Notes by the Way: Keir Hardie and the Liberals. (1932)

The Notes by the Way Column from the April 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keir Hardie and the Liberals.

For years we pointed out that the late Keir Hardie never had an understanding of Socialism and was merely a Liberal. It is amusing to read that at a Conference of the Union of University Liberal Societies at Cambridge, a Liberal proposed that Keir Hardie should be recognised as one of them. A resolution was passed welcoming the formation of a new Radical Party, and the mover, a Mr. E. G. Sollieu, said :

“The new Party should have a left-centre inclination, and should be founded on the teaching of Keir Hardie.” (“Daily Herald,” March 23rd, 1932.)

The I.L.P. and other “left-centre Liberals” will have to bestir themselves to prevent this body-snatching.

* * *

Mr. Herbert Morrison evades the issue. 

The “Clarion” makes entertaining reading for those who wish to study the Labour Party “intellectuals” at play. A quarrel has been going on as to whether state capitalism as it exists in the Post Office is more or less socialistic than State capitalism as it exists in public utility corporations. One group stands firmly by Nationalisation, while the other group denounces this as being a nineteenth century idea, now replaced by the “new Socialism” of public utility corporations. Belonging to the public utility group is Major Attlee, former P.M.G., and advocate of a public utility for the Post Office. He admits that the Post Office (so long praised by him and his Party as being an instance of Socialism) is “the outstanding example of collective capitalism” (“New Statesman,” November 7th, 1931). Mr. Herbert Morrison is also a public utility advocate. In the “Clarion” (February, 1932) he argues, with his.tongue in his cheek, that his London Passenger Transport Bill (which guaranteed their property rights to the shareholders), is Socialism, because the shareholders would no longer have the legal right of control that they now possess. Mr. Morrison knows quite well that Socialism involves social ownership of the means of life, and that the exchange of one kind of share for another kind does not deprive the capitalist of his ownership, and is not Socialism.

All the same he knows how to sling a pretty brick in controversy. Having been told by a defender of the Post Office that a man is a Socialist or not a Socialist and that nationalisation is Socialism, Mr. Morrison replies (“Clarion” March) by pointing out that the S.P.G.B. would laugh in the face of anyone who made such a statement, and would say that such a man “is not a Socialist at all, but a mere advocate of State capitalism.”

This is true enough. But Mr. Morrison did not add that the Socialist’s objections to public utilities are precisely the same as his objections to nationalisation.

What we would like to have from Mr. Morrison is his defence of public utility capitalism against the case for Socialism.

* * *

Labour Government in action. 

The theory on which the Labour Party and I.L.P. were built up is that the spectacle of a Labour Government at work so impresses and enthuses the workers that they go on to ask for more and more “Labour” reforms of capitalism. On February 27th the Labour Party M.P.’s and candidates held a meeting to inquire into the actions of the late Labour Government. Reynolds’s Illustrated News, the Co-operative-Labour paper, reporting the meeting, says:—

“One or two speakers made a feeble and timid attempt to justify the record of the late Labour Government.” (Reynolds’s, 28th Feb.)

In other words, instead of celebrating the successful application of their theory, nobody could be found to put up a plausible defence of it.

* * *

The shrinking I.L.P.

In the six years since February 1926 the I.L.P. has lost 422 branches, almost 40 per cent. of the total. The Reports to Annual Conferences give the following total number of branches in February of the years mentioned :—

1926 1,075

1929    746

1930    748

1931    712

1932    653

It was in this situation that the I.L.P. at its Easter Conference had to decide for or against continuing affiliation with the Labour Party. Would the happy days of Parliamentary seats and Governmental Office be brought back again by remaining inside, or had the time now come for the I.L.P. to exploit working-class discontent independently? The way of the reformist vote-catcher is sometimes hard.

* * *

What will Maxton do now? 

The I.L.P. Conference delegates had before them three proposals, one for continued affiliation with the Labour Party, one for disaffiliation and a third for “conditional affiliation.” Disaffiliation was rejected by 183 votes to 144, affiliation was rejected by 214 votes to 98, and the third proposal—typical of the I.L.P. in dodging the issue—was adopted by 250 votes to 53. The resolution calls for a revision of the Standing Orders of the Labour Party and it may be assumed that the I.L.P. will remain inside. The position now is that the I.L.P. repudiates the Standing Orders, but several of its members who stood as Labour candidates at the election have accepted them, including David Kirkwood, M.P., and Mr. E. F. Wise. And what now becomes of the recent assertions by Maxton, Buchanan, and others that for reasons other than the Standing Orders it is impossible for Socialists to remain inside the Labour Party ? Doubtless they will not find it difficult to swallow their words—they have had much practice at this.

One piece of information given by the Chairman of the I.L.P., Mr. Fenner Brockway, deserves to be placed on record. The I.L.P. used to be satisfied with the Labour Party reform programme. Then a few years ago it announced that the old programme had been proved inadequate and that a new reform programme, miscalled “Socialism in Our Time,” was the only adequate programme. Now Mr. Brockway in his address from the Chair (see Daily Herald, March 28th) admits that the I.L.P. is a reformist party and that its “Socialism in Our Time” is useless. He said that, in view of the present depression,

“the gradualism of the Labour Party became pathetically inadequate; even the method of Socialism in our time became inadequate. It means that our policy must become revolutionary instead of reformist.”

And then the Conference, as if to show the hollowness of the pretence that the reformist policy is going to be dropped, voted for continued affiliation with the Labour Party, although Brockway, Maxton and others know full well that there is no place for revolutionary Labour Party Socialism inside the Labour Party.

* * *

Mr. James Douglas trips up.

It is one of the pet arguments of the journalists who serve the master class by attacking Socialism, that only capitalism can give the rewards necessary to encourage literary geniuses to do their best work. Mr. James Douglas momentarily forgot himself in an article in the Daily Express (March 5th), in which he admitted that the money incentive has had an opposite effect.

“Another book I long to write is a philosophy of literary avarice. It is a base passion which has not been thoroughly explored, even by Balzac or Bennett. The influence of avarice on literature has never been analysed. 

Avarice has destroyed more men of genius than drink or indolence. Avarice corrupts the mind. Genius without avarice is as rare as beauty without vanity.”

* * *

Why the armed forces exist.

Early in February there were rumours in Eastern Europe of various Governments massing troops for war. One of the rumours said that Poland was mobilising troops on the German frontier in Upper Silesia. This, to the newspapers was a “disturbing” rumour. But re-assurance soon came. The troops were not for the purpose of threatening the German capitalists, but for the purpose of dealing with a strike which was likely to break out. (News-Chronicle, February (5th.)

Needless to say the Polish Government was not sending troops to intimidate the employers, but to keep the workers in subjection.

* * *

Trotsky's view of Russia's future.

In an interview given to the New York Times, and republished in The Militant (New York, March 12th), Trotsky stated his views on the Five-Year Plan and the future of the Socialist movement.

“Question: Do you believe that the development of the Five-Year Plan has strengthened or weakened the possibility of building socialism in Soviet Russia alone without co-operation along similar lines in the rest of Europe ?

Answer : This raises the question about socialism in a single country. The inevitability of socialism flows historically from the fact that the present productive forces of humanity have become incompatible not only with the private property in the means of production but also with present national boundaries, especially in Europe. Just as mediaeval particularism hindered the development of capitalism in its youth, so now at the peak of its development capitalism is strangling in the limits set by the national States. Socialism cannot confine productive forces in the Procrustean bed of national States. The Socialist economy will develop on the basis of an international division of labour, the mighty foundations of which have been laid down by capitalism. The Soviet industrial construction is, in my view, a part of a future European, Asiatic and worldwide Socialistic structure, and not an independent national whole.

Question : Will Soviet Russia be compelled to come to some sort of a compromise with Western capitalism, assuming that she may not be able to pursue a Socialist policy single-handed? What form would such a compromise assume?

Answer : The “compromise” between the Soviet and the capitalist systems is not a question of the future but of the present. It is already a fact to-day, although not a very stable one. How will the interrelations between the isolated Soviet Union and world capitalism develop? Here a concrete prophecy is not easy to make, but in general I should cast the following horoscope: European capitalism is far nearer to a Socialist revolution than the Soviet Union is to a national Socialist society.”

Trotsky’s recognition of the impossibility of Socialism in Russia in the near future is late but interesting. Mr. H. G. Wells has also discovered at last that the talk of Communism in Russia is “absurd,” and that the existing system there is “State Capitalism” (Daily Telegraph, February 24th).

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Trotskyist? Leninist? (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Trotskyist? Leninist?

As my interest in politics is only about three years old. and my introduction to socialism began about one year ago. I cannot claim to know much about any other political parties, beyond the fact that their policies are opposed to the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Neither am I really clear about what is meant by Leninism. Trotskyism etc But I do know that the Socialist Workers' Party is regarded by its members and by previous contributors to the Socialist Standard as Trotskyist. So why does Steve Coleman refer to them as Leninist in the July Standard?

Grant Dixon

Chatham

Reply:

All Trotskyists are Leninists. The SWP claims to be both. After all, Trotsky was just one of the gang of leaders who hung around with Lenin and accepted his elitist outlook. Other Leninists are Stalinists — they defend the activities of the dictator Stalin as being a logical progression from Lenin's policies. At least they possess the merit of consistency: if you advocate Lenin's methods of achieving a dictatorship you might as well defend Stalin's tyrannical methods of maintaining it in being. As for old Leon Trotsky, he was just an ousted Bolshevik dictator who enjoyed the pleasure of criticising the state-capitalist nightmare which he had played a key part in bringing into being. When the sailors at Kronstadt told the Bolsheviks to stuff their dictatorship over the proletariat it was Trotsky who led the Red Army to massacre them. Trotsky never gave up the belief that Russia was a "workers' state", albeit a deformed one The SWP have advanced beyond Trotsky's analysis on that one: they say that Russia is state capitalist. But even here they are hopelessly mixed up. because they argue that Russia was socialist from 1917 until the late 1920s and then, once Trotsky had left the scene, it became state capitalist In other words, the SWP are terribly confused and Grant Dixon cannot be blamed for being baffled by the various labels used to describe these absurd leftist outfits.

Editors.

Trotsky: the Prophet Debunked (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lyov Davidovich Bronstein was born a hundred years ago this month in Yanovka in the Southern Ukraine. He attended schools in the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Nikolayev, and by the age of 18 was a committed Russian revolutionary, with the basic aim of overthrowing Tsarism. In the 1890s the revolutionaries had become divided into two main streams, differing over the tactics to be adopted. One stream called themselves Social Democrats and claimed to be Marxist; they held that Russia would have to pass through the stage of capitalism even if the Tsar were overthrown and that the mass movement for this overthrow was to be sought in the industrial working class. The others were known as Narodniks (Populists) and held that a ‘socialist’ regime could be established in Russia alone following the overthrow of Tsarism by the peasant masses.

Trotsky associated himself with the Social Democrats, though the extent to which he really absorbed Marx’s ideas on history and economics is very much open to question. One thing cannot be doubted however: he was a courageous fighter for the Russian anti-Tsarist movement. Arrested for the first time in 1898, he spent two years in prison before being exiled to Siberia for four years. The abortive Russian revolution of 1905 found him a leading figure in the St. Petersburg council of Soviets, which earned him another period of deportation to Siberia. He escaped and spent the period until 1917 in exile in Austria, Switzerland, France and finally America.

While in prison after the 1905 uprising, he developed a theory which casts doubt on his understanding of Marxism. Under the influence of Plekhanov, the ‘father of Russian Marxism’, the Russian Social Democrats held that Russia would have to pass through the capitalist stage before becoming ripe for socialism. The coming revolution in Russia was thus seen as inevitably a ‘bourgeois revolution’, not necessarily in the sense of being led by the bourgeoisie but in the sense of establishing the political and economic conditions for the development of capitalism. Even Lenin at this time shared this perspective, not differing from the Mensheviks here: socialism was out of the question in Russia; the coming anti-Tsarist revolution could only be a bourgeois revolution, during which the working class might indeed play a prominent role, but after which it would find itself in the same position as the working class in the countries of Western Europe. (The disagreement between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was not over the nature of the coming revolution but over how the Social Democrats should organise themselves; into a vanguard party or into a mass democratic party.) This perspective was quite in accordance with Marx’s materialist conception of history, which teaches that socialism is only possible on the basis of developed capitalism and a majority working class which has become socialist.

Trotsky, who had refused to take sides in the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (though on the question of party organisation his sympathies were with the Mensheviks), rejected this. He argued that if in the course of the coming anti-Tsarist revolution, the working class were to get political power, it was unrealistic to expect them, or ask them, to hand over power to the bourgeoisie. According to Trotsky, they would not do this but would continue the revolution in a ‘socialist’ direction by measures of nationalisation.

“One may reassure oneself that the social conditions of Russia are not ripe for Socialism, without thinking that the proletariat, taking power, by the very logic of its position, must inevitably press forward the introduction of State management of industry.” (Quoted in Marx and the Marxists by Sidney Hook, p.201.)

This theory that the coming revolution in Russia should not stop at the bourgeois stage but should continue on towards ‘socialism’, Trotsky called ‘the theory of permanent revolution’. He borrowed this phrase from Marx at a time when the latter was under the illusion that the 1848 revolutionary wave would see a bourgeois revolution in Germany rapidly followed by a socialist revolution (an illusion soon abandoned).

Trotsky was not saying that socialism could be established in Russia alone (as did the Narodniks) but only that steps could be taken in this direction while awaiting the socialist revolution in the West. This was an opinion he held for the rest of his life, and was the basis of his later analysis of the Russian revolution. According to him, the Russian revolution of 1917, starting as a bourgeois revolution in March with the overthrow of the Tsar and ending as a ‘socialist’ revolution in November with the Bolshevik seizure of power, was the permanent revolution he had predicted in 1906. Russia under the Bolsheviks, according to Trotsky’s analysis, had started to move towards socialism but would not be able to complete this transition until the socialist revolution had occurred in the rest of the world too.

Actually, the measures which Trotsky regarded as ‘socialist’ (essentially state ownership and management of industry) were really of a state capitalist character. And in fact throughout his life Trotsky failed to make any distinction between state capitalism and socialism. Even during the periods when Lenin was frankly referring to Russia as state capitalist — in 1918 and again after 1921 — Trotsky refused to employ this term. For him, the state industries of Bolshevik Russia were basically socialist, not state capitalist, a view shared by Stalin (the disagreement between Trotsky and Stalin was not over this but over whether or not Russia in the 1930s had completed the transition to socialism).

Trotsky, then, with his theory of ‘permanent revolution’, was expressing a point of view which had more in common with Narodnik views about Russia being able to avoid capitalism. Trotsky had held this view even before 1917, and of course believed that after 1917 Russia actually had avoided capitalism. In short, he never really understood Marx, though he was an astute theorist of the Russian anti-Tsarist revolution. If we understand his reference’s to ‘socialism’ as references to state capitalism, then well before 1917 he foresaw that the Russian revolution was not going to be a simple bourgeois revolution, and that those who overthrew the Tsar could establish a state capitalism rather than a liberal capitalism as in the West. Lenin did not come round to this view until 1917, when Trotsky, for his part, overcame his misgivings about Lenin’s ideas on organisation. Lenin and Trotsky together can be said to have been the theorists of the Russian state capitalist revolution, with Lenin providing the theory of a centralised and highly disciplined vanguard party and Trotsky the theory that state capitalism rather than private capitalism could be established immediately in Russia.

But Lenin and Trotsky were not just theorists. They were also practical revolutionaries. Trotsky was in fact the chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in whose name the Bolshevik seizure of power was carried out. This is what makes his History of the Russian Revolution fascinating reading, in fact essential reading for anyone studying this event. For it is not the work of some historian studying in a university library but an account — and a well-written one — by a person who had played a key role in the event. It is also revealing in that it again shows to what extent Trotsky was not a Marxist. For, as Trotsky saw it, insurrection is an ‘art’; leaders attempting an insurrection must know the right slogans to put forward to mobilise the masses and exactly the right ‘psychological moment’ to launch the call to insurrection. He even suggested that the Bolshevik insurrection might not have been successful had it not been for one man: Lenin. A return to the Great Man theory of history if ever there was!

After the Bolshevik coup, Trotsky became a leading member of the government, first as Commissar for Foreign Affairs, then as leader of the Red Army, which under his command had by 1921 successfully defeated the counter revolutionary White Russians and their allies (including Britain, France and Japan). Trotsky carried over the military approach he had learned here to economic matters and advocated that the labour of production should be militarised, should be forced labour under military discipline. It was he who personally supervised the crushing of the Krondstadt uprising in 1921. Particularly revealing as to his frame of mind at this time is the pamphlet he wrote in 1922, Terrorism and Communism (first published in Britain under the tendentious title In Defence of Terrorism), in which he defends the use of terror against the Bolsheviks’ political opponents.

Trotsky quite clearly played a leading role in laying the foundation for Stalin’s later dictatorship, of which he was to be one of the first victims. Eased out of power in 1925, expelled from the Bolshevik Party in 1927 and exiled to Alma Ata near the Chinese border, he was finally forced to leave Russia in 1929. In exile Trotsky set out his analysis of the Russian revolution and its outcome in Revolution Betrayed. The Russian revolution, he argued, had been a capture of political power by the working class; under Lenin (and, of course, Trotsky) Russia had been developing towards socialism (state capitalism); the coming to power of Stalin represented the usurpation of political power in Russia by a bureaucracy but had left unchanged the social basis established by the Bolsheviks in 1917 — the state ownership and planning which Trotsky had always regarded as being in some way ‘socialist’. For him, Russia was a ‘degenerate Workers’ State’ in a period of transition between capitalism and socialism.

The theory is of course nonsense. It brings out once again Trotsky’s failure to make any distinction between state capitalism and socialism — in fact he actually says in Revolution Betrayed that state capitalism is impossible as a full society (chapter IX). This book is, however, still worth reading, since apart from being written by someone who had been prominently involved in the construction of the Russian regime, it became the starting point for the discussion that went on in the 1930s and 1940s about the nature of Russian society (and which still goes on in the Trotskyist sects). This polemic eventually led to some correctly coming to see Russia as state capitalist, a view Trotsky combatted until his murder in 1940 by an agent of his ‘degenerate Workers’ State’.

Trotsky himself took an active part in these discussions, and there is something genuinely pathetic in the sight of a man who had once been a leading anti-Tsarist revolutionary reduced to the leader of just one of many Trotskyist sects, to the level of a Tony Cliff or a Gerry Healy.

In conclusion, Trotsky is best seen not as a Marxist, nor as a theorist of working class revolution, but as a Russian revolutionary, as an exponent, in theory and later in practice, of the anti-Tsarist revolution which cleared the way for the further development of capitalism in Russia in the form of state capitalism. In urging the working class to adopt tactics that had proved successful in this non-socialist, state capitalist revolution, Trotsky helped in no small measure to sidetrack a part of the workers’ movement in Europe and North America and hence to delaying the coming of the world socialism to which he claimed to be committed.

Adam Buick

(A later article with the same title - and by the same author -  was published in August 1990)

Talking about a revolution. No apologies to Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao! (1993)

A Short Story from issue 10 of the World Socialist Review

Overheard in the lobby off a welfare hotel . . . 

Nick L: I say with a well-organized team and enough support from the general public at the right time, we can do it: we can take over the state and reorganize it from top to bottom.

Karl M: But wouldn’t that make you just another management team?

Nick L: No, no, no! Of course the team’s head would be in the right place. Once we took over, we’d make sure things moved in the right direction. OK, we’d have to plan on a complete renovation of the playing field, and sure, it probably would take quite a while before we were off and running . . . 

Karl M: I still don’t see how the “general public” fits into this. Nothing seems to change for them. You keep all the old rules—work for pay, return on investment, everybody still needs money to get what they need, and nobody sinks any capital into anything unless they’re sure they’ll at least get it back. Where’s your revolution?

Nick L: Eventually, everything will work out.

Leo T: Yeah, provided all the team members play by the rules—

Joe S: You heard him, everything works out. Period.

Nick L: Things just sort of unfold automatically: A team with its head on its shoulders, sticking together and teaching the public, step by step, how to end the game of exploitation, you know, with lots of feedback and all that crap—I mean, hey! How can we go wrong?

Karl M: You call it a revolution, but there’s nothing socialist about it—that’s what can go wrong! You can’t just expect to replace one set of managers with another. “Eventually” never comes. The only change that works is right now.

Mao Z: Oh, come on! You mean right here—in this room?

Leo T: [Sotto voce] Hey, be careful! There’s somebody over there who might be listening . . .They might be police—

Karl M: No, that isn’t what I mean: that’s closer to what you meant, in fact. What I meant was, you have to get rid of capital and wage labor everywhere as your first move. If you don’t do that, no amount of screwing around with the machinery of state is going to matter. Your “team” will only get caught up in making it work. You’re dreaming if you think you can “guide the masses” like that. The relations of exploitation you start out with—based on wage-labor and capital—won’t waste any time telling you what to do.

Mao Z: Oh, now wait a minute . . . You don’t just announce to the public that the game is over as soon as they’ve all sat down! The struggle against exploitation is like any good match: it could last forever if need be. The play is everything.

Leo T: The public needs to be led!

Nick L: There—you see? Outvoted!

Karl M: We’ll see about that.

Leo T: Listen, keep your voice down—someone could be listening!

Karl M: The point is simply to end the game. According to the rules, certain people own capital and they invest it, deciding in the process how everyone else will live and work. That just isn’t a community in any basic sense of the word. What we need is another set of rules: people in general decide what they can’t do without and make it known to whoever produces it. In the process everybody decides for themselves how they will live and work. We all take turns making sure production happens.

Nick L: Hello-o! Hello-o! I’m sure that’ll work just fine. How will you manage all of a sudden to turn people made passive or lazy and irresponsible by centuries of repression into paragons of reason? Think! Think!

Karl M: Think for yourself! Sooner or later, we’ll all have to.

Joe S: But without capital, how can you run the state? And who’s going to invest what you, sitting there in your nice easy chair, have “abolished” in your head? We’ve got to have a ruling class to struggle against—or are you just thick?

Karl M: Enough people have to abolish capital “in their heads” before any revolution can get off the ground. Without capital— you’re so right—the ruling class disappears. Like smoke from an extinguished fire. But it can’t just be in my head: it’s got to be in everyone’s head. No more goods and services for sale at a profit. The ending of the game means the starting of the real play, a game without spectators! People say they need certain items— wealth; producing and distributing those items implies only the administration of wealth. No one “rules” anyone, and everyone has control. From each according to ability and to each according to need.

Nick L: Oh, hey, look, I can see you don’t really belong in this group; you’re just too weird to be a real activist like us . . .

Karl M: You’ve just got to start out by replacing the wages system with a system of free access. I can say that here and now, in this lobby, but the only way anything’s going to happen is if a large enough majority of people come to have some idea of how they want to reorganize production the world over—

Mao Z: Will somebody please shut him up?

Karl M: No, I’m serious! Without ending the class struggle first, people will be unable to see an end to their powerless, downtrodden status and will just go on trying to make the world “a better place”; what we all really need is to replace this reality of fragments with an interconnected reality of whole people. Around the world, now . . . 

Nick L: So you’re saying history won’t be able to distinguish my team from—

Joe S: [Walking to the doorway] That does it! I’m leaving.

Mao Z: [Getting up] Yeah, I really can’t deal with this doctrinaire stuff, either. See you in St. Louie.

Leo T: [Huffily] I’m history. [The door to the stairwell slams closed]

Nick L: [Rising and turning around] Happy? You just ruined a perfectly good revolution!

Karl M: I didn’t ruin mine. Look, I really have done a lot of work on the subject. People have fought the introduction or confronted the reality of the wages system with a persistence that is positively impressive: the German Anabaptists who followed Thomas Muenzer in the Peasant Wars around 1525; the English “true Levellers” or Diggers in 1649; 19th- and 20th-century Utopian experiments too numerous to mention—among them, communities based on the writings of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. Each of these tried, in its own way, to break with the system of wage labor and capital—and all of them failed for lack of ability to reorganize the entire system of production—

[The stairwell door slams shut] 

Ron Elbert

SPGB Meetings (2009)

Party News from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• Zeitgeist Addendum was reviewed the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• A video recording of the debate between Adam Buick and Hillel Ticktin is available on YouTube. (A warning: it's in 10 parts.)

Anti-imperialism is not anti-capitalism (2020)

From the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

We continue our series on the origins of the mistaken view that workers in the advanced capitalist countries share in the exploitation of those in the so-called ‘underdeveloped’ countries.

Link to Part 2 

In his 1920 Preface to Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin comments:

‘Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of “advanced” countries’.

 Colonialism is not quite the same thing as imperialism. It entails the annexation of, and direct political control over, other territories by a state which is not necessarily true of imperialism. For Lenin, political independence was indeed achievable ‘within the bounds of world imperialist relationships (A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, 1916).The classical Marxist diffusionist view held that, with capitalism’s development and the increasing internationalisation of capital, nationalism would decline as a social force. Unfortunately that hasn’t yet happened. However, here we are focussing on what ought to be the attitude of socialists towards nationalism.

Early twentieth century Marxists, like Rosa Luxemburg, were already arguing that nationalism had become reactionary. Capitalism had outlived its usefulness to progress, having prepared the ground for socialism by raising society’s productive potential to an unparalleled degree. While that potential continues to expand with technological innovation it is increasingly being squandered in all sorts of ways.

Nationalist struggles

Lenin’s take on nationalism was different. The rise of monopoly capitalism associated with imperialism entailed the ‘super-exploitation’ by a few oppressor (imperialist) nations of the oppressed (colonised) nations on the capitalist periphery. Nationalist movements in the latter, were – allegedly – qualitatively different from those in nineteenth century Europe in an era of ascendant capitalism. As Jim Blaut summarises:

 ‘The nationalism of colonies and semi-colonies is called into being by the intensification of exploitation and oppression. In an important way, this is a new phenomenon…, it cannot be assimilated to the theory of national movements which emerge during the rise of capitalism and have as their purpose or goal the simple creation of a bourgeois state. The nature of colonialism is such that producing classes suffer along with whatever young or incipient bourgeoisie may exist. Therefore the national liberation movements in colonies and semi-colonies are profoundly different from the national movements of earlier oppressed nations such as those in non-colonial portions of the Tsarist Empire. It is not innately a bourgeois struggle against feudal forces for the creation of a classical bourgeois state. It is a multi-class struggle directed primarily against imperialism’ (The National Question: Decolonising the Theory of Nationalism, 1987).

Since imperialism and monopoly capitalism were linked, this suggested that ‘national liberation struggles’ could serve as the harbinger of ‘global proletarian revolution’ which would likely erupt first where the impact of imperialist exploitation was harshest – namely, those economically backward countries still transitioning to capitalism. That required workers there to take the lead in this struggle, so it ‘could be turned onto a socialist trajectory or a non-capitalist trajectory which would result in socialism’. National struggle was thus clothed in the rhetorical language of class struggle. Trotsky similarly opined: 

‘The sectarian simply ignores the fact that the national struggle, one of the most labyrinthine and complex but at the same time extremely important forms of the class struggle, cannot be suspended by bare references to the future world revolution’ (Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads, 1939).

For all Trotsky’s labyrinthine attempt to assimilate class struggle to national struggle, he was attempting to square the circle. ‘National struggle’ can only be advanced by watering down, and compromising, the class struggle. It is an attempt to impose from above a fake commonality of interests between classes whose own interests are diametrically opposed.

Though Lenin himself rhetorically committed himself to the concept of ‘proletarian internationalism’ and the repudiation of ‘national chauvinism’, it is difficult to see how one could ever successfully prosecute any ‘national liberation struggle’ without also fostering national chauvinism as its motivating ethos.

In any event, subsequent global developments exposed the fundamental flaws in his thinking. Particularly after the Second World War, vast swathes of the ‘developing world’ were granted political independence from their erstwhile colonial masters. Indeed, since then there have been further – successful – attempts at achieving political independence though these have tended to follow a somewhat different trajectory, resulting in the formation, along mainly ethnic lines, of new breakaway states as the product of civil war within existing states – for example, Southern Sudan. These latter developments do not fit well within the Leninist framework and its simplistic division of the world into ‘oppressor countries’ and ‘oppressed countries’.

In any case, history has emphatically vindicated Luxemburg’s repudiation of Lenin’s argument that socialists should support national liberation struggles to expedite a ‘global proletarian revolution’. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead, capitalist relations of production along with an accompanying capitalist mind-set has become firmly entrenched in the countries concerned. Hence the unedifying spectacle of erstwhile ‘Marxist’ guerrilla fighters transmogrified into well-heeled business people or corrupt politicians, hobnobbing with multi-nationals in a bid to pimp out the nation’s cheap labour force to overseas investors while cracking down on dissent and spiriting away a sizeable chunk of the nation’s revenue into some private offshore account. If you are going to ride the capitalist tiger don’t be surprised where it takes you.

World revolution

Yet ignorant Marx critics still routinely trot out the ridiculous refrain that Marx ‘got it all wrong’ in that the revolutions he hoped for occurred first, not in the advanced countries, but on the capitalist periphery. What these critics overlook is that these were not the revolutions Marx had in mind. Rather, they were capitalist revolutions enabling the transition to capitalism.

In the German Ideology Marx suggested the coming communist (socialist) revolution would likely be spearheaded by the advanced countries precisely because communism presupposed the advanced development of the productive forces: 

‘Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of the productive forces and world intercourse bound up with them’.

We don’t need to take the idea of instantaneous global revolution too literally. Obviously, there will be some time lags involved in the spatial transformation from global capitalism to global socialism. However, Marx insisted on the absolute necessity of majoritarian socialist consciousness before that could happen. The logic of his diffusionist model suggested that if one part of the world had a socialist majority, other parts would not be far behind.

For Lenin, the ‘law of uneven development in capitalism’ meant it was impossible to achieve socialism simultaneously across the world. But, this was a reference to the objective preconditions for socialism – not the subjective preconditions – and, if anything, it would support Marx’s contention that a socialist revolution would likely occur first in the advanced countries where the productive forces were most developed. But Lenin’s ‘law’ has long been completely irrelevant to the socialist objective, anyway. Socialism can only be a global alternative to capitalism and it is the productive potential of the world as a whole that crucially matters, not any one part of it.

Why then his obsessive preoccupation with this ‘law’? A clue can be found in his article On the Slogan for a United States of Europe (1915):

‘The victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. After expropriating the capitalists and organising their own socialist production, the victorious proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of the world—the capitalist world—attracting to its cause the oppressed classes of other countries.’

This implies not only the uneven development of the productive forces but the uneven growth of socialist consciousness itself. Lenin’s view was that workers in the advanced countries, by benefitting from imperialism, would be much more resistant to socialist thinking compared with their counterparts in the backward countries where national liberation struggle would more readily translate into ‘proletarian revolution’.

So when he spoke of organising ‘socialist production’ within a single country initially, the logic of his argument about how he saw a global proletarian revolution unfolding suggested he had in mind an economically backward country. However, it is precisely in such a country that material conditions would be least propitious for socialism. Furthermore, insofar as socialism and capitalism can no more coexist than one can mix oil and water, this would imply severing links with global capitalist supply chains exacerbating the hardships experienced there.

Lenin’s attempt to argue his way out of this impasse was disingenuous. Instead of the ‘victorious proletariat of that country’ literally ‘organising their own socialist production’ what he really had in mind was a process of ‘building socialism’ involving the implementation of state capitalism which he saw as being organically linked to socialism.

Ironically, far from advocating autarky, Lenin favoured closer integration with global capitalism and imperialist investment in the Soviet economy under his New Economic Policy his government was forced to adopt in 1921:

‘Get down to business, all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them. Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running the economy’ (The New Economic Policy, 1921).

This partnership with Western capitalists continued under Stalin, the former providing much of the capital and expertise to finance Soviet industrialisation. Prominent among these was Henry Ford to whom Stalin expressed his gratitude, calling him one of the world’s greatest industrialists and obsequiously adding, ‘May God preserve him’ (history.com/this-day-in-history/ ford-signs-agreement-with-soviet-union).

Who is ‘imperialist’?

This was not just a one-way street, however. Just like the ‘Monroe doctrine’ enunciated by the American president James Monroe in the early nineteenth century, opposing further colonisation in the Americas by European powers only in order to hypocritically assert US imperialistic hegemony over the region, so the same can be said of Soviet imperialism.

The realisation that workers in the West were not going to rise up to support the Soviet regime prompted a strategic shift by that regime towards supporting nationalist struggles in developing countries as a means of undermining its Western rivals. For all its paper commitment to the principle of ‘national self-determination’, this did not stop the Soviet Union exercising its own political (and economic) muscle when it came to those countries falling within its own sphere of influence, installing puppet regimes and threatening or carrying out military intervention in countries like Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).

All this prompts the question – what exactly is meant by ‘imperialism’ – and, by extension, ‘anti-imperialism’ – today? Lenin developed his theory of imperialism in opposition to Kautsky’s ‘ultra-imperialism’ which envisaged the major imperialist powers forming a federation which would make military conflict largely redundant or irrational – a pious hope, indeed.

But Lenin’s own theory was shaped by the then existing reality of colonialism which in the post-war era has largely disappeared. At the same time we have witnessed the rise of giant multinational corporations, some with a larger revenue base than most states. If imperialism is about the conflict between nation-states how does this hold up in an era of ‘neo-liberal’ governance?

Concerning Lenin’s distinction between ‘imperialist countries’ and ‘oppressed countries’, Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi, have identified ‘10 countries at the most that fit the bill as imperialist’-– essentially the G7 countries plus one or two small states – by analysing cross-border flows of profit, interest and rent. As Roberts notes, little has changed in the century since Lenin wrote on the subject: ‘it’s still the same countries’ (bit.ly/35j9Y98).

But if being an ‘imperialist country’ means being a net ‘recipient of cross-border income flows’, then it seems improbable you will ever get rid of imperialism while capitalism (and its ‘cross-border income flows’) exists since what we are talking about here is essentially a zero sum game. Eliminating one imperialist power simply creates a vacuum into which another will inevitably step.

Thus, nationalistic ‘anti-imperialism’ has proved to be not only a fundamental distraction from the class struggle for socialism but also fundamentally futile on its terms.

Robin Cox

Sting in the Tail: A Sordid Tale (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Sordid Tale

The history of British Labour governments is littered with sordid episodes. One of these was told on ITV's "A Marriage of Inconvenience" on 15 August.

In 1949 Ruth Williams, a white Briton, married Seretse Khama, a tribal chief In the British "Protectorate" of Bechuanaland. The neighbouring South African government, which had just imposed Apartheid, was outraged and demanded that the Labour government refuse to recognise Khama as legitimate chief.

Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, was determined that Britain must have its own atom bomb but the American government wouldn't provide the necessary know-how.

But America was short of uranium which South Africa had in plenty, so the Labour government made a deal with South Africa to betray Khama in return for uranium which it would then swop for American atom secrets.

Khama was summoned to London to be subjected to threats, attempted bribery and finally banishment from Bechuanaland.

So the government that claimed to oppose Apartheid actually assisted it, while the cynicism and treachery they displayed would have shamed the hardest-hearted Tory.

The re-telling of this episode is a reminder that Labour governments will stop at nothing in their efforts on behalf of British capitalism.

Trotsky's "Marxism"

The 50th anniversary of Trotsky’s murder had his followers lavishing the usual praise on their hero.

In a letter to The Guardian (23 August), David Widgery of the Socialist Workers Party claimed, among other things, that Trotsky had applied Marxist analysis to 20th century events.

We deny this: What Trotsky applied was the bombastic crystal-gazing which had him writing in 1935, for example, that ". . . England is heading for a revolutionary explosion" only months before the Tories won their biggest ever majority.

According to Trotsky the sit-down strikes by French workers in 1936 "revealed the wholehearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist system", that capitalism in 1938 was in its "death agony", etc., etc.

History has proved Trotsky's analyses to be nonsense and his legacy to the working class has been to confuse thousands of them down the years.

Ryzhkov's "Marxism"

In the struggle for power inside the Communist Party of the USSR there appears to be a conflict between those who would immediately go over to a Western-style market economy and those who would have that change enacted more gradually.

Amongst the gradualists is the present Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. But to illustrate the hypocrisy and deceit of the ruling élite  in the USSR his more gradual approach does not apply to his own personal ownership.

In the youth daily Komsomolskaya Pravada, it has been reported that Ryzhkov has bought his state dacha with one-and-a-half hectares of forest for the ludicrous sum of 47,000 roubles (officially £47,000 but in reality about one tenth that amount judging by the foreign tourist rate.)

With the thought of yet another coal strike in the offing perhaps Mr. Ryzhkov plans to have a good supply of firewood on hand this winter. Another example of "socialist" planning?

Off the Rails

During the enquiry into the Clapham rail disaster, which led to 35 deaths, the Westminster coroner Paul Knapman made a telling point about the cause of the disaster, when questioning the technician who carried out the faulty signalling work.

During questioning of Mr. Hemingway, Mr. Knapman said that he believed that there were four "core reasons" for the disaster — a lack of instruction; a lack of supervision; a lack of testing along the guidelines set out in circular SL-53; and "the general reckless haste, pressure, pressure, pressure" of the re-signalling work

The Independent 11 September

That the pressure was indeed intense is backed up by the information that Hemingway had had only one day off in 13 weeks, that he had no formal training and that the acting testing officer who had to check Hemingway's work had no formal training either.

The "core reason" for the Clapham disaster is of course capitalism. In a sane society based on production for use there would be no need to scrimp on safety measures.

Reformist "Progress"

The Gulf crisis has meant a big set-back for environmentalists in the USA.

Until now their pressure (aided by the low cost of imported oil) has enabled them to block further oil exploration, notably in Alaska and off the Californian coast.

Now the strategists who consider the long-term interests of US capitalism insist that America has become too dependent on imported oil and that more domestic oil production is in "the national interest".

The oil companies are using this situation to turn the tables on their enemy. One of their chief spokesmen stated:

The national security aspects in oil have been completely subordinated in recent years to the environmental concerns. Now the emphasis is coming back to the national security aspect. If there is a conflict between the two, it may no longer be resolved in favour of the environmentalists.

The Guardian 25 August

And the environmentalists' other bogey, the nuclear industry, has seized the opportunity to strenghten its case by pointing out that nuclear plants greatly reduce US dependence on oil imports.

On top of this come allegations that environmentalists are a threat to national security! Congressman Dannemeyer of California says:

The environmentalists party . . . is a greater security threat than Saddam Hussein could ever be.

Now that the "communist" menace has gone, maybe the environmentalists will be the next victims to be labelled "un-American". Stranger things have happened.

Down on the Farm

Riot police lobbing tear gas grenades at angry crowds — lorries hi-jacked — roads blocked by burning debris — a scene from Lebanon, South Africa or Palestine?

No. This is rural France as farmers protest at the import of meat and lamb.

Many of them face ruin as the price of lamb has fallen by 17 per cent, calves by 10 per cent and cows by 7 per cent.

Some "experts" blame the French government for cutting subsidies, some the import of cheap produce from Britain, others blame cheap imports from Eastern Europe. None of them apparently blame the real cause — capitalism with its production for profit. 

The spectacle of children starving — while farmers riot about the ruin that faces them as the meat mountain grows — is just another example of how essential it is that we scrap the out-dated system of society that produces everything for sale despite the desperate needs of the world's hungry.

Workers leave the running of society in the hands of "experts" at their peril.

Russia Was Never Socialist. (1929)

Book Reviews from the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

“An Illustrated History of the Russian Revolution” (Vol. II). Publisher: Martin Lawrence, 15s. “Preparing for Revolt,” Lenin, 5s. (Modern Books, Ltd). “Lessons of October,” Trotsky. 3s. (Labour Publishing Co.).

The first volume of the “Illustrated History” was noticed in these columns in June, 1928. The second volume carries the story from July, 1917, to the introduction of the New Economic Policy.

Lenin’s book consists of a series of letters and articles written between August and October, 1917 ; several appear in the “Illus­trated History.”

Trotsky’s short work was published in 1925. It was written in view of the defeat of Communist strategy in Bulgaria and Germany, and suggests the necessity of “Bolshevising” the Communist International, which, being interpreted, means, “Let’s have better leaders !”; a fairly familiar phrase in this country.

Trotsky claims a considerable amount of credit (as a leader of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee) for the success of the insurrection of October, 1917, and eulo­gises Lenin (“who was not in Petrograd,” p. 61), only in order to discredit Kamenev, Zinoviev and others.

He repeatedly emphasises the dependence of “the whole course of the revolution,” (p. 67), upon “the broken and discontented peasant army of many millions”; yet he tells us on p. 26, “a democratic coalition of workers, peasants and soldiers could not be other than weak, and could not actually attain to power,” hence the necessity for the Bolshevik dictatorship.

An interesting sidelight on this claim is obtained from the “Illustrated History,” (p. 302). “The victory of October is attributed by the Bolshevik Party to the fact that from the very first months of the revolution they rejected not only the Mensheviks’ compro­mises with the Capitalists, but also the idea of a ‘workers’ Government,’ which would have isolated them from the peasants and would have left them to the mercy of the Capitalists.”

Lenin chose the slogan, “All power to the Soviets !” The peasants, and not the workers, were in a majority in the Soviets (if the soldiers are reckoned among the peas­ants). This choice, as Lenin said, “pro­tected” the Bolsheviks from “jumping over the peasant revolution.”

Here is proof positive of the utter stu­pidity of the claim that the revolution in Russia was Socialist, or that the working-class hold power. According to the Bolshe­viks themselves, neither separately nor in alliance with the peasants is such a thing conceivable. The much-vaunted dictator­ship of the proletariat is nothing more than a hollow euphemism for opportunist office-holding by the Bolshevik Party.

Let us turn to Lenin, There is a considerable amount of repetition in his book which might well be boiled down to the two articles entitled “The Approaching Crisis” and “Will the Bolsheviks maintain power?”

In the former he deals with his proposed economic measures.

Here are the chief of these measures :—

1. The nationalisation of the banks.
2. The nationalisation of the trusts (sugar, petroleum, coal and metal monopolies).
3. The suppression of business secrecy.
4. The obligation for all industrialists, merchants and employers to group themselves into trusts.
5. Enforcement of the organisation of the population in consumers, societies under the control of the State.

Speaking of the first proposal, he says, 

“The ownership of the capital with which the banks operate is certified by printed slips called shares, bonds, etc. Not one of these slips is suppressed or altered by the nation­alisation of the banks …. whosoever has fifteen millions, keeps his fifteen millions.” (pp. 107-109).

“Nationalisation would have immense advantages, not so much for the workers (who rarely do business at a bank) as for the mass of peasants and small industrialists” (p. 111).

“From the military point of view it would bring immense advantages, and would in­ crease the military strength of Russia” (P. 112).

Speaking of trust nationalisation, 

“It is necessary to appeal directly to the initiative of the workers and offer them a definite percentage of profits on condition that they exercise complete control and increase production ” (p. 119). And again, “What we have to do, I repeat, is not establish Socialism in a day, but expose the theft of public money,” p. 124 (italics Lenin’s).

“The vital matter is not the confiscation of Capitalist property, but universal, all-embracing workers’ control over the Capitalists and their possible supporters” (p. 192).

How did these proposals work out in prac­tice? In the industrial establishments, as on the land, the closing days of the Provisional Government in 1917, witnessed the growth of anarchy, economic disorder.

“The workers, even before October and during; October, began to occupy the factories unsystematically” (p. 533, “Illustrated History”), therefore,

“The Soviet Power saw itself faced with difficult problems of organisation . . . Not merely was there no idea of the immediate introduction of Socialism, but it was also not held necessary to nationalise the whole of industry.

The Soviet Power adopted the plan of the introduction of a special form of State Capitalism in which the majority of the factories and workshops still remain the private property of the Capitalists, are not yet nationalised.

These factories are joined together in trusts under the control of the proletarian State (from above) and the organs of workers control (from below). This was a programme for the collaboration of the proletarian State and the Capitalists, for the leading; and reconstruction of industry” (p. 526-7).

The years of intervention and civil war, 1918-21, forced the Soviet Power to go much further in the direction of the regulation of private property relations than it had in­ tended” (p. 527).

Yet even so we learn on p. 549 that “up to the year 1921 it is not possible to speak of a Socialist system of production.” As for the so-called “workers’ control,” that went the way of the Constituent Assembly and several other items promised by the in­surrectionists, and even “decreed” — on paper.

“During the second half of 1918, the nationalisation en masse of factories began in the towns . . . The direct leadership of industries by State organs took the place of control of production by the workers.”

During the period of “war Communism,” “Famine and confusion tortured the working population to the limits of endurance” (p. 527). Between July, 1918, and the be­ginning of 1920, something like half-a-million workers (a third of those engaged in large-scale industry) went to work on the land largely owing to the fall in real wages (p. 550).

There “the October revolution had not merely deprived the landlords of their land and given it to the peasants it had also in­tensified the internal conflicts among the various classes of peasantry” (p. 551).

No sooner had “March, 1920, brought final victory to the Red Flag” (p. 543) however, than the peasant ranks closed in opposition to the very “State which had led the struggle against the rebels who were fight­ing to regain the property of the landlords” (p. 553).

"War Communism had forbidden trade, but a new form of secret trading arose. Conditions in these secret trade markets were uncommonly favourable for the peasants” (p. 553).

In the early part of 1921 strikes broke out for increased rations and the restora­tion of trade.

“Discussion disclosed the antagonism within the ruling party, revived the united forces of the other parties, and weakened the influence of the party over the workers at the most critical moment” (p. 551).

Then occurred the Kronstadt rebellion. “Its economic demands were completely met by the N.E.P.,” which Lenin definitely described as a retreat. (Speech at the Ple­num of Moscow Soviet, November 19th, 1922.) Writing in September, 1917, Lenin had declared that “Russia is a country dominated by the petty bourgeoisie. The vast majority of the population belong to this class” (“Preparing for Revolt,” p. 67).

Five years later conditions bore eloquent testimony to the facts that “it is impossible to introduce machinery on a large scale into agriculture in Russia,” and that “no insurrection will create Socialism if the economic conditions do not permit of the establishment of it” (“Preparing for Revolt,“ pp. 152-3).

With the substitution of taxation of the peasantry for compulsory grain deliveries, agricultural production and trade resumed their normal course. The State industries expanded and the number of workers en­gaged in large-scale industry generally increased by over a million in five years (“Illustrated History,” p. 560).

This very great increase, etc., was still, however, insufficient to absorb all the unemployed streaming in from the land. The number of registered unemployed rose to 1,310,000 on December 31st, 1926 (p. 561).

Thus a third of the workers are on the dole.

The reason is not far to seek. “Agricul­ture is not only employing a much larger amount of machinery than before the war, but, as time goes on, more complicated machinery also, as, for example, tractors. In 1914, the total number of tractors in Russia was 187, while in the U.S.S.R. in 1926 there were 23,000 tractors in use” (p. 562).

Yet even this development leaves Russia fundamentally peasant. It is not one, nor two, but several tens of millions who require industrialising on modern lines before they are likely to be fit material for Socialism.

It is owing to “the low stage of develop­ment of Russia’s productive forces and the incompleteness of her economic and techni­cal organisation” that the colossal strain of the World War precipitated Tsarism and the last relics of feudalism into the abyss. The State machine had to be reorganised, not in order to abolish an imperfectly devel­oped Capitalism, but in order to clear the way for its development. As in the French Revolution, so in Russia, the interests of individuals who had amassed great wealth in any form under the old regime had to be sacrificed to the interests of the property-owning class generally.

This is all the so-called “Socialism” of Russia amounts to. The chief victims were the landed aristocrats, who were the most active section of the counter revolutionaries. Split up into half-a-dozen political groups, the rest of the property-owning class were unable to come to a permanently workable agreement.

With an army in revolt and economic col­lapse in sight, power passed into the hands of the only party with sufficient organisation and understanding to face the task of peace and reconstruction. That this party con­tained a considerable working-class element and possessed also a marked degree of Soci­alist knowledge, is an encouraging symptom of working-class ability and the spread of revolutionary ideas.

All this, however, does not blind us to the fact that the Bolshevik power rests on the control of a conscript peasant army and that political expression of the class antago­nisms (which are denied legal form outside the Party) find vent within the Party. The Bolsheviks silenced the Social Revolutionary Party, but carried out their agrarian pro­gramme.

In like manner a “Labour” Government, in this country administers Liberal reforms. The foreign policy of the Bolsheviks which was announced with such a flourish has likewise proved but a variant of the old Tsarist policy of intrigue. Instead of assist­ing in the education of the international working-class it has financed confusion and the propaganda of criminally futile policies of insurrection, long ago obsolete in West­ern Europe.

The working-class in this and other countries must capture power, but this will not be accomplished by the influence of magic slogans. When the workers are ready to establish the co-operative commonwealth, they must at least be ready to vote for it.

Eric Boden

Letter: A Defender of the Russian Government: A Criticism and our Reply. (1928)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard 

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Bexley, Kent.

Comrade Loheit’s letter is straightforward enough, and I do not agree that he “makes a number of sweeping statements.”

Your enmity towards the Russian revolution appears to be the result of your conception of social change. You evidently believe that capi­talism can end and a shutter be put up, and that the new socialist society can begin afresh. Thus, in your January issue, A. Kohn wrote : “international Socialism will not deal with the effects of capitalist conditions, but lay the economic foundations upon which new social relations will nourish.” When it is remembered that Marx, in his letter on the Gotha Programme, wrote: “What we are concerned with is a communist society, not as it might have developed upon an independent basis of its own, but as it actually issues from capitalist society. In every respect, alike economically, morally and intellectually, it is afflicted with the congenital defects of the system from which it has sprung “—it will be clear that Kohn’s statement is quite un-Marxian.

This may help your other anti-Russian con­tributors to grasp that, although socialism is not fully established in Russia, the Soviet Union is no longer a capitalist State.

Your treatment of the Russian revolution is wrong because, while you may take a quotation from the “Manchester Guardian” of a report in the German bourgeois press, of a statement made by Trotsky, you do not give the statements of Bukharin, Mikoyan, Yaroslavsky, or others of the Party majority, on the points of dispute with the opposition.

During a discussion at the recent Fifteenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Rykov said: “The Party directs the State and is responsible for its administration and for the socialist development of an enormous country.” You hate the Bolsheviks for this : but you seem to have forgotten the Communist Manifesto, where it says : “The Communists are the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others ; theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”

It is disgraceful to say that the Bolsheviki “dis­persed the assembly by force, and have dictated by the same means ever since”; or that “they cannot revolutionise the economic basis of society by issuing decrees, nor by exiling or imprisoning all who are guilty of pointing out these obvious facts.”

In conclusion, I must say that some of your contributors who write about “legal and political rights,” need to remember Marx’s exposure of bourgeois parliamentarism in “The Civil War in France” ; and the last part of the Manifesto, explaining why Communists “in France ally themselves with the Social-Democrats,” and “in Switzerland support the Radicals,” and that they openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions “; together with the final portion of the “Poverty of Philosophy,” declaring for violent revolution, need to be re­viewed by some of your writers who tend to ignore whole passages of Marx. It would be pleasant to see attacks on Capitalism in the socialist standard, as a change from untruth about the Communist International.

Yours for history, 

Stuart Feather

Our Reply.

(We have for convenience numbered the paragraphs in Mr. Feather’s letter.)

(1) We did not say that Lobeit’s letter was not straightforward.

To say that we do not understand the “difference between dictatorship and democracy,” and to make bold assertions as to what might have happened in Russia if the Bolsheviks had adopted a different policy 10 years ago and to give no evidence for either assertion, is in our view, rightly described as making “sweeping state­ments.“ Perhaps, in any event, Mr. Lobeit will be able to state his own case.

(2) Mr. Feather talks about our “enmity towards the Russian Revolution” and later on (see 5) of our hatred for the Bolsheviks. He gives no evidence whatever for either of these charges, both of which are as vague and unilluminating as to say that we are “enemies of the battle of Waterloo.” We do state as a fact that the Russian Revolution has not and could not have achieved the impossibility of creating Socialism in industrially, socially and politically back­ward Russia. Mr. Feather quotes Marx on the obstacles which will face the working class when Socialist society “issues from capitalist society.” This brings us straight to the heart of our criticism of people like Mr. Feather who think that an intelligent and armed minority can create Socialism when there is no developed capitalist system for it to issue from.

The statement quoted from the article by A. Kohn is clear enough if read in con­junction with the preceding arguments. The capitalists here and the Bolshevik Govern­ment in Russia are dealing with the prob­lems of social relationships only in the framework of capitalism. That the Bol­sheviks show greater enlightenment does not alter the fact that the economic system in Russia is capitalist and will produce its inevitable effects. The prime task of Socialists will be to change the basis of society and thus get at causes. To say that the working class which tackles this problem will itself be the product of capitalist environment is a truism which we naturally accept. Mr. Feather cannot con­ceive that “capitalism can end and a shutter be put up.” We, on the contrary, cannot conceive of the wage-slave condition of the working class being brought to an end or being altered in any material way, until after the organised working class has definitely put a shutter up on the political and social control of the capitalist class. What bearing the quotation from the Gotha Programme has on this question it is im­possible to perceive.

(3) Mr. Feather gives no scrap of evidence to show that the Soviet Union “is no longer a capitalist state.” We will consider his evidence when he produces it. He does not disclose precisely what is his view, but the common fallacy shared by Labour Party and Communists reformers is the illusion that capitalism ceases to be capitalism when it is administered by a Lenin and his associates, or by a Ramsay MacDonald.

(4) Mr. Feather is so busy telling us what books we read and don’t read, and airing his views about our loves and hates, that he has, it seems, no time to acquaint himself with our position. If he will refer again to the December issue he will see that we published the extracts from Trotsky’s Memorandum for the information of our readers simply because Trotsky’s views are not readily accessible to them. The views of Trotsky’s opponents are readily accessi­ble in numerous Communist publications. May we also remind Mr. Feather that we expressly dissociated ourselves from the programme in question. Our views are not a copy of Trotsky’s but have been repeated in our journal at intervals for over nine years. Our main criticism was made soon after the Bolshevik’s seized power. Time has justified it and apparently Trotsky and others are coming to see the soundness of it.

(5) Mr. Feather knows and knows why we “hate the Bolsheviks.” May we ask him to believe that we have something better to do than go about hating Bol­sheviks. If he still believes that we hate them may we ask him for evidence, and finally, may we remind him that as early as 1917 and 1918, when those who were later to blossom forth as Communists were first applauding Kerensky’s rise and then deploring his fall, we almost alone in this country, were giving them due credit for the fine stand they made. Is Mr. Feather unable to appreciate the view that the Bolsheviks, like every other body which seeks working class emancipation, are justified, not by their sincerity or their intentions, but by the correctness of their position?

Mr. Feather quotes some remarks from the Communist Manifesto about the rela­tions between the Communists and the proletariat in general, but ignores the fact that the overwhelming mass of the population in Russia is peasant, not proletarian. This is the determining factor, not the hopes and beliefs of the Russian Communists.

(6) Why is it disgraceful to say that the Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent assembly by force and have dictated by the same means ever since? Mr. Feather does not, let it be noted, deny the truth of those statements.

(7) Does Mr. Feather then believe that the economic basis of society can be revolutionised by issuing decrees or by imprisoning opponents? We, like Marx, are of the opinion that “no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room within it have been developed.” (See Preface to “Critique.”)

(8) It is impossible to gather what is the connection between the phrase “legal and political rights” (and Mr. Feather, with typical slipshodness here, as elsewhere, omits to give references for his quotations) and some remarks in the Communist Mani­festo about associating with other parties. The section of the Manifesto referred to is in any event dismissed by Engels in his 1888 Preface as antiquated because “the political situation has been entirely changed.” It is kind of Mr. Feather to give as a list of books we should read and tell us that we “tend to ignore whole passages of Marx” (whatever that may mean), but it would be more useful and to the point if he would state precisely what is his case against Socialism or in favour of a minority armed revolt or whatever it is he considers necessary.

(9) Mr. Feather has not, so far, produced even one alleged untruth about the Communist International, much less proved his charge. His implication that the Socialist Standard does not contain attacks on capitalism is untrue and is of course known by him to be untrue. We do not, it is true, act as share pushers trying to induce investors to buy shares in the Soviet Govern­ment’s 9 per cent. Rail Loan as do various so-called Communist journals. Perhaps if we did Mr. Feather would be satisfied that we were attacking capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Are we anti Latin American? (2022)

Letter to the Editors from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are we anti Latin American?

Dear Editors

In your last issue, reviewing ‘The Truth About Trotsky’, you state ‘In 1937 Leon Trotsky, from his exile in Central America…’. Well, he was not exiled in Central America, he was exiled in Mexico. Unless of course you did that intentionally placing Mexico outside North America, thus implying that only the two English speaking countries, USA and Canada belong to North America, therefore Mexico as a Spanish speaking should be in Central America.

The shape of the American continent, from Alaska to Cape Horn, is that of geographical giant with a thin isthmus in the middle linking North from South America. In that sense, even if it burns the writer reviewing the book on Trotsky, Mexico’s place is in the North of the continent.

This brings me to a pattern in your constant depiction of anything political and ideological pertaining Latin America. And is that of a veiled attitude of dismissal every time it is mentioned.

I find this quite offensive – Guzman in Peru ‘was not a Marxist’, ‘Allende in Chile apart from nationalizing the copper, did very little’. AMLO in Mexico, Lula in Brazil, etc, etc.

As a Chilean who came here after being in prison from 1974 to 1976, I cannot help but to think of the typical position of those pseudo Marxists who love criticizing everybody else, without ever themselves doing anything practical for Socialism.

Salvador Allende was the leader of the Popular Unity government 1970-1973 which in itself is an achievement. The first Marxist to be elected by the vote in the Western Hemisphere, he showed that Chile could be transformed. First of all, the nationalization of the banks was the first measure taken by the Popular Unity, copper the second. Many of the big industry, especially textiles, were passed over to the Social Property Area. It created the ‘comandos populares’, which encouraged the participation at the municipal/local level of the working class, the same can be said of the ‘cordones industriales’ where all the big industries surrounding Santiago had been taken or expropriated and were now ran by their workers.

The Agrarian Reform was also a total success. It nationalized the largest privately owned land measuring over 40 hectares. Thus, not only economically benefited the rural workers of the countryside who became syndicalized but also the indigenous population of Southern Chile who for centuries had been reclaiming back their land.

Allende’s government lasted only for three year, but were filled with advances and hopes for most Chileans. In the last local elections before the coup, the Popular Unity had increased their votes supporting the government but, as Kissinger said, the CIA had to push for military intervention before it was too late.

As you can see, this is not an essay or article but a rough letter pointing out that you cannot make swiping statements as you do. I’m planning to continue reading Socialist Standard because it’s worth it.

Nigel de Vere, 

Bromley

Reply:

We take your point that we should not have referred to Mexico as being in Central America. We can assure you that it was an honest mistake – based on a common practice that we should no doubt have questioned – but it was in no way an attempt to belittle any particular country or part of the world.

However, while we apologise for that, we can find no reason to apologise for references in past issues of the Socialist Standard with regard to political events and developments in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking parts of the American continents which you have found offensive. You mention Guzman in Peru, AMLO in Mexico, Lula in Brazil and, in particular, Allende in Chile, and you object to our not considering such people or movements as ‘Marxist’. You are particularly critical of the views we have expressed about Allende’s Chile. While we acknowledge and appreciate your personal opposition to the post-Allende Chilean dictatorship which led to your imprisonment and to your leaving your home country, we cannot accept that the reforms brought in by the Allende government, beneficial as they may have been for many Chileans, had anything to do with Marxism or socialism as we define those terms. They clearly had a lot to do with ‘reformism’, i.e. the attempt by ‘progressive’ governments to run the capitalist system in a more liveable, and often less oppressive, way for workers. And we do not question that this brought with it ‘advances and hopes for most Chileans’. But the kind of reforms you mention, for example nationalisation of banks and industry, in no way amount to the moneyless wageless society without buying and selling based on economic equality and free access for all to all goods and services, which is the basis of Marx’s prescription for a socialist form of society.

Of course nothing prevents those advocating or practising policies of reform from calling themselves Marxist or socialist (or others referring to them in that way, often pejoratively), but our contention is that what they represent is a particular way of running the capitalist system, not a fundamental transformation of that system, which is currently dominant in various forms in all countries. We would contend that nothing in Allende’s policies or practises (though they sadly cost him his life) represented or even pointed the way forward to the wholly democratic society of common ownership and voluntary association that is truly worthy of the name ‘Marxist’ or socialist.

Having outlined our disagreement with you on this point, we nevertheless consider it a credit to your open-mindedness that you say that you will continue to read our journal because ‘it’s worth it’. Needless to say that is something on which we do agree with you.

Editorial Committee.