Rear View: Bin capitalism (2021)

The Rear View Column from the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bin capitalism

The rock band Garbage have a new album out this month. The title No Gods, No Masters will likely bring a smile or nod of agreement from socialists regardless of their musical tastes and is attributed to Louis Blanqui, a contemporary of Marx and Engels, and described by the latter as ‘…essentially a political revolutionist. He is a socialist only through sentiment, through his sympathy with the sufferings of the people, but he has neither a socialist theory nor any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political activity he was mainly a “man of action”, believing that a small and well organised minority, who would attempt a political stroke of force at the opportune moment, could carry the mass of the people with them by a few successes at the start and thus make a victorious revolution’ (The Programme of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune, 1874). Shirley Manson, the band’s vocalist, when she was 12 or so told her Sunday-school-teacher father ‘religion’s a sham and I’m not going to church anymore, it’s just bullshit’. Speaking recently (spin.com, 30 March) of the album she declared: ‘It was our way of trying to make sense of how fucking nuts the world is and the astounding chaos we find ourselves in’. Further, it is ‘a critique of the rise of capitalist short-sightedness, racism, sexism and misogyny across the world.’ Evidence of which abounds.

Myopic measures

‘On Feb. 21, Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party passed a resolution unequivocally hailing the “visionary leadership of Prime Minister Modi” in turning India into a “victorious nation in the fight against COVID”’ (time.com, April 28). ‘There is a shortage everywhere at the peak of the crisis. This government defines shortages, shortcomings, and short-sightedness’ (nationalheraldindia.com, 23 April). ‘Experts have long raised the alarm about shortages of medical oxygen in India and other poor countries to treat pneumonia, the world’s biggest preventable infectious killer of children under five years of age.

But the government has for years failed to invest enough money in such infrastructure, experts say. Does India produce enough oxygen? The short answer: yes. Experts say the vast nation of 1.3 billion people is producing enough oxygen – a little over 7,000 tonnes a day. Most is for industrial use but can be diverted for medical purposes’ (aljazeera.com, 29 April). Religion thrives alongside such (preventable) suffering: ‘In March 2020, a Hindutva group, the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, held a cow urine drinking party as a means of providing protection against the virus’ (scroll.in, 1 May). Yet, as Marx noted, ‘To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo…’ Atheism alone is another dead end.

Race or class?

‘Nothing has exposed the role of structural and institutional racism as starkly as the disproportionate effects of covid-19 on ethnic minority communities. Public Health England’s report identifies racism and discrimination as key contributors to infection risk, outcomes, and life chance’ (bmj.com, 21 April). ‘Poor British people in 2020 are unhealthier than those born into poverty 100 years ago, a study has found’ (dailymail.co.uk, 20 January 2020). Workers who don’t understand why capitalism condemns them to impoverished lives are all too ready to blame their problems on other workers, from other towns or from other countries or of other ’races’. This is an exercise of blind futility for after all the misconceptions, after all the efforts to reform capitalism into a problem-free system, it is clear that the need is for a radical change; nothing less than the abolition of class society will do. This is perfectly possible but it requires a united resolve among the world’s working class, reflecting the fact that their interests are as one, to establish a society based on common ownership of the means of life. Race has no scientific basis. Racism needs to be rejected as a destructive, anti-social force. There is a better way; we have a world to win and little time to lose.

Dead slow

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021: ‘At the current relative pace, gender gaps can potentially be closed in 52.1 years in Western Europe, 61.5 years in North America, and 68.9 years in Latin America and the Caribbean. In all other regions it will take over 100 years to close the gender gap: 121.7 years in Sub-Saharan Africa, 134.7 years in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 165.1 years in East Asia and the Pacific, 142.4 years in Middle East and North Africa, and 195.4 years in South Asia.’ (weforum.org, 30 March). Socialism will include the liberation of women as part of its project of human emancipation. This will not come about in an automatic or inevitable way. A political organisation whose object is socialism cannot permit sexism within its ranks on the grounds that nothing can be done now and that the problem will be resolved ‘after the revolution’. For a political organisation to be credible, it must embody the attitudes, values and practices that it seeks to institute in society at large. Socialists believe that all people, men and women, are equally worthy of respect. This is enshrined in our Declaration of Principles (1904-present), specifically Clause 4: ‘That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex’.

The Programme of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune. by Frederick Engels. (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

 [The general line running through this criticism of the Programme of the Blanquist refugees is still so applicable that despite the praise given to the German Workers' Party, it is well worth reprinting. The misunderstanding of social development by the Blanquists has been parallelled during the war period by groups both here and in Germany and Russia. Engels' criticism tells with even greater force against these groups than it did against the Blanquists, because the social conditions are more highly developed now than then, and there is, therefore, even less excuse for the misunderstanding.]

After the failure of every revolution or counter revolution, a feverish activity develops among the fugitives, who have escaped to foreign countries. The parties of different shades form groups, accuse each other of having driven the cart into the mud, charge one another with treason and every conceivable sin.

At the same time they remain in close touch with the home country, organise, conspire, print leaflets and newspapers, swear that the trouble will start afresh within twenty-four hours, that victory is certain, and distribute the various government offices beforehand on the strength of this anticipation.

Of course, disappointment follows disappointment, and since this is not attributed to the inevitable historical conditions, which they refuse to understand, but rather to accidental mistakes of individuals, the mutual accusations multiply, and the whole business winds up with a grand row. This is the history of all groups of fugitives from the royalist emigrants of 1792 until the present day. Those fugitives, who have any sense and understanding, retire from the fruitless squabble as soon as they can do so with propriety and devote themselves to better things.

The French emigrants after the Commune did not escape this disagreeable fate.

Owing to the European campaign of slander, which attacked everybody without distinction, and being compelled particularly in London, where they had a common center in the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, for the time being, to suppress their internal troubles before the world, they had not been able, during the last two years, to conceal the signs of advancing disintegration. The open fight broke out everywhere. In Switzerland a part of them joined the Bakounists, mainly under the influence of Malon, who was himself one of the founders of the secret alliance. Then the so-called Blanquists in London withdrew from the International and formed a group of their own under the title of "The Revolutionary Commune". Outside of them numerous other groups arose later, which continue in a state of ceaseless transformation and modulation and have not put out anything essential in the way of manifestos. But the Blanquists are just making their program known to the world by a proclamation to the "Communeux".

These Blanquists are not called by this name, because they are a group founded by Blanqui. Only a few of the thirty-three signers of this program have ever spoken personally to Blanqui. They rather wish to express the fact that they intend to be active in his spirit and according to his traditions.

Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionist. He is a socialist only through sentiment, through his sympathy with the sufferings of the people, but he has neither a socialist theory nor any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political activity he was mainly a "man of action", believing that a small and well organized minority, who would attempt a political stroke of force at the opportune moment, could carry the mass of the people with them by a few successes at the start and thus make a victorious revolution. Of course, he could organize such a group under Louis Phillippe's reign only as a secret society. Then the thing, which generally happens in the case of conspiracies, naturally took place. His men, tired of beings held off all the time by the empty promises that the outbreak should soon begin, finally lost all patience, became rebellious, and only the alternative remained of either letting the conspiracy fall to pieces or of breaking loose without any apparent provocation. They made a revolution on May 12th, 1839, and were promptly squelched. By the way, this Blanquist conspiracy was the only one, in which the police could never get a foothold. The blow fell out of a clear sky.

From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.

We see, then, that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the preceding generation.

These conceptions of the march of revolutionary events have long become obsolete, at least for the German Workingmen's party, and will not find much sympathy in France, except among the less mature or the more impatient laborers. We shall also note, that they are placed under certain restrictions in the present program. Nevertheless our London Blanquists agree with the principle that revolutions do not make themselves, but are made; that they are made by a relatively small minority and after a previously conceived plan; and finally, that they may be made at any time, and that "soon".

It is a matter of course that such principles will deliver a man hopelessly into the hands of all the self-deceptions of a fugitive's life and drive him from one folly into another. He wants above all to play the role of Blanqui, "the man of action". But little can be accomplished by mere good will. Not every one has the revolutionary instinct and quick decision of Blanqui. Hamlet may talk ever so much of energy, he will still remain Hamlet. And if our thirty-three men of action cannot find anything at all to do upon what they call the field of action, then these thirty-three Brutuses come into a more comical than tragic conflict with themselves. The tragic of their situation is by no means increased by the dark men which they assume, as though they were so many slayers of tyrants with stilettos in their bosoms, which they are not.

What can they do? They prepare the next "outbreak" by drawing up lists of proscription for the future, in order that the line of men, who took part in the Commune, may be purified. For this reason they are called "The Pure" by the other fugitives. Whether they themselves assume this title, I cannot say. It would fit some of them rather badly. Their meetings are secret, and their resolutions are supposed to be kept secret, although this does not prevent the whole French quarter from ringing with them next morning. And as always happens to men of action that have nothing to do, they became involved first in a personal, then in a literary quarrel with a foe worthy of themselves, one of the most doubtful of the minor Parisian journalists, a certain Vermersch, who published during the Commune the "Pére Duchene", a miserable caricature of the paper published by Hébert in 1793. This noble creature replies to their moral indignation, by calling all of them thieves or accomplices of thieves in some leaflet, and smothering them with a flood of Billingsgate that smells of the dungheap. Every word is an excrement. And is with such opponents that our thirty-three Brutuses wrestle before the public !

If anything is evident, it is the fact that the Parisian proletariat, after the exhausting war, after the famine in Paris, and especially after the fearful massacres of May, 1871, will require a good deal of time to rest, in order to gather new strength, and that every premature attempt at a revolution would bring on merely a new and still more crushing defeat. Our Blanquists are of a different opinion.

The rout of the Royalist majority in Versailles forebodes to them "the fall of Versailles, the revenge of the Commune. For we are approaching one of those great historical moments, one of those great crises, in which the people, while seemingly sunk in misery and doomed to death, resume their revolutionary advance with new strength."

In other words, another outbreak will "soon" come. This hope for an "immediate revenge of the Commune" is not a mere illusion of the fugitives, but a necessary article of faith with men, who have their mind set upon being "men of action" at a time when there is absolutely nothing to be done in the sense which they represent, that of an immediate outbreak.

Never mind. Since a start will be made soon, they hold that "the time has come, when every fugitive, who still has any life in him, should declare himself."

And so the thirty-three declare that they are: (1) atheists; (2) communists,; (3) revolutionaries.

Our Blanquists have this in common with the Bakounists, that they wish to represent the most advanced, most extreme line. For this reason they often choose the same means as the Bakounists, although they differ from them in their aims. The point with them is, then, to be more radical in the matter of atheism than all others. Fortunately it requires no great heroism to be an atheist nowadays. Atheism is practically accepted by the European working men's parties, although in certain countries it may at times be of the same calibre as that of a certain Bakounist, who declared that it was contrary to all socialism to believe in God, but that it was different with the virgin Mary, in whom every good socialist ought to believe. Of the vast majority of the German socialist working men it may even be said that mere atheism has been outgrown by them. This purely negative term does not apply to them any more, for they maintain no longer merely a theoretical, but rather a practical opposition to the belief in God. They are simply done with God; they live and think in the real world, for they are materialists. This will probably be the case in France also. But if it were not, then nothing would be easier than to see to it that the splendid French materialist literature of the preceding century is widely distributed among the laborers, that literature; in which the French mind has so far accomplished its best in form and content, and which, with due allowance for the condition of the science of their day, still stands infinitely high in content, while its form has never been equalled since.

But this cannot suit our Blanquists. In order to show that they are the most radical, God is abolished by them by decree, as in 1793: "May the Commune for ever free humanity from this ghost of past misery (God), from this cause of its present Misery." (The non-existing God a cause !) There is no room in the Commune for priests; every religious demonstration, every religious organisation, must be forbidden."

And this demand for a transformation of people into atheists by order of the star chamber is signed by two members of the Commune of the first place, that a multitude of things may be ordered on paper without being carried out, and in the second place, that persecutions are the best means of promoting disliked convictions. So much is certain, that the only service, which may still be rendered to God to-day, is that of declaring atheism an article of faith to be enforced and of outdoing even Bismarck's anti-Catholic laws by forbidding religion altogether.

The second point of the program is Communism.

Here we are more at home, for the ship in which we sail here is called "The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in February 1848." Already in the fall of 1872 the five Blanquists who withdrew from the International had adopted a socialist program, which was in all essential points that of the present German Communism. They had justified their withdrawal by the fact that the International refused to play at revolution making after the manner of these five. Now this council of thirty-three adopts this program with its entire materialist conception of history, although its translation into Blanquist French leaves a good deal to desire, in parts where the "Manifesto" has not been almost literally adopted, as it has, for instance, in the following passage: "As the last expression of all forms of servitude, the bourgeoisie has lifted the mystic veil from the exploitation of labor, by which it was formerly obscured: Governments, religions, family, laws, institutions of the past and the present, finally revealed themselves in this society, reduced to the simple antagonism between capitalist and wage workers, as instruments of oppression, by the help of which the bourgeoisie maintains its rule and holds the proletariat down."

Compare with this "The Communist Manifesto", Section 1: "In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoise has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverend awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation, etc." 

But as soon as we descend from theory to practice, the peculiarity of the thirty-three manifests itself: "We are Communists, because we want to reach our goal without stopping at any intermediate stations, at compromises, which merely defer the victory and prolong the slavery."

The German Communists are Communists, because they clearly see the final goal and work towards it through all intermediate stations and compromises, which are created, not by them, but by historical development. And their goal is the abolition of classes, the inauguration of a society, in which no private property in land and means of production shall exist any longer. The thirty-three, on the other hand, are Communists, because they imagine that they can skip intermediate stations and compromises at their sweet will, and if only the trouble begins, as it will soon according to them, and they get hold of affairs, then Communism will be introduced the day after to-morrow. If this is not immediately possible, then they are not Communists.

What a simple hearted childishness, which quotes impatience as a convincing argument in support of a theory !

Finally the thirty-three are "revolutionaries."

In this line, so far as big words are concerned, we know that the Bakounists have reached the limit; but the Blanquists feel that it is their duty to excel them in this. And how do they do this? It is well known that the entire socialist proletariat, from Lisbon to New York and Budapest to Belgrade has assumed the responsibility for the actions of the Paris Commune without hesitation. But that is not enough for the Blanquists. "As for us, we claim our part of the responsibility for the executions of the enemies of the people" (by the Commune), whose names are then enumerated; "we claim our part of the responsibility for those fires, which destroyed the instruments of royal or bourgeois oppression or protected our fighters."

In every revolution some follies are inevitably committed, just as they are at any other time, and when quiet is finally restored, and calm reasoning comes, people necessarily conclude: We have done many things which had better been left undone, and we have neglected many things which we should have done, and for this reason things went wrong.

But what a lack of judgment it requires to declare the Commune sacred, to proclaim it infallible, to claim that every burnt house, every executed hostage, received their just dues to the dot over the i! Is not that equivalent to saying that during that week in May the people shot just as many opponents as was necessary, and no more, and burnt just those buildings which had to be burnt, and no more? Does not that repeat the saying about the first French Revolution: Every beheaded victim received justice, first those beheaded by order of Robespierre and then Robespierre himself! To such follies are people driven, when they give free rein to the desire to appear formidable, although they are at bottom quite goodnatured.

Enough. In spite of all follies of the fugitives, and in spite of all comical efforts to appear terrible, this program shows some progress. It is the first manifesto, in which French workingmen endorse the present German Communism. And these are moreover workingmen of that calibre, who consider the French as the chosen people of the revolution and Paris as the revolutionary Jerusalem. To have carried them to this point is the undeniable merit of Vaillant, who is one of the signers of the manifesto, and who is well known to be thoroughly familiar with the German language and the German socialist literature. The German Socialist workingmen, on the other hand, who proved in 1870 that they were completely free from jingoism, may regard it as a good sign that French workingmen adopt correct theoretical principles, even when they come from Germany. 

(From “Der Volksstaat,” No. 73, 1874. Translated by Ernest Untermann.)

The Bourgeois role of Bolshevism (1970)

Book Review from the November 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Insurrectionists, by W. J. Fishman. Methuen. 55s.

The theme of this book is one we ourselves have often advanced: that, as we put it in the April Socialist Standard, Lenin’s theory of the vanguard party can be traced back through Russian revolutionaries like Ogarev and Tkachev to French revolutionaries like Babeuf and Buonarroti.

Fishman writes as an obvious opponent of what he thinks is Socialism and so does not really know what Marxism is all about. Nevertheless he does describe well enough the evolution of insurrectionist ideas as they spread from 18th century France to 20th century Russia and he does make some useful points.

The original Jacobins under Robespierre ruled France for a brief period in 1793-4. Though not against private property, they were on the side of the poor against the rich and believed in the ruthless use of violence to crush any opposition to Equality, one of the supposed aims of the French Revolution.

The first to combine the idea of an armed uprising and then a temporary exercise of armed power with that of communism was Babeuf (1760-1797), who was executed for his part in an abortive such coup in 1796. One of his collaborators was Buonarroti, whose account of the uprising under the revealing title of Conspiration pour L'Égalité served as a handbook for the following generation of would-be insurrectionists. Buonarroti, who lived on as an active conspirator till his death in 1837. argued that, since the old order so degraded the masses that they were unable either to see where their interests lay or to act for themselves, it was only an active, conscious minority that could overthrow the old order. This minority should be organised as a secret society with the aim of seizing power in an insurrection.

Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881). who spent most of his life in prison, was the man who more than any other personified this kind of insurrectionism. He, too, stood for a vague communist society and again argued that the masses were so ignorant as a result of the old order that its overthrow would have to be the work of a minority. Marx had a great respect for Blanqui as a man of action, but their ideas of the social revolution was quite different. For Marx it was not a question of a minority insurrection followed by a minority rule leading to communism, but rather a question of a majority capture of power (perhaps by peaceful means) followed by democratic majority rule leading to communism (or Socialism—he gave the two words the same meaning). The emancipation of the working class, proclaimed Marx in a famous slogan, was the task of the working class itself. Although Fishman quotes Engels’ well-known repudiation of minority insurrection in 1895, he does not bring out the important difference between the theories of Marx and those of previous communist revolutionaries like Babeuf, Buonarroti and Blanqui. He stood for majority revolution; they stood for minority insurrection. What he learned from them was the need to win and use political power ("dictatorship" as it was then called) to carry through the social revolution.

French revolutionary ideas spread all over Europe, including Tsarist Russia where an attempted coup was made as early as 1825. Here the secret society was the only possible form of revolutionary organisation and it was strongly advocated by Ogarev (1814-1877), a collaborator of Alexander Herzen. Ogarev was well acquainted with Buonarroti’s book and it was through him that French ideas on how to organise an insurrection — including the secret “vanguard” party — were transmitted to the Russian opponents of Tsarism.

The view that because of their oppression the masses were so ignorant that a minority organised as a secret society would have to act for them was held by many well-known Russian revolutionaries, including Nechaev (1847-1882) (the man who made a fool of Bakunin) and Tkachev (1844-1886) and even by Bakunin himself.

Tkachev, who associated with the Blanquists while in exile, is particularly important in that he anticipated some of Lenin's views on how to overthrow the Tsar. He realised that by themselves the revolutionaries could not overthrow the Tsarist bureaucracy; they needed a mass basis. He suggested the peasants as the weapon the revolutionary leaders should wield. He even realised the possibilities of using the then developing urban working class as the main element in the mass struggle. In the insurrection, said Tkachev, the Tsarist bureaucratic State should be completely smashed but the victorious leaders should set up another State in its place — an idea Lenin later tried to foist on Marx with regard to the modern bourgeois State.

By Lenin's time the use which a revolutionary minority might be able to make of the urban working class was even more obvious. Lenin, sticking to the by now well-established Russian revolutionary idea of a vanguard party and the ignorance of the masses, suggested a new tactic: the anti-Tsarist revolutionaries should concentrate on using the working class as their main weapon.

It is here that Fishman’s lack of understanding of Marxism leads him astray. He thinks that Lenin advocated this tactic as a means of establishing Socialism in Russia (in fact he mistakenly thinks there is now Socialism there, but that’s another matter). But until 1917 Lenin’s aim was the traditional one of the Russian revolutionaries: the establishment of a democratic republic. From his study of Marxism, he knew that this was the task of the bourgeoisie and one they had carried out in some West European countries. Lenin saw that in Russia the bourgeoisie was too weak to do this and applied Marx’s analysis of the period of Jacobin rule in France to the Russia of his day. By their drastic actions against the old feudal order. Marx pointed out, the Jacobins though not themselves of the bourgeoisie had furthered the bourgeois revolution by taking measures the bourgeoisie was afraid to take itself, Lenin’s suggestion was that this was more or less what would have to happen in Russia: Russia’s bourgeois revolution (the establishment of a democratic republic) would have to be accomplished without the bourgeoisie by the vanguard party leading the workers and peasants.

Trotsky argued that if the working class were to gain power in the course of Russia's bourgeois revolution they would, and should, go on to take "socialist” measures. Fishman does not seem to realise that Lenin did not come round to this view till 1917, nor that Trotsky did not accept the vanguard party idea till 1917 either. He has them as collaborators from 1902 on, an elementary mistake.

Lenin’s switch in 1917 from aiming at a democratic republic to a "socialist” one took him even further away from Marxism, but it did not invalidate his previous analysis of how Russia’s bourgeois revolution would come. The role of the Bolsheviks in Russia’s bourgeois revolution did indeed turn out to be the same as that of the Jacobins in France’s, that is, to carry through measures against the old order the bourgeoisie themselves were incapable of. The great difference was that while the Jacobins' rule did not last, the Bolsheviks’ rule did and the Bolshevik rulers gradually evolved into a new bourgeoisie (or capitalist class) themselves. Lenin and Trotsky confirmed their own earlier prognosis: their seizure of power in 1917 and subsequent short rule paved the way for the further development of capitalism in Russia.

Adam Buick

Paris 1871 (1971)

From the March 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Paris Commune itself, though arising immediately out of the Franco-Prussian War, was actually a direct product of the development of capitalism in France that brought misery to the worker and to the small trader. The idea of the Commune was borrowed partly from the French Revolution during which it had a short life. Its leading partisans drew inspiration mainly from traditions of the past in defining their ideas and shaping their policies; the future only appeared to most of them in blurred and contradictory outlines.

On 20 September, 1870, after the defeat of the French armies and the capture of Napoleon III, Paris was invested by the Germans and a four month's siege began. A Republic was immediately proclaimed and members of the National Assembly appointed themselves as the Provisional Government, declaring their intention to resist the enemy to the end. An Assembly member, Thiers, eventually emerged as the head of the government, with another Assembly member, Trochu, as its military director. In contradiction to the Republican declaration the government sent Thiers to seek for a successor to Napoleon!

It was the popular belief in Paris that the city could never be taken, and every reverse suffered by the army was followed by threatening demonstrations against the government, accusing it of incapacity, and making a demand for a Commune. This demand, as we have mentioned, was partly based on tradition. During the French Revolution, when France was sorely beset on all sides, the Commune of 1792-3 put backbone into the defence, and the memory of that Commune had persisted, hallowed by the march of time.

On 31 October the Paris Town Hall was invaded by an angry crowd, some demanding a Committee of Public Safety and others the Revolutionary Commune. Members of the government were made prisoners. Blanqui and Flourens tried, for a short time with success, to get control of the situation. Soon a battalion of the National Guard arrived and rescued the government members. The government, anxious to allay opposition for the time, declared an amnesty for all those who had taken part in the disturbance. Later, in defiance of the amnesty pledges, Blanqui was taken prisoner and played no further active part in the struggle.

On 20 January, 1871, Trochu declared that further resistance was impossible, although he had made no serious attempt to organise resistance, and that peace negotiations must be opened with the enemy. When making this declaration he exposed the government’s hypocrisy by stating that, on the evening of 4 September, he had assured his colleagues that Paris had no chance of successfully withstanding a siege, and that to attempt to hold out against the Prussian army would be folly. On 29 January the city surrendered and the German flag was hoisted on the forts, in spite of the demonstrations by angry crowds which had to be dispersed by gunfire.

At the beginning of February carefully manipulated elections were held for the sole purpose of ratifying the peace terms. The result showed the sweeping domination of monarchical and clerical influences in the provinces whilst Paris remained republican. Throughout the country the National Guard was still armed and, in the peace terms, it had been stipulated, by force of circumstances, that the Paris National Guards should be allowed to retain their arms. As soon as peace was signed the government began to give evidence of its intention to disarm and crush the revolutionary elements in Paris.

The first move made by the government was to transfer the seat of government to Versailles, a few miles from Paris, out of the reach of popular demonstrations. Soon rumours were spreading that the government intended to disband the National Guard. This would have been a calamity for thousands of workers. Since the beginning of the siege many businesses had been compelled to close down or curtail their activities, throwing workers out of work and forcing them to depend upon their pay as National Guards; the disbanding would have deprived them of their means of living. This determined them to hang on to their weapons at any cost.

The government also proposed to enforce the payment of all overdue bills and arrears of rent, which had been suspended during the siege. The enforcement of the payment of arrears brought the poorer section of the small proprietors over to the side of the Paris workers. The propertied class had not forgotten the happenings of June, 1848, and were deliberately driving the poor to despair and insurrection so that they would have an excuse, when the workers came out on the streets, to repeat their former attempt at extirpating any revolutionary ideas.

Mass meetings of protest were held and a Central Committee of the National Guard was subsequently appointed, made up of three members from each Paris district, and sub-committees were also appointed for some of the districts. The members of the Central Committee, elected by the people in the districts, were quite unknown men. They were picked out for their practical capacity and trustworthiness. The Central Committee was appointed on the 11 March, 1871, the day that the Red Republican journals (a loose organisation of radicals that had come into prominence in 1848 and still existed) were suppressed by the government, and Flourens and Blanqui were condemned to death for their part in the demonstration of 31 October.

Thiers and his ministers arrived in Paris on the 18 March, supported by 25,000 troops, and proceeded with their design to disarm the National Guard, which numbered about 200,000 men. At 3 o’clock in the morning a secret attempt was made to seize the cannon belonging to the Guards of the Monmartre district. The cannon were captured but the government had forgotten to provide means of transport. In the meantime the people in the neighbourhood awoke and women surrounded the troops calling upon them to leave the cannon alone. Subsequently National Guards and stray soldiers collected around the brigade guarding the cannon. General Lecomte, who was in charge, ordered his men to fire on the crowd. Although ordered to fire three times the soldiers did not respond. Then Lecomte was arrested and taken to the Guards headquarters. Eventually the attempt elsewhere to steal the cannon also failed.

Before the Central Committee could meet to organise the insurrection the government stole out of Paris and entrenched themselves at Versailles. Even after the Central Committee took control the defence, including the elementary precaution of closing the city gates, was neglected, whilst arrangements were being made for the election of a Commune.

Whilst the election was in progress the Central Committee set about organising the public services, suspended the sale of goods from pawnshops, forbade landlords from evicting tenants, and prolonged for a month the period of voucher bills. Two members of the Committee were sent to the bank and obtained, through the medium of Rothschild, money to pay the wages of the National Guard and the expenses of running the public services. The astonishing thing is that all through the time the Commune existed the Bank remained in the hands of its old management and the Commune officials had to beg for the money they needed, although there was a vast amount of specie in the vaults of the Bank. This was only one of the many examples that showed how respect for private property still clung closely to supporters of the insurrection.

The government of Thiers now gathered its army together, including prisoners of war which Germany released for the purpose, officially declaring war on the Commune on the 1 April and then, without further warning, gave orders to open fire on the city. The Parisians were thrown into confusion. Their forces were not yet organised and lacked officers possessing military knowledge, staff work which should have provided ammunition, guns, and other appurtenances of warfare at the proper places, was in no condition to meet the needs of the struggle. At the beginning there was a child-like trust in the reluctance of the Versailles troops to fire on their fellow countrymen; a trust that was soon dissipated by the fiendish acts that followed. A sortie against Versailles on the 3 April was repulsed. From that date onwards Paris was on the defensive and its death agony began. Three important defects contributed to the defeat of the Commune: It lacked internal harmony, which hindered the determined adherence to any line of action; it lacked experienced military leaders, which hindered the building up of adequate measures of defence; and it possessed too great a reverence for private property.

As the defences crumbled and the end drew near the Committee of the Commune disbanded to join the fanatical resistance at the barricades, which prolonged the death agony. Eyewitnesses related afterwards the terrible story of the horrors that were enacted as the victors turned Paris into a shambles.

On the 29 May the last fort was captured. This ended the Commune, but it did not put an end to the vengeance. For weeks afterwards the indiscriminate slaughter of prisoners continued, only easing eventually for fear of pestilence. A working class which had dared to demand some liberty from oppression, and failed to win it, was met with the cry “Woe to the vanquished”, and they endured woe to an immeasurable extent.

Gilmac.

See also:

March 1971: Karl Marx and the Paris Commune

Abandon The Idols. (1923)

From the May 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The need for knowledge, lest we be duped, is constantly forced upon us. The clergyman tells us the ins and outs of the twilight land—and takes our humble offerings. The doctor doses us for complaints for which we do not suffer—and takes our humble pence. The lawyer assures us that our case is worth fighting, drains us of what little money we have, then finds our case too weak to contest. The average politician asks for our trust, and promises to cure our social ills; experience afterwards informs us that we have been "sold again."

Where knowledge is possessed in these different directions, how altered is the position! Knowledge of the laws of nature frees is from the clergyman's assistance; unnecessary medical attention; knowledge of the laws of "Justice" enables us to instruct the lawyer; and knowledge of the laws of society enables us to appreciate the limits of the politician's power.

There are limits to the quantity of knowledge each individual can acquire, but one department is open to all to acquire sufficient to free them from dependence upon self-appointed guides. As far as the worker is concerned, that department is connected with his position in society and the method whereby it can be improved.

It has become a habit for the worker, in his struggle for better conditions, to depend upon the instructions of individuals supposedly possessing to an unusual degree the intelligence necessary for conducting the struggle in the best way. This dependence generally consists of a blind trust in a "leader," and a faithful carrying out of his instructions wheresoever they may lead. The disasters that constantly accompany this idol worship eventually bring about the fall of one popular idol, only to leave room for another. The position is further complicated by a war among the idols for the favours attached to leadership.

A case in point, with regard to idol worship, is that of J. H. Thomas, whose popularity at present among railwaymen is probably greater than ever, in spite of the disasters that have accompanied the policies he put forward and his openly boasted friendship with the railwaymen's opponents.

As long as the first place in the minds of the workers is occupied by this blind and unreasoning trust in another to accomplish that which one can accomplish readily and satisfactorily oneself, the condition of the majority of the people will continue one of slavery and misery.

Ideas that have been fixed in the mind by habit are difficult to remove. When such ideas serve the interests of a ruling class, their removal becomes still more difficult. The idea of "Leadership" is of the latter kind. Born of the delegation of function in early societies it has grown into the slavish habit of placing the hands of a popular idol the power to settle the affairs of large groups almost as he wishes. Times innumerable, these popular leaders have used this influence to put their followers at the mercy of the enemy. In the London Transport Strike of 1911 the workers held out for some time, in spite of going hungry for weeks, and, when finally the proposition to resume work was put before them, they voted it down by a large majority. Immediately after the result was announced, Tillett, Jones and Gosling signed the agreement that sent the dockers back to work under worse conditions than before the strike.

The leadership idea has cursed the working class movement from the beginning. At an earlier period those supporting the ideas had motives of benevolence, its later supporters have  also benevolent motives—but the benevolence is directed towards themselves. They make stepping stones of their followers to reach comfort and security.

In France, in 1793, Babeuf and his friends sacrificed their fortunes and lives in the attempt to relieve the misery of the mass of oppressed. The method was a sudden attack upon the central seat of power by a courageous and determined minority. Once the centre of power was captured, the conspirators were to issue the regulations that were to guide the people in the formation of the new society. Whether the mass of the people wished it or not, they were to be forced into the new regime. The energetic minority were to hold on to the power they had grasped until such times as the mass of people understood and accepted the new social regulations.

Babeuf's intentions were excellent, but his method was rotten at the root. Instead of first getting the mass of the people to understand and desire the new programme, he proposed to force it upon the, from without. The idea being that the intellectual few knew better what was good for the masses, than the masses did themselves.

Later, Blanqui, also a Frenchman, attempted to carry out Babeuf's idea, modified in the light of experience by altering the form of the secret organisation. Leadership of the many by the enlightened few was still the basis of the movement. In May, 1839, and again in May, 1848, Blanqui led an attaclkon the seat power, but his attempts were crowned with as little success as Babeuf's. He also had good intentions, and paid for them by spending nearly half of his life in prison.

In 1836, an association of working men were formed in London that blossomed out into the first national movement of wage workers. This association took the name of "The London Workingmen's Association" and published an address, the concluding words of which put forward a new outlook for the oppressed, telling them to have done with leaders and trust only in themselves:

"Be assured that the good there is to be must be begun by ourselves."—(Lovett's Autobiography.)

Marx has put the case more definitely, as follows:

"The emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the working-class itself."

Here the essence of the position is stated. Leaders, no matter how energetic, courageous, or good intentioned, cannot introduce fundamental social changes that the mass of the people do not understand. This, quite apart from the fact that fundamental social changes are not the work of this or that individual, but are the result of economic development, and are accomplished under the direction of the social group that will benefit by the social change.

In working out his emancipation, the worker must study the conditions that surround and oppress him. He must look to "great principles." and not to "great men" in his struggles. The great man view breeds arguments as to whether this man is a good leader, or that man a bad. The energy that should be given to a study of principles is wasted in endless arguments over idols; and apathy and discouragement often follow the finding of the idol's feet of clay.

He who would enter the land of promise, must first cut his path to the gate. A little study of elementary principles will clear off the brambles that strew the way. Armed with knowledge the worker can direct his organisation himself, and will then abandon the slavish worship of leaders.

Gilmac.

Old Fallacies—a look at International Communist Current (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The organization called International Communist Current is a mixture of perceptiveness towards some aspects of capitalism, blindness to others, and a belief in long-exposed fallacies. It recognizes that nationalization is state capitalism, that the so-called national liberation movements are anti-socialist and that Russia, China, Cuba, etc. are "just so many capitalist bastions" — "There are no socialist countries on this planet".

ICC claims to be Marxist but shows no appreciation of Marx's analysis of capitalism's economic laws. Politically it belongs to the early 19th-century world of Louis Blanqui (originator of ICC's slogan "Dictatorship of the Proletariat") and the young and inexperienced Marx and Engels. It rejects the mature Marx's view of the necessity to gain control of "the machinery of government, including the armed forces", and offers instead confrontation with the state power and "world civil war" to be waged by "armed workers' councils" (see ICC pamphlet Nation or Class). 

A basic difficulty about establishing Socialism is that such a social system, involving as it does the disappearance of buying and selling, wages and prices, and the coercive state, could only be operated if the mass of the population understood and wanted it and were ready to accept all the new responsibilities of voluntary co-operation that would rest on them. If the working class as they are at present, most of them attached to capitalism, preoccupied with wages and prices, wage differentials and trade-union demarcation lines, and dependent on management direction and trade-union leadership, were suddenly faced with Socialism there would be chaos and no alternative but to return to capitalism.

Two solutions were offered. One was the Blanquist and early Marxist view—a transition period during which the mass of the population would be "educated to Socialism". This is the ICC policy. The other, the mature Marxist, view was stated by Engels in his 1895 Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France:

“The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act. That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us.”

And again, referring to France:

“Socialists realize more and more that no durable success is possible unless they win over in advance the great mass of the people, which, in this case, means the peasants. The slow work of propaganda and parliamentary activity are here also recognised as the next task of the party.”

ICC rejects the Marxist idea of socialists gaining control of Parliament on the ground that Parliament is nothing but "mystification of the working class". Of course defenders of capitalism use Parliament to mislead the working class, just as they use religion, sport and the bogus economic theories of J. M. Keynes. They can do this only because the workers lack socialist understanding—which fact ICC fails to see. It thinks that if non-socialist workers spontaneously throw up workers' councils these can't be "mystified". Experience has shown how wrong ICC is. Lenin, in State and Revolution, complained that his political opponents had

“managed to pollute even the Soviets, after the model of the most despicable middle-class parliamentarians, by turning them into hollow talking shops.”

ICC greatly admire the Workers' Councils set up in Germany after the first world war. At the Workers' Councils National Congress in 1918, and again in 1919, they were bamboozled by Social Democratic politicians into voting their support for the Social Democrat Government, which government then sidetracked the Councils and used state forces to crush resistance.

The argument that because the franchise has been used to trick the workers they should not use it was sensibly answered by Marx in the preamble he wrote for the French Workers' Party. In it, he commended transforming the vote "from a means of duping, which it has been hitherto, into an instrument of emancipation".

As ICC are not going to wait until there is a socialist majority, they have to find some other spur to working-class action. Like the young Marx and Engels, and like the British Communist Party in the 1930s, they find it in capitalism's periodic crises and depressions which stir up discontent about unemployment and falling living standards. But, as Engels pointed out in a letter to Bernstein (25th January 1882), when the depression passes and production and employment expand again "returning prosperity also breaks the revolution and lays the basis for the victory of reaction".

Are depressions permanent?

ICC think they have an answer to this. They say that the present depression is permanent, that it throws up problems the capitalists are impotent to deal with, and that capitalism cannot afford any more concessions to the workers. The great changeover is supposed to have happened in 1914, after which capitalism became "decadent", ICC evidently does not know that all these themes are almost as old as capitalism itself.

In every one of capitalism's depressions there have been people, capitalists as well as workers, who have been convinced that it would be permanent. In the "Great Depression" of the last quarter of the 19th century, which lasted for twenty years, it was widely believed. Lord Randolph Churchill, shortly before he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared in 1884: "We are suffering from a depression of trade extending as far back as 1874, ten years of trade depression, and the most hopeful either among our capitalists or our artisans can discover no signs of a revival . . . Turn your eyes where you will, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease."

Even Engels in 1886 temporarily abandoned Marx's view of crises and announced a theory of "permanent and chronic depression". Marx's own view was tersely summed up in his statement: "There are no permanent crises."

ICC's example of the supposed impotence of the capitalists to deal with a problem relates to inflation. In International Review No. 10 (page 10) ICC says that “the bourgeoisie" is equally terrified of more inflation and of ending inflation by "restriction of credit". From which it is evident that ICC does not understand the cause and purpose of inflation, rejects Marx's demonstration that inflation is the result of excess issue of inconvertible paper currency, and has—like the Labour Party—fallen for the Keynesian nonsense about the supposed consequence of expanding or contracting credit. Inflation, like free trade, is just a way of operating capitalism. It suits some capitalists and not others. Inflation serves the interests of borrowers, including industrial capitalists, who take up loans and repay them later in depreciated currency.

Inflation and Credit

Inflation, at least for a considerable period, also enables many employers to get away with paying reduced real wages. Deflation, on the other hand, suits financial interests and lenders. If and when inflation reaches dangerous levels, or when those who favour deflation get their way, inflation will be curbed or ended as it has been on scores of occasions in the past, in this and other countries.

Marx showed what he thought of the people who held ICC's superficial view about credit.

“They looked upon the expansion and contraction of credit, which is a mere symptom of the periodic changes in the industrial cycle, as their cause.” (Capital Vol. 1, p. 695, Kerr edn.)

To show that capitalism is not what it used to be before 1914, ICC points to recent falling production and living standards, and rising unemployment, but this is what has taken place at the beginning of every depression for nearly two hundred years.

Capitalism did indeed change in 1914. As Professor E. H. Carr puts it, up to 1914: "Britain was the pre-eminent Great Power, and the directing centre of the worldwide capitalist economy." Now the industrial and military centres of power have shifted to New York, Moscow and Brussels; but this has not altered capitalism's economic laws or introduced a new "decadence".

ICC's belief that since 1914 capitalism cannot afford to make concessions to the workers is belied by the facts, and betrays a failure to understand the economics of capitalism. The capitalists (supported by ignorant or servile academics) have always "proved" that they could not afford to concede anything, as for example giving up the twelve-hour working day and the employment of small children: but the concessions have continued since 1914 as before, and particularly since the second world war.

As output per head of the workers increases (a process speeded-up during the present depression) of course the capitalists can afford to let the workers have some of the increase—as ICC will discover when the depression lifts and in the programmes at the next General Election.

Regarding "the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", ICC admit that during their prolonged "transition period" the dictatorship will be operating capitalism all over the world (see Nation or Class). They have, however, not seen its implications. How will the dictatorship deal with the next normal capitalist crisis and the strikes that will accompany it? Will they have an "incomes policy"? or suppress the unions?

The peasants are not to be allowed to share in governmental power. What if they seize the land? And what will the ICC dictatorship do when workers, discontented with the effects of capitalism, carry on ICC policy and set up "armed workers' councils" to fight the dictatorship?

All of ICC's assumptions about capitalism are wrong; but let us suppose that they are right. Suppose that a minority of workers sets up armed councils all over the world, and suppose (absurd as it is) that they could win against the massive combined armed forces of all the world's governments, and suppose they succeeded in setting up their world dictatorship—what would have been gained? The problem of winning over the mass of the population before Socialism could be established would still be there, its completion put back a few more years by ICC's unnecessary and useless war.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Cassette tape recording of the recent debate between I.C.C. and the SPGB is available from H.O. price £1.60 or 50p to hire.

Who Was Blanqui? (2013)

Louis Auguste Blanqui

From the May 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Louis Auguste Blanqui was the quintessential angry revolutionist, insurrectionist, conspiratorial socialist, who was in conflict with every French government from the 'July monarchy' of Louis-Philippe, the 1848 National Assembly, Napoleon III's Empire, to the Third Republic. Anarchist Michael Bakunin was won over to ideas of socialism through the influence of Blanqui. Blanqui lived for 76 years and spent 44 of those years in prison! Blanqui was nicknamed 'L'Enfermé' which translates as the 'the enclosed' or 'the locked one' or even 'the prisoner'. Engels in the 1874 article The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune wrote: 'Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionist. He is a socialist only through sentiment, through his sympathy with the sufferings of the people, but he has neither a socialist theory nor any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political activity he was mainly a "man of action", believing that a small and well organized minority, who would attempt a political stroke of force at the opportune moment, could carry the mass of the people with them by a few successes at the start and thus make a victorious revolution.'

Blanqui, the revolutionist prisoner of the French state wrote a curious book while imprisoned which was published in 1872 but was unknown until re-discovered by Walter Benjamin in 1938. It is called L'Eternité par les astres which translates as Eternity According to the Stars and is a formulation of a theory of the Eternal Recurrence of Time which is commonly associated with the philosophy of Nietzsche in the 1880s. The origin of the idea of the Eternal Recurrence of Time can be located to the poet Heinrich Heine, Marx's good friend in Paris in the 1840s although, quaintly, Heine envisages the altering of time experience. With Nietzsche there is no existential comfort; it is quite literally the eternal recurrence of every moment ad infinitum. To Nietzsche this is 'the greatest burden' or 'heaviest weight', but with a belief in 'amor fati' (love of one's fate) coupled with a nobility of the spirit one can avoid the trap of nihilism and endeavour to engage in a life of existential authenticity and have an impact on time and existence.

But with Blanqui, 44 years in prison has reduced this permanent revolutionist to seeing himself eternally as the confined man; bourgeois society is hell on earth, and every defeat and suffering of the working class in history are replicated throughout history. He does not envisage a socialist future, writing: 'Until now, the past has for us, meant barbarism, whereas the future has signified progress, science, happiness, illusion! This past, on all our counterpart worlds, has seen the most brilliant civilizations disappear without leaving a trace, and they will continue to disappear without leaving a trace. The future will witness yet again, on billions of worlds, the ignorance, folly, and cruelty of our bygone eras.' Nietzsche's psychological conceit is here an astronomical hypothesis of resignation and defeat. Blanqui's pessimistic 'weltanschauung' is reminiscent of Lenin's statement of the future when he wrote, 'if socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see socialism for at least five hundred years.'

Steve Clayton