The Socialist Forum: Engels and Minority Action. (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington, London, N.1.

Editor, “The Socialist Standard.”

Dear Comrade,

On page 77, Engels’ “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” the writer, referring to the socialist revolution says: “Like every other social advance it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions.”

This statement clearly shows that Engels was of the opinion that, given the necessary conditions and an intelligent minority, the establishment of a socialist system could become an accomplished fact, and seems to refute your teaching that it is necessary to have a class-conscious majority before a successful revolution could be guaranteed.

I should be pleased to have your opinion on this question, and thank you in anticipation for same. Yours, etc.,

G. W. Jones (Junr.).

Reply

Our correspondent is completely mistaken about Engels’ views. Engels did not believe that “an intelligent Minority” could establish Socialism. It will be seen that the only evidence our correspondent quotes in support of his view about Engels is a passage in which Engels makes no reference whatever either to majority or to minority action. If we turn to page 60 of the same work (“Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.” Allen & Unwin edition) we find Engels writing this :—

“It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians ; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production.”

There is nothing here about minority action. Nor is there on page 86, where Engels says : —

“The proletariat seizes the public power. . . .”

In Engels’ introduction to Marx’s “The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 ” (the introduction being written in 1895), Engels said : —

“The day of surprise attacks has passed, the day when small but resolute minorities could achieve revolutions by leading the unwitting masses to the onslaught. Where the question is one of a complete transformation in the social organism, the masses must wittingly participate, must fully understand what they are about.”

What Engels had in mind in the passage that our correspondent quotes is to emphasise that social changes do not come about because of ideas that have miraculously appeared in men’s minds, out of nothing. The development of the economic forces makes possible certain social changes, and it is out of this material basis that the ideas of change arise. Marx put it clearly in his preface to the “Critique of Political Economy.”

“No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed ; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society. Therefore, mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve ; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.” (P. 12, Kerr Edition, 1911.)

Ed. Comm.

Roger Hallam’s new plan (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Roger Hallam, the man behind the failed Just Stop Oil campaign, has emerged from prison a reformed character. He has now abandoned civil disobedience as a way of trying to change things and has embraced electoral action. He is not, however, in a position to say what he really thinks as, if he did continue to advocate breaking the law, he’d be sent straight back to prison to serve the rest of his 2025 four-year prison sentence.

In January he brought out a three-hour video and podcast called How To Start a Revolution in 2026, subtitled ‘ordinary people can run society — but only if we build the structures to let them’. The subtitle gives a clue to what he means by ‘revolution’ — a radical change in the way political decisions are made.

He proposes that elected local councillors should be answerable to and overseen by citizens’ assemblies selected by lot. It’s basically a scheme for a functioning participatory democracy. It’s not necessarily a bad proposal in itself. The trouble is that Hallam envisages it being implemented under capitalism. What he is in effect proposing is a reform of the political superstructure of capitalism while leaving its social and economic base untouched.

But it is not a lack of democracy that causes the problems that the non-owning majority face today. It’s the capitalist system of minority ownership of the means of life and production for profit. Not even the most radical democratic decision-making structure can change or overcome the basic economic law of capitalism that making profits must come before all other considerations. Given capitalism, citizens’ assemblies would be no more able to solve the problems the majority face than existing governments or local councils. His proposed new democratic and community-led political structure could only work on the basis of the common ownership of the means of life. That is the only basis on which there would be neither vested interests nor coercive economic laws standing in the way of gearing production to meeting people’s needs.

So much for the goal but what about the means to get there? Here Hallam has drawn up a detailed plan of how to mobilise people at local level to put up their own candidates and win, involving regular weekly door-knocking, postering, telephoning, targeting non-voters (over 60 percent in most local council wards), meet-ups, and fund raising. He is prepared to put his money where his mouth is and try out his plan. The chosen place is Lambeth in London, currently controlled by an unpopular Labour council. He intends to organise candidates in all 25 wards and expects, even promises, that if his plan is carried out Labour will be kicked out.

Hallam may have embraced electoral action but he hasn’t changed his view from his Extinction Rebellion days that only a minority is needed to bring about political change. He still says:

‘Mass movements don’t grow by persuading everyone. They grow by activating a specific minority — roughly five per cent of the population — who are alienated, capable, and waiting for something credible. Most people will never mobilise’.

Lenin thought much the same. The results of the elections in Lambeth in May will show how large a following Hallam’s vanguard can get. But it would only be to reform the political set-up not for a social revolution to end minority ownership of the means society needs to survive.

Adam Buick

Syndicalism: its origins and weaknesses (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago this month the main French trade union confederation of the time adopted at its Congress in Amiens a Charter which, spreading far beyond France, became the doctrinal basis of a theory of unionism and revolution known as “syndicalism” (this is in fact merely the ordinary French word for trade unionism, so in France this doctrine is known as “revolutionary syndicalism “). As this doctrine has played an important historical role in working class thinking and organisation, we mark this event by publishing below an English version of the chapter on trade unionism that appeared in the pamphlet Pour le Socialisme Mondial (“For World Socialism”) put out in French by the world socialist movement in 1981 and which reproduced the Charter in full as well as giving a socialist assessment of it.

Associations of workers of the same trade have existed since the Middle Ages but only became organisations of wage earners to negotiate wage rates and conditions of work with employers in the middle of the 19th century. Up till then these associations had been mainly mutual aid societies, but even these had been banned by the Le Chapelier Law of 1791 which was later incorporated into the Napoleonic Code. Workers’ associations nevertheless continued to exist. It was not until 1864 that they were permitted to come out into the open and not until 1884 that they were fully legalised.

In the 1860s the main workers’ organisation in France was the “Association Internationale des Travailleurs” (International Working Men’s Association) which had been founded in 1864 by French and British workers. Although Karl Marx played a prominent role in its activities the IWMA was not a socialist organisation but was mainly concerned with organising trade unions and supporting strikes. It did, however, introduce some socialist ideas to French workers. Thus in 1869 we find a federation of workers’ organisations in Paris proclaiming as its final aim “the total emancipation of the workers in a new social order where the wages system will be abolished” and in 1870 Leo Frankel declaring (not quite accurately) during a trial of some French members of the IWMA that “the international association does not have as its aim an increase in the wage of workers, but indeed the abolition of the wages system”. This demand for “the abolition of the wages system” had first been raised by the British Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s and had been taken up by Marx in an address he gave to the General Council of the IWMA in 1865 (published after his death as a pamphlet entitled Value, Price and Profit which we strongly recommend for an understanding of trade unionism, its uses and limitations). It was to become a prominent slogan of French trade unionism in the period up till the First World War, after the working class movement had recovered from the setback represented by the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.

In 1895 various trade unions and other workers’ organisations joined together to form a “Confédération générale du travail” (General Confederation of Labour) which in 1902 declared its objective to be “the disappearance of the wages system and employers”. In 1906 the CGT adopted at its congress in Amiens a new programme. In view of its historical importance we reproduce (in a contemporary translation) this “Charte d’Amiens” in full:

“The General Confederation of Labour unites, independent of all political groupings, all workers who recognise the struggle to be carried on for the abolition of the wages system [. . .]

Congress considers this declaration to be a recognition of the class struggle which, on the economic field, places the workers in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, material and moral, carried out by the capitalist class against the working class.

      Congress makes this theoretical affirmation more precise by the following points:

Regarding day-to-day needs. Trade Unionism pursues the co-ordination of the efforts of the workers, the increase of the workers’ welfare through the realisation of immediate amelioration, such as the shortening of working hours, wage increases, etc.

But this is only one aspect of its task. Trade Unionism is preparing complete emancipation which can only be realised by the expropriation of the capitalist class. It favours as a means to this end the general strike and considers that the trade union, now a unit of resistance, will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation.

Congress declares that this two-fold task, for day-to-day life and for the future, arises from the actual position of wage-earners, which forces the working class and imposes on all workers, whatever their opinion and political and philosophical views, the duty to belong to the basic organisation, the trade union. Therefore, so far as individual members are concerned, Congress declares complete freedom for every Trade Unionist to participate, outside of the trade organisation, in any forms of struggle in accordance with his political or philosophical views, confining itself only to asking him, in return, not to introduce into the trade union the opinions which he professes outside it.

In so far as organisations are concerned, Congress decides that in order that Trade Unionism may obtain utmost effectiveness, economic action should be exercised directly against the employing class and that the Confederal organisations should not, as trade unions, pay any attention to parties or sects which, outside or alongside, may pursue completely independently the transformation of society.”

The doctrine here expounded became a current in the working class movement that has become known as “syndicalism”. Only some of the leaders of the CGT accepted this doctrine and regarded the trade unions and the general strike as the means to overthrow capitalist rule and establish a new society. The bulk of the members were interested only in “day to day needs”, though they were sometimes prepared to support revolutionary phrases as a means of frightening employers into conceding higher wages or better conditions.

The Charter was not as anti-political as it has sometimes been claimed to be. It does not proclaim the incompatibility of trade union and political action, but only that political divisions should not be introduced into the trade unions. This was sensible, since to be effective in their role of bringing pressure to bear on employers over wages and working conditions trade unions need to organise as many workers as possible, irrespective of their political or philosophical views. They are, and must be, composed of workers of all views. To introduce political views (including the anti-politicaI views of the anarchists) is to risk division, so weakening the union in the face of the employers. In recognising this the Charter of Amiens adopted a sound position (one which is unfortunately not always remembered today).

Trade unions arise out of the wage-relation that is at the basis of capitalism. Capitalist society is divided into two classes: the capitalist class who own and control the means of production and the working class who, excluded from such ownership and control, are forced to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. The wage which workers receive is the price of their labour-power and the price of this commodity fluctuates, like that of all commodities, around its value as determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it. If competition between workers for jobs was unrestricted then wages would tend to fall below the value of labour-power, as often happened in the 19th century before effective trade unions existed. Combining together in trade unions to exert collective pressure on employers is a way workers can prevent their wages falling below the value of their labour-power. Put another way, it is a way of ensuring that they are paid the full value of what they have to sell. This is the usefulness of trade unions to the working class but they can do no more than this. They cannot substantially increase the living standards of their members under capitalism but they can ensure that wages are not reduced below the subsistence level.

Trade unions, then, are defensive organisations of the working class which, in order to be effective, must recruit all workers, on the basis merely that they work for wages in a particular industry or trade and not on the basis of their political or philosophical views. This means that they are not, and cannot be, revolutionary organisations since they will be composed of non-socialists as well as of socialists. In fact at the present time, when the working class does not yet want and understand socialism, the overwhelming majority of trade unionists will inevitably be non-socialist and hence non-revolutionary. This was so before the First World War too. This was why it was absurd to expect, as did the syndicalists, the trade unions to act in a revolutionary way for this was to expect non-revolutionaries to behave as revolutionaries.

To end capitalism the great majority of workers must have first come to want and understand this change since the new socialist society which will be established in place of capitalism can only function with the conscious and active participation of its members—something the syndicalists did not accept. They imagined that they, as a conscious minority, could lead the discontented mass of workers in a general strike against capitalism. This would inevitably have been defeated with many workers being killed, especially as the anti-political stand of the syndicalists meant that the state, which controls the means of coercion, was to be left in the hands of a government representing the capitalist class.

Although the sincerity of the syndicalists’ desire to end capitalism cannot be questioned, their understanding of the future society to replace it can be. In suggesting that society should be organised on the basis of trade unions—“the trade union [. . .] will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation”—the syndicalists were merely projecting into socialism the industrial and professional divisions of workers which exist under capitalism. Since socialism is based on the social ownership (= ownership by society) of the means of production, the trade union ownership proposed by the syndicalists was not socialism at all but a modified form of sectional ownership.

The First World War revealed that not only were the bulk of CGT members not revolutionary but that they were patriotic. From this time on began a process of collaboration with and integration into the state by the trade unions which continues to this day, with the unions represented on many governmental institutions at national and local level and receiving subsidies from the state for certain of their activities. Trade unionism, in other words, has dropped its pretence at being revolutionary, though the present CGT did not eliminate its paper commitment to “the disappearance of the wages system and of employers” till 1969. This has led some to argue that as the trade unions are no longer revolutionary they should not be supported by those who want social revolution, but should on the contrary be opposed. This is not a fair criticism nor a valid conclusion.

The trade unions are essentially defensive organisations with the limited role of protecting wages and working conditions and it is by this criterion that their effectiveness or otherwise ought to be judged. By this standard, although they make many serious mistakes (disunity and rivalry, collaboration with the state and with political parties), by and large the existing trade unions do succeed in protecting wage rates and working conditions against what Marx called “the never-ceasing encroachments of capital”. Our members do join the existing trade unions and work within them to defend wages and conditions. We do not criticise the unions for not being revolutionary, but we do severely criticise them when they depart from the principle of an antagonism of interests between workers and employers; when they collaborate with employers, the state or political parties; when they put the corporate interests of a particular section of workers above that of the general interest of the working class as a whole.

But even if the unions made no mistakes of this sort, what they can achieve for the working class under capitalism is very limited. They can—and do—enable workers to get the full value of their labour-power, but they cannot stop the exploitation of the working class. This exploitation is inherent in the wages system and can only be abolished along with it through the conversion of the means of production into common ownership under the democratic control of the whole community. But this requires political action based on socialist understanding by a socialist political party for which the trade unions, with their limited defensive role, can never be a substitute.

Adam Buick

The Labor Movement in France. (1909)

From the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Syndicalist and Anti-Militarist wins brought to declare for political action.

Translated from Proletary (Russian) by J. Kresswell and adapted from the Weekly People (New York).

__________

The late October, 1908, convention of the United Socialist Party and the General Confederation of Labor in France will undoubtedly serve as a turning point in the history of the French labor movement. The vacillating course and the somersaults, from “opportunistic” Socialism to “revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism” are destined to be relics of the past.

The tactics of the French proletariat, are becoming more and more similar to those of Germany, Austria and Scandinavia.

By attaching the “Socialist” Millerand to the Cabinet of the clever and masterful Waldeck-Rousseau, the French bourgeoisie succeeded in temporarily breaking down the ranks of the labor organisations. At the head of the General Confederation of Labor at that time were the reformers of the English trade unionist type, among whom were active adherents of Jaures’ theory of the co-operation of the classes. Geraud, the then secretary of the Confederation, used to support in the Federation Millerand, who opened wide the treasury of the ministry of Commerce to the labor syndicates. In those days the Confederation used to give banquets in honor of Millerand, and radical municipalities used to give to labor unions free lyceums and pecuniary subsidies. Consequently the demoralisation of labor organisations became so great that nothing better seemed to remain to honest Socialists but to join the anarcho-syndicalists in their conflict with the reformers.

In Bourges the anarcho-syndicalists, thanks to the active co-operation of the Guesdists trade unions, captured temporarily the G.C. of L. and became the moving spirits in theory and practice in the French labor movement. The reformers also prepared a fine field for anarcho-syndicalists. The hostility to political action which seized the laboring masses in the rising period of neo-syndicalism, appears only as a just reaction to the excesses of the parliamentary tactics. Only four years have passed since “revolutionary” syndicalism triumphed, yet it is now passing. We limit ourselves to a short review of the evolution this syndicalism has gone through in this time.

Arming themselves at Bourges with a complele arsenal of revolutionary phrases, our syndicalists imagined that we were on the eve of the grand sunset of the capitalist world. In their inflamed imagination the first important strike became almost the beginning of the Social Revolution. The words “general strike” became a sacred commandment. The Paris Convention of 1901 even decided to form a special committee to prepare for such a strike, and the syndicalists were convinced that the day when the working class would go on strike would be the last of the bourgeois regime. Syndicalists taught the workers that high dues, rich union treasuries and numerous syndicates lead to narrow English unionism only, that strikes must always be hastily improvised, and to prepare for them long is unnecessary. The general laboring masses they considered cowardly and apathetic, and they assigned the principal role to an active and energetic minority. These agitators being in most cases at the head of syndicates in embryo, acted with surprising self-assurance, and the unsuccessful outcome of strikes never worried them. Strikes in their eyes always served as “revolutionary gymnastics.”

With such views the syndicalists prepared themselves for the first decisive battle, which they were to give to “capital” on May 1st, 1906, in order to gain the eight hour day. Their impressive revolutionary proclamations and the previously raised hue and cry momentarily scared the French bourgeoisie. The radical ministry concentrated in proletarian centres enormous military forces. The French workingmen, without a sou in their union treasuries, without strong syndicates, temporarily influenced by the revolutionary phraseology of the demagogues, stumbled not only over the more perfectly organised capital, but also upon the government’s army. The result was the complete defeat of the workers. A great number of unions became almost wholly demoralised and disbanded. Others lost considerable of their membership—the metal workers, for instance, more than a third. The federation of pressmen, whose caution the syndicalists ridiculed and condemned, was the only one to carry on a successful struggle. This union succeeded in gaining a nine-hour day in a considerable part of France. How powerful was the blow delivered to the working class by this inflated first of May movement may be judged from the fact that the number of successful strikes for this year reached only 7 per cent., while the average for the previous ten years was 14 per cent. The Confederation of Labor, which, according to Pouget, had 250 thousand members in 1903, had at the convention of Amiens four years later only 203 thousand.

Far poorer results were shown from syndicalist practice the last two years, which even the revolutionary leaders, Pouget and Griffeulhes confess. At the same time the bourgeoisie had not remained idle. During one year the numbers in employers’ associations increased from 268 thousand to 315 thousand, a gain of 18 per cent. A more rapid progress is shown in the class-conscious organisation of capital in 1907. In the metallurgical, electrical, automobile, glass and chemical industries a series of trusts were formed almost embracing all the national industries. The league of merchants and shopkeepers alone, which was shortly formed to combat the Sunday rest idea, counts 100 thousand members. To these well organised forces of capital the Confederation of Labor proposed to give battle with the small undisciplined and provisionless army, composing only 27 per cent, of France’s working population, and only one-third of the organised labor of the land.

The revolutionary syndicalists, who during six years held noisy harangues about a general strike, understood the necessity of large and powerful organisations, when their attempt to call a general strike during the May agitation and the events at Draveil-Vigneux resulted in complete defeat. These events conclusively proved that their practical influence upon organised labor was absolutely nil. Pouget, the real head of the revolutionary syndicalists, wrote at the end of June in the Voice of the People:

“Unfortunately it must be acknowledged that if the idea of the general strike has made great theoretical gains in France, in practice we are behind even the Italian proletariat. The cause of this appears to be the state of illusion of the workers. To the practical syndicalists the lessons of the past have not been in vain, many of them have found out the errors of the past.” Griffeulhes, sec. cf the Confederation, confessed to the editor of L’Humanite that the empty revolutionary phraseology scared away the laboring masses, especially in the provinces, and instilled distrust in the trade unions. He added that what was wanted was less noise and more organisation work. Luke, the temporary secretary of the Confederation, wrote still more moderately

“What the proletariat wants are real results, i.e., real reforms. And it has come to the conclusion that for the realisation and preservation of such reforms strong organisations are absolutely necessary.”

The same revolutionary experience has been made by other “revolutionary” syndicates. They have lost the sarcastic and nagging tone in which they used to attack contemporary class-conscious proletarian organisations of Western Europe. As a result the majority of the trade unions established high membership dues. Their contempt for the necessity of numerous and powerful syndicates has vanished and such hot heads as the secretary of the metal workers’ union, advises the workers to carefully prepare for each strike and to survey the field of battle beforehand. A few ultra-syndicalists still pin their faith to “revolutionary manoeuvres.” But from the debates at Marseilles it is clearly seen how quickly the French proletariat is freeing itself from the guardianship of neo-syndicalism. 

In those debates no mention was even made of a general strike. The responsibility for the August 3rd events was by all present placed upon the government’s shoulders, but if the whole administration of the Confederation had not at that moment been behind prison bars, the “prehistoric” tactics of the “revolutionary” syndicalists would have been severely condemned there and then.

Latopy, another secretary of the metal worker’s union and a good “revolutionary” syndicalist, expressed himself thusly :

“I would like to know whether we will continue to pass resolutions, which in the future we are unable to carry out or defend. … I would that henceforth we shouldn’t enter the battlefield for the pleasure and vanity of a few leaders, who themselves remain in the security of their homes.”

This arrow was intended for the theoreticians and a few of the remaining supporters of syndicalism.

The syndicalists had to beat a retreat, as well in questions of anti-militarism and of the international trades union secretariat. At Amiens the syndicalists voted for the ultra-revolutionary resolution of Yvetot, binding them to carry on a strong anti-militarist and “anti-patriotic” propaganda, and at Marseilles, Marrheim, the prime mover of this resolution, brought forth another, in which there was not a word about “anti-militarism” or “anti-patriotism.” At Amiens the Confederation resolved to participate in the international conferences of trades union secretaries only under the condition that “anti-militarism” and the “general strike” should be deliberated. At Marseilles they were satisfied with a very moderate request: the international secretariat to be required to put on the order of the day the question of call for the convention of the international trades unions.

It is true that the “revolutionary” syndicalists have as yet preserved their majority in the central organisations, but this is because of the peculiar mode of representation at conventions, where every section of the syndicate has one vote, no matter what its numerical strength. Thus the produce union with 3 thousand members had 39 votes at Marseilles, while the miners’ union, numbering 30 thousand, had only 35. The weaker unions occupied in small production, were in fact rulers of these conventions. This is the real reason of the neglect of the majority of organised labor to obey the resolutions passed by a ficticious majority of delegates. No wonder the “revolutionary” syndicalists oppose with might and main a more just and proportional representation, for on the day of such realisation there will appear, at the head of those organisations, pure and simple reformers instead of reformers turned inside-out.

At Lyons, where the question of proportional representation was first raised, only five per cent. of the delegates present were in favour. At Montpelier this number rose to sixteen per cent., at Bourges to twenty-six per cent., and at Marseilles to thirty-four per cent., which, according to the minutest calculations, represents 160 thousand workers out of the total 170 in the Confederation. In fact, even now the majority of the trades unions, those who consider themselves “revolutionary,” do not in their practice differ from the reformers.

(To be concluded)

An “Industrialist” Rout. (1909)

Party News from the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Thursday, May 27th, at the Latchmere Baths, Battersea, J. Fitzgerald and E. J. B. Allen debated as to the correctness of the position taken up by their respective organisations in compassing the end to which both are pledged, viz., the abolition of the present system of society and the substitution of the Socialist Commonwealth.

The debate was conducted in a splendid spirit, and followed by a large audience with an attention which demonstrated their recognition of the importance of the issue raised.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain feels more than justified in giving the above title to the following short account of the debate, where the representative of the Industrialist League cleverly defended a position which, under the stern bombardment of Fitzgerald became hopelessly untenable, ultimately presenting a picture of “looped and windowed raggedness” which must have been apparent even to the adherents of, and sympathisers with, that organisation.

Mr. H. B. Rogers was in the chair. After a few opening remarks he called upon Allen to hold the fort for half an hour.

E. J. B. Allen acknowledged the oneness of aim of the two organisations. The question was:

HOW WAS THE WORKING CLASS TO GAIN CONTROL ?

On the political field we saw the waste of time and energy in the quarrels between the various political parties, while in those places where revolutionary unionism existed you had a revolutionary working class. The class struggle was manifested mainly in the factory, field and workshop. There the revolutionary organisation must be built up. Street-corner propaganda was useless, unless backed up by revolutionary tactics in every-day life. In the political field you had your Burns’s, Vivianis, Millerands, and Briands taking sides with the capitalists because they had been placed in a false position through political action. The franchise can, it has been, it may be, monkeyed with. What weapon then, had the S.P.G.B. to fall back upon? The “political” Socialist was quick to point out failures of strikes ; he seemed to shut his eyes to electoral failures with the consequent waste of time, money and energy. The Revolutionary Union would be prepared to take political action to dispossess the capitalist of power. They would use the weapon of the Strike up to the partial and complete General Strike. The French Postal workers had used this weapon with success. It looked as though after all the S.P.G.B. would have to follow the methods it denounced as impracticable, viz., the nationalisation of industries piecemeal. To-day the Parliament did not control the Army, for the Army Council was not under the control of any elected body. Along with Industrial Unionism there must be an

ANTI-MILITARIST PROPAGANDA.

There are not wanting signs that the times are ripe for such a movement. The soldiers at Featherstone killed three. Had they shot as ordered they could have killed three hundred. The capitalist class had built up their economic power before they overthrew the absolute monarchy. The recent Postal strike in Paris illustrated the fact that a worker of whatever political colour could act solid with his class in the workshop. A Radical operator held up wires from Rome which would have facilitated work of the masters. Therefore he answered, “Yes,” his organisation would accept even members of the I.L.P. It would accept anyone willing to act solid with his class. Once in the organisation the lesson of Socialism could be driven home by the Socialist already in the ranks. Besides a man would act straight as a worker who may be hopelessly befogged as a politician. The S.P.G.B. had run municipal candidates. They did not bar Parliamentary candidature. What would their representative do if elected ? He could but

SUPPORT PALLIATIVES

as the elected representatives of the I.L.P. etc. did.

J. Fitzgerald in his all too brief half hour’s reply, said that he intended, before answering his adversary’s points directly, to state briefly, the position of his Party. A mere statement of that position would refute much that had been said in opposition. What were the main obstacles to the goal ? Two. The first corporeal, measurable, gross to sight, viz., the armed forces and other political machinery ; the second, alas ! incorporeal, immeasurable, unseen but real, vague but potent, heavy with the heaviness of Death—

WORKING-CLASS IGNORANCE.

That ignorance it is the duty of every Socialist to dispel. With regard to the first obstacle he noticed that the Industrialist League had added a new item to its programme since the inception of Industrial Unionism, when they argued they could “lock out the capitalist class,” viz., Anti-Militarism. Not that he attached much importance to that particular form of propaganda, except that it clearly demonstrated that the Industrialist League had learnt from the S.P.G.B. the imperative necessity of reckoning with the armed forces instead of ignoring, Anarchist fashion, the political machinery. Did not this fact of itself show, however, that the “neutral,” telescope-to-the-blind-eye attitude of the Industrial Leaguists as far as “politics” were concerned, was officially capable of expression as a pious belief, but ludicrously impossible as practical tactics?

Allen had stated that Revolutionary Industrial organisations had made the French, Spanish, and Italian workers “more revolutionary.” Had they? Is that why they continue to send representatives of the master class to their exploiters’ grand committees for the conservation of class privilege and the preservation of class oppression ?

With regard to the second obstacle—working-class ignorance—Allen and himself were both agreed as to the vital need of teaching. It was alleged that such teaching would be most effective on the spot where the worker found himself face to face with class exploitation. As a matter of fact the workers are more split on the economic field, where they have over 1,000 organisations, than on the political, where they have less than 100. Must he bring his opponent back to the solid ground of fact by reminding him that the present system

FORCES TWO INDUSTRIALISTS TO FIGHT

for a job ? Political leaders “sell out! ” Do economic leaders never do so ? “Strikesmasher” Barnes, “Arbitration” Bell, “Mabon,” etc., never “sell out” ! Oh no ! He would remind him of Frank Rose’s sinister declaration in the Clarion of 18th September, 1908 : “They (the masters) bribe away the best and most knowing of the operatives’ officials by giving them better jobs and bigger salaries, and the internal working of the operatives’ unions are open books lo them.

“IT IS A GHASTLY BUSINESS.”

Regarding the General Strike, the ablest writer on the subject, Arnold Roller, showed the absurdity of the Industrialists’ statement that the workers could continue to carry on production for themselves and starve out the capitalists, for he says : “It is evident in such a struggle the ruling class would pay no sentimental regard to law and would simply seize the provisions of the proletariat for themselves and their army.”

What became of the talk about “taking and holding” ? Moreover, the statement completely knocked the bottom out of the case for the General Strike. What had the French Postal workers got by this weapon ? Six hundred had got— the sack !

It was not true that the Army Council was not under the control of any elected body, for it was appointed by the Cabinet, that was in its turn appointed by Parliament, which was an elected body and had ultimate control. With regard to Anti-Militarism, it were wise, especially while the Party was small, to direct their energies to most likely material for conversion. His opponent could judge of the relative accessibility to Socialist thought of soldiers and civilians, hedged in as the former were by every influence, positive and negative, tending to stupification of the thinking faculties. The gist of Hervé’s teaching consisted of calling upon the workers to resist conscription and to be shot rather than join the army ! We had been told, as an instance of the success of Herve’s propaganda, that the 71st Regiment of the line in France had mutinied when called on to fire upon the wine growers in the South, but the truth was this regiment was recruited from that very district, and it was this very fact of being called upon to fire at their own relatives—in some cases their own fathers and mothers—that caused the mutiny, and not the propaganda of Anti Militarism.

In answer to the question as to the attitude of elected representatives on public bodies, his reply was, no! they will not bolster up palliatives; they will be there to speak from the wider platform as revolutionary propagandists; essentially they can but continue the propaganda while in the minority.

Allen in his 20 minutes reply reiterated several of his former points. He said that Marx himself had declared (in his “Eighteenth Brumaire” ) that politicians would mar any movement. Suppose a majority of Socialists elected to the House. Would reactionary army officers etc. yield at the word of a majority ? No ! The means of production must be made ready for seizing by previous revolutionary work in the factories, etc. As far as education was concerned, contesting elections simply meant educating the worker in the divineness of capitalist “law and order” ; whereas

DIRECT ACTION

implies the contrary. The political movement is not a class movement, for capitalists and “intellectuals” may join, while the I.U. only admitting workers, was a class movement. In Warsaw during the late troubles, the workers struck and drove out the capitalists, who had to ask to be allowed to come back and take the works again. He again asked how the S.P.G.B. intended “seizing the political machinery” without the necessary force to seize it.

Fitzgerald in his 20 minutes reply pointed out that “revolutionary” speeches and actions born of more excitable temperaments, easily carried on waves of enthusiasm and as easily correspondingly depressed, did not constitute revolutionary tactics. The Confederation General du Travail (C.G.T.) had been referred to. Let it be clearly understood that that body was a loose conglomeration, controlled by a small body of Anarchists, who showed their individualistic proclivities with their accompanying thimble-rigging and wire-pulling, by insisting upon “one group, one vote,” which means that a precious “group” of about six carried equal weight with a genuine association of a thousand. Truly, this showed the close relationship and connection of the I.U. with the avowed Anarchists.

The C.G.T. had cal1ed a “general strike” every May Day for the last three years, and the Industrialist said they were promised one this year. All of them had been miserable fiascos and the only “revolutionary” action that took place this year was the singing of “L’Internationale” by some men while marching

TO WORK ! !

The whole tenor of C.G.T. thought is “leadership,” and “leadership” had meant, and will mean, a shambles for the workers. Organisers charged to carry out intelligently the democratic will? Yes! The S.P.G.B. stands by that. “Leaders,” in the sense of the bourgeoisie, of the I.L.P., of the S.D.P., looking meekly for direction and guidance to their middle-class tin gods ? A thousand times No !

THERE IS NO ROOM

for the “middle”-class “intellectual” on the make, if the movement was truly democratic and therefore clean. On the “Industrialist” basis Marx and Engels would have been kept out of the movement. Marx had been quoted to bolster up the “non-political” character of Industrialism. Let his opponent read that brilliant monograph and cease to drag the lustrous name of Marx in the mire. “Parliamentary idiotcy” was a disease attaching to the “pure and simple” politician. In the case of the coup-d’état of 1851, it refers more particularly to the action of the fatuous “Party of Order” in calling Napoleon the Little to “concentrate the whole executive power in his own person” (pp. 50-51). Reference by any fair-minded person to the Declaration of Principles of the S.P.G.B. would dispel any illusion to the effect that his Party could be charged with such “idiotcy,” as it distinctly states that the workers must obtain control of the fighting forces. And then as to Warsaw. What a specimen of “revolutionary” education ! When the capitalists “asked ” they were allowed to go back and recommence exploiting those who had turned them out!

Allen in his ten minutes round averred that the strong minority must lead the majority. History proved his contention. As for Parliamentary action, did not “Pride’s Purge” demonstrate the uselessness of that? Members were expelled ruthlessly by the soldiers. The Parliament did not control the militia, for when Charles went to Nottingham the majority of the trained bands followed him. As to the C.G.T., could it be denied that an organisation claiming to be out for the expropriation of the capitalist class was revolutionary ? The General Strike implied a revolutionary upheaval, animated by sheer unconstitutionalism, ignoring individual safety in looking for the salvation of the whole. It was minorities made all movements. They started the idea and dinned it into the heads of the others.

Fitzgerald, reviewing the whole situation in his last ten minutes, rammed home by apt quotation and scathing humour several points previously touched upon. The mention of “Pride’s Purge ” by Allen was peculiarly unfortunate. Above all things that event showed the enormous leverage which the seizure of political power gave. In the struggle between sections of the bourgeosie which “Pride’s Purge” illustrated, the victory was to that section effectively controlling the army as part of the political machinery. The North v. South slave struggle of 1861 in America illustrated the same point. Temporary and brilliant successes of Southern generals were bound to be rendered nugatory in the long run by the political force wielded by the North. As for the trained bands going to Charles, according to Gardiner, when the first call was made by Parliament in London, 40,000 fully armed and 100,000 lesser armed men responded—a splendid start for the Parliament. A final word as to “agitation in the workshop,” which is claimed to be so educationally efficient. Why ? In these days of speeding up, when is this propaganda to go forward? From a sheer common-sense point of view, surely, in his hours of leisure, however scant, the workman is more accessible to Socialist thought and teaching. At any rate the task-master won’t be immediately present.

The General Strike and minorities being right—well, let us see again what Roller has to say. Judge for yourselves the discrepancy between Roller’s picture and that drawn by Allen. “The immense advantage of the General Strike is that it begins

ENTIRELY LAWFULLY

and without any danger to the workers, and for this reason thousands will take part who would never have thought of taking part in a revolution, but would have stayed at home behind the grate.” What sort of “revolutionaries” are these ? Directly action in revolutionary lines was needed they would disappear and leave the others to be crushed. Is the ”General Strike” the last word of “Industrial Leagism” ? It stands self condemned.

A few harmless humourosities from the chairman closed the proceedings. That some “Industrialists” went away sadder if not wiser men is the firm hope, not to say conviction, of

REGINALD.

Letter: Just Stop Oil (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just Stop Oil

Arising out of the article in our May issue on Just Stop Oil ((‘Just Stop Oil: The failure of a tactic’), we received two emails from Tony Marone, XR Public Engagement Working Group, which we have combined into one.

The subtext of the disbanding of Just Stop Oil was that their aim had been achieved. If it was misrepresented as them having achieved their aim through their own actions alone, then that of course is not correct. However, you surely have to allow for a little self-encouragement in a world that is unremittingly bleak?

The conflation of JSO and XR through the involvement of Roger Hallam in both movements is poorly judged. The actions of JSO were neither overtly supported nor overtly denounced by XR – XR is XR, JSO is JSO.

Roger Hallam left XR in 2021 when he set up Insulate Britain (which still exists) and then moved on to set up JSO. It has been 4 years since Roger Hallam has been considered anything other than a founder member of XR. He holds no position in XR now.

The 3.5 percent minority theory was something that is closely associated with Roger Hallam, but was based in empirical research done by Chenoweth and Stephan (2011) on political campaigns from 1990-2006.

Roger was a high profile advocate of this theory when he was with XR, however it does not inform our current strategy.

You can read more about it (including links to the Chenoweth and Stephan (2011) paper) here:

I personally hold the SPGB in some regard for their educational work. However I am in constant wonder and puzzlement over how all organisations of the left seem to prefer criticising Fellow Travellers to attacking the pillars of neo-liberal capitalism.

As the saying has it, “the Right looks for Converts, The Left looks for Traitors”. Isn’t it past time to abandon ideological purity?

Reply:

We never claimed that Roger Hallam was still connected with XR and can understand why XR should want to dissociate itself from him. We did, however, say that both he and XR were committed to the theory and tactic that a minority of only 3.5 percent should try to bring about system change.

We say this is mistaken and undemocratic and that a majority of the population must be in favour of socialism before it can replace capitalism.

Thanks for the link to that article about the misuse of the 3.5% rule. We note that this rule no longer informs XR’s strategy. In which case, your website need updating as it still states:

‘We have a shared vision of change: Creating a world that is fit for generations to come.

We set our mission on what is necessary: Mobilising 3.5% of the population to achieve system change – such as “momentum-driven organising” to achieve this.’

In passing, your vision of ‘a world that is fit for generations to come’ is a bit vague. So vague in fact that everybody – and every organisation – will share it. Who wouldn’t want that? ‘System change’ is a bit vague too; from what system to what other system?

There may be a case for the multitude of reformist organisations to get together instead of criticising each other. That’s up to them. But there is no case for us, as an organisation that campaigns for socialism and nothing else, to join them or not to point out their inadequacies. 

Editors.

Just Stop Oil: the failure of a tactic (2025)

From the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just Stop Oil was set up at the beginning of 2022 as an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion (XR) which had been launched four years earlier. The disagreement was over tactics not strategy. Both were committed to the strategy of getting 3.5 percent of the population to engage in non-violent, disruptive civil disobedience, the minority considered sufficient to spark off a popular movement to topple a government and impose a new policy. This figure was based on calculations by Erica Chenoweth, an American academic.

XR say on their website that they are committed to:‘mobilising 3.5% of the population to achieve system change – using ideas such as “momentum-driven organising” to achieve this’.

At one time they had added: ‘The change needed is huge and yet achievable. No regime in the 20th century managed to stand against an uprising which had the active participation of up to 3.5% of the population (for Erica Chenoweth’s research, see bit.ly/3Gn0NoV)’.

Roger Hallam, the driving force behind JSO, has put it this way: ‘You can basically save the next generation with 2 per cent of the American population mobilised, engaged in an intense intra-relationship between high-level disruption and intense mobilisation’ (Times, 24 October 2022).

And in his book Common Sense in the 21st Century (subtitled Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown And Social Collapse) he writes:

‘We should not make the mistake of thinking “the people have to rise” in the sense of the majority of the population. We need a few to rise up and most of the rest of the population to be willing to “give it a go”.’

‘Momentum-driven organising’

The formal aim of XR was a non-violent rebellion to get a government that would adopt measures to achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2025. Hallam, one of XR’s founders but more hard-headed and a more experienced agitator than the others, considered this too remote an aim to mobilise the 3.5 percent minority. In his view, the aim needed to be more concrete, but also one that was more immediately achievable. Initially, he chose ‘Insulate Britain’, to get the government to insulate every home in the country, as the immediate mobilising aim. Then at the beginning of 2022 he switched to stopping further drilling for oil in the North Sea.

His thinking was the opposite of the Trotskyists. They put forward demands that they know can’t be achieved under capitalism in the expectation that those they get to support the demand will, when the campaign fails, turn to them for leadership to overthrow the capitalist state. Hallam’s view was to put forward a demand that could be achieved and that, when it was, could be presented as a victory for the movement, giving it self-confidence to carry on struggling for more, and more ambitious, objectives, eventually the toppling of the government and its replacement by one seriously committed to reaching zero net carbon in a few years.

We don’t have to judge whose tactic — Hallam’s ‘momentum-driven organising’ or the Trotskyists’ ‘transitional demands’— is the less realistic since we reject the basic assumption of both self-appointed vanguards of a leadership manipulating followers. If there is going to be successful and lasting system change a majority must want and understand what it involves and actively take part in bringing it about.

Self-delusion

At the end of March Just Stop Oil announced that it was disbanding. The formal reason given for this was that its goal had been achieved. Oil had been Stopped. The current government had suspended giving further licences to drill for oil in the North Sea. Their website proclaims that ‘we have kept 4.4 billions of oil in the ground’ and that this was ‘one of the world’s most effective climate campaigns’ (juststopoil.org). This is just bombast and self-delusion.

The suspension of licences to drill in the North Sea had nothing to do with their campaign of disruptive civil disobedience. If anything, that was counter-productive as the stunts they pulled inconvenienced and annoyed people. It was in fact brought about through the ballot box when a new government, committed to suspending new drilling, was elected. That said, should the ‘economic headwinds’ prove too strong the government could easily reverse its position and may well.

In any event, JSO’s self-proclaimed ‘victory’ did not give the movement the momentum anticipated and so, from their own point of view, they failed. Their only achievement has been 15 of their members in prison under legislation brought in by the government to counter their actions. That includes Hallam himself who is serving four years, though he probably thinks that having martyrs is part of ‘momentum-driven organising’. That will prove to be a delusion too.

Their disbanding statement does, however, say that ‘nothing short of a revolution is going to protect us from the coming storms’. This is a change from previous statements whose language suggested that they would be satisfied with a change of government or of governance or even just of government policy. But what kind of revolution — minority-led or majority — and with what aim — a change in the basis of society from class ownership to common ownership or something less?

Adam Buick

Engels’s Political Testament (2020)

From the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engels died in August 1895. One of his last published writings was an introduction to Marx’s The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850, a collection of articles written by Marx at the time. Its content is such that it can be regarded as his political testament.

Reviewing the political position that he and Marx had then taken up, Engels wrote that ‘history has shown us to have been wrong, has revealed our point of view at that time to have been an illusion.’

Past revolutions, he wrote, had been minority revolutions in the interest of some minority; after the initial victory the revolutionaries split into two sections – those who were satisfied with what had been achieved and those who wanted to go further, but whatever happened the end-result was minority rule.

The illusion, Engels explained, was thinking that, because during the revolutionary wave of 1848 there was already a minority, albeit a small one, which understood what was in the interest of the working class, there was a chance that this minority could draw the majority into carrying out a workers’ revolution:

‘[W]hat was involved here were not false representations, but the implementation of the most vital interests of the great majority itself, interests which, it is true, were at that time by no means clear to this great majority, but which were bound to become clear to it as their practical implementation proceeded, by their convincing obviousness. (…) [T]heproletariat grown wise from experience had to become the decisive factor — was there not every prospect then of turning the revolution of the minority into a revolution of the majority?’

Engels’s reply was unequivocal: ‘History has proved us wrong and all who thought like us’.

And later: 

‘The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required…’

He added ‘and it is just this work that we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.’ This was a reference to the use made of universal suffrage by the German Social Democratic Party, but that turned out to be another illusion as the party’s support was being built up for democratic and social reforms within capitalism rather than for socialism.

However, Engels was proved right when a revolutionary minority attempted to apply the tactics of 1848-50 in Germany after the overthrow of the Kaiser in 1918 and to push the revolution forward to socialism. They failed as the rest of the working class didn’t come to want socialism in the course of the revolution but remained satisfied with what had been achieved (political democracy).

As Engels correctly concluded, for there to be a successful socialist revolution the majority ‘must themselves already have grasped what is at stake’ and that, when they had, they could turn universal suffrage ‘from a means of deception into an instrument of emancipation’, but that to reach this point required ‘long, persistent work’.

Adam Buick

The full introduction can be found here at marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/03/06.htm

The Establishment of Socialism (1972)

From the September 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is a society in which all social affairs, including the production and distribution of wealth will be democratically controlled by the people as a whole. There will be no ruling class nor any permanent administrative élite but rather the active participation of all the people, at all levels and in all fields, in the planning and running of their various common affairs.

This is why Socialism can only be established democratically, both in the sense of being what the vast majority want and in the sense of being established by their own democratically-organised action. Any attempt by a minority to establish Socialism is bound to fail because, without a population who want to participate in social decision-making themselves and not leave it to an élite, the minority would be forced to become the exclusive decision-makers and eventually a new ruling class. The very fact that only a minority wanted Socialism would be a sign that Socialism was not yet possible. Indeed, the fact that a minority should think it could establish Socialism before a majority wanted it would show that they didn’t understand the full implication of Socialism themselves and so were not really Socialists.

A look at the various theories of minority, or minority-led, action to establish ‘socialism’ — essentially Lenin’s Bolshevism and its various offshoots, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Castroism, etc. — confirms that in practice these were the ideologies of would-be national ruling classes aiming to industrialize economically backward parts of the world through a policy of state capitalism, mistakenly called ‘socialism’. Their tactics — vanguard party, violent insurrection, ruthless measures against the old rulers and all opponents — are thus quite irrelevant for a genuine Socialist movement, though superficially attractive to those who want radical social change yet despair of ever winning over a currently indifferent or conservative-minded working class. In the unlikely event of them being successful in some highly industrialised country the outcome would be some form of state capitalism, certainly not Socialism.

Any adequate theory as to how to establish Socialism must have as its basic premise that this must be the work of a democratically-organised, socialist-minded working class majority. That the socialist revolution, in other words, must be a majority revolution. Let us follow through the implications of this.

The State machine, being both the public power of coercion and the centre of social administration, must be taken over before capitalism can be abolished and Socialism established, first to prevent it being used to resist this change and, secondly, in order to centrally co-ordinate it. This would not be denied by many of those who advocate minority action. But from here on a basic difference emerges. They repudiate the policy of trying to convince, by peaceful persuasion, a majority to join them in their struggle; in short, they reject democratic methods. Instead they favour minority action, first to disrupt society and undermine the majority-supported government and, then, to take advantage of the resulting social and political instability to seize government power themselves in an armed uprising.

Those who realise that the Socialist revolution can only be a majority revolution have no need to consider such a method of winning State power (which would almost certainly fail anyway with the loss of many innocent working class lives). Once capitalist conditions, including the persuasive efforts of a one-time Socialist minority, have created a Socialist majority the question is: What is the easiest method of winning control of the State?

In the most advanced capitalist parts of the world, such as Britain, where economic circumstances and working class pressure have forced the ruling class to grant a certain degree of political democracy, the answer is obvious. Use the existing political institutions which provide for members of parliament, local councillors and other public offices to be elected by universal suffrage, limited and incomplete as these institutions are from the point of view of democratic theory.

This would involve the Socialist majority organising themselves as a political party, but one completely different both from existing parliamentary parties and from Leninist vanguard parties. The workers’ socialist party must be democratic through and through: its policy and all its activities must be under the complete control of its members and it must have no leader or leaders. Being the actual movement of the working class to establish Socialism it must reflect, as far as is possible under capitalism, the organisational forms of Socialism, namely, democratic control and popular participation. And far from being a vanguard party seeking to lead the working class with attractive slogans, is would merely be the instrument they can use to win political power once a majority of them have become Socialists.

Naturally, such a party would have to appoint candidates to contest the elections for public offices. But those appointed would simply be mandated delegates from the working-class Socialist majority. The position would be the exact reverse of that in existing, parliamentary parties. Instead of the party outside Parliament being essentially only vote-catchers for the parliamentary leadership, Socialist MPs and councillors would merely be the messenger boys of the Socialist working class outside Parliament, democratically-organised in their Socialist political party. And, of course, the aim of sending Socialist delegates to Parliament would not be to form a ‘socialist government’ (a contradiction in terms) but to abolish capitalism as smoothly and peaceably as possible.

Once in control of State power the Socialist majority can abolish the capitalist class’s monopoly over the means of production by making them the common property of the whole community under the democratic control of all the people. And the State machine — as a public power of coercion — would be abolished by its coercive institutions (the armed forces, police, law courts, jails) being dismantled. The remaining administrative institutions (health, education, the State-run industries) would be fully democratised and extended to cover all industries. This done, the centre of social administration has ceased to be a ‘State’, properly so-called, and become simply an unarmed clearing-house for democratically settling social affairs.

Socialism will have been established.

Adam Buick

From Lenin to Stalin (1953)

From the April 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although Stalin is dead there still lingers about him a larger than life aspect, This is hardly surprising when we consider his antithetical role of an angel of light and prince of darkness. While such a black and white study might serve as a popular form of entertainment it reveals nothing about Stalin as a man and politician. For our part we are prepared to remain on ground level and try to evaluate Stalin by examining the social and economic soil from which he grew and – if we may use the word – flourished.

One cannot, however, begin to understand Stalin without bringing in Lenin and the Bolsheviks who for many years formed a section of the Russian Social Democratic Party. Indeed that body of dogma, eclecticism, opportunism, and self-contradictory ideas which goes under the name of Stalinism is in essence a more explicit form of what was always implicit in the theories and tactics of Lenin and his Bolshevik Party. While Stalin in his self-appointed role of Philosopher-Statesman sought to extend and amplify Leninism – the alleged Marxism of the 20th century – he never attempted to infringe his master’s copyright on the subject.

Stalin himself was an old Bolshevik and not one of the least that Lenin led and inspired. He formed with Lenin a vital link in a chain of political ideas whose first phase culminated in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Certainly Stalin was more attuned to the intellectual and political atmosphere of the disciplined and conspiratorial Bolshevik Party than ever Trotsky was, a fact no doubt of crucial value in his struggle for power with the latter. Leninism as a political creed was itself born out of the leadership notions and essentially undemocratic ideas of the early Bolsheviks. Stalinism was its inevitable and tragic fulfillment.

Yet when the Bolshevik Lenin first appeared on the Russian political scene he accepted the views of people like Plekhanov – whose acknowledged pupil he was – Axelrod, Deutsch and others. Lenin’s first important work, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published 1899, put forward the view that Capitalism was developing in Russia and nothing could stop its continuance. This development he argued was historically progressive in relation to the then existing semi-feudal economy of Russia. While one could not oppose this development he said, nevertheless workers should organise to resist its evils and steps should be taken to prepare for its eventual supersession.

Lenin’s book was part of an ideological campaign which the Russian Social Democratic Party were waging against the Narodniki (Populists) who maintained that Russia had a social development which was peculiar to itself and therefore did not have to pass through a normal and full capitalist development which other countries had experienced. In fact they averred that Capitalism was a kind of Western disease against which the people of Russia could and should he inoculated. Let us, they said, get rid of the tyranny of Czarism and we can, on the basis of our rural collectivism (the Mir), establish Socialism, i.e. free peasant communes and cooperatives of workers.

“Socialism in one Country” has then a much longer history than the Stalinist formulation of it. It is an ironical footnote on the earlier activities of Lenin and Stalin that the very theory they sought to combat was the one which in the end they made their own.

In fact it was Lenin who after the meagre achievements of “War Communism” re-introduced the idea of a home-grown Russian Socialism when he announced his “New Economic Policy.” It was the “Marxist” Lenin who proclaimed the myth that State Capitalism although a step backward from the earlier Bolshevik aims had in it, nevertheless, socialist implications. It was Lenin who repeatedly put forward the view that a Soviet State could be both the means and guarantee for realising Socialism in one country, and the further myth shared by both Stalin and Trotsky that what was taking place in Russia then was different from anywhere else in the world.

Lenin’s own views on Marxism had through the years undergone considerable change from his earlier standpoint. How much so could be seen in the attitude he adopted in the closing years of the 1914-18 war. Lenin had come to believe more and more that Capitalism was doomed. that it would be unable to finish the war it had started. Peace was to come by a victorious proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. For that reason the traditional difference between bourgeois and proletarian revolutions had for him lost significance. Given the right leadership in Russia a socialist revolution not a bourgeois one would be the order of the day. At the first All Russian Congress of Soviets, of which his party was only a small minority, he declared their willingness to take over immediately. In the August of that year he flatly asserted that “majority rule was a institutional illusion.”

Lenin’s predictions of what was going to happen to capitalism were falsified by the actual events. The capitalists did finish the war and no proletarian revolution took place. So Lenin’s main justification for a socialist revolution went by the board.

It is true the Bolsheviks did come to power in Russia. But it was neither with the acclamation nor assent of the Russian people. It was in the quiet of the early hours of the morning of November 7th that Bolshevik military cars occupied the centres of business and communication in Petrograd. This sealed the fate of Kerensky Provisional Government and assured the Bolsheviks of political power. Thus did the population of Petrograd discover when they woke a few hours later that their “Proletarian dictatorship” was an accomplished fact.

That the Bolsheviks concluded peace with Germany, dispossessed the private capitalist and against their own judgment gave the land to the peasants is a matter of history. They were successful because in war-weary, exhausted Russia they conceded to the inevitable. Behind the facade of their concession they planned however a new discipline and developed the latent forces for a new social order – new to Russia – but, in its exploitation based on wage labour, as old as capitalism itself.

Nor was the undemocratic seizure of power by the Bolsheviks merely the fortuitous result of filling the vacuum caused by the indecision and incompetence of Kerensky’s Government. Such action by the Bolsheviks was in keeping with their political ideas which the circumstances arising from the collapse of Csarist Russia enabled them to exploit.

The Bolsheviks, mainly recruited from the Russian bourgeois intelligentsia, had long regarded themselves as the born leaders of the Russian people, an illusion they shared with the Fabians and other reformist parties. By identifying themselves with the aims and aspirations of the non-socialist mass and securing their confidence the Bolsheviks believed that, with such backing, they could ride to political power at an opportune moment.

Because they believed themselves to be the commanding officers of the politically less conscious majority it is easy to see why the spreading of socialist ideas was subordinated to the preoccupation of tactics, unity of command and the strict discipline of party organisation. Within such a party it was obvious that freedom of individual action and opinion were gravely limited. Ideas for them were not something to be accepted because of their integral and logical structure but as an ideal means for successfully waging political struggles. Theory for the Bolsheviks, as it became later for the various Communist Parties meant a creed a dogma to be inflexibly held against all comers.

That the Bolsheviks adopted Marxism not only saved them the trouble of formulating theories of their own but as a well-established doctrine, it provided an admirable ideological basis to which changes and shifts in policy could be ultimately referred and by which they could be justified. This is the true significance of Lenin’s oft repeated phrase, echoed and re-echoed by Stalin, “Theory is a guide to practice.” For the Bolsheviks these dogmas set the limit to and decided the nature of freedom of discussion. Whatever differences may exist between Roman Catholicism and “Communism” there is at least this much in common.

It is from the mental and political outlook of the Bolsheviks we can trace the evolution of that pernicious scholasticism by which Stalin and his party not only conducted their purges but sought to hide from the world and perhaps themselves what was really taking place in “Socialist Russia.”

It would also account for the reason why men like Lenin and Stalin were at one and the same time, rigid doctrinaires and flexible, opportunistic politicians. Perhaps for dictators there is an emotional need for dogma. Many tyrants have justified their evil work on the assumption that it was ultimately for the good of mankind. Even Stalin explaining that Soviet Russia is not exempt from economic laws indulged in turgid Marxist phraseology and quotes from Engels who it appears plays a similar role in Soviet theology to that once played by Aristotle in the Catholic Church.

In such an organisation as the Bolsheviks it is not surprising that the dictum, the end justifies the means, was raised to a ruling principle. Long before the revolution they held that any means were permissible against political opponents; after the revolution it was but logical step to ensure that all means were justifiable.

The Bolsheviks themselves however became the victims of their own anti-democratic pressures. From “all power to the Soviets” it passed to “all power to the Communist Party.” The checks and balances of ordinary democratic procedure were absent. The struggle of rival groups had to be carried on within the Communist Party. Intrigue and plotting under ideological disguises became the effective means for realising political ambitions. Because of years of unbridled power the Communist Party was mentally and politically incapable of resolving the struggle by democratic means. Maintenance of power at any price became for them a matter of life and death. On a chequer board of political tactics the old Bolshevik “moved, mated and slayed” until the assumption of power rested in one man – Stalin; which compelled the fashioning of a mighty repressive machine to ensure his own preservation and that of the ruling faction which he represented.

While Stalin was prepared to make concessions to the Russian people and even grant a “New Constitution” he was incapable of granting them political freedom. Whatever may have been Stalin’s claims for what he achieved in Russia he was never prepared to submit them to normal political competition. For Stalin that would have been the end of Stalinism.

It was Stalin who completed the work begun by Lenin, the turning of Marxism, a revolutionary doctrine into its opposite an authoritative ideology of State Capitalism on a par and at times competing with other state ideologies, i.e. Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s Corporate State.

The Bolsheviks in spite of their Marxist language and at times idealistic phrases were never socialists. They served instead as spokesmen of a new ruling class in Russia, a class itself the outcome of the very economic tendencies existing in Russia, the tendencies towards State Capitalism. In the furnace of the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks were themselves forged into an instrument of class domination. In that sense was Joseph Djugashvili a man of steel.

Ted Wilmott

Extinction? Rebellion? (2023)

From the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Extinction Rebellion (XR) was founded in 2018 based on the following:

1. That there is a ‘Climate Emergency’ due to an imminent threat of extinction from global warming not just of other species but of humans too.
2. That because the government has failed in its duty to protect the security and safety of its citizens, they are no longer obliged to obey its laws.
3. That net-zero carbon emissions should be achieved by 2025.
4. That 3.5 percent of a country’s population practising non-violent civil disobedience can bring about political regime change.

Just Stop Oil is an offshoot inspired and led by one of XR’s founders, Roger Hallam. In 2021 it was called Insulate Britain. Last year it became Just Stop Oil. The difference with XR is over the immediate aim and tactics. Basically, Hallam is more militant. While they talk of love, he talks of toppling the government.

Extinction

In his Common Sense for the 21st Century, that came out in 2019, Hallam wrote of ‘the system spiralling out of our control and the likelihood of global collapse within a decade or two’ and of ‘6-7 billion people’ dying as a result of climate change ‘within the next generation or two’ (bit.ly/3jQIFMx).

He repeated this claim in an interview on the BBC Hardtalk programme on 16 August:

‘The capitalist system, the global system that we are in, is in the process of destroying itself and it will destroy itself in the next ten years. The reason for this is because it’s destroying the climate.’

‘I am talking about the slaughter, death and starvation of 6 billion people this century – that’s what the science predicts’ (bit.ly/2MDBhSZ).

Actually, it wasn’t what science said or says. It was just a worst-case scenario should average global temperature rise to 5 degrees centigrade above the pre-industrial level, which no scientist expects to happen. Admittedly, if it did it would be catastrophic. But it is not going to happen, not even those who rule under capitalism are so stupid as to allow that.

Rebellion

XR subscribes to the myth that the government exists to serve and protect its citizens and argues that, in not doing enough to protect them from climate change, the government has failed in its duty and, worse, has betrayed those they are supposed to protect; the government having broken its side of the bargain, they as its citizens are absolved from having to obey its laws.

The political philosophy behind this justification for engaging in civil disobedience, ie, not obeying the law, is surprisingly old-fashioned. It’s based on the ‘social contract’ theory of the origin of government that underlies the 1776 American Declaration of Independence. This famously declares that all humans have

‘certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…’

And goes on:

‘That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.’

XR say they are exercising this ‘right to rebellion’. Hence their name.

In short, they subscribe to the conventional view of what governments are there to do, whereas in fact governments are there to protect the interests of the rich owning class. It is their government not ours.

Beyond politics

In the beginning they considered themselves to be ‘beyond politics’ as the situation was supposedly so urgent that politics must be set aside. This included not just the trivia of everyday conventional politics — the Westminster Passing Show — but talk of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ was also part of politics that they were beyond.

They have since come to recognise that they too are involved in politics in the broad sense and now say that they are beyond only ‘party politics’. In fact they have gone further and say they want political, economic and social change and spell this out as ‘a rapid change in wealth distribution and power structures, preventing a rich elite from perpetuating a self-serving ideology’ (bit.ly/3QjCug2).

That should mean that they are now open to discussion about ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ as well as discussion of the best means to get to the sort of society they say they want. They still dismiss ‘socialism’, though, no doubt because of what the word has unfortunately come to mean.

Changing slogans

XR’s demand of net-zero carbon by 2025 was unrealisable. Even if socialism had been established in 2019 we wouldn’t have been able to reach that by then. Yet this demand is still on their website where – with only two years to go – it is even sillier than it was in 2019.

Hallam didn’t think that this was good enough as a slogan to mobilise enough people to engage in civil disobedience on the scale he envisaged. He thought that what was needed was something felt as more immediate. The first such mobilising slogan he came up with was ‘insulate Britain’. Not that this demand would make much difference to global warming as the contribution to this from poorly insulated houses on an island of 65 million people off the north-west coast of the Eurasian land mass will be fairly minimal.

At the beginning of last year this slogan was dropped and later replaced by ‘Just Stop Oil’. Originally, it was meant as a slogan for a campaign to stop any further licences being granted to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea.

Hallam’s Common Sense in the 21st Century – which, subtitled Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown And Social Collapse, is intended as a handbook on how to topple a government:

‘We must adopt the most successful model for regime change shown by the social scientific research – the civil resistance model. This involves mass participation civil disobedience: tens and hundreds of thousands of people blocking the centres of cities to demand change. There are a number of tactical options, but the main process is as follows:

• The people conduct mass mobilisation – thousands need to take part.
• They amass in a capital city where the elites in business, government and the media are located.
• They break the law – they cross the Rubicon. Examples include blocking the roads and transport systems.
• They maintain a strictly nonviolent discipline even, and especially, under conditions of state repression.
• They focus on the government, not intermediate targets – government is the institution that make the rules of society and has the monopoly of coercion to enforce them.
• They continue their action day after day – one-day actions, however big, rarely impose the necessary economic cost to bring the authorities to the table.
• The actions can have a fun atmosphere– most people respond to what is cultural and celebratory rather than political and solemn.

After one or two weeks following this plan, historical records show that a regime is highly likely to collapse or is forced to enact major structural change.’

At the beginning of the year XR announced what seemed to be an attempt to implement this ‘model for regime change. They are going to organise a mass presence over a number of days of at least 100,000 people in Parliament in London beginning on 21 April. Describing it as the ‘Big One’ and part of ‘Project 3.5‘, they declared:

‘Gathering peacefully in such large numbers at the nation’s seat of power will create a positive, irreversible, societal tipping point’(extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/#).

If they really think that this way they can topple the government and usher in ‘a fair society and a citizen-led end to the fossil fuel era’ within a couple of weeks, only one word comes to mind — delusional.

In praise of minority action

The underlying assumption of XR and Just Stop Oil is that political change can be brought about by as little as 3.5 percent of the population practising civil disobedience. The XR website says that its mission involves

‘Mobilising 3.5% of the population to achieve system change – using ideas such as “Momentum-driven organising” to achieve this. The change needed is huge and yet achievable. No regime in the 20th century managed to stand against an uprising which had the active participation of up to 3.5% of the population’ (for Erica Chenoweth’s research, see bit.ly/3Gn0NoV).

XR typically give three instances of this working: the Civil Rights movement in the US, the collapse of the ‘Communist’ regimes in Eastern Europe, and the Arab Spring. What these have in common is that they were political changes in the political superstructure of capitalism that were not incompatible with the operation of capitalism as an economic system. There are no examples of the economic laws of capitalism being overcome by this kind of action.

Supposing (just for a moment) XR or Just Stop Oil managed to topple the government, what then?

There’d still be capitalism, the cause of the problem and an obstacle to its solution, and to get rid of that requires majority understanding and democratic political action, not civil disobedience by a small minority. The capitalist economic and social system could not be toppled by the determined ‘rebellion’ of some 2 million activists, as they claim (2.3 million being 3.5 percent of the population of Britain).

Their strategy is not a democratic one. It is an attempt by a minority to impose its will on society by coercion (blocking roads is a form of coercion even though non-violent).

In his Common Sense in the 21st Century Hallam openly stated:

‘We should not make the mistake of thinking “the people have to rise” in the sense of the majority of the population. We need a few to rise up and most of the rest of the population to be willing to “give it a go”.’

Citizens’ Assemblies

He envisages that, once the 3.5 percent had toppled the government, decision-making power should be handed over to a National Citizens’ Assembly (chosen by lot) to decide the precise measures that should be taken to deal with the ‘climate emergency’.

Leaving what to do to citizens’ assemblies is a cop-out. For all the merits of such assemblies, most ‘citizens’ today will have the same ideas that they express in elections, ie, that they see no alternative to capitalism, and so would come up with proposals to be implemented under capitalism and which in all probability would accept its constraints. A majority of them would still have to change their ideas about society before they could decide what was required to deal with global overwarming.

Helping this change of consciousness to emerge – ‘making socialists’ –must be the priority as a majority in favour is a precondition for any effective ‘change in wealth distribution and power structures, preventing a rich elite from perpetuating a self-serving ideology’.

Hallam himself is still thinking within the capitalist box. His long-term goal seems to be the sort of mixed state/private economy geared to the market that we have today (plus a few social reform measures) ‘only there will be no oil, coal or gas industry’, as can been seen from the sort of measures he thinks his National Citizens’ Assembly would have to take:

‘the application of taxes, subsidies and mandates by government. Some examples include: Carbon taxes and dividends to both drive behaviour but also to compensate the poor;’ ‘taxes on all virgin materials to encourage investment in recycling; feed-in-tariffs to drive distributed energy and storage in homes, schools and factories.’

In claiming that we should give priority to campaigning for ‘climate justice’ rather than socialism, XR and its offshoots are begging the question by assuming that the threat of serious climate change can be lastingly and effectively tackled without getting rid of capitalism. But it can’t. In rejecting the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources – socialism, properly understood – they are rejecting the only framework within which the climate change crisis can be lastingly and effectively tackled.

Adam Buick