Democracy or leadership? — the difference (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Regular readers of the Socialist Standard will probably be aware that the Socialist Party doesn’t have leaders. They will also hopefully be aware that the Socialist Party claims to be completely democratic, with each member having one vote.

The reason for this is that we realise that democracy and leadership are mutually exclusive. We argue that a democratic socialist society will not have leaders because if it did then it could never be fully democratic. The same applies to the organisation of a Socialist Party. 

So what’s wrong with leaders? Leaders are only necessary in a society where a minority own the means of living and the majority of the population arc exploited for profit. In a society based on free access to the means of living via common ownership, all there will be is democratic organisation. There wouldn’t be a propertied owning class or state — in other words no people with more rights than others, or leaders.

Some people confuse organisation with leadership. The Socialist Party may not have leaders, but it does have strong democratic organisation, in which the members have full control over Party office-holders. Democratic organisation is therefore completely different from leadership. If anything, a democratic party requires more organisation than a semi-democratic leadership party, because it relies more on the initiative of the membership.

This being said, the next area of confusion is the concept of “dominant personalities”. The argument here is that even if you don’t have leaders, and the organisation is democratically controlled by the membership, you will always have those people who are: more knowledgeable than others, better at arguing than others, and generally more influential and active than others. Of course, this is true, and again there isn't a problem here. The point is everyone has the same “legal” weight, so no matter how well known you are or how good you are at writing articles for the Socialist Standard, at the end of the day you only have the same “legal” power as the least able or active member of the Party.

A third point which is often raised is the assertion that any party whose aim is to change people’s ideas is de facto a leadership party. This is pure semantic quibbling. The point is, we don't propose to lead the revolution and we don't propose to exist as a party after the revolution.

Compare this with the SWP. They are an unrepentant leadership group that aims to lead the working class to a “workers’ state” that they will inevitably control. Their concept of democracy is “democratic centralism”. The basic idea here is that the membership democratically vote for their all-powerful leaders on the Central Committee. This is obviously open to abuse, but the main point is that having leaders of any kind can never be fully democratic. Having the right to vote for your superiors doesn’t make for a democratic organisation. Democratic leadership is a contradiction in terms. Leaders and leadership are therefore incompatible with democracy.

The Socialist Party is broadly organised along the lines of how socialist society will be organised. There will be those who seem more dominant and capable than others. A democracy of class-conscious workers will ensure that any leadership pretensions that any of these “strong" people might have will come to nothing. The nature of the “power structure” simply will not allow it.

When it has been proved that leaders are, have been, and always will be our enemy, do you really think a democratic socialist society will ever feel the need to reintroduce them? 

Dave Flynn

50 Years Ago: I.S. stand for – confusion (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialist Worker”, the weekly paper of the International Socialists, regularly publishes a statement of their main principles called “What We Stand For”. We would expect this organization to stand for Socialism. Surprisingly, Socialism is nowhere defined in the statement and it only appears as a word upon which various people and organizations have placed many different interpretations. Still it is possible to get some idea of what IS stand for by a careful reading of their statement. It is also possible to get very confused. For instance, the statement starts off:

“We believe that socialism can only be achieved by the independent action of the working class.”

Whereas, the last part says they are:

“For the building of a mass workers’ revolutionary party . . . which can lead the working class to power . . .” (our emphasis both times)

Now, unless the workers are supposed to be getting power for something other than Socialism, it is simply ridiculous to say that someone who is being led is taking independent action. Could IS tell us which statement they stand for and which is this week’s deliberate mistake? It would also be interesting to know just how large a “mass” the workers of this “revolutionary part y” are to be. Presumably, if it attracted too many workers the working class would be leading themselves!

The second part of the statement reads:

“We believe in overthrowing capitalism, not patching it up or gradually trying to change it. We therefore support all struggles of workers against capitalism and fight to break the hold of reformist ideas and leaders.”

We would wholeheartedly agree with this although we wonder if they only mean reformist leaders in the last bit. However, IS don’t appear to agree with this part of the statement themselves. Later on they say they are:

“Against unemployment, redundancies and lay-offs. Instead we demand five days’ work or five days’ pay, and the 35-hour week. For nationalization without compensation under workers’ control.”

What is this if it is not an appeal to patch up capitalism? No form of nationalization ever has or could solve the problem of unemployment in capitalism. This is a strange way to fight reformist ideas.

[From the article, I. S. stand for - confusion by Con Friel,  Socialist Standard, December 1974]

Blogger's Note:

Apologies for the end of the year SNAFU. Rather than this being a 50 Years Ago column, it is in fact a 51 Years Ago column. It happens. No worries, as it is a good article by Con Friel. The confusion may have arisen because there was an I.S. article which appeared in the December 1975 Socialist Standard.

Trotskyism regurgitated (2025)

Pamphlet Review from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why you should be a communist. By Fiona Lali. Wellred Books. £2. 2025.

Fiona Lali is a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (ex-Socialist Appeal, the section of the Militant Tendency that stayed in the Labour Party after most left in 1991 until they were themselves finally expelled in 2021). She stood as their candidate in last year’s general election and has become their poster girl (literally as she appears on many of their posters). This pamphlet has been written as part of a recruitment drive by the RCP, at the moment the Trotskyist group that seems to have been the most successful in recruiting young people.

The pamphlet starts off with an attack on capitalism and is aimed at young people who realise that something is wrong with the world and want to do something about it. There is not much that can be objected to here. It’s the second part — about what is to replace capitalism and how — that is open to criticism. It starts off with the absurd claim that ‘the Russian Revolution of October 1917 — led by Lenin and Trotsky — was the greatest event in human history’. An important event in 20th century history perhaps, but in the whole of human history?

We are told that the regime it ushered in, while far from perfect (due to Stalin being in charge), was able, thanks to its ‘nationalised planned economy’, to industrialise the country and provide the workers with ‘extremely low rents’ that included ‘energy and phone services’ and retirement at age 55. The implication is that what happened in Russia in the last century is something to be emulated. But what the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 led to was a form of state-run capitalism that left the workers propertyless wage-workers, indeed forcibly changed the peasantry into these. It had nothing to do with communism or socialism. Lali is deceiving herself and misleading others in suggesting otherwise. It is not the path to go down.

She presents the Bolshevik seizure of power as the model for the future. In a section headed ‘need for a revolutionary party’, she tells us that ‘what is required is a party of trained class fighters — cadres — who dedicate themselves to the study of the class, its history, and the theory needed to liberate us’ and that:

‘In the not too distant future, Britain will be convulsed by revolutionary upheavals. It is essential that we build a revolutionary party in advance of these titanic events. This is what we are doing. And we appeal to you to join us in this effort.’

Apparently, hundreds of young people, of which Lali is one herself, have responded to this appeal. It’s the classic formula, successfully applied in the 1960s and 1970s by the founders of Trotskyist groups, to attract young people discontented with capitalism — promising them exciting times of ‘revolutionary upheavals’ and ‘titanic events’ in ‘the not too distant future’.

There are good opportunities to advance the socialist cause at the moment but to make extravagant promises like these can only lead to disillusionment when they don’t materialise. The only positive outcome would be that some will be able to sort the Marxist wheat, which they will have had to study, from the Leninist chaff.

Adam Buick

Trotsky: the Prophet Debunked (1979)

From the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Buick

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

A challenge to Leninism (2003)

From the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s frustrating that the terms “Marxists” and “Socialist” seem to get bandied around far too much these days, with their real meaning lost, and that we in the Socialist Party have to contend with other parties claiming to be socialist, when they most certainly are not. These various “Marxist-Leninist” parties (SWP, Militant, Socialist Alliance, Scottish Socialist Party, etc) claim they are socialists, but their conception of socialism has nothing to do with common ownership, production for need or Marxist economics. They appear to hold to the title of “Marxist” as some kind of badge of honour, but reject the actual real views of Marx and instead align themselves with the works of Lenin.

These parties often criticise us by claiming (as, recently, on the World Socialist Movement discussion forum) that our members don’t get involved in the class struggle, as in the issues of low pay and unemployment. For members to become more visible on these issues in their unions, etc would be a plus, but the danger must be avoided of getting too caught up in such issues and losing track of the actual aim of our party, the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a democratic association of peoples, world socialism.

Leninist groups pursue the tactic of trying to reform capitalism by concentrating on adjusting it, in order to become more popular among workers. This is a wasted effort, since the entire system is based on a minority exploiting a majority. To expend all energy in demands for a more amicable capitalism is not what socialists should aim for, as, even in the event of success, the primary evils of capitalism would still remain i.e. production for profit, extraction of surplus value and all the other unfair and sickening features of modern capitalism. The main effort of socialists should be aiming for socialism itself.

In any event, any gains made in the class struggle for better pay and conditions are still open to being eroded by the inevitable capitalist counter-attack, and without a socialist understanding, the workers will not be able to climb out of the rut of capitalism. So the cycle would continue, with workers making some gains, but then the capitalist class launches a counter offensive by either attacking the gain itself or attacking from some other direction. Workers do have to engage with the issues of pay and work conditions, but the main issue is the overthrow of capitalism, not picking away at it and then having your own gains eroded sooner or later. In thinking of the class war as an actual war, the drive for a socialist understanding in the working class and the creation of a socialist society should be the main front, demanding the most effort, while everyday issues of pay and conditions and defending the gains that have been made would be a secondary front.

It is open to speculation what many of these “socialist” groups are actually aiming for outside of immediate issues. Since they describe themselves as Leninist, it is perhaps worthwhile to take a closer look at Leninism in practice. Often little is known about Lenin by the rank and file of these groups, because he has been surrounded by an almost god-like mythic persona, but with a little research it’s easy to uncover his anti-socialist views and actions. Once the myths are dispelled from this man that these parties hold in such high regard, it can shed some light on what sort of society they themselves envisage.

Lenin was from a privileged family. His main passion seemed to be for the politics of Chernyshevsky, the author of a novel entitled What is to be done? which inspired Lenin’s work of the same title. He also admired the ways of the “Peoples Will”, an anti-Tsarist revolutionary group, known for its acts of violence against the established order, and its vanguardist ideas. So we can see here where his ideas of a vanguard party stemmed from. It is very likely that Lenin never cared for socialism in the real sense, simply desiring to harness the discontent of the masses into smashing the old social order that had rejected him and then placing him in charge of a new regime.

The very act that many of these so-called socialist groups hold up in reverence, the storming of the Winter Palace in Petrograd in November 1917, was not done by a mass of politically aware workers, but by a few hundred Bolshevik soldiers in the dead of night. While they claim that this was a spontaneous seizure of power by the workers, what can be seen is that it was timed to occur before the Soviet Congress could convene, and so guaranteeing Bolshevik supremacy in the soviets and little chance for a free democratic vote on the form any new government should take. This ties in with the Leninist notion of “democratic centralism”. It’s very plausible that if the Soviet Congress had had a free vote, the Bolsheviks would have had to share power with their arch-rivals the Mensheviks. It was also likely that Lenin himself would have been kept out of office due to the mistrust that many of the Mensheviks and other anti-Tsarist revolutionaries justly held him in. Clearly, Lenin could not allow this; to have had to share power with people who challenged and disagreed with him would have been intolerable for a man such as himself. To not even have any power in the event of other parties demanding he be left out of the new government was his nightmare.

So now, when we hear certain left wing parties praise Lenin and the USSR when he ruled it, and look with disdain upon our methods of seeking a democratic socialist understanding among the working class, let us remember the society their idol, Lenin, created, and ask ourselves “Was that Socialism? Is that what we want?” The answer is of course no. No worker should wish to relive the nightmares and mistakes of the past.

Dan Read

Bolshevising the Red Flag (2025)

Book Review from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Raising the Red Flag. Marxism, Labourism, and the Roots of British Communism 1884-1921. By Tony Collins, Haymarket Books.

In his 1969 pioneering work The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900-1921: The Origins of British Communism (reviewed July 1969), Walter Kendall advanced the view that Bolshevism-Leninism was something that was alien to the formally democratic traditions of the working class movement in Britain, introduced from an economically and politically backward part of the world where conditions were quite different. Collins, writing as a Leninist, argues that in fact those who founded the British Communist Party were all too much in the tradition of reformist labourism. Both views have some merit.

The main constituents of the CPGB when it was founded in January 1921 were the British Socialist Party (BSP), part of the De Leonist Socialist Labour Party (SLP), Workers Dreadnought (Sylvia Pankhurst), and some from the Shop Stewards Movement and the left-wing of the Independent Labour Party (ILP).

The British Socialist Party was the name the Social Democratic Federation adopted when it amalgamated with some branches of the ILP in 1911. It was essentially the same organisation from which the SLP and the SPGB broke away in 1903 and 1904 respectively over its lack of democracy, and its reformism and opportunism. It was to provide the bulk of the original membership of the CPGB and, Collins argues, its political approach too of seeing itself as the left wing of the Labour movement.

Collins examines the origin and practice of the founding factions and finds them all wanting in one way or another from a Leninist point of view. The defect they all (except the Shop Stewards Movement) share, he says, is what he calls ‘abstract propagandism’ as opposed to seeking to lead a discontented but non-socialist majority in an insurrection against the capitalist state. The Shop Stewards Movement is criticised for restricting itself to purely industrial matters and the 1911 pamphlet The Miners Next Step for advancing the slogan of ‘no leaders’. His view is that, on the contrary, new leaders were required, but the leaders of a vanguard party of dedicated revolutionaries. In fact, he argues that it was the absence of this ‘subjective’ factor that was the reason why there was no workers’ revolution in Britain just before and just after the First World War.

Tendentious

Explaining his criticism, Collins writes:

‘The SLP’s answer to the syndicalists was that a party was necessary to win a parliamentary majority which would then support the workers as they took over industry, whereupon parliament would hand over state power to the industrial unions. … Shorn of its industrial militancy, this was not very different from the SDF or the SPGB, who believed in the manner of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists that the working class would come to socialism through being educated about its benefits and thus vote for socialists in parliamentary elections’ (p. 58).

‘The Bolshevik conception’, Collins goes on to bemoan, ‘… did not exist in Britain’.

His criticism is a caricature, and tendentious in suggesting that ‘education’ meant something other than the action of workers, who had become socialist through their experience of capitalism, persuading their fellow workers to realise, on the basis of the same experience, that socialism was the only solution. It was true, though, that the implication was that a majority of workers who wanted and understood socialism was needed before socialism could be established and that, if that majority existed, workers should, among other things, vote for it. The Bolshevik conception rejects the principle that a socialist majority is necessary, indeed even possible, as it teaches that workers can only reach a trade-union consciousness and so require a vanguard party to lead them politically.

Although the SPGB is mentioned in passing a number of times, as here, only one short paragraph is devoted to our political position:

‘By this time the SDF leadership had completed its purge of leftists with the expulsion of the leaders of the London opposition, who formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Once out of the SDF, its leftism proved to be a chimera. The SPGB declared its object to be ‘the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery [of government] including [those] armed forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation’, and pursued a grim messianic parliamentary reformism for the next hundred years and more’ (pp. 30-1).

None of our opponents at the time (and even our honest opponents today) would have accused us of ‘parliamentary reformism’, as what characterised us was a refusal to advocate reforms to capitalism (called ‘palliatives’ at the time). We did advocate using parliament but not to try to reform capitalism but to deprive the capitalist class of their ownership of the means of production and their ability to use the armed forces of the state to maintain it.

Collins’s accusation is outrageous, obviously biased and possibly dishonest. It is also ignorant. The term ‘instrument of emancipation’ was consciously taken from the preamble to the 1880 programme of the Parti Ouvrier Français, a preamble that Marx himself had drafted and which speaks of the working class needing to form themselves into a political party which should use ‘universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation’ (tinyurl.com/bdf7vmj8). Clause Six of our Declaration of Principles which Collins is misinterpreting is saying the same — that to end capitalism the workers need to gain control of the machinery of government (state power) which currently upholds capitalist ownership of the means of production. It is a call for the revolutionary, not the reformist, use of parliament.

It also makes Collins a bad historian as the views of the SPGB are just as relevant, if only in terms of the numbers who held them, to his subject of Marxism during the period he is studying as are those of the SLP, John Maclean and Sylvia Pankhurst. In fact, five of the people mentioned by him either were to become or had been members of the SPGB (Jack Fitzgerald, E. J. B. Allen, T. A. Jackson, Valentine McEntee and George Hicks).

Because he didn’t bother to go into the matter in detail, Collins seems to think that the SPGB favoured participation in elections and nothing else. Actually, like the SLP, the SPGB was (and still is) in favour of industrial as well as political action, the difference being over which was the more important. The SLP said industrial, we said political. Ironically, this is the position Collins himself takes up in criticising The Miners’ Next Step and the Shop Stewards Movement, though, as a Leninist, by political action he envisages a vanguard party staging an armed insurrection to seize state power in a period of acute industrial unrest.

He doesn’t list the Socialist Standard as among the contemporary publications he looked at. Which will explain how he missed that in March 1915 we published an anti-war statement by the Bolshevik representative in Britain, Maxim Litvinov, when he couldn’t find anyone else prepared to do so . He also ignores, while noting that the BSP, the SLP and Keir Hardie wobbled on the outbreak of the war, that the SPGB immediately denounced it in a manifesto dated 25 August 1914. Nor does he mention that our members were among those imprisoned or going on the run for refusing to be conscripted.

Two issues

The groups which founded the CPGB initially disagreed on two issues which Collins examines in detail — affiliation to the Labour Party and participation in elections. The BSP was in favour of both. Sylvia Pankhurst was against both, while the SLPers favoured electoral action but not affiliation (which would have been our position but we are proud to have had nothing to do with the founding of the CPGB). In the end Lenin and the Communist International decreed that the new party should accept both, which was easy enough to ensure as the bulk of its members had come from the BSP (born SDF).

Collins’s point about the early CPGB being a continuation of the reformism of the SDF/BSP is valid, as we recognised at the time from having opposed for the previous sixteen years the views and actions of those involved. However, in the mid-1920s the Communist International decided to ‘bolshevise’ the CPGB and imposed on it a strictly Leninist organisational form with a leadership that told its members what to do and which way to turn (and which itself took orders from the rulers of state-capitalist Russia). This was, as Kendall had pointed out, quite alien to the traditions of working-class organisations in Britain. Unfortunately, it resulted in the ‘Bolshevik conception’ getting established here and in Leninist theory and tactics passing as Marxism and revolutionary socialism, as Collins’s book itself bears witness. It was left to us, alone for most of the time, to keep the standard of anti-Leninist Marxism flying high.

Adam Buick

Vanguards, get lost (2025)

From the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Maybe it’s because our offices are situated there and it’s done to annoy or provoke us but the street furniture in Clapham High Street in South-West London is frequently the object of posters and stickers adorned with a hammer and sickle saying ‘Join the Communists’. Following the internet links given reveals they come from the ‘Revolutionary Communist Party’ and the ‘Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)’. Recently they have been joined by a third, ‘Communist Vanguard’, apparently a split from the ‘Revolutionary Communist Group’.

All these, and perhaps up to 53 other varieties, claim to stand for an oxymoron they call ‘Marxism-Leninism’ and use the hammer and sickle as their logo. How oxymoronic they are can be seen by comparing what they say with what Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto:

‘All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority’.

This is how ‘Communist Vanguard’ introduces itself:

‘Our main task is to forge the future Communist Party, the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and the only organisation capable of leading the fight to destroy capitalism. For a Marxist-Leninist organisation, building the Party is inseparable from organising the working class. Only the proletariat, as the gravedigger of capitalism, possesses both the objective interest and the collective power to carry out a revolutionary transformation of society. To guide this process, we aim to create communist cadres capable of weaponising their theoretical understanding of capitalism and scientific socialism, clarifying central political questions for the working-class movement, establishing roots in labour organisations, and developing the theoretical and practical foundations necessary for revolutionary transformation.’

Pure Leninism: workers, incapable of organising themselves to overthrow capitalism, need a vanguard and its cadres (‘a small group of trained people who form the basic unit of a military, political, or business organisation’) to lead and guide them in this.

So it’s ‘the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority’ (Marx) versus ‘the revolutionary vanguard … the only organisation capable of leading the working class … To guide this process … communist cadres…’ (Lenin).

The contrast could not be starker and explains why ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is as much an oxymoron as a ‘square circle’.

The hammer and sickle was the logo of the Bolshevik Party which seized power in Russia in November 1917. This was a typical historical minority movement and led not to socialism but to state capitalism with the section of the cadres who won the internecine struggle that followed Lenin’s death in 1924 emerging as the new, privileged ruling class.

Capitalism wasn’t overthrown in Russia in 1917. It couldn’t have been as, in the absence of a world socialist revolution, it was ripe only for the further development of capitalism. How economically backward Russia was then was reflected in the Bolsheviks’ logo of a hammer to beat metal and a sickle to cut wheat.

It is difficult to see why the rival vanguards think that an ideology and logo that emerged over a hundred years ago in an economically backward part of the world could be attractive for workers today living in an advanced capitalist economy. Both ideology and logo are completely irrelevant.

The vanguards evidently have a high opinion of themselves to appoint themselves the leaders of the working class. The workers need them like they need a hole in the head. The answer of the working class to this arrogant pretension is simple: get lost.

Letter: “Socialism’s prospects have never been better” (2025)

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

“Socialism’s prospects have never been better”

In 1995 I moved to the ‘City of Three Revolutions,’ as St Petersburg was known in Soviet times, and lived there for ten years. Although my antennas were always up for signals of a socialist spirit, or even just the memory of one, they registered none. My reaction was to dive deeper into the history of the revolution. I began noticing things about it that were out of sync with my reading of Marx and Engels, like the fact that almost all the top Bolsheviks were from the upper class, not to mention that what they did to the workers they were supposedly leading to communism was far worse than what they had suffered under their old masters.

Lenin brought his Bolshevik Party to power on the cresting wave of the democratic workers’ councils in 1917. Then, with a few changes, he essentially restored tsarist autocracy. Freedom of speech, the press, and assembly were again suppressed, and the absolute power of a non-elected monarch, a dictator, reappeared along with a centralized bureaucracy. Under Lenin, the chinovnik-bureaucrat apparatus once more became the master of the land and of thousands of industrial enterprises. It included many tsarist bureaucrats, who, together with a few Bolsheviks, were the bosses in the ministries. Lenin’s bureaucracy blended with the tsarist bureaucracy and quickly adopted the same rules. Everything that upset or challenged the interests of centralized economic and socio-political life was eliminated.

Naturally, the USSR presented itself as socialist. From the standpoint of capitalists the world over, this was confirmed by the abolition of private property and the free market. For Soviet workers, however, their government, though endlessly spewing Marxist phraseology, was a harsh exploiter. The USSR had very little in common with socialism, if by this we mean a society without exploitation and classes. Abolition of private property and nationalization of the means of production are not socialism if the direct producers do not control the economy. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not a union because Moscow ruled despotically over the regions. It was not soviet because the Bolsheviks eliminated the workers’ councils. It was not socialist as workers’ self-management was destroyed. And it was not republican because there were no free elections. Every word in this ‘USSR’ was a bald lie.

German and Dutch Marxists, including among others, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches, Paul Levy, Franz Mehring, Otto Rühle, Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter, exercised an early criticism of the concept Lenin elaborated in his 1902 pamphlet What Is To Be Done? whereby a highly disciplined party of professional revolutionaries would ‘substitute’ for the working class and carry out a socialist revolution in its name. They insisted that socialism was not a party affair and argued that all political parties – even those identifying as socialist – are inherently bourgeois in nature because they always have a hierarchy with leaders who make all the important decisions and followers who do as they are told. The very idea of the political party was a violation of the credo and collectivist spirit of socialism.

For the longest time, I could not understand the phenomenon of well-off, usually well-educated, individuals leading revolutions, people like Lenin, Trotsky, Castro, Guevara, and Mao. The answer is self-evident, but it took me a while to realize this. Intellectuals have two routes to power. One is to join the establishment and work to preserve and extend it in the spirit of Niccolo Machiavelli. For the more daring or desperate, the other way is to lead a revolution and make the establishment theirs. Leftists, including Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Maoists and other ‘ists’ have a special interest in state capitalism, are based on the exploitation of and rule over the workers, and make up capitalism’s ‘radical’ left wing.

Since the Paris Commune of 1871, the world’s workers have not discovered any other form of revolutionary organization than the council. Councils know no hierarchy, all decisions are taken collectively, and their representatives answer only to their members. This is the form in which the social-revolutionary workers’ movement has clothed itself – like the soviets that were shut down and swept away by the Bolsheviks in 1917-1921, and the similar elimination of workers’ councils (arbeiterrate) in Germany in the early twenties, the councils that were eliminated by the French ‘communists’ in 1968, Iran’s mullahs in 1979, and Poland’s apparatchiki in 1981, among many others.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did not say, ‘Unite the workers of the world! They said instead, ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ Their audience were workers, not upper-class intellectuals with guilt complexes and political ambitions. Indeed, if they are to blame for anything, it is the sanguine hope they gave to so many that capitalism would spread across the planet and take root much faster than it did, along with the expectation that the victory of the proletariat, by virtue of its sheer size and majority alone, would be guaranteed and the world would finally lay the awful system to rest. In fairness to Marx and Engels, however, the first words of the Communist Manifesto, published in distant 1848, are: ‘A specter is haunting Europe.’ The confusion may be due to the pamphlet’s forward-looking last sentence: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ It is now 2025, and there have never been more workers on the planet. Moreover, the hold on them of political parties is largely a thing of the past. The prospects for international socialist revolution have never been better.

Evel Economakis

Reply:

Obviously we agree with your criticism of the so-called USSR and of Leninism but —equally obviously —cannot agree that ‘the very idea of the political party was a violation of the credo and collectivist spirit of socialism’.

The historical figures you list seem to have meant parties based on the principle of leadership such as Lenin’s vanguard party and parliamentary Social Democratic and Labour parties that ask workers to follow them as leaders by passively voting for them. We agree with rejecting that kind of party but most (though not all, not Luxemburg for example) seem to have ruled out the possibility of a political party — as a party contesting elections with a view to winning political control — which ‘know no hierarchy, all decisions are taken collectively, and their representatives answer only to their members’. This is the sort of party we advocate. Such a party is necessary as workers need to organise to take control of the state if only to prevent it being used against them but also to coordinate the changeover from capitalism to socialism.

We have nothing against ‘workers councils’ as such as bodies that workers have formed from time to time under specific historical circumstances, but we don’t see them as a necessarily socialist revolutionary form. Not all the examples you list have even claimed that but advanced various trade-union type and political democracy demands. That said, workers will need to self-organise also in the places where they work to keep production and administration going while the workers’ party uses political control to end capitalist ownership of the means of production.

Editors

Computer says ‘SPGB’ (2025)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is the result of an AI experiment, as it happened, with no edits.

QUESTION: Which organisation is the most orthodox Marxist in the U.K?

CHATGPT: The most orthodox Marxist organization in the UK is generally considered to be the Communist Party of Britain (CPB). It adheres closely to traditional Marxist-Leninist principles, emphasizing class struggle, the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship, and the eventual goal of achieving socialism through revolution. The CPB does not adopt the more modern or revisionist approaches seen in other left-wing groups, and it remains committed to the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Other groups with a similar orientation include Workers’ Party of Britain (WPB) and certain factions within the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), but the CPB is typically seen as the most prominent and consistently orthodox in terms of Marxist ideology.

QUESTION: Isn’t it Leninist?

CHATGPT: Yes, you’re absolutely right! The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) is indeed more accurately described as Marxist-Leninist rather than just Marxist. Marxism-Leninism refers to the application and adaptation of Marxist theory by Lenin, particularly focusing on the role of the vanguard party, the importance of proletarian revolution, and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as a precursor to socialism and communism. The CPB embraces these Leninist concepts, as well as the idea of centralized, disciplined party leadership in the struggle for revolution. In summary, while the CPB is rooted in orthodox Marxism, it also incorporates the key elements of Lenin’s thought, making it more accurately classified as a Marxist-Leninist organization.

QUESTION: But if Marx said that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’ doesn’t this contradict Lenin’s notion of a vanguard of ‘professional revolutionaries’?

CHATGPT: You’re right to point out that there’s a potential tension between Marx’s emphasis on the working class emancipating itself and Lenin’s concept of a vanguard party led by professional revolutionaries. This has been a point of significant debate among Marxist theorists and revolutionaries.

Marx’s vision of emancipation: Marx famously wrote in The Communist Manifesto that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’.” This suggests that workers must be the active agents of their own liberation, which implies a democratic, self-organized process of revolution led by the working class itself. Marx was critical of any attempts to impose revolution from above or to replace the class struggle with a leadership-driven project.

Lenin’s vanguard party: Lenin, in contrast, argued that the working class, on its own, would not necessarily develop the class consciousness required to overthrow capitalism. He believed that, due to the oppression and alienation inherent in capitalism, the workers could be bogged down by trade union consciousness, which focuses on immediate economic struggles rather than revolutionary transformation. Hence, Lenin proposed the need for a vanguard party—a highly disciplined, centralized group of professional revolutionaries who would guide the proletariat towards revolutionary consciousness and lead the struggle for a socialist revolution. Lenin argued that such a party would be essential to navigate the complexities of revolution and maintain the direction of the struggle, which he felt the working class on its own might not be able to do effectively.

Contradiction or development?

While at first glance these two perspectives seem contradictory, Lenin viewed his ideas as a necessary development of Marx’s theory in response to the historical and social conditions of his time. Lenin’s view is that in a period of imperialism and complex state power, workers needed not just to rise up spontaneously but to be led by a well-organized, politically aware, and disciplined party to successfully seize power.

Critics of Lenin’s approach argue that it undermines the Marxist idea of workers’ self-emancipation and could potentially lead to a bureaucratic, top-down system that alienates the masses (as they believe happened in the Soviet Union). On the other hand, Leninists argue that a vanguard party is necessary to channel the spontaneous energies of the working class into a coherent revolutionary force.

Conclusion: In short, the tension you’ve identified is a key point of divergence between orthodox Marxism (focused on working-class self-emancipation) and Marxist-Leninism (which emphasizes the role of a vanguard party). Lenin’s theory of revolution was intended to address what he saw as the practical challenges of organizing for revolution in a more complex and repressive capitalist society, but it is indeed a departure from Marx’s emphasis on working-class self-liberation.

QUESTION: With that in mind shouldn’t the answer to my first question be the SPGB?

CHATGPT: Yes, you raise a very valid point. The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) could indeed be considered one of the most orthodox Marxist organizations in the UK, particularly in the sense of adhering to the principles that Marx articulated, especially the idea of working-class self-emancipation.

SPGB’s approach: The SPGB, founded in 1904, explicitly rejects the idea of a vanguard party and the Leninist approach of professional revolutionaries. The SPGB maintains a Marxist stance that the working class must achieve socialism through its own efforts, emphasizing the necessity of democratic control, self-emancipation, and conscious political action. It stands by the view that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself, which aligns closely with Marx’s original vision, rather than a top-down leadership model.

The SPGB rejects any form of dictatorship of the proletariat or the centralization of power within a vanguard party. Instead, it focuses on the need for a majority of the working class to develop socialist consciousness and democratically take control of the means of production.

Contrast with Leninism: In this sense, the SPGB is indeed much closer to the orthodox Marxist position that you mentioned earlier, as it emphasizes that revolutionary action must arise from the working class itself rather than being led by a professional revolutionary elite, which is a hallmark of Leninist thought.

Conclusion: Given that the CPB (Communist Party of Britain) embraces Marxist-Leninist principles, it places itself more in line with Lenin’s ideas about the role of a vanguard party. Meanwhile, the SPGB adheres strictly to Marx’s original notion of working-class self-emancipation, without the leadership of a vanguard party, making it a more orthodox Marxist organization in terms of the original ideas put forward by Marx. So, in that sense, the SPGB would be a more accurate answer to your question.

QUESTION: Also Lenin believed that a state run wages system was the same as socialism but Marx believe in the abolition of the state and the wages system, didn’t he?

CHATGPT: Yes, you’re absolutely right again in pointing out a fundamental difference between Marx and Lenin on the nature of socialism, particularly regarding the state and the wages system. These differences are crucial in understanding the divergence between orthodox Marxism and Marxist-Leninism.

Marx on the state and the wages system: Marx believed that the ultimate goal of socialism was the abolition of both the state and the wages system. He argued that the state, under capitalism, was a tool of class oppression, serving the interests of the ruling capitalist class. In his vision, after a proletarian revolution, the state would gradually ‘wither away’ as class distinctions disappear and a truly classless society emerges. In a communist society, there would no longer be a need for the state as a coercive apparatus because the working class would have collectively taken control of the means of production, and the social relations of production would be radically transformed.

Regarding the wages system, Marx saw it as an essential part of capitalist exploitation, where workers sell their labour power for a wage, which is less than the value they create. In a socialist society, he envisioned the abolition of the wages system and the creation of a system based on communal ownership and the distribution of goods according to need, rather than labour performed.

Lenin on the state and the wages system: Lenin, in contrast, believed that the state would play a central role even under socialism, particularly in the early stages following the revolution. He argued that, initially, the state would need to be used to consolidate power, defend the revolution, and suppress counter-revolutionary elements. For Lenin, the state was a necessary instrument during the transition from capitalism to socialism—what he called the dictatorship of the proletariat—and that it would eventually wither away once class distinctions were fully abolished.

As for the wages system, Lenin and the Bolsheviks viewed the establishment of state control over industry and wages as a necessary step in the transition to socialism. While they aimed to move away from capitalist private ownership, they still believed in maintaining a state-run economy with wages and a system of production, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. In other words, they didn’t abolish wages in the early Soviet Union but rather reorganized the system under state control.

Lenin’s view was that the ‘state socialism’ (state-controlled means of production and distribution) implemented by the Bolsheviks was a form of socialism, even though it did not immediately meet Marx’s ultimate vision of a stateless, classless, and wage-less society. Lenin saw this as a necessary transitional phase, where the workers’ state would manage the economy and prepare the ground for the eventual realization of full communism.

The core difference:

• Marx: Aims for the abolition of the state and the wages system as part of the realization of communism, where society is based on cooperation, voluntary labour, and the fulfilment of human needs.
• Lenin: Sees the state as necessary during the transitional phase from capitalism to socialism, and views the wages system as a feature that would still exist in the early stages of socialism, but under state control.

Conclusion: So, while Marx envisioned a stateless, wage-less society as the final stage of socialism, Lenin believed that the state and wages would play a role in the early stages of socialism before ultimately transitioning toward full communism. Lenin’s perspective on the state and the wages system marks a significant departure from Marx’s more revolutionary and radical vision for the future of socialism. This difference is one of the key points of contention between Marxist-Leninist thought and orthodox Marxism.

QUESTION: So what is the most orthodox Marxist political party in the U.K?

CHATGPT: Given the distinctions you’ve highlighted between Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, and the critiques of Lenin’s approach to the state and the wages system, the most orthodox Marxist political party in the UK would indeed be the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB).

Why the SPGB is the most orthodox Marxist party:

1. Commitment to Marx’s vision of the abolition of the state: The SPGB explicitly rejects Lenin’s idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the need for a transitional state. It adheres to Marx’s vision of a stateless, classless society that emerges after the working class takes control of the means of production. The SPGB believes that the state is an instrument of class oppression and must be abolished rather than used as a tool for governance by the proletariat.
2. Opposition to the wages system: The SPGB is also firmly opposed to the wages system as part of the capitalist exploitation that Marx sought to abolish. The party believes that socialism can only be achieved when production is based on human need, not on profit, and when the wages system is replaced by a system of free access to goods and services, according to need.
3. Focus on working-class self-emancipation: Unlike Marxist-Leninist organizations that advocate for a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries, the SPGB holds that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. It is a democratic socialist organization that prioritizes education, spreading socialist ideas, and organizing the working class to take control of the economy and political system.
4. Opposition to state socialism: The SPGB critiques any form of state socialism that retains the apparatus of the state and the wages system. It rejects the idea of a transitional period where a state or vanguard party would manage the economy on behalf of the working class, as is typical in Marxist-Leninist thought.

Conclusion: In the context of the UK, where various parties and organizations claim to be socialist, the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is the most orthodox in terms of adhering to Marx’s original vision of socialism. Its rejection of Leninist strategies, including the dictatorship of the proletariat and the centralization of power in a vanguard party, sets it apart as a party that seeks to follow Marx’s ideas as closely as possible in today’s political climate.

Gerry-built (2025)

Book Review from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Party is Always Right. By Aidan Beatty. Pluto Press. 2024.

This is sub-titled the ‘Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism’ though in truth most of it has been told before. The interesting addition is the number of interviews that have helped to add colour and richness to a grim story of political failure and an even grimmer tale of internal strife and abuse.

Alongside Ted Grant of the Militant Tendency and Tony Cliff of the Socialist Workers Party, Gerry Healy was one of the three gurus of the British Trotskyist movement. While all three led organisations that had authoritarian tendencies, Healy’s outfit was by far the worst. Called the Socialist Labour League until it changed its name to the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) in 1973, it became a byword for cult-like sectarianism and was infused with a rancid, hierarchical political culture which was framed and dominated by the leader himself. Healy was a tyrannical bully who often directed and oversaw violence against his political opponents (both inside and outside the party) and who was an expert manipulator. Indeed, that was arguably his main ‘talent’ such as it was and what kept him at the top of the organisation for so long.

Unlike Grant or Cliff, Healy was no theoretician with a knowledge of Marx, even though he liked to paint himself as such. Most of his attempts at establishing this sort of reputation for himself only served to expose his limitations, which were considerable. He was obsessed with Marxist dialectics, but his forays into this were generally just nonsense (Beatty quotes a few examples in case anyone was in any doubt).

Healy also seemed to possess relatively little knowledge of Marxist economics. He was the perennial catastrophist, constantly predicting that capitalism was in its final death agony and that the revolution was imminent. He was effectively saying the same thing in the 1970s and 80s as he had been in the 1950s. Yet the collapse never came.

Some argue that he had a certain charisma, which is why he was able to keep his hold on the party for so long. It was certainly enough to woo a number of high-profile celebrities into the orbit of the organisation, starting with the actor Corin Redgrave and then his more famous sister Vanessa, but including many others from Frances De La Tour to former Spurs football player Chris Hughton.

But this charisma – if that is what it was – was ultimately to prove the downfall of both Healy and the WRP. In 1985, Healy’s secretary Aileen Jennings wrote to the Political Committee of the WRP alleging that Healy was a serial manipulator and sexual abuser of women, naming 26 female victims, mainly party members. This eventually led to a predictable slew of lurid tabloid headlines and was a proverbial ‘hand grenade’ against its supreme leader from which the WRP never recovered. It split into myriad warring factions over the following years.

Healy himself then founded the Marxist Party with loyalists Vanessa and Corin Redgrave but died aged 76 in 1989 and this party – never more than about 50 or so – dwindled away to nothing. The surviving WRP led by Sheila Torrance is also now tiny (estimated at around 120 members at most) though still stands General Election candidates, as periodically does another small surviving faction, now called the Socialist Equality Party and linked to a US organisation of the same name led by David North (a Healy protégé).

At its peak the WRP may have had 3,000 members but when the split happened the party’s finances became one of the biggest bones of contention as it emerged that many of its assets were not actually registered in the name of the party itself, but through other byzantine and opaque structures – allegedly for security reasons. There was a Head Office (with no signage) on Clapham High Street in a building now occupied by Caffé Nero, eight apartments around the corner in Clapham Old Town (Healy himself lived in one of them), a ‘College of Marxist Education’ in rural Derbyshire, and a state-of-the-art printing works in Runcorn that had enabled the WRP to produce the first colour daily newspaper in Britain, News Line. There were also several ‘Youth Training Centres’ it had set up, at one stage several bookshops, and also fleets of vehicles including Healy’s BMW.

The party’s finances were actually another Achilles Heel, as it over-extended itself in a way that couldn’t be sustained through membership income and paper sales alone, however hard the leadership pushed the members and gave them impossible targets to meet. Hence Healy’s well-known soliciting of money from Iraq and – in particular – Colonel Gaddafi’s Libyan regime (which also gave the WRP printing works considerable contracts, including for mass copies of the Green Book). Beatty is sceptical of some of the wilder claims that have been made about links with Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and the PLO as well, but there is little doubt that money came from both Iraq and Libya and was not unconnected with the virulently pro-Arab nationalist tone of much WRP literature.

This then leads us on to another theme – the paranoia and secrecy at the heart of the organisation. Healy was obsessed with the security services, spies and moles, and saw them everywhere. Anyone who crossed him was lucky to be called a ‘subjectivist idealist’ or similar, the alternative was that they were really a spy. Anecdotes about speakers at WRP meetings being asked to speak with their backs to the window (in case MI5 listening devices could pick up sensitive vibrations from the glass) were not entirely unfounded. In fact, the British state did show an interest in the WRP (especially in the 70s and 80s) though this was more because of its links to industrial disruption in the early 70s and then later links to foreign governments and their money, than any assessment of them being a credible domestic revolutionary threat.

Beatty says that the standard description of the WRP as a cult has something going for it, but is, of itself, inadequate because its internal practices were directly a product of its elitist political outlook:

‘Dismissing the WRP as a cult means ignoring the connection between the WRP’s authoritarian culture and the party’s Leninist structure. The WRP can and should be understood also as an extreme manifestation of Leninist vanguardism and its anti-democratic praxis’ (p. xvii).

We could not have put it better ourselves.

Dave Perrin

Leadership and Lenin (1949)

From the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The idea of “ Leadership ” developed alongside the growth of private property; it was a reflection of class-divided society, and the leader or leaders always represented property interests. Behind the idea was the theory that a few are born to lead whilst the many are born to serve. Over 2,000 years ago Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, put the idea this way;—

“He who can foresee with his mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and he who can work with his body is a subject, and by nature a slave."

“And so in one point of view, the art of war is a natural art of acquisition, for it includes hunting, an art which ought to practice against wild beasts, and against men who, though intended by nature to be governed, will not submit, for war of such a kind is naturally just."

In the last century Thomas Carlyle, in his essay on Chartism, put the idea in a more polite form:—

"Surely, of all 'rights of man,' this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablist. Nature herself ordains it from the first; Society struggles toward perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more and more . . . In Rome and Athens, as elsewhere, if we look practically, we shall find that it was not by loud voting and debating of many, but by wise insight and ordering of a few that the work was done. So is it ever, so will it ever be."

As soon as the workers began to combine to try to obtain some amelioration of their conditions their Movement was also cursed with this idea of leadership, and a contemporary of Carlyle, William Lovett —a working man who drafted the six points of the Charter —complained bitterly about it: —

“They were always looking up to leadership of one description or another; were being swayed to and fro in opinion and action by the idol of their choice, and were rent and divided when some popular breath had blown that idol from its pedestal. In fact the masses, in their political organisations, were taught to look up to 'great men' (or to men professing greatness) rather than to great principles."

Despite Lovett’s complaints the leadership idea was firmly entrenched in the radical and social democratic movement, and became one of the pedestals of Bolshevism. Lenin, the most prominent of the early Bolsheviks, had a complete contempt for the workers, looking upon them as just pawns in the struggle for power. In a pamphlet written by him in 1902, entitled “What is to be Done,” he indicated the attitude that governed his actions. The following quotation will make clear what this attitude was: —

“We said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. This consciousness could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working-class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., it may itself realise the necessity for combining in unions, to fight against the employers and to strive to compel the Government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.

The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modem scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia." (pages 32-33.)

“The workers can acquire class political consciousness only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers." (page 76.)

Lenin was arguing against those who contended that only the trade union struggle mattered, but in doing so he showed his hand. It may be pointed out, in passing, that it was largely from the theories of French, German and English working men that Marx and Engels acquired the knowledge that they systematised into scientific Socialism.

Lenin was an opportunist struggling for power and when it suited his policy he glorified the intelligence of the workers (see for instance his arguments in favour of trusting “ the masses ” in “Lessons of the Russian Revolution," page 24) pouring scorn on the alleged intricacies of organisational functions; later on he was just as emphatic in the opposite direction. This whole organisational policy, however, was built upon the idea that only a few possessed the intellectual capacity to direct the masses, and this was his interpretation of the “ Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Let us just give an example of how he wrote when he was appealing for working class support:—

“Capitalist culture has created industry on a large scale in the shape of factories, railways, posts, telephones and so forth, and on this basis the great majority of functions of ‘the old State' have become enormously simplified and reduced, in practice, to very simple operations such as registration, filing and checking. Hence they will be quite within the reach of every literate person, and it will be possible to perform them for the usual 'working- man's wage.’ This circumstance ought, and will, strip them of all their former glamour as 'Government,' and. therefore, privileged service.

The control of all officials, without exception, by the unreserved application of the principle of election and, at any time, recall; and the approximation of their salaries to the 'ordinary pay of the workers'—these are simple and ‘self-evident' democratic measures, which harmonise completely the interests of the workers and the majority of peasants; and, at the same time, serve as a bridge, leading from Capitalism to Socialism." (“The State and Revolution," page 46.)

The above was written just before the Bolsheviks obtained control of State power; after this was accomplished the tune changed. To illustrate this change of tune here are some extracts from “Resolutions and Regulations of the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (29th March to 4th April, 1920) Published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Moscow, 1920." In considering these extracts it must be remembered that Lenin was the dominating figure in both the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International-

“The Congress makes it obligatory to all members of the party mercilessly to fight that particularly obnoxious form of ignorant conceit which deems the working class capable of solving all problems without the assistance in the most responsible cases of specialists of the bourgeois school. The demagogic elements who speculate on this kind of prejudice of the more backward section of our working classes can have no place in the ranks of the party of scientific Socialism.

Registration of individual output or productivity of labour and the granting of corresponding individual premiums must also be carried out in a way suitable to administrative technical staff. Better conditions must be secured for our best administrators and engineers to enable them to make full use of their capacities in the interests of Socialist economy.

A special system of premiums is to be established for those specialists under whose guidance the workers can attain the necessary qualifications to make them capable to accept further independent posts.'* page 16.)

Gone was simplicity, election of officials, equality of wages and the rest of the support-catching slogans. In place of them the iron hand of dictatorship and of the “intellectual minority” was revealed. Many pages of the report were given over to arguments alleging the necessity and advantages of one-man management and responsibility. It is interesting to notice that the penalties to be imposed for failure to fall in line with labour discipline included internment in concentration camps. This shows that forced labour and concentration camps were used to bolster up dictatorship at the beginning of Bolshevik rule.

“The way to fight this labour desertion is to publish a column of desertion fines, the formation of labour detachments of deserters under fine and finally internment in concentration camps.” (page 20.)

The quotations we have given will show that leadership, an attribute of private property society, which has cursed the working class’ movement from its inception, was elevated into a guiding principle by the Bolsheviks, and sedulously followed out up to the present, bringing with it domination and the “flesh pots of Egypt” to the privileged minority whilst the masses suffer penury, hard labour, and the threat of the concentration camps or worse.

(All italics in the quotations arc in the originals.)

Gilmac.

Lenin was wrong, Marx was right (2024)

Book Review from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the 125 years or so since the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, the Socialist Standard has published numerous articles about that event and its acknowledged leader, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin). The view those articles have taken is that what Lenin and the Bolsheviks did in 1917 and after, despite their claim to be following Marxist ideas, ran entirely counter to Marx’s advocacy of a democratically run, marketless, socialist society based on production for use not profit and on the idea of from each according to ability to each according to need. Instead, Lenin set up a tyrannical one-party regime run by and in the interests of a small group of bureaucrats with the market mechanism still operating even if commanded by the state, amounting to a form of capitalism – state capitalism. Furthermore Lenin’s – and then Stalin’s – Russia failed Marx’s ‘test’ for socialism (or communism – he used the two words synonymously), which was that such a society had to – could only – arise from advanced capitalism, not from what existed in Russia in the early 20th century, ie, an economically underdeveloped, largely agricultural society in which capitalism had barely begun to take hold. It could not possibly ‘jump’ the capitalist stage and somehow go straight to socialism – something in fact that Lenin, from his speeches and writings, showed he knew, even if this did not stop him from claiming to follow Marx and to have the aim of establishing socialism.

Marxism-Leninism?

One of the inevitable outcomes of such claims by Lenin has been that, over the period since these events, the cry has gone up – and continues to from many ill-informed quarters – that Marxism (or socialism) has been tried and failed. Not only, so the story goes, did it preside over unbridled violence and brutality, starvation and other unimaginable horror in the years of ‘war communism’ (1918 to 1922) and show itself to be an entirely undemocratic authoritarian form of society for decades after that. It also, though Lenin himself died in 1924, sowed the seeds for a dictator – Stalin – to take absolute power and establish an authoritarian tyranny in which people were arrested, deported and slaughtered in their thousands at the arbitrary whim of an all-powerful leader.

There have of course also been others – not just writers in the Socialist Standard – who have studied the ideas and events in question closely, seen through these arguments and concluded that the Bolshevik takeover under Lenin and what happened later in the Soviet Union can in no reasonable sense be seen as Marxism or socialism in action. A recent example worth citing is the 2021 book by Steve Paxton, Unlearning Marx. Why the Soviet Failure was a Triumph for Marx, which, by careful analysis of the social and economic situation of Russia in the period leading up to 1917, illustrates ‘the failure of capitalist production to penetrate the lives of the mass of ordinary Russian producers’ and the inevitably premature nature of the seizure of power by Lenin and the Bolsheviks ‘in the name of the proletariat’ (June 2022 Standard review). The writer’s conclusion is that, since ‘Marx specifically predicted that projects like the Soviet Union would fail’, such an outcome does not in any way mean that ‘socialism has been tried and found wanting’. Another interesting example arises from the 2005 discussion on Marx on the BBC Radio 4 programme, In Our Time. The presenter, Melvyn Bragg, urged the three participants, all well known as practitioners of political ideas and philosophy though not necessarily as socialists or adherents to Marxist ideas (A.C. Grayling, Gareth Stedman Jones and Francis Wheen), to confirm the ‘received’ wisdom that Lenin’s imposition of revolution from the top down (as well as that of later dictators such as Mao, Pol Pot, etc.) was a reflection of Marx’s ideas. But all three disagreed vehemently. One stated that Marx had become a ‘magical name’ that people liked to quote but whose ideas had been distorted by figures such as Lenin, who in fact had ‘turned Marx on his head’. Another said that others ‘took, adapted and twisted him’. The third participant was even more robust in stating that what happened in Russia (and later elsewhere) ‘vindicated Marx’s point’, ie, that revolution imposed from above by ‘heroes on horseback’ inevitably ‘leads to a police state’ and so was ‘a negation of everything he [Marx] stood for and argued for’. In this light the association implicit in the claim to be ‘Marxist-Leninist’ often made by those on the left can be seen as a stark contradiction in terms. This also receives confirmation from parts of Lenin’s own speeches and writings of 1921-22, in which, with Russia in a piteous state after the mass violence, destruction and brutality of its civil war, he admitted defeat by stating ‘our attempt to implement socialism here and now has failed’ and talked about the need ‘to fall back on state capitalism in many economic spheres’.

Lenin in context

Of course, there are those who find value and relevance in Marx’s ideas but are not necessarily averse to their ‘adaptation’ by later political figures such as Lenin who claim Marxist inspiration. An example of this is to be found in the recent book by the American left-wing academic, Paul Le Blanc (Lenin, Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution. Pluto Press, 2023). The key to the association Le Blanc is prepared to make between Lenin and Marx is to be found in the title: ‘Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution’. Implicit in this is the idea, often repeated in the pages of an invigoratingly written book that sweeps us informatively through the whole of Lenin’s personal and political life, that the Bolshevik leader, while following in Marx’s footsteps, had to adapt and respond to the circumstances he and Russia found themselves in at the time, to be ‘flexible’ (a frequently used word). Hence Lenin’s work becomes a kind of Marxism in action, ‘open, critical-minded’, adapted to ‘a particular historical situation’ and conditioned by ‘interactions with others’. In support of this, the author quotes a reference by Lenin to the words of Marx and Engels that ‘our theory is not a dogma but a guide to action’. So, according to Le Blanc, Lenin, while sharing and aiming for Marx’s fundamental goal of a free, classless, stateless society, found himself having to deal with ‘living realities and actual struggles, not abstract revolutionary “correctness”’. In this light, therefore, according to the author, far from the ‘architect of totalitarianism’ Lenin is often presented as by conservative commentators, he was rather a leader ready to face the twists and turns of a reality that was ‘complex, ever-changing and contradictory’ and to take action accordingly – the justification for which Lenin himself framed as the application of ‘revolutionary dialectics’.

Yet Le Blanc is not always or unequivocally ready to accept such justification, and it would be unfair to characterise his study as some kind of uncritical rehabilitation of Lenin. It is, however, difficult not to sense a ‘benefit of the doubt’ tendency and this throws up a number of seeming contradictions in the way Lenin’s thought and actions are presented – the author seeming on occasion to want it both (or all) ways. So, while keen to present Lenin as a Marxist in action striving for socialism, he also states (realistically as pointed to by the evidence) that Lenin saw ‘the upcoming revolution’ as ‘not a transition to socialism, but a transition to a capitalist social and political order’. Again he refers to Lenin’s understanding of nationalism as a ‘secular faith’ and ‘the great rival of socialism’, while at the same time pointing to a view he expressed that ‘there were different forms of nationalism – some worthy of support, others worthy of denunciation’. He refers with brutal frankness to the ‘emergency measures’ taken by Lenin’s ‘new Communist regime’ in the period of Russia’s civil war (‘one-party dictatorship’, ‘Red Terror’, ‘persecution of party dissidents’) and the ‘repressive bureaucratic dictatorship’ that came after, yet this does not prevent him from describing the early years of the ‘Communist International’ which Lenin was closely associated with as demonstrating ‘heroic and impressive qualities, crackling with insights’.

Even-handed?

All this could of course simply be regarded as a form of ‘even-handedness’ on the part of the author, and so entirely positive. But it could also perhaps be understood by reference to the phenomenon of ‘cognitive dissonance’ which Le Blanc himself spends a paragraph explaining. Under this dynamic, confronted with evidence that conflicts with our well-established worldview, we experience an uncomfortable mental conflict which tends to make us dismiss that evidence and simply carry on as before. Examples he gives of this are people currently denying ‘the documented reality of climate change’ and others ‘not wanting to acknowledge the horrific realities associated with the Stalin regime’. So, in the case of this author’s take on Lenin, while himself presenting evidence of the ‘horrific realities’ he presided over and what most people would regard as outright distortions (not just ‘adaptations’) of Marx, we have an ongoing attachment to the man, the Bolshevik takeover and the overall claim that Lenin’s ideas seem more relevant than ever now.

Of course, even if the Socialist Party will see this as a serious blind spot in the author’s analysis of the historical struggle for a socialist society from Marx onwards, there is much in his book that socialists would accept and agree with. We would not, for example, want to challenge the author’s brilliantly incisive description of modern capitalism (‘a voracious market economy designed to enrich already immensely wealthy elites … intimately connected with environmental destruction engulfing our world’) or his clear characterisation of class society in capitalism ‘(the working class is those who make a living (get enough money to buy basic necessities and perhaps some luxuries) by selling their ability to work (their labor-power) to an employer. Out of the labor-power, the employer squeezes actual labor in order to create the wealth that is partly given to the workers (usually as little as possible), with the rest of this labor-created wealth going to the employer)’. On the other hand, we would see as misguided various of the ‘remedies’ for this often heard on the Leninist or Trotskyist Left which the author seems to quote with approval, for example the need for workers to have the correct ‘leadership’ for a new society to be established and ‘experiences of struggle that will convince working people of the inevitability of revolution and the significance of communism’. We would also challenge that other commonly held left-wing perspective found in this book of ‘Lenin good, Stalin bad’ (ie, that there was no continuity between the two), though we would heartily agree with one commentator’s view noted here that ‘Stalinism was as different from socialism as the hippopotamus from the giraffe’.

Right or wrong?

So was Lenin a Marxist (or a socialist)? Perhaps in the end what Paul Le Blanc’s eminently readable book can be taken as saying is that he would have liked to be and considered himself one but that circumstances prevented it. But wasn’t that what, if you were a Marxist, you should have known was bound to happen, since Marx saw socialism as arising from advanced capitalist development not from the chronically underdeveloped society that was early twentieth century Russia?

Howard Moss