Chapter 11 – Results and Prospects
Part 6
In
the same way that workers, in corporations, in capitalist states, lack
the power to exert control over the socialised capital, so too in the
deformed workers' states. But, in the deformed workers' state, it is
the workers who form the ruling class, though one too weak to rule
politically in their own name. In Russia, that was signalled not
only by the numerically tiny size of the working-class, but by its
own lack of development, and divisions within it. So, when the
Bolsheviks won only 25% of seats in the Constituent Assembly, they
closed it down. Trotsky, as Commissar of Transport, where Menshevik
workers dominated, proposed the militarisation of labour, and was
opposed by Lenin, in relation to his attitude towards the
independence of the trades unions.
“...
ours
is a workers’ state with
a bureaucratic twist to it.
We have had to mark it with this dismal, shall I say, tag. There
you have the reality of the transition. Well, is it right to say
that in a state that has taken this shape in practice the trade
unions have nothing to protect, or that we can do without them in
protecting the material and spiritual interests of the massively
organised proletariat? No, this reasoning is theoretically quite
wrong. It takes us into the sphere of abstraction or an ideal we
shall achieve in 15 or 20 years’ time, and I am not so sure that
we shall have achieved it even by then. What we actually have
before us is a reality of which we have a good deal of knowledge,
provided, that is, we keep our heads, and do not let ourselves be
carried away by intellectualist talk or abstract reasoning, or by
what may appear to be “theory” but is in fact error and
misapprehension of the peculiarities of transition. We now have a
state under which it is the business of the massively organised
proletariat to protect itself, while we, for our part, must use
these workers’ organisations to protect the workers from their
state, and to get them to protect our state. Both forms of
protection are achieved through the peculiar interweaving of our
state measures and our agreeing or “coalescing” with our trade
unions.
“
|
But,
everywhere that the Bolsheviks found themselves in a minority within
local soviets they either closed them down, or filled them out by
other means, and thereby created the basis for a fusion of the state
and governmental power, establishing the Bonapartist regime that took
its final shape under Stalin.
In
contrast to say the Bonapartism of Bismark, however, this was a state
not attempting to revolutionise the productive forces in a bourgeois
direction, but one forced to develop them in a proletarian direction,
whilst attempting to preserve the control, and political power of the
bureaucracy, which represented the personification of the dominant
form of socialised property, and all of its inherent contradictions,
as a transitional form of property. The old ruling landlord and
bourgeois classes had been ripped up, and yet the bureaucracy still
had to rest upon the workers and peasants, as against the threat from
the global bourgeoisie. Yet, in line with the theory of Socialism
In One Country, it could not mobilise the workers against that
threat, for fear both of provoking a response from imperialism, and
for fear that once mobilised, the workers would push forward to
demand control of the means of production themselves.
In
the developed capitalist economies, it is again these functioning capitalists that represent the personification of the dominant form
of property – socialised capital. It is they, like the merchant
capitalists under Mercantilism, that form the ruling social class,
but as a middle class represent only a transient form, dependent on
the support of the working-class, and at the same time, frightful of
mobilising that class against the conservative representatives of the
old regime, of private capital. As a middle class, like the
peasantry, as Marx says, they can never form a ruling political
class, on their own, because they never achieve the condition of
being a class “for themselves”.
The
modern state, therefore, is a social-democratic state that rests upon
the dominant form of socialised capital. The dominant ideas that
guide that state are the ideas of the functioning capitalists that
personify the socialised capital. Those ideas are functionalist,
technocratic and meritocratic, and internationalist, reflecting the
need for this large-scale industrial capital, for functional
efficiency, long-term stability, and a framework of planning and
regulation, on a wide field, in order to ensure it.
These
ideas should also be ones supported by the working class, for the
reasons Lenin set out earlier, as a means of developing the
productive forces at the fastest pace, and of creating the conditions
for workers solidarity and organisation across borders.
“The working class is therefore decidedly interested in the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The removal of all the remnants of the old order which are hampering the broad, free and rapid development of capitalism is of decided advantage to the working class.”
(loc.cit.)
Donald Trump, and to an extent Theresa May, have some of the characteristics
of a Bonaparte. Assorted right-wing populists, in Europe, such as Le
Pen and Wilders, present a similar picture. But, Wilders was soundly
defeated, in the Netherlands, with strongly pro-EU/pro-immigration
candidates from D66 and the Green Left making significant advances.
Le Pen is also likely to be defeated, though the main left challenge
now seems to be from Melenchon, whose Stalinoid, national-socialist
programme differs little from that of Le Pen, other than the latter
is based on open racism and xenophobia, whereas the racism and
xenophobia in the former is merely implicit.
In
fact, all the signs are that the right-wing populists have already
past their high watermark, in Europe. If anything, Brexit and Trump
has acted to provoke a reaction from social-democratic forces, in the
EU, which coupled with signs of economic growth, are likely to drive
further integration and development within the bloc.
But,
nor is Britain, or the US, a Bonapartist regime. There is no fusion
of the state and governmental power, as there is, for example, with
Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, and arguably Netanyahu in Israel,
or as can be seen with a range of regimes across the Middle East. On
the contrary, the election of Trump, in the US, and the vote for
Brexit, in the UK, are both indications of a separation of
governmental and state power, and a condition of tension between the
two.
Trump,
as with Brexit, simply reflects a condition in society whereby a
large portion of the population are atomised and alienated. This
large amorphous mass can make itself felt in acts of passive
rebellion, but it is economically and socially irrelevant. Cameron
proposed the EU referendum solely for internal party management
purposes, in the belief that a new coalition government would save him
from calling it. Had no referendum been called, there would have
been no significant demand or social activity to force the issue.
All polls showed that the EU and immigration were low down in voters
concerns, below jobs, pay, the NHS and public services.
Brexit
and Trump simply demonstrate the limitation of the governmental power
compared with the state power. Trump's remit is already being
heavily circumscribed by the US state machinery. The same fate will
befall Brexit. Theresa May seems to realise that, which is why she has called the General Election, and has started talking in war like terms in her opposition to the EU. She is preparing to preempt the British and European permanent state's inevitable attempt to grind down the forces of Brexit, by saying that negotiations have failed, and then abruptly pulling Britain out within the next six months, in line with what UKIP and the Tory right have been calling for all along. It signifies that UKIP has captured the Tory Party, and it is now firmly in the camp of reaction.
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