Labour, The Left, and The Working Class – A Response To Paul Mason - Introduction

Paul Mason has again produced an interesting essay on socialist strategy which is provoking discussion - “The Left, The Party and the Class”. Just in provoking discussion, this is a good thing. Paul is anxious that the Left does not make the same mistakes that the Stalinists made in the early 1930's, during the so called Third Period, when they equated bourgeois democracy with fascism, and, indeed, described everything outside the Communist Parties as some kind of fascism, i.e. social fascism, Trotsky-fascism and so on. It led to a period of insane sectarianism, in which the Stalinist parties would not work with any of these other social forces to defeat the actual fascists who were about to come to power in Germany. It has to be said that the Social Democrats were also culpable, as they applied a similar sectarianism, in refusing to work with the Stalinists. Paul sees an equivalence of today's conditions with those of the 1930's, and so sees the danger of fascism once more, and wants to avoid a repeat of the Third Period. However, in doing so, he repeats all of the errors of the Stalinists and Social Democrats in the period prior to and after that, which were themselves equally fatal for the working-class, and for socialists. 

Paul makes a number of errors of analysis of current conditions, as well as illustrating a series of misconceptions about the terms he utilises in his argument and proposals, for example in relation to what is meant by the Workers' Government, and how it was viewed by the first four Congresses of the Comintern, before its Stalinisation, and by Trotsky, as described in The Transitional Programme. As a contribution to a response to Paul's essay, I want to discuss the economic situation, the political situation, the programme of the early Comintern, and The Transitional Programme, and what lessons this provides in the strategy of the Left today, in relation to the Labour Party, and the British working-class. In doing so, I seek to set out, in a comradely manner, the errors of Paul's analysis, and understanding of the relevant concepts, and to suggest how this should be corrected. 

In short, in trying to avoid the zig of the Stalinist Third Period, Paul has simply adopted the zag of the Popular Front strategy that the Stalinists adopted after its failure, which was, in reality, a return to the position that Stalin had held in 1917, and through the 1920's. It is the same idea that was put forward by the Mensheviks. It is the position of social-democracy, which is satisfied with a continuation of capitalism, and the subordination of the working-class to the needs of capital. Throughout history, it has led to disastrous consequences for the working-class, and to the triumph of reaction. Paul should read Marx's writings on The Revolutions of 1848, if he wants to understand that. And, given his fears of fascism, he should read Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in which Marx describes how that very strategy on the part of the French social-democrats and Liberals led to the victory of that reaction. 

“During the June days all classes and parties had united in the party of Order against the proletarian class as the party of anarchy, of socialism, of communism. They had “saved” society from “the enemies of society.” They had given out the watchwords of the old society, “property, family, religion, order,” to their army as passwords and had proclaimed to the counterrevolutionary crusaders: “In this sign thou shalt conquer!” From that moment, as soon as one of the numerous parties which gathered under this sign against the June insurgents seeks to hold the revolutionary battlefield in its own class interest, it goes down before the cry: “property, family, religion, order.” Society is saved just as often as the circle of its rulers contracts, as a more exclusive interest is maintained against a wider one. Every demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of the most formal republicanism, of the most shallow democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an “attempt on society” and stigmatized as “socialism.” And finally the high priests of “religion and order” themselves are driven with kicks from their Pythian tripods, hauled out of their beds in the darkness of night, put in prison vans, thrown into dungeons or sent into exile; their temple is razed to the ground, their mouths are sealed, their pens broken, their law torn to pieces in the name of religion, of property, of the family, of order. Bourgeois fanatics for order are shot down on their balconies by mobs of drunken soldiers, their domestic sanctuaries profaned, their houses bombarded for amusement – in the name of property, of the family, of religion, and of order. Finally, the scum of bourgeois society forms the holy phalanx of order and the hero Crapulinski [a character from Heine’s poem “The Two Knights,” a dissolute aristocrat.] installs himself in the Tuileries as the “saviour of society.”” 

(Marx – The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Chapter 1) 

In 1917, Stalin, along with Kamenev and Zinoviev, held this position of effectively giving critical support to the government of Kerensky. Lenin fumed at that position. It led him to threaten to split the party, unless the party dropped that stance.  Trotsky notes,

"On March 6 he telegraphed through Stockholm to Petrograd: “Our tactic; absolute lack of confidence; no support to the new government; suspect Kerensky especially; arming of proletariat the sole guarantee; immediate elections to the Petrograd Duma; no rapprochement with other parties.In this directive, only the suggestion about elections to the Duma instead of the Soviet, had an episodic character and soon dropped out of sight...

On the 17th of March, through friends in Stockholm, he wrote a letter filled with alarm. “Our party would disgrace itself for ever, kill itself politically, if it took part in such deceit ... I would choose an immediate split with no matter whom in our party rather than surrender to social patriotism ...” After this apparently impersonal threat – having definite people in mind however – Lenin adjures: “Kamenev must understand that a world historic responsibility rests upon him.” Kamenev is named here because it is a question of political principle. If Lenin had had a practical militant problem in mind, he would have been more likely to mention Stalin. But in just those hours Lenin was striving to communicate the intensity of his will to Petrograd across smoking Europe, Kamenev with the co-operation of Stalin was turning sharply toward social patriotism."

(Trotsky - History of The Russian Revolution, Chapter 15)

Lenin's position was set out in The April Thesis, and Lenin got his way, whilst his opponents bemoaned that it meant that Lenin had become a Troskyist, having adopted the concept of permanent revolution. The lesson of permanent revolution, set out by Trotsky, goes back to the lessons learned by Marx and Engels in 1848 that the working-class can never rely on an alliance with the bourgeoisie, because, in the end, the bourgeoisie will always align with reaction, rather than cede power to a revolutionary proletariat. 

Lenin got his way in April 1917, and, along with Trotsky, began the work of preparing for the proletarian revolution. But, as Trotsky sets out in The Third International After Lenin, the triumvirate of Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev never really abandoned their former position, and after Lenin's death, they began to move the position back towards it. So, when the Chinese Revolution broke out, they lined up the Chinese Communists with the bourgeois nationalists of Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang. The result, as Trotsky had predicted, was that the Kuomintang waited for the opportune time to turn on the Chinese Communists, who were murdered in their thousands, the consequence also being that Japanese imperialism was strengthened in China, and the struggle against it was correspondingly weakened. 

Just as the Stalinists went from their position of opposing the more rapid industrialisation that The Left Opposition proposed, to one of break neck industrialisation and collectivisation that led to the onset of famine and the deaths of millions, so too they went from their position of alliances with bourgeois nationalists to the Third Period madness of sectarian hostility to everyone and anyone. When the consequence of that became clear, as Hitler consolidated power, so they again swung back to their previous position, and the advocacy of the Popular Front that had led to disaster in China in the 1920's, in part to the failure of the General Strike in Britain, and then to the calamity of Spain, and the coming to power of Franco.

Failure to understand where we are, to understand the concepts involved, and the lessons of the past will lead to disaster once more.  The following posts will try to provide those lessons.

The Economic Situation (1)