The Programme of the Early Comintern, and the Transitional Programme (1/18)
Paul wants to avoid the problems of the Stalinist Third Period, having concluded that we are in an economic situation similar to the 1920's/30's, which saw the rise of fascism. So, Paul proposes that the Left should support building a “broad alliance” based upon forces that are “anti neo-liberal”. In other words a Popular Front, though, in these terms, its not even clear that description is appropriate. Fascists, and ultra nationalists, after all, can be, verbally, opposed to neo-liberalism, as can be the representatives of small capital, and, indeed, they usually are, because neoliberalism is the ideology of the owners of fictitious capital, that is based upon large-scale socialised capital. But that opposition is from a reactionary not a progressive direction. Brexit is an expression of reactionary “anti-neo-Liberalism” after all, being the representation of the interests of the small capitalists.
Neoliberalism is just another name for conservative social-democracy, which is the dominant ideology of the last 40 years. It is an ideology that represents the interests of the owners of fictitious capital, the promotion of the idea that capital is composed of bits of paper, debt instruments, such as shares and bonds, not actual industrial-capital composed of commodities, such as factories, machines and labour-power; it recognises, indirectly, that these latter things, somehow, are important for the interests of the owners of that fictitious-capital, which is why it is insistent that they retain control over them, and not cede it to their rightful collective owners, the associated producers. By contrast, its not clear who, inside the LP, particularly the PLP, would constitute such an “anti neo-liberal position” other than the Corbynistas, and, as was seen, in relation to Brexit, a large part of that opposition was itself based upon reactionary, petty-bourgeois politics, as well as reactionary economic nationalism. Certainly it doesn't include the Blair-rights or soft left, and outside the LP it doesn't include the Liberals or Greens, or SNP, or Plaid.
All of those organisations accepted neo-liberalism over the last 40 years, some like the SNP, Plaid and Liberals implemented its ideas in government on their own, or in coalition, and the Greens did so in the policies they implemented in local government. For all these groups, their Remain position, in relation to the EU, was founded upon an acceptance of its existing neo-liberal ideology. As I will demonstrate later, Paul makes the same error as that made by the Stalinists in the Spanish Civil War, of watering down your own class positions in search of a “broad alliance” with wider social forces, only to find that those forces, in reality, don't exist, or represent nothing.
Neoliberalism is just another name for conservative social-democracy, which is the dominant ideology of the last 40 years. It is an ideology that represents the interests of the owners of fictitious capital, the promotion of the idea that capital is composed of bits of paper, debt instruments, such as shares and bonds, not actual industrial-capital composed of commodities, such as factories, machines and labour-power; it recognises, indirectly, that these latter things, somehow, are important for the interests of the owners of that fictitious-capital, which is why it is insistent that they retain control over them, and not cede it to their rightful collective owners, the associated producers. By contrast, its not clear who, inside the LP, particularly the PLP, would constitute such an “anti neo-liberal position” other than the Corbynistas, and, as was seen, in relation to Brexit, a large part of that opposition was itself based upon reactionary, petty-bourgeois politics, as well as reactionary economic nationalism. Certainly it doesn't include the Blair-rights or soft left, and outside the LP it doesn't include the Liberals or Greens, or SNP, or Plaid.
All of those organisations accepted neo-liberalism over the last 40 years, some like the SNP, Plaid and Liberals implemented its ideas in government on their own, or in coalition, and the Greens did so in the policies they implemented in local government. For all these groups, their Remain position, in relation to the EU, was founded upon an acceptance of its existing neo-liberal ideology. As I will demonstrate later, Paul makes the same error as that made by the Stalinists in the Spanish Civil War, of watering down your own class positions in search of a “broad alliance” with wider social forces, only to find that those forces, in reality, don't exist, or represent nothing.
Wanting to avoid Third Period sectarian madness is certainly a worthy cause. Unfortunately, Paul's alternative to that Third Period sectarianism is the kind of Stalinist opportunism that both preceded and followed the Third Period, in the shape of the Popular Front, which was equally disastrous for the working-class. Paul confuses such Popular Fronts with the Workers Government, and, similarly, confuses the Popular Front with the United Front. The Popular Front is a cross class alliance, in which the Workers' Parties inevitably subordinate their politics to those of the bourgeois parties. A United Front is an alliance of workers parties, i.e. primarily between revolutionary communist parties, and reformist, socialist parties of more or less equal size. The United Front, like the Workers Government, is a tactic devised by the Comintern, when it was a revolutionary organisation, to try to expose the vacillating, treacherous nature of the reformist workers' parties, i.e. the social-democrats, and reformist socialists heading in that direction. Its necessary to unravel this web of confusion.
So, Paul says,
“The Comintern wanted the early Communist Parties to collaborate with social democrats to form governments that could empower the working class, defend democracy, suppress the far right using the rule of law, take transformational steps in economic and social policy — opening up the space for more radical measures in the future.”
No they most certainly did not want that. As Trotsky, who was instrumental in developing these tactics puts it,
“From April to September 1917, the Bolsheviks demanded that the SRs and Mensheviks break with the liberal bourgeoisie and take power into their own hands. Under this provision the Bolshevik Party promised the Mensheviks and the SRs, as the petty bourgeois representatives of the worker and peasants, its revolutionary aid against the bourgeoisie categorically refusing, however, either to enter into the government of the Mensheviks and SRs or to carry political responsibility for it.”
(The Transitional Programme)
Paul puts forward a series of demands for a “Left government”. He honestly admits that such a government would not be a socialist government, and the conditions created would not be socialist. Indeed it would not. If Corbynism represented merely warmed up Wilsonite social-democracy from the 1970's, Paul's prescription represents simply its watered down version to remove any remaining spiciness. It would, on the basis of the demands he describes, at best, be described as a form of progressive social-democracy. There is nothing inherently wrong in that, provided that it is set in the context of being a Minimum Programme that connects inextricably with your Maximum Programme of the conquering of state power, and establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. That was the basis of Marx's argument with the Guesdists, which led Marx to make his oft misrepresented comment, "If this is Marxism, then I for one am no Marxist", as he opposed their ultimatism and revolutionary phrasemongering. However, Paul's Minimum Programme does not at all connect to a Maximum Programme, leaving it just as a series of bourgeois, liberal, reformist demands. It is at best a program for bringing about some amelioration of workers' condition, whilst accepting the basic premise of the continuation of capitalism. It perpetuates the myth that capitalism would be somehow fine if only it had some modifications, and that it was run better and more rationally by socialists. That leads nowhere, and to inevitable political failure.
The example he gives of the Mitterand government of the 1980's, is, of course, not a happy one, because, as he says, it faced widespread opposition, and it, indeed, did suffer such political failure. In the same way that the Attlee government, the Wilson government of 1964-70, and Wilson/Callaghan governments of 1974-79 failed, and opened the door to Thatcher/Major, so the Mitterand government failed and opened the door to Chirac followed by Sarkozy. Already, by 1986, the failure of Mitterand's government had led to a right-wing victory in the elections to the Legislative Assembly, with Mitterand having to name Chirac as Prime Minister, starting what became termed cohabitation. Come the 1995 elections, the Socialists didn't even get into the final round of Presidential elections, leaving the choice of voters between the crook or the fascist, Chirac or Le Pen. So much for the idea of such cross class alliances being a means of stopping the forward movement of the Right and the fascists! So much for the idea of diluting your socialist message purely for electoral acceptance.
At the very least, it highlights the reality that, in order to pursue even this limited programme, it requires the construction, not only of a mass activist base, within Britain, or anywhere else its attempted, as the precondition for any government pursuing such a programme, but of such a movement across the whole of the EU itself, which again begs the question about Brexit, and Britain's relation to the EU. Syriza and the Greek working-class realised that, without such support from workers across the EU, even its mildly progressive, social-democratic programme was impossible, when confronted by conservative forces. Unfortunately, Syriza too had done nothing to build such an EU wide movement, in advance of waging its struggle. But, at least, the Greek working-class were sensible enough to realise that leaving the EU, and even the Eurozone, offered no way forward, and would have placed them in an even more dire situation. It also means that this mass activist base must be organised, by the Left, around a class struggle programme, based upon the independence of the working-class, and not on the Left subordinating itself and its programme in the vain hope of such “broad unity”.
If we want a model of how a Starmer government is likely to act, were it ever elected, a better one is that of Hollande. Hollande promised Left, as a sort of return to Mitterand, but acted like every other such conservative social-democrat in the vein of Blair. With his centrist agenda, he avoided the opposition presented to Mitterand, but, as a consequence, failed even more miserably, essentially destroying the French Socialist Party. It was a repeat of Pasokification. Once again, in the last Presidential Elections, that meant that the voters were left with an empty choice between the vacuous, Blair-right Macron or the fascist Le Pen. Only distaste of the latter acted to cover the lack of enthusiasm for the former, and his failure was not long in coming, once more opening the possibility of the onward march of the fascists and ultra nationalists. A similar choice is being presented to US voters between Biden and Trump.
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