The Programme of the Early Comintern, and the Transitional Programme (6/18)
“When the Comintern of the epigones tried to revive the formula buried by history of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,” it gave to the formula of the “workers’ and peasants’ government” a completely different, purely “democratic,” i.e., bourgeois content, counterposing it to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Bolshevik-Leninists resolutely rejected the slogan of the “workers’ and peasants’ government” in the bourgeois-democratic version. They affirmed then and affirm now that, when the party of the proletariat refuses to step beyond bourgeois democratic limits, its alliance with the peasantry is simply turned into a support for capital, as was the case with the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries in 1917, with the Chinese Communist Party in 1925-27, and as is now the case with the “People’s Front” in Spain, France and other countries.”
(Trotsky – The Transitional Programme)
Lenin, therefore, argues that the Bolsheviks should demand that the workers and peasants representatives in the Provisional government sack the capitalist ministers, i.e. those representing the Kadets and Octobrists. This is the minimum required for the government to become a Workers' and Peasants' Government. But, this Workers' and Peasants Government is not the goal of the Bolsheviks, it is merely a necessity so long as they lack a majority themselves, and so long as the proletariat has not secured state power. Nor, contrary to the view that Paul presents, was this a government that the Bolsheviks themselves had any intention of joining, precisely because they anticipated, given its petty-bourgeois character, that it would, where possible, begin to launch attacks on the proletariat, and its revolutionary party – as indeed it did.
“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. If the Mensheviks and SRs had actually broke with the Cadets (liberals) and with foreign imperialism, then the “workers’ and peasants’ government” created by them could only have hastened and facilitated the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But it was exactly because of this that the leadership of petty bourgeois democracy resisted with all possible strength the establishment of its own government. The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favourable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (SRs, Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless, the demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the SRs: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!” had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and SRs to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks.”
(Trotsky – The Transitional Programme)
The equivalent today in the context with which Paul is dealing, i.e. tactics for the Left inside the LP, is not the proposal for some “broad church”, but a demand from the Left to Starmer, to “sack the capitalist Shadow Cabinet Ministers”! Indeed, the demand of the Left to Corbyn should always have been to break with such elements inside the party, rather than to continually appease them. Instead, of course, Starmer's position has been the opposite. He has sacked the progressive social-democrats that are the closest to being workers' representatives that the LP has, and has instead brought in all of the representatives of capital, from the days of Blair, Brown and Miliband. Anyone who cannot see that this is a massive move to the Right, and attempt to re-establish the dominant role of conservative social-democracy, within the party, simply is not looking, in order to avoid seeing what is in plain sight! Trying to build a “broad alliance” of forces, behind Starmer, against neo-liberalism is madness, precisely because Starmer represents such neo-liberalism, and the attempt to build an alliance around it.
No comments:
Post a Comment