The Programme of the Early Comintern, and the Transitional Programme (7/18)
The point of the Workers' and Peasants Government, here, as with the United Front strategy, was to expose the vacillating and conciliating nature of the petty-bourgeois democrats and social-democrats, and, thereby, its ultimately bourgeois nature. If the Mensheviks and SR's would not expel the capitalist ministers, then the workers and peasants would draw the appropriate conclusions; if they would not militantly pursue policies that undermined the position of the bourgeoisie, and strengthened the position of the working-class and peasantry, then, again, the workers and peasants would draw the appropriate conclusions, and that would drive them inexorably into the hands of the Bolsheviks.
But, Paul's approach is the direct opposite. He says,
“If you want a government that “smashes the state”, that pulls Britain out of NATO and the IMF, defunds the police force or adopts a policy of Open Borders — you are welcome to argue for all these things. But there will be no majority for them inside the Labour Party and — because of the dynamics outlined below — no possibility of Labour coming to power in 2024 if they were adopted.”
Its basically the position of the Mensheviks, or later the Stalinists. But, of course, its already possible to argue for all those things inside the Labour Party, whilst accepting that there is little chance of the party actually adopting them. That is not the question; the question is whether the Left inside the party should neuter itself by voluntarily giving up on arguing for such things simply in order to search after some chimerical alliance with the soft-left, and right inside the party – and undoubtedly that means with other petty-bourgeois forces outside Labour too – in order to form a Popular Front against the forces of reaction and Bonapartism. In reality, its what Corbyn already tried to do, in trying to appease those elements, driven on by that kind of Popular Frontism that he and his Stalinoid advisors have adopted in relation to various other issues, be it “anti-capitalism”, meaning really the “anti-monopoly alliance” or “anti-imperialism”, rather than confront, and defeat those petty-bourgeois and bourgeois elements. But, everywhere the Popular Front strategy has been adopted, in history, it resulted in disaster, and the victory of those very forces of reaction.
In fact, if you read the section on the Workers and Peasants Government in the theses of the Fourth Congress, as Paul adjures us to do, we read,
“The most basic tasks of a workers’ government must consist of arming the proletariat, disarming the bourgeois counter-revolutionary organisations, introducing [workers'] control of production, shifting the main burden of taxation to the shoulders of the rich, and breaking the resistance of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.”
The thesis talks about the development of purely parliamentary combinations of workers' representatives, and says that only under strict conditions can communists participate in them. It warns,
“For all its great advantages, the slogan of a workers’ government also has its dangers, as does the whole united front tactic. To head off these dangers, the Communist parties must keep in mind that although every bourgeois government is also a capitalist government, not every workers’ government is truly proletarian, that is, a revolutionary instrument of proletarian power.”
What Paul is proposing is not the Workers Government model as formulated by the Communist International in 1922, but what it described in its theses as an “illusory workers' government” being one comprised of liberals or social-democrats. It is the “democratic” version of the Workers Government proposed by the Stalinist epigones.
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