As Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky point out, therefore, its quite possible to identify the progressive role of capitalism, and imperialism, without in any way supporting the means by which they achieve those progressive aims. On the contrary, it is the class struggle of the working-class against those means that creates the dynamic of forward movement to a new, higher form of society.
Capitalism drives up productivity, via technological development, whose consequence is a higher rate of exploitation of labour. The former is historically progressive, but it does not mean we acquiesce in that greater exploitation of labour, rather than waging a struggle for workers' control over the much expanded surplus product. Imperialism does away with all of of the outmoded nation states, borders and peculiarities, which is progressive, as it creates a world economy, and ever larger single markets, along with a global working-class, but, it does so via imperialist wars, colonisation and annexation. We do not acquiesce in the use of these means, but fight against them, not by a reactionary defence of the nation state, but by positing the alternative of a new, socialist society, able to fully realise those progressive aims, of the end of nation states, and the creation of a world economy.
As Marx put it,
“But since M. Proudhon takes such a tender interest in Providence, we refer him to the Histoire de l’économie politique of M. de Villeneuve-Bargemont, who likewise goes in pursuit of a providential aim. This aim, however, is not equality, but Catholicism.”
It is not necessary to adopt the reactionary aim of “anti-capitalism” or “anti-imperialism” to oppose NATO or imperialist war etc., but, nor is it necessary to support NATO and imperialist militarism, or refuse to struggle against it, in order to argue for the progressive role that imperialism brings about, of a global equalisation, via competition and spread of capitalist production, development of productive forces, raising and equalising of living standards, creation of a world economy and so on. Choosing one or the other is just as arbitrary as Proudhon choosing “equality” as his providential, moral aim, whilst M. de Villeneuve-Bargemont chose Catholicism. It is morality not Marxism.
Herein lies the roots of the petty-bourgeois, idealism and moralism that is the basis of social-patriotism, social-pacifism and social-imperialism. Marxism does not base its programme on a pursuit of a “lesser-evil”, or moral imperative, but on a scientific understanding of the process of social evolution, and the solution of human problems it provides, via Socialism. That is what became manifest in WWI, and the division of the world labour movement. The arguments presented then, are simply repeated, today, by those who, on one side, have allied themselves with the capitalist camp of US imperialism/Ukraine, and on the other side, those that have allied themselves with the capitalist class camp of Russia~China.
In WWI, this division between the petty-bourgeois ideas of social-democracy, and the proletarian ideas of Marxism are manifest in the adoption of “the stages theory” by the former, and “permanent revolution” by the latter. Here, too, arises the difference of approach in relation to the question of national independence for colonies and annexed nations. This same division is seen today in relation to Ukraine, and with the social-imperialists seeking to justify a defencist position for their respective capitalist camps – Ukraine and Russia – on this basis of self-determination, and national independence. For the social imperialists that continue to call themselves Marxists, therefore, the only means for them to do this is by equating their defence of Ukraine, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, as an “anti-imperialist” struggle.
Such a claim is nonsense, as I have set out, recently, noting Trotsky's response to such claims in relation to Czecholsovakia. But, the arguments, presented by them, in respect of the Marxist position, in the case of any actual anti-imperialist struggle, are also, themselves, false, and based upon the stages theory, popular frontism, and what, in the Chinese Revolution of the 1920's, was called by its Stalinist proponents, the “Bloc of four classes”. The Stalinist arguments, at that time, as I have also noted, are also replicated, today, by both capitalist camps, in support of Ukraine's corrupt, anti-working-class regime, on the one hand, and Putin's corrupt, anti-working class regime, on the other.
A look at Trotsky's “Lessons of October”, Chapter 3, The Struggle Against War and Defencism, illustrates the point. On the outbreak of war, the social democrats lined up behind their own ruling class and its state. Many, even of the Mensheviks, in Russia, adopted the Marxist position of revolutionary defeat, whereby the workers would continue to engage in class struggle against their main enemy, the ruling class of their own country. It was only following the 1917, February Revolution that a majority of Mensheviks, as they entered the Popular Front, Provisional Government, changed position, to advocate defence of Russia. Trotsky writes,
“The petty bourgeois revolutionary parties, as is their wont, considered the February revolution to be neither bourgeois nor a step toward a socialist revolution, but as some sort of self-sufficing “democratic” entity. And upon this they constructed the ideology of revolutionary defensism. They were defending, if you please, not the rule of any one class but “revolution” and “democracy.””
These petty-bourgeois parties were the descendant of the Narodniks that Lenin had polemicised against previously. They had become the Social-Revolutionaries. But, in Trotsky's account, all of the same arguments, used today, by the petty-bourgeois socialists and moralists, can be seen. They also present their position as one of “revolutionary defencism”, but to do so they have to describe not the actual war taking place, of two huge, heavily armed capitalist camps, fighting each other via means of state organised armies, but in terms of a non-existent, fantasy war being conducted by “people”, by which we are encouraged to imply workers, for their own national liberation! Gone is any concept of class analysis of the state, be it that of Russia or that of Ukraine, and instead, what is to be defended is simply “the state”, “the people”, “Ukraine”, or “Russia”, depending upon the particular capitalist class camp making the argument.
This is precisely the method of the Narodnik, described by Lenin in his polemics against them. To justify their positions, they repeatedly described a Russia, based upon the small, independent commodity producer, organised in village communities, that no longer existed, and had disappeared, because that small scale commodity production, necessarily, as a result of competition, had resulted in a differentiation of those producers into a bourgeoisie and proletariat, that had set Russia on the same path of capitalist development that had arisen elsewhere, and which, as Marx and Engels, described, had accelerated after Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, and the Emancipation of the Serfs, which signified the decision of its rulers that, to survive, Russia needed to embark on that capitalist development. To justify their position based on this fantasy, the Narodniks also had to talk in general abstract terms of “the people”, had to disguise reality by the use of misleading average data that hid the extent of differentiation and so on, all the kinds of methods used by their modern day equivalents.
As Trotsky says, however, it was not just within the ranks of the SR's, Mensheviks and others that these arguments were being made, but they were echoed by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, in the pages of Pravda, in the weeks prior to Lenin's return to Russia, and his militant struggle waged against them. As Trotsky also describes, the Stalinists, were to resume this line of argument, in China, Britain, and in Spain, with devastating results for the working-class. Trotsky continues,
“We find here no mention of classes, of the oppressors and the oppressed; there is, instead, talk of a “free people”; there are no classes struggling for power but, instead, a free people are “remaining at their post.” The ideas as well as the formulas are defensist through and through!”
And, that is exactly the approach of the social imperialists, in both contending capitalist camps, today.
Trotsky, refers to Lenin's Letters From Afar, fuming against this bourgeois defencism, and demanding the Bolsheviks break from it, and begin to organise a proletarian militia. And, this also symbolises the difference between the Marxist theory of permanent revolution, and the petty-bourgeois, social-democratic stages theory. Going back to Marx's analysis of the Revolution's of 1848, and his concept of permanent revolution, even in the bourgeois-democratic revolution – with which, as Trotsky says, Lenin equated the anti-colonial revolution – we do not “support”, nor in any way give credence to, our bourgeois class enemies. We make temporary, tactical alliances with them, only to the extent that large sections of workers, and other oppressed classes, have not yet broken, ideologically, with them. Indeed, a large part of the reason for making such tactical alliances, in pursuit of this bourgeois-democratic revolution, is to expose both the sham nature of that bourgeois-democracy, which the bourgeoisie will always try to limit to its own interests, and to expose that bourgeoisie, and its state.
The reason for engaging in such temporary alliances, most certainly is not in order to pursue the limited goal of bourgeois-democracy itself, as some sort of staging post from which to pursue the struggle for socialism, at some later date. That is precisely the formulation of the stages theory. As Marx, Lenin and Trotsky make clear, the whole essence of permanent revolution, is that, during this period, the communists do not limit themselves to those bourgeois-democratic ideas and institutions, but posit, in opposition to them, the independent organisation of workers, and they do so openly proclaiming the antagonistic interests of the proletariat to those of the bourgeoisie, of the need to protect workers, via such organisation, from the inevitable attacks on the workers that the bourgeoisie will unleash.
That is the clear lesson, not just from 1848, and from the Paris Commune, but also from the Chinese Revolution, the British General Strike, the Spanish Revolution, or more recently, Chile in the 1970's, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and many more where this failure to insist upon independent organisation, and hostility to our class enemy, even at times of temporary alliance with them, led to disaster, but also of Russia in 1917, where such separation and continued hostility, led to the victory of the proletariat.
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