Now let me turn to the arguments, in so far as any were actually provided, by Jim Denham, in response to my comments in respect of the AWL's response to John McDonnell's original article. Let me start with the points raised in response to McDonnell's article.
It makes the fundamental errors set out above. It assumes that we have a duty to defend existing nation states - “defence of the fatherland” - which was the “error” of social-patriots in WWI and II. Not only do we have no such duty, but quite the opposite, we insist, instead, on a policy of revolutionary defeatism. That is we do not go out deliberately to achieve the defeat of our own nation state, by sabotage and so on, but nor do we privilege its survival over our own pursuance of the class struggle against it. If we are forced, by our weakness, to have to join its armed forces, we engage in class struggle within those forces, to encourage the soldiers to turn their guns on their own rulers, in the way the Russian soldiers did in 1917.
Social-patriotism does not just apply in the case of imperialist nations. It applies to any capitalist state, in which the workers subordinate the class struggle to the national struggle waged by the bourgeoisie of that state. We adopt the strategy of revolutionary defeatism in the case of any capitalist state, not just imperialist states. We adopt the position that “the main enemy is at home” for all existing states. Similarly, with social-pacifism, and with “anti-fascism”, as Trotsky describes above, in relation to the Spanish Revolution. The objective of Marxists is socialism, and the means of its achievement is class struggle. Fighting fascism, or a struggle for national liberation are not goals in themselves, but only potential components of that struggle. In order to get from A to C, it might be necessary to pass through B, but our strategy is not based upon getting to B, and progressing to C at some future undetermined time. That is the stages theory of Menshevism/Stalinism, not the theory of permanent revolution developed by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.
Denham and the AWL support this social-patriotism. They argue, if you support the right of nations to self-determination, in respect of national liberation struggles, it would be irrational not to support a war by a nation to avoid its self-determination being withdrawn by some other nation. One element of the AWL's position, in that regard, is their support for Zionism, and the Israeli state. They could hardly demand the right of Israel to engage in such activity, without accepting the same social-patriotic argument for every other capitalist state, and it is their support for Zionism and the Israeli state that seems to drive the direction of their politics in general, as seen with their support for the Right's witch hunt of the Left in the Labour Party, using the equation of Zionism with anti-Semitism, which, of course, led to their own expulsion.
There are numerous flaws in this argument, of course, as already described, of the AWL, and others. Firstly, it assumes that Marxists advocate national self-determination, which, they don't. We advocate the self-determination of the working-class, not nations. The argument the AWL put is precisely why the Bolsheviks removed support for national self-determination from their programme, and replaced it with support for the right to freely secede.
What is the difference between supporting a national liberation struggle, and supporting an existing capitalist state in opposing being annexed? It is precisely the class forces involved, and the fallacy of the AWL's argument comes down to a failure to accept that the Marxist position, in respect of any such national liberation struggles, is not that of petty-bourgeois nationalism or bourgeois-liberalism, of simply seeking the creation of some new capitalist class state, but is that of permanent revolution, and the desire to integrate any such national struggle into the socialist revolution. Its precisely for that reason that, in any such national struggle, we only offer support to the truly revolutionary forces, i.e. the revolutionary proletariat, leading the peasantry, as Lenin described it.
That is precisely the basis of Trotsky's argument against Stalin, in respect of the Chinese Revolution, and the same arguments apply in relation to the Spanish Revolution. The AWL/USC social-patriotic/social-pacifist line flows directly from their adoption of the Menshevist/Stalinist stages theory, in which Marxists should limit themselves to simply supporting a struggle for national independence, or bourgeois-democracy, and only, then, consider a struggle for Socialism, at some later date, but also, from the adoption of the associated, Stalinist concept of the Popular Front alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, as against the United Front of workers parties.
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