Paul Mason, in his latest piece of NATO propaganda - “We Need To Talk About Campism” - completely distorts the meaning of campism, in his attempt to justify his own “campist” position in support of the camp of NATO/Ukraine, by distracting attention on to the mirror image of his position represented by the supporters of Putin. Many years ago, when I read, and critiqued his book “Postcapitalism”, it became clear to me that he had a very poor understanding of basic Marxist concepts, such as value, labour, labour-power, and surplus value. ( See: Postcapitalism A Detailed Critique, Chapter 6) That has become even clearer in the subsequent years, but his writings, now, have gone way beyond that. If I were to be generous it would be to describe it as being completely wrong and confused; if I were not being so generous, I would call it a systematic bowdlerisation of Marxist theory, principles and history.
When I first read “Postcapitalism”, I was struck by the extent to which these basic Marxist categories were not understood. It was like reading the work of someone who had only recently studied the ideas, or else who had picked them up only third hand, or with a short attention span who had skimmed, quickly, through a primer, or study notes. Of course, there was a justification for that. Where I had studied Economics, Politics and Philosophy at university, including Marxist Economics, Marxist Political Theory and Sociology, and Marxist Philosophy, Paul Mason had studied Music.
But, that was not a sufficient justification. Marx studied jurisprudence, and only undertook his economic studies later; Lenin was a lawyer, and yet mostly understood these Marxist economic categories and theories. Moreover, Paul Mason had been a member of Workers Power for many years, and, like everyone who passes through such organisations, would have undertaken weekly educationals on various aspects of Marxist theory. And, what is more, if you are writing a book that heavily rests on a clear understanding of those ideas, surely, it suggests you would make sure you understood them first.
But, what has struck me with his writing in the intervening years is a similar rather cavalier and slapdash approach to ideas, in general, as I have pointed out, for example, in relation to his writing on fascism. Indeed, in that respect, and given his history in Workers Power, some of his claims and statements seem hard to reconcile with what he must have learned during that period, such as his claim that the height of Marxist theory, in relation to fighting fascism, came in the form of the resolution of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, and its adoption of the tactic of the Popular Front!
He must know that, by that time, the Comintern had been thoroughly Stalinised, and had been purged of the last vestiges of Marxist theory and principle, by it. The adoption of the Popular Front, as against the Leninist/Trotskyist tactic of the Workers United Front, was an indication of it, and, as with its leading of the Chinese Revolution into defeat and slaughter in 1927, also led the Spanish workers to defeat and slaughter in 1936.
In fact, as I'll demonstrate, Paul Mason has adopted positions, over the last few years, which he, now, simply, contradicts, without any explanation, or even recognition, much in the way that the Stalinists themselves did, as they abandoned any trace of Marxist science and grounding in principle, and veered from one position to another, as each new tide of history swept them along. And, one thing that Paul Mason does have in common with that Stalinism of the 1930's, and its Popular Frontism is its cringing attempt to curry favour with democratic imperialism, and willingness to betray the interests of the international working-class in order to achieve it.
So, what is “campism”, and how does it differ from Paul Mason's bowdlerised account of it? The basic concept of campism can be summarised in the ideas of “My enemy's enemy is my friend”, and “lesser-evilism”. It reduces the international working-class to picking sides, based upon these crude propositions. In WWI, campism involved the social patriots in Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one side, picking the side of their own ruling class, and the social patriots of France, Russia, Italy, Britain and the US picking the side of their ruling class likewise. But, Lenin and the international socialists, like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, meeting at Zimmerwald, asserted the principle that it was not necessary to pick any of these imperialist sides, as the main enemy was at home. They asserted the principle that the workers should support, instead, the independent third camp of the proletariat, rather than either of these other warring camps.
Trotsky, in The Program of Peace, wrote,
“What is a programme of peace? From the viewpoint of the ruling classes or of the parties subservient to them, it is the totality of those demands, the realization of which must be ensured by the power of militarism. Hence, for the realization of Alilyukov’s “peace programme” Constantinople must be conquered by force of arms. Vandervelde’s “peace programme” requires the expulsion of the Germans from Belgium as an antecedent condition. From this standpoint the peace clauses merely draw the balance sheet of what has been achieved by force of arms. In other words, the peace programme is the war programme. But, that is how matters stood prior to the intervention of the third power, the Socialist International. For the revolutionary proletarian the peace programme does not mean the demands which national militarism must fulfil, but those demands which the international proletariat intends to impose by its revolutionary struggle against militarism of all countries.”
When WWII came around, this same question was posed, but, now, there was also an additional factor in the shape of the USSR. The social-patriots, in each country, again wanted to choose the side of their own ruling-class, and, by falsely claiming that the war was a war, not between rival imperialist blocs, but between “democracy” and “fascism”, they also sought to win over sections of the Left, who would otherwise not have done so. In that, they were assisted, by the fact that Stalinism, having adopted the concept of the Popular Front, aligning and subordinating the workers' parties to those of the bourgeoisie, had, since 1934, also been seeking an international alliance with this “democratic imperialism”, against the “fascist imperialism” of Germany, Italy and Japan. In other words, the position that Paul Mason previously told us represented the pinnacle of Marxist theory in fighting fascism – the Popular Front – and which he, also promotes, today, to that end, was itself based upon the concept of “campism”, which, today, he also seeks to oppose! Or at least, he opposes one camp, whilst collapsing head first into another.
The Popular Front, is directly based upon the principles of “My enemy's enemy is my friend”, and “lesser-evilism”. It seeks to align and subordinate the working-class to the bourgeoisie, to oppose some other immediate enemy camp, considered to be a “greater-evil”. On that basis, the Stalinists had lined up with the leaders of the British TUC, prior to them selling out the 1926 General Strike; then they lined up with the Chinese bourgeoisie of the Kuomintang in 1925-7, insisting the Chinese communists liquidate themselves in it, right before the Kuomintang organised a coup, and slaughtered thousands of Chinese worker-communists in Shanghai; and repeated the exercise with the Left Kuomintang, with the same results; then they lined up with the French and Spanish bourgeois parties, even after the bourgeoisie itself had abandoned them, after 1934, derailing the workers in France, and subordinating them in Spain, and leading to the victory of Franco, and ultimately of Hitler.
Such was Stalin's commitment to this Popular Front class collaboration, and attempt to align with the camp of “democratic imperialism” that he made clear to them that the Spanish communists would have no truck with ideas of a socialist revolution in Spain, just as, in China, he had sought to assure the Chinese bourgeoisie, by opposing any attempts by Chinese workers and peasants to establish soviets, or to press for their specific class interests as against those of the bourgeoisie.
In terms of the war between these two imperialist blocs, Trotsky explained, there was nothing different to WWI. It was an inter-imperialist war that was reactionary on both sides, and for the workers, the main enemy was still at home. However, although Trotsky had argued that Stalinism had carried through a political counter-revolution in the USSR, establishing a Bonapartist regime under Stalin, in place of a workers democracy, he argued that the USSR was still a Workers' State, because the old ruling classes – landed aristocracy and bourgeoisie – and the property they rested on, had been thoroughly uprooted, leaving the working-class as ruling class, even if it did not exercise that rule directly, through its own political regime, just as a trades union is a workers' organisation, and yet might be run, undemocratically, by a powerful union bureaucracy. The workers, therefore, did have cause to defend the USSR, and this workers state, against attack by the other imperialist powers, just as we would defend even the most right-wing, undemocratic union against attacks on it, by a capitalist government, no matter how democratically elected, as well as against attacks by fascists.
In defending the union, we defend it as a workers' organisation, despite its right-wing leaders, and in the process of doing so, seek to enable the workers to also organise against, and replace those leaders, democratising the union. We do the same with a workers' state, despite it having a Stalinist regime, and for the same purpose. Ironically, some of those involved in the USC, today, who Paul Mason is aligned with, come from a petty-bourgeois grouping that developed in the Trotskyist movement, in the 1930's, that rejected this analysis by Trotsky, and sought to lump the USSR in with the other imperialist camps, and so, not to defend it.
Trotsky called them the Third Camp of the petty-bourgeoisie, and predicted that they would end up as supporters of “democratic imperialism”, and his prediction was right, though not entirely, because, out of this petty-bourgeois deviation, also arose another group, which, on the same basis of “My enemy's enemy is my friend”, decided that US imperialism was the main enemy, and, thereby, aligned with all sorts of reactionary regimes and forces, in order to pursue this “idiot anti-imperialism”, justifying it on the same basis that the USC, today, tries to justify its support for Ukraine's corrupt regime, of supporting national self-determination, a rather ridiculous argument, given that it has been an independent capitalist state for more than 30 years!
The leaders of that original grouping, James Burnham and Max Shachtman both moved quickly to the Right. Burnham became a right-wing neo-con warmonger, whilst Schachtman became advisor to right-wing union bureaucrat George Meany, and refused to oppose the US bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It's the inheritors of that tradition, today, in the USC, that again are supporting the imperialist class camp of NATO/Ukraine. Some of them, unlike Paul Mason, deny that they are supporting NATO imperialism, but their attempts to maintain that pretence, become more contradictory and unsustainable by the day. At least, Paul Mason has the advantage over them of being open about his support for NATO and its global expansion and rearmament, even if, in doing so, his complaints about “campism”, by those who have instead given their backing to the opposing imperialist camp of Putin/Xi are, thereby, exposed as thoroughly ludicrous and hypocritical.
Some of those that formed the other group descended from Burnham and Shactman, became the SWP, and its later splinters. And, this leads us to the other description of “campism”. That is that associated with “anti-imperialism”, in which the two camps are formed up as being imperialist states (though this almost inevitably meant US imperialism), as against those opposing it (which included all sorts of unsavoury regimes and forces). What was common to this expression of campism, and its expression in relation to WWI and II, is that, in both cases, it involves the working-class subordinating its own independent politics, organisation and interests to one of these other class camps, and its interests.
But, Paul Mason, in his account writes,
“Campism, for those not familiar with the term, is based on two essentially Leninist propositions:”
As described above, nothing could be further from the truth, and only someone who does not know their arse from their elbow, when it comes to understanding basic Marxist concepts, or else someone deliberately distorting the history and theory of Marxism/Leninism, could make such a ridiculous statement. Let us look at these two propositions put forward by Paul Mason, which gets even worse.
He argues that according to Leninism – and so we must assume, he's basing this on what Lenin, and the first four congresses of the Comintern said, and not on what Stalinism or some other set of epigones have claimed since – capitalism only survives as a result of imperialism and “the exploitation of the global south by developed-world countries.” Again, nonsense, and there is nothing in the writings of Lenin, or of Trotsky to justify such an assertion. According to Lenin, imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, and the stage in which it creates a world economy.
“. . . Try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism!
“. . . For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly.
“. . . State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs ”
It takes an existing reality in which, across that globe, there is combined and uneven development. In fact, as Trotsky described, during this imperialist phase, all of the previous processes of capitalist industrial development are speeded up, and the unevenness is equalised at a faster pace.
Paul Mason continues,
“After 1945, the West was united under the leadership of a single imperialist power – the USA – so any force that opposes or disrupts the rules-based global order is “anti-imperialist”;”
Well, its clear that has nothing to do with anything that Lenin wrote, because, by 1945, Lenin was 20 years dead, but it also has no basis in anything that Lenin or Trotsky wrote either. On the contrary, its the antithesis of everything that Lenin and Trotsky wrote! Like Marx and Engels, neither Lenin nor Trotsky, were interested in the petty-bourgeois, reactionary Socialism of Sismondi, or their later equivalents who wanted to disrupt or hold back capitalist development. Quite the opposite, they wanted to push it forward!
“And from these principles it follows that the idea of seeking salvation for the working class in anything save the further development of capitalism is reactionary. In countries like Russia, the working class suffers not so much from capitalism as from the insufficient development of capitalism. The working class is therefore decidedly interested in the broadest, freest and most rapid development of capitalism. The removal of all the remnants of the old order which are hampering the broad, free and rapid development of capitalism is of decided advantage to the working class.”
(Lenin - Two Tactics of Social Democracy)
Trotsky in The Program of Peace wrote,
"The right of national self-determination cannot he excluded from the proletarian peace programme; but it cannot claim absolute importance. On the contrary, it is delimited for us by the converging, profoundly progressive tendencies of historical development. If this “right” must be – through revolutionary force – counter-posed to the imperialist methods of centralization which enslave weak and backward peoples and mush the hearths of national culture, then on the other hand the proletariat cannot allow the “national principle” to get in the way of the irresistible and deeply progressive tendency of modern economic life towards a planned organization throughout our continent, and further, all over the globe. Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle."
Paul Mason continues, setting out the supposed second “Leninist” proposition,
“The working class of the global North is incapable of overthrowing capitalism, and therefore it needs a substitute force to do it. (This was codefied into Leninism at the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920). The substitute can be either a Leninist party, the peasantry of the global south, a guerrilla movement, or an authoritarian dictator – ranging from Chiang Kai-Shek in the 1920s through to Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela or even Khameni’s Iran.”
Complete and utter balderdash, and fabrication. For anyone who actually has read and understood the history, these words seem like those of someone who has consumed mind-bending drugs, or else who is deliberately falsifying the history. It cobbles together the last part representing the manifestations of the Popular Front that previously, Paul Mason told us was the epitome of Marxist theory, in opposing fascism, and which he sought to apply for that purpose, today, and which has nothing to do with Leninism, with an outright lie, both about the position of Leninism in relation to the ability of the working-class to overthrow capitalism, and about the decision of the Second Congress of the Comintern.
If we take that Second Congress of the Comintern, its where the tactic of the Workers United Front, was developed, as against the tactic of the Popular Front that Paul Mason supports. That far from concluded that the working-class is incapable of overthrowing capitalism. It is also where the Theses on The National and Colonial Questions was agreed, and far from saying what Paul Mason claims, it says the direct opposite. In line with the theory of Permanent Revolution, it stressed that the colonial question could only be solved by the socialist revolution undertaken by the industrial workers in the developed capitalist economies!
Moreover, far from seeing petty-bourgeois nationalist forces as an alternative to revolutionary proletarian forces, it warns against giving support to those forces, and a need to wage a struggle against them!
“the need for a struggle against the clergy and other influential reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries;
third, the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc...
the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries.”
The truth is a different country from that presented by Paul Mason.
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