Joint Statement by Sráid Marx and Boffy's Blog
This is a joint statement, by the authors of Sráid Marx and Boffy's Blog, on the global crisis of Marxism, which has become manifest in the collapse of many “Marxist” organisations into social-imperialism, in relation to the Ukraine-Russia War. Those organisations have abandoned the independent third camp of the international proletariat, and, instead, lined up behind one of the contending imperialist camps of NATO/Ukraine or Russia/China. They have sought to place the world labour movement back to the position prior to World War I (WWI), which led to the split in the Second International and formation of the Third International, although such a development is not possible, today, if only because no real International exists, making the situation similar to that prior to Marx and Engels establishing the First International.
This crisis of Marxism has been a long time coming. Its roots lie in the nature of what passed for Marxism in the post-war period, a ‘Marxism’ that was, in fact, a form of petty-bourgeois socialism, manifest in its attitude to the state as the means of historical change, rather than the independent self-activity, and self-government of the working-class, and, concomitantly, in its attitude to the national question and nation state. Both of us, with a combined experience of nearly a century in the labour movement, were recruited, in our youth, into different Trotskyist organisations - the International Marxist Group (IMG)/Peoples Democracy in Ireland, and International Communist League (I-CL), respectively - of which we were members for many years, and yet, freed from the barriers to critical thinking imposed by membership of such sects, we have, independently of each other, arrived at almost identical conclusions about the nature of the Left, and on the critical issues of the day for the labour movement.
We have set out below a statement on the fundamental issues we believe lie behind the recent failure of many groups and individuals to develop an independent working class position on the war in Ukraine, and how this very open betrayal is a result of previous errors now compounded into an outright defence of the capitalist state. While both of us have been activists in Western Europe, and our arguments are derived directly from this experience, the issues raised are relevant to Marxists everywhere and the experience of others across the world will confirm this experience and the lessons drawn that we have set out below.
The State
This ‘Marxism’ is fundamentally distinguished from other forms of socialism by its attitude to the state. Not only did Marx and Engels talk about the state withering away under communism, both were intensely hostile to the capitalist state, as the state of the class enemy. In “State and Revolution”, Lenin points out that Marx's attitude to it was the same as the anarchists.
“... it was Marx who taught that the proletariat cannot simply win state power in the sense that the old state apparatus passes into new hands, but must smash this apparatus, must break it and replace it by a new one.”
It is only in this latter sense that Marxists differ from the anarchists, i.e. in the need for the proletariat, after it has become the ruling-class, to establish its own semi-state, to put down any slave-holder revolt by the bourgeoisie. The idea that Marxists can call upon the existing capitalist state to act in its interest is, then, absurd. That opportunist attitude to the state was promoted by the Lassalleans, and Fabians, in Marx and Engel’s generation, and, as Hal Draper sets out, in The Two Souls of Socialism, became the ideology of The Second International. Marx opposed it in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, and Engels followed that with many letters, and also in his own Critique of The Erfurt Programme, in which he opposed the idea of a welfare state, National Insurance, and other forms of “state socialism”.
As Lenin says,
“Far from inculcating in the workers’ minds the idea that the time is nearing when they must act to smash the old state machine, replace it by a new one, and in this way make their political rule the foundation for the socialist reorganization of society, they have actually preached to the masses the very opposite and have depicted the “conquest of power” in a way that has left thousands of loopholes for opportunism.”
(ibid)
Stalinism adopted this opportunist attitude to the state. In the post-war period, it was taken on by organisations claiming the mantle of Trotskyism. In Britain, for example, the Revolutionary Socialist League, better known as The Militant Tendency, talked about a Labour Government nationalising the 200 top monopolies, but all these organisations raised demands for the capitalist state to nationalise this or that industry, usually to avoid bankruptcy, and they continue to do so. Even more ludicrously, they combine these utopian demands to the capitalist state with the further demand that it also then grant, to the workers in the industry, “workers' control”, as though such a request would ever likely succeed, other than in conditions of dual power in society, i.e. conditions in which workers have established their own alternative centres of power, in the form of workers' councils, enabling them to impose workers' control, arms in hand.
What such demands also illustrate is a dangerous failure to distinguish the difference between government and state. Governments of different complexions come and go at frequent intervals, as does the bourgeois political regime, appearing as either “democracy” or “fascism”, which are simply masks which the bourgeoisie adopt according to their needs, but the state itself remains as the real power in society, permanently organised as the defender of the ruling class, including against the government if required.
Authentic Marxism, therefore, rejects these opportunist appeals to the state to act in the interests of the working-class. Our method is that of the self-activity and self-government of the working-class, which must organise itself to become the ruling class, and, in so doing, bring about its own liberation. We look to the advice of Marx and Engels and The First International to develop its own cooperative production, rather than to the capitalist state and we advise it, at all times, to take its own initiative in addressing its needs within capitalism. This includes organising its own social insurance, to cover unemployment, sickness and retirement, rather than relying upon the vagaries of state provision, which is geared to the fluctuating interests of capital, and its economic cycles, not the interests of workers.
Of course, as Marx sets out in Political Indifferentism, if the capitalist state does provide such services, we do not advocate a sectarian boycott of them, out of a sense of purity. As Marx sets out in The Poverty of Philosophy, what makes the working-class the agent of progressive historical change is precisely its struggle against the conditions imposed upon it, which results from the limits of capitalism, and to breach those limits by replacing capitalism. Capitalism is progressive in developing the forces of production, via the accumulation of capital. This has led it to maximise the exploitation of labour/rate of surplus value but does not mean that we advocate no resistance to its demands for wage cuts, or lower conditions. We point to the limited ability of capitalism to maximise the rate of surplus value, and so develop productive forces, as well as the limited ability of workers to raise wages, within the constraints of capitalism, and consequently, the need to abolish the wages system itself.
Nor do we advocate a boycott of socialised healthcare, education and social care systems, but point out their limited capitalist nature, the lack of democratic control and so on. We oppose any regression to less mature capitalist forms of private provision, not by defending the existing state forms, but by arguing the need to move forward to new forms directly owned and controlled by workers themselves. Whilst we offer support to workers' struggles for improvements in existing provision, and for democratic control, we do so all the better to demonstrate to workers that so long as capitalism exists, no such permanent improvement and no real democratic control is possible.
All large scale industrial capital is now, socialised capital, be it state capital or that of corporations, and so properly the collective property of the “associated producers”, as Marx describes it in Capital III. Unlike the socialised capital of worker cooperatives, it is not, however, under the control of the associated producers, of the working class, but of shareholders and their Directors. Short of a revolutionary situation, and condition of dual power, workers cannot force the state to concede control over that capital to them. Even the social-democratic measures, such as those in Germany, providing for “co-determination” of enterprises, are a sham that retains control for shareholders, and simply incorporate the workers in the process of their own exploitation.
Similarly, we do not support the sham of bourgeois-democracy, which is merely a façade for the social dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and its state, a façade they will drop in favour of fascism if their rule is challenged by workers. We defend the democratic rights afforded to workers - to organise and to advance their class interests - but we do not confuse defence of those rights, which the working class can use, with defence of the bourgeois democratic state that continually seeks to limit, erode and threaten them outright.
We recognise, however, that millions of workers do continue to harbour illusions in bourgeois democracy, and, so long as they do, we must try to break them from it. That is not done by a sectarian abstention, but by utilising it, and demanding it be consistent democracy. For example, abolition of Monarchy and hereditary positions and titles, election of judges and military top brass, abolition of the standing army, and creation of a popular militia under democratic control. We support the workers in any such mobilisation and demands for consistent democracy, but we offer support only as the means of demonstrating the limits to such democracy and the possibility of a higher alternative, so enabling them to shed their illusions in that democracy.
The means by which we seek to mobilise the workers, in all such struggles, are not those of bourgeois society, but those of the encroaching socialist society of the future. We advocate the creation of workplace committees of workers that extend across the limited boundaries of existing trades unions; we advocate, as and when the conditions permit, the linking up of such committees into elected workers' councils, and the joining together of this network of workers councils on a national and international basis. We reject the idea of reliance on the capitalist state and its police to “maintain order”, or of its military to provide defence of workers, and instead look to democratically controlled Workers' Defence Squads and Workers Militia to defend workers' interests, including against the armies of foreign powers, terrorists and so on.
The National Question and The Nation State
The opportunist view of the state differs from the Marxist view, by presenting the state as some kind of non-class, supra-class, or class neutral body, standing above society, whereas Marxists define it as what it is, the state of the bourgeois ruling class. The opportunist view of the state is a petty-bourgeois view, reflecting the social position of the petty-bourgeoisie as an intermediate class, standing between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and which sees its role as mediating between these two great class camps.
It denies the class division of society. The symbol of this denial is the use of phrases such as “the nation”, “society”, “the people” and so on, which subsume the antagonistic classes, in each society, into one “nation”, and then transforms the state into being the state of “the nation”, or “the people”, rather than of the ruling class. This used to be the ABC of Marxism, and yet the Ukraine-Russia War, has seen a large part of the Left collapse into these opportunist and nationalist, as opposed to socialist, ideas.
The logic of this opportunist position flows inevitably from their view of the state as the agent of social change, as against the role of the working-class itself. It is necessarily a petty-bourgeois, nationalist view, as against a proletarian, internationalist view. It demurs from class struggle, in order to privilege and promote the combined interests of all classes within the nation, as a “national interest”, which necessarily sets that “national interest” against the “national interest” of other nations. The interests of workers of different nations are, thereby, brought into an antagonistic relation with each other, rather than with their own ruling class. Again, this used to be the ABC of Marxism, symbolised by Marx's statement that the workers have no country, and appeal , in The Communist Manifesto, “Workers of The World Unite”.
In WWI, the opportunists in the Second International, continued to repeat these statements, but only as mantras, whilst, in practice, abandoning class struggle, and lining up under the banner of their particular capitalist state, in alliance with their own bourgeoisie. This characterises the positions of much of the Left, in relation to the Ukraine-Russia war, whether they have lined up in support of the camp of NATO/Ukraine on the one side, or Russia/China on the other, under claims of an “anti-imperialist” struggle, or war of national independence/national self-determination.
Marx argued that the workers of no nation could themselves be free, whilst that nation held others in chains. That is why it is the duty of socialists, in each nation, to oppose their own ruling class in its attempts to colonise, occupy, or in any other way oppress other nations. While the formation of nation states was historically progressive, as it was necessary for the free development of capitalist production and its development of the productive forces, the subsequent destruction of nation states, and formation into multinational states, is also historically progressive, for the same reason. But, just as Marxists' recognition of the historically progressive role of capitalism, in developing the productive forces, which involves it exploiting workers, does not require us to acquiesce in that exploitation, so too the historically progressive role of imperialism, in demolishing the nation state, and national borders, does not require us to acquiesce in its methods of achieving that goal. (See: Trotsky – The Programme of Peace).
In both cases, we seek to achieve historically progressive goals, but without the limitations that capitalism imposes on their achievement, by moving beyond capitalism/imperialism to international socialism and communism. The struggle against militarism and imperialist war is fundamental to presenting the case, and mobilising that struggle for, the overthrow of capitalism, and its replacement by international socialism. We carry out these struggles on the basis of the political and organisational independence of workers from the bourgeoisie and its state, on the basis of Permanent Revolution. (See Marx's Address to the Communist League, 1850)
This was the basis of the position set forward by Lenin in relation to The National Question. The task of Marxists, in oppressor states, is to oppose that oppression by their own ruling class and to emphasise the right to free secession, whilst the task of Marxists in oppressed states is also to oppose their own ruling class, pointing to its exploitation of the workers, and unreliable and duplicitous nature, and emphasising not the right to free secession, but the right to voluntary association. It is what determines the Marxist position of opposing, for example, Scottish nationalism, Brexit, or other such forms of separatism across the globe. As Lenin put it, we are in favour of the self-determination of workers, not the self-determination of nations.
In 1917, following the February Revolution, in Russia, the Mensheviks, and some of the Bolsheviks, such as Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev, also changed their position of opposing the war, and argued that the Russian state had become “revolutionary democratic”, i.e. a non-class state, overseeing a non-class form of democracy. Lenin vehemently opposed that social-patriotism, and threatened to split the party unless it was rejected. However, this position was never abandoned by Stalin, who resumed it after Lenin's death, making it the foundation of his strategy of the Popular Front, applied in relation to national liberation struggles, for example “the bloc of four classes”, in China, in 1925-7, and in opposing fascism, as applied in France (1934-9), and in Spain (1934-6), and subsequently, in Stalinism's collapse into what Trotsky called “communo-patriotism” in WWII.
In the post-war period, it was not only social-democrats, reformists and Stalinists that adopted this class collaborationist Popular Front approach. In place of the Marxist principle of the self-determination of the working-class, the petty-bourgeois Left, including those that described themselves as “Trotskyist”, threw themselves into supporting struggles for national self-determination and did so, not on the basis of simply opposing the role of their own ruling-class, but of actively supporting the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist forces engaged in those struggles.
Indeed, not only were the forces involved the bourgeois class enemy of the proletariat, but, in many cases, as in, for example, Korea, Vietnam, Algeria and so on, they were aggressively anti-working-class forces with which Marxists should have had no truck whatsoever, and against which Marxists should have been warning the workers, and against which they should have been aiding workers to defend themselves. (See: The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions). Again, the petty-bourgeois socialists had adopted the mantra of “My enemy's enemy is my friend”, identifying imperialism as the enemy, and so the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalists fighting that imperialism, as their friend. This was even the case where these forces violently suppressed Trotskyists within their own country. Today these forces have presided over or opened the door not to workers’ power but to capitalism.
This was never the position of Marxism, as set out, for example, in the Comintern's Theses On The National and Colonial Questions. It is a perversion of that position introduced by Stalinism, and later adopted by the petty-bourgeois Left, in part under pressure from Stalinism, but also from peer pressure in the petty-bourgeois, student milieu in which it became embedded, and from which came much of the movement in support of these national liberation struggles, and from which it sought to recruit new members. In line with the principles of Permanent Revolution, first set out by Marx in his 1850 Address, not only was it necessary to ensure the political and organisational independence of the proletariat, and to arm it to defend itself against the national bourgeoisie, but, in so far as the proletariat was led to form any temporary tactical alliance with the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, it was on the basis of an alliance with those masses, and not with the parties representing those classes, and certainly not with the bourgeois state.
“Lenin, it is understood, recognized the necessity of a temporary alliance with the bourgeois-democratic movement, but he understood by this, of course, not an alliance with the bourgeois parties, duping and betraying the petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy (the peasants and the small city folk), but an alliance with the organizations and groupings of the masses themselves – against the national bourgeoisie.”
This is in stark contrast to the position of the Left, in all national liberation struggles, in the post-war period, and in its position in relation, now, to the Ukraine-Russia war.
The Russia-Ukraine War
Like WWI, the Russia-Ukraine war has become an acid test of the Left. As with WWI, most of that Left has failed the test. That the Left social-democrats, the reformist socialists, and Stalinists should fail only repeats their failures going back to WWI, but for those that claim the mantle of Trotskyism to fail it indicates the crisis of Marxism, and that the nature of that Left, as described above, is actually petty-bourgeois.
It is no surprise that those that have collapsed into becoming cheerleaders for one or other of the two contending imperialist camps have done so by using the arguments that opportunists used in WWI, and in WWII, based upon arguments of national self-determination, and “anti-imperialism”. But, nor is it a surprise that the Stop The War Coalition, which opposes the war on both sides, does so not on the basis of Marxism and Leninism, and the principles of class struggle and revolutionary defeatism, but on the basis of opportunism and social-pacifism.
The Marxist position is not only that the war is reactionary on both sides, and so we oppose the war; it is also a recognition that such wars are not inexplicable events, or caused by fascist megalomaniacs, but flow from the nature of imperialism, its drive to create a global single market, dictated by the needs of large-scale capital itself. It is inevitably led to do this by the violent competition of nation states (and alliances of such states), each seeking to assert their dominant position in any new international formation. Simply appealing for peace is therefore utopian, and ultimately reactionary, just as much as appealing for capitalist enterprises to stop competing against each other or forming larger monopolies and cartels.
We do not argue for an end to capitalist competition or monopolies, but for workers to take over those monopolies, and, thereby, to be able to replace competition with increasing cooperation between them, as part of a planned organisation of production and distribution. That is the real basis of class struggle, not economistic, distributional struggles for higher wages within a continuation of capitalism. Similarly, we do not argue for an end to wars between capitalist states, or the destruction of nation states and formation of larger multinational states, such as the EU, as part of forming a world state, but for workers to overthrow the existing capitalist states and establish workers' states, as the only permanent means of ending wars, and rationally constructing a single global state, based upon voluntarily association. That is the basis of class struggle at an international level, of the concept of revolutionary defeatism, as against utopian demands for peace, the demands of social-pacifism.
The Marxist position of revolutionary-defeatism, in relation to the Russia-Ukraine War, as with any such war, is not simply about opposing the war, but about explaining to workers that these wars are fought using their blood, but not for their interests, and that they will continue to suck their blood so long as capitalism continues to exist. In the same way that Marxists intervene in strikes to explain that workers will continue to have to strike for decent wages, so long as capitalism exists, and that such strikes will not, ultimately, prevent their condition in relation to capital deteriorating; so they intervene in imperialist wars to explain that they will continue so long as capitalism/imperialism exists, and so the answer is not a utopian demand for peace, but a class struggle for the overthrow of capitalism/imperialism itself, to turn the imperialist war into civil war!
In the post-war period, the petty-bourgeois Left became engrossed in the rash of “anti-imperialist” and national liberation struggles that erupted as the old European colonial empires collapsed, in part under pressure from US imperialism that sought to break open all of the monopolies and protected markets of those colonial empires, in order to give free access to US multinational corporations to exploit vast reserves of labour. At the same time, Stalinism encouraged the development of support for such movements, as agents of the global strategic interests of the USSR, in competition with US imperialism. As in China, in 1925-7, it sought to ally itself with the national bourgeoisie, and subordinate the interests of workers and poor peasants in these former colonies to that of the national bourgeoisie, which it sought to draw into its orbit, as symbolised by the Third World Movement. This same, class collaborationist, Popular Front approach, was adopted by the Stalinists in the formation of the various Solidarity campaigns established to support these “anti-imperialist”, national liberation struggles.
Whilst the “Trotskyist” Left continued to repeat the mantra of opposition to Popular Fronts, in practice, and seeing large numbers of students drawn to the campaigns of solidarity with this or that national liberation movement, nearly all of which were bourgeois in nature, and many of which were particularly authoritarian and anti-working-class, as with the Algerian NLF and Viet Cong, it joined in, and promoted these kinds of cross-class, popular frontist organisations. It did so for fear of isolation and losing out in the potential for expanding its contact lists of possible new members in its rivalry with competing sects.
The Ukraine Solidarity Committee is just the latest in a long list of such cross-class, Popular Frontist organisations that throws their support behind, and so acts as useful idiots for, some reactionary national bourgeoisie, which is the enemy of the workers of the given state. In the past, these Popular Front organisations often gave a pass to the USSR and its allies, whereas, today, the USC gives a pass to, and allies with, NATO imperialism and its associates in the EU, G7 and so on. On the other side, those social-imperialists that have thrown themselves into a cross-class alliance in support of Putin's Russia and Xi's China, on the basis that they are being threatened by NATO/US imperialism, are simply the mirror image of the USC.
What Is To Be Done?
As two individuals, we do not suffer the hubris of thinking that we have the answers to this modern crisis of Marxism, but we do believe that such a crisis exists when self-proclaimed Marxists openly support one capitalist state in war against another, each backed by one or the other of the two largest capitalist states in the world A similar condition exists today as that in the early days of Marxism, with only a handful of authentic Marxists, amidst a sea of petty-bourgeois sects that portray themselves as Marxists while peddling reformist programmes; a still not insignificant number of Stalinists and other Left reformists; and with mass workers parties that have reverted to being simply openly bourgeois parties, much as with the British Liberals and German Democrats of 1848.
Indeed, the British Labour Party, under Starmer, has declined even more than that, becoming dominated by the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism promulgated by the Tory party. Yet, in the absence of mass socialist workers parties, the working-class continues to engage in its own struggles, for increased wages to counter inflation, for example, but also to look to these bourgeois workers' parties (or simple bourgeois parties) as their political representatives, and Marxists cannot ignore this reality. Our task is to work alongside the working-class, in and out of struggle, and break it from the current delusions in those parties, and in bourgeois-democracy itself.
Appeals to create yet another Marxist sect, or to create some new Workers Party have proven to be pointless. Engels advised US socialists to work with the existing workers parties, and, likewise, prior to the creation of the Labour Party, advised Eleanor Marx and her associates to work with the Liberal Clubs, rather than the existing sects such as the SDF or ILP. As he noted, in 1848, he and Marx and their supporters had joined the German Democrats, and operated inside it, as its organised Left-Wing.
Our fundamental principle, as set out by Marx in his 1850 Address, is to maintain the political and organisational independence of the working-class as it seeks its self-emancipation. But, as Marx and Engels showed, that is not incompatible with working inside existing mass workers parties. Whether that is done openly or covertly is only a question of tactics, determined by what is possible at the given time. The existence of the Internet to produce online publications and networks makes that much easier today than it was even 25 years ago.
In the 1930's, when the forces congregating around him and his supporters were very small, Trotsky advised them to join the various socialist parties, so as to operate within them, as an organised Left-Wing, and, thereby, to begin to build the required numbers for the creation of new mass revolutionary parties. It was the formation of an undeclared United Front with those rank and file workers. It is again forced upon us given the tiny forces of authentic Marxism. Our goal is not some Quixotic attempt to capture those parties, but simply to build the required numbers of authentic Marxists to be able to create effective revolutionary workers parties as alternatives to them, and, then, to move from an undeclared United Front with the rank and file of those parties to an open and declared proposal for a United Front, exposing the leaders of those parties and drawing ever larger numbers of workers to the banner of international socialism.
That is in the future, but the first step is to establish a network of authentic Marxists, much as Marx and Engels did with the Communist Correspondence Committees, and as Lenin and Plekhanov did with the Marxist discussion circles that over time laid the basis for the creation of the RSDLP.
If you are in agreement with the principles set out above, in this joint statement, whether you are an individual or organisation, we ask you to contact either of the authors via the comments sections of these statements on our respective blogs. If you have a social media presence, then give us the details so that we can share it with our readers, and we would ask that you do the same, for everyone else as part of an expanding global network of authentic Marxists, each supporting, in whatever way they can, the work of the others, and facilitating a discussion and development of authentic Marxist ideas.
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