The fundamental lessons were known by Marxists, by the 1920's, and yet the Stalinists, as well as the social-democrats, reformists, centrists and anarchists ignored them, instead pursuing an opportunist and tailist policy of seeking a broad “popular” or “people's front” with the bourgeoisie, and its political representatives. The same approach has characterised the “Left” ever since, largely under the influence of Stalinism, but also the role of the petty-bourgeois, liberals, in the various “anti-colonial”, “anti-imperialist”, movements of the post-war period. In each case, it resulted in, or, at least, contributed to, the same betrayal of workers' interests, for the sake of limited bourgeois goals. In one national independence struggle after another, in China, Korea, Algeria, Vietnam and across Asia, the Middle-East, and Africa, support was given to petty-bourgeois, anti-working class movements, which, on assuming power, set about exploiting and oppressing the working-class in ways, at least as bad as those of the former colonial rulers.
“Foresight must be the foundation of action. We already know what has happened to the predictions of comrade Stalin: one week before the coup d’état of Chiang Kai-shek, he defended him and blew the trumpet for him by calling for the utilization of the right wing, its experiences, its connections (speech to the Moscow functionaries on April 5).” (p 66)
Even when these nationalist forces acted as pawns of a regional sub-imperialist power, as with the role of India in Bangladesh, the petty-bourgeois “Left”, were still so engrossed in their commitment to the goals of bourgeois nationalism that they threw aside the basics of Marxism, to act as cheerleaders, for the bourgeoisie. Lenin, and the Comintern set out the Marxist principles, in precisely such conditions.
“The several demands of democracy, including self-determination, are not an absolute, but only a small part of the general-democratic (now: general-socialist) world movement. In individual concrete cases, the part may contradict the whole; if so, it must be rejected. It is possible that the republican movement in one country may be merely an instrument of the clerical or financial-monarchist intrigues of other countries; if so, we must not support this particular, concrete movement, but it would be ridiculous to delete the demand for a republic from the programme of international Social-Democracy on these grounds.”
Describing the subordinate role of bourgeois-democratic demands, such as self-determination, Lenin gives the example of two large kingdoms, and a smaller one. The people of the small kingdom seek to establish a democratic republic. If the expulsion of the monarch would then lead to a war between the two larger kingdoms, in order to restore either that or some other monarch then,
“There is no doubt that all international Social-Democracy, as well as the really internationalist section of Social-Democracy in the little country, would be against substituting a republic for the monarchy in this case. The substitution of a republic for a monarchy is not an absolute, but one of the democratic demands, subordinate to the interests of democracy (and still more, of course, to those of the socialist proletariat) as a whole.”
(ibid)
And, this is emphasised in the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions.
“In all their propaganda and agitation—both within parliament and outside it—the Communist parties must consistently expose that constant violation of the equality of nations and of the guaranteed rights of national minorities which is to be seen in all capitalist countries, despite their “democratic” constitutions. It is also necessary, first, constantly to explain that only the Soviet system is capable of ensuring genuine equality of nations, by uniting first the proletarians and then the whole mass of the working population in the struggle against the bourgeoisie; and, second, that all Communist parties should render direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent and underprivileged nations (for example, Ireland, the American Negroes, etc.) and in the colonies.
Without the latter condition, which is particularly important, the struggle against the oppression of dependent nations and colonies, as well as recognition of their right to secede, are but a false signboard, as is evidenced by the parties of the Second International.
10) Recognition of internationalism in word, and its replacement in deed by petty-bourgeois nationalism and pacifism, in all propaganda, agitation and practical work, is very common, not only among the parties of the Second International, but also among those which have withdrawn from it, and often even among parties which now call themselves communist...
sixth, the need constantly to explain and expose among the broadest working masses of all countries, and particularly of the backward countries, the deception systematically practised by the imperialist powers, which, under the guise of politically independent states, set up states that are wholly dependent upon them economically, financially and militarily. Under present-day international conditions there is no salvation for dependent and weak nations except in a union of Soviet republics.”
In just the same way that capitalist competition led to the destruction of all the old feudal vestiges and idiocies, and formed national markets and nation states, and, then, as it continued, led to the formation of ever larger concentrations of capital in monopolies and trusts, within which competition was regulated, so its continued development led to the need for even larger markets, to support even larger-scale production, and so the replacement of the nation state, which had become a reactionary fetter on the development of capital, with ever larger, multinational states, like the EU. The rational form of capital, in the era of imperialism, is the multinational state. The interests of British capital, now, resided in the need to be a part of the EEC/EU, and both main bourgeois parties – Tory and Labour – came to represent that interest, as did the British state.
A section of social-democracy, associated with Stalinism clung to the ideas of reactionary nationalism, based upon the concept of “Socialism In One Country”, or, more correctly described, in its actual programmes, as “Social-Democracy In One Country”. The roots of these reactionary, nationalist ideas sprung from a number of sources.
Firstly, the reactionary, petty-bourgeois Socialism of Sismondi, described by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, which, in contrast to the ideas of Marx and Engels, set out above, sought to present any rational development of capital as something that socialists should oppose.
Secondly, the role of statism in the socialist movement, going back to Lassalle and the Fabians, again, opposed by Marx and Engels, as set out in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, and elsewhere. Statism, is necessarily chauvinistic. The term “nationalisation”, does what it says; it puts the given capital under the control of the given capitalist nation state. It is, merely, an extension of the principles of protectionism, described by Marx and Engels, in the writings on free trade, seeking to protect the interest of that “national” capital, at the expense of other national capitals, and, thereby, of the workers of other countries.
But, as Marx and Engels describe, that protectionism, whether in the form of protective tariffs etc., or protected markets, as established by colonialism, or in the form of nationalisation by the capitalist state, works, also, against the interests of the workers in the given country too. As Engels put it,
“Now, the formation of such trusts in protected industries is the surest sign that protection has done its work and is changing its character; that it protects the manufacturer no longer against the foreign importer, but against the home consumer; that it has manufactured, at least in the special branch concerned, quite enough, if not too many manufacturers; that the money it puts into the purse of these manufacturers is money thrown away, exactly as in Germany.”
(ibid)
Protectionism raises the prices of commodities in the home market, by keeping out cheaper imported commodities, and enabling domestic capital to sell at higher prices. It raises the cost of living for workers in the home market, which should lead to higher wages, but, in order to maintain profits, and to be able to sell on global markets, the domestic capital needs to keep wages down. The revenues used to subsidise the overproduction, via nationalisation etc., detracts from the ability to consume other commodities, and to accumulate capital in other industries. In the case of protective tariffs, it is the higher prices that consume those revenues, whereas, in the case of nationalisation it is the taxes (deducted from surplus value) used to subsidise the overproduction that consumes revenues and reduces capital accumulation and growth.
Nationalisation (state capitalism) is just the rational form, under capitalism, of the formation of the trusts, described by Marx and Engels, to absorb the surplus production. But, the capitalist state, then, as Kautsky described, also uses its greater power to hold down the wages of the workers – as seen in the way the government has suppressed public sector wages, way below wage settlements for workers in the private sector – and, when it has rationalised production, thrown thousands of the workers in the nationalised industries on to the streets – as happened in the 1980's – it, then, hands back control of the capital to the stock market wolves.
If we take capitalism, then, Marx sets out that it is the most progressive form of society ever seen, because it has brought about these changes on a far greater scale, and at a faster pace than anything that went before. But, along with it goes all of the horrors too. In addition, goes the role of the capitalist in seeking to maximise the exploitation of the worker, i.e. to maximise the rate of surplus value, and, when the workers respond by forming unions, and taking strike action, it includes the role of the capitalist state in trying to break these strikes. The actions of the capitalists, and of their state flow inevitably from the drive of capital to maximise exploitation and accumulation, which is precisely the basis of the progressive nature of capitalism!
To pose the question of whether this action by the capitalist and the state is, also, then, progressive is to adopt the same moralising approach as Sismondi and Proudhon. The two things are inseparable. For so long as the workers are not strong enough, the forces of production not developed enough, to overthrow capitalism then they have to accept both aspects of capitalism, and, indeed, its most rapid development is, also, thereby, in their interest, as Marx notes in Wage Labour and Capital, and Lenin notes in Two Tactics of Social Democracy.
“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.”
And, the same is rue of imperialism, the highest, most dynamic, and rational form of capitalism. It creates the world economy, and drives towards a single world market, free from the restrictions of borders, and so also creates a global working-class, as opposed to a series of working classes, divided by nationality. But, the drive to abolish those national borders, progressive in itself, is done via wars and annexations, as one nation state seeks to impose itself.
In the same way, therefore, the historic mission of imperialism is objectively progressive, but that does not mean that we have to see that role of militarism, and imperialist war as progressive, any more than we must see the role of the state, and its police and army, in breaking strikes, as progressive. What is progressive is the socialist opposition to such wars, and the alternative to it that such opposition engenders. Nevertheless, as Trotsky pointed out, so long as we are not able to overthrow capitalism, and its state, we will have imperialist wars and militarism, as the cost of that progress.
“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.”
It does not require socialists to acquiesce in it, any more than in the strike-breaking activities of the police, but to simply bemoan both, without explaining their necessity, under capitalism, and so the need to overthrow it, is just bourgeois moralising.
“The good side and the bad side, the advantages and drawbacks, taken together form for M. Proudhon the contradiction in every economic category.
The problem to be solved: to keep the good side, while eliminating the bad.” (p 103)
As Lenin describes, this was also the method of the Narodniks. They wanted the aspects of Russian feudal/Asiatic society they considered “good”, such as independent small commodity production, labour-service, rather than money economy, and village production, but without the landlordism and so on that was the “bad” side of that society, but which was equally inseparable from it. What is more, as Lenin describes, the small commodity production they sought to defend leads inevitably, via competition, to money economy, to differentiation into bourgeois and proletarians, and, thereby, to the capitalism they believed was some kind of abnormal path of development for Russia. The same reactionary ideas can be seen in the arguments of “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists” today.
The petty-bourgeoisie, is inevitably nationalistic, because its activities/revenues are constrained within national bounds, and its power resides in its numbers, in determining the outcome of national elections. The Tory government of Thatcher, rested upon the votes of the petty-bourgeoisie, and, as it grew in size, was increasingly dependent upon it. In the past, the Tories, like Labour, had ensured that, in government, they acted in the interests of the ruling class, and large-scale, multinational capital. However, the Tories, now, increasingly dominated, in their membership, by this rising petty-bourgeoisie, were faced with the dilemma of reconciling its small business rhetoric with its big business policies. Its international equivalents, such as the Republicans, in the US, faced the same problem. The rise of the Tea Party, in the US, and of UKIP in the UK, made that dilemma apparent.
The development of Thatcher, during the period, was symbolic. In the early 1980's, Thatcher was the champion of the ruling-class. That ruling-class needed the development of larger single markets, and states, as symbolised by the EU. It was Thatcher that promoted the ideas of the EU Single Market, which, implicitly – because any such single market requires a common currency, a single fiscal regime and so on – requires a single state determining those rules and regulations, and enforcing them, i.e. involved a process of political union. It is only in the late 1980's, as the pressure of this growing petty-bourgeoisie imposes itself on the Tories, that Thatcher abandoned those earlier positions, and becomes increasingly nationalistic and Eurosceptic. However, illustrating the power of the ruling-class, it was also her undoing, as the Tories replaced her with the more EU friendly John Major, instituting the period of internecine warfare that has torn the Tories apart for the last 30 years.
The rise, fall and rise again of Cameron is indicative of these processes taking place in society, and reflected in the political realm, not just within the Tories, but also within the Labour Party. In the post-war period, the Labour Party continued to reflect the past imperialist glory days of Britain, and the delusion that it could stand alone. That baton had passed to the US, and was increasingly, also, taken up by the EEC, as well as Japan, and, in the last twenty years, China and India. As Britain's nearest, and largest, trading partner, the growth of the EEC, represented the most immediate challenge, squeezing British capital. Social-democracy is based on the ideology of the professional middle-class, and its intermediating role between capital and labour (it distinguishes the middle-class from the petty-bourgeoisie, and the latter's ownership of small scale capital).
The reality was that, by the 1960's, British capital was simply too puny to compete with the large economic blocs of the US, EEC, and Japan. The only rational capitalist solution was for Britain to join the EEC. Of course, that did not mean that Marxists had to advocate such a capitalist solution. Our solution was for a Socialist United States of Europe. For workers, “In or Out, The Fight Goes On”. However, that did not mean that we were indifferent on the matter either. A look at Marx's argument in his Speech On The Question of Free Trade, illustrates the point. In it, Marx sets out that both protectionism and free trade are merely strategies used by the ruling class to further their own ends, at any given time, and both used against the interests of workers. However, as Marx sets out in Wage, Labour and Capital, the best conditions for workers exist when capital is able to expand freely, and rapidly. Free trade facilitates that, and heightens the contradictions within it.
“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade.”
“The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system.
Indirectly, however, it interests us inasmuch as we must desire as the present system of production to develop and expand as freely and as quickly as possible: because along with it will develop also those economic phenomena which are its necessary consequences, and which must destroy the whole system:”
The reality was that history had shown, in 1848, as analysed by Marx and Engels, that the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie are not reliable allies, for the simple reason that their interests are fundamentally antagonistic to those of the working-class, even if they might share superficial and ephemeral interests in opposing some other force, for example, feudalism or fascism, or colonialism. In the period before the working-class becomes a significant force in its own right, the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie do not need to concern themselves with it. That's one reason, also, why, in these early bourgeois revolutions, the bourgeoisie does not even consider giving workers, or even the petty-bourgeoisie, the vote. But, once capitalism had grown significantly, and the workers did constitute such a force, the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie needed it to achieve their goal, but feared it pushing beyond them into proletarian revolution, i.e. the revolution in permanence, described by Marx.
That doesn't change the fact that workers, in order to move forward to Socialism, cannot be indifferent to the need to oppose the continuance of feudal relations, or attempts to turn back bourgeois-democracy, based on large-scale socialise capital – social-democracy – by the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, or attacks on bourgeois-democratic freedoms, by fascists. And, as Lenin pointed out, colonial revolutions have the same character as bourgeois-democratic revolutions, against feudalism. What it does mean is that, in all these instances, the workers have to recognise that they only share the same path as the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie for part of the way. At a certain point, the bourgeoisie will cosh the workers over the head, leaving them bleeding on the ground, as they rush off down a different path.
To guard against that, the workers have to ensure that they march separately, formed up in their own ranks, and with one eye on their unreliable, bourgeois allies. For the same reasons, the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie are always likely to make alliances with their former opponents, against their new proletarian opponents. The bourgeoisie not only adopted much of the frippery and lifestyle of the old landed aristocracy, but became owners of landed property, and married into the aristocracy itself. As both exploiters, they found it easy to establish their common class hostility to labour, which is why the early bourgeois demands for land nationalisation disappeared. The same is true with the relation between the comprador bourgeoisie to the colonial power, whose interests become closely interlinked.
As for fascism, it is a social force based upon the petty-bourgeoisie that sees its own approaching demise, as its squeezed by big capital, on one side, and organised labour, on the other. Its interests are hostile to both those of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, being based upon a reactionary, petty-bourgeois, “anti-capitalism”, most visible in the form of Strasserism, but also in the way former “national socialists”, like Mussolini, Mosely and Pilsudski adopt it, as their chosen vehicle. So long as this petty-bourgeois mass is opposed by the bourgeoisie, and its state, that state, itself, prevents the growth of fascism, as seen in the way the state put down the Jan. 6th “coup”, and has pursued not only the fascists involved, but Trump, as their figurehead.
There is no reason, in these conditions, for workers to subordinate their class struggle, against capital, to the idea of an alliance with the bourgeoisie against fascism. On the contrary, the lack of class struggle, and of progressive alternatives is one reason that fascism is able to grow, not only amongst the petty-bourgeoisie, but also sections of the backward workers. But, in the crisis phase of the long wave, such as that which ran from around 1914-26, and again from around 1974-86, when the bourgeoisie fears the threat from the workers, it allies with that petty-bourgeoisie, and utilises its fascistic methods, to attack the workers organisations, rights and freedoms. Its why the idea of an alliance with it against fascism is disastrously nonsensical.
So, for example, its when Italian workers present their own solutions to the crisis in the 1920's, by setting up workers' control, and workers' councils that Italian fascism is called upon. And the same is true in Germany, Austria and across Europe, including Britain. The US which only entered this period after 1929, saw a similar process, with prominent sections of the ruling class, such as Henry Ford being notable supporters of fascism in the US, and of Hitler in Germany. The greater the threat perceived by the bourgeoisie, from labour, the more they are led to seek to save their own skin by a reliance on the petty-bourgeoisie and its fascist organisations. There is nothing more idiotic, therefore, in such conditions, than appealing to that same bourgeoisie to form an alliance with workers to fight it, as the experience in Spain illustrated. In no conditions, therefore, is there a basis for workers to subordinate their class interests to those of the bourgeoisie, or to suspend the class struggle for the purpose of fighting fascism.
Bonapartism always bases itself on these large petty-bourgeois forces, and utilises appeals to “anti-capitalism” (Strasserism), or “anti-imperialism” (Chiang Kai Shek, Mao, Ho, Castro, Khomeini, Chavez, Hamas, Zionism, Putin, Zelensky et al), in one form or another. However, having seized political power, it has to deal with reality. In conditions where no ruling class exercises direct, political control over the state, Bonapartism, becomes fused with the state itself, as seen, by the fact that coups are usually undertaken, not by the military top brass, but by the non-commissioned officers, the colonel's coup, and so on. But, whether the ruling class exercises direct political control over the state or not, it remains the state of the ruling-class, and that reality imposes itself, in the fact that the state must act accordingly, to defend and protect the property of that ruling-class, i.e. must defend and promote that property upon which the fortune of the state itself depends.
As Marx, Engels and Lenin described, after Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, although Tsarism continued to exercise control of the political regime, the Russian state, itself, was forced to act in the interests of capitalist property, not the old feudal and Asiatic forms of property upon which Tsarism rested. Engels makes a similar point in his analysis of The Peasant War in Germany. But, in developed capitalist economies, over the last 40 years, a peculiar situation arose. In newly developing economies, a national bourgeoisie is absolutely weak; in conditions such as in Italy, in the 1920's, or Germany in the 1930's, it is only relatively weak, due to a serious challenge from a large, revolutionary proletariat, and, so, the ruling class is led into an alliance with the petty-bourgeoisie, and falls back on some form of Bonapartism/fascism.
However, in the last 40 years, the ruling class has been strong, and firmly in control of the state, whilst the proletariat has been weak and subdued, following the global defeats of the 1980's. During that period, it was the petty-bourgeoisie that became numerically larger, and socially more powerful. That is unusual. Marx described why, like the peasantry, it is a transitional class. The process of differentiation, by which competition drove out the least efficient, small commodity producers, throwing them into the proletariat, whilst turning the more efficient into capitalist producers, continually acts to squeeze and diminish, the size of the petty-bourgeoisie. But, in the 1980's, a series of developments in the advanced capitalist economies, which I had described at the time, turned this process on its head.
As these economies entered a period of long wave stagnation, and intensive accumulation, unemployment rose, whilst the expansion of large-scale industrial capital was constrained. In addition, whole swathes of industrial production, now, requiring only large quantities of cheap, unskilled, machine minding labour, was shifted to China, and other parts of Asia. That facilitated the growth of capital, and the bourgeoisie and proletariat, in those locations, at the expense of those classes in the developed economies. The ruling class, which now owns its wealth, not in the form of industrial capital, but of fictitious-capital (shares, bonds, and their derivatives) had no problem with that, as it does not matter whether it owns shares/bonds, and so derives dividends/interest, in firms whose production is in China, India, or Vietnam, rather than in Britain, France or the US. However, it can be seen how this process does provide fuel for the nationalistic rhetoric of those who use it to appeal to those that lost out in this process of globalisation.
The expansion of capital, and so of the domestic markets, in developing economies, also, necessarily leads to an expansion, also, of their own petty-bourgeoisie, as it expands to meet the needs of expanding local markets for commodities. However, the biggest relative increase, comes in the developed economies. The number of small businesses, in Britain, expanded from 2.4 million in 1980, to 3.6 million in 1989.
Proudhon believes he is applying the dialectical method to his analysis, but the method consists only in an application of Kantian Moralism, of the division of phenomena into opposing “good” and “bad” sides. It is the method of petty-bourgeois, moral socialism, still seen to this day. As Marx points out, the Hegelian dialectic is amoral. It sets itself no problems to resolve, no moral imperative to achieve.
“Hegel has no problems to formulate. He has only dialectics. M. Proudhon has nothing of Hegel's dialectics but the language. For him the dialectic movement is the dogmatic distinction between good and bad.” (p 105)
The Marxist dialectic is also amoral. Socialism is not considered as some “good” moral imperative that socialists must strive to achieve, in the way of Christians achieving the Kingdom of Heaven, but as simply the scientifically determined culmination of human social evolution, as uncovered by the theory of historical materialism, and driven by The Law of Value, just as biological evolution is explained by the theory of evolution, driven by The Law of Natural Selection.
The differences and consequence can be seen in Marx's discussion of the difference between Sismondi and Ricardo, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9. Sismondi's moral socialism led him to see the “good” side of capitalism in its development of the productive forces. However, he saw that this led not only to the dispossession of means of production from the small producer, but also leads to an overproduction of commodities that creates misery. In order to avoid this “bad” side, he advocated his “anti-capitalist” agenda, based on slowing down economic development, and seeking to maintain small-scale, independent, petty-bourgeois production. The same approach was taken by the Narodniks, and can be seen in the politics of various “green” organisations, as well as various “anti-capitalist” and “anti-imperialist” groups. As Marx and Lenin describe, it is a thoroughly reactionary ideology.
By contrast, Ricardo argued for “production for production's sake”, and the most rapid development of the productive forces. He, along with Mill and Say, rejected the idea that this could lead to a general overproduction of commodities, which, at the time he was writing, had not yet been witnessed. Marx, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, sets out why they were wrong in that assumption, and Sismondi was right, though not for the reasons he describes, and yet Marx still describes Ricardo's position as progressive. The reason being that the solution to the problem Sismondi identified comes not from trying to hold back social development, but from the more rapid progress that Ricardo promoted.
That progress not only creates the productive forces required for a much more developed form of social organisation, creates a global economy, and monopolies whose production can be more easily planned and regulated, but also creates the working-class as the progressive agent that brings about this change in society. Yet, on the basis of the moral socialist philosophy, this working-class would be seen as “bad”, to be eradicated, because of its dispossessed, and impoverished condition.
Indeed, as Marx sets out, later, it is always this “bad” side of phenomena that acts as the progressive element. It was, for example, the serfs that provided the basis of the independent commodity producers that differentiated into bourgeois and proletarians, and drove society forward from feudalism to capitalism.
The Tories described this week's Budget as a budget for growth, and so on, but the actual purpose of the Budget was to prepare for an early General Election. My last year's prediction of an Autumn election, clearly, is not going to be fulfilled, but the likelihood of a Winter 2023/2024 or Spring 2024, election, now looks probable. Suggestions are for a May election, but I suspect the Tories may go before that.
Nearly all of the reasons I set out, before, for an Autumn 2023 election continue to hold, but its just deferred for several months. I doubt the Tories will be planning a further give away budget in Spring, as some have suggested, in the hope of sparking an inflationary boom, to give them a poll boost later in 2024. I have also heard some people talk about the Tories engaging in a scorched Earth policy of wrecking everything, knowing they are going to lose. That seems to say more about those suggesting that possibility, and a failure to understand the role of the Tories. The Tories hope to return to government, and such a mindless, scorched Earth tantrum, is no way to achieve that. However, the Tories have almost certainly realised that the next election is lost, and are preparing for the one after.
The Budget was geared to that, and is reminiscent of the kind of strategic budgets of Osborne, designed to lay traps for Labour, prior to elections, and goes along with the return of Cameron to government, and the defeat of the petty-bourgeois wing of the Tory party, destroyed, in practice, by Truss, and buried by Braverman. In fact, the idiocy and tailism of Starmer's Blue Labour has made that strategy easy for the Tories. In some ways its a repeat of the experience of Blairism and New Labour.
The seeds of the global financial crash in 2008, were actually laid by the policies of Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980's. It was during that time that the conditions for the blowing up of huge asset price bubbles were created, and economies were switched over to the idea that wealth could be created out of thin air, simply by the inflation of such asset prices, confusing that paper wealth, with real wealth, created by the expansion of capital. That increase of real wealth, increasingly occurred in China, and other parts of the industrialising world. It was compounded when the delusion of this paper wealth, and the contradictions it entailed, was shattered by the global crash of 1987, which then led central banks to begin the process of liquidity injections to push asset prices back up, each time requiring a larger injection of liquidity, like a junkie requiring ever larger, more frequent fixes.
But, New Labour, as with Clinton's Democrats, simply adopted that same model, in the mid and late 90's, even though global material conditions were changing, and the underlying contradiction of that model was there for all to see, if only they looked. New Labour, like the Clinton Democrats, of course, represented the interests of the ruling class, a ruling class that now owns its wealth in the form of that fictitious capital (shares, bonds, property and their derivatives), rather than in the form of real capital, and which had become addicted to the capital gains arising from annual speculative rises in asset prices. Governments, too, saw it as free money, on the basis of the ability to continually expand credit, collateralised on ever rising asset prices. Forget about funding elderly social care, you can just fund it from your massively inflated house price, for example! Sheer delusion, as was, if you considered it, apparent, and later became apparent, even to those that had done their best not to consider it.
Those asset price bubbles, inflated from the 1980's, pumped up via the removal of credit controls, in 1986, and financial deregulation, were the work of Tories and Republicans, but the likes of Clinton and Blair were culpable for continuing with them, in the late 90's, and early 2000's, leading up to the crash of 2008. In Britain, that meant that the Tories, in 2010, could lyingly blame Labour profligacy for the effects of that global crash on the British economy. The last Budget is creating the conditions for a repeat performance, and Blue Labour has created an open goal for them to do so.
The last time around, Blair and New Labour were guilty, not just of continuing with the Tory delusion of paper wealth created from thin air, as a result of asset price inflation – an identical delusion to that presented by MMT, of being able to create “money” or wealth, by simply printing money tokens and throwing them into circulation - but of the usual tailism of social-democracy, which left them being timid in their policies, which, then, left them pursuing policies that were no longer relevant to changed conditions.
In the changed conditions of long wave expansion, after 1999, the secular fall in global interest rates of the previous 20 years, could not continue. The demand for money-capital, globally, would rise, relative to its supply, causing interest rates to rise. Rising interest rates would cause asset prices to fall, making the model of that previous 20 years, based on continual inflation of asset prices, doomed. That was proved by the 2008 global crash. It required policies more like those of the 1950's, and 60's, embracing those higher interest rates, as a consequence of a rise in growth and capital accumulation. But, New Labour continued to see the world through the lens of the previous twenty years, and the needs of the ruling class for those inflated asset prices. Indeed, as it sought to win the votes of the chimerical “centre-ground” of middle-class voters, who had seen their house prices rise, astronomically, from the 1980's, they saw the electoral attractions of continuing that “wealth effect”, as an alternative to wage rises, too.
In fact, far from profligacy, New Labour was typically guilty of that tailism and timidity. As I pointed out at the time, the average budget deficit under New Labour, up to the financial crash, was half that of the Thatcher/Major years. Indeed, New Labour ran budget surpluses in four of those years, whereas Thatcher/Major had only managed a surplus in just two years, out of their total 18 years in government. But, it was Labour that was in government when the crash happened, and, despite the facts, the Tories were able to pin the blame on it, and to use it to spin all of these other lies, setting up the ground for them to win the 2010 General Election, and repeat the trick in 2015. Now, they are set up to do it again.
It is the Tories, racked for the last 30 years by the contradiction resulting from its petty-bourgeois base, and its need to address the needs of the ruling-class that collapsed into domination by the former, at the expense of the latter, as it embarked on the lunacy of Brexit. Ever since 1987, Labour had escaped its own economic nationalist lunacy, in that regard, as it embraced the limited progressive internationalism of the EU. So, it is unfathomable, other than recognising the usual tailism and opportunism of Labourism, why Starmer, the arch-Remainer, in 2015 through 2019, should, now, at the moment that Brexit nationalism is collapsing, has made it the centre piece of his agenda!
Recognising the history of such opportunism and tailism, it then becomes obvious why Starmer has done so, as, rather than providing any kind of leadership, undertaking any kind of analysis of conditions, he continues to look backwards for inspiration, and to a narrow electoralist search for the votes of those that previously pushed through the Brexit idiocy, even as those voters themselves abandon it. Starmer is, now, tied to his reactionary nationalist agenda. But, even in the red wall seats, a clear majority of Labour's 2017 voters voted Remain, and, as the failure of Brexit becomes even more recognised those that didn't are increasingly switching.
It was never a crucial issue to begin with, as the repeated failure of UKIP in general elections showed. It was only significant to the Tories, because, the ability of UKIP to snap at their heels, taking away members and voters, was enough to facilitate Labour winning elections.
For the Tories, it was a dilemma, because although it sought to accommodate those reactionary petty-bourgeois core elements of its membership, and voter base, it, in like fashion, not only alienated it from the ruling class, but also from another component of its core membership and voter base, the professional middle-class, as witnessed in its loss of Blue Wall seats to the Liberals and so on. The electoral calculus for the Tories has changed. If you are challenging for government, the loss of several thousand core votes to UKIP, in marginal seats, may cost you the seat and a majority. If you know you have little chance of obtaining a majority, then, focusing on losing marginal votes to Reform, loses out to a focus on losing core votes to the Liberals and Greens, or simply apathy. In short, the Tories are set up to drop Brexit and distance themselves from its failure, leaving an incoming, jingoistic and Brexity Blue Labour to be associated with its failure, and so blamed for it come the following election.
The Tories made various promises of tax cuts, which did not appear in the Budget, for example, a proposal for halving Inheritance Tax rates. They have upgraded benefits in line with inflation, and pensions in line with the Triple Lock. As commentators have pointed out, the £19 billion cut in National Insurance, does not even restore the earlier £80 billion of tax rises, implemented by Hunt to deal with the crisis following the idiocy of the Truss government, in 2022. The OBR has also pointed out that it will have little effect on growth, and, indeed, the projections for all future years have been revised down. Moreover, the £19 billion of tax cuts is about the same as the real terms cuts in public spending, and with some spending protected, that would mean much bigger cuts in other departments.
The reality is that those cuts are never likely to occur, or be possible. But, if the Tories hold an election some time between January and April (when they would be expected to have a Spring Budget), they can avoid discussing that, and present Blue Labour with a problem. The fact that Hunt is bringing in the National Insurance cut in January, rather than waiting till the start of the new tax year, in April, reinforces that idea. Holding an election before any new Budget means that voters will have been teased with an existing tax cut, and the promise of more, in the way of cuts in Inheritance Tax, Income Tax and so on. The lure will be, vote for us and get these tax cuts, or vote for Labour and get tax rises.
In fact, the existing tax cuts, let alone the promised ones are not sustainable, because the corresponding spending cuts they entail are not feasible. If the Tories won the election, they would have to accept that reality, and face either raising taxes themselves, or increasing borrowing, at a time of rising global interest rates that are already increasing debt servicing costs, substantially. But, voters will not see that, or follow the intricacies of government financing. They will see an existing tax cut, and promise of more to come. Not enough to enable the Tories to pull off some miraculous escape from the jaws of defeat, but enough to minimise the damage done to them in their core Blue Wall constituencies.
It will, again, be Labour that has to deal with the reality, and clean up the mess, as has happened on so many occasions in the past. Blue Labour and Starmer can be counted on to do that by attacking their own core support amongst the working-class, as Blair did, in much more favourable conditions, Wilson and Callaghan did in the 1960's, and 70's, and as Starmer is already doing with his hostility to strikes, and his adoption of Brexit jingoism. Blue Labour has boxed itself in. It has said it will not raise taxes, but even to get public spending back to 2010 levels requires an additional £150 billion. It can't get that money by chattering on about its “values”, or promises about using tax from “non-doms”, or removing charitable status from private schools. Nor, given its commitment to continuing the Brexit idiocy is it going to be able to rely on higher rates of growth to finance it.
In fact, that same Brexit idiocy creates further problems. The “non-doms” proposals, and, indeed, any other proposals for tax rises, assumes that those subject to those taxes, do not respond accordingly. With Britain having become at the forefront of seizing the assets of foreigners, many of them will increasingly view it as a dangerous location.
Non-doms can simply do what many others have already done, and move to the EU, or simply to one of the many British tax havens, such as the Channel Islands, Isle of Man etc. Rather than increasing tax revenues, it could result in a fall. Brexit Britain is already losing out competitively to the much larger EU, and worsening that competitive position by higher taxes, decaying infrastructure and so on will only compound the problem, and accelerate British decline.
By championing a clearly disastrous Brexit, and promoting the old cakist nonsense about Labour “renegotiating” a better Brexit deal, Blue Labour is taking responsibility, and, thereby, blame for that Brexit failure, at the time that everyone recognises that failure, and the Tories are escaping from it. At every step, as the election campaign proceeds in the coming months, the Tories will simply challenge Blue Labour to say whether they will reverse the tax cuts implemented, and whether they would introduce those the Tories are promising. Blue Labour with its timid and tailist politics, not to mention its constriction inside the box of its “fiscal responsibility”, will have to jump, feet first, into that trap. Either tax cuts, or spending cuts. The Blue Labour spokespeople have repeatedly failed to spell out their tax and spending plans on the basis of arguing that an election is a year away. If, in January, the Tories call an election for March, that, in itself, would wrong-foot Labour, requiring them to hurriedly draw up those tax and spend policies.
But, given the timid and tailist nature of Blue Labour, and its commitment to the disaster of Brexit, winning the election is only the start of its problems. From day one, it will be a series of failures and reversals. The promised Brexit “renegotiation” is impossible, other than negotiating for an even more subservient relation. The only sensible negotiation would be to re-join the EU, but Starmer has boxed himself in on that score. There is one obvious solution to that. Ditch Starmer as Leader! But, even a casual look around Brexit Britain shows the deep state of decay it is suffering. Its not just the collapse of the NHS, the concrete in schools, and public buildings, the lack of any decent social housing, the collapse of the road system and so on. The town and city centres are in terminal decay, because, for years governments have tried to sustain them with subsidies and schemes, which meant subsidising a dead model that was appropriate to the twentieth century, but irrelevant to the 21st century age of the Internet.
All of that, together with the fact that, from the 1980's on, conservative policies facilitated the growth of the petty-bourgeois, self-employed and so on, which is the basis of under-employment, and low levels of productivity, requiring a wholesale restructuring of the economy, which requires huge amounts of actual investment – as opposed to the speculation in stock and bond markets – way in excess even of what McDonnell and Corbyn's Labour was proposing. Brexit will continue to fail, and Blue Labour will carry the can for it; the economy will continue to deteriorate; taxes will rise, and spending continue to be constrained; the promised “renegotiation” is impossible, and so will also fail.
As with Biden in the US, Hollande, and now, Macron in France, Scholtz in Germany and so on, the timidity and tailism will lead to disaster, and electoral defeat. The Tories, with voters taste for Brexit having been soured, will stand ready to offer them a return to sweetness and light in 2028/9.
There is a certain symmetry to the return of David Cameron to government. In 2012, I wrote of the rising challenge of Boris Johnson to David Cameron, and its Shakespearean overtones. It reinforced the points, made earlier that year, in my posts comparing the challenge of Johnson to that of Louis Bonaparte, described by Marx, in The Eighteenth Brumaire. In both cases, what was involved was a rising social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie, and its political reflection. The petty-bourgeoisie, as Marx describes, like the peasantry, is too amorphous, too individualistic, to become the ruling-class. Its power, as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky describe, resides in its numbers, which is most apparent when it can be mobilised electorally. It lacks the ownership of the large scale means of production, and control of the state, of the bourgeoisie, and the concentrated economic and industrial power of the proletariat, arising from its relation to those means of production.
It explains the different tactics and strategies of these different classes. The bourgeoisie, relies on its ability to withhold capital, and to utilise its permanent state, including standing armies, whilst the proletariat uses its ability to withhold labour, to occupy and seize control of the means of production, concentrated in the large urban areas, whereas the petty-bourgeoisie, like the peasantry before it, is forced to resort to individualist acts of terror, and destruction of property, and a strategy of rural and urban guerrilla warfare, as seen in the tactics and strategy of Maoism, Guevarism and other forms of petty-bourgeois nationalism. The proletariat, too, must resort to violence, but, as Trotsky describes, in relation to the Chinese Revolution, that violence, to defend itself, flows, also, from its tactics and strategy.
Having undertaken strikes, it must organise defence squads to protect picket lines; having occupied workplaces, it must defend them against attempts by the state, and/or fascist gangs (be it those of the national bourgeoisie, or those used by some foreign colonial/imperialist state) to recapture them, and that defence involves the creation of proletarian, democratic structures (factory committees, soviets etc.), which, in turn, ensures the arming of the workers, creation of workers' militia and so on. The very workers' occupation of factories, and control of production, in arms industries, becomes, also, the means of arming the workers, and carrying through a process of permanent revolution, in the main urban centres.
As Marx described, in conditions where the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie forms a sizeable social force, however, whilst the other social classes are weak (which may be for a variety of reasons, including both the bourgeoisie and proletariat cancelling each other out), the petty-bourgeoisie can be mobilised under a strong, charismatic leader (Bonaparte), that counteracts the diffuse nature of those social forces, by imposing order and discipline on them, from above, usually on the basis of an appeal against some “other”, requiring a strong state to ensure “order”. Being “against” something, rather than “for” something, is the simplest means of effecting such fragile unity, because it remains vague, whereas, any attempt to present a positive political programme, soon, exposes the diffuse nature of the petty-bourgeoisie, and the contradictions within it (as is also the case with Popular Frontism).
The strength of the petty-bourgeoisie, as stated above, lies in its numbers, which, as Trotsky describes, is most apparent when it is simply a matter of counting up votes. That has been manifest in recent decades, for example, with the mobilisation of the votes of the petty-bourgeoisie “against” the EU, which was really a vote “against” immigrants, and against foreigners in general, who were presented as a threat to the defence of the fatherland, of national sovereignty and national self-determination. It always breaks down, once it becomes a matter of plotting a positive course forward, as happened with the reality of Brexit faced by the Tories, and the reality of Trump's Presidency. The most obvious manifestation, was the ultimate Brexit madness embodied in the few weeks of the Truss government, in 2022.
Further intervention, in Russia, by imperialism, was deterred, not by the Stalinists adopting a diplomatic and timid response to it, but by the defeat inflicted on it by the Red Army, the strengthening of the workers' state, and, by the growth of revolutionary parties in the imperialist heartlands, taking the fight to it. Weakening any of that could only act to embolden imperialism, and make further intervention more likely. The same was true in China.
“Only a revolution on whose banner the toilers and oppressed write plainly their own demands is capable of gripping the feelings not only of the international proletariat but also of the soldiers of capital.” (p 64)
That is, again, true, in relation to Ukraine and Russia, today. If the camp of social-imperialists that back Ukraine truly sought to protect it from attack, and imperialist intervention, they would abandon their cringing sycophancy to Zelensky, and his NATO imperialist backers, and call for a revolutionary programme, to organise Ukrainian workers against them. If the opposing camp of social-imperialists, backing Putin's Russia, truly fear, and seek to avoid, imperialist intevention in Russia, they would abandon their sycophantic support for Putin, and, instead, propose a revolutionary programme for Russian workers, to oppose Russia's war, and to overthrow Putin's right-wing capitalist regime. That would be a basis to build genuine international workers' solidarity for such socialist rather than nationalist struggles, and to spread that revolutionary movement across the globe, thereby, keeping the imperialists occupied at home.
“The compromising and traitorous leadership did not protect Nanking from destruction. It facilitated the penetration of the enemy ships into the Yangtze. A revolutionary leadership, with a powerful social movement, can make the waters of the Yangtze too hot for the ships of Lloyd George, Chamberlain and MacDonald. In any case, this is the only way and the only hope of defence.” (p 64)
The function of Marxism, Trotsky says, is to foresee what is to come, based upon an understanding of social laws, and how they are currently unfolding in the real world. Einstein commented that the definition of stupidity is performing the same experiment over and over, and each time expecting a different result. Put another way, those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to relive them. When it comes to leaders of the labour movement, it is not only, or mainly them that suffer the consequences, but the entire working-class. The reformists, opportunists and centrists, of course, always refuse to learn these lessons, because their politics is always based on the idea that each event is unique or discrete and unconnected to other events.
The whole basis of opportunism, or practical politics, is to try to gain short-term popularity, which translates into votes – usually votes in elections to parliamentary bodies, but also in union, student and other such elections – by tailing the prevailing majority public opinion, in the given social milieu. Hence Starmer, the arch-Remainer, of yesterday, becomes the champion of Brexitism, jingoism and sovereigntism, today. It is politics devoid of any anchor in principle, derived from a scientific analysis of social movement. It is also why the opportunist rails against the idea of external interference or criticism of their position, insisting that only they understand the national peculiarities that mean that “this time its different.”
"An individual, a group, a party, or a class that 'objectively' picks its nose while it watches men drunk with blood massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm-eaten while it is still alive".
(Trotsky - The Balkan Wars)
The western bourgeois media continually portray the genocide being committed by the Zionist state, as a war of "Israel v Hamas". They and the Zionist/imperialist apologists such as the AWL, Paul Mason et al, continue to frame this in the context of the right of the clerical-fascist, Zionist state to "self-defence"!!!
Yet, the genocidal nature of what is happening in Gaza - and developing in the occupied West Bank - is clearly not focused on Hamas - an organisation that Netanyahu previously fostered - but on all Palestinians, indeed, increasingly directed specifically to schools and hospitals. The scale of the genocide, already exceeds the number of civilian casualties in other recent conflicts.
And, we have become used to the exposition of the shockingly racist, and anti-Semitic nature of the views of many of those opposed to Israel being rightly exposed and condemned, but the Zionists and the apologists of Zionism/imperialism have been less forthcoming when it comes to the openly racist, genocidal blood lust being openly proclaimed by the Zionist regime and its media, as they continue to justify that genocide as being only a question of the right of the Zionist state to defend itself! But, that blood lust is, now, there for all to see.
In the real world, things exist before the idea of them exists. For example, oxygen exists, and its only after extensive, scientific research that the idea of oxygen comes into existence, and it is given a name. Before that, the effects of oxygen, for example, on combustion, are noted, but explained not by oxygen, but by phlogiston. Similarly, value exists long before the idea of value exists. Value is labour, and, because Man must engage in labour, value, thereby, exists, even though Man does not give it this name. In fact, as Marx says, the first etymological uses of the word ”value” or “worth” relate not to value or labour, but to use value/utility.
It is the development of value, from being the individual value of the product, to the social/market value of the commodity, and the expression of this market value, relative to other commodities, as exchange-value, and to money, as price, which leads to the idea of value, exchange-value, and price. But, Proudhon works in the opposite direction. He proceeds from the idea of value and other economic categories.
“The production relations of every society form a whole. M. Proudhon considers economic relations as so many social phases, engendering one another, resulting one from the other like the antithesis from the thesis, and realizing in their logical sequence the impersonal reason of humanity.” (p 102)
But, this presents a problem, for Proudhon's method, and, indeed, for all those who consider that value is something that springs into existence, fully formed, with commodity production and exchange, or worse, only with capitalism. The real development of value, in the material world, described above, enables this real development to be reflected in the realm of ideas, but how can you have the development of the idea of price, without, first, the idea of exchange-value; how can you have the idea of exchange-value without first the idea of social/market value; and how can you have the idea of social value without first having the idea of individual value? Marx sets this out, at length, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20.
“... when he comes to examine a single one of these phases, M. Proudhon cannot explain it without having recourse to all the other relations of society; which relations, however, he has not yet made his dialectic movement engender. When, after that, M. Proudhon, by means of pure reason, proceeds to give birth to these other phases, he treats them as if they were new-born babes. He forgets that they are of the same age as the first.” (p 102-3)
And, this is the problem for all those who argue that value only comes into existence with commodity production/capitalism, and argue that The Law of Value exists only under capitalism, conflating value with exchange-value. Its like arguing that oxygen only comes into existence after scientists isolated it and named it. This method is typical of bourgeois ideology, and deals with phenomenon as simply a series of discrete things, or events, like a series of still photographs, rather than a moving film. It operates on the basis of formal logic, rather than dialectics.
“Thus, to arrive at the constitution of value, which for him is the basis of all economic evolutions, he could not do without division of labour, competition, etc. Yet in the series, in the understanding of M. Proudhon, in the logical sequence, these relations did not yet exist.
In constructing the edifice of an ideological system by means of the categories of political economy, the limbs of the social system are dislocated. The different limbs of society are converted into so many separate societies, following one upon the other. How, indeed, could the single logical formula of movement, of sequence, of time, explain the structure of society, in which all relations coexist simultaneously and support one another?” (p 103)
In the stages theory, all of the institutions and organisations of bourgeois-democracy, created under pressure from the ruling-class, constitute a great historical stage, to which the policy must adapt, even though all of these institutions represent a “barrier for the revolutionary class movement.” (p 62) For the opportunist, they represent ends in themselves, much as with the bourgeois demand for national self-determination, and means by which the workers obtain breathing space, rather than acting to derail and divert the actual revolutionary movement.
And, the tailist nature of this opportunism is reflected in the fact that it sees this breathing space as necessary for as long as the workers have, themselves, not gone beyond it, to a revolutionary consciousness, as though this is something that materialises spontaneously, at some future appointed time, rather than being something that is generated by the interaction of the masses and their material conditions, with the revolutionary party, and its programme.
“Once we set out on this road, our policy must be inevitably transformed from a revolutionary factor into a conservative one. The course of the Chinese revolution and the fate of the Anglo-Russian Committee are an imminent warning in this regard.” (p 62)
By accepting the idea of non-interference, the Stalinists strengthened all of the backward and reactionary sentiments, not only in the global labour movement, but in the USSR too. Its no wonder that, given the travails of Russian workers in the previous decade, a certain war weariness set in. The concept of building Socialism In One Country appealed to it. Stalin said, basically, if imperialism will leave us alone, we can get on with the job of building Socialism, here, in the USSR. Of course, that was not true, but also required a big if, in that imperialism would not leave them alone. But, the response to that was, the, we shall do whatever is required to discourage it from doing so, and give it no excuse for doing so, by being as timid as possible, and building diplomatic relations.
However, that was the reverse of the policy required.
“An unavoidable temporary weakening of the revolutionary positions is in itself a great evil. It can become irreparable for a long time if the orientation is wrong, if the strategic line is false. Precisely now, in the period of a temporary revolutionary ebb, the struggle against all manifestations of opportunism and national limitedness and for the line of revolutionary internationalism is more necessary than ever.” (p 63)
The imperialist armies had attacked Russia, when they thought it was weak, in 1918, but had been defeated by the Red Army, and retreated. In China, the CP had cavilled and compromised, assuming a timid and diplomatic approach, but the consequence had not only been Chiang Kai Shek's coup, but also British and other imperialist warships up the Yangtse, and the attack on Nanking. The Royal Navy sent a heavy cruiser, the appropriately named, HMS Vindictive, and the light cruisers HMS Carlisle, Caradoc and Emerald, the minesweeper HMS Petersfield, the gunboat Gnat, and the destroyers HMS Witherington, Wolsey, Wishart, Veteran, Verity and Wild Swan. The gunboat HMS Aphis arrived toward the end of the engagement, and HMS Cricket was also involved in the naval operations at the time. Five American destroyers were also sent to engage the NRA; including USS Noa under Roy C. Smith, William B. Preston, John D. Ford, Pillsbury and Simpson. The Italian Regia Marina sent the gunboat Ermanno Carlotto.
The imperialist navies began a bombardment of Nanking where the nationalist forces had started to occupy, having taken on the forces of the local warlord Zhang Zongchang. The imperialist forces also landed marines to fight against the nationalist forces. Later the Japanese sent the gunboats Hodero, Katata, Momo and Shinoki. The Italians sent the gunboat Ermanno Carlotto, the Dutch sent the light cruiser Hr.Ms. Sumatra and the French sent aviso La Marne for the evacuation of their citizens in Nanjing. Chiang Kai Shek, despite the appeasement of the Chinese Stalinists, in any case used the events to blame the CP for having provoked the intervention.
“There is no doubt and there can be none that now, after the new defeats of the international revolutionary movement, the theory of socialism in one country will serve, independent of the will of its creators, to justify, to motivate and to sanctify all the tendencies directed towards restricting the revolutionary objectives, towards quenching the ardour of the struggle, towards a national and conservative narrowness.” (p 63)
Having used a stone to throw, it is not a huge leap to find more efficient means of using it, as a projectile, using a sling or catapult, for example. Having used it to cut, its not a huge leap to notice that some cut better than others, and so, first to use these, and then, to create them, by shaping them. In each case, Man does develop an idea, and manufacture the world around him, but it is an idea that itself originates from things that already exist, including existing, previously developed ideas, and products, in the real world. Without stones there are no stones as tools or weapons, and so no evolution of those tools and weapons to more efficiently meet Man's own material needs.
At each stage of his social evolution, therefore, Man confronts an already existing material world whose ever changing nature he must continually categorise and analyse, in order to understand its own laws of motion. It is the existing material world he must contend with, and which determines his ideas, and constrains his ability to change that world. Just as without rocks there are no stone tools, so, too, without electricity there are no electronic computers. And, the development of these ever improving tools and technologies is not driven by ideas, but by The Law of Value, the requirement to continually meet Man's material needs, the production of use-values, using the least amount of labour/value.
But, as Marx demonstrated, this development of technology, driven by The Law of Value, also has consequences for Man's social development too, because the technology that Man uses, and is able to use at any stage of development, also determines how he goes about that production, which creates changing relations of production and distribution, which, in turn, creates new social relations.
“M. Proudhon the economist understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.
The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations.” (p 102)
The bourgeois-idealist sees a material world that has been consciously manufactured by Man, starting first with ideas, which are then transformed into reality, and concludes that it has always been thus, and always will be so. Indeed, the petty-bourgeois socialist sees things in a similar way, believing that it is only necessary to construct a set of ideas, based upon how a fair and egalitarian society would work, and to construct schemas for their realisation, in order to then proceed to their to their construction. Such, for example, was the method of the Narodniks, described by Lenin. But, as Marx explains,
“... these ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.
There is a continual movement of growth in productive forces, of destruction in social relations, of formation in ideas; the only immutable thing is the abstraction of movement – mors immortalis.” (p 102)
