The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, 1) The Permanent Revolution and the Canton Insurrection - Part 7 of 8

The same was seen with the entry of the Stalinists and centrists into the Popular Front governments in Spain and France, in the 1930's.

Trotsky, then, makes the comparison with the events in Germany, in 1923, and their evaluation by the Third Congress of the Communist International. In March 1921, the German Communist Party, basing itself on an active minority of the workers, sought to engage in an insurrection. The large mass of the working-class, however, was apathetic. It came after a period of serious defeats, such as that following the 1918 revolution, when the revolutionary leaders, such as Luxemburg and Liebknecht, had been murdered. The active minority of workers, who did take part in these events, in March 1921, indeed, again, showed considerable heroism, and the leaders who were responsible for leading them into a battle that was inevitably doomed, used that to cover their errors, just as the Stalinists did following the Canton adventure.

Trotsky points out, however, that, in 1921, the ECCI did not congratulate those German leaders for having engaged in such an adventure, and wasted revolutionary resources, but condemned the adventurism of that leadership.

““Their essence,” we wrote, “is summed up in the fact that the young Communist Party, alarmed by a manifest decline in the workers’ movement, made a desperate attempt to profit by the intervention of one of the most active detachments of the proletariat in order to ‘electrify’ the working class and, if possible, to bring matters to a decisive battle.” (L. Trotsky, Five Years of the Communist International, p.333.)” (p 165)

By 1923, conditions had changed, in Germany. The workers had had time to recover and rebuild their confidence and organisation, from the earlier defeats. Support for the German Social Democrats was moving towards the Communists, and the economy was in crisis, as a result of the conditions imposed on it by the imperialists via the Versailles Treaty. It was suffering hyperinflation, as the state printed money tokens to pay those debts. It was a case in which the ruling class could no longer rule in the old way. On a rising wave of workers' struggle, therefore, the leaders of the Comintern argued for a date to be fixed for the insurrection.

“From July 1923 on, we demanded, to the great astonishment of Clara Zetkin, Warski and other old, very venerable but incorrigible Social Democrats, that the date of the insurrection in Germany be fixed. Then, at the beginning of 1924, when Zetkin declared that at that moment she envisaged the eventuality of an uprising with much “more optimism” than during the preceding year, we could only shrug our shoulders.” (p 165)

In other words, a failure by Zetkin et al to know what time it is, and to fail to understand the role of the revolutionary party in catching the upward wave, and leading it forward, as against the opportunist policy of tailism, of only raising transitional/revolutionary demands at that point where the workers have already spontaneously arrived at them themselves. The reality is that, at that point, the revolutionary wave has probably already peaked, and, as it takes time to then organise soviets etc., these demands are put forward in conditions of ebb.

““An elementary truth of Marxism says that the tactics of the socialist proletariat cannot be the same in face of a revolutionary situation as when this situation does not exist.” (Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Works, Vol.XV, p.499.)” (p 165)

In 1871, the Parisian workers rose in revolt, spontaneously, and established the Paris Commune, despite Marx's earlier warnings against doing so. A similar thing occurs with the July Days, in Russia, in 1917. In those conditions, the Marxists have to be with the workers, attempting to organise them, in conditions they had not anticipated. But, in Germany, in March 1921, and in Canton in 1927, that was not the case. These were not cases of the proletariat spontaneously revolting and the Marxists having to respond to it. It was a case of a Communist Party itself fermenting the revolt, in conditions that were not favourable.

“What did the leadership do and what should it have done during the weeks and months that immediately preceded the Canton insurrection? The leadership was duty bound to explain to the revolutionary workers that as a consequence of defeats, due to an erroneous policy, the relationship of forces had veered entirely in favour of the bourgeoisie. The great masses of workers who had fought tremendous battles, dispersed by the encounters, abandoned the field of battle. It is absurd to believe that one can march towards a peasant insurrection when the proletarian masses are departing.” (p 166)

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Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 4. Property or Rent - Part 6 of 8

Marx sets out the argument, discussed earlier, as to why it is the cost of production on the least fertile land that determines the market value of primary products, and why this is then the basis of the differential rent, as the surplus profits obtained, by capital, on the more fertile land. But, Proudhon's moral imperative sees history driving towards his goal of equality, and so,

“M. Proudhon supposes equality of the market price, with unequal costs of production, in order to arrive at an equalized sharing out of the product of inequality.” (p 149)

Marx also refers to the point made earlier, in relation to the bourgeois ideologists, like Spence, who argued for land nationalisation.

“We understand such economists as Mill, Cherbuliez, Hilditch, and others demanding that rent should be handed over to the state to serve in place of taxes. That is a frank expression of the hatred the industrial capitalist bears towards the landed proprietor, who seems to him a useless thing, an excrescence upon the general body of bourgeois production.” (p 149)

The same is true, today, with the owners of fictitious capital, who form such a useless parasitic excrescence on real capital, except, today, they, like the landed aristocracy of the past, still form the ruling-class, in whose interests the state continues to operate. Proudhon, however, was making no such openly class-war argument, on behalf of the bourgeoisie against the landed aristocracy. He was arguing a moral case on behalf of “society”, for equality, much as today the same petty-bourgeois ideological trends make a moral case on behalf of “society”, “the people”, “the nation” for “democracy”, “ peace”, and other such abstract concepts.

“But first to make the price of the hectolitre of corn 20 francs in order then to make a general distribution of the 10 francs overcharge levied on the consumer, is indeed enough to make the social genius pursue its zigzag course mournfully – and knock its head against some corner.

Rent becomes, under M. Proudhon’s pen,

“an immense land valuation, which is carried out contradictorily by land-owners and farmers... in a higher interest, and whose ultimate result must be to equalize the possession of land between exploiters of the soil and the industrialists.”” (p 149)

However, any such land reform would imply an end to capitalist production, and without that capitalist production there would be no rent, and no such basis for land valuation. Moreover, as described earlier, the actual rents charged by landlords do not represent this scientifically determined economic rent. They include all sorts of feudal vestiges, as well as interest payments, deductions from wages and so on. Consequently, those actual rents could not form the basis of the calculation of land valuation.

“On the other hand, rent could not be the invariable index of the degree of the fertility of the land, since every moment the modern application of chemistry is changing the nature of the soil, and geological knowledge is just now, in our days, beginning to revolutionise all the estimates of relative fertility. It is only about twenty years since vast lands in the Eastern counties of England were cleared; they had been left uncultivated due to the lack of proper comprehension of the relation between the humus and the composition of the sub-soil.

Thus history, far from supplying, in rent, a ready-made land valuation, does nothing but change and turn topsy-turvy the land valuations already made.” (p 150)

As I have set out elsewhere, land, as an asset, is bought and sold, as with other assets, such as stocks and bonds. If a £1 million bond produces £10,000 of interest per year that is a yield of 1%. The owner of this bond may look at a piece of land that produces £10,000 of rent, and, so value it, also at £1 million. In practice, they will take into account the illiquid nature of land, compared to bonds, additional costs of ownership, and so on, thereby, placing a value of less than £1 million on the land. In addition, especially as the owners of these assets have become more concerned with speculative capital gains than the revenues produced by them, they will be concerned with their perception of how the demand and supply for these different assets will change their market prices.

“M. Proudhon has improvised his land valuation, which has not even the value of an ordinary land valuation, only to give substance to the providentially equalitarian aim of rent.” (p 150)

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The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, 1) The Permanent Revolution and the Canton Insurrection - Part 6 of 8

Trotsky sets out why it was false to compare the Canton insurrection with the 1905 Russian Revolution. An evaluation of conditions, in China, in 1927, following the defeats and betrayals indicated that the revolutionary wave was receding, and the Opposition had demonstrated and warned against that, on numerous occasions. But, in 1905, the opposite conditions applied.

“During the whole of 1905, the Russian proletariat rose from one plane to the other, wresting concessions from the enemy, sowing disintegration in its ranks, concentrating around its vanguard ever greater popular masses. The October 1905 strike was an immense victory, having a world historical importance. The Russian proletariat had its own party, which was not subordinated to any bourgeois or petty-bourgeois discipline. The self-esteem, the intransigence, the spirit of offensive of the Party, rose from stage to stage. The Russian proletariat had created soviets in dozens of cities, not on the eve of the revolt but during the process of a strike struggle of the masses. Through these soviets, the Party established contact with the vast masses; it registered their revolutionary spirit; it mobilized them.” (p 162-3)

But, even with propitious conditions, and correct leadership, a victory is not inevitable, because it still depends on the balance of class forces, and, in particular, the ability of the ruling class to mobilise the state against the revolution. The ruling class is not the ruling class for nothing, and does not simply disappear from the stage without a fight, and the power of the state gives it tremendous advantages. The existing laws, police and courts often prove enough, but, when not, it has the power of the army. The difference between 1905 and 1917 was the ability of the Bolsheviks, in 1917, to split the army and navy, and bring revolutionary sections of them over to the revolution.

The ruling class also has long experience in keeping itself in power, and so knowing how, and for how long, to utilise the façade of the existing political institutions, and when to discard that façade and move to the use of the military, paramilitary forces and coups. In 1905, the Tsarist regime seeing the balance of forces moving against it, launched the counter-revolution, utilising these elements of the state, and its periphery, much as Thatcher did in putting soldiers in police uniforms, introducing martial law without legislation, and so on, across the coalfields, and resorting to old style cavalry charges, such as at the Battle of Orgreave.

“Under these conditions, the leadership could and should have staked everything so as to be able to test by deeds the state of mind of the last decisive factor: the army. This was the meaning of the insurrection of December 1905.” (p 163)

In 1905, as in 1985, the entrenched power of the ruling class, and the bodies of armed men of its state, proved too cohesive and strong.

The events, in China, in 1927, were completely different.

“The Stalinist policy of the Chinese Communist Party consisted of a series of capitulations before the bourgeoisie, accustoming the workers to support patiently the yoke of the Guomindang.” (p 163)

The Stalinists discredited Marxism by their actions and strengthened Chiang Kai Shek and the bourgeoisie, much as with the social imperialists and the Ukraine-Russia War, “it converted itself into an auxiliary instrument of the bourgeois leadership.” (p 163)

Rather than a rising revolutionary wave, and increasing confidence in the political leaders, the Stalinists caused one defeat, one betrayal after another, and a total loss of confidence in the political leadership, culminating in its adventurist calling for the Canton insurrection.

“The Communists entered the Wuhan government, which repressed the strike struggle and the peasants’ uprisings. They thus prepared a new and still crueller devastation of the revolutionary masses.” (p 163-4)

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Denmark Abandons Nordstream Investigation Fiasco

Denmark has now, formally, abandoned the farce of its investigation into the blowing up of the Nordstream pipeline. Sweden abandoned the same fiasco a couple of months ago. The reality is, of course, that these countries, now members of NATO, but always closely aligned with it, and subservient to US imperialism, knew all along who was responsible for the sabotage. It was the US. If it was not the US, then, even the slightest evidence to be able to pin it on Russia, would have led them, long ago, to have brought it forward. But, anyone with a brain, and not acting as an apologist of US imperialism, knew that it was the US, or agents acting on its behalf, simply by applying the principle of “follow the money”, or who benefits.

The pipeline belongs to Russia. It had no reason to destroy its own valuable asset, and source of future revenue. To say it wanted to deny gas supplies to Europe is ludicrous, because it could easily have done that by simply turning off the taps! Besides, it was Europe, under intense pressure from the US, that voluntarily imposed boycotts of Russian oil and gas! The US with large surplus production of both oil and natural gas, not only benefited strategically, by breaking the link between the EU and Russian energy supplies, but also economically, as the result was a rise in US oil exports to Europe, now at much higher prices, as well as much higher global gas prices, which benefited not only US gas producers, but also US energy companies producing and selling natural gas across the globe, and now at these higher prices to Europe.

It has the added benefit of raising costs of production for EU capital compared to the US, which strengthens the competitiveness of US capital against EU capital, strengthening the subordination of the latter to the former. Its one reason that the US economy has continued to boom in the following period, whilst the European economy has languished. Indeed, anyone but the inveterate US apologists only had to listen to the comments of US representatives, at the time, who were jubilant that their promise to turn the Nordstream pipeline into a heap of metal at the bottom of the sea had been accomplished!

Yet, at the time, the apologists for US and NATO imperialism, like Simon Pirani, and others in the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign were virulent in their proclamations that veteran journalists, like Seymour Hersch, were wrong, in claiming that the US was responsible, and that they were as good as dupes for, if not apologists for Putin. Its, now, 18 months since NATO blew up the pipelines, following which European energy prices soared, with gas prices rising by up to 1,000%. Its no wonder that EU countries, subordinated to US imperialism, wanted to do all they could to blame Russia for it, rather than admit that it was their supposed ally, the US, which had effectively committed an act of war against it. Its no wonder that the apologists for US/NATO imperialism, as well as the outright social-imperialists of the AWL, ACR etc., bent over backwards to claim that not only was there no proof that it was the US, but that it was likely to be Russia.

The fact that, across the globe, fingers pointed, sensibly, to the US being the culprit, with numerous statements by US journalists and others admitting that they had been told that it was the US that did it, though only a few of them being prepared to say so publicly, NATO, and particularly its EU subordinates were desperate to deflect the public gaze, by instituting the farce of their supposed investigations. Other attempts in that direction was to use Ukraine as a useful scapegoat, as though it could do so without the knowledge and support of the US, and of NATO members such as Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. But, hey, if you are prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives, and the fabric of Ukrainian society on the altar of NATO expansionism, what is using it as such a scapegoat in that great game?

Now, those countries think a safe time has passed, and the genocide in Gaza has distracted global public attention, so it is safe to quietly announce that they have ditched their farcical investigation, without conclusion, meaning they could not realistically provide anything that would throw reasonable doubt on the fact that the US was responsible, let alone be able to cast any reasonable suspicion on Russia. No doubt the apologists for US/NATO imperialism will also be similarly quiet, and hope we all forget their abasement at the feet of US imperialism, and its effect on the workers of Europe over the last 18 months.

Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 4. Property Or Rent - Part 5 of 8

Under feudalism, land is handed down from generation to generation, but, as soon as capitalist rent arises, the potential for putting a price on land, itself arises. The price is not a price for the land as land/use value, which has no value, but is a price for the ability of the land to produce rent, just as the price of capital (the rate of interest) is the price of its use value to produce the average industrial rate of profit. Land, then becomes a commodity that is bought and sold, its price being determined by the capitalised value of the rent. This hastens the dissolution of the old feudal landed property.

“Rent is possible only from the moment when the development of urban industry, and the social organization resulting therefrom, force the landowner to aim solely at cash profits, at the monetary relation of his agricultural products – in fact to look upon his landed property only as a machine for coining money. Rent has so completely divorced the landed proprietor from the soil, from nature, that he has no need even to know his estates, as is to be seen in England.” (p 147-8)

The same is true of the owner of fictitious-capital in the era of imperialism, especially where, in search of speculative capital gains, the shares, bonds and other such assets are bought and sold many times in seconds on global stock and bond markets. The Dukes of Devonshire had their stately home at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, whilst the Duke of Sutherland lived, here, in Stoke at Trentham, where the family mausoleum resides, whilst the Duke's statue looks down from atop the hill over the new commercial activities conducted in the grounds of his Trentham estate, comprising retail outlets and monkey park. As Dickens described, in Bleak House, in addition to these country piles, resorted to in the Summer, the aristocrats also spent much of their time in city mansions, and homes in sunnier climes in Europe too.

“As for the farmer, the industrial capitalist and the agricultural worker, they are no more bound to the land they exploit than are the employer and the worker in the factories to the cotton and wool they manufacture; they feel an attachment only for the price of their production, the monetary product. Hence the jeremiads of the reactionary parties, who offer up all their prayers for the return of feudalism, of the good old patriarchal life, of the simple manners and the fine virtues of our forefathers.” (p 148)

As Marx and Engels set out, in The Communist Manifesto, capitalism freed millions from that idiocy of rural life. Reactionaries sought, and, in various guises, still seek, to hold back or reverse that capitalist progress, as Lenin also described, in his polemics against the “anti-capitalism” of the petty-bourgeois, moral socialists.

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The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, 1) The Permanent Revolution and the Canton Insurrection - Part 5 of 8

Stalin, and the Comintern leadership had told the Chinese communists that a revolutionary situation existed, and so it was not surprising that this is interpreted as meaning that the seizure of power, and rebellions, in various areas, are seen, on the ground, as justified, and having the basis for success and spreading across the country. Only after the inevitable defeat of this adventure did Stalin and the ECCI talk about a failure to resist “putschistic moods”, having led to the uprisings in Hunan, Hupeh etc.

“But on the theatre of events, in China itself, every honest revolutionist was duty bound to do everything he could in his corner to hasten the uprising, since the Communist International had declared that the general situation was propitious for an insurrection on a national scale. It is on this question that the régime of duplicity reveals its deliberately criminal character.” (p 160-1)

And, this became characteristic of Stalinism, which, after each catastrophe, looked for scapegoats to blame for having following the line advanced by the leadership that led to it. The Communist International resolved,

“The Congress deems it entirely inexact to attempt to consider the Canton insurrection as a putsch. It was a heroic rearguard [?] battle of the Chinese proletariat, fought in the course of the period which has just passed in the Chinese revolution; in spite of the crude mistakes committed by the leadership, this uprising will remain the standard of the new soviet phase of the revolution.” (p 160)

In other words, the Comintern could not divorce itself from the Canton Uprising, and its failure is, at least partly, attributed to the crude mistakes of the Chinese leaders, but its failure is also turned into a success, by claiming that it was a “rearguard action”, and model.

“Here confusion reaches its zenith. The heroism of the Cantonese proletariat is brought in evidence as a screen to cover up the faulty leadership, not of Canton (which the resolution casts off completely) but of Moscow, which only yesterday spoke not of a “rearguard battle” but of the overthrow of the government of the Guomindang.” (p 161)

Lominadze had claimed, at the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU, that the Canton insurrection was necessary, because it inaugurated a period of direct struggle for power. No objection to this nonsense was raised. It sought to hide the mistakes of the leaders behind the bravery of the Chinese workers and peasants, much as the mistakes of Churchill and the British and French leaders was hidden behind the bravery of the troops left on the beaches of Dunkirk.

“The proletarians of Canton are guilty, without having committed mistakes, simply of an excess of confidence in their leadership. Their leadership was guilty of having had a blind confidence in the leadership of the Communist International which combined political blindness with the spirit of adventurism.” (p 162)

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Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 4. Property Or Rent - Part 4 of 8

The scientific analysis of rent explains the social relation that develops between labour and capital, and landed property, and the specific forms of property, and their historical development.

“So long as there was only M. Proudhon’s colonus, there was no rent. The moment rent exists, the colonus is no longer the farmer, but the worker, the farmer’s colonus. The abasement of the labourer, reduced to the role of a simple worker, day labourer, wage-earner, working for the industrial capitalist; the invention of the industrial capitalist, exploiting the land like any other factory; the transformation of the landed proprietor from a petty sovereign into a vulgar usurer; these are the different relations expressed by rent.” (p 147)

As Marx also describes, in Capital III, as soon as the capitalist farmer arises, the social function of the landlord disappears. They obtain rent, not for any role in production or society, but only as a monopoly owner of land, just as the usurer obtains interest. That is why bourgeois ideologists argued that, if land were nationalised, the rent would simply go to the state, and would, then, defray its costs, reducing taxes, and so facilitating greater capital accumulation. As Marx and Engels set out, later, in Capital III, and in Anti-Duhring, the same is true in relation to the private capitalist, as soon as socialised capital arises as the dominant form of property. The private capitalist loses any social function, and becomes merely a parasitic money-lender (shareholder/bondholder), living off interest and speculative capital gains.

“Rent, in the Ricardian sense, is patriarchal agriculture transformed into commercial industry, industrial capital applied to land, the town bourgeoisie transplanted into the country. Rent, instead of binding man to nature, has merely bound the exploitation of the land to competition.” (p 147)

This is also another reason that the claims that capitalist production began in agriculture are illogical, and anti-Marxian. Capitalist agriculture not only depends on an already existing large market for agricultural commodities, in the towns, but goes along with capitalist rent, and as Marx shows, capitalist rent (surplus profit), requires, first, the development of an average industrial rate of profit! Now, the rents that landlords could charge depended on the surplus profit, which depended on the level of primary product prices.

Ricardo did not accept the idea of Absolute Rent, but Marx demonstrated that landlords could charge an Absolute Rent, because the average organic composition of capital, in primary production, is lower than that in industrial production – itself, in part, a reflection of the fact that capitalist production begins in industry, not agriculture. That meant the annual rate of profit in the former was higher than in the latter, resulting in overall surplus profits, even for the least fertile land, in primary production, and so the ability to charge an absolute rent equal to it. The lower organic composition of capital was a result of a lower average level of technological development in agriculture – though, as Marx demonstrates, not in all types of agriculture, such as cattle breeding, where capital had been applied earlier – and use of fixed capital, meaning it was more labour intensive. It was one reason landlords had an incentive to deter such technological development, because higher surplus profits meant higher rents. Of course, if cheaper imports threatened that, it would undermine those rents, which is why the landlords demanded import controls to prevent it.

“Once established as rent, landed property itself is the result of competition, since from that time onwards it depends on the market value of agricultural produce. As rent, landed property is mobilized and becomes an article of commerce.” (p 147)

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Northern Soul Classics - Gonna Be A Big Thing - The Sapphires

 

Friday Night Disco - He's My Six Million Dollar Lover, Part 1 - Bunny Davis

 

The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, 1) The Permanent Revolution and the Canton Insurrection - Part 4 of 8

Trotsky sets out the Marxist definition of adventurism, as against the opportunist definition.

“Had a revolutionary situation really existed, the mere fact of the defeat of Canton would have been a special episode, and in any case, would not have transformed the uprising of this city into an adventure. Even in face of unfavourable conditions for the insurrection of Canton itself or its environs, the leadership would have had as its duty to do all that was necessary to realize the revolt most rapidly in order thus to disperse and weaken the forces of the enemy and to facilitate the triumph of the uprising in the other parts of the country.” (p 159)

Here, again, is the application of the concept of permanent revolution as was also applied by Lenin, in relation to the seizure of power in 1917. The fact of locally unfavourable conditions cannot be the basis of determining whether an action is adventurist or not. It depends, also, on an evaluation of the wider social conditions, both within a country and internationally. In 1983-4, in Britain, there were rampant strikes by workers against the Thatcher government. There was the mobilisation of a growing number of unemployed in the Peoples' March for Jobs of 1981 and 1983. A number of councils were resisting the government's spending cuts.

In other times, for revolutionaries to put themselves forward, as councillors or MP's, would be adventurist, and for councils to take on the government, by refusing to make cuts, raise rents or rates, and so be forced into setting illegal budgets, would also have been adventurist. But, in conditions of a Miners' Strike, in 1981 that defeated Tory plans for pit closures, and all of these other events, that was not at all the case. On the contrary, it was necessary to link all of these different struggles together, and using the platform of a local council, in particular, in a revolutionary manner, as Lenin sets out, in Left-Wing Communism, was entirely appropriate.

The old right-wing and reformist councillors certainly were not going to challenge the government by setting illegal budgets, and so it was up to revolutionaries to seize those positions, so as to do so, or, at least, to raise the demand for it, and to do so, even if the local conditions meant the chances of succeeding were against it. For an individual council to set an illegal budget, as Liverpool did, would normally be adventurist, but, if several councils do so, in conditions where that is combined with large-scale industrial action, and other social revolts, by the creation of local workers' councils, co-ordinating the struggle, outside the confines of bourgeois democratic institutions, is not. The failure of that time was that these separate struggles were not linked up, and coordinated, and many of those claiming to be revolutionaries, simply used their position as MP's and councillors, in a reformist parliamentarist manner, often to build their own organisation, not to build a revolutionary struggle.

In China, in 1927, however, it was clear that, after the series of defeats and betrayals, the revolutionary wave had ebbed. The opportunity had passed, much as happened in Britain, after 1985, and the defeat/betrayal of the miners, having been undermined by Kinnock and the Labour leadership, and failure of left reformists in local councils to link their struggle to it, as well as the action of TUC leaders in obstructing secondary action by other unions alongside it. Actions that only opportunists could describe as “adventurist” in 1983-4, actually did become adventurist in the period after 1985.

“The campaign of Ho Lung and Ye Ting were already developing in an atmosphere of revolutionary decline, the workers were separating themselves from the revolution, the centrifugal tendencies were gaining in strength. This is in no way contradictory to the existence of peasant movements in various provinces. That is how it always is.” (p 159)

Yet, it was in these conditions of decline that the Canton Uprising was called for, in an area that was not even propitious for it, given the greater preponderance of petty-bourgeois and peasants, rather than proletarian forces. The task of the revolutionary party is to analyse such conditions and adjust its demands accordingly, as with Marx's advice to the Parisian workers not to rise up in 1871, or the Bolsheviks advice to Russian workers in the July Days.

“The only way of explaining the policy of the leadership, in fixing and carrying out this revolt, is that it did not understand the meaning and the consequences of the defeats in Shanghai and Hupeh. There can be no other interpretation of it. But the lack of understanding can all the less excuse the leadership of the Communist International since the Opposition had warned in good time against the new situation and the new dangers. It found itself accused for this, by idiots and calumniators, of having the spirit of liquidators.” (p 159-60)

Of course, as with Marx, in 1871, and the Bolsheviks in the July Days, if the workers still rise up, despite the warnings, the Marxists throw themselves into the struggle to try to minimise the damage done by it, and to prepare for the next revolutionary wave. Again, only opportunists would refuse to do that, concerned with their own skins.

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Bourgeois-Democratic Sham-bles

The disgraceful scenes and chaos, in the House of Commons, yesterday, illustrated the sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, just as the events across the globe, as imperialism acts to justify its support for Zionist genocide against Palestinians, illustrates the same lies purveyed by bourgeois-democracy concerning the rule of law, and an international rules based system. As tens of thousands of Palestinians die in Gaza at the hands of the Zionists, backed by their imperialist allies in the US, UK and EU, the imperialist politicians played political parlour games, and showed their main concern to be about their own skins, both physically and politically, as an election approaches.

Everyone knew, the day before, that the supine imperialists of Blue Labour, led by Supple-Spined Starmer were in trouble, because the news reports had said so. For months, Starmer and his accomplices in Blue Labour have justified and supported the war crimes and genocide committed by their friends and allies in the Zionist regime, in Israel. In part, they were not only willing accomplices in those war crimes and genocide, as full throttle supporters of Zionism, but were also trapped by it, as a result of their previous weaponisation and equation of “anti-Zionism” with “anti-Semitism”, in order to, lyingly, attack Corbyn and the Left of the Party. 

It meant that, despite the overwhelming evidence of a holocaust being inflicted on the Palestinians by the Zionist state in Israel, Starmer could not admit to it, because to do so would require him to criticise that Zionist regime, in the same way that Corbyn and the Left had done. It would expose the hypocrisy and lies that he and the Right have perpetrated. And, it would have brought down its own avalanche of attacks on Starmer from the rabid Zionists in Britain, for whom nothing but total support for whatever the Zionist state does is enough. Having created the monster, he found himself about to be eaten by it.

Even after the ICJ, as one of those international organs of bourgeois-democracy, and the rules based system, had said that, even prima facie, there was a case to be answered by the Zionist state for acts of genocide in Gaza, and called for it to desist, Starmer, as with Genocide Joe, in the US, and many EU leaders, continued to deny what was, and is, apparent to everyone with eyes to see that the Zionist state was inflicting, and continued to inflict war crimes and genocide on the Palestinians, not just in Gaza, where it, supported by western media, ridiculously claims to be engaged in an Israel-Hamas War, but also in the West Bank, where Zionist settlers, backed by the Zionist state, daily attack, and kill, Palestinians, where the Zionist military machine, daily, invades Palestinian homes, and destroys them.

Indeed, the West Bank, more clearly than Gaza, is already an example of the much vaunted, and mystified, Palestinian state, required as part of a “Two-State Solution”, but which has provided no solution whatsoever to Palestinians as a whole, and to Palestinian workers and poor peasants in particular. What use is a Two State Solution, in which any Palestinian state is perpetually dependent upon the Zionist state's blessing to exist? What use is such a solution, without the Palestinian state having the means to defend itself, in the same manner that the imperialists and Zionists demand that the Zionist state itself can do?

Where is the the benefit to the working-class, of creating a solution where both these capitalist states are dependent upon the kindness of imperialist strangers for their existence, and which, then, exist as two militarised states, two heavily armed camps staring down the barrel of a gun at each other, perpetually dividing the working-class of the region, and lining it up behind its own respective ruling class? No wonder the bourgeoisie and imperialists' favourite solution is that of two-bourgeois states, though, in reality, given the dominance of US imperialism, such a solution is really just a sop to liberal fantasies, and the Arab bourgeoisie, whilst it backs the continual expansion of the Zionist single state.

Over the last five months, during which time the Zionist state has been conducting that genocide in Gaza, as well as continuing its decades long occupation, and oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israel itself, Starmer could have supported a ceasefire, could have used the Labour Opposition Days, in parliament, to do what the SNP had done, yesterday, to put a motion calling for such an immediate ceasefire, and opposing the collective punishment and genocide being committed by the Zionist state. He did not do so, and, rather, continued to give his full throated support to that Zionist state, and to refuse to acknowledge its war crimes, instead, again apologising for them, and openly supporting them, as he did in saying that he supported the Zionist state in its war crimes of cutting off water, energy and so on.

So, the news programmes on Tuesday had all noted that, with elections coming up, such as in Rochdale, where Labour is likely to lose to the obnoxious, and reactionary, George Galloway, and where Labour is hoping to make headway, in Scotland, against the SNP, Starmer and his reactionary nationalist Blue Labour Party had a problem. The party's rank and file members, such as are left after Starmer's purges, and the mass exodus of disgusted activists, were still principled enough to be reviled at the genocide being committed by the Zionists, and the support for it given by Starrmer. The Scottish Labour Party itself voted for an immediate ceasefire, showing Starmer the writing on the wall. Yet, Starrmer still needed to slither around the issue, so as to try to not unleash the full wrath of the Zionists inside and out of the party.

As with Genocide Joe, Starmer needed to try to head off the electoral storm coming his way from voters who already are revolted by the genocide and war crimes he has been complicit in, and yet to hedge his words in such a way as to make them meaningless, and allow free rein for the Zionists to continue. The SNP motion correctly pointed not only to the need for an immediate ceasefire, but also to the fact that the Zionist regime was committing war crimes and genocide. That was too much for Starmer, and his imperialist/Zionist agenda. But, as the Tuesday night news reports noted, if he voted against the SNP motion, that would cause a further revolt, not just amongst the voters, not even just amongst Labour members, but even amongst a large number of mostly useless Labour MP's.

The further problem for Starmer, as the Tuesday news programmes outlined, was that parliamentary procedure, and Standing Order 31, did not permit Starmer to put a Labour motion or amendment, on what was an SNP Opposition day. To do so would require that the Speaker of the House, Lyndsay Hoyle, overturn the previous rules and precedent, to allow such a Labour Amendment to be tabled. So, it is ludicrous for Hoyle, now, to claim that he did not know what he was doing, or what the outcome would be, when he did, break that precedent, and allow his mate Starmer to get off the hook of his own making, by allowing that amendment to be tabled. The result was that no actual lobby division on the motion and amendments took place, even though there were clear calls for such a division. Instead, under the chair of the Deputy Speaker, Rosie Winterton, another of Starmer's mates, the Labour motion was nodded through. Labour's Lucy Powell even had the gall to later claim that their motion had been passed “unanimously”.

No vote on the SNP motion, which was the whole basis of the debate, was then even taken, which, as the SNP noted, meant that the Speaker had allowed Labour, which has failed to support a ceasefire for months, and has itself failed to put forward, and even voted against, motions for a ceasefire, to hijack the SNP's Opposition Day. And, the reality is that, in doing so, the Labour motion passed is totally inadequate. It does not condemn the acts of genocide and war crimes being committed by the Zionist state, and its call for a “humanitarian ceasefire” is meaningless. What it means is a call for only a temporary ceasefire, during which the hostages might be released, and some sops of aid be provided, before allowing the Zionist butchers to once again engage in their attempts to wipe Palestinians from the map of the region, beginning with Gaza.

Hoyle has claimed that his action was taken to protect members of parliament, poor lambs. But, if those MP's were not themselves complicit in genocide by their support of the Zionist butchers, no such protection would be necessary. What is more, if such concern really was his motivation for undermining parliamentary procedure, it would be a very bad precedent to set. In fact, on Wednesday night, the BBC's Nick Watt, reported that he had been told by a Labour Shadow Cabinet member that Hoyle had been told that he could not retain his position without the support of Labour MP's, and that, in a matter of months, there would likely be a Labour government. Quizzed by Newsnight's Victoria Derbyshire, Labour's John Heeley was forced to admit that if Hoyle had been intimidated in that way, it would be a very serious matter. Today, Starmer himself admitted that he had met with Hoyle to press on him the need for the Labour motion to be tabled.  So, now, its not only the position of Hoyle, as Speaker, that is untenable, but also that of Starmer.

In other words, in all of this sordid and corrupt farrago of lies and deception, taking place as thousands of Palestinians continue to be butchered, the reality of what went on, is really about trying to allow Starmer to save face, and avoid having to recognise the genocide being committed by his Zionist allies, whilst enabling him to present, in weasel words, the most bland and meaningless call for a ceasefire, ahead of the Rochdale by-election, and the coming local and General Elections.

The ICJ's ruling shows the bankruptcy of bourgeois-democracy at an international level, because the Zionist genocide has continued despite it. Had it been a state, like Russia, doing that, the western media would never have stopped proclaiming it, and western states would have been calling for further action against it, the social-imperialists demanding military intervention, no fly-zones and so on to stop the slaughter. Instead, we have the US and UK, refusing even to admit that such genocide is taking place, as they continue to provide the weapons with which that genocide is being committed. Instead of fulfilling their obligations under the Genocide Convention, to prevent such acts, they launch their own military action against those, such as the Houthis that are fulfilling that obligation.

The institutions of global bourgeois-democracy are there, as with bourgeois democracy at a national level, only to give a superficial democratic gloss to the actions of the ruling-class, and its dominant sections, a gloss that is soon removed, if the interests of that ruling-class are undermined. As with the United Nations, US imperialism uses it to sanction its own military adventures, but, whenever, it refuses to support such actions, the US simply ignores it, and engages in its wars regardless, just as the Zionist regime, under the protection of that US imperialism has time and again refused to abide by the resolutions of the UN Security Council, as now with its refusal to abide by the ruling of the ICJ.

Exposing the sham nature of bourgeois-democracy is a primary duty of Marxists, and using it, as with the use of parliaments, and other institutions, demanding consistency and so on, is one way of doing that. But, we should never pretend that such exposure is enough, that somehow these institutions can be reformed to meet our needs. They never can be, and, this recent experience shows that the ruling class would never countenance such a development. The point of showing the sham nature of bourgeois democracy, is to show to workers the need to create their own alternative workers' democracy, operated through existing workers' organisations, and by the development of networks of workers' councils, to establish our own organs of workers' power to challenge those of the ruling class, both at a national and at an international level.

Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 4. Property Or Rent - Part 3 of 8

As Lenin described, it was often the case that poorer peasants, who did not farm their own land, in Russia, but, instead, worked as wage-workers, had higher net incomes than those, even amongst the poorer middle-peasants, who did. The reason was as set out above. Those peasants who farmed their land, but could not do so as efficiently as their richer counterparts, could not make surplus profits, or even average profits, and yet still had to pay rents and redemption payments. After these payments, their net income was lower than that of a wage worker. This acted as a powerful recruiting force of workers into the towns, and continues to do so, today, in China, and more recently, in Africa.

In addition, even small capitalist farmers may not easily be able to move their capital elsewhere, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value. Indeed, they may be led to invest additional capital on their existing land, even if it produces a lower than average rate of profit, because this rate would still be higher than they could obtain from investing it elsewhere, or using it as interest-bearing capital. Such farmers may see rent bite into their normal profit, and they compensate for this by reducing the wages paid to their workers, below the value of their labour-power. In short, all sorts of land tenure and conditions continue to exist, side by side, so that the vestiges of feudal rent continued to exist. A scientific analysis provides the explanation for these specific forms, such as share-cropping.

Finally, as Marx points out, not all of what was included in rent was actually rent, as scientifically defined. Some of the payment actually represented interest on the fixed capital invested in the land, and leased to the farmer. Things like barns, silos and so on constitute fixed capital investment, and when the farmer leases the land, they get to use this fixed capital. When any capitalist leases fixed capital, such as a machine, what they pay for it comprises an amount for wear and tear, during the lease, plus interest on the capital-value, determined by the market rate of interest. The same applies to the farmer, but this interest is lumped in with the actual rent. As Marx sets out in Capital III, often farmers would invest in fixed capital themselves, to enhance their productivity, and the landlord would appropriate it at the end of the lease, setting the new rents at a higher level accordingly. It was one reason landlords pushed for shorter and shorter leases.

“It may happen, as in Ireland, that rent does not yet exist, although the letting of land has reached an extreme development there. Rent being the excess not only over wages, but also over industrial profit, it cannot exist where the landowner’s revenue is nothing but a mere levy on wages.

Thus, far from converting the exploiter of the land, the farmer, into a simple labourer, and “snatching from the cultivator the surplus of his product, which he cannot help regarding as his own,” rent confronts the landowner, not with the slave, the serf, the payer of tribute, the wage labourer, but with the industrial capitalist.

Once constituted as ground rent, ground property has in its possession only the surplus over production costs, which are determined not only by wages but also by industrial profit.” (p 146-7)

Capitalist rent, therefore, snatches a part of the former income of the landlord, because, previously, they appropriated all of the surplus labour/product. Now, it is the capitalist which does so, and hands to the landlord only that portion of it that represents surplus profit.

This is not something that happens overnight, as a single event, but is a process extending over a long period.

“In Germany, for example, this transformation began only in the last third of the 18th century. It is in England alone that this relation between the industrial capitalist and the landed proprietor has been fully developed.” (p 147)

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The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, 1) The Permanent Revolution and the Canton Insurrection - Part 3 of 8

At every stage, the Stalinists did the opposite of what a revolutionary strategy, based on Permanent Revolution required. Only after each one of these policies had failed did they advocate the policy that they should have adopted to have avoided that failure. When Chiang Kai Shek organised his coup, utilising his monopoly of weapons, against the disarmed worker communists, in Shanghai, the Stalinists argued for arming those workers, and for soviets to be established. But, as Trotsky says, doing so after the slaughter is pointless, and demanding the arming of workers before you have created the soviets that are the basis of such arming is simply adventurist and phrase-mongering.

Even then, the Stalinists made the same mistake, in seeking to subordinate the Chinese communists to the Left KMT of Wang Chin Wei. They opposed the creation of soviets, again, in Wuhan, where Wang had his government. But, as with the bourgeois Liberal politicians in the Spanish Popular Front Republican government, it was a shadow. The Spanish Stalinists and centrists accommodated the bourgeois-liberals, in the popular front, as they did in France, and elsewhere, simply for the appearance of having broad support, and the fiction of retaining the support of the bourgeoisie. But, the Spanish liberals represented no significant social forces, as the bourgeoisie had already gone over to Franco. The liberals only got into parliament by standing under the banner of the Popular Front.

In China, the bourgeois-democratic government of Wang was a similar fiction, being the same kind of lash-up of leaders of political parties, but with no real social support. It was a bureaucratic, administrative fiction. Unlike Russia, in February 1917, however, there were no soviets representing those social forces, and able to drive the revolution forward either. The Stalinists insisted on no soviets, once again, for fear of frightening Wang and the bourgeoisie. The result was the same, as Wang, having betrayed the revolution, reconciled with Chiang Kai Shek.

Only then did the Stalinists swing violently in the opposite direction, engaging in an adventurist and putschistic strategy, with the Canton uprising. To cover these past mistakes, the idea that they did not matter, were all necessary stages of the process and learning experience for the workers and peasants, was advanced, under the cover of an empty conception of permanent revolution. The revolution was permanent, extending for years into the future, and so, these catastrophes were now to be understood as inevitable stages in that process! The same ridiculous notion was applied, in Germany, after the victory of Hitler, under cover of the idea “Hitler now, our turn next”.

The Stalinists had covered their mistakes in the same way following each catastrophe. After the Shanghai massacre, they had claimed, for example, that their membership, in Shanghai, had risen. As Trotsky points out, when this report was given to the ECCI, not a murmur was raised to question it. No one checked its truth, no one questioned the physical destruction of thousands of the most advanced workers, and their replacement, in the party, by what?

But, after mistake after mistake, catastrophe after catastrophe, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party resolved, in November 1927,

“Not only is the strength of the revolutionary movement of the toiling masses of China not yet exhausted, but it is precisely only now that it is beginning to manifest itself in a new advance of the revolutionary struggle. All this obliges the plenum of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to recognize that a directly revolutionary situation exists today (November 1927) throughout China.” (p 158-9)

It was nonsense. It is the same kind of nonsense that the social-imperialists purvey, when one camp of them talks about the war being conducted by NATO/Ukraine being one pursued by Ukrainian workers, whilst their opposing camp speaks in the same terms about the war being conducted by the Russian state.

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Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 4. Property Or Rent - Part 2 of 8

Marx, then, sets about rescuing Ricardo's theory of rent from the mysticism that Proudhon had wrapped around it like a shroud. For Ricardo's theory of rent, it is first necessary to assume the existence of feudal landed property, as private property. There is a simple reason for that. Surplus profit also exists in industrial production, but where it does, competition removes it. Firstly, producers that have an advantage, who produce commodities with a lower individual value than the market value, increase their production so as to maximise the amount of the surplus profit they make. In so doing, and increasing supply, they lower the market value itself, and so the amount of surplus profit. But, other capitalists, seeing these surplus profits, move into this sphere of production – the basis of the formation of price of production and an average rate of industrial profit – and any advantages from the use of machines etc., are equalised, and output rises, reducing market price and removing any surplus profit. In short, there is no restriction on expanding the supply.

If land was like any other input, then the same would be true of primary production, and no rent could exist. When European colonists settled in North America, that was the case. But, in Europe, feudal landed property already existed, and so, to use the land, in the possession of the landlords, the capitalist farmers had to pay rent equal to this surplus profit. The surplus profit continued to exist, because competition could not, now, expand production in this sphere, so as to reduce market price and eradicate it.

If demand for primary products exceeds the supply, additional land must be brought into cultivation, but capital will only be applied if it can make the average profit. Ricardo believed that the law of diminishing returns applied, so that any new land used would be less fertile, and so with a higher cost of production. It would be this higher cost land that would determine the market value, and not the average cost land.

Marx shows that its not necessary to assume diminishing returns. The same rule applies if more fertile land is introduced later. It would still be the least fertile land that determines the market value, because, if the capital employed on this land, now, could not produce the average profit, it would leave production, causing supply to fall, and market prices to rise.

Of course, this is the scientific analysis and explanation of rent, but, as Marx also sets out, in Capital III, and Theories of Surplus Value, what appears as rent does not wholly conform to this scientific, economic definition. For example, not all renters are capitalist producers. Peasant farming continues, even today. The individual peasant producer must produce to live, and must rent the land to produce. So, the “rent”, here, is not a capitalist rent, but may eat into any surplus produced by the peasant, and even what is required for their own subsistence. A comparison could be made as with the difference between capitalist interest and usury.

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The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, 1) The Permanent Revolution and the Canton Insurrection - Part 2 of 8

As Lenin sets out, in Left-Wing Communism, having, from the start, made that clear, having spelled out to the revolutionary masses that bourgeois-democracy is a sham, and only a more efficient means for the bourgeoisie to exercise its social dictatorship, having set out that, in the era of imperialism, there can be no such thing as truly independent nation states/national self-determination (and if there could it would be reactionary) we say to them that we recognise that they do not yet agree with us, and so we will go through that process of the bourgeois-democratic/national revolution with them, and seek to convince them along the way. But, that certainly does not mean appeasing those delusions, or tailing them. On the contrary, it requires a determined struggle by the revolutionary party, along the way, to break the masses from those delusions.

By contrast, the Stalinists had made Permanent Revolution, “a scholastic formula guaranteeing at one blow and for all time a revolutionary situation “for many years”. The permanent character of the revolution thus becomes a law placing itself above history, independent of the policy of the leadership and of the material development of revolutionary events. As always in such cases, Lominadze and company resolved to announce their metaphysical formula regarding the permanent character of the revolution only after the political leadership of Stalin, Bukharin, Chen Duxiu and Tang Pingshan had thoroughly sabotaged the revolutionary situation.” (p 158)

In other words, it became an excuse, a cover for the mistakes that had been made, and the same thing was seen, elsewhere, as in Germany, and the victory of Hitler. In China, the Opposition had set out the permanent nature of the revolution, which required proceeding on the basis described above. The fact of a large, organised working-class, many of whom already followed the Communist Party, and who looked to the success of the Russian Revolution, for inspiration, made that entirely possible.

The condition was that the Chinese Communist Party insist on its independence from the KMT, that it relentlessly criticise and oppose the KMT, and its bourgeois-democratic, national objectives. It required that the Chinese Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks had done, pursue the immediate objective of the bourgeois-democratic, national revolution, not by the methods of bourgeois-democracy, but by the methods of proletarian revolution, as described by Permanent Revolution, and contained in The Theses on The National and Colonial Questions. It is the method that Trotsky also applies to the struggle against fascism, as set out in The Action Programme for France, and his writings on the Spanish Revolution.

It required the creation of workers' and peasants' councils, and the arming of the proletariat and revolutionary peasantry, independent of its class enemies, but temporary allies, in the KMT. The existence of the USSR, as with later, in Spain, should have facilitated that, and massively strengthened the revolutionary forces, as against the bourgeoisie, represented by the KMT. But, the opposite to that was done by the Stalinists, and that was not simply a mistake made by leaders of a young Chinese party, but was driven by Stalin/Bukharin, and the leadership of the Comintern, itself.

The Stalinists, on the basis of the stages theory, emphasised the bourgeois national nature and tasks of the revolution, and subordinated the workers and peasants interests to it. Instead of insisting on the political, military and organisational independence of the Communist Party, they insisted that it liquidate itself within the KMT. Instead of insisting on establishing workers and peasants soviets, as the revolutionary organs, via which the revolution be carried through, thereby, directly, linking the bourgeois-democratic tasks to those of proletarian revolution, they opposed the creation of soviets even when they arose spontaneously from the initiative of workers and peasants, and insisted on the limitation of purely bourgeois-democratic institutions. Instead of arming the worker and peasant communists, the Stalinists disarmed them, in favour of arming the KMT, for fear of alienating the bourgeoisie.

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Israel-Palestine, The Nation State, and Imperialism

What is the Marxist analysis and explanation of what is going on in Israel-Palestine? Is it inexplicable, or just some accidental or historical animosity between Jews and non-Jews? Well, of course it is explicable, and we do not have to resort to subjective explanations, such as personal, religious or cultural animosities for that explanation. In fact, the same process has been witnessed countless times, in history, over the last 600 years, and the last 200-300 years, in particular.

Human societies developed on the basis of tribes/clans, and these tribes formed nations. For a large part of the existence of humanity, these nations and tribes, small in their numbers, could live mostly separated from each other, first as hunter-gatherers, as nomadic tribes, and later settled in specific locations undertaking agriculture. We could examine the development of empires such as the Roman Empire, or that of the Vikings, which basically operated on the basis of pillaging the wealth of the nations they conquered or raided. However, little would be served for our present purposes, in doing so.

“It is a long-established view that over certain epochs people lived by plunder. But in order to be able to plunder, there must be something to be plundered, and this implies production. Moreover, the manner of plunder depends itself on the manner of production, e.g., a stock-jobbing nation cannot be robbed in the same way as a nation of cowherds.”

(Marx – A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy, Introduction)

Similarly, feudal society had its own objective laws that drove expansion via wars. The need existed for the landed aristocracy to extend the territory from which they could obtain feudal rent, and taxes, could raise armies and so on. But, these are different laws, different objective reasons than those that drive such processes under capitalism. Capitalist production began around the 15th century, as a result of an expansion of commodity production and exchange, itself driven by a growth in the towns. This development did not take place in isolation from the feudal society in which it arose, which itself had consolidated a number of smaller nations and kingdoms into larger political units.

In Britain, for example, the Heptarchy, of the 5th century, had been consolidated into four larger kingdoms by the 8th century, and by the 10th century, a Kingdom of England had emerged, which subsequently went on to subjugate Cornwall, and Wales. Some reactionaries, today, such as those of the Northern Independence Party, would like to go back to that situation. In other words, prior to the development of the modern nation state, a whole process of consolidation based on the subjugation and even extermination of entire nations took place. In what is, now, modern France, for example, there were 300 different nationalities, some of the larger of which, today, survive such as Bretons, Normans and so on.

This feudal development was, therefore, brutal, involving the literal extermination of entire nations that have disappeared from history. But, considered from the perspective of history, and the evolution of humanity, it was progressive, because without those processes, there would not have been the development of larger nations, with a common language and so on, nor, indeed would there have developed the towns, as bands of retainers and so on were dispersed into them that laid the basis for an extension of commodity production and exchange, and, thereby, capitalism.

As Marx describes, it is this development of capitalism, first in the form of merchant capital, and, then, of industrial capital, in the towns, that creates the new material conditions for the further consolidation into the nation state. It is the requirement for a common language, for a level playing field of property and other laws, within which capitalists can operate, that drives this development, and this development requires a single market of this type that is big enough to justify that capitalist production, i.e. production on a large scale. The nations that are not big enough to create such a minimum size of single market/nation state become subordinated to others in the process of the creation of these nation states, or else become dispersed across several such states.

In the 18th/19th century when such nation states are created, this development is historically progressive for the reasons that Marx and Lenin describe. It clears away all of the old feudal rubbish that stood in the way of the development of capitalist production, which itself is required as the means of developing the means of production, the industrial working-class, and establishing, ultimately the global economy required for the development of Socialism. At this point, in the 18th/19th century, the large nation state is sufficient for this development, but the rapid development of capitalism, and of capitalist production soon made that not the case.

Even by the middle of the 19th century, even Britain, as the most developed capitalist state was reliant on the development of international markets into which it could sell its manufactured commodities, and from which it could obtain food and raw materials for that production. That brings each capitalist nation state into competition with others, as well as the trade between them, now, creating the same dynamic that trade between different provinces, principalities and regions previously led to the nation state itself. Even by the end of the 19th century, the nation state had ceased being progressive, and, instead represented a fetter on the further development of capitalism. It was manifest in the wars between those nation states, as each sought to dominate the others, and, thereby, to create larger single markets/states.

“Monopolists are made from competition; competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means of partial associations, competition increases among the workers; and the more the mass of the proletarians grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more desperate competition becomes between the monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is of such a character that monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition.”

(Marx – The Poverty of Philosophy)

A look at the Palestinians shows them to be one of those nations that never rose to the status of creating a large enough, viable, single market/nation state. In Engels words, they represent a “non-historical people”. If the developed nation states of Western Europe, by the twentieth century, were not large enough, to enable the further development of capitalism, then, clearly that could not be the case for the Palestinians. Trotsky had made a similar point about the Balkans, arguing the need for them to create a Balkan Federation. And, as he put it, in his Program of Peace, in which he describes the way the nation state has outlived its usefulness, and become reactionary.

“Capitalism has transferred into the field of international relations the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. The path of competition is the path of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of big capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the great powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome, of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps.”

Unlike the 18th and 19th century, then, when the demand for “national independence” or “self-determination” was realisable, and progressive, it was no longer so. Even the big nations were not truly independent, and were forced to club together, either voluntarily (as happened with the EU), or as a result of military conquest and annexation, let alone the small nations who, as Marx and Engels had described, always ended up as pawns in the conflicts between the larger powers, and dependent on, and subordinated to them.

But, of course, its not just the Palestinians that are too small as a nation to form a viable nation state that could have any real measure of independence. The same is true of Israel too, and indeed, of most of the surrounding states. Without massive financial and military aid from the US, the Israeli state would long since have collapsed. It is not just that Zionism, as a reactionary, racist, nationalist and colonialist ideology is driven to try to establish a single Zionist state “from the river to the sea”, but that that ideology, also fits with the material reality that Israel finds itself in, in the era of imperialism, where small nation states are simply not viable. It is forced to do what every other small nation state has done in the past, which is to try to expand its territory, and size of that state by annexation and military conquest, i.e. to subordinate the Palestinians within a single Israeli state, and, in the face of continued resistance by Palestinians, to then, exterminate them, as it is doing in Gaza, and already beginning to do in the occupied West Bank.

Brutal and sickening as it may be, the reality is that, given that the international working-class, and in particular the working-class in the Middle-East and North Africa, has failed to produce its own solution to this problem, by uniting to form the kind of federation that Trotsky described in relation to the Balkans, the most likely outcome, now, at least in Gaza, is that the Zionist state will succeed in its genocide, and effectively wipe out the Palestinians, much as Europeans did with the natives in North and South America, as well as in Australia etc. Already, the West Bank has been made non-viable, as a result of the actions of settlers, backed by the Zionist state, itself backed by the US, UK and EU. It will only be a matter of time, before the Palestinians there are reduced to being museum exhibits, much as with the Native Americans constrained within the reservations.

And, brutal and sickening as it may be, given the failure of international socialism to provide another solution, the reality will be that, as with the genocide committed against indigenous peoples elsewhere, and the formation of other nation states, considered historically, and scientifically, the consequence would itself be progressive. It would create a larger, single, more viable Israeli state, which, undoubtedly, having annexed further territory from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and possibly Egypt, would, especially given its backing from the US, UK and EU imperialism, be in a position to negotiate with the surrounding Arab states, to normalise relations, which sets in place the conditions for the coming together of those states into a larger formation, as seen elsewhere in the world, most obviously in relation to the EU.

The calls for a Two-State solution always were utopian, and delusional bourgeois, liberal fantasies, given the Marxist analysis of the material basis of the nation state. It amounted to a demand that capitalism cease being capitalism, that the dynamic, inherent within it, to drive to war as the means of expanding the size of the single market/state, cease to exist, and so that the Zionist state in Israel act differently to every other capitalist state on the planet, which, in itself, indicates the underlying anti-Semitic nature of such a demand.

The existence of nation states in Europe, did not prevent that dynamic leading to a series of European Wars, did not stop the German nation state invading the French and other nation states, for example. The existence of the Ukrainian capitalist/imperialist nation state has not prevented the Russian capitalist/imperialist nation state from invading it, so why would the formal existence of a Palestinian state prevent the Zionist state from invading it whenever it felt the need to do so, to further its own interests?

So long as capitalism exists, this dynamic, and drive to war will continue to exist, whatever formal arrangements exist, as part of some international order, and rule of law. As Marx put it,

“The bourgeois economists have merely in view that production proceeds more smoothly with modern police than, e.g., under club-law. They forget, however, that club-law too is law, and that the law of the stronger, only in a different form, still survives even in their “constitutional State.””

(Marx – A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy, Introduction)

Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 4. Property Or Rent - Part 1 of 8

4. Property or Rent

As with all such categories, it is necessary to analyse them in the specific forms they take in different modes of production. Communal property is not the same as private property, feudal property is not the same as bourgeois property, and so on, just as rent in its bourgeois economic sense is specific to capitalist production, and the formation of an average industrial rate of profit.

“M. Proudhon, while seeming to speak of property in general, deals only with landed property, with ground rent.

“The origin of rent, as property, is, so to speak, extra-economic: it rests in psychological and moral considerations which are only very distantly connected with the production of wealth.”” (p 142)

Proudhon's admission that he cannot fathom the origin of rent and property is, of itself, damning of his claim to have presented a scientific analysis of economic categories. He further talks about there being something mystical or mysterious about the origin of property.

Marx quotes Proudhon's statement.

“... that at the seventh epoch of economic evolution – credit – when fiction had caused reality to vanish, and human activity threatened to lose itself in empty space, it had become necessary to bind man more closely to nature. Now, rent was the price of this new contract.” (p 142)

Nearly everything by Proudhon, here, is back to front. As Marx says,

“In the world of real production, where landed property always precedes credit, M. Proudhon’s horror vacui [horror of a vacuum] could not exist.” (p 143)

Marx gives a lengthy quote from Proudhon setting out his interpretation of Ricardo's theory of rent. In fact, Proudhon's account itself is wrong. For Ricardo, rent is surplus profit, i.e. profit above the average industrial rate of profit. Because Ricardo denies the existence of Absolute Rent, this surplus profit is produced only on the more fertile lands, where production costs are lower. But, Proudhon goes beyond this, claiming that the rent is the difference between the market price and cost of production, not including the average profit.

Now, for the feudal rent, which amounts to a tribute paid by peasants to the feudal lord, this is correct. These kinds of pre-capitalist rents are the means by which surplus labour is pumped out of the producers. But, that is not at all the case with bourgeois rent. The individual peasant producer, under feudalism, must produce to live, and anything above what is required to reproduce their labour-power is a surplus product. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, whether this surplus takes the form of corvee, or labour rent, rent in kind, or money rent, the basis is the same, though the last is the form, in which the feudal rent is dissolved, and bourgeois rent appears in its place.

Bourgeois rent is different, because the landlord is confronted not by an individual peasant producer, but by a capitalist farmer. The capitalist farmer does not need to farm to live, and does not need to apply their capital to the land. They will do so, only if they can make, at least, the average industrial rate of profit. If not, they will employ their capital elsewhere. So, now, the landlord can only levy rent to the extent of any surplus profit that capital obtains from this production, as against the average industrial rate of profit. It is, now, the capitalist farmer who appropriates the surplus labour of the agricultural labourer, not the landlord. The farmer obtains profit, and, out of that profit, only pays to the landlord any surplus profit, as rent.

Proudhon explains property by first positing the existence of the landlord, but with no explanation of how the landlord came into existence, and having assumed the existence of the landlord, as the recipient of rent, he posits this as the explanation of rent.

“Let us note also that in determining rent by the difference in fertility of the soil, M. Proudhon assigns a new origin to it, since land, before being assessed according to different degrees of fertility, “was not,” in his view, “an exchange value, but was common.” What, then, has happened to the fiction about rent having come into being through the necessity of bringing back to the land man who was about to lose himself in the infinity of empty space?” (p 144)

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