Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The 1949 Revolution - Part 4 of 9

The same is true in relation to apartheid in South Africa, to Orangeism in Northern Ireland, and Zionism in Israel. These states have to develop on the basis of capitalism, which requires an expansion of the working-class, and, ultimately, the privileged community cannot provide the numbers for that expansion. In South Africa that was quite apparent from the start, as it depended on native black workers, and it was the growing power of those workers organised in COSATU that broke apartheid.

In what Marx described as the classic settler colonies such as the Americas, and Australia, the native population is too small and dispersed, and the working-class is only increased by large-scale immigration of Europeans. As I write this, (in December 2023), already, after just a month, Israel's economy is being hit, as a result not just of Palestinian workers being sent back, but also as a result of Jewish workers being tied up in military service to sustain the rule and oppression of the Zionist state.   It had a 16% shortage of labour, at that time.

In August 2024, Israel had a 90,000 shortfall of building workers, despite turning to India for additional workers.  Its GDP declined by 20.7% in the final quarter of 2023, driven by a 27% drop in consumption.  It has driven out 160,000 Palestinian workers, affecting all sectors of its economy.  Costs of its genocidal war are estimated by the Bank of Israel to be $55.6 billion, for 2023-2025, and that will drive a huge hole in its budget.  Of course, although Biden/Harris in the US, and Starmer/Reeves in Britain can find no money for pensioners, the poor and to maintain services in the US and UK, they can be counted on to find money to finance arms for the Zionist regime, as well as for the corrupt regime of Zelensky, which performs a similar function for it.    Each year, the US provides $3 billion in aid to the Zionist state act to buy its services in the region, and this year has provided another $14.5 billion.  The UK, who Reeves has gleefully told us "has to make difficult decisions" due to the dire state of its finances, was already providing £3 billion in military aid to the Zionist regime this, year, and Starmer/Reeves have added a further £600 million to that.

A large part of the undermining of both the Protestant Ascendancy in Northern Ireland, and of Catholic clericalism in the Republic, was the need for capital accumulation, which increasingly came from multinational companies from the US and EU, which required homogeneous labour, and had no historic ties to those old sectarian privilege systems, and, indeed, which represented a racist/sectarian impediment to its free movement. The same kinds of bigotry that were behind Brexit, also stand in the way of capital accumulation in Britain, already manifest in its own labour shortages, which again have illustrated the inevitable contradictions, as despite the promises of the Brexiters, net migration has hit record high levels.

In the age of imperialism, states are forced to develop on the basis of a development of either bourgeois or proletarian property relations. What is more, in the age of imperialism, when capital has grown to immense size, and requires correspondingly immense single markets, the state itself must assume the form of a multinational state. The nation state has become a fetter on the development of capital, and so has become absolutely reactionary. The natural form of the state, in the age of imperialism is the multinational state. Even with the United States, it is really, a multinational state, expressed in its federalism, and it too has been led to join with Mexico and Canada in NAFTA. California alone is the size of the fifth largest national economy. The same applies to China, and, obviously, the EU is the clear manifestation of this inevitable drive towards, ever larger, multinational states, as the rational form of capital, as is the development of regional economic blocs on every continent.

The demand for national self-determination, in the age of imperialism is utopian, and, consequently, reactionary. Marx and Engels noted the existence of “non-historic peoples” that had not risen to the level of being able to create their own nation states. Lenin noted that the small states were similarly reactionary, as they tried to cling to those outmoded concepts of national sovereignty, whilst, in practice, aligning themselves with larger states, acting as their vassals and agents. The Palestinians face this problem – indeed so does Israel, which is why it exists as a vassal state of US imperialism – which can only be overcome within the context of the formation of a multinational state, much as European states were led to do. As Trotsky put it in relation to the Balkan Wars,

“The peoples of the Near East must organise a democratic federation on their territory, on principles of independence from both Russia and Austria-Hungary.”

More than 30 years ago, I argued that rather than the demands for a single secular state of Palestine, or a Two State Solution, we should similarly argue for a federal democratic state of Israel and Palestine, as part of a wider Middle-Eastern federation. Such a solution depends not upon it being foisted upon the region by imperialism, or negotiated above the heads of the people by the existing states, but upon a combined struggle by the workers and poor peasants, both Jew and Arab, from below, and whose first steps comprise a struggle for equal political rights, conducted on the basis of proletarian methods.

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A Measure of Justice

Joe Biden has described the murder of Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah, by the Zionist state as “A Measure of Justice” for the many people killed by Hezbollah. These four words are extremely revealing. It again, illustrates the thoroughly hollow and sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, and its commitment to the rule of law, and an international rules based system. It required, perhaps, the US, as a society that, itself, arose on the back of religious intolerance on the part of the Pilgrim Fathers, and progressed by violence against Native Americans, and the stealing of their land, and which for much of its history has been based on gun law, and which, today, still routinely murders its own citizens by legal execution, to be so forthright.

But, let us set aside the US's penchant for murdering its own citizens, via legalised execution – a barbaric practice, long since abandoned by most civilised societies in Europe – which, of course, results in a disproportionate number of its poorer citizens, and black and Latino citizens, being executed, because, not only do they not have access to the fancy, expensive lawyers that the rich do, but also that their conditions of life are far more likely to place them in the kinds of violent situation, and desperation that will leave them sitting in the dock in the first place. Yet, even if we set aside this barbaric practice of legalised murder by the state, bourgeois-democracy, and the rule of law requires the idea of “innocent until proved guilty”, at least in legal systems based upon English Law, such as exists in the US.

Biden seems to be confusing “Retribution”, the concept of “an eye for an eye”, contained in the Old Testament, with “Justice”, the concept that everyone should have their day in court, and be proved to have committed a crime. Of course, the notion of “Justice”, of “The Rule of Law”, is itself a sham, even if we, also, set aside the points above, about the fact that it is always disproportionately the poor and oppressed that are placed in the position of breaking the law, and so on.

A look, for example, at the way the law worked in Britain, in the 19th century, showed a clear class bias, even in the way it was framed. Take the contract of employment. If an employer broke such a contract, this was treated as a civil matter, requiring the worker to take the employer to court, and sue for breach of contract. If the worker broke the contract, this was treated as a crime, and the worker was prosecuted by the state, and sent to jail! This kind of class bias is contained in the operation and formulation of the law in every bourgeois society, and legal system.

And, of course, although, in theory, bourgeois democracy, and its rule of law, claims to operate on this basis that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and is entitled to their day in court, so that justice can be seen to be done, that never happens, in practice either. The most obvious example of that is the many poor people, often black and ethnic minority people, who are routinely treated as being guilty until proven innocent. Just look at the way bourgeois society and politicians deals with the question of immigration, for example. Not only does the narrative in support of immigration controls, place all immigrants in the condition of, in some way, being a problem, who must, therefore, be kept out of the country, rather than, the reality, which is that immigrants are a fundamental means of societies meeting their needs for labour, and who also, enrich the cultural development of the society, but, also, this same narrative, then, makes all those in the society, who look like “immigrants”, the target of suspicion.

That is codified in laws, which lead to disproportionately larger numbers of black and ethnic minority citizens, being subject to repeated stop and search by the police, for example. And, of course, at its worst and most blatant, it means that large numbers of black people and other ethnic minorities are simply shot dead by the police, guilty or innocent, without any trial, any concept of justice, or of being innocent until proven guilty, any concept of the right to a fair trial. That is rampant across the US, but it is also seen in Britain, as with the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, for example. But, Britain was also guilty of implementing such policies of state murder on a systematic basis, against members of the Provisional IRA, for example, despite claiming that the IRA were simply criminals, rather than that they were engaged in a war.

In the period since then, especially as drone technology has developed, both the US and UK, have routinely murdered their political and military opponents, without any recourse to the idea of a fair trial, even a fake, bourgeois fair trial, or the idea of being innocent until proven guilty. When Russia does that, by using poisoned umbrellas, and so on, it is, of course, branded as barbarous, and flouting the norms of the international order, which just shows the extent to which both are guilty of the same crimes, and yet, in the West, those crimes are justified, as being, somehow, “a measure of justice”!!

When the British state murdered those members of the IRA, it did so up close and personal. That is not the case when the US and UK, or its proxies, such as the Zionist state, in Israel, now, carry out such actions. The use of drones to murder opponents, let alone the use of high-powered bombs and missiles, do not target and kill just those they are aimed at. Biden's claim that the murder of Nasrallah, which involved the widespread bombing and destruction of large swathes of not just Beirut, but also other cities such as Tyre, by its Zionist proxy, is like Britain had gone after Martin McGuinness, by dropping huge amounts of bombs on Belfast, and justified it by claiming it had intelligence that he was there, and that, taking him out brought “a measure of justice” to those killed by the IRA!

What is the corollary of that? Well, if we look at what actually happened both in Northern Ireland, and in Lebanon, its instructive. Before 1969, when Britain sent in its troops to the streets of Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA was an insignificant force. Its predecessor, the Official IRA, had abandoned armed struggle, in favour of bourgeois-democratic politics. When, that same bourgeois-democratic politics, undertaken in the form of the Civil Rights Movement, demanded equal political rights for Catholics, something that should not even have to be demanded given the basis of bourgeois-democracy, the Protestant community, which had been given privileges by Britain, in order for it to act as its own agent in Ireland, much as Britain envisaged the role of Zionism in the Middle East, when it set out The Balfour Declaration, rebelled, violently.

The British troops on the ground, in 1969, were supposed to be there to prevent that violence, and were welcomed by Catholic communities, in that light. But, it did not take long for the real purpose of their presence to be felt, which was to suppress the Catholic community itself, and its demands for equal political rights. It was that, emphasised by events such as Bloody Sunday, of again, the cold blooded murder of unarmed Catholics by the British Army, which soon drove Catholics into the arms of the petty-bourgeois nationalists of PIRA, which they saw as their defenders, and whom they provided support for within their communities. 

This of course, is the inevitable consequence of nationalist ideology, and national struggles, as against class struggle. A national struggle, be it one to establish some new bourgeois nation state, fought against some existing oppressor nation state, or a straight forward war between two opposing nation states, inevitably, breeds even greater nationalism, and nationalist antagonism between the masses of the two opposing states. It is why Lenin, argued that, as Marxists, we are opposed to such struggles for the creation of new bourgeois states, we are generally, opposed to the idea of national self-determination, and rather in favour of the abolition of national borders, as part of our struggle for the self-determination of the working-class, and its maximum class unity across borders.

"As the party of the proletariat, the Social-Democratic Party considers it to be its positive and principal task to further the self-determination of the proletariat in each nationality rather than that of peoples or nations. We must always and unreservedly work for the very closest unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it is only in isolated and exceptional cases that we can advance and actively support demands conducive to the establishment of a new class state or to the substitution of a looser federal unity, etc., for the complete political unity of a state."

The same is seen with Hezbollah, and Zionism. The narrative being given by Zionism and its imperialist sponsors is that the Zionist state was led to invade Lebanon, because of the role of Hezbollah, much as later, Britain, claimed that its military occupation of Northern Ireland, its use of concentration (internment) camps, where people were imprisoned, for years without trial, was in response to the actions of PIRA, whereas, PIRA only grew, because of the actions of the British Army in Ireland after 1969. The reality is that, prior to the invasion of Lebanon by the Zionist state in 1982, when it intervened in the Lebanese Civil War, in order to try to install a right-wing, Maronite-Christian, regime, Hezbollah did not exist. It was created, in a similar manner to the PIRA, in response to the external invasion, and as a means of defence of a local community.

As Marxists, we neither support the petty-bourgeois nationalism of groups like Hezbollah or PIRA, but nor do we give any ground or support to the forces of imperialism and Zionism in their hypocritical attacks on them, because it is the actions of that same imperialism, and of Zionism that creates the conditions in which those petty-bourgeois nationalist organisations spring up in response to them, and their brutal oppression of the communities who turn, in desperation, to such groups.

Of course, the further hypocrisy of US imperialism is that its own history is one in which it resorted to the same terroristic methods, in its struggle for independence from British Colonialism, in the 18th century. And, even more obviously, and recently, the Zionist state, itself, was created by the terrorists of the Irgun and Stern Gang. Irgun terrorist, Menachem Begin, as Prime Minister of Israel, was the one that organised the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, that led to the siege of Beirut, which was only turned back a a result of the creation of Hezbollah, as a resistance movement to it.

Similarly, prominent Stern Gang terrorist, Yitzhak Shamir, was Prime Minister of Israel, between 1983-4 and 1986-92. US imperialism, as with British imperialism has no problem with terrorists, so long as they are “their” terrorists, or, as in the case of people like Nelson Mandela, after they have ceased being a part of the threat to imperialism, and have been absorbed by it.

Whilst Marxists have no reason to support petty-bourgeois nationalism, or terroristic acts by such organisations, which are generally counter-productive, ineffective, and also act to drive divisions between workers, we do understand, why, in the absence of large, revolutionary workers parties, to lead such struggles, the natural response of oppressed peoples is to lash out by whatever means, and to be driven into the hands of these reactionaries. In considering, our sense of justice, we do not at all equate the violence of the oppressor, particularly the violence of a huge well armed oppressor such as the Zionist state, with its even bigger sponsor US imperialism standing behind it, with the violence of the oppressed that responds to it.

But, if we take Biden's words, what might we then conclude. To murder Nasrallah, US imperialism, using its Zionist proxy has flattened a large swathe of Beirut, and is continuing with that slaughter across Lebanon, as it has done in Gaza. In Gaza, the official figures show more than 40,000 people killed, whilst the real figure, even before we consider those about to die from disease, famine and so on, is more like 100,000. No serious person is in any doubt that the vast majority of those killed are innocent civilians, with the figures themselves showing around 70% are women and children.

The same kinds of figures are being seen in the attacks on Beirut, by the Zionist state. So, what, then, could Biden say, if the families of those innocent civilians in Beirut, and in Gaza, were to look at the murder of their relations at the hands of Zionist state terror, backed by and made possible by US, UK and EU imperialism that provides the bombs, missiles and planes, and were to draw the same conclusion. What Biden's statement means, is that those Palestinian and Lebanese families could look at any assassination of Netanyahu, Biden/Harris/Trump, Starmer and so on, and conclude that, at least, it gave them too, “a measure of justice”. That is what the sham of bourgeois-democracy, and of its rules based order really comes down to, not order and justice at all, but simply an application of mafia-style vendetta.

Value, Price and Profit, XIV – The Struggle Between Capital and Labour and Its Results - Part 1 of 5

We return, at this point, to Marx's opening remarks that, while he was going to set out the theoretical fallacy of Weston's argument, and the conclusions drawn from it, about workers not demanding higher wages, he was doing so whilst not disagreeing with Weston's motivation, and solution to workers' problems. Weston was wrong that commodity values are determined by wages, and that higher wages lead to higher prices. He was also wrong that there was no point in workers forming unions, and fighting for higher wages. However, he was right, in concluding that, in the end, workers could never succeed, by such means, in getting the better of capital, or resolving their problems. Weston supported the views of the Owenites, who sought a transformation of society, and creation of cooperatives, through which these issues could be properly addressed.

Marx too, agreed that workers could not win, inside the constraints of capitalism, and the wages system. He too argued that the solution could only come from a transformation of society, of which, as he set out, in Capital III, Chapter 27, the socialised capital of the cooperative and joint stock company represents the transitional form.

“... as with all other commodities, so with labour, its market price will, in the long run, adapt itself to its value; that, therefore, despite all the ups and downs, and do what he may, the working man will, on an average, only receive the value of his labour, which resolves into the value of his labouring power, which is determined by the value of the necessaries required for its maintenance and reproduction, which value of necessaries finally is regulated by the quantity of labour wanted to produce them.” (p 85)

However, as previously noted, the value of labour-power is not exactly like that of other commodities, though it might be compared with say the value of a 1950's TV, as against that of a 2020's TV. Both are TV's, but the use value of one against the other is considerably different. The value of labour-power comprises two separate components. On the one hand there is the physical minimum component of just that quantity of food etc., required for workers to live and work. The proponents of immiseration, such as with the Lassallean Iron Law of Wages, argue that this is the level that capital is always driving wages towards.

But, there is also another component of the value of labour-power, which Marx calls the historical, cultural or social component.

“Its ultimate limit is determined by the physical element, that is to say, to maintain and reproduce itself, to perpetuate its physical existence, the working class must receive the necessaries absolutely indispensable for living and multiplying. The value of those indispensable necessaries forms, therefore, the ultimate limit of the value of labour.” (p 85-6)

In fact, even in terms of this physical minimum, there is an historical and social component. How could workers, today, function, unless they could read and write, for example, if only to be able to catch a bus or train, or learn to drive a car, to get to work? As Marx sets out, in The Grundrisse, in relation to The Civilising Mission of Capital, it is this role of workers, also as consumers, and members of society, that determines even this physical minimum.

“...likewise the discovery, creation and satisfaction of new needs arising from society itself; the cultivation of all the qualities of the social human being, production of the same in a form as rich as possible in needs, because rich in qualities and relations -- production of this being as the most total and universal possible social product, for, in order to take gratification in a many-sided way, he must be capable of many pleasures [genussfähig], hence cultured to a high degree -- is likewise a condition of production founded on capital. This creation of new branches of production, i.e. of qualitatively new surplus time, is not merely the division of labour, but is rather the creation, separate from a given production, of labour with a new use value; the development of a constantly expanding and more comprehensive system of different kinds of labour, different kinds of production, to which a constantly expanding and constantly enriched system of needs corresponds.”

(The Grundrisse, Chapter 8)

Back To XIII - Main Attempts At Raising Or Preventing A Fall In Wages

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The 1949 Revolution - Part 3 of 9

Marx points out, in relation to that peasantry/petty bourgeoisie, upon which the Bonapartists rest,

“Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself.)

(loc cit)

The colonial regimes attempted to perform this function, welding together the divergent class interests of colonists as against the native population. The apartheid regime in South Africa did the same. When British colonial rule in Ireland ended, the same function was carried out, via the creation of the Six County statelet, giving ascendancy to the Protestant community, formed from the descendants of the original British colonists.

This is also the nature of Zionism, as a permanent bloc of four classes (Popular Front), in which what welds its components together is only this desire for protection, not against “other classes”, but against other ethnicities, i.e. against the Palestinians and Arabs, whose land and property they stole, and whose achievement of equal political rights would shatter the basis of the Zionist state. That this arose as a reactionary, nationalist, separatist solution to the experience of anti-Semitism, does not change that reality. It is, in fact, why Zionism needs anti-Semitism, as the driver and justification of itself. But, given that only 30% of the world's Jews, themselves, have been convinced of that argument, and need to move to Israel for their survival, it has been peculiarly unsuccessful in making that argument, which requires ever greater lies, and hyperbole, to justify itself. Indeed, the greatest proponents of Zionism, outside Israel, are not Jews, but right-wing Christian zealots, and those that utilise it to advance the cause of western imperialism.

As Trotsky pointed out in his class analysis of the soviet state, this is also why the soviet bureaucracy could not constitute a ruling class either, whether considered a state-capitalist class, bureaucratic-collectivist class or whatever. The Stalinists were based on the professional middle-class bureaucracy, but the bureaucracy only existed on the basis of the property relations created by the revolution, much as a trades union bureaucracy only exists so long as there are trades unions created by workers. They could have simply restored the previous, and still dominant, bourgeois property relations, but that would have required a new civil war. They could develop the existing property relations, which is what they were led to do, but the success of that required, as permanent revolution demonstrated, the extension of the revolution on an international scale. That conflicted with the theory of Socialism In One Country, and hence the inevitable failure of the state.

The same was true of the Nazi regime. The Nazis were based on the petty-bourgeoisie, which provided them with their foot soldiers, but they could not implement the anti-capitalist measures proposed to win the support of that petty-bourgeoisie, because the needs of German imperialism, did not permit it. Hence, the Strasserites were liquidated. The same applies to the petty-bourgeois nationalist agenda of the Brexiters, of Trump, Starmer, and others across the globe, which is impossible to achieve in the era of imperialism, which means that they must either abandon them in practice, whilst claiming to be continuing with that agenda, to abandon them openly, or be forced from office by one means or other.

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War on Lebanon, No Reason For Surprise

No one should be surprised that the Zionist state, in Israel, is now stepping up its war on Lebanon. I said, a year ago, that it was inevitable. The nature of Zionism is not just ethno-nationalism, but, also, settler-colonialism, combined with imperialism.  The mouthpieces of the Zionist butchers, whether its Netanyahu, Mencer or Hagari, must know, by now, that no one believes a word that comes from their mouths, any more than they believe the lies of Biden, Harris, Blinken, Starmer, Lammy and the rest that enable them, so visibly at variance are they with the reality that the whole world can see.  But, that simply means that they no longer even bother to try to make those lies convincing, just telling an ever bigger lie each time, as they drive ever deeper into the rabbit hole, themselves facilitated by the huge propaganda machine of the global 24 hour, all-pervasive media that is a central element of their rule.

For the last 80 years, Zionism has proceeded by stealing Palestinian lands, occupying them, forcibly driving the existing Arab communities from them, and then, erecting their own Zionist settler communities. It was in this way that large numbers of Palestinians were turned into refugees in their own land, and driven into Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. On each occasion, the Zionists have used such pogroms against the Palestinians to expand their territory, and, when such pogroms are responded to by neighbouring Arab states, in support of Palestinians, the Zionists have used that response, as justification for the pogroms that provoked it, and to, also, then, further annex territory, as they did, for example, in the Sinai, Golan Heights, and Lebanon.

There is a simple reason for that, which does not come down to a simple subjective drive of the Zionists to expand their territory, by stealing it from others. The reality is that without the economic support given to the Zionist state by the US, and its allies, Israel would collapse. It is too small to be viable, even today, after 75 years of such externally financed and supported, economic and technological development. Without that US and other imperialist support, it would not have had access to the capital, technology, and weapons required for that development. Its not coincidence that the Zionists, in seeking to establish their totalitarian, ethno-nationalist state, looked for external support for that from like minded regimes in Nazi Germany, and fascist Italy, and later from the USSR.

But, it was the US, as world hegemon, after WWII, that was the real sugar-daddy for the Zionist state, which became its main proxy in the region, effectively a vassal state, contrary to all of the nonsense from anti-Semites that proclaim that the Israeli-Jewish tail wags the US imperialist dog, and also makes a nonsense of the idea that, today, the US is powerless in preventing the Zionist state from continuing the genocide against Palestinians, or against its war on Lebanon, which is part of an attempt to, again, provoke a response from the neighbouring Arab states, as on all previous occasions, which, then, facilitates a wider regional war against those states, and a further annexation of their territory by the Zionists, backed by US imperialism.

Israel is too small to survive in the age of imperialism, where the nation-state has become absolutely reactionary, a fetter on the further rational development of capital. The same applies, even more, of course, to Palestine, which is one of the reasons why the bourgeois Two State Solution was not just a utopian fantasy, but also, a reactionary fantasy, only imaginable as the creation of imperialism itself, which, given the backing for the Zionist state from the US and its allies, was never going to be brought about, especially as the reality of that, led, over decades, to the Palestinians, violently, but ineffectively resisting the Zionist juggernaut, and reaching out, in that hopelessness to the kinds of reactionaries, which provided both the Zionists, and US imperialism with the propaganda to use against them. That is part of the reactionary dead-end to which nationalist ideology, as against proletarian ideology, leads.

I set out several months ago, the rationale for the current developments. Israel is too small, and the solution requires a much larger single market, in the region. US imperialism uses Zionism as its proxy, in the region, as a Senator Joe Biden once said, “If Israel did not exist, we would have to create it, to represent out interests in the Middle-East”. US imperialism, also has other client states in the Middle-East, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf Monarchies, but, they are not dependent upon US imperialism, as Israel is. Egypt as well as Syria and Iraq, in the past, looked to the USSR, and, today, Syria and Iraq, look to Iran, which, in turn, is allied to Russia and China. Even Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states, have begun to turn towards China, as the most dynamic economic power, when it comes to investment of real industrial capital, as against the proclivity of western imperialism, over the last 40 years, only to promote financial and property speculation, and consequent blowing up of asset price bubbles that subsequently burst leaving nothing tangible behind them.

As I set out, in that post, six months ago, those, like Owen Jones, that have accepted the idea that somehow, the Zionists have lost, because they have not defeated Hamas, or recovered the hostages, do so, because they are unable to allow themselves to accept the logic of their own analysis, which leads to the conclusion that the Zionists never were concerned, primarily, with defeating Hamas, nor returning the hostages, but were engaged in genocide against the Palestinians, requiring their physical destruction, or their ethnic cleansing from the region, at least into yet more refugee camps in the surrounding areas, or further afield if possible. Why is Zionism engaged in such a venture, not just out of pure evil intent, but for very specific reasons, of its need to expand its own territory and power, in the region, and to clear away the Palestinians who, for as long as they exist, will continue to rebel, and to provoke the sympathy from the Arab masses, in the region, to which the Arab ruling classes have to respond.

The strategy was set out by imperialism in The Abraham Accords. That strategy has been iced, as a result of the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, and the response to it by the Zionist state, and its imperialist sponsors. Donald Trump simply said out loud what the response of US imperialism has been, but left unspoken, which is to allow the Zionist state to finish the job, i.e. to exterminate the Palestinians. The Zionists said a year ago what they were going to do, and no one can have any excuse for not knowing in advance, what they have indeed done since then. Every red line crossed, with no consequence, for the simple reason that US imperialism has given sanction to the Zionist regime to do precisely that. This is not Netanyahu defying Biden, but Biden giving Netanyahu the green light, and the means to act, but simply saying, don't let my fingerprints on the job be too visible. Sunak, Starmer, Scholz, Von Der Leyen and the rest have done the same.

Only when Gaza is physically flattened, do they, now, call for a ceasefire there! Of course, the reason, even for that, is given primarily to recover the hostages – or sausages as Starmer referred to them in a Freudian slip in his Conference speech – not to prevent the further genocide against the Palestinians. The day after day pogroms, rape, murder and torture of Palestinian men, women and children, in the West Bank, of course, also continues, without even any such comment from US imperialism, or Starmer or the EU, because of course, the hostages are not held there.

US imperialism and its UK and EU subordinates also tried to wash their hands of the Zionist attacks on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, but, were quick to accept the Zionist narrative on it, as well as demanding that Iran did not respond to it. When, of course, Iran did respond, rather mildly, the US, UK and EU, as well as some of their client states in the region had already beefed up their own military resources in the area, ready to take down those Iranian drones and missiles that the Iron Dome did not itself take care of.

Again, we had Owen Jones, who has done a lot of good work highlighting the genocide in Gaza, and the role of Biden, Sunak, Starmer et al, in facilitating it, interviewing people who argue that the Zionist regime could not attack Lebanon in the same way it has done with Gaza, and who point to the example of previous such land invasions. But, this is basically the triumph of hope over reason, again driven by a moralistic approach. The Zionists said that they would flatten Beirut in the same way they have done with Gaza, and they are already starting to do so. It, also, shows the nonsense of those that try to distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons, a distinction used by the apologists of imperialism, and its arms supplies, both in Ukraine, and to Israel. The much vaunted Lebanese rockets have also simply been shot down by the Iron Dome, rocket launchers and so on taken out by Israeli jets and missiles.  It leaves Israel free to launch attacks without any concern for effective responses.

So, it is no surprise that the Zionist regime showed no timidity or caution when it launched its strikes inside Iran itself, used its cyber warfare capabilities to recklessly, and indiscriminately explode pagers and walky-talkies in crowded areas in Beirut, followed by outright and devastating missile and aircraft attacks on buildings in Beirut. The idea it is doing this without the tacit support of US/NATO imperialism is laughable. If the latter wanted to stop it they could with a single phone call, threatening to stop the supply of arms and other support. Not only have they not done so, but they have sent even more of their own forces to the region to act to back up the Zionist regime, and provide further cover against any response. 

The earlier attacks on Damascus etc. were intended to provoke a retaliation from Iran that never came. At each stage, the Zionist regime has had to step up the level of its attacks, as each one has failed to bring the kind of even proportionate response that would justify a rapid intensification into a regional war, giving US/NATO imperialism the grounds for its own more overt, direct involvement.

A look at the cross-border attacks between Israel and Lebanon, over the last year, shows the number of attacks by the Zionist regime, as against those from Hezbollah, is far, far higher, disproving the claims about the Zionist regime simply responding to attacks. We now see that Britain has sent 700 marines to Cyprus ready for an intervention into Beirut itself, under cover of the excuse of evacuating Britons, who currently, could be leaving by simply getting on a commercial flight out of Beirut Airport. This has a familiar ring from previous times, for example, the sending of warships to Nanking.

The continued statements out of the mouths of the likes of Biden and Starmer about wanting peace, whilst all the time sending even more weapons to the Zionists, backed up with an increasing amount of their own military hardware sitting on the sidelines, should be treated with the same contempt as Starmer and Reeves claims not to introducing austerity whilst in the same breath cutting benefits, removing Winter Fuel Payments from a million poor pensioners, and maintaining the Two Child Benefit Cap, as well as refusing to commit to the kind of taxation of the rich that would close their fiscal deficit.

A regional war is coming, and US/NATO imperialism is four-square behind it. Starmer et al may not be able to keep pensioners warm, but they can send billions in arms to the corrupt Zelensky regime, and to the genocidal Zionist regime.

Northern Soul Classics - Too Much For Me Baby - Tina Florence

 

Friday Night Disco - Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time - The Delfonics

 

Value, Price and Profit, XIII – Main Cases At Attempts of Raising Wages or Resisting Their Fall - Part 8 of 8

The slave, as discussed earlier, must be maintained, permanently, by the slave owner, even if the slave owner does so out of the product of the slave they appropriate. The serf has the security of the use of land to ensure their own reproduction, even if they must also hand over a quantity of free labour, products or money to the landlord as tribute. But, the wage-worker has no such security. The capitalist has no requirement to permanently maintain the worker, only to pay them wages for the period of employment. Unlike the serf, the wage worker has no independent means of production to ensure their own subsistence, because they are monopolised by capital.

“He must try to get a rise of wages in the one instance, if only to compensate for a fall of wages in the other. If he resigned himself to accept the will, the dictates of the capitalist as a permanent economical law, he would share in all the miseries of the slave, without the security of the slave.” (p 83-4)

The idea, therefore, that either capital can raise prices of commodities, or reduce wages, or that workers can raise wages, simply as an act of will, is false. It is subjectivist and unscientific, ignoring the fact that all of these prices are ultimately determined by values. The action of supply and demand, whether for labour-power, as a commodity, or for any other commodity, in bringing about movements of market prices, only moves these prices around their values. Moreover, the changes in supply and demand are themselves functions of these underlying material conditions, and objective laws. The idea that the determination of relative wages, and consequently relative profits is simply a matter of greedy capitalists, on the one side, or “more militancy” by workers, on the other side, pitted against each other in a battle of wills is unscientific.

“In all the cases I have considered, and they form ninety-nine out of a hundred, you have seen that a struggle for a rise of wages follows only in the track of previous changes, and is the necessary offspring of previous changes in the amount of production, the productive powers of labour, the value of labour, the value of money, the extent or the intensity of labour extracted, the fluctuations of market prices, dependent upon the fluctuations of demand and supply, and consistent with the different phases of the industrial cycle; in one word, as reactions of labour against the previous action of capital. By treating the struggle for a rise of wages independently of all these circumstances, by looking only upon the change of wages, and overlooking all other changes from which they emanate, you proceed from a false premise in order to arrive at false conclusions.” (p 84)

Back To Part 7

Forward To XIV - The Struggle between Capital and Labour and Its Results

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The 1949 Revolution - Part 2 of 9

As Marx pointed out, in relation to the French state,

“under the absolute monarchy, during the first Revolution, and under Napoleon the bureaucracy was only the means of preparing the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Under the Restoration, under Louis Philippe, under the parliamentary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class, however much it strove for power of its own.”

(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

Indeed, one of the strengths of capitalism, and of the bourgeoisie, is its adaptability to different political regimes, whether, as Trotsky describes, those regimes assume the mask of democracy or fascism, for example. Under Louis Bonaparte (and the same can be said of Nazism, Stalinism and Zionism), the political regime is based not upon the bourgeoisie, and their class interests, but on the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie,

“the state power is not suspended in the air. Bonaparte represented a class, and the most numerous class of French society at that, the small-holding peasants.”

(ibid)

Because, Bonapartism is characterised by a fusion of the political regime and the state, this gives the illusion that the state, itself, represents the interests of that petty-bourgeoisie. The Nazis were based on the German petty-bourgeoisie, the Stalinists on the managerial middle-class layers and bureaucracy, the Zionists on the Zionist ruling caste. But, that is an illusion, and is manifest by the heightened contradiction that the conflicting class interests that have to be reconciled, now, within the regime.

The point had been made by Engels, in his analysis of the Peasant War in Germany.

“The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests.”

It is not, however, just a revolutionary leader that faces this problem, but also a counter-revolutionary leader. This same problem faced the Brexiters, in Britain, for example, but, in reverse. In the age of imperialism, attempts to turn the clock backwards, and to seek a solution based upon the nation state, are impossible, as well as reactionary. Either those attempting to pursue such a course (Johnson/Starmer) are forced to essentially lie about what they are doing (seeking Brexit In Name Only), or else they are defeated in their attempts (Pol Pot, Truss). Even where they seem to have achieved their goals, it is a delusion. North Korea is dependant on China; the Zionist state, in Israel, is dependent on US and EU imperialism, for example. In each case, the growing contradiction that the regime seeks to reconcile, requires not only ever greater lies, but also ever greater authoritarian rule.

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Lars T Lih, Lenin and Permanent Revolution

In a very long article in The Weekly Worker, covering a range of subjects, all relating to Leninism, and its development into a cult, Lars T Lih, talks about Lenin's April Theses, seen by Trotskyists and Stalinists alike, as Lenin having gone over to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. I find Lih's argument, in relation to this, not only unconvincing, but strange.

He writes, of Trotsky's account,

“This story has all the earmarks of a good heroic narrative. First, it is an exciting story, full of colourful, corroborative detail and dramatic episodes. Just like Stalin’s hero narrative published a few months earlier in spring 1924, Trotsky’s story gives us a Lenin as a theoretical innovator and a rebel against established dogma - even though, in this case, the established dogma was his own earlier doctrine! A new anti-Lenin figure is introduced: Lev Kamenev. Despite the fact that Kamenev was one of Lenin’s top lieutenants for over a decade, he now becomes an icon for the bad, ‘semi-Menshevik’ sort of Bolshevik.”

Firstly, is what Lenin argued in The April Theses, and in the associated “Letters On Tactics”, a rebellion against his own earlier “dogma”, i.e. the concept of a two stage revolution, symbolised by first a Democratic Dictatorship of The Proletariat and Peasantry (bourgeois-democracy), followed, some time later, after a period of capitalist development, by a proletarian revolution, symbolised by The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Workers'/soviet democracy)? No, clearly, it is not, for reasons that both Lenin, himself, and Trotsky described.

For Lenin, the formulation of The Democratic Dictatorship of The Proletariat and Peasantry, was seen to be algebraic, reflecting the fact that, in Russia, the working-class was a small minority, and the peasantry was the largest section of society. The algebraic nature of this formulation was set out by Lenin as signifying that only history itself would determine just how the balance of forces within it would play out, in the course of events. As Lenin notes, even in 1905, he wrote, in Two Tactics of Social-Democracy,

“Like everything else in the world, the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has a past and a future. Its past is autocracy, serfdom, monarchy, and privilege....Its future is the struggle against private property, the struggle of the wage-worker against the employer, the struggle for socialism....”

(Letters On Tactics)

Moreover, Lih talks of Trotsky introducing a new “anti-Lenin” character, into this narrative, suggesting that no such theoretical antagonism between the two existed, in reality. A reading of Letters on Tactics, shows precisely such an antagonism between Lenin and the “Old Bolsheviks”, of whom Lenin picks out Kamenev as their representative.

In fact, even before the publication of The April Theses, this antagonism between the two had flared up, with Lenin sending increasingly angry missives back to Russia, about the positions taken by Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin, in relation to their support for the Provisional Government, on the basis of The Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry.

"On March 6 he telegraphed through Stockholm to Petrograd: “Our tactic; absolute lack of confidence; no support to the new government; suspect Kerensky especially; arming of proletariat the sole guarantee; immediate elections to the Petrograd Duma; no rapprochement with other parties. In this directive, only the suggestion about elections to the Duma instead of the Soviet, had an episodic character and soon dropped out of sight...

On the 17th of March, through friends in Stockholm, he wrote a letter filled with alarm. “Our party would disgrace itself forever, kill itself politically, if it took part in such deceit ... I would choose an immediate split with no matter whom in our party rather than surrender to social patriotism ...” After this apparently impersonal threat – having definite people in mind however – Lenin adjures:

“Kamenev must understand that a world historic responsibility rests upon him.”

Kamenev is named here because it is a question of political principle. If Lenin had had a practical militant problem in mind, he would have been more likely to mention Stalin. But in just those hours Lenin was striving to communicate the intensity of his will to Petrograd across smoking Europe, Kamenev with the co-operation of Stalin was turning sharply toward social patriotism."

(Trotsky - History of The Russian Revolution, Chapter 15)

In other words, it was neither Lenin nor Trotsky “innovating”, here, but applying, in practice, their existing theory. It was Kamenev, Zinoviev and Stalin who were failing to apply that theory, in practice, on the basis of the real material conditions, and who, instead, were applying simply a dogma, a mantra, without analysing the nature of the material conditions they faced.

Lih, says,

“The story as told by Lenin himself a few years later is very different: “On April 7, I published my theses, in which I called for caution and patience.” He goes on to tell his 1921 audience that in April 1917, a “left tendency demanded the immediate overthrow of the government”, but that he “proceeded from the assumption that the masses had to be won over. [The government] cannot be overthrown just now [in April 1917], for it holds the vlast due to support from the worker soviets; to date, the government enjoys the confidence of the workers.””

But, neither Trotsky nor Lenin were calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government at that time. There is a vast difference between that, and their actual position, based on permanent revolution, of no support for the Provisional Government, and the building up of their forces within the soviets where, real power in society now rested. But, there is also a vast difference between that position, and that of Kamenev of supporting the Provisional Government, and its position of "revolutionary defencism".  Its only when that process has run its course, and the Bolsheviks have the support of the soviets in the main industrial centres, that both Lenin and Trotsky, call for the overthrow of the government, symbolised by the demand “All Power To The Soviets”. So, this is a clumsy and false dichotomy, introduced by Lih, who continues,

“According to the rearming narrative, the danger Lenin faced on his return was (allegedly) from conciliatory ‘semi-Mensheviks’, such as Kamenev and Stalin. According to Lenin himself in 1921, the danger he faced consisted of impatient leftists, who needed to be slowed down. And when we turn to the text of the theses, we find - surprise, surprise! - Lenin’s memory did not fail him. The need for “patient explanation” (Lenin’s mantra after his return to Russia) was the central novelty of the theses.”

So, Lenin's threat to split the party, not a split with ultralefts, but with “The Old Bolsheviks”, and other elements driving the Bolsheviks towards “social-patriotism”, is all just a myth, it appears, for Lih. Of course, Lenin – and Trotsky – argued against ultra-Leftists and Blanquists seeking a premature insurrection. That was precisely what their response to the July Days, was all about! Of course, Lenin – and Trotsky – argued the need to “patiently explain” in order that, the dialectical processes of the revolution, in a condition of dual power, as described by Trotsky in Permanent Revolution, and also set out by Lenin in The April Theses, and Letters On Tactics provided them with the conditions for such an overthrow, proceeding, not via the support for that government that Kamenev had argued for, but in Lenin's demand for it to become a Workers Government, symbolised by the demand, “Down With The Capitalist Ministers”, which, of course, Kerensky et al refused to accept.

Lih quotes some of the contents of Lenin's position in The Theses, but fails to quote those that rip his argument to shreds. For example, contrary to the impression given by Lih, Lenin writes, following up the sentiments expressed in his earlier messages from abroad,

“How can the petty bourgeoisie be “pushed” into power, if even now it can take the power, but does not want to?

This can be done only by separating the proletarian, the Communist, party, by waging a proletarian class struggle free from the timidity of those petty bourgeois. Only the consolidation of the proletarians who are free from the influence of the petty bourgeoisie in deed and not only in word can make the ground so hot under the feet of the petty bourgeoisie that it will be obliged under certain circumstances to take the power; it is even within the bounds of possibility that Guchkov and Milyukov—again under certain circumstances—will be for giving full and sole power to Chkheidze, Tsereteli, the S.R.s, and Steklov, since, after all, these are “defencists”.

Lih does not seem to understand the meaning of permanent revolution, as set out by Marx, and later Trotsky, and described by Lenin in the Theses and Letters on Tactics. He seems to understand it, in the corrupted form presented by Bukharin, to justify the Stalinist tactics and failure in 1927, in relation to the Chinese Revolution. In other words, he views it in formalistic rather than dialectical terms. He sees these as two distinct and separated revolutions, as events, rather than as part of a single, continuous, simultaneous and intermingled process.

The point about permanent revolution, as set out by Marx in his 1850 Address, and as set out by Trotsky and Lenin, is not only that the tasks of the bourgeois national revolution are undertaken by the proletariat, in conjunction with the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie, but that they are undertaken by proletarian means, not by bourgeois-democratic means. In other words, even the Constituent Assembly comes into being only on the basis of the actions of the soviets, whose role continues even after such an assembly is constituted.

In 1850, Marx could not formulate that precisely, because it is only after the Paris Commune that the outlines of such means become apparent. Yet, he was still able to write,

“Alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers’ governments, either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers’ clubs or committees, so that the bourgeois-democratic governments not only immediately lost the support of the workers but find themselves from the very beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole mass of the workers. In a word, from the very moment of victory the workers’ suspicion must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but against their former ally, against the party which intends to exploit the common victory for itself.”

The whole point about 1905 and 1917, which confirmed permanent revolution, was that the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, were carried out by proletarian means, by the establishment of workers and peasants soviets, but as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky recognised, in the very process of doing so, the conflicting class interests of the proletariat with those of both the bourgeoisie, and the petty-bourgeoisie/peasantry would become apparent. It is this context in which the process of patiently explaining occurs, and through which the Bolsheviks win over the majority in the soviets that, in April, they lacked, and which was required to move to the insurrection.

Lih also fails to distinguish between a proletarian revolution, and a commitment to immediately introduce Socialism. That is the same conflation that Stalin introduced later, in justification of his theory of Socialism In One Country. If Lenin did not believe that socialism could be constructed in Russia, Stalin argued, then why did he argue for the socialist revolution, rather than limiting himself to simply the bourgeois-democratic revolution? But, as Trotsky notes in his Appendix to The Revolution Betrayed, even Stalin, initially, recognised the distinction.

“In April 1924, three months after the death of Lenin, Stalin wrote, his brochure of compilations called The Foundations of Leninism:

“For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are enough – to this the history of our own revolution testifies. For the final victory of socialism, for the organization of socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially a peasant country like ours, are not enough – for this we must have the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries.”

(The Revolution Betrayed)

A proletarian revolution, and creation of a workers' state are a necessary condition for the development of Socialism, but not a sufficient condition. Neither Lenin nor Trotsky, could argue in 1917, for an immediate introduction of socialism, but that is not at all the same thing as arguing for a proletarian revolution. The proletarian revolution, was, in fact, the precondition for the Bolsheviks commencing those tasks which, indeed, lay the basis for a future transition to Socialism, such as utilisation of the state to promote large-scale socialised capital (state-capitalism) at the expense of small-scale capital, and petty commodity production, the introduction of a monopoly of foreign trade, and so on.

Lih says,

“In account after account of 1917, you will read that Lenin’s theses called for ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’ to be replaced by ‘socialist revolution’ - and yet, despite ubiquitous quote marks, neither these words nor any equivalent expression appears in Lenin’s text.”

Yet, I have already shown that Lenin does say that, i.e.

“Like everything else in the world, the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry has a past and a future. Its past is autocracy, serfdom, monarchy, and privilege....Its future is the struggle against private property, the struggle of the wage-worker against the employer, the struggle for socialism....”

(Letters On Tactics)

What does Lih think Lenin means, here, if not the dialectical transformation of the bourgeois revolution into the proletarian revolution? In other words, the revolution starts out as fulfilling the tasks of the bourgeois national revolution, and that is undertaken by revolutionary proletarian means, via the soviets, in conjunction with the peasants/petty-bourgeoisie, but inevitably – as a result of the antagonistic class interests involved – increasingly is forced to also address the tasks of the proletarian revolution, the tasks, not of establishing bourgeois productive and social relations, but socialist relations.

On the basis of Lih's argument, we must either believe that there was no ideological difference between Lenin and Kamenev, because Lenin, actually never adopted the theory of permanent revolution, and its consequences, and so, continued to pursue the stageist conception of bourgeois revolution, to be followed only much later, by proletarian revolution, or else, vice versa, that Lenin, like Trotsky did argue on the basis of permanent revolution, and Kamenev et al, did not disagree.

I have briefly shown that the first is not true. Lenin threatened to split the party if it did not drop its support for the Provisional Government, and that struggle was directed at Kamenev, who was the ideological figurehead of that group of “Old Bolsheviks”. What Lih does not mention, is that, in fact, as a result of that ideological struggle, a large number of those Old Bolsheviks, themselves split, and went over to the Mensheviks.

As Trotsky notes, at least Kamenev and Zioviev had the principle, and honesty, to continue their polemic against Lenin, whereas Stalin simply avoided the confrontation, by sliding into the background during the struggle. Nor does he mention that a part of Lenin's victory was secured by, the influx of new, younger workers into the party, mobilised precisely because of Lenin's stance of refusal of support for the Provisional Government, its war drive, and austerity, on the backs of those workers (reminiscent today, already, of the actions of Starmer and Blue Labour), as against Lenin's espousal of the demands for Land, Peace, and Bread.

So, we are left with the second option that Kamenev et al did accept that adoption of Permanent Revolution. But, for the same reasons outlined above, its clear that is not true either. If they agreed, why did they support the Provisional Government, why did Lenin write the April Theses, and threaten to split the party? 

That they had to accept that they had lost that argument, over the coming weeks, is not at all the same as saying there was no argument, no disagreement. And, in fact, although they submitted to party discipline, they never did change their own view on the question, which was seen in their resumption of that Old Bolshevik, two-stage mantra, when it came to the Chinese Revolution, as detailed by Trotsky. They went back to the position they held of support for the Popular Front Provisional Government, and consequent subordination to the bourgeoisie, and limiting of the revolution to purely a bourgeois revolution, as seen in their insistence on the Chinese Communist Party joining and subordinating itself to the KMT, the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie. They continued that disastrous position even after that bourgeoisie/KMT had slaughtered tens of thousands of worker-communists, in April 1927. As Trotsky, says, its precisely this difference that distinguishes the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, with that of Russia in 1917.

Starmer Jokes About Slaughter of Palestinian Kids

Starmer's Blue Labour Party is a vile, reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist party, based on the working-class. It is a UKIP Mark II, or a watered down version of the BNP, or of Moseley's New Party on its own transition to becoming the British Union of Fascists, after Moseley left the Labour Government. Other similar transitions of politicians that began life under the cloak of socialist rhetoric, can be found in relation to Mussolini, or Pilsudski.

Blue Labour, is not just characterised by its reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism, and jingoism, manifest in the need to wrap themselves in the flag of British colonialism, but also by its ingrained and systemic racism and Islamophobia. That was also on show at Blue Labour's heavily stage-managed version of the Nuremberg Rallies. These rallies, as with those held by the other parties, here, and elsewhere, have nothing to do with democracy, or democratic decision making, but only to emphasise the greater glory of the party leaders (bedecked in all their expensive clothes and finery, provided by the rich puppet masters), as against the subordinate role of the party members, as foot soldiers. That is emphasised, not only by the physically elevated position of the party leaders, on the stage, but, now, by the fact that it is only that stage that is lit, leaving the vast majority, literally, in the dark, as some anonymous, but irrelevant mass.

I have noted before that Starmer's Blue Labour as it becomes ever more authoritarian and Bonapartist, has resorted to the use of former MI6 agents, now operating via private security agencies, to vet party members, and attendance at party functions. Yet, despite that stage management, despite all of the vetting, and use of former MI6 agents, Blue Labour was still unable to prevent dissident voices being heard in its conference, crying out from amidst the darkness to protest at Blue Labour's hypocrisy, as first Reeves, and then Starmer, tried to ignore the genocide and slaughter of Palestinian children being committed with their compliance, as it continues to arm and support that genocidal Zionist regime.

Yet, even those tiny voices of dissent, were too much for Blue Labour, and its attempt to impose a totalitarian monolithic image, and required that dissent to be violently suppressed, much as it began to do a few years ago, including via the physical removal of elderly Jewish, anti-Zionist members such as Walter Wolfgang. Indeed, although Starmer and Blue Labour made a great deal of their opposition to “anti-Semitism”, they have been one of the greatest culprits, as is Zionism itself, in promoting anti-Semitism. Under Blue Labour's support for Zionism, it has expelled more Jewish members that oppose Zionism, and the genocidal actions of the Zionist regime, than at any previous time.

The fact that the Bonapartist regime of Starmer's Blue Labour cannot allow any, even the slightest, dissent is an indication of its underlying weakness, a weakness made all the more apparent by the fact that, although they, and the media, continually talk about their election win as though a majority of voters had supported them, in fact, only 25% of the electorate voted for them, less than voted for Corbyn in 2019, and a third less than voted for Corbyn in 2017, and, already, that low level of support is dropping fast, with Starmer, now, more disliked than Sunak!

But, the same sham, and fraudulent system of bourgeois-democracy that gave them such a parliamentary majority is their strength, because with such a large majority of parliamentary seats, it's no wonder that they can sit on the stage, with smug, rictus grins on their face, for all the world looking and sounding like clones of Liz Truss, and her speech about selling pork to the Chinese. Even with Greens in second place to Blue Labour in 40 seats, and Reform coming second to them in 89, without some sudden torrent of by-elections in those seats, Labour's majority will survive up to the next election, unless, of course, a significant chunk of those MP's, also defect to a new centre-right, party formed by a merger of the Conservatives and Liberals, similar to the formation of the 2010 Coalition.

That is not out of the question, and Starmer's current policies (or lack of them), and trajectory, seem, if they have one result, to be to cause a split in Labour itself, as it comes inevitably into conflict with its membership base, and the trades unions, producing the effect that Blair and others sought in the past, to free the conservative party leadership, in parliament, from the rest of the labour movement, and, particularly, the unions.

So, its no wonder that Starmer made one of his first foreign trips to be to see Meloni, leader of the Italian fascists, and at the same time, made a point of antagonising the party base, and the trades unions in relation to the removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance for more than a million poor pensioners, as well as continuing with the Two Child Benefit Cap, followed by the announcement of an attack on other welfare benefits, all the time, refusing any further taxation of its friends and donors amongst the county's wealthy elite, or any change in its policy of sending billions in arms to Zelensky and Netanyahu.

In fact, as I have I have set out, before, and as former Labour Leader in the EU Parliament, Richard Corbett, noted, at the Politics Social event in Liverpool, if they really wanted to bridge the financial deficit, the easiest way of doing that would be to end Brexit, and re-join the EU, which would bring in an additional £40 billion a year, in tax revenues! Starmer and Blue Labour's policies, which seem irrational, are designed to rapidly engineer such a split, as he makes a point of saying that he is set on confronting the unions and party members.

The doublespeak is apparent. They say there will be no austerity, at the same time, pronouncing cuts to Winter Fuel Allowance, and other welfare benefits, and so on; they say – like Biden and others – they want a ceasefire, and peace in the Middle East, whilst continuing to send billions in weapons to the Zionist regime, as it commits genocide against Palestinians, and now expands the war into Lebanon, as it seeks to instigate a regional war, as I predicted a year ago. In the face of that, the response of the party members, and of the unions of simply bemoaning the injustice of it all, is wholly inadequate. Interviewed by one of the many, middle-class, right-wing, former advisors to New Labour, on Times Radio, Mick Lynch calmly accepted their dismissal by Starmer and Blue Labour, by describing it as a process of democratic debate! 

But, there is nothing democratic about any of this. Blue Labour did not have removing Winter Fuel Payments in its Manifesto. It did not get prior approval of the party for doing so, after being elected, and even suspended some MP's for not voting for it, just as it did in relation to the Two Child Limit. Blue Labour tried to even prevent the issue of Winter Fuel payments being discussed at conference, using bureaucratic means to try to block it, unsuccessfully. And when the conference voted overwhelming to call for that cut to be reversed, what was the response of Starmer and Blue Labour? Starmer showed his total disregard and disrespect for party members and the unions, by already being on a plane for another expenses paid junket in the US. Will Reeves and Starmer respect that democratic vote of the party at conference? Of course not, so what does any of that have to do with the democracy that Lynch talks about?

The union bureaucrats – and Lynch is one of the better ones, so that does not say much – cannot be counted on to put up any kind of real fight against Starmer and Blue Labour, because, in the end, they are more concerned to have a Blue Labour government that gives them the illusory prospect of their feet under the table, and of obtaining crumbs off that table. It will be up to ordinary rank and file union members to organise themselves to resist Starmer and Blue Labour and their increasingly authoritarian and totalitarian, Bonapartist regime. It will mean renewing and rebuilding the labour movement from the ground up, democratising the unions, cooperatives and Labour Party, turning them outwards to real immediate struggles in the workplaces and communities, and providing our own political solutions and leadership to those struggles.

It will not be easy, so the sooner the task is started the better.

Value, Price and Profit, XIII – Main Cases At Attempts of Raising Wages or Resisting Their Fall - Part 7 of 8

Marx, then, sets out how different phases of the economic cycle affect these general principles, set out above. As I have described, as that cycle goes through periods of stagnation, where productivity and relative profits rise, capital may also push the working-day beyond its normal limits, wasting labour-power, and reducing wages below the value of labour-power.

As that cycle moves into an uptrend, first of prosperity, and then of boom, and finally of crisis and overextension, these trends are reversed. As the boom phase turns to crisis, the relative shortage of labour-power causes relative wages to rise and relative profits to fall – a profit squeeze. Eventually, that squeeze is such that it manifests as a crisis of overproduction of capital. As Marx describes, in Capital III, Chapter 15, and Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21, any additional advance of capital causes wages to rise to an extent that no additional surplus value is produced. The capital does not act as capital, so that a crisis ensues and the rate of profit falls sharply.

This provokes capital to seek to address the shortage of labour via a new technological revolution, such as that of the 1801's/20's, 1870's/80, 1910's/20, and 1970's/80's. It creates a large relative surplus population, amidst stagnation, rising productivity, and a rising rate of profit. It creates the conditions for the next upswing.  Contrary to those that believe that it is changes in the rate of profit arising from The Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, which drives this cycle, it is the cycle that drives the movement, both up and down, of the rate of profit, as Marx also notes, here.

“,,, capitalistic production moves through certain periodical cycles. It moves through a state of quiescence, growing animation, prosperity, overtrade, crisis, and stagnation. The market prices of commodities, and the market rates of profit, follow these phases, now sinking below their averages, now rising above them.” (p 82)

Note that Marx says that the rate of profit follows these phases, i.e. does not precede or drive them, but moves in response to them.

“During the phases of sinking market prices and the phases of crisis and stagnation, the working man, if not thrown out of employment altogether, is sure to have his wages lowered.” (p 82-3)

But, of course, during such a period, the workers are in a poor bargaining position to resist such a fall in wages, and rise in profits. In a period of stagnation, the mass of profit may rise more slowly than in a period of prosperity or boom, for the simple reason that the period of stagnation is characterised by a slower accumulation of capital, a slower growth of employment, and consequent slower growth of new value creation. But, the period of stagnation is characterised by a faster expansion of the rate of profit, of relative profits. As Marx describes it, in Theories of Surplus Value, it is a period in which the net product grows at a faster pace than the gross product, whereas, in the expansionary phase, the opposite occurs, whilst the absolute mass of profits grows faster, along with the absolute mass of new value.

“If, during the phases of prosperity, when extra profits are made, he did not battle for a rise of wages, he would, taking the average of one industrial cycle, not even receive his average wages, or the value of his labour.” (p 83)

In other words, in the stagnation phase, wages fall below the value of labour-power, relative wages fall, and relative profits rise. In the prosperity and, particularly, boom phases, as total output and profits rise more rapidly, wages rise above the value of labour-power, relative wages grow and relative profits fall, eventually leading to a crisis of overproduction of capital, relative to the labour supply.

“It is the utmost height of folly to demand, that while his wages are necessarily affected by the adverse phases of the cycle, he should exclude himself from compensation during the prosperous phases of the cycle. Generally, the values of all commodities are only realized by the compensation of the continuously changing market prices, springing from the continuous fluctuations of demand and supply. On the basis of the present system labour is only a commodity like others. It must, therefore, pass through the same fluctuations to fetch an average price corresponding to its value.

It would be absurd to treat it on the one hand as a commodity, and to want on the other hand to exempt it from the laws which regulate the prices of commodities.” (p 83)

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