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.

Marxists And Bourgeois Democracy - Part 3

In Part 2, I argued that the Marxist position is determined by the principle that we should always “stick with the workers”. That is we do not adopt a sectarian attitude to the working-class, setting ourselves apart from it simply on the basis that it is imbued with reactionary ideas. The sects have fallen prey to such a danger, because they have created for themselves an idealised image of the working-class, which is maintained as a result of their isolation from it.

They are able to delude themselves that the workers share their ideas or many of them, because their largely petit-bourgeois background and lifestyle separates them from the real working-class. They live in a bubble in which they simply exchange ideas with likeminded people, or at best with only that tiny minority of the class that is itself engaged in some form of political or Trade Union activity.

The consequence of that, and the similarity of approach that can be made with the attitude on an international level could be seen with the Lyndsey Oil Refinery dispute. There construction workers protested at a potential loss of jobs due to work being contracted out to an Italian company.

The nature of the dispute was such that it facilitated the raising of reactionary, nationalistic demands that already hold some sway amongst the working-class. So demands such as “British Jobs For British Workers” appeared on placards. The BNP were quick to try to jump on to such a bandwagon.

Some groups such as the AWL, but also including the SWP, reacted in a thoroughly sectarian way, opposing the strike on the basis that it was being fought under these reactionary ideas. Indeed, the AWL even made an abortive attempt to organise a picket of the UNITE offices where the strikers were to attend a meeting! This is, in reality, merely an extension of the kind of moral politics, of the AWL, at an international level, to that of the day to day class struggle at home. It dates back to the origins of the Third Camp, and its moral outrage at the nature of the deformed Workers' State in the USSR.

It did not meet their pristine requirements for what a Workers State should look like, so they abandoned it, and threw in their lot with “Democratic Imperialism”. It is the same moral politics that leads them to support Democratic Imperialism and its allies against Iran, Libya, Iraq, Serbia and so on today. But, similarly, abandoning the LOR workers meant not just effectively siding with their employers, but its necessary consequecne would have been to push the workers into the hands of the BNP.

Fortunately, other socialists, primarily the Socialist Party, who had militants working at the site, were able to provide support for the strike, whilst opposing the reactionary demands. It meant that the BNP were prevented from taking advantage of the dispute, and it also meant that the reactionary demands were dropped, and the strike directed in a more positive direction.

But, let us take this analogy further. The BNP have established their own Trade Union – Solidarity. We can assume that not all members of this union are in fact members of the BNP. Suppose it were to be involved in a strike, what would the attitude of Marxists be. As a strike, an action by workers aimed directly at their bosses, we would be on the side of the workers, despite the reactionary nature of the union. We would be so, because our task would be to try to win those workers away from the influence of the BNP. Were we to oppose the strike, it would be to play into the hands of the BNP who would say to other workers, look these socialists are in league with the bosses they claim to be their enemy! Moreover, if the employer were to try to break the union, and to claim their reason for doing so was because it was run by fascists, we would give such claims no support whatsoever. It would be clear that the real reason for their action was to break the union the better to oppress the workers.

In the US, there is a history of unions being taken over by the Mob. They use their organisation and strong arm methods to buy off and intimidate union officials. But, does the fact that such unions are not in the workers interests mean that they are in the bosses interest? No. The reason the Mob seek such control is usually in order to extort money from employers, or to force them into agreeing contracts with front organisations of the Mob. They can use their control of the union to threaten employers that if they do not do as they demand, they will unleash a strike on them, and the methods used by the Mob to ensure the success of a strike are usually far more ruthless than those that would be used by workers. But, would we support an employer, or the Capitalist State intervening in such a union? No, because the only reason they would do so, would be to replace control of the union by the Mob, with either control by compliant union bureaucrats, or else to smash the union completely. The answer to Mob intimidation, is more organised more effective rank and file action by the workers themselves to ensure control of their union. We do not seek to put forward Bourgeois democracy, or the elements of it as the solution to workers problems, we advocate more extensive, more effective workers democracy.

If we go back to the beginning of the 19th century and the Chartist Movement consider a different scenario. The working class did not have the vote, but Trade Unions had been formed, and the Co-operative Movement had come into existence encouraged by people like Robert Owen.

Suppose that instead of fighting for the Charter i.e. to achieve universal suffrage and the right to representation in the bosses Parliament, which at the time the bosses would have fought a Civil War to prevent, the workers had recognised that their real strength lay in their collective action rather than in the individual action of casting a ballot. Suppose that in addition to relying on their industrial muscle in Trade Union struggles to win higher wages, they had adopted some of Owen’s ideas, and those put forward by Marx and the First International on forming Co-operatives.

Suppose that they had extended these principles into forming their own committees within the workers districts demanding improvements to their environment, demanding or providing for themselves through co-operative efforts decent housing, that they had established their own neighbourhood patrols to cut down on the rampant crime in the workers areas etc., in short that they had established their own system of workers democracy alongside the bourgeois democracy of the bosses.

Such a development would not have meant that the workers needed to mount an immediate challenge to the rule of Capital. There would be no reason the bosses should be threatened by workers policing their own districts (particularly at a time when no police force existed), there is no reason that the spread of other forms of co-operation such as co-operative enterprises should cause them to see socialist revolution on the horizon either, particularly those finance capitalists making money from lending to the workers. Because such a situation did not directly threaten the overall rule of Capital, this would not be a situation of dual power, merely the development of alternative forms of administration and control within the workers districts etc.

Now if that were the case, and the majority of the working class recognised the advantages for controlling its own life and destiny through such means, would Marxists have argued for an extension of bourgeois democracy to give workers the vote? I would suggest that to do so would have been stupid. It would be to demobilise that very workers democracy we seek to develop as the basis of the new society. It would be to suggest to workers that they could have some shared interests with their class enemy that could be debated, discussed and worked out within the context of a bourgeois Parliament, and that such means were better than their own workers democracy. It would be like those revolutionaries who call the workers out in a period of intense class conflict for a General Strike, only to limit its demands to that of a change of Government!

The only reason we would have for arguing that it was necessary for Workers and their Party to contest bourgeois elections would be because the bourgeoisie, and their State, openly declared war on the Workers property, in the way Marx said they would, in his Inaugural Address to the First International. It would be necessary, to the extent that the workers did not respond to such a declaration of War, by themselves responding with open warfare, fought not in the Chambers of Parliament, but in the factories, on the street, and supported from the workers communities.

My reason for opposing raising the idea of bourgeois democracy in Iraq, several years ago, in debating the issue with the AWL, and the same applies today in respect of Libya, where similarly no history of bourgeois democratic illusions within the working class exist, is for precisely the same reason. The first task is to develop the workers democracy, to encourage workers to see workers democracy, not bourgeois democracy, as the solution to their problems.

If, despite our best efforts in that direction, the workers still become imbued with bourgeois democratic illusions – and the main reason for that would be because reformist workers leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie within the Labour Movement, as Trotsky described them, had sown those illusions, rather than developing the workers democracy as an independent force – then, of course Marxists would have to relate to that in line with the argument set out by Trotsky above, and by Lenin in Left-Wing Communism, where he argues that the Communists would use the elections to expose the class nature of the bourgeois democracy, would use its platform to argue for Communism, and for Soviet democracy etc.

In fact, it is in this area of established bourgeois democracy that I disagree with Lenin. In his argument with Kautsky, set out in “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky”, Lenin argues that no meaningful advances can be achieved through bourgeois Parliaments. The reason for this argument is effectively two-fold.

Firstly, Lenin believes that workers cannot achieve full class-consciousness within capitalism. The ruling ideas will continue to be the ideas of the ruling class. Only a minority of the working class will achieve class-consciousness, and of those only a minority will be sufficiently class conscious to join its vanguard i.e. to become Bolsheviks. That is basically the position Lenin had developed when he wrote “What is to be Done?” It is the basis of his vision of the revolutionary party that, because the workers will continue to be dominated by bourgeois ideas, the socialist revolution must be carried through by a determined and well organised minority dragging a large section of the working class behind it, with a much larger section remaining passive. On that basis socialism can never be achieved through Parliament, or any really meaningful advance made, for the simple reason that there can never be a sufficiently large number of truly class-conscious workers to ensure the electoral victory of a truly revolutionary party. Workers Parties can be elected to government, but these workers parties can only achieve such victories by putting forward a programme that is short of a socialist transformation of society, it has to be a reformist programme seeking not to replace capitalism, but merely to ameliorate its worst effects for the workers. If it seeks to go beyond such a programme not enough workers will vote for it. The second leg of the argument is that even were such a government to try to implement policies which seriously challenged the rule of Capital, then Capital would simply undermine this government by one means or another including the use of force.

I think that Lenin is wrong in the first part of his argument, because I think he underestimates the potential for the working class achieving a sufficient level of class consciousness, to enable it to proceed to socialism, without the need to resort to a vanguard party, to carry through a political revolution, to seize state power, as the precondition for bringing about the social revolution i.e. the transformation of economic and social relations. Lenin’s ideas were influenced by the fact that he drew conclusions from the condition of the working class in backward Russia, rather than the experiences of the working class in more advanced capitalist countries. To the extent that he did take into account the experiences of workers in the advanced countries, he saw the extent to which they had been influenced by bourgeois democracy, and their Labour Movements led into reformism, as further vindication of his thesis.

He was also influenced by the idea of the working class as a slave class, and one, therefore, denied access to education and culture, the very things necessary, and which had enabled the bourgeoisie to develop its own ideology as a class, and which had allowed it to become class conscious in fighting for that ideology.

I think that in respect of large parts of Western Europe, and of the US Lenin was wrong in 1903 let alone 1918. I am absolutely sure that his perspective is wrong for today. It is, however, necessary to be careful in this not simply to accept the other side of the coin, the basic ideas of reformism. Looking back on the last 50 years in particular, it is clear that considerable reforms have been implemented through bourgeois Parliaments, reforms which have benefited the working class. To simply argue that these reforms have been implemented because in some way they were clever ruses by the bourgeoisie, that they in some way were things the bourgeoisie wanted, that they enabled them to extract more surplus value or whatever, is in my opinion facile.

As I have argued in many posts, the Welfare State, which is essentially an application of the principles of Fordism at a state level, is a construct of the bourgeoisie, and in particular the Big Bourgeoisie. It is a reflection of that Social-Democratic consensus, forged by Big Capital towards the end of the 19th Century, and identified by Engels. But, that is not to say that these issues did not form, and continue to form an arena of class struggle. Many of these reforms were introduced in the face of opposition from the bourgeoisie, or sections of it, or its political representatives, particularly reforms introduced by the 1945 Labour Government such as the Welfare State, and we only have to look at the current attacks on the Welfare State and the NHS to recognise that. And even the mildly reforming Government of Harold Wilson in the 1960’s was too much for some sections of the bourgeoisie, which were seriously plotting, with sections of the state, for a military coup to overthrow him.

The second part of Lenin’s argument that the bourgeoisie will not allow a bourgeois Parliament with a workers majority to simply legislate away its power remains completely valid. The experience of the Allende Government is clearly proof of that.

Back To Part 2

Forward To Part 4

Imperialists Call For More Death & Destruction In Libya

Two months ago, the main Imperialist powers pushed a resolution through one of their international state structures – the United Nations – to allow them to intervene in Libya. As with all such wars, the Imperialist powers covered their true intentions with a hypocritical veneer of concern for the people of Libya. Just how thin that hypocritical veneer really is can be see from looking at the reality of the situation. Firstly, the very weapons being used against the Libyan people by Gaddafi, are weapons that until a few months ago, were being sold to him, by those very same Imperialist powers. Secondly, Imperialism itself has hardly been shy in imposing terrible atrocities on civilians around the globe, in pursuance of its own politico-strategic, and economic interests. A look at the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Civilians killed or maimed by the War launched against them by the US and UK, is evidence to that, and possibly millions of Iraqi children died as a result of more than a decade of sanctions imposed on them by those same powers.

Even today, those Imperialist powers are reported to be using depleted Uranium munitions in Libya, which will have devastating effects on future generations of Libyans, long after the conflict of today is forgotten. Thirdly, those Imperialist powers show no similar concern for civilians in Bahrain – where the US even has its fleet anchored, and so could intervene easily – as they are attacked and imprisoned by the Bahraini Royal Family, and the US's other allies, the regime in Saudi Arabia, and Gulf Co-operation Council. And, in Obama's speech yesterday, that hypocrisy was repeated.

On the one hand continued threats against Libya, and Syria, whilst simply asking, oh so nicely, if the regimes in Bahrain, Yemen and Israel would stop acting in exactly the same way. Obama's statements about a Palestinian State, within 1967 borders, were meaningless, because, despite the massive financing of Israel by the US, it is clear that he will not even threaten to withdraw that, let alone start bombing Tel Aviv, in order that the Israeli regime stops killing Palestinians, stops building illegal settlements on Palestinian land etc. If Obama's statements in that regard had any meaning, yesterday, it was to reflect a growing awareness that, if the Arab Spring does continue, and results in meaningful change, the US's relations in the region will have to change, and its reliance on Israel will be diminished, at the same time that Israel will have a far more effective opposition in the form of bourgeois democratic states on its borders, under pressure to respond to the demands of their people, including in relation to a defence of the Palestinians.

It is clear, reading between the lines of news stories, such as this one from the BBC, that the real intentions of the Imperialists, in Libya, has nothing to do with protecting Libyan civilians, and everything to do with installing a regime there under its control. The UN resolution 1973 was supposed to provide for the protection of civilians against Gaddafi's use of air-power, by introducing a “No Fly Zone”. From Day One, the imperialists began, not a No Fly Zone, but an operation of providing air cover for the anti-Gaddafi forces.

There have been no reports of any Libyan aeroplanes having been shot down as part of this no fly zone, other than a military jet belonging to the anti-Gaddafi forces themselves! But, there have been lots of reports of tanks, and other vehicles being destroyed, and more bizarrely, for a No Fly Zone, of Libyan ships being destroyed. There have been lots of reports of bombing of civilian areas in Tripoli, where the majority of the population lives, many of these attacks being clearly designed to try to kill Gaddafi and his family. And, as that BBC story points out, after two months of this intensive bombing War against Libya, General David Richards has called for that bombing to be intensified further with more attacks on Libyan infrastructure.

In other words, far from protecting civilians in Libya, what the Imperialists are demanding is even more death and destruction to be inflicted on the Libyan people. On top of the long-term problems that will arise from the use of depleted Uranium munitions, further attacks on Libyan infrastructure will mean that after this War is over, then, whoever wins, Libya will have a major economic catastrophe to deal with, as that infrastructure has to be rebuilt. And, just as the Imperialists were happy to sell weapons to Gaddafi, when they saw him as their best available option, so after the War, they will be happy to sell materials etc. to effect that rebuilding of the infrastructure, to whoever is in charge.

They will no doubt be keen to ensure that if they can install their preferred regime, from within the ranks of the anti-Gaddafi forces, some of whom the Imperialists were negotiating with long before the rebellion in Benghazi began, then that regime will provide them with the most advantageous terms. What is for certain is that the real costs of that will be imposed by Imperialism and its Libyan allies upon the Libyan workers.

When the rebellion in Libya began three months ago, I, like most people, saw it in the reflection of the unfolding events across the Middle East and North Africa, as just another popular revolt against a hated dictator.

But, it quickly became clear that this was not the case. In all those other instances, the popular revolt had taken a familiar form. Simmering discontent, and working-class revolt, had provided middle class layers of society with the confidence to rise up with their own political demands. These layers had quickly taken the lead in the street protests as the working class was left in the background. As popular revolts, they centred upon the main population centres, particularly the Capital cities. But, that was not the case in Libya. The revolt began in a traditional centre of revolt against Gaddafi and his tribe, in Benghazi. But, that revolt did not spread to Tripoli. Those who have acted as cheerleaders for the forces involved in the rebellion have explained that by arguing that revolt in Tripoli was subdued by the military might of Gaddafi's regime – indeed some have even justified the intervention of Imperialism on that basis.

That was never a very good argument. Gaddafi has never treated the military well, because he feared a coup. In part, that explains why sections of the military placed themselves in the head of the rebellion in Benghazi – many of these same people have been developing relations with Imperialism for some considerable time. Moreover, the Egyptian military was much more powerful than Gaddafi's, but it was neutralised. Indeed, it had been not only neutralised but turned in Benghazi.

But, it is now clear that the argument has no legs whatsoever. Gaddafi's military power pales in comparison to just the military might from the air being used again Libya by Imperialism. On top of that, it is clear that Imperialism has had Special Forces on the ground in Libya from Day One.

They have also been training and equipping the anti-Gaddafi forces with weapons for some weeks, at the least. Yet, despite all of this massive military fire-power, being rained down on Gaddafi, and his forces, not only has their been no sign of rebellion against him in Tripoli, but even with all of that fire-power on their side, the anti-Gaddafi forces, even where they were strong, in the East, have been able to make no headway whatsoever.

Of course, it may have been that there was and is opposition to Gaddafi in Tripoli. But, at the time, I pointed out that the intervention of Imperialism was likely to have the opposite effect, in that regard, to that, which those, such as the AWL, anticipated. In relation to the arguments put forward by the AWL and others, which are a repetition of the arguments put forward by the Stalinists in the 1930's, calling for Imperialist intervention against Hitler, Trotsky wrote,

"The democracies of the Versailles Entente helped the victory of Hitler by their vile oppression of defeated Germany. Now the lackeys of democratic imperialism of the Second and Third Internationals are helping with all their might the further strengthening of Hitler’s regime. Really, what would a military bloc of imperialist democracies against Hitler mean? A new edition of the Versailles chains, even more heavy, bloody and intolerable. Naturally, not a single German worker wants this.

To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the “pacifist” jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler’s speeches. “You see,” he says to the German people, “even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!” Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin – Jouhaux, Toledano, and Company – are the best aides in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers." (p21)

(From "Phrases & Reality")

And he spells out the implications of this idea put forward by the Stalinists and Reformists like the AWL that workers can support such actions by imperialist states. He writes,

"Where and when has an oppressed proletariat “controlled” the foreign policy of the bourgeoisie and the activities of its arm? How can it achieve this when the entire power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie? In order to lead the army, it is necessary to overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize power. There is no other road. But the new policy of the Communist International implies the renunciation of this only road.

When a working class party proclaims that in the event of war it is prepared to “control” (i.e., to support) its national militarism and not to overthrow it, it transforms itself by this very thing into the domestic beast of capital. There is not the slightest ground for fearing such a party: it is not a revolutionary tiger but a trained donkey. It may be kept in starvation, flogged, spat upon it – it will nevertheless carry the cargo of patriotism. Perhaps only from time to time it will piteously bray: “For God’s sake, disarm the Fascist leagues.” In reply to its braying it will receive an additional blow of the whip. And deservingly so!"

An Open Letter To French Workers

Trotsky once said that Marxists should always face the truth squarely in the face. I would have loved for the rebellion against Gaddafi to have been a genuine popular revolt, but it quite clearly is not! Whatever, the reality of the igniting of that rebellion, whatever the revolutionary credentials of those involved in its inception, indeed whatever the revolutionary credentials of sections of those still involved in it, it is quite clear that, taken as a whole, it is now acting as nothing other than a Fifth Column, as useful idiots, for the War being waged by Imperialism against Libya, for its own politico-economic and strategic interests.

In The
Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up, Lenin writes,

“A simple reference to what Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 and 1841) will prove to anyone who is interested in Marxism in real earnest and not merely for the purpose of brushing Marxism aside, that Marx and Engels at that time drew a clear and definite distinction between “whole reactionary nations” serving as “Russian outposts” in Europe, and “revolutionary nations” namely, the Germans, Poles and Magyars.

This is a fact. And it was indicated at the time with incontrovertible truth: in 1848 revolutionary nations fought for liberty, whose principal enemy was Tsarism, whereas the Czechs, etc., were in fact reactionary nations, and outposts of Tsarism.

What is the lesson to be drawn from this concrete example which must he analysed concretely if there is any desire to be true to Marxism? Only this: (1) that the interests of the liberation of a number of big and very big nations in Europe rate higher than the interests of the movement for liberation of small nations; (2) that the demand for democracy must not be considered in isolation but on a European—today we should say a world—scale.

That is all there is to it. There is no hint of any repudiation of that elementary socialist principle which the Poles forget but to which Marx was always faithful—that no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations. If tile concrete situation which confronted Marx when Tsarism dominated international politics were to repeat itself, for instance, in the form of a few nations starting a socialist revolution (as a bourgeois-democratic revolution was started in Europe in 1848), and other nations serving as the chief bulwarks of bourgeois reaction—then me too would have to be in favour of a revolutionary war against the latter, in favour of “crushing” them, in favour of destroying all their outposts, no matter what small-nation movements arose in them. Consequently, instead of rejecting any examples of Marx’s tactics—this would mean professing Marxism while abandoning it in practice—we must analyse them concretely and draw invaluable lessons for the future. The several demands of democracy, including self-determination, are not an absolute, but only a small part of the general-democratic (now: general-socialist) world movement. In individual concrete casts, the part may contradict the whole; if so, it must be rejected. It is possible that the republican movement in one country may be merely an instrument of the clerical or financial-monarchist intrigues of other countries; if so, we must not support this particular, concrete movement, but it would be ridiculous to delete the demand for a republic from the programme of international Social-Democracy on these grounds.”

In a world in which the US, often backed up by its smaller imperialist allies, occupies a position similar to that of Tsarism described by Marx and Engels, and echoed here by Lenin, it ought to be quite clear that Marxists do not view the question of bourgeois democracy or self-determination in absolute terms. As Lenin points out here, the achievement of these bourgeois reforms is not our objective. Our objective is the Socialist Revolution, and for that we have to build the independent, self-activity of the working class, and we have to look to the interests of workers on a global scale, not just be distracted by the immediate events or issues in any one country, particularly in small countries.

That may have the appearance of callousness, but in Class War, just as in any other war, we have to analyse things, as Lenin says here, in concrete terms, we have to be guided by what is in the long-term interests of the working class at a global level.

Trotsky made that clear in his response to the Palestinian Trotskyists in the 1930's, who wanted to adopt the position put forward by the AWL and others. He wrote,

"The authors of the document come out flatly against abstract pacifism, and in this they are of course correct. But they are absolutely wrong in thinking that the proletariat can solve great historical tasks by means of wars which are led not by themselves but by their mortal enemies, the imperialist government.

One may construe the document as follows: during the crisis over Czechoslovakia our French or English comrades should have demanded the military intervention of their own bourgeoisie, and thereby assumed responsibility for the war – not for war in general, and of course not for a revolutionary war, but for the given imperialist war...

"That policy which attempts to place upon the proletariat the unsolvable task of warding off all dangers engendered by the bourgeoisie and its policy of war is vain, false, mortally dangerous. “But fascism might be victorious!” “But the USSR is menaced!” “But Hitler’s invasion would signify the slaughter of workers!” And so on, without end. Of course, the dangers are many, very many. It is impossible not only to ward them all off, but even to foresee all of them. Should the proletariat attempt at the expense of the clarity and irreconcilability of its fundamental policy to chase after each episodic danger separately, it will unfailingly prove itself a bankrupt. In time of war, the frontiers will be altered, military victories and defeats will alternate with each other, political regimes will shift. The workers will be able to profit to the full from this monstrous chaos only if they occupy themselves not with acting as supervisors of the historical process but by engaging in the class struggle. Only the growth of their international offensive will put an end not alone to episodic “dangers” but also to their main source: the class society."

A Step Towards Social Patriotism.

And this position echoes a position previously outlined by Engels to Kautsky in relation to Socialist Policy in relation to Colonialism. Engels wrote,

"In my opinion the colonies proper, i.e., the countries occupied by a European population, Canada, the Cape, Australia, will all become independent; on the other hand the countries inhabited by a native population, which are simply subjugated, India, Algiers, the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions, must be taken over for the time being by the proletariat and led as rapidly as possible towards independence.

How this process will develop is difficult to say. India will perhaps, indeed very probably, produce a revolution, and as the proletariat emancipating itself cannot conduct any colonial wars, this would have to be given full scope; it would not pass off without all sorts of destruction, of course, but that sort of thing is inseparable from all revolutions. The same might also take place elsewhere, e.g., in Algiers and Egypt, and would certainly be the best thing for us. We shall have enough to do at home."

Engels Letter To Kautsky 1882

We have seen how willingly Imperialism intervenes against proletarian revolutions, as it did in 1917 against Russia, but we have seen how it is prepared to intervene militarily or by covert means even against bourgeois nationalist regimes that challenge its politico-economic strategic interests.

That is why Marxists have to wage an all-out struggle against Imperialism, and those that act as its agents, conscious or otherwise, just as Marx and Engels argued the importance of the struggle against Tsarist Russia, and its allies – including those elements within the nationalist movements in those small Central European states, who looked to Tsarism for support to compensate for their own weakness.

But, being implacable opponents of Imperialism does not mean adopting the principle "My Enemies Enemy Is My Friend" as so many on the Left have done. It does not mean that we have to see every movement that calls itself "anti-imperialist" as being truly revolutionary, and progressive, and thereby deserving of our support. Indeed, in the Comintern Theses on the National and Colonial Question that is made clear in its statements declaring opposition to Pan-Islamism and other such movements,

"which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc"

And, in the debate on the Theses, Lenin comments,

"The point about this is that as communists we will only support the bourgeois freedom movements in the colonial countries if these movements are really revolutionary and if their representatives are not opposed to us training and organising the peasantry in a revolutionary way. If that is no good, then the communists there also have a duty to fight against the reformist bourgeoisie, to which the heroes of the Second International also belong. There are already reformist parties in the colonial countries, and on occasion their representatives call themselves Social Democrats or Socialists."

There may well be truly revolutionary elements within the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya. They should quickly separate themselves from the rest of those forces that are now in alliance with Imperialism. We should do all we can to support those truly revolutionary forces in Libya, and we should in any case, do all we can to assist in the building of an independent, working class movement, capable of developing its own industrial and political organisations, of developing its own democratic institutions and proto-state organs such as Workers Militia.

The challenges for such forces in Libya will be great, facing enemies on all sides. But, responding to the difficulty of that challenge by an opportunistic adaptation, by choosing instead to take the easier option is equally if not more doomed to disaster. If any truly revolutionary forces within the anti-Gaddafi bloc exist, then remaining within that bloc can only lead to the same kind of disaster for them that befell the Communists within the Kuomintang, or the revolutionary workers in Spain that remained tied to the Popular Front.

Egyptian Blogger Jailed For Three Years By Military Court

The New York Times, and other foreign news outlets, have reported that Egyptian blogger and activist, Maikel Nabil, has been sentenced to three years in jail by a Military Court, on Monday.

His crime? He criticised the Military! That is the same military that stood behind Mubarak for the last 30 years, and that stood behind the previous Bonapartist dictators in Egypt before him, Sadat, and Nasser. It is the same Military that has recently been detaining an increasing number of democracy activists, and which has opened fire with live ammunition on recent protests. It is the same military that is given $1 billion a year by the US. Oddly, whilst the US and its allies are bombing Libya with depleted Uranium munitions, they seem terribly quiet about the increasing repression being meted out by their allies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and elsewhere.



In my previous blogs I pointed out that the lessons of previous Democratic Revolutions are clear. In 1848, the Prussian Aristocracy absorbed the democratic movement's advance, and as soon as the Democratic forces relaxed and weakened, they began to turn it back.

Needing to rely on the numbers of the working class, and peasantry, once the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie began to fear the advance of the workers, within that movement, they turned on them, attempting to make an alliance with the Aristocracy. The end result was that the Democracy movement was defeated entirely, and a period of repression and bloodletting introduced. Ruling classes are past masters at using scape goats, and sacrifices. The whole process of bourgeois democracy is built upon it, allowing electors to periodically blame one set of bourgeois politicians, and replace them with another set of bourgeois politicians whose policies vary only superfically from those who have been replaced.

As I wrote a few weeks ago. Mubarak's demise was not really a victory of the revolution. In the weeks preceding it, the military and Mubarak had played the usual management game using the Grand Old Duke of York tactic, leading people up the hill of expectation, and then sending them back down again when those expectations are dashed.

Its aim to split away the weaker elements and to cause demoralisation and weariness. Mubarak's removal was just the latest manouevre within that tactic. The Military by organising a Coup against him held out, yet again, the possibility of some meaningful change. Now, many weeks after he has gone, nothing has changed. In fact, it is worse in some ways. During the initial protests, the Military at least stood by whilst the other State goons attacked. Now the Military is beating up, detaining and shooting at the protesters itself. Of course, some of the more moderate elements within the Movement, those tied to groups who think they might get crumbs off the table, in any arrangement worked out with the Military, will likely moderate their opposition. The Military has been holding talks with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is reportedly under pressure, as some of its youth are being won over by socialist organisations, to introduce restrictions on who can vote. Other manouvres are being organised to enable the old regime to still control the Parliament.

The good news is that sizeable numbers of people are still coming out to protest, and the military itself is starting to fracture, with some Army Officers themselves breaking ranks, and coming out to support the protesters in Tahrir Square in recent days.

The working class also appears to be continuing to strengthen its organisations. But, as I have said in previous blogs, either the Military, possibly under pressure from the US, will move towards some kind of bourgeois democracy, that satisfies the protesters, or else it will continue to resist. Bonapartist regimes are powerful and stubborn things as the experience in Libya, and elsewhere demonstrates. The economic power, the privileges, and the military and state power they can weild, via their control, makes them appear, in some instances, as though they were a Ruling Class. And, for the same reasons they have a powerful incentive to hold on to power, even when challenged by an actual ruling class.

Indeed, that is so much so, that if a powerful Bonapartist regime, such as that in Egypt, decides to fight to hold on to its power, then the only means by which it can be dislodged is if the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, enlists the support of the workers and peasants to bring it about.

But, the lessons of 1848, and the Theory of Permanent Revolution, developed by Trotsky, illustrates where that will lead. In all eventualities, the important thing for Marxists is to argue the need for the working class to focus on its own interests, to develop its own organisations, its own property, its own democracy, and its own organs of state power, such as Defence Squads, and a Militia.

March separately strike together. The workers should go so far along the road, in the fight for democratic reforms, with their class enemies - the Bourgoisie - but must not subordinate their own interests to that struggle, or be fooled by the nature of Bourgeois Democracy, which is as Lenin describes it, "The best political shell for Capitalism", its most effective means of implementing the Dictatorship of Capital, and of oppressing and exploiting the workers.

Our fight is for Socialism not Bourgeois Democracy, some of the elements of which, such as freedom of speech, freedom to organise etc. are merely means of facilitating the workers struggle for its real goal.

Politically, therefore, our attitude towards the bourgeoisie, even as we ally with them in action for those limited goals must continue to be "Extreme Revolutionary Opposition".

Why Won't The Unions Fight For Control Of Our Pensions

Over the last few years, I've written quite a few posts about Pensions. From early on, I was interested in the ideas put forward by Robin Blackburn, who spoke about the Swedish example, from the 1980's, where the Trades Unions were able to get a law passed whereby employers had to create new shares that were then paid into a central Pension Fund. Within a short time, it had grown to account for 7% of the value of shares on the Swedish Stock Market. I put forward a similar idea recently as a means by which the Liberal-Tories could raise the funds needed to pay for the deficit - How To Pay For The deficit. The problem with the Swedish model, as with any system that is in the hands of the bosses or their State, was that, when it suited that State, when it was in a position to do so, it simply scrapped the scheme. That should be no surprise. That is what bosses always do, it is what their State always does. Control comes from ownership, and if workers want to have control over their pensions, they have to own them.

But, the irony is that, in Britain, workers do own their Pension Funds, the money in them is our money to pay our pensions, and even the money paid into them by employers is done so as part of a bargaining process. It is their contribution to our deferred wages. Yet, even though these pensions, this money, is our property, we have no control over it. That is at odds even with every tenet of bourgeois property law, and bourgeois ideology, which stresses that the owners of property should have the unfettered ability to dispose of it as they choose. No one would dream of suggesting that if I buy a house, I should not be able to exercise control over how I use it, decorate it, or who I sell it to. So why, should I not have control over the money in my Pension Fund, why should I not, along with every other worker, be able to exercise a collective control over it, decide where it should be invested or not invested, and when and how I should be able to access it, to take my Pension? The Left frequently talks, in the abstract, about Workers Control. It does so by attaching it as a meaningless, utopian demand to the reactionary demand for nationalisation, in the hope, as Marx described, in attacking such demands, to hide their shame. But, when it comes to something immediate and practical, such as the simple demand for workers to have control over their own pensions the same Left is remarkably silent. Why?

In the last couple of decades, we have seen that workers cannot rely on the State Pension. It has been manipulated and mangled in every way conceivable. The Tories broke the link with earnings, at a time when earnings were rising faster than prices. New Labour failed to restore the link, and insulted Pensioners with a 75p rise. Now, in the midst of further cuts, the Liberal-Tories propose to restore the link with earnings just as wages are being frozen, and prices are let rip. Even in its guarantee against prices, it is changing the link from that with RPI to that with the much lower CPI. For the first few decades of the introduction of National Insurance and Pensions, the vast majority were paying in, whilst never living long enough to draw out. Now that workers are living long enough, that they might be able to actually draw Pension, for a few years of active life, the State proposes changing the rules, so that they can't draw their pension until they are much older. Yet, already, workers in Britain have to wait until they are 65, to draw a worse Pension than workers in France draw at 60!

I was watching the BBC's Newsnight last week, where they were discussing the issue. So much nonsense I have not heard in a long time. I've shown in the past that the argument about the increasing number of Pensioners to people in the working population is false. The reality is that since pensions were first introduced productivity per worker has increased many-fold, probably 100 times what it was. If 1 worker then could support 1 pensioner, then today they could support 100 pensioners. We should be reducing the retirement age not increasing it. The problem is not more pensioners, but the fact that an increasing amount of the surplus, produced by workers, is taken by Capital, to finance the Capitalists consumption, to finance the increasing amounts that go to buying means of production, and to finance the burgeoning Capitalist State. One worker on the programme put it succinctly. He had started work at 15, and paid NI for nearly 50 years since then, on the understanding that he had a contract with the State to retire at 65. Now, the State was breaking that Contract. Anne Widdicombe tried to deny this argument saying his contributions were not to pay for HIS Pension, but the pensions of all those who had gone before. But, this is nonsense. Firstly, she was right to say that the first pensioners had paid nothing or little in to the system. But, the reality is that these first pensioners took very little out of it either. The level of pension was a pittance, it was limited as to who could claim it, and most of them died within a few years at most of receiving it. And over the next few decades that continued to be true, money was paid in by workers who never got to take it out. Moreover, no one would agree, in the first place, to such an arrangement if they did not believe that the provision they were making for others would not likewise be made for themselves.

But, I did a quick calculation. I reckoned that, from when I left school, up to retirement age, I would have paid in £50,000 in NI contribuitons. A few years after I left school I started paying into a Life Insurance Endowment. Its currently worth around 4 times what I've paid into it. Given that for the last 10 years returns on Endowment Polices have been pretty abysmal, its not excessive to suggest that had I invested that £50,000 over the longer period, I should reasonably have been able to expect that it would be worth 6 times what was paid in. So, in fact, I would be quite happy for the State to simply give me what I've paid in, in NI contributions, plus that return, in exchange for it not having to pay me a pension. The £300,000 it would owe me, I think I could quite easily live on for the rest of my life, in fact, more comfortably than the Pension it may or may not eventually pay me.

But, its not just the State pension. The last couple of decades have seen the outright criminality of Robert Maxwell who simply stole money from the workers pension scheme, we have seen the fiasco with Equitable Life, and we have seen first the dishonesty involved in the selling of private pensions fostered by the Thatcher Government, and the subsequent wiping out of billions of pounds of workers savings in them due to the Stock Market collapse of 2000.

I have just been reading an old review by Hugo Radice of a book, “Pension Funds and British Capitalism”, from 1982. Radice begins by pointing out that although this is our money, even getting basic information is not easy. He had been trying to obtain information himself, he says, but gave up after a few months, because he found it hopeless. Minns he says, had the advantage of writing his book just at the time of the Wilson Committee reviewing financial institutions, which perhaps made them more willing to be less secretive. Minns study provided the details for the situation in 1975. With £7.5 billion of holdings they were the second most important share owners after private individuals. Today, that figure is more like £800 billion. Control now as then of these massive amounts of financial power is in the hands not of the workers whose funds they are, but of powerful financial institutions - Merchant Banks, Stockbrokers and Insurance Companies. Radice argues that because these organisations are themselves increasingly linked to the large clearing banks, operational control over the workers funds is exercised by Banking Capital. The significance of that, today, we might want to relate to the fact that this is the same Banking Capital whose speculation and irresponsibility caused the financial meltdown of 2008! In 1975, where Pension Funds (i.e. workers) owned 16.8% of ordinary shares, they controlled only 5.6%. In contrast, where Banks owned only 0.7%, they controlled 17.6%.

Minns figures showed that the funds were concentrated in larger companies, and in the financial sector rather than in industry. The reason for this is that the Fund Managers would not take a stake in any company that gave them more than a few percent of the company, and because they wanted to avoid the management costs of having large numbers of small holdings. Where Funds have specialised in investing in smaller companies, the Banks and Financial Institutions have insisted on much higher returns on the basis of higher risks. The Financial Institutions, through their control of these funds, could also use them to support their own activities, for example, by buying shares in a Company whose Public Offering they were also managing.

But, as Radice says, the role of the Trades Unions has been pathetic. The schemes have Trade Union Trustees, but they are effectively excluded from exercising any kind of influence, even if they were in a position to do so. Even with Local Authorities, where one would expect the unions to have some possibility of demanding control over their members funds, the funds are often managed by the Local Authority itself, although since Minns work, many of them also utilise investment companies for advice, if not actual management of the investments. And, as he says, with private sector employers, the Trustees are appointed by the employer and they have a say only in administration and the payment of benefits, not over investment. Where they have any involvement in investment, it is almost always under the control of external “Experts” and the National Association of Pension Funds, which Radice says is “wholly in thrall to the City”.

Radice argues that control of these funds “is the most obvious area for immediate political mobilisation. If the collective bargaining strength of the unions was combined with a serious educational campaign on the pension funds issue, then the disengagement of the funds from the privately-owned financial sector could proceed without the latter being nationalised. Of course, it implies a very different politics than the proposals for central or local state intervention, but in the long run it would provide a much more solid basis for such intervention than the insertion of clauses into the Labour Party manifesto” (Radice – Capital & Class 16)

He was right, but that was nearly 20 years ago, and not only have the Trades Unions shown no interest in fighting for such a basic democratic right as that workers should control their own Pension Funds, but the Left has shown no interest in pushing them to do so either. Why?

The answer is quite simple. The Trades Unions exist not to fundamentally challenge or replace Capitalism, but only to bargain within it. Without that function the Trades Union bureaucracy, that has a lifestyle similar to that of the petit-bourgeoisie, would have to look for proper jobs, which might not be so lucrative. The basic ideology of the Trades Unions is to respect the sanctity of capitalist property, and the right of management to manage. That is why there is so frequently hostility to actions which challenge that idea, such as occupations of factories etc., and why such actions have almost always been led by ordinary rank and file workers. But, that ideology also leads to the idea that the laws and norms set down by Capital in relation to investment has to be respected too. The purpose of a Pension Fund, under that ideology, is to do no more than to provide workers with the best possible pension in retirement, and that requires that the laws of Capitalist Accumulation be adhered to, and the best people to achieve that are the “experts” from the financial world. Any idea that this massive resource in the hands of the workers could be used for other purposes, could be used as a weapon of class struggle, have to be rejected, because ultimately the basis of the Trades Unions is that there is no class struggle, it is that workers and bosses can have shared interests in ensuring growth of the Capitalist economy. If one wanted to be entirely cycnical, one could also imagine that the Trades Union bureaucracy might not want to see these vast resources used to gain control over large profitable firms, and place them in the hands of a Workers' Co-operative, because the success of such an operation would mean that the bureaucrats themselves would lose their function in such a Co-operative.

This latter also explains the reason that the Left has not taken up the demand that workers should have control of their Pension Funds. The Left, in the sense of the organised Left sects, is a thoroughly sectarian left in the true sense of the word. It places its own narrow interests above the interests of the working class. For the last 100 years it has worked with a dogma. That dogma is that Co-operatives cannot work, and are Utopian. As I've shown elsewhere this idea has no validity in Marxist theory. It certainly has nothing in common with the position of Marx or Engels. The dogma effectively says, nothing significant can be achieved short of the revolution, understood as a repeat of 1917. Everything has to be geared to such a repetition, so that, although the revolutionaries support workers in struggle, they do so mainly for the purpose of building the revolutionary party – for which actually read building their particular sect. Workers self-activity is reduced to the trivial – strikes or other industrial action, to win concessions from an employer or to seek reforms from the Capitalist State – rather than the meaningful self-activity that Marx and Engels envisaged of workers creating their own Co-operatives, organising their own self-government, including the provision of Funds for Education, and Welfare. In fact, rather than this self-government argued for by Marx and Engels, the left adopted the position of Lassalle and the Fabians, and whose importance was recognised by Big Capital itself, of the Capitalist State exercising these functions, and thereby establishing another layer of dominance and control over the lives of workers, in addition to that already existing in the workplace. In this respect that Left's approach to the question of the State has been truly schizophrenic. On the one hand it tells workers that the Capitalist State is their enemy, their oppressor, the agent of the bosses, and that they should not rely on it to be neutral. On the other they repeatedly raise demands for that State to do precisely that, to act on workers behalf, to provide them with essential services, to nationalise their industry and so on, and therefore, to strengthen its grip over them, to exploit and oppress them even more!

But, its precisely for this reason that the Left itself cannot argue for control over the workers' Pension Funds either. It has repeatedly told them that only the revolution will do. If workers really did gain control over that £800 billion in their Pension Funds, and did begin to use it in an active manner to further their interests as workers then much of that ideology, purveyed by the left, would be undermined. The fact, that many of the examples of Workers Co-operatives, have been in small firms that had already failed, strengthened the arguments of that sectarian left. But, there have been plenty of examples of Workers Co-ops that even in these unfavourable conditions have succeeded – Tower Colliery is one that springs to mind. In part, even the failure of some of those other Worker Co-ops, such as at Meriden and KME in the 1970's, was due to the fact that the Co-operative Movement itself did not give them the support they needed. For example, British Steel insisted that KME paid cash in advance, and all of them faced problems raising finance from the private banks. They would have benefited from a Co-operative Bank that also saw its role in more overtly political terms, and such a Bank would benefit if it had at its disposal that £800 billion of workers funds.

£800 billion would buy around two-thirds of the companies in the FTSE 100 outright. That kind of control over companies of that size would undermine many of the arguments raised against Worker Co-operatives. Once these Co-operatives began to demonstrate their viability, it is not just bourgeois ideology that would be undermined, which says that production and distribution cannot take place without the existence of Capital and Capitalists, but would undermine the ideology of the sects, that nothing is possible until the revolution, apart from repeated struggles to defend what has previously been achieved. The sects and their leaderships reproduce themselves on the basis of their sectarianism and this ideology, just as much as the Trades Unions reproduce themselves on the basis of their ideology of bargaining within the system. If workers want to proceed they have to break out of the ideology of both, which is more related than either group would like to admit.