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.

The Debate On Two States Forty Years On

In 1985, the Workers Socialist League (now the AWL), began an internal discussion on our position on Israel-Palestine. Until that time, the WSL, like most of the Left, and like Palestinian organisations, such as the PLO, had a position of support for a single, secular state of Palestine. It was proposed that this position should be changed to one of supporting a two-state solution, creating a new, independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. I contributed a number of papers to this discussion.

At the conference of the WSL in the Summer of 1985, three different positions were discussed. One put forward by Bruce Robinson, argued for the existing position of a secular democratic Palestinian state, the second put forward by Sean Matgamna and Martin Thomas, argued for a two-state solution, and the third put forward by me argued that both of these other two were solutions that were bourgeois nationalist solutions, not socialist solutions, and both were equally utopian and reactionary. I proposed a third solution, which was for a workers struggle for equal political rights for all within Israel-Palestine, just as Lenin and the Bolsheviks had proposed within the Tsarist Empire, and for the establishment of a new federal state of Israel and Palestine.

The conference did not resolve the issue, and agreed to open the discussion to wider debate within the pages of the organisation's paper of the time – Socialist Organiser. I am reprinting, here, my article, carried in Socialist Organiser No. 241, of August 21^st, which is a summary of my position at the time. The discussion in the paper, over a number of weeks, included contributions from the authors of the other motions to the WSL Conference, as well as from others outside the group such as Moshe Machover, and Tony Greenstein, and was supplemented by other discussions around the country. Within a matter of weeks, however, the group adopted the two-state solution position, which was already pretty assured to have been the case. Internal discussion on the issue, however continued.

In future posts, I will also reprint the actual papers I submitted for discussion in the run up to the conference, along with parts of the discussion papers of other contributors, as required for clarity, as well as others from the continued internal discussion in the following year. The arguments I set out, and summarised in this article, proved to be an accurate assessment of the problems faced, over the last forty years, in attempting to implement either the secular state or two state solutions. My position, during that time has, therefore, essentially, not changed, but only been strengthened, and elaborated. The position of the proponents of two states, has, however changed during that period, and for the worse, as I feared.

Today, the AWL openly proclaim themselves to be “Zionists”, and supporters of the bourgeois defencist position of “defence of the fatherland”, put forward by social patriots in World War I, and opposed by Lenin and the revolutionaries. That was not the case, in 1985, when this debate took place. At that time, the proponents of two states proclaimed that they were “committed anti-Zionists”, and described the Zionist state as “a Jewish-sectarian machine”, i.e. inherently racist.

At the start of the internal discussion, Clive Bradley wrote,

“1. I am both in theory and in practice a committed anti-Zionist. A large part of this article is concerned with how best to argue against and defat Zionism in different contexts.”

(WSL Internal Bulletin 127, July 1985)

Responding to a contribution that I had made, Martin Thomas wrote, in WSL IB 135,

“This greater Israel would be ruled by the existing Israeli state machine – a Jewish-sectarian machine. Whatever rights were won by the Arabs of the West bank and Gaza, they would not have real equality. The Israeli Arabs have a number of formal democratic rights and yet are oppressed.”

It is the dialectic of history that has taken them from the positions adopted, then, to their position, today, in which their pursuit of a bourgeois nationalist, rather than proletarian, solution led, inexorably, to them becoming bourgeois nationalists, and defencists. Once you have embarked on that road, so that you adopt the position that the one specific bourgeois state – Israel – has a right of self-defence, you must logically, argue that all bourgeois states have a right to self-defence, which was the position of the social patriots in WWI and II. That is particularly true, when you have based a lot of your criticism of “Left anti-Semitism” on the argument that the Zionist state is treated differently to every other bourgeois state

The rationale of the secular state solution was an acceptance of the idea of the physical destruction of the existing Israeli state, by war, of the type already seen conducted by the PLO, as well as by neighbouring bourgeois Arab states. It is a thoroughly reactionary solution, and leads to idiocies such as represented by the slogan “We are all Hezbollah Now”. But, the Two State Solution, was no less idiotic and unachievable, and, certainly, no less bourgeois nationalist, in content.

For the last forty years, it acted as a sop to western bourgeois liberals, of peace and harmony tomorrow, as well as buying off the bourgeois Arab and Palestinian leaders. But, being unachievable, on the basis of independent workers struggle, and with the only means of achieving it being its implementation, from above, by US imperialism, which had no intention of doing so, it served merely to enable the Zionist (“Jewish-sectarian”) state to continue to occupy Palestine, and to expand its territory, inherent within its own nationalist, colonialist ideology, and, consequently, to make the two state solution even more a utopian and reactionary pipe dream of liberals.

The first part of what I reprint, here, did not appear in the paper, but was included in my submission to it. The article, as it appeared in the paper, begins from “... some comrades have argued...”

~

There are a number of points on which everyone, in SO, as far as I know, agree on,

• We are opposed to the oppression of the Palestinians, and we support the Palestinians struggle whatever programme and tactics they adopt to oppose that oppression

• At the same time, we reserve the right to criticise their programme and tactics

• Fundamental to ending the oppression of the Palestinians is that they have some means of exercising their national identity

• We are opposed to the Jews being oppressed in any future state, which may be established

• because two separate nations exist on the same territory, the solution Marxists usually put forward, self-determination, is inapplicable in a pure form, because self-determination for one would, de facto, deny it to the other

• The ultimate solution to all oppression, in the area, is the establishment of a United Socialist States of the Middle East.

Problems

The problems that have to be tackled, therefore, are:-

1. How can the Palestinians be enabled to exercise their national identity

2. What arrangements will allow both nations to retain and exercise their national identity, enjoy some measure of self-determination, and, at the same time, guarantee, for both nations, that they will not be oppressed.

3. What solution will act to break the working-class, of both nations, from their bourgeois leaders and rulers, and unite them in the fight for socialism and a Socialist United States of the Middle East.

The Democratic Secular State

In trying to resolve this problem, some comrades have argued that the present Zionist state must be smashed, and, in its stead a Democratic Secular State of Palestine be established. The rights of Jews, in this state, would be protected by some form of federalism, which would ensure a large measure of self-government for Jews, in those areas where they are a majority of the population, and likewise for Palestinians.

The trouble with this is that there are only three ways which it could come about. Either the Jewish ruling class decide to hand it over, or the Jewish workers carry through a socialist revolution, or the state is defeated militarily. The first option is inconceivable. If the Jewish workers overthrew capitalism, and established a workers' state, our job would be to defend that state, and fight for the extension of the revolution, not to call for that state to be handed over to Arafat or some other bourgeois Arab leader. As such a state would almost certainly guarantee the rights of Palestinians, the demand would, in any case, be somewhat redundant.

We are left, then, with the final option of a military defeat. But, if the Zionist state was defeated militarily, this would so poison relations between the two nations that any hope of co-operation within one state would be destroyed for a long time. In effect, it would simply be running the history of Palestine in reverse. Instead of Zionism establishing its state by militarily defeating the Palestinians, we have the Palestinians establishing their state by militarily defeating Zionism.

There is a further problem with the Democratic Secular State, as a solution. Given the military strength of Israel, there is no possibility of the Palestinians militarily defeating the Israeli state. The only possible way it could succeed is with the support of other Arab states. Under such circumstances, a defeat for the Israeli state would not be an advance for the Palestinian masses, but for Arab capital. It would be an opportunity to carve up Israel, and, at best, establish a Palestinian state dependent on surrounding bourgeois Arab states.

Two States

Other comrades have argued that, because of these, and other, reasons, the Democratic Secular State has no grip on reality. As an alternative, they have put forward the idea of establishing a separate Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, and, in some versions, a struggle for a modified Israel, in which the rights of the remaining Palestinians would be protected.

The advantage of this solution, it is argued, is that it allows the Palestinians the right to have their own state, without removing the right of the Jews to theirs. The West Bank and Gaza are not officially part of Israel, but are occupied territories, taken by Israel, in the 1967 war. Withdrawal of Israel, and the establishment of a Palestinian state would, therefore, simply be a matter of Palestinians exercising their democratic rights. It would be something which, in principle, the Palestinians could fight for and win, on their own.

There are, however, more problems with the Two State solution than with the Democratic Secular State. Firstly, the establishment of a separate state would be opposed not only by the Israeli State, but by the Jewish working-class. The reason is that the history of the PLO's military campaign has been one of using neighbouring Arab states as bases from which to launch its attacks on Israel, including against Jewish civilians. A basic right of a Palestinian state would be the right to a standing army. Imagine, then, what fears Jewish workers would have about a Palestinian state on their doorstep which would no longer be restricted to launching guerrilla attacks, but which would be tooled up with all the military hardware and military technology of a fully-fledged state. Imagine their fears being heightened by the fact that some 700,000 Palestinians would still remain trapped inside Israel, still denied democratic rights, and that such a Palestinian state could hardly be expected to stand idly by when those Palestinians called on it for assistance.

In short, whilst, in principle, the Palestinians could fight for the establishment of a separate Palestinian state, in practice, there is no more chance of it being achievable than the Democratic Secular State. To that extent, it lacks the same grip on reality. In effect, it is a call to the Jewish workers to become selfless internationalists, prepared to support the Palestinians right to a state, knowing full well that it will be used against them the first time some conflict with the Israeli Arabs occurs, or else it is a demand for such a Palestinian state, once established, to stand aside from the 700,000 Palestinians still living in Israel.

In SO 234, Martin Thomas and John O'Mahony argued that these Palestinians, left in Israel, should have the right, where they are a majority, to secede to the new state. This argument is a cop out. If a separate Palestinian state was established, the Palestinians, in the rest of Israel, being oppressed, would want to secede to the new state from day one. So, why not start off by calling for the new, separate, Palestinian state to include the areas of Israel in which Arabs form a majority? In practice, hiding behind the idea of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, there lies the attitude, “sod the 700,000 Palestinians trapped in the rest of Israel.”

At best, the Two State Solution could offer self determination for some Palestinians, and some Jews. 700,000 Palestinians would remain trapped and oppressed in Israel. The establishment of a separate state would mean either that it intervened militarily to support those Palestinians (thus blowing apart the whole set up again), or else it stood aside. If it stood aside the position of the Palestinians, still in Israel, would, in fact, deteriorate. Their specific weight, as a proportion of the population would have been drastically reduced, and their ability to force change, from inside, would have been reduced, as a result.

Since 1967, Jews have also settled in the occupied territories. These settlers are often militant Zionists. They would be trapped in a new Palestinian state, and as devoid of rights as the Palestinians in Israel.

In many ways, therefore, such a partition would lead to the kind of “carnival of reaction”, on both sides of the border, as James Connolly predicted in Ireland. On both sides would be capitalist states within which would be trapped national minorities. In Israel, the racist, Zionist state would remain unchallenged, now with a large section of its most radicalised population, the Palestinian workers, hived off. With a new hostile neighbour on its border, the Zionist state would be even more able to avert class antagonism by rallying Jewish workers around the flag. Meanwhile, the link between Israel and US imperialism would remain, and would probably be strengthened.

On the other side of the border would be a feeble bourgeois, Palestinian state, economically dependent on neighbouring Arab capital. Such a state could offer nothing to the Palestinian workers, and even less for the minority Jewish population trapped within its borders, who would rapidly become the scapegoats for every deficiency.

For socialists, the most important part of the demands we raise, or solutions we advocate, is that they lead the working-class forward to realising the need to fight for socialism; that they mobilise the working-class, setting in motion the logic of class struggle. The demands which socialists put forward, in relation to the struggle of the Palestinians, therefore, must have this aim of (a) creating the maximum unity of Jewish and Arab workers, and (b) acting as stepping stones towards the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of a Socialist United States of the Middle East.

The problem with both the Democratic Secular State, and Two State solutions is that they are both bourgeois solutions. They remain on the territory of looking for bourgeois democratic solutions to the national question, hoping that this will then clear the field for “normal” class politics to develop. That approach is a collapse into the Stalinist stages theory, whereby it is argued that, before a socialist revolution can take place, there first has to be a national democratic revolution. In opposition to this, Trotskyists have put forward the theory of permanent revolution, arguing that the only force capable of carrying through the national and democratic revolution is the working-class, and that the workers would have to go beyond just the national democratic revolution to a socialist transformation. Whilst the post-war period has seen national and democratic revolutions carried out by forces other than the working class, the states that have been subsequently established have offered very little to the working-class and poor peasantry. The main thrust of the theory of permanent revolution, mobilisation of the working class to fight for socialist revolution alongside the national and democratic revolution, remains valid.

A socialist solution requires us to solve the national question by splitting the workers from their bourgeois leaders and rulers, and creating the maximum unity of the working class. In our analysis and programme for Ireland, SO has done this. We have broken from the rotten tradition of the so called Trotskyist Left, which has accommodated to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist movements. SO has refused to be swept up in the hysterical attempt to portray Sinn Fein as some left moving socialist party. We have refused to write off the protestant workers as just “tools of imperialism”, and, instead, we have proposed that it is necessary to try to win over the protestant workers by putting forward the idea of a federal United Ireland, in which their rights as a distinct community, would be guaranteed. A similar solution in Palestine offers the prospect of a principled solution which is not only consistently democratic, but, by its very nature could unite the Palestinian and Jewish workers in the struggle for it.

The United States of Israel and Palestine

One of the main problems with the Two States theory is that not only would the Israeli state oppose it, but so would the Jewish workers for the reasons already mentioned. For those who argue for the Two State solution, there is an implied characterisation of the Jewish workers as “tools of the Israeli state”. Nowhere is any distinction between Jewish workers and the Jewish state elaborated, and the strong impression is given that Jewish workers could never be won to supporting democratic rights for the Palestinians. From that flows the two state solution. It says, basically, “Sod the Jewish workers, they're just 'tools of the Zionist state', so advocate two states the Palestinians can fight for that on their own.”

If the Israeli Jews constituted an exploiting caste vis a vis the Palestinians (like the whites in South Africa) such an argument could be sustained, but they don't, and at least some of those who support Two States recognise that they don't. In which case, as Marxists we have a duty to advocate a programme which is aimed not just at the Palestinian workers, but at the Jewish workers too.

Imagine that you are a Jewish worker. You live in a society that has hyperinflation, would sink economically were it not for its link with US imperialism, has a massive military budget, conscription, and, in addition to that, your Trades Union federation is also the biggest employer in the country. Hardly a lot to offer. One might think that the main concern would, therefore, be to fight for a better standard of living, do something about the trades union so that it actually fought for you, that the military budget was cut, to free resources for more useful purposes etc. But, at the moment, these are not the main concern of Jewish workers. The reason is that they are more concerned at what they see as an external threat from neighbouring Arab regimes, and from the military campaign of the PLO.

The first step in winning Jewish workers away from the Israeli state is to remove those fears. A basic position of any Marxist should be to say that we are opposed to any attack on Israel by those Arab states, and that we are opposed to the military campaign of the PLO, other than where it is a matter of it acting purely as a self-defence squad against attacks by the Israeli state. The military campaign of the PLO, like the military campaign of the IRA, is an alternative to political struggle, not an integral and subordinate part of it. It is a typical petty-bourgeois strategy.

If the Palestinian workers were to approach Jewish workers on the clear basis that they opposed that military campaign, it would open up a powerful opportunity for political dialogue. The Peace Now campaign shows that Israeli workers do not like being in a continued state of war, and anyone who believes that the Jewish workers would prefer to remain in a state of war rather than be able to find a political solution to the problem has to be either anti-Semitic, or have a pretty low estimation of the working-class.

That political solution has to be one that is consistently democratic, that provides for the rights of both nations to exercise considerable self-government in those areas, where they constitute a majority, and which, at the same time, protects the rights of minorities. It requires the establishment of a federal United States of Israel and Palestine.

The Israeli state would obviously oppose such a solution, and so too, probably, would the bourgeois leaders of the PLO. Our job, as Marxists, however, is to mobilise the workers of both nations against their respective bourgeoisies, in the political struggle for the demand. As a demand aimed at the workers of both nations, it conforms with the method of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution – mobilising the working-class to fight not just for the national democratic revolution, but to deepen it into a fight for socialism.

It is an algebraic demand – mobilising the workers without limiting, in advance, the scope and aims of that mobilisation. The demand for a United States of Israel and Palestine would have to be supplemented by other demands. A democratic programme would have to be elaborated, which would protect the rights of minorities. In addition, we would need to raise various transitional demands such as the Sliding Scale of Wages, disbandment of the standing army and establishment of workers' militias, a crash house building programme, financed by a massive reduction in the military budget, so that the Palestinian refugees could be rehoused etc. Put in this way, the Jewish workers could see that they did not need a massive military machine, that their living standards could be improved, if they were to come to a political settlement with the Palestinians, and their potential for winning such improvements would be considerably strengthened if the Palestinian working-class was fighting alongside them.

Lenin argued, “against the practicalness of the bourgeoisie, the proletarians advance their principles in the national question....” The Democratic Secular State and Two State solutions, however, are not expressions of our principles. They are expressions of the principles of bourgeois democracy, which have nothing to say about the struggle for socialism, other than it is put off until some indefinite time in the future after the national question has been resolved.

Those who support the two state solution have argued that, although the democratic secular state has the appearance, in theory, of offering a consistently democratic solution, in practice, it does not. The trouble is that the Two State solution does not, even in theory, offer a consistently democratic solution.

The demand for a United States of Israel and Palestine, however, does offer the possibility of a consistently democratic solution. Unlike the Democratic Secular State, it starts from the situation as it exists, and, as such, offers the prospect of a joint struggle by Palestinian and Jewish workers. In that it distinguishes between the interests and motivations of Palestinian and Jewish workers, as against their respective bourgeoisies, it differs from the Democratic Secular State and Two State solutions, which talk only in terms of the Palestinian and Jewish nations. By focusing on the Palestinian and Jewish workers, as the only force capable of resolving the problem, it also establishes the basis for deepening the struggle into one for socialism, in accordance with the theory of permanent revolution.

In contrast, both the Democratic Secular State and Two State solutions mirror the Stalinist stages theory. Both see the necessity of a first stage whereby a bourgeois democratic solution to the national question is achieved before “normal” class struggle can take place.

In that it requires an orientation to internationalism rather than nationalism, on the part of both Palestinian and Jewish workers, and to the need for socialist revolution rather than simply a bourgeois democratic revolution, it is much harder to argue for than either the Democratic Secular State or Two State solutions, which, as bourgeois solutions, both have some resonance with the bourgeois leaders of the PLO. To that extent, it might be described as less practical, but as Lenin said, “against the practicalness of the bourgeoisie, the proletarians advance their principles in the national question....”

~

In subsequent posts, I will also examine the contents of this article, in the light of the experience of the last forty years.

Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, Introduction - Part 1 of 4

Introduction

The war between Russia and Ukraine has, again, shown the confusion that exists on the “Left”, in relation to the Marxist attitude to imperialism, national liberation struggles and war. That's not surprising. The socialist movement split, in 1914, over the question of war and national defence. In 1917, both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were split, following the February Revolution, over the question of national defence, with Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev arguing a bourgeois-defencist position that left Lenin fuming and, threatening to split the party, if it adopted this social-patriotic line.

In the 1920's, as Trotsky describes, in his analysis of the Chinese Revolution, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev returned to their February 1917 position whose manifestation is the Popular Front, an alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, for the purpose of carrying through the bourgeois-democratic national revolution, which Lenin also equated with the national independence struggle of colonies and annexed nations. To understand that, its necessary to also look back to the lessons of the Russian Revolution, and the role of the theory of Permanent Revolution.

As a result of the revolutions of 1848, Marx and Engels concluded that the era of “popular revolutions” had passed. Lenin makes the same conclusion, which he sets out in his polemics against the Narodniks. Lenin says that it was valid to speak of popular revolutions, or “the people” in that period prior to the differentiation of the peasantry and small commodity producers into a bourgeoisie and proletariat, because “the people”, at that time, constituted an undifferentiated mass, but that was no longer the case.

Bourgeois-democratic revolutions would occur, and would involve an alliance of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie and proletariat, but the proletariat itself, now, constituted a revolutionary class, also in opposition to the bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry. Its antagonistic interests to those of the bourgeoisie, and these other classes, would inevitably mean that, having been mobilised, it would also pursue those class interests of its own, whilst the bourgeoisie and democratic petty-bourgeoisie, would try to curtail the revolution at that point, where its interests had been met, and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie had been established. In conditions where the peasants still constituted a large mass of society, they also had an incentive to utilise their numbers, as voters, in bourgeois parliaments. The interests of peasants and proletarians may be aligned to a point, but they are different classes, with different class interests.

In his 1850 Address to the Executive of the Communist League, Marx says,

“As in the past, so in the coming struggle also, the petty bourgeoisie, to a man, will hesitate as long as possible and remain fearful, irresolute and inactive; but when victory is certain it will claim it for itself and will call upon the workers to behave in an orderly fashion, to return to work and to prevent so-called excesses, and it will exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It does not lie within the power of the workers to prevent the petty-bourgeois democrats from doing this; but it does lie within their power to make it as difficult as possible for the petty bourgeoisie to use its power against the armed proletariat, and to dictate such conditions to them that the rule of the bourgeois democrats, from the very first, will carry within it the seeds of its own destruction, and its subsequent displacement by the proletariat will be made considerably easier...

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...

they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.”

It was necessary, he says, therefore, for the proletariat to guard against this by ensuring their political and organisational independence from the bourgeoisie.

Forward To Part 2

Permanent Revolution - Part 8 of 8

Modern Bourgeois Democratic Transformations

The Theory of Permanent Revolution does not say that a bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot occur, today, without the workers assuming the lead and moving beyond it to a proletarian revolution. It sets out why, given particular material conditions, the workers can and will come to power in backward countries before more advanced countries. The basic material conditions required are that the national bourgeoisie is small and weak, the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie is large, but is amorphous, the proletariat is large, organised and class conscious. A revolution in which the proletariat and peasantry take a leading role, but in which the proletariat does not assume power, may result in the defeat of the revolution, but it may also result in Bonapartism, based upon the social weight of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie. Such Bonapartist regimes can have numerous forms.  The superficial appearance of such political regimes does not tell us anything about the class nature of the state itself, which is determined objectively by the dominant form of property within the given society. 

The Iranian revolution of 1979, shows one such form. Here, the workers played a lead role, but the political leadership of the workers was weak, whilst the mullahs were able to form a powerful coherent and disciplined force able to seize the day on the back of the mobilisation of the peasant and petty-bourgeois masses. The Bonapartist regimes in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East show another. Across Africa, in the aftermath of anti-colonial revolutions, military junta form a common type of Bonapartist regime. Yet, what all these regimes have in common, despite resting upon a large, peasant and petty-bourgeois social base, is that they are forced to have to develop capitalist productive relations, as its upon that that the future of the state depends.

Such Bonapartist regimes, in so developing the productive forces, also create the material conditions under which a transition to bourgeois-democracy itself becomes possible. The experience of Egypt after 2011 is an illustration of these processes. Morsi, like the mullahs in Iran, was a reflection of the still significant role played by the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, whilst the working-class and professional middle-class itself had still not developed sufficient class consciousness and strength to take the leading role.

Imperialism welcomed the idea of a bourgeois-democratic Egypt, quite in opposition to the ideas that underlay Lenin's theory of Imperialism, and Trotsky's Permanent Revolution, at the start of the 20th century, which thought that imperialism would carve the world into colonies held in slavery. For imperialism, as for industrial capitalism, the basis of profits is not colonial slavery, or unequal exchange, but the extraction of relative surplus value, increased via the use of large amounts of fixed capital. As in the advanced economies, the best political regime for such exploitation is that of the bourgeois democratic republic. But, Morsi did not represent any such development, which is why imperialism withdrew its support, and stood back as Sisi took hold of the reins once more, on behalf of the bourgeoisie, and promotion of the interests of large scale industrial capital.

But, across the globe, other examples can be seen of where former backward economies have gone through a process of industrialisation, usually with the assistance of large amounts of foreign direct investment by large multinational companies, in which the weakness and small size of the domestic bourgeoisie is buttressed by the support of the imperialist bourgeoisie, and also by the development of a large, social-democratic middle-class, which acts as a conduit to a growing working-class. The rapid increase in the living standards of such working classes, facilitates their incorporation into the social-democratic state, in much the same way that Engels described in relation to the British working-class in the second half of the 19th century.

The belated bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the later 19th century, and early 20th century were conducted against one or both of an old landed ruling class, or a colonial overlord. In the late 20th century those old ruling classes ceased to be the main obstacle to the establishment of the bourgeois-democratic state. Imperialism itself destroyed colonialism, whilst the landlord class increasingly became absorbed into the capitalist ruling class. The main obstacle became the persistence of large, reactionary, petty-bourgeois masses, committed to holding back further capitalist development, and often giving their support to mediaevalist political forces.

Increasingly, the interests of the proletariat lie in an alliance not with this backward peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, but with the social-democratic middle-class, which represents the interests of large-scale socialised capital, and its further development. The persistence of Stalinist parties, and of the concept of subordinating the proletariat to the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, and other backward layers of society acts as a block on this further development of society.

Back To Part 7

Permanent Revolution - Part 7 of 8

The Popular Front

The actions of the Spanish Stalinists were driven by the machinations in Moscow. In the Third Period, the Spanish Stalinists refused to adopt the strategy of the United Front to defend the Popular Front government against the increasing attacks of fascists. Such defence, as Trotsky set out in his Action Programme for France, does not at all mean having to water down or liquidate your own politics and organisation. On the contrary, the principle of march separately strike together means that you maintain your own organisation, and that, if anything, you intensify your criticism of the politics and tactics of the bourgeois parties and reformist workers' parties, illuminating their deficiency, even in confronting the fascist menace, whilst standing alongside, in action, all of the workers that continue to have illusions in those parties.

Marxists, of course, could never take up any such positions in a Popular Front government, precisely because of its bourgeois nature, and is why Trotsky argued against communists joining the Popular Front governments in Spain, France and elsewhere. We call on the reformists amongst the workers' parties to form Workers' Governments and to expel the capitalist elements, act against the interests of capital, and so on, not because we have any intention of joining such formations, but purely because we are not yet strong enough ourselves to take power. The concept of The Dictatorship of the Proletariat drawing the peasantry behind it, is one in which it is only where the leading role is taken by a revolutionary workers party that we can enter such a government.

“the participation of the proletariat in a government is also objectively most probable, and permissible in principle, only as a dominating and leading participation. One may, of course, describe such a government as the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, a dictatorship of the proletariat, peasantry and intelligentsia, or even a coalition government of the working class and the petty-bourgeoisie, but the question nevertheless remains: who is to wield the hegemony in the government itself, and through it in the country? And when we speak of a workers’ government, by this we reply that the hegemony should belong to the working class.”

(Trotsky – Results and Prospects”

The demand for a Workers Government, as Trotsky sets out in The Transitional Programme, is a demand aimed at the reformist and centrist workers parties, the social-democrats, Stalinists and anarchists, precisely in order to expose them for what they are.

“The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favourable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (SRs, Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.

Nevertheless, the demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the SRs: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!” had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and SRs to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks.”

(Trotsky – The Transitional Programme)

The problem in all these cases is that, unlike the situation in 1917, there is no sizeable revolutionary party able to draw out these lessons, and to win over the majority of the working-class to its banner. That is the task that Marxists have to address. In Spain, the Stalinists maintained a pretence that they were making an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, via their representatives in parliament. The reality was that those bourgeois parliamentarians no longer had the support of that liberal bourgeoisie, which had already lined up with Franco. The parliamentary representatives of the bourgeoisie, or “shadow bourgeoisie”, as Trotsky was to call them, were there only because of the Popular Front, and because of the support given to them by the Stalinists and Socialists.

The approach of the Spanish Stalinists was dictated by the interests of the Moscow bureaucracy. The theory of building Socialism in One Country, developed by Stalin in 1924, meant that the USSR sought to undertake whatever international manoeuvres left it free from external interference. That meant continual diplomatic manoeuvres to make deals at one point with "democratic imperialism", at another with the fascists. In both cases, it meant the Stalinists positioning themselves as hangmen of the revolution. Everywhere, the national communist parties were subordinated to the interests of the USSR, in its dealings with these vying global powers. As the Stalinists sought to obtain the support of "democratic-imperialism", as they saw Japan threatening the USSR to the East, whilst fascist Germany and Italy threatened it from the West, and were all now joined into an “anti-Comintern Alliance”, so they had to assure "democratic-imperialism" that it had no intention of allowing the workers in those countries to engage in proletarian revolution, and would act to demobilise and limit their struggles.

In France, the Popular Front government demobilised the growing general strike wave of the French working-class, channelling it into safe parliamentary limits, contained within demands for bourgeois reforms inside capitalism. Once contained with some reforms and increases in nominal wages, even those reforms were reversed. In two years, nominal wages rose 48%, but inflation rose by 46% even on the rigged price indices used by capitalist governments. The other labour reforms such as recognition of shop stewards, right to strike, to collective bargaining, were simple bourgeois-democratic rights that were long overdue, but in any case irrelevant when, on the ground workers were engaged in a massive strike wave, were already bargaining collectively and not waiting for employer approval as to who they could elect as shop stewards!

But, in any case, as even these reforms contradicted the interests of French capital, as it began its rearmament programme, Blum abandoned them! The determining element of Blum's government was that rearmament, which itself also failed in its goal, as France was defeated quickly, in 1940, by Germany, leading to the victory of fascism, both in the form of the German occupation and the Vichy government. The French Communist Party played the same role in May 1968, when, with a General Strike, and workers occupying large numbers of workplaces and operating them under workers' control, it used its support amongst the workers to advise them to end the occupations, and settle for bourgeois elections. Having demobilised the workers' direct action, DeGaulle knew that he had the upper hand, and won the subsequent elections, offering merely relatively minor reforms to workers and students, well contained within the limits of capitalism.

It was this diplomatic turn of the Moscow bureaucracy that led to the reverse from the madness of the Third Period, and adoption of the Popular Front strategy. To show to the forces of "democratic imperialism" its good faith, the Stalinists made clear that they had no desire for revolution in Spain.

Jesus Hernandes, Editor of the CP's daily newspaper, El Mundo, wrote on August 6th 1936,

“It is absolutely false that the present workers' movement has for its object the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship after the war has terminated. It cannot be said that we have a social motive for our participation in the war. We communists are the first to repudiate this supposition. We are motivated exclusively by a desire to defend the democratic republic.”

As with the French CP in 1968, the Spanish CP also fleshed out the words of Hernandes, by also standing against the direct action of the workers as they established their own factory committees and engaged in occupations. Jose Diaz, speaking in March 1937, to the CP Central Committee opposed this direct action saying,

“At the present time when there is a government of the Popular Front, in which all the forces engaged in the fight against fascism are represented, such things are not only not desirable, but absolutely impermissible.”

(Communist International, May 1937)

But, the truth was that, just as the representatives of the bourgeois parties in parliament represented only a shadow bourgeoisie, so that the Stalinists, Socialists and other workers' parties had liquidated their own politics only in order to seek unity with a ghost, and only acted to provide Left cover for those bourgeois representatives who, without the Popular Front, would not have been able to retain their positions, so too the attempts by Moscow to build an international Popular Front with the forces of "democratic imperialism" was also chasing after a mirage. In fact, as Trotsky was to point out in relation to Germany itself, this policy of the Comintern hung the German Communists, because Hitler could point to the alliance of Stalin with that democratic imperialism, and use it as a means to rally the German masses around his nationalistic rhetoric and banner.

Trotsky wrote,

"Fascism is a form of despair in the petit-bourgeois masses, who carry away with them over the precipice a part of the proletariat as well. Despair as is known, takes hold when all roads of salvation are cut off. The triple bankruptcy of democracy, Social Democracy and the Comintern was the prerequisite for fascism. All three have tied their fate to the fate of imperialism. All three bring nothing to the masses but despair and by this assure the triumph of fascism...

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."

(“Phrases and Reality” in Writings 1938-9)

What is more, Stalin got nothing from "democratic imperialism" from this servility. The Popular Front governments refused to arm the workers and peasants to defend themselves, be it in Spain or France, fearful that the workers and peasants might use those weapons to pursue their own agenda. The same disastrous approach was taken by the Allende Popular Front government in Chile, in the 1970's, leading to the same catastrophe, as Pinochet launched his coup.

Yet, all the time, the German and Italian fascist regimes were shipping the latest arms to Franco and the Falangists, who already had the benefit of superior arms, as well as use of ships and aeroplanes. At the very least, you might have expected that the forces of "democratic imperialism" would do the same for a democratically elected republican government, as recognition of Stalin's obeisance to them. But, no, the governments of the "democratic imperialists" insisted on refusing to sell arms to the Spanish government, instead implementing a policy of “non-interference”. And, who was it that proposed this policy? None other than the socialist, Leon Blum, head of the French Popular Front, whose existence itself depended upon the support of the French Stalinists!

The approach of the Stalinists to the Popular Front was not an error, but a conscious betrayal of the working-class and proletarian revolution. It is the inevitable consequence of the adoption of the Theory of Socialism in One Country, which meant, in practice, the sabotage of proletarian revolution everywhere else, in order to seek the support of "democratic imperialism", or at least to dissuade it from intervention in the USSR. The Stalinists, as in Spain, also sought to avoid proletarian revolution, because they feared that, in practice, what this meant was that forces to their Left would also overtake them. In particular, in the 1930's, they feared that it would be the Trotskyists that would gain in power and influence, which would undermine the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow itself.

That the Spanish Socialist Party should align itself with the bourgeoisie was no surprise, because, even though verbally, it stood on the Left of European social-democracy, in practice, it continued to act as with all social-democratic parties, as a defender of bourgeois property and interests. Social democracy is the ideology of the middle-class which simply transfers its role in society as a mediating, and managerial layer into an ideology, which seeks simply to operate the mechanism of capitalism and bourgeois society more efficiently, and, thereby to conciliate the interests of workers and capital within that framework. But, the actions of the other workers' parties such as the centrist POUM, and the Anarchists are different, they represent not a simple betrayal of the working-class, as in the case of the Stalinists and Socialists, but an error. It is an error, nevertheless, that flows from their own inadequate petty-bourgeois politics.

Those petty-bourgeois politics have also been described in the series I have been writing on Economic Romanticism, and also, thereby, the arguments put forward today by the “anti-imperialists”, who also put forward similar Popular Frontist strategies that subordinate workers to the nationalist bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. In the age of colonialism, Spain was a major colonial power. It, at least, equalled England in that respect, with large colonies in the Americas, as well as in Asia and Africa. But, emphasising the difference between colonialism, based upon mercantilism - the power of merchant and financial capital in alliance with feudal landed property - as against imperialism, based on industrial capital, by the 19th century, Spain's power had waned. In the 1930's, Spain was one of the less developed capitalist economies in Europe. This fact was used by the POUMists to argue that this meant that the Spanish bourgeoisie was not like the bourgeoisie in other developed European countries, and that the situation in Spain was more akin to that of a colonial country engaged in an anti-colonial struggle. This is the same argument that the “anti-imperialists” use today to justify their own popular front type alliances with the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist regimes and movements. It is completely false.

Trotsky's rejection of the POUM's argument that the special conditions justified a bloc with bourgeois parties is set out in Trotsky's article “The Treachery of the POUM”, written in January 1936. In it can be found Trotsky's condemnation of the same kinds of petty-bourgeois demands that had been put forward by the Narodniks and criticised by Lenin.

“How ironical is the name “Marxist Unity” ... with the bourgeoisie. The Spanish “Left Communists” (Andres Nin, Juan Andrade and others) have more than once tried to parry our criticism of their collaborationist policies by citing our lack of understanding of the “special conditions” in Spain. This is the customary argument put to use by all opportunists – for the first duty of a genuine proletarian revolutionist lies in translating the special conditions of his country into the international language of Marxism, which is accessible even beyond the confines of one’s own country. But today there is no need of these theoretical arguments. The Spanish bloc of the tops of the working class with the left bourgeoisie does not include in it anything “national,” for it does not differ in the least from the “People’s Front” in France, Czechoslovakia, Brazil or China. The “Party of Marxist Unity” is merely slavishly conducting the same policy that the Seventh Congress of the Comintern foisted upon all its sections, absolutely independently of their “national peculiarities.” The real difference in the Spanish policy this time lies only in the fact that a section of the London International has also adhered officially to the bloc with the bourgeoisie. So much the worse for it. As far as we are concerned we prefer clarity. In Spain, genuine revolutionists will no doubt be found who will mercilessly expose the betrayal of Maurin, Nin, Andrade and Co., and lay the foundation for the Spanish section of the Fourth International!”

Trotsky points out that the bourgeoisie in Spain, or in colonial countries, is not below the position of the bourgeoisie in Russia, and yet the Bolsheviks saw no basis for an alliance with that bourgeoisie, quite the contrary. But, even were it the case that the bourgeoisie in Spain or some other colonial or less developed country were below that of the Russian bourgeoisie in 1917, there is no basis for any such alliance, Trotsky says, because as Lenin set out in the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions,

“the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form.”

In other words, here, Lenin sets out the basic principle of the United Front, as against the Popular Front. The communists wage a determined struggle against the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois movements that attempt to portray themselves as something they are not, in order to garner the support of the proletariat. They forge temporary unity in revolutionary action, but the communists refuse to merge with these other forces, or, thereby to subordinate their politics or organisation, which is the hallmark of the Popular Front.

Not even such unity in action is possible unless the communists are able to bring together and train the proletariat and peasantry for such revolutionary activity, and that revolutionary activity is, from the start, stated clearly as being aimed not only against any colonial power, but also against the national bourgeois-democratic movements that ultimately act as the local agent of that colonial power, in opposition to the revolutionary proletariat. That is in complete contrast to the policy of the Popular Front, which is itself based upon the Stalinist/Menshevist stagist theory, in which the proletariat is required to subordinate its own revolutionary ambitions to those of the bourgeois-democratic or national revolution, having to postpone its own struggle to some unknown future date.

The other problem with the position of the POUM and the Anarchists in relation to the Popular Front was their failure to properly calculate the strength of their own forces as against the strength of their opponents, in particular the Stalinists. They based themselves on formal logic, rather than the dialectic, in determining how those current relations of forces were likely to change in the course of the war. In particular, as Trotsky says, they failed to take into account the fact that, behind the Spanish Stalinists stood the USSR, as well as the Communist parties of France, Britain, Italy and even the United States. Money and weapons could be shipped to the Spanish Stalinists, bypassing the republican government, and cutting off such supplies to the fighters of the other workers' parties, who, as Orwell's account demonstrates, were woefully ill quipped. The Spanish Stalinists had all of the power of the Communist International for propaganda, which daily spread lies about the other workers parties.

Back To Part 6

Forward To Part 8

Permanent Revolution - Part 6 of 8

Permanent Revolution, Socialism In One Country and Stages Theory In Practice

The Anglo-Russian Committee

The application of the theory of building Socialism In One Country, as against Permanent Revolution, meant that the USSR and the Comintern sought diplomatic arrangements with the imperialist powers, and they sought to obtain them via “pressure” applied by the workers of these countries, as against them undertaking their own revolutionary activity. To this end, the soviet bureaucracy sought to operate through the petty-bourgeois labour bureaucracy in each country, for example, the leaders of the TUC in Britain. The vehicle for this was The Anglo-Russian Trades Union Liaison Committee.

The principle of the United Front can be expressed as unity from below, or “unity with the workers always, with the workers leaders sometimes.” The whole point, here, is that the United Front is intended to unite the working class in action, and is, thereby, differentiated from purely parliamentary alliances. It was necessary, in countries where the Communists represent only a quarter, third or half of the working-class, which leaves the majority still affiliated to the reformists and centrists. Unity of the working-class, in action, requires, in practice, a unity, in action, of these different organisations, and thereby, with their leaders. But, such unity, in action, does not mean unity with the leaders of those other parties on the basis of their politics, nor organisational unity with them. On the contrary, it means that, whilst undertaking joint activity, the Communists dissociate themselves from the reformist and centrist politics of the leaders of those other parties. If fascists are attacking a neighbourhood, communists do not have to agree with the politics of the leaders of a reformist party in order to fight alongside the workers who still have illusions in those leaders, so as to defeat the immediate enemy. On the contrary, such joint activity is the best way of winning those workers away from those leaders, and their reformist politics, but it requires that the communists use the opportunity to expose those politics and explain the necessity of their own, for that to happen.

In place of unity from below, which would have led communists to have warned the British workers about the bourgeois nature of the politics of the TUC leaders, who would sell them out in the General Strike, the Stalinists, instead, led the workers to place faith in those very leaders, in order to retain a purely diplomatic alliance with them. The experience of the Anglo-Russian Committee, during the General Strike, also illustrates the point about the need for the proletariat to occupy the lead role, and that, in such conditions, it cannot be a matter of simply seeking to achieve limited goals, and then trying to implement an artificial halt to the class struggle. That point is made clear in Aneurin Bevan's account of the General Strike. The strike was always bound to fail, because of the liberal bourgeois politics of the TUC leaders, who would not push forward to a workers' seizure of power. He writes about the meetings that the TUC leaders had with the Government. The Government said to them “Well gentlemen, you have won. The question is are you prepared to run the country instead?” Bevan reports that, at that point, the TUC leaders knew they had lost, because they were not prepared to take over.

For the strike to have succeeded, the Communists needed to have armed the workers, in advance, of that inevitable act of betrayal. They needed to have been developing workers councils, ready, indeed, to have run the country instead, and so on. But, the Stalinists had failed to do any of that, and instead had sowed illusions in the bourgeois liberal leaders of the TUC. The result was not only that the workers did not move forward to take power, but that, even the General Strike, and its limited aims, was defeated, setting in place a period of reaction for years to come.

The Chinese Revolution

Trotsky and the Left Opposition repeatedly called for the communists to break with the TUC leaders, but Stalin refused. This experience was totemic, because it symbolised the method that Stalin would use also in China in 1927, in its revolution, and his instruction to the Chinese Communists to form an alliance with Chiang Kai Shek, and the Kuomintang. In essence, he had now reverted to the stages theory that he, Zinoviev and Kamenev had applied in February 1917, in relation to the provisional government, whereby, they saw the need for society to pass through a long period of bourgeois democracy before socialism became possible. Such alliances are not a manifestation of the United Front of workers parties, but of a Popular Front, a cross class alliance in which the interests of the workers are always subordinated, and which invariably lead to the bourgeois forces within them turning on the working-class.

Part of the reason for Stalin's attempt to continue the diplomatic alliance with the TUC leaders was, indeed, the hope that it might facilitate the Chinese Revolution, as a bourgeois-democratic revolution, whilst Stalin also wanted to reassure the imperialists that his objective was merely such bourgeois national revolutions, and no desire to go beyond them to socialist revolution. In fact, the trajectory was predictable. The social-imperialists like Citrine who had been opposed to the Bolsheviks in 1917, and some of whom organised Labour Battalions to fight alongside the Whites against the Bolsheviks, were hardly going to be reliable allies for the Chinese revolution. At a time of its choosing, the TUC leaders themselves broke with the Anglo-Russian Committee, and at a time of his choosing Chiang Kai Shek broke with the Chinese Communists.

At the time, in 1927, Trotsky and the Left Opposition were allied with Zinoviev and Kamenev in the United Opposition against Stalin, following his rightward turn in alliance with Bukharin. Trotsky points out, later, that, as a result, the criticism of Comintern policy in China was muted, in order to obtain the agreement of Zinoviev and Kamenev, who themselves still held to their 1917 positions in relation to the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry.

Trotsky points out that Lenin, in The Theses on the National and Colonial Questions had said that it was necessary not to allow the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie to cloak the anti-colonial struggles under the banner of communism. It was necessary for communists to retain political and organisational separation from such forces, But, Stalin and Bukharin, in the same way they had formed a disastrous diplomatic alliance with the leaders of the TUC, not only formed such an alliance with Chiang Kai Shek, but also, on his insistence, allowed the Kuomintang into the Communist International. They did this at the very moment when the Left Opposition, and Trotsky were being expelled from it! At the time of his choosing, however, Chiang Kai Shek repaid Stalin by organising a coup and turning his forces on the Chinese Communists who were murdered in their thousands. Unable, to admit their mistakes, Stalin then repeated it, forcing the Chinese communists into an alliance with the “Left Kuomintang” of Wang Ching-wei.

As with the failure of the British General Strike, the consequence of these disastrous positions was not just that the Chinese workers failed to take power, but that even the limited objective of the bourgeois-democratic revolution failed. It opened the door to Japanese Imperialism, in the run up to the outbreak of a new imperialist war. The same mistake was to be made in Spain a decade later.

The Spanish Civil War

The aim of Stalin's policy was to avoid a military intervention in the USSR by imperialism, an intervention that had taken place at the time of the Civil War, but which had ended as a result of a combination of circumstances that affected the imperialist powers. Stalin had sought to assure the imperialists that he had no intention of encouraging international revolution, a position that was, in fact, in accordance with his own reversion to the stages theory, and concentration on building socialism in backward Russia. But, as Trotsky points out, Stalin began to fret that such assurances were not working.

In China, the failures led to a sharp reversal, and turn into an ultra-Left position. The bourgeois democratic demands were dropped, and Chinese communists were urged into a serious of adventures to set up soviets out of thin air. Trotsky had been exiled, and the Left Opposition subdued or expelled. Fear of renewed intervention prompted a drive for break neck industrialisation and collectivisation that brought its own contradictions and crises. The alliance with Bukharin and the Right was dissolved, and Zinoviev, Kamenev and other sections of the Left Opposition such as Radek and Preobrazhensky were drawn back. This ultra-left turn meant that all alliances were now rejected. So began the lunacy of the Third Period.

But, it too inevitably resulted in disaster. It came in the form of the coming to power of Hitler. Hitler lost no time in bringing together the fascist regime of Mussolini in Italy, along with the regime of the Emperor in Japan, to create an “anti-Comintern Alliance”. This could only further encourage the idea that military intervention was at hand. In Britain, the Monarchy of Edward VIII had demonstrated its clear pro-Nazi sentiments, and the government of Chamberlain continued to negotiate with Hitler. Negotiations between Britain and Germany resulted in a naval agreement that was signed in 1935.  In the wings, the Nazis negotiated with Lord Halifax, as a potential new Tory Prime Minister, who favoured a peace deal with Germany that would have allowed Hitler free rein to attack Russia. 

Stalin had to rush to make another swift change of course, back to the Popular Front strategy of the previous period.

The Spanish Revolution begins in 1931. The Third Period ran from 1928 to 1934. As a result of Stalin's apparent left turn, the United Opposition dissolved, with Zinoviev and Kamenev returning to the Stalinist fold. They were to be repaid when Stalin once more made an abrupt turn to the Right. In 1935, they were executed as the Stalinist show trials got under way. In 1931, Republican parties, in Spain, win majorities in elections, and almost immediately face opposition from the fascists (falangists).

The Republican government is a Popular Front comprising the Socialist Party, as largest party, and bourgeois-liberal, republicans. The Left Republican, Manuel Azana, became Prime Minister. As is the nature of such governments, it acts to demobilise the workers' struggles themselves. A general strike in Seville, in July-August 1931, is crushed by military force by the republican government. As a result of the Stalinist Third Period, the Spanish Communist Party refuses to offer any support for the Republican government against the growing fascist threat. In August 1932, there is an unsuccessful Monarchist coup, and in the municipal elections, the following Spring, rightist forces show big gains. Another big change in 1933, is that, in Germany, Hindenberg makes Hitler Chancellor. Hitler begins to remove opposition to him in the Reichstag, organising the Reichstag fire as pretext to remove the Communists, and secure a majority. Germany joins with Japan, and Italy in forming an “anti-Comintern Alliance”.

This is the start of Stalin's switch back to the former position, as he now seeks to win support from the camp of “democratic imperialism”, i.e. Britain, France, and the US against Germany, Japan, and Italy. He seeks to do this by convincing the former that he has no intention or desire to ferment or support proletarian revolution anywhere in the world, but seeks to promote and defend bourgeois-democracy against the rising threat of fascism. In fact, Stalin also in secret, worked with the fascists to destroy his enemies to the Left. When Trotsky moved to Norway in 1935, the GPU worked with the fascists to break in and steal his archives, for example. But, this shift back to the Popular Front strategy was formalised by the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935. It is codified in Dimitrov's definition of fascism, which is used as the basis for promotion of the return to the Menshevist strategy of subordinating the workers to the liberal bourgeoisie, via the Popular Front.

In September 1933, Azana resigned as Prime Minister. The following month, the fascist Falange Espanola was founded in Madrid. In the November elections, the rightists and Monarchists won a majority in the Cortes, as the Anarchists of the CNT abstained. The following year, this right-wing government, which has been repealing the reforms previously introduced by the republicans also acts to crush a rising strike wave by both industrial and rural workers. It calls on Franco to crush the rising of Asturian miners. In the aftermath, 5,000 are killed in a vicious reprisal reminiscent of the aftermath of the Paris Commune, and 30,000 political prisoners are incarcerated.

But, it is a pyrrhic victory for the Right, as it provokes a new upsurge. Elections, in February 1936, bring the Popular Front back into government, and now the Spanish CP, is providing uncritical support to it. However, at this time, the Spanish CP is tiny. In 1931, it had only about 800 members, which had grown to around 10,000 by the beginning of 1936, but this number was overshadowed by the 40,000 members of the centrist POUM, let alone the 1.5 million members of the anarchist CNT. The Spanish Socialist Party, which was on the left of most of European social-democracy, had several hundred thousand members. The Trotskyists of the Spanish Bolshevik-Leninist group were tiny. The Stalinists and bourgeoisie attempted to portray the centrists of the POUM as Trotskyists, but they were not. They were centrists wavering between reformist and revolutionary politics, that led them into providing support for the Popular Front, which led to disaster.

Understanding the disaster of the Popular Front strategy in Spain requires examining it from the perspective of the attitude of the centrists of the POUM and Anarchists, as well as from the perspective of the Stalinists to the bourgeois-democratic parties themselves. The former made a terrible mistake that Trotsky had warned them against, in a calculation that they could draw revolutionary forces to their side, and in overestimating their own social and political weight as against the CP, which, as stated above, was in 1936, still small in comparison.

By the end of the Civil War, the Stalinists had become by far the biggest element of the Popular Front, whilst those to its Left had been destroyed. They failed to take into account, as Trotsky pointed out, that the Spanish CP had the full might of the USSR standing behind it, and of its ability to mobilise from amongst global Stalinist parties, reflected in the International Brigades. By contrast, the position of the Stalinists was not one based upon error, but one based upon being the active executioner of proletarian revolution, as it sought an alliance with democratic imperialism to fight Germany and Japan in particular. The Stalinists were more concerned to defeat their political opponents to their Left than defeating the fascists, as a number of writers described.

“To [the CP], winning the war meant winning it for the Communist Party and they were always ready to sacrifice military advantage to prevent a rival party on their own side from strengthening its position.”

(Gerald Brennan, The Spanish Labyrinth)

“[The infantry were far worse armed than an English public school Officers' Training Corps with worn out Mauser rifles which usually jammed after five shots; approximately one machine gun to fifty men; and one pistol or revolver to about thirty men. These weapons so necessary in trench warfare were not issued by the government and could be bought only illegally and with the greatest difficulty...

A government which sends boys of fifteen to the front with rifles forty years old, and keeps its biggest men and newest weapons in the rear, is manifestly more afraid of the revolution than of the fascists.”

(George Orwell, Controversy, August 1937)

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