Italy - Popular Frontism Leads To Disaster Again - Part 5 of 5

The good news remains that the ruling class have no need, and no desire to see fascists in government. On the contrary, the fascists represent the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, not the bourgeoisie, and their interests are antagonistic to those of the ruling class. It is why the state, which is the state of the ruling class, has acted to limit the damage that could be done by Brexit, and the Brexitories, as well as by Trump. It does so by typically bureaucratic and Bonapartist methods, rather than by open political conflict, mobilising class forces for such a struggle. It can use the courts, the financial markets, and so on as effectively against the far right and petty-bourgeoisie, as it can against the working-class.

Expect the Italian far right government to break apart very quickly under pressure of its own contradictions, along with the external pressure of markets that will be applied to it, just as the far right, Brexitory government of Truss has faced such pressure in its first days, with the removal of the Kamikwarzi Chancellor, his replacement by the prominent Remainer, Jeremy Hunt, and even for yet another leadership challenge.

But, that is fortunate for us, at this time, and those conditions will not last forever. The existing workers parties are worse than useless. They are riddled with opportunism and electoralism, itself a foundation for their popular frontism in search of purely electoral majorities at any cost. As in the 1950's and early 60's, the road forward for the working-class, now appears to be around, or over, those existing workers parties, pulling them along with us, in our slipstream, eroding them like stones in a fast flowing river, and, in the process, accumulating the material for new or renewed parties fit for the task.

Workers are on the move, as they feel firmer ground beneath their feet, as economies are again responding to the dynamic of the long wave, despite attempts to hold it back, now using the deliberate imposition of high energy costs, resulting from NATO's boycott of Russian oil and gas, to try to soak up workers' disposable income. Instead of accepting that, they are demanding higher wages to cover those higher energy costs and the rest of the inflation caused by the policies of "money" printing. They are refusing to accept the demands of politicians like Reeves that we simply put our faith in the election of a right-wing, Blue Labour government sometime in the future.

That does not mean making the mistakes that the syndicalists of the SWP made in that earlier post-war period, of ignoring politics, or Labour as the workers party.  A real solution can only be a political solution, which requires a political party to fight for it. For now, in Britain, that party is still the Labour Party, just as it is the Democrats in the US, SPD, PD in Germany, Italy and so on.

But, for Marxists, our focus, here and now, must be to concentrate on those real workers struggles, to turn the best elements of the workers' parties out towards them, whilst taking the most advanced elements of the workers direct struggles into those political arenas, and engaging them as allies, to transform those parties, to demand the removal, deselection and so on of the overtly pro-capitalist elements, or else, if that becomes impossible, to break them apart, and to establish new mass socialist workers parties from the material provided.

Such a focus requires us not to engage in any kind of conciliation and accommodation with forces to our right, of the kind proposed by Paul Mason et al, which amounts to liquidationism, let alone to continue the errors of Popular Frontism seen most recently in Italy, but quite the opposite, to sharpen, even more, the Marxist programme, and the solutions we put to workers, in contrast to the continued inevitable failures of the liberals, social-democrats and reformists. Rather than rotten electoral blocs to try to temporarily deny the far right parliamentary majorities, we propose a fighting unity, on the streets, in the workplaces, and in the communities. Our mantra is march separately, strike together.

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Italy - Popular Frontism Leads To Disaster Again - Part 4 of 5

Across the globe, and in the developed economies specifically, the stagnation of the 1980's and 90's created impotent embitterment. As the new global long wave upswing began in 1999, the conditions began to emerge in which workers could turn that embitterment into rebellion, and action, first to raise their wages and conditions, and then to rebuild their organisations, and assert their interests. 

As usual, they were constrained in the latter by the dead weight of the trades union bureaucracy, and the strength both organisationally and ideologically of social-democracy. The same was seen in the last similar period, the long wave upswing that occurred in the 1950's and 60's, and required workers to move forward via new, or restored grass roots channels such as the shop stewards movement, and to find, once again, the ideas of Marxism that had been lost during the 1930's and the war years, as well as being grotesquely bowdlerised by Stalinism, which continued to appear as the left-wing of the workers' movement in the following period. As I have set out elsewhere, even amongst the new left that emerged in the post-war period, the ideas of Marxism were distorted, owing more to the ideas of syndicalism and statism than Marxism.

Even as economies expanded at a more rapid pace, after 2000, creating the conditions for workers to advance, the workers' parties, like Labour, which had moved massively to the Right, compared to anything seen before in their history, could offer nothing to them, other than the delusion of benefiting from the rise of asset prices that had become the central pillar of conservative social-democracy over the previous 20 years. Forget about wage rises, let alone the idea of control of your workplace, the conservative social-democrats proclaimed, instead look at the rise in your house price, or the value of your 401k, or ISA. Of course, if you were one of those that had found yourself in precarious employment, or simply low value, low paid, service employment, who had not been able to buy a home, let alone have money left over to put into a pension or savings, such pronouncements appeared more as a kick in the guts, rather than a clarion of hope.

And, when the delusion itself fell apart in 2008, all those that had never benefited from it, must have had some sense of schadenfreude. It was short lived, as those same conservative social-democrats, so adamant in their refusal to propose state intervention on behalf of workers, were instantaneous in their response to provide state funding for the bankers and speculators whose paper assets had been turned into confetti. And to add to the kick in the guts, they followed up with a kick to the groin, as they then proposed to pay for all this largesse, by implementing a decade long programme of austerity on the workers, who had not benefited from any of the inflation of assets to begin with.

But, the fundamental material conditions had changed, and so, despite the austerity measures, despite central banks implementing QE to divert money from the real economy and into speculative assets, the global economy grew, with developing economies taking advantage of the imposed slower growth in developed economies to seize additional market share themselves. In so doing they illustrated, again, at a global level, what Marx had already explained in terms of capital at an individual level, which is that competition forces capital to accumulate, because, as demand rises, each capital must accumulate to expand their own production or lose market share, and become progressively less competitive.

And, global capital accumulation led to further employment of labour, establishing a virtuous circle. In the age of imperialism, you cannot understand capital in any single country without first understanding capital as global capital.  Bit, by bit, expanding global trade also fed into the developed economies that had sought to restrain growth via austerity. By 2014, despite austerity, even the developed economies were growing more rapidly again, and the large increase in investment in raw materials, food and energy production, initiated in 1999, had now led to large increases in their supply, sending their market prices much lower, and providing a boost to profits via a release of constant capital, and rise in the rate of profit.

In 2014, when I wrote my book – Marx and Engels' Theories of Crisis – I had envisaged this process unfolding in the same way that previous long wave cycles had done. On that basis, the turn from the Spring (prosperity) phase to the Summer (boom) phase was due to begin around 2013, and this turn, in 2014 seemed to confirm it. However, I had underestimated the extent to which a global ruling class whose wealth was now held entirely in the form of fictitious capital, was prepared, and able, to damage the real economy, to slow growth, in order to inflate the prices of its assets. And so, 2014 was a false dawn, as austerity continued to be implemented, to slow growth, whilst, at the same time, central banks doubled down on the printing of money tokens to inflate asset prices.

In 2012, as the Eurozone Debt Crisis rumbled on, and currencies came under attack, Mario Draghi, as President of the ECB, made his “whatever it takes” speech, in which he committed the ECB to the same kind of QE policies of infinite money printing that Bernanke had implemented in the US. What was actually required, in the EU, and is still required, was for it to back up its single market and single currency with a single fiscal regime, and a centralised debt management office, with fiscal transfers then being made to the component states. That way, each state would borrow on capital markets at the same rate. Without that, a centrifugal force lies at the heart of the EU structure itself, and the promise of money printing to buy up the worthless sovereign bonds of members states in trouble, was always a poor alternative to it, which would blow up, having itself created the dynamic for higher inflation.

When Greece elected a progressive social-democratic government, in the form of Syriza, the scene was set again, and once more, the conservative social democracy that defines the majority of EU states, as well as the EU itself, ensured that the full weight of economic pressure was put on it to buckle. It again sent the clear message to workers, across Europe, that the sate had endless capacity to intervene on behalf of the speculators, and an equal amount to intervene against the interests of workers, should they begin to make their voices heard.

All of those failures of conservative social-democracy to provide answers in changed material conditions, led to advances of the far right all along the way, and as I have set out elsewhere, that advance of the far right, was also a concomitant of the rise in the social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie since the 1980's, itself resulting from the slow down of growth of large-scale socialised capital. As the far right advanced, so sections of the Left and Centre, instead of defining actual solutions for workers problems, responded only to their own electoral fortunes, by seeking broader coalitions and alliances, which meant even less chance of presenting a distinct and clear alternative, as the third way mantra that elections can only be won from the centre asserted itself, but with that centre itself moving ever further to the Right.

The trouble is that, no matter how wide the definition of “the centre” is made, including sections of the Tories in Britain, and so on, so as to sew up electoral seats, it can provide no solution to the problems that exist that conservative social democracy, let alone those to its right can accept, because those solutions, required by workers, even as progressive social-democratic solutions, require greater economic growth, capital accumulation, and that means rising interest rates that will cause a massive bursting of asset price bubbles, much greater than 2008, and, to bring about that capital investment, the current executives that control that capital, but operate on behalf of shareholders, would have to be removed, and widespread industrial democracy introduced, so that workers and manages used profits to reinvest rather than pay out as dividends and inflated stipends to directors, or to buy back shares to inflate their prices and so on.

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Italy - Popular Frontism Leads To Disaster Again - Part 3 of 5

The reason Marxists oppose Popular Fronts was set out by Marx as far back as 1850, and Marxists have had plenty of experience since then to see Marx's warning played out time and again. A Popular Front involves the Marxists effectively dissolving their own independent organisation and programme. Superficially, they may continue to exist, but, in practice, the Marxists subordinate themselves to the organisation and programme of the Popular Front itself. Given that the whole point of any tactic of Marxists, in making alliances with centrist, reformist, let alone bourgeois forces, is to expose them, and to win a majority of workers to their own banner, anything that requires you to abandon your own organisation and programme is to be avoided at all costs.

As Marx pointed out, in 1850, the liberal petty-bourgeois, when they are engaged in a class struggle against the old landlord class, need the support of workers. But, they have no interest in achieving the specific interests of workers, quite the contrary. As soon as the struggle has achieved their ends, they want to bring it to a halt, and particularly, if it continues, and the workers seek to push on to the fulfilment of their own ends, the petty-bourgeois will certainly want to bring proceedings to a halt, even doing deals with their old enemies, against the workers to achieve it. The same is true of the liberal bourgeoisie when it comes to fascism. Generally, the ruling class has no need of fascism, because its rule is secure via the operation of social-democracy.

Its only at specific times, such as in the 1920's and 30's, when capitalism enters a period of crises of overproduction of capital, resulting from shortages of labour reaching such a point that wages have risen to squeeze profits, and when powerful workers organisations resist attempts to replace labour with capital, resulting in workers occupying factories, and introducing workers' control (Italy), or electing mass Communist Parties to parliament that could form Workers Governments to challenge capital, and support workers (Germany et al), that the ruling class looks to the fascists, and their specific talents, to physically break-up the workers organisations, and, thereby, to push through the attacks on the workers, to break their resistance, and enable labour to be thrown out of production, pushing down wages, and raising profits.

So, when the ruling class itself resorted to the fascists in the 1920's (Italy) and 1930's (Germany et al), it is ridiculous to propose a Popular Front alliance of workers and bourgeois parties, to fight it, because the bourgeoisie, and specifically the petty-bourgeoisie, has already gone over to the fascists! To the extent that some liberal politicians continue to act as though they are still the representatives of those classes, is simply a delusion on their part. As Trotsky pointed out, in relation to the Spanish Popular Front, those liberal politicians actually only represented a “ghost class”.

For those who are enamoured of parliamentarism, that, of course, is of no concern, because they view politics only in this limited sense of winning parliamentary votes, and parliamentary elections. But, as Italy, Germany and Spain showed, amongst others, when it comes to fascism, what happens in parliaments and elections is more or less irrelevant. What is important is not the superficial alliance of politicians and parties, but the actual line up and alliance of social, i.e. class forces. In France and Spain, in the 1930's, as the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie had gone over to fascism, the bourgeois liberal politicians themselves owed their election only to the fact of standing under the cover of the Popular Front, and the votes they obtained from communist and socialist workers. That was of no advantage to the actual Communist, Centrist and Socialist Parties, who could just as easily have stood under the banner of a United Front.

What the Popular Front did was to limit the ability of the revolutionaries to put forward their own Marxist programme, and, instead, subordinated them to the programme of the liberals, who would withdraw from it if it adopted any more radical programme. The same thing has been seen with other Popular Fronts, and even Popular Frontist organisations, such as the SWP's creation of the Anti-Nazi League, or its Respect abomination. Starmer's coup inside Labour is a reflection of the same thing, as the search for votes from the Right, inevitably, leads to a subordination even of social-democratic ideas to the ideas of the reactionary Right.

The processes which lead to the growth of far right and fascist forces are not ones that arise overnight, or during an election campaign, but are created over many years, as the social-democrats, liberals and reformists fail to offer the masses any solution to their problems. The more the liberals, social democrats and reformists view things purely in electoral terms, the more they seek to unite in popular fronts to bolster their votes, thereby, creating a momentum to the right. As they adopt ever more right-wing policies to draw in additional parties to their right, the more do they emphasise their own bankruptcy, and concern only to hang on to their lucrative parliamentary careers.

What happened in France was also an example of that. The Left and the social-democrats, after years of offering no solutions, were reduced to rumps, and, in response to the advance of Le Pen, they were left with no alternative but supporting Macron as such a catch all. But, inevitably, Macron also failed to provide any way forward, and so strengthened Le Pen even more, whose party, now, also has sizeable representation in the Assembly.

And, the same is true in Italy. For years, the liberals, the social democrats and the Stalinists (who are themselves merely social-democrats) have provided no real answers for Italian workers, and they have repeatedly fallen into Popular Frontist alliances and coalition governments, each one failing to provide any solution, and falling apart, as some new crisis erupts. The most obvious manifestation of that is the Democratic Party itself. Wikipedia describes this popular frontist hotch-potch as follows,

“The PD was established in 2007 upon the merger of various centre-left parties which had been part of The Olive Tree list in the 2006 general election, mainly the social-democratic Democrats of the Left (DS), successor of the Italian Communist Party and the Democratic Party of the Left, which was folded with several social-democratic parties (Labour Federation and Social Christians, among others) in 1998, as well as the largely Catholic-inspired Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy (DL), a merger of the Italian People's Party (heir of the Christian Democracy party's left wing), The Democrats and Italian Renewal in 2002.  While the party has also been influenced by social liberalism and Third Way progressivism, especially under Matteo Renzi's leadership, the PD's main ideological trends are social democracy and the Christian leftist tradition.”

In other words a Popular Front of Stalinist, social-democratic and liberal parties all combined in the one party. But, in line with the strategy proposed by Paul Mason, in which even these broad, catch-all, parties are still not broad enough, and need to form an alliance with parties even further to their right, the PD, did just that. In the period 2013-18, it was in government as part of an even wider “centre-left” Popular Front, and remained in that alliance in 2016-2018, whilst the alliance itself failed to win a majority.

Feeling the need of all such Popular Fronts to reach out to ever wider layers to their Right, they then allied with the right-wing populists of the Five Star Movement, in 2019. In 2021, the logic of this Popular Frontism reached a peak, as they joined the National Unity government of Mario Draghi. Draghi himself, of course, as a technocrat, fresh from having stoked astronomical inflation across Europe by the printing of vast quantities of Euro money tokens, during his time as President of the ECB, as well as having crucified the economy of Greece, was not even elected, but simply imposed as Prime Minister from above, in a government that included even the far right forces of the Northern League and Forza Italia that are part of the new far right government! That is Popular Frontism, lesser-evilism, and “my enemy's enemy is my friend” taken to the level of absurdity.

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Italy - Popular Frontism Leads To Disaster Again - Part 2 of 5

Whilst asset prices rose astronomically from 1980 onwards, conservative social-democrats, be it Clinton in the US, or Blair in Britain, offered nothing to workers as even crumbs from the table. In the US, it led to the defeat of Gore in 2000, and the installation of a right-wing Bush Presidency, followed by a right-wing Obama Presidency that continued the same conservative-social democratic policies of Clinton and Bush, the same bailing out of speculators, and printing of money tokens to inflate asset prices.

To be fair, Obama did try to use the power of the US economy to introduce fiscal stimulus after 2008, but was beaten back by right-wing Republicans in state legislatures, who imposed fiscal austerity, showing the weakness of federal states, as against unitary states, and also by Tea Party Republicans who won control in Washington, illustrating the problem of Presidential as against parliamentary system. But, the Democrats failed to mobilise anything other than verbal opposition to these Republican wrecking tactics, despite having control of the Presidency.

Obama's failure to provide any real solutions for US workers led to the election of Trump. In Britain, the failure of the Blair/Brown government to meet workers needs had seen its support continually fall since 2001, and as Brown/Darling bailed out the bankers and speculators, in 2010, again providing no answers for workers, they too were kicked out, and replaced by a Cameron Tory Party, itself moving to the right under pressure from its petty-bourgeois base, in coalition with an Orange Book Liberals, themselves moving rapidly rightwards in search of support from the petty-bourgeoisie.

The US Democrats and UK Labour Party are already, effectively Popular Fronts, contained within one party. In relation to Labour, it is basically the meaning of Lenin's characterisation of it as a bourgeois workers party. That is a party based upon the working-class and its organisations, the party that they look to to represent their interests, but whose ideology is itself bourgeois, itself reflecting the bourgeois nature of the trades unions, of bargaining within the system, rather than seeking to overthrow it. But, that description applies equally to the US Democrats, as it does to the German SPD, and so on. It is always only a question of the degree to which these parties reflect the alternating strength of conservative as against progressive social-democracy, which itself is a reflection of the comparative strength of real socialised capital, as against fictitious capital.

Given the weakness of Marxists, they have been left with no real alternative but to operate within these bourgeois workers parties, as recognised by Trotsky, in the French Turn of the 1930's. This amounts to nothing more than the position that Marx and Engels pursued in 1848, when, again, given the reality of the tiny size of Marxist forces, they joined the German Democrats, which was an overtly bourgeois party, in order, in Engels' words, to “gain the ear of the workers”. There is, however, a difference between this tactical operation of revolutionaries, forced upon them by their numerical weakness, in operating inside bourgeois parties, and the joining of revolutionary parties, or centrist and reformist parties with openly bourgeois parties, in a formal or even informal alliance.

The revolutionaries, in adopting the “entryist” tactic do not abandon their criticism of the reformists and centrists, let alone that of the overtly pro-capitalist elements within those parties, today represented by Starmer and Reeves, in Labour, Biden and Harris in the Democrats, and so on. Nor, do they give up their own independent organisation, and programme within those parties, around which they seek to mobilise additional forces. As Engels put it, in relation to this tactic adopted inside the German Democrats,

“When we returned to Germany, in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of getting the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it. ... I think that all our practice has shown that it is possible to work along with the general movement of the working class at every one of its stages without giving up or hiding our own distinct position and even organisation, and I am afraid that if the German Americans choose a different line they will commit a great mistake.”

(Engels to Florence Kelley Wischnewetsky)

If the revolutionaries do have to hide their own independent organisation, as they have had to do, from time to time, as the bourgeois leaders of the parties have conducted witch hunts against them, they do so, in order to continue the tactic, all the while, arguing the case for turning these parties into united fronts of parties representing the workers interests, and, thereby, expelling the pro-capitalist elements that constitute them as popular fronts instead. It is a version of Lenin's demand, in April 1917, directed at the Provisional Government, of “Down With The Capitalist Ministers”.

Applying the tactic, particularly, in conditions of working-class advance, does not prevent Marxists from becoming MP's, Councillors or other such elected representatives in parliaments, because that enables them to use these positions as more elevated platforms from which to argue the revolutionary case against the official programme of the reformists, centrists and pro-capitalist elements, thereby, gaining the ear of an even wider number of workers. What it does mean is that Marxists cannot join the government and shadow cabinets of any such parties, which would make them equally responsible for the inevitably anti-working class measures such parties implement and advocate. In short, the entryist tactic is one forced on us by material conditions, whilst our aim is to break up these parties as Popular Fronts, and to build a mass revolutionary party.

Even the United Front, as a combination between workers parties is a compromise we enter into given existing material conditions in which the revolutionary party does not have a clear majority. As Trotsky set out in his speech on The United Front, if the revolutionary party had a clear majority of support from the working-class, it would not propose a united front with the reformists and centrists, ploughing its own course, and forcing those minority parties to support it, or else become even more irrelevant. We are clearly, a very, long way from any such condition, today.

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Italy - Popular Frontism Leads To Disaster Again - Part 1 of 5

The Italian elections have delivered a huge win for the far right. Whether you define the Brothers of Italy as fascist or not (they are the descendants of the party of Mussolini), the fact remains that they are a far right, nationalist party, that has won a majority as a result of a coalition with other far right parties, such as the Northern League, and others such as Berlusconi's Forza Italia. 

The basis of the win for the far right is the popular frontism of the majority of Leftist parties in the preceding years. It blows out of the water, the advocacy of such Popular Frontism, as the way to fight fascism, promoted by rapidly rightward moving pundits, such as Paul Mason, and of other former Trotskyists that have collapsed into, at best, centrism, and more frequently simple liberalism. All experience of the Popular Front, as set out by Trotsky, in relation to China in the 1920's, and Spain, Brazil and elsewhere in the 1930's, is of disaster, and the facilitation of the victory of fascism.

As Trotsky noted, in the 1930's,

"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."

(Phrases and Reality)

It, is of course, not just Italy, where these conditions have been created. During the 1980's and 90's, as the world economy went through its phase of long wave stagnation, workers in much of the globe were in no position to improve their condition relative to capital. That is not to say that their living standards did not, on average, rise. They did, as a result of huge rises in productivity that cheapened wage goods, but those same increases in productivity, were what meant that labour itself was weakened in the first place. It meant that gross output rose, but at a slower rate, whilst net output, the amount going as surplus product and surplus value, rose at a much faster rate. That provided a surplus of money-capital (from realised profits), which led to a secular decline in interest rates, which inflated asset prices, such as property, share and bond prices and their derivatives (fictitious capital).

So, not only did capital strengthen relative to labour, as output expanded faster than employment, but, along with it, profits increased relative to wages, and the amount going to interest and rents increased relative to the amount going to productive investment. The ruling class that owns all its wealth in the form of fictitious capital saw its wealth rise spectacularly on the back of the inflation of these assets, with the Dow Jones rising by 1300% between 1980 and 2000, whilst US GDP rose by only 250% during that time. But, it was not just the ruling class that saw its paper wealth increase spectacularly during that time. The middle class, and even some workers, who owned their own homes, or who had pension funds, or had had enough disposable income to buy into shares or mutual funds, also saw their paper wealth increase substantially, even as their wages were being reduced relative to profits.

Of course, also, the 1980's and 90's was a period of deindustrialisation in many already developed economies, as a new international division of labour was established, with mature manufactured commodities, now being produced in newly industrialising economies, where the use of large amounts of fixed capital, required only cheap, unskilled labour to mind the machines, or to assemble components endlessly on an assembly line. China was the classic example, and the result was that, in these economies, the living standards of hundreds of millions of labourers increased substantially, during that period, as they went from being more or less subsistence peasants to being industrial wage labourers. But, as this manufacturing moved to China and elsewhere, to the benefit of workers there, so, too, it meant that labour in developed economies became even more bifurcated, as I had predicted would be the case, back in the early 1980's, as this process unfolded.

In developed economies in North America, and in Europe, jobs increasingly fell into two categories a) very high skilled, high value service industry jobs, and b) low skilled, low value service industry jobs, as service industry itself accounted for 80% of employment, and new value and surplus value produced. Looked at from the perspective of the world working class, the creation of hundreds of millions of new wage labourers, which made the working-class the largest class on the planet, by the early 2000's, and the raising out of the idiocy of rural life, was a great step forward. From the perspective of the workers in the developed economies, who saw jobs disappear, and an increasing divide within their own societies, not so much.

But, during all that time, workers in these developed economies were constrained. There was unemployment caused by the labour-saving technologies introduced in the late 70's and early 80's, and by the fact that its continued effect was to increase gross output faster than employment ensuring a continued relative surplus population. And, as one commodity after another became mature, so its large-scale production could more profitably be undertaken in China, or, later, in Eastern Europe. It ensured a growth of resentment, but growing impotence to channel it. As Trotsky put it, in the 1920's, warning those catastrophists who relish the thought of crises,

“In all capitalist countries the working-class movement after the war reached its peak and then ended, as we have seen, in a more or less pronounced failure and retreat, and in disunity within the working class itself. With such political and psychological premises, a prolonged crisis, although it would doubtless act to heighten the embitterment of the working masses (especially the unemployed and semi-employed), would nevertheless simultaneously tend to weaken their activity because this activity is intimately bound up with the workers’ consciousness of their irreplaceable role in production.”

(Flood Tide)

On TV the other day, Blue Labour's Rachel Reeves, refused to give support to workers forced into striking for pay rises to compensate for rampant inflation. She claimed that the best answer for those workers was a Labour government. But, if she wants a Labour government, I suggest she does actually start supporting workers on strike, now, and getting down to their picket lines, because, otherwise why would any of those workers bother to vote Labour anyway? Fobbing them off with something that may or may not happen in two years time, when an election is called, does nothing to deal with their immediate problem of rampant inflation caused by money printing that Labour itself supported, and by NATO's boycott of Russian energy supplies, which has caused global energy prices to soar, which again Labour has championed!

Reeves claimed that the strikes being seen, now, were not seen under the last Labour government. That of course, skirted around the issue of the anti-working class policies of the Callaghan government that attempted to hold down wages in a period of soaring inflation, which led to the Winter of Discontent, and ultimately to the election of the hard right Thatcher government in 1979. But, Reeves is also wrong in relation to the last Labour government. It is always the case that, after a period of economic stagnation, such as that of the 1980's and 90's, it takes time for workers to feel firmer ground beneath their feet, to rebuild their organisations and so on, before they flex their muscles. After 1999, the global economy entered a new period of long wave upswing, and by 2007 that was manifest, as workers also began to demand higher wages to meet rising living costs.

But, in 2008, when UK tanker drivers struck for a 14% pay rise, to compensate for rising inflation, and the falls in their wages over previous years, Labour's then Chancellor, Alistair Darling pleaded with workers not to demand wage rises in line with inflation. The media, basing itself on the conditions of the previous 20 years, said the tanker drivers demand was ludicrous, and unattainable, but within 48 hours, the employers had capitulated. Similar strikes and pay rises were won by workers in Germany and elsewhere. But, of course, 2008 was the year when the global financial happened too. It was caused by rising interest rates, themselves reflecting the fact that global economic growth had risen, causing the demand for capital to rise, and with workers now demanding pay rises to cover rising prices, the supply of capital from realised profits was beginning to be squeezed.

So, just as workers began to translate that “embitterment”, Trotsky describes, into industrial action, it was cut short. After 2010, governments introduced austerity to slow economic growth, to prevent the demand for capital rising, which would cause interest rates to rise, and asset prices to fall. They printed even greater quantities of money tokens to buy up worthless paper assets, so as to inflate their prices, and simultaneously drain money from the real economy. So, even as workers saw the real economy deliberately slowed, they also saw conservative social-democratic governments inflate already massively inflated asset prices, even further, to the benefit of the rich. And, now, for millions of workers, the most visible manifestation of that became that any prospect even of being able to buy a house, despite artificially reduced mortgage rates, and other bribes, became impossible. And, as they were forced into privately rented accommodation, so they saw those rents rise relentlessly too.

Forward To Part 2

Review of Predictions For 2021 - Prediction 6 – Trump Indicted

Prediction 6 – Trump Indicted

Again the verdict must be  - not yet. All of the arguments set out last year remain valid. The net is tightening around Trump's associates in the US, and globally. Bannon has been indicted, Christopher Steele's dossier has been published, and so on.

One factor that has slowed progress is the incompetence and timidity of Biden, which is also resulting in weakness politically for the Democrats as they approach next year's midterm elections. Biden's incompetence is only outdone by the similar opportunist idiocy of Starmer in Britain, as conservative social-democracy continues to focus on the limited threat to its Left, as against the very real, clear and present danger on its Right. That also shows the disaster that would flow from the kind of Popular Frontist politics proposed by Paul Mason, last year, which called for the Left to politically disarm itself in search of a meaningless alliance with those forces of conservative social-democracy.

The Left will, of course, fight alongside the centre against any immediate threat from the Right, but we will do so under our own banner, not that of alien class forces, and any such fight first requires that the centre is itself prepared to fight those to its Right, and not to continually seek to appease them, as both Biden and Starmer have done, including by adopting large swathes of the ideological programme of reactionary nationalism.

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Review of Predictions For 2021 - Prediction 3 – Populism Is Put In Retreat

Prediction 3 – Populism Is Put In Retreat

The predictions in this post have been wholly borne out, along with the arguments set out as their basis. The day after the post, I reflected on the pathetic attempt at a coup, by Trump and his supporters. In the days and weeks that have followed, the various fascistic organisations involved have been subject to action by the US state that is breaking them apart. The state, through the civil courts, is pulling apart at Trump's property and financial empire, preparing the ground for legal actions against him, as well as combing through his tax affairs, and so on, which will provide the material for criminal charges against him. Investigation into all those around him, and their links to others, to Putin et al, continues to go on apace, and Congress, itself, is systematically investigating the January 6th coup attempt, to provide the basis of legal action, including charges of treason. Trump's long-time ideological mentor, and guiding light of global populism, Steve Bannon, has been indicted. In Britain, the threads of this web, are at an early stage of being unwound, but the release of papers by former MI6 operative, Christopher Steele, is indicative of the way that the state is beginning to move against the populists, and the petty-bourgeois interests they serve.

Populism is often described as being Left or Right, which is a fallacy, based upon idealism and subjectivism, wholly dependent upon the self-description of those involved. It comes down to the particular populists own verbiage, and the superficial targets of their ire, used to mobilise masses behind them. Left populists direct their ire at large-scale capital, the rich, and “imperialism”, whilst right-wing populists direct their ire at “foreigners”, organised labour and so on. Both replace class analysis with easy answers designed to unite a petty-bourgeois mass. The easy answers of both Left and Right Populists are both reactionary in nature, and the supporters of one can easily move to the other - the material basis of Red-Brown Fronts.

Lenin writing about the programme and ideology of the Russian Populists (Narodniks) described this reactionary nature, in relation to the Russian bourgeois-democrats (Narodnoye Pravo), let alone the Russian Marxists.  Lenin argues that a recognition by the group of its liberal-idealist nature and aims, in the process of breaking away from its heritage in Russian peasant socialism, was a step forward, because it brought a degree of honesty and clarity.  I have argued a similar thing in relation to the fact that the petty-bourgeois, liberal idealists of the AWL, appear also to be now on the verge of formally renouncing the Marxism within which they try to reconcile those actual politics, and which is the basis of their turmoil, and need to resort to dishonest, bureaucratic, and vulgar methods of responding to criticism both from within and from without.

Lenin discusses the unity drive launched by the bourgeois democrats of the Narodnoye Pravo group, to form an alliance to fight for political liberty against absolutism. But, this appeal had no foundation, because it ignored all the other questions, which defined the various organisations. Something similar can be seen in the way various petty-bourgeois groups have made similar appeals for the creation of organisations such as the Anti-Nazi League, Stop The War Coalition, and so on. These organisations are sometimes referred to as Popular Fronts, which is an inaccurate description, because a Popular Front actually exercises political power through government. These organisations are more properly defined as cross-class alliances, and as such they fall apart on contact with reality, when the question of political programme has to be addressed, or else to prevent that, the socialists have to subordinate their principles, so as to avoid the discussion of programme.

“But what is characteristic is that this “amalgamation” trend represents one of the last stages in the process of transformation of militant, revolutionary Narodism into politically radical democracy, a process which I have tried to outline above.”

(Lenin – What The Friends of The People Are, p 292)

The Marxists would welcome the development of a non-socialist, bourgeois-democratic party, Lenin says, but such a party would only be possible “when a durable programme of democratic demands has been drawn up that will put an end to the prejudices of the old Russian exceptionalism.” (p 292) This would, of course, facilitate the clarification of political lines, reflecting the division of society into two great class camps, because, whilst the bourgeoisie would form itself into such a democratic party, the workers would be organised under the banner of Marxism.

“The Social-Democrats, who consider essential the independent organisation of the workers into a separate workers’ party, could not, of course, “amalgamate” with such a party, but the workers would most strongly support any struggle waged by the democrats against reactionary institutions.” (p 293)

The Populists, however, were defenders of those reactionary institutions, which they saw as representing the traditional interests of “the people”, of the small producers, and barriers to capitalist development. Populists whether they describe themselves as Left or Right, seek to hold back the development of large-scale capital, in favour of small scale capital, because they are representatives of the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie.

Brexit was a classic example of that. Even when they claim to be representatives of workers, as was the case with the Sismondists and Narodniks, and today is seen with the Lexiters, the “anti-imperialists”, and “anti-capitalists”, in their ideology, they never get beyond the ideas of the petty-bourgeoisie. And, because the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie are themselves contradictory, reflecting the fact that it is a transitional class, continually in the process of differentiation, it is impossible to present a clear programme based upon class interest. It necessitates vagueness, and the prominent role of some charismatic leader, with the prime means of change coming from the top, from the state, with the masses brought on only as foot soldiers.

Populism thrives when the two main classes are weak, but as Marx describes in Wage Labour and Capital, and elsewhere, the condition for the working-class being strong is that capital is also strong, that capital is accumulating rapidly, and driving up the demand for labour-power. The populists, and the idealists and subjectivists see things standing on their head. They believe that workers condition improves as a result of workers becoming more organised in trades unions, etc., and becoming more militant. But, that requires that this change in consciousness comes about by some switch simply being turned on in their heads, unrelated to the material conditions surrounding them. Its this which leads them to the crude belief that any form of economic crisis, leads workers into such a response, whereas, the opposite is the case.

As Marx and Engels describe, it is the more rapid accumulation of capital that lessens the competition between the workers, enables their wages to rise, and so facilitates their own educational, cultural and political development, as well as facilitating their ability to combine to further their interests, which they now see more clearly. The same process, by contrast, increases the competition between different capitals. As Trotsky put it,

“It means a growing demand for goods, expanded production, shrinking unemployment, rising prices and the possibility of higher wages. And, in the given historical circumstances, the boom will not dampen but sharpen the revolutionary struggle of the working class. This flows from all of the foregoing. In all capitalist countries the working-class movement after the war reached its peak and then ended, as we have seen, in a more or less pronounced failure and retreat, and in disunity within the working class itself. With such political and psychological premises, a prolonged crisis, although it would doubtless act to heighten the embitterment of the working masses (especially the unemployed and semi-employed), would nevertheless simultaneously tend to weaken their activity because this activity is intimately bound up with the workers’ consciousness of their irreplaceable role in production.

Prolonged unemployment following an epoch of revolutionary political assaults and retreats does not at all work in favour of the Communist Party. On the contrary the longer the crisis lasts the more it threatens to nourish anarchist moods on one wing and reformist moods on the other. This fact found its expression in the split of the anarcho-syndicalist groupings from the Third International, in a certain consolidation of the Amsterdam International and the Two-and-a-Half International, in the temporary conglomeration of the Serrati-ites, the split of Levi’s group, and so on. In contrast, the industrial revival is bound, first of all, to raise the self-confidence of the working class, undermined by failures and by the disunity in its own ranks; it is bound to fuse the working class together in the factories and plants and heighten the desire for unanimity in militant actions.”

(Flood Tide)

In other words, workers higher living standards are not a consequence of their increased militancy and trades union organisation, but the increased organisation and militancy is itself the consequence of their higher living standards, which themselves result from the economic expansion, and demand for labour. The economic revival that got underway in 2021, was the material basis for such a change, and the further undermining of populism. But, the same limitations of that economic revival, resulting from the physical constraints on economies, brought about by lockouts and lockdowns, has necessarily limited that process also.

The main challenge for the ruling-class (the main owners of fictitious-capital) comes today not from the working-class, but from that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie whose economic and social weight has been significantly increased over the last 40 years, and whose political reflection is found in their control over traditional conservative parties such as the Tories in Britain, and Republicans in the US. Its in that sphere that the danger of fascism resides, but it is a fascism aimed directly at the ruling class, in the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, not on behalf of the ruling class directed at workers.

But, here, too, the ruling class faces a dilemma, because, as set out in yesterday's post, the potential for the ruling class to avoid a cataclysmic crash in asset prices has run its course. The best it might hope for is that it minimises such a crash, by having central banks buy up even more worthless paper, and also having workers pension schemes buy up worthless assets, with large numbers of gullible retail speculators picking up other assets before their prices crash. The development of phone apps, and commission free platforms, and proliferation of meme stocks, cryptocurrency etc. is the front runner of that.

It would then focus on driving up the rate of profit, and capital accumulation, so as to finance its interest payments and rents, but could only do so as a result of a high level of inflation, whilst wages were held down, causing a sharp fall in living standards. For the reasons set out above, in conditions of a rapidly expanding economy that could only be achieved by the use of draconian measures by a Bonapartist National Government of the kind that is being de facto created by Johnson and Starmer.  Covid restrictions have been a good preparation for such an eventuality.

The comparison of the responses to COVID with the measures during war is apt. In 1939, when war broke out, my father was just 20, and working as an engineer at Rolls Royce in Crewe, making engines for Spitfires. In the next five years, he worked at nearly every other car factory in the Midlands, and the reason was that he was continually moved from one to another as a result of him acting to organise and represent the grievances of his fellow workers. In the end, he had his cards literally filled with black ink, so that he could not get another job, at which point he went into the army. In fact, during the war, all such opposition was made almost impossible, even without resort to the use of the bodies of armed men to prevent it.

The Stalinists, who had originally opposed the war, during the Hitler-Stalin Pact, came out to argue that it was now the class conscious worker who would strike-break in favour of the war effort. Labour, which had made Churchill Prime Minister, in the face of opposition from many on his own Tory benches, formed a National Government, with him, and so prevented any effective political challenge, via parliament. When elections did take place, it was National candidates that fought the election, thereby, removing any competition between Tory and Labour. Only the candidates from the Commonwealth Party of Tom Whittingham and J.B. Priestley offered workers a socialist alternative.

Today, we are seeing Covid used in a similar manner to create a National Government, backed by totalitarian methods of propaganda, by a 24 hour, war to wall, media that bombards homes directly sending the views of an elite, unchallengeable into the heads of the masses. Undoubtedly, this apparatus is going to be central to the requirements of the ruling class in rescuing itself from the inevitable financial crash to come.

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Permanent Revolution - Summary

 Summary

• The term Permanent Revolution was first used by Marx in a Speech to the Executive of the Communist League, in 1850, analysing the revolutions of 1848.

• In the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the 18^th and early 19^th century, the bourgeoisie is supported by the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, the proletariat is, at that time, only small, and does not form a class for itself.

• In the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of 1848, the bourgeoisie has grown, and the petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry relatively declined, as a result of the process of differentiation, and so the proletariat has also relatively, and absolutely, expanded, and begins to form into a class for itself.

• The bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie are concerned only with their own class interest. As soon as they feel those interests are met, they seek to call a halt to the revolutionary movement, and agree terms with the old ruling class. The petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry are amorphous and unable to form their own state. They must follow behind either the bourgeoisie or else the proletariat. The workers are thrown into the lead of the bourgeois revolution, but a newly politicised and empowered proletariat has no reason to leave things at that, which does not address its own democratic and political interests.

• The proletariat must continue the revolutionary process, making it permanent, in order to secure its own political rights, such as the right to vote, and so on. But, soon, any workers party must also address the needs of workers by an assault on bourgeois property, even if only in search of better wages and so on. The bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie see any such development as threatening their own interests. They break with their erstwhile allies in the proletariat, and align themselves with the old ruling class. The old ruling class, seizes the day, as the revolution falters, and having then dealt with the workers, it takes back the political concessions made to the bourgeoisie, a period of reaction following.

• The lesson for the proletariat, Marx concludes, is that, whilst they can ally, in action, with the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, against the landlords, the proletariat must maintain both political and organisational independence, in preparation for this inevitable betrayal. The proletariat must organise its own militias, and so on, so as to be able to continue with the revolution, when the bourgeoisie seek to bring it to an end. The proletariat must then continue the revolution, beyond the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and seize power themselves, as the only means of securing it, and preventing the reaction.

• Trotsky takes this analysis, and applies it to the conditions in all those places where, in the 20^th century, the bourgeois-democratic revolution had not been undertaken. That amounts to all those places, such as in Russia, where nations existed as annexes of an oppressive Empire, or, for example, as existed with all of the colonies.

• In all these places, the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, whilst dependent upon an increasingly numerous and powerful proletariat, were afraid of it for exactly those reasons. In the Russian Empire, the liberal bourgeoisie adopted the garb of nationalism, in order to divide the workers, in their nation, from the Russian workers, to prevent a combined class struggle, by all workers, against the bourgeoisie. Whilst spouting nationalist rhetoric, they negotiated with the bourgeoisie of Russia, or in other cases, the bourgeoisie of other large powers who they appealed to for support. In the colonies, the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie argue for independence, and seek the backing of the proletariat, but any hint of the workers pursuing their own interests results in them aligning with the colonial power to suppress the workers revolt.

• Again, therefore, whilst the proletariat agrees to engage in joint action with the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry, it must retain its independence from it, both politically and organisationally. Its motto is “March separately, strike together.” The proletariat, throughout such action, seeks to build its own forces, ready to be able to make the revolution permanent, at that point where the bourgeoisie seeks to bring it to a halt.

• The practical implementation of this theory occurred in February 1917. The bourgeois-democratic revolution brought the Provisional Government to power, as a bourgeois government, a Popular Front government, combining representatives of the bourgeoisie, petty-bourgeoisie and reformist representatives of the proletariat. Lenin, in The April Theses, sets out why it was necessary to make the revolution permanent, to call for the removal of the capitalist ministers, converting it into a Workers and Peasants Government, and for All Power To The Soviets. The Soviets represented the Dictatorship of the Proletariat leading the Peasantry.

• The Theory of Permanent Revolution, advanced by Trotsky, and verified by the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions, says that it is possible for workers to come to power in backward countries, before it does in the more advanced countries. But, it can never establish socialism, in these backward countries, before it does so in the advanced countries. A revolution bringing workers to power in the former, must fail unless supported by an international revolution in the advanced countries, and so the idea of permanence is widened, to the extent that, what starts as a revolution in one country, necessitates a continual expansion of revolution, until the whole world is encompassed by it.

• Understanding Permanent Revolution, also involves an understanding of The Popular Front, The United Front, and the Workers Government. Failure to understand these concepts, and the criminal actions of the Stalinists, in pursuing a Popular Front strategy, rather than a strategy based upon Permanent Revolution, led to the catastrophes of the defeat of the Chinese Revolution in 1927, the demobilisation of the French workers in 1934, and the defeat of the Spanish Revolution in 1936. It has led to defeats elsewhere too, such as that of the Popular Unity government in Chile, in 1973.

• Permanent Revolution does not mean that, today, bourgeois-democratic revolutions cannot occur without them being undertaken by workers in the lead. Each instance must be analysed on the basis of the material conditions that exist. It only explains how, in some cases, workers can come to power in countries that are less developed, but if they do so, they cannot stop at merely the bourgeois-democratic revolution, or a revolution confined to national bounds.

• A large element in relation to colonies was the concept that imperialism would act to divide the world, and so revolutions would be required against the imperialist/colonial power. However, Imperialism destroyed colonialism, and has been a force in supporting the bourgeoisie, in a number of countries, in establishing a bourgeois-democratic regime as the best political shell in which industrial capital can exploit labour.

• Trotsky's Summary.

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The Popular Front - Part 7 of 7

The fascists are the vehicle for this fight. On the one hand, the fascists ideology is one based upon the mobilisation of the petty-bourgeoisie. It is “anti-capitalist”, in the sense of being superficially hostile to large-scale monopoly capital; it is nationalistic in outlook, and able to rally the lumpen elements around racist and conspiracist tropes; and its methods are based upon a violent break-up and suppression of the organised labour movement, which forms the immediate concern of the ruling class. The liberal-bourgeois representatives, i.e. the conservative social-democratic politicians within the conservative and social-democratic parties, may look on aghast at the growth of such forces, but, as seen in Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere, in the 1920's, and 30's, these liberal-bourgeois politicians have already been abandoned by the class they seek to represent. The petty-bourgeoisie, already in the camp of the reactionaries, is joined by the bourgeoisie itself, i.e. by the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital, and the forces of its state.

As Trotsky points out, therefore, the attempt to create a popular front, to oppose the fascists, in such conditions is pointless, because such a popular front can only be with the liberal bourgeois politicians who no longer represent anything other than a ghost class. A popular front only allows these politicians to obtain seats in parliament on the back of the workers parties in the alliance, but the workers themselves must abandon their own independence in order solely to obtain this mirage of broad support. Such popular fronts insist on the workers remaining inside the remit of bourgeois-democracy, and because they confuse the winning of elections, and governmental office with state power, they inevitably demobilise and disorient the working-class, when that state, as the state of the ruling-class, then turns on them, and sides with the fascists, as happened in Spain in 1936, Chile in 1973 and so on. The workers could only have been prepared for such events had they been warned of them in advance, and had a revolutionary party began to organise them in defence squads and workers militia.

Fascism, however, is to be understood as conservative rather than reactionary. Unlike the reactionaries who represent the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, fascism represents, in these specific historical conditions, the interests of the owners of fictitious-capital. It represents the same interests as the conservative social-democrats, interests which those politicians cannot represent, within the confines of bourgeois-democracy, in these specific historical conditions. Once having seized power, the fascists set about utilising the state power to destroy the petty-bourgeois and lumpen elements within their ranks; in Germany those elements were represented by the Strasserites.

The fascists then set about the use of the state to reorganise the economy in the interests of large scale socialised capital. The owners of fictitious capital see increased revenues in the form of interest on the loans they provide to the state to undertake such infrastructure spending, and as the profits of large-scale industry increases, they see their dividends increase too. Superficially, national socialism under fascism appears identical to national socialism under Stalinism, and its no wonder that an enthusiastic supporter of the Moseley Memorandum of the 1930's, setting out such policies, was Nye Bevan and other statist social-democrats.

A range of organisations are described as popular fronts, which aren't, but which are popular frontist in nature, i.e. they are cross class organisations. Stalinists have been the biggest force behind such organisations, in line with the adoption of the popular front, as the principle tactic of Stalinism since the 1930's. The development of “anti-imperialist alliances” and “anti-monopoly alliances” are typical of such cross class organisations. They are thoroughly reactionary in nature, for the reasons that Lenin describes in relation to the same kinds of populism put forward by the Sismondists and Narodniks. Rather than seeking the further development of capitalism, and of the revolutionary elements within it, such movements seek to hold back the development of the most advanced elements of capitalism, and to align with and foster the less mature, reactionary forms of capital. So called “Anti-Capitalist” movements are usually of this type too, their aim being to hold back or turn back capitalist development, rather than to push forward through it to Socialism.

As an indication of the deterioration of the Left in general, it is not just the Stalinists that have been the driving force of such cross class movements, and popular fronts. The SWP in the 1970's, became a major force in such developments through things such as the Anti-Nazi League, but also most Left groups fell into similar cross-class alliances, such as CND, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and so on, which itself reflected the weakness of many of those smaller organisations, who criticised the nature of these organisations, but were unable to avoid their gravitational pull. In the last two decades, the SWP and its splinters became inseparable from such popular frontist, cross-class alliances, and the unprincipled politics that goes with them.

Although, such organisations are not themselves popular fronts, because they do not represent electoral alliances, and so do not require an abandonment of socialist ideas and programmes, the reality of these organisations is that that is what happens, because those that create them, in order to attract and retain the wider political representation they crave, are forced to limit the platform of the organisation itself to the bland, bourgeois politics that the liberal politicians, religious leaders and so on will accept. Indeed, in the case of the SWP, and its Respect abomination, it is not even just liberal politicians whose support is sought, but that of outright reactionaries such as George Galloway and Islamic religious leaders. In all these cases, as with the experience of popular fronts throughout history, when the liberal and other bourgeois political representatives have obtained what they require, and at a time of their choosing, they cut free from the workers' representatives, and turn against them.

The lesson of history taught by Marxist analysis is to avoid popular fronts like the plague. The weakness of revolutionary socialism means that, as with Marx and Engels in 1848, we are forced into an undeclared popular front inside the social-democratic parties, in order to obtain the ear of workers, via their mass organisations. The alternative is the sterility of sectarianism of all those that seek to build their own alternative in splendid isolation. But, as Marx and Engels did, we have to recognise the nature of our position within these parties, and protect against the danger of opportunism. It is necessary to see our sojourn as a temporary tactic as a means of building the mass revolutionary Workers' Party as a real alternative. It is necessary to see ourselves in Engels' words, as a wing of those bourgeois parties, and to act to defend our own political and organisational independence within them.

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The Popular Front - Part 6 of 7

The owners of fictitious-capital have two contradictory sources of revenue upon which their wealth and power is based. On the one hand, they can obtain large revenues in the form of interest/dividends on their shares, bonds and other financial assets. On the other they can obtain large capital gains as a result of significant rises in the prices of these assets, and they can then convert these capital gains into revenues, by selling a proportion of those assets. A rise in the price of assets, unless it is a reflection of the increased revenue produced by the asset, results in a lower yield, i.e. ratio of the revenue to the price of the asset. If yields fall, the owners of shares can compensate, by having their representatives on company boards increase the proportion of profits going to dividends, but this then reduces the amount going to real capital accumulation, and so undermines revenues and fictitious capital in the longer-term.

If interest rates rise, then asset prices fall, and so yields also rise. The owners of revenue producing assets see their revenues rise, but they see the price of their assets fall. The total return might then also fall, as the capital loss outweighs any increase in revenue. But, ultimately, it is the real productive capital that dominates, because it is the source of profits, and thereby of these other revenues and capital gains. The owners of fictitious-capital, as ruling-class, seek to protect themselves from this contradiction. They have central banks print money tokens to buy up assets, to reflate their prices, when they crash and so on. They seek to have the state regulate the economy to a greater extent and on a wider geographical basis, so that the profits that are accumulated as real capital, can be more effective and produce greater profits and so on, But, eventually, the prices of assets cannot continue to rise at a faster pace than the growth of revenues, and revenues can only grow if surplus value grows, which requires the accumulation of real capital, and so the employment of additional labour.

Ultimately, this question of the accumulation of real capital has to be addressed. That was the property question that imposed itself in the 1920's, and again in the 1930's. It requires a restructuring of real capital on the basis of a technological revolution that qualitatively raises productivity, and, thereby, the rate of surplus value and rate of profit. The owners of fictitious-capital are forced to accept a large-scale write down of their paper wealth, as interest rates rise, and financial and property markets crash, but their main concern then becomes to retain control over the real socialised capital, which now becomes the focus of their wealth and power.

In the 1920's and 30's, it is when they see a threat to this control, as workers and sections of the professional middle-class, who are the personification of this large-scale socialised capital, begin to rationally demand control over it that the ruling class now turns to the fascists to protect its interests. The ruling-class is tiny. To protect its interests as against the old landlord class it looked to the proletariat. To protect its interests against a revolutionary proletariat it can only look to the petty-bourgeoisie, and lumpen proletariat in addition to its state. The interests of these elements are contradictory to the interests of large-scale socialised capital, and so, therefore, the long-term interests of the ruling class, but the ruling class is immediately concerned with its own survival, and is forced to think about its longer-term interests only after having dealt with the proletariat.

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Forward To Part 7

The Popular Front - Part 5 of 7

Meanwhile, the development of that large scale socialised capital, which eclipsed the monopoly of private capital that preceded it, had also brought another transformation with it, which was that the former owners of that private capital had been transformed into a class of rentiers, coupon clippers, whose wealth was held in the form of fictitious capital, of shares and bonds. As Marx describes in Capital III, and Theories of Surplus Value, the objective interests of this class now diverge from the objective interests of industrial capital.

Their immediate interests depend not upon the accumulation of real capital, but on the appropriation of interest/dividends out of the profits produced by industrial capital. In order to ensure that, they made sure to use their political power to pass corporate governance legislation, when limited liability companies were made possible, that gave shareholders control over those companies, and their capital, even though they were mere creditors of those companies. The old alliance between the landed aristocracy, and the financial oligarchy that was represented by the Tory Party, and which is increasingly manifest in the merging and intermarriage of these exploiting classes, emerges in a new form. These conservative parties, which can be seen across the world, become the representative of that ruling class, whose actual objective interest is now at odds with the interests of the dominant form of property, large-scale socialised capital, whose accumulation is the determinant of the fortunes of the state itself. In other words, this represents a transitional state, in which the contradictions have been sharpened and raised to a new height.

The heightened contradiction is manifest in the fact that, the short-term interest of this fictitious-capital, the property form of the ruling-class, is contradictory to the interests of the real socialised capital, and, thereby, the long-term interest of the state itself. But, the long-term interest of the fictitious-capital, and of the ruling class is itself dependent upon the development of the real socialised capital, which is the source of profits, and thereby of the interest/dividends and rent that provides the revenues, and underpins the capital gains on the fictitious capital. The long-term interest of fictitious capital, is only possible on the basis of the continued development of large-scale socialised capital, and so the interests of the ruling class are only furthered, by the continued advance of the socialised property, and development of the new ruling class – the working-class and middle class collective owners of that socialised capital. The ruling class's short-term interest contradicts its own long-term interest!

Social-democracy, thereby, reflects this contradiction. The social-democratic parties represent a popular front in which the owners of these two contradictory forms of capitalist property are combined. On the one hand, they contain the conservative social-democrats who represent the interests of large-scale fictitious-capital, and, thereby, its owners, the top 0.01% of the population that owns and controls the majority of fictitious-capital. On the other hand, they contain the progressive social-democrats who represent the interests of the large-scale socialised capital itself, and, thereby, the professional middle class that is its personification. And, they contain the reformist socialist representatives of the working-class, whose own interests are tied to the development of this large-scale socialised capital, so long as they are not able to go beyond it to their own direct control over the means of production.

The conservative parties, as opposed to the conservative wings of the social-democratic parties, then become not conservative at all, but reactionary. That is best seen with the Tory Party in Britain, and the Republicans in the US. Their membership becomes dominated by the most numerous components of the bourgeoisie, which increasingly becomes indistinguishable from the petty-bourgeoisie. In other words, it is dominated by the plethora of small private capitalists which linger on as a relic of capitalism's earlier development, prior to the development of socialised capital, and also of all those new small private capitals that are constantly being brought into existence, and as constantly going out of existence, unable to compete with large scale socialised capital.

As parties seeking governmental office, these conservative parties, however, are forced to recognise the reality that the fortunes of the state itself depends upon the fortunes of large-scale socialised capital. The conservative parties themselves, therefore, are racked by their own internal contradiction. In their ideology and programmes they must reflect the interests of their own core membership and voter base amongst the petty-bourgeoisie, in opposition to large scale socialised capital, whilst, in government, they have to act in the interests of that large-scale socialised capital, because on it depends the future of the state.

In the end, the social-democratic elements of these conservative parties, together with the conservative wings of the social-democratic parties are led to the same position of seeking to protect the interests of the owners of fictitious-capital, but, in the longer-term that can only be done by advancing the interests of large-scale socialised capital itself. That requires that greater regulation and planning occurs, to ensure that capital accumulation can take place in a more secure environment; it requires that larger single markets be developed, as the minimum size of operations of these larger capitals and so on. But, what the owners of that fictitious-capital cannot allow is that this occurs, on any meaningful basis, outside their own continued control of the real socialised capital.

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