Corbyn And Your Party

After a long and fraught gestation period, the new left-wing party in British politics has been created, by former Labour MP's Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Initially, labelled “Your Party” they are asking supporters for suggestions for names, so that it can be decided when it holds a conference later this year. No doubt some wag will have proffered the suggestion of “Fruit and Nut” party! However, the fact that its reported to already have signed up more than 600,000 supporters, increasing by around 500 per minute, that 18% of the electorate say that they would possibly support a Left party led by Corbyn, and that, even before it has even got off the ground, it is standing level in the polls with Starmer's Blue Labour Party, shows this is no joke.  As Reform has shown in replacing The Tories, the electoral system means that, as Your Party draws its potential vote from Labour (plus Greens and Liberals), a collapse in Labour's vote is quite possible, as the election increasingly becomes one fought out between the reactionaries of Reform, and the progressive alternative offered by Your Party.

When Corbyn got on the ballot to stand for Labour Leader, in 2015, a similar skyrocketing in Labour membership took place. It went from around 200,000, many of whom were inactive, to over 600,000, most of the new recruits being young people, though a substantial number of older, former members rejoined, now seeing some prospect of an end to the days of bland, Blair-Right, conservative social-democracy. Under Corbyn, Labour became the largest political party in Europe, by some way, and with such a large membership, overnight, its funding problems, also, disappeared, filling the coffers, and ending the need to appeal to either the unions, or rich patrons via the prawn cocktail circuit. The surge in membership was matched by a surge in electoral support, despite the efforts of the Tory media, and of the right-wing inside the party itself, which did all it could to undermine Labour's position, including attempts to launch two parliamentary coups against him, spearheaded by members of Labour Friends of Zionism.

Corbyn's Labour, in the 2017 General Election, saw the biggest increase in its vote, since 1945. Compared to 2015, Corbyn's Labour saw its vote rise by more than 3 million votes, a rise of nearly 40%. It rose by 50% compared to Labour's vote in 2010. That was despite the attempted parliamentary coup, and no confidence vote by the PLP, and perpetual sniping, the undermining of the functioning of the party machine, as the right-wing retained control of the bureaucracy, as well as all of the increasing fuelling of media stories about intimidation, as those right-wing MP's simply faced the censure by their own party members in the constituencies. The right of the party who had banked on a poor performance, in 2017, as the springboard for another assault on Corbyn, could hardly contain their disappointment, when all their efforts to undermine Labour turned out in vain, and Corbyn, almost snatched victory, obtaining 40% of the poll, just behind the 42% obtained by Theresa May, whose parliamentary majority disappeared.

They had to wait until 2019, when Corbyn's Labour lost to Boris Johnson's Tories, amidst a full scale shit storm whipped up on the basis of largely baseless accusations of widespread anti-Semitism in the party. In fact, those charges were shown to be largely false, and malicious, in subsequent investigations. That some of those involved in promoting them have gone on to show their true colours as defenders of war criminals and as genocide deniers, is exemplified by the former Chair of Labour Friends of Zionism, David Mencer, who claimed he was leaving Britain for Israel out of fear of a future Corbyn Labour government, and who now daily lies and denies an actual genocide is taking place against Palestinians, as the media spokesman of the Zionist regime.

But, the response of Corbyn, and of his Stalinist advisors, at that time, facilitated the strategy of the Labour Right, and their alliance with the Zionists. Time after time, Corbyn and his supporters, who had mobilised thousands of members via Momentum, refused to tackle the challenge presented by the Right. A priority was to have democratised the party, but that was hardly something the Stalinists that increasingly dominated Corbyn's office are renowned for. On the contrary, Stalinism always operates bureaucratically, seeking behind the scenes deals and alliances. Moreover, the Stalinists must have had huge concerns over the fact that the 400,000 new members, drawn in were largely to their Left, and one reason they were drawn in was their opposition to Brexit, a political trajectory not at all in keeping with the petty-bourgeois nationalist ideology of Stalinism, nor of Corbyn.

Whilst, the stepped up attempts to undermine Labour's 2019 election campaign, the ever more hyperbolic claims about anti-Semititism and so on, played a pivotal role in Labour's defeat in 2019, it was the inadequate politics of Corbynism, and of his Stalinist advisors that sealed it. In the Spring elections of 2019, even 60% of Labour members voted for other, anti-Brexit parties, as Corbyn swung Labour back towards his old, 1970's anti-Common Market positions. And, not only was Corbyn setting his face against the vast majority of the party membership, around 90% of whom opposed Brexit, on that front, but he was also failing to defend party members falsely accused of anti-Semitism, and who were being daily suspended or expelled by the party machine, still in the control of the Right.

Nevertheless, despite all of the jubilation at Labour's defeat by the Right of the party, in the 2019 General Election, Corbyn still did better than did Stamer's Blue Labour in 2024, which saw its vote fall below that of Corbyn's Labour by half a million votes. Compared to 2017, Starmer's Blue Labour saw its vote fall by 3 million votes, and obtained only 34% of the poll, compared to the 40% obtained by Corbyn's Labour in 2017. Since then, as Blue Labour has attacked workers, the elderly, the young, the sick and disabled, and spent two years repaying its debt to the Zionists for their aid in removing Corbyn, its support has cratered even further.

The experience of Corbyn's Labour shows precisely the weakness of this new party. The Labour Party has never been, in reality, just a single party. It is, basically, a popular front. It is a coalition under a big tent, of different classes and their political interests, just as the Liberal Party of the 19th century, was a party, established to represent what was seen as the aligned (social-democratic) interests of the industrial capitalists, and industrial working-class, against the interests of the old landed aristocracy, and their allies within the commercial bourgeoisie and financial oligarchy. The Labour Party was created by the unions, when the working-class became by far the largest component of that class alliance, but did so, whilst still retaining the old social-democratic ideology of the ultimate symbiotic relation between the interests of capital and labour that simply had to be negotiated, though always within the context of the ultimate primacy of the needs of capital and capital accumulation.

The objection of Marxists to the creation of some new mass workers party has always been that these proposals, put forward by sections of the Left, from time to time, have sought to simply replicate all of those deficiencies of the Labour Party itself. In other words, to create a Labour Party Mark II. Just as with all of the other Popular Fronts, created by sections of the Left, over the last 100 years, they have sought to privilege size and scope of organisation over, politics and programme. In order to draw in large numbers, the clarity of ideas, based on class interest has been watered down to the lowest common denominator, so as not to frighten the horses, not to scare off all of the radical vicars, much beloved by the Stalinists and Liberals.

In his Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx faced a similar problem. In 1848, as Engels described in his letters to various US socialists, he and Marx had joined the German Democrats, an openly bourgeois party. Why? Because, in the context of the revolutions of 1848, the tiny forces of socialism had to do what they could to win the ear of the workers, who were, themselves mobilising in support of the bourgeois revolution. But, Marx and Engels made clear that, in doing so, they saw themselves both as part of that movement, and simultaneously as having their own separate stream within it.

”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.”

(Engels to Florence Kelley Wischnewetsky)

He goes on to describe how, as such a “wing”, they advanced their own ideas and programme, and without doing so, what would be the purpose of “getting the ear” of the workers? Its on that basis that Marxists always justified their involvement in the Labour Party, or other such social-democratic parties, in conditions where there were no mass communist parties. Where a mass Marxist party does exist, the question does not arise. In those conditions, as Trotsky and the Communist International set out, in the Theses on The United Front, a mass communist party can simply propose to other workers the formation of a workers united front in action, for example, to fight the fascists, on the streets, and so on, and, in the process, as the leaders of those other workers parties shrink from any such joint action, so the workers still attached to those parties are drawn away from them. But, Trotsky, and the CI, considered that such conditions would require the communists to have around 40% of the working class already behind them. We are far from such conditions.

At the time of the joint congress of the Lassalleans and Eisenachers at Gotha, the German working-class was growing rapidly, though still not the largest class. Marx considered that the formation of a single large workers party in such conditions, was an important step forward, a point reiterated by Engels in his letters to US socialists. But, as can be seen in his Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx did not consider that this justified the Eisenachers abandoning their programme. That didn't mean that Marx and Engels opposed the formation of the new party, but that they believed that, it would have been better to have agreed to not have a jointly agreed programme, than to have one that was a step backward.

As Marxists, we clearly have no interest in agreeing to a programme that is inadequate to the needs of the working-class, and of driving the class struggle forward. Similarly, there is no point in us creating yet another party, with such an inadequate ideological basis, simply in order to broaden its appeal to other class forces, and their political representatives, i.e. popular frontism. We have no interest in creating a Labour Party Mk. II. But, given the tiny forces of Marxism, at the present time, that is clearly a different question to what our attitude should be to any party that is created by others. We still have the question of tactics of how best to get the ear of workers, and, in particular, the most advanced sections of workers.

At the present time, if “Your Party” is likely to represent simply the creation of a Labour Party Mark II, Starmer's Blue Labour has turned the Labour Party Mark I, into a Labour Party Mark -I. In other words, not even into the Liberal Party out of which the Labour Party emerged, but a step back beyond that, a regression to the kind of "Young England" nationalism of Disraeli's Tories of the 19th century, and what Marx and Engels termed "Reactionary Socialism". On the one hand, “Your Party” could act as the kind of external whip on the Labour Party that UKIP/Brexit Party represented in relation to the Tories. But, that external whip on the Tories carried on for a quarter of a century, before the Conservative Party eventually fractured, into its bourgeois and petty-bourgeois wings, with the latter metamorphosing into Reform, and the former left as a rump that must be swallowed by the Liberals, in short order.

If the figures for those signing up to “Your Party” are correct, then that is something qualitatively different, even than the role of UKIP etc. Even if the claim of half a million members is wildly exaggerated, and the real figure is half that, it would mean that, in every constituency across Britain, there would be around 500 members, or about one in a hundred voters would be members. Combined with the polling data showing the party already level with Blue Labour, the significance of that membership base, then, becomes obvious. At least one person, in every street in Britain, would, on average, be a member of Your Party, which not only means no shortage of local candidates in local and other elections, but candidates known by and recognised by their neighbours. Given that, as with Corbyn's Labour, most of these members will be young, enthusiastic and active, compared to the old, moribund membership, not only of Blue Labour, Liberals and Conservatives, but also Reform, this is a significant development.

In a couple of months, the Labour Party holds its annual conference. What the Labour Party still has, is the links to the trades unions that created it, as well as to the cooperative movement. That organic link still enables the Labour Party to be saved from Blue Labour. The writing is on the wall with the warnings from UNITE to Starmer and Rayner. Blue Labour do not dare even publish their current membership figures which have collapsed, not least from the thousands of members expelled for daring challenge the leadership and its support for the genocide committed by the Zionist state. If the unions fail to call a halt to the Blue Labour project, in the Autumn, the writing appears to be on the wall.

The unions created Labour at the start of the last century, for one reason, because it was easier to do so than to try to change the Liberal Party itself, which remained in the control of the industrial bourgeoisie. The same may be true, today, in relation to Labour and Your Party. If the unions and individual party members do not kick out Starmer and put an end to the Blue Labour regime in the Autumn, members and voters will flock to Your Party. Given the history of Corbyn's Labour, we have to be concerned, as Marxists, as to how that pans out for them. For one thing, however, they will not have to deal with all of the crap and obstacles thrown at them by the Labour Right, which, of itself, liberates them to engage in positive action.

The formation of the party also facilitates the drawing together of all of the various Left sects, many of which voluntarily excluded themselves from the Labour Party on the basis of supposedly protecting their ideological purity. Whether they seize the opportunity will be up to them. As Engels put it, writing to US socialists,

"….It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed harmoniously, take root and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than "durch Schaden klug tererden" [to learn by one's own mistakes]. And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical as the Americans. The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, H.G. or Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own.”

(ibid)

It seems that Marxists will have to relate to Your Party, at the same time as seeking to utilise its external whip on Labour, to drive out Blue Labour. The relation for now can only be algebraic until such time as history shows which of these parties will prevail as the workers party. In both cases, Marxists continue to stand alongside the workers as they travel this road, and we continue to advance our own independent programme, based on the class struggle, and interests of the working-class, by addressing the property question.

The Idiocy of Left Brexitism and Its Twin - Part 2 of 15

Trotsky rejected the idea of “lesser-evilism”, and of the Popular Front as a means of opposing the “greater evil”. The opportunists and parliamentary cretins have argued for voting for Kamala Harris, to defeat Trump, for example, misusing Trotsky's words – as is their wont – to do so. They seem to forget that it was the policies of Obama that opened the door to the first Trump Presidency, just as those of Biden opened the door to the second, and as the policies of Macron have opened the door to Le Pen, those of Scholz to the AfD, and those of Starmer to Farage. In the quote, they use, Trotsky writes, opposing the lunacy of the Stalinist Third Period,

“The wiseacres who claim they see no difference between Bruning and Hitler are in fact saying: it makes no difference whether our organisations exist or whether they are destroyed … If fascism comes to power, it will ride like a tank over your skulls and spines … Only a fighting unity with social democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, communist workers; you have little time to lose.”

Quite right, but, there is nothing in this article that justifies the opportunists position of creating a popular front, and even less for simply voting for bourgeois parties, as a lesser-evil. On the contrary, what Trotsky is arguing for, in it, is the opposite of that, the opposite of a popular front, let alone passively voting for bourgeois candidates, who we know will attack workers and create conditions for demoralisation, apathy and open the door to the Right! Its why, in 1979, for example, even faced with the prospect of the first Thatcher government, Marxists argued that we could not ask workers to simply vote for a Labour government that was already attacking them, and, instead, proposed an alternative, limited socialist programme, and called for support for those Labour candidates that stood on it, such as Jeremy Corbyn, as part of a fighting strategy. What Trotsky argues for is “a fighting unity” in action, against the fascists, i.e. for a workers united front, a fighting front, in action, of all workers. In this article, he says, though the opportunists chop it out of their account,

“The Social Democracy supports Brüning, votes for him, assumes responsibility for him before the masses-on the grounds that the Brüning government is the “lesser evil.” Die Rote Fahne attempts to ascribe the same view to me – on the grounds that I expressed myself against the stupid and shameful participation of the Communists in the Hitler referendum. But have the German Left Opposition and myself in particular demanded that the Communists vote for and support Brüning? We Marxists regard Brüning and Hitler, Braun included, as component parts of one and the same system. The question as to which one of them is the “lesser evil” has no sense, for the system we are fighting against needs all these elements. But these elements are momentarily involved in conflicts with one another and the party of the proletariat must take advantage of these conflicts in the interest of the revolution.”

In other words, there was no suggestion, on Trotsky's part, that they should vote for Bruning, the equivalent of the opportunists demand for a vote for Harris as the lesser-evil to Trump. The opportunists, today, simply accuse Trotsky of the same thing the Third Period Stalinists did, in the 1930's, an accusation that Trotsky himself flatly denied. Similarly, the 1930's, equivalent of today's opportunists, Hilferding, was also to claim that Trotsky had adopted that position, a claim that Trotsky, himself, again, flatly rejected.

Such a vote, is a purely passive action, tying the Communists to the bourgeois parties, and so damning them when those bourgeois parties, inevitably, attack the workers. On the contrary, the Communists should be drawing the workers away from them. It is simply an even more craven form of the Popular Front, in which the Communists suppress their own programme in order to retain a purely electoral alliance with the bourgeois parties.

Back To Part 1

Forward To Part 3

The Idiocy of Left Brexitism and Its Twin - Part 1 of 15

In the 1960's, the revolutionary Left, in Britain, refused to be drawn into backing one of two opposing bourgeois camps, in respect of the repeated attempts, by British governments, to join what was then the EEC (European Economic Community or Common Market), and which is now the EU. They adopted the stance that “In Or Out The Fight Goes On”, or, in other words, for the working-class, joining the EEC could not be the solution to their problems, as it was just as capitalist as Britain, and so the exploitation of their labour would still take place, as it would if Britain stayed out. But, the same argument applied in reverse. There was no reason to ally with British capitalists – particularly, the most backward sections of capital, i.e. the small capitals and petty bourgeoisie, who were the main opponents of membership – on the basis that, somehow, exploitation by “British” capital was preferable to European capital, i.e. some kind of “lesser-evil”. By the 1960's, that was, in any case, absurd, because a large part of “British” capital was, in fact, foreign capital, in the form of companies such as Ford, General Motors and, necessarily, also, European capitals, such as VW, Renault, Siemens and so on.

The only “British” capitals were those small, mostly privately owned firms, remnants of the private capital of the 19th century, often family owned businesses, and the dwarfish businesses of the petty-bourgeoisie. These are, as Engels noted, the most backward, the most viciously anti-working class sections of bourgeois society, precisely because their small size, and consequent inefficiency, means they can only survive by all kinds of petty means, and cheating that large-scale capital found to be counter-productive, even by the end of the 19th century. The only sections of “the Left” that advocated opposition to the EEC, were The Communist Party, and its fellow travellers within the Tribunite/Bennite wing of the Labour Party, just as, in the 1930's, the same Left reformist trend, around Nye Bevan, had supported Oswald Mosley's economic nationalism, set out in The Mosley Memorandum, which formed the basis of his economic plan, when he left Labour to set up the British Union of Fascists.

Why was that? In the 1920's, the policy of the USSR, under Stalin, which controlled the Communist International, and, thereby, the various national communist parties, was to ally with the peasantry, and petty-bourgeoisie. It was an abandonment of revolutionary politics, and a return to the ideas of Menshevism, of a two-stage transition towards socialism. It was most apparent in relation to the Chinese Revolution of 1927, when Stalin liquidated the Chinese Communist Party into the bourgeois nationalist KMT of Chiang Kai Shek. The policy disarmed, physically and ideologically, the Chinese workers and communists, leading to their slaughter by the KMT, in July 1927.

Part of the reason for that was that Stalin, and his regime, in the USSR, sought to pursue a policy of building Socialism In One Country, a thoroughly utopian and reactionary venture. In the hope that the USSR would be allowed to get on with that, he sought to assure imperialism that the USSR would not actively promote international socialist revolution, but would limit itself to supporting only bourgeois-democratic national revolutions. When that approach, inevitably, led to disaster, in China, Stalin and the Comintern, briefly, swung in the opposite direction, for around four years, during the Third Period, in which they refused to engage in any joint action with other parties, defining them all as some kind of “fascist”.

The consequence was that, in Germany, it enabled Hitler to come to power. Trotsky's criticism of the Stalinist position, in that regard, has been used by opportunists, and parliamentary cretins to justify the creation of popular fronts.

Forward To Part 2

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

Mao pronounced the establishment of the People's Republic of China on October 1st. 1949. The name itself is significant, as a “People's Republic”, rather than “Workers' Republic”, or “Soviet Republic”. Lenin had pointed out as far back as the 1890's, in his polemics against the Narodniks, that the term “people” ceased to be useful, as soon as large-scale commodity production and exchange, results in the mass of the people being differentiated into bourgeois and proletarians. Not only do these two new distinct classes have different and antagonistic interests, but, they both have antagonistic interests to the remnants of the former popular mass, i.e. the peasants and petty-bourgeois, independent commodity producers. The term “people”, becomes, as Lenin sets out, a bourgeois deception, an abstract category that hides the concrete reality of a society comprised of hostile classes.

The term “People's Republic”, reflected the nature of the social transformation that had taken place in China, and the reality of the Chinese Communist Party, not as a Marxist Workers' Party, but as a Peasant Party, much like the Russian Narodniks, using the cloak of Marxist terminology, and its association with the Stalinist regime in the USSR, now, itself, being a Bonapartist regime that rested on the interests of a middle-class, bureaucratic caste, leaching off the surplus product of the workers', and itself utilising Marxist language to disguise its true nature. That Stalinist regime in the USSR, as a consequence of Stalin's theory of building Socialism In One Country, of attempting to provide itself with “breathing space”, to do so, by compromising with and appeasing imperialism, reflected in the policy of “peaceful coexistence”, was engaged in a global strategic dance with US imperialism.

It is why Stalin had urged Mao to form a coalition government with the KMT, continuing the Popular Front line that had led to disaster in the previous decades. In Eastern and Central Europe, Stalin also attempted to pursue that policy after the end of the war. The first governments in these countries were established, at least superficially, as coalitions, but as the Cold War intensified following the creation of NATO, as an overtly anti-communist military alliance, the USSR was led to respond.

That began in 1947, with the Anglo-French Dunkirk Agreement, expanding in 1948, and culminating in the NATO Treaty, in 1949. With the US signing a peace deal with Japan, and its role in China and Korea, including the US pressure on Japan to surrender Taiwan to Chiang Kai Shek, the divisions became hardened, particularly after the Korean War, and rejection, by the West, of Stalin's proposal, in 1952, to unify Germany, as a neutral state. The states of Eastern and Central Europe became Stalinised on the model of the USSR, and joined together in a defensive military bloc to counter NATO, in 1955 – The Warsaw Pact.

The Chinese “Revolution” of 1949, never was, then, a proletarian, i.e. communist revolution, but from the start, simply a Peasant War, supported by external powers, and ultimately by the Stalinist regime in Moscow, much as with the occupation of Poland in 1939, by the Red Army, and of Eastern and Central Europe after 1945. Where, in Russia, in 1917, there had been an actual revolution, led by the industrial proletariat, in the main urban areas, and drawing behind it the peasantry, no such proletarian revolution occurred in China, or in Central and Eastern Europe, or in Korea, despite the fact that these transformations are described as communist revolutions. In fact, in Korea, it was in the South where an actual popular revolt occurred, against the US Military Government, in 1946.

But, as set out earlier, the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie cannot form the ruling class. There can be no mode of production, in the era of imperialism, based upon peasant or small-scale, independent commodity production. Any such venture results either in economic and social collapse, a failed state, or else, results in an overthrow of the regime, and the installation of a new Bonapartist/military regime, as seen frequently in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia, and the Middle-East. Bonapartist regimes can only move forward, by themselves acting as the agent of industrialisation of the economy, and that can only be done by either serving the interests of capital, or of labour.

In China, the Bonapartist regime of Mao, which headed a Peasant Party, and came to power on the back of a Peasant War, was also constrained in that manner. Given its association with the Stalinist regime in the USSR, the path of its initial industrial development was set. As with the transformations in Eastern Europe, the landlord class was uprooted, as was the bourgeoisie, leaving the small but rapidly growing proletariat as the ruling-class, by default, but, as in the USSR and Eastern Europe, a ruling class that, as with the English bourgeoisie under Cromwell, could not exercise political power, directly, in its own name. I set this out, in 2010, in a series of posts.

Its within this context that the bourgeois national revolutions in the post-war period have to be viewed. That is of the global strategic competition between the USSR and primarily US imperialism, which dominates the NATO military alliance.

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The 1949 Revolution - Part 8 of 9

In 1945, as the USSR's forces swept down through Manchuria towards Japan, the Japanese ruling class feared being over run by it, and coming under its domination, as had happened with the Red Army's march into Eastern and Central Europe. The Japanese ruling class was, therefore, keen to quickly capitulate to US imperialism, before any such eventuality. Illustrating, the path of the next few years, of the US ditching its erstwhile soviet allies, US imperialism also ensured that, in China, the Japanese forces would only surrender to the KMT, and not to the CCP. However, by this time, and with the backing of the advancing USSR, the forces of the CCP began taking the surrender of Japanese forces, and overwhelming them where they refused to surrender.

The US assigned General Albert Wedemeyer to be Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai Shek, and as such, he responded to the advances of the CCP, by calling on the US to send seven US divisions to China to support the KMT. However, the request was denied by General George Marshall, as the US saw its role in Korea and Japan as more important. At the end of the war, the USSR stripped Chinese industrial areas of equipment, sending it back to the USSR, but also handed over vast arsenals of captured Japanese weapons to the CCP, following the surrender of the Japanese forces. By now, the CCP controlled around a quarter of Chinese territory and a third of its population. The KMT could no longer rely on using its position to supply itself from Chinese industry, whilst the CCP had the backing of the USSR.

The CPC, as a peasant party, implemented land reform, in favour of the peasants, which, also provided it with an almost limitless supply of additional manpower. By contrast, as with the experience of the Whites, during the Russian Civil War, areas controlled by the KMT, saw a return of the usual levels of corruption. The US admitted that rather than calling on the Japanese troops to surrender, in China, they used them to continue fighting the CCP, to buy time, whilst they airlifted KMT forces into those areas. As with the corruption seen in all such instances, as for example, with US proxies in Iraq, and now in Ukraine, the Chinese bourgeoisie, within the KMT, used every opportunity, as the Japanese withdrew, to line their own pockets. They occupied most of the banks, factories and commercial premises. They also began hoarding in preparation for a continued civil war against the CPC, rather than using resources for productive use, with the consequence that output collapsed, unemployment soared to nearly 40%, and a hyperinflation occurred.

As the KMT became increasingly on the back foot, the US was led to intervene more overtly in its support, as is again happening, now, in Ukraine. The US sent 50,000 troops to support the KMT in Hebei and Shandong, and now also actively sent Japanese and Korean troops to support the KMT forces against the CCP. In just two years after the end of the war, the US had sent $4.43 billion to the KMT, mostly in military aid. The large scale military aid for the KMT, much as now with that sent by western imperialism to Ukraine, meant that its forces could resist for longer, but that only delayed what was inevitable, as now in Ukraine. It simply resulted in greater loss of life, and destruction.

As CCP forces advanced, they also seized large amounts of these weapons, and, increasingly KMT troops not only surrendered, but changed sides. A victory for the CCP was imminent, and yet, Stalin, as he had done in Eastern and Central Europe, and consistent with his policy of seeking to appease western imperialism, so as to deter a further attack on Russia, called on Mao to form a coalition government with the KMT. Mao refused. On 23rd April, CCP forces took the KMT's capital in Nanjing, and KMT forces, staged repeated retreats to Canton, Chongqing, and Chengdu, before eventually settling in Taiwan, in December 1949.

Back To Part 7

Forward To Part 9

Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The 1949 Revolution - Part 7 of 9

Illustrating the lessons of permanent revolution, when Japanese imperialism invaded and occupied Manchuria, in 1931, Chiang Kai Shek continued to see the Chinese Communist Party as the main enemy. As Trotsky described, in the 1930's, these kinds of conditions always lead to the supposed “anti-imperialist”, bourgeois forces allying with imperialism against the revolutionary workers, including allying with one imperialist alliance against another, and, thereby substituting domination by one imperialism to that of another, as with Ukraine.

By 1937, as World War II approached, Japanese imperialism had its sights set on expanding its dominance in the Pacific, including the Pacific coast of the USSR. In 1905, it had had a quick success over Tsarist Russia, and its ability to occupy Manchuria, encouraged it to think that it could repeat its success. It began by occupying the whole of China, creating conditions in which Chiang Kai Shek, and the KMT were forced into a renewed alliance with the Chinese Communist Party. In fact, this alliance amounted only to a reduction in the degree of fighting between the two. The KMT forces used standard military tactics and strategy, reflecting their nature as a bourgeois army, whilst the Chinese Communists utilised the guerilla warfare methods of a peasant army. In areas not occupied by the Japanese, fighting between the KMT and CCP forces, continued, as before.

In 1939, the Japanese military suffered a severe defeat against the USSR, in the Battle of Khalkin Gol. Prior to that, Japan had seen a war with the USSR as an easier option than war with the US. Following this defeat, Japanese military planners reversed that opinion, and, as US imperialism was also, now, looking to establish its own dominance in the Pacific, began to plan their war with the US, which began in 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbour. The occupation and annexation of China, and other territories, was central to this goal of Japanese imperialism, of creating a large regional market under its domination, required for the large scale production, just as Germany sought to create such a single market in Europe under its domination.

Both US imperialism, and the USSR, had reason to oppose Japanese imperialism in China, and sought to end the continued conflict between their respective proxies, in order to fight it. In fact, prior to Japan attacking Pearl Harbour, and declaring war on the US, which led to Germany also declaring war on the US, Nazi Germany also acted alongside the US, Britain the USSR and other European states in supporting China. These were the conditions in which The Chinese Communist Party, essentially a peasant party, but backed by both US imperialism, and the USSR, against Japanese imperialism, was able to grow, and eventually seize power in China, not via a proletarian revolution, but via a Peasant War.

The KMT, under Chiang Kai Shek, having identified the CCP as the main enemy, compromised with Japanese imperialism. In 1940, Chiang Kai Shek, demanded that the CCP's New Fourth Army leave the Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. The CCP again complied, and as they retreated, were ambushed by KMT forces, again leading to several thousand of them being slaughtered. It brought to an end the second popular front between the CCP and KMT. The KMT's conventional warfare was ineffective against the superior Japanese forces, and its compromises with Japanese imperialism made it unpopular in areas where the Japanese oppressed local populations, with a corresponding increase in support for the CCP, assisting its guerrilla strategy. A similar process has been seen in Vietnam, and elsewhere.

KMT forces were, thereby, denuded through the course of the war, whilst the CCP's forces grew, and areas of the countryside under its control expanded. At the end of the war, the Chinese Red Army had 1.3 million men, with a separate militia of around 2.6 million. More than 100 million people lived in CPC controlled areas.

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Lessons Of The Chinese Revolution, The 1949 Revolution - Part 6 of 9

In China, as already detailed, Stalinism let slip a golden revolutionary opportunity, in the 1920's. The Chinese proletariat had grown rapidly, and gave its support to the Chinese Communist Party. Unlike the Russian peasants, which had created their own peasant party – the S.R.'s – the Chinese peasants had not. They too gave their support to the Chinese Communist Party. The prestige of the Communist Party and of the Comintern was high, following the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, in 1917. But, Stalinism squandered this opportunity, and betrayed the Chinese Revolution.

Its policy of the Popular Front (bloc of four classes), subordinated the workers and poor peasants to the Chinese national bourgeoisie, via the KMT, in the name of pursuing the limited goal of an “anti-imperialist” struggle, and bourgeois national revolution. For Stalin, this was driven not only by his factional struggle against the Left Opposition, which led him to oppose permanent revolution, and the ideas which guided Lenin in the Russian Revolution, and his principles for revolutionaries in relation to the national and colonial questions, but also by his own theoretical weakness. Stalin reverted to the same ideas he had prior to Lenin's April Theses. In addition, having adopted the theory of Socialism In One Country, and the consequent abandonment of the international socialist revolution, in order to try to obtain a “breathing space” from imperialism, by not antagonising it, Stalin, and consequently the Comintern, attempted to appease imperialism, by showing them that it could be trusted to hold back any attempts to move beyond purely bourgeois democratic revolutions, and if need be, to sabotage any attempts to do so.

That strategy was disastrous. After Chiang Kai Shek's coup in April 1927, the Chinese workers abandoned the Communist Party, as a result of its betrayal. That strengthened the social weight of the peasants in the Chinese Communist Party. Stalin repeated the error by subordinating the workers to the Left Kuomintang, with the same results, and when the Left Kuomintang allied once more with the KMT, the Chinese Communist Party, effectively took its place, as a revolutionary peasant party, becoming basically a Chinese equivalent of the Narodniks, or S.R.'s. Its political programme and revolutionary strategy, from the late 1920's, reflected that, as it abandoned the programme and strategy of proletarian revolution for the program of Peasant War, and rural guerrilla warfare, epitomised by Mao Zedong, and the PLA. Indeed, in his youth, Mao was influenced by the anarchist ideas of Kropotkin.

In the early 1920's, Mao's activity inside the KMT, was almost exclusively directed towards organisation of the peasantry, whose revolutionary potential he promoted. In 1924, after the Stalinists took the Chinese Communists into the KMT, Mao was elected on to the latter's Central Executive Committee, in Guangzhou. He proposed four resolutions to decentralise power to urban and rural bureaus. In 1926, he ran the KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute.

As detailed in previous sections, following the disaster of the Stalinist's Popular Front strategy, leading to the coup of Chiang Kai Shek, and its sequel with the Left KMT, not only did the Communist Party lose its proletarian base, leaving it dominated by peasants, but, it resorted to adventurist stunts, like the Canton Uprising, and increasingly turned to those measures of Peasant War, and rural guerrilla warfare typical of a peasant party, and which Mao had promoted. That condition of civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT, carried out in rural areas, continued for the next ten years. During this period, all of the deficiencies of Peasant War, disconnected from proletarian revolution in the urban areas, previously described by Trotsky, were apparent. It was during this time that Mao became leader of the Chinese Communist Party, on the basis of assuming the position of its military commander.

Much as with the mythology created around the defeat of the British Army at Dunkirk, the Long March conducted by Mao's Peasant Army has also been romanticised. Yet, it was a similar disaster to that of Dunkirk. Of the 100,000 that set out on the march, only about 8,000 reached the final destination, in Shanxii.

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The 1949 Revolution - Part 5 of 9

What permanent revolution demonstrates is that, in the age of imperialism, where industrial capital has grown, and along with it the industrial working-class, this working-class can, lead the bourgeois national revolution, where it has not already taken place, and, where it does, it will be led to go beyond the tasks, purely of that revolution, that it will be led to fulfil the tasks of that revolution, by proletarian not bourgeois means. (Incidentally, this shows the lack of understanding of revolution as a dialectical process, rather than as an event portrayed by Lars T Lih, in his recent article in the Weekly Worker) But, can that bourgeois national revolution occur without the working-class taking that leading role, and so without the process of permanent revolution being set in motion? Yes, of course it can.

For one thing imperialism is not colonialism. Colonialism is the expression of mercantilism, of the symbiotic relation between the landed aristocracy with merchant capital, and the financial oligarchy. The same appropriation of surplus value via unequal exchange that characterises rent, commercial profit and interest is what characterises the extraction of surplus value from colonial possessions. It also is an extension of the old monopolies and protected markets, that industrial capitalism sweeps away. This is a fundamental error in Lenin's “Imperialism”, in which he continued to see the issue in terms of colonialism, and a struggle for division of the world, to acquire these protected markets, whereas the real issue was a struggle to create, and dominate ever larger single domestic markets, subsumed within ever larger, multinational states.

Rather than seeking to create protected markets, what multinational capital actually sought, as industrial capital had done in creating the nation state, was to ensure the openness of those global markets, as sources of supply of materials, and locations where it could invest capital, and, thereby, exploit labour, i.e. the extraction of surplus value, not via unequal exchange, but directly in production, via the production of ever larger quantities of relative surplus value, and ever larger masses of capital. World War I and II, in Europe, was about creating a single European market, for example. It required not the old protectionism, but free trade and a level playing field for all capital operating within it, which requires a single, European, multinational state.

So, colonialism after WWII, no longer served the interests of capital, which had become dominated by multinational industrial capital - imperialism. As Trotsky notes, western imperialism had financed revolutionaries to overthrow Tsarism, whose political regime was no longer compatible with the needs of industrial capital. The development of industrial capital, and the consequent decline of the old landed aristocracy, as well as of the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie, inevitably leads to the social dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, whose preferred political regime is that of the parliamentary republic, as Lenin described in “State and Revolution”.

Towards the end of WWII, Roosevelt proposed to Stalin that, if required, they should join forces to ensure the break-up of the old colonial empires, which, of course, the US required, in order to gain access to them. That did not happen, but those old colonial empires were broken up, as a consequence of the dominance of US imperialism, the bankruptcy of the old European capitals, and the national liberation struggles conducted within those former colonies. What imperialism required was no longer colonial slaves, but wage slaves, and that meant it no longer required colonies, or even neocolonies, but the ability to move capital freely to wherever labour could be best exploited to maximise profits. It required something approaching a global rule of law protecting capitalist property rights, and so something approaching bourgeois-democratic states, implementing and enforcing such laws.

Of course, as the Revolutions of 1848 demonstrated, such bourgeois republics require either that the ruling class is dominant, and able to exercise direct control over its state, or else that a large, professional middle-class, and proletariat exists upon which social democracy rests. In many developing countries, no such conditions existed, or indeed exist. The domestic ruling class is often weak, with foreign capital being strong.

As in Russia and China, that also means that the working-class may develop rapidly, concentrated in these large scale, foreign owned enterprises, whilst the rapid expansion of commodity production and exchange, at the expense of direct production, leads to the rapid development of the domestic petty-bourgeoisie. As the working-class may assert its interests against capital, this petty-bourgeoisie, sees its net social weight increase, and, in many cases, other cross-cutting cleavages, for example, based on caste, religion, or ethnicity may weaken class division. In these conditions, Bonapartism again thrives, imposing order from above.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(loc cit)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

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

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

(ibid)

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

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

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

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

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The 1949 Revolution - Part 1 of 9

The 1949 Revolution

The Theory of Permanent Revolution does not say that bourgeois national revolutions are, now, impossible, unless they are led by the revolutionary proletariat, and flow over into proletarian revolution. Marx, in relation to India, for example, had set out why it was the role of British colonialism that had brought about the only true social revolution, in the country. That social revolution, was a bourgeois social revolution, based upon the destruction of the Asiatic Mode of Production, and its replacement with bourgeois commodity production and exchange, which means, also, the development of bourgeois and proletarian classes.

“These small stereotype forms of social organism have been to the greater part dissolved, and are disappearing, not so much through the brutal interference of the British tax-gatherer and the British soldier, as to the working of English steam and English free trade. Those family-communities were based on domestic industry, in that peculiar combination of hand-weaving, hand-spinning and hand-tilling agriculture which gave them self-supporting power. English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dissolved these small semi-barbarian, semi-civilized communities, by blowing up their economical basis, and thus produced the greatest, and to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.”

(The British Rule in India)

What Marx and Engels recognised, was that the bourgeois political revolutions, consequent upon such social revolutions, in the 18th, and early 19th centuries, occurred when the working-class, itself, was still a weak, and emerging class. It is the bourgeoisie, and petty-bourgeoisie that carried them through, be it the English Civil War, and Glorious Revolution, through to the 1832 Reform Act, or the American Revolution, or the Great French Revolution. As Engels was to write, later, even in 1848, it was only in Britain where it was large enough to have played the leading role, but, even, there, it acts as an ally of the industrial bourgeoisie.

What 1848 showed was not that bourgeois revolutions were impossible without the working-class playing a leading role, and so being subsumed within the proletarian revolution, but that proletarian revolution was impossible, under such conditions, without the working-class ensuring its own political and organisational independence. In the last 70 years, as the “Left” collapsed into becoming cheerleaders of petty-bourgeois nationalism, this fundamental aspect of Marxism that what we are concerned with is proletarian revolution, not bourgeois revolution, as the significance of permanent revolution, was forgotten.

In terms of the state, even where these bourgeois political revolutions were thrown back, by counter-revolution, as the bourgeoisie broke from its proletarian allies, it, necessarily, was driven down the road of becoming a capitalist state. Whether it was the Junker state in Germany, or that of Louis Bonaparte in France, or the Tsarist state in Russia, or that of the Mikado in Japan, all were forced to pursue the interests of capital, or fail. It was only the political physiognomy of these states that varied.

“the different states of the different civilized countries, in spite or their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common.”

(Marx – Critique of The Gotha Programme)

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Stalin and The Chinese Revolution, 18. The Character of Stalin’s “Mistakes” - Part 4 of 4

Trotsky explains the sharp left turn made by Stalin.

“To see in this episode – and the left zigzag with all its significance will nevertheless go down into history as an episode – a contradiction to what has been said, can be done only by very near-sighted people who are foreign to an understanding of the dialectic of human consciousness in connection with the dialectic of the historic process.” (p 302)

The episodic nature of The Third Period was confirmed, in 1934, when Stalin swung back to the opportunist politics of the Popular Front.

“The decline of the revolution as well as its rise does not move along a straight line. The empirical leader of the down-sliding of the revolution – ”You think that you are moving but you are being moved” (Goethe) – could not help at a certain moment but take fright at that abyss of social betrayal to the very edge of which he was pushed in 1925-27 by his own qualities, utilized by forces half-hostile and hostile to the proletariat. And since the degeneration of the apparatus is not an even process, since the revolutionary tendencies within the masses are strong, then for the turn to the left from the edge of the Thermidorian abyss there were sufficient points of support and reserve forces already at hand.” (p 302-3)

Moreover, as described earlier, the nature of Bonapartism is that it must choose to base itself upon, and promote, one form of property, one class or another, because, although its social base is the petty-bourgeoisie/middle-class/peasantry, these heterogeneous and transitional classes are not a stable social base for a mode of production, and cannot form the ruling class. In the age of imperialism, a bourgeois state must look back towards capitalism, or forwards to Socialism, to the bourgeoisie or proletariat.

In the USSR, with its need for rapid industrialisation, the dynamic led, inevitably, towards the latter. If the state and the bureaucratic caste was to survive, it had to industrialise fast, and the most assured means of that resided in an extension of statisation and planning. The Maoists were confronted with the same reality.

“The turn assumed a character of panicky jumps, precisely because this empiric foresaw nothing until he had reached the very brink of the precipice. The ideology of the jump to the left was prepared by the Left Opposition – it only remained to utilize its work in bits and fragments, as befits an empiric. But the acute paroxysm of leftism does not change the basic processes of the evolution of the bureaucracy, nor the nature of Stalin himself.” (p 303)

The same was true with Mao, following the disaster of The Great Leap Forward. In China, the swing to industrialisation, following Nixon in China, was an earlier swing to the capitalist road, signalled by Deng Xiaoping.

Stalin had no theoretical abilities nor imagination, but he was an effective bureaucrat, which is how Lenin had used him, for organisational purposes. Stalin had no means of coming into contact with Lenin on political issues, and, when he did, for example in February 1917, he simply faded into the background.

“But for all that, Lenin very often had practical organizational-moral conflicts with Stalin, frequently very sharp ones, precisely for those Stalinist defects which Lenin, so carefully in form but so mercilessly in essence, characterized in his “testament”.” (p 303-4)

Lenin's intellectual capacity allowed him to surround himself with able partners, so that ideas were thrashed out, in debate, but Stalin's lack of such capacity meant he always felt threatened by debate, and in need of “yes-men”.

“Stalin is surrounded, particularly after the liquidation of the right wing group, by accomplished mediocrities, devoid of any international outlook and incapable of producing an independent opinion on a single question of the world labour movement.” (p 304)

The ossified sects of the “left” have a similar quality, operating more like gangs and cliques than political organisations of the working-class. They rely on cult like loyalty from their members, and respond to any external challenge to their ideas, in the same kind of rude and abusive manner of Stalin described in Lenin's Testament. They depend upon keeping their members secluded from such challenges, by the creation of “safe spaces” for their bankrupt ideas, unable to actually defend them intellectually, and upon physical or bureaucratic “no-platforming” of any oppositional viewpoint. It is a psychological trait of petty-bourgeois insecurity and narcissism.

“Stalin’s leadership in the Chinese revolution is just the fruit of the combination of theoretical, political and national limitedness with huge apparatus power. Stalin has proved himself incapable of learning. His five phrases on China at the Sixteenth Congress are permeated through and through with that same organic opportunism which governed Stalin’s policy at all the earlier stages of the struggle of the Chinese people. The undertaker of the second Chinese revolution is preparing before our very eyes to strangle the third Chinese revolution at its inception.” (p 304)

And, so it was. The only difference, today, is that the “Left” has no state power, nor even any effective apparatus. That, in many ways, is a blessing, but it has exacerbated the way these groups have, even more than Stalin, pinned their colours to the mast of more powerful class forces, to hitch a ride. Unfortunately, that ride is taking them in the opposite direction to the international socialist revolution.

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Stalin and The Chinese Revolution, 18. The Character of Stalin’s “Mistakes” - Part 3 of 4

In the 1960's and 70's, as the working-class became stronger, and rebuilt its organisations, it, necessarily led to the revolutionary organisations, themselves, also, growing and riding on this rising wave. Yet, here, too, the continued strength and implantation of Stalinism, and its Left, Labourite periphery made its mark. Rising militancy, in conditions where labour shortages meant that employers, frequently, conceded, after short wildcat strikes, encouraged syndicalist ideas, and transferred to the political sphere, via the social-democratic parties of the workers, into reformist ideas. The Left advanced during this period, but still within the constraints of syndicalism and Left social-democracy. When the long wave turned, in 1974, to the crisis phase, those ideas proved increasingly bankrupt. Syndicalism and more militancy had no answer when employers no longer quickly conceded or closed down.

The Labour government of Callaghan responded, not by supporting workers, or even supporting the logic of the needs of socialised industrial capital, for greater planning and regulation, but by abandoning those limited advances made, and instituting fiscal austerity, slowing the economy, to the advantage of fictitious capital, rather than real capital. Its attacks on workers, in The Winter of Discontent, opened the door to Thatcher, who completed that task more ruthlessly, and a similar course was followed in North America and Europe.

“The Chinese revolution was an examination of the new role of Stalin – by the inverse method. Having conquered power in the USSR with the aid of the strata who have been breaking away from the international revolution and with the indirect but very real aid of the hostile classes, Stalin automatically became the leader of the Comintern and by that alone the leader of the Chinese revolution. The passive hero of the behind-the-scenes apparatus mechanism had to show his method and quality in the events of the great revolutionary flow. Within this lies the tragic paradox of Stalin’s role in China. Having subordinated the Chinese workers to the bourgeoisie, put the brakes on the agrarian movement, supported the reactionary generals, disarmed the workers, prevented the appearance of soviets and liquidated those that did appear, Stalin carried out to the end that historic role which Tsereteli only attempted to carry out in Russia.” (p 301-2)

The bourgeoisie presses down on social-democracy, and social-democracy presses down on the revolutionaries that have accommodated to it, in search of cross-class popular fronts and forays into assorted liberal good causes, in search of new middle class recruits. In Marx's day, the First International was permeated with state spies and provocateurs. We saw that in the 1970's and 80's the British state had hundreds of trades union and Labour Party officials and politicians on its payroll. We have, also, seen organisation of the left take money from Libya, and undoubtedly there are individuals, if not entire organisations, taking money from Russia, the US, Israel, and elsewhere, all being utilised to further the interests of the bourgeoisie in these various states. The smaller the sect, the easier for these external forces to control them.

When Tsereteli proposed to sell out Russia, to be carved up by various imperialist powers, the Bolsheviks were there to call this betrayal to account. Today, the social-imperialists sell-out the Ukrainian workers, whose future exploitation is discussed by the imperialists at conferences in London, over their heads, but, today's Tseretelis are to be found in the ranks of those that still call themselves Trotskyists, whilst implementing the policies of Stalin and the Mensheviks.

“Stalin, however, acted in China primarily behind the scenes, defended by a powerful apparatus and draped in the banner of Bolshevism. Tsereteli supported himself on the repressions of the power of the Bolsheviks by the bourgeoisie. Stalin, however, himself applied these repressions against the Bolshevik-Leninists (Opposition). The repressions of the bourgeoisie were shattered by the rising wave. Stalin’s repressions were fostered by the ebbing wave. This is why it was possible for Stalin to carry out the experiment with the purely Menshevik policy in the Chinese revolution to the end, that is, to the most tragic catastrophe.” (p 302)

And, that was repeated on numerous subsequent occasions, as the Stalinists slaughtered thousands of Vietnamese Trotskyists, and with similar tragedies and betrayals in every national independence struggle, whilst the so called revolutionaries, in the West, continued to act as the cheerleaders of these anti-working class butchers, purely on the basis that they were leading a struggle for the merely bourgeois-democratic goal of national self-determination! Trotsky, who warned that Stalin's betrayal would prepare the ground for future catastrophes, would be appalled that those future catastrophes were facilitated by those that claim to act in his name!

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