The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, 1) The Permanent Revolution and the Canton Insurrection - Part 2 of 8

As Lenin sets out, in Left-Wing Communism, having, from the start, made that clear, having spelled out to the revolutionary masses that bourgeois-democracy is a sham, and only a more efficient means for the bourgeoisie to exercise its social dictatorship, having set out that, in the era of imperialism, there can be no such thing as truly independent nation states/national self-determination (and if there could it would be reactionary) we say to them that we recognise that they do not yet agree with us, and so we will go through that process of the bourgeois-democratic/national revolution with them, and seek to convince them along the way. But, that certainly does not mean appeasing those delusions, or tailing them. On the contrary, it requires a determined struggle by the revolutionary party, along the way, to break the masses from those delusions.

By contrast, the Stalinists had made Permanent Revolution, “a scholastic formula guaranteeing at one blow and for all time a revolutionary situation “for many years”. The permanent character of the revolution thus becomes a law placing itself above history, independent of the policy of the leadership and of the material development of revolutionary events. As always in such cases, Lominadze and company resolved to announce their metaphysical formula regarding the permanent character of the revolution only after the political leadership of Stalin, Bukharin, Chen Duxiu and Tang Pingshan had thoroughly sabotaged the revolutionary situation.” (p 158)

In other words, it became an excuse, a cover for the mistakes that had been made, and the same thing was seen, elsewhere, as in Germany, and the victory of Hitler. In China, the Opposition had set out the permanent nature of the revolution, which required proceeding on the basis described above. The fact of a large, organised working-class, many of whom already followed the Communist Party, and who looked to the success of the Russian Revolution, for inspiration, made that entirely possible.

The condition was that the Chinese Communist Party insist on its independence from the KMT, that it relentlessly criticise and oppose the KMT, and its bourgeois-democratic, national objectives. It required that the Chinese Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks had done, pursue the immediate objective of the bourgeois-democratic, national revolution, not by the methods of bourgeois-democracy, but by the methods of proletarian revolution, as described by Permanent Revolution, and contained in The Theses on The National and Colonial Questions. It is the method that Trotsky also applies to the struggle against fascism, as set out in The Action Programme for France, and his writings on the Spanish Revolution.

It required the creation of workers' and peasants' councils, and the arming of the proletariat and revolutionary peasantry, independent of its class enemies, but temporary allies, in the KMT. The existence of the USSR, as with later, in Spain, should have facilitated that, and massively strengthened the revolutionary forces, as against the bourgeoisie, represented by the KMT. But, the opposite to that was done by the Stalinists, and that was not simply a mistake made by leaders of a young Chinese party, but was driven by Stalin/Bukharin, and the leadership of the Comintern, itself.

The Stalinists, on the basis of the stages theory, emphasised the bourgeois national nature and tasks of the revolution, and subordinated the workers and peasants interests to it. Instead of insisting on the political, military and organisational independence of the Communist Party, they insisted that it liquidate itself within the KMT. Instead of insisting on establishing workers and peasants soviets, as the revolutionary organs, via which the revolution be carried through, thereby, directly, linking the bourgeois-democratic tasks to those of proletarian revolution, they opposed the creation of soviets even when they arose spontaneously from the initiative of workers and peasants, and insisted on the limitation of purely bourgeois-democratic institutions. Instead of arming the worker and peasant communists, the Stalinists disarmed them, in favour of arming the KMT, for fear of alienating the bourgeoisie.

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The Chinese Question After The Sixth Congress, Introduction - Part 4 of 4

The fact that many of these Bonapartist regimes proceeded on the basis of state-capitalist policies, as with Assad, Nasser and so on, fitted well with a “Left” whose own conception of “Socialism” was riddled with the same statism, demands for nationalisation, welfarism, and owed more to Lassalle and the Fabians than to Marx. But, the Menshevist/Stalinist policy that privileged the bourgeois national revolution over the international proletarian revolution, in line with the stages theory, did not even demand that. Again, the basis of that, in Stalinism, was fairly obvious.

As part of the global strategic game played out between the USSR and imperialism, the USSR and its agents within the various “Communist Parties”, were actually not too concerned whether those bourgeois nationalist forces, carrying through bourgeois national revolutions, were progressive, even in the bourgeois-democratic sense. On the contrary, to have regimes that were more clearly aligned to the USSR, it was easier if these regimes shared the same bureaucratic/totalitarian nature as that of the USSR. The task, on a global scale, was to establish, via these national revolutions, regimes that were drawn out of the sphere of influence of imperialism, and into that of the USSR.

And, indeed, as in Spain, in the 1930's, the last thing the Stalinists, in the USSR, wanted was any actually independent proletarian revolution. That would have undermined the Stalinist bureaucracy's own position, but would also have upset the arrangement it had reached with imperialism, after WWII. That knowledge, by the bourgeoisie, in many of these countries, however, meant that their fears of permanent revolution could be discarded. If the workers began to press their own demands, threatening to push the revolution beyond bourgeois limits, they could always count on the local Stalinists, backed by Moscow, to help them to suppress the workers. Indeed, these bourgeois forces did, frequently, present themselves in those same “communist” colourations.

As these bourgeois national liberation struggles and movements against the military adventures of imperialism played a large role, also, for the “Left” outside the Stalinist parties, so this privileging of “anti-imperialism”, over the positive struggle for socialism, became firmly entrenched. On that basis, eyes were closed to the reactionary nature of many of the forces leading those national independence struggles, in Algeria, Iran and so on, as only the fact of opposition to “imperialism”, was considered.

“Passing over from the opportunism openly practised in the form of collaboration (1924-27), it made an abrupt zig-zag at the end of 1927 by resorting to adventures. After the Canton insurrection, it rejected putschism and passed into the third phase, the most sterile one, seeking to combine the old opportunistic premises with a purely formal, ineffectual radicalism, which at a certain period bore in Russia, the names of “ultimatism” and “Otzovism”, and which constitutes the worst variety of ultra-leftism.” (p 153-4)

And, that was manifest in the policy of the Communist International, of The Third Period, until the catastrophe of that, in Hitler's victory, the Anti-Comintern Alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan, and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, and so on, led to Stalin's fear of a renewed attack on the USSR, and so his scrabble to appease “democratic-imperialism”, and an even more abasing return to the Popular Front, along with open avowals, as in Spain, to oppose proletarian revolution.

Trotsky notes that the defeats suffered had cost the Chinese Communist Party the bulk of its worker members and this was not compensated by having attracted to it new members from amongst the peasantry. The same is true of the “Left” sects that, long ago, lost their support within the industrial working-class, and substituted for it recruitment of students, each year culling a new intake at the Fresher's Fairs, the large majority of whom pass through the sects and out again, before taking up positions in the professions, or as SPAD's, having served this right of passage that can be added to, or left out of, their C.V.'s, as required. Starmer epitomises these parvenus. Trotsky described it, in relation to the peasants and the CPC.

“... it is only one form of the dissolution and the liquidation of the CPC, for, by losing its proletarian nucleus, it ceases to be in conformity with its historical destination.” (p 155)

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, Trotsky's Second Speech On The Chinese Question - Part 7 of 7

A look at the arguments of the USC, and its affiliates and supporters shows all the same tactics used by Stalin, in relation to the Opposition. Today, Marxists who oppose the war on both sides, are branded by the USC and pro-imperialists as supporters of Putin, or, even more ridiculously, supporters of the “red-browners” (populist alliance of national socialists of both Right and Left). At the same time, they are branded by the actual supporters of Putin as being pro-NATO imperialists!!!

“Stalin said the Opposition stands in one front with Chamberlain, with Mussolini and Zhang Zuolin. To that I answer: Nothing has facilitated the work of Chamberlain so much as the false policy of Stalin, particularly in China. The revolution cannot be made by halves. The London blow is the pay-off for the Martinovist course in China. On this path, only defeats can be accumulated.” (p 104)

And, the same is seen, today. One reason for Putin's strength is the fact, obvious to everyone in Russia, that NATO reneged on its pledges about not expanding Eastwards. As soon as US corporations started to lose their ability to rob Russia blind, after the fall of its puppet, Yeltsin, the US began to encircle Russia, setting up its bases in the “Stans” of Central Asia, allying with the most barbarous dictators to do so. When Russian workers see even Western socialists denying this reality, and apologising for NATO, it acts directly as a recruiting sergeant for Putin. As Trotsky put it, in relation to a similar situation, prior to WWII,

“Fascism is a form of despair in the petty-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 the successes of fascism. All three have tied their fate to the fate of imperialism. All three bring nothing to the masses but despair and by this assure the triumph of fascism...

The democracies of the Versailles Entente helped the victory of Hitler by their vile oppression of defeated Germany. Now the lackeys of democratic imperialism of the Second and Third Internationals are helping with all their might the further strengthening of Hitler's regime. Really, what would a military bloc of imperialist democracies against Hitler mean? A new edition of the Versailles chains, even more heavy, bloody, and intolerable. Naturally, not a single German worker wants this. To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the "pacifist" jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler's speeches. "You see," he says to the German people, "Even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!" Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin —Jouhaux, Toledano, and Company — are the best aides of Hitler in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers.”

(Trotsky – Phrases and Reality)

And, similarly, the failure of social-democracy to deal with the contradictions inherent in the model it pursued from 1990 onwards, of holding back capital accumulation, so as to boost asset prices, had already led to the growth of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and of the fascists, and nationalist political forces, based upon it, which, also, in the absence of a cogent socialist alternative, drew behind them sections of backward, isolated workers in the decaying urban areas that had been abandoned by the bourgeois workers parties, during all of that previous period.

But, when NATO also introduced its boycotts against Russian oil and gas exports, which caused energy prices, in Europe, to spike massively (though contrary to the Keynesian/Stalinist explanations of inflation as arising from cost-push, the massive increase in liquidity/reduction in the value of the standard of prices, during lockdowns had already seen global primary product prices soar, once lockdowns began to be lifted, and long before the Ukraine invasion etc. Brent Crude went from $25 in April 2020 to $85 in October 2021, for example, with a steady rise throughout 2021), instead of the “Left” mobilising workers against those imperialist actions, large sections of it, instead, called for even more such sanctions, as they threw their weight, such as it was, behind the war drive of democratic imperialism.

Again, disproving the Keynesian/Stalinist narrative of cost-push inflation, a look at EU natural gas prices shows it rose from €5 per megawatt/hr., in June 2020, to €35 in July 2021, long before any invasion of Ukraine, or imperialist boycotts, but consistent with the start of lifting of lockdowns, and surge of the sea of liquidity into circulation, but, also, reflecting the consequence of those later boycotts of Russian gas, by imperialism, it rose to €339 in August 2022. Similarly, UK CPI had risen from below 1 in 2020, to 7%, in March 2022, prior to the invasion, and subsequent imperialist boycotts. The actual inflation, was clearly well embedded, as a consequence of that earlier liquidity injection, and devaluation of currencies, long before, any invasion, and increase in primary product prices caused by the imperialist boycotts. They simply added fuel to the existing fire.

The “Left's” action, as in the 1930's, in failing to provide any cogent alternative, and instead jumping into bed with “democratic imperialism”, as its voluntary (and in some cases paid) apologists, left the field wide open for the forces of reaction, for the actual red-browners, to fill that political void, and, themselves led the protests against those boycotts, and their devastating effects on workers' cost of living.

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Tony Greenstein's Bad Logic On Hamas

In a letter to the Weekly Worker, Tony Greenstein attacks Daniel Lazare for refusing to support Hamas. Greenstein says,

“Lazare says that Marxists do not side with rightwing groups claiming to speak in the people’s name. Wrong. In the 1950s we supported Eoka in Cyprus against the British. Likewise we supported the IRA. Lazare fails to understand that the nationalism of the oppressor and oppressed is not the same. It is all very simple. We support the struggle of the oppressed.”

The word “we”, here, is the locus of Greenstein's bad logic. It appears to be used in the context of a “Royal We”, in which it really means that Greenstein, and others claiming to be Marxists, supported Eoka, and the IRA. Of course, Stalinists, Maoists and others claim to be Marxists, and have supported all sorts of reactionary causes and movements, which should have given him reason to be careful about imputing such a “Royal We” to Marxists, as against those that simply label themselves as such. In fact, the support for various petty-bourgeois and bourgeois nationalist movements has nothing to do with the Marxism of Marx and Engels, or Lenin and Trotsky, and so with genuine Marxism. As Marx would have put it, “if this is Marxism, then I am no Marxist”!

Marx and Engels' position on the national question, as in everything else, flowed from their class analysis, and determination of what best served the interests of the working-class, and the development of Socialism. The basic idea, conveyed as far back as The Communist Manifesto, that “the workers have no country”, is as far from any concept of, or support for, nationalism, particularly bourgeois-nationalism, as you can get. As far as a number of national liberation struggles in the 19th century, in Europe, Marx and Engels specifically opposed them, as being reactionary ventures.

As far as the actual bourgeois-nationalist revolutions taking place, Marx and Engels attitude to them was clear, and set out in Marx's analysis of The Revolutions of 1848, and his conclusions from it, presented to the Central Committee of the Communist League. That is, the bourgeois-national revolutions were historically progressive, a necessary step on the road to Socialism. The workers, and their parties should support such revolutions, as part of a process of Permanent Revolution. But, you will search that address in vein to find any statement by Marx of support for the bourgeois nationalist parties themselves engaged in such revolutions. Quite the opposite. Marx warns in stark terms of the need for the workers to be organised independently from, and ready to fight, those very bourgeois-nationalist parties, as their class enemy.

“This democratic party, which is far more dangerous for the workers than were the liberals earlier, is composed of three elements: 1) The most progressive elements of the big bourgeoisie, who pursue the goal of the immediate and complete overthrow of feudalism and absolutism. This fraction is represented by the former Berlin Vereinbarer, the tax resisters; 2) The constitutional-democratic petty bourgeois, whose main aim during the previous movement was the formation of a more or less democratic federal state; this is what their representative, the Left in the Frankfurt Assembly and later the Stuttgart parliament, worked for, as they themselves did in the Reich Constitution Campaign; 3) The republican petty bourgeois, whose ideal is a German federal republic similar to that in Switzerland and who now call themselves ‘red’ and ’social-democratic’ because they cherish the pious wish to abolish the pressure exerted by big capital on small capital, by the big bourgeoisie on the petty bourgeoisie. The representatives of this fraction were the members of the democratic congresses and committees, the leaders of the democratic associations and the editors of the democratic newspapers.”

(ibid)

All of these same bourgeois elements can be found in the various bourgeois-nationalist movements. Marx's warning that they are “far more dangerous”, is the precursor of Lenin and the Comintern's warning in The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, to guard against those in such movements that attempt to present themselves as “communists”.

“the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations.”

Unfortunately, Greenstein, like much of the petty-bourgeois Left, in the post-war period, has abandoned those basic Marxist principles set out by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, and fallen into petty-bourgeois nationalism, instead, doing the opposite of what Marxism requires, of the independent organisation of the working-class in opposition to the bourgeois-democratic forces, as part of the process of permanent revolution, and, instead, has adopted the position of social-democracy, of Menshevism and Stalinism, based upon the stages theory. Where Marxism requires that the bourgeois nationalist struggle, in any country, be subordinated to the global class struggle, Greenstein, instead, subordinates the class struggle to the purely purely bourgeois-nationalist struggle, with the interests of workers deferred to some future undetermined date.

Yet, the history, going back to 1848, is quite clear, as Marx set out.

“The relationship of the revolutionary workers’ party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it cooperates with them against the party which they aim to overthrow; it opposes them wherever they wish to secure their own position.”

(loc cit)

Marx goes on to describe the reactionary nature of those petty-bourgeois democrats, even compared to the big bourgeoisie. The former seeks to limit the development of capitalism, and, thereby, of the productive forces, including the working-class. Lenin made the same analysis of the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nature of the Narodniks, in Russia. Marx continues,

“While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.”

In other words, the workers, too, seek to abolish the rule of the old landed aristocracy, and all that goes with it, but not simply to obtain a continuation of their existing exploitation by capital, but as part of a process of permanent revolution, to overthrow the bourgeoisie too, and move on simultaneously to Socialism. Support for the idea of bourgeois-democratic, national revolution, in the abstract, does not mean simply support for any such struggle, but only support for it, as part of this process of permanent revolution, in which the working-class increasingly must pursue its own class interests, in opposition to those of the bourgeois-nationalists. The truth is always concrete, and the question of support by communists for any actual party or movement engaged in such a struggle can only be determined, in practice. As The Theses put it,

“the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations.”

Marx continued,

“Although the German workers cannot come to power and achieve the realization of their class interests without passing through a protracted revolutionary development, this time they can at least be certain that the first act of the approaching revolutionary drama will coincide with the direct victory of their own class in France and will thereby be accelerated. But they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.”

Lenin and Trotsky noted that, in terms of strategy and analysis, there is no difference between this bourgeois-democratic, national revolution, and the anti-colonial revolution. Marxists support, in the abstract, the anti-colonial struggles, but, again, the truth is always concrete, and whether we give actual support to any given movement depends upon it fulfilling those criterion set out above. In other words, we “only” support the truly revolutionary proletarian movements, engaged in such a struggle, and those movements are hostile to the idea of being limited to simply the bourgeois national revolution.  Neither Eoka, nor the IRA conformed to that requirement.

The most obvious first instance of that was the Chinese revolution of 1925-27. The Kuomintang was clearly the leading bourgeois nationalist movement, engaged in a national war of independence against British, and other colonialist powers, in China, and their agents amongst the various Chinese warlords. On the basis of Greenstein's principles, Marxists should, then, have supported the KMT, in the same way he says they supported Eoka and the IRA, and in the same way, he now supports Hamas, and the USC support Ukraine. Indeed, the “Marxists” of Stalin's Comintern, did support the KMT, telling Chinese Communists to join it, as well as supplying it with arms. But, as Trotsky set out in detail, such a position had nothing in common with Marxism, or with the principles set out, on the basis of Marxism, by Lenin.

There is a vast difference between forming a temporary tactical alliance, in action, with a bourgeois, or petty-bourgeois movement, as against “supporting” such a movement. As Marx put it,

“This unity must therefore be resisted in the most decisive manner. Instead of lowering themselves to the level of an applauding chorus, the workers, and above all the League, must work for the creation of an independent organization of the workers’ party, both secret and open, and alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of its communes a centre and nucleus of workers’ associations in which the position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois influence. How serious the bourgeois democrats are about an alliance in which the proletariat has equal power and equal rights is demonstrated by the Breslau democrats, who are conducting a furious campaign in their organ, the Neue Oder Zeitung, against independently organized workers, whom they call ‘socialists’. In the event of a struggle against a common enemy a special alliance is unnecessary. As soon as such an enemy has to be fought directly, the interests of both parties will coincide for the moment and an association of momentary expedience will arise spontaneously in the future, as it has in the past. It goes without saying that in the bloody conflicts to come, as in all others, it will be the workers, with their courage, resolution and self-sacrifice, who will be chiefly responsible for achieving victory.”

(loc cit)

Moreover, as Trotsky set out, in opposing the Stalinist support for bourgeois-nationalist parties, whilst Lenin spoke of forming such alliances of the revolutionary forces, in action, with the bourgeois and petty bourgeois masses, it was precisely with those masses, and NOT with the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist parties.

“Lenin, it is understood, recognized the necessity of a temporary alliance with the bourgeois-democratic movement, but he understood by this, of course, not an alliance with the bourgeois parties, duping and betraying the petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy (the peasants and the small city folk), but an alliance with the organizations and groupings of the masses themselves – against the national bourgeoisie.”

(Trotsky – Stalin and The Chinese Revolution)

In other words, our support depends, and is directed towards, only truly revolutionary forces engaged in such struggles, which means not bourgeois or petty-bourgeois nationalist forces that represent the enemy of the working-class.  Again, neither Eoka, nor the IRA, nor the Algerian NLF, the Viet Cong, and certainly not Hamas, nor the imperialist, Ukrainian state, conform to that requirement!  A temporary alliance of such revolutionary forces with the wider bourgeois-democratic masses, but certainly not any alliance with (Popular Front), or merger with their parties, (and certainly not governments nor states!), is possible in action, and its via such action that the revolutionary party seeks to break those masses away from their existing parties and bourgeois-democratic nationalist illusions, and to the cause of permanent revolution.

Greenstein admits that Hamas is reactionary, but the logic of his position of supporting them, leads him to try to apologise for them, and their actions, just as the USC have tried to deny the nature of the Zelensky regime, and apologise for it, and as the Zionists of the AWL, similarly apologise for the actions of the Zionist state.  In similar fashion the supporters of Putin, do exactly the same thing.  This is the inevitable consequence of "lesser-evilism", and of "My enemy's enemy is my friend", in which instead of an independent working class position, the working-class and socialists are left choosing one bourgeois camp or another to support, and to cheer it on.  It has nothing to do with Marxism, which requires a stance of "a plague on both your houses".

The experience of the position that Greenstein puts forward, and which ironically, the USC promote in respect of Ukraine, is one of unmitigated disaster for the working-class, and the cause of international socialism. From the coup of Chiang Kai Shek, and slaughter of tens of thousands of Chinese workers, to the Popular Front in Spain in 1936, to the victory of the viciously anti-working class Viet Cong, or the Algerian NLF, to Khomeini in Iran, and many more, the workers were sold a reactionary bourgeois illusion, in pursuit of the class interests of their class enemy, just as surely as they were when they were similarly asked to back their own ruling class in WWI and II.

It was not Marxists that backed Eoka, or the IRA, or any of these other bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist forces, but Stalinists, Menshevists, reactionary petty-bourgeois socialists and nationalists camouflaged in communist colours.

The Chinese Revolution and The Theses of Comrade Stalin - Part 30 of 47

In Russia, the revolution, and the Red Army, defeated the reaction, and its support from the invading imperialist armies. In China, the Stalinists did try to hold the revolution back, in the name of not frightening the bourgeoisie, and the result was the counter-revolutionary coup of the KMT.

“Only the transition of the Chinese revolution to the phase of real mass action, only the formation of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets, only the deepening of the social program of the revolution, are capable, as our own experiences prove, of bringing confusion into the ranks of the foreign armed forces by arousing their sympathy for the soviets and thus really protecting the revolution from blows from without.” (p 51)

How different are these revolutionary sentiments compared to the USC, and its sycophantic cheerleading of Zelensky and NATO, and their mirror image in those social-imperialists that have likewise hitched their wagon to the camp of Putin and Xi.

Instead of soviets, Stalin proposed “revolutionary peasant committees, workers’ trade unions, and other mass organizations as preparatory elements for the soviets of the future”. (p 51) If they were preparatory to soviets, there must be some known path from one to the other, yet no such path is explained or described in Stalin's theses. These mass organisations, also, cannot be set up at will, but arise naturally from material conditions. As such, they are always a possible development, but their transformation into soviets is not at all something that arises spontaneously. In 1917, Lenin also argued that, if the Bolsheviks could not win a majority in the soviets, they would have to focus on the factory committees, where they did. In the absence of soviets, these other organisations inevitably have to perform all of the functions required by the agrarian and democratic revolution, which in itself means that they will engage in strikes and other activities that may just as well scare off the bourgeoisie or provoke the intervention of imperialism. So, all this proposal does is to set up organs to carry out the functions of soviets, but whilst being less suited to the task than are soviets.

“During all the preceding mass movements, the trade unions were compelled to fulfil functions closely approaching the functions of soviets (Hong Kong, Shanghai, and elsewhere). But these were precisely the functions for which the trade unions were entirely insufficient. They embrace a too small number of workers. They do not at all embrace the petty-bourgeois masses in the city that incline towards the proletariat.” (p 52)

This not only leaves large masses unorganised, and separated from the workers, making solidarity and coordination more difficult, it fosters division. The basis of trades unions is not class struggle, but economic, distributional struggle, often also based craft exclusiveness. A look at the multitude of separate strikes, by different groups, in the NHS, on the railways etc., illustrates that. What is worse, it leaves the door open to other forces to organise the petty-bourgeoisie, lumpen proletariat, and non-unionised workers, using reactionary, populist, “anti-capitalist” rhetoric.

“... such tasks as the carrying through of strikes with the least possible losses to the poorer population of the city, the distribution of provisions, participation in tax policy, participation in the formation of armed forces, to say nothing of carrying through the agrarian revolution in the provinces, can be accomplished with the necessary sweep only when the directing organization embraces not only all the sections of the proletariat, but connects them intimately in the course of its activities with the poor population in the city and country.” (p 52)

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