Is The US Preparing To Ditch Israel?

That is a question that will be considered heresy by large sections of the Left for whom the two countries are not only seen as joined at the hip, but for whom there is also an implication that it is Israel that is the dominant partner; a very small tail, wagging a huge dog. For a Left, much of which has not come to terms with the fact that large numbers of former colonies have won political independence, and which searches after some straw to grasp, to justify its belief that these countries are still in some sense “Neo-Colonies”, Israel plays a central role, in the Middle East, of acting as an enclave for “Imperialism”, and a means by which its “Neo-Colonial” rule is implemented throughout the region. However, its on the question of just how much the US needs Israel today that this turns.

After WWII, the US set about applying pressure to ensure that the old European Colonial Empires were broken up. During the War, Roosevelt, who considered Churchill a drunken, old Colonialist, had even proposed to Stalin, that they should form an alliance to bring about such a break up. Of course, although the US had some historical and philosophical grounds for opposing Colonialism, having fought its own War of Independence against Britain, its real reason for wanting to see that break up was not altruistic. Colonialism was a political form appropriate to the overseas rule of parasitic forms of Capital – Merchant and Money Capital, and Landlordism. Each derived their income by draining Surplus Value created in production, and in doing so impeded the expansion of Capital. But, the US was the home of productive Capital par excellence. Its most developed form was the multinational corporation that sought the right and freedom to settle anywhere in the globe, to build plants and exploit new, cheap sources of labour, and to sell its products. The Colonial Empires and their feudal monopolies on trade were an impediment to that development.

But, we shouldn't forget that in 1945, the US did not have, and certainly was not as confident in, its position of hegemony as we might think it to have been today. In the 1920's, when the US was still only a rising power, like China is today, it believed that the next global war would be between itself and Great Britain. The US, began a massive program of building its navy, in order to challenge the position of the British Navy, on the high seas, which gave it global reach. In 1945, the US authorities, and economists, still believed that the ending of War production would cause the economy to go into a massive Depression. They had not counted on the effects of the Long Wave Boom, which, in fact, lifted, not just the US, but economies throughout the globe. In part, the Marshall Plan was geared as a piece of international Keynesianism to assuage that fear of Depression, in the US, as a result of ending war production. In part, it utilised what the US had lots of – Money Capital, and Capital Goods – to both restart markets in Europe, and to ensure its economic dominance over them.

At the same time, its position was challenged by the USSR. In the 1930's, whilst Europe and North America had been mired in Depression, the USSR was growing like topsy. Economists like Mises and Hayek had begun by claiming that economic planning was impossible. By the 1930's, when that had been disproved, they changed tack to argue that economic planning necessarily led to totalitarianism, an easier line to advance given what was obvious in the USSR and Germany. Its interesting, though, that at the time, they did not even make the case about lack of efficiency of planning, because that certainly could not have been claimed at the time. On the contrary, their general belief was that the democracies were going to be economically overhauled by the centrally planned economies of the USSR and Germany.

The strength of that planning was demonstrated during the War. It allowed Germany to construct a hugely powerful military-industrial machine, that swept across most of Europe in a matter of weeks. It was only because Hitler continued to hold out hope of doing a deal with the British ruling class via Lord Halifax and others that he refrained from chasing the British Expeditionary Force across the Channel during the fiasco of Dunkirk. He was content to leave Britain holed up in its island prison, while he turned to his main target, the USSR. But, the even more effective planning system of the USSR, together with its huge expanse, its huge manpower resources, and the lingering beliefs of a people who had thrown of their class oppressors, and still believed the state to be theirs, was an even more powerful force than that of Germany, despite Stalinist bungling.

The Tank Battle at Kholkin Gol in 1939 was one of the
biggest in history.  The Japanese were heavily defeated.

That bungling allowed Hitler to spring Operation Barbarossa on an unprepared USSR. The consequences were dire. The USSR lost 25% of its territory, and production capabality. But, it managed to physically move factories and workers across the country to safety, and quickly restart production. The USSR, several years before, had massively defeated Japan in a huge tank battle, at Khalkin Gol which is why Japan decided the US would be an easier target. That left the USSR free to move men and equipment to the western front, and in December 1941, to turn back Hitler's forces from outside Moscow, and to keep pushing them back until the end of the War.

The US saw, this power of the USSR, and its ability to roll over countries in Europe and Asia. According to General MacArthur, the reason Japan surrendered to the US was not the atom bomb, but fear that they were about to be overrun by Soviet forces! When Khruschev announced in the 1950's that the USSR would overtake the US, he wasn't kidding, and the US at the time thought it possible. They thought it even more possible as the USSR conquered space, and continued to lead the US in the space race for the next decade or so.

So, there was every reason for the US not to consider its position hegemonic at the time. It had every reason to try to enhance its position against potential enemies and rivals. Breaking up the Colonial Empires was a part of that. When Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt in 1956, to regain control of the Suez Canal, the US saw an opportunity. It ditched its wartime allies, and aligned itself with the Arabs who had been the former subjects of those states. Britain and France were mortally wounded in the region, whilst the US was provided with the opportunity to strike up its own arrangements, with Arab rulers, for the provision of oil, and for the expansion,, of the US oil companies, into the area. At the same time, the message was made clear to Israel, that the time for the European Colonial powers had passed. If it wanted security, it had to look to the US. As the USSR gained strategic advantage, in its relations with Nasser, and other Arab Nationalist leaders, in North Africa, the role of Israel for the US became more significant.

The idea that US policy is driven by Israel is nonsensical. It is a form of anti-semitism, a version of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. There is a powerful Jewish lobby in the US. Its power comes from the fact that the Jewish Community has traditionally, within the diaspora, held together as a community. Given that, some members of that community, over the centuries, have specialised in trading, and money dealing - often arising from Medieval Christian limitations on such activities that did not apply to non-Christians – that is backed up by the power of money. In a country where Money talks louder in politics than in many other countries, that is not an unimportant fact. But, there are lots of people with lots of money in the US. Jews are only a tiny proportion of them.

The consequences are being drawn out more clearly in the current Presidential Election. Mitt Romney is courting the Jewish Lobby, whereas its being argued that Obama has not given the attention and support to Israel that previous Presidents have done. Obama, clearly has little time for Netanyahu. Romney has to court the Jewish Lobby. He has little chance of winning over social liberals, who have been turned off by the extreme right-wing shift of the Republican Party, on social issues, such as Abortion, and its growing dominance by the Religious Right. If Romney is to win over any of Obama's former support, it will be amongst those blue collar workers that Obama's economic policies have failed, and who generally speaking tend to be more socially conservative.

At the same time, Romney has a problem with his own Party and supporters. For the Tea Party Right, Romney is too liberal on economic policy. For the religious Right he has the disadvantage of being a Mormon, which is for some of them close to being a Devil Worshipper. It is an odd feature of US politics that the biggest supporters of Israel come not from the Jewish Community, but from the 7 million or so, extreme Christian Fundamentalists, the end timers, who honestly believe every word of the Bible and look forward to the day when the world will be destroyed at Armageddon. These nutters, actually want to see a full scale war in the Middle East, because they believe this is part of the Plan for the Second Coming.

If, Romney wants to win over these people – and Bush did, he tried to win over this Constituency, and McCain did. He appointed Sarah Palin as his running mate, who reportedly attends a Church run by these nutters – he has to be an ardent supporter of Israel. That is what he is doing. But, what Romney is doing to win an election is not likely to determine what he does in that regard were he to win the election. Still less does it tell us the direction in which the US State is moving.



Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal is one of the
 largest investors in the US.  He frequently appears
 on US CNBC.  Here he gives Giuliani a
$10 million cheque for 9/11, and also
 used the occasion to call for the US
to adopt a different attitude in the Middle East,
 particularly in regard Palestine.

Over the last twenty years or so, an increasing centre of economic power has been the Gulf States. Not in the sense that these economies are themselves huge centres of industrial or high-tech production. Mostly they are not. Most of them, even to run their oil industry rely on huge numbers of foreign rather than domestic workers. Nearly half of Saudi Arabia's 27 million population is made up of foreign workers. Some of them such as Dubai, have become regional trading hubs, and financial centres, but mostly they continue to rely on extracting Rent from their oil wells. No, their economic power has come from the ability of a tiny ruling group to amass fantastic amounts of this oil wealth, and to use it to invest in the global financial markets, and to buy up foreign Capital, particularly in the US. If it was Jewish Money that formerly ensured a hearing for the Jewish Lobby, then the much larger amount of Gulf Monarchy money, is obtaining an even greater hearing in Washington. The links between George Bush, and the Bin Laden family, are just one indication of that.

The US strategy in the region for a long time rested on two pillars. Its relation with Israel in the North, and with the Gulf States in the South. That strategy began to fall apart with the downfall of the Shah, a situation the US quickly tried to reverse by supporting Saddam, and promoting the Iran-Iraq war. The US had a problem in trying to replace Saddam with someone more reliable and effective. The most likely forces capable of overthrowing him were the Shia in the South, and the Kurds in the North. Neither were acceptable option for the US, which is why they refused to support them after the 1991 Gulf War, and left them to their fate. As, has, in fact happened, if the Shia were to come to power, they would inevitably gravitate to their brethren in Iran. That is the very opposite of the strategic solution the US desires. Moreover, they would be likely to oppress the Sunni Minority in the country, a situation the Sunni Gulf Monarchies had set their face against. If the Kurds won, even independence, that would set an example to Kurds in Turkey, the US's other important ally in the region and a member of NATO. The Kurds are the world's largest nation without a state of their own. To prevent them obtaining one, Turkey has waged a long war against them, including bombing them in Turkish and Iraqi Kurdistan, without any condemnation from the West.  Already, Kurds in Iraq have established a high degree of autonomy.  Just today the Iraqi Government has imposed sanctions on French Oil Company Total, for having signed a separate deal with Kurdistan.  At the same time, as Syria falls apart into warring sectarian areas, the Syrian Kurds have taken advantage to establish their own area, to protect themselves against potential attacks from incoming Sunni clerical-fascist forces.

Having lost Iraq to Iran, the US is left with another cleft stick. It needs even more to rely on Israel, but also upon its Gulf Allies. The main strategic goal of the US is to overthrow the regime in Iran, and to prevent it from becoming a regional power, more than it already is. Certainly, the US wants to ensure that it is not able to develop that position on the basis of a strategic alliance with Russia and China, which represent the main global challengers to US power. The US would settle for chaos in Iran, as opposed to instituting its own dictator, so long as it prevented Iran acting as a regional power. In this the interests of the US with its Gulf allies are symbiotic.

The Gulf States apart from Bahrain, are overwhelmingly Sunni – about 80% of their population. But, compared to Iran, Iraq, Syria,, these Gulf States have tiny populations. They are at risk if ever a war began between them, and Iran and Iraq. The recent conflict in Bahrain, where the Sunni regime attacks, Shia protesters, and the outbreak of fighting in Shia dominated areas of Saudi Arabia itself, as the regime opens fire on protesters, are an indication of how such a conflict could begin. Any, attempt by the US to simply open hostilities against Iran would be likely to provoke a conflagration of Shia revolts across the Gulf, and to re-open conflict by Shia forces such as Hezbollah. The US needs to isolate Iran, and to cripple it, hoping to promote revolt from inside. That, of course, what it hoped would have happened in Iraq, a coup from forces within the regime itself.

In order to isolate Iran, the US has sought to weaken those forces and regimes connected with it. A price of that is to place a heavier reliance on the forces of the Gulf Monarchies. In some ways, what we have is a situation rather like the way wars were fought in Europe during the Middle Ages, where the Catholic Church sat in Rome, and enlisted mercenary armies to go and fight its battles. The US plays a similar role to the Catholic Church, making alliances first with this, then with the other Prince. Given the importance of Gulf Oil to the US, given the importance of Gulf Arab Money in bankrolling US debt, and their investments in major US companies, given their strategic role in opposing Iran, it is no wonder that the US has shifted its emphasis away from Israel, which costs its billions of dollars a year to support, and whose actions in refusing to come to a settlement with the Palestinians continues to create political problems for the US, with its other allies within the region.

The influence of Russia in North Africa has long since gone, except for Syria. It is this crescent running up from Iran, through Iraq, and Syria that now poses the strategic problem for the US to solve. It appears to be solving it, by throwing its eggs all into the basket of the Sunni Gulf Monarchies, and their ability to mobilise clerical-fascist militias, such as Al Qaeda, to go and fight wherever they are required with money and weapons provided by the Gulf States, alongside their own Special Forces, and more advanced weapons and logistics provided by the US via the CIA.

Just as they did in Afghanistan where they used the clerical-fascist Mujaheddin fighters like Bin Laden to oppose the USSR, or as they did in Kosovo, where they used the clerical-fascist, and Mafia type gangs of the KLA to whip up ethnic violence, so that seems to be the chosen route of the US in North Africa. The gamble appears to be that these clerical-fascist forces, be they the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or even the Salafis, or even as in Libya and Syria, the Al Qaeda linked groups, can be used to overthrow the existing regimes, and can then be reigned back, and controlled by their paymasters in the Gulf. Well good luck with that idea, given the experience of Afghanistan!

Yet, the US, seems prepared to risk that strategy in order to break apart Syria, and thereby using its remaining bases in Iraq, to isolate Iran, before finding some pretext to begin yet another bombing war. There are already plenty at hand, including the potential nuclear capacity. In that process, Israel has effectively been sidelined. In fact, its likely that Israel was told NOT to bomb Iran, precisely because it would have provided a pretext for Sunnis and Shia to unite against it. But, there is good reason then for Israel to be worried. If the US has thrown its lot in with the Gulf Monarchies, then a price to be paid may well be that Israel is left to its own devices. Al Qaeda began not as an opposition to the US, but to those very Monarchical regimes, which it argued were corrupt. In order to preserve themselves, those Monarchies will need to continually find the mercenaries another target. The most obvious target is Israel itself.  All in all Israel may have felt its position more secure with Mubarak, Assad and Gaddafi as neighbours.

A Tale Of Contradictions - Part 3

Yet, stuck with that old vision of Imperialism, taken from Lenin, most of the Marxist Left in the post-war period found itself disoriented when it came to analyse US imperialism. The Stalinists, of course, had good reason to point to US involvement in any overseas territory as imperialist aggression, and necessarily reactionary. Their function, after all, was to act as cheerleaders and propagandists for the ruling elite in the USSR, not to engage in any kind of objective analysis. But, the Trotskyist Left were little better. In part, that was because they too saw some duty to “defend” the USSR by placing a plus in its column, wherever the US placed a minus. But, they were in reality also disoriented by one of the central planks of Trotskyism – the Theory of Permanent Revolution.

The starting point of Permanent Revolution, as with Lenin's theory of Imperialism was the existence of that old Colonialist form of Imperialism. The basic idea of the need for a bourgeois revolution – either against a domestic Landlord Class or against a Colonial Power – is that identified by Marx and Engels, in the Revolutions of 1848, which is that although, the middle class cannot carry through such a revolution without the aid of the workers, they will, as soon as they fear that the workers will assert their own interests, desert them, and side with the landlords or Colonialists. But, the experience of Germany and Japan had shown that a different variant was possible. Just as Marx and Engels had outlined in the Communist Manifesto, the existence and dominance of the Capitalist Mode of Production in England was forcing every other country to assume the bourgeois form too, on pain of extinction. In Germany and Japan, and in Russia, Capitalist industrialisation was proceeding under the dominance of a Capitalist State, but where feudal regimes still ruled politically. It would only be a matter of time before these old classes, increasingly basing themselves on the ownership of Capital, and certainly dependent upon it, recognised what the Big industrial bourgeois recognised, that the best conditions for Capital accumulation existed within the context of a liberal bourgeois democracy.

Big Capital had cast aside bourgeois democracy only where it was no longer fulfilling the function assigned to it – maintaining social peace, and absorbing working-class pressure. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and other revolutions across Europe, first the Italian bourgeoisie looked on at the spreading wave of Workers Councils, and establishing of Workers Control in its factories, and decided enough was enough, throwing its financial support behind Mussolini. Even in Germany at this time, conditions were not sufficient to persuade the Big German bourgeois to follow suit. Only with the developing global economic crisis of Capitalism, the growing economic strength of the USSR, and the increasing votes being won by the German Socialists and Communists, did they also throw their financial support behind the Nazis. Even then they probably did not realise what they were unleashing, and expected it to be little different to Mussolini's Italy. But, here too is an important lesson. The capitalist class is very small. The Big Capitalists, the ones whose ownership of the major means of production sets them aside even from the rest of their class, is even smaller, perhaps less than one thousandth of the population – for example, in the US, Bill Gates alone has wealth equal to the bottom 40% of the population. They can rule, therefore, only with the acquiescence of the rest of society. That acquiescence arises on the back of the overwhelming dominance of the ideas of that ruling group, and the hold they have over those that hold the levers of power in the State, in the echelons of Higher education, in the media etc. That ideological dominance is such as to ensure that via bourgeois democracy, the range of ideas presented by the contending parties is tightly restricted. The big bourgeoisie can make its influence felt on these parties when they are in Government via its representatives in the State, and via its contacts with the leading figures within the contending parties, by its use of finance to support one or another. But, its influence is restricted to such indirect pressures, because the drawback for it, of bourgeois democracy, is that the Government is ultimately elected by the vast mass of the people. Still, its ability to exert such control over Government's, which are generally weak, to achieve much against the wishes of the State, is significantly greater than it is over a fascist regime or military junta.

But, rather than recognising this fact, the Marxist Left assumed that the normal political regime that would be favoured by Imperialism would be similar to those old Colonial regimes, or an alliance with a local dictator. In fact, the only places where this was likely to be the case was in those areas where the old economic base of Colonialism remained dominant, and where it feared the strength of the working-class, or radical petit-bourgeois forces. In the aftermath of WWII, of course, no shortage, of undeveloped areas existed. The problem was that the Marxist Left tied this state of lack of economic development, to its theory of Imperialism, and came up with the idea that this Imperialism had an incentive in perpetuating such underdevelopment – what became known as the development of underdevelopment – in order to keep these economies subordinate, and to ensure that they remained sources of cheap raw materials, and markets for manufactured goods from the centre. In fact, the lack of development was partly due to Colonialism, but was more significantly just an indication of the well-known phenomena of combined and uneven development.

In reality, the period after WWII, the period in which big, industrial, multinational Capital has been dominant, has not only seen an increasing level of economic development around the globe – what today is termed globalisation – but, has seen alongside that, the greatest extension of bourgeois democracy around the globe. That, is one reason why Imperialism has, objectively, been the most progressive force on the planet in the last 60 years.

But, I hasten to emphasise the repeated use of the adjective “objectively” here, for there will no doubt be no shortage of opponents who will want to pick up on such an apparently heretical statement. It is no more heretical than Marx's own use of the term to describe the role of Capital in general. Simply describing, the consequences of the role of Imperialism as “progressive” in no way is intended to ascribe any “progressive” intent to the actions of the dominant imperialist agents. On the contrary, it is just a consequence of their aim to maximise profit, an aim, which, has also led them where the situation required it, to adopt quite other measures, the opposite of anything that could be described as progressive. The question is not to become blinded by the individual instances, but to analyse the broad picture, and to ascertain the general trend. The refusal to do that, to pick on any instance to re-affirm the old view of Imperialism as a wholly reactionary force, is what has led some Marxists to deny what is apparent. There is no shortage of Marxists who view the idea that Imperialism – or simply Capitalism – is still capable of revolutionising production as heretical, who view the world economy through a lens in which Capitalism is in permanent crisis, or about to experience some catastrophe, and so who have to deny that any progress is real. In the case of the developing economies, that has gone through stages of denying that they had actually become politically independent, describing them as neo-colonies or semi-colonies, to then arguing that they were not really independent because they were economically subordinate, to now denying that some of these economies, which have themselves become developed economies, are really developed, that their economies only have the level they have because of the role of foreign rather than domestic Capital! It is one of the weirdest examples of self-delusion you could encounter.

If Imperialism is viewed as such a social relation, then it can be seen that, however, imperfectly, some of the developments it was led towards within the context of the nation state, it has also attempted to extend on a global scale. And within that those same basic elements of Social Democratic ideology are also replicated. When I speak of Social Democratic ideology here, I am not meaning in the restricted sense of that pertaining to the various “Social Democratic” parties, but to that general trend, which developed even from the beginning of the twentieth century around the notions of social justice and security, of social harmony and so on, which has been taken on by Christian Democratic and even Conservative parties as much as by parties of the Centre-Left. The strategy of Imperialism has been to try to create global institutions, through which these ideas could be implemented, and to proceed by negotiation where possible. The strategy has been to create a Global economy in its own image, and the military interventions in Iraq, in Yugoslavia and elsewhere have to be viewed in that context, rather than in any kind of narrow immediate economic determinist manner, in the way that the invasion of Iraq, for oil, for instance was presented.

But, the global economy is not the nation state, and the kinds of complications that it experiences in translating its interests into policies and actions in the latter, are multiplied many fold in the former. By this roundabout discussion we come to the current situation in regard to the world economy, and the multiple contradictions apparent within it.

Back To Part 2

Forward To Part 4

Concessions Or Conveniences - Part 2

Part 2 – Bourgeois Health & Education Factories

More recent examples can be seen of this. In the 1930's, in the USSR, the major hindrance to increased production arose, because new, more technological machines, that were capable of much greater levels of output, had to be slowed down, because the workers who had to use them, having been recruited recently from the peasantry, lacked the education and training to use them.

Frequently, that led to the machines actually being broken due to misuse. The USSR, poured resources into educating and training these workers with a massive corresponding rise in productivity. In a speech in the US a couple of years ago, Alan Greenspan told Congress that US education was failing.

He didn't think it was failing because it wasn't providing a decent education to all US citizens, but essentially because it wasn't producing enough of the right kinds of workers. Highly skilled, and educated workers had over the last thirty years, seen their incomes rise significantly, whilst the ordinary unskilled workers had seen their wages at best stagnate, or even fall. Of course, Greenspan wasn't particularly, concerned about the latter, other than the consequences it might have for social stability. On the contrary, his main concern was about the former. Given that the US will be only able to compete globally by developing its advantage in high value added production, the high wages of workers in that sector are a problem. The solution for Capital is to increase the number of more highly educated, and skilled workers, to increase the supply, and, therefore, reduce the wages of such workers. A similar drive is behind the need for UK Capital to encourage more working-class kids to go to university or higher education, and hence New Labour's policy of 50% entrance into Higher Education. Of course, just as it did with lower levels of education, it wants the workers to pay themselves for making them more productive instruments of capitalist production.

And, for the same reasons, especially as the use of contraception by the working-class has prevented the normal increase in the supply of workers that capital could previously count on as a natural stabilising mechanism over wages, capital needed to ensure that the workers on which it had spent time and money educating and training, were actually healthy enough, and lived long enough, to ensure that their was the maximum return on that investment. Given also, that the amount of constant capital that these workers now set in motion was massive, capital could not afford disruptions to its production process as a result of the human components of the process being faulty or absent. A few years ago, I heard that explained quite clearly. Someone I was talking to, told me he was a Transport Manager for TESCO. He had been provided with membership of BUPA. As a member of the Labour Party, and a Councillor, he told me he had asked if he could refuse to accept it. No he was told, and the reason he was given was exactly that stated above. You are in a high paid, job, we have invested in you, and we want to ensure you are not away from work due to ill-health for any time longer than necessary.

In fact, as I've described previously some socialists have explained why, in fact, the bourgeois healthcare provided by the NHS, which treats it as a commodity sold to workers, paid for via a compulsory deduction from their wages, might even be contrary to workers health needs. The oversubscribing of anti-depressants, and antibiotics, would seem to confirm that view, as does the emphasis placed on secondary healthcare – the building of expensive hospitals, the carrying out of expensive surgical procedures etc – rather than on primary care, or even on dealing with those factors within capitalism most responsible for causing workers ill-health, also seems to back that up. Time after time studies have shown that whether it is in education or in healthcare, the largest improvement has resulted from better living conditions, and conversely, where living conditions remain poor, workers continue to die young, to suffer ill-health, and any natural intellectual advantage they might have as infants, is lost by the time they are just seven years old, as against less intelligent kids from more affluent backgrounds. Yet, in the 60 years of its existence the Welfare State has done nothing to challenge, less still to fundamentally change, those basic underlying causes of ill-health, or poor educational attainment. It has merely performed the function that capital assigns to it, to provide the necessary supply of workers, suitably educated, trained, and socialised, and able to work for capital for a sufficient duration to maximise its investment in them.

Back To Part 1

Forward To Part 3

Proletarian Strategy - Part 6

The Weakest Link

In Part 5, I made the comparison between the strategic nature of a Workers State, and a Co-operative. Both represent a physical manifestation of Workers Property, of territory that can be won and held, and developed as a power base by workers. In the first case that is true not just in the sense of property in the form of enterprises, but in the fuller sense of actual geographic territory. There is another similarity. Lenin argued that the Russian revolution occurred because it was Capitalism breaking at the weakest link. It was easier for the Russian workers to carry through the revolution, precisely because of the condition of Russian Capitalism and the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie. But, for the same reasons, it would be more difficult to construct Socialism – or even to compete effectively with the surrounding Capitalist States – than for a more developed economy. Similarly, the most frequent places where workers might establish Co-ops will be where they have been led to as a result of that firm collapsing. In a vibrant, dynamic, and profitable firm the existing Capitalist owners are not likely to voluntarily hand ownership to the workers. That doesn't make it impossible. Most such firms are publicly listed companies, and can be bought out. Indeed, I've suggested that if workers had control of the £800 billion in their pension funds, they could mobilise these funds to take over such companies on a strategic basis, and then use these companies as further leverage to take over further companies. But, as yet, we have not won that basic democratic right to control the money in our pension funds. The other alternative is to use the funds in the Co-op Bank, but currently there is no real workers democracy exercising control over the Bank, or the Co-op. As with the Trades Unions and Labour Party, a key part of working-class strategy involves a struggle for greater democracy within the Labour Movement.

However, as I have suggested, the development of modern industry has led to a situation in which the old argument about size being a limit to entry does not necessarily apply. The most profitable, most dynamic industries in the modern economy are those involved in high-technology of various kinds. Many of these industries require little in the way of Constant Capital (buildings, machinery, materials), but do require very highly skilled, complex labour-power. In fact, many of them are based on, and have been developed by Universities and their academics. There is considerable scope here, for a determined socialist, co-operative strategy. By developing worker-owned co-operatives in these enterprises, the kinds of problems encountered by the Worker Co-ops of the 1970's can be avoided. In addition, as the Lucas Plan demonstrated, the fact that workers take over a firm in a failing industry does not mean that they have to simply try to make what is failing under Capitalism succeed. Workers can switch existing production to other channels, where the specific benefits of a Co-op can be maximised.

Of course, none of that in any way suggests that none of these Co-ops will fail, or that there is some kind of linear progression. That is not true of any War, or very few. Every war sees advances and retreats. Territory is gained, and territory is lost. But, it is a very strange War, in which one side decides on principle, not to attempt to seize and hold on to territory for the fear of losing it! In many ways, this is the distinction that Gramsci made between a “War of Position”, and a “War of Movement”. In reality, people only adopt a strategy of war of movement, or guerilla tactics, because they begin from a position of weakness, a position in which they have no territory of their own to base themselves in and upon. That was the position that workers found themselves in, having been deprived of their means of production. But, it is ridiculous to make a virtue out of necessity, and refuse to establish your own territory. And unless you are an Anarchist, any force that did establish its own territory would not want to see it as just a piece of property in which everyone simply went about their activities as individuals. As soon as possible, it would be necessary to establish some form of Government, it would be necessary to establish means of making decisions, and of enforcing them. It would be necessary to look at how best production could be organised to strengthen your defences, and war fighting ability. It would be necessary to make alliances with others, and to consider how your forces could be combined to best effect. And, any kind of strategy would have to look at where further advances could be made, how the enemy could be undermined.

That is the whole point about the strategy that Marx and his followers adopted in relation to Co-operatives. Just as Trades Unions were rallying points to assemble the troops for the task of conducting battles that could establish some meaningful progress for workers, some advance that they could hold on to, so the Co-operatives were not the end in themselves, but the territory that the workers need to seize in order to make these further advances. The workers in the Co-op would need to establish a form of Worker Democracy to make the decisions, just as a force having seized territory would need to establish its method of decision making. In fact, the extent to which that form of Workers Democracy was seen by Workers as furthering their interests, the more it would be a reason for workers having secured it to defend it, and at the same time would be an inspiration to workers still exploited by Capital, to want to emulate it. That was the experience of the French Revolution, which even on the basis of a limited bourgeois democracy gave French workers something to defend, and acted to inspire workers in Britain. The same was true of the Russian Revolution. One of the biggest factors that led Peasants to support the Bolsheviks against the Whites, was the experience of how quickly the Whites reinstalled all of the cruelties of the old Tsarist system in those areas they were able to recapture. In WWII, as with any such War, a central aspect of strategy was to ensure that lines of communication were kept open, and that territory captured that was under attack could be supported. The same is true for a strategy of developing workers property. As Marx pointed out, the whole point of each Co-op being an integral part of a National Federation, was that not only could the surpluses be centralised so that they could be used to expand the number of Co-ops, and the degree of the economy in the Co-op sector, but it also meant that any individual Co-op could be provided with resources to overcome a short-run setback, rather like the system of Lend-Lease operated by the US towards its Allies in WWII. Moreover, the more different territories combining to provide such mutual support, means that the normal operations of specialisation, and exchange can operate. Similarly, a wide range of Co-ops involved in a range of activities can support each other, each using its specialisation to provide at lower costs for its partners within the Federation.

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Proletarian Strategy - Part 5

Socialism In One Country

As I have written previously, one reason the Left holds this position, of opposition to Co-ops, is due to a misreading of Marx in his criticism of the Utopian Socialists. For, the Trotskyist Left, that is compounded also by a misunderstanding of the question of building “Socialism In One Country”, as an extension of that argument. In fact, the position adopted is not that of Lenin or Trotsky, but that of the Ultra-Left criticised by both of them. For example, in his work Lenin, Left-Wing Childishness - not to be confused with the better known Left-Wing Communism – Lenin, argues against the idea that they had a revolutionary duty to destroy themselves, by responding to imperialist provocation, and engaging in a war against it. On the contrary, he points out that having secured power they had a duty to try to hold on to it, by any means possible, retreating back into the interior if necessary.

“If you want to fight now, say so openly. If you don’t wish to retreat now, say so openly. Otherwise, in your objective role, you are a tool of imperialist provocation. And your subjective “mentality” is that of a frenzied petty bourgeois who swaggers and blusters but senses perfectly well that the proletarian is right in retreating and in trying to retreat in an organised way. He senses that the proletarian is right in arguing that because we lack strength we must retreat (before Western and Eastern imperialism) even as far as the Urals, for in this lies the only chance of playing for time while the revolution in the West matures, the revolution which is not “bound” (despite the twaddle of the “Lefts") to begin in “spring or summer”, but which is coming nearer and becoming more probable every month....

Now that we have become representatives of the ruling class, which has begun to organise socialism, we demand that everybody adopt a serious attitude towards defence of the country. And adopting a serious attitude towards defence of the country means thoroughly preparing for it, and strictly calculating the balance of forces. If our forces are obviously small, the best means of defense is retreat into the interior of the country (anyone who regards this as an artificial formula, made up to suit the needs of the moment, should read old Clausewitz, one of the greatest authorities on military matters, concerning the lessons of history to be learned in this connection). The “Left Communists”, however, do not give the slightest indication that they understand the significance of the question of the balance of forces.”

There is a huge difference between the Theory of Socialism In One Country, which essentially is pessimistic of international revolution, and so focusses entirely on the reactionary idea of building an autarchic, statised economy within a single country, and bases all its politics and strategy around that goal to the exclusion of all else, and a policy of defending what has been gained, as a means of securing a foothold for further advance, once the balance of forces allow. The latter is what Lenin argues, and the differences here with the position outlined by Trotsky are only differences of nuance not substance.

Once again, what we have is a difference based on time-scales. Essentially, what is being said is, its not permissible to build Co-operatives, because the date of the revolution is unknown. So, Co-operatives might have to survive for a long-time prior to the revolution, and in that time they will have degenerated. So, only Trade Union struggle, and Economistic struggle for reforms is allowed, short of the revolution. However, once the Revolution breaks out, even in a single country, that is okay, because the assumption is that the revolution will automatically spread internationally, and the revolutionaries where they have seized power will use that to hasten its spread. But, of course, as Lenin argues in the above,

“This formulation is even more childishly inaccurate despite its playing at science. It is natural for children to “understand” science to mean something that can determine in what year, spring, summer, autumn or winter the “collapse must begin”.

These are ridiculous, vain attempts to ascertain what cannot be ascertained. No serious politician will ever say when this or that collapse of a “system” “must begin” (the more so that the collapse of the system has already begun, and it is now a question of the moment when the outbreak of revolution in particular countries will begin). But an indisputable truth forces its way through this childishly helpless formulation, namely, the outbreaks of revolution in other, more advanced, countries are nearer now, a month since the beginning of the “respite” which followed the conclusion of peace, than they were a month or six weeks ago.”

So, it was just as impossible to conclude that international revolution WOULD follow on from its outbreak in one country. All that followed was that what had been gained should be defended, and should be built upon as an example to workers elsewhere, and to be used as a resource to facilitate workers in those other countries, in order to thereby facilitate their development and struggle, so that such revolutions were made more likely! In response to the Ultra-Left statement,

“. . . The Russian workers’ revolution cannot 'save itself’ by abandoning the path of world revolution, by continually avoiding battle and yielding to the pressure of international capital, by making concessions to ’home capital’.

“From this point of view it is necessary to adopt a determined class international policy which will unite international revolutionary propaganda by word and deed, and to strengthen the organic connection with international socialism (and not with the international bourgeoisie). . . .”
Lenin responds,

“But examine this riot of phrase-making—and timidity in deeds—in the sphere of foreign policy. What tactics are binding at the present time on all who do not wish to be tools of imperialist provocation, and who do not wish to walk into the snare? Every politician must give a clear, straightforward reply to this question. Our Party’s reply is well known. At the present moment we must retreat and avoid battle. Our “Lefts” dare not contradict this and shoot into the air: “A determined class international policy"!!”

So, in reality the argument for building Co-operatives is precisely, from a strategic perspective, the same as that in relation to carrying through a revolution in a single country, and attempting to hold on to that territory once achieved, despite the fact that this implies the need to accept reality, and to compromise. The idea that whether in a Workers' Co-operative or a Workers' State, it is possible to avoid the use of the best aspects of Capitalist Management, of Capitalist technique, of Capitalist organisation, or even the Capitalist Market is ridiculous, Ultra-Left childishness, typical of the petit bourgeois. It does not, as the view of the reactionary Utopians, or the Stalinists requires, mean turning this necessity into a virtue, into a principle of self-sufficiency.

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Proletarian Strategy - Part 4

The Bourgeois Content of Ultra-Left Orthodoxy

In Part 3, I demonstrated that the orthodox Ultra-Left opposition to Co-ops, was the same petit-bourgeois Ultra-Leftism against which Lenin had to argue in Russia, in relation to their need to develop the industry of the Workers State on the basis of the best, revolutionary elements of Capitalism, as the basis from which to both compete effectively, and from which the limitations of Capitalist production could be transcended, through the development of new Co-operative methods and systems. But, what is worse in the orthodox Ultra-Left opposition to Co-ops is the bourgeois ideology that actually underpins it. The implication is that the conditions in the industry had been achieved as a result of “union action”. But, as Marx and Engels point out such a notion is absurd. Trade Union action could only achieve what was compatible with the needs of Capital accumulation. To quote Engels again,

“The history of these Unions is a long series of defeats of the working-men, interrupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts naturally cannot alter the economic law according to which wages are determined by the relation between supply and demand in the labour market. Hence the Unions remain powerless against all great forces which influence this relation. In a commercial crisis the Union itself must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and in a time of considerable increase in the demand for labour, it cannot fix the rate of wages higher than would be reached spontaneously by the competition of the capitalists among themselves.”

Engels Condition of The Working Class in England p243

Just how powerless the unions were, just how secure those conditions were was demonstrated a few years later when those conditions were swept away, along with most of Fleet Street, as Capital simply rolled over the unions and established its operations in Wapping. But, the fundamental message here is bourgeois. What it is saying to workers is that their needs can be met by Trade Union action provided it is militant enough. But, for the reasons Marx and Engels set out that is nonsense. In fact, if the SWP had applied its logic consistently it would have seen that its argument made no sense. If a Co-op could not but act in the same way as a Capitalist firm because of the laws of Capital Accumulation, how could simple Trades Union action change those laws for the capitalist firms either? Either capital is forced to act that way, however much Trades Union opposition there is, or it is not. If it is not, then we are left with a theory that Capitalists act in a particular way because of their own subjective desires! That is Capitalists act because they are greedy or mean, or whatever, not because the economic laws of Capitalism force them to act that way. This later interpretation is the only one that can be derived from the comment,

“And workers' management of a commercial concern operating in that sea deprives the workers of the strength of union organisation directed against management...”

As for, “Co-operative self-management by workers will come. But, it can only realise its potential when the working class controls the economy and when planning for its own needs replaces production for profit.” then we would have to assume that workers self-management is a very long way away indeed! The replacement of Capitalist property ownership, and even the establishment of a Workers State is not at all synonymous with working class control of the economy (whatever that might actually mean) nor even with production based on planning for need rather than profit. The reality is that the market can only be replaced to the extent that society is able to find and develop real alternatives to it, and that is likely to be a very gradual process. It is one thing as Marx and Engels spoke about in relation to the Paris Commune to establish some kind of outline National Plan of priorities, but to actually plan the whole of production is a completely different matter. If the argument for Socialism rests solely on such a perspective then we are lost. Moreover, as Lenin himself pointed out in relation to the Russian experience,

“From the point of view of the “enlightened” European there is not much left for us to do to induce absolutely everyone to take not a passive, but an active part in cooperative operations. Strictly speaking, there is “only” one thing we have left to do and that is to make our people so “enlightened” that they understand all the advantages of everybody participating in the work of the cooperatives, and organizes participation. “only” the fact. There are now no other devices needed to advance to socialism. But to achieve this “only", there must be a veritable revolution—the entire people must go through a period of cultural development. Therefore, our rule must be: as little philosophizing and as few acrobatics as possible. In this respect NEP is an advance, because it is adjustable to the level of the most ordinary peasant and does not demand anything higher of him. But it will take a whole historical epoch to get the entire population into the work of the cooperatives through NEP. At best we can achieve this in one or two decades. Nevertheless, it will be a distinct historical epoch, and without this historical epoch, without universal literacy, without a proper degree of efficiency, without training the population sufficiently to acquire the habit of book reading, and without the material basis for this, without a certain sufficiency to safeguard against, say, bad harvests, famine, etc.—without this we shall not achieve our object. The thing now is to learn to combine the wide revolutionary range of action, the revolutionary enthusiasm which we have displayed, and displayed abundantly, and crowned with complete success—to learn to combine this with (I'm almost inclined to say) the ability to be an efficient and capable trader, which is quite enough to be a good cooperator. By ability to be a trader I mean the ability to be a cultured trader. Let those Russians, or peasants, who imagine that since they trade they are good traders, get that well into their heads. This does not follow that all. They do trade, but that is far from being cultured traders. They now trade in an Asiatic manner, but to be a good trader one must trade in the European manner. They are a whole epoch behind in that.”

I'll pass over this latter comment where Lenin is committing the cardinal sin, according to the SWP, of encouraging the Russian workers and peasants to learn to be good Capitalist traders, because the most important aspect of what Lenin says here is in relation to the need for the Russian workers themselves to learn to become themselves involved in running their enterprises, for which he says a whole epoch is required. Herein lay the problem, and at base it was one that affected the Bolsheviks generally. It is the question of timescale. The reality was that even in the most active, most developed of Workers' parties – the German SPD – actual involvement by workers was abysmal. SPD branches were dominated by a small number of activists. That was not unusual, other workers' parties, including the Labour Party were exactly the same. The same was true of the Trades Unions, and the Consumer co-ops. And, although the Russian Revolution was one of the greatest upheavals in history that involved millions of people, it did not involve the majority of Russian workers, who were themselves in any case, only a small minority of the Russian population. It was one thing to overthrow a despised, tyrannical system, it was another to build a replacement in which the majority of society was actively, and democratically involved. The reality is that workers were not excluded from control because of the rise of a bureaucracy, but that a bureaucracy arose because the majority of workers showed little interest in exercising control of the means of production, and in any case had no experience or developed skill to be able to do so.

The reality was that if production was not going to fall into complete chaos then decisions had to be made, and if the majority of workers were not interested and were not capable of making those decisions, then someone had to, and hence arises a bureaucracy. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does history, it was not going to wait for an “epoch”, or even two decades for workers to go through that “cultural revolution” that Lenin spoke of, in order to be able and willing to fulfil that function, and once a bureaucracy had become entrenched it was not going to encourage workers to fulfil that function anyway. Despite all the education and experience of workers in Western Europe, and the US, attendance at Trades Union meetings is at an all-time low. There is absolutely no reason to believe that workers are going to suddenly begin to demand the right to exercise such control, because the whole of their experience, and pressures of life tells them to do otherwise, to leave it up to someone else. That is all the more so the case when “Marxists” tell them that they should put off such aspirations until some time in the undefined future after the revolution.

If Socialism is to be possible, workers need to go through that process before not after the revolution. It is necessary for workers to begin to integrate the concept of control over their lives, into their daily experience and consciousness. There is really only one basis on which that is likely to happen, and that is if workers see a direct financial imperative to do so. That is, in becoming the owners of their means of production they are led on a daily basis to the need to make such decisions. To the extent that such experience can be generalised, once having learned to undertake such control at work, workers can also extend that concept to other aspects of their lives, in control of their housing and estates, and of the policing of those estates, for example. As Lenin says, for workers to learn these skills might take an epoch, but there is no time in the construction of Socialism for workers to simply learn it on the job. It is necessary for a long period of building such skills, of entrenching such ideas and creating such a consciousness as the fundamental basis of attempting to overturn property relations on an entire societal basis.

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Chinese Workers And The State - Part 5

Social Transformation

The 1917 Revolution in Russia, was a proletarian political revolution carried through with the support of a Peasant War. In that respect it was similar to the English Civil War. Both were premature revolutions carried through by political elites with the backing of a small, weak revolutionary class, and a large peasantry in rebellion against an oppressive autocratic regime. In both cases, the political leadership comes from a determined minority that has glimpsed the future destiny of the revolutionary class they represent.

Unfortunately, in neither case is that revolutionary class sufficiently developed, economically and socially powerful enough, or sufficiently conscious of its class interests, or historic role to be able to fulfil its destiny at that time. It can overthrow the old society, but cannot create a new one. Unable to rule politically in its own name, that function passes initially to the elite which acted as its spearhead, and then to the State itself, which rises up above the contending classes.

In China, a premature Proletarian Political Revolution is again carried through by a political elite that mobilises a large Peasantry through a Peasant War. Whereas in Russia this political elite commences the revolution in the honest belief that the forces it is setting in motion will assume the reigns of power – as did Cromwell – the experience of that revolution, and assumption of power by the bureaucratic state apparatus conveys the idea to those elites established in its image that the tasks of this revolution can only be accomplished by such an elite acting to control and manipulate the masses.

In this respect it is like the transformations carried through on behalf of the bourgeoisie in Germany, France and elsewhere by a bureaucratic state apparatus. In both these cases the lessons of the industrialisation in England are learned, and the perceived weakness of the bourgeoisie to efficiently carry through such a transformation is overcome by this bureaucratic state. In England, the Political Revolution is carried through by an elite on behalf of a revolutionary class, who subsequently lose power back to the old rulers.

The process of economic and social transformation, however, continues through a prolonged period of class struggle, during which the Capitalist forms of property have to prove their superiority over the feudal forms. Two hundred years pass between the initial Political Revolution, and the eventual economic and social domination of industrial Capital. But, once achieved the force of that dominance asserts its historical power. In the words of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto,

“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”

In fact, as Engels was to admit later at the time of this writing the only country to which this properly applied was England. But, the words here apply equally to France and Germany, and the United States, and later Japan in terms of the need to industrialise “..the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary” as Engels had put it. And this nature of the social transformation, of an economic and social transformation, from the beginning, by a bureaucratic State under the political domination of the old ruling class is what gives these transformations their specific character, and also explains the subsequent character of the Capitalist regimes established within them, regimes in which the State continued to play a more central, and directing role.

Where in England the bourgeois political revolution had given way to the restoration, and only after a long period of class struggle, and the eventual absorption of the old ruling class into the bourgeoisie, gives way once again to bourgeois political rule, in France and Germany under Louis Napoleon and Bismark there is no further restoration because the old ruling class in these countries is itself forced to carry through that transformation, via the bureaucratic state, on pain of their own extinction at the hands of British Capital.

In China as in Russia, the tasks of industrialisation are carried through by a bureaucratic State apparatus, but a bureaucratic state apparatus not of the old ruling class, but one that rests upon the social power of the revolutionary class, and the peasantry. The difference here with the transformations in France and Germany is that they sought only to effect an industrialisation as part of a bourgeois revolutionary economic and social transformation.

Both of these societies had reached a stage where such a transformation was not only possible, but overdue. Not as overdue as Engels believed, however, who mistakenly felt that the bourgeoisie was rising in Germany at the very moment when it was in the descendant in Britain! In both cases an existing exploiting class could effect a de facto alliance with the new exploiting class in order to bring that transformation about, as was happening by that time in Britain itself.

In Russia and China no such alliance between the existing ruling class, and the revolutionary class could be effected for the purpose of this transformation, precisely because the working-class is not an exploiting class. In conditions where these societies were barely capable of a bourgeois transformation, and rapid industrialisation – both societies would have likely succumbed to imperialist domination had their respective revolutions not occurred – it was not likely that the socialist transformation of these societies, which was the prospectus upon which they had been undertaken would be possible.

As Engels described this situation in his 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. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost. We have seen examples of this in recent times. We need only be reminded of the position taken in the last French provisional government by the representatives of the proletariat, though they represented only a very low level of proletarian development. Whoever can still look forward to official positions after having become familiar with the experiences of the February government — not to speak of our own noble German provisional governments and imperial regencies — is either foolish beyond measure, or at best pays only lip service to the extreme revolutionary party.”

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