Trotskyists and the state

Leon Trotsky and his followers did not develop their ideas on the state very much. They set themselves up as oppositionists to the Stalinist regime and that is fair enough not many would hold that against them for opposing Stalinism but yet their critique of the state is very silent and often absent from many Trotskyist critiques. For me the state and an analysis of it are key for understanding capitalism and the way forward. For all my time in the socialist party of England and Wales the state got a little bit of attention it was seen as a body of armed workers essentially and nothing more. The analysis of the state or the modern state by the socialist party is hugely out of date and in my view completely irrelevant in many ways. No longer is the state just a system of ruling class rule and order. It has developed and sunk itself into greater and greater depths. For me the socialist party’s analysis of the police and the army is deeply flawed and out of step with modern thinking. Many Trotskyists refer to Lenin’s state and revolution and in many ways it is an interesting text I swallowed it whole first time round and felt the state would wither away but why would this happen and how would it happen? The more anymore i think about I find it hugely unlikely the state will just simply wither away once it has become unnecessary in terms of Marxism anyway but why would it ? The state has an independent thought and strategy of its own and ultimately looks after its own whether it’s a capitalist or a workers state point is its still a state for an all intents and purposes. The nation state as a feature of capitalism is key it almost predates capitalism and has its origin in the rise of capitalism. As the old quote goes the state makes war and the war makes the state it plays a huge role in modern society and has spread beyond even Marx’s imagination now. We even see today the state within a state with spying and surveillance states appearing under capitalism. For me no Trotskyist group out there has any up to date critique on the modern state or have begin to scratch the surface. For me the state will play a huge part in many people’s politics in the coming years as capitalism fails to progress society and develop the means of production. The state will become more and more in conflict with its base and its system it represents. The state is an important political body which needs a serious discussion on inside and outside of Marxist circles. There is much to do and to think about before we even come to taking on the understanding of the state and what it means to us and Howe we go about removing as no society which base’s itself on equality for all can exist with an existence of a state. There can be no freedom with any state; we need to address the idea of a state and what it ultimately means for the masses. Communism for me is a class less society and as such a state less society. Building a workers state is something which never sat easy with me as is a body of oppression. Ok we may need to defend ourselves against counter revolutionary forces but after that an armed group of workers is no longer needed and must go as soon as possible in my opinion. The debate will go on I am sure.

Minimalist and Maximust programme

The difference between a minimalist and a maximualist program has separated Marxist parties for as long as it has existed. The difference between fighting for reforms under capitalism and offering your full programme for full power of a communist or socialist type are hugely different. Leon Trotsky outlined in his transitional programme the death agony of capitalism which I’m still studying to bring out conclusions and to reach an understanding as the current one I understand is the one lead by the vanguard party leading by the nose the workers to the final conclusion that society needs to be changed and that can only be carried out with mass independent socialite consciousness and the working class gaining power. I’ve been trying to get my head around this Trotskyist idea and I may be getting there but I still don’t quite understand how the fighting for better wages and better conditions under a trade union struggle eventually leads you to realising the need to over throw the current system. As I can see those who are the most militant in the trade unions fight very hard for their members and for themselves but ultimately does this lead to socialist or Marxist ideas? I don’t think so personally. As Lenin correctly stated trade union contiousness ness can only lead you so far. A revolutionary party a Marxist party is still needed to give workers those revolutionary ideas to change society which trade unions will never give. As Trotsky correctly writes in his chapter on The Minimum Program and the Transitional Program The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat. The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to another. The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bourgeoisie can still for a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense of national accumulations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc.), all of capital’s traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering on a paralysis of will. The “New Deal,” despite its first period of pretentious resoluteness, represents but a special form of political perplexity, possible only in a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in accumulating incalculable wealth. The present crisis, far from having run its full course, has already succeeded in showing that “New Deal” politics, like Popular Front politics in France, opens no new exit from the economic blind alley. International relations present no better picture. Under the increasing tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, and Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course, is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war. But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war than on the eve of 1914. All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. Of course Trotsky writes this on the verge of a world war and is right to write this but today in 2013 ? Are we on the verge of capitalist decay ? In some regards yes but in others no. In the East for example China has a opportunity to save capitalism if it wish’s it may not do and plunge the system into a huge long decline but the opportunities to save the system are there for sure. Reform or revolution the famous piece by Rosa Luxemburg is key to our understanding the ability for capitalism to survive is under estimated in my view. It cannot go on forever but it to out live its life and its ability to evolve cannot be under estimated eater. Mainly due to the lack of leadership in the working class but also the unprepared nature of the revolutionary Marxist movement. We cannot catch up history is already here. We must hastily learn from history in order not to make the same mistakes again.

Is a transitional programme still relevant today?

In the socialist party we have a basic programme of key transitional demands which we raise within the labour movement and at various times raise as key demands that workers can take up and take on and will lead them to the conclusion that there is a need to change society that is the basic outlook of a transitional demand. They are constantly changing as the situation and current consciousnesses changes too. I thought I’d look at what others are saying about a programme and the need for one and whether we are still right to hold to such demands as Marxists today. In the weekly worker the CPGB publication they take up the look at left unity and Nick Wrack’s contribution to the need for a new party of the left. As they go through this they look at the transitional programme parties on the revolutionary left claim to uphold and take a look at things. They write and I quote In terms of its fundamental propositions Marxism is extraordinarily simple. Marxism can be grasped by anyone. Marxism can be summed up by saying that the working class needs democracy in the state and its own organisations, that the whole of society must be run from below according to the principle of need, not profit. That is easy to understand. But in terms of building a Marxist party we must begin in a fundamentally different way. A Marxist party is not built on the basis of going out and getting thousands of signatures. Nor is it built through activity for the sake of activity. Nor is it built by smoothing over differences, fudging the 20% where we differ in favour of unity around the 80% where we agree (or some such other rotten formulation). The Marxist party is built top-down. It is built through the struggle for the correct theory and the correct politics. It is built around its programme. Not, it should be emphasised, the programme of warmed over social democracy. But the sort of minimum-maximum programme the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party had. In other words, not a confession of faith, but a statement of basic principles and a practical, testable, road map which can take us from the hell hole of capitalism to the high heavens of communism and human liberation. So Marxist parties must be built top-down, around a historically informed and fully theoretical programme. The CPGB has its Draft programme, and the word ‘draft’ is not used accidentally. It is there in order to make a very important point. We may have the name, Communist Party of Great Britain, but we are not a party. The word ‘party’ is derived from ‘part’: i.e., part of the class. And a Marxist party must by definition be based on the advanced part of the working class. At present the CPGB is simply one of many different groups on the left and, even if the existing left was to unite into single organisation, in itself that would not constitute a party in the genuine sense. Our Draft programme is actually what we bring to all unity projects. We do so not as an ultimatum, but as a contribution. For example, comrade Wrack says he agrees with much of it, but does not particularly like some of the language. Well, we are not precious about that. If he disagreed with its internationalism and the need for a pan-European strategy, then we would have a furious argument ... an argument that could continue and gain full clarity within the space of a single organisation. All we would demand is the unrestricted right to combat and defeat all forms of opportunism: egg, Stalinism, British nationalism, left economism, general strikism, pacifism, etc. So the Marxist party begins with the programme. Some people say that such an approach is sectarian, excludes anarchists, syndicalists and Labourite nostalgics, and is therefore bound to fail. Well, one of the advantages of studying history is that you can learn to avoid making the same mistakes again and again. However, far from providing only negative lessons, history also provides positive ones - which we must always treat critically, in context, and never mindlessly copy, of course. That said, if we apply the positive lessons of the past to our current political impasse then perhaps we can find a way forward that will bring victories instead of yet more heroic defeats. I am thinking in particular of the mass parties of social democracy and the unity symbolised by the Second International. Not the social democracy that treacherously voted for war credits in August 1914, but the social democracy that became a mass movement across the whole of Europe, to the point where in Germany it became a ‘state within a state’. A model that was applied in Russian conditions by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. It is a myth that Lenin ‘broke’ with the SPD model in 1914 or 1917. In fact, October 1917 was the vindication of the correctness of that model. We can argue about the particulars of the SPD and the RSDLP. But what is unarguable is that they were successful in organising the advanced part of the working class and through that not only in leading the mass of the working class, but other sections of the population too (crucially, in Russia, the peasantry). That success did not come from watering down principles, from fudging differences, from unity for the sake of unity. No, in the last analysis it came from the Marxist programme. I shall now turn to what frequently excuses and certainly explains the all too common rightism of the left. Whether it be the SWP’s Alex Callinicos, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s Sean Matgamna or Peter Taaffe of the socialist party , they all say that are guided by what they call the ‘transitional method’. The ‘transitional method’ is widely held on the left to be the highest achievement when it comes to programmatic demands. In fact, it represents a regression to a pre-Marxist conception of revolution. It certainly owes something to the anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin and general strikism. Anyway, I can well understand Leon Trotsky coming out with his Transitional programme in 1938. He knew that the world war was looming. He had seen what had happened in Spain. He knew that humanity faced the threat of fascist barbarism. But how many people were organised under the banner of the so-called Fourth International? It was smaller in global terms than the left is today in Britain. In the absence of real forces Trotsky turned to spontaneity. Out of desperation he proposed that if his comrades put forward ‘reasonable’ demands, such as resisting factory closures and pay cuts, then in the fight to realise those ‘reasonable’ demands the logic of struggle would take the working classes one step at a time from the politics of the defensive to the politics of the offensive. Through that process the working class would eventually find its way to power. That is basically what the much vaunted ‘transitional method’ amounts to. Here is the logic that says resisting cuts, fighting for pay demands, mobilising to save the NHS are revolutionary. Hence what the working class needs is not Marxist consciousness, not Marxist theory, not a Marxist programme, but protests, strikes, occupations. In a word, action. Of course, no Marxist would oppose resisting cuts, striking for pay demands or fighting to save the NHS. But we do emphasise consciousness and therefore polemics and the struggle of ideas. In many cases the ‘transitional method’ results in what I would call honest rightism. Nevertheless, even the most honest rightism is thoroughly elitist. So-called ‘ordinary people’ are treated as if the only thing that motivates them is wages, conditions and the NHS. The implication is that they are incapable of anything higher and therefore the members of the revolutionary sect, especially when they are enlodged in trade unions, reformist parties and protest campaigns, should lead them by the nose, should not confuse them with factional arguments, should keep any differences safely behind locked doors. Only the members of the elect are really aware of what is going on and where things are expected to go. As I say, I can understand why Trotsky put forward such a perspective in 1938. But it did not work, it will not work, it cannot work. No, we have tell the working class the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Sometimes that will involve difficult concepts, obscure references and fine nuances. That is why Marxists place such stress on theory. As Lenin once famously said, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” So we in the CPGB do not consider theory as some kind of hobby for intellectuals. The working class needs theory as much as the body needs food and drink. So, when it comes to the nature of the Soviet Union, this is no side issue. There are those who say it was just state capitalism. If that was the case, what happened in 1991? Did the USSR go from capitalism to capitalism? If so, what was all the fuss about? What about the ‘degenerate workers’ state’ theory. Was Stalin’s mass murder regime really an example of the working class in power? Was Brezhnev’s USSR really a ‘planned’ economy superior to capitalism? What about those who remain with the Stalinite tradition and say that China, North Korea and Cuba are conquests of the working class? Do such people have anything in common with Marxism apart from a few deracinated phrases and slogans? These and other questions will not only be asked by our class enemies. They will be asked by intelligent members of the working class and we must have full, frank and honest answers”. To this I would reply I agree with a lot of it but not all. I do think Trotsky’s transitional programme is still relevant today as it aims to raise workers political consciousnesses but I am still unconvinced it can lead to over throwing the system. As the piece above states it is a guide a way of leading workers by the nose but will it ultimately give them the confidence to go on and to start running society on socialist democratic lines? This awaits to be seen. I think as Marxists we put a lot of emphasis on building for demonstrations strikes and the like which is all well and good but we also must not loose sight of our eventual goal of fighting for the best reforms but still explaining to workers the truth that reforms under capitalism are only ever temporary. I like the weekly worker not for its so called bitchy comments about other sects but its approach to theory and understanding the process’s going on. Not just detailing what strikes have happened this week but detailing how we can go beyond that and what Marxism really means to us and the working class itself. Marxism is only ever a guide it’s not a set of actions we must carry out to fulfil socialism it’s a guide to action and theory is something we must always pay close attention too. I feel sometimes we who call ourselves Marxists today fail to really pay enough attention to theory as we ought to. Theory is hugely important and should not be dismissed as naval gazing as some comrades seem to think. Its important to arming ourselves and the working class with the ideas of Marx, Engel’s , Lenin and Trotsky for the future ahead. To learn the lessons and to avoid the mistakes of the past. With thanks and extracts from Jack Conrad’s piece at http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/961/left-unity-the-spirit-of-45

What I’d ask Trotsky if he was around today

Many people pour cold water on us in the socialist party for looking back and learning from the works and ideas of Leon Trotsky but I think personally he is as relevant as ever. Facing one of the deepest if not the longest economic crisis we’ve possibly ever known many working people will be looking for ideas and a explanation why this is happening and what can we do about it. Workers will naturally be drawn back to the ideas of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. There is so much I’d ask Trotsky if he was still alive today such as does he feel we are posing the right questions and raisin the correct slogans in the class struggle right now. His foresight to what was necessary at each time and at every stage. Trotsky was an outstanding Marxist and a very crucial person during the Russian revolution alongside Lenin was able to steer the revolution towards a successful end. But above all, Leon Trotsky was one of the greatest theoreticians of the workers' movement. If Karl Marx was the man of the millennium, then Leon Trotsky was undoubtedly, with Lenin, Friedrich Engel’s and Rosa Luxemburg, also one of the greatest figures of the millennium, and certainly of the 20th century. His ideas, his method of analysis, and the conclusions drawn from this, are as relevant today as in the past. TAKE TROTSKY'S FAMOUS theory of the permanent revolution, which brilliantly anticipated the class forces involved in the outcome of the Russian revolution. Russia prior to 1917 was a feudal or semi-feudal system which meant virtual slavery for the population. Like India today, the majority of the population were peasants who eked out an existence on narrow parcels of land while the urban working class had no rights and were ruthlessly exploited in rapidly developing industry. Russia had not completed the capitalist democratic revolution as had England, for instance, in the 16th century, and France in the 18th century. The main tasks of this revolution were the elimination of feudal and semi-feudal relations in the land, unification of the country, and the solution of the national question. It also involved the introduction of democracy, the right to vote, the election of a democratic parliament, a free press, and trade union rights for the working class. Last but not least, the completion of this revolution would free the economy from the domination of imperialism, particularly of Anglo-French imperialism which saw Russia as a virtual colony. Marxists do not idolise 'ancient texts' no matter how brilliant they might be. However, if a theory is very 'old' and yet it correctly foresees events and processes, it is the most modern of theories. And Trotsky's ideas are as applicable today for most of Africa, and for huge parts of Asia and Latin America, as they were for Russia more than 80 years ago. The capitalist democratic revolution has not been completed in big parts of the neo-colonial world. The landlords and capitalists are incapable of solving the even greater accumulation of problems which exist today compared with 1917. TROTSKY'S ANALYSIS OF the rise of the bureaucracy and the victory of the Stalinist counter-revolution is one of the treasures of humankind. Without this Marxists would have been groping in the dark to find a way forward. In his Diary In Exile, Trotsky summed up his contribution in the following fashion: "The work in which I am engaged now, despite its extremely insufficient and fragmentary nature, is the most important work of my life - more important than 1917, more important than the period of the civil war or any other. "For the sake of clarity I would put it this way. Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October revolution would still have taken place - on the condition that Lenin was present and in command. If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October revolution: the leadership of the Bolshevik Party would have prevented it from occurring - of this I have not the slightest doubt! If Lenin had not been in Petersburg, I doubt whether I could have managed to conquer the resistance of the Bolshevik leaders. The struggle with 'Trotskyism' (i.e. with the proletarian revolution) would have commenced in May 1917, and the outcome of the revolution would have been in question. But I repeat, granted the presence of Lenin, the October revolution would have been victorious anyway. The same could by and large be said of the civil war, although in its first period, especially at the time of the fall of Simbirsk and Kazan, Lenin wavered and was beset by doubts. But this was undoubtedly a passing mood which he probably never even admitted to anyone but me. "Thus I cannot speak of the 'indispensability' of my work, even about the period from 1917 to 1921. But now my work is 'indispensable' in the full sense of the word. There is no arrogance in this claim at all. The collapse of the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these Internationals is at all equipped to solve. The vicissitudes of my personal fate have confronted me with this problem and armed me with important experience in dealing with it. There is now no one except me to carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third International". (Diary in Exile, pp53-54) There is not an atom of personal arrogance let alone 'pessimism' in these lines. Trotsky was the first real dissident, together with the rest of the Left Opposition, to oppose Stalinism. They were the staunch defenders of workers' democracy against the Stalinist counter-revolution. Trotsky points out that the basic contradiction of capitalism is that the working class cannot buy back the full product of their labour, because they only receive a portion of this in the form of wages. However, capitalism overcomes this contradiction by ploughing the surplus back into industry. But this, in turn, leads to an even greater production of goods which the working class at a certain stage is incapable of buying back. The capitalist economists dispute this even, as Trotsky pointed out, in short-lived booms, such as the 1924-29 boom in Germany, when Werner Sombat proclaimed that capitalism had overcome its contradictions (on the eve of the 1929 Wall Street Crash). Trotsky was not without his faults and the socialist party never shy’s away from pointing these out he for example didn’t see the Stalinist soviet union living on past the 2nd war which in fact actually strengthened the Stalinist system. Of course, Trotsky wrote and worked in a different historical era to ourselves. Some of the issues he was compelled to deal with are no longer as burning for the working class. You will find in his writings this or that antiquated expression or an idea which does not appear immediately relevant to our world today. However, an amazing amount of what Trotsky wrote is extremely pertinent, a thousand times more relevant to serious workers looking for an explanation of economic, political and even historical phenomena, than anything else on offer today. Trotsky never had any fetish about organisational forms. He also opposed both ultra-leftism and opportunism. His ideas were never for the meeting room alone but were preparation to intervene wherever the working class is and win them to socialist and Marxist ideas. Following Trotsky's advice, members and supporters of Militant (now the Socialist Party) patiently worked within the Labour Party in Britain. The Labour Party, as with its cousins internationally, had a dual character. Sectarians of all stripes disputed this. They took the phrase of Lenin that the Labour Party was a 'bourgeois workers' party' and turned their backs on the Labour Party and the support it then enjoyed at bottom from the working class. There was not an atom of dialectical analysis in their approach. Right from the outset, the Labour Party had 'bourgeois' leaders in the sense that even those who claimed to be 'socialist' ultimately were not prepared to go beyond the framework of capitalism. Nevertheless, at its base the Labour Party was perceived by workers as 'their' party and its creation was a step forward from a class point of view of the proletariat in Britain. Moreover, it possessed democratic features which allowed Marxists to intervene, in the case of Militant, with great success. We were able to connect the ideas of Trotsky to youth and workers. Militant was the most successful Trotskyist organisation since the Left Opposition in the whole of Western Europe. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of workers were introduced to the basic ideas of Trotsky through the work of our organisation (now the Socialist Party). In Liverpool between 1983-87 we created a mass movement which shook the ruling class. We initiated and led the mighty anti-poll tax battle, with 34 of our comrades jailed, which ended in the defeat of the tax and the consignment of Thatcher to the rubbish heap of history. No other Trotskyist party in the advanced industrial world could claim such a record. While others are, in reality, abandoning Trotsky as no longer relevant to 'the modern world', we perceive that his ideas and methods are as vital, indeed more vital, to the struggles that are opening up. The new changed period will allow Marxism to reconnect to the working class, in the first instance, to its more developed layer, which will provide the backbone for the creation of new mass forces. The working class in Britain, for the first time in 100 years, in a mass sense has been politically beheaded by New Labour's move to a position analogous to that of the Democratic Party in the USA. This is why the Socialist Party in Britain calls for the creation of a new mass workers' party, while at the same time seeking to build its own forces within the working-class movement. We hail Trotsky as a great theoretician and leader of the working class but we do not merely acclaim past leaders. It is necessary for us, particularly the new generation of workers, to study the writings of Leon Trotsky alongside of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg but, above all, to seek to acquire his method which will allow us to create a mass Marxist force that will eradicate from the planet the scourge of capitalism and all that goes with it. Extracts taken from Peter Taaffe’s excellent the relevance of Trotsky today in socialism today http://www.socialismtoday.org/49/trotskys_ideas.html

In defence of the revolutionary party

In recent times there has been a sustained attack on the left notably the SWP and the crisis within that party but the SWP is not the left and their use of democratic centralism is alien to a lot of others on the left. I thought it was a good time to revisit democratic centralism and why the socialist party the party I’m a member of still use this today. Lenin one of the great revolutionaries did not fetishes over organisational types he considered democratic centralism to be the most democratic form of organisation but was open to other forms of organisation to given different circumstances. It is necessary to begin with a basic summary on the need for a party. This flows from the position of the working class as it develops in capitalist society. It is of course true that the working class is the most homogenous, united class through its role in production. In the transition from feudalism to capitalism the working class was dragooned, disciplined and organised in big industry; it is its objective position in industry which determines that the working class develops a collective consciousness. The petit bourgeois on the other hand is heterogeneous, scattered, with its upper layers tending to merge with the bourgeois and its lower layers forced! By monopolisation, etc., into the ranks of the proletariat. There is then, of course, the ruling class, divided into different sections: finance capital, industrial capital, heavy industry, light industry, etc. These broad categorisations of the classes in society, first formulated by Marx 150 years ago, retain all their validity today. But while the working class is much more homogenous than the petit bourgeois or middle class, it is still divided into many different layers: men and women, racial divisions, skilled and unskilled, young and old, etc. Class, Party and the Leadership THE BOURGEOIS, from the dawn of its rule, has skilfully learned to play on these divisions to perpetuate its rule. A party, particularly a revolutionary party, is designed to overcome these divisions, to unite the working class for common objectives, the struggle against capitalism, its eventual overthrow and its replacement with a socialist society. A party, including the most revolutionary party in history, the Bolshevik party, is not, however, an autonomous factor in history. It is dependent upon, and springs from, the working class. The relationship between the party, its leadership and the class has been a hotly disputed issue, right from the inception of scientific socialism that is Marxism, formulated by Marx and Engel’s. The dialectical interrelationship between the class, the party and its leadership was touched on by Trotsky in his History of the Russian Revolution. Writing about the party he states; "Without a guiding organisation toe energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. GIVEN THAT the necessity of a party is clear then what should be the character of this party? Marxism has answered, particularly after the experience of the revolutionary movement in Russia and the successful Russian revolution, that it should be a party that should possess special features which no bourgeois or petit bourgeois organisation, trend or party could possess. It should be a 'democratic centralist' organisation. Unfortunately this term has been partially discredited; the concept mangled and distorted by Stalinism and now recently the SWP. It has come to mean, for uninformed people, something entirely opposite to its original meaning. Seeking to discredit genuine Marxism the reformists, both the left as well as the right, link this idea to the grotesque caricature of socialism manifested in Stalinism. Moreover, the right-wing Labour leadership who usually hurl insults against the Marxists on the alleged undemocratic character of 'democratic centralism' themselves actually practice an extreme form of 'bureaucratic centralism', as the experience of the witch-hunt against Militant and others on the left in the Labour Party demonstrated. A REVOLUTIONARY party is not a debating club, let alone a debating circle, so beloved of the minuscule sects on the outskirts of the labour movement, it must, of course, be thoroughly democratic. Democracy is like oxygen for a genuine revolutionary party. Without the full freedom of discussion, genuine, comradely and fraternal debate, it would be incapable of correctly arming its members with an understanding of the current situation, and the demands and programme upon which it is necessary to intervene in the class struggle. Contrary to what our opponents have attempted to argue Militant, over 30 years, allowed debate, including oppositional ideas, at every level of our organisation. Even then there was a disquieting tendency of some, mainly those who became the minority, not to want to discuss different points of view. But that we possessed a relatively homogenous, united organisation flowed not from any powerful apparatus in the possession of the leadership, but came from genuine agreement on the basis of broad perspectives, the programme, the tactics of work in the mass organisations, etc. This agreement was only gained through discussion and debate within the ranks of the organisation. To listen to some of the sects who criticise the past record of our organisation and who light-mindedly delve into the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia it would be possible to draw a conclusion that the absence of organised tendencies, factions, etc. within the ranks of Militant over a protracted historical period was itself a symptom of an unhealthy internal regime. On the contrary, Trotsky commenting on the disarray in the ranks of his followers in France in the 1930s, who presented a spectacle very similar to organisations which claim to be Trotskyist' at this moment in time, comments: "An organisation that is smaller but unanimous can have enormous success with a correct policy, while an organisation which is torn by internal strife is condemned to rot." Flowing from democracy comes centralism and for the socialist party this is unity in action once an agreed line has been agreed with the majority of the membership. This is THE OTHER and vital aspect of the question, absolutely requisite for a revolutionary party, is that of centralism. It is that part of the formula of 'democratic centralism' which is most misunderstood, wilfully by the enemies of Marxism, and unconsciously even by those who sympathise with the Marxist and Trotskyist movement. It seems to smack, particularly in the light of Stalinism and of various Trotskyist organisations which imitate Stalinism, of a top-down, bureaucratic, 'leadership-dominated' organisation. But the need for a centralised party flows from the tasks which confront the working class in our epoch. The ruling class has concentrated in its hands not just the means of production - less than 300 firms on the planet dominate most of production, distribution and exchange of the world's goods - but enormous means of repression, both legally and physically, against any organised protest. This is particularly the case in Britain with the anti-trade union laws. The centralisation and concentration of capital, which has been taken to unprecedented lengths in the modern era, means that the overthrow of the ruling class is inconceivable without a centralised party capable of unifying the working class and acting decisively against the inevitable attempts of counter-revolution when the working class attempts to change society. IT IS not possible in a revolutionary organisation to have an attitude towards forms of organisation which are 'once and for all'. It is necessary, at some stages, to emphasise the need for democracy, discussion, debate, etc. Following a debate it is therefore necessary, without precluding further discussion, to proceed to action, to a degree of centralism, to a period of implementing decisions. Which predominates at each stage, the democratic or the centralist aspect, depends upon the concrete situation? "Truth is concrete"; this is the most important law of the dialectic. The 'mobile balance' between democracy and centralism is something which cannot be established a priori, but only on the basis of discussion and estimation of the concrete situation Leon Trotsky was once asked to give a definition of democratic centralism This is not a new question. Leon Trotsky was asked to give a "clear and exact formula on democratic centralism" which would preclude false interpretations or bureaucratic degeneration. He replied that he could not give, "such a formula on democratic centralism that 'once and for all' would eliminate misunderstandings and false interpretations. A party is an active organism. It develops in the struggle with outside obstacles and inner contradictions... The regime of a party does not fall ready make from the sky but is formed gradually in the struggle. A political line predominates over the regime. First of all is necessary to define strategic problems and tactical methods correctly in order to solve them. The organisational form should correspond to the strategy and tactic." Trotsky then makes a fundamental point: "Only a correct policy can guarantee a healthy party regime." Of course this does not automatically mean that if a party has a correct programme that its organisational methods will be correct. That is an issue for debate and discussion as to what emphasis should be given, to democracy or centralism, depending upon the different situations. A formula for democratic centralism must inevitably find a different expression in the parties of different countries and in different stages of development of one and the same party. "The equilibrium between democracy and centralism establishes itself in the actual struggle, at moments it is violated and then again re-established. The maturity of each member of the party expresses itself particularly in the fact that he does not demand from the party regime more than it can give. "He is a poor revolutionist who defines his attitude to the party by the individual fillips that he gets on the nose. It is necessary, of course, to fight against every individual mistake of the leadership, every injustice and the like. But it is necessary to estimate these 'injustices' and 'mistakes' not by themselves but in connection with the general development of the party both on a national and international scale. A correct judgement and a feeling for proportion in politics is an extremely important thing." [Leon Trotsky: On Democratic Centralism and the Regime (1937)] With extracts and quotes from Peter Taaffee general secretary of the socialist party of England and Wales on democratic Centralism http://www.marxist.net/namechange/nameframe.htm

Could socialism really work in the 21st century?

I was having a good debate the other day with a member at a local debating society I go to we were discussing the economic crisis and the mess we are in and I put forward my ideas of another world is possible a world run by the many for the many we got on to all topics such as what does taxing the rich really mean, who indeed are the rich are they those on 100 grand a year or is there far fewer of them. We all agreed that the working class’s pay far too much tax that was music to my socialist ears. But we got on to human nature an my friends idea that socialism could never work as people are naturally greedy and human nature would mean we all want more. I countered this by saying under a democratic socialist system there would be no need for crime, povety or greed as there would be enough to go around for us all to live comfortably. My friend said this will never happen as we always want more than our neighbour. This is the entrenched ideology of capitalism bourgeois ideas to want us to want more and more this is unnatural in my eyes. No one, of course, can give a blueprint of how socialism is going to work. But we can as Marxists work out which direction we are travelling in and the likely outcomes of such movements. "It's a nice idea but it will never happen" is one of the most common responses to the suggestion that it is in our interests to work towards building a socialist society. The assumption is that socialism will rely upon everybody being altruistic, sacrificing their own interests for those of others. But socialism would actually involve the majority of people recognising their common interests. People are too greedy This is a common objection to socialism, and suggests that, in socialism, some people would take more than their share of goods. Images are conjured up of people walking out of supermarkets carrying stockpiles of food—after all, isn't that what everyone would do if all goods were freely available? It may be what people would do in today's capitalist society, where what we need appears to be scarce because it is rationed by the payment of the wage. But if food were given away free in socialism, there would be no need to take more than you need. Because food will have been produced to satisfy society's needs, not for profit, it will be available on that basis. The current world food supply (let alone the potential supply) is enough to feed the global population Indeed, there is the potential to meet the broader range of human needs, in an environmentally sustainable way, if socialism were established. Once the insecurity of our current society is left behind, it would simply become pointless to take more than you needed. Who would do the dirty work? This is a common objection to the proposal that all work be contributed on a voluntary basis. Some people point to certain kinds of work that people might seek to avoid—such as cleaning out sewers, or mining. A more extreme form of the argument suggests that everyone would spend the whole day in bed if they were not forced to work. Humans throughout history have sought fulfillment through their work. If they have not enjoyed their work, it has not been through dislike of work in general but due to the particular purpose and conditions of the work that they have been forced to undertake. Work under socialism has the potential to be entirely different to capitalist employment. The most important reason for this is that unpleasant work could be organised far more efficiently than under capitalism and that all work would be organised so as to be as pleasant as possible. The purpose of work would be entirely different. Under capitalism, much of the work done is the work required by capitalism in order to perpetuate its own existence. In socialism, the only work that would need to be done would be that for directly meeting human needs. Indeed, interesting and pleasant work is itself a human need. And work that isn't in itself interesting and pleasant must be minimised or abolished. If a household gets a washing machine, you never hear the family members who used to do the laundry by hand complain that this "puts them out of work". But strangely enough, if a similar development occurs on a broader social scale it is seen as a serious problem—"unemployment"—which can only be solved by inventing more jobs for people to do. The fact is that most jobs under capitalism are either completely or partially unnecessary. Many of those that are necessary are performed by stressed people working long hours while others suffer poverty. In a sane society, the elimination of all these absurd jobs (not only those that produce or market ridiculous and unnecessary commodities, but the far larger number directly or indirectly involved in promoting and protecting the whole capitalist system) would reduce necessary tasks to such a trivial level that they could easily be taken care of voluntarily and cooperatively, eliminating the need for the whole apparatus of economic incentives and state enforcement. That economists now believe that in 20 years time, total world demand for all commodities could be met by 2% of the global population—and this in capitalist society!—suggests necessary work in socialist society could be so organised as to enable individuals to contribute no more than a few hours a week to the good of society. Waste, destruction and exploitation are the ultimate outcomes of the market economy and production for profit. The market develops and ‘regulates’ the economy through booms and slumps, with an inevitable tendency towards overproduction and overcapacity. As society moves towards socialism goods and services become directly produced to meet needs, not indirectly for a market based on an exchange to realise profit. At the early stage of socialism there will, of course, still be elements of capitalism left. Money will have to be used for a time but, unlike before, the material and human resources are there for a rapid advance towards a society – or more correctly, a world – based on the socialist principle: ‘From each according to his or her ability, to each according to their needs’. Many reasons are given for the fall of the planned if highly bureaucratic economy of the Soviet Union but It was not central planning as such that brought Stalinism to its knees. It was the absence of democracy, elected bodies and accountability, the prerequisites for a planned economy. The more the economies developed, the more acute became the crisis. In response, the bureaucracies themselves started to introduce ‘market-reforms’ which, in turn, accelerated the process of crisis and disintegration. Leon Trotsky was the first to explain how the ulcer of bureaucratism and totalitarianism worsens "the more the economy runs into the problem of quality, which slips out of the hands of a bureaucracy like a shadow. The Soviet products are as though branded with the grey label of indifference. Under a nationalised economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative – conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery". "Behind the question of quality stands a more complicated and grandiose problem which may be comprised in the concept of independent, technical and cultural creation. No new values can be created where a free conflict of ideas is impossible... Soviet democracy is not the demand of an abstract policy, still less an abstract moral. It has become a life-and-death need". (Revolution Betrayed, p247) At the centre of the struggle conducted by Trotsky and the Left Opposition was the restoration of workers’ democracy based on elected representatives subject to the right of recall and with officials’ wages brought down to the level of an average worker. The aim was "the gradual involvement of the entire working population without exception in the work of state administration and the systematic struggle for equality". Workers’ or socialist democracy was a condition for the development towards socialism. A planned economy requires the active participation of the mass of the working class to implement, check, regulate and make changes to the plan. In the absence of this democratic involvement the bureaucracy inevitably becomes an absolute fetter on further progress. The process of stagnation and decline that started to set in during the 1970s reflected the unsolvable contradictions between the nationalised economy and bureaucratic dictatorship. A socialist economy would for the first time give people, as producers and users, the chance to control every step of production, take initiatives and experiment without being strangled by profit-driven competition. This, together with research and testing, would make possible an economy based on equality and in harmony with nature. Why would people produce poor quality goods when they are producing to meet their own (and others) needs? Is the revolution we are talking about at all likely? Appearances would suggest not. The odds seem to be stacked against it. Indeed, when we put forward the idea, most people can scarcely believe we are serious. But most revolutions have been preceded by periods when most people were scoffing at the idea that things could ever change. There was a time when the idea of a capitalist society would have been dismissed as a hopeless utopian dream. To a peasant living in feudal society, the idea of radical change would appear as hopeless as it may appear to you now. To them, feudalism would have appeared as eternal and unchanging and unchangeable as capitalism appears to us now. In Europe, when capitalism was relatively young, the idea of workers working an eight hour day with a weekend would have appeared hopelessly utopian. In the past in countries where everybody now has a vote, there was a time when the idea was scorned and violently opposed. So we're not too surprised that people find it difficult to take our ideas on board. of course. Yet, despite the many discouraging trends in the world, there are some encouraging signs, not least of which is the widespread disillusionment with previous false alternatives. Fewer and fewer people are bothering to vote in elections, for example, correctly realising that it will have little effect on their everyday lives at this stage even TUSC is facing difficulties due to this widespread apathy. We have the ability to change things if we act together. The power to transform society lies in the hands of those who create everything—the working class. This is the source of our power, should we eventually use it. The power not to make a few reforms, but to change the whole system, to make a social revolution.

Learning from trotsky’s transitional programme

Many people will be unfamiliar with Leon Trotsky’s Transitional programme which he set out in the 30’s which Trotskyist parties across the world worth their salt have looked to base their programme on. The Socialist party formally Militant Labour and part of the CWI the Committee for Workers International which I’m a member of would claim to look towards and formulate a transitional programme which can fit to the current consciousness of the working class at a given period.

Trotsky described the situation as thus
The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.

Which still till this day is absolutely bang on the money, the leadership of the working class is at best asleep at worst in the pockets of the boss’s and the capitalist class. Trotsky made many points in his original transitional programme and by no means meant it to be a blueprint which to follow but any Marxist worth his or her salt in today’s society will recognise the need to bridge the gap between current consciousness and where we need to be heading. Trotsky in his day recognised this too with the gap between the minimum programmes
It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.


Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimum program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum program which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum program no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday specifying. The Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and the raising of he masses’ living standards; when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state.
The strategic task of the CWI lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.


As Trotsky says we fight for every reform and defend all the gains of the working class but look to go a lot lot further than just defending reforms won in the past.

The CWI does not discard the program of the old “minimal” demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers. But it carries on this day-to-day work within the framework of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary perspective. Insofar as the old, partial, “minimal” demands of the masses clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism – and this occurs at each step – the CWI advances a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old “minimal program” is superseded by the transitional program, the task of which lies in systematic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution.

As the socialist party we not only use Trotsky’s transitional programme we actively look to learn and develop it to discover by living and interacting with day to day struggles of the working class able to use our Marxist theory to develop a understanding as to which demands are reasonable at this time to put forward which raise consciousness but also look to move the working c lass forward in its pursuit of power and the eventual over throw of the current exploitative system of capitalism.

Remembering Leon Trotsky one of the greatest class fighters of all time

Down the years people have stood out against oppression and exploitation including the likes of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Lenin, Robert Owen George Orwell and many more to mention here but I would like to focus on Leon Trotsky.
A comrade born into a middle class environment dedicated his whole life to struggle for ordinary poor people and his life story featured in my life by Leon Trotsky highlights exactly this. The struggles that Trotsky took up was a never ending battle with people who he opposed. Trotsky didn’t oppose people for the sake of it he opposed them on principle and never ever let his principles drop until his death in 1940 at the hands of the Stalinist regime.

Leon Trotsky, the greatest living revolutionary of the time, was murdered by Josef Stalin's hit man Ramón Mercader in 1940. Previous attempts on Trotsky's life had failed. But this time a fatal blow from an ice-pick successfully destroyed the 'brain' of the working class and the symbol of implacable opposition to capitalism and to totalitarian Stalinism.
This event, celebrated in the Kremlin by Stalin and the bureaucratic elite he represented, also brought joy to the capitalist governments of Europe, America and the world. At the time of the notorious Moscow Trials, which laid the basis for Trotsky's murder, Winston Churchill said to the Russian ambassador in Britain: "I've kept an eye on his activities for some time. He's Russia's evil genius, and it is a very good thing that Stalin has got even with him."
If by killing Trotsky they thought they could destroy his ideas they were profoundly mistaken. For succeeding generations, when the most politically aware layers have moved into struggle against capitalism and Stalinism, they looked for explanation and inspiration in the works of Trotsky. Even in the post-1989 period of ideological counter-revolution his ideas still proved attractive.
Now, confronted by the worst economic crisis of capitalism since the 1930s and the resulting inevitable mass revolt of the working class and poor, the ideologues of capitalism fear the influence of the ideas of Trotsky. They are conscious, or at least half conscious, that figures like Che Guevara, seen as fighting for socialism and national liberation while opposing the Stalinist bureaucracy, and Leon Trotsky will be looked towards. Thus a campaign to discredit Trotsky is necessary. This is the purpose of books like those of Robert Service, reviewed in The Socialist, and others that have been produced in the last year.

Trotsky, along with most of his family and the heroic generation he represented, was assassinated by Stalin. But nevertheless Service seeks to create the unbelievable impression that Trotsky is a blood-brother of Stalin and the system of bureaucratic terror Stalin represented. For Service and his ilk, like Stalinism, Trotsky's ideas are also an 'outgrowth' of Bolshevism which was 'inherently' totalitarian and authoritarian in character. This, of course, is a gross slander against the Bolshevik party Lenin led, the most democratic party of workers in history, which led the Russian Revolution. Stalinism, with its totalitarian methods (including the wiping out of the Bolshevik party itself) rather than being a continuation of Bolshevism represented its negation.
Stalinism cannot act as a pole of attraction, as it did for instance in the 1930s and, to some extent, in the immediate period after 1945. Then a new generation moving into struggle was, unlike today, largely ignorant of the crimes of Stalinism. In this new explosive period Trotsky can provide a way forward through his heroic struggle for workers' democracy and his method of analysis, not just on the vital issue of Stalinism, but also on the general struggles of the working class today.
This does not mean that Trotsky was 'infallible', no more than were Marx, Engels and Lenin. But he was more correct, sometimes spectacularly so, on the major issues which confronted the workers' movement in his day. Witness his colossal contribution through his dissection of fascism in the 1930s. Even then he was prepared to openly correct his earlier comments on 'fascism' from the 1920s when it was a new phenomenon.
Then, with a broad brush, even Trotsky tended to describe dictatorial regimes - like that of Primo de Rivera in Spain - as 'fascist'. Later he recognised that this was mistaken and gave a much more precise definition of fascism, which annihilated workers' organisations, and its differences with military bonapartist regimes, which, although reactionary, had not managed to destroy all democratic rights and organisations.
But Trotsky's ideas are 'outdated', it is argued. This is the refrain of the professors and defenders of the present system. 'Trotskyism' is, in fact, a modern manifestation of the ideas of Marx.
From its inception, the hirelings of capitalism tried to imply that Marxism is inapplicable to 'democratic' societies, particularly after the experience of the 20th century.
If Marxism is so 'outdated' why was it possible that we, the Marxists, better understood the workings of the system of capitalism than the defenders of the system themselves? They argued, through the mouthpiece of Francis Fukuyama, that the "end of history" had arrived. The Wall Street Journal declared in 1990 following the collapse of Stalinism that: "We (capitalism) won".
Marxists, of course, recognised that the liquidation of the planned economy, flowing from the collapse of the totalitarian system that existed, was a historic defeat for the working class. Economically at least, the planned economies of Russia and Eastern Europe, despite the drag of the bureaucracy, was a point of reference, a glimpse of what could have been possible on the basis of workers' democracy.
Many 'Marxists' were either in denial of the earth-shattering event of Stalinism's collapse, while others evacuated the field of struggle. The CWI understood that while it was a defeat, in the main of an ideological character in the first instance, it nevertheless was not on the lines of the destruction of the workers' organisations by fascism in the 1930s.
We predicted, virtually alone apart from a handful of capitalist commentators, such as Nouriel Robin, who arrived at the same conclusions empirically, that the very methods which boosted capitalism following the collapse of Stalinism would savagely recoil on the system at a certain stage. The colossal injection of credit, fictitious capital, led to the biggest economic bubble in history.
In 1987, following the collapse of Stalinism, we said, that by using the reserves of Germany and Japan, capitalism could temporarily find a way out. However in 2007 we said that the system would go into a deep crisis. And so it has proved to be. Our analysis was not based, as it is with the economic witch doctors of capitalism on alchemy, but on a scientific analysis of their system. This in turn is reliant on the approach of Trotsky which was also based upon the methods of Marx.

, the capitalist system is based upon production for profit for a handful of millionaires, multimillionaires and billionaires - economic plutocrats - and not social need. The ultimate contradiction of the system is that the working class cannot buy back the full value of what it produces. This arises from the fact that the working class only receives a share of the value it creates in the form of wages, the surplus Marx described as 'unpaid labour'. The system can go ahead so long as this surplus is productively invested into industry, science and technique - the means of production.
However this situation at a certain stage develops into a crisis, resulting in the overproduction of both 'consumer' goods and capital goods. The very idea of 'overproduction' would have been seen as absurd in all previous economic systems, in a world of dire poverty and need. But the main motive force of this system is profits not human need. The struggle over the surplus is the catalyst for a programme to decrease wages and the share of wealth that the working class receives.
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating". Every day, almost, confirmation of the analysis of Marxism can be found in the press.


Marx's criticism of capitalism, stubbornly defended by Trotsky, was very simple. If the system can deliver the basics of jobs, shelter, food, the abolition of war and racism, the overcoming of national divisions, etc, then it will maintain itself. But the essence, surely, of the current situation of world capitalism is that it is incapable of solving even the basic needs of humankind, particularly for the two thirds living in the neo-colonial countries.
This was summed up by the manifesto of the previous Haitian president, Aristide, who pledged to abolish the "obscene poverty" which affected his country but, after his assumption to power, replaced it with "acceptable poverty"! Not even this was achieved as the catastrophic situation following the earthquake in Haiti demonstrates today.
Trotsky's idea of the 'permanent revolution' retains its validity for countries in the neo-colonial world. This holds that the democratic revolution in the modern era cannot, ironically, be carried through by the capitalists. The tasks of land reform, a real parliament and democracy, freedom from the economic and political shackles of imperialism are impossible for the weak ruling classes in these countries and regions.
Only the working class in alliance with the poor peasantry is capable of completing the national democratic revolution. But then it has to secure its victory by going over to the tasks of socialism both on the national sphere and internationally. This was the effect of the Russian Revolution which eliminated landlordism and capitalism but also provoked a revolutionary wave worldwide.
But cynics say "you'll end with some kind of bloody dictatorship" as in Russia. This is a lie. Russia in 1917 was a beacon, not only for planning and socialism, but for spreading workers' democracy to the masses worldwide. Stalinism flowed, not from the Russian Revolution in its initial period, but from its isolation. Some, like Service, argue that Trotsky, if he had been victorious against Stalin, would have established the same 'personal power' as that ultimately established by Stalin.
This begs the question that Trotsky, given the isolation of the Russian Revolution, the consequent rise of the bureaucracy and destruction of workers' democracy, could have taken the place of Stalin without violating his democratic and socialist programme both for Russia and internationally. Incredibly, some Marxists go further today and argue that Trotsky should have taken power when it was offered to him by Antonov-Ovseyenko the chief commissar of the Red Army in the 1920s.
After all, Trotsky at that time enjoyed immense authority, much greater than Stalin, with the Red Army, not only amongst the ranks, but also in the upper echelons of the officers who had fought with him in the civil war and defeated the 21 armies of imperialism.
But Trotsky understood that by accepting 'power' from this source he would have ultimately become a prisoner of perhaps a worse 'military bureaucracy' which would have inevitably developed given the isolation of the Russian Revolution at the time.
This demonstrates that Trotsky understood, as Marx, Engels and Lenin did, and that it is not through manoeuvres, cliques or alleged coups that socialism and Marxism will grow. It is only by basing ourselves upon the consciousness of the working class - its political understanding at each stage - and attempting to take that forward with a clear programme, slogans and organisation that socialism and Marxism can genuinely grow. The CWI, for instance, did fall back after the collapse of Stalinism and particularly with the liquidation of the planned economy. It could not be otherwise given the orgies of capitalist propaganda which flowed from this.
However, the Socialist Party and the CWI maintained the democratic, socialist banner of Trotsky, not without experiencing opportunist splits or ultra-left ones. This is not unusual in a period such as we have been through. Lenin and Trotsky were engaged in similar struggles in the period between 1907 and 1911. But inevitably, as we foresaw, capitalism would break down and usher in a new period. Political struggle, not just during the high tides of working-class movements but also in periods of retreat, is necessary in order to prepare for future, mighty events.

What are the lessons for today? There is an urgent need to create a new mass force that can gather together the struggles of the working class both on an industrial plane but also in the political arena itself. This requires the 'dual task' that the CWI set itself in the early 1990s of fighting for the rehabilitation of the ideas of socialism for the mass movement and of maintaining the clear programme of Marxism-Trotskyism.
We are in one of the most explosive periods in history. If the economic crisis has proved 'contagious', spreading to one country after another, how much more will socialism spread? Globalisation has created the basis for this to an extent unimagined by Marx himself. In the Vietnamese revolution, imperialism developed the theory of the 'domino' effect, which held that if one country was lost to capitalism, there would be a similar collapse throughout south-east Asia. To some extent this was borne out.



with extracts from the socialist party's website www.socialist party.org.uk

The rellevance of Trotsky's transitional programme today

In 1938 one of the greatest revolutionary pieces was written by Leon Trotsky. His idea of a programme that can bridge the gap between the current stand point and socialism which is the end goal a class less society based on the needs of the mass's over the profits of a select few.

Here unfolds before us in all its richness the application of the method of Marxism to the historical tasks of the workers' movement. It was written in 1938 in preparation for the Second World War and its revolutionary consequences for the working class worldwide.

But the approach adopted - despite some of the demands not yet being fully applicable today in all situations - is very 'modern' and relevant to the struggles of the workers' movements today.

While it is described as a 'programme', it is not strictly this. It does, in fact, combine programmatic demands of the most important kind with necessary comment, points on perspectives for capitalism and the labour movement which could have been written today.

Take Trotsky's characterisation of the capitalists in 1938 who were "tobogganing towards disaster with their eyes closed".

Is this not an apt description of the capitalists and their spokespersons and commentators who virtually, to a man and woman, hurtled towards the current economic crisis "with their eyes closed"?

Capitalists fall out over crisis
A few capitalist commentators, such as Nouriel Roubini, arrived empirically at the same conclusions as the Socialist Party and the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) that a serious crisis loomed.

But they, alongside Marxists, were considered to be 'anachronisms' in the era of the neo-liberal paradigm. Capitalism - based on production for profit and not need - was the best system possible, described by Francis Fukuyama as the "End of History".

Now, faced with the greatest economic crisis for 70 years - the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, says it is the worst since the First World War - the capitalists swing violently from one ineffective short-term expedient to another.

Fearful of a repetition of the 1930s 'Great Depression', capitalist governments bailed out the banks and the financial system in a colossal exercise in 'state capitalism'.

This represented in the US, Britain and elsewhere de facto nationalisation of big sections of the banking sector. It was a state rescue of the debts of failed private financial moguls.

This then became a burden on the state and, indirectly, on the masses, which is now being paid for with massive cuts, wage freezes and a rise in unemployment, with a tendency for this to become permanent.



The Transitional Programme was written by Trotsky in 1938, in preparation for the coming world war and the social upheavals which would result from this.

In the whole preceding period, and particularly after the victory of Hitlerite fascism in Germany, Trotsky had predicted the inevitability of the Second World War.

Out of the ashes of this world conflagration would come an irresistible revolutionary uprising of the working class in the capitalist states against imperialist barbarism which would be paralleled by the revolt of the Russian workers against the monstrous regime of Stalinism.

Trotsky anticipated that the revolutionary wave which would issue from the war would even put in the shade the revolutionary convulsions which followed the First World War and the victory of the working class in Russia in 1917.

This in turn would shatter the old organisations of the working class - "not one stone upon another of the old Internationals would be left standing" - out of which would crystallise new mass revolutionary organisations and a new mass Fourth International.

The Transitional Programme was conceived as the means of creating and arming mass organisations.

There were not a few, then and today, who dismissed this prognosis, together with the transitional programme, as an example of Trotsky's 'revolutionary exaggeration'.

And yet Trotsky's perspective was in one respect borne out to an even greater extent than even he could have foreseen. From 1943 to 1947 a revolutionary wave swept over Europe which threatened the rule of capital.

The mere announcement that Mussolini had been replaced by Badoglio - Lucifer for Satan - by the Fascist Grand Council in 1943 was enough to bring millions of Italian workers out onto the streets.

This opened the floodgates of revolution in Italy. Similarly, the French workers rose in Paris in 1944 to smash the Nazi occupation forces while the troops of American imperialism and de Gaulle's 'Free French' were 50 miles from Paris.

Fearing a new version of the Paris Commune, de Gaulle was rushed to Paris to be filmed by the news cameras, thus fostering the legend that he was the 'liberator' of the city.

In Britain also, the conviction of workers, particularly the troops, to never again return to the mass unemployment and misery of the 1930s swept the Labour government to power in 1945.

In Africa, Asia and Latin America the colonial peoples set in motion a movement which resulted in the retreat of imperialism from at least direct domination of these areas.

In Eastern Europe also, revolutionary uprisings followed the flight of the quisling capitalists - who had collaborated with the Nazi invaders - and the advance of the Red Army.

But even the most revolutionary theory cannot anticipate all developments. Trotsky did not foresee, and indeed, could not foresee, that the social democratic and Stalinist leaders would be able, in the immediate aftermath of the war, to provide the necessary breathing space for capitalism to recover from the devastation.

Capitalism was saved in Western Europe by the social democratic and Stalinist leaders who entered capitalist governments and undertook to rescue the system from collapse.

In Italy the Stalinists and socialists entered a series of popular front governments, even attempting to screen King Victor Emmanuel, Mussolini's benefactor, from the anger of the masses.

Their French cousins did the same, with 'Communist' ministers like Maurice Thorez sitting in the government that bombed Madagascar and re-occupied Indochina (later Vietnam), which in turn set in train the 30-year horror of the Vietnam war.

The social-democratic and Stalinist leaders laid the political preconditions for the recovery of capitalism from the devastation of the war. From 1947 onwards the conditions sketched out by Trotsky were thus not present, in the advanced capitalist world at least.

Trotsky had spoken and written about the incapacity of capitalism to give large-scale or lasting reforms. The struggle for reforms, and even to defend the gains of the past, was bound up with the idea of socialist revolution, he maintained.

But the beginnings of the world upswing - the causes of which have been sketched out many times by the Marxists in Britain - allowed significant concessions to be granted to the working class.

Twenty per cent of industry was nationalised in Britain; true, only those industries which had been ruined by the capitalists, who received lavish compensation into the bargain.

The National Health Service, one of the most important reforms, was introduced, which put hospital and health care in reach of millions for the first time.

Similar reforms were introduced in education, social services, housing, etc. Undoubtedly, the absolute living standards of the working class began to rise (one of the factors being a big increase in overtime working and women going out to work).

Rather than undermining the reformist leadership of the mass workers' organisations this led to a temporary consolidation of their position.

Leon Trotsky also wrote during the 1930s' crisis: "The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat." However, the difference today and then is that it is not just a crisis of leadership that we face but also of organisation, or a lack of it of the working class, as well as a clear programme.

This is a consequence of the move towards the right in the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism in the early 1990s by the leadership of the workers' parties - such as the Labour Party in Britain - and the trade union leadership.

Socialism was relegated to the margins and even the class struggle was conjured away by the 'miracle' of the 1990s' boom until its exhaustion in 2007.

The present economic, social and political situation is unprecedented in its scope.

Never in history has the gap - the 'scissors' - between the objective situation of capitalism in crisis and the outlook of the working class, its absence of organisation, particularly political mass parties, been so evident.

Given the relentless propaganda barrage, the reality of neo-liberal policies over 30 years and the absence of a political and economic alternative, it is inevitable that there is still, despite the severity of the crash, a residual acquiescence to the 'market', even amongst the working class.

Many are stunned by the economic collapse. There is even a lingering view amongst many workers that the present crisis is temporary, that it will all be over soon and we can then return to the sunny, economic uplands.

This is reinforced by right-wing, timid trade union leaders who seek to hold back the legitimate class anger of workers. Therefore, while demanding a democratic, socialist planned economy, as a crowning idea in the programme of socialists and Marxists, it is necessary to put forward fighting transitional demands in the current situation.

This is vital if the confidence of the working class is to be built for the trials ahead.

In pre-1914 social democracy, such an approach - the transitional method - was considered unnecessary. Its programme was divided between a maximum programme, the idea of socialism, and a minimum day-to-day programme.

That decisively changed with the onset of the First World War which led to the revolutionary explosions in Russia and the mass struggles and revolutionary waves which detonated in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution throughout Europe and the world.

In this changed situation, the struggle for basic reforms and even the defence of past gains came up directly against the limits of the system of capitalism itself.

The Bolsheviks therefore formulated a transitional programme as a bridge - taking into account the day-to-day demands of the working class - proceeding from the existing level of consciousness to the idea of the socialist revolution.

This was necessary even during the Russian revolution because of the differing and changing outlooks of the different sections of the working class. This was summed up in Lenin's wonderful pamphlet, 'The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Avoid It'.

Following in Lenin's footsteps, Trotsky formulated for the revolutionary Fourth International the Transitional Programme: 'The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International'.

But today, even in France, which with Greece is still politically in the vanguard of the workers' movement in Europe, there are important differences in the outlook of the French working class between 1968 and now.

Paradoxically, the economic situation is far worse for capitalism today than it was in 1968 when the greatest general strike in history took place against the background of a continuing boom.

Then, there was a broad socialist and even a revolutionary consciousness amongst workers and students. Given what has transpired in the last three decades combined with the capitulation of the leaders of the workers' organisations to capitalism, the mood is initially bound to lag behind that of 1968.

There is a mixed outlook and political confusion.

There is, undoubtedly, generalised bitter class hatred throughout the advanced capitalist countries for those who are seen as the main authors of the present economic catastrophe, namely the financiers and bankers.

Semi-public trials have unfolded in the British parliament and US Congress. But this has not as yet developed into a broad, pronounced anti-capitalist consciousness.

It is therefore necessary to take up the partial demands of the working class both at the level of wages and conditions but also involving governmental action or inaction.

The capitalists have allowed the state to step in to rescue them through massive bailouts. They can accept state rescue, so long as it is then run completely along capitalist lines and with the prospect of returning the 'nationalised' industries in the future to the very same private interests which ruined them in the first place.

Consequently, even the demand for nationalisation is not as popular as in previous periods. However, through experience, this idea has gained support in Greece as the banks, financiers and bond markets are seen as having brought the country to its knees.

But experience of partial nationalisation in Britain and de facto in the US has perhaps temporarily alienated mass public opinion. The boards of these partially nationalised companies remain unreconstructedly capitalist in character, for example the payment of large bonuses to the top bankers who still continue to run them.

There were no celebrations when the state stepped in similar to those which greeted the taking over of the mines in 1948 by the Labour government of the time, with the flying of red flags and big hopes of a better future for the working class.

Northern Rock's state takeover was 'celebrated' with increased repossessions of homes, the sacking of thousands of workers and lavish bonuses for the capitalist crew who remain in charge of this and other banks.

This is a form of state capitalism, not a step in the direction of socialism, as advocated by even reformist socialists in the Labour Party in the past.

The need for a transitional programme in this era arises from the mixed consciousness of working-class people. This consciousness will be shaken and changed by the march of events.

But the development of a rounded-out socialist consciousness, firstly of the most politically developed layers and then of the mass of the working class, can also be enormously facilitated by a transitional approach and programme.

This provides a bridge from the consciousness of working people today to the idea of socialist change. Sectarians have no need for such a bridge because they have no intention of passing over from the study, armchair or sideline to engage with the working class and, together with it, helping to change consciousness and increasing identification with socialism.

We have entered an entirely new period for the working class of Britain, Europe and the world. Obama in the US and Brown's New Labour government managed to put a partial cushion under capitalism through the stimulus programmes.

But this in turn, as we have now seen, has created a new problem: 'sovereign debt'. The world economy will consequently experience anaemic growth with the stubborn maintenance of mass unemployment.

This, like fatty tissue in the body, is a symptom of a declining organism. Capitalism, however, will not disappear from the scene of history automatically.

It is necessary to forge a powerful mass weapon which can provide the helping hand for this failed system to make way for socialism.

Without such an approach, there is the danger that it will not be immediately evident to working people, even faced with economic catastrophe, that socialism is the alternative.

Indeed, because a mass socialist alternative and party has not yet been established, the far right has been able to occupy the political vacuum in a number of countries in Europe.

It is necessary to combat the far right but also to skilfully use events to make the case for socialism to working-class people.

In the car industry, for instance, where wages were slashed at the beginning of the crisis due to mass layoffs and short-time working, there was an instinctive understanding by workers that there was 'no market' for their present products.

But, given the high technique and skill that exists, it would take very little to convert the car industry, faced with massive overproduction and a glut, to the production of useful goods, including green, environmentally-friendly vehicles.

These are urgently needed for the world's population, in the context of a sustainable, environmentally-friendly transport system. Such a switch in production was achieved at the outbreak of the Second World War - in this case from peaceful production to products for war.

It would be much easier today to switch production to environmentally friendly and useful goods.

The gap between the increasingly worsening objective situation and the consciousness of the working class will close in the next period. Events - and explosive events at that - will help to ensure this.

On the edge of an abyss, the mass of workers will confront the capitalist system - sometimes without a clear idea of what can be put in its place. The journey to a socialist and revolutionary consciousness can, however, be shortened considerably if the working class embraces the transitional method and a transitional programme linking day-to-day struggles with the idea of socialism.

Learning to think dialectically

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is, however, to change it." (Marx:‘Theses on Feuerbach’)

Was one of the most well known sayings by Karl Marx one of the greatest thinkers we've ever known.

I thought i'd look at how we look at things and the nature in which we do. Of course we are aware as socialists that in society we have two major class's at play. The ruling class who look to make their position permenant and continue to drive for profit.
There is also the working class which the majority of us who work for a living are and sell our labour power to liv e. The wealth that is created by this is creamed off by the ruling capitalist class.

Every ruling class throughout history has sought to give its regime the stamp of permanence. Never mind that there have been many forms of class rule including slavery and feudalism, today’s smug apologists for capitalism believe their way of running society is best and represents the Everest of achievement.

Tony Blair has sneeringly denounced Marxism as "an outmoded sectarian dogma." His sole contribution to philosophy has been to bestow credit on Anthony Gidden’s Third Way theory – the very old and discredited idea that there can be a middle way between the market and a planned economy. Most capitalist leaders believe they don’t require a philosophy. Making money is all that matters and they embrace the idea that if it works, it’s good. They are largely empirical in their approach, responding pragmatically to new challenges and rarely bothering to understand the relationship and connections between policies and events, cause and effect. In the spheres of politics and economics, theirs is the complacent philosophy of thinking that what has gone on before will continue largely unchanged into the future.

In the 1990s they were sure the dotcom boom would just keep on growing. When it crashed they were astonished, but learning nothing, scratched their heads, said they’d predicted it all along, then went back to the comfort-blanket of believing capitalism would get better again.


But as Marxists we look and see things differnt. We look at the world dialecticaly that everything is constantly changing and nothing ever stays the same. We look at what has created a situation to get to a certain point and where it is going next. We do not see things in their isolation as capitalists do where they see things in their moment as simply just being. We as materailists look at the differences and how that moment came into being.

Dialectical materialism, the basis of Marxist philosophy is still the most modern method of thought that exists.

As Leon Trotsky observed in Marxism in our Time: "…if the theory correctly estimates the course of development and foresees the future better than other theories, it remains the most advanced theory of our time, be it even scores of years old."

Marxism is the science of perspectives - looking forward to anticipate how society will develop - using its method of dialectical materialism to unravel the complex processes of historical development.

It endeavors to teach the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself as a class. Dialectical Materialism – the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought – was and remains a revolutionary philosophy, challenging capitalism in every sphere and substituting science for dreams and prejudice.


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Materialism versus Idealism.
"It is not consciousness that determines existence, but social existence that determines consciousness." (Marx & Engels: ‘The German ideology.’)

People have always sought to understand the world they lived in through observing nature and generalising their day-to-day experiences. The history of philosophy shows a division into two camps – Idealism and Materialism. The Idealists argue that thought (consciousness) is paramount and that people’s actions stem from abstract thought, devoid of history and material conditions.

It was Marx and Engels who first fully challenged this conception, explaining that an understanding of the world has to start not from the ideas which exist in people’s heads in any particular historical period, but from the real, material conditions in which these ideas arise.

Nature is historical at every level. No aspect of nature simply exists; it has a history, comes into being, changes and develops, is transformed, and, finally ceases to exist. Aspects of nature may appear to be fixed, stable, in a state of equilibrium for a shorter or longer time, but none is permanently so. For Trotsky: "Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of the nebulae."

Marx and Engels based their materialism upon the ideas and practice of the great materialist philosophers of the 18th century. The ‘renaissance’ in the 16th century with its spread of cultural and scientific enquiry was both a cause of and an effect of the early growth of capitalism. In Engels’ words: "Science rebelled against the Church; the bourgeoisie could not do without science, and therefore had to join the rebellion."

Astronomy, mechanics, physics, anatomy and physiology were feverishly developed as separate disciplines, with the consequence that age-old beliefs in an inviolable god were rocked. Galileo for instance began to discover some of the physical properties of the universe and revealed that the planets revolved around the sun. Later, Newton’s theories of gravity and laws of physical motion uncovered the mysteries of movement and mechanics.

The philosopher Hobbes declared that it was impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks. Marx observed that this ‘enlightenment’ had "cleared men’s minds" for the great French revolution and the age of reason.

But Engels added that "The specific limitation of this materialism lay in its inability to comprehend the universe as a process, as matter undergoing uninterrupted development."

He and Marx were to fuse the brilliant scientific advances of materialism with dialectical thought, creating the most revolutionary and far-reaching theory for explaining and changing our world.

The German philosopher Hegel, who resurrected dialectics from ancient Greek learning in the early 19th century, was a proponent of the Idealist approach. To him the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract images of actual things and processes, but on the contrary, things and their development were only the realised images of the Idea/God existing somewhere from eternity before the world existed.

Marx turned this confusion on its head. "To me the idea is nothing else than the material world reflected in the human mind."

Marxism therefore bases itself upon a materialist view of history. The material world is real and develops through its own natural laws. Thought is a product of matter, without which there are no separate ideas.

Flowing from this it is clear that Marxism must reject universal truths, religions and spirits. All theories are relative, grasping one side of reality. Initially they are assumed to possess universal validity and application. But at a certain point, deficiencies in the theory are found. These have to be explained and at a certain point new theories are developed which can account for the exceptions. But the new theories not only supercede the old, but also incorporate them in a new form.

For example, in the field of biological evolution, Marxists are neither biological nor cultural determinists. There is a dialectical interaction between our genes and our environment.

Recently the ‘human genome project’ has enabled the complete mapping out of the structure of the genes which are passed on from one human generation to the next. Some biologists have asserted that this would reveal individual genes shaping behaviour patterns ranging from sexual preference to criminality and even political preference!

A consequence would be that a person’s position in society would be largely pre-determined and unalterable.

However, any attempt to ‘tag’ individual genes for ‘intelligence’ has failed and the attempt to define social position as genetically determined has been exposed as a pure consequence of the ideology of the biologists involved.

A breakthrough that has revolutionised our understanding of human behaviour, scientists recently discovered we possess far fewer genes than previously thought, revealing that environmental influences must be vastly more powerful in shaping the way humans act.


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What is dialectical thinking?
" Men thought dialectically long before they knew what dialectics was, just as they spoke prose long before the term prose existed." (Engels: ‘Anti-Duhring’.)

Dialectics is the philosophy of motion. The dialectical method of analysis enables us to study natural phenomena, the evolution of society and thought itself, as processes of development based upon motion and contradiction.

Everything is in a constant state of flux and change; all reality is matter in motion.

The roots of dialectical thought can be traced back to the ancient Greeks who, just because their civilisation was not yet advanced enough to dissect and analyse nature in its separate parts, viewed nature as a whole, in its connections, dialectically. Nothing in life is static. In the words of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: "All things flow, all change."

Around us in the natural world are illustrations of the dialectical development of our Earth and space itself. Astronomers are transfixed as super-telescopes allow us to witness the birth and death of distant stars, while no geologist or vulcanologist can function without having an understanding of the basic and interlinked laws of the dialectic – the law of quantity into quality, the interpenetration of opposites and the negation of the negation.

In mathematics a dialectical approach is indispensable. In everyday life we often need to distinguish between curved and straight lines. But mathematically a straight line is merely a special sort of curve. Both can be treated using a single general mathematical equation.

We also learn how at a specific temperature, solid ice changes to liquid water then at a higher temperature to steam – a gas – and that the three apparently different substances are actually different manifestations of the motion of the same water molecules.

But though capitalist or bourgeois society uses the dialectical method in its pursuit of scientific advance, in the fields of philosophy and economy it stubbornly seeks to refute dialectics, clothing itself in the straightjacket of metaphysics (formal logic). Metaphysics translated into politics becomes a justification for the status quo, the idea that evolution proceeds unchangingly at a snail’s pace.

It is not hard to see why. Explained in a Marxist manner, the development of all past and present forms of society would show that at certain periods in history when the mode of production has come into acute conflict with the mode of exchange, wars and revolutionary movements have followed. The forms of class struggle have changed through different historical epochs, but the fundamental struggle over the division of the surplus value between exploiter and exploited forms a continuous line from the early slave societies to the present day.

The capitalist class or bourgeoisie (as Marx described it) must therefore hide the materialist conception of history from us, extolling instead the acts of great men (and occasionally women!) who it is claimed have changed history. Great social revolutions are attributed not to the struggle between classes, but to the mistakes of tyrant kings and tsars and the bloodthirsty ambitions of ruthless men like Cromwell, Robespierre and Lenin to name three of their special bete noirs.

Metaphysical thought is often described as the science of things, not of motion. Basing itself upon rigid classification techniques and seeing things as static entities, it is a useful tool in our day to day lives, but does not let us see things in their connections.

The formal logician operates within the limitation of three laws:

The Law of Identity – where A is equal to A

The Law of Contradiction – where A cannot be equal to non-A

The Law of Excluded Middle – where A must be equal to A, or must not be equal to A.

Formal logic sees cause and effect as opposites, but for Marxists the two categories merge, mix and melt into each other all the time.

Trotsky compared formal logic to dialectics using the analogy of a photograph and a moving film. The former has its uses, but as soon as we go into complex questions formal logic proves inadequate.

For instance we can say ours is a capitalist society and all will agree.

But viewing it dialectically as a bourgeois society in an advanced stage of development, we have to add that it still possesses remnants of feudalism, while more importantly it contains in its technological potential, the seeds for a Socialist planned economy. This example is not abstract.

Marxists use the dialectical method in order to clarify perspectives. All realities have more than one side to them.

What stage has British capitalism reached, what character will the recession have, how powerful is the working class, what is the role of New Labour, where and when do we expect big industrial struggles to break out… all these questions and many more can only be answered by analysing society dialectically.


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The laws of the dialectic
"Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought." (Engels: ‘Anti-Duhring.’)

BASED UPON the laws of motion, dialectics enables us to see things in their connection. Our bodies and our thoughts are continually changing. From conception to death there is never a moment when our physical development is still. Neither are our thoughts and mental growth. We are always evolving our ideas.

But how specifically do dialectics apply in relation to a study of society? What are the general laws of dialectical materialism beyond the primary idea that everything changes? If dialectics is the theoretical toolkit of Marxists, what do the tools look like and how do they assist us in challenging capitalism and changing society?

Marx and Engels elaborated three broad and interconnected laws of dialectics, each of which is continually at work and give us the insight into how society develops and what theoretical and practical tasks confront us as revolutionaries seeking to build the forces to overthrow capitalism.

The law of quantity and quality

Just as a scientist is familiar with the concept of things altering their quality at certain quantitative points (water into steam at boiling point), so too an observation of the evolution of class societies illustrates the same law.

Society does not develop in a slow, evolutionary manner. The friction between the classes can and does create episodic periods of sharpened struggle leading to political and social crises, wars and revolutions. For a whole period the class struggle may appear to be at a low-ebb, low levels of industrial action, apparent disinterest in political struggle, etc.

Marxists however view events in an all-sided manner. On the surface there can be apparent stability, but a quantitative build-up of frustration and antagonism towards capitalism can break out suddenly, creating entirely new conditions for struggle and catching the bosses and their New Labour echoes completely by surprise. This law is vulgarly recognised by even some bourgeois philosophers who, usually after the event, refer sadly to "the straw that broke the camel’s back."

It has enormous consequences for Marxists. We analyse the build-up of class conflict and at all times intervene in the workers’ movement to build the ideas of Socialism to take advantage of these sudden changes and sharp turns.

The law does not always denote a progression of course. For many years we characterised the Stalinist bureaucracy in the former Soviet Union as a relative fetter upon the growth of the planned economy. By this we meant that despite the waste and corruption of the bureaucrats, there was still a potential for the planned economy to grow, albeit less efficiently than had the working class been in charge. By the 1960s command-style rule from the Kremlin was struggling to cope with the fresh challenges of a more technically advanced form of economy. Trotsky’s maxim that a planned economy needs workers’ control as a body needs oxygen became more relevant than ever. We observed this change and concluded that the bureaucracy had gone from being a relative fetter to an absolute fetter. Quantity had turned into quality.

From a study of all the declining economic statistics coming out of the USSR we began to draw theoretical rounded-out conclusions.

A society in economic, political and social crisis where the bureaucratic caste has become absolutely incapable of further playing any progressive role cannot stay in absolute stasis. A point was being rapidly reached where either the working class would have to overthrow the incubus of bureaucracy and carry through a political revolution, or there would occur a social counter-revolution leading to the restoration of capitalism; this possibility was predicted by Trotsky over 50 years earlier. The triumph of the latter with Yeltsin undoing all the remaining gains of the 1917 revolution marked a qualitative defeat for the working class in Russia and everywhere else.

The Interpenetration of Opposites

Dialectics applied to the class struggle does not have the same degree of precision as it does in the science laboratory. The role of individuals, political parties and social movements is not scientifically pre-ordained. A trade union leader might be a repected left-winger, but may capitulate when faced with a determined onslaught from the bosses. A moderate trade union leader may surprise himself or herself however and become much more "militant" than intended, when faced with mass pressure from below.

There are no absolutes in the class struggle! We often stress for instance that boom and slump are not antithetical categories as crude GCSE textbooks proclaim. Within every economic growth of capitalism are the seeds of future recession and vice versa. It is not slump alone, which causes workers to rebel against the class system. The very opposite may be the case, with workers feeling intimidated by the threat of widespread unemployment.

In a boom, workers can go on the offensive not only in order to recapture past gains that have been lost, but to win new victories around pay and conditions.

Trotsky illustrated this law in his analysis of the forces which made the Russian Revolution in 1917: "In order to realise the Soviet State, there was required a drawing together and mutual penetration of two factors belonging to completely different economic species; a peasant war – that is, a movement characteristic of the dawn of bourgeois development – and a proletarian insurrection, the movement signaling its decline. That is the essence of 1917". (History of the Russian Revolution.)

This "combined and uneven development" illustrates the complex manner in which societies develop. Application of the law of interpenetrating opposites is crucial in our clarification of the stage at which capitalism has reached, its future direction and our responses.

The Negation of the Negation

Described by Engels as "an extremely general, and for this very reason extremely far-reaching and important, law of development of nature, history and thought", the negation of the negation deals with development through contradictions which appear to annul, or negate a previous fact, theory, or form of existence, only to later become negated in its turn.

Capitalism’s economic cycle illustrates this law. Great wealth is created in the boom, only to become partially destroyed by episodic crises of over-production. These in turn create afresh the conditions for new booms, which assimilate and build upon previously acquired methods of production, before once again coming into contact and being partially negated by the limits of the market economy.

Everything, which exists, does so out of necessity. But everything perishes, only to be transformed into something else. Thus what is ‘necessary’ in one time and place becomes ‘unnecessary’ in another. Everything creates its opposite, which is destined to overcome and negate it.

The first human societies were classless societies based on the co-operation of the tribe. These were negated by the emergence of class societies basing themselves upon the developing material levels of wealth. Modern private ownership of the means of production and the nation state, which are the basic features of class society and originally marked a great step forward, now serve only to fetter and undermine the productive forces and threaten all the previous gains of human development.

The material basis exists now to replace the bosses’ system with socialism, the embryo of which is already contained in class society, but can never be realised until the working class negates capitalism.


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Dialectical Materialism as a revolutionary theory
"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature.." (Engels: ‘Dialectics of Nature.’)

In the realm of science, explicitly or implicitly, the dialectical method continues to vindicate itself as a vital tool for progress. Apparently unrelated scientific disciplines have come to share visions and methodologies reflecting the real connectedness of our living universe.

Even the idealist philosopher Kant, writing before the time of Marx and Engels and who believed in a supreme being, was forced by experience to arrive unconsciously at a dialectical position. He argued that if the earth was something that had come into being, then its present geological, geographical and climatic states, its plants and animals too, must be something that had come into being. If this was the case, then earth must have had a history not only of co-existence in space but also a succession in time.

In particular, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the revolutionary significance of which was immediately understood by Marx and Engels, has itself become enriched and a more profound confirmation of dialectics of nature as a result of further study and practice.

Darwin demonstrated how evolution develops through natural selection, creating outrage among those for whom "God" determined all. But while he argued that "nature does not make a leap", the debates now raging among neo-Darwinists are about whether or not leaps take place and the nature of them.

Incorporating the science of genetics, new concepts such as MUTATION (the spontaneous formation of new variations in genetic make-up), GENE FLOW (the introduction of new genes into a population by immigration of breeding individuals) and GENETIC DRIFT (random gene changes in a population due to its limited size) as well as natural selection, have begun to be studied.

In a brilliant endorsement of dialectics as the science of sharp turns and sudden changes as opposed to gradualist development, it is now widely accepted that rate of evolutionary change can vary enormously. The theory of PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA takes this idea a stage forward, maintaining that the development or appearance of a new species can be, in terms of geological time, instantaneous breaking an apprarently stable equilibrium.

This theory deals with rapid and sudden speciation and mass extinction of species, in the same way as Darwin spoke of the struggle for existence of individual varieties within a single species.

Modern scientific theories rest on a dialectic view of nature. Quantum mechanics, the theory on which all modern technology is based, rests on a unification of the two classical (apparently contradictory) concepts of wave motion and particle motion to produce a new deeper understanding of the nature of reality.

Theories of fundamental particles find themselves working on concepts which bridge the contradiction between matter and the space-time in which matter moves.


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Towards a Socialist World.
" …the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in man’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.

They are to be sought not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch." (Engels: ‘Socialism: Utopian & Scientific.’)

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM is not a dull theory to be pondered over by erudite academics in their studies. It is a guide to action. For young workers and students seeking to understand capitalism and more importantly change it, it is an indispensable tool.

The so-called New World Order is daily proving to be less harmonious than the old one. Of the six billion people on Earth, almost 3.6 billion have neither cash nor credit to buy much of anything. A majority of people on the planet remain, at best, window shoppers. Although the development of giant corporations straddling continents and the existence of computer technologies underline the potential for the world planning of production and trade, capitalism remains a system based on wasteful competition between nation states where rival multinationals fight to improve market share, productivity and profit at our expense.

Great social revolutions in the past have been carried out by emerging minorities who best articulated the new economic and political needs of the rising class. History is made by conscious men and women, each driven by definite motives and desires. The struggle for Socialism is qualitatively different as it involves the conscious participation of the majority – the world’s working class and oppressed masses. Standing in our way is diseased capitalism.

Our task is to harness the indefatigable energy of the workers worldwide to throw off our exploitation, through the building of a mighty Socialist force. The dialectical method applied to every stage of the class struggle, illuminates our path, assists us in turning our ideas into a material force and brings closer the day when men and women can pass over from the realm of necessity into the realm of human freedom.





extracts taken from the introduction to marxist theory from teh pamphletts on introducing marxism from the socialist party.