Kronstadt, the rebellion forgotten by many

If you speak to many Trotskyists and mention the K word they will go white in the face and shift uneasy as Kronstadt for them is a difficult one to explain. The workers rebellion of March 1921 stands out as one of the most brutal acts the BOLSHEVIKS Committed in their time in power. For me the Russian Revolution itself is a major inspiration to my political ideas but the Kronstadt rebellion which I brought up once when I was a member of the socialist party was rarely discussed and if it was I was brought to one side and told this act by the BOLSHEVIKS Was necessary to defend the revolution from "outside forces". This seems to be the common line from Trotskyists who try to justify this brutal act on the good sailors and workers who helped in the early days of the revolution who were not happy with the authoritarian nature of the BOLSHEVIKS And their methods of suppression of freedoms. “An understanding of the Russian revolution is vital for any understanding of why the left failed in the 20th century. Yet most discussion amongst revolutionaries never goes beyond the usual argument about the Kronstadt rebellion. The left's present crisis has forced rethinking in some circles but many of us continue to cope with isolation by clinging onto our respective traditions. Anarchists and libertarian communists emphasize the Bolsheviks' authoritarian policies, blaming them for the revolution's failure, while underestimating the difficulties of constructing a new society in an isolated country devastated by civil war. In contrast Trotskyists blame these material conditions exclusively for the revolution's degeneration, dismissing most left-wing criticisms of the Bolsheviks as giving comfort to the right. Bolshevik policies were problematic from the start. In 1917 Lenin argued that, as private capitalism could not develop Russia, a revolutionary state would have to use 'state capitalism' to build the prerequisites for the transition to communism. This approach was always likely to come into conflict with the working class. Then, as the revolution failed to spread outside Russia, the Bolsheviks imposed even more external discipline on workers, effectively abandoning Marx's insistence on "the self-emancipation of the working class". This concept of "self-emancipation" implies that the working class can only create communism by freely making and defending the revolution themselves. So the action of workers taking day-to-day control of every aspect of society is itself the essence of the revolutionary process. Considerable compromises with the ideals of self-emancipation were inevitable in the crippling conditions of the Russian revolution. By October 1917 there were 900 workers' councils or soviets, controlling everything from housing to hospitals. There were also more than 2,000 elected factory committees which were even more powerful because they had been compelled to supervise the factory owners and production. The Bolshevik party was dwarfed by these bodies and was often overtaken by the rapid radicalization of workers. However, unlike the reformist Mensheviks or the peasant oriented Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), it had not joined the repressive Provisional Government; a regime that had totally discredited itself by its failure to maintain living standards, authorise land seizures or provide peace. The openness and flexibility of the Bolshevik party allowed it to express workers' desire for a government of all the soviet parties. On 25 October it organised the overthrow of the Provisional Government and set up a Soviet government headed by Lenin Once in power the overriding concern of the Bolshevik leadership was the revival of industry to overcome a largely feudal crisis-ridden society. To this end they proposed to nationalise the largest monopolies, initially leaving the rest of industry under capitalist ownership combined with both government and workers' control. This was consistent with Lenin's arguments before October that "socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly." He later said, "we recognise only one road - changes from below; we wanted the workers themselves, from below, to draw up the new, basic economic principles." But, like the Second International he came from, Lenin never developed a consistent theory of workers' self-management, tending to only advocate "inspection", "accounting and control" by workers of the decisions of others.” This is very similar to many Trotskyist parties today and their programme is very close if not identical to the original programme Lenin looked to set about putting into place. The term those who fail to learn the lessons from history are doomed to repeat them. So for me whilst being inspired by the early days of the Russian revolution what followed the suppression and the terror does not inspire me and has lead me to re assess my thoughts and political feelings as to how a revolution can be carried out. Kronstadt for me is a chilling tale of a rebellion by workers who were involved in the original revolution in 1917 yet had grown tired of the lack of freedom and democracy that was allowed. They feared the growing tide of suppression by the government. “Trotskyists usually justify the Bolshevik's actions on the grounds that the heroic sailors of 1917 had been replaced by newly recruited peasants, easily influenced by counter-revolutionary ideas. But Evan Mawdsley and Israel Getzler cite Soviet research which shows that three-quarters of all the sailors in Kronstadt in 1921 had probably been there since World War One. It also clearly demonstrates that 90% of the sailors on the two main battleships were drafted before 1918 White exiles had tried to help the mutineers and the main leader of the rebellion, Petrichenko, did join the Whites for a period after the mutiny was suppressed. Still, there is no convincing evidence that the mutineers had any ties to the Whites during the rebellion itself and it appears that no foreign power even attempted to take military advantage of the situation. Moreover Lenin himself said, "There they do not want either the White Guards or our government". So the Bolshevik regime's need to suppress any rebellion calling for democracy was at least as much a factor in its attitude to the sailors as the threat of intervention from abroad. Trotskyists are right to say that a major cause of the degeneration of the revolution was its inability to spread which meant that it was crippled by objective factors such as economic backwardness, isolation and civil war. Nevertheless they are wrong to advocate a rigid determinism, minimising ideological factors. This is especially the case when at every stage of the bureaucratisation of the regime there were vocal critics within the Bolshevik party itself who proposed alternative policies that might have slowed this process. Even if the appalling conditions of the civil war justified their policies then, they cannot excuse the repression both before and after the war. Of course Trotskyists could argue that the civil war and economic collapse started in 1917 so Lenin's attitudes were justified from the beginning. But soviet democracy withstood the crises of 1917 and then expanded sufficiently to make a revolution in October. So it must have had the potential to survive the threats of 1918 better than it did, especially as it was supposedly holding state power. The civil war also cannot be used to excuse the Bolshevik leaders' lack of regret about their use of repression. For instance, although Lenin described the NEP as a 'defeat', at no stage did he describe the suppression of soviet democracy and workers' control in such language. Indeed the Bolsheviks even called their civil war policies "communist" although they were obviously the antithesis of genuine communism. It is easy to criticise with the benefit of hindsight. However there is something very disturbing about the fact that Trotskyists still claim that the Bolsheviks were acting as communists after 1918 when they were clearly acting more as agents of the degeneration of the revolution. Material conditions did limit everything at this time but this includes Lenin and Trotsky's ideas so their applicability eighty years later is surely also severely limited. Effectively many Trotskyists are arguing that, if it is necessary, Marx's insistence on "self-emancipation" and a democratic workers' republic can be postponed provided people like Lenin and Trotsky run the 'workers' state' and raise the red flag for international revolution. Yet for the Bolsheviks to suppress the Russian working class - on behalf of a world working class that has no say in this policy - contradicts any concept of proletarian self-emancipation. Workers will never be inspired by a Marxism that offers the possibility of state subjugation in a 'holding operation' until the whole world has had a revolution. This argument also assumes that Lenin's internationalism could have remained intact while the revolution degenerated all around him. But future writing will show that his internationalism was compromised not long after October. Some Trotskyists do have criticisms of a number of Bolshevik policies, such as the post-war restrictions on soviet democracy. However none of them are willing to stray too far from Trotsky's own reservations which he only really voiced when he had lost power. Their lack of appreciation of what might be valuable in the Bolshevik tradition is shown by the fact that no Trotskyist organisation today allows the range of views that coexisted in the Bolshevik party even during the civil war. Besides, considering the extent of the repression resorted to by Lenin's regime, the priority is not to criticise individual policies but to try and work out how revolutionaries could have avoided getting into this appalling situation in the first place. If the Bolsheviks had respected workers' democracy they may well have lost power. Nevertheless this would have been a gamble, like the October revolution, that they would have been right to take, one that in itself would have restored some of the party's popularity. It would also have had more chance of success than Trotsky's bureaucratic attempts to prevent Stalin's dictatorship. Even if the gamble had failed, the outcome could not have been worse than 'Stalinism', which not only slaughtered millions, but did so in the name of communism and so stifled the prospects for revolution world-wide for the rest of the century. In the end perhaps the most interesting aspect of this whole issue is why so many Marxists who claim to believe in workers' self-emancipation defend a politics that effectively denies it. “ With thanks for quotes and extracts at libcom http://www.libcom.org/library/beyond-kronstadt

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.

How Stalinism distorts Marxism

Stalinism as an ideology is a dieing set of ideas but for decades it distorted the true ideas of Marx Engels and Lenin too. I thought I’d give some examples and explained perhaps why the Stalinists looked to distort the real ideas of Marxism over the years. Stalinism basically the safe guarding of the bureaucracy the elite in the labour movement quite often was something born out of Stalins ideas in the Soviet Union. Those who like to draw the conclusion that Lenin’s ideas were carried on to their natural conclusion by Stalin are completely incorrect in many ways. Stalin was a brutal dictator and abused Marxism to fit in with his own agenda unlike Stalin Lenin was a big supporter of debate and discussion rather than persecution and murdering your opponents who seem to be a threat to your leadership. Lenin debated with them, fiercely demanding high standards of evidence and principle in his opponent’s arguments, always calling people to task for unclear, illogical, factually weak positions. He brought the best out in people, who on their own were fatally flawed. He even threatened to resign several times in order to make his points. Lenin was a master of Marxism at the global level, European wide level, national, regional and city by city level. One of Lenin's most powerful accomplishments was his ability to translate Marxism to the individual and personal level and then return to broad general points, not just "What is to be done" but what is to be done by you and I right now. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin, in leadership by himself, with his cynical tendency unchecked, then gutted Marxism's emphasis on carefully considered revolutionary action. Stalin's disastrous political line equating the Social Democrats as an equal danger to the fascists was a prejudiced course of action reflecting his cynicism about the Social Democrats rather than a careful examination of them. Stalin did not abandon this ill-conceived perspective until after it was too late to stop Hitler. As Lenin might have put it, the "What is to be done?" was replaced by "Left Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder." Stalin replaced Marxian dialectics with a mechanistic version that emphasized the "inevitability" of socialism in place of Karl Marx's stark choice for revolutionaries in "The Communist Manifesto," "a fight that each time ended, either in the revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes" (CW Marx Engel’s V 6 pp.482). For Marx the possibility of terrible defeat was so real that all prejudice and intellectual short cuts had to be abandoned because each serious choice in a crisis that revolutionaries make on the "ground they have been given" can lead to advance or "the common ruin of the contending classes." Stalin's disastrous line equating Social Democracy as an equal enemy to the workers movement as Fascism was so clearly prejudiced and filled with intellectual short cuts that it can only be explained, at least in part, by the same character flaws that Lenin wanted Stalin removed as Secretary General of the Communist Party for in 1922. All revolutionaries have to accept "the ground they have been given" such as the militarized imperialism and ferocious racism in Germany in 1932, but Marxists have no excuse to abandon careful analysis for cynical prejudice. We have no excuse now nor should we excuse Stalin. Stalinism doesn’t see Marxism as a guide to action more an excuse to batter your opponents with. Using revolutionary language doesn’t make you a revolutionary its in your actions that your judged and Stalin and Stalinists today do not apply genuine Marxism only a bastardised version of it with rigid dogma out dated and used to sure up their own positions in the labour movement and the unions. Stalinism also subscribes to the stagiest theory that we must have a period of growth under capitalism first and deal with a socialist revolution at some undefined point in the future in essence this point never comes as its all about Suring up your own positions and fearing the working class Justas much if not more than the capitalist class. This was the case in the Soviet Union where great purges and mass killings took place to put down workers revolts to quash dissent. This is not socialism and has nothing in common with Marxism we follow today. Its brutal dictatorship looking to up hold its own privileged positions. Thankfully Stalinism is all but dead today in the labour movement mass communist parties around the world are dieing if they haven’t already. In their place we must fight to build new workers party true and democratic with a right to free speech and critical thinking without the fear of reprisal.

Is Trotsky's ideas of the permeneant revolution still relevant ?

ONE HUNDRED years ago, while in a St Petersburg jail awaiting trial for his leading role in the defeated 1905 Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky formulated the ‘Theory of Permanent Revolution’. Niall Mulholland Trotsky’s profound ideas examined the prospects for socialist revolution in Russia at the start of the 20th century and the processes of revolution worldwide. The validity of the permanent revolution was brilliantly confirmed by the successful October 1917 socialist revolution. But is the permanent revolution relevant today, especially since the collapse of Stalinism? Yes. It remains the key to understanding how to end the terrible problems of the so-called ‘Third World’ – pauperisation, under-development, dictatorship and imperialist domination - in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Of course, the permanent revolution is a living theory, which must be updated in the light of new developments. Trotsky summed up the permanent revolution in two ways. Firstly, the revolution starts in a ‘backward’ country with the capitalist democratic tasks and goes over to socialist measures. Secondly, the revolution starts in one country and spreads on an international level. Although the 1917 Russian Revolution, and its world repercussions, magnificently proved Trotsky correct, when his ideas were first published in 1906 they caused huge controversy in the Marxist movement. Most leaders thought a socialist revolution would take place first in the richer, capitalist West. Semi-colonial Russia had to still go through a capitalist ‘democratic revolution’. After the democratic capitalist phase was completed, the Russian working class would struggle for socialism. What is the ‘democratic revolution’? THE FIRST ‘democratic revolutions’ saw the developing capitalist class (which included merchants, manufactures and middle-class professionals) rise up against age-old feudalism, which restricted capitalism. The aim was to end the power and domination of kings, nobles, the aristocracy and the big landlords. This meant removing feudal barriers to trade and the development of the capitalist economy, unification of the country, introducing democratic rights, and establishing the basis of the modern nation-state. The 1789 French Revolution was the most thoroughgoing capitalist revolution, which swept away the power of the Church, the landlords and the King. Capitalism in its early, dynamic phase created the material, social and subjective conditions for the socialist transformation of society ie science, technique, and the modern working class. And it is the working class - which is forced to sell its labour power to survive and therefore has no material stake in capitalist society - that alone can lead the struggle for a new, classless society. In the modern period, in the age of multinationals and imperialism, capitalism is a reactionary barrier to the development of society. It’s a system where the social organisation of production is constrained by the limitations of the nation state, the private ownership of the means of production, and the destructive nature of capitalist competition with its associated booms and slumps. In Results and Prospects, [on our website - opens in new window] Trotsky wrote about processes of revolution in Russia and internationally, by looking at the lessons of the 1905 Petersburg Soviet and other revolutions. He explained that the national capitalist class (bourgeoisie) in the ‘underdeveloped’ countries came into existence too late, when the world was already dominated by the major capitalist and imperialist powers, like Britain, France and Germany. Trotsky explained that the national bourgeoisie in the colonial or neo-colonial world does not play a progressive role. It is dominated by imperialist powers and tied to foreign capital. It is also linked financially to, and reliant on, the big landlords and other feudal relations. A weak, cowardly class, the national bourgeoisie is not prepared to decisively struggle against feudal relations and the imperialists. Instead, Trotsky argued, only the proletariat (working class), bringing behind it the peasants, urban poor and other middle layers in society, can lead a successful revolution and solve the problems of society. 1905 showed: "The revolutionary leadership of the proletariat revealed itself as an incontrovertible fact". When it takes power, the working class will have to carry out the historic tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. When in power, the working class will not stop at democratic tasks. It will take measures that reflect its class interests; socialist measures, including nationalisations and overthrowing the local capitalist class. The working class in power in a poor country will be compelled to spread the socialist revolution. At the same time, the revolution will be a hugely inspiring example for the international working class to follow. Trotsky argued the socialist revolution could break out in Russia first, given the weakness of the Tsarist regime, the development of a young, militant working class, and the acute, unresolved social and economic problems and land question. There were also differences amongst Marxists over the relationship between the different classes in the revolution. Prior to 1917, Tsarist Russia was a vast empire but also feudal or semi-feudal, where the majority of people were poor peasants and the urban working class was ruthlessly exploited and had no democratic rights. ‘Stages’ theory of social change The Mensheviks (the ‘Minority’ wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party) argued that the national bourgeoisie must lead the coming revolution, as the main tasks were the completion of the bourgeois democratic revolution. Socialism was for the distant future. This crude, ‘stages’ position, reflected the reformist, class collaborationist approach of the Mensheviks - the right wing of the Russian workers’ movement. In contrast, Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks (‘Majority’ of the Russian Social Democrats), agreed with Trotsky that the pro-capitalist ‘Liberals’ would not carry out the bourgeois democratic revolution. Only the proletariat would carry out the revolution, in alliance with the peasants. Lenin called for a "democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry", leaving open the exact relationship between the classes. Trotsky said the working class would play the key, leading role. The peasantry never played an independent role in history. It would be led by either the capitalist class or the working class. The arguments were finally settled by the year 1917, when Trotsky’s permanent revolution was borne out. The February Revolution overthrew the Tsarist regime but the Provisional Government, dominated by capitalist ‘Liberals’, failed to end Russia’s disastrous participation in the First World War or carry out bourgeois democratic tasks. Lenin accepted his old slogan of "a democratic dictatorship of the working class and peasantry" was overtaken by events. In his famous April Theses, Lenin called for the working class to fight to take power. The October 1917 socialist revolution, led by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, saw the working class come to power, leading the peasantry and middle layers. The Bolsheviks carried out bourgeois democratic tasks (e.g. land reform, democratic rights) and went over to socialist tasks (e.g. nationalisation of major industries). The example of October 1917 sparked a revolutionary wave throughout Europe (e.g. Germany 1918, 1923, Austria 1918, Bavaria 1919, and Italy 1919-1920). In the face of imperialist armed intervention, the Bolsheviks appealed to the world working class. The Communist International (Comintern) was set up. Lenin, Trotsky and all the leading Bolsheviks understood that without the spread of the socialist revolution, economically under-developed Russia could not build socialism alone. But the international revolutions failed, largely due to the betrayal of social democrat leaders in the West. This compounded the isolation and economic backwardness of Russia. A conservative bureaucracy – based around the figure of Stalin - increased its hold in these conditions and wanted to expand and to protect its power and privileges. This bureaucratic reaction found ideological expression in Stalin and Bukharin’s ‘Socialism in one country’ theory, in 1924. Socialism, they argued, could be built in Russia and it was not necessary to wait for international revolution. This marked a complete refutation of the historic position of the Marxist movement and it had disastrous consequences. Under Stalin, the Communist International rejected Lenin’s independent, class policy and the communist parties internationally sought "alliances" with the "national progressive bourgeoisie" in various countries. This approach led to defeats for the working class internationally (e.g. British General Strike 1926, China 1925-1927, Germany 1933, Spain 1936-39), which, in turn, deepened the bureaucratic counter-revolution in Russia. The Stalinists argued that capitalist democratic revolutions would take place first in the neo-colonial world, and after a period of capitalist development there would be a struggle for socialism. In other words, Stalinists argued a return to the discredited Mensheviks’ ‘stages theory’. The Stalinists covered their betrayals by a vociferous attack on the permanent revolution, digging up old pre-1917 arguments between Lenin and Trotsky on the issue. "The revolution on the international scale was suffering one defeat after another… strengthening the Stalin bureaucracy against me and my political friends," Trotsky wrote. The ‘permanent revolution’ today AFTER THE Second World War, the permanent revolution developed in a way that could not have been foreseen even by Trotsky. The victory of the Red Army over the Nazis strengthened Stalinism. Capitalism was overthrown in Eastern Europe, albeit in a distorted, bureaucratic way. At the same time, the reformists and Stalinists saved capitalism in Western Europe. In countries like China, Vietnam and Cuba, society was at an impasse due to capitalism and landlordism. But the working class was weak or misled, usually by Stalinists. When the peasant Red Army of Mao Zedong entered China’s cities, they balanced between different sections of society – peasants, workers, sections of the capitalists – and gradually ended capitalism and landlordism. Land and most of industry was nationalised but workers’ democracy was not introduced. Instead, what Marxists called a ‘deformed workers’ state’ was established. The main thrust of Trotsky’s permanent revolution was borne out in these events, but in a caricatured form. Although a key part of Trotsky’s theory - the conscious role of the working class as the leading class in the revolution - was absent in China, Cuba and Vietnam, for example, a social revolution was still carried out. Landlordism and capitalism were abolished. But the working class did not directly play the leading role in these revolutionary upheavals. The Cuban Revolution, lead by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, enjoyed mass support, but without workers’ democracy - a bureaucratic layer formed, concentrating power in its hands. Trotsky’s permanent revolution was vital to understanding events in the post-1945, neo-colonial world. Take China, for example. Does its ‘spectacular’ growth disprove the permanent revolution? Chinese revolution The 1949 revolution, despite its bureaucratic character, led to the development of industry and living standards, under a planned economy. But in the absence of democratic workers’ rule, the economy stagnated under the ruling bureaucracy. In the 1970s, the ruling elite began looking towards the market as a way to boost growth, although the state run sector was still dominant. Today, capitalist relations increasingly take hold. Growth rates are high but at a huge social cost: barbaric exploitation, uprooting millions from the countryside, enormous poles of wealth and poverty, dismantling of social gains, growing problems of nationalities, etc. Many of the worst features of pre-1949, capitalist China have re-appeared. And whatever the future role of China in the world economy, capitalist restoration will be incapable of fundamentally raising living standards and conditions of the mass of its people (as we have clearly seen in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe). India is also held up as an ‘emerging power’, based on its huge supply of cheap labour. But while India has a growing middle class, pockets of ‘modernisation’ and is a nuclear power, the majority of its desperately poor people eke a living on the land and caste, religious and national differences remain. As a whole, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America have suffered social and economic regression over decades of neo-liberalism, imperialist plunder and endemic corruption and waste. A quarter of the world’s population lives in "severe poverty", and half the world lives on less than $2 a day. Almost 800 million people are malnourished and the same figure lack basic healthcare. Every day, 30,500 children die from preventable diseases. African is littered with "failed states" and the continent is beset with endless problems, like wars, poverty famine, preventable diseases, corruption, and dictatorships. In Latin America, once ‘promising’ countries, like Argentina, are still recovering from economic collapse. Brazil is now trumpeted by pro-capitalist commentators as the new economic ‘success story’. Latin America Like Tsarist Russia, Brazil plays a regional imperialist role but many of the fundamental problems of the neo-colonial world remain in that huge country (including, huge city and rural disparities, economic situation, the actions of US imperialism, and the consciousness of working people. Unlike the first years of the Cuban Revolution, Stalinist Russia no longer exists to act as a ‘model’ and practical support to neo-colonial deformed workers’ states. Ultimately, the only way to defend and to extend the revolution in Venezuela and beyond is by carrying through and spreading the socialist revolution; fulfilling the tasks of the permanent revolution. Today, the ‘classical’ ideas of the permanent revolution - with the working class playing the main role - can re-develop. This year, marks the first time in history when over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. The collapse of Stalinism, and the social democratic parties openly going over to capitalism, provides an opportunity for independent, class politics and revolutionary socialism to win a mass audience. However, reformist ideas, and versions of the ‘stages theory’, will not just disappear. In the next period, the working class in the neo-colonial world will be poised to lead the social transformation of society. Trotsky’s permanent revolution may be 100 years old but his brilliant theory remains the most modern, indispensable guide for the working class in its struggle to overthrow capitalism, landlordism, and to end all the barbarities of life in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Socialism or Communism

It is an interesting thing I’m asked from time to time what you mean by socialism are you not just a communist. Well there is a difference but the end goal is more or less the same. Tonight I am doing a lead off at Harlow Socialist party on what is socialism and I will start by explaining its transitional nature. Socialism the lower form of communism as Lenin described it in The State and Revolution one of his greatest contributions to revolutionary thinking I’d say describes socialism or lower communism as a transitional phase which still consists of capitalist elements but with a socialist edge with the directional arrows pointing in the direction of moving towards a withering away of the state as the old ruling class is removed from the scene of history. Socialism what we stand for in the socialist party is a transitional programme consisting of reforms which capitalism c cannot meet quite deliberately. A transitional programme with transitional demands is supposed to draw the working class forward but not too far in front of its own current thinking to lead it to draw the conclusions for the need to change society. So in affect we are communists and socialists at the same time which may sound strange. But Communism is the final target of a state less and a class less society where the need for a state to oppress a class by another class is gone as there would only be one class left t he working class ready and able to run society for the masses. Socialism and communism are alike in that both are systems of production for use based on public ownership of the means of production and centralized planning. Socialism grows directly out of capitalism; it is the first form of the new society. Communism is a further development or "higher stage" of socialism. From each according to his ability, to each according to his deeds (socialism). From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs (communism). The socialist principle of distribution according to deeds— that is, for quality and quantity of work performed, is immediately possible and practical. On the other hand, the communist principle of distribution according to needs is not immediately possible and practical—it is an ultimate goal. Obviously, before it can be achieved, production must reach undreamed of heights—to satisfy everyone’s needs there must be the greatest of plenty of everything. In addition, there must have developed a change in the attitude of people toward work—instead of working because they have to, people will work because they want to, both out of a sense of responsibility to society and because work satisfies a felt need in their own lives. Socialism is the first step in the process of developing the productive forces to achieve abundance and changing the mental and spiritual outlook of the people. It is the necessary transition stage from capitalism to communism. It must not be assumed, from the distinction between socialism and communism, that the political parties all over the world which call themselves Socialist advocate socialism, while those which call themselves Communist advocate communism. That is not the case. Since the immediate successor to capitalism can only be socialism, the Communist parties,-like the Socialist parties, have as their goal the establishment of socialism. Are there, then, no differences between the Socialist and Communist parties? Yes, there are. The Communists believe that as soon as the working class and its allies are in a position to do so they must make a basic change in the character of the state; they must replace capitalist dictatorship over the working class with workers’ dictatorship over the capitalist class as the first step in the process by which the existence of capitalists as a class (but not as individuals) is ended and a classless society is eventually ushered in. Socialism cannot be built merely by taking over and using the old capitalist machinery of government; the workers must destroy the old and set up their own new state apparatus. The workers’ state must give the old ruling class no opportunity to organize a counter-revolution; it must use its armed strength to crush capitalist resistance when it arises. Instead of wanting to take away people’s private property, socialists want more people to have more private property than ever before. There are two kinds of private property. There is property which is personal in nature, consumer’s goods, used for private enjoyment. Then there is the kind of private property which is not personal in nature, property in the means of production. This kind of property is not used for private enjoyment, but to produce the consumer’s goods which are. Socialism does not mean taking away the first kind of private property, e.g. your suit of clothes; it does mean taking away the second kind of private property, e.g. your factory for making suits of clothes. It means taking away private property in the means of production from the few so that there will be much more private property in the means of consumption for the many. That part of the wealth which is produced by workers and taken from them in the form of profits would be theirs, under socialism, to buy more private property, more suits of clothes, more furniture, more food, more of the things we need. More private property for use and enjoyment. No private property for oppression and exploitation. That’s socialism. Socialism would see an instant shortening of the working week to an initial 35 hours with no loss of pay allowing workers to have time out of work to start to run society. As capitalism has you working all hours of the day you have no time to plan political activity or how to start to plan the running of society collectively. Former economies and nations which called themselves communist we do not consider were communist or even socialist they had a planned economy but run on a bureaucratic rule with no democracy to keep the bureaucracy in check or really had any intention on seeing through the transitional stage to removing the state if anything the states in these lands has grown beyond proportion. We often call these nations degenerated workers states as they are no longer capitalist but can’t be called socialist either they are transitional in c character but as Marxists we must understand the direction of change and the nature of that change. Ultimately today’s socialists and communists largely agree we need to replace this rotten capitalist system with something better some have different ideas of how to get there but one thing is for sure we can’t go on as we are the world is full of resources and there is so much wealth in society if only it was harnessed for the benefit of the many not just the few.

The life and times of Rosa Luxemburg

Many socialists coming to Marxism for the first time will go straight towards your Marx, Engel’s, Lenin and Trotsky but someone who should not be forgotten and her works are very important and a major contribution to Marxist politics is Rosa Luxemburg the anniversary of her brutal murder this week seems a good time to revisit her works and life and ideas. She was not perfect as none of us are but gave a huge contribution to Marxist thought and revolutionary politics. Below I republish a fantastic article by Socialist party general secretary Peter Taaffe who looks at Rosa’s contribution to the workers movement and the fight for socialism in Germany and beyond. On 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the finest brains of the German working class and its most heroic figures, were brutally murdered by the bloodthirsty, defeated German military, backed to the hilt by the cowardly social-democratic leaders Noske and Scheidemann. On this important anniversary, it is vital to look at Luxemburg’s inspirational, revolutionary legacy. By Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party (England & Wales) Their murders, carried out by the soldier Otto Runge, were decisive in the defeat of the German revolution but were also indissolubly linked to the victory of Hitler and the Nazis 14 years later. Wilhelm Canaris, the naval officer who assisted the escape of one of Rosa’s murderers, 20 years later was to command the Abwehr, German military intelligence, under the Nazis. Other luminaries of the Nazi regime were similarly ‘blooded’ at this time for the future murderous activities in their own country and throughout Europe. Von Faupel, the officer who, at the time, tricked the delegates to the recently-formed workers and soldiers’ councils, 20 years later was Hitler’s ambassador to Franco’s Spain. The political power behind the throne to better-known generals was Major Kurt von Schleicher, who became German Chancellor in 1932 and a gateman for Hitler and the Nazis. But if the German revolution had triumphed then history would not, in all probability, have known these figures or the horrors of fascism. Rosa Luxemburg, as a top leader and theoretician of Marxism, could have played a crucial, not to say decisive, role in subsequent events up to 1923 and the victory of the revolution if she had not been cruelly cut down. Karl Liebknecht is correctly bracketed with Luxemburg as the heroic mass figure who stood out against the German war machine and symbolised to the troops in the blood-soaked trenches, not just Germans but French and others, as an indefatigable, working-class, internationalist opponent of the First World War. His famous call – “The main enemy is at home” – caught the mood, particularly as the mountain of corpses rose during the war. But Rosa Luxemburg, on this anniversary, deserves special attention because of the colossal contribution she made to the understanding of Marxist ideas, theory and their application to the real movement of the working class. Many have attacked Rosa Luxemburg for her ‘false methods’, particularly her alleged lack of understanding of the need for a ‘revolutionary party’ and organisation. Among them were Stalin and Stalinists in the past. Others claim Rosa Luxemburg as their own because of her emphasis on the ‘spontaneous role of the working class’ that seems to correspond to an ‘anti-party mood’, particularly amongst the younger generation, which is, in turn, a product of the feeling of revulsion at the bureaucratic heritage of Stalinism and its echoes in the ex-social democratic parties. But an all-sided analysis of Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas, taking into account the historical situation in which her ideas matured and developed, demonstrates that the claims of both of these camps are false. She made mistakes: “Show me someone who never makes a mistake and I will show you a fool.” Yet here is a body of work of which, read even today almost 100 years later, is fresh and relevant – particularly when contrasted to the stale ideas of the tops of the ‘modern’ labour movement. They can enlighten us particularly the new generation who are moving towards socialist and Marxist ideas. For instance, her pamphlet ‘Reform and Revolution’ is not just a simple exposition of the general ideas of Marxism counterposed to reformist, incremental changes to effect socialist change. It was written in opposition to the main theoretician of ‘revisionism’, Eduard Bernstein. Like the labour and trade union leaders to day – although he was originally a Marxist, indeed a friend of the co-founder of scientific socialism, Friedrich Engels – Bernstein under the pressure of the boom of the late 1890s and first part of the 20th century, attempted to ‘revise’ the ideas of Marxism, which would in effect have nullified them. His famous aphorism, “The movement is everything, the final goal nothing,” represented an attempt to reconcile the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with what was an expanding capitalism at that stage. Rosa Luxemburg, as had Lenin and Trotsky, not only refuted Bernstein’s ideas but in an incisive analysis adds to our understanding of capitalism then, and to some extent today, the relationship between reform and revolution (which should not be counterposed to each other from a Marxist point of view) and many other issues. She wrote: “What proves best the falseness of Bernstein’s theory is that it is in the countries having the greatest development of the famous “means of adaptation” – credit, perfected communications and trusts – that the last crisis (1907-1908) was most violent.” Shades of today’s world economic crisis, particularly as it affects the most debt-soaked economies of the US and Britain? Social democracy supports the war Moreover, Luxemburg was amongst the very few who recognised the ideological atrophy of German social democracy prior to the First World War. This culminated in the catastrophe of the SPD deputies in the Reichstag (parliament) – with the original single exception of Karl Liebknecht – voting for war credits for German imperialism. The leaders of the SPD, along with the trade union leaders, had become accustomed to compromise and negotiations within the framework of rising capitalism. This meant that the prospects for socialism, specifically the socialist revolution, were relegated to the mists of time in their consciousness. This was reinforced by the growth in the weight of the SPD within German society. It was virtually “a state within a state”, with over one million members in 1914, 90 daily newspapers, 267 full-time journalists and 3,000 manual and clerical workers, managers, commercial directors and representatives. In addition it had over 110 deputies in the Reichstag and 220 deputies in the various Landtags (state parliaments) as well as almost 3,000 elected municipal councillors. Apart from in 1907, the SPD seemed to progress remorselessly in electoral contests. There were at least 15,000 full-time officials under the sway of the SPD in the trade unions. This was, in the words of Ruth Fischer, a future leader of the Communist Party of Germany, a “way of life… The individual worker lived in his party, the party penetrated into the workers’ everyday habits. His ideas, his reactions, his attitudes, were formed out of the integration of his personal and his collective.” This represented both a strength and a weakness. A strength because the increasing power of the working class was reflected in the SPD and the unions. But this was combined with the smothering of this very power, an underestimation by the SPD leaders, indeed a growing hostility to the revolutionary possibilities which would inevitability break out at some future date. Rosa Luxemburg increasingly came into collision with the SPD machine, who’s stultifying conservative effect she contrasted to the social explosions in the first Russian revolution of 1905-07. Luxemburg was a real internationalist; a participant in the revolutionary movement in three countries. Originally a Pole, she was a founder of the Social Democratic party of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), in the Russian movement as a participant in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and a naturalised German and prominent member of the SPD. She contrasted the flair and energy from below in Russia, witnessed at first hand, to the weight the increasingly bureaucratic machine of the party and unions in Germany, which could prove to be a colossal obstacle to the working class taking power, she argued, in the event of a revolutionary eruption. In this sense, she was more farsighted even than Lenin, who passionately absorbed in Russian affairs and who saw the SPD as the ‘model’ for all the parties of the Second International, and its leaders, such as Kautsky, as teachers. Trotsky pointed out: “Lenin considered Kautsky as his teacher and stressed this everywhere he could. In Lenin’s work of that period and for a number of years following, one does not find a trace of criticism in principle directed against the Bebel-Kautsky tendency.” Indeed, Lenin thought that Luxemburg’s increasing criticisms of Kautsky and the SPD leadership were somewhat exaggerated. In fact, in his famous work, ‘Two Tactics of Russian Social Democracy” of 1905, Lenin wrote: “When and where did I ever call the revolutionism of Bebel and Kautsky ‘opportunism’? … When and where have there been brought to light differences between me, on the one hand, and Bebel and Kautsky on the other? … The complete unanimity of international revolutionary Social Democracy on all major questions of programme and tactics is a most incontrovertible fact.” Lenin recognised that there would be opportunist trends within mass parties of the working class but he compared the Mensheviks in Russia not with Kautskyism but with the right-wing revisionism of Bernstein. That lasted right up to the German social democrats’ infamous vote in favour of war credits on 4 August 1914. With the initial exception of Liebknecht and later Otto Rühle, they were the only two out of 110 SPD deputies who voted against. Indeed, when Lenin was presented with an issue of the SPD paper, ‘Vorwärts’, supporting war credits, he first of all considered it a ‘forgery’ of the German military general staff. Rosa Luxemburg was not so unprepared, as she had been involved in a protracted struggle, not just with the right-wing SPD leaders but also with the ‘left’ and ‘centrist’ elements, like Kautsky. Trotsky also, in his famous book, ‘Results and Prospects’ (1906), in which the Theory of the Permanent Revolution was first outlined, did have a perception of what could take place: “The European Socialist Parties, particularly the largest of them, the German Social-Democratic Party, have developed their conservatism in proportion as the great masses have embraced socialism and the more these masses have become organized and disciplined… Social Democracy as an organization embodying the political experience of the proletariat may at a certain moment become a direct obstacle to open conflict between the workers and bourgeois reaction.” In his autobiography, ‘My Life’, Trotsky subsequently wrote: “I did not expect the official leaders of the International, in case of war, to prove themselves capable of serious revolutionary initiative. At the same time, I could not even admit the idea that the Social Democracy would simply cower on its belly before a nationalist militarism.” Spontaneous mass action It was these factors, the immense power of the social democracy, on the one side, and the inertia of its top-heavy bureaucracy in the face of looming sharp changes in the situation in Germany and Europe, on the other side, which led to one of Luxemburg’s best-known works, ‘The Mass Strike’ (1906). This was a summing up of the first Russian revolution from which Luxemburg drew both political and organisational conclusions. It is a profoundly interesting analysis of the role of the masses as the driving force, of their ‘spontaneous’ character in the process of revolution. In emphasising the independent movement and will of the working class against “the line and march of officialdom”, she was undoubtedly correct in a broad historical sense. Indeed, many revolutions have been made in the teeth of opposition and even sabotage of the leaders of the workers’ own organisations. This was seen in the revolutionary events of 1936 in Spain. While the workers of Madrid initially demonstrated for arms and their socialist leaders refused to supply them, the workers of Barcelona – freed from the inhibitions towards ‘leaders’ – rose ‘spontaneously and smashed Franco’s forces within 48 hours. This ignited a social revolution which swept through Catalonia and Aragon to the gates of Madrid, with four fifths of Spain initially in the hands of the working class. In Chile in 1973, on the other hand, where the working class listened to their leadership and remained in the factories as Pinochet announced his coup, the most militant workers were systematically rounded up and slaughtered. We also saw, without a ‘by-your-leave’ to their leaders, a spontaneous revolutionary explosion in France in 1968 when 10 million workers occupied factories for a month. The leaders of the French Communist Party and the ‘Socialist’ Federation, rather than seeking victory through a revolutionary programme of workers’ councils and a workers and farmers’ government, lent all their efforts to derailing this magnificent movement. Similarly, in Portugal, in 1974, a revolution not only swept away the Caetano dictatorship but meant that, in its first period, an absolute majority of votes to those standing in elections under a socialist or communist banner. This led in 1975 to the expropriation of the majority of industry. The Times (London) declared that “capitalism is dead in Portugal”. This proved not to be so, unfortunately, because the initiatives from below by the working class, and the opportunities they generated, were squandered. This was because there was no coherent and sufficiently influential mass party and leadership capable of drawing all the threads together and establishing a democratic workers’ state. These examples show that the spontaneous movement of the working class is not sufficient in itself to guarantee victory in a brutal struggle against capitalism. The ‘spontaneous’ character of the German revolution was evident in November 1918. This spontaneous eruption of the masses, moreover, flew in the face of everything that the social-democratic leaders wanted or desired. Even the creation before this of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), which came from a split in the SPD in 1917, arose not from any conscious policy of its leaders – including Kautsky and Rudolf Hilferding, as well as the arch-revisionist Bernstein. It developed because of the indignation and revolt of the working class at the SPD’s executive throttling within the party of all objections and resistance to their policy on the war. This split was neither prepared nor desired by these ‘oppositionists’. Nevertheless, they took with them 120,000 members and a number of newspapers. The general strike Connected to Rosa Luxemburg’s emphasis on ‘spontaneity’ was the issue of the general strike. Basing herself on the mass strikes of the Russian revolution, she nevertheless adopted a certain passive and fatalistic approach on this issue. To some extent, this later affected the leaders of the Communist Party (KPD) after her death. Rosa Luxemburg correctly emphasised that a revolution could not be made artificially, outside of a maturing of the objective circumstances that allowed this possibility. However, the role of what Marxists describe as the ‘subjective factor’, a mass party, far-sighted leadership, etc, is crucial in transforming a revolutionary situation into a successful revolution. So is timing, as the opportunity for a successful social overturn can last for a short time. If the opportunity is lost, it may not recur for a long time, and the working class can suffer a defeat. Therefore, at a crucial time, a definite timeframe, a correct leadership, can help the working class to take power. Such was the role of the Bolsheviks in the 1917 Russian revolution. The opposite was the case in 1923 in Germany. The opportunity of following the example of the Bolsheviks was posed but lost because of the hesitation of the KPD leaders, who were supported in this wrong policy by, among others, Stalin. This was partly conditioned by historical experience until then, in which ‘partial general strike action’ featured in the struggles of the working class in the decades prior to the First World War. In this period, there were instances where governments took fright at the general strike at its very outset, without provoking the masses to open class conflict, and made concessions. This was the situation following the Belgian general strike in 1893, called by the Belgian Labour Party with 300,000 workers participating, including left-wing Catholic groups. A general strike, on a much bigger scale, took place in Russia, in October 1905, on which Rosa Luxemburg comments. Under the pressure of the strike, the Tsarist regime made constitutional ‘concessions’ in 1905. The situation following the First World War – a period of revolution and counter-revolution – was entirely different to this, with the general strike posing more sharply the question of power. The issue of the general strike is of exceptional importance for Marxists. We do not have a fetish about the general strike. In some instances, it is an inappropriate weapon; at the time of General Lavr Kornilov’s march against Petrograd in August 1917, neither the Bolsheviks nor the soviets (workers’ councils) thought of declaring a general strike. On the contrary, the railway workers continued to work so that could transport the opponents of Kornilov and derail his forces. Workers in the factories continued to work too, except those who had left to fight Kornilov. At the time of the October revolution, in 1917, there was again no talk of a general strike. The Bolsheviks enjoyed mass support and under those conditions calling a general strike would have weakened them and not the capitalist enemy. On the railways, in the factories and offices, the workers assisted the uprising to overthrow capitalism and establish a democratic workers’ state. In today’s era, a general strike, ‘generally’, is an ‘either-or’ issue where an alternative workers’ government is implicit in the situation. In the 1926 general strike in Britain, the issue of power was posed, where ‘dual power’ existed for nine days. In 1968, in France, the biggest general strike in history posed the question of power but for the reasons explained above, the working class did not seize it. The German revolution of 1918-1924 also witnessed general strikes and partial attempts in this direction. The Kapp putsch in March 1920, when the director of agriculture of Prussia, who represented the Junkers and highly-placed imperial civil servants, took power with the support of the generals, was met with one of the most complete general strikes in history. Like France in 1968, the government “could not get a single poster printed” as the working class paralysed the government and the state. This putsch lasted for a grand total of 100 hours! Yet even with this stunning display of the power of the working class, it did not lead to a socialist overturn, precisely because of the absence of a mass party and leadership capable of mobilising the masses and establishing an alternative democratic workers’ state. In fact, the erstwhile followers of Luxemburg in the newly-formed Communist Party made ultra-left mistakes in not initially supporting and strengthening the mass actions against Kapp. The role of a revolutionary party The issue of leadership and the need for a party is central to an estimation of Rosa Luxemburg’s life and work. It would be entirely one-sided to accuse her, as has been attempted by some critics of both her and Trotsky, of ‘underestimating’ the need for a revolutionary party. Indeed, her whole life within the SPD was bent towards rescuing the revolutionary kernel within this organisation from reformism and centrism. Moreover, she herself built up a very ‘rigid, independent organisation’, that is a party, with her co-worker Leo Jogiches in Poland. However, her revulsion at the ossified character of the SPD and its ‘centralism’ meant that she did, on occasion, ‘bend the stick too far’ the other way. She was critical of Lenin’s attempt to create in Russia a democratic party but one that was ‘centralised’. On the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, Luxembourg she was a ‘conciliator’ in her approach, as was Trotsky (shown in his participation in the ‘August bloc’). She sought unity between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in Russia. But after the Bolsheviks had won four fifths of the organised workers in Russia by 1912 a formal split took place between them and the Mensheviks. Lenin understood before others that the Mensheviks were not prepared for a struggle going beyond the framework of Russian landlordism and capitalism. Lenin’s approach was vindicated in the Russian revolution, with the Mensheviks ending up on the other side of the barricades. Following the 1917 Russian revolution, Rosa Luxemburg did come close to Bolshevism subsequently and became part of its international trend, as did Trotsky. The main charge that can be made against Luxemburg, however, is that she did not sufficiently organise a clearly delineated trend against both the right of the SPD and the centrists of Kautsky. There were some criticisms both at the time and later that suggested that Luxemburg and her ‘Sparticist’ followers should have immediately split with the SPD leaders, certainly following their betrayal at the outset of the First World War. Indeed Lenin, as soon as he was convinced of the betrayal of social democracy – including the ‘renegade Kautsky’ – called for an immediate split, accompanying this with a call for a new, Third International. A political ‘split’ was undoubtedly required, both from the right and ‘left’ SPD. Rosa did this, characterising the social democracy as a “rotten corpse”. The organisational conclusion from this was of a tactical rather than a principled character. Moreover, hindsight is wonderful when dealing with real historical problems. Rosa Luxemburg confronted a different objective situation to that facing the Bolsheviks in Russia. Spending most of their history in the underground, with a relatively smaller organisation of cadres, the Bolsheviks necessarily acquired a high degree of ‘centralisation’, without, at the same time, abandoning very strong democratic procedures. There was also the tumultuous history of the Marxist and workers’ movement in Russia, conditioned by the experience of the struggle against Narodya Volya (People’s Will), the ideas of terrorism, the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, the split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, the first world war, etc. Rosa Luxemburg confronted an entirely different situation, as a minority, and somewhat isolated in a ‘legal’ mass party with all the attributes described above. Although she was a naturalised German citizen, Luxemburg was considered an ‘outsider’, particularly when she came into conflict with the SPD leadership. Indeed, despite this, Luxemburg’s courage and fortitude shines through when one reads the speeches and criticisms that she made of the party leadership over years. She criticised the “clinging mists of parliamentary cretinism”, what would be called “electoralism” at the present time. She even lacerated August Bebel, the ‘centrist’ party leader who increasingly “could only hear with his right ear”. At one stage, accompanied by Clara Zetkin, she said to Bebel: “Yes, you can write our epitaph: ‘Here lie the last two men of German social democracy’.” She castigated the SPD’s trailing after middle-class leaders in an excellent aphorism appropriate to those who support coalitionism today. She wrote that it was necessary “to act on progressives and possibly even liberals, than to act with them”. But a vital element of Marxism, in developing political influence through a firm organisation or a party, was not sufficiently developed by Rosa Luxemburg or her supporters. This does not have to take the form necessarily, on all occasions, of a separate ‘party’. But a firmly-organised nucleus is essential in preparing for the future. This, Luxemburg did not achieve, which was to have serious consequences later with the outbreak of the German revolution. Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches correctly opposed “premature splits”. Luxemburg wrote: “It was always possible to walk out of small sects or small coteries, and, if one does not want to stay there, to apply oneself to building new sects and new coteries. But it is only an irresponsible daydream to want to liberate the whole mass of the working class from the very weighty and dangerous yoke of the bourgeoisie by a simple ‘walk out’.” Working in mass organisations Such an approach is entirely justified when a long-term strategy is pursued by Marxists within mass parties. Such was the approach of Militant, now the Socialist Party, when it worked successfully within the Labour Party, in the 1980s, in Britain. Militant established perhaps the most powerful position for Trotskyists, in Western Europe at least, probably since the development of the international Left Opposition. But such an approach – justified at one historical period – can be a monumental error at another, when conditions change and particularly when abrupt revolutionary breaks are posed. Rosa Luxemburg and Jogiches could not be faulted for seeking to organise within the social democracy for as long as possible and, for that matter, the USPD later. Indeed, Lenin, in his eagerness to create mass communist parties in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, was sometimes a little impatient and premature in his suggestions for splitting from social-democratic organisations. He proposed a rapid split of the communists from the French Socialist Party in 1920 but changed his mind after Alfred Rosmer, in Moscow during that year, suggested that the Marxists would need more time to bring over the majority to the stand of the Communist (Third) International. Even Lenin, while proposing a split from the Second International and the formation of the Third International, following the August 1914 debacle, was even prepared to amend his position if events did not work out as he envisaged. For instance, on the issue of the Third International he wrote: “The immediate future will show whether conditions have already ripened for the formation of a new, Marxist International… If they have not, it will show that a more or less prolonged evolution is needed for this purging. In that case, our Party will be the extreme opposition within the old International – until a base is formed in different countries for an international working men’s association that stands on the basis of revolutionary Marxism.” When the floodgates of revolution were thrown open in February 1917 in Russia, and the masses poured onto the political arena, even the Bolsheviks – despite their previous history – had about 1% support in the soviets, and 4% by April 1917. The real weakness of Luxemburg and Jogiches was not that they refused to split but that in the entire preceding historical period they were not organised as a clearly-defined trend in social democracy preparing for the revolutionary outbursts upon which the whole of Rosa Luxemburg’s work for more than 10 years was based. The same charge – only with more justification – could be levelled at those left and even Marxist currents that work or have worked in broad formations, sometimes in new parties. They have invariably been indistinguishable politically from the reformist or centrist leaders. This was the case in Italy in the PRC where the Mandelites (now organised outside in Sinistra Critica) were supporters of the ‘majority’ of Bertinotti until they were ejected and then left the party. The SWP’s German organisation (Linksruck, now Marx 21) pursues a similar policy within Die Linke (the Left party) today as the left boot of the party and consequently will not gain substantially. Luxemburg politically did not act like this but she did not draw all the organisational conclusions, as had Lenin, in preparing a steeled cadre, a framework for a future mass organisation, in preparation for the convulsive events that subsequently developed in Germany. It was this aspect that Lenin subjected to criticism in his comments on Rosa Luxemburg’s’ Junius’ pamphlet, published in 1915. Lenin conceded that this was a “splendid Marxist work” although he argued against confusing opposition to the First World War, which was imperialist in character, and legitimate wars of national liberation. But Lenin, while praising Luxemburg’s pamphlet, also comments that it “conjures up in our mind the picture of a lone man [he did not know Rosa was the author] who has no comrades in an illegal organisation accustomed to thinking out revolutionary slogans to their conclusion and systematically educating the masses in their spirit”. Here lie some of the differences between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. Lenin systematically trained and organised the best workers in Russia in implacable opposition to capitalism and its shadows in the labour movement. This necessarily involved clearly organising a grouping, ‘faction’ – one that was organised as well as based on firm political principles. Lenin organised for future battles, including the revolution. Rosa Luxemburg was an important figure in all the congresses of the Second International and generally carried the votes of the Polish Social Democratic party in exile. She was also a member of the International Socialist Bureau. However, as Pierre Broué points out: “She was never able to establish within the SPD either a permanent platform based on the support of a newspaper or a journal or a stable audience wider than a handful of friends and supporters around her.” The growing opposition to the war, however, widened the circle of support and contacts for Luxemburg and the Sparticist group. Trotsky sums up her dilemma: “The most that can be said is that in her historical-philosophical evaluation of the labour movement, the preparatory selection of the vanguard, in comparison with the mass actions that were to be expected, fell too short with Rosa; whereas Lenin – without consoling himself with the miracles of future actions – took the advanced workers and constantly and tirelessly welded them together into firm nuclei, illegally or legally, in the mass organisations or underground, by means of a sharply defined programme.” However, Luxemburg did begin after the revolution of November 1918 her “ardent labour” of assembling such a cadre. A programme for workers’ democracy Moreover, Luxemburg posed very clearly the ideological tasks: “The choice today is not between democracy and dictatorship. The question which history has placed on the agenda is: bourgeois democracy or socialist democracy for the dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy in a socialist sense of the term. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean bombs, putsches, riots or ‘anarchy’ that the agents of capitalism claim.” This is an answer to those who seek to distort the idea of Karl Marx when he spoke about the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which in today’s terms, as Luxemburg pointed out, means workers’ democracy. Because of its connotations with Stalinism however, Marxists today, in trying to reach the best workers, do not use language which can give a false idea of what they intend for the future. This, unfortunately, includes the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which can be construed as connected to Stalinism. The same idea is expressed in our call for a socialist, planned economy, organised on the basis of workers’ democracy. The German revolution not only overthrew the Kaiser but posed the germ of a workers government through the institution of a network of workers and sailors’ councils on the lines of the Russian revolution. A period of dual power was initiated and the capitalists were compelled to give important concessions to the masses such as the eight-hour day. But the social-democratic leaders like Gustav Noske and Philipp Scheidemann conspired with the capitalists and the reactionary scum in the Freikorps (predecessors of the fascists) to take their revenge. General Wilhelm Groener, who led the German army, admitted later on: “The officer corps could only cooperate with a government which undertook the struggle against Bolshevism … Ebert [the social-democrat leader] had made his mind up on this … We made an alliance against Bolshevism … There existed no other party which had enough influence upon the masses to enable the re-establishment of a governmental power with the help of the army.” Gradually, concessions to the workers were undermined and a vitriolic campaign against the ‘Bolshevik terror’, chaos, the Jews, and particularly, “bloody Rosa” was unleashed. Bodies like the Anti-Bolshevik League organised its own intelligence service and set up, in its founder’s words, an “active anti-communist counter-espionage organisation”. In opposition to the slogan ‘All power to the soviets’ – the slogan of the Russian revolution – the reaction led by Noske’s Social Democrats mobilised behind the idea of “All power to the people”. This was their means of undermining the German ‘soviets’. A ‘constituent assembly’ was posed as an alternative to Luxemburg and Liebknecht’s ideas of a national council of soviets to initiate a workers and farmers’ government. Unfortunately, the muddled centrist lefts, whose party grew enormously as the social-democratic leaders lost support, let slip the opportunity to create an all-Germany council movement. The discontent of the masses was reflected in the January 1919 uprising. Such stages are reached in all revolutions when the working class sees its gains snatched back by the capitalists and comes out onto the streets; the Russian workers in the July Days of 1917 and the May Days in Catalonia in 1937 during the Spanish revolution. The events of the German revolution were dealt with in Socialism Today (Issue 123, November 2008) and The Socialist (Issue 555, 4 November 2008). The July Days in Russia developed four months after the February revolution whereas in Germany the uprising took place a mere two months after the revolutionary overturn of November 1918. This itself is an indication of the speed of events that developed in Germany at this stage. Given the isolation of Berlin from the rest of the country at that stage, a setback or a defeat was inevitable. But this became all the greater for the working class with the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. It was as if both Lenin and Trotsky had been assassinated in Russia in July 1917. This would have removed the two leaders whose ideas and political guidance led to the success of the October revolution. Lenin – extremely modest on a personal level – was quite aware of his own vital political role and took steps, by going into hiding in Finland, to avoid falling into the hands of the counter-revolution. Despite the urging of those like Paul Levi to leave Berlin, both Luxemburg and Liebknecht remained in the city, with the terrible consequences that followed. There is no doubt that Luxemburg’s sure political experience would have been a powerful factor in avoiding some of the mistakes – particularly ultra-left ones – which were subsequently made in the development of the German revolution. In the convulsive events of 1923 in particular, Rosa Luxemburg with her keen instinct for the mass movement and ability to change with circumstances, would probably not have made the mistake made by Heinrich Brandler and the leadership of the KPD, when they let slip what was one of the most favourable opportunities in history to make a working-class revolution and change the course of world history. Luxemburg and Liebknecht are in the pantheon of the Marxists greats. For her theoretical contribution alone, Rosa Luxemburg deserves to stand alongside Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Those who try and picture her as a critic of the Bolsheviks and the Russian revolution are entirely false. She hailed the work of Lenin and Trotsky. Her book written in prison in 1918 – in which she criticised the Bolshevik regime – was a product of isolation, which she was persuaded not to publish and did not pursue later when released from prison. Yet still in her most erroneous work she wrote of the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviks: “Everything that a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness, and consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure… Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian revolution; it was also the salvation of the honour of international socialism”. Only malicious enemies of the heroic traditions of the Bolshevik party circulated this material after her death in an attempt to divide Luxemburg from Lenin, Trotsky, the Bolsheviks and the great work of the Russian revolution. Luxemburg made mistakes on the issue of the independence of Poland. She was also wrong on the difference between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (even in July 1914 supporting the opportunists who stood for the ‘unity’ between them) and, as Lenin pointed out, also on the economic ‘theory of accumulation’. But also in the words of Lenin, “In spite of her mistakes she was – and remains for us – an eagle”. So should say the best workers and young people today who have occasion to study her works in preparation for the struggle for socialism.

How Lenin looked to deal with bureaucracy

"In the last period of his life Lenin was desperately concerned about the growth of bureaucracy in the Soviet state and in the Party." Lenin feared for the party and the Russian state and could sense Stalin’s rise and him concentrating more and more power in his hands. Many people understand wrong the definition of bureaucracy today many believe bureaucracy" as if it were simply a matter of "bureaucratic behavior", excessive red-tape, officialdom, etc. Such an approach has nothing in common with the Marxist method, which explains bureaucracy as a social phenomenon, which arises for definite reasons. Lenin, approaching the question as a Marxist, explained the rise of bureaucracy as a parasitic, capitalist growth on the organism of the workers' state, which arose out of the isolation of the revolution in a backward, illiterate peasant country. Lenin’s ideas did not grow into Stalinism as many opponents of socialism tell us. Stalinism was a rise of the bureaucracy which h fed off of the degeneration of the Russian workers state. In one of his last articles, Better Fewer but Better, Lenin wrote: "Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say wretched, that we must first think very carefully how to combat its defects, bearing in mind that these defects are rooted in the past, which, although it has been overthrown, has not yet been overcome, not yet reached the stage of a culture that has receded into the past." (Works, vol. 33, page 487) The October revolution had overthrown the old order, ruthlessly suppressed and purged the Tsarist state; but in conditions of chronic economic and cultural backwardness, the elements of the old order were everywhere creeping back into positions of privilege and power in the measure that the revolutionary wave ebbed back with the defeats of the international revolution. Engels explained that in every society where art, science and government are the exclusive of a privileged minority, then that minority will always use and abuse its positions in its own interests. And this state of affairs is inevitable, so long as the vast majority of the people are forced to toil for long hours in industry and agriculture for the bare necessities of life. After the revolution, with the ruined condition of industry, the working day was not reduced, but lengthened. Workers toiled ten, twelve hours and more a day on subsistence rations; many worked weekends without pay voluntarily. But, as Trotsky explained, the masses can only sacrifice their "today" for their "tomorrow" up to a very definite limit. Inevitably, the strain of war, of revolution, of four years of bloody Civil War, of a famine in which five million perished, all served to undermine the working class in terms of both numbers and morale. The NEP stabilized the economy, but created new dangers by encouraging the growth of small capitalism, especially in the countryside where the rich "kulaks" gained ground at the expense of the poor peasants. Industry revived, but, being tied to the demand of the peasantry, especially the rich peasants, the revival was confined almost entirely to light industry (consumer goods). Heavy industry, the key to socialist construction, stagnated. By 1922 there were two million unemployed m the towns. Immediately after the seizure of power, the only political party which was suppressed by the Bolsheviks was the fascist Black Hundreds. Even the bourgeois Cadet Party was not immediately illegalized. The government itself was a coalition of Bolsheviks and Left Social-Revolutionaries. But, under the pressure of the Civil War, a sharp polarization of class forces took place in which the Mensheviks, SRs and "Left SRs" came out on the side of the counter-revolution. Contrary to their own intention, the Bolsheviks were forced to introduce a monopoly of political power. This monopoly, which was regarded as an extraordinary and temporary state of affairs, created enormous dangers in the situation where the proletarian vanguard was coming under increasing pressure from alien classes. In relation to Stalin, Lenin writes that "Comrade Stalin having become General Secretary has concentrated enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution." Repeatedly, Lenin characterized the bureaucracy as a parasitic, bourgeois growth on the workers' state, and an expression of the petty-bourgeois outlook - which penetrated the State and even the Party. The petty-bourgeois reaction against October was all the more difficult to combat because of the exhausted state of the proletariat, sections of which were also becoming demoralized. Nonetheless, Lenin and Trotsky saw the working class as the only basis for a struggle against bureaucracy, and the maintenance of a healthy workers' democracy as the only check on it. Thus, in one article Purging the Party Lenin wrote: "Naturally, we shall not submit to everything the masses say because the masses, too, sometimes - particularly in time of exceptional weariness and exhaustion resulting from excessive hardship and suffering - yield to sentiments that are in no way advanced. But in appraising persons, in the negative attitude to those who have "attached" themselves to us for selfish motives, to those who have become "puffed-up commissars" and "bureaucrats", the suggestions of the non-Party proletarian masses and, in many cases, of the non-Party peasant masses, are extremely valuable." (Works, vol. 33, page 39) As the bureaucracy became more remote from the working class within Russia, so it increasingly gave up confidence in the proletariat abroad. The Communist International was transformed into an agency of the bureaucracy's foreign policy. Searching for national security, the bureaucracy began to play a counter-revolutionary role on the world arena. The perspective for an independent struggle for socialism was abandoned. In an effort to provide theoretical, 'Leninist' justification, Stalin exhumed Lenin's old formula of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. In other words, they returned to the policy they had supported at the beginning of 1917 - before they had been defeated by Lenin in the struggle within the party. The revival of this discredited policy was applied with disastrous results to the Chinese revolution of 1925-26. Against the wished of the leadership of the Chinese Communists, the Stalinist bureaucracy imposed a policy of subordination to the Chinese bourgeoisie led by Chiang Kai-cheek and the Kuomintang. This led to the defeat of China's dynamic working class, with the massacre of thousands of Communists and militants. Since then, the same policy has been applied with the same disastrous results. In the post-Second World War period the ex-colonial lands have experienced a series of revolutionary upheavals. The communist party leaders, still dominated by Stalinist ideology, have invariably subordinated the workers' organizations to the interests of national-capitalist leaders. In many cases this has meant support for Bonapartist, including military bonapartist leaders. Sukharno in Indonesia, Kassim in Iraq, Gonclaves in Portugal - the list could be extended around the world many times. Lenin stood for all workers officials to only receive the wage of a skilled worker, an immediate right to recall, a rotation of tasks to not get too bogged down in one position for too long and for all officials to be accountable to their members. These policies we still stand by today in the socialist party and look to popularise them in our fight against bureaucracy and for the most open democracy at all times with thin the labour movement. With extracts taken from Lynn walsh’s introduction to Lenin’s April thesis and Ted Grant and Alan woods lenin’s fight against bureaucracy

Why Marxists warn and fight against imperialism

I’m currently reading Lenin’s excellent work on Imperialism the highest form of capitalism. What a fantastic piece I must say to someone still getting to grips with Marxism and learning about the world and how it really works this piece has been a really top read.

Imperialism is as Lenin quite rightly points out is the heights form of capitalism it is born out of monopoly capitalism which arises as a contradiction to the so called free market. It’s the domination of capital on an international scale breaking out of its national confines to invade and plunder foreign markets in pursuit of greater profits and to see off the competition as much like capitalism does on the national scale.

Imperialism. Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom. Whatever the political system, the result of these tendencies is everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field. Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the striving for annexations, i.e., the violation of national independence (for annexation is nothing but the violation of the right of nations to self-determination).
This piece which Lenin wrote highlights the role imperialism plays on the world stage and the view which Marxists take towards it. The current state of imperialism is a very interesting thing from what I can understand American and British imperialism would appear to be in decline with the rise of German and Chinese imperialism on the rise in its influence and market share. Germany has done well off the back of the Euro one of the few countries powering ahead still in the world although this cannot last it is for now holding great sway over much of Europe and beyond in some cases. China due to its huge growth in the last period has enabled it to enter new markets in Africa and other parts of Asia Taiwan Malaysia etc. It is the so called strength of eastern imperialism including China which capitalists worldwide hope will pull their system out of this deep crisis it is unlikely to do so as China itself is now slowing and cooling off its growth nod a repeat of the 2008 pumping of the economy by a estimated 12 % of GDP in China is simply not possible any longer. This is a desperate stage for capitalism where it goes from here they have no idea the thinkers part of this system. Hense I think imperialism in the US and the UK for example has taken a beaten of late. The fact that Egypt and Tunisia which were both backed by Imperialism for many years have seen their regimes crumble at the force of the working class is proof that imperialism is not indestructible and immune to crisis’s and defeat. The imperialist backed invasion of Iraq by Western troops in 2003 to remove Sadam Hussein now looks a shattered idea as the idea that only imperialist forces can bring down a dictator has been blown wide out of the water.

The mass’s when they unite and bring dictators to their knees such as in Egypt although not a fully developed situation there now with the SCAF still holding the power there shows that workers and the mass’s are finding their voices and their power which has laid dormant for years is now finally being realised again.

The fight against imperialism has to be international much like the struggle for socialism. A national struggle will always be supported by other workers around the world as we all face the same oppression but a global effort to replace capitalism is what is needed more. Ending capitalism will bring an end to imperialism and exploitation. Growing ideas and building the ideas of Marxism around the globe is key to understanding imperialism. Reading Lenin and Trotsky on the matter is very helpful too I’m still learning and always will be learning. Understanding the way capitalism works and doesn’t work is key to bein a Marxist but applying it to the class strugglea and a programme for winning workers to the ideas to change society is far more important though. This is what the socialist party does day to day and will continue to do to realise a better more equal society for the 99%.

Why do Marxists stand for elections ? ?

Next week in our branch meeting in Harlow socialist party the topic for discussion will be why do we stand for elections? I will do this lead off as branch secretary and open up for debate and discussion.
With our meeting coming the night before the 3rd may elections I thought it was very appropriate to schedule this discussion in for our branch and what attitude we take to elections.



By PAUL D'AMATO
WHAT ATTITUDE do Marxists take to elections and representative government? In the history of the socialist movement there have developed or coexisted two principal and, in the end, quite different and opposing views of the question. One, reformism, argues that modern representative government affords the working class the opportunity to achieve socialism by electing a socialist majority into office. This view emphasizes the peaceful, gradual transition to socialism, and sees campaigns around elections and the work of socialist elected officials as the most important aspect of socialists’ activity. The other trend, first outlined by Marx and Engels, and then elaborated by Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin, argues for a revolutionary overthrow of the state, based upon the mass struggle of the working class, and its replacement by new organs of workers’ power.
The reformist trend flourished in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, expressed most fully by a former collaborator of Engels, Eduard Bernstein, who wrote in his reformist bombshell Evolutionary Socialism,
The task of social democracy is to organize the working classes politically and develop them as a democracy and to fight for all reforms in the State which are adapted to raise the working classes and transform the State in the direction of democracy.1
But even Karl Kautsky, the foremost theoretical leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a critic of Bernstein’s views, saw "the conquest of political power" as essentially the conquest of parliament. He wrote, for example, in 1912,
The objective of our political struggle remains what it has always been up to now: the conquest of state power through the conquest of a majority in parliament and the elevation of parliament to a commanding position within the state. Certainly not the destruction of state power. 2
Kautsky considered mass action–street protests and strikes–to be abnormal methods of struggle, denouncing an emphasis on them as being "one-sided" and reflecting a "cretinism of mass action."3
In the early socialist tradition, these two tendencies were often blurred by the fact that both reformists and revolutionaries used the term "conquest of political power" by the working class to describe two very different sets of aims.
Marx and Engels on the state, parliament and elections
Throughout their political lives, Marx and Engels always argued that the working class–whatever its size and state of development–must organize itself independently as a class "and consequently into a political party,"4 as they wrote in The Communist Manifesto.
Just months later, during the revolutions of 1848 that swept across Europe, Marx and Engels, as leading members of a small group of socialists in the Communist League, participated in the revolution in Germany as the far left wing of the radical bourgeois-democratic movement. With only a few hundred members across Europe, the League was simply not big enough to assert itself as an independent force. But in the course of the revolution, it became clear to Marx that, due to the cowardly and tentative nature of the radical middle-class elements, it would be necessary for the working class to organize independently to safeguard its own class interests.
In his March 1850 "Address to the Communist League," Marx recommended that in the future course of the revolution, the workers’ party "‘march with’ the petty-bourgeois democrats against the faction whom it aims at overthrowing," but that it oppose "them in everything whereby they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests."5
In addition to arming themselves and organizing centralized and independent clubs, the workers’ party should put candidates up for elections in Germany in the event of the creation of a national assembly as a result of revolutionary upheaval:
Even when there is no prospect whatsoever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces, and to bring before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be seduced by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the Democratic Party and making it possible for the reactionaries to win. The ultimate intention of all such phrases is to dupe the proletariat. The advance which the proletarian party is bound to make by such independent action is indefinitely more important than the disadvantage that might be incurred by the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.6
The argument for voting against left-wing or socialist candidates on the grounds that they can’t win and are therefore helping the right wing into power has, of course, been a time-worn argument in the U.S. against bucking the two-party system. Engels, in an 1893 letter to an American colleague, pointed out that in the U.S., the formation of a workers’ party is hindered by the "Constitution…which makes it appear as though every vote were lost that is cast for a candidate not put up by one of the two governing parties."7
Marx’s March circular was shelved after revolutionary upsurge ebbed. But Marx and Engels lived to see the formation of the first mass socialist workers’ party in Germany that was able to use the German parliament, the Reichstag, to advance their cause. The SPD in Germany was formed in 1875 out of a merger between two different parties–one influenced by Marxism, the other based on "winning reforms through a compromise with the Prussian state."8 But as much as they came to consider this their party, Marx and Engels were from the start critical of what they considered its political shortcomings and always fought any attempt to dilute its working-class character.
As early as 1879, Marx and Engels wrote a circular letter to party leaders in which they asked if the party had not been "infected with the parliamentary diseases, believing that, with the popular vote, the Holy Ghost is poured upon those elected."9 The circular letter also attacked an article written by, among others, Eduard Bernstein. The article applauded the idea of a socialist movement led by "all men imbued with a true love of mankind," and attacked those who "trivialized" the movement into a "one-sided struggle of the industrial workers to promote their own interests." The article called upon the party to be "calm, sober and considered" in order not to scare "the bourgeoisie out of their wits by holding up the red spectre." It also called for "educated" men to represent the party in the Reichstag.10
Marx and Engels attacked the authors, arguing that they should leave the party if they intended to "use their official position to combat the party’s proletarian character."11 For Bernstein and the others:


As Marxists we often say that standing for elections and trying to win votes is the lowest form of class struggle. As the socialist party standing as TUSC of late we have not made big breakthroughs this is true and we do not expect to see them this year either but what we do do is have that opportunity to talk to people and get our ides to a wider audience.
But we do not hold illusions in bourgeois democracy as Rosa Luxemburg was clear that even if socialists were able to achieve a majority in parliament in a given country, this would not signal the victory of socialism. The ruling class would rally around its most trusted state institutions–the police, the army, the state bureaucracy and corrupted party politicians–against parliament if necessary:
In this society, the representative institutions, democratic in form, are in content the instruments of the interests of the ruling class. This manifests itself in a tangible fashion in the fact that as soon as democracy shows the tendency to negate its class character and become transformed into an instrument of the real interests of the population, the democratic forms are sacrificed by the bourgeoisie and by its state representatives
This is not some theoretical debating point, but has often been the bitter historical experience of the workers’ movement internationally. In Chile, for example, Salvador Allende’s reformist socialist government was overturned in a bloody military coup in 1973. Moreover, in many countries, such as China, Saudi Arabia and many others, capitalism and the market go hand in hand with military, monarchic or one-party rule. Democracy–even bourgeois democracy–is in some cases seen as a luxury that those who rule cannot afford.


The Bolshevik Party was the first to utilize elections in a really revolutionary way. The fact that the Bolsheviks organized independently of the reformists, the Mensheviks, freed them to follow the course outlined by Luxemburg, to utilize the rostrum of parliament to conduct revolutionary propaganda and agitation.
Like Germany, Russia had not undergone a bourgeois revolution and was still under the heel of a semi feudal autocracy. Revolutionaries were driven underground, forced to operate clandestinely in order to escape persecution, arrest, exile and even execution.
In the mass upheaval of the 1905 revolution, the Tzar issued a manifesto announcing the creation of a parliament (Duma) as a sop to the revolutionary movement. This was not to be a real legislative body but a consultative council to the Tzar that the latter could dissolve at will. Moreover, the Duma election system was weighted to give more representation to big landlords. The Bolshevik Party advocated an "active" boycott of the first Duma. But once the revolution began to ebb, Lenin changed his position and argued that socialists should participate in the Duma.
We were obliged to do–and did–everything in our power to prevent the convocation of a sham representative body. That is so. But since it has been convened in spite of all our efforts, we cannot shirk the task of utilizing it.
Lenin had to wage a determined fight against party members who argued that on principle Marxists should boycott the Duma. He argued that under changed, no revolutionary conditions, the boycott was meaningless:
The boycott is a means of struggle aimed directly at overthrowing the old regime, or, at the worst, i.e., when the assault is not strong enough for overthrow, at weakening it to such an extent that it would be unable to set up that institution, unable to make it operate. Consequently, to be successful the boycott requires a direct struggle against the old regime, an uprising against it and mass disobedience to it in a large number of cases.
Lenin therefore attacked the idea of a "passive" boycott–that is, simply abstaining from elections or parliament, a refusal to "recognize" existing institutions even if the movement cannot destroy them. He did not glorify the work, but said, "Since the accursed counter-revolution has driven us into this accursed pig-sty, we shall work there too for the benefit of the revolution, without whining, but also without boasting."
Even so, Lenin was clear that revolutionaries considered participation in elections as only a small part of their activity, and that the struggle in the workplaces and streets was far more important.
We shall not refuse to go into the Second Duma when (or "if") it is convened. We shall not refuse to utilize this arena, but we shall not exaggerate its modest importance; on the contrary, guided by the experience already provided by history, we shall entirely subordinate the struggle we wage in the Duma to another form of struggle, namely strikes, uprisings, etc.
What did that work consist of? For party work, it meant using the election campaigns to conduct propaganda among masses it normally did or could not reach. And, for the party members who were elected as deputies, it meant using the Duma as a platform to disseminate propaganda, to expose the right wing and the liberal bourgeoisie and to assist in the organization of struggles outside the Duma. Socialist deputies could use their parliamentary immunity to conduct propaganda that outside the Duma would normally be considered illegal. They could make Duma speeches that reprinted in the party and non-party press could reach a wider audience than other types of party propaganda, and they could use the Duma rostrum to expose, in the form of "interpolations," the various abuses of the system against peasants and workers. Unlike in the German SPD, where parliamentary representatives were the stars in the party crown, the Bolshevik Party subordinated their Duma deputies to party control and saw them as servants of the working-class struggle.

This is exactly the same approach we take today we do not sow false illusions in parliament but we do fight for every reform for workers we can and be that beacon on the inside to expose the right wing and the system from within.
As Lenin rightly points out there are some workers who still look towards parliament as bodies of power and we need to be there winning them over and turning them towards our point of view if we can. Lenin said Participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the platform of parliament is obligatory for the party of the revolutionary proletariat…As long as you are unable to disperse the bourgeois parliament and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work inside them, precisely because there you will still find workers who are stupefied by the priests and by the dreariness of rural life; otherwise you risk becoming mere babblers.
We do not take a ultra left view of totally against elections like the anarchists do we look to be the best working class fighters possible while pointing to the fact that reforms will never be enough for workers.

We are faced with the fact that Parliament exists and that the mass of the population, despite their criticisms, look to it for change. In 1940 Trotsky, while discussing the question of war, explained how Marxists must make use of bourgeois institutions like parliament. “The courts are bourgeois but we don’t boycott them as the anarchists. We try to use them and fight within them. Likewise with parliaments. We are enemies of the bourgeoisie and its institutions, but we utilise them.”
Trotsky carried the argument forward – to the question of war: “War is a bourgeois institution a thousand times more powerful than all the other bourgeois institutions. We accept it as a fact like the bourgeois schools and try to utilise it.” He continues:
“In the union I can say I am for the Fourth International. I am against war. But I am with you. I will not sabotage the war. I will be the best soldier just as I was the best and most skilled worker in the factory. At the same time I will try to convince you too that we should change society.” (Writings, 1939-40, p. 256).
So with parliament. There is no contradiction between understanding, from a revolutionary point of view, the true nature of a bourgeois parliament and at the same time fighting for every crumb, every concession we can gain from it. In the same sense as Trotsky in 1940 advocated that the members of the Fourth International, while opposing the war; in the case of that particular war should be the “best soldiers,” we must be the “best parliamentary representatives,” the most effective in squeezing every possible concession and, at the same time, the most resolute in revealing its limitations. If we are to expose the limits of change through parliament we have to struggle within it to reach those limits and thereby bring them into the view of the working class.
Instead of such sterile ultra-leftism we explain that we are fighting to become the majority in parliament and go on to spell out what we would do if we had that majority. We say we would pass legislation to take the wealth out of the hands of the ruling class. But, as the bitter experience of Chile showed, the ruling class will not peaceably surrender their wealth and power. They would use their control of the armed machinery of the state to resist. Under those circumstances we would mobilise the working class to confront them, just as the Bolsheviks did in August 1917. Part of this resistance would be the formation of workers’ councils, of committees in the army, in short of the emergence of an alternative state based on the independent power of the working class. In this way the real question of power would be posed.
Only a sectarian divorced from reality could reduce this explanation to holding open “the possibility that socialism can be achieved by a mass movement ‘backing up’ its parliamentary representatives.” The ability to go from abstract theoretical understanding to a day-to-day programme and explanation, put forward in a manner and language which can be understood, is one of the factors which distinguish Marxism from doctrinaire sectarianism.

The revolutionary line which avoids the opposite but twin pitfalls of ultra-leftism and opportunism is a difficult and often narrow line which cannot be traced out in advance or from the sidelines of the class struggle. It is not formed through declarations of revolutionary intent, nor is it made deeper by revolutionary phrase mongering. It can only be traced out in practice in the course of the struggle itself.


We are often told by others on the left oh you’ll just end up turning into a reformist and just the same as all those other polititians we refute this as our first elected TD in Ireland has shown Joe Higgins. Like Terry Fields, Pat Wall and Dave Nellist, Joe Higgins has not adopted the lifestyle or adapted to the customs and norms of bourgeois politics. He lives on a workers wage and provides the Dublin West electorate with an account of where the rest of his salary and all his allowances go. He has used the Dáil chamber to challenge the establishment. He has brought the scent of the class struggle into the otherwise rarefied atmosphere of the Dáil, as with his handcuffed gesture in solidarity with jailed building workers. He has used his position to promote working class struggle outside the Dáil, speaking at countless meetings, protests and pickets. He has intervened in debates on legislation, with opposition proposals and amendments. On top of this he has carried a huge constituency case load, trying to use his influence to help working class people in Dublin West with day-to-day problems.


So it is clear going into these coming elections as TUSC where we stand and how we hope to gain from standing. As we say its not just about standing for us at all it’s about having a broad outlook to winning over workers to your cause to change society.

With extracts from the late Peter Haddon from th CWI on Marxists in elections and extracts from ISR