Die Welt ist Klein

HOPI AGM this Saturday November 28!

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:35:00 +0000

This coming weekend, Hands Off the People of Iran will hold its third annual conference. In the past three years we have been pivotal in planting the flag of principled solidarity, taking the arguments for proletarian internationalism into the workers’ and student movements both in Britain and, to a lesser extent, internationally.
Indeed, in spite of the confusion that has been sown about the campaign by regime apologists and social-imperialists alike, Hopi’s message has been and remains unambiguous: consistently siding with the Iranian masses and the movements of workers, students, women and LGBT people must flow from two indispensable principles.
On the one hand, we must implacably oppose imperialist sanctions and war as the worst possible outcome for the peoples of Iran (as we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq). For this reason, we have been on every Stop the War Coalition demonstration against imperialism’s presence in the Middle East and against any future attacks. Unfortunately, the STWC still rejects our affiliation, but precisely because of our commitment to the defeat of the imperialist project we take the unity of the anti-war movement seriously and will continue to seek such affiliation.
On the other hand, we must provide unswerving support for the mass democratic movements inside Iran, especially those led by the working class, as opposed to this or that faction of the purportedly ’anti-imperialist’ regime.
If we are to truly champion the cause of the Iranian masses, then these principles cannot exist in isolation from each other. We are firmly convinced that the tumultuous events of the past year and the mass upsurge following the patently fraudulent presidential election of June 2009 have vindicated our fundamental perspectives. Approaching the question in the manner we have always done, we had no hesitation in immediately placing ourselves on the side of the Iranian masses. We also welcomed the fact that the left in Britain - with a few distinctly dishonourable exceptions such as George Galloway - also sided with the Iranian people. As a result of the inspiring events, many comrades in the movement who previously held doubts about the campaign have increasingly come over to our perspectives. This is good news.
As we have insisted, the Islamic Republic is deeply unpopular inside Iran. It is increasingly clear, however, that illusions in the green movement of Mir-Hossein Moussavi are disappearing. The only way the Iranian masses can impose their agenda on society is by building a red movement and fighting for working class rule. The actions of workers in transport, train manufacture, the sugar and oil industries are intimations of something more generalised and must be supported through practical international solidarity.
Hopi is committed to advancing the interests of the working class. This is why we resolutely oppose imperialist sanctions: they reduce the fighting capacity of the working class to a mere struggle for survival. For example, oil workers have been seriously discussing a nationwide strike (that is what tipped the balance of forces decisively against the shah in 1979), but they are concerned that such an action would be damaging to the Iranian population which faces a harsh winter and renewed talk in the Obama administration of “crippling” petroleum sanctions (about 40% of Iran’s petroleum has to be imported because it lacks the necessary processing capacity).
The sanctions war has the aim of either forcing Tehran to compromise and fall in with the wishes of the US or, failing that, helping to bring to fruition plans for regime change from above. US imperialism now smells blood. With the regime deeply split and facing a huge opposition movement, administration officials are hoping for a diplomatic deal that will ends Iran’s pariah status as a rogue state, while safely neutralising the mass movement. Given Iran’s history of revolutions in the 20th century and militant working class traditions, this is more than understandable.
In the absence of a strong international workers’ movement that is capable of providing decisive material and ideological support, many pseudo-leftwingers in Iran are overtly or covertly going over to the camp of imperialism and winning a degree of support by claiming that anything must be better than the brutal and thoroughly discredited theocratic regime. However, Iraq is a living warning that imperialism brings not peace, democracy and plenty, but barbarism.
Winning the working class in the core imperialist countries away from the type of politics promoted by the International Workers Transport Federation and International Trade Union Confederation is a key question for Hopi. In March 2008 and June 2009 the ITWF and ITUC organised protests outside Iranian embassies highlighting the plight of imprisoned trade unionists but failed to mention imperialist sanctions or the threat of war (not least an Israeli strike).
In 2010 we shall continue to fight on two fronts: against the theocratic regime, against imperialist sanctions and war.

The BNP and Trotskyists chasing their own tails

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:49:00 +0000

Comrade John McKee of Permanent Revolution has written a stupidly illogical ‘critique’ of the CPGB’s view on the BNP and EDL, taking James Turley and myself to task for our recent articles (see ‘CPGB defends Nick Griffin’s “democratic rights”’: www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/2859).
In a flagrant disregard for evidence and facts, the comrade writes that the EDL is the BNP’s “boot-boy front”. He accuses the CPGB and myself of “deliberate naivety” because we have looked at the evidence and facts, and concluded that the mutual antipathy between the BNP and EDL is genuine. Of course, we accept that individual BNP members have been involved with the EDL - why else would the BNP threaten disciplinary action against them and declare the EDL a “proscribed organisation”?
Comrade McKee fantasises about the BNP “wanting to maintain some distance between its respectable profile and its street fighting wing”, but this “entirely bogus separation is strictly for public consumption”. Think about it. How can the BNP say one thing in public, including to its own members and supporters, and precisely the opposite covertly? Don’t you think it might cause some confusion amongst its own rank and file if the BNP were secretly running the EDL and urging its members to support it, while publicly threatening them with expulsion if they did? We also accept that the BNP is perfectly capable of lying about all sorts of things, but it is the duty of communists to identify when it is doing so and when it might just be telling the truth.
McKee displays the usual inability to actually deal with what comrade James Turley and I have been saying: “Right on queue [sic], the CPGB’s Weekly Worker launches a campaign to explain why socialists and anti-fascists should abandon ‘no platform for fascists’ and support Griffin’s right to a place in the mass media.”
We have not launched any “campaign” for Nick Griffin’s “democratic rights”. We are for defending the hard won rights of the working class and oppose all state bans and censorship, which inevitably will be wielded against us. We therefore also oppose demands by the left for the state to enforce such bans or for media outlets like the BBC to decide what views are or are not acceptable. As for ‘no platform’, we want to restate the classical Marxist case for utilising various tactics in the struggle in the fight against the far right - tactics which obviously include denying them a platform when appropriate. In the early 1920s the Communist Party of Germany tore apart the ideas of the Nazis not only in pamphlets, but on shared platforms. Under different circumstances they were prepared to tear them apart physically.
Comrade McKee states: “Like Ben Lewis, Turley does not rule out action against the fascists, but not now of course.” Amazingly, he then goes on to quote comrade Turley precisely referring to “now”: “If our working class organisations, meetings and demonstrations are being directly threatened in a given locality, then socialists, trade unionists and others should take whatever steps are necessary to defend them. But this is not true of the situation in British politics at large.”
It is the final sentence quoted above that McKee particularly dislikes: “This is utter complacency. If [the CPGB] had any influence, which fortunately it doesn’t, it would completely disarm the struggle against fascism and the BNP. This precisely needs to take place before it has built roots and can mobilise its passive voting base onto the streets.” Note that comrade McKee does not dispute the contention that working class events are usually not physically attacked by far-right thugs at this time, but he wants us to behave (or pretend to behave) as though they were anyway.
What the comrade is unwilling, or unable, to countenance is that the main threat to the workers’ movement does not come from the far right. It is the bourgeois state that is preparing a full-scale assault on the postal workers, planning to impose vicious cuts on all of us, waging a murderous war in Afghanistan and - as Nick Griffin points out whenever he is interviewed - is actually deporting refugees and asylum-seekers in the here and now. As Trotsky lucidly points out in his writings on fascism (have any of the so-called Trotskyists even read this stuff?), confusing the nature of threat of the far right can have disastrous tactical and strategic implications.
The icing on the cake comes when McKee scoffs at me for highlighting the core of the problem: the inability of the purportedly Marxist left to articulate its own political alternative in elections in the struggle to become a recognised force in society. He writes: “So, while the BNP are busy spreading their fascist politics across the media, the Marxists need to win elections in order to force ‘the establishment to start taking us seriously’. As if the establishment have ever been forced to do anything by the election of MPs.”
This is pathetic. The BNP is becoming recognised in society because it is standing candidates, getting elected and on some sort of level winning the political argument amongst a working class left high and dry by the idiocy of the confessional sects. Instead of constructing a response which focuses on the main enemy - the capitalist state - and on the need for a working class party and programme capable of challenging it, too many on the left want to chase around after the BNP like a dog chasing its tail.
As it cannot beat the BNP where it counts - in the battle of ideas - it views the ill-organised and disparate forces of the EDL as a godsend, pretending it is seeing off the “fascist” BNP’s “street fighting wing”.
If my insistence on party, programme and winning the battle of ideas makes me a “liberal wearing a communist mask” and a “democrat, not a communist”, then that says everything about McKee. We in the CPGB are the ones who have consistently fought for the unity of Marxists as Marxists in a political party now, whereas the PR comrades go along with the left ‘common sense’ of setting up organisations ‘not programmatically delimited between reform and revolution’ to swim in, as a means of building their own narrow sect.
Small wonder then that leading PR member Bill Jefferies was so keen on blocking attempts to mobilise against the EDL in Manchester around openly socialist politics. Much better to tail the bourgeois multiculturalist consensus and throw in a bit of 1980s rhetoric for good measure.

Lenin and the four wagers of 1917

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:05:00 +0000

The Bolshevik decision to make revolution was based on four key predictions, or ‘wagers’, says Lars T Lih: international revolution, soviet democracy, peasant followership and progress towards socialism. This is an edited version of the third speech he gave to the CPGB’s Communist University

I am going to talk about the fate of the ‘four wagers’ made by Lenin in 1917. They are: the wagers on international revolution, on soviet democracy, on steps toward socialism, and on what I call ‘peasant followership’.

First I will look at them in 1917, and then assess how Lenin thought they were turning out. By late 1918-early 1919 he is still very confident that most of them are paying off, but then he begins to realise in several ways that they are not. Then I will move ahead to 1922-23 and Lenin’s final writings, where I think he achieves a shaky synthesis of sorts.

I should say that the term ‘wager’ which I use is not meant to imply in any way something adventurous or risky. It comes from Pyotr Stolypin’s peasant policy, known as a wager, or betting, on the strong. In other words, it refers to a policy intended to produce certain results, based on the prediction that events will turn out in a certain way.

I will not speak much about Kautsky in this talk, but I will begin with a Kautsky quote from 1904: “The practical politician, if he wishes to be successful, must attempt to see into the future much like the theoretical socialist. Whether this foresight takes the form of a prophecy will depend on his temperament. But he must at the same time always be prepared for the appearance of unexpected factors which will frustrate his plans and impart a new direction to developments, and he must always be ready to change his tactic accordingly.”

And that is how I am approaching this subject: Lenin is making predictions and when he sees they are not working he tries to deal with the new situation.

My source for all this - since Lenin wrote little in terms of lengthy texts during this period - is his speeches. That was a big element of Lenin’s role in power: he made speeches to mainly party or sympathising audiences, where he would pound home the big message about what was happening. I think he was sincere in what he was saying, so when he started to recognise things were changing this was reflected in his speeches. There is a human drama in this: you can see his painful disappointment coming right to the surface.

A lot of this will be somewhat familiar - I am not going to be revisionist in this talk - and there is one familiar framework I am polemicising against. A lot of people believe that in 1917 and especially 1918 the regime starts off in a moderate, realistic way, but then during the civil war the Bolsheviks become more and more radical. They are forced to be by the civil war, but they do not realise this is happening, so by 1920 they see themselves in the position of taking a leap or short cut to communism - a kind of insanity. Then Kronstadt gives them a slap in the face, for which they are grateful, and they are able to turn back to the sober moderation of the New Economic Policy.

I see it in a different way. In 1917 there was a lack of reality and even demagogy on the part of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but afterwards a steady sobering up, so that in 1920 they are glum and pessimistic - far from ‘euphoric’, as, unbelievably, many writers claim. Arthur Ransome, the English writer, was in Russia and knew the Bolshevik leaders and talked to them a lot. He wrote two very good books describing the atmosphere at the time: Russia in 1919 and The crisis in Russia. Both were pre-NEP and so very valuable in this way.

He used this expression: “The Bolsheviks had illusion after illusion scraped from them by the pumice stone of experience.”1 I think that is what happened. I partially agree with the theory that the Bolsheviks overtheorised their problems, but I have a somewhat different picture of what that theory was.
‘October thesis’?

Let me now go back to October 1915, to a crucial comment made by Lenin. Most of his writings at this time were about the European situation, but on this occasion he sets out a policy for Russia. How does he combine this left Zimmerwald message - international revolution, socialism in Europe - with his desire for democratic revolution in Russia? In October1915 he said: “The task of the proletariat in Russia is to carry out the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia to the end.”2 He meant the most thoroughgoing democratic revolution possible - not one that went on to socialism, but simply won as many democratic gains as possible from the beginning, in order to ignite the socialist revolution in Europe.

Lenin then sketches out a scenario which connects the two. He was against an anti-tsarist revolution that would bring to power revolutionary chauvinists: ie, those who wish to remove the tsar only because he is bungling the war effort. He is against the chauvinists even if they are revolutionaries and republicans. The Bolsheviks were to strive for a second stage to the revolution led by the proletariat and supported by the petty bourgeois peasantry, which has been pushed to the left under the strain of the war. This second stage would resurrect the soviets of 1905, acting now as the heart of a new power (vlast) and this revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would carry out the full minimum programme and propose a just peace.

The Bolsheviks did not expect the imperialists would accept the proposal, but this would now put the Bolsheviks in the position to wage a just, revolutionary war aimed at socialist revolution in Europe and anti-colonial revolutions across the world. In Lenin’s words, “There is no doubt the victory of the proletariat in Russia would create extraordinarily favourable conditions for the development of revolution in Asia and Europe - even 1905 proved that.”3

So what we see here in 1915 is pretty much his 1917 platform - perhaps, instead of talking about the April thesis, we should talk of the ‘October (1915) thesis’. Lenin himself wrote to friends in 1917, saying the Bolsheviks had predicted the 1917 events in 1915 - “We were absolutely right”.

However, there was one change, a change he made without great fanfare right before he left for Russia, and that what I call the inclusion of “steps toward socialism”. That was the careful way in which Lenin described the programme for Russia - he used that metaphor of moving toward socialism, and that occurred on the eve of his return to Russia in April 1917. This is the first time we have the notion of not just the democratic revolution until the socialist revolution in Europe: now Russia is moving toward socialism regardless. In 1917 he continued to express the three wagers of 1915, plus this new wager.

I will now look at some of the arguments Lenin made in support of this in 1917. State and revolution, whilst written in 1917, was not published until 1918, and is often over-emphasised in assessing Lenin’s platform of 1917. In State and revolution he aimed to address the European audience, although he could not help at times reverting to Russian examples.

The two books upon which I am basing my summary are written in September 1917: The impending catastrophe and how to deal with it and Can the Bolsheviks retain state power? This is where Lenin talks about Russia and explains his logic. He is not calling on workers and peasants to make a socialist revolution, but to take the power. This is based on the assumption that the nature of the class that holds the vlast - Russian for ‘power’ or ‘governmental authority’ - decides everything. The Bolsheviks explained that, as long as the vlast was held by their enemies - the landowners, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie in any form - the imperialist war would continue, the economic collapse would continue, radical land reform would continue to be postponed. This would cease only when the workers as a class took power and fulfilled their historic mission of leading the whole of the narod (people) to revolutionary victory.

So let us see how these four wagers turned out.

I am not going to say much about the wager on international revolution - not because it is not important, but because I do not have a lot new to say. Soviet democracy is also fundamental, but I do not think I am going to change your mind on that one. I do, however, want to say something about the other two, the steps toward socialism and ‘peasant followership’.

Lenin’s rhetoric at this time was a new version of ‘aggressive unoriginality’,4 in that he said that everybody knew what measures must be taken: the Mensheviks, the liberals and even the monarchists are aware that we need a degree of economic regulation, land reform and strong governmental power, but are afraid to do these things because of their class position. This is summed up by a section title in The impending catastrophe: ‘Control measures are easy to take and known to all’ (‘control’ meaning ‘regulation’). So there is no ambiguity or difficulty in solving the crisis, if you have the will. The only way, of course, is to take power. The logic here is partly what I call a ‘Wumba of the people’. ‘Wumba’ is a German acronym for Waffen und Munitionsbeschaffungsamt. That was the weapons and supply bureaucracy in Germany - everybody was amazed at just how organised it was.

So, talking about Europe in 1916, Lenin said: “If, for instance, Germany can direct the economic life of 66 million people from a single centre and strain the energies of the narod in order to wage a predatory war in the interests of 100 or 200 financial magnates or aristocrats, the monarchy, etc, then the same can be done in the interests of nine-tenths of the people - ie, the non-propertied masses - if their struggle is directed by the conscious or purposive workers liberated from social-imperialist and social-pacifist influence.”5

So his programme for Europe was: expropriate the banks, and, relying on the masses, carry out in their interests what occurred in Germany. That is why I call it ‘Wumba for the people’. Can this be applied to Russia? Lenin thought so - there is enough of an economic regulatory apparatus, there is enough of a banking system, there are enough governmental trusts and so forth. He says it is possible to solve the crisis if we apply determined, revolutionary-democratic measures.
Steps toward socialism

I would like to make three points about the wager on steps towards socialism. First, there has been quite a debate about smashing (in Marx zerbrechen) the state, as opposed to using it ready-made. On this Lenin says explicitly: ‘We will smash the state’ - ie, what he meant by that in the Marxist framework was the bureaucracy, the army and the police: that is to say, the repressive and undemocratic apparatus - but we will preserve the economic apparatus. However, much of that apparatus is part of the state. So he is still saying at this point that we are going to preserve what I would call the ‘economic state apparatus’.

Secondly, when you read the rhetoric of Lenin and other Bolsheviks, they are promising an easy way out. They are saying, ‘If you let us, comrades, we will get you out of this crisis pretty quickly and painlessly.’ So I think that there is a certain unrealism bordering on demagogy here.

And finally, Lenin is somewhat ambiguous about whether the result will be socialism and what exactly that is. For example, there is another section entitled: ‘Can we go forward if we fear to go towards socialism?’ So they are moving forward and are not afraid of socialism, but he is not quite saying that it is going to be socialism. As I said earlier, the heart of the message in 1917 was not ‘Create a socialist revolution’, but rather ‘Take over the vlast’.

Looking ahead, what actually happened is that the economic apparatus was smashed by events and therefore, precisely because it was smashed, the repressive apparatus was not smashed and had to be strengthened.

What do I mean by ‘peasant followership’? Basically the old Bolshevik idea that you are going to rely on the peasants to follow you and try to be their leader. I use the word ‘followership’, as opposed to ‘leadership’, not as an insult, but much more of a compliment - the Bolsheviks are optimistic about the ability of the peasants and are prepared to make this wager on their followership. It is a question of understanding their interests: if we give them their demands around land then they will support us against the counterrevolution. When you look at the record of the peasants in western Europe you see that this was a gamble, a wager.

It is one half of this wager - the old Bolshevik view that we are going to complete the democratic revolution. We have only had a half-assed revolution because we are yet to destroy class power and the rule of the gentry. We are going to remove this class from history and get the peasants on board - they will support us against a counterrevolution. This is a somewhat readjusted old Bolshevism, but definitely taken from it.

But there was a new stage which was not so emphasised - this is something I saw only when I looked at the speeches and offhand comments. Lenin hoped that the peasants would move to socialism on their own - now. Of course, if the peasants started moving towards collectivised forms of production, then you could solve the problems.

This also brings a new twist to the idea of whether socialism was possible in Russia alone. This is an approach to the idea of socialism in Russia from a non-Trotskyist, non-permanent revolution logic. Trotsky never said - and in fact his whole argument is premised on it - that the peasants would be moving towards socialism on their own, whereas Lenin is banking on this as a possibility: if they are obliged by the emergency of the war and the prospect of ruin, they might see that it is good to get together and cooperate with each other.

So let us jump ahead one year to the end of 1918 and look at the book The renegade Kautsky. I am not going to talk about anything Lenin says about Kautsky here (one half abuse and the other half praise of ‘the old Kautsky’). I want to look at what Lenin wrote in response to Kautsky’s criticisms of the revolution. Lenin looks at the accomplishments of the revolution on its first anniversary, taking account of everything against Kautsky’s criticisms. He says, soviet democracy is fine - everybody says that we are coming along nicely.

He writes: “In Russia, however, the bureaucratic machine has been completely smashed, razed to the ground; the old judges have all been sent packing, the bourgeois parliament has been dispersed - and far more accessible representation has been given to the workers and peasants; their soviets have replaced the bureaucrats, their soviets have been put in control of the bureaucrats, and their soviets have been authorised to elect the judges. This fact alone is enough for all the oppressed classes to recognise that soviet power - ie, the present form of the dictatorship of the proletariat - is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic”.6

Defiant

So at this point Lenin is still saying defiantly that Russia is unambiguously democratic. On the peasant question he says, rather strikingly: “Things have turned out just as we said they would. The course taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our reasoning.”7

First of all, says Lenin, the Bolsheviks gained the loyalty of the whole peasantry by fulfilling their desire for land. We carried the bourgeois revolution to its end. Then he made an argument which we tend to forget about, because it did not pan out this way - the next ‘steps towards socialism’ phase: “The peasants themselves will see the inadequacy of bourgeois democratic solutions and the necessity of proceeding beyond their limits and passing on to socialism.”8

Lenin argues that Kautsky himself had said much the same in his 1899 Agrarian question about the means at the disposal of the proletarian state for bringing about the transition of the small peasants to socialism. Lenin hoped to see the peasantry moving towards socialism and is encouraged by a policy called ‘class war in the villages’ - although even as he was writing The renegade Kautsky, the policy was being pulled back.

The economy is the one area over which Lenin is a little defensive. The reason obviously being that the crisis had not been solved by the Bolshevik revolution, but had spiralled further out of control. He writes: “All the flunkeys of the bourgeoisie in Russia argue in this way: ‘Show us after nine months your general well-being!’ And this after four years of devastating civil war and foreign capital giving all-round to the sabotage and rebellions of the bourgeoisie in Russia.”9 And he is absolutely right - that is one of the basic reasons why there was such a crisis.

The fourth wager is international revolution, and here Lenin is absolutely confident because the German revolution has just broken out. Alexander Rabinovitch’s new book ends with celebration of the revolution which is on the march in Germany.

This is something Zinoviev said in September 1918 as a tribute to Lenin: “Scheidemann [a rightwing German social democrat] knows that if he ends up hanging from a lamp post (and I bet that he does!) to a large degree comrade Lenin would be to blame. We comrades will live to see the moment when our proletariat through its vozhd, Lenin, will dictate its will to all of old Europe - and comrade Lenin will agree treaties with the government of Karl Liebknecht, and the same Lenin will help the German workers compose their first socialist decrees.”10

In the final part of The renegade Kautsky, Lenin writes: “Kautsky’s above lines were written on November 9 1918. The very same night, news was received from Germany announcing the beginning of the victorious revolution - first in Kiel and other towns and ports, where power passed into the hands of the soviets - and then in Berlin. The conclusion which still remained to be written for my pamphlet on Kautsky is now superfluous.”11

Now I am going to deal with the phase where Lenin is having to start to acknowledge that things are not going right, although I must stress that I do not see any fundamental change - there are some very disappointing empirical realities that he has to handle. The euphoria around the international revolution continues up until the summer of 1919 - and I think ‘euphoria’ is the best way to describe this. In Krupskaya’s memoirs she writes how Lenin was happier than she had ever seen him around November 1918.

I also get this impression from his speeches - he thought the wagers were paying off and things were going OK. So when addressing an audience facing many economic difficulties he says: “This is the last difficult half year, because the international situation has never been so good.”12

Lenin is confident that within six months the situation will be much better because Russia will no longer be blockaded and the international revolution will bail them out. Then in March 1919 the Hungarian revolution broke out and this is a very indicative reaction from Lenin, who is particularly pleased: “As a more cultured country than Russia, Hungary will show the socialist revolution in a better light - without the violence, without the bloodshed, that was forced upon us by the Kerenskys and the imperialists”.13

So you see that this is really from the heart, showing the wariness he held about some of the things he had to do. He also talks on numerous occasions about how previous generations of Russian revolutionaries lived and died, but we are the generation which is going to see it happen: “No matter the great misfortunes that may be brought upon us by that dying beast, imperialism, it will perish and socialism will triumph throughout the world.”14

This is the most amazing quote from July 1919: “We say with confidence - taking all our experience, all that has happened this past year, into account - that we shall surmount all difficulties and that this July will be the last difficult July and that next July we will welcome the victory of the world soviet republic - and that this victory will be full and complete.”15 Again, this comes from a public speech - Lenin is really putting himself out on a limb.

But this kind of rhetoric comes to a sudden halt around August with the defeat of the Hungarian revolution. It never really comes back. I read through Lenin’s speeches in 1919 and, although the content does not really change much throughout, you do notice that on the question of the international revolution he is very confident in the first half of the year, but much less so in the second half.

In an interview with Arthur Ransome, Lenin confidently predicts the revolution in England. When Ransome questions this, Lenin tells him of how he once had typhoid in the 1890s, but he had been carrying this a long time before he actually knew about it. Then suddenly he was struck down. This is how he saw England - it has got the disease, is still walking around, but is going to collapse. However, a year later he is interviewed by Bertrand Russell and by then has already given up on a revolution in England. By this point the Bolsheviks were saying that they were no longer in a revolutionary situation.

This is confirmed at the Second Congress of the Communist International - as opposed to the first one. Zinoviev says: “Soviets only make sense in a revolutionary situation, since soviets without such a situation will only turn into a parody of soviets”.16 So he is pointing out that in the next historical period we will have soviets, but now it was propaganda for them which was the only appropriate thing.

But this is the dilemma. You have developed a new party model over the years based on the premise of there being a revolutionary situation - so all sorts of things are pertinent to that: the purging of opportunists, the underground and certain other things were argued for on the basis of the existence of this situation. What party model should be put forward now? I think that is a major dilemma and has implications for the ‘over-theorisation’ problem we have discussed elsewhere - with the Bolsheviks making virtues out of the necessities imposed on them. They never really did solve this problem.

The Polish war of 1920 represented a brief re-ignition of the hopes for international revolution but they were pushed back very quickly and soon forgotten. Starting from about mid-1919, foreign policy is increasingly orientated to trade treaties and economic concessions.

The big point I want to make about the wager on Soviet democracy is that the Bolsheviks were aware and openly acknowledged that things were not turning out so well. And at the end of 1920 there was a debate in the party about elitism, which was called ‘The highers vs the lowers’. What is interesting is the attitude of some of the ‘highers’ in admitting just how bad things were. I am going to quote what Zinoviev said.

The soviets of 1917 are described as “organs in which the creativity of the masses finds for itself the most free and most organised path. Soviets are organs that guarantee a constant stream of forces from below. The soviets are organs in which the masses learn to legislate and, at the same time, carry out their own laws. This is not paying off at present. The most elementary demands of democracy are being ignored.”17

He gives some excuses for why this is so, however: “The pressures of the modern administrative state, the necessity to put extreme pressure on the population during the civil war, the exceptional discipline imposed by wartime necessities, the need to often side with bourgeois specialists against the workers, and the overload of work and responsibility based on a thin party elite”.18

Steps

Regarding the wager on steps towards socialism I would like to quote Leon Trotsky. Here is what he said in 1920 at the third anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution to a popular audience:

“We went into this struggle with magnificent ideals, with magnificent enthusiasm, and it seemed to many people that the promised land of communist fraternity - the flowering of not only material but spiritual life - was much closer than it actually turned out to be. That promised land - the new kingdom of justice, freedom, contentment and cultural uplift was so near, it could be touched.

“If three years ago we were given the opportunity of looking ahead we would not have believed our eyes - we would not have believed that three years after the proletarian revolution it would be so hard for us to live on this earth. Our task has not been accomplished - each one of us knows this. The new order for which we have fought and are fighting still does not exist.”

So this very eloquent statement underlines how the Bolsheviks are certainly not claiming that they have achieved socialism.

At this point in 1920, Nikolai Bukharin comes up with a theory to explain this - it is a sort of ‘crisis’ theory: “A revolution requires a deep, long and abiding crisis”, which is the precondition for workers’ power. And when workers’ power gets underway, the first thing to do is to deal with this crisis, which will accelerate, even though the workers have taken power, meaning that it is necessary to go through a period of what he calls “expanded negative reproduction” - ie, a collapse. And then only later can we really start to progress.19

This is Bukharin’s understanding of smashing the state - you have to smash not only the political, but the economic and the military aspects of the state and you have to accept that it is going to break apart - a tragic breakdown in society, which can only be put back together again slowly. So socialism is only possible when this has happened - which certainly was not the case by 1920. But all the coercion and the militarisation that the Bolsheviks had organised was justified because in the long run it was necessary for workers’ power, which in turn was necessary for socialism.

By following these speeches I think I have discovered something on peasant followership which, as far as I know, has not been pointed out by anybody.

A lot of people say that there are two different Lenins when it comes to the peasants: the hard-line Lenin of 1919 and the ‘good’ Lenin of the NEP period; and that Stalin reverted to the ‘bad’ Lenin of 1919. The plausibility behind this comes from the fact that they were putting extreme pressure on the peasants both for their grain and for recruits for the army, so that there were a lot of rebellions and so forth.

But we are not dealing with this. We are dealing with the change in a whole mode of production, and therefore a whole way of life. For starters, as I say, Lenin hoped that the peasants would move forward by themselves.

There were two forms of local collective production. The first was state farms, where an estate previously held by a landowner would be taken over and there was already a framework for production. The other one was communes - again this was on a very small scale, but it was very intense. Poor peasants would get together in the communes and really share everything - not only production. As one Russian, non-Marxist émigré quite accurately observed, “The Bolsheviks made attempts at new agrarian forms, but they did not expect any great success from them and did not achieve any either.”

That is how it was. But for reasons I have mentioned, Lenin put great hopes on this - especially when the international revolution was not being fulfilled. He was absolutely devastated by this, and you can mark his reaction in speeches from late 1918 to 1921, when he gets increasingly exasperated about the worthlessness of the communes.

This is him in late 1919: “The peasants say ‘Long live Soviet power!’, ‘Long live the Bolsheviks!’ but ‘Down with the communes!’ They curse the communes when they are organised in a stupid way and when it is forced upon them. They are suspicious of everything that is imposed on them, and quite rightly so. We must help the peasants and teach them - but only in the fields of science and socialism - farm management we must learn from them!”

So he is sort of taking the side of the peasants who do not like the communes and the state farms - there are many quotes showing that Lenin thought the communes were an embarrassment and that the peasants were right to laugh at them.

So voluntary collectivisation is not working. What is his reaction? To get them to work by force - more or less Stalin’s reaction in 1931? Lenin is quite explicit that violence is absolutely ruled out when it comes to changing the mode of production.

He says in 1919: “The communists would never resort to violence. The absurdity of this was so obvious that the Soviet government long ago forbade it, so that the last trace of this outrage towards the peasants would be swept from the face of the republic.” In other words, no Marxist would ever condone violence or force in getting the peasants to change the mode of production. This was a point remembered by dissident Bolsheviks when forced collectivisation occurred.

On the question of whether Lenin’s policies towards the peasants were a forerunner of Stalin’s, I think we can say ‘no’ unambiguously. He denounced it ahead of its time. And, by the way, this is why Lenin was so excited about electrification - he thought that by bringing electricity to the countryside it would help bring the peasants nearer to socialism.

Now I would like to quickly discuss Lenin’s writings in 1922-23. On international revolution he has what I call a ‘hold-out perspective’. In Better fewer but better he talks of the revolution ‘holding out’ on numerous occasions. On soviet power there is a kind of sad irony where the word ‘soviet’ - which initially meant ‘council’ - comes to mean the government as opposed to the party or the people. So it now referred to the bureaucracy - but this mainly consisted of bourgeois spetsy and officials from the old tsarist order and so on which the population was suspicious of.

So gradually, at least amongst many of the leading Bolsheviks, the word ‘soviet’ started to acquire quite negative connotations. I saw this in Stalin’s letters from the mid-1920s and it took me quite a while to figure out. Why was ‘soviet’ such a negative word? It was because it began to mean ‘government’. This was the ironic twist to all of this.

What Lenin did in 1922-23 was attempt to come up with a scheme to remake the soviets from above by using the party, but also to bring in the workers and peasants - not from below but siphoned to the top. That was his special idea for the workers and peasants which he took a lot of thought and time to develop in his last articles.

‘Peasant followership’ now became the link - we have to lead the peasants to socialism, so that the kulaks and the bourgeoisie do not lead them in their direction. The famous phrase ‘Who, whom?’, which is supposed to be Lenin’s favourite, is only mentioned two or three times towards the end of his life. Zinoviev and others picked up on it, which is why we know Lenin used it. What he meant by it was that the peasants will follow either us or the bourgeoisie - it is old Bolshevism transformed into the new situation. So we are going to remake the peasantry via electrification and keep them on our side in the meantime.

In terms of steps towards socialism, things again were not that great, because they were just clambering out of the crisis and there was a huge famine in 1921-22. Here is what Lenin says about it - he is so angry that the attractiveness of socialism was not able to reveal itself: “They failed to overthrow the new system created by the revolution, but they did prevent it from at once taking the steps forward that would have justified the forecasts of the socialists, that would have enabled the latter to develop the productive forces with enormous speed, to develop all the potentialities which, taken together, would have produced socialism; socialists would thus have proved to all and sundry that socialism contains within itself gigantic forces and that mankind had now entered into a new stage of development of extraordinarily brilliant prospects”.20

Synthesis

You can see from this that Lenin still believed in socialism but that the international situation in particular had caused severe problems. In one of his very last articles called ‘Our revolution’, he admits that those who criticised the Bolsheviks for saying that the situation was ripe for socialism were right. But, he says, we had to do what we did - it was a life-or-death situation. He questions why it was not possible for them to create the kind of culture necessary for socialism once in power. I think this is quite a change in Marxism.

Now I am going to just read out what I think his final synthesis was on the wagers:

“Hopes have faded for the socialist revolution in Europe at any time in the foreseeable future: then take courage in the inevitable awakening of the east, whilst praying that inter-capitalist squabbles will allow socialist Russia to hold out. Hopes have faded that soviet-style democracy from below will transform the state: then use the party to remake the inherited state apparatus from above. Hopes have faded that the peasants would move towards socialist transformation on their own initiative: then take the old Bolshevik scenario of class leadership, which had vindicated itself during the civil war, and apply it to the task of overcoming the market by using the market [ie, NEP]. Hopes have faded that the measures needed to solve Russia’s economic crisis will also be at the same time steps towards socialism; then build up industry to the point where Russia can move ahead into socialism - not at the slow pace of a peasant nag but at the high speed of advanced industrial technology.

“Do all these faded hopes mean that our socialist critics were right in that Russia was not ready for socialism? Yes, but who is to say that a proletarian vlast cannot pull itself up by its own bootstraps by itself creating the cultural prerequisites for socialism?”

Notes

1. A Ransome The crisis in Russia: www.scribd.com/doc/16189800/The-Crisis-in-Russia
2. VI Lenin CW Vol 21, Moscow 1977, pp401-04
3. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/oct/13.htm
4. See ‘Lenin, Kautsky and 1914’ Weekly Worker September 10.
5. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/dec/25.htm
6. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/democracy.htm
7. Quoted in L Trotsky Permanent revolution: www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr05.htm#n2
8. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/subservience.htm
9. Ibid.
10. www.marx.org/archive/zinoviev/works/1918/lenin/ch14.htm
11. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/subservience.htm
12. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/rcp8th/09.htm
13. www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/lenin/works/1919/rcp8th/09.htm
14. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/rcp8th/09.htm
15. www.marxistsfr.org/archive/lenin/works//1919/jul/12.htm
16. www.trotsky.org/archive/weisbord/conquest41.htm
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. See K Tarbuck Bukharin’s theory of equilibrium London 1989.
20. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/02.htm

English Defence League stunts and the real lessons of the 1930s

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:32:00 +0000

Calls for state, local government and BBC censorship and bans will inevitably backfire against the workers’ movement

Doubtless bolstered by the British National Party’s recent electoral success, there has been a rise in far-right street mobilisations, leading to tussles with the police, Muslim youth and left activists, including those from Unite Against Fascism. On top of pickets and demonstrations in Birmingham, Luton and Harrow, a further rightwing provocation is planned for Manchester on October 10. At the heart of this sudden increase in activity has been the English Defence League.

However, the only EDL stunt that has gained any noticeable support so far has been in Luton last March. Its counter-demonstration was called against alleged al Muhajiroun Islamists, who marked the return of the Royal East Anglican regiment from a tour of duty in Afghanistan by jeering their parade and called for more troops to be brought home in body bags.

The EDF counter-demo tapped into the respectable nationalism of the mainstream and united it with football ‘Casuals’ and skinhead racists. British-Asian businesses were attacked by breakaway groups. Since then subsequent EDF actions have involved negligible numbers, but likewise serve to massively increase social tensions.

Formed by a motley crew of confused lumpenproletarians, convicted football hooligans and seasoned far-rightist lunatics, the EDL has ridden on the growing wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in the wider population. The EDL has, though, no coherent political platform or ideology and is organisationally loose, shadowy and prone to splinter at any point. It organises in so-called divisions and mainly by using blogs and Facebook.

Not irrelevantly, especially given the stupid and often hysterical leftwing commentary, the BNP is at pains to distance itself. The BNP insists that it does not engage in the sort of street provocations the EDL has become known for. It says it is now thoroughly committed to elections, not conquering the streets or sparking a premature race war. To underline the point, the BNP’s national organiser, Eddy Butler, publicly announced on September 4 that the EDL is a “proscribed organisation”. Henceforth it will be a “disciplinary offence” for any BNP member to be involved with EDL activities.1

In turn, the EDL says it disavows racism and ‘extremism ’and denies any links with the BNP. Despite that, the EDL’s numerous supporters have been photographed giving Nazi salutes on demonstrations and heard shouting slogans about hating ‘Pakis’ and keeping ‘Britain for the Brits’. True, there have been known BNPers and ex-BNPers operating in the EDL. Its website, for example, was constructed by BNP activist Chris Renton. However, it is quite clear that the BNP wants nothing to do with organising EDL street protests or to be associated with it in any other way. Nick Griffin craves respectability, votes and political power gained through the ballot box.

The EDL hypocritically blames the left, UAF and Muslims for the street violence. Apparently they are the planners and perpetrators of clashes which threaten “democracy” and “free speech”. Playing the anti-establishment card, it accuses UAF of being a “government-backed organisation with supporters including David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party”.2 Whatever the spin, the EDL aim is quite clearly to whip up British chauvinist hysteria and divide working class communities.

The EDL has incurred the wrath of sections of the political establishment as well as the BNP and the far left. Communities secretary John Denham drew an analogy with the 1930s by linking the aims and approach of groups like the EDL to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, although he admits the EDL does not possess the BUF’s “potency, organisation or threat”. Leading Socialist Workers Party member and UAF convenor Weyman Bennett agrees: Denham is “right to compare anti-Muslim hate groups such as the English Defence League (EDL) to the fascists that marched against Jews in the 1930s”.3

In 1930s Germany, Leon Trotsky correctly judged that the bourgeois parties had injected the workers’ movement with poison that would slowly kill it, but that the Nazis were more akin to a man approaching with an axe. This then informed strategic perspectives - Trotsky advised the workers’ movement as a whole to defend itself against the immediate threat so as to be able to deal with the slow poison.

However, in 2009, far-right groups like the EDL and BNP, in terms of their size, influence and the threat they pose to the working class movement, bear no comparison even to the Daily Mail-backed British Union of Fascists under Oswald Mosley, let alone Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

Of course, especially given the current economic downturn and the austerity that lies ahead, that could quickly change. So the real point about looking back to the 1930s is to draw from them strategic lessons. Comrade Bennett likes to highlight some of the inspiring events of the 30s in the fight against the far right. The CPGB mobilisation to beat the BUF at Cable Street and the struggles in the workplaces and in communities are undoubtedly inspiring. But there is another side to the coin.

The CPGB embraced popular frontism in the mid-1930s, which meant lining up with trade union officials, Labour left, liberals, churchmen and film stars in a classless defence of democracy. The fight for working class political independence and socialism was effectively abandoned. And despite the SWP’s pretensions about UAF being a ‘united front’ in the spirit of Leon Trotsky, it is clearly a classic popular front, albeit of the unpopular kind. UAF cannot even advise a class vote in elections. Instead it just says: ‘Use your vote to stop the Nazi BNP!’

Not only is this reactive approach (what exactly are we for?) based on an overestimation of the far right’s current influence: it encapsulates the archetypal popular frontist distinction between the ‘respectable’, mainstream parties like New Labour, the Tories and even the United Kingdom Independence Party on the one hand, and the ‘illegitimate’ BNP and EDL on the other. Despite the EDL’s fantasies about David Cameron as a UAF supporter, the leader of a party whose history is synonymous with imperialist slaughter, national chauvinism, racism, gay-baiting and sexism would not be unwelcome on a UAF platform.

Ban them!

Alongside the left’s popular frontist approach is its increasing tendency to call for state bans, censorship and proscriptions.

The CPGB of the 1930s learnt the meaning of such measures the hard way. It campaigned for the banning of the BUF, using similar arguments about respectability and legitimacy to those of UAF/SWP. When the Public Order Act was passed in 1936, the CPGB soon found that the legislation was employed against its demonstrations, rallies and mobilisations. Indeed, whenever the going gets tough, the parties of the establishment (‘respectable’ ones, remember) are more than willing to bring down the full weight of state repression on the organised workers’ movement - we saw a glimpse of this during the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85.

But whether for reasons of historical illiteracy or naked class-collaborationism, some will never learn. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ‘ official communist’ Morning Star implores her majesty’s constabulary to “ban tonight’s planned ‘anti-Muslim protest’ outside Harrow Central Mosque in the same way they would do if a church, synagogue, chapel or temple was targeted.”4

Our friends in the SWP are no better. ‘Turn the BNP into HMP’5 has now become its mantra. After all, what would be a more effective means of denying Nick Griffin and co the “oxygen of publicity” than being locked up?

The problem with this approach, however, is that it fails to recognise that the main enemy - both in the immediate and the long-term sense - is precisely the capitalist state, upon which these comrades would bestow greater powers to deal with the ‘Nazis’. It is not actually illegal to stage a demonstration outside any religious establishment, nor should it be. After all, it is not inconceivable that the workers’ movement might wish to protest against the reactionary actions of a pro-establishment church, so why call on the state to adopt powers to prevent us from doing so? Similarly, it is not exactly unknown for working class fighters to be jailed for giving voice to unacceptable views.

Gag them!

Which brings us to the controversy over the BBC television programme, Question time. As the reader will be aware, the corporation has stated that it intends to invite a BNP leader to debate current politics with representatives of the main parties on a forthcoming edition - a decision that has not exactly pleased the SWP.

Writing in Socialist Worker, Michael Rosen states: “Like the street, the BBC is a public place and is indirectly publicly owned. The BBC has a responsibility to represent everyone. It has no responsibility to represent those who attack sections of the population and demand that they leave the country.”6

The mind boggles. If the BBC has a responsibility to represent everyone, then there is the obvious point to be made - the BNP, by tapping into the discontent amongst backward workers, is winning votes and getting elected. The appearance of a BNP leader on Question time would provide this minority with a form of representation. Moreover, if one’s criterion for a place on the show is that no panellist should “attack sections of the population and demand that they leave the country”, then this would see the number of invited speakers dwindle to virtually zero. After all, every one of the mainstream, ‘respectable’ parties supports immigration controls, which certainly involves attacking sections of the population and forcing them out of the country.

Implicit in Rosen’s moralism is something else - elitism. As soon as the ‘ordinary workers’ sitting at home see Nick Griffin mouth off some nonsense on Question time they will be won over to Hitlerism and holocaust denial!7

Now, this is not to say that any of those likely to challenge Griffin on Question time would be able to mount any kind of principled working class argument against him. That would require a champion of genuine socialism - not tailing the establishment consensus of the Denhams, Camerons et al.

And this is the point. What our comrades in the SWP, CPB and UAF seem unable to come to terms with is that the BNP‑’s relative electoral success will increasingly mean pressure to appear on various platforms, political debates, radio shows and more. It should be blindingly obvious that the tasks of Marxists now should not consist in appealing to the BBC to ban the BNP, but to start articulating our solutions and our programme, build our own electoral base, see our own councillors and MEPs elected, and force the establishment to start taking us seriously!

Unfortunately, even if the left were strong enough to be invited onto a programme like Question time, then our current ‘common sense’ would dictate such an appearance to be beyond the pale if it meant sharing a platform with a ‘Nazi’. In fact comrade Bennett et al would very likely ‘no platform’ themselves rather than make use of the opportunity to promote independent working class politics. They would rather hand the banner of decency, respectability and democracy to the stalwarts of the bourgeoisie!

Sack them!

The reaction to the BBC decision to invite the BNP onto Question time is just one example of the left’s elitism, lack of self-confidence and disdain for democracy.

Last week’s Trade Union Congress in Liverpool unanimously backed a call for urgent talks with the government to address the need to extend the ban on BNP members in the police and prison services across the whole of the public sector. This time it was Janice Godrich - deputy general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union and a member of Socialist Party in England and Wales - calling for more state powers.

Despite making noises about the “mainstream parties” needing to “urgently address the serious gaps in the policies that allow the BNP and far right to exploit division to suit their own ends”, she was quite clear that the ban should be extended. The “BNP’s message of hate and fear” stood in stark contrast to the values of equality and access for all on which public services are based.8 Socialist Worker carries exactly the same message: “It is absolutely right that BNP members should be banned from public sector jobs”.9

These comrades seem incapable of learning from history how such measures end up being used against our class. The Berufsverbot law passed against communists and fascists in post-World War II Germany had a disastrous impact. Anybody suspected of being a member of, or sympathetic to, the German Communist Party was hounded out of teaching in the name of defending the ‘public interest’ and upholding ‘democracy’ and ‘legitimacy’. Always it is the bourgeois establishment that decides who and what is legitimate.

We communists disdain to conceal our views as a party of intransigent, uncompromising and irreconcilable hostility to the capitalist system, its sham democracy and coercive state apparatus. In this we are an ‘extreme’ party like the BNP or the EDL - and are therefore just as vulnerable to ‘anti-extremist’ witch-hunt legislation. That is why the left calling for the state to arm itself with yet more powers is like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Once again, though, the ghost of the popular frontist 1930s is back to haunt us - only this time on a much smaller scale: first time tragedy, second time farce. Instead of opting for no confidence in the bourgeois state and fighting for the divestment of state powers, the left is acting as cheerleader for British it:‘democracy’ and the values of ‘equality and access for all’ that are at the heart of good old British institutions like the BBC.

In the last decade the BNP has gone from being an utterly marginal group to one that now commands a modestly healthy vote, has dozens of councillors and two MEPs. By contrast, the left is nowhere. Yet, to state the obvious, while the BNP can offer nothing but divisive dead ends, we have the only viable solutions for millions of people at a time when the capitalist system is so obviously failing humanity.

For communists, the various political tactics we can employ are not predetermined in some sort of religious manner. But this is unfortunately what they have become. Let us repeat: it is tactically as legitimate to organise physical defence against groups like the EDL or the BNP (including pre-emptively) as it is to ruthlessly expose their rotten ideas on a shared platform. As we have shown in previous articles, the best parts of our movement have always employed such a wide array of tactical weapons.

If we were actually making headway in rolling back the influence of the BNP, while simultaneously making new inroads for working class politics, then it might well be argued that we need to continue on the same course and perhaps pursue it with greater energy.

But facts can be stubborn things, and even a cursory glance at the relative strength of the far left in relation to the far right should at least pose some questions, if not necessarily the answers.

Notes

1. bnp.org.uk/2009/09/the-english-defence-league-a-statement-from-the-bnp%e2%80%99s-national-organiser
2. See: www.englishdefenceleague.org/uaf-spark-near-race-riots-in-birmingham-080809.html
3. www.uaf.org
4. Editorial, Morning Star September 11.
5. This phrase was coined by Weyman Bennett (then UAF convenor) when Nick Griffin was charged in 2006 with inciting racial hatred.
6. Socialist Worker September 26.
7. Weekly Worker correspondent Bob Potter exposes such a narrow outlook very well: “Are the arguments for racism really so dangerous, so contagious, so convincing? Given free expression, would fascism really win the battle for the human mind? Are the arguments for a libertarian society so unconvincing? If the answer to these questions is ‘yes’, our hopes for the socialist future are best forgotten, because, while people, given all the facts to make a rational judgement, choose an authoritarian solution, there will be no progress towards the classless society” (Letters Weekly Worker September 17).
8. The Guardian September 11.
9. Socialist Worker September 26.

Lenin, Kautsky and 1914

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:55:00 +0000

In the second of his talks to the CPGB’s Communist University, Lars T Lih takes a closer look at Lenin’s reaction to the betrayal of German social democracy at the outbreak of World War I

We all know the famous anecdote about Lenin when he received the news that the Germany Social Democratic Party’s delegation to the Reichstag had voted for war credits - he initially believed it was a forgery put out by the bourgeoisie in order to whip up support for the war. I would like to put this and other such shocks into a more exact context.

On August 1 1914 Germany declared war on Russia, and at that time Lenin was living in a village in Poland which was under Austrian control. It was on August 5 that he discovered the SPD delegation had voted for war credits. They could have abstained, but they did not even do this and that completely floored him.

But then he had another problem to deal with, because the Austrian authorities were wondering about this suspicious character who spoke Russian, had French money and went for walks in the hills. Lenin was jailed on suspicion of spying and held from August 8 to August 19. One of the reasons he managed to get out so quickly (as opposed to his arrest 10 years earlier) was that he now had friends in high places: namely Victor Adler, the leader of Austrian Social Democracy, who called on the minister of the interior to release Lenin, who was, after all, one of the biggest opponents of the tsar.

But before he finally got out he received yet another shock: a French leaflet had been issued under the title, ‘Declaration of Russian socialists joining the French army as volunteers’. The war fervour was such that even some Bolsheviks had become swept up in it. I would like to emphasise just how tough these weeks were for Lenin - he had all this to think about combined with the ill-health of his mother-in-law, who was dying.

He arrived in Bern on September 5 for a meeting with the local Bolsheviks and presented to them the principles of his programme for the next two to three years. Either he had managed to undertake some sort of rethink in this short time or he did not have to do so. By outlining these dates and details I am trying to suggest that it was the latter.

But actually the shocks were not over. The most personally upsetting one related to Karl Kautsky - the mentor whose writings Lenin had unreservedly admired. Kautsky was now writing articles that wibbled, wobbled and wavered and did not live up to what Lenin thought he should be saying. Lenin was devastated.

In September 1914 but before these Kautsky articles came out, Lenin had written that the dangers of opportunism had long been pointed out by the greatest representatives of the workers’ movement of all countries, and it is pretty clear that it was predominantly Kautsky and Luxemburg he had in mind. But now one of these two finest representatives was writing articles that essentially justified what the Reichstag deputies did. A famous account in a letter to one of his comrades says: ‘I hate more than anybody else this dirty, vile, self-satisfied, smug hypocrisy of Kautsky’.1 I may have left out a term or two, but his strong, emotional response was evident.

Another of Lenin’s letter to the same addressee, Shlapnikov, a week later contained the line: “Obtain without fail and reread Kautsky’s The road to power and see what he says there about the tasks of our time. And now how he acts the toady and disavows all that!”2 The reason he is so angry and upset is because this book, along with Kautsky’s views, were so right. What was in that book and what did it mean to talk about “the tasks of our times”?
Aggressive unoriginality

There are two ways of looking at this. The traditional way on the left is to say that the Reichstag vote and other shocks led Lenin to a process of rethinking Marxism - he came to understand the fallacious nature of the Second International’s version and either returned to the roots of Marxism or came up with new theories.

One story is that he read Hegel, rediscovered the dialectic, and then applied that to the tasks of his time (he did, of course, read Hegel, but that was not the reason for his platform at the time). Another story is that Nikolai Bukharin was a big influence on him, and so on. I refer to this as the ‘rethinking’ way of looking at Lenin in 1914.

I have my term for what I think is happening, and that is aggressive unoriginality. Why? If you read Lenin’s writings in the period between 1914 and 1916 he sort of grabs you by the throat and says, ‘I am not original, OK? I am just saying what everybody else was saying. This was the educated Marxist consensus which is now being betrayed.’ Now, this could just be rhetoric, but it could also neatly express what is going on. And I think it could also lead us to Lenin’s platform, outlook and definition of the situation in these years and, secondly, to a closer look at the ideological background and historical context of those ideas.

I refer to 1914-1916 as the ‘left Zimmerwald’ years. Zimmerwald is the little village in Switzerland, where in September 1915 a three-day conference was held of the movement’s representatives from various countries who opposed the war. ‘Left Zimmerwald’ came to be known as the faction that Lenin led within that movement. It was more revolutionary and wanted a more radical, defeatist and non-pacifist position, which marked them out from many of the others. This is significant in that it marks the first time that Lenin was a leader on a European scale, staking a leadership claim over a very small but well-known grouping.

Lenin made the point that all left Zimmerwaldians were saying what Kautsky had been saying before 1914: namely that revolution will come from war and that we will be faced with a new revolutionary situation - an example of this ‘aggressive unoriginality’. Lenin insisted that it was his grouping that had the strongest connections with what Kautsky had been saying in The road to power.

So let me say a few words about this book, which is not very long - more like a pamphlet of 80-90 pages. It came out in 1909 and it is the end part of a development that began in 1902 with a book called The social revolution. Against the revisionists, both these books were adamant that not only is revolution necessary, but that it is becoming more necessary - the contradictions are sharpening and we are entering into a revolutionary era.

Actually, the experience of trying to get this book published told Kautsky that something was wrong with the party, because the leadership said that they would not produce it under the party name - under the pretext that this would risk prosecution for high treason. This excuse was not quite plucked out of thin air, but its basis was pretty thin. So Kautsky had to fight behind closed doors and the compromise was that the book would be published if he would agree to change the odd word or two. He did not change anything significant though.

Almost before it was published in Germany under the auspices of the party, it was already being translated and published elsewhere - including in Russia. Oddly enough, there is no record of Lenin commenting on it until 1914, when he started making these pleas to reread it. I think he took his own advice to Shlapnikov, because he wrote an article in which he literally went through The road to power pulling out quotes along the way, pointing out what Kautsky had said before.

He began: “For decades, German social democracy was a model to the social democrats of Russia - even more so than for any other country in the world. It is therefore clear that there can be no intelligent attitude towards the new social chauvinism without a precise definition of one’s attitude towards German social democracy. What was it in the past? What is it today? What will it be in the future? Part of the first of these questions can be found in The road to power - a pamphlet written by Kautsky in 1909 and translated into many different languages [a point made in order to highlight just how authoritative this international work is] containing a most complete exposition of the tasks of our times. I am going to go into this in some detail, since it now these ideals are so barefacedly cast aside.”3

Lenin concludes by arguing: “This is German social democracy at its finest. This is the German social democracy that had promise and this is the German social democracy that one can and must respect.”4 I am trying to get across not only how strongly he felt, but his belief that this “social democracy at its finest” was still valid.

Neither did Lenin change his mind on this. He kept repeating the same things throughout this period - I think the last such reference is in 1918 or 1919. In State and revolution he criticises The road to power for not mentioning the state, but still says that it is the best of Kautsky’s books. He does not actually criticise anything that Kautsky says: merely what he does not say on the state. Even then he still agrees with the arguments.

Summary

I am going to do a little summary of the book to clarify things. This summary will only consist of quotes that Lenin himself pulled out when reading it again. So in a sense this is Lenin’s summary of the book.

“We are entering a new age of revolutions”. “In particular ... a world war is imminent and war also means revolution.” “This revolutionary situation will lead to an acceleration of social polarisation”, since “the rate of advance becomes very rapid as soon as the time of revolutionary fervour comes”. “For one thing, petty bourgeois forces such as the peasantry are capable of coming over to our side en masse”. “Western Europe is ripe for socialism ... therefore the proletariat can no longer speak of a premature revolution.” “In fact, the long-awaited dictatorship of the proletariat is a real possibility in the near future.” The duty of the socialist party is therefore to remain “consistent, unshakeable and irreconcilable”.

I should also mention that there is a scenario of global revolution in this book which was picked up and used by Lenin.

In good dialectical fashion I am going to move from the abstract to the concrete. The most abstract thing concerns the idea of a revolutionary situation: we alternate between periods of peaceful development and periods that are revolutionary - utterly dissimilar. Peaceful and revolutionary situations are different in their logic and everything about them - including the tactics that are called forth. One such difference relates to the tempo of development. This is what Kautsky said (I think this is interesting because it helps to explain why Lenin and many other revolutionaries admired Kautsky):

“When times of revolutionary ferment come, the tempo of development at once becomes rapid. It is quite incredible how quickly the masses of the population learn in such times and achieve clarity about their own class interests - not only their courage and their desire to fight, but also their political interest is spurred on in the most powerful way by the consciousness that the time has arisen for them to rise by their efforts out of the darkest night into the bright glory of the sun. Even the most sluggish become industrious, even the most cowardly bold, even the most intellectually limited acquire a wider mental grasp. In such times, political education of the masses that would otherwise require generations takes place in years.”5

Lenin also picks up on this idea that you learn more in months in a revolutionary situation than you would in decades of peaceful development many times in his writings. By the way, I think that this idea comes from the Marxist notion that revolutionary situations are not created by the party. The party is revolutionary, but it is objective forces that prepare the way for revolution - you just have to be ready. Therefore you need new tactics.

At the time of writing The road to power Kautsky had been engaged in a polemic with Rosa Luxemburg. He argued that a mass strike is fine for a revolutionary situation, but we are not in one now so let us not use it just yet.

I am not going to evaluate the situation that was actually faced, but will merely highlight how the idea of a revolutionary situation affects the context of the party’s response. That is the most abstract idea. Next we are going to progress to another fairly abstract set of necessary and sufficient conditions for recognising a revolutionary situation. There is a fairly well known Lenin quote on this, and what is interesting is that it bears a very strong resemblance to the one presented by Kautsky.

Kautsky offers four conditions: 1. a regime hostile to the people; 2. a party of irreconcilable opposition; 3. mass support given to the party; 4. a regime crisis of confidence.

Lenin’s own definition also contains four parts, and the ‘aggressive unoriginality’ rhetoric can once more be seen when Lenin states: “Such are the Marxist views on revolution - views that have been developed many, many times, have been accepted as indisputable by all Marxists and for us Russians were corroborated in a particularly striking fashion by the experience of 1905.”6 So again he his disclaiming any originality for his own definition.

Kautsky was one of the first to have the idea of moving into one of three periods - 1. a revolutionary period up until 1871; 2. a peaceful period of development between 1871 and 1905; and then 3. 1905 onwards - a new era of revolutions, unrest and accelerated revolutionary development. Lenin adopted this idea, and it is part of his explanation for what happened to the Second International - ie, that during the time of peace it degenerated.

Turning to the concrete, let us look at what Kautsky said and what Lenin picked up on in terms of the expected revolutionary situation in Europe. In western Europe, there were sharpening class contradictions - not the softening of them, as the revisionists around those like Bernstein maintained. The framework and the prerequisites of socialism are in place and therefore it is impossible to speak of a premature revolution. At one point Lenin said of this: “There is no need for us to prove that the objective conditions in western Europe are ripe for socialist revolution. This was admitted before the war by all influential socialists in all advanced countries.”7

That quote brings out two things. Firstly, whilst Kautsky was the main guy, Lenin is clearly talking of all influential socialists in the advanced countries. Secondly, the statement, “There is no need for us to prove …”, in my opinion shows the rhetorical use of this aggressive unoriginality. He is saying that not just some radical Russian is telling you this - it is the informed consensus of the experts, so you had better believe it! And, by the way, Kautsky himself had said that there was nothing new in The road to power, but that it was merely a summation of what he had been arguing for the previous seven or eight years.

Then there was what I call the ‘global interactive revolutionary scenario’. This is an aspect of Kautsky which I think has not been fully explored. And he was also highly interested in colonial policy - the first attack on Edward Bernstein, which led to the famous debates of the 1890s, was over colonial policy, because Bernstein fought for an ethical or ‘nice’ colonialism. As I mentioned in my last talk, Kautsky was particularly interested in and knowledgeable about Russia, and the Bolsheviks were picking up on this global scenario even before the outbreak of war.

What are the features of this? Firstly, the ‘interactive’ formula generally means that events in one country have a strong influence on those in other countries, and Kautsky stresses that as something we have to understand. How does he fill this picture out? Firstly, there are all sorts of linkages between the class struggles in various countries. One is that people can read and know about them - particularly the case for Russia, where everybody has been influenced by events in western Europe. Any class struggle today will be different to those of yesterday because people can know about and be influenced by them.

Secondly, bourgeois revolutions can no longer be the same because there is a new need to fight external domination, which there was not previously. Thirdly, there is the possibility of what you might call syncopated development - ie, backwardness can actually be an advantage because you move faster. One example he gives of this is Japan, which he argues was able to leap over feudalism.

Of course, there was also Russia. Russia plays a big role in this ‘interactive’ formula, because it was a generally accepted idea that Russia’s democratic revolution might well spark off a socialist revolution in western Europe. But Kautsky also says that should this happen then you might well have accelerated development in Russia: because it is backward, it might proceed faster in the context of a socialist Europe than one of the more hidebound western European countries.

Finally, he talks a great deal about nationalist revolutions. He wants to make clear that countries such as China, Turkey and Russia represent a new development that is going to upset things, and he insists that the leaders of the movements in these countries are generally not nice people! But for Kautsky this does not alter the fact that they are weakening capitalism and are bringing an element of political unrest to the whole world - ie, he almost cheers on these movements because they are fighting against national oppression and also making life more difficult for the European powers.

When Kautsky polemicises against Bernstein and the ‘ethical’ colonialists, he says: “Colonial policy is based on the idea that only the European countries are capable of development - the men of other races are children of idiots or beasts of burden - and even socialists proceed on this assumption as soon as they want to pursue a policy of ethical colonial expansionism. But reality soon teaches them that our party’s tenet that ‘All men are equal’ is no mere figure of speech, but a very real force.”8

Kautsky is arguing that people are perfectly capable of fighting back and that they are actually doing so. He says: “When Marx and Engels wrote the Communist manifesto, they regarded only western Europe as the field of battle of the proletarian revolution, but today it has become the whole world. Today, the battles and the liberation struggle of the whole of labour and exploited humanity is being fought not only on the banks of the Spree and the Seine, but also on the Hudson and the Mississippi, the Neva and the Dardanelles, the Ganges and the Huangho.”9

Here I call attention to the Neva - the Russian river near Petersburg. Kautsky was including Russia in this idea of global unrest.

I want now to move on to the subject of imperialism, war and revolution. In this context I disagree with the idea that Kautsky’s ‘ultra-imperialism’ theory argued that war was not going to break out. This is not quite correct - for two reasons. The first is that super-imperialism is a new theory that Kautsky consciously and explicitly developed in a move away from what he had himself been saying earlier. So, it is Kautsky who is rethinking here and exploring a new concept. And it is once again Lenin who is defending the old orthodoxy. So when Lenin says that he is getting his definition of the tasks of the times from Kautsky, he was including imperialism. He was infuriated at the new concept of ultra-imperialism.

The second thing to be said on this is that Kautsky was not quite saying that ultra-imperialism is occurring right now, but that it is a possibility - and a strong one - because at some point the imperialists will wonder why they are shooting each other when they could easily get together and exploit everyone as a team. So it was not exactly a prophecy - more of a future possibility.

However, it was exactly this implication that made Lenin so furious. He argued that if you think peace is possible with imperialism then you are letting down the side and it is untrue anyway. But I do not want to get into this debate now, and so will return to our current topic.

We find in Kautsky’s The road to power the following ideas: firstly, that imperialism is the “last refuge of capitalism”.10 What he meant is that people are desperate; they see capitalism as a blind alley, but there is one possible great rallying idea - imperialism, where the country will go forth, make it in the world, bring benefits to humanity and do well for itself. But he says that, once this obviously nonsensical idea is blown apart, then that is it. He is also saying that the world is being completely divided up, and in this respect imperialism has reached its limits in that it has divided up the world. Secondly, imperialism leads to war. He thinks that, even though we are in situation where the ruling classes are afraid of war because they are afraid of revolution, guns will fire of themselves.

Another idea - and this links back to the idea of the bourgeois workers’ party concept - is that England has avoided social revolution because of the profits brought by India. As far as I can see, he does not mention the labour aristocracy, although I think he does discuss that elsewhere. But what he is saying here is just that England is exploiting India to make concessions, so that if India rebels that will mean crisis for England. This even leads him on to suggest that if the English workers do not rebel even after India has broken free, then they really are hopeless!

I am not going to try to evaluate these ideas written in about 1904. I merely wish to point out that Lenin’s ideas about imperialism as a reason why the revolution has not yet broken out is not a particularly new one. Further, both Lenin and Kautsky are looking to limit the damage and to find a reason why the English workers are not rising up.

To sum up all of what I have said, then, the prediction based on the growing class contradictions at home and abroad is that there is a period of upheaval and unrest coming up and it will probably end with the dictatorship of the proletariat in Europe.This is what Kautsky says in 1906 (I think he is talking about the Russian revolution): “What it promises to inaugurate is an era of new European revolutions that will lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, paving the way for the establishment of a socialist society.”11
Tactics and the ‘new Lenin’

The reason that I have emphasised these themes in Kautsky is because Lenin emphasises them. But I now I wish to discuss the tactical conclusions. The two main tactical conclusions which Lenin draws from this era of upheaval are also contained in Kautsky, even if they are somewhat more ambiguous.

By the two tactics I mean the ones he is already going for in September 1914 - ie, turn the imperialist war into a civil war and get rid of opportunism in the new international.

For the first of these tactics, I wish to bring your attention to something which was very important to Lenin, and which he referred to on numerous occasions - the Basel manifesto of 1912. It was the last in a series of manifestos at Socialist International congresses. This was a special one called because of a diplomatic crisis. This manifesto is important for Lenin, who refers to it many times, and the reason I think he does so is that it was a solemn document which everybody signed up to, but few actually carried out.

Representatives of European social democracy at the Basel congress repeated their 1907 pledge to resolve to “use the political and economic crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.”12

It is a little more evasive than maybe Lenin realised. Note how it says “to rouse the masses and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist rule”. What he understood it to mean was that the parties were under the obligation of their own manifesto to turn the imperialist war into a civil war: ie, turn an unjust war into revolution. So he insists that this was a solemn, binding obligation which Kautsky had also signed up to. Furthermore, he believed that the Basel manifesto was squarely within the socialist tradition - another piece of ‘aggressive unoriginality’.

For Lenin it was “the summation of millions and millions of proclamations, articles, books and speeches of the socialists of all countries in the entire epoch of the Socialist International. To brush aside the manifesto means to brush aside the whole history of socialism”.13 Because he thought they were brushing this aside, he accused them of being traitors.

So that leads to the next tactical conclusion, which is to get rid of opportunism from the international parties. One of the things Lenin wanted to achieve by this was to get rid of Kautsky! So it is very ironic that he practically quotes Kautsky to explain his reasoning.

Firstly, he gives Kautsky full credit for developing and fighting the concept of opportunism. Even in 1920 Lenin is still saying that, although Kautsky becomes a traitor and an opportunist in 1914, he did yeoman work in fighting opportunism. Secondly, for Lenin the new social chauvinism - ie, people defending the national interest - is just the old opportunism reborn. (By the way, there is a slight problem with this assertion, in that the people who were the most rabid social patriots and social chauvinists tended to have been on the left in France, Germany and Russia.)

Lenin is saying that he understands what is going on in 1914 in terms of how he and Kautsky understood the old Second International - ie, opportunism versus orthodoxy. Lenin actually quotes Kautsky in underlining the need to split if opportunism becomes too dominant - Kautsky advised a split if opportunism became not just a mood or danger, but a tendency that threatened to take over. And then - this is quite amazing - he quotes Kautsky talking about changing the name of the party from ‘Social Democratic’ to ‘Communist’ in order to justify doing so himself. Kautsky had never called for a Third International and would never have wanted it, but the idea of it was inspired by things that Lenin got from Kautsky!

What I have tried to show is that between 1914 and 1916 Lenin operated on the basis of a revolutionary situation and global unrest that had certain features requiring new tactics. He got his understanding of these, and the assurance that it was the truth, from the old international and from Karl Kautsky.

I also pointed out that Lenin had rhetorical reasons for making this kind of assumption. If he had gone and rethought Marxism and said that everyone had been wrong for the last 30 years and people should follow him on that basis, then he would not have got very far. He did not - what he did was state that he was the one standing up for what all the others used to say.

Again I am not giving you my opinion, but Lenin’s - he might be right or he might be wrong. I happen to think he was right, but even if he was wrong, even if it was all just rhetorical and he did not really mean it, we should definitely take it very seriously when Lenin says that Kautsky and his The road to power is the most precise definition of the tasks of our times.

In Lenin’s mind, the job of a political leader was to take the broad definition of the historical situation and work out tactics that are both true to the principles and applied to the situation, which I think is what he meant when he talked about dialectics. At one point he says that Kautsky had taught us dialectics, but he completely failed to apply them himself when it came to 1914.

So did 1914 lead to a new Lenin? I think it did in one way. It led to Lenin putting himself on the line on a European scale. He was now thinking in terms of being a European leader with a European programme. To overstate it perhaps, ‘Lenin had to become Kautsky because Kautsky was not being Kautsky’.

Notes

1. Paraphrasing from Lenin’s letter to Shlapnikov, October 27 1914.
2. October 31 1914.
3. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/dec/12.htm
4. Ibid.
5. Quoted by Lenin in ‘Dead chauvinism and living socialism’: www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/dec/12.htm
6. marx.org/archive/lenin/works//1915/csi/ii.htm
7. www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/nov/20.htm
8. www.marx.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/ch09.htm
9. Ibid.
10. www.marx.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/ch09.htm
11. www.marx.org/archive/kautsky/1906/xx/revolutions.htm
12. www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1912/basel-manifesto.htm
13. VI Lenin Imperialist war: the struggle against social chauvinism and social pacifism.

Fight for Marxism in the unions

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:49:00 +0000

Comrade Dave Vincent’s report of developments within the Public and Commercial Services union provided an extremely interesting outline of some of the problems facing revolutionaries in a union in which the Socialist Party of England and Wales sits at the helm (‘Contradictions in SP-led Left Unity’, Weekly Worker May 7).

A concrete question posed was who to vote for in the election for deputy general secretary, contested by Hugh Lanning (described by comrade Vincent as a Blairite) and John Moloney - a leading militant in the Independent Left rank and file grouping and a member of the social-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Comrade David Harney (Letters, March 12) described the contest as a “non-choice” and in many ways he is right. As it was, Lanning - supported by the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party and Communist Party of Britain - won the position with 13,755 votes to Moloney’s 11,547.

The question has sparked a discussion within the CPGB between leading IL member Lee Rock and other, predominantly younger, members, such as James Turley and myself. As it throws up fundamental questions about the role of communists in trade unions, I think this discussion should be held publicly - within our own ranks and beyond. First, though, we should consider what communists understand trade unions to be.

Communists and unions

It is beyond doubt that historically trade unions represent a huge advance for the combativity and confidence of our class. Atomised workers are no match for the employers. Unions, however, bring the great strength that comes with organisation and acting in unity. This paves the way for what Karl Marx referred to as the working class’s “guerrilla struggles” with the capitalist class - winning concessions, compromises and defending them when they come under attack.
But it goes without saying that unions, which by definition contain workers of various ideological and political persuasions, cannot meet the full needs of the working class. Those with a trade union consciousness are not the same as those who have a vision beyond capitalism, beyond the market, beyond wage slavery and who understand that in order to liberate the working class one must liberate humanity as a whole. So communists in trade unions should fight to push working class political consciousness in the direction of the class forming itself into a force with a programme for all of society - organising its best and most far-sighted elements into a Communist Party.

As comrade Vincent’s report underlined, no force is currently organising around these politics within the PCS. This reflects a basic problem within the left - its tendency within the unions to act first and foremost as trade unionists rather than as communist politicians.

The notion that working class struggle is primarily about the bread and butter demands of day-to-day life is the common sense of the left, but this is actually a manifestation of Labourism and economism within our ranks - a weakness which has historically been one of the greatest obstacles to workers acting as a class for itself.

John Moloney quite rightly questions the “kind of trade union movement we have and the kind of movement we should want” by standing on a workers’ wage and calling for annual elections for all full-time officials.1 He looks to “develop meaningful strategies in place of the NEC’s once-in-a-blue-moon one-day strikes”, correctly attacking the SP for its shameful capitulation over two-tier pensions. But he goes no further than this. What about the struggle for a higher form of society? The need for the working class to counter the crisis of capitalism by struggling for socialism? The type of party we desperately need to organise this? The furthest Moloney goes is to say that we are “fighting with one hand behind our back if we fail to develop a labour movement political challenge to New Labour and the Tories. The sheer breadth of the political attacks that are looming demand that PCS now throws its weight onto the political scales to help develop a working class political alternative to New Labour.”

What would this “working class political alternative” to Gordon Brown and co look like? What politics would it be based on? We have had numerous attempts at ‘new workers’ parties’, and all have failed. Why? Because what we need is not another Labourite bourgeois workers’ party - the original still exists. Originally emerging from the bowels of the trade union bureaucracy, Labour still has organic roots in the working class. The kind of workers’ party we need is a Marxist party that champions democracy in our own movement and in society, consistent internationalism and the independence of our class.

By exclusively focusing on what ‘trade union politics’, comrades in IL are committing the classic sin of economism. In the AWL’s case, this takes on a particularly pernicious form. Their whole scabby record on Iraq has been based on the absurd notion that occupying forces offered “some limited space” for workers to get involved in “class-struggle politics”, as they put it. In this way they failed the test when it came to the overriding democratic question of the occupation, the biggest obstacle to the Iraqi working class winning societal hegemony, by refusing to call for the withdrawal of imperialist troops. For the AWL this was apparently not a class question. It was a dispute that ought to be left to the occupiers and the Islamists! By contrast communists seek to take the lead on all questions, and most of all questions of democracy, of who rules.

A student analogy
Economism can also take less pernicious forms. When I raised criticisms of unconditionally voting for Moloney, comrade Lee Rock dismissed this as sectarian. Not without a certain condescension, he said: “This, quite frankly, is not student politics we are talking about here.” Now, anybody who reads this paper regularly will know that many Communist Students and CPGB writers have argued against the philistine notion that the National Union of Students is a trade union in the sense that unions like PCS, Unison and Aslef are.

But this is not what Lee is referring to. Statements like his reflect precisely the ‘common sense’ of the left on trade union politics and economism - that trade union politics is all about the ‘bread and butter’ of pay, conditions, pensions, etc. Whilst high politics might be fair enough for students who doss around and read books, they are absurd in the real world of the workplace.

So how should we have voted? Well, in terms of elections there are no principles absolutely set in stone, no shopping list which must be completely fulfilled before a vote can be cast. Our tactics are based on what can best advance the education and interests of the working class as a whole.

In this sense I think that an analogy with student politics actually works very well. As is well known, we in Communist Students refused to vote for AWLer Heather Shaw for the NUS executive unless she publicly called for the immediate withdrawal of UK occupying forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Back then, we were assured by other AWLers that Heather had a minority view on the ‘troops out now’ issue. Whether this was true or was just about trying to win votes I do not know. But anyway, in politics there is no such thing as a private position.

So when Heather refused to openly state her position, we tactically made a point by not voting for her. As it was, this really did matter as she missed election by just one vote. Hard lines. Many lefties at the time simply could not see what we were doing. One comrade who actually voted CS first preference and Heather Shaw second preference was particularly flummoxed. But following the later notorious article of AWL leader Sean Matgamna, in which he excused any Israeli nuclear attack on Iran, and the subsequent apologetic response from AWL cadre, he later admitted that we were spot on.2

Surely such tactics should have applied to Moloney too? Comrade Rock points out that Moloney and his comrades voted for PCS to affiliate to Hands Off the People of Iran. Good. But where was the reporting of this in the AWL’s Solidarity? It was conspicuously absent. Indeed, the AWL has (unsuccessfully) bent over backwards to try and wreck the solidarity that Hopi has generated and the support it has won - not just through rubbish leaflets about Hopi’s alleged ‘softness’ on the Iranian regime (tell that to our comrades who have done time in the regime’s prisons); not just through bilge about Hopi’s alleged “Iranian defencism” and support for a “mullahs’ bomb”, but by actually looking to undercut the campaign through front alternatives. Anyone remember Middle East Workers’ Solidarity? Such was the depth of support it won, it effectively ceased to exist when oppositionist David Broder left the AWL. Or what about Iranian Student Solidarity, that inspiring organisation which held a grand total of one meeting?

Apparently, Moloney is also in the (dwindling) AWL minority for ‘troops out now’. However, like Heather Shaw, he does not say so publicly and certainly did not include it in his election material. But silence is simply not good enough, and privately held views do not count. When the leader of an organisation excuses a nuclear strike and prominent members make no comment, it must be assumed they are in agreement. Trade union militants must be clear - Moloney might stand on supportable positions such as a worker’s wage and for annually elected full-time staff, but unless he is willing to openly and publicly distance himself from those like Matgamna and Mark “Israel had a point in Gaza” Osborn, another leading AWLer, then he is effectively standing on their politics. As such, his election as deputy general secretary would be a retrograde step - not only for PCS members, but for our class as a whole. It would be an awful blow if a prominent union leader added to the Matgamna-style excuses for a nuclear attack on Iran.

If Moloney does have oppositional views, then these should have been brought out into the open. He should have been encouraged to stand up and openly fight the social-imperialists, rather than quietly disagree. In my opinion, what comrades Rock and Vincent should have done before voting was to ask comrade Moloney some basic questions. As PCS deputy general secretary, would you do your utmost to mobilise members to stop a potential attack on Iran? Would you openly argue and agitate amongst the rank and file for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan? If so, comrade, we are behind you.
Communism into the unions!

It is high time for communist politics in the unions and a clean break with Labourism and economism. On a small scale, Communist Students has exemplified that one can be successful in raising high politics. It is excellent that comrades Rock and Vincent have successfully promoted Hopi within PCS and even won over the AWLers to support PCS affiliation to it. They should draw heart from this in looking to organise as communists in the PCS.

We should aim to generalise this experience and not simply pass off high politics as something for idealistic young students abstracted from ‘real’ class politics - ie, trade unionism. With only 10% of members bothering to vote, there is clearly a need within the PCS - and other unions - for politics that can inspire workers to a vision of a different society - one which positively supersedes this system which is so palpably rotting in front of our very eyes.
I hope that comrades Vincent and Rock will take part in this much-needed discussion and take a lead in actively promoting such a vision in their union work l

Notes
1. www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/05/01/vote-john-moloney-pcs-deputy-general-secretary.
2. ‘What if Israel bombs Iran?’ Solidarity July 24 2008.

VI Lenin and the influence of Kautsky

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:02:00 +0000

In the first of three talks given at the CPGB’s Communist University, historian Lars T Lih discussed the relationship between two great Marxists. This is an edited version of his speech dealing with the period 1894-1914

Picture the situation. It is Vladimir Ilych Lenin’s 50th birthday in April 1920. The Bolsheviks have been fighting the civil war and, although they are in a pretty desperate situation in the spring, they can see victory as pretty much assured, and they are celebrating the occasion with their great hero and great leader, Lenin. He rather reluctantly comes out onto the stage and says that he would like to read out a rather long quotation by Karl Kautsky from a 1902 work, ‘Slavs and revolution’. Lenin also inserted the same page-and-a-half-long quote into Leftwing communism: an infantile disorder.

He introduced it in this way: “I’d like to say a few words about the present position of the Bolshevik Party, and was led to these thoughts by a passage from a certain writer written by him 18 years ago in 1902. This writer is Karl Kautsky, who we have at present had to break away from and fight in an exceptionally sharp form [which is putting it rather politely!], but who earlier was one of the vozhdi, the leaders of the proletarian party in the fight against German opportunism, and with whom we once collaborated. There were no Bolsheviks back then [before the 1903 congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party], but all future Bolsheviks who collaborated with him valued him highly.”

So, on this great occasion, Lenin tells the audience that the person they had been fighting and whom they had all been looking down upon really was a great guy. He read out the quotation which still thrilled him. That for me is significant. I wonder how shocked some of the people must have been.

A couple of weeks later the Second Congress of the Communist International met and Lenin did the same thing. He referred again to the same long quote in Leftwing communism and repeated his appreciation of Kautsky: “When he was a Marxist, how well he wrote!” I imagine a lot of the people in both audiences - those at his birthday and those present at the Second Congress - were surprised to hear anything like that.

After all, following 1914 you could read tremendous polemics against Kautsky, where Lenin seemed unable to think of enough bad names for him. But it is clear that Lenin still had a soft spot for him - in his heart and also in his thinking. People on the left have all grown up with the idea of the “renegade Kautsky” - indeed, I gather many actually think “renegade” is his first name, as they have never heard him called anything else! And there is a long list of other things we have learnt about him - ie, that he was a passive and mechanical determinist, not very revolutionary, Darwinist, and so on and so forth.

We are told that in 1914 Lenin managed to see through not only Kautsky, the person (which he clearly did), but also what he stood for. Then we are told that this led Lenin to finally settle accounts with Kautskyism root and branch, that there was a massive rethinking of Marxism. Kautsky was associated with the Second International and so that was also bad. That is how the Kautsky-Lenin relationship is generally thought of. And, of course, there are people on the other side of the political spectrum who have the same idea of Kautsky versus Lenin - except that they like Kautsky!

Well, lately there has been a sort of Kautsky revival going on. Mike Macnair’s book Revolutionary strategy is one example of it, and there are a lot of other articles I could cite. There is another huge book in the Historical Materialism series called Witness to permanent revolution, which has several hundred pages of Kautsky documents from the 1904-06 period, which I will quote from later on.

I am proud to be part of this little revival and I think I can describe myself as probably the most extreme member of it, as I have probably gone further than anyone else in saying that Lenin’s view on Kautsky was highly positive, never changed and continued to play an important role in all points of his career, including in the last decade. My little epigram for the relationship is this: ‘After 1914 Lenin hated Kautsky because he loved Kautsky’s books’. This is what I am going to try and convey.

One reason I am confident about what I am saying is that after publishing my book Lenin rediscovered, the reviews by some people on the left were complimentary, but a couple of them highlighted what they thought was a weak point: that is, I saw the Lenin-Kautsky relationship as closer than it was - although Lenin might have considered the relationship close before 1914, he did not realise the real issues involved, that he actually disagreed with Kautsky; but in 1914 the scales fell from his eyes.

That was a valid criticism, as I did not talk in the book about the later period. So I thought I would do some research on this. I compiled a rather odd little database which I refer to as ‘Kautsky as Marxist’. I went through Lenin’s works and pulled out all the references I could find about Kautsky’s writings up to 1909, when Road to power came out. Lenin considered this the cut-off point. Kautsky might not have become a full traitor until 1914, but after 1909 he is not so good.

The first surprise is that there is a lot of it. The second is the picture that arose from this, which was almost entirely positive and also had a wide range of issues and a lot of references to specific writings and so forth. I am still working out the whole picture and trying to get all the facts that came out of it.

But I am going to make a modest claim here: I am not giving you Lars Lih’s view of the Lenin-Kautsky relationship, I am giving you Lenin’s view of the Lenin-Kautsky relationship. He may be wrong, but this is what he thought. I have a summary here that I wrote out of that guide. It is my guide, but it is an attempt to paraphrase what Lenin says about Kautsky after 1914. This is the picture you would get of Kautsky, if you were listening to Lenin:

“Karl Kautsky was an outstanding Marxist who is the most authoritative theoretician in the Second International and teacher to a generation of Marxists. His popularisation of Das Kapital back in the 1890s has canonical status. He was one of the first to refute opportunism in detail, although personally he somewhat hesitated before launching his attack, and he continued to fight energetically against it, asserting even that a split would be necessary if opportunism ever became the official tendency of the German party. Marxists of Lenin’s generation learned a dialectical approach to tactics from him. Only vis-à-vis the state do we observe a tendency to restrict himself to general truths and evade a concrete discussion.

“Kautsky was also a reliable guide to the revolutionary developments of the early 20th century. His great work on the agrarian question is still valid. He correctly diagnosed the national problem, as opposed to Rosa Luxemburg. He insisted that western Europe was ripe for socialist revolution and foretold the connection between war and revolution.

“Kautsky had a special relation to Russia and to Bolshevism. On the one hand, he himself took great interest in Russian developments and endorsed the basic Bolshevik view of the 1905 revolution and the peasant strategy which emerged from it. On the other hand, the Russian revolutionary workers read him eagerly and his writings enjoyed greater influence in Russia than anywhere else. This enthusiastic interest in the latest word of European Marxism is one of the main reasons for Bolshevism’s later revolutionary prowess.”

That, as I say, is Lenin’s view of the Lenin-Kautsky relationship. Of course, I have left out the angry irony of ‘Look at him now!’, ‘Look at what happened!’ and how Kautsky had become a traitor or renegade in 1914 and so forth.

I want first to give the big picture and then proceed to the first two decades of their relationship (1894-1904 and 1904-14). I will talk about the third decade in the next sessions. The first decade I summarise under the title of ‘Lenin, the social democrat’ and the second under ‘Lenin, the Bolshevik’. ‘Lenin, the communist’ comes in the third decade. I have chosen these titles merely in order to identify the central theme of the particular decade - I am convinced of the continuity in Lenin’s thought and do not think he changed that much at all.

‘Lenin, the social democrat’ refers to his desire to initiate a social democratic party in Russia. ‘Lenin, the Bolshevik’ is so called as I regard Bolshevism as a Russian answer to a Russian question of how to defeat the tsar. You can call this classic Bolshevism, old Bolshevism or whatever, but that is what people meant when the word was invented. ‘Lenin, the communist’ obviously refers to the Lenin of 1917 and the socialist revolution.

By using this framework, the point I wanted to make about the Lenin-Kautsky relationship is the following: Kautsky’s influence is continuing, complex and central. It is complex because it has different facets that are more important at particular times - not just one or another issue. It is central because in the central concerns of each decade of Lenin’s life you will find Kautsky.

In the first decade, Kautsky was the authoritative spokesman of ‘Erfurtianism’ - the term I introduced in Lenin rediscovered. It is my word, referring to the Erfurt programme, for the image of the German party that inspired the Russians in this decade. In addition, it refers to Kautsky’s polemics against opportunism, such as his book against Bernstein.

It is true that at the start of the second decade - ie, when the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks split in 1904 - Kautsky sided with the Mensheviks. But this was just temporary. Actually on the more substantive issues and for most of the time from 1906 on, Kautsky was associated with the Bolsheviks, and he more or less endorsed the Bolshevik strategy. In fact both the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks saw Kautsky as a sort of honorary Bolshevik. This seems to have been forgotten, but it does have to be said.

I would like to go into more detail on three points: Firstly the role of Kautsky as a mentor - the historical fact of the role that Kautsky played in the history of Russian social democracy. Secondly, Kautsky as an expounder of the logic of the party and the Russian underground (which is mainly what my book is about). And, thirdly, Kautsky’s support for the explicitly Bolshevik strategy of hegemony.
Kautsky as mentor

The best account of this is given by Lenin in State and revolution, which, as you know, is in many ways a polemic against Kautsky. But before he begins the polemic, Lenin gives the following generous and accurate account of Kautsky’s relationship to Bolshevism and the Russian movement (I should say, by the way, that if you read State and revolution you will find a great deal of praise even in this highly polemical pamphlet):

“Undoubtedly, an immeasurably larger number of Kautsky’s works have been translated into Russian than into any other language. It is not without justification that some German social democrats sometimes say jokingly that Kautsky is read more in Russia than in Germany. (We may say, in parentheses, that there is a deeper historical significance to this joke than those who made it first suspected. For the Russian workers, having manifested in 1905 an unusually strong and unprecedented demand for the best works of the best social democratic literature in the world, and having been supplied with editions and translations of these works in quantities unheard of in other countries, thereby transplanted, so to speak, with an accelerated tempo, the immense experience of a neighbouring, more advanced country into the almost virgin soil of our proletarian movement)”.

A somewhat similar comment can be found in Leftwing communism.

What Lenin is saying is that Kautsky was the main reference point of the Russian movement and Russian workers, and that this continued not only during the underground period, but almost throughout the 1920s - at least until 1929. For example, I have a long Bolshevik reading list for study and propaganda circles in the underground. This one is from 1908. The first thing to be said is that it is an extremely impressive reading list - if I had read all this stuff, then I would know a lot more than I do! I counted 23 works by Karl Kautsky, who dominates the list. Nobody else comes even close. There are only four articles by Lenin - none of the famous books such as What is to be done? or Two tactics.

But this continues for a long time. The classic Bolshevik textbook published in 1919, The ABC of communism, also has reading lists, from which you get the same picture - Kautsky is by far the leading author. Of Lenin’s pre-1909 works, the only ones that are included are those on agrarian development. Again, no trace of What is to be done? or Two tactics. So workers and Bolsheviks looking to educate and develop themselves are reading Kautsky! That is an historical fact.

Kautsky himself had more interest in Russia than any other non-Russian writer (ie, not Rosa Luxemburg, who was Russian in the sense that she grew up in the Russian empire). He gives specific support to Iskra and later to the Bolsheviks, and he told German and European readers about the heroic struggles going on in Russia and their immense significance. I would just like to quote from the article ‘Slavs and revolution’ from 1902, which was read out by Lenin at his 50th birthday. You can see why he was so inspired by it. This is what Kautsky said about the Russian workers:

“We are entering a new epoch of revolutionary struggle in Russia, a struggle that is developing on a much wider basis than a quarter of a century ago, but also one that in terms of the zeal of its fighters, in terms of the meanness and cruelty of the oppressors, and in terms of the heroism and devoted self-sacrifice of the revolutionaries is just as impressive as the Russian struggle of earlier periods, and involves more than physics in pitting force against force. The revolutionising of minds advances alongside the revolution of fists. The now awakening strata of the people are being seized by a passionate thirst for knowledge and are attempting to clarify for themselves their historical tasks, so that they might attempt to solve the most complex political problems, rising above the small daily struggle to the great historical goals that it serves.”

He then goes on to argue that in Marx’s day the Slavs were often seen as the force of reaction against the revolution, but perhaps now we can rather see them as the spark that sets off western socialism, which is becoming rather philistine.

Kautsky wrote a lot about Russia and it is always in this vein - ie, that in terms of their development the Russian workers are far above and beyond the English workers, etc.
The merger formula

I now want to discuss the logic of the party in Kautsky and Lenin. I refer to this as the ‘merger formula’ and it comes up a lot in my book because it is essential to this first decade - you do not read it much after that because the issues have basically been resolved.

The merger formula is this: social democracy is the merger of socialism and the worker movement. Lenin quotes this in the early 1890s and writes that this is how Kautsky sums up the essential message of the Communist manifesto - I do not think you can find higher praise than that. He also thought that it summed up the logic of German social democracy - the SPD. So the merger formula is the definition of ‘Erfurtianism’. It is seen as the prediction of the Communist manifesto, which, according to Lenin, is being confirmed before our eyes by the German SPD. So we have Kautsky formulating the link between the Communist manifesto and the party. Not only Lenin thought this - a whole generation of Marxists and activists of the 1890s did too.

What was this party logic? First of all, it is both a vanguard and a mass party - those are not opposed, because first of all bringing what Kautsky called the “good news” of socialism to the workers requires a vanguard who know about socialism, because the masses do not yet know about it. At the same time it requires a mass party, because you are trying to attract as many people as possible to this message and because the party is a large and open organisation that is going to argue for this message day and night. That is one aspect that results from this formula.

The second is what I call ‘campaignism’, which is the large array of jewels that the SPD came up with for getting the message across. This was very innovative stuff back then. I do not think we can appreciate all the things that - although familiar to us - were pioneered by the SPD: rallies, petition campaigns, a huge press, a large range of societies. These are all the things that the Soviet system based itself on and which all groups on the left use to some extent. This is due to the idea of merging. The workers will protest, but, if socialism is the real and final answer, then the only way to get socialism is to merge the two: the workers’ movement must adopt socialism as its goal.

Finally, the third implication of this is ‘political freedom’. That was the term used back then which is not used so much any more. It might be referred to today as ‘civil liberties’ perhaps, but this was the term that referred to the freedom of the press, freedom of association, strikes - ie, a basic array of organisational freedoms that allow this kind of party to exist. Particularly, of course, political freedom is needed in order to get the papers out, to hold rallies and to organise meetings in order to get the message across.

Most explicitly in his commentary on the Erfurt programme, Kautsky argues that anybody who does not want political freedom is an objective enemy of the proletariat - even if they are sincere in their desire to help the workers. Back then of course, a lot of socialists were either dubious on the question of political freedom or even hostile towards it, because they saw it as a sort of bourgeois-liberal toy. The best news for political freedom as a cause in the 19th century was the fact that the logic of Marxism meant arguing for political freedoms for the party.

That is what the merger formula meant. Let us now look at it from the point of view of what I call the ‘social democratic wannabes’ in the 1890s - these young activists either in Petersburg or in some isolated town in Russia. In illegal literature they read about this great party which is both popular and revolutionary and is run by the workers themselves. What an inspiring party! But, they asked, what does it mean for us today? We cannot do anything like that at all because we will be hauled off for speaking out in public.

So what could be done? First of all, they could adopt political freedom as their goal. This was not an obvious choice for revolutionaries in Russia because first of all they had to go through a long period of internal development in order to understand the importance of political freedom. The assassination of the tsar in 1881, for example, was a step forward towards this understanding. Whereas they previously rejected its significance, they now realised it was important.

This brings me to the next problem - is it possible to have something like political freedom under absolutism? Some people said that they were for political freedom, but that the only way to get it was the old terrorist way - ie, to throw bombs and force the government to do what they wanted because it was simply not possible to use newspapers and rallies, etc. That made a lot of sense. Others thought that the liberals would do it for them.

There was, however, another view held by people who had read Kautsky (in this sense Kautsky must be seen as the father, or godfather, of Russian social democracy). These people who had read Kautsky turned to the German party and started experimenting to see whether it was possible to carry out agitation and campaigns amongst the workers without getting arrested. The Russian word for this is konspiratsia, which does not mean ‘conspiracy’ (the word for that is zagovor). Konspiratsia has a specific meaning (or at least it did back in those days) of a set of operating rules which I call the fine art of not getting arrested. I did not use this phrase in Lenin rediscovered, but I now refer to this as the ‘konspiratsia underground’ - a new type of underground. Not one where you sit in a small room and plot to throw a bomb which will overthrow the tsar, but an underground that manages to keep its members safe from arrest. They form a national party with local roots, trying to get the word out to the workers à la SPD.

What is to be done? is therefore not Lenin saying, ‘Here is my great idea of a party - go and do likewise’. It was the summation and codification of what had been worked out by this underground. For that reason I would make the further argument that a lot, if not most, of what he is saying there became the common property of the underground - not just the Bolsheviks. For example, the term and actuality of ‘professional revolutionary’ were common to all parties - not at all a Bolshevik trick. The Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries and even the Liberals (to the extent that they were underground) had professional revolutionaries.

I therefore sum up Lenin’s slogan for this period as: ‘Let us build a party as much like the German party as possible under tsarist conditions. Then we can overthrow the tsar and build a party which is even more like the German one.’
Kautsky and Bolshevik strategy

I now wish to discuss Kautsky and the Bolshevik strategy that developed and became clear after the 1905 revolution.

Let us put it like this. You have a goal: political freedom. You have an institution in the form of the underground. But what about strategy? What sort of reading of class forces do you have that will achieve this political freedom? The Bolshevik strategy is one of hegemony.

Now the word ‘hegemony’ is a very famous one for a variety of reasons. What it meant back then was that the peasants were not only a discontented or destructive force, but by this time they were genuinely radical democrats whose interest it was to have a democratic, anti-tsarist revolution - partly because they wanted the land, but for other reasons too. They also needed leadership, so they had to choose between the main classes. One of these was the liberal bourgeoisie, who were anti-tsarist for their own reasons, and the other was the proletariat. The bourgeois liberals were already becoming counterrevolutionary because they were afraid of revolution, and they could more or less put up with what they got in 1905. Therefore the proletariat should aim to win, and has a very good chance of winning, class leadership over the peasants by promising them land and by being an uncompromising revolutionary force.

The way I summarise it is that the bourgeois revolution is too important to be left to the bourgeoisie - in fact the bourgeoisie is not going to carry out the bourgeois revolution. What follows from this is that the proletariat has a duty to lead the revolution and the mass of the people as a whole - ie, in the first instance the peasantry. Where did this hegemony strategy come from?

One common view is that Lenin invented it in 1905 when he realised that orthodox Marxism was insufficient, because it says that the bourgeoisie will lead the bourgeois revolution. So this view bases itself on Lenin repudiating German textbooks. But actually this is not so.

After 1905 Lenin wrote that the Bolsheviks had always been in favour of the hegemony scenario and it was the Mensheviks who were falling away from it. It is hard to locate just when the term ‘hegemony’ came about, but he was arguing that the Bolsheviks had always fought for it and that they still were. The idea goes back to Plekhanov in the 1880s, when he said that the Russian revolution can only succeed as a worker revolution. What he meant by revolution was a democratic and anti-tsarist revolution.

From the very beginning, Kautsky was again an influence, a conduit, for the hegemony strategy. The logic of it can be traced back to his writings in the 1890s, and it is based on three things. Firstly, that the bourgeoisie is unreliable. Marx and Engels realised this as soon as the ink was dry on the Communist manifesto in 1848. Another thing Kautsky says is that the bourgeoisie becomes weaker and feebler the further east we get, something which was picked up on by other writers. Then the idea of social democracy as the leader of the people - das Volk in German or narod in Russian. This means that the social democrats were not merely leading the workers, but were also the consistent champions of the wide masses of the non-proletarians and could also count on their support - the peasants above all, but the urban petty bourgeoisie too.

Finally, there is what I sometimes call the Kautsky hypothesis or theory. He says at one point that the social democrats are better defenders of democracy than the democrats, and what he means by that is that - in Germany especially - the democrats are to the left of the liberals, but they are starting to compromise, so the force that was really fighting for democracy was the workers’ party.

I read an American writer from this period who drew a comparison between the US and Germany. When something happened to the workers in the US then it would be ignored, but in Germany the party would kick off a big fuss about it in the Reichstag. This is the background to the hegemony strategy.

When applied to Russia, Kautsky specifically endorsed it and might have even helped to formulate it. Writing in February 1904, he says: “More than anywhere else, the proletariat in Russia today is the advocate of the vital interests of the whole nation - ie, the struggle against the government. That is to say, it is the proletariat which is the defender of national interests that the other classes are letting down. And particularly the peasantry is a source of possible support. Until the 1880s, Russian absolutism found its support in the peasantry. This no longer exists. The Russian peasant is ruined, starved and rebellious.”

By December 1905 Kautsky had taken the argument further by comparing the Russian revolution with the French revolution. He says that he expects “the disappearance of today’s great landed estates throughout the whole Russian kingdom and their transformation into peasant possessions. Next to tsarism, it is the large landed estates that will pay the bill of the revolution. We do not know what the result will be in terms of the mode of production, but we will say that the peasants will fight tooth and nail against anybody trying to restore the old aristocratic landed regime - even by foreign intervention.” This obviously says something not only about 1905, but also about 1917.

Then, in 1906, Kautsky specifically endorsed Bolshevik strategy - something that came out of a logic of Kautsky’s particular way of looking at social democracy (I will not say that this is something coming from social democracy in general - this is Kautsky individually - but he and Lenin were on the same wave length on this vital question).

To sum up, we have to understand that political freedom as a goal really was the central theme of Lenin’s first two decades - why it was important and how to get it. Political freedom also has a political logic - both in the ideal party that would be possible when political freedom was achieved and in the underground as a sort of ray of political freedom in the gloom of absolutism. Finally the strategy for winning political freedom was to get the peasants on board and to win leadership and hegemony over the peasants away from the liberals.

At each step we find Kautsky is a central influence and active mentor and educator. If I were speaking merely as a Russian historian I would have to say that Kautsky was a very important figure in Russian social democracy. He was a figure in Russian history.

The Kautsky-Lenin relationship is, for me, one of the most fascinating individual relationships in Lenin’s life. It is full of a passion and emotion that is hard to find elsewhere, but also it tells us about Lenin’s relationship to the Marxism of his day and to the Second International.

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:02:00 +0000

[CU09]Capitalism's crisis: How do we organise? from Communist Party of Great Britain on Vimeo.

How not to stop the BNP

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:00:00 +0000

The continued rise of the British National Party raises key questions about the left’s strategy. Looking at the Socialist Workers Party’s analysis underlines how we need a root-and-branch rethink

The election of BNP leader Nick Griffin and acolyte Andrew Brons to the European parliament has been endlessly reported in both the bourgeois media and the left press. Although the BNP vote did not increase absolutely, the complete collapse of Labour, combined with the low turnout on June 4, ensured that their candidates scraped home in two UK regions.

In contrast, the far left in Britain was virtually nowhere to be seen - an utter condemnation of the puerile view that the economic crisis is automatically ‘good for us’. We clearly have some rethinking to do.

The latest edition of International Socialism is therefore encouraging in one sense. Socialist Workers Party national secretary Martin Smith has written an account of the BNP’s rise in which he discusses some examples from history and attempts to map out the way forward to counter its success. In addition to his SWP full-time post, comrade Smith is coordinator of Love Music, Hate Racism and a leading member of Unite Against Fascism - two of the SWP’s ‘united fronts’.

However, one would have hoped comrade Smith would recognise that the BNP’s rise and rise indicates there is perhaps something amiss with the left’s current approach. Instead, unfortunately, the only arguments he takes up are those made by “some [anonymous] sections of the left” who hold that the BNP is no longer fascist, and - in a manner so typical of the SWP - by those to his right, in this case Nick Lowles of Searchlight.
‘Uniting everyone’

The first aspect of his polemic is rather odd. He does not address the question of whether the BNP actually is a “Nazi party” by examining its practice. He does not take up the argument that, while it remains a far-right organisation, it is no longer fascist. Instead, he suggests that many people, especially “your average 16-year-old”1, do not know what the terms ‘far right’ or ‘post-fascist’ mean, but they understand ‘Nazi’. Which is why the UAF slogan of ‘Don’t vote Nazi’ is so effective!

The second aspect of the polemic sees comrade Smith address the elephant in the ‘anti-fascist’ room - the need to articulate a positive alternative, if the social basis of the BNP’s electoral success is to be undermined.

In this context, although it is hardly a difficult task, Smith raises some well aimed criticisms of Nick Lowles’ views on Labour. He reminds us that support for Labour is at an all-time low and that many people are voting BNP as a protest against the New Labour project in the first place. So just telling them to keep voting Labour is counterproductive, surely? Yes, it is, if that is as far as it goes. But how is ‘Don’t vote Nazi’ any better? Who should workers vote for if not Labour?

Comrade Smith’s arguments reveal the popular frontist quagmire into which the SWP has sunk. Pointing out that “many people from many different political traditions want to stop the BNP”, he lists them as “revolutionary socialists, greens, anarchists and activists who do not support any political organisation” (p69). The various sections of the political establishment which also wish to “stop the BNP” are not included. So, although Smith doubtless has the above-mentioned token range of left politicos in mind when he writes that ‘Don’t vote Nazi’ “unites everyone” (ibid), he fails to notice that the slogan does not draw a line of demarcation against either the capitalist state or the capitalist parties. This is all the more absurd, because elsewhere in his article comrade Smith correctly points out that it is precisely the bourgeoisie which in times of severe economic and political crisis often turn to the fascists: “Fascism has never taken power in a country simply through elections - fascist parties have always been handed power by ruling classes in crisis” (p45).

Indeed, this ‘uniting everyone’ approach undermines class politics. When Nick Griffin was charged in 2006 with inciting racial hatred, leading SWP member and then UAF convenor Weyman Bennett used the slogan “Turn the BNP into HMP”. In other words, everyone - from the establishment to the SWP - is agreed that the BNP is beyond the pale and we should call on the ruling class to lock up its leaders. And when a United Kingdom Independence Party member tried to address demonstrators against Griffin’s election in Manchester, and, quite rightly, came under fire from activists, an SWP member and shop steward intervened to say that this was “not the time to be exposing Ukip”.2 Unity can sometimes extend even to the non-BNP far right.
Fascism and the BNP

Smith clings to the old ‘anti-fascist’ dogma of the 1970s and 80s and the SWP halcyon days of the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism. To rationalise this he must attempt to prove that the BNP has not really changed: although it is posing as a “respectable party of the right, the BNP remains a fascist party to the core”.3

Unfortunately, however, he does not go beyond assertion. To show that BNP leaders used to be fascists is hardly enough to prove that they and their party are still fascists today. Fascist parties in the first half of the 20th century were typically characterised by their command of non-state combat units and mass mobilisations against the organised working class. That is what marks fascism out from other forms of counterrevolution. Certainly fascism has no coherent, worked out or defining ideology. The Italian Fascisti were not the German Nazis; the Spanish Falange were not the British Union of Fascists and so on. Although in some senses an international phenomenon, fascism has taken on many and various national forms.

Fascism recruits the declassed, the desperate, the enraged petty bourgeoisie and forms them into a social battering ram. Trade unions, workers’ demon-strations and working class political parties are physically attacked, cowed and finally crushed through extreme force. Contradictions in the bourgeoisie itself are forcibly, though temporarily, overcome too. When in power, however, the fascist party ceases to be anything special. It is bureaucratised and absorbed to become just another facet of the bureaucratic, authoritarian state.

With this in mind, it is clear that the BNP no longer fits the definition. Where are its street fighting forces? Comrade Smith would have us believe they are still lurking in the wings, ready to spring into action should votes begin to fall. But there is no evidence for this, just as there is no evidence of the BNP - as an organisation rather than as individual members - having planned any kind of physical attack on working class organisations for well over a decade.

That is not to say the BNP is not a vile, despicable, divisive outfit. It is an ultra-right nationalist party along the lines of the Front National in France, Austria’s Freedom Party, Switzerland’s People’s Party, etc. But none of these can be correctly defined as fascist. All have fascists within their ranks (including no doubt at the top level). But none of them have counterrevolutionary fighting formations. Certainly there have been, and will be, tensions, over the new course adopted by the BNP back in the 80s, but in order to formulate our response and our alternative, we must recognise this changed reality.
‘In the spirit’ of Trotsky?

Smith refers to Leon Trotsky’s excellent writings on the united workers’ front against fascism in Germany. Trotsky tore to shreds the ‘official communist’ notion of ‘First Hitler, then us’ - the idea that fascism represented some organic final stage of development within capitalism that would open the way for its overthrow.

Recognising the fact that it is the ruling class that turns to fascism in times of revolutionary crisis, Trotsky did not advocate an alliance with ruling class parties to defeat it. He urged action by the whole of the organised working class in Germany to disarm the main threat to its existence.

But this did not mean a diplomatic non-aggression pact, involving the suspension of criticism, between the German Communist Party and social democracy - rather a short-term fighting alliance which would threaten civil war if the bourgeoisie backed Hitler. This unity could also stop the fascists acting as strike-breakers and empower the working class to go forward in its historic mission to overthrow capitalism. To use a rough analogy, this would be similar to the way Russian workers be they Bolshevik, Menshevik or Socialist Revolutionary turned back general Kornilov’s attempted coup in 1917 or German workers united to fight off the Kapp putsch in 1920.

Yet, just as comrade Smith draws a straight line between the Nazis in the 30s and the BNP today, so he claims that UAF’s approach of ‘Don’t vote Nazi’ and ‘no platform’ is “in the spirit” of Trotsky’s united front. He could not be more wrong.

Central to Trotsky’s judgement was the political independence of the working class movement in its struggle against capitalism. But Smith does not really raise class politics at all. He wants to “unite everyone” without a clear perspective - a bit like the Stop the War Coalition refusing to recommend a vote only for anti-war candidates in 2005 (some STWC supporters wanted to vote for Tony Blair, after all). Of course, Searchlight actually does argue its Labourite politics. We need to argue for our Marxist politics.

Singling out the BNP as “Nazi” is particularly popular frontist. It appeals to British nationalist sentiment and the notion of ‘Britain’s finest hour’ in defeating the Germans - ie, the patriotic consensus built up by the British bourgeoisie post-World War II. Smith is right - “your average 16-year-old” will know what a Nazi is: he or she will have learnt all about the ‘spirit of the Blitz’ in school, and the fact that we would all be speaking German today if the country had not pulled together to resist Hitler. Even the queen did her bit, you see.

But a mass fascist movement in Britain is not exactly going to come decked in swastikas, chanting ‘Sieg Heil!’ and bearing pictures of Hitler. As Clara Zetkin and Karl Radek both noted, the way in which fascist movements gain a popular base is through extreme national chauvinism - a chauvinism which in Britain would be more likely to take the form of hatred of Germans than the veneration of Hitler. Thus a viable fascist movement in the UK would surely be British nationalist. A movement that appeals to ‘British values’.

And how does it serve working class political independence to draw a distinction between “legitimate”, “normal” and “respectable”4 parties on the one hand and the BNP on the other? What about Ukip? What about the Tories, with their record of anti-migrant baiting, clause 28 gay-bashing and glorification of imperialist conquest and slaughter? Are these “legitimate” parties with whom, unlike the BNP, we can engage in civilised debate? Drawing this line of legitimacy not only boosts their so-called democratic credentials, but plays into the hands of the ‘anti-establishment’ BNP.
No platform

What distinguishes the Marxist political method from that of social democracy, anarchism and liberalism is that, for us, no tactic is automatically ruled out. Marxists are characterised by programmatic intransigence, combined with tactical flexibility. Thus, for Trotsky, prioritising the organisation of militias was a tactical judgement based on the concrete reality of Germany in the 1930s - the worrying rise of fascist squads threatening the workers’ movement’s very existence. So, although Smith refers to the “weapon” of the ‘no platform’ tactic, it effectively makes up his entire arsenal - a tactic which has become a timeless principle set in stone. In this he echoes Chris Bambery in his June 2008 pamphlet following the election of the BNP’s Richard Barnbrook to the London assembly:

“The charge that is often thrown at those who seek effectively to oppose the Nazis - that it would be better to defeat them through reasonable debate - is completely wrong. For a start, Nazis gain power through terror, not through force of argument. And if they do gain power, then all free speech, all forms of democracy, will be at an end. That is why socialists, who are wholeheartedly for free speech and open debate, say Nazis must be silenced to safeguard these.”5

So it is “completely wrong” to even countenance the possibility of openly exposing the arguments of the BNP in elections hustings or in media debates. But debating those like Boris Johnson - as Lindsey German did in 2007 - is perfectly OK. Having said that, do you really think the BNP is doing so well in elections “through terror” and not at all “through force of argument”?

This reveals the utter bankruptcy of the SWP’s approach. Whereas the BNP has dropped the Sieg Heils and the overt Hitlerism in order to persuade people to vote for them, the SWP is trapped in some sort of time warp, believing it can defeat the BNP by chasing it around like headless chickens - eggs and all.
History

To see what is meant by flexible tactics, it is worth taking a quick look at the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the early 1920s. For these comrades it was not anathema to debate with fascist organisations. Rightly, the KPD did not doggedly pursue this over a protracted period of time. It was, though, another string to its bow and one that certainly should not be dismissed out of hand.6

Another leading SWP member, Chris Harman, even acknowledges this in his worthwhile book on the German revolution. He writes that in 1923, as part of the “ideological offensive against the Nazis amongst the Nazis’ own followers”, “leading communists such as Ruth Fischer debated against Nazi spokesmen in meetings of students - for example, where the Nazis were strong and the revolutionary left was very weak”.7

Similarly Pierre Broué explains that “the communists systematically sought discussion and public debate with the Nazis, especially amongst students, who formed one of their bastions”.8 Further, there were also open exchanges in print between the communists Karl Radek and Paul Froehlich, on the one hand, and Count Ernst Reventlow and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, on the other. The KPD was so serious about undermining the tenuous arguments put forward by the far right and the Nazis that it published a pamphlet which its members did their utmost to sell, including in particular to members of the Nazi party.

In their debates with the far right KPD speakers were able to put across their ideas to great effect. On August 2 1923, KPD leader Hermann Remmele spoke at a Nazi meeting in Stuttgart, and on August 10 a Nazi speaker spoke at a KPD meeting. Remmele made it clear: “They told you that communism would take everything from you. But it is capitalism that has taken everything from you!” As both Broué and Harman acknowledge in their accounts, these meetings proved too much for the Nazis, who discontinued them after August 1923, believing them to be a cause of lost members and waning influence.

I am not pointing out these things because I think we are in 1923, or because I think we should be going out of our way to put on such joint events. I am doing so in order to point out that it is just as principled for communists to debate with fascists as it is to beat the hell out of them - it all depends on the circumstances. That applies equally to Griffin’s gang.

Let me be clear: were we in Iran and dealing with organisations like the Bassij, then organised violence (including pre-emptively) would be on the agenda. Baseball bats, chains, Molotov cocktails, AK47s or whatever else we could get hold of would be utilised. But unlike the Bassij the BNP is not trying to drive us off the streets, smash up our meetings and stop us from operating.

But the SWP does not reason in this way. Instead of the programmatic intransigence and tactical flexibility which have served our movement so well, it is characterised by programmatic fragility and tactical dogmatism. In attempting to deprive the BNP of “the oxygen of publicity”,9 the SWP ends up no-platforming itself10 and preventing its own vision for an alternative society being more widely disseminated.

Crushing the far right ‘in the egg’ has simply not worked - the BNP has come up with a new strategy that has taken it forward - it has won itself a space, and a hearing. So what is so brilliant about the left’s tactics that the SWP cannot even contemplate a change? How about socialists - “who are wholeheartedly for free speech and open debate”, don’t forget - trying to expose the pathetic weakness of the far right’s arguments, including face to face in front of workers who might otherwise vote BNP?
Party and strategy

The irony is that comrade Smith implicitly recognises the left’s failure when he says: “We also have to be honest. At the moment the BNP is using the ballot box to build a mass base … As the European elections demonstrated, we cannot point to a left electoral alternative.”11 No, we certainly cannot.

It is blindingly obvious that the left needs to openly articulate its own socialist agenda, not consistently play it down to smooth the path of popular frontist practice. Against the backdrop of the greatest capitalist crisis since the 1930s, a principled, vibrant Marxist party could begin to plant serious roots in society - and become a genuine mass party, as opposed to the myriad of confessional sects.

Of course, comrade Smith talks about the “fight for a socialist society”. But this is completely abstracted from what he actually does now. The SWP has, of course, recently nodded in the direction a united left alliance, but its expressed aim of signing up people like Tony Benn and Clare Short should say something about what it has in mind program-matically - another SWP ‘united front’ (which if it were ever to see the light of day would be every bit as unsuccessful as Respect). More of the same lowest-common-denominator politics, with the SWP doing the donkey work for those to its right and attempting to win naive recruits into its ranks. Yet the very fact that the SWP ‘party’ never operates under its own name whenever it attempts to speak to a mass audience reveals precisely that it is no such thing - a party has a history, a track record and roots in society - something which the SWP’s focus on endless fronts precludes.

Indeed, in terms of its method, the SWP is actually pretty similar to … the BNP. Nick Griffin, for example, writes: “Instead of presenting the party as a revolutionary alternative to the system, we must present [the electorate] with an image of moderate reasonableness … Of course, we must teach the truth to the hard core. But, when it comes to influencing the public, forget about racial differences, genetics, Zionism, historical revisionism and so on.”12 Replace “racial differences”, “genetics” and “historical revisionism” with ‘secularism’, ‘open borders’ and ‘working class socialism’ and you have the SWP in Respect.

The problem is, though, that just as the BNP started to become a “moderate” rightwing party, so the SWP will eventually be transformed into a bunch of completely harmless reformists. Until the left starts to operate honestly on the basis of the politics it purportedly upholds it will be condemned to remain on the margins of society.

The left needs to break with all this and begin the urgent task of building genuine party unity around a prog-ramme that provides answers for every question posed by capitalist society. Precisely because of Marxism’s powerful message we should be at least as well placed as the BNP - a growing membership base, a strong party apparatus, our own clutch of elected representatives. Yet the sad fact of the matter is that comrade Smith cannot even imagine such a scenario at the moment. Nevertheless that is what life demands.

Respond to this article

Notes

1. International Socialism summer 2009, p69.
2. See infantile-and-disorderly.blogspot.com/2009/06/this-is-not-their-victory-it-is-our.html
3. International Socialism summer 2009, p43.
4. C Bambery How to stop the Nazi BNP London 2008, p3.
5. Ibid p13.
6. Unfortunately, the rot does not stop at the SWP when it comes to the refusal to even contemplate anything other than ‘no platforming’ fascists. Bill Jeffries and Wladek Flakin of Permanent Revolution desperately suggest that to even raise this point is to slip into “third period Stalinism”.
7. C Harman The lost revolution London 1982, p253.
8. P Broue The German revolution Chicago 2006, p728.
9. International Socialism summer 2009, p78.
10. A particularly striking example of this occurred when Weyman Bennett, representing UAF, appeared on the same radio show as BNP deputy leader Simon Darby. Comrade Bennett refused to answer any of Darby’s idiotic direct questions on “black racism” because he could only talk to the presenter in this so-called ‘debate’. Darby rather smugly suggested that his questions were just too clever for comrade Bennett. The programme can be downloaded at playradiouk.podbean.com/medias/feed/aHR0cDovL21lZGlhMi5wb2RiZWFuLmNvbS8xMjA2My91L1RCXzI0MDIwOVB0Mi5tcDM/TB_240209Pt2.mp3
11. International Socialism summer 2009, p78.
12. Patriot spring 1999.

Organise united action for principled solidarity!

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:54:00 +0000

A report on a Hopi emergency meeting (you can watch the videos at www.youtube.com/hopi2008) and an appeal to the SWP for co-ordinated solidarity action.

Over 40 comrades attended the June 20 meeting called by Hands Off the People of Iran. Those present were mainly Hopi members, but a good number of new faces came along to hear an analysis of developments in Iran rather different from the sometimes simplistic reporting of the media. They were certainly not disappointed.

The two main speakers were Hopi steering committee members Yassamine Mather and Moshé Machover, who outlined the significance of recent events from two different perspectives - comrade Mather spoke of developments inside Iran and the challenges facing the Iranian working class and revolutionary forces, whereas comrade Machover placed developments in a regional context by looking at the Israeli government’s response to what has been happening.

Comrade Mather emphasised the split that had engulfed the Iranian ruling elite, something that was emphasised by the many “red lines” that both Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had crossed during the presidential campaign, exposing the corruption at the heart of Iranian politics. She argued that in spite of the heated debates, any talk of democracy in Iran is utterly illusory - at least 80% of power lies outside the superficially democratic majles (parliament) and elected president - real authority lies with the unelected supreme leader and the council of guardians.

Comrade Mather exposed the hypocrisy of those like Moussavi who had presided over the murder of thousands of communists and socialists, and argued that the tasks of Hopi were predominantly to support the Iranian workers’ and student movements. We should be arguing for independent working class politics, she said, in order to avoid the danger of workers’ struggles being hijacked by ‘regime change’ and ‘colour revolution’ forces, which would be the “kiss of death” to Iranian workers’ struggles.

Comrade Machover emphasised that - in spite of its claims to uphold democracy and human rights in the Middle East - the last thing the Israeli government wants is the election of Moussavi and some pro-US government in Iran, as this would undermine the special relationship it enjoys with America and exacerbate the very slight tension that had arisen between Israel and the US following the election of Barack Obama and then the new rightwing government under Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ahmadinejad is “Allah’s gift to Israel” - his remarks and comments buttress the Israeli government by providing it with a pretext to pull the Israeli Hebrews behind it and to distract attention from the ongoing expansion of colonial settlements in the West Bank.

In the discussion, Peter Manson of the CPGB said it was “absolutely essential” for working class forces to engage with the protests, to attempt to win hegemony over the movement and arm it with the slogans of working class democracy. Instead of echoing calls for a recount or rerun of the election, the left should take those demands to their logical conclusion - the need to overturn the whole thoroughly undemocratic system and convene a constituent assembly to establish popular power.

Stuart King of Permanent Revolution and the Hopi steering committee spoke of the “dangerous time” for the Islamic republic and emphasised the importance of the split in the ruling elite - although it had not started out over “anything fundamental”, given that the masses are willing to come out onto the streets, there was now a “classic revolutionary situation”.

He emphasised its precariousness, however, arguing that it could either go the “Burmese way”, with troops being used to crush the masses and the revolution and shore up an even more oppressive and dictatorial regime, or the masses could continue to brave the attacks and push forward. For this reason he thought that if young workers - particularly in the oil industry - are calling for strike action then we should applaud this and argue for it to be carried out immediately. The next few days are crucial - and if it goes beyond a few days then the situation would move into a counterrevolutionary phase.

He argued that the key demand was for the annulment of the elections. If that one thing were forced on the regime, he said, it would “open up the floodgates of the democratic revolution” - and this was appreciated by the guardian council and supreme leader. To give in to that demand was the last thing they wanted to do.

Responding to a question about what form action by the left might take, comrade Machover responded that, although he could not say exactly what tactics should be adopted, he did know what they would have to be based on in order to be effective - the principles Hopi has put forward all along and which have been vindicated by recent events. “Of course, one should condemn the threats against Iran from Israel and the US, but one should not mute one’s criticism and opposition to the theocracy.” This does not mean supporting the Moussavi faction of the regime, but “the masses”.

With this in mind, Hopi is asking the Socialist Workers Party to host a joint meeting at its forthcoming annual school, Marxism 2009, at the beginning of July. Given the crying need for principled and coordinated solidarity action, we are urging the SWP to make this an official event at Marxism 2009.
Updates from Iran

Hopi has set up a new blog featuring regular news updates from Iran. It can be accessed via the Hopi website (www.hopoi.org) or directly at: hopinewsfromiran.wordpress.com

To find out more about upcoming Hopi meetings, or to request a speaker for your organisation, campaign or union, please get in touch with us at office@hopoi.info or 07590 429226.

For working class culture: Rosa Luxemburg on Leo Tolstoy

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:34:00 +0000

From her stinging polemics to her appraisal of the positive aspects of Lassalle’s legacy, her uniquely lucid writing style always marks her articles out. This is in no small part due to her fascination with literature and the keen interest she took in literary developments both in Germany and elsewhere.
As this text makes quite clear, she was also of the opinion that the working class must storm the heights of culture if it is to form itself into a hegemonic class. It must equip itself not only with the weapons of a critical political economy and understanding of history independent of bourgeois ideology, but must also formulate its own cultural outlook. This indeed reflected one of the healthiest elements of the Second International’s approach, following Marx and Engels in viewing the working class as a force that can liberate itself not because of its strength at the point of production, but due to the its separation from the means of production and thus its need for collective and voluntary organisations in society at large which provide intimations of a future classless society. The role of the workers’ party, as August Bebel put it at the Gotha conference of 1875, was to be “revolutionary in every sphere of life, not just in politics”.
It is interesting that this article was printed in Die Neue Zeit. It was not only a journal of political polemic and discussion but one that had numerous contributions on art and culture, particularly those from the SPD’s main cultural critic, Franz Mehring. In contrast to the rather narrow outlook of today’s left, with an almost exclusive focus on this or that narrow trade union campaign or latest turn, the SPD took questions of culture extremely seriously, with debates on the role of naturalist literature and art within Marxism at the 1896 congress, which saw Wilhelm Liebknecht, August Bebel and Franz Mehring fight it out. This is kind of political culture of openness, seriousness and audacity that our class must aspire to – it is working class culture.

Tolstoy’s literary estate
From Die Neue Zeit (Stuttgart), 1912-13, Volume II, pp. 97-100
Tolstoy’s literary estate, which has been published in German in three volumes by Ladyschnikow in Berlin, encompasses (alongside several sketches and fragments) the great historical story Hadji Murat, which depicts Russia’s subjugation of the Caucasus around the middle of the nineteenth century; three stories, The devil, The forged coupon and Father Sergius; two dramas, The fruits of enlightenment as well as The living corpse; and finally two depictions of Russian village life during serfdom, An Idyll and Tichon and Malania. Apart from the last two novellas, which were written at the beginning of the 1860s, all the great works listed above were written in the last two decades of his life. The freshness, the radiance and the wealth of the intellectual creations of a man between 60 and 70 year would by themselves be astounding enough, if the works were at the same time not also the best explanation for the inexhaustible fruitfulness of Tolstoy’s genius.
Common bourgeois opinion tends to sharply distinguish between Tolstoy the artist and Tolstoy the moralist; the former is allowed a place amongst the greatest creators of world literature, the latter is banished to the Russian wilderness, a sinister and vulgar fellow with a “Slavic” tendency to pensiveness and other such nonsense, bemoaned as part romantic, part anarchist, and definitely as an enemy of art in general and his own art in particular. Ivan Turgenev made his well-known invocation to Tolstoy from this point of view, begging him for god’s sake to turn away from the moral-philosophical musing and to once again concentrate on his glorious, pure art, which was floundering because of his prophetic fads. This displays a complete lack of understanding of Tolstoy, because whoever does not understand his ideology is also closed off from his art, or at least from the real source thereof.
This is probably what makes Tolstoy a unique figure in world literature – there is complete identity between his own life and art. Literature is only an instrument with which he expresses his thoughts and his internal struggle. And because his inexhaustible work and harrowing struggle completely fulfilled this human being until his very last breath, Tolstoy became such a tremendous artist who produced a wellspring of art, inexhaustible in richness and in ever greater clarity and beauty.
Without a grand personality and grand worldview there can be no great art. Tolstoy sought the truth from the very first awakening of his conscious mind. Yet for him, seeking the truth is not a literary occupation that has nothing to do with his private life, as with the other “truth seekers” of modern literature. For him it is a personal life problem that fulfils all his conduct and all his feeling, completely dominating his way of life, his family life, his friendships and loving relationships, his working methods and also his art.
Neither is this search confined to the dwarf-like world-weariness of an “individual” who, trapped in a cage of petty-bourgeois existence, cannot act out his male or female ego - as in Ibsen or Bjornson. Tolstoy’s eternal search is aimed at such ways of living and existence, which would be in harmony with the ideals of morality. Yet his moral ideal is of a purely social nature: equality and solidarity of all members of society, based on a general obligation to work, which is what the heathen people of his works inexhaustibly strive for: Pierre Besuchow in War and Peace, Lewin in Anna Karenina, Prince Nechljudow in Resurrection as well as in Father Sergius and finally Saryznew in The Fruits of Enlightenment.
The history of Tolstoy’s art is the search for the solution of the contradiction between this ideal and the existing social relations. He never parted with this ideal until the hour of his death, as he did not want to compromise a hair’s width with the existing order. Yet at the same time he did not adopt the only path towards realizing this ideal, the world view of the revolutionary proletarian class struggle, because, as a genuine son of pre-capitalist Russia, he could not adopt this view. From there evolves the particular tragedy of his life and his death.
Torn from the soil of history, his ideal society floats in the air of the individual, moralistic “resurrection” of an ancient Christian colouring, or in the best case of a confused agrarian communism. In solving his problem, Tolstoy remained an utopian and a moralist all his life. But it is not the solution, not the social recipe, that makes art effective - but the problem itself, the depth and the sincerity of its depiction. Here, Tolstoy has accomplished the highest in thought process and internal struggle, and this made it possible for him to accomplish the highest in art. The same relentless honesty and thoroughness which led him to critically measure the whole of society on the basis of this ideal, also allowed him to artistically grasp life in its great construction and its correlations. Thus he became the untouchable epicist, who showed himself in his maturity in War and Peace and as an old man in Hadji Murat and in The forged coupon.
Tolstoy’s genius is of the original nature of an inexhaustible golden vein. Yet, the recent example of the Danish writer Jensen shows how little creative effect even the greatest artistic talent may have if it is without a compass of a great, serious worldview. His fine, colourful and ingenious grasp of the plot and his confident mastery of the technical methods of narration make him a born epicist of the highest order. And yet what else did he deliver in his Madame D’Ora or his Wheel than a tortured, gigantic distortion of modern society, a garishly coloured fairground booth with abnormalities, which half comes across as brash colportage and half as a spiteful mockery of the reader himself. He lacks a unified worldview, which he could group the details around. He lacks the holy seriousness, honesty and truthfulness with which Tolstoy approaches all things.
In his literary estate, all of Tolstoy’s characteristics are displayed to the full. He no longer makes even the slightest of compromises to the beauty of form, the reader’s sensationalism or his need for calm. He puts every padding aside and reaches the most disciplined self-control, the greatest honesty and the most succinct means of expression. His art is now so identical to the subject that it can hardly be noticed. And thus in his last works, Tolstoy has reached the peak of art, which becomes so natural to him that everything he touches blossoms, immediately takes shape and lives. In Father Sergius for example, he follows the life of an atoning man of the world; in The forged coupon a false banknote’s journey through different layers of Russian society - these are themes and ideas which, written in pure prose, would kill every weaker form of art and anything which is not so completely honest as this. With the most simple methods of unaffected storytelling, Tolstoy creates a terrific painting of human destinies of the highest artistic efficacy.
This very same depth, one could almost say unprecedented honesty, transforms both of his dramas into experiences of deep, harrowing effect - although they lack pretty much everything that is commonly expected of a theatre play in terms of “dramatic plot” and “solution”.
It is particularly interesting and informative to observe the yawning gap between these two creations of a great poet and the bourgeois audience during a performance. The Fruits of Enlightenment is nothing but Tolstoy’s own life drama. The struggle of a lonely titan, who is trying to escape the daily clutches of compromise, is for the bourgeois audience nothing but a moving “marriage tragedy”, a conflict between “motherly duties”, “husbandly duties” and other such tribulations of the German philistine’s bedroom.
There are some very harrowing scenes, such as that in front of the military commando, where a lad expresses his disgust with militarism by resolutely refusing to serve and as a result has to endure endless psychological torture. In another, we see the final attempt of the fighter for social equality to escape from his family and a tragic confrontation between him and his wife. In front of the German bourgeois audience - which has been corrupted by the widespread mendacity of contemporary theatre - all these deeply serious and honest words seem completely inappropriate, embarrassing, almost like an indecency.
There is no intellectual bond either between the audience and Tolstoy’s other drama, the Living corpse. The preened audience of the German theatre, which is probably rushing to the performance in order to see a gipsy choir or some gruesomely juicy “marriage troubles”, does not even suspect that is raining invisible slaps from the stage, where the upright, honourable society is depicted in its entire pitifulness, narrowness and cold egomania, whereas the only beings with human emotions and generous feelings are to be found amongst the so-called “lumpens”, the castaways and the depraved.
The corrupted bourgeois audience, made insensitive by [the suit of armour of] the triviality of its existence, only goes to the theatre to take its mind off things. It doesn’t even notice that it is they who are being referred to when the ragged hero of the drama - stuck in his last sanctuary, a dirty inn - explains his life story with a few simple sentences: “The man who is born into the circles from which I come from, has only three possibilities. Either he can take up office, earn money and add to the dirt in which we live - that was too repugnant for me, or maybe I didn’t understand it, but above all I found it repugnant. Or he can fight the dirt, but in order to do that he must be a hero, and I was never one of those. Or finally he could do a third thing: he can attempt to forget, become slovenly, drink and sing - that’s what I did, and this is how far it has got me”.
Those “who take up office, earn money and add to the dirt” enthusiastically applaud the miming actor, yet the intellectual empire of the poet remains sealed off to them, as does the intellectual life of the modern workers’ movement and the hero of the masses who “fights the dirt” and who will forever remain to them a book with seven seals.
This is why Tolstoy’s literary estate, both the stories and the dramas, needs to be seen by a working class audience - even more so than his earlier works. Of course, Tolstoy had no understanding of the modern working class movement, but it would be a terrible sign of the intellectual maturity of the enlightened proletariat if it in turn did not have any understanding of Tolstoy’s great art, which breathes the purest and most genuine air of socialism.
As the death enemy of the existing society, as the unflinching fighter for equality, solidarity and for the rights of those without property, as somebody who is incorruptibly exposing all hypocrisy and dishonesty in state, church and marriage, Tolstoy is - in his essence - intellectually thoroughly related to the proletariat, in spite of the utopian-moralising form of his work. His art belongs in front of a working class audience - but a revolutionarily, enlightened working class audience, which is able to raise itself above all prejudice and every belief in authority, and which also has the courage to internally free itself from all cowardly compromise. In fact, there can be no other better reading material for the education of working class youth than Tolstoy’s works.

SPD and the Swamp

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:19:00 +0000

This previously untranslated article, ‘After the Jena congress’, by Rosa Luxemburg is of particular interest. A cool analytical summation of the Jena congress of German Social Democracy in September 1913, it sounds a warning against the new alignment of the party’s centre and right against the left. In a sign of things to come, the Leipziger Volkszeitung - one of the many local SPD newspapers - refused publication1

What distinguishes our party’s last congress in Jena2 from previous congresses is not so much that theoretical or practical revisionism no longer took centre stage, but rather the emergence of two new problems - both born of new situations. As long as we had to waste most of our time and energy at congresses with Bernsteinite ‘misunderstandings’ on theories of immiseration and catastrophe or with South German budget approvers and participants in monarchist rallies - that is, more or less every congress from 1898 to 1910 - the results led merely to the defence of the old status quo of the party.

Of course, those conflicts were no coincidence, but rather a symptom of the powerful growth of the movement amongst the broad masses, leading a section of party comrades into doubts about the old revolutionary principles. Of course, those debates were also of great use and, in addition to this, were of absolute necessity if the party did not want to abandon its proletarian class-struggle character.

However, this periodic necessity of repeatedly defending the old theoretical clarity and solidity of principle created the impression that we were not going anywhere, which had a tiring and depressive effect on wide circles of the party. On top of this, for the mass of our comrades the theoretical disputes often appeared to be nothing more than empty academic discussions about splitting hairs.

It was different at this year’s congress. Two purely practical problems were up for discussion; problems which every informed worker, whether active politically or in a trade union, was able directly to approach and grasp; problems which were not thought up by a mad theoretician in his study, or which came about by a surprise revelation of infidelity by one of our south German parliamentarians. It was the change in the general conditions of our struggle that imposed on us in Jena both the debate on the mass strike and the debate on the question of taxation.3

Of course, on the question of the mass strike this year’s congress was only taking up an item that had already been up for discussion and voting in 1905 and 1906. Seemingly, the problem had already been solved through the acceptance of the mass strike in principle and, since nobody was considering the immediate proclamation of the mass strike in Germany, the discussion might seem pointless. At least, this is how the party executive and its theoreticians presented the matter - a pointless argument about words, and a damaging one at that, which reveals our current impotence to the enemy. This is how the spokesmen of the majority characterised the debate on the mass strike at the congress.

Yet nothing is better than this view in proving how much the resolution on the matter of the mass strike carried at Jena in 19054 has remained a dead letter - both for our practical and theoretical ‘authorities’. It also proves just how necessary a new debate was and how necessary it remains in order gradually to move this letter of law into the party’s living bloodstream.

The Jena resolution of 1905 had been passed under the immediate influence of the Russian Revolution and its victorious expansion. It came in a period of great struggles, revolutionary mood and a general advancement of the proletarian army in Europe. In the January of the same year, the German public was already deeply stirred by the giant struggle of the miners in the Ruhr.5 In Austria, the fight for general and equal suffrage, likewise under the influence of the Russian Revolution, made the greatest waves of all.6

Revolutionary determination and the belief in the power of the working class - a lively sentiment that back then penetrated the whole working class movement - provided the inspiration for the mass strike resolution at Jena. One only needs to read Bebel’s7 great speech at the congress in order to feel the strong, reverberating note of revolutionary determination, of the greatest revolutionary tradition, which permeated the discussions and the resolution itself: “There we have Russia, there we have the battle of June, and there we have the commune! With the spirits of these martyrs, should you not starve yourselves a few weeks to defend your highest human rights?”8 This was the glowing fire of the greatest idealism in which the first resolution on the mass strike was created.

It would, however, be a fateful error to imagine that this mood was shared by all circles of the workers’ movement later on, or even at the time itself. Let us not forget that a few months before the Jena congress, in May 1905, the trade union congress in Cologne had passed a resolution regarding the mass strike which was in direct contradiction to the Jena resolution. The mass strike was rejected on the grounds that it was a useless, and indeed harmful, weapon - not merely making propaganda for it, but even discussing it was forbidden, as it was seen as playing dangerously with fire!

Of course, this ban was not pronounced from the heart of the broad mass of the comrades in the unions - these comrades are, after all, identical to the mass of the party comrades who soon after cheered both the Jena resolution and Bebel’s speech across the whole of the country. But the Cologne trade union conference had clearly shown where the main opposition to the idea of the mass strike is to be found: in the bureaucratic conservatism of the leading union circles. The Jena party resolution was adopted explicitly against the leaders of the trade unions, and Bebel’s speech was for the most part a clear polemic against the rationale of the Cologne congress.

Yet the hostile position of the trade union leaders towards the mass strike did not disappear with this speech. Faced with the decisive position of the party and the revolutionary atmosphere in the country, it did not dare to come to the surface. That it still exists as a silent, passive resistance was shown with quite admirable clarity by the official representative of the general commission of the trade unions, comrade Bauer,9 in his talk on the issue at this year’s congress. It was also shown by comrade Scheidemann’s10 reference to the fact that ‘willingness to take action’ had been culled from the executive committee’s resolution on the mass strike - evidently on the behest of the other instrumental authority, the very same general commission of the trade unions.

The same point is continuously proven by statements of trade union leaders when they are reporting on the Jena congress at party meetings. The typical example was delivered at the general meeting in Bochum, in which Leimpeters and other happy people reduced their wisdom to the old formula that a ‘general strike is general nonsense’ and with this thought to have said everything necessary on the question.

With the acceptance of the mass strike in principle in 1905, the question was thus dealt with to such a limited extent that today we are facing the same principled resistance that we did eight years ago. And nobody should have known this better than our executive committee. In producing the failed resolution in cooperation with the trade union leaders, they should have been able to see at close range just how much the Jena resolution has remained a dead letter to them.

However, even in party circles the zest of 1905 had markedly evaporated. For he who only looks at the surface and only appreciates tangible success, the defeat of the Russian Revolution had brought about a deep depression. The defeat of the miners’ movement in the Ruhr region had equally discouraging effects. On top of this, in 1907, our party suffered its first electoral defeat for decades.11 Together, all these conditions led to an ebb in general confidence and fighting spirit, something that is from time to time unavoidable in the living historic pulse of the workers’ movement.

Only since 1910, under the pressure of the course of imperialism, has class pugnacity gradually been growing again, and a return to fiercer methods of struggle been noticeable. The debates on the insufficiency of our party’s activity against the advance of imperialism defined our congress in 1911.12

And it was essentially not merely, and definitely not primarily, the result of the Prussian state parliament elections,13 but rather the effect of the immense military bill14 and the recognition of the general intensification of the situation which so forcefully put the matter of the mass strike on the party’s agenda in the last few months.

Objective conditions now worked towards once again giving the resolution adopted eight years ago living force and increasing strength. Now, conditions prevailed which were gradually instilling the decision taken eight years ago by 400 party members into the minds of millions.

This year’s conference was called to signal this shift in the situation and this heightening of contradictions in the face of imperialism and to call out to the masses: Equip yourself with the sharpest weapons, for only from your inner intellectual and political maturity can - when necessary - the decisiveness of action and the certainty of victory be born.

Yet it was precisely here that the transformation of our own ‘authorities’ manifested itself. Instead of purposefully expressing the party’s will, as Bebel and the Jena conference of 1905 had done, the current executive, unnerved by the unions’ resistance, saw its mission in giving in to the union authorities, in bringing about a common resolution stripped of everything that would encourage practical determination, and in cohering an entire front in the debate - not against the unruly trade union leaders, but against party comrades who were pushing forwards.

Both in his speech and his summing up, comrade Scheidemann adopted a completely opposite position to that of Bebel in 1905. Whereas Bebel spoke sharply and with bitter mockery against the fear of publicly discussing the mass strike and against the bloody spectres which were being painted as the consequences of the mass strike, Scheidemann summoned up all of his oratory skills to oppose the discussion of the mass strike, playing with politics and painting bloody spectres on the wall!

In one word: if Bebel’s approach in 1905 was an advance of the party in order to force the unions to the left, then the party executive’s strategy in 1913 consisted in allowing itself to be forced to the right by the union authorities and to serve them as a battering ram against the party’s left wing.

Now, if the party debates had forced a clear and direct rejection of the mass strike from the representatives of the general commission, and if they subsequently forced the party executive, by way of Scheidemann in his closing speech, finally to veer from this standpoint and to stress more strongly the will to action, then this exposure of the situation in front of the whole party was an inestimable success.

That the debate on the mass strike took place at the congress in spite of all the resistance; that as a result it will be taken up again in all party meetings; that the masses are dealing with the question; that they have experienced what they have to expect from their leaders on both sides; that they had the opportunity to see how necessary it is to get things going through their own political pressure if the party’s methods of struggle are to advance - these are all unquestionable achievements of the party minority, which from its point of view has been successful, despite its resolution15 being rejected by the majority.

Because of recent imperialist developments, the question of taxation, just like the question of the mass strike, has become a current issue for the party. After all, what has been expressed by this ‘new era’ of the property tax in Germany? Nothing more than the fact that in its advance, German militarism has even abandoned its convoluted indirect taxation system and now demands that the bourgeoisie is partially drawn in to cover its costs.

Thus, taxation of property, which has long been a reality in England, appeared before our parliamentarians as a totally new fact and initially caused quite a lot of confusion amongst them. It is likely to be the perception of most comrades that the party congress did not dispose of this confusion, but rather that this confusion was made into the common property of the party both in the way the question was discussed and the subsequent motion that it adopted.

Indeed, hardly any serious theoretical and practical matter has been treated in such a completely inadequate manner at a German party congress as the question of taxation. It has been on the agenda for four years - sufficient time, it would seem, to prepare a thorough discussion of the material. Yet it was precisely in this field that the scientific review of the party appointed to deal with such issues, Die Neue Zeit, failed. Instead of introducing the discussion, Die Neue Zeit did not even publish any arguments from the quills of the editors themselves - editors who had already entered the debates with a very pronounced position at the Leipzig conference,16 albeit one which is the opposite of their current one.

Left high and dry from this side, the party was dependent on the daily press with all its insufficiencies in large and complicated problems. In party meetings the question was barely discussed at all. Furthermore, one of the speakers published his theses and resolutions less than a month before the congress, and the other one did not publish his at all. This is how the party congress came into the position of deciding on a new, highly important and complex question and to determine the party’s tactics for the coming period, without being in the slightest factually prepared for this responsible role. And just to compound the insufficiency of this situation, everything at the party congress was geared towards allowing one side to speak at great length, whilst the other side was hardly allowed to speak at all.

That a decision made under such unprecedented conditions bears all the signs of ‘tentativeness’ and a ‘botch job’ is not surprising. Wurm’s17 resolution did not decide the question of taxation for the party, but for the first time curtailed it. Amongst other things, we need complete and systematic work in the press in order to disentangle what was frilly and unclear, and to shed light on what was improvised and left unanswered by the majority, especially by comrade Wurm, in the field of tactics around taxation at the party congress. Furthermore, we need a systematic discussion of the question of taxation in party meetings in order to make the mass of the comrades aware of the complicated economic and political context of the problem, so that they can become aware of all the fatal and unforeseeable consequences of our tactics, to which Wurm’s botched resolution will necessarily lead.

If on the question of the mass strike a concession was made to the conservative resistance of the union leaders by adopting the executive’s resolution,18 then the adoption of Wurm’s resolution and the endorsement of the tactics of the majority faction represent a much more significant concession to parliamentary opportunism - to the Südekums, the Davids and the Noskes.19

Now elevated to the point of a principle, the ‘lesser evil’ slogan (in the sense that the abandonment of the principled rejection of militarism is the ‘lesser evil’); the acceptance in principle of approving credits for military purposes, ‘if the military bill has already successfully been decided upon’ - all this opens the door to the very same revisionist tactics which the overwhelming majority of the party had, until now, brusquely defeated, year after year.

Yet Wurm’s cleverly contrived formula, that we approve military funds once it can be demonstrated that they can be represented as the sole means of avoiding the placing of a burden on the people through more adverse taxes, is a carte blanche for all budget approvals, as, of course, no budget can be perceived which could not be portrayed as the ‘prevention’ of another, more adverse one.

It is enough to keep these consequences in mind in order to see that the revision of the casual work done on the question of taxation in Jena is an urgent task for one of our next party congresses, and one to which systematic preparation both in the press and in party meetings must be dedicated.

And yet, in looking at the decisions on the mass strike and the question of taxation, it would, in our opinion, be an error to draw the conclusion that the Jena congress highlights a hefty shift to the right, with the revisionist wing gaining a two-thirds majority. Such a rapid growth of the right wing, which up until the last party congress represented a mere third of the party, would be an inconceivable phenomenon, and indeed it has not happened at all.

On the question of taxation, at least half of the victorious majority did not commit conscious revisionism - it was the lack of understanding about the true consequences and the true character of the decision reached which influenced a great number of the delegates. And on the question of the mass strike, it was clear that the party executive was obliged to do its utmost to the very last moment to pull together a majority for its resolution.

Accordingly, we have no reason to assume that the usual revisionist third of party congresses, as represented by the conscious and consistent spokesmen of opportunism, has somehow increased at this party congress. Those who formed the majority alongside the revisionist third were the indecisive and vacillating layer of the centre. Back in Dresden, following the well-known description of the convention of the great French Revolution, Bebel referred to these forces as the “swamp”:

“It is forever the same old struggle - the left here, the right there, and between them the swamp. These are the elements who never know what they want, or rather, never say what they want. They are the ‘wise guys’ who always ask: what’s going on here, what’s happening there? They always feel where the majority is, and then go with them.

“We have these types in our party too. In these proceedings, a whole number of them has come into the light of day. We have to denounce these comrades. [Heckle from the audience: ‘Denounce?’] Yes! Denounce them, I say, so that the comrades know what semi-people they are. At least I can struggle with the man who defends his position openly - I know where I am with him. Either he wins or I do, but the lazy elements who always suppress themselves and go out of the way of every clear decision, and always say that we are all united and are all brothers - these elements are the worst of all! These are the ones I combat the most.”20

The role of this “swamp” is - in spite of the indecisiveness of the opinions of each of its members - quite a decisive one in every political body, and not least in our party. During the whole of the last period of the struggle against revisionism, the swamp supported the left wing of the party and together with it formed a compact majority against revisionism and brought about one sensational defeat of revisionism after the other.

What motivated it to do so was the seemingly conservative factor, which it considered necessary to defend. After all, ‘the old tried and tested tactics’ had to be protected in the face of revisionist innovations. And what sanctified this defensive struggle in the eyes of the centre elements was that the highest and most respected authorities stood at the head of this struggle. The party executive, the scientific central organ of the party, such well-known names as [Paul] Singer, [Wilhelm] Liebknecht, Bebel, [Karl] Kautsky,21 fought it out in the front row. That the traditional and established elements found themselves on this side provided the calming guarantee that the swamp needed.

Yet the imperialist period, the sharpened relations of the last years, confronts us with a new situation and new tasks. The necessity of imbuing the party in all its massive broadness with a greater mobility, quick-wittedness and aggressiveness; of mobilising the masses and the party majority to use its victories in crucial questions and to throw its full weight onto the scales of history - all this requires more than the desperate adherence to ‘tried and tested tactics’. Namely, it necessitates the understanding that this old and proven revolutionary tactic now needs new forms of mass action and that these tactics also have to be upheld in new situations: for example, when it comes to the introduction of the property tax for German militarism.

This is where the “swamp” first fails. As a conservative element, it now resists the forward thrust of the left in exactly the same way that, until now, it resisted the backward drag of the right. Yet through this it transforms itself from a protective barrier of the party against opportunism into a dangerous element of stagnation, in whose tepid waters the very same opportunism which has until now been suppressed can sprout like a weed.

It is not merely the decision on the question of taxation that shows, at a closer look, how the victorious swamp unconsciously organised a triumph for the very same parliamentary opportunism against which it had been fighting at dozens of party conferences. The whole nature of struggle against the left; the whole manner of arguing, while systematically distorting the other side’s arguments; and the persistent ‘misunderstandings’ on the apparent underestimation of legwork, underestimation of parliamentarism and cooperatives, putschist tendencies and other nice products of their imagination - this whole apparatus is truly taken from the revisionist wing’s arsenal of weaponry. In the fight against the left, the swamp is now making use of literally the same arguments that the right has been hurling at it for years.

And the thing that finally determines the swamp’s attitude is that the ‘authorities’ are turning on the left. The party executive, having fought under Bebel’s leadership against the right for years, now accepts the right’s support in order to defend conservatism against the left.

Finally, since 1910, the scientific review Die Neue Zeit has also gone through this change alongside the party executive. Amongst its circle of friends, the popular expression of the ‘Marxist centre’ has recently been used. More precisely, this supposed ‘Marxist centre’ is the theoretical expression for the current political function of the swamp.

Propped up by the swamp and in alliance with the right, the party executive and the party majority have gained victories on the crucial questions at the Jena congress. And Kautsky, crowing over the victory of the ‘old tried and tested tactics’ in Jena, has forgotten to reflect on this strange situation, where the likes of Südekum, David, Noske and Richard Fischer22 are on his side - people against whom he had defended those tactics for over a decade!

This new constellation is no coincidence: it is the logical development of the shifts in the external and internal conditions of our party life, and we would do well to look out for the continuation of this constellation maybe for a couple of years, if external events do not suddenly accelerate the course of developments.

However unpleasant the situation may seem to some comrades, there is not the slightest reason for pessimism and despondency. This period must, just like every other historically conditioned period, be endured.23 On the contrary, the more clearly we look into things, the more energetically, vigorously and merrily we can continue our struggle.

The next task that emerges from the Jena congress is systematic action against the “swamp” - that is, against the intellectual conservatism in the party. Here too, the only effective way to do this is through the mobilisation of the broad mass of the comrades, the shaking up of opinion by carrying the discussion on the questions of the mass strike and taxation (with all tactical differences) into party meetings, union meetings and into the press.

Every day, the course of events itself is leading with historic necessity towards increasingly vindicating the tactical endeavours of the left, and if this development itself leads to the overpowering of the elements of stagnation in the party, then the minority of the Jena congress can look towards the future with good spirits. That the Jena congress has brought about clarity on the reciprocal power relationship in the party, and led for the first time to a self-contained left opposed to the bloc of the swamp and the right, is a pleasant beginning to further development which can only be welcome.
Notes

1. Comintern’s magazine Die Internationale printed ‘After the Jena congress’ for the first time in 1927. This translation will also appear in a forthcoming special edition of Revolutionary History (www.revolutionary-history.co.uk) dedicated to Rosa’s life and work. The Weekly Worker is grateful to Einde O’Callaghan of the Marxist Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) for transcribing the original German text and to Paul Flewers of RH for his editorial work.
2. The congress of the German Social Democratic Party that took place in Jena from September 14-20 1913.
3. The retarded development of industry and the strength of the peasantry in southern Germany were amongst the factors that encouraged Social Democratic leaders in that region to adopt a considerably more moderate political approach than the party did in the remainder of the country. For the question of taxation, see note 14 below.
4. The Jena congress in 1905 decided to defend the general right to vote and to assembly, possibly through the mass strike, which was restricted to use for this purpose.
5. From January 17-19 1905, approximately 215,000 Ruhr miners were on strike demanding an eight-hour day, higher wages and safety provisions. The strike was called off without its demands being met.
6. A mass strike for universal suffrage rocked Austria-Hungary. In January 1907, the Austrian government presented a bill to parliament introducing the general right to vote.
7. August Bebel (1840-1913) played a key role in the formation and subsequent leadership of German Social Democracy. He had died just prior to the writing of this article.
8. Protocol of the proceedings of the SPD’s congress held at Jena during September 17-23 1905 (Berlin 1905, p305).
9. Gustav Bauer (1870-1944) chaired the general commission of the German trade unions during 1908-18. He was chancellor of Germany in 1919-20.
10. Philipp Scheidemann (1865-1939) was leader the SPD succeeding Bebel. An ardent supporter of Germany in World War I, he became chancellor in 1919.
11. The campaign led by chancellor Bernhard von Bülow for the Reichstag elections of January 25 1907 was characterised by the chauvinistic mobilisation of reaction against all opposition forces, particularly against Social Democracy, and for the continuation of the colonial war against the Hereros in South West Africa. Although the SPD gained the highest number of votes, due to a combination of constituency gerrymandering and bourgeois alliances it won only 43 seats, whereas in 1903 it had 81.
12. At the SPD congress of September 10-16 1911 in Jena, the ‘wait and see’ politics of the party executive in relation to the Morocco crisis was at the centre of the debates. In the spring of 1911, French imperialism had attempted to extend its rule to the whole of Morocco and Germany had used this to justify its decision to send warships to Agadir. Britain’s intervention in favour of France forced a retreat and a compromise was reached between France and Germany.
13. Because of the undemocratic, three-tier voting system used in the Prussian state parliament elections of June 3 1913, the SPD’s 775,171 votes (28.38%) resulted in only 10 seats. On the other hand, the 402,988 votes for the Conservatives were translated into 147 seats.
14. The military bill of March 1913 brought the greatest increases in armaments spending in German history. The SPD parliamentary fraction, despite opposition from 37 comrades, voted in favour on the grounds that some of the costs were to be covered by a wealth tax. Through this act, the maxim of ‘Not a man nor a penny for this system!’ was abandoned.
15. See ‘Motion on the political mass strike resolution’, R Luxemburg Collected works Vol 3, pp328-29.
16. A reference to the SPD congress held in Leipzig from September 12-18 1909.
17. Emanuel Wurm (1857-1920) was a journalist, and worked with Karl Kautsky on Die Neue Zeit. He subsequently joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD).
18. See ‘The party executive’s resolution on the mass strike’, R Luxemburg Collected works Vol 3, pp323-24.
19. All leading SPD rightwingers. Albert Südekum (1871-1944) was editor of its paper Vorwärts and minister of finance in Prussia from 1918-20. Eduard David (1863-1930) was minister of the interior in 1919. Gustav Noske (1868-1946) was a trade union official and, as minister of defence during 1919-20, he permitted the emergence of rightwing paramilitary forces, such as that responsible for the murder of Luxemburg in January 1919.
20. Protocol of the proceedings of the SPD’s congress, held at Dresden, September 13-20 1903 (Berlin 1903, p319).
21. Paul Singer was with Bebel the co-chairman of the SPD. Karl Kautsky (1856-1938) was at this point the editor of Die Neue Zeit and the most prominent SPD theoretician. It can be seen from this article that Luxemburg is including Kautsky in the “swamp”.
22. Richard Fischer (1855-1926) was a longstanding leading official in the SPD.
23. In the original durchfressen: literally 'eaten through'.

Der Naturalismus und die Sozialdemokratie: Natürliche Verbündete oder von vornherein zum Scheitern verurteilt?

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:44:00 +0000

*Old essay on the relationship between naturalism and German Social Democracy - I would probably write it slightly differently today, but still quite interesting to look back at*

Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts entstand eine flüchtige doch einzigartige Beziehung zwischen der neuen europäischen kulturellen Bewegung des Naturalismus und der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung. Viele Dichter und Denker wollten eine neue Form der Kunst herbeibringen, die das Publikum und die Gesellschaft im Allgemeinen auf das alltägliche Elend des Kaiserreichs aufmerksam machen wollten. Dieses Aufwerfen der ‚sozialen Frage’ brachte die Intellektuellen der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung immer näher, und obwohl einige der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (SPD) fern blieben, wurden andere zu bekannten Figuren und Aktivisten der SPD.
So galten, zumindest aus populärer Sicht, der Naturalismus und der Sozialismus als natürliche, sich beide ergänzende Verbündete. Innerhalb von beiden Bewegungen war dieses Verhältnis jedoch nicht so eindeutig, und eine gewisse Skepsis war auf beiden Seiten zu finden. Tatsächlich kam es in weniger Zeit zu Meinungsunterschieden, veröffentlichten Auseinandersetzungen, und sogar offenem Streit in der ‚Revolte der Jungen’ und dem Friedrichshager Streit. 1896, beim Parteitag der SPD, fand eine lange „Naturalismus-Debatte“ statt, die effektiv die zwei Bewegungen spaltete. Folglich nabelte sich die naturalistische Bewegung auch ab und flüchtete sich vor der Arbeiterbewegung – entweder „nach vorne“ in den Vitalismus (und teilweise in eine nationalistische Kriegsbegeisterung) oder „nach hinten“ zum Rückzug ins Idyllische und religiös-Mystische.

Es ist schon viel über das vielschichtige und unklare Verhältnis zwischen der deutschen Sozialdemokratie und dem Naturalismus geschrieben worden, denn diese Frage ist von höchster Bedeutung - nicht nur im sozio-politischen sondern auch im literaturwissenschaftlichen Sinne. Es erhebt sich die Frage, was aus diesem komplizierten und zwiespältigen Verhältnis zu entnehmen sei. Ist die Tatsache, dass die beiden Bewegungen auseinander geraten sind, auf die damalige politische Lage, nämlich die Aufhebung des Sozialistengesetztes und deren Auswirkung zurückzuführen? Oder liegt es eher an einem aufkeimenden „verknöcherten“ und „deterministischen“ Verständnis des Marxismus in der SPD, die kulturelle Fragen vermied, um sich auf parlamentarische und gewerkschaftliche Fragen zu konzentrieren? Oder übersieht eine solche Analyse die innere Widersprüchlichkeit des Naturalismus selbst, die schon am Anfang des Naturalismus auf eine solche Neigung zu „individualistischen Konzepten“ hinwies?
Durch die Analyse dieser Entwicklungen wird ein Einblick sowohl in die Dynamik des Sozialismus als auch in die des Naturalismus ermöglicht. Zwangsläufig wird so auf die umstrittene Frage der Beziehung zwischen gesellschafts-politischen und künstlerischen Entwicklungen eingegangen.
Hier wird die Frage aufgeworfen, inwiefern das flüchtige Verhältnis zwischen dem Naturalismus und der Sozialdemokratie zwangsläufig so war, oder ob das Verhältnis unter anderen Umständen hätte anders sein können.
Es kann behauptet werden, dass die Beziehung zwischen der „Intelligenz“ und der Arbeiterbewegung seit Marx und Engels selbst eine komplizierte sei. Beide Denker entstammten schließlich dem kritisch denkenden Bürgertum, und wiesen sogar daraufhin, dass die Theoretiker der Arbeiterbewegung meistens dieser Klasse angehören würden, wenn nur aufgrund ihrer Freizeit und Ausbildung im Vergleich zu den, um ihre Existenz kämpfenden, Arbeitern. Tatsächlich war die anfängliche Reaktion der Sozialdemokraten auf das zunehmende Interesse der Akademiker an der sozialen Frage sehr hoch. Die Sozialdemokraten waren daran interessiert, kritische Denker zum Sozialismus zu gewinnen, was nicht nur für Annäherungsreden und Vorträge an den Universitäten sondern auch die Veröffentlichung bestimmter Publikationen wie des „Sozialistischer Akademiker“ sorgte.
Es war jedoch eine zwiespältige Einstellung der „Intelligenz“ gegenüber der Revolution zu betrachten und viele dieser „kleinbürgerlichen Intellektuellen“ konnten sich, trotz ihren Sympathien mit den Armen, der marxistischen Revolutionstheorie nicht anschließen, denn sie verstanden diese Theorie als „eigenes Todesurteil.“ Diese Empfindung, wenngleich ein Missverständnis des marxschen Begriffs von „Revolution“, war aber auch schon bei Heinrich Heine zu finden, der „von einer unaussprechlichen Traurigkeit ergriffen“ war, als er an „den Untergang“ dachte, „mit dem das siegreiche Proletariat meine Verse bedroht“, obwohl „eben dieser Kommunismus“ auf seine Seele einen Reiz ausübte, dem er sich nicht entziehen konnte.
Es könnte auch betont werden, dass viele Naturalisten auf Grund ihres Mitleids, und nicht auf Grund ihrer sozialistischen Überzeugung, über das Elend der Armen geschrieben haben. Wie es in einem Gedicht von Karl Henckell lautet: „Aus Mitgefühl sang ich mein Lied der Not“ Das findet auch bei Michael Georg Conrad Ausdruck, wenn er „das Unwetter“ der kommenden Revolution als ein „unvermeidliches Übel“ und eine „natürliche Notwendigkeit“ beschreibt, die erst Zustande kommt, „sobald der große Teil der Buerger verarmt ist“ – diese Einstellung führt er sogar auf Marx zurück.
Insofern sind solche zwiespältige Einstellungen seitens der Intelligenz hinsichtlich der proletarischen Revolution als ein Trend aufzuweisen, der sich auch auf das Verhältnis zwischen dem Naturalismus und der Sozialdemokratie auswirkte. Die Sozialdemokraten wollten jedoch eben aus diesen Gründen versuchen, die Intellektuellen und Dichter zum Sozialismus zu gewinnen und sie von der Notwendigkeit der Revolution überzeugen. So lässt sich betonen, dass es trotz der Klassenunterschiede der beiden Bewegungen, zu einer langfristigeren Vereinigung hätte kommen können.
Wichtig in dieser Hinsicht ist die Aufhebung des Sozialistengesetzes im Jahre 1890. Einerseits führte es dazu, dass die Sozialdemokratie „selektiver“ im Umgang mit ihren Freunden, Anhängern und Sympathisanten sein konnte und deswegen nicht mehr auf „kleinbürgerlichen“ Elementen in der ‚Subkultur’ angewiesen war. Andererseits könnte man der Auffassung sein, dass das „Mitgefühl“ der Naturalisten (und des liberalen Bürgertums im Allgemeinen) nicht nur auf die Massen gerichtet war, sondern auch auf die Sozialdemokratie selbst, die durch das Sozialistengesetz teils brutal verfolgt wurde. So gesehen ist es nicht gerade zufällig, dass beide Bewegungen wirklich erst ab 1890 auseinander gingen.

Es wäre jedoch falsch, von einem homogenen Naturalismus zu reden. Die naturalistische Bewegung war durch Vielfältigkeit gekennzeichnet und in ihr existierten sowohl Subjektivität, Objektivität, Optimismus und Pessimismus, Kollektivismus und Individualismus nebeneinander. In mannigfaltigen Programmen, Manifesten und theoretischen Schriften wie „Revolution der Literatur“ von Bleibtreu oder „Die Kunst – Ihr Wesen und ihre Gesetze“ von Holz, wurden diese unterschiedlichen Stellungnahmen zum „Naturalismus“ veröffentlicht. Es gilt dennoch zu sagen, dass sich Schriftsteller wie die Brüder Hart, Bölsche und Hauptmann darüber einigten, dass es eine „Revolution“ in der Literatur geben sollte, die die „Wahrheit“ anzustreben und die Halbwahrheiten und Oberflächlichkeit des Bürgertums zu entlarven hat, um eine Literatur anzubieten, die jedermann leicht eingängig ist. Die Vielfältigkeit innerhalb dieser Kunstinterpretation galt aber auch für die verschiedenen politischen Standpunkte der Naturalisten – die von einer kritischen Beurteilung bis zur völligen Übereinstimmung reichten.
Die Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen den Naturalisten und den Sozialdemokraten sind jedoch deutlich zu erkennen. Obwohl viele naturalistische Schriftsteller aus den bürgerlichen und kleinbürgerlichen Klassen stammten, fanden sie eine Art Zuflucht in der Arbeiterbewegung und ihre Literatur war „nicht von der Entstehung der Arbeiterbewegung zu trennen.“ Einige Publikationen oder Aufführungen wurden von der Partei selbst finanziert, oder wurden in der Arbeiterpresse veröffentlicht. Das Phänomen des Laientheaters und der „Freie Bühne“ stand der SPD auch sehr nah. Diese sozialdemokratische Subkultur war also von höchster Bedeutung für die Naturalisten.
Beide Bewegungen betonten auch das Primat der Natur, die Marx als die Quelle alles menschlichen Reichtums bezeichnete. Liebknecht brachte dies auch beim Parteitag der SPD 1896 zum Ausdruck: „Wir sind uns alle einig, dass die Kunst natürlich zu sein, die Natur zur Grundlage, zum Ausgangspunkt und zum Ziel haben muss.“
Während die Sozialdemokraten eher die fortgehend dialektische Wechselbeziehung der Natur und so die Veränderlichkeit hervorhoben, wollten die Naturalisten der Natur bestimmten, festen „Gesetzen“ zuordnen. Folglich wurde der Dichter einem Wissenschaftler gleichgesetzt – der sich nicht nur der Regeln und Gesetze der Natur bewusst ist, sondern auch mit diesen Gesetzen experimentiert, um etwas tief greifendes, bewegendes oder poetisches herzustellen. Um „das Schöne“ wirklich festzustellen und aufzuzeigen, habe die Ästhetik „Hand in Hand mit der Naturwissenschaft zu gehen.“ Diese gesetzmäßige Ästhetik fand ihren höchsten Ausdruck in der Holzchen Theorie und seiner mathematischen Formel: Kunst = Natur – ‚x’ (wo‚x’ die Unzulänglichkeit des Materials und die Subjektivität des Künstlers sei ).
Dieser Unterschied war vielleicht der größte zwischen der Weltanschauung beider Bewegungen, und liefert einen Hinweis dafür, warum einige naturalistische Denker wie Conrad („stets siegt der Stärkere, lautet das Naturgesetz“ ) zum Sozialdarwinismus neigten und wie sogar Denker wie Hauptmann eine Begeisterung für den ersten Weltkrieg äußerten.
Auch sind beim Naturalismus erhebliche idealistische Züge zu konstatieren, die auch stark von Positivisten, wie dem Franzosen August Comte , beeinflusst sind – nämlich die Idee, dass nur das „empirische Gegebene“ und „wissenschaftlich Gesicherte“ Gültigkeit haben sollte, im Versuch, Gesetze für das soziale Leben zu entdecken. Ein anderer starker Einfluss auf den Naturalismus hatten auch die Ideen des „Prophet[en] Darwins“ Ernst Haeckel – der das menschliche Verhalten in den Naturwissenschaften suchte.
Das wirft die Frage auf, inwiefern beide Bewegungen aufgrund der Widersprüche innerhalb vom Naturalismus selbst auseinander geraten sind. Der Widerspruch zwischen einer positivistisch-empirischen und einer romantisch-naturphilosophischen Naturauffassung ist nicht zu leugnen und vielleicht geriet der Naturalismus, auf Grund seiner innerlichen Widersprüchen und seines kleinbürgerlich geprägten Individualismus, in den Vitalismus oder in die quasi-mystische Verehrung der naturalistischen Bewegung. In der Tat waren vitalistische Züge schon bei Hauptmann zu finden – verkörpert in seiner Darstellung von Rose Bernds’ erotischer Vitalität im Vergleich zu Frau Flamme.
Bei einer solchen Einstellung wird jedoch der Einfluss sozial-politischer Faktoren auf die Entwicklung der Kunst gering geschätzt. Es ist nicht zu übersehen, dass der Naturalismus viele, sich gegenüberstehende Ideen und Konzepte enthielt, doch es ist davon auszugehen, dass eine offenere Einstellung der Sozialdemokraten dem Naturalismus gegenüber vielleicht dazu geführt hätte, dass der Naturalismus sozialkritisch und sozial engagiert geblieben wäre. Es ist vielleicht kein Wunder, dass sich einige Naturalisten wie John Henry Mackay mit der Politik des Anarchismus verbündeten, wenn sie von Sozialdemokraten wie Engels als „reiner Verderb“ gesehen wurden, wenn sie nicht „völlig auf den proletarischen Standpunkt“ standen.
Diese Bemerkungen von Engels wiesen jedoch vielleicht darauf hin, dass das Streben der Naturalisten nach einer getreuen „Wiedergabe der Wirklichkeit“ eigentlich nicht vereinbar mit dem marxistischen Streben nach ‚Wirklichkeit’ und Wahrheit war. In der Tat war der Naturalismus nicht einzigartig in dem Sinne, dass er die wahre gesellschaftliche Realität zeigen wollte, sondern wie er versucht hat, diese darzustellen.
Der marxistische Kunsttheoretiker Georg Lukacs vertritt sogar der Auffassung, dass der ‚bürgerliche Realismus’ die bessere Darstellung der Wirklichkeit anbieten würde, denn er gab die Erscheinung der Wirklichkeit nicht nur wie ein Abbild wieder, sondern entlarvte auch ihr Wesen und schilderte spezifische ästhetische Momente als Bestandteile einer welthistorischen Totalität.
Paul Lafarge war auch der Auffassung, dass der Blick der Naturalisten, trotz ihrem lobenswerten Streben danach, die Not der Arbeiterklasse zu beschreiben, was „Jargon und Dialekt, Stammeln, Stottern“ und sogar „Rülpsen“ mit einbezog, „ausschließlich auf der Außenseite der Dinge gehaftet“ bleibe. Lafarge vertritt diese Auffassung, weil der Naturalismus dazu neige, keinen Ausweg aus dieser Not heraus oder keine Lösungen für die Massen aufzuzeigen. In der Tat tendiert der Naturalismus zu einer fast Büchernischen Auffassung des Menschen als „produktives Endglied einer langen biologischen Entwicklungskette“ , als Teil einer beinahe systemhaften „organischen Natur.“ In dieser Hinsicht ist es einzusehen, wieso die Sozialisten dem Naturalismus einen gewissen Determinismus vorwarfen.
Obwohl es offensichtlich theoretische Unterschiede darüber gab, wie man am Besten die Not der Arbeiterklasse darstellen konnte, scheint es jedoch kontraproduktiv, darauf zu bestehen, dass sozialdemokratische Kunst durch Dialektik und Klassenkampf gekennzeichnet werden muss. Man könnte sogar behaupten, dass ein politisches Drama wie Vor Sonnenaufgang schon im Titel (wenn nicht auf marxistische Art und Weise) auf eine kommende soziale Umwälzung hindeutet. Selbst wenn das Drama anders interpretiert, scheint Vor Sonnenaufgang Gefühle von Solidarität zu erwecken für die Probleme von Helena. Und Hauptmanns Entlarvung der Realität für viele Familien in Deutschland muss unbedingt dafür gesorgt haben, dass viele sich sozial-politisch engagiert haben.
Tatsächlich kommt Lukacs später zu diesem Schluss und misst den Dramen Hauptmanns eine große ästhetische Bedeutung zu, aufgrund ihrer „meisterhaften Dialoge“ zwischen Charakteren und Figuren, in die man sich „völlig hineinfühlen könnte.“
Dieses „Hineinfühlen“ mag zwar nicht auf dem „proletarischen Standpunkt“ beruhen, hätte jedoch trotzdem von großer Bedeutung für die Sozialdemokraten sein sollen. Beispielsweise war das Theater dem Naturalismus sehr wichtig und Dramen wie Vor Sonnenaufgang oder Die Weber würde einem breitem Publikum vorgeführt. Wäre es zu keiner Spaltung gekommen, hätten die Sozialdemokraten solche Angelegenheiten benutzen können, nicht nur große Denker wie Hauptmann, sondern auch das breite Publikum zu sich zu locken. Allerdings hatten die Gesetzgeber einen „Horror“ vor dem Theater und davor, dass „durch das Theater eine Masse in Bewegung gesetzt werden könnte, und mehrere Stücke wie Erich Hartlebens Hannah Jagert wurden verboten.
Auf Grund der oben angeführten Argumente lässt sich sehen, dass die Sozialdemokraten hätten auf eine positivere Art und Weise mit den Naturalisten umgehen können, und dass ihre Herangehensweise auf eine begrenzte und konservatives Verständnis des Marxismus zurückzuführen war. Eine erfolgreiche revolutionäre Umwälzung der bestehenden Sozialverhältnisse setzt voraus, dass die überwiegende Mehrheit der Gesellschaft dazu imstande ist, die herrschende Klasse zu sein. Das heißt nicht nur sozialdemokratische Abgeordnete wählen und Streiks organisieren, sondern auch kulturelle Fragen beherrschen und eine eigene, neue und revolutionäre Kunstform und Verständnis zu erreichen.
Eine offensichtliche Stärke der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, im Vergleich zu anderen Bewegungen in Europa, war ihre Organisation und Wurzeln in der Klasse mit selbstverwalteten Bibliotheken und Kneipen, aber durch ihre Konzentration auf Parlament und Gewerkschaftsfragen verlor die SPD tatsächlich an Einfluss. Insofern ist es durchaus berechtigt von Wynne, wenn er angesichts dieser Taktik der SPD die Integration der Arbeiter in die bürgerliche Kultur betont. Ebenso gilt Mahals Feststellung, dass die Sozialdemokraten eine „Versimpelung des Zusammenhangs von Literatur und Politik hervorgebracht haben.
Ein Ausgangspunkt der marxistischen Ästhetik ist, dass die Kultur sich in einer komplizierten und wechselseitigen Beziehung zwischen sowohl gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen als auch Spannungen innerhalb dieser Kultur selbst entwickelt. In ihrem Umgang mit dem Naturalismus, besonders nach der Aufhebung des Sozialistengesetzes und der damit verbundenen Versammlungsfreiheit, hat sich die Sozialdemokratie ganz sektiererisch gegenüber dem Naturalismus und der Kunst im Allgemeinen verhalten, verkörpert in Liebknechts Idee, dass „das kämpfende Deutschland“ „keine Zeit zum Dichten“ habe. Es lässt sich nicht beschreiten, dass die Sozialdemokratie und der Naturalismus zwei ganz verschiedene Bewegungen waren – nicht nur was ihre Klassenbasis, sondern auch was ihre Ideologie betraf. Insofern sind sie nicht als „natürliche Verbündete“ zu betrachten. Im Nachhinein lässt sich jedoch betonen, dass eine freundliche, kritische, distanzierte Einstellung der Sozialdemokratie dem Naturalismus gegenüber, sich positiv auf die progressivsten Aspekte des Naturalismus ausgewirkt hätten, und dazu geführt hat, dass die offensichtlichen Widersprüchen des kulturellen „Zwischenaktes“
zwischen Positivismus, Naturwissenschaft, Romantik und Mystik hätten auf eine andere Art und Weise überwunden werden können – zugunsten der SPD. Das gilt auch für das eher verkehrte Verständnis der Revolution unter einigen Naturalisten und ihre Überzeugung, dass Individualität und Freiheit durch Revolution verdrängt würde. Das hätte auch dafür gesorgt, dass viele intelligente und sozial engagierte ‚Mitläufer’ ihre Ideen unter der Arbeiterklasse hätten verbreiten können und dass die Meistengagierten, wie Wille und Bölsche, in der Partei geblieben wären. Es ist nicht zu leugnen, dass dieser taktische Fehler, ebenso wie viele der strategischen Fehler der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, auf das Aufkommen eines „verknöcherten“ Marxismus zurückzuführen sei, der sich fast ausschließlich mit gewerkschaftlichen und parlamentarischen Fragen beschäftigte. Durch kompromisslose Kritik von Kunstformen und Künstlern die der Arbeiterbewegung nah stehen können Verbündete gewonnen werden, und was noch wichtiger ist, die Arbeiter können die besten Aspekte der bisherigen Kultur übernehmen, und wie Bebel es beim Gotha-Parteitag formulierte, „nicht nur auf politischem und wirtschaftlichen Gebiet revolutionär sein“ , sondern in allen Sphären der Gesellschaft.

Literaturverzeichnis:
Bogdal, Klaus-Michael, Arbeiterbewegung und Literatur in: „Hanzers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur“ Band 6, hrsg. Von Edward Mc.Innes und Gerhard Plumpe, 1.Aufl. (Muenchen; Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag, Wien1996)
Deutsche Arbeiterliteratur von den Anfaengen bis 1914 hrsg. von Bernd Witte, 1.Aufl.(Stuttgart: Reclam: 1977)
Die deutsche Literatur in Text und Darstellung, Band 12: Naturalismus, hrsg. von Walter Schmähling, 1.Auflage (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1977)
Geschichte der deutschen Literatur hrsg. Von Bengt Algot Sørensen, 1.Auf.(Muenchen: Beck Verlag, 1997)
Hauptmann, Gerhard, Rose Bernd (Handout)
Hauptmann, Gerhard, Vor Sonnenaufgang (Handout)
Heine, Heinrich, Lutèce. Lettres sur la vie politique, artistique et sociale de la France in Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke, Band 13/1 s.167 [Gefunden 17.4.2007]
Lukacs, Georg: Einfuehrung in die aesthetischen Schriften von Marx und Engels (Handout vom Kurs „Modern German Thought“)
Mahal, Guenther, Naturalismus, 1. Aufl. (Muenchen: Willhelm Fink Verlag, 1975)
Rohe, Wolfgang, Literatur und Naturwissenschaft in: „Hanzers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur“ Band 6, hrsg. Von Edward Mc.Innes und Gerhard Plumpe, 1.Aufl. (Muenchen; Wien: Carl Hanser Verlag, Wien1996)
Trommler, Frank, Sozialsitische Literatur in Deutschland,1.Aufl. (Stuttgart: Kroener Verlag, 1976)
Trotsky, Leon: „Literature and Revolution“ [Gefunden: 14.7.2004]
Theorie des Naturalismus hrsg. Von Theo Meyer, 1.Aufl.( Stuutgart; Reclam, 1973)
Wynne, Robert James, Naturalism and Socialism in Germany. The politics of art and the art of politics, 1880-1900, 1.Aufl.(University of California, San Diego: 1979).

Rosa Luxemburg - In her own words

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:35:00 +0000

Ninety years ago, on January 15 1919, one of the greatest revolutionaries of the 20th century, Rosa Luxemburg, was killed by the Freikorps - a freelance paramilitary outfit formed by rightwing officers after the defeat of Germany in World War I. They acted with the full encouragement of the coalition government headed by Fredrich Ebert and Gustav Noske (both members of the Social Democratic Party). There were thousands of other such victims, not least Karl Liebknecht. A trail of blood that led all the way to Hitler.

Possessing theoretical, literary and political talents which no one else in the newly formed Communist Party of Germans (KPD) equalled, her death was a massive loss, including to the international workers’ movement. The funeral procession, organised by the KPD and others, was one of the biggest workers’ demonstrations ever seen in German history, with hundreds of thousands following her coffin. Even today thousands turn out for the annual commemoration in honour of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

Yet, as with any important historical figure, her legacy has been distorted and her views misrepresented to justify various opportunist projects. Thus the reformist Die Linke effectively controls the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung) and nowadays heads the memorial marches in Berlin. This despite advocating politics that in reality are not that far removed from those of the 1919 Social Democratic Party.

Luxemburg was, to use the words of Lenin, “an eagle” of Marxism who soared above the political collapse and theoretical degeneration of the Second International and did all in her power to uphold the integrity of Marxism. As Trotsky put it, she “had mastered the Marxist method like the organs of her body. One could say that Marxism ran in her bloodstream”.

Our series of articles covers a wide range of themes and questions revealing various elements of Luxemburg’s Marxism. We begin with two appraisals of Ferdinand Lassalle’s life by Luxemburg. They provide an interesting insight into this complex man who laid the foundations of the SDP.

Next will come a scornful polemic against the ‘father of Russian Marxism’, Georgi Plekhanov, a report of the 1913 SPD congress (which was refused publication in the party press) and finally reflections on Leo Tolstoy - one of her favourite writers and someone she would always recommend to comrades, friends and even her prison guards. In each of her articles, Rosa’s writing is infused with a rare passion that brings each and every word to life, whether she is discussing the particulars of the German tax question or how the masses moved onto the historical stage.

It is a historical tragedy that many of the writings of this great Marxist are not available in English. Indeed, this reflects a general problem: much of classical Marxism’s achievements - including whole books as well as theoretical articles, journalism and polemics - have suffered the same fate. Thinkers exerting a strong influence on Lenin and Trotsky such as Karl Kautsky, Alexander Parvus, and many others beside, cannot be fully read in English. This might go some way to explaining the widespread and deep-rooted ignorance about their ideas. Yet if Marxism is to be cleansed of all the ideological garbage it has accumulated after a century of defeat, then making such works available for critical study is crucial.

In this respect, the short series of articles we are publishing is a contribution towards what needs to be done. Much credit must go to Ted Crawford of the Marxist Internet Archive (www.marxists.org), who spends so much of his time and effort facilitating the translation and transcription of such material. We are very grateful to him for pointing out some of the untranslated works. All of our texts will appear on the MIA site, as will others I am working on by Luxemburg and other important Marxists.
Lassalle and the revolution
This March 1904 article was written for a volume commemorating Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64). He founded the General German Workers’ Association in 1863, the first German workers’ party. This organisation merged with the Social Democratic Workers Party headed by Karl Liebknecht and August Bebel in 1875, later becoming the Social Democratic Party

Lassalle’s immediate relationship with the March [1848] revolution has remained a mere fragmentary, almost fleeting, one.

This is partly because of his still relatively young age, but above all because of the peculiar concatenation of circumstances in his life which - for almost a decade - chained him to the individual fate of a woman badly abused by the dominant feudal powers and which have made his energy to the service of the revolution highly disputed in this period.1 Not until the November crisis of 1848 was Lassalle able to play an exemplary part in the revolutionary struggles of the Rhineland. Immediately, however, he was snared by the Prussian judiciary, which only released him when the revolution was over.

But Lassalle’s historical connection with the March revolution does not end with his direct agitation during the ‘great year’: it was not even the main thing about it. Rather, it was the fact that Lassalle put into practice the most important historical consequence of the March revolution by finally releasing the German working class from the political conscription of the bourgeoisie and organising it into an independent class party.

As is well known, the specific manner in which Lassalle carried out this immortal task has been met with sharp and often well deserved criticism from Marx. “He made big mistakes,” wrote Marx to Schweitzer in 1868. “He allowed himself to be influenced too much by the immediate circumstances of the time. He made the minor starting point, his opposition to the dwarf-like Schulze-Delitzsch, the central point of his agitation - state aid versus self-help. The ‘state’ was, therefore, transformed into the Prussian state. He was thus forced to make concessions to the Prussian monarchy, to Prussian reaction (the feudal party) and even to the clerics.”2

Yet Lassalle’s great deed - accomplished both in spite of and through these mistakes - is not reduced, but actually grows in significance with the historical perspective from which we observe it. That Lassalle understood how to see through the inner misery of bourgeois liberalism and to expose this ruthlessly and almost brutally in front of the working class - especially at a time when this liberalism was still, after all, daring to engage in something akin to a struggle with the crown and the Junker reaction - this service will in this sense be ever greater in the eyes of the historians and the politicians, for since then the bourgeoisie has achieved the miracle of sliding, year on year, further down beyond the depths where it stood even back then.

And if still today, until quite recently, if only sporadically and fleetingly, illusions in a new upswing, an Indian summer of bourgeois liberalism, the cooperation and common struggle of the proletariat were conceivable, the more groundbreaking Lassalle’s noble deed will become, as he did not hesitate for a second in showing the German proletariat the way to independent class politics through the rubble of liberalism stemming from the time of conflict - a liberalism that, of course, towers above the liberalism of today.

In his tactics of struggle, Lassalle certainly did make mistakes. Yet emphasising mistakes in a great life’s work is the trite pleasure of petty peddlars of historical research. Far more important in judging someone’s personality and the impact of their work is to ascertain the actual cause or the specific source from which both their errors and virtues resulted. In many cases, Lassalle transgressed in his tendency to ‘diplomacy’ or ‘ploys’, such as in his deals with Bismarck on the introduction from above of general suffrage or in his plans for cooperatives funded with state credit. In his political struggles with bourgeois society, as well as in his judicial struggles with the Prussian judiciary, he happily fought on the enemy’s territory, appearing to make concessions in his point of view. A sassy, noble acrobat, as Johann Phillip Becker wrote, he often dared to jump right to the edge of the abyss that separates a revolutionary tactic from collaboration with reaction.

But the cause that led him to these audacious leaps was not inner insecurity, an inner doubt of the strength and practicability of the revolutionary cause that he represented, but on the contrary an excess of confident belief in the unconquerable power of this cause. Lassalle sometimes went over to the ground of the opponent in the fight, not in order to relinquish something of his revolutionary goals, but, on the contrary, in the deluded belief that his strong personality would suffice to wrest away so much from his opponent for those revolutionary goals, that the ground beneath his opponent’s feet would cave in.

When, for example, Lassalle grafted his idea of cooperatives funded by state credit onto an idealistic, unhistorical fiction of the ‘state’, the great danger of this fiction was that in reality he merely idealised the wretched Prussian state. But what Lassalle wanted to impose on it in terms of the tasks and duties of the working class would not only have shaken the miserable shack that is the Prussian state, but the bourgeois state in general.

The wrong - one might say the opportunistic - aspect of the Lassallean tactic was that he aimed his demands at the wrong audience. Yet his demands did not as a result diminish and disintegrate in his hands: they grew more and more. And if he preferred to reduce the whole fight to a few militant slogans - on the general right to vote and the productive associations, for example - then it was not an excess of patience, which would have meant abandoning the sea of socialist demands for piecemeal bourgeois reforms, but his impatience, on the contrary, which drove him to concentrate all forces on one or a few particular points of attack in order to cut short the long historic process.

So the mistakes of Lassallean tactics are those of an aggressive attacker, not a ditherer. They are those of a daring revolutionary, not a fainthearted diplomat.

In every period there are people - and there are also such people today - who only believe in the possibility and the timeliness of a revolution when it has already happened. Such people grasp world history not by observing its face, so to speak, but its behind. Lassalle belonged to that great generation, at the top of which Karl Marx shone, in which belief in the revolution was alive in all its power. Not merely in the sense that in the 1850s Lassalle, like Marx and Engels, still confidently expected the return of the March revolutionary wave in Europe, but above all in the sense that he lived in the rock-solid conviction of the validity and inevitability of the proletarian revolution.

He constantly listened to the ‘the march of worker-battalions’ in the historical storming of the bourgeois order of society, right in the middle of the everyday struggle and the guerrilla war with the Prussian judiciary and police. And he knew perfectly well that the only adequate guarantee of the victorious course of this struggle lay in the proletarian mass itself. Even if he did not arrive at this conclusion by way of historical materialist research, as Marx did, but rather by way of philosophic-idealistic speculation, he provided the German working class, in complete harmony with Marx’s teaching, with one of its most important signposts in their class struggle when he, in contrasting parliamentary reformism to revolutionary mass action, said: “A legislative assembly never has overthrown and never will overthrow the existing order. All that [such an] assembly has ever done and ever been able to do is proclaim the existing order outside, sanction the already completed overthrow of society and elaborate on its individual consequences, laws and so forth … Spoken more realistically, in the last instance revolutions can only be made with the masses and their passionate devotion” (my emphasis - RL).3

In a few months, on August 31, to be precise, 40 years will have passed since Lassalle’s death. He and his life’s work, judged for so long in a varied and sometimes contradictory manner, are now available for the German working class in full and exhaustive clarity - and indeed both in mortal and immortal forms - in Bernstein’s commentary and in Mehring’s works.

Had his sudden death not taken him away after such a short and bright life, it is doubtful whether Lassalle would be have been able to orient himself in today’s movement and claim his position as a leading and powerful spirit in this completely changed environment. “Events”, he wrote shortly before his death, “will develop very slowly, I fear, and my glowing soul takes no pleasure in these children’s illnesses and chronic tasks.”4 Yet history has hardly ever suffered from a more disgusting infantile illness than the current period of bourgeois-feudal parliamentarianism, which the modern proletariat in Germany and all capitalist countries is damned to wade through and penetrate if it is to overcome it. Lassalle’s personality was simply not made for this period of the struggle.

But the contemporary proletarian mass movement needs that “glowing soul”, which shone in Lassalle and still breathes in each of his written words, all the more today. That soul, in Lassalle’s words, will alone be able to “clench the whole power into a fist”, and, at the crucial moment, overcome bourgeois society and achieve victory.
Notes

1. This refers to Sophie Gräfin von Hartzfeld, who sought to divorce her cheating husband. Lassalle met her at the age of 20 and took up her case in 36 court cases between 1846 and 1854.
2. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_10_13.htm
3. F Mehring (ed) Der Literarische Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle Vol 4, Stuttgart 1902.
4. E Bernstein (ed) Lassalles Reden und Schriften Vol 1, Berlin 1892, p179.
Lassalle’s legacy
First published in the SPD women’s magazine Die Gleichheit (Equality) No18, 1913, pp275-77

“Hutten’s error was merely that of all prophetic natures: namely to view and desire at once a shining ideal, which humanity can only achieve step by step and bit by bit after centuries of struggle.”

With these words, David Friedrich Strauss closes his novel Hutten. And what applies to Hutten also applies to Lassalle in the same degree. Of course, centuries do not come into consideration in the speedy development of contemporary capitalist development. But what Lassalle managed to wrestle from history in two years of flaming agitation needed many decades to come about. Yet it is precisely this optical illusion - which all prophetic natures succumb to, and causes them like giants from the top of their mountain to imagine the far away horizons to be within their grasp - we must thank for the bold deed from which German social democracy emerged.

The emergence of an independent class party of the proletariat was an historical necessity, stemming from the capitalist economic system and the political nature of the bourgeois class state. German social democracy would have arisen with or without Lassalle, just as the class struggle of the international proletariat would have become the predominant factor of recent history with or without Marx and Engels. Yet the fact that the German proletarian class party already appeared at the gates with such radiance and splendour 50 years ago, more than two decades before all other countries, and acted as a role model for them, is thanks to Lassalle’s life work and his maxim: ‘I dared!’

Class struggle has been the driving force at the core of world history ever since private property separated human society into exploiters and exploited. The modern proletariat’s struggle is merely the last in the series of class struggles running like a red thread through written history. And yet the last 50 years offers something that world history had not seen before: for the first time the spectacle of the great mass of the exploited emerging in an organised and purposeful struggle for the liberation of their class. All previous revolutions were those of minorities in the interest of minorities. And, as the first movements of the proletariat in England and France initiated modern class struggle, the masses would step onto the stage only for a few moments and then melt away in the revolutionary downturn and become absorbed in bourgeois society over and over again.

Brought into existence by Lassalle, German social democracy was the first historic attempt to create a permanent organisation of the masses, the majority of the people, for class struggle. Thanks to Lassalle’s political action and thanks to Marx’s theory, German social democracy has radiantly solved this new task. Its 50-year history has proved that on the basis of proletarian class interests it is possible to unite the ultimate goal of revolution with patient day-to-day struggle, to unite scientific theory with the most sober praxis, to unite tight and disciplined organisation with the mass character of the movement, to unite insight into historic necessity with conscious, dynamic will. The present-day size and power of social democracy is the fruit of this unity.

The history of social democracy hitherto can be quickly summarised as the utilisation of bourgeois parliamentarianism for the enlightenment and centralisation of the proletariat into its class party. On this track, from which it never allowed itself to be lured either by brutal emergency laws or demagogic cunning, our party has advanced decade after decade to become by far the strongest political party in the German empire and the strongest workers’ party in the world. In this sense, the last 50 years have seen the implementation of Lassalle’s action programme, which was concentrated on two closely linked aims: the creation of a class organisation of the workers, independent of the liberal bourgeoisie; and the achievement of universal suffrage, in order to put it to the service of the workers.

The construction of this organisation and the systematic utilisation of universal suffrage - this was more or less Lassalle’s legacy, and the lifeblood of social democracy over the last 50 years.

This programme has just about been pushed to its limits, where, according to the law of the historical dialectic, quantity must transform into quality, where the unstoppable growth of social democracy, on the ground of and in the framework of bourgeois parliamentarianism, must eventually transcend this.

Germany’s capitalist development, like that of the entire world economy, has now reached a point where the conditions in which Lassalle accomplished his great task appear as a clumsy child. Whereas back then in Europe, the framework of bourgeois national states was still being fashioned to suit the unrestricted rule of capital, today the last non-capitalist lands are being swallowed up by the imperialist monster, and capital is crowning its world dominance with a chain of bloody expansionist wars.

From its birth onwards, bourgeois parliamentarianism on the European continent was ridden with impotence through fear of the red spectre of the revolutionary proletariat. Today, it is being crushed by the iron hooves of rampantly galloping imperialism; it becomes a hollow shell, degraded to an impotent appendage of militarism.

In 50 years of exemplary work, social democracy has pretty much taken everything it could from the now stony soil in terms of material profit for the working class and class enlightenment. The most recent, biggest electoral victory of our party1 has now made it clear to all that a 110-person-strong social democratic faction in the era of imperialist delirium and parliamentary impotence, far from achieving more in terms of agitation and social reforms than a faction the quarter of its size in the past, will achieve less.

And the hopeless foundering of the hub of Germany’s internal political development today - voting rights in Prussia - has destroyed all prospects of parliamentary reform through mere pressure of electoral action.

Both in Prussia and in the empire, social democracy in its entire force is rendered powerless as it comes up against the barrier which Lassalle already foresaw in 1851: “A legislative assembly never has overthrown and never will overthrow the existing order. All that [such an] assembly has ever done and ever been able to do is proclaim the existing order outside, sanction the already completed overthrow of society and elaborate on its individual consequences, laws, etc. Yet such an assembly will always be impotent to overthrow the society which it itself represents.”2

We, however, have arrived at a level of development where the most pressing and imperative defensive demand of the proletariat - the right to vote in Prussia and the people’s militia in the empire - signify an actual overthrow of existing Prussian-German class relations. If the working class wants to pursue its life interests in parliament today, then it has to carry out this actual overthrow “outside”. If it wants to make parliamentarianism fertile again, then it has to lead the masses themselves onto the political stage through non-parliamentary action.

The last decade - with the mass strike resolution in Jena under the influence of the Russian Revolution and the campaign of street demonstrations in the struggle for the right to vote in Prussia three years ago - clearly shows that the transition from purely parliamentary to unstoppable mass action will force its way through - even if the consciousness of the party in Germany, as elsewhere, only follows this path unevenly, encountering many setbacks.

The 50th anniversary of German social democracy represents a proud, victorious completion of Lassalle’s political testament. Yet simultaneously it is also a warning to the socialist proletariat to become fully conscious that nothing would be more contrary to Lassalle’s spirit than following its well-worn routine at its usual steady pace and stubbornly clinging to a tactical programme which has already been overtaken by the course of history.

Lassalle’s great creative work consisted in recognising the correct task of the proletariat at the right historical hour and daring to fulfil this with bold action. What is today the just continuation of Lassalle’s work? Not clinging to Lassalle’s political programme, but rather recognising the new great tasks of the contemporary situation and boldly tackling them at the right moment. Then, in the spirit of Lassalle, it can also say of itself: ‘I dared!’
Notes

1. F Mehring (ed) Der Literarische Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle Vol 4, Stuttgart 1902, p38.
2. The resolution passed at the SPD conference from September 17-23 1905 in Jena characterised the most extensive use of the mass withdrawal of labour as one of the most effective working class methods of struggle, but nevertheless restricted the use of the political mass strike to a considerable extent to defending the right to vote to the Reichstag and freedom of assembly.

Democracy and 'Stageism'

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:47:00 +0000

Here is my (belated response) to a comrade from Permanent Revolution, again one that started on Facebook...!

Christina,

Thanks for your response and apologies for the delay in replying. You know the circumstances. I am basically going to go through what you say line by line and throw in some comments.

”Hi Billy. Revolutionaries support struggles to defend and extend bourgeois democracy”.

This sentence, whilst formally true, shows where you are going wrong in this question. You see the rule of the bourgeoisie as being accompanied with a certain level of formal or necessary democracy for their rule (a sham of course as you point out). The phrase “bourgeois democracy” is an utterly misleading misnomer which communists should strive to expose. Democracy is the rule of the people, for the people, by the people. As such it is a political form which serves the interests of the majority in society. The bourgeoisie has never, and will never, make up a majority. The limited democracy that it has allowed throughout its history in power is simply what it thinks it is necessary to allow in order to stay comfortably in power. What they can get away with.

You continue:

“What Ben fails to point out is that Trotsky prefaced all this with the goal a workers’ state to take power from the bourgeoisie, a form of democracy that is qualitatively different from bourgeois democracy”.

Bourgeois democracy is qualitatively different to workers’ rule or the dictatorship of the proletariat because in my opinion the bourgeoisie is not an inherently democratic class – every thing we take for granted is a result of struggle (ie the fact that MPs are paid a wage was a Chartist demand back in the 1850s!)

“We acknowledge the need to fight for democratic demands, whilst not fetishing bourgeois democratic forms. Equally the struggle for bourgeois democratic demands will not always be at the top of our agenda in countries with formal democracy. The fight for democratic demands is only one part of the revolutionary transitional programme, and has to be part of the struggle to render all instances of class resistance political by, wherever possible, pushing for the creations of embyronic organisations of working class power. Only then can we hope to create the basis by which the working class will transcend bourgeois democracy and impose the democracy of the majority, not the sham democracy we have today”.

Nobody is fetishising “bourgeois democratic forms”, just as Trotsky is not when he calls for a single executive and legislative assembly, or when Marx and Engels called for the one and indivisible republic. As I said above – the bourgeoisie does not rule by democracy. It is not an inherently democratic class but rules through rule of law constitutionalism.

The “formal” or “sham” democracy we enjoy in Britain as opposed to Iran, for example, is not because of the classes in power (the bourgeoisie rule in both of course) but a product of struggle, victory and defeat. Yes, you push for organs of working class power, but central to this is a programme for the state and the questions it throws up. You can have a whole republic of councils/soviets, but without a political party with a programme for state power supported by the majority of society then they will dissolve (Germany 1918 being a good example of that).

It is good you call for the abolition of the House of Lords, but what about annual parliaments, the abolition of MI5/MI6, the abolition of the monarchy, the arming of the people (Stuart, Bill J, Mark F and I had a good argument at the May 68 event about how it was supposedly ‘ultra-left’ to call for the arming of the people) – that is the programme for the republic, the dictatorship of the proletariat, workers’ power, whatever you want to call it. We raise these demands in the here and now, and indeed some of them might be reforms we win (with a big communist party and MPs in particular). What is controversial about any of this?

”Ben, the Erfurt Programme was written in a different epoch, before the political implications of imperialism were made clear, and crucially before the Russian Revolution. The class struggle moves on, the programme develops accordingly”.

Tina, I agree that times have moved on since 1891. Google anything I have written an said on this (or search for the debate between Mike Mac and Mark H last year) and it will become clear that I do not wish to take the Erfurt programme written for Germany in 1891 and transpose it onto Britain in 2009. There are two reasons for this:

The Erfurt programme itself was insufficient (cf Engels’ critique of the Erfurt programme, which castigates Liebknecht, Bernstein et al precisely for their vacillation on the question of calling for the ‘democratic republic’, amongst others)
We obviously live in different historical times. Not least, the working class is now the majority class worldwide. These new times, alongside the experience of the working class movement in the 20th century (not least Stalinism and Social Democracy) find expression in the CPGB’s minimum programme – ie it has a lot more to it than the Erfurt programme, it is a lot longer with a lot more demands.

What I am basically arguing is that we need a minimum programme for the smashing of the state apparatus and bureaucracy, which necessarily takes democracy seriously and has at its core democratic demands for the workers’ movement to unite around and form itself into a class strong enough to be the ruling class. It is this method of the minimum-maximum programme, first set out by Marx and carried on by those like Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg etc which I am defending, not what Kautsky did to the minimum programme by gutting it of its content and turning the dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the existing military-bureaucratic state apparatus.

Some Trots will then however object: ah yes, but Lenin embraced the transitional method in 1917, the Bolsheviks dumped the min-max approach realising it was no longer applicable (ie the “political implications of imperialism were made clear” as you argue), Luxemburg’s Spartacist programme broke with it too etc. All nonsense, of course, as Lars Lih makes quite clear in his study of the Bolsheviks and in the interview I did with him. There is no direct line between min-max and 1914, which you sort of imply by arguing that the min-max approach was not fully conscious of the political implications of imperialism. The ‘direct line’ argument is ahistorical and not rooted in the historical experience of the Bolsheviks, nor indeed German Social Democracy (the latter being somewhat forgivable given that the left has neglected to translate much of the theoretical output of the SPD).

And just on the question of changing period and the need to change the programme. Let us remember the full title of the programme in which Trotsky develops the method you defend and counterpose to my alleged Menshevism/Stalinism/Stageism: “The transitional programme: the death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the fourth international”. Let us also not forget that your organisation PR has the view that capitalism and the laws which guide it are not even in decline (a view I hold) let alone in their death agony! Given that capitalism is in a period of unprecedented expansion due to access to the former ‘degenerate workers’ states’, does this not have consequences for the programme given that we are not in a period of workers rushing to arm themselves?

“Workers democracy is based on the self-organisation of the working class, organised in workplaces and communities, the soviet form of power”.

Well yes, but as I have pointed out, the “soviet form of power” is not necessarily the form assumed by working class power. The Paris Commune was not the same thing as the rule of soviets. Engels referred to it both as “the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “democratic republic”.

“The problem with the CPGB’s concept of “extreme democracy”, is that it is posed as the extreme end of a sort of continuum of democracy. There is no qualitative break with bourgeois democracy.”

Again, this is not true. Not merely because I think you are wrong to talk of “bourgeois democracy” in the way you do (see above) but also because this accusation is simply not true. If you think I am making this up, let me quote Mike Macnair in response to a similar question posed by David Broder. Broder says: “it is not clear whether the democratic republic is meant to be the product of the revolution, or whether it is a taking-over of the existing state bureaucracy.” (ie a non-qualitative break in your terms). Mike responds:

“In fact, it should be clear that the actual creation of the democratic republic would be, amount to, the smashing-up of the existing bureaucratic-coercive state. Here I follow Engels in describing the Paris Commune as a “democratic republic”. But, as with the minimum programme in general, individual democratic-republican demands could be won under capitalism - and, if won, would strengthen the position of the working class in future class struggles.”

Christina continues:

“Hence, during the political crisis in France in 2002 when the fascist Le Pen got through to the second round of the presidential elections in a run off with Chirac, the CPGB’s slogan on the back page of their paper was “For a 6th Republic”, which implies continuity with the current Fifth Republic. “Extreme” democracy in action, no doubt”.

This is probably a typo on your behalf (and they often occur when writing in a Facebook comment box!). How does calling for the 6th republic in anyway imply continuity with 5th? If we wanted continuity with the 5th we would say “for the 5th republic plus x” not “down with the 5th republic and for a 6th republic based on some of the demands (and more) that Trotsky outlines in 1934”. There is no continuity there.

“For Trotsky the fight for a “more generous democracy”, particularly in the context of attacks from undemocratic forces would “facilitate the struggle for workers power”. This is the essence of revolutionary politics that Ben ignores.”

I am sorry Tina. Whereas your points above are of substance and raise questions that need to be discussed, this is just rhetoric and posturing completely devoid of substance or political meat. In fact, it reminds me slightly of the way in which Bill J and Dave E responded to Mike’s book. The point is that if the left is to go anywhere from its current sorry state, you need to actually engage with what we are saying, not just recoil in horror when you see the word Kautsky etc.

I quote Trotsky verbatim here because I think he sums up exactly what my position would have been both in 34 in the struggle against Bonapartist reaction AND in 1968 against De Gaulle’s bonapartism (look what he got away with!) as something which the working class should have fought for to strengthen its power, driven the revolution forward (make it permanent if you will) and place the working class in a much better position for them to “facilitate the struggle for workers’ power”. I am not “ignoring” anything there at all Tina, I am quoting Trotsky verbatim about “facilitating power” and you accuse me of being ignorant to how Trotsky’s position was about “workers’ power” which is slightly strange….

Hope this helps clear some things up.

Ben

Rediscovering Lenin: Interview with Lars T Lih

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:10:00 +0000

Lars T Lih is an acclaimed scholar living in Canada. I spoke to him about his book, Lenin rediscovered: ‘What is to be done?’ in context (2006) and some of the questions it raises for the left in understanding its own history and tradition

One of the themes of Lenin rediscovered was Lenin’s closeness to Karl Kautsky. I argued that What is to be done? (WITBD) did not represent any sort of break with the Kautsky outlook. Naturally, this point has been challenged, in particular by the Socialist Workers Party’s John Molyneux and Chris Harman. They respond something as follows: ‘yes, it’s true, Lenin himself was not at this time (1902) aware that he differed in fundamental ways from Kautsky. Only in 1914 did the scales fall from Lenin’s eyes. At this point, he realised how fundamentally his outlook differed from Kautskyism and from Second International Marxism in general.’

No doubt my critics are justified in challenging me on this point, since my book did not take the story past 1904. Nevertheless, it has always been my view that Lenin saw Kautsky after 1914 as a renegade, that is, someone who renounces their earlier correct outlook. In order to settle this question with data in my hand, I undertook to collect all the references by Lenin after the outbreak of war in 1914 to “Kautsky when he was a Marxist” (a phrase often used by Lenin). There are a great many of these references, and they settle the question once and for all. Lenin did not renounce Kautsky’s pre-war writings - in fact, he made clear his continuing high admiration for them. His denunciation of kautskianstvo was aimed at Kautsky’s conduct after the outbreak of war, when (according to Lenin) he used revolutionary-sounding phrases to cover up a de facto alliance with opportunism.

Once we get this stumbling block out of the way - that is, the notion that somehow Lenin disowned his earlier approval of Kautsky’s writing - we can start investigating the full extent of Lenin’s relations with Kautsky. And this proves to be such a fascinating story that I am thinking of devoting an entire book to the subject. The nature of the relationship changed over the years, so I will look briefly at each decade in Lenin’s career.

In the first decade (1894-1904), Kautsky is most important for Lenin as the spokesman for the basic outlook of international social democracy. This is the aspect that is examined in Lenin rediscovered. Perhaps most basic here is the merger formula: “Social democracy is the merger of socialism and the worker movement.” This formula served both as a definition of the mission of social democracy and as a template for a history of the origins of Marx-based social democracy. And here arises a misunderstanding that is reflected in your questions, one that I wish I had dealt with more effectively.

At times, Kautsky is paraphrased as asserting that “socialism is a science”. But if you look closer at the actual text, you will see that Kautsky is referring to “modern socialism”, a common label in this period for ‘scientific socialism’: that is, Marxism. This is the socialism that is a science and, as such, was born in the heads of members of the bourgeois intelligentsia: to wit, Marx and Engels. Kautsky does not argue that socialism in general is a science - in fact, the merit of Marx and Engels is that they made it one.

Socialism in general has many points of origin, including with many workers. Kautsky wrote about the origins of social democracy often enough, so that there is no doubt about his views. Unfortunately, most people deduce his views solely from the passage cited by Lenin in WITBD - a passage in which Kautsky is mainly interested in making a separate, if related, point (to wit, there is no direct or automatic correlation between the level of capitalist development and the level of socialist awareness among the workers). From this arises the common criticism: Kautsky (and by extension Lenin) overlooks the interaction between theory and practice, Kautsky sees the origin of socialism in entire isolation from the class struggle, etc.

In reality, no criticism of Kautsky’s actual historical views is less accurate than this one. When Kautsky himself unpacks his formula in his historical accounts of the European socialist movement - and there are more than a few of such accounts - he stresses the interaction between the various social components that coalesced in Marxist social democracy. In fact, Marx is almost presented as someone who merely synthesised the many theories and approaches swirling around in his day. Also, Kautsky himself strongly emphasises that even if a worker movement rejects Marx, they sooner or later will accept the need for socialism and will take power to put it into effect. I cannot delve deeper into this topic now, so I’ll just refer to pages 82-87 in Lenin rediscovered, where I summarise one such discussion by Kautsky.

Another misunderstanding arises from Lenin’s polemics against Martov after the 2nd Congress off the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Lenin said that Martov’s definition of a party member showed that he didn’t understand the distinction between party and class. From this there has arisen the idea that Kautsky did not understand this distinction. In reality, neither Martov nor even less Kautsky had any trouble distinguishing party and class. This is a non-issue.

There is a view that the split in 1903 “led Lenin to a clean break with Kautsky and the ‘German model’”. I disagree with this, but, more to the point, Lenin disagreed with it. Let me make a larger contrast. Commentators on Lenin seemed compelled to find ruptures, turning points, clean breaks and so on, although, of course, there is no agreement about what these were. On the other hand, when Lenin discussed his own views, he almost always stressed their continuity and the apostasy of those opposed to him. They were the ones making clean or messy breaks, not he.

Lenin’s second decade, 1904-14, was the one in which Bolshevism as such was developed. Although Kautsky sided with the Mensheviks at the very beginning of the party split (not for ideological reasons, but because he thought Lenin was personally responsible for the split), it soon became clear that, when it came to the issues that really divided the two factions - the different readings of the class forces in Russia - Kautsky sided entirely with the Bolsheviks. So much so that Kautsky became a sort of honorary Bolshevik. If you want to get an idea of Kautsky’s role during this period, read Lenin’s generous and (more to the point) accurate description at the beginning of the section on Kautsky in State and revolution.

Kautsky continued to be important for Lenin in his third decade (1914-24). By the way, Kautsky was regarded as part of the radical wing of the party at least until 1910, when he and Rosa Luxemburg fell out. At that time, Lenin sided with Kautsky (and I don’t think he ever changed his mind about who was right in 1910). As against Luxemburg, Kautsky said that the socialist party should not act as if a revolutionary situation existed when it didn’t, but that a revolutionary situation was sure to come very soon. From Lenin’s point of view, the very revolutionary situation that Kautsky had predicted did in fact come to pass in 1914. He was therefore infuriated with Kautsky when the latter did not act as he had promised. But again, this anger was a sign of Lenin’s loyalty to what had once been the shared outlook of the two men. As I put it once, Lenin hated Kautsky because he loved Kautsky’s books.

After 1914, Lenin identified Kautsky with “the centre”, but this was a description of Kautsky’s wartime position between the “social chauvinists” and revolutionary leftists such as himself. In general, the word ‘centre’ when applied to socialist politics at this time obscures more than it illuminates.

But Kautsky’s positive influence on Lenin does not end even in 1914. Indeed, there were still many twists and turns to come in this story, and I have not worked them all out yet. So I will conclude with a brief observation about 1917. In one sense, it is true that Lenin and the Bolsheviks shifted their tactics and focus all the time from 1903 to 1917, but this should not let us overlook the underlying unity. The Bolshevik analysis of the situation in Russia was a fairly stable and coherent one: in the upcoming revolution for political freedom, the proletariat should become the leading force by wresting influence over the peasantry away from the liberal bourgeoisie. (As earlier mentioned, Kautsky fully agreed and gave a classic exposition of this tactic in his article, ‘Prospects and driving forces of the revolution’, which is available in English.) The Bolsheviks certainly did not abandon this perspective in 1917, even though they added other goals. In fact, the outcome of the revolution and the civil war can be taken as a massive vindication of this tactic.

In 1914, Lenin did not change his outlook, but he did shift his main focus from Russia to Europe as a whole, and therefore from democratic revolution to socialist revolution. At this time, he thought of these two revolutions as linked, but separate: “The task of the proletariat in Russia is to carry out the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia to the end [do kontsa], in order to ignite the socialist revolution in Europe” (October 1915 - VI Lenin CW Vol 21, Moscow 1977, pp401-4).

Finally, in 1917 Lenin added another goal: “steps toward socialism” in Russia itself, without waiting for the international revolution. (I believe that Kautsky played a role even here, but I know this will be controversial, so I’ll wait until I can put across the evidence more completely.) Thus by 1917 Lenin’s outlook had three major strata: “old Bolshevism”, left Zimmerwald and “steps toward socialism”.

These strata are reflected in the principal points of his 1917 platform: land to the peasants (from pre-war Bolshevism), democratic peace and/or revolutionary war (from wartime left Zimmerwald) and state regulation of the collapsing economy (from the new note of “steps toward socialism”). So, at this point in my thinking, I tend to see Lenin as adding on new perspectives rather than fundamentally changing his older ones. That is to say, he didn’t junk the minimum-maximum distinction, but he simply argued that, under the circumstances prevailing in Russia, they could be accomplished in tandem. Lenin’s work of late 1918, Renegade Kautsky and the proletarian revolution, argues in this way. Note particularly the passage in which he says that, even if it turns out Russia was not ready for socialist transformation, the proletariat was justified in taking power to complete the democratic revolution (VI Lenin CW Vol 28, p304).

Other candidates have been put forward for the role of the catalyst in Lenin’s thinking in the years 1914-17 - Trotsky, Hegel, Bukharin among others. I put my money on the candidate with whom Lenin was explicitly engaged, the candidate whose views he repeatedly endorsed: namely, Karl Kautsky.

One final point. The SPD model certainly did not become irrelevant even during the revolution or after the Bolsheviks took power. One central feature of the Soviet state is taken directly from SPD practice: namely, the permanent campaign of agitation and propaganda. Now that the party controlled the state, it could carry out even vaster campaigns and could eliminate the competition, creating what I call “state monopoly campaignism”. A classic study of the SPD is The alternative culture by Vernon Lidtke. The book describes how the SPD used everything from an extensive party press to choral singing societies in order to inculcate the proper socialist outlook. In many ways, the Soviet Union is the SPD writ large, and Lidtke’s title could be used for a study of the Soviet era.
Bread

I came to the writing of Lenin rediscovered by a somewhat circuitous route. My first book, based on my PhD thesis, was Bread and authority in Russia, 1914-1921 (1990). This study examined the enormous impact of bread shortages on the policies and politics of all governments during this ‘time of troubles’: the tsarist government, the provisional government and the Bolsheviks.

I came to the conclusion that Bolshevik food-supply policies resulted much more from honest attempts to cope with the crisis than from ideological delusion. This got me interested in the whole subject of so-called war communism, when (according to many writers of all ideological persuasions) the Bolsheviks were supposed to have gone right off the rails and conned themselves into thinking that the ruined Russia of 1920 was a socialist paradise. I devoted a number of articles to refuting this myth and showing that the Bolsheviks were not clinically insane, but fully understood that the devastation of the civil war had set back socialist transformation.

These scattered articles have not had the impact I would have liked (although I’m glad to see that you mention ‘The mystery of the ABC’, my article about The ABC of communism, a fundamental Bolshevik textbook published in 1919), and I hope to make the case in book form some time soon.

In any event, this research got me interested in the Bolshevik outlook in general. At this point, I was not interested in Lenin per se, but Bolshevism in general. What I call the textbook interpretation of What is to be done? was therefore merely an obstacle on my way to giving an accurate portrayal of the Bolshevik outlook after the revolution. My first thought was: I’ll have to put a paragraph into my account warning the reader against misconceptions arising from WITBD. Then I thought, well, the issues are complicated, I’d better devote a chapter to the topic.

Probably I would have stayed at that level without the prodding of Sebastian Budgen from the journal Historical Materialism. He originally asked for a new translation, but I felt a translation would not be useful without a full commentary. In order to write the commentary, I felt obliged to read everything mentioned by Lenin in his book. I began to discover that, despite WITBD’s notoriety, there is actually very little out there that could be called genuine historical analysis of the book. And so the whole thing ballooned, since the story I was getting from my material was so fundamentally different from the story about Lenin found in the textbooks.

At this point, I would like to express my great appreciation of the people at Historical Materialism, especially Sebastian Budgen, of Brill (publishers of the hardback), and of Haymarket Press (publishers of the paperback). In today’s economic and academic climate, it took courage to support a semi-mad scholar who was intent on writing a fundamental work, length no object. The new paperback edition makes the book somewhat more affordable for individual purchase, and furthermore, it has a snazzy, colourful cover. For readers wondering about purchasing the book, let me say that its length is partly due to the fact that it locates Lenin within a much wider panorama of what one reviewer (Anna Krylova) called “Eurorussian social democracy”.

Let me briefly mention four basic themes of the book. First, I describe Lenin as a “Russian Erfurtian”. “Erfurtianism” is my own coinage, but I think that any informed observer before World War I would have found it instantly intelligible. It is a complex concept that combines the aims of the Erfurt programme adopted by the German party in 1892, the authoritative commentary on those aims by Kautsky and a rather idealised ‘SPD model’. Just as important is the fact that Lenin was a Russian Erfurtian, who, along with many members of his generation, took on the arduous task of applying Erfurtian precepts to Russian realities.

This leads to my second big theme: the role of what I now call the konspiratsiia underground. As explained in the book, konspiratsiia is the set of empirical rules for avoiding arrest while maintaining contact with wider worker groups. As opposed to the traditional conspiratorial underground - one that wants to stay as secretive and closed-off as possible - a konspiratsiia underground attempts to spin as many threads as possible that will connect it to wider groups. WITBD celebrates and advocates the konspiratsiia underground, but Lenin certainly did not invent it. It arose as a result of a decade-long empirical search for possible ways of importing the Erfurtian model of a mass agitational party to the repressive realities of tsarist Russia.

Coming now to Lenin himself, my main aim is to change the question. The proper way to grasp Lenin’s individual outlook is not to obsess about abstract generalities concerning ‘spontaneity’ and ‘consciousness’, but rather to examine his concrete views about the actions of the Russian working class during the years 1895-1905. When this is done, the traditional textbook interpretation that talks about Lenin’s ‘worry about workers’ falls away of itself and Lenin’s romantic optimism about the working class becomes glaringly obvious. Why did Lenin strive for an organised, centralised, efficiently structured party that was staffed with people who knew their business? Because he had given up on the masses and was looking for a substitute? Just the opposite: Lenin wanted all these things because he thought he saw the masses on the move.

Finally, I argue that Lenin understood his own basic outlook and remained loyal to it. This turns out to be surprisingly controversial, as brought out in my earlier discussion of Kautsky.

I am very pleased with the reactions to the book. Most readers seem to be in sympathy with my basic aims, although I realise now that I could have put some things better and made some necessary points more forcefully. Historical Materialism asked a number of readers of my book for their thoughts, and in my response to these readers I took the opportunity to clear up some of these misunderstandings - and, as often when responding to criticism, I became more clear in my own mind about what I was trying to say. So my rather extensive response to these readers serves as a sort of appendix to Lenin rediscovered. I hope this discussion will be published soon (although right now I’m the one holding things up).

John Molyneux’s review of my book brings up many of the points I will be addressing in Historical Materialism. One such point, of course, is Kautsky’s relation to Lenin, since Molyneux still believes in the existence of a fundamental divide between Lenin and “Kautsky when he was a Marxist”. I am confident that the new evidence I am bringing forth will narrow our differences on this issue.

Another set of issues concerns Lenin’s later attitude toward his own book. One common scenario goes like this: Lenin ‘bent the stick’ too far when he wrote WITBD, exaggerating what was otherwise a valid point. He himself realised this in 1905 when faced with the revolutionary militancy of the workers. Unfortunately, many of his fellow Bolsheviks still followed the precepts of WITBD and opposed the presence of workers on local party committees. Lenin himself grew highly circumspect about WITBD and explicitly admitted he had bent the stick too far. He wasn’t exactly apologetic about it, though, since he felt that bending the stick was a necessary part of leadership.

I disagree with this scenario in every respect. For full details, see my forthcoming discussion in Historical Materialism. But here is the scenario that I think fits the facts. Lenin did not mean to say anything new or astounding in WITBD, but rather meant to state universally accepted axioms in order to show that his opponents failed to live up to them. At the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in 1903, he used the ‘bend the stick’ image in order to make the following point: he was responding in WITBD to one particular set of opponents and was not making a general or programmatic discussion. (Unfortunately, the English translation in the Collected works paraphrases Lenin’s image so that his actual use of ‘bend the stick’ is completely obscured.)

He did not then or later admit that he had bent the stick too far - this was a polemical distortion of his remarks by Menshevik opponents (including Trotsky). Polemics by Mensheviks and, I think, the cool reaction of his own Bolshevik allies convinced Lenin that he had indeed made his point clumsily and in a way that was open to misinterpretation. But he did not change his mind about the actual point he wanted to make. He saw the events of 1905 as a confirmation of his prognoses in WITBD and said so on a number of occasions. At no time were Bolsheviks hostile to putting workers on local committees.

After 1905, of course, the practical arguments of WITBD were completely dated. What would now be the point of making the case that a party newspaper would be a good way to set up as yet non-existent central party organs? In Lenin’s eyes, WITBD did not say anything theoretically new, and its formulation of old truths was admittedly clumsy. WITBD was a good book for its time, but its time had past. It applied some basic social democratic truths to a specific situation, but now the task was to apply these and other truths to more current problems. Such was the Bolshevik view of WITBD: neither embarrassment nor founding document.

Of course, like any other leader, any of Lenin’s remarks must be put in the context of the particular issues on the agenda at that time. But this does not mean he had a philosophy of bending the stick: that is, deliberate exaggeration in order to get his point across. Those who believe that Lenin had such a philosophy - for example, Tony Cliff - tend to picture Lenin as swinging from one extreme to the other, which is simply not the case.
My views

When I come before the public, I like to think I have something new, interesting and important to say. My political views are none of the above. I will say something about what I am trying to accomplish with my work.

As is evident from my publication list, my principal interest is in Russian history. I see Lenin first and foremost, not as a figure in Marxist theory, but as the founder of the Soviet state. I feel solidarity with a somewhat earlier generation that was fascinated with the origins, course and outcome of the Russian Revolution.

My special interest over the last decade or so has been the world view of Bolshevism as a whole. Accordingly, I have written what I like to think of as major articles about Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin and just recently Zinoviev (in the new journal The NEP Era: Soviet Russia, 1921-1928). Unfortunately, these are scattered around in various journals and books. The nature of my subject has reinforced a long-time interest in the European left, and I have a long article-in-waiting about Marx’s trio of works on the class struggle in France that will be published when I get the time to polish it up. I am also very interested in the issue of whether Marx’s late writings represent any profound change in his outlook (I tend not to think so). This topic would take me full circle back to Russia.

Is my interest “purely academic”? If by this you mean, ‘Do I write to further my academic career?’, then the answer is no, since I haven’t got one. Academic historians are certainly a major audience for me, but so is any reader interested in the Russian Revolution. This includes not only those interested in continuing Lenin’s revolutionary politics, but also Russian readers who are trying to understand their own past (so far merely a target audience) and anyone else who would like an accurate insight into one of the great upheavals of history.

I think I serve all these constituencies better by committing fully to none and keeping my status as an independent researcher. I also enjoy my precarious role as one of the few links between the academic historians and activists on the left. I should add that I am in love with my subject and I am truly fascinated by the people that I study.

I like to think that my research does embody a political stance of sorts. First, objective truth through careful, unbiased and adventurous research is possible, and striving towards objective truth is an admirable thing. Second, we are better off if we see history as the result of the strivings of real persons, not demons or angels. That is my simple credo.

After all that, you might not think that I see any lessons to be drawn from my book for the contemporary left. But actually there are two points I would like to make. First, in surveying the past, left writers of today too often reduce the problem to one of simple doctrinal errors. Lenin is great, they say, because he rejected Kautsky’s confusion of party and class. This vastly over-simplifies the dilemmas facing the left (even overlooking the inaccuracies involved). Ah, if life were so easy that rejecting some rather feeble-minded doctrinal errors would set us on the right path! The fact is that pre-World War I generation of socialists agreed on basic things, but disagreed on how to apply them to reality - and they disagreed because of the huge pressures and inescapable dilemmas inherent in their situation. I wish I could say that the Third International simply solved the problems that brought down the Second International, but I cannot. Thus, more respect for all the socialists of that generation can eventually lead to more nuanced insight into our own dilemmas.

Second, I think that the socialist attitude toward political freedom needs serious attention. In my book, I stress the primordial importance of political freedom as a goal for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. But this is only half the story. The main reason the Russian social democrats wanted political freedom was to be able to spread their own version of the truth. When they got into a position of ‘state monopoly campaignism’, their drive toward political freedom turned (dialectically?) into its opposite: lack of political freedom for their opponents now helped them spread their own version of the truth.

And this is not just some Asiatic deviation of the Russian Bolsheviks. On the contrary, European socialism as a whole was sceptical about the benefits of political freedom in bourgeois society and did not really see much need for political freedom in socialist society. And their scepticism was, of course, highly justified, then as it still is today. So the solution is not just to say, ‘Let’s recognise the importance of political freedom.’ The proper attitude to adopt is a complex and difficult issue. But from where I sit I cannot see any real grappling with the problem.

Thanks again for asking me these probing questions. I may have learned more in writing the answers than you in reading them.

For Mike Macnair’s 2006 review of the book, see Weekly Worker August 31 2006.

Red November 1918

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:45:00 +0000

Ninety years ago, the destiny of the world revolution lay in the hands of the German working class. Ben Klein describes the tumultuous events and draws some lessons for today

“Without the revolution in Germany, we are doomed.”1 Vladimir Ilych Lenin’s words of January 1918 underline how the world revolution, initiated and set into motion by Russia, relied on spreading the flame to Germany. Germany was the leading industrial power in continental Europe and its working class was highly organised with a deeply entrenched political consciousness.

Without the Germans acting, Lenin feared that the young Soviet republic would be condemned to isolation and inevitable defeat, surrounded as it was by a sea of hostile imperialist powers and subject to the overarching economic dictates of the world division of labour.

Little wonder then that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were so enthused when news arrived from Germany in September 1918. The kaiser’s empire was cracking under the weight of military defeat and mass discontent, while a deep-seated desire for radical change was manifesting itself in strikes and demonstrations: “The decisive hour is at hand.”2 Lenin looked to his German comrades around the Spartacist Group headed by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht to follow the example set by Russia a year earlier.

The Russian masses were enthused too - at last there would be an end to their suffering and grinding poverty. The names of Luxemburg and Liebknecht were on every lip. Events in Germany were followed closely and every advance was celebrated. The gamble that the Bolsheviks took in October 1917 seemed to be paying off. The Austro-Hungarian empire was also collapsing under pressure from below and workers’ councils were spreading across Europe. Nothing less than the future course of humanity was at stake.

In hindsight we know that the German revolution was cruelly betrayed by the ‘socialists’, Soviet Russia was left high and dry and our class internationally drifted towards a whole series of defeats. We are still feeling the effects. A critical examination of the events of November 1918 will allow us to understand how and why the German working class was able to come within inches of taking state power, but also how, in the absence of a tried and tested revolutionary party, the rightwing Social Democrats were able to manoeuvre, confuse and save the day for capitalism.

Let us start by putting the revolutionary crisis of 1918 into context, so that we can grasp the social dynamics underpinning it.
The Prussian state and SPD

Karl Marx once quipped that the Prussian state was “nothing but a police-guarded military despotism, embellished with parliamentary forms, alloyed with feudal admixture”.3 This situation could, of course, be traced back to the failure of the bourgeoisie to unite Germany in the 1848 revolution. Instead it was reactionary Prussia which remade Germany in 1871. That meant Prussian landowners - the Junker class, with the kaiser at its head - dominating the officer corps and the state bureaucracy of the united Germany, with the capitalist class expected to quietly get on with the business of making money as privileged subordinates.

The Reichstag, or parliament, elected by the highly undemocratic three-tier voting system, had no more than formal powers in being able to veto government bills. Not only did the kaiser choose the government himself: he could recall parliament at any time, and together with the Oberste Heeresleitung (supreme command), he controlled the Prussian-German army.

Yet growing within this contradictory framework was a force pointing to the future - the workers’ movement, centred on the Social Democracy Party, which constantly pushed against the boundaries of the old order. Three and a half decades of rapid capitalist development saw it grow into a state within a state. By 1912 it had become Germany’s biggest party with 110 Reichstag seats and over 28% of the popular vote. The SPD had around a million members, and a slick party apparatus producing almost a hundred daily newspapers and running numerous sports clubs, women’s associations, youth clubs, etc.

As Clara Zetkin put it, the SPD really was “a way of life”. It was a party in the true sense of the word - a genuine part of the working class - and was officially guided by Marxism. It was no sect: ie, it was not a Socialist Workers ‘Party’ or a Communist ‘Party’ of Britain. Nor was the SDP a Labour Party, as Socialist ‘Party’ leader Peter Taaffe seems to imply.4

Capitalist expansion had, however, also planted the seeds of revisionism and opportunism - a gulf opened up between theory and practice. Party trade union leaders and functionaries saw no further than higher wages and better conditions. Reichstag deputies aimed for minor reforms and parliamentary deals. High politics and the goal of socialism were increasingly relegated to Sunday speeches and party congresses. In other words the politics of the labour bureaucracy were gaining ground and found theoretical expression in the writings of Eduard Bernstein. Luxemburg polemically savaged him. But it was Karl Kautsky who spoke for the majority.

And here was another problem. Although Kautsky opposed Bernstein, he in effect was himself gutting Marxism of its revolutionary content. Kautsky talked about simply taking over the bureaucratic-coercive apparatus of the German state. Above all, however, he was resolutely committed to maintaining the unity of the SDP. That increasingly meant subordination in deed if not word to the labour bureaucracy and the SDP’s right wing.
The war

World War I, which caused the death of at least two million Germans, was to push both the SPD and the Prussian state to breaking point.

The true extent of the SPD’s transformation became painfully clear on August 4 1914, when its parliamentary fraction voted to approve the proposed war credits. This scab act, combined with a deal the trade union bureaucracy had made just a day earlier promising to avoid strikes and social unrest, cleared the way for the army to mobilise and cast the German working class into the mincing machine of war - “the insatiate Moloch into whose bloody jaws are thrown millions upon millions of fresh human sacrifices” (Karl Liebknecht).

Yet even Liebknecht submitted himself to bureaucratic discipline on that fateful day. But never again. Recognising his error, he was soon to join the Spartacist Group, along with Luxemburg, just a few days later in issuing an illegal anti-war statement. His punishment was to serve time both in prison and at the front.

However, the patriotic wave that had allowed union leaders to promise class peace was gradually replaced by a burgeoning anti-war sentiment. Shortages, repression and the horrific reality of the carnage altered perceptions. The longer the war continued, the more examples there were of workers taking action. Inspired by the events in Russia, strikes against bread rationing in April 1917 saw 300,000 munitions workers flood the streets. The Obleute, the movement of leftwing, pro-Bolshevik shop stewards, gained in strength. By now there were secret groups in the navy, such as the League of Soldiers and Sailors, organising meetings and strikes and looking for political leadership. Some were court-marshalled. Lenin heralded these actions as showing the underlying drive to revolution and the necessity of defeatism - “turning the imperialist war into a civil war”.

The developing revolutionary situation highlighted the contradictions within the German workers’ movement - particularly on the nature of the capitalist state. Future battle lines were becoming clear between the different factions of the workers’ movement - factions that until a year beforehand had been active in the same organisation. 1917 saw a huge split, with the formation of the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) after the expulsion of leading SPD comrades for refusing to vote for further war credits.

As developments were later to underline though, the USPD was far from clear on the Russian Revolution, and it was precisely this question that distinguished its revolutionary elements from its centrists. Those around Luxemburg and Liebknecht viewed the revolution as the “vanguard of humanity and peace”, whilst others were convinced that it would end in “social and political discomposition, in chaos”5 (Kautsky, Bernstein, Hugo Haase).

The Prussian state was descending into chaos. The Allied counterattack of August 1918 hit hard, forcing the German army into retreat with inevitable consequences at home. The military apparatus was crumbling and quickly losing legitimacy. Army loyalty was more and more called into question. Many demanded its democratisation and the abolition of military privilege.

Anti-war agitation, particularly in Berlin and key industrial centres such as Bremen and Hamburg, made a big impact in terms of mass consciousness.

A revolutionary crisis was developing, but, as historian Pierre Broue notes, “Whilst Lenin spoke of the ‘eve of the world revolution’, the approaching tragedy in Germany was summed up … in the contrast between the readiness of the young workers to act and the impotence of leaders crushed by responsibilities, and convinced that the future of humanity could be settled in terms of subscriptions, local branches and speeches in parliamentary assemblies.”
‘Revolution from above’

By September 28 Germany’s inevitable defeat was obvious to the military leaders, the emperor and leading industrialists alike. They were now discussing how they could best bring the war to an end. The highly discredited general von Ludendorff was pressing for urgent action. He was quite clear: it was necessary to broaden the government to include the SPD in order to head off revolution. Military dictatorship was not an option in view of the disarray in the army, so if a situation along the lines of a “Russian October” were to be avoided what was demanded was, in the words of admiral von Hintze, a “revolution from above” - that is, a new government and an armistice.

The SPD was thrown into confusion. Initially hesitant, the leadership eventually decided to join the new administration, following acceptance of SPD demands that were far less than the minimum conditions outlined in the Erfurt programme of 1891 - failing which socialists would not even consider entering into government. They were bought off with the promise of an equal franchise in Prussia, and the restoration of the Belgian state, which would receive reparations.

It was on October 4 1918 that the SPD joined the coalition of Progressives, National Liberals and the Centre. These bourgeois parties held the key ministries - the foreign office, war ministry and ministry of the interior. Phillip Scheidemann and Gustav Bauer were the SPD representatives in the new government.

Yet resolving the crisis would take more than a few token reforms and adjustments. Although the chancellor was now accountable to the Reichstag, which could make key decisions on war and peace, Count Hertling was replaced by Prince Max von Baden! The Junkers still held sway, with echoes of Prince Lvov’s provisional government in Russia the previous year. Some of the key names in the new government were despised for the way they had dealt with working class resistance to the effects of the war. General von Linsingen’s name, for example, was synonymous with the prohibition of meetings, arrests and censorship.

The Spartacists and the left wing of the USPD reacted to this development with a conference on October 7. they demanded the immediate release of political prisoners, an end to the state of siege, cancellation of compulsory labour, expropriation of the entire banking capital and all large and middle-sized estates, plus the establishment of a minimum wage. On October 16, a demonstration demanded the release of the still incarcerated Karl Liebknecht under the slogan “Down with the government, long live Liebknecht!”
Mutiny

Confidence was high. On November 1 the Obleute assembled to decide on the day of the insurrection and to begin preparations. A very close vote of 21-19 set the date for November 11. However, Liebknecht, now released, and Willhelm Pieck of the Spartacists disagreed with the decision, rightly insisting that more time was necessary to win mass working class support for the taking of power. However, things were moving so quickly that by November 11 the revolution was well underway - it had taken even the most advanced elements by surprise.

If war is the locomotive of revolution, then it was the mutinous German sailors who drove that locomotive. Discontented with the meagre food rations and their treatment by arrogant and overbearing military officers, they were less than keen to throw themselves into a last battle for German ‘honour’ when it was known an armistice was imminent. Thanks to the brave efforts of comrades illegally organising in the navy, the sailors were highly politically conscious and more than up to speed with developments on the German left.

Over 800 were imprisoned for mutiny after refusing orders to move against the British fleet off the coast of Flanders. There were mass demonstrations of sailors, even though assemblies were still banned. As one sailor recalled: “At five o’clock in the afternoon of November 3, approximately ten thousand marines and some thousand workers gathered, thereafter moved to the Waldwiese and freed men who were imprisoned there; a considerable number armed themselves”.6

The workers in Kiel called a general strike in solidarity. Strengthened by arriving squadrons, they quickly proceeded to seize power locally. So profound was the crisis in the Prussian state apparatus that next to no resistance was offered. Leadership and inspiration were needed to channel the spontaneous energy of a reinvigorated working class into a direct challenge for state power. Yet it was precisely this decisive factor that was missing.

The SPD now faced a dilemma. It was flatly opposed to the new mass movement and had already made this explicitly clear to its allies in the government. On November 4 the SPD executive committee announced that the kaiser’s abdication was under discussion, and called on its supporters in the working class “not to frustrate these negotiations through reckless intervention” and to reject the calls to action of an “irresponsible minority”.7 Reichstag deputy Gustav Noske, well known amongst the sailors in particular for his expertise in military affairs, was sent to Kiel to sort things out, together with the Liberal secretary of state, Conrad Haussmann, and Hugo Haase of the USPD.

Noske paid lip service to the workers’ demands and declared himself on their side, despite their calls for the abdication of the Hohenzollern.8 He was then elected as chair of the Kiel council. At that point, few doubted his intentions The soldiers greeted him enthusiastically: “Noske was trusted and given a free hand. People saw him as a socialist comrade and nobody thought at that time he would be prepared to order workers to be shot” - a reference to the counterrevolutionary slaughter he would later unleash on the German working class.

The ramifications of Kiel were felt right across the reich. Bavaria was the first state to become a republic, declared by USPD member Kurt Eisner following a demonstration on November 7. King Ludwig III abdicated and the process of sweeping away the power of numerous petty princes and fiefs began. By November 8, Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Frankfurt, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hanover, Nuremberg and Stuttgart had all fallen into the hands of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.

The contradictions latent within the state burst open and the revolution spread like wildfire. In Cologne, 45,000 soldiers swelled its ranks, almost without a shot being fired. The soldiers and now unemployed veterans in particular moved remarkably quickly: “Across the compact mass of the moving crowd big military lorries urged their way, full to overflowing with soldiers and sailors who waved red flags and uttered ferocious cries … These cars, crowded with young fellows in uniform or in mufti, carrying loaded rifles or little red flags, seemed to me characteristic. These young men constantly left their places to force officers or soldiers to tear off their badges of rank.”9
Berlin and the Kaiser

On November 9 the empire was finally brought to its knees. The revolution had infected Berlin. A meeting of the USPD the night before had planned a general strike and, although the Jägerbatallion was sent in by prince von Baden to suppress it, the soldiers could not bring themselves to move against the throng. Officers across the empire were complaining that their soldiers were no longer willing to accept orders.

Von Baden hoped that the empire could be salvaged if he personally appointed Friedrich Ebert, secretary general of the SPD, as chancellor. Ebert told him: “If the kaiser does not abdicate, then social revolution is unavoidable. But I do not want it; no, I hate it like sin.”

By midday on November 9 Ebert was chancellor. Meanwhile, leading SPD member Phillip Scheidemann had found out that Liebknecht was about to proclaim the socialist republic. He decided to act. Against Ebert’s wishes, Scheidemann declared the dawn of the republic and that von Baden had given his office over to “our friend Ebert”, who would “form a government which all socialist parties will belong to”.

Almost at the same time, Liebknecht was indeed proclaiming the socialist republic. The Obleute and their supporters, with the memory of Ebert’s and Scheidemann’s betrayals of August 1914 still in their minds, were clear that the revolution had to deepen and widen in order to sweep power from beneath Ebert’s feet. At 8pm around a hundred of them stormed and occupied parliament. Their plan was quite simple - tomorrow elections had to take place in every factory and every regiment in order to form a revolutionary government from the two workers’ parties.
Circus Busch and dual power

The SPD was unsure whether the workers’ councils would cooperate with the government declared by Scheidemann or would themselves become an alternative centre of power. It had to quell the mass movement and hijack the councils. Its next step would be to push for the USPD to join it in forming a provisional government.

Distrust between members of the USPD and the SPD ran deep, but the comrades knew each other’s politics inside out and the SPD was confident that there was a softer layer of USPD leaders who could be won over to stem the movement from below and prevent a descent into “Bolshevik chaos”. They were split on the question of the war, but many leading USPD members were later to rejoin the SPD - their politics had become increasingly indistinguishable from the Eberts and Scheidemanns. Ebert even implied, hypocritically, that he wanted Liebknecht on board - just hours earlier he had been absolutely committed to a parliamentary monarchy in coalition with the Liberals and the Progressives.

There was huge pressure on the USPD. Liebknecht insisted that government participation should be made contingent on all power being vested in the councils, following the signing of an armistice. This was rejected by the SPD leaders, who claimed that a “class dictatorship” of the workers would be undemocratic. The people could only decide on their government following properly organised elections - an impossibility, as they well knew. Their idea was to win time to strengthen their hand against the far left.

A second attempt at negotiations - this time without Liebknecht’s presence in the USPD delegation - proved far more fruitful. The USPD later accepted the invitation on condition that any bourgeois politicians would be mere “technical assistants” who would be directly recallable and accountable to the people. The other condition was that the constituent assembly should not meet until “the gains of the revolution had been consolidated”. This vague concession had counterrevolutionary implications.

Liebknecht was clear that he would not join the proposed government with Ebert, who had smuggled himself into the revolution to further his own reactionary aims. So the new government was set up without Liebknecht - it consisted of three representatives from each group: Ebert, Scheidemann and Otto Landsberg for the SPD; and Hugo Haase, Willhelm Dittmann and Emil Barth for the USPD.

But the SPD also had to deal with the Obleute proposal for elections to the Vollzugsrat, which was to act as an executive council of a revolutionary government. In order to be able to keep control, the SPD leadership mobilised in every factory and regiment it possibly could in order to get its supporters onto the Vollzugsrat. The 3,000-strong meeting on November 10 at Circus Busch in Berlin was dominated by SPD-loyal soldiers whose insistence on an unconditional “Unity!” made for a highly charged atmosphere. Numerous fist-fights broke out. At one point during his speech, Liebknecht actually feared that he might be shot. His prescient warning about how the revolution’s “enemies surround us” and condemnation of the “insidious” exploitation of the soldiers by those enemies certainly did not go down well with the majority of those present.

A proposal from Barth sought the election of an executive council which would have supreme legislative power, and to which the people’s commissars would be responsible. But it also sanctioned the SPD-USPD provisional government, unwittingly becoming a source of support for those who had been opposed to the revolution from the very start.

With the SPD enjoying the support of the majority of the meeting, the principle of parity between the two groups was only partly enforced: the SPD and USPD each had seven worker members elected, but the 14 soldiers on the Vollzugsrat were overwhelmingly supporters of or sympathetic to the SPD. The conference also confirmed the provisional government as the basis of the revolution.

Although initially unhappy with the Circus Busch result, Ebert was actually now in a stronger position. Setting up a cabinet with the USPD was crucial and control over the Vollzugsrat also allowed him to prevent the formation of a counterweight to the provisional government and its state apparatus. Moreover, although bourgeois politicians formally operated only as “technical advisors”, they essentially carried on with many of the functions of the old order.
Business as usual

The situation was highly contradictory. The SPD was schizophrenically portrayed as both the heir of the old regime and the head of a revolutionary cabinet approved by the popular will of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils. Yet SPD intentions were clear - the priority was not to arm the people, not to expropriate and socialise industry, but to use its influence within the remnants of the old order to prevent the workers from exercising control of the workplace, localities or media, while itself claiming to represent both the “community of labour” and “national interests”.

Right from the outset the SPD-USPD government sought to undermine the executive council. Whilst the latter had voted through a motion declaring that Germany was now a “socialist republic”, where power lay in the “workers’ and soldiers’ councils”, this was not even mentioned in the SPD-controlled press. When the executive sought to form red guards, Ebert and Barth worked with the military commander of Berlin, Otto Wels, in order to form a ‘republican defence force’ to defend the government, consisting of around 15,000 volunteers. There could be no question of arming the people. Unsurprisingly, funding for the republican defence force poured in from numerous bourgeois sources.10

Crucial was the deal struck between the officer corps and the SPD apparatus. General Groener - successor to Ludendorff as quartermaster general - later wrote: “The officer corps could only cooperate with a government which undertook the struggle against Bolshevism … Ebert 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.”11

The Hohenzollern bureaucracy, most significantly at the level of the military apparatus, remained in place. For Rosa Luxemburg this meant “leaving the administrative organs of the state intact from top to bottom, in the hands of yesterday’s pillars of Hohenzollern absolutism and tomorrow’s tools of the counterrevolution”.12

A cabinet meeting on November 12 showed just how far things had gone. It confirmed that the officers’ power of command was to remain and military discipline was to be upheld. This made things uncomfortable for the USPD, which had gained so much support from soldiers and sailors precisely as a reaction to the military hierarchy’s bullying. But the SPD won the day by using the pretext of the Versailles treaty and the demand to retreat “in good order” to the east bank of the Rhine. It also introduced measures like the right to vote from the age of 20, an end to censorship and to the state of siege.

Meanwhile, the councils were thrown into a state of confusion. Largely products of spontaneity, their make-up had always differed across the country. Bremen and Hamburg, for example, were always extremely militant. They had abolished the local administration and taken over its affairs, in Bremen forming Red Guards to replace the standing army and police. In other areas like Cologne and Duisburg, the SPD was able to win the inclusion of bourgeois forces. Other councils were simply organisationally ineffective or even totally corrupt. The strength of the SPD lay in the fact that it was able to rely on political backwardness amongst the newly politicised and on connections with the old state. In addition since the Circus Busch the USPD was committed to parity between the two parties even when it was in a distinct majority.

Whereas radical councils like Dresden and Leipzig would produce programmes proclaiming working class power and calling for socialisation to begin immediately, they were the exception rather than the rule. Many of the councils simply left many functions like the police and judicial system in the hands of the old state machinery.

Luxemburg was quite clear that what had happened was not the equivalent of October 1917. The task of the working class was to consolidate its gains and prepare for further advances. “Above all”, she wrote, November 9 was a “political revolution”, reflecting to “a very small extent the victory of a new principle; it was little more than a collapse of the extant system of imperialism.”

November 15 saw an agreement between SPD trade union leader Carl Legien of the SPD and big capitalists Hugo Stinnes and Carl Friedrich von Siemens. It promised to end strikes, roll back the influence of the councils and stymie workers’ control of production. Although gestures were made by the new Council of People’s Commissars through the appointment of a commission to investigate which industries were suitable for socialisation, this more or less did nothing until April 1919.

The foreign policy pursued by the new government spoke volumes. Ever since the outbreak of the revolution, the Bolsheviks had made offers to help to overcome the scarcity of food in Germany. But the new government refused to accept Russian grain, despite the best diplomatic efforts of German-speaking Bolsheviks like Karl Radek. Then it issued a statement on the deal reached with US president Woodrow Wilson, which laid down that food supplies to address the desperate shortages would be considered “only on condition that public order in Germany is genuinely re-established and maintained and a just distribution of food supplies guaranteed”.

It was claimed that this had been enforced by Wilson himself. but the French daily Le Temps later revealed that this extra clause had been insisted upon by Ebert, not Wilson.13 The intention was clear. Instead of establishing the German working class as a key battalion in the international proletariat, the SPD aim was to join in the campaign to strangle the Russian Revolution. The government used the threat of starvation and appealed for national unity in the face of the Allies’ demands.

The counterrevolution was thus painted in ‘socialist’ colours. And it was of a national and international nature. While claiming that law and order was essential for a return to normality, the SPD was preparing to join forces with rightwing militias such as the Freikorps at home, while supporting direct military collusion with the Entente imperialist states to keep German troops in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and hold back the Russian Revolution. Supporting the ‘free press’, the SPD was complicit in the dissemination of anti-Jewish and anti-Bolshevik propaganda. This, combined with the killing of Luxemburg and Liebknecht in 1919 and the failed attempt to stabilise capitalism would eventually culminate in the counterrevolutionary horror of Hitler.
Revolutionary alternative

The success of the Russian Revolution confirmed the necessity of a deeply rooted revolutionary party. The German Spartacists, although operating independently and at least as a ‘proto-party’ formation since the launch of the International Group in January 1916, were not sufficiently demarcated from the USPD. The Spartacist publication Die Rote Fahne was established too late in the day.

Ninety years on from one of the greatest and most inspiring events in working class history, it is incumbent upon us to strive to understand why the German revolution was defeated. The foundation of the German Communist Party under the leadership of Luxemburg and Liebknecht did not take place until the end of 1918 and at the outbreak of crisis months earlier the Spartacists had only 50 comrades in Berlin. Their bravery, determination and enthusiasm ensured that their numbers grew quickly, but they were not an established political party like the Bolsheviks in Russia when crisis broke.

If there is one thing we can learn from the events of November 1918, it is that it is never too early to fight for a party openly committed to working class power. Delay can only serve to strengthen the labour bureaucracy and their acolytes - the future Eberts, Noskes, and Scheidemanns.
Notes

1. C Harman The lost revolution London 1982, p11.
2. Quoted in P Broue The German revolution Chicago 2006, p131.
3. J Riddell (ed) The German revolution and the debate on soviet power Atlanta 1986, p21.
4. The Socialist November 4. Taaffe claims the bureaucratisation, growth of revisionism and gradualism within the SPD is “something similar” to what has occurred in the Labour Party over the past few decades. A desperate attempt to excuse his group’s past auto-Labourism, and provide cover for the call to set up a Labour Party mark two. Bizarrely, he goes on to lambast the USPD for having a “halfway house political position, sometimes using very radical, ‘revolutionary’ phraseology”, and for being “passive in deeds, refusing to go the whole way in the struggle against capitalism”. In reality the USPD was way to the left of Taaffe and his Socialist Party.
5. Kautsky, one of the leading theoreticians of the centrist tendency, was virulently anti-Bolshevik. Quoted in P Broue The German revolution Chicago 2006, p101.
6. www.kurkuhl.de/english/index_en.html
7. J Riddell (ed) The German revolution and the debate on soviet power Atlanta 1986, p38.
8. www.kurkuhl.de/english/index_en.html
9. C Harman The lost revolution London 1982, p53.
10. P Broue The German revolution Chicago 2006, p177.
11. Ibid p169.
12. Rosa Luxemburg The beginning: www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/11/18b.htm
13. J Riddell (ed) The German revolution and the debate on soviet power Atlanta 1986, p66.

Ted Crawford on Iran

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:07:00 +0000

With his kind permission, I print here Ted Crawford's report of his recent holiday to Iran. You will find Ted on the Revolutionary History stall selling his journal enthusiastically and cracking jokes about this or that stupid thing Trot groups have been up to of late. He is a very funny guy, as can be seen by the report...

Report and impressions on a visit to Iran 3-17 October 2008, contrasted with Syria and Turkey, countries with Islamic traditions, but claiming to be secular.

I will try to make clear in this report what I was told and what I saw or heard myself. Unless otherwise stated what we were told was information given by our guides. We flew south to Shiraz and stayed there, travelling by coach to Yazd, Ispahan and back to Tehran, staying in all these places, seeing marvellous architectural sights there and places in between. I will say nothing about these.

The Turks are a bit better off than the Iranians and both a lot better off on average than the Syrians, the CIA website says the Syrians have a GDP [at PPPs] of $4,700 (2007 est.) per capita and the Turks $12,000 (2007 est.) but I would guess the Gini coefficient at 42 is much more unequal than for the Syrians, for which the CIA makes no estimate. From the same source the Iranians have a GDP per capita of $10,600 (2007 est.), a very similar Gini coefficient to the Turks of 43, [1] a net fertility rate of 1.71 and a life expectancy at birth for males of 69, and for females of 72. The net fertility rate in Iran was confirmed by the observation that all the families we saw in the street or parks were one or two children, not five or six. On that we were told that during and just after the Iran-Iraq war there was a massive increase in the birth rate encouraged by the state (net fertility of 5 or 6) but then when they saw how the population was exploding they got cold feet and, in probably the most successful piece of population control in the world outside a far more brutal China, managed to cut the NFR by half in five years from which it has since declined further a good deal. Every small village apparently has a health/birth control clinic. We were told that, though the Ayatollahs do not particularly like abortion, it is not illegal and is practised with limitations on dates etc though I do not know any statistics about it, or indeed even if they are collected.[2] Since one of the most important aspects, if not the most important, of a woman’s liberation is the control of her fertility this is a considerable plus for human rights in Iran. From the same CIA statistics the women in Saudi (friend of the “West”) seem to be baby making machines. But in Iran as a result of the massive birth rate in the 1980s and early 1990s there is a great bulge of 15-25 year olds with consequent social problems such as unemployment.

Next religion. What was noticeable for a tourist group like ourselves was how much less intrusive the muezzin was in Iran than in Syria, Turkey or Libya where one was frequently woken up by the call to prayers. It is true that the Shias only have 3 calls and the Sunnis 5 but even so this surprised me a good deal. It seemed far less loud even though we were in a hotel just next to a mosque in Ispahan. Secondly there were far fewer new mosques being built though one of our guides complained bitterly that there were too many, the money for which could have been spent on hospitals or schools. (A lot of money was being spent on the restoration of the beautiful old mosques but I hope that an Iranian socialist or communist government would do no less.) Of course all the new mosques in Syria, Turkey, Britain or anywhere else are probably financed by the Saudis, Sunni Wahabis, the “Wee Frees” of the Islamic world. (The only problem is that they are not just sitting on the Isle of Skye throwing stones at those who dare to go fishing on Sunday but are sitting on most of the world’s oil supply and able to indulge their little hobbies internationally.) We were told that people as a whole were rather less religious than in the time of the Shah. There is a joke that Turkey is a religious country ruled by atheists while Iran is an atheist country ruled by the religious. Atheists is a bit strong, in both cases it is rather more nominal religious affiliation in the best non-practising Anglican tradition and in Iran anyway this is probably truer of the upper and upper middle classes.

Related to this was the position of women. Everyone, by law had to be “covered” but the niquab that conceals all but the eyes was hardly ever seen and, in every case where we saw it, the women turned out to be Saudi or Gulf states’ tourists. I know because they spoke and were spoken to by some of the women in our group and the first enquiry was where each came from. You see it more commonly in Ealing or near Hyde Park than you do in Iran. A member of our party who had been in Mashad, a very “holy” town in 2000 said the niqab was far more common there but many of those may have been Shia pilgrims from the Gulf too. Of course this “covering” of the head law intensely annoyed many of the strong women in our group – including Mary. The majority of Iranian women were also covered by the chador, the shapeless black garment which conceals both class differences in dress and age related differences in figure though a few girls in Tehran seemed to be wearing VERY tight jeans designed to distract the average male. But with a change in the law there would be a swift change so that I would guess fewer girls would then “cover” themselves than in Turkey. As we know from English history, the “rule of the saints” is never popular, above all when they ban the simple pleasures of bull-baiting and maypole dancing, so when prohibitions are removed there is an immediate and considerable reaction. But we were told that in the privacy of their homes people wore what they liked and the better off people in North Teheran did so while drinking prohibited alcohol, all available when ordered by phone from their friendly bootlegger. The prices, we were told, were much the same as in England but most of the money, instead of going to the government, went to the smuggler.[3] (We wretched tourists were absolutely “dry”.) Everybody was most friendly, the women were frequently approached and spoken to by Iranian women including schoolgirls. Most western tourists were Germans, followed by French with the British a minority and very few Americans. The sanctions were a bit of a joke. We could not use western credit cards normally but for big items, such as when we bought a small carpet, our cards were accepted and our details were phoned through to their office in the UAE so we apparently bought our carpet there.[4]

What about free speech and censorship? Foreign newspapers were emphatically not available and we were told local ones are frequently closed down if they overstep the line though our guides were far, far more outspoken than in Syria, let alone Libya where Mary had gone in 2007. Our Turkish guide was outspoken but not as “agin the government” as were the Iranians since he and his government were of course both secularist on the political issue of the day - and he put away the raki like anything. Apparently you can say what you like in Iran among your friends, the problem is publishing it. Indeed an Iranian girl I met on the plane to London had a special phrase for it – “verbal therapy” - people were allowed to moan and it was a useful safety valve as the phrase recognises. (Come to think of it this has similarities, even if the censorship is not so brutal, with what happens in Britain and the USA.) Our guide told us that a journalist in Shiraz asked him what improvements he would like to see in the tourist industry. He asked her to turn off the recording machine and then said that if he told her and her paper published it they would be closed down and he might lose his tourist licence. So she did not pursue that line of inquiry. The system, if you like, worked. As far as the mass media was concerned we had access in the hotels to a great many TV stations, BBC World News, CNN, Aljazeera and a surprisingly good Iranian government news station in English – see http://www.presstv.ir/programs/. We were told private homes were not supposed to have dishes but many did. There was also the official government English language daily newspaper, The Teheran Times. Far more readable than the Syrian government equivalent, or the Indonesian one said my Australian banker friend, it had, of course, a good many excruciatingly boring statements by government ministers and announcement of obscure delegations and treaties about trade or cultural links with a number of small countries. Yet there were also reprints from quality western papers, the Herald Tribune, the Sunday Times and so on - in all of which our little company was very interested as world markets reeled, they became rather poorer and worried about the prospects of any of their children now managing a hedge fund. Israel was never mentioned, only the “Zionists” but Al-Qa’ida was always coupled with the word “terrorist”, as in “American forces have killed a well known Al-Qa’ida terrorist leader”. This appellation was also applied to the group at Tripoli in the Lebanon – horrible Salafists I think. A number of statements by the Iranian government, whether made in good faith or not, denounced terrorism of all kinds but, as far as I could see, particularly the Sunni variety. I suspect that is their genuine position. (They would not regard Hezbollah as terrorist but as a popular-based Resistance movement, which indeed is what it seems to me.) On the web the Marxist Internet Archive www.marxists.org (which has a Farsi section) is blocked but not ETOL http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/index.htm which is entirely in English.

A small item I saw may have had significance which was that the Assyrian exile movement (of Christians) which had been based in the USA shifted its HQ to Iran in October 2008. Perhaps they know something we do not. We were told that the names of all those executed were reported in the press, presumably the publicity was thought to be a deterrent, the common criminals being hanged while the politicals were shot. Our guides said that no political ones had taken place for some years but that in the past, just after the war, pages and pages of the politicals’ names were listed in the daily papers which our guides obviously found disgusting even if they were somewhat lacking in sympathy for the criminals. They said the sort of people hanged recently at 4 in the morning in a stadium on a crane were generally gangs, guilty of something like raping 200 women and killing 20 of them though I suspect that was a bit of an exaggeration. There were beggars in the streets, quite often including women, which never happened in Syria let alone Libya, while they were there in the evening and sometimes quite young. Were they drug addicts?[5] But that must mean that they felt physically secure enough to beg at night which is a big point in the Iranians favour. Or was this prostitution? [6] I failed to ask the guides.

Politically our guides were certainly not lefties but seemed to be supporters of Mossadeq rather than the Shah, that is, nationalist, though not extreme, keen on the westernisation and modernisation of their country but through parliamentary democratic means and wary of the western powers. The latter very understandably so. They seemed to think Ahmo did not really have power but that rested almost wholly with the Ayatollahs and they seemed to think things had always been just as bad for the last 20 years, sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit worse. There was no sense of the feeling that “the levels of state chaos and arbitrary repression have recently risen dramatically, as the ruling caste and government fragment and the ultras take uncontrolled actions on their own, while there is now a lot of fear among reformist intellectuals”, all of which an American connected to the neo-cons has suggested to me is happening. It may be so but I got no sense of it. If they were trying to present some Potemkin village of dancing happy workers and peasants for our delectation (which I do not believe for a moment) they were doing a very bad job of it.

On politics we were told that only about 25% of the population voted, faced as they were by a choice between a very conservative religious party, a v. v conservative religious party and a v. v. v. conservative religious party. Rather like us in the USA and Britain when faced with the choice between a pro-business party and a very pro-business party. The greater the evils in the choice, the less the differences, the fewer people are interested in participating. The candidates are all vetted by the clerically appointed Council of Experts and the clergy know where all the bodies are buried. Candidates are not removed for the political opinions but because it is announced that they are discovered to have taken bribes, behaved in sexually inappropriate ways etc, etc. All true but this is equally true of those who are allowed through of course, but the numbers of the more moderate, reformist members are severely whittled down. And, naturally, the reforming clerical faction(s) has some difficult in finding people who are clean as clean.

Travelling about the country by coach the roads were often very new and good and the sign posts, as in Syria, had both the names and distances in Latin characters as well as Arabic ones and frequently driving directions in English such as “Drive slowly”. Crossing the road in the towns was a most terrifying experience and highly dangerous for a foreigner. The cars themselves were often quite old – more so than the UK anyway, which is what you would expect, while one of our number who had been to Iran in 2000 on another tour said that there were far more cars on the road than at that time. I noticed a number of times pup tents or sleeping bags on the side of the road and enquired of our guide who laughed and said that though you could not go to your hotel with your girl friend you could go and camp with her. I asked if the police had not stopped that kind of thing to which he replied that the morality police had been abolished 10 years ago and that “‘They’ had given up on the young”. Now although I am sure that this happens (youth will always find a way) I do not know to what extent while, to own a tent for recreation and fornication, would mean that you were well above the economic Plimsoll line in Iran I would have thought. Was this confined to a small minority of those in north Teheran? I assume the girl would have to deceive her father in any case. But that seems inconceivable in Syria and, if happening in Turkey, not nearly so blatant. Last year I wrote about Turkey that “whether lay or religious it is, and certainly was, a socially very conservative place though we were told that a bit of a sexual revolution had taken place from the late 1980s and 1990s even if I do not expect this was of the same depth and intensity as that in the UK from about 1964 when it suddenly seemed that all one’s Christmases had come at once. In Turkey it was probably both geographically confined to the western areas and rather more of the occasional mutual furtive grope with one’s contemporaries of the same social class that had never been on offer before. We saw secondary school kids occasionally holding hands while Mary, with the eagle eye of the retired deputy head, easily spotted in Antalya the tarty one who had hoisted up her school uniform skirts to show maximum leg and was always surrounded by about five boys. It was, she said, all very familiar. Syria was a much, much more socially conservative place..” I think in Iran I once saw in a park a couple having a snog, though she had her hijab on.

Our guides did mention the Shiite practice of muta’a or temporary marriage in which couples are allowed to have sex and share responsibilities for a stated period of time. The basis for this has always been recognition of sexual need and does not imply payment of dowries or sharing of common property. (Sunnis ban Muta’a.) They said that some Ayatollahs had recommended this to deal with the problems of prostitution and our guides clearly thought of it as an amazing bit of mediaeval backwardness and bit of a joke. However it seems that the kids in their pup tents were just the youth having a shag, no religious nonsense at all. I was not indiscreet enough to ask what their attitude was to their own daughters! My daughter in Jordan says there is a boom there among medical practitioners repairing hymens for a healthy fee, the same appears to be true in the Lebanon and I would not imagine it is much different in Iran.

Both our guides were charming, immensely educated, lovely people, clearly very privileged and competent upper class professionals. I would guess that they came from families who had been unhappy with the Shah but had done nothing about it save grumble as they had a lot to lose. But our male lecturer was also a patriotic Iranian. When I enquired it turned out that in the Iraq-Iran war, when he had finished his degree (MSc I think) in London, he had gone straight back to Iran knowing that he would be called up for two years. There they shoved him into the heavy artillery, (175mm) which even if not as dangerous as the infantry was not without its perils. But there you are, patriotic and volunteering for the front, just like Bush and Cheney (dream on). He also said that in that war they had more volunteers than rifles with, I think, a hint of pride. On nuclear weapons I suspect our guides were not totally frank. When asked they said they genuinely did not know but I reckon the same could be said for some other statements they had made but of which they merely had a very good idea. If pressed I am sure they would have said that Iran lived in a very dangerous neighbourhood with nuclear-armed Pakistan to their east, an unstable largely Sunni state which had been handing out nuclear technology to other countries like a child molester hands sweets to kiddies, while on the west Israel threatened first use against a non-nuclear states like theirs – not to speak of US imperialism. What is more the USA had been far kinder to North Korea, which had these ghastly weapons than to Iran which had not. But the two sentences above are only my personal opinion but I believe they were patriotic Iranians without being jingoistic about it. We did see something of a nuclear installation surrounded by AA batteries – the latter looked a bit old fashioned to me - some way north of Ispahan off the main road going north to Teheran. There were piles of rock and earth which I took to be the spoil from digging out underground caverns. But for all I know it may all have been an elaborate hoax.

And our guide mentioned Israel when he told us to take no notice but that their real enemy was the Wahabi Saudi state which regarded them as idolaters, heretics and renegades and he implied that all Iranians knew this. (Our guide in Syria in 2005 never allowed the word Israel to pass his lips, only “Zionists.”) We saw minorities, went to a Zoroastrian fire temple, saw Armenian churches and passed synagogues though the Jewish and Christian minorities are declining because of emigration. There is certainly a real sense of Iranian nationhood, which does not exist in Pakistan, Iraq or Syria, founded on their poetry and we saw a moving scene at the tomb of Hafiz where young boys and girls had come to recite his poems. When I quoted in English the lines:-

“How many vows of repentance are undone

By the smile of wine and the tresses of a girl

Like the vows of Hafiz.”

Our guide immediately quoted them back in Farsi. And there are hundreds of poems and an immense corpus of his work. And because apparently Hafiz said he had seen God in a fire temple and mentioned Jesus both claim him as really one of theirs though in fact he was a Sufi mystic believing that “There are many ways up the mountain”. (I am told that even Iranian rappers sometimes do a bit of Hafiz – and I was told in the UK there is a flourishing Heavy Metal scene, not that the last makes me very interested.) And on the tomb of Cyrus someone had left a bunch of gladioli, not an Islamic sentiment but certainly a national one. There were other charming cultural cum social-political things. Just next to the finest bridge in Ispahan is the tomb, completed it is true a year or two before the revolution, which contains the bodies of two Jewish Americans, a great scholar and his wife, who were most learned about a whole number of Iran’s traditions and history which was put there with the permission of the mayor. The tomb is in pristine condition and thus I deduce there is this welcoming attitude to those from other cultures who have contributed to Iranian knowledge of their culture(s). They have the great self-confidence of the Chinese I think.

There were clearly considerable variations in wealth and income but even the CIA says that this is much the same as Turkey. I cannot say that we saw much of poor areas but our guides complained of universal corruption and the attitudes that existed. When I asked the lecturer what did the Ayatollahs’ children do, did they follow their fathers, he replied that they were shopping till they were dropping in the malls of Vancouver from which I deduced that their fathers were not capable of passing on their values and beliefs in face of all the shallowest and most superficial aspects of western society. One can almost feel sorry for the clerics if that is the case. Our mentors had an entertaining story from a few years back, all the details of which they said had been in the press, of a extremely pious high official who at the same time was having it off with his secretary. Four men in his office, also deeply pious and who had beards - the latter point very important - thought this was absolutely shocking and decided to expose the bounder. According to Sharia law before adultery can be proved it must be seen in the act itself by four men with beards. So they broke in to find him and the lady making the Beast with Two Backs. Alas, they were immediately sacked for violating his privacy and never employed again by the government while he continued on his way, having a certain “influence” in high quarters. So much for Sharia. This sort of thing leads to enormous cynicism and so it must be asked what are the prospects for the regime.

I would argue that given the idiotic American pressure which consolidates the position of the Ayatollahs and given an enormous unemployment rate of 20% or so together with a vast patronage machine of religious charities controlled by the clergy plus the Pasdaran militia, all regular volunteers, all of which helps the poorest, the whole lot fuelled and paid for by oil revenues, (85% of exports) the regime could continue for quite some time. With such a huge unemployment rate the working class, the only political force which could shake things a bit, is pretty passive except for isolated incidents. (I never got the chance of asking about the busmen’s strikes in Teheran last Christmas and their brutal suppression.) Among the population as a whole there must surely be not merely cynicism but a feeling that they have had it with politics. The slaughter, both in the war, the horrible purge of oppositionists in the 80s and early nineties plus their massive emigration must have knocked the stuffing out of them for a bit. What would change things is greater economic growth and rising employment while the quickest way for the West to achieve this would be to lift all sanctions and give cast-iron guarantees that there would be no attack on Iran as long as they did not get nuclear weapons. But do either the Americans or the Ayatollahs want a deal? Will either, even assuming a liberal future American President, want an active Iranian working class? But can sanctions be maintained in a bad recession?

For the details of modern Iranian history I have been using the relevant chapters of The Persians (2007) by Gene R. Garthwaite, a Prof at Dartmouth College in the States. Seems quite good but you have to read between the lines a bit to grasp the class nature of the situation in the great crises of 1953 and 1979-83 while for those of us who believe that consciousness arises from being rather than the other way round he seems to over emphasise the ideological springs of behaviour.

Since coming back to the UK I have heard that this Iranian cultural link to Germany, many archaeologists and linguists were there in the 19th and early 20th century, as well as the relatively larger number of tourists today, was continued in the latter half of the last century as the Russians sub-contracted the Stalinist movement in Iran for the East Germans to manage so that there is a lot of material about the Tudeh in the Stasi archives.

Ted Crawford

(4,859 words)

The following points in these notes were suggested by a left winger (Y.M.) in exile in the UK.

[1] Iran’s Gini coefficient was 44 according to UN in Jan 2008 , and is probably higher now.

[2] Abortion. This is not available to working class women, shanty town dwellers, women in rural areas, mainly because it is only available in private clinics, or unofficial ‘surgeries’

[3] ‘Alcohol prices were much the same as in England but most of the money, instead of going to the government, went to the smuggler.’ The smugglers are associated with the government committees … otherwise it would be impossible to bring alcohol into the country.

[4] Sanctions - it is true that for tourist credit cards and rich Iranians transferring money abroad, Dubai is used to avoid sanctions. However for most Iranians sanctions are not a joke. Major firms from car manufacturers to petrochemical companies are making workers redundant because they can’t buy equipment necessary for production. There is a shortage of some medicines and surgical equipment. Almost all Iranian banks are in the new list of sanctions, at a time of economic uncertainty many people are concerned that their wages will be paid into bank accounts blacklisted by new sanctions

[5] The beggars might not be drug addicts but Iran has a major problem with drug addiction ‘ – A report by the United Nations has found that Iran has the highest drug addiction rate in the world, the Washington Post reported on the 24th Sept 2008’

[6] Prostitution- Illegal however very common. In 2003 when the government briefly considered legal brothels, it estimated that about 300,000 prostitutes worked on the streets of the capital, that figure is much higher now. To this one should add the number of Iranian prostitutes ‘exported’ to the Gulf states. [Ted adds, this would be 1 out of 30-40 women in Iran in the relevant age group and 1 out of 10 women in Teheran were prostitutes which seems very high.]

Is another SWP front possible?

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:57:00 +0000

My reports from last Friday’s demonstration in London, called by 'Another Education is Possible' to oppose cuts in grants.

“You’re lucky you're late, there was hardly anyone here at the time we were meant to start”. This is how one member of the Socialist Worker's Party greeted me on arrival at the 'emergency' demonstration called by new SWP student front Another Education is Possible. There was not much of a hello from the others present either. At that point – half an hour after the demo was due to start – there were 40 people there at most. Rather despondent, everybody stood around wondering what to do next. SWP student organiser Rob Owen started shouting into a megaphone, but it was not having much of an effect on the mood of the masses. Some confused public school kids in bright purple blazers came up, wondering what was happening. They weren’t the only ones asking that question...

I need to explain who 'everybody' is in this context, as it was unfortunately not a throng of angry, potentially revolutionary youth keen to snap up revolutionary propaganda and get involved. It consisted instead of the 'usual suspects'. The majority were SWP members; the AWL, Revo and I completed the student left spectrum. I was accompanied by a comrade who wanted to leaflet for Hands Off the People of Iran, but he soon left to carry on with uni work once he realised he would be leafleting the ‘factions’ as opposed to the ‘masses’. I was tempted to go with him. At one point it looked as if we were all going to be sent packing anyway; the relatively large posse of coppers, spurred on by the fact that nobody had actually turned up, were giving the organisers much grief. In all fairness though they held their ground, and with our ranks swelled by a small group of anarchists and latecomers we went forth onto the streets of London, much to the bemusement of onlookers. The great thing about a small demo though (by this point about 50-60 people) is that you can be quite nimble on your feet. So it came to pass that the crafty leaders of the march sold the cops a dummy, and in a militant gesture to the world working class actually walked on the road around a roundabout! This was serious stuff.

Slogans chanted at the demo were very much of the cut and paste variety – “you say cutback we say fightback”, “we want them all to see, education must be free” and did not inspire much anger or enthusiasm amongst those present. Something of interest though was the relative openness of the SWP members in talking and discussing politics at the end – something I have not experienced for a while. Maybe it was because there was actually no basis to the usual argument of ‘let’s stop talking about stupid things like the popular frontist nature of Respect and its relationship to Marxism, as I have to go and speak to all the angry people out there’ etc. Maybe it was just because they were bored and wanted a bit of a bun fight. Whatever the reason, I had good discussions with some SWPers and exchanged views in a comradely manner.

Having said that, one did say that the CPGB had issued death threats to SWP members in the Socialist Alliance. A quite bizarre allegation which says a lot about the political culture of the SWP; slander used to isolate members from debate and maintain ideological purity. I find striking the disdain with which ordinary members are treated in the hope of creating so-called ‘activists’, i.e. leaflet fodder for the current scheme of the SWP leadership. When asked whether they had an internal discussion list to talk politics, or whether it was possible to organise into permanent factions and hold the leadership to account, the members I spoke with seemed genuinely convinced that such channels did exist. They do not, of course – something which I pointed out. Such was the openness of conversation that one member then argued the SWP “needed people like me” who would stand up and argue for change. I politely pointed out that my chances of being allowed in are roughly the same as anti-imperialist David Broder had in getting elected to the Executive Committee of the AWL not so long ago.

It does not seem too cynical to suggest that the real 'emergency' this demo was addressing was the urgent need to find something -anything- for SWP students to do after the collapse of Student Respect. Yes, the demo was on a Friday evening, called at very short notice and opposed the cutting of a grant that most students will drink away before even knowing it exists. But comrades, was it really worth it? It could have been an afternoon spent drawing together 50 leading comrades together in order to discuss some politics, learn from each other how to overcome the ridiculous state of the student left and talk about future work. I often wonder how small and politically moribund the left has to get before it realises that it is time to unite our amateur and feuding forces around the political strategy of Marxism. Of course, it would be great if Santa really would come this year, but such things are not granted. They are fought for. To quote Rosa Luxemburg in reference to her frustrating and at times fruitless struggles with Bernstein in the early 20th century, every historical period has to be durchgefressen – eaten through.

Devil and deep blue sea

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:39:00 +0000

Some 250 people packed into Conway Hall for the November 15 annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee. Here is my take on it and the key questions facing the Labour left

Despite, for the most part, not getting much younger, those attending the LRC conference were certainly optimistic about the coming period. Talk was very upbeat about the prospects for ‘socialism’ and the success of the LRC, which now boasts 150 affiliated organisations, including six unions, and 1,000 members.

This sense of confidence and urgency was underlined by the hectic agenda: 20 motions, committee elections, trade union caucuses at lunchtime, and a whole number of platform speakers - Tony Benn, MPs Katy Clarke, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, trade union general secretaries Matt Wrack and Jeremy Dear, plus guests from Norway and Denmark.

‘My favourite’
The indefatigable LRC founding member, Tony Benn, kicked off proceedings. He is still around, as he put it, to “blow on the flames of anger and hope” and is brimming with “confidence” that we can make an impact in these stormy times. I do not know how many times he has spoken of “turning points” in his life, but he assured us that the financial crisis was the most historic occasion “since the fall of the Berlin wall”.

He lavished praise on the recent Convention of the Left event for bringing us together on the question of “what needed to be done” and for taking us “into the movements” - as opposed to the arid attempt to achieve what he calls “ideological unity”. Didn’t we know that you can’t have “a pure socialist party”? He once more described the Weekly Worker as his favourite paper, declaring, to much applause, that we “write about left unity on page 1, but then proceed to attack everyone on pages 2, 3, 4 and 5”.

Jeremy Dear of the National Union of Journalists made a good speech indicting the hypocrisy of those in power - a theme also picked up by Fire Brigades Union leader Matt Wrack. Millions of people are angry and we need to organise to bring about political, economic and social change. Both of these union lefts spoke of how socialism is no longer discredited and urged us to prepare for a battle between free-market ideas and our own. They also referred to joint action over pay in order to forge unity across the unions from below, but, of course, there was no concrete proposal as to how this would arise and who would coordinate it.

Comrade Wrack made a good point about the need for a political fightback which no single union would be able to wage, but he did not mention the political alternative that will be necessary to counter the stifling effects of the labour bureaucracy and make “TUC paper policies something real”.

John McDonnell reminded us of the struggles that followed the recession of the early 1980s. Our tasks are great and we cannot let one or two minor points come between us, as in the past - the left has acted as though it almost enjoys being divided: “Those who try and split us are objectively working against us” - especially in these times: “People are looking to the left” and the LRC, as the biggest group uniting the left inside and outside the Labour Party, is best placed to answer their questions.

Comrade McDonnell said we need a “broad united front” working alongside the unions to defend the class. The time has now gone for selling each other papers and recruiting ones and twos - that is in the past, whereas now we are “on the march again”. As the rest of the conference was to show though, we are hardly about to see such unity take organisational form, least of all on the basis of a principled working class programme.

As is usual on such occasions, although the platform speakers made some points upon which we can all agree about the anarchy of the market and so on, the disproportionate amount of time they were allotted meant that the time for genuine debate was reduced accordingly. Motions were proposed and discussed in batches under different themes rather than individually. Speakers from the floor were allowed two minutes, whilst those moving motions got a generous three.

Motions
The LRC committee statement, ‘Rising to the challenge’, continued along the lines of the platform speeches. It declared that “we can only succeed if we can unite the wide-ranging but often fragmented resources of the left and progressive movements within our society” and contained a left reformist shopping list - “supporting public ownership and opposing privatisation, redistributing wealth and power, democratising control of our economy, investing in public services and public housing, tackling climate change, reasserting trade union rights, equal rights and civil liberties, and opposing war and securing peace”. In other words, a combination of platitudes and vague measures to be implemented by an old Labour-type government.

A motion from the Campaign for Socialism called for “an alternative strategy which takes us in a socialist direction, away from individualised solutions to the crisis”. It was far from clear what was to be understood by “a socialist direction”, however. For example, one speaker said, “If Obama can tax the rich, then so can we”, while a lunchtime caucus was devoted to so-called ‘Scandinavian socialism’. The Socialist Appeal motion, on the other hand, called for full-scale nationalisation of the banks, utilities, transport, food distribution and the remnants of industry - the SA speaker explained that “workers’ control” of these nationalised industries would be implemented “through the TUC and the government”.

I am not sure how compatible this is with the motion from the Commune, which committed the LRC to “set as its goal a system of genuine social ownership, organised on the basis of workers’ self-management, a system of participatory democracy based on the sovereignty of those who produce the goods and services in society”. In any case, both were passed.

Also successful was the motion from Lambeth and Southwark calling for an LRC campaign “equivalent to Stop the War” for “democratic public ownership” and a “major programme of public works”.

Hopi affiliation
The international section of the conference supported two principled motions on the politics of the Middle East, correctly recognising that internationalism is a central tenet of a working class fightback.

I moved the motion calling for affiliation to Hands Off the People of Iran on behalf of the Socialist Youth Network, the LRC youth wing which had already affiliated to Hopi earlier in the year. Pointing out the increased likelihood of inter-imperialist rivalry and the fact that one of the best ways for capitalism to resolve crisis historically has been through war, I underlined how urgently Hopi’s political outlook is needed in the struggle for a working class policy independent of both imperialism and the Iranian theocracy.

The motion was overwhelmingly passed, with only an unholy alliance of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, New Communist Party and Communist Party of Britain voting against. None of these groups chose to speak on the motion though. Interestingly the Morning Star report of the conference quoted my speech approvingly, but ‘forgot’ to mention the affiliation to Hopi or the fact that Star staff member Ivan Beavis and his comrades actually opposed it (November 17).

AWL number two Martin Thomas chose to speak against the LRC anti-war commission motion on Iraq “not so much for what it says as what it doesn’t say”. However, he went on to say that the call for “the immediate withdrawal of troops” contained in the motion might imply “handing over Iraq to sectarian militias”, so perhaps what it said did trouble him after all. It was overwhelmingly carried, of course.

Labour adjunct?
Many of the policies passed are certainly supportable, but how are they to be implemented in the absence of a political organisation capable of actually carrying them out, linking up the different campaigns and uniting our class in the fight for socialism? There are a quite a few different opinions within the LRC on this question.

Chair Simeon Andrews, for example, has come in for quite a bit of flak from the more traditionalist Labour wing of the LRC for inviting leading Socialist Party member and Campaign for a New Workers’ Party chair Janice Godrich to speak at the LRC fringe meeting at this year’s TUC. In his speech he defended this decision by referring to the “tidal wave of disgust” at the New Labour project, and underlined the need to “think outside the box” by speaking to those who “share a class analysis”. Quite right.

Yet not everyone was of this opinion, and it was only in the debate resulting from the AWL’s motion on “working class representation” - a more or less carbon copy of the one moved the year before - that these differences came out into the open. The AWL bemoaned the fact that “no union leadership has challenged the Bournemouth decision to ban political motions to Labour conference” and called for the LRC to support not only official candidates who are “loyal to the labour movement”, but also “non-Labour socialist candidates adopted with the support of local workers’ representation committees or other substantial bodies of the local labour movement”. This was the only motion which attracted much debate, and the only one to be voted down.

LRC treasurer Graham Bash spoke of a “class-based party”, by which, of course, he meant Labour. Our task is to reclaim this party, not try to set up something which could only be a sect that would stand in elections and get a derisory vote. He argued that the history of our movement was “littered with the corpses of those who tried and failed” to establish an alternative. This was echoed by Communication Workers Union executive member Gary Heather, who said our task was to “refound Labour as a party of radical change”.

The AWL speaker, John Maloney, neatly summed up the AWL’s (and indeed most of the left’s) ‘third period Bernsteinism’ - the Labour Party is now a bosses’ party and the answer to this is … Labourism!

Old Labour for New
He argued that “probably it was true that 40 years ago the Labour Party was synonymous with working class politics”, whereas today, as his comrade, Duncan Morrison, put it, it is “no longer a vehicle for working class representation in any form”. The LRC must therefore be ready to support candidates against Labour.

Both sides of this debate essentially agree on the need for a Labour Party, but the AWL insists that the LRC should effectively arrange to be kicked out of the existing one - others pointed out that this would amount to committing suicide. Morrison claimed such people had a “shaky grasp of history”. He reminded us that at the start of the 20th century the majority of unions looked to the Liberal Party. Back then lots of people argued against ‘breaking the link’, and it was a brave minority who campaigned for what was to become the Labour Party.

Yet we must be clear what the Labour is and always has been - the project to reduce working class politics to economic issues within the framework of her majesty’s imperial government - ‘socialism’ and clause four were merely sound bites aimed at keeping control over a British working class which had been inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917.

It is hardly the duty of Marxists to argue for such a party, let alone call on the trade union bureaucracy to do it, as the AWL insists on doing (see ‘Why won’t union leaders fight for a workers’ party?’: www.workersliberty.org/node/10669). The Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Labour Party, the Scottish Socialist Party and the experience of Respect underline how trying to break the working class from Labourism by offering them a smaller version of the same thing simply will not cut the mustard.

Marxism
Although the LRC is rightly pleased to have organised such a well attended conference, the key political questions posed by the lack of working class representation remain unanswered. Is it the task of the left to ‘reclaim’ the Labour Party or build ‘something new’? If so, what? Should it be another party or just a loose network? All into the Convention of the Left?

In a situation where the Labour left is now so marginalised that comrade McDonnell was unable even to get onto the ballot for the 2006 leadership contest and where the far left is in programmatic and organisational meltdown, the LRC seems to be stuck between the New Labour devil and the deep blue sectarian sea.

Tony Benn is correct, in a very limited sense, to say it is not the “ideological unity” that creates sects that we should be striving for. What is required is unity on the basis of a practical programme - that can be summed up under the headings of working class independence, democracy in respect of both the state and the workers’ movement, and consistent internationalism. These three Marxist principles are diametrically opposed to Labourism.

Karl Kautsky: The Intellectuals and the Workers

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:00:00 +0000

(Stolen from the website of the excellent Marxist journal, Revolutionary History) - http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/

Part of the very problem which once again so keenly preoccupies our attention is the antagonism between the intellectuals and the proletariat.

My colleagues will for the most part wax indignant at my admission of this antagonism. But it actually exists, and as in other cases, it would be a most inexpedient tactic to try to cope with this fact by ignoring it.

This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes and not individuals. An individual intellectual, like an individual capitalist, may join the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his fellows, that we shall deal with in the following lines. Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual. who take the standpoint of bourgeois society and who are characteristic of intellectuals as a whole, who stand in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.

This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. An intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he has to sell the product of his labour, and frequently his labour. power; and he is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalists. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.

As an isolated individual, the proletarian is a nonentity. His strength, his progress, his hopes and expectations are entirely derived from organisation, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels himself big and strong when he is part of a big and strong organism. The organism is the main thing for him; the individual by comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, performing his duty in any post assigned to him, with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.

Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He fights not by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability and his personal convictions. He can attain a position only through his personal abilities. Hence the freest play for these seems to him the prime condition for success. It is only with difficulty that he submits to serving as a part which is subordinate to the whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the masses, not for the select few. And naturally he counts himself among the latter,

In addition to this antagonism between the intellectual and the proletarian in sentiment, there is yet another antagonism. The intellectual, armed with the general education of our time, conceives himself as very superior to the proletarian. Even Engels writes of the scholarly mystification with which he approached workers in his youth. The intellectual finds it very easy to overlook in the proletarian his equal as a fellow fighter, at whose side in the combat he must take his place. Instead he sees in the proletarian the latter's low level of intellectual development, which it is the intellectual's task to raise. He sees in the worker not a comrade but a pupil. The intellectual clings to Lassalle's aphorism on the bond between science and the proletariat, a bond which will raise society to a higher plane. As advocate of science, the intellectuals come to the workers not in order to co-operate with them as comrades, but as an especially friendly external force in society, offering them aid.

For Lassalle, who coined the aphorism on science and the proletariat, science, like the state, stands above the class struggle. Today we know this to be false. For the state is the instrument of the ruling class. Moreover, science itself rises above the classes only insofar as it does not deal with classes, that is, only insofar as it is a natural and not a social science. A scientific examination of society produces an entirely different conclusion when society is observed from a class standpoint, especially from the standpoint of a class which is antagonistic to that society. When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught, no matter whether his origin is academic or proletarian. The object of study is the activity of the proletariat itself, its role in the process of production, its role in the class struggle. Only from this activity can the theory, the self-consciousness of the proletariat, arise.

The alliance of science with labour and its goal of saving humanity, must therefore be understood not in the sense which the academicians transmit to the people the knowledge which they gain in the bourgeois classroom, but rather in this sense that every one of our co-fighters, academicians and proletarians alike, who are capable of participating in proletarian activity, utilise the common struggle or at least investigate it, in order to draw new scientific knowledge which can in turn be fruitful for further proletarian activity. Since that is how the matter stands, it is impossible to conceive of science being handed down to the proletariat or of an alliance between them as two independent powers. That science, which can contribute to the emancipation of the proletariat, can be developed only by the proletariat and through it. What the liberals bring over from the bourgeois scientific circles cannot serve to expedite the struggle for emancipation, but often only to retard it.

The remarks which follow are by way of digression from our main theme. But today when the question of the intellectuals is of such extreme importance, the digression is not perhaps without value.

Nietzsche's philosophy with its cult of superman for whom the fulfilment of his own individuality is everything and the subordination of the individual to a great social aim is as vulgar as it is despicable, this philosophy is the real philosophy of the intellectual; and it renders him totally unfit to participate in the class struggle of the proletariat.

Next to Nietzsche, the most outstanding spokesman of a philosophy based on the sentiments of the intellectual is Ibsen. His Doctor Stockmann (An Enemy of the People) is not a socialist, as so many believe, but rather the type of intellectual who is bound to come into conflict with the proletarian movement, and with any popular movement generally, as soon as he attempts to work within it. For the basis of the proletarian movement, as of every democratic movement, is respect for the majority of one's fellows. A typical intellectual a la Stockmann regards a "compact majority" as a monster which must be overthrown.

From the difference in sentiment between the proletarian and the intellectual, which we have noted above, a conflict can easily arise between the intellectual and the party when the intellectual joins it. That holds equally even if his joining the party does not give rise to any economic difficulties for the intellectual, and even though his theoretical understanding of the movement may be adequate. Not only the very worst elements, but often men of splendid character and devoted to their convictions have on this account suffered shipwreck in the party.

That is why every intellectual must examine himself conscientiously, before joining the party. And that is why the party must examine him to see whether he can integrate himself in the class struggle of the proletariat, and become immersed in it as a simple soldier, without feeling coerced or oppressed. Whoever is capable of this can contribute valuable services to the proletariat according to his talents, and gain great satisfaction from his party activity. Whoever is incapable can expect great friction, disappointment, conflicts, which are of advantage neither to him nor to the party.

An ideal example of an intellectual who thoroughly assimilated the sentiments of a proletarian, and who, although a brilliant writer, quite lost the specific manner of an intellectual, who marched cheerfully with the rank-and-file, who worked in any post assigned to him, who devoted himself wholeheartedly to our great cause, and despised the feeble whinings about the suppression of one's individuality, as individuals trained in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Ibsen are prone to do whenever they happen to be in a minority - that ideal example of the intellectual whom the socialist movement needs, was Wilhelm Liebknecht. We might also mention Marx, who never forced himself to the forefront, and whose hearty discipline in the International, where he often found himself in the minority, was exemplary.

In Defence of Defeatism

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:59:00 +0000

I reprint here a Facebook debate between myself, Sacha Ismail of the AWL and David Broder of The Commune, who left the AWL when he was asked to pen an article condemning a position on Iran that he agreed with! I think it is important to reprint this debate in order to draw out just how deeply ‘theorised’ the AWL’s social imperialism is, and how this ‘theory’ flies not only in the face of the historical experience of the workers’ movement, but also in the face of current global political reality. Sacha’s guff about HOPI being “Iranian defencist” is merely a fig-leaf for his Israeli defencism. I have dealt with this rubbish here (http://benjamin-edgar-klein.blogspot.com/2008/03/pro-imperialists-snubbed.html):

“It betrays a certain formal logic to argue that calling for the defeat of one’s ‘own’ imperialist state means automatically supporting the forces it happens to be in conflict with. We call for the defeat of the US and UK because they are imperialist states and their actions are therefore against the international interests of the working class. But we do not support the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad any more than we supported that of Saddam Hussein. We wish to see their defeat too - at the hands of the working class! But there is no question as to which is the greater enemy - imperialism, not Saddam, Ahmadinejad or political islam”.

Scratching the surface you see that the AWL’s approach to this question is merely an inversion of the trotskyist schema that ‘if we are for the defeat of imperialism then that means we support the forces engaged in battle with them’.

Katie Buse wrote
at 16:18 on 14 October 2008
sacha,

The AWL supported Israel's right to a preemtive strike on Iran, which would horrify most sane Israelis as far as I can see.
Did anyone go? what was it like?

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 21:37 on 14 October 2008
That's great, Kate, except for the fact that it's not actually, you know, true. We oppose any Israeli strike on Iran. If that's not clear enough, let me explain. We are against it, we don't want it to happen, we will participate in actions to stop it from happening.
As a member of the AWL national committee, I have some idea of what I'm talking about. In any case, that's a unanimous AWL position.
Let me ask you: what do you think about the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons?
A proper report soon.

Benjamin Edgar Klein wrote
at 22:51 on 14 October 2008
As a member of the AWL National Committee, Sacha will indeed know what is going on.

Thus it is quite strange that he fails to mention that at one of these NC meetings in August his own amendment to say that the AWL should "oppose" an attack was defeated. 5-8 I think. Still AWL policy to "oppose" from their last conference, but not the view now held by the majority of their leadership.

Still, oppose or not, we are still within the framework of liberalism. Marxism however calls for international working class unity for defeatism, ie exploiting that crisis to make revolution. Yet the AWL dismiss this as "supporting the victory of Iran". Just Like Lenin supported the victory of the German Kaiser in WW1, one presumes...

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 08:59 on 15 October 2008

Ben, this is ridiculous. Our NC discussed whether to replace the word "against" with "oppose" in a motion. That's all. Since then, the committee member who you accuse of not opposing an attack on Iran, Sean, has written several articles in which he makes his opposition quite clear, including by using the word "oppose". Yawn.

So you can't be a Marxist unless you support Lenin's "revolutionary defeatist" position in WW1? So Trotsky and Luxemburg were liberals were they, when they opposed the war but rejected Lenin's "defeatism"? Defeatism is not exploiting the crisis to make revolution - "turn the imperialist war into a civil war"; that was common to all the revolutionary anti-war socialists, including those like Trotsky and Luxemburg who rejected "defeatism".

Are you totally politically illiterate?

Hal Draper's "The Myth of Lenin's Revolutionary Defeatism"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1953/defeat/index.htm

Just a point of clarification. Of course "defeatism" - being for the defeat of your own or a particular government - is appropriate in a war where you want the other side to win militarily. Eg, being defeatist in your attitude to the US in the Vietnam War. The whole argument here is about whether it makes sense to talk about "defeatism" in a war where you oppose both sides, like WW1. (Or in a different form, I would argue, the US vs Iran.)

Hal Draper: "Bury the dead. The tradition of Lenin’s defeatism was born in a political mistake in 1904-1905; it was revived in confusion in 1914, to be shelved without stock-taking in 1917; it was revived again in malice and reaction in 1924; it was turned into a hollow phrase by “explaining away” in the 1930s; it was ignored in the 1940s; and muddled into a pro-war stew in the 1950s; and any war policy based on it can only be disorienting or worse... the policy of the Third Camp... was the real content also of Lenin’s war policy when he ignored the hollow formulas of defeat."

David Broder wrote
at 09:51 on 15 October 2008
So, Sacha, do you think that Lenin was for the military victory of Germany in 1916?

Nonsense.

Without arguing your case, you just quote Draper like gospel (shame that AWL is now hostile to his ideas on "socialism from below" though - http://www.workersliberty.org/node/1206 - ) and indeed defend his idea of "military support"... and you advocate military support for the Vietcong. Thus your "third campism" collapses.

And indeed on Israel/Iran... Third campism is the positive assertion of working-class politics, not teetering between competing imperialist blocs. In this particular case leaning to the "good country" against the "bad". Israel is called "one of the most democratic societies on Earth", and the last Solidarity featured an article welcoming Tzipi Livni's coming to power. Not by an AWL member... but why print this nonsense?

You shouldn't misrepresent your NC decision by writing that the AWL opposes an attack. Surely writing "oppose" is capitulation to the kitsch left?

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 12:14 on 15 October 2008
No, David, I don't think Lenin was for a German victory in 1916; the whole point is that "defeatism" was a confused expression of the "third camp" policy of opposing both sides which he shared with eg Trotsky - which is why he quietly dropped it.

Do you think Trotsky and Luxemburg were somehow less anti-war than Lenin because they rejected his "defeatism"?

I don't quote Draper "like gospel"; I simply think he puts it better than me. Also, the 1,000 limit on these messages is a bit cramping for arguments!

Yes, we support Kadima, of course. Never mind that we have a long record of rejecting support for the Israeli Labor Party on the grounds that it's a bourgeois party. Can't you do better than that?

Benjamin Edgar Klein wrote
at 15:16 on 15 October 2008
Sacha,

Draper is wrong on this, and so are you. For several reasons:

1.Revolutionary defeatism - including defeatist propaganda in the armed forces - was the essence of the split in the second international - ie this is the context of Lenin's debate with Trotsky - the necessity to break with the right as well as the centre who vacillated on this question.

2.Lenin did not drop revolutionary defeatism, as Draper argues - it is codified in the (1920) 21 conditions of the Communist Interntaional - 4,6 and 8. Again, these do not fit very well with your idea that: "No Marxist, even in the classic period of anti-colonial revolt in the 20s to the 60s, used the "troops out now" slogan".

3.Defeatism is crucial to the success of an anti-war movement, which is why Vietnam is important - not only was military recruitment hindered, but systematic defeatist agitation carried out amongst the troops.
4. I agree with Draper in the limited sense that what has become of "revolutionary defeatism" amongst the Trots today is "revolutionary defencism" as an acid test of one's revolutionary credentials. I think this is also why Draper gets it so drastically wrong - he is looking to fight these ideas, but ends up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, despite writing stuff on Marx which actually completely undermines this nonsense (War and Revolution, Vol 5 for example) Lenin's defeatism in WW1 was correct, vindicated indeed by the Russian Revolution itself.

Given that you also refuse to condemn in advance an Israeli attack on Iran, I suspect this could be an underlying reason for your opposition to defeatism, as for you after all it might just not be a reactionary war on both sides, as you make explicit here:

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/09/10/when-marxists-fall-out-or-defence-sean-matgamna

"Do you condemn the destruction of the Syrian reactor last year? Really? If Israel destroyed Iran's nuclear facilities and the casualties and consequences were similar to those in Syria, would you really condemn it? The point is that it is perfectly possible to oppose an attack now - not just because we judge the consequences would be a lot worse in this case, but because of what Israel is, because of what it may use the attack as an opportunity to do etc etc - without committing yourself to "condemning" after the fact when you don't yet know what the consequences will be. Anything else is just phrase-mongering".

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 16:14 on 15 October 2008
***The 21 Conditions say nothing about defeatism***, except implying it (no use of the phrase) in relation to imperialist rule over the colonies, where it is uncontroversial for us. The debate is about whether it's appropriate for all wars involving imperialist states, even ones where revolutionaries oppose both sides. Btw, are you also "defeatist" for Iran or just for the US?

Where do you get the idea that it's included in points 4, 6 and 8?

"4. The duty of propagating communist ideas includes the special obligation of forceful and systematic propaganda in the army. Where this agitation is interrupted by emergency laws it must be continued illegally. Refusal to carry out such work would be tantamount to a betrayal of revolutionary duty and would be incompatible with membership of the Communist International."

6. "Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International has the obligation to unmask not only open social-patriotism but also the insincerity and hypocrisy of social-pacificism, to show the workers systematically that, without the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, no international court of arbitration, no agreement on the limitation of armaments, no 'democratic' reorganisation of the League of Nations will be able to prevent new imperialist wars."

8. "A particularly marked and clear attitude on the question of the colonies and oppressed nations is necessary on the part of the communist parties of those countries whose bourgeoisies are in possession of colonies and oppress other nations. Every party that wishes to belong to the Communist International has the obligation of exposing the dodges of its 'own' imperialists in the colonies, of supporting every liberation movement in the colonies not only in words but in deeds, of demanding that their imperialist compatriots should be thrown out of the colonies, of cultivating in the hearts of the workers in their own country a truly fraternal relationship to the working population in the colonies and to the oppressed nations, and of carrying out systematic propaganda among their own country’s troops against any oppression of colonial peoples."

Note the rational assumption that wanting the defeat of one side means wanting the victory of the other.

So, no mention of defeatism at all. You're totally wrong. Isn't this embarrassing?

I repeat: what do you say to the fact that a large part of the anti-war revolutionary left in WW1, including Trotsky and Luxemburg, opposed Lenin's "defeatist" position?

David Broder wrote
at 16:23 on 15 October 2008
Except, Sacha, that in fact you believe that you can want the defeat of your "own" bourgeoisie, but only want the "military" (not "political") victory of the other side! Your logic certainly implies that you would "take sides" particularly in the cases where the AWL and its forerunners called for troops out now (e.g. Afghanistan, Ireland, Vietnam)

Of course there is no meaningful separation between the military and political sides of a war.

You can be for the defeat of all bourgeois camps by class struggle across borders. But you are posing it in terms of "who do you want to win, the Stalinists or the US imperialists/the Islamists or the US imperialists?"

And (it's a simple question), what's the Livni article about? What kind of dialogue is that meant to open up?

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 16:26 on 15 October 2008
David, you conflate "victory" and "revolution". Yes, of course we want our own ruling class, every ruling class, to be "defeated" by the working class. But in response to every war your position is simply "We need workers' revolution". That doesn't answer the question. Eg what about the Spanish civil war - would you simply have opposed both sides?

You have a different position from those you are allied with here, eg the CPGB. From the logic of your argument, you would be "defeatist" for both the US and Iran. In fact, for all sides in all wars. Ben, by contrast, is only defeatist for the US - which is why his position is a version of Iranian defencism.

Sorry, forgot about that. It was an interesting article by a prominent Israeli peace activist. We don't agree with it, of coruse. I know you think that every article needs to begin and end "That's why we need a struggle for workers' control", but what's the problem with printing interesting articles by such people?

David Broder wrote
at 16:42 on 15 October 2008
Not that your characterisation of what I write is vaguely true (Unlike Martin T, Paul H etc, I am not one for ending articles with bullet point programmes), but why should a "Marxist" paper feature articles which are nothing but geopolitics and ignore labour movement forces?

In this case, could it be that you don't differentiate between the class forces on the ground, as long as they're for two states? (This is also why you now support Fatah). Two states could mean anything, you should root your coverage in the struggles of the Middle Eastern workers' movements (who, if you've forgotten, are the people our support for self-determination is meant to help)

No doubt you'll reply that you "always" bang on about trade unions in Palestine and that Sean Matgamna is an expert on the Iranian workers' movement. Never mind that it's so well hidden.

Why do you assume that "all sides in all wars" are all bourgeois governments?

I am a dual defeatist in conflicts between bourgeois governments and their armies. I am for the defeat of the Iranian regime and of the US government. I would have been for the defeat of the Spanish Republic by the revolutionary workers' movement (which it crushed, partly thanks to the misleadership of the CNT and POUM)... as a necessary complement to the struggle against the fascists in the east.

Must you persist in referring to governments with country names? ("Iran", "the USA", "the Israelis" etc.) It shows an abstract and undynamic understanding of the conflict, and reflects your willingness to side with one "country" against another.

Sacha Ismail wrote
at 16:51 on 17 October 2008
David,
I'm sorry for not replying to your comments. I will do soon when I have more time.
For now I'd just like to note that Ben has not come back on the question of the 21 Conditions. He claimed that "revolutionary defeatism" was included in points 4, 6 and 8 - a claim which I have proved with quotations of the relevant sections is not true!
Erm...

Benjamin Edgar Klein wrote at 18:05 on 17 October 2008

Sacha,

This is moronic. Any idiot can quote the sections I mentioned and scream: Look, the words revolutionary defeatism do not even feature. There are factors of appearance and essence though.

Lenin argued (correctly in my view) not just for a split with the right, but also the centre, and even sections of the left that clung to the unity of the second international. His reasoning was that anti-imperialism only has meaning if one is defeatist – ie carries out systematic agitation in the army for such a defeat and for the soldiers turning on their officers to facilitate revolution . this line was confirmed both in a positive and negative sense. Positively on the one hand by the experience of 1917 itself, and negatively, by the reaction of those to 1917 who were the very same people Lenin argued for a split with. As Lenin wrote in 1914 (ie before he purportedly dropped defeatism):

“Refusal to serve with the forces, anti-war strikes, etc, are sheer nonsense, the miserable and cowardly dram of an unarmed struggle against the armed bourgeoisie, vain yearning for the destruction of capitalism without a desperate civil war or series of wars. It is the duty of every socialist to conduct propaganda of the class struggle, in the army as well; work directed towards turning a war of nations into civil war is the only socialist activity in the era of imperialist armed conflict of the bourgeoisie of al nations”.
Now, the words ‘revolutionary defeatism’ do not feature. Well done Sherlock. One wishes the Russian leadership would have had the prescience to write it down as a term in order to look out for people garbling history to justify their social imperialism by culling quotes, but they didn’t. Yet in each of the condtions you quote, there is a revolutionary defeatist thread which runs through them all – ie the political essence of defeatism outlined in the quote above is maintained.

In 1920, the Russian leadership wanted an even cleaner break with elements who vacillated on this question, leading to the 21 conditions.

"4. The duty of propagating communist ideas includes the special obligation of forceful and systematic propaganda in the army. Where this agitation is interrupted by emergency laws it must be continued illegally. Refusal to carry out such work would be tantamount to a betrayal of revolutionary duty and would be incompatible with membership of the Communist International." – what do you think the army agitation is for Sacha, sexy uniforms?

6. Exposing social pacificism and social patriotism – ie precisely those elements Lenin was arguing against in the second International

8. Systematic agiation amongst the armed forces against the oppression – again, following your twisted logic, another example of agitating for the victory of the other side

The rest of your stuff on me as an Iranian defencist and that David and I have completely different positions is just bunk, and I will return to it. Remember, part of the reason why the AWL leadership went barmy and demanded from David that he write an article condemning the CPGB position he is in broad agreement with as an act of loyalty, is precisely because we have a similar take on this question. War against the CPGB, take sides David etc? Matgamna's words, not mine. David was and is for the defeat of the AWL on this question (like everyone vaguely left-wing) but not necessarily for the CPGB’s victory…hence the Commune I suppose.

Liam Finn back on tour in the UK

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:51:00 +0000

Here is a video of the awesome Liam Finn and Eliza-Jane Barnes playing a special version of 'Second Chance' with members of the band they toured with in the US, The Veils. They are back in the UK touring this November and December, so pop along to and check out their musical talents. More details of the tour dates at http://www.myspace.com/theliamfinn

Connecting with new layers

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:07:00 +0000

Communist Students has certainly stepped up our game in the last couple of weeks, having a presence at freshers fairs in 17 universities, where we distributed around 4,000 copies of the latest issue of our paper, Communist Student (see communiststudents.org.uk). This was specifically designed to introduce our organisation and to provide a broad outline of our politics on themes such as capitalism in decline, the threat of war on Iran and the environment.

As you would expect, we had some very interesting discussions with students from all sorts of backgrounds and political outlooks, and were able to get a snapshot of political opinion and sentiment amongst the campus population. We established numerous contacts and drew a new layer of interested and sympathetic comrades around us - particularly in Manchester, where there was a lot of interest in our work.

I am sure my experience was similar to that of other comrades (and indeed most of the left) in that I found the response from students warmer than in previous years. The reasons for this are obvious. The financial crisis, combined with the fact that the words ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ are currently being thrown around in the bourgeois media every day, certainly gave us more of a pitch. As one open Tory supporter in Kingston put it to me, as she took a copy of CS almost in spite of herself, “I would say communism doesn’t work, but then again I can hardly claim that capitalism is working, can I?”

Numerous other anecdotal examples from the fairs underline how the political atmosphere has changed. Yet we should not get over-excited about this and fall into the trap that a looming recession and the prospect of millions of people being forced into austere living conditions will immediately and automatically favour the left. Class-consciousness is still at an extremely low level - something quite clearly highlighted by the apolitical, commercialised and tightly regulated affairs that freshers fairs still are. And unfortunately most students are out to get freebies and discount vouchers, as opposed to new political ideas.

Nevertheless, there is the beginnings of a new sentiment amongst students which communists can tap into. With a growing minority starting to question the rationality of the current economic system, it is clear that we in CS should be confident about our ideas and our ability to influence and win new layers.

Communist Students is quite clear about what is needed - a mass student movement where the hegemonic ideas are those of Marxism as a living and breathing guide to action and political practice. We are clear that this is nothing like the stale, narrow and economistic outlook peddled by the existing left. As the failings of the system of capital are revealed for all to see, the left sects are still offering fronts like Another Education is Possible and Education Not for Sale.

Yes, the struggle for free education and grants is important, particularly given the coming review of the cap on fees. Yes, we should question the nature of education under capitalism and the role it plays in readying young people for the workforce through continuous assessments and examinations.

But we need to be much more audacious - more and more students are searching for the big, global ideas in answer to both capitalism’s obvious failings and their own alienating individual experience. We should not limit ourselves to trade union-type demands, but point to a new communist society and show what needs to be done in order to get there.

Arming ourselves with Marxism must be central to our work. We now have CS cells in Cardiff, London, Manchester and Sheffield, and each of these groups devotes a good amount of its time to collective study and discussion. This does not mean that we in CS are aiming to produce clones, as some of our critics allege. What it means is winning students to Marxist politics through a culture of open, honest and critical debate, which allows for the frankest exchange of ideas.

We need to develop cadre who are in it for the long haul and who are willing to become rounded Marxists. What currently blights left student politics is the insistence on activism for the sake of activism - well-meaning young radicals are encouraged to rally behind the latest single-issue or reformist campaign. They receive no genuine education beyond narrow sect dogma, and are certainly not encouraged to study the political viewpoints of opponents on the left. Those who do - especially when it comes to the ideas of the CPGB and CS - are often told to sling their hook.

Those who remain become little more than mouthpieces for promoting the latest sect wheeze. This is an unacceptable way to treat what are to begin with honest and enthusiastic young people who want an end to capitalism and have vague notions about a better and more just world. As anyone who has been to university will know, by the end of their degrees many of the keenest members of the Socialist Workers Party and its student wing, the SWSS, end up burnt-out, dis-illusioned, cynical and hostile to the left - they are either absorbed into bourgeois society, become anarchistic individualists or a mixture of both.

CS branches will be studying different texts and recording their meetings, so that education can become a collective endeavour and individual comrades where there is no branch can also take part.

In Manchester, for example, CS comrades are currently looking at Lenin’s State and revolution, while those in Sheffield are shortly to begin their study of Capital. The London group is also reading Capital, but alternating this with their study of Mike Macnair’s excellent new book Revolutionary strategy and monthly public meetings. Nationally, CS will hold a day school every month - the next one being on November 2 in London.

In order to encourage more younger comrades to write for our magazine, our excellent new website (www.communiststudents.org.uk) and also the Weekly Worker, the CS executive has set up a commissioning team to work more closely with comrades and plan longer-term projects.

Given the current global situation, our main campaigning priority remains Hands Off the People of Iran - Hopi is organising films and meetings, and CS is building for the Hopi annual conference on December 13. We in CS now also have good contacts with Iranian students, allowing us to exchange ideas and learn from each other. CS members have been integral to getting the exiled Iranian students Kaveh Abbasian and Behrouz Karimizadeh to speak in London and in Manchester, with other meetings planned soon.

One area where we have so far been weak has been in our ability to directly intervene in day-to-day issues on individual campuses. Comrades can gain a hearing through taking up particular grievances: eg, opposing department closures, fighting the commercialisation of courses, mobilising to support a sacked lecturer, etc. This in no way implies that we fall into the trap of running around chasing every issue - activism for the sake of activism belies a complete lack of understanding of what it means to be a Marxist.

Despite our organisational limitations, CS has been able to strongly articulate the politics of revolutionary Marxism and win over a new layer of students across the country. We can and must increase our political work and agitation because the objective situation and the programmatic meltdown of the left demands it. Yet in stepping up our work we should not take our eye off our main long-term task: patiently organising for the re-articulation of communist politics as the only credible and viable alternative to the rotting system of capital.

The ideas of revolutionary Marxism as the basis of student unity are needed now - not at some undefined point in the future. As our interventions in freshers fairs showed, Marxism is not exactly rolling off the tongues of every student - these ideas are still in a minority. But precisely due to its explanatory power and perspective of human liberation, if the left openly fights for Marxism then this situation can be taken forward so that we become the majority.

This is the battle of ideas that CS is committed to, and we call on all those who share this aim to join us!

More Student Arrests

noreply@blogger.com (B.E.Klein (CPGB)) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:23:00 +0000

Once again, at the start of the new semester, the Iranian security forces are closely observing and arresting members of Students for Freedom and Equality in Iran (SFEI). The Islamic regime has fabricated evidence in order to arrest activists, who are accused of organising demonstrations on Student Day, May Day, Women’s Day, etc. This is part of a new wave of attacks on students, which has seen five arrests in October alone.

Those detained include: Amir Mohsen Mohammadi, Neda Asadi, Arsalan Sadeghi, Habib Alaei and Maziyar Masoumi. Amir Mohsen Mohammadi, a well known journalist, was the first to be detained, on October 6. Following his arrest, we set up a committee to demand his release. The other four students, three of whom are active members of the SFEI committee, were arrested on October 13 and are being held in Dastgerd prison in Isfahan.

We call for international support and solidarity to argue for their release and to oppose these crass attempts to silence our movement.

Students for Freedom and Equality