Monthly Archives: October 2022

The crisis in British politics (2) – the mess on the left

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Kier Starter, leader of the British Labour Party, flagging his alterrnative (Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Where does the current political crisis put the left?  I can’t remember a time when it has been so divided, not only over the causes of a crisis but what to do about it.  Brexit, Covid lockdowns and the Ukraine war have all contributed, as have years of printing money.  Yet many on the left have supported Brexit, demanded more severe lockdowns, supported war and western sanctions, and it even has its fair share of proponents of Modern Monetary Theory.

Even the minimum of policies raises division: against austerity includes opposition to energy price increases, which can be solved by ending support for war and removing sanctions. Opposition to the threats to workers living standards, and attacks on democratic rights opened up by the threats of removing EU laws, can be advanced by opposing Brexit.  This means giving focus to the awareness of the majority that Brexit has failed, by explaining the purpose of re-joining the EU.  

Photo: Morning Star

The Labour Party isn’t going to fight for these because it has, like some on the left, supported all the steps that got us here.  Some on the left have therefore said that it is better to face a weakened Tory government than a stronger Labour one committed to more or less the same agenda, so we shouldn’t call for a general election.

There are things wrong with this, although it has the merit of admitting that the left is chronically weak.  This should give it pause to recognise just how close, or rather how far away, it is to leading any revolutionary change, and to considering just what the preconditions for this would be.

Opposition to the call for a general election may reveal the belief that your alternative is weak but the weakness of your enemy will not make up for it.  Labour support for ‘balancing the books’, and therefore austerity, can easily permit their implementation by Sunak if he introduces the odd seemingly ‘fair’ implementation of pain, which would also prevent Labour from shouldering the blame. The effect of further Tory mistakes and division could either be to encourage opposition to austerity or usher in a Starmer government essentially wedded to the same project.

Calls for a general election to kick out the Tories should not be opposed but since we know that it’s not nearly enough the left should concentrate not on this but on what Marx would have called the momentary interests of the working class as well as its future.

This means supporting and generalising the strikes workers are taking to defend their living standards. It means politicising them, including with the demand to bring down the Tories with the purpose of also setting the expectations that will be placed on any alternative Government, including a Labour one.  It means organising in the trade unions to make them more democratic, which is easier to do when workers are engaged in union activity, and building the grounds for longer term rank and file activity.  It means similar activity in the Labour Party, and since this is mainly a defensive struggle against the leadership, it means defending existing rights and supporting the very few potential candidates who will get to stand in an election that support working class action.

If it is argued that the Labour Party is dead then such a view must be tested by the activity that can be organised within it; by the possibility of activating members and recruiting others through the strikes that are taking place, and some proof that the lessons of numerous attempts to organise a party outside it have been learnt.  It’s not enough to say that numerous battles have been lost if it is not clear to thousands of Labour members that the war inside it is over and definitively lost.  It’s not enough to propose some party that does not exist to something you claim is dead but will in some way have to be recognised as very much alive for millions who will vote for it.

Unity on the left is not enough.  There is no point blindfolding ourselves to Brexit, which cannot, like Starmer hopes, simply be parked, but has to be opposed.  Those who have supported it show no sign of recognising their mistake when it stares them in the face.  Likewise, what is the point of demanding protection from the enormous increase in energy prices while supporting war and the sanctions that make it inevitable?  The political struggle against these disastrous positions must continue.

The left, both in Britain and Ireland has put forward actions that the state must implement to address these problems: through nationalisation of energy companies, windfall taxes or price caps, increased state spending and taxation of the rich.  All of these rely on the state doing what the working class needs to do itself, and the state doesn’t exist for this purpose.  We have all just been given a huge lesson on who really controls society and what they are prepared to do even to a pro-capitalist Government that doesn’t play by its rules.

Nationalisation will not gain control over the supply of gas and oil so nationalising retail companies (known as suppliers in the industry) will not reduce prices; and you can’t nationalise companies in other countries.  This is also the case in Ireland, where much of the industry is already nationalised. You certainly can’t nationalise Russian gas, but you can pay a lower price for it, if you argue it’s generally good practice to buy from the cheapest supplier.

You can’t continue to increase workers income from state payments to make up for inflation when the financial markets won’t even support unfunded tax cuts for the rich.  While it’s an acceptable propaganda demand to increase taxation on the rich you won’t be able to make this the answer to the crisis. The underlying weakness of British capitalism is set to continue worsening, especially outside the EU, and redistribution of the tax burden isn’t going to change this.

The Tories have already overturned proposals to reverse corporation tax increases and there comes a point where significant increases would simply amount to a form of state capitalism, and one that is to the benefit of workers!  That’s not the society we live in, or one that could possibly exist.  Income taxes on the rich require a government to legislate it; require a capitalist class to accept it without shifting its incomes abroad, and a state willing to implement it.  The British tax authorities have proved time and time again their willingness to indulge tax avoidance and evasion by corporations and the rich. Tax incentives are as much a part of the code as levies and these always apply to the rich; workers don’t need an incentive to work since it’s the only way they can afford a tolerable or decent standard of living.

The recent crisis of the British state’s creditworthiness was caused not by proposed tax cuts for the rich but by increased debt caused by income payments during the pandemic, and early predictions of a £150 billion bill for energy supports to energy companies in lieu of consumers paying.  The idea that the financial markets will accept lending money to fill any gap left after screwing Britain’s rich, so that the incomes of the working class can be protected, ignores the political interests of the players involved in these markets. At the very least increased interest rates would be demanded if steps along this road were taken, which means they would get their pound of flesh one way or the other.

It makes no sense to offer alternatives that depend on actions by the state when you also argue any possible government won’t introduce them.  To paraphrase Marx again, the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself.  So must the fight against austerity, the defence of living standards and against war.

Under capitalism the place of the working class is determined by its absence of property ownership – the means of producing goods and services.  If you create these by your labour but don’t own them, you can’t expect to receive the revenue arising from them, and especially from a state that is there to defend existing property rights.

This means that the income of the working class comes overwhelmingly from wages and if these are being reduced through inflation the correct response is to increase them, including through strikes.  The working class in many countries is now in the fortunate position of being in a period of low unemployment where it can take advantage of its position in the labour market to organise, demand wage increases and fight for them.  The longer term perspective is to take ownership of the means of production, and thus of the goods and services produced, so it can determine the distribution of the incomes derived from their use and sale.  In this it will obviously come up against the state determined to defend the rights of existing ownership.

It should be axiomatic for the left that the benevolence of the state is not the answer.  It takes the workers’ own money and then decides how much of it to give back, to whom and for what purpose.  It also borrows, then taxes workers to repay the borrowing.  In all this it buys the goodwill of workers with their own money, pretending it is that of the government.  The problem of lack of income then becomes one of demanding that the state gives you more, in the form of lower taxes, higher welfare and pensions, payments for not working (as in Covid) or subsidies to pay energy bills.

This analysis derives from very basic understandings derived from Marxism that many of its adherents accept in theory only to forget in practice.  The failure produces a phenomenon not unknown to Marx.

It produces an inverted reality in which workers seek salvation in actions by the instrument of their subordination.  It illustrates the grain of truth in accusations of the right that welfare dependency creates a culture of dependency, of which the politics of much of the left is a demonstration.  It is indeed ironic that the right often betrays a better appreciation of the role of the state than many self-described socialists.

This state-centred socialism has resulted in support for Brexit because it is believed that somehow the British state can be relied upon to be more progressive than any European one, and can become the vehicle to introduce socialism.

It fuelled demands for more stringent lockdowns during the pandemic because the state can miraculously give people money to buy goods and services it then prevents them from making and providing.

The Left’s “zero-COVID” strategy in operation in China (Chinatopix Via AP)

It now results in support for a notoriously corrupt capitalist state and its armed forces because it supposedly embodies the interests of Ukrainian workers; indeed the workers of the world, even while it acts on behalf of the most powerful states, together forming what is customarily called imperialism.

The Left joins supporters of the Ukrainian state who just happen to be fascists https://theintercept.com/2022/06/30/ukraine-azov-neo-nazi-foreign-fighter/ Photo:NurPhoto via Getty Images: veterans of the Azov volunteer battalion attend a rally in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 14, 2020

From all this we can see that the task of the left in assisting the British working class in the current political crisis needs some work itself.  A lot of work.

Back to part 1

The crisis in British politics (1) – Brexit

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For weeks my wife had complained about Johnson and his lies and wondered how on earth he had managed to survive.  How did he get away with it and when will we be rid of him?  

I explained that although he would go eventually I wanted the crisis caused by his repeated lying to continue as he was dragging the rest of the Tory Party down with him.  I also explained that his biggest lie was Brexit and Kier Starmer wasn’t calling him out on it.  In fact, he was repeating the lie by claiming he could get it to work.

When she wondered how long Liz Truss would last I ventured the opinion that the longer she stayed the more divided the Tory Party would become although I also said she was already toast.  Once again Brexit loomed large and about the only useful service she provided was to admit it in her very short, 89 seconds, resignation speech – ‘we set out a vision for a low-tax, high-growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit.’

Indeed she did.  She demonstrated that ‘taking back control’ was a fantasy and that attempting the national road to growth the Tories planned for Britain was deluded.  The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote that the Labour Party, Lib-Dems and ‘moderate’ Tories should now strike her ‘extreme brand of libertarian, state-destroying, Europe-baiting, austerity politics . . .  dead so it never resurrects, so no one ever tries it again any more than they would advocate Stalinism.’

Unfortunately, while she may prove correct about the Right, although I doubt it, she has already been proved wrong about similar nationalistic, Brexit-supporting ideas on the Left, which range from Starmerism to Stalinism, plus some ‘Trotskyism’, which spoils the alliteration, but that still makes for a strange unity of purpose. The opinion poll by Tony Blair’s think tank asked for one word that describes Brexit for its supporters and opponents.  For supporters it was the word ‘Freedom’. However, if such ‘freedom’ doesn’t make a nationalist capitalist programme possible how much more impossible is the idea of such freedom bringing about socialism?

The dominance of such a stupid idea arises not from the idea itself but from what it seems to allow – a much reduced role for the state or a much increased one; its reactionary character demonstrated by the fact it can succeed in neither.  Far from thinking it has been achieved by Johnson’s ‘Get Brexit Done’ Government, more believe it hasn’t that has, with only 6 per cent thinking it has been completely accomplished.  Sixty per cent think it has made the economy worse; in the North of Ireland its rating is negative 72 per cent and negative in parts of the so-called “red wall” in the north-east of England.

This doesn’t prevent about two-thirds expecting some benefits from Brexit, but since the most likely anticipated is new trade deals this has already been disappointed.  The prospect of ‘better UK laws’, ‘less immigration’, ‘better-funded public services’, ‘greater influence in the world’ and ‘lower prices’ are all being disproved.  No matter how blinkered its supporters may be, even with blinkers you can still see what is going on.

Where an alternative might come from explains a lot of the crisis in British politics.  Asked which option you would choose for the UK’s place within Europe in the next 10–15 years, only 23 per cent said inside the EU, while 36 per cent said some sort of new trading partnership outside, and 11 per cent said outside the EU but inside the single market.  In other words, almost half thought they could choose having your cake and eating it, or an arrangement that made Brexit pointless at best.  Only 45 per cent of Remain voters supported joining the EU.  That this is the case is suggestive of the role of political parties in setting out what appears possible; after all, if next to no one is saying it would even be a good idea then achieving it becomes, at best, something remote.

I informed my wife that the press were reporting some Tories saying that it would be better if the Labour Party took over; something that none of them would have claimed had Corbyn been leader, not altogether for rational reasons it must be said.  This told us that such a view was informed not just by the idea that the Tory Party needed a period in opposition to get their act together but by the view that the mess created would be better cleaned up by Labour.  Labour could then take the hit for all the unpopular decisions that the Tories are promising and still formulating.

Of course, allowing a general election when some opinion poll shows Tory support at 14 per cent means this is rather an unattractive position.  At this level they would seem to be justified in believing that the only way is up.  Instead, therefore, they will likely try to climb their way back with the new leader– the richest man in parliament, increasing taxes while his household has avoided a reported £20 million, and introducing austerity in which claiming ‘we are all in this together’ can only be seen as so much transparent nonsense.  Misguided attempts to suppress energy prices or reduce their impact will not so much be more targeted as just avoid aiming at most of them.  Inflation will continue and so will support for a war drummed up by unprecedented censorship and propaganda that has millions believing the righteousness of a state previously noteworthy for its corruption, internal division and endearment to fascists.

Having been trounced by the financial markets and the state, in the shape most obviously of the Bank of England, the new Tory leader will be on-side.  Despite being a supporter of Brexit, he will still be detested by the hard-right of the Party, although its traditionally good at hanging together instead of hanging apart.

Which brings us back to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, which has to reckon on being the opposition, something it hasn’t been very good at.  Starmer’s Party has been characterised as a policy-free zone, but this does not mean policies will not, in the absence of an alternative, impose themselves.  In a longer time-frame, ‘making Brexit work’ will not work.  Immediately, calling for a general election only puts more pressure on it to set out an alternative, and the more we see of that the less alternative it looks.

We will look at that in the next post

Let the people sing their stories and their songs?

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(Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

Last week the Ireland women’s football team beat Scotland one nil to qualify for the World Cup, which is more than the men can do.  They celebrated by singing songs including ‘Celtic Symphony’, which includes a line ‘Ooh Aah Up the ‘Ra’ (repeated 23 times in case you missed it the first time).

Cue much declaration of outrage by a whole range of people forming a rather disorderly queue with much taking of offence.

For foreign readers, this phrase indicates support for the Irish Republican Army and in particular in its Provisional IRA incarnation, which is supposed not to exist anymore, and if it does, only in a much-reduced form that has no intention of renewing its previous armed struggle.  In fact, if the IRA was still blowing things up it is very doubtful the song would have been sung.  It therefore signals no meaningful endorsement of anything currently existing. 

Well, that’s not exactly true, since it is a football song and was written by the Wolfe Tones to celebrate 100 years of Glasgow Celtic which, unlike its Glasgow rivals, has never gone into liquidation and had to form itself into a new club. I’m not sure that all its listeners will understand its references to ‘Paradise’ or ‘the Jungle’ but the offending part is clear enough, although its meaning and significance is not.  As a football song it’s passable but even as a Celtic supporter myself it must be admitted that it will not win many Grammy awards.  I doubt it would even make a Eurovision song contest entry.

So, as explained above and for the avoidance of doubt, the IRA or ‘Ra in question is not the one which fought British rule in the War of Independence between 1919 and 1921.  That would not have caused offence, or at least not to the talking heads within the Irish State, which owes its existence at least partly to this earlier IRA.  Whether its violence was kinder, comparable, or even relevant is not something anyone wants to dwell upon lest it all get too complicated.  It’s harder to justify offence taken when it involves considerable deliberation and circumlocution to avoid explaining how some historical violence is ok and some is not.  For some if it’s not ok, well, it’s far enough in the past to consign to history.  The past is a foreign country as they say, so nothing to do with us presumably.

So, if it cannot be consigned to the past, even though, as I have said, the most recent IRA is mostly retired, this must be because the question is not really about this IRA directly but about the current embodiment of Provisional republicanism in Sinn Fein.  It’s about the present.  To quash even further doubt, it is not because anyone believes that Sinn Fein will seek to create the conditions in which a new IRA campaign can begin.  The party has shown often enough, especially in relation to dissident republicans, that it opposes armed action against the British state even if these assurances are laced with lies and hypocrisy.

No, it’s not about the prospect of renewed republican violence, not about the continuing argument over its historical legitimacy and not even about what reflection this has on the current representatives of republicanism.  It is more straightforwardly directed against Sinn Fein’s current project, which is actually light years from opposing British rule in Ireland through armed struggle, or any other political struggle if we think about it.  Today it is the major Party seeking to implement the favoured form of British rule in the North of the country, and if it has any complaint about the British, it is that they are not pushing this project hard enough against unionist opposition.

One can only imagine therefore how pleased Sinn Fein must be that the traditional expression of Irish nationalism through song is now associated so much with itself, knowing that nationalism dominates politics in the Irish State, as all its main parties are a variety of it, and its history of opposition to British rule is widely viewed, especially by the working class, as popular and legitimate.  We see this reflected in the fact that ‘Celtic Symphony’ reached number 1 in the iTunes chart and number 2, to be sure, to be sure that you can’t miss the message.

This shouldn’t be a surprise as controversy over a previous song – ‘Come Out Ye Black and Tans’ – followed attempts by the Irish Government to go a step too far in equating Irish nationalist resistance to British rule with the defenders of that rule.  Ironically, this song is also not a very good example of the better strains of the Irish nationalist tradition, but the continuing hold of this tradition was shown when it too reached number 1 in the iTune chart.  Perhaps the outraged were seeking some revenge but if they were they failed, again.

However, much of the reaction against the faux outrage of the various constituencies ‘offended’ by the singing of the song is also missing the point, or several.  While it is absolutely correct to dismiss the hypocrisy of the British media, which laughably thinks the women need to learn Irish history; and politicians who lament its damage to the ‘shared future’ with unionism, which requires for example that the mass slaughter of the First World War is commemorated by nationalists as a symbol of respect for their politics, it is also important to look at what the controversy means for those rushing to defend its use.

Yes, this ‘outrage’ and ‘offense’ is synthetic and if taken at its word would prohibit any expression of Irish nationalist opposition to British rule.  This tradition did involve violence, but nothing on the scale of that perpetrated by British imperialism.  Many of those lamenting the glorification of violence, and its traumatic effect on some who are still living, are wilfully blind to the violence of the British state.  Their sensitivity to its cruel effects is very discriminating.  Almost all of them are incapable of explaining why this violence occurred, which means their expressions of sorrow are objectively so much cant.

But some of the defensive reaction to it is unsatisfactory, to put it mildly.

One of the Wolfe Tones is reported to have dismissed complaints by saying that some of it came from people who ‘aren’t really Irish’, which if it refers to Northern Protestants, and who else could it refer to, is exactly the argument of Irish unionism. More apposite however, it is in perfect harmony with Sinn Fein’s policy of ‘respecting the two traditions.’

So, one republican said in response that “I feel very sorry that anyone died in the Troubles.  I feel very sorry that the troubles were visited on us.’  It’s as if the Provisional IRA played no active part in creating what has been called ‘the Troubles’, which simply paid a visit on it.  It too has played the victim along with every other participant, playing along with the idea that we were all responsible (so no one was) and that we all have to move on – together. And moving on together means partnership with unionism and continuing British rule, all washed down with the hope that the Catholics in the North will out-breed the Protestants and enough will be true to what is expected of them and support a united Ireland.  

It has been argued that the young women didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t actually mean support for the Provisional IRA.  Well, yes and no, or rather no and yes.  They knew what they were singing and what, to them, it signified, and that very likely didn’t mean support for an IRA armed struggle that’s over.

What is represented, what it was, is increasingly common – young people expressing their rebelliousness and defiance of the conventions of older generations, as always happens, through support for an Irish republicanism that is increasingly popular among younger generations.  It expresses both increased confidence and increased anger.  Confidence that being Irish is no longer to be in a backward country compared to its neighbour and confidence that comes from almost full employment and many working for big US tech companies.  Anger that despite this they can’t get a house and renting means queueing with dozens of others for a viewing and paying enormous amounts for sub-standard flats.  What often results is young people having to live with their parents – no wonder there’s generational friction. 

‘Up the ‘Ra’ is therefore what has been called ‘an umbrella toast to republicanism’ which is now the politics they support in the belief that it will sort out their problems.  It combines both youthful rebelliousness, a common generational cultural meme, and a declaration of confident national and political identity with the measure of each varying by individual.

Like much youth rebelliousness it’s not as radical as it thinks it is.  Such republicanism has its support among older generations too and actually has a long history in various forms.  Sinn Fein is not going to lead any revolution and is keen to project its pro-business identity, most recently by declaring its consensus with the rest of the Irish establishment parties by supporting Ukraine and damning Russia.  US multinationals in Ireland have nothing to worry about.

The song from the young footballers is a cultural refection of the fact that, as the last Irish Times Ipsos opinion poll reported, while support for Sinn Fein among all voters was 36 per cent, it was 44 per cent among 18-24 year olds and 43 per cent among 25-34 year olds.

That this rebelliousness of the young against the precepts of older generations draws upon such old traditions and aligns itself with a party that has ditched its own rebelliousness should tell us something about the nature of the ‘offensive’ behaviour,  about those ‘outraged’ and ‘offended’, and about how we should respond to it as socialists.

There was no call to apologise for the singing and no requirement to make more of it than was there by those in sympathy with it.

The war in Ukraine – the blind leading the blind

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ‘The Blind leading the Blind’

Much of the argument over the war in Ukraine hits their target but misses the most essential point.

So, it is important to know that the historical demand for self-determination argued by Lenin does not provide support to those who want to support the Ukrainian state and its victory in the war.

It’s vital to understand that the massive role of the United States and NATO in provoking and affecting the course of the war also determines the war’s character.

It is important to be aware of the wider agenda of the United States, which wants to diminish Russia, and necessarily therefore achieve a change of regime in order to encircle China and also diminish it – as the only state capable of seriously challenging US hegemony.

It is instructive to appreciate the role of ultranationalism in Ukraine, which countless photographs of fascist iconography on display by the Armed Forces of Ukraine makes impossible to deny, or so you might think.

It is also necessary to understand that there is nothing progressive about the Russian state or its invasion and that this necessitates opposition to it.  To do otherwise, because Western imperialism also opposes it, is to accept that it is impossible for the working class to have an independent policy and that some indispensably correct positions must in effect be voluntarily surrendered.  It’s origin arises partially from some similar considerations of the pro-war, pro-Ukraine left who abandon the socialist programme because we can only currently fight for it with weak forces, which means, of course, that these will always remain weak.

It is, finally, important to understand what constitutes imperialism so that we can understand how the world works, the better to change it.

However, as important as these all are, the most important issue to understand is that the working class must identify and fight for its own interests including against the various states of the capitalist class, which are weapons to defend their system.  It is necessary to form a separate party of the working class to advance this understanding, including that such understanding categorically rules out support for any capitalist state, not only in war but especially in war.  This means that it is impermissible to support either the Ukrainian or Russian state and every attempt to do so is bogus and a gross betrayal.

We all know that this has not stopped large numbers of self-described socialists from supporting the Ukrainian state; defending the role of NATO when not actually supporting it; ignoring the wider agenda of the imperialist hegemon; minimising or simply ignoring the reactionary ideology of the Ukrainian state, and claiming that the interests of the working class in a war that now defines world politics is aligned with fascist fighters in Ukraine, the Ukrainian state and US imperialism and its NATO allies.

You would think that some extraordinary arguments would need to be employed to make such a case remotely plausible.  That it is not remotely credible is proved by the poverty of the arguments put forward in support of it, many of which have been addressed in previous posts.  What this implies is that much of what describes itself as left, radical left, anti-capitalist or even Marxist is nothing of the sort, and no wailing about politically sectarian argumentation can wash away the significance of the division that now exists.

A friend sent me a link to an article that presented itself as a summary of the leftists who are actively supporting the Ukrainian state.  What is noteworthy is their immediate emphasis on arming it:

‘Mick Antoniw and a group of British trade unionists went to Ukraine to deliver a car, military equipment and medical supplies to Ukrainian trade unionists currently in the Armed Forces.’

‘The statement calls, in particular, for the supply of military equipment and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, as well as for the country’s foreign debt to be written off.’

‘As a reaction to the ‘pacifist’ left, the initiative has focused on promoting weapons supply, and solidarity with the people of Ukraine . . .‘

‘ENSU’s founders and members are opposed to all imperialisms, but support the right of oppressed peoples everywhere to seek military, economic and diplomatic support from their invader’s enemies.’

The authors make much of their opposition to imperialism but it is a strange sort of opposition that supports the intervention of the United States and NATO.

The Polish organisation has apparently distinguished itself by displaying its opposition to the country’s notoriously Russophobic political culture through having ‘unequivocally (sometimes even by Polish standards) taken a stance on the side of Ukrainians.’

From the text of the interviews it is clear that the solidarity of these associated groups comprises of the same analysis and perspective as most of the reactionary governments in the region:

‘This is an existential and fundamental issue. Not only for the Ukrainian left, but for the whole Eastern European and Nordic countries, for all countries that have been under the threat of Russian imperialism.’

‘This closeness of EE, Baltic and Nordic left is happening on the ground of the resistance to imperialism everywhere, solidarity with sovereign countries, with the people and working class who want to determine their own fate everywhere.’

So, the sovereignty of capitalist states; the ‘people’ and the ‘working class’ are all compatible, all allies in determining their own fate ‘everywhere’.  So where in all this is opposition to the capitalist state, recognition of the division of ‘the people’ into classes, and identification of the separate interests of the working class?

The elimination of these independent interests leads to the witless belief that the capitalist state and ruling class will behave likewise and see things the same way.  What else could be meant by the following?

‘We try to convince western left activists that Russia is in no way anti-imperialist and that Ukrainian society deserves our solidarity irrespective of our disagreement with the oligarchs or the ultranationalists, conservatives and neoliberals in the Ukrainian parliament. Unfortunately, some western leftists believe that only western imperialism is a problem, so their solidarity with Ukraine is weak if not absent.’

We are meant to support ‘Ukraine’ even if we disagree (is that all?) with those who own it, rule it and are fighting to preserve its alliance with imperialism!  ‘Resistance to imperialism everywhere’ includes support for US and NATO backing for the ‘oligarchs and ultranationalists’ etc. How could socialists justify ‘solidarity . . . with the oligarchs or the ultranationalists, conservatives and neoliberals.’?

Blindness to the interest of the working class also leads to failure to see what is in front of their eyes.  Apparently it’s not western sanctions or US sabotage of pipelines that is causing the shortage of energy in Europe:

‘We are worried that Russia will manipulate oil and gas issues as winter approaches, encouraging cowardly and opportunist politicians to call for the partition of Ukraine – ‘peace at any price’ in exchange for Russian gas.’

So we get this ridiculous alternative:

‘Therefore we recently started networking with environmental groups and consumer protection activists to argue for accelerating the green transition.’

A transition that will take decades to achieve is an answer to the energy shortage this winter; and this will be accomplished through pressure by ‘environmental groups’ and ‘consumer protection activists’!  This is not serious.

The article we have been quoting starts with the following passage:

‘Since the beginning of the full-scale war, we have published numerous critical texts about those leftists who have got stuck in the past and keep seeing the war as just another confrontation between Western and Russian imperialism. Some adhere to this idea due to sincere beliefs; others simply choose a more comfortable position of not intervening or even searching for arguments against the support of Ukrainian resistance (‘nationalism,’ ‘protection of Russian-speaking people,’ ‘promotion of NATO,’ etc.). Westplaining helps them close their eyes to the whole picture.’

The author claims we must be ‘searching’ for arguments to justify opposition to the war and the Ukrainian state, and then gives us an (incomplete) list of what they might be! He thinks we are stuck in the past in opposing capitalist war, forgetting the socialist principles that have inspired this opposition and the lessons learned from the support of reformist parties for the mass slaughter of two World Wars.

This is not just another conflict between Western imperialism and Russia and no amount of covering for NATO or the ‘oligarchs ultranationalists, conservatives and neoliberals’ will change their role or the character of the war.  

It is not ‘comfortable’ to choose to fight for the independent interests of the working class and against both the reactionary Russian invasion and the Ukrainian state and its imperialist sponsors.  And as the author himself illustrates, we do not have to ‘search’ for arguments to defend our refusal to support the reactionary ‘Ukrainian resistance’, which no amount of leftists supporting will make progressive. 

We are told that we are ‘Westplaining’ – ‘a form of gaslighting that imposes Western views through the heads of residents of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly Ukrainians.’

Given the support for NATO and US imperialism in much of Central and Eastern Europe, any ‘Westplaining’ that has occurred has been accomplished by all the forces – oligarchs, ultranationalists, conservatives and neoliberals who support NATO and the US. We in the western left are expected to show solidarity with all of them and through them to our own ruling classes and capitalist states, which we are supposed to encourage to arm the kleptocratic Ukrainian State. Just who is attempting the gaslighting?

Whatever socialist now believes that these forces are on our side is lost to socialism.  Whoever in the West believes that their own state and ruling class can play a progressive role in the world has no right to proclaim themselves as socialist.  They politically disarm their own working class and present it up on a plate for imperialism’s ‘progressive’ wars of the future.

The article referenced above is of use only to show the poverty of arguments of the pro-war left.  That their authors believe them in any way credible reminds me of what the musician Prince is purported to have said of Michael Jackson’s album ‘Bad’.  It should, he said, have been called ‘Pathetic’.

The war in Ukraine – you say it best when you say nothing at all

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Sometimes it’s not what you say but what you don’t say that is revealing.

From the start, the pro-war left has continually aped the bourgeois media in its denunciation of the obsession and madness of Vladimir Putin.

While Western imperialism needed some explanation that turned attention away from its own provocations and responsibility for the war, the left needed a cover for its effective solidarity with it.   How could it support western imperialist intervention unless this could safely be disregarded? And why deliberate on any wider geopolitical canvas when it could all be satisfactorily accounted for by focussing attention on the unknowable workings of Putin’s brain?

Not a word, or at least I haven’t seen any, on the workings of the brain of that other President so involved in the war, whose own obsession with Ukraine has been of long standing, and whose own cognitive functioning has been questioned long before the war.

And what about the Ukrainian President, whose popularity has apparently soared since the war started?  Does this in itself not raise questions?  How many reactionary leaders through the ages have gained (temporary) popularity through war and its glorification – Slava Ukraini?

Zelensky has called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine to be implemented by NATO, which even the most rabid supporter of the Ukrainian state must accept is an invitation to World War III.  But where were the denunciations from the pro-war left of Zelensky?

His latest demand is that the war now be declared, through a pre-emptive strike by the West on Russia.  The sound of denunciation by the cheerleaders of the war strains the ears of everyone trying to make it out.  Fixated on the supposed threats of nuclear war by Putin, while the Russian state declares no change to its nuclear policy, the pro-war left stays mum while Biden talks of ‘Armageddon’ and Zelensky calls for World War III. Even Macron rebukes Biden but the pro-war left sees its role as being the best defenders of the Ukrainian state, as it thinks it must be for every struggle it involves itself in.

And by the way, try googling ‘Zelensky calls for a preemptive strike on Russia’ and you will be rewarded with lots of articles claiming he didn’t mean what he said. Imagine the same speech and ‘clarification’ by Putin and you can appreciate the purely propagandistic character of Western media coverage of the war. While driving my wife to an appointment this morning I had to suffer RTE radio describe Russians as hyenas and express its disgust at some of them gloating over missile attacks on Ukraine. Presumably previous Ukrainian gloating over the Kerch bridge attack didn’t register; selective speech is always combined with selective hearing.

Since some of the pro-war Left claims to be inspired by Marxism, seeking the overthrow of imperialism and reactionary states like Ukraine, it might seem obvious to ask how they found themselves on the side of both. This was, after all, a choice freely taken; it was open to them to oppose the Russian invasion without supporting the Ukrainian state.

Their answer lies partly in their claim that it is necessary to support self-determination for the Ukrainian state and oppose imperialism, Russian that is, not the NATO one which Ukraine is now a supplicant of. But what will the pro-war Left do if or when it actually becomes an official NATO member? It’s alright to be armed and fight on behalf of NATO but not be an official member of the club?

Will the character of the war therefore suddenly change for them? How will they explain the transition, or will the ‘self-determination’ of Ukraine that presently justifies their support for this capitalist state and the role of NATO still determine their position?

Why would it not? If it is Russia that is waging an aggressive war and Ukraine a war of national defence, which of these would be changed by increased Western imperialist support? Having accepted that the reactionary policies and nature of the independent Ukrainian capitalist state does not invalidate support for it, why should this support not continue? Is this not inevitable when one supports the demand for self-determination of a state that is already independent and self-determines its objective of NATO membership?

The demand for ‘self-determination’ has thus been turned into a fig-leaf tat can excuse support for Western imperialism and any notoriously corrupt state.  But where in this can any part of the policy of Lenin be discerned so that it could justify support for an independent capitalist state at war?  Where is the denunciation of Ukrainian nationalism that Lenin would have demanded?  Where is the demand for an independent Ukrainian working class organisation and policy instead of loyal membership of the armed forces of the Ukrainian state?  Where is the demand for opposition to this state and its war within the Armed Forces of Ukraine?

Of course, the policy of self-determination of an already independent state is a million miles from Lenin’s demand, but then their application of it has more to do with that of Woodrow Wilson than Lenin. We have already explained at length that they either do not understand Lenin’s position or, more evidently, don’t care to understand it. But then, who reads for the purpose of changing their mind, especially to be convinced of something harder to fight for? They are not going to start now having just perverted and misrepresented his ideas.

Nothing for them has gotten in the way of supporting ‘Ukraine’ and the ‘Ukrainian resistance’.  Eyes are diverted when fascists are honoured by their President for their role in it.  We are given to concern ourselves more with fascists in places like France, while the Ukrainian variety is armed to the teeth, incorporated into the armed forces of the state, widely viewed as legitimate for its role in the fighting, and has its slogans adopted by ‘the resistance’.  We are meant not to recall its role in ensuring that the Minsk agreements to prevent the return of war were frustrated and ignored by the Ukrainian state, lest we question Russian sole responsibility.

So, the main question to ask of this left is not ‘why?’, but ‘with what consequences?’  With what result?

Failure to speak leads to, and is a result of, failure to notice what is actually going on, generating grotesque political positions.  We see self-proclaimed socialists ‘gloating’ over the success of offensives by the Ukrainian armed forces as it captures swathes of land in Kharkiv and advances in Kherson.  Their support for ‘the Ukrainians’ and defeat of the ‘Russian forces’ parrots the bourgeois media, which ignores the massive loss of Ukrainian lives from offensives only made possible through western arms and organisation, while ignoring that in Kharkiv it is not Ukrainians chasing Russians but Ukrainians primarily chasing other Ukrainians.

But of course, the view that there is a single Ukrainian people and a single ‘Ukrainian resistance’ can’t deal with the fact that this is not the case, just as it cannot start any analysis from the idea that there is a separate interest of the Ukrainian working class.  The collapse into nationalism is lit up in lights when support is declared for ‘Ukraine’ and the ‘Ukrainian resistance’ when the war is obviously one also within Ukraine and between Ukrainians. They have no answer to the obvious reality that many citizens of Crimea and Donbas etc. no longer have any wish to live under a political regime based in Kyiv.

It is not in the interests of working class people that they die in a war that only continues through Western support, objectively making them a proxy for imperialism.  The pro-war left, acting as leftist cover, also only seeks victory and is therefore silent on any demand for a democratic peace, or any sort of peace, never mind working class unity to overthrow the Zelensky regime. It has nothing to say to those other Ukrainian workers, whom their heroes are fighting, who seek salvation from the Russian state; no political demands to join in a peace agreement that puts their combined interests first. Such ideas are unspoken because they have never occurred to them.

Instead, the pro-war left celebrates offensives in which the meat-grinder of Russian artillery destroys Ukrainian workers in uniform, while failing to notice that Russian forces withdraw with minimum losses.

When one becomes a cheerleader one must continue to cheer because that is the job.  The pro-war left supports the prosecution of the war until Ukrainian victory when this can only come from a victory also of Western imperialism.  This necessarily entails escalation of the war and increased risk of it becoming a global one between NATO and Russia. Since the ultimate target is China, it too cannot remain indifferent to its encirclement, becoming more and more the target of US verbal attacks and sanctions.

To deny all this requires either stupidity or descent into the most rotten politics, hence the silence, as if all this will go away if we refuse to speak of it, at least until Ukraine and NATO win, Russian forces are expelled, and other workers who consider themselves Russian suffer occupation.

Revolution in an undeveloped country – a warning unheeded?

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Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism part 55

In 1894 Engels had cause to write on the prospects of Italian socialism, addressing circumstances not very dissimilar to those that would face socialism in Russia in the following century.

Engels wrote of a ‘bourgeoisie [that] was neither able nor willing to complete its victory. It did not sweep away the remains of feudalism, nor did it reorganise national production on modern bourgeois lines. Incapable of enabling the country to share in the relative and temporary benefits of the capitalist regime, the bourgeoisie imposed on it all this regime’s burdens and disadvantages.’

Quoting Marx – ‘like all the rest of Continental Western Europe’ – he notes that it suffers not only from the development of capitalist production but from the incompleteness of its development, so that alongside modern evils a series of inherited evils oppress as well. ‘The situation is heading towards a crisis.’ (Marx, Preface to the First German Edition of Capital, 1867)

In response Engels states that ‘Obviously the socialist party is too young and, because of the economic situation, too weak to hope for the immediate victory of socialism. Nationwide, the rural population far outnumbers that of the towns; in the towns there is little large-scale developed industry, and consequently few typical proletarians; the majority are made up of tradesmen, small shopkeepers and déclassés, a mass floating between the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat.’

He goes on – ‘Only this class, constantly facing economic ruin and now provoked to despair, will be able to supply both the mass of fighters and the leaders of a revolutionary movement. It will be backed by the peasants, whose geographical dispersal and illiteracy prevent them from taking any effective initiative, but who will nonetheless make powerful and indispensable auxiliaries.’

The result? ‘In the event of more or less peaceful success, there will be a change of government: the “converted” republicans, Cavallotti & Co., would take the rudder; in the event of revolution there will be a bourgeois republic.’

Naturally then, Engels asks ­– ‘What part should be played by the socialist party with regard to these eventualities?’

As in the previous post, Engels goes back to his and Marx’s initial programmatic statement: 

‘Since 1848 the tactics which have most often ensured success for the socialists have been those of the Communist Manifesto: in the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, the socialists always represent the interests of the movement as a whole…. they fight for the attainment of the immediate aims in the interest of the working class, but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement.’

‘Thus they take an active part in each of the evolutionary phases through which the struggle of the two classes passes, without ever losing sight of the fact that these phases are only so many stages leading to the great goal: the conquest of political power by the proletariat as a means of social reorganisation.’

He elaborates on the implications and consequences of such a strategy – socialists ‘have their place among the combatants for any immediate advantage which can be obtained in the interest of the working class; they accept all these political and social advantages, but only as advance payments. Therefore they consider every revolutionary or progressive movement to be heading in the same direction as their own; their special mission is to drive the other revolutionary parties forwards and, should one of these parties be victorious, to safeguard the interests of the proletariat.’

‘These tactics, which never lose sight of the great goal, spare the socialists the bouts of disillusionment to which the less clear-sighted parties are invariably subject — whether pure republicans, or sentimental socialists who mistake a mere stage for the final outcome of the march forwards.’

He further elaborates on this perspective with reference to Italy:

‘The victory of the disintegrating petty bourgeoisie and the peasants may thus lead to a government of “converted” republicans. That would give us universal suffrage and much greater freedom of action (freedom of the press, assembly, association, abolition of the ammonizione, etc.) — new weapons which are not to be despised.’

‘Or a bourgeois republic with the same people and a few Mazzini supporters. That would widen our freedom of action and field of action even more, at least for the moment. And the bourgeois republic, said Marx, is the sole political form in which the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can be decided. Not to mention the repercussions this would have in Europe.’

‘The victory of the present revolutionary movement cannot, therefore, be achieved without strengthening us and placing us in a more favourable environment. Thus we would be committing the greatest of errors should we wish to abstain, if in our attitude to “akin” parties we sought to limit ourselves to purely negative criticism. The time may come when we shall have to co-operate with them in a positive fashion. When will this time come?’

‘Obviously it is not up to us to prepare directly a movement which is not exactly that of the class which we represent . . . If we are obliged to support every real popular movement, we are also obliged not to sacrifice in vain the scarcely formed core of our proletarian party or to allow the proletariat to be decimated in sterile local riots.’

‘If, on the contrary, the movement is truly national, our men will be there before the order can be given, and it goes without saying that we shall take part. But it must be understood, and we should proclaim it aloud, that we are taking part as an independent party, allied for the moment with the radicals and the republicans, but entirely distinct from them; that we have no illusions about the result of the struggle, in the event of victory; that for us this result, far from satisfying us, will only be a stage that has been won, a new base of operations for further conquests; that on the very day of victory our paths will diverge; that from that day hence we shall form the new opposition vis-à-vis the new government, not a reactionary opposition but a progressive one, an opposition of the extreme left which will be pressing for new conquests beyond the territory already gained.’

As an Irish Marxist it is impossible not to note the correspondence of this approach to that reputedly of James Connolly before the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland, who warned the workers’ army to hold onto its weapons even in event of the victory of their temporary republican allies.

Engels goes on ‘After the joint victory we might be offered a few seats in the new government, but always in a minority. This is the greatest danger. After February 1848 the French socialist democrats . . . made the mistake of occupying such seats. As a minority in the government they voluntarily shared the blame for all the foul deeds and betrayals perpetrated by the majority of pure republicans against the workers; whilst the presence of these gentlemen in the government completely paralysed the revolutionary action of the working class which they claimed to represent.’

Engels notes the limits of his counsel but also the strength of the overall approach that he has advised:

‘In all this I am merely giving my personal opinion, because I have been asked for it, and also with the greatest diffidence. As for the general tactics; I have experienced their effectiveness throughout my life; they have never let me down. But as for applying them to the state of affairs in Italy, that is quite a different matter; that must be decided on the spot and by those who are in the midst of events.’

This short article encapsulates all the preconditions for socialism elaborated over the last number of posts – the necessity for sufficient capitalist growth both in economic terms and the concomitant development of a working class;  the political conditions that allow the development of the workers’ movement; the necessity to address the immediate tasks of the working class – ‘only such tasks as it is able to solve’ – in the words of the‘1859 Preface’; the necessity for the independence of the working class even while ensuring it does not become purely negative and isolated, and all the while not sacrificing the future of the movement, as in the words of ‘The Communist Manifesto’.

Missing only are the results of the alternative, the consequences of not adopting such an approach, which was set out by Engels in ‘The Peasant War in Germany’:

‘The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply.’

‘What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement.’

‘Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests.’

‘Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost. We have seen examples of this in recent times. We need only be reminded of the position taken in the last French provisional government by the representatives of the proletariat, though they represented only a very low level of proletarian development.’

‘Whoever can still look forward to official positions after having become familiar with the experiences of the February government – not to speak of our own noble German provisional governments and imperial regencies – is either foolish beyond measure, or at best pays only lip service to the extreme revolutionary party.’

Back to part 54

Marx and Engels: Getting it right after getting it wrong

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Friedrich Engels 1891

Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism part 54

In 1895 Engels wrote that ‘History has proved us wrong, and all who thought like us. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production . . .’

Until 1857 Marx and Engels expected some sort of “new and revised edition of 1848” wherein the proletarian revolution would follow at some point behind a radicalised bourgeois revolution involving a process of ‘permanent revolution’.  After this, for two decades, “they had hope of imminent and successful proletarian revolution, though Engels maintained his perennial youthful optimism better than Marx.”  Thereafter the growing working class movement became the focus although “they did not consider a successful transfer of power to the proletariat imminent or probable.” (from Eric Hobsbawm, ‘How to Change the World’ p65-6)

The world changed rapidly in the second half of the 19th century and especially Europe, with which Marx and Engels were most engaged.  Marx did not live to see most of the last twenty years.  Many of the tasks of the failed bourgeois revolutions attempted in 1848 were later solved, not from below but from above, by various combinations of existing ruling classes, the state and later by the pressure of imperialist rivalry.

What is remarkable is not only the scope of the error admitted, or that it was admitted, but that despite it and the changes that especially Engels was to live to see, so much of what they had earlier written was not only relevant but was correct.  We have seen this already in previous posts.  What prevented their committing egregious errors arising from their too optimistic outlook was their theoretical commitments to the objective grounds for socialism and their equal commitment to the working class struggle and its success.

The former led to appreciation of the potential of the latter and concern that it should not be endangered by allowing optimism to determine revolutionary strategy and activity.  

In relation to the former, Engels wrote in ‘In modern history at least it is, therefore, proved that all political struggles are class struggles, and all struggles by classes for emancipation, despite their necessarily political form—for every class struggle is a political struggle —turn ultimately on the question of economic emancipation. Therefore, here at least, the state—the political order—is the subordinate factor and civil society—the realm of economic relations—the decisive element.’ (Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Collected Works Vol 26 pp 390-1)

The objective of economic emancipation upon which all emancipation rests requires collective ownership, which requires a working class – ‘A radical social revolution is bound up with definite historical conditions of economic development; these are its premisses. It is only possible, therefore, where alongside capitalist production the industrial proletariat accounts for at least a significant portion of the mass of the people.’ (Marx ‘Notes on Bakunin’s Statehood and Anarchy’, Collected Works, Volume 24 p 518) 

In the first section of the Communist Manifesto, entitled “Bourgeois and Proletarians” (see Manifesto, p. ll), it is argued in detail that the economic and, hence too, in one form or another, the political sway of the bourgeoisie is the essential precondition both of the existence of the modern proletariat and of the creation of the “material conditions for its emancipation”. 

Further – ‘The development of the modern proletariat” (see Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Revue, January 1850, p. 15) “is, in general, conditioned by the development of the industrial bourgeoisie. Only under its rule does the proletariat gain that extensive national existence which can raise its revolution to a national one, and does it itself create the modern means of production, which become just so many means of its revolutionary emancipation. Only its rule tears up the material roots of feudal society and levels the ground on which alone a proletarian revolution is possible.’ I declared accordingly in the same “Review” that any revolution in which England did not take part was no more than a ’storm in a teacup”.’ (Marx Herr Vogt, Collected Works Volume 17 p91)

‘The industrial workers can free themselves only by transforming the capital of the bourgeois, that is, the raw materials, machines and tools, and the means of subsistence they need to work in production, into the property of society, that is, into their own property, used by them in common. Similarly, the farm labourers can be rescued from their hideous misery only when, primarily, their chief object of labour, the land itself, is withdrawn from the private ownership of the big peasants and the still bigger feudal lords, transformed into public property and cultivated by cooperative associations of agricultural workers on their common account.’ (Engels Preface to the Peasant War in Germany 1870, Collected Works Vol 21 p 99-100

As noted above, this meant that the future of the revolution rested on ‘England’, or more accurately Britain – ‘ revolutionary initiative will probably come from France, England alone can serve as the lever for a serious economic Revolution. It is the only country where there are no more peasants and where landed property is concentrated in a few hands. It is the only country where the capitalist form, that is to say combined labour on a large scale under capitalist masters, embraces virtually the whole of production. It is the only country where the great majority of the population consists of WAGES-LABOURERS. It is the only country where the class struggle and the organisation of the working class by the TRADES UNIONS have acquired a certain degree of maturity and universality. It is the only country where, because of its domination on the world market, every revolution in economic matters must immediately affect the whole world. If landlordism and capitalism are classical features in England, on the other hand, the material conditions for their destruction are the most mature here.’ (Marx The General Council to the Federal Council of Romance Switzerland, Collected Works Volume 21 pp86-7)

Despite the optimism, their theoretical commitments to these objective grounds for socialism and commitment to the working class struggle and its success, led to concern that it should not be endangered by allowing optimism to determine revolutionary strategy and activity.

In 1884 Engels still maintained that the line of march in The Communist Manifesto was correct:

‘Never has a tactical programme proved its worth as well as this one. Devised on the eve of a revolution, it stood the test of this revolution; whenever, since this period, a workers’ party has deviated from it, the deviation has met its punishment; and today, after almost forty years, it serves as the guiding line of all resolute and self-confident workers’ parties in Europe, from Madrid to St. Petersburg.’ (Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung(1848-49), Marx and Engels Collected Works Vol 26 p120-8).

A few months later Engels was advising the German socialist August Bebel that – ‘As in 1848, we are still the opposition of the future and must, therefore, have the most extreme among the existing parties at the helm before being able to confront it as the opposition of the present’.  In relation to France, he says that ‘the field is being increasingly cleared for the decisive battle, while the position of the parties becomes more distinct and well- defined. This slow but inexorable progress of the French Republic towards its logical conclusion — the confrontation between radical would-be socialist bourgeois and genuinely revolutionary workers — I consider to be a manifestation of the utmost importance, and I hope that nothing will happen to stop it. And I am glad that our people are not yet strong enough in Paris (but all the stronger for that in the provinces) to be misled by the force of revolutionary phrases into attempting a putsch.’ (Engels to Bebel. 6 June 1884, Collected Works Volume 47 p149).

Back to part 53

Forward to part 55

Marx and Engels learn about revolution

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Karl Marx’s alternative to capitalism part 53

As we noted in the previous post, since the ideas we now consider ‘Marxism’ did not spring whole and fully formed all at once from their progenitors, these ideas underwent a development from less to more adequate expressions of working class politics.  We have already noted and addressed the penchant of Marx to anticipate the next economic crisis and potential for revolution.  

Similarly, it is argued that Marx and Engels consistently anticipated the imminence of this revolution.  If this was indeed their position it would undermine the argument of the last number of posts which have set out the constraints that bind successful working class revolution.

It would undercut their revolutionary caution and might subvert their early argument with the Willich-Schapper faction in the Communist League, which claimed that revolutions were essentially acts of “will” and that the job of revolutionaries was to ‘make’ the revolution.

Given any inconsistency it would be incumbent to compare when and how over-optimistic revolutionary expectations were expressed and when and how more considered and formal analysis led to the arguments of the last number of posts.  Marx and Engels were once young, and regardless of age were always enthusiasts of revolution, optimism expressed privately is the blood of hope that runs through the veins of all such revolutionaries.

So, when Engels was 24, a newspaper in 1845 reported that at a meeting ‘Mr Engels delivered a speech in which he proved (from the fact, that not a word was offered in reply), that the present state of Germany was such as could not but produce in a very short time a social revolution; that this imminent revolution was not to be averted by any possible measures for promoting commerce and manufacturing industry; to prevent such a revolution — a revolution more terrible than any of the mere subversions of past history — was the introduction of, and the preparation for, the Community system.’

Two years later he was writing that the coming revolution would be bourgeois and this class would have to come to power first before it would become the turn of the working class:

‘Not until only one class—the bourgeoisie—is seen to exploit and oppress, until penury and misery can no longer be blamed now on this estate, now on that, or simply on the absolute monarchy and its bureaucrats—only then will the last decisive battle break out, the battle between the propertied and the propertyless, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.’ 

‘Only then will the field of battle have been swept clean of all unnecessary barriers, of all that is misleading and accessory; the position of the two hostile armies will be clear and visible at a glance.’

‘With the rule of the bourgeoisie, the workers, compelled by circumstances, will also make the infinitely important advance that they will no longer come forward as individuals, as at the most a couple of hundreds or thousands, in rebellion against the established order, but all together, as one class, with its specific interests and principles, with a common plan and united strength, they will launch their attack on the last and the worst of their mortal enemies, the bourgeoisie. ‘

‘There can be no doubt as to the outcome of this battle. The bourgeoisie will and must fall to the ground before the proletariat, just as the aristocracy and the absolute monarchy have received their coup de grâce from the middle class.’

‘With the bourgeoisie, private property will at the same time be overthrown, and the victory of the working class will put an end to all class or caste rule for ever.’ (Engels, Collected Works Volume 6, p94–5) 

To believe that in underdeveloped Germany, its mainly small artisanal working class could carry out a social revolution that could ‘end class rule for ever’ would contradict the basic postulates of Marx and Engels historical analysis and their later lifetimes’ revolutionary activity.  Through both of these they learned about the validity of their view that it was necessary to fight with the bourgeoisie against the remnants of feudalism, and about how far the latter were actually prepared to struggle and not turn away from it or ally with fellow exploiting classes:

‘The workers know that the abolition of bourgeois property relations is not brought about by preserving those of feudalism. They know that the revolutionary movement of the bourgeoisie against the feudal estates and the absolute monarchy can only accelerate their own revolutionary movement. They know that their own struggle against the bourgeoisie can only dawn with the day when the bourgeoisie is victorious.’

‘Despite all this they do not share Herr Heinzen’s bourgeois illusions. They can and must accept the bourgeois revolutions a precondition for the workers’ revolution. However, they cannot for a moment regard it as their ultimate goal.’ (Collected Works Volume 6, p332–3)

The relationship between this struggle against feudalism and the bourgeois revolution on the one hand, and working class revolution on the other, is also a subject of much later debate and shall be taken up in greater depth later. In less developed countries it revolves around the idea of permanent revolution, made more famous by Leon Trotsky, but a term also employed by Marx on a number of occasions.  

Hal Draper states that a continued, uninterrupted revolution (the meaning of permanent in this case) was ‘a very widespread, though by no means unanimous view among the radicals of the time.’ (Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution Vol II, p 201)

Marx and Engels went through a number of versions of what the transition from bourgeois to workers revolution would look like, learning from the experience of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, and summed up these lessons following the revolutions’ defeat.

Marx had, for example, hoped (at the end of 1848) that sections of the bourgeoisie would join with the Democracy in fighting for a Social Republic, an open-ended agitational slogan ‘referring to a government that takes a socialistic direction.’ (KMTR Vol II p234).  Instead, they learned that even in what was to be a bourgeois revolution, this bourgeoisie did not ally with the Democracy (peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie and working classes) but with ‘the trinity of Crown-aristocracy-bureaucracy’. (KMTR Vol II, 225).

The Communist Manifesto had stated that:

‘The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.’

Following defeat of the 1848 revolutions, especially in France and Germany, Marx drew some important and lasting lessons about the importance of England, as the most advanced country, to future revolutions:

‘A transformation of the relations of political economy in every land of the European continent, on the whole of the European continent, is a tempest in a teapot without England. . . . But every social upheaval in France is necessarily wrecked on the rock of the English bourgeoisies, of the industrial and commercial world domination by Great Britain.  Every partial social reform in France, and on the European continent in general, is and remains an empty pious wish insofar as it aspires to end there [without involving England].  (quoted in KMTR Vol II pp243–4)

The permanence of the revolution would allow the ‘tendency we represented [ to] enter the struggle for the attainment of our real party aims’; the party never imagined itself capable of producing at any time and at its pleasure, that revolution which was to carry its ideas into practice . . .’

This would become possible because ‘only through the increase in power of the bourgeoisie does the proletariat gradually get to the point of becoming the majority . . .’  ‘Only its rule [the rule of the bourgeoisie] tears up the material roots of feudal society and levels the ground on which alone a proletarian revolution is possible.’  In ‘countries where the aristocracy’ must be ‘driven from power’ there was lacking ‘the first premise of a proletarian revolution, namely, an industrial proletariat on a national scale.’ 

(KMTR Vol II p 249, 208, 280 and 284)

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