Monthly Archives: August 2025

What does “Don’t betray Ukraine?” mean (3 of 3)

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In a Facebook discussion on why socialists should oppose the war I received a reply that stated:

‘In ninety cases out of a hundred the workers actually place a minus sign where the bourgeoisie places a plus sign. In ten cases however they are forced to fix the same sign as the bourgeoisie but with their own seal, in which is expressed their mistrust of the bourgeoisie. The policy of the proletariat is not at all automatically derived from the policy of the bourgeoisie, bearing only the opposite sign – this would make every sectarian a master strategist; no, the revolutionary party must each time orient itself independently in the internal as well as the external situation, arriving at those decisions which correspond best to the interests of the proletariat. This rule applies just as much to the war period as to the period of peace.’

This of course is a quote from Trotsky.  The problem is not to quote this as if this explains left support for the Ukrainian/Western imperialist alliance, but why this combination requires socialists to place a plus sign when the chances are only one in ten of that being correct.

If we look at the examples in the article from which the quote is taken, we see the sort of circumstances in which this would be correct.  These include when a ‘rebellion breaks out tomorrow in the French colony of Algeria’ and receives help from a rival imperialism such as Italy.  The second is when ‘the Belgian proletariat conquers power . . . Hitler will try to crush the proletarian Belgium’ and’ the French bourgeois government might find itself compelled to help the Belgian workers’ government with arms.’

In a footnote, Trotsky says that: ‘We can leave aside then the question of the class character of the USSR. We are interested in the question of policy in relation to a workers’ state in general or to a colonial country fighting for its independence.’

The Ukrainian working class has not come to power; Ukraine is not a workers’ state and has just celebrated Independence Day, so it is not a colony.  Some have tried to squeeze in the ridiculous idea that it is an oppressed country, but this is false.  It is a country backed by the whole of Western imperialism; is in an open alliance with it, and the war was provoked by both parties to this de facto alliance which sought to make it formal.

Ukraine will most likely lose territory but will not be totally occupied, unless Russia does something stupid, which it has not signalled it will do.  At least part of the territory occupied is pro-Russian so that it is not possible to see either sides’ occupation as being unambiguously liberating.  In other words, thinking in terms of oppressor and oppressed states does not provide a solution; more fundamentally because this is an imperialist war in which Ukraine is on one of the sides, and cloaking it with oppression does not explain either the origin and nature of the war or the approach that socialists should take to it. 

Victory for Ukraine, it is claimed, would be a victory against Russian imperialism, but it would also be a victory for Western imperialism with which Ukraine is now an ally. Claims that this is any sort of anti-imperialist war are therefore obviously spurious.  Only from a campist position can it be claimed that a victory for the camp of western imperialism is preferable to a victory of the Russian.  Complete disorientation and political degeneration explains why supporters of this position regularly accuse those opposed to it of ‘campism’ and describe themselves as ‘internationalist.’ 

It is irrelevant who fired the first shot, as Trotsky noted elsewhere:

‘Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defence of the fatherland,” “defence of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people.’

“The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.”

He goes on: ‘The objective historical meaning of the war is of decisive importance for the proletariat: What class is conducting it? and for the sake of what? This is decisive, and not the subterfuges of diplomacy by means of which the enemy can always be successfully portrayed to the people as an aggressor. Just as false are the references by imperialists to the slogans of democracy and culture.’

Trotsky makes the following summary judgement: ‘If a quarter of a century ago Lenin branded as social chauvinism and as social treachery the desertion of socialists to the side of their nationalist imperialism under the pretext of defending culture and democracy, then from the standpoint of Lenin’s principles the very same policy today is all the more criminal.’  Over one hundred years has passed since Lenin’s judgement, how much more does this criminal treachery deserve condemnation today?

The depths of disorientation can be gleaned from one article reviewing the latest film documentary on the war, in which the author states that the film 2000 Meters to Andriivka is ‘the Ukrainian working class at war.’

‘The young men we see in this documentary about the capture of a village called Andriivka by the 3rd Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian army are a snapshot of the country’s working class. One is a lorry driver, their commander previously worked in a warehouse and a third is a polytechnic student studying electronics. They are virtually all in their early twenties and all volunteered to fight the Russian invasion.’ 

‘Ukraine continues to resist against overwhelming odds at the price of losing its bravest and most self-sacrificing young people’, while telling us why they are fighting, reminding him of the Soviet ‘partisans fighting Nazi invaders.’  What a pity for such a claim that it is the 3rd Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian army that the author lauds, which is composed of today’s Nazis, and hails as its historic heroes the Ukrainian fascists who collaborated with the Nazis in World War II and who fought Soviet partizans.

Aleksei ‘Kolovrat’ Kozhemyakin looks at a photo of himself. Exhibition opening in Kyiv, September 27, 2023. Source: Vechirnii Kyiv

The author, like me, will have been stopped in the streets of Belfast many times by soldiers of the British army who may have previously been lorry drivers or worked in a warehouse; certainly more or less all of them would have been working class.  This would not in the slightest have determined the nature of the British army or answered Lenin’s questions ‘What class is conducting it? and for the sake of what?’  Nor would – who fired the first shot? – have defined the conflict in the North of Ireland.

The working class British squaddies were fighting for an imperialist army in the interests of their imperialist state just as the Ukrainian workers in the 3rd Assault Brigade are fighting for the capitalist Ukrainian state in its alliance with western imperialism, from whom it will have received its funding, training, weapons and intelligence.  That the neo-Nazis within it are not the least bit interested in ‘democracy’ and are bitter enemies of anything remotely resembling socialism just puts the tin hat on the preposterous claims of the social imperialist supporters of Ukraine.

Quotes from Trotsky won’t therefore exculpate today’s social-imperialists who support imperialism while proclaiming socialism.  Even the isolated passage quoted at the start of this post assumes an independent working class movement to apply its own seal, but no such movement exists in Ukraine.  In raising the demand “Don’t betray Ukraine” the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign has fixed a plus sign to the actions of imperialism where no independent working class movement exists in Ukraine to place its own.

The demand “Don’t Betray Ukraine” is not therefore a call to take advantage of a contradiction within imperialism but to take one side of it instead of opposing both.   It is a demand for capitalist solidarity; that one section of it remain united in its struggle against the other. It is a call for Western imperialism to be united in full commitment to a particularly rotten capitalist state, signalling the total abasement of those declaring it.

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What does “Don’t betray Ukraine” mean? (2 of 3)

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In a Democracy Now programme, US professor John Mearsheimer told the Ukrainian ‘democratic socialist’ Denys Pilash  that “the best outcome would be to settle this war now” since it will otherwise  be “settled on the battlefield.’  Pilash could only respond that there were still measures such as sanctions that could be taken by the West to pressure Russia into a ceasefire.  This is not a proposal to end the war but to allow Ukraine to regroup and the West to put itself in a better position to support it when it is recommenced.  Ukraine has not tried to disguise this intention and has not modified its maximal objectives.

The British and French have threatened to put their own troops into Ukraine and want the US to protect them under the formula of ‘security guarantees’.  They hope that this would dissuade Russia from taking the offensive again following any ceasefire, at least to the point that Ukraine thinks itself in a position to take the initiative.  It is not a solution but a transparent attempt to achieve the goals of Ukraine and the West later since they cannot be achieved now.  It promises not the end of the war but its resumption.  This is the position of the Ukrainian state, western imperialism and the ‘democratic socialist’ of Sotsialnyi Rukh interviewed by Democracy Now.

Trump has already moved to enact what Pilash proposed by raising tariffs on India for its purchase of Russian oil, although it has failed to do so on China.  This is a sign of weakness while India has signalled that it will continue buying from Russia.  So this proposal hasn’t worked, just as all the previous sanctions and previous financing, weapons, logistics, intelligence, planning and Western ‘volunteers’ haven’t delivered on their hopes.

Thus, the Sotsialnyi Rukh programme has already failed and promises only to prolong the war with its attendant death and destruction.  The objective for socialists should be to end it as quickly as possible while the policy of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and that of Sotsialnyi Rukh is to continue it to victory, apparently regardless of the cost.

Millions of Ukrainians have voted with their feet and have left the country while Trump is trying to send them back, which would only result in the men being conscripted, sent to the front and then killed.  A lot of Ukrainian soldiers have already voted with their feet and deserted, while those seeking to avoid conscription are voting with their feet by running away from recruitment press-gangs or attempting to escape the country.

Sotsialnyi Rukh could give a political voice to this instinctive opposition, born out of healthy suspicion and distrust of many Ukrainians for their state, but this is a road they will not take.  Instead, it champions a war its own state played a major role in creating, and a political and military alliance that subordinates the country to imperialism.  Its view of the war means it can do nothing other than tail-end a corrupt and ethno-nationalist state, its alliance with imperialism and a political regime that is responsible for both.

In Pilash’s fabricated reality Trump is supporting Putin; a view which requires ignoring the sanctions against Russia and the continuation of US military support.  Such a stupid statement so at odds with reality only confirms the reactionary character of the whole Sotsialnyi Rukh programme.

NATO is not the issue, says Pilash, but did he think repeated Russian warnings about Ukrainian membership were so much hot air?  Does its huge role in the war today not tell him something about its centrality to its origin and purpose, and does his enthusiasm for Western ‘security guarantees’ not confirm it?

Pilash thinks that Putin himself is the cause of the expansion of NATO – to Finland and Sweden – and look Russia hasn’t invaded them!  The problem, of course, is that he must assume the importance of NATO expansion for the argument to matter, while pretending that Russian warnings about Ukrainian membership are empty, even while his country is in the process of being devastated because of it.

His support for ‘security guarantees’, which means willingness to go to war against Russia, shows that the purported irrelevance of NATO is absurd, and his attempt to cover his ass by calling on the ‘global south’ to join western powers as guarantors is political camouflage.

Not even all the European NATO powers are prepared to put their troops into Ukraine, or at least to admit to it, including those in Eastern Europe; why would the ‘global south’?  And what, anyway, is the ‘global south’?  Does he want China, India, Brazil or South Africa to put troops into Ukraine?  Would they do it without Russian agreement, and would they want to be made hostage to the good intentions and behaviour of a Ukraine determined to get all its 1991 territory back?

The proposal for a ceasefire is thus not a promise to end the war, and not a resolution to it, but to put into Ukraine the exact forces that Russia invaded to keep out.  It is an incentive to Russia to continue hostilities in order to prevent it happening, and is a statement by the West that any end or even pause to the war will, absent an overall agreement, entail a NATO win. The cries for a ceasefire and peace are thus the habitual imperialist lies now trumpeted by some on the ‘left’.

Pilash states that Washington is about dividing the world into spheres of influence, as if this is something invented by Trump, and will not be the case in the form of the ‘security guarantees’ that he seeks.  Occupation of Ukraine by Western troops would be a fitting end to the claim to be fighting imperialism, colonialism and for independence.  And that’s if WWIII is avoided in the process.

He claims that there is a new axis of authoritarian regimes being created that includes Russia and calls for all the oppressed to unite against all the oppressors, mentioning Palestine as an example.  Who does he think was sitting in the White House with Trump while they discussed the possibility of guarantees; the prime candidates for providing and enforcing them?

Ursula Von der Leyen, who gave Israel a blank cheque to do what it wanted after October 7.  Keir Stamer, who announced on radio that Israel had the right to commit war crimes?  And Donald Trump the main provider of weapons and financing for the genocide.  Where does that leave his notion of uniting the ‘democratic’ countries against the authoritarian regimes in a fight against oppression?

The US, British and French states have a blood-soaked history of imperialist war and the German variety an unrivalled reputation for barbarity.  Their foreign expeditions have never stopped.   Today these states parade their democratic credentials while their foreign policy reverberates at home with threats of an approaching war with Russia and repression of domestic dissent.  

The christening of Ukraine as a beacon of democracy while its regime enforces martial law, refuses new elections, celebrates its fascist history and closes opposition media and political parties is testament to what Western states consider is democratic. 

The pro-war left always advises opponents of the war to follow the lead of the Ukrainian ‘socialists’ but these ‘socialists’ approve and flatter the actions of the imperialist states and encourage their aggression.  In following their lead their Western friends encourage the bellicosity of their own states and their movement to a war against Russia. It leads to them holding up as a beacon of democracy a state renowned as one of the most corrupt in Europe that the Ukrainian people themselves have made repeated attempts to change. 

The policy of supporting their own imperialism through its de facto military alliance with Ukraine is summed up in a few words – “Don’t Betray Ukraine”.

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What does “Don’t betray Ukraine” mean? (1 of 3)

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The British Ukraine Solidarity Campaign publicised a rally under the slogans Don’t Betray Ukraine and Occupation is not Peace.  What do these slogans mean?

The demand not to ‘betray’ Ukraine was raised as Western leaders met to discuss the possibility of negotiations with Russia.  The call not to ‘betray’ is obviously directed to them.  So, let’s pause there for a moment.

When the Russian invasion was launched sections of the Western left stated that Ukraine had the right to get armed help from western imperialism (as if the Ukrainian army was not already being armed and trained by the West). While recognising that the West had its own selfish interests in doing so it affected to believe that this would not incur any political cost and would not determine the nature of the war.  Apparently, the selfishness of the west would somehow disappear; it would impose no demands on Ukraine and seek not to impose any of its interests.  A case of selfish imperialism becoming unselfish.

Today’s slogans go much further and it is now this left itself which is calling on their own imperialism to intervene and arm Ukraine.  The bedrock socialist belief that the state is a weapon of the ruling class and that it should be disarmed and abolished has been transformed into the need for it to use its armed forces to do good in the world, or at least in Ukraine.  This is apparently necessary because Russia is imperialist and must be defeated, although this doesn’t apply to the western variety; despite the watchword that the main enemy is at home there is no call for Russian imperialism to defeat their own. Not when it can do good.

The slogan Occupation is not Peace implies that the West must keep arming Ukraine and otherwise supporting it as long as any part of Ukraine is occupied.  In other words the call by the USC is for the war to continue until complete victory.  The implications and consequences of such a victory are many, but it is rarely stated what they are.  In fact, off the top of my head I can’t think of any time this has been explained. There have, of course, been many warnings about the consequences of Ukrainian defeat but that is not, quite obviously, the same thing.

At the moment Russia is winning the war.  Ukraine is increasingly stretched and suffers mainly from a shortage of people to fight for it.  Given what this implies for the number of casualties that the Ukrainian forces must have suffered, this in itself should give pause for thought.  I have read time and time again claims about the scale of Russian losses but a studied ignorance on the scale of Ukrainian deaths (when they are not being falsified).

Like the consequences of victory, left supporters of the war are both keen to proclaim its deathly consequences but seemingly reluctant to demand of Ukraine that it reveal its losses.  No doubt, this is because they believe this will demoralise Ukrainian society and set back the war effort, but this only reveals yet another aspect of the conflicting interests of the Ukrainian state and its western allies on one side and the Ukrainian people and its working class on the other.  The latter are paying the price, they should know exactly what it is.

The slogan Occupation is not Peace is therefore a call to continue a war that cannot be won.  There may be a belief that yet more western (unselfish!) intervention can turn the tide, but even the moron Donald Trump understands that this can only mean escalation that points towards World War III.  Zelensky thinks he can entice Trump by promising that he will buy $100bn of weapons from the US, paid for by ‘Europe’, which means European workers, but even this is an illusion.

Repeated injections of Western arms have been destroyed in the war, along with the Ukrainian troops using them; so much so that stocks in Western armouries have been sorely depleted.  The weapons are not there, and you can’t kill people with dollar bills.  The pro-war left says that the remaining weapons stored in the West should be sent to Ukraine, but this is just another illustration of the stupidity of pretending that western imperialist intervention is unselfish.  They want these weapons for themselves because they might want to fight other (unselfish?) wars, or perhaps ultimately in Ukraine itself

The US and European powers have said that they will build up their military-industrial complex to help produce the arms that can go to Ukraine, which leaves the pro-war left supporting the militarisation of their own countries.  But this will take time, and meanwhile the death and destruction will continue.

The negotiating positions of Ukraine and Russia are not miles apart, but light years, so the war is going to continue with all its disastrous consequences. If the pro-war left insists on complete victory it needs to spell out exactly the imperialist intervention that will be necessary to achieve it.

Don’t hold your breath.

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Understanding ‘Citizen Marx’ 3 of 3

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Engels once said that ‘Marx and I, for forty years, repeated ad nauseam that for us the democratic republic is the only, political form in which the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class can first be universalised and then culminate in the decisive victory of the proletariat.’

The context was a claim against him that when ‘the socialist party, will become the majority’ it will ‘then proceed to take power.’  Engels however stated that ‘For a start, I have never said the socialist party, will become the majority and then proceed to take power.  On the contrary, I have expressly said that the odds are ten to one that our rulers, well before that point arrives, will use violence against us, and this would shift us from the terrain of majority to the terrain of revolution . . .’

Responding to the question of what form this power would take – ‘Will it be monarchic, or republican, or will it go back to Weitling’s utopia’, Engels replied that of course the Reichstag deputies are republicans and revolutionaries, the question of a Republic being the most controversial political question in Imperial Germany at that time.

Engels goes on to ask whether it is implied ‘that the German socialists attribute no more importance to the social form than to the political form? Again he would be mistaken. He should be well enough acquainted with German socialism to know that it demands the socialisation of all the means of production. How can this economic revolution be accomplished? That will depend on the circumstances in which our party seizes power, on the moment at which and the manner in which that occurs.’ (Engels, Reply to the Honourable Giovanni Bovio MECW Vol 27 p271)

What Engels is making clear is that the fight for democracy is vital to the struggle of the working class to achieve political power not that it is necessary to have a republic as the first step to communism. Even where the question of a Republic was the unmentionable political issue, the objective was ‘the socialisation of all the means of production.’

On a separate occasion he said that ‘If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power in the form of the democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat . .’ (emphasis added – SM) On the question of a Republic he explains the content of the demand, if it is not possible to employ the term itself: ‘But the fact that in Germany it is not permitted to advance even a republican party programme openly, proves how totally mistaken is the belief that a republic, and not only a republic, but also communist society, can be established in a cosy peaceful way’

‘However, the question of the republic could possibly be passed by. What, however, in my opinion should and could be included is the demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of the people’s representatives. That would suffice for the time being if it is impossible to go any further.’ (Engels A critique of the draft Social-Democratic programme of 1891, MECW Vol 27 p227)

Engels in his postscript to Marx’s Civil War in France wrote ‘And people think they have taken quite an extraordinary bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.’

‘From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not manage with the old state machine . . .’  The bourgeois republic was not therefore the mechanism to advance towards communism.

Marx noted of the Paris Commune that ‘the political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery.’

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Understanding ‘Citizen Marx’ 2 of 3

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In one review of Citizen Marx, Mike Macnair states that ‘the conception of the democratic republic as the necessary first step to communism was, in fact, Marx’s conception: comrade Leipold has, I think, shown this beyond rebuttal.’  If this is taken to mean that the struggle always and everywhere involves firstly a fight for a bourgeois republic then we see that this is not the case. In the Paris Commune the struggle went immediately beyond it and Leipold argues that Marx never looked at the struggle for bourgeois democracy – a bourgeois republic – in the same way after it (see the previous post).

It is not true today because in many countries, capitalism is ruled by states with a democratic and republican form.  There are all sorts of restrictions and qualifications to this bourgeois democracy, and Marx noted and opposed them in his day, but this did not transform the working class struggle – and communists bringing ‘to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question’ – into a struggle first for a bourgeois ‘democratic republic’.  This is simply old-fashioned Stalinism in which the working class struggle is always limited to a fight for bourgeois democracy, and only when successful, then a struggle for socialism.  This never comes because the bourgeois allies asserted as necessary in the first struggle betray not only the struggle of the working class for socialism but also any struggle for democracy that involves the working class as an independent force.

Macnair appears to accept grounds for rejecting this approach today, on the basis that ‘It is nonetheless arguable that the more advanced stage of the spread of capitalism across the whole globe, and its decline at its core, means that we should focus more on socialisation: the immediate need to move beyond markets and privately-owned concentrations of capital as the means of coordinating human productive activities. . .  . In this sense socialisation is more immediately posed than it was in the later 19th century.’

This means that the working class is the majority of society, with the existence of a much more developed capitalist system that brings to the fore the question of working class dissolution of capitalist private property through socialisation of the productive forces.  To defend this process requires a Commune type state and not a bourgeois republic that will, no matter how democratic or republican, stand upon and defend capitalist property relations.

Unfortunately, Macnair rejects this – ‘There are two problems with this line of argument’ he claims. ‘The first is the Soviet case’ in which economic planning failed.  He argues that ‘Democratic republicanism is essential to effective economic planning; and, because it is essential to effective economic planning, it is also essential to believable socialism/communism.’

In fact, the Soviet Union was not an example of an ‘advanced stage’ capitalism and the initial major problem with socialisation of production was the small size of the forces of production that could most easily be socialised, and thus the associated weakness of the working class that would carry it out. This experience is not therefore an argument against working class socialisation of the forces of production and a state form of the Commune type adequate to defend this process.

The second problem he identifies with a ‘focus more on socialisation: the immediate need to move beyond markets and privately-owned concentrations of capital’ is not so much a structural feature of the current stage of capitalism (that it rules out socialisation) but an obstacle to it.  What he poses is an obstacle to any and all independent political action by the working class, including reform of the capitalist state that Macnair poses as the ‘necessary first step to communism.’

He writes that it is ‘illusory to imagine that it is possible to fight for “workers’ democracy” against the bureaucracy, without simultaneously proposing a constitutional alternative to the regime of the capitalist state as such. Without challenging the capitalist constitutional order, it is impossible to render transparent the dictatorship of the labour bureaucracy in workers’ organisations.’  The capitalist state must be democratised before the working class movement can also be so transformed appears to be the argument.

Democratising the capitalist state requires a force to do it, which presumably is the working class, but as long as the workers’ movement is strangled by bureaucracy this is not going to be done.  In terms of voting, elections in most minimally democratic bourgeois republics involve a bigger turnout than elections within trade unions, which illustrates the necessity to politicise the working class movement.  The prior task to making changes to the capitalist state is to dissolve illusions in it, including that it can be ‘really’ democratic and that it can be made a (more?) neutral mechanism that can be employed by the working class for its own ends.

Any mass mobilisation of the working class will face the immediate task of sidelining or removing the labour bureaucracy because the organisations and mobilisations this bureaucracy stifles are the workers own.  This task will need to be both independent of any change to the ‘constitutional order of the capitalist state’ and go beyond it.  Constitutional forms can change but the essential nature of the state remains.  Prioritising changing this is to invest in the capitalist state the power of making changes that only the self-emancipation of the working class can accomplish.  Why would a capitalist state, again no matter how democratic or republican, help ‘render transparent the dictatorship of the labour bureaucracy in workers’ organisations?’

Removing or otherwise destroying the labour bureaucracy will undoubtedly be accompanied with the need to struggle for goals outside the workers’ organisations, but these struggles should not be under the misapprehension that what we need is reform of the capitalist state constitution in order to change the constitution of the workers own organisations.  In so far as we often seek to change the operation of the capitalist state it is often to remove its influence on workers’ organisations.  The functioning of this state is not an example to follow, or an aid to understanding working class interests, but an obstacle to overcome including the many illusions workers have in it.

Attempts to give a place to republican politics within socialism that it should not have ignores the class character of even the most radical republicanism and inevitably drags us back to accommodation with the capitalist state.  This is not a lesson Citizen Marx teaches.

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Understanding ‘Citizen Marx’ 1 of 3

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The book Citizen Marx, which deals with Marx’s engagement with republicanism, has been favourably reviewed in a number of socialist publications.  In previous posts we have shown that this was an engagement coloured by competition for the allegiance of a radicalising working class.  This involved starting from a materialist analysis of the conditions facing workers and other classes, which brought to the fore the property question and involved a clear separation of socialist politics from even the most radical republicanism.

The book notes both Marx and Engels very brief alignment with anti-political communism that eschewed political struggles because of their claimed irrelevance to the over-riding social question, which resolved into the question of property.  For Marx and Engels this involved the socialisation of production by the working class that would lead to the abolition of all classes, including itself.

This required the conquering of political power by the working class and the book deals with Marx and Engels treatment of the Paris Commune as the first example of the capture of such power (with some qualifications).  Many of their tributes to it and the force of its example included elements of the democratic functioning of the Commune that were championed by republicanism, for example the direct election of workers’ delegates to state office and their being subject to recall.

This state however was to be a workers’ state, and qualitatively different to existing capitalist states, whether an absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy or bourgeois republic.  It was to be a state not ‘superimposed upon society’ but ‘one completely subordinate to it.’ (Citizen Marx p 392)

‘It was essentially a working-class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour.’   (Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 22 p334)

The most famous lesson learned was that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold on the ready-made state machinery and wield it for their own purpose. The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation.’  (MECW Vol 22 p533)

This is not the bourgeois state democratised, à la radical republicanism, but the destruction of the bourgeois state and creation of one that would serve as a political instrument of working class emancipation.  And as the emancipation of the working class was to be achieved by the working class itself this meant not just creation of a workers’ state but the working class emancipating society from the state – a state not ‘superimposed upon society’ but ‘one completely subordinate to it.’  As Bruno Leipold notes in Citizen Marx, for Marx the Commune was a ’Revolution against the State itself . . . a resumption by the people for the people, of its own social life.’  It was “the people acting for itself by itself.’ (Citizen Marx p 389 & 366)

Leipold states that through the experience of the Commune Marx not only changed his understanding of what a ‘social republic’ was but that this also ‘went hand in hand with a new attitude to the bourgeois republic.  While his Commune writings contain similar condemnations of the emancipatory limits of the bourgeois republic that we find in his 1848 writings, we find no corresponding statements that the bourgeois republic still remains the terrain on which this emancipation is to be fought for.’ (Citizen Marx p 357)

Much of the book covers the period before the Paris Commune and deals with the role of the working class in a purely democratic revolution, i.e. a bourgeois revolution.  Marx and Engels set out the policy of communists, in which the working class, particularly in Germany, must fight for a democratic republic – as an independent force – alongside the bourgeoisie (if and when it does indeed fight) in circumstances where it cannot yet impose its own interests because of undeveloped material conditions.

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