whatever happened to leon trotsky?

Upping and leaving

2009-05-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I no longer have much reason to use this blog, particularly as all my political pieces are at The Commune. The title is also rather inappropriate given my drift away from Trotskyism...

I thought I'd set up a different blog here. Obviously one person having more than one blog is mad, but I'll leave all the old stuff at this one and not delete it.

I wanted to have a space for my more asinine musings on ‘popular culture’ and sectariana (i.e. the popular culture of some terrifying dystopia where the British left is important or powerful).

Furthermore, one of my main ambitions is to feature lots of crudely ‘Marxist’ cultural reviews, in the style of Monkey Smashes Heaven and the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Movement, such as “The Jokers of the world will never destroy the system. Only communist revolution will destroy Batman and the system he represents once and for all.”

The new site will also feature a lot of gossip about the far left; YouTube videos of 80s pop hits; and reports on trips to Wetherspoons.

The Commune issue 3 published

2009-03-05T16:34:00.001-08:00

The Commune issue 3 - March 2009

The Commune's new pamphlet on Chávez

2009-02-17T05:36:00.000-08:00

The Commune are pleased to announce the publication of our seventh pamphlet, “The revolution delayed: a decade of Hugo Chávez”.

The pamphlet features the translation of an interview conducted with El Libertario in Caracas by the French anarchist ‘Charles Reeve’, alongside an interview with Loren Goldner, author of Ubu saved from drowning: worker insurgency and statist containment in Spain and Portugal. These documents are prefaced by a chronology of recent developments in Venezuela. Click the image below to read it online.

You can order the pamphlet for £1 + postage by writing to uncaptiveminds@gmail.com or The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY.

the commune issue 2 published

2009-01-21T17:34:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce the publication of the second issue of The Commune.

It features articles on the Obama presidency, the war in Gaza, the labour movement resistance to the recession, attacks on welfare provision, call centre trade union organising, and much more besides.

You can order a hard copy for £1 + postage by emailing uncaptiveminds@gmail.com, or click here to read it online.

Origins of the movement for workers' councils in Germany

2008-12-04T10:34:00.000-08:00

Ninety years ago the German working class unseated the Kaiser and the military establishment with a series of strikes and mutinies which brought World War I to a close.

Conscripted sailors and soldiers created strike committees, and then joined with industrial workers to create workers’ councils akin to the soviets which existed during the Russian revolution. These enjoyed extensive working class participation and in some cities held power: but over the subsequent five year revolutionary wave the working class was time and again crushed by the Social Democrats and the right-wing troops it could call upon to defend capital.

For The Commune's latest pamphlet we have reprinted a seventy-year old pamphlet on the workers’ council movement produced by the Dutch GIK (Group of International Communists) accompanied by the autobiography of leading GIK member Jan Appel (a participant in the revolution and the commandeering of a ship) along with a chronology of the German revolution.

Printed copies cost £1 each - email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com or write to The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY.

click here for pdf

Issue 1 of The Commune

2008-11-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce the publication of the first issue of our newspaper The Commune. You can order a printed copy (£1 per copy + postage and packing) by emailing uncaptiveminds@gmail.com or writing to The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY.

It includes extensive coverage of the credit crunch and "state socialist" and Keynesian solutions, arguments saying nationalisation has no answers, reports on Unison and PCS actions, a piece on William Morris, arguments for social ownership, and a piece on the class struggle in Iran.

Alternatively, visit http://thecommune.wordpress.com/magazine/the-commune-issue-1/ to read the articles online or download the PDF file

Interview with Kliman on the financial crisis

2008-11-05T06:10:00.000-08:00

An interview with Andrew Kliman on the economic crisis is online at The Commune.

This is the main part of a new pamphlet by The Commune, discussing how the workers' movement should respond to the crisis and what we should have to say about the bailout and nationalisations.

http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/new-pamphlet-the-crisis-an-interview-with-andrew-kliman/

Andrew Kliman on the credit crunch

2008-10-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

Andrew Kliman, author of Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital', has given an interesting talk on the current economic crisis.

Click here to read "Worse than what they want you to think - a Marxist analysis of the economic crisis.

new pamphlet: ‘nationalisation or workers’ management?’

2008-09-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

We have produced a pamphlet on the subject of workers’ control and management, counterposing working-class power exercised from below to nationalisations by the bourgeois state.

The pamphlet, costing £1, includes the following articles:

Review of the LEAP pamphlet on social ownership for the 21st century

The struggle for self-management (by Solidarity)

An exchange between Solidarity and the Institute for Workers’ Control

The ambiguities of workers’ control (by Solidarity)

The Harrogate debates: the 1977 debate between the then secretary of state for energy Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield from the NUM on workers’ control. Includes summaries of contributions from the floor.

We have posted some of the contents on the commune already, but we have not yet uploaded the Harrogate debates piece, which represents about half the pamphlet’s length.

If you would like a copy of the 26 page pamphlet, email uncaptiveminds@googlemail.com or write to us at The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY.

Demonstration: hands off Kurdish asylum seekers!

2008-09-02T17:07:00.001-07:00

the international federation of iraqi refugees and coalition to stop deportations to iraq are holding a joint lobby to protest at the uk home office’s continuing policy of forcible deportations to iraq.

lobby of the home office, 2 marsham st, london, westminster/st james’ park, thursday 11 september, 12.30 – 14.30

the families of hussein ali and muhammed hussein will be attending the lobby: hussein ali committed suicide days after being forcibly returned to kurdistan on 7 august. muhammad hussein died of cancer following six years of struggle to gain refugee status in the uk.

Moving on

2008-08-23T03:02:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in why I left the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, read my guest post at the Shiraz Socialist blog.

To find out more about what I am doing now, visit the website of The Commune

COB announces 45-day truce with Bolivian government

2008-08-15T05:10:00.000-07:00

La Paz, August 13th 2008: translated from econoticiasbolivia.com

This Tuesday evening the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) announced a 45 day truce in its struggle to win a new welfare system for pensions, but warned that it would begin mobilisations again if the Evo Morales Government did not keep his end of the bargain.

The union’s meeting in La Paz also decided to give its backing to the union leaders Pedro Montes (COB), Guido Mitma (Federación de Mineros) and Jaime Solares (Central Obrera de Oruro) after the government accused them of orchestrating mobilisations to help the right wing and of inciting miners to fight the forces of order.

COB official Octavio Urquizo assured that trade unionists “would not tolerate any attacks on the legitimacy of their unions from the Government or anyone else”.

The meeting approved the agreement reached on 9th August with the Government to draw up a new Pensions Bill in the next 45 days, but also warned that protests would happen again if it did not meet the union’s demands in this period.

UNDER QUESTION

However, the executive secretary of the Central Obrera de Potosí, Gerardo Coro, the leader of the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de Caminos, José Luis Pacheco, and Jaime Solares, amongst others, maintained that the rank-and-file should not demobilise, since an adverse outcome is possible: rather, they should begin a struggle until working-class victory.

Solares argued that president Evo Morales’ politics of conciliation with the ruling class had “given new life to the right”, by not keeping to the mandate he was given by the people in the October agenda, which should have involved nationalisation of mines, gas and oil by the state, land for the peasants, and better salaries and a decent retirement for the workers.

In the meeting trade unionists paid their respects to Luís Hernán Montero Claros (26 years old) and Roberto Cáceres Fábrica (24 years old), miners shot dead last Tuesday during the clashes with police in Caihuasi.

DIVIDE AND RULE

Given the current situation, the miners’ leader Guido Mitma accused the Morales Government of trying to “decapitate” the leadership of the miners’ union and other social sectors in order to avoid fresh mobilisations.

“It seems that the Government is now waging a dirty fight, since it is decapitating the workers’ movement and Huanuni, which has been the vanguard of trade union struggles. For this reason we must not play the Government’s game”, he argued.

Shocked by the two dead and fifty wounded among their ranks, the last miners’ assembly in Huanuni had decided no longer to recognise the three principal leaders of the union – Isidora Vargas, Fernando Chávez and Juan Flores – as well as the COB leader Pedro Montes; the miners’ leader Guido Mitmo; and the executive secretary of the Central Obrera de Oruro, Jaime Solares; all of them Huanuni miners.

“I empathise with the comrades who are shocked by the deaths in Caihausi – this was the Government’s fault – but we cannot turn in on ourselves and our leaders, since this is exactly what the Government wants: to divide the workers’ movement and to rule over it”, Mitma said.

“These positions in Huanuni will be filled, so that this great union is not undermined, and so that there is no crisis in the unions and the people in the leadership of the Sindicato de los Mineros de Huanuni will be able to lead the workers’ struggle in the interests of the workers’ movement”, he added.

UNION PETITION

The COB had declared a general strike, combined with road blockades and a march on La Paz , to gain attention for its petition of demands, which included a new pensions law; the nationalisation of gas, oil and the mines; the expropriation of the huge latifundios in the east; the distribution of land among the peasants; salary increases; and the nationalisation of the agricultural conglomerates who profit from the hunger of the people and their control over food prices.

The central point of the COB document is the abrogation of the neo-liberal pensions law and its replacement with a welfare system whereby active workers, the state and businesses finance pension payments.

The current private pensions system, administered by the multinationals Zurich Financial Services and the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, only really offers pensions to 10 percent of the Bolivian work force, leaving the other 90 percent without pension payments and therefore forced to work until they die.

This private system is base on individual payments whereby each worker makes a monthly contribution equivalent to 12.5 percent of his salary, which goes to a personal account which will pay out as pensions when he retires. In this system, which allows multinationals to control $3.2 billion of contributions from workers, the state and the bosses pay nothing.

The oligarchy, the parties of the right, bosses' associations and the big communications firms want to keep the system like this.

The second proposal, currently being passed through Congress, is that of President Morales' government, which in essence keeps the individual payment system, with the sole benefit that the $3.2 billion will now not be administered by multinationals but by the state.

The COB wants reform, which fundamentally means: (i) reducing the retirement age from 65 to 55 for male workers and from 60 to 50 for women; (ii) returning to a welfare system where active workers pay into a common fund for old people's pensions; (iii) getting rid of private administration of pension funds, today in the hands of the multinationals Zurich Financial Services and the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, in order that these resources might be administered under the direct control of workers' organisations; and (iv) that the state, the multi-nationals and private business should have to pay enough money into pension funds as to guarantee that the system is sustainable.

Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell

2008-08-07T15:24:00.000-07:00

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now it's just another show
You leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Dont give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's loves illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all
I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Workers' rebellion in Bolivia grows

2008-08-07T10:13:00.000-07:00

A multi-faceted workers' mobilisation is pressuring Evo Morales to get rid of the neo-liberal pensions law and set up a welfare system financed by the state, multi-nationals and the bosses.

Translated from www.econoticiasbolivia.com

La Paz, July 31st 2008 - the united, combative Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) has begun a sharp offensive against the peasant-indigenous government of Evo Morales and against the oligarchy, fighting for its own demands.

For two and a half years the leadership of the workers' movement, aligned to the Morales government, has hoped that he would carry out at least in part the so-called "October agenda", including the nationalisation of gas, oil and the mines, the expropriation of the wealthy landowners and the opportunity for all to have a decent retirement and better working and living conditions.

But very little of this has taken place, and now criticism of Morales for not having got rid of the neo-liberal pensions law has unleashed a true working-class rebellion from below, going beyond the control of union officialdom.

This Thursday, for the second day in a row, thousands of workers, led by the miners, marched through the streets of La Paz demanding the abrogation of the neo-liberal pensions law and the establishment of a new pensions system as elaborated by the workers: one based on solidarity, not on the individual.

Thousands of angry workers have joined this mobilisation and increased the ranks of the protestors. They have abandoned their workplaces and disregarded their government-supporting leaders.

Other cities like Cochabamba, Potosí and Sucre are surrounded by road blockades, while in Huanuni, the largest nationalised mine in Bolivia, the 4,500 miners, the revolutionary vanguard of the people, today declared an indefinite general strike to force the satisfaction of their demands. In their assembly they are still deciding whether to send more contingents to strengthen the protest in La Paz or to build blockades to stop all access to the capital.

Working-class rebellion

Working-class rebellion against the peasant-indigenous government and the oligarchy will in ten days give way to the recall referendum which will decide if Evo, his vice-president Alvaro García Linera and eight of the governors, six of them in virtual rebellion against the central government, will retain their mandates for the next two and a half years or if they will immediately lose their positions.

"We are not fighting to bring down Evo Morales but on a social question, that of pensions for all workers at the national level. Therefore this COB movement should not be treated as if we were in accord with, or complicit with, the right. We would never do that, since the right is neo-liberal and we cannot be confused with the all-out neo-liberal assault which spent over twenty years attacking the people of Bolivia", said the COB leader Próspero Quispe, coming out against the government-aligned unions.

President Morales himself had a few days before accused the most radical sections of COB of being an "instrument of imperialism" and "allied to the right". Like him, Morales called on the workers to abandon their demands and their struggle.
"The oligarchy's main ally is Evo Morales, since he defends the landowners and the rich who exploite the workers and pay poverty wages (...) Evo should say if he is going to follow the rich or the poor", claimed Jaime Solares - the main leader of the Central Obrera de Oruro - on Wednesday. On Thursday he led the massive mobilisation in La Paz.

"Neither Evo nor the oligarchy"

In the evening in the centre of La Paz, activists from the ruling Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) tried to put the brakes on the workers' mobilisation, but this met with little success given the size of the protests, and the Government was forced to send thousands of police into the streets to protect buildings and state offices. It thus hoped to avoid what happened the day before when the miners occupied the Communications Office for several hours, blocking access to five ministries.

"Evo's a wanker, we want an answer!" chanted the demonstrators who this Thursday made clear that the Bolivian working class is tired of President Morales' demagogy, who uses anti-imperialist slogans at the same time as the government defends the interests of the rich and the neo-liberals.

The most radical sectors of COB like the miners and teachers have questioned Morales' refusal to raise salaries in line with increases in the cost of living, protecting the interests of the bosses and a state which has repeatedly increased its income. They have also attacked him for kowtowing to the oligarchy and the hundred richest families who own the land, the economy in the east and the valleys, and for allowing these people, supported by the US Embassy, to set up parallel governments in open rebellion with the centre.

"Our struggle must fight the seat of economic power of the oligarchic-landowning minority. This means fighting to carry out the Agendas of 2003 and 2005, nationalising the multinational firms and taking back the privatised businesses. This will strike a fatal blow against the wealthy, stop them stealing [natural resources], generate jobs and help us overcome the poverty which capitalism and neo-liberalism have long subjected us to", declared the April assembly of almost 5,000 tin miners in Huanuni, where the revolutionary path that the workers follow today has been laid down.

There, in the biggest nationalised mine in the country, trade unionists are pressuring the Morales government to abandon his policy of conciliation with the bourgeoisie, whose only likely outcome is the coming to power of the right and of fascism, winning over the middle classes and taking control of almost half of Bolivia, establishing parallel governments in rebellion against Morales.

"The Government", the miners' assembly said, "cannot be so irresponsible as to dodge this. There have been enough deals with the conspirators and saboteurs of the reform process. Reform must not be an empty slogan but structural change to take back our natural resources, which should be extracted by the state under social control. Nationalising and industrialising our wealth must be our immediate objective. Experience has shown that only the people, with the state, can do this".

Interview

This reform promised by Evo is expressed in the struggle for a new pensions law, as Felipe Machaca, general secretary of the COB, explained in an interview with Radio Fides.

- Why are you confronting the Morales government?
- We have had long negotiations with them on many occasions, particularly in regard to the measures advocated by the Central Obrera Boliviana, but we did not come to any agreement. We regret that ministers in the political, economic, agricultural and social arenas have been unable to satisfy the workers' demands. Nor have they responded to the Pensions Bill advocated by the workers, which has proven critical.
I want to be very clear here. There have been dictatorial governments and neo-liberal governments before, and as a result of the popular movement we now have a coca-growers' trade unionist as President, who said he wanted to carry out the agenda of the 2003 struggle. But he has not done so: the 2003 agenda included the nationalisation of hydro-carbons without compensation, the recovery of natural resources, a popular-indigenous Constituent Assembly and other demands which are always part of working-class struggle.
Comrades of ours were killed in the genocidal massacre perpetrated in 2003 by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who today evades justice. After this came the elections and the coming to power of Evo Morales, who has the face of an indigenous man but who in fact carries out neo-liberal policies. The Central Obrera Boliviana has already denounced the fact that many of his ministers are neo-liberals who were in the Sánchez de Lozada government, for example the Minister of the Treasury and the Deputy Minister of Pensions, as well as the fact that many other ministers protect the neo-liberal system and have shown how empty Morales' politics are.

- Is President Evo Morales "empty"?
- Yes, we can say this, since he has not ordered that they pay attention to the demands of the workers and the Central Obrera Boliviana. He forgets that in many situations the COB protected him, and that the COB has always supported the struggles of the coca-grower comrades. Indeed on one occasion we held a hunger strike to demand the end of martial law in Chapare. But now he has forgotten the Central Obrera Boliviana. We regret this situation and the fact that he operates like the neo-liberal governments did. It is a shame that we have to do these protest marches, indefinite strikes, road blockades and hunger strikes like in the time of the neo-liberals.
This government is acting like the neo-liberal governments did: arresting us, killing us, making us eat dirt and trampling over us. In Caracollo [during the repression of the blockade the COB set up between Oruro and La Paz on Monday 28th July] the police trampled on us, jumping up and down on our backs and forcing us to give up our documents and our phones. After this they dragged us kicking and screaming onto a bus, hitting us with truncheons and tear-gassing us. Many comrades almost suffocated: as we banged on the doors we remembered the way the neo-liberal governments treated us. These are neo-liberal actions, ordered by the Minister of Government: the Police is following the orders of the Ministry and the Executive.

- Why did you stage a blockade in Caracollo?
- We staged a road blockade to seek resolution to the nation-wide struggle of the Central Obrera Boliviana demanding the immediate abrogation of Pensions Law 1732 and demanding the passing of the workers' pensions bill. Law 1732 is a neoliberal law, and many workers have to work until 65 or 70 with no right to retire. For this reason we are exercising our right to protest: but we were suppressed with tear gas and shooting.

- But aren't you aware that these protests are weakening Evo Morales on the eve of the recall referendum?
- We have been telling the government for a long time to satisfy the demands of the Central Obrera Boliviana and pass our pensions bill - as agreed by all workers at the second social security conference in which the government participated. Unfortunately the government has forgotten about the situation the workers are in. In negotiations we said that our plan had to be given five years and we would do it for twenty. We presented it again and all they do is delay and delay.
The comrade Evo Morales mounted road blockades and used this measure to fight the eradication of the coca crop, but now he has forgotten and he fights us with gunfire, tear-gas, arrests, beatings and imprisonment in special gas-rooms.

- What are you going to do?
- At the moment we are carrying out a nationwide indefinite general strike along with with road blockades. The government has to resolve this situation in one way or another. We demand negotiations between the COB and the government. We are determined and are going to continue - even if they attack us with tear-gas and gunfire - until the government satisfies our demands. If there are arrests and casualties, the responsibility will lie with Evo Morales and García Linera alone, the people who are acting like the neo-liberal governments did. When we demand something, their only response is to suppress us. We want a pensions system which genuinely meets the needs of the workers. The workers have demanded such a law for many years without getting one; after achieving this we will move on to the rest of our agenda.

- What would you do if you were in Evo Morales' shoes?
- I would do what we have told Evo Morales must be the sensible attitude to take towards his comrades (...) In any case if I was in charge and was presented with this state of affairs, where the multinationals have taken the natural resources extracted at the expense of the workers' lungs and taken the workers' wages, we would want the wealth generated by the workers to be administered by Bolivians themselves, not by multi-nationals.
The neo-liberals have stolen from the country and from the workers. In this country there are large numbers of poor people and unemployed and yet there is no policy for the countryside: our comrades in the countryside have no pensions rights. The COB is fighting for all of them and wants the President to come to an agreement with the workers.

A system in crisis

The union demand to get rid of the neo-liberal pensions law and replace it with a welfare system where active workers, the state and the bosses finance pension payments, is a vital part of the people's struggle and was even used by President Morales himself, who promised in his election campaign to make it a reality.

The current private pensions system, administered by the multinationals Zurich Financial Services and the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, only really offers pensions to 10 percent of the Bolivian work force, leaving the other 90 percent without pension payments and therefore forced to work until they die.

This private system is base on individual payments whereby each worker makes a monthly contribution equivalent to 12.5 percent of his salary, which goes to a personal account which will pay out as pensions when he retires. In this system, which allows multinationals to control $3.2 billion of contributions from workers, the state and the bosses pay nothing.

The oligarchy, the parties of the right, bosses' associations and the big communications firms want to keep the system like this.

The second proposal, currently being passed through Congress, is that of President Morales' government, which in essence keeps the individual payment system, with the sole benefit that the $3.2 billion will now not be administered by multinationals but by the state.

The COB wants reform, which fundamentally means: (i) reducing the retirement age from 65 to 55 for male workers and from 60 to 50 for women; (ii) returning to a welfare system where active workers pay into a common fund for old people's pensions; (iii) getting rid of private administration of pension funds, today in the hands of the multinationals Zurich Financial Services and the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, in order that these resources might be administered under the direct control of workers' organisations; and (iv) that the state, the multi-nationals and private business should have to pay enough money into pension funds as to guarantee that the system is sustainable.

Bolivia: Two miners dead but the struggle continues

2008-08-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

La Paz, August 5th 2008: translated from econoticiasbolivia.com

As evening fell this Tuesday the Huanuni miners continued to defend their blockade of the road which links the west of Bolivia, throwing dynamite and stones in their hand-to-hand struggle with strong detachments of police.

The authorities have so far reported two miners killed and 41 injured, whether shot or gassed, all of them falling in the struggle waged by the united, combative Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) to defeat the neo-liberal pensions reform and replace it with a welfare system financed by taxes on multinationals and private enterprise as well as state funding and contributions by workers.

An autopsy has been carried out on the body of the miner Hernán Montero, a 24 year old and father to a young daughter, in the Oruro Workers' Hospital. According to the diagnosis of Dr. José Daza, he was killed by a bullet through the heart. The second dead man, who has also been taken to the Workers' Hospital, is the miner Roberto Cáceres. The cause of his death is yet to be determined.

THE COB will not give in
The latest reports from the region describe fresh clashes and violent police incursions in a vain effort to open the road which links Cochabamba with La Paz and Oruro. Bullets, gas, shots, stones and dynamite have been used.

New detachments of miners and their wives have arrived at the conflict zone, coming from Huanuni, Bolivia's biggest tin mine and now the axis of workers' resistance against the peasant-indigenous government and the oligarchs.

The COB leadership in La Paz has held an emergency meeting and decided to reinforce the blockade and take more radical forms of protest to force Evo Morales' peasant-indigenous government to satisfy the workers' demands and get rid of the neo-liberal pension law, replacing it with a new welfare system.

"The Morales Government must carry out its election promises", said the COB leader Pedro Montes - a Huanuni miner - who condemned the government repression "which came just as we met with the Government to negotiate a solution to the problem".

Weapons of war

The Government, for its part, has declared that in bringing the blockade to an end the Police has not used firearms but only used persuasion.

"We believe that the irresponsibility of some [union] leaders has led to these unfortunate events", said the Government Minister Alfredo Rada, criticising the miners' leaders for having ordered the use of dynamite at the Caihuasi bridge which links east and west.

The Deputy Government Minister Rubén Gamarra said that the miners had burned a bus belonging to the Trans Azul company and had dynamited a bridge on the road to Cochabamba, damaging infrastructure in two ways.

The Minister Rada said that the President had received a report from the Comandante of the National Police, assuring him that he had not given authorisation for the use of deadly weapons in bringing the blockade to an end.

Applying the brakes on the referendum

The Deputy Minister for Co-ordinating Social Movements, Sacha Llorenti, attacked the COB's methods and claimed that the real motive for its protests is to undermine the Recall Referendum. "What they want is to stop the referendum taking place and to undermine the image of the President".

Llorenti, former President of the Human Rights Assembly and now a paid employee of Morales, condemned the actions of the miners and their leaders, who he claimed to be servants of the right and the oligarchy.

These accusations against the COB and the miners have intensified in the run-up to the 10th August referendum - in five days time - in which the positions of Evo, his Vice-President and eight governors will be up for recall. All the polls suggest that the vote will re-affirm the roles held by Morales and his main opponents. The outcome on Monday will change nothing, or at least nothing of much importance, about the current political situation where we have two parallel govenrments: Morales in the altiplano and the oligarchs in the east and in the valleys.

Morales wants to use victory in the referendum to seal an important national agreement with the oligarchs. But the COB and radical unions want Evo to abandon his policy of collaborating with the oligarchs and instead to meet the demands of the people, fighting the economic power of the bourgeoisie.

What the President has forgotten

For their part, the rank-and-file workers have eschewed the governments' claim that the COB and the miners are in the service of the right. Therefore, the Huanuni miners, the revolutionary vanguard of the Bolivian people, have vociferously rebuffed Evo Morales' accusations and condemned him for "forgetting" the workers' struggles which brought him to power.

"We reject the Government claims which accuse the Bolivian workers of being in the service of the right and imperialism. Evo Morales should remember that the COB, the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia (FSTMB) and all linked organisations were in the forefront of the struggles which led to the December 2005 elections", declared the miners' assembly held at Huanuni on 2nd August.

The Huanuni miners warned that Morales "should remember that the current government has promised to, and is obliged to, carry out the agenda advocated in 2003-2005, including a new Pensions Law.

The assembly of the nearly 5,000 strong Huanuni miners last Saturday agreed to extend the struggle over pensions and declared war on the oligarchy, which is carefully and patiently conspiring against the Morales Government.

"We condemn and reject the attitudes of the governors in the east and the neo-liberal parties like UN, PODEMOS, MNR, NFR, MIR and others who are guilty for the poverty that exists in this country, just as in 2003 we miners expelled and wiped out these servants of the multi-nationals and landowners pursuing their conspiratorial agenda", affirmed the miners' pronuncamiento.

The declaration of the Huanuni assembly

The resolutions of the Emergency General Assembly of Huanuni read as follows:

"1. A call for an indefinite general strike declared by the Huanuni mine-workers in conjunction with COB and FSTMB demands for the introduction into law of the COB Pension Law Bill as passed by last year's Social Security conference.
2. Mobilisation of the 5,000 workers to demand from the government, parliament and state institutions the immediate introduction into law of the COB Pension Law Bill and the abandonment of Law 1732, the creation of neo-liberal governments.
3. Given working conditions in the mining sector and to extend the life-time of the nation's natural resources, the retirement age for miners should be 50.
4. To condemn and reject the attitudes of the governors in the east and the neo-liberal parties like UN, PODEMOS, MNR, NFR, MIR and others who are guilty for the poverty that exists in this country, just as in 2003 we miners expelled and wiped out these servants of the multi-nationals and landowners pursuing their conspiratorial agenda.
5. To reject the Government claims which accuse the Bolivian workers of being in the service of the right and imperialism. Evo Morales should remember that the COB, the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia (FSTMB) and all linked organisations were in the forefront of the struggles which led to the December 2005 elections. Similarly he should remember that the current government has promised to, and is obliged to, carry out the agenda advocated in 2003-2005, including a new Pensions Law.
6. Finally, to reject the tendentious claims made by private enterprise and government that COB Pension Law Reforms mean "stealing". In fact it is the current Law 1732 which steals workers' individual pension contributions, delays thousands of workers' retirement or sees them retire with pathetic incomes, all in the interests of multinationals who exploit our natural resources, investing dollars in businesses and foreign banks without taking into account the collapse of United States currency. Those who reject the COB Pension Law Bill are the same people who push Law 1732 and bring private enterprise and the neo-liberal press together in their own government".

Response to Sean Matgamna on "What if Israel bombs Iran?"

2008-07-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

No doubt, Sean Matgamna intended his "discussion article" to provoke debate. Certainly, it does facilitate discussion when comrades are honest and make their views clear. But the article, which includes only minimal and superficial reference to independent working-class politics and any idea of working-class agency, instead dishonestly zigzags between empathising with Israeli hawks and using figleaf, weasel words to avoid openly 'advocating' an Israeli strike against Iran in advance. He says we should "least of all" support Ahmedinejad, as if we were under any compulsion to pick sides and support Olmert a little bit more instead.

(Throughout Sean also takes for granted the idea that the Iranian regime is indeed developing nuclear weapons. This claim is highly tendentious - it is not the opinion of US intelligence - and Sean does not cite any evidence in support of this assertion. Sean clearly uses this only for the reason that if true it helps justify his broader argument in an article light on analysis of what is actually going on in the Middle East as opposed to on the British left. The same could be said for his over-simplified drawing of an equals sign between the Iranian regime and al-Qaedist suicide bombers. However, since my opposition to Sean's position is far from reliant on any illusions in the peaceful intentions of the Iranian regime, I shall ignore this for now).

Sean begins: "An attack on Iran will most likely lead to great carnage in the Middle East and beyond as supporters of Iran resort to suicide bombings in retaliation. There might well be large scale Iranian civilian "collateral" casualties. An attack would strengthen the Iranian regime and license a smash down on its critics, including working class critics, inside Iran. It would throw Iran back into the worst chaos". The only part of the article citing reasons why Sean would be critical of an Israeli bombing raid on Iran (we may assume that a ground invasion would be impossible) this paragraph is interesting in that its main argument is simply that an attack could well be counterproductive for Israel because of how Islamists would react. Note that the opening sentence tells us that the cause of the carnage would in fact be that "supporters of Iran" would retaliate! And Sean's focus is not the interests of the labour movement or the tasks of Marxists in the (potential) belligerent countries, but rather hoping for a balance in the world of geopolitics, military manoeuvre and weapons competition. The reference to Iranian workers is only in passing, even though sabre-rattling and sanctions against Iran, Ahmedinejad's "anti-Zionist" rhetoric and Israel's oppression of the Palestinians all serve to foster a generalised chauvinism in the region and create enormous obstacles to the development of an internationalist labour movement. Sean's view is crude and one-sided and he is far from condemning the Israeli government's effort to cling onto its status as the leading regional power by force: if he realises that such a bombing run would hamper the possibility of workers in the region "uniting to fight for a socialist Middle East", he certainly doesn't show it.

From then on Sean confuses what is "rational" in the interests of Israeli imperialism and great-power realpolitik with what is "rational" in the interests of humanity. As if gazing into his crystal ball Sean predicts that Israel "will not tolerate" and "will act to stop" Iran's nuclear proliferation; Israel "will bomb Iran, with or without the agreement of the USA and NATO"; Israel "will act" on its interests; "Israel will act to stop this Muslim fundamentalist regime". Yet here the word "will" almost seems to be used not to mean that these events are likely but rather as an expression of defiance - you may have doubts in its leaders' confidence, but Israel will stand up for itself! Sean asks us to see the situation from Israel's point of view - "In Israeli eyes the facts and alternatives here are stark" - but is clearly talking about the alternatives as seen in the IDF leadership, ignoring the question of how an attack would be viewed through the eyes of any class-conscious Israeli (or indeed Iranian) worker. He focuses on the tasks of the Israeli government and indeed nearer the end of the article he neatly concludes: "the harsh truth is that there is good reason for Israel to make a precipitate strike at Iranian nuclear capacity".

What an awful, awful thing to write. Good reason for "Israel" to do this: or do you mean that the Israeli military would be justified in attacking Iran? This just playing the game of speculating on manoeuvres the great powers might make with their armies and airforces to guarantee stability, while discounting out of hand as utopian any possibility of the working class acting independently in the regional crisis. Of course, as a "left" figleaf Sean writes that he would rather it was the Iranian workers than the Israeli bombers who got rid of Ahmedinejad, as if the two eventualities are in any sense comparable or would have any similar results. Sean does not want to "advocate" or "endorse" an attack: but this is just playing with words, and clearly given the tone of the piece and the fact that he is so keen to defend the rationale for an attack which is not yet on the cards the article can only be read as offering justification for Olmert et al. How can you say there is "good reason" to do something but not "endorse" it?

Indeed, Sean denounces those who would "condemn" the Israeli government for "refusing to stand idly by", an argument which - if you believed that Saddam Hussein could launch an offensive in 45 minutes - could equally have been used to justify the invasion of Iraq in opposition to those who would prefer to "appease" the Iraqi dictator. Much in the same vein of those on the far left who accuse Third World tyrants of being insufficiently ardent in their opposition to US imperialism, Sean is incensed by "idlers" who would sit on their hands rather than stand up to Ahmedinejad, by fair means or foul.

Sean asks "In the name of what alternative would we condemn Israel?" (having decided that the only choices on offer are (i) Israel attacks Iran or (ii) Iran attacks Israel) and goes on to score easy points against those who say that Israel has no right to exist or that Iran has a right to nuclear weapons. His conclusions do not automatically follow though - thinking that there is "good reason" for a pre-emptive bombing attack on Iran is not merely the logical corollary of the belief that, whatever its government's crimes and whatever its history, the Israeli nation has the right to self-determination and to have a state alongside Palestine if it so chooses. You do not have to be "kitsch left" to oppose an Israeli attack on Iran, nor do you have to be "kitsch left" to refer to Israel's hypocrisy in keeping its own nukes, which Sean avoids reference to. We can say these things whilst posing a positive alternative opposed to all "sides" in the stand off. Even if working-class forces are currently weak in the Middle East, Marxists cannot put off building this independent class camp for the sake of taking sides in some more 'immediate' conflict: doing so and fostering jingoistic illusions actually makes our main objective more difficult to realise.

Sean makes occasional, tokenistic references to 'the workers': these are abstract and separate from the general thrust of the article, and indeed Sean makes no effort to delve into the tasks of the working class in the region or how it might intervene in the crisis. Nor, for that matter, does he refer to the oppression of the Palestinian's or the utter hypocrisy of Israel, the region's sole nuclear power, posturing as "anti-nuclear".

Indeed, one among the "kitsch left reasons for criticising Israel" Sean throws up in his list is of a rather different character to the others: "Because for choice we would live in a world where the workers of Israel, Iran, Iraq were united in opposition to all their rulers, and strong enough to get rid of them and bring to the region an era of socialist and democratic peace and understanding." Sean clearly thinks this is just utopian, and portrays this approach in a carping and dismissive fashion. Of course, none of us think that there's going to be a worldwide socialist revolution in the next week, month or even before Iran is bombed. But that is our sole objective, and the way Marxists respond to more 'immediate' national disputes does indeed shape the possible future outcome: it is impossible to just mix and match between fighting for revolution and playing at imperialist geopolitics like Sean does. You can, however, oppose both regimes and their militarists.

We are not armchair generals willing the Israeli government to stand up for themselves against the "Muslim fundamentalists" or hoping that the big Western imperialist powers will be able to maintain some sort of ersatz "safety" for the Israeli Jews by keeping Israel's rival regional powers weak until that bright, sunny future day when the workers storm the Knesset and take power. Not only do we refuse to put our confidence in the Israeli generals, but we must ardently denounce their aggressive and imperialist stance, the very mirror-image of the Iranian theocrats and one which puts working-class unity further down the agenda.

Workers' power in Russia 1917-21

2008-07-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

1. The Bolsheviks' leadership of the workers' revolution

The 'April Theses'
Upon returning to Russia from exile in April 1917, Lenin published in Pravda The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution, a series of theses arguing for no confidence in the Provisional Government and denouncing coalition with the bourgeoisie ; the transfer of all power to the soviets; and for the new revolutionary government to end the imperialist war and carry out widespread nationalisations. Although the soviets were at that time led by Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, he stressed that they would serve both as the means of taking power and as the form of the post-revolutionary state:

"In most of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority... The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.
As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.
...
"The Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’ and other Deputies are not understood, not only in the sense that their class significance, their role in the Russian revolution, is not clear to the majority. They are not understood also in the sense that they constitute a new form or a new type of state... Since the end of the nineteenth century... revolutionary epochs have advanced a higher type of democratic state, a state which in certain respects, as Engels put it, ceases to be a state, is "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word". This is a state of the Paris Commune type, one in which a standing army and police divorced from the people are replaced by the direct arming of the people themselves. It is this feature that constitutes the very essence of the Commune..."

Lenin’s determined views were derided by his comrades - Bogdanov characterised the theses as "the delirium of a madman", and Krupskaya thought that Lenin had "gone crazy". As with much of his agitation for imminent revolution during the next six months, Lenin’s views were far from dominant in the party - Alexandra Kollontai was the only leading Bolshevik who agreed with the sentiment of the April Theses. Of course, Lenin had to wage a fight within the Bolshevik party, since he did not for one second think that the current leadership of the soviets would lead a bid for power:

"A "commune state" (i.e. a state organised along the lines of the Paris Commune) cannot be introduced in Russia "immediately" because to do that it would be necessary for the majority of the deputies in all (or in most) soviets to clearly recognise all the erroneousness and harm of the tactics and policy pursued by the SRs, Chkheidze, Tsereteli, Steklov etc."

Yet far from being held back by the apparent weakness of the Bolsheviks in the soviets or widespread complacency with the success of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February 1917, Lenin knew that it was impossible to stand still - for the workers not to seize power would mean their crushing by the bourgeoisie. Against great opposition, he fought for the party to adopt a similarly revolutionary standpoint, and then agitate for his perspectives among the whole class. This was no simple task, and even on the eve of the October revolution such leading comrades as Kamenev and Zinoviev opposed insurrection, having only taken some of his ideas to heart.

For Lenin, there was no use arguing that the working class was not ready to take up the reins of government - somehow, it had to be made to realise its mission. If the Bolsheviks just waited for the soviets to take power, they might have to wait forever - they had to make it happen themselves, and win support through the act of offering a revolutionary solution. Lenin expressed his admiration for Napoleon’s maxim "Engage, then see what happens". But amidst his angry rows with comrades and his preparations for a militarily effective seizure of power, he wavered as to the best means for revolution - particularly when the tight Bolshevik party clashed with the bureaucracy of the soviets and the lethargy of the SRs and Mensheviks, who of course refused to enact Lenin’s demand that they lead the soviets to power. At the Congress of Soviets, held in Petrograd in June 1917, the Menshevik minister Irakli Tsereteli attacked Lenin, as Michael Pearson describes:

"Accusing [the Bolsheviks] of gross irresponsibility, he asserted "Only by pooling our efforts can we achieve democracy and victory. Today, Russia has no political party which would say "Give us power, go yourselves and we will take your place.""
At that moment, a voice rang out from the back of the big hall. "There is such a party!" To the astonishment of his comrades, who knew his careful reticence in public, Lenin had stood up. "There is such a party," he repeated. "It is the Bolshevik Party!".
The shocked silence was broken by a wave of laughter from the big audience. To men from outside Petersburg, the idea that so small a party as the Bolsheviks - which only had 105 voting delegates among them - could form a government seemed absurd. By contrast, the other parties were represented by 822 delegates.
They laughed again when Lenin mounted the platform to demand that the Soviet should at once seize power from the Provisional Government."

Mocked by Kerensky to the acclaim of the majority parties, Lenin walked out of the Congress in disgust. He had called for working-class self-emancipation - the Mensheviks and their ilk held Russia’s workers in contempt. But although Lenin knew that soviets composed like this would never take power, he continued to call on them and the leading parties to do so - not because immediate insurrection was militarily wise or because he wanted to see the other ‘socialist’ parties in government, but because raising the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" highlighted the obsoleteness of the SRs and Mensheviks, attracted radical workers in the Factory Committees and unions to the Bolsheviks and prepared the working class for a later seizure of control.

May in Kronstadt
The problem was that, although well in advance of the other ‘socialist parties’, the Party had to keep up with the great revolutionary energy of some sections of the class. One early dilemma came on May 13th, when the radical SR-led Kronstadt soviet passed a resolution which declared its sole authority over the city and said it would make contact with the Provisional Government "in matters of state". Leon Trotsky, at the time leader of the Mezhraiontsy group - soon to join the Bolsheviks - addressed a crowd in Kronstadt's Anchor Square the following day during a debate with the Menshevik Mark Broido:

"You yourselves have drafted a revolution about taking power into your hands! Don't you agree that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and what is good for Kronstadt is also good for any other town? It is you who stand in the front line, while the others have fallen behind. It is up to you to call on them to adopt your standpoint. What you have to say is: we are standing firm as a rock, and you too must stand firm, take power into your own hands and demand that the central power of Russia be transferred to the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies."

SR (later Left-SR) Aleksandr Brushvit, a leading figure in the Kronstadt soviet, held that the Petrograd soviet must represent the central state power, and wanted to pressurise it to overthrow the Provisional Government. He recognised the essentially revolutionary character of soviet rule in spite of the Petrograd soviet's then collaboration with the Kerensky régime and the continuation of the imperialist war.

"I am of the opinion that the central power is the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of the city of Petrograd, since the coalition government is merely its executive organ, a body set up on the basis of a definite platform, which the Petrograd Soviet can remove at any given moment, replacing it with a more suitable executor of its will."

Amending the previous decision to "engage with" the Provisional Government, Brushvit passed a resolution through the Kronstadt Soviet on May 16th, declaring that "the sole power in the city of Kronstadt is the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies which in matters of state, enters into direct relations with the Petrograd soviet." The SRs, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks all voted for this motion, which was passed 211-41.

However, the Bolshevik Central Committee were not impressed by the behaviour of their comrades locally, who had not consulted Petrograd. Secretly furious at what had happened, Kamenev had to play down the episode in a Pravda editorial, claiming that
"Of course, the Kronstadt comrades know perfectly well that there is nothing more dangerous than taking power piecemeal, in different areas, towns and districts. In taking the administration of Kronstadt into their hands they did not establish a 'Kronstadt Republic' that was separate from Russia... but only recognised the right of the local population to run their own local town affairs".

Perhaps a strange counter-argument - the "right" of a soviet to run a town is in direct contradiction to the bourgeois authorities' "rights" there. Indeed, on May 28th the staunchly Bolshevik First Regiment of Machine-Gunners stationed in Petrograd held an armed demonstration in support of Kronstadt's soldiers and sailors and their "staunch position of non-confidence in the Provisional Government". Such was the depth of the change that October saw no further insurrection in Kronstadt itself.

Trotsky's position was correct: the Provisional Government may not have responded militarily to events in Kronstadt, but the socialist revolution could not exist in one city alone and it would necessarily either serve as a beacon for other workers or not survive at all.

All Power to the...?
But the Bolsheviks were unwilling to provoke an insurrection prematurely, which would have risked handing the opportunity to the bourgeoisie to bloodily repress the workers' movement, guaranteeing years of defeat. This was a question of military tactics, not of broader political orientation. However, during the "July Days" the party reluctantly supported the spontaneous uprising, even though it was sure that the time was not yet right to attempt a seizure of power. Indeed, July saw terrible repression of the workers' movement and the Bolshevik Party and it appeared that the government would move ever to the right unless the workers took power. Kerensky disarmed the Red Guards.

The SRs and the Mensheviks, and the soviets they led, failed to put up any resistance to the Provisional Government in this, and Lenin began to see them as an obstacle to working-class revolution. At a secret two-day party Conference in mid-July he described the soviets and the other socialist parties as "mere fig leaves of the counter-revolution", and at the party's Sixth Congress (July 26th-August 3rd), held after Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev had been forced into hiding, Stalin's motion to substitute the slogan "Complete Liquidation of the Dictatorship of the Counter-revolutionary Bourgeoisie" for "All Power to the Soviets" was passed near-unanimously. This was not just some Stalinist machination - Lenin's own position had substantially changed to calling for power to be placed in the hands of "revolutionary proletarian and peasant soviets". Of course, any soviet that takes power is, per se, revolutionary, but Lenin was expressing his disenchantment with those led by SRs and Mensheviks.

At the same time, the Bolsheviks were ever more conscious of the need to topple the Provisional Government, but this was a great risk given their small base. While there were some, such as Bukharin and Trotsky's acolytes, who continued to assert the central role of the soviets throughout August 1917, the party thought it had found an alternative - the Factory Committees. These were the most basic unit of industrial democracy, and indeed were counter-posed to the trade unions, which were bureaucratic and out of the hands of the rank-and-file . Existing in two-thirds of factories with more than 200 employees, the Factory Committees could be an effective organ for workers' control of production but giving them "All Power" jarred with the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. And yet in order to show up the Social-Revolutionaries' and Mensheviks' refusal to break their pact with the Kerensky government - a bourgeois dictatorship with which Lenin and his followers never allied themselves - the Bolsheviks continued to call on these parties to assert themselves and seize power, using insurrectionary slogans propagandistically.

The Bolsheviks never had a clear alternative to the soviets, but it is interesting that they were prepared to look elsewhere, given that soviets had previously been touted by Lenin as the only form of working-class state. "All Power to the Factory Committees", along with the one-sided "Complete Liquidation of the Dictatorship of the Counter-revolutionary Bourgeoisie" meant that they could not specify any particular state form at all, and it was therefore an essentially unMarxist position. Throughout August there was significant opposition within the party to dropping the "All Power to the Soviets" slogan, and Lunacharsky even intervened at the Petrograd Factory Committees' conference (12th-14th August) to persuade it to oppose the Sixth Congress decision. Yet, ironically enough, it was the Bolsheviks' single-handed defeat of the Kornilov coup, acting independently of the soviets, which swung the debate decisively in favour of the pro-soviet stance. The soviets had atrophied during the summer as the SRs and Mensheviks refused to lead them to power, but the fascist threat embodied by Kornilov swung them to the left, with the groundswell of popular support for the Bolsheviks channelled through the soviets.

This was the basis for the seizure of power in October - once the Bolsheviks had won a majority in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets, they had a clear mandate to lead them to revolution. Trotsky and Lenin debated the date of the insurrection - Lenin lambasted his comrades’ failure to take action immediately whereas Trotsky wanted to wait until the Second Congress of Soviets could ratify it - but both accepted the sovereignty of the soviets . And yet just one week before the revolution in Petrograd, led by the soviet which Trotsky personally controlled, Lenin wavered:

"We must shift the centre of gravity to the Factory Committees. The Factory Committees must become the organs of insurrection. We must change our slogan and instead of saying 'All power to the Soviets' we must say 'All power to the Factory Committees'."

The Bolsheviks used their majority in the soviets to make the revolution happen, but Lenin was never fully convinced that they were the organs with which to take power, particularly since the Factory Committees themselves were a major driving force of revolutionary energy, what the Bolsheviks referred to as "the battering ram that would deal blows to capitalism, organs of class struggle created by the working class on its own ground". Furthermore, while the soviets could be bureaucratic, cumbersome and resistant to Lenin's aims, he knew that the disciplined party could act decisively.

2. Workers’ control after the revolution

The authority of the soviets
With the October revolution the soviets became masters of Russia. Sweeping land reforms and nationalisations were coupled with social measures, such as freedom of divorce, rights for gay people and reorganisation of the education system. While this was essentially putting the programme of the Bolshevik Party into effect, the soviets were characterised by free debate and Bolshevik strength was due to voting numbers rather than any institutional advantages. Coupled with the soviet take-over was a wave of enthusiasm among the working class, with hundreds more soviets created in the weeks following the revolution and, for the first time in history, mass participation in the administration of Russia.

There was a pyramid structure in the soviet system, with shop-floor votes to elect delegates to the local soviet, which would itself elect higher bodies such as the Central Executive Committee of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets (CEC). It was a pluralist socialist democracy, with debate between the governing parties - i.e. the Bolsheviks and Left-SRs - up and down this pyramid: for example, the Left-SRs controlled the Commissariat of Justice, and through their strength in the soviets were able to initiate a massive public debate on the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

In the October revolution the Petrograd soviet had acted like an extension of the Bolshevik Party, which controlled the Military Revolutionary Committee, but the Bolsheviks did not dominate the soviets at a national level. However, their apparent laxity about enforcing their will through these organs did have another edge, namely the party’s willingness to make use of extra-soviet bodies, in particular the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), the de facto national government after the revolution, which was composed entirely of Bolshevik Party members. It only had to seek retrospective approval from the CEC for its actions. The June 1918 constitution of the RSFSR showed the contradiction between these organs:

"31. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee is the supreme legislative, executive and controlling organ of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic.
32. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee directs in a general way the activity of the Workers' and Peasants' Government and of all organs of the soviet authority in the country, and it coordinates and regulates the operation of the Soviet constitution and of the resolutions of the All-Russian congresses and of the central organs of the soviet power.
33. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee considers and enacts all measures and proposals introduced by the Soviet of People's Commissars or by the various departments, and it also issues its own decrees and regulations
(...)
37. The Council of People's Commissars is entrusted with the general management of the affairs of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic.
38. For the accomplishment of this task the Council of People's Commissars issues decrees, resolutions, orders, and, in general, takes all steps necessary for the proper and rapid conduct of governmental affairs.
39. The Council of People's Commissars notifies immediately the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of all its orders and resolutions.
40. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee has the right to revoke or suspend all orders and resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars.
41. All orders and resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars of great political significance are referred for consideration and final approval to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Note: Measures requiring immediate execution may be enacted directly by the Council of People's Commissariats."

From the winter of 1917-18 onwards the Bolsheviks’ attitude towards soviet democracy was characterised by a certain arbitrariness, which appears unnecessary given that at that time they were the majority faction and were in alliance with the Left SRs. Indeed, given how far away they were from considering banning opposition parties or "protecting" the soviets from them, the establishment of Sovnarkom seems like a bureaucratic-centralising manoeuvre designed to entrench Bolshevik control - the party’s leaders found it impossible to trust any other parties with the fragile young Soviet Republic. But the problem was not just the technical point that the CEC could only retrospectively criticise the Sovnarkom’s actions, but that the rights of the soviets were subordinated to the authority of the government. The Central Executive Committee had been conceived as a permanent body, the highest organ of the soviet system, but did not meet at all between July 14th, 1918 and February 1st, 1920 - a fact which did not stop the Bolshevik Party from continuing to issue decrees in its name.

Despite what he had written in the ‘April Theses’, it seems that by the end of 1917 Lenin’s conception of the soviets was one of administration and accounting rather than of direct rule - what "workers’ control" meant was that they could work as a "check" on the government and capitalist businesses, rather than that they had the ability to take initiative or proactively organise society themselves. The month before the revolution, he had offered this definition:

"When we say workers' control, always associating that slogan with the dictatorship of the proletariat, and always putting it after the latter, we thereby make plain what state we have in mind... If it is a proletarian state we are referring to (i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat) then workers' control can become a national, all embracing, omnipresent, extremely precise and extremely scrupulous accounting of the production and distribution of goods".

This transfer of executive authority away from the soviets, initiated even long before the civil war broke out, was a departure from the principle of working-class self-rule. Formerly participatory organs of working-class power, the soviets were increasingly marginalised after a decline in Bolshevik support upon the demobilisation of the Tsarist army . Following big gains for the Left-SRs in the spring 1918 elections, where they won control of Tula, Iaroslavl, Kostroma, Sormovo, Briansk and Izhevsk, these soviets were all shut down by force. Lenin did continue to identify with some notion of "Soviet power" into 1919:

We know very well that there are still many defects in the organisation of Soviet power in this country. Soviet power is not a miracle-working talisman. It does not, overnight, heal all the evils of the past- illiteracy, lack of culture, the consequences of a barbarous war, the aftermath of predatory capitalism. But it does pave the way to socialism. It gives those who were formerly oppressed the chance to straighten their backs and to an ever-increasing degree to take the whole government of the country, the whole administration of the economy, the whole management of production, into their own hands. Soviet power is the road to socialism that was discovered by the masses of the working people, and that is why it is the true road, that is why it is invincible.

Yet the soviets on the ground were hollowed out to the extent that they were in the most part unable to express themselves independently of the Bolshevik government after the early summer of 1918. After the great wave of revolutionary enthusiasm of winter 1917-18 had died down, and famine and destruction set in, the working class was severely weakened in its ability to hold top-down undemocratic structures and bureaucracy in check. Once the opposition parties had been banned (by the edict of the Bolshevik government rather than by soviets themselves), and vote-rigging had become widespread, the soviets were simply rubber-stamps for Central Committee policy, with little of the debate and mass participation which had characterised the early stage of the workers’ revolution. Lenin’s version of "Soviet power", as described in the paragraph above, only makes sense if we assume that organs such as Sovnarkom whose membership was entirely hand-picked by the Bolshevik leadership were themselves authentic workers’ councils.

The disenfranchisement of the Factory Committees
The same went for the Factory Committees, which were unable to maintain their influence over economic decision-making (never mind actually managing production and distribution) in the face of unaccountable national structures and technocratic attempts to kick-start the economy.

Immediately after the October revolution, Lenin set out a Draft Decree on Workers' Control in Pravda. Workers' control was to be "carried out by all the workers and employees in a given enterprise, either directly if the enterprise is small enough to permit it, or through delegates to be immediately elected at mass meetings". Delegates would be entitled to "access to all books and documents and to all warehouses and stocks of material, instruments and products, without exception"...Their decisions were legally binding upon the owners of enterprises but could be "annulled by trade unions and congresses" Furthermore "in all enterprises of state importance" the delegates were "answerable to the state for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property". "Enterprises of state importance" were defined as "all enterprises working for defence purposes, or in any way connected with the production of articles necessary for the existence of the mass of the population", which, given the dilapidated state of the economy, meant pretty much all arenas of production.

Workers were to be able to enact some "checks" on state and private production, guaranteeing some level of accountability of officials, but would not take the means of production and distribution in their own hands. Neither the Factory Committees nor the soviets would decide broader production levels, wage rates or working conditions themselves, but would exercise influence over Sovnarkom through the All-Russian Council for Workers' Control, a board of 21 representatives, of whom 5 were from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, 11 from trade unions and just 5 from the All-Russian Council of Factory Committees. Even aside from the question of its composition - the relative lack of shop-floor representatives from the Factory Committees is worth mentioning - this was not an example of working-class self-rule. The Council for Workers’ Control, much like the CEC, could take no initiative of its own, but merely monitor and counsel government decisions. Indeed, the Council for Workers’ Control was set up in mid-November 1917 in response to the Factory Committees’ own attempts to co-ordinate their actions nationally - the government was very wary of the "anarchic" attitude of the Factory Committees, i.e. their wish to have the final say on workers’ conditions and production practices, and so called on the trade unions to counter their threat. This despite the fact that the purpose of the Factory Committees’ national organisation was to cohere the programmes of workers in different industries to make a viable economic plan. But one month on from his "All Power to the Factory Committees" speech, Lenin was now in favour of top-down economic management with limited trade union supervision.

At the first meeting of the All Russian Committee for Workers’ Control, the rightist Bolshevik representative Larin declared that:

"The trade unions represent the interests of the class as a whole whereas the Factory Committees only represent particular interests. The Factory Committees should be subordinated to the Trade Unions."

Zhivotov, a leading figure in the Factory Committee movement, answered that:

"In the Factory Committees we elaborate instructions which come from below, with a view to seeing how they can be applied to industry as a whole. These are the instructions of the work shop, of life itself. They are the only instructions that can have real meaning. They show what the Factory Committees are capable of, and should therefore come to the forefront in discussions of workers’ control."

But the Bolsheviks continued to pare down industrial democracy and co-opt labour movement organisations into state structures. On December 5th 1917 Sovnarkom created a Supreme Council of National Economy (Vesenka) which was to draw up economic plans, with a handful of Council of Workers’ Control representatives but mostly composed of experts and technocrats nominated by Sovnarkom. Lenin commented, "We have passed from workers’ control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy".

The Factory Committees were systematically undermined by the Bolsheviks, and economic power became more and more alienated from the working class. Originally radical and participatory organs of rank-and-file self-expression, with a libertarian bent towards direct workers’ self-management, the Factory Committees were in January 1918 amalgamated into the official trade union structures. This after the creation of Vesenka, which had seen a fusion of the powers of trade union officials, technocrats and Bolshevik party cadre - a fusion of authority which had no mandate from the soviets.

One-man management
For every crisis the Bolsheviks could only find a Bonapartist centralising solution, with little attempt to ensure the maintenance of grassroots self-rule or democratic norms. On March 26th 1918, Vesenka abolished all vestiges of workers’ control on the railway, bringing in a régime of one-man management, and four days later Trotsky abolished the election of army officers, and re-introduced saluting, privileges, separate living quarters and the death penalty:

"At the present time, comrades, who is building up the army? The bourgeoisie? No, the workers' and peasants' soviets, i.e. the same classes which compose the army. Here no internal struggle is possible."

In an article for Pravda on April 28th 1918, Lenin further explained the measures taken:

"Concerning the significance of individual dictatorial powers from the point of view of the specific tasks of the present moment, it must be said that large-scale machine industry - which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism - calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. The technical, economic and historical necessity of this is obvious, and all those who have thought about socialism have always regarded it as one of the conditions of socialism. But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one.
"Given ideal class consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the common work, this subordination would be something like the mild leadership of the conductor of an orchestra. It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal discipline and class-consciousness are lacking. But be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of process organised on the patter or large-scale machine industry. On the railways it is twice and three times as necessary. In this transition from one political task to another, which on the surface is totally dissimilar to the first, lies the whole originality of the present situation. The revolution has only just smashed the oldest, strongest and heaviest of fetters to which the people submitted under duress. Today, however, the same revolution demands - precisely in the interests of socialism - that the people unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of labour."

Neither Lenin nor Trotsky blamed material circumstances for their policy nor say that what they are doing is an unfortunate necessity. It is instructive that Lenin says that given ideal class consciousness management’s leadership would be milder - but since he thinks "strict unity of will" necessary, he can only mean that if class consciousness were ideal, then no-one would disagree with their managers. Both Lenin and Trotsky assume that free debate, industrial democracy and questioning authority are inefficient, unworkable, and unnecessary after an (incomplete) socialist revolution - Trotsky even uses the paper-thin argument that internal struggle in the army was "not possible" on the grounds that its sociological composition was akin to that of the soviets. Once the managers started "electing" themselves to the soviets as Bolshevik Party representatives, even that was untrue.

The trade unions had little real independence from the Bolshevik government, particularly since strike activity was outlawed. Thus what Deutscher called the "syndicalist slip", the Bolsheviks’ Eighth Congress resolution that "the trade unions must proceed to the actual concentration in their own hands of all the administration of the entire economy, as a single economic unit" was essentially meaningless. Ordinary workers had no control over institutions such as Vesenka - which from August 1918 onwards had no Factory Committee representatives whatsoever - except through intervention in the structures of the Bolshevik Party itself. The Eighth Congress resolution also "urge[d] the unions to impress upon the workers the need to work with and learn from the bourgeois technicians and specialists and to overcome their 'ultra-radical' distrust of the latter", and to tolerate their higher wages.

Rather than acting as vehicles for workers’ representation, the Bolsheviks saw the unions’ role as (i) increasing production rates by administering the labour force and (ii) acting as "schools for socialism", educating the working class in Party doctrine. The Party itself would provide representation and theoretical leadership for Russia’s workers, to the exclusion of other organisations. Lenin, responding to Bukharin's winter 1920 call for "workers' democracy in production", described his platform as:

"a full break with communism and a transition to a position of syndicalism. It destroys the need for the Party. If the trade unions, nine-tenths of whose members are non-Party workers, appoint the managers of industry, what is the use of the Party?"

The Bolsheviks' April 1920 Ninth Congress instructed the Factory Committees (now merely local units of the unions) to "devote themselves to the questions of labour discipline, of propaganda and of education of the workers". Hierarchical and capitalist structures continued to predominate across the economy, which, in Trotsky’s opinion, was neither undesirable nor merely a symptom of Civil War conditions;

"Under capitalism the system of piece work and of grading, the application of the Taylor system etc., have as their object to increase the exploitation of the workers by the squeezing out of surplus value. Under socialist production, piecework, bonuses, etc., have as their problem to increase the volume of the social product... those workers who do more for the general interest than others receive the right to a greater quantity of the social product than the lazy, the careless and the disorganisers".
...
"The dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed in the abolition of private property in the means of production, in the supremacy over the whole soviet mechanism of the collective will of the workers, and not at all in the form in which individual economic enterprises are administered. I consider that if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one man management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner and much less painfully."

3. Strike activity and political opposition

The Constituent Assembly
A leading sympathetic critic of the Bolsheviks, Rosa Luxemburg opposed the Bolsheviks’ decision to disband the Constituent Assembly in January 1918,

"To be sure, every democratic institution has its limits and shortcomings, things which it doubtless shares with all other human institutions. But the remedy which Trotsky and Lenin have found, the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than the disease it is supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions. That source is the active, untrammelled, energetic political life of the broadest masses of the people."

One consideration was that the electoral list for the Socialist Revolutionary party, which won a majority of seats in the Constituent Assembly elections, had been composed before that party split into Left and Right groups, rendering the results meaningless. Clearly many SR voters would not have voted for the right-wing candidates on offer, given the choice - then again, had there been a Left-SR list, the Bolsheviks would surely have lost support to that party. Luxemburg’s remedy was for the election to be re-staged.

But to create a Constituent Assembly elected by the entire population would have been an affront to the power of the soviets - the organs of the working-class state - recreating a situation of dual power. With a tiny working class, the composition of the Constituent Assembly would necessarily have been far different to that of workers’ councils elected on the shop-floor. As it happens, in Luxemburg’s attack on the Bolshevik decision to abolish the Constituent Assembly, The Russian Tragedy, her whole case for democratic rights is predicated on analogies - England’s Long Parliament in 1642, France’s Estates-General in 1789, the Fourth Russian Duma of 1909 - that is to say, analogies with the role of parliaments in bourgeois revolutions.

These situations were qualitatively different to that of 1918 - while the oppressed could find some more expression for their grievances thanks to bourgeois-democratic institutions, they were far from being able to exercise state power. In a country ruled by workers’ councils, the existence of a national Constituent Assembly would have drawn power away from the working class and away from city soviets. That is in direct contradiction to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" - a phrase used by Marx not to mean "dictatorship" as in totalitarianism, press censorship and death camps, but the rule of one class over another .

Indeed, it is hard to understand why the Bolsheviks would consider allowing such a parliament after the October revolution. Again though, confusion and inexperience in government played their role. In November 1917, Lenin was incoherent on the role of the soviets versus that of the Constituent Assembly:

"In reply to numerous questions from peasants, be it known that all power in the country henceforth belongs wholly to the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The workers’ revolution has won in Petrograd and Moscow and is winning everywhere else in Russia. The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government ensures the alliance of the mass of the peasants, the poor peasants, the majority of the peasants, with the workers against the landowners, against the capitalists.
Hence the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, primarily the uyezd and then the gubernia Soviets, are from now on, pending the convocation of the Constituent Assembly , vested with full governmental authority in their localities."

A further complication in the Bolsheviks’ thinking was that they had a long-held programmatic commitment to the creation of a Constituent Assembly. But while a universally elected parliament was a correct demand to place on Kerensky, since he refused to convene any democratic institutions at all, by the time the workers seized power it was abundantly clear that (i) the existence of a Constituent Assembly challenged the soviets (ii) the Bolsheviks would lose heavily in the elections and (iii) the controversy over the Social-Revolutionary list rendered the vote unfair. Rather than entertaining illusions in the Constituent Assembly and then abolishing it upon the publication of the election results, the Bolsheviks should not have tolerated the convention of the assembly at all.

Labour unrest
The forced abandonment of the Constituent Assembly was not a working-class issue, and provoked no resistance whatsoever. The militant Baltic Fleet sailors had no qualms about closing down the Right SR dominated parliament. The first significant stirrings of unrest among the working class were expressed in the spring of 1918, when, as I have mentioned, the Left SRs and Mensheviks made significant breakthroughs in soviet elections across European Russia, seemingly through discontent with the government rather than any particular enthusiasm for the programmes of these parties. The soviets which they took over were broken up by the Bolsheviks at once.

Both parties had been inculpated in strikes, typically referred to in the Bolshevik press as "sabotage" and "conspiracies", even though many such strikes had broken out spontaneously and the Left SRs and Mensheviks had merely made attempts to co-opt their leadership. The Bolsheviks were far from compromising in their attitude to those charged with fomenting industrial unrest - on April 11th-12th 1918 the Cheka had raided 26 anarchist offices in Moscow, taking 500 prisoners, and leaving 40 killed or wounded. During the summer of 1918, not only were the Left SRs (who had initiated an terrorist insurrection in their vehement, unreasoned and pseudo-ultra-left opposition to the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty) banned, but also the anarcho-syndicalists Golos Truda, Anarkhia, and Burevestnik. No opposition press existed after July 1918, except for a spell in January-April 1919 when the anti-soviet Menshevik Party was tolerated .

Clearly the government had the right to combat terrorism - but a wholesale ban of all Left SRs and clamping down on all strikes by workers tarred with the Left SR brush was a counter-productive reaction which served only to weaken further the soviet system. Furthermore, it is clear that the Bolsheviks were not simply banning those parties which used violence or helped the Whites. Although rather utopian in terms of abstract, general philosophical perspectives, Golos Truda were hardly of much use to the counter-revolution. Yet in Pravda the Bolsheviks wrote that the masses' lack of political consciousness made it necessary to "shut the mouth" of their opponents. Furthermore, Left SR Maria Spiridonova’s speeches were called "White Guardist propaganda and treason", while the Mensheviks, Left and Right SRs were called "traitors", "social Kolchakovites", "Black Hundreds", and "monarchists"- dishonestly amalgamating different opposition groups to imply that they had a commonality of interests. What the Bolsheviks never did was to determine precisely what opposition was tolerated - for example, they could have required that each party pledge loyalty to soviet power and workers' rule and renounce terrorism before being allowed to stand in elections.

The Bolsheviks could also alienate workers through their seemingly automatic condemnation of strike activity under the workers’ state. At the end of February 1919 a strike broke out at the Aleksandrovskii railway workshops, the central grievance being that the workers had not been paid 40 percent of that month’s wages. Following a rally of 3000 workers, where government representatives were not allowed to speak and the workers demanded pay and rations equal to those of Red Army soldiers, the Bolsheviks said that they would acquiesce to the strikers’ demands. Yet the night before a likely return to work, the Cheka arrested the strike leaders. Workers walked out again, demanding that their leaders were freed. At the end of March, after the Aleksandrovskii workers voted against the Bolsheviks in the soviet elections, they forcibly evicted the strikers, seized control of the factory and closed it down. All the workers were sacked - and twelve put on trial - and Pravda posted an advertisement for replacement staff. In future, workers’ meetings there would be subject to strict Cheka supervision. And yet another strike followed in June.

A further unnecessary provocation was the arrest of Maria Spiridonova in February 1919, which served as the trigger for a strike movement in Petrograd based on workers’ concerns on the fronts of pay and conditions, soviet democracy and workers’ management of production. In the forefront of the spring strikes, which involved half of the Petrograd labour force, were the workers at the Putilov works, who near-unanimously passed this angry resolution on March 10th:

"We, the workmen of the Putilov works and the wharf, declare before the labouring classes of Russia and the world that the Bolshevik government has betrayed the high ideals of the October Revolution, and thus betrayed and deceived the workmen and peasants of Russia; that the Bolshevik government, acting in our name, is not the authority of the proletariat and peasants, but the authority of the dictatorship of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, self-governing with the aid of Extraordinary Commissions, Communists and police.

"We protest against the compulsion of workmen to remain at factories and works, and attempts to deprive them of all elementary rights: freedom of the press, speech, meetings and inviolability of person.

"We demand:
1. Immediate transfer of authority to freely elected Workers' and Peasants' soviets
2. Immediate re-establishment of elections at factories and plants, barracks, ships, railways, everywhere
3. Transfer of entire management to the released workers of the trade unions
4. Transfer of food supply to workers' and peasants cooperative societies
5. General arming of workers' and peasants
6. Immediate release of members of the original revolutionary peasants' party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries
7. Immediate release of Maria Spiridonova"

Strikes spread rapidly across Petrograd. Lenin visited the city on March 12th, offering increased food rations at a Party rally - but the workers demanded his resignation. Anatoly Lunacharsky was roundly heckled, but under pressure from the crowd conceded that the Bolshevik government would have to resign if most workers so wished. Two days later at an extra-ordinary session of the city soviet, the Bolsheviks decided to "clear the Putilov plant of the White Guardists and bagmen". The strike was smashed.

"Meetings and rallies were banned. Anyone with a copy of the Putilov resolution was arrested immediately. Workers who refused to resume work were evicted from their dwellings and their food ration cards were taken away. At the Putilov plant, the Treugolnik rubber factory, and at the Rozhdestvenskii tram-park the strike was suppressed by armed force. The city authorities had intended to deploy Baltic sailors, but they refused to participate and voted at their meeting to join the workers instead. These sailors, of course, had expressed their solidarity with the Petrograd strikers in June 1918, staged their own abortive uprising in October 1918, and were widely known to support the Left SR party. The Petrograd authorities hurriedly brought additional forces into the city. According to an American intelligence report, 18,000 men and 250 machine guns were brought in. Strikers barricaded themselves at the Putilov plant, which was stormed and occupied. Those in possession of firearms were executed on the spot. According to The Times of London, 300 were arrested during the week after 16 March and suspected ringleaders were shot. According to A.G. Gogolevskii, 225 Left SRs were arrested in March, 75 of them at the Putilov plant. The exact number of those shot is not known. Bolshevik newspapers published the name of 15 Left SRs who were executed. Some western reports said 12. A letter from Petrograd, published in the west, simply stated: "a score or so of workmen were shot at the works." The United States consul's figure was the highest: In April, he reported, 200 workers were shot on orders of Zinoviev. The strike was suppressed and the Cheka went to work, holding summary trials. Many executions followed, taking place in a remote locality called Irinovka, near the fortress of Schlusselburg. The procedure was to line up the victims against the wall, blindfolded, and to shoot them down in batches by machine gun fire."

Clearly the Left SR party had had some influence over the workers at the Putilov plant, as evidenced by their demand for the release of Maria Spiridonova. But that by no means implies that the workers did not have the right to strike - some of them fighting against abuses such as managers "electing" themselves to the soviet - nor that the Bolsheviks were right to meet the workers’ grievances with a hail of bullets. Although a petty-bourgeois formation, the Left SRs were the well-organised alternative to the Bolsheviks and given their pseudo-socialist programme and rhetoric it is unsurprising that they were able to win the backing of workers angry with the Bolsheviks. The fact that tens of thousands of Petrograd workers struck against the government cannot simply be dismissed as a Left SR "conspiracy" or blamed on "counter-revolutionary elements" at Putilov - the Bolsheviks themselves had to take responsibility for the fragmentation of their support.

4. Kronstadt and the Tenth Congress

The significance of the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion in the decay of the Russian revolution can be overstated – the suppression of the uprising did not mark a change in the Bolsheviks’ course, but rather continued their policy of opposition to strikes and independent working-class organisation and served as a further expression of the power of the bureaucracy. The soviets and factory committees had been run down long before – structural guarantees of workers’ democracy had been swept away by the beginning of the Civil War in early summer 1918 - but what changed in 1921 was that despite the opportunities offered by the end of the Civil War the chance of reversing bureaucratisation was increasingly impossible. Even though the worst war-time living conditions and exhaustion were now behind them, the working class would not again make a concerted bid to win back its power, cowed by repression.

The Kronstadt rebellion was provoked by the Petrograd strike wave of February 1921. Like that of spring 1919, the labour stoppages were met with lockouts, the declaration of martial law by the city soviet and dozens of arrests. There were fights in the streets, barricades erected and the roads out of the city blockaded by the Red Army.

"The first strike broke out at the Troubotchny factory, on 23rd February 1921. On the 24th, the strikers organised a mass demonstration in the street. Zinoviev sent detachments of 'Koursanty' (student officers) against them. The strikers tried to contact the Finnish Barracks. Meanwhile, the strikes were spreading. The Baltisky factory stopped work. Then the Laferma factory and a number of others: the Skorokhod shoe factory, the Admiralteiski factory, the Bormann and Metalischeski plants, and finally, on 28th February, the great Putilov works itself.
The strikers were demanding measures to assist food supplies. Some factories were demanding the re-establishment of the local markets, freedom to travel within a radius of thirty miles of the city, and the withdrawal of the militia detachments holding the road around the town. But side by side with these economic demands. several factories were putting forward more political demands freedom of speech and of the Press, the freeing of working class political prisoners. In several big factories, Party spokesmen were refused a hearing."

Despite the official ban on ships’ committees, when news of attacks on striking workers reached Kronstadt on February 26th, the crews of the ships Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol held an emergency meeting and elected a fact-finding mission of thirty-two sailors to visit Petrograd. According to Israel Getzler’s account, what they found were workers frightened to speak out or explain their grievances, fearful of the Communist Party. He cites one worker brave enough to say what he thought:

"Since you are from Kronstadt with which they frighten us all the time, and you want to know the truth, here it is: we are starving. We have no shoes and no clothes. We are physically and morally terrorised. Each and every one of our requests and demands is met by the authorities with terror, terror, endless terror. Look at the prisons of Petrograd and you will see how many of our comrades sit there after being arrested in the last three days. No, comrades, the time has come to tell the Communists openly - you have spoken enough on our behalf. Down with your dictatorship which has landed us in this blind alley. Make way for non-party men. Long live freely elected Soviets! They alone can take us out of this mess!"

Upon the return of the Petrograd delegation on February 28th, the crews of the two ships voted for a resolution with fifteen demands calling for freedom for socialist parties, free soviet elections and the recognition of workers’ right of association:

1. Immediate new elections to the Soviets. The present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be held by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda.
2. Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
3. The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant organisations.
4. The organisation, at the latest on 10th March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
5. The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
6. The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.
7. The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces. No political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In the place of the political sections various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.
8. The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
9. The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
10. The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups. The abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.
11. The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.
12. We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.
13. We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
14. We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.
15. We demand that handicraft production be authorised provided it does not utilise wage labour."

Note that the sailors did not ask for "market socialism" or a New Economic Policy – their demands relating to the peasantry were all wholly in the interests of peasants who did not hire labour. They did not ask for a Constituent Assembly or for the re-legalisation of the Black Hundreds (or even the Right SRs). There was nothing right-wing, petty-bourgeois or pro-White about these demands – each opposed bureaucracy and sought reforms which would mean the extension of soviet power and workers’ control. The mischaracterisation of the above 15 points in Trotskyist accounts of Kronstadt is amazing - particularly since the Petropavlovsk resolution encapsulates a soviet, democratic and rational criticism of developing bureaucratisation.

The Bolsheviks did not consider meeting these demands. In a botched attempt to quell the unrest, the Communist Party sent Mikhail Kalinin to address a rally of Kronstadt workers the following day. The 15,000 strong crowd was very hostile. He was heckled when he said that he had lost his voice - "there's no need anyhow, for you won't say anything new". He was drowned out by slogans attacking the commissars - "We have had enough of that life - prisons and executions without trial", "Look at all the jobs you've got, and surely you take rations for each of them" – and when he assured the Kronstadters that he too was just an ordinary working-class lad, there was so much shouting that he had to abandon the rostrum. Kuzmin, an associate of Trotsky and commissar of the Baltic Fleet, was similarly angrily denounced, and his sickly effort to appease the crowd by regaling them with stories of the city’s revolutionary past was taken to be some sort of ironical joke. After the government representatives’ speeches, the Petropavlovsk resolution was moved and passed, and the meeting resolved to invite each ship’s crew, army unit, dock, workshop, trade union and soviet institution to elect two delegates to a conference to be held at the Engineers’ College the next day (March 2nd) to draw up the rules for fresh soviet elections.

The 303 delegates at the Engineers' College elected a five man praesidium - Petrichenko, Yakovenko, Oreshin, Tukin, and Arkhipov - none of whom were Communist Party members. This body, labelled as the ‘Provisional Revolutionary Committee’ became the de facto provisional government of Kronstadt, and on March 2nd sent out squads of sailors to occupy the telephone exchange, the Cheka offices and all naval and military installations. There was no resistance to the re-establishment of soviet power over the city. Since no elections had yet taken place, the conference itself worked like a soviet, meeting again on March 4th and 11th to debate the progress of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee and propose edicts.

The commissar Kuzmin, meanwhile, was arrested, having told the conference that the Communist Party could not tolerate "dual power" and were ready for a showdown "Communists will never voluntarily relinquish power and will fight it out to the end". But the Communist Party delegates, representing one-third of the conference, had also voted for the Petropavlovsk resolution. On March 4th the Provisional Revolutionary Committee’s Izvestiia published an appeal from local Communists, who had reconstituted the local party section into a ‘Provisional Bureau of the Kronstadt section of the Russian Communist Party’:

"Comrade Communists, working in all Soviet departments, trade organizations, and factory committees, all economic organs, and also in the military units of the garrison, the PROVISIONAL BUREAU OF THE R.C.P. addresses you with a comradely appeal and urgent call of the following substance:
The moment currently being endured demands of us special caution, restraint and tact. Our party has not betrayed, and is not betraying, the working class, in the defense of which it has stood for many years. The historic course of political events requires us, in the interests of all labourers, to be at our places, and to carry on our daily work without any stoppages. We must remember that the smallest weakening or break in work, in any section of our economic life, brings about worse living conditions for the working class and peasantry.
May every comrade of our party be imbued with an understanding of the moment being endured. Do not believe the absurd rumours that Communist leaders are supposedly being shot, and that Communists are preparing for armed action in Kronstadt. They are spread by a clearly provocative element, which wishes to provoke bloodshed. These are lies and absurdities, and it is on such as these that the agents of the Entente, working to achieve the overthrow of Soviet power, wish to play.
We openly declare that our party, with weapon in hand, has and will defend all the achievements of the working class against the open and secret White Guards who wish the destruction of the Soviet power of workers and peasants.
The Provisional Bureau of the R.C.P recognizes new elections to the Soviet as necessary, and calls on all members of the R.C.P to take part in these new elections.
The Provisional Bureau of the R.C.P. calls on all members of the party to be at their places, and not to cause any obstruction to the measures being carried out by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee. Restraint, discipline, calm and unity are the price of victory for the workers and peasants of the entire world against all the secret and open plots of the Entente.
Long live Soviet power! Long live the Worldwide Union of Labourers!"
Provisional Bureau of the Kronst. Organ. of the R.C.P.
IA. ILYIN, F. PERVUSHIN, A. KABANOV"

However, the goodwill expressed in the RCP(PB) appeal above, the good treatment of the three commissars arrested by the Provisional Revolutionary Committee and the tone of Izvestiia –

"The Provisional Revolutionary Committee takes revenge against no one, threatens no one. All the Kronstadt Communists are at liberty, and are unthreatened by any danger. Only those are restrained who tried to flee and were taken by the patrols. But even they are located in complete security, in a security which guarantees them against revenge by the populace for the "red terror." The Communists' families are inviolate, just as all citizens are inviolate"

- stood in stark contrast to the words of the Communist Party leaders. Zinoviev, who sat at the head of the Kronstadt Defence Committee, attacked the Kronstadters as "puppets who dance at the behest of the Tsarist general Kozlovsky and other notorious White Guards" and told them that if they did not surrender immediately they would be "shot down like partridges". The government party had plenty of other accusations to level against the Provisional Revolutionary Committee, largely based on the theme that it was a White plot funded by French imperialism.

But the Communists did not just have nasty words. Kronstadt conference members in Petrograd were arrested and their families rounded up by the Cheka. Leaflets were dropped out of planes over Kronstadt telling the citizens that those arrested in Petrograd were being held as hostages, in response to the arrest of the commissars. The leaflets proclaimed that "if even one hair falls from the heads of the restrained comrades, the named hostages will answer for it with their heads". The government locked the Petrograd sailors in their barracks, fearing dissent, while striking workers were appeased with a lifting of roadblocks and the unexpected delivery of more meat, shoes and clothing. The Kronstadters were isolated and the stage set for invasion.

Negotiations were not considered – to negotiate would have been to recognise the legitimacy of soviet power, breaking the political and economic monopoly of the Communist Party. In any case, the Bolsheviks were in a hurry to break Kronstadt before the melting of the bay, which would have made the fortress impregnable to invasion by land. After Trotsky had offered a final ultimatum for the immediate surrender of the opponents of the "socialist Fatherland", on March 7th, 60,000 troops began the assault. Some units mutinied and joined the rebellion – many more were forced onto the ice at gunpoint. An appallingly attritional battle over nearly two weeks killed thousands of civilians and as many as 10,000 Red Army soldiers – the number of rebel fatalities was probably even higher.

Mischaracterisations of Kronstadt
The slander volleyed at the Kronstadt rebels deserves to be countered. For a start, it is not true that the general decomposition of the working class in the Civil War meant that the "petty-bourgeois", "White" Kronstadt sailors of 1921 had nothing to do with the revolutionary sailors of 1917:

"Yasinsky's impression that the veteran politicised Red sailor still predominated in Kronstadt at the end of 1920 is borne out by the hard statistical data available regarding the crews of the two major battleships, the Petropavlovsk and the Sevastopol, both renowned in 1917 for their revolutionary zeal and Bolshevik allegiance. Of 2,028 sailors whose years of enlistment are known, no less than 1,904 or 93.9% were recruited into the navy before and during the 1917 revolution, the largest group, 1,195, having joined in the years 1914-16. Only some 137 sailors or 6.8% were recruited in the years 1918-21, including three who were conscripted in 1921, and they were the only ones who had not been there during the 1917 revolution."

Aside from the fact that 93.9% of Kronstadt sailors were active in the revolution (at the end of 1920, a survey found that under four percent of the Communist Party’s members in the city had joined before 1918 ) the "sociological composition" argument is inherently a fallacious one. Only two of the Petropavlovsk demands have anything to do with the peasantry, and all are in favour of greater sovereignty for workers’ councils – and how is it possible to judge a movement without taking some account of what it says it is for? Even if the delegates to the conference had all been the children of peasants, the fact that they were elected by docks and factories to a workers’ council means that they became part of the organised working-class, not the petty-bourgeoisie.

Furthermore, Trotsky’s analogy between fighting the Kronstadt rebellion and fighting Cossacks in Hue and Cry over Kronstadt is highly misleading. Only the most bone-headed pseudo-Marxist could seriously claim that since the Kronstadters were opposed to the Bolsheviks, they were therefore supporters of the Whites. This is a completely unacceptable – indeed, Stalinist – idea: if you disagree with the leader of the ruling party, at any time, on any issue, you are necessarily a counter-revolutionary. While the Bolshevik leaders foamed at the mouth with their absurd allegations that the sailors were monarchists, the reality is that the party most central to events in Kronstadt – where the Mensheviks, Left and Right SRs were infinitesimally weak – was the anarcho-populist Maximalist group.

But even if the rebels were not Whites, did they, against their own intentions, help the White cause through taking over the city? Although in public he had called the rebels "Black Hundreds", at the Bolshevik Congress Lenin described Kronstadt as "the stepping stone and bridge for the White Guards". The argument behind this schema is that, much as Stalinists were wrong when they failed to appreciate that even though Social Democrats’ betrayals of the working class and failure to put up any resistance made them handmaidens of fascism, they were not themselves fascists, it was wrong to simply label the Kronstadters as Whites – they only inadvertently served in their military interests. Paul Avrich expresses his lack of surprise that the Bolsheviks were unwilling to tolerate the situation in Kronstadt given that they had lost military control of a fortress which might serve as a base for counter-revolution.

But aside from whether this is accurate, given that the Civil War had petered out by November 1920, this is a highly elitist conception of socialism – the premise of Avrich’s argument is the workers could not be trusted with control over the soviet, since they might not be able to defend it. As if workers fighting to extend soviet power would not have fought back against an attack by the Whites, as if the Communist Party’s armed forces were the only guarantor of socialism . Bolshevik military intervention against a soviet, the obliteration of working-class organisation in the city and the deaths of tens of thousands of people were hardly "defense" of the revolution – they all served to weaken the workers’ ability to defend their power.

Bolshevik "reforms"
So did the events of the Bolsheviks’ Tenth Congress, which instituted a "temporary" ban on platforms in the party. This would never be rescinded. If one were to hold the view that the working class was the ruling class through the fact that the Bolsheviks were in government rather than because of the existence of soviets, then this is the beginning of the end for the Russian revolution. The possibility of fighting for reform within the structures of the Communist Party and Comintern was increasingly closed off (it is absurd to believe, like Trotsky, that it remained "reformable" until 1933). Of course, the Tenth Congress manoeuvre did not at once put a stop to all dissent and debate within the party, which of course retained much of its 1917 membership and residual culture – but banning internal platforms rather seems to go with the territory of a one-party state without freedom of association or the right to strike.

Farber and Avrich both characterise the Tenth Congress’ New Economic Policy as a concession to the Kronstadt sailors’ demands, the idea being that economic "liberalisation" served the interests of the peasants. This is not based on a rational analysis of what the Kronstadters wanted or what the NEP was. The Petropavlovsk resolution demanded workers’ control and freedom for peasants who did not hire labour, whereas the NEP marked a change from a centralised, nationalised economy under "War Communism" to one with elements of free trade – namely, strengthening capital and freeing up trade in the interests of richer peasants who had a surplus to sell. One-man management in industry was there to stay.

Farber thinks that given the opportunities for reform in the post-Civil War period, the New Economic Policy should have been accompanied by a parallel New Political Policy, with greater democratic freedoms in the soviets – but this analogy is based on a failure to understand what NEP represented or the difference between "liberalisation" in economics and "liberalisation" in the political arena. Workers did not win any extra powers or rights to organise under NEP – far from it. The toleration of market forms in a mostly nationalised economy marked an alliance between industrial managers in the cities and peasants who hired labour in the countryside, all of them opposed to grassroots workers’ management. As Lenin put it in his notes for his Tenth Congress speech "the lesson of Kronstadt: in politics - the closing of ranks (and discipline) within the party, greater struggle against the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries; in economics - to satisfy as far as possible the middle peasantry". The Bolsheviks were not opening up in front of the working class.

5. Bolsheviks and bureaucracy

Lenin’s last struggle
Moshe Lewin’s book Lenin’s last struggle cites various cases where Lenin opposed Stalin in 1922-23 in an effort to establish the lack of continuity between the two men. This is a noble effort, but is based on a great exaggeration of Lenin’s awareness of encroaching bureaucracy, his determination to fight it and the ‘democratic’ nature of his response to it. The fact that in an addendum to his Last Testament Lenin called for the removal of Stalin does not mean that he mounted a sustained effort to defend the working class from the bureaucracy. While it would be unfair to ask of Lenin that he be fully aware of how bad the Stalinist nightmare would be, it is also a mischaracterisation to read back the tone of Trotsky’s later criticisms of Stalin onto the musings of Lenin.

For example, Lenin’s 1923 work Better Fewer But Better is characterised as an anti-bureaucratic tract. While critical of state structures, Lenin’s piece is in reality vague and non-committal; uncritical of authoritarianism or intrigue amongst the bureaucracy; and does not counterpose more effective workers’ control. The kind of criticisms made are epitomised by this kind of passage:

"We must show sound scepticism for too rapid progress, for boastfulness, etc. We must give thought to testing the steps forward we proclaim every hour, take every minute and then prove every second that they are flimsy, superficial and misunderstood. The most harmful thing here would be haste. The most harmful thing would be to rely on the assumption that we have any considerable number of elements necessary for the building of a really new state apparatus, one really worthy to be called socialist, Soviet, etc."

His suggestion for how to improve the state and party apparatus is wholly based on notions such as "better human material", recruiting "irreproachable Communists" and those "recommended by several Communists". He does not see a problem with state institutions, just the people who compose their workforce. Indeed, his means of solving even this conundrum could only be imagined to strengthen the bureaucracy – merging unaccountable state institutions with those of the party. Calling for the fusion of the Central Control Commission and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, he writes,

"How can a Party institution be amalgamated with a Soviet institution? Is there not something improper in this suggestion? I do not ask these questions on my own behalf, but on behalf of those I hinted at above when I said that we have bureaucrats in our Party institutions as well as in the Soviet institutions. But why, indeed, should we not amalgamate the two if this is in the interests of our work? Do we not all see that such an amalgamation has been very beneficial in the case of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, where it was brought about at the very beginning? Does not the Political Bureau discuss from the Party point of view many questions, both minor and important, concerning the "moves" of foreign powers in order to forestall their, say, cunning, if we are not to use a less respectable term. Is not this flexible amalgamation of a Soviet institution of a Party institution a source of great strength in our politics? I think that what has proved its usefulness, what has been definitely adopted in our foreign politics and has become so customary that it no longer calls forth any doubt in this field, will be at least as appropriate (in fact, I think it will be much more appropriate) for our state apparatus as a whole. The functions of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection cover our state apparatus as a whole, and its activities should affect all and every state institution without exception: local, central, commercial, purely administrative, educational, archive, theatrical, etc. - in short, all without any exception."

Whatever the inefficiencies of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate – and there were many - Lenin’s proposition (the only specific reform of the state apparatus he suggests) is very dangerous. Clearly he does not fear that the party will become monolithic or that entrenching its political monopoly by merging it with the state is undemocratic. Much as he wants to ensure that the Bolsheviks "maintain[ed] workers’ support", Lenin makes no reference to the idea that their active involvement in decision making would be the best way to ensure working-class confidence in the "workers’ government". True, in his Letter to the Congress Lenin does recommend as a matter of great urgency:

"increasing the number of C.C. members, I think it must be done in order to raise the prestige of the Central Committee, to do a thorough job of improving our administrative machinery and to prevent conflicts between small sections of the C.C. from acquiring excessive importance for the future of the Party. It seems to me that our Party has every right to demand from the working class 50 to 100 C.C. members, and that it could get them from it without unduly taxing the resources of that class"

But having a few dozen workers on the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party is not the same thing as workers’ power. The idea of working class rule is that as an organised class, through workers’ councils, shopfloor delegates and so on, workers own the government, not that they are a social milieu from which individual officials are hand-picked.

Lenin was not the same as Stalin

Moshe Lewin’s sympathies are in the right place however. After all, one of the most common charges levelled against those who follow in the Leninist tradition is that "Lenin and Stalin were the same" - that due to the existence of a one-party state even before Stalin came to power, the systems of 1919 and 1939 were essentially similar, two points on one totalitarian continuum. Despite the fact that I am opposed to many of the undemocratic measures taken by Lenin, I utterly reject any such version of events. Lenin attempted a radical emancipatory overhaul of the whole social order but ended up resorting to undemocratic tactics and bureaucratic administration for want of any idea what to do. Stalin, however, was little but a mediocre nationalist machine politician who held the working class in complete contempt and spent most of his political career trying to ally himself to different imperialist powers.

Only restricted comparisons can be made between 1919 and 1939. The economy of the immediate post-revolutionary era was controlled by organs in which the working class had little direct participation and formal control, but which they could effect through semi-tolerated strikes, protest resolutions and Bolshevik Party activity. This was far from ideal, and very top-down, as I have outlined, but not the same as a system where trade unions do not exist, the state is absolutely all-powerful and the working class is so atomised and disorganised (since it had no collective representative bodies whatsoever) that it has no social weight. Although the working class cannot rule economically without political power, short-term disenfranchisement can nevertheless leave it a certain residual influence in society, particularly given a somewhat benign government. Between 1917 and 1921 there was an ongoing struggle between labour and capital, and increasingly less so for a few years after that - but the economy of the Five-Year Plans was one of massive exploitation, with colossal rates of inequality of income (far higher than in the UK, never mind the Soviet Republic where Lenin furiously berated an acolyte who offered to give him higher-than-average rations), huge rates of surplus value, extensive market mechanisms and competition, foreign trade in the benefit of the party leaders and an immiserated working class. Economic life in the Soviet Union was barely distinguishable from that of wartime Nazi Germany, except for the fact that Germany’s factories had fewer secret police.

There is no simple cut-off point which marks the transition from one period to the other - to claim that the bourgeoisie was the ruling class in Russia as soon as the soviets lost this or that executive power, or at the moment when the Factory Committees were co-opted into the trade unions, would be to caricature the process. Such ideas as "the counter-revolution happened in 1922" totally fail to grasp the gradual and complex nature of changes in class composition of the state, the rise of the bureaucracy and the decline of the labour movement. Before October 1917 there was a situation of dual power; after the revolution the pendulum swung in favour of the working class, but without workers' management capital, wage labour and hierarchy continued to exist; and from 1921 capital was vastly strengthened. Here was a state of flux, neither socialism nor the stable régime of exploitation and class domination which would follow.

Furthermore, even to the extent that their one-party states were superficially similar, the way in which Lenin and Stalin opposed dissent is different. The Bolsheviks of the Russian revolution were fearful that the revolution might lose, and fought against opposition from both left and right in the belief that if their party held onto political power, the revolution could be "saved". Often lacking in positive perspectives, bureaucratic and dishonest in the portrayal of their opponents, this is not the same as Stalinism, which was a system of paranoid control-freakery, with a massive self-serving police state apparatus exacting random acts of violence against huge swathes of the population. The effort was not to dominate political discourse as much as to create an atmosphere of terror in which everyone was too afraid to speak out. Appalling as the Bolshevik response to Kronstadt was, it seems perverse to imagine that in his time Stalin would have sent representatives to try and talk round the mutinous sailors.

Stalin’s rule was not only predicated on the smashing of the kulaks , forced collectivisation and rapid industrialisation which took power away from individual petty-bourgeois and placed more authority in the hands of a technocratic clique. It was also based on the breaking of the Communist Party, the last organ through which the working class had any ability to express itself. As I have mentioned, the Tenth Congress ban on platforms did not immediately lead to an end to debate, since oppositionists and comrades involved in the party for many years would not change their political culture overnight to that of loyal followers of the leadership. Although the ban was grossly undemocratic and struck a blow against socialist democracy, before it had concretised and before the total change in the party’s membership, the fact of opposition to the party leadership meant that it was potentially reversible. But from 1924 the "Lenin Levy" which flooded the party with uneducated working-class cadre willing to take in everything the leadership said (a manoeuvre justified on preposterous sociological grounds), the purging of the party’s Old Guard and the radical clampdown on all free expression crushed the party and made it nothing more than a weapon of the bureaucracy. True, many managers had served as Communist soviet delegates in Lenin’s era, but there were great tensions within the party and it was nothing like as alienated from working-class control as in the mid-late ‘20s.

Yet although far from sharing Stalin’s subjective intentions, the Bolsheviks’ measures did inadvertently ease his passage into power. Had there been democracy in the soviets, workers’ management of production, and freedom of factions inside the Communist Party, Stalin’s job would have been a hundred times more difficult. How could one individual have been able to portray himself as the heir to the Leninist tradition, how could the bureaucrats have entrenched their perks and political monopoly if the workers and their elected representatives had run the economy themselves? Lenin was wrong - it is impossible to "save" the revolution through undemocratic means, since that destroys its whole character. The revolution only exists insofar as people consciously and pro-actively take ownership over their own lives; insofar as they can express their interests politically, economically, culturally and sexually; workers' power cannot be suspended in the pursuit of some higher interest. The revolution cannot just be experienced as the authority vested in this or that unaccountable government - 'socialism from above' is an oxymoron if ever there was one. And yet tactics used to maintain Bolshevik power were elevated into some sort of timeless principles of socialist rule. The Bolshevik leadership did not themselves finish off the working class - but when the hierarchies they created were used with such a purpose in mind, the workers had few means by which to resist.

The General Strike in France: 1968

2008-07-03T04:14:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of Workers' Liberty features an essay by David Broder on the May-June 1968 General Strike in France, with particular reference to the self-activity of the working class against the will of the union leaders and attempts to implement forms of workers' control and management.

It is followed by an account of the first night of the first factory occupation, which took place at Sud Aviation near Nantes.

Click here to read the pdf file.

Illusions in the Allies

2008-06-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

The 21 June Socialist Worker, an issue geared for the SWP’s anti-BNP demo in London, was full of establishment anti-fascism, claiming that the BNP are not a “respectable” party and calling for an apolitical cross-class front against fascism. To this end, the paper included an article about the “hidden story” of West Indian people fighting for the Allies in World War II, as “revealed” by a new Imperial War Museum exhibition.

Simon Assaf tells us that “Over 10,000 West Indians volunteered to defend Britain against the Nazis”, neglecting to mention the imperialist character of the war on both sides. He makes no reference whatsoever to colonial exploitation in the British Empire, and in this vein uses the word "flowed" rather oddly in the sentence "Many people in the British empire took part in raising money to help the war effort – in addition to the extra taxes, raw materials and food that flowed from the colonies to support the war." Surely he means “were forcibly taken”.

Socialist Worker makes great play of the digging-deep the “war effort” required: but the fact that the West Indians were poor doesn't mean that when they got shipped off to Egypt to defend the British Empire from the Germans they were fighting the good fight. They had absolutely no control over the character, strategy and organisation of any aspect of the Allies’ "war effort". They were just cannon fodder for Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and de Gaulle. One could equally say that German soldiers were working-class and fought bravely: should we honour their "contribution"?

There is no mention of the 1934-39 strike wave in the British West Indies, the lack of free elections in such territories or indeed those peoples' demand for independence. West Indians are just portrayed as useful troops for Churchill, and the article is nothing but a long advertisement for an Imperial War Museum exhibition, i.e. an exhibition staged by a museum celebrating British imperialism. It is social-patriotism, pure and simple, and further evidence of the SWP’s complete lack of working-class political bearings.

Morning Sun - Edward Hopper

2008-06-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

Trotskyism in occupied France

2008-06-11T06:54:00.000-07:00

I have translated the complete surviving collection of Arbeiter und Soldat, the clandestine paper produced by the French Trotskyists (Comités de la IVe Internationale) for Wehrmacht soldiers in 1943-44. It has been published as a supplement to the latest issue of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty paper Solidarity.

Click here to access the files. My introduction appears below.

By summer 1943 the Axis war machine was suffering heavy setbacks. Although Hitler had completed a full occupation of France in November 1942, and still held on to his conquests in the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and parts of western Russia, the Axis powers no longer looked able to win the war. The German defeat at Stalingrad, after months of exaggeration of Wehrmacht success in the Nazi media, and the subsequent loss of much of south-western Russia; the incompetence of the Italian army; the Allies’ conquest of North African and threatened landings in southern Italy; Japan’s defeats at the hands of the United States in the Pacific; Tito’s Yugoslav partisan movement which had taken control of much of Macedonia, southern Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and part of Slovenia; and the mounting French Resistance, led by Charles de Gaulle and the French Communist Party, were all bad omens for the Nazi leaders and their satraps.

Indeed, with increasing privations, bombings of cities and military disasters, there were significant stirrings of discontent in the Axis powers. Not only did high-up German officers initiate plots to remove Hitler in order to better manage the war effort (the closest-run, and final such attempt to do so was the well-known 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life by Claus von Stauffenberg), but in Rome the Fascist Grand Council actually voted 19-7 on 24 July 1943 to no-confidence Benito Mussolini, who was summoned to the King Victor Emmanuel III, arrested and taken to jail in an ambulance. This manoeuvre on the part of the King and the Marshal Pietro Badoglio was an attempted ‘revolution from above’ mounted to save the ruling class from the threat of working-class uprisings, after the huge strike waves in the industrial north starting in March 1943 including stoppages in major armaments plants in Milan and Turin to secure more evacuation allowances – the first big strikes since 1925. As the Partito Comunista Internazionalista commented in August:

“The bourgeoisie, the monarchy and the Church, who created and supported Fascism, who today are throwing Mussolini to the people to avoid going down with him, and who don democratic and populist clothes in order to continue the exploitation and oppression of the working class, have no right to say anything in today’s crisis. This right exclusively belongs to the working class, the peasants and the soldiers, the eternal victims of the imperialist octopus.”

The late World War II period is usually compared unfavourably to the wave of revolutionary struggles provoked by World War I (the February and October revolutions in the Russian empire; large anti-war demonstrations in Germany; and after the war the Bavarian soviet republic; the Hungarian soviet republic; and a series of revolutionary opportunities in Germany until 1923), contrary to Trotsky’s prediction that it would cause an even greater revolutionary crisis. However, during this period there were signs significant working-class struggles in several belligerent countries, including the efforts of the resurgent Italian workers’ movement; miners’ strikes in Britain and the United States; strikes tens of thousands strong against forced deportations in France and Belgium; the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; and small-scale mutinies in the German armed forces.

But for the most part working-class mobilisation was co-opted into the Allied war effort. Hundreds of thousands of workers who supported the Communist Parties of Europe, loyal as they were to Stalin’s Soviet Union, courageously devoted themselves to anti-occupation “resistance” armies led by bourgeois nationalists in the belief that it was the best way of fighting fascism. The hollowness of Stalin’s “anti-fascist” credentials was however made clear by his keenness for CPs to work alongside the same nationalists, generals and bankers who had helped the fascists crush the workers’ movements of Europe to start with. For example, he created in Moscow a “Committee for a Free Germany” mostly composed of ex-Nazi generals; along with the other Allies supposedly liberating Europe from fascism he left Franco in power in Spain and Salazar in Portugal; he betrayed his own supporters in Greece, who were then butchered by the monarchists’ allies, the British Army, at the end of that country’s Civil War; and he ordered the Italian CP to support the monarchy and lay down its weapons. Although this was in a sense nothing new – before the war the French CP leader Maurice Thorez had called on “patriotic” French fascists to join a “national front” against the Nazis – Stalin’s leading role in the stabilisation of European capitalism in the 1943-1945 period was a shock to some, with a 2,500-strong Stalinist formation Movimento Comunista d’Italia even breaking from the Italian CP under the impression that they were implementing Stalin’s “real” policies and that the local CP leader Palmiro Togliatti was being disloyal to Moscow!

The Communist Parties and Moscow, who still had enormous prestige among much of the world working class, were hostile to all strikes and any independent working-class action which might undermine the Allied war effort. The British Stalinist leader Harry Pollitt even proclaimed “today it is the class conscious worker who will cross the picket line”. Despite the USSR’s August 1939-June 1941 pact with Hitler to carve up Eastern Europe, Stalin’s imperialist ambitions were now completely intertwined with the war aims of the Allies – indeed, the “Soviet” empire would be a leading, if not the leading, beneficiary of the Allied victory, extending its grip over almost all of Eastern and Central Europe and seizing tens of billions of pounds worth of war reparations. The nationalist and anti-German chauvinist hysteria promoted by Moscow, which portrayed the war to the Russian people as just another chapter in the Slavs’ struggle against the Germans, must be seen as largely responsible for the vengeance exacted on the German people at the end of the war with hundreds of thousands of rapes of women and girls, the murder and leaving to starve of millions of civilians as well as organising huge population transfers. In France the Communist Party raised the slogans “everyone, united against the Krauts” and “everyone kill a Kraut”, refusing to draw any distinction between Nazi-led German imperialism and the working-class German conscripts in the Wehrmacht.

This monumental error was only replicated in part by the Trotskyist Fourth International, which had no truck whatsoever with the idea that workers in the Allied countries should cross picket lines to aid the USSR’s war effort or that the war was a war between ‘democratic nations’ and ‘fascist nations’. However, the Fourth International press did foster illusions in the progressive character of the USSR’s war effort, claiming that as a “degenerated workers’ state” with a nationalised economy it deserved support against the Axis, and furthermore in some of its sections’ press hailed the progress of “Trotsky’s Red Army” in fighting back the Wehrmacht. American Trotskyist James Cannon said that Trotskyists would “fight in the front rank” of the Soviet army to defend the USSR. Of course, the Fourth International’s enthusiastic claims that the USSR’s successes in the war were the result of continuing “Leninist planning” or Trotsky’s role in establishing the Red Army were nonsensical; the Russian economy had experienced complete counter-revolution, with an atomised working-class unable to act independently with its own unions, soviets or party, never mind plan the economy for itself; the Communist Party had been completely gutted, with almost all the leading actors in the revolution executed by Stalin; the Red Army high command had itself been purged repeatedly, while rank, titles and saluting had been reintroduced as well as orders and military academies named after Tsarist war heroes like Aleksandr Suvorov; early setbacks in the war at the hands of Germany (whose own war economy was almost entirely state-run) ran counter to claims of the superiority of the Russian economy over the capitalist countries; and indeed throughout the war the Russians relied heavily on food supplies and military equipment from the United States, including thousands of Studebaker trucks.

However, despite this misunderstanding of the role of the USSR in the war, the Fourth International and its member organisations did mount a heroic struggle against national chauvinism and illusions in the democratic aspirations of Britain and the United States. French Trotskyists were sharply critical of the Gaullist “French Resistance”, characterising it as an instrument of Allied imperialism and a movement which aspired not simply to liberate France but also to let it hold onto its colonial empire. Rather than calling on the working class to act as a supporting cast for the Allied war effort, these internationalists called for fraternisation between soldiers, working-class struggle against the participating governments and a “revolutionary defeatist” attitude towards both sides, hoping to transform the imperialist war into international class war. As Jean Rous had explained in a motion to the centrist Parti Socialiste Ouvrier et Paysan’s congress in 1939:

“The party will not be put off the belief that the main enemy is in our own country by the possibility that mass revolutionary agitation in time of war may contribute to the military defeat of our country. Accepting this possibility does not mean encouraging or wanting victory for Hitler, but on the contrary will encourage the total defeat of Hitler and worldwide fascism. Indeed:

“1. Revolutionary agitation led by workers in our country will exercise a powerful contagious influence on workers in the fascist countries; will provoke the break up of the rival capitalist armies, fraternisation between soldiers of both sides and the collapse of the dictatorships; and will light the flame of world revolution, the only means of defeating war and fascism, across the globe.

“2. Besides, a revolutionary seizure of power by the working class in our country will turn the imperialist war into a civil war and create the conditions for meaningful national defence: only a proletariat in control of its own destiny and defending a socialist order will be able to mount an invincible resistance to foreign fascism…”

It was with this aim of winning over German troops to a common struggle against the belligerent imperialists that in summer 1943 the French Trotskyists turned to organising among the German troops occupying France. Given the strict discipline of the Wehrmacht and the murderous anti-communism of the Gestapo (and their French accomplices, the Milice) this was incredibly dangerous, but important both in terms of teaching the French workers to repudiate the chauvinist attitudes promoted by the Communist Party and in terms of encouraging dissent among the German ranks, as had been manifested earlier in 1943 by a submarine mutiny in Brest, north-western France. The French Comités de la IVe Internationale (Fourth International Committees) produced German-language leaflets for Wehrmacht troops as well as a monthly German-language newspaper, Arbeiter und Soldat (i.e. Worker and Soldier) and built links with German troops.

This was not the only such initiative. The paper of the group associated with Pierre Frank and Raymond Molinier, formerly known as la Commune but from September 1943 as le Soviet, had a German-language back page, and the group also had contacts in Germany. But more important for the Fourth International group were the efforts arising from the German troops themselves. German Trotskyist produced a paper Zeitung für Arbeiter und Soldat im Westen (i.e. News for the Worker[s] and Soldier[s] in the West) and furthermore a previously unorganised group of soldiers in Brittany produced Der Arbeiter (i.e. The Worker). The latter journal encouraged dissent amongst the ranks but also called on conscripted workers to “throw down your weapons and go home”, a slogan opposed by the Fourth International Committees, who wanted the workers to hang on to their weapons and carefully organise for an uprising to overthrow the Nazis before the Allied “liberators” plundered Germany. The Fourth International Committees therefore held discussions with revolutionary soldiers and tried to carry out joint agitation.

Yvan Craipeau’s book Contre vents et marées quotes the electrics worker Roland Filiâtre, one of the comrades responsible for this work (under the alias Dupont): “The French comrades started discussions with German soldiers and got them talking and giving hints of their past politics. Once they had shown themselves trustworthy, after screening they were put in touch with the German soldiers who produced Der Arbeiter and then taken care of by their organisation. The Paris region was organised as two branches. But the heart of the organisation was in Brittany, both around Nantes and in particular around Brest where the soldiers provided the party with Ausweis [identity cards] and weapons. In Brest the organisation had about fifty soldiers on average despite some people being posted elsewhere. Contacts were established in Toulon, Valence, La Rochelle and at Conches aerodrome. There was also an organisation in Belgium. Links were established with the German Trotskyist organisation, most importantly in the port of Hamburg, in Lübeck and in Rostock. Victor [a German Trotskyist, whose real name was Widelin] was responsible for these contacts. Arbeiter und Soldat was also distributed in garrisons in Italy.”

These brave efforts brought down harsh repression on the heads of the French Trotskyists, many of whom such as Yvan Craipeau had repeatedly raised the alarm in the group about certain comrades’ lack of care in evading detection. Realising these fears, young Fourth International activists imprudently but enthusiastically joined in a demonstration staged by Der Arbeiter activists through the streets of Kerhoun, singing the Internationale and thus attracted the attention of the fascist police. Not much later, in early October 1943 a meeting of Trotskyist activists and German soldiers held in Brest was found out by the Gestapo, who arrested all the participants. 17 German soldiers as well as Robert Cruau, who organised fraternisation in the region, were executed on 6 October. Once the Gestapo were on the trail, the Trotskyists were doomed. On 7 October 18 Fourth International Committees activists in Brittany were arrested, along with much of the Paris organisation. In total around fifty French activists were rounded up, and many of them were tortured, executed or sent to concentration camps. Similarly, as many as fifty Der Arbeiter soldier comrades were put to death, and their paper never reappeared. Arbeiter und Soldat was itself out of action until May 1944, such were the losses suffered by the Fourth International Committees.

For these courageous activists the class struggle never stopped: even having been arrested and taken to the Compiègne transit camp Marcel Beaufrère told his comrades that: “We are going to be deported to Buchenwald. Before leaving I want to say: we are going to meet up with German revolutionaries and make the revolution with them.” Indeed, the French Trotskyists set up a cell at the Buchenwald concentration camp and in April 1944 it managed to release a manifesto calling for: “revolutionary fraternisation with the workers in the armies of occupation. For a Germany of workers’ councils in a Europe of workers’ councils! For the world workers’ revolution!”. But the sad fact was that many of these activists would soon be murdered by the Nazis. In reality the task with which the Trotskyist movement was confronted, lifting the world working class from the abyss of imperialist war, fascism and Stalinism, was far beyond their extremely modest numbers and means. Not only the crushing of the German workers’ movement by fascism but also Stalinist misleadership and the ensuing co-option of working-class and democratic struggle by the Allied imperialists meant that working-class revolution as had been seen at the end of the war twenty-five years previously was nigh-on impossible. Despite all these difficulties the Trotskyists fought to promote the internationalist Marxist tradition, and here we reproduce the surviving propaganda distributed among German troops occupying France in 1943-44, both the collection of Arbeiter und Soldat and the sole extant fragment of Zeitung für Arbeiter und Soldat im Westen.

May '68: Report on the Occupation of the Sorbonne

2008-05-20T01:35:00.000-07:00

A Situationist report on the student-occupied Sorbonne

The occupation of the Sorbonne that began Monday, May 13, has opened a new period in the crisis of modern society. The events now taking place in France foreshadow the return of the proletarian revolutionary movement in all countries. The movement that had already advanced from theory to struggle in the streets has now advanced to a struggle for control of the means of production. Modernized capitalism thought it had finished with class struggle -- but it's started up again! The proletariat supposedly no longer existed -- but here it is again.

By surrendering the Sorbonne, the government hoped to pacify the student revolt, which had already succeeded in holding a section of Paris behind its barricades an entire night before being recaptured with great difficulty by the police. The Sorbonne was given over to the students in the hope that they would peacefully discuss their university problems. But the occupiers immediately decided to open it to the public to freely discuss the general problems of the society. This was thus a prefiguration of a council, a council in which even the students broke out of their miserable studenthood and ceased being students.

To be sure, the occupation was never complete: a chapel and a few remaining administrative offices were tolerated. The democracy was never total: future technocrats from UNEF [the students' union] claimed to be making themselves useful and other political bureaucrats also tried their manipulations. Workers' participation remained very limited and the presence of nonstudents soon began to be questioned. Many students, professors, journalists and imbeciles of other professions came as spectators.

In spite of all these deficiencies, which are not surprising considering the disparity between the scope of the project and the narrowness of the student milieu, the exemplary nature of the best aspects of this situation immediately took on an explosive significance. Workers were inspired by the free discussion and the striving for a radical critique, by seeing direct democracy in action. Even limited to a Sorbonne liberated from the state, this was a revolutionary program developing its own forms. The day after the occupation of the Sorbonne the Sud-Aviation workers of Nantes occupied their factory. On the third day, Thursday the 16th, the Renault factories at Cléon and Flins were occupied and the movement began at the NMPP and at Boulogne-Billancourt, starting at Shop 70. Three days later 100 factories have been occupied and the wave of strikes, accepted but never initiated by the union bureaucracies, is paralyzing the railroads and developing into a general strike.

The only power in the Sorbonne was the general assembly of its occupiers. At its first session, on May 14, amidst a certain confusion, it had elected an Occupation Committee of 15 members revocable by it each day. Only one of the delegates, a member of the Nanterre-Paris Enragés group, had set forth a program: defense of direct democracy in the Sorbonne and absolute power of workers councils as ultimate goal. The next day's general assembly reelected its entire Occupation Committee, which had as yet been unable to accomplish anything. In fact, the various specialized groupings that had set themselves up in the Sorbonne all followed the directives of a hidden "Coordination Committee" composed of self-appointed organizers, responsible to no one, doing everything in their power to prevent any "irresponsible" extremist actions. An hour after the reelection of the Occupation Committee one of these "coordinators" privately tried to declare it dissolved. A direct appeal to the people in the courtyard of the Sorbonne aroused a movement of protests that forced the manipulator to retract himself. By the next day, Thursday the 16th, thirteen members of the Occupation Committee had disappeared, leaving two comrades, including the Enragés member, vested with the only delegation of power authorized by the general assembly -- and this at a time when the urgency of the situation demanded immediate decisions: democracy was constantly being flouted in the Sorbonne while factory occupations were spreading all over the country. At 3:00 p.m. the Occupation Committee, rallying to itself as many Sorbonne occupiers as it could who were determined to maintain democracy there, launched an appeal for "the occupation of all the factories in France and the formation of workers councils." To disseminate this appeal the Occupation Committee had at the same time to restore the democratic functioning of the Sorbonne. It had to take over or recreate from scratch all the services that were supposed to be under its authority: the loudspeaker system, printing facilities, interfaculty liaison, security. It ignored the squawking complaints of the spokesmen of various political groups (JCR [Jeunesses Communistes Révolutionnaires, now LCR], Maoists, etc,), reminding them that it was responsible only to the general assembly. It intended to report to the assembly that very evening, but the Sorbonne occupiers' unanimous decision to march on Renault-Billancourt (whose occupation we had learned of in the meantime) postponed the meeting until 2:00 p.m. the next day.

During the night, while thousands of comrades were at Billancourt, some unidentified persons improvised a general assembly, which broke up when the Occupation Committee, having learned of its existence, sent back two delegates to call attention to its illegitimacy.

Friday the 17th at 2:00 p.m. the regular assembly saw its rostrum occupied for a long time by self-appointed marshals belonging to the FER [Fédération des Étudiants Révolutionnaires, Lambertists]; and then had to interrupt the session for the second march on Billancourt at 5:00.

That evening at 9:00 the Occupation Committee was finally able to present a report of its activities. It was, however, completely unable to get its actions discussed and voted on, in particular its appeal for the occupation of the factories, which the assembly did not take the responsibility of either disavowing or approving. Faced with such indifference, the Occupation Committee had no choice but to resign. The assembly proved equally incapable of protesting against a new invasion of the rostrum by the FER troops, whose putsch seemed to be aimed at countering the provisional alliance of JCR and UNEF bureaucrats. The partisans of direct democracy realized, and immediately declared, that they had no further interest in the Sorbonne.

At the very moment that the example of the occupation is beginning to be taken up in the factories it is collapsing at the Sorbonne. This development is more serious since the workers have against them a bureaucracy infinitely more powerful and entrenched than that of the student or leftist amateurs. To add to the confusion, the leftist bureaucrats, echoing the CGT [the biggest union federation, controlled by the Communist Party] in the hope of being accorded a little marginal role alongside it, abstractly separate the workers from the students. ("The workers don't need any lessons from the students.") But the students have in fact already given an excellent lesson to the workers precisely by occupying the Sorbonne and briefly initiating a really democratic debate. The bureaucrats all tell us demagogically that the working class is grown up, in order to hide the fact that it is enchained -- first of all by them (now or in their future hopes, depending on which group they're in). They counterpose their lying seriousness to the "festivity" in the Sorbonne; but it was precisely that festiveness that bore within itself the only thing that is serious: the radical critique of prevailing conditions.

The student struggle has now been left behind. Even more left behind are all the second-string bureaucratic leaders who think it's a good idea to feign respect for the Stalinists at the very moment when the CGT and the so-called "Communist" Party are terrified. The outcome of the present crisis is in the hands of the workers themselves, if only they succeed in accomplishing in their factory occupations the goals toward which the university occupation was only able to hint at.

The comrades who supported the first Sorbonne Occupation Committee -- the Enragés-Situationist International Committee, a number of workers, and a few students -- have formed a Council for Maintaining the Occupations. The occupations can obviously be maintained only by quantitatively and qualitatively extending them, without sparing any existing regime.

COUNCIL FOR MAINTAINING THE OCCUPATIONS
Paris, 19 May 1968

Gaullism

2008-05-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

Dockers in USA and Iraq strike for "troops out now"

2008-05-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

An article written for Solidarity

25,000 dockers at all 29 ports across the West Coast of the USA staged an 8-hour strike on 1 May calling for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq. The action was not only supported by significant demonstrations in the USA but also by a solidarity strike staged by Iraqi port workers in Umm Qasr and Khor Alzubair.

When the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) called the strike in February it was widely reported that it was a mere demonstration, and that the union had one day at its disposal each month for its own purposes. In fact the Pacific Maritime Association tried to use the courts to stop the strike, while trucks and port traffic (10,000 cargo containers are unloaded per shift) were brought to an absolute standstill for the whole shift. The dockers have a powerful union and are in a strong position to defy management.

Of course, we should not give carte blanche credit to the politics of the ILWU leadership. In a typical move to channel working-class radicalism into bourgeois politicking, the union is supporting millionaire lawyer Barack Obama in the upcoming election. And at the strike rally on 1 May the ILWU President McEllrath stressed his American patriotism, “Big foreign corporations that control global shipping aren’t loyal or accountable to any country. For them it’s all about making money. But longshore workers are different. We’re loyal to America, and we won’t stand by while our country, our troops and our economy are destroyed by a war that’s bankrupting us to the tune of three trillion dollars” in a speech full of the same “Bring our boys home” effluent spouted by the SWP-led Stop the War Coalition in the UK.

But the Iraqi dockers took heart from the strike, and staged their own action to demand the withdrawal of troops in an excellent display of international working-class solidarity. Indeed, on 1 May the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions and the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions and Iraq published a joint May Day address calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops, new laws guaranteeing workers’ right to organise and an end to IMF diktats. Similarly, the FWCUI-affiliated General Union of Port Workers in Iraq wrote a letter to the American ILWU welcoming their strike, exalting the principle of working class unity and denouncing both the sectarian gangs and the occupying troops.

The strike shows the possibility of international working-class action against the imperialist occupation of Iraq and offers an important glimmer of hope for the building of a “third camp” independent of both the US-UK armies and the Islamist militias.

May' 68: the first factory occupation

2008-05-12T03:48:00.000-07:00

The first factory occupation of May 1968 came at the Sud-Aviation aircraft plant in Bouguenais, near Nantes, in north-west France. 2000 workers went on strike, took over the factory and imprisoned the boss in his office. This step was decisive in moving the May movement as a whole onto the terrain of industrial action, deepening the government's malaise and forcing the unions to take sides.

There had been turmoil at Sud-Aviation since February 1968, when the bosses announced a plan to reduce working time from 48 to 45 hours per week, with only a 1% raise in the hourly pay rate to compensate. Yet it was not until April 9th that the CGT, CFDT and Force Ouvrière unions even held a meeting to discuss their reaction.

They were vacillating - but with 76% of workers voting to "take action", they organised a series of short walk-outs. 1 hour on the 9th, 23rd and 24th of April; 45 minutes on the 25th and 29th; only after this yielded no results did the Lambertist activist Yvon Rocton in charge of the Force Ouvrière union section at the plant propose an all-out strike.

A fight on the 30th in which the boss, Duvochel, was chased around the factory, made clear the workers' anger - but the idea of occupying the factory, or even an all-out strike, seemed risky. The CGT, for their part, claimed that raising the intensity of the strikes would mean breaking the unity of the Sud-Aviation workers. So followed another two weeks of occasional short walkouts - two hour stoppages here and there punctuated by an all-day strike on the unions' joint day of action in the region on 8th May.

But there was a rising tide of discontent with the unions’ tactics, expressed not just through riots in the factory, but also in union meetings, and on May 10th a small majority of workers voted for an all-out strike. However, the CGT and CFDT, who were against such a change of direction, simply decreed that the decision would be deferred until a later date. There was also a lack of outside support. This isolation was somewhat alleviated when the workers' isolation was broken with the nationwide strike of the 13th, and the student revolt showed the possibility of resisting the de Gaulle administration. As Francois le Madec writes, the struggle could take on new forms:

On Monday 14th there were the usual sporadic walkouts. Management were going to meet with the union reps in early afternoon: it wasn’t exactly clear why, but something big was in the offing. The atmosphere was electric. During the first afternoon walkout, between half past two and three o’clock, there was a meeting in the corner of Workshop 4. The workers looked like ants in this massive space: they wandered in from all sides, hands dug into their pockets. There were a few whistles and shouts as the now busy crowd packed out the workshops.

The mood was explosive. Slogans were shouted, and you could see the tension on everyone’s faces. The handful of scabs who dared to keep on working were given a seeing to. You could feel drama in the air. A scab who braved the pack was sprayed with a rivet gun: he went pale and stood as stiff as a starched shirt.

The workers walked out and stood outside the windows of the bosses’ office, where the union reps were being received.

Le père Duvochel [a song about the boss] rang out, followed by the Internationale. Waiting for the next walkout planned for half past three, workers started to talk. There were lively debates and animated conversations. Would the bosses make a reasonable offer?

At half past three was another meeting of all the staff. The union reps had emerged from the bosses’ offices. The CGT rep climbed on a metal mounting-block to speak, but saw worried faces… What news did he have? When he had silence, you could only hear the dull thudding of the compressors and the echo of the machines’ belts turning. He reported that the bosses’ answer was still no.

At once the crowd started to break up: the union reps shouted “Silence!”. At first the workers ran, but then slowed to creep round the western side of the huge offices. The stairs were weighed down by the mass of men gripping the guide-rails. Low voices could be heard, chanting “Ho! Hiss! Ho! Hiss!”. Finally, the door crept open and the crowd burst into the tracing room, their cries dampened by the soundproofed ceiling. The temps were petrified: what were they going to do? The crowd called on them to join their number, but there was a moment’s hesitation… the workers tried to contact the temps’ reps; the crowd advanced through the offices; the anger mounted; but a few temps didn’t want to follow. Finally, the temps’ reps called for a walkout: there were cries of victory among the occupiers. Through the windows you could hear some of the workers crowded in the yard.

They took the stairs down to the director’s office on the first floor. Songs and slogans reverberated through the corridors as the crowd flowed into the hall and occupied the management corridor.

The director came out of his office, flanked by his personnel manager. He forced a smile and said “I am your prisoner, do with me what you will”, a statement greeted with shouts of “Duvochel will give in! We want our pay back! Sign the deal!”. The director replied “You’re not going to get very far with that”.

Anger was reaching a climax. The crowding in the corridor was terrible. The lights kept going out. Fists drummed on the walls to the rhythm “Com-pen-sa-tion”. The director was pushed about roughly, and in vain did he try and escape from the hands of this gang in their dirty blue overalls. An ORTF [French state television] reporter they found there with a camera in his hands (no doubt, he was invited in by the bosses) was precipitously pushed through an office door.

It was impossible to breathe. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and the smell of oil on the workers’ overalls and sweat made the crowding unbearable. A bar of soap flew over the workers’ heads, striking the boss on the shoulder, and this was followed by a jet of water thrown from the toilet door. What was going to happen? Would somebody lose their nerve? For now at least they were only using their fists to strike up the Internationale.

Already at this stage some people scared by the power of the revolt had hurried out of the premises. But a spontaneous occupation was beginning. Union men arrived and told all the boilermakers to help them seal shut the exits in order to stop workers reluctant to strike leaving the building. Men were already guarding the main exits.

In the management corridor a state of relative calm had been restored, and the director was allowed to telephone Paris. They waited. They sat around. They offered the boss a chair. The men sat on the floor of the corridor and began a series of revolutionary anthems, which would last throughout the first night. Their throats were dry: a litre of red wine passed from mouth to mouth. They offered some to the boss but he refused. They played cards.

The union reps returned from the heart of the factory. They asked them what was happening with the blockades at the exits: they told them that the boilermakers had done a good job, and the metal doors on the western and eastern exits had been soldered shut. The other doors, albeit not soldered, were bolted shut. The occupation was a fortress. There were speeches in the yard, and the workers organised patrols to watch over the exits.

People who did not participate in the action (or barely did so) emerged from their offices and workshops, impatient in the expectation that the problem would soon be sorted out… they didn’t understand the top management. The Paris bosses were totally silent, refusing to negotiate.

The normal time for clocking off came and went, and they had to start thinking about dinner: some people went to the boulangerie and the local grocer. Helped by a few volunteers the canteen staff prepared some Viandox [a product similar to Bovril]

They rigged up a loudspeaker in the bosses’ offices, and the first refrains echoed around the factory.

At the main entrance there was something of a panic, with a few people finding good excuses to escape the plant. It must be said, people were very worried, fearing that the police would come to clear out the factory and thinking about the consequences. Food supplies were a problem: the local boulangeries would not open again until the morning.

News of the occupation spread quickly: workers’ wives and friends came to see what was going on, hoping to speak to their husbands through the gates or talk to the men perched on the walls. The food brought by the workers’ wives and their support on that first night was a vital fillip for the troops’ morale.

But still no news from Paris. Now everyone was thinking about the night ahead. For beds they used boxes, stretchers, packets of fibreglass, rags, shavings of wood…

Some scabs still hoping to escape sidled along the fences, concocting plans for escape, but the more militant pickets going round were keeping an eye out for them. Workers reluctant to strike were out in force at the main entrance, despite the authorisation given to women and workers over sixty years old to leave the plant. Some pretended that they had fallen unconscious or were having nervous breakdowns. An ambulance took them home, the noise of its siren leading many people in the surrounding area to believe that there had been a fight in the factory and the ambulance was taking away the injured.

There was in fact only one injury: someone broke their leg trying to jump across a ditch. But it would be difficult to get opponents of the strike to admit the truth.

As time passed and night came, there was more and more tension at the main gates. There was a busy crowd: people were here, there and everywhere. All the other exits were tightly guarded by pickets, already solidly in place around the factory.

But the main gates were the most vulnerable, and it was here that people wanting to leave the occupation made all their efforts to try and escape. Most of them were temps, of whom there were around 150. They were increasingly angered as all their attempts to break through the blockade were rebuffed. The gates were in the hands of “People’s Guards” who enthusiastically carried out the unions’ joint instructions.

Faced with failure the people trying to escape tried to work together. Some line managers who would later take part in the “scabs’ committee” harangued: they had to bloc and try and break through the blockade by force, even if the human blockade was five or six ranks deep in front of the gate.

The picketers were ready and stood steadfast. The confrontation was brutal, and no quarter was given. In the mêlée you could hear no few daft “philosophical” arguments the rights of the individual and the right to work. But every scab who dared say his piece would get a lecture about workers’ rights!... They were allowed to speak, but not to leave.

But these holy “philosophers” were stubborn: they insisted… The situation remained rather dangerous, since they were organised together, angry and had their eyes fixed on the gates that weren’t being opened for them. But God knows what they were waiting for or what they expected to get out of this: a pressie from the picketers, perhaps? They seemed totally unaware of the importance of what was happening; they were only motivated by their little daily routines and the desire to go home.

For God’s sake! “Democracy” can be difficult at moments like that!

The defence of the main gate was reinforced, since it was important strategically. If they managed to get through there, the whole movement might have gone under. Furthermore, given the course of events, the picketers became more skittish and more unrelenting. But these were only arguments about organisation and exasperation caused by the events: most of the time they just had to go out and get snacks or take food for a striking worker from one of their friends or relatives.

On the other hand, for a few vulnerable souls ill-prepared for such happenings the workers’ “militia” banded together at the entrance raised a few moral and intellectual dilemmas! Without doubt, many of them only had a few fairly naïve ideas about factory occupations gleaned here and there from little history books or sentimental and superficial memories of June 1936.

But those who wanted to leave met with failure, and their exit-by-force was never carried through… their rubbish leaders eventually gave up. They thought about making a few individual openings through the security ring surrounding the factory, hoping to evade the patrols who continued to circle the factory and scoured through the bushes; the bushes where a few scabs had planned to hide themselves for a few hours before reaching their selfish little abodes.

The other scabs stood silent in front of the entrance or returned in small groups to the yard, waiting for better times. Most of them, despite everything, did manage to escape during the first days and nights of the occupation. But that would be no great threat to the success of the factory occupation. Nor was it a great loss for most of the people actively involved in the “new commune” which was being born. These people would later be found in the scabs’ committee. To each his own: the fainthearted outside, the “workers making history” inside.

What mattered was that the gates held, and the movement with them… Some will always make great play of criticising the harsh measures taken to achieve this, at a crucial stage of the occupation. But this type of preaching has no grip on events. They talk a lot about the brutal attitude of over-zealous pickets and of kidnapping… But to the over-zealous preachers who make these easy criticisms we say “Could it have been done differently?” Given the circumstances, the so-called “prisoners” were agents provocateurs causing trouble and regrettable confrontations which would not have taken place if it was not for their reactionary and anti-democratic attitude to a strike which was proven to be supported by the majority of workers. They are poor little preachers who know nothing except how to jabber on about the little ‘morals’ of their exploiters.

The seals on all the doors and exits of the factory were now secure. All along the 1800 metre perimeter wall which encircled the factory, workers devoted themselves to careful work planning and strengthening guard-posts. Personal and collective initiative burst forth everywhere. They set up installations reminiscent of soldiers’ watchtowers in the countryside. The blockade took place quickly and efficiently. They had to hurry as night closed in: it would be a night of unforgettable memories for all concerned, on one side or the other. A clear, cool night… brimming with activism: hard for a few splitters but exciting for the participants.

Revolutionary anthems blaring from a powerful loudspeaker echoed around the huge management offices. The director’s “guard of honour” sang along. This guard of honour was scattered pell-mell, albeit clustered in the tight, smoke-filled corridor which led to the director’s office: the men were sat, either on chairs or the floor, in an entanglement of arms and legs in overalls.

Outside a ring of fire was in the works. The cold of the night fell on the workers’ lightly-clothed shoulders, and everywhere a thousand flaming braziers cast arabesques into the spring night. All these hungry fires consumed an incredible amount of fuel. Contraptions went round in all directions carrying huge quantities of planks, logs and boxes… All night you had the feeling of living in the middle of a tank column, such was the noise of engines cutting through the silence. The enormous reddish flames lit up the walls and also served as spotlights, which was of great help to those watching from guard-posts along the walls.

Small groups of scabs wandered round the factory all night, like sleepwalkers, with their little bags in their arms, hoping to find a way out or some gap in the surveillance that would allow them to escape. These people’s wandering around, clasping little bags in which people normally carried snacks, displayed the “reluctant” workers’ lack of understanding of what was taking place.

The posts which were rather more spread out 'into nature' were served by some odd contraptions: boxes which normally served as packaging for fridges made by Frigeavia, a workshop at the factory which made fridges. The workers wedged themselves into these improvised 'coffins', lay down and closed the boxes again to protect themselves from the cold. Seeing all these bodies lined up in rows in these boxes, one could not help but think of mummies in their tombs! They only took off their work shows. This morbid sight had a fantastical allure, added to by the hallucinogenic effect of the brazier flames. The few white faces you could see in the boxes had a spectral quality when lit up by the flames. The effect was eye-catching, and you couldn’t help but smile, knowing that they were alive and well and your friends. But few of them managed to get much rest, since the day’s events had been so exciting. How could you sleep on a night as special as this? That morning they left their families at home and now, voilà, they suddenly found themselves thrown into an extreme confrontational situation. Groups of people who couldn’t sleep gathered round fires and conversed in hushed tones. There was an amazing feeling of solidarity, brotherhood and power in this bivouac assembly.

News of the occupation quickly spread to the households of Nantes and the surrounding area. A few cars driven by worried wives circled the plant, stopping before the guard post fires. Names were shouted over the walls and through the bars. But it was difficult to make contact with this or that occupier lost in the mas of men scattered across the workshops, offices, wagons and boxes. Only later, when loudspeakers were installed at the main entrance to beam out the names of the comrades asked for, could contact finally be made more easily.

Throughout the night a team of volunteers went from one post to the next carrying an enormous stew pot full of burning hot bouillon and snacks, which served as some comfort on this cold night. For almost everyone this was a night without sleep, a night of nervous tension, all eyes focused on the guard-posts and ears straining to hear news from Paris. But Paris slept…

The big offices were lit up, a permanent headquarters. There, there was no question of trying to sleep even for a minute. It was the place where picketers and activists came to see the boss. For many this was the first time they had met: each of them introduced themselves. In the last few hours “power” had changed hands in the factory. An atmosphere of free discussion reigned; conversation with the old “authorities” was direct and good-humoured; there was curiosity but not hatred.

Revolutionary anthems followed one after the other without end. The corridor was very musical indeed: some songs were moving, sung in unison or listened to in complete silence by the bosses’ guards, and made these people of strength and solidarity - smoking cigarette after cigarette as they supervised the door – watch the birth of this new brash and loud working-class order with deadpan faces. What did they feel as the night wore on? Without doubt, they could only have a limited view of given their lack of direct participation in events outside the office at the guard-posts.

The cold, pale dawn had not yet come to an end, an odd sight for these tired men shivering with insomnia and the nerves build up over the last month. The frippery bodies started to clamber out of their boxes. Their bearded faces hung heavy; their eyes were as red as the last night’s brazier fires. But the moment would pass: time to wake up and have a coffee. Down the length of the wall they could feel the hawthorns; a perfumed bouquet for the “campers” every breakfast-time. Spring and the strike had both arrived: in the morning daisies and hawthorns would start to flower on the cabin roofs.

Throughout the day on 15th May, the factory and its surroundings looked like a giant building site, but the workers soon improved the scene and their ramshackle structures, beginning to construct coverings and cabins. No need for leaders or orders from the union for this ant colony. Solidarity and self-discipline could work wonders.

The “commune” took shape, a “People’s Administration” putting things in place with surprising efficiency. Participants, supporters and locals were struck dumb by all this upheaval. Soon enough, around a kilometre down the road from the factory, a sign put up by the trade unions’ joint committee delineated the borders of the occupied area. It invited passers-by to take a diversion down the Couëts road to get to the Château-Bougon aerodrome.

A hundred metres from the plant they duly erected a blockade with chicanes for cars; there was a special way through for pedestrians. Notices were dug into the ground. New regulations were enacted: to take the “rue de l’Aviation” required a special pass: the “exterior” guard stopped people not from the factory venturing within their “perimeter”.

Only trade union, political party and student delegations that came in the early hours of the morning to bring solidarity to the striking workers were allowed in: but they were not allowed past the red barriers placed around the plant.

At the main entrance they set up an information service with loudspeakers: its work was unceasing and tiring, since workers’ relatives, delegations and all sorts of visitors kept coming in. By the end of the afternoon the square in front of the entrance was packed with people. Until late in the night the loudspeakers did not stop calling people and broadcasting communiqués and trade union instructions. From now on this noise would be a constant part of occupation life.

The speakers were relentless: such-and-such comrade was called to the main entrance… this comrade… that comrade…

After the last day’s anger, an unbelievable tumultuous mood continued to reign at this “iron gate”, both on the walls and among the crowds. Some of them had spent practically a whole day and night on the wall. Wives, mothers and friends were pressed up against the gates trying to see this or that friendly face, get a message across or pass across some food. Along the walls of the offices loads of young women were pressed against each other, trying to hold the hands of their young husbands or fiancés stretched through the bars of the windows.

Whatever comfort this may have offered the striking workers, the situation was plenty confused and tense. The picketers kept the doors firmly sealed, since the success of the occupation could hardly allow for any laxity. Despite this there was a certain degree of movement between the occupation and the outside world, with small groups of men going out to see their family on the other side of the gates: there was time to embrace, have a little chat and hand over a basket of food before going back. When these men had returned, others could go out in their place. They therefore tried to have some sort of balance between the numbers going out and the numbers coming in. Although there were, inevitably, some confrontations between the “supporters at the gates” (who were not exactly delighted) and the workers coming out, the men understood that they had to return all the same.

To guarantee permanent control over this worn-out post the exhausted picketers were taken off duty. They decided to “liberalise but formalise” the exits with a system of badges. Each worker was given a little card on which was written his name, the time of exit and return. The badge was signed by a trade union rep and recorded in a book. This safe-passage also allowed him through the road blockades. This “administrative and regulatory” measure allowed them bit by bit to relieve the gates while maintaining the strength of the occupation. All these details did nothing to cloud the mood.

But a bolt out of the blue in the afternoon changed the atmosphere, as the first report of success passed into the hands of the information service. The speaker cried with joy: the Renault factory at Cléon is on strike! The news spread through the aisles… the men crowded at the gates were overcome with fresh enthusiasm, and the announcement met with cries of joy.

Now the question was on everyone’s lips: is the strike going to spread? Renault: that meant something… everyone was filled with hope. Would there be a general strike tomorrow? They had talked about it so much before, but never really believed it.

May' 68: the Sorbonne Soviet

2008-05-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

An extract from libertarian socialist Maurice Brinton's diary of the events in France in May-June 1968

On Saturday 11 May, shortly before midnight, Mr Pompidou, Prime Minister of France, overruled his Minister of the Interior and his Minister of Education, and issued orders to his 'independent' Judiciary. He announced that the police would be withdrawn from the Latin Quarter, that the faculties would re-open on Monday 13 May, and that the law would 'reconsider' the question of the students arrested the previous week. It was the biggest political climb-down of his career: For the students, and for many others, it was the living proof that direct action worked. Concessions had been won through struggle which had been unobtainable by other means. Early on the Monday morning the CRS platoons guarding the entrance to the Sorbonne were discreetly withdrawn. The students moved in, first in small groups, then in hundreds, later in thousands. By midday the occupation was complete. Every 'tricolore' was promptly hauled down, every lecture theatre occupied, Red flags were hoisted from the official flagpoles and from improvised ones at many windows, some overlooking the streets, others the big internal courtyard. Hundreds of feet above the milling students, enormous red and black flags fluttered side by side from the Chapel dome, What happened over the next few days will leave a permanent mark on the French educational system, on the structure of French society and - most important of all - on the minds of those who lived and made history during that hectic first fortnight. The Sorbonne was suddenly transformed from the fusty precinct where French capitalism selected and moulded its hierarchs, its technocrats and its administrative bureaucracy into a revolutionary volcano in full eruption whose lava was to spread far and wide, searing the social structure of modern France.

The physical occupation of the Sorbonne was followed by an intellectual explosion of unprecedented violence. Everything, literally everything, was suddenly and simultaneously up for discussion, for question, for challenge. There were no taboos. It is easy to criticise the chaotic upsurge of thoughts, ideas and proposals unleashed in such circumstances. 'Professional revolutionaries' and petty bourgeois philistines criticised to their heart's content. But in so doing they only revealed how they themselves were trapped in the ideology of a previous epoch and were incapable of transcending it. They failed to recognise the tremendous significance of the new: of all that could not be apprehended within their own pre-established intellectual categories. The phenomenon was witnessed again and again, as it doubtless has been in every really great upheaval in history.

Day and night, every lecture theatre was packed out, the seat of continuous, passionate debate on every subject that ever preoccupied thinking humanity. No formal lecturer ever enjoyed so massive an audience, was ever listened to with such rapt attention - or given such short shrift if he talked nonsense. A kind of order rapidly prevailed. By the second day a noticeboard had appeared near the front entrance announcing what was being talked about, and where. l noted'. 'Organisation of the struggle'; 'Political and trade union rights in the University'; 'University crisis or social crisis?'. 'Dossier of police repression'; 'Self-management'; 'Non-selection' (or how to open the doors of the University to everyone); 'Methods of teaching'; 'Exams', etc. Other lecture theatres were given over to the students-workers liaison committees, soon to 'assume great importance. In yet other hales, discussions were under way on 'sexual repression', on 'the colonial question', on 'ideÃ´logy and mystification', Any group of people wishing to discuss anything under the sun would just take over one of the lecture theatres or smaller rooms. Fortunately there were dozens of these. The first impression was of a gigantic lid suddenly lifted, of pent-up thoughts and aspirations suddenly exploding, on being released from the realm of dreams into the realm of the real and the possible. In changing their environment people themselves were changed. Those who had never dared say anything suddenly felt their thoughts to be the most important thing in the world and said so. The shy became communicative. The helpless and isolated suddenly discovered that collective power lay in their hands. The traditionally apathetic suddenly realized the intensity of their involvement. A tremendous surge of community and cohesion gripped those who had previously seen themselves as isolated and impotent puppets, dominated by institutions that they could neither control nor understand. People just went up and talked to one another without a trace of self-consciousness. This state of euphoria lasted throughout the whole fortnight I was there, An inscription scrawled on a wall sums it up perfectly'. 'DéjÃ dix jours de bonheur' (ten days of happiness already).

In the yard of the Sorbonne, politics (frowned on for a generation) took over with a vengeance. Literature stalls sprouted up along the whole inner perimeter, Enormous portraits appeared on the internal walls: Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, Guevara, a revolutionary resurrection breaking the bounds of time and place. Even Stalin put in a transient appearance (above a Maoist stall) until it was tactfully suggested to the comrades that he wasn't really at home in such company.
On the stalls themselves every kind of literature suddenly blossomed forth in the summer sunshine: leaflets and pamphlets by anarchists, Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyists (three varieties), the [left social-democrat] PSU and the non-committed. The yard of the Sorbonne had become a gigantic revolutionary drug-store, in which the most esoteric products no longer had to be kept beneath the counter but could now be prominently displayed. Old issues of journals, yellowed by the years, were unearthed and often sold as well as more recent material. Everywhere there were groups of 10 or 20 people, in heated discussion, people talking about the barricades, about the CRS and about their own experiences, but also about the commune of 1871 , about 1905 and 1917, about the Italian left in 1921 and About France in 1936. A fusion was taking place between the consciousness Of the revolutionary minorities and the consciousness of whole new layers Of people, dragged day by day into the maelstrom of political controversy. The students were learning within days what it had taken others a lifetime to learn. Many lichens came to see What it was all about. They too got sucked into the vortex. I remember a boy of 14 explaining to an incredulous man of 60 why students should have the right to depose professors.

Other things also happened. A large piano suddenly appeared In the great central yard and remained there for several days. People would come and play on it, surrounded by enthusiastic supporters. As people talked in the lecture theatres of neo-capitalism and of its techniques of manipulation, strands of Chopin and bars of jazz, bits of La Carmagnole and atonal compositions wafted through the air. One evening there was a drum recital, then some clarinet players took over. These 'diversions' may have infuriated some of the more single-minded revolutionaries, but they were as much part and parcel of the total transformation of the Sorbonne as were the revolutionary doctrines being proclaimed in the lecture hails. An exhibition of huge photographs of the 'night of the barricades' (in beautiful half-tones) appeared one morning, mounted on stands. No-tine knew who had put it up. Everyone agreed that it succinctly summarised the horror and glamour, the anger and promise of that fateful night. Even the doors of the Chapel giving on to the yard were soon covered with inscriptions: 'open this door - Finis, le tabernacles','Religion is the last mystification'. Or more prosaically: 'We want somewhere to piss, not somewhere to pray'. The massive outer walls of the Sorbonne were likewise soon plastered with posters - posters announcing the first sit-in strikes, posters describing the wage rates of whole sections of Paris workers, posters announcing the next demonstrations, posters describing the solidarity marches in Peking, posters denouncing the police repression and the use of CS gas (as well as of ordinary tear-gas) against the demonstrators. There were posters, dozens of them, warning students against the Communist Party's band-wagon jumping tactics, telling them how it had attacked their movement and how it was now seeking to assume its leadership. Political posters in plenty. But also others, proclaiming the new ethos. A big one for instance near the main entrance, boldly proclaimed 'Défense d'interdire' (Forbidding forbidden). And others, equally to the point: 'Only the truth is revolutionary', 'Our revolution is greater than ourselves', 'We refuse the role assigned to us, will not be trained as police dogs'. People's concerns varied but converged. The posters reflected the deeply libertarian prevailing philosophy: 'Humanity will only be happy when the last capitalist has been strangled with the guts of the last bureaucrat'', 'Culture is disintegrating. Create!','I take my wishes for reality for I believe in the reality of my wishes'; or more simply, 'Creativity, spontaneity, life'. In the street outside, hundreds of passers-by would stop to read these improvised wall-newspapers. Some gaped. Some sniggered Some nodded assent. Some argued, Some, summoning their courage: actually entered the erstwhile sacrosanct premises, as they were being exhorted to by numerous posters proclaiming that the Sorbonne was now open to all, Young workers who 'wouldn't have been seen in that place' a month ago now walked in groups, at first rather self-consciously, later as if they owned the place, which of course they did.

As the days went by, another kind of invasion took place -- the invasion by the cynical and the unbelieving, or - more charitably - by those who 'had only come to see'. It gradually gained momentum. At certain stages it threatened to paralyse the serious work being done, part of which had to be hived off to the Faculty of Letters, at Censing, also occupied by the students. It was felt necessary, however, for the doors to be kept open, 24 hours a day. The message certainly spread. Deputations came first from other universities, then from high schools, later from factories and offices, to look, to question, to argue, to study.

The most telling sign, however, of the new and heady climate was to be found on the wails of the Sorbonne corridors. Around the main lecture theatres there is a maze of such corridors', dark, dusty, depressing, and hitherto unnoticed passageways leading from nowhere in particular to nowhere else. Suddenly these corridors sprang to life in a firework of luminous mural wisdom - much of it of Situationist inspiration. Hundreds of people suddenly stopped to read such pearls as: 'Do not consume Marx. Live it'; 'The future will only contain what we put into it now'; 'When examined. we will answer with questions'', 'Professors, you make us feel old' ; 'One doesn't compose with a society in decomposition'', 'We must remain the unadapted ones'; 'Workers of all lands, enjoy yourselves' : 'Those who carry out a revolution only half-way through merely dig themselves a tomb (St Just), 'Please leave the PC (Communist Party) as clean on leaving as you would like to find it on entering '; 'The tears of the philistines are the nectar of the gods',' 'GO and die in Naples. with the Club Mediterranée'; 'Long live communication, down with telecommunication' ' 'Masochism today dresses up as reformism ; We will claim nothing. We will ask for nothing. We will take. We will occupy'; 'The only outrage to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was the outrage that put him there'', 'No, we won't be picked up by the Great Party of the Working Class', And a big inscription, well displayed'. 'Since 1936 l have fought for wage increases, My father, before me, also fought for wage increases. Now I have a telly, a fridge, a Volkswagen. Yet all in all, my life has always been a dog's life. Don't discuss with the bosses. Eliminate them.'

Day after day the courtyard and corridors are crammed, the scene of an incessant bi-directional flow to every conceivable part of the enormous building. It may look like chaos, but it is the chaos of a beehive or of an anthill. A new structure is gradually being evolved. A canteen has been organised in one big hall, people pay what they can afford for glasses of orange juice, 'menthe', or 'grenadine' and for ham or sausage rolls. l enquire whether costs are covered and am toad they more or less break even. In another part of the building a children's creche has been set up, elsewhere a first-aid station, elsewhere a dormitory. Regular sweeping-up rotas are organised. Rooms are allocated to the Occupation Committee, to the Press Committee, to the Propaganda Committee, to the student- worker liaison committees, to the committees dealing with foreign students, to the action committees of Lyceens, to the committees dealing with the allocation of premises, and to the numerous commissions undertaking special projects such as the compiling of a dossier on police atrocities, the study of the implications of autonomy, of the examination system, etc. Anyone seeking work can readily find it. The composition of the committees was very variable. It often changed from day to day, as the committees gradually found their feel. To those who pressed for instant solutions to every problem it would be answered: "patience, comrade give us a chance to evolve an alternative. The bourgeoisie has controlled this university for nearly two centuries. It has solved nothing. We are building from rock bottom, We need a month or two...''

Confronted with this tremendous explosion which it had neither foreseen nor been able to control the Communist Party tried desperately to salvage what it could of its shattered reputation. Between 3 May and 13 May every issue of I'Humanité had carried paragraphs either attacking the students or making slimy innuendoes about them. Now the line suddenly changed, The Party sent dozens of its best agitators into the Sorbonne to 'explain' its case. The case was a simple one. The Party 'supported the students' - even if there were a few 'dubious elements' in their leadership. It 'always had'. It always would. Amazing scenes followed. Every Stalinist 'agitator' would immediately be surrounded by a large group of well-informed young people, denouncing the Party's counter-revolutionary role. A wall-paper had been put up by the comrades of Voix Ouvrière on which had been posted, day by day, every statement attacking the students to have appeared in I'Humanite- or in any of a dozen Party leaflets. The 'agitators' couldn't get a word in edgeways. They would be jumped on (non-violently). ''The evidence was over there, comrade. Would the Party comrades like to come and read just exactly what the Party had been saying not a week ago? Perhaps I'Humanité would like to grant the students space to reply to some of the accusations made against them?'' Others in the audience would then bring up the Party's role during the Algerian War, during the miners' strike of 1958, during the years of 'tripartisme' (1945-1947). Wriggle as they tried, the 'agitators' just could not escape this kind of 'instant education'. It was interesting to note that the Party could not entrust this 'salvaging' operation to its younger, student members. Only the 'older comrades' could safely venture into this hornets' nest. So much so that people would say that anyone in the Sorbonne over the age of 40 was either a copper's nark or a stalinist stooge. The most dramatic periods of the occupation were undoubtedly the 'Assemblées Générales', or plenary sessions, held every' night in the giant amphitheatre. This was the soviet, the ultimate source of all decisions, the fount and origin of direct democracy. The amphitheatre could seat up to 5000 people in its enormous hemicycle, surmounted by three balcony tiers. As often as not every seat was taken and the crowd would flow up the aisles and onto the podium, A black flag and a red one hung over the simple wooden table at which the chairman sat. Having seen meetings of 50 break up in chaos it is an amazing experience to see a meeting of 5000 get down to business. Real events determined the themes and ensured that most of the talk was down to earth.

The topic having been decided, everyone was allowed to speak. Most speeches were made from the podium but some from the body of the hall or from the balconies. The loudspeaker equipment usually worked but sometimes didn't. Some speakers could command immediate attention, without even raising their voice. Others would instantly provoke a hostile response by the stridency of their tone, their insincerity or their more or less obvious attempts at manoeuvring the assembly. Anyone who waffled, or reminisced, or came to recite a set-piece, or talked in terms of slogans, was given shod shrift by the audience, politically the most sophisticated I have ever seen. Anyone making practical suggestions was listened to attentively. So were those who sought to interpret the movement in terms of its own experience or to point the way ahead.

Most speakers were granted three minutes, Some were allowed much more by popular acclaim. The crowd itself exerted a tremendous control on the platform and on the speakers. A two-way relationship emerged very quickly. The political maturity of the Assembly was shown most strikingly in its rapid realization that booing or cheering during speeches slowed down the Assembly's own deliberations. Positive speeches were loudly cheered - at the end. Demagogic or useless ones were impatiently swept aside, Conscious revolutionary minorities played an important catalytic role in these deliberations, but never sought - at least the more intelligent ones - to impose their will on the mass body. Although in the early stages the Assembly had its fair share of exhibited nests, provocateurs and nuts, the overhead costs of direct democracy were not as heavy as one might have expected.

There were moments of excitement and moments of exhortation. On the night of 13 May, after the massive march through the streets of Paris, Daniel Cohn-Bandit confronted J M Catala, general secretary of the Union of Communist Students in front of the packed auditorium. The scene remains printed in my mind. ''Explain to us'', Cohn-Bandit said, ''why the Communist Party and the CGT told their militants to disperse at Denfed Rochereau, why it prevented them joining up with us for a discussion at the Champ de Mars?'' "simple, really'' sneered Catala. ''The agreement concluded between the CGT, the CFDT, the UNEF and the other sponsoring organizations stipulated that dispersal would take place at a predetermined place. The Joint Sponsoring Committee had not sanctioned any further developments...'' ''A revealing answer'', replied Cohn-Bandit, ''the organizations hadn't foreseen that we would be a million in the streets. But life is bigger than the organizations. With a million people almost anything is possible. You say the Committee hadn't sanctioned anything further. On the day of the Revolution, comrade, you will doubtless tell us to forego it 'because it hasn't been sanctioned by the appropriate sponsoring committee'...''

This brought the house down. The only ones who didn't rise to cheer were a few dozen Stalinists. Also, revealingly, those Trotskyists who tacitly accepted the Stalinist conceptions - and whose only quarrel with the CP is that it had excluded them from being one of the 'sponsoring organisations'. That same night the Assembly took three important decisions. From now on the Sorbonne would constitute itself as a revolutionary headquarters ('Smolny', someone shouted). Those who worked there would devote their main efforts not to a mere re-organisation of the educational system, but to a total subversion of bourgeois society. From now on the University would be open to all those who subscribed to these aims. The proposals having been accepted the audience rose to a man and sang the loudest, most impassioned 'Internationale' I have ever heard. The echoes must have reverberated as far as the Elysee Palace on the other side of the River Seine...

The struggle for self-management

2008-05-02T05:15:00.000-07:00

This "open letter to IS comrades" was printed in the libertarian socialist paper Solidarity on 27th September 1968

Dear comrades,

It is remarkable how few socialists seem to recognize the connection between the structure of their own organization and the type of ‘socialist’ society it might help bring about.

If the revolutionary organization is seen as the means and socialist society as the end, one might expect people with an elementary understanding of dialectics to recognize the relation between the two. Means and ends are mutually dependent. They constantly influence each other. The means are, in fact, a partial implementation of the end, whereas the end becomes modified by the means adopted.

One could almost say ‘tell me your views concerning the structure and function of the revolutionary organization and I’ll tell you what the society you will help create will be like’. Or conversely ‘give me your definition of socialism and I’ll tell you what your views on the revolutionary organization are likely to be’.

We see socialism as a society based on self-management in every branch of social life. Its basis would be workers’ management of production exercised through Workers’ Councils. Accordingly we conceive of the revolutionary organisation as one which incorporates self-management in its structure and abolishes within its own ranks the separation between the functions of decision-making and execution. The revolutionary organisation should propagate these principles in every area of social life.

Others may have different conceptions of socialism. They may have different views on the aims and structure of the revolutionary organisation. They must state what these are clearly, openly and unambiguously. They owe it not only to the workers and students but to themselves.

An example of haziness in the definition of socialism (and of its repercussions concerning revolutionary organisation) is to be found in the material published by the central bodies of International Socialism (IS) in preparation for the bi-annual conference of September 1968.

In the duplicated ‘Statement of basic principles’ (IS constitution) we find that IS struggles for ‘workers’ control’. But we also find that “planning, under workers’ control, demands nationalisation”. These are the only references, in the document, to the structure of the socialist society towards whose creation all of IS’s activity is directed.

How, precisely, does IS conceive of working class ‘control’? What does ‘nationalisation’ mean? How does IS relate to ‘workers’ control’? Does the working class implement its ‘control’ through the mediation of a political party? Or of trade union officials? Or of a technocracy? Or through workers’ councils?

Are those who formulated the IS constitution aware that ‘nationalisation’ means precisely relegating authority of decision-making on industrial policy to a group of state officials? Don’t they realise that the struggle of the French students and workers for ‘autogestion’ (self-management) renders ‘nationalisation’ irrelevant? Apparently they do not. In the analysis of the French events (The Struggle Continues) written by T. Cliff and I. Birchall (and produced as an official IS publication) the relation between self-management and nationalisation is not discussed at all.

Why should a national federation of Workers’ Councils (composed of elected and revocable delegates of regional Councils) allow any other group in society to wield ultimate authority in relation to all aspects of production?

In political terms the question could be posed thus: does IS stand for the policy of ‘All Power to the Workers’ Councils’? Or does it stand for the policy of ‘All Power to the Revolutionary Party’? It is no use evading the issue by saying that in France no workers’ councils existed. When this is the case, it is the duty of revolutionaries to conduct propaganda for their creation.

In Russia, in 1917, Workers’ Councils (soviets) did exist. On July 4, 1917, Lenin raised the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’. He ended his article with the words ‘things are moving by fits and starts towards a point where power will be transferred to the soviets, which is what our Party called for long ago’. Yet two months later, on September 12, he wrote: “The Bolsheviks, having obtained a majority in the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies of both capitals can and must take state power into their own hands”.

However one analyses Lenin’s transition, in the context of Russia in 1917, from a policy of ‘All Power to the Soviets’ to a policy of ‘All Power to the Bolshevik Party’, one must recognise that his choice was a fundamental one, whose implications for Britain in 1968 cannot be evaded.

The leading (i.e. decision-making) bodies in IS are very careful not to state explicitly that, like Lenin, they believe that the Party must take power on behalf of the class. This principle however runs through the entire Cliff-Birchall analysis of the French events. Their analysis is, in fact, tailored to fit this principle.

We say to these comrades: if you believe that the working class itself cannot ‘seize power’ (but that the Revolutionary Party must do it on behalf of the class), please say so openly and defend your views.

Let us put to you our own views on the subject. Political ‘power’ is fundamentally little more than the right to take and impose decisions in matters of social production, administration, etc. This authority is not to be confused with expertise. The experts give advice, they do not make the decisions. Today, during the development of the self-management revolution, it is precisely the authority of decision-making in relation to the management of production (whether the means of production be formally in the hands of private bosses or of the state) that is being challenged. The challenge is being repeated in all branches of social life.

Those who think in terms of ‘seizing power’ unwittingly accept that a political bureaucracy, separate from the producers themselves, and concentrating in its hands the authority of decision-making on fundamental issues of social production must be a permanent social institution. They believe its form (the bourgeois ‘state apparatus’) has to be changed. But they refuse to question the need for such a social institution. They want to capture political power and use it for allegedly different purposes. They do not consider its abolition to be on the agenda.

As for us, we believe that once self-management in production has been achieved, ‘political power’ as a social institution will lose both its social function and justification. To speak of ‘workers’ control’ and of ‘seizing political power’ is to confuse a new structure of society (the rule of the Workers’ Councils) with one of the by-products of the previous form of class society, which was based on withholding from the workers the right to manage.

Comrades Cliff and Birchall fail to recognise the specific, new features of the May events in France. They fail to explain why the students succeeded in inspiring 10 million workers. ‘The student demonstrations created an environment in which people were free to coin their own slogans’ (The Struggle Continues p.17) What slogans? The two most important were ‘Contestation’ and ‘Autogestion’ (self-management). What was being contested? What does self-management mean? How are the two slogans related to each other? Not a word on all this. What we do find however is the important statement (p.18) that “when a worker went to the Sorbonne he was recognised as a hero. Within Renault he was only a thing. In the University he became a man”.

Comrades, you should seek to clarify this assessment (with which we agree). Please tell us what was the mysterious element in the ‘environment’ which transformed a man into a thing and vice-versa. Are we wrong in assuming that a man feels like a ‘thing’ when he has to live as an executant of social decisions which he cannot influence, whereas he feels like a ‘man’ when he lives under social circumstances which he has shaped by his own decisions (or in whose creation he was an equal partner)?

If this is really your opinion, why not say it in so many words?

But if this is really what you believe how could your Political Committee suggest an organisational regulation saying that:
“Branches must accept directives from the Centre, unless they fundamentally disagree with them, in which case they should try to accord with them while demanding an open debate on the matter.” (Perspectives for IS, September 12 1968)

Isn’t the Political Committee attempting to transform IS members from ‘men’ into ‘things’? Isn’t the attempt to limit the right of rank-and-file IS members to initiate political decisions – while democratically permitting them to debate (not overrule!) the directives of the Centre, after having carried them out – an indication of an ideological disease more serious than being out of touch with the spirit of the young workers and students? If IS is to play a significant role in the revolution this regulation must be defeated, not only organisationally but also ideologically.

In the last chapter of their analysis of the French events, comrades Cliff and Birchall quote Trotsky to the effect that “unity in action of all sections of the proletariat, and simultaneity of demonstration under a single common slogan [Are these really essential? Did they ever exist in history?] can only be achieved if there is a genuine concentration of leadership in the hands of responsible [to whom?] central and local bodies, stable in their composition [!] and in their attitude to their political line”. (The Struggle Continues p.77)

This is to confuse the technical and political aspects of a real problem. Coordination is essential and may require centralisation. But the function of an administrative centre should not include the imposition of political decisions.

Trotsky’s argument (and Cliff’s) sound almost Stalinist. A centre “stable in its composition” concentrates in its hands the authority of political decision-making. “The branches must accept directives from the Centre”. The Party ‘leads’ the working class and ‘seizes power’ on its behalf. Workers are ‘summoned’ (p.78) to an “open revolutionary assault on capitalism.” From this it is but a short leap to Trotsky’s statement that “the statutes should express the leadership’s organised distrust of the members, a distrust manifesting itself in vigilant control from above over the Party”.

This approach reveals a very definite view concerning the role of the Centre in relation to the Party and of the Party in relation to the class. But it is wrong to identify this view with Stalinism. It preceded Stalin, Lenin and Marx. As a matter of fact, it has been part of ruling class ideology for centuries.

Cliff and Birchall mobilise every possible argument to support the doctrine of ‘Centre leads the Party, Party leads class’. They write: “Facing the strictly centralised and disciplined power of the capitalists, there must be no less centralised and disciplined a combat organisation of the proletariat” (p.77). Yet two pages earlier they had admitted that “the 14th July 1789 revolution was a spontaneous act of the masses. The same was true of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the February 1917 Revolution (p.74). In other words they admit that two of the most centralised regimes in history were overthrown by masses that were not led by any party, let alone a centralised one. How do they reconcile these facts with their assertion that “only a centralised party can overthrow centralised power”?

The conscious factor in changing history, embodied in revolutionary organisations, can play a significant role in shaping the new social structure. However after the Russian experience it is clear that this ‘conscious factor’ must develop its own self-consciousness. It must recognise the connection between its own structure and practice – and the type of socialism it will help achieve.

Writing in 1904 Lenin took sides unequivocally for ‘bureaucracy’ (as against democracy) and for ‘centralism’ (as against autonomy). He wrote: “Bureaucracy versus democracy is the same thing as centralism versus autonomism. It is the organisational principle of revolutionary political democracy as opposed to the organisational principle of the opportunists of Social Democracy. The latter want to proceed from the bottom upwards and, consequently, wherever possible and to the extent that it is possible, it supports autonomism and “democracy” which may (by the over-zealous) be carried as far as anarchism. The former proceeds from the top, and advocates an extension of the rights and power of the Centre in respect of the parts”.

With all due allowance to the objective factors which contributed to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, these ideas (the conscious, subjective factor) must also be stressed, certainly in 1968.

We can only add here what Rosa Luxemburg, answering Lenin, said in 1904: “Let us speak plainly. Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary working class movement are infinitely more fruitful and valuable than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee”.

Are these words less relevant in 1968 than they were in 1904?

Today in Britain the danger is not that future society will be shaped in the image of a bureaucratic revolutionary organisation based on “genuine concentration of leadership in the hands of responsible central and local bodies, stable in their composition”, organisation in which “branches must accept directives from the Centre”, etc. The danger is rather to such organisations themselves. They will cease to be relevant to the social self-management revolution now developing. Before long they will be identified as just other ‘centre-managed’ political bureaucracies, to be swept aside. This is the fate now threatening IS, should the Political Committee’s recommendations be accepted.

We wish all IS members a useful Conference and a serious discussion that will help them clarify their ideas about socialism, workers’ management and the structure and function of the revolutionary organisation.

Solidarity on Israel-Palestine

2008-04-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

In her reply to David Kirk’s criticism of the Solidarity 3/128 editorial on Israel/Palestine, Cathy Nugent comments on the idea that we should not put demands on bourgeois governments:

“… socialists have always made such “calls” and made demands on bourgeois governments, and in many dreadful circumstances — in order to organise movements of opposition, to cohere groups of people who share our basic politics, because these demands/calls have the potential to create mass movements, or because under pressure bourgeois governments do act.”

This is correct when it refers to the necessity of making demands for agitational purposes. If the workers’ movement raises slogans for Palestinian self-determination, it can become a rallying point for working class forces, who can hegemonise the democratic and national question and thus build a third camp independent of the Israeli state and the Palestinian leadership. Socialists must argue (i) for working-class unity and independence from other class forces and (ii) for the workers’ movement to take the lead in posing democratic demands against the Israeli and Palestinian ruling classes.

However, it is does not follow that a simple expression of the sentiment ‘The Israeli state really ought to allow the Palestinians to have their own state’ is necessarily ‘third camp’ in character. The ‘third camp’ is the organised working class taking the lead in struggle, not just the idea of a ‘two state solution’ in itself. After all, Fatah, Ehud Olmert, sections of Hamas and George Bush all want a ‘two state solution’, but their projects are not similar to our hope for a joint Arab-Jewish workers’ struggle for self-determination for all peoples in the region. The fact that we do not just shout “down with negotiations” or “down with diplomatic deals” when they happen does not mean that we do not have our own politics to push forward as well.

Yet the editorial in question made not a single reference to workers’ struggle, the working class or even trade unions, either in the abstract or in the concrete. It did not at any point mention the class struggle in the region nor how national oppression and democratic struggles relate to it. It read not like an article in a Trotskyist paper but like an Independent comment piece which patronisingly “exposes” the Israeli government’s “lack of proportion”. There was not one word in the editorial which would have been out of place in any liberal bourgeois daily.

This was the problem with the way the editorial posed demands on the Israeli government. Rather than stressing the importance of working-class struggle to force these demands to be fulfilled, it suggested that it would be the Kadima government which gifted Palestinian self-determination. As “one of the most democratic societies in existence”, Israel “should be correspondingly humane and enlightened” and use its power to grant justice to the Palestinians. No other agency of change was mentioned, with the article appealing to the Israeli élite to live up to their own democratic credentials!

That is not an agitational demand. In front of whom does the hypocrisy of Ehud Olmert and the IDF need to be “exposed”? I doubt that anyone who would buy our – revolutionary socialist - paper, nor for that matter the Palestinian workers and unemployed masses, would have been too impressed. We need to make the case for a ‘third camp’ in Israel-Palestine, not waste paper with liberal musings about “disproportionate” levels of violence.

The Fourth International in Britain

2008-04-06T01:32:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I wandered outside the University of London Union building, only to find the pompous Stuart Richardson laying into our comrade Sofie Buckland.

Stuart, a leading member of the International Socialist Group (British section of the “Fourth International”), had the Respect Renewal newspaper on him, which led me to assume that he was having a go at Iranian gay people, or perhaps substantiating his leader’s claim that embryo research “blasphemes against the very idea of God”.

After all, since the ISG joined up with George Galloway and disbanded its own newspaper in favour of the RR organ, it has not written a single word in criticism of the Stalino-Catholic MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, and its members have somersaulted through all sorts of logical contortions to justify Galloway’s bigotry.

But no, Stuart was telling Sofie about her alleged support for a US attack against Iran. Funny, she’s never said or written anything to that effect, and plenty to the contrary. Not a very interesting argument.

Anyway, I hadn’t seen Stuart for a while, and I always enjoy a chat with him, so I took the opportunity to ask him about his theft of over £400 from the bank account of North Birmingham Socialist Alliance four years ago. Stuart was defensive about this ‘Mariam Appeal moment’ – after pretending for a while that the allegation that he had taken money from the SA was simply untrue, he then said that he hadn’t done it for personal gain. Rather confirming my initial claim that he wanted to transfer the funds to Respect.

Of course, I wouldn’t dream of casting aspersions on the financing of Respect Renewal – I’m sure that Galloway’s massive salary and expenses are quite enough to keep them going, and the Iranian regime probably doesn’t even need to pay Galloway to be their useful idiot. It is the politics of the ISG comrades which are disappointing – is this really the continuation of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International?

For what the ISG were getting up to inside ULU was even worse than the arguments they made on the steps. Having written nothing in response to two articles in Respect by Galloway calling for a first preference vote for Ken Livingstone, not even on their own website, the ISG decided to make an independent stand at their conference. A stand which, I might add, has only been publicised via an eight-line “article” on the blog of ISG fellow traveller Liam MacUaid.

The stance they took, amazingly, was to call for a first-preference vote for the Green Party candidate Sian Berry in the London Mayoral Election. Seems funny, given that the social base of the Green Party is the petty-bourgeoisie and they have not one union affiliation. Seems funny given that Jenny Jones – one of their two London Assembly members – voted against the sacking of police chief Ian Blair.

Of course, we all know that the reason is the ISG’s shift to “eco-socialism” - largely characterised by cosying up to the leaders of the Campaign Against Climate Change and having nothing to say about the working class or transitional demands – and presumably they think that they can tap into the wishy-washy liberal Green vote if they boycott their own politics. This closely parallels their reason for immersing themselves in Respect Renewal – namely that the ISG has nothing to say and no reason to exist, and after tailing the SWP for a while has found a niche for itself by licking the boots of Galloway, now that the rest of the left wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole.

We might recall that the first line of Trotsky’s Transitional Programme, cornerstone of the Fourth International, reads “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat”. This was always a bit of a red herring (even in 1938 it was hardly the case that the proletariat was chomping at the bit but constantly sold out by reformists), although that’s hardly cause to give up on the working class altogether.

I’m sure that Sian Berry is sincere and probably quite left wing. But that’s the answer to the wrong question. How does backing the Greens (I’m sure it will be essentially uncritical support) serve the cause of working-class political representation? How will it help the ISG relate to workers disaffected with New Labour? What does it do to further the cause of left unity?

The ISG doesn’t care. They are only interested in surfing on the wave of popularity for the not-so-great-and-good, like Galloway and the Green liberals. They have dismantled their own public presence. They mask their own existence. They abandon all of their own analysis, ideas and understanding of the world. They try and find a niche in bourgeois politics. They become a pisspoor impression of Socialist Action.

We saved NUS democracy

2008-04-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

150 at protest to defend Mehdi Kazemi

2008-03-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

Over 150 people turned out on Saturday 22nd for a protest against the deportation of Iranian gay 19-year-old Mehdi Kazemi. Even though the Iranian regime has already executed his boyfriend, Mehdi is in limbo, with the Dutch government and the UK Home Office refusing to let him stay. The protest also highlighted the cases of Pegah Emambakhsh - an Iranian lesbian woman - and Jojo Yakob - a Syrian gay man - also under threat of deportation.

This turnout was particularly pleasing in that it came despite snowy weather and bitter cold. Dozens of activists came from outside London, including groups of students from Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester.

Speakers such as Sofie Buckland (NUS NEC and Feminist Fightback) and David Broder (Middle East Workers' Solidarity) highlighted the inherent racism of the immigration system and called for the abolition of borders. Similarly, demonstrators chanted slogans including "No borders, no nations, stop deportations!" and "Mehdi must stay!"

They furthermore pointed to the homophobia of people like George Galloway who call themselves left-wing but have refused to back Mehdi Kazemi, instead leaping to the defence of Iran's theocracy. Opposing war does not mean we have to whitewash the Iranian regime - the anti-war movement needs to be honest if it is to deserve support.

Other speakers at the demonstration opposite Downing Street included Peter Tatchell, Scott Cuthbertson (NUS LGBT), Chris Strafford (Hands Off the People of Iran) and Dave Landau (who advertised next Saturday's conference of trade unions against immigration controls)

Middle East Workers' Solidarity will continue to defend Middle Eastern asylum seekers from deportation and highlight the issue of immigration controls, as well as opposing war and supporting unions and social movements in the region. Visit www.union-solidarity.org for more info.

Anti-war doesn't mean pro-repression!

2008-03-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

Respect Renewal MP George Galloway has been far from sympathetic to the case of Mehdi Kazemi, instead choosing to spew homophobic bile and defend the Iranian regime. Showing his complete contempt for human rights and democracy, he has levelled the ridiculous accusation that people campaigning against the deportation of Mehdi Kazemi are “the pink contingent of imperialism” – even though the protests are against our own government.

The controversy started on 13 March on Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff chat show, where Galloway said that the papers’ coverage of Mehdi’s story amounted to “demonisation of Iran”, even though Mehdi is himself Iranian. What Galloway did not like was the criticism of the Iranian regime.

Denying that you can be executed for being gay in Iran (thousands of dead suggest otherwise), Galloway claimed that Mehdi Kazemi’s boyfriend was executed for “sex crimes against young men”. Not even the Iranian government has made this claim, but the contortions of Galloway’s rhetoric do not have much time for little matters such as fact or evidence. By all accounts, the “sex crime” in question was “sodomy”, a term Galloway himself used on his Talksport radio show to describe homosexuality.

After an outcry and an angry statement in the papers by gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, Galloway made another appearance on Channel 5 – only to dig himself even deeper. Accusing Tatchell of being a “pink” cover for imperialism (which is both untrue and deeply homophobic), Galloway said that it was pointless to criticise homophobic laws in Iran since there is homophobia everywhere, from Tehran to Tunbridge Wells. At a meeting at SOAS, he reiterated the point, claiming that people who criticise the Iranian regime’s homophobia do not seem concerned by anti-LGBT discrimination elsewhere, such as in US ally Saudi Arabia.

Not only is his allegation totally untrue, but we can also note that Galloway himself does not protest against homophobia anywhere else. For example, there was a demo at the Saudi Embassy when the Saudi king visited Britain in winter, but Galloway did not attend. In fact, the Respect manifesto has in the past always omitted reference to LGBT rights, which neatly complements Galloway’s homophobic remarks on his radio show.

Galloway’s position, at its most ‘rational’, appears to be that we should defend the Iranian government absolutely, because it is under threat of war and sanctions, which would make everything worse in Iran by far. Of course, it is true that any sort of western or Israeli attack on Iran would be an absolute disaster for the people who live there, and indeed that sabre-rattling against Iran will invariably strengthen nationalism in that country and allow President Ahmedinejad to posture as “anti-imperialist”, buttressing his regime. We are opposed to all sanctions, bombing “raids” or war.

However, it does not follow that we should whitewash the Iranian regime, which in the here and now is meting out death and destruction against its own people. The anti-war movement will not deserve a hearing if it does not tell the truth, and clearly Galloway cannot have it both ways – he is claiming both that opponents of Mehdi Kazemi’s deportation are just a left cover used by British imperialism, but also that we are wrong to protest against the British government for threatening to deport him!

Furthermore, the left will be failing (and currently is failing) in its solidarity effort with Iranians if it does not also support them in their struggle against the theocracy. Practical solidarity with workers’, women’s, student and - to the extent that they can exist even underground - LGBT organisations in Iran is an extremely important task for socialists at this time of great struggle inside Iran..

Of course, Galloway is not really a socialist. Never on the left of the Labour Party when a member, he displays no interest in workers’ struggle and social movements, but instead places his sole political focus on apologetics for various third world regimes which take his fancy, including Iran, Syria and Cuba. As I was keen to point out to him when he spoke at SOAS, he is a Stalinist and a homophobe who has nothing to do with the kind of left we need. We need a working-class set of politics which takes up liberation issues and democratic questions, not support for this or that Islamist regime which spouts rhetoric against US imperialism.

No deportations to Iraq

2008-03-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

The first two weeks of March saw dozens of shootings, roadside bombs, car bombs and discoveries of mass graves in Iraq. Five years into the war, the country remains torn apart by sectarian violence, which marks its toll not only in bodies but also in destroyed basic infrastructure, power and supplies shortages and a grave lack of hospital beds. Yet on March 13 it was revealed that the Home Office now considers Iraq ‘safe’, and will therefore give 1,400 Iraqi asylum seekers an ultimatum – go back, or stay in Britain but with no benefits and no home. They have three weeks to make up their minds.

The claim that Iraq is safe is highly troubling, and displays the government’s complete lack of concern for the people it expels from the UK. As if to underline the stupidity of their assertion, the government will also ask them to sign a waiver form which says that the Home Office will take no responsibility for what happens to them or their families once they return to Iraq.

Of course, as everyone knows, millions of Iraqis have been forced to flee from their homes by the invasion and civil war, either to find solace in another community in Iraq among their co-religionists, or to seek refuge in neighbouring Jordan or Syria. The UN estimates that 2.2 million people have escaped from Iraq since 2003 –few of these millions, so desperate as to have to leave their country, would corroborate the government’s claim that Iraq is safe.

This is not the first time the British government has deported people to Iraq, although previous flights carrying asylum seekers have headed for the Kurdish north - which except the recent Turkish invasion has been relatively stable – rather than southern Iraq itself. We also strongly condemned those removals, since they are nothing other than part of the Home Office’s racist demonisation of immigrants and their constant effort to pander to far-right prejudices against people of Middle Eastern background, no matter how worthy their asylum case.

Indeed, even the 1,400 Iraqi asylum seekers concerned had in 2005 been refused the right to stay in Britain and were only spared deportation because it was impossible to find a plausibly safe route back. They were therefore only entitled to the meagre "section four” state support which includes basic "no-choice" accommodation, three meals a day, vouchers for essential items and utility bills.

No matter whether the government needs to pretend for its own reasons that Iraq is safe and free, we are unconditionally for the right for anyone who so pleases to make the UK their home. We furthermore demand that all immigrants have the same welfare rights as anyone else who lives in this country, and are absolutely opposed to racist two-tier benefits system which keeps people in poverty just because they were born abroad.

Action to defend Mehdi Kazemi March 22nd

2008-03-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

Middle East Workers' Solidarity

On Saturday March 22nd at 2pm Middle East Workers' Solidarity will be staging a protest opposite Downing Street in defence of Mehdi Kazemi, a gay Iranian asylum seeker who the British government plans to send back to Iran on the grounds that if gay Iranians are "discreet about their sexuality", they will not get in trouble.

In fact, Mehdi Kazemi's boyfriend in Iran has already been executed for being gay, and the regime knows about Mehdi Kazemi and will likely kill him if he returns. We are demonstrating to demand that he should not be sent to his death in Iran, and that he should be allowed to stay in Britain if he so chooses.

Saturday March 22nd, 2pm, Downing Street. Nearest tube Westminster/Charing Cross

International Women's Day

2008-03-08T06:00:00.006-08:00

US dockers call for strike to end occupation of Iraq

2008-03-07T07:58:00.001-08:00

Middle East Workers' Solidarity

A motion passed by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union conference

FOR WORKERS' ACTION TO STOP THE WAR

WHEREAS: On May 1, 2003, at the ILWU Convention in San Francisco
resolutions were passed calling for an end to the war and occupation
in Iraq; and

WHEREAS: ILWU took the lead among labor unions in opposing this bloody
war and occupation for imperial domination; and

WHEREAS: Many unions and the overwhelming majority of the American
people now oppose this bipartisan and unjustifiable war in Iraq and
Afghanistan but the two major political parties, Democrats and
Republicans continue to fund the war; and

WHEREAS: Millions worldwide have marched and demonstrated against the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but have been unable to stop the wars; and

WHEREAS: ILWU's historic dock actions,

1) like the refusal of Local 10 longshoremen to load bombs for the
military dictatorship in Chile in 1978 and military cargo to the
Salvadoran military dictatorship in 1981 and

2) the honoring of the teachers' union antiwar picket May 19, 2007
against SSA in the port of Oakland stand as a limited but shining
example of how to oppose these wars; and

WHEREAS: The spread of war in the Middle East is threatened with U. S.
air strikes in Iran or possible military intervention in Syria or the
destabilized Pakistan;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

That it is time to take labor's protest to a more powerful level of
struggle by calling on unions and working people in the U. S. and
internationally to mobilize for a "No Peace No Work Holiday" May 1,
2008 for 8 hours to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation
in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U. S. troops from the
Middle East; and

FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED:

That a clarion call from the ILWU be sent with an urgent appeal for
unity of action to the AFL-CIO, the Change to Win Coalition and all of
the international labor organizations to which we are affiliated to
bring an end to this bloody war once and for all.

Submitted by:

ILWU Local 10

passed overwhelmingly after thorough debate

Israeli jets bomb Palestinian trade union HQ

2008-03-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

Middle East Workers' Solidarity

On the night of February 28th Israeli jets levelled the five-storey Gaza headquarters of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU)with three heavy F-16 missiles.

The "Folk House building" in Gaza City had been used for union-administered health care as well as organising. But this fresh Israeli atrocity has changed all that.

The complete destruction of the building not only means severe hardship for Palestinian trade unionists, but the death of one Palestinian and 37 other casualties, many of them children. It badly damaged numerous homes, and destroyed the area's electricity and water supply.

The attack came as part of Israel's continuing "collective punishment" of Gaza, which in one four-day period killed one hundred and ten Palestinians, one third of them children.

"The occupation doesn't need any justifications to commit crimes against Palestinians," said Nabil al-Mabhouh, acting head of the PGFTU in Gaza. But the building was targeted because "we at PGFTU are supporting the rights of tens of thousands of Palestinian workers."

The PGFTU has put out a call for solidarity, commenting "We call for an appropriate and effective response from the international trade unions and the International Labour Organisation to put compel Israel to compensate the PGFTU for the destruction of the Folk House in Gaza."

Solidarity and "troops out now"

2008-03-04T07:19:00.000-08:00

Among other issues the upcoming Alliance for Workers' Liberty conference will debate our position on Iraq and Iran. This piece is intended to contribute to that discussion and explain some of the views of minority comrades.

Within our organisation there is a substantial minority grouping critical of the leadership's attitude to the occupation of Iraq. We argue that the only principled line on the conflict, and only chance to build independent working-class forces, is to stand sharply opposed to US-UK intervention in the region as well as Islamism. In contrast, the majority argue that we should acquiesce to the occupation of Iraq, since if we demanded that the troops leave and they did, Islamist militias would win out and crush democratic space in Iraq.

All of our comrades say they are for solidarity with Iraqi workers, and the debate is normally posed in terms of what slogans we should add to this position - demands like "troops out now", "troops out" or just a general sentiment "against the occupation". But is apparent that there is more to the disagreement than superficial differences in wording. The real divide is between those who believe that US 'globocop' actions are progressive but that socialists shouldn't "give them any credit in advance", and those who think that this misses the point of how to build an independent "third camp" of working-class forces which can stand on its own two feet.

My own differences with Martin Thomas's conference document for the majority are only partly about analysis of what is going on in Iraq. While I have stressed the idea that the Mahdi Army - backed by the Iranian regime - and sectarian militias are increasingly integrated into the occupation government already, and deny that the imperialist troops protect Iraqi workers (the Iraqi government's Decree 8750 renders unions semi-illegal and gives it the right to confiscate all of their funds; the US Army have attacked trade union offices; while all of the British troops are safely ensconced near Basra airport, since Brown is too embarrassed to remove them even though Moqtada al-Sadr already controls the streets), Martin focuses on what would happen if the troops left. I do not deny his assertion that if all the troops magically "disappeared" and the Iraqi government collapsed, the consequence would just be the victory of the best-armed militias. I do not say “troops out now” because I want that to happen. But nor can I accept Martin's terms of argument.

In his only reference to the idea that we should call for "troops out now" he writes,

"...if "troops out now" were somehow to happen, the result would almost certainly be full-scale war between different sectarian clerical fascist militias and then the destruction of the labour movement; the chopping-up of the country; the probable liquidation of any chances of Iraqi (or Arab-Iraqi) national self determination; and the destruction of any elements of democracy (free press, etc.)
"Solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement against both the US/UK occupation and the sectarian militias remains the indicated policy for socialists internationally. We reject negative slogans like "troops out now" which the actual balance of forces would fill with a reactionary political content".

This kind of schematic logic is no good. Marxists understand that social forces and classes do not exist in the abstract, isolated from one another, but instead that they are in struggle, and the subjective factor of political struggle can change the "balance of forces", which is neither fixed nor controlled by some ethereal hand of history. Martin's reference to "if "troops out now" were somehow to happen" makes no sense - in reality slogans do not mysteriously "happen" out of the blue, but are demands raised and fought for by real people. What interests us here is the slogans of the international workers' movement, the forces to which we are aligned and hope to influence.

Our politics, our programme and the slogans which crystallise them are agitational, designed to organise the working-class as well as forces such as women's, LGBT and student movements for struggle. If the workers' movement raised the demand "troops out now", it would not be some magic wand to make the troops "disappear", but a basis for the working class to organise in sharp hostility to US-UK imperialism as well as confronting Islamists and Iranian regional imperialism intervening in Iraq. As Sean Matgamna has written,

"One makes all kinds of educational agitation and propaganda demands, despite knowing that they will not be implemented immediately or precisely. Agitation, the spotlight of the steady beam of propaganda, is seen as preparing the way. The implementation of the demand presupposes a whole series of changes, which the raising of the demand will help to bring about. As strength is built up it becomes possible to act, to plan.”

“Troops out now" is not merely a radical posture. Clearly, we do not raise the slogan because we are comfortable in the belief that we are so weak that the demand will never be realised and so it doesn't matter what we say. Yet we also know that if we ever did organise enough workers around our demands to force the troops out, then the balance of forces would have changed and so the consequences of withdrawal would be different to the troops just "disappearing" tomorrow.

The problem with "troops out", i.e. missing out the word "now", is that in the context of the world we live in it would be seen to deliberately avoid saying "now" and give free rein for the troops to stay indefinitely. This looks like a variant of the majority view that we should accept the presence of troops until the trade unions do not need their protection. But the whole point is that the workers' movement will never grow to be in that position if it takes sides with the occupiers. While we may approve of some democratic side effects of the occupation, "refusing to grant it political support" at the same time as you go round telling people that you also "refuse to demand that the troops leave" is tonally and operationally nothing other than fostering illusions in the democratic credentials of the occupiers.

In the case of the majority, this is worsened by clumsy formulations which, for all of the qualifications and equivocation which surround them, imply taking sides with US imperialism. Martin, whose conference motion presented to National Committee on 1 March avoided any reference to sanctions and the threat of "surgical" air strikes in Iran, had written in October that although plans for war against Iran were "crazy", it was possible to imagine that "if it were possible to imagine some "surgical" operation that would stop Iran's hideous regime acquiring nuclear weapons, and take out the foul Ahmedinejad, it would be good", which is precisely the wrong argument to be making at a time when US threats strengthen the hand of the Iranian regime against our comrades, since it is able to appeal to nationalism and portray itself as "anti-imperialist".

The same goes for the argument that we should not call ourselves "anti-imperialist" since clerical reactionaries have adopted the label too. Firstly, if everyone followed the AWL's majority line, the result would be to buttress sectarian Islamist militias by allowing them to present themselves as the consistent opponents of the US Army, and by saying nothing about the need for Iraqi-Arab self determination we would concede an enormous amount of political territory to Islamists who claim that self determination should mean a patchwork of statelets run by clerical fascist mafias. And secondly, just because the words have been dragged through the mud is not a reason to abandon our politics - why should we not also dispense with the word "socialism", which for most people means something between Harold Wilson and Joseph Stalin?

The question of working-class agency is of vital importance for the minority. Articles by comrades such as Daniel Randall and myself have stressed the need for a working-class anti-war movement demonstrating that only the workers' movement - and not Iranian regional imperialism and Moqtada al-Sadr - can fight for both democratic rights (including national self-determination) and social liberation. Rather than imagining that occupying troops will protect the working-class, we should be calling for the arming of the workers and supporting efforts at community self-defense.

Also important here is working-class action at home - while actions such as those of the Motherwell train crew and the Italian dockers who refused to transport weapons for use in Iraq are occasional and receive little coverage in the Guardian, we must vocally propagandise about them as a means to undermine the war effort, and argue that they are necessarily the same struggle as oil workers in Iraq who strike against the looting of the country's oil by Halliburton. While in the lead-up to conference the majority have co-opted some of that point into their position, it does not sit well - if you think the occupiers' democratic war effort is the only hope for the Iraqi trade unions, how can you also be in favour of attempts to sabotage the troops carrying out that mission?

To refuse to call for the withdrawal of troops is to refuse to pose yourself sharply against the occupation, and so weakens efforts to organise anti-war workers' action. The majority's position reflects an unwillingness to take on this important question and acquiesces to US imperialism as a guarantor of democracy for a supposedly eternally weak working class. In contrast, the minority argue that we must struggle for a strong and independent third camp, with the international left and workers' movement organising around the slogans "Solidarity with Iraqi workers against the occupation and Islamism. Troops out now".

World Against War rally

2008-03-03T23:30:00.000-08:00

Hezbollah were among the organisations represented at the 'World Against War' rally in Friends' Meeting House, London on 25 February, with the Stop the War Coalition seeing fit to give a platform to the clerical fascist Lebanese militia. Reflecting the StWC's eclecticism, this utter reactionary was speaking alongside Tony Benn, who gave his usual upper-class liberal speech about why the United Nations should be stronger and why we should learn from the Bible's lessons of contrition.

Introduced by Communist Party of Britain commissar Andrew Murray to rapturous applause from the 250-strong audience, the Hezbollah speaker Ibrahim Mousawi shied away from the Shia-supremacist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-semitic and anti-trade union rhetoric which his organisation peddles in the shanty towns of Beirut. Instead, he told us that Hezbollah are oh-so reasonable - "why do the Americans ignore the real terrorists at the expense of us, the bridge-builders?". Hezbollah are not led by a bunch of gangsters, but "engineers, lecturers and people from all walks of life".

Indeed, Hezbollah are fully willing to arrange a lash-up with the rest of the Lebanese ruling class, for example the pro-Western parties behind Prime Minister Siniora, to resolve the political crisis which has seen the country without a president for three months. Mousawi said that all Hezbollah want is to be able to veto anything the government tries to do - isn't that reasonable? Along with this, Hezbollah are strong proponents of Lebanon's sectarian political order, whereby seats in parliament are distributed according to religious group and politics is staged at the level of horse-trading between the leaders of competing faith and ethnic communities.

Crashing full frontal into Bond villain-esque self-parody with his long leather coat and black shirt, Mousawi - editor of a Hezbollah newspaper and former manager of a TV station which put out soap operas about the Jewish World Conspiracy - claimed that the problem in his country was the lack of a strong government, and argued that since the Lebanese government cannot be relied on to keep order and stand up to the Israelis, Hezbollah have every right to arm themselves and patrol the streets. At pains to deny that he hated the Jews (the western Trots don't really like that kind of thing, but it's fine for Lebanese TV), he appealed to "a man's right to protect his family" from Zionism.

The other speeches were rather less spicy. Lindsey German, the Socialist Workers' Party candidate for the London mayoral election, gave a dull talk about the hypocrisy of the British establishment and echoed much of Benn's liberal sentiment. For example, she talked at length about the "dodgy dossier" used by Tony Blair to make the case for war, and why he should be "taken to a war crimes trial in the Hague". But who does she think polices "international law"? Last time I checked, the United Nations was a cartel run by the imperialist powers victorious in World War II. Making no reference to socialism or workers in the Middle East, she did however attempt a 'radical' pitch - "Those who support the right of Hezbollah and Hamas to fight back are characterised as extremists. If opposing the government is extremist, then we're all extremists".

The only person on the platform whose views were worthy of respect was Hassan Jumaa, leader of the militant Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions which has waged several strikes against privatisation and looting of Iraq's major resource, demonstrating the potential of the working-class movement despite nightmarish circumstances. Although the union is non-sectarian and organises all oil workers, Juma'a is influenced by the soft-Islamist Shi'ite Fadila group, and so said little about the workers' movement's opposition to clerical reaction in Iraq.

Instead, he focused on the question of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the destruction the US and UK have unleashed. He commented that "the Iraqi workers will win victory for the oppressed Iraqi people" - given that the American mission's success is reliant on stable control of Iraqi resources, strikes represent a significant challenge for the occupiers. Indeed, Jumaa's attitude to the troops was stark, "you should not be taken in by those who say that the withdrawal of troops will bring death and destruction. The longer they, the source of death, stay, the worse it will get", and said that at the last two May Days the union had raised a call for the troops to leave Iraq. Without doubt, this was an optimistic characterisation of events, but Jumaa's understanding of the situation is certainly worthy of our attention.

Unfortunately, the audience was not allowed to ask any questions or make any comments, so we could not find out more about Jumaa's support for political Islam or how workers organise against the home-grown bourgeoisie. After all, in the eyes of the Stop the War Coalition and its SWP and Stalinist leadership, letting activists talk to the leading trade unionist in Iraq is not as exciting as giving a platform for a fascist to rant in defence of Hezbollah. It seems that for these "socialists", the workers' movement is just one part of the cross-class spectrum of "The Movement", and so giving a token ten minutes to someone like Hassan Jumaa is sufficient to cover their left flank.

Capitalism and War

2008-02-29T02:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I attended a Socialist Worker Student Society meeting at King's College London, with Alex Callinicos speaking on 'Capitalism and War'.

Callincos's lead off, arguing that the logic of capitalism inevitably leads to wars, was extremely bland, and furthermore failed to explain why war is inherent to capitalism. Instead, he simply gave various examples of the argument that 'big capitalist powers have a record of launching wars, ergo capitalism means war'.

Unsurprisingly, the result of this argument-by-correlation was that many confused members of the audience asked questions along the lines of "surely it's not just capitalism that causes war, but also religion and national conflicts" while others said that war had always existed. Since Callinicos had neither said that war is the logical product of class societies, nor argued that other oppressive ideas such as nationalism and religious chauvinism are rooted in class exploitation, he was forced to backtrack by these in fact rather facile questions and start again from scratch. Bizarrely, he angrily tore into one student who had said that there had always been conflicts, telling him "you should think twice about coming to a meeting and saying that before you've studied it".

This was pathetic, as was his speech about how for the majority of human history people had lived in egalitarian "primitive communist" societies where there was no war and all lived happily, and then extrapolated from this that "class is in fact a marginal factor in human history". Of course, even though it is true that class societies have existed for only fifteen thousand years or so, the large majority of humans in history have lived in class society, and "primitive communism" is certainly not what we are fighting for. In any case, it was silly of Callinicos to get drawn into such sophistry rather than try and talk about how class impacts other factors as well as class's relationship with imperialism.

Indeed, I posed the question of how it was possible to fight against imperialism on the level of supporting the ruling class of Iran against the United States (and its own working class), given that it is far from anti-capitalist. Its relationship with imperialism is contradictory - much as Iran faces sanctions and threats, its regime is willing to implement IMF reforms and support the occupation of Iraq in the hope of grabbing its slice of the pie. Disingenuously I also asked if he could 'expand' on the issue workers', women's and student's struggles in Iran, which he had neglected to mention.

Callinicos in fact has no perspective whatsoever for working-class opposition to imperialism, as he demonstrated when he responded (at the second time of asking), telling me that while he supports "petitions for democracy" in Iran, the fact that the Iranian government is not consistently anti-imperialist is no reason for the USA to invade it (!) Interrupting, I repeated my question about whether Callinicos supports strikes in Iran and the imprisoned students, but he again ignored the question - clearly, for him "petitions for democracy" and supporting "reformists" within the elite is sufficient.

Therefore, we had a meeting on 'Capitalism and War' where the SWP speaker said that war was the result of capitalism - yet then told his audience that rather than opposing capitalism or supporting working class struggle, we should simply devote our efforts into Grand Old Duke of York demo-building in "solidarity" with the rulers of Iran.

Ubu Imperator - Max Ernst

2008-02-28T07:31:00.001-08:00

International day of action for trade unionists in Iran

2008-02-27T08:21:00.001-08:00

Demonstrate for Mansour Osanloo, Mahmoud Salehi and union rights in Iran

On Thursday 6 March there will be a trade union demonstration outside the Iranian Embassy in London as part of a worldwide day of action against the repression and harassment of trade unionists in Iran.

The demonstration will be held from 12:30 to 1:30pm outside the Iranian Embassy at 16 Prince's Gate, London SW7 1PT.

The international day of action has been called by the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF). Here is a location map for the event.

Fidel Castro on Czechoslovakia in 1968

2008-02-24T01:13:00.000-08:00

Two speeches by Fidel Castro on August 23rd and 24th 1968, attacking the "counter-revolutionary" anti-Stalinist movement in Czechoslovakia and supporting the USSR's invasion. To the dismay of the "Mandelite" Fourth International, which to this day venerates Che Guevara (who died in 1967), the Cuban regime put itself firmly in the camp of Russian imperialism fighting to crush the organs of democratic working-class power that had emerged in Czechoslovakia.

August 23, 1968 - Excerpts from Cuban Premier Castro's speech in defense of Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia are given below. In his speech, Premier Castro criticized the Soviet leadership for not giving more aid to defeat the counter-revolution - in other countries as well as Czechoslovakia. But he did not, as some social democrats contend, give merely "critical support" to the action of the Red Armies.

Right here, I wish to make the first important affirmation: we considered that Czechoslovakia was moving toward a counter-revolutionary situation. Toward capitalism and into the arms of imperialism.

So this defines our first position in relation to the specific fact of the action taken by a group of socialist countries. That is, we consider that it was absolutely necessary, at all cost, in one way or another, to prevent this eventuality from taking place. ...

Discussion of the form is not, in the final analysis, the most fundamental factor. The essential point to be accepted, or not accepted, is whether or not the socialist camp could allow a political situation to develop which would lead to the breaking away of a socialist country, to its falling into the arms of imperialism. And our point of view is that it is not permissible and that the socialist camp has a right to prevent this in one way or another. I would like to begin by making it clear that we look upon this fact as an essential one. ...

A real liberal fury was unleashed; a whole series of political slogans in favor of the formation of opposition parties began to develop, in favor of open anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist theses, such as the thesis that the Party should cease to play the role which the Party plays within socialist society and begin to play the role there of a guide, supervising some things but, above all, exerting a sort of spiritual leadership. In short, that the reins of power should cease to be in the hands of the Communist Party.

The revision of certain fundamental postulates to the effect that a socialist regime is a transition regime from socialism to communism, a governmental form known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. This means a government where power is wielded in behalf of one class and against the former exploiting classes by virtue of which in a revolutionary process political rights, the right to carry on political activities -- whose objective is precisely to struggle against the essence and the raison d'etre of socialism - cannot be granted to the former exploiters.

A series of slogans began to be put forward and in fact certain measures were taken such as the establishment of the bourgeois "freedom" of the press. This means that the counter-revolution and the exploiters, the very enemies of socialism, were granted the right to speak and write freely against socialism.

As a matter of fact, a process of seizure of the principal information media by the reactionary elements began to develop. As regards foreign policy, a whole series of slogans of open rapprochement toward capitalist concepts and theses and of rapprochement towards the West appeared...

On many occasions the imperialists have publicly stated what their policy is in relation to the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. And in Congress, in the press, they always talk about encouraging the liberal tendencies and even about promoting, of making available, some selective economic aid and of using every means of contributing to creating an opposition to socialism there. The imperialists are carrying out a campaign, not only in Czechoslovakia, but in all the countries of Eastern Europe, even in the Soviet Union.

Opinion on Intervention
August 24, 1968

I wish to quickly make the first important statement that we considered
Czechoslovakia to be heading toward a counterrevolutionary situation,
toward capitalism and into the arms of imperialism. This is the operative
concept in our first position toward the specific fact of the action taken
by a group of socialist countries. That is, we consider that it was
unavoidable to prevent this from happening - at any cost, in one way or
another.

Of course, let us not become impatient, because we propose to analyze this
in line with our ideas. Discussing the form is not really the most
fundamental thing. The essential thing, whether we accept it or not, is
whether the socialist bloc could permit the development of a political
situation which lead to the breakdown of a socialist country and its fall
into the arms of imperialism. From our viewpoint, it is not permissible and
the socialist bloc has the right to prevent it in one way or another.

We first wish to begin by establishing what our opinion is about this
essential matter. Now, it is not enough to explain simply that
Czechoslovakia was heading toward a counterevolutionary situation and that
it had to be stopped. It is not enough to conclude simply that the only
alternative was to prevent it and nothing more. We must analyze the causes
and determine the factors which made possible and necessary such a
dramatic, drastic, and painful remedy. What are the factors which required
a step unquestionably involving a violation of legal principles and of
international standards, which have often served as shields for peoples
against injustices and are so highly regarded in the world?

What is not appropriate here is to say that the sovereignty of the
Czechoslovak state was not violated. That would be fiction and a lie. The
violation was flagrant, and on this we are going to talk about the effect
on sovereignty, and on legal and political principles. From the legal
viewpoint, it cannot be justified. This is quite clear. In our judgment,
the decision on Czechoslovakia can be explained only from the political
viewpoint and not from a legal viewpoint. Frankly, it has absolutely no
legality.

What are the circumstances that have permitted a remedy of this nature, a
remedy which places in a difficult situation the entire world revolutionary
movement, a remedy which constitutes a really traumatic situation for an
entire people - as is the present case in Czechoslovakia - a remedy which
implies that an entire nation has to pass through the most unpleasant
circumstances of seeing the country occupied by armies of other countries,
although they are armies of the socialist countries. A situation in which
millions of beings of a country have to see themselves today in the tragic
circumstance of electing and choosing either to be passive toward these
circumstances and this event--which so much brings to mind previous
episodes - or to struggle in comradeship with pro-Yankee agents and spies,
the enemies of socialism, the agents of West Germany, and all that fascist
and reactionary rabble that in the heat of these circumstances will try to
present itself as champions of the sovereignty, patriotism, and freedom of
Czechoslovakia?

Logically, for the Czechoslovak people this experience and this fact
constitute a better and tragic situation. Therefore, it is not enough
simply to conclude that it has arisen as an inexorable necessity and even,
if you wish, as an unquestionable obligation of the socialist countries to
prevent such events from happening. [One must inquire] what are the cases,
the factors, and the circumstances that brought forth - after 20 years of
communism in Czechoslovakia - a group of persons whose names do not even
appear anywhere, and this petition directed to other countries of the
socialist camp, asking them to send their armies to prevent the triumph of
the counterrevolution in Czechoslovakia and the triumph of the intrigues
and conspiracies of the imperialist countries interested in breaking
Czechoslovakia from the community of socialist countries?

Could it be imagined, gentlemen, that at the end of 20 years of communism
in our country - of communist revolution, of socialist revolution--that
under any circumstances it could happen that a group of honest
revolutionaries in this country, terrified at the prospects of an advance
or, better said, of a retrogression toward counterrevolutionary positions
and imperialism, would see the need of asking the aid of friendly armies to
prevent such a situation from occurring?

What would have remained of the communist consciousness of this people?
What would have remained of the revolutionary consciousness of this people,
of the dignity of this people, of the revolutionary morale of this people?
What would have remained of all those things that mean for us essentially
the revolution if such circumstances should one day arise?

But no circumstances of that kind will ever occur in our country. First,
because we believe that it is a duty and fundamental responsibility of
those who direct a revolution to prevent deformations of such a nature that
might make possible such circumstances. Secondly, gentlemen, for an
unquestionably practical reason and not only a moral elemental reason,
because we could ask if it would be worth the trouble if, after 20 years,
to survive a revolution one had to resort to such procedures. And also, for
a very simple practical reason: who would false personalities of this
country ask to send armies? The only armies that we have in our vicinity
are the Yankee army and the armies of the puppets allied with the Yankee
imperialists, the because we are too alone in this part of the world for
there ever to exist the most remote possibility of saving this revolution
by asking aid of allied armies.

And it must be said that I do not know anyone capable of having enough
shame to do such a thing if they had the need and opportunity to do it,
because what kind of communists would we be and what kind of communist
revolution would this be if at the end of 20 years we found ourselves
having to do such a thing to save it?

Always, when we have thought about foreign aid, we have never had the idea
of foreign aid to fight against the imperialist soldiers and against the
imperialist armies. I simply analyze these facts because I know that,
legally, our people are concerned with an explanation of these concepts.
Such things are not in our idea of the revolution.

I do not think that a person can justify the appeal of high-ranking
persons, because the justification can only be the political fact in
itself - that Czechoslovakia was marching toward a counterrevolutionary
situation and this was seriously affecting the entire socialist community.
And besides, there is no lack of figleaves of any kind. It is the political
fact in itself, with all its consequences and all its importance. As we
were saying, recognizing that and nothing else is simply enough.

Or if it is obligatory, it is elementary to draw from this most bitter
experience all the political conclusions. And as it is possible, we repeat:
In these circumstances, an analysis must be made of all the factors. For
the communist movement, there is the unavoidable duty of investigating
deeply the causes leading to such a situation, a situation inconceivable
for us, the Cuban revolutionaries. If such action is impossible for us
Cuban revolutionaries - we who saw the necessity for carrying out this
revolution 90 miles from imperialism - we also know that we cannot fall into
these circumstances because it would mean the very end of the revolution
and falling into the worst situation, provoked by our enemies,
full of hatred. But this is not the reason for making or trying to make
this profound analysis.

Leon Trotsky's ideas today

2008-02-23T03:15:00.000-08:00

A series of discussions from the North London branch of Workers’ Liberty, open to all.
All meetings held on Tuesdays from 7:30pm at the Red Rose Club, 129 Seven Sisters Road, N7. Nearest tube is Finsbury Park.

Week 3 (26th February): The Soviet Union after the Revolution: The New Course.

“The struggle against the bureaucratism of the state apparatus is an exceptionally important but prolonged task, one that runs more or less parallel to our other fundamental tasks: economic reconstruction and the elevation of the cultural level of the masses. The most important historical instrument for the accomplishment of all these tasks is the party. Naturally, not even the party can tear itself away from the social and cultural conditions of the country. But as the voluntary organization of the vanguard, of the best, the most active and the most conscious elements of the working class, it is able to preserve itself much better than can the state apparatus from the tendencies of bureaucratism. For that, it must see the danger clearly and combat it without let up.”
Reading: The New Course (1923) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/newcourse/index.htm. Short Reading: Chapter 1: the question of party generations.

Week 4 (4th March): Trotsky on Art and Literature.

“Before the proletariat will have passed out of the stage of cultural apprenticeship, it will have ceased to be a proletariat. Let us also not forget that the upper layer of the bourgeoisie passed its cultural apprenticeship under the roof of feudal society; that while still within the womb of feudal society it surpassed the old ruling estates culturally and became the instigator of culture before it came into power. It is different with the proletariat in general and with the Russian proletariat in particular. The proletariat is forced to take power before it has appropriated the fundamental elements of bourgeois culture; it is forced to overthrow bourgeois society by revolutionary violence for the very reason that society does not allow it access to culture. The working-class strives to transform the state apparatus into a powerful pump for quenching the cultural thirst of the masses. This is a task of immeasurable historic importance. But, if one is not to use words lightly, it is not as yet a creation of a special proletarian culture.”
Reading: Literature and Revolution (1924) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/index.htm. Short reading: Chapter 6: Proletarian culture and proletarian art.

Week 5 (11th March): Stalinism and the defeat of the workers.

Trotsky argues that Stalinism was not the logical product of Bolshevism, but represented a bureaucratic counter-revolution against the Russian working class - separated from Bolshevism by "a river of blood"
Reading: The Revolution Betrayed (1936) - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm. Short reading: chapter 11: Whither the Soviet Union?

Week 6 (18th March): The Struggle against Fascism

In the 1930s, as the Kremlin-backed German Communist Party ignored the Nazi threat, claiming that fascists were no worse than Social Democrats, Trotsky highlighted the danger fascism posed to all democratic and workers’ organisations and made the case for working-class forces to form a united front against the Nazis.
Reading: The Struggle against Fascism in Germany (or the Bookmarks collection: Racism, Stalinism and the United Front) (1930-1934). Alternatively all of Trotsky’s writings on Germany of this period are collected at http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/index.htm
Short Reading: The United Front for Defense: A Letter to a Social Democratic Worker (1933)

Week 7 (25th March): The Fourth International and the Transitional Programme.

Leon Trotsky’s “transitional programme” was a method by which to relate immediate struggles in the here and now to the ultimate goal of revolution, by posing demands which implicitly raised questions about power in society and the rule of capitalism.
Reading: The Transitional Programme (the Pathfinder edition with associated articles and transcripts of discussions is particularly useful). http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm. Short reading: the programme itself, the first seven sections up to and including “‘Business secrets’ and workers’ control of industry”

All meetings will also include a section on organisation + political work. Ring David on 07828 844695 for further details or email davidthetrot@googlemail.com.

Working class internationalism and the Middle East

2008-02-21T02:53:00.000-08:00

The left devotes much of its efforts to campaigning against imperialism, which is no surprise given the present foreign policy of the American and British governments. However, in order to effectively combat imperialism and war, it is necessary that we understand what ‘anti-imperialism’ means, who is anti-imperialist, and what relationship that has with working-class politics.

Unfortunately, the dominant conception of ‘anti-imperialism’ on the British left today, as schooled to thousands of young new activists by organisations such as the Socialist Workers’ Party, is wholly inadequate. As I shall explain, rather than taking imperialism on at a structural level, i.e. by understanding it as the logic of modern capitalism, the SWP along with orthodox Trotskyist and Stalinist groups take an anti-war stance entirely abstract from any analysis of class relations or democratic rights such as self determination. For this reason, they take the position that any opponent or competitor of the largest imperialist power – the United States – is therefore ‘anti-imperialist’ and therefore worthy of support.

In order to sustain this illusion, they exaggerate or falsify the progressive characteristics of the forces they support. For example, they claim that that Iran is the most democratic country in the Middle East, and wax lyrical about the welfare programmes and "women's participation" in Hamas. At Stop the War conference these ‘anti-imperialists’ entertained Somaye Zadeh, who lied outrageously to play down the human rights abuses of the Tehran regime. In the NUS left unity discussions the SWP were unwilling to raise slogans to support workers in Iran but happy to make vague gestures of support for "democratic forces". Claiming that the existence of pro-reform elements within the elite is itself evidence that Iran is democratic, they look to sections of the Iranian bourgeoisie to effect change rather than encouraging the working class to overthrow it.

They seem to want to see this decade as the 1960s in slow motion, with Hamas substituting for the Vietcong and the Iranian government for Cuba. Indeed, so progressive do they deem these ‘anti-imperialist’ friends in the Middle East that they see fit to deny the existence of a working-class movement opposed to both imperialism and political Islam. But this attitude is not just a betrayal of our comrades in the Middle East, who so badly need solidarity from the international labour movement – it is also a completely wrong-headed understanding of what forces are able to challenge imperialism.

Of course, helped by the sabre-rattling of George Bush and Western sanctions, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is plenty able to speechify with anti-imperialist rhetoric - and yet not only did the Iranian regime ban demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, but it supported the invasion, and furthermore supports the occupation of Afghanistan. Ahmedinejad has willingly introduced all sorts of IMF plans to liberalise the Iranian economy and at the same time has clamped down on trade unions, with long periods in jail for activists in the militant bus workers’ union. Similarly, parties in Iraq like Dawa, SCIRI and even the forces led by Moqtada al-Sadr, which all call for the immediate withdrawal of troops, are not even sufficiently ‘anti-imperialist’ as to refuse to participate in the occupation government. Hezbollah are Shia sectarians and radical Islamists, but their row with Prime Minister Siniora in fact has the aim of grabbing a few posts in a coalition government. On the other side of the conflict, the Americans have their own Islamist allies and militias in Iraq, and, indeed, as in the past with Saddam Hussein, are perfectly willing to deal with any local despot.

While all the organisations I have mentioned have at times been in direct conflict with US imperialism, and their relations with the US bourgeoisie are complex, they are far from consistently anti-imperialist. They are little but sections of the ruling class looking to grab a slice of the action, yet the Socialist Workers’ Party characterises them as relatively progressive since they are not the ‘main’ enemy. A logical extension of the same idea, as employed by Socialist Action and the CPGB (Marxist-Leninist), is that the Chinese government is (or “remains”) ‘anti-imperialist’ since it is in competition with the USA, or liberal support for the European Union as some sort of counterweight to George Bush.

What is missing from all of these ideas is any notion of class, with barely even the suggestion that imperialism is premised on a set of class relations. The Middle Eastern labour movement, which is mostly relatively weak, obviously disappoints these people. We can see the same mistake being made by such people as Nick Cohen, the Euston Manifesto group and ex-Marxists like Norman Geras who, thinking that the working-class is dead after the fall of the Soviet bureaucracy, support “humanitarian” interventions or imperialist missions to spread democracy, with the US Army staging a Bonaparte-like fight to spread the French Revolution by the sword. They deprive words like ‘democracy’ (and they even speak of ‘workers’ rights’) of any meaningful content, substituting liberation-from-above by imperialist powers for the idea that people should take control over their own lives. Operationally, these people are not left-wing in any real sense, since they have no understanding of agency other than that US troops can be an effective force for ‘change’.

For those who have stuck by Marxism, the recent conflicts in the Middle East have just offered further bloody proof of the absolute impossibility of imperialism serving the cause of democracy. We stick unfailingly by the idea that it is the working class which fights for social liberation, and even if it is weak in the here and now we must seek to build its organisations, not rely on some two-bit democrat in a smart suit or a general’s epaulettes.

The stance of the majority group in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, whose ideas are explicitly based on the “third camp” of the working class, is not the same as Cohen and his ilk. Engaging in real solidarity work with comrades in the Middle East, the AWL’s refusal to call for the occupying troops to leave Iraq is predicated on the understanding that their withdrawal would destroy the Iraqi labour movement, since if Islamists came to power they would not tolerate trade unions, or indeed women’s or LGBT organisations. If you believe the AWL majority, the call for “troops out now” is counterposed to defence of the Iraqi workers’ movement.

However, this understanding of events, along with the AWL’s positions on Iran and Palestine, belies some of the same problems as both the SWP and their allies and the Eustonites. The question of class independence is not always in the forefront of their minds. In practice, pessimistic about the prospects for the working class to stand up for itself, the AWL acquiesces to imperialist involvement in the region in the here and now the belief that it will be able to hold Islamism at bay and so create breathing space for the workers’ movement to grow. Of course, we are always living in the “here and now”, while the question of how and why the Iraqi left and trade unions are meant to grow in the “meantime” before the troops leave is barely considered.

Yet it is apparent that the occupation is not a bulwark against Islamism – as I have said, there are numerous Islamist parties and associated militias in the seat of power under the occupation, while most trade union activity is illegal. The imperialist occupiers would far rather make backroom deals to put the Islamists in charge than devote their time to defending workers’ organisations from the likes of Moqtada al-Sadr and his forces.

Furthermore, it is quite clear that if the workers’ movement fails to call for the immediate withdrawal of troops, it will help Islamist groups foster illusions in their own ‘anti-imperialist’ character and abstain from having anything to say about the question of Iraqi self-determination, which should hardly be left for Shia or Sunni supremacists to carve up. If the labour movement did reach the position where it could force the realisation of the slogan “troops out now”, then clearly the balance of forces would shift in favour of working-class internationalism and against clerical fascist reaction.

But not only does the AWL refuse to call for “troops out of Iraq now” in the understanding that the workers’ movement will be crushed if they are withdrawn, but it supports the US-EU-backed Fatah to stave off Hamas and has even taken a soft stance on US aggression against Iran. In Solidarity Mark Osborn has played down the idea that Palestinian workers could act independently of Fatah, “under Fatah there is some freedom for a third camp to develop; under Hamas there is none. David doesn’t like the choice, Fatah or Hamas. I don’t like it much myself. But during the fighting in Gaza that’s what it came down to”, while Martin Thomas made the hypothesis “if it were possible to imagine some ‘surgical’ operation that would stop Iran’s hideous regime acquiring nuclear weapons, and take out the foul Ahmadinejad, it would be good”, as if it were even vaguely plausible that such an eventuality could a) not kill thousands of people b) not strengthen the hand of the regime to crush internal dissent and c) replace the Ahmedinejad government with anything better. This is not a consistent third camp position, but one which veers towards support for non-working class forces who happen to use the right catchphrases about “democracy”, “two states” and so on.

I refute the suggestion that we must prioritise opposing the occupation of Iraq or war and sanctions against Iran over direct solidarity with workers, women and students in those countries, or indeed vice-versa. This idea concedes an awful lot of ground to the Stalinist worldview which sees all Middle Eastern workers with democratic or secular goals as ‘objective’ allies of imperialism, and claiming that any talk of democracy is siding with George Bush, seeks to set a dividing line between anti-war and workers’ solidarity efforts. Equally, I do not accept that we should "prioritise" either opposition to imperialism or opposition to Islamists over the other - we shouldn't be allying with either.

Far from being counterposed, these two fronts of struggle are inextricably linked. Workers' action to undermine our armed forces and strikes against the war are vital in showing the power of the working class to stand on its own two feet as a force which can intervene in the "war on terror" conflict. "Troops out now" is not a magic wand to make the troops disappear, but a slogan for the working class to organise around, to try and force the realisation of that demand itself. I support the slogan not because it is unrealisable, so it doesn't matter what the consequences would be if it played out, but precisely because if it is workers in the US and UK or workers in Iraq whose efforts force the troops out, then the balance of forces will turn in favour of the workers' movement.

Even if they do not receive prominent coverage in the international pages of the bourgeois media, actions like those of the train crew in Scotland or dockers in the United States who refused to move weapons are inextricably linked to the strikes of oil workers in Basra, and must be both encouraged and advertised. Rather than writing articles about geopolitical developments which we cannot influence with analyses cropped from the comment pages of the Guardian, our primary task is to talk about what the workers' movement can achieve through its own struggles

This idea of working-class internationalism does not just mean trade union conferences passing resolutions about the war, or bureaucrats in suits speechifying about the need to give a bit of money to the Stop the War Coalition, but practical solidarity action with our comrades abroad, critical engagement with the ideas of the Middle Eastern left (including encouraging exile communities to assimilate into the local left) and propaganda which sharply poses the question of how workers in countries like Britain can fight in common with their counterparts abroad.

The defining characteristic of most of the far left’s stance on imperialism is a profound retreat from class, looking to any number of reactionaries and local bourgeoisies to resist the influence of the US hyperpower. Of course, it is true that despite large strikes in the Iraqi oil fields and Egyptian textile factories, the Middle Eastern working class is far from being in a position to defeat imperialism and Islamism. But that does not mean that we can loosen our grip on the Marxist understanding of class independence – the growth of our forces, which currently appear weak, is the only hope we have for democracy and peace in the Middle East, and – worldwide - we must strive unerringly to develop workers’ understanding of their independent agency. The AWL does have a much stronger class focus than other left groups, yet has still failed to develop a real understanding of working-class internationalism and what exactly constitutes an anti-imperialist workers’ movement.

Solidarity with Iraqi workers!
Troops out now!

The "General Strike" in Lebanon

2008-02-20T05:44:00.000-08:00

An article for Solidarity

Seven people were killed last month as the Lebanese army clashed with rioters in southern Beirut in the wake of a Shia demonstration. The incident has drawn the army into Lebanon's political crisis, which has seen three months of impasse as parties close to PM Fouad Siniora squabble with Syrian-backed parties such as Amal and Hezbollah over the election of a new president.

The 27 January demonstration in Mar Makhaeil was called to protest about the chronic power cuts which take place in predominantly Shia districts of the Lebanese capital. The army attempted to break up the demonstration, shooting dead an Amal activist and provoking a riot which continued late into the night. As news of the shooting spread, more and more people joined in the protest, with some rioters torching cars and firing back at the troops. In nearby Ain Roummaneh, where civil war broke out in 1975, a hand grenade wounded seven people.

Troops had already taken to the streets that week in response to a general strike called by transport and agricultural unions, called in response to the rising cost of living and high fuel prices. Although the union leaderships claimed that the strike had little to do with the Amal-Hezbollah political opposition, it was clear that the pro-Western versus pro-Syrian divide had everything to do with the observance of the strike. Roads were closed and stacks of tyres were set ablaze in Shia areas where support for Hezbollah is strong, such as south Beirut, southern Lebanon and the northeastern parts of the Bekaa Valley, while there was little sign of the strike in cities such as Sidon and Tripoli where the government has stronger backing.

Communalist pro-Syrian parties such as the Islamist Hezbollah and Amal have nothing to do with a workers’ movement which organises the working class as a class to fight for democracy and liberation. Recognising the power of strike action to undermine the government, these parties seek to mislead workers, using them as a battering ram to achieve their own sectarian goals and give weight to their drive to take up posts in the government. Yet in the wake of the general strike Socialist Worker meaninglessly claimed that “among supporters of the opposition there is a frustration that the mass demonstrations that brought two million on to the streets before Christmas were not enough to topple the government, and that more radical action is necessary”, failing to pose the questions of precisely who the opposition is and what radical action might constitute.

However, it is clear that Hezbollah’s ability to mobilise workers behind their cause is related to the genuine economic and political grievances which much of the population experience, and even beside plainly bourgeois non-sectarian allies (such as the Free Patriotic Movement), we can see the Lebanese Communist Party lining up with Hezbollah. The Lebanese CP’s website (www.lcparty.org, in French) points out that the price index has risen by 37.4% in the eighteen months since the war with Israel, while one third of Lebanese families live on the minimum wage (frozen for the last ten years) of £100 a month. Many working class areas, in particular Shia districts, lie in darkness due to the constant power cuts.

The Lebanese Communist Party’s programme, however, is uncritical support for Hezbollah and participation in the opposition, despite the fact that this is almost entirely composed of plainly bourgeois parties, many of them Shia sectarians who opposed the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country. It has absolutely no independent working-class perspectives, and thus facilitates Hezbollah’s moves to mislead the unions and workers.

It is precisely this failure – the lack of a secular left which unites workers across sectarian divides – which has led to a political situation where US allies battle with Islamists to dominate Lebanon. Strike action, although at this point badly misled and harnessed for the aims of the far-right Hezbollah movement, has however given a glimpse of what kind of power a workers’ movement could have in Lebanese society. In order to build such a force, the central challenge is the fight for a democratic and secular labour movement and independent political organisation for the working class.

Communist Students conference

2008-02-18T03:21:00.000-08:00

On Saturday 16th I attended the conference of Communist Students, the autonomous student organisation connected to the CPGB/Weekly Worker group. Around 25 people attended, of whom only around a quarter were actual CPGB members (as far as I could tell). Most of those attending were members of CS, but there were also a few of their contacts who I hadn't met before, as well as Bill Jefferies of Permanent Revolution.

The first significant discussion was on how we should fight against the British National Party, a debate which has recently had significant coverage in the Weekly Worker. While Ben Lewis, who led off the session, believes that we should be flexible in our tactics as regards the BNP, and although not necessarily seeking to organise meetings with the far right we should sometimes be prepared to debate them, others such as the Permanent Revolution group think that any debate legitimises the ideas of 'fascists' (there was a subordinate debate as to whether the BNP are actually fascists).

Ben talked about the way in which the SWP and the Unite Against Fascism campaign subscribe to liberal anti-fascism, seeking to defend 'normal' establishment political discourse against fascists, whose ideas are 'beyond the pale'. While the BNP has filled a political space vacated by Labour - claiming to have all the answers to some very real concerns of (white!) working class voters such as jobs and housing - and indeed won 800,000 votes in the European election, UAF just go round telling people not to 'vote Nazi', reminding them that Nazis are 'really, really bad'. In doing this they ignore the reasons why people vote BNP rather than Labour, Lib Dem or Tory - one SWPer he quoted even referred to BNP voters as 'the scum on the estates'.

Bill Jefferies' response was correct insofar as it stressed the need for working-class and minority community self-defence against fascists, and furthermore said that, unlike the SWP, he would not call on the bourgeois state to ban fascists, since any anti-free speech laws would just as easily be used against the far left. It is important that anti-fascism is a working-class cause, not an exercise in liberal moral condemnation of BNP voters. However, I think his argument that we should always refuse to debate fascists was wrong-headed, based as it was on the idea that since fascists are 'really, really bad', we should not give them legitimacy by sharing a platform with them. A couple of others, including James Turley, added that if you debate fascists and sweep the floor with their absurd ideas, they will still have won even if they pick up a couple of contacts by doing the meeting.

This was disingenous - the debate was not really about "should we write to the BNP and ask if they'd do a joint public meeting", but whether it was appropriate to boycott election hustings etc. in which they would also participate. Bill Jefferies said that a couple of years ago a Workers' Power comrade at a student union hustings debated a BNP candidate, but now he thinks she should just have "mobilised the audience against him". Ben Lewis made the obvious retort that a revolutionary standing in an election should seek to mobilise the audience against all of the other bourgeois candidates.

For my part, I said that if you made a principle out of refusing to share a platform with the BNP, then why not boycott the Tories too? Or the Liberal Democrats? Of course, in reality, tearing someone's ideas to shreds at a hustings is not 'legitimising' their politics. I furthermore pointed out that not only do the UAF refuse to debate the BNP, but they also refuse to engage with any of their ideas at all, telling people "don't vote Nazi, vote for anyone else" rather than saying "yes, housing, jobs and public services really are concerns, but black workers are not the problem". Lining up with the bourgeois parties and telling alienated Labour voters who vote BNP that they are just Nazi morons is no good - we should seek to win over their voters. Many of those who turn to the BNP would not do so if the left and workers' movement had more coherence and could ourselves promote a real alternative.

After a debate over whether CS should support the IWW union and an interesting discussion on student politics, and whether it is possible to build mass student campaigns on issues like fees - or indeed on international politics - the focus of the conference turned to imperialism and the Middle East. This was staged as a debate between the chair of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign, the CPGB's Tina Becker and myself (i.e. an AWL member with a "troops out now" position).

I found the politics of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign somewhat bizarre - while the speaker was strongly opposed to the Iranian regime and its various satellite organisations (he mentioned in particular the homophobia of the Mehdi Army), he did not have any particular focus on the working class as an anti-imperialist force, and lauded the home-grown Iraqi resistance groups. While Islamist forces are undoubtedly even more vicious, I was surprised that to this he counterposed secular Arab nationalism, and indeed the Ba'ath Party, claiming that Saddam Hussein remained the "legitimate" president of Iraq under "international law".

This was an unusual position, invoking laws created by the imperialist powers themselves in order to guarantee self-determination.

Indeed, he appeared to think that whatever happens in Iraq is fine, as long as there's no interference from the USA, UK or Iran. But while I opposed the war which provoked Saddam Hussein's downfall, I cannot stomach the idea that Saddam Hussein is "legitimate" - why has he any more right to rule than the dictator he overthrew, or the guy before him, and so on? Tina Becker took the Iraq Solidarity Campaign speaker to task on all of these points.

In my lead off I stressed the idea that no force in the Middle East other than the working class can introduce democracy, and no force other than the working class is, or even could be, anti-imperialist. Imperialism is the logic of modern capitalism, not something which exists in the abstract, and local bourgeoisies cannot be trusted to oppose it. Look at the Tehran theocracy - it spouts anti-imperialist rhetoric and yet supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, supports the occupation of Afghanistan and has willingly introduced all sorts of IMF plans to liberalise its economy. Similarly, parties in Iraq like Dawa, SCIRI and even the forces led by Moqtada al-Sadr are not even sufficiently anti-imperialist as to refuse to participate in the occupation government.

Yet the SWP instead exaggerate the "progressive" character of the forces which it sees as anti-imperialist - for example, claiming that Iran is the most democratic country in the Middle East, and endorsing the welfare programme and "women's participation" in Hamas. They would rather look to "reform" elements within the Iranian bourgeoisie to effect change than encourage the working class to overthrow it. They seem to want to see this decade as the 1960s in slow motion, with Hamas substituting for the Vietcong and the Iranian government for Cuba.

I did however address the complexities of the kind of solidarity we need with workers in the Middle East. I expressed my disagreement with the majority position of the AWL which, while explicitly focused on the "third camp" of the working class, can collapse into acquiescence to imperialism when the workers appear too weak to act on their own. The AWL's refusal to call for troops out now, and indeed its support for Fatah against Hamas, are both predicated on the idea that the workers will be crushed without their imperialist guardians - yet how is the "third camp" ever to grow as an independent force if in the "here and now" (i.e. all the time) it does not cut itself sharply against both imperialism and Islamist reaction?

Our support for the working class in the Middle East must be linked to our tactics at home. Workers' action to undermine our armed forces and strikes against the war are vital in showing the power of the working class to stand on its own two feet as a force which can intervene in the "war on terror" conflict. "Troops out now" is not a magic wand to make the troops disappear, but a slogan for the working class to organise around, to try and realise that demand itself. I support the slogan not because it is unrealisable so doesn't matter what the consequences would be if it played out, but precisely because if it is workers in the US and UK or workers in Iraq whose efforts force the troops out, then the balance of forces will turn in favour of the workers' movement.

Actions like those of the train crew in Scotland who refused to move weapons are inextricably linked to the strikes of oil workers in Basra, and must be both encouraged and advertised. Rather than writing articles about geopolitical developments which we cannot influence with analyses cropped from the comment pages of the Guardian, our primary task is to talk about what the workers' movement can do itself.

I then briefly turned to the question of engaging with left groups in the Middle East, and said that as well as teaching ourselves about workers', women's, LGBT and student struggles in the region (which the SWP deny the existence of), we should critically engage with the ideas of our comrades there. Giving money to organisations in the Middle Eastern left is useful - particularly given their pressing need for self-defence - but we must also learn from the comrades and argue with their positions.

In the discussion that followed I broadly agreed with much of what was said by CS comrades, although I feel that they are too willing to defend those who raise the slogan "troops out now" from an abstract perspective with no reference to class. My whole point was that we should take a strict class standpoint against imperialism and Islamism, and discussion about which of the two heads of reaction is worse than the other or whether "the main enemy is at home" does not give us much tactical direction.

Equally, I have no doubt that neither the "bring the troops home" line of Barack Obama nor the Stalinist-Islamist use of "troops out now" by Galloway and his ilk is better than the position of Sean Matgamna. Nevertheless, my criticisms here should be qualified by a positive attitude towards Communist Students' and the CPGB's Hands Off the People of Iran campaign, although I do think they should make more of an effort to foster these ideas in the labour movement rather than just in the anti-war and student milieux.

I saw three cities - Kay Sage

2008-02-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

Campaign against Climate Change meeting

2008-02-08T07:15:00.001-08:00

by Sacha Ismail

About 60 people of many different ages, backgrounds and politics attended a Campaign against Climate Change meeting in Bethnal Green in East London on 7 February. Although the main organisers appeared to be members of Respect Renewal (I recognised people including the ISG's Liam McUaid, SWP defector Kevin Ovenden and NUS presidential candidate Ruqayyah Collector), it was a good meeting with some lively and sharp debate.

The event had been called in the run up to the 9 February CCC Trade Union conference; the speakers were CCC organiser Phil Thornhill, CWU executive member Tony Kearns, Green councillor Romayne Phoenix, George Galloway – and AWL member Robin Sivapalan, speaking on behalf of the Climate Camp collective and the new Workers’ Climate Action network.

Robin spoke about the need for climate change activists to look to the labour movement and vice versa – but for environmental issues to be integrated with workers’ concerns on the basis of anti-capitalist class struggle, not tacked on to trade unionism as just one more in a list of worthy causes. He emphasised how, in addition to the obvious middle-class prejudices of some green activists (part of the reason why the Climate Camp has not been quicker in making links with eg workers at Heathrow, though this is now changing), the conservatism of the trade union movement is a vital factor in preventing the development of the kind of movement we need.

This is true not just in terms of unions like Unite supporting airport expansion, more nuclear power stations etc, but also the conservative syndicalism which prevents workers’ struggles attaining the political character necessary to hegemonise broader forces. The refusal of the RMT bureaucracy to allow Metronet workers to continue their recent dispute on the basis of demanding renationalisation – a demand with obvious environmental as well as safety benefits – is a case in point.

He stressed that workers are not a stage army to be wheeled on in support of scientists poised to change the world through their sheer knowledgableness, but self-liberating agents whose power at the heart of production gives them the ability to remake themselves in order to remake society. We are not "armed only with science", but with the power of class action and solidarity.

Such an approach, which is that taken by Workers’ Climate Action, implies ideas which are in essence environmental "transitional demands": things like cutting the working week without loss of pay, free public transport, public ownership of energy, and workers’ plans to reshape industry on a democratic and sustainable basis.

Tony Kearns did a decent turn, stressing the importance of environmental politics for effective trade unionism and indicting capitalism’s drive for profit as the basic cause of climate change, though he didn’t make any real proposals for moving forward. Phil Thornhill’s comments on the science of climate change were very interesting and most of his prescriptions unobjectionable, though the underlying politics were those of liberal lobbying. Romayne Phoenix described herself as a socialist, but some of her politics were far from what the AWL understands by the term: she called for "fair trade, not free trade", urged people to get themselves elected as councillors (a role she seems to see in primarily managerial terms) and put a lot of her emphasis on individual lifestyle changes - which as Tony Kearns pointed out, is exactly where government and big business want it to be.

George Galloway’s speech (which didn't seem to have involved much preparation) combined some cheap anti-capitalist demagogy with all kinds of weird nonsense, including what a wonderful world God has created for us and citing a Muslim magazine about the number of galaxies in the universe. He went on to reference war mobilisation, state planning and “people working together” during World War 2 as the kind of approach necessary to defeat the threat of environmental disaster. This was a theme picked up by many of the older speakers from the floor.

In his closing contribution, Robin took task with some of these ideas. Yes, we need to unite, but the question is what kind of unity, with whom and for what goals? To Galloway’s invocation of the spirit of the blitz, he counterposed workers’ unity in the class struggle, drawing in environmental campaigners, students, women’s rights activists etc, to build an alliance capable of halting climate change by defeating capitalism. He pointed out the divisive nature of religious identity as a political organiser, and added that opposition to school privatisation, which had been discussed during the meeting, had to include opposition to the control of schools by religious organisations. He defended the importance of sharp political debate in developing the ideas necessary to build an effective movement.

This last idea was not shared by everyone; in addition to a smug, smirking dismissal of Robin as a Trotskyist sectarian by Galloway, the general tone was exemplified by Phil Thornhill’s comment that we should worry less about discussing ideas, and get on with doing things. Of course the two are not counterposed; and in fact the most positive thing about this meeting was precisely that it featured such a healthy debate.

There are plans to create a local campaign in Tower Hamlets; hopefully, alongside united campaigning, the debate will continue.

The Lambertists

2008-02-05T05:50:00.000-08:00

Pierre Lambert was in his time one of those “orthodox Trotskyists” who kept a banner of anti-Stalinist revolutionary Marxism flying in the worst years of Cold War and declining class struggle.

They tried — incoherently, but they tried — to resist the move of most “orthodox Trotskyists”, in the early 1950s, to see the Stalinist parties as the “owners” of all short-term revolutionary possibilities; they tried to sustain the idea of building an independent revolutionary working-class party against both capitalism and Stalinism.

Today the “Lambertist” organisation, now known as the Parti des Travailleurs (“Workers’ Party”), is a shadow of its former self. It has lost the thousands-strong activist base which Lambert won in the 1970s; it retains only some cranky ideas and a bureaucratic internal regime to remind Lambert’s disciples of what once was. The death of the sect-leader Lambert is far less sad than the tale of those who followed him, committed revolutionaries who acquiesced to the rule of an petty tyrant and his coterie in the belief that they were contributing to the cause of socialism and the liberation of humanity, and were politically destroyed and demoralised by the experience.

Lambert’s early record was rather better. Having joined the Trotskyist movement in 1939, Lambert was arrested in the early months of the Second World War and sentenced to a year in prison for his “anti-militarist” attitude to the French government. Escaping en route to prison, Lambert joined Henri Molinier’s La Commune group, but was soon expelled due to his hostility to the organisation’s efforts to win supporters from the Nazi-collaborationist Rassemblement National Populaire.

In 1943 Lambert joined the Parti Ouvrier Internationaliste, which the following year merged into the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI), an ancestor not just of the Parti des Travailleurs but also of another current French Trotskyist group, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire.

By the end of the Nazi occupation, there were maybe three hundred Trotskyists in the PCI in France. These activists attempted to organise unrest in industry as well as promote working-class internationalism, using the slogan “behind every Nazi soldier is a German worker!” to combat the French chauvinist ideas of the Kremlin-backed Parti Communiste Français, whose watchword was “everyone kill a German”. Facing tough circumstances, the PCI mounted a heroic effort to propagandise for socialism among the German troops, organising the clandestine production and distribution of a newspaper Arbeiter und Soldat (“Worker and Soldier”). No doubt, the PCI bent the stick too far with its June 1944 claim that the Normandy landings would see no improvement over the rule of the fascist Vichy government. It took a while before they could recognise that bourgeois democracy was in fact being restored in France. Their hopes that the end of the Second World War would end with a revolutionary wave akin to the struggles of 1917-1923 proved to be naive. Nonetheless the group had a firm orientation to working-class political independence.

That was more than could be said for the Parti Communiste Français which allied itself to Charles de Gaulle and served in a cross-class government after the end of the war. Among many Communist Party crimes in this period perhaps the most ignominious was its complicity in the bombing of Sétif in Algeria — overseen by its Minister of Aviation, Tillon — which left 45,000 dead. The Trotskyists supported national liberation movements in France’s colonies — for example organising Marseilles dockers not to load arms into boats headed for Indochina.

But the CP’s patriotic aura from the Resistance, and the great prestige of the Soviet Union, assured it a dominant role in the working-class movement, with over a million members and near-monopoly control of the apparatus of the largest union federation, the Confédération Générale du Travail.

Pierre Lambert became the central trade union organiser for the PCI, which grew to about 1000 members by 1947.

The PCI was divided. Yvan Craipeau, Paul Parisot, Albert Demaziere were influenced by the arguments of the American Trotskyist Felix Morrow, who called for less declamatory revolutionism, more attention to concrete political demands including simple democratic demands, and more recognition of the realities of relative bourgeois stabilisation. They hoped to build a broad party by merging with the left-moving youth of the social-democratic SFIO.

A minority, led by Pierre Frank, Marcel Bleibtreu, and others, denounced Craipeau’s group as “right wing”. Lambert was not a major figure in these political battles.

Since 1944 the CP had been able to prevent almost all strike action. In April-May 1947 the dam broke, in a big strike at the Renault Billancourt car factory. Trotskyists played a big role in this; Pierre Bois, a member of a forerunner group of today’s Lutte Ouvrière was a strike leader, and PCI members were also active at Renault.

The Communist Party left the government coalition. In November-December 1947 the CP launched a big strike wave, but pretty much as a political gambit to counter the harder attitude De Gaulle and the bourgeois parties were taking to the CP with the development of the Cold War.

The right wing in the CGT, with CIA backing — and a fair number of left-wingers, too, including anarcho-syndicalists — split from the CGT to form a new confederation, Force Ouvrière.

At first the rise in strikes encouraged the PCI. The “left wing” of Frank and Bleibtreu won a majority at the November 1947 congress of the PCI. Agitation to “build the revolutionary party” became more strident.

The strikes, however, were the start not of a real rise in working-class self-assertion, but of the dark years of the Cold War. The Communist Party waged war on all Trotskyists and independent minded revolutionaries in the labour movement, hounding its opponents out of the CGT, breaking up meetings and perpetrating physical assaults.

In early 1948 the PCI suffered a major collapse. Its weekly paper stopped appearing after 16 April 1948; it resumed regular publication, and then in diminished format, only from November, with just three issues published in the interim.

Most of the left wing Socialist Party youth went into to Jean-Paul Sartre’s short-lived Rassemblement Démocratique Révolutionnaire; so did many of the Craipeau wing of the PCI. Two smaller groups in the PCI who believed the Soviet Union to be state capitalist also left.

The rump PCI struggled to reorient itself in a world that was developing in a way completely different from what they had expected.

For a while, activity with the “Titoites” — supporters of the Tito regime in Yugoslavia, which had fallen out with Stalin in summer 1948 — appeared to offer the PCI a way out. Like many Trotskyists, Lambert had been expelled from the CGT in 1950. He started work in Force Ouvrière, and, helped by funds from the Yugoslav embassy, was able to start a newsletter advocating trade-union unity on a democratic basis. The PCI also organised some 3000 volunteers to go to Yugoslavia in work brigades.

But all that was based on gross illusions about the nature of the Tito regime; ended embarrassedly when Tito backed the USA in the Korean war; and anyway brought the PCI little profit.

Michel Pablo, the main international leader of “orthodox Trotskyism”, started to argue that a Third World War between the USA and the Stalinist bloc was imminent and certain; that in that war, the Communist Parties would be forced into a “roughly revolutionary orientation against capitalism”; and that Trotskyists should therefore join the Communist Parties.

Bleibtreu and others criticised Pablo (though, in hindsight, very insufficiently: their attitude to Tito and Mao was no more critical than Pablo’s). They rejected Pablo’s notion that world politics was defined by the two “blocs”, US imperialism and Stalinism; they contested Pablo’s ideas that there was no point in opposing World War Three and that in any case nothing of any significance could be done before World War Three.

Lambert still played little role in the theoretical debates. But he tended towards Bleibtreu, who had a majority in the PCI. And then in early 1952 Pablo instructed the PCI to send most of its activists into the French Communist Party.

The PCI readily agreed to send a limited number of peopple in to do “fraction work” within the CP. Pablo insisted that the PCI must send its leading activists in, even if they would have to make grovelling denunciations of their Trotskyist “past” in order to gain entry — and, of course, in those days of high Stalinism, they would have to.

The PCI split. A majority, maybe 150 as compared to the thousand members of 1947, defied Pablo. A couple of dozen, with Frank, complied. Lambert, with his trade union work relying on networks in Force Ouvriere, went with Bleibtreu.

Lambert was still not the “leader” of the group. Over the next three years or so, he became that. The “theoreticians”, Bleibtreu, Michel Lequenne, Jacques Danos, Marcel Gibelin, were forced out between 1953 and 1955.

From all accounts, this was not just a matter of Lambert being authoritarian. Bleibtreu and the others were demoralised and disoriented. They were flummoxed, and understandably so, by the way the world had turned out.

Lambert had no better theories. But he did have ideas about what to do, organisational talent and energy to make them happen, and a temperament that left him not too bothered about the theoretical issues.

Lambert developed contacts among left wingers in Force Ouvriere and in the Socialist Party, and in the wing of the Algerian independence movement led by Messali Hadj. Operationally, in the mid 50s, the Lambert group became almost a variety of anarcho-syndicalism.

Its paper La Vérité had headlines like: “The odious comedy of elections will change nothing. Let’s prepare the struggle for power!” (16 December 1955); “General strike for bread and peace” (28 September 1956 and against 19 September 1957); “War and poverty or socialist revolution” (27 December 1956); and “The general strike can win 10,000 francs increase for all and peace in Algeria” (17 October 1957). Week after week it hammed away on the call for troops out of Algeria, wage increases, and a general strike to win them.

1958 brought a sudden shock and a drastic shift in orientation. In May 1958, General De Gaulle was brought back to power by a military coup, executed by the army in Algeria. He abolished the old parliamentary constitution and set up a new presidential “Fifth Republic”. As it turned out, De Gaulle would retain an essentially bourgeois-democratic regime rather than going further, and concede independence to Algeria; but many leftists thought they faced a military dictatorship.

Meanwhile, Messali Hadj’s movement was eclipsed by the rival Algerian-nationalist FLN, and moved towards compromise with De Gaulle.

Dismayed, the Lambertists shut down their weekly paper, declaring that “It is not slogans for action, which is impossible for now, that the vanguard workers need today”. In the modest duplicated bulletin they started to replace it, they wrote: “The working class today is incapable of intervening as such in political struggles”.

A heavy stress on defensive demands, on the “workers’ united front”, and on deep burrowing within trade-union officialdom, came to be the hallmarks of the Lambert group.

They developed extensive contacts within the world of free-masonry and a habit of having “undercover” members in the most unlikely places. Lionel Jospin, who would eventually become Socialist Party prime minister, turns out to have been still been paying dues to the Lambertist group as late as 1987, when Jospin was already a well-integrated part of the inner circle round Socialist Party president Francois Mitterrand.

The 1952 split in the PCI merged into an international split in “orthodox Trotskyism” in 1953. Lambert joined a new international network with Gerry Healy in Britain and James P Cannon and the Socialist Workers’ Party in the USA. They were known as the International Committee of the Fourth International.

In 1963 Healy’s and Lambert’s groups separated from the Americans. In 1970 Lambert would split from Healy, rejecting the British group’s increasingly manic ultra-leftism; but by the 1960s Lambert’s group, in its internal organisation, had become much like Healy’s.

There was a culture of top-down control, rather than of democracy. More and more, everything was centred round Lambert’s efforts to build a strong organisational machine and to establish a network of contacts and influence around by bending the ears of people in prominent positions. At the end, all the general secretaries of Force Ouvriere for the last forty years felt obliged to honour Lambert by attending his funeral.

Lambert’s most famous ally was Alexandre Hébert. Hébert, a self-proclaimed anarcho-syndicalist, was operationally a careerist bureaucrat and the little Napoleon of the Force Ouvrière union in Loire-Atlantique from 1947 until 1992 (now succeeded by his own son, Patrick!). Moreover, as I discovered when I interviewed Hébert in researching a study of May 1968, his attitudes to immigrants are racist. In 1995, he contributed to Jean-Marie le Pen’s paper Français d’abord (“The French first”), outlining his hostility towards immigrants. Hébert and his periphery joined the Parti des Travailleurs.

From the early 1960s, the Lambert group grew again. It had won over a very slow trickle of discontented CPers and well-known intellectuals such as the historians Jean-Jacques Marie and Pierre Broué. It grew seriously among students, and began to copy the Healy view that its sect was the revolutionary party in embryo. The most startling example was the group’s attitude towards the student movements of the late 1960s and the general strike of May-June 1968.

Despite the low ebb of the workers’ movement, the years leading up to “May ‘68” saw a rise in student activism, with questions such as the Fouchet plan’s technocratic reorganisation of the education system, war in Vietnam, and sexual radicalism feeding a burgeoning movement.

The Lambertists’ CLER was the largest student organisation to the left of the Communist Party. It favoured basic bread-and-butter student unionism and stressed that building their own organisation was the best way of fighting the Fouchet reforms. The sexual revolution was very much off the agenda of this group! Eschewing meaningful engagement in anti-war activity with the youth group JCR (close to the mainstream Fourth International) or the Maoist youth, the UJCml, the CLER imitated the Lambertists in industry and arranged a panoply of “action committees”, “co-ordination committees” and “committees for struggle” which were in reality very shallow fronts for their own organisation. CLER was however (of course!) interested in taking positions in the bureaucracy of the students’ union UNEF!

Over the winter of 1967-1968, as Strasbourg and Nantes universities and the Nanterre Faculty of Paris University saw rising waves of student activism, including anti-war demonstrations, occupying halls of residence in protest against gender segregation, and large student strikes, the Lambertists focused their efforts on building a rally of their own members and periphery, looking to galvanise their “party” rather than agitate in broader movements.

The January/February 1968 issue of the CLER newspaper Révoltes carried a call for “a rally of 3,500 youth at the Mutualité on the 29-30 June”, and articles on both domestic and international politics ended with a call for activists to attend this event, as if it were some catch-all solution. The next month, the April issue of Révoltes, had the same theme. One might have assumed that the plans for a rally like this would have been shelved in early May, when protests leading to the occupation of the Sorbonne by police, street battles which pitched students and young workers against the riot cops and anger at the victimisation of student activists signified great unrest among the student population. Even if other groups had played a greater role in setting events in motion than the Lambertists, a revolutionary organisation worth its salt would have wanted to get involved in the struggle. Yet Lambert’s group abstained.

The most notable flashpoint came on the evening of 10 May 1968, when a demonstration of students, lycée pupils and young workers through Paris, protesting against the police occupation of the Sorbonne, met with lines of riot police and blockades in the Latin Quarter. After several days of skirmishes and small clashes, both sides were spoiling for a fight. The demonstrators levered up cobblestones, benches and street signs to construct some sixty barricades, with eight-foot paving slabs for foundations.

Twenty thousand people stood their ground against police aggression, piling up branches, petrol-soaked pieces of wood and even cars to fend off a police attack. The JCR occupied a flat as a command base and communicated to activists over the radio. But where were the Lambertists?

Having refused to cancel a planned “vanguard” meeting at the Mutualité to organise the demonstration for 13 May, the Lambertists’ five hundred-strong contingent did not reach the Latin Quarter until one in the morning, marching up to the barricades in close formation and holding red banners aloft. Upon their arrival on the front line the group’s leaders grandly announced to the protestors that they refused to “risk the necks of the revolutionary vanguard” in a supposedly pointless fight, and — calling upon the students to “disperse and organise strike committees” — promptly marched away again. Révoltes explained that “without the revolutionary party, there can be no victorious struggle. We know that we represent the only force able to organise the workers’ and students’ fight.”

Knowing that in fact they had already lost any opportunity to organise the workers’ and students’ fight from the outside themselves, the Lambertists had already gone home when the police launched their three-hour campaign to clear the streets of protestors by means of tear gas and truncheons.

The organisation was not all bad. The first factory occupation in 1968 was the direct result of the agitation of Yvon Rocton, an OCI member who was a Force Ouvrière militant at the Sud-Aviation aircraft plant near Nantes. Rocton had built up an activist base at the plant, whose workers were fighting a difficult campaign against cuts in working hours, and the strength of the student movement and the crisis of de Gaulle’s administration gave impulse to more radical workers to risk the occupation tactic rather than just occasional strikes. Rocton was able to win the argument for an occupation of the factory, but the workers also kept their boss as a prisoner in his office for over two weeks during the occupation.

The efforts of Alexandre Hébert were rather less admirable. With the Nantes police force in disarray following the sacking of their headquarters on 13 May, and the local council in considerable trouble as groups of workers in the suburbs of the city began to take over food and petrol distribution for themselves, Hébert arranged with the leader of the social-democrat local government and the head of the police (who, like Hébert, were freemasons) for the trade unions to take over the administration of the Town Hall. It was not “dual power”, as described in some accounts; at Hébert’s instigation the trade unions sought to prop up the authorities and face off spontaneous working-class action. The local authorities did not react at all to the union bureaucrats’ “taking power”, and were even invited to speak at public meetings staged by the unions for the sake of public information. As Noir et Rouge explained.

“Given the deficiency of the old authorities (police prefecture and municipal government) but also with their active support, the trade unions jointly used their respective organisations, and supporting bodies, to put in place a new power structure. Far from reopening the huge modern distribution centres — of which the workers were on strike — which would have meant taking “risks” and an attack on the rule of private property, instead they supported the small-scale farmers and shopkeepers. Stuck in the middle between this ‘social base’ of theirs and the old police and administrative apparatus, the inter-trade union committee would limit itself to pathetic vacillation until the ‘return to normality’.”

It was such bureaucratic manoeuvres that marked Pierre Lambert’s decline, rather than the grotesque physical assaults and sexual abuse of Gerry Healy committed against comrades of the OCI’s sister organisation in Britain.

The Lambert organisation constantly declared itself to be going from strength to strength, never reviewing its own problems; but in fact, after growing in the 1970s, it declined in the 1980s. Lambert expelled most of his close collaborators, one after another: Michel Varga, Charles Berg, Pierre Broué, Stéphane Just...

At the same time the Lambertists puffed up a ridiculous posture of openness. They declared a new “broad” party, the Parti des Travailleurs, supposedly comprising Socialist, Communist, Trotskyist and anarcho-syndicalist “currents”. In fact, the group is weak (except in Force Ouvriere officialdom!), and the diverse “currents” fictional.

The Parti des Travailleurs complains that the European Union is an affront to the “sovereignty” of France and calls for the “defence of the Republic”. The EU is blamed as primarily responsible for almost all social ills, and the Lambertists denounce “Brussels” is a vehicle for the agenda of the Vatican. In the 2007 Presidential elections the Parti des Travailleurs promoted Gérard Schivardi, who declared himself the “candidate of the mayors” and stressed that he would defend “mayors’ rights” against the Paris government.

It is hard to look at the career of Pierre Lambert and think of him as a defiant opponent of Stalinism or a fighter for the working class. In reality, he was neither, and the sectarian mores of his organisation were matched by its complete lack of internal democracy and debate and the ensuing stagnation of ideas.

Of course, his comrades’ intervention in the labour movement was not wholly fruitless. But essentially the activity of the Lambertist group came to be geared towards sect-building and winning influence among trade union bureaucrats rather than encouraging the working class to organise itself. Lambert’s story, in the end, is an object lesson in sectarianism, a sad chapter in the history of the Trotskyist left.

Respect GLA election bid

2008-02-02T10:14:00.000-08:00

On Thursday I went to the SWP-Respect's pre-election rally and candidate selection meeting with my comrade Martin Thomas. Although the purpose of the event was supposedly to choose Respect's candidates for the Greater London Assembly list, there was no hustings, the scope of the meeting confined to a long series of speeches from SWP-Respect leaders to fill time as people filled out their ballots.

Just 15 minutes was allowed for "debate", during which time only one contribution from the floor, by leading SWP teacher Sean Purnell, was permitted to speak. No discussion or dissent was allowed to rock the boat.

The SWP-Respect have obviously been shaken by the split with Galloway and his allies, and seemed barely able to bring themselves to refer to their rival "Respect Renewal" by name. Oli Rahman (a leading Respect councillor - not a member of the SWP) said that the party is "psychologically and physically stronger than the other side" and alleged that, far from losing support since the split, SWP-Respect was going from strength to strength. Yet mayoral candidate Lindsey German and SWP leader John Rees' call for the assembled activists to work harder, campaign more and sign up members carried a tone of desperation rather than optimism.

Only around 150 people had attended the meeting, almost exclusively members of the Socialist Workers' Party. Attempting to save face after Galloway's departure, the SWP leadership seem happy to maintain the illusion that Lindsey German might be elected to the GLA, even though this is patently impossible as Respect's, and indeed the SWP's, activist base has narrowed and its support in East End mosques has collapsed.

Rees, German et al are throwing money, resources and their members' efforts into a futile campaign, and at the same time are too prim and sectarian to make a turn to the rest of the left or the broader labour movement. The SWP moved to stop the RMT railworkers' union from standing a slate. Calling for the organisation to give up this ridiculous charade, Martin Thomas and I handed out the following leaflet;

On Thursday 27 September the London Transport Regional Council of the rail union RMT voted to call on the union to "draw up lists of candidates to stand in the London mayoral elections and GLA elections in 2008.

"These lists should be drawn from RMT members, socialists, anti-capitalists, local campaign groups, etc...[and] speak to the many different issues facing workers, working-class communities and oppressed groups in London, such as education, the health service, housing, a living wage and trade union rights - while of course making the demand for a 100% publicly owned, democratically controlled, integrated and cheap public transport system central".

In the event, the RMT union executive decided not to go ahead with the plan. It concluded that there wasn't enough momentum of support from the labour movement and left.

Part of the reason is that there had been a vocal minority in the Regional Council arguing against the RMT initiating a list. That minority was led by the SWP, saying that the electoral arena was already "full up" because of Respect's plans to stand.

In the wake of the Galloway split, Respect should reconsider this stance.

It should approach the RMT, say that it was wrong back in September, and ask the RMT executive to reconsider the issue on the basis that Respect and the SWP will participate in a joint list energetically and enthusiastically.

It should put out an appeal to other trade-union and left organisations to join in this call on the RMT to reconsider.

Respect should do this:

* Because it is the right thing. Trade-unionists striving to regain a political voice after the disenfranchisement which New Labour has forced on them should be supported and encouraged, not opposed.
* Because it would open the possibility of a genuine broad working-class and left-wing challenge (within which, of course, Marxists could make clear their own ideas). Realistically, a Respect-only effort will amount to the SWP and a few allies "pretending" to be a broad front, and thus have as its main result only a blurring of socialist political profile.
* Because it would win more support against Livingstone and New Labour.
* Because it would turn Respect in the direction of a proper left-wing and working-class alliance - a fresh direction after the debacle of the alliance with Galloway to develop a "party for Muslims" (as Respect described itself in 2004 election leaflets).
* Because a Mayor/GLA challenge will cost about £30,000. To do it just as a publicity stunt is not a good use of resources.

Lindsay German was right to restate the need for a left challenge to Ken Livingstone. Contrast George Galloway's defence of "Red Ken" (as he still calls him) and his appeal for a "Progressive List" (the title the Liberals formerly used in local government) on the vaguest basis to contest GLA seats but back Livingstone.

But let's do the job seriously, on a genuine working-class and socialist basis.

The tragedy of the German proletariat

2008-01-30T09:32:00.001-08:00

Today marks the 75th anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power in Germany. While in today's Socialist Worker Chris Bambery's article on the Nazi coup pathetically muses that fascism ought to be "taken seriously", without making a single reference to Stalin's disastrous "Third Period", Trotsky's March 1933 article The tragedy of the German proletariat exposed the double-dealings of the Soviet bureaucracy.

The most powerful proletariat of Europe, measured by its place in production, its social weight, and the strength of its organizations, has manifested no resistance since Hitler’s coming to power and his first violent attacks against the workers’ organizations. This is the fact from which to proceed in subsequent strategic calculations.

It would be patently stupid to believe that the future evolution of Germany will follow the Italian road; that Hitler will strengthen his domination step by step without serious resistance; that German fascism will enjoy long years of domination. No, the further fate of National Socialism will have to be deduced from an analysis of the German and international conditions, and not from purely historical analogies. But this much is already evident: if from September 1930 onwards we demanded of the Communist International a short-range policy in Germany, then it is necessary now to work out a long-range policy. Before decisive battles will become possible, the proletarian vanguard will have to reorient itself; that is to say, it will have to understand what has happened, assign the responsibility for the great historical defeat, trace out the new road, and thus regain confidence in itself

The criminal role of the Social Democracy requires no commentary: the Comintern was created fourteen years ago precisely in order to snatch the proletariat from the demoralizing influence of the Social Democracy. If it has not succeeded up to now, if the German proletariat found itself impotent disarmed, and paralyzed at the moment of its greatest historic test the direct and immediate blame falls upon the leadership of the post-Leninist Comintern. That is the first conclusion which ought to be drawn immediately.

Under the treacherous blows of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the Left Opposition maintained its fidelity to the official party to the very end. The Bolshevik-Leninists now share the fate of all the other Communist organizations: the militants of our cadres are arrested, our publications forbidden, our literature confiscated. Hitler even hurried to suspend the Bulletin of the Opposition appearing in the Russian language. But if, together with the whole proletarian vanguard, the Bolshevik-Leninists bear the consequences of the first serious victory of fascism, they cannot and will not bear even a shadow of the responsibility for the official policy of the Comintern.

Since 1923, that is, since the beginning of the struggle against the Left Opposition, the Stalinist leadership, although indirectly, assisted the Social Democracy with all its strength to derail, to befuddle, to enfeeble the German proletariat: it restrained and hindered the workers when the conditions dictated a courageous revolutionary offensive; it proclaimed the approach of the revolutionary situation when it had already passed; it worked up agreements with petty-bourgeois phrasemongers and windbags; it limped impotently at the tail of the Social Democracy under cover of the policy of the united front; it proclaimed the “third period” and the struggle for the conquest of the streets under conditions of political ebb and the weakness of the Communist Party; it replaced the serious struggle by leaps, adventures or parades; it isolated the Communists from the mass trade unions; it identified the Social Democracy with fascism and rejected the united front with the mass workers’ organizations in face of the aggressive bands of the National Socialists; it sabotaged the slightest initiative for the united front for local defense, at the same time it systematically deceived the workers as to the real relationship of forces, distorted the facts, passed off friends as enemies and enemies as friends – and drew the noose tighter and tighter around the neck of the party, not permitting it to breathe freely any longer, nor to speak, nor to think.

Out of the vast literature devoted to the question of fascism it is enough to refer to the speech of Thälmann, official leader of the German Communist Party, who, at the plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in April 1931, denounced the “pessimists,” that is, those who knew how to foresee, in the following terms: “We have not allowed the moods of panic to rout us ... We have soberly and firmly established the fact that September 14 [1930] was in a certain sense Hitler’s best day, and that afterwards will come not better days but worse. This evaluation which we made of the development of this party is confirmed by the events ... Today, the fascists have no reasons for laughing.” Referring to the creation of defense groups by the Social Democracy, Thälmann demonstrated in the same speech that these groups differ in no respect from the shock troops of the National Socialists and that both of them are likewise preparing to annihilate Communism.

Today, Thälmann is under arrest. Faced with triumphant reaction, the Bolshevik-Leninists are in the same ranks as Thälmann. But the policy of Thälmann is the policy of Stalin, that is, the official policy of the Comintern. It is precisely this policy which is the cause of the complete demoralization of the party at the moment of danger, when the leaders lose their heads, when the party members, unaccustomed to thinking, fall prostrate, when the principal historic positions are surrendered without a fight. A false political theory bears within itself its own punishment. The strength and the obstinacy of the apparatus only augment the dimensions of the catastrophe.

Having surrendered to the enemy everything that could be surrendered in such a short space of time, the Stalinists are trying to rectify the past by means of convulsive acts, which only more brightly illuminate the whole chain of crimes committed by them. Now that the press of the Communist Party is stifled, now the apparatus is destroyed, now the bloody pennant of fascism waves with impunity over the Karl Liebknecht House [1], the Executive Committee of the Comintern is starting out on the road of the united front not only from below but also from above. The new zigzag, sharper than all that preceded it, has not, however, been effected on the impulse of the ECCI itself, the Stalinist bureaucracy has abandoned the initiative to the Second International. The latter has succeeded in taking hold of the weapon of the united front of which it has been in mortal dread until now. To the extent that it is possible to speak of political advantages under the conditions of a panicky retreat, they are to be found exclusively on the side of reformism. Forced to reply to a direct question, the Stalinist bureaucracy chose the worst way: it does not reject an entente of the two Internationals, but neither does it accept it; it plays hide and seek. It has come to such a lack of self-confidence, to such degradation, that it no longer dares to show itself to the world proletariat face to face with the leaders of the Second International, the branded agents of the bourgeoisie, the electors of Hindenburg who blazed the trail of fascism.

In a special appeal of the ECCI on March 5, To the Workers of All Countries, the Stalinists do not say a word about social fascism as the main enemy. They no longer speak about the great discovery of their leader: “The Social Democracy and fascism are not antipodes but twins.” They no longer insist on saying that the struggle against fascism demands as a preliminary the defeat of the Social Democracy. They do not breathe a word about the inadmissibility of the united front from above. On the contrary, they carefully enumerate those cases in the past where the Stalinist bureaucracy, unexpectedly for the workers and for itself, found itself forced to improvise proposals for the united front to the reformist summits. Thus do artificial, false, and charlatanesque theories founder in the fury of the historical tempest

“Taking into account the peculiarities of each country” and the impossibility, which allegedly flows from them, of organizing the united front on an international scale (the struggle against “exceptionalism,” that is, the theory of the right-wingers on national peculiarities, is suddenly forgotten), the Stalinist bureaucracy recommends to the national Communist parties that they address proposals for a united front to the “Central Committees of the Social Democratic parties.” Only yesterday this was proclaimed a capitulation to social fascism! Thus do all the great lessons of Stalinism for the last four years fly under the table into the wastebasket Thus is a whole political system reduced to dust.

Matters do not rest there: having just declared the impossibility of generating the conditions for a united front on the international arena, the ECCI immediately forgets it and no more than twenty lines further on formulates the conditions under which the united front is admissible and acceptable in all countries, in spite of the difference in national conditions. The retreat before fascism is followed by a panic-stricken retreat from the theoretical commandments of Stalinism. Chips and fragments of ideas and principles are thrown out along the road like so much ballast.

The conditions for the united front put forward by the Comintern for all the countries committees of action against fascism, demonstrations and strikes against wage reductions) present nothing new. On the contrary, they are the schematized and bureaucratized reproduction of the slogans that the Left Opposition formulated much more clearly and concretely two and a half years ago, for which it was registered in the camp of social fascism. The united front on such a basis could have yielded decisive results in Germany; but for that, it would have had to be carried out in time. Time is an important factor in politics.

What is therefore the practical value now of the proposals of the ECCI? For Germany, it is minimal. The policy of the united front assumes a ␄front,” that is, stabilized positions and a centralized leadership. The Left Opposition put forward the conditions for the united front back then as conditions for an active defense, with the perspective of passing over to the offensive. Now, the German proletariat has been reduced to a state of disorderly retreat, without even rearguard battles. In this situation, voluntary unions of Communist and Social Democratic workers can and will be realized for various episodic tasks, but the systematic construction of the united front is inevitably thrust back for the indefinite future. There must be no illusions on this score.

About eighteen months ago, we wrote that the key to the situation is in the hands of the German Communist Party. The Stalinist bureaucracy has now let this key fail from its hands. Great events outside of the will of the party will be necessary to give the workers the possibility of drawing up short, of fortifying themselves, of rebuilding their ranks and of passing over to an active defense. We have no way of knowing with precision when this will occur. Perhaps much quicker than the triumphant counterrevolution hopes. But in any case, it is not those who issued the manifesto of the ECCI who will direct the policy of the united front in Germany.

If the central position has been surrendered, one must fortify the approaches; one must prepare bases for a future assault from all sides. In Germany, this preparation implies the critical elucidation of the past, maintaining the spirits of the vanguard fighters, rallying them, and organizing rearguard combats wherever possible – in anticipation of the moment when the various fighting groups will draw together into a great army. This preparation implies at the same time defending the proletarian positions in the countries closely connected with Germany or located near it: in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, France, and Switzerland. Fascist Germany must be surrounded by a powerful circle of proletarian fortifications. Without ceasing for an instant the attempts to halt the disorderly retreat of the German workers, it is necessary to create fortified proletarian positions around the frontiers of Germany for the struggle against fascism.

In the first place comes Austria, which is immediately threatened by the fascist cataclysm. One can say with confidence that if the Austrian proletariat were to seize power now and transform its country into a revolutionary battleground, Austria would become for the revolution of the German proletariat what Piedmont [2] was for the revolution of the Italian bourgeoisie. It cannot be predicted how far the Austrian proletarian pushed forward by the events but paralyzed by the reformist bureaucracy, will advance along this road. The task of Communism is to help the events, overcoming Austro-Marxism. The policy of the united front is one of the means. The conditions which the manifesto of the ECCI takes over so tardily from the Left Opposition thus retain all their force.

However, the policy of the united front contains not only advantages but also dangers. It easily gives birth to combinations between leaders behind the back of the masses, to a passive adaptation to the ally, to opportunist vacillations. It is possible to ward off these dangers only if there exist two express guarantees: the maintenance of full freedom of criticism of the ally and the reestablishment of full freedom of criticism within the ranks of one’s own party. To refuse to criticize one’s allies leads directly and immediately to capitulation to reformism. The policy of the united front in the absence of party democracy, that is, without control of the apparatus by the party, leaves the leaders a free hand for opportunist experiments, the inevitable complements of adventurist experiments.

How has the ECCI acted in this case? Dozens of times the Left Opposition predicted that under the blows of events, the Stalinists would be forced to repudiate their ultraleftism and that, placing themselves on the road of the united front they would begin to commit all the opportunist treasons which they attributed to us only yesterday. This time, too, the prediction has been realized literally.

In making a dizzying swing towards the position of the united front the ECCI tramples on the fundamental guarantees which alone can assure a revolutionary content to the policy of the united front. The Stalinists take into consideration and accept the hypocritical-diplomatic demands of the reformists for so-called mutual non-aggression. Breaking with all the traditions of Marxism and of Bolshevism, they recommend to the Communist parties, in case a united front is realized, that they “abandon all attacks against the Social Democratic organizations during the joint action.” That’s just what it says. “To abandon all attacks [!] upon the Social Democracy” (what a shameful formula!) means to abandon the freedom of political criticism, that is, a basic function of the revolutionary party.

The capitulation is called for not by practical necessity but by a panicky state of mind. The reformists come and will come to an agreement to the extent that the pressure of events and the pressure of the masses force them to do so. The demand for “nonaggression” is blackmail, that is, the attempt of the reformist leaders to extort an auxiliary advantage. To submit to blackmail means to build the united front upon rotten foundations and to give the reformist businessmen the possibility of blowing it up under some arbitrary pretext or other.

Criticism in general, all the more so under the conditions of a united front should of course correspond to the real relations and observe the necessary proportions. The absurdities about “social fascism” must be refuted. That is a concession not to the Social Democracy, but to Marxism. It is not for the treachery of 1918 but for its evil work in 1933 that the ally must be criticized. But criticism, like political life itself, of which criticism is the voice, cannot be halted for an hour. If the Communists’ disclosures correspond to reality, they serve the purposes of the united front pushing forward the temporary ally and, what is more important giving a revolutionary education to the whole proletariat. To abandon this fundamental duty is the first stage in that shameful and criminal policy which Stalin foisted upon the Chinese Communists with regard to the Kuomintang.

Matters stand no better with regard to the second guarantee. Having renounced criticism of the Social Democracy, the Stalinist apparatus does not even think of giving the right of criticism to the members of its own party. The turn itself is accomplished, as usual, by way of a bureaucratic revelation. Not a single national congress, no international congress, nor even a plenum of the ECCI; no preparation in the press of the party, no analysis of the policy of the past. And there is nothing astounding in this. At the very first steps in the discussion in the party, each thinking worker would ask the functionaries: Why have the Bolshevik-Leninists been expelled from all the sections and why are they subjected in the Soviet Union to arrests, to deportation, and to firing squads? Is it only because they dig deeper and see further? The Stalinist bureaucracy cannot permit such a conclusion. It is capable of any flip-flops or somersaults, but to present itself honestly before the workers face to face with the Bolshevik-Leninists – that’s something it cannot and does not dare to do. Thus in the struggle for self-preservation, the Stalinist apparatus vitiates its new turn by making it suspect beforehand in the view not only of the Social Democratic workers but also of the Communists.

The publication of the manifesto of the ECCI is accompanied by yet another circumstance, extraneous to the question we are examining, but which throws an exceedingly glaring light on the present position of the Comintern and on the attitude of the leading Stalinist groups towards it. In Pravda of March 6, the manifesto is published not as a direct and open appeal of the ECCI situated in Moscow – as was always the case – but as the translation of a document from l’Humanité, transmitted from Paris by the telegraphic agency TASS.

What a stupid and humiliating ruse! After all the successes, after the realization of the first Five Year Plan, after the “disappearance of the classes,” after the “entry into socialism,” the Stalinist bureaucracy no longer dares to publish in its own name the manifesto of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. That is its real relationship to the Comintern and that is how confident it is on the international arena.

The manifesto is not the sole reply to the initiative of the Second International. Through the intermediary of paper organizations – the revolutionary trade union oppositions (RGOs) of Germany and Poland, the Anti-fascist Alliance, and the so- called Italian General Confederation of Labor – the Comintern is convening for the month of April a “Pan-European Workers’ Anti-fascist Congress.” The list of those invited, as is proper, is confused and vast: factories (they say “factories,” although by the efforts of Stalin-Lozovsky the Communists have been ousted from practically all the factories in the world), local labor organizations, revolutionary, reformist, Catholic, belonging to a party or not, sports, anti-fascist, and peasant organizations. And more: “We wish also to invite all those individuals who are really [!] fighting for the cause of the workers.” Having compromised for a long time the cause of the masses, the strategists appeal to the “individuals,” to those hermits who have found no place in the ranks of the masses but who, just the same, “are really fighting for the cause of the workers.” Barbusse and General Schönaich [3] will once more be mobilized to save Europe from Hitler.

Here we have a ready-made libretto for one of those charlatan presentations with which the Stalinists are in the habit of masking their impotence. What has the Amsterdam bloc of centrists and the pacifists accomplished in the struggle against the aggression of the Japanese bandits in China? Nothing. Out of respect for Stalinist “neutrality,” the pacifists have not even issued a manifesto of protest. Now a new edition of the Amsterdam Congress is being prepared, not against war but against fascism. What will the anti-fascist bloc of vacated “factories” and impotent “individuals” do? Nothing. It will issue a hollow manifesto, if, as a matter of fact things go as far this time as the holding of a congress.

The propensity for individuals has two faces: opportunistic and adventurist. The Russian Social Revolutionaries in the old days extended the right hand to the liberals and held a bomb in the left hand. The experience of the last ten years attests that after every great defeat provoked or at least aggravated by the policy of the Comintern, the Stalinist bureaucracy invariably sought to refurbish its reputation with the aid of some grandiose adventure or other (Estonia, Bulgaria, Canton). Doesn’t this danger exist now too? In any case, we deem it necessary to raise a voice of warning. Adventures that aim to replace the action of the paralyzed masses disorganize the masses still more and aggravate the catastrophe.

The conditions of the present world situation, as well as the conditions of each country in particular, are just as deadly for the Social Democracy as they are favorable for the revolutionary party. But the Stalinist bureaucracy has succeeded in converting the crisis of capitalism and of reformism into a crisis of Communism. That is the sum total of ten years of uncontrolled command by the epigones.

Hypocrites will be found to say: the Opposition is criticizing a party which has fallen into the hands of the executioner. Blackguards will add: the Opposition is helping the executioner. By combining a specious sentimentalism with venomous falsehood, the Stalinists will endeavor to hide the Central Committee behind the apparatus, the apparatus behind the party, to eliminate the question of responsibility for the catastrophe, for the false strategy, for the disastrous regime, for the criminal leadership: that means helping the executioners of today and tomorrow.

The policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy in China was no less disastrous than it is now in Germany. But there, the affair took place behind the back of the world proletariat, under conditions which were incomprehensible to it. The critical voice of the Opposition hardly reached beyond the Soviet Union to the workers of the other countries. The Stalinist apparatus went practically unpunished for the Chinese experience. In Germany, it is entirely different All the stages of the drama developed before the world proletariat At each stage, the Opposition raised its voice. The whole course of development was announced in advance. The Stalinist bureaucracy slandered the Opposition, imputed to it ideas and plans alien to it; expelled all those who dared to speak of the united front; helped the Social Democratic bureaucracy demolish the united local defense committees; cut the workers off from the slightest possibility of setting out on the road of the mass struggle; disorganized the vanguard; paralyzed the proletariat. Thus, by opposing a united front of defense with the Social Democracy, the Stalinists found themselves with the latter in a united front of panic and of capitulation.

And now, already standing just short of ruin, the leadership of the Comintern fears light and criticism more than anything else. Let the world revolution perish, but long live vain prestige! The bankrupts sow confusion, bury the evidence, and cover their tracks. The fact that the Communist Party of Germany lost “only” 1,200,000 votes at the first blow – with a general rise in the number of voters of three to four millions – is proclaimed by Pravda as an “enormous political victory.” In the same way, in 1924, Stalin proclaimed as an “enormous victory” the fact that the workers in Germany, who were retreating without battle, had still given the Communist Party 3,600,000 votes. If the proletariat deceived and disarmed by both apparatuses, has this time given the Communist Party almost five million votes, this signifies only that they would have given it twice or three times that number had they trusted its leadership. They would have raised it to power had it shown itself capable of taking and holding power. But it gave the proletariat nothing save confusion, zigzags, defeats, and calamities.

Yes, five million Communists still succeeded in reaching the ballot box, one by one. But in the factories and on the streets, there are none. They are disconcerted, dispersed, demoralized. They have been broken away from independence under the yoke of the apparatus. The bureaucratic terror of Stalinism paralyzed their willpower before the turn came for the terror of the fascist bands.

It must be said clearly, plainly, openly: Stalinism in Germany has had its August 4. Henceforth, the advanced workers will only speak of the period of the domination of the Stalinist bureaucracy with a burning sense of shame, with words of hatred and curses. The official German Communist Party is doomed. From now on it will only decompose, crumble, and melt into the void. German Communism can be reborn only on a new basis and with a new leadership.

The law of uneven development acts also upon the fate of Stalinism. In the various countries, it finds itself in different stages of decomposition. To what degree the tragic experience of Germany will serve as a stimulus to the rebirth of the other sections of the Comintern, the future will show. In Germany in any case the swan song of the Stalinist bureaucracy has been sung. The German proletariat will rise again, Stalinism – never. Under the terrible blows of the enemy, the advanced German workers will have to build up a new party. The Bolshevik-Leninists will give all their forces to this work.

He's not there

2008-01-24T08:20:00.000-08:00

I finally went to see I'm Not There...

I must admit, I’m no Dylanologist, so I was not particularly upset by director Todd Haynes’ decision to merge Suze Rotolo and Sara Lownds into one character, nor the fact that I’m Not There is far from a biography of Dylan. However, while the film has an excellent score (unsurprisingly, there are lots of Bob Dylan tracks) and features some memorable performances from the six actors representing the singer-songwriter’s different personas, it feels like a simple homage rather than offering any particular insight.

Central to the appeal of I’m Not There is its jigsaw-like composition. The film is not presented as a biopic, and it is not chronological – instead Haynes splices together fragments featuring “Dylans” from different eras, none of them called “Bob Dylan”.

There is Marcus Carl Franklin, who sparkles as a wandering 11 year-old African-American Woody Guthrie devotee. Christian Bale plays two roles – an early ’60s folk-guitar star Jack Rollins and then a washed-out evangelical preacher in the late ‘70s. Heath Ledger is a late ’60s actor increasingly alienated from his wife (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg), misogynistic and self-obsessed. Cate Blanchett, like Bale performing an ‘impression’ of Bob Dylan, has the leading part in I’m Not There as ‘Jude’ the confused Dylan who ‘betrayed’ folk music and his own ‘principles’ in favour of playing electric guitar. The other two actors – Ben Whishaw as poet Arthur Rimbaud and Richard Gere as a disguised near-hermitical Billy the Kid – put in unremarkable performances, with Gere’s part particularly incoherent and rambling.

The contradictions of Dylan’s political-activist side, and similarly his ‘turn’ to electric, are of some prominence in the film, mainly in Blanchett’s performance. Haynes shows fans disgruntled by Dylan’s behaviour, yet the star is himself puzzled by accusations of hypocrisy. A BBC reporter repeatedly tries to get Blanchett’s ‘Jude’ to admit that he has changed, but ‘Jude’ doesn’t see why his critics are so bothered, why they don’t ask such searching questions of their own political sincerity, or why they won’t appreciate his music for what it is. ‘Jude’ does not take this bad press seriously and, looking up to a statue of Jesus Christ being crucified, he shouts "Do your early stuff, man!" He says that the lyrics don’t change anything anyway.

Although some protest songs can be moving, there is a lot to be said for Haynes’ sceptical attitude to the critics of Dylan’s “turn”. The standard left critique of Dylan for “selling out” or “betrayal” is crude and concedes a lot of ground to the Stalinist notion of “good art” as that which is on-message, rather than what is strong aesthetically. Given that Dylan’s politics were at most a general concern for the oppressed and anti-war sentiment, and he was never an activist, what precisely was there for him to “betray”? Even political people should not just judge culture as if it were a political instrument.

However, apart from Marcus Carl Franklin’s scenes, which are mostly early in the film, and Blanchett’s cultured impression of Dylan, much of the film is soggy and inconsequential. Several performances show Dylan as aloof, and he often appears pretentious rather than pensive, but the film is wary of taking its subject head on and largely aims at veneration. This kid-gloves attitude to the aging legend appears to echo the widespread acclamation for Dylan’s pisspoor 2006 album Modern Times, despite its homages to such artists as Bing Crosby and Memphis Minnie.

I had eagerly anticipated going to see I’m Not There, but to be truthful it left me a little cold. Yes, Cate Blanchett’s impression of Dylan is eye-catching, but the film has very little new to say about Dylan, and its 2 hour 15 minute running time seemed excessive when so much of the film has no direction.

An anti-capitalist party for France?

2008-01-21T10:11:00.000-08:00

After winning 1.5 million votes in the April 2007 French presidential election, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire launched a call for a new “anti-capitalist party” to bring together activists from across the spectrum of the far left in a joint organisation.

This unity effort in some ways echoes the LCR’s previous efforts to turn to other parts of the left, for example in their support for former leading Communist Party member Pierre Juquin in the 1988 presidential election. At present it is unclear what exactly the LCR plans to do – bring together the revolutionary left, or just everyone to the left of the Parti Socialiste’s Blairite leadership? Nothing has been settled as yet, although the debates at the LCR congress on January 24-27 are sure to shed more light on the matter.

However, in practical terms the most important issue at stake in any left regroupment is the LCR’s relationship with Lutte Ouvrière, the other prominent Trotskyist force in France. Their lack of unity has been a political hot potato for four decades, with occasional joint slates in municipal and European elections failing to mask the animosity between the two organisations. Much in the same way as past unity offensives have collapsed, the prospects for LCR-LO cooperation here appear dim, with the majority at LO conference eschewing the idea of a new party. It seems that all the LCR can really hope for at this point in time is to win over some individual activists, the anarchist Alternative Libertaire group, the French section of the Committee for a Workers’ International and a fraction of LO dissidents.

Many of the criticisms which Lutte Ouvrière’s conference document levels against the LCR’s project are fair comment. It decries the idea of an “anti-capitalist” party rather than one which has a working-class led socialist revolution as its explicit goal. Whatever the claims of the biggest faction in the LCR leadership, Marxists do not believe that our politics can be summarised as opposition to capitalism and big corporations. Marx's Communist Manifesto is full of polemic against "conservative socialists" and "petty-bourgeois socialists" who oppose capitalist development but are not in favour of posing a positive working-class based alternative.

LO further criticise the political softness of the LCR, who do not educate their members and periphery adequately in the Marxist tradition, but demagogically pander to “anti-neoliberal” sentiment which lacks real political content. Similarly, they attack the LCR for not learning the political lessons of Trotsky’s critique of Stalinism – as amply displayed by the LCR’s veneration of Che Guevara and the Cuban regime. Furthermore, we could point out that although they are the lone force calling for a new party, the revolutionary socialists of the LCR are softening their politics for the sake of constructing a pseudo-‘united front’ with a largely non-existent right wing – mirroring previous ventures like the Scottish Socialist Party, the Portuguese Left Bloc, the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, and so on. The “anti-capitalist” party is a construct without a real base.

However, the flaw in Lutte Ouvrière’s analysis is to abstract from their somewhat accurate criticisms of the LCR’s political culture the idea that working together in the same party is impossible. Although expressing a general sympathy for the LCR’s aims and the idea of organising activists, LO’s fundamental problem with the “anti-capitalist” party appears to be that it would not have the regimented cadre structure of Lutte Ouvrière by which the old hands channel their political outlook (supposedly the direct continuation of Leon Trotsky’s ideas) down to the less experienced membership. Unlike the LCR, LO refuse to dissolve themselves into any broader party, and so can only support the “anti-capitalist party” initiative vicariously.

“Although we wish for its success, [the proposed party] is not what we want to create and that’s why, while we watch this initiative attentively and sympathetically, we refuse to participate in building it”

A significant factor in LO’s attitude to the LCR’s project is its own organisational culture, which tolerates little dissent and seeks to recruit only those activists who are already in full agreement with the leadership line. The minority tendency which publishes Convergences Révolutionnaires, more sympathetic to the LCR, is not allowed to recruit new members to LO and has very limited space to publish its views.

In their polemic against the LCR, Lutte Ouvrière takes a patronising and elitist tone asserting their group’s own ‘purity’. For example, it describes setting up a party which recruits activists who do not define themselves as Trotskyists as “turning your back on Trotsky’s teachings” but further adds that “of course, you could describe yourself as Trotskyist and not actually be one!” - a category which purportedly includes the membership of the LCR. It is impossible to reason with the Lutte Ouvrière leaders on this score – their claim to be the sole inheritors of Marxism, Leninism (“no-one knows any more what ‘Leninism’ means”) and Trotskyism, coupled with their rigid organisational culture and belief that non-LO activists are “turning their back on all the ideas” of socialist revolution is hardly conducive to comradely debate or joint work. Indeed, rather than making proposals to the LCR to outline its conditions for unity, the LO leadership has taken an attitude along the lines of ‘we wish you all the best if you want to do your thing; but your suggestion isn’t the same as what we want, so no thanks’. As the LO conference document puts it;

“If we were to say that we hope that it succeeds… it is only because not everyone can be revolutionary and Trotskyist, but many people, particularly young people, want to fight the injustices of the present social order. Some people get involved in NGOs to help underdeveloped countries; others work closer to home helping illegal immigrants and homeless people; others are simply outraged by what the government does and want to oppose it in which ways they can. It would be a good thing if, even though not revolutionaries, these people could find a significant organisation ready to act and which shared some of their ideas.”

The LCR are not seen by LO as comrades taking part in a common struggle against capitalism, but characterised as akin to liberals and do-gooders who want to ‘make a difference’.

In contrast to this sectarian approach, the Lutte Ouvrière minority have welcomed the LCR’s new unity offensive and called for LO to use the opportunity to have a debate about what party the revolutionary socialist left needs. Even if not in agreement with the specific proposals of the LCR, or even its broader politics, LO should say what kind of left regroupment it is in favour of and what positive suggestions it can make to potential allies. After emphasising the need for unity in the face of Sarkozy’s attacks on pensions and jobs but criticising the LCR’s lack of specific perspectives, the LO minority comment;

“It is precisely in order to overcome these problems that both in terms of eventually creating a new party and in terms of intervention in struggles in the here and now we recommend regular and systematic meetings between the LCR and LO at every level, starting with the leaderships. If we haven’t already, now is time to make contact.”

At this level, it is rather hypocritical of Lutte Ouvrière to insist on their version of Trotskyist purity, given their electoral pacts with reformists and indeed their past ‘partyist’ adventures. For example, during the general strike of May 1968 their forerunners Voix Ouvrière set up a co-ordination group with the Parti Communiste Internationaliste and Jeunesses Communistes Révolutionnaires, the two ancestor organisations of today’s LCR. In the aftermath of those struggles, LO looked to form a broad left force comprising not only these Trotskyist forces but also Maoists and the left-social-democrat Parti Socialiste Unifié.

In the struggle against Sarkozy's attacks on the working class, which are supported by the Parti Socialiste, French workers need a party of their own to give political expression to their struggles. The important question here is that the party has a clear goal of organising the working class as a class, and explicitly seeks to lead other sections of society opposed to the rule of capital in a struggle to replace it socialism, so any given programmatic differences should not be erected as barriers to unity. In a party which, unlike Lutte Ouvrière, allowed for free and full debate and platform rights, it would be possible to bring together people with different viewpoints yet still engaged in common struggle.

While revolutionary socialists should always be open about their politics and educate their activists and followers about their ideas, insistence on homogeneity, ultra-'hard' organisational discipline and bureaucratically excluding those who are not deemed to be the correct brand of 'Trotskyist' is no means by which to argue for Marxist ideas in the labour movement. It can only serve to cut off the self-proclaimed revolutionary élan as a sect without broad working class involvement.

Is debating our ideas sectarian?

2008-01-17T10:33:00.000-08:00

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

The broad church of anarchism incorporates many different tendencies. There are anarchists who carve out “liberated space” living in eco-villages, anarchists who go to demos to join in the ‘Black Bloc’ for a ruck with the police, and of course those many anarchists who read old books and dream of utopia but have no personal involvement in the struggle.

But none of these individuals debate their politics with one another, and those who polemicise to even a limited extent (such as Murray Bookchin) are viewed with deep suspicion. They say that criticism is inherently an ‘authoritarian’ violation of the individual’s free will, and so each is allowed to go off and do their own thing, as long as they call themselves ‘anarchist’.

You think workers have power in society so you should go and build an anarcho-syndicalist union to fight the bosses; I prefer immediate action, so I’ll go and live on a camp with some mates and start an unhierarchical society outside of capitalism. While the sectarian Trots row with each other, the anarchists live out their free society by doing as they please.

But this is a perversion of the idea of ‘sectarianism’, a word whose real meaning is placing a specific group’s organisational interests above those of the working class as a whole. ‘Sectarianism’ is not the same thing as admitting that you disagree with other activists. It is not the same thing as challenging the ideas of those people who have carved out influence on the left.

Of course, the anarchists’ unwillingness to criticise one another or to engage in sharp debate is in part a response to very real problems with the way the Trotskyist left operates. Some recoil from the way polemicists resort to labels like ‘petty-bourgeois’, ‘unMarxist’, ‘centrist’, and indeed, the slander ‘anarchist’, to attack their opponents. Others are bothered by the fashion in which they exaggerate differences and caricature positions ad absurdum to help ‘win’ the argument. The use of personal innuendo, bureaucratic manoeuvres to silence rivals and even physical fights (such as the SWP’s attacks on AWL and CPGB comrades at their ‘Marxism’ event) also serve as clear evidence that the culture of the far left is indeed unhealthy and sectarian.

But the problems outlined above, to the extent that they exist, are symptomatic of a lack of free and honest debate, not too much of it. It is not the criticism itself, or admitting that there are differences, which engenders uncomradely behaviour. Far from it – for example, look at Marx’s work on the Civil War in France. He raises numerous criticisms of the tactics of the Paris Communards of 1871, but this does not detract in the slightest from his glowing reverence for their brave struggle and the comradely tone of the work.

The real problem is the bureaucratic culture of many organisations which seeks to silence or cow critics by whatever means are at hand. Indeed, the anarchist claim that any criticism other people’s views is sectarian bears a striking parallel to the position of leaders of bureaucratic-centralist organisations such as the Socialist Workers’ Party. The SWP’s idea of unity is that its leaders set out their politics without any debate or consultation with the membership, and then activists can agree to follow them or not. Those who raise criticisms are told to go off and join some other group – “if you don’t agree with the leaders, why are you in the SWP?” So take it or leave it – agree with John Rees and Lindsey German or choose to be a “sectarian” and debate politics with other people elsewhere.

Quite why the people who raise criticisms are ‘sectarians’ and are the ones who ‘disagree’ while those who follow the leadership line are assumed to be correct is never explained. If I disagree, why is it incumbent on me to pretend that I have nothing to say for myself?

Neither the SWP’s modus operandi nor the anarchist schema of ‘do your own thing’ represent ‘unity’. There is no sentiment of collective responsibility, equal exchange of ideas or recognition that activists should be engaged in a common struggle, whatever their differences. The real ‘sectarianism’ is the idea that any disagreement is bound to prove irreconcilable, so people who disagree should work separately in different organisations and not engage with one another. It undermines our fighting strength, stymies creative thought and reflects a lack of belief in the idea that solidarity could work.

Thinking that the labour movement is unsalvageable and living out your anarchist utopia in a commune is sectarian. Thinking, like the Black Bloc cadre, that people with jobs, pensioners and housewives are useless to a struggle where the primary task is confronting the police is sectarian. Those both place the interests of an activist élite above that of the working class, which is not seen as an important agent of social change. What is not sectarian is seeking to bring together the maximum possible forces while maintaining a culture where no leader has a monopoly over ideas, no viewpoint is silenced and continuous free and full debate allows the development of political theory and a sharpening of our tactics.

Labour and Tories race to attack benefits

2008-01-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

David Cameron has launched a fresh offensive against single parents, unemployed and disabled people with plans to force them into work. The Tory leader’s proposals include making the unemployed participate in “community work”, penalties for those who turn down “reasonable” job offers and cutting the number of people receiving incapacity benefit by 600,000 over the next five years.

At the heart of the Tories’ plans is a vast overhaul of the incapacity benefit system, which caters for 2.6 million ill and disabled people, most of whom suffer from either mental disorders or musculo-skeletal diseases. Writing for the News of the World, David Cameron claimed that “I don’t believe that there are nearly half a million young people in Britain with a disability which prevents them from doing any work at all. What we have is a culture of despair, where kids grow up without any idea that for our society to function everyone has to pull their weight if they can.” In order to get these people to “pull their weight”, Cameron suggests a reassessment of incapacity benefit claimants which will force some onto the lower-rate Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), an “allowance” received dependent on actively seeking work. Conveniently, Cameron says that these cuts will raise the £3 billion necessary to fund his “helping hand” for married couples.

But it is not just the Conservatives who are stressing the need for people with mental disorders to get a crap job on the minimum wage. Gordon Brown told viewers of the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that New Labour’s plans to get people to work were “far more revolutionary” than the Tories’ suggestions. “Today the issue is people don’t have the skills, even when there are 600,000 vacancies in the economy… the next stage is not what the Conservatives are talking about but giving people the skills to get into work.”

Rather than presenting the Tories’ plans to slash incapacity benefit by billions of pounds as an outrageous attack on the ill and disabled, New Labour claim that the Tories’ plans are just a half-hearted imitation of their own idea that what people on incapacity benefit really need is not benefits but… training.

Indeed, this row serves as part of a generalised attempt to undermine the welfare state. The Tories have also proposed compulsory (privately or voluntary-sector organised) “community work” projects for those on JSA for two years and removing JSA for up to three years for those who turn down three job offers.

The bourgeois parties’ “welfare into work” agenda is a thinly veiled attack on the disabled, are scapegoating them for ‘wasting money’ that could be better spent on strengthening the institution of marriage.

But it is not our only argument that benefit claimants really are unable to work, or that maybe they don’t much like living on a pittance. We also contest the idea of compulsory employment, when most of the jobs out there are alienating, tedious and badly paid — why should anyone have to do a demoralising job where they get bossed around for £5.50 an hour? We oppose any plans which make benefits dependent on claimants’ willingness to work.