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NTERNATIONAL I IEWPOINT V News and analysis from the IV381 - September 2006

Lebanon/ Reproductive Rights International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

IV381 - September 2006

Lebanon/Israel - Reproductive Rights - Brazil

Lebanon Against resolution 1701, against the sending of NATO troops - Gilbert Achcar 3 Israel The Limits of Might - Michel Warschawski 4 Elections and Regime Crisis - Against the Current 6 Reproductive Rights USA Jumping Through Hoops - Dianne Feeley 8 Femicide in A Tale of Two Cities - Kathy Lowe 10 Aids Crisis Time to Deliver! - Julia Barnett 11 Narrow victory for the Swedish right - Anders Svensson 12 Brazil For an alternative in Brazil - Left Front 14 Review Liberation, Then What? - John Saul on reviewed - Jeffery R Webber 17 The revival of a political tradition - Celia Hart's new book reviewed - John Lister 20 Our History Alain Krivine and - Alain Krivine 22 FI Youth Camp 2006 Pasta, politics and parties - Thomas Eisler , Penelope Duggan 26 European Anti-Capitalist Left Call for Anti-G8 mobilisation in Rostok - European Anti-Capitalist Left 27 Debate The Labor Aristocracy Myth - Charlie Post 29 Eleven Theses on the Resurgence of Islamic Fundamentalism - Gilbert Achcar 38 Twelve comments plus one more, to continue the debate with John Holloway - Daniel Bensaïd 42 Theory The Mole and the Locomotive - Daniel Bensaïd 44 The of Trotsky's "Results and Prospects" - Michael Löwy 49 Dialectics and Revolution - Michael Löwy 51 The Challenge of in the Life and Thought of - Paul Le Blanc 57 Uneven and Combined Development and the Sweep of History: Focus on Europe - Paul Le Blanc 60 Letter to Readers International Viewpoint needs €3,670 - Chris Brooks 72

INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT is a review of news and analysis published under the auspices of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International. IV appears online at www.internationalviewpoint.org and in a monthly pdf version. Editorial office: PO Box 112, Manchester M12 5DW UK ISSN 1294-2925 2 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Lebanon Against resolution 1701, against the sending of NATO troops

Gilbert Achcar

Lebanon has, in recent years, been a privileged terrain for the shift brought about by the ending of the very specific system of “balance of powers” mutually necessary for the two superpowers until 1990. Security Council Resolution 1559 (2004) on the subject of the Lebanon is both the most flagrant violation of the UN Charter and a monument to hypocrisy. Adopted without any submission to the SC from the Lebanese government, it proclaims its attachment to the sovereignty of Lebanon while interfering in its internal affairs in violation of article 2, point 7, of the Charter, which prohibits any intervention “in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state”. It would, moreover, require an extraordinary “Could you be brought to use force against UNIFIL has been in place since 1978 and is dose of naivety to believe for a single instant Hezbollah? We could be brought to do it with accepted by all the Lebanese political forces. in the attachment of the permanent members respect to any element that would hinder our In spite of its obvious ineffectiveness as to of the SC to the sovereignty of any state other freedom of movement or would represent a the protection of Lebanon against Israeli than their own. Resolution 1559 - and the fact threat to the population or to peace. [...] encroachments on its sovereignty, and its that it was adopted in 2004, and not before, inaction in the face of the invasion of "What would UNIFIL do in the case of a raid amply demonstrates it - fits in an obvious Lebanon by Israel in 1982 and its occupation by the Israeli army on the Lebanon? fashion into the US action against in the of south Lebanon for 18 years, it is a precious witness to these violations of sovereignty. course of their occupation of , targeting "Unhappily, since the cessation of hostilities, both of Teheran’s allies: the Syrian regime there have been more Israeli violations than What is important is 1) to reject the profound and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. violations by Lebanese armed elements. [...] and dangerous change in the UNIFIL Could it be brought to use force against Israel mandate represented by resolution 1701, and Resolution 1701 of August 11, 2006 is every in this case? I think that Israel wants 2) to oppose the use of UNIFIL II and the UN bit as flagrant in this respect. It was adopted international law to be upheld, and given that cover in order to continue the war for the after several weeks of stonewalling of the SC responsibility and sovereignty hand in hand common objectives of Israel, Washington and by Washington to allow Israel time to pursue in Lebanon, would assume its responsibilities in Lebanon. What is developing is the its aggression. Its iniquity is blatant inasmuch in respecting international law.” rehearsal of a practice symptomatic of the as it fails to condemn Israel’s criminal new era: the use of the UN as fig leaf for aggression, mentioning only “Hezbollah’s Resolution 1701 is filled with deliberately military operations led by Washington with attack on Israel” and the “hostilities in ambiguous formulations that raise the NATO and other allies, as is the case in Lebanon and in Israel” (sic). prospect of a combat mission coming under Afghanistan since December 2001. Chapter VII of the Charter, which It shows a flagrant hypocrisy in demanding Washington and Paris invoked directly in In good logic, an intervention force should be that Israel "cease its offensive military their draft resolution distributed on August 5 made up of troops from neutral countries. Yet operations” without even demanding the and rejected by Hezbollah and the Lebanese Washington and Paris are in no way neutral in immediate lifting of the blockade it is government. Before these objections, the Lebanese conflict. No force allied to the imposing on Lebanon - as if a blockade was Washington and Paris abandoned the idea of US will be considered as neutral in a conflict not an eminently offensive military a new international force in Lebanon, between one of Washington’s principal allies operation. contenting themselves with the UNIFIL force and another state. That is why all those who already in position. desire peace in the Middle East and are The iniquity is just as flagrant when the new concerned by the US projects in this part of UNIFIL - which, remarkably, is deployed Nonetheless, the mandate of this latter has the world should energetically oppose the only on the territory of the occupied country been profoundly altered, not only in the sense sending to and presence in Lebanon of troops - is supposed to ensure that its zone of indicated above, but also as to its zone of from NATO member countries. deployment is not used for “hostile activities activity, with UNIFIL II authorised to deploy of any kind”. Resolution 1701 does not say a along the Lebanese-Syrian border and control A protest movement in this sense has begun word on the protection of Lebanese territory Lebanon’s aerial and maritime access. in the countries in question, from to , via , and . The task against the repeated aggression by Israel, In sum, the spirit of this resolution is to treat occupying power in Lebanon for 18 years is all the more necessary in that Israel gives Lebanon as if it was the aggressor! In this itself the “right of the strongest” to reject the (without speaking of the portion of territory sense it represents an attempt to continue the participation in UNIFIL of troops from occupied since 1967). Israeli war in the Lebanon in another fashion, certain Muslim countries, on the pretext that which could imply war operations in the To get an idea of the very biased character of they are not neutral in the Israeli-Arab short or medium term. That is why it should conflict. the vision of UNIFIL upheld by the European be vigorously denounced and rejected by states that will provide its backbone, read the anybody who upholds the spirit of the UN Gilbert Achcar grew up in Lebanon and teaches interview given to the newspaper Le Monde Charter. political science at the University of Paris-VIII. His (August 31, 2006) by Jean-Marie Guéhenno, best-selling book The Clash of Barbarisms just came out in a second expanded edition and a book of his head of the UN’s peacekeeping operations. It That does not mean rejecting the presence of dialogues with on the Middle East, requires no commentary. UNIFIL along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier. Perilous Power, is forthcoming. 3 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Israel The Limits of Might

Michel Warschawski

This morning (13 Sept. - ed) the Israeli newspapers headlines Confronted with the growing himself... why after more than announced that Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert, agreed to the sympathy towards Hizbollah and 150 killed in the last three formation of a fact-finding commission, headed by a senior his sensational ability to hit the weeks, they are still trying one judge, in order to evaluate all the aspects, political as well as heart of Israel with hundreds of Qassam, one more rocket. Why military, of the Israeli war in Lebanon. This commission is rockets, the declared objective the logic of the IDF, which replacing the various non-independent inquiry commissions was reduced to “destroy the calculates its strength by the ability of Hizbollah to send previously established by the PM and the army. quantity of steel at its disposal, rockets on the Israeli territory.” why this logic doesn’t work on Two weeks after the colossal air them...” It is not yet what a majority of Political as well as military strikes on Hizbollah, the number Israelis, and more and more initiatives are usually evaluated of rockets hitting Israel, and The fact that the Israeli army has senior politicians are demanding according to their initial provoking serious damages to all not been able to achieve even - a national independent inquiry objectives. A first problem we the northern part of the country one objective, and that after a commission, having juridical are confronted with, is the lack is even bigger than before! month Hizbollah is still able to power, like after the 1973 war or of clearly defined objectives, or, Another failure. Finally - for strike hundreds of rockets on the massacres of Sabra and more precisely, the fact that the today - the objective has once Israel is perceived in Israel as a Shatilla, in 1982. Last week, stated objectives of the war have again been enlarged: to restore national tragedy. “Does someone 60,000 civilians, led by reserve changed many times. First, the the Israeli capacity of dissuasion think we have won?” asks Yoel soldiers and officers who have declared aim was to release the and its image as a local military Marcus, “who believe that the fought in Lebanon, made this Israeli prisoners of war captured demand loud and clear, and one by Hezbollah. Then, few days super-power. promises of Ehud Olmert at the can expect that such a after the beginning of the Israeli commission may still be offensive, PM Olmert The fact that after a month Hizbollah is still established. announced that the objective able to strike hundreds of rockets on Israel is was to eradicate Hizbollah, not perceived in Israel as a national tragedy. If one had still doubts about the less! The method suggested by pathetic failure of the Israeli the Israeli High command was This objective too has not been beginning of the war to eradicate military offensive in Lebanon, characteristic of the narrow- achieved, on the contrary. As Hezbollah and to finish with the the decision of the Prime mind of military senior Zwy Barel, Haaretz expert for threat of rockets on Israel, was Minister put the things straight: personnel and their inability to the Arab world explains: “Why fulfilled?” [3] 33 days of colossal use of learn anything from history, would someone in Lebanon be military force didn’t bring any including their own one: dissuaded, when he is witnessing But the conclusion drawn by the substantial result, except massive terror operations against its houses destroyed, the military high command, most of massive destruction and horrible Lebanon, in order to “teach the children of its neighbors and the Israeli leadership and many massacres. Haaretz editorial is Lebanese government and their parents killed by hundreds, Israeli commentators was still to unambiguous on the failure of people” what is the price of and having almost no chance to increase the offensive, to the Israeli offensive: “There is letting Hezbollah act from start school-year on time? He is mobilize more reserve units, to no room for mistake: despite the Lebanese territory. The result of now convinced that the war is try to invade and occupy parts of attempts of the Prime Minister undiscriminating destructions not anymore against Hizbollah Lebanon. The same Yoel and the IDF generals to count the and killings in Lebanon only, but against Lebanon, Marcus, signor commentator in IDF achievements, towards its (including Beirut airport, more against himself, whether he is Haaretz, concluded his article on coming end, the war is perceived than hundred bridges, power Christian, Druze or Shiite.” [2] the total failure of the Israeli in the area and in the world, but stations etc) was to create a In his article, Barel suggests to offensive with the following also in the eyes of the Israeli massive pro-Hizbollah the Israeli leaders to try to learn appeal: “It is now clear that the public, as a painful defeat, with sentiment among the Lebanese something from the Palestinian fight is not on Lebanon. We are negative far reaching people, including large sectors experience: “Whoever doesn’t not confronted with a local implications...” [1] of the Christian population. understand the formula can ask organization, but the arm linked 4 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Israel

The Israeli army is still active in Lebanon, but it is definitely an army which has suffered a defeat. and acting on behalf Iran and territories, and witnessing the ., Al Qaeda and the massive use of force and the followers of the path which brutality of the Israeli soldiers started with the Twin Towers. against civilians, we use to tell Israel is not only defending them: “Big heroes! Your war is Kiryat Shmoneh, Hedera and against unarmed women and may be Tel Aviv; it became, children, and you dare calling it against its own will, a partner in “confrontation or even “a the war against Islam battle”! The kind of wars you are fundamentalism, what Bush strong at is wars against helpless names “the axis of evil”, in this civilians! But when you will be part of the world... The confronted with real fighters, Peace demonstrators clash with police in Tel Aviv conclusion must be to take a big you will not know how to fight, breath and to initiate a fight with and you will either die or run all the might we have at our away like rabbits!” And indeed disposal, in the air and in the Israeli soldiers are experiencing ground, until we are able to a war with well trained and well neutralize Hezbollah, as a motivated fighters, and proving want an immediate revenge, in there will be a second round, if military militia on our borders. to be completely un-efficient. order to show to the world, and only because it is part of the neo- We must reach a cease-fire when The number of casualties is to the US neo-conservative conservative strategy of global we are the winning side, to show huge, compared to the relatively leadership, that it has still its non-ending preemptive war for them that even the small Satan small quantity of Hizbollah capacity of deterrence, and can the re-colonization of the world has teeth... ” [4] fighters, and one should ask play the role allocated to the IDF and the establishment of a what it may be if Israel dare to in the global non-ending “Great Middle East” under full Finally, after more destructions attack Syria, not only from the preemptive war, and those who US hegemony. And we too shall and killings - according to air, where definitely Israel has believe that Israel needs first to prepared for this next round. international organizations, tremendous superiority. re-organize its armed forces, in more than 80% of the bombs Michel Warschawski is a journalist order to be able to win. The were thrown in the last week of The Israeli experience is and writer and a founder of the demand for a reaches and a new Alternative Information Center (AIC) in combat - and many more obviously reminding the US Israel. His books include On the casualties in the Israeli army, experience in Iraq: a powerful opportunity to how what the guys are “really able to do” is Border (South End Press) and Olmert has been obliged to army, but too powerful, too self- Towards an Open Tomb - the Crisis of accept the UN Security Council confident, too arrogant and too very strong; the demands to put Israeli Society (Monthly Review resolution calling not for a spoiled to be able to fight with order in the Israeli mess, is Press). strong too. cease-fire, but for a “stop to the efficiency that the huge NOTES hostilities”. The Israeli army is means at its disposal may have In the next few months, we will still active in Lebanon, but it is led to expect they will [1] Haaretz editorial, August 8 definitely an army which has demonstrate. know which of these currents suffered a defeat. will win, depending among [2] Haaretz, August 6, 2006 The Israeli political as well as other, on the conclusions of the [3] Haaretz editorial, August 8 Often, during demonstrations in military establishment is, right various fact-finding and inquiry the Palestinian occupied now divided; between those who commissions. But in both cases, [4] idem 5 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

United States Elections and Regime Crisis

Against the Current

WILL THE DEMOCRATS “regain control of Congress”? Will Joseph Lieberman change parties? Will Hillary Clinton be the Democratic frontrunner for 2008? How much does any of this matter? The November election will the oil-fuelled empire; electoral Iraq war: ’bleeding the Bush regime to death’ highlight, as usual, two sets of rigging and the stripping away of all labor - in that period, Nixon’s fall, however, that questions - the sound-and- fury voting rights; the step-by-step segment was moving into the ones that generate most of the replacement of democratic rights compared to the present level of Republican column where it has campaign rhetoric and media by presidentialist decree with the struggle, above all the incipient now become firmly planted. speculation; and the crucial assent of Congress and the collapse of the U.S. labor Despite this, Nixon’s failures in issues that will be generally be courts - in short, most of the movement after three decades of war, domestic crimes and the ignored, except for the one that questions that shape real a corporate and government simply can’t be skipped over: the people’s lives. onset of economic crisis offensive against working and American defeat in Iraq. appeared to be propelling the Meanwhile, the new Middle East There’s no doubt that people in America. to the stature war - Israel’s assault on Lebanon mainstream national politics in Underlying the general triviality of the official - has proven what the Democrats America is polarized, bitterly debate is a dual reality: the collapse of public are: as rabid a war party, as divided and incredibly vicious. cynical and careless (especially At the same time, it’s almost confidence in the Bush regime, accompanied with other nations’ lives) as devoid of substance, except for a by the extreme decay of the Democratic anything the Republicans have few issues like preserving the Party as a meaningful opposition party, to offer. badly shredded fabric of abortion rights, where the The Democrats retain an of a hegemonic national party - The superficial mudslinging Democrats remain under enormous electoral apparatus, an opportunity that came in with debates will feature such topics pressure from the women’s but their social base is highly the 1974 midterm election and as whether the Democrats are movement. Underlying the segmented. Organized labor, quickly passed after 1976 with “soft on terror” or the general triviality of the official such as it is, remains the debacles of the Republicans “incompetent” in debate is a dual reality: the predominantly in the administration. Above all, as a failing to find bin Laden or collapse of public confidence in Democratic fold although this loyal party of American letting North Korea go nuclear; the Bush regime, accompanied support is somewhat eroded; , the Democrats fully which is the party of by the extreme decay of the African-American voters are participated in the restructuring “irresponsible spending” on Democratic Party as a overwhelmingly Democratic, that attacked the social programs or tax cuts; meaningful opposition party, i.e. which is why rightwing voter and set in motion the destruction who’s best at “securing the a force that can seriously fraud and intimidation is of the movement that was the border;” which politicians confront the political drive directed principally against party’s main base. promote “traditional values” and toward the far right (to the them; Republican inroads into who’s most corrupt (between degree it even wants to do so). the Latino vote are likely to be The Democratic Party which there is, admittedly, a blunted by the sheer viciousness establishment today is fractured strong positive correlation), and Some historical perspective: The of the right wing’s anti- over the Iraq war - with John various other rubbish. last time a Republican immigrant crusade. But much of Kerry (“I opposed the war before presidency was so discredited by the Democrats’ base is now in I voted for it, before I voted The issues to be debated poorly- a failed war, revelations of the white suburban “socially against it”) having finally gotten or-not-at-all involve the criminal conspiracy and global liberal, fiscally conservative” around to opposing it, after a explosive health care crisis, the economic uncertainty was the sector, whose loyalties are fickle fashion, while Senators Hillary immediate prospect of a crisis of the Richard Nixon and diluted. Clinton and Joseph Lieberman catastrophic wider war with regime in 1973-4 at the height of continue to be so committed to Iran; the hemorrhaging of the Watergate scandal. The Before 1968, to be sure, the this failed imperial venture that decent- paying jobs in the U.S. difference between then and now Democrats’ hegemony in they are being challenged from economy; catastrophic climate lies above the relative Congress still rested on the most the party’s base, which hates the change, which proceeds apace as strength of social movements - rotten of foundations, the racist war, and in Lieberman’s case our rulers wage endless war for antiwar, civil rights and above Dixiecrat South. By the time of actually dumped by Democratic 6 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

United States

primary voters. In any case, muscular Cold War , unlike their voters, the represented by The New Democrats do not want to stop Republic, where Democrats the Iraq war - cynically, they would promote tough foreign want the Bush administration to and military (but multilateralist) absorb the blame for “bungling” policies while reviving social Hillary Clinton with Joseph Lieberman (far right) it and for the ongoing carnage; programs at home. On the right, democracy, civil and anything. For our part, we’re and the congressional The and its workers’ rights mounted by the Democrats’ foaming-at-the- ideological cousin the looking for an escape from the Bush regime, the right wing and mouth performance during the Democratic Leadership Council quicksand of a rotten two-party corporate America, the USA destruction of Lebanon shows promote a centrist “middle system. At a time when PATRIOT Act and domestic they hope to share the “credit” class” perspective in place of organized labor is at its weakest for lining up support for war fighting for “special interests” spying, to say nothing of since the 1920s, we look to the Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and with Syria and Iran. like labor and people of color. promise represented by the secret renditions, on which most On the liberal wing of the explosive new immigrant If the Democrats aren’t opposing Democrats have nothing to say? spectrum stands Michael workers’ rights movement. The the war, what then are they Tomasky of The American Second: What about the war? magnificent self-organization of arguing about? An important Prospect, whose views are Just because it may conveniently this past spring’s immigrant New York Times article by summarized by Robin Toner: Robin Toner gives some of the bleed the Bush administration to rights mobilizations shows that answers (“Optimistic, Mr. Tomasky argues that the death doesn’t mean the question the situation is rather precarious Democrats Debate the Party’s Democratic Party needs to stand will go away for the Democrats. for both parties. Vision. Seeking Big Goals and a for more than diversity and It’s not just that American voters Clear Alternative to rights; it needs to return to its will want to know, not only in First and foremost, it’s social ,” May 9, 2006: New Deal, New Frontier and 2006 but also 2008, what the movements like this that A1, A18). The party’s “analysts, Great Society roots and run as Democrats actually think about represent a hopeful future - and both liberals and moderates, are the party of the common good - these issues. The fact that the second, initiatives that can give convinced that the Democrats the philosophy, he says, that Democratic Party will not them an organized political face a moment of historic brought the nation Social demand ending the war means expression. That’s the potential that any promises it makes to fix opportunity...But some of these Security, the Marshall Plan, the represented by Green party a broken society are lies, which analysts argue that the party Peace Corps and civil rights campaigns, some of which we cannot be kept. A party that needs something more than a legislation. After years of what cover in this issue, in states like pastiche of policy proposals. It he calls “rapacious social doesn’t oppose the current war, California, Wisconsin and needs a broader vision, a Darwinism” under Mr. Bush, and the next one, has no claim to elsewhere. We need the kind of narrative, they say, to return to Mr. Tomasky argues that the represent the antiwar movement power and govern effectively - country is ready for the idea that - or to lead the country. The fact party these campaigns point what some describe as an “we’re all in this together - that the Democrats intend to toward - a party that will be unapologetic appeal to the postindustrial America, the inherit power as the Bush regime genuinely independent of ‘common good,’ to big goals like globalized world and especially falls apart from its own imperial corporate power, with no expanding affordable health the post-9/11 world in which arrogance and incompetence commitment to America-as- coverage and to occasional free peoples have to unite to doesn’t mean they can or will world-ruler, loyal to the real sacrifice for the sake of the fight new threats - together.” clean up the mess it leaves needs of real people instead of nation as a whole.” behind. the elites and the military Tomasky’s liberal enthusiasm machine. A variety of ideas are out there. evades at least two fundamental Our purpose here, in any case, is not to advise or salvage a Thomas Friedman, the Times’ questions. First: What is meant It’s no longer about a lesser evil. designated apostle of by the “new threats” that “free pseudo-opposition party that has It’s about the politics we need globalization, proposes peoples” have to fight essentially given up on reform, for human survival. financing economic renovation “together”? Is it the “threat” of ceded the ideological initiative and reviving national purpose by Iran? Of immigrants? Something to the Republican right wing, Against the Current is the magazine of taxing gasoline up to $4 a gallon. else from outside? Or is the main and pretty much allowed the , a radical socialist Others suggest a return to threat from inside: the assault on Bush gang to get away with regroupment in the United States. 7 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Reproductive Rights USA Jumping Through Hoops

Dianne Feeley

It’s clear that women can make intelligent decisions for their lives when they are “If you’re old enough to get supported in their goals and encouraged to consider their full range of options. This pregnant, you’re old enough begins with reproductive freedom, but needs to include access to education and health to decide that you don’t care, the right to a decent and meaningful job, the right to have a family and raise it in a safe environment. It includes quality day care for parents who need it, as most do. want to be pregnant.” No matter how many obstacles the radical right attempts to put in front of women, another $38 million in matching funds. Fifty- women have an objective need to circumvent them. one percent of sex education programs require abstinence to be portrayed as the Yet in 2006 opponents of reproductive rights In the case of South Dakota, 38,000 people preferred option for adolescents, although have continued to move on several different signed a petition to prevent the anti-abortion information about contraception is permitted, fronts: law from taking effect and demanded that the and 35%, including half of all the districts in issue be placed on the ballot for a vote this the South, require an abstinence-only In March the South Dakota legislature passed November. Oglala Sioux Tribal President program. a law, subsequently signed by Governor Cecelia Fire Thunder announced at the time Mike Rounds, banning abortions in the state. “I will personally establish a Planned Not only are these programs out of step with In defiance of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Parenthood clinic on my own land, which is the effective evidence about how to teach sex this law includes no provision to protect the within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge education, but they are out of step with health of a pregnant woman. Before the Reservation where the state of South Dakota reality. intervention of activists who opposed the ban has absolutely no jurisdiction.” [1] Restrictions on Abortion the law was scheduled to take effect July 1. The Jackson clinic has gathered a network of Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision This summer the Jackson Women’s Health supporters to defend the right of women to seek abortions. legalizing abortion, the right wing has sought Organization, Mississippi’s lone remaining to prevent hospitals from performing the abortion clinic, has faced two waves of anti- Letters to the editor in hundreds of procedure, restricted clinics with a range of abortion protests. newspapers across the country have debated regulations and harassed medical personal the issue of criminalizing adults who aid both at the clinics and at their homes. On the By a lopsided 65 to 34 vote, the Senate pregnant minors, with the vast majority federal level, the government excludes recently passed a bill to make it a federal pointing to the reality that most teenagers do abortion from medical coverage for women crime for any adult to take a pregnant minor tell at least their mothers. The handful of in the military, denies the procedure to most across state lines for an abortion without her those who don’t have good reason not to tell- women receiving public assistance and, both parents’ consent. The House of they may have seen what their parents did to at home and abroad, has defunded family Representatives passed an even stricter an older sister and want to shield themselves planning programs that provide abortion version last year so if the two houses can from abuse. services. agree on a compromise bill, President Bush would gladly sign it into law. Both medical professionals and networks of Given that abortions are not available in over reproductive rights supporters have opposed 90% of all the counties throughout the United On August 1 the Food and Drug the FDA’s age restriction on Plan B. States (and never have been), women in rural Administration (FDA) announced its plans to areas are forced to travel several hours to a make the morning-after pill known as Plan B Years ago the right wing decided the best way clinic. While 35% of women between 15-45 available over the counter for women 18 and to attack sex education was to demand that obtain an abortion at some point in their older. This is the first time the FDA ever such programs teach abstinence as the only reproductive life, one third live in the proposed a separate age status for a non- effective birth control method. They insist counties where there are no clinics. Lack of prescription drug. Plan B, which contains condoms lead to venereal disease while access means a woman is unable to obtain the abortion raises one’s risk of breast cancer and concentrated amounts of the hormone abortion as early as she would like in her infertility. Despite the lack of any evidence pregnancy cycle. It can even mean a more progestin, is the most common form of for such claims, several states have legislated expensive, second-semester abortion, raising emergency contraception. Available in some these sex “education” programs. For many the possibilities of medical complications. European countries for more than 20 years, young women, especially in conservative Plan B can prevent a pregnancy within 72 states like Mississippi, there are few In 1992 the Supreme Court placed significant hours of intercourse, but is most effective alternative sources for birth control restrictions on abortion rights. In Planned within the first 24. As an over-the-counter information. Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. drug with an age restriction, chances are that Casey the court ruled that states had the right it will only be available where pharmacists Although U.S. educational policy is to pass laws that don’t recreate an “undue are present. decentralized, the priority set by federal burden.” Both supporters of women’s rights funds has a big impact on local school and their opponents saw the case as a In each case supporters of reproductive boards. Washington currently earmarks setback-the right wing was hoping for freedom have organized to oppose these approximately $80 million to promote overturning legal abortion while most actions. abstinence-only education and states provide supporters of women’s reproductive freedom 8 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Reproductive Rights USA

realized the battle over which restrictions would be considered “undue” had just begun.

Within the last year approximately 500 anti- abortion bills were introduced in state legislatures and a couple dozen were signed into law. More have been introduced this year. All this harassing legislation has an impact on clinics; there are now Pro-choice activists on the march approximately 10% fewer clinics than a Drs. George Tiller (Witchita, KS), Barnett manufacturer reapplied for permission to sell decade ago. Slepian (Buffalo, NY) and David Gunn it to women ages 16 and up. When, in August Today 32 states and the District of Columbia (Pensacola, FL), and Gunn’s escort, John 2005, the FDA announced it would delay prohibit the use of state funds except when Britton. making a decision, Dr. Susan F. Wood, federal funds are available; 46 allow director of the Office of Women’s Health at This summer both Operation Save America individual health care providers to refuse to the FDA, resigned in protest. (descendent of Operation Rescue) and Oh participate in an abortion and 43 allow Saratoga picketed the Jackson Women’s In response to this foot dragging, the institutions to refuse to perform abortions. Health Organization, which stayed open Morning-After Pill Conspiracy, a grassroots Twenty-two states require parental consent throughout. The protesters, ranging from 25- coalition of feminist groups, has been for a teenager seeking an abortion. Only two 100, brought their signature blown-up fetus engaged in civil disobedience. Over 4,000 require the signature of both parents; most photos. Operation Save America protesters women have signed a pledge to distribute the provide for an additional mechanism also targeted the neighborhood of the clinic’s pills to those who need them, period. Annie whereby the teenager can seek a bypass. gynecologist, Dr. Joseph Booker. They went Tummino, lead plaintiff in a suit filed against Eleven states require parental notification; door to door, telling his neighbors that the FDA stated, “If you’re old enough to get seven others have passed legislation but it is Booker was “a baby killer.” Throughout the pregnant, you’re old enough to decide that permanently enjoined. (95,000 women 18 or protests Dr. Booker, a 62-year old African you don’t want to be pregnant.” younger had an abortion in 2000.) American, had a police escort. But like other abortion providers, he took it all in stride. According to a 2006 study by the Guttmacher Twenty-eight states mandate a woman must Institute, there are 6.4 million pregnancies a be given “counseling” before an abortion that A number of feminist organizations, most year in the United States, 3.1 million of includes: the supposed link between abortion notably NOW and the Feminist Majority, which are unintended and 1.3 million that and breast cancer (3 states), the ability of a organized to support the Jackson clinic, end in abortion. In the seven years since the fetus to feel pain (4 states), long-term mental holding rallies in defense of women’s last such study, the overall unintended- health consequences for a woman (3 states) reproductive healthcare and fundraisers for pregnancy rate (about half of all pregnancies) or the availability of services and funding the extra expenses the clinic faced. has remained unchanged-but women below should the woman decide to carry the the poverty level were four times as likely to pregnancy to term (26 states). Twenty-four Restricting the Emergency Pill have an unplanned pregnancy and five times require a one-day waiting period. This is a as likely to have an unplanned birth. The ultra particular problem for women traveling any Like abortion, the right wing has made right, however, has a one-size-fits-all distance-recent statistics indicate that 25% of emergency contraception a battleground. The solution: poor women who aren’t married the women obtaining abortions travel more right opposes it because it represents a should be encouraged to get married! than 50 miles; 8% travel more than 100 “slippery slope.” Some even claim it works miles. the same way an abortion does and therefore While most of the right-wing’s rhetoric is “taking a life.” against women’s bodies has revolved around Clinic Blockades restricting access to abortion and attacking In December 2003 the FDA’s advisory panel lesbians and others regarded by the right as These institutional strategies accompany the voted 28-0 that Plan B was “safe for use in a sexually deviant, their agenda is much larger. right wing’s in-your-face actions at clinics. nonprescription setting,” voting 23 to 4 in They seek to reestablish the “traditional Twenty years ago they were able to mobilize favor of granting it over-the counter-status. family” as they imagine it so that “values” week-long protests of several thousand; But following the 2003 vote, Dr. W. David and “stability” will cover over the social and supporters of women’s rights organized Hager, a Christian conservative and Bush economic problems that confront Americans counter pickets. The radical right didn’t just appointee to the panel, stated his fear that if today. That ideology just isn’t in synch with picket. They attempted to “save” women Plan B were freely available, it would reality. from abortions, stalked medical personnel, increase sexual promiscuity among traced the license plates of any cars going to teenagers. NOTES the clinic, and put out wanted posters. In the end Congress was forced to enact legislation In May 2004 the FDA denied the drug [1] Fire Thunder was subsequently impeached by the Tribal Council for allegedly soliciting donations on behalf protecting the clinics, but not before the manufacturer’s application, citing some of of the tribe for a proposed clinic without the council’s murders of doctors performing abortions- Hager’s reasoning. Two months later the approval. She is challenging her impeachment. 9 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Femicide in Latin America A Tale of Two Cities

Kathy Lowe

“Femicide” is the new word in Latin America. A new word for an old crisis. It refers to an epidemic of rapes and murders of women in the region that for years have gone unsolved and unpunished. Violence and sexual abuse against women remain rife across Latin America. But they have reached horrific extremes in City and in ’s bleak, free trade town of Cuidad Juarez across the border from the US. In these two notorious centres of femicide the abduction and brutal killings of women have become almost routine.

In Ciudad Juarez, according to human rights to the Mexican President. Actors Jane Fonda organizations, over 400 women have met and Sally Field are among the celebrities who violent deaths since 1993. Hardly a week have made solidarity visits. Hollywood, it goes by without another body being seems, even plans a film starring Jennifer discovered dumped in the desert or on waste Lopez as a reporter investigating the ground behind the town. The murdered murders. women are nearly all young and poor - students, domestics, or factory workers from NGOs and human rights activists have helped Some Mexican women’s groups argue that the local foreign-owned assembly plants distraught relatives of the slain Guatemalan the sight of young single women migrants known as maquiladoras. Most have been women to publicise their cases. The mother from the poor south of the country working in Juarez factories and living independently raped and tortured to death. of Maria Isabel Véliz, murdered in 2001 at may have made them a particular target in a the age of 15, brought her case to the Inter- profoundly misogynist society. The picture is almost identical in Guatemala American Commission on Human Rights City. Guatemala’s femicide has claimed the (IACHR) in January 2005. And in March this lives of nearly 2,200 women and girls since Women’s lives come cheap suggests Yanette year the Organization of American States Bautista, Amnesty International’s 2001. In the lawless capital women live in heard testimonies from a number of families. investigator of violence against women. Last constant fear of being snatched from the year, at a presentation of Amnesty’s streets by gangs or forced off buses at The Guatemalan government set up a investigation of the killings of women in gunpoint into empty lots. National Commission on Femicide with Guatemala, she argued: ‘The atmosphere of senior officials and politicians. In Mexico too A dawn police patrol regularly recovers from tolerance by the (Guatemalan) state and alleyways and rubbish dumps bodies often the chamber of deputies created a Special societal indifference toward all forms of unrecognizable due to torture and sexual Commission on Femicide and the attorney violence against women contribute to the mutilation. In the killers’ methods there are general established a prosecutor’s office for feminicide’. strong echoes of ferocious attacks on women violent crimes against women. Clearly in these neo-liberal metropolitan used by US-backed government troops and Yet there have been few arrests and even wastelands with their social disintegration death squads in Guatemala’s long civil war fewer convictions. The women go on dying. and, in the case of Guatemala, a recent that ended in 1996. Most of the perpetrators history of war, there are few brakes on the of those wartime crimes are still at large. The Mexican and Guatemalan governments most ferocious expressions of machismo. By In both Guatemala City and Cuidad Juarez blame gang violence, drug-trafficking and contrast in , , and parts of the dead women’s families and advocacy corruption. These problems of lawlessness Brazil, where the left has not been defeated groups have themselves been threatened as affect everyone, they argue, not just women. and class solidarity is strong, women are they have tried to seek justice. Says Amnesty helping to lead inspiring struggles. Violence But while acknowledging that the number of International: ‘Turning to the police is often against them may not have been eliminated men killed is much higher than women in not a safe option as so many officers have but where they are respected and valued as Guatemala, the UN Special Rapporteur Yakin themselves been implicated in corruption and equals by men and able to organize violent crimes.’ Erturk concluded after a 2004 investigation themselves to articulate their demands, they there that the female cases “have a different are in a much stronger position to pursue The Juarez outrages have provoked national dimension”. This, she said, was due to the their liberation. and international protests, a stream of human way in which women are being killed. “They Kathy Lowe is an author and journalist, and a rights reports, condemnation by the UN are raped, mutilated, and this has a terrible supporter of Socialist Resistance in England and Human Rights Commission and delegations impact on women and society in general.” Wales. 10 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Aids Crisis Time to Deliver!

Julia Barnett

The 16th International AIDS Conference Time to Deliver held in Toronto from August 13-18 has ended only to raise more questions, more political demands, and a whole new sense of urgency for those living and dying from AIDS on a global level. AIDS activists who are entering the second One AIDS activist said it a long time ago “Women’s rights are human rights” as one of decade of activism in North America are tired “AIDS is like a lens of the world around us. the major demands were chanted. Another and those who are still alive continue to hold AIDS reflects and manifests itself as it exists significant demonstration organized during the banners and demands of those who have in the world.” It crosses societies through AIDS 2006 was by Sex Workers and their died. Unlike most social movements the interconnecting and by multiple forms of supporters from over 21 countries demanding AIDS movement has grown and expanded in oppressions based on racism, their own place not only at the conference, many ways that has created a genuine global sexism/misogyny, class, the suppression of but also within their own countries. They response. gender identities, the oppression of sexual demanded that sex work be recognized as a practices/desires and various forms of drug form of work that should include health Another crucial factor is the numbers of those use and draconian drug policies. insurance, paid vacation, and job security. As becoming infected world wide at the rate of with all women, Sex trade workers demanded close to 40 million while thousands die The contradictions spu out while capitalist human rights and workers rights, and to be everyday. If this conference did anything it hegemony by the pharmaceuticals and treated with respect as they are key people in gave a space for activists to make the global through government inaction that breeds the fight for AIDS prevention strategies demands necessary to strategize, and fight neglect, stigma, red tape, and miss guided within all communities around the world. policies and practices increases on a daily back. basis. Here, within the Canadian State The Harm It has been gay men and lesbians for the most Reduction Movement has grown from the The international AIDS Conference focused part who have been in the forefront of the early epidemic when we first began passing on the theme of Time to Deliver. While movement in North America who created out clean sterile injecting equipment researchers debated and shared papers on clear, and non compromising demands from including syringes to injection drug users to a new vaccines and new promising treatments the State for prevention materials, access to more current comprehensive strategy that and other scientific data, demonstrations treatment and care, and human rights through includes safer crack use equipment and were held on ARV’s (HIV treatment) access Narcan distribution to heroin users to prevent comprehensive AIDS strategies from both to developing nations immediately without overdose and through advocating for drug governments and other institutions on an pharmaceuticals or funders interference and policy reform. We have seen since the 1980s international basis and have won on many at a cost for countries to develop their own the drug policy reform and Harm Reduction fronts. generic medicine and dispensing rather than movements growing not only through out the stay dependent on the corporations that hold Many of these leaders in the movement have Canadian State but internationally except for the patens. for the most part died. However, new voices in the U.S. from developing countries and voices of The largest demonstration was the Women’s The most recent demonstration during the women and youth that did not have a voice in and girls March and rally on the Monday International AIDS Conference reflected this the past are emerging, and as a result, we are morning of the opening day not only did struggle on a Federal Level. From Quebec to learning and making links as never before. speakers focus on the numbers of women activists gathered to demand that testing positive around the world at the first North American safe injection site Although the media hype was focused on disproportionate rates than men but on the “Insite” remain open. It is under imminent “the two Bill’s (Bill Clinton and Bill and fundamental need for women to have control threat of closure pending a decision by the Melinda Gates) and celebrities, those of us over our own reproduction, access to general Conservative government Health Minister to working, living with and activists in the and reproductive health care at no cost, the exempt the site from Federal legislation AIDS movement became even more right to education, job training (beyond bead under The Controlled Drugs and Substances convinced that the demand for making NGO initiatives) and viable Act section 56 in order to remain open. comprehensive AIDS strategies that links this economic independence from men and the movement to a broader anti - globalization end to both male violence against women and Over 600 injection drug users frequent the framework is crucial if we are to stop the both State sanctioned and individual rape of site on a daily basis. Hundreds of people have spread of HIV in the decades to come. women and girls. prevented overdose, HIV infection, Hepatitis 11 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Sweden Narrow victory for the Swedish right

A commentary on the Swedish election Anders Svensson

C, and have obtain drug treatment, and health The Swedish election resulted in change of power. For the first time in 30 years care services by accessing Insite. This was Sweden will have a right majority-government. But the election victory for the only one of many demands and political conservative alliance was a narrow one. They only got two percent more votes than pressure the AIDS movement has placed on the left-parties, 48% against 46%. The number of parliamentary seats ended 178 for the conservative government led by Stephen the conservative alliance against 171 for the left wing bloc. Biggest party, despite the Harper who didn’t even show up to the worst election result since 1928, is still the Social-democrats (Socialdemokratiska conference. arbetarpartiet, SAP) with 130 seats. The Social-democrats lost 14 seats whereas the As the disparity between developing biggest party in the conservative alliance, the Conservative Party (Moderaterna) won countries and the West are more apparent 42 which makes it the next biggest party with 97 seats. This is the best election result day-by-day and where the most vulnerable for the Conservative Party since 1928. A marginal gain for the greens (2 seats) and a members of most communities on both sides loss of 8 seats for the Left-party only confirm the bad election results for the left-bloc. of the world are hardest hit by the AIDS Pandemic. The rising contradictions of The neo-liberal policies of the Social-democratic government globalization unmask itself within the AIDS pandemic. made it possible for the Conservative alliance to win the election with an even worse neo-liberal agenda. It is no wonder that governments find millions of dollars and build their armies and One reason for the big success for the it comes to the second city of Sweden, spend it on war or occupation abroad rather Conservative party is the Social-democrats Gothenburg (Göteborg) where the Social- than keeping essential services or resources themselves. For 12 years they have been in democrats got 7% more votes locally than such as health care and treatment or water government and during this time they have natinally. The local Social-democrats in public. It is also no surprise that we have to been privatising, cost-cutting and generally Gothenburg has been criticizing the social- continue the struggle against the spread of have pursued a neo-liberal agenda, though democratic government for some years and in HIV and the care of those living with, carefully and slow. The unemployment rate the election campaign they criticised the affected, and stigmatized by this disease with in Sweden during these years has grown to be focus on ”everything is alright” and wanted little or scarce resources, it is no surprise that among the highest in Europe, much higher the campaign to focus on how to create more trying to access funding and or having to than in the other Nordic countries. jobs and take better care of immigrants and contend with bureaucracy at disproportionate Throughout the election campaign the Social- refugees. Due to this the local Social- levels that the very lives of people living with democrats denied this and put claims democrats, with their popular local leader HIV/AIDS are at stake. that everything in the country was all right. Göran Johansson, stayed in power in This gave the Conservative party and their Gothenburg city. As one woman AIDS activist put it “how can alliance an opportunity to act as the more we care for the orphans of HIV/AIDS if we credible alternative for creating more jobs. The Left-party is another reason for the loss can’t give support, treatment, and a voice for The deprivation of resources to the public of power of the Social-democrats. Unable to the women/the mothers of these children?” domain including hospitals etc by the Social- create a left alternative to social-democracy “How can we tell people to use a condom democrats together with the Greens and the and nearly always supporting the social- when there isn’t any and when there isn’t Left-party created a paved road for the democratic government, even when it comes even clean or free water in the whole Conservative alliance to follow. Thus the to privatisations they have been no village?” For that matter it is no surprise that neo-liberal policies of the Social-democratic alternative for the Swedish working class. the future of humanity is at stake and as such government made it possible for the Parts of the working class instead have the struggle contues. Conservative alliance to win the election with supported the racist Sweden-democrats in an even worse neo-liberal agenda. this election. Julia Barnett is an AIDS activist in Toronto for over a decade and has been a Sexual Health, AIDS and In some local elections the Social-democrats Just as worrisome as the conservative victory Harm Reduction Educator for over 16 years and a member of the New Socialist Group and supporter of has made a better result than in the national is the success in the local elections for the the 4th International. elections. This is especially noteworthy when Swedish far-right, the racist party Sweden- 12 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Sweden

democrats. Due to the fact that the social- Swedish election results, national elections democrats have been unable to create more jobs and to do anything at all about the Conservative Alliance (Alliansen) 178 seats unemployment, the Sweden-democrats have Conservative Party (Moderata Samlingspartiet) 26.2% 97 seats been able to use racism as a way to success. (Folkpartiet liberalerna) 7.5% 28 seats It’s easy to blame the high unemployment Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna) 6.6% 24 seats rates on the immigrants and refugees. They Center Party (Centerpartiet) 7.9% 29 seats did not make it to the national parliament this time, but if nothing happens inside the left Left Bloc 171 seats and segmented extreme left in Sweden the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) 5.2% 19 seats racist Sweden-democrats will probably make Social Democratic Workers Party it to the national parliament next time. In the (Socialdemokratiska Arbetarpartiet) 35.0% 130 seats local elections however, they have won seats Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) 5.8% 22 seats in many local councils. Especially they got very high results in South Sweden, in areas Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) 2.9% close to . In the national election in Feminist Initiative (Feministiskt Initiativ) 0.7% South Sweden they got around 10%, Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) (a party formed around anti-copyright groups) 0.6% compared to only 3% nationally. In local June List (Junilistan) 0.5% elections in the same area they got up to more than 20%. party seem to have won a lot of votes in the class probably will experience a harsh four- The third party that supported the social- middle-class from the Social-democrats but democratic government was the Greens. year period with big cuts in public spending, also some working class votes. They now Although they have never gained a strong for example in the payment to the have stronger support in the working class support in the working class and are not seen unemployed. There will also be more as an alternative in these groups. than the Left-party. We have also seen a privatised schools. Most of the possibly significant number of working-class votes profitable hospitals will be privatised as well The second biggest party outside the going to the extreme right, especially in local as most of the state-owned corporations. The elections. parliament is the new party, Feminist legislation to protect a worker from getting Initiative, a feminist party led by an old sacked will be weakened, especially for chairman of the left-party, Gudrun Schyman. The extreme left did not have good election young people. The Conservative alliance will They got 1% in the national elections. Mainly results and probably gained nothing taken introduce legislation that will force women votes from traditional left-wing voters together. The two small stalinist groups lost 6 despite the fact they claim to stand outside seats together whereas the two parties with away from the job market and legislation that the left-right scale and also despite the fact trotskyist orientation gained 6 seats. The will make life more difficult for refugees. they have no class oriented agenda at all. CWI-section (Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna) The bourgeosisie right wing government will Their election result is definitely a thus has most local councillors (totally 8, 3 also lower the property tax in such a way it disappointment for them. Just as the result for new seats) of all Swedish extreme left will primarily benefit the very rich. The the main victor of the last European groups. (Socialistiska Partiet), company taxation, already one of the lowest parliament elections in Sweden, Junilistan, is the Fourth International section probably in Europé, will be even lower and the same also a big disappointment for his EU-critic gained 3 seats and now has 4 local council goes for the tax on big fortunes. All this will and bourgeoisie party. They got only 0,5% in seats in 4 different cities. Compared to the probably lead to higher prices, lower wages the national election compared to 14% in the number of local seats (more than 200) for the and increased segregation. last election to the European parliament. extreme-right this is really nothing. Anders Svensson is a member of the EC of the There have been a strong right wing turn in With the victory for the right-wing Socialist Party in Sweden and also a member of the the Swedish elections. The Conservative bourgeoisie parties the Swedish working- Fourth International’s International Committee. 13 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Brazil For an alternative in Brazil

Against the bankers, imperialism and the corrupt! Left Front

Neither Lula, nor Alckmin! Heloísa Helena President!

We reproduce here the Manifesto of the Left Front, founded at the appeal of the PSOL, PSTU and PCB.

We launch this appeal from Quilombo dos Palmares, inspired by the strength of the struggle of Zumbi [1], so as to build the Left Front and proclaim the candidacy of Heloísa Helena for the Presidency of the Republic. [2]

Just as the resistance of the We will struggle together in the bankers who govern really, that INDEPENDENCE BY slaves and a strong abolitionist streets and in the mass they daily make use of the BREAKING WITH movement were necessary to put organisations to win the electoral corruption in the government. IMPERIALISM AND an end to slavery in the past, support of the workers against But the right is not only in the FINANCE CAPITAL today, in order to suppress the two blocs of the dominant PSDB-PFL, it is also in the Lula modern slavery and create a just class, PT and PSDB-PFL [3]. government. The banks have The economic policy of the and sovereign country, workers, obtained more profits with the government is oriented around peasants, the middle classes, THE PT AND THE PSDB PT government than at the time the goal of satisfying the intellectuals, artists, Brazilian GOVERN FOR 20,000 of FHC. It is not then by chance international markets, with low youth and poor people should FAMILIES that they offered 7.9 million réis interest rates, free circulation of also arise and mobilise. to the PT and 4.3 millions to the speculative capital and the The electoral battle is part of the repatriation of profits of foreign The Brazilian people cannot PSDB during the 2004 elections. struggle of the people. In the companies which make Brazil condemn themselves to choose elections, we will show that the Lula will pay the bankers nearly an exporter of capital to rich between Lula and Alckmin, two bankers and the big bosses, 520 billion réis of interest on the countries. candidates who defend the same represented by the politicians public debt. But 70% of this neoliberal programme and the and the conservative parties, are mountain of money will go into The foreign debt continues to same political practice of the accounts of Brazil’s 20,000 bleed the national resources corruption which undermine the in power and do not represent an alternative for Brazil. We will richest families. During this white. Nearly 40% of the National Congress and the national budget is consumed by present a new alternative faced time, the government spent 5.5 government. The candidacy of the payment of interest on the with the governmental bloc of billion réis per year for the Heloísa Helena is a real public debt, leaving less than 5% the PT and the bourgeois Family Purse, a programme of alternative for the Brazilian for investment. people faced with these “opposition” of the PSDB-PFL. social assistance used above all candidates supported by the We support the demand of bankers. The Left Front wants to liberate the country Jubilee South against the debt; from the clutches of finance capital and suspend the payment of the The Left Front wants to liberate imperialism foreign debt and carry out an the country from the clutches of audit. In relation to the internal finance capital and imperialism. These groups only oppose each as an instrument of electoral debt, we support an audit Inside this front, workers, the other to occupy more political clientelism. conforming to what is laid down unemployed, the millions of men space, to see who will occupy in the Constitution of 1988 as To fight the concentration of and women who are in the the governmental machine, but well as the analysis of its informal economy, living with they are agreed on the essentials; wealth, defend the people and structure so as to identify the difficulty from their labour, on the neoliberal economy and change Brazil, the Left Front speculators and the big workers’ political and social for the defence of institutions presents a series of proposals, companies to whom we propose organisation, independent marked by corruption. It is only makes an appeal to struggle and to no longer pay anything. activists, all have their place. As a struggle to see who will benefit requests your vote. well as all the Brazilians from the privileges of power. Foreign multinationals make use revolted by corruption and TO CONQUER REAL of strategic economic sectors submission in the face of big The PSDB and PFL have already SOVEREIGNTY AND from which they repatriate the finance capital and the bankers. shown with FHC [4] that it is the NATIONAL profits to their countries of 14 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Brazil

origin. These sectors - like oil, plan which would allow the 4.5 The presentation of a proposal of public works to telecommunications, energy, million landless families to settle radical democratisation of the reduce steel - should be placed under at a cost of 17,000 réis each. We regime and of political action the control of the Brazilian could also double the national should be done, always and unemployment people. education and health budget. All systematically, by articulating these initiatives, which are the denunciation of the decadent reduction of The proposal of a new qualitative so as to resolve the democracy of money and of alternative economic and social working time social problems of the country, corruption with its opposite; the project demands structural without loss of would cost 394.5 billion réis, or real democracy of the changes that Brazilian very much less than the absurd participation of the workers and wages capitalism has never realised and quantity of money that Lula has of the people. The necessity of which, in the framework of offered to the bankers. radically democratising the double the neoliberal globalisation, are more inaccessible than ever for it FOR NEW GENUINELY regime, by changing its class minimum wage content, should be repeated because they cannot be obtained DEMOCRATIC forcefully as being a first without a rupture with INSTITUTIONS WHICH profound agrarian imperialist domination. condition for the application of reform under REPRESENT A NEW an emergency programme The elimination of financial POWER UNDER THE capable of bringing the country workers control tyranny, speculation and the debt DIRECT CONTROL OF out of crisis and resolving the burden, the control of capital, the THE WORKERS AND OF problems of the majority of the abrogation of recuperation of the capacity of THE PEOPLE people. neoliberal reforms intervention and state regulation, the extension of public services The Lula government is at the We want the voters to be able to no to reform of the as well as the redistribution of centre of a political crisis which, revoke the mandates of those wealth, the creation of jobs, as none before, has shown to who have been elected and who labour market and agrarian and urban reform, the public opinion the real face of do not fulfil their promises. We rights preservation of the environment, the regime of false democracy of demand the imprisonment and are so many indispensable economic power and of the confiscation of the goods of the immediate corruption. Scandals have measures to finish with the the corrupt and the corruptors. abrogation of poverty known by the majority brutally revealed the We desire a radical of the Brazilian population and decomposition of its institutions. transformation of popular privatisations to satisfy the historic demands of From the Presidency and the representation and its mandates, the workers and of the people. Executive to the judiciary via the through an exclusive public immediate National Congress and the financing of the electoral With 520 billion réis of debts political parties, the main withdrawal from the campaigns, the democratisation that Lula has paid to the bankers institutions of the Republic are negotiations on the of schedules for electoral during his term of office, it henceforth assimilated without propaganda in the media, the FTAA would have been possible to appeal as instruments of the revocability of mandates and of effect a great national change dominant classes in the service creation of crèches and resolve very serious social of corruption and the the suppression of the barrier problems. We can build for exploitation of the people. clause [5] which renders difficult for children from 0 example 16 million popular the representation of parties and to 6 years houses (which is the size of the Lula and Alckmin are candidates without economic housing deficit in the country) at representatives of this corruption power. against all forms of a unit cost of 12,000 réis and which reigns in the country. It is thus offer jobs to the masses of not true that the public thinks These measures should radically racial or sexual unemployed in the country that in some way “everyone is attack corruption, decreeing also discrimination through the effort of like that”, because the majority the end of privileged forums, of construction. of people do not. The corruption banking and fiscal secrecy, by severe taxation of of the politicians and elites is the establishing the wage of This sum would allow also to characteristic of the capitalist parliamentarians and those who the banks and big finance a real agrarian reform system. govern through a referendum companies 15 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Brazil

and with as basis of departure worse. Lula is already In defence of the working Workers Party in 1994. The “historic” the minimum wage. committed to leading a labour woman, we demand the creation PCB (Brazilian Communist Party), reform which will represent a of crèches for children from 0 to which was pro-, is today a small left party. With the project of conquering terrible blow for the historic 6 years. We fight against all real popular sovereignty in forms of racial or sexual conquests of the workers. The NOTES Brazil, the Left Front announces so-called “Super Simples” discrimination. that, in the government of project, in discussion currently [1] Zumbi Dos Palmares was one of the comrade Heloísa Helena, the Moreover, we recommend in the National Congress and most significant warrior leaders of the Brazilian people will be called, severe taxation of the big which affects the rights of the autonomous kingdom of the Palmares, through an intense day of fortunes and profits of the banks workers in small and medium founded in the 17th century by insurgent mobilisations, to decide and to and big companies. The public enterprises is an anticipation of slaves in the northeast of Brazil. He give the last word on: relations control by workers and remains an icon of the anti-slavery and this reform. with imperialism (IMF, FTAA consumers of the production of anti-colonialist movement, and a hero for essential goods is a necessity so the Afro-Brazilian community, Brazil and and so on); the foreign and A RADICAL POLICY SO internal debt and the necessity of that the redistribution of wealth Latin America in general a real national independence; AS TO CONFRONT is a reality and to put an end to [2] The Left Front supports the candidacy agrarian and urban reform and a SUPEREXPLOITATION the enormous inequalities which IN BRAZIL, SOURCE OF are the shame of our country. to the presidency of our comrade Heloísa new statute on land ownership; Helena (member of the Fourth the amount of the minimum UNEMPLOYMENT AND From Quilombo de los Palmares, International’s International Committee), wage and budget priorities; the OF THE INCREASING we call on the workers to revolt, senator and leader of the PSOL. Some criteria of preservation of the INSECURITY OF WORK once again, against slavery. The recent polls indicate a possible electoral environment and so on. dignity of workers commences breakthrough for this candidacy. In some states she is in second position, behind the GUIDELINES OF THE LEFT by their right to a job and a A NEW ABOLITION IS outgoing president Lula supported by the FRONT’S PROGRAMME: decent wage. Audacity, NECESSARY TO PUT AN Workers Party, but ahead of Geraldo We want a plan of public works creativity and novelty are Alckmin, the candidate of the right END TO THE MODERN necessary. And the novelty is the so as to reduce unemployment, opposition (PSDB-PFL). Thus in Bahia SLAVERY Left Front. at the same time as the reduction Lula is first with 55.9%, followed by Heloísa Helena with 15% and Alckmin of working time, without loss of An immense sector of the Internet links with 9.7%. In the state of Alagoas, Heloísa Brazilian people still lives in a wages. We want to double the is second with 18%, according to a poll situation of semi-slavery. To minimum wage immediately. www.heloisahelena50.com.br/ carried out on August 18- 20. An IBOPE begin with the slavery of poorly For a profound agrarian reform poll on August 18 in Rio de Janeiro shows paid waged labour and under the control of the workers http://www.psol.org.br/ Heloïsa second with 18%, ahead of dismantled social rights. of the countryside. We demand Alckmin with 12%. Finally in the state of http://www.pstu.org.br/ the abrogation of neoliberal Rio Grande do Sul, from July to August Twenty two million Brazilians Heloísa increased her poll ratings from reforms, starting with the reform http://www.pcb.org.br/ live with a minimum wage 9.9% to 16.8%, but she remains third of social . No to reform behind Alckmin (30.5%) and Lula (28.8 which is one of the lowest in the of the labour market and of trade Left Front was founded at the appeal of the three parties in Brazil: PSOL, %). world. Data from the IBGE union rights by the government show that 46.7% of families PSTU and PCB. The PSOL (Party for and the IMF. No to the reform of and ) was founded in [3] PSDB-PFL: Currently the main right suffer from hunger, a rate which privatisation of the university. 2004 after the expulsion from the opposition force, a coalition between the reaches nearly 70% in the Workers’ Party (PT) in December party of Brazilian and We desire the immediate 2003, of the senator Heloísa Helena Northeast. During this time, the the party of the Liberal Front abrogation of the privatisations and the deputies Babá, Luciana 5,000 richest families in the of public enterprises, starting Genro and João Fontes for their country (0.01% of the total opposition to the counter-reform of [4] Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a leader with that of Vale do Rio Doce. of the PSDB, was president of Brazil from families) concentrate a wealth pensions carried out by the Lula government and more generally their 1995 to 1999 and from 1999 to 2003. He equivalent to 46% of all the Cancellation of the partial demand for the respecting of the was behind the of Brazilian privatisation of Petrobras. For historic commitments of the PT by the wealth generated every year in economic policy on the ultra neoliberal Brazil’s immediate withdrawal Lula government. The PSTU (Socialist the country (GDP). model from the negotiations Party of United Workers) is a Trotskyist organisation of the so-called If Lula or Alckmin are elected, concerning the FTAA (Free “Morenist” current LIT-CI, founded [5] the 500,000 signatures required to the situation will only get still Trade Area of the Americas). when this current decided to leave the obtain recognition as a party 16 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Review Liberation, Then What?

John Saul’s recent book on post-apartheid South Africa reviewed Jeffery R Webber

IN A LUCID contribution to our understanding of contemporary Africa, David Seddon and Leo Zeilig recently charted that continent’s two waves of popular protest and class struggle over the last 40 years, as well as pointing to signs of a nascent third wave. Figures in round brackets refer to book page numbers. political movements in Africa in both Endnotes are in square brackets analysis and action at the grass roots. This The first wave - often referred to as the “IMF will encompass both the practical and riots” - took off in the late 1970s with its strategic needs of ordinary people and characteristic “strikes, marches, exploration with them/by them of new forms demonstrations and riots.” The protests, write of active engagement in the determination of Seddon and Zeilig, “usually involved a their own futures, as well as with the debates variety of social groups and categories and and discussions of the ‘anti-capitalist did not always take place under a working movement’ in its other manifestations [across class or trade union banner or with working the globe]. South Africa has demonstrated some of the ways that this dual engagement is class leadership - if this term is used in its possible.” [1] narrow sense.”

The broad base of popular forces involved The Revolutionary Prospect not only challenged the immediate austerity In The Next Liberation Struggle, John S. Saul measures being introduced as part of more makes such a re-engagement in ways that are general neoliberal structural adjustment provocative and stimulating, while also policies, “but also the legitimacy of the careful and analytical. In the best tradition of reforms themselves and even, sometimes, the scholarly activism Saul seeks to draw governments that introduced them. They also historical lessons from past decades of frequently identified the international liberation struggle to inform and foment a Political Economy of Africa (1973), co- financial institutions and agencies that led stronger third wave, or as he thinks of it, “the edited with Giovanni Arrighi, and The State this concerted effort to further enmesh ‘the next liberation struggle.” and Revolution in Eastern Africa (1979). developing world’ and the ordinary people Mid-career books include The Crisis in South who live there, into the uneven process of “My central intellectual preoccupation,” Africa (1981), co-authored with Stephen capitalist globalization in the interests of writes Saul, “remains now, as it was in the Gelb, and A Difficult Road: The Transition to major transnatioanal corporations and the 1960s, the revolutionary prospect in Africa. Socialism in (1985). states that gain most from their operations.” Indeed, it continues to take as a starting point that a ‘revolution’ - both in post-apartheid Two of his most recent works are A second wave, from the late 1980s and into Southern Africa and in the rest of Africa - is Recolonization and Resistance: Southern the 1990s, was characterized by greater both necessary and possible on that Africa in the 1990s (1994); and Development political coherence and objective. In these continent.” (7) after Globalization: Theory and Practice for new protests, “The charge that national the Embattled South in a New Imperial Age governments had broken the implicit social Saul has been studying and engaging with (2005). contract to safeguard not only the material revolutionary activity in Africa since the mid- welfare of the people, but also their political 1960s. He spent seven years teaching Growing out of this deep body of work, The rights, led to growing demands for university in , as well as shorter Next Liberation Struggle is a collection of democracy and political change.” stints teaching in post-liberation essays written over the last decade which Mozambique and post-apartheid South seeks to understand the Thirty Years War for Finally, a third wave, yet to have clearly Africa. While back in Canada Saul was an Southern African liberation, 1960-90, in an emerged but breaking onto the horizon in the important member of the Toronto Committee effort to contribute to a fuller, more present day, is one with which Seddon and for Southern Africa, as well as an editor and meaningful liberation of Africa today. Zeilig urge activists to engage while drawing frequent contributor to the committee’s lessons from the past 40 years of struggle: journal, Southern Africa Report. That Thirty Years War, fought on many fronts “(T)he future success of social protest as the and in different forms from country to basis for far-reaching progressive social, During forty years of such engagement Saul country, was a war against colonial economic, and political change will depend has published a large number of books, occupation and white minority rule. While on serious re-engagement by activists and including classics such as Essays on the much of the book is devoted to exposing the 17 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Review

limits of the victories which dismantled the “the positive implications of order to better forge a new future for twin prisons of colonial occupation and white socialism on the continent. Toward the same minority rule, Saul is nonetheless too careful the removal of white end, the last chapter of Part I juxtaposes an observer to miss the indelible significance minority rule have been really existing “liberal democracy” to Saul’s of those earlier popular efforts: muted for most people in preferred “popular democracy” in the context of Sub-Saharan African politics. No amount of concern as to the deeply the region” compromised nature of the outcome of the incorporation into the global economy and of Part II, “Southern Africa: A Range of war for Southern African liberation should the wounding domestic social and political Variation,” presents chapters on the causes blind us to just what was achieved, both patterns accompanying it...” (6). and consequences of war and peace in within the region and by Africa as a whole, in Mozambique, and official “forgotten history” realizing the basic precondition - that is, the Well aware of the tremendous obstacles - in contemporary , a situation in removal of white minority rule - of any both global and local - to socialist which the SWAPO (South West Africa transformation in Africa, Saul nevertheless meaningful freedom there. (5) Peoples Organization) government is pitted maintains a “strong sense that a new stage of against the Breaking the Wall of Silence At the same time, to see clearly the way revolutionary activity is slowly but surely Movement (BWS). forward for popular struggle today, we need being born in post-apartheid South Africa to return again to the parameters of that itself as elsewhere on the continent...” (11) BWS is seeking to force investigations into compromised outcome, and understand how allegations of human rights abuses by black majority rule has not meant an end to Why Failed SWAPO leadership against innocent cadres capitalist exploitation and marginalization, while the movement was in exile, in nor to imperialist impositions on Africa The book is divided into three parts. Part I, particular at the SWAPO-run detention centre within the world order. On this, it is useful to “Continental Considerations,” first deals with quote from Saul at some length: Sub-Saharan Africa’s position within the at Lubango, during the 1980s. global capitalist system, in a chapter co- This chapter is also co-authored by Colin In the end, then, the positive implications of authored with Colin Leys [2] This part of the Leys. Another, co-written with Richard the removal of white minority rule have been book also sketches some of the contours of Saunders, presents a Gramscian analysis of muted for most people in the region: extreme “African socialism” as it played itself out in socio-economic inequality, desperate the Tanzania of Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania Mugabe’s and popular struggles poverty, and disease (AIDS most notably) African National Congress (TANU) in the emerging against that regime. [3] Finally, an remain the lot of the vast majority of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in entire chapter is devoted to Julius Nyerere’s population. Unfortunately, too, the broader Mozambique under the Frelimo movement, problematic socialism in Tanzania. goals that emerged in the course of the led first by Eduardo Mondlane and then by Part III, “South Africa: Debating the liberation struggles - defined around the Samora Machel. Frelimo first commanded Transition,” is devoted exclusively to an proposed empowerment and projected state power in 1975. transformation of the impoverished state of analysis of different stages of South Africa’s the mass of the population of the region - In a very different way, African Socialism is transition from apartheid to post-apartheid have proven extremely difficult to realize.... examined through the lens of South Africa’s neoliberal democracy. The essays, originally In now writing of the Thirty Years War for liberation struggle. In the latter case, the written between 1994 and 2004, grow Southern African liberation I hope that a analysis is more of “what the situation increasingly cutting in their criticisms of the greater consciousness of the shared war will seemed to promise.” As Saul notes, “If there post-apartheid African National Congress help to remind Southern Africans of its heroic was ever a dog that did not bark in the night (ANC) government, in correspondence with dimensions and help rekindle some sense of for latter-day Sherlocks to reflect upon, it is the ANC’s deepening capitulation to the their joint accomplishment - and that this will the absence of a socialist vocation on the part dictates of capital, both global and local. provide a positive point of reference from of both the South African liberation which they can work to once again fire the movement leadership and, perhaps more The Hard Questions flames of joint resistance in the new importantly, that country’s apparently well- millennium. (6) developed and assertive working class once Among the many positive things I could say apartheid had been defeated.” (41) about this excellent book, I think the most That next wave of resistance, envisioned by important is the simplest: Saul confronts the Saul as the necessary and possible “next The chapter on African Socialism is biggest and most difficult questions facing liberation struggle,” consists of “a struggle essentially geared towards learning how and socialists within the African context, and he against the savage terms of Africa’s present why it failed in its various manifestations in takes his answers seriously. 18 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Review

The Next Liberation Struggle represents an While recognizing the power-plays in Africa, and the obstacles and attempt to be realistic without being passive opportunities for the next liberation struggle or cynical, to be a revolutionary socialist difficulties for a socialist in the post-Cold War international scene. perspective while avoiding the mere alternative, Saul rhetorical flourishes of ultra-leftism, and to convincingly demonstrates On the one hand, there are surely “long-term be cognizant of the dramatic obstacles in the benefits of the passing of the Soviet bloc and way of socialism in Africa while always the irrationality of seeing in the discrediting of its bankrupt legacy (both seeking to highlight the popular forces from capitalism a future for in theory and in practice) to the freeing up of below whose growth might help shift the meaningful and just space for the renewal of radicalism in Africa. balance of forces in ways more favourable to Yet “the present world-wide context - of neo- the realization of socialism. development liberal market mania and monolithic reducing) - and a few associated African capitalist globalization - is at least as hostile While recognizing the difficulties for a stock exchanges worth gambling on. (20, 21). (if in novel ways) to progressive aspirations socialist alternative, Saul convincingly in Africa as was the old Cold War world.” [4] demonstrates the irrationality of seeing in Democracy is another theme that runs capitalism a future for meaningful and just throughout The Next Liberation Struggle. On While the international left lends its attention development. He shows how the World Bank the one hand, Saul provides a searing critique to the Middle East, with the ongoing and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of liberal democracy, and the essential occupation and to Latin America, with the impotence of normative claims about continue to follow a dogmatic market proliferation of inspiring struggles against “democracy” in Africa so long as the liberalism which they promote in Africa capitalism, I urge us to stay informed (or continent and its people are both exploited through aid conditionality; how these become informed) of struggles in Africa. For and marginalized within global capitalism. institutions have failed to respond in those of us based in North America, such meaningful ways to demands for debt relief; At the same time, Saul sees the lack of knowledge will draw our attention to new and how the United States and other democratic practice and theory historically in areas to which we must add our anti- imperialist states - including his own, Canada the African socialist experiments as one of imperialist energies. Saul’s latest book is an - continue to make independent African the roots of their failures. Among the failures important tool for advancing this struggle. initiatives vulnerable through a whole host of of African socialist practices with regard to interventionist mechanisms. democracy, Saul underlines “the intellectual Jeffery R. Webber is an editor of New Socialist and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University From the perspective of capital, there is arrogance of newly ascendant elites; the of Toronto. He is currently in La Paz. “optimism, even excitement,” in the “oil, cumulative precedents of nationalist natural gas, and minerals industries” because movement practices elsewhere in the NOTES continent...; the inherited hierarchies deemed Africa’s resources remain “substantially necessary to movements and liberation forces [1] David Seddon and Leo Zeilig (2005), “Class and untapped, with many existing discoveries yet previously engaged in intense struggles, Protest in Africa: New Waves,” Review of African to be developed and many new ones still to Political Economy No. 103: 9-27. sometimes armed, against colonial masters; be made.” (19-20) As Saul and Leys argue, and the ‘progressive’ vanguardist discourses [2] Colin Leys is another important long-time however, “Africa’s development, and the learned from overseas parties in the commentator on African affairs. He is author, perhaps dynamics of global capitalism, are no longer ‘successful’ Marxist-Leninist tradition.” most famously, of Underdevelopment in : The congruent, if they ever were.” Political Economy of Neo-Colonialism (1975). More contemporary works of Leys’ include, The Rise and Fall of For Saul, the cases of Tanzania, An economic profile of Africa drawn from Development Theory (1996) and Market Driven Politics: Mozambique, and South Africa illustrate “the this [global capitalist] perspective would pay Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest (2003). pattern of smothering (however often ‘with Currently he is co-editor, along with Leo Panitch, of relatively little attention to countries or the best of intentions’) the kinds of mass Socialist Register. states, except as regards the physical security political activism that could have helped of fixed investments and the availability of [3] Richard Saunders teaches at York University in sustain the democratic and socialist charge communications and transport facilities. Toronto. He is the author of Dancing Out of Tune: A repeated over and over again.” (52). History of the Media in Zimbabwe (1999). Instead it would highlight a group of large transnational corporations, especially mining After the Cold War [4] David Finkel takes up this question of the transition of companies, and a pattern of mineral deposits, Cold War to post-Cold War geopolitics in terms of its coded according to their estimated size and Conscious of the imperialist dynamics of the importance for progressive aspirations world-wide in an important recent article. David Finkel (2006), “The value and the costs of exploiting them (costs global order, Saul charts the effects on Legacies of National Liberation,” New Socialist 55 (Feb- that technical advances are constantly national liberation movements of Cold War March): 12-17. 19 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Cuba book review The revival of a political tradition

Celia Hart’s new book of writings reviewed John Lister

The fact that Celia Hart can now write freely about Trotsky and By 1948 the Presidential palace presidents led in 1952 to the real , and discuss many of the historical crimes of openly took a share of the huge danger than the opposition appears to reflect a much more relaxed attitude from profits from selling cocaine, Ortodoxo party (whose the Cuban CP leadership which is now freed from any shackles skimming the National Lottery radicalising membership of Moscow control. and milking the country’s included ) could win Customs revenues. While US the elections: twelve weeks When George Bush latched on to suppress riots. The country was banks and corporations had before polling day, Batista the illness of Fidel Castro, and run by a succession of brutal and largely sewn up the profits from staged a bloodless preemptive the temporary handing of power dictatorial regimes, culminating monopoly control of Cuba’s coup which had been widely in Cuba to Castro’s brother Raul, in a coup in 1934 led by former sugar and extractive industries, predicted in advance, and with as a pretext to urge regime sergeant Fulgencio Batista, transport, telephones, energy and evident acquiescence from change, on the island, he revived whose blend of authoritarianism, infrastructure, the Mafia had by Washington. memories of a long and violence and brazen corruption the early 1950s achieved a inglorious history of US established him as the military dominant role in tourism, It is worth recalling that this was intervention in the affairs of strongman and dominant figure casinos, nightclubs, prostitution, a period at the height of the Cold Latin American countries. in Cuban politics for 25 years. drug traffic, gambling, trade in War, with war still raging in precious stones, smuggling, Batista was shrewd enough to Korea, and heightened US fears In no instance during more than money-laundering, import and recognise the potential benefits of popular movements which a century of involvement has the export businesses, finance and to him of legalising the later brought CIA-backed USA sided with popular, banking, and had extensive military coups against radical democratic forces against a (Stalinist) Communist Party in influence in the Autentico party military dictatorship: instead, 1938 (then embroiled in the and with Batista and his circle of nationalist leaderships in Iran time and again, the US has collaborationist politics of supporters. (1953) and then Guatemala dispatched troops or pulled building Popular Fronts with so- (1954). The Batista dictatorship strings to repress any movement called democratic bourgeois The US government, and deepened its alliance with the that might unseat vicious, formations) and trade unions in especially the CIA had worked Mafia, while escalating its corrupt, but pro-US, regimes. 1939, and was rewarded by CP closely with the Mafia during the repression of popular endorsement of his election War, and many links remained in movements. It sealed off any In the case of Cuba, the history campaign in 1940. place afterwards. Even the high normal avenue of opposition. of US intervention goes back to profile expulsion of mob boss the end of the 19th century. In In 1942 two leading Stalinists “Lucky” Luciano from Cuba in The paralysis of bourgeois 1895 the US made a bid to buy took office as ministers in 1947 as a result of US pressure politics triggered Castro’s now the island. Three years later, Batista’s government. But the was in fact a means to divert famous attack on the Moncada other key prop to Batista’s rule after defeating Spain in war, the attention from the booming barracks in Santiago on July 26 was the USA, and especially the US took over , Guam Mafia business, involving top 1953, backed by about 150 financial groups which grabbed and the . And US-based mobsters, which had supporters, including two the chance for rich pickings from American troops occupied Cuba been set up before his arrival and women. The raid itself was Cuban investment, and the US for three years. In that time they continued to flourish on the abortive and some of the rebels took the opportunity to alter the Mafia, which stepped up its island after his enforced were killed: others were put on constitution with the 1901 Platt operations on the island with the departure. trial and jailed, but not before amendment, giving the US arrival of top mobsters including Castro, defending himself, had perpetual rights to intervene in the Mafia’s banker, Meyer For the US government, which put forward the accusing Cuban affairs, and limiting its Lansky, who lived in Cuba from had already sidelined the statement- cum-manifesto independent action. 1937 to 1940, establishing a embarrassing revelations of the growing empire of casinos and 1950 Kefauver report into mob “History will absolve me”, Only when Cubans elected a hotels. When Batista handed activities in the USA, the which called for action to break president to the liking of over the presidency in 1944 to Mafia’s Cuban empire was seen, up the holdings of the big Washington was the US military the corrupt leaders of the if anything, as an additional landowners, nationalisation of presence scaled down in 1902, Autentico party, the Mafia was lever of control over the political electricity and telephone but US Marines were back for already well established in the regime. However the blatant companies, and a variety of three years from 1906 to top circles of power. corruption of Autentico democratic and other reforms. 20 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Review

Released from jail early under an decisive military intervention in over the many years in which are still constraints and it is not amnesty in 1955, Castro went support of the Angolan they uncritically endorsed a accurate to claim that the Cuban into exile in Mexico. He secured liberation struggle, which in turn Cuban regime which excluded leadership was Trotskyists in support and funding from a helped weaken and overturn their current from political practice. variety of oppositional and apartheid in South Africa. After debate: why was it forbidden for disgruntled forces. including the heavy-handed repression and so many years to put Leon Che may have been the one to sidelined former Autentico incarceration of the small body Trotsky in relation to the Cuban free the imprisoned Cuban President Prio Socorras, whose of Cuban Trotskyists in the Revolution? (p21). Trotskyists on his return from donation purchased the Granma, immediate aftermath of the 1959 Africa, and may well have read the boat in which Castro’s Rebel revolution, we have waited over Celia insists that she has not Permanent Revolution and had Army, with its ramshackle 40 years for a specifically Cuban managed to find out - but the Trotsky’s History of the Russian policies, sailed on November 24 critique of the politics of answer is not too difficult to Revolution in his knapsack in 1956 to fight a 3-year guerrilla Stalinism. uncover. Castro’s July 26 Bolivia (p25), but his guerrilla war based in the Cuban Movement, which had fought exploits in Latin America, countryside. The emergence of such writings and defeated Batista in the teeth however heroically inspired, at this time, in a new volume by of opposition from the Stalinists never set out to lead a process of The eventual success of what at Celia Hart offers tremendous of the Popular Socialist Party., permanent revolution in which times seemed a tenuous battle by basis for optimism that as was strong enough to oust the the working class would take the small numbers of rebels against Castro’s physical strength ebbs old regime, but was not based in lead. But as a treasure trove of an apparently large and ruthless away there is a core of the working class and did not ideas and neglected facts past army rested both on the popular committed and critical Marxists have enough links or expertise in and present, and a reminder of support for any genuine within the Cuban CP willing to the trade unions to secure stable the historic legacy that helped opposition to Batista, and on the fight in defense of the gains that control over the whole economy. give us the Cuban Revolution, disintegration of the dictatorial have been made and against a Celia Hart’s writings are very And Castro’s new regime, regime itself, which by the CIA orchestrated important. We also need to see immediately under pressure middle of 1958 had lost the democratisation. by a vicious how these ideas can be further from the USA, felt that it needed confidence and support of the Miami-based expatriate developed in the context of the international economic and USA. restorationist mafia. Cuban political situation in the military support. For its part the closing years of Fidel’s rule. relatively new Soviet We have waited over 40 years for a bureaucracy under Khrushchev specifically Cuban critique of Stalinism. was looking to strengthen its hand against the USA: deals The emergence of such writings by Celia were done in which the July 26 Hart offers tremendous basis for optimism Movement merged with the Stalinist party, with the Castro that there is a core of committed and critical brothers in overall control, but Marxists within the Cuban CP willing to fight considerable political influence in defense of the gains that have been made handed to the Stalinists. When Batista and his cronies ran Celia first discovered the In exchange the USSR extended for the planes and fled the writings of Trotsky while military and economic support country on New Year’s Eve, studying in East Germany in the to Cuba. Moscow was prepared Castro’s forces were welcomed 1980s and the essays and articles to allow Castro a degree of into Havana by a massive in this volume show her leeway in nationalising the general strike. Revolutionary increasing awareness of the Cuban economy, and for some Cuba has since been a beacon for corrosive effects of Stalin’s years ignored Cuban efforts to many of various theory that it was possible to export its model of revolutionary political traditions: but for over build “socialism in a single change by endorsing guerrilla Selected writings by Celia Hart 20 years from the late 1960s to country” and the Stalinist struggles and left currents in Edited by Walter Lippmann. the early 1990s its economic and rejection of Trotsky’s Latin American countries. Published by Socialist military dependence upon the interpretation of the concept of Resistance. £5.50 inc postage resulted in a “permanent revolution” (i.e. But the new Kremlin regime (cheques payable to Resistance) visible avoidance by many of its uninterrupted and international) under Brezhnev took a harder from PO Box 1109 N4 supporters of any explicit first put forward by in line. and from the late 1960s 2UU. International buyers can discussion of the politics of the 1850s. until the collapse of the USSR in get the book from amazon.co.uk Stalinism, and some highly the early 1990s Castro’s Cuba or the suppliers listed at questionable policy statements Celia argues that the core was required to operate within resistancebooks.blogspot.com. by Fidel Castro. such as backing revolutionary concepts in the boundaries of Soviet foreign the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Trotsky’s approach were close to policy. The fact that Celia can John Lister is a long-time leader of the ISG in England and Wales, and an endorsing the grisly Ethiopian those of early Cuban now write freely about Trotsky and Trotskyism, and discuss editor of Socialist Resistance. He is dictatorship, and opposing the revolutionary Julio Antonio also an expert in the politics of trade union movement in Mella, and also embraced by many of the historical crimes of healthcare and the Director of London . Che in his quest to Stalinism appears to reflect a Health Emergency. His book of the internationalise the revolution. much more relaxed attitude from worldwide neoliberalisation of However the same period also She also poses the question the Cuban CP leadership which healthcare, "Health Policy Reform - • Driving the Wrong Way?" was saw Cuba break ranks from the which we might have expected is now freed from the shackles of published by Middlesex University Kremlin’s policy, to mount the more Trotskyists to have posed Moscow control. However there Press in 2005. 21 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Our History Alain Krivine and Algeria

Alain Krivine

Alain Krivine, one of the best-known leaders of the Fourth International, is about to publish his political memoirs, covering 50 years of political activism. He began his political life as a young Communist militant. It was in that capacity that he was sent to the World Youth Conference in Moscow in 1957, where he met with representatives of the Algerian FLN. This meeting was to be the turning point in his political life. French troops confront rioters, Algiers 1960 When I returned to France, if I hadn’t totally of Algeria. Everyone started to chant: me. So there was the stoppage of trains of broken with the Party, I was at least “Virgin, Virgin...” soldiers who were leaving. Signals were scandalized by its attitude. From that point on sabotaged. In this way we stopped dozens of I took the decision to aid the FLN and to talk So I found myself in a network that was led trains, and this made a lot of noise. about it with those around me, considering by Trotskyists. My brothers were Trotskyists that it was absolutely necessary to “do and of course they hadn’t told me this, since During most of the war the Party had as its something.” But I didn’t know how to make as a good Stalinist I hated the Trotskyists. slogan “Peace in Algeria,” and its contact. The first question I asked one of them was: “I instructions were not to have relations with agree to join into your Jeune Résistance the Algerians, which would have been too And it was here that family relations network, but only on condition that there not dangerous for the Party. When the hierarchy intervened: I had brothers who had been be any Trots there!” He asked me why I said found members supporting the FLN they aiding the FLN for a long time. They weren’t this and I answered: “Because they’re cops, were expelled. A comrade from Billancourt Stalinists and they had hidden their activities and I know that in this kind of thing there are who aided the FLN, who we called “Benoit,” from me since I was a [little] “Stalinist Trotskyists.” He assured me that there was immediately chased out of the Party (in leader.” But seeing how unhappy I was to not weren’t any and asked me what I had against fact, he was a clandestine Trotskyist). Trotsky. “Nothing! All I know is that he was be able to do anything for Algeria they The Party was also equally opposed to a cop and a fascist!” intervened, telling me that perhaps we could desertion and insubordination. It explained help the Algerians. So I worked with Jeune Résistance, which that a young Communist should go into the army, but following Lenin’s schema, in order So they put me in contact with the group above all worked at stopping the trains of to introduce revolutionary ideas there. Jeune Résistance (Young Resistance), draftees. Then I went into the Union des Nevertheless, the PCF didn’t organize the through which I began my support activities. étudiants communistes (UEC), where I was a draftees at all, and none of the young Within the framework of the Communist member of the leadership, while Communists who went had any instructions. Youth (JC) I had begun to carry on a fight for clandestinely being a member of Jeune Unfortunately, many of them became racists, Résistance. During demonstrations we tried the Algerians, notably demanding that Mme since there was no counterweight to the to start up chants for independence and to Audin [1] be invited to a meeting of the JC. ideological pressures of military life. They answered me: “You’re nuts. We’re not wave FLN flags, while the rest shouted going to invite her to a meeting.” “Peace in Algeria!” There was also activity So the PCF opposed all initiatives. It was within the army; this is what most interested completely against the stopping of trains, the Just to finish off these stories, which show During most of the war the sabotage against “our comrade railroad pretty clearly the mind set of the party, the JC (Communist) Party had as workers.” The movement had considerably had distributed a tract that invited people, on developed, since we were as many as 900 in the occasion of a student congress, to a dance its slogan “Peace in Jeune Résistance, which is a lot for a “For peace in Algeria.” The words: “We’ll Algeria,” and its instructions clandestine organization (in a way it was the dance and we’ll...” were added to it. I was a were not to have relations beginning of the extreme Left). Young delegate to the National Congress. Still naïve Communists refused to be insubordinate for I went up to the tribune to declare that we with the Algerians. When fear of going to prison... There were some didn’t seem to be aware of the situation, that the hierarchy found sons of members of the Central Committee there were people who were dying there and who carried out courageous actions, but it that I thought it disgusting that we would members supporting the was too late. The leadership of the PC had its allow these kinds of festivities on the subject FLN they were expelled. few martyrs in order to later say to the 22 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Our History

Algerians and public opinion “Our Party, too, was pretty well organized. The networks had its martyrs.” were a good school. Some participated for Alain Krivine (second right) with Rudi “humanist” reasons, because they were Dutschke (third right) with the JCR So in the last two years of the war about 20 scandalized by the torture of Algerians. This contingent, Vietnam demo, young Communist soldiers refused to be sent is both good and normal. But for others these February 1968 to Algeria. But when you look at their names networks were a good political school. They feeding and radicalizing a portion of the it was often the sons of leaders, like the son became true internationalists. They acquired Young Communists, including in “practical of Léandre Letocard, or of members of the a form of political practice, which is always labour.” Central Committee who did refuse to go to useful. Algeria and were sent to prison. But this was All of these elements were to contribute to at the end. In 1956 Alban Liechti was the first Afterwards, in political organizations, we our radicalization, but in contradictory ways. to refuse to go to Algeria, but the Party didn’t realized that a good part of the nucleus of the So when it came to the army, in principle I support him: he was absolutely alone [2]. future extreme Left had its origins in the aid was attached to the Leninist tradition, i.e., to the Algerian revolution. It was a matter of that it was necessary to go into the army and My two brothers were directly involved in “practical” internationalism, and not one of fight there by denouncing colonialism. I the support networks, in liaison with the discourse. It could concretely be seen how a admired those few soldiers who went over to Federation de France of the FLN. They revolution inspires sympathy, politicizes the other side, lock, stock and barrel. For me, handled the transporting of money. From young people, and makes militants of them. as I was beginning to de-Stalinize myself, the time to time I gave them some help. For the This was truly a school of practical labor. hero was officer cadet Maillot. What he did most part I took care of transports in Paris: was like the “mutineers of the Black Sea” The attitude of the leadership and the when cars full of cops closed off certain with André Marty [3]: “We are in solidarity Communist students in relation to the war in neighborhoods you had to put people at the with the revolution on the other side. We join intersections to be sure there weren’t any Algeria was to be one of the reasons for the them with our arms, we’re joining the other checkpoints set up. Our friends sent us opposition that was born and exploded side.” The enemy was French colonialism. signals permitting cars transporting FLN among them. Algeria, along with , Maillot and Iveton [4] were truly heroes: the militants to cross Paris without hindrance. I are the two elements of the crisis; the betrayal act of solidarity was capital. did this many times. of the Algerian people by the PCF and the support given by the latter during the Soviet Knowing that the PCF was doing nothing, in And then we took “initiatives” concerning invasion of Hungary, which was also the army we completely supported prisons. Notably, I participated in an attempt considered a betrayal - of the Hungarian insubordination and desertion. This allowed to liberate some women. This was at Fresnes. people. the carrying out of political provocation, a A group of comrades had flown over the a good part of the nucleus political gesture to shake up the French. It prison with a small plane, which was was better than doing nothing. Since those prohibited, and had taken some pictures. By of the future extreme Left who left for Algeria couldn’t be educated, the way, they were sick as dogs in the plane, had its origins in the aid to many became racists. which had had to perform aerial acrobatics. We kept track of the changing of the guard the Algerian revolution - it You know what a colonial war is: "our among the police and the CRS around the was a matter of “practical” buddies are being killed", the young soldiers prison in order to learn their itinerary, how internationalism are completely caught up in the machine. It may they were, and when the guard was was better that they not leave at all. Though The “clandestine” militants in solidarity with changed. Leninists on the army question, we were thus Algeria, who were members of the UEC, in support of insubordination: it was the most We were right up against the walls. Little were to play a very important role in the birth effective way to lead people to obtain hills permitted us to hide. We were a few of a “Left Opposition” to Stalinism. This consciousness and to participate, in however couples who relieved each other, each couple opposition was to be born beginning in 1960- slight a way, in a small sabotage of the remaining there four and a half hours. 61 and would end with the expulsion of all of French military apparatus. them in 1965. The transition was nevertheless We transmitted the information to people to take five years. Before the war in Algeria Torture, too, was an important element in our who had pseudonyms, and whose identity I ended, the OAS affair was to be a choice. There were newspapers that don’t know. They were at “a higher level.” It supplementary element in nourishing, specialized in the distribution of forbidden 23 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Our History

works (like La Question by Henri Alleg). organization that brought together thousands nabbed them and interrogated them (without This was the case with Temoignages et of students in Paris and the provinces. The beating them) for a whole night in an documents, which denounced all the dirty PCF was against us and we, Communists, apartment until they confessed. work of the French in Algeria. I worked a lot were at the head of the FUA. for this last publication. We found on them a list of 50 officers and In opposition to the Stalinists, we managed to dozens of keys. Afterwards we didn’t know The denunciation of torture played a large demonstrate that it was possible to have a what to do with these people. We turned them role. For example, when the general secretary unitary, non-sectarian combative reaction, over to the cops, with the maps of the Figaro of the Algiers Prefecture in 1957, Paul since it was the organization that had decided that they had. The cops were furious that it Teitgen, said: “Torture is our way of to chase the fascists from the Latin Quarter. was “Leftists” who gave them these bombers. governing,” he didn’t go much further, but Every day there were hundreds of students Three of these OAS members were placed in this was already more than mere who, at the call of the FUA, gathered in the an internment camp. “.” We managed thus to be “forced Latin Quarter with flying squads. As soon as to respond,” as we say today, on the very there was a distribution of fascist leaflets we The next day the Figaro, very much put out, nature of the combat that the French carried went out and broke it up. We know that had to talk about this. This was really an out in Algeria. This had an important political people like Duprat, [5] who was pro OAS and event. But the newspaper still said that it was meaning. has since died, were never able to penetrate “perhaps” a question of the bombers of the the Institut de Geographie... Recently there Figaro. The OAS people did about two or After this, the OAS was also an important was still an inscription on the walls of that three years in an internment camp (there were cause of political turmoil, because there it Institute: “Duprat will not enter.” We really very few of these camps for fascists, but was a matter of fascism. For a whole period cleaned up the Latin Quarter, not in an ultra- many for Algerians.) Algeria was very far away for people, so Left way, but with the mass of students And then there was October people didn’t really give a damn, and anyway who’d been mobilized. There were it had to do with the “Arabs.” The mass of the Christians, PSU (United Socialist Party, a left 17, 1961, when hundreds of population began to get interested in Algeria centrist group - ed) members, the Algerians were killed... when tens of thousands of their sons had been unorganized and us, the Communist The OAS alienated a good part of public there and then told about their war when they “opposition.” got back. Besides this, there were thousands opinion, especially after the attack aimed at who didn’t come back, or were wounded; the The Party leadership called me in, along with he apartment of André Malraux, which cost French population then began to ask some others, to tell us to stop, that we were little Delphine Renard her eye. This was a questions. behaving like “ultra-Leftists.” This was to be turning point in the war in Algeria. People a good experience, for we were quickly given said: “It’s a total mess here. If there’s a At the beginning of the war, aside from a kind of “democratic cushion” to protect us: danger of attacks on the streets, well, let’s put intellectuals, the Left slept. But with the 150 intellectuals, with Jean-Paul Sartre and an end to this...” OAS, that is, with fascism, the people of the at the head of the group, Left began to wake up, there were anti-fascist signed a text that was more or less the same And then there was the Paris demonstration reactions. It became a “French phenomenon,’ as that of the FUA. This was the creation of of October 17, 1961, when hundreds of with the skinheads, the strong-arm men of the the FACUIRA [Front d’action et de Algerians were killed their bodies thrown right...people began to be afraid. Then there coordination des universitaires et into the Seine. Public reaction was miserable; were the attacks, Delphine Renard... As for intellectuals pour un rassemblement what happened had never before been seen. me, my flat was firebombed by the fascists. antiraciste]. So we now had this anti-OAS But there was so much racism among the structure guided by intellectuals, and the public that everyone contented themselves The third “interesting” experience: at the organization of high school and college with finding the repression shameful. time when the OAS was carrying out these students, the FUA. Information about it came out little by little. attacks, we felt that among young people there was something bigger than just the war This was a very rich experience. We had our Today we know what happened, but at the in Algeria itself that was happening, and the own spy service: it was in this way that we time not much was known; we were Front universitaire antifasciste (University acquired credibility. We were able to arrest constantly lied to. For many people it was Anti-fascist Front- FUA) was created. We those who bombed Le Figaro, a kind of only a that “there was an enormous demo of managed to create a true mass combat operation that the cops never handled. We filthy Arabs that the cops attacked.” The 24 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Our History

public reacted to this benign version of the There’s finally today a rehabilitation of the facts, and racism had free rein here. It wasn’t truth, but we had to wait for it almost till the With Daniel Bensaid (left) and Oliver French people who were attacked and, by end of the century. All kinds of committees Besancenot in 2002. definition, the Algerians were frightening. have tried to do something. In many We like the neighborhood Arab grocer, the interviews it was asked of Communists if it’s , to or it’s not the one who’s open all night, but when they’re true that the curtain of L’Humanité had same as when I go to Algeria. There’s together on the street they’re scary. So there remained closed before of the demonstrators. something there that remains. This is why was, on the one hand, fear of that mass of They answered that this was the case, but that we’re very demanding if something’s not Algerians and a little regret because there they couldn’t do otherwise, that they had to right in Algeria. “They don’t deserve this,” was talk that there had been a lot of deaths. ensure the security of the newspaper, etc. we think. This explains the paralysis of opinion. Always the same arguments, it’s terrible. Source: Jacques Charby, Les Porteurs I saw the horrible scene on the Grands All of this represents the beginning of the d’Espoir. La Découverte, Paris, 2004; Boulevards. I was warned of it, and it was break between the world of labour and the Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor. absolutely horrible: it’s a memory I’ll never PCF, the beginning of the latter’s decline. Alain Krivine’s new book Ca te passera avec forget. What’s more, it was raining, which From a certain point of view, the formation of l’âge (You’ll Grow Out of It) is published at gave it an even more gloomy aspect. There the “cadres” of 1968 and the “new extreme the beginning of October by Flammarion. were no cars on the Grands Boulevards, Left” with the Trotskyists, the Maoists and some of the ecologists - everything that goes Alain Krivine is one of the main spokespersons of the traffic was blocked. It was 11:00 at night and French Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire the massacre had already taken place. beyond the traditional parties, in short, a good part of the militants today in their NOTES ...The worst was in front of fifties, were politicized, radicalized, the offices of L’Humanité, its revolutionized and de-Stalinized by their [1] Josette Audin, widow of Maurice Audin, an Algerian support for the Algerian Revolution. Communist professor who was arrested by French iron shutter down and in paratroopers, tortured and executed in secret.

front of it a mass of In 1962 the independence of Algeria was a [2] He was sentenced to two years in prison for Algerians, wounded or great joy; we had worked for years to this insubordination. end. There were no manifestations of joy in dead: an image like this one [3] André Marty led a mutiny in an attempt to stop the France. It was difficult...But it was French Navy intervening against the Bolshevik is unforgettable. extraordinary for all the solidarity militants. Revolution in 1917. Tried and imprisoned, Marty was eventually released in 1923. Marty immediately joined the The Boulevard was flooded, gloomy, black; You could look yourself in the mirror after having contributed if not a stone, at least a Communist Party and eventually became a member of its no cars, not a sound: total silence. And the Central Committee. He was also appointed to the grain to that Algerian independence. The mounds of Algerians - and there’s no other executive of the Comintern and was involved in combat was victorious and we were establishing the International Brigades that took part in the words for it - every 50 meters before the absolutely happy. Spanish Civil War. Marty was in the Soviet Union on the doorways. You didn’t know who was dead. outbreak of the Second World War. He later moved to There was blood. They didn’t move, they Afterwards there were debates: what is this Algiers where he attempted to direct the activities of the didn’t cry out, they didn’t say anything. Front National and the Frances-Tireurs Partisans, the going to lead to? Some were more confident military wing on the Communist Party. After the D-day Mounds of Algerians in the darkness, and than others, more optimistic. But we said to landings took place Marty wanted the Communists to take companies of CRS, clubs in hand, who ourselves: “At least this is it. The country is power. However, under instructions from Joseph Stalin in weren’t hitting anyone anymore, who walked the Soviet Union, Maurice Thorez and other leaders independent, the cause for which people were refused to cooperate. In 1952 Marty and Charles Tillon back and forth. massacred. Torture has stopped. Whatever were both expelled from the Communist Party. André the regime, the primary objective has been Marty died in 1956. The worst was in front of the offices of achieved, the Algerians have their own L’Humanité, on the boulevard Poissonière, [4] Maillot was an Algerian Communist who was killed home.” while transporting arms stolen from the French army. its iron shutter down and in front of it a mass Iveton, too, was a Communist, guillotined after a failed act of Algerians, wounded or dead, who were In conclusion, I’d like to say that you have to of sabotage. bleeding and were there, in front of the closed try to understand that an entire generation [5] Extreme Right-wing militant, later co-founder of the shutter: an image like this one is maintains particularly close ties with the Front National. He was killed under mysterious unforgettable. Algerian people since that time. If I go to circumstances in 1978. 25 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

FI Youth Camp 2006 Pasta, politics and parties

Thomas Eisler , Penelope Duggan

More than 550 young participants met at the youth camp this year near the Umbrian town of Perugia in the largest FI youth camp since 1995. This was thanks to an impressive mobilisation by the youth of Sinistra Critica in Italy who brought 230 Italians to the camp. The 130- strong delegation from France and 70 from the Spanish State made it a camp with a strong Latin language dominance. It was of course a pleasant internationalist atmosphere that made the smaller delegations from , Britain, Scotland, Denmark, Germany, , the , , Sweden, and the Philippines feel “at home”.

The presence of the comrades understanding of the Middle Crucial moment for anti- In several countries the students from Mindanao in the East and discuss how to improve capitalists in Italy have mobilised against austerity Philippines brought home to the solidarity work with the peoples and commodification of participants the reality of a of Lebanon and Palestine. A The camp was an important education. The withdrawal of the constant struggle against “permanent workshop” to occasion for the young people of CPE (first job contracts) in military occupation by the exchange experiences and the FI and the left current France after a broad Sinistra Critica inside Philippines government, backed coordinate the activities mobilisation was an inspiration by the US. “We were saddened, Rifondazione. Several of the throughout the week was added for others. “After the yet inspired, after speaking with dissident Rifondazione to the programme. The planned mobilisation against the CPE an the Filipino comrades, who parliamentarians had a chance to central forum on international enormous student movement shared their experiences of state explain the situation. The repression, armed resistance resistance to imperialism and Rifondazione majority had started in Greece. ... The movements and comrades being war was strengthened by the decided to be in favour of the students, to state that they were brutally murdered by Maoist participation of a young Italian troops in Afghanistan in going to win, said they would guerrillas, ” wrote James Nesbitt Palestinian comrade as well as a contradiction with its earlier “talk French” to the government. in Scottish Socialist Voice in his young woman from the Spanish position. They wanted to We discussed the lessons we had account of the camp. State arriving directly from influence the military presence learnt from our different solidarity work in Gaza. to make it less harmful. “But mobilisations, knowing that in The participation of 12 Scottish how do you make war and kill Greece they won the youth was also a big step “A new generation for a new people in a less harmful way”, postponement of their reform.” forward in relations with the Europe - building the anti- asked Franco Turigliatto, one of (Rouge-France) Scottish Socialist Youth even capitalist left” The experiences the dissident senators. The two though they are facing a crisis in of building radical anti-capitalist senators from the Fourth Revolution in the 21st the SSP. The Greeks were also International section could have parties in Europe was another century much more numerous than in central point on the agenda of the decisive vote in toppling the any previous camps due to the government and bringing back the camp. The exchange of Another constant thread was the geographic proximity as well as Berlusconi because it was made experiences between the need for a new generation of a growth in youth membership in a vote of confidence. In the end comrades involved in such political activists to look at the the OKDE-Spartakos. They the dissident senators voted in found the experience very projects were a central theme favour of a motion that world as it is today and build the positive and will put mobilising both of forums and workshops prolonged the Italian troops in political instruments necessary for the camp as a high priority on and of the bilateral inter- Afghanistan. But they also for the fight to change it without their agenda for next year. The delegation meetings where presented an ultimatum backed forgetting to learn from past Portuguese delegation was back comrades could discuss face to by 16 senators which made it experiences. The camp is an after having giving priority to face their experiences, successes clear that at the next time in six important moment forming that the Left Bloc youth camp in the and failures whether they had months they will not save the new generation to take forward last couple of years. already a relative long Prodi government if it insists on the revolutionary struggle in the experience such as in the Left maintaining the troops in 21st century. Under the shadow of war Bloc of Portugal, the Red Green Afghanistan. Alliance in Denmark, the Thomas Eisler is a member of the The question of war became a From the movements to national leadership of the Red-Green or within more central theme than the camp Alliance as well as the leadership of predicted in the planning the party of Communist SAP - Danish Section of the Fourth because the camp took place Refoundation (PRC) in Italy or The camp was full of enthusiasm International. while Israel was in the midst of newer experiences such as the and there was a rich exchange in Penelope Duggan is a member of the its attack on Lebanon. The camp WASG-Linkspartei in Germany experiences due to the recent executive bureau of the Fourth was a chance to enhance the or Respect in Britain. movements in various countries. International. 26 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

European Anti-Capitalist Left Call for Anti-G8 mobilisation in Rostok

European Anti-Capitalist Left

“Learned a lot, had Run by the youth, the camp is fun” able to instil knowledge and confidence in a socialist The Fourth International seems structure. “The Fourth to have worked to recognise the International youth camp crucial nature of class issues samples a utopian society and such as LGBT liberation, creates a microcosm of a internationalism, women’s socialist civilization where the liberation and Marxist ecology. class war is won, gender is In particular, they make no indifferent and equality is The next G8 summit will take place in June 2007 in the Baltic absolute” comments Jamie bones about their commitment to coastal resort of Heiligendamm, near Rostock, after summits in Smith (Sheffield, South Bank feminism, something which Edinburgh and St Petersburg. Poverty, debt, environmental University). would undoubtedly be destruction, war, social cuts and attacks on our democratic contentious in the SSP. Our (Socialist Resistance, rights - this is the catastrophic balance-sheet of the neo-liberal delegation came home satisfied, England & Wales) policies of the leaders of the eight most powerful countries that having learned a lot, had fun and meet up every year. made important new contacts. The red thread... The FI is not the only show in The G8 symbolises more than to turn the G8 summit town on the international far- It was interesting to meet any other international into a huge European left, but SSY were glad to have historical fighters like the institution the economic and demonstration of social been involved and grateful to the French philosopher Daniel political order of capitalism. A opposition. organisers and delegations for Bensaid sitting down with a group of industrial states which their friendliness, hospitality and group from a younger generation govern only 13% of the world‚s The parties and groups organised solidarity. I would strongly exchanging impressions, taking population sets the agenda for in the European Anti-Capitalist recommend young members the temperature of the new the other international Left are part of a broad social attend next year and to learn rebellious youth, and, institutions in secret meetings alliance at European level to more about the FI, their history undoubtedly, remembering his and assumes it can just dominate protest against the G8 and their policies as effectively and and their current perspectives. own and never renounced fights the rest of the world. These are visibly as possible. But our aim as a “sixty-eighter” . Because precisely the countries where the (Scottish Socialist Voice) is not just to oppose these attacks not all the rebel students from biggest financial centres are on our rights, living conditions that era have been integrated into concentrated, where most ”A mini dream and future, but to develop an transnational companies are the system as the mass media alternative society based on world” based, the most billionaires live would like us to believe in an peace and not war, on solidarity and insatiable greed for natural The experiences of the camp irreversible logic that one is not competition, on equality, not resources dominates. have had a profound effect on radical left at 20 but inevitably discrimination. rightwing at 40 (...) The those that went. Tamir Nasrallah A broad European counter- educationals and the informal WE CALL ON THE WHOLE from London says “The camp movement to this summit is conversations in the camp are a EUROPEAN LEFT AND was like a mini dream world, it necessary to protest against the necessary transmission of PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS was a platform for the young to cruel policies of this self- militant experience, they tie the TO JOIN US IN THE express themselves politically appointed elite and develop ACTIVITIES AND and allowed us to break the knot firmly in the red thread that social alternatives to the dictates links the different generations. DEMONSTRATIONS IN barriers of the capitalist system of capital. The Assembly of ROSTOCK IN JUNE 2007! and question things in a highly (Espacio Alternativo, Social Movements decided at critical way.” Spanish state) the European Social Forum in EACL Secretariat 27 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

European Anti-Capitalist Left

European Anticapitalist Left declaration

One year after saying NO to the European Constitutional Treaty

1 One year after, the European protection. Being challenged in any compromises which would lead immigrants themselves into Union faces challenges Strasbourg and , the to capitalism being stabilised on the criminals. This hatred and fear is strategies of Lisbon and Barcelona back of workers, youth, women and coming from above. That’s why we, The French and Dutch “No” ended have been challenged with a new immigrants. the parties of the EACL are taking up up being a fatal blow to the project of dimension in many European a two-pronged battle for hearts and the militarist, antidemocratic and countries, after several decades. 4 Against the role of minds: for peace and equal rights for neo-liberal constitution for the Multinationals in Europe and immigrants. European Union (EU). This victory Germany’s biggest strike in 20 years in Latin America is first of all a defeat for neo- happened while the government 6 Towards a new social and liberalism. Workers and youth don’t wanted to increase working time The legitimate of the political force across Europe accept capitalism as the end of from 38.5 to 42 hours in regional oil and gas industry by the Bolivian history for humanity any more. In a public services. In Great Britain too government has met with an angry The rejection of the European context of globalization, of the biggest strike since 1926 took response from right-wing European Constitution made the 450 million delocalization and privatization, the place in transport and municipal governments and multinational citizens aware that the fight against values of the market and competition services, with more than 1.5 million corporations. It forces us, the parties this Europe is a common fight. The are definitely not ours. workers on strike for 24 hours. In and movements involved in the Social Forum of Athens, which has Denmark over 100,000 EACL, to support campaigns in just come to an end, leads the way The rejection of the constitution is a demonstrated on 17th May against defence of the rights of the Bolivian towards this new Europe, thereby sanction against the autocratic power the right-wing government’s plan to people and other oppressed peoples following on from the previous of the ruling elite. They cannot attack the welfare system. Finally, in of Latin America to use their own social forums. Enhanced by these indefinitely ridicule universal France, after the movement of the natural resources as they want. This, new struggles, new experiences and suffrage and all our democratic poor suburbs in autumn 2005, a long, we believe is, the main task of the new generations, it is up to us in the gains, the fruits of two centuries of massive and powerful social anticapitalist left in Europe in the European Anti-Capitalist Left to struggle. movement took place among youth struggle against the transnationals in deepen our cooperation and our and the working class against the our own countries. links, beyond our different histories Finally, the results of the French and CPE (“First Job Contract”), which and cultures. We support the effort to Dutch referendums express a deep legalized contingent work for youth 5 Against War and build a new social, political and aversion to war and imperialism, at under the age of 26. On 8th March discrimination of immigrants pluralist force across Europe able to the time of the Iraqi mire and the and 4th April, more than 3 million overthrow neo-liberalism. This is the militarization of Europe through its people demonstrated against the Social struggles and the anti-war commitment we are making. subordination to NATO. We oppose French government’s policy. campaign are very closely linked. A any imperialist war against Iran. new stage of imperialist war is on the Saint-Denis, the 19th of May 2006 Across Europe with more or less horizon. The US government has 2 From the No of the ballot to intensity, new generations of declared its new aim of Bloco de Esquerda the No on the streets demonstrators realise the need for an overthrowing the mullahs’ regime in (Portugal), alternative to neo-liberalism. Teheran. That means the dispute The French and Dutch “No” have about nuclear power in Iran is central Esquerra Unida i Alternativa, been a tremendous lever for all the 3 Preparing political and the EU, in particular the British, (Catalunya) social struggles in Europe those past alternatives French and German governments, few months. The rejection of neo- are playing the role of a useful idiot Espacio Alternativo (Spain) liberalism in the ballot has been As participants of the European in a murderous strategy which is no Deutsche Kommunistische translated into powerful European Anti-Capitalist Left, we have longer under their control. social movements on the streets. The participated in those social and union Partei (Germany) Lisbon and Barcelona strategies, movements with all our strength. We Anti-war mobilisation must return to Ligue Communiste with their antisocial effects have favour the unity of all progressive the streets. Solidarity with the been massively rejected. In January forces against neo-liberal projects, Palestinian people and the rejection Révolutionnaire (France), 2006, thanks to their European be they launched by conservative, of cynical European cessation of aid Özgürlük Dayanisma Partisi mobilization and the pressure they social-democrat or neo-liberal labour is an urgent necessity. put on the European Parliament, governments. (Turkey), dockers have defeated the directive The renewed peace movement is Red/Green Alliance Our goal is not only to resist the confronted with a brutal anti- which liberalizes port services for (Denmark), the second time. attacks on our rights, living immigrant and islamophobic conditions and our future, but also to campaign aimed at those sections of Respect (Great Britain), With their European demonstrations, help develop an alternative society society which are most susceptible to social movements and unions have founded on peace not war, on racism and xenophobia. The Scottish Socialist Party pushed back the Eurocrats on the solidarity not competition, on European governments are directly (Scottland), country of origin principle in the equality not discrimination, on responsible for creating this Bolkestein directive. The struggle environment not pollution. It’s based atmosphere. All across Europe they SolidaritéS (Switzerland) goes on for its total rejection and for on this programme of political, are proposing new discriminatory The European Anti-Capitalist Left the improvement of working democratic and social breakthrough measures. On the borders of Fortress brings together a range of broad conditions in all the countries of that we stand in elections. We reject Europe they are pursuing a shameful parties from across Europe to co- Europe and legislation offering racism, sexism, homophobia and all policy which is turning immigration ordinate policy discussions and workers the highest degree of kinds of discrimination. We reject into a national security issue and the practical actions. 28 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Debate: On working class consciousness The Labor Aristocracy Myth

Charlie Post

THE PERSISTENCE OF and outright conservatism among workers, especially in the imperialist centers of North America, Western Europe and , has long confounded revolutionary socialists. The broadest outlines of Marxist theory tell us that capitalism creates it own “gravediggers” - a class of collective producers with no interest in the maintenance of private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist system’s drive to maximize profits should force workers to struggle against their employers, progressively broaden their struggle and eventually overthrow the system and replace it with their democratic self-rule. Well paid Boeing workers listen The reality of the last century seems to class. He argued that those British workers respectfully to Democrat Senator challenge these basic Marxist ideas. Despite who had been able to establish unions and Barbara Boxer occasional mass militancy and even proto- secure stable employment - skilled workers revolutionary struggles, the majority of the in the iron, steel and machine making social disruption. By 1915, Lenin had begun working class in the developed capitalist industries and most workers in the cotton to develop his explanation for the victory of countries have remained tied to reformist textile mills - constituted a privileged and opportunism in the socialist and labor politics - a politics premised on the “bourgeoisified” layer of the working class, a movements. In his article “The Collapse of possibility of improving the condition of “labor aristocracy.” the ,” Lenin argued: workers without the overthrow of capitalism. British capital’s dominance of the world “The period of imperialism is the period in While living and working conditions for economy - its industrial and financial which the distribution of the world among the workers in the “global North” have “monopoly” - allowed key employers to ‘great’ and privileged nations, by whom all deteriorated sharply since the late 1960s, the provide a minority of workers with relatively other nations are oppressed, is completed. result has not been, for the most part, the higher wages and employment security. Scraps of the booty enjoyed by the privileged growth of revolutionary consciousness. Engels saw the resulting relative privilege, as a result of this oppression undoubtedly fall Instead we have seen reactionary ideas - especially when compared with the mass of to the lot of certain sections of the petty- racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, poorly paid workers in unstable jobs, as the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy and militarism - strengthened in a significant material basis of the growing conservatism of bureaucracy of the working class.” [3] sector of workers in the advanced capitalist the British labor movement. countries. Since the late 1970s, nearly one- This segment “represents an infinitesimal third of U.S. voters in union households have The contemporary theory of the labor minority of the proletariat and the working voted for right-wing Republicans. [1] aristocracy is rooted in the work of V.I. Lenin masses” whose “adherence... with the on imperialism and the rise of “monopoly bourgeoisie against the mass of the This paradox poses a crucial challenge for capitalism.” Lenin was shocked when the proletariat” was the social basis of revolutionary Marxists. However, we need to leaders of the European socialist parties reformism. avoid “mythological” explanations, imagined supported “their” capitalist governments in explanations for real phenomena, whether to the First World War. The victory of what he Lenin located the economic foundation of the interpret natural events or to explain the called “opportunism” (his term for labor aristocracy in the “super-profits” nature of society. Unfortunately, one of the reformism) confounded Lenin, who had generated through imperialist investment in most influential explanations within the left dismissed the development of “” what we would today call the “third world” for working class reformism and (Edward Bernstein’s challenge to classical or “global South.” According to his 1920 conservatism - the theory of the “labor Marxism in 1899) as the ideology of socially preface to Imperialism: The Highest Stage of aristocracy” - is such a myth. isolated, middle-class intellectuals. Lenin Capitalism: believed the “orthodox Marxist” leadership Theory of the “Labor Aristocracy” of the socialist parties and unions had long “Obviously, out of such enormous super ago vanquished the revisionist challenge. profits (since they are obtained over and Frederick Engels first introduced the notion above the profits which capitalists squeeze of the “labor aristocracy” in a number of Lenin had therefore expected that the out of the workers of their “own” country) it letters to Marx stretching from the late 1850s European socialist leaders would fulfill their is possible to bribe their labor leaders and an through the late 1880s. [2] Engels was pledge, ratified at numerous congresses of upper stratum of the labor aristocracy. And grappling with the growing conservatism of the Socialist International, to oppose their the capitalists of the “advanced” countries do the organized sectors of the British working ruling classes’ war drive with strikes and bribe them: they bribe them in a thousand 29 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Debate

to white supremacy and the dominance of “America” in the world.” [9]

Most current versions of the labor aristocracy thesis recognize some of the grave empirical problems (see below) with Lenin’s claims that higher wages for a significant minority of workers in the imperialist countries comes from the super profits earned from the exploitation of lower paid workers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. [10] Instead, they tend to emphasize how the emergence of “monopoly capitalism” allows large corporations that dominate key branches of industry to earn super profits, which they share with their workers in the form of secure employment, higher wages and benefits.

Contemporary defenders of the labor aristocracy thesis argue that prior to the rise of large corporations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, capitalism was in its Boeing workers on strike “competitive” stage. Under competitive lie in Trotskyism, has published a series of capitalism most branches of industry saw a different ways, direct and indirect, overt and articles in the DSP sponsored journal Links large number of relatively small firms covert.” [8] that elaborates upon Elbaum and Seltzer’s competing with one another through price defense of the theory of the labor aristocracy. “This stratum of bourgeoisified workers or cutting. “labor aristocracy,” who have become Important groups of activists, in particular If any particular firm or industry began to completely petty-bourgeois in their mode of those working with low-wage workers, are experience higher than average profits life, in the amount of their earnings, and in also drawn to the theory of the labor because of the introduction of new their point of view, serve as the main support aristocracy. Four members of the People machinery, it was relatively easy for its of the Second International [the reformist Organized to Win Employment Rights competitors to either adopt the new socialists - CP] and, in our day, the principal (POWER), a workers’ center organizing technology or shift investment from social (not military) support of the mostly “low-wage/no-wage” workers of industries with lower profits to industries bourgeoisie. They are the real agents of the color in the San Francisco area, argued that: with higher profits. Through this process of bourgeoisie in the labor movement, the labor “Another feature of imperialism that competition within and between branches of lieutenants of the capitalist class, the real production, new technology was rapidly carriers of reformism and chauvinism.” [4] distinguishes it from earlier eras of capitalism is the imperialist powers’ creation of a “labor diffused and capital easily moved between The theory of the labor aristocracy remains aristocracy.” The dominant position of the different sectors of the economy, resulting in uniform technical conditions within an an important explanation of working-class imperialist nations allows these nations to industry and equal profit rates within and reformism and conservatism for important extract super-profits. The ruling elite of between industries. segments of the far left in the industrialized imperialist nations use some of the super- countries. While the mainstream Communist profits to make significant economic and According to Elbaum and Seltzer, Marx’s Parties generally distanced themselves from political concessions to certain sectors of that analysis of the equalization of the rate of the notion of the labor aristocracy as they nation’s working class. Through higher profit [11] applied to the “competitive” phase moved toward reformist politics in the late wages, greater access to consumer goods and of capitalism: 1930s, [5] certain left-wing opponents of the services and expanded social wage such as Communist Parties continue to defend the public education and cultural institutions, the “In the era of competitive capitalism, profits theory. imperialist elite are able to essentially bribe above the average rate, i.e. surplus profits, those sections of the working class... were generally spasmodic and temporary. Thus, in the “New Communist Movement” They were usually derived as a result of of the 1970s and 1980s, various currents “For a contemporary example of this, all we technological advances that enabled a defended the notion that a layer of U.S. have to do is look at the 2004 presidential capitalist to reduce costs below the industry workers shared in the “super profits” of elections. Statistics show that working class average, or entrepreneurial skills that opened imperialism and monopoly capitalism. Max whites in the United States voted new markets. However, an abnormally high Elbaum (the author of the influential overwhelmingly for George W. Bush in an rate of profit by an individual firm, or in a Revolution in the Air [6] and Robert Seltzer, election that could be read as a referendum of particular branch of industry, was soon then leaders of the prominent “new the empire’s war on the Iraqi people. An undermined by an inflow of capital seeking communist” group Line of March, published analysis that solely focuses on class would the higher rate of profit or by the relatively a three part explication and defense of the suggest that working class whites had and rapid adoption of cost-cutting innovations by theory of the labor aristocracy in the early have an interest in opposing a war that, if competitors.” [12] 1980s. [7] nothing else, is costing them billions in dollars. But clearly that ain’t what happened. The rise of large scale corporations in the More recently, Jonathan Strauss of the Working class whites voted overwhelmingly 20th century create “institutional or structural Australian Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), in support of the war on the Iraqi people. The restrictions of this process” which “result in one of the larger revolutionary organizations majority of working class whites, despite monopoly super profits.” [13] “Monopoly” in the English-speaking world whose origins their own exploitation, tie their own interests or “oligopoly” - where a small number of 30 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

On Working Class Consciousness firms dominate a given industry - replaced and doom workers in these industries to capitalist investment takes place within the competition. Specifically, the enormous cost below average wages and benefits and boundaries of each industrialized country. of new capital’s entering these industries insecure employment. (auto, steel, etc.) - the barriers to entry — Of that five percent of total global investment allow these firms to limit competition and From this perspective, effective unions are that is foreign direct investment, nearly three- sustain above average profits in several ways. only possible in the monopoly sector of the quarters flow from one industrialized country economy, where the absence of competition - one part of the global North - to another. These barriers to entry prevent the rapid creates super profits and allows corporations Thus only 1.25% of total world investment diffusion of new methods of production to “bribe” workers with higher wages and flows from the global North to the global across industries, creating what Ernest more secure employment. Given the realities South. It is not surprising that the global Mandel called “technological rents” or super- of racism and national oppression, “white” South accounts for only 20% of global profits [14] for these monopoly corporations. workers tend to be overrepresented in the manufacturing output, mostly in labor- These barriers also prevent capital from higher paid sectors of the economy, while intensive industries such as clothing, shoes, moving from low profitability to high workers of color tend to be overrepresented auto parts and simple electronics. profitability industries, blocking the in the lower paid sectors of the economy. equalization of profit rates. Finally, barriers Data for profits earned by U.S. companies to entry and restricted competition allow The labor aristocracy, as today’s theorists see overseas do not distinguish between corporations to raise prices above their prices it, is no longer made up primarily of skilled investments in the global North and global of production, securing super profits for the machinists and other industrial workers, as South. For purposes of approximation, we largest firms in the economy. [15] was the case in the early 20th century. Today, will assume that the 25% of U.S. foreign the more highly paid workers in the direct investment in labor-intensive In this view competition does not disappear unionized monopoly and public sector manufacturing in Africa, Asia and Latin under monopoly capitalism, but tends to constitute a labor aristocracy whose higher America produces profits above those earned operate primarily in those sectors of the wages derive from the super-exploitation of on the 75% of U.S. foreign direct investment economy where large numbers of relatively workers in the competitive sectors of the in more capital-intensive production in small firms continue to predominate. Cut- western Europe, Canada and Japan. It is advanced capitalist economies. [17] throat competition and the rapid depression unlikely, however, that more than half of the of above average profits to the average rate Despite its intellectual pedigree and profits earned abroad by US companies are persist in the “competitive” sectors (garment, longevity, the labor aristocracy thesis is not a earned in the global South. electronics, etc.) of the economy. There the theoretically rigorous or factually realistic Thus, assigning 50% of foreign profits of small scale of investment necessary to start a explanation of working-class reformism or U.S. companies to their investments in the competitive firm lowers barriers to entry and conservatism. This essay undertakes an allows a large number of small firms to global South probably biases the data in favor examination of the theoretical and empirical survive. of claims that these profits constitute a economic claims of the labor aristocracy significant source of total U.S. wages. Yet thesis. The result is a “dual economy,” with two even accepting such a biased estimate, the distinct profit rates: We will first evaluate the claim that super data for the period 1948-2003 supports Ernest Mandel’s assertion that U.S. profits “In the monopoly stage of capitalism, the profits pumped out of workers in the global South underwrite a “bribe” in the form of from investment in the global South tendency to form an average rate of profit “constitute a negligible sum compared to the higher wages for a minority of the working still exists, since monopoly doesn’t obliterate total wage bill of the American working class in the global North. The essay then competition in the system as a whole. But it class.” [20] is modified by monopoly power. Therefore, evaluates the claim that limits on competition the surplus value of society is distributed flowing from industrial concentration in key Prior to 1995 total profits earned by U.S. both according to size of capital through sectors of the economy produces differential companies abroad exceeded 4% of total U.S. inter-industry competition (which yields profits rates and wages. We will conclude our wages only once, in 1979. Foreign profits as equal profit on equal capital as in competitive critique of the theory of the labor aristocracy a percentage of total U.S. wages above capitalism); and according to the level of with an analysis of the actual history of 5% only in 1997, 2000 and 2002, and rose monopolization (which yields monopoly radical and revolutionary working-class slightly over 6% in 2003. If we hold to our super profits). Monopolies receive both the activism in the 20th century. estimate that half of total foreign profits are average profit and monopoly super profit. earned from investment in the global South, Consequently, there arise the phenomena of a Finally, I will present an alternative only 1-2% of total U.S. wages for most of the relatively permanent hierarchy of profit rates explanation of the persistence of working nearly 50 years prior to 1995 - and only 2-3% ranging from the highest in the strategic class reformism and conservatism - one of total U.S. wages in the 1990s - could have industries with large-scale production and the rooted in the necessarily episodic character of come from profits earned in Africa, Asia and strongest monopolies, to the lowest in weaker working-class self-organization and activity, Latin America. industries with small-scale production, the emergence of an officialdom intense competition and market instability.” (bureaucracy) in the unions and pro-working Such proportions are hardly sufficient to [16] class political parties, and the inability of explain the 37% wage differentials between reformist politics to effectively win or defend secretaries in advertising agencies and “labor According to Strauss, Elbaum and Seltzer, working-class gains under capitalism. [18] aristocracy” machinists working on oil monopoly super profits become the primary pipelines, or the 64% wage differentials source of the “bribe” for the contemporary Investment, Wages and Profits between janitors in restaurants and bars and labor aristocracy. The monopoly industries’ automobile workers. [21] higher than average profit rates allow these Imperialist investment, particularly in the firms to provide higher than average wages global South, represents a tiny portion of Does this analysis mean that imperialism - and benefits and secure employment to their global capitalist investment. [19] Foreign rooted in the export of capital (and capitalist workers. By contrast, competitive industries direct investment makes up only 5% of total class relations) across the globe - has no earn average (or below average) profit rates world investment - that is to say, 95% of total impact on profits and wages in the global 31 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Debate

more employment and rising wages for capital has sharpened competition among “aristocratic” steel, automobile, machine- workers internationally, to the detriment of making, trucking and construction workers, workers in both the global North and South. but also for lowly paid clerical, janitorial, garment and food processing workers. As The mere threat of moving production “off- Ernest Mandel put it, “the real ‘labor shore,” even if the vast majority of industrial aristocracy’ is no longer constituted inside investment remains within the advanced the proletariat of an imperialist country but capitalist societies, is often sufficient to force rather by the proletariat of the imperialist cuts in wages and benefits, the dismantling of countries as a whole.” [24] That “real ‘labor work rules and the creation of multi-tiered Nike factory, City aristocracy’” includes poorly paid immigrant workforces in the United States and other janitors and garment workers, African- industrialized countries. Neoliberalism’s North? No - but the impact is quite different American and Latino poultry workers, as deepening of the process of primitive from what the labor aristocracy thesis well as the multi-racial workforce in auto and accumulation of capital - the forcible predicts. trucking. [25] expropriation of peasants from the land in Africa, Asia and Latin America - has created In Capital, Volume III, [22] Marx recognized Clearly, these “benefits” accruing to the a growing global reserve army of labor that foreign investment was one of a number entire working class of the industrialized competing for dwindling numbers of of “countervailing” tendencies to the decline countries from imperialist investment are fulltime, secure and relatively well paid jobs of the rate of profit. Put simply, the export of neither automatic nor evenly distributed. across the world. capital from the global North to the global Rising profits and increased investment do South, especially when invested in not necessarily lead to higher wages for Put simply, the sharpening competition production processes that are more labor workers in the absence of effective working- among workers internationally more than intensive than those found in the advanced class organization and struggle. capitalist countries, tends to raise the mass offsets the “benefits” of imperialism for and rate of profit in the North. There is During the post-World War II long wave of workers in the global North. [28] indeed some evidence that foreign profits - expansion, the industrial unions that had Monopoly, Super-Profits and Wage from investments in both the global North arisen during the mass strike wave of 1934- and global South - constitute an important 37 were able to secure rising real wages both Differentials counter tendency to declining profits in the for their own members and the bulk of the The claim that monopoly super-profits, United States. unorganized working classes. However, since resulting from industrial concentration and 1973, the labor movement in the United the limitation of competition in key sectors of Profits earned abroad by U.S. companies as a States and the rest of the industrial countries percentage of total U.S. profits (Table I and has been in retreat. the economy, produce higher than average Graph I) have risen fairly steadily since 1948, wages - and a labor aristocracy of unionized rising from a low of 5.19% in 1950 to a high Real wages for U.S. workers, both union and workers - is also open to empirical challenge. of 30.56% in 2000. [23] The proportion of nonunion, have fallen to about 11% below During the long boom of the 1940s, 1950s U.S. profits earned abroad jumped sharply their 1973 level, despite strong growth and 1960s, certain branches of production did after the onset of the long-wave of stagnation beginning in the late 1980s. [26] Higher than seem to enjoy stable higher than average in 1966, jumping from 6.43% in 1966 to average profits have accrued, first and profits and wages flowing from the rise of 18.36% in 1986. foremost, to capital, allowing increased oligopolies. investment; and to the professional- Even more indicative is the relationship managerial middle class in the form of higher However, as that boom turned into the long between annual percentage changes in salaries. stagnation beginning in the late 1960s, these domestic and foreign U.S. profits (Table II). industries began to face persistently lower In a number of years (1967-1970, 1972-1974, Nor are the “benefits” of increased than average profits and sharpened 1978-1980, 1986-1990, 1994-1995, 1997- profitability and growth due to imperialist competition both at home and abroad. By 2001, 2003), the annual percentage change investment distributed equally to all portions 1980, the impact on wages and working for foreign profits was higher than the annual of the working class. As we will see below, conditions are apparent. According to percentage change for domestic profits. In the racial-national and gender structuring of Howard Botwinick: some of these years (1967, 1969-1970, 1974, the labor market result in women and 1979-1980, 1989, 1998, 2000-2001), total workers of color being concentrated in the “(T)he ‘eternal’ core [“monopoly” industries profits earned in the U.S. declined while total labor-intensive and low-wage sectors of the - CP] was beginning to show more and more profits earned abroad increased. economy. evidence of peripheral [‘competitive’ industries - CP] behavior. Industries like steel Higher profits result in more investment Whatever benefits all workers in the global and auto were experiencing serious across the board in the industrialized North reap from imperialist investment in the profitability crunches and were becoming countries. More investment eventually brings global South are clearly outweighed by the more and more interested in lowering the a growing demand for labor (within limits set deleterious effects of the expansion of wages and working conditions of their by investment in newer, more capital capitalist production on a world scale. This is primary work force. In addition to relocating intensive technology), falling unemployment especially clear today, in the era of neoliberal to low-wage areas, core firms were and rising wages for all workers in the “globalization.” industrialized capitalist countries. successfully extracting serious concessions Although industry is clearly not “footloose in wages and working conditions from their Put simply, this means that imperialist and fancy free” as some theorists of work forces. Even more distressing, a investment in the global South benefits all globalization claim - moving from one ‘secondary’ labor market was developing workers in the global North - both highly country to another in search for the cheapest within the factory gates of these core firms as paid and poorly paid workers. Higher profits labor [27] - the removal of various legal and two-tiered wage packages were increasingly and increased investment mean not only judicial obstacles to the free movement of introduced on a wide scale.” [29] 32 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

On Working Class Consciousness

As early as the mid-1970s, statistical studies mobility of capital between branches of have seen over the last thirty years, however, of the relationship between industrial production, uniform technology, equal profit only effective worker organization can secure concentration and profit and wage rates and wages - exists only when a large and defend these higher than average wages. differentials began to challenge the central number of small firms exist in a market. Any factual claims of the monopoly capitalism deviation from this is “oligopoly” - a form of Racial and gender inequalities can be best thesis. “imperfect competition” that creates understood in relationship to the profit and obstacles to capital mobility, different wage differentials created through capitalist In his 1984 study, Willi Semmler [30] techniques, and higher than average profits accumulation and competition. As race, reviewed the existing literature on industrial and wages. nationality and gender structure the concentration and profit rate differentials and “employment queue” in capitalist societies, carried out his own statistical analysis for the The notions of perfect competition and women and workers of color are over- United States and West German economies oligopoly/monopoly are both conceptually represented in different segments of the since the second world war. He found, first, and empirically flawed. Perfect competition “active” and “reserve” armies of labor. that while there was evidence of a correlation is an ideological construction - an between industrial concentration (monopoly) idealization of capitalist competition that Different industries, with diverse technical and profit rate differentials before 1970, he makes the existing economic order appear conditions of production, profit rates and also found that marked profit rate efficient and just. wages, thus recruit workers from these differentials existed between and within racially and gender defined sectors of the concentrated industries in this period. Real capitalist competition - from the birth of working class. In general, women and capitalism in English agriculture in the 16th workers of color tend to be over represented In other words, profit rate differentials had century, through the industrial revolution of in labor-intensive, low-wage sectors; while multiple causes before 1970. Semmler also the 18th and 19th century to the emergence of white and male workers tend to be over found that when profit rate differentials were the transnational corporations in the 20th represented in the more capital-intensive, examined through the 1970s and early 1980s, century - has never corresponded to the higher-wage sectors. the correlation between industrial dream world of “perfect competition.” concentration and higher than average profit Capitalist competition is fought through what Thus race, nationality and gender do generate rates all but disappeared. Instead, Marx called the “heavy artillery of fixed a stratified working class as workers are “differentials of profit rates are significantly capital” - constant technological innovation, distributed into branches of production that related to the productivity, capital/output taking the form of the increasing competition and accumulation - rather than ratios, and unit wage costs of each industry.” mechanization of production. monopoly or imperialist super profits - [31] continually differentiate in terms of Older investments in fixed capital, even if technique, profitability and wages. Howard Botwinick’s 1993 study of wage and they no longer allow a particular firm to profit differentials reviewed the literature reduce unit costs and raise its profit margins PART 2 published since Semmler’s work was and rates, cannot be abandoned immediately completed, and found similar patterns. [32] in favor of new and more efficient machinery. The “Labor Aristocracy” and Industrial concentration, again, could not According to Botwinick: Working-Class Struggles explain profit and wage rate differentials. In onsciousness in Flux fact, not only were factors like labor “Given the presence of fixed capital productivity, capital-intensity of production, investment, however, new techniques cannot WHATEVER THE THEORETICAL and and the like more important in accounting for be immediately adopted by all firms in the empirical problems with the economics of the profit and wage differentials; but many of the industry. Because fixed capital generally labor aristocracy thesis, its defenders still highly concentrated industries that had requires prolonged turnover periods, new claim that well paid workers have generally experienced higher than average profits prior techniques will be adopted primarily by those been more reformist and conservative in their to 1970 were experiencing lower than capitals that are in the best position to do so. politics than lower paid workers. They point average profits in the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, although new capitals will enter the to the example of mostly white New York industry with ‘state of the art’ equipment and City construction workers (“hardhats”) More recent studies have confirmed the other existing capitals will gradually begin to attacking antiwar demonstrators in the Spring absence of a strong correlation between replenish and expand their productive of 1970; and contrast them with the militancy industrial concentration and higher than facilities with the latest techniques, older, less and progressive politics of some of the recent average profits and wages. Instead, profit and efficient capitals will also tend to live on for “Justice for Janitors” campaigns. wage differentials were rooted in differences many years. This is particularly true within in labor-productivity and capital-intensity of prolonged periods of rapid growth... Rather A more systematic examination of the history production. [33] than creating identical firms, competition of workers’ struggles in the global North in therefore creates a continual redifferentiation the past century, however, does not bear out The empirical problems with the monopoly of the conditions of production.” [35] the claim that well paid workers are generally super profits argument - so central to reformist or conservative, while poorly paid contemporary theories of the labor Put simply, competition - not its absence - workers are more revolutionary or radical. aristocracy - are rooted in the very notions of explains the diversity of technical conditions “monopoly” and “oligopoly.” [34] The notion of production and the resulting The most important counter-example is the that the existence of a small number of large differentiations of profit and wage rates Russian working class in the early 20th firms in an industry limits competition, within and between industries throughout the century. The backbone of Lenin’s Bolsheviks allowing higher than average profits and history of capitalism. The higher wages that (something he was most definitely aware of) wages, is derived from neo-classical (non- workers in unionized capital-intensive were the best paid industrial workers in the Marxian) economics’ vision of “perfect industries enjoy are not gained at the expense Russian cities - skilled machinists in the competition.” of lower paid workers, either at home or largest factories. Lower paid workers, such as abroad. Instead, the lower unit costs of these the predominantly female textile workers, For neoclassical economists, perfect industries make it possible for these capitals were generally either unorganized or competition - which allows instantaneous to pay higher than average wages. As we apolitical (until the beginnings of the 33 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Debate revolution) or supported the reformist Nor is this pattern of militancy and The working class cannot be, as a whole, . [36] radicalism among relatively well paid permanently active in the class struggle. The workers limited to the global North. In entire working class cannot consistently In fact the mass base of the left, antiwar wing between 1970 and 1973, and engage in strikes, demonstrations and other of the pre-First World War socialist parties between 1971 and 1974, copper miners and forms of political activity because this class and of the postwar revolutionary Communist metal workers engaged in industrial struggles is separated from effective possession of the parties were relatively well paid workers in and took the lead in mass mobilizations means of production, and its members the large metalworking industries. These against the military and the right. In Brazil, it compelled to sell their labor power to capital workers led militant struggles against was the well paid metal workers in the in order to survive. They have to go to work! speedup and deskilling that became political “ABC” suburbs of San Paolo who led mass struggles against conscription and the war. strikes in the 1970s that created the CUT Put simply, most workers, most of the time (United Workers Confederation) and are engaged in the individual struggle to sell German became a mass eventually the PT (Workers Party) in the their capacity to work and secure the movement when tens of thousands of well early 1980s. reproduction of themselves and their families paid metal workers left the Independent - not the collective struggle against the Socialists and joined the Communists in Similarly, it was the highest paid Black employers and the state. The “actually 1921. The French and Italian Communists workers in South Africa - in mining, auto, existing” working class can only engage in also became mass parties through the steel - whose struggles in the 1970s created mass struggles as a class in extraordinary, recruitment of thousands of machinists who the radical and militant FOSATU trade union revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situations. led the mass strikes of the postwar period. confederation. FOSATU and its successor Because of the structural position of wage These highly paid workers were also COSATU were able to build on workplace labor under capitalism, these must be of short overrepresented in the smaller Communist organization and power in the political duration. Most often, different segments of parties of the United States and Britain. [37] struggle against apartheid in the 1980s and the working class become active in the 1990s. struggle against capital at different times. Well paid, although generally deskilled, workers in large scale industry continued to It is not surprising that relatively well paid In the wake of successful mass struggles, play a leading role in mass upsurges workers have been at the center of the most only a minority of the workers remain throughout the 20th century. During the CIO militant and radical workers’ struggles of the consistently active. Most of this workers’ upsurge during the 1930s, relatively well paid last century. These workers tend to be vanguard - those who “even during a lull in workers in the U.S. auto, steel, rubber and concentrated in large, capital intensive the struggle...do[es] not abandon the front other mass production industries, often with workplaces that are often central to the lines of the class struggle but continues the skilled industrial workers in the lead, capitalist economy. These workers have war, so to speak, ‘by other means’” [41] - spearheaded the creation of industrial unions considerable social power when they act attempts to preserve and transmit the that united skilled and unskilled, highly paid collectively. Strikes in these industries have a traditions of mass struggle in the workplace and poorly paid. Well paid and skilled much greater impact on the economy than or the community. However, a sector within this active minority, together with workers were, again, over represented in workers in smaller, less capital intensive intellectuals who have access to cultural radical and revolutionary organizations in the workplaces (garment, office cleaning, etc.) skills from which the bulk of the working United States during the 1930s. [38] Workers in capital intensive industries are class is excluded, must take on responsibility also often the first targets of capitalist for administering the unions or political Well paid workers were also in the vanguard restructuring in periods of falling profits and parties created by periodic upsurges of mass of proto-revolutionary mass struggles in sharpened competition. France (1968), Italy (1968-69), Britain activity. (1967-75), and Portugal (1974-75). Explaining Working-Class This layer of fulltime officials - the Relatively “aristocratic” workers in trucking, Reformism [39] bureaucracy of the labor movement - is the auto, telecommunications, public education social foundation for “unconditional” How do we explain the fact that most and the postal service were at the center of reformist practice and ideology in the labor workers, most of the time, do not act on their the unofficial, wildcat strikes that shook U.S. movement. Those workers who become potential power? Why do workers embrace industry between 1965 and 1975. officials of the unions and political parties reformist politics - support for bureaucratic begin to experience conditions of life very In France in 1995, well paid workers in unionism (reliance on the grievance different from those who remain in the telecommunications, public transport, postal, procedure, routine collective bargaining) and workplace. health care and education led the public Democratic party electoral politics - or sector strikes that mounted the first worse, reactionary politics in the forms of The new officials find themselves freed from successful workers’ struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, the daily humiliations of the capitalist labor neoliberalism. In the Fall of 2004, auto militarism? process. They are no longer subject to either workers, some of the best paid in Germany, deskilled and alienated labor or the petty stood up to layoffs, defying their own union The key to understanding working-class despotism of supervisors. Able to set their leaders in an unofficial strike. reformism (and conservatism) is the own hours, plan and direct their own necessarily episodic nature of working- class activities, and devote the bulk of their waking In the U.S. working class during the past struggle and organization. The necessary hours to “fighting for the workers,” the decade, relatively poorly paid workers condition for the development of class officials seek to consolidate these privileges. (janitors, hotel workers, and grocery clerks) consciousness is the self-activity and self- have engaged in strike actions much more organization of the workers themselves. The As the unions gain a place in capitalist frequently than relatively well paid workers. experience of mass, collective and successful society, the union officials strengthen their However, better paid workers - from UPS struggles against capital and its state in the role as negotiators of the workers’ workers in 1997 to transit workplace and the community is what opens subordination to capital in the labor-process. workers in 2005 — have not been absent layers of workers to radical and revolutionary In defense of their social position, the labor from militant workplace struggles. political ideas. [40] bureaucracy excludes rank and file activists 34 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

On Working Class Consciousness in the unions and parties from any real politics, institutionalized collective Eschewing militancy and direct action by decision-making power. [42] bargaining and grievance handling. workers and other oppressed people, the labor bureaucracy and reformist politicians in The consolidation of the labor bureaucracy as However, the continued hold of reformism the West have no choice but to make a social layer, distinct from the rest of the over the majority of workers requires that concessions to the employers’ offensive and working class under capitalism, gives rise to labor officials “deliver the goods” in the form to administer capitalist state austerity. The its distinctive political practice and world- of improved wages, hours and working spectacle of reformist bureaucrats shunning view. The preservation of the apparatus of the conditions. As Bob Brenner points out: the struggle for reforms has been repeated mass union or party, as an end itself, becomes across the capitalist world in the last three the main objective of the labor bureaucracy. "(G)iven even a minimum of working-class decades, with tragic results. The labor bureaucrats seek to contain organization, reformism tends to be widely working-class militancy within boundaries attractive in periods of prosperity precisely Again and again, the reformist bureaucrats that do not threaten the continued existence because in such periods the threat of limited have surrendered to the requirements of of the institutions which are the basis of the working-class resistance - symbolized by the capitalist profitability. The Italian officials’ unique life-style. resolution to strike or a victory at the polls - Communist party embraced austerity in the actually can yield concessions from capital. 1970s. The U.S. AFL-CIO officials have Thus what Ernest Mandel called the Since filling orders and expanding accepted concession bargaining since 1979, “dialectic of partial conquests,” the production are their top priorities in the usually without even the pretense of struggle. possibility that new struggles may be boom, capitalists will tend to find it in their Social-democratic regimes across Europe defeated and the mass organizations of the interests to maintain and increase production, (Mitterand and Jospin in France, Blair in working class weakened, buttress the labor even if this means concessions to the Britain, Schroeder in Germany) embraced bureaucracy’s reliance on electoral workers, if the alternative is to endure a strike neoliberal realism - cutting , campaigns and parliamentary pressure tactics or other forms of social dislocation." [43] privatizing public enterprises, and (lobbying) to win political reforms, and on deregulating capital and labor markets. strictly regimented collective bargaining to When capitalism enters one of its increase wages and improve working unavoidable periods of crisis and Nor has the reformist retreat been limited to conditions. restructuring - like the one that began in the the imperialist countries. In the early 1990s, late 1960s through most of the capitalist the ANC-COSATU-led government in post- The labor bureaucracy’s stake in stable world - the paradox of reformism becomes apartheid South Africa has embraced what bargaining relationships with the employers manifest. In a world of declining profits and some have called the “sado-monetarism” of and their credibility in the eyes of the sharpened competition, capitalists throughout the IMF and World Bank. The debacle of the capitalists as negotiators further reinforce the world went on the offensive at the Lula regime in Brazil - attacking workers’ their conservative ideology and practice. workplace and at the level of the capitalist rights, opening the agricultural economy to From the bureaucracy’s point of view, any state. The restructuring of the capitalist transnational investment and systematically attempt to promote the militant self-activity production along the lines of lean production, retreating from its promise of popular reform and organization among workers must be and the neoliberal deregulation of capital and - fits the pattern all too well. Today, even the quashed. At this point, the bureaucracy’s labor markets, [44] required all-out war most moderate forms of social-democratic organizational fetishism (giving priority to against workers and their organizations have become utopian, as the labor the survival of the apparatus over new across the capitalist world. bureaucracy across the world has been unable advances in the struggle) produces a world- to defend the workers’ past gains much less view that demands the workers’ At this point, reformism becomes ineffective. win significant new reforms in an era of crisis unquestioning obedience to leaders who Workers can and have made gains against and restructuring. claim they know “what is best for the their employers in the past fifteen years - the workers.” success of the UPS strike and the “Justice for Why Working-Class Conservatism? Janitors” campaigns in various cities cannot [46] While the unconditional ideological be ignored. However, these victories often commitment to reformism grows organically required substantive rank-and-file The inability of reformism to “deliver the from the privileged social position of the organization and mobilization - including goods” for most working people also helps us labor officialdom, how do we explain the independent organizations, like Teamsters for make sense of the appeal of right-wing conditional reformism of most workers? Why a Democratic Union (TDU). politics - racist, sexist, homophobic, nativist do most workers, most of the time accept and militarist - for a segment of workers. The reformism? Put bluntly, why is this In fact, the reformist officialdom of the objective, structural position of workers conditional reformism the normal state of unions and social-democratic parties under capitalism provides the basis for working class consciousness under embraced realpolitik - adapting to the new collective, class radicalism and individualist, capitalism? “reality” of declining living and working sectoralist and reactionary politics. conditions. As Mandel pointed out: In “normal times” - of working class Bob Brenner and Johanna Brenner point out, quiescence and passivity - the majority of "(T)he underlying assumption of present-day “workers are not only collective producers workers come to accept the “rules of the social-democratic gradualism is precisely with a common interest in taking collective game” of capitalist competition and this: let the capitalists produce the goods, so control over social production. They are also profitability. They seek a “fair share” of the that governments can redistribute them in a individual sellers of labor power in conflict products of capitalist accumulation, but do just way. But what if capitalist production with each other over jobs, promotions, etc.” not feel capable of challenging capitalist demands more unequal, more unjust As Kim Moody put it, capitalism “pushes power in the workplace, the streets or society. distribution of the ‘fruits of growth’? What if together and pulls apart” the working class. For most workers during “normal times,” there is no economic growth at all as a result As competing sellers of labor power, workers mass, militant struggle seems unrealistic; of capitalist crisis? The gradualists can then are open to the appeal of politics that pit them they tend to embrace the labor officialdom’s only repeat mechanically: there is no against other workers - especially workers in substitution of liberal and reformist electoral alternative; there is no way out." [45] a weaker social position: 35 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Debate

It appears possible for the stronger sections a clashing collection of old ideas handed development of anti-racist struggles and anti- of the working class to defend their positions down, others learned through daily racist consciousness. by organizing on the basis of already existing experience, and still others generated by the ties against weaker, less-organized sections. capitalist media, education system, religion, However, a mass working-class audience for They can take advantage of their positions as etc. It is not simply the popular idea of a anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-militarist Americans over and against foreigners, as nation tranquilized by TV and weekends in ideas will most likely be created in the whites over and against blacks, as men over the mall. “Common sense” is both deeper and context of mass, class struggles against and against women, as employed over and more contradictory because it also embodies capital. Today, the main audience for the idea against unemployed, etc. In so doing, experiences that go against the grain of that workers need to stand up to right-wing working people may act initially only out of capitalist ideology. [51] ideas and practices are the small layer of rank what they perceive to be their most and file activists who are trying to promote immediate self-interest. But over time they Only through the experience of collective, solidarity, militancy and democracy in the class activity against the employers, starting inevitably feel the pressure to make sense of labor movement. at but not limited to the workplace, can these actions and they adopt ideas which can workers begin to think of themselves as a make their actions reasonable and coherent. Only if these activists, with the help of class with interests in common with other These ideas are, of course, the ideas of the socialists in the labor movement, can succeed workers and opposed to the capitalists. right. [47] in building effective collective fight back will Workers who experience their collective, these ideas - the politics of class radicalism - Bruce Nelson’s recent study of steelworkers class power on the job are much more open to achieve mass resonance. details how relatively white workers in the class - and anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti- steel industry struggled to defend their militarist, anti-nativist - ways of thinking. Thanks to the editors of Against the Current, privileged access to better paying and Joaquin Bustelo, Steve Downs, Sam Farber, As Marx pointed out, it is through the relatively more skilled work after the Fred Feldman, Sebastian Lamb, Mike Parker, workplace and union struggles that the Jane Slaughter and Teresa Stern for their establishment of industrial unionism. The working class “becomes fit to rule” - comments on an earlier draft of this essay. rise of the CIO opened the possibility of develops the organization and consciousness Special thanks to Kim Moody and Anwar classwide organization that began to reduce capable of confronting capital. Such Shaikh for their general comments and their the racial/national segmentation of the organization will require a struggle not only help with obtaining data on the weight of working class. against “backward ideas” among workers, foreign direct investment in world and US but against the officialdom of the unions and As the CIO offensive ground to passed its investment (Moody) and on the US profits other popular mass organizations that are peak by the late 1930s, and the industrial committed to reformist strategies, no matter earned abroad as a percentage of total US unions became bureaucratized during the how blatantly ineffective. profits and domestic US wages (Shaikh). second world war, white workers increasingly moved to defend their privileged Workers’ self-organization and self-activity Charlie Post teaches sociology in New York City, is access to employment (and with it housing, active in the faculty union at the City University of in the workplace struggles is the starting New York, and is a member of Solidarity. education for their children, etc.) against point for creating the material and ideological workers of color. In the steel industries, white conditions for an effective challenge to NOTES workers militantly defended departmental working class reformism and conservatism. seniority in promotion and layoffs against Clearly, militant workplace struggle is not a [1] New York Times’ compilation of exit polls for the demands of Black and Latino workers for years 1972-2004 http://www.nytimes.%20com/ sufficient condition for the development of packages/pdf/politics/20041107_px_ELECTORATE.xls plant wide seniority and affirmative action in radical and revolutionary consciousness promotions in the 1960s and 1970s. [48] among workers. Struggles in working-class [2] Jonathan Strauss, in “Engels and the theory of the communities around housing, social welfare, Labor Aristocracy”, Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, 25 (January-June 2004) As Marxists, we understand that such transport and other issues; and political strategies are counter-productive in the www.desp.org.au/links/bank/issue25/Strauss.htm, struggles against racism and war are crucial presents a useful summary of Engel’s writings. medium to long term. Divisions among elements in the political self-transformation workers and reliance on different segments of of the working class. [3] http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/ the capitalist class only undermine the ability 1915/jun/x01.htm of workers to defend or improve their Successful workplace struggles, however, are [4] http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/ conditions of life under capitalism. [49] the necessary condition for the development 1916/imp-hsc/pref02.htm However, when reformism proves incapable of class consciousness. Without the of realistically defending workers’ interests - experience of such struggles, workers will [5] See C. Post, “The Popular Front: Rethinking the History of the CPUSA,” Against the Current 63 (July- as it has since the early 1970s - workers continue to passively accept reformist August 1996) on the Communist Parties’ evolution into embrace individualist and sectoralist politics or, worse, embrace reactionary reformist organizations. perspectives as the only realistic strategy. politics. [6] Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, This is particularly the case in the absence of This does not mean that workers of color, Mao and Che (London: Verso Books, 2002). a substantial and influential militant minority women and other oppressed groups in the [7] ”The Labor Aristocracy: The Material Basis for in the working class that can organize working class should “wait” to fight until Opportunism in the Labor Movement, Part I: The Theory collective resistance to capital independently white and male workers are ready to act. of the Labor Aristocracy,” Line of March 11 (May-June of, and often in opposition to the reformist White and male workers, because of the 1982) [home.conexus.net.au/ benj/LOM.htm]; “Part II: temporary but real advantages they gain in The U.S. Labor Movement Since World War II,” Line of labor officials. [50] March 12 (September-October 1982); “Part III: The the labor market - preferential access to better Polemic Within the Communist Movement,” Line of Conclusion jobs -are not likely to initiate struggles March 13/14 (March-April 1983). against racism, sexism or homophobia in the Kim Moody has pointed out that everyday workplace or anywhere else. Self- [8] Strauss, “Engels and the Labor Aristocracy” 2004; “Monopoly Capitalism and the Bribery of the Labor working class “common sense” is not “some organization and self-activity of racially Aristocracy,” Links: International Journal of Socialist consistent capitalist ideology” but instead: oppressed groups are crucial to the Renewal 26 (July-December 2004). 36 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

On Working Class Consciousness

[9] J. Browne, M. Franco, J. Negron-Gonzales & S. components); and reduces the cost of food and consumer [38] Mike Davis, “The Barren Marriage of Labor and the Williams, Towards Land, Work & Power (San Francisco: goods, increasing the living standard of some workers. Democratic Party” in Prisoners of the American Dream POWER: United to Fight, 2005), 46. (See Arghiri Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange: A Study of (London: Verso Books, 1986), Chapter 2. the Imperialism of Trade (New York: Monthly Review [10] Elbaum and Seltzer, “The Labor Aristocracy,” Part I, Press, 1972) [39] My alternative theory of working class reformism and 16-17; Strauss, “Monopoly Capitalism,” 49. conservatism is drawn from Mandel, “What is the The question of “unequal exchange” in the capitalist world Bureaucracy?” and Robert Brenner, “The Paradox of [11] Capital, Volume III (Harmondworth, England: economy involves a variety of theoretical and technical Reformism: The American Case,” in M. Davis, F. Pfeil, M. Penguin Books, 1981), Part Two. measurement questions which are beyond the scope of this Sprinker (eds.) The Year Left: An American Socialist essay. (See Anwar Shaikh, “Foreign Trade and the Law of Yearbook (London: Verso, 1985); Robert Brenner, “The [12] Elbaum and Seltzer, “The Labor Aristocracy, Part I”, Value, Parts I-II,” Science & Society (Fall 1979 and Problem of Reformism,” Against the Current (New Series) 41 (note iv). Spring 1980) Granting the reality of “unequal exchange,” 43 (March-April 1993). the notion that it produces benefits only for a minority of [13] Strauss, “Monopoly Capitalism,” 50. workers in the global North is not tenable. Again, all [40] Clearly, successful economic and political struggles workers in the global North-from the most poorly to the [14] Late Capitalism (London: Books, 1975), under capitalism can also encourage the development of a best paid-would benefit from “unequal exchange.” They Chapter 3. This is the main economic argument of Strauss, “militant reformist” consciousness among many workers. “Monopoly Capitalism,” 50. would benefit from elevated profit rates and the resulting Some combination of successful self-activity and increase in accumulation and demand for all labor-power. organization, which allows workers to experience their [15] Elbaum and Seltzer, “Theory of the Labor Similarly, lower cost consumer goods and food “affects collective power; and the experience of the limits of Aristocracy, Part I”, 41 (note iv). the standard of living not only of a minority ‘aristocracy of struggles that accept capitalist economic and political rule labor’ but the whole of the working class of the industrial are necessary for the development of revolutionary [16] Elbaum and Selzter, “Theory of the Labor countries.” (Cliff, “Economic Roots of Reformism,” 4) consciousness among a minority of workers. Aristocracy, Part I” 41 (note iv). Strauss relies heavily on the work of Ernest Mandel, which does attempt to [26] Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Sylvia [41] Ernest Mandel, “The Leninist Theory of reconcile notions of “monopoly” with a classical Marxist Allegretto, The State of Working America, 2004/2005 Organization: Its Relevance for Today” in S. Bloom (ed.), concept of competition. Elbaum and Seltzer do not cite (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), Chapter 2. Revolutionary Marxist and Social Reality in the 20th other Marxist and radical economists as the source of their Century: Collected Essays of Ernest Mandel (Atlantic theory of “monopoly capitalism.” However, both [27] For instance, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc. 1994), arguments bear a close relationship to the theories of Paul influential Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 85. Sweezy and Paul Baran, Monopoly Capital (New York: Press, 2000), which I reviewed in Against the Current 99 Monthly Review Press, 1966); and especially the work of (July-August 2002). [42] The process of bureaucratization of trade unions and David Gordon, Richard Edwards and Michael Reich, working class political parties, and the resulting Segmented Work, Divided Workers (Boston: Cambridge [28] See Kate Bronfenbrenner and Stephanie Luce, “The development of reformism, goes on in all capitalist University Press, 1982). Changing Nature of Corporate Global Restructuring: The societies where the labor movement achieves legal Impact of Production Shifts on Jobs in the US, China, and recognition and institutional stability. Put simply, [17] Elbaum and Seltzer, “The Labor Aristocracy, Part II” Around the Globe,” Submitted to the US-China Economic reformism is not limited to the working classes of the presents a fairly detailed discussion of the composition of and Security Review Commission (October 14, 2004) global North. Thus, it is not surprising that in periods of the “labor aristocracy” in the US since the second world www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2004/cornell_u_massrepor war, which is very similar to Gordon, Edwards and declining mass struggle, the mass industrial unions and t.pdf. Reich’s discussion of the “primary labor market” under political parties of the Brazilian (CUT and PT) and South “monopoly capitalism” in Segmented Work, Divided African (COSATU) working classes have become [29] Persistent Inequalities: Wage Disparity Under Workers. bureaucratized and their leaderships embraced reformist- Capitalist Competition (Princeton: Princeton University and ultimately neo-liberal-politics. Press, 1993), 45. [18] My arguments against the “labor aristocracy” argument owe much to Tony Cliff, “Economic Roots of [43] Brenner, “The Paradox of Social Democracy,” 42. Reformism,” Socialist Review (Old Series) 6,9 (June [30] Competition, Monopoly and Differential Profit Rates (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) 1957); Ernest Mandel, “What is the Bureaucracy?” in T. [44] C. Post and J. Slaughter, Lean Production: Why Work Ali (ed.), The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on 20th Century [31] Semmler, Competition, 127. Is Worse Than Ever, And What’s The Alternative? World Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984); (Solidarity Working Paper, 2000) [http://solidarity.igc.org/ and Sam Friedman, “The Theory of the Labor LeanProduction.html]; C. Post, “The Economic Impact of Aristocracy,” Against the Current (Old Series) 2,3 (Fall [32] Botwinick, Persistent Inequalities, 155-170. the War and Occupation of Iraq,” ATC (New Series) 104 1983). [33] David G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald and Peter (May-June 2003) http://solidarity.igc.org/indexATC.html [19] These statistics are drawn from Kim Moody, Workers Sanfey, “Wages, Profits and Rent-Sharing,” The Quarterly in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy Journal of Economics, 111, 1 (February 1996); Kenneth R. [45] Mandel, Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of (London: Verso, 1997), Part I; and personal Troske, “Evidence on the Employer- Size Wage Premium Bureaucracy (London: Verso, 1992), 236. correspondence May 15, 2002 and October 23, 2004. from Worker-Establishment Data,” The Review of Economics and Statistics, 81, 1 (February 1999); Osburn, [46] I want to acknowledge my debt to the seminal essay [20] Mandel, “What is the Bureaucracy?” 19. “Interindustry Wage Differentials;” (2000); Julia I. Lane, by Johanna Brenner and Robert Brenner, “Reagan, the Laurie A. Solomon and James R. Speltzer, “Establishment Right and the Working Class,” Against the Current (Old [21] Jane Osburn, “Interindustry Wage Differentials: Wage Differentials” http://http://www.urban.org/ Series) 1, 2 (Winter 1981). Patterns and Possible Sources,” Monthly Labor Review UploadedPDF/%20410505.pdf Urban Institute Working (February 2000), Table I (“Mean Hourly Wages of Paper, 2001 all come to similar conclusions on the [47] Brenner and Brenner, “Reagan, the Right and the Selected Occupations in Selected Industries, 1998), 36. determinants of profit and wage differentials. Working Class, 30.

[22] Chapter 14, Section 5. [34] Our critique of the theory of “monopoly capitalism” [48] B. Nelson, Divided We Stand: American Workers and is indebted to Steve Zelluck, “On the Theory of the the Struggle for Black Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton [23] Clearly, US corporations earn above average or Monopoly Stage of Capitalism,” Against the Current (Old University Press, 2001), Part Two. “super”-profits on these investments-the result of the Series), 1,1, (Fall 1980); Botwinick, Persistent combination of low wages and labor intensive techniques Inequalities; Semmler, Competition; and Anwar Shaikh, [49] Michael Reich’s Racial Inequality: A Political- common in the global South, rather than the “Marxian Competition versus Perfect Competition: Economic Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University transnationals’ “monopolistic” position in the world Further Comments on the So-Called Choice of Press, 1981) presents substantial evidence that a divided market. Technique,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 4 (1980). working class is less capable of defending itself against capital. He finds that those areas in the US that had the [24] Mandel, “What is the Bureaucracy?” 19. [35] Botwinick, Persistent Inequalities, 131. greatest racial inequality in wages (an index of working class racial division), also had the lowest average wages [25] Some exponents of the labor aristocracy thesis have argued that “unequal exchange”-the ability of firms in the [36] David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers, Volumes I (an index of working class weakness in relation to capital). global North to obtain raw materials, components, and II (London: Macmillan, 1985). consumer goods (clothing, electronics, etc.) and foodstuffs [50] C. Post and K.A. Wainer, Socialist Organization from the global South below their value-is the basis of the [37] Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution, Germany 1918 Today (Solidarity Pamphlet, 1996) “imperialist bribe” to the “labor aristocracy” of the to 1923 (London: Bookmarks, 1982); Mark Hudson, http://solidarity.igc.org/sot.html. advanced capitalist countries. Specifically, they argue that “Rank-and-File Metalworker Militancy in France and “unequal exchange” lowers the cost of inputs (raw Britain, 1890-1918,” New Politics 9, 3 (New Series) [51] The Rank And File Strategy: Building A Socialist materials, components), elevates profit rates in the North (Summer 2003) http://www.wpunj.edu/%20newpol/ Movement In The US (Solidarity Working Paper, 2000) by lowering the cost of inputs (raw materials, issue35/Hudson35.htm http://solidarity.igc.org/TheRankAndFileStrategy.html 37 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Debate : Marxism and Religion Eleven Theses on the Resurgence of Islamic Fundamentalism

Gilbert Achcar

Given the renewed discussion, we are producing this 1981 document, which stands the test of time. The “theses” were circulated widely and have been translated into many languages. Their success was due to the fact that they gave a Marxist analysis of a phenomenon that was then still relatively new. The current resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism dates from the 1970s, and reached its first crescendo, after years of underground activity, with the Iranian revolution of 1979. 1. The extent and diversity of the forms taken 2. There has been no eruption of Islam into this was a cheap way for him to protect his by the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, politics. Islam and politics have always been left and right flanks. which has marked the beginning of the last inseparable, as Islam is a political religion in quarter of the twentieth century, preclude any the etymological sense of the word. Thus, the 3. The following theses do not deal with hasty, generalized conjectures about it. It demand for the separation of religion and Islam as one element among others, albeit a would be totally mistaken to equate the state in Muslim countries is more than . fundamental element, in the ideology of Catholicism of the Polish workers with that secularist: it is openly anti-religious. This nationalist currents. That kind of Islam’s time is up, as with the currents that identify with it. of Franco’s reaction, though this should not helps explain why none of the major currents More generally, we shall distinguish between make us overlook the common features of the of bourgeois or petty bourgeois nationalism Islam used as one means among others of agrarian histories of Spain and Poland or the on Islamic soil, with the exception of shaping and asserting a national, or political and ideological content that their Kemalism in Turkey, have called for . What is an elementary communal, or even sectarian identity, on the respective forms of Catholicism share. democratic task elsewhere-separation of one hand, and Islam considered as an end in Similarly, elementary analytical caution religion and state-is so radical in Muslim itself, a total, general objective, a unique, forbids putting such diverse phenomena as countries, especially the Middle East, that exclusive program, on the other. “The Koran the resurgence of Muslim clerical and/or even the “dictatorship of the proletariat” will is our constitution,” declared Hassan Al- Banna, founder of the political movements in , Syria, Tunisia, find it a difficult task to complete. It is beyond the scope of other classes. in 1928. The Islam that interests us here is Turkey, , Indonesia, or , Zia Furthermore, the democratic classes of Islam elevated to an absolute principle, to Ul-Haq’s military dictatorship in Pakistan or Muslim societies have on the whole shown which every demand, struggle and reform is Gaddafy’s in Libya, the seizure of power by no interest, or almost none, in challenging subordinated-the Islam of the Muslim Iranian Shi’ite clergy or by Afghan guerrillas, their own religion. In fact Islam has not been Brotherhood, of the “Jamaat-i-Islami,” of the etc., all into the same category. Even perceived in the twentieth century as the different ulemas’ associations and of the phenomena that on the surface appear clearly ideological cement of an outmoded feudal or movement of Iranian ayatollahs whose identical, such as the made by the semi-feudal class structure in these societies. organized expression is the Islamic same movement, the “Muslim Brotherhood,” It has been seen instead as a basic element of Republican Party. in Egypt and Syria, have different underlying national identity jeered at by the foreign political content and functions, determined Christian (or even atheist) oppressor. It is no The common denominator of these different by their different immediate objectives. accident that Turkey is the only Muslim movements is Islamic fundamentalism, that society not to have been subjected to direct is, the wish to return to Islam, the aspiration Beneath their agreement on otherworldly foreign domination in the twentieth century. to an Islamic utopia, which incidentally matters, beyond their agreement on problems Mustafa Kemal too was exceptional among cannot be limited to a single nation but must of everyday life, when they do agree on such his peers. He waged his main battle not encompass all Muslim peoples if not the issues, and notwithstanding their similar, against colonialism or imperialism but whole world. In this spirit, Bani-Sadr even identical, denominations and against the Sultanate, a combination of declared to the Beirut daily An-Nahar in 1979 organizational forms, Muslim movements temporal and spiritual power (the Caliphate). that “Ayatollah Khomeini is an remain essentially political movements. They On the other hand Nasser, however radical a internationalist; he is opposed to Islamic are thus the expression of specific socio- bourgeois nationalist, had every interest in Stalinists who want to build Islam in one political interests that are very much of this identifying with Islam in his main combat country” (sic!). This “internationalism” is world. against imperialism; all the more so because also visible in the way that all these 38 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Marxism and Religion

movements go beyond the borders of their intellectuals,” those coming from the petty are interpreters. The core of the Islamic countries of origin and/or maintain more or bourgeoisie and condemned to stay there: religion, which all Muslims agree on, in no less close relations with each other. They all teachers and office workers in particular. In a way satisfies the pressing material needs of reject nationalism in the narrow sense, and period of ascendancy Islamic the petty bourgeois, quite apart from whether consider nationalist currents-even those that fundamentalism recruits widely at it can satisfy their spiritual needs. Islamic claim to be Islamic-rivals if not adversaries. universities and other institutions that fundamentalism in itself is in no way the They oppose foreign oppression or the produce “intellectuals,” where they are still most appropriate program for satisfying the national enemy in the name of Islam, not in more conditioned by their social origins than aspirations of the social layers that it appeals defense of the “nation.” The United States is by a hypothetical and often doubtful future. to. thus not so much “imperialism” for Khomeini as the “Great Satan”; Saddam 5. In countries where Islamic fundamentalist 6. The social base described above is notable Hussein is above all an “atheist,” an reaction has been able to become a mass for its political versatility. The quotation from ”infidel.” For all the movements in question, movement and where it now has the wind in the Communist Manifesto above does not Israel is not so much a Zionist usurper of its sails, the labor force includes a relatively describe a fixed attitude of the middle Palestinian land as “the Jewish usurper of an high proportion of middle classes, according classes, but only the real content of their fight Islamic holy land.” to the Communist Manifesto definition: against the bourgeoisie when there is a fight, manufacturers, shopkeepers, artisans and when they turn against the bourgeoisie. 4. However progressive, national and/or peasants. Nevertheless, any outbreak of Before fighting against the bourgeoisie, the democratic the objective significance of Islamic fundamentalism mobilizes not only a middle classes were its allies in the fight certain struggles carried on by various larger or smaller layer of these middle against feudalism; before seeking to reverse Islamic fundamentalist currents, it cannot classes, but also layers of other classes newly the course of history they contributed to mask the fact that their ideology and their spawned by the middle classes under the advancing it. program are essentially, by definition, impact of capitalist primitive accumulation The middle classes are first and foremost the reactionary. What sort of program aims to and impoverishment. Thus parts of the social base of the democratic revolution and construct an Islamic state, faithfully modeled proletariat whose proletarianization is very the national struggle. In backward, dependent on the seventh century of the Christian era, if recent, and above all parts of the sub- societies such as Muslim societies the middle not a reactionary utopia? What sort of proletariat that capitalism has dragged down classes still play this role as long as the tasks ideology aims to restore a thirteen-century- from their former petty bourgeois level, are of the national and democratic revolution are old order, if not an eminently reactionary particularly receptive to fundamentalist still more or less uncompleted and on the ideology? Thus it is wrong and even absurd agitation and susceptible to being caught up agenda. They are the most ardent fans of any to define Islamic fundamentalist movements in it. This is Islamic fundamentalism’s social bourgeois leadership (and even more of any as bourgeois, whatever the extent to which base, its mass base. But this base is not the petty bourgeois leadership) that champions some struggles they wage align them with all natural preserve of religious reaction, the these tasks. The middle classes are the social or part of their countries’ bourgeoisies, just as way that the bourgeoisie relates to its own wrong as to define them as revolutionary base par excellence of the Bonapartism of the program. Whatever the strength of religious when they happen to come into conflict with ascendant bourgeoisie; they are in fact the feeling among the masses, even if the these same bourgeoisies. social base of all bourgeois Bonapartism. So religion in question is Islam, there is a the only time when large sections of the qualitative leap from sharing this feeling to In terms of the nature of their program and middle classes strike off on their own and seeing religion as an earthly utopia. In order ideology, their social composition, and even seek other paths is when bourgeois or petty for the opiate of the masses to become an the social origins of their founders, Islamic bourgeois leaderships that have taken on effective stimulant once more in this age of fundamentalist movements are petty national and democratic tasks run up against automation, the peoples must truly have no bourgeois. They do not hide their hatred of their own limits and lose their credibility. representatives of big capital any more than other choice left but to throw themselves on of representatives of the working class, or God’s mercy. The least one can say about Of course, as long as capitalism on the rise their hatred of imperialist countries any more Islam is that its immediate relevance is not seems to open up prospects of upward social than of “communist” countries. They are obvious! mobility for the middle classes, as long as hostile to the two poles of industrial society their conditions of existence are improving, In fact, Islamic fundamentalism poses more that threaten them: the bourgeoisie and the they do not question the established order. proletariat. They correspond to those layers problems than it solves. Although Islamic Even when depoliticized or unenthused, they of the petty bourgeoisie described in the law is several centuries younger than Roman normally play the role of “silent majority” in Communist Manifesto: law, it was produced by a society the bourgeois order. But if ever the capitalist considerably more backward than ancient evolution of society weighs on them with all The lower middle class, the manufacturer, the . (The Koran was largely inspired by its force-the weight of national and/or shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these the Torah, just as the Arabs’ way of life was international competition, inflation and debt- fight against the bourgeoisie to save from fairly similar to the Hebrews’.) And besides then the middle classes become a formidable extinction their existence as fractions of the the problem of updating a thirteen-century- reservoir of opposition to the powers that be. middle class. They are therefore not old civil code, there is also the question of Then they are free of any bourgeois control, revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, completing it. In other words, the most and all the more formidable because the they are reactionary, for they try to roll back orthodox Muslim fundamentalist is incapable violence and rage of the petty bourgeois in the wheel of history. Petty bourgeois Islamic of responding to the problems posed by distress are unparalleled. reaction finds its ideologues and leading modern society with exegetical contortions elements among the “traditional alone, unless the contortions become totally 7. Even then the reactionary option is not intellectuals” of Muslim societies, ulemas arbitrary and therefore a source of endless unavoidable for the petty bourgeoisie, and the like, as well as among the lower disagreements among the exegetes. There are downtrodden though it is by capitalist society echelons of the bourgeoisie’s “organic thus as many interpretations of Islam as there and disillusioned with bourgeois and petty 39 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Debate

bourgeois democratic-nationalist leaderships. to implement their national democratic Ba’athist dictatorship. Still less can it run, There is always another option, at least in programs. Some went a long way in this alone, a country whose economic and theory. The middle classes are faced with the direction, notably in Egypt and countries political problems are as thorny as Syria’s. choice between reaction and revolution. They under Egyptian influence, where Nasser The Syrian fundamentalist movement is thus can join the revolutionary struggle against the towered over the political landscape. condemned to co-operate with the Syrian bourgeoisie, as the Communist Manifesto Nationalists were able to stay in power for a propertied classes (bourgeois and foresaw: long time, or are still in power-in the latter landowners). It is not, and cannot be, any cases because they owe their power to the more than their spearhead. In Egypt too, for If by chance [the middle classes] are army. In Iran and Pakistan, where the the same reasons, the possibility of an revolutionary, they are so only in view of nationalists formed civilian governments, the independent seizure of power by the their impending transfer into the proletariat, army soon swept them away; Mossadegh and fundamentalist movement is very limited, all they thus defend not their present, but their Bhutto came to sad ends. In all four the more so because it has less influence future interests, they desert their own countries, in any case, the progress made so there than in Syria. In both these countries a standpoint to place themselves at that of the far in carrying out the national democratic long struggle against progressive regimes has proletariat. program, even within the framework and hardened the fundamentalist movement, thus limits of a bourgeois state, ranges from very highlighting its reactionary character. In the backward and dependent societies that little to almost none. Even in Iran where the Moreover, the very scope of Egypt’s the Communist Manifesto did not take into Mossadegh experience was a very short one, economic problems makes the account, however, the middle classes have the Shah took it on himself (on his US tutors’ fundamentalists’ bid for power even less absolutely no need to abandon their own advice) to bring about with his own pseudo- credible. viewpoint in order to place themselves under Bismarckian methods what the combined proletarian leadership. Quite the contrary, by efforts of Robespierres and Bonapartes The Egyptian bourgeoisie is perfectly aware taking up the middle classes’ aspirations, accomplished elsewhere. On the other hand, of this fact and is thus very obliging toward notably national and democratic tasks, the the only noteworthy working class political the fundamentalist movement. The proletariat can manage to win them over organizations in the whole region are fundamentalists constitute in its eyes an ideal them to its side. Stalinist parties. “fifth column” inside the mass movement-a particularly effective “antibody” to the left. But for the proletariat to win the middle These, when they amount to anything, have That is why it is not at all worried about classes’ confidence, it must first of all have a totally discredited themselves with a long Egyptian fundamentalist movement’s trying credible leadership itself, a leadership that history of selling out popular struggles and to outbid the left on the left’s two favorite has proved itself politically and practically. If making deals with the powers that be. So issues: the national question and the social on the other hand a leadership with a majority when middle class discontent began to question; any gains made by Islamic reaction in the working class has discredited itself on surface these past few years in the four on these two issues mean equivalent losses the level of national democratic political countries mentioned, no working class or for the left. The Egyptian bourgeoisie’s struggles (while maintaining its majority bourgeois or petty bourgeois nationalist attitude toward the fundamentalist movement position because of its trade union positions organization was able to capitalize on it. The resembles that of any bourgeoisie faced with or simply the lack of an alternative), if it way was wide open for petty bourgeois a deep social crisis toward the far right and proves politically flabby in face of the Islamic fundamentalist reaction. fascism. Pakistan is different from Egypt in established order, or if even worse it supports that the Pakistani fundamentalist movement the established order, then the middle classes By contrast, in Algeria, Libya and Iraq, where has consolidated itself mainly under will really have no choice but to lend their the enlightened despotism of a bourgeois or reactionary regimes. It has therefore been ears to petty bourgeois reaction-even if it is as petty bourgeois nationalist bureaucracy able to reclaim some elements of the national inscrutable as Islamic reaction-and possibly allowed broad middle class layers to benefit democratic program for long periods of time respond to its calls. from the oil manna, Islamic fundamentalism and thus form a credible opposition to the could be contained. established order. But during these same long 8. In all the countries where Islamic periods, bourgeois democratic- nationalist fundamentalism has gained considerable 9. While Islamic fundamentalism has made tendencies were themselves in opposition, ground, particularly in Egypt, Syria, Iran and notable gains in Egypt and Syria as well as and more credible and thus more influential Pakistan, all the conditions described above Iran and Pakistan, the forms and extent of its than the fundamentalists were. exist. In all these countries middle class gains differ greatly from one country to living standards have manifestly deteriorated another, as do its political content and Only when Bhutto, skipping the stages of a over the last few years. Although some of function. In Syria, the fundamentalist Nasser-type evolution in an impressive these countries are even oil exporters movement is the main opposition to the historical shortcut, rapidly alienated the themselves, the only effect the massive oil declining Bonapartism of the Ba’athist masses by getting entangled in his own price increases have had on most of their bourgeois bureaucracy, and engaged in a life- contradictions was the way opened up for the middle classes has been unbridled inflation. and-death struggle against it. Syrian extreme right dominated by the In addition, bourgeois and petty bourgeois fundamentalists have profited from the fact fundamentalist movement (given that the democratic-nationalist leaderships are that the Ba’athist ruling elite belongs to a Pakistani far left was insignificant). Bhutto’s generally discredited in these countries. In all minority faith (Alawi). bankruptcy was so glaring that the four countries, democratic-nationalist fundamentalists managed to mobilize a huge leaderships have undergone the test of state The outrageously, purely reactionary nature mass movement against him. power. of the Syrian fundamentalist movement’s program reduces its possibilities of seizing The army’s coup d’état was meant to forestall All of these leaderships had had virtually power on its own to almost nothing. It cannot the “anarchy” that could have resulted had unanimous middle class support at certain on its own, on the basis of such a program, this mobilization led to Bhutto’s overthrow moments in their history as they were trying mobilize the forces needed to overthrow the (as in Iran!). To win the fundamentalists’ 40 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Marxism and Religion

sympathy, Zia Ul-Haq’s reactionary The Russian Bolsheviks replaced the years of fundamentalism in power is already bourgeois military dictatorship took over Constituent Assembly, after having struggled very negative compared with earlier years. their projects for Islamic reforms and used to have it elected, with the eminently On the other hand, the inconsistency of the them to its own advantage. Today it is democratic power of the soviets; the fundamentalist “program” and the great counting on the fundamentalist movement to ayatollahs replaced the Constituent variety of social layers who identify with it neutralize any “progressive” opposition to its Assembly, which they too had placed at the and interpret it according to their own lights regime, including the late Bhutto’s party. In head of their demands but never allowed to are manifest in a plurality of rival and the three cases analyzed above, the see the light of day, with a reactionary antagonistic centers of powers. Only fundamentalist movement has proved itself to caricature: the Muslim “Assembly of Khomeini’s authority has made it possible so be nothing but an auxiliary for the Experts.” The fate of this demand common to far for them to keep up a façade of unity. 11. reactionary bourgeoisie. But Iran is different. the two revolutions eloquently sums up the Islamic fundamentalism is one of the most counterposed natures of the leaderships, and 10. In Iran the fundamentalist movement, dangerous enemies of the revolutionary thus the opposite directions they took. represented mainly by the fundamentalists proletariat. It is absolutely and under all among the Shi’ite clergy, was forged in a As for the democratic forms of organization circumstances necessary to fight against its long and bitter struggle against the Shah’s “reactionary and medieval influence,” as the eminently reactionary imperialist-backed that arose in the course of the Iranian February, the Islamic leadership co-opted “Theses on the National and Colonial regime. The sad historical bankruptcy of them. The shoras were a far cry from the Question” adopted at the Second Congress of Iranian bourgeois nationalism and Stalinism soviets! On the national question, while the the said many years is too well known to describe here. Because Bolsheviks’ proletarian internationalism ago. Even in cases such as Iran, where the of this exceptional combination of historical made possible the emancipation of the fundamentalist movement takes on national circumstances, the Iranian fundamentalist Russian empire’s oppressed nationalities, the democratic tasks for a time, the duty of movement managed to become the sole ayatollahs’ Islamic “internationalism” turned spearhead of the two immediate tasks of the revolutionary socialists is to fight out to be a pious pretext for bloody national democratic revolution in Iran: intransigently against the spell it casts on the repression of the Persian empire’s oppressed overthrowing the Shah and severing the ties struggling masses. nationalities. The fate of women in the two with US imperialism. revolutions is just as well known. The If not, if they do not free themselves in time, This situation was all the more possible fundamentalist Iranian leadership only the masses will surely pay the price. While because the two tasks in question were in remained faithful to the national democratic striking together at the common enemy, perfect harmony with the generally program on one point: the struggle against revolutionary socialists must warn working reactionary program of Islamic US imperialism. But it stayed true to this people against any attempt to divert their fundamentalism. So as the social crisis struggle in its own peculiar way. Describing struggle in a reactionary direction. Any matured in Iran to the point of creating the the enemy not as imperialism but as the failure in these elementary tasks is not only a preconditions for a revolutionary overthrow “West” if not the “Great Satan,” Khomeini fundamental weakness, but can also lead to called for throwing out the baby with the of the Shah, as the middle classes’ resentment opportunist wrong turns. On the other hand, bathwater, or rather the baby before the of him reached fever pitch, the even in cases where Islamic fundamentalism bathwater. He attributed all the political and fundamentalist movement personified by takes purely reactionary forms, revolutionary social gains of the bourgeois revolution, Khomeini managed to harness the immense socialists must use tactical caution in their including democracy and even Marxism, power of the embattled middle classes and fight against it. In particular they must avoid which he considered (correctly) a product of sub-proletariat and deal the regime a series of falling into the fundamentalists’ trap of (supposedly “Western”) industrial body blows. fighting about religious issues. They should civilization, to the hated “West.” stick firmly to the national, democratic, and The fundamentalists were almost suicidal in He called on Iranians to rid their society of social issues. They must not lose sight of the their determination to remain unarmed, a feat these plagues, while neglecting the main fact that a part, often a big part, of the masses that only a mystical movement is capable of. links between Iran and imperialism: the under Islamic fundamentalist influence can The Iranian fundamentalist movement economic links. The US embassy affair, the and must be pulled out of its orbit and won to managed to carry out the first stage of a way it was managed, gained Iran nothing. In the workers’ cause. national democratic revolution in Iran. But its the final analysis it proved very expensive, fundamentalist character very quickly got the profitable in the last analysis to US banks. At the same time revolutionary socialists upper hand. In a sense, the Iranian revolution However the fundamentalist dictatorship must nevertheless declare themselves is a permanent revolution in reverse. Starting evolves in Iran from now on, it has already unequivocally for a secular society, which is with the national democratic revolution, it proved to be a major obstacle to the a basic element of the democratic program. could under proletarian leadership have development of the Iranian revolution. They can play down their atheism, but never “grown over” into a socialist transformation. their secularism, unless they wish to replace Its fundamentalist petty bourgeois leadership Moreover, its evolution is very problematic. Marx outright with Mohammed! prevented that, pushing it on the contrary in Beyond the exceptional combination of the direction of a reactionary regression. The circumstances described above, there is a February 1, 1981: First published in English February 1979 revolution was astonishingly fundamental difference between Iran and the in International Marxist Review vol. 2 no. 3 similar to February 1917-two identical points three other countries mentioned earlier: Iran (Summer 1987) of departure ushering in diametrically can afford the “luxury” of an experiment with opposite processes. While October 1917 an autonomous, petty bourgeois, Gilbert Achcar grew up in Lebanon and teaches enabled the Russian democratic revolution to fundamentalist regime. Its oil wealth is the political science at the University of Paris-VIII. His go to its logical conclusion, in Iran the guarantee of a positive balance of payments best-selling book The Clash of Barbarisms just came out in a second expanded edition and a book of his fundamentalist leadership betrayed the and budget. But at what price and for how dialogues with Noam Chomsky on the Middle East, revolution’s democratic content. long? The economic balance sheet of two Perilous Power, is forthcoming. 41 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Debate: Revolutionary Strategy Twelve comments plus one more, to continue the debate with John Holloway

Daniel Bensaïd

1. ‘Spit on history’, John Holloway answers us . Why not? But on which history? For him apparently there is only one history, a one-way history, the history of oppression that even contaminates the struggle of the oppressed. As if history and memory were not themselves battlefields. As if a history of the oppressed - often an oral history (history of the exploited, women’s history, gay history, the history of colonised peoples) - does not also exist, just as we can conceive of a theatre of the oppressed or a politics of the oppressed. 2. For Holloway [1] history is ‘the great 4. ‘Spit on history because there is nothing so excuse for not thinking’. Does he mean that it reactionary as the cult of the past.’ So be it. is impossible to think historically? And then But who is talking about a cult? Does what do we mean by ‘thinking’? - an old tradition weigh like a nightmare on the brain question that, always getting in the way. of the living? Definitely. But what tradition? John Holloway Where does this singular tradition come 3. Spit ‘also on the concept of Stalinism’, from, in the singular, in which so many theology’, he maintained nonetheless that which absolves us of the ‘need to blame contrary traditions vanish away? Walter ‘living requires the services of history’: ‘To ourselves’ and constitutes a convenient ‘fig- Benjamin by contrast, whom Holloway cites be sure, we need history. But we need it in a leaf, protecting our innocence’. No one today so eagerly (appositely or not), demands that manner different from the way in which the imagines that the revolution of the 1920s, we rescue tradition from the conformism that spoilt idler in the garden of knowledge uses it luminous and immaculate, can be always threatens it. This distinction is ... for life and action, not for a comfortable counterposed to the dark 1930s on which we essential. turning away from life and action....’ can dump every sin. No one has emerged Nietzsche thus defended the necessity of a unscathed from the ‘century of extremes’. 5. ‘Break history. Du passé faisons table ‘critical history’. At least he claimed to Everyone needs to methodically examine his rase.’ The song rings out proudly. But the counter ‘the effects of history’ not with a or her conscience, including us. But is this politics of the blank page (which Chairman politics of emancipation but rather with an sufficient reason to erase the discontinuities Mao was so fond of) and the blank slate aesthetic: the ‘powers of art’, or the ‘”super- that Michel Foucault was so fond of? evokes some rather disquieting precedents. historical” ... powers which divert the gaze Its most consistent advocate was none other from what is developing back ... to art and To establish a strict genealogical continuity than a certain Pol Pot. Gilles Deleuze speaks religion’. Myth against history? between the revolutionary event and the more wisely when he says, ‘We always begin bureaucratic counter-revolution? To in the middle.’ (“we always restart from the 7. ‘We live in a world of Monsters of our own pronounce an evenly balanced verdict of middle”) ? creation’. While commodities, money, capital ‘guilty’ on both victors and vanquished, both and the state are fetishes, they are not ‘mere the executioners and their victims? This is 6. ‘Spit on history’? Nietzsche himself, illusions, they are real illusions’. Exactly. not a moral question but rather a political certainly the most virulent critic of historical What follows from this, in practical terms? one. It determines whether it is possible to reason and the myth of progress, was subtler. That abolishing these illusions requires ‘continue’ or ‘begin anew’. He did admittedly recommend learning to abolishing the social relations that make them forget in order to be able to act. He took necessary and fabricate them? Or, as The darkness of non-history, in which all cats exception to any history that would be ‘a kind Holloway suggests, that we must be content are grey (without for all that catching the of conclusion to living and a final reckoning with a fetish strike: ‘Capital exists because tiniest mouse) is the preferred landscape for for humanity’. But while he implacably we create it.... If we do not create it neoliberals and repentant Stalinists to hold denounced ‘monumental history’, tomorrow, it will cease to exist’? their reunions, hurriedly wiping out the traces ‘antiquarian history’, ‘excess of historical of their past without thinking about this past culture’ and the ‘supersaturation of an age in In the aftermath of 1968 there were Maoists that makes it so hard for them to pass. history’, and history as such as ‘a disguised who claimed that ‘driving out the cop’ in our 42 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Revolutionary Strategy

minds would be enough to get rid of the real but it will kick over the traces and came back strategic temporality: each present is thus cops too. Yet the real cops are still with us in through the window. invested with a feeble messianic power of (more than ever), and the tyranny of the ego reshuffling the cards of past and future, 10. There is ‘something fundamentally is still secure even in the best regulated giving the vanquished of yesterday and minds. So would refusing to create capital wrong with the power-centred concept of forever their chance, and rescuing tradition suffice to lift its spells? Magical behaviour revolution’. But what? Foucault passed this (conjuring away in our imaginations an way a long time ago. More than 25 years ago from conformism. Yet for all that this present imaginary despot) would only bring about a I wrote a book entitled La Révolution et le is not detached from historical time. As in liberation just as imaginary. Abolishing the Pouvoir (‘The Revolution and Power’), Blanqui’s work it maintains relations with conditions of fetishism in reality means around the idea that the state can be broken past events, not relations of causality, but overthrowing the despotism of the market but the ‘relations of power’ must still be rather relations of astral attraction and undone (or deconstructed). This is not a new and the power of private property and constellation. It is in this sense that, to use breaking the state that ensures the conditions issue. It reached us by way of libertarian Benjamin’s definitive formulation, from now of social reproduction. traditions and May ’68, among other ways. Why, if not out of ignorance, does Holloway on politics trumps history. 8. No doubt this is all an old story. But where make a show of radically innovating (still are the new stories? The new must always be making a clean sweep) instead of situating 12. ‘Using History as a pretext’, Holloway made (at least in part) with the bricks of the himself in discussions that have - a (long) says, we want to ‘pour new struggles into old old. Holloway defines the revolution as ‘the history! methods’: ‘Let the new forms of struggle breaking of tradition, the discarding of flourish.’ Just because we are constantly history..., the smashing of the clock and the 11. ‘The accumulation of struggle is an welcoming a portion of newness, history (!) incremental view of revolution’, says concentration of time into a moment of exists rather than some divine or mercantile unbearable intensity.’ Here he is recycling the Holloway. It is a positive movement, whereas eternity. But the historical dialectic of old and imagery that Benjamin used in describing the the anti-capitalist movement ‘must be a rebels in 1830 who fired on the faces of negative movement’. Criticising illusions of new is subtler than any binary or Manichean public clocks. The symbolic destruction of progress, the stockbroking sprit, Penelope’s opposition between old and new, including the image of time still confuses the fetish of weaving their electoral skeins (stitch by methodologically. Yes, let the new flourish; temporality with the social relationship on stitch, link by link), interest piled on interest, do not give in to routine and habit; stay open which it rests: the ‘wretched’ measurement of and the ineluctable march of history as it to surprise and astonishment. This is all abstract labour time. triumphs over regrettable skids, detours and useful advice. But how, by what standard, can delays - all this criticism is itself an old we evaluate the new if we lose all memory of 9. Holloway blots out with his spit the tradition (represented in France by Georges the old? Novelty, like antiquity, is always a criticisms that Atilio Boron, Alex Callinicos, Sorel and Charles Péguy, who had so much Guillermo Almeyra and I have made of his influence on Benjamin). relative notion. work. He reproaches us with envisaging history as ‘something unproblematic’, But just the same, is the absolute interruption Screaming and spitting do not amount to instead of opening it up to theoretical of a scream without a past or a sequel enough thinking. Still less to doing politics. questions. This is a gratuitous accusation, to outweigh the continuities of historical backed up neither with arguments nor with time? Benjamin takes exception to the Daniel Bensaïd is one of France’s most prominent serious evidence. All of us have on the homogenous, empty time of the mechanics of Marxist philosophers and has written extensively. He is a leading member of the LCR (French section of contrary devoted much of our work to progress, and with it to the notion of an the Fourth International). interrogating, revising, deconstructing and evanescent present, a simple, evanescent reconstructing our historical worldview. hyphen, absolutely determined by the past NOTES History is like power; you cannot ignore it. and irresistibly aspiring to a predestined You can refuse to take power, but then it will future. In Benjamin’s work by contrast the [1] This articles replies to John Holloway’s "Drive your take you. You can throw history out the door, present becomes the central category of a cart and plough over the bones of the dead" 43 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

The persistence of revolution The Mole and the Locomotive

Daniel Bensaïd

Translation of Daniel Bensaïd’s introduction to his book: "Résistances. Essai de taupologie générale", Fayard, Paris 2001.

‘Well said, old mole. Canst work I’th’earth so fast? A worthy pioner.’ (Shakespeare, Hamlet I:5). Our old friend is short-sighted. He is a haemophiliac as well. Doubly infirm and doubly fragile. And yet, patiently, obstinately, from tunnel to passage, he cheerfully continues his mole’s progress towards his next invasion. The nineteenth century experienced history engineering of public health, altered the face as an arrow pointing in the direction of of the city and transformed its relation to the progress. The Destiny of the ancients and suburbs. Daniel Bensaid divine Providence bowed down before the to a new workers’ movement, which gained There was a revolution in knowledge: the prosaic activity of a modern human species, notoriety in 1864 with the creation of the which produced and reproduced the theory of evolution and developments in International Working Men’s Association. conditions of its own improbable existence. geology changed the place of man in natural history. The first murmurings of ecology This prodigious quarter of a century also saw This sharpened sense of historical explored the subtle metabolic interaction the industrialisation of the arms trade, development was born of a long, slow between society and its environment. foreshadowing the “slaughter industry” and movement of secularisation. Heavenly Thermodynamics opened up new total war. It was the era of the social crime, miracles were lost among earthly perspectives in energy control. The “which does not seem like murder, because contingencies. Rather than illuminated by the blossoming of statistics furnished calculating there is no murderer to be seen, because the past, the future now offered justification for reason with an instrument for quantification victim’s death appears natural, but which is the present. Events no longer seemed and measurement. no less a murder.” [1] Between Edgar Allan miraculous. Where before they had been Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, the appearance sacred, now they were profane. There was a revolution in production: the of detective fiction, the development of “age of capital” saw the furious circulation of rational modes of enquiry, and the scientific The railway, the steamship, the telegraph all investments and commodities, their refinement of detection methods sum up the contributed to a feeling that history was accelerated turnover, the great universal mindset of this period with its urban speeding up and that distances were getting exhibitions, mass production, and the “mysteries”: the loot passes from one hand to shorter, as if humanity had built up enough beginnings of mass consumption with the another, and all trace of the guilty party is lost speed to break free. It was the era of opening of the first department stores. in the anonymity of the crowd. revolutions. It was also a time of frenzy on the stock The railway was the perfect symbol and There was the revolution in transport and exchange, of speculation in real estate, of emblem of this rush towards technology and travel: in scarcely a quarter of a century, fortunes quickly made and equally quickly profit. Launched into a conquest of the future between 1850 and 1875, the great railway lost, of scandals, of affairs, of crashing along the tracks of progress, these companies, the Reuter’s agency and the Cook bankruptcies, the time of the Pereires, the revolutions appeared to be the roaring agency all emerged. The rotary press Saccards, the Rothschilds and the locomotives of history! multiplied circulation figures. From now on Boucicauts. And it was the era of empires and it would be possible to travel around the colonial divisions, when armies carved up The last quarter of the twentieth century world in eighty days. That hero of modernity, territories and continents. offers a number of analogies with the third the explorer, heralded the air-conditioned quarter of the nineteenth century, albeit on a exoticism of the tour operators. There was a revolution in working practices completely different scale. and social relations: mechanised industry Telecommunications, satellites and the There was the revolution in materials: with usurped the workshop. The modern internet are the contemporary equivalents of the triumph of the railway came the reign of proletariat of the factories and the cities took the telegraph and the railway. New sources of coal, of glass and of steel, of crystal palaces over from the artisan class of tailors, joiners, energy, biotechnologies and transformations and metallic cathedrals. High-speed cobblers, weavers. From 1851 to 1873, this in working practices are revolutionising transport, architectural transformations, the growth in capitalist globalisation gave birth production in their turn. Industrial 44 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

The persistence of revoultion

manufacturing techniques increasingly make The postmodern labyrinth is thus unaware of propertied classes cemented the puritan holy consumption a mass phenomenon. The “the dark crossroads” where “the dead return, alliance between the bourgeoisie and development of credit and of mass marketing bringing new announcements.” History, aristocracy of England. After the creative lubricates the circulation of capital. The which is no longer “pushed towards the status upheaval of the came result is a new gold rush (in the field of of legend,” no longer appears to be Thermidor’s period of restoration. After the computers), a fusion of the upper echelons of “illuminated by an internal light,” contained great hope of the October Revolution the state with the financial elites, and “in the wealth of witnesses who look forward followed the time of bureaucratic reaction, relentless speculation with all its attendant to the Revolution and the Apocalypse.” [4] It with all its trials and purges, its falsifications Mafia scandals and spectacular bankruptcies. crumbles into a dust of images or into the and forgeries, its disconcerting lies. scattered pieces of a puzzle which no longer The new era of capitalist globalisation is fits together. This recurrence of Thermidor has always seeing the commodification of the world and bolted the door of possibility whenever it has a generalised fetishism. The time has come The train of progress has been derailed. In the been opened just a fraction. However, its for a seismic overturning of national and saga of the railway, sinister cattle trucks have “dull peace with the world” has never quite international boundaries, for new forces of eclipsed the iron horse. Already for Walter made its way to the obstinate mole, who is imperial domination which are armed right Benjamin, revolution was no longer forever born anew from his own failures. It up to the stars. Yet the dream of this twilight comparable to a race won by an invincible took no more than thirty years for the flames era has already ceased to be one of infinite machine, but rather to an alarm signal, fired of 1830 or 1848 to rekindle the embers kept progress and great historical promises. so as to interrupt its mad race towards glowing by various hidden groups. It took Condemned to go round in circles on the catastrophe. only a few years for Jacobin radicalism to wheel of fortune, our social imagination resurface, laden with new concerns, with the withdraws from history and, from Kubrick to That said, just as the reed outlives the oak, so Luddites, and then with the Chartist Spielberg, escapes into space. The weight of the mole prevails over the locomotive. movement of the English working class. [6] defeats and disasters reduces every event to a Though he looks tired, our old friend is still Less than twenty years after the bloody dusty powder of minor news items, of sound digging away. The eclipse of the event has suppression of the Commune and the exile of bites which are skipped over just as soon as not put an end to the hidden work of its survivors, the socialist movement was they are received, of ephemeral fashions and resistance which discreetly, when everything already being born again, as if a timeless of faddish anecdotes. seems asleep, prepares the way for new message had spread from generation to rebellions. Just as the Victorian era’s “growth generation down a long line of conspiratorial This world in decline, prey to the without development” gave rise to the First whispers. inconsolable desolation of a faithless International, just as the muted social war religiosity, of a commercialised spirituality, exploded in the uprising of the Communards, Whether they be failed or betrayed, of an individualism without individuality, so too are new contradictions brewing in the revolutions are not easily wiped from the prey to the standardisation of differences and great transformations of the present time. memory of the oppressed. They are to the formatting of opinions, no longer prolonged within latent forms of dissidence, enjoys either “magnificent sunrises” or However limited they might seem, the spectral presences, invasive absences, in the triumphant dawns. It’s as if the catastrophes marginal conspiracies and plots active at any molecular constitution of a plebeian public and disappointments of the past century have given moment are also fermenting the great space, with its networks and passwords, its exhausted all sense of history and destroyed rages of days to come. They herald new nocturnal assignations and its thundering any experience of the event, leaving only the outpourings. They are the place of that “hard- explosions. “One might imagine,” warned an mirages of a pulverised present. fought advance” Ernst Bloch speaks of, “a astute observer after the collapse of peregrination, a ramble, full of tragic Chartism, “that all is peaceful, that all is This eclipse of the future imperils tradition, disturbances, seething, blistered with motionless; but it is when all is calm that the which is now seized by the conformism of fissures, explosions, isolated engagements.” seed comes up, that republicans and socialists remembrance commemorations. The past, [5] It is a stubborn advance made up of advance their ideas in people’s minds.” [7] notes Paul Ricoeur in La Mémoire, l’histoire, irreconcilable resistances, well-directed l’oubli, is no longer recounted so as to set us ramblings along tunnels which seem to lead When resignation and melancholy follow the a task, but rather so as to institute a “piety of nowhere and yet which open up into daylight, ecstasy of the event, as when love’s memory,” a devout remembrance and a into an astonishing, blinding light. excitement dulls under the force of habit, it conventional notion of right-thinking. [2] becomes absolutely essential “not to adjust This fetishism of memory claims to steer Thus the underground heresies of the yourself to the moments of fatigue.” We away from collective amnesia an era Flagellants, the Dolcinians and other should never underestimate the power, not of condemned to the snapshots of an eternal Beguines paved the way for the likes of that daily fatigue which leads to the sleep of present. Thomas Münzer (1490-1525) to appear with the just, but of the great historical weariness his “apocalyptic propaganda calling for at having spent too long “rubbing history Detached from any creative perspective, action,” before his execution sealed the against the grain.” Such was the weariness of critical recollection turns to tired-out ritual. It lasting alliance between the reformed priest Moses when he stopped on the threshold of loses the “unfailing consciousness of and the country squire. After the egalitarian Canaan to “sleep the sleep of the earth.” The everything which has not come to pass.” [3] revolt of the Levellers, the great fear of the weariness of Saint-Just, walled up in the 45 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory

silence of his last night alive. Or the Then there begins the time, not for a passing We are confined to the prosaic management weariness of Blanqui, flirting with madness reduction of speed, but for “inevitable of a fatalistic order, reduced to an infinite in his dungeon at Taureau. revolutionary slowness,” for maturation and fragmentation of identities and communities, ripening, for an urgent patience, which is the condemned to renounce all programmes and Such too was the heavy fatigue which fell, in opposite of fatigue and habit: the effort to plans. An insidious rhetoric of resignation is August 1917, upon the shoulders of the persevere and continue without growing used left, right and centre to justify young Peruvian publicist José Carlos accustomed or getting used to things, without spectacular U-turns and shameful defections, Mariategui: “We wake up ill from monotony settling into habit or routine, by continually regrets and repentances [13] and ennui. And we experience the immense astonishing oneself, in pursuit of “this desolation of not hearing the echo of the least desirable unknown” [10] which always slips And yet! A radical critique of the existing event that might liven up our minds and make away. order braces itself against the tide, inspired our typewriters rattle. Languor slips into by new ways of thinking resistance and things and into souls. Nothing remains but “At what moment in time could truth return events. In the vicious spiral of defeats, those yawning, despondency and weariness. We to life? And why should it return to life?,” engaged in defensive resistance sometimes are living through a time of clandestine wondered Benjamin Fondane in the very harbour doubts about the counter-attack murmurings and furtive jokes.” [8] A few heart of darkness. [11] When? Nobody which is so long in coming; the hope of a months later, this avid chronicler of knows. The only certainty is that truth liberating event then falls away from resurrectional events came to find them at remains “in the rift between the real and the everyday acts of resistance, retreats from the first hand in the old world of Europe, then in legal.” profane to the sacred, and ossifies in the the throes of war and revolutions. expectation of an improbable miracle. When For whom? There are no designated heirs, no the present drifts without past or future, and In reactionary times, obstinate progress natural descendents, just a legacy in search of when “the spirit withdraws from a given era, becomes “a long, slow movement, itself authors, waiting for those who will be able to it leaves a collective frenzy and a spiritually patient, of impatience,” a slow, intractable carry it further. This legacy is promised to charged madness in the world.” [14] impatience, stubbornly at odds with the order those who, as E. P. Thompson puts it, will that then reigned in Berlin, and that was soon manage to save the vanquished from “the When it loses the thread of earthly resistance enormous condescension of posterity.” For to swoop down upon Barcelona, Djakarta or against the order of things, the desire to “heritage is not a possession, something Santiago: “Order reigns in Berlin, proclaim change the world risks turning into an act of valuable that you receive and then put in the the triumphal bourgeois press, those officers faith and the will of the heavens. Then comes bank.” It is “an active, selective affirmation, of the victorious troops, in whose honour the tedious procession of smooth-talking which can sometimes be reanimated and Berlin’s petty bourgeoisie waves its potion sellers and charlatans, fire-eaters and reaffirmed, more often by illegitimate heirs handkerchiefs and shouts hurrah. Who here is tooth-pullers, pickpockets and cut-throats, than by legitimate ones.” not reminded of the hounds of order in Paris, relic-sellers and fortune-tellers, New Age visionaries and half-believers. and of the bourgeoisie’s bacchanalian feast The event is “always on the move,” but on the corpses of the Communards? ‘Order “there must be some days of thunder and This is what happened after 1848, when the reigns in Warsaw! Order reigns in Paris! lightning” if the vicious circle of fetishism quarante-huitards of A Sentimental Order reigns in Berlin!’ So it is that the and domination is to be broken. The morning Education turned to commerce or looked to proclamations made by the guardians of after a defeat can easily lead to an their careers. This is what happened after order spread from one centre to another of the overwhelming feeling that things must 1905, when disappointed militants became global historic struggle.” [9] forever begin again from scratch, or that “seekers after God.” This is what happened everything is suspended in an “eternalised after May 1968, when certain faint-hearted present.” When the universe seems to repeat prophets took it into their heads to play at itself without end, to keep on marking time, angels, having played too much at monsters. nevertheless the “chapter of changes” In such situations, religious revivals and remains open to hope. Even when we are on kitsch mythology are supposed to fill the gap the point of believing that nothing more is left by the disappointment of great hopes. possible, even when we despair of escaping from the relentless order of things, we never Against renunciation and its endless cease to set the possibility of what might be justifications, those involved in the politics of against the poverty of what actually is. For resistance and events never give up looking “nobody can easily accept the shame of no for the reasons behind each loss of reason. longer wanting to be free.” [12] But the disjunction of a fidelity to events with no historical determination from a resistance After twenty years of liberal counter-reform with no horizon of expectation is doubly and restoration, the market-based order now burdened with impotence. seems inescapable. The eternal present no longer appears to have any future, and In a sense, resistance can take on an infinite Rosa Luxemburg absolute capitalism no longer any outside. variety of forms, from a concrete critique of 46 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

The persistence of revoultion

existing reality to an abstract utopia with no There are always new beginnings, moments barbarity has never before had such powerful historical roots, from an active messianism to of revival or renewal. In the dark times of means at its disposal to exploit the a contemplative expectation of a Messiah change and transition, worldly and spiritual disappointments and hopes of a humanity who never comes, from an ethical politics to ambitions, reasons and passions, combine to which has doubts about itself and about its a depoliticised ethics, from prophecies form an explosive mixture. Attempts to future.” [18] We fumble our way through this seeking to avert danger to predictions safeguard the old are mixed up with the first unsettled twilight, somewhere between dusk claiming to penetrate the secrets of the future. stammerings of the new. Even in the most and dawn. sombre moments, the tradition on the rise is As for events whose political conditions never far behind the tradition in decline. Is it a simple crisis of development? Or seem evasive and compromised, it is all too There is never any end to the secret indeed, rather than a sort of discontent within civilisation, is it a sorrow that gives rise to tempting to treat them as moments of pure composition of the uninterrupted poem of “myths which make the earth shake with their contingency with no relation to necessity, or “probable impossibilities.” enormous feet”? If a new civilisation is to as the miraculous invasion of repressed This obstinate hope is not to be confused with prevail, the old one must not be entirely lost, possibilities. the smug confidence of the believer, or with abandoned or scorned. Not only must it be defended, but it must also be ceaselessly Thermidorian times, as everyone knows, see the “sad passion” driven out by Spinoza. On reinvented. a hardening of hearts and a weakening of the contrary, it endures as the virtue of “surmounted despair.” For “to be ready to stomachs. In such circumstances, many The stubborn old mole will survive the place hope in whatever does not deceive,” people find nothing to oppose to the dashing locomotive. His furry, round form you must first have despaired of your own assumption that everything is likely to turn prevails over the metallic coldness of the illusions. Disillusioned, disabused, hope then out for the worst, other than their willingness machine, his diligent good nature over the becomes “the essential and diametrical to settle for the lesser of the evils on offer; rhythmic clanking of the wheels, his patient opposite of habit and softening.” Such hope when this happens, the “flabby fiends” [15] smile over the sniggering steel. He comes is obliged constantly to “break with habit,” congratulate each other, share a wink and pat and goes, between tunnels and craters, constantly to dismantle “the mechanisms of each other on the back. Then the outgoing between burrows and breakouts, between the habit,” and to launch new beginnings Tartuffe, “the old Tartuffe, the classical darkness of the underground and the light of everywhere, “just as habit everywhere the sun, between politics and history. He Tartuffe, the clerical Tartuffe,” takes the introduces endings and deaths.” [17] “second Tartuffe, the Tartuffe of the modern makes his hole. He erodes and he world, the second-hand Tartuffe, the To break with habit is to retain the ability to undermines. He prepares the coming crisis. humanitarian Tartuffe, at any rate the other astonish yourself. It is to allow yourself to be The mole is a profane Messiah. Tartuffe” [16] by the hand. This alliance of surprised. “two Tartuffe cousins” can last for a very The Messiah is a mole, short-sighted and long time, with “the one carrying the other, These untimely invasions, during which the obstinate. one fighting the other, one supporting the contingency of events cuts a path through other, one feeding the other.” insufficient yet necessary historical The crisis is a molehill which suddenly opens conditions, make a breach in the unchanging out. The veneration of victors and victories goes order of structures and of things. hand in hand with compassion towards the * * * * * Crisis? What crisis is there today? There is a victims, so long as the latter stick to their role historical crisis, a crisis in civilisation, a “People turn to soothsayers when they as suffering victims, so long as they are not stretched and prolonged crisis which drags on no longer have prophets” seduced by the idea of becoming actors in and on. Our ill-fitting world is bursting at the (Chateaubriand). their own version of history. seams. As H.G. Wells predicted, the rift François Furet concludes The Passing of an However, even in the worst droughts and between our culture and our inventions has Illusion with a melancholy verdict. “The most arid places there is always a stream - not stopped growing, opening up at the very democratic individual, living at the end of the perhaps barely a trickle - which heralds heart of technology and knowledge a twentieth century, can only watch as the disturbing gap between fragmented surprising resurgences. Again, we must divinely sanctioned order of history trembles rationalities and a global irrationality, always distinguish between the rebellious to the core.” To a vague anticipation of between political reason and technical messianism which will not give in, and the danger is added “the scandal of a closed madness. humiliated millennialism which looks instead future,” and “we find ourselves condemned to live in the world in which we live.” [19] towards the great beyond. We must always Does this crisis contain the seeds of a new Capital seems to have become the permanent distinguish between the vanquished and the civilisation? It is just as pregnant with unseen horizon for the rest of time. broken, between “victorious defeats” and barbarities. Which will prevail? Barbarity has unalleviated collapse. We must avoid taken the lead by a good few lengths. It is There will no more afterwards, no more confusing the consolations of utopia with becoming more difficult than ever to separate elsewhere. forms of resistance that perpetuate an “illegal destruction and construction, the death throes tradition” and pass on a “secret conviction.” of the old and the birth pangs of the new, “for Death of the event. 47 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory

End of story. Napoleon, the socialist movement was [4] Ibid. likewise seized by “Christolatry.” “Look at [5] ibid. End of history. these offspring of Voltaire,” wrote one former Communard, “these former scourges of the [6] See Edward P. Thompson, The Making of the English Unhappily ever after. church, now huddled together around a table, Working Class [1963] (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1980). But in fact there is always conflict and hands clasped in pious union, waiting hour contradiction, there is always discontent in upon hour for it to rise up and lift one of its [7] Henry Mayhew, and the London Poor: legs. Religion in all its forms is once again A Cyclopaedia of the Condition and Earnings of Those the midst of civilisation and crisis in the the order of the day, and has become so very That Will Work, Those That Cannot Work, and Those That midst of culture. There are always those Will Not Work, 4 vols. [1861-1862] (New York: A.M. ‘distinguished.’ France has gone mad!” [21] refuse servitude and resist injustice. Kelley, 1967). Pierre Bourdieu was right to distinguish [8] José Carlos Mariategui, in El Tiempo () 16 From Seattle to Nice, from Millau to Porto mystical affirmation or divination from the August 1917. Alegre, from Bangkok to Prague, from the conditional, preventive and performative organisation of the unemployed to the [9] Rosa Luxemburg, “Order reigns in Berlin” (written on stance of prophecy. “Just as the priest is part mobilisation of women, a strange geopolitics 14 January 1919, several days before her murder by the and parcel of the ordinary order of things, so Freikorps despatched by a social democrat Minister of the is taking shape, and we don’t yet which too is the prophet the man of crisis, of Interior). events will follow in its wake. situations in which the established order [10] Dionys Mascolo, Le Communisme (Paris: Gallimard, The old mole burrows on. crumbles and the future as a whole is thrown 1953). into question.” [22] [11] Benjamin Fondane, L’Écrivain devant la révolution Hegel draws our attention to that “silent and (Paris: Paris-Méditerranée, 1997). secret” revolution which always precedes the The prophet is not a priest. Or a saint. development of a new way of thinking. [12] Jacques Derrida with Marc Guillaume and Jean- Still less a soothsayer. Pierre Vincent, Marx en jeu (Paris: Descartes et Cie, Through the unreasonable detours of history, 1997). the cunning claws of the mole dig their own To ward off disaster, it’s not enough to resist path of Reason. The mole is in no rush. He for the sake of resistance, it’s not enough to [13] Michel Surya, Portrait de l’intellectuel en animal de compagnie (Tours: Farrago, 2000) 11; see also Surya, De has “no need to hurry.” He needs “long wager on the possibility of a redemptive l’argent (Paris: Payot, 2000) 122. periods of time,” and he has “all the time he event. We must seek both to understand the needs.” [Note missing in text] If the mole logic of history and to be ready for the [14] Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An takes a backward step, it’s not in order to Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge [1936] surprise of the event. We must remain open to (London: Routledge, 1960) 192-196, quoted in E. P. hibernate but to bore through another the contingency of the latter without losing Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class opening. His twistings and turnings allow the thread of the former. Such is precisely the 419. him to find the place where he can break out. challenge of political action. For history [15] “les monstres mous” The mole never disappears, he only heads doesn’t proceed in a vacuum, and when underground. things take a turn for the better this never [16] Charles Péguy, Clio (Paris: Gallimard, 1931) 99. happens in an empty stretch of time, but Negri and Hardt say that the metaphor of the [17] Charles Péguy, Note conjointe (Paris: Gallimard, always “in time that is infinitely full, filled 1942) 123. mole is a figure of modernity, they say that he with struggles.” [23] has been surpassed by postmodernity. [18] Georges Bernanos, La Liberté pour quoi faire? [1953] “We’ve come to suspect that the old mole is And with events. (Paris: Gallimard, 1995). dead”: his digging gives way to the “infinite The mole prepares the way of their coming. [19] François Furet, The Passing of an Illusion. The Idea undulations of the snake” and other reptilian of Communism in the Twentieth Century, trans. Deborah struggles. [20] But such a verdict smacks of With a measured impatience. With an urgent Furet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). that chronological illusion whereby patience. [20] Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire postmodernity is supposed follow on after a For the mole is a prophetic animal. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000) 57. modernity that has since been consigned to [21] Gustave Lefrançais, Souvenirs d’un révolutionnaire the museum of ancient history. For the mole Daniel Bensaïd is one of France’s most prominent (Paris: La Tête de feuille, 1971) 191. is ambivalent. He is both modern and Marxist philosophers and has written extensively. He is a leading member of the LCR (French section of postmodern. He bustles discreetly about in [22] Pierre Bourdieu, “Genèse et structure du champ the Fourth International). his “subterranean rhizomes,” only to burst religieux,” Revue française de sociologie 12 (1971) 331. thunderously forth from the craters he makes. NOTES [23] Hegel, Leçons sur l’histoire de la philosophie (Paris: Folio Essais, 1990). On the pretext of giving up on history’s [1] , The Condition of the Working Class metanarratives, the philosophical discourse in England (Moscow and London, Progress of postmodernity lends itself to mystics and Publishers/Lawrence & Wishart: 1973) 121 (translation modified). mystagogues: when a society runs out of prophets it turns to soothsayers instead. This [2] Paul Ricoeur, La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (Paris: is the way it goes, in periods of reaction and Seuil, 2000). restoration. After the massacres of June 1848 [3] Paul Ricoeur, La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (Paris: and the 18th Brumaire of the younger Seuil, 2000). 48 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Permanent Revolution The Marxism of Trotsky’s "Results and Prospects"

A decisive break with the mechanical Marxism of the 2nd International Michael Löwy

Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, as sketched for the first time in his essay Results and Prospects (1906), was one of the most astonishing political breakthroughs in Marxist thinking at the begining of the XXth century. Kamenev (left) with Lenin and Trotsky

By rejecting the idea of separate historical possible...it is our interest and our task to form of communal ownership of land in stages - the first one being a «bourgeois make the revolution permanent until all the may form the starting point for a democratic» one - in the future Russian more or less propertied classes have been communist course of development”. [2] Revolution, and raising the possibility of driven from their ruling positions, until the transforming the democratic into a proletariat has conquered state power and With the exception of Trotsky, these ideas proletarian/socialist revolution in a until the association of the proletarians has seem to have been lost to Russian Marxism in «permanent» (i.e. ininterrupted) process, it progressed sufficiently far - not only in one the years between the end of the XIXth not only predicted the general strategy of the country but in all the leading countries of the century and 1917. If we leave aside the semi- October revolution, but also provided key world - that competition between the Marxists in the populist camp, such as insights into the other revolutionary proletarians of these countries ceases and at Nicolaion, or the “legal marxists”such as processes which would take place later on, in least the decisive forces of production are Piotr Struve, there remain four clearly China, Indochina, Cuba, etc. Of course, it is concentrated in the hands of the workers”. [1] delimited positions inside Russian social- not without its problems and shortcomings, democracy : but it was incomparably more relevant to the This striking passage contains three of the real revolutionary processes in the peripheria fundamental themes that Trotsky would later I) The Menshevik view , which considered of the capitalist system than anything develop in Results and Prospects : 1) the the future Russian revolution as bourgeois by produced by «» from the uninterrupted development of the revolution its nature and its driving force would be an death of Engels until 1917. in a semi-feudal country, leading to the alliance of the proletariat with the liberal conquest of power by the working class ; 2) bourgeoisie. Plekhanov and his friends In fact, the idea of permanent revolution the need for the proletarian forces in power to believed that Russia was a backward, appeared already in Marx and Engels, take anti-capitalist and socialist measures ; 3) “Asiatic”and barbarous country requiring a notably in their Address of the Central the necessarily international character of the long stage of industrialism and Committee to the Communist League, from revolutionary process and of the new socialist “Europeanization”before the proletariat March 1850, while the German Revolution of society, without classes or private property. could aspire to power. Only after Russia has 1848-50 - in an absolutist and backward developed its productive forces, and passed country - still seemed to unfold. Against the The idea of a socialist revolution in the into the historical stage of advanced unholy alliance of the liberal bourgeoisie and backward periphery of capitalism - although capitalism and parliamentary democracy absolutism, they championed the common not the terms “permanent revolution”- is also would the requisite material and political action of the workers with the democratic present in late Marx writings on Russia : the conditions be available for a socialist parties of the petty bourgeoisie. letter to Vera Zassoulitsch (1881) and, transformation. together with Engels, the preface to the 1882 But they insisted on the need of an Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto II) The Bolshevik conception also recognized independent proletarian perspective : “while : “If the Russian revolution sounds the signal the inevitably bourgeois-democratic the democratic petty bourgeoisie want to of a in the West so that character of the revolution, but it excluded bring the revolution to an end as quickly as each complements the other, the prevailing the bourgeoisie from the revolutionary bloc. 49 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory

According to Lenin, only the proletariat and from the existent level of productive the first to reject the economistic the peasantry were authentically forces”.[3] interpretations of Marxism by attempting to revolutionary forces, bound to establish restore the dialectical concepts of totality and through their alliance a common democratic The ideas suggested in various of Trotsky’s historical process. Labriola defended revolutionary dictatorship. Of course, as we articles in 1905 - particularly in his preface historical materialism as a self-sufficient and know, Lenin changed radically his approach, for the Russian translation of Marx’s writings independent theoretical system, irreducible to after the April Theses of 1917. on the - were then other currents ; he also rejected scholastic developed, in a more systematic and coherent dogmatism and the cult of the textbook, III) Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg, while way, in Results and Prospects (1906). insisting on the need of a critical aknowledging the bourgeois character of the However, this bold piece of writing remained development of Marxism. [5] revolution in the last instance, insisted on the for a long time a forgotten book. It seems that hegemonic revolutionary role of the Lenin did not read it - at least before 1917 - Trotsky’s starting-point, therefore, was this proletariat supported by the peasantry. The and its influence over contemporary Russian critical, dialectical and anti-dogmatical destruction of Czarist absolutism could not Marxism was desultory at best. Like all understanding that Labriola had inspired. be achieved short of the establishment of a forerunners, Trotsky was in advance of his “Marxism”, he wrote in 1906, “is above all a workers’ power led by social-democracy. time, and his ideas were too novel and method of analysis - not analysis of texts, but However, such a proletarian government heterodox to be accepted, or even studied, by analysis of social relations”. Let us focus on could not yet transcend in its programmatic his party comrades. five of the most important and distinctive aims the fixed limits of bourgeois democracy. features of the methodology that underlies How was it possible for Trotsky to cut the the Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, IV) Finally, Trotsky’s concept of permanent gordian knot of Second International in his distinction from the other Russian revolution, which envisaged not only the Marxism - the economicist definition of the Marxists , from Plekhanov to Lenin and from hegemonic role of the proletariat and the nature of a future revolution by “the level of the Mencheviks to the Bolcheviks (before necessity of its seizure of power, but also the productive forces”- and to to grasp the 1917). possibility of a growing over of the revolutionary possibilities that lay beyond the 1. From the vantage point of the dialectical democratic into the socialist revolution. dogmatic construction of a bourgeois democratic Russian revolution which was the comprehension of the unity of the opposites, Curiously enough, Trotsky does not mention, unquestioned problematic of all other Trotsky criticized the Bolsheviks’ rigid in Results and Prospects, any of the above Marxist propositions ? division between the socialist power of the mentioned pieces by Marx and Engels. He proletariat and the “democratic dictatorship probably ignored the Address of March 1850 There seems to exist an intimate link between of workers and peasants”, as a “logical, : the re-edition of 1885 in Zurich, in German, the dialectical method and revolutionary purely formal operation”. This abstract logic was not well known in Russia. His immedate theory : not by chance, the high period of is even more sharply attacked in his polemic source for the term “permanent revolution” in revolutionary thinking in the XXth century, against Plekhanov, whose whole reasoning 1905 seems to have been an article by Franz the years 1905-1925, are also those of some can be reduced to an “empty sillogism”: our revolution is bourgeois, therefore we should Mehring on the events in Russia, “Die of the most interesting attemps to use the support the Kadets, the constitutionalist Revolution in Permanenz”, published in the hegelo-marxist dialectics as an instrument of bourgeois party. Moreover, in an astonishing Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of German knowledge and action. Let me try to illustrate passage from a critique against the Social-Democracy. Mehring’s article was the connexion between dialectics and Menchevik Tcherevanin, he explicitly immeditaely translated in 1905 in Trotsky’s revolution in Trotsky’s early work. condemned the analytical - i.e. abstract- paper Nachalo in Petrograd and in the same A careful study of the roots of Trotsky’s formal, pre-dialectical - character of issue appeared also the first article in which political boldness and of the whole theory of Menchevik politics : “Tcherevanin constructs Lev Davidovitch used the term “permanent permanent revolution, reveals that his views his tactics as Spinoza did his ethics, that is to revolution”: “Between the immediate goal were informed by a specific understanding of say, geometrically”. [6] Of course, Trotsky and the final goal there should be a Marxism, an interpretation of the dialectical was not a philosopher and almost never wrote permanent revolutionary chain”. materialist method, distinct from the specific philosophical texts, but this makes his clear-sighted grasp of the methodological However, a close reading of Mehring’s piece dominant orthodoxy of the Second dimension of his controversy with stagist shows that the German Marxist used the International, and of Russian Marxism. conceptions all the more remarkable. words, but was not really a partisan of The young Trotsky did not read Hegel, but permanent revolution in the same sense as his understanding of Marxist theory owes 2. In History and Class consciousness (1923), Trotsky in 1905-1906. The vital kernel of the much to his first lectures in historical Lukacs insisted that the dialectical category theory, its concept of the ininterrupted going- materialism, namely, the works of Antonio of totality was the essence of Marx’s method, over of the democratic towards the socialist Labriola. In his autobiography he recalled the indeed the very principle of revolution within revolution, was denied by Mehring. This was “delight”with which he first devoured the domain of knowledge. [7] Trotsky’s well understood by Martov, the great Labriola’s essays during his imprisonment in theory, written twenty years earlier, is an Menshevik leader, who, in a work written Odessa in 1893. [4] His initiation into exceptionally significant illustration of this many years later, recalled Trotsky’s piece as dialectics thus took place through an Lukacsian thesis. Indeed, one of the essential a disturbing "deviation from the theoretical encounter with perhaps the least orthodox of sources of the superiority of Trotskys’s foundations of the Programm of Russian the major figures of the Second International. revolutionary thought is the fact that he Social-Democracy". He clearly distinguished adopted the viewpoint of totality, perceiving between Mehring’s article, which he Formed in the Hegelian school, Labriola capitalism and the class struggle as a world considered acceptable, and Trotsky’s essay, fought relentlessly against the neo-positivist process. In the Preface to a Russian edition which he repudiated as “utopian”, since it and vulgar-materialist trends that proliferated (1905) of Lassalle’s articles about the transcended “the historical task which flows in Italian Marxism (Turati !). He was one of revolution of 1848, he argues : “Binding all 50 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Permanent Revolution

countries together with its mode of architecture of Trotsky’s theoretical-political production and its commerce, capitalism has ideas from 1905 on. converted the whole world into a single economic and political organism (...) This 5. While the Populists insisted on the immediately gives the events now unfolding peculiarities of Russia and the Mencheviks and international character, and opens up a believed that their country would necessarily wide horizon. The political emancipation of follow the “general laws”of capitalist development, Trotsky was able to achieve a Russia led by the working class (...) will dialectical synthesis between the universal make it the initiator of the liquidation of and the particular, the specificity of the world capitalism, for which history has Russian social formation and the world created the objective condition”. [8] Only by capitalist process. In a remarkable passage posing the problem in these terms - at the from the History of the Russian Revolution level of “maturity”of the capitalist system in (1930) he explicitly formulated the viewpoint its totality - was it possible to transcend the that was already implicit in his 1906 essays : May Day 1976. DRV tank crew traditional perspective of the Russian “In the essence of the matter the Slavophile welcomed into Saigon. Marxists, who defined the socialist- conception, with all its reactionary since Russia was not economically ripe for a revolutionary “unripeness”of Russia fantasticness, and also Narodnikism, with all socialist revolution.” exclusively in terms of a national economic its democratic illusions, were by no means determinism. mere speculations, but rested upon Once he crossed the Rubicon, he applied indubitable and moreover deep pecularities 3. Trotsky explicitly rejected the un- himself to studying the problem from a of Russia’s development, understood one- dialectical economicism - the tendency to practical, concrete, and realistic angle and sidedly however and incorrectly evaluated. In came to conclusions very similar to those reduce, in a non-mediated and one-sided way, its struggle with Narodnikism, Russian all social, political and ideological anounced by Trotsky in 1906 : what are the Marxism, demonstrating the identity of the measures, constituting in fact the transition contradictions to the economic infra- laws of development for all countries, not structure - which was one of the hallmarks of towards socialism, that could be made infrequently fell into a dogmatic acceptable to the majority of the people, that Plekhanov’s vulgar materialist interpretation mechanization discovering a tendency to of Marxism. Indeed, Trotsky break with is, the masses of the workers and peasants ? pour out the baby with the bath”. [11] This is the road which led to the October economicism was one of the decisive steps Trotsky’s historical perspective was, Revolution... towards the theory of permanent revolution. therefore, a dialectical Aufhebung, able to A key paragraph in Results and Prospects simultaneously negate-preserve-transcend Michael Löwy is Research Director in Sociology at defined with precision the political stakes the contradiction between the Populists ant the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) implied in this rupture : “To imagine that the the Russian Marxists. in Paris. He is the author of many books, including The Marxism of , Marxism and dictatorship of the proletariat is in some way Liberation Theology, Fatherland or Mother Earth? automatically dependent on the technical It was the combination of all these and The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin development and resources of a country is a methodological innovations that made America. prejudice of ‘economic’ materialism Results and Prospects so unique in the simplified to absurdity. This point of view landscape of Russian Marxism before 1917 ; NOTES dialectics was at the heart of the theory of has nothing in common with Marxism”. [9] [1] In Marx, Engels, The , Penguin, permanent revolution. As Isaac Deutscher 1973, p. 323-4. 4. Trotsky’s method refused the un- wrote in his biography, if one reads again this dialectical conception of history as a pre- pamphlet from 1906, “one cannot but be [2] Marx, Engels, The Russian Menace to Europe, determined evolution, typical of Menchevik impressed by the sweep and boldness of this London, 1953, p. 217. arguments. He had a rich and dialectical vision. He reconnoited the future as one who [3] Martov, Geschichte der Russischen Sozialdemokratie, understanding of historical development as a surveys from a towering mountain top a new Berlin, 196, pp. 164-165. contradictory process, where at every and immense horizon and point to vast, [4] Trotsky, My Life, New York, 1960, p. 119 moment alternatives are posed. The task of uncharted landmarks in the distance”. [12] Marxism, he wrote, was precisely to [5] See A.Labriola, La concepcion materialista de la A similar link between dialectics and “discover the ‘possibilities’ of the developing historia (1897), La Habana, 1970, p. 115, 243. revolutionary politics can be found in Lenin’s revolution”. [10] In Results and Prospects, as evolution. Vladimir Illitch remained faithfull [6] Trotsky, “The proletariat and the Russian revolution”, well as in later essays - for instance, his to the orthodox views of Russian Marxism and “Our Differences”in 1905, London, 1971, p. 289 , 306-312. polemic against the Mencheviks, “The till 1914, when the begining of the war led proletariat and the Russian him to discover dialectics : the study of [7] G.Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, London, revolution”(1908), he analyzes the process of Hegelian logic was the instrument by means 1971, ch. 1. permanent revolution towards socialist of which he cleared the theoretical road transformation through the dialectical [8] Quoted in Results and Prospects, London, 1962, p. leading to the Station of Petrograd, 240. concept of objective possibility, whose where he first announced “All the power to outcome depended on innumerable the soviets”. In March-April 1917, liberated [9] Results and Prospects, p. 195. subjective factors as well as unforeseeable from the obstacle represented by [10] Ibid p. 168. events - and not as an inevitable necessity predialectical Marxism, Lenin could, under whose triumph (or defeat) was already the pressure of events, rid himself in good [11] Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, London, assured. It was this recognition of the open time of its political corollary: the abstract and 1965, vol. I, p. 427. character of social historicity that gave rigid principle according to which "The [12] I. Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, London, 1954, p. revolutionary praxis its decisive place in the Russian revolution could oniy be bourgeois, 161 51 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Trotsky, Lenin, Lukacs Dialectics and Revolution

Michael Löwy

There seems to exist an intimate link between the dialectical method and revolutionary theory: not by chance, the high period of revolutionary thinking in the XXth century, the years 1905-1925, are also those of some of the most interesting attemps to use the hegelo-marxist dialectics as an instrument of knowledge and action. Let me try to illustrate the connexion between dialectics and revolution in the thought of three distinct Marxist figures : Leon D. Trotsky, Vladimir I. Lenin and György Lukacs. Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, as His initiation into dialectics thus took place revolution is bourgeois, therefore we should sketched for the first time in his essay Results through an encounter with perhaps the least support the Cadets, the constitutionalist and Prospects (1906), was one of the most orthodox of the major figures of the Second bourgeois party. astonishing political breakthroughs in International. Formed in the Hegelian school, Marxist thinking at the beginning of the Labriola fought relentlessly against the neo- Moreover, in an astonishing passage from a critique against the Menshevik Tcherevanin, XXth century. By rejecting the idea of positivist and vulgar-materialist trends that he explicitly condemned the analytical - i.e. separate historical stages - the first one being proliferated in Italian Marxism (Turati!). He abstract-formal, pre-dialectical - character of a “bourgeois democratic” one - in the future was one of the first to reject the economistic Menshevik politics : “Tcherevanin constructs Russian Revolution, and raising the interpretations of Marxism by attempting to restore the dialectical concepts of totality and his tactics as Spinoza did his ethics, that is to possibility of transforming the democratic historical process. Labriola defended say, geometrically” [3]. Of course, Trotsky into a proletarian/socialist revolution in a historical materialism as a self-sufficient and was not a philosopher and almost never wrote “permanent” (i.e. uninterrupted) process, it independent theoretical system, irreducible to specific philosophical texts , but this makes not only predicted the general strategy of the other currents; he also rejected scholastic his clear-sighted grasp of the methodological October revolution, but also provided key dogmatism and the cult of the textbook, dimension of his controversy with stagist insights into the other revolutionary insisting on the need of a critical conceptions all the more remarkable. processes which would take place later on, in development of Marxism [2]. China, Indochina, Cuba, etc. 2. In History and Class Consciousness Trotsky’s starting-point, therefore, was this (1923), Lukacs insisted that the dialectical Of course, it is not without its problems and critical, dialectical and anti-dogmatic category of totality was the essence of Marx’s shortcomings, but it was incomparably more understanding that Labriola had inspired. method, indeed the very principle of relevant to the real revolutionary processes in “Marxism”, he wrote in 1906, “is above all a revolution within the domain of knowledge the periphery of the capitalist system than method of analysis - not analysis of texts, but [4]. Trotsky’s theory, written twenty years anything produced by “orthodox Marxism” analysis of social relations”. Let us focus on earlier, is an exceptionally significant from the death of Engels until 1917. Now, a five of the most important and distinctive illustration of this Lukacsian thesis. Indeed, careful study of the roots of Trotsky’s features of the methodology that underlies one of the essential sources of the superiority political boldness and of the whole theory of the Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, of Trotsky’s revolutionary thought is the fact permanent revolution, reveals that his views in his distinction from the other Russian that he adopted the viewpoint of totality, were informed by a specific understanding of Marxists, from Plekhanov to Lenin and from perceiving capitalism and the class struggle Marxism, an interpretation of the dialectical the Mensheviks to the Bolsheviks (before as a world process. 1917). materialist method, distinct from the In the Preface to a Russian edition (1905) of dominant orthodoxy of the Second 1. From the vantage point of the dialectical Lassalle’s articles about the revolution of International, and of Russian Marxism. The comprehension of the unity of the opposites, 1848, he argues : “Binding all countries young Trotsky did not read Hegel, but his Trotsky criticized the Bolsheviks’ rigid together with its and its understanding of Marxist theory owes much division between the socialist power of the commerce, capitalism has converted the to his first lectures in historical materialism, proletariat and the “democratic dictatorship whole world into a single economic and namely, the works of Antonio Labriola. In his of workers and peasants”, as a “logical, political organism (...) This immediately autobiography he recalled the “delight” with purely formal operation”. This abstract logic gives the events now unfolding and which he first devoured Labriola’s essays is even more sharply attacked in his polemic international character, and opens up a wide during his imprisonment in Odessa in 1893. against Plekhanov, whose whole reasoning horizon. The political emancipation of Russia [1] can be reduced to an “empty syllogism”: our led by the working class (...) will make it the 52 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Trosky, Lenin, Lukacs

initiator of the liquidation of world character of social historicity that gave Until 1914, Lenin used to consider himself, capitalism, for which history has created the revolutionary praxis its decisive place in the on the theoretical and philosophical level, as objective condition” [5]. Only by posing the architecture of Trotsky’s theoretical-political a faithful follower of the orthodox Marxism problem in these terms - at the level of ideas from 1905 on. of the Second International, as represented by “maturity” of the capitalist system in its figures such as and G. V. totality - was it possible to transcend the 5. While the Populists insisted on the Plekhanov. His main philosophical work traditional perspective of the Russian peculiarities of Russia and the Mensheviks from the early years, Materialism and Marxists, who defined the socialist- believed that their country would necessarily Empiriocriticism, is much influenced by the revolutionary “unripeness” of Russia follow the “general laws” of capitalist kind of Marxism represented by the leader of exclusively in terms of a national economic development, Trotsky was able to achieve a the Menshevik faction. His philosophical determinism. dialectical synthesis between the universal thinking began to change radically after and the particular, the specificity of the 1914, when he saw - and at first could not 3. Trotsky explicitly rejected the un- Russian social formation and the world believe - that German Social-Democracy dialectical economism - the tendency to capitalist process. In a remarkable passage (including Kautsky) voted the war credits for reduce, in a non-mediated and one-sided way, from the History of the Russian Revolution the Kaiser’s government in August 4, 1914 - all social, political and ideological a choice reproduced in Russia by Plekhanov (1930) he explicitly formulated the viewpoint contradictions to the economic infra- and several of his comrades. structure - which was one of the hallmarks of that was already implicit in his 1906 essays : Plekhanov’s vulgar materialist interpretation “In the essence of the matter the Slavophile The catastrophe of the Second International of Marxism. Indeed, Trotsky break with conception, with all its reactionary at the outbreak of was, for economism was one of the decisive steps fantasticness, and also Narodnikism, with all Lenin, striking evidence that something was towards the theory of permanent revolution. its democratic illusions, were by no means rotten in the state of Denmark of official A key paragraph in Results and Prospects mere speculations, but rested upon “orthodox” Marxism. The political defined with precision the political stakes indubitable and moreover deep peculiarities bankruptcy of that orthodoxy led him, implied in this rupture : “To imagine that the of Russia’s development, understood one- therefore, to a profound revision of the dictatorship of the proletariat is in some way sidedly however and incorrectly evaluated. philosophical premises of the Kautsky- automatically dependent on the technical Plekhanov sort of historical materialism. It development and resources of a country is a In its struggle with Narodnikism, Russian will be necessary one day to retrace the prejudice of ‘economic’ materialism Marxism, demonstrating the identity of the precise track that led Lenin from the trauma simplified to absurdity. This point of view laws of development for all countries, not of August 1914 to the Logic of Hegel has nothing in common with Marxism” [6]. infrequently fell into a dogmatic scarcely a month after. The simple desire to mechanization discovering a tendency to return to the sources of Marxist thinking ? Or 4. Trotsky’s method refused the un- pour out the baby with the bath water” [8]. a clear intuition that the methodological dialectical conception of history as a pre- Trotsky’s historical perspective was, Achilles’ heel of Second International determined evolution, typical of Menshevik therefore, a dialectical Aufhebung, able to Marxism was the absence of dialectics ? arguments. He had a rich and dialectical simultaneously negate-preserve-transcend understanding of historical development as a Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that the contradiction between the Populists ant contradictory process, where at every his vision of was the Russian Marxists. moment alternatives are posed. The task of profoundly changed by it. Evidence of this is Marxism, he wrote, was precisely to It was the combination of all these the text itself of the Philosophical Notebooks, “discover the ‘possibilities’ of the developing but also the letter he sent on January 4, 1915, methodological innovations that made revolution” [7]. shortly after having finished reading Hegel’s Results and Prospects so unique in the The Science of Logic (December 17, 1914) to landscape of Russian Marxism before 1917 ; In Results and Prospects, as well as in later the editorial secretary of Granat Publishers to dialectics was at the heart of the theory of essays - for instance, his polemic against the ask if “there was still time to make some Mensheviks, “The proletariat and the Russian permanent revolution. corrections [to his Karl Marx entry ] in the revolution” (1908), he analyzes the process section of dialectics." [10] of permanent revolution towards socialist As Isaac Deutscher wrote in his biography, if transformation through the dialectical one reads again this pamphlet from 1906, And it was by no means a "passing concept of objective possibility, whose “one cannot but be impressed by the sweep enthusiasm" : seven years later, in one of his outcome depended on innumerable and boldness of this vision. He reconnoitered last writings, On the Significance of Militant subjective factors as well as unforeseeable the future as one who surveys from a Marxism (1922), he called on "the editors events - and not as an inevitable necessity towering mountain top a new and immense and contributors" of the party’s theoretical whose triumph (or defeat) was already horizon and point to vast, uncharted journal (Under the Banner of Marxism) to assured. It was this recognition of the open landmarks in the distance” [9]. "be a kind of Society of Materialist Friends of 53 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory

Hegelian Dialectics." He insists on the need history." Kautsky, for example, defines objective, by destroying their one-sidedness for a "systematic study of Hegelian Marxism as "the scientific study of the [15]. Dialectics from a materialist standpoint," and evolution of the social organism." Kautsky proposes even to "print in the journal had, in fact, been a Darwinian before 3. He emphasizes the major difference excerpts from Hegel’s principal works, becoming a Marxist, and it is not without between the vulgar evolutionist conception of interpret them materialistically and comment reason that his disciple Brill defined his development and the dialectical one : "the on them with the help of examples of the way method as “bio-historical materialism”... first, [development as decrease and increase, Marx applied dialectics." [11] as repetition] is lifeless, pale and dry; the 4. An abstract and naturalistic conception of second [development as a unity of opposites] What were the tendencies of Second the "laws of history," strikingly illustrated by alone furnishes the key to the ’leaps,’ to the International Marxism which gave it a the marvelous pronouncement of Plekhanov ’break in continuity,’ to the ’transformation predialectical character? when he heard the news of the October into the opposite,’ to the destruction of the Revolution: "But it’s a violation of all the old and emergence of the new." [16] 1. Primarily, the tendency to ignore the laws of history!". distinction between Marx’s dialectical 4. With Hegel, he struggles "against making materialism and the "ancient," "vulgar," 5. A tendency to relapse into the analytical the concept of law absolute, against "metaphysical" materialism of Helvetius, method, grasping only “distinct and separate" simplifying it, against making a fetish of it" Feuerbach, etc. Plekhanov, for instance, objects, fixed in their differences: Russia- (and adds: "NB for modern physics!!!"). He could write these astonishing lines: "In Germany; bourgeois revolution-socialist writes likewise that "laws, all laws, are Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach . . . none of the narrow, incomplete, approximate." [17] 5. He revolution; party-masses; minimum fundamental ideas of Feuerbach’s philosophy sees in the category of totality, in the program-maximum program, etc. There is no are refuted; they are merely amended ... Marx development of the entire ensemble of the doubt that Kautsky and Plekhanov had and Engels’ materialist views were moments of reality, the essence of dialectical carefully read and studied Hegel; but they elaborated in the direction indicated by the cognition [18]. We can see the use Lenin had not, so to speak, "absorbed" and inner logic of Feuerbach’s philosophy" ! [12] made immediately of this methodological "digested" him into their theoretical systems, principle in the pamphlet he wrote at the grounded on evolutionism and historical 2. The tendency, that flows from the first, to time, The Collapse of the Second reduce historical materialism to mechanical determinism. International (1915) : he submits to severe economic determinism in which the criticism the apologists of "national How far did Lenin’s notes on (or about) "objective" is always the cause of the defence"-who attempt to deny the imperialist Hegel’s Logic constitute a challenge to "subjective." For example, Kautsky character of the Great War because of the predialectical Marxism? untiringly insists on the idea that "the "national factor" of the war of the Serbs domination of the proletariat and the social 1. First, Lenin insists on the philosophical against -by underlining that Marx’s revolution cannot come about before the abyss separating "stupid," that dialectic "correctly excludes any isolated preliminary conditions, as much economic as is,"metaphysical, undeveloped, dead, crude" examination of an object, i.e., one that is one- psychological, of a socialist society are materialism from Marxist materialism, sided and monstrously distorted." [19] sufficiently realised." What are these "psychological conditions"? According to which, on the contrary, is nearer to Against the isolation, fixation, separation, Kautsky, "intelligence, discipline and an "intelligent," that is, dialectical, idealism. and abstract opposition of different moments organisational talent." How will these Consequently, he criticizes Plekhanov of reality, Lenin insists in dissolving them conditions be created? "It is the historical severely for having written nothing on through the category of totality, arguing also task of capitalism" to realize them. The moral Hegel’s Great Logic, "that is to say, basically that "the dialectic is the theory which shows . of history: "It is only where the capitalist on the dialectic as philosophical knowledge," . . why human understanding should not take system of production has attained a high and for having criticized Kant from the contraries as dead and petrified but as living, degree of development that economic standpoint of vulgar materialism rather than conditioned, mobile, interpenetrating each conditions permit the transformation, by the in the manner of Hegel [14]. other." [20] power of the people, of capitalist property in the means of production into social 2. He fully grasps the dialectical conception What interests us here most is less the ownership." [13] of causality : "Cause and effect, ergo, are discussion of the philosophical content of merely moments of universal reciprocal Lenin’s Notebooks of 1914-15 "in itself" than 3. The attempt to reduce the dialectic to dependence, of (universal) connection, of the that of its political consequences : the Darwinian evolutionism, where the different reciprocal connection of events. ..." At the socialist-revolutionary conception developed stages of human history (slavery, feudalism, same time, he praises the dialectical process by the Bolshevik leader in his “April Thesis” capitalism, socialism) follow a sequence by which Hegel dissolves the "opposition of from 1917. It is not difficult to find the red rigorously determined by the "laws of solid and abstract", of subjective and thread leading from the category of totality to 54 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Trosky, Lenin, Lukacs

the theory of the weakest link in the conditions. Since this opus magnum of imperialist chain; from the inter-penetration Marxist dialectics in the XXth century is well of opposites to the transformation of the known, I would like to add a few comments democratic into the socialist revolution; from on another piece by Lukacs, only recently the dialectical conception of causality to the discovered, Chvostismus und Dialektik . refusal to define the character of the Russian Revolution solely by Russia’s "economically For many years scholars and readers backward base"; from the critique of vulgar wondered why Lukacs never answered to the evolutionism to the "break in continuity" in intense fire of criticism directed against 1917; and so on. History and Class Consciousness (HCC) soon after its publication, particularly from But the most important is quite simply that Communist quarters. The recent discovery of the critical reading, the materialist reading of Chvostismus und Dialektik - probably Hegel had freed Lenin from the straitjacket of written around 1925 - in the former archives György Lukacs the pseudo-orthodox Marxism of the Second of the Lenin Institute shows that this International, from the theoretical limitation “missing link” existed : Lukacs did reply, in a “economistic Marxists” who “tail-end” the it imposed on his thinking. The study of most explicit and vigorous way, to these spontaneous . Lukacs, Hegelian logic was the instrument by means attacks, and defended the main ideas of his however, uses it in a much broader of which Lenin cleared the theoretical road hegelo-marxist masterpiece from 1923. One historiosophical sense : Chvostismus means leading to the Finland Station of Petrograd, may consider this answer as the last passively following - “tailing” - the where he first announced “All the power to revolutionary/marxist writing of the “objective” course of events, while ignoring the soviets”. Hungarian philosopher, just before a major the subjective/revolutionary moments of the turn in his theoretical and political orientation historical process. In March-April 1917, liberated from the - the philosophical “reconciliation with obstacle represented by predialectical reality” proposed by his essay on Lukacs denounces the attempt by Rudas and Marxism, Lenin could, under the pressure of from 1926 [21]. Deborin to transform Marxism into a events, rid himself in good time of its “science” in the positivist, bourgeois sense. political corollary: the abstract and rigid Chvostismus und Dialektik - English Deborin - an ex-Menshevik - tries, in a principle according to which "The Russian translation : Tailism and Dialectics - may be regressive move, to bring back historical revolution could only be bourgeois, since considered as a powerful exercise in materialism “into the fold of Comte or Russia was not economically ripe for a revolutionary dialectics, against the crypto- Herbert Spencer” (auf Comte oder Herbert socialist revolution." Once he crossed the positivist brand of “Marxism” that was soon Spencer zurückrevidiert), a sort of bourgeois Rubicon, he applied himself to studying the to become the official ideology of the Soviet sociology studying transhistorical laws that problem from a practical, concrete, and bureaucracy. The key element in this exclude all human activity. And Rudas places realistic angle: what are the measures, polemical battle is Lukacs’ emphasis on the himself as a “scientific” observer of the constituting in fact the transition towards decisive revolutionary importance of the objective, law-bound course of history, socialism, that could be made acceptable to subjective moment in the subject/object whereby he can “anticipate” revolutionary the majority of the people, that is, the masses historical dialectics. developments. Both regard as worthy of of the workers and peasants ? This is the road scientific investigation only what is free of which led to the October Revolution... If one had to summarize the value and the any participation on the part of the historical significance of Tailism and dialectics, I subject, and both reject, in the name of this The philosophical work that best gave would argue that it is a powerful “Marxist” (in fact, positivist) science any expression to the dialectics of revolution after hegelian/marxist apology of revolutionary attempt to accord “an active and positive role October 1917 was probably György Lukacs’ subjectivity. This motive runs like a red to a subjective moment in history”. [22] The History and Class consciousness (1923). By thread throughout the whole piece, war against subjectivism, argues Lukacs, is dissolving the reified moments in the particularly in its first part, but even, to some the banner under which opportunism justifies contradictory process of the historical extent, in the second one too. Let us try to its rejection of revolutionary dialectics : it totality, and by emphasizing the unity bring into evidence the main moments of this was used by Bernstein against Marx and by between the subjective and the objective in argument. One could begin with the Kautsky against Lenin. In the name of anti- the revolutionary praxis, Lukacs was able to mysterious term Chvostismus of the book’s subjectivism, Rudas develops a fatalist dialectically supersede (Aufhebung) the title - Lukacs never bothered to explain it, conception of history, which includes only traditional oppositions between “ought” and supposing that its - German ? Russian ? - “the objective conditions”, but leaves no «being”, values and reality, ethics and readers were familiar with it. The word was room for the decision of the historical agents. politics, final goal and immediate used by Lenin in his polemics - for instance In an article in Inprekor against Trotsky - circumstances, human will and material in What is to be done ? - against those criticised by Lukacs in T&D - Rudas claims 55 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory

that the defeat of the Hungarian revolution of permanent advance, endless progress : the [8] Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, London, 1919 was due only to “objective conditions” temporally later stage is necessarily the 1965, vol. I, p. 427. and not to any mistakes of the Communist higher one in every respect. [9] I.Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, London, 1954, p. 161 leadership; he mentions both Trotsky and Lukacs as examples of a one-sided From a dialectical viewpoint, however, the [10] Quoted in R.Garaudy, Lenine, Paris, PUF, 1969, p. 40 conception of politics which overemphasizes historical process is “not an evolutionary nor [11] Lenin, Selected Works, vol . 3 p. 672, 667-668. the importance of proletarian class an organic one”, but contradictory, jerkily consciousness [23]. While rejecting the unfolding in advances and retreats [25]. [12] George V. Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems of accusation of “subjective idealism”, Lukacs Unfortunately Lukacs does not develop this Marxism (London, Martin Lawrence, n.d.) pp. 30-31. Cf. does not retract from his voluntarist insights, that point towards a radical break also pp. 21-22 : « Marx’s theory of cognition is directly with the ideology of inevitable progress derived from Feuerbach’s. If you like, we can even say viewpoint : in the decisive moments of the that, strictly speaking, it is Feuerbach’s theory...given a struggle “everything depends on class common to Second and - after 1924 - Third profounder meaning in a general way by Marx ». consciousness , on the conscious will of the International Marxism. Another important proletariat” - the subjective component. Of aspect related to this battle against the [13] Karl Kautsky, The social revolution, Chicago, Charles Kerr, 1903, pp. 185-187 (translation modified).. course, there is a dialectical interaction positivist degradation of Marxism is Lukacs critique, in the second part of the essay, between subject and object in the historical [14] Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, pp. 179, 276, 277 process, but in the crucial moment against the views expressed by Rudas on (Augenblick) of crisis, it gives the direction technology and industry as an “objective” [15] Ibid, pp. 159, 187, 260. and neutral system of “exchange between of the events, in the form of revolutionary [16] Ibid. p. 360. consciousness and praxis. By his fatalist humans and nature”. This would mean, attitude, Rudas ignores praxis and develops a objects Lukacs, that there is an essential [17] Ibid. p. 151 theory of passive “tail-ending”, considering identity between the capitalist and the [18] Ibid. pp. 157-158. See also pp. 171, 196, 218. that history is a process that “takes place socialist society ! independently of human consciousness”. In his viewpoint, revolution has to change not [19] Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International in Collected Works, vol. 21, p. 235. What is , argues Lukacs, if not the only the relations of production but also permanent insistence on the “active and revolutionize to a large extent the concrete [20] Lenin, Karl Marx, in CW, vol. 21, p.33. conscious rôle of the subjective moment” ? forms of technology and industry existing in capitalism, since they are intimately linked to [21] On the meaning of this work in Lukacs’s intellectual How could one imagine, “without this evolution, I refer to the last chapter of my book Georg function of the subjective moment”, Lenin’s the capitalist division of labour. In this issue Lukacs. From Romanticism to , London, New conception of insurrection as an art? too Lukacs was well ahead of his time, but Left Books, 1980. Insurrection is precisely the Augenblick, the the suggestion remains undeveloped in his essay [26]. [22] G.Lukacs, Tailism and the dialectics, London, Verso, instant of the revolutionary process where 2000, pp. 50, 135, 137. Cf. the German original, Chvostismus und Dialektik, Budapest, Aron Verlag, 1996, “the subjective moment has a decisive Michael Löwy is Research Director in Sociology at p.9 predominance (ein entscheidendes the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in Paris. He is the author of many books, including Übergewicht)”. [23] As John Ree very aptly comments, Rudas and The Marxism of Che Guevara, Marxism and Deborin stand in drect continuity with Second In that instant, the fate of the revolution, and Liberation Theology, Fatherland or Mother Earth? and The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin International positivist/determinist Marxism : “In Rudas’ therefore of humanity “depends on the America. mind, Trotsky and Lukacs are linked because they both subjective moment”. This does not mean that stress the importance of the subjective factor in the revolutionaries should “wait” for the arrival NOTES revolution. Rudas steps forth as a defender of the ‘objective conditions’ which guranteed that the revolution of this Augenblick : there is no moment in the was bound to fail. The striking similarity with Karl [1] Trotsky, My Life, New York, 1960, p. 119. historical process where the possibility of an Kautsky’s review of Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy, in which he attributes the failure of the German revolution to active rôle of the subjective moments is [2] See A.Labriola, La concepcion materialista de la just such objective conditions, is striking testimony to the completely lacking [24]. In this context, historia (1897), La Habana, 1970, p. 115, 243 persistence of vulgar Marxism among the emerging Lukacs turns his critical weapons against one [3] See A.Labriola, La concepcion materialista de la Stalinist bureaucracy”. (“Introduction” to T&D pp. 24-25) of the main expressions of this positivist, historia (1897), La Habana, 1970, p. 115, 243 “sociological”, contemplative, fatalist - [24] G.Lukacs, T&D pp. 48, 54-58, 62. Cf. Chvostismus chvostistisch in his terminology - and [4] G.Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, London, und Dialektik p. 16. Emphasis in the original. Of course, 1971, ch. 1. this argument is mainly developed in the first chapter of objectivist conception of history : the the first part of the essay, which has the explicit title ideology of progress. Rudas and Deborin [5] G.Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, London, “Subjectivism”; but one can find it also in other parts of believe that the historical process is an 1971, ch. 1. the document. evolution mechanistically and fatally leading [6] Results and Prospects, p. 195. [25] T&D pp.55, 78, 105. to the next stage. History is conceived, according to the dogmas of evolutionism, as [7] Ibid p. 168. [26] T&D pp. 134-135. 56 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory The Challenge of Revolutionary Democracy in the Life and Thought of Rosa Luxemburg

Paul Le Blanc

Rosa Luxemburg’s life and intelligence have illuminated the human experience and inspired many people who have reached for a better world. Many of her insights and inclinations seem to place her in advance, on certain essential matters, of certain co-thinkers or partial co-thinkers who, like her, are also central to the Marxist tradition - whether Kautsky, or Lenin, or Trotsky. This comes through, I think, in the way she talks about the natural world, in her sense of kinship with other creatures of this planet, in her open and penetrating engagement with human dignity and human suffering, in her often luminously sensual formulations and turns of phrase, and also in her wonderful humor. Her writings are incredibly alive. [1] Rosa Luxemburg at SPD rally, 1900 once wrote a poem about to the extent that they are absorbed into our regardless of whether that authoritarianism Luxemburg after she had been dealt with by own thoughts and actions as we struggle assumes either brutal or benign postures. And right-wing death squads in 1919: against oppressive realities of our own time. the capitalist marketplace functions, primarily, not to meet the needs of the great Red Rosa now has vanished too. Luxemburg stands as a powerful challenge to majority of the people (the consumers) but a number of false conceptions very prevalent rather to maximize the profits of the small Where she lies is hid from view. today regarding both Marxism and minority that owns and controls the democracy. Among the most powerful and economy.[3] She told the poor what life is about. influential ideologists in the world today are those who tell us that the market economy And so now the rich have rubbed her out. [2] If she were here, Luxemburg would also and democracy (that is, capitalism and rule focus our attention on the actual dynamics of And yet, again and again since her death, the by the people) historically and naturally capitalist development in Central and Eastern spirit and ideas of Red Rosa have returned. In develop hand-in-hand, and that it is not Europe - the Germany, Poland, and Russia our own time, however, especially with the possible, for any length of time, to have one with which she was so familiar. There, for the 20th century’s final decade, there have been without the other. If Rosa Luxemburg were most part, the capitalist class, sensing a renewed and incredibly powerful efforts to here today, she would argue incisively and greater kinship with the elites above them rub out Rosa Luxemburg altogether, as part persuasively - as she did in her own time - than with the masses below them, deferred to that this is a lie. There is also the myth, of a well-orchestrated effort to see that and intertwined with the traditional elites that propagated by pro-capitalist propagandists as Marxism itself be made to vanish as a force were inclined to maintain authoritarianism as well as all too many would-be Communists, that can be used for understanding and the political framework within which the that socialism is something to be brought changing the world. market economy and industrial about through authoritarian measures. modernization would be allowed to The only way to bring this wonderful We should deal with these two myths one at flourish.[4] comrade to life is to refuse to be content with a time. simply “honoring her memory” or with Red Rosa would point out to us - as she did detailing her ideas as if we were placing the The natural development of the market in her own day - that democracy can be corpses of butterflies in a glass case. Rather, economy, of capitalism (regardless of advanced only through the struggles of the we must embrace - as critically and honestly whether one views it as in some ways growing working-class majority, only as we can - the challenge of her ideas for our positive or “progressive”) is certainly through the self-organization of working own time. This challenge (and especially the authoritarian. It is based upon, and it further people through mass movements for social challenge of revolutionary democracy) is enhances, inequality of economic power, and political reform, through strong, poignantly relevant to all countries, from which naturally generates an inequality of independent, democratic trade unions, Russia to Poland, from Germany to the political power. There is nothing so through democratic mass working-class United States, from Japan to China to , authoritarian as a capitalist workplace, whose parties. Historically, it was not the normal from South Africa to Cuba to Brazil. Rosa function is to manage the exploitation of functioning of the capitalist market, but Luxemburg and revolutionary Marxism live large numbers of workers, and this is so rather the mass pressure and mass struggle of 57 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory

the working class movement and its allies people. Rather it meant what Marx and gradual accommodation and subjugation of that paved the way, step-by-step, for the Engels said in the Communist Manifesto the socialist movement to the authoritarian expansion of democratic rights, democratic when they spoke of the working class proclivities, the brutal realities, and the reforms, and democratic political winning the battle of democracy, what Lenin violent dynamics of the capitalist system. structures.[5] meant in The State and Revolution, when he Even though vital gains could be won for the spoke of a thorough-going political rule by working class through struggles for reforms, At the same time, Luxemburg was insistent the working class. This was in contrast to the this would be like the labor of Sisyphus - the that capitalism and democracy are authoritarian political forms that began to strong man in the ancient Greek myth who incompatible, that in multiple ways the develop all-too-soon in the wake of the1917 time after time would roll a heavy boulder up natural functioning of the capitalist market- Russian Revolution. [7] a steep hill, only to have the gods roll it back place and of the capitalist class result in down again. So would the natural dynamics proliferating restrictions, manipulations, Luxemburg was an early critic of this of capitalism time after time outflank and corruptions, erosions that undermine the development, challenging Lenin and the erode the reforms won by the labor gains of the working-class and prevent (and Bolsheviks - whom she held in high esteem - movement. [9] must always prevent) the blossoming of a to pull back from their dangerously fully democratic society. And she was critical expansive justifications for the undemocratic Luxemburg taught that in order to remain (and would be critical now) of currents in the emergency measures that were adopted in the true to its democratic and socialist principles, labor and socialist movements which deny or face of both internal counter-revolutionary and in order to defend the material interests forget that capitalism and democracy are assaults and a global capitalist counter- of the workers and the oppressed, the incompatible. offensive. “Freedom only for the supporters socialist workers’ movement - even while of the government, only for the members of fighting for necessary and life-giving partial Luxemburg also observed - and brilliantly one party - however numerous they may be - reforms - would sometimes find itself in analyzed - the powerful expansionist is no freedom at all,” she insisted. “Freedom uncompromising confrontation with the tendencies of capitalism. These resulted in is always and exclusively freedom for the one capitalist power structure. What she and her the invasion of more and more portions of the who thinks differently.” In her prophetic revolutionary-minded comrades found, globe, violating the cultures, the quality of warning she elaborated: however, is that the increasingly life, and the self-determination of bureaucratized structure of their own socialist innumerable peoples for the benefit of Without general elections, without workers’ movement was becoming an capitalist enterprises that were compelled to unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, obstacle to the internal democracy of the reach for ever-expanding markets, raw without a free struggle of opinion, life dies materials, and investment opportunities. This out in every public institution, becomes a movement. The increasingly bureaucratic- authoritarian process of global capital mere semblance of life, in which only the conservative leadership of the trade unions accumulation, defined as imperialism, was bureaucracy remains as the active element. and party more and more sought to contain also dependent on the expansion of Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen radicalizing impulses of the working-class exceptionally authoritarian military party leaders of inexhaustible energy and membership, to limit the ability of people machines. The aggressive expansionism and boundless experience direct and rule. Among such as Luxemburg to present a revolutionary growing militarism would, as Luxemburg so them, in reality only a dozen outstanding socialist perspective, to deflect upsurges in correctly predicted, result in violent heads do the leading and an elite of the the class struggle into safely moderate catastrophes (colonial wars, world wars, and working class is invited from time to time to channels. They sought to maintain the more) in which the masses of people would meetings where they are to applaud the reformist strategy that they sincerely believed pay the price, for the benefit of wealthy and speeches of the leaders, and to approve was more “practical,” but which was, in fact, powerful elites. She warned that such proposed resolutions unanimously - at entwining the labor movement into the developments might also whirl out of control bottom, then, a clique affair - a dictatorship, authoritarian structures and disastrous and threaten the future of civilization to be sure, not the dictatorship of the directions of the capitalist status quo. [10] itself.[6] proletariat, however, but only the dictatorship Rosa Luxemburg was quite clear that the of a handful of politicians ... [8] Against this triumph of authoritarianism, majority of the people - and the working class violence, and death, Luxemburg passionately Luxemburg was also profoundly critical of as such - were by no means uniformly or struggled for the socialist alternative. In her authoritarian developments of a different sort consistently inclined to go in a revolutionary view, the socialist movement had proved to inside her own Social-Democratic Party of or socialist direction. She saw political and be the most consistent force for democracy in Germany. An increasingly powerful tendency social consciousness among the masses of the world - a view which has received inside the party and trade union leadership people as incredibly deep and diverse, considerable support from knowledgeable was arguing that the gradual accumulation of contradictory, shifting and changing, tending and serious historians in recent years. More reforms - to painlessly erase capitalism’s to go in one direction at one point and then in than this, she viewed socialism quite simply worst features - would be a better path for a very different direction soon after. The as an expanded, deepened, authentic achieving socialist goals. Luxemburg oppressive and sometimes horrific nature of democracy - genuine rule by the people in responded that it was not possible to choose capitalist development, however, when both the political and economic life of different paths to socialism in the same way combined with the clear and capable society. Her notion of a workers’ state (what that one might choose either spicy sausages articulation of perspectives of class-struggle has sometimes been called “dictatorship of or mild sausages in the market. The reformist and socialism, could sometimes cause the proletariat”) had nothing to do with a one- path, she prophetically insisted, would not dramatic upsurges - what she called mass party dictatorship ruling in the name of the lead gradually to socialism at all, but to the strikes, or mass actions, that would often take 58 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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place outside of existing structures of the effervescing life falls into a thousand new [4] Relevant here are Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of labor movement. She saw this, in part, as forms and improvisations, brings to light the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), and Peter Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg, essential in the creation of militant new trade creative force, itself corrects all mistaken Abridged Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, unions and other organizations of the workers attempts. ... The whole mass of the people 1969), 72-74, 304-305. and oppressed, although its implications went must take part. ... Socialism in life demands a further. Luxemburg had no desire to deny the [5] The centrality of democracy in Marxism has been well- complete spiritual transformation in the established for some time - see, for example, Michael importance of the day-to-day work of the masses degraded by centuries of class rule. Lowy, The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx existing trade unions and of the votes cast by Social instincts in place of egotistical ones, (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005), Richard N. Hunt, The the socialist representatives elected to mass initiative in place of inertia, idealism Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, 2 vols. (Pittsburgh: Germany’s parliament. But a movement University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974, 1984), and August H. which conquers all suffering. ... The only way Nimtz, Jr., Marx and Engels, Their Contribution to the capable of actually attaining socialism must to a rebirth is the school of public life itself, Democratic Breakthrough (Albany: New York State go beyond this. It was essential, she believed, the most unlimited, the broadest democracy University Press, 2000). On the centrality of Marxist- that a proliferation of possibilities be found to and public opinion. [13] influenced political movements for the advance of engage more and more people in action, in democracy, see Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber experience that would deepen their own Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development It is obvious that such genuine democracy as and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, understanding and commitment and skills, Rosa Luxemburg believed in cannot be 1992), and Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History that would enhance their own confidence and bestowed on a people through charismatic of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). creativity, as well as their ability to inspire leaders, through well-meaning revolutionary and win ever more workers to the elites, through single-party dictatorships, [6] Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital revolutionary cause. [11] through labor bureaucracies, through glitzy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), and “The election campaigns financed by big-business Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis and the German Social And this understanding was central for her as Democracy,” in Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, 261-331. a revolutionary strategist, distinguishing her interests, and certainly not through military from the dominant leadership of the German invasions from powerful outsiders. It must be [7] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Manifesto of the won through the accumulation of experience Communist Party,” in Le Blanc, From Marx to Gramsci, Social-Democratic Party. Luxemburg gave 143; Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” great weight to so-called “extra- and struggles, also the proliferation of in Selected Works, Vol. 2 (New York: international parliamentary” social struggles, and to a seasoned activists and democratic Publishers, 1967, 343-345. dynamic interplay between existing organizations, and the consequent rise of consciousness and revolutionary-democratic [8] “The Russian Revolution,” in Rosa Luxemburg organizations and spontaneous mass action. Speaks, 389, 391. This frightened her less revolutionary commitment among the masses of the people comrades. She put it this way: themselves, especially the immense majority [9] The points on sausages and Sisyphus can be found in of those who labor. [14] Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution” in Rosa Luxemburg As bred-in-the-bone disciples of Speaks, 71, 77. Her growing critique of the orientation of the Social-Democratic leadership can be seen in “The parliamentary cretinism, these German social And people such as ourselves, of course, Mass Strike, the Political Party, and the Trade Unions” in democrats have sought to apply to must face the difficult question of whether Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, 155-218, in the excerpt of revolutions the homemade wisdom of the we want to help advance such a process, and “Theory and Practice” in Le Blanc, Rosa Luxemburg, 139- parliamentary nursery: in order to carry if so, how. 174 (a slightly different excerpt is in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, 208-231), and correspondence to be found in anything, you must first have a majority. The Stephen Eric Bronner, ed., The Letters of Rosa Paul Le Blanc has for many years been a teacher same, they say, applies to the revolution: first Luxemburg, Second Edition (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: and activist in Pittsburgh. His writings include "Lenin Humanities Press, 1993), 129, 149, 179, 294-295. let’s become a “majority.” The true dialectic and the Revolutionary Party" and "A Short History of of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom the US Working Class". [10] See Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy 1905- on its head: not through a majority to 1917: The Development of the Great Schism (New York: revolutionary tactics, but through NOTES Wiley, 1955). revolutionary tactics to a majority - that is the way the road runs. Only a party which knows [1] An exploration of the Marxist tradition, and in part of [11] These perspectives are elaborated in sources cited in Luxemburg’s place within it, is offered in Paul Le Blanc, footnote 9 above, as well as in Luxemburg’s “Speech to how to lead, that is, to advance things, wins From Marx to Gramsci, A Reader in the Revolutionary the Founding Convention of the German Communist support in stormy times. [12] Marxist Politics (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Party” in Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, 405-427. Press, 1996), with further elaboration in Paul Le Blanc, For Luxemburg there was a remarkable Rosa Luxemburg, Reflections and Writings (Amherst, NY: [12] “The Russian Revolution” in Rosa Luxemburg consistency between this revolutionary- Humanity Books, 1999). Key texts on this and related Speaks, 374. matters are Paul Frolich, Rosa Luxemburg, Her Life and democratic strategic perspective and her Work (New York: Monthly Review, 1972) and Norman [13] Ibid., 389-391. Also see “The Socialization of revolutionary-democratic vision of socialism. Geras, The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg (London: Verso, Society,” in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, 346-348. Here is how she put it: 1983). The most recent English-language anthology of Luxemburg’s writings is also well worth consulting - The [14] One recent effort pushing in this direction is the late Bourgeois class rule has no need of the Rosa Luxemburg Reader, ed. by Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Daniel Singer’s final work, Whose Millennium? Theirs or political training and education of the entire Anderson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004). Ours? (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999). Another can be found in materials by Eveline Wittich, Paul Le mass of the people, at least not beyond [2] Quoted in Wendy Forrest, Rosa Luxemburg (London: Blanc, Ottakar Luban, Thomas Deve, and Lindsey Collen certain narrow limits. But for the proletarian Hamish Hamilton, 1989), 61. in a conference of scholars and activists organized by dictatorship that is the life element, the very South Africa’s Anti-War Movement and the Johannesburg air without which it is not able to exist. ... [3] See, for example, Rosa Luxemburg, “What Is office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation - Militarism and Economics?” in Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, ed. by Mary- War: Rosa Luxemburg Political Education Seminar 2004 Only experience is capable of correcting and Alice Waters (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), 220- (Johannesburg, South Africa: Khanya College Publishing, opening new ways. Only unobstructed, 249. 2005). 59 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory Uneven and Combined Development and the Sweep of History: Focus on Europe

Paul Le Blanc

It is often rationalized that a European bias in the study of world history makes sense because in modern times that history can best be comprehended as a process of “Westernization” - the growing dominance of capitalism in the global economies of our planet, the gradual and accelerating crystallization of a unified global economy, with accompanying spread of Western (i.e., European) cultural, social, and political models and norms. While there is a strong element of validity to this, it also Diego Rivera’s vision of Tenochtitlan, Mayan city of canals on the can introduce substantial distortions of the historical process. site of today’s Mexico City, destroyed by the conquistadors Before the “rise of the West” driven by the From the 15th through the mid-19th are known as the means of production) plus emergence of capitalism and particularly the centuries, a fundamental transformation took human labor-power, that can combine these incredible engine of the Industrial place in Europe - a transformation based on means of production in such a way that create Revolution, the more dominant aspect of the shift from one to the products which make it possible for world history seems to have involved a another, from one mode of production to individuals and society as a whole to survive process of “Southernization” - involving the another, a shift from feudalism to capitalism. and develop. Those are the productive forces: extensive diffusion of cultural, economic, The manner in which this shift took place, the means of production (raw materials and social, and political influences from portions and the consequences of the shift, set into technology) plus labor. The relations of of southern Asia and the Middle East motion a number of historical dynamics production are constituted by the economic (including throughout Europe). In addition, which shaped the modern world and which - ownership of the means of production, and even after the beginning of the among other things - resulted in calamities of control over the labor force - and this can be “Westernization” process, the dynamics of the 20th century: the collision of referred to as the class relations in society. imperialisms, two world wars that historical development in the various The old feudal mode of production was countries and cultures of the global South are sandwiched the Great Depression, the rise and fall of fascism, the haunting specter of primarily agricultural, in which the two marked both by a some-time relative Communism, momentous struggles and principal classes were the powerful warrior autonomy that challenges Western death camps and labor camps and shattered stratum, the so-called nobility, and the conceptualizations. But more, there is an dreams, with the Cold War threat of nuclear laboring peasants, who worked the land but obvious, ongoing, and accelerating impact, overkill fading into a new global order. This were compelled to surrender to the nobles influence, and interpenetration of the cultures particular presentation will trace in broad either portions of their labor or the product of of the global South with those of “the West” strokes a general interpretative framework in their labor over and above what was needed (or North), a global transformative process. which, hopefully, we can make better sense for peasant family subsistence. In return, the nobility was expected to provide protection An important conceptual tool for responding of the welter of experiences and the swirl of events that constitute the history of modern and assistance to the peasantry. The to such dynamics is the theory of uneven and Europe. traditionalist ideology that dominated feudal combined development formulated by Leon society involved a vision of divinely-created Trotsky as a contribution to the rich body of 1. The Uneven Transition to social orders, divided between those who Marxist analysis. Trotsky’s theory will be Capitalism prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the elaborated and utilized in this essay, and nobility, or feudal lords), and those who while a European focus is adopted here, The concept of the mode of production worked (the peasants, who were often consistent with the “Westernization” model, consists of two interlinked elements - the transformed into serfs - that is, forced to stay it is seen simply as an initial and incomplete forces of production and the relations of on the land under the control of the lords). In effort to suggest the general applicability of production. The forces of production include this organic view of society, the three social Trotsky’s theorization, a theorization most such things as raw materials, tools, and orders (or estates) were mutually supportive consistent with a more rounded account of sources of energy (taken together, these and had defined roles - outside of which no global history than is proved here. things - raw materials, tools, energy sources - one born or appointed to a particular order 60 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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must step. To do so would be a violation of to be sold at the marketplace - including against monarchist absolutism by appealing social stability, of the way things were human labor-power. to and mobilizing the lower middle classes supposed to be, and of God’s will. (artisans and shopkeepers) as well as the All of this subverted the feudal order. So did urban and even rural poor. This greatly A transitional period of several centuries saw the new ideas that began to develop. contributed to the ideological ferment - even the erosion of this system, as international Individualistic, experimental, scientific and more so when, in some cases, the newly- trade created a growing market for products rationalist orientations came to compete with politicized masses began to slip away from coming from one or another area. More and the traditionalist faith-based and supernatural upper-class influence and develop even more more, goods were produced not simply for ideologies. This helped to generate, and was radical notions of their own. What’s more, immediate consumption by lords and priests in turn further stimulated by, new the growth of towns and cities, with dynamic and peasants, but for the purpose of exchange developments in knowledge and technology. urban populations, was to create centers of at the market place. To facilitate such This trend has been identified with “the Age social, intellectual and revolutionary ferment exchange, a money economy became of Reason” and “the Enlightenment,” that would provide leadership for future increasingly important, and the feudal ruling reflecting a different way of thinking transformations. classes became increasingly caught up in it. connected with a different way of life. A new The notion of property and property rights mode of production, and new ideological A series of revolutionary upheavals resulted transformed feudal relations, with the nobles perspectives, were gaining power. from this profoundly unstable situation. transforming themselves into a landowning Revolutions in the Netherlands and England aristocracy who came to consider their own The feudal order evolved under the impact of in the 1600s resulted in a new political and private property the lands traditionally all this. Previously, limited communications social synthesis in those countries. This occupied by the peasantry. and transportation systems and the localized culminated in non-absolutist - limited - nature of the feudal economic units had monarchies and the triumph of the capitalist There was a growing tendency for this meant that effective rule could only be mode of production. aristocracy to exploit their peasants more exercised over a relatively small area. But severely, through feudal dues and rents, in remarkable changes in technology and the In France, however, the revolutionary order to accumulate greater wealth and connection of more and more areas by the explosion of 1789-93 was dramatically more luxuries. This generated peasant rebellions in capitalistic marketplace changed this. Not violent and far-reaching. The monarchy some cases. In other cases, peasants fled the only had it become possible to rule over sought the implementation of modest reforms land. Sometimes peasants were driven out by increasingly large areas, but the needs of that would ease social tensions in a manner landowners who sought more profitable uses capitalist economic development created that would help preserve the power of the of the land, such as raising sheep to provide strong pressures to do so. Certain powerful monarchy. In contrast, an alliance of wool for the growing textile trade. sections (or factions) of the feudal nobility aristocrats and moderate bourgeois elements, sought to take advantage of the new with support from the peasantry and the New classes began to emerge, particularly in possibilities by establishing centralized urban masses, sought to introduce political growing urban areas (or burgs). The burgers - monarchies, consolidating nation-states and social reforms that would ease social or bourgeois - were largely what came to be under absolutist rule. tensions in France while bringing an end to known as businessmen, or capitalists. There monarchist absolutism. But the were those who invested money in trade (or In those sections of Europe where such contradictions in French society were too commerce, the activity of the merchants) in monarchist nation-states took shape, a great, and the resulting social crisis too order to make a profit, buying products considerable amount of power was severe, to be solved by mild reforms and half- plentiful in one area to sell for a higher price concentrated into the hands of absolutist way measures. In the face of rising to those in need of them in another area. monarchs. expectations and deepening radicalization of Some of these merchants were able to the masses, not only was the authority of the accumulate enough money in this way to In those sections of Europe where such crown overwhelmed, but the new become financiers - financing various monarchist nation-states took shape, a aristocrat/bourgeois alliance was swept away. projects undertaken by merchants and considerable amount of power was The power of the king was smashed, and a aristocrats, making loans at interest. Other concentrated into the hands of absolutist succession of moderately revolutionary merchants of more modest means established rulers. But the result was fraught with leaderships were violently cast aside in the small shops, taverns, and inns. Along with tensions between different modes of face of the increasingly revolutionary these commercial and financial capitalists, production, between widely differing social of the masses. The most these arose a growing stratum of producers - classes, between different factions within radicalized and politically conscious sections artisans and craftsmen, stratified into those classes, and between divergent of the masses wanted a thoroughgoing apprentices, journeymen, and master- ideological orientations. All of this was political democracy and a social order in craftsmen, and originally organized into heightened by dramatic complications which freedom, equality and brotherhood guilds representing various skilled trades. resulting from the development of the market would be a living reality. economy - significant fluctuations in prices, Less fortunate but increasing in number were economic rivalry between nations (which Although the revolutionary masses of France unpropertied and unskilled laborers, blurring generated costly military expenditures and - covered by the catch-all term “the people” - into the destitute mass of the urban poor. wars), and monetary policies by absolutist were uncompromisingly anti-feudal, With the passage of time, some capitalists rulers that generated debts and taxes at levels however, they were composed of increasingly shifted from a focus in that would have been unimaginable in earlier contradictory class elements, and this made it commerce and finance to manufacturing - centuries. impossible for a similar consensus to form hiring craftsmen and laborers to produce around a clear program that would bring commodities that would be appropriated by Increasingly, rival factions within the about a realization of the most radical of their the capitalist and sold at a profit. More and aristocracy and within the bourgeoisie sought stated goals. “The people” (that is, peasants, more things became commodities - products to enhance their power against each other and artisans, shopkeepers, laborers, some 61 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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capitalist manufacturers, and more) may have different stages of the journey, a combining absorption into a French-dominated social been united in their dissatisfaction with the of separate steps, an amalgam of archaic with order - Napoleon’s French Empire. Secondly, old order, but they had different conceptions more contemporary forms.” the traditionalists came to realize that if they of precisely what would be the virtues of the were to cope successfully in the modern new order. This, combined with economic This law of uneven and combined world with a challenge such as that posed by dislocations, civil war, and foreign invasions, development guaranteed that the dynamics of Napoleon, then - at least for military reasons paved the way for confusion and murderous the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and the - they themselves would have to initiate some in-fighting among the revolutionary leaders. transition to a capitalist social order, would “modernization” reforms in their own In this context, the radicalizing momentum of be quite different in other parts of Europe and societies. the French Revolution was cut short, giving in later periods than had been the case in way, from 1794 through 1799, to a France at the end of the 18th century. An additional impulse for instituting such succession of rightward-moving and corrupt reforms (or for maintaining some of the The traditional, aristocratic ruling classes of dictatorships, and finally the military coup of Napoleonic reforms even after the ultimate Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe very Napoleon Bonaparte. defeat of Bonaparte in 1815) was provided by much felt what Trotsky called “the whip of a desire to de-fuse the kinds of middle-class 2. Uneven and Combined external necessity.” This took several forms. and lower-class discontents that had Development to 1850 One was the dangerous example of the generated the earlier revolutionary French Revolution that could potentially explosions in France. The French Revolution is often seen as the become a model for their own discontented high-point of bourgeois-democratic classes. Some traditionalists undoubtedly Even with the old ruling classes’ grudging revolution. This is defined as a revolution wanted to deal with this through increased adaptation to some aspects of capitalist that sweeps away the vestiges of the feudal repression, pure and simple - favoring “modernization,” however, their mode of production, clearing the way for the reactionary policies that would prevent any determination to maintain as much full development of capitalism, replacing changes in the forms and norms of the old monarchist power and aristocratic privilege monarchist-absolutism with a popular and social order. There were, however, three as possible was destined to generate a wave representative form of government. other “whips of external necessity” which of revolutionary explosions throughout thwarted such an easy “solution.” Europe in 1848. But the law of uneven and In the course of the 19th century, the combined development ensured that these Most important was the Industrial Revolution capitalist mode of production triumphed explosions would assume different forms and that was unleashed by the capitalist economic throughout Europe. Yet the transformation have different consequences than had been development of Western Europe. Such a took place in a manner that was qualitatively the case during the French Revolution. To mighty generator of material wealth and different from the form it took in France - and understand this, we must grasp the new if we understand why that was the case, we’ll power could hardly be shrugged off. Related to this was the fact that the traditional ruling sociological and ideological realities of the also be able to grasp one of the central keys 1840s. for explaining the subsequent history of classes - despite their feudal origins and Europe. inclinations - had themselves, for well over a The further development of capitalism - and century, been inescapably seduced by and especially of industrial capitalism - resulted There is an obvious and simple law of history entangled in the world capitalist economy. in a growing divergence among the new that has profoundly important consequences. These two interrelated “whips” (the progress social classes throughout Europe’s cities and This is the law of uneven development: of the Industrial Revolution and the towns. What had been simply “the people” in different areas and different countries are just traditional ruling classes’ own involvement in revolutionary France became increasingly the that - different. While all of Europe had been the world capitalist economy) made it sharply defined, self-conscious and often dominated by some variety of feudalism, and impossible to return to an earlier feudal openly antagonistic classes of capitalist while all of Europe was affected by the “golden age.” The traditionalists were, employers on the one hand and proletarian development of the capitalist market, the instead, compelled to adapt to a profoundly wage-workers on the other. In-between was a different regions had their own particular changing social order. A third “whip of middle stratum of independent artisans and characteristics. For various reasons, external necessity” was provided by the small shopkeepers, impelled by the dynamics technological and cultural and ideological French invasions during the Napoleonic wars of the capitalist marketplace but also on the innovations arose first in one area and then that spanned the first 15 years of the 19th verge of being ruined by larger capitalist had an impact on other areas at different century. enterprises. This three-layered class structure times - leading to uneven development in the history of Europe as a whole. France’s capitalist economy was more in the urban areas - bourgeoisie, petty- efficient and dynamic, unencumbered by bourgeoisie, and proletariat - did not form a This leads to another historical law which semi-feudal restrictions and forged into a cohesive revolutionary mass such as had was expressed most clearly by Russian cohesive national unit. This was also existed in Paris of 1789, but rather an uneasy revolutionary theorist in this reflected in the superior military capabilities alliance in the struggle against semi-feudal way: “Unevenness, the most general law of of Napoleon’s armies - in which the inertia of absolutism. In the rural areas there were large the historic process, reveals itself most aristocratic privilege had been replaced with landowners and various peasant strata - the sharply and complexly in the destiny of sweeping organizational, technological and former more often than not constituting a backward countries. Under the whip of tactical innovations combined with backward-looking aristocracy, while the external necessity their backward culture is performance-based incentives offered to all peasant masses (who were a majority of compelled to make leaps. From the universal regardless of social station. This had two Europeans) were often inclined toward law of unevenness thus derives another law effects. First, Napoleon’s forces overran most traditionalist values and hostile to urban- which, for the lack of a better name, we may of Europe and instituted social, economic, capitalist pressures, but also inclined to be call the law of combined development - by and political reforms in those areas, reforms revolutionary if this could satisfy their deep which we mean a drawing together of the that were designed to facilitate their hunger for land and dignity. 62 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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Three fundamental ideological currents took the politics but also the economic life of landowning aristocracy; and capitalism shape in the first half of the 19th century: society. Some of the earliest theorists of becoming entwined with traditional elites. liberalism, conservatism, and socialism. socialism imagined a utopian future whose blueprints they wished to somehow impose The bourgeois-aristocratic, or liberal- Liberalism favored the new capitalist order on humanity for its own good. By the mid- conservative, compromise impacted and sought to eliminate old feudal restrictions 19th century, however, it became throughout Europe after 1848, and this and hierarchies, seeking instead to facilitate increasingly identified as a goal to be profoundly affected the economic, political, for all. In its classical form, achieved and shaped by society’s laboring and cultural history of that entire area. In the and throughout most of the 19th century, majority. (At various times, conceptions of face of this hostile alliance, the first upsurge liberalism favored economic policies of communism and tended to be of self-conscious working-class radicalism laissez-faire, convinced that wealth and identified with this broad current.) (reflected in Karl Marx’s small Communist progress would be guaranteed if the state put League, for example, and more massively in no restrictions on the decisions of the Elements from various classes could be England’s Chartist movement) was smashed capitalists on how to run the economy. (By found in each political camp, and not and didn’t fully recover for about fifteen the 20th century the liberal mainstream surprisingly, many people of various class years. At the same time, the relative political would come to favor a more active backgrounds - particularly among the hard- and social stability that resulted facilitated intervention of the state in the economy, pressed lower classes - identified with no the dramatic economic expansion of presumably to reform and regulate capitalism political current at all. The fact remains that, industrial capitalism that would set the stage for its own good.) Committed to freedom of roughly speaking, in 19th century Europe for an even more dramatic working-class thought and expression, and the separation of liberalism found its most consistent base upsurge in the future. church and state, liberalism was inclined among the rising bourgeoisie, conservatism toward Enlightenment rationalism as a guide found its most consistent base among the 3. Swirling Toward 1914 to political reform, favoring the creation of sections of the aristocracy that were adapting constitutional republics. Throughout much of After 1848, the law of uneven and combined to capitalism, and socialism found its most the 19th century, however, a majority of development continued to assert pressure on consistent base among the working class. At liberals did not favor a democratic republic - the triumphant conservatives. They felt different times and in different places, fearing that giving propertyless masses the compelled to carry out “modernizing” elements of the peasantry were drawn to one right to vote would create a “tyranny of the reforms which corresponded to the liberal or another of these basic currents. majority” that would overturn capitalist and radical demands - but in a highly distorted form that preserved much of the property rights. At first, it was only the most Given this sociological and ideological line- aristocracy’s status and power. radical fringe of this political current that up, it may be easier to understand the favored moving forward to democracy. differences between the bourgeois- A prime example can be found in the career Conservatism accepted the new capitalist democratic revolution of 1789 and that of of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, order but resisted impulses toward equal 1848. In the case of the latter, I will focus on who initiated policies over more than two opportunity and the upsetting of traditional one major example - that of Germany. decades after the defeat of the 1848 hierarchies. Often counterposing traditional revolution that finally unified different parts If we examine the events of 1789-93 in values and cultural norms to the intellectual of Germany into a powerfully capitalist France, we see - amid an admittedly complex innovations of the Enlightenment, it nation, but as part of a distinctively swirl of events - that elements of the rising challenged optimistic notions about the conservative synthesis. In Prussia - which he bourgeoisie helped lead a mass-based possibilities of progress and human guaranteed was Germany’s dominant movement of the urban and rural poor in betterment - yet its adherents were most province - the parliament consisted of elected smashing the remnants of the old feudal concerned about conserving the traditional representatives, but the election laws divided order. Results of the revolutionary triumph power relations associated with prevailing the electorate into three groups: the monarchs and aristocratic elites. Essentially included: the replacement of monarchy with landowning aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and anti-democratic, it often favored freedom of a constitutional republic; the achievement of the laboring population. The votes of the first thought and expression only for the elite, and national unity, with a form of nationalism two sectors were given greater weight than was inclined to keep the masses in their strongly tinged with radical-democratic the third, ensuring that the upper classes places through a combination of restrictive content; and a sweeping which would get more representatives than the and benevolent policies by a more or less broke the power of the aristocracy, clearing lower classes. authoritarian central government. As the way for a thoroughgoing development of parliamentary systems and the right to vote capitalism. At the same time, the Prussian monarch - the spread through Europe in the 19th and early Kaiser - exercised far-reaching executive If we examine the events of 1848-49 in 20th centuries, of course, forms of powers over all of Germany. Social reforms Germany, we see that the dominant elements conservatism evolved that more or less beneficial to the working class were adopted, of the already-existing bourgeoisie, accepted and adapted to these changes. but at the same time there were repressive frightened by working-class radicalism, drew laws against working class organizations. Socialism challenged the new capitalist back from revolution and sought an alliance Although land reforms were promulgated to order, wanting to eliminate both the old with potent remnants of the old feudal order. relieve peasant discontent, the domination by feudal restrictions and hierarchies and the The results of the defeated revolution the big landowners of the countryside new capitalist restrictions and hierarchies. It included: the preservation of a powerful remained intact. In other words, capitalist held that equal opportunity would be possible monarchy; the failure to achieve national development blended with aristocratic only through the of the unity for over two decades; the combined privilege, social reforms blended with upper- economy, and that freedom of thought and thwarting of democratic political currents and class paternalism, concessions to the expression could only be guaranteed by a development of a conservative-tinged principle of representative government radical democracy that encompassed not only nationalism; maintenance of power by a blended with continued authoritarianism, 63 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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“modernization” blended with the policies of future, in which the power of the capitalists 2. Within the capitalist mode of production, repressive bureaucracies committed to and landowners would be replaced by the there was a growing contradiction between maintaining the relationships of power and power of the working-class majority. Despite the forces of production and the relations of privilege associated with the old status quo. the fact that a majority of these parties production. As we have noted, the awesome gradually embraced the theoretical development of the forces of production This was the pattern throughout much of orientation advanced by Karl Marx and encompassed all of society, bringing about Europe, although it unfolded with different combined into unified international profound and rapid changes in the culture and variations in different countries. In Russia, associations (first the International everyday life of all people in society - but for example, there had been no bourgeois- Workingmen’s Association, later the Socialist none of this was under their control, because democratic upsurge because the indigenous International), divisions opened up among the relations of production involved the capitalist class and working class did not the socialists over how much the private ownership of those productive forces exist as a significant force until the last years revolutionary vision should be compromised by a small self-interested minority of of the 19th century; therefore, the for the sake of immediate reforms, and over capitalists - and even this minority was conservatism and authoritarianism of the strategies for attaining socialism. These driven by impersonal market dynamics which monarchist system - Tsarism - were much divisions, and the compromises that spawned were not really under anyone’s control. The stronger, and the various “modernizing” them, created a fatal indecisiveness that was immense changes in society were reforms comparatively weaker in Russia. to paralyze the socialist movement at the experienced by large masses as arbitrary, alienating, and threatening. The fact remains that the triumph of the decisive moment in 1914. The fact remains that, up to the First World War, this capitalist mode of production in Europe was 3. The actual dynamics of the economy movement was seen as a powerful challenge an accomplished fact by the middle of the contained an additional irrational element. to the status quo. 19th century, and the stage was now set for The competition between capitalist firms technological and industrial developments so One of the most effective ideological tools periodically resulted in overproduction, rapid and so profound that they are utilized by conservatives was nationalism. which would glut the markets, bringing about sometimes said to constitute a “Second Nationalism had first been a central a collapse in prices and a decline in Industrial Revolution.” Communication and component of revolutionary and liberal production and employment - that is, periodic transportation systems, levels of industrial ideology - linking the ideas of popular economic depressions. Such problems production and productivity, the size and sovereignty and national self-determination, naturally generated greater tensions and proportional increase of urban populations, celebrating the culture and sense of instability. the level of knowledge and general community of the popular masses. education, the relative and absolute size of The development of imperialism provided an economic, political and even psychological the urban working class, the amount of Conservatives developed forms of outlet for all of these tensions. The obvious wealth produced by society - such things nationalism which were designed to blur economic outlet was, of course, essential: the increased spectacularly, qualitatively class differences, accentuating traditionalist transforming the life-rhythms of European continents of Asia, Africa, and Latin America cultural elements, glorifying authoritarian culture. (and even North America and vulnerable symbols, blending patriotism with anti- portions of Europe) offered vital sources of foreign prejudices and with militarism. They This naturally increased tensions within raw materials, important markets for were able to tap into non-rational longings European society as a whole, including manufactured goods, and virgin territories for and fears that had been intensified by the tensions between different factions of the profitable investments. The traditionalist dramatic transformations, disruptions, and ruling classes on how to respond to new ethos of military glory and authoritarian tensions introduced by the new industrial problems and possibilities. Divergences grandeur also found an outlet, as did popular capitalist order. Liberals and even socialists between conservatives and liberals once impulses toward a super-patriotic national- again became more pronounced. Both were affected in some ways by this variation chauvinism. appealed to the masses for support - offering, of nationalist ideology that the conservatives in return, reforms extending the right to vote developed so skillfully. At the same time, imperialism - in addition to and also increasing numbers of social being a brutal and oppressive assault on the If anything, however, this form of intense reforms (which were easier to grant thanks to peoples targeted for exploitation - failed to nationalism was not a source of social economic growth). resolve the contradictions of European stability and cohesion, but rather a reflection society, but simply led to heightened rivalries The consequent resurgence of mass politics of the deep tensions and instability that had between different companies and countries in European life, combined with the growing become part of the core of modern European over who would control what areas. Such size and productive power of the working life. This instability had at least three rivalry, combined with the rising tide of class, led to the regeneration of the European fundamental sources: nationalism and militarism, created a labor movement. Mass socialist parties, and framework that generated the eruption of the 1. The uncompleted nature of the bourgeois- mass trade union movements under left-wing First World War in August 1914. leadership, arose and became powerful forces democratic revolution - resulting from the in the political and economic life of Europe. aristocratic/capitalist compromise - creating 4. Permanent Revolution They were able to force important economic, an ongoing antagonism between traditionalist social, and political reforms from the upper values, expectations and cultural norms on The incredible destructiveness of what one classes - combating authoritarianism and the one hand, and the newer bourgeois Asian scholar once referred to as “the injustice in society’s political life and in values, practices and culture on the other. European civil war” resulted not only in the capitalism’s factories. This deep cultural conflict was felt slaughter of millions of people, but also in a consciously and unconsciously, not only dramatic political and cultural transformation At the same time, they inspired millions of among the upper classes, but within broad on the European continent. A period working people with a vision of a socialist sectors of the population. combining revolutionary upheaval and 64 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory

counter-revolutionary backlash defined the Trotsky became involved. He would become their own rule through democratic councils rest of the 20th century. One of the focal- a theorist and leader of the revolutionary (known in Russia as “soviets”) and their own points of this dialectic was Russia, where the movement second in stature only to Vladimir people’s army. Under working-class rule theory of uneven and combined development Ilyich Lenin. In the context of intense there would be dramatic efforts first came to be articulated. The patterns struggles, Trotsky developed an analysis of already discussed were dramatically evident the peculiarities of Russian history that v to spread education, there. defined it as “uneven and combined development,” and flowing from this he v to create universal literacy, At the summit of Russian society was the crafted a strategic orientation known as the v to make the benefits of culture available to tyrannical ruler, the Tsar, an absolute theory of permanent revolution. monarch. Any opposition to him or to the all, system over which he ruled could mean Trotsky’s theory linked the struggle for v to provide universal health care to all as a arrest, and prison or Siberian exile - or death. democracy - freedom of expression, equal matter of right, Only just below him was a powerful layer of rights for all, and rule by the people - with the hereditary nobles whose wealth and power struggle for socialism, a society in which the v to ensure that decent housing would be was secured through the control of Russia’s great majority of people would own and available for all, land and the exploitation of the great majority control the economic resources of society to of the Russian people, who were peasants. allow for the free development of all. It also v to secure full and equal rights for women The condition of even the fairly well-to-do linked the struggle for revolution in Russia and all others oppressed in the old society, peasants was impoverished, and the great with the cause of socialist revolution masses of peasants were deprived of throughout the world. The theory contained v and to include all people in building and adequate land (monopolized by the rich elite three basic points. One held that the developing an economy that would sustain of nobles) and lived in terrible and revolutionary struggle for democracy in the free development of all. brutalizing destitution. All of this was Russia could only be won under the justified by the religious hierarchy of the leadership of the working class with the Increasingly, the development of society in Russian Orthodox Church, which glorified support of the peasant majority. The second this transitional period would move beyond the Tsar as “our little Father” - a god on earth point held that this democratic revolution the framework of capitalism and in the - and persecuted all who did not accept the would begin in Russia a transitional period in direction of socialism. doctrines of Russian Orthodoxy. The which all political, social, cultural and The third aspect of Trotsky’s theory was oppressive second-class status of women economic relations would continue to be in related to his understanding that capitalism is received absolute religious justification, as flux, leading in the direction of socialism. a global system that can only be replaced by did all policies of the tsarist regime. The third point held that this transition would be part of, and would help to advance, and socialism on a global scale. It was his The Tsars of Russia had conquered many would also be furthered by an international conviction that it would not be possible to different peoples, and the tsarist empire was revolutionary process. create a in an known as the prison-house of nations.” At the economically underdeveloped country such same time - and most important for Russian The first aspect of Trotsky’s theory was as Russia surrounded by a hostile capitalist development - the tsarist regime felt related to his understanding that the relatively world. In fact, a working-class revolution in compelled, under the pressure of competition weak capitalist class of Russian businessmen one country would inevitably generate with other major powers in the world, to was dependent on the tsarist system, and that counter-revolutionary responses in modernize aspects of their society - to the capitalists would be too frightened of the surrounding countries - with efforts to repress develop technology and compete in the revolutionary masses to lead in the overthrow the revolution. At the same time, it would dynamically growing world market economy. of tsarist tyranny. The struggle for democracy inspire the workers and oppressed of Because of this, it was especially important and human rights could only be advanced countries throughout the world. for the Tsars to develop capitalist industry in consistently and finally won under the Russia. leadership of the working class, which was The Russian revolution would be one of a capable of organizing labor unions and series of revolutions in country after country This gave rise to a small but growing political organizations in Russia’s cities and throughout the world. This would come about capitalist class of industrialists and towns. Allied with the workers would be the not only because of the example of financiers, a layer of professionals. It also vast peasantry hungry for land, as well as revolutionary Russia, but especially because resulted in a rapidly expanding class of wage- other oppressed social layers - women, of the desire of more and more workers and workers and their families - the proletariat. oppressed ethic and national groups, oppressed people in all countries to end the The labor of this working class created the religious minorities, and dissident exploitation and hardship that - Trotsky great wealth that flowed from Russian intellectuals. A victorious worker-led believed - are the inevitable result of industrialization, and workers in the factories revolution would bring the working class to capitalism. The process of socialist were exploited intensively - laboring long political power. In other words, democratic revolution can begin within a single country, hours, often in unhealthy and unsafe revolutions in so-called “backward” but socialism can only be created on a global conditions, pushed hard by factory managers, countries such as tsarist Russia must spill scale. and paid low wages. It was illegal for over into working-class revolutions. workers to organize trade unions to press for This orientation, was reflected in the improved pay and conditions. In the growing The second aspect of Trotsky’s theory was orientation not only of Trotsky but - by the cities workers and their families lived in related to the understanding that the spring of 1917 - also of the Russian socialist crowded and impoverished circumstances. victorious revolutionary working class would movement’s most revolutionary wing, the not be willing to turn political power over to Bolsheviks, led by Lenin. An immense Such realities as these gave rise to a growing their capitalist bosses. Instead, they would - upsurge of the working-class and the revolutionary movement, in which Leon with the support of the peasants - consolidate peasantry, after sweeping away the tsarist 65 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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regime, came under Bolshevik sway, “benign” tyranny rooted in the maintenance transformation of Communism into a culminating in the establishment of a of colonial empires; the searing and grotesque blend of dogmatized Marxism and revolutionary workers’ government brutalizing experience of the world war; “modernized” tsarist absolutism. Under Josef supported by the peasantry. long-standing ethnic tensions; deeply-rooted Stalin, a conception of creating “socialism in patriarchal and authoritarian mores; uneven one country” (an industrially-backward The combination of the First World War and combinations of horror and fascination and USSR) both reflected and further contributed the Russian Revolution helped to generate attraction over the challenge of rapid to three profound developments: revolutionary upheavals on a global scale. industrialization and “modernization” to The devastating impact of the war not only traditional values and ways of life - all fed 1. a distancing of the Soviet regime from a had disastrous consequences for the into a political culture that culminated in the commitment to spreading the world socialist populations of Europe (particularly for the crystallization of a new mass political revolution, now deemed unnecessary for the continent’s working classes), but they also movement that replaced monarchist- triumph of socialism in the USSR (leading to undermined the ability of Europe’s “great absolutism at the extreme right of the the eventual dissolution of the Communist powers” to maintain their colonial empires. political spectrum: fascism. International); The example of Russia’s insurgent workers and peasants inspired masses of people on Fascism involved a strident and militaristic 2. an institutionalization of bureaucratic every continent to struggle more militantly nationalism, employing radical or populist dictatorship as representing “working-class against oppressive realities. The Russian rhetoric, which sought to overcome class rule” and as the initiator of a brutalizing revolutionaries led by Lenin and Trotsky conflict (and the threat of left-wing “revolution-from-above” designed to sought to connect with revolutionaries of all revolution) through a combination of extreme overcome economic backwardness through countries, establishing the Communist political authoritarianism, a “corporate state” forced collectivization of the land and rapid International to aid in the spread of enforcing cooperation between labor and industrialization; revolutions. capital, in practice preserving and reinforcing large capitalist corporations while providing 3. the de-linking of democracy and equality As it turned out, however, the global at least modest social welfare programs for from the meaning of socialism (now revolutionary ferment was not able to the masses. Arising first in Italy under the redefined narrowly as and overcome the resistance of the ruling classes leadership of Benito Mussolini, it assumed planning-oriented control of the economy). of most countries. Throughout Europe, the various forms, with its German version - the ruling powers joined to establish a cordon Nazi movement of Adolf Hitler - making the “” helped to sanitaire to protect their populations from most thoroughgoing racism a centerpiece of transform Communist parties of various Bolshevik contagion, and to give massive aid ideology and policy. It is noteworthy that this countries from revolutionary working-class to counter-revolutionary elements in Russia extreme right-wing nationalism evolved in organizations to vehicles meant to advance or waging a bloody civil war against the two countries where, on the one hand, the resist revolutionary struggles depending on Bolsheviks. In some countries revolutionary crystallization of nation-states had been the narrow, nationalistically-defined foreign uprisings and movements were brutally delayed until late in the 19th century, policy needs of the USSR. The “revolution suppressed, in others dramatic concessions involving far-reaching compromises and from above” required the concentration of were made to more moderate (and absolutely admixtures between modern (capitalist) and political, economic, social, and cultural anti-revolutionary) sectors of the social- traditional (pre-capitalist) upper classes; on power in a few hands, at the expense of the democratic labor movement to divert the the other hand, where the working-class Left majority of workers and peasants. This working-class away from the overthrow of was particularly strong. concentration of power, advanced by new capitalism. In some countries, such as technologies (and labeled by some as Germany, both things happened. The Russian An essential element in the coming of “totalitarianism”), had much in common with Communists found themselves isolated in a fascism in both Italy and Germany was the developments in Nazi Germany and fascist hostile capitalist world. The Russian fact that there were mass upsurges in both Italy - with the key difference that revolution’s isolation led to bureaucratic, countries, arising out of profound political capitalism’s market economy was replaced authoritarian, and murderous distortions of and economic crises. It appeared that by a collectivized “,” and Communism in the Soviet Union and (due to triumphant revolutions could have resulted, the influence of the Stalin regime that arose but weaknesses in revolutionary leadership that lip-service continued to be paid to after Lenin’s death) throughout the blocked such possibilities. Disappointed democratic, humanistic, and egalitarian Communist movements of other countries. hopes among masses of people combined ideals repugnant to the likes of Hitler and with extreme fears generated among the Mussolini. 5. Revolution and Counter- upper classes and deepening anxieties among The brutality associated with Stalinism was Revolution in Inter-War Europe sectors of the intermediate “middle classes.” justified by its partisans as a necessary This dynamic generated for the rising wave element in dragging “backward Russia” into Those who led their countries into the of fascism burgeoning recruits and supporters a modernized existence that would be devastation of the First World War utilized an from sectors of the middle and lower classes beneficial to the majority of its laboring unbridled and murderous “patriotism” that and, from sectors of the upper classes, an placed militarism into the center of the inclination toward both official and informal population (who were already being offered national ethos. Among the masses of people encouragement, as well as generous material certain benefits - the right to education, who were swept into intense political life in resources. health care and other social services, the wake of the war, not all were drawn to the employment, etc. - previously unavailable). banner of Communism or to the more The relative isolation of Soviet Russia - This would, it was argued, eventually moderate appeals of social-democracy. transformed into the Union of Soviet become increasingly democratic, and would Interpenetrating elements - ultra-patriotic and Socialist Republics (USSR), whose increasingly prove to be a powerful example militarist forms of nationalism; a boundaries corresponded to the old Russian for peoples around the world. And to many it glorification of violence, racism, and empire - contributed decisively to the seemed to represent a practical, compelling 66 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Theory

alternative to the capitalist status quo and to Throughout the 19th and 20th century, we insurgencies, massive two-way propaganda the fascist “new order.” find - through a brutal colonialist imperialism barrages, espionage, and an arms race as well as an “open door” and “good involving weapons that could destroy the The dramatic economic downturn in the neighbor” imperialism - the spread and entire population of the planet several times global capitalist economy represented by the growing predominance of the market over. The diminished power of Europe’s Great Depression (1929-1939), with massive economy, with its subordination of more and capitalist forced them to accept business failures and unemployment, more aspects of life to the accumulation U.S. leadership in a “free world” coalition. generated a sharpening polarization between process and cash nexus, and also with its Left and Right throughout Europe, and also crystallization of a very specific socio- It was not necessary for a nation to be free or an intensified competition between various economic class structure throughout Latin democratic to be part of the “free world” capitalist nations seeking markets, raw America, Asia, Africa, and other (some were, in fact, ruled by vicious and materials, and investment opportunities on a capitalistically “underdeveloped” areas unpopular dictatorships) - it was necessary global scale. Related to this, there was a (although often intertwined with earlier only to be pro-capitalist, anti-Communist, growing militarism requiring large-scale state socio-economic formations and and accepting of U.S. leadership in the Cold expenditures which - in the fascist-dominated stratifications). To deal with what were often War. Within the advanced capitalist nation’s first - revived the economy of one profoundly invasive, violent, and oppressive democracies of Western Europe, however, capitalist country after another. realities associated with this economic the capitalist economic and political forces expansionism, growing sectors of the native (fearing potentially revolutionary working- The explosion of the Second World War population utilized various tools for class militancy and the threat of (1939-1945) resulted, far more than the First, conceptualization and resistance drawn from Communism) established far-reaching in an incredible trauma, in which different Western experience - notions of nationalism, agreements with the moderate, social- portions of the global, and different global race and ethnicity, democracy, socialism, etc. democratic labor movements (both political realities, came together in lethal and (although generally, again, dynamically parties and trade unions) for extensive profoundly transformative combinations. In a combined with earlier cultural patterns). “” programs providing sense, this was several different wars substantial benefits in increased incomes, combined. One involved a murderous Beginning in the wake of World War II (and education, health care, housing, social confrontation between several contending in large measure due to its destructive impact security, unemployment insurance, etc. These capitalist empires, while another involved a on European power), a wave of radical anti- countries enjoyed a long wave of prosperity no less murderous confrontation between colonial and nationalist revolutions that significantly improved working-class and Communism. There was also an challenged and dissolved the European living standards (as was the case, along with ideological confrontation between empires through the 1950s, 1960s, and an increasingly robust consumerism, democratic and egalitarian ideals on one side 1970s. This revolutionary wave coincided throughout the advanced-industrial capitalist and idealized dictatorship and racial purity on and in some areas intersected with a powerful world). In exchange for these benefits, the surge of Communist expansion. leaderships of these labor movements agreed the other. For many, the war was a defense of to help preserve capitalism, and in some case their against a ruthless foreign This Communist expansion in some cases also to support efforts to maintain invader. Among the Allies, there were took place through the efforts of indigenous colonialism. partisans of imperialism and anti-colonial parties that had played central roles in revolutionaries, those reaching for a socialist resistance struggles during World War II Such “welfare state” benefits (minus the future and those determined to save a (China, Yugoslavia, partially in Vietnam and robust consumerism) were provided also by capitalist status quo. Korea, almost in Greece). To a large extent it the regimes of the Communist Bloc, along came about due to the central role of the with the elimination of capitalist enterprises The consequences of the war were, of course, USSR in defeating Nazi Germany and rolling and the establishment of state ownership and devastating for the losers - Germany, Italy, back Hitler’s legions throughout Eastern control over the economy. While this was and Japan - and brought extreme discredit to Europe - and then placing pro-Soviet regimes done in the name of the working class and fascism in all its varieties, and brought in power throughout the region. This was “the people,” however, it was the Communist discredit also to much of the tangled carried out, initially, with the reluctant parties in each of these countries that had a ideological sources of fascism (national and agreement of its capitalist allies (especially monopoly on political power, maintained ethnic chauvinism, anti-democratic thought, the U.S. and Britain) in 1943-45 thanks to according to the bureaucratic-authoritarian racism, militarism). Among the victors, the Stalin’s sincere promise to reign in Stalinist model. While the new Communist war ushered in disintegration and danger, and Communist parties in other portions of regimes were expected to follow the a new global power struggle that one Europe (particularly in Italy and France, leadership of the USSR in the Cold War and perceptive partisan foretold would culminate where they had played central roles in the in other matters, in those countries where in “the American Century.” resistance movements and might have moved Communist parties had taken power with to take power). Soon the acquiescence turned popular support (instead of being placed in 6. Complexities of the 20th into Cold War hostility, particularly as power by the USSR), a powerful pull toward Century’s Last Half Western European regimes sought to check independence began to assert itself - first leftist-influenced anti-colonial insurgencies with Yugoslavia, later with China. Here it is useful to remind ourselves that and dominant forces in the United States what is presented here corresponds to a sought to realize the “American Century.” A significant number of the newly- “Westernization” conceptual model, which independent nations emerging from needs to be modified by a more complex The Cold War of 1946-89 involved a global colonialism, particularly those under left- employment of the“ Southernization” confrontation - short of total war, but marked leaning but non-Communist leaders, chose to conceptualization. Nonetheless, the process by multiple smaller wars, diplomatic align themselves neither with the Communist and importance of Westernization is maneuvering, economic rivalries, coups and Bloc nor with the “free world” of their old undeniable. counter-coups, insurgencies, counter- colonial oppressors. Both of the Cold War’s 67 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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contending power blocs sought to increase that is in harmony with the needs of the Communist Bloc stood as a substitute for their influence in this sphere, offering advanced capitalist countries - which means, international socialist revolution as the force economic aid and various alliances designed in a sense, to keep them under-developed. that could provide for the survival and to bring them closer to one camp or the other. The investments of business corporations assistance required for an “underdeveloped” Throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America, from advanced capitalist countries, similarly, country to embark on a non-capitalist path of however, there was a powerful desire to find are not designed to facilitate genuine development. One dramatic example of this paths of economic development that would “modernization,” but rather to maximize beginning in 1959 was the Cuban revolution. nurture at least relative independence and profits for the businesses of the advanced “modernization.” countries. They wish to pump wealth out of This was problematical in more than one the less developed countries, not to way. The USSR and Communist Bloc were An influential model for economic, social, contribute to progress or rising living prepared to lend support not from principle and political development - “modernization standards for the populations of the but from pragmatic and often manipulative theory” - utilized an interpretation of the underdeveloped regions. Nor would the considerations in the Cold War power historical experience of Western Europe and policies of governments or corporations from struggle. This meant that under certain North America to propose a path for the “less the advanced capitalist countries be designed circumstances they would be fully prepared developed” countries. The development of to promote democracy in Asia, Africa, or to withhold, reduce, or withdraw support. capitalism generated industrialization, which Latin America. Genuine democracy could They might also be inclined to impose generated greater wealth and new variations result in “instability” in the form of popular restrictions or conditions consistent with their of social differentiation, in turn breaking protests against and powerful challenges to own narrow foreign policy needs. They were down stagnant customs and traditional the profit-hungry outsiders. This explained also inclined to influence revolutionaries of hierarchies, generating political pluralism, why U.S. political and economic interests other lands to adopt attitudes, structures, and democracy, prosperity - and all the benefits of preferred repressive regimes that would policies consistent with their own Stalinist modernization. Therefore, the solution for guarantee “stability” and higher profit traditions. Asia, Africa, and Latin America would be for margins. Western capitalist governments to offer In the Communist countries, lip-service economic aid, and especially for Western Influenced by such perspectives in the late might be paid to democracy, human rights, business corporations to make investments in 1950s and 1960s, rebels throughout Asia, and control over the economy by the laboring these regions, leading to greater capitalist Africa, and Latin America initiated masses, but this was far from the reality. The economic development, with the consequent revolutionary struggles, challenging bureaucratic regimes were increasingly modernization pay-offs in the social, cultural traditional elites and also the ostensible losing whatever genuine confidence, respect and political realms. “modernizers” whose policies actually led to and support they may have once enjoyed imperialist entanglements. In many cases among their own populations. Uprisings of Obviously, “modernization theory” was becoming principled opponents of workers, students, and others were violently consistent with the open door/good neighbor capitalism, they gravitated to variants of repressed in East Germany (1953), Hungary variants of economic expansionism advanced Marxist programs and Communist (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Poland by U.S. foreign policy, and also increasingly organization. They often tended to view (1981) - and gradually many dissidents who the foreign policies of the post-colonialist political realities from a prism similar to that might have argued for “socialism with a Western European powers. In fact, it was an of permanent revolution: the democratic human face” saw no human possibilities at all ideological and policy-making tool in the struggle (against imperialism, against in this system called “socialism.” The Cold War struggle. Another aspect of that dictatorship, for human rights and equal centrally and bureaucratically controlled struggle was a tendency of the United States rights for all, for land reform, for a decent life economy - the so-called “command and other Western capitalist nations to oppose for all) could only be secured through the economy” - proved increasingly vulnerable de-stabilizing nationalist, anti-imperialist struggles of the laboring masses, whose to mismanagement, not to mention the struggles - especially if in any way tainted revolutionary struggle must culminate in endemic inequalities and corruptions that had with left-wing and especially Communist their own political power, which would result been manifest from almost the beginning. influences. Often U.S. and Western European in socialist-oriented economic development. Some Communist Bloc countries, seeking to policy-makers preferred to support unpopular avoid economic stagnation and impasse, and anti-democratic regimes when they were Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, dabbled with “market reforms” (which challenged by popular insurgencies. however, posited an increasingly successful introduced elements of incoherence into their wave of working-class revolutions, economic reality) and secured substantial An analysis counterposed to “modernization particularly in advance industrial countries, loans from Western capitalist banks (which theory” (and consistent with the theory of which would give aid to each other as they had fatal consequences when a downturn in uneven and combined development) took the collectively moved forward to create a world the global economy made it impossible for form of what has become known as socialist economy. An attempt to create them to overcome the accumulation of dependency theory. According to this socialism in one country, or even in a debts). analysis, the path of economic development scattering of economically undeveloped followed by such countries as Britain and the countries, could not be successful with such a The1960s and 1970s saw ferment, United States in an earlier historical period is global revolutionary socialist expansion. In radicalization, and insurgency on a global no longer open. The advanced capitalist the advanced industrial countries of Western scale, most dramatically in Asia, Africa, and nations are now determined to maintain their Europe, however, the largely socialist- Latin America - but also taking the form of a dominance in the global economy. Any oriented workers who identified with labor youth radicalization embracing not only economic aid they give to an parties and social-democratic parties, and students but also sections of the working “underdeveloped” country will not be even the many workers who were members class of the advanced capitalist countries of allowed to make their economies competitive of Communist parties, were economically Western Europe, and also in Eastern Europe. with those of advanced capitalist countries, relatively well-off and not inclined to make a In many cases, the ferment swept past the but rather to make them develop in a manner revolution. In this situation, the USSR and existing Communist and social-democratic 68 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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organizations and found expression in a political strategies, but that cannot be valid if comes to power, a transitional period opens proliferation and expansion of “far left” it is utilized as an excuse for not actually up that includes the development of precisely groups (although ultimately the traditional studying the specifics and peculiarities of such a “” as came into being organizations were able to attract much of each national and cultural reality. As Trotsky in revolutionary . The theory’s this youthful ferment). In the West, there was developed it, the theory - far from seeking to crowning assertion is that such a mobilization around anti-imperialism, establish a closed theoretical-strategic development can find completion in opposition to bureaucratic and alienating orientation - was part of an “open” and socialism only as the revolution expands on structures, anti-racism, feminism, anti- critical-minded approach to revolutionary the international stage, with workers’ states militarism, , free speech analysis and strategy. To make sense of the coming to power in more and more countries, and more. And sections of the trade union various “exceptions,” it is necessary to including industrial advanced countries. Only movement were impacted as well. determine to what extent they are incomplete on a global scale can a socialist economy exceptions, and to what extent they may be come into being. The eventual defeat of the In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, however, either exceptions that prove or overturn the Sandinistas (as a force for socialist there were organizations that developed both “rule” of permanent revolution - a task which revolution) was inevitable given the the capacity and the will to take political goes beyond the present paper. stalemate and defeat of the revolutionary power through revolutionary struggle. In upsurge in Central America, the collapse of Western Europe those organizations having One could argue, however, that, to the extent the Communist Bloc, and the failure of the capacity to take power (as opposed that the theory is utilized to provide a working-class revolutions to triumph in other simply to winning elections in order to run strategic orientation, it is consistent with the countries (such as Iran, South Africa, Brazil, traditional revolutionary Marxist orientation the capitalist state) did not have the will to etc.). try. There were many activists, especially arguing that the full human needs and rights among the young, who may have had the will of the working class, of other exploited Setting aside such a specific - but they did not have adequate toilers, and of all oppressed sectors of the misunderstanding, and setting aside the organizations or sufficient mass support. And population can only be realized through a elevation of Trotsky’s theory into a messianic within the Communist Bloc, with the thoroughgoing democracy that can only be expression of revolutionary triumphalism, remarkable exception of Poland at certain achieved by the laboring majority taking there is an additional argument that could be moments, the repressiveness of the state political power and establishing planful made in the theory’s defense. To the extent apparatus seemed too thoroughgoing to allow control over the economy. The struggle for that political strategies consistent with the for more than seemingly ineffectual dissent. democratic demands, if followed all the way, theory of permanent revolution have failed: necessary spills over into the struggle for In reflecting on the developments as they socialism. (This makes the theory relevant v to that extent have the movements and stood in the 1980s, one is tempted to play not only to “underdeveloped” regions, but struggles of the working class been with the formulation “uneven and combined also to advanced capitalist nations.) compromised, eroded, dismantled; development” by noting that the three very unevenly developed sectors of the world In the 1980s, another challenge to the theory v to that extent has the promise of “the revolution - the advanced capitalist countries, seemed to be posed by revolutions in Central democratic revolution” been compromised, the Communist Bloc, and the exploited America and the Caribbean, particularly the hollowed out, tragically incomplete - despite regions of the global South - while Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. In this real gains made in one or another realm of influencing and altering each other in situation, a popular revolution of the partially society; important ways, ultimately failed to combine proletarianized “laboring masses” - led by into a coherent and triumphant challenge to Marxist-oriented revolutionaries - was v to that extent have terrible inequalities the status quo. mobilized largely as a democratic revolution, persisted, deepened, and contributed to the culminating in a regime based solidly on erosion of the integrity and viability of the 7. Problems of Permanent mass support, but that instead of moving specific society (and of the world). Revolution forward to socialism (taking “the Cuban road”), the Sandinistas doggedly sought to This relates to recent discussions regarding If treated as a dogma rather than an analytical maintain a “mixed economy” with state, the possibility of eliminating global poverty. tool, the theory of permanent revolution , and private sectors. While some In 2000 the United Nations initiated a stands challenged and discredited by dogmatists accused the Sandinistas of Millennium Development Goals campaign. developments of the late 20th century. A bloc “betraying” the revolution, more realistic This projected the realization of the of nations on many continents - for example, analysts noted that - given the dramatic following eight goals: 1) eradicate extreme Spain, Portugal, Greece, Mexico, Brazil, erosion and increasing disintegration of the poverty and hunger; 2) achieve universal India, South Korea, Taiwan, , power of the USSR and Communist Bloc in primary education; 3) promote gender Turkey, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria - that period - the “Cuban road” (moving equality and empower women; 4) reduce appeared to be following the path from toward the replacement of capitalism with a child mortality; 5) improve maternal health; “backwardness” to “modernization” (and, nationalized planned economy) was not an 6) combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other more or less, to realization of “democratic option for a small nation hoping to survive diseases; 7) ensure environmental tasks”) without a worker-peasant revolution within the global capitalist economy. This sustainability; and 8) develop a global culminating in a workers’ state moving was seen by some as a demonstration that partnership for development. toward socialism. Trotsky’s theory had proved to be invalid. These goals, supported by 190 governments The fact is that Trotsky explicitly denied that A careful examination of Trotsky’s theory, around the world, are to be realized by 2015, the theory of permanent revolution was a however, indicates that this particular critique as an initial step to assuring a decent life for schema or practical recipe applicable equally is based on a serious misunderstanding. A the world’s peoples, involving very specific everywhere from Paris to Honolulu. It is, central component of the theory of permanent sub-goals and practical policy projections. above all, an analytical tool that can inform revolution asserts that when a workers’ state For example, of the world’s six billion 69 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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people, half live on less than $2 per day, but into bitter disappointment, disillusionment, exacerbated by increasingly desperate 1.3 billion live on less than $1 per day - and and passive hostility. The increasingly impoverishment, indignation over violations the goal by 2015 is to cut this number of the unstoppable interpenetration of the cultures national sovereignty, and rage over the “most impoverished” in half. of Eastern and Western Europe contributed pollution of cultural traditions - with a mightily to the collapse of popular support or backward-looking religious fundamentalism If these goals can be achieved within the acquiescence, particularly given the growing combining with technologies and other framework of global capitalism, and then inability of the so-called “command cultural influences from the “advanced” progressively advanced upon, a case can be economy” - after initial successes in West. It is unlikely that the consequent made for the final obsolescence of the theory establishing heavy industry and basic social dialectic of terrorism and counter-terrorism of permanent revolution. But to the extent programs - to compete with or resist the will play itself out in the near future. that the goals - which, given existing incursions of the dynamics of global resources, have been shown to be perfectly capitalism. In opposition to this lethal dialectic, and to realizable - prove to be unrealized under the the overarching reality of corporate-capitalist present structures of wealth and power, The corrosive impact of Stalinist traditions globalization, there have been stirrings of a considerable validity must be credited to at and the inadequacies of the “command so-called “globalization from below.” A least some variant of Trotsky’s theory. economy” had a profound impact beyond the variety of oppositional forces - fragments of collapsing USSR and Communist Bloc. On the other hand, to the extent that there is a the traditional Left from various regions of Particularly as the collapse occurred, rebel different continents blending with vibrant decompositon of the political organizations regimes of Asia, Africa and Latin America and capacities for class consciousness and representatives from a variety of new social that had been dependent on the Soviet model movements and political formations, also struggle on the part of the working class and and on trade and aid from the Communist from various regions of different continents - other sectors of the toiling masses, without an Bloc found themselves increasingly isolated, have come together in massive and accompanying recomposition of the actual or vulnerable, and in many cases unviable. worldwide global justice mobilizations, in potential power of the laboring majorities of There was a powerful tendency toward rapid the World Social Forums, and in international the various countries and cultures of our degeneration into some of the worst forms of campaigns around a number of issues. planet, to that extent the theory of permanent tyranny, compromise and corruption. Some revolution will cease to have practical joined the ranks of the so-called “failed relevance. In the present historical moment of 2005, we states” fragmented by internal divisions, see the continuing dynamic of uneven and Regardless of any problems related to the often exacerbated by contending outside combined development. On the one hand, theory of permanent revolution, the fact economic interests. To a growing extent, European elites seek to a more sweepingly multi-national corporations from the remains that the overarching theory of pan-national European Union that might “developed” North, while distressed over uneven and combined development can be facilitate a sharper contestation with U.S. consequent instabilities, no longer faced shown to be valid (that is, to be a useful and hegemony - even as their economies and dilemmas posed by the threat of left-wing illuminating analytical tool) for historians, cultures entwine ever more intimately with insurgencies. anthropologists and other social scientists those of the American Empire. On the other seeking to understand the developments and Communism’s collapse obviously meant an hand, masses of “ordinary” Europeans complexities of human existence in Europe end, for the most part, of Western Europe’s influence each other across borders with their and beyond. large Communist movement, which various struggles to maintain national- cultural identities and decent living standards 8. The Past Flows Into the Future increasingly evolved (or collapsed) into the capitalist-friendly reformism long associated - saying “NO” to a Europe-wide constitution In the past two decades (1985-2005), uneven with traditional social-democratic that would undermine national sovereignty and combined development has continued to orientations. At the same time, Western and facilitate the further advance of neo- shape the world in which we live. Europe (and other parts of the globe) saw a liberal policies. conservative free market assault on the One of the most dramatic instances has been welfare state and social compact that had The past flows into the future in a never- the decline and collapse of the Communist been secured in the wake of the Great ending swirl and collision of uneven and Bloc. With the failure of working-class Depression and World War II: a seemingly combined developments. revolution to spread to advanced industrial unstoppable “neo-liberal” wave of countries, the relative isolation of the USSR privatization, dismantling social programs, Bibliographical Essay (and then the bloc of countries under its breaking unions, driving down working-class There can be no question of providing a tutelage) contributed to a fateful combination living standards - accompanied by soaring comprehensive bibliography here, but a of progressive Marxist ideology and goals corporate profits, the breaking of unions, and relative handful of titles can suggest some with reactionary and repressive traditions the dramatic decline of social-democracy and useful sources and what may be fruitful paths from the pre-revolutionary period. the collapse of labor reformism. Bureaucratic elites were increasingly prone for further investigation. to increasingly prone to compromise Triumphant capitalism unleashed similar My own general orientation, with some revolutionary principles and goals dynamics throughout the world, accelerated discussion of matters dealt with in this essay, internationally and internally, becoming in by new technologies and divisions of labor many ways indistinguishable from other that - under the banner of “Globalization” - can be found in Paul Le Blanc, From Marx to privileged and oppressive elites. has drawn the diverse cultures and unevenly Gramsci, A Reader in Revolutionary Marxist developed regions of the world into an Politics (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, The glowing promise of human liberation increasingly intimate if unstable mix. 1996), and also in my Ph.D. dissertation was increasingly turned into hypocritical Workers and Revolution: A Comparative propaganda and bombast. Popular hopes and This has brought an incredibly violent Study of Bolshevik Russia and Sandinist expectations were increasingly transformed reaction from some sectors of the world, Nicaragua (University of Pittsburgh, 1989). 70 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

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Among the key works by Leon Trotsky that (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, The “modernization theory” discussed in this have special relevance here are Permanent 1985). essay refers to that presented by Walt Revolution and Results and Prospects (New Whitman Rostow in Stages of Economic York: Pathfinder Press, 1978), The History of There are numerous historical studies that Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto the Russian Revolution, Three Volumes in can be useful in considering matters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, One (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), discussed here, among the most obvious 1960). and The Revolution Betrayed (New York: being ’s four-volume survey Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1937). A - The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (New Discussion on controversies and rival notions serviceable short biography of Trotsky can be York: New American Library, 1962), The of developmental theory can be found in found in David Renton, Trotsky (London: Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (New York: New Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: Haus Publishing, 2004), whose ideas are American Library, 1979), The Age of From Western Origins to Global Faith discussed critically but thoughtfully in Empire, 1875-1914 (New York: Vintage (London: Zed Books, 1997). The conception Duncan Hallas, Trotsky’s Marxism and Other Books, 1989), and The Age of Extremes, of “Southernization” is introduced in a Essays (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2003). 1914-1991 (New York: Vintage Books 1996). classic essay by Lynda N. Shaffer, Southernization (Washington, DC: American Still valuable is Michael Lowy’s The Politics A relevant survey of intellectual history is Historical Association, 2002). A sharp of Combined and Uneven Development: The provided in George L. Mosse, The Culture of critique of Eurocentrism is offered in J.M. Theory of Permanent Revolution (London: Western Europe, The Nineteenth and Verso, 1981), and also his fine set of essays, Twentieth Centuries, Third Edition (Boulder: Blaut, Eight Eurocentric Historians (New On Changing the World: Essays in Political Westview Press, 1988), and suggestive works York: The Guilford Press, 2000). Philosophy From Karl Marx to Walter on social history are provided in George Innovative contributions relevant to matters Benjamin (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Rude, The Crowd in History, 1730-1848 discussed here are provided in the work of Humanities Press, 1993). Among the most (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964) and anthropologist Carol McAllister - for important interpreters of Trotsky’s ideas was E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Ernest Mandel, among whose many relevant Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, example, in Matriliny, Islam and Capitalism: books are Trotsky As Alternative (London: 1966). A blend of political science, Combined and Uneven Development in the Verso, 1995) and The Meaning of the Second anthropology, and history that offers a Lives of Negeri Sembilan Women World War (London: Verso, 1986). provocative vision of struggle that spans (University of Pittsburgh, 1987) and Uneven centuries can be found in James C. Scott, and Combined Development: Dynamics of Discussing Trotsky’s ideas on uneven and Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Change in Women’s Everyday Forms of combined development and permanent Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale Resistance in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia revolution in the larger frameworks of University Press, 1990). Review of Radical Political Economy, Vol. Marxist economic and philosophical thought 23, Nos. 3 and 4, Fall and Winter, 1991. are M.C. Howard and J.E. King, A History of A pioneering comparative study, quite Marxian Economics, 1883-1990, 2 vols. relevant to this essay, can be found in Other works by anthropologists relevant to (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of this essay are Peter Worsley, The Third World 1992), and John Rees, The Algebra of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Revolution: The Dialectic and the Classical Peasant in the Making of the Modern World 1964), and - even more - Eric R. Wolf, Marxist Tradition (London: Routledge, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966). It is, in some Europe and the People Without History 1998). ways supplemented and in some ways (Berkeley: University of California Press, challenged by three outstanding works by 1982), who gives some usefully critical While not referring to Trotsky’s theories, but Arno J. Mayer, which provide remarkable consideration to Trotsky’s perspective. entirely relevant, is Teodor Shanin, Late accounts of European history entirely Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and “The consistent with uneven and combined Peripheries of Capitalism” (New York: development (without referring to it): The Monthly Review Press, 1983). Also relevant, Persistence of the Old Regime, Europe to the Relevant to final comments in the essay are: and relating to Trotsky’s ideas, are two other Great War (New York: Pantheon Books, Manfred B. Steger, Globalization, A Very volumes from Shanin - Russia as a 1981), Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford “Developing Society” (New Haven: Yale The “Final Solution” in History (New York: University Press, 2003), Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Press, 1985) and Russia, 1905-07: Pantheon Books, 1988), and The Furies: The End of Poverty, Economic Possibilities Revolution as a Moment of Truth (New Violence and Terror in the French and for Our Time (New York: The Penguin Press, Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). Russian Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton 2005), Walden Bello, Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmaking of the American Valuable studies relevant to issues in this University Press, 2000). Important and essay are Perry Anderson’s Passages from relevant volumes making explicit mention of Empire (New York: Metropolitan Antiquity to Feudalism (London: Verso, uneven and combined development are Books/Henry Holt, 2005), Jose Correa Leite, 1978) and Lineages of the Absolutist State David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The The World Social Forum: Strategies of (London: Verso, 1979). Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Resistance (Chicago: Haymarket Books, Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century 2005), and Susan Watkins, “Continental Key volumes on transitions from feudalism Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Tremors,” New Left Review 33, May-June to capitalism are Rodney Hilton, ed. The 1984), and Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: 2005. Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (London: Verso, 1978), and T.H. Aston and (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Paper presented at the 27th annual North C.H.E. Philpin, eds., The Brenner Thesis: Also relevant is Hannah Arendt, The Origins America Labor History Conference, held at Agrarian Class Structure and Economic of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Wayne State University in Detroit, October Development in Pre-Industrial Europe Books, 1960). 20-22, 2005. 71 International Viewpoint - IV381 - September 2006

Letter to Readers International Viewpoint needs €3,670

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As a unique source of analysis during the crisis in Lebanon, the readership of InternationalViewpoint.org has swelled over the summer, forcing further development in the technology that underpins the site. We urgently need small and large donations to meet the growing demand.

Last year IV promised readers volunteers in the complexities of that, with the right financial the new system. Over the last 3 support, we could double the months, readership of the site readership to 250,000 visits a has risen 38%. Since the same year by the start of next year. We resources are serving many more have hit that target early. 700 people, the extra demand means visitors now come to the site the site becomes slow: 63% of each day. Even this is a web sites are faster. All of this reduction from the 1,000 a day would be enough reason for us to our system was counting before ask for more donations. print version for each issue we found a way to ignore visits available as pdf download by machines to the site. The However, we are also asking for special issue that our activists rising readership is largely readers to support us in need so much. If we can raise the driven by the readers’ demand producing two new publications remaining €1,670 by December, for analysis of the conflicts and on the Middle East. We need then we can go ahead with the struggles like those in the help to produce a magazine- production of this amazing Middle East. Over the summer format collection of the articles collection of Marxist writing on we have had a double-sized we have recently published the Middle East. publishing volume, placing our about the Middle East for translators and web team under activists around the world to use If you can donate €100 or more, some pressure. More in their campaigning work. We then we will give you a copy of translations, of course, also raise have also decided to produce our this impressive new book as a our costs. first book: International token of our thanks. Viewpoint has started to prepare Hitting that readership target a collection of the most Make your gift forced us to bring forward plans important Marxist writing about today to upgrade the site. Over the last the Middle East over the last month the software that powers decades, including documents to To donate online, click on the the site has undergone a major reflect the views of the Fourth ‘Make a Donation’ button on upgrade, which has allowed us International, Matzpen (the the left hand side of the to optimise the design. The new defunct Israeli socialist internationalviewpoint.org system makes the design and organisation) and of Arab website. writing of articles more efficient. socialists. It has improved performance By post, send cheques payable slightly, and has allowed us to Each year, International to International Viewpoint, PO ignore some automated requests Viewpoint needs €5,000 in Box 112, Manchester M12 from machines. donations. So far, we have 5DW, Britain. received just €1,330. If we can However, the upgrade solves raise €2,000 by the end of Chris Brooks is part of the IV editorial only some problems, and it September, then we can team. Chris is a member of the International Socialist Group, the produces new tasks for us, complete the site upgrade and British section of the Fourth including training up our produce magazine-format International.

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