Class Struggle, #126, Spring, 2018
Class Struggle # 126
Briefs
Speaking about Freedom
Why should Marama Davidson need a media plan to
speak the truth any more than Lauren Southern
does to vilify African boat people? After all free
speech is universal isn't it, and censorship is a
cowardly act.
Bomber Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog, argues
that it is more important for politicians to 'manage'
progress so that the ruling class cannot manipulate
public opinion and defeat a Labour-led
government.
Here we have a contradiction that leads to
confusion and defeat. One the one hand free
speech is universal, and yet its freedom is limited
to those with the power to distort the truth, while
the freedom of the powerless is subordinated to
economic unfreedom.
To resolve this contradiction and defend our right
to physically resist death threats, means building a
resistance that can handle both ruling class media
lies as well as the rise of fascist gangs. A good
starting place is to recognize that 'universality' is a
fraud in a class ridden society. It
is not in the class interests of
workers to be subordinated to a Lenin
fake universality that covers up
basic unfreedoms of wage
labour, unpaid labour, gender,
race and national oppression.
The only freedom that workers
need is that which is won in the
class war against the unfreedom
of capitalist exploitation and
oppression. Free speech by the
ruling class is paid for by the
denial of such freedoms in the
working class. Logically that
means recognizing the
contradictory role of 'free
speech' in class terms. Workers
assert their democratic rights by
organizing an independent class
movement against the suppression of democratic
rights by the ruling class and their political
representatives.
Preparing for such resistance includes mending
divisions in the working class along race, ethnic
and gender lines. Reclaiming "cunt" becomes part
of the currency of such a resistance because it
signifies the rejection of reactionary ideas about
gender divisions in the working class.
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September/November 2018
Any red-blooded worker would hear the death
threats against Davidson and the death threats
made by Southern against African migrants (they
can drown rather than make an EU landfall) and
want to physically stop them. Rebuilding fighting,
democratic unions is one means of uniting the
resistance. Because death threats historically are
usually acted upon - look at the hundreds of
journalists tortured or killed in Syria by Assad's
fascist regime. Also, historically, those who are
threatened either fight back or flee for refuge,
again as in Syria.
It would be good if we understood that, and started
now to speak the most basic truths that show us
how to prepare for that fight and avoid the
otherwise inevitable flight.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/08/19/its-the-
medias-fault-for-covering-the-reclaiming-of-the-
c-word-fiasco/
In Praise of Revolution
There is no inevitability that socialism must end as
bureaucracy and dictatorship like capitalism. This
does not need a correct reading of Marx to prove,
though it helps to understand that. It needs a study
of the Russian revolution.
There you will find that the
causes of bureaucratization
were not human nature, greed,
Bolshevik dictatorship, Lenin’s
personality or any other old
excuse to write off socialism. In
fact, the revolution was
ultimately destroyed by 11
capitalist states invading,
isolating, and otherwise
quarantining the SU, even if it
took 70 years to complete the
counter-revolution.
The Bolshevik revolution was so
threatening to the capitalists
that they had to destroy it for
fear that they would be next
for expropriation. They
stopped it in Germany where
social democracy(!) conspired with the fascists to
kill off the leadership of the Spartacists. A
successful revolution would have united Russian
wheat with German tractors and spurred on the
world revolution.
The failure of the German Revolution and the
invasion and civil war destroyed much of the Soviet
economy forcing it to retreat into a reliance on the
market to revive the economy.
Class Struggle # 126
This retreat opened up the forces of capitalist
counter-revolution which included the rise of a
bureaucratic layer who took over the party and the
state destroying workers democracy and the
potential for socialism.
Also evident to those who care to read the history,
Lenin and the other revolutionary Bolsheviks who
fought this degeneration of the revolution with all
their power. They clearly did not make the victory
of Stalin easy and most paid with their lives.
So, while NZ was settling into a post-war white
settler paradise of small farmers on stolen Maori
land, Russia was also undergoing a counter-
revolution based on small farmers hostile to the
revolution.
In both cases it was the European imperialist
powers that ultimately called the tune, nothing to
do with Marxism, or Bolshevism.
In any event, the bourgeois mythology that
capitalism is still the best bet because socialism,
you know, proved to be fatal, will be trampled in
the rush as workers decide for themselves who
rules, and what society, human nature, and
humanity itself needs. It won’t be dying capitalism
destroying everything in its path. It will be a
workers’ state based on workers’ democracy and a
socialist plan that fulfils Marx’s powerful dream.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/07/05/keeping-
power-homeless/
Marx on Trade Wars
Is neo-liberalism or capitalism the cause of trade
wars? Most of the liberal/social democratic left
blame neo-liberalism. Therefore, Trump must be a
neo-liberal. We don’t agree. Trump is not the
product of neoliberalism. He is one answer to
neoliberalism from the proto fascist far right.
Otherwise he would not reject the ‘globalization’
which was neo-liberals big project to export capital
to restore profits at home by investing in offshore
production to capture cheap labour and new
markets.
Because neo-liberalism failed to stop the long-term
problem with capitalism which – despite decades of
austerity (squeezing wages to boost profits) and
destroying the Soviet Union – has exhausted its
productive capacity to return to profitable growth
in the developed world.
Despite being put onto the drip feed of bailouts,
neo-liberal capitalism in the advanced capitalist
world has used the trillions to prop up its own
falling share prices rather than invest in new
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September/November 2018
unprofitable production. Making neoliberalism
hostage to a bastardised neo-Keynesian statism.
Trump was white ‘middle class’ America’s answer
to neoliberalism gutting their jobs and lives. This
puts him at odds with US capital which makes more
money from offshore plants in China etc than their
parent plants in the US. A trade war with China is
also a trade war with US investment in China (and
the EU) which is an economic war against the US
itself.
So, Trump has bought a fight with a fraction of his
own ruling class. He knows this, and the return to
Amerikan national chauvinism in the middle class
is his gamble to hold onto power. That is why all
his isolationist policies are designed to promote
America as a bastion of white civilization.
Chauvinism is the last refuge of the scoundrel
Trump is not mad. He is a scoundrel. He is the
Bonapartist figure that stands above the bourgeois
state as the cult leader of the petty bourgeois and
lumpenproletariat. As Congress pathetically tries
to block this or that retreat from globalization, and
therefore the interests of the dominant finance
capital fraction of the US ruling class, Trump will
resort increasingly to executive orders to rally his
support and keep the reactionary momentum for
US going.
All this points to a new war between the US and
China/Russia.
The question as to what the NZ military needs in
such a war is the wrong question. Right now, we
should be rejecting all military alliances with the
US bloc or Russia/China bloc, and preparing
ourselves for this threat by building strong anti-
fascist bonds with workers in all of these countries
whose common interest is not to go to war or
become nuclear fodder to a tiny ruling class that
will risk global destruction before they surrender
their wealth.
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/07
/06/trade-war-and-depression/
Class Struggle # 126
Kill Capitalism, not Yourself
Newsflash! NZ had 668 suicides last year. Another
record. All ages, but mainly young males and
especially young Maori. The youth rate is the
highest in the world, reflecting mainly the terrible
young Maori rate. The rise of suicide stats, double
the annual road deaths, and the collective pain of
so many thousands of men, women and children
whose lives are ended in this way, needs a
revolutionary response.
NZ is a white settler abomination. No better today
than the 1840s when Aotearoa was invaded by land
hungry Brits, escaping the fate of industrialising
Britain, trying to recreate the yeoman's paradise
with a bit of stolen land to subsist on.
But escaping the workhouse onto the land was
going backwards to feudalism. It kept alive the
peasant mentality - look down on farm workers and
Maori gang labour, and up to the big white gentry
homestead on the hill. It gave us our Eurocentric
racism, patriarchy and small business
mindlessness.
Fast forward to now. The land is dying because it’s
been stolen, corporatized, capitalized and bought
up by the giant banks. And everything else is wage-
slavery, self-employed slavery, work for the dole
slavery, and parasites living off rising land values
paid for out of workers unpaid wages.
Suicide is a natural response to alienation from
nature, society and ourselves. Because if we
cannot hold the real perpetrator of our fate - dying
capitalism - responsible, we are powerless to
change our circumstances and our actions self-
implode in interpersonal abuse. In the end those
who cannot live with using and abusing others, take
the little power they have left, to blame ourselves
and abuse ourselves to death.
Acknowledge the real perpetrator. Return to
nature, nationalize the land, make the Maori right
of usage the basis for leaseholds. It you don't use it
sustainably and for the benefits of the collective,
democratically defined, then risk losing it to those
who can. Use it or lose it.
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September/November 2018
Banks would vanish because who would need them
for a loan? A single state bank would supply state
credit without interest as with student loans.
Collectives on the land which cooperate in
production and equalize the rewards would be the
springboard for an Aotearoan socialism, able to
trade with other countries that go down the same
road.
The moral? Don't kill yourself. Kill capitalism, and
live full lives in harmony with nature and
humanity.
What’s left about the ‘left’?
This video is taking caricature to absurdity. Gaining
insight by going up your own backside.
With climate chaos looming, with the global
economy melting down, with poverty, oppression,
repression and war, as capitalism's daily calling
cards, let’s get serious.
The ‘left’ is a term of abuse for the right, and that
includes everyone from liberal to communist, and
is meaningless. Essentially it conflates capitalists
with anti-capitalists. Because liberals are polite
capitalists, while communists are rude anti-
capitalists.
The 'woke' left is even more meaningless. Except
as a dog whistle to label ‘alt-left’ equally as fascist
as the ‘alt right’.
We prefer ‘class consciousness'.
The only red pill that makes one class conscious is
the ‘red’ one of Marxism, and that means avoiding
being bogged down in liberal fetishes about
defending bourgeois rights like free speech unless
they help to make the billions of working people
free of the tyranny of the 1%.
The capitalists fool us into thinking that their
"rights" are universal, so many of us join the rat
race in this hope.
The maverick capitalist Trumps shows us how such
rights are worth to him and worthless to us. Anti-
capitalists have to take those rights from the
capitalists who use them to trap us inside their
dying system.
But that means they cease to be bourgeois rights
and become workers’ rights. Like the workers right
to a job on a living income, decent affordable
health, education and housing, and the right to live
in a healthy, sustainable environment.
None of which capitalism can deliver us, but which
the end of capitalism can give as a fighting chance
to make for ourselves.
Crime: Labour tries for system reboot
Labour had a plan to repeal the ‘three-strike law’ but couldn’t get coalition support
from the NZ first party to pass it. But it fails to provide any leadership on justice
matters. Instead Labour wants to build support with public meetings and expert
opinion, a “Criminal justice summit”, reports from the chief science advisor, and a
specialist advisory panel. These are the tools the Minister of Justice Andrew Little
is using to try to move public opinion away from the right wing, senseless sentencing
trust ‘tough on crime’ failed approach. It’s not working because the Coalition
Government is frightened of upsetting red-neck voters and the ‘victims’ of crime.
Criminal Justice prisoner statistics that are gathered; more
frequently under-represented by under-resourced
The Criminal Justice Summit has been an exercise
lawyers, and over-represented in convictions and
to soften up public opinion for options and
getting longer sentences. A claim has been taken to
“solutions” to the economic burden of paying for
the Waitangi tribunal on police bias on all the police
prisons and the whole (Orwellian named) “justice”
decisions before court appearance. While Waitangi
and “corrections” services. The Minister of Justice
claims may document the problem and describe the
appointed a specialist advisory panel to develop
current statistics, it will be more difficult to make
recommendations.
changes.
Their task: how to reduce a 60% re-offending rate
We would argue that as well as race-based bias,
within 2 years of release from prison. But the
there is a class bias in at all levels of the
problem means also shifting “public opinion” from
policing/justice/corrections system. At the end of
a moral judgement of crime and a reliance on
the day these social structures defend the interests
punishment which sates anger with revenge.
of the capitalist class and so are tools to contain
Already expanded programmes of restorative workers’ struggle. And that is why the majority of
justice and Marae-based justice process are being prisoners are sentenced as unemployed with drug
expanded. “Offenders” meet with the “victims” of habits and associated mental health problems.
crime and face the impact of their actions with
Abolish prisons
opportunities to make restitution.
One measure of how much capitalist society is
The Chief science advisor reports into justice
failing is the large size of prison populations.
system and youth offending are likewise criticisms
Unemployment, casualisation, long hours, end of
of the current approach. It is astounding NZ has got
overtime, weak unions and poverty pay, lack of dry,
itself into the position of sentencing 800yrs worth
affordable housing and adequate health services,
of expected time served each year in 2016 and
and poor health and safety, all point to the real
2017. And that is only the methamphetamine
causes of crime.
related sentencing. Costing over $100,000 per year
per prisoner, this option is clearly unsustainable No wonder that large sections of the working class
from a financial point of view. become becomes frustrated, angry and need to
resort to “crime” to survive, provide for their
And from the point of view of addressing a
family, or take drugs to escape the harshness of
methamphetamine problem it has failed to curtail
capitalist life and work.
the availability of methamphetamine, if anything
price per gram has been dropping. Jail doesn’t work A socialist programme would reduce the working
to reduce “crime” or “offending”. week until full employment is with no reduction in
take home pay; real jobs on living wages with
A trial drug court programme is so limited it is only
enough recreation time. That would eliminate the
for offences under a 2-year limit which doesn’t
incentives to commit property crime or deal in
meet the sentences with a 5-year minimum on
drugs.
possession of more than 5 grams class A drugs like
methamphetamine which tips automatically into We also need to build real housing solutions – truly
supply. affordable; not double bunked prisons. We call for
workers councils to set the controls on alcohol and
Government under pressure from Maori
drug supply – neither gangs and nor capitalist
Typical of colonised and oppressed peoples, Maori corporations. We oppose capitalist interests in
are over-represented within all criminal and
Class Struggle # 126
prisons or corrections programmes – take back Wiri
Men’s prison from Serco management.
Workers control of drug supply
During the Russian revolution 1918-1920 the
counter-revolutionaries sent train loads of wine to
the red army soldiers in an effort to sabotage their
ability to fight. The revolutionaries had to empty
the wine and some of the rich houses cellars of
alcohol to avoid the risk of the army getting
intoxicated.
Support to decriminalise drugs –former cops and
lawyers see the sense in stopping the “war on
drugs”. Lawyers suggest decriminalising drugs –
including methamphetamine. Former Prime
Minister’s see the sense of a change from
punishment towards health and social services.
We say this is a not a war on drugs and never has
been. It was and always has been a war on
working class people who use drugs. In the USA,
Mexicans were blamed (and imprisoned) for
September/November 2018
Marijuana; Blacks were blamed (and
imprisoned) for crack cocaine; and poor whites,
“trailer trash”, were blamed (and imprisoned) for
methamphetamine.
“2001, Portugal became the first country in the
world to decriminalise possession of all drugs. Users
caught with small amounts of drugs, less than a 10-
day supply, are not arrested or charged, but offered
treatment. In December Norway's Parliament also
voted to decriminalise drugs.” Five Good Reasons…
We say that legislative change to drug laws is still
about regulating and controlling the working class.
“Calls to regulate, decriminalise or to legalise
drugs all rely on parliament to change laws. This
fails to increase the power of the working class.
Instead diverts the struggle for freedom from
police oppression (the state) back into the
capitalist state at another level: - parliament and
law making. It limits the debate to legal status.”
Class Struggle

Nurses: Sorry Dear, Strikes are Off

Just when the Nurses had mobilized their ranks to stand firm on the demands that
they made to meet their urgent needs, The Daily Blog (TDB) is producing posts
attacking them for failing to strike against National when in government, and for
exposing the Coalition to right wing charges that it cannot control the unions.

Martyn Bradbury and acted as the agents of

Chris Trotter both take the bosses in the union
this line. Trotter is a movement.
long-time defender of
It was the most radical
socialist ‘realism’
unions, such as Martyn
which boils down to
lauds, with strong rank
workers taking only
and file democracy –
what bosses can afford
the miners, Wharfies,
to pay. They both seem
railway workers,
to be suffering from
construction workers
historical amnesia in
etc., that challenged
demanding that Nurses
the union bureaucracy
should settle and wait
and broke with the
for the Council of
state arbitration
Trades Unions (CTU) to organize a deal with the
courts in 1908 to form the Red Federation.
Coalition that benefits all workers. Strikes are off
dear. That led to a showdown at Waihi and the general
strike in 1913 smashed by Massey’s Cossacks
The ranks of all the public sector unions are due (farmers as special cops) and the military. The
massive wage increases to catch up with the deficit infamous Labour Party was formed in 1916 to steer
of the last few decades at least since the 1980s. The the now tamed labour movement onto the
union leadership that holds back workers to serve parliamentary road to avoid future open class
the bosses are the problem, not the workers. warfare.
Throughout modern history the union leadership has

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Class Struggle # 126
But workers and poor farmers were still a force and
their protests and struggles during the depression
forced the first Labour Govt in 1936 to enact a
reform program to insulate the economy and
provide social security. Of course, that didn’t stop
Empire-loyalist Labour from turning on the unions
during the war and after the war when workers
fought for better conditions.
Labour’s colours changed from pink to puce
(dragging the red flag in the mud) with the mood of
the bosses. It sent workers to the imperialist war
and subordinated labour to the Cold War falling in
behind the US ‘new world order’.
Then it was the wharfies locked out in 1951, and
their allied unions (mostly ex-Red Fed) strike action
in support, which forced the Labour Party into a
passive bloc with the National Govt which also used
emergency regulations and the military to smash
the lockout after 151 days. That split the labour
movement with the breakaway Trades Union
Council (TUC) under Jock Barnes outlawed from the
Federation of Labour (FOL) under the sell-out rat FP
Walsh.
One of the prominent wharfies victimized after the
’51 defeat, Bill Andersen, ended up a leader of the
union movement in Auckland. He used to say that
after ’51 the unions clung to the Labour Party
because it was the only party able to help workers.
The deal was better conditions for industrial peace.
So strikes were OK against National but not Labour.
Andersen admitted after 1991, when National
brought in the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) in a
deal with CTU head Ken Douglas to block a general
strike, that he had been mistaken in calling off the
industrial action at Marsden Point in 1984 to help a
Labour victory. The union pressure should have
been maintained against what turned out to be an
extreme right Labour Govt.
Relying on handouts from Labour by maintaining
industrial peace weakened the unions, and turned
them into beggars not fighters. To rub it in, Douglas’
justified his refusal to act on the majority union
vote for a general strike in 1991 to stop the Act,
saying “he could work with both Labour and
National”.
Douglas later stated his rationale for the existence
of unions – to increase labour- productivity so that
it could then be fairly shared by labour and capital.
In other words, Douglas was echoing the philosophy
of Labourism from the time of the Industrial
Conciliation and Arbitration Act (IC&A Act) of 1894,
introduced to conciliate (class collaboration) and
arbitrate (the Court made wage ‘awards’ provided
the economy and the bosses could afford them)
wages claims and disputes.
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September/November 2018
This philosophy of state arbitration has underpinned
Labour’s approach to industrial relations from the
start, and every Labour Govt has tried to keep it in
place. It required a balancing act between labour
and capital regulated by the state. It was broken by
National for the first time in 1991 with the ECA
deregulation of the labour market, and the
abolition of compulsory unionism.
The Clark Labour Govt partially restored the key
role of state intervention by amending the ECA with
the Employment Relations Act (ERA) in the 2000s to
shift the balance back slightly toward the unions.
But membership remained voluntary and the unions
never recovered their former influence.
National jerked that balance back towards the
bosses under the Key regime, pushing individual
contracts, excluding unions, 90-day fire at will etc.
So while the Nurses who went on strike in 1991
against the NACTs ECA to defend their own pay and
conditions, when the union movement was in a
much better condition to mobilise for a general
strike, doing the same against the Key Regime 17
years later had many barriers to overcome.
If TDB wants to blame Nurses for their failure to
strike then, rather than now, and to stop being
selfish and settle, the first to blame is the Labour
Party that has used the union bureaucracy to
maintain the historic deal that rewards labor only if
capital can afford it.
Since this paternalist state regulated approach has
repeatedly failed to meet the needs of workers, and
prevented any real shift of power in favour of
workers who produce the wealth, putting profits
first and wages last, why should workers remain
trapped in that antiquated industrial relations
system?
What is being advocating is the same old state
arbitration that serves the interests of capital that
has been kept alive in some form since 1894. The
Coalition is obviously going to rebore the Act in the
form of new state conciliation and arbitration
mechanisms.
If the nurses fall for the excuse that the Labour
Coalition is constrained by fiscal responsibility to
offer no more than the present offer, they may get
something, but the unfair system of industrial
relations will not be challenged.
The class collaboration of the Labour Party to pacify
workers in the interests of profits will not be
challenged. The sell-out role of the labour
bureaucracy in bed with the politicians will not be
challenged. Fiscal responsibility which is being used
by the Coalition to ration out spending that does not
put pressure on profits will not be challenged.
Class Struggle # 126
Most of all, 100 years after the defeat of the Red
Fed, the pacification of the labour movement by
the formation of the Labour Party, will not be
challenged. It’s clear that whatever the Coalition
wants to do it is surrounded by well-established
capitalist institutions that will fight to the death
to make workers pay for the failing of their
capitalist system. No more so that climate
change.
Climate change ‘changes everything’ as Naomi Klein
put it. Sustainable economic growth, renewable
energy, reversal of climate change is a precondition
of social security. It will not come from any
government with both feet in the camp of finance
capital which speaks out of both corners of its
mouth, while climate change dooms us all.
Moreover, as the global crisis hits and climate
catastrophe comes closer, no capitalist govt is going
Update
Nurses brought to heel for a 3 years term?
The collective agreement won by Nurses is
actually a truce in what is an ongoing class
struggle – a struggle for working nurses to get
paid enough to survive; for enough time and
adequate nursing to patient resources to heal
effectively the public (working class) who need
public health services. Some admit that there
is a two-tier health system, those with
insurance can jump the queues for public
health services, and access private health
providers.
The nurses came to the fight this negotiation
round. By starting with internet-based
communicating both to each other and publicly
nurses were able to share the reality of
frontline work. And this exposed that the NZNO
negotiation team was out of touch with the
needs of frontline nurses.
Nurses were able to document and confirm the
reality of understaffing and the dangerous
positions it puts working nurses into. And online
communication among the frontline workers
and further research has been useful for
developing an analysis of the problems that
need to be solved, and alternative solutions (for
example not CCDM but Patient ratios).
Out of the struggle and continued online
communication, nurses have built activist
networks. Those networks are a communication
channel outside of official union control,
8
September/November 2018
to seriously challenge the status quo. A death
sentence for the biosphere and our species.
Such radical change can only come from
organized labour which has the power to
challenge the death wish of capital. And the
revival of the unions as the economic power
house of labour is the means.
That will not happen until workers fight for what
they need now by striking for basic social
reforms, rejecting state labour regulation, and
uniting all strikes and struggles into one massive
workers movement that takes power out of the
hands of capitalists and puts it in the hands of
working people.
https://situationsvacant.wordpress.com/2018/06/26/n
urses-sorry-strikes-are-off-dear/
therefore allowing independence of thought.
This has exposed the leadership of NZNO and
apologists for Labour Party weak settlement
and sources of strength to take on that mis-
leadership.
The next steps:
• For frontline nurses’ control of the
NZNO: replace the sellout bureaucrats!
• For frontline workers control of Health
& Safety; including actions to close
beds where staffing is inadequate –
such as the PSA members did with
Mental health beds at North Shore
Hospital’s mental health unit.
• Cut the umbilical cord: End the
affiliation to the Labour Party. Labour
betrayed nurses and all labour by not
providing enough to meet nursing
needs; and by continuing to allow the
two-tier health system. Labour
continue to let private providers
undermine public health services.
• For a publicly owned free, universal
health system!
• Expropriate private hospitals under
health workers control to meet the
needs of workers on public waitlists.
End the queue jumping two-tiered
system and expropriate the health
insurer’s profits.
How Marxists fight Fascism in Aotearoa
Today, capitalism is dying and is thrashing about destroying everything it touches.
It deserves to die, but not to take us with it. Fascism is the political response of last
resort against the overthrow of capitalism by the working class. It will not give up
its fight peacefully, logically, rationally, resorting to undemocratic and illegal
actions, wars and genocide. Fascism is back on the agenda with a vengeance. Not
merely because two Canadian ‘alt-right’ activists want to spread their message in
Aotearoa. Of course, ‘alt-right’ is a euphemism for fascism. And when someone
actively attempts to stop refugees from Africa and the Middle East from reaching
Europe by attacking their boats there is no denying fascism as ‘alt-right’.

Today, capitalism is dying and is thrashing about
destroying everything it touches. It deserves to die,
but not to take us with it.
Fascism is the political response of last resort
against the overthrow of capitalism by the
working class. It will not give up its fight
peacefully, logically, rationally, resorting to
undemocratic and illegal actions, wars and
genocide.
Yet it wants its class enemy to fight peacefully and
respect bourgeois human rights – including ‘free
speech’. Never mind the right to life of African
refugees. It wants fascism to be normalized as just
another ideology that deserves equality before the
law. Meanwhile it builds and organizes a reactionary
social movement against refugee rights, workers’
rights and socialist revolution.
The denial of a platform to fascists is a longstanding
question, first raised with the rise of the fascist
movement in Germany in 1920, rapidly followed by
Italy and then Spain. If you look at these movements
its clear that they took advantage of the pacifism
and disorganization of the workers to put up
resistance to its armed shock troops.
Remember Visconti’s film, The Leopard, set in Italy
during the 1920s. The communists were a powerful
political force but no match for armed fascist bands
that attacked their union halls and murdered labour
leaders defeating their movement.
In Germany the same methods were used to
weaken, divide and destroy the labour movement.
Revolutionary leaders like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht were assassinated and workers armed
uprisings put down.
The fascists succeeded because workers were
divided along ideological lines. Social Democracy
was committed to parliamentary socialism and
the rule of law. It looked to the state to protect
them from fascists, denying the fact that the state
supports fascism in defending capitalism against
socialist revolution. Since social democracy
prefers fascism to communism the Communists
were isolated. Fascists even appealed to workers
and declassed petty bourgeois as ‘socialist’ to
deceive them.
Fascism is the militant, violent, undemocratic and
unlawful instrument of brutal bourgeois class rule.
It doesn’t defend bourgeois freedoms even while it
attempts to hide behind them. Its main purpose is
to smash the working class as the only class that can
overthrow capitalism and build a new society free
from exploitation and oppression.
Therefore, since we must learn from history or die,
it is stupid to ignore that lesson and fall for the ploy
that fascism is somehow an aberration that is
equally at home on the ‘alt-right’ and ‘alt- left’
against the law-abiding, pacifist, moderate middle.
That is to separate the symptoms of fascism from
its cause.
The only language that fascists understand is that
of force – class force. Either they use that force
against us and win the class war, or we organize
our own class force and defeat fascism in its
embryo before it gains the upper hand.
Marxists do not call on the bourgeois state to ban
fascists because we have learned that historically
the state sides with fascism to smash the working
class. We organize as a class to use every bourgeois
freedom that advances our class interests in
socialism. That is why we do not fetishize ‘freedom
of speech’ when it disarms us in the face of the rise
of fascism.
Those who want to survive capitalism’s decline
and fall need to work out where their class
allegiance lies now before it is too late, and build
a working class anti-fascist movement to defeat
fascism on the streets.
The Helsinki Deal and the American Empire
There is a lot of confusion about Trump's behavior in Helsinki. Is he crazy, a
traitor, or dupe of Putin? Nah. It's not that hard. As Escobar says, it’s still about
the Great Game for Eurasia. Trump is picking a fight with China which is the
main economic threat to US imperialism. China has said it will ignore the
sanctions on Iran. Trump wants to test the loyalty of Putin to Xi in the hope of
weakening the China/Russia bloc. He wants a new deal.
The confusion is
compounded by making
this about Trump-the-
man and not US national
interests. It's not an
oligarch love fest. It’s
not about the world
conspiracy of White
Supremacists or about
Trump’s private business
empire. It’s about the
future of the US Empire.
But empires are passé
you might say, thinking about historical examples
like Ancient Greece or Ancient China. You would be
wrong. Empire today means a capitalist empire
which has its own special characteristics that can be
summed up as ‘state monopoly capitalism’.
As the main capitalist nations industrialized in the
19th century, they grew too big for their national
markets and began to evolve strong states to
aggressively expand at the expense of their rival
empires. They had to export capital to escape
falling profits at home. The object was to grab
global resources and markets from their colonies to
boost their profits by any means necessary including
trade wars and military wars.
The template was set early in the 20th century as
the Great Game between capitalist imperialist
Britain and feudal imperialist Russia for control of
Eurasia and then the world! It was the rivalry
between the European powers to re-divide the
colonial world that led directly to World War 1.
Britain and France had stolen a march on their rivals
pouring capital into pre-capitalist Russia leaving
Germany and Japan behind the game.
World War 1 did not resolve this clash of interests –
the Russian Revolution created the Soviet Union,
and the draconian peace terms imposed on
Germany created deep resentments which led
ultimately to World War 2.
In both wars the US remained isolationist until its
economic interests were directly threatened. In
April 1917 the US reacted to the loss of its merchant
ships to German submarines, and the threat of
Mexico joining the Axis.
In December 1941, the
US reacted to Japan’s
attack on Pearl Harbor.
But by this time the US
was the dominant global
power and assumed that
role in framing the post-
war settlement at
Yalta.
The dominant US
occupied Europe and
Japan setting the terms
of the peace by forming
a military ring around the USSR and soon-to-be
‘Red’ China. US isolationism was over and the epoch
of US as the global hegemonic power began. The
mission of the post-WW2 US imperialism was to
defeat the USSR and China and add them to its
global domain.
Yet despite its steel ring around Eurasia and the
‘cold war’, which eventually brought the USSR and
China to their knees in the 1990s, neither the US nor
its EU and Japanese ‘allies’ succeeded in converting
them into neo-colonies. On the contrary they re-
entered the global capitalist economy largely on
their own terms.
Decades of bureaucratic state planning allowed
both Russia and China to develop the centralized
state economies able to resist penetration and
domination by the Western imperialist powers. The
usual methods of imperialist penetration of capital
to subordinate weaker powers to Western finance
capital came up against well buttressed state
capitalist regimes. Military domination was
checkmated by nuclear weapons. Both Russia and
China emerged as new imperialist powers
threatening to limit and even challenge US
hegemony.
The US responded by doubling down on its
aggressive expansionism as the neo-conservatives
pushed for war with Russia and China to contain the
‘red menace’. From Reagan to Bush Junior, NATO
expanded to the Russian borders, but this together
with wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran failed
to isolate the Russia/China bloc. In the East, the
Class Struggle # 126
ring of military bases around China from Japan to
Guam was reinforced.
All failed to break down the political and economic
barriers to Western imperialist penetration and
domination. The neo-conservative mission to
recover Eurasia had timed out. Obama’s ‘Pacific
Pivot’ was largely a propaganda exercise.
Under Obama, the US Democrats pulled back on
expensive military invasions, in preference for
limited special ops adventures, standing by while
both Russia and China expanded their imperialist
spheres of influence in Europe, Asia, Africa and
Latin America.
With the neoconservatives seething over the
Ukraine and the Democrats stuck in the swamp of
unresolved conflicts, neither could halt the erosion
of US hegemony. Along came Donald Trump as a
cartoon amalgam of former US presidents both
isolationist and expansionist to make America Great
Again. His brief was to drop the failed policies of
the neo-conservatives and the globalisation of the
Democrats by balancing the costs and benefits of
imperialist hegemony in a period of global capitalist
terminal crisis.
As Michael Klare on “Trumps Grand Strategy”
points out, this brief fitted with the Russian and
Chinese plan for a tripolar world.
Klare argues that Trump for all his bizarre behavior
is into a serious bid to solve US imperialism’s
problems by joining the Putin and Xi in a trilateral
deal between Russia, China and the US.
He thinks that there is nothing stopping the US from
ending both neo-liberal and Democratic
‘imperialism’ as bad policy options, and that with
the ‘good will’ of Putin and Xi Jinping could
persuade the US to join this deal to end the threat
of nuclear war.
“However ironic it might seem, this is, of course,
the gist of the Sino-Russian tripolar model as
embraced and embellished by Donald Trump. It
envisions a world of constant military and economic
contention among three regional power centers,
generating crises of various sorts, but not outright
war. It assumes that the leaders of those three
centers will cooperate on matters affecting them
all, such as terrorism, and negotiate as necessary
to prevent minor skirmishes from erupting into
major battles.”
This left-liberal analysis, drawing on Henry
Kissinger, at least gives Trump the credit for having
a geopolitical strategy. But it is limited by its focus
on geopolitics separated from the laws of capitalist
economics. It does not trace Trump’s ‘strategy’
back to the limits of US of post WW2 economic
expansion and assumes that it has nothing to gain
11
September/November 2018
from military aggression and can realize its national
interests in such a peace pact.
Yet this is misreading the nature of imperialism as
outlined above and assumes that with good advice
Trump can join with Putin and Xi Jinping in a new
epoch of world peace. This would mean that the
history of wars over the last two centuries were the
results of bad leadership and that all that is needed
is some good leadership.
Here the author indulging in magical thinking in
place of the reality that imperialist powers cannot
survive in rational Kissinger-type ‘win-win’ deals
but must defeat their rivals to survive the ‘zero-
sum’ game.
It fails not only to account for the underlying US
economic expansionism that pushed Presidents like
Wilson and Truman from isolation towards
globalism. It also misunderstands Putin’s and Xi’s
imperialist interests in promoting their ‘globalist’
policies.
And it misreads Trump’s own ‘strategy’ of seeking
new methods of restoring America’s greatness by
penetrating and dominating its rivals. One can only
understand his policy moves towards other
imperialist powers and other nations as designed to
reduce the costs and boost the gains of the US
Empire.
So, for Trump it’s about how much of the globe you
can still dominate by making weaker states and the
worlds' workers pay for the declining US economy.
His intervention over Brexit shows he wants the UK
out of EU so he can weaken both. He wants to force
a re-alignment of his former 'allies' and 'foes' to see
how US can come out on top.
Specifically, he is testing Putin on his alliance with
China to see if he can weaken it and play them off
against each other. Iran is likely to be a big test, as
China is ignoring US sanctions. The EU has caved on
US pressure to observe the sanctions. Will Putin
follow or offer a hand to the EU to evade the
sanctions? The latter is most likely as Iran is now
part of the Security Cooperation Organization- the
Eurasian military bloc led by Russia and China.
Can they reach agreement on the Middle East? The
Syrian revolution has seen a realignment of the
great powers. The US bloc has been reduced to
Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Russia/China bloc now
includes Syria, Turkey, Iran and Qatar. Al Monitor
has a theory that Trump is subcontracting the Syrian
war to Russia to allow a US disengagement.
“Maxim Sukov reports that “prior to the Helsinki
meeting, Russia had been expected to deliver
primarily three things: guarantee Israel’s security
from what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees
as a growing Iranian presence on the Syrian-Israeli
Class Struggle # 126
border, curb Iranian influence in the rest of Syria
and open up to some kind of engagement with the
United States and interested European states — all
to ensure America’s own military pullout from
Syria. Hence, the statements and moves Russian
officials have made in the few days following the
Helsinki meeting are meant to signal that Moscow
has been delivering on what appears to have been
its promises to each party: security for Israel,
cooperation with Iran and engagement with the
West.”
This may be one part of the new tripolar deal. But
what’s in it for the US? Will Kurdistan be traded for
a united Korea on terms set by Trump? And how will
the two rival blocs deal with the current threat of a
working class uprising in Iraq? Can that be managed
as part of a Tripolar world? Certainly, they will
collaborate in suppressing any renewed Arab
revolution as part of the war on terror. But such
regional cooperation cannot survive any real test of
the core interests of the rival great powers.
This, as ever, is the Great Game between the great
powers. It cannot be a “win-win” game. There can
Brazil: Elections 2018: a critical vote in the PSTU
For workers' committees that stand candidates against the Popular Front!
Brazil is heading for the most unstable and
unpredictable elections since the country's re-
democratization and the candidates are beginning
to campaign for victory in October.
Brazil is experiencing its greatest economic,
political and social crisis, showing that the current
global crisis of capitalism has hit the country and
that it was not a "marolinha" as Lula said, but a
tsunami. The end of the international economic
boom, of selling commodities to China and bountiful
credit, is over. The PT could no longer keep
concessions for the working class and the Dilma
government was hit directly by the crisis and the
popular discontent it generated. This weariness
continues in the Temer government. Dilma and the
PT denied the existence of the global crisis of
capitalism and ended up taking a "blow" from their
own bourgeois allies who said that the cause of the
crisis was the PT. The bourgeoisie today is divided
and affected by popular discontent and
denunciations of corruption, immersed in a political
crisis and the need to attack the working class as a
way to "solve" the crisis.
After the dictatorship, the PT spent 20 years
deceiving the working class that a solution to the
bourgeois elections, electing Lula president, would
be the solution for the working class to improve
12
September/November 2018
be no benign tripolar deal that unites Israel and Iran
any more than their imperialist backers. Facing an
unstable crisis ridden global economy the rival
imperialisms are inevitably locked into a “zero-
sum” game.
Today it is between the declining US and a reborn
Russian empire, in a bloc with the new Chinese
empire, with the EU powers pulled in two both
directions. The imperialist powers are driven by
falling profits into trade and military wars which
download their crises of falling profits onto the
backs of their rivals and everywhere onto the backs
of the working people. Workers everywhere must
organize internationally to get ahead of the game
and fight all such imperialist maneuvers.
Protesting Trump is a start, but it will go nowhere
unless it becomes a global anti-imperialist
movement against all imperialist trade wars, hot
wars, genocides, climate collapse, and for a global
socialist revolution. And for that to happen we all
need to wake up and realise that for humanity to
live, capitalism and all of its destruction to lives and
planet, must die.
their living conditions. Today, after 14 years of PT
government that has faithfully applied the neo-
liberal policies of imperialism, the PT continues
with its reformist policy and popularist Front of
alliances with the bourgeoisie, as shown by the
party's alliances with the "colonel" of politics, Renan
Calheiros, and several other examples from Brazil.
The polarity between the traditional right
represented by the PSDB and the left by the PT of
the last 24 years may be coming to an end, the
growth of Bonapartism through Bolsonaro's
candidacy and fascism with those who defend a
military coup is a sign. The crisis that we live affirms
the necessity of independent organization of the
working class for a revolutionary and socialist
outcome.
The left is also divided for these elections. PSOL
presents itself with the candidacy of Boulos and an
openly reformist program and Popular Front; the
platform "VAMOS", built in a Front with several
bourgeois parties, such as PDT. Boulos and PSOL
present themselves as the great saviors and
reformers of the rotten capitalism in its terminal
crisis. Boulos / PSOL are today one of the greatest
defenders of the PT and the Popular Front, that is,
of the alliance with "progressive" sectors of the
bourgeoisie, as a form of struggle against fascism.
Class Struggle # 126
The Popular Front is not able to fight against
fascism and a coup d'état in the country, on the
contrary, it divides the workers and opens the
way for fascism. Lula's defense and the narrative
that there was a coup d'état in Brazil, disarms the
class for the fight against a real coup.
The PSTU launched Vera's candidacy, without
coalitions. The PSTU did not campaign strongly for
a Left Front as it had in previous elections in which
it had been an important element in raising
awareness of left-wing activists and activists in
Brazil that no alliances with the bourgeoisie should
be made. The PSTU says that it is against alliances
with the bourgeoisie in the elections, and we agree.
But in the union movement and in the workers'
struggles they defend any kind of alliances with the
union bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie, which they
justify as not being a Front but as a "unity of action".
For us, the reason for not having the left front with
the PSOL is not because of the principle of class
independence or the fact that PSOL is defending a
Popular Front program, but because of PSTU
sectarianism with PSOL and because of electoral
opportunism. The PSTU electoral program calls for
a "rebellion", not a revolution anymore.
In 2013, when radical youth rebelled against the
increase in public transport fares and led to the
great demonstrations known as the "June Days",
the PSTU published the infamous "No More Black
Blocs!" Note that they actually criminalized rebel
youth, which the media and the government
called "vandals."
It was in the heat of the Days of June 2013 that the
PSTU inaugurated the bureaucratic block between
the directions of the trade union centrals, which
still exists today. From the Days in 2013 to the fight
against the World Cup in 2014 there were numerous
strikes by all sectors of the working class and the
clamor for a General Strike was strong. This
pressure for the general strike was what led to the
formation of the bureaucratic bloc between the
union leaderships at the power plants that until
today derails the general strike in favor of a
"National Day of Mobilizations".
The true Single Front that was formed in the course
of the struggles, such as the Block of Fights in Porto
Alegre, the Fight Forum in RJ, the single front of
students occupying schools in 2016 or the fronts
during the workers' strikes were destroyed by the
opportunist leaderships and supported by the PSTU,
which, while it boycotted the united front and
independent organization in the battles, it also
joined the bureaucratic blocs where the direction
of the movement was decided between four walls.
13
September/November 2018
The reformist left, such as the PSOL replaces the
working-class independent power with bourgeois
democracy and positions in parliament. In place of
the direct and independent struggle of the class the
PSTU substitutes support for the union bureaucracy.
Therefore, it is only hypocrisy when the PSTU
criticizes the union bureaucracy of the plants and
joins them in bureaucratic blocs with the
justification that these are necessary as a "stage" of
the workers' struggle. This genuine People's Front
among bureaucracies is not a necessary stage, but
an obstacle to the independent and democratic
organization of the workers: committees for
workplaces, self-defense committees, the Single
Front and the General Strike.
The Brazilian working class is tired, cannot stand
the terrible conditions of life and work. Despite the
great popular discontent with the government and
parliament, and the growing discredit in the
elections, they still do not see an alternative
outside bourgeois democracy. But anyone who wins
the election will need to deepen attacks on the
working class as an "exit" from the capitalist crisis.
The Social Security Reform, cuts in public spending,
privatizations and ruling class exploitation are the
main and real agenda of the parties there.
That is why we defend the Critical Vote for the
PSTU, which is a bourgeois workers’ party that is not
allied with any sector of the bourgeoisie. Why
critical? Precisely because despite presenting a
candidacy without alliances with the bourgeoisie,
its program starts to defend a "rebellion" and not
the necessary socialist Revolution. Their methods
are not the independent organization of the class
with committees by workplace, committees of self-
defense and the General Revolutionary Strike, but
bureaucratic methods of alliance with the
opportunist leaderships of the trade union
movement.
• For the nationalization of banks and large
companies, without compensation and
with workers control!
• For non-payment of public debt and a
public works plan that meets the needs of
workers and poor people!
• In the 2018 elections, support for workers'
committees that launch their candidates
as tribunes of program against the Popular
Front!
• For a Congress of Workers elected by rank-
and-file committees to discuss and decide
the course of the fight!
• For a revolutionary party to organize the
vanguard of the workers!
• For a government of Workers' Councils!
For a Socialist Brazil!
Review of Mieville: The Story of October.
Part 5: Conclusion: October Today
At the time Lenin wrote Our Revolution, January
1923, the situation was difficult but not ‘hopeless’.
Capitalism in its imperialist ‘final stage’ had
exhausted its ‘historic mission’ to prepare the way
for socialism and was destroying the forces of
production including the lives of millions of
workers. The war had mobilized armed workers in
the struggle to re-partition the world but this had
created the objective conditions for proletarian
revolution.
All that was needed to turn this revolutionary
situation into victorious revolution was the class-
conscious proletariat and a vanguard party to lead
it. The German revolution had been betrayed by
social democracy, yet failed ultimately because
there was no Bolshevik-type mass party capable of
leading it to victory. The result was that the
European proletariat was now confronted with a
rising fascist movement.
The Russian Revolution survived the civil war but at
a huge cost. The revolutionary proletariat was
weakened, Lenin was on his sickbed, and Stalin was
moving to concentrate power in the bureaucracy.
But there was not the slightest suggestion that Lenin
was viewing the situation in Russia as more than a
‘tactical retreat’ (NEP) necessary to construct the
socialist order, nor did he doubt the upwards
trajectory of the international revolution.
Towards the end of his life, Lenin began to turn to
the East for new revolutions that would follow
Russia’s lead. In his ‘Last Will and Testament’ he
called on Trotsky to remove Stalin and the
bureaucracy from power and re-arm the revolution
in the cause of international revolution.
Against all his detractors, who paint Lenin as an
authoritarian, or ‘dictator’, who substitutes his
‘will’ for that of the proletariat, the party even,
Trotsky, in Lessons of October, sums up Lenin’s role
in forcing the pace of revolution with his constant
interventions, in particular the letters from exile
with which he bombards the Central Committee:
“All these letters, every sentence of which was
forged on the anvil of revolution, are of
exceptional value in that they serve both to
characterize Lenin and to provide an estimate of
the situation at the time. The basic and all-
pervasive thought expressed in them is – anger,
protest, and indignation against a fatalistic,
temporizing, social democratic, Menshevik attitude
to revolution, as if the latter were an endless film
… When things have reached the point of armed
insurrection, events are to be measured not by the
long yardstick of politics, but b6 the short yardstick
of war. To lose several weeks, several days, and
sometimes a single day, is tantamount under
certain conditions to the surrender of the
revolution, to capitulation. Had Lenin not sounded
the alarm, had there not been all this pressure and
criticism on his part, had it not been for his intense
and passionate revolutionary mistrust, the party
would probably have failed to align its front at the
decisive moment, for the opposition among the
party leaders was very strong, and the staff plays a
major role in all wars, including civil wars.”
Miéville’s ‘strange story’ is well told, but his
interpretation of events is limited by his inclination
to attribute “failures and crimes” to the Bolsheviks
(and in particular Lenin) who took responsibility for
that revolution, rather than those global players
who worked to destroy it, and sought to excuse
their own marginal or counter-revolutionary role.
Yet as we have argued here, the Bolsheviks could
not be ‘blamed’ for the ‘one-party’ state without
putting bourgeois democracy ahead of proletarian
democracy. For that ‘one party’ was the only one
that represented the ‘historical’ and ‘international’
interests of the revolutionary class – the proletariat.
The construction of socialism in Russia always
depended on a victorious German revolution,
betrayed by the petty bourgeois ‘culture’ of social-
democracy in league with fascists. ‘State
capitalism’ was not a betrayal of the revolution but
a Marxist grasp on the reality that a Workers State
in a backward country must take advantage of the
latest technical developments of capitalist
production to create the pre-conditions for
socialism. The Bolsheviks were not to blame for the
'mistakes and shortcomings' of the revolution. We
put that blame where it belongs, on the bourgeois
and petty-bourgeois counter-revolutionaries.
Without the Bolsheviks, and without Lenin, there
would have been no socialist revolution. Russia
would have become a semi-colony of France and
Britain, and there would be no ‘lessons of the
October’ to inspire and guide revolutionaries for
another century onwards towards the only solution
for the survival of our civilization, the international
socialist revolution. The main lesson that we must
take from October, today, is to promote Marxism
and build the Bolshevik party and program as our
guide in making that global revolution.
Reclaiming Marx: Part Two – Marxism after Marx
For Marx, even the best theory, without the Party testing it in the class struggle,
was worthless dogma. The fusing of theory and practice demands a program that is
tested by the Communist Party in the class struggle. In his lifetime, the revolutions
of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 were the most important practical tests
that produced lessons requiring revisions of the program. By 1850, the proletariat
had succeeded the now reactionary bourgeoisie as the revolutionary class. The
bourgeois revolution could be advanced only by the proletarian revolution – the
permanent revolution.
The Commune put this to the test. Its defeat
strengthened the bourgeois counter-revolution and
the impact of reformism on the workers’
movement. It proved that the bourgeois state had
to be smashed and replaced by a workers’ state.
Failure to learn these lessons frustrated Marx and
his Critique of the Gotha Program in 1875 was a
declaration of his Marxism against those who
revised it by succumbing to bourgeois reforms.
This statement made a few months before his death
in 1883, that if the reformists called themselves
Marxist then he “was not a Marxist”, leaves no
doubt as to what his Marxism was right up to the
end. His friend and political collaborator, Engels,
continued the fight to defend Marx’s Marxism from
all sides in the struggle to keep it alive in the face
of the opportunist, reformist tendencies in the
Second International.
Engels, friend and collaborator
After Marx’s death, Engels, his lifelong collaborator
continued the fight to resolve this crisis. He was
faithful to Marx’s Marxism, completing and
publishing three of the unfinished volumes of
Capital (Vols 2,3 and 4 – or Theories of Surplus
Value), in which Marx had fleshed out the
foundations of his scientific theory so they could be
understood and applied in practice to developing
the Communist program. The importance of
publishing these 3 volumes were that they
demonstrated Marx’s method of moving from the
abstract to the concrete.
Moving from the Vol 1. analysis of value which was
‘abstracted’ from the struggle over wages, prices
and profits etc; Marx in Vol 2, showed how the
production of value underlay the struggle over the
distribution of value between Labour and Capital;
and to Vol 3 to show how crises that appeared on
the surface of capitalist society as unstable ‘chaos’,
were determined by the TPRF. Engel’s major
contribution was therefore to show how falling
profits, not falling wages, explained the ‘chaos’ of
capitalism.
Not only did this show that workers wage
demands did not cause crises, rather it exposed
the fact that capital could not exploit workers
enough to prevent recurring crises.
Therefore, workers had to understand Marx to
recognize that capitalist crises cannot end
capitalism; it has to be overthrown. Engels’
determination to make Marxism comprehensible to
ordinary workers, has seen him belittled as a
‘popularizer’ of Marx. Was not Marx a popularizer in
the Communist Manifesto and in his serializing of
Volume 1 in the French Edition making it accessible
to workers?
To further illustrate this point, after their critique
of the Gotha Program, Marx and Engels intervened
in the debate against Herr Duhring, a minor
academic who launched a reformist socialist
program, attacking Marx among others. Engels’
book Anti-Duhring was serialized in 1877/78 as a
response to this attack. It explodes Duhring’s
“bumptious pseudo-science” as “sublime
nonsense”. Marx contributed the chapter “From the
Critical History” in which he takes his opponent
apart as an “ignorant plagiarist”.
Engels’ pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,
published in 1880 was a re-write of some sections of
Anti-Duhring “suitable for immediate popular
propaganda”. Marx clearly approved of these joint
efforts since he wrote the Introduction to the
French Edition praising it as “…an introduction to
scientific socialism”. It proved very popular, selling
20,000 of the four German editions despite being
banned under the Anti-Socialist Law, and was
translated into 10 languages.
After Marx’s death Engels continued to intervene as
the authority on Marx’s work in the debates that
took place in the Second International. First, his
Introduction to a new edition of Marx’s The Civil
War in France (1891) restated the lessons of the
Commune. Second, his ‘Foreword’ to the first
publication of Marx’s Critique of the Gotha
Program, (1891) aimed at the German Social
Democratic Party leadership which tried to suppress
the publication of Marx’s Critique because it
Class Struggle # 126
exposed their break from Marxism. Third, Engels’
‘science of socialism’ popularized Capital Vol 3 to
explain crises, imperialism, colonialism, ‘bourgeois
workers’, and the material roots of ‘social
chauvinism’ in the Second International.
When Engels published Vol 3 in 1894 it was clear
that the imperialism in the 1880s was the result of
crises cause by the TRPF forcing the export of
capital to restore profits. This accounted for super-
profits extracted from the colonies that raised living
standards for the working class, creating a
privileged labour aristocracy made up of “bourgeois
workers” as Engels called them.
Colonial super-profits explained the material roots
of the labour bureaucracy and social democracy –
the political expression of a layer relatively
privileged worker-officials in the trades unions and
in parliament. Lenin labelled the labour aristocracy
as “social chauvinist” and “social imperialist”,
promoting “parliamentary socialism at home and
imperialism abroad”. Clearly, it was colonial super-
profits that paid for ‘democracy’ in the imperialist
countries.
These interventions were to lay the foundations for
the next generation of Marxists whose task was to
in effect to write Marx’s last three planned volumes
– on The State, Foreign Trade, and the World
Market and Crises – which accounted for the uneven
and crisis-ridden expansion of world capitalism.
They explain why the 2nd International degenerated
into opportunism after Gotha and evolved into a
reformist party with a bourgeois program. This
opportunism was to lay the ground for what was to
be the second crisis of Marxism, the betrayal of the
proletariat by the majority of the Second
International leadership on August 4, 1914.
Love Marxism, Love Leninism
After the death of Engels in 1895, the task of
keeping Marxism alive fell to the next generation
born in the late 19th century – notably Lenin, Trotsky
and Luxemburg. To do that they had to develop
Marxist theory as a guide to the class struggle in the
new epoch of imperialism recognized by Marx and
Engels. Marxism can only live when it is tested as a
program of action by a Marxist party immersed in
the struggles of the day. So, those who took over
the leadership of the movement from Marx and
Engels have to be evaluated as leaders who were
capable of this task.
As mentioned above, we first have to see if they
agreed with with Marx and Engels on the major
challenges to Marxism in their time – the Commune,
and the Gotha Program. Lenin, Trotsky and
Luxemburg took a Marxist stand on these questions,
and condemned the anti-Marxist position of Kautsky
and others who opposed the Communards’ taking up
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September/November 2018
arms to overthrow of the French regime, out of
respect for parliamentary compromises. However,
it is notable that their critique of Kautsky did not
become urgent until the shock betrayal of the 2nd
International in 1914.
That betrayal proved beyond doubt that even the
most revolutionary Marxists were taken by surprise
by the power of the labour bureaucracy in the
imperialist countries that sided with its own ruling
classes and called on workers to pay for the war and
give their lives fighting other workers. In their
defence, the three leaders were in exile in Europe,
in the US, or in jail, and isolated from the European
sections of the International.
The death of Marx had created the first crisis in
Marxism; the betrayal of the 2nd International was a
second crisis that nearly claimed the life of Marxism
itself. Joining with the exploiting class to kill one’s
fellow workers was a total rejection of Marxism. It
was putting bourgeois national chauvinism ahead of
international working-class solidarity. It was junking
every lesson learned in the history of class
struggles, that declare to the world that the
proletariat and bourgeoisie have nothing in
common. There could be no argument to justify
going to war in the interests of the bourgeoisie.
There was only one course open to save Marxism and
that was to declare the 2nd International dead and
begin the task of building a new one.
Zimmerwald Left
Those on the anti-war left of the International met
at Zimmerwald in Switzerland in September 1915.
The majority opposed the war but took a
subjective, pacifist line in talking against the evils
of war while voting for it in the Reichstag.They were
now reformists having succumbed to social
imperialism - the view that imperialism abroad
could be reformed by parliamentary socialism at
home. The minority, the Zimmerwald Left, around
Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, argued to turn
imperialist war into class war in which workers
would refuse to fight one another and turn their
guns on their own ruling class. The 2nd International
was pronounced dead and a commitment to building
a new international made. They all agreed that the
betrayal of Social Democracy resulted from the
creation of labour aristocracies (Engels’ ‘bourgeois
workers’) bought off by colonial super-profits to
promote social chauvinism at home in support of
imperialist war. What to do?
The “three L’s” called for workers to mutiny and
organise armed uprisings against the ruling classes
in every imperialist country. Trotsky called for
workers to refuse to fight but did not think that
workers were ready for armed insurrection. They
disagreed on other aspects of Marxism too.
Class Struggle # 126
Luxemburg and Trotsky, from right and left
positions, rejected the Bolshevik Party as
substituting for the proletariat.
Trotsky on the right saw the split between
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks as unnecessary. He was
known as a ‘conciliationist’ for advocating a united
party. Yet at the same time Trotsky agreed with
Lenin in rejecting the Menshevik two-stage theory,
that the bourgeois revolution had to be completed
by a class alliance with the bourgeoisie, before the
socialist revolution was possible in Russia.
They both agreed with Marx, that since 1850 the
bourgeoisie was now a reactionary class. Therefore,
the bourgeois revolution against the Tsar would
have to be led by the proletariat as the
revolutionary class and completed as the socialist
revolution i.e., the uninterrupted, or permanent
revolution.
Luxemburg from the left objected to Bolshevik
democratic centralism as substituting for the
spontaneous revolutionary consciousness of the
masses. But from the right, however, her
underconsumptionist theory of capitalist crisis
ignored Marx’s theory of “the tendency of the Rate
of Profit to Fall” (TRPF) in Capital Vol 3 published
by Engels in 1894. Since for her falling profits were
caused by underconsumption due to low wages, the
spontaneous struggle for higher wages would bring
about revolutionary class consciousness and the
overthrow of capitalism.
Therefore, on the central question of the Party,
both in their own way took one-sided views of
democratic centralism against Lenin’s dialectical
position which weighed-up all sides of the question.
The Party is the subjective factor in the revolution,
not the spontaneous mass “trade union”
consciousness – which is an objective barrier to
revolutionary consciousness that can only be
transcended by the Party. Nor can the Party be
united around a broad program for an objective,
inevitable march from reform to revolution without
the subjective vanguard party intervening to know
when to advance and retreat.
Not until the Russian revolution proved them wrong
did Trotsky and Luxemburg come around to Lenin’s
position. Trotsky joined Lenin in July 1917 and
became one of the main leaders of the Russian
revolution. Luxemburg withdrew her objection to
the Bolshevik type party and formed the Spartacist
Party but was betrayed by Social Democracy in
Germany and assassinated in 1919, cutting short the
life of a true revolutionary, and contributing to the
defeat of the German Revolution.
The October Revolutions in Russia and Germany
Lenin, as the leading revolutionary Marxist,
advanced Marxism, against all backsliding comrades
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September/November 2018
(Trotsky as conciliator; Luxemburg as spontaneist
and underconsumptionist) and hostile class enemies
(Social Democracy), by re-asserting its premises, re-
reading Hegel, re-affirming the dialectical method,
and applying the theory of Capital vol 2 and 3 to
analyze the ‘concrete’ conditions in Russia (he read
Marx on Sismondi to expose the petty bourgeois
program of the Narodniks). He developed the theory
of crisis in Vol 3 to explain the state of the world
economy embedded in imperialism and war
(Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism); the
reactionary role of Social Democracy and Kautsky’s
vacillating centrism (Renegade Kautsky); the class
character of the State (State and Revolution); AND
applied it to a Transitional Program put into
practice by the democratic centralist Bolshevik
Party.
Lenin was true to Marx because he fused theory and
practice in the democratic centralist party in which
objective and subjective reality was united. He
used Marx’s dialectic method to defeat the
objectivists and subjectivists who pushed old
idealist formulae instead of the ‘art’ of revolution.
He routed the objectivists who treated the
proletariat as a passive rather than active
participant in revolution. These petty bourgeois
upstarts took over from the proletariat in deciding
when the workers would be ready for revolution.
Lenin also denounced the subjectivists (anarchists
and left communists) who argued spontaneous
proletarian class consciousness was sufficient to
make the revolution, and that democratic
centralism must lead to the Party substituting itself
for workers democracy.
It follows that without Lenin in the leadership of a
democratic centralist party there would have been
no socialist revolution in Russia. It would have
collapsed into objectivism or subjectivism; nor
would Marxism have survived as a living political
force. In February 1917, the Bolshevik leadership
was tied to the old dogma of Plekhanov etc., that
Russia must have a bourgeois revolution to prepare
the conditions for socialism. This was based on a
doctrinaire application of Marx’s slogan that
capitalism cannot be overthrown until it has
completed its historic task and is no longer capable
of developing the forces of production. Yet since
1850 Marx understood that the bourgeoisie was no
longer the revolutionary class and had to be
displaced by the proletariat as the new
revolutionary class. So, if the pre-conditions for
socialism still had to be created, that could only be
done by the proletariat in power.
When it came to the concrete conditions in Russia
the idealist dogma was clearly out of touch with
reality. The bourgeoisie was not strong enough to
overthrow the Tsar and complete the bourgeois
Class Struggle # 126
revolution. It was women textile workers that began
the strikes in February 1917 that led to the
overthrow of the Tsar. Only the industrial workers,
combined with the poor peasants and soldiers could
advance the revolution by overthrowing capitalism.
Lenin challenged the doctrinaire leadership by
going to the Bolshevik masses and convincing them
that a socialist revolution was necessary to
complete the bourgeois revolution even in
backward Russia. In Russia 1917, the same mistake
that saw the German bourgeoisie join forces with
the feudal Junkers in 1848, had to be avoided at all
costs. So like Marx in 1850, Lenin was affirming
the validity of permanent revolution as the only
way to take the bourgeois revolution forward to
socialism in one continuous movement.
Permanent revolution was also tested by the failure
of the German revolution. The first uprising in 1919
failed because of the Menshevik SPD formed a
government with the ‘democratic’, ‘progressive’,
but still warmongering, bourgeoisie! Then in 1921
the Communist Party (KPD) took part in a premature
putsch that was easily suppressed. By 1923 a
revolutionary situation had returned. The KPD was
better prepared, but its leadership vacillated and
failed to size up the situation and prepare for
insurrection on time, and the moment was lost.
Having failed to make the revolution, the
responsibility for the rise of fascism in Germany fell
on the KPD leadership, mainly because it had not
learned the lessons of the Bolshevik revolution and
built a strong, democratic-centralist party in time.
Left Opposition and Fourth International
With the failure of the German revolution, the most
important condition for the success of the Russian
revolution disappeared. The industrialization of the
Soviet Union was held back by the backwardness
and war devastation in both industry and
agriculture. The Bolsheviks had to keep the
revolution alive in an isolated, under-developed
country without international support. The only way
out was to fight for a democratic-centralized plan
for industry and agriculture to develop the forces of
production and survive until revolutions succeeded
in Europe or Asia. For the Bolsheviks there was
never the possibility of socialism being built in one
country.
After the death of Lenin in 1924, the battle to claim
his legacy was the key to the life and death struggle
between the growing bureaucratization of the party
and state apparatus under Stalin that appeased the
petty bourgeoisie and surviving bourgeoisie, and the
Left Opposition (LO) led by Trotsky, which insisted
that workers democratic control of the soviets and
of the Party regime were pre-conditions for
planning production in industry and agriculture,
allowing the forces of production to grow, reducing
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September/November 2018
necessary labour-time, and making the building of
socialism possible.
The record of the Bolshevik Leninists from 1923 to
1933 was of a life and death struggle to reverse the
Stalinists regimes break from ‘Leninism’. Stalin
subordinated world revolution to popular fronts
with the bourgeoisie around a Menshevik program
for ‘national roads’ to socialism in defence of
‘socialism in one country.’ From the betrayal of the
German Revolution in 1923, to the Chinese
Revolution, 1924/1927, the challenge of the LO was
met with repression, exile and execution of its
militants. Among them was Trotsky expelled and
exiled in 1917.
The Left Opposition became an International Left
Opposition (ILO) as an internal opposition inside the
Comintern. It fought to restore workers democracy
against the bureaucratic regime until 1933 when
Stalin’s policy to appease fascism in Germany
helped the Nazi’s come to power. This betrayal of
the international communism was of the same order
as the 4th of August 1914 had been for the 2nd
International.
From 1933 the ILO was committed to building a new
revolutionary international to take the leadership of
the world revolution, fighting for political
revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy in the
Soviet Union, and for socialist revolutions based on
workers’ and peasants’ soviet governments
everywhere. The Fourth International was formed
in 1938 based upon its Transitional Program
dedicated to the unconditional defence of the
Soviet Union, the political revolution and the
international revolution.
Conclusion: The Short 20th Century
For Marxism after Marx, it is the onset of the epoch
of imperialism that explains the inevitability of
recurring crises, revolutions, counter-revolutions
and wars. Arising out of WW1 the rise and fall of the
Russian revolution became the ultimate test of the
power of revolutionary Marxism. The British
historian Eric Hobsbawn, talks of the “Short 20th
Century” from the Russian revolution of 1917 to the
restoration of capitalism in 1991, as shaping the
fate of the modern world. Indeed, there is some
truth in this. The October revolution proved that
Marxism could keep the 19th century theory of Marx
alive in the form of a revolution led by a Marxist
party. Its success proved that a dying capitalism
could be replaced by a socialist revolution. But was
this the end of the road for Marxism?
No. The degeneration of the revolution also proved
the validity of living Marxism. Neither the revolution
nor the counter-revolution can be understood
except as a partial and incomplete realization of
the permanent revolution Marx spoke of in 1850.
Class Struggle # 126
The proletariat made the revolution along with the
poor peasants, against the counter-revolution of
world capitalism and the united exploiting classes.
While we can talk about the Russian revolution
succumbing to counter-revolution as the
culmination of the Short 20th century, it is only part
of the larger historic dynamic of permanent
revolution from the mid-19th century to today, and
beyond.
For Marx permanent revolution did not mean only
that the working class must to lead the exploited
and oppressed classes to the revolution against all
September/November 2018
the exploiting and oppressing classes. It meant that
the revolution could not be realized fully without
the victory of the international revolution, and
without the victory of world socialism and the
prospect of a future communist, classless, and
stateless, society. Not until then, will the Manifesto
of the Communist Party, and permanent revolution,
end up in the museum of class struggle. Until then,
it is the daily task of Marxists to continue the fight
for permanent revolution.
To be continued: Part 3: Marx Today.

Workers Democracy
Communists are for workers' democracy, which far exceeds phony capitalist 'democracy' subordinated
to profits. It is based on workers councils which vote on what is needed in a plan, which is then
referred to regional and then national councils, federated internationally, made of up elected
delegates, both accountable and immediately recallable by those they represent, and paid no more
than the average workers' wage. Such a concept of 'democratic planning' was first advanced in the
Paris Commune of 1871.
This process allows the democratic representation of the working masses to be integrated nationally
and internationally into a coordinated plan. This is a centralization process but not one dictated by a
central body isolated from the mass base as became the case under the Stalinist bureaucracy.
You can see this democratic model in operation during the early years of the Russian revolution where
workers, peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets elected delegates to local, regional and national soviets. It
was during the second national congress of soviets in October 1917 that the popular insurrection was
organized and carried out with very little resistance.
Workers democracy came under immediate attack with imperialist invasions and the defeat of the
German revolution. The result was that, isolated and forced to fight a destructive civil war from 1918
to 1921, a centralized reconstruction only took until 1924 for Russia to recover its 1913 GDP. And
despite the destruction and concessions forced on Russia, state planning was able to outstrip economic
growth in the depressed capitalist West and avoid the fate of a Western colony.
But this could never have been sustained, as socialism cannot be built in one backward isolated
economy. As a result, the influence of capitalism externally and internally to destroy the revolution
and restore capitalism, produced a bureaucracy fostering the enrichment of the capitalist owners at
the expense of the workers' democracy and living standards.
The best account of the fight inside the Communist Party to stop Stalin's machine is that of the Left
Opposition - a strong minority led by Trotsky - that fought the bureaucracy to return to workers
democracy in the state, and a democratic plan to boost growth and equality. Despite the execution of
most of the oppositionists, the Left Opposition fought on into the 1930s when a new communist
international was formed to fight for socialist revolution.
In other words, Marxism that is not based on a genuine workers democracy, is not Marxism. The same
applies to the terms "socialism" and "communism". These both had specific meaning for Marx.
Socialism was collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange based on
workers' democracy. The SU or USSR, was never going to reach socialism without a world revolution.
So it never make the transition to communism, Marx’s classless, stateless, society of the future.
That is why humanity faces an existential choice, socialism, understood as a future democratic,
egalitarian society, versus capitalism, dying on its feet and right now actually destroying most living
species.

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Class Struggle #126 September/October 2018

For the World Party of Socialist Revolution!

Liaison Committee of Communists

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