Communist For Beginners
Communist For Beginners
Communist For Beginners
workers power
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Contents
1) Karl Marx: from capitalism to communism
What is the difference between socialism and communism? How can we get from a capitalist society with all its problems, divisions and inequalities to a communist society? Reading: Socialism: the transition to communism (pg 4-5)
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Smith set out a vision of what it might be like. Socialism, understood as a society in which the economy was socially owned and output was shared equally, would not be created, fully developed, separate from existing capitalist society. Instead, in historic terms, there would be a period during which capitalist society would be transformed into socialist society, a transitional period. The struggle for a more just and genuinely human society, therefore, could not turn its back on the actually existing capitalist society. Just as a worker can only work with the tools and raw materials that are available, humanity in general could only create a new society with the raw materials provided by societys past development. What were these raw materials? At first sight there appeared to be two: the physical apparatus of production or, means of production machinery, factories, railways etc. the people who made up any society. Whoever was going to change society would themselves be a product of existing society. Tomorrows society would be built by todays people using, initially, todays technology. One of Marxs most brilliant insights was his realisation that there was, in fact, a third factor in society that had to be taken into account. In order to use the technology of production, people had become organised in a very definite way. A small number, the capitalists, owned and controlled the means of production while a vastly greater number, the working class, actually operated them. The workers had no real choice in the matter because
their only means of survival was the wage they could earn from the capitalists. Marx called this third element the relations of production. Although not as immediately obvious, it was the third element, the relations of production, that was the most important in terms of changing society. Even in Marxs day, technical progress had made it possible to produce enough for everybody to have a decent standard of living. Poverty was a result of social relations, the unequal shares in the output, not the limitations of technology. It was precisely the living conditions of the working class, coupled with its centrality within production, that would create the social force, the revolutionary working class, that could transform society into socialism. The same social relations also meant that the capitalists had every reason to keep things as they were.
And they had very effective means of preventing change. The whole organisation of society protected them. They had the best living conditions, the best education, each generation was trained to take over control and, in addition, the law protected their wealth and was backed up by the more physical means of defence: policemen, soldiers, prisons in a word, the state. Marxs political strategy, therefore, had to begin from this understanding of society; the means of production for a better society already existed, the working class needed that better society but the capitalists, protected by the state, were determined to prevent any change. His first attempt to develop a way of overthrowing this minority was presented in the Communist Manifesto of 1848. In the Manifesto, Marx not only delivered a devastating attack on
capitalism but set out the measures that a working class government, brought to power by a democratic revolution, would need to take to begin the transition to socialism. These included the abolition of private ownership of land, a progressive tax to drain away the wealth of the capitalists, the centralisation of credit in a national bank, state ownership of transport and communications, planned extension of production to meet need and free state education for all children. In one sense, Marxs predictions were brilliantly confirmed within months. Revolutions shook Europe later in 1848. But the course of events revealed a flaw in this first communist programme. Even where democratic rights were won, as in France, they were not enough to overthrow capitalism. Out on the streets, the working class was confronted by the armed might of the state. Soldiers and policemen, disciplined and controlled by officers from the richer classes, enforced laws backed up by their officers relatives in the judiciary. They massacred the workers of Paris and were given medals to commemorate it. Marx, himself imprisoned during the German revolution, and Engels, who fought in the defeated revolutionary army, later drew a forthright conclusion. Given the human material that made up the state, with its millions of links to the ruling class, there was no possibility that a democratic government could overthrow the bourgeoisie by an Act of Parliament. The rest of the state machine would simply refuse to carry out orders and would overthrow the elected government. At first, that was as far as Marx went. Determined not to make the mistake of the utopians by dreaming up personal recipes for the future, he did not return to the
question until the class struggle gave him new evidence. In 1871, after France had been defeated by Prussia, the French government agreed to dismantle the defences of Paris. However, the majority of Parisians opposed this, mobilised to stop the guns being moved and forced the government itself to flee. Paris Commune For three months, Paris had no government, no state apparatus, in the ordinary sense of the word. For the first time, working class men and women took charge of a modern capital city. They created their own system of government, a radical democracy, the Paris Commune in which delegates were elected by universal suffrage from each city district. The delegates had responsibility for the defence of the city, distributing what food was available and formulating the laws by which the city would now live. They met in public and their decisions were enforced by the people themselves when they declared the eight hour day and a minimum wage they did not need a judicial commission to work out how to introduce it. Well aware of how popular representatives could become corrupted by power, the Commune decreed that no official would receive more than a workers wage and that all delegates were immediately recallable by their electors. Real accountability, not the empty democracy which allows an MP, once elected, to ignore the electors for the next five years! Marx saw in the Paris Commune more than just an episodic adventure in democracy. He realised that it had revealed the key to the problem of how forces created by capitalist society could, through revolutionary struggle, transform themselves into the first stage of the new society.
The existing state had to be smashed, that he already knew, but Paris showed how a new form of social organisation, the commune, could carry out those functions of state power that would still be necessary during the transition, such as defence, reconstruction and economic organisation, without forming a new oppressive apparatus standing above the people. More than that, because the population as a whole now had responsibility for government, individuals were themselves transformed. Attitudes and assumptions that had been formed under capitalist rule were left behind. It was not yet socialism, but the road to socialism the transition period had been opened. Marx developed his conclusions further in the mid-1870s by sketching out what he thought could be said with some certainty about this transitional period. In the aftermath of revolution, the economic system would be whatever had been created by capitalism. Marx assumed that the first task of the new commune state would be to get the economy working again. All who could would be required to work and, since the commune would have confiscated the wealth of the bourgeoisie, society would make rapid strides towards economic equality. However, although utilising existing industrial capacity on a rationally planned basis would be a huge step forward, society would still be marked by its origins in capitalism. Inequality would be reduced but the actual scale of production would still be limited. In the longer run, it would be necessary for society to transform that as well. Regional and national inequalities had to be overcome. Reversing the dramatic underdevelopment of vast areas of the globe would require planned re-
allocation of resources and the creation of a genuinely democratic division of labour within a global economy. Marx, therefore, further refined the concept of a transition society and introduced the idea that the development of communist society would take place in two phases. In the first stage, socialism as he called it, the commune state was still necessary both to defeat all attempts at counter-revolution and to reconstruct the international economic system on an egalitarian and planned basis. Democratic dictatorship This, Marx called, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship is frequently counterposed to democracy. Yet for Marx the concept of dictatorship was necessary and justified. Indeed, it was a very democratic dictatorship. Democratic, that is, for the vast majority, the working class; dictatorial over the bosses who would try to sabotage progress and crush the new regime through counter-revolution. How long this transition would take was not predictable but Marx pointed out that the more successful the commune was the less necessary it would become. Once the bourgeoisie had been eliminated as a class, for example, there would be no need for military organisation or defence expenditure. In the longer term, the transition would be completed when society no longer needed a political force, a state of any sort, in order to organise production and distribution. Administration would still be necessary but in an egalitarian society this would not involve the subordination of one part of the population by another, it would no longer be political. This would be communist society.
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Eduard Bernstein
These developments underpinned the emerging view inside the SPD and other workers' parties, that capitalism could be reformed from above. In Britain, this perception shaped the programme and practice of the Labour Party. In Germany, Eduard Bernstein, a very influential SPD thinker, explicitly abandoned the struggle for revolutionary socialism, claiming that Marx and Engels were fundamentally wrong about capitalism's tendency to crisis and declaring that the revolutionary road was utopian. He promoted the view that Germany would continue to prosper and that workers, under the paternal guidance of the SPD's parliamentary leadership, could move towards a gradual socialist transformation. A battle of ideas developed within the SPD that would profoundly influence the socialist movement internationally. The Polish-born Marxist, Rosa Luxemburg, launched a defence of basic Marxist principles against Bernstein in her pamphlet, Reform or revolution. World War Despite Luxemburg's battles within the SPD, Bernstein's reformism gained influence and served to justify many an SPD retreat. When
capitalist stability gave way to the catastrophic First World War, the SPD leadership supported the German state's war effort. The SPD's programme had, in fact, strengthened capitalism by directing workers' anger away from the bosses' system itself into a doomed attempt to make it more humane. Reformist logic the commitment to managing capitalism inexorably leads to the defence of that system led the German SPD leadership to support their bosses when they plunged Germany and Europe into a frenzy of inter-imperialist carnage. Luxemburg had clearly anticipated the danger of this logic. She recognised that whether workers struggle to reform the capitalist state or overthrow it is not a question of different paths on the same road or towards the same goal: That is why people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society they take a stand for surface modification of the old society. She was proved right not only by the SPD leadership's becoming
Rosa Luxemburg
armed might of workers' and peasants' militias combined with the power of workers' councils (soviets) could secure the basis for a socialist society. The insurrection in October 1917 was able to take power from the capitalists precisely because the workers had built their own alternative power structures. Without these alternatives, without a revolutionary party leading a revolution reformism will always fill the gap. And Reformism's strategy can have far more tragic consequences than just a missed opportunity. In 1973 in Chile, after Salvador Allende's left-wing government attempted to implement a programme of radical reforms, the bosses launched a bloody coup against the workers. The workers were left defenceless and the socialist government
powerless. All their decrees came to nothing. The real power of the bosses' state was revealed in all its brutal horror in a Santiago football stadium where army troops murdered thousands of workers and radical students. We have to ensure that this lesson is learnt once and for all by the majority of the working class. The century now ending has seen countless opportunities to rid the globe of capitalism squandered by reformist leaders, all too often ending in tragedy. This is why the necessity for revolutionary force, organised by the mass of workers with the unambiguous aim of smashing the military power ofthe capitalist state and replacing it with the power of the workers militia, based on the democracy of workers' councils, is the only strategy that can secure a socialist victory.
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the air. Soldiers deserted and mutinied. The Tsarist regime crumbled within days. It was replaced by the Provisional Government, made up of bourgeois politicians. But the workers who had made the revolution also built their own organisations: factory committees, workers' militia and the workers and soldiers' soviets. Dual Power The fall of Tsar Nicholas only served to deepen the contradictions at the level of state power. A situation of dual power began that is, power was split between the bourgeoisie on the one hand and the working class on the other. This situation, a feature of revolutionary situations, could not last forever. Either the workers or the bosses would have to become the sole power in the land. The majority of the delegates to the Petrograd Soviet including its Menshevik (reformist) leaders supported the provisional government They saw the February uprising as a bourgeois democratic revolution which would logically result in a bourgeois government.
The soviets resolved to form an observation committee to watch over the provisional government. They intended to establish strict control on behalf of the working masses who saw them as the voice of their struggles. The bourgeoisie meanwhile looked upon the Provisional Government as their bastion against those very same struggles. For the working class to triumph they could not merely rely on the maturity of the objective situation, nor could they rely solely on the spontaneous struggle of the masses as had been proved by the failed revolution of 1905. A victorious socialist revolution requires a subjective force; in the subsequent October revolution that force was the Bolshevik party. The Bolsheviks showed an ability to develop a strategically correct understanding of the February revolution and what followed. This was not automatic, it was forged through democratic debate within the party and through the experience of the living struggle. Initially, many leading Bolsheviks shared a view similar to that of the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet. These included the editorial board of Prav-
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Election restrictions Today elections are still not completely free and fair in Britain. At 16 we are old enough to marry, old enough to work and be exploited, but still not allowed to vote. Not all our votes count. The undemocratic first-past-the-post system means that all the votes for unsuccessful constituency candidates are discounted. A system of proportional representation would ensure that all parties were represented according to their share of the vote but the main
parties resist it. The elected House the Commons still doesnt have full power. The unelected House of Lords can obstruct and delay laws. And Britain is still not a republic. The Queen is not just a tourist attraction but has the power to declare war, the power to dissolve a parliament, and the power to appoint and dismiss prime ministers. If there is a hung parliament after this election, the power of this unelected hereditary monarch will come into play. One government after another strips away the rights of the people. MI5 and MI6 use torture against British citizens to force them into confessions. The High Court ruled it illegal for a group of Muslims to chant slogans accusing Britains army of occupation in Iraq of murder despite the fact that there are documented cases of soldiers murdering civilians in this illegal and unpopular war. Perfectly legal demonstrations against the banks in the City of London last year were herded into police pens and one bystander was even killed by police thugs. The fight for democratic rights goes on, and it is resisted by the rich minority of capitalists who rule Britain. All the more reason to step up the fight to extend our rights, and to use what rights we have to fight for a government of the working class. In the coming election, communists should stand candidates where we can, on a clear revolutionary programme. That is what Workers Power supporter Jeremy Drinkall is doing in Vauxhall, South London, where he is standing on the ANTICAPITALIST ticket. When revolutionaries stand in elections, they do so to raise support for workers struggles outside
parliament, in the workplace and on the streets. They put forward policies that address the immediate needs of working class people, like investment in jobs and housing, and link it to the need to dispossess the rich capitalists for example by taking over the banks, taxing the rich, and taking the big companies into state hands under workers control, without compensation. Communist candidates oppose our rulers wars, call for the withdrawal of troops from overseas, and support strikes and occupations against job losses. A communist candidate is not like a normal candidate of one of the capitalist parties. Because they are part of a disciplined communist organisation, which holds all its members accountable to its democratic decisions, a communist candidate cannot just pursue their own whims, is obliged to uphold a fighting working class policy, and agrees in advance to take only the average wage of a skilled worker, donating the rest of their large salary to the working class movement. No expenses scandals, duck islands and second homes for us!
Socialist society Communists believe that even if 600 communist MPs were elected to the House of Commons, the real power in society the unelected police and army chiefs, the faceless civil servants who rule behind the scenes would quickly move to overthrow us, rather than sit by peacefully as we took away their wealth and shared it among the people. That is why, election or no election, communists always say clearly: to get rid of the rule of the capitalists, to remove their control of societys wealth and the riches we create, to establish a fair, socialist system based on a democratic plan of production in place of inequality and market madness it will be necessary to smash the capitalists state forces in a revolution. That will take the action of millions of people, organised and led by a revolutionary anti-capitalist party. It is to build that party winning new recruits across the country that communists devote their efforts in the coming election campaign.
he world is witnessing dramatic and far-reaching changes. The global credit crunch has turned into an historic financial crisis. A series of corporations - some of them major icons of American capitalism - have collapsed into bankruptcy, been forced into takeovers or were nationalised. And we are still only at the beginning. Major recessions now loom in world's major economic including Britain. Major corporations are already fighting to stay alive in a frenzied bout of takeovers. States will also desperately seek to shift
the worst effects of the crisis onto one another. There is one thing, however, that capitalists and ruling politicians will agree on: to make the working class pay for the economic crisis. Job losses, unemployment, pay cuts and home repossessions are on the way. But the working class did nothing to cause the crisis - so why should we pay for it? We shouldn't. We urgently need to draw up a plan of action to resist this onslaught. What sort of organisation do we need? What demands should we fight for? What tactics should we fight around? These
are the crucial questions our class faces today. A Workers' Answer to the Crisis is addressed to these questions and problems. But it also goes further. In the 21st century, if we are to avoid decades more war, poverty and exploitation, then resistance to the bosses' attacks must - more than ever - be linked to the overthrow of capitalism and a socialist world. This is why A Workers' Answer to the Crisis proposes a strategy that links our immediate struggles to the socialist goal. It is not a manifesto of reforms for parliamentary legislation but a
set of proposals for working class action on the streets and in the workplaces. Every one of the policies we raise addresses the immediate interests of our class. None of of the solutions we propose are compatible with the capitalist system. Each and every one of them undermines the ability of the capitalists to exploit us. A Workers' Answer to the Crisis is the British action programme of the revolutionary socialist organisation, Workers Power. If you agree with it, we urge you to join us and help turn it into a reality.
Get your copy of the The Workers Answer to the Crisis from your local Workers Power branch, or online at http://tinyurl.com/workers-answer For further reading...
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that the method of developing a programme that points out the road to the revolution has remained constant it is what we call a transitional method. The transitional method developed as a response to the first serious undermining of the revolutionary programme of Marx and Engels. While the Communist Manifesto outlined an elementary programme for the transition to socialism, the major working class parties formed in the later nineteenth century, especially the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), gradually abandoned this idea of a transition (and later revolution) altogether. In its place they developed a minimum programme (a set of demands for reforms within capitalism) and a maximum programme (socialism). The concept of a bridge between the two was considered unimportant. The SPD grew rapidly and won parliamentary representation. But it came under increasing pressure
to adapt to capitalism. Its minimum demands were often important and radical, supportable even today (arming the people, for example). While the transitional programme has replaced the minimum programme for Marxists, the fight around reforms (minimum demands) remains important and can kickstart many struggles. But the minimum demands did not, taken as a whole, constitute a programme for a revolution. Any mention of socialism as the movements goal became the stuff of Sunday speeches, separated by a growing chasm from the SPDs actual programme and practice as it became ever more reformist. It was Engels, writing in 1891, who first spotted the problem with the minimum/maximum approach. When he saw the SPDs draft programme (the Erfurt Programme) he wrote: The political demands of the draft have one great fault. It lacks precisely what should have been said. If all ten demands were granted we should indeed have more
diverse means of achieving our main political aim, but the aim itself would in no wise have been achieved. Engels saw that the fight for reforms, though important, ran the risk of becoming the fight for the reform of capitalism rather than for its revolutionary overthrow. His doubts were confirmed by the SPDs evolution into a reformist party. After the Bolsheviks successfully re-elaborated the transitional method in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the international revolutionary movement, the Communist International, looked back to Marx and Engels and their transitional method in order to avoid the pitfalls of the SPD-style minimum/maximum programme. Tragically, the Russian revolutions internal defeat at the hands of Stalin and his bureaucrats cut short the debate in the Communist International and it was left to Trotsky (exiled and eventually murdered by Stalin) to keep the revolutionary flame alight and formulate a transitional programme for
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VI Lenin
Party (RSDLP), a party which united all revolutionary Marxists in the Russian empire at the start of the century.In 1903 a row broke out at the RSDLPs founding congress. What appeared to be at first a minor organisational question, over what it meant to be a member of the party, proved to be a key political question in the fight for revolution. enin, the leader of the Bolshevik faction, argued in line with what had up until then been the common position of the entire leadership of the RSDLP, that the organisation needed to be a militant, professional and centralised organisation.Its members would have to be under the discipline of one of the party organisations and fight for the party programme, what was later to become known as democratic centralism. The party would be organised democratically, with freedom of discussion among the members lead-
ing to a vote on the partys programme, policies, tactics and action. Once a decision had been made then every member of the party would be obliged to fight for it. Lenin won a majority at the 1903 congress after a number of his opponents walked out. (Bolshevik is the Russian word for majority). The minority, Mensheviks, (from the Russian word for minority) argued for a looser form of organisation. They refused to accept the right of the congress to elect the editorial board of the party paper, Iskra. This was not just a question of the formal constitution of the party but was directly related to the political tasks of the Social Democrats. In the previous year, Lenin wrote a very important work, What is to be Done?, that remains a vital guide for revolutionaries in the struggle today. Lenin explained that without a conscious political leadership, a
party, the working class economic struggle inside the workplace will not, spontaneously, generate a revolutionary socialist consciousness.The party is the bearer of that consciousness, fighting within every sphere of class struggle against capitalism and oppression not just within the workplace over economic issues to win the working class and oppressed to the revolutionary programme. Capitalism conceals the exploitation and oppression that is inherent within it. Selling your labour seems to be a fair deal. It appears to be a free contract between a boss and a worker. Systematic exploitation is not immediately obvious, even if the effects of it, like low pay are.And it is precisely the fight over the effects the fight for a better deal, a fair days pay for a fair days work, for reforms within capitalism that workers spontaneously take up. To go beyond this requires an under-
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STRAP GOES HERE KEY STRUGGLE (A): THE WORKING CLASS AND THE UNIONS
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Committees of action
T
By Joy Macready, Oct 2009 he mainstream parties' assessment of the extent of the pubic sector cutbacks needed an estimated 10-20% cuts in the health sector, 2bn cuts in education, 10 per cent savings across government departments is staggering. Their representatives and their loyal friends in the media, however, never mention that it is caused by the gaping hole left in the public purse from the 1.3 trillion bailout of the banks. Meanwhile, private sector bosses are using the recession to relocate production, sack workers, cut their wages and steal from their pensions. Share prices and profit margins may be recovering, but this is not enough for the greedy capitalists; they want to inflict further damage on working class families and communities. Solidarity But already we see the signs of a militant fightback. Occupations are leading the way: Visteon, Two Sisters, Prisme, Waterford, and Vestas, to name a few. Parents and teachers in Glasgow and Lewisham occupied their schools to prevent closure. Postal workers are balloting for a national strike against redundancies and reductions in hours and wages. Tower Hamlets College lecturers took allout indefinite action for four weeks, while Leeds bin workers are still all out. The list of struggles shows that it is not just the public sector that is under attack, but also the private sector; it is not just workers fighting back against service cuts, but the users of worsening services. Although the public sector is in the direct firing line of the government, all workers will be affected by cuts in housing, healthcare or education. As Marxists, we do not just live in the realm of ideas and theory, but we put our theory into practice. The challenge is to find a way to link these struggles together, overcoming the division between public and private, between providers and users, and between the various unions. Those struggles listed above are inspiring but all are isolated to a degree. Within the different struggles, Workers Power has argued for local committees of action to unite activists at a community level. The Vestas solidarity committees, which attracted workers from many different unions, community and green activists, and socialist organisations, were an encouraging step in this direction. But we need a more permanent form of organisation that goes beyond the limited scope of one struggle, one strike or one issue committees of action that can be mobilised to fight on a number of fronts at the same time. Such committees can react quickly to events, overcome divisions between workers in different unions, and also bring into struggle the unemployed who have been thrown out of work. They should also include users of public services; as the government and bosses try to lay the blame for deteriorating services at the feet of public sector workers, pubic opinion must be won to the struggle of these workers for quality services. Unity from below Britain has developed organs of class struggle like this in the past. During the 1926 General Strike, councils of action were built by the trades councils in each town and city all working class political, industrial, co-operative and unemployed organisations were represented, and, importantly, women were also heavily involved. They counteracted the poisonous and pernicious propaganda of the government and the employers' organisations and even took control of food supplies, organised defence corps against scabs and the police and army, and directly controlled the strike locally. Miners strike In 1984, during the Great Miners' Strike, a network of Miners' Support Committees criss-crossed the country, providing vital solidarity like food supplies, Christmas presents for the miners' children, speakers to factories to explain why the miners' needed support, campaigning against police harassment of strikers and mobilising support for the picket lines. But, say the sceptics, Britain today is not at that level of class struggle the working class does not have the confidence or the fighting spirit to create committees of action. This is a self-defeating argument. In every area where there is struggle, strikers can put out the call for committees of action and rally support from others. The committees will in turn help to boost confidence and raise fighting spirit. Take the Vestas struggle, for example, where workers occupied a plant that made blades for wind power when bosses announced its closure. It was the solidarity movement the climate camp and Campaign Against Climate Change that encouraged the workers to occupy the plant. If solidarity committees could be built for Vestas, then why not for other struggles? By building committees of action in every town and city, more workers will feel able to take militant action and the general level of the class struggle will rise. But to do this, they must do more than simply raise donations, hold meetings and stand on picket lines, crucial though these acts are. They can start to become an alternative centre of power in society. Alternative power What do we mean by an alternative centre of power? Three things. First, we know from bitter experience that the trade union leaders often sabotage our struggles, selling them short, calling off action, disuniting strikes. Committees of action can help thwart such treachery by building unity from below. Second, committees of action can also lay the basis for a political alternative to Labour a basis from which to build a new anti-capitalist party in Britain, one that will fight for the interests of the working class. Committing to a new party is not a precondition to joining the local committees of action many workers who still look to Labour or who are against all parties can be rallied to them. But, because these will be engaged in the local struggles, because they will be coming up against the government's cuts and attacks, many will begin to realise that only a working class political party can secure general, society-wide victories for our class through fighting for the overthrow of the capitalist system and the formation of a workers' government. Finally, a government of the workers would be based not on an unelected civil service bureaucracy, unelected generals, unelected millionaires in the boardrooms, and 600-odd MPs who are elected every five years but are free to break their promises itself. It could be based on democratic organisations of working class delegates from below, workers' councils with all delegates recallable by the workers who voted for them. The formation of committees for action is a step in that direction a step towards an alternative centre of power for the whole of society. For more on committees of action, go to: www.workerspower.com
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measure to the fact that most union leaders have applied the brakes whenever they could in order to prop up the embattled Labour government. In the run-up to an election the leaders of the big unions, especially in the public sector, will do all they can to head off strikes embarrassing for Brown. But in private companies, as the economy picks up and profits start to recover, workers will feel more confidence to fight job losses and cuts in wages and pension. In the public service, whoever wins the election, workers will face the biggest onslaught on their jobs and conditions since the early 1980s. Build from below It is vital we learn the lessons from recent struggles. The biggest lesson is that we face defeat if we leave the leadership of struggles to the full time officials, who repeatedly
sell us out or sell us short. An example of a monumental sell-out was the action of Unite fulltime conveners and national officials who did nothing to defend the jobs of 850 agency workers at the Cowley BMW mini plan. An example of the sell-short was CWU leader Billy Hayes in the post after militant rank and file action in action in London and elsewhere had management on the ropes. The November Interim Agreement, settled for by the executive, led to few improvements in some offices, but by calling off the action without a binding permanent agreement they doomed posties to another bitter battle when management returns to the attack, as they surely will. Another example, the British Airways cabin crew dispute where branch militants won the vote for strike action but Unite leader Derek Simpson, whilst calling the judge's strike ban a disgraceful day for
democracy simultaneously leaked to the press his view that a decision to strike at Christmas was over the top. Now Simpson has pledged in advance that, whatever the result of the re-ballot, Unite will not call strikes over the Easter holiday period. How can we stop this kind of sabotage? Firstly by warning that sellouts by the officials are a real possibility at the beginning of every dispute. The syndicalists and the communists of the 1920s always said, Watch Your Leaders. Even better would be Control your Leaders. We can do this by organising strike committees, elected by mass meetings held regularly during a dispute. We should demand that the officials report regularly to them and that rank and file representatives are present at all negotiation and they should not be bound by secrecy or confidentiality. Lastly we need
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to insist that no final agreement is reached without the opportunity for discussion of it and voting on it by mass meetings of the strikers. Another historic slogan first raised by Clydeside shop stewards in the First World War is a vital guide to action today. With the union officials where possible, without them where necessary. It means that not only that we need to retain or gain to control over our own disputes but to initiate them whenever the union leaders refuse to act. This not pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, either. A number of disputes last year started without official backing. Visteon, Vestas, Prisme the list is quite a long one. The last two occupations started before the workers even joined a union! While the postal strike would not have gone national at all if it hadn't been for the London offices kick starting the action back in the summer of '09. Action Committees By uniting rank and file militants from each and every union into local organisations that can deliver action strikes, solidarity, demos and rallies we can help every section that takes action. Such organisations sprang up around the Visteon and Vestas occupations and, most notably, the national post strike. In the case of Vestas, workers commented that they could not have done what they did without the solidarity groups.
Rob Williams, a Unite convenor at Linamar car parts plant, was victimised for his role in persuading Bridgend Ford workers to agree to strike in support of the Visteon workers. But not only did the threatened solidarity action force Ford to cough up the workers' redundancy money, the spirit of solidarity spread and Rob won his own job back. Workers Power campaign to transform these solidarity groups into committees of action by not dissolving them after each dispute, but keeping them going and broadening them, drawing in delegates from as many workplaces and unions as possible. Of course such committees can only survive in a period of more intense class struggle, but that's precisely what we anticipate. Indeed the 700 or so individuals and delegates coming to the Right To Work conference are testimony to the fact that thousands of activists know we are facing a co-ordinated attack and need a coordinated response. The National Shop Stewards Network, for fear of offending RMT officials and due in no small part to the influence of the Socialist Party, has several times refused Workers Power's proposal to take up the slogan, 'with the union officials where possible, without them where necessary'. Right To Work to its credit has done so, both at its founding conference last June and again at last month's steering committee. Now we have
to move from words to deeds. We need to support workers once they take unofficial action, but also prepare the way for such action now. The best way to do this is to form rank and file movements democratically uniting the most farsighted and determined militants inside every union and across the trade union movement. Tradition There is an excellent tradition in Britain of building rank and file movements. It goes back over 100 years to the years just before and during the First World War. Union and Labour leaders called for their members to make sacrifices and support the mass slaughter in the trenches during the war. A network of shop stewards, directly elected representatives of the rank and file, sprang up across the country to defend the members pay conditions and oppose conscription. In 1921 the post-war crisis hit. Workers' wages fell by up to 24 per cent per cent by 1924. Unemployment topped two million. The right wing union leaders again hampered the workers' fightback; union membership fell. It was in 1924, in this difficult climate, that the young communist party launched the National Minority Movement (NMM) in the unions. The party's paper set out its aims: In every union the rank and file forces must be gathered 1. Around a fighting programme.
2. Around concrete demands for union consolidation and reorganisation. 3. Around the necessity for creating a new ideology amongst the union membership. 4. Around the necessity of training and developing a new leadership to replace the old. The NMM set out to transform the local trades councils into fighting organisations of the whole labour movement, changing their constitutions to incorporate delegates from workplace committees, political organisations, co-operatives and college students, as well as union branches. It fought to have them affiliated to the TUC to make its pressure felt within the official structures. This is a model for the committees of action we need today. But the communists did not rest there, communist party member JR Campbell wrote:
It should be clear to members of minority groups, however, that their task consists of something more than demanding slightly higher wages than the officials are prepared to demand That 'something more' is the popularisation of the conception of trade unionism, not merely as a reformist force under capitalism, but as a revolutionary instrument for participating in the struggle for power, and after the struggle for power, playing a part in the management of industry. This was not just for the contemplation of party members or lengthy articles either. Every candidate for even the most insignificant post, wrote Campbell, should stand on a revolutionary platform. While the communists supported the left officials against the right and strove to transform the muddled and incomplete left wing viewpoint of the more progressive
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STRAP GOES HERE KEY STRUGGLE (B): AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND WAR
Marxism: on war
By Jenny Scott, May 1999 ar is a bloody and brutal business. Our rulers deliberately air-brush the images we get of the wars they are involved in. The Gulf war against Iraq in 1991, was presented by the media as a computer choreographed fireworks show in aid of democracy. Later, the pictures of hundreds of mangled and charred bodies on the road to Basra came to light. Iraqis had been wantonly slaughtered by the US, British and other forces. We are now being treated to the same sort of propaganda barrage as our rulers blanket bomb the Balkans. They are having a harder time of it given Nato's mistake in bombing a refugee column and its targeting of journalists, television technicians and make-up artists at the Serbian television headquarters. But to soften the impact of the scenes of carnage, this time much emphasis is being placed on the humanitarian objectives of the Nato onslaught. Unlike our rulers Marxists never try to prettify war in order to justify it. We tell the truth. Part of that truth is that war is an inevitable product of a class divided society and a world divided into competing nations. It is also a necessary part of the struggle to overthrow class society.
Pacifism Unlike pacifists who reject all wars socialists oppose some wars, support others and will be prepared to wage war against the capitalist enemy. Our aim is to create a world free of national divisions and in which classes have been abolished: world socialism. Only such a world can get rid of war altogether and
to achieve what we will have to fight, arms in hand. Clausewitz, a nineteenth century German soldier and philosopher, provided an important insight into wars when he wrote: We see, therefore, that war is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky all took Clausewitz's insistence that war was not something separate from politics as their starting point for analysing wars. They went on to analyse the class character of each particular war. Writing during the carnage of the First World War, Lenin noted that the key questions were, ''what caused that war, what classes are waging it, and what historico-economic conditions gave rise to it. By posing these questions Lenin drew the conclusion that there were both just and unjust wars. In the former category he included wars fought by nations oppressed by imperialism -Ireland's war for independence for example. In the latter category he pointed to the war then being waged between the major imperialist powers. He recognised that beneath the superficial question of''who fired the first shot?, lay the important fact that those powers were fighting each other in order to divide the world between themselves. He wrote: This is a war firstly, to fortify the enslavement of the colonies by means of a 'fairer' distribution and subsequent more 'concerted' exploitation of them; secondly, to fortify the oppression of other nations within the 'great' power's, for both Austria and Russia (Russia
more and much worse than Austria) maintain their rule by such oppression, intensifying it by means of war; and thirdy, to fortify and prolong wage slavery, for the working class is split up and suppressed, while the capitalists gain, making fortunes out of the war, aggravating national prejudices and intensifying reaction, which has raised its head in all countries, even in the freest and most republican. Imperialism The imperialist system described by Lenin and the wars waged by the great powers in that system retain the same reactionary characteristics he noted. The principal difference is that since the second world wars most of the oppressed countries have been transformed from colonies into semi-colonies. That is, colonies that have been given, or have won, formal independence but remain subordinated to the economic power and political pressure of imperialism. Imperialism goes to war against such countries in the name of democracy against the military dictator Galtieri of Argentina in the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982, against the tyrant Saddam Hussein in 1991 (and again in 2003) and against the new Hitler Milosevic during the Balkans war. Socialists recognise that this democratic pretext is a lie. In each case imperialism has used and backed the dictators in question when it suited them. Only when they went against imperialism's will and threatened to upset its world order-and the profits of its mulinationals or the stability of the regions it seeks to control does imperialism turn against these countries.
Socialists have a clean conscience. We have fought these dictators while they were imperialism's friends and we will continue to fight them despite them becoming its enemies. But, in each case the concrete question in the wars by imperialism is not the fate of the dictators themselves Thatcher had no wish to overthrow Galtieri, Saddam Hussein was kept in power courtesy of George Bush and Milosevic may yet be used as the guarantor of stability in the Balkans but the subordination of the oppressed nation to the will ofimperialism. If imperialism succeeds, it represents a defeat for workers internationally. The Gulf war was fought by the imperialist-led coalition to keep Iraq in this subordinate state and to end any threat to their exploitation of the area. The imperialists' claim that they were fighting for democracy against a cruel dictator was a lie. Kuwait the country invaded by Iraq and liberated by imperialism was a vile dictatorship in which workers and peasants were denied any democratic rights whatsoever. Its royal family, restored by the liberation, set about reinforcing its dictatorship under the protection of the USA and Britain. The importance of this example is that it demonstrates why Marxists were not simply against the war in the Gulf. We were against imperialism's war on Iraq, a war waged for oil and political control of the Gulf region. We supported Iraq's war against imperialism. This was a just war even though it was being waged under a leadership which we want to see destroyed by the workers and peasants of Iraq. In the Balkans today we apply the
same principles, but with one important difference. In Kosova, Milosevic himself is engaged in a reactionary war of ethnic cleansing. We therefore make a distinction between the war in Kosova and the war in Serbia itself. Different class issues are at stake in each war. We are against the policy being continued in Kosova reactionary, nationalist ethnic cleansing, and therefore do not support Serbia. We are against the policy being continued by Nato subordination of the Balkans and therefore do not support Nato. In Serbia itself, however, the justified defence of an ex-Stalinist country in transition to becoming a capitalist semi-colony against imperialism means we do support Serbia's struggle against Nato. Some Marxists throw up their hands at this and plead for easy, catch-all solutions. But war provides no easy answers. Wars can rapidly change their character. Only by a class analysis, an understanding of the politics of each war, can we understand why some wars are just and some are unjust and only thus can we determine whose side we are on, if any. This method has proved vital for revolutionaries in many wars, but none more so than the two world wars of this century. Both, despite the so called anti-fascist character of the Allied war effort in the Second World War, were unjust wars as far as Britain, the USA, France, Germany, Japan and the other imperialist states were concerned. World Wars Neither world war was fought to preserve democracy. Both were fought in order to re-divide the world for exploitation between
the imperialist powers. They were unjust, imperialist wars. As Lenin put it with regard to the First World War: Picture to yourselves a slave owner who owned 100 slaves warring against a slave owner who owned 200 slaves for a more 'just' distribution of slaves. Clearly, the application of the term 'defensive' war, or 'war for the defence ofthe fatherland', in such a case would be historically false, and in practice would be sheer deception of the common people ... Precisely in this way are the present day imperialist bourgeoisie deceiving the peoples by means of 'national' ideology and the term 'defence of the fatherland' in the present war between slave owners for fortifying and strengthening slavery. Revolutionary defeatism Lenin formulated a policy for Marxists that went beyond simply analysing the class character of wars and supporting or opposing them. He developed the policy of revolutionary defeatism -waging the class struggle in your own country against your own bourgeoisie even at the cost of it being defeated in war as a means of creating the conditions under which imperialist war could be transformed into a civil war, a war by workers on their own ruling class. He argued: A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war, cannot fail to see that its military reverses facilitate its overthrow. Socialists must explain to the masses that they have no other road of salvation except the revolutionary overthrow of 'their' governments, and that advantage must be taken of these governments' embarrassments In
the present war precisely for this purpose. The successful application of this policy led directly to the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the world's first workers' state. But even the establishment of such a state, in a single country, will not eradicate war and its attendant horrors. Socialism Until the socialist revolution is victorious on a global scale freeing the world from the economic and national competition that causes war the capitalists will resist each and every worker' revolution since they stand to lose their fortunes, their privileges and their political rule. Always and everywhere they will fight arms in hand to defeat workers' revolution. Civil war to
defeat them will be necessary. It is a stage towards the creation of a world free from war, and such an objective justifies the use of warlike means to achieve it. That is another reason why Marxists are not pacifists and are not in favour of general and abstract calls for disarmament. We know we cannot defeat a powerful enemy other than by revolution and civil war. To win such a war we need arms. We are for the disarmament of the bosses' by the armed working class. As Engels put it: If the working class was to overcome the bourgeoisie it would first have to master the art and strategy of war. To Say otherwise is a deception, one that will result in wars without end.
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Accommodation Many on the left in the imperialist countries baulk at such a position. For example, the Alliance for Workers Liberty in Britain refuses to even call for the troops to be pulled out of Iraq. They argue that the trade unions in Iraq would be destroyed by clerical Islamist forces in the resistance were
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STRAP GOES HERE KEY STRUGGLE (C): OPPOSING RACISM, FIGHTING FASCISM
By Luke Cooper, Sept 2009 new group calling itself the English Defence League (EDL) is organising a series of marches trying to intimidate Muslim and Asian communities, under the guise of protests against Islamic extremism. Twice now, in recent weeks, Asian youth along with white antifascist campaigners have driven them off the streets in angry protests in Birmingham. The EDL marches mark the far rights return to the streets, on the back of the British National Partys increasing electoral success. The BNP, presenting themselves as a respectable party, remains fascist to the core. Their election campaigns are just a cover for winning power through a campaign of street terror, culminating in a fascist dictatorship. Undercover investigations by journalists and infiltrators inside the BNP have consistently exposed this as the basic ambition of the BNP leadership. The EDL, if it is allowed to grow, could become the streetfighting arm of Britains resurgent fascist movement. That is why istmust be stopped by any means necessary. Communists see fascist organisations as instruments of civil war against the working class. Their aim is to smash the workers movement, both trade union and political, and to divide the working class through murderous campaigns against racial, religious and sexual minorities. In this sense the fascists are not a normal capitalist party, and so the methods necessary to defeat them cannot be those we use against the maintream capitalist parties. Fascism is a weapon of last resort for the capitalists against the working class movement: when capitalism faces a major social crisis, the ruling class can turn to the fascist organisations.
Antifascist movement The most high profile antifascist campaign in Britain is Unite Against Fascism (UAF) an alliance of MPs including Labour, Liberals and Tories, several trade unions, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone and the Socialist Workers Party. Though UAF sees the need to protest against the BNP, it suffers from having to limit its arguments and tactics to what the capitalist politicians and figures on the right wing of the labour movement will accept. The return of the fascists to the streets has created tensions in the alliance. In Birmingham the local UAF group, Birmingham United, refused to organise a protest against the second EDL march, fearing violence would break out between antifascist youth and the EDL. In the run up to the march UAF had lobbied the council and police to ban the EDL march and planned to hold a rally with Asian community leaders, trade unions and councillors in the council chamber at the same time. But then the police allowed the EDL to march while the council banned the anti-racist rally from taking place. It was a worked example of how the state will back far right groups against challenges from the work-
ers movement. Shamefully UAF then refused to organise a protest citing the danger of violence, leaving it to local antifascists, including to their credit the Socialist Workers Party, to organise a protest without them. The split in UAF exposed the contradiction built into the coalition from the outset. In order to keep more right wing, pacifistic forces on board UAF has to present only a liberal opposition to the BNP, and not back physical no platform. But the Socialist Workers Party, which is a key component of UAF, does support physical no platform. If the EDL continue to march while UAF refuse to organise counter-protests for fear of violence, then the contradictions within UAF between these wings can only widen further. Antifascist defence league The actions of Black and Asian youth in Birmingham are an example to the whole antifascist movement. But we shouldnt simply rely on spontaneous acts of courage. We need to take steps towards organised defence squads a national Antifascist Defence League that can rout the EDL wherever they appear. This is particularly important if we are to draw all other sections of the working class, white as well as black and Asian youth, into the struggle, and not just leave it to minority communities to defend themselves. The Socialist Workers Party, while supporting physical no platform where it happens, has not been willing to develop the struggle in Birmingham to a higher level of organisation, an antifascist defence league, as it would force a rupture in UAF. This is a mistake. We need to learn from the experience in Birmingham and generalise the policy of physically confronting the EDL elsewhere, if we are to make sure no community has to endure their campaign of racist and fascist terror.
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It is a last resort for the bourgeoisie since it involves the suppression of its own parliamentary representatives. As Nazi Germany and Mussolinis Italy showed, it is a measure that will be taken if the situation demands it. In the semi-colonial countries, fascism can develop as a movement arising out of communalist conflicts or out of reactionary clerical movements. The phraseology of such movements can sometimes be anti-imperialist. But this should not blind us to their anti-communist, anti-working class nature. This rhetoric is in the same mould as the demagogic anti-capitalism of the Nazis. With the triumph of communalism or clerical fascism in the semi-colonies, the
rule of imperialism will remain intact or even be strengthened. From the moment that fascism emerges, the working class must wage a merciless struggle to smash it. Even when it conceals its more general aims and concentrates on spreading the poisonous fumes of race hatred, the workers united front must be organised to fight it. We call on all working class organisations to build a mass workers united front against the fascists. The workers movement should not recognise or respect the democratic rights of fascist movements because they are instruments of civil war against the working class movement and the oppressed. But we do not call for them to be banned by the capitalist state. The
bourgeoisie cannot be entrusted with this task since they are the ultimate backers of the fascists. In fact, the state will use bans to disarm and hamper resistance to fascism. Instead, the revolutionaries fight to mobilise the working class around the slogans: no platform for fascists, drive the fascists out of the workers organisations! We must physically confront every fascist mobilisation and organise workers defence units to combat fascist attacks on the racially oppressed and the workers movement. The struggle to defend the democratic rights of the workers from military dictatorship and fascism will only be finally won through the overthrow of the system that spawns them: capitalism.
USEFUL WEBSITES Marxists Internet Archive a wealth of classic Marxist texts in many languages, readable online MARXISTS.ORG League for the Fifth International Website International news, theory, and key documents FIFTHINTERNATIONAL.ORG Workers Power Website Britain news and analysis WORKERSPOWER.COM Revolution Website Youth news, culture and politics WORLDREVOLUTION.ORG.UK