Reconstructing Lenin: an intellectual biography

I hope that ‘Reconstructing Lenin’ by Tamas Krausz becomes established as a major reference in writing and discussion about Lenin and the Bolsheviks: not simply in academic circles, but (more importantly) among modern-day revolutionary activists. It deserves to become an integral part of the study of Lenin, Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution – a growing and sizeable field of study since the end of the Cold War - due to the author’s excellent political judgement, the wealth of relevant contextual material and the way if illuminates the coherence and continuity in Lenin’s political thought over time (and its relationship to Lenin and his comrades’ political actions).

It is a very substantial book, a work of exceptional scholarship accurately subtitled ‘an intellectual biography’ because the focus is largely on Lenin’s ideas and their development. To call it ‘exhaustively researched’ is an understatement: its ‘Notes’ contain well over 1000 references, drawing on an extraordinarily wide range of sources.

Originally written in Hungarian, the English translation will hopefully influence discussion about its subject in the English-speaking world. This translation, by Balint Bethlenfalvy with Mario Fenyo, is published by US-based left-wing publishers Monthly Review Press.

The author, Tamas Krausz, is a professor of Russian history in Budapest. He is long established as a leading Marxist intellectual in Hungary. The earliest reference to his own writing on Lenin that I spotted in the bibliography was from 1980, so this book has had a long gestation (it is described as ‘four decades in the making’ on the back cover).

The author’s location in a former Eastern Bloc state means he is acutely conscious of the massive and violent distortion done to Lenin’s ideas, reputation and legacy by Stalinism. He is determined to uncover the real Lenin, via close attention to Lenin’s own writings and a sensitive project of re-discovering the intellectual, political and social world that shaped him.

This is not, it should be noted, an introduction to Lenin, the Bolsheviks, or the times in which they lived. A certain amount of familiarity with the field is generally assumed, while much of the language is reasonably specialised. It is nonetheless accessible and readable, and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to explore the field in some depth.

Although the focus is primarily on Lenin’s intellectual and political development, the opening (and long) chapter is biographical, from Lenin’s family background through his entire life. I thought this was excellent – genuinely insightful even for those of us familiar with Lenin and his life story, rooting the man in his time and place. It includes some fascinating, less well-known, details while recapitulating the essentials, giving a vivid sense of Lenin’s compelling personality as well as tracing the events of his life and how they intersected with wider political and social contexts.

It’s also worth noting here that two extensive appendices complement the main text perfectly. One of them is an extremely thorough series of brief biographical details of scores of socialists, political figures and so on relevant to a biography of Lenin. The other is a detailed time line of events between the revolutionary year of 1917 and Lenin’s death in 1924.Both of these are useful resources.

An innovative and coherent thinker

The book has three particular themes which should be flagged up. Firstly, Krausz is keen to root Lenin firmly in the Marxist tradition while grasping the intellectual contributions that made him innovative. He demonstrates, unanswerably, that Lenin made important contributions to the Marxist tradition – a necessary antidote to those who treat him as a purely pragmatic figure. But these contributions are nonetheless rooted in Marxism – Krausz explicitly rejects any suggestion that Lenin originated a new ism that is separate from Marxism, or one that constitutes a variation on Marxism.

Different chapters examine different important contributions – roughly chronologically, though there is inevitably much overlap. These include Lenin’s work on Russian capitalist development, imperialism, the national question, the state and revolution, and the relationship between struggles for democracy and struggles for socialism. Lenin made original contributions that form a vital part of the inheritance of classical Marxism and help us understand history and both understand and change the world we live in.

Secondly, Krausz makes a powerful case for Lenin’s intellectual and political coherence. This is not to underestimate his tactical or organisational flexibility – these are well documented. But his flexibility in practice was deeply rooted in a coherent and consistent worldview and set of ideas.

This is a vital antidote to the idea that Lenin was an opportunistic politician, twisting and turning to suit immediate practical interests with no intellectual compass. Even after 1917, when he repeatedly faced incredibly difficult obstacles as leader of a besieged and fledgling workers’ state, there was a coherent political worldview shaping his responses (whatever political expediency was, admittedly, required).

This, again, does not mean ignoring how Lenin’s ideas developed and evolved. There is no suggestion that he arrived fully formed, so to speak. Quite the opposite: the development of his ideas is traced in close relationship to the history of the society in which he lived. He is rooted historically by Krausz.

There is also a strong sense of interplay between Lenin’s thinking and that of other Marxists: he was ‘first among equals’, the leading figure in a talented and intellectually vibrant generation of radical socialists. There’s a lively sense of the many debates between Lenin and others, and the significance of these debates. It’s also clear that political experiences – above all the 1905 revolution – influenced the direction of Lenin’s thinking.

So Lenin made important political and theoretical contributions to Marxism which analysed a changing world: a world in which capitalism was spreading globally, while its European and north American core was evolving into a constellation of competing imperialist states, with the nation state increasingly intertwined with the capitalist economy. Capitalist development was uneven, with Russia characterised by a complex mix of new industrial methods and traditional (but evolving) agriculture. Classes were being re-shaped: the industrial working class was growing in many countries, but the peasantry was changing too.

Consequently, the prospects for revolution were changing too – new thinking was needed on the potential role of different classes in the revolutionary process, and on the nature and scope of revolution. Lenin’s analysis evolved over time and through debate with other Marxists, but nonetheless formed a coherent worldview that was consistent with the Marxist tradition.

Ideas into action

The third central theme in Krausz’s account concerns the relationship between ideas and action. Lenin was a revolutionary political leader. He didn’t simply develop analysis of the world; that analysis was, profoundly and throughout his adult life, geared towards changing the world. Krausz notes that Marx’s famous thesis – ‘the philosophers have interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it’ – has never been more acutely relevant than in the case of Lenin. A single-minded commitment to building an organisation capable of playing a decisive role in historical change dominated Lenin’s life up to 1917.

Krausz carefully traces the relationship between theory and practice, between Lenin’s ideas and the project of social transformation. He provides the big picture here, but also a multitude of specific tactical debates and decisions. He makes an interesting comment, for example, about how all the various factional disputes in the Russian revolutionary movement (over many years) had a strategic or tactical dimension. They were often influenced by theoretical issues, but there was only ever really a serious dispute if there were tactical implications (there were no splits over purely philosophical debates).

Krausz is attentive to the different aspects of debates and to what was going on at key turning points, e.g. the 1905 revolution, the ‘April Theses’ in April 1917, on the eve of insurrection in October 1917, etc. He expresses the theoretical underpinnings without reducing everything to them; concrete tactical disagreements can only be understood with attention to the concrete situation.

Lenin’s practical achievements – incomparable in the history of Marxism – were threefold: he had the leading role in building a revolutionary party in Russia before 1917, he was the principal leader in the ‘second revolution’ of 1917, i.e. that which led to the overthrow of the entire political and social order in October, and he was subsequently the head of government in a fledgling Russian workers’ state for several years (this last one remains a unique role in the history of revolutionary socialism). He was therefore, in turn, party builder, revolutionary leader and statesman.

Krausz is good at illustrating the continuity in Lenin’s personality, political qualities and ideas through all these periods, while also focusing on the distinctiveness of each context. The period of building revolutionary organisation, at varying stages from the 1890s until 1917, was the bulk of Lenin’s political life, and it proves especially fascinating in terms of potential implications for activists today. 

In addition to these central themes, ‘Reconstructing Lenin’ is a goldmine of details – biographical, political and historical. Although Lenin is at the centre throughout, it brings various other political figures of the time (Plekhanov, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bogdanov and many more) into focus, showing how they influenced Lenin or how he debated with them. It in some senses serves as a collective biography of the Bolsheviks, a compelling study of a revolutionary organisation that evolved enormously in changing circumstances.

I have just three very small criticisms. Firstly, although Krausz is brutally honest about the enormous problems faced after October 1917 - and indeed the mistakes he believes were made by Lenin and his government during this period - he refers very little to the actual positive achievements of revolutionary Russia (which were considerable). This makes his sketching of the context of Russia in the several years following the October Revolution a little unbalanced.

Secondly, I think he underestimates the possibilities for successful revolution in a number of European countries, especially Germany, during the same period, appearing to be rather mechanical and deterministic about the apparently near-inevitable failure of the European movements. Thirdly, I think he is guilty of somewhat understating Trotsky's achievements and stature as a political leader and thinker - not drastically so, but this is a minor problem of emphasis for me.

These minor points should not distract, however, from the larger achievement. Crucially, the question of how ideas interacted with efforts to change the world is a thread running through the whole book. The issue of what lessons revolutionary socialist activists can learn for today is not my main focus in this short appreciation, but the book provides a solid historical basis for that project.

Note: I recommend Chris Nineham's Counterfire review of the book.

Share

A world to win: class struggle and the Communist Manifesto

A young Karl Marx

In August I gave a talk on the Communist Manifesto at an event organised by Counterfire in Newcastle. I have just got around to collating my notes into readable form. I built my presentation, which focused especially on themes of history and class struggle in the Manifesto (two other sessions addressed different aspects), around a series of quotations from the original text. Here we go...

--------------

Marx and Engels were commissioned to write a manifesto for the Communist League in late 1847. Economic crisis had affected much of Europe in the previous couple of years. Revolution was in the air. Communists were making connections across borders and beginning to get organised, but were still small in number. The opening line of the Manifesto -  ‘A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.’ – was more wishful thinking than accurate description.

Engels had drafted something in rather dry question-and-answer form, but it was Marx who turned this – in the space of a few weeks at the start of 1848 – into what would become the most widely-read, influential and famous political pamphlet ever published. It was the culmination of several years’ intellectual and political development in Marx’s thinking, an attempt to state clearly what communists stood for.

There was a culture of secret and conspiratorial societies at the time, but Marx and Engels rejected this. If the emancipation of the working class is to be the act of the working class, there is little purpose served by secrecy. Ideas must be stated openly and persuasively.

By the time it was published, revolution had broken out in a number of parts of Europe – 1848 would turn out to be an historic year of revolutionary upheaval, though most of it defeated. The Manifesto in fact turned out to be something quite different to what might be expected. It almost entirely avoided specific policy prescriptions. It contained a broad survey of historical development rather than keeping its attention trained on present politics. It was expressed in often powerful, even poetic, language.

At the core of the Manifesto is a particular conception of history and how change happens: an understanding of society as being divided, fundamentally, into classes, and history as a succession of class societies (and class struggles).  Marx writes:

'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another.’

This is an important starting point: class is the main dividing line in society. This is not unique to capitalism , but rather has been true for thousands of years. It is a division that inevitably engenders conflict too.

Marx then provides a sweeping survey of the development of early capitalism, moving on to the era of industrial capitalism through which he was living:

'Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie.’

So, capitalism grew out of an earlier feudal society. Merchant capitalism increasingly replaced feudal relations, and in turn this grew into industrial capitalism. A new urban elite developed: the bourgeoisie. Although Marx refers to ‘two great classes’, this shouldn’t be taken to indicate anything about their size: the proletariat, those who do the work, are far greater in number than those who live off the surplus their labour produces. Marx specifically traces the growth of industry:

‘Steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.’

This kind of language is almost celebratory – and the tone often surprises first-time readers, expecting virulent denunciation of capitalism’s evils from the beginning. Of course Marx doesn’t leave it there, but he does take time to extol the progress represented by capitalism’s development. He writes of the revolutionising role played by capitalism, its economically dynamic quality and the way that overturns many established certainties:

‘All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air.’

Marx and Engels had first met a few years earlier (and went on to be lifelong collaborators). In 1844 Engels wrote ‘The Condition of the working class in England’ about the impact of industrial capitalism on the living and working conditions of those drawn into the newly mushrooming cities. It was an ugly and unromantic picture. Marx and Engels had no illusions about the often grim reality of industrial capitalism for the proletariat, the working class.

What they grasped was how capitalism accelerated the pace of technological and economic change, went together with the growth of major cities and created greater opportunities for wealth (largely concentrated, though, among a tiny class of those who owned and controlled the means of production).

The development of the modern nation state went together with the growth of capitalism. This was a deeply contested process. The English, American and French revolutions were all, whatever their differences, about the rising bourgeois class asserting itself against the barriers inherited from late feudalism. Political revolutions, with varying degrees of success, accompanied the economic changes. Marx wrote:

‘Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.’

1848 was itself a year of bourgeois revolution. Although mostly unsuccessful, the uprisings left their mark – and in the decades that followed there was much greater political unification and centralisation in many parts of Europe, (limited) advances in democratic reform, the strengthening of modern state institutions (e.g. police forces), and so on.

But capitalism did something else, something enormously important for Marx, Engels and their comrades in the small Communist League. It created the working class. It brought together large numbers of workers in factories, mills and elsewhere - a process that was dangerous for the capitalists:

‘The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.’

There is a lot packed in to this quotation. Firstly, it is identifying that growing industry brought turned people who had previously worked on the land, or perhaps as artisans, into workers - wage-labourers dependent on selling their labour power to the capitalist to make a living. Secondly, proletarianisation (working class formation) is a collective process, bringing workers together in combination. So, too, is proletarian resistance to capitalism a collective matter. Workers’ power is not as individuals, but as a collective force.  Finally, this collective power of workers is so potentially great that it can defeat the bourgeoisie and end capitalism, a system that has paradoxically created its own gravedigger.

Marx’s account of history, specifically the rise and development of capitalism (and the potential for moving from capitalism to socialism), therefore has class division at its heart, but also an awareness of the centrality of class struggle. The division into classes, and the exploitation at the heart of class relationships, inevitably generates conflict over what is produced and how the surplus wealth is allocated.

But Marx also had interesting things to say about the battle of ideas in society, and how that is shaped by material realities. Imagining himself addressing the bourgeois class, he wrote:

‘The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you.’

This is a brutal warning and a reality check. Every ruling class imagines its own ideas and values to be a kind of ‘common sense’: universal values, taken for granted and seemingly obvious. In fact ideas change over time. The dominant ideology of one age may later seem antiquated. Changing ideas are shaped by material changes in the conditions of society: ‘the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property’.

History moves forward. Material production – the forces and relations of production – changes over time. So, with it, do the dominant ideas change:

‘What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.’

Marx points here to another vital aspect of ideology: it is the ideas of the ruling elite that are universalised as the ideas of a whole society. Whether through control of state religion, or schools and universities, or the media, the ruling class – the tiny elite possessing wealth and power – asserts its own ideas and values.

Yet there is no fatalism in the Manifesto. Running through it is an acute consciousness of historical change – transformation indeed – and the potential for further transformation in the future. The working class, identified as the collective agent of transformation, is not doomed to be tied to the ruling ideology. It is driven to resist by exploitation.

The working class is gathered together in large numbers and can organise collectively. Writing against the backdrop of Chartism, a mass working class movement coming to its end in 1848, Marx and Engels were aware of what was possible. There had been the earliest examples of strike action by the 1840s. There had been early efforts at building trade unions.

The class that can organise and resist collectively, can also set about creating a new world – one characterised by co-operation, equality and democracy, not the rule of the few over the many. There is little detail on what a communist or socialist society might look like, but this is a starting point:

‘In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.’

So communism is, ultimately, to be a classless society. And in that state of equality and interdependence lies the potential for human development and liberation. But there’s also recognition that such a future vision must be linked to current struggles, if it is to be anything more than a utopian dream. Marx succinctly outlines the tasks of communists:

‘In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.’

Three points here, all of them acutely relevant as the Manifesto was circulated amidst growing revolutionary tumult in 1848: communists support democratic or bourgeois revolutions (whatever their limitations might be), working class economic and social interests (‘the property question’) must always be forefront, and the movement must be international, uniting workers across national boundaries and opposing a common enemy. Class, not nationhood, is what unites us.

The Manifesto ends, then, with these stirring words:

‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!’

Share

Trotsky's crash course on revolution and counter-revolution

This is my Counterfire review of 'Trotsky: Writings in Exile', edited by Kunal Chattopadhyay and Paul Le Blanc (Pluto, 2012).

Leon Trotsky kept the flame of authentic revolutionary socialism burning from the late 1920s onwards. Despite the most unimaginable persecution by Stalin’s regime, he sustained a commitment to internationalism, equality and radical democracy after Lenin’s death, the rise of Stalinist counter-revolution and the marginalisation of the revolutionary tradition. He did not do this through dogmatic fidelity to Marxist ‘classics’, but by analysing fresh developments and challenging orthodoxies.

Having played a role in the Russian Revolution second only to Lenin, Trotsky later found himself isolated and persecuted. During his later years, Trotsky’s role as a practical revolutionary leader was hardly comparable to the part he played in 1917’s revolution and the years which had followed it. During that turbulent time he had organised the Red Army in defending a besieged workers’ state in civil war, helped give political leadership in the new Russia and played a central role in the Comintern, an international of socialist organisations which aimed to spread working class revolution.

Yet his later contributions as political analyst, theoretician and historian were extraordinary. His mature writings are informed by a special sort of practical experience, as a leading figure in turbulent events of remarkable historic importance, as well as deep knowledge of the Marxist tradition. Trotsky also sought to gather revolutionaries in new networks which could sustain the genuine traditions of socialism from below, and give some flesh to the radical perspectives he (and his small number of collaborators) developed. These efforts were of limited practical success due to immensely hostile circumstances, but invaluable for sustaining the tradition. After the Second World War, Trotsky’s later writings would become the basis for a great deal of what sustained the revolutionary left, with, admittedly, some important revisions to account for changing realities.

Pluto’s ‘Get Political’ series aims to make the writings of various radical thinkers and writers accessible to a new generation. Three volumes in particular, this one together with selected writings by Lenin and Luxemburg, are designed to share the insights of the path-breaking generation of Marxists which emerged around the turn of the twentieth century. These individuals are, after Marx and Engels, the most influential theorists in the Marxist tradition, making leaps forward in our understanding of revolution, reformist socialism, imperialism, fascism, and much more.

University students might learn about Marx, Gramsci and perhaps a few other Marxist thinkers, though often in somewhat distorted form, but they are unlikely to encounter Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky at all, despite their theoretically rich contributions. These figures are firmly associated with an activist, not academic, Marxism: ridiculed, despised or ignored by the mainstream. It is one of the strengths of the editorial introductions in this series that the editors have extensive experience as revolutionary activists. The three books are supported by a website with slide shows and study materials, launched by a statement signed by numerous writers, activists and academics. They are meant as resources for discussion and self-education, geared towards the needs of a new generation of activists, not mere historical or academic curiosities.

The Trotsky volume contains articles, speeches and essays from 1929, when Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union, until his assassination by one of Stalin’s agents in Mexico in 1940. It largely omits excerpts from full-length works like the epic 1,200-page History of the Russian Revolution (of which left-wing comedian Mark Steel once remarked, ‘the only problem is its length - it should be twice as long’) or The Revolution Betrayed, a detailed account of the rise of Stalinism.

Instead the focus is on complete shorter works, from articles of just a few pages to substantial essays.
This is, I think, a strength: the overall result is a remarkably wide-ranging book but one packed with coherent and succinct pieces on major topics. There is helpful and detailed guidance on further reading, both Trotsky’s own writings and a range of works about him and his ideas, such as the multi-volume biographies by Isaac Deutscher and Tony Cliff.

The core of Trotsky’s analysis of the rise of Stalinism was his grasp of an elementary fact: ‘socialism in one country’ is impossible. Lenin and Trotsky both insisted, in the years immediately following 1917, that Russia’s fledgling workers’ state could only survive if there were successful revolutionary uprisings in Europe. Trotsky, following Lenin’s death in 1924, developed an analysis of Stalinism as a victory for counter-revolution, one which was predicated on the isolation of Russia’s revolution and the determined efforts of hostile imperialist powers to crush it. Stalinism, he wrote, was ‘the negation of Bolshevism’.

Trotsky was perceptive about the disastrous effects of civil war, which left the Russian working class hollowed out, while the power of the bureaucracy grew. This was the material basis for the authoritarianism associated with Stalin. While critiquing this counter-revolutionary phenomenon, Trotsky promoted the authentic tradition of revolutionary socialism. In a forensic and powerful speech he gave in Denmark, he reasserted the tremendous achievements of the early years of revolutionary Russia.

The extract here from Trotsky’s writings on Germany in the early-to-mid 1930s is astonishingly clear, illuminating the complex processes which underpinned the rise of Hitler to power in 1933. The political strategy Trotsky advocated was influenced by his prescient grasp of the enormous dangers posed by Hitler’s rising Nazi Party in the early 1930s. His pieces on Germany from this period are among the greatest writings in the entire Marxist tradition. The article contained in this volume is an extraordinary example of first-rate political analysis: acutely perceptive, concise, urgent, and powerfully expressed. As well as offering a peerlessly astute insight into Nazism, its class basis, the historical forces driving it, and the direction in which it was heading, the article is a model of political writing.

As well as probing the problem, Trotsky was clear-sighted about the solution. Trotsky - emphatically, repeatedly, insistently - urged the unity of all socialists to defeat the threat of Nazism in Germany. He argued that a united front was more necessary than ever, calling for a coalition of Communists and supporters of the Social Democrats (the German equivalent of the Labour Party) to mobilise on the streets and through the trade unions. He was, however, a marginal figure with no political base. His words were ignored, with tragic consequences. Communists and Social Democrats were persecuted, and many later killed, once Hitler took power.

A number of selected pieces are connected to the book’s central thread of revolution and counter-revolution in Russia, even if it is not immediately obvious. One example is Trotsky’s introduction to Harold Isaacs’ magisterial history of the Chinese revolution. The negative role played by the Stalinist bureaucracy, through its disastrous foreign policy, was a critical factor in the outcome of events in China. This essay is as good a brief introduction to the Chinese Revolution as you will find anywhere.

What is even more important is how essays like the one on China fit into the greater whole: it is part of the book’s larger narrative. The whole selection is united by a number of central concerns: recovering the real Bolshevik tradition from massive Stalinist distortion, tracing the rise of Stalinist counter-revolution and its dire consequences internationally, and probing the mechanics and dynamics of revolution. Writings in Exile is a potted history of major developments between 1917 and the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, but it is also a crash course in revolution and counter-revolution from one of the Marxist tradition’s most gifted writers.


Share

Get Political: why read Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin today?

Ours is a time of multiple crises generated by global capitalism. It is a time of global resistance, occupation, and insurgency. It is a time to connect with the ideas of Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Lenin – a critical-minded engagement with revolutionary resources, based on past revolutionary experience, as we consider future action for social change.

New waves of young activists are compelled to become radical – going to the root of today’s problems, demanding a shift of power in society from the super-wealthy 1% to the increasingly hard-pressed 99%.

It will not be a simple thing to win the battle of democracy, to create a world in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. The problems we face have been more than two centuries in the making. 

Millions of people, generation after generation, have engaged in revolutionary struggles for basic human rights and dignity – liberty and justice for all, experiencing defeats and victories, learning and passing on an accumulation of lessons for those who would continue the struggle.

Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin were among the most perceptive and compelling revolutionaries of the 20^th century. The body of analysis, strategy and tactics to which they contributed was inseparable from the mass struggles of their time. Critically engaging with their ideas can enrich the thinking and practical activity of those involved in today’s and tomorrow’s struggles for a better world.

A global activist collective – multiple individuals exploring texts on how to understand and change the world, proliferating study groups connecting revolutionary theory with the struggles of today and tomorrow – reaching out to the rest of the 99%, can have a powerful impact for social change.

It is time, in the most revolutionary sense, to get political.

The statement has been issued by the signatories below - find out more about them here.

Learn more about the initiative, and check out some great resources (study material, slide shows, sample chapters), at this new website.

John Riddell on the Comintern: giant and dwarfs?

Zinoviev, Comintern president

I'm a bit late with this, but I recommend reading John Riddell's blog post 'The Comintern in 1922: the periphery pushes back'. It is based on a presentation Riddell - the leading historian of the Communist International - gave at November's Historical Materialism conference.

It challenges assumptions about Moscow dominating the Comintern in the early 1920s. Arguing that Communist parties outside Russia influenced decisions more than is traditionally acknowledged, he begins:

'Until recently, I shared a widely held opinion that the Bolshevik Party of Russia towered above other members of the early Communist International as a source of fruitful political initiatives. However, my work in preparing the English edition of the Comintern’s Fourth Congress, held at the end of 1922, led me to modify this view. On a number of weighty strategic issues before the congress, front-line parties, especially the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), played a decisive role in revising Executive Committee proposals and shaping the Congress’s outcome.

When I translated the first page of this congress, I was not far distant from the view of Tony Cliff, who, referring to the 1921–22 period, referred to the “extreme comparative backwardness of communist leaders outside Russia.” They had an “uncritical attitude towards the Russian party,” which stood as “a giant among dwarfs,” Cliff stated.

Duncan Hallas wrote of the Comintern’s failure “to emancipate the pupil from excessive dependence on the teacher.” A similar view is advanced by historians hostile to the Comintern tradition, although they regard Bolshevik influence as not helpful but calamitous.

In recent years, a new generation of historians has focused attention on the dynamics of Comintern member parties, stressing the influence of their worker ranks and the parties’ relative autonomy. Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew present the view, widely held among these historians, that “strategy was defined in Moscow, but tactics, to a certain extent, could be elaborated on the ground by the parties themselves.” However, the record of the Fourth Congress suggests that at least in 1922, the influence of front-line parties was felt in determining not only national tactics but international strategy.'

Share

Hobsbawm, revolution and class

It won't, I think, be too controversial to observe that Eric Hobsbawm's record as a historian is superior to his record as an analyst of contemporary politics.

From sticking to the official Communist line when many of his fellow left-wing intellectuals rebelled against it (and formed the New Left) after 1956, to his claims about the allegedly disappearing working class in the 1980s, he has generally fared better when his eyes have been fixed firmly on the past. This disjunction between historian and political analyst (and activist) continues with an interview he's given to the BBC World Service.

For now, I'm relying on the website article for Hobsbawm's perspective. The full interview may give a more rounded picture, though his views seem fairly clearly defined. The historian compares 2011 to another landmark revolutionary year: 1848. But he's on surer ground analysing 1848, a year of democratic political revolutions and uprisings in several European countries (which half a century ago he wrote about insightfully in his classic 'The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848') than when assessing the meaning of 2011.

He does make a few valid points. Hobsbawm is surely right to note that a political revolution's effects often show up many years later, so early setbacks or even defeats should not lead anyone to despair. Revolution is a process not an event and we have to take the long view - and it is therefore well worth examining past revolutions and their legacy.

He is also correct to note the centrality of a layer of young people to the Arab revolts - and resistance elsewhere - and the similarities between movements in different parts of the world. Many of these people have, however, been young unemployed graduates or young workers not students.

The interviewer tells us: 'with the possible exception of Tunisia, he sees little prospect of liberal democracy or European-style representative government in the Arab world.' Why is that? It's not entirely clear, but we're later offered this quote from Hobsbawm, referring to the Iranian Revolution of 1979:

"The people who had made concessions to Islam, but were not Islamists themselves, were marginalised. And that included reformers, liberals, communists. What emerges as the mass ideology is not the ideology of those that started off the demonstrations."

This appears to be why he doesn't believe a Western-style bourgeois democracy will follow the Arab Spring, i.e. Arab societies are too in thrall too Islamist ideology for that to be possible. The rise of Iranian-style Islamism, or at least a modified version of it, is presumed to be the successor of this year's uprisings.

It's a surprisingly simplistic view that ignores the fact that Islamism is itself complex and varies across different settings, e.g. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is very different to a Khomeini-style theocracy, while the balance of forces between Islamist currents and other political forces in Egypt and Tunisia today is different to Iran thirty years ago. Nobody would deny that Islamist parties have the upper hand in Egyptian electoral politics, but let's not limit ourselves to the ballot box - especially at a time when the action on the streets is, on a daily basis, challenging a narrow notion of democracy as limited to putting a cross on a ballot paper.

Hobsbawm neglects what is actually currently happening in Egypt, which is not an Islamist takeover but a battle between those wanting to extend and deepen the revolution against ruling elements (the military council, supported most of the time but not always by political leaders in the Brotherhood) who want to curtail the revolution and defend the status quo.

The real danger posed by the Brotherhood is not an Islamist dictatorship but reformist compromise. And there are considerable tensions within the Brotherhood, notably with many of the youth dissenting and supporting the ongoing revolutionary movement. Viewing Islamism as a monolithic bloc - across time and space - won't help us.

Hobsbawm locates the motor of resistance, from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street, in a new middle class:

"What unites them is a common discontent and common mobilisable forces - a modernising middle class, particularly a young, student middle class, and of course technology which makes it today very much easier to mobilise protests."

It is rather jarring, in 2011, to witness someone referring to a 'student middle class'. Haven't we reached the point where it's obvious that students are not necessarily from middle class backgrounds? This is as true in Arab countries - many of which, including Tunisia and Egypt, have high student populations - as in the West. Even when students are from propserous backgrounds, it's possible for them to face a distinct lack of such propserity after graduating.

This observation is no mere slippage in terminology. It is linked to an argument Hobsbawm has put for at least three decades: the working class is disappearing. The Chinese working class is today bigger than the global working class in 1848, but I suspect that is something Hobsbawm wouldn't acknowledge - partly due to a narrow conception of what it means to be working class, partly due to confusion about 'Communist' societies. Hobsbawm says:

"The traditional left was geared to a kind of society that is no longer in existence or is going out of business. It believed very largely in the mass labour movement as the carrier of the future. Well, we've been de-industrialised, so that's no longer possible. The most effective mass mobilisations today are those which start from a new modernised middle class, and particularly the enormously swollen body of students."

This under-estimates the role of workers in resistance both in the Arab world and the West: as John Rees notes in his end-of-2011 retrospective, at key moments the power of the organised working class has merged with broad street-based movements, most crucially in toppling Ben Ali in January and again in the final two days before Mubarak fell in February. Likewise, Hobsbawm overstates the role of students - important, undoubtedly, but he seems to be assuming anyone under 30 is a student - and fails to grasp that students have been most powerful when combining with other social groups.

His comments also echo claims he's made previously which rest on assuming that 'industrial' and working class are synonymous. Someone as well-versed in Marx and Engels' writings as Hobsbawm must know that is very different from how the marxist tradition's founders defined class relationships. It's worth quoting Terry Eagleton, in his review of Hobsbawm's recent book 'How to Change the World':

'It is true that the industrial proletariat had dwindled [by the 1980s], but Marx himself did not think that the working class was confined to this group. In Capital, he ranks commercial workers on the same level as industrial ones. He was also well aware that by far the largest group of wage labourers in his own day was not the industrial working class but domestic servants, most of whom were women. Marx and his disciples didn’t imagine that the working class could go it alone, without forging alliances with other oppressed groups. And though the industrial proletariat would have a leading role, Marx does not seem to have thought that it had to constitute the social majority in order to play it.'

In any case, the really interesting and productive questions to explore concern how the working class has evolved, and what that means for the nature of resistance, rather than repeating the old line about a disappearing proletariat.

Hobsbawm also ignores the mass participation of the kind of poor people who, even by the broadest definitions, couldn't possibly be categorised as 'middle class' in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. It's true that middle class elements often (but far from exclusively) played a leading or catalysing role in the upheavals, but when millions took to the streets throughout Egpyt it was in large part because the poor joined in on a massive scale. Yet Hobsbawm seems to be simultaneously writing off the working class as an objective entity and dismissing any subjective agency from anyone who isn't identifiably 'middle class'.

Hobsbawm is also on shaky ground when he traces the Occupy movement back to Barack Obama's election campaign. I'm not aware of anyone inside the Occupy movement claiming this, so it stretches credibility. One of his reasons for making this connection seems to be the role of social media in mobilising activists. I think he has an exaggerated view of the internet's role - in relation to both the Obama camapign and Occupy - but it also obscures the political differences between these two cases, by focusing on form (social media) at the expense of political content.

An important difference is that the Obama campaign was geared entirely to the realm of established electoral politics, which the Occupy movement tends to ignore or even reject. Some of the impetus behind the US-based movement is in fact widespread disenchantment with the Obama administration - which tends not to be targeted as the problem, but it definitely isn't seen as the solution either.

It is reasonable to observe that the 'traditional left' has been marginal to the wave of protests, occupations and uprisings in 2011. It is perhaps unsurprising, considering his background, that Hobsbawm pins this on the supposed decline of the working class rather than paying attention to, say, the impact of the legacy of Stalinism on people's perceptions of socialism and left-wing organisations.

But if we simply account for the left's marginalisation by alluding to a vanished class of industrial labourers, we can't even begin to consider how the left might be rebuilt. Indeed the logical conclusion of Hobsbawm's line of reasoning is that the left cannot be built. Socialism becomes nothing more than a nostalgic fetish, a nice idea but without a material basis.

Renewing the left - and successfully building on the inspiring resistance of this year - requires a recognition of the continuing existence (and potential for collective struggle) of a changing working class. It rests, too, on an accurate understanding of what social forces are involved in today's struggles, and how they can combine to powerful effect.

There are possibilities and pitfalls in the current movements. To build on those possibilities, and avoid the pitfalls, will require strategies for winning based on an accurate view of current conditions - not the erroneous picture Eric Hobsbawm gives us.

Share

Renewing the radical left

Chris Bambery's recent article - see HERE - is a useful contribution to discussing how to build a new left. I want to think through a few of the issues he raises, but first a summary of the ideas.

Summary of the analysis

Chris Bambery makes the following points:

1) The left does not automatically grow alongside resistance to the system. Growth depends on choices about tactics and forms of organisation, an ability to relate to new movements, and a capacity for fresh thinking about a changing world.

2) There is a gap between the political upturn of the last decade or so and the state of the radical left. Mass movements, political radicalisation and widespread distrust of establishment institutions have not led to growth for the radical left. There are factors beyond our control which influence this, but it's partly because of weaknesses in the established Left. A period bracketed by emergent anti-capitalism and the start of the 'war on terror' at one end and the financial crisis and mass austerity at the other end has not led to a stronger radical left.

3) The radical left in Europe is currently struggling more than it is flourishing. There is unevenness, with the radical left in a number of southern European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece) having greater 'social weight' than elsewhere, though there are still substantial problems in these countries. Italy provides the most powerful example of a mistaken approach and subsequent collapse, but Spain fares little better. Germany's Die Linke is contradictory but relatively successful.

4) There are both similarities and differences between the post-1968 period and the current period. It is not self-evident today that the working class - organised in the trade unions, deploying tactics of mass strikes and rank and file militancy - is central to social change in the way it was to large numbers of young activists four decades ago. The centrality of the organised working class remains a largely abstract argument.

5) Our starting point for analysis has to be the current shape and conditions of the working class. There is an urgent need to engage with contemporary reality. There will not be a simple repetition of historical experiences when new resistance movements develop.

6) Leninism remains marginal. We need a Left that relates to wider layers of the working class in resisting capitalism, but also offers a consistently anti-systemic perspective and articulates alternatives. But while Marx may be frequently cited as an analyst of capitalist crisis, Lenin is more unfashionable than ever. The organised revolutionary left is too small. The anti-socialist backlash following the end of the Cold War has been an important factor in this.

7) We can't have a 'non-ideological Left'. It isn't sufficient to declare ideology dead in the name of 'left unity'. Political questions will always emerge - and need to be addressed. Islamophobia and Libya are good examples. Political and theoretical clarity will always be essential for the radical left.

8) Cadre can be conservative. Lenin's old, familiar warning about the dangers of conservatism in an organisation's cadre is especially relevant now. This is because we've had such a long period of the radical left being on the margins and industrial struggle remaining very low. It is far from automatic that long-time socialists will be able to relate to current problems.

9) The unions remain weak. There is a particular problem with the decline of the trade union movement - with increased bureaucratisation, a low level of combativity and the casework-dominated nature of life for most reps. This inevitably finds expression inside the organised left.

10) Much of the left expresses a mixture of economism and propagandism. In his summing up in the video, Bambery cites Tony Cliff's comment about how Scottish communist Willie Gallacher operated during World War One: for six days a week he was a radical trade unionist and on Sundays he propagandised for socialism. This approach is particularly at odds with a context characterised by a high level of politics but still a low level of strikes, in which trade unionists tend to make an impact precisely when they ally with other groups and address political issues.

11) The radical left in the UK has failed key tests. Specifically, Bambery refers to failures in building out of the student protests of late 2010 and developing a credible response to August's riots. There is a particular tendency to intervene in campaigns and disputes from the outside, reduced to the level of selling publications and trying (with little success) to recruit new members.

12) The left has to relate to the most advanced sections. When new waves of resistance develop, 'revolutionaries have to base themselves within that section of the working class that is in the vanguard of the struggle'. In the early and mid 1970s, for example, that meant orienting on mainly younger militant workers - some of them union reps but some not, many of them in white-collar areas of work not traditionally associated with militancy - who weren't part of the older, increasingly bureaucratised, layers in the unions.

13) In the UK there are fresh opportunities for left unity and renewal. But it won't be done by simply cobbling together the existing fragments of the organised left. Any new electoral formations will develop out of the anti-austerity movement and involve new forces, steered primarily by a younger generation which isn't stuck in the disputes of previous periods.



Developing some key themes

I want to develop my own thoughts about three recurring themes in Chris Bambery's analysis: the shape of resistance today, realigning the Left, and internationalism.

The shape of resistance

If the left is to grow then it needs an accurate grasp of forms of resistance in today's world. A striking characteristic of recent resistance is the tactic of the mass occupation of public space: from Madrid to Tunis, Athens to Cairo, Wall Street to Santiago, youth-led demonstrations in public squares are pretty much the trademark tactic of 2011.

More generally - and this is a long term pattern - it's clear that street demonstrations have been a prominent form of resistance across a range of issues. This is true of the anti-austerity movement: the 26 March demo indicated the unions can mobilise on a large scale on the streets, at a time when there was still insufficent confidence to strike.

We have had 20 years of historically low strike levels. That is thankfully now changing, but it flies in the face of reality for anyone to think strike action is now the dominant form of resistance just because of the prospect of N30.

Union density in the private sector is 1 in 6. The power of the union bureaucracy in relation to the grassroots has, over the last 30 years or more, increased dramatically. The unions are shackled by anti-union laws. Reps are bogged down in casework, with a shift over time from collective action to individual remedies like employment tribunals. Some unions haven't had any strike action at all for many years.

The workplace is increasingly becoming a key site of resistance, but it won't replace other forms of struggle. Rather we can expect strikes to complement - and gain strength from - the protests, marches and occupations. There's still a common idea on the left that 'real power' is in the workplaces - other forms of resistance are a sort of prelude to what really matters, which is mass strikes.

Revolutionaries, however, argue that confronting (and contending for) state power is the highest form of struggle. A mass strike becomes more powerful when it rises to this level and becomes an overtly political confrontation. The fusion of economic and political struggles is especially vital.

The left has to constantly forge connections between trade unionists and different groups. The strengths in one area have to be brought into other areas: the most advanced sections must set the pace for everyone else. The emergence of strike action in the public sector is hugely hopeful, but it must be allied to a broader general anti-cuts movement that can't be dismissed as sectional, self-interested or single-issue, that isn't overly reliant on the whims of the union bureaucracy.

Realigning the left

I am, like Bambery, rooted in the distinctive strand in the history of British Trotskyism associated with Tony Cliff, i.e. the International Socialist tradition. But why would anyone in 2011 define themselves - and their relationship to the wider Left, movements or class - according to theories developed in the post-WW2 world which are now largely of historical interest?

Elements of these theories are still relevant. Most notably, Cliff's theory of state capitalism enables marxists to defend our tradition against the still widespread assumption that marxism - or more precisely Leninism - can be written off because of the legacy of Stalinism. A revised, updated and accessible version of it is therefore essential.

But you can't possibly define your political stance in 2011 with reference to state capitalism, deflected permanent revolution and the arms economy (if you aren't familiar with these terms, that perhaps illustrates my point).

The crucial issues defining today's left are different. At the theoretical and political levels there are many important issues to engage with: Islamophobia, Libya and 'humanitarian intervention', climate change, the rise of China, the working class today, struggles in Latin America, and so on.

Just as importantly, there are questions of political strategy. Sects build nothing. We need a Left that participates in and strives to influence the wider resistance that develops, identifying political priorities and locating where it can be most effective.

The development of any movement is not blind. It requires conscious intervention and organisation. And that means a stronger left, but specifically a Left that grasps current realities and can adapt and renew itself accordingly.

Internationalism

The importance of internationalism is implicit in Bambery's comments, but it's worth foregrounding this and making it explicit. There are two current political reasons for this.

One is that austerity is pan-European, and the resistance to it will be stronger if internationally co-ordinated. Tomorrow's Europe Against Austerity event is not just another conference. It is a unique opportunity to get our act together as an international movement and co-ordinate resistance.

The other reason is the continuing centrality of imperialism and the 'war on terror' to global politics. Crisis, austerity, revolutions in the Arab world, imperialism and the anti-Muslim backlash are the defining features of our epoch.

Anti-imperialism has to remain a priority for the left, not simply at the level of propaganda but as a guide to action. This means building an anti-war movement, regardless of the level of mobilisation being far lower than during its peak period. This is also, for those of us inside the imperialist countries, the most important and practical way for us to demonstrate solidarity with the Arab revolutions. The closely-related Palestinian solidarity movement is also politically important, now more than ever.

Localism and parochialism are problems in the anti-cuts movement. There are chronic problems with achieving national co-ordination, while too much of the Left is allowing an astonishingly good opportunity for international co-ordination - tomorrow's conference - to largely pass them by.

Austerity is imposed by central government. It is framed by an international crisis. National and international co-ordination and solutions are thus indispensable.

Furthermore, the Left's task has to be to make connections and raise the political level everywhere: bring anti-imperialism into the anti-cuts movement, argue within anti-war circles for participation in anti-austerity struggles, and so on. Politics remains central: not as a propaganda exercise, but as a living, integral part of every act of resistance.

Share

The Fire This Time

"The bonds between 2011's islands of youth dissent remain limited. Although the root causes of anger may be similar, the levels of politicisation among those expressing that anger vary wildly. But this year could still be remembered as one in which, after many decades of moribund political and economic realities, a new narrative began to form."

Islands of youth dissent

The above quote is from an article in The Guardian on 13 August, one week after Tottenham erupted in riots. It was called 'A hunger for change - how youth-led revolts shook elites around the world.'

These 'islands of youth dissent' include the riot-torn communities in this country, but more importantly the occupied public squares of Madrid, Athens and elsewhere. Above all, the phrase refers to the sites of revolution and popular uprisings in the Arab world - the subject of this article - where the levels of politicisation and struggle have been highest.

Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight's economics editor, has referred to 2011 as the year it all kicked off. In not only the Arab world but Greece, Spain, Chile, Wisconsin and elsewhere - even here with the student revolts, the massive TUC demonstration on 26 March, public sector strikes on 30 June (and with more to come on 30 November) - there has been a shift in the level of resistance.

The Guardian article I opened with went on:

"The philosopher who coined the term "Black Swan event" - denoting a hugely consequential event that is utterly unpredictable and can only be explained afterwards - was recently asked by Jeremy Paxman whether the violence on the streets of Athens fell into that category. He demurred - and said that the real Black Swan event was that more people weren't rioting elsewhere."

Many of the root causes of anger have indeed been similar, if to varying degrees. There are both economic and political factors at work. Economic motors of revolt include rising food prices, privatisation, growing inequality and - a key element in explaining the generational dynamics - the phenomenon of rising graduate and youth unemployment.

The sense of a 'lost generation', disproportionately victims of the economic crisis and austerity, is unmistakable. It is no coincidence that anti-austerity revolt in this country first found expression in student protests and a wave of college occupations (in November-December 2010).

Political motors of revolt vary in degree. It is true that Western democracies are different to the old authoritarian regimes of Ben Ali, Mubarak, Saleh, Al-Assad and Gaddafi. In the Arab world repression, censorship and overt authoritarian rule were crucial drivers of revolt. But in countries like Greece and Spain the revolts articulate a deep sense of alienation from political structures, of democracy having been hollowed out.

The Arab revolutions are marked by the intertwining of political struggles - focused on democracy - and economic struggles. There is a fusion of economic and political, of young protesters and workers, of the streets and the workplaces. Such fusion is hardly the exclusive preserve of Arab countries.

Tunisia and Egypt

In their new book 'The People Demand: a short history of the Arab revolutions', John Rees and Joseph Daher identify three overlapping phases in the development of the Arab revolutions.

Firstly, the victorious revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. These saw rapid victories as a result of massive demonstrations. In both these revolutionary movements, strikes also played a critical role in the final days before the old regime fell. They were victories for the democratic revolution but also - from the start - raised economic demands.

US and western imperialism were helpless, incapable of a coherent response. Cracks in the ruling elite, including in the top brass of the armed forces, weakened the old order - and emboldened the revolutionaries.

The revolutions inspired uprisings in the wider Arab world. When I visited the occupied West Bank in late February, I asked one of our Palestinian hosts "Are you hopeful about the future of Palestine?" He said yes, so I asked why. He gave a one-word answer: "Egypt". Millions of people elsewhere in the region felt the same hope about not just Palestine, but the destiny of their own country.

The Tunisian and Egypt revolutions have in fact continued, beyond the toppling of Ben Ali on 14 January and Mubarak on 11 February, but with a sharp process of class-based and political differentiation. Moderate elements of the democratic revolution are now emphasising continuity rather than change.

There is a recurring conflict between the elites and the streets. In Cairo, it is between the army council (and its political allies) and the 'Republic of Tahrir', i.e. the alternative model of popular power and participatory democracy embodied by the protesters who keep returning to Tahrir Square.

The continuing struggles concern economics and politics. Workers have raised independent class demands, but there is also the ongoing movement for genuine democratic reform. Different visions of democracy are constantly in competition. The question is posed: their democracy or ours?

Imperialism and counter-revolution

Secondly, there was the imperialist, or counter-revolutionary, backlash. This took two main forms - and at almost exactly the same time.

In mid-March the western powers, led by France, Britain and the US, exploited weaknesses in Libya's revolution and - desiring influence in the revolutionary process, to curtail it rather than to advance it - moved in. The NATO intervention was undoubtedly a turning point, altering the character of the Libyan revolt profoundly, but also shifting the balance of forces in the broader Arab world.

You only have to observe the aftermath of the fall of Tripoli to recognise this is politically very different from the victories of January-February. The dominant elements in Libya's TNC are former members of the Gaddafi regime - these are the people with existing links to the Western powers, after all.

The bombing of Libya has resuscitated the case for 'humanitarian intervention' which was so discredited by Iraq and Afghanistan. Tony Blair feels confident about calling for 'regime change' in Iran and Syria. This is unlikely to happen, but it's a marker of the shifting ideological terrain.

Almost exactly simultaneous to the Libya intervention, Saudi troops entered Bahrain to help the Bahraini authorities crush that country's uprising. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US and Britain, with close military, diplomatic and trade links.

While in Libya Western intervention played the key role, in Bahrain it was the neighbouring Gulf states which repressed the uprising - but with the tacit approval of the West. US defense secretary Robert Gates gave the 'green light' to US allies in the Gulf for the crushing of the Bahraini movement, at the same time as gearing up for the bombardment of Libya (supposedly to 'protect the revolution').

John Rees and Joseph Daher put it like this:

"The aim in both cases was the same: to crush and control the emerging revolutionary processes. In Bahrain this was achieved by straightforward repression. In Libya the military intervention was used to corral and control the revolutionary process. The result has been to impede the march of revolution everywhere - in Syria and Yemen, as well as in Bahrain and Libya. The dictators have dug in."

Freedom for Palestine

Thirdly, a new phase in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine has opened up. The turning point here was also mid-March. While NATO bombing of Libya and the crushing of Bahrain's uprising were setbacks for the whole movement, the "15th of March Movement" in the Occupied Palestinian Territories was a vastly more hopeful development.

The new, youth-led, movement for Palestinian unity dovetailed with developments in neighbouring Egypt. The interim regime in Egypt is under popular pressure to break from the old cosy relationship with Israel and deliver solidarity to the Palestinians. It is an issue about which millions of Egyptians are passionate.

The Egyptian regime played the pivotal role in engineering a unity deal between Fatah (dominant in the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority), Hamas (ruling party in Gaza) and other political groups. Only Egypt has such authority in the region to do this. Recent claims about Turkey's role as a regional superpower, while reflecting real forces, need to be kept in perspective.

The youth movement inside the occupied territories and the popular pro-Palestinian protests in Egypt have called for unity between Fatah and Hamas, but often also for a renewal of resistance to Israel (sometimes dubbed a ‘Third Intifada’) and for broader unity across the whole Palestinian people and the Arab world. There is pressure on the established Palestinian leadership from within the Palestinian community (notably the 15th of March movement) and from outside, in the form of a post-Mubarak Egypt.

Egypt’s revolution has opened up space in which a post-Mubarak foreign policy can be debated. The demonstrations outside Cairo’s Israeli Embassy – with the Israeli flag twice being removed by protesters as a powerful symbol of popular support for Palestine – exert pressure on the army council, which historically has close ties with the US and a conciliatory attitude to Israel.

The debate inside Egyptian society helped form the conditions in which a unity deal was possible. There are problems with it - just as there are problems with the current bid for Palestinian 'statehood' - but it nevertheless poses a serious challenge to Israel and US interests in the region. The imperial architecture of the Arab world is changing.

What next?

We can see, then, how the Arab revolutionary wave is the most acute expression of a global revolt. Driven by political authoritarianism and economic hardship, young people have played a central role, though in a broad movement which has witnessed strike waves and the emergence of new workers' organisations - as well as the mass occupations of public spaces, which have become the signature of modern youth-led revolts.

The politics of north Africa and the middle east is being re-shaped. This has profound consequences for the West, in particular for US imperialism. The heady days of revolutionary success in January-February have been followed by three processes: political differentiation in Tunisia and Egypt; the imperialist, counter-revolutionary backlash in Libya and Bahrain; and the opening of a new chapter in the movement for Palestinian freedom.

Imperialism has been weakened, but we have learnt - if we didn't know it already - that powerful Western states won't just sit back and let revolutionary change happen in the most geopolitically and strategically important region of the globe. More optimistically, it is also clear that many ordinary people in the region, especially in Egypt and Tunisia, aren't willing to settle for a modest democratic settlement which leaves most of their demands unmet.

In Egypt the revolution continues. On 9 September there was yet another huge demo in Tahrir Square, demanding those responsible for corruption and brutality in the old regime are brought to justice, and more generally pursuing the democratic demands of the 25 January Revolution. There have also been fresh strikes, across a number of sectors, during September.

Two central questions have emerged in Tunisia and Egypt. What kind of democracy are we fighting for? And can change be extended to the economic sphere?

The latter question isn't just about driving out the 'workplace Mubaraks' - corrupt, rich old bosses linked to the former regime. It is about demands for jobs, a living wage and improved workers' rights. More deeply, it concerns fundamental questions of power in a capitalist society.

These are the questions that students of past revolutions would expect to arise. Most revolutions have been limited to struggles for democratic and political reform. The degree of political change has varied, but even in South Africa - where the scale of political change was profound, with the end of apartheid - economic exploitation has remained unaltered.

The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions have been among the deeper, more profound revolutions of modern times. Think about the vast scale of the demonstrations, the full participation of the working class, the role of strikes, the raising of far-reaching democratic demands and independent class demands, and the continuing momentum of protest since the dictators fell.

These are, furthermore, revolutions happening in a very different context to the upheavals of 1989-94. As revolts against regimes which were simultaneously neoliberal and allied to the West, their effect has been to shift the balance of forces against US imperialism and neoliberal capitalism. This is the opposite of the impact - politically, economically and ideologically - of the eastern European revolutions over two decades ago. The Libya intervention has shifted this balance in the opposite direction, but only up to a point.

In both countries there has been an element of a 'second revolution' opening up within the larger revolutionary process, one that aims at deeper democratic change and seeks to extend the revolution to economic relations, and in which the working class is central. But this process prompts very serious questions about the role of organisation and politics.

John Rees and Joseph Daher write about the necessity of two further elements, both to do with independent working class organisation:

"Working class organisation must assume a form that can challenge the state apparatus for power. And a political organisation  which popularises this perspective among workers is necessary."

To focus on Egypt, since February there have been three developments which are hopeful and extremely significant in this respect. There has been growth in independent trade unions, new left-wing political parties and grassroots popular assemblies (whether in Tahrir or in local communities). These three elements are all vital in strengthening working class organisation and creating an alternative political pole of attraction to the dominant moderate elements in the new order.

The unions need to be bigger, the left wing parties need to be bigger - and the experiments in democratic assemblies, which have been extremely sporadic, inconsistent and ad hoc, need to be become systematic and co-ordinated. In every revolution it is necessary for the more radical elements - those committed to sustaining the revolutionary process - to create institutional forms which express alternative political programmes and can, at their most advanced, pose a challenge to the power of the state.

The outcome of the revolutions is yet to be settled. Just as importantly, they have inspired and informed the character of revolts elsewhere, including in Europe. In our struggles, especially in opposition to austerity, we can expect resistance to develop in new and dynamic ways. We may yet, in this country, confront some of the same challenges alluded to above. 


Share

Rosa Luxemburg: reform or revolution

As a slight theoretical detour I'm posting this nugget of insight from Rosa Luxemburg:

'Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the development of class society. They condition and complement each other, and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Every legal constitution is the product of a revolution. In the history of classes, revolution is the act of political creation, while legislation is the political expression of the life of a society that has already come into being.

Work for reform does not contain its own force independent from revolution. During every historic period, work for reforms is carried on only in the direction given to it by the impetus of the last revolution and continues as long as the impulsion from the last revolution continues to make itself felt. Or, to put it more concretely, in each historic period work for reforms is carried on only in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution. Here is the kernel of the problem.

It is contrary to history to represent work for reforms as a long-drawn out revolution and revolution as a condensed series of reforms. A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ according to their duration but according to their content. The secret of historic change through the utilisation of political power resides precisely in the transformation of simple quantitative modification into a new quality, or to speak more concretely, in the passage of an historic period from one given form of society to another.

That is why people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place 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 modifications of the old society.

If we follow the political conceptions of revisionism, we arrive at the same conclusion that is reached when we follow the economic theories of revisionism. Our program becomes not the realisation of socialism, but the reform of capitalism; not the suppression of the wage labour system but the diminution of exploitation, that is, the suppression of the abuses of capitalism instead of suppression of capitalism itself.'

Share