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./articles/Lumumba-Patrice/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.africa.lumumba.reminiscences.khokhlov.goal | <body>
<p class="title">N. KHOKHLOV</p>
<h1>THE GOAL PATRICE SOUGHT TO ACHIEVE</h1>
<br>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source</span>: <strong>Patrice Lumumba, The Truth about a Monstrous Crime of the Colonialists</strong>, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, pp 105-115.<br>
<span class="info">Written</span>: by N. KHOKHLOV, Izvestia Special Correspondent<br>
<span class="info">Transcribed</span>: by Thomas Schmidt.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>The whole of mankind now sees the Belgian colonialists as vicious plunderers. The myth that the former Belgian Congo was a model colony has collapsed. In the African continent Brussels had seized a whole country, pillaging it for nearly 80 years. During this long period Belgian writers produced a huge number of books on this vast tropical colony. Fat tomes and slim brochures importunately preached the single idea that the modern Congo had been created by the monarchs in Brussels. Like the Lord in Heaven who is supposed to have created everything terrestrial, the Belgian kings "created" an entire country. "Without kings, without Belgium there would have been no Congo!" the imperialist pen-pushers cried from the roof-tops. That, in essence, was how the Congolese nation was robbed spiritually. That was the substance of colonial propaganda. What official Brussels called its "civilising mission" was nothing but brigandage and the forbidding reality of the capitalist world.</p>
<p>The Congo is one of the oldest countries in Africa. Its name is derived from the Congo, which is one of the greatest rivers of the world. The country has a territory of 905 square miles, which is 77 times bigger than the territory of Belgium. It turns out that a small European colonial vulture conquered and exploited a territory that is almost 80 times the size of the kingdom of Belgium.</p>
<p>A census has never been taken of the population of the Congo. The colonialists estimated the number of inhabitants "by eye". It is believed that in the Congo today there are at least 14 million inhabitants. Historians assert that the population of the Congo decreased by half in the past century, i.e., during the period of Belgian domination. In the recent past the Congo was one of the main sources of slaves for the West. Historical researches point to the astounding fact that European traders in "live merchandise" shipped over 13 million slaves from the Congo. More than five million unfortunate inhabitants of Equatorial Africa perished in the voyages across the Atlantic.</p>
<p>In the African languages the Congo means "Great Water". The earliest mention of this far-away and fabulously rich country is to be found in the notes of the Carthaginian Hanno and the Arab navigator Pateneit. The numerous peoples of the Congo had their own highly developed culture, which was almost completely effaced by the strangers from Europe, who took from the Congo everything they could: people, rare species of trees, gold and pearls, ivory and the skins of rare animals. Henry Morton Stanley, who is also referred to as one of the "creators" of the Congo, wrote:</p>
<p class="quoteb">"Every tusk, piece and scrap in the possession of an Arab trader has been steeped and dyed in blood. Every pound weight has cost the life of a man, woman or child, for every five pounds a hut has been burnt, for every two tusks a whole village has been destroyed, every twenty tusks have been obtained at the price of a district with all its people, villages and plantations."</p>
<p>In the period between 1857 and 1876 alone, nearly 800 Tons of ivory was shipped out of Africa annually. In other words, the colonialist barbarians destroyed not less than 51,000 elephants a year.</p>
<p>No one can say how much precious metal was taken out of the Congo or give the quantity of diamonds that was wrung out of the diamond-fields scattered along the Kasai and Lulua rivers. It would be an impossible task to state the number of ships that sailed away loaded with ebony and jacaranda, with baobab and sequoia, with bamboo, or with crocodile skins. The Baluba people have no other name for a Belgian than <em>pene toto,</em> which means "money-grabbing". For a piece of copper wire or for a handful of glass beads that were used as ornaments by tribal chiefs, the Belgian colonialist received in exchange bags of gold dust and bottles filled with diamonds. He killed hippopotamuses and crocodiles, giraffes and deer, leopards and the rare okapis. For a song he acquired the priceless masks of the Bashi, Lulua and Baluba tribes and bought up the works by artists of the <em>poto-poto</em> school, which is famous throughout Africa. The Brussels merchants began to bring from the Congo even giant canoes hollowed out of the ancient trees growing on the banks of the great African river. Jungles were cut down and the dense, luxuriant forests were laid waste. The once flourishing flora and fauna began to grow sickly. The Congo became a "dying land".</p>
<p>The bronze statues of Belgian kings, sticking into the air in Leopoldville, Luluabourg, Bukavu, Stanleyville, Elisabethville, Matadi, Boma and many other Congolese towns are unique landmarks of pillage and colonial piracy. Leopold II issued an edict decreeing the chopping-off of the hands of Congolese who did not bring the fixed amount of rubber, coffee or ivory. To this day one can meet in the Congo old men with amputated left hands as sinister reminders of the Belgian monarch. Who was left-handed lost his right hand.</p>
<p>Since those days Belgian "civilisation" has changed to some extent, taking on a more "modern" appearance. The Congolese no longer had their hands mutilated: they were savagely flogged instead. There were purely mercantile considerations behind this fiendish "humanity": it was unprofitable to chop off a man's hands as that deprived him of his capacity for work. The colonialists turned to the whip and lash.</p>
<p>The Congo is a grim reproach to and a stern accusation of the colonial system of oppression. Occupying a twelfth part of the territory of Africa, the Congo lived in darkness and her people were doomed to extinction. A handful of Belgian magnates wallowed in wealth while the population of the tropics knew nothing but hardship and privation. The Belgian Union Minière controls billions of francs, but the Congolese does not have two francs with which to buy a box of matches. After a few years in the Congo, the Belgian official builds luxurious villas, buys the latest American cars and can command a comfortable life for the rest of his days. A Congolese has to work for a year to earn the price of an aircraft ticket from Leopoldville to Elisabethville. An American car costs from 220,000 to 250,000 francs, a sum that a Congolese can never earn even in 50 or 60 years.</p>
<p>Many of the Belgians in the Congo have private helicopters, sea-going vessels and launches, to say nothing of cars. The Congolese has what his grandfather and great-grandfather had before him: a wretched hut made of bamboo and palm leaves, a ragged singlet and a loin-cloth. The Belgian imports wild goat meat into the Congo from the Portuguese colony of Angola, drinks the choicest of French wines and treats himself to oysters brought in refrigerators from Antwerp. The food the Congolese eats consists of manioc, which, ground into flour, was eaten by the local inhabitants a hundred, two hundred and a thousand years ago.</p>
<p>The colonialists enmeshed the glorious Congolese people in chains of spiritual slavery. When I went to the Congo I wanted to meet Congolese writers, scientists, doctors and teachers. But there were none to meet. This former Belgian colony with its population of 14 million people does not have a single doctor, scientist or teacher of its own. What an unspeakable disgrace this is to civilised and cultured Belgium! In the Congo not a single newspaper is published in the local language: all publications belong to the Belgian Catholics. The French language has trampled and supplanted the Lingala, Ki-Kongo, Chikoba and Kiswahili languages that are spoken by millions of people. Brussels eradicated the whole of Congolese culture, flinging a many-million-strong people into the abyss of medieval darkness. This was the modern barbarism that Patrice Lumumba, ardent patriot and great son of his people, struggled against. The nation spoke through his lips, declaring relentless war on colonialism. Lumumba sacrificed his life for a united, sovereign Congo. His ideals live in the hearts of Congolese patriots, who are determined to consummate these bright ideals in the name of which a hero of our day has died.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p>The horrible news that Patrice Emery Lumumba was murdered in cold blood in the Katanga lair was for all of us like a blow by a home-made Congolese battle-axe. The destiny of this heroic man, a devoted patriot and an ardent fighter against the accursed colonial regime, is inseparable from the destiny of his homeland. Patrice, as he is lovingly and simply called by the Congolese people, was always in the front ranks of the patriots who courageously and proudly bid defiance to the imperialist vultures. The tragedy of Lumumba as a politician, man and fighter reflects the bottomless grief of the 14-million-strong Congolese people. The Congo and Lumumba, Lumumba and the Congo are interlaced and each of them stirs us and evokes vehement hatred for the organisers of this orgy of blood.</p>
<p>Who was Patrice Lumumba? What were the ideals to which he was dedicated heart and soul?</p>
<p>Lumumba was born on July 2, 1925, in Sankuru Region, Kasai Province. He belonged to the Mutetela ethnical group. After finishing secondary school he went to work, finding employment in various colonial firms and offices. He was a post-office employee and worked in a factory run by a Belgian. At the same time he plunged into literary and journalistic activity, writing poems and publishing articles about the terrible plight of the Congolese. In Stanleyville he founded the newspaper <em>Uhuru (Freedom),</em> which today is one of the most popular in the Congo Republic. Lumumba was the director of the weekly <em>Indepéndance</em>. In October 1959, he published a declaration on the establishment of the Congo National Movement Party. This was the organizational culmination of the extensive work that was done by Lumumba and his associates to mobilise and unite into a single party all the progressive forces standing shoulder to shoulder in the liberation movement. The Party advanced the slogan of "Independence Now!"</p>
<p>The Belgian colonialists flung Lumumba into jail twice. But long before independence was proclaimed Lumumba's popularity and influence among his people was such that it could not be ignored by the official Brussels. The Belgian King had a long conversation with Lumumba during one of his visits to the Congo. Lumumba was promised a high position and an untroubled life in a new pro-Belgian and, essentially, colonial government of the Congo. Lumumba remained true to his political convictions and with unflagging energy went on defending the rights of the enslaved Congolese people.</p>
<p>It is characteristic that in the elections in Orientale Province Lumumba's Party received 90 per cent of the votes. This took place at a time when the leader of the Party was in jail.</p>
<p>The so-called round-table conference, held in the Belgian capita) early in 1960, was planned by official Brussels as a rehearsal to determine the role Congolese leaders would play in the future "independent" government at Leopoldville. The colonial officials had already selected "suitable" candidates: Jean Bolikango, for example, could be president, and Joseph Kasavubu prime minister.</p>
<p>The conference organisers endeavoured to avoid even the mention of Lumumba's name. But the plan hatched in Brussels was upset as soon as the conference began. Lumumba's supporters demanded that the head of the Congo National Movement Party be admitted to the conference.</p>
<p>"If Lumumba is not invited we shall leave Brussels," Congolese patriots declared.</p>
<p>Lumumba was in jail at the time. The Belgians had no alternative but to release him immediately and bring him to Brussels by aircraft. It is said that when Lumumba entered the conference room his arms still bore the bloody marks of shackles: they had been taken off only a few hours before.</p>
<p>In Leopoldville I, like all the other Soviet correspondents, saw Lumumba many times, went to his residence and attended his press conferences. I would say that simplicity and fidelity to principles are the qualities that distinguish Patrice Lumumba most of all. He began one of his press conferences with the words:</p>
<p class="quoteb">"I have invited you, gentlemen, to talk with you, to seek your advice and to exchange opinions. I hope that you will be objective in reporting the events in my country and keep world opinion informed of the truth."</p>
<p>That was Lumumba's way—warm and stimulating.</p>
<p>There was no correspondent in Leopoldville who did not have the greatest of respect for Lumumba. Everything about this outstanding personality was attractive: his ardent calls against colonialism, his passion as a political leader and his ability to engage an adversary in open and honest battle. Here is what the British <em>Foreign Report</em> wrote about this remarkable leader of the Congo:</p>
<p class="quoteb">"Hard-working, physically courageous and a charmer, his strength is that he is the only genuinely nationalist, anti-tribal and anti-regional Congolese leader.... Mr. Lumumba seems to be the only Congolese politician with the necessary ambition and qualities to hold the Congo together as a unitary state."</p>
<p>Lumumba showed that he was a convinced and consistent opponent of tribalism, of tribal wars. A native of Kasai, which is inhabited by dozens of ethnical groups, tribes and nationalities, Lumumba knew what the tribal wars cost the Congolese people and time and again urged that an end be put to hostility between tribes once and for all. The membership of Lumumba's Party is a practical embodiment of his ideas, for it embraces almost all the nationalities of the Congo and there are branches of his Party in every province.</p>
<p>Patrice Lumumba worked in an exceedingly difficult situation. The treasury was empty. There was no national army. The state apparatus was weak. The government had no means of transportation. There had been several cases of Belgian aircraft taking off with Lumumba on board only to return to the airport after circling over it. The colonialists resorted to base means to deprive the Prime Minister of all opportunity of touring the republic and speaking to the people.</p>
<p class="quoteb">"Westerners and U.N. representatives are the only people I meet," Lumumba said in such cases. "I have to speak French, when all the time I yearn to discuss things in my native Lingala, to meet with the peasants."</p>
<p>Yes, with his people he spoke in Lingala. Those were stirring scenes! When he arrived in Stanleyville, tens of thousands of townsfolk and villagers came to meet him. The Elaeis palms seemed to shake with the mighty shouts of:</p>
<p>"Congo! Lumumba! <em>Uhuru</em>!<em>"</em></p>
<p>In Stanleyville I saw that if you wanted to make a Congolese smile and well disposed towards you you had to greet him with just the one word <em>Lumumba.</em></p>
<p>Lumumba showed a very eager interest in the Soviet Union. He was always glad to meet and talk with Soviet people. While in Stanleyville, he found the time to talk with Vasily Shishkin, head of a team of Soviet doctors who worked in the province. He asked how the Soviet doctors were getting used to the tropical climate, what accommodations they had, how they were supplied with food, and so on.</p>
<p>"You come straight to me if you have difficulties," he said to Shishkin.</p>
<p>Lumumba was the one who said that the Soviet Union was the only Great Power whose position was in accord with the will and views of the Congolese people. This evaluation of the Soviet Union's policy of disinterestedly supporting the fighting people of the Congo served as grounds for accusing Lumumba of favouring communism. He was asked about this during receptions in Leopoldville and during his trips abroad. His reply was:</p>
<p class="quoteb">"We are neither Communists, Catholics nor socialists. We are African nationalists. We reserve the right to choose our friends in accordance with the principle of positive neutrality."</p>
<p>Lumumba had the uncanny gift of instantaneously exposing the plots of the enemies of a united Congo, The local and overseas colonialists alike feared his speeches. Hammarskj�ld preferred not to meet him: the U.N. Secretary-General was unable to reply to the direct questions asked by the Congolese Prime Minister. In Leopoldville Hammarskj�ld engaged in a "business" correspondence with Lumumba's Government from a sumptuous hotel.</p>
<p>We are speaking and writing as though Lumumba were alive, just as we had seen him. A tall and well-made man looks openly at you through glasses with slightly short-sighted eyes. He speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. He has the manners of an intellectual and the heart of a fighter. After a session in Parliament, when he had to take the floor three times, he rode home to play with his four children. He is a fond father....</p>
<p>It is hard to believe that what happened to Patrice Lumumba took place in the second half of the twentieth century. Just think of it! The lawfully elected Prime Minister of a young African republic was seized by the bandits of the usurper Mobutu, thrown into a dungeon in Thysville and then transported by special plane to Katanga. Regretfully we do not have all the facts of the brutal slaying of Lumumba and his comrades-in-arms, President of the Congolese Senate Joseph Okito and Minister of Defence Maurice Mpolo. But it is obvious that Lumumba's "escape" was a fake and that it was made public after the prisoners of the Katanga jail had been put to death. Could it be that what President Modibo Keita of the Mali Republic spoke of a few days before the terrible news crashed down upon the world was actually what happened? Speaking of the physical reprisal that was being prepared against Lumumba, Keita declared:</p>
<p>"Eight hundred thousand Belgian francs are to be collected in Paris and sent to Brazzaville, from where this money will be taken to the Congo. Hired assassins are to be paid from this first instalment. Lumumba's second escape will be engineered to allow the assassins to commit their crime. It would not be superfluous to recall that during Lumumba's first escape certain Belgian newspapers reported: 'It was stupid to arrest him! We could have settled this devilish problem at once!'"</p>
<p>What was "not settled" at once was done later.</p>
<p>Foreign observers saw Patrice Lumumba and his comrades-in-arms for the last time at the Elisabethville aerodrome on January 17, 1961. They were blindfolded and covered with blood.</p>
<p>No one must forget the condemnatory fact that the U.N. Command in the Congo perpetrated a crime when on two occasions it surrendered and betrayed the head of the legal Government of the Congo Republic: the first time into the hands of Mobutu and Kasavubu, and the second time into the hands of the Belgian aggressors and Tshombe.</p>
<p>Patrice Lumumba never camouflaged his political convictions. On behalf of his Party and on behalf of the Congolese people he demanded the full and final abolition of the colonial system. He never sought a compromise with the imperialists and their creatures. That was why he was hated in colonialist circles. That was why plots were organised against him in Leopoldville and in Brazzaville on the far bank of the Congo.</p>
<p>The murder of Patrice Lumumba shocked the whole world.</p>
<p>Lumumba became a legend, a symbol, a banner of struggle. The whole world now realises the full significance of the loss. Lumumba was not released as was undeviatingly demanded by world public opinion. He was tortured to death. The American <em>Washington Post and Times Herald</em> can now stop worrying that "Lumumba's release will be an obvious risk for the Western Powers". We know that behind the Katanga hangmen there are definite "white" faces. Sitting in an international organisation they squeezed out of themselves official "condolences" that sounded as though they were glued together with pieces of gutta-percha. They will always be haunted by the ghost of the dead hero and martyr! It is time the whole world forcibly declared that the post of U.N. Secretary-General is incompatible with villainy. May the wrath and grief of millions of Congolese and of hundreds of millions of ordinary folks the world over finally force the overt and covert accomplices of the crime in a nameless Katanga village out of their high posts in the U.N.!</p>
<p>Lumumba is no longer among the living. The Congo lost a great son. He perished in the prime of his anti-colonial, patriotic activity. A prime minister may be unlawfully removed and assassinated, but the idea of the Congo's unity cannot be put down. Lumumba is no more. But his staunch supporters and his Party remain. Writing about them, the newspaper <em>Uhuru</em> said:</p>
<p>"The Congo National Movement Party is the motor of our entire movement. Its credo and ours is unity.</p>
<p class="quoteb">"Belgium should have realised that the views expressed by Lumumba were the views of the majority of the Congolese people. Lumumba always forestalled the designs of those who shape Belgium's foreign policy. We call upon the entire people to participate in political activity and support the national movement that was created and organised by Lumumba's Party. For those who are fighting for the future of our country we bring to mind a piece of ancient wisdom, which says that the substance of life is not that man should fall, but, on the contrary, that he should continually rise. At this culminating period we call upon you to support unity. History and the people will appraise the efforts we are making today. Long live a united and indivisible Congo! Long live Lumumba and freedom!"</p>
<p>"Lumumba and freedom!", "Lumumba and independent Congo!" are the slogans with which thousands upon thousands of Congolese are rising to the struggle against the Belgian aggressors and their satellites. Lumumba's bright life inspires people to the performance of great deeds. The savage murders are evidence of the agony of the outworn system of slavery. Lumumba's very death is mobilising the Congolese to the struggle for freedom and independence, for the sake of which Africa's national hero Patrice Lumumba lived, worked and suffered with such supreme courage to the last drop of his blood.</p>
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N. KHOKHLOV
THE GOAL PATRICE SOUGHT TO ACHIEVE
Source: Patrice Lumumba, The Truth about a Monstrous Crime of the Colonialists, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, pp 105-115.
Written: by N. KHOKHLOV, Izvestia Special Correspondent
Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt.
The whole of mankind now sees the Belgian colonialists as vicious plunderers. The myth that the former Belgian Congo was a model colony has collapsed. In the African continent Brussels had seized a whole country, pillaging it for nearly 80 years. During this long period Belgian writers produced a huge number of books on this vast tropical colony. Fat tomes and slim brochures importunately preached the single idea that the modern Congo had been created by the monarchs in Brussels. Like the Lord in Heaven who is supposed to have created everything terrestrial, the Belgian kings "created" an entire country. "Without kings, without Belgium there would have been no Congo!" the imperialist pen-pushers cried from the roof-tops. That, in essence, was how the Congolese nation was robbed spiritually. That was the substance of colonial propaganda. What official Brussels called its "civilising mission" was nothing but brigandage and the forbidding reality of the capitalist world.
The Congo is one of the oldest countries in Africa. Its name is derived from the Congo, which is one of the greatest rivers of the world. The country has a territory of 905 square miles, which is 77 times bigger than the territory of Belgium. It turns out that a small European colonial vulture conquered and exploited a territory that is almost 80 times the size of the kingdom of Belgium.
A census has never been taken of the population of the Congo. The colonialists estimated the number of inhabitants "by eye". It is believed that in the Congo today there are at least 14 million inhabitants. Historians assert that the population of the Congo decreased by half in the past century, i.e., during the period of Belgian domination. In the recent past the Congo was one of the main sources of slaves for the West. Historical researches point to the astounding fact that European traders in "live merchandise" shipped over 13 million slaves from the Congo. More than five million unfortunate inhabitants of Equatorial Africa perished in the voyages across the Atlantic.
In the African languages the Congo means "Great Water". The earliest mention of this far-away and fabulously rich country is to be found in the notes of the Carthaginian Hanno and the Arab navigator Pateneit. The numerous peoples of the Congo had their own highly developed culture, which was almost completely effaced by the strangers from Europe, who took from the Congo everything they could: people, rare species of trees, gold and pearls, ivory and the skins of rare animals. Henry Morton Stanley, who is also referred to as one of the "creators" of the Congo, wrote:
"Every tusk, piece and scrap in the possession of an Arab trader has been steeped and dyed in blood. Every pound weight has cost the life of a man, woman or child, for every five pounds a hut has been burnt, for every two tusks a whole village has been destroyed, every twenty tusks have been obtained at the price of a district with all its people, villages and plantations."
In the period between 1857 and 1876 alone, nearly 800 Tons of ivory was shipped out of Africa annually. In other words, the colonialist barbarians destroyed not less than 51,000 elephants a year.
No one can say how much precious metal was taken out of the Congo or give the quantity of diamonds that was wrung out of the diamond-fields scattered along the Kasai and Lulua rivers. It would be an impossible task to state the number of ships that sailed away loaded with ebony and jacaranda, with baobab and sequoia, with bamboo, or with crocodile skins. The Baluba people have no other name for a Belgian than pene toto, which means "money-grabbing". For a piece of copper wire or for a handful of glass beads that were used as ornaments by tribal chiefs, the Belgian colonialist received in exchange bags of gold dust and bottles filled with diamonds. He killed hippopotamuses and crocodiles, giraffes and deer, leopards and the rare okapis. For a song he acquired the priceless masks of the Bashi, Lulua and Baluba tribes and bought up the works by artists of the poto-poto school, which is famous throughout Africa. The Brussels merchants began to bring from the Congo even giant canoes hollowed out of the ancient trees growing on the banks of the great African river. Jungles were cut down and the dense, luxuriant forests were laid waste. The once flourishing flora and fauna began to grow sickly. The Congo became a "dying land".
The bronze statues of Belgian kings, sticking into the air in Leopoldville, Luluabourg, Bukavu, Stanleyville, Elisabethville, Matadi, Boma and many other Congolese towns are unique landmarks of pillage and colonial piracy. Leopold II issued an edict decreeing the chopping-off of the hands of Congolese who did not bring the fixed amount of rubber, coffee or ivory. To this day one can meet in the Congo old men with amputated left hands as sinister reminders of the Belgian monarch. Who was left-handed lost his right hand.
Since those days Belgian "civilisation" has changed to some extent, taking on a more "modern" appearance. The Congolese no longer had their hands mutilated: they were savagely flogged instead. There were purely mercantile considerations behind this fiendish "humanity": it was unprofitable to chop off a man's hands as that deprived him of his capacity for work. The colonialists turned to the whip and lash.
The Congo is a grim reproach to and a stern accusation of the colonial system of oppression. Occupying a twelfth part of the territory of Africa, the Congo lived in darkness and her people were doomed to extinction. A handful of Belgian magnates wallowed in wealth while the population of the tropics knew nothing but hardship and privation. The Belgian Union Minière controls billions of francs, but the Congolese does not have two francs with which to buy a box of matches. After a few years in the Congo, the Belgian official builds luxurious villas, buys the latest American cars and can command a comfortable life for the rest of his days. A Congolese has to work for a year to earn the price of an aircraft ticket from Leopoldville to Elisabethville. An American car costs from 220,000 to 250,000 francs, a sum that a Congolese can never earn even in 50 or 60 years.
Many of the Belgians in the Congo have private helicopters, sea-going vessels and launches, to say nothing of cars. The Congolese has what his grandfather and great-grandfather had before him: a wretched hut made of bamboo and palm leaves, a ragged singlet and a loin-cloth. The Belgian imports wild goat meat into the Congo from the Portuguese colony of Angola, drinks the choicest of French wines and treats himself to oysters brought in refrigerators from Antwerp. The food the Congolese eats consists of manioc, which, ground into flour, was eaten by the local inhabitants a hundred, two hundred and a thousand years ago.
The colonialists enmeshed the glorious Congolese people in chains of spiritual slavery. When I went to the Congo I wanted to meet Congolese writers, scientists, doctors and teachers. But there were none to meet. This former Belgian colony with its population of 14 million people does not have a single doctor, scientist or teacher of its own. What an unspeakable disgrace this is to civilised and cultured Belgium! In the Congo not a single newspaper is published in the local language: all publications belong to the Belgian Catholics. The French language has trampled and supplanted the Lingala, Ki-Kongo, Chikoba and Kiswahili languages that are spoken by millions of people. Brussels eradicated the whole of Congolese culture, flinging a many-million-strong people into the abyss of medieval darkness. This was the modern barbarism that Patrice Lumumba, ardent patriot and great son of his people, struggled against. The nation spoke through his lips, declaring relentless war on colonialism. Lumumba sacrificed his life for a united, sovereign Congo. His ideals live in the hearts of Congolese patriots, who are determined to consummate these bright ideals in the name of which a hero of our day has died.
* * *
The horrible news that Patrice Emery Lumumba was murdered in cold blood in the Katanga lair was for all of us like a blow by a home-made Congolese battle-axe. The destiny of this heroic man, a devoted patriot and an ardent fighter against the accursed colonial regime, is inseparable from the destiny of his homeland. Patrice, as he is lovingly and simply called by the Congolese people, was always in the front ranks of the patriots who courageously and proudly bid defiance to the imperialist vultures. The tragedy of Lumumba as a politician, man and fighter reflects the bottomless grief of the 14-million-strong Congolese people. The Congo and Lumumba, Lumumba and the Congo are interlaced and each of them stirs us and evokes vehement hatred for the organisers of this orgy of blood.
Who was Patrice Lumumba? What were the ideals to which he was dedicated heart and soul?
Lumumba was born on July 2, 1925, in Sankuru Region, Kasai Province. He belonged to the Mutetela ethnical group. After finishing secondary school he went to work, finding employment in various colonial firms and offices. He was a post-office employee and worked in a factory run by a Belgian. At the same time he plunged into literary and journalistic activity, writing poems and publishing articles about the terrible plight of the Congolese. In Stanleyville he founded the newspaper Uhuru (Freedom), which today is one of the most popular in the Congo Republic. Lumumba was the director of the weekly Indepéndance. In October 1959, he published a declaration on the establishment of the Congo National Movement Party. This was the organizational culmination of the extensive work that was done by Lumumba and his associates to mobilise and unite into a single party all the progressive forces standing shoulder to shoulder in the liberation movement. The Party advanced the slogan of "Independence Now!"
The Belgian colonialists flung Lumumba into jail twice. But long before independence was proclaimed Lumumba's popularity and influence among his people was such that it could not be ignored by the official Brussels. The Belgian King had a long conversation with Lumumba during one of his visits to the Congo. Lumumba was promised a high position and an untroubled life in a new pro-Belgian and, essentially, colonial government of the Congo. Lumumba remained true to his political convictions and with unflagging energy went on defending the rights of the enslaved Congolese people.
It is characteristic that in the elections in Orientale Province Lumumba's Party received 90 per cent of the votes. This took place at a time when the leader of the Party was in jail.
The so-called round-table conference, held in the Belgian capita) early in 1960, was planned by official Brussels as a rehearsal to determine the role Congolese leaders would play in the future "independent" government at Leopoldville. The colonial officials had already selected "suitable" candidates: Jean Bolikango, for example, could be president, and Joseph Kasavubu prime minister.
The conference organisers endeavoured to avoid even the mention of Lumumba's name. But the plan hatched in Brussels was upset as soon as the conference began. Lumumba's supporters demanded that the head of the Congo National Movement Party be admitted to the conference.
"If Lumumba is not invited we shall leave Brussels," Congolese patriots declared.
Lumumba was in jail at the time. The Belgians had no alternative but to release him immediately and bring him to Brussels by aircraft. It is said that when Lumumba entered the conference room his arms still bore the bloody marks of shackles: they had been taken off only a few hours before.
In Leopoldville I, like all the other Soviet correspondents, saw Lumumba many times, went to his residence and attended his press conferences. I would say that simplicity and fidelity to principles are the qualities that distinguish Patrice Lumumba most of all. He began one of his press conferences with the words:
"I have invited you, gentlemen, to talk with you, to seek your advice and to exchange opinions. I hope that you will be objective in reporting the events in my country and keep world opinion informed of the truth."
That was Lumumba's way—warm and stimulating.
There was no correspondent in Leopoldville who did not have the greatest of respect for Lumumba. Everything about this outstanding personality was attractive: his ardent calls against colonialism, his passion as a political leader and his ability to engage an adversary in open and honest battle. Here is what the British Foreign Report wrote about this remarkable leader of the Congo:
"Hard-working, physically courageous and a charmer, his strength is that he is the only genuinely nationalist, anti-tribal and anti-regional Congolese leader.... Mr. Lumumba seems to be the only Congolese politician with the necessary ambition and qualities to hold the Congo together as a unitary state."
Lumumba showed that he was a convinced and consistent opponent of tribalism, of tribal wars. A native of Kasai, which is inhabited by dozens of ethnical groups, tribes and nationalities, Lumumba knew what the tribal wars cost the Congolese people and time and again urged that an end be put to hostility between tribes once and for all. The membership of Lumumba's Party is a practical embodiment of his ideas, for it embraces almost all the nationalities of the Congo and there are branches of his Party in every province.
Patrice Lumumba worked in an exceedingly difficult situation. The treasury was empty. There was no national army. The state apparatus was weak. The government had no means of transportation. There had been several cases of Belgian aircraft taking off with Lumumba on board only to return to the airport after circling over it. The colonialists resorted to base means to deprive the Prime Minister of all opportunity of touring the republic and speaking to the people.
"Westerners and U.N. representatives are the only people I meet," Lumumba said in such cases. "I have to speak French, when all the time I yearn to discuss things in my native Lingala, to meet with the peasants."
Yes, with his people he spoke in Lingala. Those were stirring scenes! When he arrived in Stanleyville, tens of thousands of townsfolk and villagers came to meet him. The Elaeis palms seemed to shake with the mighty shouts of:
"Congo! Lumumba! Uhuru!"
In Stanleyville I saw that if you wanted to make a Congolese smile and well disposed towards you you had to greet him with just the one word Lumumba.
Lumumba showed a very eager interest in the Soviet Union. He was always glad to meet and talk with Soviet people. While in Stanleyville, he found the time to talk with Vasily Shishkin, head of a team of Soviet doctors who worked in the province. He asked how the Soviet doctors were getting used to the tropical climate, what accommodations they had, how they were supplied with food, and so on.
"You come straight to me if you have difficulties," he said to Shishkin.
Lumumba was the one who said that the Soviet Union was the only Great Power whose position was in accord with the will and views of the Congolese people. This evaluation of the Soviet Union's policy of disinterestedly supporting the fighting people of the Congo served as grounds for accusing Lumumba of favouring communism. He was asked about this during receptions in Leopoldville and during his trips abroad. His reply was:
"We are neither Communists, Catholics nor socialists. We are African nationalists. We reserve the right to choose our friends in accordance with the principle of positive neutrality."
Lumumba had the uncanny gift of instantaneously exposing the plots of the enemies of a united Congo, The local and overseas colonialists alike feared his speeches. Hammarskj�ld preferred not to meet him: the U.N. Secretary-General was unable to reply to the direct questions asked by the Congolese Prime Minister. In Leopoldville Hammarskj�ld engaged in a "business" correspondence with Lumumba's Government from a sumptuous hotel.
We are speaking and writing as though Lumumba were alive, just as we had seen him. A tall and well-made man looks openly at you through glasses with slightly short-sighted eyes. He speaks in a soft, pleasant voice. He has the manners of an intellectual and the heart of a fighter. After a session in Parliament, when he had to take the floor three times, he rode home to play with his four children. He is a fond father....
It is hard to believe that what happened to Patrice Lumumba took place in the second half of the twentieth century. Just think of it! The lawfully elected Prime Minister of a young African republic was seized by the bandits of the usurper Mobutu, thrown into a dungeon in Thysville and then transported by special plane to Katanga. Regretfully we do not have all the facts of the brutal slaying of Lumumba and his comrades-in-arms, President of the Congolese Senate Joseph Okito and Minister of Defence Maurice Mpolo. But it is obvious that Lumumba's "escape" was a fake and that it was made public after the prisoners of the Katanga jail had been put to death. Could it be that what President Modibo Keita of the Mali Republic spoke of a few days before the terrible news crashed down upon the world was actually what happened? Speaking of the physical reprisal that was being prepared against Lumumba, Keita declared:
"Eight hundred thousand Belgian francs are to be collected in Paris and sent to Brazzaville, from where this money will be taken to the Congo. Hired assassins are to be paid from this first instalment. Lumumba's second escape will be engineered to allow the assassins to commit their crime. It would not be superfluous to recall that during Lumumba's first escape certain Belgian newspapers reported: 'It was stupid to arrest him! We could have settled this devilish problem at once!'"
What was "not settled" at once was done later.
Foreign observers saw Patrice Lumumba and his comrades-in-arms for the last time at the Elisabethville aerodrome on January 17, 1961. They were blindfolded and covered with blood.
No one must forget the condemnatory fact that the U.N. Command in the Congo perpetrated a crime when on two occasions it surrendered and betrayed the head of the legal Government of the Congo Republic: the first time into the hands of Mobutu and Kasavubu, and the second time into the hands of the Belgian aggressors and Tshombe.
Patrice Lumumba never camouflaged his political convictions. On behalf of his Party and on behalf of the Congolese people he demanded the full and final abolition of the colonial system. He never sought a compromise with the imperialists and their creatures. That was why he was hated in colonialist circles. That was why plots were organised against him in Leopoldville and in Brazzaville on the far bank of the Congo.
The murder of Patrice Lumumba shocked the whole world.
Lumumba became a legend, a symbol, a banner of struggle. The whole world now realises the full significance of the loss. Lumumba was not released as was undeviatingly demanded by world public opinion. He was tortured to death. The American Washington Post and Times Herald can now stop worrying that "Lumumba's release will be an obvious risk for the Western Powers". We know that behind the Katanga hangmen there are definite "white" faces. Sitting in an international organisation they squeezed out of themselves official "condolences" that sounded as though they were glued together with pieces of gutta-percha. They will always be haunted by the ghost of the dead hero and martyr! It is time the whole world forcibly declared that the post of U.N. Secretary-General is incompatible with villainy. May the wrath and grief of millions of Congolese and of hundreds of millions of ordinary folks the world over finally force the overt and covert accomplices of the crime in a nameless Katanga village out of their high posts in the U.N.!
Lumumba is no longer among the living. The Congo lost a great son. He perished in the prime of his anti-colonial, patriotic activity. A prime minister may be unlawfully removed and assassinated, but the idea of the Congo's unity cannot be put down. Lumumba is no more. But his staunch supporters and his Party remain. Writing about them, the newspaper Uhuru said:
"The Congo National Movement Party is the motor of our entire movement. Its credo and ours is unity.
"Belgium should have realised that the views expressed by Lumumba were the views of the majority of the Congolese people. Lumumba always forestalled the designs of those who shape Belgium's foreign policy. We call upon the entire people to participate in political activity and support the national movement that was created and organised by Lumumba's Party. For those who are fighting for the future of our country we bring to mind a piece of ancient wisdom, which says that the substance of life is not that man should fall, but, on the contrary, that he should continually rise. At this culminating period we call upon you to support unity. History and the people will appraise the efforts we are making today. Long live a united and indivisible Congo! Long live Lumumba and freedom!"
"Lumumba and freedom!", "Lumumba and independent Congo!" are the slogans with which thousands upon thousands of Congolese are rising to the struggle against the Belgian aggressors and their satellites. Lumumba's bright life inspires people to the performance of great deeds. The savage murders are evidence of the agony of the outworn system of slavery. Lumumba's very death is mobilising the Congolese to the struggle for freedom and independence, for the sake of which Africa's national hero Patrice Lumumba lived, worked and suffered with such supreme courage to the last drop of his blood.
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./articles/Lumumba-Patrice/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.africa.lumumba.1960.08.25 | <body>
<p class="title">Patrice Lumumba</p>
<h1>Speech at the opening of the All-African Conference in Leopoldville</h1>
<h4>August 25, 1960</h4>
<br>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source:</span> <strong>Patrice Lumumba: Fighter for Africa</strong><strong>’s Freedom</strong>, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1961, pp 19-25.<br>
<span class="info">Written</span>: by Patrice Lumumba;<br>
<span class="info">Transcribed</span>: by Thomas Schmidt.</p>
<hr class="end">
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<td><img src="../img/all-conf.jpg" width="800" height="499" align="bottom" alt=""> </td>
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<td><p class="quoteb">Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba speaks at the opening of the All-African Conference in Leopoldville, August 25, 1960</p></td>
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<br>
<p>Ministers,</p>
<p>Ladies and gentlemen,</p>
<p>Dear comrades,</p>
<p>The fighting Congolese people are proud and happy to receive their brothers-in-arms in their country today.</p>
<p>For my Government, for us Congolese, your presence here at such a moment is the most striking proof of the African reality whose existence our enemies have always denied and are still attempting to deny. But you, of course, know that that reality is even more stubborn than they, and Africa lives on and fights. She refuses to die to justify the arguments about the backwardness of our history, a history we have made with our hands, our skins and our blood.</p>
<p>It is at conferences such as this that, we first became conscious of our personality, of our growing solidarity. When at our first conferences, which were held in various cities in Africa, we brought up the problem of decolonisation the imperialists never expected we would be successful. However, since the first Conference of the Peoples of Africa in Accra in December 1958 we have traversed the entire road of the liberation of our continent together.</p>
<p>You will recall the upsurge of the liberation struggle of the peoples of Angola, Algeria, the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Nyasaland and Rhodesia after the Conference in Accra, and of Ruanda-Urundi today. You will remember that a decisive step forward was taken after that historic Conference. Nothing, neither bullets, nor repressions, could stop this popular movement.</p>
<p>The work of this Conference is aimed at accelerating the movement for the independence of the African continent.</p>
<p>Ministers, dear fighters for the freedom of Africa, it is your duty to show the world and those who sneer at us that nothing can deter us from liberating Africa, which is our <em>common</em> aim. We can achieve this aim only in solidarity and unity. Our solidarity will have meaning only when it is boundless and when we are convinced that Africa's destiny is indivisible.</p>
<p>Such are the deep-going principles of the work you will have to do. This meeting will prepare the ground for a Summit Conference at which our countries will have to speak on:</p>
<p>1) the unqualified support of all the African states in the general struggle for a Pan-African bloc;</p>
<p>2) a policy of neutralism with the purpose of achieving genuine independence;</p>
<p>3) the breaking down of colonial barriers through cultural exchanges;</p>
<p>4) trade agreements between the African states;</p>
<p>5) Africa's position with regard to the European Common Market;</p>
<p>6) military co-operation;</p>
<p>7) the building in Leopoldville of a powerful radio station with the aid of all the African states;</p>
<p>8) the creation of a research centre in Leopoldville. </p>
<p>Ministers, you have come into contact with the reality of the Congo here, in the very heart of the crisis that we shall have to resolve.</p>
<p>Your confidence in the future of our continent will unquestionably help you to complete your work successfully. Your principal purpose is to prepare a meeting of our Heads of State, who will in deed establish African unity, for whose sake you have responded to our appeal.</p>
<p>You know the origin of what is today called the Congolese crisis, which is actually only a continuation of the struggle between the forces of pressure and the forces of liberation. At the very outset of the Belgian aggression, my Government, the guarantor and representative of the sovereignty of the Congolese nation, decided to appeal to the United Nations. The U.N. has responded. And so has the free world. Belgium has been condemned. I went to New York to show world public opinion the moving forces of the Congolese drama.</p>
<p>Upon our return from the United Stateswe replied to the invitation of the Heads of the free African states, who publicly adopted a definite position and unanimously extended to us their fraternal support. From this rostrum I express my gratitude to President Bourguiba, His Majesty Mohammed V, President Sekou Toure, President Tubman, President Nkrumah and President Olympio, whom I had the honour to meet at this decisive moment. I regret that material difficulties prevented me from replying to the invitation of President Nasser and His Majesty Haile Selassie.</p>
<p>All of them, fighting for African unity, have said "No" to the strangulation of Africa. All of them immediately realised that the attempts of the imperialists to restore their rule threaten not only the independence of the Congo but also the existence of all the independent states of Africa. They all realised that if the Congo perishes, the whole of Africa will be plunged into the gloom of defeat and bondage.</p>
<p>That is further striking proof of African unity. It is concrete testimony of the unity that we need in the face of imperialism's monstrous appetite.</p>
<p>All statesmen are agreed that this reality is not debated but fought for so that it may be defended.</p>
<p>We have gathered here in order that together we may defend Africa, our patrimony. In reply to the actions of the imperialist states, for whom Belgium is only an instrument, we must unite the resistance front of the free and fighting nations of Africa. We must oppose the enemies of freedom with a coalition of free men. Our common destiny is now being decided here in the Congo.</p>
<p>It is, in effect, here that the last act of Africa's emancipation and rehabilitation is being played. In extending the struggle, whose primary object was to save the dignity of the African, the Congolese people have chosen independence. In doing so, they were aware that a single blow would not free them from colonial fetters, that juridical independence was only the first step, that a further long and trying effort would be required. The road we have chosen is not an easy one, but it is the road of pride and freedom of man.</p>
<p>We were aware that as long as the country was dependent, as long as she did not take her destiny into her own hands, the main thing would be lacking. This concerns the other colonies, no matter what their standard of life is or what positive aspects of the colonial system they have.</p>
<p>We have declared our desire for speedy independence without a transition period and without compromises with such emphasis because we have suffered more mockery, insults and humiliation than anybody else.</p>
<p>What purpose could delays serve when we already knew that sooner or later we would have to revise and re-examine everything? We had to create a new system adapted to the requirements of purely African evolution, change the methods forced on us and, in particular, find ourselves and free ourselves from the mental attitudes and various complexes in which colonisation kept us for centuries.</p>
<p>We were offered a choice between liberation and the continuation of bondage. There can be no compromise between freedom and slavery. We chose to pay the price of freedom.</p>
<p>The classical methods of the colonialists, which we all knew or partially still know, are particularly vital here: survivals of military occupation, tribal disunity, sustained and encouraged over a long period, and destructive political opposition, planned, directed and paid.</p>
<p>You know how difficult it has been for a newly independent state to get rid of the military bases installed by the former occupying powers. We must declare here and now that henceforth Africa refuses to maintain the armed forces of the imperialists in its territory. There must be no more Bizertes, Kitonas, Kaminas and Sidi Slimanes. We have our own armies to defend our countries.</p>
<p>Our armed forces, which are victims of machinations, are likewise freeing themselves from the colonial organisation in order to have all the qualities of a national army under Congolese leadership.</p>
<p>Our internal difficulties, tribal war and the nuclei of political opposition seemed to have been accidentally concentrated in the regions with our richest mineral and power resources. We know how all this was organised and, in particular, who supports it today in our house.</p>
<p>Our Katanga because of its uranium, copper and gold, and our Bakwanga in Kasai because of its diamonds have become hotbeds of imperialist intrigues. The object of these intrigues is to recapture economic control of our country.</p>
<p>But one thing is certain, and I solemnly declare that the Congolese people will never again let themselves be exploited, that all leaders who will strive to direct them to that road will be thrown out of the community.</p>
<p>The resonance that has now been caused by the Congolese problem shows the weight that Africa has in the world today. Our countries, which only yesterday they wanted to ignore as colonial countries, are today causing the old world concern here in Africa. Let them worry about what belongs to them. That is not our affair. Our future, our destiny, a free Africa, is our affair.</p>
<p>This is our year, which you have witnessed and shared in. It is the year of our indisputed victory. It is the year of heroic, blood-drenched Algeria, of Algeria the martyr and example of struggle. It is the year of tortured Angola, of enslaved South Africa, of imprisoned Ruanda-Urundi, of humiliated Kenya.</p>
<p>We all know, and the whole world knows it, that Algeria is not French, that Angola is not Portuguese, that Kenya is not English, that Ruanda-Urundi is not Belgian. We know that Africa is neither French, nor British, nor American, nor Russian, that it is African.</p>
<p>We know the objects of the West. Yesterday they divided us on the level of a tribe, clan and village. Today, with Africa liberating herself, they seek to divide us on the level of states. They want to create antagonistic blocs, satellites, and, having begun from that stage of the cold war, deepen the division in order to perpetuate their rule.</p>
<p>I think I shall not be making a mistake if I say that the united Africa of today rejects these intrigues. That is why we have chosen the policy of positive neutralism, which is the only acceptable policy allowing us to preserve our dignity.</p>
<p>For us there is neither a Western nor a communist bloc, but separate countries whose attitude towards Africa dictates our policy towards them. Let each country declare its position and act unequivocally with regard to Africa.</p>
<p>We refuse to be an arena of international intrigues, a hotbed and stake in the cold war. We affirm our human dignity of free men, who are steadily taking the destiny of their nations and their continent into their own hands.</p>
<p>We are acutely in need of peace and concord, and our foreign policy is directed towards co-operation, loyalty and friendship among nations. We want to be a force of peaceful progress, a force of conciliation. An independent and united Africa will make a large and positive contribution to world peace. But torn into zones of hostile influence, she will only intensify world antagonism and increase tension.</p>
<p>We are not undertaking any discriminative measures. But the Congo is discriminated against in her external relations. Yet in spite of that she is open for all and we are prepared to go anywhere. Our only demand is that our sovereignty be recognised and respected.</p>
<p>We shall open our doors to specialists from all countries motivated by friendship, loyalty and co-operation, from countries bent not on ruling Africans but on helping Africa. They will be welcomed with open arms.</p>
<p>I am sure that I shall be expressing the sentiments of all my African brothers when I say that Africa is not opposed to any nation taken separately, but that she is vigilant against any attempt at new domination and exploitation both in the economic and spiritual fields. Our goal is to revive Africa's cultural, philosophical, social and moral values and to preserve our resources. But our vigilance does not signify isolation. From the beginning of her independence, the Congo has shown her desire to play her part in the life of free nations, and this desire was concretised in her request for admission to the United Nations.</p>
<p>Ministers and dear comrades, I am happy to express the joy and pride of the Government and people of the Congo at your presence here, at the presence here of the whole of Africa. The time of projects has passed. Today Africa must take action. This action is being impatiently awaited by the peoples of Africa. African unity and solidarity are no longer dreams. They must be expressed in decisions.</p>
<p>United by a single spirit, a single aspiration and a single heart, we shall turn Africa into a genuinely free and independent continent in the immediate future.</p>
<p>Long live African unity and solidarity!</p>
<p>Forward, Africans, to complete liberation!</p>
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Patrice Lumumba
Speech at the opening of the All-African Conference in Leopoldville
August 25, 1960
Source: Patrice Lumumba: Fighter for Africa’s Freedom, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1961, pp 19-25.
Written: by Patrice Lumumba;
Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt.
Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba speaks at the opening of the All-African Conference in Leopoldville, August 25, 1960
Ministers,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear comrades,
The fighting Congolese people are proud and happy to receive their brothers-in-arms in their country today.
For my Government, for us Congolese, your presence here at such a moment is the most striking proof of the African reality whose existence our enemies have always denied and are still attempting to deny. But you, of course, know that that reality is even more stubborn than they, and Africa lives on and fights. She refuses to die to justify the arguments about the backwardness of our history, a history we have made with our hands, our skins and our blood.
It is at conferences such as this that, we first became conscious of our personality, of our growing solidarity. When at our first conferences, which were held in various cities in Africa, we brought up the problem of decolonisation the imperialists never expected we would be successful. However, since the first Conference of the Peoples of Africa in Accra in December 1958 we have traversed the entire road of the liberation of our continent together.
You will recall the upsurge of the liberation struggle of the peoples of Angola, Algeria, the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique, Nyasaland and Rhodesia after the Conference in Accra, and of Ruanda-Urundi today. You will remember that a decisive step forward was taken after that historic Conference. Nothing, neither bullets, nor repressions, could stop this popular movement.
The work of this Conference is aimed at accelerating the movement for the independence of the African continent.
Ministers, dear fighters for the freedom of Africa, it is your duty to show the world and those who sneer at us that nothing can deter us from liberating Africa, which is our common aim. We can achieve this aim only in solidarity and unity. Our solidarity will have meaning only when it is boundless and when we are convinced that Africa's destiny is indivisible.
Such are the deep-going principles of the work you will have to do. This meeting will prepare the ground for a Summit Conference at which our countries will have to speak on:
1) the unqualified support of all the African states in the general struggle for a Pan-African bloc;
2) a policy of neutralism with the purpose of achieving genuine independence;
3) the breaking down of colonial barriers through cultural exchanges;
4) trade agreements between the African states;
5) Africa's position with regard to the European Common Market;
6) military co-operation;
7) the building in Leopoldville of a powerful radio station with the aid of all the African states;
8) the creation of a research centre in Leopoldville.
Ministers, you have come into contact with the reality of the Congo here, in the very heart of the crisis that we shall have to resolve.
Your confidence in the future of our continent will unquestionably help you to complete your work successfully. Your principal purpose is to prepare a meeting of our Heads of State, who will in deed establish African unity, for whose sake you have responded to our appeal.
You know the origin of what is today called the Congolese crisis, which is actually only a continuation of the struggle between the forces of pressure and the forces of liberation. At the very outset of the Belgian aggression, my Government, the guarantor and representative of the sovereignty of the Congolese nation, decided to appeal to the United Nations. The U.N. has responded. And so has the free world. Belgium has been condemned. I went to New York to show world public opinion the moving forces of the Congolese drama.
Upon our return from the United Stateswe replied to the invitation of the Heads of the free African states, who publicly adopted a definite position and unanimously extended to us their fraternal support. From this rostrum I express my gratitude to President Bourguiba, His Majesty Mohammed V, President Sekou Toure, President Tubman, President Nkrumah and President Olympio, whom I had the honour to meet at this decisive moment. I regret that material difficulties prevented me from replying to the invitation of President Nasser and His Majesty Haile Selassie.
All of them, fighting for African unity, have said "No" to the strangulation of Africa. All of them immediately realised that the attempts of the imperialists to restore their rule threaten not only the independence of the Congo but also the existence of all the independent states of Africa. They all realised that if the Congo perishes, the whole of Africa will be plunged into the gloom of defeat and bondage.
That is further striking proof of African unity. It is concrete testimony of the unity that we need in the face of imperialism's monstrous appetite.
All statesmen are agreed that this reality is not debated but fought for so that it may be defended.
We have gathered here in order that together we may defend Africa, our patrimony. In reply to the actions of the imperialist states, for whom Belgium is only an instrument, we must unite the resistance front of the free and fighting nations of Africa. We must oppose the enemies of freedom with a coalition of free men. Our common destiny is now being decided here in the Congo.
It is, in effect, here that the last act of Africa's emancipation and rehabilitation is being played. In extending the struggle, whose primary object was to save the dignity of the African, the Congolese people have chosen independence. In doing so, they were aware that a single blow would not free them from colonial fetters, that juridical independence was only the first step, that a further long and trying effort would be required. The road we have chosen is not an easy one, but it is the road of pride and freedom of man.
We were aware that as long as the country was dependent, as long as she did not take her destiny into her own hands, the main thing would be lacking. This concerns the other colonies, no matter what their standard of life is or what positive aspects of the colonial system they have.
We have declared our desire for speedy independence without a transition period and without compromises with such emphasis because we have suffered more mockery, insults and humiliation than anybody else.
What purpose could delays serve when we already knew that sooner or later we would have to revise and re-examine everything? We had to create a new system adapted to the requirements of purely African evolution, change the methods forced on us and, in particular, find ourselves and free ourselves from the mental attitudes and various complexes in which colonisation kept us for centuries.
We were offered a choice between liberation and the continuation of bondage. There can be no compromise between freedom and slavery. We chose to pay the price of freedom.
The classical methods of the colonialists, which we all knew or partially still know, are particularly vital here: survivals of military occupation, tribal disunity, sustained and encouraged over a long period, and destructive political opposition, planned, directed and paid.
You know how difficult it has been for a newly independent state to get rid of the military bases installed by the former occupying powers. We must declare here and now that henceforth Africa refuses to maintain the armed forces of the imperialists in its territory. There must be no more Bizertes, Kitonas, Kaminas and Sidi Slimanes. We have our own armies to defend our countries.
Our armed forces, which are victims of machinations, are likewise freeing themselves from the colonial organisation in order to have all the qualities of a national army under Congolese leadership.
Our internal difficulties, tribal war and the nuclei of political opposition seemed to have been accidentally concentrated in the regions with our richest mineral and power resources. We know how all this was organised and, in particular, who supports it today in our house.
Our Katanga because of its uranium, copper and gold, and our Bakwanga in Kasai because of its diamonds have become hotbeds of imperialist intrigues. The object of these intrigues is to recapture economic control of our country.
But one thing is certain, and I solemnly declare that the Congolese people will never again let themselves be exploited, that all leaders who will strive to direct them to that road will be thrown out of the community.
The resonance that has now been caused by the Congolese problem shows the weight that Africa has in the world today. Our countries, which only yesterday they wanted to ignore as colonial countries, are today causing the old world concern here in Africa. Let them worry about what belongs to them. That is not our affair. Our future, our destiny, a free Africa, is our affair.
This is our year, which you have witnessed and shared in. It is the year of our indisputed victory. It is the year of heroic, blood-drenched Algeria, of Algeria the martyr and example of struggle. It is the year of tortured Angola, of enslaved South Africa, of imprisoned Ruanda-Urundi, of humiliated Kenya.
We all know, and the whole world knows it, that Algeria is not French, that Angola is not Portuguese, that Kenya is not English, that Ruanda-Urundi is not Belgian. We know that Africa is neither French, nor British, nor American, nor Russian, that it is African.
We know the objects of the West. Yesterday they divided us on the level of a tribe, clan and village. Today, with Africa liberating herself, they seek to divide us on the level of states. They want to create antagonistic blocs, satellites, and, having begun from that stage of the cold war, deepen the division in order to perpetuate their rule.
I think I shall not be making a mistake if I say that the united Africa of today rejects these intrigues. That is why we have chosen the policy of positive neutralism, which is the only acceptable policy allowing us to preserve our dignity.
For us there is neither a Western nor a communist bloc, but separate countries whose attitude towards Africa dictates our policy towards them. Let each country declare its position and act unequivocally with regard to Africa.
We refuse to be an arena of international intrigues, a hotbed and stake in the cold war. We affirm our human dignity of free men, who are steadily taking the destiny of their nations and their continent into their own hands.
We are acutely in need of peace and concord, and our foreign policy is directed towards co-operation, loyalty and friendship among nations. We want to be a force of peaceful progress, a force of conciliation. An independent and united Africa will make a large and positive contribution to world peace. But torn into zones of hostile influence, she will only intensify world antagonism and increase tension.
We are not undertaking any discriminative measures. But the Congo is discriminated against in her external relations. Yet in spite of that she is open for all and we are prepared to go anywhere. Our only demand is that our sovereignty be recognised and respected.
We shall open our doors to specialists from all countries motivated by friendship, loyalty and co-operation, from countries bent not on ruling Africans but on helping Africa. They will be welcomed with open arms.
I am sure that I shall be expressing the sentiments of all my African brothers when I say that Africa is not opposed to any nation taken separately, but that she is vigilant against any attempt at new domination and exploitation both in the economic and spiritual fields. Our goal is to revive Africa's cultural, philosophical, social and moral values and to preserve our resources. But our vigilance does not signify isolation. From the beginning of her independence, the Congo has shown her desire to play her part in the life of free nations, and this desire was concretised in her request for admission to the United Nations.
Ministers and dear comrades, I am happy to express the joy and pride of the Government and people of the Congo at your presence here, at the presence here of the whole of Africa. The time of projects has passed. Today Africa must take action. This action is being impatiently awaited by the peoples of Africa. African unity and solidarity are no longer dreams. They must be expressed in decisions.
United by a single spirit, a single aspiration and a single heart, we shall turn Africa into a genuinely free and independent continent in the immediate future.
Long live African unity and solidarity!
Forward, Africans, to complete liberation!
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<p class="title">Patrice Lumumba</p>
<h1>Letter from Thysville Prison to Mrs. Lumumba </h1>
<br>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source</span>: <strong>Patrice Lumumba, The Truth about a Monstrous Crime of the Colonialists</strong>, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, pp. 230-231.<br>
<span class="info">Written</span>: by Patrice Lumumba;<br>
<span class="info">Transcribed</span>: by Thomas Schmidt.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>My dear wife,</p>
<p>I am writing these words to you, not knowing whether they will ever reach you, or whether I shall be alive when you read them.</p>
<p>Throughout my struggle for the independence of our country I have never doubted the victory of our sacred cause, to which I and my comrades have dedicated all our lives.</p>
<p>But the only thing which we wanted for our country is the right to a worthy life, to dignity without pretence, to independence without restrictions.</p>
<p>This was never the desire of the Belgian colonialists and their Western allies, who received, direct or indirect, open or concealed, support from some highly placed officials of the United Nations, the body upon which we placed all our hope when we appealed to it for help.</p>
<p>They seduced some of our compatriots, bought others and did everything to distort the truth and smear our independence.</p>
<p>What I can say is this—alive or dead, free or in jail—it is not a question of me personally.</p>
<p>The main thing is the Congo, our unhappy people, whose independence is being trampled upon.</p>
<p>That is why they have shut us away in prison and why they keep us far away from the people. But my faith remains indestructible.</p>
<p>I know and feel deep in my heart that sooner or later my people will rid themselves of their internal and external enemies, that they will rise up as one in order to say 'No' to colonialism, to brazen, dying colonialism, in order to win their dignity in a clean land.</p>
<p>We are not alone. Africa, Asia, the free peoples and the peoples fighting for their freedom in all corners of the world will always be side by side with the millions of Congolese who will not give up the struggle while there is even one colonialist or colonialist mercenary in our country.</p>
<p>To my sons, whom I am leaving and whom, perhaps, I shall not see again, I want to say that the future of the Congo is splendid and that I expect from them, as from every Congolese, the fulfilment of the sacred task of restoring our independence and our sovereignty.</p>
<p>Without dignity there is no freedom, without justice there is no dignity and without independence there are no free men.</p>
<p>Cruelty, insults and torture can never force me to ask for mercy, because I prefer to die with head high, with indestructible faith and profound belief in the destiny of our country than to live in humility and renounce the principles which are sacred to me.</p>
<p>The day will come when history will speak. But it will not be the history which will be taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations.</p>
<p>It will be the history which will be taught in the countries which have won freedom from colonialism and its puppets.</p>
<p>Africa will write its own history and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity.</p>
<p>Do not weep for me. I know that my tormented country will be able to defend its freedom and its independence.</p>
<p>Long live the Congo!</p>
<p>Long live Africa!</p>
<p>Thysville prison</p>
<p>Patrice LUMUMBA</p>
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Patrice Lumumba
Letter from Thysville Prison to Mrs. Lumumba
Source: Patrice Lumumba, The Truth about a Monstrous Crime of the Colonialists, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961, pp. 230-231.
Written: by Patrice Lumumba;
Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt.
My dear wife,
I am writing these words to you, not knowing whether they will ever reach you, or whether I shall be alive when you read them.
Throughout my struggle for the independence of our country I have never doubted the victory of our sacred cause, to which I and my comrades have dedicated all our lives.
But the only thing which we wanted for our country is the right to a worthy life, to dignity without pretence, to independence without restrictions.
This was never the desire of the Belgian colonialists and their Western allies, who received, direct or indirect, open or concealed, support from some highly placed officials of the United Nations, the body upon which we placed all our hope when we appealed to it for help.
They seduced some of our compatriots, bought others and did everything to distort the truth and smear our independence.
What I can say is this—alive or dead, free or in jail—it is not a question of me personally.
The main thing is the Congo, our unhappy people, whose independence is being trampled upon.
That is why they have shut us away in prison and why they keep us far away from the people. But my faith remains indestructible.
I know and feel deep in my heart that sooner or later my people will rid themselves of their internal and external enemies, that they will rise up as one in order to say 'No' to colonialism, to brazen, dying colonialism, in order to win their dignity in a clean land.
We are not alone. Africa, Asia, the free peoples and the peoples fighting for their freedom in all corners of the world will always be side by side with the millions of Congolese who will not give up the struggle while there is even one colonialist or colonialist mercenary in our country.
To my sons, whom I am leaving and whom, perhaps, I shall not see again, I want to say that the future of the Congo is splendid and that I expect from them, as from every Congolese, the fulfilment of the sacred task of restoring our independence and our sovereignty.
Without dignity there is no freedom, without justice there is no dignity and without independence there are no free men.
Cruelty, insults and torture can never force me to ask for mercy, because I prefer to die with head high, with indestructible faith and profound belief in the destiny of our country than to live in humility and renounce the principles which are sacred to me.
The day will come when history will speak. But it will not be the history which will be taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations.
It will be the history which will be taught in the countries which have won freedom from colonialism and its puppets.
Africa will write its own history and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity.
Do not weep for me. I know that my tormented country will be able to defend its freedom and its independence.
Long live the Congo!
Long live Africa!
Thysville prison
Patrice LUMUMBA
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<p class="title">Patrice Lumumba</p>
<h1>Statement at a press conference in
Leopoldville</h1>
<h4>August 16, 1960</h4>
<br>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source:</span> <strong>Patrice Lumumba: Fighter for Africa</strong><strong>’s Freedom</strong>, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1961, pp 59-61.<br>
<span class="info">Written</span>: by Patrice Lumumba;<br>
<span class="info">Transcribed</span>: by Thomas Schmidt.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>I have asked you to this press conference primarily to announce
to you an important decision that the present situation has forced
the Government of the Republic to take.</p>
<p>You shall see that we are conscious of the gravity of the hour
and are not shirking our responsibilities. The reason for calling
this conference is that I wanted to determine the present situation
with you.</p>
<p>Yesterday, from the U.N. services, you received a version of the
divergences between the U.N. Secretary-General and our Government.
Some people are seeking to present this dispute as a question of
personality, of personalities. I should like to emphasise here and
now that the U.N. Secretary-General is a high officer in the
service of an institution that we respect to the point that we have
appealed to it (for aid-<em>Tr.).</em> However,
here the question is to examine, on the basis of facts, the
Secretary-General's mission and the manner in which he has or has
not fulfilled this mission.</p>
<p>Everything was perfectly clear in the evening of July 14 in New
York, when the Security Council decided, I quote the text of the
resolution, "to authorise the Secretary-General to take, in
consultation with the Government of the Republic of the Congo, all
necessary measures with a view to giving that Government the
military assistance it requires until such a time when the national
security forces, thanks to the efforts of the Congolese Government
and with the technical assistance of the United Nations, are, in
the opinion of that Government, fully capable of carrying out their
tasks".</p>
<p>From this it is quite clear that the Secretary-General had no
business giving his own interpretation of the order instructing him
to extend to our Government unrestricted military assistance, which
we required and still require and with regard to which we are the
sole judges.</p>
<p>We asked the U.N. for assistance, and it responded to our
appeal. Our attitude towards the United Nations remains one of full
trust. Strong and confident of our right, we are profoundly
convinced that the U.N., which has already demonstrated its insight
and impartiality with regard to us, will straightforwardly carry
out the decisions it has adopted.</p>
<p>Let me emphasise once again that the matter concerns the
maintenance of peace among nations.</p>
<p>That is why we regret some of the actions that have been taken
by the Secretary-General, and you are bearing witness that these
actions are only prolonging the crisis, which we are the first to
deplore.</p>
<p>Incidents, which U.N. troops should have stopped long ago, are
taking place every day because of the behaviour of the aggressive
Belgian forces and because of certain ambiguities created by some
groups.</p>
<p>On the other hand, all the Belgian magistrates have fled,
leaving their offices in indescribable disorder, with the result
that civil courts no longer exist.</p>
<p>We have decided to take immediate steps to hold in check all
trouble-makers, white or black, in order to enable our people to
retrieve their dignity and to restore legality and peace.</p>
<p>I shall now read you the ordinance that was promulgated by the
Government today.</p>
<p>[P. Lumumba reads the text of the ordinance.]</p>
<p>I shall now give you some figures to show that with goodwill
each can make his contribution towards the solution of our
problems.</p>
<p>In the period from August 1 to 8, the Matadi-Leopoldville
Railway transported 6,000 tons of timber. During thepast week this
figure has been nearly trebled to 17,500 tons. In other words, in
the past eight days we have restored the normal rhythm.</p>
<p>This encouraging result was achieved with only 5 per cent of the
former European personnel. We greet the work that has been done by
these people. The Government of the Republic takes this occasion to
reaffirm the friendship of the Congolese population for the Belgian
people. It confirms that it is ready to restore diplomatic
relations with Belgium as soon as Belgian troops withdraw from the
Congo, including the bases at Kitona and Kamina. We are prepared to
renew friendly relations.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
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Patrice Lumumba
Statement at a press conference in
Leopoldville
August 16, 1960
Source: Patrice Lumumba: Fighter for Africa’s Freedom, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1961, pp 59-61.
Written: by Patrice Lumumba;
Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt.
I have asked you to this press conference primarily to announce
to you an important decision that the present situation has forced
the Government of the Republic to take.
You shall see that we are conscious of the gravity of the hour
and are not shirking our responsibilities. The reason for calling
this conference is that I wanted to determine the present situation
with you.
Yesterday, from the U.N. services, you received a version of the
divergences between the U.N. Secretary-General and our Government.
Some people are seeking to present this dispute as a question of
personality, of personalities. I should like to emphasise here and
now that the U.N. Secretary-General is a high officer in the
service of an institution that we respect to the point that we have
appealed to it (for aid-Tr.). However,
here the question is to examine, on the basis of facts, the
Secretary-General's mission and the manner in which he has or has
not fulfilled this mission.
Everything was perfectly clear in the evening of July 14 in New
York, when the Security Council decided, I quote the text of the
resolution, "to authorise the Secretary-General to take, in
consultation with the Government of the Republic of the Congo, all
necessary measures with a view to giving that Government the
military assistance it requires until such a time when the national
security forces, thanks to the efforts of the Congolese Government
and with the technical assistance of the United Nations, are, in
the opinion of that Government, fully capable of carrying out their
tasks".
From this it is quite clear that the Secretary-General had no
business giving his own interpretation of the order instructing him
to extend to our Government unrestricted military assistance, which
we required and still require and with regard to which we are the
sole judges.
We asked the U.N. for assistance, and it responded to our
appeal. Our attitude towards the United Nations remains one of full
trust. Strong and confident of our right, we are profoundly
convinced that the U.N., which has already demonstrated its insight
and impartiality with regard to us, will straightforwardly carry
out the decisions it has adopted.
Let me emphasise once again that the matter concerns the
maintenance of peace among nations.
That is why we regret some of the actions that have been taken
by the Secretary-General, and you are bearing witness that these
actions are only prolonging the crisis, which we are the first to
deplore.
Incidents, which U.N. troops should have stopped long ago, are
taking place every day because of the behaviour of the aggressive
Belgian forces and because of certain ambiguities created by some
groups.
On the other hand, all the Belgian magistrates have fled,
leaving their offices in indescribable disorder, with the result
that civil courts no longer exist.
We have decided to take immediate steps to hold in check all
trouble-makers, white or black, in order to enable our people to
retrieve their dignity and to restore legality and peace.
I shall now read you the ordinance that was promulgated by the
Government today.
[P. Lumumba reads the text of the ordinance.]
I shall now give you some figures to show that with goodwill
each can make his contribution towards the solution of our
problems.
In the period from August 1 to 8, the Matadi-Leopoldville
Railway transported 6,000 tons of timber. During thepast week this
figure has been nearly trebled to 17,500 tons. In other words, in
the past eight days we have restored the normal rhythm.
This encouraging result was achieved with only 5 per cent of the
former European personnel. We greet the work that has been done by
these people. The Government of the Republic takes this occasion to
reaffirm the friendship of the Congolese population for the Belgian
people. It confirms that it is ready to restore diplomatic
relations with Belgium as soon as Belgian troops withdraw from the
Congo, including the bases at Kitona and Kamina. We are prepared to
renew friendly relations.
Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in Africa |Patrice Lumumba Archive
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<p class="title">Jean BULABEMBA</p>
<h1>A LIFE GIVEN UP FOR THE PEOPLE</h1>
<br>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source:</span> <strong>Patrice Lumumba: Fighter for Africa</strong><strong>’s Freedom</strong>, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1961, pp 80-90.<br>
<span class="info">Written</span>: by Jean BULABEMBA, Congolese journalist;<br>
<span class="info">Transcribed</span>: by Thomas Schmidt.</p>
<hr class="end">
<br>
<p>"There is no compromise between freedom and slavery," said Patrice Emery Lumumba, who sacrificed his life to bring real freedom to his people. Those who consider freedom as their exclusive prerogative murdered him in an effort to strangle Congolese nationalism.</p>
<p>"Africa will write her own history, and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity," Lumumba wrote a few days before his death. The Congo already has its own history, but so far it is only a history of struggle, a history of a transitional period. The history of glory and dignity Lumumba spoke about will come.</p>
<p>Lumumba personifies the Congolese people. He chose the road of suffering, torture and, lastly, death rather than become a slave of the imperialists. He was firmly and deeply convinced that sooner or later his country would be completely independent. Like their leader, the Congolese people prefer to bear every form of suffering rather than see their freedom mutilated and trampled upon by those who for more than 80 years of colonial rule kept them in such poverty and bondage that they are themselves ashamed of it.</p>
<p>The Congolese people are carrying on their struggle for true independence.</p>
<h4>LUMUMBA AND THE CONGOLESE PEOPLE</h4>
<p>The movement for the Congo's liberation had its own features. At first, when real nationalists led by Lumumba demanded complete independence, some political leaders in connivance with colonialist circles called for the creation of a commonwealth with Belgium. Shorn of its trimmings, it meant the retention of colonial rule in the Congo pure and simple. One man realised earlier and better than any other political leader what had to be done to carry the national-liberation movement to victory. His name was Patrice Emery Lumumba and his prime concern was to make his people conscious of themselves as a nation.</p>
<p>He was the first Congolese leader to come into contact with the people, to discuss their country's problems with them and to take their will into consideration. In 1958, when he returned from Accra, he organised a rally in Leopoldville's Victory Square. More than 15,000 men, women, young people and old folk flocked to the square to listen to him. It was the first time in the Congo's history that the people responded to a call from a compatriot. Until then they had been taught to obey only the instructions of the white man.</p>
<p>The rally's success surpassed all expectations. I was there. With other Congolese political leaders standing beside him, Lumumba spoke of the Conference in Accra in a clear and simple manner. The people listened to him quietly and attentively.</p>
<p>Confident in himself and speaking off the cuff, he told the people of the difficulties lying on the road to independence. He repeatedly stressed the need for unity and national consciousness. "We are not unlike any other inhabitants of the world. The Congo is our country. We must be the masters in our homes. So let us this day begin the struggle for our rights. Let us unite and go forward to independence," he said.</p>
<p>The word "independence" struck a responsive chord in people's hearts. At that moment Lumumba established direct contact with his hearers. He had touched on their most cherished hopes. The people saw that he was the man to lead them to freedom. For his part Lumumba felt the response of his listeners.</p>
<p>He continued: "The colonialists seek to divide us in order to go on ruling us. Let us prove our maturity. Let us live like brothers. Independence is our birthright. We don't need anyone to present it to us because this country belongs to us. If the colonialists choose to ignore our lawful demands, we shall do everything to wrest our independence from them." The crowd responded with shouts of "Independence! Long live Lumumba! Independence!"</p>
<p>While the people voiced their heartfelt approval of Lumumba's statements, the few Belgians present in the square virtually writhed in fury. A Belgian official standing beside me turned purple with rage. In the meantime Lumumba went on speaking on the subject of national independence and the struggle to achieve it. Following Congolese custom, the speaker and his listeners began a dialogue. "Do you want to be the masters of your country?" Lumumba asked. "Yes," the people thundered in reply. "What is needed for that?" Lumumba continued. "Independence!" the people replied. This meeting, called for Congolese by Congolese, ended on a note of jubilation. Lumumba was the first man to awaken the people's national consciousness, which was to change the future of this old Belgian colony.</p>
<h4>LUMUMBA AND THE CONGO'S POLITICAL LIFE</h4>
<p>Naturally, the success of this Lumumba-organised rally required the continuation of political work among the people. Lumumba had no intention of tackling this task single-handed. He appealed to Congolese political leaders to unite in a single political bloc with independence as their common objective. He gave his political organisation the meaningful name of Congo National Movement (CNM), thereby underlining the aspiration for unity. Most of the political leaders responded favourably to Lumumba's appeal.</p>
<p>The colonialists attentively followed developments. Feeling the threat to their policy they immediately resorted to bribery. Huge sums of money passed into the hands of some political leaders on the understanding that they would break with Lumumba and oppose his efforts.</p>
<p>Drawing upon his own meagre resources, Lumumba toured the country and set up branches of the Congo National Movement which was gaining in popularity. The CNM's growing influence, due in large measure to Lumumba's efforts, furthered the development of the national-liberation movement in the Congo.</p>
<p>In Orientale Province support for the CNM was so overwhelming that branches were set up even in villages inhabited only by 20 persons or so. Lumumba personally toured the villages, speaking to the people. He knew several Congolese dialects and had no difficulty communicating with the people. He became the most popular figure in the country.</p>
<p>In the young states of Africa political activity requires exceptional endowments, particularly high spiritual qualities. The people loved Lumumba because they knew he shared their aspirations. Lumumba appreciated that political activity meant work with and among the people. He gave up a well-paid job and devoted himself entirely to politics. His travels about the country took him to the farthest corners. He appealed to the people and they responded to his appeals. He shared the unhappy lot of the Congolese nation and understood its sufferings, and the support he got from the people encouraged him to press for radical changes.</p>
<p>Throughout his career as a political leader Lumumba preached fraternal love between all Congolese. And he practised what he preached. When Kasavubu was arrested following the events of January 4, 1959, in Leopoldville, Lumumba took steps to obtain his release.</p>
<p>He looked for ways of forming an alliance with all Congolese leaders in order to begin a general offensive against the colonialists. In spite of the difficulties, he went to the people and said to them: "Let us continue the struggle. Let us be solidly behind our brothers who have been arrested by the colonialists in an effort to divide us."</p>
<h4>LUMUMBA DIRECTS THE NATIONAL STRUGGLE FOR IMMEDIATE INDEPENDENCE</h4>
<p>The political situation in the country grew tense after the arrests that followed the demonstration in Leopoldville on January 4, 1959. Developments in the Congo forced the Belgian Government to carry out a political and administrative reform.</p>
<p>This reform was announced in a declaration by the King and Government of Belgium on January 13, 1959. It mentioned independence.</p>
<p>The publication of this declaration sparked off a fresh upsurge of the struggle for national independence. The development of the national-liberation struggle depended on the positions adopted by the Congolese leaders. In this situation, the stand taken by Lumumba attracted nationwide attention and, in particular, the attention of Belgian political leaders.</p>
<p>Lumumba suggested convening a round-table conference of Belgian and Congolese leaders to work out the ways that would lead the Congo to immediate independence. The colonialists rejected his plan, refusing to talk with Congolese leaders whom they regarded as "unrepresentative".</p>
<p>The demand for a round-table conference received widespread support in Leopoldville and other major towns in the Congo. Lumumba's proposals were approved by all the nationalist leaders. At this decisive moment of the struggle for national independence Lumumba did his utmost to unite the efforts of all the political leaders. On his initiative, representatives of Congolese political parties gathered together several times to work out a common policy. Lumumba, of course, played an important role in these quests for a joint line and greatly influenced the decisions that were taken.</p>
<p>When the Belgian authorities flatly refused to meet the Congolese leaders, whom they continued to regard as "unrepresentative", Lumumba appealed to the people to go out into the streets and peaceably demonstrate their aspiration for freedom.</p>
<p>In 1959 he organised two congresses. CNM leaders gathered at the first congress, and at the second all the nationalist parties reached agreement on a joint plan of action.</p>
<p>The CNM congress was held at a time when it was obvious that the colonialists would try to start disorders. While the congress was in session in the large hall of the Mangobo Commune in Stanleyville, Belgian-officered soldiers and gendarmes patrolled the street outside. The presence of the soldiers in no way cooled passions, but Lumumba succeeded in avoiding any worsening of the situation. He constantly called upon the population to remain calm and warned them against provocateurs. The congress adopted resolutions demanding independence without delay, the Africanisation of personnel and an immediate meeting between Congolese and Belgian leaders.</p>
<p>Lumumba hardly slept at all during the days the congress was in session. After the sittings he could be seen in the secretariat offices, typing and helping out in other ways. He received delegations, discussed various problems with congress delegates and other visitors, wrote statements for the press and held press conferences.</p>
<p>At this time there was tension between the civilian population and troops commanded by Belgian officers. This tension reached white heat when the congress of the nationalist parties opened. Lumumba went to Leroy, the governor of Orientale Province, and warned him that the behaviour of the army, which was in a mood to fire upon the crowds, was fraught with dangerous consequences.</p>
<p>On Lumumba's suggestion the congress sent a telegram to the Belgian Government demanding that the colonial authorities arrange a meeting between Congolese and Belgian leaders without delay. The Belgian Government replied that it had no intention whatever of discussing the Congo's future with Congolese leaders. The reply came in the evening. The congress had hoped it would be more or less favourable. After reading the telegram, Lumumba said: "I propose we break with Belgium," and the delegates unanimously shouted their approval.</p>
<p>The Belgian officers observing the congress through the windows broke into the premises and threw tear-gas bombs. Lumumba courageously went to the Belgians and told them to leave the hall. It was the first time in the history of the Belgian colony that white officers were compelled to obey an African.</p>
<p>Lumumba's courageous behaviour won the warm approval of the crowds outside. More and more people filled the street. In the face of the provocative actions of the troops, the people of Stanleyville armed themselves with spears, bows and arrows, knives and other weapons. The situation was becoming tense. The Belgian officers completely lost control over themselves and began to fire at the crowd after the Congolese soldiers refused to fire at their brothers. When the first Congolese was struck down by the officers' bullets, Lumumba went to the dead man, lifted him in his arms and wept. The sight of Lumumba weeping with bullets whistling in the air round him made the people reply to the fire of the Belgian officers. Some of the officers fell to the ground, their hearts pierced by arrows. Lumumba wished to stop further bloodshed, and in this confusion he called upon the people to remain calm. They obeyed him and dispersed, leaving the street to the troops.</p>
<p>Disturbances broke out again that night. Lumumba was somewhere at the other end of the city, and when he arrived at the trouble spot it was already too late. Dead troops and civilians, black and white, lay on the road. The authorities ordered ruthless repressions. A warrant for Lumumba's arrest was issued on the next day.</p>
<p>The news of Lumumba's arrest spread like wildfire in Leopoldville, capital of the Congo. The colonialists desperately looked for support among the Congolese leaders, but they could find very little of it. The rallies organised by the CNM drew huge crowds. Resolutions supporting Lumumba were sent to Brussels. Delegations of the different strata of the population went to the Belgian authorities in the Congo and demanded Lumumba's immediate release.</p>
<p>Daily the political situation worsened. The elections to local organs of power, set for the end of 1959, drew near. The nationalist parties decided to boycott these elections. Though in prison, Lumumba continued to direct the activities of his supporters, and his letters reached their destinations despite the close surveillance. Naturally, he was assisted by Congolese troops. It is interesting to note that in spite of the strict measures that were taken by the colonial authorities, almost all of these troops were members of the CNM and had party membership cards.</p>
<h4>LUMUMBA AND THE BRUSSELS ROUND-TABLE CONFERENCE</h4>
<p>In January 1960, the Belgian Government convened a round-table conference in Brussels. It was attended by Congolese leaders and Belgian representatives. At the time the conference opened Lumumba was transferred from Stanleyville to a prison in Jadotville that was notorious as a torture chamber. He was barefoot, handcuffed and bore the marks of beatings. He had been manhandled on the way.</p>
<p>The Brussels conference opened without Lumumba, but his representatives were there. The proceedings dragged on for several days without any agreement being reached. The Congolese leaders made it plain to the Belgian authorities that the conference would break down unless the repressions against Congolese were stopped and Lumumba was permitted to attend the conference. This condition was complied with.</p>
<p>In Brussels Lumumba was met by the majority of the Congolese leaders and journalists. He showed them his wounds. In a statement to the press he appealed to the Belgians and Congolese to reach agreement on the early achievement of independence by the Congo.</p>
<p>His presence at the round-table conference cleared the atmosphere. He played a particularly noteworthy role in naming the day for the proclamation of independence. At the conference he publicly exposed the manoeuvres of some Belgian financial groups, who were seeking to split the Congolese and thereby divide the Congo. He even walked out of the conference, and only returned when Tshombe's lawyer, a Belgian named Humblet, was excluded from its sittings. He realised that the objective was to legalise Katanga's secession and called attention to the danger. The other Congolese leaders supported him and condemned the activities of Tshombe, who in view of the general discontent was compelled to give assurances that he had never advocated Katanga's secession. But subsequent events showed that this was a lie.</p>
<p>An Executive Council, which included Congolese members, was set up during the round-table conference on Lumumba's suggestion. This Council was attached to the Governor-General of the Congo and, in principle, its job was to help prepare the proclamation of independence and the parliamentary elections.</p>
<p>Upon their return to the Congo the national leaders were given a jubilant reception by the people. The Congolese were proud that their leaders had been successful. An election campaign began. Lumumba won the election in April 1960. This was frowned upon by the colonialists, who did their utmost to keep Lumumba away from power. But they came up against the people's determination, against Congolese reality. In spite of all their intrigues, Lumumba became the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo. His deputy was Antoine Gizenga, who later carried on his work.</p>
<h4>LUMUMBA AND THE CONGO'S INDEPENDENCE</h4>
<p>The colonialists' plots aimed at giving the country only formal independence were exposed by Lumumba long before June 30, 1960, the day the independence of the Republic of the Congo was proclaimed. He went to the people, explaining the political situation to them and uniting them. Rallies were held all over the country. Lumumba secured a basic agreement among the nationalist parties with regard to unity of action. These parties subsequently formed the Lumumba or nationalist bloc.</p>
<p>On June 30, 1960, when the people of the Congo were celebrating their independence, the Belgians were already dreaming of regaining control over the country. But in spite of all their intrigues against Lumumba, he remained in power right up to the grimmest period of his political career.</p>
<p>Six days after independence was proclaimed, the. people of the Congo ran into an emergency precipitated by the colonialists. Everybody knows what that emergency was. In those days and right up to the last minute of his life, Lumumba showed he was a great leader guiding the destinies of his people whom he had always served devotedly.</p>
<p>Lumumba's life was a continuous struggle for the Congo's interests. With the support of the people he became the Head of Government and the leader of the national-liberation movement in the country. Today, when he is dead, his people remember him, his cause and his life.</p>
<p>We are confident that the righteous cause for which many of the Congo's sons have given their lives will ultimately triumph.</p>
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Jean BULABEMBA
A LIFE GIVEN UP FOR THE PEOPLE
Source: Patrice Lumumba: Fighter for Africa’s Freedom, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1961, pp 80-90.
Written: by Jean BULABEMBA, Congolese journalist;
Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt.
"There is no compromise between freedom and slavery," said Patrice Emery Lumumba, who sacrificed his life to bring real freedom to his people. Those who consider freedom as their exclusive prerogative murdered him in an effort to strangle Congolese nationalism.
"Africa will write her own history, and in both north and south it will be a history of glory and dignity," Lumumba wrote a few days before his death. The Congo already has its own history, but so far it is only a history of struggle, a history of a transitional period. The history of glory and dignity Lumumba spoke about will come.
Lumumba personifies the Congolese people. He chose the road of suffering, torture and, lastly, death rather than become a slave of the imperialists. He was firmly and deeply convinced that sooner or later his country would be completely independent. Like their leader, the Congolese people prefer to bear every form of suffering rather than see their freedom mutilated and trampled upon by those who for more than 80 years of colonial rule kept them in such poverty and bondage that they are themselves ashamed of it.
The Congolese people are carrying on their struggle for true independence.
LUMUMBA AND THE CONGOLESE PEOPLE
The movement for the Congo's liberation had its own features. At first, when real nationalists led by Lumumba demanded complete independence, some political leaders in connivance with colonialist circles called for the creation of a commonwealth with Belgium. Shorn of its trimmings, it meant the retention of colonial rule in the Congo pure and simple. One man realised earlier and better than any other political leader what had to be done to carry the national-liberation movement to victory. His name was Patrice Emery Lumumba and his prime concern was to make his people conscious of themselves as a nation.
He was the first Congolese leader to come into contact with the people, to discuss their country's problems with them and to take their will into consideration. In 1958, when he returned from Accra, he organised a rally in Leopoldville's Victory Square. More than 15,000 men, women, young people and old folk flocked to the square to listen to him. It was the first time in the Congo's history that the people responded to a call from a compatriot. Until then they had been taught to obey only the instructions of the white man.
The rally's success surpassed all expectations. I was there. With other Congolese political leaders standing beside him, Lumumba spoke of the Conference in Accra in a clear and simple manner. The people listened to him quietly and attentively.
Confident in himself and speaking off the cuff, he told the people of the difficulties lying on the road to independence. He repeatedly stressed the need for unity and national consciousness. "We are not unlike any other inhabitants of the world. The Congo is our country. We must be the masters in our homes. So let us this day begin the struggle for our rights. Let us unite and go forward to independence," he said.
The word "independence" struck a responsive chord in people's hearts. At that moment Lumumba established direct contact with his hearers. He had touched on their most cherished hopes. The people saw that he was the man to lead them to freedom. For his part Lumumba felt the response of his listeners.
He continued: "The colonialists seek to divide us in order to go on ruling us. Let us prove our maturity. Let us live like brothers. Independence is our birthright. We don't need anyone to present it to us because this country belongs to us. If the colonialists choose to ignore our lawful demands, we shall do everything to wrest our independence from them." The crowd responded with shouts of "Independence! Long live Lumumba! Independence!"
While the people voiced their heartfelt approval of Lumumba's statements, the few Belgians present in the square virtually writhed in fury. A Belgian official standing beside me turned purple with rage. In the meantime Lumumba went on speaking on the subject of national independence and the struggle to achieve it. Following Congolese custom, the speaker and his listeners began a dialogue. "Do you want to be the masters of your country?" Lumumba asked. "Yes," the people thundered in reply. "What is needed for that?" Lumumba continued. "Independence!" the people replied. This meeting, called for Congolese by Congolese, ended on a note of jubilation. Lumumba was the first man to awaken the people's national consciousness, which was to change the future of this old Belgian colony.
LUMUMBA AND THE CONGO'S POLITICAL LIFE
Naturally, the success of this Lumumba-organised rally required the continuation of political work among the people. Lumumba had no intention of tackling this task single-handed. He appealed to Congolese political leaders to unite in a single political bloc with independence as their common objective. He gave his political organisation the meaningful name of Congo National Movement (CNM), thereby underlining the aspiration for unity. Most of the political leaders responded favourably to Lumumba's appeal.
The colonialists attentively followed developments. Feeling the threat to their policy they immediately resorted to bribery. Huge sums of money passed into the hands of some political leaders on the understanding that they would break with Lumumba and oppose his efforts.
Drawing upon his own meagre resources, Lumumba toured the country and set up branches of the Congo National Movement which was gaining in popularity. The CNM's growing influence, due in large measure to Lumumba's efforts, furthered the development of the national-liberation movement in the Congo.
In Orientale Province support for the CNM was so overwhelming that branches were set up even in villages inhabited only by 20 persons or so. Lumumba personally toured the villages, speaking to the people. He knew several Congolese dialects and had no difficulty communicating with the people. He became the most popular figure in the country.
In the young states of Africa political activity requires exceptional endowments, particularly high spiritual qualities. The people loved Lumumba because they knew he shared their aspirations. Lumumba appreciated that political activity meant work with and among the people. He gave up a well-paid job and devoted himself entirely to politics. His travels about the country took him to the farthest corners. He appealed to the people and they responded to his appeals. He shared the unhappy lot of the Congolese nation and understood its sufferings, and the support he got from the people encouraged him to press for radical changes.
Throughout his career as a political leader Lumumba preached fraternal love between all Congolese. And he practised what he preached. When Kasavubu was arrested following the events of January 4, 1959, in Leopoldville, Lumumba took steps to obtain his release.
He looked for ways of forming an alliance with all Congolese leaders in order to begin a general offensive against the colonialists. In spite of the difficulties, he went to the people and said to them: "Let us continue the struggle. Let us be solidly behind our brothers who have been arrested by the colonialists in an effort to divide us."
LUMUMBA DIRECTS THE NATIONAL STRUGGLE FOR IMMEDIATE INDEPENDENCE
The political situation in the country grew tense after the arrests that followed the demonstration in Leopoldville on January 4, 1959. Developments in the Congo forced the Belgian Government to carry out a political and administrative reform.
This reform was announced in a declaration by the King and Government of Belgium on January 13, 1959. It mentioned independence.
The publication of this declaration sparked off a fresh upsurge of the struggle for national independence. The development of the national-liberation struggle depended on the positions adopted by the Congolese leaders. In this situation, the stand taken by Lumumba attracted nationwide attention and, in particular, the attention of Belgian political leaders.
Lumumba suggested convening a round-table conference of Belgian and Congolese leaders to work out the ways that would lead the Congo to immediate independence. The colonialists rejected his plan, refusing to talk with Congolese leaders whom they regarded as "unrepresentative".
The demand for a round-table conference received widespread support in Leopoldville and other major towns in the Congo. Lumumba's proposals were approved by all the nationalist leaders. At this decisive moment of the struggle for national independence Lumumba did his utmost to unite the efforts of all the political leaders. On his initiative, representatives of Congolese political parties gathered together several times to work out a common policy. Lumumba, of course, played an important role in these quests for a joint line and greatly influenced the decisions that were taken.
When the Belgian authorities flatly refused to meet the Congolese leaders, whom they continued to regard as "unrepresentative", Lumumba appealed to the people to go out into the streets and peaceably demonstrate their aspiration for freedom.
In 1959 he organised two congresses. CNM leaders gathered at the first congress, and at the second all the nationalist parties reached agreement on a joint plan of action.
The CNM congress was held at a time when it was obvious that the colonialists would try to start disorders. While the congress was in session in the large hall of the Mangobo Commune in Stanleyville, Belgian-officered soldiers and gendarmes patrolled the street outside. The presence of the soldiers in no way cooled passions, but Lumumba succeeded in avoiding any worsening of the situation. He constantly called upon the population to remain calm and warned them against provocateurs. The congress adopted resolutions demanding independence without delay, the Africanisation of personnel and an immediate meeting between Congolese and Belgian leaders.
Lumumba hardly slept at all during the days the congress was in session. After the sittings he could be seen in the secretariat offices, typing and helping out in other ways. He received delegations, discussed various problems with congress delegates and other visitors, wrote statements for the press and held press conferences.
At this time there was tension between the civilian population and troops commanded by Belgian officers. This tension reached white heat when the congress of the nationalist parties opened. Lumumba went to Leroy, the governor of Orientale Province, and warned him that the behaviour of the army, which was in a mood to fire upon the crowds, was fraught with dangerous consequences.
On Lumumba's suggestion the congress sent a telegram to the Belgian Government demanding that the colonial authorities arrange a meeting between Congolese and Belgian leaders without delay. The Belgian Government replied that it had no intention whatever of discussing the Congo's future with Congolese leaders. The reply came in the evening. The congress had hoped it would be more or less favourable. After reading the telegram, Lumumba said: "I propose we break with Belgium," and the delegates unanimously shouted their approval.
The Belgian officers observing the congress through the windows broke into the premises and threw tear-gas bombs. Lumumba courageously went to the Belgians and told them to leave the hall. It was the first time in the history of the Belgian colony that white officers were compelled to obey an African.
Lumumba's courageous behaviour won the warm approval of the crowds outside. More and more people filled the street. In the face of the provocative actions of the troops, the people of Stanleyville armed themselves with spears, bows and arrows, knives and other weapons. The situation was becoming tense. The Belgian officers completely lost control over themselves and began to fire at the crowd after the Congolese soldiers refused to fire at their brothers. When the first Congolese was struck down by the officers' bullets, Lumumba went to the dead man, lifted him in his arms and wept. The sight of Lumumba weeping with bullets whistling in the air round him made the people reply to the fire of the Belgian officers. Some of the officers fell to the ground, their hearts pierced by arrows. Lumumba wished to stop further bloodshed, and in this confusion he called upon the people to remain calm. They obeyed him and dispersed, leaving the street to the troops.
Disturbances broke out again that night. Lumumba was somewhere at the other end of the city, and when he arrived at the trouble spot it was already too late. Dead troops and civilians, black and white, lay on the road. The authorities ordered ruthless repressions. A warrant for Lumumba's arrest was issued on the next day.
The news of Lumumba's arrest spread like wildfire in Leopoldville, capital of the Congo. The colonialists desperately looked for support among the Congolese leaders, but they could find very little of it. The rallies organised by the CNM drew huge crowds. Resolutions supporting Lumumba were sent to Brussels. Delegations of the different strata of the population went to the Belgian authorities in the Congo and demanded Lumumba's immediate release.
Daily the political situation worsened. The elections to local organs of power, set for the end of 1959, drew near. The nationalist parties decided to boycott these elections. Though in prison, Lumumba continued to direct the activities of his supporters, and his letters reached their destinations despite the close surveillance. Naturally, he was assisted by Congolese troops. It is interesting to note that in spite of the strict measures that were taken by the colonial authorities, almost all of these troops were members of the CNM and had party membership cards.
LUMUMBA AND THE BRUSSELS ROUND-TABLE CONFERENCE
In January 1960, the Belgian Government convened a round-table conference in Brussels. It was attended by Congolese leaders and Belgian representatives. At the time the conference opened Lumumba was transferred from Stanleyville to a prison in Jadotville that was notorious as a torture chamber. He was barefoot, handcuffed and bore the marks of beatings. He had been manhandled on the way.
The Brussels conference opened without Lumumba, but his representatives were there. The proceedings dragged on for several days without any agreement being reached. The Congolese leaders made it plain to the Belgian authorities that the conference would break down unless the repressions against Congolese were stopped and Lumumba was permitted to attend the conference. This condition was complied with.
In Brussels Lumumba was met by the majority of the Congolese leaders and journalists. He showed them his wounds. In a statement to the press he appealed to the Belgians and Congolese to reach agreement on the early achievement of independence by the Congo.
His presence at the round-table conference cleared the atmosphere. He played a particularly noteworthy role in naming the day for the proclamation of independence. At the conference he publicly exposed the manoeuvres of some Belgian financial groups, who were seeking to split the Congolese and thereby divide the Congo. He even walked out of the conference, and only returned when Tshombe's lawyer, a Belgian named Humblet, was excluded from its sittings. He realised that the objective was to legalise Katanga's secession and called attention to the danger. The other Congolese leaders supported him and condemned the activities of Tshombe, who in view of the general discontent was compelled to give assurances that he had never advocated Katanga's secession. But subsequent events showed that this was a lie.
An Executive Council, which included Congolese members, was set up during the round-table conference on Lumumba's suggestion. This Council was attached to the Governor-General of the Congo and, in principle, its job was to help prepare the proclamation of independence and the parliamentary elections.
Upon their return to the Congo the national leaders were given a jubilant reception by the people. The Congolese were proud that their leaders had been successful. An election campaign began. Lumumba won the election in April 1960. This was frowned upon by the colonialists, who did their utmost to keep Lumumba away from power. But they came up against the people's determination, against Congolese reality. In spite of all their intrigues, Lumumba became the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo. His deputy was Antoine Gizenga, who later carried on his work.
LUMUMBA AND THE CONGO'S INDEPENDENCE
The colonialists' plots aimed at giving the country only formal independence were exposed by Lumumba long before June 30, 1960, the day the independence of the Republic of the Congo was proclaimed. He went to the people, explaining the political situation to them and uniting them. Rallies were held all over the country. Lumumba secured a basic agreement among the nationalist parties with regard to unity of action. These parties subsequently formed the Lumumba or nationalist bloc.
On June 30, 1960, when the people of the Congo were celebrating their independence, the Belgians were already dreaming of regaining control over the country. But in spite of all their intrigues against Lumumba, he remained in power right up to the grimmest period of his political career.
Six days after independence was proclaimed, the. people of the Congo ran into an emergency precipitated by the colonialists. Everybody knows what that emergency was. In those days and right up to the last minute of his life, Lumumba showed he was a great leader guiding the destinies of his people whom he had always served devotedly.
Lumumba's life was a continuous struggle for the Congo's interests. With the support of the people he became the Head of Government and the leader of the national-liberation movement in the country. Today, when he is dead, his people remember him, his cause and his life.
We are confident that the righteous cause for which many of the Congo's sons have given their lives will ultimately triumph.
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<h2>C.</h2>
<h1>The N.T.W.I.U. at Work in Boston</h1>
<h3>(October 1931)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1931/index.htm#tm31_28" target="new">Vol. IV No. 28 (Whole No. 87)</a>, 24 October 1931, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">After a long period of passivity the N.T.W.I.U. has awakened to the fact that something must be done. And while this is not the first time this has been said, let us hope and see that this time it is not only put into words, but into deeds.</p>
<p>During the past week, several meetings were held with leading comrades in an endeavor, finally, to consider seriously the united front policy. It must be said that it took long before we succeeded in getting a “leader” down to Boston and when Burochovitch finally came he received, together with a warm welcome the well-deserved criticism to the G.E.B. for the many shortcomings as well as for sending away some of the heads to Russia during a period of such acute struggles. At a time when the furriers in New York and the cloak and dress makers throughout the industry needed leadership the most, no leader could spare three days in Boston but could spend nine months in the Soviet Union – with the result that the needle trades suffered severely. And today we have a shadow of what once promised to be a broad movement. However, this shadow still has life and needs building up. Every thinking worker will agree that the needle trades union needs the immediate and intensive activity of all forces including the leadership. How, then, could Hyman leave for the Soviet Union with the farewell words: “When the workers will need me, I will come back”? When does Hyman think the time will be more pressing than the present? It is hardly believable that he thinks that the workers do not need him any longer, for he knows the situation thoroughly and also knows that the workers feel it too keenly to accept his statement literally. However, the future will undoubtedly tell the truth.</p>
<p>The united front question is not new and has received much mention but never been made clear to the minds of the workers. Consequently we often hear: “Yes, a united front, but how is it to be enforced?” This question intensified the interest of the workers to find out this time just what the leadership had to propose. When we came to the meeting and after Burochovitch spoke for an hour, he failed, as so many times in the past, to bring forth clearly this idea. Calling to the workers to organize shop committees, make this their fighting body that will demand conditions, that the workers are not compelled to join the Industrial Union is not enough to clarify to the workers the united front policy. We must in a united front draw up a slogan for demands. Together with the Right wing workers who are still deceived by their corrupt leaders, bring our demands to these leaders, emphasizing that they shall not sign agreements for us without fighting for our conditions, and if they will not do this then we will fight without them and against them.</p>
<p>The active membership meeting was followed by a mass meeting with Gold. “This meeting of about four hundred workers, the majority of whom are Right wingers, again proved that the existing conditions are opening the eyes of the workers to the realization that only the unity of all workers can lend them to victory. It was precisely with this in mind that so many answered the call to pave the way for successful struggles in the coming season when the agreements with the bosses expire in February. It was here that our speakers had a splendid opportunity to bring forward more clearly our policy to the workers, and failed again to some extent.</p>
<p>However, let us call this the beginning of real earnest activity. Let us not neglect it as in the past. The time is now. Forward to a genuine united front of all workers in our conning struggles for victory.</p>
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C.
The N.T.W.I.U. at Work in Boston
(October 1931)
From The Militant, Vol. IV No. 28 (Whole No. 87), 24 October 1931, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
After a long period of passivity the N.T.W.I.U. has awakened to the fact that something must be done. And while this is not the first time this has been said, let us hope and see that this time it is not only put into words, but into deeds.
During the past week, several meetings were held with leading comrades in an endeavor, finally, to consider seriously the united front policy. It must be said that it took long before we succeeded in getting a “leader” down to Boston and when Burochovitch finally came he received, together with a warm welcome the well-deserved criticism to the G.E.B. for the many shortcomings as well as for sending away some of the heads to Russia during a period of such acute struggles. At a time when the furriers in New York and the cloak and dress makers throughout the industry needed leadership the most, no leader could spare three days in Boston but could spend nine months in the Soviet Union – with the result that the needle trades suffered severely. And today we have a shadow of what once promised to be a broad movement. However, this shadow still has life and needs building up. Every thinking worker will agree that the needle trades union needs the immediate and intensive activity of all forces including the leadership. How, then, could Hyman leave for the Soviet Union with the farewell words: “When the workers will need me, I will come back”? When does Hyman think the time will be more pressing than the present? It is hardly believable that he thinks that the workers do not need him any longer, for he knows the situation thoroughly and also knows that the workers feel it too keenly to accept his statement literally. However, the future will undoubtedly tell the truth.
The united front question is not new and has received much mention but never been made clear to the minds of the workers. Consequently we often hear: “Yes, a united front, but how is it to be enforced?” This question intensified the interest of the workers to find out this time just what the leadership had to propose. When we came to the meeting and after Burochovitch spoke for an hour, he failed, as so many times in the past, to bring forth clearly this idea. Calling to the workers to organize shop committees, make this their fighting body that will demand conditions, that the workers are not compelled to join the Industrial Union is not enough to clarify to the workers the united front policy. We must in a united front draw up a slogan for demands. Together with the Right wing workers who are still deceived by their corrupt leaders, bring our demands to these leaders, emphasizing that they shall not sign agreements for us without fighting for our conditions, and if they will not do this then we will fight without them and against them.
The active membership meeting was followed by a mass meeting with Gold. “This meeting of about four hundred workers, the majority of whom are Right wingers, again proved that the existing conditions are opening the eyes of the workers to the realization that only the unity of all workers can lend them to victory. It was precisely with this in mind that so many answered the call to pave the way for successful struggles in the coming season when the agreements with the bosses expire in February. It was here that our speakers had a splendid opportunity to bring forward more clearly our policy to the workers, and failed again to some extent.
However, let us call this the beginning of real earnest activity. Let us not neglect it as in the past. The time is now. Forward to a genuine united front of all workers in our conning struggles for victory.
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<h4><em>Fourth International</em>, July 1940</h4>
<p> </p>
<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h1>The American Telephone<br>
and Telegraph Co.</h1>
<p> </p>
<p class="from">From <em>Fourth International</em>, <a href="../../index.htm#fi40_07" target="new">Vol. I No. 3</a>, July 1940, p. 79.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for <em>ETOL</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="fst"><strong>AT&T, The Story of Industrial Conquest</strong><br>
by N. R. Danièlian<br>
<em>Vanguard Press; New York. 460 pp.</em></p>
<p class="fst">The American Telephone and Telegraph Company receives more income a year than do Chile, Finland, Norway, Hungary and Yugoslavia combined. The largest single corporation in the country, it has a total capital of more than $5,000,000,000; in 1929 it employed 454,000 workers. It operates between 80 and 90 per cent of the nation’s telephone system; controls 222 vassal corporations, including Western Electric which produces 90 per cent of the world’s telephone equipment; owns over 9,000 United States patents and is licensed for 6,725 more. But even more important in the eyes of the bourgeois world – since 1880 AT&T and its forerunners have never paid a dividend of less than $7 a share, and since 1921, it has paid even through the lean years of the depression, $2.25 each quarter with astronomical regularity.</p>
<p>The corporation began with a total investment of less than $200,000 in 1878 and by a process of accumulation and centralization has reached the gigantic status of today. Management and ownership are completely separated. Control is vested in the hands of a virtually self-perpetuating board of directors, paid huge salaries, while the stockholders’ only function is to clip dividend coupons.</p>
<p>The AT&T boasts of the democracy of its ownership, of the widespread distribution of stock. However, the figures revealed by US government investigators show us the following as of September 16, 1935:</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr valign="top">
<td>
<p class="sm1">No. of<br>
Shares</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">Total<br>
Stockholders</p>
</td>
<td rowspan="7">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">Total<br>
Shares</p>
</td>
<td rowspan="7">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">%<br>
Stockholders</p>
</td>
<td rowspan="7">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">%<br>
Shares</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>
<p class="sm1">1–5</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">244,566</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 702,365</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">36.8</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 3.8</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>
<p class="sm1">6–25</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">279,981</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">3,609,391</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">42.2</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">19.3</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>
<p class="sm1">26–99</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">105,610</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">4,933,620</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">15.9</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">26.4</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>
<p class="sm1">100–999</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 32,904</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">6,319,962</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 5.0</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">33.9</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>
<p class="sm1">1,000–9,999</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 991</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">2,121,336</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 0.1</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">11.4</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>
<p class="sm1">10,000 and over</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 43</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 975,601</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">negligible</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 5.2</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">These figures are eloquent testimony of the “democracy,” of the modern corporation. Each stockholder of the group owning 10,000 or more shares owns more than 9,000 times as much stock as each shareholder of the 1–5 group. Less than 0.1 percent of the shareholders own more shares than do two-thirds.</p>
<p>The House of Morgan has dominated AT&T since 1907. Since that time, Morgan has sold $1,500,000,000 worth of shares, yielding a banker’s commission of nearly $40,000,000 for this service. As a result of the connection with Morgan, the Company loaned $20,000,000 to the Allies in 1916.</p>
<p>In order to escape income tax payments, unfavorable publicity, etc., various subterfuges are used that make even this picture a distortion of the facts, as the actual concentration is undoubtedly even greater than that shown.</p>
<p>Yet, it is true that AT&T is the most “democratic” of the large corporations. One can only guess at the distribution of ownership in the other corporations. Study of the income tax statistics show that less than 0.5% of the nation receive 75 to 80% of the corporate dividends.</p>
<p>The high dividend rates which so arouse capitalist admiration are not due to any miracle. The maintenance of the rate of profit through the depression years can only be explained by the intensification of labor, which is in the final analysis a form of cutting wages and raising hours. In 1937, business was above the 1929 levels, profits rose from $116,000,000 to $168,000,000, but the number of employees decreased by 134,000.</p>
<p>It scarcely need be added that AT&T actively opposes unionism through participation in the Special Conference Committee, a company union supported by 11 other giant corporations.</p>
<p>The modern corporation has made a wage slave of the scientist, the engineer and the inventor. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the Bell Laboratories, where research is carried on in both experimental and applied science. The labor power of the scientist is bought and sold on the labor market, the scientist-proletarian punches the time clock, receives wages, while the product of his toil belongs to the capitalists who hire him. That product is patents, the ownership of which becomes part of the capital of the corporation to be used either directly by it, or leased to other capitalists for use in the production of profits.</p>
<p>A discovery in one field of science will often find uses in many others, sometimes far removed from its original aim. For example, De Forest’s vacuum tube is useful not only in telegraphy, but in long distance telephony, in radio, television and sound pictures. By control of this patent, as with others, the Bell System finds itself a factor in industries far removed from telephones.</p>
<p>The control of patents, resulting from the work of the Bell Laboratories, the accumulation of large surplus funds demanding investment, the fear of competition, as for instance, from the radio, explains the constant tendency of AT&T to invade other fields, particularly those connected with its patents. Here they come into contact and clash with other industries. Competition is no longer a struggle for the customer, waged by a host of small concerns, but a war of giants to see who shall dominate a monopolized field. The chief instrument used in this war, besides finances, is the control of patents. It is a struggle, not mainly at the point of consumption, but in the laboratory.</p>
<p>Two groups are dominant in the electrical communications and manufacturing field: the telephone group composed of AT&T and its subsidiaries; and the radio group, consisting of RCA, General Electric and Westinghouse. with the addition of some minor groups. (The telegraph companies are sinking into relative unimportance.) After a period of war between the groups a peace treaty was signed on July 1, 1926 delimiting the zones of monopoly of each, with an exchange of patents for use in those zones.</p>
<p>Telephony, both wire and wireless, with the exception of broadcasting went to the telephone group; telegraphy and radio broadcasting was allocated to the radio group. Telephone equipment manufacturing went to the telephone group, while radio and communication household equipment is the domain of the radio group. Wire television and facsimile process went to the telephone group, while radio television and fascimile went to the radio group.</p>
<p>The manufacture of radio transmission equipment is shared between the two.</p>
<p>The only “no man’s land” in the agreement is sound movies. In this field intense warfare has raged. For a long time, the movie-goer could see on the “title page” of the talkie, only the trade mark “Western Electric Sound System” or “Western Electric Microphonic Recording.” But the radio group did not leave unchallenged the domination of the Western Electric.</p>
<p>In order to bolster its position, the subsidiary of Western Electric, ERPI (Electrical Research Products, Incorporated) loaned money to studios and movie houses to aid them in placing Western Electric recording and reproducing equipment. Having loaned millions, the crash of 1929 found the AT&T taking over studios and theaters, becoming at one time the second most important financial interest in the movie industry.</p>
<p>The Bell interests were not successful in maintaining a monopoly in the sound motion picture field. In June 1936, Warner Brothers, Fox Film, and Columbia Pictures installed RCA recording equipment in their studios to supplement Western Electric equipment.</p>
<p>Capitalist economy has run its course. Its end result is the gigantic monopoly, in which the capitalist is a useless parasite. Of what use are the owners of the corporations? The picture which Mr. Danièlian draws of a single company, is to a great extent, true of all corporations and companies and American economy as a whole. The workers are exploited by these concerns; the consuming public is victimized through monopoly prices. Mr. Danièlian, writing in the style of Ferdinand Lundeberg does not draw any conclusions from his study as to the future of industry. The class conscious worker, will draw the only correct one: the necessity of the transition to socialism!</p>
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Fourth International, July 1940
C. Curtiss
The American Telephone
and Telegraph Co.
From Fourth International, Vol. I No. 3, July 1940, p. 79.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
AT&T, The Story of Industrial Conquest
by N. R. Danièlian
Vanguard Press; New York. 460 pp.
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company receives more income a year than do Chile, Finland, Norway, Hungary and Yugoslavia combined. The largest single corporation in the country, it has a total capital of more than $5,000,000,000; in 1929 it employed 454,000 workers. It operates between 80 and 90 per cent of the nation’s telephone system; controls 222 vassal corporations, including Western Electric which produces 90 per cent of the world’s telephone equipment; owns over 9,000 United States patents and is licensed for 6,725 more. But even more important in the eyes of the bourgeois world – since 1880 AT&T and its forerunners have never paid a dividend of less than $7 a share, and since 1921, it has paid even through the lean years of the depression, $2.25 each quarter with astronomical regularity.
The corporation began with a total investment of less than $200,000 in 1878 and by a process of accumulation and centralization has reached the gigantic status of today. Management and ownership are completely separated. Control is vested in the hands of a virtually self-perpetuating board of directors, paid huge salaries, while the stockholders’ only function is to clip dividend coupons.
The AT&T boasts of the democracy of its ownership, of the widespread distribution of stock. However, the figures revealed by US government investigators show us the following as of September 16, 1935:
No. of
Shares
Total
Stockholders
Total
Shares
%
Stockholders
%
Shares
1–5
244,566
702,365
36.8
3.8
6–25
279,981
3,609,391
42.2
19.3
26–99
105,610
4,933,620
15.9
26.4
100–999
32,904
6,319,962
5.0
33.9
1,000–9,999
991
2,121,336
0.1
11.4
10,000 and over
43
975,601
negligible
5.2
These figures are eloquent testimony of the “democracy,” of the modern corporation. Each stockholder of the group owning 10,000 or more shares owns more than 9,000 times as much stock as each shareholder of the 1–5 group. Less than 0.1 percent of the shareholders own more shares than do two-thirds.
The House of Morgan has dominated AT&T since 1907. Since that time, Morgan has sold $1,500,000,000 worth of shares, yielding a banker’s commission of nearly $40,000,000 for this service. As a result of the connection with Morgan, the Company loaned $20,000,000 to the Allies in 1916.
In order to escape income tax payments, unfavorable publicity, etc., various subterfuges are used that make even this picture a distortion of the facts, as the actual concentration is undoubtedly even greater than that shown.
Yet, it is true that AT&T is the most “democratic” of the large corporations. One can only guess at the distribution of ownership in the other corporations. Study of the income tax statistics show that less than 0.5% of the nation receive 75 to 80% of the corporate dividends.
The high dividend rates which so arouse capitalist admiration are not due to any miracle. The maintenance of the rate of profit through the depression years can only be explained by the intensification of labor, which is in the final analysis a form of cutting wages and raising hours. In 1937, business was above the 1929 levels, profits rose from $116,000,000 to $168,000,000, but the number of employees decreased by 134,000.
It scarcely need be added that AT&T actively opposes unionism through participation in the Special Conference Committee, a company union supported by 11 other giant corporations.
The modern corporation has made a wage slave of the scientist, the engineer and the inventor. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the Bell Laboratories, where research is carried on in both experimental and applied science. The labor power of the scientist is bought and sold on the labor market, the scientist-proletarian punches the time clock, receives wages, while the product of his toil belongs to the capitalists who hire him. That product is patents, the ownership of which becomes part of the capital of the corporation to be used either directly by it, or leased to other capitalists for use in the production of profits.
A discovery in one field of science will often find uses in many others, sometimes far removed from its original aim. For example, De Forest’s vacuum tube is useful not only in telegraphy, but in long distance telephony, in radio, television and sound pictures. By control of this patent, as with others, the Bell System finds itself a factor in industries far removed from telephones.
The control of patents, resulting from the work of the Bell Laboratories, the accumulation of large surplus funds demanding investment, the fear of competition, as for instance, from the radio, explains the constant tendency of AT&T to invade other fields, particularly those connected with its patents. Here they come into contact and clash with other industries. Competition is no longer a struggle for the customer, waged by a host of small concerns, but a war of giants to see who shall dominate a monopolized field. The chief instrument used in this war, besides finances, is the control of patents. It is a struggle, not mainly at the point of consumption, but in the laboratory.
Two groups are dominant in the electrical communications and manufacturing field: the telephone group composed of AT&T and its subsidiaries; and the radio group, consisting of RCA, General Electric and Westinghouse. with the addition of some minor groups. (The telegraph companies are sinking into relative unimportance.) After a period of war between the groups a peace treaty was signed on July 1, 1926 delimiting the zones of monopoly of each, with an exchange of patents for use in those zones.
Telephony, both wire and wireless, with the exception of broadcasting went to the telephone group; telegraphy and radio broadcasting was allocated to the radio group. Telephone equipment manufacturing went to the telephone group, while radio and communication household equipment is the domain of the radio group. Wire television and facsimile process went to the telephone group, while radio television and fascimile went to the radio group.
The manufacture of radio transmission equipment is shared between the two.
The only “no man’s land” in the agreement is sound movies. In this field intense warfare has raged. For a long time, the movie-goer could see on the “title page” of the talkie, only the trade mark “Western Electric Sound System” or “Western Electric Microphonic Recording.” But the radio group did not leave unchallenged the domination of the Western Electric.
In order to bolster its position, the subsidiary of Western Electric, ERPI (Electrical Research Products, Incorporated) loaned money to studios and movie houses to aid them in placing Western Electric recording and reproducing equipment. Having loaned millions, the crash of 1929 found the AT&T taking over studios and theaters, becoming at one time the second most important financial interest in the movie industry.
The Bell interests were not successful in maintaining a monopoly in the sound motion picture field. In June 1936, Warner Brothers, Fox Film, and Columbia Pictures installed RCA recording equipment in their studios to supplement Western Electric equipment.
Capitalist economy has run its course. Its end result is the gigantic monopoly, in which the capitalist is a useless parasite. Of what use are the owners of the corporations? The picture which Mr. Danièlian draws of a single company, is to a great extent, true of all corporations and companies and American economy as a whole. The workers are exploited by these concerns; the consuming public is victimized through monopoly prices. Mr. Danièlian, writing in the style of Ferdinand Lundeberg does not draw any conclusions from his study as to the future of industry. The class conscious worker, will draw the only correct one: the necessity of the transition to socialism!
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>Priorities Joblessness Faces<br>
2 Million Workers</h1>
<h4>Monopolies Oppose Expansion of<br>
Production Facilities and Try to Limit Supplies<br>
of Raw Materials for Small Companies</h4>
<h3>(August 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_34" target="new">Vol. V No. 34</a>, 23 August 1941, p. 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Close to two million men and women will be thrown out of work within a few months as a result of “priorities unemployment.” They will be added to those now unemployed, numbering, according to Secretary of Labor Perkins, between 7,000,000 and 8,500,000 workers.</p>
<p>Attention was focused recently on “priorities unemployment” by the closing down of the women’s silk stocking factories. Plants employing 175,000 workers have been ordered closed. This was caused by the government order forbidding trade with Japan and the requisitioning of the stocks of raw silk on hand for military use. No reserves of raw silk, which comes entirely from Japan, are on hand, in spite of government promises to build up such reserves. Nylon plants can supply only a fraction of the demand for silk.</p>
<p>Besides the silk industry, “priorities unemployment” has already directly affected thousands of oil and aluminum workers. This latest form, of unemployment threatens particularly the auto, refrigerator and electrical appliance industries.</p>
<p>Jobs of all workers employed in non-war industries using steel, oil, aluminum, iron, copper, brass, zinc, nickel, tin, rubber and cork are also endangered.</p>
<p>“Priorities unemployment” arises from the government policy of granting preference to the war industries in the rationing of limited supplies of raw materials. As a result, plants working on non-military products are forced to curtail production: and in many cases shut down completely.</p>
<p>On July 19, 1941, Leon Henderson, federal price-control administrator, ordered a reduction of 50 per cent in the manufacture of autos to begin by October. According to the United Auto Workers Union (CIO) this would mean a lay-off of 215,000 workers.</p>
<p>Production of household refrigerators will be halved, throwing more than 27,000 out of work, while more than 3,000 workers will be unemployed as a result of curtailment of the domestic laundry and related appliance industry.</p>
<p>Sixteen thousand aluminum-ware workers are already unemployed.<br>
</p>
<h4>Transportation Lack</h4>
<p class="fst">Many industries will suffer from insufficient raw materials because of lack of train and boat transport facilities. The recent order of Secretary of Interior Ickes, closing all gasoline stations on the Eastern seaboard from 7 P.M. to 7 A.M. every day was due not to a shortage of gasoline but to insufficient tankers to bring the gasoline to its consumer outlet. In the city of New York alone 5,000 workers lost their jobs because of this decree.</p>
<p>Industries as far removed from war production as printing will feel the pinch of “priorities unemployment.” On July 21, 1941, the OPM predicted a shortage of most types of paper due to lack of ships to carry newsprint and pulp from Canada.</p>
<p>Industries using copper have had their supplies of this metal curtailed due, among other causes, to shipping difficulties which interfere with transport of refined copper from Chile.</p>
<p>The OPM foresees that the transportation situation will become more serious as rail and boat lines become congested with defense shipments.</p>
<p>A probable shortage of electrical energy in certain regions is expected as aluminum and other large consumers of electricity receive priority. Production of non-priority plants will suffer.<br>
</p>
<h4>Small Concerns Hit</h4>
<p class="fst">Particularly hard hit have been and will be the small plants producing consumers’ non-priority goods. In Illinois, for example, a state commission disclosed that 24 such plants producing articles as diversified as watch parts and railway cars and employing a total of 3,569 workers face complete closing within 60 days at most. These small plants have great difficulty in getting government orders, as 75 per cent of this work is monopolized by a few large concerns.</p>
<p>Not only will the workers directly engaged in manufacturing lose their jobs, but salesmen, warehousemen and other workers as well.</p>
<p>An indirect form of “priorities unemployment” will result from the recent curtailment of installment selling. Automobile production will be particularly hard hit as 64 per cent of the output in autos is sold on installment: 60 per cent of all furniture and more than half of all mechanical refrigerators and other household appliances are also sold “on time.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Capitalist Anarchy</h4>
<p class="fst">If we leave aside silk, shortages of steel and aluminum are at present the greatest causes of “priorities unemployment.” Yet, on July 10, Walter S. Tower, president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, falsely declared that there was no sound factual basis for expecting any shortage of steel. The steel monopolies are deliberately trying to maintain their dominant position by curbing competitive steel production. The big steel officials are trying to foist on the public the view that there really is no practical need for wholesale increases in capacity.</p>
<p>I.W. Wilson, vice-president of the Aluminum Company of America, stated before the Temporary National Economic Committee that his company alone could not only supply all aluminum needed for national defense but also “ordinary domestic requirements and normal requirements.” The OPM has given the lie to this statement by admitting the need for 2,100,000,000 pounds of aluminum in 1942, while ALCOA has a top productive capacity of only 700,000,000 pounds.<br>
</p>
<h4>Workers Protest Planlessness</h4>
<p class="fst">The AFL and the CIO have both protested the threatened job losses. The Auto Workers Union (CIO) and the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (CIO), whose member are most immediately and directly affected, have launched campaigns to resist “priorities unemployment.”</p>
<p>By the example of “priorities unemployment” and similar lessons, the workers of the United States are learning that capitalism cannot overcome its anarchy of production, which is inherent in the profit system, even in the face of its greatest emergencies. America’s 60 Families, in their mad greed for profits, not only cannot put millions back on the job, but on the eve of direct involvement in the war are throwing millions more out of work.</p>
<p>Thus, the capitalists are attempting to place the burden of their own incompetence on the workers in the form of unemployment, goods shortages, monopoly prices and real wage cuts.</p>
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C. Charles
Priorities Joblessness Faces
2 Million Workers
Monopolies Oppose Expansion of
Production Facilities and Try to Limit Supplies
of Raw Materials for Small Companies
(August 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 34, 23 August 1941, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Close to two million men and women will be thrown out of work within a few months as a result of “priorities unemployment.” They will be added to those now unemployed, numbering, according to Secretary of Labor Perkins, between 7,000,000 and 8,500,000 workers.
Attention was focused recently on “priorities unemployment” by the closing down of the women’s silk stocking factories. Plants employing 175,000 workers have been ordered closed. This was caused by the government order forbidding trade with Japan and the requisitioning of the stocks of raw silk on hand for military use. No reserves of raw silk, which comes entirely from Japan, are on hand, in spite of government promises to build up such reserves. Nylon plants can supply only a fraction of the demand for silk.
Besides the silk industry, “priorities unemployment” has already directly affected thousands of oil and aluminum workers. This latest form, of unemployment threatens particularly the auto, refrigerator and electrical appliance industries.
Jobs of all workers employed in non-war industries using steel, oil, aluminum, iron, copper, brass, zinc, nickel, tin, rubber and cork are also endangered.
“Priorities unemployment” arises from the government policy of granting preference to the war industries in the rationing of limited supplies of raw materials. As a result, plants working on non-military products are forced to curtail production: and in many cases shut down completely.
On July 19, 1941, Leon Henderson, federal price-control administrator, ordered a reduction of 50 per cent in the manufacture of autos to begin by October. According to the United Auto Workers Union (CIO) this would mean a lay-off of 215,000 workers.
Production of household refrigerators will be halved, throwing more than 27,000 out of work, while more than 3,000 workers will be unemployed as a result of curtailment of the domestic laundry and related appliance industry.
Sixteen thousand aluminum-ware workers are already unemployed.
Transportation Lack
Many industries will suffer from insufficient raw materials because of lack of train and boat transport facilities. The recent order of Secretary of Interior Ickes, closing all gasoline stations on the Eastern seaboard from 7 P.M. to 7 A.M. every day was due not to a shortage of gasoline but to insufficient tankers to bring the gasoline to its consumer outlet. In the city of New York alone 5,000 workers lost their jobs because of this decree.
Industries as far removed from war production as printing will feel the pinch of “priorities unemployment.” On July 21, 1941, the OPM predicted a shortage of most types of paper due to lack of ships to carry newsprint and pulp from Canada.
Industries using copper have had their supplies of this metal curtailed due, among other causes, to shipping difficulties which interfere with transport of refined copper from Chile.
The OPM foresees that the transportation situation will become more serious as rail and boat lines become congested with defense shipments.
A probable shortage of electrical energy in certain regions is expected as aluminum and other large consumers of electricity receive priority. Production of non-priority plants will suffer.
Small Concerns Hit
Particularly hard hit have been and will be the small plants producing consumers’ non-priority goods. In Illinois, for example, a state commission disclosed that 24 such plants producing articles as diversified as watch parts and railway cars and employing a total of 3,569 workers face complete closing within 60 days at most. These small plants have great difficulty in getting government orders, as 75 per cent of this work is monopolized by a few large concerns.
Not only will the workers directly engaged in manufacturing lose their jobs, but salesmen, warehousemen and other workers as well.
An indirect form of “priorities unemployment” will result from the recent curtailment of installment selling. Automobile production will be particularly hard hit as 64 per cent of the output in autos is sold on installment: 60 per cent of all furniture and more than half of all mechanical refrigerators and other household appliances are also sold “on time.”
Capitalist Anarchy
If we leave aside silk, shortages of steel and aluminum are at present the greatest causes of “priorities unemployment.” Yet, on July 10, Walter S. Tower, president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, falsely declared that there was no sound factual basis for expecting any shortage of steel. The steel monopolies are deliberately trying to maintain their dominant position by curbing competitive steel production. The big steel officials are trying to foist on the public the view that there really is no practical need for wholesale increases in capacity.
I.W. Wilson, vice-president of the Aluminum Company of America, stated before the Temporary National Economic Committee that his company alone could not only supply all aluminum needed for national defense but also “ordinary domestic requirements and normal requirements.” The OPM has given the lie to this statement by admitting the need for 2,100,000,000 pounds of aluminum in 1942, while ALCOA has a top productive capacity of only 700,000,000 pounds.
Workers Protest Planlessness
The AFL and the CIO have both protested the threatened job losses. The Auto Workers Union (CIO) and the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (CIO), whose member are most immediately and directly affected, have launched campaigns to resist “priorities unemployment.”
By the example of “priorities unemployment” and similar lessons, the workers of the United States are learning that capitalism cannot overcome its anarchy of production, which is inherent in the profit system, even in the face of its greatest emergencies. America’s 60 Families, in their mad greed for profits, not only cannot put millions back on the job, but on the eve of direct involvement in the war are throwing millions more out of work.
Thus, the capitalists are attempting to place the burden of their own incompetence on the workers in the form of unemployment, goods shortages, monopoly prices and real wage cuts.
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<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>Mexican Nazis Attack Trotsky</h1>
<h3>(June 1934)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1934/index.htm#tm34_24" target="new">Vol. VII No. 24</a>, 16 June 1934, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">There is in Mexico a fascist sheet, organ in Spanish of Hitler’s embassy in Mexico. Anti-labor, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, with all the lack of originality and logic of that movement the paper, thanks to the subsidy it receives from the Nazis, appears, unnoticed by the great majority of Mexicans. Without doubt, the most religious supporters of this paper are the Jews, who pay 5 cents for every issue in a morbid curiosity to see what new strange fables about them appear.</p>
<p>One thing must be impressed, and that is that this paper is the organ of Nazism. About five months ago a new ambassador arrived from Berlin bearing a membership card in the Nazis and a Baron and a Von before his name (need more be said).</p>
<p>When the issue of the Trotsky expulsion from France came up, in this organ appeared an article by a renegade from Communism named Mullen. The article makes a show of erudition that in its shallowness is really painful to behold. But we do not want to criticize the article. Not being very much read it does not merit criticism. What we want to do is merely to comment upon it.</p>
<p>The theme of this article is that the Jews are the only real internationalists, and that the expulsion of Trotsky from the Communist International is a victory for nationalism. That the struggle between Stalin the Georgian and Trotsky the Jew is really a struggle between nationalism and internationalism.</p>
<p>Let us extract the true core of this matter and leave the rest. That core is that the struggle of the International Communists is in essence a struggle for internationalism, which does not represent the Jew or the Methodist but represents the interests of the worldwide proletariat. Will this frank appraisal by Nazism make some of the rank and file Stalinists think?</p>
<p>The national-socialists of Germany find an ideological rapproachment with Stalinistic “socialism in one country”, and find common ground with it in the struggle against the internationalism of Trotsky.</p>
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C.C.
Mexican Nazis Attack Trotsky
(June 1934)
From The Militant, Vol. VII No. 24, 16 June 1934, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
There is in Mexico a fascist sheet, organ in Spanish of Hitler’s embassy in Mexico. Anti-labor, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, with all the lack of originality and logic of that movement the paper, thanks to the subsidy it receives from the Nazis, appears, unnoticed by the great majority of Mexicans. Without doubt, the most religious supporters of this paper are the Jews, who pay 5 cents for every issue in a morbid curiosity to see what new strange fables about them appear.
One thing must be impressed, and that is that this paper is the organ of Nazism. About five months ago a new ambassador arrived from Berlin bearing a membership card in the Nazis and a Baron and a Von before his name (need more be said).
When the issue of the Trotsky expulsion from France came up, in this organ appeared an article by a renegade from Communism named Mullen. The article makes a show of erudition that in its shallowness is really painful to behold. But we do not want to criticize the article. Not being very much read it does not merit criticism. What we want to do is merely to comment upon it.
The theme of this article is that the Jews are the only real internationalists, and that the expulsion of Trotsky from the Communist International is a victory for nationalism. That the struggle between Stalin the Georgian and Trotsky the Jew is really a struggle between nationalism and internationalism.
Let us extract the true core of this matter and leave the rest. That core is that the struggle of the International Communists is in essence a struggle for internationalism, which does not represent the Jew or the Methodist but represents the interests of the worldwide proletariat. Will this frank appraisal by Nazism make some of the rank and file Stalinists think?
The national-socialists of Germany find an ideological rapproachment with Stalinistic “socialism in one country”, and find common ground with it in the struggle against the internationalism of Trotsky.
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<h2>Charles Curtiss</h2>
<h4>Workers Forum</h4>
<h1>The Death of Frank Halstead</h1>
<h3>(20 July 1940)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_29" target="new">Vol. IV No. 29</a>, 20 July 1940, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Editor:</p>
<p class="fst">It is with deep sorrow that we report the news of the death of Frank Halstead, of Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Comrade Halstead was one of the founders of the Left Opposition movement in Los Angeles. Previous to that, he had been a member of the Young People’s Socialist League in the days before the War, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, and an active member of the progressive group in the Machinists Union.</p>
<p>When the writer of these lines arrived in Los Angeles, comrade Halstead was receiving and distributing a bundle of <b>Militants</b>, and speaking wherever he could for the Left Opposition, doing pioneer work in the then “white spot” of reaction. This period marked the beginning of the unemployed movement into which the small nucleus of the Left Opposition threw itself; beginning a left wing in the large unemployed co-operative movement. In this movement comrade Halstead was a leading figure, organizing the unemployed. Working side by side with comrade Halstead, I was able to see a real rebel in action; a rebel who combined a deep loyalty to and faith in the working class, with a clear forceful mind.</p>
<p>After starting the Left Opposition movement on its way, comrade Halstead withdrew from the movement into the role of a sympathizer. He later joined one of the splinter movements.</p>
<p>In spite of the differences between himself and our organization, the Los Angeles section of the Socialist Workers Party salutes a rebel. We are sure his work will be remembered by the working class.</p>
<p>We offer our condolences to his wife and sons.</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst"><i>Charles Curtiss</i><br>
For the Los Angeles section<br>
of the Socialist Workers Party</p>
</td>
</tr>
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Charles Curtiss
Workers Forum
The Death of Frank Halstead
(20 July 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 29, 20 July 1940, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Editor:
It is with deep sorrow that we report the news of the death of Frank Halstead, of Los Angeles.
Comrade Halstead was one of the founders of the Left Opposition movement in Los Angeles. Previous to that, he had been a member of the Young People’s Socialist League in the days before the War, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, and an active member of the progressive group in the Machinists Union.
When the writer of these lines arrived in Los Angeles, comrade Halstead was receiving and distributing a bundle of Militants, and speaking wherever he could for the Left Opposition, doing pioneer work in the then “white spot” of reaction. This period marked the beginning of the unemployed movement into which the small nucleus of the Left Opposition threw itself; beginning a left wing in the large unemployed co-operative movement. In this movement comrade Halstead was a leading figure, organizing the unemployed. Working side by side with comrade Halstead, I was able to see a real rebel in action; a rebel who combined a deep loyalty to and faith in the working class, with a clear forceful mind.
After starting the Left Opposition movement on its way, comrade Halstead withdrew from the movement into the role of a sympathizer. He later joined one of the splinter movements.
In spite of the differences between himself and our organization, the Los Angeles section of the Socialist Workers Party salutes a rebel. We are sure his work will be remembered by the working class.
We offer our condolences to his wife and sons.
Charles Curtiss
For the Los Angeles section
of the Socialist Workers Party
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>Strike Lessons on Pacific Coast</h1>
<h3>(September 1933)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info"><em>From the Militants</em>, <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1933/index.htm#tm33_46" target="new">Vol. VI No. 43</a>, 16 September 1933, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>Los Angeles.</strong> – It is sad to have to write to you that the workers on strike against Golden Bros. Millinery shop were defeated.</p>
<p>The bravery of the strikers, their militancy on the picket lines, their courage before the clubs and saps of a degenerate group of police, the great number of arrests bravely endured (17 in number) were not able to overcome the objective fact of the strike being forced on the workers in the off season and the subjective condition of weakness in the Trade Union Unity League officialdom. (To grace them with the name of “leaders” would be sheer violence of the latter term).</p>
<p>Victory could have been won, even though the strike took place in the slack season, but for the passivity and lethargy in the general activities – a condition due to the actions of the apparatus of the T.U.U.L. <em>and not the strikers themselves</em>.</p>
<p>The chairman of the strike committee, comrade Louis Meyers insisted on a more militant attitude, but to no avail, as a result scabs manned the shops.</p>
<p>After much effort, comrade Meyers succeeded in securing what amounted to a little more than a verbal agreement with his views.</p>
<p>In spite of its weaknesses, the strike has created a tradition in Los Angeles. To all workers, particularly needleworkers, it showed how even the most brutal of police terror can be fought. Smashed picket lines were reformed. Jail did not daunt. In this manner strikes are won; not in the class collaboration of the conservative trade union fakers.</p>
<p>A storm of strikes, in the needle trades above all, is in the offing. The first strikes, the forerunners, are already here. The NTWIU is conducting a number of small strikes. The Amalgamated Clothing</p>
<p>Workers has struck the Kurtzman Clothing Co. The international Ladies Garment Workers Union is planning a general strike and has been waging a series of minor strike battles in this situation it becomes yet more important for the I.U.W.L. members to finally learn too that the place of the Left wing is within the mass unions.</p>
<p>To the strikers out now and to those who are yet to strike, the workers of Golden Bros. shop have taught lessons that we hope will not go unheeded.</p>
<p>Although the strike has been called off, rearguard battles remain to be fought. These are the struggles for the freeing of the strikers arrested on the vicious anti-picketing ordinance, a piece of legislation aimed to maintain Los Angeles as the pride and joy of employers.</p>
<p>These trials are now going on. First results have not been good. Two workers were fined $20 each. Two girl strikers, Elsie Meyers and Sally Wegdorow, have been fined $50 or 25 days in jail. This case has been appealed. Three girls are going on trial now.</p>
<p>This fight cannot remain solely in the courtroom. Behind the victimized strikers all of Los Angeles labor must be mobilized.</p>
<p>The fight against the anti-picketing ordinance concerns every worker who is ever going to strike whether he or she is in a union affiliated with the Trade Union Unity League, the A.F. of L., the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, or independent unions. For workers to strike without picket, lines is like soldiers marching to war without fire arms.</p>
<p>Around the right to strike and to picket a broad united front can be formed. The acute need of the moment for all workers is the winning of this right. The most important ingredient of successful strikes is strong picket lines. The anti-picketing ordinance stands in the way.</p>
<p>Only action by the workers can remove this anti-picketing ordinance, not legal argumentation before the bosses’ courts. Although this latter angle must, not be ignored, the following must be driven deep into the consciousness of stirring Los Angeles labor: “Only united action by the workers can do away with the anti-picketing ordinance, and open the road to higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions.”</p>
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C.C.
Strike Lessons on Pacific Coast
(September 1933)
From the Militants, The Militant, Vol. VI No. 43, 16 September 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Los Angeles. – It is sad to have to write to you that the workers on strike against Golden Bros. Millinery shop were defeated.
The bravery of the strikers, their militancy on the picket lines, their courage before the clubs and saps of a degenerate group of police, the great number of arrests bravely endured (17 in number) were not able to overcome the objective fact of the strike being forced on the workers in the off season and the subjective condition of weakness in the Trade Union Unity League officialdom. (To grace them with the name of “leaders” would be sheer violence of the latter term).
Victory could have been won, even though the strike took place in the slack season, but for the passivity and lethargy in the general activities – a condition due to the actions of the apparatus of the T.U.U.L. and not the strikers themselves.
The chairman of the strike committee, comrade Louis Meyers insisted on a more militant attitude, but to no avail, as a result scabs manned the shops.
After much effort, comrade Meyers succeeded in securing what amounted to a little more than a verbal agreement with his views.
In spite of its weaknesses, the strike has created a tradition in Los Angeles. To all workers, particularly needleworkers, it showed how even the most brutal of police terror can be fought. Smashed picket lines were reformed. Jail did not daunt. In this manner strikes are won; not in the class collaboration of the conservative trade union fakers.
A storm of strikes, in the needle trades above all, is in the offing. The first strikes, the forerunners, are already here. The NTWIU is conducting a number of small strikes. The Amalgamated Clothing
Workers has struck the Kurtzman Clothing Co. The international Ladies Garment Workers Union is planning a general strike and has been waging a series of minor strike battles in this situation it becomes yet more important for the I.U.W.L. members to finally learn too that the place of the Left wing is within the mass unions.
To the strikers out now and to those who are yet to strike, the workers of Golden Bros. shop have taught lessons that we hope will not go unheeded.
Although the strike has been called off, rearguard battles remain to be fought. These are the struggles for the freeing of the strikers arrested on the vicious anti-picketing ordinance, a piece of legislation aimed to maintain Los Angeles as the pride and joy of employers.
These trials are now going on. First results have not been good. Two workers were fined $20 each. Two girl strikers, Elsie Meyers and Sally Wegdorow, have been fined $50 or 25 days in jail. This case has been appealed. Three girls are going on trial now.
This fight cannot remain solely in the courtroom. Behind the victimized strikers all of Los Angeles labor must be mobilized.
The fight against the anti-picketing ordinance concerns every worker who is ever going to strike whether he or she is in a union affiliated with the Trade Union Unity League, the A.F. of L., the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, or independent unions. For workers to strike without picket, lines is like soldiers marching to war without fire arms.
Around the right to strike and to picket a broad united front can be formed. The acute need of the moment for all workers is the winning of this right. The most important ingredient of successful strikes is strong picket lines. The anti-picketing ordinance stands in the way.
Only action by the workers can remove this anti-picketing ordinance, not legal argumentation before the bosses’ courts. Although this latter angle must, not be ignored, the following must be driven deep into the consciousness of stirring Los Angeles labor: “Only united action by the workers can do away with the anti-picketing ordinance, and open the road to higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions.”
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<h4>Fourth International, May 1940</h4>
<p> </p>
<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h1>California Agriculture – Ripe for Unionism</h1>
<h3>A Book Review</h3>
<p> </p>
<p class="from">From <em>Fourth International</em>, <a href="../../index.htm#fi40_05" target="new">Vol. I No. 1</a>, May 1940, p. 31.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for <em>ETOL</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="fst"><strong>Factories in the Field</strong><br>
By Carey McWilliams<br>
<em>334 pp. Little Brown and Company</em></p>
<p class="fst">Highly centralized and trustified factory farms controlled by the banks, rapid elimination of the small independent farmer, a large super-exploited agricultural proletariat virtually without civil rights – this is California agriculture, ably depicted by Mr. Carey McWilliams in his book, <strong>Factories in the Field</strong>. And California merely shows the other states of the Union their immediate future. The adversaries of Marxism have always held up the farmers as a refutation of the Marxist concept of the centralization and concentration of industry and wealth. Once more the intellectual defenders of capitalism have been proved wrong.</p>
<p>The “primitive accumulation” of the main item of agricultural constant capital, the land, was accomplished as ruthlesslyin California as elsewhere. The old Spanish and Mexican land grants, essentially feudal in their character, were bought for a song, or secured by force and cheating. In 1860, some 9,000,000 acres were concentrated in the hands of some 800 grantees.</p>
<p>The railroads were granted, in addition to a Federal subsidy equivalent to the complete cost of extending the system to California, every other section of land along the right of way. In this manner, the railroads were given 18 per cent of the State government land.</p>
<p>The third method of securing large stretches of land was through plain ordinary everyday swindling. For example, no limit was placed on the acreage of swamp land that a single person could buy. So one of the land barons hitched a team of horses to a rowboat and had it dragged over perfectly dry land, thereby “proving” the valuable land to be swamp and securing it for less than a dollar an acre.</p>
<p>That patriotism pays, was rediscovered by the growers who bought at extremely depressed prices the land which the Japanese owners were forced to sell upon the passage of the California alien land laws.</p>
<p>These methods together with the elimination of the small landowner by the ordinary process of concentration and centralization, have placed huge stretches of land under the domination of single companies or individuals.</p>
<p>From all over the world low paid workers were inveigled into toiling upon this land. In the beginning the native Indians were used; then the bindle-stiff appeared, ex-miners and ruined farmers; then followed the Chinese, Japanese, the Hindus, Mexicans, Greeks, Italians, Filipinos, Negroes and last the “Okies” driven from the lands of Texas and Oklahoma by natural and social disasters.The growers have been able to use group against group to prevent the workers from organizing.</p>
<p>From 1865 to 1880 the crop of first importance was wheat. Then followed fruit, sugar beets, vegetables, and finally cotton. The transition from dry, wheat farming to irrigated farming required huge engineering projects. California’s ranches and irrigation projects have been and still are a point of investmentfor world capital. Fifty per cent of the land in central and northern California, for example, is under the control of the Bank of America.</p>
<p>The organization of the agricultural industry from a capitalist point of view is highly involved. The completely parasitic ownership is entirely distinct from control and management. For example, Mr. McWilliams points out:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... the owners of 309,000 citrus growing acres, valued at close to $618,000,000, sell <em>their</em> crops through the California Fruit Growers’ Exchange. The exchange picks, packs, pools, grades, ships and sells the orange crop ... The Fruit Growers’ Supply Company, an agency of the exchange, owns vast tracts of timber and a lumber mill, and thus buys boxes and crates at cost ... As Mr. Stokes (a grower) pointed out: ‘I irrigate my orchard with water delivered by a non-profit combination of growers. My trees are sprayed or fumigated by a non-profit partnership.’ The exchange even notifies the grower when he is supposed to start the smudge pots burning to protect his crop from frost.”</p>
<p class="fst">The hiring of labor has reached an unusual degree of centralization and organization as well. The employers cooperate to keep wages down:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... the growers in a given area, involved in the production of a particular crop, would create an employment agency or exchange. This agency would estimate the labor requirements for the coming harvest season, fix a prevailing wage rate, and then proceed to recruit the necessary workers ... Under this practice, the workers more and more began to be employed by the industry rather than by individual growers.”</p>
<p class="fst">The success of the employers in keeping wages down can be estimated by the fact that it is more advantageous for the workers to stay on the miserable relief than to work in the fields. As a matter of fact the growers have forced the relief administration to drive workers off the relief rolls, otherwise the growers could get no workers at the wages they offer. This is the basis of their drive to have relief placed in the hands of the counties. In 1937, wages of a migratory agricultural family were estimated at $350 to $400 a year, which is an increase from 1935 when wages were $289.</p>
<p>The agricultural workers, even the “Okies,” are considered an inferior breed. They are not allowed to vote because of residential requirements. Labor laws do not include them as the legal fiction holds that agriculture is not an industry. Attempts at organization and strikes are met with brutal repression jointly by vigilante fascist groups and the local governments. The growers control legislation through their control of the state senate,and, with reason, oppose all moves for a unicameral legislature.</p>
<p>Here we have all the factors of a colony: foreign, often absentee, capital, trustification, control by the banks, a super-exploited proletariat without rights.</p>
<p>Such is the background for the waves of desperate and heroic strikes which in the last decade have shaken the state like earthquakes. Dozens have been killed, hundreds wounded and hurt, thousands arrested, many imprisoned for years. But the strikes continue. They have been mainly under the leadership of left-wing groups (IWW, CP, SWP) as the aristocratic craft union bureaucrats of the AFL look down with disdain upon the agricultural worker.</p>
<p>The agricultural industry in California is over-ripe for a basic social change. While we disagree with some of the ideas expressed in the book (his estimate of the national government which Mr. McWilliams pictures as a saviour for the agricultural workers; and his estimate of the subsistence homesteads), we thoroughly agree with his conclusion when he says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Agricultural workers can be organized. Once they are organized they can work out the solutions for most of their immediate problems ... But the final solution will come only when the present ... system of agricultural ownership in California is abolished. The abolition of this system involves at most merely a change in ownership. The collective principle is already there; large units of operation have been established, only they are being exploited by private interests for their own ends. California agriculture is a magnificent achievement: in its scope, efficiency, organization and amazing abundance.”</p>
<p class="fst">The book by Mr. McWilliams is clearly and interestingly written, and we urge that every worker interested in one of the great tasks facing American labor, the organization of agriculture, read it.</p>
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Fourth International, May 1940
C. Curtiss
California Agriculture – Ripe for Unionism
A Book Review
From Fourth International, Vol. I No. 1, May 1940, p. 31.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Factories in the Field
By Carey McWilliams
334 pp. Little Brown and Company
Highly centralized and trustified factory farms controlled by the banks, rapid elimination of the small independent farmer, a large super-exploited agricultural proletariat virtually without civil rights – this is California agriculture, ably depicted by Mr. Carey McWilliams in his book, Factories in the Field. And California merely shows the other states of the Union their immediate future. The adversaries of Marxism have always held up the farmers as a refutation of the Marxist concept of the centralization and concentration of industry and wealth. Once more the intellectual defenders of capitalism have been proved wrong.
The “primitive accumulation” of the main item of agricultural constant capital, the land, was accomplished as ruthlesslyin California as elsewhere. The old Spanish and Mexican land grants, essentially feudal in their character, were bought for a song, or secured by force and cheating. In 1860, some 9,000,000 acres were concentrated in the hands of some 800 grantees.
The railroads were granted, in addition to a Federal subsidy equivalent to the complete cost of extending the system to California, every other section of land along the right of way. In this manner, the railroads were given 18 per cent of the State government land.
The third method of securing large stretches of land was through plain ordinary everyday swindling. For example, no limit was placed on the acreage of swamp land that a single person could buy. So one of the land barons hitched a team of horses to a rowboat and had it dragged over perfectly dry land, thereby “proving” the valuable land to be swamp and securing it for less than a dollar an acre.
That patriotism pays, was rediscovered by the growers who bought at extremely depressed prices the land which the Japanese owners were forced to sell upon the passage of the California alien land laws.
These methods together with the elimination of the small landowner by the ordinary process of concentration and centralization, have placed huge stretches of land under the domination of single companies or individuals.
From all over the world low paid workers were inveigled into toiling upon this land. In the beginning the native Indians were used; then the bindle-stiff appeared, ex-miners and ruined farmers; then followed the Chinese, Japanese, the Hindus, Mexicans, Greeks, Italians, Filipinos, Negroes and last the “Okies” driven from the lands of Texas and Oklahoma by natural and social disasters.The growers have been able to use group against group to prevent the workers from organizing.
From 1865 to 1880 the crop of first importance was wheat. Then followed fruit, sugar beets, vegetables, and finally cotton. The transition from dry, wheat farming to irrigated farming required huge engineering projects. California’s ranches and irrigation projects have been and still are a point of investmentfor world capital. Fifty per cent of the land in central and northern California, for example, is under the control of the Bank of America.
The organization of the agricultural industry from a capitalist point of view is highly involved. The completely parasitic ownership is entirely distinct from control and management. For example, Mr. McWilliams points out:
“... the owners of 309,000 citrus growing acres, valued at close to $618,000,000, sell their crops through the California Fruit Growers’ Exchange. The exchange picks, packs, pools, grades, ships and sells the orange crop ... The Fruit Growers’ Supply Company, an agency of the exchange, owns vast tracts of timber and a lumber mill, and thus buys boxes and crates at cost ... As Mr. Stokes (a grower) pointed out: ‘I irrigate my orchard with water delivered by a non-profit combination of growers. My trees are sprayed or fumigated by a non-profit partnership.’ The exchange even notifies the grower when he is supposed to start the smudge pots burning to protect his crop from frost.”
The hiring of labor has reached an unusual degree of centralization and organization as well. The employers cooperate to keep wages down:
“... the growers in a given area, involved in the production of a particular crop, would create an employment agency or exchange. This agency would estimate the labor requirements for the coming harvest season, fix a prevailing wage rate, and then proceed to recruit the necessary workers ... Under this practice, the workers more and more began to be employed by the industry rather than by individual growers.”
The success of the employers in keeping wages down can be estimated by the fact that it is more advantageous for the workers to stay on the miserable relief than to work in the fields. As a matter of fact the growers have forced the relief administration to drive workers off the relief rolls, otherwise the growers could get no workers at the wages they offer. This is the basis of their drive to have relief placed in the hands of the counties. In 1937, wages of a migratory agricultural family were estimated at $350 to $400 a year, which is an increase from 1935 when wages were $289.
The agricultural workers, even the “Okies,” are considered an inferior breed. They are not allowed to vote because of residential requirements. Labor laws do not include them as the legal fiction holds that agriculture is not an industry. Attempts at organization and strikes are met with brutal repression jointly by vigilante fascist groups and the local governments. The growers control legislation through their control of the state senate,and, with reason, oppose all moves for a unicameral legislature.
Here we have all the factors of a colony: foreign, often absentee, capital, trustification, control by the banks, a super-exploited proletariat without rights.
Such is the background for the waves of desperate and heroic strikes which in the last decade have shaken the state like earthquakes. Dozens have been killed, hundreds wounded and hurt, thousands arrested, many imprisoned for years. But the strikes continue. They have been mainly under the leadership of left-wing groups (IWW, CP, SWP) as the aristocratic craft union bureaucrats of the AFL look down with disdain upon the agricultural worker.
The agricultural industry in California is over-ripe for a basic social change. While we disagree with some of the ideas expressed in the book (his estimate of the national government which Mr. McWilliams pictures as a saviour for the agricultural workers; and his estimate of the subsistence homesteads), we thoroughly agree with his conclusion when he says:
“Agricultural workers can be organized. Once they are organized they can work out the solutions for most of their immediate problems ... But the final solution will come only when the present ... system of agricultural ownership in California is abolished. The abolition of this system involves at most merely a change in ownership. The collective principle is already there; large units of operation have been established, only they are being exploited by private interests for their own ends. California agriculture is a magnificent achievement: in its scope, efficiency, organization and amazing abundance.”
The book by Mr. McWilliams is clearly and interestingly written, and we urge that every worker interested in one of the great tasks facing American labor, the organization of agriculture, read it.
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<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h1>“Services No Longer Required”</h1>
<h3>(April 1930)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1930/index.htm#tm30_14" target="new">Vol. III No. 14, 5 April 1930</a>, p. 7.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The Roman slave holder had his “labor troubles”. The slave uprising led by Spartacus in 70 A.D. proves that. The Southern U.S. plantation owner, master over many negro chattels, many centuries later had “labor troubles” also. The Fugitive Slave Act bears proof of this. The medieval baron, lord over many serfs, also had his “labor troubles”. Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, the Peasant Wars in Germany, testify how bloody these “labor troubles” became. Today a pick up of any capitalist newspaper will show the modern capitalist and his “labor troubles”.</p>
<p>There is one essential difference between the labor troubles of chattel slavery, of feudalism and wage slavery or capitalism. Today the slave struggles for a chance to work, for employment. Then the slave would revolt to flee from employment. Today, police are called to club unemployed into starving idleness; then soldiers were called to keep the slaves at work. Then, stringent laws providing for terrible punishments like crucifixion, hanging, quartering, mutilating and flogging were meted out to any slave or serf fleeing his work. Now terrible punishments like jail terms and police beatings are handed out to any worker having the audacity to demand work.</p>
<p>In a few words, and this illustrates the superiority of the capitalist mode of production – for the master class – over any other: formerly the master sought the slave, now the slave seeks the master. He stands in line, he spits in his own face by offering to work for less food than his fellow worker; occasionally now he demonstrates and then the papers scream. Once in a great while he revolts – all for a chance to slave.<br>
</p>
<h4>“Services No Longer Required”</h4>
<p class="fst">Essentially there are two sorts of unemployment, the unemployment of the blue bloods, the parasites, who while unemployed waste millions in degenerate orgies. For this class of leeches useful employment is a terrible nightmare. Then there is the unemployment of the wage slave – a terrible nightmare that haunts the mind of the worker. As he sees the job-line lengthen, however worn out and sped up he may be, he will manage an extra burst of energy so that he may not be the next one told that his “services are no longer required”.</p>
<p>There are many millions of this type whose “services are no longer required”. He goes from shop to shop offering his labor power, but the market is glutted with this material. As he walks he begins to think, a dangerous sign for the capitalists. Perchance a “Red”, an “agitator”, may give him some literature and he discovers:</p>
<p>Capitalism uses a new and much more efficient method than the cat-o’-nine-tails to make the workers slave. That is hunger. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us terms of any kind – we are free to starve unless we accept these terms.</p>
<p>As we work, we create profits, such huge profits that even in their wildest extravagances the bosses cannot spend them. So there proves to be no more market for that commodity we are hired to produce; no more profits can be gotten so the free boss lays off the free worker to freely starve in the midst of a land of full warehouses which the worker filled.<br>
</p>
<h4>Over-Production – Yet Poverty for Masses</h4>
<p class="fst">The workers starve because they have grown too much, they wear rags because they wove too much; they live in hovels because they erected too many homes; they freeze because they have mined too much coal. This is the paradox of capitalism.</p>
<p>Capitalism, greedily demanding more and more profits, puts faster machines into the shops which produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. More workers are thrown on the streets.</p>
<p>What of the worker thrown out of work?</p>
<p>Some of our suave, moral uplifters may take a look at this: during periods of unemployment, there is an increase of prostitution, murders and suicides. Our clergymen of every denomination rail at the morals of the people and point at the mounting crime wave, but of course do not dare to examine the economic cause or the capitalist system.</p>
<p>During periods of unemployment, disease and death rate increase. Among workers these are always high, but during hard times they rise to terrible levels. Fed on adulterated foods, shoddy clothed, poorly housed, the workers become more vulnerable than ever to disease.</p>
<p>Child labor increases as children are forced to leave school and provide for the family. While old workers leave the factory at one door, their own children enter at another – at lower wages. We have the case at present of unemployment generally and child labor specifically mounting at the same time.</p>
<p>During periods of unemployment the wages of those at work are slashed by the boss. The answer to any resistance is: “there are plenty outside who want your job.”</p>
<p>These are but a few of the effects of unemployment upon the workers. Every worker must ask himself: What is to blame?<br>
</p>
<h4>Communists Have Unemployment Solution</h4>
<p class="fst">The skilled worker says: the machine; the adult: the youth; men: women; white: the Negro; the native: the foreigner; the deluded Republican workers says its the Democratic administration; the Democratic worker says its the Republican administration.</p>
<p>None of these are true. The youth, the women, the Negro, the foreigner, the Republican and Democrat all suffer from unemployment. While one group blames another, the boss has a hearty laugh as he sees the divided and thereby powerless workers quarreling among themselves.</p>
<p>The socialists have no cure for unemployment as socialist governments have proven in Europe: witness England, Germany, etc.</p>
<p>Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will unemployment be done away with. The society of Communism alone can eliminate the terror of unemployment. Capitalism will be replaced by employment and plenty for all. To help bring this about all workers should join the Communist League of America (Opposition) and help fight for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Communism.</p>
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C. Curtiss
“Services No Longer Required”
(April 1930)
From The Militant, Vol. III No. 14, 5 April 1930, p. 7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Roman slave holder had his “labor troubles”. The slave uprising led by Spartacus in 70 A.D. proves that. The Southern U.S. plantation owner, master over many negro chattels, many centuries later had “labor troubles” also. The Fugitive Slave Act bears proof of this. The medieval baron, lord over many serfs, also had his “labor troubles”. Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, the Peasant Wars in Germany, testify how bloody these “labor troubles” became. Today a pick up of any capitalist newspaper will show the modern capitalist and his “labor troubles”.
There is one essential difference between the labor troubles of chattel slavery, of feudalism and wage slavery or capitalism. Today the slave struggles for a chance to work, for employment. Then the slave would revolt to flee from employment. Today, police are called to club unemployed into starving idleness; then soldiers were called to keep the slaves at work. Then, stringent laws providing for terrible punishments like crucifixion, hanging, quartering, mutilating and flogging were meted out to any slave or serf fleeing his work. Now terrible punishments like jail terms and police beatings are handed out to any worker having the audacity to demand work.
In a few words, and this illustrates the superiority of the capitalist mode of production – for the master class – over any other: formerly the master sought the slave, now the slave seeks the master. He stands in line, he spits in his own face by offering to work for less food than his fellow worker; occasionally now he demonstrates and then the papers scream. Once in a great while he revolts – all for a chance to slave.
“Services No Longer Required”
Essentially there are two sorts of unemployment, the unemployment of the blue bloods, the parasites, who while unemployed waste millions in degenerate orgies. For this class of leeches useful employment is a terrible nightmare. Then there is the unemployment of the wage slave – a terrible nightmare that haunts the mind of the worker. As he sees the job-line lengthen, however worn out and sped up he may be, he will manage an extra burst of energy so that he may not be the next one told that his “services are no longer required”.
There are many millions of this type whose “services are no longer required”. He goes from shop to shop offering his labor power, but the market is glutted with this material. As he walks he begins to think, a dangerous sign for the capitalists. Perchance a “Red”, an “agitator”, may give him some literature and he discovers:
Capitalism uses a new and much more efficient method than the cat-o’-nine-tails to make the workers slave. That is hunger. We are told that we are free and the bosses are free. He is free to offer us terms of any kind – we are free to starve unless we accept these terms.
As we work, we create profits, such huge profits that even in their wildest extravagances the bosses cannot spend them. So there proves to be no more market for that commodity we are hired to produce; no more profits can be gotten so the free boss lays off the free worker to freely starve in the midst of a land of full warehouses which the worker filled.
Over-Production – Yet Poverty for Masses
The workers starve because they have grown too much, they wear rags because they wove too much; they live in hovels because they erected too many homes; they freeze because they have mined too much coal. This is the paradox of capitalism.
Capitalism, greedily demanding more and more profits, puts faster machines into the shops which produce goods and profits at a faster and faster rate. More workers are thrown on the streets.
What of the worker thrown out of work?
Some of our suave, moral uplifters may take a look at this: during periods of unemployment, there is an increase of prostitution, murders and suicides. Our clergymen of every denomination rail at the morals of the people and point at the mounting crime wave, but of course do not dare to examine the economic cause or the capitalist system.
During periods of unemployment, disease and death rate increase. Among workers these are always high, but during hard times they rise to terrible levels. Fed on adulterated foods, shoddy clothed, poorly housed, the workers become more vulnerable than ever to disease.
Child labor increases as children are forced to leave school and provide for the family. While old workers leave the factory at one door, their own children enter at another – at lower wages. We have the case at present of unemployment generally and child labor specifically mounting at the same time.
During periods of unemployment the wages of those at work are slashed by the boss. The answer to any resistance is: “there are plenty outside who want your job.”
These are but a few of the effects of unemployment upon the workers. Every worker must ask himself: What is to blame?
Communists Have Unemployment Solution
The skilled worker says: the machine; the adult: the youth; men: women; white: the Negro; the native: the foreigner; the deluded Republican workers says its the Democratic administration; the Democratic worker says its the Republican administration.
None of these are true. The youth, the women, the Negro, the foreigner, the Republican and Democrat all suffer from unemployment. While one group blames another, the boss has a hearty laugh as he sees the divided and thereby powerless workers quarreling among themselves.
The socialists have no cure for unemployment as socialist governments have proven in Europe: witness England, Germany, etc.
Only by overthrowing the system of capitalism will unemployment be done away with. The society of Communism alone can eliminate the terror of unemployment. Capitalism will be replaced by employment and plenty for all. To help bring this about all workers should join the Communist League of America (Opposition) and help fight for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Communism.
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<h2>Charles Curtiss</h2>
<h1>Los Angeles’ “Radical” S.P.</h1>
<h3>(April 1931)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1931/index.htm#tm31_07" target="new">Vol. IV No. 7</a>, 1 April 1931, p. 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">LOS ANGELES, Calif.—</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Permit or no permit, we are going to parade.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“They can’t stop us from marching to the city hall.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The cop who wields the first club makes history.”</p>
<p class="fst">The above are characteristic statements made by William Busick, chairman of the executive board of the Socialist party of California, to 3,000 unemployed workers in the socialist-controlled unemployed conference. These words were greeted by the hungry workers with enthusiasm.</p>
<p>The city council, however, refused the permit and Busick, the bombastic, promptly changed his tune and urged the workers</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... to accept defeat ... and march to the polls, and use our organization as a power for law, order and the return of constitutional government.”</p>
<p class="fst">This, I think, is the premier attempt of the socialists to use the unemployed, and deserves careful attention and analysis by every worker. As the crisis drives deeper, the misery of the workers increases and similar socialist activity will appear elsewhere.</p>
<p>A number of questions spring to our mind. How come that the Socialist party is organizing 3,000 workers in three weeks, while the T.U.U.L. has not even one-tenth that number after 18 months of effort? Why were the socialists refused a permit to parade? Why were the rank and file so docile in the face of betrayal?</p>
<p>The reason the socialists succeeded in rallying the unemployed where the Left wing has failed is that the socialists had never attempted to do anything in the situation. They were a last hope.</p>
<p><em>The Communists had been tried by the workers and found wanting.</em> The hungry workers looked to the Left wing to lead them to bread, they were led instead in unsuccessful demonstrations.</p>
<p>With each demonstration for the last ten months the futility of following the present leadership of the Left wing becomes more and more apparent and the disappointment of the masses in the leadership of the Left wing is shown in the constantly decreasing number attending the demonstrations. The Socialist party, an untried factor, entered the situation and a staunch and determined mass fell into line behind it. The workers discouraged in the would-be leaders of the T.U.U.L. fall easy prey to glib charlatans.</p>
<p>Why were the socialists refused a permit to parade? The answer is to be found with the Communists. The Communist-led councils have never been able to develop into a real force for the struggle against misery and the city council felt that the danger from this source was not great enough for the socialists to enter as lightning reds to detract the masses from militant action. They felt that the hungry, as led by the Communists, could as yet be met with gun, bomb and club.</p>
<p>Chief of Police Steckel, in a burst of candor stated: “If your parade is going ahead against the wishes of the city council some of your people will be killed. We have to take steps to protect constituted authority.” (“Constituted authority and government,” it may be remarked, has an unbroken line of defense reaching from Steckel to “Red” Hynes, to Busick.)</p>
<p>For his eagerness to serve the powers that be by disrupting the movement (the “socialist” demonstration was called for February 6, four days before the previously announcement T.U.U.L. demonstration), Busick received a sound drubbing.</p>
<p>Had there been sufficient pressure from the rank and file, pressure of a sort that only the Left wing could generate, possibly Mr. Busick would have carried out his threat in spite of his masters’ opinions. That Left wing was absent, had no contact with this mass of eager material and Busick was left to carry out his betrayal unhindered. This is the reason the masses took this betrayal so docilely.</p>
<p>The sheer helplessness of the official leadership of tine Communist party in this situation is obvious. It is due to two causes.</p>
<ol>
<li>The putsch-like ordering of demonstrations. Demonstration has followed demonstration but from each one, from each attempt to reach the city hall, the workers have returned without work and without wages. With the decline of the workers’ support, the brutality of the police has grown and recent demonstrations have become ultra-Leftism personified; the gathering of a few Left wing workers, the shouting of a few slogans, the raising of a few banners, the scattering of a few leaflets and a windup of bomb and billy. The situation demands a digging in, organizational work and flexibility of tactics that will make our demonstrations assemblages of strength and not of weakness.<br>
</li>
<li>The second factor that prevents us from being effective is the absolute rejection of the united front tactic by the Stalinists. An appeal to the unemployed workers in the socialist council for joint action between them and us would have had and can still have telling effects. Busick would oppose the united front but with the cry of solidarity we could expose Busick as an agent of the bosses and establish contact with the rank and file.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">Another tragi-comedy is that those who in the “second period” were quite willing to make a united front with any faker, in the “third period” can see no distinction between the misleaders and the misled, and hold that a united front with the socialist unemployed conference would be the same as a united front with the socialist misleaders. It goes without saying that Busick and his ilk should be severely criticized by the Left wing in any united front.</p>
<p>By the way, the “third and last period of post-war capitalism” that was repeated in every paragraph of the <strong>Daily Worker</strong>, and with which every unit literature agent opened his report has, of late, been making but shy appearances few and far between. Explain, Jorge!</p>
<p>The ultimate source of the poison that is making our movement impotent is to be found in the tactics of the revisionist Centrists. Only by a return of the movement to the Marxist-Leninist course pointed out by the Left Opposition can our movement be rendered healthy again.</p>
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Charles Curtiss
Los Angeles’ “Radical” S.P.
(April 1931)
From The Militant, Vol. IV No. 7, 1 April 1931, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
LOS ANGELES, Calif.—
“Permit or no permit, we are going to parade.”
“They can’t stop us from marching to the city hall.”
“The cop who wields the first club makes history.”
The above are characteristic statements made by William Busick, chairman of the executive board of the Socialist party of California, to 3,000 unemployed workers in the socialist-controlled unemployed conference. These words were greeted by the hungry workers with enthusiasm.
The city council, however, refused the permit and Busick, the bombastic, promptly changed his tune and urged the workers
“... to accept defeat ... and march to the polls, and use our organization as a power for law, order and the return of constitutional government.”
This, I think, is the premier attempt of the socialists to use the unemployed, and deserves careful attention and analysis by every worker. As the crisis drives deeper, the misery of the workers increases and similar socialist activity will appear elsewhere.
A number of questions spring to our mind. How come that the Socialist party is organizing 3,000 workers in three weeks, while the T.U.U.L. has not even one-tenth that number after 18 months of effort? Why were the socialists refused a permit to parade? Why were the rank and file so docile in the face of betrayal?
The reason the socialists succeeded in rallying the unemployed where the Left wing has failed is that the socialists had never attempted to do anything in the situation. They were a last hope.
The Communists had been tried by the workers and found wanting. The hungry workers looked to the Left wing to lead them to bread, they were led instead in unsuccessful demonstrations.
With each demonstration for the last ten months the futility of following the present leadership of the Left wing becomes more and more apparent and the disappointment of the masses in the leadership of the Left wing is shown in the constantly decreasing number attending the demonstrations. The Socialist party, an untried factor, entered the situation and a staunch and determined mass fell into line behind it. The workers discouraged in the would-be leaders of the T.U.U.L. fall easy prey to glib charlatans.
Why were the socialists refused a permit to parade? The answer is to be found with the Communists. The Communist-led councils have never been able to develop into a real force for the struggle against misery and the city council felt that the danger from this source was not great enough for the socialists to enter as lightning reds to detract the masses from militant action. They felt that the hungry, as led by the Communists, could as yet be met with gun, bomb and club.
Chief of Police Steckel, in a burst of candor stated: “If your parade is going ahead against the wishes of the city council some of your people will be killed. We have to take steps to protect constituted authority.” (“Constituted authority and government,” it may be remarked, has an unbroken line of defense reaching from Steckel to “Red” Hynes, to Busick.)
For his eagerness to serve the powers that be by disrupting the movement (the “socialist” demonstration was called for February 6, four days before the previously announcement T.U.U.L. demonstration), Busick received a sound drubbing.
Had there been sufficient pressure from the rank and file, pressure of a sort that only the Left wing could generate, possibly Mr. Busick would have carried out his threat in spite of his masters’ opinions. That Left wing was absent, had no contact with this mass of eager material and Busick was left to carry out his betrayal unhindered. This is the reason the masses took this betrayal so docilely.
The sheer helplessness of the official leadership of tine Communist party in this situation is obvious. It is due to two causes.
The putsch-like ordering of demonstrations. Demonstration has followed demonstration but from each one, from each attempt to reach the city hall, the workers have returned without work and without wages. With the decline of the workers’ support, the brutality of the police has grown and recent demonstrations have become ultra-Leftism personified; the gathering of a few Left wing workers, the shouting of a few slogans, the raising of a few banners, the scattering of a few leaflets and a windup of bomb and billy. The situation demands a digging in, organizational work and flexibility of tactics that will make our demonstrations assemblages of strength and not of weakness.
The second factor that prevents us from being effective is the absolute rejection of the united front tactic by the Stalinists. An appeal to the unemployed workers in the socialist council for joint action between them and us would have had and can still have telling effects. Busick would oppose the united front but with the cry of solidarity we could expose Busick as an agent of the bosses and establish contact with the rank and file.
Another tragi-comedy is that those who in the “second period” were quite willing to make a united front with any faker, in the “third period” can see no distinction between the misleaders and the misled, and hold that a united front with the socialist unemployed conference would be the same as a united front with the socialist misleaders. It goes without saying that Busick and his ilk should be severely criticized by the Left wing in any united front.
By the way, the “third and last period of post-war capitalism” that was repeated in every paragraph of the Daily Worker, and with which every unit literature agent opened his report has, of late, been making but shy appearances few and far between. Explain, Jorge!
The ultimate source of the poison that is making our movement impotent is to be found in the tactics of the revisionist Centrists. Only by a return of the movement to the Marxist-Leninist course pointed out by the Left Opposition can our movement be rendered healthy again.
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<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h1>The Misery of India’s Youthful Toilers</h1>
<h3>(June 1930)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info"><em>The Young Vanguard</em>, <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1930/index.htm#tm30_23" target="new">Vol. III No. 23</a>, 14 June 1930, p. 8.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">It would be ridiculous to expect from the British (and their junior partners, the native) ruling classes that have made of India a huge welter of poverty, pestilence, superstition and ignorance anything but the most callous treatment of the young toilers in field and factory. But even we, none too pampered by Hooverian prosperity were deeply shocked to read of the terrible conditions the young workers and peasants are forced to live and work under. Speaking generally, an idea can be gained by noting the fact that infant morality reaches the rate of 206 per thousand all over the peninsula as compared with 91 in the United Kingdom. In the textile city of Bombay this reaches the sickening total of 667 on the average and 828 in the workers centers. Behind these figures can be glimpsed the terrible poverty, poor housing and poor food that grips the nation, the five acres of land that compromise the average holding, causing the terrible holocausts that sweep the country in the shape of epidemics and pestilences.</p>
<p>The margin between bare existence and non-existence is so slight that the child, when barely able to balance itself must go into the field to work. School is out of the question even if such facilities were present. The British Empire, that carrier of enlightenment, does not deem it necessary to spend more than 11 pence per head in India for education (local, district, national and from the empire) as against the two pounds spent in the British Isles, which has none too a high a standard. When Prince Albert Victor (the royal gentleman on the tins of tobacco) who was the grandson of Queen Victoria visited Poona in 1882, the following doggerel greeted him:</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" width="300">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="quoteb">“Tell grandma we are a happy nation,<br>
But 19 <em>crore</em> <a href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a> are without education.”</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">Of the 269 millions in India today but 22 million know an alphabet. The huge profits, the great taxation, the usury is returned in no form whatever to the masses of India.</p>
<p>It the conditions of the <em>ryots</em> (peasants) are bad, they are infinitely above those of the factory workers. In 1926 there were 1,500,00 factory workers of whom 250 were women and 70,000 are children below 15 years of age. (These figures are a factory population of 2,650,000 with the percentage of women and children doubtless holding their own if not actually gaining.)</p>
<p>Textile is the chief industry in India. Nowhere has King Cotton been a benevolent monarch; his history is one of blood, particularly of women and children whether in England in 1844, in Gastonia or in India from 1919 on.</p>
<p>Read the section of Marx’s <strong>Capital</strong> dealing with conditions in the spinning mills darken the picture and an idea is gleaned of the conditions of the mill cities of India today.</p>
<p>There is a total of 374,380 workers in the cotton industry of India of whom 70,000 are women and over 15 thousand are children.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1">
<tbody><tr>
<td colspan="4">
<p class="smc"><strong>Wages in the Cotton Industry by Days</strong> <a href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<p class="smc"><em>Adults</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">Rupee</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">Anna</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">Pies</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Ahmedabad</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 5</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 0</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Bombay</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 5</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 6</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Sholapur</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">15</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">11</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Other Centers</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">1</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 8</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">
<p class="smc"><em>Big Lads and Children</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Ahmedabad</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">11</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 4</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Bombay</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">11</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Sholapur</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 9</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 1</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Other Centers</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"> 8</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">11</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">These wages allow the workers a diet on par with that of a Bombay criminal prisoner, a <em>chawl</em> (tenement room), each <em>chawl</em> containing on the average 4 persons.</p>
<p>It is said that conditions in the mills owned by native capitalists are worse than in those owned by the Britishers. (Although this comes from reliable sources it seems hardly likely – the conditions in the British-owned mills challenge worsening. In the jute mills of Calcutta and Bengal, where most of the jute in the world is produced the average wage for children is 9 pence per day. In 319,000 workers in 76 jute mills investigated 50,000 were women and 29,000 children.</p>
<p>And so it is in the entire country. On the plantations of Assam hundreds of thousands of farm laborers, entire families including babes toil for a few pence per day. Fabled spices of India!</p>
<p>Women and children even dig coal in India, bringing coal to the surface in baskets – human beings are cheaper than hoisting machinery. Of the 250,000 miners, 9 thousand are women and a similar number children.</p>
<p>As for social legislation for children and youth, the little that has been forced through is flagrantly disregarded. Twelve years is the minimum age at which children are permitted to work <em>in factories employing more than 10 workers and using motive power</em>. Between the age of 12 and 15 half time is allowed or 30 hours per week.</p>
<p>A far different side of the story is the profits of 200 and 300%. It was a bad year when only 125% was secured on capital investment.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<p class="note"><a href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> A <em>crore</em> is 10,000,000.</p>
<p class="note"><a href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> A rupee is about 32.4 cents. An anna is one-sixteenth of a rupee or 2 cents and a pies is one-twelfth of an anna or about one-sixth of a cent.</p>
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C. Curtiss
The Misery of India’s Youthful Toilers
(June 1930)
The Young Vanguard, The Militant, Vol. III No. 23, 14 June 1930, p. 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
It would be ridiculous to expect from the British (and their junior partners, the native) ruling classes that have made of India a huge welter of poverty, pestilence, superstition and ignorance anything but the most callous treatment of the young toilers in field and factory. But even we, none too pampered by Hooverian prosperity were deeply shocked to read of the terrible conditions the young workers and peasants are forced to live and work under. Speaking generally, an idea can be gained by noting the fact that infant morality reaches the rate of 206 per thousand all over the peninsula as compared with 91 in the United Kingdom. In the textile city of Bombay this reaches the sickening total of 667 on the average and 828 in the workers centers. Behind these figures can be glimpsed the terrible poverty, poor housing and poor food that grips the nation, the five acres of land that compromise the average holding, causing the terrible holocausts that sweep the country in the shape of epidemics and pestilences.
The margin between bare existence and non-existence is so slight that the child, when barely able to balance itself must go into the field to work. School is out of the question even if such facilities were present. The British Empire, that carrier of enlightenment, does not deem it necessary to spend more than 11 pence per head in India for education (local, district, national and from the empire) as against the two pounds spent in the British Isles, which has none too a high a standard. When Prince Albert Victor (the royal gentleman on the tins of tobacco) who was the grandson of Queen Victoria visited Poona in 1882, the following doggerel greeted him:
“Tell grandma we are a happy nation,
But 19 crore [1] are without education.”
Of the 269 millions in India today but 22 million know an alphabet. The huge profits, the great taxation, the usury is returned in no form whatever to the masses of India.
It the conditions of the ryots (peasants) are bad, they are infinitely above those of the factory workers. In 1926 there were 1,500,00 factory workers of whom 250 were women and 70,000 are children below 15 years of age. (These figures are a factory population of 2,650,000 with the percentage of women and children doubtless holding their own if not actually gaining.)
Textile is the chief industry in India. Nowhere has King Cotton been a benevolent monarch; his history is one of blood, particularly of women and children whether in England in 1844, in Gastonia or in India from 1919 on.
Read the section of Marx’s Capital dealing with conditions in the spinning mills darken the picture and an idea is gleaned of the conditions of the mill cities of India today.
There is a total of 374,380 workers in the cotton industry of India of whom 70,000 are women and over 15 thousand are children.
Wages in the Cotton Industry by Days [2]
Adults
Rupee
Anna
Pies
Ahmedabad
1
5
0
Bombay
1
5
6
Sholapur
15
11
Other Centers
1
1
8
Big Lads and Children
Ahmedabad
11
4
Bombay
11
1
Sholapur
9
1
Other Centers
8
11
These wages allow the workers a diet on par with that of a Bombay criminal prisoner, a chawl (tenement room), each chawl containing on the average 4 persons.
It is said that conditions in the mills owned by native capitalists are worse than in those owned by the Britishers. (Although this comes from reliable sources it seems hardly likely – the conditions in the British-owned mills challenge worsening. In the jute mills of Calcutta and Bengal, where most of the jute in the world is produced the average wage for children is 9 pence per day. In 319,000 workers in 76 jute mills investigated 50,000 were women and 29,000 children.
And so it is in the entire country. On the plantations of Assam hundreds of thousands of farm laborers, entire families including babes toil for a few pence per day. Fabled spices of India!
Women and children even dig coal in India, bringing coal to the surface in baskets – human beings are cheaper than hoisting machinery. Of the 250,000 miners, 9 thousand are women and a similar number children.
As for social legislation for children and youth, the little that has been forced through is flagrantly disregarded. Twelve years is the minimum age at which children are permitted to work in factories employing more than 10 workers and using motive power. Between the age of 12 and 15 half time is allowed or 30 hours per week.
A far different side of the story is the profits of 200 and 300%. It was a bad year when only 125% was secured on capital investment.
Footnotes
1. A crore is 10,000,000.
2. A rupee is about 32.4 cents. An anna is one-sixteenth of a rupee or 2 cents and a pies is one-twelfth of an anna or about one-sixth of a cent.
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<h2>Charles Curtis</h2>
<h1>The Strike in K.C.</h1>
<h3>(October 1929)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info"><em>Letters from the Militants</em>, <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1929/index.htm#tm29_16" target="new">Vol. II No. 16</a>, 15 October 1929, p. 8.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="date">Kansas City, Mo.</p>
<p class="fst">Dear Comrades:</p>
<p class="fst">Before leaving St. Louis, the comrades there were arranging an affair for the <strong>Militant</strong>. They are sure on the job there and few as they are, they are many more times as active as the Party under Delbert Early’s guidance. They are making valuable connections in the labor movement and with the correct policy they will soon be an important factor in St. Louis. I just received a letter stating that their Gastonia meeting was successful.</p>
<p>In K.C. we have an interesting situation. The local Loose Wiles Biscuit Co. tried to introduce a speed-up and there was a spontaneous walkout. The workers are mostly young girls and their spirit is splendid. After walking out they turned their minds to organizing and the local A.F. of L. boys organized them. The first day of the strike, Stephens, the Party D.O. issued a leaflet in the name of the T.U.U.L. It had the whole bible in it, nothing omitted – rationalization, speed-up, war danger, betrayers of labor, an attack on the A.F. of L. and telling them: “Our organization is representative of the masses of workers in the United States who are organizing into fighting unions and shop committees in every industry!” He appeared at the first organization meeting of the union where he changed his mind about whom he represented, and it became instead the I.L.D. I spoke after him and tried to point out the next step – organization – and I sounded a militant note by urging the spreading of the strike to the other plants of the National, etc., and other cities and completely shutting down the plant. The remarks were well received by the workers.</p>
<p>We are arranging an affair in K.C. for the <strong>Militant</strong> in two weeks.</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst">Comradely,<br>
<em>Charles Curtis</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
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Charles Curtis
The Strike in K.C.
(October 1929)
Letters from the Militants, The Militant, Vol. II No. 16, 15 October 1929, p. 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Kansas City, Mo.
Dear Comrades:
Before leaving St. Louis, the comrades there were arranging an affair for the Militant. They are sure on the job there and few as they are, they are many more times as active as the Party under Delbert Early’s guidance. They are making valuable connections in the labor movement and with the correct policy they will soon be an important factor in St. Louis. I just received a letter stating that their Gastonia meeting was successful.
In K.C. we have an interesting situation. The local Loose Wiles Biscuit Co. tried to introduce a speed-up and there was a spontaneous walkout. The workers are mostly young girls and their spirit is splendid. After walking out they turned their minds to organizing and the local A.F. of L. boys organized them. The first day of the strike, Stephens, the Party D.O. issued a leaflet in the name of the T.U.U.L. It had the whole bible in it, nothing omitted – rationalization, speed-up, war danger, betrayers of labor, an attack on the A.F. of L. and telling them: “Our organization is representative of the masses of workers in the United States who are organizing into fighting unions and shop committees in every industry!” He appeared at the first organization meeting of the union where he changed his mind about whom he represented, and it became instead the I.L.D. I spoke after him and tried to point out the next step – organization – and I sounded a militant note by urging the spreading of the strike to the other plants of the National, etc., and other cities and completely shutting down the plant. The remarks were well received by the workers.
We are arranging an affair in K.C. for the Militant in two weeks.
Comradely,
Charles Curtis
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<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>The Movement in Mexico</h1>
<h4>Revolutionary Events as Seen by Our Own Correspondent</h4>
<h3>(February 1933)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1934/index.htm#tm34_07" target="new">Vol. VII No. 7</a>, 10 February 1934, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>Mexico City.</strong> – There is no lack of activity or signs of activity of the Bolshevik-Leninists in Mexico City. In fact, judging by the number of posters, signs, etc., on the street the Internationalists are as active or nearly as active as the Stalinist party.</p>
<p>The first day in town I noticed a statement of our comrades on the Montevideo Congress, printed and pasted all over the workers’ section.</p>
<p>Then in my walking through the town I saw painted in a great number of places “<em>Viva la Oposicio de Izquierda Communista</em>” with sickles and hammers. I also noticed a mimeographed statement of the opposition on the 7th of November all over the working class sections of the city.</p>
<p>There is another sign of activity of the Internationalist Communists. This is the great attention and amount of space given them in the Stalinist organ, the <strong>Machete</strong>. Every issue of this rag is filled with rabid frothings, lies, slander, provocation, denunciation – this is their “ideological” campaign.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalinist Provocation</h4>
<p class="fst">The four numbers I have seen of this paper each contained lengthy attacks. In one attack, they gave the name of one of the leaders of the group, and where he worked – all the police had to do was pick him up and send him to the Islas de Tres Marias on this information.</p>
<p>When I showed this to a Stalinist party sympathizer he, stated, “Oh, the police don’t bother the Trotskyites”. I said that I didn’t believe him. In a little while you will see the truth of this statement.</p>
<p>The story itself was a delirious lie. The truth is the contrary of all the statements <strong>Machete</strong> made. Our comrade did not help the boss cut the workers’ wages – he organized the workers against this cut in wages. For this he was thrown out on the street jobless.</p>
<p>It was through this statement that I made contact with the group. I went up to the shop where the comrade was supposed to have done his counter-revolutionary work and asked where I could find this man.</p>
<p>The workers did not manifest any signs of indignation when I said I was his friend. On the contrary, one worker volunteered to show me where he lived and accompanied me there. He did not curse comrade L. or abuse him, but rather spoke of him with affection and admiration. This worker, by his intelligent class conscious conversation, showed that not a faker, or government agent had worked for some time beside him but a class conscious revolutionist.<br>
</p>
<h4>Young Internationalists</h4>
<p class="fst">I made contact with our comrade, who at present is working in a little shop. After I showed him your letter and had talked with him, he gave me the following information:</p>
<p>We have in Mexico City a group of 47, about 25 active. The majority are young, none of them work for the government, all are workers. How different from the Stalinist Party: He invited me to a meeting of the group the following night.</p>
<p>I accompanied this comrade on the meeting night. We entered a room, then went upstairs. Everyone who entered was first seen from above.</p>
<p>The first thing I noticed about the comrades was that the majority were young. I mean really young, – 17 to 22 was the majority. There were a few older workers, obviously unskilled laborers, one of whom brought the latest copy of the <strong>Machete</strong> with a slanderous cowardly attack upon us in it.</p>
<p>The first order of business was the reading of this article and its refutation. Then a class took place in historical materlalism. (This was an educational meeting.) Persecution of Comrades</p>
<p>When the meeting broke up, one of the comrades in conversation with me accidentally let the remark drop that he had done time on the Islas de Tres Marias. I was amazed.</p>
<p>Here was a youngster of barely 17, a child, who had spent six months on the Devil’s Island of Mexico. He had, besides, been arrested innumerable times.</p>
<p>When I expressed my amazement he showed me three other comrades ranging in age from 15 to 22 who bad also been picked up with him and had served time. Two were 22, one was 16, and one 15.</p>
<p>I was rather bitter when I thought of this party sympathizer’s statement: “The police never bother the Trotskyites.” I looked at the child who had contracted dysentry on the islands, and who would never be the same – this was the agent among the working class sent by the government.<br>
</p>
<h4>Marxist Education</h4>
<p class="fst">Poverty-stricken, harassed by the government, our comrades in Mexico work on. They are developing all sides of their work. They are educating themselves in Marxism. They are doing work among the masses. They are internationalists and so are preparing a Boycott Hitler Campaign. They are also planning to set up an apparatus for legal work. They are organizing syndicates (unions). They are going to carry on the Boycott Campaign in two ways – first, a statement by the group and then in a united front form. The statement will be printed and distributed by the League and pasted on walls all night, and at great risk, lest the pro-government Trotskyites are picked up by the government they are so devotedly serving and sent by that government to the Island. But our comrades here are internationalists in theory, and in fact – and are willing to suffer for their internationalism if necessary.</p>
<p>The comrades here have something that is unique in our international organization – a group of children organized in a Red Pioneer Group. These children learn about the class struggle both from books and in participating in the battle. They organize demonstrations of the children for free books and papers.<br>
</p>
<h4>Demagogy of Government</h4>
<p class="fst">The government, a master in demagogy (it is in reality a Social Democratic government), has, with a loud blast, inaugurated “Socialist Education”. They do not, with all their “Socialist education”, give the workers’ children adequate school facilities or free books or paper, thus making the loudly proclaimed compulsory education illusory. Our Pioneers are educating the struggle of the workers’ children. Some of these grammar school children in the group have more than once seen the inside of the jail of the Mexican Workers and Peasants government (so the government describes itself).</p>
<p>It must be understood that the work has many shortcomings. This is inevitable, granting the conditions. The comrades find it difficult to buy books and read, they are so expensive. The illegal paper, the <strong>Izquierda</strong> (<strong>Left</strong>), has difficulty in coming out due to the high cost of stencils and papers.<br>
</p>
<h4>Trotsky’s Works Popular</h4>
<p class="fst">The book stores here prominently display Trotsky’s books and they seem to have a good sale among the students and intellectuals. I have seen all of Trotsky’s work on display – printed in Spain and Chile in the main. The tragedy is that they are so expensive. Sixty centavos, which is the cost of the cheapest pamphlet amounts to nearly half a day’s wages for an unskilled worker. It amounts to half a week’s wages for a young worker. Marx’s, Engel’s, Trotsky’s and Lenin’s works are loaned among the comrades until the print on the cheap paper becomes indiscernable and the book is in tatters.</p>
<p>The <strong>Militant</strong> also plays a great role in the education of the comrades. By dint of great labor important articles are translated and are read to the comrades. Unfortunately, since none of the comrades know English, this can only be done at all-too-rare occasions.</p>
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C.C.
The Movement in Mexico
Revolutionary Events as Seen by Our Own Correspondent
(February 1933)
From The Militant, Vol. VII No. 7, 10 February 1934, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Mexico City. – There is no lack of activity or signs of activity of the Bolshevik-Leninists in Mexico City. In fact, judging by the number of posters, signs, etc., on the street the Internationalists are as active or nearly as active as the Stalinist party.
The first day in town I noticed a statement of our comrades on the Montevideo Congress, printed and pasted all over the workers’ section.
Then in my walking through the town I saw painted in a great number of places “Viva la Oposicio de Izquierda Communista” with sickles and hammers. I also noticed a mimeographed statement of the opposition on the 7th of November all over the working class sections of the city.
There is another sign of activity of the Internationalist Communists. This is the great attention and amount of space given them in the Stalinist organ, the Machete. Every issue of this rag is filled with rabid frothings, lies, slander, provocation, denunciation – this is their “ideological” campaign.
Stalinist Provocation
The four numbers I have seen of this paper each contained lengthy attacks. In one attack, they gave the name of one of the leaders of the group, and where he worked – all the police had to do was pick him up and send him to the Islas de Tres Marias on this information.
When I showed this to a Stalinist party sympathizer he, stated, “Oh, the police don’t bother the Trotskyites”. I said that I didn’t believe him. In a little while you will see the truth of this statement.
The story itself was a delirious lie. The truth is the contrary of all the statements Machete made. Our comrade did not help the boss cut the workers’ wages – he organized the workers against this cut in wages. For this he was thrown out on the street jobless.
It was through this statement that I made contact with the group. I went up to the shop where the comrade was supposed to have done his counter-revolutionary work and asked where I could find this man.
The workers did not manifest any signs of indignation when I said I was his friend. On the contrary, one worker volunteered to show me where he lived and accompanied me there. He did not curse comrade L. or abuse him, but rather spoke of him with affection and admiration. This worker, by his intelligent class conscious conversation, showed that not a faker, or government agent had worked for some time beside him but a class conscious revolutionist.
Young Internationalists
I made contact with our comrade, who at present is working in a little shop. After I showed him your letter and had talked with him, he gave me the following information:
We have in Mexico City a group of 47, about 25 active. The majority are young, none of them work for the government, all are workers. How different from the Stalinist Party: He invited me to a meeting of the group the following night.
I accompanied this comrade on the meeting night. We entered a room, then went upstairs. Everyone who entered was first seen from above.
The first thing I noticed about the comrades was that the majority were young. I mean really young, – 17 to 22 was the majority. There were a few older workers, obviously unskilled laborers, one of whom brought the latest copy of the Machete with a slanderous cowardly attack upon us in it.
The first order of business was the reading of this article and its refutation. Then a class took place in historical materlalism. (This was an educational meeting.) Persecution of Comrades
When the meeting broke up, one of the comrades in conversation with me accidentally let the remark drop that he had done time on the Islas de Tres Marias. I was amazed.
Here was a youngster of barely 17, a child, who had spent six months on the Devil’s Island of Mexico. He had, besides, been arrested innumerable times.
When I expressed my amazement he showed me three other comrades ranging in age from 15 to 22 who bad also been picked up with him and had served time. Two were 22, one was 16, and one 15.
I was rather bitter when I thought of this party sympathizer’s statement: “The police never bother the Trotskyites.” I looked at the child who had contracted dysentry on the islands, and who would never be the same – this was the agent among the working class sent by the government.
Marxist Education
Poverty-stricken, harassed by the government, our comrades in Mexico work on. They are developing all sides of their work. They are educating themselves in Marxism. They are doing work among the masses. They are internationalists and so are preparing a Boycott Hitler Campaign. They are also planning to set up an apparatus for legal work. They are organizing syndicates (unions). They are going to carry on the Boycott Campaign in two ways – first, a statement by the group and then in a united front form. The statement will be printed and distributed by the League and pasted on walls all night, and at great risk, lest the pro-government Trotskyites are picked up by the government they are so devotedly serving and sent by that government to the Island. But our comrades here are internationalists in theory, and in fact – and are willing to suffer for their internationalism if necessary.
The comrades here have something that is unique in our international organization – a group of children organized in a Red Pioneer Group. These children learn about the class struggle both from books and in participating in the battle. They organize demonstrations of the children for free books and papers.
Demagogy of Government
The government, a master in demagogy (it is in reality a Social Democratic government), has, with a loud blast, inaugurated “Socialist Education”. They do not, with all their “Socialist education”, give the workers’ children adequate school facilities or free books or paper, thus making the loudly proclaimed compulsory education illusory. Our Pioneers are educating the struggle of the workers’ children. Some of these grammar school children in the group have more than once seen the inside of the jail of the Mexican Workers and Peasants government (so the government describes itself).
It must be understood that the work has many shortcomings. This is inevitable, granting the conditions. The comrades find it difficult to buy books and read, they are so expensive. The illegal paper, the Izquierda (Left), has difficulty in coming out due to the high cost of stencils and papers.
Trotsky’s Works Popular
The book stores here prominently display Trotsky’s books and they seem to have a good sale among the students and intellectuals. I have seen all of Trotsky’s work on display – printed in Spain and Chile in the main. The tragedy is that they are so expensive. Sixty centavos, which is the cost of the cheapest pamphlet amounts to nearly half a day’s wages for an unskilled worker. It amounts to half a week’s wages for a young worker. Marx’s, Engel’s, Trotsky’s and Lenin’s works are loaned among the comrades until the print on the cheap paper becomes indiscernable and the book is in tatters.
The Militant also plays a great role in the education of the comrades. By dint of great labor important articles are translated and are read to the comrades. Unfortunately, since none of the comrades know English, this can only be done at all-too-rare occasions.
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<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>Labor Shows Militancy in Los Angeles Conflicts</h1>
<h3>(August 1933)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info"><em>From the Militants</em>, <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1933/index.htm#tm33_39" target="new">Vol. VI No. 39</a>, 12 August 1933, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>Los Angeles.</strong> – The seventh week of the strike at the Golden Bros. Millinery Shop finds the workers with spirit high and ranks intact. Picket lines have been maintained in the face of the “Red” squad, which probably is the most degenerate collection of strikebreakers in the country.</p>
<p>Eight women have been arrested. The picket line has been subject to most brutal attacks, in which pickets, women as well as men have been slugged and beaten. The events of Friday, July 24, will give an idea of the activities of the “Red” Squad as well as the courage and valor of the strikers.</p>
<p>At 5 o’clock as the picket line was forming, Pfeifer, lieutenant of the “Red” Squad began donning a pair of gloves. Every picketer knows what that means. The gloves cover brass knuckles. Unflinchingly the strikers maintained their ranks. Squad cars rolled up. Police unloaded from these cars. With face pale the picketers continue.<br>
</p>
<h4>“Clear the Streets”</h4>
<p class="fst">“Clear the street, officers!” commands Pfeifer. The street are “cleared”. Fighting every inch of the way the picketers are forced down the street. On the corner of Eighth Street, the picketers resistance increases. Pfeffer becomes panic-stricken. “Take your saps out officers – and use them,” he shouts. No picketer is intimidated.</p>
<p>The chairman of the strike committee is punched. The picketers demonstrate. Brass knuckled fists strike and blackjacks fly. Comrade C. Curtiss is knocked to the ground. He recovers his feet and is whisked off to a doctor where a number of stitches are taken into his scalp.</p>
<p>The picket line stands its ground. The next day all the picketers are there again, early in the morning, Spanish and English speaking, young and old, in a display of solidarity that is making working class tradition on the west coast. Old time western rebels pay a tribute as the most militant strike in Los Angeles since the McNamara trial. In the heart of reaction, in Los Angeles the “white spot” of Harry Chandler’s <strong>Los Angeles Times</strong> to maintain a picket line is a heroic deed. The tribute is well earned.<br>
</p>
<h4>General Strike Needed</h4>
<p class="fst">Every militant in the entire needle trades is watching this strike. One thing becomes obvious and that is, that in order to firmly establish union conditions it is necessary to project the idea of a general strike into the millinery industry. Faced with the highly organized association it is absolutely necessary to organize all workers in the entire industry. In the millinery trade the New Deal is a joke. The minimum the bosses agreed to in their code is $2 lower than the minimum for women in California. The idea of a general strike will undoubtedly find a fertile field awaiting it in the underpaid, speed-up millinery workers. <strong>Agricultural Workers Strike</strong></p>
<p>The. recent strike of the 5,000 agricultural workers has been ended with a “victory” for the strikers and the recognition of a union formed under the aegis of the Mexican Consul. Wage rates had been increased to a minimum of $1.50 for a nine hour day, with all overtime and part time paid at the rate of 20 cents an hour. Before the ink was dry on the agreement the ranchers began breaking the contract.</p>
<p>The situation is still ripe for an aggressive strike. The workers demands have not been satisfied yet – not by far.<br>
</p>
<h4>T.U.U.L. Outwitted</h4>
<p class="fst">The TUUL Agricultural Workers Union was completely outwitted by the Mexican Consul. The leadership of the TUUL while courageous in action was very weak in strategy. Now it is necessary to make a quick shift in the orientation of the Agricultural Workers Union.</p>
<p>The former status of complete un-organization has been changed to a condition where there is a semi-company, nationalist union in the field with a large membership of agricultural workers.</p>
<p>In this case the tactics of the T.U.U.L. must be to function within the class collaborationist union as a Left wing, and from within transform this union into a genuine class struggle union. Will the leadership of the TUUL be able to execute this maneuver or will the dualism and sectarianism that is embedded in the ideology and practice of the TUUL and the party keep the union upon the futile path of ultra-Leftism?<br>
</p>
<h4>Hollywood Film Strike</h4>
<p class="fst">Hollywood’s famed industry, the movies, has been the latest to he drawn into the wave of strikes. On Saturday, July 22, 650 sound technicians, a highly specialized and trained group of workers struck against a wage rate of as low as $38 per week for work that often lasted until midnight or later.</p>
<p>When the studios advertized for scabs to take the place of the men who had struck, a strike was called by four other unions bringing the total strikers up to nearly 5,000. Despite the solidarity shown by these unionists the sad truth is that under the influence of craft unionist ideology many unions are still working for producers whose shops have been struck. More will be heard of this strike later.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Strikes and the Left wing</h4>
<p class="fst">Strikes increasing in number involving all sections of the working class from unskilled farm hands to highly educated sound technicians and camera men – the question of aggressive action and leadership of future strikes becomes of paramount importance to the Left wing.</p>
<p>The training of cadres of militants capable of participating in and leading these struggles and the drawing of lessons from these strikes, from the successes and even more from the failures – this is the present task of the TUUL and the party as well as the entire revolutionary movement.</p>
<p>Is the TUUL seriously undertaking this work? Judging by the farcical bureaucratic manner in which conventions of the TUUL are called the answer is, NO. A few days ago the Los Angeles TUUL held a general pre-convention discussion membership meeting. Few letters were sent out. The rank and file of the furriers and milliners – the majority of the TUUL – were in ignorance of the meeting. The strikers were meagerly represented.</p>
<p>While this highly important and poorly attended meeting was in session the Friends of the Soviet Union were holding a mass meeting for Soviet recognition. 2,000 people packed the house. This is party policy! Two thousand people listen to lawyers, doctors, rabbis, preachers spread opportunism among the workers and an infinitesmal part of that at a meeting of the TUUL in the midst of a series of intense strikes!</p>
<p>Slowly, but surely, the ideas of the Left Opposition are gaining hearing and response. Our activity on the picket line, in the union, in the Unemployed organization has gained us the respect of the workers generally and especially the thinking Communists. Above all amongst the youth our literature is being avidly read as the facts that our correctness in action in the everyday struggles of the workers is based upon Bolshevik clarity and theory is recognized.</p>
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C.C.
Labor Shows Militancy in Los Angeles Conflicts
(August 1933)
From the Militants, The Militant, Vol. VI No. 39, 12 August 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Los Angeles. – The seventh week of the strike at the Golden Bros. Millinery Shop finds the workers with spirit high and ranks intact. Picket lines have been maintained in the face of the “Red” squad, which probably is the most degenerate collection of strikebreakers in the country.
Eight women have been arrested. The picket line has been subject to most brutal attacks, in which pickets, women as well as men have been slugged and beaten. The events of Friday, July 24, will give an idea of the activities of the “Red” Squad as well as the courage and valor of the strikers.
At 5 o’clock as the picket line was forming, Pfeifer, lieutenant of the “Red” Squad began donning a pair of gloves. Every picketer knows what that means. The gloves cover brass knuckles. Unflinchingly the strikers maintained their ranks. Squad cars rolled up. Police unloaded from these cars. With face pale the picketers continue.
“Clear the Streets”
“Clear the street, officers!” commands Pfeifer. The street are “cleared”. Fighting every inch of the way the picketers are forced down the street. On the corner of Eighth Street, the picketers resistance increases. Pfeffer becomes panic-stricken. “Take your saps out officers – and use them,” he shouts. No picketer is intimidated.
The chairman of the strike committee is punched. The picketers demonstrate. Brass knuckled fists strike and blackjacks fly. Comrade C. Curtiss is knocked to the ground. He recovers his feet and is whisked off to a doctor where a number of stitches are taken into his scalp.
The picket line stands its ground. The next day all the picketers are there again, early in the morning, Spanish and English speaking, young and old, in a display of solidarity that is making working class tradition on the west coast. Old time western rebels pay a tribute as the most militant strike in Los Angeles since the McNamara trial. In the heart of reaction, in Los Angeles the “white spot” of Harry Chandler’s Los Angeles Times to maintain a picket line is a heroic deed. The tribute is well earned.
General Strike Needed
Every militant in the entire needle trades is watching this strike. One thing becomes obvious and that is, that in order to firmly establish union conditions it is necessary to project the idea of a general strike into the millinery industry. Faced with the highly organized association it is absolutely necessary to organize all workers in the entire industry. In the millinery trade the New Deal is a joke. The minimum the bosses agreed to in their code is $2 lower than the minimum for women in California. The idea of a general strike will undoubtedly find a fertile field awaiting it in the underpaid, speed-up millinery workers. Agricultural Workers Strike
The. recent strike of the 5,000 agricultural workers has been ended with a “victory” for the strikers and the recognition of a union formed under the aegis of the Mexican Consul. Wage rates had been increased to a minimum of $1.50 for a nine hour day, with all overtime and part time paid at the rate of 20 cents an hour. Before the ink was dry on the agreement the ranchers began breaking the contract.
The situation is still ripe for an aggressive strike. The workers demands have not been satisfied yet – not by far.
T.U.U.L. Outwitted
The TUUL Agricultural Workers Union was completely outwitted by the Mexican Consul. The leadership of the TUUL while courageous in action was very weak in strategy. Now it is necessary to make a quick shift in the orientation of the Agricultural Workers Union.
The former status of complete un-organization has been changed to a condition where there is a semi-company, nationalist union in the field with a large membership of agricultural workers.
In this case the tactics of the T.U.U.L. must be to function within the class collaborationist union as a Left wing, and from within transform this union into a genuine class struggle union. Will the leadership of the TUUL be able to execute this maneuver or will the dualism and sectarianism that is embedded in the ideology and practice of the TUUL and the party keep the union upon the futile path of ultra-Leftism?
Hollywood Film Strike
Hollywood’s famed industry, the movies, has been the latest to he drawn into the wave of strikes. On Saturday, July 22, 650 sound technicians, a highly specialized and trained group of workers struck against a wage rate of as low as $38 per week for work that often lasted until midnight or later.
When the studios advertized for scabs to take the place of the men who had struck, a strike was called by four other unions bringing the total strikers up to nearly 5,000. Despite the solidarity shown by these unionists the sad truth is that under the influence of craft unionist ideology many unions are still working for producers whose shops have been struck. More will be heard of this strike later.
The Strikes and the Left wing
Strikes increasing in number involving all sections of the working class from unskilled farm hands to highly educated sound technicians and camera men – the question of aggressive action and leadership of future strikes becomes of paramount importance to the Left wing.
The training of cadres of militants capable of participating in and leading these struggles and the drawing of lessons from these strikes, from the successes and even more from the failures – this is the present task of the TUUL and the party as well as the entire revolutionary movement.
Is the TUUL seriously undertaking this work? Judging by the farcical bureaucratic manner in which conventions of the TUUL are called the answer is, NO. A few days ago the Los Angeles TUUL held a general pre-convention discussion membership meeting. Few letters were sent out. The rank and file of the furriers and milliners – the majority of the TUUL – were in ignorance of the meeting. The strikers were meagerly represented.
While this highly important and poorly attended meeting was in session the Friends of the Soviet Union were holding a mass meeting for Soviet recognition. 2,000 people packed the house. This is party policy! Two thousand people listen to lawyers, doctors, rabbis, preachers spread opportunism among the workers and an infinitesmal part of that at a meeting of the TUUL in the midst of a series of intense strikes!
Slowly, but surely, the ideas of the Left Opposition are gaining hearing and response. Our activity on the picket line, in the union, in the Unemployed organization has gained us the respect of the workers generally and especially the thinking Communists. Above all amongst the youth our literature is being avidly read as the facts that our correctness in action in the everyday struggles of the workers is based upon Bolshevik clarity and theory is recognized.
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<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>The Stalinist Theory of<br>
“Socialism in One Country”</h1>
<h4>Soviet Disasters, Defeat of Revolutions Are Fruits of This Theory</h4>
<h3>(22 November 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_47" target="new">Vol. V No. 47</a>, 22 November 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The defeats of the Red Army are the latest fruits of the false “theory of socialism in one country,” which is the fundamental idea of the ruling Stalinist clique.</p>
<p>False theories bring tragic results.</p>
<p>For example, many so-called socialists preached the idea that the way to achieve socialism was by a gradual transformation of the capitalist governments and industry, bit by bit.</p>
<p>When they had the opportunity, they refused to take control of the government and place industry under the control of the workers. Instead they strengthened capitalism when it was weak, so that they could, according to their illusion, gradually transform capitalism into socialism. They became doctors of capitalism instead of its undertakers.</p>
<p>Their fallacious theories together with the treachery of Stalinism led to the victory of fascism.<br>
</p>
<h4>Theory of the Russian Revolution</h4>
<p class="fst">The greatest historical achievement of the human face, the Soviet Union, was the result of the correct theories of Bolshevism under Lenin and Trotsky.</p>
<p>The central idea of the Russian revolution, was that the Russian workers’ and peasants’ revolution was the first of a series of revolutions that would establish socialism in the entire world. Through the dark year of hunger and intervention this inspired the Soviet masses. The Russian workers in making their revolution knew that unless the workers of other countries, more industrially developed, joined hands with the Soviet Union, first in a socialist United States of Europe and then a socialist world, the Russian revolution would in the last analysis go under. Either capitalism would conquer the Soviet Union or the workers of tire world would vanquish international capitalism.</p>
<p>Stalin, who was practically unknown during the period of the Russian Revolution, came forward with a “new” idea after the defeat of the German workers in 1923. the death of Lenin in 1924 and the coming to power of a privileged bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. This bureaucracy was interested only in maintaining its own power rather than in achieving the aims of the revolution. Stalin’s “new” idea was the theory of “socialism in one country.” In the words of Stalin this meant:<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalin’s Theory</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“... that the proletariat, having seized power in Soviet Russia, can use that power for the establishment of a fully socialized society there. For this ... it is not essential that there should have been a victorious proletarian revolution in these lands.” – <strong>Problems of Leninism</strong>, by Joseph Stalin</p>
<p class="fst">In other words, Stalin held that the Soviet Union could achieve socialism by itself if allowed to exist in peace by the imperialists.</p>
<p>Let us first examine this idea.</p>
<p>Modern economic life is marked by internationalism. For any industry to function it must have raw materials that come from all over the world.</p>
<p>Even the United States, the most developed and richest country in the world, would weaken and decline economically if it did not import products from the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Not only does every industrial country buy raw materials but increasingly it buys finished goods as well.</p>
<p>Just as it must import, so must every country sell to the rest of the world, to keep its industries in operation.</p>
<p>With greater industrial development comes greater connection with the world. Primitive economy has little of no trade or exchange. Modern economy is based on an ever-increasing world trade and international division of labor.</p>
<p>Socialism is more advanced than capitalism. It must develop and extend the international division of labor already achieved under capitalism, thereby giving greater well-being to the people of the entire globe. Under socialism, we will not go backward into a self-contained, national economy, as Stalin with the reactionary theory of “socialism in one country” proposes, but to even greater internationalism.</p>
<p>The practical results of the theory of “socialism in one country” Were disastrous to the workers of the world, including those of the Soviet Union.<br>
</p>
<h4>What Happened to the C.I.</h4>
<p class="fst">Since socialism could, according to Stalin, be achieved if the capitalist countries did not intervene, it was no longer vitally necessary for the workers of other countries to overthrow capitalism in order to achieve socialism in the USSR. All that was necessary was that the Soviet Union not be attacked.</p>
<p>From this idea it was a short step to make of the Communist International an organization whose primary aim was to defend the Soviet Union instead of overthrowing capitalism. And from this, it was an even shorter step to make of the Communist International an organization whose only aim was to defend the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>The defense of the Soviet Union is of course a duty of every worker. Every attack on the Soviet Union by capitalism, which in its search for profits would like to open the Soviet Union as a market for their goods and as a source of raw material, and to enslave the workers there, must be beaten back by the workers of the Soviet Union and the workers of the capitalist countries.<br>
</p>
<h4>Capitalist Attitude to the USSR</h4>
<p class="fst">The capitalists have, besides their economic purposes, a political aim in desiring to smash the Soviet Union. They hate and fear the Soviet Union because they are afraid that the example of the Soviet people who threw out the Czars and the capitalists, will be an inspiration to the workers of the capitalist nations.</p>
<p>But the real defense of the Soviet Union can only come when the workers of other countries of Western Europe and the United States establish their own government and join hands with the Soviet Union. The real security of the Soviet Union is world socialism. The real defenders of the Soviet Union are the fighting, anti-capitalist workers. The real defense of the Soviet Union is part of the workers struggle against capitalism.</p>
<p>Under the theory that he could build a complete socialist society if he were not attacked, Stalin sold out working class movements all over the world in return for pacts with the capitalist governments. He placed his hope in defending the Soviet Union, not on the workers movement all over the world, but on agreements and alliances with this or that capitalist nation.</p>
<p>These capitalist powers demanded from Stalin in return for diplomatic pacts that Stalin through his control of the Communist parties stifle the militancy of the workers, and even put down workers’ revolts.</p>
<p>No Trotskyist is opposed to the Soviet Union making pacts with capitalist countries. We are opposed to selling out the working class as a price for these pacts. A capitalist government does not change its reactionary character because it signs a pact with the Soviet Union. It is still an enemy of the workers, the Soviet Union, and of socialism, and the workers must continue their struggle against it.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in <strong>The Militant</strong> Comrade Lydia Beidel in her series of articles on the <a href="../../../beidel/1941/11/stalin.html" target="new"><em>Crimes of Stalin</em></a> is telling, country by country, some of the consequences of the theory of “socialism in one country.”</p>
<p>I will just give three examples to show how the Stalinist policy not only weakens the struggle of the workers of the world but also the defense of the Soviet Union.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Franco-Soviet Pact</h4>
<p class="fst">In 1934, when Germany under Hitler was arming itself for the present war, France and the Soviet Union signed a military pact which was directed against Germany.</p>
<p>Part of this pact called for the cessation of the struggle of the workers in France against French capitalism. The French workers, who could easily have taken government power then if they had a correct leadership, were told to support the French capitalists who were “friendly” to the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Finally, as was to be expected, after the French working class was smashed, French capitalism turned upon the Soviet Union and broke its pact with it.</p>
<p>In America, the workers are told by the Communist Party that they must not go on strike for better wages or conditions and that they must support Roosevelt because Roosevelt and Stalin are coming together on the international scene. This is Stalin’s method of defending the Soviet Union. He does not build up the working class struggle for immediate gains and for the ultimate achievement of socialism. Instead he tells the workers through his Communist Party to follow Roosevelt. The end will be that the American capitalists will try to crush the independent workers’ movement, and then turn upon the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>The tragic results of the theory of socialism in one country come out most clearly in relation to the present war between Hitler and the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>In order to meet Hitler’s attack Stalin was forced to form an alliance with British imperialism. Everyone knows that Churchill hates the Soviet Union and the workers’ cause as much as does Hitler. Churchill and British capitalism seek the defeat of the Soviet Union at the same time as the defeat of Hitler, so that Great Britain can dominate the world.<br>
</p>
<h4>Churchill and the USSR</h4>
<p class="fst">Churchill will inevitably turn against the Soviet Union. Yet, in order to get this pact with Churchill, Stalin forces the Communist Party of Great Britain to give up its struggle against Churchill. Stalinism lulls the British workers to sleep with fairy tales about Churchill and English imperialism and tells the workers they should not struggle for a workers government.</p>
<p>Stalin gives this in return for a piece of paper which bitter experience shows the capitalists have no qualms about tearing up and throwing in Stalin’s face after he has done the dirty work.</p>
<p>Not only does Stalin give up the struggle against the capitalists of Great Britain, he does not even struggle against the capitalist class of Germany, which put Hitler in power. He does not address any appeals through the Communist International to the German masses to rise against German capitalism and establish a Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of Russia and Germany. He does not dare do so, because if he did, Churchill would object. Churchill does not want to overthrow German fascist capitalism; he does not even want this idea spread around; he wants to eliminate only an imperialist rival, not the system of capitalism itself.</p>
<p>Because Churchill objects the Stalinist International does not carry on effective international socialist propaganda against German fascism to arouse the workers of Germany to overthrow Hitler, and thereby disintegrate the fascist rear.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalin and the German Workers</h4>
<p class="fst">Stalin tells the German workers to overthrow Hitler, not with the idea of establishing a workers government in Germany but with the idea of bringing back the capitalist republic. Stalin goes only this far. The German workers, however, know that the capitalist republic only brought unemployment and crisis to them. They cannot be rallied to fight against Hitler with the slogan of a capitalist republic.</p>
<p>The ideal of world socialism that inspired the Russian masses in 1917 is the only thing that can arouse the German masses against Hitlerism. Stalin, with his theory of “socialism in one country” and fear of antagonizing Churchill, alienates the German workers and peasants, the real friends of the Soviet Union, by adopting the capitalist war-program of Roosevelt and Churchill which holds out only a new Versailles Treaty to the German people in case of defeat.</p>
<p>The theory of “socialism in one country” has resulted in the defeats of the workers of the world and the weakening of the Soviet Union through these defeats.</p>
<p>The future of the Soviet Union depends on the establishment of workers and farmers governments in Europe. For this to take place the workers must reject the theory of “socialism in one country” which has resulted in so many defeats in the past 17 years and put in its place the original idea of the Russian Revolution: world socialism!</p>
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C. Charles
The Stalinist Theory of
“Socialism in One Country”
Soviet Disasters, Defeat of Revolutions Are Fruits of This Theory
(22 November 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 47, 22 November 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The defeats of the Red Army are the latest fruits of the false “theory of socialism in one country,” which is the fundamental idea of the ruling Stalinist clique.
False theories bring tragic results.
For example, many so-called socialists preached the idea that the way to achieve socialism was by a gradual transformation of the capitalist governments and industry, bit by bit.
When they had the opportunity, they refused to take control of the government and place industry under the control of the workers. Instead they strengthened capitalism when it was weak, so that they could, according to their illusion, gradually transform capitalism into socialism. They became doctors of capitalism instead of its undertakers.
Their fallacious theories together with the treachery of Stalinism led to the victory of fascism.
Theory of the Russian Revolution
The greatest historical achievement of the human face, the Soviet Union, was the result of the correct theories of Bolshevism under Lenin and Trotsky.
The central idea of the Russian revolution, was that the Russian workers’ and peasants’ revolution was the first of a series of revolutions that would establish socialism in the entire world. Through the dark year of hunger and intervention this inspired the Soviet masses. The Russian workers in making their revolution knew that unless the workers of other countries, more industrially developed, joined hands with the Soviet Union, first in a socialist United States of Europe and then a socialist world, the Russian revolution would in the last analysis go under. Either capitalism would conquer the Soviet Union or the workers of tire world would vanquish international capitalism.
Stalin, who was practically unknown during the period of the Russian Revolution, came forward with a “new” idea after the defeat of the German workers in 1923. the death of Lenin in 1924 and the coming to power of a privileged bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. This bureaucracy was interested only in maintaining its own power rather than in achieving the aims of the revolution. Stalin’s “new” idea was the theory of “socialism in one country.” In the words of Stalin this meant:
Stalin’s Theory
“... that the proletariat, having seized power in Soviet Russia, can use that power for the establishment of a fully socialized society there. For this ... it is not essential that there should have been a victorious proletarian revolution in these lands.” – Problems of Leninism, by Joseph Stalin
In other words, Stalin held that the Soviet Union could achieve socialism by itself if allowed to exist in peace by the imperialists.
Let us first examine this idea.
Modern economic life is marked by internationalism. For any industry to function it must have raw materials that come from all over the world.
Even the United States, the most developed and richest country in the world, would weaken and decline economically if it did not import products from the rest of the world.
Not only does every industrial country buy raw materials but increasingly it buys finished goods as well.
Just as it must import, so must every country sell to the rest of the world, to keep its industries in operation.
With greater industrial development comes greater connection with the world. Primitive economy has little of no trade or exchange. Modern economy is based on an ever-increasing world trade and international division of labor.
Socialism is more advanced than capitalism. It must develop and extend the international division of labor already achieved under capitalism, thereby giving greater well-being to the people of the entire globe. Under socialism, we will not go backward into a self-contained, national economy, as Stalin with the reactionary theory of “socialism in one country” proposes, but to even greater internationalism.
The practical results of the theory of “socialism in one country” Were disastrous to the workers of the world, including those of the Soviet Union.
What Happened to the C.I.
Since socialism could, according to Stalin, be achieved if the capitalist countries did not intervene, it was no longer vitally necessary for the workers of other countries to overthrow capitalism in order to achieve socialism in the USSR. All that was necessary was that the Soviet Union not be attacked.
From this idea it was a short step to make of the Communist International an organization whose primary aim was to defend the Soviet Union instead of overthrowing capitalism. And from this, it was an even shorter step to make of the Communist International an organization whose only aim was to defend the Soviet Union.
The defense of the Soviet Union is of course a duty of every worker. Every attack on the Soviet Union by capitalism, which in its search for profits would like to open the Soviet Union as a market for their goods and as a source of raw material, and to enslave the workers there, must be beaten back by the workers of the Soviet Union and the workers of the capitalist countries.
Capitalist Attitude to the USSR
The capitalists have, besides their economic purposes, a political aim in desiring to smash the Soviet Union. They hate and fear the Soviet Union because they are afraid that the example of the Soviet people who threw out the Czars and the capitalists, will be an inspiration to the workers of the capitalist nations.
But the real defense of the Soviet Union can only come when the workers of other countries of Western Europe and the United States establish their own government and join hands with the Soviet Union. The real security of the Soviet Union is world socialism. The real defenders of the Soviet Union are the fighting, anti-capitalist workers. The real defense of the Soviet Union is part of the workers struggle against capitalism.
Under the theory that he could build a complete socialist society if he were not attacked, Stalin sold out working class movements all over the world in return for pacts with the capitalist governments. He placed his hope in defending the Soviet Union, not on the workers movement all over the world, but on agreements and alliances with this or that capitalist nation.
These capitalist powers demanded from Stalin in return for diplomatic pacts that Stalin through his control of the Communist parties stifle the militancy of the workers, and even put down workers’ revolts.
No Trotskyist is opposed to the Soviet Union making pacts with capitalist countries. We are opposed to selling out the working class as a price for these pacts. A capitalist government does not change its reactionary character because it signs a pact with the Soviet Union. It is still an enemy of the workers, the Soviet Union, and of socialism, and the workers must continue their struggle against it.
Elsewhere in The Militant Comrade Lydia Beidel in her series of articles on the Crimes of Stalin is telling, country by country, some of the consequences of the theory of “socialism in one country.”
I will just give three examples to show how the Stalinist policy not only weakens the struggle of the workers of the world but also the defense of the Soviet Union.
The Franco-Soviet Pact
In 1934, when Germany under Hitler was arming itself for the present war, France and the Soviet Union signed a military pact which was directed against Germany.
Part of this pact called for the cessation of the struggle of the workers in France against French capitalism. The French workers, who could easily have taken government power then if they had a correct leadership, were told to support the French capitalists who were “friendly” to the Soviet Union.
Finally, as was to be expected, after the French working class was smashed, French capitalism turned upon the Soviet Union and broke its pact with it.
In America, the workers are told by the Communist Party that they must not go on strike for better wages or conditions and that they must support Roosevelt because Roosevelt and Stalin are coming together on the international scene. This is Stalin’s method of defending the Soviet Union. He does not build up the working class struggle for immediate gains and for the ultimate achievement of socialism. Instead he tells the workers through his Communist Party to follow Roosevelt. The end will be that the American capitalists will try to crush the independent workers’ movement, and then turn upon the Soviet Union.
The tragic results of the theory of socialism in one country come out most clearly in relation to the present war between Hitler and the Soviet Union.
In order to meet Hitler’s attack Stalin was forced to form an alliance with British imperialism. Everyone knows that Churchill hates the Soviet Union and the workers’ cause as much as does Hitler. Churchill and British capitalism seek the defeat of the Soviet Union at the same time as the defeat of Hitler, so that Great Britain can dominate the world.
Churchill and the USSR
Churchill will inevitably turn against the Soviet Union. Yet, in order to get this pact with Churchill, Stalin forces the Communist Party of Great Britain to give up its struggle against Churchill. Stalinism lulls the British workers to sleep with fairy tales about Churchill and English imperialism and tells the workers they should not struggle for a workers government.
Stalin gives this in return for a piece of paper which bitter experience shows the capitalists have no qualms about tearing up and throwing in Stalin’s face after he has done the dirty work.
Not only does Stalin give up the struggle against the capitalists of Great Britain, he does not even struggle against the capitalist class of Germany, which put Hitler in power. He does not address any appeals through the Communist International to the German masses to rise against German capitalism and establish a Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of Russia and Germany. He does not dare do so, because if he did, Churchill would object. Churchill does not want to overthrow German fascist capitalism; he does not even want this idea spread around; he wants to eliminate only an imperialist rival, not the system of capitalism itself.
Because Churchill objects the Stalinist International does not carry on effective international socialist propaganda against German fascism to arouse the workers of Germany to overthrow Hitler, and thereby disintegrate the fascist rear.
Stalin and the German Workers
Stalin tells the German workers to overthrow Hitler, not with the idea of establishing a workers government in Germany but with the idea of bringing back the capitalist republic. Stalin goes only this far. The German workers, however, know that the capitalist republic only brought unemployment and crisis to them. They cannot be rallied to fight against Hitler with the slogan of a capitalist republic.
The ideal of world socialism that inspired the Russian masses in 1917 is the only thing that can arouse the German masses against Hitlerism. Stalin, with his theory of “socialism in one country” and fear of antagonizing Churchill, alienates the German workers and peasants, the real friends of the Soviet Union, by adopting the capitalist war-program of Roosevelt and Churchill which holds out only a new Versailles Treaty to the German people in case of defeat.
The theory of “socialism in one country” has resulted in the defeats of the workers of the world and the weakening of the Soviet Union through these defeats.
The future of the Soviet Union depends on the establishment of workers and farmers governments in Europe. For this to take place the workers must reject the theory of “socialism in one country” which has resulted in so many defeats in the past 17 years and put in its place the original idea of the Russian Revolution: world socialism!
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<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>Partial Victory for U.S.<br>
Won at Rio Conference</h1>
<h4>A Compromise Resolution on Rupture<br>
with Axis Adopted by American Ministers</h4>
<h3>(31 January 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_05" target="new">Vol 6 No. 5</a>, 31 January 1942, pp. 1 & 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">As the Rio de Janeiro Conference of the Foreign Ministers of the Americas draws to a close, the breaking off of diplomatic relations with the Axis powers by 19 of the 21 Latin American countries can be recorded as a partial victory for the United States. Ten of the 21 nations are at present at war against Japan, Germany and Italy.</p>
<p>The aim of the United States at the conference was first and above all to secure full control of the raw materials and food produced in Latin America and thus prevent the Axis powers from getting any of these vital exports. To a large extent, Sumner Welles, the United States’ representative at Rio, was successful in this respect.</p>
<p>Two of the South American powers are still holding out against an immediate break with the Axis: Argentina and Chile. Argentina is the most adamant, while the exact action that Chile will take is still doubtful.<br>
</p>
<h4>Unanimous Vote Veils Differences</h4>
<p class="fst">A unanimous vote was secured on a compromise resolution which declared:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The American republics, in accordance with the procedure established by their own laws and within the position and circumstances of each country in the actual continental conflict, recommend the rupture of their diplomatic relations with Japan, Germany and Italy, since the first of these States has attacked and the other two have declared war on an American country.”</p>
<p class="fst">This statement replaced one to which Argentina had raised violent objections because it said more categorically the American countries “cannot continue” relations with the Axis.</p>
<p>During the last days of the conference foreign minister after foreign minister of Latin America arose and announced that the country he represented had broken or was breaking with the Axis.</p>
<p>But that the unanimity on the resolution means little was shown the day after its, adoption when Acting President of Argentina Ramon S. Castillo “reassured” the German envoy and issued a statement that Argentina:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Would neither go to war nor toward a rupture, but would accept any formula that reaffirmed continental solidarity and unity” that “left each country free to adopt decisions that its special situation and circumstances counseled.”</p>
<p class="fst">Without doubt economic pressure by the United States will continue against Argentina and Chile to bring them into line with the war plans of the United States.</p>
<p>The position of Argentina and Chile does not flow from an active connection with the Axis powers, but rather results from the following factors:</p>
<ol>
<li>Fear that the Axis will respond to a break by them with a declaration of war and that the Allied forces will not be able to effectively help in the defense of Argentina and Chile in such an event.<br>
</li>
<li>The desire to strike a better bargain economically in return for the support demanded by the the Allies.<br>
</li>
<li>The wish of the ruling classes of these two countries to take advantage, while the industrially dominant powers such as the U.S. are occupied in the war, of the opportunity to strengthen the position of Argentina – and Chilean-owned industry.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">Before the war the Argentinian and Chilean capitalist classes could not hope to compete with the already entrenched foreign capitalists who dominated the South American markets with their exports. Argentina and Chile, although very important food and raw material producing regions, are the two most industrially developed countries south of the United States, and sections of their ruling classes are ambitious to become the dominant industrial powers.</p>
<p>The other countries in South America are nearly exclusively food and raw material producing and exporting countries. Their only markets at present are the Allies, who are in a position now to secure their support. On the other hand, the Axis powers cannot buy or sell to Latin-America because of Allied control of the seas.</p>
<p>The resistance of Argentina and Chile to United States pressure must necessarily be of the most limited and timid character. First of all, the capitalists of these countries who export to the Allies will strive, in case of real difficulty, to mold the policy of the governments so as to have them come to an agreement with their chief customers.</p>
<p>Secondly, while certain other sections of the capitalist classes in these countries would like the chance to build their industries against the United States and British competition, the Allies still have control of maritime transport and supplies of machinery and certain raw industrial materials. These native capitalists will have to come to terms with the Allies.<br>
</p>
<h4>Dare Not Rouse Masses</h4>
<p class="fst">Above all the ruling classes of Argentina and Chile dare not call forth a mass movement of the people in a struggle for real independence from foreign control of their industrial and political life. The ruling classes fear that the masses would not stop with the foreign capitalists but would continue their fight against their native exploiters as well. Fearful of arousing the masses, the capitalists are reduced to nearly futile gestures.</p>
<p>If the conference did nothing else, it exposed a lot of the current talk about a “war for democracy”. The scene of the sessions was itself deeply symbolic. It was the meeting place of the Brazilian Congress before the Congress was dissolved by the self-appointed President-for-Life of Brazil, Getulio Vargas, Welles’ chief aide at the conference.</p>
<p>Foreign ministers arose and solemnly spoke in the name of democracy when their own countries are now being ruled by brutal dictators. The last thing in the world that the Vargases want is democracy and they would fight to the last drop of blood to prevent it from coming to their own countries. These dictator governments do not represent the masses; they are pliant and willing tools of American and British oil, agricultural, mining, industrial, commercial and banking interests.</p>
<p>The United States and British, diplomats may be successful in convincing the ruling classes of Latin America of the benefits of support of the Allies. But they cannot convince the masses of Latin America who see little difference in being ruled by American- and British-supported dictators (who now dominate Latin America) or Axis-supported dictators (who would like to dominate Latin America).</p>
<p>For the great majority of the masses, imperialism means hunger, want, ignorance, super-exploitation and lack of democratic rights.</p>
<p>This is why the present governments in this country and Britain cannot rally the people of the colonies and semi-colonies, even with talk about democracy and destroying dictatorship. Only Workers and Farmers Governments in these countries can really arouse the spontaneous, complete and enthusiastic support of the colonial masses for a war against fascism.</p>
<p>Such governments would be concerned with the freedom, not the oppression of the nations now enslaved by imperialism; with the improvement of their standards of living and not with their super-exploitation as is the case at present under the rule of international capitalism.</p>
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C. Charles
Partial Victory for U.S.
Won at Rio Conference
A Compromise Resolution on Rupture
with Axis Adopted by American Ministers
(31 January 1942)
From The Militant, Vol 6 No. 5, 31 January 1942, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
As the Rio de Janeiro Conference of the Foreign Ministers of the Americas draws to a close, the breaking off of diplomatic relations with the Axis powers by 19 of the 21 Latin American countries can be recorded as a partial victory for the United States. Ten of the 21 nations are at present at war against Japan, Germany and Italy.
The aim of the United States at the conference was first and above all to secure full control of the raw materials and food produced in Latin America and thus prevent the Axis powers from getting any of these vital exports. To a large extent, Sumner Welles, the United States’ representative at Rio, was successful in this respect.
Two of the South American powers are still holding out against an immediate break with the Axis: Argentina and Chile. Argentina is the most adamant, while the exact action that Chile will take is still doubtful.
Unanimous Vote Veils Differences
A unanimous vote was secured on a compromise resolution which declared:
“The American republics, in accordance with the procedure established by their own laws and within the position and circumstances of each country in the actual continental conflict, recommend the rupture of their diplomatic relations with Japan, Germany and Italy, since the first of these States has attacked and the other two have declared war on an American country.”
This statement replaced one to which Argentina had raised violent objections because it said more categorically the American countries “cannot continue” relations with the Axis.
During the last days of the conference foreign minister after foreign minister of Latin America arose and announced that the country he represented had broken or was breaking with the Axis.
But that the unanimity on the resolution means little was shown the day after its, adoption when Acting President of Argentina Ramon S. Castillo “reassured” the German envoy and issued a statement that Argentina:
“Would neither go to war nor toward a rupture, but would accept any formula that reaffirmed continental solidarity and unity” that “left each country free to adopt decisions that its special situation and circumstances counseled.”
Without doubt economic pressure by the United States will continue against Argentina and Chile to bring them into line with the war plans of the United States.
The position of Argentina and Chile does not flow from an active connection with the Axis powers, but rather results from the following factors:
Fear that the Axis will respond to a break by them with a declaration of war and that the Allied forces will not be able to effectively help in the defense of Argentina and Chile in such an event.
The desire to strike a better bargain economically in return for the support demanded by the the Allies.
The wish of the ruling classes of these two countries to take advantage, while the industrially dominant powers such as the U.S. are occupied in the war, of the opportunity to strengthen the position of Argentina – and Chilean-owned industry.
Before the war the Argentinian and Chilean capitalist classes could not hope to compete with the already entrenched foreign capitalists who dominated the South American markets with their exports. Argentina and Chile, although very important food and raw material producing regions, are the two most industrially developed countries south of the United States, and sections of their ruling classes are ambitious to become the dominant industrial powers.
The other countries in South America are nearly exclusively food and raw material producing and exporting countries. Their only markets at present are the Allies, who are in a position now to secure their support. On the other hand, the Axis powers cannot buy or sell to Latin-America because of Allied control of the seas.
The resistance of Argentina and Chile to United States pressure must necessarily be of the most limited and timid character. First of all, the capitalists of these countries who export to the Allies will strive, in case of real difficulty, to mold the policy of the governments so as to have them come to an agreement with their chief customers.
Secondly, while certain other sections of the capitalist classes in these countries would like the chance to build their industries against the United States and British competition, the Allies still have control of maritime transport and supplies of machinery and certain raw industrial materials. These native capitalists will have to come to terms with the Allies.
Dare Not Rouse Masses
Above all the ruling classes of Argentina and Chile dare not call forth a mass movement of the people in a struggle for real independence from foreign control of their industrial and political life. The ruling classes fear that the masses would not stop with the foreign capitalists but would continue their fight against their native exploiters as well. Fearful of arousing the masses, the capitalists are reduced to nearly futile gestures.
If the conference did nothing else, it exposed a lot of the current talk about a “war for democracy”. The scene of the sessions was itself deeply symbolic. It was the meeting place of the Brazilian Congress before the Congress was dissolved by the self-appointed President-for-Life of Brazil, Getulio Vargas, Welles’ chief aide at the conference.
Foreign ministers arose and solemnly spoke in the name of democracy when their own countries are now being ruled by brutal dictators. The last thing in the world that the Vargases want is democracy and they would fight to the last drop of blood to prevent it from coming to their own countries. These dictator governments do not represent the masses; they are pliant and willing tools of American and British oil, agricultural, mining, industrial, commercial and banking interests.
The United States and British, diplomats may be successful in convincing the ruling classes of Latin America of the benefits of support of the Allies. But they cannot convince the masses of Latin America who see little difference in being ruled by American- and British-supported dictators (who now dominate Latin America) or Axis-supported dictators (who would like to dominate Latin America).
For the great majority of the masses, imperialism means hunger, want, ignorance, super-exploitation and lack of democratic rights.
This is why the present governments in this country and Britain cannot rally the people of the colonies and semi-colonies, even with talk about democracy and destroying dictatorship. Only Workers and Farmers Governments in these countries can really arouse the spontaneous, complete and enthusiastic support of the colonial masses for a war against fascism.
Such governments would be concerned with the freedom, not the oppression of the nations now enslaved by imperialism; with the improvement of their standards of living and not with their super-exploitation as is the case at present under the rule of international capitalism.
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<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>A Ferment in the Chicago Y.C.L.</h1>
<h3>(October 1931)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1931/index.htm#tm31_26" target="new">Vol. IV No. 26 (Whole No. 85)</a>, 10 October 1931, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">On September 14, 1931, three former members of the Executive Committee of District 8, Young Communist League, issued a statement to all members on why two. Norman Satir and Ruth Andras, have been expelled from membership, and one, Nathan Gould, is about to meet the same fate (he has since been expelled also).</p>
<p>The charges of these comrades are: that based on a system of bureaucracy, a regime of terror, of expulsion, an incapable district and national leadership has attached itself to the Y.C.L. and prevents the League from efficiently fulfilling its role.</p>
<p>The same leadership, in order to maintain its position, has had to line up comrades against Satir who had taken a critical attitude towards the activity of the National Committee, spread lies and slanders, suppress articles written for the pre-convention discussion, not allow anybody time to present any position opposing the National Committee and that the party leadership has condoned and encouraged the younger bureaucrats.</p>
<p>The document charges that the last convention of the Y.C.L. was not a Communist convention, because there was no pre-convention thesis, nor discussion involving the membership. The statement goes on to tell what the League bureaucracy is attempting to hide: political bankruptcy (if that term can be applied to a leadership which never was capable). According to the Y.C.I. letter, the National Committee of the American League has:</p>
<ol>
<li>been absent from the economic field;</li>
<li>not formulated any youth demands;</li>
<li>no shop nuclei;</li>
<li>no anti-militarist work;</li>
<li>no opponent work;</li>
<li>crisis in sports and Pioneers;</li>
<li>League still isolated.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">To these, the trio add four additional points;</p>
<ol start="8">
<li>no single shock plan was completed;</li>
<li>the ideological level of the League is at its lowest;</li>
<li>bureaucracy is the prevailing system;</li>
<li>the National Committee is entirely incapable of independent analyses or formulation of correct policies;</li>
<li>all gains that were made, were made after the Y.C.I. threat of removal and these gains are microscopic.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">According to the present leadership, the League membership fusing “third period” mathematics) is “around 3,000”. Even if these figures are correct, they show a great discrepancy between potential possibilities and actual results. Yet, many join the Y.C.L. continuously, but go through it like water through a sieve. Why?</p>
<p>The main reason for this, the statement goes on to say, is the low ideological level of the membership. Theory, while openly paid lip-service, is secretly sneered at as a pre-”third period” prejudice. Then the document says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“To expect the leadership to change their attitude on this matter is hopeless. Because this leadership can only exist as long as widespread ignorance prevails ... political consciousness would mean the doom of this ‘leadership’.”</p>
<p class="fst">Secondly, the strangling hold of the bureaucracy. Democratic centralism – the highest degree of democracy with the highest degree of centralism, becomes the handing down of decisions by the higher committees to the lower ranks with the air of a royal decree, or infallible papal bull. The ranks must say, “To hear is to do.” The efficient methods of Communist leadership are replaced by the carrying out of decisions by a membership who have no understanding of the reasons for the decision. Self-criticism becomes greatly similar to the confession-box proceedings of the Catholic Church. Like the Catholic Church, too, the only ones allowed to receive confession, to give chastisement or to allow absolution are higher bodies, while the “very, very low”, if they attempt criticism, become “enemies of the working class”.</p>
<p>Thirdly, the document goes on to show how these leaders are created. Not the most developed, ideologically and practically, but the “politically dishonest, opportunist and careerists – who will agree with everything that the higher bodies propose ... ignoramuses” rise to the leadership. The proletarian leadership becomes merely a blind They take no real part in the work of the leadership.</p>
<p>The practical proposals of these protesting comrades then follow:</p>
<ol>
<li>A broad and free discussion.</li>
<li>The discussion must be followed by a real convention.</li>
<li>The present leadership must be replaced by tempered young Communists.</li>
<li>Regular reports to the membership by the leaders.</li>
<li>Democratic centralism – free elections by and responsibility to the membership.</li>
<li>Broad discussions on all important questions.</li>
<li>Right of Communist criticism of leaders.</li>
<li>Bureaucracy must be destroyed.</li>
<li>Raise the theoretical level.</li>
<li>Proper relations between the Youth and the party.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">With a call to the membership not to heed the bureaucrats’ instructions to disassociate themselves from the signing comrades, the statement ends: “Oust the bureaucrats! Build the League!”</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The following is the statement of the Youth Committee of the Chicago branch of the Communist League of America (Opposition) on the recent developments in the Y.C.L.:</p>
<p class="fst">In Chicago, the statement of Norman Satir, Ruth Andras and Nathan Gould against the bureaucracy in the Y.C.L. has met with a warm welcome from the members of the Y.C.L. This in spite of a long and arduous campaign of slander.</p>
<p>While young comrades are not as well versed or experienced and therefore more easily misled than the older comrades, the psychological factors make bureaucracy more repugnant among the youth than ever among the adults. These signs of stirring life, which the Left Opposition always knew to be present, is a favorable portent.</p>
<p>The statement has obvious shortcomings. It fails to answer the <em>whereas</em> of this bureaucracy. Its source, according to the statement, is a mystery, it sprang up from nowhere. That source is the Y.C.I. leadership and behind them the Stalinist revisionists of the teachings of Marx and Lenin in the C.I. Unless these comrades recognize this, their correct labors will be ineffectual. Every leadership will tend towards bureaucracy for the ideas of the Stalinist revisionists, not having ideological correctness, can only be defended by bureaucracy.</p>
<p>How long will a leadership that is honest and theoretically firm stand for “socialism in one country”; the Anglo-Russian Committee betrayal, the Chiang Kai-Shek alliance, the “third period”, “social-Fascism”, for the dubbing of Trotsky and the International Left Opposition as counter-revolutionists? The only kind of leadership the C.I. and the Y.C.I. bureaucrats can tolerate are bureaucratic ignoramuses. Any other kind could not tolerate the C.I. and Y.C.I. leaders.</p>
<p>The decline in membership is an international phenomenon when we discuss quality. When we discuss quantity, with the exception of Russia, where the reason for the exception is obvious, and Germany, where the situation is so favorable that members stream in, in spite of the bureaucrats, the same holds true in the entire International. The same causes in our brother Leagues produce the same effects as in the American League.</p>
<p>Our support of their statement will undoubtedly cause these comrades to be subjected to the epithet of “Trotskyists” which the bureaucrats will fling at them, as though that disposes of the questions raised. Do not permit this to divert your attention from the fight. Spread the rebellion, district and nation wide! Our support as our criticism, is given in a comradely fashion. The ousting of the bureaucracy, the re-arousing of the interest in Marxism, the study of the tactics and strategy of the movement, leads every sincere young revolutionist forward on the path towards the International Left Opposition.</p>
<p>We urge all comrades to study the position of the Left Opposition.</p>
<p class="author">Youth Committee, C.L.A.(O.) Chicago branch</p>
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C.C.
A Ferment in the Chicago Y.C.L.
(October 1931)
From The Militant, Vol. IV No. 26 (Whole No. 85), 10 October 1931, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
On September 14, 1931, three former members of the Executive Committee of District 8, Young Communist League, issued a statement to all members on why two. Norman Satir and Ruth Andras, have been expelled from membership, and one, Nathan Gould, is about to meet the same fate (he has since been expelled also).
The charges of these comrades are: that based on a system of bureaucracy, a regime of terror, of expulsion, an incapable district and national leadership has attached itself to the Y.C.L. and prevents the League from efficiently fulfilling its role.
The same leadership, in order to maintain its position, has had to line up comrades against Satir who had taken a critical attitude towards the activity of the National Committee, spread lies and slanders, suppress articles written for the pre-convention discussion, not allow anybody time to present any position opposing the National Committee and that the party leadership has condoned and encouraged the younger bureaucrats.
The document charges that the last convention of the Y.C.L. was not a Communist convention, because there was no pre-convention thesis, nor discussion involving the membership. The statement goes on to tell what the League bureaucracy is attempting to hide: political bankruptcy (if that term can be applied to a leadership which never was capable). According to the Y.C.I. letter, the National Committee of the American League has:
been absent from the economic field;
not formulated any youth demands;
no shop nuclei;
no anti-militarist work;
no opponent work;
crisis in sports and Pioneers;
League still isolated.
To these, the trio add four additional points;
no single shock plan was completed;
the ideological level of the League is at its lowest;
bureaucracy is the prevailing system;
the National Committee is entirely incapable of independent analyses or formulation of correct policies;
all gains that were made, were made after the Y.C.I. threat of removal and these gains are microscopic.
According to the present leadership, the League membership fusing “third period” mathematics) is “around 3,000”. Even if these figures are correct, they show a great discrepancy between potential possibilities and actual results. Yet, many join the Y.C.L. continuously, but go through it like water through a sieve. Why?
The main reason for this, the statement goes on to say, is the low ideological level of the membership. Theory, while openly paid lip-service, is secretly sneered at as a pre-”third period” prejudice. Then the document says:
“To expect the leadership to change their attitude on this matter is hopeless. Because this leadership can only exist as long as widespread ignorance prevails ... political consciousness would mean the doom of this ‘leadership’.”
Secondly, the strangling hold of the bureaucracy. Democratic centralism – the highest degree of democracy with the highest degree of centralism, becomes the handing down of decisions by the higher committees to the lower ranks with the air of a royal decree, or infallible papal bull. The ranks must say, “To hear is to do.” The efficient methods of Communist leadership are replaced by the carrying out of decisions by a membership who have no understanding of the reasons for the decision. Self-criticism becomes greatly similar to the confession-box proceedings of the Catholic Church. Like the Catholic Church, too, the only ones allowed to receive confession, to give chastisement or to allow absolution are higher bodies, while the “very, very low”, if they attempt criticism, become “enemies of the working class”.
Thirdly, the document goes on to show how these leaders are created. Not the most developed, ideologically and practically, but the “politically dishonest, opportunist and careerists – who will agree with everything that the higher bodies propose ... ignoramuses” rise to the leadership. The proletarian leadership becomes merely a blind They take no real part in the work of the leadership.
The practical proposals of these protesting comrades then follow:
A broad and free discussion.
The discussion must be followed by a real convention.
The present leadership must be replaced by tempered young Communists.
Regular reports to the membership by the leaders.
Democratic centralism – free elections by and responsibility to the membership.
Broad discussions on all important questions.
Right of Communist criticism of leaders.
Bureaucracy must be destroyed.
Raise the theoretical level.
Proper relations between the Youth and the party.
With a call to the membership not to heed the bureaucrats’ instructions to disassociate themselves from the signing comrades, the statement ends: “Oust the bureaucrats! Build the League!”
The following is the statement of the Youth Committee of the Chicago branch of the Communist League of America (Opposition) on the recent developments in the Y.C.L.:
In Chicago, the statement of Norman Satir, Ruth Andras and Nathan Gould against the bureaucracy in the Y.C.L. has met with a warm welcome from the members of the Y.C.L. This in spite of a long and arduous campaign of slander.
While young comrades are not as well versed or experienced and therefore more easily misled than the older comrades, the psychological factors make bureaucracy more repugnant among the youth than ever among the adults. These signs of stirring life, which the Left Opposition always knew to be present, is a favorable portent.
The statement has obvious shortcomings. It fails to answer the whereas of this bureaucracy. Its source, according to the statement, is a mystery, it sprang up from nowhere. That source is the Y.C.I. leadership and behind them the Stalinist revisionists of the teachings of Marx and Lenin in the C.I. Unless these comrades recognize this, their correct labors will be ineffectual. Every leadership will tend towards bureaucracy for the ideas of the Stalinist revisionists, not having ideological correctness, can only be defended by bureaucracy.
How long will a leadership that is honest and theoretically firm stand for “socialism in one country”; the Anglo-Russian Committee betrayal, the Chiang Kai-Shek alliance, the “third period”, “social-Fascism”, for the dubbing of Trotsky and the International Left Opposition as counter-revolutionists? The only kind of leadership the C.I. and the Y.C.I. bureaucrats can tolerate are bureaucratic ignoramuses. Any other kind could not tolerate the C.I. and Y.C.I. leaders.
The decline in membership is an international phenomenon when we discuss quality. When we discuss quantity, with the exception of Russia, where the reason for the exception is obvious, and Germany, where the situation is so favorable that members stream in, in spite of the bureaucrats, the same holds true in the entire International. The same causes in our brother Leagues produce the same effects as in the American League.
Our support of their statement will undoubtedly cause these comrades to be subjected to the epithet of “Trotskyists” which the bureaucrats will fling at them, as though that disposes of the questions raised. Do not permit this to divert your attention from the fight. Spread the rebellion, district and nation wide! Our support as our criticism, is given in a comradely fashion. The ousting of the bureaucracy, the re-arousing of the interest in Marxism, the study of the tactics and strategy of the movement, leads every sincere young revolutionist forward on the path towards the International Left Opposition.
We urge all comrades to study the position of the Left Opposition.
Youth Committee, C.L.A.(O.) Chicago branch
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<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>British Labor Party Leaders Betray<br>
Masses of Both India and England</h1>
<h4>Support Tories’ War Aims and Labor Policies</h4>
<h3>(7 March 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_10" target="new">Vol. VI No. 10</a>, 7 March 1942, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">In their manifesto giving the official statement of their views on the war and the post-war aims, issued on Feb. 27, tire executive committee of the reformist British Labor Party once more comes to the support of the British, capitalist class.</p>
<p>The prestige of the capitalist class of Great Britain is clearly at the lowest point in decades.</p>
<p>The workers are seething with discontent over the conduct of the war which has resulted in a series of military defeats. On the production front the workers are beginning to oppose the profits-first policies of the capitalists.</p>
<p>The reshuffling of the British cabinet was a desperate attempt to allay this mass discontent by the ancient device of providing scapegoats.</p>
<p>Now when there is a great opportunity to raise the banner of socialism in the British Isles, to advance the ‘idea of a workers’ struggle against fascism, to drive the Tories out. of office, the leadership of the British Labor Party issues a sell-out statement.</p>
<p>This statement will be analyzed at greater length in coming issues of <strong>The Militant</strong>. Now we will mention only a few points.</p>
<p>In the most nationalistic way this party, the largest section of the Second International declares that the “peoples of Germany, Italy and Japan must be brought to realize the power which peace-loving nations can mobilize against aggression is overwhelming in its strength and absolute in its assurance of success.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Helps Axis Rulers</h4>
<p class="fst">Is there any hotter way of doing the work of Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini than lumping the masses of Japan, Italy and Germany, who did not want the war and who have nothing to gain from the war, together with their capitalist rulers, who want and hope to profit by the war?</p>
<p>The leaders of the Labor Party solidarize themselves with the super-Versailles war aims of Churchill and Roosevelt, glossing over the capitalist nature of these war aims with fine words about the “four freedoms.”</p>
<p>Thus the Axis rulers are able to keep their toilers in line by the masses’ fear of another Versailles peace of victors and vanquished. Hitler, Mussolini and the rulers of Japan point at the Labor Party and say to their masses: “You are sure to get another Versailles treaty unless we win. Even the Labor Party stands for such a peace.”</p>
<p>The result of the Labor Party manifesto, therefore, is not only to strengthen the position of British and American capitalism, but the position of the Axis rulers as well.<br>
</p>
<h4>Masses Stirring</h4>
<p class="fst">The final word will be said, however, not by the heads of the Labor Party, but by the British masses. There are many signs that the policies of the Labor Party leaders are opposed by the great masses of Britain.</p>
<p>At the time of the outbreak of the present war, the Labor Party made an agreement with the Conservative Party (Tories) not to place any candidates up against the other in the event of an election. If a seat in Parliament were to be vacated for any reason and if this seat were previously held by the Conservative Party, the Labor Party would not place any candidate up against that of the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party, in turn, agreed not to launch a candidate in opposition to that of the Labor Party.</p>
<p>The relationship of forces as it existed at the time of the outbreak of the war was frozen. The Labor Party delivered itself up bound hand and foot to the British ruling class and their party which was in control of Parliament.</p>
<p>The masses within the Labor Party are now beginning to stir in opposition to the policy of the leadership. This was manifested most sharply last December at the time of the vote on conscription of all men and women in England for war or work.<br>
</p>
<h4>Division Among the Deputies</h4>
<p class="fst">In this discussion, the leader of the so-called left wing, Mr. Shinwell, stated in debate with his own party leaders:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The male labor of the country and to a large extent the female labor of the country is conscripted. In effect, everything is conscripted with the sole exception of’ the vested interests. Labor did not enter the government for this. Has the Labor Party not always declared that if Labor was conscripted there must be a <em>quid pro quo</em> (this for that)? Did they not abandon that principle when they went in?”</p>
<p class="fst">Shinwell of course does not represent the real interests of the masses. He fights shy of giving a concrete socialist answer to the problem. He ambitiously hopes to capitalize on the growing opposition of the masses to the sellout policy of the Labor Party officials.</p>
<p>But the important thing is that the masses are in increasing opposition to the policies of the leaders of the Labor Party. This opposition showed itself, in nowhere near its real strength, by the vote of 30 members of the Labor Party in Parliament against the official policy of the Labor Party on the question of “conscription of wealth.”</p>
<p>Another sign of the veering away of the masses from the official Labor Party is the increase in votes of the centrist Independent Labor Party in the recent bye-elections when they polled from 15% to 29% of the total vote. This vote was recorded in spite of the fact that the Communist Party ardently supported the Tories in the elections.</p>
<p>The British <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, organ of the Workers International League, a Trotskyist group, demands that the Labor Party end’ the coalition with the Tories and strive for power upon a program of socialist demands.<br>
</p>
<h4>Strikes Increase</h4>
<p class="fst">Just as the Labor Party agreed to a coalition with the Tories on the political field so did the trade union leaders agree with the employers to a “truce” on the economic field. Without consulting the masses, they adopted a no-strike compulsory arbitration policy that cripples the workers’ efforts to better their conditions.</p>
<p>The standards of living of the workers are constantly falling as the effects of goods shortages and higher prices are being felt ever more sharply.</p>
<p>The workers’ resentment is increased because at the same time, the bosses’ profits are not being curtailed but are even rising. The British <strong>Economist</strong> points out that 2017 companies which had reported by Jan. 1, 1942, showed a total profit of 389 million pounds for 1941 over 375 million pounds for 1940.</p>
<p>As a result of these factors, and in spite of the official policy of the trade union leaders, workers have struck in numerous cases. For example:</p>
<p class="fst">The aircraft workers in the Napiers Plant in Liverpool struck: a “token” walkout of a half-hour took place in all the shipyards on the Clyde; 5,000 men walked out in the Rolls Royce plant; several thousand Kentish coal miners struck and succeeded in raising their pay from 6 shillings, 9 pence a day to 15 shillings, 2½ pence a day.</p>
<p class="c"><strong>(More on Great Britain next week)</strong></p>
<p class="link"> <br>
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C. Charles
British Labor Party Leaders Betray
Masses of Both India and England
Support Tories’ War Aims and Labor Policies
(7 March 1942)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 10, 7 March 1942, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In their manifesto giving the official statement of their views on the war and the post-war aims, issued on Feb. 27, tire executive committee of the reformist British Labor Party once more comes to the support of the British, capitalist class.
The prestige of the capitalist class of Great Britain is clearly at the lowest point in decades.
The workers are seething with discontent over the conduct of the war which has resulted in a series of military defeats. On the production front the workers are beginning to oppose the profits-first policies of the capitalists.
The reshuffling of the British cabinet was a desperate attempt to allay this mass discontent by the ancient device of providing scapegoats.
Now when there is a great opportunity to raise the banner of socialism in the British Isles, to advance the ‘idea of a workers’ struggle against fascism, to drive the Tories out. of office, the leadership of the British Labor Party issues a sell-out statement.
This statement will be analyzed at greater length in coming issues of The Militant. Now we will mention only a few points.
In the most nationalistic way this party, the largest section of the Second International declares that the “peoples of Germany, Italy and Japan must be brought to realize the power which peace-loving nations can mobilize against aggression is overwhelming in its strength and absolute in its assurance of success.”
Helps Axis Rulers
Is there any hotter way of doing the work of Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini than lumping the masses of Japan, Italy and Germany, who did not want the war and who have nothing to gain from the war, together with their capitalist rulers, who want and hope to profit by the war?
The leaders of the Labor Party solidarize themselves with the super-Versailles war aims of Churchill and Roosevelt, glossing over the capitalist nature of these war aims with fine words about the “four freedoms.”
Thus the Axis rulers are able to keep their toilers in line by the masses’ fear of another Versailles peace of victors and vanquished. Hitler, Mussolini and the rulers of Japan point at the Labor Party and say to their masses: “You are sure to get another Versailles treaty unless we win. Even the Labor Party stands for such a peace.”
The result of the Labor Party manifesto, therefore, is not only to strengthen the position of British and American capitalism, but the position of the Axis rulers as well.
Masses Stirring
The final word will be said, however, not by the heads of the Labor Party, but by the British masses. There are many signs that the policies of the Labor Party leaders are opposed by the great masses of Britain.
At the time of the outbreak of the present war, the Labor Party made an agreement with the Conservative Party (Tories) not to place any candidates up against the other in the event of an election. If a seat in Parliament were to be vacated for any reason and if this seat were previously held by the Conservative Party, the Labor Party would not place any candidate up against that of the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party, in turn, agreed not to launch a candidate in opposition to that of the Labor Party.
The relationship of forces as it existed at the time of the outbreak of the war was frozen. The Labor Party delivered itself up bound hand and foot to the British ruling class and their party which was in control of Parliament.
The masses within the Labor Party are now beginning to stir in opposition to the policy of the leadership. This was manifested most sharply last December at the time of the vote on conscription of all men and women in England for war or work.
Division Among the Deputies
In this discussion, the leader of the so-called left wing, Mr. Shinwell, stated in debate with his own party leaders:
“The male labor of the country and to a large extent the female labor of the country is conscripted. In effect, everything is conscripted with the sole exception of’ the vested interests. Labor did not enter the government for this. Has the Labor Party not always declared that if Labor was conscripted there must be a quid pro quo (this for that)? Did they not abandon that principle when they went in?”
Shinwell of course does not represent the real interests of the masses. He fights shy of giving a concrete socialist answer to the problem. He ambitiously hopes to capitalize on the growing opposition of the masses to the sellout policy of the Labor Party officials.
But the important thing is that the masses are in increasing opposition to the policies of the leaders of the Labor Party. This opposition showed itself, in nowhere near its real strength, by the vote of 30 members of the Labor Party in Parliament against the official policy of the Labor Party on the question of “conscription of wealth.”
Another sign of the veering away of the masses from the official Labor Party is the increase in votes of the centrist Independent Labor Party in the recent bye-elections when they polled from 15% to 29% of the total vote. This vote was recorded in spite of the fact that the Communist Party ardently supported the Tories in the elections.
The British Socialist Appeal, organ of the Workers International League, a Trotskyist group, demands that the Labor Party end’ the coalition with the Tories and strive for power upon a program of socialist demands.
Strikes Increase
Just as the Labor Party agreed to a coalition with the Tories on the political field so did the trade union leaders agree with the employers to a “truce” on the economic field. Without consulting the masses, they adopted a no-strike compulsory arbitration policy that cripples the workers’ efforts to better their conditions.
The standards of living of the workers are constantly falling as the effects of goods shortages and higher prices are being felt ever more sharply.
The workers’ resentment is increased because at the same time, the bosses’ profits are not being curtailed but are even rising. The British Economist points out that 2017 companies which had reported by Jan. 1, 1942, showed a total profit of 389 million pounds for 1941 over 375 million pounds for 1940.
As a result of these factors, and in spite of the official policy of the trade union leaders, workers have struck in numerous cases. For example:
The aircraft workers in the Napiers Plant in Liverpool struck: a “token” walkout of a half-hour took place in all the shipyards on the Clyde; 5,000 men walked out in the Rolls Royce plant; several thousand Kentish coal miners struck and succeeded in raising their pay from 6 shillings, 9 pence a day to 15 shillings, 2½ pence a day.
(More on Great Britain next week)
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<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>Commune Charted Way<br>
to Workers’ Freedom</h1>
<h4>After the French Defeat of 1871, the Workers of Paris Set Up<br>
the Most Democratic Government Modern History Had Ever Seen</h4>
<h3>(21 March 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_12" target="new">Vol. VI No. 12</a>, 21 March 1942, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="quoteb"><strong>“Working-men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them.”</strong> – Karl Marx, <strong>The Civil War in France</strong>, May 30, 1871.</p>
<p class="fst">The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 showed the French workers that the capitalist class of that country was rotten to the marrow, interested only in huge profits. The war saw the siege of Paris by the Prussians. During the siege the Parisian people were armed as a measure of defense. The war witnessed the fall of Napoleon III and the rise of the capitalist republic.</p>
<p>The French capitalist class, monarchist and Republican united, were mortally afraid of the armed anti-capitalist Parisian workers. After signing an armistice with Bismarck, head of the Prussian forces, the first task that faced the French capitalists was the disarming of the workers of Paris.</p>
<p>As the initial step in this direction, several regiments crept into Paris before dawn on March 18, 1871, with the purpose of stealing the cannon which belonged to the Paris people.<br>
</p>
<h4>Soldiers Go Over to Workers</h4>
<p class="fst">The move was discovered. The thoroughly aroused masses thronged out of their homes. The soldiers sent to take the cannon went over to the side of the workers. The workers took over the city. War was declared between Workingman’s Paris and the French capitalist class with its headquarters in Versailles. On the 26th the Commune, composed of representatives from each section of the city,’was elected. On the 28th it was installed.</p>
<p>For 71 days the Red Flag waved over Paris.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the Paris workers, hoping to avert a civil war, did not at once march against Versailles. Versailles was given a chance to strengthen itself. The Communards paid dearly in blood for their illusion that the capitalists would not wage a civil war against them.</p>
<p>The French capitalist forces, with the solidarity of Bismarck, placed another siege against Paris. Most of the energy of the Commune had to be given to military defense.</p>
<p>In spite of this, the Commune passed important social legislation.</p>
<p>All house rents were remitted from October 1870 to April 1871. Night work was eliminated for bakers. The pawn shops were abolished and all pawned goods belonging to Workers and small independent craftsmen were returned free to their owners.</p>
<p>The Commune ordered a census to be made of all factories and workshops which had been closed by their employers. The aim of this was to have these plants operated by and for the workers previously employed in them. The workers were to be organized in producers’ cooperative societies.<br>
</p>
<h4>Commune Upholds Workers Internationalism</h4>
<p class="fst">In the field of political and cultural activity, the Commune:</p>
<ul>
<li>Abolished the standing army and conscription and established the National Guard to which all citizens capable of bearing arms had to belong as the sole force with the right to have arms.<br>
</li>
<li>Granted full rights to all foreigners since the “flag of the Commune was the Universal Republic.” Destroyed the column erected by Napoleon I in 1809 as a monument of national vanity and international jealousy. These were symbols of the internationalist character of the Commune.<br>
</li>
<li>Publicly burned the guillotine.<br>
</li>
<li>Decreed the strict separation of Church and State.<br>
</li>
<li>Fixed the maximum pay allowed to an official of the Commune at 6000 francs per year ($1200).</li>
</ul>
<p class="fst">On May 28, the Versailles troops, now overwhelming in number, crushed the last heroic barricade of the Commune.</p>
<p>Terrible revenge was wreaked upon the Communards. From 20,000 to 80,000 working men, women and children were killed either in Paris or died in exile. Their crime: striving for a free world.<br>
</p>
<h4>Commune Showed Road to Socialism</h4>
<p class="fst">The Commune gave the answer to the problem of how the transition between capitalism and socialism will take place. It proved that the workers cannot use the machinery of the capitalist state as an instrument of this transition. Even the most democratic of capitalist governments abounds with checks and hindrances of the popular will, has artificial divisions between the various departments of governments, creates a strong bureaucracy and army separated from the people.</p>
<p>The capitalist state must be replaced by a workers state, a time democracy. According to Lenin, who made a deep study of the Commune and its lessons, proletarian democracy, or proletarian dictatorship, has the following characteristics:</p>
<ol>
<li>The source of power, is not law previously discussed and enacted by parliament but the initiative springing straight from the underlying mass of the people, on the spot ...;<br>
</li>
<li>It involves the replacement of the police and army, which are separated from the people and opposed to it, by the direct arming of the whole nation; peace and order are maintained under such a government by the armed workers themselves, by the armed nation;<br>
</li>
<li>The bureaucracy is either cashiered (fired) in favor of representatives of the people or held strictly under popular control.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">The Commune was the first expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets under Lenin and Trotsky was the second historical example of the rule of the workers.<br>
</p>
<h4>Commune Will Be Re-established</h4>
<p class="fst">The greatest promise for the future is in the recent news we have received from France. Not only has the fighting spirit of the French workers not been broken by Hitler and Petain, but the great weakness of the Commune is being remedied. That historical weakness was the absence of a revolutionary Party. This shortcoming in 1871 was inevitable. It was the price the Parisian workers paid for being the great pioneers. We are informed that the Bolshevik Party of the Fourth International of France is functioning and gaining new support among the workers.</p>
<p>The French workers will reconstruct the Commune on stronger foundations under the leadership of the Fourth International.</p>
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C. Charles
Commune Charted Way
to Workers’ Freedom
After the French Defeat of 1871, the Workers of Paris Set Up
the Most Democratic Government Modern History Had Ever Seen
(21 March 1942)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 12, 21 March 1942, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
“Working-men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them.” – Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, May 30, 1871.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 showed the French workers that the capitalist class of that country was rotten to the marrow, interested only in huge profits. The war saw the siege of Paris by the Prussians. During the siege the Parisian people were armed as a measure of defense. The war witnessed the fall of Napoleon III and the rise of the capitalist republic.
The French capitalist class, monarchist and Republican united, were mortally afraid of the armed anti-capitalist Parisian workers. After signing an armistice with Bismarck, head of the Prussian forces, the first task that faced the French capitalists was the disarming of the workers of Paris.
As the initial step in this direction, several regiments crept into Paris before dawn on March 18, 1871, with the purpose of stealing the cannon which belonged to the Paris people.
Soldiers Go Over to Workers
The move was discovered. The thoroughly aroused masses thronged out of their homes. The soldiers sent to take the cannon went over to the side of the workers. The workers took over the city. War was declared between Workingman’s Paris and the French capitalist class with its headquarters in Versailles. On the 26th the Commune, composed of representatives from each section of the city,’was elected. On the 28th it was installed.
For 71 days the Red Flag waved over Paris.
Unfortunately the Paris workers, hoping to avert a civil war, did not at once march against Versailles. Versailles was given a chance to strengthen itself. The Communards paid dearly in blood for their illusion that the capitalists would not wage a civil war against them.
The French capitalist forces, with the solidarity of Bismarck, placed another siege against Paris. Most of the energy of the Commune had to be given to military defense.
In spite of this, the Commune passed important social legislation.
All house rents were remitted from October 1870 to April 1871. Night work was eliminated for bakers. The pawn shops were abolished and all pawned goods belonging to Workers and small independent craftsmen were returned free to their owners.
The Commune ordered a census to be made of all factories and workshops which had been closed by their employers. The aim of this was to have these plants operated by and for the workers previously employed in them. The workers were to be organized in producers’ cooperative societies.
Commune Upholds Workers Internationalism
In the field of political and cultural activity, the Commune:
Abolished the standing army and conscription and established the National Guard to which all citizens capable of bearing arms had to belong as the sole force with the right to have arms.
Granted full rights to all foreigners since the “flag of the Commune was the Universal Republic.” Destroyed the column erected by Napoleon I in 1809 as a monument of national vanity and international jealousy. These were symbols of the internationalist character of the Commune.
Publicly burned the guillotine.
Decreed the strict separation of Church and State.
Fixed the maximum pay allowed to an official of the Commune at 6000 francs per year ($1200).
On May 28, the Versailles troops, now overwhelming in number, crushed the last heroic barricade of the Commune.
Terrible revenge was wreaked upon the Communards. From 20,000 to 80,000 working men, women and children were killed either in Paris or died in exile. Their crime: striving for a free world.
Commune Showed Road to Socialism
The Commune gave the answer to the problem of how the transition between capitalism and socialism will take place. It proved that the workers cannot use the machinery of the capitalist state as an instrument of this transition. Even the most democratic of capitalist governments abounds with checks and hindrances of the popular will, has artificial divisions between the various departments of governments, creates a strong bureaucracy and army separated from the people.
The capitalist state must be replaced by a workers state, a time democracy. According to Lenin, who made a deep study of the Commune and its lessons, proletarian democracy, or proletarian dictatorship, has the following characteristics:
The source of power, is not law previously discussed and enacted by parliament but the initiative springing straight from the underlying mass of the people, on the spot ...;
It involves the replacement of the police and army, which are separated from the people and opposed to it, by the direct arming of the whole nation; peace and order are maintained under such a government by the armed workers themselves, by the armed nation;
The bureaucracy is either cashiered (fired) in favor of representatives of the people or held strictly under popular control.
The Commune was the first expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets under Lenin and Trotsky was the second historical example of the rule of the workers.
Commune Will Be Re-established
The greatest promise for the future is in the recent news we have received from France. Not only has the fighting spirit of the French workers not been broken by Hitler and Petain, but the great weakness of the Commune is being remedied. That historical weakness was the absence of a revolutionary Party. This shortcoming in 1871 was inevitable. It was the price the Parisian workers paid for being the great pioneers. We are informed that the Bolshevik Party of the Fourth International of France is functioning and gaining new support among the workers.
The French workers will reconstruct the Commune on stronger foundations under the leadership of the Fourth International.
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<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>Illinois Conference Opens</h1>
<h4>Miners Are Militant but Right Wing Forces Are Organized</h4>
<h3>(October 1932)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1932/index.htm#tm32_41" target="new">Vol. V No. 41</a>, 8 October 1932, p. 1.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>SPRINGFIELD, ILL.</strong> – Over 200 delegates, representing at least 22,000 miners of all sections of the state, from the terror-ridden southern counties (Franklin, Williamson and Saline) to the far northern Peoria-Wilmington fields, assembled in constitutional convention to decide upon the form and aims of the organization of coal miners to replace the shell of an organization left by the Lewis-Walker-Coal operators’ combine.</p>
<p>The opening of the convention on Monday, October 3 was marked by a parade of 3,000 coal miners and their women folk. The demand for clean fighting unionism has reached into elements hitherto dormant or nearly dormant. The spirit of the well-organized women’s auxiliary is distinguished by its militancy.</p>
<p>The convention heard the secretary of the West Virginia Miners’ Union with great attention and evinced their solidarity with that movement there. The applause left no doubt of the position of the Illinois miners on the question of national unity when Shearer, the secretary of the W.Va. Miners Union, raised this point in his speech.</p>
<p>The convention was very jealous of the rights of the membership. As a reaction to the mandatory fashion of the Lewis bureaucracy, this swing to rank and file-ism goes to nearly ridiculous extremes. The spirit, however, is very healthy and very vigorous in its extreme care for democracy.</p>
<p>As yet no Left wing has appeared in the convention. The proposal to hear a speaker from the N.W.U. was turned down. The first day was only taken up with routine business.</p>
<p>The spirit of the delegates can be shown by the fact that many were forced to sleep on the floor of the city hall. All sorts of vehicles were pressed into service to bring these striking miners into Gillespie. The heroism of the underground, illegal Progressive Miner’s of America groups in Franklin County was unconsciously and unwittingly expressed by the delegates from there. To belong to the P.M.A. means the loss of the job, and relief is automatically stopped. To be active is only possible by threat of life.</p>
<p>The president, Pearce, in his opening address gave a review of the month’s activity since the provisional convention. The problem of Franklin County and the absorption of the miners therein into the state-wide strike will be a most important topic.</p>
<p>The Right wing, however, is active and seems organized. Their refusal to allow a speaker of the N.W.U. to speak was marked by demagogy, illogic and the conspicuous waving of the red herring.</p>
<p>The Left Opposition is proposing to the C.P. joint Left wing action.</p>
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<p class="note">The above is a brief summary of the first day’s important news items. More later.</p>
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C.C.
Illinois Conference Opens
Miners Are Militant but Right Wing Forces Are Organized
(October 1932)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 41, 8 October 1932, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
SPRINGFIELD, ILL. – Over 200 delegates, representing at least 22,000 miners of all sections of the state, from the terror-ridden southern counties (Franklin, Williamson and Saline) to the far northern Peoria-Wilmington fields, assembled in constitutional convention to decide upon the form and aims of the organization of coal miners to replace the shell of an organization left by the Lewis-Walker-Coal operators’ combine.
The opening of the convention on Monday, October 3 was marked by a parade of 3,000 coal miners and their women folk. The demand for clean fighting unionism has reached into elements hitherto dormant or nearly dormant. The spirit of the well-organized women’s auxiliary is distinguished by its militancy.
The convention heard the secretary of the West Virginia Miners’ Union with great attention and evinced their solidarity with that movement there. The applause left no doubt of the position of the Illinois miners on the question of national unity when Shearer, the secretary of the W.Va. Miners Union, raised this point in his speech.
The convention was very jealous of the rights of the membership. As a reaction to the mandatory fashion of the Lewis bureaucracy, this swing to rank and file-ism goes to nearly ridiculous extremes. The spirit, however, is very healthy and very vigorous in its extreme care for democracy.
As yet no Left wing has appeared in the convention. The proposal to hear a speaker from the N.W.U. was turned down. The first day was only taken up with routine business.
The spirit of the delegates can be shown by the fact that many were forced to sleep on the floor of the city hall. All sorts of vehicles were pressed into service to bring these striking miners into Gillespie. The heroism of the underground, illegal Progressive Miner’s of America groups in Franklin County was unconsciously and unwittingly expressed by the delegates from there. To belong to the P.M.A. means the loss of the job, and relief is automatically stopped. To be active is only possible by threat of life.
The president, Pearce, in his opening address gave a review of the month’s activity since the provisional convention. The problem of Franklin County and the absorption of the miners therein into the state-wide strike will be a most important topic.
The Right wing, however, is active and seems organized. Their refusal to allow a speaker of the N.W.U. to speak was marked by demagogy, illogic and the conspicuous waving of the red herring.
The Left Opposition is proposing to the C.P. joint Left wing action.
The above is a brief summary of the first day’s important news items. More later.
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<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>Militant Strikes on West Coast</h1>
<h3>(July 1933)</h3>
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<p class="info"><em>On the Workers’ Front</em>, <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1933/index.htm#tm33_33" target="new">Vol. VI No. 33</a>, 1 July 1933, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>Los Angeles.</strong> – The city of Los Angeles has witnessed, and is witnessing, the beginning of a wave of strikes as the workers are commencing to think that it is as well to starve fighting as to starve working. About six weeks ago, the Cleaners and Dyers struck. This union is affiliated to the American Federation of Labor: A strike of upholsterers is now going on.</p>
<p>The two most important strikes, however, are those of the agricultural workers and of the milliners who are in the Left wing Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union.</p>
<p>The Mexican agricultural workers are a super-exploited section of the Southwestern proletariat. These workers are generally migratory or semi-migratory. Entire families work in the fields, from the little children of six and seven to the adults. The wages paid range from six cents an hour for seven year olds to eight cents an hour for twelve year olds and thirteen cents an hour for adults. Payments for work is highly speculative, as the Mexican laborer, under constant threat of deportation, is very reluctant about going to the legal channels to collect his wages. The ranchers knew this and have been quick to take advantage of the Mexican agricultural proletariat.</p>
<p>Beginning as a spontaneous struggle the strikers in this field have now reached the number of 5,000. Arrests of pickets are a daily occurrence but in spite of this the strikers’ morale is still high.</p>
<p>A curious phenomenon in this strike is the attitude of the Mexican government. Ex-president Calles has sent the strikers $750 and President Rodriguez has sent them $1,000. The explanation for this most probably is that in order to succeed in present-day Mexican politics with the radicalized workers and peasants one has to be “socialist” or “labor” or “agrarian”.<br>
</p>
<h4>Milliners in Militant Strike</h4>
<p class="fst">Another strike now going on is that of the milliners led by the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union. About four or five weeks ago, Golden Bros., the second largest shop in the city attempted to celebrate the “New Deal” in a fitting fashion. They introduced a piece-work, speed-up system. The workers, amongst whom were a nucleus of Left wingers, stopped work without going down into the street and brought the Golden Bros. to their knees.</p>
<p>The victory at Golden Bros. became the talk and inspiration of the millinery workers who are most desperately in need of militant organization. The union is growing daily. It has increased its membership ten-fold at least in the last month, since the triumphant stoppage at Golden Bros.</p>
<p>The millinery trade has a large representation of Communists and sympathizers. The new spirit amongst the workers also had a thawing effect upon the Communists and Left wingers. Long silent, they have once more begin agitating. The next fruits of their agitation has been a strike at Lubes Hat Works, where forty workers walked out demanding the 44-hour week, (they were working 48 hours) division of work, recognition of a shop committee and the cessation of wage cutting.</p>
<p>A picket line was thrown around Lubes. This line was re-enforced with girls from other shops, particularly from Golden Bros, in a demonstration of solidarity. The “Red Squad” did not succeed in intimidating the girls and men on strike. In forty-eight hours, the bosses at Lubes surrendered to all the demands of the workers.</p>
<p>If the millinery market was astir with hope after the first victory at Golden’s, the condition of the workers’ minds after the second brilliant victory can only be left to the imagination. The workers were inspired, but the bosses’ chief emotion was one of fear and alarm.</p>
<p>Mr. Sam Golden is the vice-president of the Millinery Ass’n, the bosses’ organization. In an evidently planned attack, the bosses of the Golden Bros. shop began to lay the ground work of again attempting to introduce the piece-work system. The workers who are nervously alert demanded of the Golden Bros., the giving up of these plans. When the Messrs. Golden refused, the workers walked out to the number of 70 out of 90 employed. Of the 20 remaining, most of them were relatives. This was about a week ago.</p>
<p>The first day of the strike witnessed the arrest of two pickets, comrade Elsie Meyers and Helen Costello. This did not in any way frighten the strikers. Picketing kept right on in spite of the almost unbelievably brutality of the most, despicable collection of human filth which bears the title of “Red Squad”. Thursday night six more pickets were arrested. They are still in jail as charge after charge is being placed against them making bail impossible to secure. The original strikers, however, are out nearly one hundred per cent.</p>
<p>Strike meetings, held under the leadership of the chairman of the strike committee, comrade Sam Meyers, an active Left Oppositionist, are as enthusiastic now as on the lirst day of the strike. The workers are girding themselves for a long time struggle. The bosses arc doing likewise.</p>
<p>The Chamber of Commerce presented Mr. Golden with a $5,000 check to be used in keeping Los Angeles the “white spot” of the country.</p>
<p>However, like a pack of wolves, the other manufacturers are snatching the Golden Bros.’ orders away as deliveries are not made. Mr. Golden’s bank credit is none too high. Victory is possible for the strikers provided the leadership of the union can formulate and apply correct policies.</p>
<p>The need at the moment is a mass picket line. This picktet line should bear the character of a united front. The issue is elementary and appeals to the proletarian instincts of every workers of every type of labor organization. Will the leadership of the union make this appeal to every progressive labor organization or will they retain their old position of “united-front-from-below” only? Or what is still worse, will they give lip service to the idea of a genuine united front and sabotage it in action?</p>
<p>The strike can be won provided a correct policy is followed. The L.O. in Los Angeles will attempt to point out this correct policy inside of the union and in the struggle, itself..</p>
<p>This strike wave particularly in the N.T.W.I.U., the only T.U.U.L. group of anywhere near a <em>bona fide</em> character in Los Angeles, has caught the party unprepared, Long paralyzed by the ultra-Leftism of the C.I., the worker Communists are re-learning the art of leadership in the every day struggles of the workers. Once liberated from the effects of the “Third Period” they are becoming skillful Communist organizers and not parroting sectarians. In the class struggle itself, the correctness of the views of the Left Opposition are being shown. The worker-Communist, after these struggles, will not be the easy prey for a pencil-pushing, “infallible” bureaucrat.</p>
<p>The activities of the L.O. in the agricultural fields, in the Needle Trades workers, in the unemployed organizations are putting the Left Opposition on the map. Our influence is growing rapidly, and while our membership is growing in an extremely slow pace disproportionate’ with the growth of our influence, organizationally too, we can mark some progress.</p>
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C.C.
Militant Strikes on West Coast
(July 1933)
On the Workers’ Front, The Militant, Vol. VI No. 33, 1 July 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Los Angeles. – The city of Los Angeles has witnessed, and is witnessing, the beginning of a wave of strikes as the workers are commencing to think that it is as well to starve fighting as to starve working. About six weeks ago, the Cleaners and Dyers struck. This union is affiliated to the American Federation of Labor: A strike of upholsterers is now going on.
The two most important strikes, however, are those of the agricultural workers and of the milliners who are in the Left wing Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union.
The Mexican agricultural workers are a super-exploited section of the Southwestern proletariat. These workers are generally migratory or semi-migratory. Entire families work in the fields, from the little children of six and seven to the adults. The wages paid range from six cents an hour for seven year olds to eight cents an hour for twelve year olds and thirteen cents an hour for adults. Payments for work is highly speculative, as the Mexican laborer, under constant threat of deportation, is very reluctant about going to the legal channels to collect his wages. The ranchers knew this and have been quick to take advantage of the Mexican agricultural proletariat.
Beginning as a spontaneous struggle the strikers in this field have now reached the number of 5,000. Arrests of pickets are a daily occurrence but in spite of this the strikers’ morale is still high.
A curious phenomenon in this strike is the attitude of the Mexican government. Ex-president Calles has sent the strikers $750 and President Rodriguez has sent them $1,000. The explanation for this most probably is that in order to succeed in present-day Mexican politics with the radicalized workers and peasants one has to be “socialist” or “labor” or “agrarian”.
Milliners in Militant Strike
Another strike now going on is that of the milliners led by the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union. About four or five weeks ago, Golden Bros., the second largest shop in the city attempted to celebrate the “New Deal” in a fitting fashion. They introduced a piece-work, speed-up system. The workers, amongst whom were a nucleus of Left wingers, stopped work without going down into the street and brought the Golden Bros. to their knees.
The victory at Golden Bros. became the talk and inspiration of the millinery workers who are most desperately in need of militant organization. The union is growing daily. It has increased its membership ten-fold at least in the last month, since the triumphant stoppage at Golden Bros.
The millinery trade has a large representation of Communists and sympathizers. The new spirit amongst the workers also had a thawing effect upon the Communists and Left wingers. Long silent, they have once more begin agitating. The next fruits of their agitation has been a strike at Lubes Hat Works, where forty workers walked out demanding the 44-hour week, (they were working 48 hours) division of work, recognition of a shop committee and the cessation of wage cutting.
A picket line was thrown around Lubes. This line was re-enforced with girls from other shops, particularly from Golden Bros, in a demonstration of solidarity. The “Red Squad” did not succeed in intimidating the girls and men on strike. In forty-eight hours, the bosses at Lubes surrendered to all the demands of the workers.
If the millinery market was astir with hope after the first victory at Golden’s, the condition of the workers’ minds after the second brilliant victory can only be left to the imagination. The workers were inspired, but the bosses’ chief emotion was one of fear and alarm.
Mr. Sam Golden is the vice-president of the Millinery Ass’n, the bosses’ organization. In an evidently planned attack, the bosses of the Golden Bros. shop began to lay the ground work of again attempting to introduce the piece-work system. The workers who are nervously alert demanded of the Golden Bros., the giving up of these plans. When the Messrs. Golden refused, the workers walked out to the number of 70 out of 90 employed. Of the 20 remaining, most of them were relatives. This was about a week ago.
The first day of the strike witnessed the arrest of two pickets, comrade Elsie Meyers and Helen Costello. This did not in any way frighten the strikers. Picketing kept right on in spite of the almost unbelievably brutality of the most, despicable collection of human filth which bears the title of “Red Squad”. Thursday night six more pickets were arrested. They are still in jail as charge after charge is being placed against them making bail impossible to secure. The original strikers, however, are out nearly one hundred per cent.
Strike meetings, held under the leadership of the chairman of the strike committee, comrade Sam Meyers, an active Left Oppositionist, are as enthusiastic now as on the lirst day of the strike. The workers are girding themselves for a long time struggle. The bosses arc doing likewise.
The Chamber of Commerce presented Mr. Golden with a $5,000 check to be used in keeping Los Angeles the “white spot” of the country.
However, like a pack of wolves, the other manufacturers are snatching the Golden Bros.’ orders away as deliveries are not made. Mr. Golden’s bank credit is none too high. Victory is possible for the strikers provided the leadership of the union can formulate and apply correct policies.
The need at the moment is a mass picket line. This picktet line should bear the character of a united front. The issue is elementary and appeals to the proletarian instincts of every workers of every type of labor organization. Will the leadership of the union make this appeal to every progressive labor organization or will they retain their old position of “united-front-from-below” only? Or what is still worse, will they give lip service to the idea of a genuine united front and sabotage it in action?
The strike can be won provided a correct policy is followed. The L.O. in Los Angeles will attempt to point out this correct policy inside of the union and in the struggle, itself..
This strike wave particularly in the N.T.W.I.U., the only T.U.U.L. group of anywhere near a bona fide character in Los Angeles, has caught the party unprepared, Long paralyzed by the ultra-Leftism of the C.I., the worker Communists are re-learning the art of leadership in the every day struggles of the workers. Once liberated from the effects of the “Third Period” they are becoming skillful Communist organizers and not parroting sectarians. In the class struggle itself, the correctness of the views of the Left Opposition are being shown. The worker-Communist, after these struggles, will not be the easy prey for a pencil-pushing, “infallible” bureaucrat.
The activities of the L.O. in the agricultural fields, in the Needle Trades workers, in the unemployed organizations are putting the Left Opposition on the map. Our influence is growing rapidly, and while our membership is growing in an extremely slow pace disproportionate’ with the growth of our influence, organizationally too, we can mark some progress.
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<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>On the 18th Anniversary<br>
of Lenin’s Death</h1>
<h3>(17 January 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_03" target="new">Vol 6 No. 3</a>, 17 January 1942, pp. 1 & 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">January 21, 1942 marks the 18th anniversary of the death of V.I. Lenin, who together with Leon Trotsky led the Russian workers and peasants in 1917 in the revolution which established the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Lenin, the architect of the Soviet Union, built well. He laid the foundations of the Soviet Union deep and strong. Neither Hitler’s assaults nor the undermining effects of Stalinist rule have yet been able to destroy Lenin’s work.</p>
<p>Everywhere Hitler triumphed until he turned east against the Soviet Union. In Lenin’s Soviet Union, after months of bitter fighting and retreats, the morale and fighting capacity of the Soviet masses remain so high that Hitler’s troops were brought to a dead halt for the first time, and now are actually retreating.<br>
</p>
<h4>Why Soviet Morale Is High</h4>
<p class="fst">The capitalist journalists and statemen either do not see, or pretend they do not see, the real cause for the enthusiasm and morale of the Soviet masses which is:</p>
<p class="fst">In place of the ownership of the factories and land by a small minority of capitalists and landlords, the Russian Revolution under Lenin’s leadership established the national ownership by the workers and peasants of the means of production.</p>
<p>The Red Army and Soviet masses are fighting for their own revolution and not for a band of parasites. They are fighting for their socialist future.</p>
<p>In the Soviet Union alone Hitler has not found any Fifth Column to carry on his work behind the lines. The Fifth Column was destroyed – mark well the date, ex-Ambassador Davies and you Stalinist pen-prostitutes – in 1917, when under Lenin’s guidance, the government of the capitalists and landlords was replaced by the Soviet government of workers and peasants and when the factories and land were nationalized.</p>
<p>Everywhere else, Hitler’s Fifth Column has found a base among the large industrialists, bankers and land-owners, who prefer the foreign invader, Hitler, to revolution by their own workers.<br>
</p>
<h4>Soviet Union Resists Stalinism</h4>
<p class="fst">Stalinism reduced the Soviets and trade unions to fictions; established a bureaucratic dictatorship over the Soviet Union, employing a vast GPU terror to enforce it; purged the Red army of its most able officers; saddled the country with a privileged bureaucracy, and murdered the Bolshevik Old Guard, Lenin’s comrades-in-arms, on monstrous frame-up charges of being Hitler’s agents.</p>
<p>If Lenin were alive today, he would be accused by Stalin of being a Fifth Columnist and Trotskyist!</p>
<p>Stalinism has aided in the destruction of the international working class movement by its criminal policies and thus isolated the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Yet, Stalin could not destroy the forces of the Russian revolution as long as the main work of Lenin, the abolition of capitalism and the nationalization of the means of production, persist.<br>
</p>
<h4>Lenin Was a Marxist</h4>
<p class="fst">Lenin could give leadership to the Russian revolution as well as the workers’ movement of the world, because he was above all a Marxist. He mastered the ideas of Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism. An important part of Lenin’s work was the defense of Marxism, not only against the capitalists, but also against such “socialists” as Bernstein and Kautsky who wanted to revise Marxism in line with their own opportunist ideas.</p>
<p>Lenin developed Marxism and applied it to the present period of capitalism. Modern capitalism, he showed, must conquer and exploit foreign territories so that the trusts and monopolies can continue to reap profits. Modern monopoly capitalism brings the millions of Asia, Africa and South and Central America within its arena of exploitation. Using Marxism, Lenin analyzed present day world economics in his book on Imperialism.</p>
<p>Lenin showed the need for close unity of the labor and socialist movement of the advanced countries with the masses of the colonies and semicolonies. Lenin was an internationalist in the true sense of the word.<br>
</p>
<h4>Lenin During World War I</h4>
<p class="fst">When the first world war broke out, Lenin was one of the few socialist leaders who did not betray international socialism. Other “socialist” leaders became cabinet members in capitalist governments; Lenin told the truth. He showed the aim of the war was to determine which group of capitalists would dominate the earth and reap profits from the labor of the toilers of the world. He was merciless in his exposure of those “socialists” who had sold themselves to the capitalists.</p>
<p>These were the most difficult years in Lenin’s life. To speak to five or six workers was a grand occasion for him. Yet Lenin remained confident that the workers would rally to international socialism.</p>
<p>Above all, Lenin emphasized the importance of the party to the toilers in their struggle for emancipation. The party is the vanguard, the most far-seeing and self-sacrificing section of the class, which organizes itself into a self-disciplined group to carry on Marxist education and organization for the transition to socialism. Lenin created the Bolshevik Party of Russia which led the Russian revolution in 1917; two years later, in 1919, he formed the world party of Bolshevism, the Third International.</p>
<h4>Fourth International, SWP, Leninists of Today</h4>
<p class="fst">The Trotskyists, the Fourth International abroad and the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, are the Leninists of today.</p>
<p>Just as Lenin struggled against those who would falsify and emasculate the ideas of Marx, so the Trotskyists battle against the Stalinists who falsify and emasculate the ideas of Lenin.</p>
<p>Just as Lenin struggled against the “socialpatriots” for working class internationalism during World War I, so the Trotskyists today struggle against the Stalinists for working class internationalism during World War II.</p>
<p>Just as Lenin struggled against the “yellow socialists” who betrayed the interests of the workers in the first World War, so the Trotskyists struggle against the Stalinists who betray the interests of the workers in the second World War.</p>
<p>As Lenin fought for socialism, so now the Trotskyists fight for a socialist world against the Stalinists and all who say that “socialism is not on the order of the day.”</p>
<p>The capitalist system had matured for a change to socialism in Lenin’s life time; it had reached and it now remains in a stage of decay and can produce only unemployment, crisis, fascism and war.</p>
<p>The way to honor Lenin’s memory today is to continue the struggle, against capitalism to which he devoted his entire life.</p>
<p>Stalinism and Leninism are worlds apart.</p>
<p>The spirit, ideas and work of Lenin live in the Trotskyist movement.</p>
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C. Charles
On the 18th Anniversary
of Lenin’s Death
(17 January 1942)
From The Militant, Vol 6 No. 3, 17 January 1942, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
January 21, 1942 marks the 18th anniversary of the death of V.I. Lenin, who together with Leon Trotsky led the Russian workers and peasants in 1917 in the revolution which established the Soviet Union.
Lenin, the architect of the Soviet Union, built well. He laid the foundations of the Soviet Union deep and strong. Neither Hitler’s assaults nor the undermining effects of Stalinist rule have yet been able to destroy Lenin’s work.
Everywhere Hitler triumphed until he turned east against the Soviet Union. In Lenin’s Soviet Union, after months of bitter fighting and retreats, the morale and fighting capacity of the Soviet masses remain so high that Hitler’s troops were brought to a dead halt for the first time, and now are actually retreating.
Why Soviet Morale Is High
The capitalist journalists and statemen either do not see, or pretend they do not see, the real cause for the enthusiasm and morale of the Soviet masses which is:
In place of the ownership of the factories and land by a small minority of capitalists and landlords, the Russian Revolution under Lenin’s leadership established the national ownership by the workers and peasants of the means of production.
The Red Army and Soviet masses are fighting for their own revolution and not for a band of parasites. They are fighting for their socialist future.
In the Soviet Union alone Hitler has not found any Fifth Column to carry on his work behind the lines. The Fifth Column was destroyed – mark well the date, ex-Ambassador Davies and you Stalinist pen-prostitutes – in 1917, when under Lenin’s guidance, the government of the capitalists and landlords was replaced by the Soviet government of workers and peasants and when the factories and land were nationalized.
Everywhere else, Hitler’s Fifth Column has found a base among the large industrialists, bankers and land-owners, who prefer the foreign invader, Hitler, to revolution by their own workers.
Soviet Union Resists Stalinism
Stalinism reduced the Soviets and trade unions to fictions; established a bureaucratic dictatorship over the Soviet Union, employing a vast GPU terror to enforce it; purged the Red army of its most able officers; saddled the country with a privileged bureaucracy, and murdered the Bolshevik Old Guard, Lenin’s comrades-in-arms, on monstrous frame-up charges of being Hitler’s agents.
If Lenin were alive today, he would be accused by Stalin of being a Fifth Columnist and Trotskyist!
Stalinism has aided in the destruction of the international working class movement by its criminal policies and thus isolated the Soviet Union.
Yet, Stalin could not destroy the forces of the Russian revolution as long as the main work of Lenin, the abolition of capitalism and the nationalization of the means of production, persist.
Lenin Was a Marxist
Lenin could give leadership to the Russian revolution as well as the workers’ movement of the world, because he was above all a Marxist. He mastered the ideas of Karl Marx, the founder of scientific socialism. An important part of Lenin’s work was the defense of Marxism, not only against the capitalists, but also against such “socialists” as Bernstein and Kautsky who wanted to revise Marxism in line with their own opportunist ideas.
Lenin developed Marxism and applied it to the present period of capitalism. Modern capitalism, he showed, must conquer and exploit foreign territories so that the trusts and monopolies can continue to reap profits. Modern monopoly capitalism brings the millions of Asia, Africa and South and Central America within its arena of exploitation. Using Marxism, Lenin analyzed present day world economics in his book on Imperialism.
Lenin showed the need for close unity of the labor and socialist movement of the advanced countries with the masses of the colonies and semicolonies. Lenin was an internationalist in the true sense of the word.
Lenin During World War I
When the first world war broke out, Lenin was one of the few socialist leaders who did not betray international socialism. Other “socialist” leaders became cabinet members in capitalist governments; Lenin told the truth. He showed the aim of the war was to determine which group of capitalists would dominate the earth and reap profits from the labor of the toilers of the world. He was merciless in his exposure of those “socialists” who had sold themselves to the capitalists.
These were the most difficult years in Lenin’s life. To speak to five or six workers was a grand occasion for him. Yet Lenin remained confident that the workers would rally to international socialism.
Above all, Lenin emphasized the importance of the party to the toilers in their struggle for emancipation. The party is the vanguard, the most far-seeing and self-sacrificing section of the class, which organizes itself into a self-disciplined group to carry on Marxist education and organization for the transition to socialism. Lenin created the Bolshevik Party of Russia which led the Russian revolution in 1917; two years later, in 1919, he formed the world party of Bolshevism, the Third International.
Fourth International, SWP, Leninists of Today
The Trotskyists, the Fourth International abroad and the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, are the Leninists of today.
Just as Lenin struggled against those who would falsify and emasculate the ideas of Marx, so the Trotskyists battle against the Stalinists who falsify and emasculate the ideas of Lenin.
Just as Lenin struggled against the “socialpatriots” for working class internationalism during World War I, so the Trotskyists today struggle against the Stalinists for working class internationalism during World War II.
Just as Lenin struggled against the “yellow socialists” who betrayed the interests of the workers in the first World War, so the Trotskyists struggle against the Stalinists who betray the interests of the workers in the second World War.
As Lenin fought for socialism, so now the Trotskyists fight for a socialist world against the Stalinists and all who say that “socialism is not on the order of the day.”
The capitalist system had matured for a change to socialism in Lenin’s life time; it had reached and it now remains in a stage of decay and can produce only unemployment, crisis, fascism and war.
The way to honor Lenin’s memory today is to continue the struggle, against capitalism to which he devoted his entire life.
Stalinism and Leninism are worlds apart.
The spirit, ideas and work of Lenin live in the Trotskyist movement.
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<h2>Charles Curtiss</h2>
<h1>The Communist Fight against Imperialist War</h1>
<h3>(January 1930)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1930/index.htm#tm30_03" target="new">Vol. 3 No. 3, 18 January 18</a>, p. 4.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Talk! talk! talk! Peace! Naval reduction! Disarmament! Abolition of War! Geneva Conferences! London Conferences! League of Nations! Kellogg Pact – and while all this hypocritical cant is filling the air to the confusion of many workers, arsenals are being filled, gases compounded, troops drilled, battleships built, industries organized, all for the next August 1, 1930.</p>
<p>Young workers and farmers, you who do the fighting and dying for the greater glory (and profit) of your capitalist masters, engrave this deeply into your consciousness: Twelve years after “the last war, the war to end wars”, the world is bristling with armaments even more so than the week before Sarejevo in July 1914. The black clouds have gathered – a tiny spark and the storm of death will have broken.</p>
<p>The Role of the Socialists Loudest in their vehemence, most touching in their oratory, holding the attention of millions of workers are the bellwethers for capitalism, the leadership of the international social democracy and the pacifists, trying to convince the workers of the possibility of disarmament, of the abolition of war under capitalism, meanwhile, with might and main aiding their imperialist in arming, such as MacDonald, Mueller and Paul Boncour.</p>
<p>The Communists are blunt: under capitalism war is inevitable. If you, fellow-worker, desire to abolish war, we say: Abolish capitalism with all its misery and replace it with the proletarian dictatorship – with a system of production for use and not for profit – all over the world.</p>
<p>Some “scientists” say, in the spirit of Bismarck, that war is nature’s way of removing the unfit, the way “the law of the survival of the fittest” operates nowadays. Nonsense! It is precisely those who are sickly and weak and crippled and old who stay at home to survive and deteriorate the race, while the strong, the healthy and the young, without scar or blemish, who lay down their lives as blood sacrifices to Mammon on the altar of war.</p>
<p>So, as the chief sufferers, those most endangered, the young workers traditionally lead the fight against capitalist war. But how? Whose method shall be used?</p>
<p>War calls for a radical cure, for a revolutionary surgeon’s knife to exterminate class society, and not a reformist salve to heal the ulcer and retain the body of capitalism. So those who would apply the salve, the leadership of the Socialist Parties and Socialist Youth Leagues are excluded as capable of fighting war.<br>
</p>
<h4>From Bosses’ War to Class War</h4>
<p class="fst">Essentially the problem is how to turn the imperialist war into a war of the working class against the master class. The reformists do not desire whatsoever to turn the war against capitalism. The task remains for the Communists.</p>
<p>But the days when Leninist policy dominated the Communist movement are long past. Today, within the Communist movement we have three currents, the Right, the Center and the Left.</p>
<p>Based theoretically on the monstrosity of “socialism in one country”, which it shares with the Centrists, the Rights have taken the next step down the hill to reform the next step following “socialism in one country”. They have declared their “right” to “national” Communist Parties” (a contradiction in terms as ridiculous as a square circle), negating the very principles of internationalism which is fundamental in our movement and especially in the fight against war. The Right wing “Communist” is checked off as incapable. The Centrists waver between the Right and Left, and anyone who hesitates in the class struggle is lost. A bold, determined policy is needed. They lag behind the masses or overtake and jump far ahead of them into adventurism and lag behind again.</p>
<p>The Left wing under the leadership of Trotsky and Rakovsky and many other fighters against the last war stands foursquare on an International Leninist platform. It is the embodiment of internationalism, of the fight against war and capitalism.</p>
<p>With the old battle-cries, first used by Lenin, Liebknecht and Trotsky, with which the masses overthrew the czar and Russian imperialism, and shook many a haughty empire, we shall also turn the next imperialist war into a victorious class war of the proletariat. The young workers must be in the front ranks.</p>
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Charles Curtiss
The Communist Fight against Imperialist War
(January 1930)
From The Militant, Vol. 3 No. 3, 18 January 18, p. 4.
Marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Talk! talk! talk! Peace! Naval reduction! Disarmament! Abolition of War! Geneva Conferences! London Conferences! League of Nations! Kellogg Pact – and while all this hypocritical cant is filling the air to the confusion of many workers, arsenals are being filled, gases compounded, troops drilled, battleships built, industries organized, all for the next August 1, 1930.
Young workers and farmers, you who do the fighting and dying for the greater glory (and profit) of your capitalist masters, engrave this deeply into your consciousness: Twelve years after “the last war, the war to end wars”, the world is bristling with armaments even more so than the week before Sarejevo in July 1914. The black clouds have gathered – a tiny spark and the storm of death will have broken.
The Role of the Socialists Loudest in their vehemence, most touching in their oratory, holding the attention of millions of workers are the bellwethers for capitalism, the leadership of the international social democracy and the pacifists, trying to convince the workers of the possibility of disarmament, of the abolition of war under capitalism, meanwhile, with might and main aiding their imperialist in arming, such as MacDonald, Mueller and Paul Boncour.
The Communists are blunt: under capitalism war is inevitable. If you, fellow-worker, desire to abolish war, we say: Abolish capitalism with all its misery and replace it with the proletarian dictatorship – with a system of production for use and not for profit – all over the world.
Some “scientists” say, in the spirit of Bismarck, that war is nature’s way of removing the unfit, the way “the law of the survival of the fittest” operates nowadays. Nonsense! It is precisely those who are sickly and weak and crippled and old who stay at home to survive and deteriorate the race, while the strong, the healthy and the young, without scar or blemish, who lay down their lives as blood sacrifices to Mammon on the altar of war.
So, as the chief sufferers, those most endangered, the young workers traditionally lead the fight against capitalist war. But how? Whose method shall be used?
War calls for a radical cure, for a revolutionary surgeon’s knife to exterminate class society, and not a reformist salve to heal the ulcer and retain the body of capitalism. So those who would apply the salve, the leadership of the Socialist Parties and Socialist Youth Leagues are excluded as capable of fighting war.
From Bosses’ War to Class War
Essentially the problem is how to turn the imperialist war into a war of the working class against the master class. The reformists do not desire whatsoever to turn the war against capitalism. The task remains for the Communists.
But the days when Leninist policy dominated the Communist movement are long past. Today, within the Communist movement we have three currents, the Right, the Center and the Left.
Based theoretically on the monstrosity of “socialism in one country”, which it shares with the Centrists, the Rights have taken the next step down the hill to reform the next step following “socialism in one country”. They have declared their “right” to “national” Communist Parties” (a contradiction in terms as ridiculous as a square circle), negating the very principles of internationalism which is fundamental in our movement and especially in the fight against war. The Right wing “Communist” is checked off as incapable. The Centrists waver between the Right and Left, and anyone who hesitates in the class struggle is lost. A bold, determined policy is needed. They lag behind the masses or overtake and jump far ahead of them into adventurism and lag behind again.
The Left wing under the leadership of Trotsky and Rakovsky and many other fighters against the last war stands foursquare on an International Leninist platform. It is the embodiment of internationalism, of the fight against war and capitalism.
With the old battle-cries, first used by Lenin, Liebknecht and Trotsky, with which the masses overthrew the czar and Russian imperialism, and shook many a haughty empire, we shall also turn the next imperialist war into a victorious class war of the proletariat. The young workers must be in the front ranks.
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<h4><em>Fourth International</em>, November 1940</h4>
<p> </p>
<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>America’s Productive Capacity</h1>
<p> </p>
<p class="from">From <em>Fourth International</em>, <a href="../../index.htm#fi40_11" target="new">Vol. I No. 6</a>, November 1940, p. 175.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for <em>ETOL</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="fst"><strong>Productivity, Wages and National Income</strong><br>
by Spurgeon Bell<br>
<em>The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1940; pp.344, including index.</em></p>
<p class="fst">Between the years 1923–1924 and 1936–1937 productivity, the power of a unit of labor to achieve a desired result, increased in manufacturing by 50%; in mining by 89%; in railroads by 43% and in electric light and power by 111%. We use the average of the year 1936–1939 because this marks the high point in industrial production achieved since the crash, although the present year (1940) promises to equal and possibly surpass it. The above four industries account for 75% of the wage workers in the country, and without a doubt similar rates of increase in productivity hold true for the other industries.</p>
<p>Has the greatly increased productivity that has marked these fifteen years resulted in economic benefit to the masses? asks Mr. Bell in his book.</p>
<p>First, has this greatly strengthened power of man over nature meant an increased output? In 1937, the high year since 1929, according to information given by the Federal Reserve Board, total industrial production reached 109% of the average of 1923–25. In manufacturing production was 124%, in railroading 112%, in electric light and power, the only really expanding industry, it reached 238%. Thus realized production was far below what the potential productivity and increased labor supply makes possible. In the meantime the population increased by about 115%.</p>
<p>How did wages fare in this period? In the words of Mr. Bell: “Annual earnings of workers attached to industry have shown a very substantial decline. In terms of money…over 30% and even with allowances for a change in the cost of living it was something like 20%” (computed in real wages – the amount of goods and services monetary wages can buy). In this period, hourly wages increased roughly 20% in monetary terms and 45% in buying power; weekly wages were reduced 10% in money and increased 10% in buying power.</p>
<p>The real gain to the working class in this period is in shorter hours for the employed workers. Working 20% less time, the employed worker was able to buy as much as he formerly did. However, when one considers that very few workers are employed throughout the year, and when one considers the class as a whole, both employed and unemployed, the decrease in real and monetary wages has been, as pointed out, drastic.</p>
<p>The salaried employee in the manufacturing, railroad and electric light and power industries, received $34 less in his annual pay envelop. This would mean a real increase in wages of about 13.6% for each employee, working substantially fewer hours. However, and this is a point that Mr. Bell does not mention, the concept “salaried employee” is a very misleading one: it runs from the corporation official earning $100,000; $50,000; $25,000 or $10,000 a year to the typist who draws $14 or $16 a week. These high “salaries” are merely a form of disguised profits. The improvement in the position of the salaried employee is exaggerated, to speak conservatively.</p>
<p>A decrease of 6% was registered in this period in the income of the capitalist class, from $5,070 millions in 1923–24 to $4,768 millions in 1936–37; in the rate of return to capital the figures are 6.37% and 5.55%, a decrease of 13%. This does not take into consideration hidden profits.</p>
<p>Did prices fall proportionately to the increase in the rate of productivity? In manufacturing prices fell by 33%, in railroads by 20% and in electric light and power by 40%. Or by another method of computation, in manufacturing the unit wage cost fell to 76 while wholesale prices fell to 83.7; in the railroad industry the unit wage cost fell to 78.6 while the unit price on freight fell to 85.9 and the passenger unit price fell to 60.9, thanks to bus competition; in mining the unit wage cost fell to 56.1 while the wholesale price was 81.4; and in electric light and power, the unit wage and salary cost sank to 62.9 while revenue per kilowatt hour was 76.6. These are two different methods, and space does not allow us to go into the basis of the difference in result.</p>
<p>Prices are substantially above the level that increased productivity would allow. The old motive force for a lowering of price with a reduction in the amount of labor involved in producing a commodity is for long periods non-operative in this day of concentration and monopolization of industry.</p>
<p>Capitalist economists are smugly proud of the hourly wage increase from 50.3 cents in 1933 to 58.3 cents in 1934, 62.2 cents in 1935 and up to 71 cents in 1938.</p>
<p>Yet there was no scarcity in labor due to boom conditions with a resultant increase in the price of labor. Labor was not scarce – the opposite is true. Production did increase it is true but even so there was a large proportion (26%) of the labor supply unoccupied. In the prosperous period from 1923 to 1929, with a far less supply of labor, money wages went up only 5.7 cents an hour and real wages 6.8 cents an hour. Yet in 1933-38 real and monetary wages increased tremendously. Why this difference? The answer is not to be found in the workings of the capitalist system, but in the intervention in these workings of the labor movement. The answer to the question, why did hourly wages go up, is not a benevolent Washington government, but the growth and militancy of the trade union movement. This was absent in the previous period.</p>
<p>Mr. Bell believes in the capitalist system. He does not see that capitalism is a barrier to economic progress not only because of the large share of the income taken by the parasitic ruling class <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a>, but also because the present social system stands in the way of even an approach to the full utilization of the productive potentialities its laboratories and research institutes have discovered.</p>
<p>Capitalism has thrown the country into an economic crisis that has resulted in the loss between 1929 and 1938 of 200 billion dollars. Just as it must undergo periodic crises to keep functioning so it must undergo periodic wars. It keeps the consuming power of the masses of the people down by low wages and high prices. Capitalism has shown the world how to produce. That has been its great historic function. Now it must give way to a new society that will be able to use this productive potentiality.</p>
<p>The forces of production have come in conflict with the property relations of society. This conflict can be “reconciled” temporarily on the Procrustian bed of fascism, or can be really solved by socialism, which will end private ownership of the means of production and thereby give their development an enormous impetus.</p>
<p>For the facts and figures contained in this book we recommend it. It is an excellent case book for the study of Capital – which I imagine was furthest from the writer’s mind when he wrote it.</p>
<p class="linkback"> <br>
<big><a href="#top"><strong>Top of page</strong></a></big><br>
</p>
<h3>Footnote</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> The following figures give the proportion of the income from each industry appropriated by the capitalist class in 1936-37:</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Manufacturing</p>
</td>
<td rowspan="3">
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">24.7</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Railroads</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">22.4</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Electric light and power</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">64.1</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<hr>
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Fourth International, November 1940
C. Charles
America’s Productive Capacity
From Fourth International, Vol. I No. 6, November 1940, p. 175.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Productivity, Wages and National Income
by Spurgeon Bell
The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1940; pp.344, including index.
Between the years 1923–1924 and 1936–1937 productivity, the power of a unit of labor to achieve a desired result, increased in manufacturing by 50%; in mining by 89%; in railroads by 43% and in electric light and power by 111%. We use the average of the year 1936–1939 because this marks the high point in industrial production achieved since the crash, although the present year (1940) promises to equal and possibly surpass it. The above four industries account for 75% of the wage workers in the country, and without a doubt similar rates of increase in productivity hold true for the other industries.
Has the greatly increased productivity that has marked these fifteen years resulted in economic benefit to the masses? asks Mr. Bell in his book.
First, has this greatly strengthened power of man over nature meant an increased output? In 1937, the high year since 1929, according to information given by the Federal Reserve Board, total industrial production reached 109% of the average of 1923–25. In manufacturing production was 124%, in railroading 112%, in electric light and power, the only really expanding industry, it reached 238%. Thus realized production was far below what the potential productivity and increased labor supply makes possible. In the meantime the population increased by about 115%.
How did wages fare in this period? In the words of Mr. Bell: “Annual earnings of workers attached to industry have shown a very substantial decline. In terms of money…over 30% and even with allowances for a change in the cost of living it was something like 20%” (computed in real wages – the amount of goods and services monetary wages can buy). In this period, hourly wages increased roughly 20% in monetary terms and 45% in buying power; weekly wages were reduced 10% in money and increased 10% in buying power.
The real gain to the working class in this period is in shorter hours for the employed workers. Working 20% less time, the employed worker was able to buy as much as he formerly did. However, when one considers that very few workers are employed throughout the year, and when one considers the class as a whole, both employed and unemployed, the decrease in real and monetary wages has been, as pointed out, drastic.
The salaried employee in the manufacturing, railroad and electric light and power industries, received $34 less in his annual pay envelop. This would mean a real increase in wages of about 13.6% for each employee, working substantially fewer hours. However, and this is a point that Mr. Bell does not mention, the concept “salaried employee” is a very misleading one: it runs from the corporation official earning $100,000; $50,000; $25,000 or $10,000 a year to the typist who draws $14 or $16 a week. These high “salaries” are merely a form of disguised profits. The improvement in the position of the salaried employee is exaggerated, to speak conservatively.
A decrease of 6% was registered in this period in the income of the capitalist class, from $5,070 millions in 1923–24 to $4,768 millions in 1936–37; in the rate of return to capital the figures are 6.37% and 5.55%, a decrease of 13%. This does not take into consideration hidden profits.
Did prices fall proportionately to the increase in the rate of productivity? In manufacturing prices fell by 33%, in railroads by 20% and in electric light and power by 40%. Or by another method of computation, in manufacturing the unit wage cost fell to 76 while wholesale prices fell to 83.7; in the railroad industry the unit wage cost fell to 78.6 while the unit price on freight fell to 85.9 and the passenger unit price fell to 60.9, thanks to bus competition; in mining the unit wage cost fell to 56.1 while the wholesale price was 81.4; and in electric light and power, the unit wage and salary cost sank to 62.9 while revenue per kilowatt hour was 76.6. These are two different methods, and space does not allow us to go into the basis of the difference in result.
Prices are substantially above the level that increased productivity would allow. The old motive force for a lowering of price with a reduction in the amount of labor involved in producing a commodity is for long periods non-operative in this day of concentration and monopolization of industry.
Capitalist economists are smugly proud of the hourly wage increase from 50.3 cents in 1933 to 58.3 cents in 1934, 62.2 cents in 1935 and up to 71 cents in 1938.
Yet there was no scarcity in labor due to boom conditions with a resultant increase in the price of labor. Labor was not scarce – the opposite is true. Production did increase it is true but even so there was a large proportion (26%) of the labor supply unoccupied. In the prosperous period from 1923 to 1929, with a far less supply of labor, money wages went up only 5.7 cents an hour and real wages 6.8 cents an hour. Yet in 1933-38 real and monetary wages increased tremendously. Why this difference? The answer is not to be found in the workings of the capitalist system, but in the intervention in these workings of the labor movement. The answer to the question, why did hourly wages go up, is not a benevolent Washington government, but the growth and militancy of the trade union movement. This was absent in the previous period.
Mr. Bell believes in the capitalist system. He does not see that capitalism is a barrier to economic progress not only because of the large share of the income taken by the parasitic ruling class [1], but also because the present social system stands in the way of even an approach to the full utilization of the productive potentialities its laboratories and research institutes have discovered.
Capitalism has thrown the country into an economic crisis that has resulted in the loss between 1929 and 1938 of 200 billion dollars. Just as it must undergo periodic crises to keep functioning so it must undergo periodic wars. It keeps the consuming power of the masses of the people down by low wages and high prices. Capitalism has shown the world how to produce. That has been its great historic function. Now it must give way to a new society that will be able to use this productive potentiality.
The forces of production have come in conflict with the property relations of society. This conflict can be “reconciled” temporarily on the Procrustian bed of fascism, or can be really solved by socialism, which will end private ownership of the means of production and thereby give their development an enormous impetus.
For the facts and figures contained in this book we recommend it. It is an excellent case book for the study of Capital – which I imagine was furthest from the writer’s mind when he wrote it.
Top of page
Footnote
1. The following figures give the proportion of the income from each industry appropriated by the capitalist class in 1936-37:
Manufacturing
24.7
Railroads
22.4
Electric light and power
64.1
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<h2>C.</h2>
<h1>Two Philly Oppositionists Held for Sedition</h1>
<h3>(March 1931)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1931/index.htm#tm31_05" target="new">Vol. IV No. 5</a>, 1 March 1931, p. 1.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Two of our comrades, members of the Philadelphia branch of the Communist League of America (Opposition) have been arrested on charges of sedition and are being held under $1,000 bail for distributing leaflets in front of a “shelter for homeless men” and for calling on the employed and unemployed workers to demonstrate on International Unemployment Day at the mass meeting of the unemployed on City Hall Plaza.</p>
<p>Comrades Goodman and Morgenstern were distributing our unemployment leaflet. The passage in the leaflet (<em>The Open Letter to the Central Committee of the party</em>) for which they were indicted and which the District Attorney termed seditious, reads as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“There can be no solution to the unemployment problem under capitalism. The solution can be found only in the Socialist revolution and, finally, on a world scale.”</p>
<p class="fst">For calling upon the workers to <em>fight</em> against unemployment and for the six hour day, against capitalist rationalization and for unemployment insurance paid by the bosses and their government, for long term credits to the Soviet Union (where unemployment does not exist) in order to gain employment for more American workers and at the same time to help put through the Five Year Plan and lastly, for pointing out to the workers that unemployment can be abolished only by the world revolution, our two comrades have been snatched up by capitalist class justice. Together with scores and hundreds of other courageous working class militants they are threatened with imprisonment and with isolation from their class brothers in struggle.</p>
<p>Under the outrageous Flynn Sedition Law of the state of Pennsylvania the Communist fighters Peltz, Holmes, Resetar, Muselin and Zima have already been incarcerated, while Bill Lawrence, Tess Ryder and Anna Lynn are awaiting sentence and Leon Goodman and Berman Morgenstern are up for trial. The ravages of capitalist justice must not be allowed to go on unhampered. The entire revolutionary working class of America must be aroused to action in defense of their valiant pioneers. Comrades Goodman and Morgenstern, as well as the other arrested Communists need the help of the united forces of the whole communist and Left wing movement in this country, in the fight for their freedom. Thus far, they have been furnished only with an attorney by the Civil Liberties Union. The local organization of the I.L.D. has been appealed to for help, and we are awaiting their response.</p>
<p>On Sunday, March 1, an Anti-Sedition Conference has been called by the I.L.D. in Philadelphia, to organize the struggle against the Flynn Sedition Law as part of the struggle against capitalist class justice all over the country. This Anti-Sedition Conference must be made into a real, united front conference in defense of <em>all</em> class war prisoners, into a real fighting weapon of the working class.</p>
<p>In these times of deep capitalist crisis and growing workers’ unrest, the savage onslaught of the bosses and their government against the liberties and rights of the workers, as well as against their living standards, can be repulsed only by the combined efforts of the entire working class, by the fighting unity of its revolutionary vanguard. Only a broad united front of struggle, composed of all elements fighting capitalist justice on a revolutionary class basis can save Goodman and Morgenstern, Peltz, Holmes, Lawrence, Ryder and Lynn and the others from the fangs of the bosses and their government.</p>
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C.
Two Philly Oppositionists Held for Sedition
(March 1931)
From The Militant, Vol. IV No. 5, 1 March 1931, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Two of our comrades, members of the Philadelphia branch of the Communist League of America (Opposition) have been arrested on charges of sedition and are being held under $1,000 bail for distributing leaflets in front of a “shelter for homeless men” and for calling on the employed and unemployed workers to demonstrate on International Unemployment Day at the mass meeting of the unemployed on City Hall Plaza.
Comrades Goodman and Morgenstern were distributing our unemployment leaflet. The passage in the leaflet (The Open Letter to the Central Committee of the party) for which they were indicted and which the District Attorney termed seditious, reads as follows:
“There can be no solution to the unemployment problem under capitalism. The solution can be found only in the Socialist revolution and, finally, on a world scale.”
For calling upon the workers to fight against unemployment and for the six hour day, against capitalist rationalization and for unemployment insurance paid by the bosses and their government, for long term credits to the Soviet Union (where unemployment does not exist) in order to gain employment for more American workers and at the same time to help put through the Five Year Plan and lastly, for pointing out to the workers that unemployment can be abolished only by the world revolution, our two comrades have been snatched up by capitalist class justice. Together with scores and hundreds of other courageous working class militants they are threatened with imprisonment and with isolation from their class brothers in struggle.
Under the outrageous Flynn Sedition Law of the state of Pennsylvania the Communist fighters Peltz, Holmes, Resetar, Muselin and Zima have already been incarcerated, while Bill Lawrence, Tess Ryder and Anna Lynn are awaiting sentence and Leon Goodman and Berman Morgenstern are up for trial. The ravages of capitalist justice must not be allowed to go on unhampered. The entire revolutionary working class of America must be aroused to action in defense of their valiant pioneers. Comrades Goodman and Morgenstern, as well as the other arrested Communists need the help of the united forces of the whole communist and Left wing movement in this country, in the fight for their freedom. Thus far, they have been furnished only with an attorney by the Civil Liberties Union. The local organization of the I.L.D. has been appealed to for help, and we are awaiting their response.
On Sunday, March 1, an Anti-Sedition Conference has been called by the I.L.D. in Philadelphia, to organize the struggle against the Flynn Sedition Law as part of the struggle against capitalist class justice all over the country. This Anti-Sedition Conference must be made into a real, united front conference in defense of all class war prisoners, into a real fighting weapon of the working class.
In these times of deep capitalist crisis and growing workers’ unrest, the savage onslaught of the bosses and their government against the liberties and rights of the workers, as well as against their living standards, can be repulsed only by the combined efforts of the entire working class, by the fighting unity of its revolutionary vanguard. Only a broad united front of struggle, composed of all elements fighting capitalist justice on a revolutionary class basis can save Goodman and Morgenstern, Peltz, Holmes, Lawrence, Ryder and Lynn and the others from the fangs of the bosses and their government.
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<h2>Charles Curtiss</h2>
<h1>Father Manuel and Comrade Epstein</h1>
<h3>(February 1931)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1931/index.htm#tm31_03" target="new">Vol. IV No. 3</a>, 1 February 1931, p. 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h5>SAN ANTONE<br>
THIS IS THE MAN<br>
EL PADRE MANUEL<br>
GOD IS WITH US<br>
CROSSES, ROSARIES, MEDALLIONS,<br>
HOLY PICTURES</h5>
<h5>HARRY EPSTEIN<br>
423 Delmar St.,<br>
San Antonio, Texas</h5>
<p class="fst">This legend, illustrated by a picture of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child, encircled by a host of angels, is inscribed on a calendar hanging from the wall of many Mexican workers’ homes in San Antonio.</p>
<p>God’s sun has rarely shone on so pious a creature as Father Manuel. A perfervid proselyte, a man of piety and devotion. A true defender of the catholic faith.</p>
<p>“I went to six o’clock mass this morning,” he reproaches his customers, “why were you missing?”</p>
<p>“Verily, God must be in him”, murmurs every good catholic, leaving him with a benediction.</p>
<p>The good people of the Catholic fold in San Antonia know him as Father Manuel when he changed his personality by a draught of the magic chemical. And even so is Father Manuel. At the stroke of six, the holy father is wondrously transubstantiated, out of the body of Christ, and into the person of Comrade Epstein, leader of the San Antonio branch of the Communist Party of the United States, section of the Communist International! Hard to believe? But it is nevertheless true.</p>
<p>Mr. Hyde, in his transformation, would trample children to death in his road rage. Comrade Epstein tramples underfoot the Trotskyist traitors. The welkin rings with his denunciation of these counter-revolutionists! How he demands their blood – nothing less! Just as he affirms his faith in Pius XI up to six o’clock, he affirms his faith in Stalin I after six. He shuns the sullying contact of the infidel before six, and of the Negro and Mexican “ignorant workers” after six. The sacred fire burns within him at all time.</p>
<p>At six in the morning, he is again transubstantiated. Comrade Epstein once more becomes Father Manuel. Again, like a humble friar, he wends his way from door to door, urging the benighted to greater piety and selling them his crosses, rosaries, medallions and holy pictures. Of such is the Kingdom of God. This is the resurrection and the faith.</p>
<p>This is a true picture of a party member in San Antonio. We invite the <strong>Daily Worker</strong> to challenge it. The rest of the party membership there is not much better. They make an economic living by fleecing the Negro and the Mexican, and save their political soul by shrill protests of loyalty to the latest party “line”. It goes without saying that they consider Trotsky worse than wrong. How long will this rubbish be tolerated in the party?</p>
<h4>* * * *</h4>
<p class="fst">After this was written, the <strong>Daily Worker</strong> published a statement announcing the expulsion of Epstein. The other Epsteins of varying shades remain. It is barely necessary to add that the statement also makes an attack on the “Trotskyists” and on comrade Curtiss in particular. The attacks on the Opposition are not new; they are an unoriginal repetition of Father Manuel’s political philosophy. The attack on comrade Curtiss is, of course, a typical Stalinist “payment” to the Opposition for the crime of having pointed out in time an open sore in the movement which the Stalinists themselves only discover long afterwards.</p>
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Charles Curtiss
Father Manuel and Comrade Epstein
(February 1931)
From The Militant, Vol. IV No. 3, 1 February 1931, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
SAN ANTONE
THIS IS THE MAN
EL PADRE MANUEL
GOD IS WITH US
CROSSES, ROSARIES, MEDALLIONS,
HOLY PICTURES
HARRY EPSTEIN
423 Delmar St.,
San Antonio, Texas
This legend, illustrated by a picture of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child, encircled by a host of angels, is inscribed on a calendar hanging from the wall of many Mexican workers’ homes in San Antonio.
God’s sun has rarely shone on so pious a creature as Father Manuel. A perfervid proselyte, a man of piety and devotion. A true defender of the catholic faith.
“I went to six o’clock mass this morning,” he reproaches his customers, “why were you missing?”
“Verily, God must be in him”, murmurs every good catholic, leaving him with a benediction.
The good people of the Catholic fold in San Antonia know him as Father Manuel when he changed his personality by a draught of the magic chemical. And even so is Father Manuel. At the stroke of six, the holy father is wondrously transubstantiated, out of the body of Christ, and into the person of Comrade Epstein, leader of the San Antonio branch of the Communist Party of the United States, section of the Communist International! Hard to believe? But it is nevertheless true.
Mr. Hyde, in his transformation, would trample children to death in his road rage. Comrade Epstein tramples underfoot the Trotskyist traitors. The welkin rings with his denunciation of these counter-revolutionists! How he demands their blood – nothing less! Just as he affirms his faith in Pius XI up to six o’clock, he affirms his faith in Stalin I after six. He shuns the sullying contact of the infidel before six, and of the Negro and Mexican “ignorant workers” after six. The sacred fire burns within him at all time.
At six in the morning, he is again transubstantiated. Comrade Epstein once more becomes Father Manuel. Again, like a humble friar, he wends his way from door to door, urging the benighted to greater piety and selling them his crosses, rosaries, medallions and holy pictures. Of such is the Kingdom of God. This is the resurrection and the faith.
This is a true picture of a party member in San Antonio. We invite the Daily Worker to challenge it. The rest of the party membership there is not much better. They make an economic living by fleecing the Negro and the Mexican, and save their political soul by shrill protests of loyalty to the latest party “line”. It goes without saying that they consider Trotsky worse than wrong. How long will this rubbish be tolerated in the party?
* * * *
After this was written, the Daily Worker published a statement announcing the expulsion of Epstein. The other Epsteins of varying shades remain. It is barely necessary to add that the statement also makes an attack on the “Trotskyists” and on comrade Curtiss in particular. The attacks on the Opposition are not new; they are an unoriginal repetition of Father Manuel’s political philosophy. The attack on comrade Curtiss is, of course, a typical Stalinist “payment” to the Opposition for the crime of having pointed out in time an open sore in the movement which the Stalinists themselves only discover long afterwards.
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<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h1>Armed Vigilantes Terrorize<br>
Calif. Agricultural Workers</h1>
<h4>Tar and Feather Union Organizers in Desperate Attempt<br>
to Stem Unionization: But Crops Rot in Field</h4>
<h3>(August 1935)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>New Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1935/index.htm#nm35_36" target="new">Vol. I No. 36</a>, 31 August 1935, pp. 1 & 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>SANTA ROSA, Calif., Aug. 23.</strong> – Santa Rosa is the chief town in Sonoma county from which come the big, red, juicy, Gravenstien apples and hops. The crops are ripening now. The trees are loaded ; the branches sagging to the earth. Labor is needed to harvest the apples and hops. The cry is for labor, labor.</p>
<p>Labor does not respond to the cry because the wages offered are not sufficient to maintain even the low standard of life the agricultural workers are accustomed to. The workers are organizing and forming into unions.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago there was a strike of apple-pickers in Santa Rosa. The workers called a meeting. Vigilantes crashed into this strike meeting, dispersing it, and beating up workers. From this period, the vigilantes have been terrorizing Sonoma county. The highest point to date was reached on the night of Wednesday, August 21, when two active militant workers, accused of being Communists, were tarred and feathered and then marched through town for eight hours.<br>
</p>
<h4>Patriotism and a Drunken Mob</h4>
<p class="fst">The night riders began their activities by taking Jack Green, a sign painter of Santa Rosa. Jack Green for many years was president of the Central Trades and Labor Council of Sonoma County, and up to two months ago was president of the local union of sign painters. He is at present a delegate to the Central Trades and Labor Council.</p>
<p>They then descended upon S. Nitzburg, a rancher. Shotgun fire met them at Nitzburg’s ranchhouse. The brave mob of 300 then fell back, and sent for tear gas. When the gas arrived it was shot into the ranchhouse, driving Nitzburg and his family out. They rounded up three others, manhandling women in their attempts to capture their victims. The five were ordered to kiss the American flag. Nitzburg and Green refused, while the others “acceded”. Finally they beat Nitzburg and Green into doing likewise, but as a reprisal for their refusal, they shaved the heads of the two and then dumped tar and feathers over them. Shouting, the triumphant mob, many of whom were drunk, paraded the two through the streets of Santa Rosa.</p>
<p>The vigilantes instructed all five to leave town immediately.</p>
<p>At present, the vigilantes, encouraged by the great feat of 300 vanquishing five, are mouthing threats of invading San Francisco and “cleaning up” on the waterfront unions. Their reception by the maritime unions will be warm. They will be met with open arms, and doubled fists.</p>
<p>The local police and authorities undoubtedly cooperate with the vigilantes. While the victims were being paraded up and down the main streets of Santa Rosa for a period of eight hours, the police did nothing The police of Santa Rosa have not yet been able to answer the question: how did the raiders get the tear gas bombs that were used against Nitzburg and others. No one else but the police had the bombs nor the guns to fire them.<br>
</p>
<h4>Police Cooperation</h4>
<p class="fst">Santa Rosa is not a large town and three hundred men could not organize themselves without police knowledge and connivance. It is definitely charged and proven that public officials, police officials and prominent “honored” citizens were active in the raiding.</p>
<p>U.S. Attorney General Webb, who had given sanction to the vigilantes, by refusing to act in earlier cases in Santa Rosa, had the following statement to make in reply to a demand of the Civil Liberties Union for investigation and action: <em>“There is nothing to investigate.”</em></p>
<p>Let some strikers say “scab” to some strikebreaker and Mr. Webb will be sure to call out all the forces at his disposal to restore “law and order,” meanwhile beating and arresting workers by scores. This attack upon the lives of five workers evokes nothing out of him</p>
<p>but the implicit support of the vigilantes. Knowing the character of the capitalist state machinery, this need cause us little surprise, no matter how discomfited the <strong>San Francisco News</strong>, a liberal paper, may be by the declaration of Webb. The <strong>San Francisco News</strong> in its timid protest against the Vigilantes has the following to say:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“We have every sympathy for growers who see their entire year’s work menaced by a few agitators.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">How about some sympathy for the underpaid workers, with their substandard existence wages! The position of the <strong>News</strong> is summed up in the statement:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Could the mob take a better way to arouse sympathy for its victims and to weaken any legitimate case there may be against them?”</em></p>
<p class="fst">The victims’ sole crime was that they took a position for the organisation of the field workers. To the capitalist class this is a heinous crime. And the <strong>News</strong>’ position is that the vigilante methods do not work in suppressing this crime – these methods merely arouse sympathy for the victims. The <strong>News</strong> prefers the more regular channels of suppression as offering a more efficient instrument of oppression. To the workers of the state, there is but little to choose between the <strong>News</strong>’ method of “sympathizing” with the growers and the vigilante methods.<br>
</p>
<h4>Made-in-California</h4>
<p class="fst">Hearst-inspired vigilanteism which is sweeping the state is a Made-in-California variety of fascism. The terror practiced by the small growers, storekeepers, petty officials and hoodlum elements, in the interests of big business, will have to be met determinedly, or the cause of labor will be doomed. Vigilanteism has become a common occurrence Jackson, Pixley, San Francisco Richmond, Imperial Valley, Santa Rosa and other places have been scenes of raids by vigilantes against labor unions. The only way the workers can defeat the vigilantes is not to meet it with moans of anguish and appeals for sympathy but by having groups of workers ready and willing to fight for labor by all means – matching weapon for weapon with the vigilantes.</p>
<p>Contrary to the hopes of the master class the jailing of eight workers, at Sacramento, a few months ago has not stifled the labor movement. It continues. Struggles are developing in agriculture, mining, industry and on the waterfront We have recounted in brief the situation in Santa Rosa. Word comes that the Mexican Agricultural Workers Union of Los Angeles and surrounding counties is preparing to go out on strike. The Jackson miners are still holding out. On the waterfront the probabilities are that there will be a struggle with the expiration of the contract, on September 30. The river bargemen are on strike. Five locals of agricultural workers have been charted in one county by the Bakersfield Central Labor Council.</p>
<p>The capitalist class places a lot of hope in the vigilantes as a weapon against the workers.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst"><strong>P.S.</strong> The terroristic action of the vigilantes has resulted in creating a labor shortage in Sonoma County which may mean that the crops will rot unharvested. This was the announcement of J.A. Stellern, state director of national re-employment. Mr. Stellern said 1,500 men are needed for work at once in the harvest around Santa Rosa, and emphasized the point that only men active in fomenting labor trouble and strike movements are “in disfavor” there.</p>
<p>Behind all the obscene exhibition of flag-kissing and frenzy stands the economic interests of the growers. The motive behind this 100 percentism is cold profit. Patriotism is the refuge of all anti-labor forces.</p>
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C. Curtiss
Armed Vigilantes Terrorize
Calif. Agricultural Workers
Tar and Feather Union Organizers in Desperate Attempt
to Stem Unionization: But Crops Rot in Field
(August 1935)
From New Militant, Vol. I No. 36, 31 August 1935, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
SANTA ROSA, Calif., Aug. 23. – Santa Rosa is the chief town in Sonoma county from which come the big, red, juicy, Gravenstien apples and hops. The crops are ripening now. The trees are loaded ; the branches sagging to the earth. Labor is needed to harvest the apples and hops. The cry is for labor, labor.
Labor does not respond to the cry because the wages offered are not sufficient to maintain even the low standard of life the agricultural workers are accustomed to. The workers are organizing and forming into unions.
A few weeks ago there was a strike of apple-pickers in Santa Rosa. The workers called a meeting. Vigilantes crashed into this strike meeting, dispersing it, and beating up workers. From this period, the vigilantes have been terrorizing Sonoma county. The highest point to date was reached on the night of Wednesday, August 21, when two active militant workers, accused of being Communists, were tarred and feathered and then marched through town for eight hours.
Patriotism and a Drunken Mob
The night riders began their activities by taking Jack Green, a sign painter of Santa Rosa. Jack Green for many years was president of the Central Trades and Labor Council of Sonoma County, and up to two months ago was president of the local union of sign painters. He is at present a delegate to the Central Trades and Labor Council.
They then descended upon S. Nitzburg, a rancher. Shotgun fire met them at Nitzburg’s ranchhouse. The brave mob of 300 then fell back, and sent for tear gas. When the gas arrived it was shot into the ranchhouse, driving Nitzburg and his family out. They rounded up three others, manhandling women in their attempts to capture their victims. The five were ordered to kiss the American flag. Nitzburg and Green refused, while the others “acceded”. Finally they beat Nitzburg and Green into doing likewise, but as a reprisal for their refusal, they shaved the heads of the two and then dumped tar and feathers over them. Shouting, the triumphant mob, many of whom were drunk, paraded the two through the streets of Santa Rosa.
The vigilantes instructed all five to leave town immediately.
At present, the vigilantes, encouraged by the great feat of 300 vanquishing five, are mouthing threats of invading San Francisco and “cleaning up” on the waterfront unions. Their reception by the maritime unions will be warm. They will be met with open arms, and doubled fists.
The local police and authorities undoubtedly cooperate with the vigilantes. While the victims were being paraded up and down the main streets of Santa Rosa for a period of eight hours, the police did nothing The police of Santa Rosa have not yet been able to answer the question: how did the raiders get the tear gas bombs that were used against Nitzburg and others. No one else but the police had the bombs nor the guns to fire them.
Police Cooperation
Santa Rosa is not a large town and three hundred men could not organize themselves without police knowledge and connivance. It is definitely charged and proven that public officials, police officials and prominent “honored” citizens were active in the raiding.
U.S. Attorney General Webb, who had given sanction to the vigilantes, by refusing to act in earlier cases in Santa Rosa, had the following statement to make in reply to a demand of the Civil Liberties Union for investigation and action: “There is nothing to investigate.”
Let some strikers say “scab” to some strikebreaker and Mr. Webb will be sure to call out all the forces at his disposal to restore “law and order,” meanwhile beating and arresting workers by scores. This attack upon the lives of five workers evokes nothing out of him
but the implicit support of the vigilantes. Knowing the character of the capitalist state machinery, this need cause us little surprise, no matter how discomfited the San Francisco News, a liberal paper, may be by the declaration of Webb. The San Francisco News in its timid protest against the Vigilantes has the following to say:
“We have every sympathy for growers who see their entire year’s work menaced by a few agitators.”
How about some sympathy for the underpaid workers, with their substandard existence wages! The position of the News is summed up in the statement:
“Could the mob take a better way to arouse sympathy for its victims and to weaken any legitimate case there may be against them?”
The victims’ sole crime was that they took a position for the organisation of the field workers. To the capitalist class this is a heinous crime. And the News’ position is that the vigilante methods do not work in suppressing this crime – these methods merely arouse sympathy for the victims. The News prefers the more regular channels of suppression as offering a more efficient instrument of oppression. To the workers of the state, there is but little to choose between the News’ method of “sympathizing” with the growers and the vigilante methods.
Made-in-California
Hearst-inspired vigilanteism which is sweeping the state is a Made-in-California variety of fascism. The terror practiced by the small growers, storekeepers, petty officials and hoodlum elements, in the interests of big business, will have to be met determinedly, or the cause of labor will be doomed. Vigilanteism has become a common occurrence Jackson, Pixley, San Francisco Richmond, Imperial Valley, Santa Rosa and other places have been scenes of raids by vigilantes against labor unions. The only way the workers can defeat the vigilantes is not to meet it with moans of anguish and appeals for sympathy but by having groups of workers ready and willing to fight for labor by all means – matching weapon for weapon with the vigilantes.
Contrary to the hopes of the master class the jailing of eight workers, at Sacramento, a few months ago has not stifled the labor movement. It continues. Struggles are developing in agriculture, mining, industry and on the waterfront We have recounted in brief the situation in Santa Rosa. Word comes that the Mexican Agricultural Workers Union of Los Angeles and surrounding counties is preparing to go out on strike. The Jackson miners are still holding out. On the waterfront the probabilities are that there will be a struggle with the expiration of the contract, on September 30. The river bargemen are on strike. Five locals of agricultural workers have been charted in one county by the Bakersfield Central Labor Council.
The capitalist class places a lot of hope in the vigilantes as a weapon against the workers.
* * *
P.S. The terroristic action of the vigilantes has resulted in creating a labor shortage in Sonoma County which may mean that the crops will rot unharvested. This was the announcement of J.A. Stellern, state director of national re-employment. Mr. Stellern said 1,500 men are needed for work at once in the harvest around Santa Rosa, and emphasized the point that only men active in fomenting labor trouble and strike movements are “in disfavor” there.
Behind all the obscene exhibition of flag-kissing and frenzy stands the economic interests of the growers. The motive behind this 100 percentism is cold profit. Patriotism is the refuge of all anti-labor forces.
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<h2>C.</h2>
<h1>First Mass Meeting in Los Angeles</h1>
<h3>(March 1933)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1933/index.htm#tm33_17" target="new">Vol. VI No. 17</a>, 8 March 1933, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>Los Angeles.</strong> – The first official appearance of the Left Opposition before the workers of Los Angeles was the mass meeting on the question of the <em>The Crisis in Germany</em>. The results of the meeting of March 3 left the newly formed branch highly enthusiastic.</p>
<p>Over 85 workers including a score of members of the party and Y.C.L. listened to the presentation of the position of the International Left Opposition. The hall chosen for the meeting was far too small. Every inch of standing space was taken and the meeting overflowed. The door was kept open to allow the workers who could not be accommodated within the hall to hear the speeches and discussion.</p>
<p>The speakers of the evening were S.M. Rose and C. Curtis. Comrade Sam Meyers was the chairman.</p>
<p>After the speakers of the evening had concluded the floor was thrown open to discussion. The comrades of the YCL and the party are marked here as elsewhere by a lack of any serious education. (They have, however, plenty of that which goes as Marxism-Leninism in the present day.)</p>
<p>Driven into the corner by the irresistible flow of Marxism, one young comrade resorted to the inevitable retreat of an exposed person: slander. The meeting, finally, adjourned at midnight. We are sure that the comrades and workers are going to seriously consider the L.O. position, and are going to raise the issue within their organizations.</p>
<p>It is noteworthy that the C.P. here has not taken notice of the German events. The necessity sensitiveness of a Communist to international events has been blunted by the years of the Stalinist regime. “More important things ... shop campaigns, unemployed work ...” the bureaucrats mumble.</p>
<p>More important things than the defeat or victory of the most powerful working class movement outside the USSR!</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">The meeting resulted in a number of contacts for the L.O. and quite a sale of literature.</p>
<p>The comrades of the L.O. are very active in the mass unemployed movement and are the recognized spokesmen within the movement for the Left wing. The Left wing of the Unemployed Cooperative Relief Association (an organization of 40,000 heads of families), through the initiative of the L.O. has invited the C.P. into active participation in the work. The comrades of the C.P. are having quite a time of it. At one meeting we are counter-revolutionists, and at another we are comrades-in-arms, battling together.</p>
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Charles Curtiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
C.
First Mass Meeting in Los Angeles
(March 1933)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 17, 8 March 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Los Angeles. – The first official appearance of the Left Opposition before the workers of Los Angeles was the mass meeting on the question of the The Crisis in Germany. The results of the meeting of March 3 left the newly formed branch highly enthusiastic.
Over 85 workers including a score of members of the party and Y.C.L. listened to the presentation of the position of the International Left Opposition. The hall chosen for the meeting was far too small. Every inch of standing space was taken and the meeting overflowed. The door was kept open to allow the workers who could not be accommodated within the hall to hear the speeches and discussion.
The speakers of the evening were S.M. Rose and C. Curtis. Comrade Sam Meyers was the chairman.
After the speakers of the evening had concluded the floor was thrown open to discussion. The comrades of the YCL and the party are marked here as elsewhere by a lack of any serious education. (They have, however, plenty of that which goes as Marxism-Leninism in the present day.)
Driven into the corner by the irresistible flow of Marxism, one young comrade resorted to the inevitable retreat of an exposed person: slander. The meeting, finally, adjourned at midnight. We are sure that the comrades and workers are going to seriously consider the L.O. position, and are going to raise the issue within their organizations.
It is noteworthy that the C.P. here has not taken notice of the German events. The necessity sensitiveness of a Communist to international events has been blunted by the years of the Stalinist regime. “More important things ... shop campaigns, unemployed work ...” the bureaucrats mumble.
More important things than the defeat or victory of the most powerful working class movement outside the USSR!
* * *
The meeting resulted in a number of contacts for the L.O. and quite a sale of literature.
The comrades of the L.O. are very active in the mass unemployed movement and are the recognized spokesmen within the movement for the Left wing. The Left wing of the Unemployed Cooperative Relief Association (an organization of 40,000 heads of families), through the initiative of the L.O. has invited the C.P. into active participation in the work. The comrades of the C.P. are having quite a time of it. At one meeting we are counter-revolutionists, and at another we are comrades-in-arms, battling together.
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<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h1>Opposition and Unemployed in Los Angeles</h1>
<h3>(May 1933)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info"><i>League Activities</i>, <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1933/index.htm#tm33_27" target="new">Vol. VI No. 27</a>, 20
May 1933, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><b>Los Angeles</b> – Part of the machinery set into
motion-by the United Front anti-Fascist letter of the C.I. was an
anti-Hitler united front conference in Los Angeles on April 28.</p>
<p>This conference was not called by the Communist party but by a
united front provisional organization of German groups.</p>
<p>Proof that the “united front from below under revolutionary
leadership” has gone the way of the “third period”
and the “struggle for the streets” was had by the fact
that neither the Communist party nor the Young Communist League were
represented officially.</p>
<p>We presume, their assumption was that their presence there would
frighten from the “broad united front” the three branches
of the ILD, the IWO, the FSU, the friends of the Polish Political
Prisoners, the LSU, the Icor, and the Unemployed Council as well as
two or three German speaking organizations: Workingmen’s
Benefit, Maennerchor, etc. And by no means shall we forget the
Cremation Society who were present, too.</p>
<p>The only Communist organization openly participating was the Left
Opposition.</p>
<p>A delegate of the Left Opposition was placed on the resolutions
committee. In this committee he proposed three resolutions, in
addition to the two already proposed. One of the resolutions, on the
struggle against fascism, stood for a united front with all labor
organizations against the fascist attacks, particularly with the
socialist party. The socialist party was condemned for refusing to
participate in this conference.</p>
<p>Other resolutions, on anti-Semitism pointed out that the struggle
against Fascism and anti-Semitism by the Jews could only be waged by
the lower social strata allying themselves with the proletariat, and
demonstrated that only a new social order could abolish religious and
racial prejudices.</p>
<p>The third resolution on the Defense of the Soviet Union showed
that Hitler represented the spearhead of the attacks on Russia, and
the labor movement particularly in the countries intervening between
Russia and Germany must join the anti-Fascist bloc. (The party voted
against the resolutions of the L.O.)</p>
<p>The party seems determined to to make of the anti-Hitler struggle
an affair of fraternal German and Jewish groups instead of a labor
affair. The local branch off the Opposition took a determined
position against this. The consensus of opinion of revolutionaries
here is that Stalinism is ready for a nice sanitary disposal.</p>
<p>Call the Cremation Society!<br> </p>
<h4>Activity of the Left Opposition</h4>
<p class="fst">The comrades in the Los Angeles branch of the League are very
active in the class struggle particularly in the mass unemployment
movement, the Unemployed Cooperative Relief Association in which they
are very influential. The organization is slowly progressing. We are
developing a group of erstwhile scissor bills into class conscious
battlers, although in this as well as in other activities we suffer
acutely from lack of forces.</p>
<p>The organization has demanded $50,000 monthly from the city. This
morning’s newspapers state that Mayor Porter has appropriated
$20,000. The cause for this “liberality” is a dual one, a
combination of pre-election political activity, and the forestalling
of our movement by a political concession.</p>
<p>The movement has also gone on record for the freedom of Mooney,
has elected a delegate by proxy to the Free Mooney Congress in
Chicago.</p>
<p>Some time ago, when the U.C.R.A. placed an evicted family’s
furniture back into the home, the man, Tibbs, was arrested. After a
nine day trial, costing the authorities at least $1,000, the verdict
was “not guilty.” This was a victory for the unemployed.</p>
<p>The unemployed are turning on their disconnected gas, light and
water in the tens of thousands. A number of half-hearted arrests have
taken place on this account, too.</p>
<p>Friday, April 27, a member of the organization was placed on the
streets. The unemployed determined to make a demonstration in the
form of a continual meeting 24 hours daily at a pitched tent before
the workers former home. This tactic had won shelter for the family
before.</p>
<p>In the small hours of the night, when the members keeping vigil
had dwindled to 35 warming themselves before bonfires, the police and
“red squad” swooped down and brutally beat the
unemployed. It was not that horror of horrors, a “red”,
that was clubbed but one of themselves. The unemployed are aroused.</p>
<p>So the lessons of the class struggle, of private property, of the
role of the state are being beaten home. We are busy drawing
conclusions, organizing the instinctive rebellion into revolutionary
Marxist paths.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" width="100%">
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<p class="updat">Last updated: 4 September 2015</p>
</body> |
Charles Curtiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
C. Curtiss
Opposition and Unemployed in Los Angeles
(May 1933)
League Activities, The Militant, Vol. VI No. 27, 20
May 1933, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Los Angeles – Part of the machinery set into
motion-by the United Front anti-Fascist letter of the C.I. was an
anti-Hitler united front conference in Los Angeles on April 28.
This conference was not called by the Communist party but by a
united front provisional organization of German groups.
Proof that the “united front from below under revolutionary
leadership” has gone the way of the “third period”
and the “struggle for the streets” was had by the fact
that neither the Communist party nor the Young Communist League were
represented officially.
We presume, their assumption was that their presence there would
frighten from the “broad united front” the three branches
of the ILD, the IWO, the FSU, the friends of the Polish Political
Prisoners, the LSU, the Icor, and the Unemployed Council as well as
two or three German speaking organizations: Workingmen’s
Benefit, Maennerchor, etc. And by no means shall we forget the
Cremation Society who were present, too.
The only Communist organization openly participating was the Left
Opposition.
A delegate of the Left Opposition was placed on the resolutions
committee. In this committee he proposed three resolutions, in
addition to the two already proposed. One of the resolutions, on the
struggle against fascism, stood for a united front with all labor
organizations against the fascist attacks, particularly with the
socialist party. The socialist party was condemned for refusing to
participate in this conference.
Other resolutions, on anti-Semitism pointed out that the struggle
against Fascism and anti-Semitism by the Jews could only be waged by
the lower social strata allying themselves with the proletariat, and
demonstrated that only a new social order could abolish religious and
racial prejudices.
The third resolution on the Defense of the Soviet Union showed
that Hitler represented the spearhead of the attacks on Russia, and
the labor movement particularly in the countries intervening between
Russia and Germany must join the anti-Fascist bloc. (The party voted
against the resolutions of the L.O.)
The party seems determined to to make of the anti-Hitler struggle
an affair of fraternal German and Jewish groups instead of a labor
affair. The local branch off the Opposition took a determined
position against this. The consensus of opinion of revolutionaries
here is that Stalinism is ready for a nice sanitary disposal.
Call the Cremation Society!
Activity of the Left Opposition
The comrades in the Los Angeles branch of the League are very
active in the class struggle particularly in the mass unemployment
movement, the Unemployed Cooperative Relief Association in which they
are very influential. The organization is slowly progressing. We are
developing a group of erstwhile scissor bills into class conscious
battlers, although in this as well as in other activities we suffer
acutely from lack of forces.
The organization has demanded $50,000 monthly from the city. This
morning’s newspapers state that Mayor Porter has appropriated
$20,000. The cause for this “liberality” is a dual one, a
combination of pre-election political activity, and the forestalling
of our movement by a political concession.
The movement has also gone on record for the freedom of Mooney,
has elected a delegate by proxy to the Free Mooney Congress in
Chicago.
Some time ago, when the U.C.R.A. placed an evicted family’s
furniture back into the home, the man, Tibbs, was arrested. After a
nine day trial, costing the authorities at least $1,000, the verdict
was “not guilty.” This was a victory for the unemployed.
The unemployed are turning on their disconnected gas, light and
water in the tens of thousands. A number of half-hearted arrests have
taken place on this account, too.
Friday, April 27, a member of the organization was placed on the
streets. The unemployed determined to make a demonstration in the
form of a continual meeting 24 hours daily at a pitched tent before
the workers former home. This tactic had won shelter for the family
before.
In the small hours of the night, when the members keeping vigil
had dwindled to 35 warming themselves before bonfires, the police and
“red squad” swooped down and brutally beat the
unemployed. It was not that horror of horrors, a “red”,
that was clubbed but one of themselves. The unemployed are aroused.
So the lessons of the class struggle, of private property, of the
role of the state are being beaten home. We are busy drawing
conclusions, organizing the instinctive rebellion into revolutionary
Marxist paths.
Top of page
Charles Curtiss Archive | ETOL Main Page
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<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>Plenum Greetings Sent to Natalia Trotsky</h1>
<h3>(12 October 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_42" target="new">Vol. V No. 42</a>, 18 October 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>The following is the message of solidarity sent to Natalia Sedov Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico, by the National Plenum-Conference of the Socialist Workers Party, meeting October 11–12 in Chicago, Illinois:</strong></p>
<p class="fst">We are closing this evening the best attended and most enthusiastic conference in our history. The unanimous vote on the political resolution which is based on the life teachings of Comrade Leon Trotsky expressed our firm unity. As we successfully conclude our work, we send you our warmest comradely greetings.</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst"><em>C. Charles</em>,<br>
Chairman of Session,<br>
Plenum-Conference Socialist Workers Party</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
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Charles Curtiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
C. Charles
Plenum Greetings Sent to Natalia Trotsky
(12 October 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 42, 18 October 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The following is the message of solidarity sent to Natalia Sedov Trotsky in Coyoacan, Mexico, by the National Plenum-Conference of the Socialist Workers Party, meeting October 11–12 in Chicago, Illinois:
We are closing this evening the best attended and most enthusiastic conference in our history. The unanimous vote on the political resolution which is based on the life teachings of Comrade Leon Trotsky expressed our firm unity. As we successfully conclude our work, we send you our warmest comradely greetings.
C. Charles,
Chairman of Session,
Plenum-Conference Socialist Workers Party
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<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>America <em>vs.</em> Japan in Latin America</h1>
<h3>(April 1934)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1934/index.htm#tm34_17" target="new">Vol. VII No. 17</a>, 28 April 1934, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The key to many of the policies of American imperialism, both in relation to Latin America and to Japan, may be found in the following facts and figures, the latter taken from a Panama newspaper.</p>
<p>A veritable flood of goods from Japan is reaching the Latin American market which, for the last 15 years, has been considered reserved for the U.S. While the amount of goods bearing the tale “Made in U.S.A.” is diminishing, the goods bearing the words “Made in Japan” are increasing in number, relatively to the amount of imports from other countries and absolutely in relation to the figures of each preceding years.</p>
<p>Silks; cambrics; food-stuffs; paper goods; articles of porcelain, crockery, glassware, and china; drug, medical and toilet articles, leather goods; bamboo; canvas shoes; rubber articles; toys; celluloid – these are the chief articles of import.<br>
</p>
<h4>Japanese Exports</h4>
<p class="fst">The value of the imports from Japan to Paraguay in pesos de oro:</p>
<table align="center" width="210" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1924</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">140,231</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1925</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">223,678</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1926</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">242,073</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1927</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">276,944</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1928</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">308,597</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">To Peru, in Japanese yen:</p>
<table align="center" width="210" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1928</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">1,758,651</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1929</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">2,601,545</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1930</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">2,234,774</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1931</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">729,205</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1932</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">840,574</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>
<p class="sm1">1933<br>
<small><small>(first six months only)</small></small></p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">1,857,807</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">In Panama, where three years ago Japanese goods were unknown, they now hold second place. The figures given are in Panamanian dollars, and for the months cited only.</p>
<p>Before May, 1931, there was a monthly import of less than $15,000.</p>
<table align="center" width="210" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">May 1931</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">$ 29,180</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Nov. 1931</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">40,308</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">July 1933</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">94,025</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">Aug. 1933</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">109,745</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<h4>Tendency Alarms U.S.</h4>
<p class="fst">These are but examples of a general tendency that is causing, to say the least, a great deal of anxiety in the U.S. These figures are not large, but the fact that Japan’s exports to the Latin American markets can gain, as in Brazil, where for the first hall of 1933, the increase was 113%, to Cuba, a relatively changing position, a 173%, and to Peru, where the increase was 322%, is symptomatic of process that in the final analysis can only be changed by imperialist war.</p>
<p>In this time of crisis every shred, scrap and crumb of foreign market assumes a great importance. A teaspoonful of water to a man dying of thirst is much more important than a well of water in a region where there is plenty. These two facts – of Japan’s increasing foreign trade in Latin America and the great demand for every dollar’s worth of market by the U.S. – must be taken careful account of when reading the reports of international conferences.<br>
</p>
<h4>U.S. Exports to South America</h4>
<p class="fst">Part of the meaning behind the Pan-American congresses, treaties, etc., can be found in these figures of U.S. exports to South America. These figures are taken from the <strong>World Year Book</strong>:</p>
<table width="210" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1928</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">$480,814,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1929</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">539,309,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1930</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">337,508,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1931</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">158,691,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1932</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">97,132,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">These figures for 1932 are less than 20% of those for 1929. The same process is at work on a world scale as the following figures for the world export of the U.S. show:</p>
<table align="center" width="210" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1928</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">$5,128,356,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1929</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">5,240,995,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1930</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">3,843,181,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1931</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">2,424,289,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1932</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">1,611,016,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<h4>Do the Figures Spell War?</h4>
<p class="fst">Japanese exports in these years decreased also, but nowhere near the degree of the other powers.</p>
<table align="center" width="210" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<th>
<p class="smc"> In Yen</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1928</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">1,971,955,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1929</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">2,148,618,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1930</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">1,469,852,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1931</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">1,146,981,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="sm1">1932</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smr">1,409,992,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">While in 1932 U.S. exports dropped to 31% of the 1929 figures, Japanese exports only dropped, at the end of the year 1932, to 67%.</p>
<p>Does this inequality mean war in which the American and Japanese wage slaves will, among other things, fight to determine whether Japanese or North American goods shall be found in the bazaars of India, the fairs of South America and the market places generally of the world?</p>
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C.C.
America vs. Japan in Latin America
(April 1934)
From The Militant, Vol. VII No. 17, 28 April 1934, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The key to many of the policies of American imperialism, both in relation to Latin America and to Japan, may be found in the following facts and figures, the latter taken from a Panama newspaper.
A veritable flood of goods from Japan is reaching the Latin American market which, for the last 15 years, has been considered reserved for the U.S. While the amount of goods bearing the tale “Made in U.S.A.” is diminishing, the goods bearing the words “Made in Japan” are increasing in number, relatively to the amount of imports from other countries and absolutely in relation to the figures of each preceding years.
Silks; cambrics; food-stuffs; paper goods; articles of porcelain, crockery, glassware, and china; drug, medical and toilet articles, leather goods; bamboo; canvas shoes; rubber articles; toys; celluloid – these are the chief articles of import.
Japanese Exports
The value of the imports from Japan to Paraguay in pesos de oro:
1924
140,231
1925
223,678
1926
242,073
1927
276,944
1928
308,597
To Peru, in Japanese yen:
1928
1,758,651
1929
2,601,545
1930
2,234,774
1931
729,205
1932
840,574
1933
(first six months only)
1,857,807
In Panama, where three years ago Japanese goods were unknown, they now hold second place. The figures given are in Panamanian dollars, and for the months cited only.
Before May, 1931, there was a monthly import of less than $15,000.
May 1931
$ 29,180
Nov. 1931
40,308
July 1933
94,025
Aug. 1933
109,745
Tendency Alarms U.S.
These are but examples of a general tendency that is causing, to say the least, a great deal of anxiety in the U.S. These figures are not large, but the fact that Japan’s exports to the Latin American markets can gain, as in Brazil, where for the first hall of 1933, the increase was 113%, to Cuba, a relatively changing position, a 173%, and to Peru, where the increase was 322%, is symptomatic of process that in the final analysis can only be changed by imperialist war.
In this time of crisis every shred, scrap and crumb of foreign market assumes a great importance. A teaspoonful of water to a man dying of thirst is much more important than a well of water in a region where there is plenty. These two facts – of Japan’s increasing foreign trade in Latin America and the great demand for every dollar’s worth of market by the U.S. – must be taken careful account of when reading the reports of international conferences.
U.S. Exports to South America
Part of the meaning behind the Pan-American congresses, treaties, etc., can be found in these figures of U.S. exports to South America. These figures are taken from the World Year Book:
1928
$480,814,000
1929
539,309,000
1930
337,508,000
1931
158,691,000
1932
97,132,000
These figures for 1932 are less than 20% of those for 1929. The same process is at work on a world scale as the following figures for the world export of the U.S. show:
1928
$5,128,356,000
1929
5,240,995,000
1930
3,843,181,000
1931
2,424,289,000
1932
1,611,016,000
Do the Figures Spell War?
Japanese exports in these years decreased also, but nowhere near the degree of the other powers.
In Yen
1928
1,971,955,000
1929
2,148,618,000
1930
1,469,852,000
1931
1,146,981,000
1932
1,409,992,000
While in 1932 U.S. exports dropped to 31% of the 1929 figures, Japanese exports only dropped, at the end of the year 1932, to 67%.
Does this inequality mean war in which the American and Japanese wage slaves will, among other things, fight to determine whether Japanese or North American goods shall be found in the bazaars of India, the fairs of South America and the market places generally of the world?
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<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h4>Workers Forum</h4>
<h1>A Paper Where Workers Will Feel at Home</h1>
<h3>(21 November 1939)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1939/index.htm#sa03_89" target="new">Vol. III No. 89</a>, 21 November 1939, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Editor:</p>
<p class="fst">When the Twice-a-Week <strong>Appeal</strong> first came out, full of good features, well written, popular, attempting to address itself to workers and become a mass paper, we used to take 200 an issue, and dispose of them. Our Sunday mobilizations, when the comrades used to assemble to go door to door in the working class sections of town with the paper, were full of enthusiasm and good-natured competition to see who would sell the most papers. Alas, all that is slowing up. To organize each mobilization requires more effort than the previous one. Who is to blame?<br>
</p>
<h4>Comrades Not at Fault</h4>
<p class="fst">Some would say the comrades, and without a doubt, this is true to a minor extent, as the work began to become a familiar routine. Still, this is not by far the most important factor. I think more responsibility falls upon the paper itself because the comrades find it more difficult to sell the paper now than when the Twice-a-Week first appeared. Our own comrades do not have the will to sell the paper when it is not well written and not directed to the workers.</p>
<p>Before the Twice-a-Week, our major outlet was the radical gatherings and radical contacts. With the appearance of the Twice-a-Week, we had been hoping for a change in the paper, which for a brief period was realized. In that period we attempted to address our paper not only to the old elements but get new readers among the workers. But that period seems to have come to an end.<br>
</p>
<h4>An Alarming Symptom</h4>
<p class="fst">I would like to take up another point, and that is the question of repeat sales. After selling a paper to a worker, when we come back to sell it to him again, we find greater sales resistance. In other words, even after reading the paper, which we hoped would break down his indifference or hostility towards us, we nearly invariably find that it is more difficult to sell the paper again. The answer to this dilemma is found in the difference between our sales talk and the paper. While attempting to sell the worker or working class housewife a paper, we play up what we think the worker would be interested in. In other words, we paint for him a picture of an imaginary paper which arouses his interest, but when the worker looks at the <strong>Appeal</strong>, it is quite different than the description of it given by the comrade.</p>
<p>Of course, we, here, do not agree with the comrade from Detroit, who said that the workers are not interested in India, Ireland, etc. It is the task of the paper to show the importance of the events to the workers’ immediate struggles, but it must be done in an interesting fashion, and the interest and concern of the workers in international problems will be built up.<br>
</p>
<h4>What Is Needed</h4>
<p class="fst">An average worker does not feel at home in our paper. It is only the radical worker who does. It is important to keep these informed of what goes on but, it is as important that the worker from the shop, or on relief, also be interested in the paper, and this is proven by the fact that he does not write for the paper. Where is the worker’s correspondence that the paper should have? Where is the correspondence from the unions ? Where is the question box that a worker’s paper should have ? Where are the interesting stories that a paper should have ? Where are the absorbing lessons on <em>What is Socialism</em>, written simply and understandable to all? This list could be continued.</p>
<p>I hope that this will not be confused with the phenomena that often appears in our movement of anti-anti-Stalinism. The struggle against Stalinism must not be given up, but neither must it be “raised” to the level which only a few workers can understand. The basis for, our opposition to Stalinism must be made clear to even the simplest worker. Much of our articles against Stalinism is aimed, if not at the summits of Stalinism, certainly not to the rank and file CP member or sympathizer who cannot understand it and for this reason, ignores it, or looks upon it as a struggle between two groups of “college professors.”</p>
<p>I would like to again repeat the central slogan: The <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong> must be a paper in which every worker will feel at home.</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p class="fst">Los Angeles</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst"><em>C. Curtiss</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<a id="staff" name="staff"></a>
<h3>The Road to a Real Workers’ Newspaper</h3>
<p class="fst">Comrade Curtiss’ letter merits the attention, not only of the staff of the <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, but of all party branches and workers who read our press. The facts he adduces are attested to from all parts of the country. Where is the solution ?</p>
<p>A European comrade with the richest experience in the mass movement some time ago estimated the paper in these terms:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The paper is very well done from a journalistic point of view; but it is a paper for the workers and not a workers’ paper.</p>
<p class="quote">“As it is the paper is divided among various writers, each of whom is very good, but collectively they do not permit the workers to penetrate to the pages of the <strong>Appeal</strong>. Each of them speaks for the workers (and speaks very well), but nobody will hear the workers. In spite of its literary brilliance, to a certain degree the paper becomes a victim of journalistic routine. You do not hear at all how the workers live, fight, clash with the police or drink whiskey. It is very dangerous for the paper as a revolutionary instrument of the party. The task is not to make a paper through the joint forces of a skilled editorial board, but to encourage the workers to speak for themselves.</p>
<p class="quote">“The whole party must participate in the paper not only financially but politically and journalistically. The paper must have correspondents, researchers and reporters everywhere. Three lines from a shop or a meeting can often give more than a well written article by the staff. Only such a paper can penetrate into the masses and receive great support from them.</p>
<p class="quote">“A radical and courageous change is necessary as a condition of success. The paper is too wise, too scholarly, too aristocratic for the American workers and tends to reflect the party more as it is than to prepare it for its future.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Why We Halted</h4>
<p class="fst">The course of the paper began to move in this proposed direction; that was the period of which Comrade Curtiss speaks as the time when the Los Angeles comrades were able to sell the paper easily. However, since the outbreak of the war there has been, to a considerable extent, a retrogression. One reason is that the comrades tend to separate the daily events of the class struggle from the war situation, and fail to write into the <strong>Appeal</strong> about the actual life in which they are engaged. This is the main explanation for the cessation of direct reports from the fields of struggle.</p>
<p>Another reason for the failure of the <strong>Appeal</strong> to continue its transformation into a real workers’ paper is the necessity, imposed by the war, of devoting a considerable part of the paper to analytical articles, in order to arm the advanced workers for the struggle against social-patriotism. But it is certainly possible to combine this work with material more directly attractive to the workers, to constitute a paper with a popular tone.<br>
</p>
<h4>What’s To Be Done</h4>
<p class="fst">The staff’s main shortcoming along this line has been its failure to remain in regular contact with the field, suggesting subjects for direct reports and workers’ correspondence, encouraging those who write in, etc.</p>
<p>The Staff, however, in and of itself, cannot solve the problem! A widespread understanding among party members, Yipsels, and our worker-readers, that their voices must be heard in the paper, is the beginning of the solution. Let the workers write our paper!</p>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst"><em>The <strong>Appeal</strong> Staff</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
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C. Curtiss
Workers Forum
A Paper Where Workers Will Feel at Home
(21 November 1939)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 89, 21 November 1939, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Editor:
When the Twice-a-Week Appeal first came out, full of good features, well written, popular, attempting to address itself to workers and become a mass paper, we used to take 200 an issue, and dispose of them. Our Sunday mobilizations, when the comrades used to assemble to go door to door in the working class sections of town with the paper, were full of enthusiasm and good-natured competition to see who would sell the most papers. Alas, all that is slowing up. To organize each mobilization requires more effort than the previous one. Who is to blame?
Comrades Not at Fault
Some would say the comrades, and without a doubt, this is true to a minor extent, as the work began to become a familiar routine. Still, this is not by far the most important factor. I think more responsibility falls upon the paper itself because the comrades find it more difficult to sell the paper now than when the Twice-a-Week first appeared. Our own comrades do not have the will to sell the paper when it is not well written and not directed to the workers.
Before the Twice-a-Week, our major outlet was the radical gatherings and radical contacts. With the appearance of the Twice-a-Week, we had been hoping for a change in the paper, which for a brief period was realized. In that period we attempted to address our paper not only to the old elements but get new readers among the workers. But that period seems to have come to an end.
An Alarming Symptom
I would like to take up another point, and that is the question of repeat sales. After selling a paper to a worker, when we come back to sell it to him again, we find greater sales resistance. In other words, even after reading the paper, which we hoped would break down his indifference or hostility towards us, we nearly invariably find that it is more difficult to sell the paper again. The answer to this dilemma is found in the difference between our sales talk and the paper. While attempting to sell the worker or working class housewife a paper, we play up what we think the worker would be interested in. In other words, we paint for him a picture of an imaginary paper which arouses his interest, but when the worker looks at the Appeal, it is quite different than the description of it given by the comrade.
Of course, we, here, do not agree with the comrade from Detroit, who said that the workers are not interested in India, Ireland, etc. It is the task of the paper to show the importance of the events to the workers’ immediate struggles, but it must be done in an interesting fashion, and the interest and concern of the workers in international problems will be built up.
What Is Needed
An average worker does not feel at home in our paper. It is only the radical worker who does. It is important to keep these informed of what goes on but, it is as important that the worker from the shop, or on relief, also be interested in the paper, and this is proven by the fact that he does not write for the paper. Where is the worker’s correspondence that the paper should have? Where is the correspondence from the unions ? Where is the question box that a worker’s paper should have ? Where are the interesting stories that a paper should have ? Where are the absorbing lessons on What is Socialism, written simply and understandable to all? This list could be continued.
I hope that this will not be confused with the phenomena that often appears in our movement of anti-anti-Stalinism. The struggle against Stalinism must not be given up, but neither must it be “raised” to the level which only a few workers can understand. The basis for, our opposition to Stalinism must be made clear to even the simplest worker. Much of our articles against Stalinism is aimed, if not at the summits of Stalinism, certainly not to the rank and file CP member or sympathizer who cannot understand it and for this reason, ignores it, or looks upon it as a struggle between two groups of “college professors.”
I would like to again repeat the central slogan: The Socialist Appeal must be a paper in which every worker will feel at home.
Los Angeles
C. Curtiss
The Road to a Real Workers’ Newspaper
Comrade Curtiss’ letter merits the attention, not only of the staff of the Socialist Appeal, but of all party branches and workers who read our press. The facts he adduces are attested to from all parts of the country. Where is the solution ?
A European comrade with the richest experience in the mass movement some time ago estimated the paper in these terms:
“The paper is very well done from a journalistic point of view; but it is a paper for the workers and not a workers’ paper.
“As it is the paper is divided among various writers, each of whom is very good, but collectively they do not permit the workers to penetrate to the pages of the Appeal. Each of them speaks for the workers (and speaks very well), but nobody will hear the workers. In spite of its literary brilliance, to a certain degree the paper becomes a victim of journalistic routine. You do not hear at all how the workers live, fight, clash with the police or drink whiskey. It is very dangerous for the paper as a revolutionary instrument of the party. The task is not to make a paper through the joint forces of a skilled editorial board, but to encourage the workers to speak for themselves.
“The whole party must participate in the paper not only financially but politically and journalistically. The paper must have correspondents, researchers and reporters everywhere. Three lines from a shop or a meeting can often give more than a well written article by the staff. Only such a paper can penetrate into the masses and receive great support from them.
“A radical and courageous change is necessary as a condition of success. The paper is too wise, too scholarly, too aristocratic for the American workers and tends to reflect the party more as it is than to prepare it for its future.”
Why We Halted
The course of the paper began to move in this proposed direction; that was the period of which Comrade Curtiss speaks as the time when the Los Angeles comrades were able to sell the paper easily. However, since the outbreak of the war there has been, to a considerable extent, a retrogression. One reason is that the comrades tend to separate the daily events of the class struggle from the war situation, and fail to write into the Appeal about the actual life in which they are engaged. This is the main explanation for the cessation of direct reports from the fields of struggle.
Another reason for the failure of the Appeal to continue its transformation into a real workers’ paper is the necessity, imposed by the war, of devoting a considerable part of the paper to analytical articles, in order to arm the advanced workers for the struggle against social-patriotism. But it is certainly possible to combine this work with material more directly attractive to the workers, to constitute a paper with a popular tone.
What’s To Be Done
The staff’s main shortcoming along this line has been its failure to remain in regular contact with the field, suggesting subjects for direct reports and workers’ correspondence, encouraging those who write in, etc.
The Staff, however, in and of itself, cannot solve the problem! A widespread understanding among party members, Yipsels, and our worker-readers, that their voices must be heard in the paper, is the beginning of the solution. Let the workers write our paper!
The Appeal Staff
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<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h1>Class Struggle Issues Arouse<br>
West Coast Maritime Unions</h1>
<h3>(18 December 1935)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>New Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1935/index.htm#nm35_52" target="new">Vol. 1 No. 52</a>, 28 December 1935, pp. 1& 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 18. – The issue of job action has assumed great proportions on the West coast.</p>
<p>The recent convention of the maritime federation (organization of all waterfront crafts on the coast) has attempted to resolve this question of job action, with what success remains to be seen.</p>
<p>Job action is a term that describes a multitude of activities. But speaking generally it is action taken right on the job by the men involved in order to gain a demand or a set of demands.</p>
<p>Above all the seamen have been forced to take recourse to job action. The “award” they received some time ago has proven to be a cruel farce, and in order to maintain conditions of living and safety, the seamen have been compelled to utilize job action as an ultimate weapon.</p>
<p>The conditions under which the seamen live and work are described by Barry Lundberg, leader of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, and president of the Maritime Federation:<br>
</p>
<h4>Conditions of Seamen</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“The seamen are still working 56 hours a week or more for an average pay of $60 per month. No holidays for the seamen. It is only natural and just that they have a demand to claim overtime pay after working these long hours instead of time back.</p>
<p class="quote">“The living and eating quarters of the seamen as a rule are in terrible condition, poor heating and ventilation systems, rotten sleeping quarters, messrooms so small that men must wait in turn for another to eat. This condition and many others exist on most of the ships. The only way these conditions were remedied was by the action of the men themselves, refusing to live and work under such conditions. This action the men were forced to take, as the new existing labor relations hoard never was able to get anything for the men. The shipowners always manage to stall and block action.”</p>
<p class="fst">The Portland local of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, for example, in a letter sent to the <strong>Voice of the Federation</strong>, organ of the Maritime Federation, has the following to state, in part:<br>
</p>
<h4>Job Action Gets Results</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“After the 1934 strike the men were forced to job action practically all of the time, in order to force the shipowners to give them their due rights. On the strength of the united action of various ship-crews, the owners and the government were finally forced to hand down the present award, which they so recently have broken by denying the men collective bargaining. Job action forced the American Hawaiian, the Shepard Line, and various other companies to recognize the I.S.U.</p>
<p class="quote">“We could name hundreds of other cases where job action was the only weapon whereby the seamen got their just rights.”</p>
<p>Let us quote from another letter sent into the <strong>Voice</strong>, this time by a member of the American Radio Telegraphers Association, and approved by the Seattle local of that union.</p>
<p class="c">(These articles were written in answer to an editorial published in the <strong>Voice</strong> giving the pros and cons of job action. The editorial was entitled <em>Job Action, or Else!</em>)</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Job action is not the spontaneous demonstration of the will of the crew as the author of <em>Job Action or Else!</em> states. It is rather the last resort of men who have fully acquainted the ship operators or owners with a condition they do not care to sail under. After being refused the request, the crew has no alternative but to use job action.</p>
<p class="quote">“Following is the case of the crew of the <em>S.S. Suweid</em> of the Nelson Line. The crew of the <em>S.S. Suweid</em> knowing the ship not to be any too seaworthy, decided that they wanted the added protection of radio in the event an S.O.S. should have to be sent. For the information of those who do not know, the Nelson line has been operating a fleet of ships in the intercoastal trade. It has carried as many as nine passengers on a ship without radio equipment. None of the Nelson ships are very modern seacraft. Out-moded laws have no jurisdiction over the specific case mentioned above. The steamship companies will tell you that they do not carry radio on ships where there are less than fifty lives aboard. In point of law they are right. But how about the crew? Have they no right to state under what conditions they will take chances with a watery grave?</p>
<p class="quote">“The case of the <em>Suweid</em> is no isolated one in job action. The crew were granted their just demands. Wireless apparatus was installed and a competent radio officer was placed in charge of the equipment.”</p>
<p class="fst">One thing becomes clear from the above extracts, and that is that in the opinion of the men themselves (and who should know better than they) JOB ACTION GETS RESULTS.</p>
<p>Yet job action has been under steady attack by right wing elements as well as by Stalinists, who under guise of being for “organized” job action, steadily oppose the virile action of the seamen, and emasculate job action.<br>
</p>
<h4>Lundberg Answers Conservatives</h4>
<p class="fst">Harry Lundberg, representative of the seamen, in answer to the editorial <em>Job Action or Else!</em> has the following to state:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><strong>Objection:</strong> “They (opponents of job action) believe that indiscriminate, unorganized job action will prove a boomerang. That it will not only fail, but that it will definitely harm the maritime workers’ movement.”</p>
<p class="quoteb"><strong>Reply by Lundberg:</strong> “Job action is never indiscriminate, unorganized or unjust. As long as the men mutually agree, they have a just grievance which cannot be adjusted otherwise than through job action.”</p>
<p class="quoteb"><strong>Objection:</strong> “Job action, like any other spontaneous elemental effort on the part of men goaded to extremity, has its drawbacks. Where emotion and antipathy can occasionally dilute cool reason, mistakes are bound to occur.”</p>
<p class="quoteb"><strong>Reply:</strong> “Job action is not spontaneous. Neither is it emotional. The men who use job action are the men on the job who are discriminated against. Who knows better than the man on the job. Surely not the committee which is in most cases slowing up or holding back the progress of the seamen.”</p>
<p class="fst">There are elements within the Maritime Federation who fear the organized mass movement of the workers. These are the right wingers who, basing themselves upon some of the better situated sections of the maritime workers, now find themselves in the position where they are in deadly fear of any disturbance of the <em>status quo</em> and their position. In answer to the demands of the underpaid, overworked elements for better conditions, they lift an admonishing finger. That there are dangers in job action is true, but these dangers must not blind us to the correctness (as proven by the effectiveness) of the seamen’s position for job action.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalinists on Reactionary Side</h4>
<p class="fst">Opposition to job action is perfectly understandable from the point of view of a right wing bureaucrat who fears motion of the masses as the devil himself. The Stalinists, however, have also come out against job action, by coming out for “organized” job action. (The seamen stood for “unorganized” job action according to these worthies.) In the final analysis this means no action at all, as proven by their attacks upon patrolmen (stewards) of the seamen, who had come out in favor of crews taking action. For their pains the Stalinists received the following reply by Chas. Cates, second patrolman of the Seamen’s Union:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The editor of the <strong>Waterfront Worker</strong>, the anonymous organ of the C.P. on the waterfront, has taken it upon himself to ridicule and condemn the actions taken by the patrolmen of the Sailor’s Union.</p>
<p class="quote">“He (the editor of the <strong>Waterfront Worker</strong>) also states that this job action was taken without the consent of the rank and file.</p>
<p class="quote">“Now this action was taken right on the job by the men themselves with one idea in mind. And that idea was to get the full support of the Sailor’s Union, and not a lot of scares and threats that they would be breaking the award and probably be the cause of a coastwise strike.</p>
<p class="quote">“It was proven that job action is bringing results.</p>
<p class="quote">“I say instead of discouraging such action, steps should be taken to encourage job action.”</p>
<p class="fst">About the same time as the article appeared in the <strong>Waterfront Worker</strong> an editorial appeared in the <strong>Western Worker</strong>, organ of the Communist Party, attacking Harry Lundberg, leader of the elements standing for job action. The heading of this editorial is entitled <em>We Need Maritime Unity – Not Beef Squads</em>.<br>
</p>
<h4>Workers Slam Stalinists</h4>
<p class="fst">Harry Lundberg answered this editorial in an article that was unanimously endorsed by the Sailors’ Union.</p>
<p>The following is the heading of this statement by Lundberg.</p>
<h5>Sailors’ Union Condemns Editorial</h5>
<p class="quoteb">“The following answer to the vicious attack appearing in the <strong>Western Worker</strong> received the unanimous and enthusiastically acclaimed endorsement of the Sailors’ Union at their last meeting.”</p>
<p class="fst">The statement then went on to sharply condemn the attack on Lundberg, giving a picture of what actually took place rather than the distorted piece of fiction of the <strong>Western Worker</strong>.</p>
<p>In reply to this sharp statement made by the sailors, the <strong>Western Worker</strong> published a snivelling, creeping, crawling article of which the main theme was that an attack on the <strong>Western Worker</strong> is support for the shipowners.</p>
<p>In answer to this hypocritical statement let us refer that paper to an article written by two seamen, panning the little brother of the <strong>Western Worker</strong>, the <strong>Waterfront Worker</strong>:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The <strong>San Francisco Chronicle</strong>, the <strong>American Seaman</strong>, organ of the official right wing in the Seamen’s Union, both took the same stand as the editorial in the <strong>Waterfront Worker</strong> in condemning job action. SO WHAT? In our opinion this is certainly no compliment to the <strong>Waterfront Worker</strong>, or any other so-called rank and file publication. Instead of questioning the sincerity of the writers of these three men (patrolmen who pushed job action) we believe that the sincerity of the writers of the article in the <strong>Waterfront Worker</strong> should be questioned.”</p>
<p class="fst">The Stalinists in this crucial question are following the logic of their extreme right turn. Within the mass movement they are a fetter upon its development. The Stalinists will have to be removed as well as the right wing in order for the union to make any further steps in advance.<br>
</p>
<h4>Maritime Federation Resolution Ambiguous</h4>
<p class="fst">A number of weeks ago the controversy was laid over for solution to a specially called convention of the Maritime Federation. The Maritime Federation has issued an ambiguous resolution, which generally supports the Stalinist version of job action – organized job action. Let us quote the resolution :</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Whereas, we believe and have demonstrated on numerous occasions that job action rightly used, with proper control, has been the means of gaining many concessions for the maritime workers on the Pacific coast, and</p>
<p class="quote">“Whereas, in as much as job action is and should be action taken when any group of maritime workers desire to gain a concession without openly resorting to a strike, and</p>
<p class="quote">“Whereas, in order to eliminate confusion and insure coordination of efforts in the best interests of all maritime groups concerned, it is apparent that an organized method of procedure for job action be laid down by this convention, therefore be it</p>
<p class="quote">“Resolved, that the term job action shall mean only action taken by any maritime group in attempting to gain from their employers some concessions specifically provided for in their respective agreement or awards and shall also mean action taken to enforce the award or agreement to the best interests of the maritime groups concerned, or to prevent employers from violating agreements or awards, and be it further</p>
<p class="quote">“Resolved, that job action should be confined to a job such as a ship, dock, shop, or warehouse, unless otherwise agreed by all maritime groups affected or liable to be affected should be notified and the. issue in question be placed before them, and be it further</p>
<p class="quote">“Resolved, that a committee of all maritime groups affected on the job be formed on the job to consolidate action and prevent misunderstandings; such committees’ authority not to exceed the constitution of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast, and be it further</p>
<p class="quote">“Resolved, that when job action reaches a point in the opinion of the majority of the maritime groups affected by having their members pulled off the job, and that to go further may jeopardize the Maritime Federation as a whole, the matter shall be referred where and when possible to the district council for further action or adjustment.”</p>
<p class="fst">Instead of a sharp statement endorsing any action taken by the seamen in order to maintain and better their conditions, this resolution, endorsed by the Stalinists, comes out with a lot of <em>ifs</em> and <em>whereases</em>. In reality, this resolution does not answer any question, and leaves the important question still open: will the maritime leadership wholeheartedly support job action or will it try to spend its time proving to the <strong>San Francisco Chronicle</strong>, and the “good” shipowners how level-headed and sane they are.<br>
</p>
<h4>For a Class Struggle Policy</h4>
<p class="fst">Unqualified support of any group of workers struggling to better their conditions! No conditions must be given to this support! A class struggle policy, not a class-collaborationist policy will benefit the worker on the waterfront as a whole. And as part of the solution of this question we must present the following: the need for an industrial union on the waterfront instead of a federation of unions. The Maritime Federation was a progressive step over the lack of unity previously the rule off the waterfront. The first step should be followed by a second one: the organization of a Marine Transport Industrial Union. The conflict between one section and another section of the workers will then be done away with. The present situation with a number of agreements and awards, instead of one agreement, has many of the drawbacks of craft unionism.</p>
<p>It is necessary to also point out that the role of the Stalinists as progressives is a false one. Posing as left wingers, as rank and filers, their action has proved that in the final analysis they are an obstacle in the workers’ struggle. In reality they are closer to “progressives” of the John L. Lewis and Gorman type than to the rank and file. The creation of a genuine left wing union movement, free of Stalinist influence, is on the order of the day.</p>
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C. Curtiss
Class Struggle Issues Arouse
West Coast Maritime Unions
(18 December 1935)
From New Militant, Vol. 1 No. 52, 28 December 1935, pp. 1& 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 18. – The issue of job action has assumed great proportions on the West coast.
The recent convention of the maritime federation (organization of all waterfront crafts on the coast) has attempted to resolve this question of job action, with what success remains to be seen.
Job action is a term that describes a multitude of activities. But speaking generally it is action taken right on the job by the men involved in order to gain a demand or a set of demands.
Above all the seamen have been forced to take recourse to job action. The “award” they received some time ago has proven to be a cruel farce, and in order to maintain conditions of living and safety, the seamen have been compelled to utilize job action as an ultimate weapon.
The conditions under which the seamen live and work are described by Barry Lundberg, leader of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, and president of the Maritime Federation:
Conditions of Seamen
“The seamen are still working 56 hours a week or more for an average pay of $60 per month. No holidays for the seamen. It is only natural and just that they have a demand to claim overtime pay after working these long hours instead of time back.
“The living and eating quarters of the seamen as a rule are in terrible condition, poor heating and ventilation systems, rotten sleeping quarters, messrooms so small that men must wait in turn for another to eat. This condition and many others exist on most of the ships. The only way these conditions were remedied was by the action of the men themselves, refusing to live and work under such conditions. This action the men were forced to take, as the new existing labor relations hoard never was able to get anything for the men. The shipowners always manage to stall and block action.”
The Portland local of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, for example, in a letter sent to the Voice of the Federation, organ of the Maritime Federation, has the following to state, in part:
Job Action Gets Results
“After the 1934 strike the men were forced to job action practically all of the time, in order to force the shipowners to give them their due rights. On the strength of the united action of various ship-crews, the owners and the government were finally forced to hand down the present award, which they so recently have broken by denying the men collective bargaining. Job action forced the American Hawaiian, the Shepard Line, and various other companies to recognize the I.S.U.
“We could name hundreds of other cases where job action was the only weapon whereby the seamen got their just rights.”
Let us quote from another letter sent into the Voice, this time by a member of the American Radio Telegraphers Association, and approved by the Seattle local of that union.
(These articles were written in answer to an editorial published in the Voice giving the pros and cons of job action. The editorial was entitled Job Action, or Else!)
“Job action is not the spontaneous demonstration of the will of the crew as the author of Job Action or Else! states. It is rather the last resort of men who have fully acquainted the ship operators or owners with a condition they do not care to sail under. After being refused the request, the crew has no alternative but to use job action.
“Following is the case of the crew of the S.S. Suweid of the Nelson Line. The crew of the S.S. Suweid knowing the ship not to be any too seaworthy, decided that they wanted the added protection of radio in the event an S.O.S. should have to be sent. For the information of those who do not know, the Nelson line has been operating a fleet of ships in the intercoastal trade. It has carried as many as nine passengers on a ship without radio equipment. None of the Nelson ships are very modern seacraft. Out-moded laws have no jurisdiction over the specific case mentioned above. The steamship companies will tell you that they do not carry radio on ships where there are less than fifty lives aboard. In point of law they are right. But how about the crew? Have they no right to state under what conditions they will take chances with a watery grave?
“The case of the Suweid is no isolated one in job action. The crew were granted their just demands. Wireless apparatus was installed and a competent radio officer was placed in charge of the equipment.”
One thing becomes clear from the above extracts, and that is that in the opinion of the men themselves (and who should know better than they) JOB ACTION GETS RESULTS.
Yet job action has been under steady attack by right wing elements as well as by Stalinists, who under guise of being for “organized” job action, steadily oppose the virile action of the seamen, and emasculate job action.
Lundberg Answers Conservatives
Harry Lundberg, representative of the seamen, in answer to the editorial Job Action or Else! has the following to state:
Objection: “They (opponents of job action) believe that indiscriminate, unorganized job action will prove a boomerang. That it will not only fail, but that it will definitely harm the maritime workers’ movement.”
Reply by Lundberg: “Job action is never indiscriminate, unorganized or unjust. As long as the men mutually agree, they have a just grievance which cannot be adjusted otherwise than through job action.”
Objection: “Job action, like any other spontaneous elemental effort on the part of men goaded to extremity, has its drawbacks. Where emotion and antipathy can occasionally dilute cool reason, mistakes are bound to occur.”
Reply: “Job action is not spontaneous. Neither is it emotional. The men who use job action are the men on the job who are discriminated against. Who knows better than the man on the job. Surely not the committee which is in most cases slowing up or holding back the progress of the seamen.”
There are elements within the Maritime Federation who fear the organized mass movement of the workers. These are the right wingers who, basing themselves upon some of the better situated sections of the maritime workers, now find themselves in the position where they are in deadly fear of any disturbance of the status quo and their position. In answer to the demands of the underpaid, overworked elements for better conditions, they lift an admonishing finger. That there are dangers in job action is true, but these dangers must not blind us to the correctness (as proven by the effectiveness) of the seamen’s position for job action.
Stalinists on Reactionary Side
Opposition to job action is perfectly understandable from the point of view of a right wing bureaucrat who fears motion of the masses as the devil himself. The Stalinists, however, have also come out against job action, by coming out for “organized” job action. (The seamen stood for “unorganized” job action according to these worthies.) In the final analysis this means no action at all, as proven by their attacks upon patrolmen (stewards) of the seamen, who had come out in favor of crews taking action. For their pains the Stalinists received the following reply by Chas. Cates, second patrolman of the Seamen’s Union:
“The editor of the Waterfront Worker, the anonymous organ of the C.P. on the waterfront, has taken it upon himself to ridicule and condemn the actions taken by the patrolmen of the Sailor’s Union.
“He (the editor of the Waterfront Worker) also states that this job action was taken without the consent of the rank and file.
“Now this action was taken right on the job by the men themselves with one idea in mind. And that idea was to get the full support of the Sailor’s Union, and not a lot of scares and threats that they would be breaking the award and probably be the cause of a coastwise strike.
“It was proven that job action is bringing results.
“I say instead of discouraging such action, steps should be taken to encourage job action.”
About the same time as the article appeared in the Waterfront Worker an editorial appeared in the Western Worker, organ of the Communist Party, attacking Harry Lundberg, leader of the elements standing for job action. The heading of this editorial is entitled We Need Maritime Unity – Not Beef Squads.
Workers Slam Stalinists
Harry Lundberg answered this editorial in an article that was unanimously endorsed by the Sailors’ Union.
The following is the heading of this statement by Lundberg.
Sailors’ Union Condemns Editorial
“The following answer to the vicious attack appearing in the Western Worker received the unanimous and enthusiastically acclaimed endorsement of the Sailors’ Union at their last meeting.”
The statement then went on to sharply condemn the attack on Lundberg, giving a picture of what actually took place rather than the distorted piece of fiction of the Western Worker.
In reply to this sharp statement made by the sailors, the Western Worker published a snivelling, creeping, crawling article of which the main theme was that an attack on the Western Worker is support for the shipowners.
In answer to this hypocritical statement let us refer that paper to an article written by two seamen, panning the little brother of the Western Worker, the Waterfront Worker:
“The San Francisco Chronicle, the American Seaman, organ of the official right wing in the Seamen’s Union, both took the same stand as the editorial in the Waterfront Worker in condemning job action. SO WHAT? In our opinion this is certainly no compliment to the Waterfront Worker, or any other so-called rank and file publication. Instead of questioning the sincerity of the writers of these three men (patrolmen who pushed job action) we believe that the sincerity of the writers of the article in the Waterfront Worker should be questioned.”
The Stalinists in this crucial question are following the logic of their extreme right turn. Within the mass movement they are a fetter upon its development. The Stalinists will have to be removed as well as the right wing in order for the union to make any further steps in advance.
Maritime Federation Resolution Ambiguous
A number of weeks ago the controversy was laid over for solution to a specially called convention of the Maritime Federation. The Maritime Federation has issued an ambiguous resolution, which generally supports the Stalinist version of job action – organized job action. Let us quote the resolution :
“Whereas, we believe and have demonstrated on numerous occasions that job action rightly used, with proper control, has been the means of gaining many concessions for the maritime workers on the Pacific coast, and
“Whereas, in as much as job action is and should be action taken when any group of maritime workers desire to gain a concession without openly resorting to a strike, and
“Whereas, in order to eliminate confusion and insure coordination of efforts in the best interests of all maritime groups concerned, it is apparent that an organized method of procedure for job action be laid down by this convention, therefore be it
“Resolved, that the term job action shall mean only action taken by any maritime group in attempting to gain from their employers some concessions specifically provided for in their respective agreement or awards and shall also mean action taken to enforce the award or agreement to the best interests of the maritime groups concerned, or to prevent employers from violating agreements or awards, and be it further
“Resolved, that job action should be confined to a job such as a ship, dock, shop, or warehouse, unless otherwise agreed by all maritime groups affected or liable to be affected should be notified and the. issue in question be placed before them, and be it further
“Resolved, that a committee of all maritime groups affected on the job be formed on the job to consolidate action and prevent misunderstandings; such committees’ authority not to exceed the constitution of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast, and be it further
“Resolved, that when job action reaches a point in the opinion of the majority of the maritime groups affected by having their members pulled off the job, and that to go further may jeopardize the Maritime Federation as a whole, the matter shall be referred where and when possible to the district council for further action or adjustment.”
Instead of a sharp statement endorsing any action taken by the seamen in order to maintain and better their conditions, this resolution, endorsed by the Stalinists, comes out with a lot of ifs and whereases. In reality, this resolution does not answer any question, and leaves the important question still open: will the maritime leadership wholeheartedly support job action or will it try to spend its time proving to the San Francisco Chronicle, and the “good” shipowners how level-headed and sane they are.
For a Class Struggle Policy
Unqualified support of any group of workers struggling to better their conditions! No conditions must be given to this support! A class struggle policy, not a class-collaborationist policy will benefit the worker on the waterfront as a whole. And as part of the solution of this question we must present the following: the need for an industrial union on the waterfront instead of a federation of unions. The Maritime Federation was a progressive step over the lack of unity previously the rule off the waterfront. The first step should be followed by a second one: the organization of a Marine Transport Industrial Union. The conflict between one section and another section of the workers will then be done away with. The present situation with a number of agreements and awards, instead of one agreement, has many of the drawbacks of craft unionism.
It is necessary to also point out that the role of the Stalinists as progressives is a false one. Posing as left wingers, as rank and filers, their action has proved that in the final analysis they are an obstacle in the workers’ struggle. In reality they are closer to “progressives” of the John L. Lewis and Gorman type than to the rank and file. The creation of a genuine left wing union movement, free of Stalinist influence, is on the order of the day.
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<h2>Charles Curtiss</h2>
<h1>Stalinists Launch New Phoney<br>
Labor Party in San Francisco</h1>
<h4>Opportunist Platform Is to Right of Epic;<br>
Devised to Catch All Voters</h4>
<h3>(September 1935)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>New Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1935/index.htm#nm35_38" target="new">Vol. I No. 38</a>, 14 September 1935, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>SAN FRANCISCO.</strong> – “Labor Unites with Liberal Democratic and Radical Forces for the Municipal Elections” is the heading of a leaflet stating the program of the San Francisco Municipal Labor Party, which was ratified on August 31.</p>
<p>The Labor party being formed under Stalinist aegis in San Francisco, key labor city in California, is an indication of the nature of the Labor parties the Communist party is going to form throughout the state. For this reason it deserves the attention of workers nationally.</p>
<p>The program for the proposed Labor party calls for everything from 100 percent unionization of the city to abolition of one-man street cars; from a demand for referendum, to free school books; from a unified publicly owned transbay transportation system, to a statement of opposition to vigilantism; from the improvement and extension of vocational training, to a demand for the freedom of Tom Mooney.</p>
<p>The program lists 21 demands and slogans. The mass-class Labor party so loudly touted by the Stalinists, reveals itself to be a catch-all to attract votes on any basis. But the burning question to literally hundreds of thousands it leaves untouched. To these hundreds of thousands enrolled in the Epics and Utopians, besides thousands of un-affiliated workers, the present capitalist crisis has driven one fact home: capitalism is an outworn system that must be replaced with a new social order.</p>
<p>Upton Sinclair, on the platform of “End Poverty in California” and “Production for Use,” polled nearly a million votes in the gubernatorial elections of last year. The overwhelming majority of these votes were protests against the present system, and for socialism, although a confused type of socialism as popularized by Upton Sinclair in his “production for use and not for profit” platform.</p>
<p>That the methods proposed by Sinclair to attain socialism, would and could not lead to the desired goal, but somewhere far off from it, is very true, but right now we shall not deal with this aspect of the question.</p>
<p>Although nearly a million California voters cast their mandates for a new social order, the fact of the matter is that the proposed program for the Stalinist-inspired Labor party does not even contain a word about the necessity of the abolition of the capitalist system, and the establishment of socialism.</p>
<p>The program of the Stalinist conceived and executed Labor party limits itself to the struggle for immediate demands. The program does not base itself upon the idea of the overthrow of capitalism, but merely to the patching up of this system. It is silent concerning the burning question of the era: capitalism or socialism. The elementary teachings of Marxism-Leninism concerning the use of parliamentary elections to propagandize the revolutionary solution by the workers oi their problems, is thrown overboard by the Communist party. The highest aim of the parliamentary struggle seems to be for the Stalinists to give the workers the idea that capitalism can be reformed. The mistake is two-fold: first, not to utilize the interest aroused in politics around election periods for the advocacy of the revolutionary solution, and second, in giving the workers the illusion that any gains of a substantial nature can be won through parliamentary struggle.</p>
<p>As a matter of tragic fact, the Epic movement, having as its central slogan, Production for Use (in addition to a series of immediate demands), is far to the Left of the Stalinist-created Labor party, which bases itself solely upon the struggle for immediate demands, and does not even place before the workers the need of a new social order. The program of the Labor party cannot even be called reformist; the best description that can be given for it is Left-liberal.</p>
<p>The self-proclaimed vanguard of the working class, instead of leading the workers to the broad highway of revolution, is dragging them to the abyss of the most craven type of reformism. The masses have seen the necessity of a new social order (confused though they are as to the means of attaining this social order), but the Labor party does not even pay lip service to this ideal.</p>
<p>The Workers Party of California, however, places before Itself an altogether different task. It does not drag behind the masses; it does not strengthen their illusions in parliamentarism. To those workers convinced of the necessity of replacing capitalism by socialism it points out the only real way of attaining this goal; through the scientific method of Marxism-Leninism, the workers’ dictatorship over the capitalist class, as a temporary stage to the free communist society. To the workers still imbued with faith in capitalism, it shows the need for a new social order.</p>
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Charles Curtiss
Stalinists Launch New Phoney
Labor Party in San Francisco
Opportunist Platform Is to Right of Epic;
Devised to Catch All Voters
(September 1935)
From New Militant, Vol. I No. 38, 14 September 1935, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
SAN FRANCISCO. – “Labor Unites with Liberal Democratic and Radical Forces for the Municipal Elections” is the heading of a leaflet stating the program of the San Francisco Municipal Labor Party, which was ratified on August 31.
The Labor party being formed under Stalinist aegis in San Francisco, key labor city in California, is an indication of the nature of the Labor parties the Communist party is going to form throughout the state. For this reason it deserves the attention of workers nationally.
The program for the proposed Labor party calls for everything from 100 percent unionization of the city to abolition of one-man street cars; from a demand for referendum, to free school books; from a unified publicly owned transbay transportation system, to a statement of opposition to vigilantism; from the improvement and extension of vocational training, to a demand for the freedom of Tom Mooney.
The program lists 21 demands and slogans. The mass-class Labor party so loudly touted by the Stalinists, reveals itself to be a catch-all to attract votes on any basis. But the burning question to literally hundreds of thousands it leaves untouched. To these hundreds of thousands enrolled in the Epics and Utopians, besides thousands of un-affiliated workers, the present capitalist crisis has driven one fact home: capitalism is an outworn system that must be replaced with a new social order.
Upton Sinclair, on the platform of “End Poverty in California” and “Production for Use,” polled nearly a million votes in the gubernatorial elections of last year. The overwhelming majority of these votes were protests against the present system, and for socialism, although a confused type of socialism as popularized by Upton Sinclair in his “production for use and not for profit” platform.
That the methods proposed by Sinclair to attain socialism, would and could not lead to the desired goal, but somewhere far off from it, is very true, but right now we shall not deal with this aspect of the question.
Although nearly a million California voters cast their mandates for a new social order, the fact of the matter is that the proposed program for the Stalinist-inspired Labor party does not even contain a word about the necessity of the abolition of the capitalist system, and the establishment of socialism.
The program of the Stalinist conceived and executed Labor party limits itself to the struggle for immediate demands. The program does not base itself upon the idea of the overthrow of capitalism, but merely to the patching up of this system. It is silent concerning the burning question of the era: capitalism or socialism. The elementary teachings of Marxism-Leninism concerning the use of parliamentary elections to propagandize the revolutionary solution by the workers oi their problems, is thrown overboard by the Communist party. The highest aim of the parliamentary struggle seems to be for the Stalinists to give the workers the idea that capitalism can be reformed. The mistake is two-fold: first, not to utilize the interest aroused in politics around election periods for the advocacy of the revolutionary solution, and second, in giving the workers the illusion that any gains of a substantial nature can be won through parliamentary struggle.
As a matter of tragic fact, the Epic movement, having as its central slogan, Production for Use (in addition to a series of immediate demands), is far to the Left of the Stalinist-created Labor party, which bases itself solely upon the struggle for immediate demands, and does not even place before the workers the need of a new social order. The program of the Labor party cannot even be called reformist; the best description that can be given for it is Left-liberal.
The self-proclaimed vanguard of the working class, instead of leading the workers to the broad highway of revolution, is dragging them to the abyss of the most craven type of reformism. The masses have seen the necessity of a new social order (confused though they are as to the means of attaining this social order), but the Labor party does not even pay lip service to this ideal.
The Workers Party of California, however, places before Itself an altogether different task. It does not drag behind the masses; it does not strengthen their illusions in parliamentarism. To those workers convinced of the necessity of replacing capitalism by socialism it points out the only real way of attaining this goal; through the scientific method of Marxism-Leninism, the workers’ dictatorship over the capitalist class, as a temporary stage to the free communist society. To the workers still imbued with faith in capitalism, it shows the need for a new social order.
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<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>Why Philippine Masses Have Not<br>
Been Rallied to Support of War</h1>
<h3>(14 March 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_11" target="new">Vol. VI No. 11, 14 March 1942, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by </a><a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Could the Philippine Islands have been successfully defended against the Japanese? The military experts say no; President Roosevelt in his radio speech of Feb. 23 said no. All that could be expected, according to them, was a delaying action.</p>
<p>This is not true. Nothing else could have happened as long as the masses ot the Philippine people were not rallied to the fight. But if the masses had been rallied, the picture in the Philippines, would be entirely different today from what it is.</p>
<p>The news dispatches attempt to give the impression that great numbers of Filipinos are aiding the United States forces in the Philippine Islands. This is a deliberate misrepresentation. Only a very small part of the population of the islands is supporting General MacArthur.</p>
<p>Just as the hated British exploiters could not get any support from the Malayan people in the struggle between Great Britain and Japan, so, for the most part the United States has been unable to get real support from the great masses of the Filipinos. The reason is that they know the truth about American imperialism.<br>
</p>
<h4>Under U.S. Rule</h4>
<p class="fst">Long before the outbreak of the war between Spain and the United States in 1$98, the Filipinos were in armed revolt against Spain for their national independence. The United States, upon declaring war, offered a united front to the Filipino insurrectionaries against Spain, which was accepted.</p>
<p>When the Spaniards surrendered, the Filipinos demanded their independence, this time from the United States. In reply, the American troops turned their rifles against their former allies. After a bloody war against the Filipinos, the domination of the United States was established.</p>
<p>More than 40 years have passed. What have been the results of American rule?</p>
<p>Fifty per cent of the people cannot read or write. The death rate on the Islands is twice as high as that in the United States. One cannot walk through the terrible slums of Manila without hearing tubercular coughing on all sides. Tuberculosis, a disease of malnutrition, is rife in Manila.</p>
<p>The wages of the industrial urban workers, the “aristocracy” of labor, are 50 cents a day.</p>
<p>In the Tural areas the sharecropper is lucky if $1 a week passes through his hands. They do not get enough food to nourish themselves adequately.<br>
</p>
<h4>Conditions of the Peasants</h4>
<p class="fst">The average <em>tao</em> (peasant) suffers from roundworms and hookworms that drain his strength. But these are not the only parasites he supports. He lives under a <em>cacique</em> (landlord) system. Half the crop goes to the <em>cacique</em>. The feudal status on the land has been unchanged from the days of Spanish rule.</p>
<p>The <em>tao</em> is perpetually in debt. He has to borrow from the landlord at usurious rates often running to 100% in order to exist until the harvest. He then sells the crop at low harvest prices in order to pay his debts. Soon he must inevitably go into debt again.</p>
<p>The landless rural worker, employed in the sugar, rice, copra, tobacco and hemp fields, earns from 15 cents to 30 cents a day. His hours are from sunrise to sunset.</p>
<p>The workers and peasants are in constant revolt against these conditions. Militant strikes have taken place. Workers’ and peasants’ organizations have spread throughout the country.</p>
<p>To keep down the labor and peasant movement, all the internationally known tricks, are tried, from company unions to company-controlled towns where union leaders and organizers are slugged – if a worse fate does not overtake them.</p>
<p>The governor of the rice and sugar raising province of Pampanga, organized a fascist society. This province was the center of the peasant and rural worker movement, which was strongly dominated by socialist ideas. The hirelings of the governor, working in close collaboration with the constabulary, were unable to make the workers and <em>taos</em> desert their organization.<br>
</p>
<h4>Profits for Capitalists</h4>
<p class="fst">Under these economic conditions it is easy to understand how huge fortunes have been built by American investors, and to a lesser extent, the Spaniards. For example, American and Spanish capital, invested in the sugar interests has been consistently earning 20 per cent profit per year.</p>
<p>The Philippines imported $100,000,000 in goods from the United States in 1939. In that year the Islands were the fifth most important customer of the United States.</p>
<p>As is usually the case in the colonies and semi-colonies, the foreign exploiters have developed racial ideas akin to Hitler’s.</p>
<p>The great masses of the Filipinos are considered racial inferiors by the wealthy Americans and Spaniards; even the upper classes of the Filipinos are not permitted in certain clubs reserved for whites.</p>
<p>Imperialism means hunger, disease and insult for the Philippine masses but for the American investors and Wall Street it means super-profits. Is it any wonder these investors oppose independence for the Philippines?</p>
<p>The movement for Philippine independence, now more than 50 years old, met the stubborn resistance of the American government up to 1934 when independence was finally promised for 1946. Even so, certain reservations were to be maintained, such as continuing military forces on the islands.</p>
<p>Independence was promised only because certain interests in competition with the products of the Philippines – such as the American and Cuban sugar interests – wanted the Philippine products subject to tariffs.</p>
<p>So it was not the democratic right of every nation to govern itself, but the argument of dollars which won the promise of freedom for the Phillipines.</p>
<p>In the face of such a record and such hypocrisy, is it not understandable why the Philippine masses are apathetic to the war between the United States and Japan, why they feel it is not their war?</p>
<p>That which a capitalist government could not and cannot do, only a Workers and Farmers Government in the United States would do. Such a government would not be interested in exploiting other peoples but in raising the standards of living not only of their own people but of all nations. Such a government would establish a fraternal alliance with the masses of the present colonies and semi-colonies against imperialism and fascism.</p>
<p>Such a Workers and Farmers Government would be the only guarantee for the independence for the Philippine nation, which under imperialism is destined only to subjugation by one or the other of the large imperialist powers.</p>
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C. Charles
Why Philippine Masses Have Not
Been Rallied to Support of War
(14 March 1942)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 11, 14 March 1942, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Could the Philippine Islands have been successfully defended against the Japanese? The military experts say no; President Roosevelt in his radio speech of Feb. 23 said no. All that could be expected, according to them, was a delaying action.
This is not true. Nothing else could have happened as long as the masses ot the Philippine people were not rallied to the fight. But if the masses had been rallied, the picture in the Philippines, would be entirely different today from what it is.
The news dispatches attempt to give the impression that great numbers of Filipinos are aiding the United States forces in the Philippine Islands. This is a deliberate misrepresentation. Only a very small part of the population of the islands is supporting General MacArthur.
Just as the hated British exploiters could not get any support from the Malayan people in the struggle between Great Britain and Japan, so, for the most part the United States has been unable to get real support from the great masses of the Filipinos. The reason is that they know the truth about American imperialism.
Under U.S. Rule
Long before the outbreak of the war between Spain and the United States in 1$98, the Filipinos were in armed revolt against Spain for their national independence. The United States, upon declaring war, offered a united front to the Filipino insurrectionaries against Spain, which was accepted.
When the Spaniards surrendered, the Filipinos demanded their independence, this time from the United States. In reply, the American troops turned their rifles against their former allies. After a bloody war against the Filipinos, the domination of the United States was established.
More than 40 years have passed. What have been the results of American rule?
Fifty per cent of the people cannot read or write. The death rate on the Islands is twice as high as that in the United States. One cannot walk through the terrible slums of Manila without hearing tubercular coughing on all sides. Tuberculosis, a disease of malnutrition, is rife in Manila.
The wages of the industrial urban workers, the “aristocracy” of labor, are 50 cents a day.
In the Tural areas the sharecropper is lucky if $1 a week passes through his hands. They do not get enough food to nourish themselves adequately.
Conditions of the Peasants
The average tao (peasant) suffers from roundworms and hookworms that drain his strength. But these are not the only parasites he supports. He lives under a cacique (landlord) system. Half the crop goes to the cacique. The feudal status on the land has been unchanged from the days of Spanish rule.
The tao is perpetually in debt. He has to borrow from the landlord at usurious rates often running to 100% in order to exist until the harvest. He then sells the crop at low harvest prices in order to pay his debts. Soon he must inevitably go into debt again.
The landless rural worker, employed in the sugar, rice, copra, tobacco and hemp fields, earns from 15 cents to 30 cents a day. His hours are from sunrise to sunset.
The workers and peasants are in constant revolt against these conditions. Militant strikes have taken place. Workers’ and peasants’ organizations have spread throughout the country.
To keep down the labor and peasant movement, all the internationally known tricks, are tried, from company unions to company-controlled towns where union leaders and organizers are slugged – if a worse fate does not overtake them.
The governor of the rice and sugar raising province of Pampanga, organized a fascist society. This province was the center of the peasant and rural worker movement, which was strongly dominated by socialist ideas. The hirelings of the governor, working in close collaboration with the constabulary, were unable to make the workers and taos desert their organization.
Profits for Capitalists
Under these economic conditions it is easy to understand how huge fortunes have been built by American investors, and to a lesser extent, the Spaniards. For example, American and Spanish capital, invested in the sugar interests has been consistently earning 20 per cent profit per year.
The Philippines imported $100,000,000 in goods from the United States in 1939. In that year the Islands were the fifth most important customer of the United States.
As is usually the case in the colonies and semi-colonies, the foreign exploiters have developed racial ideas akin to Hitler’s.
The great masses of the Filipinos are considered racial inferiors by the wealthy Americans and Spaniards; even the upper classes of the Filipinos are not permitted in certain clubs reserved for whites.
Imperialism means hunger, disease and insult for the Philippine masses but for the American investors and Wall Street it means super-profits. Is it any wonder these investors oppose independence for the Philippines?
The movement for Philippine independence, now more than 50 years old, met the stubborn resistance of the American government up to 1934 when independence was finally promised for 1946. Even so, certain reservations were to be maintained, such as continuing military forces on the islands.
Independence was promised only because certain interests in competition with the products of the Philippines – such as the American and Cuban sugar interests – wanted the Philippine products subject to tariffs.
So it was not the democratic right of every nation to govern itself, but the argument of dollars which won the promise of freedom for the Phillipines.
In the face of such a record and such hypocrisy, is it not understandable why the Philippine masses are apathetic to the war between the United States and Japan, why they feel it is not their war?
That which a capitalist government could not and cannot do, only a Workers and Farmers Government in the United States would do. Such a government would not be interested in exploiting other peoples but in raising the standards of living not only of their own people but of all nations. Such a government would establish a fraternal alliance with the masses of the present colonies and semi-colonies against imperialism and fascism.
Such a Workers and Farmers Government would be the only guarantee for the independence for the Philippine nation, which under imperialism is destined only to subjugation by one or the other of the large imperialist powers.
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<h2>Curtis</h2>
<h1>Highlights at Gillespie</h1>
<h4>Observations at the Convention of the Illinois Miners</h4>
<h3>(October 1932)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1932/index.htm#tm32_43" target="new">Vol. V No. 43</a>, 22 October 1932, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>GILLESPIE.</strong> – The National Miners Union had presented a credential for a fraternal delegation for Nelson, Meyerscough, Minerich and Borich. The Right wing showed itself, amid much demagogy, much flaunting of the red herring, one delegate from Auburn, proclaiming loudly his Americanism, threatened to withdraw if the N.M.U. were permitted to remain in the hall, The Right wing was victorious and the N.M.U. was not seated while the West Virginia Miners Union was. The N.M.U. was not even allowed the floor when the motion was made and carried to proceed to the next order of business. The fight of the Left wing was unavailing against the double factor of the red phobiac reactionaries and the disrepute of Communism because of the record of the Stalinists. The second factor prepared the miners to be easy prey for the reactionary demagogues.</p>
<p>The resolutions and constitutional committees were then elected by one representative of each from each sub-district. There was a Left Oppositionist on each of these committees, comrade Noel Bernard on the former and comrade Gerry Allard on the latter. The key constitutional committee had a good proportion of progressives, although it is significant to note that two members or supporters of the I.W.W., by the very force of their logic or illogic – often found themselves closer to the reaction than to the progressives centered around Allard. The resolutions committee seemed much more reactionary than the constitutional committee.</p>
<p>The sessions that heard the report of the scale committee and all ensuing sessions were closed to all non-delegates.</p>
<p>A survey of the situation had convinced the Left Oppositionists of the urgent necessity for united Left wing action. We proposed to Minerich a joint meeting of both groups to talk over possibilities of united work. Minerich stated that he would have to consult with his comrades and he would give us their answer later that evening.</p>
<p>We went to keep our appointment with Minerich. We found Meyerscough and Minerich waiting for us and we went into a side street and began our talk. This meeting, I think, is of great interest and importance. It is the first time, I believe, that the representatives of the party and the Left Opposition met, even informally, to discuss the possibility of common work for the common aim. After a long discussion in which we placed forward our ideas and they theirs, they left us stating that they would have to take counsel from a comrade still higher. Jack Stachel, who was in town, is the one they meant. The following is the program we proposed for joint labor:</p>
<ol>
<li>Win the strike. Against the wage-cut to the bitter end. For a referendum in case the convention decided to retreat (this possibility had been hinted by Pearcey in his opening speech).<br>
</li>
<li>Strike Franklin County. Make the strike effective.<br>
</li>
<li>A union based on the class struggle.<br>
</li>
<li>A democratic union, with rank and file control and right of minority opinion.<br>
</li>
<li>National unity of all miners’ groups that had risen against Lewis, including the N.M.U.<br>
</li>
<li>The N.M.U. to be seated as fraternal delegates with voice and the N.M.U. to be given a chance to speak.<br>
</li>
<li>Reinstatement of all expelled for their views from U.M.W.A. into the P.M.A.<br>
</li>
<li>For a united Left wing slate in the coming elections.<br>
</li>
<li>No horse-trading with reactionary elements and cliques – a straight-forward fight.<br>
</li>
<li>Cooperation with all relief and defense organizations.<br>
</li>
<li>A fight, if the point is raised, for Foster and Ford, and the C.P. in the elections.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">This, I believe, was a key moment of the convention. Our proposal for a joint meeting of all Left wingers about this program would mean an aggressive fight that if not immediately victorious, would at least jolt the Right wing. In this positive platform would be found a rallying unifying center for the scattered Left wingers who stood hopeless before the Right machine. Their later refusal places upon Stalinism a terrible onus.<br>
</p>
<h4>Tues. Oct. 4, 1932</h4>
<p class="fst">The next noon we met Borich and Minerich. They were evasive about the joint meeting. In order not to give them any excuse whatsoever we told them we were having a meeting at 6 that evening and we suggested that they turn this into a joint meeting. A hazy “We’ll see”, was their reply.</p>
<p>The Belleville-St. Clair Operators Association employing about 1,000 men had proposed to the P.M.A. negotiations to settle the strike. The day set was Wednesday the 5th, so the convention spent that day in arriving at agreement on what to instruct their representative at the conference with the operators. By a vote of 157 to 27 the convention recommended to its committee to secure the best terms above $5 – in other words to compromise. The 27 represented that group of Left wingers who stood for a fight to the finish.</p>
<p>As the delegates came to the relief headquarters for their supper the N.M.U. distributed a mimeographed copy of the speech Borich would have made had the floor been allowed him. I have sent you a copy of it. You will agree with me that it is a document much superior to anything issued on the miners in the last four years by Stalinism. The “third period” had died an unlamented death. The method of argument by epithet was abandoned here.</p>
<p>A much better appraisal of the united front replaces the old formula of “united front from below” <em>versus</em> “united front from above.” The N.M.U. offers the united front to the organization as a whole. Our pride – for in great part this is the result of the consistent Leninist hammering of the Left Opposition – is only followed by the fear of the Right “zag” that will replace the ultra-Left “zig”. We can see a foreshadowing of this when the statement of the N.M.U. does not mention a word about political action in this presidential year. The miners are not, either as a group or Individually, asked to vote Communist, in this statement.</p>
<p>While the statements were being distributed we asked if our invitation was going to be accepted. Our answer was a surly, “No.” This “No” meant the granting of right of way to the reactionary steam roller!</p>
<p>We now come to another factor in the situation, the Socialist party. Four years ago, Socialists were conspicuous solely by their absence. Today the Socialist party has replaced the Communist party as dominant working class group throughout southern Illinois. Miners, young miners, are jamming socialist meetings, are wearing “vote for Thomas and Maurer” buttons on their lapels. The C.P. has become a bitter memory. The fact that the Socialists can stage a comeback after 20 years of betrayal speaks eloquently for the results of Stalinist policy.</p>
<p>Five hundred miners filled the hall that night to hear Roy Burt expound the benefits of voting Socialist. This typical reformist address was followed by a clownish, shallow demagogue, by trade – a Socialist organizer – by name, John Taylor. Upon the completion of Taylor’s speech the floor was thrown open for questions.</p>
<p>The Left Oppositionists present felt it incumbent upon themselves to ally themselves definitely with the party, but none of its moronic errors, to place itself sharply in opposition to the reformist Socialists and to give the Stalinists a needed lesson in how to carry on such activity. So comrade Clarke asked whether it was true that the S.P. by a vote of 6–5 had decided not to intervene in the battle between Lewis and the P.M.A. to remain “neutral”, which meant essentially helping Lewis.</p>
<p>Taylor, answering, stated that the S.P. did not interfere in the internal quarrels of the miners. He boorishly jested about the danger of mixing into the quarrels of a man and wife.</p>
<p>Later Clarke arose and read from the <strong>Class Struggle</strong>, the organ of a group of extreme left wingers in the Socialist Party, edited by Sol Larks of Chicago, where the stand of the National Executive Committee of that organization in refusing to support the Progressives is sharply condemned. Upon the demand of Taylor, Clarke handed him the paper. After the adjournment of the meeting when Taylor was asked for the return of the journal he bellowed like an infuriated bull and snarlingly refused, stating that the editor of the “filthy rag” would be expelled from the S.P.</p>
<p>Our attack upon the S.P. was slashing and telling, while the arch-stupidity of the Centrists was exactly to the liking of those on the platform, and antagonized, not as Zip Kachinski, a Communist youth organizer, tried lamely to tell us, the Socialist party members but all the workers present. Comrade Minerich told Kachinski not to “kid himself” and much more realistically recognized that opposed to us were the practically unanimous miners. Yet the Left Opposition questions were not shouted down, but listened to quietly and with interest and attention and even with some sympathy as we brought the lessons of socialist betrayal close to them. Yet, we must recognize that the Left Opposition often suffers because of Stalinism.</p>
<p>We discussed in comradely fashion with the miners after the meeting and showed the difference between Communism and Socialism – a privilege not granted the Stalinists.</p>
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Curtis
Highlights at Gillespie
Observations at the Convention of the Illinois Miners
(October 1932)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 43, 22 October 1932, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
GILLESPIE. – The National Miners Union had presented a credential for a fraternal delegation for Nelson, Meyerscough, Minerich and Borich. The Right wing showed itself, amid much demagogy, much flaunting of the red herring, one delegate from Auburn, proclaiming loudly his Americanism, threatened to withdraw if the N.M.U. were permitted to remain in the hall, The Right wing was victorious and the N.M.U. was not seated while the West Virginia Miners Union was. The N.M.U. was not even allowed the floor when the motion was made and carried to proceed to the next order of business. The fight of the Left wing was unavailing against the double factor of the red phobiac reactionaries and the disrepute of Communism because of the record of the Stalinists. The second factor prepared the miners to be easy prey for the reactionary demagogues.
The resolutions and constitutional committees were then elected by one representative of each from each sub-district. There was a Left Oppositionist on each of these committees, comrade Noel Bernard on the former and comrade Gerry Allard on the latter. The key constitutional committee had a good proportion of progressives, although it is significant to note that two members or supporters of the I.W.W., by the very force of their logic or illogic – often found themselves closer to the reaction than to the progressives centered around Allard. The resolutions committee seemed much more reactionary than the constitutional committee.
The sessions that heard the report of the scale committee and all ensuing sessions were closed to all non-delegates.
A survey of the situation had convinced the Left Oppositionists of the urgent necessity for united Left wing action. We proposed to Minerich a joint meeting of both groups to talk over possibilities of united work. Minerich stated that he would have to consult with his comrades and he would give us their answer later that evening.
We went to keep our appointment with Minerich. We found Meyerscough and Minerich waiting for us and we went into a side street and began our talk. This meeting, I think, is of great interest and importance. It is the first time, I believe, that the representatives of the party and the Left Opposition met, even informally, to discuss the possibility of common work for the common aim. After a long discussion in which we placed forward our ideas and they theirs, they left us stating that they would have to take counsel from a comrade still higher. Jack Stachel, who was in town, is the one they meant. The following is the program we proposed for joint labor:
Win the strike. Against the wage-cut to the bitter end. For a referendum in case the convention decided to retreat (this possibility had been hinted by Pearcey in his opening speech).
Strike Franklin County. Make the strike effective.
A union based on the class struggle.
A democratic union, with rank and file control and right of minority opinion.
National unity of all miners’ groups that had risen against Lewis, including the N.M.U.
The N.M.U. to be seated as fraternal delegates with voice and the N.M.U. to be given a chance to speak.
Reinstatement of all expelled for their views from U.M.W.A. into the P.M.A.
For a united Left wing slate in the coming elections.
No horse-trading with reactionary elements and cliques – a straight-forward fight.
Cooperation with all relief and defense organizations.
A fight, if the point is raised, for Foster and Ford, and the C.P. in the elections.
This, I believe, was a key moment of the convention. Our proposal for a joint meeting of all Left wingers about this program would mean an aggressive fight that if not immediately victorious, would at least jolt the Right wing. In this positive platform would be found a rallying unifying center for the scattered Left wingers who stood hopeless before the Right machine. Their later refusal places upon Stalinism a terrible onus.
Tues. Oct. 4, 1932
The next noon we met Borich and Minerich. They were evasive about the joint meeting. In order not to give them any excuse whatsoever we told them we were having a meeting at 6 that evening and we suggested that they turn this into a joint meeting. A hazy “We’ll see”, was their reply.
The Belleville-St. Clair Operators Association employing about 1,000 men had proposed to the P.M.A. negotiations to settle the strike. The day set was Wednesday the 5th, so the convention spent that day in arriving at agreement on what to instruct their representative at the conference with the operators. By a vote of 157 to 27 the convention recommended to its committee to secure the best terms above $5 – in other words to compromise. The 27 represented that group of Left wingers who stood for a fight to the finish.
As the delegates came to the relief headquarters for their supper the N.M.U. distributed a mimeographed copy of the speech Borich would have made had the floor been allowed him. I have sent you a copy of it. You will agree with me that it is a document much superior to anything issued on the miners in the last four years by Stalinism. The “third period” had died an unlamented death. The method of argument by epithet was abandoned here.
A much better appraisal of the united front replaces the old formula of “united front from below” versus “united front from above.” The N.M.U. offers the united front to the organization as a whole. Our pride – for in great part this is the result of the consistent Leninist hammering of the Left Opposition – is only followed by the fear of the Right “zag” that will replace the ultra-Left “zig”. We can see a foreshadowing of this when the statement of the N.M.U. does not mention a word about political action in this presidential year. The miners are not, either as a group or Individually, asked to vote Communist, in this statement.
While the statements were being distributed we asked if our invitation was going to be accepted. Our answer was a surly, “No.” This “No” meant the granting of right of way to the reactionary steam roller!
We now come to another factor in the situation, the Socialist party. Four years ago, Socialists were conspicuous solely by their absence. Today the Socialist party has replaced the Communist party as dominant working class group throughout southern Illinois. Miners, young miners, are jamming socialist meetings, are wearing “vote for Thomas and Maurer” buttons on their lapels. The C.P. has become a bitter memory. The fact that the Socialists can stage a comeback after 20 years of betrayal speaks eloquently for the results of Stalinist policy.
Five hundred miners filled the hall that night to hear Roy Burt expound the benefits of voting Socialist. This typical reformist address was followed by a clownish, shallow demagogue, by trade – a Socialist organizer – by name, John Taylor. Upon the completion of Taylor’s speech the floor was thrown open for questions.
The Left Oppositionists present felt it incumbent upon themselves to ally themselves definitely with the party, but none of its moronic errors, to place itself sharply in opposition to the reformist Socialists and to give the Stalinists a needed lesson in how to carry on such activity. So comrade Clarke asked whether it was true that the S.P. by a vote of 6–5 had decided not to intervene in the battle between Lewis and the P.M.A. to remain “neutral”, which meant essentially helping Lewis.
Taylor, answering, stated that the S.P. did not interfere in the internal quarrels of the miners. He boorishly jested about the danger of mixing into the quarrels of a man and wife.
Later Clarke arose and read from the Class Struggle, the organ of a group of extreme left wingers in the Socialist Party, edited by Sol Larks of Chicago, where the stand of the National Executive Committee of that organization in refusing to support the Progressives is sharply condemned. Upon the demand of Taylor, Clarke handed him the paper. After the adjournment of the meeting when Taylor was asked for the return of the journal he bellowed like an infuriated bull and snarlingly refused, stating that the editor of the “filthy rag” would be expelled from the S.P.
Our attack upon the S.P. was slashing and telling, while the arch-stupidity of the Centrists was exactly to the liking of those on the platform, and antagonized, not as Zip Kachinski, a Communist youth organizer, tried lamely to tell us, the Socialist party members but all the workers present. Comrade Minerich told Kachinski not to “kid himself” and much more realistically recognized that opposed to us were the practically unanimous miners. Yet the Left Opposition questions were not shouted down, but listened to quietly and with interest and attention and even with some sympathy as we brought the lessons of socialist betrayal close to them. Yet, we must recognize that the Left Opposition often suffers because of Stalinism.
We discussed in comradely fashion with the miners after the meeting and showed the difference between Communism and Socialism – a privilege not granted the Stalinists.
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<h2>C.C.</h2>
<h1>Serious Unemployment Problems Suffer<br>
Because of Stalinist Maneuvers</h1>
<h4>Left Opposition Brings Program Before Chicago Conference</h4>
<h3>(October 1931)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1931/index.htm#tm31_29" target="new">Vol. IV No. 29 (Whole No. 88)</a>, 31 October 1931), p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">CHICAGO. – A few additional words on the Unemployment Conference that took place in Chicago on October 18 might interest readers of <strong>The Militant</strong>. It was grimly humorous, if humor can be associated with unemployment and the struggles of the working class.<br>
</p>
<h4>”Slip Up” of the Machine</h4>
<p class="fst">The conference which was to unite the workers for a hunger march in Cook County started at 11 o’clock, an hour late. The attendance was not as large as at the preceding conference. The preliminaries being done away with, the conference proceeded to the election of a credentials committee. The committee elected consisted of five: Rubicki, Brown, Williams, O’Hare and Curtiss, the last being a member of the Left Opposition. It would be too much to say that this was the result of pressure from the ranks; it was evidently a slip-up of the machine, although the Opposition’s stand, particularly for unity, had a large following also from the floor.</p>
<p>The credentials committee then convened in a room above. Of course, there was no great difficulty about seating anyone; everyone was seated except the delegates of the Communist League of America (Opposition) whose credentials were taken up when all other business was cleared away.</p>
<p>Rubicki then said, “I move that the delegation of the Communist League of America (Opposition) be not seated” because it was an organization that was against the Communist Party, the only party of the workers, and he drooled his litany on and on. Rubicki was very anxious to go to a vote. The delegate from the Opposition however got the floor and spoke, in brief, as follows:<br>
</p>
<h4>Opposition on Floor</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“The statement of comrade Rubicki is untrue. While the Communist League of America (Opposition) is undoubtedly outside the Communist Party against our wish and action, because it disagrees with the policies of its leaders, it still recognizes the Communist Party as the incarnation of the ideals of communism which live in spite of the actions of the leaders of the party. Comrade Rubicki is challenged to prove that we, by word, writ or deed in any way, are against communism. Even if this statement were true, which it is not, the call for the conference specifies that all organizations ‘regardless of the affiliations to unions or political parties’ are invited. Would that mean that the Democratic, Republican or Socialist parties or their controlled organizations would be allowed to send representatives and the Opposition not permitted? Unity is the need of the movement; rally the workers behind the Communist Party and T.U.U.L.”</p>
<p class="fst">Rubicki constantly hurried the delegates and begrudged them a few words and demanded that a vote be taken. Discussion was for the moment cut short.</p>
<p>“All those in favor of the motion that the delegates of the Communist League of America (Opposition) not be seated, raise their hands”. Two hands were raised. Rubicki blinked in amazement, counted again. There were yet two.</p>
<p>“All those opposed.” ... Three hands were raised. Rubicki went pale with horror. It was bad enough that he had had to sit on the same committee with a “rengade”, but to have that committee go down and recommend the seating of the delegates of the Communist League of America was more than flesh could stand. Three to two the credentials committee stood, for seating the delegates of the Left Opposition.</p>
<h4>Rubiczki in Frenzy</h4>
<p class="fst">Rubicki now became interested in further discussion. The Negro delegate, Williams, was evidently a new party member and instinctively he reacted to the proposals of the Left Opposition for unity. Upon him all the attention of Rubicki was turned. Rubicki was in a frenzy. The delegate of the Left Opposition, calm, had no difficulty in refuting Rubicki’s arguments. Rubicki had to dig deep into the sewers of slander and demagogy in order to bully the Negro delegate into voting to unseat the delegates of the Left Opposition.</p>
<p>The Committee then stood three to two on the question of seating the Opposition. A demand for a minority report was voted down – a Jeffersonian prejudice; it is all right for left wingers to ask such rights from reactionary labor unions, but quite different when the Opposition demands it from the party bureaucrats.<br>
</p>
<h4>Opposition’s Program</h4>
<p class="fst">Meantime, down below the work of the conference had begun. During the discussion, comrade Oehler of the Opposition had put forth the position of the Communist League: for the six hour day and five day week without reduction in pay; for social insurance; for the extension of long term credits to the Soviet Union and development of economic relations between the United States and the U.S.S.R.; for unity of the workers; for the ultimate goal of the proletarian revolution. Oehler’s remarks were received with manifest applause by the delegates. Following him, Gebert party district organizer, spoke.</p>
<p>Gebert’s speeches never vary, especially against the “Trotskyites”: the same adjectives, verbs, nouns, adverbs, etc. He scarcely allows himself to give order to his words of what he would like to be “burning scorn”, but he only succeeds in boring his audience. Maybe there is merit in Gebert’s methods. Since he will never discover any new proofs of the “renegacy” of the Left Opposition, he will also not be guilty of deviations.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Machine “Repaired”</h4>
<p class="fst">Finally the report of the credentials committee was called for. Rubicki reported and scarcely allowed himself time to mention the number of delegates, 320, before he attacked the “renegades”. The slip-up of earlier in the day was not to be repeated. The machine had been repaired, oiled and put again into first class shape, but in spite of all this, the attempts at steam-rolling had quite a bit of resistance. The unprecedented refusal of a minority report abashed even a number of party comrades. When “Noes” were called for, there was quite a sprinkling of them throughout the hall.</p>
<p>Some of the die-hards then arose and demanded that the unseated delegates leave the hall. The bureaucrats thought better of it, the action would be too obvious, and our support was not negligible. The die-hards, who plainly did not have much support from the floor, were quieted.</p>
<p>During all this hub-bub the delegates from the Left Opposition received whispered words of encouragement from workers. Their attitude was admiration of the more advanced communists and their sincere proposals, so obviously in place. The Opposition demand for unity aroused many of the workers. Our support was larger than ever before. In spite of the methods of the bureaucrats, we advise all workers, especially those who supported our seating, to remain in the Unemployed Conference for these, among other, reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>It is the only conference for unemployment relief under the leadership of the revolutionary party;</li>
<li>To fight from the inside for the seating of the Left Opposition in the best interests of the immediate and historical needs of the working class.</li>
</ol>
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C.C.
Serious Unemployment Problems Suffer
Because of Stalinist Maneuvers
Left Opposition Brings Program Before Chicago Conference
(October 1931)
From The Militant, Vol. IV No. 29 (Whole No. 88), 31 October 1931), p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
CHICAGO. – A few additional words on the Unemployment Conference that took place in Chicago on October 18 might interest readers of The Militant. It was grimly humorous, if humor can be associated with unemployment and the struggles of the working class.
”Slip Up” of the Machine
The conference which was to unite the workers for a hunger march in Cook County started at 11 o’clock, an hour late. The attendance was not as large as at the preceding conference. The preliminaries being done away with, the conference proceeded to the election of a credentials committee. The committee elected consisted of five: Rubicki, Brown, Williams, O’Hare and Curtiss, the last being a member of the Left Opposition. It would be too much to say that this was the result of pressure from the ranks; it was evidently a slip-up of the machine, although the Opposition’s stand, particularly for unity, had a large following also from the floor.
The credentials committee then convened in a room above. Of course, there was no great difficulty about seating anyone; everyone was seated except the delegates of the Communist League of America (Opposition) whose credentials were taken up when all other business was cleared away.
Rubicki then said, “I move that the delegation of the Communist League of America (Opposition) be not seated” because it was an organization that was against the Communist Party, the only party of the workers, and he drooled his litany on and on. Rubicki was very anxious to go to a vote. The delegate from the Opposition however got the floor and spoke, in brief, as follows:
Opposition on Floor
“The statement of comrade Rubicki is untrue. While the Communist League of America (Opposition) is undoubtedly outside the Communist Party against our wish and action, because it disagrees with the policies of its leaders, it still recognizes the Communist Party as the incarnation of the ideals of communism which live in spite of the actions of the leaders of the party. Comrade Rubicki is challenged to prove that we, by word, writ or deed in any way, are against communism. Even if this statement were true, which it is not, the call for the conference specifies that all organizations ‘regardless of the affiliations to unions or political parties’ are invited. Would that mean that the Democratic, Republican or Socialist parties or their controlled organizations would be allowed to send representatives and the Opposition not permitted? Unity is the need of the movement; rally the workers behind the Communist Party and T.U.U.L.”
Rubicki constantly hurried the delegates and begrudged them a few words and demanded that a vote be taken. Discussion was for the moment cut short.
“All those in favor of the motion that the delegates of the Communist League of America (Opposition) not be seated, raise their hands”. Two hands were raised. Rubicki blinked in amazement, counted again. There were yet two.
“All those opposed.” ... Three hands were raised. Rubicki went pale with horror. It was bad enough that he had had to sit on the same committee with a “rengade”, but to have that committee go down and recommend the seating of the delegates of the Communist League of America was more than flesh could stand. Three to two the credentials committee stood, for seating the delegates of the Left Opposition.
Rubiczki in Frenzy
Rubicki now became interested in further discussion. The Negro delegate, Williams, was evidently a new party member and instinctively he reacted to the proposals of the Left Opposition for unity. Upon him all the attention of Rubicki was turned. Rubicki was in a frenzy. The delegate of the Left Opposition, calm, had no difficulty in refuting Rubicki’s arguments. Rubicki had to dig deep into the sewers of slander and demagogy in order to bully the Negro delegate into voting to unseat the delegates of the Left Opposition.
The Committee then stood three to two on the question of seating the Opposition. A demand for a minority report was voted down – a Jeffersonian prejudice; it is all right for left wingers to ask such rights from reactionary labor unions, but quite different when the Opposition demands it from the party bureaucrats.
Opposition’s Program
Meantime, down below the work of the conference had begun. During the discussion, comrade Oehler of the Opposition had put forth the position of the Communist League: for the six hour day and five day week without reduction in pay; for social insurance; for the extension of long term credits to the Soviet Union and development of economic relations between the United States and the U.S.S.R.; for unity of the workers; for the ultimate goal of the proletarian revolution. Oehler’s remarks were received with manifest applause by the delegates. Following him, Gebert party district organizer, spoke.
Gebert’s speeches never vary, especially against the “Trotskyites”: the same adjectives, verbs, nouns, adverbs, etc. He scarcely allows himself to give order to his words of what he would like to be “burning scorn”, but he only succeeds in boring his audience. Maybe there is merit in Gebert’s methods. Since he will never discover any new proofs of the “renegacy” of the Left Opposition, he will also not be guilty of deviations.
The Machine “Repaired”
Finally the report of the credentials committee was called for. Rubicki reported and scarcely allowed himself time to mention the number of delegates, 320, before he attacked the “renegades”. The slip-up of earlier in the day was not to be repeated. The machine had been repaired, oiled and put again into first class shape, but in spite of all this, the attempts at steam-rolling had quite a bit of resistance. The unprecedented refusal of a minority report abashed even a number of party comrades. When “Noes” were called for, there was quite a sprinkling of them throughout the hall.
Some of the die-hards then arose and demanded that the unseated delegates leave the hall. The bureaucrats thought better of it, the action would be too obvious, and our support was not negligible. The die-hards, who plainly did not have much support from the floor, were quieted.
During all this hub-bub the delegates from the Left Opposition received whispered words of encouragement from workers. Their attitude was admiration of the more advanced communists and their sincere proposals, so obviously in place. The Opposition demand for unity aroused many of the workers. Our support was larger than ever before. In spite of the methods of the bureaucrats, we advise all workers, especially those who supported our seating, to remain in the Unemployed Conference for these, among other, reasons:
It is the only conference for unemployment relief under the leadership of the revolutionary party;
To fight from the inside for the seating of the Left Opposition in the best interests of the immediate and historical needs of the working class.
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<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>Welles Tries to Line Up<br>
So. American Countries</h1>
<h4>With Vargas as His Chief Lieutenant,<br>
He Uses Economic Pressure as Well as Words</h4>
<h3>(21 January 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_04" target="new">Vol 6 No. 4</a>, 24 January 1942, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">JAN. 21. – On Jan. 16, the Conference of American Foreign Ministers assembled in the palace of the former Chamber of Deputies of Brazil at Rio de Janeiro. At the opening session Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles presented the proposal of the United States Government calling for the complete breaking off of relations with the Axis by all the Latin American countries.</p>
<p>The aim of Welles at the conference was to make sure that the United States and its allies would receive all the civilian and military exports of Latin America. This is part of the long-range military strategy of blockading the Axis. The United States is also attempting to secure air and naval bases.</p>
<p>Ten nations, primarily in the Caribbean area, are at war alongside the United States, while three others have broken off diplomatic relations with the Axis.</p>
<p>The representatives of Argentina and Chile are proving difficult to “convince”. Fearful that the Allies will not be victorious and that the Axis powers in this case would take revenge upon them; anxious to avoid an Axis declaration of war against their own countries, and bargaining for more economic concessions from the United States as a price for their support of the resolution calling for hemispheric unity and an unanimous rupture with the Axis – they are hesitant about lining up.</p>
<p>Welles, in his speech attempting to overcome these obstacles, assured the assembled diplomats of the superior military power of the Allies over the Axis. In addition the threat of economic and financial pressure is being used behind the scenes.</p>
<p>Other resolutions presented called for the establishment of a Pan-American defense committee, for hemispheric adherence to the Atlantic Charter, for the investigation on an inter-continental scale of Axis activities, the suppression of Axis organizations, the closing of communication channels with the Axis and the strict regulation of movement of Axis citizens.</p>
<p>The chief lieutenant of Welles is Getulio Vargas, “president” of Brazil.</p>
<p>Vargas on Nov. 10, 1937, declared himself dictator of Brazil, dissolved the Congress (which has never met since), promulgated a new constitution which declared him dictator for life. He has. gone even further – he has appointed the next president, the head of the Supreme Court, Eduardo Espinola, to take over when Vargas dies. All unions have been abolished. Vargas loves to pass out nicely noosed lengths of rope when he wants people to hang themselves, saving himself the trouble of doing away with them. A thousand opponents of his government are in prison.</p>
<p>With this as the stage and with Vargas as his lieutenant, it is no wonder that the references by Welles to the war as a “war for democracy” are very few. In the house of the hanged one does not speak of gallows. In Brazil one is polite and considerate to Vargas and one speaks rarely and vaguely about democracy, but one does speak of finance, trade and industrial concessions.</p>
<p>The events at the palace where the Brazilian Congress used to meet, before it was dissolved, the actors on the stage, the lines that are spoken – all promise that the Rio de Janeiro conference will be the season’s best satire.</p>
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C. Charles
Welles Tries to Line Up
So. American Countries
With Vargas as His Chief Lieutenant,
He Uses Economic Pressure as Well as Words
(21 January 1942)
From The Militant, Vol 6 No. 4, 24 January 1942, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
JAN. 21. – On Jan. 16, the Conference of American Foreign Ministers assembled in the palace of the former Chamber of Deputies of Brazil at Rio de Janeiro. At the opening session Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles presented the proposal of the United States Government calling for the complete breaking off of relations with the Axis by all the Latin American countries.
The aim of Welles at the conference was to make sure that the United States and its allies would receive all the civilian and military exports of Latin America. This is part of the long-range military strategy of blockading the Axis. The United States is also attempting to secure air and naval bases.
Ten nations, primarily in the Caribbean area, are at war alongside the United States, while three others have broken off diplomatic relations with the Axis.
The representatives of Argentina and Chile are proving difficult to “convince”. Fearful that the Allies will not be victorious and that the Axis powers in this case would take revenge upon them; anxious to avoid an Axis declaration of war against their own countries, and bargaining for more economic concessions from the United States as a price for their support of the resolution calling for hemispheric unity and an unanimous rupture with the Axis – they are hesitant about lining up.
Welles, in his speech attempting to overcome these obstacles, assured the assembled diplomats of the superior military power of the Allies over the Axis. In addition the threat of economic and financial pressure is being used behind the scenes.
Other resolutions presented called for the establishment of a Pan-American defense committee, for hemispheric adherence to the Atlantic Charter, for the investigation on an inter-continental scale of Axis activities, the suppression of Axis organizations, the closing of communication channels with the Axis and the strict regulation of movement of Axis citizens.
The chief lieutenant of Welles is Getulio Vargas, “president” of Brazil.
Vargas on Nov. 10, 1937, declared himself dictator of Brazil, dissolved the Congress (which has never met since), promulgated a new constitution which declared him dictator for life. He has. gone even further – he has appointed the next president, the head of the Supreme Court, Eduardo Espinola, to take over when Vargas dies. All unions have been abolished. Vargas loves to pass out nicely noosed lengths of rope when he wants people to hang themselves, saving himself the trouble of doing away with them. A thousand opponents of his government are in prison.
With this as the stage and with Vargas as his lieutenant, it is no wonder that the references by Welles to the war as a “war for democracy” are very few. In the house of the hanged one does not speak of gallows. In Brazil one is polite and considerate to Vargas and one speaks rarely and vaguely about democracy, but one does speak of finance, trade and industrial concessions.
The events at the palace where the Brazilian Congress used to meet, before it was dissolved, the actors on the stage, the lines that are spoken – all promise that the Rio de Janeiro conference will be the season’s best satire.
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<h2>C. Curtiss</h2>
<h1>Conflict Looms on West Coast</h1>
<h3>Maritime Federation Is Threatened with General Lockout</h3>
<h4>New Struggle Finds Workers Prepared</h4>
<h3>(18 January 1936)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>New Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1936/index.htm#nm36_03" target="new">Vol. II No. 3</a>, 18 January 1936, pp. 1 & 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">SAN FRANCISCO. – The year1936 is ushered in with the west coast waterfront daily becoming more tense. A storm is brewing that will, when it breaks, make the strike of 1934 seem like a gentle breeze.</p>
<p>A few of the salient facts:</p>
<p class="fst">Fifty-nine steam schooners are tied up, as the men refuse to work more than six hours per day. The bosses have retaliated with a lock-out. These ships ply coastwise between the northern lumber regions and San Francisco. The Seamen’s Union of San Francisco, differently than the so-called “left” as well as conservative labor leaders, is supporting the seamen of these steam schooners.</p>
<p>The <em>Pennsylvania</em>, a super luxurious liner, was tied up for several days as the east coast seamen refused to man her, unless they received the same rate of pay as is drawn by the sailors signing out of west coast ports. The Panama Pacific Line which owns the <em>Pennsylvania</em>, has signed an agreement with the Sailors Union of the Atlantic, which has a lower wage rate than the Pacific. Of course, this agreement was signed without the men being consulted.<br>
</p>
<h4>Furnishing Scabs Union Cards</h4>
<p class="fst">After being tied up for quite a number of days, a skeleton crew of unlicensed scabs was secured. It is said that the local appointee of Furesuth, the Grand Old Man of the Shipowners who is president of the International Seamen’s Union, gave these scabs union cards. It is sad to say, but the fact must be told: union men worked alongside of these scabs.</p>
<p>Four Luckenback freighters which had been tied up by job-action of the seamen, sailed on Saturday, Jan. 11, after the men had accepted the company offer of an increased basic rate, equalling the west coast scale.<br>
</p>
<h4>Urges East Coast Action</h4>
<p class="fst">The Sailor’s Union of San Francisco, at its last meeting, went on record recommending that the east coast sailors attempt to get at least the west coast rate of pay by job action, preferably on the east coast, and pledging support to all job action taken there, or here.</p>
<p>The Waterfront Machinists and the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers are on strike.</p>
<p>Lockout talk is common on the waterfront The growing strength of the unions, and resultant higher wages and shorter hours, eats into the income of the famished-for-profits capitalist class. The latter is going to attempt to smash the sole obstacle in their path to the garnering of huge dividends out of the only possible source, the backs of the workers. That obstacle is the union.<br>
</p>
<h4>Follow Class Struggle Relief</h4>
<p class="fst">The oncoming lockout or strike of the waterfront workers can and must be won. The workers are incomparably better situated than they were in 1934. Their organization is stronger. They have learned many lessons. The only thing standing between the workers and victory is treachery or incorrect leadership. The right wing class-collaborationists and the Stalinists are the specific dangers referred to. If, in spite of these, a class struggle policy will be instituted on the waterfront, victory is certain.</p>
<p>Let us see the attitude of the old guard of the labor fakers. Scharrenburg, erstwhile member of the Seamen’s Union, thrown out of there by the membership, and present secretary of the California Federation of Labor:<br>
</p>
<h4>Scharrenburg’s Attack</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“The Sailor’s Union has deliberately and flagrantly violated every agreement signed with the shipowners since last year’s strike and has repeatedly expressed bitter resentment when urged to respect such agreements.</p>
<p class="quote">“Only by a prompt declaration of war on the wrecking crew can we hope to re-establish the reputation of our international union as a responsible organization.</p>
<p class="quote">“One or more charters must be revoked ... I have weighed all objections and realize fully that Bridges’ maritime federation will doubtless go to bat for the union or unions that have their charter revoked.”</p>
<p class="fst">One thing becomes clear here: due to the militancy of the seamen and their vigorous defense of their living standards, they are under attack, not only of the employers,but also of the labor “leaders.” The convention of the International Seamen’s Union, in session at the time of this writing, will be the scene of an attempt of the reactionaries to either emasculate or expel these militant locals.</p>
<p>The Maritime Federation, founded in struggle, and much more amenable to mass pressure than the robot-like unions that once existed on the waterfront, is a constant threat to Scharrenburg and his ilk.</p>
<p>Again we repeat what we stated a few weeks ago: The struggle of the seamen can be won, if properly supported by the Maritime Federation! Unqualified support to the seamen, without any “ifs,” “buts,”or “insofars”!</p>
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C. Curtiss
Conflict Looms on West Coast
Maritime Federation Is Threatened with General Lockout
New Struggle Finds Workers Prepared
(18 January 1936)
From New Militant, Vol. II No. 3, 18 January 1936, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
SAN FRANCISCO. – The year1936 is ushered in with the west coast waterfront daily becoming more tense. A storm is brewing that will, when it breaks, make the strike of 1934 seem like a gentle breeze.
A few of the salient facts:
Fifty-nine steam schooners are tied up, as the men refuse to work more than six hours per day. The bosses have retaliated with a lock-out. These ships ply coastwise between the northern lumber regions and San Francisco. The Seamen’s Union of San Francisco, differently than the so-called “left” as well as conservative labor leaders, is supporting the seamen of these steam schooners.
The Pennsylvania, a super luxurious liner, was tied up for several days as the east coast seamen refused to man her, unless they received the same rate of pay as is drawn by the sailors signing out of west coast ports. The Panama Pacific Line which owns the Pennsylvania, has signed an agreement with the Sailors Union of the Atlantic, which has a lower wage rate than the Pacific. Of course, this agreement was signed without the men being consulted.
Furnishing Scabs Union Cards
After being tied up for quite a number of days, a skeleton crew of unlicensed scabs was secured. It is said that the local appointee of Furesuth, the Grand Old Man of the Shipowners who is president of the International Seamen’s Union, gave these scabs union cards. It is sad to say, but the fact must be told: union men worked alongside of these scabs.
Four Luckenback freighters which had been tied up by job-action of the seamen, sailed on Saturday, Jan. 11, after the men had accepted the company offer of an increased basic rate, equalling the west coast scale.
Urges East Coast Action
The Sailor’s Union of San Francisco, at its last meeting, went on record recommending that the east coast sailors attempt to get at least the west coast rate of pay by job action, preferably on the east coast, and pledging support to all job action taken there, or here.
The Waterfront Machinists and the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers are on strike.
Lockout talk is common on the waterfront The growing strength of the unions, and resultant higher wages and shorter hours, eats into the income of the famished-for-profits capitalist class. The latter is going to attempt to smash the sole obstacle in their path to the garnering of huge dividends out of the only possible source, the backs of the workers. That obstacle is the union.
Follow Class Struggle Relief
The oncoming lockout or strike of the waterfront workers can and must be won. The workers are incomparably better situated than they were in 1934. Their organization is stronger. They have learned many lessons. The only thing standing between the workers and victory is treachery or incorrect leadership. The right wing class-collaborationists and the Stalinists are the specific dangers referred to. If, in spite of these, a class struggle policy will be instituted on the waterfront, victory is certain.
Let us see the attitude of the old guard of the labor fakers. Scharrenburg, erstwhile member of the Seamen’s Union, thrown out of there by the membership, and present secretary of the California Federation of Labor:
Scharrenburg’s Attack
“The Sailor’s Union has deliberately and flagrantly violated every agreement signed with the shipowners since last year’s strike and has repeatedly expressed bitter resentment when urged to respect such agreements.
“Only by a prompt declaration of war on the wrecking crew can we hope to re-establish the reputation of our international union as a responsible organization.
“One or more charters must be revoked ... I have weighed all objections and realize fully that Bridges’ maritime federation will doubtless go to bat for the union or unions that have their charter revoked.”
One thing becomes clear here: due to the militancy of the seamen and their vigorous defense of their living standards, they are under attack, not only of the employers,but also of the labor “leaders.” The convention of the International Seamen’s Union, in session at the time of this writing, will be the scene of an attempt of the reactionaries to either emasculate or expel these militant locals.
The Maritime Federation, founded in struggle, and much more amenable to mass pressure than the robot-like unions that once existed on the waterfront, is a constant threat to Scharrenburg and his ilk.
Again we repeat what we stated a few weeks ago: The struggle of the seamen can be won, if properly supported by the Maritime Federation! Unqualified support to the seamen, without any “ifs,” “buts,”or “insofars”!
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<h2 class="survey">Bio-bibliographical sketches of selected Trotskyists</h2><h2>— Survey —</h2>
<p>Within the framework of <em>TrotskyanaNet</em>, we provide biographical sketches (or, short notices) and bibliographical notes (selective bibliographies) about people who were (or are) more or less 'renowned' Trotskyists — either for all their adult life or for a certain span of their life only. The fact whether or not a person is bio-bibliographically featured here, has neither to do with his/her degree of importance with regard to the history of the Trotskyist movement nor with the person's scholarly, ideological, political or historical relevance in general. With one single exception, only persons already deceased are featured.<br>Furthermore, we like to refer to our introductory remarks to the <a href="../../Trotskyists/NameFiles/namefiles.html">Trotskyists' Name Authority Files</a>. Bio-bibliographical information about some 180 deceased Trotskyists is also to be found in Chapter 9 of our <a href="../../LubitzBibliographies/Trotsky_Bibliography/Leon_Trotsky_Bibliography_09.html">Leon Trotsky Bibliography</a>.</p>
<p>The scope of our bio-bibliographical miscellanies are varying considerably; most of them are provided as PDF files; longer sketches are, as a rule, divided into three or four parts:</p>
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<li>basic biographical data (name, pseudonyms, date of birth and death, etc.)</li>
<li>a short biographical sketch (emphazising especially the role of the featured person within the Trotskyist movement) or a biographical note</li>
<li>bibliographical notes (selective bibliographies of works by and about the featured person)</li>
<li>sidelines and/or notes on archives</li>
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<h3>Alphabetical list of featured persons</h3>
<table width="70%" align="center" border="1" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="10" rules="none" frame="border" summary="Alphabetical list of featured persons">
<colgroup>
<col width="30%">
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<col width="10%">
</colgroup>
<tbody><tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_abern.pdf"><strong>Abern, Martin</strong></a></td>
<td>(1898-1949)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_ackerknecht.pdf"><strong>Ackerknecht, Erwin Heinz</strong></a></td>
<td>(1906-1988)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_belleville.pdf"><strong>Belleville, Fritz</strong></a></td>
<td>(1903-1994)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_breitman.pdf"><strong>Breitman, George</strong></a></td>
<td>(1916-1986)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="../../Trotskyists/Pierre_Broue/pierre_broue.html"><strong>Broué, Pierre</strong></a></td>
<td>(1926-2005)</td>
<td>HTML</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_buchbinder.pdf"><strong>Buchbinder, Heinrich</strong></a></td>
<td>(1919-1999)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_buchman.pdf"><strong>Buchman, Alex</strong></a></td>
<td>(1911-2003)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_cannon.pdf"><strong>Cannon, James P.</strong></a></td>
<td>(1890-1974)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_cochran.pdf"><strong>Cochran, Bert</strong></a></td>
<td>(1913?-1984)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_cornell.pdf"><strong>Cornell, Charles</strong></a></td>
<td>(1911-1989)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_curtiss.pdf"><strong>Curtiss, Charles</strong></a></td>
<td>(1908-1993)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_deutscher_i.pdf"><strong>Deutscher, Isaac, pt. 1</strong></a><br>
<a href="bio-bibl_deutscher_i_2.pdf"><strong>Deutscher, Isaac, pt. 2</strong></a></td>
<td>(1907-1967)</td>
<td>PDF<br>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_epe.pdf"><strong>Epe, Heinz</strong></a></td>
<td>(1910-1942)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="../../Other_trotskyana/Trotsky_Sculptors/trotsky_sculptors.html"><strong>Ferguson, Duncan</strong></a></td>
<td>(1901-1974)</td>
<td>HTML</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_frank.pdf"><strong>Frank, Pierre</strong></a></td>
<td>(1905-1984)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_frankel.pdf"><strong>Frankel, Jan</strong></a></td>
<td>(1906-1984)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_glass.pdf"><strong>Glass, C. Frank</strong></a></td>
<td>(1901-1988)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_gordon_s.pdf"><strong>Gordon, Sam</strong></a></td>
<td>(1910-1982)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_grylewicz.pdf"><strong>Grylewicz, Anton</strong></a></td>
<td>(1885-1971)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_hansen_j.pdf"><strong>Hansen, Joseph</strong></a></td>
<td>(1910-1979)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_healy.pdf"><strong>Healy, Gerry</strong></a></td>
<td>(1913-1989)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_hirson.pdf"><strong>Hirson, Baruch</strong></a></td>
<td>(1921-1999)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_kerry.pdf"><strong>Kerry, Tom</strong></a></td>
<td>(1901-1983)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_klement.pdf"><strong>Klement, Rudolf</strong></a></td>
<td>(1908-1938)</td>
<td>PDF<a style="text-decoration:none;" href="#klement-letter"><sup>*</sup></a></td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_krivine.pdf"><strong>Krivine, Alain</strong></a></td>
<td>(1941-2022)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_lovell_f.pdf"><strong>Lovell, Frank</strong></a></td>
<td>(1913-1998)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_lovell_s.pdf"><strong>Lovell, Sarah</strong></a></td>
<td>(1922-1994)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_loewy.pdf"><strong>Löwy, Michael</strong></a></td>
<td>(b. 1938)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_maitan.pdf"><strong>Maitan, Livio</strong></a></td>
<td>(1923-2004)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="../../Trotskyists/Ernest_Mandel/ernest_mandel.html"><strong>Mandel, Ernest</strong></a></td>
<td>(1923-1995)</td>
<td>HTML<br>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_mangan.pdf"><strong>Mangan, Sherry</strong></a></td>
<td>(1904-1961)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_meyer.pdf"><strong>Meyer, Franz</strong></a></td>
<td>(1906-1958)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_moltved.pdf"><strong>Moltved, Georg</strong></a></td>
<td>(1881-1971)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_moneta.pdf"><strong>Moneta, Jakob</strong></a></td>
<td>(1914-2012)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_nelz.pdf"><strong>Nelz, Walter</strong></a></td>
<td>(1909-1990)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_nettelbeck.pdf"><strong>Nettelbeck, Walter</strong></a></td>
<td>(1901-1975)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_novack.pdf"><strong>Novack, George</strong></a></td>
<td>(1905-1992)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_pablo.pdf"><strong>Pablo, Michel</strong></a></td>
<td>(1911-1996)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_reed.pdf"><strong>Reed, Evelyn</strong></a></td>
<td>(1905-1979)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_santen.pdf"><strong>Santen, Sal</strong></a></td>
<td>(1915-1998)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_schuessler.pdf"><strong>Schüssler, Otto</strong></a></td>
<td>(1905-1982)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_seipold.pdf"><strong>Seipold, Oskar</strong></a></td>
<td>(1889-1966)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_shachtman.pdf"><strong>Shachtman, Max</strong></a></td>
<td>(1904-1972)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_siegel.pdf"><strong>Siegel, Paul N.</strong></a></td>
<td>(1916-2004)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="../../Trotskyists/Louis_Sinclair/sinclair.htm"><strong>Sinclair, Louis</strong></a></td>
<td>(1909-1990)</td>
<td>HTML</td>
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<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_vanheijenoort.pdf"><strong>Van Heijenoort, Jean</strong></a></td>
<td>(1912-1986)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_vincent.pdf"><strong>Vincent, Jean-Marie</strong></a></td>
<td>(1934-2004)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><a href="bio-bibl_wright.pdf"><strong>Wright, John G.</strong></a></td>
<td>(1901-1956)</td>
<td>PDF</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<a name="klement-letter"></a><p class="fontklein">* See also appended <a href="klement_letter_2.pdf" target="_blank">document</a> [PDF]</p>
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Bio-bibliographical sketches of selected Trotskyists— Survey —
Within the framework of TrotskyanaNet, we provide biographical sketches (or, short notices) and bibliographical notes (selective bibliographies) about people who were (or are) more or less 'renowned' Trotskyists — either for all their adult life or for a certain span of their life only. The fact whether or not a person is bio-bibliographically featured here, has neither to do with his/her degree of importance with regard to the history of the Trotskyist movement nor with the person's scholarly, ideological, political or historical relevance in general. With one single exception, only persons already deceased are featured.Furthermore, we like to refer to our introductory remarks to the Trotskyists' Name Authority Files. Bio-bibliographical information about some 180 deceased Trotskyists is also to be found in Chapter 9 of our Leon Trotsky Bibliography.
The scope of our bio-bibliographical miscellanies are varying considerably; most of them are provided as PDF files; longer sketches are, as a rule, divided into three or four parts:
basic biographical data (name, pseudonyms, date of birth and death, etc.)
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bibliographical notes (selective bibliographies of works by and about the featured person)
sidelines and/or notes on archives
Alphabetical list of featured persons
Abern, Martin
(1898-1949)
PDF
Ackerknecht, Erwin Heinz
(1906-1988)
PDF
Belleville, Fritz
(1903-1994)
PDF
Breitman, George
(1916-1986)
PDF
Broué, Pierre
(1926-2005)
HTML
Buchbinder, Heinrich
(1919-1999)
PDF
Buchman, Alex
(1911-2003)
PDF
Cannon, James P.
(1890-1974)
PDF
Cochran, Bert
(1913?-1984)
PDF
Cornell, Charles
(1911-1989)
PDF
Curtiss, Charles
(1908-1993)
PDF
Deutscher, Isaac, pt. 1
Deutscher, Isaac, pt. 2
(1907-1967)
PDFPDF
Epe, Heinz
(1910-1942)
PDF
Ferguson, Duncan
(1901-1974)
HTML
Frank, Pierre
(1905-1984)
PDF
Frankel, Jan
(1906-1984)
PDF
Glass, C. Frank
(1901-1988)
PDF
Gordon, Sam
(1910-1982)
PDF
Grylewicz, Anton
(1885-1971)
PDF
Hansen, Joseph
(1910-1979)
PDF
Healy, Gerry
(1913-1989)
PDF
Hirson, Baruch
(1921-1999)
PDF
Kerry, Tom
(1901-1983)
PDF
Klement, Rudolf
(1908-1938)
PDF*
Krivine, Alain
(1941-2022)
PDF
Lovell, Frank
(1913-1998)
PDF
Lovell, Sarah
(1922-1994)
PDF
Löwy, Michael
(b. 1938)
PDF
Maitan, Livio
(1923-2004)
PDF
Mandel, Ernest
(1923-1995)
HTMLPDF
Mangan, Sherry
(1904-1961)
PDF
Meyer, Franz
(1906-1958)
PDF
Moltved, Georg
(1881-1971)
PDF
Moneta, Jakob
(1914-2012)
PDF
Nelz, Walter
(1909-1990)
PDF
Nettelbeck, Walter
(1901-1975)
PDF
Novack, George
(1905-1992)
PDF
Pablo, Michel
(1911-1996)
PDF
Reed, Evelyn
(1905-1979)
PDF
Santen, Sal
(1915-1998)
PDF
Schüssler, Otto
(1905-1982)
PDF
Seipold, Oskar
(1889-1966)
PDF
Shachtman, Max
(1904-1972)
PDF
Siegel, Paul N.
(1916-2004)
PDF
Sinclair, Louis
(1909-1990)
HTML
Van Heijenoort, Jean
(1912-1986)
PDF
Vincent, Jean-Marie
(1934-2004)
PDF
Wright, John G.
(1901-1956)
PDF
* See also appended document [PDF]
Wolfgang and Petra Lubitz,last rev. May 2022
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>C. Charles</h2>
<h1>Unions Offer Own Plans<br>
for Handling ‘Priorities’</h1>
<h3>(September 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_38" target="new">Vol. V No. 38</a>, 20 September 1941, pp. 4 & 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Alarmed by the obvious capitalist mismanagement of industrial production, various unions have endorsed plans to do away with priorities unemployment.</p>
<p>The plans aim to increase production in their respective industries or propose a method of shifting workers from civilian to military production without any loss of employment.</p>
<p>Every one of the plans so far proposed is based on the formation of a government-management-labor council in each industry.</p>
<p>The <em>CIO Plan for Strengthening the National Defense Program</em> was the first plan presented. It was drawn up in December 1940 by Philip Murray, chairman of the CIO.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Murray Plan</h4>
<p class="fst">According to this plan, the labor-management-government council would:</p>
<ol>
<li>Ascertain the military and non-military “requirements of each respective industry to coordinate the production of each industry to meet these requirements speedily arid accurately and to expand production facilities where they are inadequate ...”<br>
</li>
<li>”Re-employ unemployed workers in each respective industry and in the communities and regions in which the industry operates as quickly as the accelerated pace of the industry permits, fill the labor requirements of the industry from the available supply and train workers for those occupations in which the council finds a shortage.”<br>
</li>
<li>“Achieve the greatest possible output as quickly as possible by bringing into full use all the production facilities in each respective industry. This covers the granting and re-allocating of armament contracts, fulfilling in advance known domestic requirements so as to clear the way for the peak in armament production and eliminating bottlenecks created by one concern having a disproportionate amount for armament contracts that it can not complete within the necessary limit of time, and other bottlenecks caused by contractual or technical factors.”</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">Murray also presented a specific plan along these lines for the steel industry.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Reuther Plan</h4>
<p class="fst">Another plan is that of Walter Reuther, a member of the executive board of the United Auto Workers (CIO), and one of the supporters of Hillman.</p>
<p>Reuther in his plan proposed to alleviate the intensely seasonal character of auto work and avoid mass layoffs when the steel would be rationed for the auto industry. He hoped to achieve this by producing 500 planes daily within the present auto plants and machinery. The auto workers would man the defense plants.</p>
<p>The Reuther plan consists essentially of the following ideas:</p>
<ol>
<li>That a survey of the automotive industry around Detroit be made to show the plant and machine capacity was available for airplane work above normal and seasonal needs of the auto industry.<br>
</li>
<li>The blue print of a plane should be broken down into it’s various parts and these parts be assigned for mass production to the plants which could best handle them. Finally the plane would be assembled in a central hangar.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<h4>The UE Plan</h4>
<p class="fst">The United Electrical and Radio Workers Union (CIO), whose members in the washing machine, refrigerator, home appliance, radio and similar goods have been hard-hit by priorities unemployment, issued an emergency program on July 26th which provides:</p>
<ol>
<li>Opposition to arbitrary reduction in production of consumers goods.<br>
</li>
<li>Before any reductions are instituted, the companies affected must be given defense work to take up slacks.<br>
</li>
<li>Workers laid off get first claim on jobs in the community working on government contracts.<br>
</li>
<li>Excessive overtime, when unnecessary, must be abolished, but present total income shall be maintained through increases in wages.<br>
</li>
<li>Union-government-management co-operation in administering this program.<br>
</li>
<li>“The President of the United States should immediately call a national conference of labor, agriculture, government and industry ... to compel the giant corporations to stop defrauding the nation and its citizens by monopolistic practices – which practices are now creating scandalous artificial shortages in materials ...”<br>
</li>
</ol>
<h4>The Aluminum Plan</h4>
<p class="fst">N.A. Zonarich, president of the Aluminum Workers of America, has proposed a plan for the raising of aluminum production to 3 billion pounds yearly.</p>
<p>The plan urges full priorities in all construction materials for creation of new aluminum plants; the use of the Aluminum Company of America’s plants as a training school to supply workers for the new factories; a 500% expansion of the Arkansas bauxite mining operations with the industry council allocating the material to the companies which need it. Non-defense rationed.</p>
<p>From the attitude adopted by the capitalist class to the Reuther Plan we can get a picture of the bosses’ attitude toward all these plans. The organ of the machine tool industry, the <strong>American Machinist</strong>, in its issue of April 2, 1941, says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The CIO Reuther (500 planes a day) plan to use Detroit capacity for aircraft has been definitely rejected. It was rejected squarely on its essential features, treatment of the auto industry as one firm with work parcelled out in semi-compulsory fashion, and labor participation in management, rather than on the rather irrelevant arguments as to whether the plan could actually produce 500 planes a day ...”</p>
<p class="fst">According to the capitalist class, the question of production of 500 planes a day is “irrelevant.” (But when an aircraft union walks out on strike, they shout to the high heavens at the lack of patriotism of the workers.)</p>
<p>What is “relevant” to the capitalist class is that it does not in the least want to share its power with the workers.</p>
<p>The fact is that the monopolies do not want even the slightest infringement of their “right” to run the industry as they please. They want to interfere with their “right” to monopoly profits, cost what it may to the masses in unemployment and high prices.</p>
<p>The plan to organize industry as a unit would mean that the monopolies would have to give up some of their backlogs and contracts and profits to other concerns not now getting them.</p>
<p>But suppose these plans were put into practice?</p>
<p>Labor would be outvoted by two to one on the government-labor-industry boards on all the important questions, on all questions where important interests of the bosses would be involved.</p>
<p>The plans are all founded on the illusion that the government represents an independent factor in modern society, above the workers and above the bosses and impartial so far as both are concerned. The truth is that the government represents the capitalist class and is concerned first and foremost with protecting its interests. Labor would be only a prisoner on these boards.</p>
<p>Reuther, Murray, Zonarich and the others who propose these plans of “co-operation,” are only blinding the workers to the fact that to the government and the bosses, “cooperation” means subservience to their profits and interests.</p>
<p>The profit-mad bosses don’t want proposals to really plan economy – they want only the right to continuous profits. And even if any of these plans should be formally accepted by them, they would, utilize their control of the boards to see to it that there would be no interference with those profits.</p>
<p>Instead of leaving control of industry in the hands of the capitalists, where it now is, and instead of plans to give control of industry to a coalition of capitalists and government representatives, which is what the Murray and other plans propose, the unions must fight for workers’ control of industry. In this way alone can they open up the road toward planned production.</p>
<p>While struggling for this, the workers must also demand the sliding scale of hours. All the work on hand should be divided among the available workers. Total wages in this period should not be cut because of the reduction in hours for each worker. Although the plans described do not answer the problems of production and unemployment, they do show that labor no longer has any respect or confidence in the ability of capitalism to run industry.</p>
<p>What labor needs is a plan to establish planned production on a basis of national ownership of the expropriated war industries, operated under workers’ control.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of page</a></p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade" width="100%">
<p class="linkback"><a href="../../index.htm">Curtiss Archive</a> | <a href="../../../index.htm">Trotskyist Writers Index</a> | <a href="../../../../index.htm">ETOL Main Page</a></p>
<p class="updat">Last updated: 21 March 2019</p>
</body> |
Charles Curtiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
C. Charles
Unions Offer Own Plans
for Handling ‘Priorities’
(September 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 38, 20 September 1941, pp. 4 & 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Alarmed by the obvious capitalist mismanagement of industrial production, various unions have endorsed plans to do away with priorities unemployment.
The plans aim to increase production in their respective industries or propose a method of shifting workers from civilian to military production without any loss of employment.
Every one of the plans so far proposed is based on the formation of a government-management-labor council in each industry.
The CIO Plan for Strengthening the National Defense Program was the first plan presented. It was drawn up in December 1940 by Philip Murray, chairman of the CIO.
The Murray Plan
According to this plan, the labor-management-government council would:
Ascertain the military and non-military “requirements of each respective industry to coordinate the production of each industry to meet these requirements speedily arid accurately and to expand production facilities where they are inadequate ...”
”Re-employ unemployed workers in each respective industry and in the communities and regions in which the industry operates as quickly as the accelerated pace of the industry permits, fill the labor requirements of the industry from the available supply and train workers for those occupations in which the council finds a shortage.”
“Achieve the greatest possible output as quickly as possible by bringing into full use all the production facilities in each respective industry. This covers the granting and re-allocating of armament contracts, fulfilling in advance known domestic requirements so as to clear the way for the peak in armament production and eliminating bottlenecks created by one concern having a disproportionate amount for armament contracts that it can not complete within the necessary limit of time, and other bottlenecks caused by contractual or technical factors.”
Murray also presented a specific plan along these lines for the steel industry.
The Reuther Plan
Another plan is that of Walter Reuther, a member of the executive board of the United Auto Workers (CIO), and one of the supporters of Hillman.
Reuther in his plan proposed to alleviate the intensely seasonal character of auto work and avoid mass layoffs when the steel would be rationed for the auto industry. He hoped to achieve this by producing 500 planes daily within the present auto plants and machinery. The auto workers would man the defense plants.
The Reuther plan consists essentially of the following ideas:
That a survey of the automotive industry around Detroit be made to show the plant and machine capacity was available for airplane work above normal and seasonal needs of the auto industry.
The blue print of a plane should be broken down into it’s various parts and these parts be assigned for mass production to the plants which could best handle them. Finally the plane would be assembled in a central hangar.
The UE Plan
The United Electrical and Radio Workers Union (CIO), whose members in the washing machine, refrigerator, home appliance, radio and similar goods have been hard-hit by priorities unemployment, issued an emergency program on July 26th which provides:
Opposition to arbitrary reduction in production of consumers goods.
Before any reductions are instituted, the companies affected must be given defense work to take up slacks.
Workers laid off get first claim on jobs in the community working on government contracts.
Excessive overtime, when unnecessary, must be abolished, but present total income shall be maintained through increases in wages.
Union-government-management co-operation in administering this program.
“The President of the United States should immediately call a national conference of labor, agriculture, government and industry ... to compel the giant corporations to stop defrauding the nation and its citizens by monopolistic practices – which practices are now creating scandalous artificial shortages in materials ...”
The Aluminum Plan
N.A. Zonarich, president of the Aluminum Workers of America, has proposed a plan for the raising of aluminum production to 3 billion pounds yearly.
The plan urges full priorities in all construction materials for creation of new aluminum plants; the use of the Aluminum Company of America’s plants as a training school to supply workers for the new factories; a 500% expansion of the Arkansas bauxite mining operations with the industry council allocating the material to the companies which need it. Non-defense rationed.
From the attitude adopted by the capitalist class to the Reuther Plan we can get a picture of the bosses’ attitude toward all these plans. The organ of the machine tool industry, the American Machinist, in its issue of April 2, 1941, says:
“The CIO Reuther (500 planes a day) plan to use Detroit capacity for aircraft has been definitely rejected. It was rejected squarely on its essential features, treatment of the auto industry as one firm with work parcelled out in semi-compulsory fashion, and labor participation in management, rather than on the rather irrelevant arguments as to whether the plan could actually produce 500 planes a day ...”
According to the capitalist class, the question of production of 500 planes a day is “irrelevant.” (But when an aircraft union walks out on strike, they shout to the high heavens at the lack of patriotism of the workers.)
What is “relevant” to the capitalist class is that it does not in the least want to share its power with the workers.
The fact is that the monopolies do not want even the slightest infringement of their “right” to run the industry as they please. They want to interfere with their “right” to monopoly profits, cost what it may to the masses in unemployment and high prices.
The plan to organize industry as a unit would mean that the monopolies would have to give up some of their backlogs and contracts and profits to other concerns not now getting them.
But suppose these plans were put into practice?
Labor would be outvoted by two to one on the government-labor-industry boards on all the important questions, on all questions where important interests of the bosses would be involved.
The plans are all founded on the illusion that the government represents an independent factor in modern society, above the workers and above the bosses and impartial so far as both are concerned. The truth is that the government represents the capitalist class and is concerned first and foremost with protecting its interests. Labor would be only a prisoner on these boards.
Reuther, Murray, Zonarich and the others who propose these plans of “co-operation,” are only blinding the workers to the fact that to the government and the bosses, “cooperation” means subservience to their profits and interests.
The profit-mad bosses don’t want proposals to really plan economy – they want only the right to continuous profits. And even if any of these plans should be formally accepted by them, they would, utilize their control of the boards to see to it that there would be no interference with those profits.
Instead of leaving control of industry in the hands of the capitalists, where it now is, and instead of plans to give control of industry to a coalition of capitalists and government representatives, which is what the Murray and other plans propose, the unions must fight for workers’ control of industry. In this way alone can they open up the road toward planned production.
While struggling for this, the workers must also demand the sliding scale of hours. All the work on hand should be divided among the available workers. Total wages in this period should not be cut because of the reduction in hours for each worker. Although the plans described do not answer the problems of production and unemployment, they do show that labor no longer has any respect or confidence in the ability of capitalism to run industry.
What labor needs is a plan to establish planned production on a basis of national ownership of the expropriated war industries, operated under workers’ control.
Top of page
Curtiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 21 March 2019
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<p class="toplink"><a id="top" href="../../../../index.htm" name="top">MIA</a> > <a href="../../../index.htm">Archive</a> > <a href="../../index.htm">Higgins</a></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<table align="center" width="90%">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h1>From Gangrene ... to the Danger of Amputation</h1>
<h3>(July 1993)</h3>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>New Interventions</strong>, Vol. 4 No. 3, 1993.<br>
Downloaded with kind permission from the <a target="new" href="http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/index.htm"><strong>What Next?</strong> Website</a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h4>On the Shoulders of a Giant</h4>
<p class="fst">“If you stand on the shoulders of a giant, it is possible to see even further than the giant.” I first heard this piece of homely wisdom from the lips of Tony Cliff, none of which detracts from its truth or, indeed, its appositeness to the current discussion, in the pages of <strong>New Interventions</strong>, between Jim Dye, Mike Jones and Ken Tarbuck.</p>
<p>Cliff’s little aphorism is, of course, only true so long as two conditions are satisfied. First, that you do not use the advantage of the giants height to look steadfastly backwards (this seems to be Jim Dye’s stance). Second, that you do not abuse this privileged position by kicking the giant repeatedly in the ear (this seems to be Mike Jones’ standpoint).</p>
<p>If I could, without offensive compression, summarise the arguments of the contestants, I think it would go like this: Jim Dye, while accepting a number of errors and omissions by Lenin and Trotsky, still maintains the essential validity of the Bolshevik tradition of the vanguard party, with all the trappings of democratic centralism. This seems to me to be a viable, if mistaken, stand for Jim to take. Less convincing, is his insistence that the Fourth International was “one of Trotsky’s finest achievements” and that the priority today is for a “reforged FI”. Having said that, what I do find heartening is that a member of one of the fragments of the shattered Healy WRP can debate in a non-sectarian fashion without recourse to vituperation. I am not familiar with <strong>Workers News</strong>, the paper of the Workers International League (Leninist-Trotskyist), but I intend to be so in the future. Incidentally, why do revolutionary organisations have these awful portmanteau titles? If they want to locate themselves with total accuracy, perhaps they should include a PO Box number.</p>
<p>Mike Jones, it seems to me, with his impressive knowledge of German Communism, is attempting to resuscitate a different, Luxemburgist, tradition with which to beat the Trotskyist model. In some ways, this is an admirable effort; if only because Luxemburg has a great deal to teach us all, including the most unreformed orthodox Trotskyist. Nevertheless, it seems perverse for Mike to correctly emphasise that the revolution is the task of the majority of the working class while denying any credit to the only political current that attempted, however badly, to connect the movement of the workers with Marxist theory. With all due respect to Paul Levi and Brandler-Thalheimer, they were not quite in Trotsky’s league.</p>
<p>With Ken Tarbuck’s contribution, I confess I feel more at home. I think he is saying that Trotskyism had its rationale in the fight against Stalinism, from a revolutionary perspective. In that sense it was a positive contribution, for which all honour is due and to which most of us owe our presence in the revolutionary movement today. Trotsky’s written work does stand as his monument and, as Ken points out, without the movement he founded it would be gathering dust in some archive of socialist ephemera.<br>
</p>
<h4>Making a Fetish of the International</h4>
<p class="fst">If I have not done too much injustice to the three comrades’ views, I would appreciate the opportunity to develop my own arguments. On the question of the vanguard party and democratic centralism, I find the first term vainglorious and conducive to the view that we, not the class, are the key factor. The second term is either a meaningless contradiction or a recipe for self-perpetuating leaders to avoid accountability. “To mess about with the cadre”, in James P. Cannon’s immortal phrase. Discipline in the revolutionary movement comes about from shared conviction and common objectives, not at all from concern about some immaculately conceived party line, the breaching of which will land you in front of the control commission, twisting your cap nervously in your sweaty hands.</p>
<p>The party does have a number of functions, however, that only it can perform. It provides the forum for discussion, the exchange of experience and the decision about programme and policy. It provides the written material – papers, journals and propaganda – with which the members operate more effectively in the working class movement in so far as the material and the work of the comrades is accurate and effective, the experience of the workers themselves is fed back into further analysis and further action. The party grows and its work in the class becomes influential, in setting the broad movements agenda. The prospect of building a mass party then stands in the realm of practical politics. The very essence of all this is that the movement is subjected at all times to the critical gaze of the workers. If the party does not accord with workers everyday experience and assist them in their struggles it will be rejected and rightly so.</p>
<p>The tragedy of the Trotskyist movement has been that it was largely irrelevant to the workers as a class. That this was, in large measure, due to the overpowering presence of Stalinism and social democracy on the one hand and a series of working class defeats on the other, cannot gainsay the fact that some of the wounds were self-inflicted. For example, the American Trotskyists who tried bravely and so hard at Minneapolis-St Paul, then proceeded to engage in a faction fight about entry into the barely breathing corpse of American social democracy. Having shed members on the way, they then performed their “French turn”. In due course, they departed the American SP having recruited a large chunk of the Young Peoples Socialist League. The period of their self-immolation coincided with the explosive growth of the CIO, while the Trotskyists were giving Norman Thomas a seeing to. Even more pathetic, the newly augmented Socialist Workers Party then engaged in a near fatal faction fight between Cannon and Shachtman. The subsequent split took almost half the party into Shachtmans Workers Party, including practically all the recently won YPSLs. A nice little exercise in futility that is in no way mitigated by the spin off of <strong>In Defence of Marxism</strong> and <strong>The Struggle for a Proletarian Party</strong>, two volumes that have seen service in the cause of many a subsequent and destructive faction fight.</p>
<p>Of similar proportions was the failure of the IS Group in the early 1970s when the group in this country possessed a thousand-plus industrial workers and a chain of rank and file papers. This happy conjunction, certainly the best of any group in Britain, with its prospect of building a genuine rank and file movement on the tide of working class militancy, was rejected by Cliff and his co-thinkers for that shop-soiled nostrum “the revolutionary youth”. (I hope to write in a future issue of <strong>New Interventions</strong> a more detailed account of this episode from the SWP’s past.)</p>
<p>Building a revolutionary workers organisation has to be based upon the class as it is, not how we would like it to be. If we cannot show how our socialism connects realistically with workers lives, it seems unlikely that they will help us to “reforge the FI”.</p>
<p>There is a sort of fetishism about the notion of the International that I find puzzling. It must surely be apparent to everyone that at no time has the FI (in any of its many guises) done anything that brought it to the attention of, let alone gave assistance to, the worlds workers. So far as the Trotskyist groups were concerned, such benefits as it conferred were more psychological than practical. The one-day get-together of 1938, in Rosmer’s barn, bears as much relationship to the founding congress of a world party of Bolshevism as Gerry Healy did to Leon Trotsky. Even that pipsqueak event required the Tammany Hall talents of Cannon to ensure a smooth outcome. Sadly that was the high point; from then on it was downhill all the way.</p>
<p>The manner in which Cannon passed on the mandate to “our young men in Europe” (Pablo and Mandel) was rather like Colonel Sanders granting a franchise for a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. The way in which Cannon and Pablo adopted and cherished Healy is responsible for more ex-Trotskyists than a small movement can readily bear. Every major pronouncement of the FI’s “theoreticians” turned out to be wrong. Mandel could tailor you a theory that was an un-seamed garment, that sometimes fitted where it touched. The next week, when hard reality gave the thing an unseemly bulge, he would – without a backward glance or word of regret – run you up a new one, guaranteed to last until at least next Tuesday. Pablo thought more deeply and gave us “Centuries of Deformed Workers States” (tell that one to Mikhail Gorbachev). The ISFI had a more polished brand of bullshit than the ICFI, but both of them and their splinters were frequently malevolent and always irrelevant. Internationalism to mean anything implies influence and activity outside the closed circle of the organisation, otherwise it is empty rhetoric and that is what we have had: the world party of rhetorical socialism.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Heritage of Luxemburg</h4>
<p class="fst">There are then a lot of things to complain about in the heritage that LDT left us and it seems to be Mike Jones’ argument that we should look to another tradition. The problem here is that there has been something of a 70-year gap in the alternative he espouses. The tragedy is that Luxemburg was murdered, because she was probably the only individual who enjoyed comparable prestige to Lenin and Trotsky. Indeed, in the international movement, she was the outstanding figure on the revolutionary left, much better known than Lenin, before the Russian Revolution. It is perhaps fruitless, although enjoyable, to speculate what would have happened if she had lived. One finds it difficult to believe that a KPD with Luxemburg in the leadership would have been a party to the March Action of 1921 or the 1923 fiasco. It is also possible that her unique prestige would have tipped the scales in the building of a mass party that was able to carry through the German revolution.</p>
<p>The subsequent course of world history would have been vastly different and all to the good. Even so, I have no doubt that there would have been a different Mike Jones anxious to point out that there wee one or two skeletons in the Luxemburgist closet. Such a comrade might say that Jogiches was quite a few cards short of the full democratic pack when it came to his leadership of the Polish party (SDKPiL) and that Rosa supported him almost unfailingly, whatever her private reservations. Her attitude to the trade unions was one of profound mistrust, preferring the underground Polish unions under the hegemony of the party to free and independent ones. She also supported Jogiches in his fruitless attempt to take over the Russian Social Democracy. But none of this is the general method of Luxemburg, and her mistakes were made, like Trotsky’s, in the heat of political controversy. The overwhelming weight of her politics, like Trotsky’s, is benevolent and positive.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Luxemburg did not live to exert her benevolent influence on the infant KPD and the CI. After Jogiches’ murder by the Freikorps, the KPD leadership was taken by Paul Levi, one of Luxemburg’s most talented protégés. Levi, a lawyer by profession, was not a theoretician in the Luxemburg mould, nor an organiser in Jogiches’ style, but he was, nevertheless, a figure of authority in Germany and the International. Both Lenin and Trotsky thought very highly of him, which may explain, at least in part, why Zinoviev cordially detested him. Even so, Zinoviev had to take account of the fact that Levi led the most significant party in the International, one whose success would guarantee the Soviet power in Russia. Unless Levi managed some unforced errors he was a difficult man to dislodge. Unfortunately, that is just what he did make. At the Leghorn conference of the Italian Socialist Party, Levi supported Serrati, who opposed the expulsion of the PSI right wing. This was a nice excuse for Zinoviev to move against Levi. Through the CI delegates Rakosi and Kabakchiev, Thalheimer was persuaded to move a censure vote on Levi. When that was carried by 28 to 23, Clara Zetkin and three others resigned from the central committee. In their absence, once more under CI urging and under the leadership of Brandler-Thalheimer, the ill-fated and misconceived March Action was mounted. A few bombs were set off to stir up the Reichswehr, scattered strikes occurred, guerrilla raids were mounted. The Reichswehr, suitably stirred up, suppressed the action with some ease, artillery and much bloodshed. Levi immediately, before the dust had settled, published a pamphlet denouncing the action as a putsch, claiming that it was “war by the Communist Party on the working class”. In short order he was expelled from the KPD and the CI. Lenin, in discussion with Clara Zetkin, said: “You know how highly I value Paul Levi ... Ruthless criticism of the March Action was necessary, but what did Paul Levi give? He tore the party to pieces ... he gave nothing to which the party could usefully turn. He lacks the spirit of solidarity with the party and it was that which has made the rank and file ... deaf and blind to the great deal of truth in Levi’s criticism, particularly to his correct political principles ... The Leftists have to thank Paul Levi that up to the present they have come out so well, much too well.” (Degras, <strong>Communist International</strong>, Vol. 1, p. 218)</p>
<p>In the wake of his expulsion Levi formed the Working Committee for Communism, a short-lived group that joined the USPD a few months later and stayed when it fused with the SPD. Brandler and Thalheimer stayed on in the KPD to participate in and serve as scapegoats for the failed revolution of 1923.<br>
</p>
<h4>No Whited Sepulchres</h4>
<p class="fst">The reason for banging on at this length is to show that in revolutionary politics, where the stakes are so high, there are no whited sepulchres and that correct politics are no guarantee of success, if the tactics both within and without the party are faulty. Luxemburg had no closer disciple than Levi among the younger comrades and no one better able to develop her heritage. He just might have done so in the KPD, but he signally failed outside.</p>
<p>In a very real sense the coining of the terms Leninism, Luxemburgism and Trotskyism confuse more than they clarify. In so far as they have meaning it is that they represent the ideas that revolutionary Marxists have developed to answer problems they face in the real world. It is not surprising that Lenin emphasised discipline in the chaos of Tsarist Russia and that Luxemburg emphasised spontaneity in the bureaucratically ordered world of German Social Democracy. This silly “ism” business was started by Stalin, with his pamphlet <strong>Foundations of Leninism</strong>, a shrewd attempt to recast Lenin in Stalin’s own image. Lenin himself certainly did not see the body of his work as a universal panacea worthy of an “ism”. Discussing the entire process of the revolution he said: “[It] had to be admitted to have some fundamental significance on an international scale. Of course it would be a great mistake to exaggerate this truth and apply it to more than a few of the fundamental features of our revolution. We must not make the error of forgetting that once the proletarian revolution has been victorious in at least one of the advanced countries, things will in all likelihood change very considerably, i.e. Russia will shortly cease to be the model country and become once more the backward country, in a Soviet and socialist sense.” (<strong>Collected Works</strong>, Vol. 31, p. 21) Luxemburg, I have no doubt, would, with equal modesty, have rejected any claim to an “ism”.<br>
</p>
<h4>How Many “isms” Do We Need?</h4>
<p class="fst">The word Trotskyism, to describe a body of ideas, was coined by Stalin as the reactionary antithesis to Leninism. The label stuck, but to turn it back on the Stalinists we acquired the bracketed Bolshevik-Leninist suffix.</p>
<p>In discussing Trotskyism Ken Tarbuck makes the point (one also made by Al Richardson in <strong>New Interventions</strong>) that it had its raison d’être in the existence of Stalinism. With the demise of Stalinism it is irrelevant to the future of the movement. I think that is probably true. I also think that Luxemburgism as a separate strand, in the absence of anything like the orthodox social democracy she was fighting against, has also had its day.</p>
<p>In the process of moving on, however, we must not make the air hideous with the screams of babies being hammered down the plughole with all the dirty water. Transitional politics, as opposed to the <strong>Transitional Programme</strong>, are crucially important, the centrality of the working class and the workers self-activity to any socialist analysis are also vitally important.</p>
<p>There are, perhaps, 10,000 people organised in revolutionary groups in Britain today and there is a much larger number of people who once were in one or other of the groups. For many of these groups their principled reason to exist is not discernible to the naked eye. The question of the Fourth International is not, for example, a matter of principle. It may or may not be desirable but it cannot be said that the work of socialist agitation is attenuated by its absence. I take the view that the existence of the Potemkin FIs we have had were almost totally malign for the Trotskyist groups. The relinquishing of sectarian shibboleths may be as heart-wrenching and difficult as removing a child’s comfort blanket, but in both cases it must be done if maturity is to be achieved. The exclusive rectitude of groups, who could hold their aggregates in a telephone booth, is tragic and absurd. It is a sort of perverse hobby that cannot hold a candle to train spotting, where you see more of the country and might even meet some real workers.</p>
<p>It is long past the time when we should continue playing the fool with contending “isms”. Marxism is really the only one we need and we should be able to incorporate all that is valuable for class struggle from the different traditions under that one umbrella.</p>
<p>Revolutionary regroupment is necessary if Jim Dye is to see the realisation of his dream of the kids dancing on the rubble of Buckingham Palace. I wonder, though, if I might move a small amendment: could the kids have Centrepoint and Buckingham Palace turned into a museum after the style of the Imelda Marcos’ one in Manila. Just imagine all those thousands of sensible shoes and hats designed like chamber pots. Now that would be something to show your grandchildren.</p>
<p class="date"><em>July 1993</em></p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
From Gangrene ... to the Danger of Amputation
(July 1993)
From New Interventions, Vol. 4 No. 3, 1993.
Downloaded with kind permission from the What Next? Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
On the Shoulders of a Giant
“If you stand on the shoulders of a giant, it is possible to see even further than the giant.” I first heard this piece of homely wisdom from the lips of Tony Cliff, none of which detracts from its truth or, indeed, its appositeness to the current discussion, in the pages of New Interventions, between Jim Dye, Mike Jones and Ken Tarbuck.
Cliff’s little aphorism is, of course, only true so long as two conditions are satisfied. First, that you do not use the advantage of the giants height to look steadfastly backwards (this seems to be Jim Dye’s stance). Second, that you do not abuse this privileged position by kicking the giant repeatedly in the ear (this seems to be Mike Jones’ standpoint).
If I could, without offensive compression, summarise the arguments of the contestants, I think it would go like this: Jim Dye, while accepting a number of errors and omissions by Lenin and Trotsky, still maintains the essential validity of the Bolshevik tradition of the vanguard party, with all the trappings of democratic centralism. This seems to me to be a viable, if mistaken, stand for Jim to take. Less convincing, is his insistence that the Fourth International was “one of Trotsky’s finest achievements” and that the priority today is for a “reforged FI”. Having said that, what I do find heartening is that a member of one of the fragments of the shattered Healy WRP can debate in a non-sectarian fashion without recourse to vituperation. I am not familiar with Workers News, the paper of the Workers International League (Leninist-Trotskyist), but I intend to be so in the future. Incidentally, why do revolutionary organisations have these awful portmanteau titles? If they want to locate themselves with total accuracy, perhaps they should include a PO Box number.
Mike Jones, it seems to me, with his impressive knowledge of German Communism, is attempting to resuscitate a different, Luxemburgist, tradition with which to beat the Trotskyist model. In some ways, this is an admirable effort; if only because Luxemburg has a great deal to teach us all, including the most unreformed orthodox Trotskyist. Nevertheless, it seems perverse for Mike to correctly emphasise that the revolution is the task of the majority of the working class while denying any credit to the only political current that attempted, however badly, to connect the movement of the workers with Marxist theory. With all due respect to Paul Levi and Brandler-Thalheimer, they were not quite in Trotsky’s league.
With Ken Tarbuck’s contribution, I confess I feel more at home. I think he is saying that Trotskyism had its rationale in the fight against Stalinism, from a revolutionary perspective. In that sense it was a positive contribution, for which all honour is due and to which most of us owe our presence in the revolutionary movement today. Trotsky’s written work does stand as his monument and, as Ken points out, without the movement he founded it would be gathering dust in some archive of socialist ephemera.
Making a Fetish of the International
If I have not done too much injustice to the three comrades’ views, I would appreciate the opportunity to develop my own arguments. On the question of the vanguard party and democratic centralism, I find the first term vainglorious and conducive to the view that we, not the class, are the key factor. The second term is either a meaningless contradiction or a recipe for self-perpetuating leaders to avoid accountability. “To mess about with the cadre”, in James P. Cannon’s immortal phrase. Discipline in the revolutionary movement comes about from shared conviction and common objectives, not at all from concern about some immaculately conceived party line, the breaching of which will land you in front of the control commission, twisting your cap nervously in your sweaty hands.
The party does have a number of functions, however, that only it can perform. It provides the forum for discussion, the exchange of experience and the decision about programme and policy. It provides the written material – papers, journals and propaganda – with which the members operate more effectively in the working class movement in so far as the material and the work of the comrades is accurate and effective, the experience of the workers themselves is fed back into further analysis and further action. The party grows and its work in the class becomes influential, in setting the broad movements agenda. The prospect of building a mass party then stands in the realm of practical politics. The very essence of all this is that the movement is subjected at all times to the critical gaze of the workers. If the party does not accord with workers everyday experience and assist them in their struggles it will be rejected and rightly so.
The tragedy of the Trotskyist movement has been that it was largely irrelevant to the workers as a class. That this was, in large measure, due to the overpowering presence of Stalinism and social democracy on the one hand and a series of working class defeats on the other, cannot gainsay the fact that some of the wounds were self-inflicted. For example, the American Trotskyists who tried bravely and so hard at Minneapolis-St Paul, then proceeded to engage in a faction fight about entry into the barely breathing corpse of American social democracy. Having shed members on the way, they then performed their “French turn”. In due course, they departed the American SP having recruited a large chunk of the Young Peoples Socialist League. The period of their self-immolation coincided with the explosive growth of the CIO, while the Trotskyists were giving Norman Thomas a seeing to. Even more pathetic, the newly augmented Socialist Workers Party then engaged in a near fatal faction fight between Cannon and Shachtman. The subsequent split took almost half the party into Shachtmans Workers Party, including practically all the recently won YPSLs. A nice little exercise in futility that is in no way mitigated by the spin off of In Defence of Marxism and The Struggle for a Proletarian Party, two volumes that have seen service in the cause of many a subsequent and destructive faction fight.
Of similar proportions was the failure of the IS Group in the early 1970s when the group in this country possessed a thousand-plus industrial workers and a chain of rank and file papers. This happy conjunction, certainly the best of any group in Britain, with its prospect of building a genuine rank and file movement on the tide of working class militancy, was rejected by Cliff and his co-thinkers for that shop-soiled nostrum “the revolutionary youth”. (I hope to write in a future issue of New Interventions a more detailed account of this episode from the SWP’s past.)
Building a revolutionary workers organisation has to be based upon the class as it is, not how we would like it to be. If we cannot show how our socialism connects realistically with workers lives, it seems unlikely that they will help us to “reforge the FI”.
There is a sort of fetishism about the notion of the International that I find puzzling. It must surely be apparent to everyone that at no time has the FI (in any of its many guises) done anything that brought it to the attention of, let alone gave assistance to, the worlds workers. So far as the Trotskyist groups were concerned, such benefits as it conferred were more psychological than practical. The one-day get-together of 1938, in Rosmer’s barn, bears as much relationship to the founding congress of a world party of Bolshevism as Gerry Healy did to Leon Trotsky. Even that pipsqueak event required the Tammany Hall talents of Cannon to ensure a smooth outcome. Sadly that was the high point; from then on it was downhill all the way.
The manner in which Cannon passed on the mandate to “our young men in Europe” (Pablo and Mandel) was rather like Colonel Sanders granting a franchise for a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. The way in which Cannon and Pablo adopted and cherished Healy is responsible for more ex-Trotskyists than a small movement can readily bear. Every major pronouncement of the FI’s “theoreticians” turned out to be wrong. Mandel could tailor you a theory that was an un-seamed garment, that sometimes fitted where it touched. The next week, when hard reality gave the thing an unseemly bulge, he would – without a backward glance or word of regret – run you up a new one, guaranteed to last until at least next Tuesday. Pablo thought more deeply and gave us “Centuries of Deformed Workers States” (tell that one to Mikhail Gorbachev). The ISFI had a more polished brand of bullshit than the ICFI, but both of them and their splinters were frequently malevolent and always irrelevant. Internationalism to mean anything implies influence and activity outside the closed circle of the organisation, otherwise it is empty rhetoric and that is what we have had: the world party of rhetorical socialism.
The Heritage of Luxemburg
There are then a lot of things to complain about in the heritage that LDT left us and it seems to be Mike Jones’ argument that we should look to another tradition. The problem here is that there has been something of a 70-year gap in the alternative he espouses. The tragedy is that Luxemburg was murdered, because she was probably the only individual who enjoyed comparable prestige to Lenin and Trotsky. Indeed, in the international movement, she was the outstanding figure on the revolutionary left, much better known than Lenin, before the Russian Revolution. It is perhaps fruitless, although enjoyable, to speculate what would have happened if she had lived. One finds it difficult to believe that a KPD with Luxemburg in the leadership would have been a party to the March Action of 1921 or the 1923 fiasco. It is also possible that her unique prestige would have tipped the scales in the building of a mass party that was able to carry through the German revolution.
The subsequent course of world history would have been vastly different and all to the good. Even so, I have no doubt that there would have been a different Mike Jones anxious to point out that there wee one or two skeletons in the Luxemburgist closet. Such a comrade might say that Jogiches was quite a few cards short of the full democratic pack when it came to his leadership of the Polish party (SDKPiL) and that Rosa supported him almost unfailingly, whatever her private reservations. Her attitude to the trade unions was one of profound mistrust, preferring the underground Polish unions under the hegemony of the party to free and independent ones. She also supported Jogiches in his fruitless attempt to take over the Russian Social Democracy. But none of this is the general method of Luxemburg, and her mistakes were made, like Trotsky’s, in the heat of political controversy. The overwhelming weight of her politics, like Trotsky’s, is benevolent and positive.
Unfortunately, Luxemburg did not live to exert her benevolent influence on the infant KPD and the CI. After Jogiches’ murder by the Freikorps, the KPD leadership was taken by Paul Levi, one of Luxemburg’s most talented protégés. Levi, a lawyer by profession, was not a theoretician in the Luxemburg mould, nor an organiser in Jogiches’ style, but he was, nevertheless, a figure of authority in Germany and the International. Both Lenin and Trotsky thought very highly of him, which may explain, at least in part, why Zinoviev cordially detested him. Even so, Zinoviev had to take account of the fact that Levi led the most significant party in the International, one whose success would guarantee the Soviet power in Russia. Unless Levi managed some unforced errors he was a difficult man to dislodge. Unfortunately, that is just what he did make. At the Leghorn conference of the Italian Socialist Party, Levi supported Serrati, who opposed the expulsion of the PSI right wing. This was a nice excuse for Zinoviev to move against Levi. Through the CI delegates Rakosi and Kabakchiev, Thalheimer was persuaded to move a censure vote on Levi. When that was carried by 28 to 23, Clara Zetkin and three others resigned from the central committee. In their absence, once more under CI urging and under the leadership of Brandler-Thalheimer, the ill-fated and misconceived March Action was mounted. A few bombs were set off to stir up the Reichswehr, scattered strikes occurred, guerrilla raids were mounted. The Reichswehr, suitably stirred up, suppressed the action with some ease, artillery and much bloodshed. Levi immediately, before the dust had settled, published a pamphlet denouncing the action as a putsch, claiming that it was “war by the Communist Party on the working class”. In short order he was expelled from the KPD and the CI. Lenin, in discussion with Clara Zetkin, said: “You know how highly I value Paul Levi ... Ruthless criticism of the March Action was necessary, but what did Paul Levi give? He tore the party to pieces ... he gave nothing to which the party could usefully turn. He lacks the spirit of solidarity with the party and it was that which has made the rank and file ... deaf and blind to the great deal of truth in Levi’s criticism, particularly to his correct political principles ... The Leftists have to thank Paul Levi that up to the present they have come out so well, much too well.” (Degras, Communist International, Vol. 1, p. 218)
In the wake of his expulsion Levi formed the Working Committee for Communism, a short-lived group that joined the USPD a few months later and stayed when it fused with the SPD. Brandler and Thalheimer stayed on in the KPD to participate in and serve as scapegoats for the failed revolution of 1923.
No Whited Sepulchres
The reason for banging on at this length is to show that in revolutionary politics, where the stakes are so high, there are no whited sepulchres and that correct politics are no guarantee of success, if the tactics both within and without the party are faulty. Luxemburg had no closer disciple than Levi among the younger comrades and no one better able to develop her heritage. He just might have done so in the KPD, but he signally failed outside.
In a very real sense the coining of the terms Leninism, Luxemburgism and Trotskyism confuse more than they clarify. In so far as they have meaning it is that they represent the ideas that revolutionary Marxists have developed to answer problems they face in the real world. It is not surprising that Lenin emphasised discipline in the chaos of Tsarist Russia and that Luxemburg emphasised spontaneity in the bureaucratically ordered world of German Social Democracy. This silly “ism” business was started by Stalin, with his pamphlet Foundations of Leninism, a shrewd attempt to recast Lenin in Stalin’s own image. Lenin himself certainly did not see the body of his work as a universal panacea worthy of an “ism”. Discussing the entire process of the revolution he said: “[It] had to be admitted to have some fundamental significance on an international scale. Of course it would be a great mistake to exaggerate this truth and apply it to more than a few of the fundamental features of our revolution. We must not make the error of forgetting that once the proletarian revolution has been victorious in at least one of the advanced countries, things will in all likelihood change very considerably, i.e. Russia will shortly cease to be the model country and become once more the backward country, in a Soviet and socialist sense.” (Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 21) Luxemburg, I have no doubt, would, with equal modesty, have rejected any claim to an “ism”.
How Many “isms” Do We Need?
The word Trotskyism, to describe a body of ideas, was coined by Stalin as the reactionary antithesis to Leninism. The label stuck, but to turn it back on the Stalinists we acquired the bracketed Bolshevik-Leninist suffix.
In discussing Trotskyism Ken Tarbuck makes the point (one also made by Al Richardson in New Interventions) that it had its raison d’être in the existence of Stalinism. With the demise of Stalinism it is irrelevant to the future of the movement. I think that is probably true. I also think that Luxemburgism as a separate strand, in the absence of anything like the orthodox social democracy she was fighting against, has also had its day.
In the process of moving on, however, we must not make the air hideous with the screams of babies being hammered down the plughole with all the dirty water. Transitional politics, as opposed to the Transitional Programme, are crucially important, the centrality of the working class and the workers self-activity to any socialist analysis are also vitally important.
There are, perhaps, 10,000 people organised in revolutionary groups in Britain today and there is a much larger number of people who once were in one or other of the groups. For many of these groups their principled reason to exist is not discernible to the naked eye. The question of the Fourth International is not, for example, a matter of principle. It may or may not be desirable but it cannot be said that the work of socialist agitation is attenuated by its absence. I take the view that the existence of the Potemkin FIs we have had were almost totally malign for the Trotskyist groups. The relinquishing of sectarian shibboleths may be as heart-wrenching and difficult as removing a child’s comfort blanket, but in both cases it must be done if maturity is to be achieved. The exclusive rectitude of groups, who could hold their aggregates in a telephone booth, is tragic and absurd. It is a sort of perverse hobby that cannot hold a candle to train spotting, where you see more of the country and might even meet some real workers.
It is long past the time when we should continue playing the fool with contending “isms”. Marxism is really the only one we need and we should be able to incorporate all that is valuable for class struggle from the different traditions under that one umbrella.
Revolutionary regroupment is necessary if Jim Dye is to see the realisation of his dream of the kids dancing on the rubble of Buckingham Palace. I wonder, though, if I might move a small amendment: could the kids have Centrepoint and Buckingham Palace turned into a museum after the style of the Imelda Marcos’ one in Manila. Just imagine all those thousands of sensible shoes and hats designed like chamber pots. Now that would be something to show your grandchildren.
July 1993
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Tony Cliff</h1>
<h3>(2002)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Revolutionary History</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm#v8n2" target="new">Vol. 8 No. 2</a>, 2002.<br>
Transcribed by Alun Morgan for <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/main.htm" target="new"><em>Revolutionary History Website</em></a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Dear Editor</p>
<p class="fst">In the last issue of <strong>Revolutionary History</strong> (Volume 8, no. 1), Ian Birchall took Ted Crawford and myself to task for our criticisms of Tony Cliff’s autobiography <strong>A World to Win</strong>. Ted dealt with most of Ian’s letter in the same issue, but there are a couple of matters I would like to set straight, if possible. In a patronising passage, calculated to strain my amiability to its limit, Ian writes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Personally, I always found Jim Higgins an amiable and amusing individual, and I should be quite happy to let bygones be bygones. But since he insists on scratching at the wound, let me say that the real difference between Cliff and Higgins is as follows: if Cliff had lost the 1975 faction fight, he would have got on with rebuilding what was left of his organisation; he would certainly not have spent the next 25 years writing articles about how badly he had been treated.</p>
<p class="fst">In this short half-paragraph Ian marks up an impressive score of errors, which suggests to me that for all his closeness to Cliff he was not too aware of what was going on. For starters, I do not, so far as I am aware, have any ‘bygones’ with Ian. Indeed, I can recall quite vividly some fairly acrimonious debates that I had with Cliff, but not so much as a cross word with Ian. He may, of course, have voted for Cliff’s side of the dispute with noisy enthusiasm, but that would be quite insufficient to be noticed among the strident clamour of Cliff’s noisier loyalists. Again, contrary to Ian’s suggestion, I have not spent my time for the last 25 years whinging about how Cliff did me wrong. I have, of course, written fairly extensively about the International Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party when requested to by various journals. In all of that I have attempted to keep my own part in this out of the narrative, except in so far as it clarified the text. Where I have written with some defence of my personal involvement, it has been in response to Ian, who has been pursuing me through the pages of these same journals with such doggedness as to put him in danger of prosecution under the anti-stalking legislation.</p>
<p>Ian’s most substantial error is in the passage where he guesses what Cliff might have done if the IS Opposition had won the 1975 faction fight. The fact is that the ISO was a most reluctant opposition and, assuming that we had won, had no intention of expelling Cliff and his <em>camarilla</em>. The ISO was a response to Cliff’s depressingly ingrained inability to operate in any kind of collective where there was a chance that he might not get his own way. Now this failing, observable and forgivable in kindergartens, is destructive and ultimately pathetic when practised in an organisation with pretensions to Bolshevism. Had he lost the faction fight, he would have been expected to abide by the line that he had supported (and had been in large measure responsible for initiating) until a few months before the arguments erupted.</p>
<p>This outcome might have saved him from the embarrassment of fathering the ‘all shop stewards are bent’ line that with total irresponsibility he tossed into the 1975 debate. This particular piece of crass stupidity is described in Mike Sheridan’s moving obituary of Sean Halloran in the same issue of <strong>Revolutionary History</strong> as Ian’s letter. The real difference between Cliff and Higgins was that I was unwilling to discard valuable parts of the IS heritage, much of which I had originally learned from Cliff, for a passing factional advantage. Cliff embraced the opportunity, performing political convolutions of herpetic proportions, that by some alchemy damaged neither his backbone nor his credibility among the faithful. But as Ian Birchall knows perfectly well, Cliff was prepared to lie and cheat to retain his untrammelled control of the organisation. Ye Gods, on occasion he was even prepared to perpetrate such notorious porkies as his rewriting of the anti-Lenin bits of the first edition of <strong>Rosa Luxemburg</strong>, then denying he had done so, so that he could pretend that his Leninism was pure, unwavering and lifelong.</p>
<p>In his concluding paragraphs, Ian presents a vision of Cliff as candidate for imminent beatification, well good luck on that one Ian. Perhaps if he eventually gets round to producing, <em>Tony Cliff: The Movie</em>, he might cast Julie Andrews in the title rôle.</p>
<p class="author">Jim Higgins</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>Ian Birchall</strong> adds that he does not wish to continue this correspondence, but wishes to point out that the republication of Cliff’s pamphlet on Rosa Luxemburg in the first volume of his <strong>Selected Works</strong> does include both of the passages to which Jim Higgins refers.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Tony Cliff
(2002)
From Revolutionary History, Vol. 8 No. 2, 2002.
Transcribed by Alun Morgan for Revolutionary History Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Dear Editor
In the last issue of Revolutionary History (Volume 8, no. 1), Ian Birchall took Ted Crawford and myself to task for our criticisms of Tony Cliff’s autobiography A World to Win. Ted dealt with most of Ian’s letter in the same issue, but there are a couple of matters I would like to set straight, if possible. In a patronising passage, calculated to strain my amiability to its limit, Ian writes:
Personally, I always found Jim Higgins an amiable and amusing individual, and I should be quite happy to let bygones be bygones. But since he insists on scratching at the wound, let me say that the real difference between Cliff and Higgins is as follows: if Cliff had lost the 1975 faction fight, he would have got on with rebuilding what was left of his organisation; he would certainly not have spent the next 25 years writing articles about how badly he had been treated.
In this short half-paragraph Ian marks up an impressive score of errors, which suggests to me that for all his closeness to Cliff he was not too aware of what was going on. For starters, I do not, so far as I am aware, have any ‘bygones’ with Ian. Indeed, I can recall quite vividly some fairly acrimonious debates that I had with Cliff, but not so much as a cross word with Ian. He may, of course, have voted for Cliff’s side of the dispute with noisy enthusiasm, but that would be quite insufficient to be noticed among the strident clamour of Cliff’s noisier loyalists. Again, contrary to Ian’s suggestion, I have not spent my time for the last 25 years whinging about how Cliff did me wrong. I have, of course, written fairly extensively about the International Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party when requested to by various journals. In all of that I have attempted to keep my own part in this out of the narrative, except in so far as it clarified the text. Where I have written with some defence of my personal involvement, it has been in response to Ian, who has been pursuing me through the pages of these same journals with such doggedness as to put him in danger of prosecution under the anti-stalking legislation.
Ian’s most substantial error is in the passage where he guesses what Cliff might have done if the IS Opposition had won the 1975 faction fight. The fact is that the ISO was a most reluctant opposition and, assuming that we had won, had no intention of expelling Cliff and his camarilla. The ISO was a response to Cliff’s depressingly ingrained inability to operate in any kind of collective where there was a chance that he might not get his own way. Now this failing, observable and forgivable in kindergartens, is destructive and ultimately pathetic when practised in an organisation with pretensions to Bolshevism. Had he lost the faction fight, he would have been expected to abide by the line that he had supported (and had been in large measure responsible for initiating) until a few months before the arguments erupted.
This outcome might have saved him from the embarrassment of fathering the ‘all shop stewards are bent’ line that with total irresponsibility he tossed into the 1975 debate. This particular piece of crass stupidity is described in Mike Sheridan’s moving obituary of Sean Halloran in the same issue of Revolutionary History as Ian’s letter. The real difference between Cliff and Higgins was that I was unwilling to discard valuable parts of the IS heritage, much of which I had originally learned from Cliff, for a passing factional advantage. Cliff embraced the opportunity, performing political convolutions of herpetic proportions, that by some alchemy damaged neither his backbone nor his credibility among the faithful. But as Ian Birchall knows perfectly well, Cliff was prepared to lie and cheat to retain his untrammelled control of the organisation. Ye Gods, on occasion he was even prepared to perpetrate such notorious porkies as his rewriting of the anti-Lenin bits of the first edition of Rosa Luxemburg, then denying he had done so, so that he could pretend that his Leninism was pure, unwavering and lifelong.
In his concluding paragraphs, Ian presents a vision of Cliff as candidate for imminent beatification, well good luck on that one Ian. Perhaps if he eventually gets round to producing, Tony Cliff: The Movie, he might cast Julie Andrews in the title rôle.
Jim Higgins
Ian Birchall adds that he does not wish to continue this correspondence, but wishes to point out that the republication of Cliff’s pamphlet on Rosa Luxemburg in the first volume of his Selected Works does include both of the passages to which Jim Higgins refers.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>The arrogance of the long distance Zionist <small><small><a id="fa" href="#na" name="fa">[1*]</a></small></small></h1>
<h3>(March 1998)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Workers’ Liberty</strong>, No.38, March 1998.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">This will be the third time I have ventured to disagree with Sean Matgamna on the vexed question of Zionism. I do so with some trepidation because, or so it seems, even when I am right I am in reality exposing myself as fundamentally wrong and mischievously so. In my first article I attempted to lighten the subject with a few mildly humourous quips. I was sternly rebuked for this failure of seriousness. Chastened, in part two I adopted a serious tone. Sean responded by regretting my humour had been replaced by “choler, rodomontade, unleavened abuse, some of it purely personal ...” Did I really do all of that? I feel particularly cheered to hear that I was guilty of choler and rodomontade, rather like the man who discovered at an advanced age that he had been speaking prose all his life. Normally, of course, I only use unleavened abuse during Passover. Sorry about that.</p>
<p>Having reviewed Sean’s articles I can see that they fit quite nicely into the Matgamna mode of polemic. First and foremost, his views are lumped together in such a way that they will sharply divide him from other socialists. This is what Al Richardson calls “consumer socialism” and Marx calls “sectarianism.” In practice this means that since Bernard Dix died, there have been no adherents of the Shachtmanite school of bureaucratic collectivism on these shores and if Sean were to occupy this vacant franchise he would acquire a whole slew of politics to differentiate himself from everybody else. All you need is a file of <strong>New International</strong> (published monthly between 1936 and 1958) and you can start to kid yourself you are writing with all the style and eloquence of Max Shachtman. Along with all the clever nonsense about Russia you will also inherit the Workers’ Party-International Socialist League line on Israel.</p>
<p>A comparison of Sean’s article with a sampling of the WP-ISL texts shows that whatever Sean lacks in originality he has made up for in the diligence of his researches into the <strong>New International</strong>. In the September issue of <strong>Workers’ Liberty</strong> we have Sean as follows: “Cliff’s 1946 pamphlet does not deal at all with the political questions in the Middle East, having more to say about the price of oil than about the rights of national minorities. Where politics should have been there is a vacuum ...” Now here is Al Gates in the <strong>New International</strong> in September 1947: “T. Cliff’s competent analytical work on Palestine, and here too we observed a fine study of the economic growth and problems of the Middle East and the place of Palestine in that situation. Yet the whole work was outstanding for its studious evasion of the political questions of the class and national struggles taking place there.” Gates is more polite than Sean, but that will probably surprise no one.</p>
<p>Another standard feature of Sean’s method is the one where he complains bitterly that he is being abused unfairly as a prelude to unleashing a little of his own venom into the argument. For example, I raised the case of Deir Yassin because it took place in April 1948 and set in motion the Arab refugees, countering Sean said they only fled in May 1948 when the Arab armies started their offensive. In so doing I neglected to mention the killing of 60 Jews by Arabs in the bloody attacks of 1929. For this I was accused of hypocrisy. Perhaps now I should go on to apologise for failing to condemn the similar outrages of 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936 and 1938. In the interests of balance perhaps I should also throw in the massacres of Sabra and Chatila, because I condemn them as well. In the same vein, Sean insists that he does not believe that I, or the SWP, are racist, but in virtually breath he repeats his accusation that we are anti-semitic. This does not come from the WP-ISL. I have nowhere in the pro-Israel polemics of Al Gates and the rest seen them accuse their socialist opponents of anti-semitism. For that we must look to official Zionist spokesmen and Sean Matgamna. It is, I suppose, always nice to have two sources of inspiration.</p>
<p>Let us now turn to Sean’s predilection for discovering sinister and malign purposes in the motives of others and constructing a sort of retrospective amalgam. About a quarter of his piece is devoted to a partial and not very informative trawl through Cliff’s works on the Middle East. On the strength of his 1948 pamphlet <a href="../../../cliff/works/1946/me/index.htm" target="new"><strong>Middle East at the Crossroads</strong></a>, this apparently made Cliff, along with Abram Leon, one of the Fourth International’s two experts on the Jewish question. Unfortunately, Leon was killed by the Nazis, so after 1946 Cliff must have stood pre-eminent, although Sean assigns a subordinate role to Ernest Mandel. Thus we have the sinister Cliff leading the FI along the road of “anti-semitic anti-Zionism.” Unfortunately, by the time Sean got round to this particular fantasy he had forgotten what he had written on the previous page: “In 1967, after the Six Day War, Cliff wrote a pamphlet which is closer in its political conclusions and implied conclusions to what <strong>Workers’ Liberty</strong> says than to what the SWP or Jim Higgins say now. The decisive shift came after 1967 and was brought to the present level of nonsense after the Yom Kippur war of 1973. The ‘honour’ of having established the post 1973 IS/SWP line belongs, I think, to none other than Jim Higgins (in an article in <strong>IS Journal</strong>).” There you have it comrade readers, Cliff set the style for the FI and especially the American SWP, except that until 1973 his views were not much different from those of <strong>Workers’ Liberty</strong>, which I assume are the same as Sean’s. Far from Cliff being the <em>deus ex machina</em> of anti-Zionist anti-semitism, I am. In <strong>International Socialism</strong> No. 64 in 1973, I wrote this seminal offending piece, <a href="../../1973/12/zionism.htm"><em>Background to the Middle East Crisis</em></a>. At the same time, the ground-breaking significance of the article passed without a murmur. Nobody, including the author, was aware that it was any more than a short explanation of the IS Group’s attitude to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, which I had reported for <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>. In the 23 years since it was written probably only Sean Matgamna has read it, now that Sean, with Holmes-like skill, has unmasked me as the <em>eminence grise</em> of “non-racist anti-semitic anti-Zionism” I too have read it, and regret that it has no claims, subliminal or otherwise, to trend-setting originality.</p>
<p>Delving further into the Matgamna polemical method we find encounter that special form of arrogance that insists on setting all the terms of any debate and finding significance in a failure to follow him up any logical blind alley he may choose. Let us then consider his “serious and not entirely rhetorical question, why the Jewish minority, a third of the population in the 1940s, did not have national rights there.” Let us leave aside the fact that rhetorical questions are precisely the ones that are not looking for answers, and think about this one. First, in those terms of realpolitik to which Sean is so addicted, who was to afford them national determination in the 1930s and 1940s. Was it the Arab majority? Not a bit of it, the very notion of any kind of accommodation with the Arab majority was totally anathema to the Zionist leadership. Should they have addressed themselves to the British? Actually they did and were turned down. The fact is that there were no rights for self-determination for anyone in Palestine. British policy had been to utilize Zionism as a force to divide and discipline the Arab masses. That is how the Jewish population rose from fewer than 100,000 in 1917 to over 400,000 in 1939 (a third of the total population). The plan was for eventually a Jewish homeland under strictly British tutelage. The turning off of Jewish immigration in 1939 was because the British were concerned to pacify the Arab majority to safeguard Palestine as a British controlled Middle East hub, especially the oil pipeline, in the war.</p>
<p>The question of self-determination for the Zionists had nothing to do with democracy, because any solution, while the Jewish population remained a minority, would under democratic norms have to be cast in such a way that came to terms with the Arab majority. It is for this reason that the Zionist leadership fought so hard for unrestricted immigration and why the Arabs were against it. It is for the same reasons that the Zionists while demanding Jewish immigration were opposed to Arab immigration. It is the same reason why Zionist policy was bitterly opposed to the idea of a constituent assembly. This vexed question of population arithmetic is what distorted the political agenda of Palestine.</p>
<p>With two thirds of the population the Arabs would seem to have a fairly safe majority. In fact, they had a plurality of only 400,000. For the Zionist leadership this was the magic number and to overhaul it took precedence over all other considerations. Such a number might just, with massive difficulty and at the expense mainly of the Arabs, be accommodated. This was the emphasis of Zionist propaganda, despite that Palestine, assuming a complete disregard for the Arabs, could take only a small proportion of the Jews threatened and eventually murdered by Hitler. The massive propaganda effort was expended on altering Palestine’s population statistics, instead of demanding asylum from the US and Britain (who were infinitely better able to provide for it) for these and many, many more Jews who were to be lost in Himmler’s ovens. This was not a matter of emphasis, shouting louder about Jerusalem than New York, it was a positive opposition to Jews going anywhere other than Palestine. If the intention had been to save Jewish lives at all costs, the argument should have been: “If you will not let Jews into British-mandated Palestine, then you have an urgent and absolute moral responsibility to give them asylum elsewhere.” no such campaign was mounted.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, comrades might ask, is not the hallmark of socialist internationalism the free, unfettered flow of all people throughout the world? Why should Palestine be different? The short answer is that immigration as part of a concerted plan that will take over the country, expropriating, expelling and exploiting the native masses, is less immigration and more a long drawn out and aggressive invasion. For socialists, the reactionary character of Zionism is defined by its racist ideology, imbued with the spirit of separation and exclusion, the very reverse of socialist solidarity. It was prepared totally itself with every reactionary force that might help its purposes. It lobbied such figures as the Kaiser, the Sultan of Turkey, for twenty years it cosied up to British imperialism, finally snuggling into the embrace of the biggest imperial power of them all, the United States. In the process, it has treated the Arab population as a species of <em>untermensch</em> and has effectively driven a large portion of the Arab masses into the hands of Islamic obscurantists and bigots. It stands in the way of any socialist advance in the Arab world, operating as imperialism’s gendarme in the region, a far more effective force for imperialism than, for example, the feeble Saudi royal family or the Hashemites. If Zionism has had one redeeming feature over the years, it is that it never bothered to conceal its intentions, but it is difficult to commend a man for his honesty in telling you that he is going to beat your brains out, especially if he then delivers the mortal blow.</p>
<p>As Sean indicates, the development of ideas on Zionism in the Trotskyist movement is quite interesting. So Sean says, Cliff in his <strong>New International</strong> article of <a href="../../../cliff/works/1939/06/classpol.htm" target="neew">June 1939</a>, was for Jewish immigration into Palestine and for the sale of land to the Jewish population, both points vigorously opposed by the Palestinian CP. His argument for this, and it is a thin one, is: “Yet from the negation of Zionism does not follow the negation of the right to existence and extension of the Jewish population in Palestine. This would only be justified if an objectively necessary identity existed between the population and nothing more.” Like a lot of Cliff, this takes a bit of time to get your head around. With perseverance one is, however, struck by how abstract it is as a serious formulation. Whether this is a reaction against the Arab chauvinism of the PCP I cannot say, but it clearly suggests that unless Zionism is 100% in the pocket of British imperialism it is OK to augment its forces. But as we well know, nationalist movements are not wedded to any particular sponsor, and their interests are never seen as identical and often antithetical. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem could make overtures to Hitler, Jabotinsky, the founder of revisionist Zionism, was a great admirer of Mussolini, and, during the war, Chandra Bose, the leftist Indian nationalist, worked with the Japanese, building an Indian national army. In the same way, the Jewish population were not 100% identified with Zionism, Cliff and the handful of Jewish Trotskyists were not and neither was the PCP, but in the absence of anything of consequence, Zionism certainly had at least the tacit support of an overwhelming majority of the Jews. After the war and the holocaust, that support became far more active.</p>
<p>I have a suspicion that it is from this 1939 article that Sean acquired his idea that the Comintern were not opposed to Jewish immigration to Palestine in the 1920s. In truth Cliff, as is his wont, is being a bit economical with the <em>actualité</em> here. He says: “The members of the Comintern in Palestine ... while absolutely opposed to Zionism (against the national boycott [of Arab goods and Arab labour - <em>JH</em>], against slogans like the Jewish majority and the Jewish state and the alliance with England, etc.), declared at the same time that the Jewish population is not to be identified with Zionism and hence demanded the maximum freedom of movement for Jewish immigration into Palestine ...” You will notice the odd usage of the “members of the Comintern in Palestine”. He is trying not to refer to the PCP, which he excoriated earlier in his piece, and also neglects to say that the PCP was formed of resignées from the Zionist Poale Zion in 1922. Whatever the PCP’s policy may have been, up to 1926-27, it was not the Comintern’s.</p>
<p>Cliff’s article concludes by proclaiming that the only solution is socialism, but in the meanwhile calls for a secular, unitary state in a parliamentary democracy. The suggested programme included: compulsory education for all, pensions, minimum wage and all the other appurtenances of the welfare state. All of this seemed to have a familiar ring about it, especially when taken with the call for Jewish immigration. Then it struck me, Cliff’s 1939 policy was the same as that of the WP-ISL, as set out in various resolutions of that party. Shachtman never acknowledged this fact, but then he always denied that the theory of bureaucratic collectivism came from Bruno Rizzi. We are now left with a terrible problem. We have it on no less authority than Sean Matgamna that Cliff, in 1946, had set the political line for the Fourth International, especially of the Cannonite SWP. Now I find that such is the dastardly cunning of T. Cliff, he had previously masterminded the opposing Shachtmanite WP-ISL policy. With the brain reeling, one realises the full horror of it all. The Cliff-inspired Shachtman variant has now been taken up by Sean Matgamna. When one recalls that for some years there was no greater fan of the US-SWP and James P. Cannon than Sean Matgamna (he endorsed their defencism, violent anti-Shachtmanism as well as their anti-Zionism), we might describe this phenomenon as “deviated apostolic succession.”</p>
<p>In all this chopping and exchanging of opinions, we can confidently affirm that Sean’s “two states for two peoples” formulation did not come from Lenin, Trotsky, Cliff (pre- or post-1946), Shachtman, Cannon or any other international socialist source. In Sean’s thesis it seems that if most Jews support a Zionist state, although the overwhelming majority of them do not and would not live there, then socialists must support them regardless of the democracy of numbers or the rights of others. By the same token, presumably, the rural Afrikaaners who want their own state must have it because they represent a significant minority.</p>
<p>It is possible to argue that after the war the people who suffered the ultimate barbarism of the holocaust deserved special treatment from the world that bore no little responsibility for that horror. It is a persuasive argument and one that struck the heartstrings of many in the aftermath of 1945. It was that public sympathy at the condition of the Jews, who had endured so much, languishing in displaced persons camps, that put pressure on the Allied governments to solve this humanitarian problem. What none of them were going to do was open their own doors to a flood of immigrants. Not least of their calculations concerned the fact that there were also hundreds of thousands of displaced people and prisoners of war who might have claimed similar privileges. Their attitude was rather like that of Kaiser Wilhelm II who thought of a Jewish homeland as “at least somewhere to get rid of our Yids.” The people’s conscience about the Jews was salved at little cost to the world but at the expense of the Palestinians. Many of the other refugees were herded callously to their deaths behind the Iron Curtain. In both instances, a cheap and easy solution for the Allies, but not one that readily commends itself to international socialists. It is ironic that the displaced persons camps in Europe emptied as the displaced persons in the Middle East were filling with Arabs. Why should the world’s debts be paid by the poorest people?</p>
<p>Of a piece with this affectation for the accomplished fact and his perverse inability to fight for it, is his sneering response to the suggestion that the answer is revolutionary socialism. For Sean, the fight must be for the maintenance of Israel. The socialist Matgamna is the eager partisan of this robustly capitalist state, this proud possessor of an arsenal of atomic bombs, this outpost of imperialism that enshrines the expropriation and exploitation of its Arab citizens and finds its justification in the notion of the exclusive and superior character of its Jewish people. Sean might condemn (but not too loud) the denial of human and democratic rights, the legal theft of property and land, the arbitrary arrests, the rigorous application of collective guilt, the deportations and curfews, but he draws no political conclusions other than to excuse this on the grounds of the right of Israel to be secure. For my part, I believe that so long as Israel exists as a Zionist state, then Jews and Arabs will continue to die needlessly and to no good purpose, as they are dying while we conduct this argument. There will be no peace. I further believe that only under socialism can the national question be solved for both peoples, because only then can there be any chance of fairness and equity. The history of the last 50 years is the negative affirmation of that fact.</p>
<p>Scattered throughout Sean’s text are four footnotes. Footnote 3 is quite charming, because it bangs on at length abusing the leadership of IS, during Sean’s recruiting raid within its ranks from 1968 to 1971. As part of the leadership during that time I was overjoyed to discover that, along with Cliff, Duncan Hallas, Chris Harman and Nigel Harris, I had displayed “Malvolio-like snobbery, self-satisfaction, and brain-pickling conceit, built on small achievement ...” As Malvolio said: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust on them.” I have to say that, since he transferred his loyalty from Cannon to Shachtman, Sean has acquired an entirely better class of vituperation, although he still has some way to go before he is in the same street as Max Shachtman for his high-grade abuse. Probably better to get the politics right, Sean, especially the WP-ISL’s opposition to Zionism and two nations theory.</p>
<p>The disconnected footnote 4 concerns an anecdote told to Sean by James D. Young, concerning a discussion about Israel, in the late 1950s between Cliff and Hal Draper, witnessed by James. According to Sean: “Suddenly Draper turns on Cliff in irritation and repudiation, and accuses him: “You want to destroy Israeli Jews! I don’t!” leaving aside the “irritation” and “repudiation” - this is Sean spicing up the story - this little anecdote is actually more revealing of Sean’s method than of Cliff’s. We hear what Hal Draper said, as recalled by James, forty years after the event. But what did Cliff respond to this accusation of his wanting a pogrom of holocaust proportions? Did Sean ask James for this information and he could not remember? Or is it that Sean, having acquired the evidence for the prosecution, did not want to confuse matters with any defence? Or did Cliff have no explanation and confess that he, along with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, wanted to drive all the Israeli Jews into the sea? If the answer to this last question is “yes”, then he should have been scandalised out of the movement. Or is this just something that Sean has failed to check properly with James D. Young? What we do know, however, is that Draper was against the Zionist state and wanted to replace it with an Arab-Jewish socialist state. And so say all of us, including Cliff, I think.</p>
<p>Throughout Sean’s reply there runs an accusatory thread that I am conducting this argument as some way of making my apologies to Cliff. If I defend his line on Palestine in <strong>Workers’ Liberty</strong> it is to cover my “social embarrassment before [my] SWP friends and former comrades.” Which ones are those, pray? Paul Foot, Chris Harman, Jim Nichol? I think not. I do not defend Cliff’s line on the permanent arms economy, because I no longer agree with it. I no longer defend his line on Russia, because I no longer agree with it. I defend his line on Zionism, because I agree with it. I defend the IS line on the Minority Movement that both of us held and he abandoned. It may come as a surprise to Sean but there are those of us who can disagree on fundamentals with Cliff without consigning everything he has said or done to the dustbin of history. At the same time, I do feel a degree of bitterness that what I saw as the best hope for the revolutionary movement in Britain since the 1920s, that I spent some time in helping to build, should have been diverted down various blind alleys at the behest of Cliff’s impressionism and caprice. Most of all, my real complain is not that Cliff has maintained his position on various matters, it is that he is capable of jettisoning almost any of those positions for at worst imaginary and at best transitory benefit. All of this and a great deal more, I have set out in a recently completed book on the IS group. <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a> At the end of it I do not think anybody, including Cliff, will think that I am apologizing, or wonder why I, and many others, are a touch bitter.</p>
<p>Finally, I would like to apologize to those Workers’ Liberty readers who have got this far, for taking up so much of their time, but they really should blame Sean. He started it.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<p><a id="na" href="#fa" name="na">1*.</a> Jim Higgins’ suggested title for this piece was <em>Sean Maxshachtmana</em>.</p>
<p>1. Current medical research suggests Alzheimer’s may be caused through eating from aluminum cooking utensils. If Sean still has such pots in his kitchen, I suggest he replaces them without delay.</p>
<p><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> <strong>More Years for the Locust</strong> by Jim Higgins, to be published by the International Socialist Group.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The arrogance of the long distance Zionist [1*]
(March 1998)
From Workers’ Liberty, No.38, March 1998.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
This will be the third time I have ventured to disagree with Sean Matgamna on the vexed question of Zionism. I do so with some trepidation because, or so it seems, even when I am right I am in reality exposing myself as fundamentally wrong and mischievously so. In my first article I attempted to lighten the subject with a few mildly humourous quips. I was sternly rebuked for this failure of seriousness. Chastened, in part two I adopted a serious tone. Sean responded by regretting my humour had been replaced by “choler, rodomontade, unleavened abuse, some of it purely personal ...” Did I really do all of that? I feel particularly cheered to hear that I was guilty of choler and rodomontade, rather like the man who discovered at an advanced age that he had been speaking prose all his life. Normally, of course, I only use unleavened abuse during Passover. Sorry about that.
Having reviewed Sean’s articles I can see that they fit quite nicely into the Matgamna mode of polemic. First and foremost, his views are lumped together in such a way that they will sharply divide him from other socialists. This is what Al Richardson calls “consumer socialism” and Marx calls “sectarianism.” In practice this means that since Bernard Dix died, there have been no adherents of the Shachtmanite school of bureaucratic collectivism on these shores and if Sean were to occupy this vacant franchise he would acquire a whole slew of politics to differentiate himself from everybody else. All you need is a file of New International (published monthly between 1936 and 1958) and you can start to kid yourself you are writing with all the style and eloquence of Max Shachtman. Along with all the clever nonsense about Russia you will also inherit the Workers’ Party-International Socialist League line on Israel.
A comparison of Sean’s article with a sampling of the WP-ISL texts shows that whatever Sean lacks in originality he has made up for in the diligence of his researches into the New International. In the September issue of Workers’ Liberty we have Sean as follows: “Cliff’s 1946 pamphlet does not deal at all with the political questions in the Middle East, having more to say about the price of oil than about the rights of national minorities. Where politics should have been there is a vacuum ...” Now here is Al Gates in the New International in September 1947: “T. Cliff’s competent analytical work on Palestine, and here too we observed a fine study of the economic growth and problems of the Middle East and the place of Palestine in that situation. Yet the whole work was outstanding for its studious evasion of the political questions of the class and national struggles taking place there.” Gates is more polite than Sean, but that will probably surprise no one.
Another standard feature of Sean’s method is the one where he complains bitterly that he is being abused unfairly as a prelude to unleashing a little of his own venom into the argument. For example, I raised the case of Deir Yassin because it took place in April 1948 and set in motion the Arab refugees, countering Sean said they only fled in May 1948 when the Arab armies started their offensive. In so doing I neglected to mention the killing of 60 Jews by Arabs in the bloody attacks of 1929. For this I was accused of hypocrisy. Perhaps now I should go on to apologise for failing to condemn the similar outrages of 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936 and 1938. In the interests of balance perhaps I should also throw in the massacres of Sabra and Chatila, because I condemn them as well. In the same vein, Sean insists that he does not believe that I, or the SWP, are racist, but in virtually breath he repeats his accusation that we are anti-semitic. This does not come from the WP-ISL. I have nowhere in the pro-Israel polemics of Al Gates and the rest seen them accuse their socialist opponents of anti-semitism. For that we must look to official Zionist spokesmen and Sean Matgamna. It is, I suppose, always nice to have two sources of inspiration.
Let us now turn to Sean’s predilection for discovering sinister and malign purposes in the motives of others and constructing a sort of retrospective amalgam. About a quarter of his piece is devoted to a partial and not very informative trawl through Cliff’s works on the Middle East. On the strength of his 1948 pamphlet Middle East at the Crossroads, this apparently made Cliff, along with Abram Leon, one of the Fourth International’s two experts on the Jewish question. Unfortunately, Leon was killed by the Nazis, so after 1946 Cliff must have stood pre-eminent, although Sean assigns a subordinate role to Ernest Mandel. Thus we have the sinister Cliff leading the FI along the road of “anti-semitic anti-Zionism.” Unfortunately, by the time Sean got round to this particular fantasy he had forgotten what he had written on the previous page: “In 1967, after the Six Day War, Cliff wrote a pamphlet which is closer in its political conclusions and implied conclusions to what Workers’ Liberty says than to what the SWP or Jim Higgins say now. The decisive shift came after 1967 and was brought to the present level of nonsense after the Yom Kippur war of 1973. The ‘honour’ of having established the post 1973 IS/SWP line belongs, I think, to none other than Jim Higgins (in an article in IS Journal).” There you have it comrade readers, Cliff set the style for the FI and especially the American SWP, except that until 1973 his views were not much different from those of Workers’ Liberty, which I assume are the same as Sean’s. Far from Cliff being the deus ex machina of anti-Zionist anti-semitism, I am. In International Socialism No. 64 in 1973, I wrote this seminal offending piece, Background to the Middle East Crisis. At the same time, the ground-breaking significance of the article passed without a murmur. Nobody, including the author, was aware that it was any more than a short explanation of the IS Group’s attitude to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, which I had reported for Socialist Worker. In the 23 years since it was written probably only Sean Matgamna has read it, now that Sean, with Holmes-like skill, has unmasked me as the eminence grise of “non-racist anti-semitic anti-Zionism” I too have read it, and regret that it has no claims, subliminal or otherwise, to trend-setting originality.
Delving further into the Matgamna polemical method we find encounter that special form of arrogance that insists on setting all the terms of any debate and finding significance in a failure to follow him up any logical blind alley he may choose. Let us then consider his “serious and not entirely rhetorical question, why the Jewish minority, a third of the population in the 1940s, did not have national rights there.” Let us leave aside the fact that rhetorical questions are precisely the ones that are not looking for answers, and think about this one. First, in those terms of realpolitik to which Sean is so addicted, who was to afford them national determination in the 1930s and 1940s. Was it the Arab majority? Not a bit of it, the very notion of any kind of accommodation with the Arab majority was totally anathema to the Zionist leadership. Should they have addressed themselves to the British? Actually they did and were turned down. The fact is that there were no rights for self-determination for anyone in Palestine. British policy had been to utilize Zionism as a force to divide and discipline the Arab masses. That is how the Jewish population rose from fewer than 100,000 in 1917 to over 400,000 in 1939 (a third of the total population). The plan was for eventually a Jewish homeland under strictly British tutelage. The turning off of Jewish immigration in 1939 was because the British were concerned to pacify the Arab majority to safeguard Palestine as a British controlled Middle East hub, especially the oil pipeline, in the war.
The question of self-determination for the Zionists had nothing to do with democracy, because any solution, while the Jewish population remained a minority, would under democratic norms have to be cast in such a way that came to terms with the Arab majority. It is for this reason that the Zionist leadership fought so hard for unrestricted immigration and why the Arabs were against it. It is for the same reasons that the Zionists while demanding Jewish immigration were opposed to Arab immigration. It is the same reason why Zionist policy was bitterly opposed to the idea of a constituent assembly. This vexed question of population arithmetic is what distorted the political agenda of Palestine.
With two thirds of the population the Arabs would seem to have a fairly safe majority. In fact, they had a plurality of only 400,000. For the Zionist leadership this was the magic number and to overhaul it took precedence over all other considerations. Such a number might just, with massive difficulty and at the expense mainly of the Arabs, be accommodated. This was the emphasis of Zionist propaganda, despite that Palestine, assuming a complete disregard for the Arabs, could take only a small proportion of the Jews threatened and eventually murdered by Hitler. The massive propaganda effort was expended on altering Palestine’s population statistics, instead of demanding asylum from the US and Britain (who were infinitely better able to provide for it) for these and many, many more Jews who were to be lost in Himmler’s ovens. This was not a matter of emphasis, shouting louder about Jerusalem than New York, it was a positive opposition to Jews going anywhere other than Palestine. If the intention had been to save Jewish lives at all costs, the argument should have been: “If you will not let Jews into British-mandated Palestine, then you have an urgent and absolute moral responsibility to give them asylum elsewhere.” no such campaign was mounted.
Nevertheless, comrades might ask, is not the hallmark of socialist internationalism the free, unfettered flow of all people throughout the world? Why should Palestine be different? The short answer is that immigration as part of a concerted plan that will take over the country, expropriating, expelling and exploiting the native masses, is less immigration and more a long drawn out and aggressive invasion. For socialists, the reactionary character of Zionism is defined by its racist ideology, imbued with the spirit of separation and exclusion, the very reverse of socialist solidarity. It was prepared totally itself with every reactionary force that might help its purposes. It lobbied such figures as the Kaiser, the Sultan of Turkey, for twenty years it cosied up to British imperialism, finally snuggling into the embrace of the biggest imperial power of them all, the United States. In the process, it has treated the Arab population as a species of untermensch and has effectively driven a large portion of the Arab masses into the hands of Islamic obscurantists and bigots. It stands in the way of any socialist advance in the Arab world, operating as imperialism’s gendarme in the region, a far more effective force for imperialism than, for example, the feeble Saudi royal family or the Hashemites. If Zionism has had one redeeming feature over the years, it is that it never bothered to conceal its intentions, but it is difficult to commend a man for his honesty in telling you that he is going to beat your brains out, especially if he then delivers the mortal blow.
As Sean indicates, the development of ideas on Zionism in the Trotskyist movement is quite interesting. So Sean says, Cliff in his New International article of June 1939, was for Jewish immigration into Palestine and for the sale of land to the Jewish population, both points vigorously opposed by the Palestinian CP. His argument for this, and it is a thin one, is: “Yet from the negation of Zionism does not follow the negation of the right to existence and extension of the Jewish population in Palestine. This would only be justified if an objectively necessary identity existed between the population and nothing more.” Like a lot of Cliff, this takes a bit of time to get your head around. With perseverance one is, however, struck by how abstract it is as a serious formulation. Whether this is a reaction against the Arab chauvinism of the PCP I cannot say, but it clearly suggests that unless Zionism is 100% in the pocket of British imperialism it is OK to augment its forces. But as we well know, nationalist movements are not wedded to any particular sponsor, and their interests are never seen as identical and often antithetical. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem could make overtures to Hitler, Jabotinsky, the founder of revisionist Zionism, was a great admirer of Mussolini, and, during the war, Chandra Bose, the leftist Indian nationalist, worked with the Japanese, building an Indian national army. In the same way, the Jewish population were not 100% identified with Zionism, Cliff and the handful of Jewish Trotskyists were not and neither was the PCP, but in the absence of anything of consequence, Zionism certainly had at least the tacit support of an overwhelming majority of the Jews. After the war and the holocaust, that support became far more active.
I have a suspicion that it is from this 1939 article that Sean acquired his idea that the Comintern were not opposed to Jewish immigration to Palestine in the 1920s. In truth Cliff, as is his wont, is being a bit economical with the actualité here. He says: “The members of the Comintern in Palestine ... while absolutely opposed to Zionism (against the national boycott [of Arab goods and Arab labour - JH], against slogans like the Jewish majority and the Jewish state and the alliance with England, etc.), declared at the same time that the Jewish population is not to be identified with Zionism and hence demanded the maximum freedom of movement for Jewish immigration into Palestine ...” You will notice the odd usage of the “members of the Comintern in Palestine”. He is trying not to refer to the PCP, which he excoriated earlier in his piece, and also neglects to say that the PCP was formed of resignées from the Zionist Poale Zion in 1922. Whatever the PCP’s policy may have been, up to 1926-27, it was not the Comintern’s.
Cliff’s article concludes by proclaiming that the only solution is socialism, but in the meanwhile calls for a secular, unitary state in a parliamentary democracy. The suggested programme included: compulsory education for all, pensions, minimum wage and all the other appurtenances of the welfare state. All of this seemed to have a familiar ring about it, especially when taken with the call for Jewish immigration. Then it struck me, Cliff’s 1939 policy was the same as that of the WP-ISL, as set out in various resolutions of that party. Shachtman never acknowledged this fact, but then he always denied that the theory of bureaucratic collectivism came from Bruno Rizzi. We are now left with a terrible problem. We have it on no less authority than Sean Matgamna that Cliff, in 1946, had set the political line for the Fourth International, especially of the Cannonite SWP. Now I find that such is the dastardly cunning of T. Cliff, he had previously masterminded the opposing Shachtmanite WP-ISL policy. With the brain reeling, one realises the full horror of it all. The Cliff-inspired Shachtman variant has now been taken up by Sean Matgamna. When one recalls that for some years there was no greater fan of the US-SWP and James P. Cannon than Sean Matgamna (he endorsed their defencism, violent anti-Shachtmanism as well as their anti-Zionism), we might describe this phenomenon as “deviated apostolic succession.”
In all this chopping and exchanging of opinions, we can confidently affirm that Sean’s “two states for two peoples” formulation did not come from Lenin, Trotsky, Cliff (pre- or post-1946), Shachtman, Cannon or any other international socialist source. In Sean’s thesis it seems that if most Jews support a Zionist state, although the overwhelming majority of them do not and would not live there, then socialists must support them regardless of the democracy of numbers or the rights of others. By the same token, presumably, the rural Afrikaaners who want their own state must have it because they represent a significant minority.
It is possible to argue that after the war the people who suffered the ultimate barbarism of the holocaust deserved special treatment from the world that bore no little responsibility for that horror. It is a persuasive argument and one that struck the heartstrings of many in the aftermath of 1945. It was that public sympathy at the condition of the Jews, who had endured so much, languishing in displaced persons camps, that put pressure on the Allied governments to solve this humanitarian problem. What none of them were going to do was open their own doors to a flood of immigrants. Not least of their calculations concerned the fact that there were also hundreds of thousands of displaced people and prisoners of war who might have claimed similar privileges. Their attitude was rather like that of Kaiser Wilhelm II who thought of a Jewish homeland as “at least somewhere to get rid of our Yids.” The people’s conscience about the Jews was salved at little cost to the world but at the expense of the Palestinians. Many of the other refugees were herded callously to their deaths behind the Iron Curtain. In both instances, a cheap and easy solution for the Allies, but not one that readily commends itself to international socialists. It is ironic that the displaced persons camps in Europe emptied as the displaced persons in the Middle East were filling with Arabs. Why should the world’s debts be paid by the poorest people?
Of a piece with this affectation for the accomplished fact and his perverse inability to fight for it, is his sneering response to the suggestion that the answer is revolutionary socialism. For Sean, the fight must be for the maintenance of Israel. The socialist Matgamna is the eager partisan of this robustly capitalist state, this proud possessor of an arsenal of atomic bombs, this outpost of imperialism that enshrines the expropriation and exploitation of its Arab citizens and finds its justification in the notion of the exclusive and superior character of its Jewish people. Sean might condemn (but not too loud) the denial of human and democratic rights, the legal theft of property and land, the arbitrary arrests, the rigorous application of collective guilt, the deportations and curfews, but he draws no political conclusions other than to excuse this on the grounds of the right of Israel to be secure. For my part, I believe that so long as Israel exists as a Zionist state, then Jews and Arabs will continue to die needlessly and to no good purpose, as they are dying while we conduct this argument. There will be no peace. I further believe that only under socialism can the national question be solved for both peoples, because only then can there be any chance of fairness and equity. The history of the last 50 years is the negative affirmation of that fact.
Scattered throughout Sean’s text are four footnotes. Footnote 3 is quite charming, because it bangs on at length abusing the leadership of IS, during Sean’s recruiting raid within its ranks from 1968 to 1971. As part of the leadership during that time I was overjoyed to discover that, along with Cliff, Duncan Hallas, Chris Harman and Nigel Harris, I had displayed “Malvolio-like snobbery, self-satisfaction, and brain-pickling conceit, built on small achievement ...” As Malvolio said: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust on them.” I have to say that, since he transferred his loyalty from Cannon to Shachtman, Sean has acquired an entirely better class of vituperation, although he still has some way to go before he is in the same street as Max Shachtman for his high-grade abuse. Probably better to get the politics right, Sean, especially the WP-ISL’s opposition to Zionism and two nations theory.
The disconnected footnote 4 concerns an anecdote told to Sean by James D. Young, concerning a discussion about Israel, in the late 1950s between Cliff and Hal Draper, witnessed by James. According to Sean: “Suddenly Draper turns on Cliff in irritation and repudiation, and accuses him: “You want to destroy Israeli Jews! I don’t!” leaving aside the “irritation” and “repudiation” - this is Sean spicing up the story - this little anecdote is actually more revealing of Sean’s method than of Cliff’s. We hear what Hal Draper said, as recalled by James, forty years after the event. But what did Cliff respond to this accusation of his wanting a pogrom of holocaust proportions? Did Sean ask James for this information and he could not remember? Or is it that Sean, having acquired the evidence for the prosecution, did not want to confuse matters with any defence? Or did Cliff have no explanation and confess that he, along with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, wanted to drive all the Israeli Jews into the sea? If the answer to this last question is “yes”, then he should have been scandalised out of the movement. Or is this just something that Sean has failed to check properly with James D. Young? What we do know, however, is that Draper was against the Zionist state and wanted to replace it with an Arab-Jewish socialist state. And so say all of us, including Cliff, I think.
Throughout Sean’s reply there runs an accusatory thread that I am conducting this argument as some way of making my apologies to Cliff. If I defend his line on Palestine in Workers’ Liberty it is to cover my “social embarrassment before [my] SWP friends and former comrades.” Which ones are those, pray? Paul Foot, Chris Harman, Jim Nichol? I think not. I do not defend Cliff’s line on the permanent arms economy, because I no longer agree with it. I no longer defend his line on Russia, because I no longer agree with it. I defend his line on Zionism, because I agree with it. I defend the IS line on the Minority Movement that both of us held and he abandoned. It may come as a surprise to Sean but there are those of us who can disagree on fundamentals with Cliff without consigning everything he has said or done to the dustbin of history. At the same time, I do feel a degree of bitterness that what I saw as the best hope for the revolutionary movement in Britain since the 1920s, that I spent some time in helping to build, should have been diverted down various blind alleys at the behest of Cliff’s impressionism and caprice. Most of all, my real complain is not that Cliff has maintained his position on various matters, it is that he is capable of jettisoning almost any of those positions for at worst imaginary and at best transitory benefit. All of this and a great deal more, I have set out in a recently completed book on the IS group. [2] At the end of it I do not think anybody, including Cliff, will think that I am apologizing, or wonder why I, and many others, are a touch bitter.
Finally, I would like to apologize to those Workers’ Liberty readers who have got this far, for taking up so much of their time, but they really should blame Sean. He started it.
Footnotes
1*. Jim Higgins’ suggested title for this piece was Sean Maxshachtmana.
1. Current medical research suggests Alzheimer’s may be caused through eating from aluminum cooking utensils. If Sean still has such pots in his kitchen, I suggest he replaces them without delay.
2. More Years for the Locust by Jim Higgins, to be published by the International Socialist Group.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Doon in Troon</h1>
<h3>(April 1976)</h3>
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<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong> 3 April 1976, p.9.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="date"><em>Troon, Scotland</em></p>
<p class="fst">“Politics,” said Lenin, “is concentrated economics” and whatever you may think about the rest his ideas, you have to agree that he had a point there. This thought is occasioned by a three day stint at the Scottish Council of the Labour Party conference in Troon. This annual event does not normally attract much attention from the press but these are not normal times. The Labour Party in Scotland is not at all happy about its future electoral prospects. On the right, Mrs Thatcher seems to be quite popular among the Scottish voters. On the left they are facing a potentially powerful challenge from Mr Jim Sillars’s Scottish Labour Party. They also have the impression that they are surrounded on all sides by the Scottish Nationalist Party.</p>
<p>For years the Labour Party was able to dismiss nationalism as the eccentric pursuit of minds befogged by Celtic vapours. Scotland, it could be said, was poor, for whatever historical reason, its industry outdated, its energy resources declining and its agriculture inadequate. The English connection, with a redistributive Labour government at Westminster, was the only hope for the Scots. For a long time it worked, Scotland provided a solid bedrock of Labour MPs, that in the current political line-up are essential if a Labour administration is to be formed. Now that is the simple political expression of elementary concentrated economics. But then a new economic factor set the whole political equation awry – North Sea oil.</p>
<p>The SNP, in a cleverly orchestrated campaign, set out the slogan: “It’s Scotland’s oil”. From then on every time some Westminster politician extolled the great benefits to the UK of the North Sea bonanza, it proved to the Scots that it would be even more of a boon to Scotland if they kept it all to themselves. The ‘Nats’ suddenly became credible to a much larger Scottish audience. Even more horrendous, they began to win seats. The initial response was abusive, the must printable being “Tartan tories” and “kilted fascists”. Incidentally, in the light of his subsequent course, Mr Jim Sillars was the greatest hammer of the Nats and their policies.</p>
<p>Things were not too bad while the SNP was taking seats from the Tories, or replacing the Liberals in the mid-term protest vote stakes. But lately they have shown a distinct capacity for taking seats from Labour. Late, very late, the Labour establishment in London decided that it was necessary to head off this threat. The very idea of a future Labour administration was put into the realm of impossibility. As Mr Willie Ross wittily observed in Troon “There is a Labour majority of one and he is out on bail”. Thus it was that the White Paper on devolution was born. If it was an advance on the extreme restriction of Tory policy and eschewed the Liberals’ federalism, it fell far short of what was acceptable to the devolutionists and dangerously permissive to the anti-devolutionists.</p>
<p>In the event, Mr Sillars denounced the document as inadequate and, with Mr John Robertson MP, bolted the party to form “the Scottish Labour Party”. The Scottish Labour Executive majority, and probably a majority of the members, objected to it as a concession to the SNP and an offence against internationalism. These same internationalists were, of course, violently opposed to the Common Market.</p>
<p>The situation was impossible, the only beneficiaries the SNP and possibly Mr Sillars. Pressure was brought to bear both from London and, more importantly, from the Scottish trade union establishment to accept devolution. As the British TUC has shown they are convinced of the need for continuing series of Labour <em>governments</em>. In the Scottish TUC they feel the same, with the added feature that the Communist Party has a much greater influence in its councils. The Communist Party has the shrewd suspicion that it would have a better chance of getting its members elected to a Scottish Assembly than they have shown in Westminster elections. Their weight and the weight of the STUC was sufficient to swing the balance toward the idea of a devolved assembly, but an assembly with much greater powers than the White Paper envisaged.</p>
<p>The Scottish executive, in their statement at Troon, accepted the STUC line completely. No veto power for the Secretary of State over Assembly legislation, control over the Scottish Development Agency, the right to raise finance – over and above the block grant – other than by a surcharge on the rates and a number of other amendments to the White Paper. Such has been their acceptance of the devolution case, at least on paper, that there is very little that separates them from the Sillars Labour Party. Which may explain why speaker after speaker offered forgiveness and a warm berth to the prodigal SLP.</p>
<p>What is most significant is that they look very much like getting most of what they want. Mr Short let it be known that he welcomed constructive amendment to the White Paper. In this he was echoed by Messrs Ron Hayward, Michael Foot and Willie Ross, this last seemingly intent on relinquishing any reserve powers the White Paper accorded him.</p>
<p>On this basis they achieved, as one speaker observed: “... unity doon in the toon of Troon”. Lions laid down with lambs all over the place, Mr Alex Kitson tipped as a likely successor to Jack Jones – if the government will ever let him retire – expressed his complete agreement with John P. Mackintosh MP, a very unlikely piece of solidarity. Only the perverse Mr Willie Hamilton, a dab hand at lese-majeste, managed to get to the rostrum to say that the policy was “blatant political appeasement”. He was abruptly told to get off and concern himself with his proper study, the Royal perquisites. Mr Tam Dalyell, who agrees with Hamilton and also has a political death wish, made valiant attempts to achieve martyrdom at the rostrum but the chairman, a gentleman with selective vision and a sketchy idea of the rules of debate, studiously ignored him.</p>
<p>So it was that unity was achieved at Troon. The delegates were told that now they had a real policy with which to fight the SNP. They were urged to go over on to the offensive. The comrade delegates must counterpose the Troon policy to the complete lack of everybody else, particularly the SNP.</p>
<p>And so it may be, except that the public unanimity masks a very wide range of differences. In private, or in their cups, or both, leading members of the Scottish party and a large number of rank and file delegates will confess their lack of faith in devolution. Many of them see it as the slippery slope that will inevitably end up in complete separation. More than a few think that the further they go along this path the more hostages they give to the SNP, who can always outflank them on this issue. They are haunted by the possibility of Assembly elections turning into a landslide win for the SNP, who will then have an unanswerable mandate for independence,</p>
<p>It matters not that the SNP has no discernible coherent policy for an independent Scotland. It does not help to point out that the oil will be extremely costly to acquire and will, anyway, run out in twenty years. All of that is of little consequence to those justly disenchanted with the major parties and intoxicated with a handful of slogans.</p>
<p>Even assuming that the refurbished policy attracts support in Scotland it may well have some difficulty south of the border. A sassenach cloud, no bigger than a barrage balloon, hovered briefly over Troon in the person of Eric Heffer. Mr Heffer, a not inconsiderable force in the Labour Party, represents a Merseyside constituency where the problems are as great as Scotland, without benefit of oil and with a 20 per cent lower government handout. Describing himself as “a Heffer with horns”, he demanded a referendum of the constituent parts of the UK on the question of devolution. Mr Benn’s success with his call for the Common Market referendum suggests that Mr Heffer might be on a winner here.</p>
<p>After all this worthy and weighty debating it was something of a relief to listen to Mr Michael Foot’s fraternal address. In it he promised to reappoint Willie Ross if he is elected prime minister, a statement unaccountably popular with the delegates. In a further bid for all imaginable ethnic votes he told the conference that he was part Irish, part Cornish, part English and part Scottish. A statement that drew the comment from a sneering Young Socialist, “and part socialist”. It is clear that in Scotland, more than anywhere else, you cannot please everyone. I fear that is what the Labour Party in Scotland is trying to do.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Doon in Troon
(April 1976)
From the Spectator 3 April 1976, p.9.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Troon, Scotland
“Politics,” said Lenin, “is concentrated economics” and whatever you may think about the rest his ideas, you have to agree that he had a point there. This thought is occasioned by a three day stint at the Scottish Council of the Labour Party conference in Troon. This annual event does not normally attract much attention from the press but these are not normal times. The Labour Party in Scotland is not at all happy about its future electoral prospects. On the right, Mrs Thatcher seems to be quite popular among the Scottish voters. On the left they are facing a potentially powerful challenge from Mr Jim Sillars’s Scottish Labour Party. They also have the impression that they are surrounded on all sides by the Scottish Nationalist Party.
For years the Labour Party was able to dismiss nationalism as the eccentric pursuit of minds befogged by Celtic vapours. Scotland, it could be said, was poor, for whatever historical reason, its industry outdated, its energy resources declining and its agriculture inadequate. The English connection, with a redistributive Labour government at Westminster, was the only hope for the Scots. For a long time it worked, Scotland provided a solid bedrock of Labour MPs, that in the current political line-up are essential if a Labour administration is to be formed. Now that is the simple political expression of elementary concentrated economics. But then a new economic factor set the whole political equation awry – North Sea oil.
The SNP, in a cleverly orchestrated campaign, set out the slogan: “It’s Scotland’s oil”. From then on every time some Westminster politician extolled the great benefits to the UK of the North Sea bonanza, it proved to the Scots that it would be even more of a boon to Scotland if they kept it all to themselves. The ‘Nats’ suddenly became credible to a much larger Scottish audience. Even more horrendous, they began to win seats. The initial response was abusive, the must printable being “Tartan tories” and “kilted fascists”. Incidentally, in the light of his subsequent course, Mr Jim Sillars was the greatest hammer of the Nats and their policies.
Things were not too bad while the SNP was taking seats from the Tories, or replacing the Liberals in the mid-term protest vote stakes. But lately they have shown a distinct capacity for taking seats from Labour. Late, very late, the Labour establishment in London decided that it was necessary to head off this threat. The very idea of a future Labour administration was put into the realm of impossibility. As Mr Willie Ross wittily observed in Troon “There is a Labour majority of one and he is out on bail”. Thus it was that the White Paper on devolution was born. If it was an advance on the extreme restriction of Tory policy and eschewed the Liberals’ federalism, it fell far short of what was acceptable to the devolutionists and dangerously permissive to the anti-devolutionists.
In the event, Mr Sillars denounced the document as inadequate and, with Mr John Robertson MP, bolted the party to form “the Scottish Labour Party”. The Scottish Labour Executive majority, and probably a majority of the members, objected to it as a concession to the SNP and an offence against internationalism. These same internationalists were, of course, violently opposed to the Common Market.
The situation was impossible, the only beneficiaries the SNP and possibly Mr Sillars. Pressure was brought to bear both from London and, more importantly, from the Scottish trade union establishment to accept devolution. As the British TUC has shown they are convinced of the need for continuing series of Labour governments. In the Scottish TUC they feel the same, with the added feature that the Communist Party has a much greater influence in its councils. The Communist Party has the shrewd suspicion that it would have a better chance of getting its members elected to a Scottish Assembly than they have shown in Westminster elections. Their weight and the weight of the STUC was sufficient to swing the balance toward the idea of a devolved assembly, but an assembly with much greater powers than the White Paper envisaged.
The Scottish executive, in their statement at Troon, accepted the STUC line completely. No veto power for the Secretary of State over Assembly legislation, control over the Scottish Development Agency, the right to raise finance – over and above the block grant – other than by a surcharge on the rates and a number of other amendments to the White Paper. Such has been their acceptance of the devolution case, at least on paper, that there is very little that separates them from the Sillars Labour Party. Which may explain why speaker after speaker offered forgiveness and a warm berth to the prodigal SLP.
What is most significant is that they look very much like getting most of what they want. Mr Short let it be known that he welcomed constructive amendment to the White Paper. In this he was echoed by Messrs Ron Hayward, Michael Foot and Willie Ross, this last seemingly intent on relinquishing any reserve powers the White Paper accorded him.
On this basis they achieved, as one speaker observed: “... unity doon in the toon of Troon”. Lions laid down with lambs all over the place, Mr Alex Kitson tipped as a likely successor to Jack Jones – if the government will ever let him retire – expressed his complete agreement with John P. Mackintosh MP, a very unlikely piece of solidarity. Only the perverse Mr Willie Hamilton, a dab hand at lese-majeste, managed to get to the rostrum to say that the policy was “blatant political appeasement”. He was abruptly told to get off and concern himself with his proper study, the Royal perquisites. Mr Tam Dalyell, who agrees with Hamilton and also has a political death wish, made valiant attempts to achieve martyrdom at the rostrum but the chairman, a gentleman with selective vision and a sketchy idea of the rules of debate, studiously ignored him.
So it was that unity was achieved at Troon. The delegates were told that now they had a real policy with which to fight the SNP. They were urged to go over on to the offensive. The comrade delegates must counterpose the Troon policy to the complete lack of everybody else, particularly the SNP.
And so it may be, except that the public unanimity masks a very wide range of differences. In private, or in their cups, or both, leading members of the Scottish party and a large number of rank and file delegates will confess their lack of faith in devolution. Many of them see it as the slippery slope that will inevitably end up in complete separation. More than a few think that the further they go along this path the more hostages they give to the SNP, who can always outflank them on this issue. They are haunted by the possibility of Assembly elections turning into a landslide win for the SNP, who will then have an unanswerable mandate for independence,
It matters not that the SNP has no discernible coherent policy for an independent Scotland. It does not help to point out that the oil will be extremely costly to acquire and will, anyway, run out in twenty years. All of that is of little consequence to those justly disenchanted with the major parties and intoxicated with a handful of slogans.
Even assuming that the refurbished policy attracts support in Scotland it may well have some difficulty south of the border. A sassenach cloud, no bigger than a barrage balloon, hovered briefly over Troon in the person of Eric Heffer. Mr Heffer, a not inconsiderable force in the Labour Party, represents a Merseyside constituency where the problems are as great as Scotland, without benefit of oil and with a 20 per cent lower government handout. Describing himself as “a Heffer with horns”, he demanded a referendum of the constituent parts of the UK on the question of devolution. Mr Benn’s success with his call for the Common Market referendum suggests that Mr Heffer might be on a winner here.
After all this worthy and weighty debating it was something of a relief to listen to Mr Michael Foot’s fraternal address. In it he promised to reappoint Willie Ross if he is elected prime minister, a statement unaccountably popular with the delegates. In a further bid for all imaginable ethnic votes he told the conference that he was part Irish, part Cornish, part English and part Scottish. A statement that drew the comment from a sneering Young Socialist, “and part socialist”. It is clear that in Scotland, more than anywhere else, you cannot please everyone. I fear that is what the Labour Party in Scotland is trying to do.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Too much Cogitation is bad for Monty’s eyesight</h1>
<h3>(August 1976)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Workers News</strong>, No.10, Aug-Sept 1976.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">YOU CANNOT help having a sneaking regard for Monty Johnstone. He is quite un-putdownable. Not only that, by a quirk of an unjust world, he seems to have discovered some spring of eternal youth.</p>
<p>Perhaps that is why his best writing is reserved for the pages of the Young Communist League magazine, <strong>Cogito</strong>. In the late 1960s he produced a lengthy critique of Trotsky and Trotskyism part 1.</p>
<p>Despite a promise, in part 1, of an early appearance of part 2, we have had to wait 7 years to get the full beauty of Monty’s thought on the question. But now it is with us and it would be surly to cavil at the delay.</p>
<p>Monty Johnstone has some credentials, that set him apart from his fellow CP authors on the subject, to write on Trotskyism; In his extreme youth he was a Trotskyist, a trauma which – if it did not last long – must have left lasting scars.</p>
<p>He has actually read the source material, which as I say puts him one up on such as John Mahon, Willie Gallagher, William Wainwright, Betty Reid, Marjorie Pollitt, J.R.Campbell and a host of others – who have vented their ignorant literary spleen on Trotsky.</p>
<p>Monty knows that Trotsky was not in the pay of the Mikado (the one in Japan, not the Labour MP), Adolf Hitler or anyone else and, refreshingly, he says so. He takes some pains to point out that on Germany, during the rise of Nazism, Trotsky was right and Stalin, and the Comintern, were wrong.</p>
<p>That, however, is as far as Monty will go. On every other question Trotsky was wrong, apparently. The “fallacy” in Trotsky’s thought is traced back to his theory of Permanent Revolution. This theory, placing as it does the working class as the central core of socialist strategy and action, blinded poor old Trotsky so it seems, to the great revolutionary potential of the middle classes, the peasantry and the “progressive” capitalists, as represented, for example, by the Kuo-Min-Tang.</p>
<p>Now, of course, this is a point of view, and one that has activated the minds of the Stalinist wing of communism for many years. It is not, nevertheless, the only view on the question.</p>
<p>It is for example the view of quite a number of people that the theory of permanent revolution is one that explains, in a Marxist way, the developments of the post-war period in Eastern Europe and China and several other “workers’ paradises”.</p>
<p>The pity of Trotsky’s theory is that the “old man” did not follow through its logic. Perversely, in my view, he insisted on calling Russia a “workers’ state” long after the working class content had been crushed.</p>
<p>But all of this is, perhaps, beside the point. Monty is, of course entitled to his point of view. Trotsky, for the sake of the argument, could have been wrong, on all the major questions – on Russia and the world, in the 1920s and 1930s.</p>
<p>But he was not wrong historically. It was in the context of a debate about the future of the Soviet state, the nature of the workers parties, the prospect of world revolution. Now those are very big themes, and so heated was the struggle that a lot of people had to die before Stalin felt that he had won.</p>
<p>Stalin was in alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky from 1923 to 1925. Then he was in alliance with Bukharin, and Tomsky against Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev.</p>
<p>Not very much later between 1936 and 1938, Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev and Kamenev were judically murdered by Stalin (Tomsky committed suicide).</p>
<p>In part 1 of his work Monty Johnstone conceded, readily, that the Moscow trials were a frame-up: What he did not make clear, though, was the reason for the need of such a method of winning an argument.</p>
<p>The fact is that Stalin was neither right or wrong on the questions Monty Johnstone discusses. Zinoviev and Kamenev were right, or wrong. Bukharin was right, or wrong. But Stalin just won the arguments and in the end it was with a gun or a long distance ice-axe.</p>
<p>In the process the Communist International was transformed into an instrument of Russian policy. The Communist Parties became the extension of Russian diplomacy. And almost without exception the men who made the revolution were killed, disgraced or capitulated completely.</p>
<p>Now sophisticated CP apologists will argue, with the characteristic dialectical chop-logic of the breed, that whatever the crimes of Stalin, whatever the inadequacy of his theoretical grasp, it all came right in the end.</p>
<p>Well that too is a point of view. Even if it flies in the face of all the facts, and it ignores the divisions in the Communist movement, and the abject failure of the Western Communist parties to see any route to socialism except via a bourgeois parliament.</p>
<p>It is true that Trotsky had his failings but he never dreamed that working class power could be exercised through a capitalist institution. For Monty and his chums in the Italian CP this may smack of ultra-leftism; for others it sounds dangerously like marxism.</p>
<p>Our advice to Monty Johnstone is that, now he has completed his work on Trotsky, he should reexamine the Stalinist tradition and attempt to explain the phenomena of the late J.V.Stalin. It will be instructive, worthwhile for the YCL and will undoubtedly get him a highly paid post squaring circles.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Too much Cogitation is bad for Monty’s eyesight
(August 1976)
From Workers News, No.10, Aug-Sept 1976.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
YOU CANNOT help having a sneaking regard for Monty Johnstone. He is quite un-putdownable. Not only that, by a quirk of an unjust world, he seems to have discovered some spring of eternal youth.
Perhaps that is why his best writing is reserved for the pages of the Young Communist League magazine, Cogito. In the late 1960s he produced a lengthy critique of Trotsky and Trotskyism part 1.
Despite a promise, in part 1, of an early appearance of part 2, we have had to wait 7 years to get the full beauty of Monty’s thought on the question. But now it is with us and it would be surly to cavil at the delay.
Monty Johnstone has some credentials, that set him apart from his fellow CP authors on the subject, to write on Trotskyism; In his extreme youth he was a Trotskyist, a trauma which – if it did not last long – must have left lasting scars.
He has actually read the source material, which as I say puts him one up on such as John Mahon, Willie Gallagher, William Wainwright, Betty Reid, Marjorie Pollitt, J.R.Campbell and a host of others – who have vented their ignorant literary spleen on Trotsky.
Monty knows that Trotsky was not in the pay of the Mikado (the one in Japan, not the Labour MP), Adolf Hitler or anyone else and, refreshingly, he says so. He takes some pains to point out that on Germany, during the rise of Nazism, Trotsky was right and Stalin, and the Comintern, were wrong.
That, however, is as far as Monty will go. On every other question Trotsky was wrong, apparently. The “fallacy” in Trotsky’s thought is traced back to his theory of Permanent Revolution. This theory, placing as it does the working class as the central core of socialist strategy and action, blinded poor old Trotsky so it seems, to the great revolutionary potential of the middle classes, the peasantry and the “progressive” capitalists, as represented, for example, by the Kuo-Min-Tang.
Now, of course, this is a point of view, and one that has activated the minds of the Stalinist wing of communism for many years. It is not, nevertheless, the only view on the question.
It is for example the view of quite a number of people that the theory of permanent revolution is one that explains, in a Marxist way, the developments of the post-war period in Eastern Europe and China and several other “workers’ paradises”.
The pity of Trotsky’s theory is that the “old man” did not follow through its logic. Perversely, in my view, he insisted on calling Russia a “workers’ state” long after the working class content had been crushed.
But all of this is, perhaps, beside the point. Monty is, of course entitled to his point of view. Trotsky, for the sake of the argument, could have been wrong, on all the major questions – on Russia and the world, in the 1920s and 1930s.
But he was not wrong historically. It was in the context of a debate about the future of the Soviet state, the nature of the workers parties, the prospect of world revolution. Now those are very big themes, and so heated was the struggle that a lot of people had to die before Stalin felt that he had won.
Stalin was in alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky from 1923 to 1925. Then he was in alliance with Bukharin, and Tomsky against Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev.
Not very much later between 1936 and 1938, Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev and Kamenev were judically murdered by Stalin (Tomsky committed suicide).
In part 1 of his work Monty Johnstone conceded, readily, that the Moscow trials were a frame-up: What he did not make clear, though, was the reason for the need of such a method of winning an argument.
The fact is that Stalin was neither right or wrong on the questions Monty Johnstone discusses. Zinoviev and Kamenev were right, or wrong. Bukharin was right, or wrong. But Stalin just won the arguments and in the end it was with a gun or a long distance ice-axe.
In the process the Communist International was transformed into an instrument of Russian policy. The Communist Parties became the extension of Russian diplomacy. And almost without exception the men who made the revolution were killed, disgraced or capitulated completely.
Now sophisticated CP apologists will argue, with the characteristic dialectical chop-logic of the breed, that whatever the crimes of Stalin, whatever the inadequacy of his theoretical grasp, it all came right in the end.
Well that too is a point of view. Even if it flies in the face of all the facts, and it ignores the divisions in the Communist movement, and the abject failure of the Western Communist parties to see any route to socialism except via a bourgeois parliament.
It is true that Trotsky had his failings but he never dreamed that working class power could be exercised through a capitalist institution. For Monty and his chums in the Italian CP this may smack of ultra-leftism; for others it sounds dangerously like marxism.
Our advice to Monty Johnstone is that, now he has completed his work on Trotsky, he should reexamine the Stalinist tradition and attempt to explain the phenomena of the late J.V.Stalin. It will be instructive, worthwhile for the YCL and will undoubtedly get him a highly paid post squaring circles.
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<h2>Paul Foot & Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Rank and file movement:<br>
the first links are forged</h1>
<h3>(April 1974)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, 6 April 1974.<br>
Reprinted in <strong>In the Heat of the Struggle: 25 Years of <em>Socialist Worker</em></strong>, <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>/Bookmarks, London 1993, pp.115-9.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">THE ENORMOUS response to the first National Rank and File Conference for trade unionists surprised even the organising committee. More than 500 delegates were signed in at Birmingham.</p>
<p>Conference chairman Will Fancy, a member of the government officers’ union executive (NALGO) and supporter of the rank and file paper <strong>NALGO Action</strong>, said more than 300 trade union bodies had applied for delegacies.</p>
<p>These included 40 shop stewards’ and combine committees, two strike and occupation committees, 19 trades councils, seven district committees of unions. There were 239 from trade union branches and chapels: 58 from Engineering, 38 from Transport, seven from Construction, 16 from print unions, five from miners’ lodges, 20 from the supervisors union ASTMS, 14 from the public employers, 22 from NALGO, eight from the civil servants and 32 from teachers’ associations.</p>
<p>Said Will Fancy: “The rank and file must be organised. Constant vigilance to control the trade union leadership and militant policy are essential if we are not to lose out. We have got to coordinate rank and file activity across trade and industrial boundaries.”</p>
<p>LARRY CONNOLLY, shop steward at Lucas Birmingham, moved the first section of the resolution, on the fight against employers’ and government attacks on trade union rights. Larry is on strike and had to be released from picket duties to speak at the conference.</p>
<p>In a powerful speech he outlined the economic background of a predicted &pound;5,000 million balance of payments deficit:</p>
<p class="quoteb">We face cutback, rationalisation, redundancy and lower living standards. By the end of the year one million unemployed are planned. Unemployment is a powerful weapon of the employers to demoralise the workers and the trade unions.</p>
<p class="fst">The Industrial Relations Act was still on the statute book. Phase Three still held force and the Pay Board was with us, just as under the Tories.</p>
<p>“We need a rank and file movement to fight the proven treachery of the officials,” he said. “If we do this the employers will tremble in their boots. The working class will not be hammered.”</p>
<p>An emergency resolution was moved by FRANK HENDERSON (Sheet Metal Workers’ shop steward at British Leyland): “This conference sends a message of solidarity to Lucas strikers and resolves to send a delegation to the picket line.”</p>
<p>This was carried unanimously and six delegates carried the message to the Lucas strikers.</p>
<p>MIKE BRIGHTMAN (Cricklewood AUEW) told the conference: “All industrial legislation, Labour or Tory, presents a sinister picture. Even under a Labour government we still have conspiracy laws. The Shrewsbury lads are still in jail.”</p>
<p>GEOFF WOOLF (Lewisham NALGO) said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">When it comes to the crunch the Labour government will be no different from any other We often hear that a voluntary incomes policy is better than a statutory policy. Well I for one am not volunteering and neither will my branch.</p>
<p class="quote">We should use this new movement to fight Phase Three and whatever follows. We will not permit the trade union leader to do the job for the government that repressive laws could not do.</p>
<p class="fst">MIKE MARRIOT (South Norwood ASTMS) said: “We have just spent three years fighting the Tories. With a Labour government we must be prepared to fight even harder.”</p>
<p>In a rousing contribution HUGH KERR (North London Polytechnic ATTI) said: “On the government’s own figures, living standards will be cut by at least 10 percent. We must reject the philosophy that rent freeze and increased old age pensions can be exchanged for a cut in wages. We want the rent rises reversed and the Housing Finance Act withdrawn,” he said to applause.</p>
<p class="quoteb">We are going to see the finest examples of class collaboration when the trade union leaders lie down for the Labour government.</p>
<p class="quote">We must involve ourselves in every sphere and level of the trade unions. We have to make it clear they cannot collaborate in the cutting of our living standards.</p>
<p class="fst">This theme was emphasised by JOHN WORTH (Coventry AUEW) who said district committees and trades councils became inactive because “we don’t fight for them and give them the fighting spirit.”</p>
<p>JOHN MAGEE (TGWU Holloway Bus Branch): “We will help Heath if we do not give support to Labour. Otherwise we will dig our own graves. The most important thing is to get a majority Labour government.” He concluded by appealing to Engineering leader Hugh Scanlon and train drivers’ leader Ray Buckton to cooperate with Labour</p>
<p>It was clear that a large majority of delegates were opposed to the views of John Magee, but as a delegate said at the lunch break a genuine rank and file movement must take account of and patiently explain the reasons why the Holloway bus delegate’s views would disarm the trade unions. Such views form the thinking of a great number of workers.</p>
<p>FRANK DRAIN (UCATT, Edinburgh) asked: “What happens after this conference? I think we must take this resolution back to the factories and workshops and really fight for it.”</p>
<p>DAVE ADSHEAD (shop steward, Bryant’s city centre development Birmingham) spoke angrily of the obstruction of union officials on the Shrewsbury campaign. Militants in Birmingham had argued for a rank and file committee with a programme of leaflets, meetings and action. Building union officials refused for fear of embarrassing the Labour Party.</p>
<p class="quoteb">They worked actively against the holding of meetings. There were no leaflets. Of course we must work in the official union structure, but we have also got to organise mass pressure to keep full-time officials in line.<br>
</p>
<h4>The way forward now</h4>
<p class="fst">THE FINAL part of the conference resolution dealt with the work which had to be done to carry the rank and file movement forward.</p>
<p>An amendment moved by JOHN CLOSSACK (NUT) calling for a general newsletter for the movement was clearly defeated after PETE GLATTER, a London busman, had called for more specific organisation around rank and file papers.</p>
<p>FRANK HENDERSON (British Leyland, Longbridge) said that it was the job of all the delegates to involve everyone on the shop floor in the sale and production of their rank and file paper</p>
<p>Although he liked organising secretary Roger Cox and admired his hairstyle (laughter), the <strong>Carworker</strong> would be useless if it was all written by Roger.</p>
<p>“We want to have workers reading it during their lunch hours,” said Frank. “We want to see them jumping up, spitting a mouthful of blood and saying: ‘Right, I’m going to write off and let that bastard know what I think’.”</p>
<p>STEVE ABBOTT (NUM Calverton Lodge) said all the delegates had to go back to their trade union branches and fight against the backward leadership of the trade unions.</p>
<p>STEVE LUDLAM (Hospital worker) said that the conference had meant a great deal to him.</p>
<p class="quoteb">Last year, after six weeks’ struggle, we hospital workers lost our claim. We had no support. Many of us asked why-why had we been sold out.</p>
<p class="quote">We’ve found since then that there’s more to a rank and file movement than determination. We’ve got to organise callously to win.</p>
<p class="fst">More than 100,000 trade unionists bought one or other of the rank and file papers which had called the conference. That figure had to be doubled and trebled, he said.</p>
<p>An additional resolution moved by GEORGE BARCLAY (GMWU branch at Stanton Works of the British Steel Corporation) called for more specific commitment on racialism, abortion, contraception and expropriation. It was defeated by more than two to one after KEN HUME (TGWU, Coventry) asked conference to concentrate on the minimal demands which could unite the maximum number of rank and ffle trade unionists.</p>
<p>JIMMY McCALLUM (TASS/AUEW convenor, John Brown Engineering, Glasgow) said that the election of a Labour government had not changed the struggle against Phase Three. In fact, the co-operation of trade union leaders with Phase Three was now even more apparent.</p>
<p>He reminded delegates of the strike at Maclarens factory at Glasgow, owned by the multi-national giant ITT. The strikers had stuck fast to their objective, and had been forced to seek support in other ITT factories in Britain. The result was an ITT stewards’ combine across the country. “That is the sort of rank and file activity we should be fighting for,” he said.</p>
<p>The conference resolution was carried with only a handful of delegates opposed.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">AT THE afternoon session JOHN LLYWARCH, one of the six pickets in the first Shrewsbury trial, moved part two of the conference resolution, on the organisation of a rank and file movement.</p>
<p>After delighting the conference with some of his more juicy memories of the Shrewsbury trial, he castigated union leaders and Labour politicians for their refusal to fight to get the six men in prison for picketing released.</p>
<p>TREVOR BALL (NUM, Lea Hall Lodge) spoke about the economic crisis of capitalism. He said the crisis existed in all capitalist countries. Everywhere employers and government were holding wages down. It was the capitalists’ crisis, and they should pay for it.</p>
<p>His members had shown that they were not prepared to be sacrificed to someone else’s crisis, he said. The miners had used their strength and blown a “whopping great hole” through Phase Three.</p>
<p>TERRY HORAN (UCATT) attacked the officials of his union for their apathy over Shrewsbury.</p>
<p>He said UCATT was run by men completely out of touch with the rank and file. His site – John Laings in Edinburgh – and another had come out over Shrewsbury, but had found that other protests, demonstrations and strikes were being held on different days.</p>
<p>There was no coordination, and that was why a rank and file movement was so important.</p>
<p>ERIC BRIGHT (President of UCATT branch at Clifton, Notts) said he had asked Edward Short, Labour’s deputy leader, at an election meeting what Labour would do about the 1875 Conspiracy Act which had led to the prison sentences at Shrewsbury.</p>
<p>“He said he’d repeal all but the conspiracy section,” said Eric. “But that’s just the bit we want scrapping.”</p>
<p>Eric attributed the “massive loss of membership” in UCATT to the behaviour of the executive, especially their “puerile” response to the Shrewsbury case. Shrewsbury showed more than anything else in his experience the importance of a rank and file movement.</p>
<p>“I’ll do all I can in my small way to bring this movement forward,” he promised.</p>
<p>RAB DAWSON (EETPU, Glasgow Corporation Central Electrical Workshops Stewards Committee) sounded a note of caution over part of the resolution which called for support for “all candidates in union elections fighting the right wing.”</p>
<p>The emphasis, he said, should be on “rank and file candidates,” or delegates would find themselves supporting all forms of opportunists from the union bureaucracy who called themselves ‘left’ at election time.</p>
<p>ALAN WATT’S (Ponders End No.5 branch, AUEW) put the caution to the test by moving an amendment to delete the word ‘all’ in the resolution.</p>
<p>“The rank and file movement supports those people who support the rank and file. It does not support those people who do not support the rank and file”, he said to applause. The amendment was carried.</p>
<p>BETTY COATES (a candidate in the elections for the teachers’ union executive) was worried that the resolution said nothing about the accountability of union officials, once elected.</p>
<p>GEORGE POGMORE (a bus inspector from York and member of the national committee of his section of the TGWU) spoke about the “fight for militant policies” called for in the resolution. In November 1972 all bus platform staff had got shift pay, but the inspectors had been denied it, though they worked shifts, he said. A year later, the Pay Board said the shift pay was impossible under Phase Three.</p>
<p class="quoteb">We called a national conference which told the Pay Board that unless we got the shift pay, we’d all work 8am to 4pm. Then, suddenly, a week before we took the action, the Pay Board changed their mind and paid us the shift pay.</p>
<p class="fst">EUROPE SINGH (Southward NUT) argued that the resolution’s call for action against racialism did not go far enough. An anti-racialist declaration on its own could be found in most TUC statements. What was needed was a clear commitment for more specific demands.</p>
<p>First the conference should insist on equal status and pay on the shop floor for all black workers. Second, it should call for the repeal of the Immigration Act 1971, and third, should continue the argument against all immigration controls.</p>
<p>“These are nothing to do with over-crowding. They are simply used by people like Powell to spread racialism through the country and through the working class,” he said.</p>
<p>The part of the resolution calling for stronger combine committees and better links between shop stewards drew the two most authoritative contributions of the conference.</p>
<p>GEORGE ANDERSON (TGWU chairman of the joint shop stewards committee at Coventry Radiators) asked: “What kind of combine committee do we want?”</p>
<p class="quoteb">Should it be based entirely on the boundaries created by management or should it be industry-wide?</p>
<p>He had found that as long as his stewards’ combine committee was based on Associated Engineering, a management creation, it served little purpose. But when they had tried to spread it, for instance, through all press work in the components industry, its effectiveness was enormously increased.</p>
<p class="quote">We try to change the concept of the combine committee. If Associated Engineering isn’t drawing all the companies with workers doing our kind of work, we say we’re not bound in by management boundaries like sheep. We say, why don’t we amalgamate with some other combine of like workers – why don’t Associated Engineering combines link with those at British Leyland?</p>
<p class="fst">George was followed by JOE McGOUGH (chairman of the joint shop stewards committee at Dunlop, Speke, and chairman of the National Dunlop Combine Committee): “The fact that there are 400 delegates filling this hall today shows that there’s a large body of people who are somewhat disenchanted with the union leadership.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">If ever there was a need for joint shop stewards’ committees, it is now. We’ve every reason to believe that we should extend the combines across the national boundaries.</p>
<p class="quote">In June 1972 we had a stoppage in Britain and Italy against the Dunlop-Pirelli combine. It made history. It showed that if the rank and file organise, they can confront the same employers in different countries.</p>
<p class="fst">Hardly had the cheers died down for Joe McGough than chairman Will Fancy was reading out a telegram of greetings and encouragement from the Italian rank and file movement.<br>
</p>
<h4>“Pay back AUEW”</h4>
<p class="fst">RON MURPHY (AUEW/TASS office committee, Manchester AEI) moved an emergency resolution on the fines on the AUEW over the Con-Mech case, and called for delegates to pledge support for the union in its stand against the Industrial Relations Court. He said the refusal of the AUEW to appear before the court had been an important factor in keeping the whole trade union movement from “sliding down the slippery slope to acceptance of the Industrial Relations Act.”</p>
<p>“Of course the AUEW has not fought consistently enough, but at least they had fought,” he said. He called not only for this judgement to be set aside but for the return of previous fines imposed by the NIRC and a pledge of no further seizures.</p>
<p>“We have real, important people here today. They must exert the maximum pressure to get the government to agree to our demands,” he said. The resolution was passed unanimously.<br>
</p>
<h4>Report from a sit-in</h4>
<p class="fst">CONFERENCE GAVE a rousing reception to MALCOLM VASS (AUEW Eastleigh No.2) speaking for the Strachan Joint Unions Occupation Committee. Strachan builds Ford van bodies under contract. As part of rationalisation plans the workers were given one minute’s notice.</p>
<p>After three days of picketing they occupied the plant, to stop &pound;2 million worth of car bodies and machinery being taken away. When management became a nuisance they got rid of them. Ford shop stewards had agreed that any Strachan vans that got out would be blacked.</p>
<p>A delegation to Michael Meacher, a new Labour minister, had been told the firm had a right to sack them. Said Malcolm Vass: “Social Contracts mean nothing if they can treat workers as they have treated us at Strachans.</p>
<p>“They want to get their hands on those vans and machinery,” said Malcolm. “They bloody well won’t.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Greetings from Dublin</h4>
<p class="fst">CHRIS GIBSON, from the Irish Transport and General Workers Union No.14 branch, gave the conference fraternal greetings from the Dublin Shop Stewards and Rank and File Committee.</p>
<p>He said that the committee had been set up because of the way wage settlements had been agreed every year between union leaders and employers without taking the workers’ interests into account.</p>
<p>The rank and file had organised to great effect, and conferences of up to 350 delegates had been held in Dublin.</p>
<p>They were not yet strong enough to combat the propaganda of the employers and union leaders but they had dented the national wage agreement, and hoped to do more next year.</p>
<p>He wished the conference and the British rank and file movement every success, and promised solidarity from across the Irish Sea.<br>
</p>
<h4>Solidarity with <em>Express</em></h4>
<p class="fst">AN EMERGENCY resolution on the <strong>Scottish Daily Express</strong> closure received unanimous support. It called for condemnation of the management, all possible support for the takeover and messages of solidarity.</p>
<p>STEPHEN CHILDS (Sheffield NUJ) told the conference the action of the Beaverbrook management was “the biggest scandal to hit the newspaper industry for years. The NUJ has done nothing to save the jobs of the <strong>Scottish Daily Express</strong> members. These jobs are lost forever once the workers leave the plant.”</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Paul Foot & Jim Higgins
Rank and file movement:
the first links are forged
(April 1974)
From Socialist Worker, 6 April 1974.
Reprinted in In the Heat of the Struggle: 25 Years of Socialist Worker, Socialist Worker/Bookmarks, London 1993, pp.115-9.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
THE ENORMOUS response to the first National Rank and File Conference for trade unionists surprised even the organising committee. More than 500 delegates were signed in at Birmingham.
Conference chairman Will Fancy, a member of the government officers’ union executive (NALGO) and supporter of the rank and file paper NALGO Action, said more than 300 trade union bodies had applied for delegacies.
These included 40 shop stewards’ and combine committees, two strike and occupation committees, 19 trades councils, seven district committees of unions. There were 239 from trade union branches and chapels: 58 from Engineering, 38 from Transport, seven from Construction, 16 from print unions, five from miners’ lodges, 20 from the supervisors union ASTMS, 14 from the public employers, 22 from NALGO, eight from the civil servants and 32 from teachers’ associations.
Said Will Fancy: “The rank and file must be organised. Constant vigilance to control the trade union leadership and militant policy are essential if we are not to lose out. We have got to coordinate rank and file activity across trade and industrial boundaries.”
LARRY CONNOLLY, shop steward at Lucas Birmingham, moved the first section of the resolution, on the fight against employers’ and government attacks on trade union rights. Larry is on strike and had to be released from picket duties to speak at the conference.
In a powerful speech he outlined the economic background of a predicted £5,000 million balance of payments deficit:
We face cutback, rationalisation, redundancy and lower living standards. By the end of the year one million unemployed are planned. Unemployment is a powerful weapon of the employers to demoralise the workers and the trade unions.
The Industrial Relations Act was still on the statute book. Phase Three still held force and the Pay Board was with us, just as under the Tories.
“We need a rank and file movement to fight the proven treachery of the officials,” he said. “If we do this the employers will tremble in their boots. The working class will not be hammered.”
An emergency resolution was moved by FRANK HENDERSON (Sheet Metal Workers’ shop steward at British Leyland): “This conference sends a message of solidarity to Lucas strikers and resolves to send a delegation to the picket line.”
This was carried unanimously and six delegates carried the message to the Lucas strikers.
MIKE BRIGHTMAN (Cricklewood AUEW) told the conference: “All industrial legislation, Labour or Tory, presents a sinister picture. Even under a Labour government we still have conspiracy laws. The Shrewsbury lads are still in jail.”
GEOFF WOOLF (Lewisham NALGO) said:
When it comes to the crunch the Labour government will be no different from any other We often hear that a voluntary incomes policy is better than a statutory policy. Well I for one am not volunteering and neither will my branch.
We should use this new movement to fight Phase Three and whatever follows. We will not permit the trade union leader to do the job for the government that repressive laws could not do.
MIKE MARRIOT (South Norwood ASTMS) said: “We have just spent three years fighting the Tories. With a Labour government we must be prepared to fight even harder.”
In a rousing contribution HUGH KERR (North London Polytechnic ATTI) said: “On the government’s own figures, living standards will be cut by at least 10 percent. We must reject the philosophy that rent freeze and increased old age pensions can be exchanged for a cut in wages. We want the rent rises reversed and the Housing Finance Act withdrawn,” he said to applause.
We are going to see the finest examples of class collaboration when the trade union leaders lie down for the Labour government.
We must involve ourselves in every sphere and level of the trade unions. We have to make it clear they cannot collaborate in the cutting of our living standards.
This theme was emphasised by JOHN WORTH (Coventry AUEW) who said district committees and trades councils became inactive because “we don’t fight for them and give them the fighting spirit.”
JOHN MAGEE (TGWU Holloway Bus Branch): “We will help Heath if we do not give support to Labour. Otherwise we will dig our own graves. The most important thing is to get a majority Labour government.” He concluded by appealing to Engineering leader Hugh Scanlon and train drivers’ leader Ray Buckton to cooperate with Labour
It was clear that a large majority of delegates were opposed to the views of John Magee, but as a delegate said at the lunch break a genuine rank and file movement must take account of and patiently explain the reasons why the Holloway bus delegate’s views would disarm the trade unions. Such views form the thinking of a great number of workers.
FRANK DRAIN (UCATT, Edinburgh) asked: “What happens after this conference? I think we must take this resolution back to the factories and workshops and really fight for it.”
DAVE ADSHEAD (shop steward, Bryant’s city centre development Birmingham) spoke angrily of the obstruction of union officials on the Shrewsbury campaign. Militants in Birmingham had argued for a rank and file committee with a programme of leaflets, meetings and action. Building union officials refused for fear of embarrassing the Labour Party.
They worked actively against the holding of meetings. There were no leaflets. Of course we must work in the official union structure, but we have also got to organise mass pressure to keep full-time officials in line.
The way forward now
THE FINAL part of the conference resolution dealt with the work which had to be done to carry the rank and file movement forward.
An amendment moved by JOHN CLOSSACK (NUT) calling for a general newsletter for the movement was clearly defeated after PETE GLATTER, a London busman, had called for more specific organisation around rank and file papers.
FRANK HENDERSON (British Leyland, Longbridge) said that it was the job of all the delegates to involve everyone on the shop floor in the sale and production of their rank and file paper
Although he liked organising secretary Roger Cox and admired his hairstyle (laughter), the Carworker would be useless if it was all written by Roger.
“We want to have workers reading it during their lunch hours,” said Frank. “We want to see them jumping up, spitting a mouthful of blood and saying: ‘Right, I’m going to write off and let that bastard know what I think’.”
STEVE ABBOTT (NUM Calverton Lodge) said all the delegates had to go back to their trade union branches and fight against the backward leadership of the trade unions.
STEVE LUDLAM (Hospital worker) said that the conference had meant a great deal to him.
Last year, after six weeks’ struggle, we hospital workers lost our claim. We had no support. Many of us asked why-why had we been sold out.
We’ve found since then that there’s more to a rank and file movement than determination. We’ve got to organise callously to win.
More than 100,000 trade unionists bought one or other of the rank and file papers which had called the conference. That figure had to be doubled and trebled, he said.
An additional resolution moved by GEORGE BARCLAY (GMWU branch at Stanton Works of the British Steel Corporation) called for more specific commitment on racialism, abortion, contraception and expropriation. It was defeated by more than two to one after KEN HUME (TGWU, Coventry) asked conference to concentrate on the minimal demands which could unite the maximum number of rank and ffle trade unionists.
JIMMY McCALLUM (TASS/AUEW convenor, John Brown Engineering, Glasgow) said that the election of a Labour government had not changed the struggle against Phase Three. In fact, the co-operation of trade union leaders with Phase Three was now even more apparent.
He reminded delegates of the strike at Maclarens factory at Glasgow, owned by the multi-national giant ITT. The strikers had stuck fast to their objective, and had been forced to seek support in other ITT factories in Britain. The result was an ITT stewards’ combine across the country. “That is the sort of rank and file activity we should be fighting for,” he said.
The conference resolution was carried with only a handful of delegates opposed.
AT THE afternoon session JOHN LLYWARCH, one of the six pickets in the first Shrewsbury trial, moved part two of the conference resolution, on the organisation of a rank and file movement.
After delighting the conference with some of his more juicy memories of the Shrewsbury trial, he castigated union leaders and Labour politicians for their refusal to fight to get the six men in prison for picketing released.
TREVOR BALL (NUM, Lea Hall Lodge) spoke about the economic crisis of capitalism. He said the crisis existed in all capitalist countries. Everywhere employers and government were holding wages down. It was the capitalists’ crisis, and they should pay for it.
His members had shown that they were not prepared to be sacrificed to someone else’s crisis, he said. The miners had used their strength and blown a “whopping great hole” through Phase Three.
TERRY HORAN (UCATT) attacked the officials of his union for their apathy over Shrewsbury.
He said UCATT was run by men completely out of touch with the rank and file. His site – John Laings in Edinburgh – and another had come out over Shrewsbury, but had found that other protests, demonstrations and strikes were being held on different days.
There was no coordination, and that was why a rank and file movement was so important.
ERIC BRIGHT (President of UCATT branch at Clifton, Notts) said he had asked Edward Short, Labour’s deputy leader, at an election meeting what Labour would do about the 1875 Conspiracy Act which had led to the prison sentences at Shrewsbury.
“He said he’d repeal all but the conspiracy section,” said Eric. “But that’s just the bit we want scrapping.”
Eric attributed the “massive loss of membership” in UCATT to the behaviour of the executive, especially their “puerile” response to the Shrewsbury case. Shrewsbury showed more than anything else in his experience the importance of a rank and file movement.
“I’ll do all I can in my small way to bring this movement forward,” he promised.
RAB DAWSON (EETPU, Glasgow Corporation Central Electrical Workshops Stewards Committee) sounded a note of caution over part of the resolution which called for support for “all candidates in union elections fighting the right wing.”
The emphasis, he said, should be on “rank and file candidates,” or delegates would find themselves supporting all forms of opportunists from the union bureaucracy who called themselves ‘left’ at election time.
ALAN WATT’S (Ponders End No.5 branch, AUEW) put the caution to the test by moving an amendment to delete the word ‘all’ in the resolution.
“The rank and file movement supports those people who support the rank and file. It does not support those people who do not support the rank and file”, he said to applause. The amendment was carried.
BETTY COATES (a candidate in the elections for the teachers’ union executive) was worried that the resolution said nothing about the accountability of union officials, once elected.
GEORGE POGMORE (a bus inspector from York and member of the national committee of his section of the TGWU) spoke about the “fight for militant policies” called for in the resolution. In November 1972 all bus platform staff had got shift pay, but the inspectors had been denied it, though they worked shifts, he said. A year later, the Pay Board said the shift pay was impossible under Phase Three.
We called a national conference which told the Pay Board that unless we got the shift pay, we’d all work 8am to 4pm. Then, suddenly, a week before we took the action, the Pay Board changed their mind and paid us the shift pay.
EUROPE SINGH (Southward NUT) argued that the resolution’s call for action against racialism did not go far enough. An anti-racialist declaration on its own could be found in most TUC statements. What was needed was a clear commitment for more specific demands.
First the conference should insist on equal status and pay on the shop floor for all black workers. Second, it should call for the repeal of the Immigration Act 1971, and third, should continue the argument against all immigration controls.
“These are nothing to do with over-crowding. They are simply used by people like Powell to spread racialism through the country and through the working class,” he said.
The part of the resolution calling for stronger combine committees and better links between shop stewards drew the two most authoritative contributions of the conference.
GEORGE ANDERSON (TGWU chairman of the joint shop stewards committee at Coventry Radiators) asked: “What kind of combine committee do we want?”
Should it be based entirely on the boundaries created by management or should it be industry-wide?
He had found that as long as his stewards’ combine committee was based on Associated Engineering, a management creation, it served little purpose. But when they had tried to spread it, for instance, through all press work in the components industry, its effectiveness was enormously increased.
We try to change the concept of the combine committee. If Associated Engineering isn’t drawing all the companies with workers doing our kind of work, we say we’re not bound in by management boundaries like sheep. We say, why don’t we amalgamate with some other combine of like workers – why don’t Associated Engineering combines link with those at British Leyland?
George was followed by JOE McGOUGH (chairman of the joint shop stewards committee at Dunlop, Speke, and chairman of the National Dunlop Combine Committee): “The fact that there are 400 delegates filling this hall today shows that there’s a large body of people who are somewhat disenchanted with the union leadership.”
If ever there was a need for joint shop stewards’ committees, it is now. We’ve every reason to believe that we should extend the combines across the national boundaries.
In June 1972 we had a stoppage in Britain and Italy against the Dunlop-Pirelli combine. It made history. It showed that if the rank and file organise, they can confront the same employers in different countries.
Hardly had the cheers died down for Joe McGough than chairman Will Fancy was reading out a telegram of greetings and encouragement from the Italian rank and file movement.
“Pay back AUEW”
RON MURPHY (AUEW/TASS office committee, Manchester AEI) moved an emergency resolution on the fines on the AUEW over the Con-Mech case, and called for delegates to pledge support for the union in its stand against the Industrial Relations Court. He said the refusal of the AUEW to appear before the court had been an important factor in keeping the whole trade union movement from “sliding down the slippery slope to acceptance of the Industrial Relations Act.”
“Of course the AUEW has not fought consistently enough, but at least they had fought,” he said. He called not only for this judgement to be set aside but for the return of previous fines imposed by the NIRC and a pledge of no further seizures.
“We have real, important people here today. They must exert the maximum pressure to get the government to agree to our demands,” he said. The resolution was passed unanimously.
Report from a sit-in
CONFERENCE GAVE a rousing reception to MALCOLM VASS (AUEW Eastleigh No.2) speaking for the Strachan Joint Unions Occupation Committee. Strachan builds Ford van bodies under contract. As part of rationalisation plans the workers were given one minute’s notice.
After three days of picketing they occupied the plant, to stop £2 million worth of car bodies and machinery being taken away. When management became a nuisance they got rid of them. Ford shop stewards had agreed that any Strachan vans that got out would be blacked.
A delegation to Michael Meacher, a new Labour minister, had been told the firm had a right to sack them. Said Malcolm Vass: “Social Contracts mean nothing if they can treat workers as they have treated us at Strachans.
“They want to get their hands on those vans and machinery,” said Malcolm. “They bloody well won’t.”
Greetings from Dublin
CHRIS GIBSON, from the Irish Transport and General Workers Union No.14 branch, gave the conference fraternal greetings from the Dublin Shop Stewards and Rank and File Committee.
He said that the committee had been set up because of the way wage settlements had been agreed every year between union leaders and employers without taking the workers’ interests into account.
The rank and file had organised to great effect, and conferences of up to 350 delegates had been held in Dublin.
They were not yet strong enough to combat the propaganda of the employers and union leaders but they had dented the national wage agreement, and hoped to do more next year.
He wished the conference and the British rank and file movement every success, and promised solidarity from across the Irish Sea.
Solidarity with Express
AN EMERGENCY resolution on the Scottish Daily Express closure received unanimous support. It called for condemnation of the management, all possible support for the takeover and messages of solidarity.
STEPHEN CHILDS (Sheffield NUJ) told the conference the action of the Beaverbrook management was “the biggest scandal to hit the newspaper industry for years. The NUJ has done nothing to save the jobs of the Scottish Daily Express members. These jobs are lost forever once the workers leave the plant.”
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>The deluge after Blackpool</h1>
<h3>(September 1975)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 6 September 1975, p.304.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">George Woodcock’s dictum that what happens during the other fifty-one weeks is infinitely more important than the decisions of a five-day seaside junket receives adequate confirmation at this week’s Blackpool TUC. The vital question had already been decided in advance. The mineworkers will, for the time being, support the Government’s £6 limit. Now that is crucial. Whatever the majority for the Government’s policy might be this week, if the miners decide to get more, they will undoubtedly get what they want, and the central feature of Labour policy will be worth much less than the paper on which it is written.</p>
<p>It is thus the Government’s good fortune that the miners have been balloted and come down in Mr Wilson’s favour. This simple fact illuminates with great clarity the actual nature of the TUC. Mr Jack Jones with his 1,700,000 is reckoned to be something of a power in the land. Journalists, captains of industry and government ministers hang on his every word. The truth is, as you would suppose, that Mr Jones presides over an extremely ramshackle coalition of different interests. There is no way, short of revolution, that he could bring the different sections of his vast empire into coherent action. For everyone of his members who could get £60 he has ten who would be lucky to get 60 pence.</p>
<p>Trade union leaders’ calculations are based not on ideology but on a realistic calculation of what the relation of forces are in any prospective struggle. For the Transport and General Workers Union £6 all round is, in global figures, a great deal more than they hope to get by the vagaries of “free collective bargaining”.</p>
<p>It is because of this that the miner’s ballot decision in favour of the Government pay policy is of the utmost short-term importance. Messrs Gormley and Daly do not, like Mr Jones, have to calculate what will be attractive to the lowest common denominator of their members. For them, the lowest common denominator is quite the same as the highest common factor. If they say ‘out’, then the industry will stop. Not a knob of coal will be dug – not even a slice of nutty slack.</p>
<p>But to describe, and thank God for, the altruism of the miners is not to tell the whole story about the TUC. There are others, less devoted to their trade union perhaps, who are almost as capable of bringing industry to a halt and governments to their knees. The electricians, the tanker drivers and a host of others. Why do they not to so? The answer is not clear cut and may be less than satisfying. But it is abundantly clear that the steady drip of propaganda that equates large wage increases, with increasing unemployment has had its effect.</p>
<p>Great numbers of rank and file trade union members are dimly aware that their jobs are at risk. These same members require from their trade union officials that they both guard their living conditions and maintain their jobs. If that seems, and is, a contradiction, it is one that exists in life. The Joneses and Scanlons must, whatever their subjective desires, make proper obeisance to their members’ wishes. It is out of this proper respect for the rank and file that there will be an overwhelming vote in favour of the £6 limit. Any other result would signify that the trade unions are on a course that would set them directly against not only the Government but also the whole notion of parliamentary democracy. Neither Mr Jones nor Mr Scanlon, nor for that matter Reg Birch or Ken Gill, has any intention of moving beyond the confines of the system as it is. For Hugh Scanlon the very worst result of this week’s deliberations would be the success of his union’s resolution Which states, inter alia: “opposition to any incomes policy having as its aim wage regulation through intervention from any source.” He knows, as does Mr Jones after his experience with the dockers jailed under the Industrial Relations Act, that if the TUC insists on going its own way, it will inevitably face the prospect of taking state power. Trade unions have neither the will, the conscious base nor the organisation that could make that a reality.</p>
<p>Mr Scanlon may, because of internal pressures within his own union, oppose the Government’s policy, but he will not be disappointed if he fails. Trade unions do not wish to take on or take over the government of Britain. Their task this week, as they savour the two-star splendours of Blackpool cuisine, will be to support the efforts of Mr Wilson’s administration to hold back wage increases and at the same time distance themselves from the Government by insisting that the £6 is for all and sundry, not the outside limit. Trade union leaders, even in the NUM, do not wish to bring down governments merely to bring home such bacon as their members will accept. Their clear calculation is that their members will accept, in the short term, a slight diminution in living standards. They are almost certainly right. They undoubtedly calculate that the pressure for militant action will be mitigated by the pressure of unemployment as it rises to and beyond a million and a half. Once again they are probably right. But in a real world, that still moves, to be right is a very transitory phenomenon. Increasingly larger numbers of workers, well organised and in key sectors of the economy, will realise that they are supporting a policy whose major sanction is marginally to reduce their employers’ ability to raise prices. It is at that stage that all the fine speeches of Mr. Jones, and all the moderation of the General Council of the TUC, and a great deal more, will be required to hold to an even keel.</p>
<p>It is a very nice calculation about how long trade unionists will restrain themselves in the interests of lower unemployment and greater social justice when both of these commodities are manifestly in short supply and becoming scarcer by the hour. It is for this reason that the deliberations of the TUC are important, if the line is to be held. As with every serious facet of politics today, the upper reaches of trade unionism continue to exist and be reasonably effective on the basis of psychology rather than hard coherent policy. As with the voters, the members must be convinced against the evidence of their own experience that the sweet by-and-by will come if not next year the year after, that sacrifices now will be rewarded and that there is pie not just in the sky but in late 1976 or early 1977.</p>
<p>Now that is a trick that no trade union leader has managed to pull off to date. Contrary to prevalent myth they are not elderly devotees of a sinister conspiracy dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism nor are they idiot bureaucrats uniformly obsessed with their own grandeur. Some are one or the other and a very few are both, but most are quite talented and socially concerned human beings, limited in time, space and experience and generally doing their best.</p>
<p>Today’s trade union leaders and their organisations are reckoned to have more power than ever before in their history. Paradoxically they are unable to realise on that power, for to do so would be to destroy the source from which improvements aright come. At Blackpool this week they huff and puff and make much of their commitment to full employment and greater social justice. They talk about further more draconian controls on profits. In all probability they will pass resolutions calling for import controls and the institution of some kind of siege economy. But that is not serious, not a policy they expect to be adopted. It is the policy sweetener that, they hope, will make the pay limits, palatable for at least twelve months. We had better hope that they are right. The alternative is not at all nice to contemplate.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The deluge after Blackpool
(September 1975)
From the Spectator, 6 September 1975, p.304.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
George Woodcock’s dictum that what happens during the other fifty-one weeks is infinitely more important than the decisions of a five-day seaside junket receives adequate confirmation at this week’s Blackpool TUC. The vital question had already been decided in advance. The mineworkers will, for the time being, support the Government’s £6 limit. Now that is crucial. Whatever the majority for the Government’s policy might be this week, if the miners decide to get more, they will undoubtedly get what they want, and the central feature of Labour policy will be worth much less than the paper on which it is written.
It is thus the Government’s good fortune that the miners have been balloted and come down in Mr Wilson’s favour. This simple fact illuminates with great clarity the actual nature of the TUC. Mr Jack Jones with his 1,700,000 is reckoned to be something of a power in the land. Journalists, captains of industry and government ministers hang on his every word. The truth is, as you would suppose, that Mr Jones presides over an extremely ramshackle coalition of different interests. There is no way, short of revolution, that he could bring the different sections of his vast empire into coherent action. For everyone of his members who could get £60 he has ten who would be lucky to get 60 pence.
Trade union leaders’ calculations are based not on ideology but on a realistic calculation of what the relation of forces are in any prospective struggle. For the Transport and General Workers Union £6 all round is, in global figures, a great deal more than they hope to get by the vagaries of “free collective bargaining”.
It is because of this that the miner’s ballot decision in favour of the Government pay policy is of the utmost short-term importance. Messrs Gormley and Daly do not, like Mr Jones, have to calculate what will be attractive to the lowest common denominator of their members. For them, the lowest common denominator is quite the same as the highest common factor. If they say ‘out’, then the industry will stop. Not a knob of coal will be dug – not even a slice of nutty slack.
But to describe, and thank God for, the altruism of the miners is not to tell the whole story about the TUC. There are others, less devoted to their trade union perhaps, who are almost as capable of bringing industry to a halt and governments to their knees. The electricians, the tanker drivers and a host of others. Why do they not to so? The answer is not clear cut and may be less than satisfying. But it is abundantly clear that the steady drip of propaganda that equates large wage increases, with increasing unemployment has had its effect.
Great numbers of rank and file trade union members are dimly aware that their jobs are at risk. These same members require from their trade union officials that they both guard their living conditions and maintain their jobs. If that seems, and is, a contradiction, it is one that exists in life. The Joneses and Scanlons must, whatever their subjective desires, make proper obeisance to their members’ wishes. It is out of this proper respect for the rank and file that there will be an overwhelming vote in favour of the £6 limit. Any other result would signify that the trade unions are on a course that would set them directly against not only the Government but also the whole notion of parliamentary democracy. Neither Mr Jones nor Mr Scanlon, nor for that matter Reg Birch or Ken Gill, has any intention of moving beyond the confines of the system as it is. For Hugh Scanlon the very worst result of this week’s deliberations would be the success of his union’s resolution Which states, inter alia: “opposition to any incomes policy having as its aim wage regulation through intervention from any source.” He knows, as does Mr Jones after his experience with the dockers jailed under the Industrial Relations Act, that if the TUC insists on going its own way, it will inevitably face the prospect of taking state power. Trade unions have neither the will, the conscious base nor the organisation that could make that a reality.
Mr Scanlon may, because of internal pressures within his own union, oppose the Government’s policy, but he will not be disappointed if he fails. Trade unions do not wish to take on or take over the government of Britain. Their task this week, as they savour the two-star splendours of Blackpool cuisine, will be to support the efforts of Mr Wilson’s administration to hold back wage increases and at the same time distance themselves from the Government by insisting that the £6 is for all and sundry, not the outside limit. Trade union leaders, even in the NUM, do not wish to bring down governments merely to bring home such bacon as their members will accept. Their clear calculation is that their members will accept, in the short term, a slight diminution in living standards. They are almost certainly right. They undoubtedly calculate that the pressure for militant action will be mitigated by the pressure of unemployment as it rises to and beyond a million and a half. Once again they are probably right. But in a real world, that still moves, to be right is a very transitory phenomenon. Increasingly larger numbers of workers, well organised and in key sectors of the economy, will realise that they are supporting a policy whose major sanction is marginally to reduce their employers’ ability to raise prices. It is at that stage that all the fine speeches of Mr. Jones, and all the moderation of the General Council of the TUC, and a great deal more, will be required to hold to an even keel.
It is a very nice calculation about how long trade unionists will restrain themselves in the interests of lower unemployment and greater social justice when both of these commodities are manifestly in short supply and becoming scarcer by the hour. It is for this reason that the deliberations of the TUC are important, if the line is to be held. As with every serious facet of politics today, the upper reaches of trade unionism continue to exist and be reasonably effective on the basis of psychology rather than hard coherent policy. As with the voters, the members must be convinced against the evidence of their own experience that the sweet by-and-by will come if not next year the year after, that sacrifices now will be rewarded and that there is pie not just in the sky but in late 1976 or early 1977.
Now that is a trick that no trade union leader has managed to pull off to date. Contrary to prevalent myth they are not elderly devotees of a sinister conspiracy dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism nor are they idiot bureaucrats uniformly obsessed with their own grandeur. Some are one or the other and a very few are both, but most are quite talented and socially concerned human beings, limited in time, space and experience and generally doing their best.
Today’s trade union leaders and their organisations are reckoned to have more power than ever before in their history. Paradoxically they are unable to realise on that power, for to do so would be to destroy the source from which improvements aright come. At Blackpool this week they huff and puff and make much of their commitment to full employment and greater social justice. They talk about further more draconian controls on profits. In all probability they will pass resolutions calling for import controls and the institution of some kind of siege economy. But that is not serious, not a policy they expect to be adopted. It is the policy sweetener that, they hope, will make the pay limits, palatable for at least twelve months. We had better hope that they are right. The alternative is not at all nice to contemplate.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>[Mike Kidron]</h1>
<h3>(1965)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info"><em>From our Readers</em>, <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj021" target="new">No.21</a>, Summer 1965, p.23.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The need for discussion of theory in the Marxist movement is frequently insisted but less frequently acted upon. One of the brighter (probably the brightest) exceptions to this rule has been the regular appearance of <strong>International Socialism</strong>. The magazine has consistently maintained the best traditions of Marxist scholarship and this has been, in large measure, due to the work of the editor, Mike Kidron, who, with scant resources, and often without the help the undertaking merited, has regularly produced the journal up to the standards of excellence that have won praise throughout the international socialist movement. On the occasion of his relinquishing the editorship I and a number of other friends and supporters of <strong>IS</strong> would like to place on record our appreciation of the work that Mike Kidron has done in the past, work that will ensure <strong>IS</strong> an even brighter future.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
[Mike Kidron]
(1965)
From our Readers, International Socialism (1st series), No.21, Summer 1965, p.23.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The need for discussion of theory in the Marxist movement is frequently insisted but less frequently acted upon. One of the brighter (probably the brightest) exceptions to this rule has been the regular appearance of International Socialism. The magazine has consistently maintained the best traditions of Marxist scholarship and this has been, in large measure, due to the work of the editor, Mike Kidron, who, with scant resources, and often without the help the undertaking merited, has regularly produced the journal up to the standards of excellence that have won praise throughout the international socialist movement. On the occasion of his relinquishing the editorship I and a number of other friends and supporters of IS would like to place on record our appreciation of the work that Mike Kidron has done in the past, work that will ensure IS an even brighter future.
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<h2>Robert James <small><small><a id="fa" href="#na" name="fa">[1*]</a></small></small></h2>
<h1>Trotsky: a documentary</h1>
<h3>(1973)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj054" target="new">No. 54</a>, January 1973, p. 25.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>Trotsky: a documentary</strong><br>
Francis Wyndham and David King<br>
Penguin. £1.50</p>
<p class="fst">This book is probably as complete a pictorial record of Trotsky’s life as we are likely to get. It contains all the well-known pictures together with a number that 1, for one, have not seen before.</p>
<p>We find pictures of the nine-year old Trotsky tastefully posed against a chair with a background of ferns; of his mother and father, of Alexandra Sokolovskaya – his first wife – Trotsky in a Tsarist jail after the crushing of the Soviet in 1905.</p>
<p>Through the heroic triumphs of 1917 and the creation and direction of the Red Army, to exile and murder in Mexico.</p>
<p>Of almost equal interest are the pictures that include members of Trotsky’s staff and his co-thinkers. Max Shachtman, Yvan Craipeau, Van Heijinoort, the Rosmers, Albert Goldman, Joseph Hansen and many others. All looking, with the exception of the Rosmers, incredibly youthful. A stark reminder that so very few of Trotsky’s own generation remained alive, or endowed with the stamina to carry on the revolutionary struggle.</p>
<p>As with all books on Trotsky this moves with horrific inevitability to the assassination. The gruesome fact of violent death does not cease to shock even if the pictures are among the most publicised. Mercader (Jacson-Mornard) looking miserable, as well he might, preparatory to 20 years in a Mexican jail. A sentence mitigated by a well-appointed suite of cells, together with female companionship and radio equipment. All financed by a grateful CPU. It is an interesting sidelight on the small change of history that the Socialist Workers Party, who financed and staffed Trotsky’s Coyoacan fortress, should be so fond of Castro’s Cuba. The country in which Mercader found temporary refuge on his release. His stay lasting long enough for Czech citizenship to be conferred. You cannot say the CPU does not pay its debts.</p>
<p>The text that accompanies the pictures is flat, pedestrian and at no time rises above the level of the <strong>Sunday Times Colour Supplement</strong>. Those who want to see the pictures should read the original works from which Francis Wyndham freely and often inappropriately quotes.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h3>Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="na" href="#fa" name="na">1*.</a> Robert James is a pseudonym used occasionally by Jim Higgins.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Robert James [1*]
Trotsky: a documentary
(1973)
From International Socialism (1st series), No. 54, January 1973, p. 25.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Trotsky: a documentary
Francis Wyndham and David King
Penguin. £1.50
This book is probably as complete a pictorial record of Trotsky’s life as we are likely to get. It contains all the well-known pictures together with a number that 1, for one, have not seen before.
We find pictures of the nine-year old Trotsky tastefully posed against a chair with a background of ferns; of his mother and father, of Alexandra Sokolovskaya – his first wife – Trotsky in a Tsarist jail after the crushing of the Soviet in 1905.
Through the heroic triumphs of 1917 and the creation and direction of the Red Army, to exile and murder in Mexico.
Of almost equal interest are the pictures that include members of Trotsky’s staff and his co-thinkers. Max Shachtman, Yvan Craipeau, Van Heijinoort, the Rosmers, Albert Goldman, Joseph Hansen and many others. All looking, with the exception of the Rosmers, incredibly youthful. A stark reminder that so very few of Trotsky’s own generation remained alive, or endowed with the stamina to carry on the revolutionary struggle.
As with all books on Trotsky this moves with horrific inevitability to the assassination. The gruesome fact of violent death does not cease to shock even if the pictures are among the most publicised. Mercader (Jacson-Mornard) looking miserable, as well he might, preparatory to 20 years in a Mexican jail. A sentence mitigated by a well-appointed suite of cells, together with female companionship and radio equipment. All financed by a grateful CPU. It is an interesting sidelight on the small change of history that the Socialist Workers Party, who financed and staffed Trotsky’s Coyoacan fortress, should be so fond of Castro’s Cuba. The country in which Mercader found temporary refuge on his release. His stay lasting long enough for Czech citizenship to be conferred. You cannot say the CPU does not pay its debts.
The text that accompanies the pictures is flat, pedestrian and at no time rises above the level of the Sunday Times Colour Supplement. Those who want to see the pictures should read the original works from which Francis Wyndham freely and often inappropriately quotes.
Note
1*. Robert James is a pseudonym used occasionally by Jim Higgins.
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<h2>Duncan Hallas & Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Marxism and Terrorism</h1>
<h3>(March 1972)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">Duncan Hallas & Jim Higgins, <em>Marxism and Terrorism</em>, <strong>IS Internal Bulletin</strong>, March 1972.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" tafrget="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="quoteb">“Individual terrorism is in its very essence bureaucratism turned inside out. For marxists this law was not discovered yesterday. Bureaucratism has no confidence in the masses. Terrorism works in the same manner; it seeks to make the masses happy without asking their participation.”<br>
Trotsky</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Running like a red thread through my 37 years of revolutionary and literary activity is my irreconcilable attitude towards the adventurism of individual terrorism”<br>
Trotsky<br>
(Both quoted from <strong>The Kirov Assasination</strong>, 1934)</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="fst">At the EC meeting of 6.3.72, a division of opinion arose about the line of the editorial <em>No Substitute for Mass Action</em> in <strong>Socialist Worker</strong> of March 4th. A resolution endorsing the general line of this editorial was carried, although the vote did not reflect adequately the division on the committee. It is no doubt the case that the differences on the E.C. reflect similar differences amongst the membership and that the matter needs to be discussed in the organisation. This contribution explains the position of the E.C. majority.<br>
</p>
<h4>What the Dispute is About</h4>
<p class="fst">Objection was taken to one sentence in the editorial, namely ‘The extension of that self defense (i.e., by the IRA of the Catholic community) into killing of individual politicians and the bombing of buildings cannot be supported by socialists,’ Naturally this statement has to be considered in its context – the whole line of the editorial – and that is summed up in the conclusion ‘Indiscriminate terrorism hinders the growth of the mass movement.’<br>
</p>
<h4>The Marxist Tradition</h4>
<p class="fst">This question has a very long history in the movement. It was one of the issues in dispute between marxists and anarchists in the last century. In Russia the marxist movement developed in the course of a systematic struggle against the advocates (and practitioners) of terrorism as a method of struggle (the Narodniks),</p>
<p>The Narodnik terrorists had a record of heroism, self-sacrifice and indeed success in the sense of successful ‘executions’, that was and is second to none. They could and did accuse the marxists of avoiding the ‘real struggle’ in favour of ‘handing out leaflets outside factories,’ of being arm-chair theorists (‘dogmatists’ was the favourite term).</p>
<p>The Russian marxists, Plekhanov, Lenin and the rest, spent a considerable part of their early political activity, in patiently but firmly (‘dogmatically’ if you like) arguing against terrorism. The core of their case was summed up very simply by Trotsky:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Is individual terror, for example, permissible or impermissible from the point of ‘pure morals’? In this abstract form the question does not exist at all for us. Conservative Swiss bourgeois even now render official praise to the terrorist William Tell. Our sympathises are fully on the side of Irish, Russian, Polish or Hindu terrorists in their struggle against national and political oppression ... However, not the question of subjective motives but that of objective expediency has for us the decisive significance. Are the given means really capable of leading to the goal? In relation to individual terror both theory and practice bear witness that such is not the case, To the terrorist we say: It is impossible to replace the masses; only in a mass movement can you find expedient expression for your heroism.” (<em>Their Morals and Ours</em>, 1938)</p>
<p class="fst">All sides in the dispute would accept the above statement. It is the essential basis for the discussion. The question is whether or not certain of the activities of the Provisionals end the Officials constitute terrorism. It is common -round that many of their activities do not, As the editorial stated, ‘The violence used by both wings of the IRA is not, for the most part, terrorism in the proper sense of that term’. What is at issue is the attitude to the bombing campaign of the Provisionals and to the reprisal raids (e.g. Aldershot, the shooting of Taylor) of the Officials.<br>
</p>
<h4>A State of Civil War?</h4>
<p class="fst">The planting of bombs in factories, cafes, pubs and shops, a practice actively pursued by the Provisionals, is a classic example of terrorist tactics. So too is the shooting of particularly hated politicians like Taylor. If that was all that there was to it there could be no dispute. It is the clear duty of marxists to oppose such tactics and to attempt to influence supporters of these methods towards the building of a revolutionary working class organisation. But, it is argued, we have, in the six counties, a civil war – and the shootings and bombings have to be seen as part of that war.</p>
<p>If it is true that a state of civil war exists, then certainly the case would be entirely different. We would be dealing with military operations as in Vietnam. In these circumstances attacks on individuals, destruction of buildings and so on would be part of attempts to defeat the army by military means. Even in this case the expediency of indiscriminate bomb planting could questioned, However, the argument about terrorism would be irrelevant.</p>
<p>Is there a civil war? Some elements of civil war certainly exist. The mass of the Catholic population is completely alienated from the state and gives passive, and in some cases active support to guerrilla actions. Nevertheless it falls well short of the situation where military considerations are of first importance. The situation is a complicated one in which guerrilla attacks and civil disobedience on a large scale occur, whilst the majority of the working class – the Protestants – oppose the national struggle. The question is what is a socialist perspective in those circumstances.</p>
<p>The line of our organisation – which is the application of the theory of permanent revolution to Ireland – is that the overthrow of imperialism in Ireland – North or South) is impossible except on the basis of a mass movement with a revolutionary socialist leadership. Therefore the need is for the development of a revolutionary party which can struggle for the support of the working class on a thirty-two county basis. That is why we support the Socialist Workers Movement, In the six-counties the hold of the Orange-Tories on the majority of the workers cannot be broken until a sizeable working class organisation already exists on a thirty-two county basis, and is seen to be as hostile to the Green Tories as to the Orange ones. The activities of the two IRA’s have to be judged in the light of this perspective. It is interesting to note here that the NILP is wedded to the British LP and the imperial connexion, while the SDLP is tied to Lynch’s green tory coat-tails. For marxists the only present hope, small though it may be, is the SWM.</p>
<p>The defense of the Catholic community against governmental terrorism helps this development by challenging the power of the state and thus raising the possibility of its destruction. Defence, of course, includes the necessary measures against informers and agents of the state.</p>
<p>The bombing campaign hinders the development by strengthening the ties of the Orange workers to Stormont. And it deflects the Catholic working class militants by giving then a false perspective and activity.</p>
<p>Of course there are those who have, in practise, written off the Protestants i.e., the majority of the working class. For them ‘Victory to the IRA’ is all that is left. It leads, logically enough, to a new partition of the six counties and an implicit acceptance of the ‘Two Nations’ theory. It also leads to the postponement of any successful struggle against imperialism, in the north and the South, to the indefinite future. It is the counsel of despair.<br>
</p>
<h4>Conclusion</h4>
<p class="quoteb">‘Unconditional but critical support for all those, including both IRAs, fighting imperialism in Ireland. By unconditional we mean support regardless of our criticism of the leadership and tactics. By critical we mean opposing the sowing of illusions that the struggle can finally be won except by the victory of the working class fighting on a programme of social as well as national liberation’. (<strong>Socialist Worker</strong> editorial, 12th February).</p>
<p class="author">Duncan Hallas Jim Higgins</p>
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Duncan Hallas & Jim Higgins
Marxism and Terrorism
(March 1972)
Duncan Hallas & Jim Higgins, Marxism and Terrorism, IS Internal Bulletin, March 1972.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
“Individual terrorism is in its very essence bureaucratism turned inside out. For marxists this law was not discovered yesterday. Bureaucratism has no confidence in the masses. Terrorism works in the same manner; it seeks to make the masses happy without asking their participation.”
Trotsky
“Running like a red thread through my 37 years of revolutionary and literary activity is my irreconcilable attitude towards the adventurism of individual terrorism”
Trotsky
(Both quoted from The Kirov Assasination, 1934)
At the EC meeting of 6.3.72, a division of opinion arose about the line of the editorial No Substitute for Mass Action in Socialist Worker of March 4th. A resolution endorsing the general line of this editorial was carried, although the vote did not reflect adequately the division on the committee. It is no doubt the case that the differences on the E.C. reflect similar differences amongst the membership and that the matter needs to be discussed in the organisation. This contribution explains the position of the E.C. majority.
What the Dispute is About
Objection was taken to one sentence in the editorial, namely ‘The extension of that self defense (i.e., by the IRA of the Catholic community) into killing of individual politicians and the bombing of buildings cannot be supported by socialists,’ Naturally this statement has to be considered in its context – the whole line of the editorial – and that is summed up in the conclusion ‘Indiscriminate terrorism hinders the growth of the mass movement.’
The Marxist Tradition
This question has a very long history in the movement. It was one of the issues in dispute between marxists and anarchists in the last century. In Russia the marxist movement developed in the course of a systematic struggle against the advocates (and practitioners) of terrorism as a method of struggle (the Narodniks),
The Narodnik terrorists had a record of heroism, self-sacrifice and indeed success in the sense of successful ‘executions’, that was and is second to none. They could and did accuse the marxists of avoiding the ‘real struggle’ in favour of ‘handing out leaflets outside factories,’ of being arm-chair theorists (‘dogmatists’ was the favourite term).
The Russian marxists, Plekhanov, Lenin and the rest, spent a considerable part of their early political activity, in patiently but firmly (‘dogmatically’ if you like) arguing against terrorism. The core of their case was summed up very simply by Trotsky:
“Is individual terror, for example, permissible or impermissible from the point of ‘pure morals’? In this abstract form the question does not exist at all for us. Conservative Swiss bourgeois even now render official praise to the terrorist William Tell. Our sympathises are fully on the side of Irish, Russian, Polish or Hindu terrorists in their struggle against national and political oppression ... However, not the question of subjective motives but that of objective expediency has for us the decisive significance. Are the given means really capable of leading to the goal? In relation to individual terror both theory and practice bear witness that such is not the case, To the terrorist we say: It is impossible to replace the masses; only in a mass movement can you find expedient expression for your heroism.” (Their Morals and Ours, 1938)
All sides in the dispute would accept the above statement. It is the essential basis for the discussion. The question is whether or not certain of the activities of the Provisionals end the Officials constitute terrorism. It is common -round that many of their activities do not, As the editorial stated, ‘The violence used by both wings of the IRA is not, for the most part, terrorism in the proper sense of that term’. What is at issue is the attitude to the bombing campaign of the Provisionals and to the reprisal raids (e.g. Aldershot, the shooting of Taylor) of the Officials.
A State of Civil War?
The planting of bombs in factories, cafes, pubs and shops, a practice actively pursued by the Provisionals, is a classic example of terrorist tactics. So too is the shooting of particularly hated politicians like Taylor. If that was all that there was to it there could be no dispute. It is the clear duty of marxists to oppose such tactics and to attempt to influence supporters of these methods towards the building of a revolutionary working class organisation. But, it is argued, we have, in the six counties, a civil war – and the shootings and bombings have to be seen as part of that war.
If it is true that a state of civil war exists, then certainly the case would be entirely different. We would be dealing with military operations as in Vietnam. In these circumstances attacks on individuals, destruction of buildings and so on would be part of attempts to defeat the army by military means. Even in this case the expediency of indiscriminate bomb planting could questioned, However, the argument about terrorism would be irrelevant.
Is there a civil war? Some elements of civil war certainly exist. The mass of the Catholic population is completely alienated from the state and gives passive, and in some cases active support to guerrilla actions. Nevertheless it falls well short of the situation where military considerations are of first importance. The situation is a complicated one in which guerrilla attacks and civil disobedience on a large scale occur, whilst the majority of the working class – the Protestants – oppose the national struggle. The question is what is a socialist perspective in those circumstances.
The line of our organisation – which is the application of the theory of permanent revolution to Ireland – is that the overthrow of imperialism in Ireland – North or South) is impossible except on the basis of a mass movement with a revolutionary socialist leadership. Therefore the need is for the development of a revolutionary party which can struggle for the support of the working class on a thirty-two county basis. That is why we support the Socialist Workers Movement, In the six-counties the hold of the Orange-Tories on the majority of the workers cannot be broken until a sizeable working class organisation already exists on a thirty-two county basis, and is seen to be as hostile to the Green Tories as to the Orange ones. The activities of the two IRA’s have to be judged in the light of this perspective. It is interesting to note here that the NILP is wedded to the British LP and the imperial connexion, while the SDLP is tied to Lynch’s green tory coat-tails. For marxists the only present hope, small though it may be, is the SWM.
The defense of the Catholic community against governmental terrorism helps this development by challenging the power of the state and thus raising the possibility of its destruction. Defence, of course, includes the necessary measures against informers and agents of the state.
The bombing campaign hinders the development by strengthening the ties of the Orange workers to Stormont. And it deflects the Catholic working class militants by giving then a false perspective and activity.
Of course there are those who have, in practise, written off the Protestants i.e., the majority of the working class. For them ‘Victory to the IRA’ is all that is left. It leads, logically enough, to a new partition of the six counties and an implicit acceptance of the ‘Two Nations’ theory. It also leads to the postponement of any successful struggle against imperialism, in the north and the South, to the indefinite future. It is the counsel of despair.
Conclusion
‘Unconditional but critical support for all those, including both IRAs, fighting imperialism in Ireland. By unconditional we mean support regardless of our criticism of the leadership and tactics. By critical we mean opposing the sowing of illusions that the struggle can finally be won except by the victory of the working class fighting on a programme of social as well as national liberation’. (Socialist Worker editorial, 12th February).
Duncan Hallas Jim Higgins
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>A secular-democratic state</h1>
<h3>(July 1996)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Workers Liberty</strong>, No.33, July 1996.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">It is always a pleasure to see Sean Matgamna in full spate and my enjoyment of his piece, <em>Paul Foot philo-semite</em> (<strong>WL</strong> 32) was abutted only by the fear that he might do himself an injury under the weight of all that heavy irony. What a spiffing wheeze, Sean must have thought, to belabour Footie with Hillaire Belloc, because one thing is sure, whatever Foot’s prejudices may happen to be, Belloc was a brass-bound and copper-bottomed anti-semite, the author of the lines: “How odd of God, to choose the Jews.”</p>
<p>Now I have not read, and I hope I do not have to, the Paul Foot article that has so aroused Sean’s rage, but I assume that it is anti-Zionist and that it sees the state of Israel as the single greatest barrier to socialism and peace in the region. If that is the case then Paul Foot has adopted, in this case if no other, the only tenable position for a Marxist.</p>
<p>There used to be a man, I do not know if he is still alive, called Pat Sloan. He was for many years the secretary of the British Soviet Friendship Society. If anyone suggested in the press that Joe Stalin had smelly feet or Molotov was “old stone bottom”, Pat would write in to say that he personally owned two pairs of Stalin’s socks, and they glowed in the dark, suffusing his bedroom with a perfumed aroma like Chanel No.5. As to Molotov, his bum was in fact made of the finest Ferrara marble, which like aeroplanes, cars, TV and the air-conditioned pogo-stick had been invented in Russia. Sean on Israel puts me very much in mind of Pat Sloan in full apologia mode.</p>
<p>Let us take the question of the expulsion of a million Arabs from their homes. Sean says, “In fact Israel was proclaimed in May 1948, in territory allotted by the United Nations, without any Arabs being expelled. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs did flee – the great majority not expelled – after Arab states with the backing, naturally enough, of the Palestinian Arabs, invaded Israel.” In this case Sean is guilty of exactly that which he accuses Foot, distorting history.</p>
<p>As a result of a plan conceived in January 1948, the Irgun Zvai Leumi bombarded Jaffa for three days, Haganah attacked the Arab community in Jerusalem, and on the 9th April the Irgun and the, fascist trained, Stern Gang attacked the Arab village of Deir Yassin, killing in cold blood 254 men, women and children. It was news of these massacres which set the Arab refugees on the move and it was their land expropriation that enabled the Zionists to increase their share of the partitioned state by 45% before the UN resolution was even passed. In 1948 the Arab armies, apart from a few Egyptian troops, all fought on Arab land.</p>
<p>In a sense, the detailing of who did what to whom is not very productive. What the Arabs did to Jews in 1929, and on several other occasions, or what Jews did to Arabs in 1948 and have done consistently ever since, suggests an equality between Arabs and Jews that does not exist. It suggests that they were acting as in a vacuum. It really was not like that.</p>
<p>From the very beginning of the Zionist movement, its leaders attempted to get the support of powerful backers. Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, tried unsuccessfully to approach the German Kaiser and the Sultan of Turkey. After his death, Weitzman had a first meeting with Arthur Balfour in 1906, that bore fruit in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Balfour was not only giving away a land already occupied by Palestinians, but also was effectively disposing of the spoils of a war that had yet to be won.</p>
<p>Weitzman, however, had chosen wisely, and a Jewish population that had stood at 130,000 in 1914 under the British increased by half a million by 1939. Naturally enough, this represented no great British sympathy for Jews – Balfour was in fact an anti-semite – it <em>did</em> represent a useful counter-balance to the Arabs and made it easier to control Palestine which was important strategically for its proximity to the Suez Canal and as a vital link for the sea route and air routes to India and the East. Oil from Iraq flowed through the pipeline to Haifa, which was known as the Singapore of the Middle East.</p>
<p>Throughout the 1920s and 1930s British imperialism put on a virtuoso performance of divide and rule. They blew up Arab houses, they demolished villages to punish “collective guilt”, established concentration camps, which they justified on the basis of protecting Jews and Jewish property. On the other hand the British would turn off the immigration tap to punish Jews and reward Arabs. Any sign of Arab-Jewish rapprochement would be met by a solid alliance of Arab feudalists, Zionists and the British administration.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the war in 1939, the Zionists recognised that Britain was in decline and that America was a much more powerful patron. America in its turn sought to replace Britain as the power in the Middle east; Zionism was a useful weapon in this project.</p>
<p>The role that Israel has played in the Middle East was nicely summed up by the editor of the Israeli daily paper, <strong>Ha’aretz</strong>, when he explained in 1951: “Israel has been given a role not unlike a watchdog. One need not fear that it will exercise an aggressive policy toward the Arab states if their will contradicts the interests of the USA and Britain. But should the west prefer for one reason or another to close its eyes one can rely on Israel to punish severely those of the neighbouring states whose lack of manners towards the west has exceeded the proper limits.”</p>
<p>Israel has certainly lived up to its promise to punish those failing to show proper respect and in the process has taken on more and more of its neighbours’ territory. Of course, they have learnt, like other invaders before them, that it is not always easy to keep the natives quiet, even if you pursue a humanitarian Rabin policy and just break the arms of stone throwing children.</p>
<p>Sean makes much of Tony Cliff’s 70th birthday statement; “I used to argue that poor Jewish refugees should be allowed to come to Palestine ... that was an unqualified compromise ...” To which Sean responds: “Think about it. What is he saying here but that, if countries like Britain and the US could not be persuaded to let Jews in, then it would have been better that they were left to the mercy of Hitler that that they should go to Palestine?”</p>
<p>There is, however, a slight problem here, because at the Bermuda Committee in 1943 Roosevelt suggested that all barriers be lifted for the immigration of Jews from Nazi persecution. To avoid offending British sensibilities Palestine was excluded from consideration. Zionist reaction was immediate and hostile, alleviation of Jewish misery was to be in Palestine or not at all. As Dr Silver told the 22nd World Zionist Congress: “Zionism is not an immigration or refugee movement, but a movement to re-establish the Jewish state for a Jewish nation in the land of Israel. The classic textbook of Zionism is not how to find a home for the refugees. The classic textbook of our movement is the Jewish state.” You cannot get much clearer than that.</p>
<p>Hal Draper, a Marxist with some prestige in <strong>Workers’ Liberty</strong> circles, records: “Morris Ernst, the famous civil rights lawyer, has told me the story about how the Zionist leaders exerted their influence to make sure that the US did not open up immigration (into the US) to these Jews – for the simple reason that they wanted to herd these Jews to Palestine.”</p>
<p>Sean quite correctly it seems to me, says the answer is the unity of Arab and Jewish workers. He then goes on to spoil it by suggesting they then set up separate states. What kind of states are these? Is there a mini-Palestine on a bit of the West Bank, plus the Gaza Strip, or has Sean got some complicated scheme for population exchange? Surely, what is needed is a secular Arab-Jewish state based on socialism and democracy in all of Palestine.</p>
<p>Paul Foot, of course, can speak for himself, it is his favourite subject, but there is nothing manifestly anti-semitic in the points Sean attributes to him. Indeed what is strange about Sean’s piece is the absence of any mention of the role of British and American imperialism in the Middle East. There is nothing Stalinist in a recognition of Israel’s client status to American imperialism. Nor is there anything anti-semitic in recognising that a Zionist state smack in the middle of the region is the greatest enemy of peace and socialism for all Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
A secular-democratic state
(July 1996)
From Workers Liberty, No.33, July 1996.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
It is always a pleasure to see Sean Matgamna in full spate and my enjoyment of his piece, Paul Foot philo-semite (WL 32) was abutted only by the fear that he might do himself an injury under the weight of all that heavy irony. What a spiffing wheeze, Sean must have thought, to belabour Footie with Hillaire Belloc, because one thing is sure, whatever Foot’s prejudices may happen to be, Belloc was a brass-bound and copper-bottomed anti-semite, the author of the lines: “How odd of God, to choose the Jews.”
Now I have not read, and I hope I do not have to, the Paul Foot article that has so aroused Sean’s rage, but I assume that it is anti-Zionist and that it sees the state of Israel as the single greatest barrier to socialism and peace in the region. If that is the case then Paul Foot has adopted, in this case if no other, the only tenable position for a Marxist.
There used to be a man, I do not know if he is still alive, called Pat Sloan. He was for many years the secretary of the British Soviet Friendship Society. If anyone suggested in the press that Joe Stalin had smelly feet or Molotov was “old stone bottom”, Pat would write in to say that he personally owned two pairs of Stalin’s socks, and they glowed in the dark, suffusing his bedroom with a perfumed aroma like Chanel No.5. As to Molotov, his bum was in fact made of the finest Ferrara marble, which like aeroplanes, cars, TV and the air-conditioned pogo-stick had been invented in Russia. Sean on Israel puts me very much in mind of Pat Sloan in full apologia mode.
Let us take the question of the expulsion of a million Arabs from their homes. Sean says, “In fact Israel was proclaimed in May 1948, in territory allotted by the United Nations, without any Arabs being expelled. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs did flee – the great majority not expelled – after Arab states with the backing, naturally enough, of the Palestinian Arabs, invaded Israel.” In this case Sean is guilty of exactly that which he accuses Foot, distorting history.
As a result of a plan conceived in January 1948, the Irgun Zvai Leumi bombarded Jaffa for three days, Haganah attacked the Arab community in Jerusalem, and on the 9th April the Irgun and the, fascist trained, Stern Gang attacked the Arab village of Deir Yassin, killing in cold blood 254 men, women and children. It was news of these massacres which set the Arab refugees on the move and it was their land expropriation that enabled the Zionists to increase their share of the partitioned state by 45% before the UN resolution was even passed. In 1948 the Arab armies, apart from a few Egyptian troops, all fought on Arab land.
In a sense, the detailing of who did what to whom is not very productive. What the Arabs did to Jews in 1929, and on several other occasions, or what Jews did to Arabs in 1948 and have done consistently ever since, suggests an equality between Arabs and Jews that does not exist. It suggests that they were acting as in a vacuum. It really was not like that.
From the very beginning of the Zionist movement, its leaders attempted to get the support of powerful backers. Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, tried unsuccessfully to approach the German Kaiser and the Sultan of Turkey. After his death, Weitzman had a first meeting with Arthur Balfour in 1906, that bore fruit in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration for a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Balfour was not only giving away a land already occupied by Palestinians, but also was effectively disposing of the spoils of a war that had yet to be won.
Weitzman, however, had chosen wisely, and a Jewish population that had stood at 130,000 in 1914 under the British increased by half a million by 1939. Naturally enough, this represented no great British sympathy for Jews – Balfour was in fact an anti-semite – it did represent a useful counter-balance to the Arabs and made it easier to control Palestine which was important strategically for its proximity to the Suez Canal and as a vital link for the sea route and air routes to India and the East. Oil from Iraq flowed through the pipeline to Haifa, which was known as the Singapore of the Middle East.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s British imperialism put on a virtuoso performance of divide and rule. They blew up Arab houses, they demolished villages to punish “collective guilt”, established concentration camps, which they justified on the basis of protecting Jews and Jewish property. On the other hand the British would turn off the immigration tap to punish Jews and reward Arabs. Any sign of Arab-Jewish rapprochement would be met by a solid alliance of Arab feudalists, Zionists and the British administration.
At the beginning of the war in 1939, the Zionists recognised that Britain was in decline and that America was a much more powerful patron. America in its turn sought to replace Britain as the power in the Middle east; Zionism was a useful weapon in this project.
The role that Israel has played in the Middle East was nicely summed up by the editor of the Israeli daily paper, Ha’aretz, when he explained in 1951: “Israel has been given a role not unlike a watchdog. One need not fear that it will exercise an aggressive policy toward the Arab states if their will contradicts the interests of the USA and Britain. But should the west prefer for one reason or another to close its eyes one can rely on Israel to punish severely those of the neighbouring states whose lack of manners towards the west has exceeded the proper limits.”
Israel has certainly lived up to its promise to punish those failing to show proper respect and in the process has taken on more and more of its neighbours’ territory. Of course, they have learnt, like other invaders before them, that it is not always easy to keep the natives quiet, even if you pursue a humanitarian Rabin policy and just break the arms of stone throwing children.
Sean makes much of Tony Cliff’s 70th birthday statement; “I used to argue that poor Jewish refugees should be allowed to come to Palestine ... that was an unqualified compromise ...” To which Sean responds: “Think about it. What is he saying here but that, if countries like Britain and the US could not be persuaded to let Jews in, then it would have been better that they were left to the mercy of Hitler that that they should go to Palestine?”
There is, however, a slight problem here, because at the Bermuda Committee in 1943 Roosevelt suggested that all barriers be lifted for the immigration of Jews from Nazi persecution. To avoid offending British sensibilities Palestine was excluded from consideration. Zionist reaction was immediate and hostile, alleviation of Jewish misery was to be in Palestine or not at all. As Dr Silver told the 22nd World Zionist Congress: “Zionism is not an immigration or refugee movement, but a movement to re-establish the Jewish state for a Jewish nation in the land of Israel. The classic textbook of Zionism is not how to find a home for the refugees. The classic textbook of our movement is the Jewish state.” You cannot get much clearer than that.
Hal Draper, a Marxist with some prestige in Workers’ Liberty circles, records: “Morris Ernst, the famous civil rights lawyer, has told me the story about how the Zionist leaders exerted their influence to make sure that the US did not open up immigration (into the US) to these Jews – for the simple reason that they wanted to herd these Jews to Palestine.”
Sean quite correctly it seems to me, says the answer is the unity of Arab and Jewish workers. He then goes on to spoil it by suggesting they then set up separate states. What kind of states are these? Is there a mini-Palestine on a bit of the West Bank, plus the Gaza Strip, or has Sean got some complicated scheme for population exchange? Surely, what is needed is a secular Arab-Jewish state based on socialism and democracy in all of Palestine.
Paul Foot, of course, can speak for himself, it is his favourite subject, but there is nothing manifestly anti-semitic in the points Sean attributes to him. Indeed what is strange about Sean’s piece is the absence of any mention of the role of British and American imperialism in the Middle East. There is nothing Stalinist in a recognition of Israel’s client status to American imperialism. Nor is there anything anti-semitic in recognising that a Zionist state smack in the middle of the region is the greatest enemy of peace and socialism for all Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h4>Communist congress</h4>
<h1>Pale-pink Reds</h1>
<h3>(November 1975)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 22 November 1975, p.661.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The Communist Party of Great Britain has this week been holding its congress, an event which takes place every other year. In the sense that the content of the resolutions, not to mention the speeches, has a certain sameness from one meeting to another, it could be argued that two years is too frequent. But, like every other party with pretensions – and which of them has no pretensions – it is necessary at regular intervals to gather together the faithful, to enthuse them with a new understanding and vigour for the old line of policy.</p>
<p>A few things have changed, however, over the last few years. In the early years of the party it was one of the most slavish, if most unsuccessful, adherents to anything emanating from the Kremlin. No twist and turn of Stalin’s policy was enunciated without being greeted by the CPGB, as a work of consummate genius. That is until 1956, when jolly old Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and “the cult of the individual”. The subsequent turmoil in the international Communist movement was nowhere more damaging than in Britain. Thousands left the party in disgust. Worse – the old attitude of unswerving loyalty to party directives was lost. The monolith cracked and it has proved impossible to mend. Nowadays, with a proper and slightly apologetic politeness, the British comrades will occasionally criticise the Russians. In 1968 they criticised the invasion of Czechoslovakia, this year they criticise the treatment of the Russian dissidents. “Anti-marxist ideas”, they say, “should be handled by political debate and not by administrative measures.” Translated from the jargon this means people who disagree should not be put in jail.</p>
<p>Of course these genuflexions to the liberal conscience are not achieved unanimously. At each stage the residual Stalinists, led by Sid French of the Surrey District, attempt to remove all criticism of the Socialist motherland. They are always unsuccessful.</p>
<p>But these few high points of marginal disagreement do not seriously alter the well-disciplined course of CP congresses. The comrade delegates are not as young as they used to be, and age brings with it the compensation of lowered expectations. Without too much hope they wish to halt the decline in the circulation of the <strong>Morning Star</strong> (1,600 down since 1973), to increase party membership and best of all, please, to have a Communist MP or two. A far cry from the revolutionary hopes of 1926.</p>
<p>Of some interest this year, was to compare the performance of the new Gcneral Secretary, Gordon MacLennan, with that of his predecessor John Gollan. It can be said without fear of contradiction, that Mr MacLennan delivers his speeches much better than did Mr Gollan. In every other respect they are the same type of faceless bureaucrat. Those of us with memories of Harry Pollitt and Willie Gallacher can only conclude: they don’t make communists like that any more.</p>
<p>But to see the party as a collection of aging hacks without hope or a future would be a mistake. Industrially the Communists are still the most powerful organised force on the left. With some difficulty and some creaking of joints they can, when the occasion demands it, bring out the cadre for the big set piece demonstration, or organise a significant presence in union elections. In his report to the Congress Mr McLennan set out the perspective of a developing mass movement around the questions of unemployment, social service cuts, higher wages and pensions. On wages though there is a certain softening. The £6 limit received little attention in the pre-congress material, and little more in MacLennan’s speech The problem here is the difficulty of taking on such powerful figures as Jack Jones who, on most other questions is considered a bit of a left-winger. Communist policy for years has been to snuggle up close to the more successful Labour left trade union leaders. In terms of reciprocal tolerance for communists within these unions, the policy has not been without benefits for individual party members. In many unions the leading official’s use of some socialist rhetoric has been sufficient to still the most turbulent Communist on the executive council.</p>
<p>On the direct political questions the CP stands behind the Tribune group in Parliament. Import controls loom very large, further nationalisation, a prices and rents freeze. Interestingly enough in previous times the labour left used, in general, to take its political line from the Communist Party, today the situation is reversed. This political weakness is not accidental. Since 1951, when Joe Stalin approved the party programme. <strong>The Socialist Road for Britain</strong>, there has been a heavy emphasis on electoral politics. The notion of a Labour government, with a group of Communist MPs, has been the consummation they so devoutly wished for. Inevitably such a policy requires an element of tailing the left of the parliamentary Labour Party and a diminution of the industrial work where the main Communist strength lies. This contradiction is one that has never been resolved and the pre-occupation with elections has caused a fair amount of simmering discontent among the industrial members. That is a matter of some concern for the hierarchy. There exist revolutionary groups ready and willing to recruit the most militant CP workers.</p>
<p>Mr MacLennan has to perform a balancing act that maintains the democratic electoral image that makes possible united front activity with the Tribunite and trade union left-wingers. At the same time he must keep the industrial party members satisfied and avoid being outflanked on the left. Whether he is capable of this is a matter of some doubt. Failure now, when according to the Marxist canon “the objective conditions are ripe for revolutionary advance” will consign both him and his party to that great dustbin of history.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Communist congress
Pale-pink Reds
(November 1975)
From the Spectator, 22 November 1975, p.661.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Communist Party of Great Britain has this week been holding its congress, an event which takes place every other year. In the sense that the content of the resolutions, not to mention the speeches, has a certain sameness from one meeting to another, it could be argued that two years is too frequent. But, like every other party with pretensions – and which of them has no pretensions – it is necessary at regular intervals to gather together the faithful, to enthuse them with a new understanding and vigour for the old line of policy.
A few things have changed, however, over the last few years. In the early years of the party it was one of the most slavish, if most unsuccessful, adherents to anything emanating from the Kremlin. No twist and turn of Stalin’s policy was enunciated without being greeted by the CPGB, as a work of consummate genius. That is until 1956, when jolly old Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and “the cult of the individual”. The subsequent turmoil in the international Communist movement was nowhere more damaging than in Britain. Thousands left the party in disgust. Worse – the old attitude of unswerving loyalty to party directives was lost. The monolith cracked and it has proved impossible to mend. Nowadays, with a proper and slightly apologetic politeness, the British comrades will occasionally criticise the Russians. In 1968 they criticised the invasion of Czechoslovakia, this year they criticise the treatment of the Russian dissidents. “Anti-marxist ideas”, they say, “should be handled by political debate and not by administrative measures.” Translated from the jargon this means people who disagree should not be put in jail.
Of course these genuflexions to the liberal conscience are not achieved unanimously. At each stage the residual Stalinists, led by Sid French of the Surrey District, attempt to remove all criticism of the Socialist motherland. They are always unsuccessful.
But these few high points of marginal disagreement do not seriously alter the well-disciplined course of CP congresses. The comrade delegates are not as young as they used to be, and age brings with it the compensation of lowered expectations. Without too much hope they wish to halt the decline in the circulation of the Morning Star (1,600 down since 1973), to increase party membership and best of all, please, to have a Communist MP or two. A far cry from the revolutionary hopes of 1926.
Of some interest this year, was to compare the performance of the new Gcneral Secretary, Gordon MacLennan, with that of his predecessor John Gollan. It can be said without fear of contradiction, that Mr MacLennan delivers his speeches much better than did Mr Gollan. In every other respect they are the same type of faceless bureaucrat. Those of us with memories of Harry Pollitt and Willie Gallacher can only conclude: they don’t make communists like that any more.
But to see the party as a collection of aging hacks without hope or a future would be a mistake. Industrially the Communists are still the most powerful organised force on the left. With some difficulty and some creaking of joints they can, when the occasion demands it, bring out the cadre for the big set piece demonstration, or organise a significant presence in union elections. In his report to the Congress Mr McLennan set out the perspective of a developing mass movement around the questions of unemployment, social service cuts, higher wages and pensions. On wages though there is a certain softening. The £6 limit received little attention in the pre-congress material, and little more in MacLennan’s speech The problem here is the difficulty of taking on such powerful figures as Jack Jones who, on most other questions is considered a bit of a left-winger. Communist policy for years has been to snuggle up close to the more successful Labour left trade union leaders. In terms of reciprocal tolerance for communists within these unions, the policy has not been without benefits for individual party members. In many unions the leading official’s use of some socialist rhetoric has been sufficient to still the most turbulent Communist on the executive council.
On the direct political questions the CP stands behind the Tribune group in Parliament. Import controls loom very large, further nationalisation, a prices and rents freeze. Interestingly enough in previous times the labour left used, in general, to take its political line from the Communist Party, today the situation is reversed. This political weakness is not accidental. Since 1951, when Joe Stalin approved the party programme. The Socialist Road for Britain, there has been a heavy emphasis on electoral politics. The notion of a Labour government, with a group of Communist MPs, has been the consummation they so devoutly wished for. Inevitably such a policy requires an element of tailing the left of the parliamentary Labour Party and a diminution of the industrial work where the main Communist strength lies. This contradiction is one that has never been resolved and the pre-occupation with elections has caused a fair amount of simmering discontent among the industrial members. That is a matter of some concern for the hierarchy. There exist revolutionary groups ready and willing to recruit the most militant CP workers.
Mr MacLennan has to perform a balancing act that maintains the democratic electoral image that makes possible united front activity with the Tribunite and trade union left-wingers. At the same time he must keep the industrial party members satisfied and avoid being outflanked on the left. Whether he is capable of this is a matter of some doubt. Failure now, when according to the Marxist canon “the objective conditions are ripe for revolutionary advance” will consign both him and his party to that great dustbin of history.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Morning Star</h1>
<h3>(April 1969)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj036" target="new">No. 36</a>, April–May 1969, pp. 40–41.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>History of the Communist Party of Great Britain: Vol. 1 Formation and Early Years 1919–1924</strong><br>
James Klugman<br>
<em>Lawrence and Wishart, 63s.</em></p>
<p class="fst">The Communist Party is a strange organisation. In the face of all the evidence it maintained for years an image of super efficiency and political industrial militancy. Since the early 1920’s its consistency has only been shown in a dreadful succession of mistakes and unprincipled political manoeuvres. From its policy in the General Strike; through loyal adherence to Stalin’s “third period social fascism”, into the sickening phase of the Popular front, support for the Molotov-Hitler pact, rapidly succeeded by hysterical support for the Churchill coalition, on to the post-war quietism, a brief burst of cold-war induced militancy to end up, reduced in numbers irreparably damaged in spirit by Hungary, the Sino-Soviet dispute and now Czechoslovakia, in the present mad scramble for respectability and the appearance of independent thought.</p>
<p>It was not always like this. The early CP was a small organisation but it contained most of the best elements of the British Marxist movement. It carried with it the reflected prestige of the October revolution and it was born into a period of large scale radicalisation of working-class people. That it bore the sectarian weaknesses, in some measure, of its constituent organisations, is true; but organisations do not grow out of thin air and will inevitably contain elements of past associations. The trick in any unification is to set the programmatic framework in which the sectarian weaknesses can be seen and overcome. The infant CP had the framework – the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism – and it had the nucleus of working class militants and intellectuals that would have enabled them to build a revolutionary party. That it did not happen is one of the tragedies of the British socialist movement.</p>
<p>To grow and develop a revolutionary organisation must make its own mistakes and learn from the difficulties it experiences through the pursuit of its policies. The CPGB in compounding the errors of the Comintern Bureaucracy denied itself any possibility of meaningful interaction with the British working-class experience. The very real insight into the nature of the TU bureaucrats, both ‘left and right’ varieties, that the pre-war syndicalists had popularised was ignored in favour of the Russian directed policy of the Anglo-Russian Committee – a policy that had no relevance to British struggle but a great relevance to the supposed interests of Russian foreign policy. The net result was a quite un-Leninist handing over of the initiative to the general Council of the TUC. A revolutionary party will frequently make all sorts of agreements and accommodations with other working-class organisations but it cannot hold such agreements to be more important than interests of the working-class. The slogan of “All Power to the General Council” except as the practical application of Soviet diplomacy can never be correct for a serious Communist Party and displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the trade union leadership.</p>
<p>The fatuity of the Anglo Russian committee policy was to be multiplied one hundred-fold in the later shifts and turns dictated by the Russian apparatus but it is perhaps in this fundamental error that the seeds of the future destruction were sown. None of this, of course, comes out in James Klugman’s book on the early years of the CP. Official histories are usually dull and this is no exception. The problem writing about the youth of the party from the very heart of its senility is one that Klugman cannot overcome. The present day preoccupation with elections means that a quite unreal emphasis is given to a minor feature of the party’s activity in the early years. It is of course a matter of some pleasure to note that Philips Price increased his vote in 1923 by 3.25% over his vote in 1922 and it is even more intriguing to find in a footnote that Philips Price was, “not fully Communist in 1922”. I have a mental picture of the faceless 3.25% holding back until Philips Price takes the plunge and becomes “fully Communist”. It would be however unfair to say that Klugman maintains the standard of untruthfulness that makes his earlier work, <strong>From Trotsky to Tito</strong>, one of the outstandingly nauseating examples of Stalinist falsification. In so far as one can judge without looking up a load of obscure references , the story is told with reasonable respect for historical fact and this is perhaps because the years 1919 to 1924 contain less to cover up than any subsequent five years of party history. Indeed it is interesting to note that the fiction, maintained for years, that Willie Gallagher was the first Communist MP has now been abandoned for the simple truth that Walton Newbold beat Gallagher to this distinction by a good thirteen years and so became an unperson for thirty-five years while Gallagher grew old and feeble in strict time with the party until the day of his death.</p>
<p>One of the more interesting and significant of Communist activity of the early years was the formation of the minority movement but in Klugman’s scale of historical value this merits only the sketchiest exposition of its programme and influence while the labour party merits page after page of fairly tedious detailing of its (The Labour Party) relations with the CP. Despite the strong impression that Klugman wrote the book with the blunt end of a bread pudding occasionally the real life of the movement breaks through. It has been a long time since any CP paper has printed anything like the <em>Open letter to the Fighting Forces</em> by J.R. Campbell:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen ... the Communist Party calls on you to begin the task of not only organising passive resistance when war is declared, or when an industrial dispute involves you but to definitely and categorically let it be known that, neither in the class war, nor a military war will you turn your guns on your fellow workers, but instead will line up with your fellow workers in attack upon the exploiters and capitalists, and will use your arms on the side of your own class ... form Committees in every barracks, aerodrome and ship ... refuse to shoot down your fellow workers.</p>
<p class="quote">Refuse to fight for profits.</p>
<p class="quote">Turn your weapons on your oppressors.</p>
<p class="fst">As a direct result of the Labour Government’s decision not to prosecute Campbell for this splendidly seditious piece the Liberals withdrew their support for labour and the Government fell. This was the first and – if present indications are any guide – the last Government the CPGB will bring down even by accident.</p>
<p>The book contains several new pictures of the vintage years. I am particularly pleased to report that there is a picture of Albert Inkpin (General Secretary from the formation to 1929), a man I had despaired of ever seeing even in a photograph. There is also a very fine picture of the delegates to the Leeds conference of the party. All the comrades are gathered in their serried ranks, both male and female, in front of a butchers shop. In the window of the shop is a notice bearing the legend “These prime bullocks and heifers”. Could it be that the photographer was some kind of premature Trotsky-Fascist. Well there it is the pictures are good, there are no jokes at all, the election results are if out of date comprehensive and the price is three guineas. I know it’s a lot of money but where else would you get such a fine likeness of Albert Inkpin.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Morning Star
(April 1969)
From International Socialism (1st series), No. 36, April–May 1969, pp. 40–41.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
History of the Communist Party of Great Britain: Vol. 1 Formation and Early Years 1919–1924
James Klugman
Lawrence and Wishart, 63s.
The Communist Party is a strange organisation. In the face of all the evidence it maintained for years an image of super efficiency and political industrial militancy. Since the early 1920’s its consistency has only been shown in a dreadful succession of mistakes and unprincipled political manoeuvres. From its policy in the General Strike; through loyal adherence to Stalin’s “third period social fascism”, into the sickening phase of the Popular front, support for the Molotov-Hitler pact, rapidly succeeded by hysterical support for the Churchill coalition, on to the post-war quietism, a brief burst of cold-war induced militancy to end up, reduced in numbers irreparably damaged in spirit by Hungary, the Sino-Soviet dispute and now Czechoslovakia, in the present mad scramble for respectability and the appearance of independent thought.
It was not always like this. The early CP was a small organisation but it contained most of the best elements of the British Marxist movement. It carried with it the reflected prestige of the October revolution and it was born into a period of large scale radicalisation of working-class people. That it bore the sectarian weaknesses, in some measure, of its constituent organisations, is true; but organisations do not grow out of thin air and will inevitably contain elements of past associations. The trick in any unification is to set the programmatic framework in which the sectarian weaknesses can be seen and overcome. The infant CP had the framework – the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism – and it had the nucleus of working class militants and intellectuals that would have enabled them to build a revolutionary party. That it did not happen is one of the tragedies of the British socialist movement.
To grow and develop a revolutionary organisation must make its own mistakes and learn from the difficulties it experiences through the pursuit of its policies. The CPGB in compounding the errors of the Comintern Bureaucracy denied itself any possibility of meaningful interaction with the British working-class experience. The very real insight into the nature of the TU bureaucrats, both ‘left and right’ varieties, that the pre-war syndicalists had popularised was ignored in favour of the Russian directed policy of the Anglo-Russian Committee – a policy that had no relevance to British struggle but a great relevance to the supposed interests of Russian foreign policy. The net result was a quite un-Leninist handing over of the initiative to the general Council of the TUC. A revolutionary party will frequently make all sorts of agreements and accommodations with other working-class organisations but it cannot hold such agreements to be more important than interests of the working-class. The slogan of “All Power to the General Council” except as the practical application of Soviet diplomacy can never be correct for a serious Communist Party and displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the trade union leadership.
The fatuity of the Anglo Russian committee policy was to be multiplied one hundred-fold in the later shifts and turns dictated by the Russian apparatus but it is perhaps in this fundamental error that the seeds of the future destruction were sown. None of this, of course, comes out in James Klugman’s book on the early years of the CP. Official histories are usually dull and this is no exception. The problem writing about the youth of the party from the very heart of its senility is one that Klugman cannot overcome. The present day preoccupation with elections means that a quite unreal emphasis is given to a minor feature of the party’s activity in the early years. It is of course a matter of some pleasure to note that Philips Price increased his vote in 1923 by 3.25% over his vote in 1922 and it is even more intriguing to find in a footnote that Philips Price was, “not fully Communist in 1922”. I have a mental picture of the faceless 3.25% holding back until Philips Price takes the plunge and becomes “fully Communist”. It would be however unfair to say that Klugman maintains the standard of untruthfulness that makes his earlier work, From Trotsky to Tito, one of the outstandingly nauseating examples of Stalinist falsification. In so far as one can judge without looking up a load of obscure references , the story is told with reasonable respect for historical fact and this is perhaps because the years 1919 to 1924 contain less to cover up than any subsequent five years of party history. Indeed it is interesting to note that the fiction, maintained for years, that Willie Gallagher was the first Communist MP has now been abandoned for the simple truth that Walton Newbold beat Gallagher to this distinction by a good thirteen years and so became an unperson for thirty-five years while Gallagher grew old and feeble in strict time with the party until the day of his death.
One of the more interesting and significant of Communist activity of the early years was the formation of the minority movement but in Klugman’s scale of historical value this merits only the sketchiest exposition of its programme and influence while the labour party merits page after page of fairly tedious detailing of its (The Labour Party) relations with the CP. Despite the strong impression that Klugman wrote the book with the blunt end of a bread pudding occasionally the real life of the movement breaks through. It has been a long time since any CP paper has printed anything like the Open letter to the Fighting Forces by J.R. Campbell:
Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen ... the Communist Party calls on you to begin the task of not only organising passive resistance when war is declared, or when an industrial dispute involves you but to definitely and categorically let it be known that, neither in the class war, nor a military war will you turn your guns on your fellow workers, but instead will line up with your fellow workers in attack upon the exploiters and capitalists, and will use your arms on the side of your own class ... form Committees in every barracks, aerodrome and ship ... refuse to shoot down your fellow workers.
Refuse to fight for profits.
Turn your weapons on your oppressors.
As a direct result of the Labour Government’s decision not to prosecute Campbell for this splendidly seditious piece the Liberals withdrew their support for labour and the Government fell. This was the first and – if present indications are any guide – the last Government the CPGB will bring down even by accident.
The book contains several new pictures of the vintage years. I am particularly pleased to report that there is a picture of Albert Inkpin (General Secretary from the formation to 1929), a man I had despaired of ever seeing even in a photograph. There is also a very fine picture of the delegates to the Leeds conference of the party. All the comrades are gathered in their serried ranks, both male and female, in front of a butchers shop. In the window of the shop is a notice bearing the legend “These prime bullocks and heifers”. Could it be that the photographer was some kind of premature Trotsky-Fascist. Well there it is the pictures are good, there are no jokes at all, the election results are if out of date comprehensive and the price is three guineas. I know it’s a lot of money but where else would you get such a fine likeness of Albert Inkpin.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<table align="center" width="80%">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h1><small>It’s time to give left-wing democracy the deodorant treatment</small></h1>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(April 1976)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">Originally published in <strong>Workers News</strong>, No.3, April 1976. <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a><br>
Reprinted in <strong>Workers Action</strong>, Dec 2002.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">If there is one statement that will receive general assent among most gatherings of workers it is ‘politics stink’. When this generalised point of view is directed to the parliamentary parties most left-wing socialists would not dissent.</p>
<p>But similar epithets and ripe descriptive utterances are applied to the Communist Party and to other left groups.</p>
<p>It is an unpalatable fact but a fact nonetheless that the accelerating disenchantment with conventional British politics is not accompanied by noticeable enthusiasm for any left alternative. On the contrary, the left has declined both in influence and numbers in strict time with the growing crisis of parliamentary politics and capitalist economy.</p>
<p>Now this is strange. It has always been assumed in the left movement that a decline in capitalism and the consequent difficulties of capitalist politics would be the opportunity for a major advance of the extra-parliamentary left.</p>
<p>Of course, it is possible to point to a number of difficulties. Increasing unemployment reduces the combativity of the workers: the complete abdication of their defensive role by the trade union leadership: and the small forces of the revolutionary left – all can be brought forward as reasons for lack of growth. While these arguments are true, in general, they still beg more questions than they answer.</p>
<p>Why is it, for example, that the left, which in the years up to 1974 had an unparalleled – in their terms – growth, has not been able to exert much greater pressure within the unions against the collaboration of the leadership with anti-working class policies. Why has it been unable to retain all of the workers who joined in the heady days of the Heath administration?</p>
<p>The answers to these and other pointed questions will trip lightly and with great facility off the tongues of the spokesmen for any of the left groups. If there is one thing they have perfected it is the production of excuses. Some of them might even be true.</p>
<p>That last sentence was not written in any spirit of cynicism but it was written deliberately. Too often the statements of various revolutionary groups are produced to obscure rather than to reveal the truth.</p>
<p>This is done in several ways, the most common being the resort to a form of ‘marxese’ that only the initiated can understand. Meaning and reality are drowned in a clotted form that cannot be dignified by the word prose.</p>
<p>More seriously, and in a way that is both deceptive and self-deceiving, each of the groups develops a theory of the world that sets its own organisation at the centre of the universe and then proceeds to rearrange the geography to take account of the shift.</p>
<p>Most frequently this is accompanied by a species of hysterical party loyalty that would have been welcomed by the medieval Catholic church. Such a spectacle is both distasteful and incomprehensible to workers unfamiliar with the phenomenon.</p>
<p>Even more distressing is the fact that many workers who are aware of the revolutionary left have a shrewd suspicion that the groups are manipulative, untruthful and undemocratic. All too frequently such critics are right. Militant workers may despise Labour’s truckling to capitalism, they may dislike the Communist Party’s reformist politics but they also distrust the revolutionary left.</p>
<p>It would be pleasant to say that such fears are groundless but they are not. It is not true that the left never packed a meeting, nor is it true that the left never pushed through their resolutions at the fag-end of a small, unrepresentative trade union branch meeting.</p>
<p>It is true that there is all too frequently a double standard applied by the left. What the left does is all right because it is in the interests of class struggle but what anyone else does is by definition reactionary because it does not accord with some preconceived notion of socialist advance.</p>
<p>Nowhere does this double standard become more apparent than in the attitude to democracy within their own organisations. Basing themselves generally on some largely imagined organisational principles laid down by Lenin under conditions of Tsarist autocracy, they would deny their own minorities the rights they loudly demand in the wider movement.</p>
<p>The argument that capitalism is nasty and we have to be hard and ultra-disciplined in fighting it leaves out of account the difficulty that potential recruits, radicalised by capitalist unpleasantness, are more likely to be repelled than attracted by similar characteristics in revolutionary groups.</p>
<p>The truth is that the left has contributed mightily to its own difficulties. It has lived for too long in a wilderness without influence and membership. In the closed, over-heated revolutionary circles, a form of historical play-acting has replaced any connection with the real movement of the working class. When at last the opportunity was provided to break out of this isolation was largely fluffed.</p>
<p>The time is long overdue to break the old outmoded mould. The left leaderships should stop pretending they are some reincarnation of Lenin in October 1917 and the membership should be educated in the traditions and the reality of the British working class.</p>
<p>The old way has failed. A moment’s reflection will indicate that it was bound to fail. It is time that some fundamental rethinking was done. It is true, both in theory and practice in times of capitalist crisis the revolutionary left has its greatest opportunity. But it must be a left radically different from one we have today.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> First appeared under the pseudonym Robert James in <strong>Workers News</strong>, No.3, April 1976, the paper of the short-lived Workers League.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
It’s time to give left-wing democracy the deodorant treatment
(April 1976)
Originally published in Workers News, No.3, April 1976. [1]
Reprinted in Workers Action, Dec 2002.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
If there is one statement that will receive general assent among most gatherings of workers it is ‘politics stink’. When this generalised point of view is directed to the parliamentary parties most left-wing socialists would not dissent.
But similar epithets and ripe descriptive utterances are applied to the Communist Party and to other left groups.
It is an unpalatable fact but a fact nonetheless that the accelerating disenchantment with conventional British politics is not accompanied by noticeable enthusiasm for any left alternative. On the contrary, the left has declined both in influence and numbers in strict time with the growing crisis of parliamentary politics and capitalist economy.
Now this is strange. It has always been assumed in the left movement that a decline in capitalism and the consequent difficulties of capitalist politics would be the opportunity for a major advance of the extra-parliamentary left.
Of course, it is possible to point to a number of difficulties. Increasing unemployment reduces the combativity of the workers: the complete abdication of their defensive role by the trade union leadership: and the small forces of the revolutionary left – all can be brought forward as reasons for lack of growth. While these arguments are true, in general, they still beg more questions than they answer.
Why is it, for example, that the left, which in the years up to 1974 had an unparalleled – in their terms – growth, has not been able to exert much greater pressure within the unions against the collaboration of the leadership with anti-working class policies. Why has it been unable to retain all of the workers who joined in the heady days of the Heath administration?
The answers to these and other pointed questions will trip lightly and with great facility off the tongues of the spokesmen for any of the left groups. If there is one thing they have perfected it is the production of excuses. Some of them might even be true.
That last sentence was not written in any spirit of cynicism but it was written deliberately. Too often the statements of various revolutionary groups are produced to obscure rather than to reveal the truth.
This is done in several ways, the most common being the resort to a form of ‘marxese’ that only the initiated can understand. Meaning and reality are drowned in a clotted form that cannot be dignified by the word prose.
More seriously, and in a way that is both deceptive and self-deceiving, each of the groups develops a theory of the world that sets its own organisation at the centre of the universe and then proceeds to rearrange the geography to take account of the shift.
Most frequently this is accompanied by a species of hysterical party loyalty that would have been welcomed by the medieval Catholic church. Such a spectacle is both distasteful and incomprehensible to workers unfamiliar with the phenomenon.
Even more distressing is the fact that many workers who are aware of the revolutionary left have a shrewd suspicion that the groups are manipulative, untruthful and undemocratic. All too frequently such critics are right. Militant workers may despise Labour’s truckling to capitalism, they may dislike the Communist Party’s reformist politics but they also distrust the revolutionary left.
It would be pleasant to say that such fears are groundless but they are not. It is not true that the left never packed a meeting, nor is it true that the left never pushed through their resolutions at the fag-end of a small, unrepresentative trade union branch meeting.
It is true that there is all too frequently a double standard applied by the left. What the left does is all right because it is in the interests of class struggle but what anyone else does is by definition reactionary because it does not accord with some preconceived notion of socialist advance.
Nowhere does this double standard become more apparent than in the attitude to democracy within their own organisations. Basing themselves generally on some largely imagined organisational principles laid down by Lenin under conditions of Tsarist autocracy, they would deny their own minorities the rights they loudly demand in the wider movement.
The argument that capitalism is nasty and we have to be hard and ultra-disciplined in fighting it leaves out of account the difficulty that potential recruits, radicalised by capitalist unpleasantness, are more likely to be repelled than attracted by similar characteristics in revolutionary groups.
The truth is that the left has contributed mightily to its own difficulties. It has lived for too long in a wilderness without influence and membership. In the closed, over-heated revolutionary circles, a form of historical play-acting has replaced any connection with the real movement of the working class. When at last the opportunity was provided to break out of this isolation was largely fluffed.
The time is long overdue to break the old outmoded mould. The left leaderships should stop pretending they are some reincarnation of Lenin in October 1917 and the membership should be educated in the traditions and the reality of the British working class.
The old way has failed. A moment’s reflection will indicate that it was bound to fail. It is time that some fundamental rethinking was done. It is true, both in theory and practice in times of capitalist crisis the revolutionary left has its greatest opportunity. But it must be a left radically different from one we have today.
Note
1. First appeared under the pseudonym Robert James in Workers News, No.3, April 1976, the paper of the short-lived Workers League.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>The Fate of the Russian Revolution</h1>
<h3>(1999)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Revolutionary History</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm#v7n2" target="new">Vol. 7 No. 2</a>, 1999, pp. 275–79.<br>
Transcribed by Alun Morgan for the <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/main.htm" target="new"><em>Revolutionary History Website</em></a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Sean Matgamna (<em>ed.</em>),<br>
<strong>The Fate of the Russian Revolution: Lost Texts of Critical Marxism</strong>, Volume 1<br>
<em>Phoenix Press, London 1998, pp603, £16.99</em></p>
<p class="fst">WHEN, in 1957, I became a Trotskyist, one of the great joys of this rather lonely allegiance was that a great treasure-house of quality political writing opened up for study. Although there was nothing like the sheer volume of material that appeared in the late 1960s and 1970s, there were, nevertheless, the key texts of Trotsky and the publications of American Trotskyism in both its Cannonite and Shachtmanite manifestations. One particularly valuable cache was the back issues of the American Trotskyists’ <strong>New International</strong>. From 1934 to 1958, this excellent journal appeared, setting a standard for its rivals to aspire to but seldom to achieve. Much of the credit for the quality of the <strong>New International</strong> was due to Max Shachtman, who for most of those years was the main guiding hand behind the magazine. Shachtman was a revolutionary man for all seasons, a fine orator, witty, eloquent, penetrating and very funny, sometimes savagely so; all qualities that were equally in evidence in his writing. In the 1930s, he was, after Trotsky, held in the highest esteem in the international movement, where he helped in developing the sections and preparing the way for the foundation of the Fourth International. Trotsky certainly thought very highly of him, appointing him his literary executor, and making strenuous efforts to avoid the split in the US Socialist Workers Party in 1940.</p>
<p>There was, as one might assume, another side to all this, and, as Bob Pitt has observed in a recent issue of <strong>What Next?</strong>, Shachtman was, despite his manifest talents, a bit of a smart arse. In this, of course, his smart arsery was of the same character as your run-of-the-mill group gurus, where the leader’s stranglehold on the dialectic enables him to pontificate on all questions, even if it does sound like piffle. With Shachtman, the piffle always sounded plausible, and often the speed of the pen deceived the unwary.</p>
<p>I met him only once, when, in pursuit of material for his never-written magnum opus on the Comintern, he visited these shores in the early 1960s. He was staying with Jock Haston, and several of us were invited to meet him. He was something of a patrician figure, given to making his statements as if in papal infallibility mode, and I gained the distinct impression that contact with the hem of his garment might prove efficacious for any troublesome skin conditions one might be enduring. He was, however, graciously pleased to relieve me of my incomplete file of <strong>Labour Monthly</strong>.</p>
<p>This is the Max Shachtman whose writing on the Russian question forms the overwhelming bulk of the volume here under review. In a way, this is unfortunate, because whilst bureaucratic collectivism might have been a useful defining theory for the Workers Party/Independent Socialist League, it was one of the least attractive or interesting parts of that organisation’s life, and was certainly the main factor impelling, or allowing, Shachtman finally to make his peace with American imperialism.</p>
<p>The theory had its first outing in America in the SWP in 1937, propounded by James Burnham and Joe Carter. C.L.R. James, whose opinion of bureaucratic collectivism was not high, referred to it as ‘Carter’s little liver pill’. There is some evidence to suggest that it was an adaptation of Bruno Rizzi’s theory, and, despite strenuous denials by the WP/ISL, the jury is still out on this question. Shachtman, who was a co-factionalist with Burnham and Carter, did not adopt the theory himself until late in 1940, after they had all been expelled from the SWP. This makes it seem rather unfair that all subscribers to bureaucratic collectivism are now called ‘Shachtmanites’ rather than ‘Burnham-Carterites’. This may be explained by the fact that Burnham defected to the right in 1940, whilst Shachtman spent nearly 20 years more or less attached to a revolutionary outlook before he, too, followed the well-worn path. Carter, probably the real originator, was not an easy read, and the few articles he did write have all the charm of a bare-faced fletton. So, Shachtmanism it is, and perhaps there is some justice in that, for they deserve one another.</p>
<p>As a theory, bureaucratic centralism tells us that Russian Stalinism represented a new ruling class based on the super-exploitation of slaves. The birth and evolution of this class is not charted, and seems to be based on anecdotal evidence, a fine and justified moral outrage at the crimes of Stalinism, and a desire to produce something to replace the inadequate ‘workers’ state’ theory of Trotsky. It is also quite possibly the case that Shachtman’s late conversion represented a need to have a central defining theory to set him apart from Cannon’s SWP, which already had the franchise on Soviet defencism. Like all of these theories, it was a bit of a mix and match, and Shachtman spent years patching here and extending there, and gradually squeezing out any revolutionary content from the original.</p>
<p>One of the more bizarre aspects of Shachtmanism is the rôle it ascribes to the Communist parties. It suggests that, as capitalism grew up within the interstices of the feudal system, so the Communist parties were a bureaucratic collective class-in-waiting. In pursuit of this particular thesis, Shachtman engaged in a strange debate with Theodore Draper in the pages of the <strong>New International</strong> in which he claimed that the American Socialist Party left of 1912 was quite different from the left of 1917. If this sounds dangerously like the debates of the mediaeval schoolmen on whether the late J.C. of Bethlehem was of the same stuff or similar stuff to God, there is definitely a whiff of that kind of incense in the air. That left of 1917 was, of course the main element that went into the foundation of the American Communist Party. Within that party, amongst others, were Max Shachtman and his mentor James P. Cannon, struggling manfully in one factional alignment or another to convince Zinoviev that they were the men to lead the American section of the Comintern. Between 1922 and 1928, in all his activity as a second-rank leader of the party, Shachtman managed to avoid turning into a new ruling class. We do not know, of course, what nocturnal anguish he endured in his struggles to resist this transformation, especially when the moon was full.</p>
<p>From 1940 to 1948, the Workers Party thought of itself as a Trotskyist organisation, dedicated to the Fourth International, and, apart from the Russian question, broadly adhering to the ideas of the movement. It was more open and tolerant than most Trotskyist groups, but until 1948 it followed the debates within the Fourth International, and attempted to contribute to the discussion. Whatever their differences with the SWP, they were as concerned with creating an international leadership for the coming struggles. Perhaps it is the case that because they were unorthodox they were more aware of the way that postwar reality invalidated so many of Trotsky’s predictions. With the expansion of Stalinism into Eastern Europe, it was imperative, they thought, that the International rectify its mistaken line on Russia so that the workers could be given a clear and unequivocal lead. The condition of the Fourth International in the immediate post-1945 period, in the light of what it saw as its prospects, would have made a cat laugh, that is if the cat didn’t have more pressing matters in mind. Shachtman attended the 1948 congress of the Fourth International, he found the rhetoric of Michel Pablo empty and dispiriting, and the International, at whose founding in 1938 he had presided, a shell whose past had been based on hopes, and whose future was nostalgia for the past. Not only that, Shachtman’s own brand of Trotskyism made little impression on anyone. He returned to the US disappointed, and within a short time the Workers Party had not only broken with the Fourth International, but had changed its name to the Independent Socialist League, a recognition that a party of a couple of hundred people was a contradiction in terms.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, those first few years of the Workers Party were their best. In the 1940 split, they had taken slightly less than half the membership of the SWP, perhaps 400 people. They were, in the main, young and middle-class, but they were exceptionally dedicated. During the war, when engineering plants had many vacancies, they became factory workers, joining the union and fighting for leadership on the shop floor. Hal Draper, an archetypal intellectual, was one of those who became a factory worker. Unfortunately, when the war ended, the arms factories closed down and demobbed soldiers took the jobs that were available. Once again, they were commenting from the outside, and the slow but steady attrition of the members began.</p>
<p>For Shachtman, the non-revolutionary character of the postwar working class and the strength of Stalinism internationally inevitability impelled him to the right. If Stalinism was the barbaric antithesis of Socialism, and revolutionary Socialists just could not be heard, then Socialists should support those structures within capitalism that enabled workers to organise and better their conditions. By 1949, he was floating the idea of supporting trade union candidates in the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>By 1958, the ISL still had enough of its old spirit for there to be a faction fight when Hal Draper led the opposition to dissolving the ISL into the American Socialist Party. It was to no avail, the organisation had outlived its time, and having signed the humiliating dissolution statement demanded by the Socialist Party, Shachtman took his followers into the palsied embrace of Norman Thomas. One of the great paradoxes of all this is that the leaders of the Socialist Party were even more tired than the ISL, and within a short time Shachtman and his <em>camarilla</em> were in control of the organisation, and remorselessly driving it to the right. In the end, poor Shachtman was a caricature of his former self. Gradually he broke with his old comrades of many years’ standing. He supported the Bay of Pigs landing, he backed Johnson over Vietnam, backed Humphries for US President, and then refused to back McGovern against Nixon, and finally, in 1972, he died some years after his demise as a Socialist.</p>
<p><strong>The Fate of the Russian Revolution</strong> is subtitled <em>Lost Texts of Critical Marxism</em>, and, it has to be said, not all of it needed finding, but for those interested in the history of the Trotskyist movement, there is plenty to satisfy their appetite. Apart from the reprints from <strong>Labour Action</strong> and <strong>New International</strong>, there are Workers Party conference documents and internal bulletins, with contributions by such luminaries as C.L.R. James and Hal Draper.</p>
<p>Sean Matgamna not only edited this volume, he also provides us with an introduction which aims to set the historical material in an overall context, both in relation to Trotsky and Trotskyism, and also to the Leninist tradition. The need for such an attempt rests in the fact that nobody in the ISL ever took the trouble to produce a coherent text on the theory of bureaucratic collectivism, not its origin, dynamic, political economy, or its laws of motion. Shachtman published a collection of his articles, under the title <strong>The Bureaucratic Revolution</strong>, in which he tinkered a little with the original texts to prove that from 1940 he had always been an opponent of the ‘evil empire’. Hal Draper put out another collection of articles, <strong>An Introduction to Independent Socialism</strong>, but all his major works were devoted to other more valuable tasks. I regret to say that Sean has not rectified the omissions of more talented Shachtmanites. I did, however, notice in Sean’s acknowledgements at the front of the volume, where he thanks Martin Thomas for help in editing the draft of part two of the <em>Introduction</em> to just a tenth of its original length. Now part two in the final text is 69 pages long, I counted them, and if you will just multiply that number by 10 you will realise that Martin deserves a heartfelt vote of thanks from all of us for his selfless endeavours. Now there’s a man I would be happy to go to the barricades with any day.</p>
<p>The Russian question certainly has its place in any examination of the life of the WP/ISL, but it really was much more than that. For 20 years, against great odds, an organisation was maintained that vigorously preached the message that Socialism is an expansion of, not an alternative to, democracy. And from all the evidence, that idea also informed the practice of the organisation, which puts it one up on practically every other group extant today. If you asked Alan Thornett whether that spirit of fair play that characterised the ISL has somehow trickled down to the Alliance for Workers Liberty, I’ll bet a modest sum that the enamel would fall off his teeth and steam come out of his ears before he was able to reply.</p>
<p>I believe that for young comrades coming into the movement, an altogether more valuable and entertaining book from the WP/ISL archive, a selection that would faithfully cover the whole of the Shachtmanite canon, would have yielded something of much greater interest. The point of this volume, I suspect, is not for the edification of the young, or indeed the not-so-young. Its purpose is to add a certain theoretical respectability to Sean’s own organisational needs. He has attached himself to a tradition that had some good ideas, but not on the Russian question, and some very good people. It really is no good reinventing the wheel if it was a small inadequate one that only moved to the right, and was, in any case, irreparably smashed with the fall of the Berlin wall.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The Fate of the Russian Revolution
(1999)
From Revolutionary History, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1999, pp. 275–79.
Transcribed by Alun Morgan for the Revolutionary History Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Sean Matgamna (ed.),
The Fate of the Russian Revolution: Lost Texts of Critical Marxism, Volume 1
Phoenix Press, London 1998, pp603, £16.99
WHEN, in 1957, I became a Trotskyist, one of the great joys of this rather lonely allegiance was that a great treasure-house of quality political writing opened up for study. Although there was nothing like the sheer volume of material that appeared in the late 1960s and 1970s, there were, nevertheless, the key texts of Trotsky and the publications of American Trotskyism in both its Cannonite and Shachtmanite manifestations. One particularly valuable cache was the back issues of the American Trotskyists’ New International. From 1934 to 1958, this excellent journal appeared, setting a standard for its rivals to aspire to but seldom to achieve. Much of the credit for the quality of the New International was due to Max Shachtman, who for most of those years was the main guiding hand behind the magazine. Shachtman was a revolutionary man for all seasons, a fine orator, witty, eloquent, penetrating and very funny, sometimes savagely so; all qualities that were equally in evidence in his writing. In the 1930s, he was, after Trotsky, held in the highest esteem in the international movement, where he helped in developing the sections and preparing the way for the foundation of the Fourth International. Trotsky certainly thought very highly of him, appointing him his literary executor, and making strenuous efforts to avoid the split in the US Socialist Workers Party in 1940.
There was, as one might assume, another side to all this, and, as Bob Pitt has observed in a recent issue of What Next?, Shachtman was, despite his manifest talents, a bit of a smart arse. In this, of course, his smart arsery was of the same character as your run-of-the-mill group gurus, where the leader’s stranglehold on the dialectic enables him to pontificate on all questions, even if it does sound like piffle. With Shachtman, the piffle always sounded plausible, and often the speed of the pen deceived the unwary.
I met him only once, when, in pursuit of material for his never-written magnum opus on the Comintern, he visited these shores in the early 1960s. He was staying with Jock Haston, and several of us were invited to meet him. He was something of a patrician figure, given to making his statements as if in papal infallibility mode, and I gained the distinct impression that contact with the hem of his garment might prove efficacious for any troublesome skin conditions one might be enduring. He was, however, graciously pleased to relieve me of my incomplete file of Labour Monthly.
This is the Max Shachtman whose writing on the Russian question forms the overwhelming bulk of the volume here under review. In a way, this is unfortunate, because whilst bureaucratic collectivism might have been a useful defining theory for the Workers Party/Independent Socialist League, it was one of the least attractive or interesting parts of that organisation’s life, and was certainly the main factor impelling, or allowing, Shachtman finally to make his peace with American imperialism.
The theory had its first outing in America in the SWP in 1937, propounded by James Burnham and Joe Carter. C.L.R. James, whose opinion of bureaucratic collectivism was not high, referred to it as ‘Carter’s little liver pill’. There is some evidence to suggest that it was an adaptation of Bruno Rizzi’s theory, and, despite strenuous denials by the WP/ISL, the jury is still out on this question. Shachtman, who was a co-factionalist with Burnham and Carter, did not adopt the theory himself until late in 1940, after they had all been expelled from the SWP. This makes it seem rather unfair that all subscribers to bureaucratic collectivism are now called ‘Shachtmanites’ rather than ‘Burnham-Carterites’. This may be explained by the fact that Burnham defected to the right in 1940, whilst Shachtman spent nearly 20 years more or less attached to a revolutionary outlook before he, too, followed the well-worn path. Carter, probably the real originator, was not an easy read, and the few articles he did write have all the charm of a bare-faced fletton. So, Shachtmanism it is, and perhaps there is some justice in that, for they deserve one another.
As a theory, bureaucratic centralism tells us that Russian Stalinism represented a new ruling class based on the super-exploitation of slaves. The birth and evolution of this class is not charted, and seems to be based on anecdotal evidence, a fine and justified moral outrage at the crimes of Stalinism, and a desire to produce something to replace the inadequate ‘workers’ state’ theory of Trotsky. It is also quite possibly the case that Shachtman’s late conversion represented a need to have a central defining theory to set him apart from Cannon’s SWP, which already had the franchise on Soviet defencism. Like all of these theories, it was a bit of a mix and match, and Shachtman spent years patching here and extending there, and gradually squeezing out any revolutionary content from the original.
One of the more bizarre aspects of Shachtmanism is the rôle it ascribes to the Communist parties. It suggests that, as capitalism grew up within the interstices of the feudal system, so the Communist parties were a bureaucratic collective class-in-waiting. In pursuit of this particular thesis, Shachtman engaged in a strange debate with Theodore Draper in the pages of the New International in which he claimed that the American Socialist Party left of 1912 was quite different from the left of 1917. If this sounds dangerously like the debates of the mediaeval schoolmen on whether the late J.C. of Bethlehem was of the same stuff or similar stuff to God, there is definitely a whiff of that kind of incense in the air. That left of 1917 was, of course the main element that went into the foundation of the American Communist Party. Within that party, amongst others, were Max Shachtman and his mentor James P. Cannon, struggling manfully in one factional alignment or another to convince Zinoviev that they were the men to lead the American section of the Comintern. Between 1922 and 1928, in all his activity as a second-rank leader of the party, Shachtman managed to avoid turning into a new ruling class. We do not know, of course, what nocturnal anguish he endured in his struggles to resist this transformation, especially when the moon was full.
From 1940 to 1948, the Workers Party thought of itself as a Trotskyist organisation, dedicated to the Fourth International, and, apart from the Russian question, broadly adhering to the ideas of the movement. It was more open and tolerant than most Trotskyist groups, but until 1948 it followed the debates within the Fourth International, and attempted to contribute to the discussion. Whatever their differences with the SWP, they were as concerned with creating an international leadership for the coming struggles. Perhaps it is the case that because they were unorthodox they were more aware of the way that postwar reality invalidated so many of Trotsky’s predictions. With the expansion of Stalinism into Eastern Europe, it was imperative, they thought, that the International rectify its mistaken line on Russia so that the workers could be given a clear and unequivocal lead. The condition of the Fourth International in the immediate post-1945 period, in the light of what it saw as its prospects, would have made a cat laugh, that is if the cat didn’t have more pressing matters in mind. Shachtman attended the 1948 congress of the Fourth International, he found the rhetoric of Michel Pablo empty and dispiriting, and the International, at whose founding in 1938 he had presided, a shell whose past had been based on hopes, and whose future was nostalgia for the past. Not only that, Shachtman’s own brand of Trotskyism made little impression on anyone. He returned to the US disappointed, and within a short time the Workers Party had not only broken with the Fourth International, but had changed its name to the Independent Socialist League, a recognition that a party of a couple of hundred people was a contradiction in terms.
Nevertheless, those first few years of the Workers Party were their best. In the 1940 split, they had taken slightly less than half the membership of the SWP, perhaps 400 people. They were, in the main, young and middle-class, but they were exceptionally dedicated. During the war, when engineering plants had many vacancies, they became factory workers, joining the union and fighting for leadership on the shop floor. Hal Draper, an archetypal intellectual, was one of those who became a factory worker. Unfortunately, when the war ended, the arms factories closed down and demobbed soldiers took the jobs that were available. Once again, they were commenting from the outside, and the slow but steady attrition of the members began.
For Shachtman, the non-revolutionary character of the postwar working class and the strength of Stalinism internationally inevitability impelled him to the right. If Stalinism was the barbaric antithesis of Socialism, and revolutionary Socialists just could not be heard, then Socialists should support those structures within capitalism that enabled workers to organise and better their conditions. By 1949, he was floating the idea of supporting trade union candidates in the Democratic Party.
By 1958, the ISL still had enough of its old spirit for there to be a faction fight when Hal Draper led the opposition to dissolving the ISL into the American Socialist Party. It was to no avail, the organisation had outlived its time, and having signed the humiliating dissolution statement demanded by the Socialist Party, Shachtman took his followers into the palsied embrace of Norman Thomas. One of the great paradoxes of all this is that the leaders of the Socialist Party were even more tired than the ISL, and within a short time Shachtman and his camarilla were in control of the organisation, and remorselessly driving it to the right. In the end, poor Shachtman was a caricature of his former self. Gradually he broke with his old comrades of many years’ standing. He supported the Bay of Pigs landing, he backed Johnson over Vietnam, backed Humphries for US President, and then refused to back McGovern against Nixon, and finally, in 1972, he died some years after his demise as a Socialist.
The Fate of the Russian Revolution is subtitled Lost Texts of Critical Marxism, and, it has to be said, not all of it needed finding, but for those interested in the history of the Trotskyist movement, there is plenty to satisfy their appetite. Apart from the reprints from Labour Action and New International, there are Workers Party conference documents and internal bulletins, with contributions by such luminaries as C.L.R. James and Hal Draper.
Sean Matgamna not only edited this volume, he also provides us with an introduction which aims to set the historical material in an overall context, both in relation to Trotsky and Trotskyism, and also to the Leninist tradition. The need for such an attempt rests in the fact that nobody in the ISL ever took the trouble to produce a coherent text on the theory of bureaucratic collectivism, not its origin, dynamic, political economy, or its laws of motion. Shachtman published a collection of his articles, under the title The Bureaucratic Revolution, in which he tinkered a little with the original texts to prove that from 1940 he had always been an opponent of the ‘evil empire’. Hal Draper put out another collection of articles, An Introduction to Independent Socialism, but all his major works were devoted to other more valuable tasks. I regret to say that Sean has not rectified the omissions of more talented Shachtmanites. I did, however, notice in Sean’s acknowledgements at the front of the volume, where he thanks Martin Thomas for help in editing the draft of part two of the Introduction to just a tenth of its original length. Now part two in the final text is 69 pages long, I counted them, and if you will just multiply that number by 10 you will realise that Martin deserves a heartfelt vote of thanks from all of us for his selfless endeavours. Now there’s a man I would be happy to go to the barricades with any day.
The Russian question certainly has its place in any examination of the life of the WP/ISL, but it really was much more than that. For 20 years, against great odds, an organisation was maintained that vigorously preached the message that Socialism is an expansion of, not an alternative to, democracy. And from all the evidence, that idea also informed the practice of the organisation, which puts it one up on practically every other group extant today. If you asked Alan Thornett whether that spirit of fair play that characterised the ISL has somehow trickled down to the Alliance for Workers Liberty, I’ll bet a modest sum that the enamel would fall off his teeth and steam come out of his ears before he was able to reply.
I believe that for young comrades coming into the movement, an altogether more valuable and entertaining book from the WP/ISL archive, a selection that would faithfully cover the whole of the Shachtmanite canon, would have yielded something of much greater interest. The point of this volume, I suspect, is not for the edification of the young, or indeed the not-so-young. Its purpose is to add a certain theoretical respectability to Sean’s own organisational needs. He has attached himself to a tradition that had some good ideas, but not on the Russian question, and some very good people. It really is no good reinventing the wheel if it was a small inadequate one that only moved to the right, and was, in any case, irreparably smashed with the fall of the Berlin wall.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Revolutionary Trade Unionism</h1>
<h3>(February 1971)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj046" target="new">No.46</a>, February/March 1971, pp.27-31.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="quoteb"><strong>Workers are taught organisation not by their superior intelligence or by outside agitators but by the capitalists themselves. They are organised on the assembly lines, in the factory gangs, in shifts, in work teams, in the division of labour of capitalism itself. Capitalism cannot grow without organising its workers and teaching them the virtues of a form of ‘solidarity’ of working together.</strong> – Hal Draper: <em>Why the Working Class is the Key to Progress</em>.</p>
<p class="fst">The development of capitalism in Britain was accompanied by massive movements of population, unparalleled in brutality until Stalin undertook a similar exercise 100 years later. The enclosures, the ending of outdoor relief and the growth of the segregated workhouse, the importation of thousands of Irish labourers and the virtual destruction of the skilled hand-craftsman all conspired together to drive the people into the grim barrack-factories of the industrial revolution.</p>
<p>In short order, these uneducated workers, without the benefit of precedent or kindly middle-class tutelage, combined into trade unions. The first lesson learned in the hard workshop school of the factory masters was solidarity: solidarity within the factory and, in the Chartist experience, solidarity as a class. This is not to say that the early attempts at combination were all successful. Struggles were localised and communication bad. Poverty and frequent unemployment made the continuous existence of trade unions difficult almost to the point of impossibility. The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (having at its best 30,000 members) was unable to survive a prolonged strike of tailors.</p>
<p>But despite defeats, despite government repression, trade unions were formed and the struggle continued. Capitalism had decreed the factories, the division of labour and must needs live with and battle with the social and political consequences. The objective difficulties of trade union advance meant that the response was generalised into the struggle around the Charter. Taken in its historical context, the demands of the Charter and, in particular the movement that grew up around the programme, had profoundly revolutionary content. At its birth, capitalism could only view the simple demands for political democracy and human rights as completely subversive – and they were right.</p>
<p>For Marxists, in their consideration of working-class organisation, the early trade unions and the Chartist movement provide, among other things, a lesson in the infinite capacity of the working class to give organisational form to their struggle for emancipation. The disparate elements that went into the making of the working class were able to construct organisations to challenge the whole ethic of capitalism. For decades the ruling class lived in fear of the activities of the ‘mob’. It is part of the complex of contradictions that run through the history of the working class that the trade unions that represented a threat to the very structure of capitalism at its inception should today be a bulwark of that system.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">The demise of Chartism, the greater economic power and concentration of capitalism and the consequent growth of stable employment for the skilled sections of workers gave rise to financially viable trade unions along craft lines. Unlike the early trade unions that saw their task as obtaining for the worker the full product of his labour, and unlike the Chartists who saw the extension of political democracy as the inevitable emancipation of the oppressed, the craft unions saw themselves as a pressure group maintaining the standards of the trade and the sectional interests of their members. The problems of the unorganised and unskilled were not the problems of craft unionism. The later movement among the unskilled labourers, epitomised in the great dock strike, came not as a result of the activities of the trade unions, but from the spontaneous struggle of the workers themselves and the agitation and propaganda of socialists like Eleanor Marx, Tom Mann and John Burns.</p>
<p>The growing prosperity of the system was reflected in the growing prosperity of the trade union bureaucracy. Organisation of craftsmen, the extension of the franchise, all contributed to the importance to capitalism of the trade union bureaucracy. Wages for the skilled were as much as three times the wages of the unskilled, continuity of employment was much greater for craftsmen and their higher wages allowed for higher contributions to cater for unemployment and sick pay. The power that trade union stability conferred on the leadership was recognised by employers and politicians alike. Their views were sought, their social and financial desires, at least partially, satisfied. They were in no time at all transferred, in De Leon’s phrase, into ‘Labour Lieutenants of Capitalism’.</p>
<p>In political and social terms the trade union bureaucracy was a conservative layer, enjoying special privileges and dedicated to maximising those privileges within the context of capitalism. The super profits of empire and exploitation of the unorganised and unskilled made all this possible. The further expansion of capitalism, the growing division of labour, made the work of the unskilled more important within the process of production. This coupled to the example of comparatively successful craft unionism led on to the organisation of whole new layers of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, less stable, with a heavy turnover of members and more prone to the effects of any economic downturn but making up in numbers what they lacked in other respects. (Between 1870 and 1900 the number of unions affiliated to the TUC grew from 47 to 184 and affiliated membership from 250,000 to 1,250,000.)</p>
<p>The growth of trade unionism resulted in a growth in the real standard of British workers. (Taking 1900 as 100, the index of real wages rose from 63 in 1869 to 99 in 1895.) Trade unionism in Britain grew on the dynamic of British capitalism. As capitalism became more prosperous, so the chance of suborning wider sections of the trade union bureaucracy became possible. From being a bar to the free expression of early capitalism the trade unions became a spur to greater capitalist rationalisation and concentration. The growth of political reformism developed in this period, the rise of Fabianism in Britain, the revisionism of Bernstein in Germany. What has developed is, for the reformist, the end point of analysis, not what the present has developed from and what it is developing towards. Capitalist democracy could afford not just reformist trade unions but also a reformist working class politics.</p>
<p>After 1900 the situation for the trade unions and the working class began to decline rapidly. The downturn of the economic cycle had an immediate and disastrous effect on working class standards. Prices rose uninterruptedly during the following decade while wages remained static. Unemployment rose until, in 1907, it was higher than it had been at any time in the previous 25 years. <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a> The Taff Vale judgement, which cost the railwaymen’s union some £200,000 in 1901, drove the trade union leadership into support for the political expression of reformism in the Labour Representation Committee and subsequently the Labour Party. But neither political or industrial reformism could answer the simple needs of the working class.</p>
<p>In France the syndicalists built a trade union federation based on the skilled workers and dedicated to revolutionary direct action. (Sabotage derives from the word <em>sabot</em> – wooden shoe – that French railway strikers would place on the lines to derail blackleg trains.) In America in 1905 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was formed to oppose the one big union against the combined might of the system and the ‘bread and butter unionism’ of the American Federation of Labour (AFL).</p>
<p>The international experience of the class found its reflection in Britain through the growth of a tendency that saw the industrial union as the immediate response to working-class needs and as the instrument for taking power and also the instrument for the exercise of that power. The syndicalist-cum-industrial-unionist tendency were uncompromisingly opposed to craft unionism and its political expression in the Labour Party. Influenced by the French direct activists and the dual unionism of De Leon and the IWW they quickly discovered that, whatever the universal validity of the notion of independent revolutionary class action, the transposition of American and French theories to the British scene were doomed to failure. The Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) an attempt by the British Socialist Labour Party to implant the IWW into Britain was a brave but dismal failure. We will return to the IWGB later but first it is necessary to examine in some detail the origin of the movement in America.<br>
</p>
<p>There are three figures who came together in 1905 to form the IWW: Daniel De Leon, Eugene Debs and Bill Heywood. There were, of course, many others who subsequently became as important if not more important than these three, but the past experience and personal prestige of Debs, De Leon and Haywood drew together the disparate strands they represented and gave the movement the impetus it required. Debs represented a particularly strange development as an individual within the working-class movement. In a way he reversed the popular path of a labour leader. Starting off as a railroad worker he became active in the ultra-conservative Railroad Brotherhoods and a protagonist of non-political craft unionism. He developed as the result of the manifest failure of the brotherhoods into a partisan of industrial unionism and formed the American Railway Union. The ARU’s defeat in the bloody Pullman strike of 1894 (in Chicago alone 13 people were killed and 53 injured <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a>) and the assistance provided to the employers by state and federal government ended his lifelong attachment to the Democratic Party. The incapacity of the brotherhoods and the AFL turned him to dual unionism. In Cook County jail he learned the bare essentials of socialist theory. He became a socialist, a revolutionist, an internationalist – and a dual unionist.</p>
<p>Haywood represented a different tradition, a native born American who started work as a youth in the metal mines of the West and then left to become a homesteader. The government, however, took his land for an Indian reservation (an unusual reversal of tradition) and Haywood was forced back into the mines. This experience confirmed Haywood in an already well-developed antipathy to the fetters of wage slavery. Together with others in the West he saw the end of the dream of individual liberty in the terrible conditions of the metal mines.</p>
<p>Individual freedom was submerged in the freedom of the corporations and the power of corporate wealth was made apparent in the naked force with which they manipulated both people and government. Heywood and his like did not need, certainly felt they did not need, the abstract theories of marxism and socialism to teach them the need to struggle and the need to destroy capitalism. For them it was a fact of life, a necessary condition of working-class experience. In 1893 he helped to form the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Haywood’s philosophy is well summed up in his speech to the founding convention of the IWW:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wages system’.</p>
<p class="fst">This splendid formulation is interesting. The emphasis on the abolition of the wages system in a way harks back to the early British trade union philosophy – the opposition of the independent producer to the tyranny of the wages system – the demand for the full product of his labour, by the man who hates the naked and direct exploitation of the capitalist. This feature of the WFM and other dissident American trade unions indicates one reason for the difficulty in implanting the forms of the IWW into the conditions of Europe. Only in Australia, which had a .similar internal frontier, was the IWW able to exert more than a transitory influence. Hayward was also a member of the American Socialist Party and, at least while he maintained membership avoided the worst non-political attitudes of the extreme Wobblies. Nevertheless he was at one with Debs and a significant group in the ASP that opposed Gomper’s AFL and was committed to dual unionism.</p>
<p>De Leon was a totally different personality from the other two, a doctrinaire marxist in that most doctrinaire of organisations the Socialist Labour Party. A former lecturer in law at Colombia University, he joined the SLP at a low point in its fortunes. The SLP, an organisation largely composed of immigrants, experienced in somewhat exaggerated form the controversies of the European movement. The Lassalleans and the marxists fought incessantly for theoretical control of the party in frequently unreal and dogmatic terms. For the Lassalleans the ‘iron law of wages’ made it futile to engage in the economic struggle of trade unions. De Leon managed formally to straddle the positions of the two tendencies in the SLP and evolve a theory to combine political and industrial activity. In practice the party adopted such an exclusive tactic that the advantages of certain rectitude (De Leon once wrote ‘The SLP has all the “tyranny” of truth’ <a id="f3" href="#n3" name="f3">[3]</a>) and disciplined organisation were lost in the almost universal opposition they provoked.</p>
<p>In 1893 he entered the Knights of Labour and by superior organisation and force of personality captured District 49 of the union. For 12 months the SLP exercised considerable influence in the organisation. Inevitably the extreme dogmatism of his position met with revulsion and the SLP adherents were expelled. In 1894, in concert with several small ‘socialist’ unions. De Leon managed to lead a battle for building in socialist objectives to the AFL constitution. In this they were unsuccessful but together with the Mineworkers they did manage to defeat Gompers for the presidency. Twelve months later Gompers was back and De Leon was out. For De Leon boring from within was now a dead letter and he set up, under SLP auspices, the Socialist Trades and Labour Alliance. The ST&LA never numbered more than 10,000 members and was solely based in New York among immigrant trades. The sectarianism of the SLP, the shrillness of its polemics and its virulent dual unionism eventually gave rise to a split within the SLP. In 1898 a sizeable section of the party, behind Morris Hillquit, bolted. Three years later the Hillquit group formed the basis for the American Socialist Party.</p>
<p>By 1905 the ST&LA had reduced in membership to 1,500. There was no way for the organisation to exist unless it merged with the growing forces within the independent unions and, the left wing in the SP for an industrial unionist opposition to the AFL. De Leon’s errors were large ones and most commentators, especially those of the Communist Party – who made all of De Leon’s mistakes without any of his justification – concentrated on these errors. But despite his dogmatism, he made a genuine contribution to socialist thought and his work on the way the victorious working class would exercise their power through their own industrial organisation was a reasonably accurate forecast of the Soviets.</p>
<p>These three personalities, with all their faults and strengths, came together in 1905 to form the IWW. The Knights of Labour had declined and then failed and the AFL was almost exclusively craft unionist and organised only 5 per cent of the workers. To charges of splitting the trade union front the Wobblies replied that the AFL was not a trade union at all. In another section of his speech to the inaugural convention of the IWW, Hay wood said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘It has been said that this convention was to form an organisation to rival the AF of L. This is a mistake. We are here for the purpose of forming a Labour organisation.’</p>
<p class="fst">Debs went even further.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘To talk about reforming these rotten graft infested (AF of L) unions which are dominated absolutely by the labour boss, is as vain and wasteful of time as to spray a cesspool with attar of roses.’ <a id="f4" href="#n4" name="f4">[4]</a></p>
<p class="fst">There is more than a little justification for these remarks. The exclusiveness of the AFL went further than mere craft. They were also lilywhite and their refusal to organise the unskilled meant that the migrant and immigrant workers were left entirely at the mercy of the employers. AFL policy was effectively: I will not organise them but neither must anyone else. Between 1896 and 1897 the WFM was affiliated to the AFL, This brief association ended with recrimination on both sides. The political and industrial quietism of the Gompers-led AFL, together with a failure to effectively support the miners in the Lead-ville strike, were the causes of the split. The WFM immediately started a rival Western Labour Union to ‘organise all labour west of the Mississippi irrespective of occupation, nationality, creed or colour’. In the next seven years the WFM fought a series of bitter, bloody, long-drawn-out disputes, generally around the issues of the eight-hour day, union recognition and wages. Sometimes they lost, more often they won and they maintained the union and spread the appeal of militant industrial unionism.</p>
<p>In 1902 Debs persuaded the WFM to change the name of the Western Labour Union to the American Labour Union (ALU) and to extend their sphere of activity to the whole country. The dual unionist challenge was being made with a vengeance. In the summer of 1905 the founding conference of the IWW met in Chicago. Beside the WFM, the ALU and De Leon’s ST&LA there were delegates from a number of independent unions, some state federations of unions, some Canadian unions and the American branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers of Great Britain. All together some 200 delegates attended. It was a mixed bunch. The seeds of future difficulty already existed in the two main strands that were represented – the anarchist trend (Father Hagerty and Lucy Parsons – widow of the Haymarket martyr) and the orthodox marxists (the left of the SP, the SLP). For the anarchists and syndicalists,</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Political action leads to capitalism reformed. Direct action leads to socialism ... death to politics ...’ <a id="f5" href="#n5" name="f5">[5]</a></p>
<p class="fst">As late as April 1904 De Leon still believed that American socialism could be ushered in by the ballot box, although he was later to concede that if the capitalists used fraud to deprive the workers of victory then direct action should be taken to redress the balance. De Leon however did not explain why workers with the ability to redress the balance should wait for the bosses to use fraud before exercising direct action.</p>
<p>The keynote for the IWW founding convention in 1905 was given by Bill Hay wood:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘This is the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism’. (<strong>Proceedings of the First Convention of the IWW</strong>)</p>
<p class="fst">The proceedings were much taken up with debates around the question of politics. It is a measure of the strength of De Leon’s personality that politics were seen in his terms: the ballot box versus direct action, the IWW as the industrial appendage of the SLP or as the combination of revolutionary cadre and mass trade union. But De Leon’s apparent victory in securing the inclusion of political aims in the preamble to the IWW constitution was short lived. At the 1906 convention the first week was spent in a wrangle about whether De Leon was a bona fide worker who could be seated at all. The anti-political anti-De Leon forces were gaining strength. The most stable section of the IWW, the WFM, was especially hostile to De Leon’s particular brand of politics. (The editor of the <strong>Miner’s Magazine</strong> wrote that the second convention was ‘part of a conspiracy that contemplated the resurrection ... of a political corpse – the Socialist Labour Party’. <a id="f6" href="#n6" name="f6">[6]</a>) In July 1908 the WFM withdrew from the IWW. De Leon was blamed for the alienation of this, the only stable union in the IWW, and at the September convention the annual attempt to deny De Leon a seat was successful. The SLP set up a rival IWW in Detroit, which lasted until 1925 (after De Leon’s death called the Worker’s International Industrial Union). De Leon had succeeded once more in driving the SLP into splendid isolation and intensified the anti-political reaction of the IWW.</p>
<p>Despite its theoretical crudity, despite its anti-political Philistinism, the IWW involved literally thousands of militants in the organisation. The dedication of the Wobblies and their willingness to suffer beatings by company and state thugs, their readiness to go to jail and their fortitude and defiance at judicial frame-ups to the point, and beyond, judicial murder, made the name of the organisation and its militants known and respected throughout the labour movement. It also made them known and execrated in the press and legislatures.</p>
<p>They fought a strike in Goldfield, Nevada, and organised virtually all workers in the town (with the exception of a few AFL skilled trades) they forced up wages and conditions from $1.75 for a ten-hour day to $4.50 for an eight-hour day. At Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912, they turned wage cuts for some 30,000 workers into a wage increase. Between 1907 and 1916 they ran 13 major free speech campaigns against local ordinances specifically directed against IWW organising meetings. In these campaigns they drafted in literally hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Wobblies to defy the ordinances and to jam the jails and often they won. But none of these great struggles left the IWW with a continuing organisation in the towns of the East. The power of the corporations, the difficulty of organising workers divided into as many as 20 language groups (as at Paterson, New Jersey), the state and government repression and the IWW’s refusal to consider bargaining with the bosses, made stable organisation impossible. In Lawrence, at the end of the strike, the IWW had 14.000 members in the local. Twelve months later they were down to the pre-strike 400.</p>
<p>In trade union terms, the IWW was not a success. In the sense that their intention was to build something much more than a trade union, there was a certain inevitability about lack of success. The natural ground for the Wobblies were the mass production industries of the East, the factory towns populated by a polyglot collection of immigrants working long hours in inhuman conditions for miserably low wages, at the beginning of the piece work and factory speed-up system. But the successes were confined to the migratory workers of the West and Middle West. They organised effectively among the transient harvest workers forming the Agricultural Workers Organisation (AWO) and in bloody battles forced up the wage rates and improved on the disgusting, bug-infested conditions of the farm camps. By a system of delegates actually organising on the job, by keeping non-members off the farms, they doubled wages and recruited 18,000 workers into the AWO in two years. The AWO Secretary, Walter Nef, claimed that they had established an 800-mile picket line from Kansas to South Dakota. Despite these successes among the truly dispossessed of the farms and logging camps, where the workers never stayed long enough to obtain the vote and the dubious privileges of settled citizenship, the defeat of Paterson and the failure of organisation among the Eastern working class doomed the organisation to inevitable decline.</p>
<p>The tenuous financial security obtained through the AWO affiliation, and one or two other effective sections, were dissipated during the war by a massive government-directed attack on the IWW. The leadership were by the war’s end either serving or preparing to serve long prison sentences. During the post-war Palmer persecutions, hundreds of foreign-born Wobblies were deported. As with every other revolutionary organisation the very fact of the Russian Revolution served to clarify the thinking of IWW members. The uneasy alliance between marxists, syndicalists, anarchists and industrial unionists that had coexisted in the IWW on the basis of a militant class war attitude, without working through a clear analysis for revolutionary change, could not survive the implications of October 1917. Many of the leading figures joined the Communist Party. The majority, however, did not. The IWW were invited to join the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) but withdrew when it became clear that the line of the International favoured working through existing trade unions and dual unionism was to be avoided.</p>
<p>The IWW continued its decline, by 1925 it was taken over by an extreme anarchosyndicalist tendency that completely decentralised the organisation. The IWW was involved in one or two major disputes, both among coal miners – Colorado in 1927 and Harlan County in the 1930s – but the organisation was effectively dead. In 1948 they managed to form a picket line around the offices of the <strong>New Republic</strong> magazine, in whose pages had appeared an article – by Wallace Stegner – suggesting that Joe Hill had been guilty of the murder for which he was shot in Utah in 1915. At its 50th anniversary the IWW still existed, just. It did not organise a single factory or plant.</p>
<p>The IWW, however, was not a failure. In James P Cannon’s phrase, it was ‘a Great Anticipation’. Without the IWW the massive outburst of industrial unionism in the 1930s would have been very different and certainly less effective. The sit-in strike tactics used to such great effect in the Congress of Industrial Organisations’ organising drives derived directly from the Wobblies. Much of the CIO cadre were old-time members of the IWW. The organisation of the mass production industries attempted with the immigrants in Lawrence, Paterson and Akron, in the brave days of the IWW, had to wait until the English-speaking second generation were ready for organisation. The great tragedy of the non-politicism of the IWW was repeated in the CIO. The greatest outburst of the American working class was not accompanied by the growth of a genuine revolutionary party. The Trotskyists spent the important period of the CIO in a faction fight over entry into the corpse of American Social Democracy, followed by a split and entry into Norman Thomas’s party. The Communist Party, after years of dedicated pursuit of each twist and turn of Stalinism, involving them in dual unionism, boring from within the AFL and independent red unions, provided much of the second line cadre for the CIO, from which position they were well able to assist Roosevelt and the trade union bureaucracy to impose the anti-strike pledge during the second world war.</p>
<p>The American industrial unions made the giant step forward in the 1930s, but in a short period of time they were as bureaucratised as the despised AFL. The one-page contracts negotiated with the employers in the late 1930s that merely recognised the union are today the massive documents that regulate every moment of the worker’s life. The union has become the equal partner of the bosses with equal interest in the continuance of capitalism and the exclusion of the worker from effective control over his own life. The transformation of the brave notion of industrial unionism as the harbinger of the new society into its opposite was not considered, nor could it have been, by the men who formed the IWW in 1905. Nor was it a factor in the minds of the British partisans of the IWW.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="../04/revtu2.htm"><big>Part II</big></a><br>
</p>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> W. Stewart, <strong>J. Keir Hardy</strong>, p.87, quoted in Kendal, <strong>Revolutionary Movement in Britain</strong>, p.24.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> R. Ginger, <strong>Eugene Debs</strong>, p.170.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n3" href="#f3" name="n3">3.</a> P. Renshaw, <strong>The Wobblies</strong>.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n4" href="#f4" name="n4">4.</a> T. Draper, <strong>The Roots of American Communism</strong>, p.19.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n5" href="#f5" name="n5">5.</a> E. Higgins, <strong>Direct Action versus Impossibilism</strong>, quoted in Renshaw, <strong>op. cit.</strong></p>
<p class="note"><a id="n6" href="#f6" name="n6">6.</a> Renshaw, <strong>op. cit.</strong>, pp.176-78.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Revolutionary Trade Unionism
(February 1971)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.46, February/March 1971, pp.27-31.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Workers are taught organisation not by their superior intelligence or by outside agitators but by the capitalists themselves. They are organised on the assembly lines, in the factory gangs, in shifts, in work teams, in the division of labour of capitalism itself. Capitalism cannot grow without organising its workers and teaching them the virtues of a form of ‘solidarity’ of working together. – Hal Draper: Why the Working Class is the Key to Progress.
The development of capitalism in Britain was accompanied by massive movements of population, unparalleled in brutality until Stalin undertook a similar exercise 100 years later. The enclosures, the ending of outdoor relief and the growth of the segregated workhouse, the importation of thousands of Irish labourers and the virtual destruction of the skilled hand-craftsman all conspired together to drive the people into the grim barrack-factories of the industrial revolution.
In short order, these uneducated workers, without the benefit of precedent or kindly middle-class tutelage, combined into trade unions. The first lesson learned in the hard workshop school of the factory masters was solidarity: solidarity within the factory and, in the Chartist experience, solidarity as a class. This is not to say that the early attempts at combination were all successful. Struggles were localised and communication bad. Poverty and frequent unemployment made the continuous existence of trade unions difficult almost to the point of impossibility. The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (having at its best 30,000 members) was unable to survive a prolonged strike of tailors.
But despite defeats, despite government repression, trade unions were formed and the struggle continued. Capitalism had decreed the factories, the division of labour and must needs live with and battle with the social and political consequences. The objective difficulties of trade union advance meant that the response was generalised into the struggle around the Charter. Taken in its historical context, the demands of the Charter and, in particular the movement that grew up around the programme, had profoundly revolutionary content. At its birth, capitalism could only view the simple demands for political democracy and human rights as completely subversive – and they were right.
For Marxists, in their consideration of working-class organisation, the early trade unions and the Chartist movement provide, among other things, a lesson in the infinite capacity of the working class to give organisational form to their struggle for emancipation. The disparate elements that went into the making of the working class were able to construct organisations to challenge the whole ethic of capitalism. For decades the ruling class lived in fear of the activities of the ‘mob’. It is part of the complex of contradictions that run through the history of the working class that the trade unions that represented a threat to the very structure of capitalism at its inception should today be a bulwark of that system.
The demise of Chartism, the greater economic power and concentration of capitalism and the consequent growth of stable employment for the skilled sections of workers gave rise to financially viable trade unions along craft lines. Unlike the early trade unions that saw their task as obtaining for the worker the full product of his labour, and unlike the Chartists who saw the extension of political democracy as the inevitable emancipation of the oppressed, the craft unions saw themselves as a pressure group maintaining the standards of the trade and the sectional interests of their members. The problems of the unorganised and unskilled were not the problems of craft unionism. The later movement among the unskilled labourers, epitomised in the great dock strike, came not as a result of the activities of the trade unions, but from the spontaneous struggle of the workers themselves and the agitation and propaganda of socialists like Eleanor Marx, Tom Mann and John Burns.
The growing prosperity of the system was reflected in the growing prosperity of the trade union bureaucracy. Organisation of craftsmen, the extension of the franchise, all contributed to the importance to capitalism of the trade union bureaucracy. Wages for the skilled were as much as three times the wages of the unskilled, continuity of employment was much greater for craftsmen and their higher wages allowed for higher contributions to cater for unemployment and sick pay. The power that trade union stability conferred on the leadership was recognised by employers and politicians alike. Their views were sought, their social and financial desires, at least partially, satisfied. They were in no time at all transferred, in De Leon’s phrase, into ‘Labour Lieutenants of Capitalism’.
In political and social terms the trade union bureaucracy was a conservative layer, enjoying special privileges and dedicated to maximising those privileges within the context of capitalism. The super profits of empire and exploitation of the unorganised and unskilled made all this possible. The further expansion of capitalism, the growing division of labour, made the work of the unskilled more important within the process of production. This coupled to the example of comparatively successful craft unionism led on to the organisation of whole new layers of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, less stable, with a heavy turnover of members and more prone to the effects of any economic downturn but making up in numbers what they lacked in other respects. (Between 1870 and 1900 the number of unions affiliated to the TUC grew from 47 to 184 and affiliated membership from 250,000 to 1,250,000.)
The growth of trade unionism resulted in a growth in the real standard of British workers. (Taking 1900 as 100, the index of real wages rose from 63 in 1869 to 99 in 1895.) Trade unionism in Britain grew on the dynamic of British capitalism. As capitalism became more prosperous, so the chance of suborning wider sections of the trade union bureaucracy became possible. From being a bar to the free expression of early capitalism the trade unions became a spur to greater capitalist rationalisation and concentration. The growth of political reformism developed in this period, the rise of Fabianism in Britain, the revisionism of Bernstein in Germany. What has developed is, for the reformist, the end point of analysis, not what the present has developed from and what it is developing towards. Capitalist democracy could afford not just reformist trade unions but also a reformist working class politics.
After 1900 the situation for the trade unions and the working class began to decline rapidly. The downturn of the economic cycle had an immediate and disastrous effect on working class standards. Prices rose uninterruptedly during the following decade while wages remained static. Unemployment rose until, in 1907, it was higher than it had been at any time in the previous 25 years. [1] The Taff Vale judgement, which cost the railwaymen’s union some £200,000 in 1901, drove the trade union leadership into support for the political expression of reformism in the Labour Representation Committee and subsequently the Labour Party. But neither political or industrial reformism could answer the simple needs of the working class.
In France the syndicalists built a trade union federation based on the skilled workers and dedicated to revolutionary direct action. (Sabotage derives from the word sabot – wooden shoe – that French railway strikers would place on the lines to derail blackleg trains.) In America in 1905 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was formed to oppose the one big union against the combined might of the system and the ‘bread and butter unionism’ of the American Federation of Labour (AFL).
The international experience of the class found its reflection in Britain through the growth of a tendency that saw the industrial union as the immediate response to working-class needs and as the instrument for taking power and also the instrument for the exercise of that power. The syndicalist-cum-industrial-unionist tendency were uncompromisingly opposed to craft unionism and its political expression in the Labour Party. Influenced by the French direct activists and the dual unionism of De Leon and the IWW they quickly discovered that, whatever the universal validity of the notion of independent revolutionary class action, the transposition of American and French theories to the British scene were doomed to failure. The Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) an attempt by the British Socialist Labour Party to implant the IWW into Britain was a brave but dismal failure. We will return to the IWGB later but first it is necessary to examine in some detail the origin of the movement in America.
There are three figures who came together in 1905 to form the IWW: Daniel De Leon, Eugene Debs and Bill Heywood. There were, of course, many others who subsequently became as important if not more important than these three, but the past experience and personal prestige of Debs, De Leon and Haywood drew together the disparate strands they represented and gave the movement the impetus it required. Debs represented a particularly strange development as an individual within the working-class movement. In a way he reversed the popular path of a labour leader. Starting off as a railroad worker he became active in the ultra-conservative Railroad Brotherhoods and a protagonist of non-political craft unionism. He developed as the result of the manifest failure of the brotherhoods into a partisan of industrial unionism and formed the American Railway Union. The ARU’s defeat in the bloody Pullman strike of 1894 (in Chicago alone 13 people were killed and 53 injured [2]) and the assistance provided to the employers by state and federal government ended his lifelong attachment to the Democratic Party. The incapacity of the brotherhoods and the AFL turned him to dual unionism. In Cook County jail he learned the bare essentials of socialist theory. He became a socialist, a revolutionist, an internationalist – and a dual unionist.
Haywood represented a different tradition, a native born American who started work as a youth in the metal mines of the West and then left to become a homesteader. The government, however, took his land for an Indian reservation (an unusual reversal of tradition) and Haywood was forced back into the mines. This experience confirmed Haywood in an already well-developed antipathy to the fetters of wage slavery. Together with others in the West he saw the end of the dream of individual liberty in the terrible conditions of the metal mines.
Individual freedom was submerged in the freedom of the corporations and the power of corporate wealth was made apparent in the naked force with which they manipulated both people and government. Heywood and his like did not need, certainly felt they did not need, the abstract theories of marxism and socialism to teach them the need to struggle and the need to destroy capitalism. For them it was a fact of life, a necessary condition of working-class experience. In 1893 he helped to form the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Haywood’s philosophy is well summed up in his speech to the founding convention of the IWW:
‘between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wages system’.
This splendid formulation is interesting. The emphasis on the abolition of the wages system in a way harks back to the early British trade union philosophy – the opposition of the independent producer to the tyranny of the wages system – the demand for the full product of his labour, by the man who hates the naked and direct exploitation of the capitalist. This feature of the WFM and other dissident American trade unions indicates one reason for the difficulty in implanting the forms of the IWW into the conditions of Europe. Only in Australia, which had a .similar internal frontier, was the IWW able to exert more than a transitory influence. Hayward was also a member of the American Socialist Party and, at least while he maintained membership avoided the worst non-political attitudes of the extreme Wobblies. Nevertheless he was at one with Debs and a significant group in the ASP that opposed Gomper’s AFL and was committed to dual unionism.
De Leon was a totally different personality from the other two, a doctrinaire marxist in that most doctrinaire of organisations the Socialist Labour Party. A former lecturer in law at Colombia University, he joined the SLP at a low point in its fortunes. The SLP, an organisation largely composed of immigrants, experienced in somewhat exaggerated form the controversies of the European movement. The Lassalleans and the marxists fought incessantly for theoretical control of the party in frequently unreal and dogmatic terms. For the Lassalleans the ‘iron law of wages’ made it futile to engage in the economic struggle of trade unions. De Leon managed formally to straddle the positions of the two tendencies in the SLP and evolve a theory to combine political and industrial activity. In practice the party adopted such an exclusive tactic that the advantages of certain rectitude (De Leon once wrote ‘The SLP has all the “tyranny” of truth’ [3]) and disciplined organisation were lost in the almost universal opposition they provoked.
In 1893 he entered the Knights of Labour and by superior organisation and force of personality captured District 49 of the union. For 12 months the SLP exercised considerable influence in the organisation. Inevitably the extreme dogmatism of his position met with revulsion and the SLP adherents were expelled. In 1894, in concert with several small ‘socialist’ unions. De Leon managed to lead a battle for building in socialist objectives to the AFL constitution. In this they were unsuccessful but together with the Mineworkers they did manage to defeat Gompers for the presidency. Twelve months later Gompers was back and De Leon was out. For De Leon boring from within was now a dead letter and he set up, under SLP auspices, the Socialist Trades and Labour Alliance. The ST&LA never numbered more than 10,000 members and was solely based in New York among immigrant trades. The sectarianism of the SLP, the shrillness of its polemics and its virulent dual unionism eventually gave rise to a split within the SLP. In 1898 a sizeable section of the party, behind Morris Hillquit, bolted. Three years later the Hillquit group formed the basis for the American Socialist Party.
By 1905 the ST&LA had reduced in membership to 1,500. There was no way for the organisation to exist unless it merged with the growing forces within the independent unions and, the left wing in the SP for an industrial unionist opposition to the AFL. De Leon’s errors were large ones and most commentators, especially those of the Communist Party – who made all of De Leon’s mistakes without any of his justification – concentrated on these errors. But despite his dogmatism, he made a genuine contribution to socialist thought and his work on the way the victorious working class would exercise their power through their own industrial organisation was a reasonably accurate forecast of the Soviets.
These three personalities, with all their faults and strengths, came together in 1905 to form the IWW. The Knights of Labour had declined and then failed and the AFL was almost exclusively craft unionist and organised only 5 per cent of the workers. To charges of splitting the trade union front the Wobblies replied that the AFL was not a trade union at all. In another section of his speech to the inaugural convention of the IWW, Hay wood said:
‘It has been said that this convention was to form an organisation to rival the AF of L. This is a mistake. We are here for the purpose of forming a Labour organisation.’
Debs went even further.
‘To talk about reforming these rotten graft infested (AF of L) unions which are dominated absolutely by the labour boss, is as vain and wasteful of time as to spray a cesspool with attar of roses.’ [4]
There is more than a little justification for these remarks. The exclusiveness of the AFL went further than mere craft. They were also lilywhite and their refusal to organise the unskilled meant that the migrant and immigrant workers were left entirely at the mercy of the employers. AFL policy was effectively: I will not organise them but neither must anyone else. Between 1896 and 1897 the WFM was affiliated to the AFL, This brief association ended with recrimination on both sides. The political and industrial quietism of the Gompers-led AFL, together with a failure to effectively support the miners in the Lead-ville strike, were the causes of the split. The WFM immediately started a rival Western Labour Union to ‘organise all labour west of the Mississippi irrespective of occupation, nationality, creed or colour’. In the next seven years the WFM fought a series of bitter, bloody, long-drawn-out disputes, generally around the issues of the eight-hour day, union recognition and wages. Sometimes they lost, more often they won and they maintained the union and spread the appeal of militant industrial unionism.
In 1902 Debs persuaded the WFM to change the name of the Western Labour Union to the American Labour Union (ALU) and to extend their sphere of activity to the whole country. The dual unionist challenge was being made with a vengeance. In the summer of 1905 the founding conference of the IWW met in Chicago. Beside the WFM, the ALU and De Leon’s ST&LA there were delegates from a number of independent unions, some state federations of unions, some Canadian unions and the American branch of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers of Great Britain. All together some 200 delegates attended. It was a mixed bunch. The seeds of future difficulty already existed in the two main strands that were represented – the anarchist trend (Father Hagerty and Lucy Parsons – widow of the Haymarket martyr) and the orthodox marxists (the left of the SP, the SLP). For the anarchists and syndicalists,
‘Political action leads to capitalism reformed. Direct action leads to socialism ... death to politics ...’ [5]
As late as April 1904 De Leon still believed that American socialism could be ushered in by the ballot box, although he was later to concede that if the capitalists used fraud to deprive the workers of victory then direct action should be taken to redress the balance. De Leon however did not explain why workers with the ability to redress the balance should wait for the bosses to use fraud before exercising direct action.
The keynote for the IWW founding convention in 1905 was given by Bill Hay wood:
‘This is the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism’. (Proceedings of the First Convention of the IWW)
The proceedings were much taken up with debates around the question of politics. It is a measure of the strength of De Leon’s personality that politics were seen in his terms: the ballot box versus direct action, the IWW as the industrial appendage of the SLP or as the combination of revolutionary cadre and mass trade union. But De Leon’s apparent victory in securing the inclusion of political aims in the preamble to the IWW constitution was short lived. At the 1906 convention the first week was spent in a wrangle about whether De Leon was a bona fide worker who could be seated at all. The anti-political anti-De Leon forces were gaining strength. The most stable section of the IWW, the WFM, was especially hostile to De Leon’s particular brand of politics. (The editor of the Miner’s Magazine wrote that the second convention was ‘part of a conspiracy that contemplated the resurrection ... of a political corpse – the Socialist Labour Party’. [6]) In July 1908 the WFM withdrew from the IWW. De Leon was blamed for the alienation of this, the only stable union in the IWW, and at the September convention the annual attempt to deny De Leon a seat was successful. The SLP set up a rival IWW in Detroit, which lasted until 1925 (after De Leon’s death called the Worker’s International Industrial Union). De Leon had succeeded once more in driving the SLP into splendid isolation and intensified the anti-political reaction of the IWW.
Despite its theoretical crudity, despite its anti-political Philistinism, the IWW involved literally thousands of militants in the organisation. The dedication of the Wobblies and their willingness to suffer beatings by company and state thugs, their readiness to go to jail and their fortitude and defiance at judicial frame-ups to the point, and beyond, judicial murder, made the name of the organisation and its militants known and respected throughout the labour movement. It also made them known and execrated in the press and legislatures.
They fought a strike in Goldfield, Nevada, and organised virtually all workers in the town (with the exception of a few AFL skilled trades) they forced up wages and conditions from $1.75 for a ten-hour day to $4.50 for an eight-hour day. At Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912, they turned wage cuts for some 30,000 workers into a wage increase. Between 1907 and 1916 they ran 13 major free speech campaigns against local ordinances specifically directed against IWW organising meetings. In these campaigns they drafted in literally hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Wobblies to defy the ordinances and to jam the jails and often they won. But none of these great struggles left the IWW with a continuing organisation in the towns of the East. The power of the corporations, the difficulty of organising workers divided into as many as 20 language groups (as at Paterson, New Jersey), the state and government repression and the IWW’s refusal to consider bargaining with the bosses, made stable organisation impossible. In Lawrence, at the end of the strike, the IWW had 14.000 members in the local. Twelve months later they were down to the pre-strike 400.
In trade union terms, the IWW was not a success. In the sense that their intention was to build something much more than a trade union, there was a certain inevitability about lack of success. The natural ground for the Wobblies were the mass production industries of the East, the factory towns populated by a polyglot collection of immigrants working long hours in inhuman conditions for miserably low wages, at the beginning of the piece work and factory speed-up system. But the successes were confined to the migratory workers of the West and Middle West. They organised effectively among the transient harvest workers forming the Agricultural Workers Organisation (AWO) and in bloody battles forced up the wage rates and improved on the disgusting, bug-infested conditions of the farm camps. By a system of delegates actually organising on the job, by keeping non-members off the farms, they doubled wages and recruited 18,000 workers into the AWO in two years. The AWO Secretary, Walter Nef, claimed that they had established an 800-mile picket line from Kansas to South Dakota. Despite these successes among the truly dispossessed of the farms and logging camps, where the workers never stayed long enough to obtain the vote and the dubious privileges of settled citizenship, the defeat of Paterson and the failure of organisation among the Eastern working class doomed the organisation to inevitable decline.
The tenuous financial security obtained through the AWO affiliation, and one or two other effective sections, were dissipated during the war by a massive government-directed attack on the IWW. The leadership were by the war’s end either serving or preparing to serve long prison sentences. During the post-war Palmer persecutions, hundreds of foreign-born Wobblies were deported. As with every other revolutionary organisation the very fact of the Russian Revolution served to clarify the thinking of IWW members. The uneasy alliance between marxists, syndicalists, anarchists and industrial unionists that had coexisted in the IWW on the basis of a militant class war attitude, without working through a clear analysis for revolutionary change, could not survive the implications of October 1917. Many of the leading figures joined the Communist Party. The majority, however, did not. The IWW were invited to join the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) but withdrew when it became clear that the line of the International favoured working through existing trade unions and dual unionism was to be avoided.
The IWW continued its decline, by 1925 it was taken over by an extreme anarchosyndicalist tendency that completely decentralised the organisation. The IWW was involved in one or two major disputes, both among coal miners – Colorado in 1927 and Harlan County in the 1930s – but the organisation was effectively dead. In 1948 they managed to form a picket line around the offices of the New Republic magazine, in whose pages had appeared an article – by Wallace Stegner – suggesting that Joe Hill had been guilty of the murder for which he was shot in Utah in 1915. At its 50th anniversary the IWW still existed, just. It did not organise a single factory or plant.
The IWW, however, was not a failure. In James P Cannon’s phrase, it was ‘a Great Anticipation’. Without the IWW the massive outburst of industrial unionism in the 1930s would have been very different and certainly less effective. The sit-in strike tactics used to such great effect in the Congress of Industrial Organisations’ organising drives derived directly from the Wobblies. Much of the CIO cadre were old-time members of the IWW. The organisation of the mass production industries attempted with the immigrants in Lawrence, Paterson and Akron, in the brave days of the IWW, had to wait until the English-speaking second generation were ready for organisation. The great tragedy of the non-politicism of the IWW was repeated in the CIO. The greatest outburst of the American working class was not accompanied by the growth of a genuine revolutionary party. The Trotskyists spent the important period of the CIO in a faction fight over entry into the corpse of American Social Democracy, followed by a split and entry into Norman Thomas’s party. The Communist Party, after years of dedicated pursuit of each twist and turn of Stalinism, involving them in dual unionism, boring from within the AFL and independent red unions, provided much of the second line cadre for the CIO, from which position they were well able to assist Roosevelt and the trade union bureaucracy to impose the anti-strike pledge during the second world war.
The American industrial unions made the giant step forward in the 1930s, but in a short period of time they were as bureaucratised as the despised AFL. The one-page contracts negotiated with the employers in the late 1930s that merely recognised the union are today the massive documents that regulate every moment of the worker’s life. The union has become the equal partner of the bosses with equal interest in the continuance of capitalism and the exclusion of the worker from effective control over his own life. The transformation of the brave notion of industrial unionism as the harbinger of the new society into its opposite was not considered, nor could it have been, by the men who formed the IWW in 1905. Nor was it a factor in the minds of the British partisans of the IWW.
Part II
Notes
1. W. Stewart, J. Keir Hardy, p.87, quoted in Kendal, Revolutionary Movement in Britain, p.24.
2. R. Ginger, Eugene Debs, p.170.
3. P. Renshaw, The Wobblies.
4. T. Draper, The Roots of American Communism, p.19.
5. E. Higgins, Direct Action versus Impossibilism, quoted in Renshaw, op. cit.
6. Renshaw, op. cit., pp.176-78.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>A World To Win</h1>
<h3>(2000)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Revolutionary History</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm#v7n4" target="new">Vol. 7 No. 4</a>, 2000.<br>
Transcribed by Alun Morgan for the <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/main.htm" target="new"><em>Revolutionary History Website</em></a>.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Tony Cliff<br>
<strong>A World To Win: Life of a Revolutionary</strong><br>
<em>Bookmarks, London 2000, pp. 247, £11.99</em></p>
<p class="fst">READING Cliff’s autobiography has brought back to me a host of images and incidents, hardly any of which feature in the book. Its tone is serious, displaying little of his humour, and conferring on the author a quite unmerited gravitas. I remember once saying to Jock Haston how impressed I was by C.L.R. James’ book <strong>Black Jacobins</strong>. Jock, who did quite a nice line in patronising cynicism, replied: ‘I always find James impressive unless I know something about the subject he is writing about.’ I feel much the same about Cliff’s last book. I know a little about his life from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, and the virtually unsullied character presented here does not sit too well with the multiple-charactered personality I knew for years on an almost daily basis.</p>
<p>For example, some time in the 1960s, Tony Cliff and his family moved house from Finsbury Park to more commodious premises in Stoke Newington. This larger property had been purchased from a Jewish family, and came not only with more room, a garden and the usual offices, but also with a <em>mezuzah</em> nailed to a door frame. Anxious that he should not have to walk about his home with a rope of garlic round his neck, I suggested to Cliff that he hand me a screwdriver, and I would have the offending religious item in the dustbin in a trice. To my surprise, he refused this handy offer. ‘No, no, you will spoil the paint’, he insisted. Now this <em>mezuzah</em> was a tinny little item fixed with panel pins, definitely at the Woolworths end of the religious artifacts market. For my part, I would sooner have a slightly damaged architrave than suffer this piece of pious persiflage. Cliff, however, was adamant, and the <em>mezuzah</em> stayed. It may be there to this day.</p>
<p>Over the years I have occasionally wondered why the atheist Cliff, whose disregard for appearances was immediately apparent, should worry so about a few slivers of gloss paint. I believe that I can now shine a small light on this puzzle. In every <em>mezuzah</em> there is a tiny scroll with 20 lines from Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, in which Moses sets down his last injunctions to the Israelites. It demands absolute adherence to his words, and that the message shall be taught during every waking hour. Such fidelity will be rewarded by a land flowing with milk and honey, fat cattle and tables groaning with comestibles and good wine. Cliff, it seems to me, steeped as he was in biblical lore, saw himself as just such a Moses figure, who would lead his people to the promised Socialist land. Even if he did not get there himself, he would set out his law for them to follow. Of course, his Moses days would have to fit in with this busy programme, so that it did not conflict with his Lenin days (very frequent these), or his Trotsky days, neglected for many years, but a bit bullish in recent times. There would, of course, be no problem with his Luxemburg days, because he forswore that rôle in 1968.</p>
<p>Cliff’s last, posthumously-published work, <strong>A World to Win</strong>, sees him very much in a valedictory Moses mode. This is a book for Socialist Workers Party members, and one that will prove, despite the odd setback, that the organisation has over the years developed, under his wise tutelage, into a firmly-based expression of Bolshevism in the twenty-first century. If the comrades will pay careful attention to Cliff’s application of the Marxist method, as he learned it from Lenin, then they too can become instruments of history.</p>
<p>Most of us who have spent some years in the revolutionary movement have found it all too easy to forget the generous impulses that drew us to it in the first place. The revulsion against discrimination, exploitation, poverty and war, usually through some heightened personal experience, provides the live evidence that makes Socialist ideas both relevant and inspiring. That high passion is too often lost sight of in the practice of everyday sectarian or factional organisation. What we fondly imagined was the means is all too often transformed into an end in itself. For most of Cliff’s life, it was the organisation and what he perceived to be its needs that formed the basis of his thought and deed. If those thoughts wandered beyond the immediate concerns of the party to the sunlit uplands of the Socialist commonwealth it was, more often than not, that species of May Day peroration calculated to enthuse the comrades to greater efforts on behalf of the Party. The turning point in Cliff’s life came very early when he witnessed the wretched conditions of Arab children in his native Palestine. An essay by the youthful Cliff on his sadness that there were no Arab children in his school was prophetically marked up by his teacher as ‘Communist’. Most of us have a teacher with a talent for prophecy like that in our past, mine with prescient accuracy wrote ‘abject failure’. This part of the autobiography dealing with Palestine is probably the most interesting. For some inexplicable reason, I find it quite pleasing that somewhere in the Gluckstein family album there may still exist a picture of Cliff’s uncle, Banker Gluckstein, leading a Jewish delegation to Tsar Nicholas II, bringing loyal blessings to that doomed and dim Romanov. Perhaps part of the charm of Cliff’s Palestine reflections is that one was not there to know what actually happened and what he actually did, nevertheless there is certainly an air of authenticity about his assertion that in a country where the tiny working class was divided by religion, language and tradition, the minuscule Trotskyist organisation had virtually no contact with organised workers. Cliff goes so far as to say that ‘the average branch of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain today has greater impact than we had in Palestine’. Those of us who knew the International Socialists when a good third of its members were manual workers, and saw what kind of a sorry fist Cliff made of that, might give him an argument on that one.</p>
<p>In pursuit of a relationship with the working class, Cliff came to Britain in 1946. It is part of his and our tragedy that in the next 50 plus years that contact was never more than skin deep and oh so fleeting. En route to the UK, he stopped off in Paris to meet the leaders of the Fourth International, and discovered, as so many of us did later on, that this powerhouse of the ‘World Party of Bolshevism’ was in fact an empty shell just kept afloat by Michel Pablo’s and Ernest Mandel’s windy rhetoric. Nevertheless, he agreed to defend the workers’ state thesis against the state capitalist leanings of Jock Haston and Ted Grant when he got to the UK. You will not find any mention of this particular arrangement in Cliff’s book, although on page 51 you might read: ‘Jock did toy with the idea that perhaps Stalin’s Russia was not a workers’ state. But a few months later he dropped this idea completely.’ The entire text is littered with small evasions of this sort.</p>
<p>In that confusing postwar time, the nature of the Stalinist regime exercised the minds of Trotskyists throughout the world. Trotsky’s predictions and promises after the Founding Congress of the Fourth International in 1938 looked particularly thin in the light of the war and its aftermath. If Trotsky predicted that the Stalinist bureaucracy could not survive the convulsions of a world war and it turned out that Stalin was not only still in charge in Russia but was presiding over half of Europe in addition, then James P. Cannon, in his self-appointed rôle of Trotsky’s successor, decreed that the war was not over. Mandel let it be known that news was expected by the next post that Stalinism had succumbed to a rejuvenated proletariat. If this suggests that Mandel’s mind was less brick-shaped than Cannon’s, nevertheless both had only the most tenuous grip on reality. Max Shachtman in the USA saw this as a chance to convert the Fourth International to his bureaucratic collectivist theory, and replace Cannon in the driving seat. Haston at least was attempting to come to terms with reality, even if his ideas were extremely tentative. It is now possible to say with some confidence that all the protagonists in this debate got it wrong, and they are still in error to this day. For all of them, the argument was cast within the old categories that had been found wanting. It was all form and no content, the working class, the proper study for Socialists, was not in it. It was rather like three blind men feeling their way around different parts of an elephant and, from their researches, attempting to describe the beast. There would certainly be elements of truth in their reports, but it would bear no relation to a living, breathing, complicated flesh-and-blood jumbo interacting with the real world. It is this inability to see beyond the boundaries of their own dubious certainties that ensured that the fall of Stalinism was unheralded in workers’ statist, state capitalist and Shachtmanite publications. As Al Richardson wrote in the introduction to his collection <strong>In Defence of the Russian Revolution</strong>: ‘It has to be said that the collapse of the Soviet Union caught them all napping. In spite of their claims to scientific Socialism, possession of this science gave them no predictive powers whateverb… you can scan their journals right up to the event in vain for any suggestion of what was coming. Nor has any coherent explanation emerged since.’ Al also makes a significant point, in the same introduction: ‘Those who hold to a state capitalist analysis came up with the illuminating suggestion that a state capitalist class had slimmed down its bankrupt concern into smaller private firms, oblivious of the observation that while many a small shopkeeper dreams of becoming a monopoly capitalist, few monopoly capitalists dream of becoming small shopkeepers.’ Similarly, when I consider the arguments for the idea that Russia was a workers’ state, I like to think that the Russian workers, having for all those years exerted pressure on the bureaucracy to retain state property, awoke one day with an overwhelming craving to put on a pair of 501 jeans and queue for a Big Mac, while they listened to their Sony Walkmen. What has state property and the monopoly of foreign trade to offer to match the seductive charms of these powerful symbols of personal freedom? After much heart-searching and sleepless nights, Cliff came to the conclusion that Jock Haston was right, Russia was state capitalist. At the same time, Jock decided that not only was Russia a workers’ state, but so were all the countries of the Eastern bloc. Which nifty piece of footwork not only put Jock at odds with Cliff, but also with Mandel and Pablo, who insisted that the Eastern bloc regimes were capitalist states with an ‘extreme form of police Bonapartism’. It is true that they did not hold this view for long, because in 1948 Tito broke with the Cominform and, for the Fourth International, was transformed from a semi-fascist into an appropriate ally for Trotskyism. In later years, Mandel had the good grace to be embarrassed if you twitted him about his mental gymnastics in 1948.</p>
<p>Into this maelstrom Cliff tossed his 150-page Revolutionary Communist Party internal bulletin on state capitalism. Right or wrong, it was the most coherent argument on the disputed questions around at the time. It formed the central core of all subsequent editions of <strong>Stalinist Russia: A Marxist Analysis</strong>, except that Cliff removed the original material about ‘Soviet millionaires’, such as the odd collective farmer and Alexei Tolstoy, who were thought to be of great significance in the RCP just after the war. Reading this internal bulletin today, aside from its antique charm, one can appreciate that it had some persuasive power, even though, for me, it is no longer persuasive enough. Certainly it is more appealing than the tediously longer accretion of supporting evidence with which Cliff felt it necessary to burden later editions.</p>
<p>This was Cliff’s attempt to reconcile Trotskyism with the postwar reality, to give the party a defensible theory. That this inevitably required that he contradict and replace large chunks of Trotsky’s pre-war politics ensured that the response to his ideas would be hostile. His personal base in the RCP was negligible, after just a few months in Britain and Haston’s rejection of state capitalism meant that there was no significant figure to pursue the argument internationally. From this point on, the idea was to form a distinct state capitalist group. Now theory would serve to build a new organisation, and he set about building a cadre. The pool from which these recruits would come was the RCP as it subsided into Labour Party entrism and Gerry Healy’s maw. In <strong>A World to Win</strong>, Cliff mentions only three of the original band: his wife Chanie Rosenberg, Duncan Hallas and Geoff Carlsson, which is less than generous to Jean Tait, Ray Challinor, Bill Ainsworth, Ken and Rhoda Tarbuck, Peter Morgan and Anil Munesinghe. This unwillingness to acknowledge that comrades other than Cliff and Chanie made some contribution to building the group runs throughout the volume. Suffice it to say that many others were involved in NCLC lecturing, speaking to YS branches, writing for <strong>Socialist Review</strong>, setting type for the pocket Adana editions of <strong>Rebel</strong>, and making contact with likely recruits. The difference between Cliff and the rest of us was that we worked for a living before we engaged in all these exciting pursuits. Cliff, for example, makes much of his heroic contact visiting trip to Glasgow on the back of a comrade’s motor-bike, no doubt a long and arduous ride. What he does not say is that the heroic rider of the machine was Stan Newens, who was pressed into this primitive chauffeuring activity on a regular basis. Stan, of course, lost his right to any credit when he left the group in the late 1950s, compounding this offence when he later became a Labour MP and later still an MEP.</p>
<p>Cliff does not claim to be the only begetter of state capitalist theory, perhaps because too many people have heard of C.L.R. James. He does, however, let it be understood that the theory of the permanent arms economy was his very own brainchild and stands as the second of the three pillars holding up his political legacy. In fact, the theory made its first appearance in the American magazine <strong>Politics</strong> in February 1944 under the by-line of Walter J. Oakes. This was one of the many pen names of Ed Sard, a member of Shachtman’s Workers Party. Sard expanded on his original article in the <strong>New International</strong> in a six-part series starting in January 1951, this time under the pseudonym T.N. Vance. True Sard called his theory the <em>Permanent War Economy</em>, but so did Cliff for several years until Mike Kidron changed the middle word to ‘Arms’. On chronological evidence alone, Cliff could not claim originality on this one.</p>
<p>It is possible to plough through this text and unearth many, many examples such as the Permanent Arms Economy where Cliff claims unwarranted primacy in thought, word and deed, but it would weary the reader almost as much as it would weary me. I believe there are those who find this kind of implacable self-aggrandisement strangely charming, I am not one of them. Perhaps Cliff thought that Ian Birchall (whose ‘phenomenal memory’ he rightly commends) would be the only one to remember the real facts, and, as the SWP’s premier apologist, he would keep mum. In every small revolutionary organisation, there is always a problem with the founding father (or mother, if you are talking about the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania). One feels a debt of gratitude for his founding efforts, he may well be older and more knowledgeable of revolutionary theory and practice, and, in any case, you can bet your bottom dollar he will fight like hell to get his own way. Ted Grant is like that, Gerry Healy was like that, and Cliff, although less boring than Grant and much more civilised than Healy, would go to considerable lengths to come out on top in any dispute. This trait was compounded by his absolute certainty that his current policy, because it was his, brooked no denial, and it was imperative that it be implemented by next Tuesday at the latest.</p>
<p>From about the mid-1950s, Cliff drifted away from the organisational conceptions of Trotskyism, and maintained and developed a more libertarian approach to these questions until the mid-1960s. This largely corresponds to the period when Mike Kidron exercised the greatest influence within the Socialist Review Group. It was incidentally the period when CND and the Labour Party Young Socialists were the main area of recruitment. For this work, Rosa Luxemburg was much more useful than Lenin. Cliff proclaimed in his short book on Luxemburg, published in 1959: ‘For Marxists in advanced industrial countries, Lenin’s original position can much less serve as a guide than Rosa Luxemburg’s.’</p>
<p>By 1968, the International Socialists had grown modestly but not unimpressively to about 800 members. That year also saw the abomination of London dockers marching in support of Enoch Powell. This event led Cliff to propose left unity under the urgent menace of fascism. Let us leave aside the fact that if there had been an urgent menace of fascism, then the unity of say 2,000 revolutionaries would not have been of much significance, it would have been far more sensible for all the revolutionaries to have joined the Labour Party if they wanted a real fight against fascism. Really, the object of the exercise, despite the fact that all the groups and the Communist Party were called on to unite, was the International Marxist Group, then the British section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. For such a unity to happen, let alone work, it would be necessary to adopt at least some of the forms of the Trotskyist tradition. For Cliff this was no great problem, and he assumed, his wish being father to the deed, that democratic centralism would be readily accepted by a grateful membership. In June 1968, he unleashed his <em>Notes on Democratic Centralism</em> on a less than appreciative group. This is a slipshod piece of work, more like a stream of consciousness than an internal bulletin, in which he seems to suggest that the First International had a democratic centralist constitution. It may surprise some current members of Cliff’s organisation that he once took it as the <em>sine qua non</em> of democratic centralism that factions could exist, and that they were entitled to representation on all the leading committees.</p>
<p>This pathetic two sides of quarto paper produced a storm of controversy. Almost overnight, about a dozen factions formed and produced long documents ranging in politics from ultra-libertarian to king-sized Bolshevism. Having sown the dragon’s teeth and reaped a whirlwind, Cliff restricted his intervention to long telephone calls, leaving the rest of the leadership to carry on the argument, despite the fact that we had not been privy to his plans. In the hope of great joy in heaven, I repent and confess that the two lengthy documents put out by the Working Committee that attempted to make up for the inadequacies of <em>Notes on Democratic Centralism</em> and to answer the plethora of opposing documents, were written by me. I sincerely apologise to the comrades. In his autobiography Cliff, for some inexplicable reason, dates his <em>Notes on Democratic Centralism</em> after October 1968.</p>
<p>Funnily enough, if Cliff had a hidden agenda so did several of us working closely with him at the time. We calculated, given a more formal structure and with a clearly understood decision-making process, that Cliff’s propensity to appoint himself a central committee of one would be reined in so that he might become part of a collective, where his ideas would be respected and discussed, but not venerated as revealed truth. Not only that, we also took the view that as we were recruiting a few but still significant number of workers, democratic centralism would enable their ideas to enlighten and inform the leading committee’s decision-making. Oh comrades, what vain hopes we entertained when we were a lot younger than we are today. Cliff, of course, continued to run things as a piece of private enterprise whenever the whim took him, rather like the proprietor of an inefficient corner shop. His veneration for the worker members was unabated and had only one reservation — that they agreed wholeheartedly with his immediate preoccupation. On page 118 of <strong>A World to Win</strong>, Cliff lets us into the secret of leadership in a Marxist organisation. Lenin, following an original idea of Napoleon’s, believed ‘<em>On s’engage et puis on voit</em>’. Cliff translates this as ‘get stuck in and see what happens’, or putting it another way, suck it and see. He first let us in on this particular aperçu in the draft of Volume One of his <strong>Lenin</strong>, it was, he explained, profoundly dialectical. Whatever the merits of this, and I think there are none, Cliff unintentionally gives us a good insight into how his mind worked. You think of something to do, then do it, and if it does not work think of something else and do that, and so on. Now that has not got a great deal to do with dialectics, and is a system that over the centuries has made bookmakers rich and silly punters broke. Cliff seems to recognise this when he goes on to says: ‘Of course this method must lead to mistakes being made, but at the same time it is essential if there are to be breakthroughs, forward jumps into new ways of doing things.’ All of this seems to me to be closer to a superstition than a Marxist analysis. Because there is something missing here, how do you decide what is a good thing to do in the first place? Do you spread your analytical net as wide as possible, drawing on the advice and experience of the worker members? Or, do you dredge up the idea from your subconscious, seek out buttressing quotes from Lenin, and then talk to Chris Harman? If you have answered yes to the second of these questions, then you are not just a pretty face, nor are you Chris Harman.</p>
<p>Joe Stalin let it be known that, as a general principle, the closer the Soviet Union approached Socialism the greater would be the attacks of the counter-revolution abroad and the depredations of internal subversion. Thus the rising population of the isolators and labour camps marked not only the eternal vigilance of Comrade Stalin, but also the giant strides being made toward Socialism. In the early 1970s, as IS began to grow modestly but into the very low thousands, with a small, perhaps 30 per cent, working-class membership, Cliff seemed to operate on the general principle that the closer IS became to a serious and viable organisation, the more capricious and impatient he should be. Increased membership was at the centre of his preoccupations. On the principle of ‘<em>on s’engage et puis on voit</em>’, he appointed himself membership secretary and set up league tables of local organisers recruiting efforts where the biggest liar won the most plaudits. Naturally enough, on this criteria, Roger Rosewell was the man of the hour.</p>
<p>Cliff also produced his thesis on the leading areas. The most promising areas would be identified speakers, money and manpower would be dedicated to these places, and the less promising areas left to their own devices would benefit, according to Cliff, from a sort of Thatcherite trickle-down process. Then there was the risible ‘buyers into sellers’ campaign, where anyone who bought the paper was pressed to become a seller. This up-to-the-minute campaign was lifted direct from Lenin, spluttered briefly and died without regret, as did the leading areas and the league tables. Another dud was the Socialist Worker Supporter’s Cards, known to the cynical as ‘revolutionary beer mats’ because most of them were left soggily on public house tables. The cards idea, lifted from Lenin on the workers’ paper, were less for the money they might bring and more to get a commitment from the workers that might be the first step to full membership. Sad to say, this was another bummer, as I have never heard of anybody who graduated from Supporter’s Card to Membership Card. The strike rate for Napoleon and Lenin’s little aphorism was looking pretty poor, and those of us who thought it might be a good idea to consolidate some of our existing recruits, who were drizzling away almost as rapidly as we recruited them, were condemned as conservative elements, unable to grasp the great opportunities opening up before us. Cliff’s zeal now shifted, momentarily, to ridding the leadership of conservative elements (Cliffspeak for Duncan Hallas and Jim Higgins). Whatever merit this plan might have, the replacements were to be local full-timers from the provincial branches, who in the very nature of their work could not operate as a day-to-day leadership. Cliff would be back into his one-man central committee mode.</p>
<p>Duncan, whose affection for Cliff had not survived, having knowing him for 30 years, felt that the course Cliff was embarked on would seriously endanger the advances we had made, and he proposed that we form a faction. I, who was actually quite fond of Cliff (but then I had only known him for 15 years), felt that he had gone too far, and that a short sharp faction fight might clear the air a bit. John Palmer and Roger Protz agreed with us, and we set about contacting people around the group. I was surprised at the favourable response we got when we approached others with our worries and discontents. Typically, the people who responded to our call were members of several years standing, and with some experience in the wider working-class movement. Among them were shop stewards and trade unionists from Manchester, Teesside, Glasgow, Harlow, Birmingham, Exeter, London and several other places. Cliff’s response, on the other hand, was most uncomradely. In short order a series of organisational manoeuvres were put in place, usually preceded by a thin veneer of political justification. Roger Protz and I were working on <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, and this became the object of close analysis. A paper that Cliff had shortly before praised somewhat immoderately, became unreadable. With much quotation from Lenin on the workers’ paper, Cliff indicated that journalist were not really needed, just somebody to put in punctuation and correct the spelling of the workers’ reports. Naturally enough, there were no more workers’ reports than there had ever been, but Roger and I were fired.</p>
<p>Far more serious than this piece of petty spite, however, was Cliff’s attempt to deal with the fact that our opposition contained a number of trade unionists, including a fair sprinkling of AUEW members. This was especially so in Birmingham, where we had 20 AUEW comrades, organised in two factory branches. Among them were 10 shop stewards, two convenors of big factories, six members of the AUEW district committee, and Arthur Harper, the president of that district committee, plus several trades council delegates. As Ted Crawford has written elsewhere, these people were the catalyst that brought the Saltley struggle to a victorious conclusion. This, if not the jewel in the crown, was of a similar character to the ENV branch of which Cliff had been so proud. Now he produced a novel thesis that shop stewards were rotted by years of reformism and routinism; many convenors, he discovered, worked full-time on their union work. Only the young were revolutionary, and we should be encouraging them to run for shop stewardships. Leave aside what serum Cliff would use to inoculate these eager thrusting youngsters against reformism in the unlikely event that they were elected, this bizarre novelty made nonsense of the declared policy of the group since its founding in 1950. Even more tragically, the policy that it sought to replace was having some success in integrating experienced trade unionists into the group.</p>
<p>This ultra-left nonsense was compounded by a decision to run an IS member from Glasgow for National Organiser in the AUEW elections. This decision, taken without any discussion with the IS-AUEW national fraction, was nevertheless reaffirmed when the AUEW fraction rejected it by an overwhelming majority. All this was extremely embarrassing to the Birmingham AUEW comrades, which is just what it was intended to be. As they explained, they had, as directed by IS conference decisions, been working in the Broad Left grouping in the union, and, as always when working with Labour Lefts and the Communist Party, this involved a fair amount of work around union elections. Long before Cliff had a rush of blood to the head and decided to run an IS candidate, the IS members working the AUEW Broad Left had committed themselves to working for the election of a CPer called Ken Higgs. Cliff was completely unable, or unwilling, to understand that initiatives like the Saltley success are based on contact with people of different or no political affiliation who have some respect for the character and trust in the word of our comrades. That trust would be lost, and with it future joint activity, whether electoral or militant. With all the splendid disregard for cost of a man who knows that he has enough money to last him the rest of his life, so long as he dies at 6.30pm tomorrow, Cliff and his satraps began expelling the Birmingham AUEW members. A couple of them had to be suspended at the door to a meeting of the IS district committee, of which they were members, so that they might not vote against their own exclusion. It was this action that convinced me that Cliff, with all his brains and all his years in the movement, was not a serious person.</p>
<p>Just to make sure that the Opposition should not get a fair crack of the whip, Cliff then arranged that the basis of delegation to the conference should be changed, as would the election of delegates, in a way that was specifically designed to minimise the Opposition’s representation. This was a neat trick, because according to the constitution the only way that its clauses could be changed was at a conference. No problem there, for a man with a stranglehold on the Leninist impulse. The delegates could vote to insert those provisions by which they had been improperly elected. It was not long before the Opposition was either expelled or forced out. Cliff describes this as follows: ‘One symptom of this situation [this refers to an alleged shift to the right in the unions in 1975 — <em>JH</em>] was a demoralisation among significant sections of our own members. They lost heart. Some left without any statement of disagreement (like Mike Kidron and Peter Sedgwick), but some, like the former national secretary Jim Higgins and former editor of <strong>Socialist Worker</strong> Roger Protz, led a split that included 150 members.’ It is difficult to imagine a statement with more misstatements in it than this one. ‘Demoralisation’ indeed, in our dispute Cliff was arguing that the workers would turn against the Labour government in three months, and I said it would be at least six months. Now you could say, with some justice, that both of us were talking nonsense, but hardly that my slightly longer-term perspective indicated demoralisation. We had not lost heart, just our patience with Cliff playing the fool. Mike Kidron and Peter Sedgwick certainly had a number of discontents that they expressed quite forcefully, and Kidron, in particular, blotted his copybook by rejecting the Permanent Arms Economy theory that he had done so much once to flesh out into some coherence. They left, together with a number of others, in 1977 when Cliff, still on his ultra-left binge, proclaimed the Socialist Workers Party. Finally, Roger and I did not lead a split, we were expelled.</p>
<p>One last entertaining and revealing example from the pages of <strong>A World to Win</strong>, on page 133, is that Cliff, so it seems, is confessing his mistakes about perspectives in 1975. He writes: ‘In retrospect it is clear that we were radically wrong in our prognosis regarding the shape of the class struggle and hence our fate. I cannot think how we could have come to a more correct prognosis at the time … at all breaking points in the past we find that the best Marxists get things wrong.’ Cliff then goes on to show that Lenin — what a reliable buttress for a chap to lean on, no matter how heavily — got it wrong in 1906. Well there you have it comrades, when he is wrong it is the case that he is right to be wrong, and in any case in changing circumstances even the best Marxists get it wrong, like Lenin in 1906. Phew, for a nasty moment I thought he was going to bring himself to account, there is nothing like a session of self-criticism for an easy acquittal.</p>
<p>This is a book that only Cliff could have written. It is clever but naive, cunning but transparently obvious, and a mine of misinformation with terminological inexactitude like a giant worm leaving a small deposit on every page. As with all his other works, it is not written to make the historical record, it would not pass any half-way rigorous test. It is intended that it will fill a rôle as an inspiration to the comrades in their task of building the Socialist Workers Party. That is a cause to which Cliff dedicated his life, and the ultimate sadness is that 60-odd years of thinking and scheming and plotting have built an organisation in his own image of a few thousand, whose influence in the working class is negligible. His background and training and the political milieu he chose in his formative years produced a particular mindset. His intelligence and his ego made him believe that the important thing was for him to lead. But his thinking was abstract, the secret recipe for the revolutionary cocktail could be found in Lenin, not in the working class. He did not generalise from working-class experience, but from Lenin’s tactics. With all due respect, that is a poor substitute.</p>
<p>Nearly 80 years ago, the Communist Party of Great Britain had a few thousand members, probably not a great deal more than the SWP today. It did, however, exercise an influence in the working-class movement, in the Labour Party, the trade unions and the rank-and-file movement that was infinitely greater than the SWP has ever exercised — and when the latter did begin to build a periphery of some consequence, Cliff blew it. Of course, the Communist Party did not make the revolution, and it went out of business a few years ago. The SWP still has time to do either of these things, but I would not bet the mortgage on the revolution if I were you. Three individuals dominated British Trotskyism in the second half of the twentieth century: Gerry Healy, Ted Grant and Tony Cliff. Of the three, Cliff was the most accomplished, and, on a personal level, a man of great humour and charm. Gerry Healy also got the odd laugh, but that was generally from those who thought someone breaking a leg was funny. He had great energy, and Jock Haston commended his organising abilities, but for the rest he was a bully and a liar and a scoundrel. Ted Grant was, well Ted-like, what more can I say? If one were called to testify to any saving graces they might have shown, it would be quite in order to say that they kept alive a revolutionary Socialist tradition through some difficult times. After that it gets difficult, because they clung like limpets to the worst features of a framework that militated against them building anything more than a sect. In a way, perhaps, Cliff’s sin was the greater because for a brief time he started to look beyond the arid certainties of the tradition, before settling back into the easy embrace of a spurious Leninism. It is not easy to forgive him for that.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>Sheila Lahr adds:</strong></p>
<p class="fst">While appreciating much of this book, especially Cliff’s recounting of his political experience of Palestine before and during the Second World War, and also being reminded of the political and economic events of the 1970s, I am unhappy with his attitude to women and feminism.</p>
<p>For instance, Cliff deplores the publication of <strong>Women’s Voice</strong> by the Socialist Workers Party in the 1970s because: ‘I was steadfast in following the Bolshevik tradition of insisting on the common interests of female and male workers.’ (p. 146) Cliff tells us that Lenin always insisted on the party leadership controlling women’s activities. He quotes Anne Bobroff’s criticism of Bolshevism on this point — ‘And although the editorial board [of <strong>Rabotnitsa</strong> — <strong>Woman Worker</strong>] was made up completely of women … Lenin had the deciding vote in the event of a tie.’ (p. 147) — only to reject her complaint. He adds with approval that women working under Lenin’s direction put through resolutions on his behalf.</p>
<p>It’s worth quoting Cliff’s own reasoning for opposing feminism: ‘Imagine a male worker writing to his friend. “I have good news to tell you. My wife’s wages are lousy. To add to my joy there is no nursery for our children. And to fill my cup to the brim my wife is pregnant and we want to have an abortion, but she can’t get one.”’ From this Cliff concludes that ‘male workers do not benefit from women’s oppression’. This hypothetical example is hardly the stuff of Marxist analysis! Surely Cliff should have understood the gender game played by the state for over the generations by which, to take a fairly recent example, both men and women have been brainwashed into rôles to suit the perceived needs of capitalism. For instance, before the Second World War, at a time of high male unemployment, women were ‘educated’ into a belief that their place was in the home, practising the womanly arts of cooking, cleaning, childcare and submitting to their menfolk. This message was carried by the media, various pundits and even by the popular women’s magazines. The men, on the other hand, were told that as the breadwinners they were masters in their own homes (if nowhere else), and that the women should submit. Even George Orwell in <strong>The Road to Wigan Pier</strong> applauds the fact that the wives of unemployed men returned home after a day’s work (no doubt gruelling and low-paid) to cook, clean and wait on the man, so maintaining male dignity!</p>
<p>As we know, the Second World War ended all this, because women were needed in the munitions factories, and following the war it proved impossible to return women to the home. Capitalism, of course, adapted, and now not only has the family wage disappeared, but women are being forced out to work in low paid jobs. However, the brainwashing of previous generations has been slow to erode, and women continue to receive 80 per cent of the male rate, and also retire on unequal pensions because of broken service from home and caring responsibilities. Additionally, in much of the Third World, women are under attack by governments supported by the West. While men in the Third World might not benefit in the long-term by women’s oppression, they obviously believe that they do so.</p>
<p>If nothing else, the women’s movement has made us aware that women need to fight for greater equality both in the home and at work, just as an earlier generation of women had fought for the vote. In this way, the women’s movement has changed the way in which women think about themselves. For that I am grateful.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
A World To Win
(2000)
From Revolutionary History, Vol. 7 No. 4, 2000.
Transcribed by Alun Morgan for the Revolutionary History Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Tony Cliff
A World To Win: Life of a Revolutionary
Bookmarks, London 2000, pp. 247, £11.99
READING Cliff’s autobiography has brought back to me a host of images and incidents, hardly any of which feature in the book. Its tone is serious, displaying little of his humour, and conferring on the author a quite unmerited gravitas. I remember once saying to Jock Haston how impressed I was by C.L.R. James’ book Black Jacobins. Jock, who did quite a nice line in patronising cynicism, replied: ‘I always find James impressive unless I know something about the subject he is writing about.’ I feel much the same about Cliff’s last book. I know a little about his life from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, and the virtually unsullied character presented here does not sit too well with the multiple-charactered personality I knew for years on an almost daily basis.
For example, some time in the 1960s, Tony Cliff and his family moved house from Finsbury Park to more commodious premises in Stoke Newington. This larger property had been purchased from a Jewish family, and came not only with more room, a garden and the usual offices, but also with a mezuzah nailed to a door frame. Anxious that he should not have to walk about his home with a rope of garlic round his neck, I suggested to Cliff that he hand me a screwdriver, and I would have the offending religious item in the dustbin in a trice. To my surprise, he refused this handy offer. ‘No, no, you will spoil the paint’, he insisted. Now this mezuzah was a tinny little item fixed with panel pins, definitely at the Woolworths end of the religious artifacts market. For my part, I would sooner have a slightly damaged architrave than suffer this piece of pious persiflage. Cliff, however, was adamant, and the mezuzah stayed. It may be there to this day.
Over the years I have occasionally wondered why the atheist Cliff, whose disregard for appearances was immediately apparent, should worry so about a few slivers of gloss paint. I believe that I can now shine a small light on this puzzle. In every mezuzah there is a tiny scroll with 20 lines from Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, in which Moses sets down his last injunctions to the Israelites. It demands absolute adherence to his words, and that the message shall be taught during every waking hour. Such fidelity will be rewarded by a land flowing with milk and honey, fat cattle and tables groaning with comestibles and good wine. Cliff, it seems to me, steeped as he was in biblical lore, saw himself as just such a Moses figure, who would lead his people to the promised Socialist land. Even if he did not get there himself, he would set out his law for them to follow. Of course, his Moses days would have to fit in with this busy programme, so that it did not conflict with his Lenin days (very frequent these), or his Trotsky days, neglected for many years, but a bit bullish in recent times. There would, of course, be no problem with his Luxemburg days, because he forswore that rôle in 1968.
Cliff’s last, posthumously-published work, A World to Win, sees him very much in a valedictory Moses mode. This is a book for Socialist Workers Party members, and one that will prove, despite the odd setback, that the organisation has over the years developed, under his wise tutelage, into a firmly-based expression of Bolshevism in the twenty-first century. If the comrades will pay careful attention to Cliff’s application of the Marxist method, as he learned it from Lenin, then they too can become instruments of history.
Most of us who have spent some years in the revolutionary movement have found it all too easy to forget the generous impulses that drew us to it in the first place. The revulsion against discrimination, exploitation, poverty and war, usually through some heightened personal experience, provides the live evidence that makes Socialist ideas both relevant and inspiring. That high passion is too often lost sight of in the practice of everyday sectarian or factional organisation. What we fondly imagined was the means is all too often transformed into an end in itself. For most of Cliff’s life, it was the organisation and what he perceived to be its needs that formed the basis of his thought and deed. If those thoughts wandered beyond the immediate concerns of the party to the sunlit uplands of the Socialist commonwealth it was, more often than not, that species of May Day peroration calculated to enthuse the comrades to greater efforts on behalf of the Party. The turning point in Cliff’s life came very early when he witnessed the wretched conditions of Arab children in his native Palestine. An essay by the youthful Cliff on his sadness that there were no Arab children in his school was prophetically marked up by his teacher as ‘Communist’. Most of us have a teacher with a talent for prophecy like that in our past, mine with prescient accuracy wrote ‘abject failure’. This part of the autobiography dealing with Palestine is probably the most interesting. For some inexplicable reason, I find it quite pleasing that somewhere in the Gluckstein family album there may still exist a picture of Cliff’s uncle, Banker Gluckstein, leading a Jewish delegation to Tsar Nicholas II, bringing loyal blessings to that doomed and dim Romanov. Perhaps part of the charm of Cliff’s Palestine reflections is that one was not there to know what actually happened and what he actually did, nevertheless there is certainly an air of authenticity about his assertion that in a country where the tiny working class was divided by religion, language and tradition, the minuscule Trotskyist organisation had virtually no contact with organised workers. Cliff goes so far as to say that ‘the average branch of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain today has greater impact than we had in Palestine’. Those of us who knew the International Socialists when a good third of its members were manual workers, and saw what kind of a sorry fist Cliff made of that, might give him an argument on that one.
In pursuit of a relationship with the working class, Cliff came to Britain in 1946. It is part of his and our tragedy that in the next 50 plus years that contact was never more than skin deep and oh so fleeting. En route to the UK, he stopped off in Paris to meet the leaders of the Fourth International, and discovered, as so many of us did later on, that this powerhouse of the ‘World Party of Bolshevism’ was in fact an empty shell just kept afloat by Michel Pablo’s and Ernest Mandel’s windy rhetoric. Nevertheless, he agreed to defend the workers’ state thesis against the state capitalist leanings of Jock Haston and Ted Grant when he got to the UK. You will not find any mention of this particular arrangement in Cliff’s book, although on page 51 you might read: ‘Jock did toy with the idea that perhaps Stalin’s Russia was not a workers’ state. But a few months later he dropped this idea completely.’ The entire text is littered with small evasions of this sort.
In that confusing postwar time, the nature of the Stalinist regime exercised the minds of Trotskyists throughout the world. Trotsky’s predictions and promises after the Founding Congress of the Fourth International in 1938 looked particularly thin in the light of the war and its aftermath. If Trotsky predicted that the Stalinist bureaucracy could not survive the convulsions of a world war and it turned out that Stalin was not only still in charge in Russia but was presiding over half of Europe in addition, then James P. Cannon, in his self-appointed rôle of Trotsky’s successor, decreed that the war was not over. Mandel let it be known that news was expected by the next post that Stalinism had succumbed to a rejuvenated proletariat. If this suggests that Mandel’s mind was less brick-shaped than Cannon’s, nevertheless both had only the most tenuous grip on reality. Max Shachtman in the USA saw this as a chance to convert the Fourth International to his bureaucratic collectivist theory, and replace Cannon in the driving seat. Haston at least was attempting to come to terms with reality, even if his ideas were extremely tentative. It is now possible to say with some confidence that all the protagonists in this debate got it wrong, and they are still in error to this day. For all of them, the argument was cast within the old categories that had been found wanting. It was all form and no content, the working class, the proper study for Socialists, was not in it. It was rather like three blind men feeling their way around different parts of an elephant and, from their researches, attempting to describe the beast. There would certainly be elements of truth in their reports, but it would bear no relation to a living, breathing, complicated flesh-and-blood jumbo interacting with the real world. It is this inability to see beyond the boundaries of their own dubious certainties that ensured that the fall of Stalinism was unheralded in workers’ statist, state capitalist and Shachtmanite publications. As Al Richardson wrote in the introduction to his collection In Defence of the Russian Revolution: ‘It has to be said that the collapse of the Soviet Union caught them all napping. In spite of their claims to scientific Socialism, possession of this science gave them no predictive powers whateverb… you can scan their journals right up to the event in vain for any suggestion of what was coming. Nor has any coherent explanation emerged since.’ Al also makes a significant point, in the same introduction: ‘Those who hold to a state capitalist analysis came up with the illuminating suggestion that a state capitalist class had slimmed down its bankrupt concern into smaller private firms, oblivious of the observation that while many a small shopkeeper dreams of becoming a monopoly capitalist, few monopoly capitalists dream of becoming small shopkeepers.’ Similarly, when I consider the arguments for the idea that Russia was a workers’ state, I like to think that the Russian workers, having for all those years exerted pressure on the bureaucracy to retain state property, awoke one day with an overwhelming craving to put on a pair of 501 jeans and queue for a Big Mac, while they listened to their Sony Walkmen. What has state property and the monopoly of foreign trade to offer to match the seductive charms of these powerful symbols of personal freedom? After much heart-searching and sleepless nights, Cliff came to the conclusion that Jock Haston was right, Russia was state capitalist. At the same time, Jock decided that not only was Russia a workers’ state, but so were all the countries of the Eastern bloc. Which nifty piece of footwork not only put Jock at odds with Cliff, but also with Mandel and Pablo, who insisted that the Eastern bloc regimes were capitalist states with an ‘extreme form of police Bonapartism’. It is true that they did not hold this view for long, because in 1948 Tito broke with the Cominform and, for the Fourth International, was transformed from a semi-fascist into an appropriate ally for Trotskyism. In later years, Mandel had the good grace to be embarrassed if you twitted him about his mental gymnastics in 1948.
Into this maelstrom Cliff tossed his 150-page Revolutionary Communist Party internal bulletin on state capitalism. Right or wrong, it was the most coherent argument on the disputed questions around at the time. It formed the central core of all subsequent editions of Stalinist Russia: A Marxist Analysis, except that Cliff removed the original material about ‘Soviet millionaires’, such as the odd collective farmer and Alexei Tolstoy, who were thought to be of great significance in the RCP just after the war. Reading this internal bulletin today, aside from its antique charm, one can appreciate that it had some persuasive power, even though, for me, it is no longer persuasive enough. Certainly it is more appealing than the tediously longer accretion of supporting evidence with which Cliff felt it necessary to burden later editions.
This was Cliff’s attempt to reconcile Trotskyism with the postwar reality, to give the party a defensible theory. That this inevitably required that he contradict and replace large chunks of Trotsky’s pre-war politics ensured that the response to his ideas would be hostile. His personal base in the RCP was negligible, after just a few months in Britain and Haston’s rejection of state capitalism meant that there was no significant figure to pursue the argument internationally. From this point on, the idea was to form a distinct state capitalist group. Now theory would serve to build a new organisation, and he set about building a cadre. The pool from which these recruits would come was the RCP as it subsided into Labour Party entrism and Gerry Healy’s maw. In A World to Win, Cliff mentions only three of the original band: his wife Chanie Rosenberg, Duncan Hallas and Geoff Carlsson, which is less than generous to Jean Tait, Ray Challinor, Bill Ainsworth, Ken and Rhoda Tarbuck, Peter Morgan and Anil Munesinghe. This unwillingness to acknowledge that comrades other than Cliff and Chanie made some contribution to building the group runs throughout the volume. Suffice it to say that many others were involved in NCLC lecturing, speaking to YS branches, writing for Socialist Review, setting type for the pocket Adana editions of Rebel, and making contact with likely recruits. The difference between Cliff and the rest of us was that we worked for a living before we engaged in all these exciting pursuits. Cliff, for example, makes much of his heroic contact visiting trip to Glasgow on the back of a comrade’s motor-bike, no doubt a long and arduous ride. What he does not say is that the heroic rider of the machine was Stan Newens, who was pressed into this primitive chauffeuring activity on a regular basis. Stan, of course, lost his right to any credit when he left the group in the late 1950s, compounding this offence when he later became a Labour MP and later still an MEP.
Cliff does not claim to be the only begetter of state capitalist theory, perhaps because too many people have heard of C.L.R. James. He does, however, let it be understood that the theory of the permanent arms economy was his very own brainchild and stands as the second of the three pillars holding up his political legacy. In fact, the theory made its first appearance in the American magazine Politics in February 1944 under the by-line of Walter J. Oakes. This was one of the many pen names of Ed Sard, a member of Shachtman’s Workers Party. Sard expanded on his original article in the New International in a six-part series starting in January 1951, this time under the pseudonym T.N. Vance. True Sard called his theory the Permanent War Economy, but so did Cliff for several years until Mike Kidron changed the middle word to ‘Arms’. On chronological evidence alone, Cliff could not claim originality on this one.
It is possible to plough through this text and unearth many, many examples such as the Permanent Arms Economy where Cliff claims unwarranted primacy in thought, word and deed, but it would weary the reader almost as much as it would weary me. I believe there are those who find this kind of implacable self-aggrandisement strangely charming, I am not one of them. Perhaps Cliff thought that Ian Birchall (whose ‘phenomenal memory’ he rightly commends) would be the only one to remember the real facts, and, as the SWP’s premier apologist, he would keep mum. In every small revolutionary organisation, there is always a problem with the founding father (or mother, if you are talking about the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania). One feels a debt of gratitude for his founding efforts, he may well be older and more knowledgeable of revolutionary theory and practice, and, in any case, you can bet your bottom dollar he will fight like hell to get his own way. Ted Grant is like that, Gerry Healy was like that, and Cliff, although less boring than Grant and much more civilised than Healy, would go to considerable lengths to come out on top in any dispute. This trait was compounded by his absolute certainty that his current policy, because it was his, brooked no denial, and it was imperative that it be implemented by next Tuesday at the latest.
From about the mid-1950s, Cliff drifted away from the organisational conceptions of Trotskyism, and maintained and developed a more libertarian approach to these questions until the mid-1960s. This largely corresponds to the period when Mike Kidron exercised the greatest influence within the Socialist Review Group. It was incidentally the period when CND and the Labour Party Young Socialists were the main area of recruitment. For this work, Rosa Luxemburg was much more useful than Lenin. Cliff proclaimed in his short book on Luxemburg, published in 1959: ‘For Marxists in advanced industrial countries, Lenin’s original position can much less serve as a guide than Rosa Luxemburg’s.’
By 1968, the International Socialists had grown modestly but not unimpressively to about 800 members. That year also saw the abomination of London dockers marching in support of Enoch Powell. This event led Cliff to propose left unity under the urgent menace of fascism. Let us leave aside the fact that if there had been an urgent menace of fascism, then the unity of say 2,000 revolutionaries would not have been of much significance, it would have been far more sensible for all the revolutionaries to have joined the Labour Party if they wanted a real fight against fascism. Really, the object of the exercise, despite the fact that all the groups and the Communist Party were called on to unite, was the International Marxist Group, then the British section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. For such a unity to happen, let alone work, it would be necessary to adopt at least some of the forms of the Trotskyist tradition. For Cliff this was no great problem, and he assumed, his wish being father to the deed, that democratic centralism would be readily accepted by a grateful membership. In June 1968, he unleashed his Notes on Democratic Centralism on a less than appreciative group. This is a slipshod piece of work, more like a stream of consciousness than an internal bulletin, in which he seems to suggest that the First International had a democratic centralist constitution. It may surprise some current members of Cliff’s organisation that he once took it as the sine qua non of democratic centralism that factions could exist, and that they were entitled to representation on all the leading committees.
This pathetic two sides of quarto paper produced a storm of controversy. Almost overnight, about a dozen factions formed and produced long documents ranging in politics from ultra-libertarian to king-sized Bolshevism. Having sown the dragon’s teeth and reaped a whirlwind, Cliff restricted his intervention to long telephone calls, leaving the rest of the leadership to carry on the argument, despite the fact that we had not been privy to his plans. In the hope of great joy in heaven, I repent and confess that the two lengthy documents put out by the Working Committee that attempted to make up for the inadequacies of Notes on Democratic Centralism and to answer the plethora of opposing documents, were written by me. I sincerely apologise to the comrades. In his autobiography Cliff, for some inexplicable reason, dates his Notes on Democratic Centralism after October 1968.
Funnily enough, if Cliff had a hidden agenda so did several of us working closely with him at the time. We calculated, given a more formal structure and with a clearly understood decision-making process, that Cliff’s propensity to appoint himself a central committee of one would be reined in so that he might become part of a collective, where his ideas would be respected and discussed, but not venerated as revealed truth. Not only that, we also took the view that as we were recruiting a few but still significant number of workers, democratic centralism would enable their ideas to enlighten and inform the leading committee’s decision-making. Oh comrades, what vain hopes we entertained when we were a lot younger than we are today. Cliff, of course, continued to run things as a piece of private enterprise whenever the whim took him, rather like the proprietor of an inefficient corner shop. His veneration for the worker members was unabated and had only one reservation — that they agreed wholeheartedly with his immediate preoccupation. On page 118 of A World to Win, Cliff lets us into the secret of leadership in a Marxist organisation. Lenin, following an original idea of Napoleon’s, believed ‘On s’engage et puis on voit’. Cliff translates this as ‘get stuck in and see what happens’, or putting it another way, suck it and see. He first let us in on this particular aperçu in the draft of Volume One of his Lenin, it was, he explained, profoundly dialectical. Whatever the merits of this, and I think there are none, Cliff unintentionally gives us a good insight into how his mind worked. You think of something to do, then do it, and if it does not work think of something else and do that, and so on. Now that has not got a great deal to do with dialectics, and is a system that over the centuries has made bookmakers rich and silly punters broke. Cliff seems to recognise this when he goes on to says: ‘Of course this method must lead to mistakes being made, but at the same time it is essential if there are to be breakthroughs, forward jumps into new ways of doing things.’ All of this seems to me to be closer to a superstition than a Marxist analysis. Because there is something missing here, how do you decide what is a good thing to do in the first place? Do you spread your analytical net as wide as possible, drawing on the advice and experience of the worker members? Or, do you dredge up the idea from your subconscious, seek out buttressing quotes from Lenin, and then talk to Chris Harman? If you have answered yes to the second of these questions, then you are not just a pretty face, nor are you Chris Harman.
Joe Stalin let it be known that, as a general principle, the closer the Soviet Union approached Socialism the greater would be the attacks of the counter-revolution abroad and the depredations of internal subversion. Thus the rising population of the isolators and labour camps marked not only the eternal vigilance of Comrade Stalin, but also the giant strides being made toward Socialism. In the early 1970s, as IS began to grow modestly but into the very low thousands, with a small, perhaps 30 per cent, working-class membership, Cliff seemed to operate on the general principle that the closer IS became to a serious and viable organisation, the more capricious and impatient he should be. Increased membership was at the centre of his preoccupations. On the principle of ‘on s’engage et puis on voit’, he appointed himself membership secretary and set up league tables of local organisers recruiting efforts where the biggest liar won the most plaudits. Naturally enough, on this criteria, Roger Rosewell was the man of the hour.
Cliff also produced his thesis on the leading areas. The most promising areas would be identified speakers, money and manpower would be dedicated to these places, and the less promising areas left to their own devices would benefit, according to Cliff, from a sort of Thatcherite trickle-down process. Then there was the risible ‘buyers into sellers’ campaign, where anyone who bought the paper was pressed to become a seller. This up-to-the-minute campaign was lifted direct from Lenin, spluttered briefly and died without regret, as did the leading areas and the league tables. Another dud was the Socialist Worker Supporter’s Cards, known to the cynical as ‘revolutionary beer mats’ because most of them were left soggily on public house tables. The cards idea, lifted from Lenin on the workers’ paper, were less for the money they might bring and more to get a commitment from the workers that might be the first step to full membership. Sad to say, this was another bummer, as I have never heard of anybody who graduated from Supporter’s Card to Membership Card. The strike rate for Napoleon and Lenin’s little aphorism was looking pretty poor, and those of us who thought it might be a good idea to consolidate some of our existing recruits, who were drizzling away almost as rapidly as we recruited them, were condemned as conservative elements, unable to grasp the great opportunities opening up before us. Cliff’s zeal now shifted, momentarily, to ridding the leadership of conservative elements (Cliffspeak for Duncan Hallas and Jim Higgins). Whatever merit this plan might have, the replacements were to be local full-timers from the provincial branches, who in the very nature of their work could not operate as a day-to-day leadership. Cliff would be back into his one-man central committee mode.
Duncan, whose affection for Cliff had not survived, having knowing him for 30 years, felt that the course Cliff was embarked on would seriously endanger the advances we had made, and he proposed that we form a faction. I, who was actually quite fond of Cliff (but then I had only known him for 15 years), felt that he had gone too far, and that a short sharp faction fight might clear the air a bit. John Palmer and Roger Protz agreed with us, and we set about contacting people around the group. I was surprised at the favourable response we got when we approached others with our worries and discontents. Typically, the people who responded to our call were members of several years standing, and with some experience in the wider working-class movement. Among them were shop stewards and trade unionists from Manchester, Teesside, Glasgow, Harlow, Birmingham, Exeter, London and several other places. Cliff’s response, on the other hand, was most uncomradely. In short order a series of organisational manoeuvres were put in place, usually preceded by a thin veneer of political justification. Roger Protz and I were working on Socialist Worker, and this became the object of close analysis. A paper that Cliff had shortly before praised somewhat immoderately, became unreadable. With much quotation from Lenin on the workers’ paper, Cliff indicated that journalist were not really needed, just somebody to put in punctuation and correct the spelling of the workers’ reports. Naturally enough, there were no more workers’ reports than there had ever been, but Roger and I were fired.
Far more serious than this piece of petty spite, however, was Cliff’s attempt to deal with the fact that our opposition contained a number of trade unionists, including a fair sprinkling of AUEW members. This was especially so in Birmingham, where we had 20 AUEW comrades, organised in two factory branches. Among them were 10 shop stewards, two convenors of big factories, six members of the AUEW district committee, and Arthur Harper, the president of that district committee, plus several trades council delegates. As Ted Crawford has written elsewhere, these people were the catalyst that brought the Saltley struggle to a victorious conclusion. This, if not the jewel in the crown, was of a similar character to the ENV branch of which Cliff had been so proud. Now he produced a novel thesis that shop stewards were rotted by years of reformism and routinism; many convenors, he discovered, worked full-time on their union work. Only the young were revolutionary, and we should be encouraging them to run for shop stewardships. Leave aside what serum Cliff would use to inoculate these eager thrusting youngsters against reformism in the unlikely event that they were elected, this bizarre novelty made nonsense of the declared policy of the group since its founding in 1950. Even more tragically, the policy that it sought to replace was having some success in integrating experienced trade unionists into the group.
This ultra-left nonsense was compounded by a decision to run an IS member from Glasgow for National Organiser in the AUEW elections. This decision, taken without any discussion with the IS-AUEW national fraction, was nevertheless reaffirmed when the AUEW fraction rejected it by an overwhelming majority. All this was extremely embarrassing to the Birmingham AUEW comrades, which is just what it was intended to be. As they explained, they had, as directed by IS conference decisions, been working in the Broad Left grouping in the union, and, as always when working with Labour Lefts and the Communist Party, this involved a fair amount of work around union elections. Long before Cliff had a rush of blood to the head and decided to run an IS candidate, the IS members working the AUEW Broad Left had committed themselves to working for the election of a CPer called Ken Higgs. Cliff was completely unable, or unwilling, to understand that initiatives like the Saltley success are based on contact with people of different or no political affiliation who have some respect for the character and trust in the word of our comrades. That trust would be lost, and with it future joint activity, whether electoral or militant. With all the splendid disregard for cost of a man who knows that he has enough money to last him the rest of his life, so long as he dies at 6.30pm tomorrow, Cliff and his satraps began expelling the Birmingham AUEW members. A couple of them had to be suspended at the door to a meeting of the IS district committee, of which they were members, so that they might not vote against their own exclusion. It was this action that convinced me that Cliff, with all his brains and all his years in the movement, was not a serious person.
Just to make sure that the Opposition should not get a fair crack of the whip, Cliff then arranged that the basis of delegation to the conference should be changed, as would the election of delegates, in a way that was specifically designed to minimise the Opposition’s representation. This was a neat trick, because according to the constitution the only way that its clauses could be changed was at a conference. No problem there, for a man with a stranglehold on the Leninist impulse. The delegates could vote to insert those provisions by which they had been improperly elected. It was not long before the Opposition was either expelled or forced out. Cliff describes this as follows: ‘One symptom of this situation [this refers to an alleged shift to the right in the unions in 1975 — JH] was a demoralisation among significant sections of our own members. They lost heart. Some left without any statement of disagreement (like Mike Kidron and Peter Sedgwick), but some, like the former national secretary Jim Higgins and former editor of Socialist Worker Roger Protz, led a split that included 150 members.’ It is difficult to imagine a statement with more misstatements in it than this one. ‘Demoralisation’ indeed, in our dispute Cliff was arguing that the workers would turn against the Labour government in three months, and I said it would be at least six months. Now you could say, with some justice, that both of us were talking nonsense, but hardly that my slightly longer-term perspective indicated demoralisation. We had not lost heart, just our patience with Cliff playing the fool. Mike Kidron and Peter Sedgwick certainly had a number of discontents that they expressed quite forcefully, and Kidron, in particular, blotted his copybook by rejecting the Permanent Arms Economy theory that he had done so much once to flesh out into some coherence. They left, together with a number of others, in 1977 when Cliff, still on his ultra-left binge, proclaimed the Socialist Workers Party. Finally, Roger and I did not lead a split, we were expelled.
One last entertaining and revealing example from the pages of A World to Win, on page 133, is that Cliff, so it seems, is confessing his mistakes about perspectives in 1975. He writes: ‘In retrospect it is clear that we were radically wrong in our prognosis regarding the shape of the class struggle and hence our fate. I cannot think how we could have come to a more correct prognosis at the time … at all breaking points in the past we find that the best Marxists get things wrong.’ Cliff then goes on to show that Lenin — what a reliable buttress for a chap to lean on, no matter how heavily — got it wrong in 1906. Well there you have it comrades, when he is wrong it is the case that he is right to be wrong, and in any case in changing circumstances even the best Marxists get it wrong, like Lenin in 1906. Phew, for a nasty moment I thought he was going to bring himself to account, there is nothing like a session of self-criticism for an easy acquittal.
This is a book that only Cliff could have written. It is clever but naive, cunning but transparently obvious, and a mine of misinformation with terminological inexactitude like a giant worm leaving a small deposit on every page. As with all his other works, it is not written to make the historical record, it would not pass any half-way rigorous test. It is intended that it will fill a rôle as an inspiration to the comrades in their task of building the Socialist Workers Party. That is a cause to which Cliff dedicated his life, and the ultimate sadness is that 60-odd years of thinking and scheming and plotting have built an organisation in his own image of a few thousand, whose influence in the working class is negligible. His background and training and the political milieu he chose in his formative years produced a particular mindset. His intelligence and his ego made him believe that the important thing was for him to lead. But his thinking was abstract, the secret recipe for the revolutionary cocktail could be found in Lenin, not in the working class. He did not generalise from working-class experience, but from Lenin’s tactics. With all due respect, that is a poor substitute.
Nearly 80 years ago, the Communist Party of Great Britain had a few thousand members, probably not a great deal more than the SWP today. It did, however, exercise an influence in the working-class movement, in the Labour Party, the trade unions and the rank-and-file movement that was infinitely greater than the SWP has ever exercised — and when the latter did begin to build a periphery of some consequence, Cliff blew it. Of course, the Communist Party did not make the revolution, and it went out of business a few years ago. The SWP still has time to do either of these things, but I would not bet the mortgage on the revolution if I were you. Three individuals dominated British Trotskyism in the second half of the twentieth century: Gerry Healy, Ted Grant and Tony Cliff. Of the three, Cliff was the most accomplished, and, on a personal level, a man of great humour and charm. Gerry Healy also got the odd laugh, but that was generally from those who thought someone breaking a leg was funny. He had great energy, and Jock Haston commended his organising abilities, but for the rest he was a bully and a liar and a scoundrel. Ted Grant was, well Ted-like, what more can I say? If one were called to testify to any saving graces they might have shown, it would be quite in order to say that they kept alive a revolutionary Socialist tradition through some difficult times. After that it gets difficult, because they clung like limpets to the worst features of a framework that militated against them building anything more than a sect. In a way, perhaps, Cliff’s sin was the greater because for a brief time he started to look beyond the arid certainties of the tradition, before settling back into the easy embrace of a spurious Leninism. It is not easy to forgive him for that.
Sheila Lahr adds:
While appreciating much of this book, especially Cliff’s recounting of his political experience of Palestine before and during the Second World War, and also being reminded of the political and economic events of the 1970s, I am unhappy with his attitude to women and feminism.
For instance, Cliff deplores the publication of Women’s Voice by the Socialist Workers Party in the 1970s because: ‘I was steadfast in following the Bolshevik tradition of insisting on the common interests of female and male workers.’ (p. 146) Cliff tells us that Lenin always insisted on the party leadership controlling women’s activities. He quotes Anne Bobroff’s criticism of Bolshevism on this point — ‘And although the editorial board [of Rabotnitsa — Woman Worker] was made up completely of women … Lenin had the deciding vote in the event of a tie.’ (p. 147) — only to reject her complaint. He adds with approval that women working under Lenin’s direction put through resolutions on his behalf.
It’s worth quoting Cliff’s own reasoning for opposing feminism: ‘Imagine a male worker writing to his friend. “I have good news to tell you. My wife’s wages are lousy. To add to my joy there is no nursery for our children. And to fill my cup to the brim my wife is pregnant and we want to have an abortion, but she can’t get one.”’ From this Cliff concludes that ‘male workers do not benefit from women’s oppression’. This hypothetical example is hardly the stuff of Marxist analysis! Surely Cliff should have understood the gender game played by the state for over the generations by which, to take a fairly recent example, both men and women have been brainwashed into rôles to suit the perceived needs of capitalism. For instance, before the Second World War, at a time of high male unemployment, women were ‘educated’ into a belief that their place was in the home, practising the womanly arts of cooking, cleaning, childcare and submitting to their menfolk. This message was carried by the media, various pundits and even by the popular women’s magazines. The men, on the other hand, were told that as the breadwinners they were masters in their own homes (if nowhere else), and that the women should submit. Even George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier applauds the fact that the wives of unemployed men returned home after a day’s work (no doubt gruelling and low-paid) to cook, clean and wait on the man, so maintaining male dignity!
As we know, the Second World War ended all this, because women were needed in the munitions factories, and following the war it proved impossible to return women to the home. Capitalism, of course, adapted, and now not only has the family wage disappeared, but women are being forced out to work in low paid jobs. However, the brainwashing of previous generations has been slow to erode, and women continue to receive 80 per cent of the male rate, and also retire on unequal pensions because of broken service from home and caring responsibilities. Additionally, in much of the Third World, women are under attack by governments supported by the West. While men in the Third World might not benefit in the long-term by women’s oppression, they obviously believe that they do so.
If nothing else, the women’s movement has made us aware that women need to fight for greater equality both in the home and at work, just as an earlier generation of women had fought for the vote. In this way, the women’s movement has changed the way in which women think about themselves. For that I am grateful.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>[White-collar unions]</h1>
<h3>(Spring 1966)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>The Notebook</em>, <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj024" target="new">No.24</a>, Spring 1966, p.6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Throughout the traditional white-collar ranks there has, in recent years, been a considerable increase in militant activity and in the once despised trade-union organisation. NALGO, which a few years ago was frequently written off as irrevocably delivered up to middle-class morality has recently considered strike action, affiliated to the TUC and come out against Incomes Policy. The CAWU has also been brightening its image and between 1955 and 1965 membership has increased from 55,000 to 35,000. In the case of NALGO this excess of militancy clearly derives from their unfortunate experiences with Selwyn Lloyd’s pay pause and in CAWU with the introduction on a large scale of business machines.</p>
<p>Most interesting however and probably most significant – from the point of view of long term effects – is the situation in the expanding technical field. DATA has the privilege of conducting more official strikes than any other TUC affiliate. ASSET has engaged in some serious actions resulting in quite significant advances in recent years. Membership has increased at a fantastic rate (albeit from a fairly low starting point) <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a>:</p>
<table cellspacing="4" align="center" cellpadding="4">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="smc"> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"><em>1955</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc"><em>1965</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1">ASSET</p>
</th>
<td>
<p class="smc">16,000</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">65,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>
<p class="sm1">DATA</p>
</th>
<td>
<p class="smc">50,000</p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="smc">62,000</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">ASSET claim to be recruiting at a rate of 700 members per week. However, even though their rate of increase is high, at 700 new entrants per week it would seem that there is a fair amount of wastage.</p>
<p>Quite clearly the impetus for this impressive advance is due to their close association with a fast-growing sector of industry. But also a number of intangible benefits which in the past have militated against white-collar unionism no longer have the same weight. Staff and salaried status, shorter hours and in particular a closer personal relationship with management count for less when compared wit the very real monetary advances made by manual workers in the growth industries since the war.</p>
<p>The growing disenchantment with management is seldom compensated by a closer identification with manual workers. Jenkins of ASSET goes so far as to say “... push up wages and the differential between manual and skilled men and you will force managements to bring in more automated systems.” The natural follow-up from more automated systems is of course more potential members for ASSET and less members for the manual unions. It is perhaps not surprising that Mr Jenkins is not the most loved (or indeed the most lovable) official in the trade-union establishment.</p>
<p>As a response to this challenge the ETU recently attempted (unsuccessfully) to change the name of the union to the ‘Electrical, Electronics and Communications Trade Association.’ The fact that this makes the organisation sound more like an employers’ association than a trade union is beside the point; the obvious intention was to present a more comprehensive and attractive image to technicians in industry. The AEU, flying in the face of its whole tradition, is making far-reaching constitutional changes to enable it to establish supervisors’ branches. Both unions are, as yet anyway, having small success in this field.</p>
<p>The reason for technicians’ militancy and their leaderships’ willingness to initiate aggressive policies may well be based on a narrow sectional interest, but at the same time to indulge in traditional forms of struggle is to enter, like it nor not, the whole field of working-class action. To declare one’s interest in wider differentials is to agree that a basis for comparison exists and is also to call into being a powerful tendency from manual workers to close differentials. The trade-union pace-setters may change but the class struggle is indivisible.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> <strong>The Statist</strong>, 14 January 1966.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
[White-collar unions]
(Spring 1966)
From The Notebook, International Socialism (1st series), No.24, Spring 1966, p.6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Throughout the traditional white-collar ranks there has, in recent years, been a considerable increase in militant activity and in the once despised trade-union organisation. NALGO, which a few years ago was frequently written off as irrevocably delivered up to middle-class morality has recently considered strike action, affiliated to the TUC and come out against Incomes Policy. The CAWU has also been brightening its image and between 1955 and 1965 membership has increased from 55,000 to 35,000. In the case of NALGO this excess of militancy clearly derives from their unfortunate experiences with Selwyn Lloyd’s pay pause and in CAWU with the introduction on a large scale of business machines.
Most interesting however and probably most significant – from the point of view of long term effects – is the situation in the expanding technical field. DATA has the privilege of conducting more official strikes than any other TUC affiliate. ASSET has engaged in some serious actions resulting in quite significant advances in recent years. Membership has increased at a fantastic rate (albeit from a fairly low starting point) [1]:
1955
1965
ASSET
16,000
65,000
DATA
50,000
62,000
ASSET claim to be recruiting at a rate of 700 members per week. However, even though their rate of increase is high, at 700 new entrants per week it would seem that there is a fair amount of wastage.
Quite clearly the impetus for this impressive advance is due to their close association with a fast-growing sector of industry. But also a number of intangible benefits which in the past have militated against white-collar unionism no longer have the same weight. Staff and salaried status, shorter hours and in particular a closer personal relationship with management count for less when compared wit the very real monetary advances made by manual workers in the growth industries since the war.
The growing disenchantment with management is seldom compensated by a closer identification with manual workers. Jenkins of ASSET goes so far as to say “... push up wages and the differential between manual and skilled men and you will force managements to bring in more automated systems.” The natural follow-up from more automated systems is of course more potential members for ASSET and less members for the manual unions. It is perhaps not surprising that Mr Jenkins is not the most loved (or indeed the most lovable) official in the trade-union establishment.
As a response to this challenge the ETU recently attempted (unsuccessfully) to change the name of the union to the ‘Electrical, Electronics and Communications Trade Association.’ The fact that this makes the organisation sound more like an employers’ association than a trade union is beside the point; the obvious intention was to present a more comprehensive and attractive image to technicians in industry. The AEU, flying in the face of its whole tradition, is making far-reaching constitutional changes to enable it to establish supervisors’ branches. Both unions are, as yet anyway, having small success in this field.
The reason for technicians’ militancy and their leaderships’ willingness to initiate aggressive policies may well be based on a narrow sectional interest, but at the same time to indulge in traditional forms of struggle is to enter, like it nor not, the whole field of working-class action. To declare one’s interest in wider differentials is to agree that a basis for comparison exists and is also to call into being a powerful tendency from manual workers to close differentials. The trade-union pace-setters may change but the class struggle is indivisible.
Note
1. The Statist, 14 January 1966.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Trotskyist Bears and Working Class Stars</h1>
<h3>(2002)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>What Next?</strong>, No.22, 2002.<br>
Copied with thanks from the <a href="http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/" target="new">What Next?</a> Website.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="quoteb">“Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out crude rhythms for bears to dance to, when we long to make music that will move the stars to tears.” Flaubert</p>
<p class="fst">AL RICHARDSON and Cyril Smith in their articles on Trotskyism (Cyril Smith, <a href="http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext20/Cyril.html"><em>On the Importance of Having Been a Trotskyist</em></a>, and Al Richardson, <a href="http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext20/Alrich.html"><em>The Place of Trotskyism in the Logic of Marxism</em></a>, both in issue No.20) have started a useful and necessary discussion, and <strong>What Next?</strong> is to be commended for providing a forum for that discussion to take place. There is always something to be learned from Trotsky, even on those occasions when his arguments, eroded by time and experience, seem less convincing than once they did. Trotskyism at least is coherent and one can appreciate its quality without agreeing with every dot and comma or doing damage either to conscience or good sense.</p>
<p>Stalinism, on the other hand, which, especially in Stalin’s own hand, reads like the pedestrian maunderings of an inattentive seminarist, is at one and the same time inconsistent and incoherent. Stalin’s most inspired wheeze, as Al Richardson points out in his article, was to invent a totally spurious Leninism as a weapon with which to beat Trotsky, which the unfortunate L.D.T. could only counter by seeming to put himself at odds with Lenin. For the rest, Stalinism could accommodate contradictions as a dog provides a home for fleas. Today it might be let’s go left with Zinoviev, tomorrow it could be let’s go right with the Bukharinites. For Stalin, the ultra-left Third Period could give way without a word of explanation to a Popular Front against fascism, which in its turn could arbitrarily change to sucking up to Hitler, and all as if these were items in a natural progression with a brain at work throughout the piece.</p>
<p>Trotsky on substitutionism is brilliant and it is a pity that he did not subsequently call this to the attention of those in effective charge of the Fourth International in the 1930s. The theory of the Permanent Revolution is an astonishingly accurate preview of how the Russian Revolution actually took place. Less satisfactory were his later ideas on the ”Russian question”. To follow Trotsky through his self-constructed maze, running from Thermidor to Bonapartism, on to the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy that maintained state property only under the pressure of the masses, and finally in 1940 leaving the answer to the question in history’s safe hands, results in confusion rather than clarity. All this seems to have represented developments in Trotsky’s head, developments, unfortunately, cut short by Ramón Mercader’s ice-axe, rather than significant changes in the phenomenon he was describing. What we can say with some confidence is that the emphasis on the class nature of Russia and all the theories that failed to describe it or understand it illuminated nothing, and despite their alleged insight into the laws of motion of this new society none of them came within a mile of what actually happened.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, one of the most practical and inspired ideas of Trotsky was the <strong>Transitional Programme</strong> that he worked up for the founding conference of the Fourth International. Here was a programme, beautifully tailored to its time, with which a communist party firmly based in the working class could make genuine advances. Alas, there was no such party adhering to the FI – indeed, the membership figures quoted for the organisations at the founding conference were exaggerated and even at that they were in the tens and a few hundreds. The truth is that there were not even enough Trotskyists to attempt to promote the <strong>Transitional Programme</strong> in a social democratic party, despite the fact that most of them were engaged in some sort of entry tactic.</p>
<p>Regardless of that, however, in the real world the notion of transitional demands can be extended far beyond the original items set out in Trotsky’s 1938 programme. Within the trade unions, it is possible to develop a programme of transitional demands that can develop the struggle and set the stage for future political struggles. No Trotskyist organisation has made any serious attempt to develop such a programme, which is sad because the real dynamic of the 1938 founding conference was in the transitional method not in the construction of the first of a seemingly endless succession of Potemkin Internationals.</p>
<p>Most of us would support the proposition that there is a crying need for a World Party of Socialist Revolution. Unfortunately, it was not called into being by a handful of delegates in Rosmer’s back garden, and it is even less likely that it will be called into being from one or the other of the fragments from the sundered Pabloite and Healyite Internationals. Today as in 1938 there is no justification for building, with not one hundredth part of its forces, a tiny copy of the Communist International, especially as the CI cannot be said to have been overburdened with revolutionary successes, even during the brave early days covered by the first four congresses.</p>
<p>It is probably the case that Trotsky was loath to criticise the early CI in the same way as he failed to criticise not only the Lenin cult but also some of the organisational practices of Bolshevism, which come straight from Lenin as do some of the faults in the CI. This inability to come to terms with the legacy of the CI ensured that an international tendency with a total membership of a perhaps a couple of thousand acquired a centre staffed by Stalinist agents and recently ex-Zinovievites to direct the sections. Thus we find that Ruth Fischer, whose record of achievement in the KPD would have sent most people to a retreat for a long period of penitent silence and rigorous self-criticism, was telling the comrades in South Africa, a far away place of which she knew little, how to go about their revolutionary tasks. This did nothing to endear Ruth Fischer to the South African Trotskyists and did rather less than nothing for their revolutionary tasks.</p>
<p>One of the more instructive episodes in the history of the Fourth International, one that may justify the expenditure of a little space, concerns the British Trotskyists who, in 1938, had the temerity not to accept the fusion diktat of James P. Cannon, when he visited these shores to unite the British groups as part of the preparation for the FI’s founding conference. Unfortunately, the most recent split had taken place because some South African comrades were falsely accused of having misled African strikers and then decamped to England with the strike funds. Aided by rumour and gossip, this absurdity had managed to reach the International Executive Committee before being effectively scotched as a Stalinist canard originating in South Africa. All of this occurred in late 1937, and the passions aroused, that gave rise to the split, had hardly gone off the boil before Cannon arrived to unite to groups who were definitely not speaking to one another. He was not amused when the offended parties, Heaton and Ralph Lee, Millie Lee, Ted Grant and Jock Haston, refused the invitation. As a result they were branded as “a petit bourgeois group, with nationalist tendencies” at the Founding Congress and earned themselves the enduring hostility of James P. Cannon. (This unedifying episode is much more adequately dealt with in <strong>War and the International</strong>, by Al Richardson and Sam Bornstein.)</p>
<p>With the coming of the war the group led by Ralph Lee and Jock Haston, the Workers International League, was more successful than the Revolutionary Socialist League, the official section, under the clever but uninspired leadership of Denzil Harber. The WIL recruited in mines and factories, particularly the Royal Ordnance Factories, and in the forces, and maintained a lively propaganda, while the RSL, whose main enthusiasm seems to have been faction fighting, fermented gently in the Labour Party where the electoral truce meant virtually no activity at all. By 1944 the WIL had some 400 members while the RSL had about 70. As the war moved to its conclusion, Trotsky’s promises for the post-war world, the demise of Stalinism and the deep crisis of capitalism, with the imminent prospect of workers’ power, seemed about to be realised. The only thing missing from this revolutionary equation was a united British section of the Fourth International.</p>
<p>To rectify his failure of 1938, Cannon sent Sam Gordon over to assist the fusion. Gordon’s brief seems to have involved bringing together the malcontents from both organisations so that the new section, the Revolutionary Communist Party, could be presented with an augmented, virulent and internationally nurtured irritant from the very day of its foundation. The Healy-Lawrence faction was born. Having set his little time bomb in the RCP, Cannon set his mind to the FI, which during the war had been evacuated to the US. Obviously the FI should be based in Europe where the revolution was expected to start, but just to make sure that he was still in charge Cannon had his nominees Michel Raptis (Pablo) and Ernest Mandel (Germain) installed in the leadership. Pablo and Mandel became his “young men in Europe”. Naturally enough, part of Pablo’s responsibility was to oversee the work of Cannon’s acolytes in the UK, Healy and Lawrence.</p>
<p>In the light of subsequent events and such seminal works as <strong>Against Pablo Revisionism</strong>, it is amazing to learn that Healy was the most dedicated Pabloite in the International. His political line was supplied from Paris and his faction was afforded most favourable status by the IEC. So it continued. Pablo was given free rein to eviscerate the French section, freeing it from its most experienced and consequential leadership. With splendid opportunism he could commit the FI to supporting Tito in his little unpleasantness with Stalin. This experiment with Stalinism with a Yugoslav face became the prelude to a general softening of the line on Stalinism. This change was reflected in Pablo’s own works on the War-Revolution, Centuries of Deformed Workers’ States and his theory that significant sections of the Stalinist bureaucracy would come over to the revolution, under the pressure of the masses in the developing economic and political crisis.</p>
<p>Whatever your opinion on the validity of Pablo’s thought, it cannot be gainsaid that it was completely contrary to both the spirit and the word of Trotsky’s ideas. For Trotsky, the very notion of any kind of workers’ state which comes into being without the active intervention of the working class is an invention entirely alien to his politics. The War-Revolution, where the workers’ states defeat the capitalists and set up loads of deformed workers’ states lasting for the next few hundred years, was no less at odds with Trotsky’s thinking. He would have denied vigorously that the Stalinists were capable of any kind of revolutionary advance, or that large sections of the bureaucracy would come over to the revolution. On this point at least, history seems to be on Trotsky’s side of the vote.</p>
<p>Pablo might act up in Europe and play fast and loose with Trotskyist theory with impunity, but an attempt to interfere in Cannon’s SWP was an adventure too far. In short order, there were two organisations, the new International Committee of the Fourth International, covering the British section, the SWP USA and a French section plus a few odds and sods, and Pablo’s remaindered International Secretariat of the Fourth International. The unedifying spectacle of the FI and the manner in which it rapidly became the tiny stage on which even smaller men have strutted and plotted while maintaining the pretence that they are organising the emancipation of humanity is a piece of theatre with diminishing credibility. In another part of the forest, we have the British SWP with its not really a Fourth International, more a sort of Two-and-Five-Sixteenths International in which Alex Callinicos is apparently licensed to extirpate dissenters, or invent some dissent if none actually exists. Thus the American affiliate, the ISO, has been cast into the outer darkness and Callinicos like Healy, Pablo, Cannon and Zinoviev before him is proving a dab hand with bell, book and candle. Trotsky had a word for all this: substitutionism, a word that in its accusatory form could be used again and again in the 60-odd years since the FI was founded with so many brave hopes and so few possibilities.</p>
<p>Of course, the FI did not fail because Cannon, Pablo, Mandel and Healy were bad people, although come to think of it Healy <em>was</em> a bad person, but because the organisations in which they were pre-eminent had no connection with the working class, not at one, not even at two removes. The sections had virtually no workers and this inevitably led to a fatal disconnection between the real movement and the one where small meetings in pub rooms are lectured by gurus, with long standing subscriptions to the <strong>Economist</strong> and the <strong>Financial Times</strong>, about the class struggle. How such a section is to prepare the International with the meaningful information that would enable it to act as the General Staff of the revolution is not disclosed. Is it any wonder that in the strange amalgam of cloud cuckoo land and limbo there was a democracy of daft ideas that would set the faithful to bitter argument, faction fighting and splits that even today animates the most dedicated “Trotskyists”? The Fourth International really has no future because it has no past. No matter how much we pretend that a recitation of the bullet points in the Trotskyist canon can give it wings and a powerful engine, it will remain on the ground, immobile as a brick, invaded by weeds and suffering the corrosion of cruel reality.</p>
<p>Alongside the fetish of the International, our heritage has also included a similarly pious attitude to the party. At its lowest level this means that a collection of no hopers, nutters and bug-eyed zealots, so long as they call themselves “Bolsheviks” and operate a command system called “democratic centralism”, somehow acquires a hammerlock on history and a mystical communion with the working class. This particular foible is essentially Lenin’s organisational prescription for work in conditions of Tsarist illegality, mediated through Stalinist adaptations the better to crush opposition.</p>
<p>As Al Richardson points out in the introduction to the excellent <strong>Trotsky and the Origins of Trotskyism</strong> (Francis Boutle, 2002), the first international adherents of Trotsky’s opposition, Eastman, Ludwig Lore, Monatte, Rosmer and A.E. Reade, were sacrificed on the altar of the Russian party struggle. The second levy, James P. Cannon, Fischer, Maslow, Treint etc, were ex-Zinovievists, whose earlier experiments in Bolshevism, when they were in the leadership of their own Communist Parties, had been directed to expelling the first Trotskyists. It is from this unlikely group of “democrats” that Trotskyism acquired its close-mouthed, buttock-clenching style of democratic centralism. Anyone with any experience in the movement can tell some horror story, usually involving Gerry Healy, in which they were done wrong in some bizarre travesty of revolutionary justice. (In fact, although Gerry was an endlessly inventive disciplinarian, he was certainly not the first or the last man unwilling to give an opponent, real or imagined, an even break.)</p>
<p>John Gollan used to tell a story about his father, a member of the De Leonite SLP in Glasgow before the First World War. Being a good party man, Gollan senior was proud when selected to stand for the council on the party ticket. In the event he failed to win election by a substantial margin, harvesting only 32 votes. In the party inquest following the contest he was taken severely to task, it being argued that within the ward there were only 28 members of the SLP and the four additional votes were obviously obtained by making concessions to alien political creeds. Apart from the fact that Gollan probably made this story up, it nevertheless illustrates the closed mindset of the dedicated party patriot and I can think of a few comrades from the Trotskyist movement who would have found nothing wrong with that reasoning. The patriot’s mind closes with the spring-loaded bang of a rat trap and it is wise to keep any delicate sensibilities clear of the jaws. To quote another example from even further afield, let us mull over the case of Felix Dzerzhinsky who, when a member of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, wrote to the Executive Committee telling them not to bother sending him the arguments in the debates that preceded EC decisions, just the decisions would do. Now that is the sort of chap, given the choice, you would put in charge of the Cheka.</p>
<p>Closer still in time and space is the Communist Party of Great Britain, whose <strong>Weekly Worker</strong> I find compulsive reading. They seem to be an open and agreeable enough group, currently engaged in preliminary unity skirmishing with Sean Matgamna’s Alliance for Workers’ Liberty – I do advise they count their fingers before shaking on the deal. A regular feature in their journal, and one that worries me a bit, is the <strong>What We Fight For</strong> column. “Marxism-Leninism”, we are told, “is powerful because it is true.” What does this mean? That all of Marxism-Leninism is true? What, every single bit, all those bloody great volumes? Was this truth revealed to Jack Conrad on the road to Damascus, or the Cave at Hira? Or should we just take his word for it, because he has an honest face like Tony Blair?</p>
<p>Or take the “central aim” of <em>What We Fight For</em>: “to reforge the Communist Party of Great Britain. Without this Party the working class is nothing; with it, it is everything.” Leave aside the question, why reforge a party that you already proudly proclaim above the masthead? But surely the second part of the point is arse about face. Is it not rather the case that without the working class the CPGB is nothing? Even were the fusion with the AWL to be consummated, the aggregation of nothings would not add materially to the revolutionary forces, because the working class would be somewhere else engaged in less taxing projects.</p>
<p>I have used these examples from different traditions because we can see that the closed mind is not a peculiarly Trotskyist defence against a world that perversely disagrees with us most of the time. For the revolution, we may well need a revolutionary party, but that party will certainly have to be of an even newer kind. The Leninist model did well enough in 1917 but, in the 80-plus years since, it has not marked up any successes; indeed, the Stalinist variant used its command structure to ensure that there were no successes. A socialist organisation finds its justification in the fact that it provides the geographical spread, the publishing resources and a forum in which to discuss and learn from workers; within such a relationship there is a mutual growth and understanding. It is in this too that the possibility of developing transitional programmes can arise; the more successfully this policy is pursued the more the organisation grows in time with developing class awareness and struggle.</p>
<p>In so far as such organic growth takes place, so will the new reality clarify all but the most heavily fortified of closed minds. The is not the realisation of that other Trotskyist unity fantasy, where our membership figures prove to all the other groups that we were right all the time and that the rest had best line up behind the new Lenin. Not at all – this is a movement for the self-emancipation of the working class in which socialists can play a constructive part, not acting the fool as some kind of entrist with a secret agenda for the greater glory of an antediluvian sect.</p>
<p>This is important work because, as Cyril Smith says in his article: “Capitalism ... was and remains a danger to the future of humanity. Only the struggle of the working class movement can avert this danger.” It is now a rather more pressing danger since September 11-plus failure George W. Bush developed a taste for the nuclear-armed soundbite. It is, I think, with this in mind that Al Richardson commended Trotsky for his critique of popular frontism, and condemned cosy relationships with the Greens and the like (had his article been written a little earlier, he might have added with fundamentalist Islam). The business of socialists is socialism, and for a job like that you need the working class, not a campaign with some zero-growth Green, a species of Jonathon-Pol-Porritt.</p>
<p>The world has moved on and, no matter how much we might like make-believe swashbuckling in a historical drama, it merely confirms our irrelevance in the same way that the chaps who hurtle about firing muskets in re-enactments of Civil War battles achieve nothing except looking like prats. The communist tradition has, over the decades, acquired such an accretion of dross that its founders would be hard pressed to recognise it as their creation, and where they reject the child, we should be most careful not to adopt the bastard.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Trotskyist Bears and Working Class Stars
(2002)
From What Next?, No.22, 2002.
Copied with thanks from the What Next? Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
“Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out crude rhythms for bears to dance to, when we long to make music that will move the stars to tears.” Flaubert
AL RICHARDSON and Cyril Smith in their articles on Trotskyism (Cyril Smith, On the Importance of Having Been a Trotskyist, and Al Richardson, The Place of Trotskyism in the Logic of Marxism, both in issue No.20) have started a useful and necessary discussion, and What Next? is to be commended for providing a forum for that discussion to take place. There is always something to be learned from Trotsky, even on those occasions when his arguments, eroded by time and experience, seem less convincing than once they did. Trotskyism at least is coherent and one can appreciate its quality without agreeing with every dot and comma or doing damage either to conscience or good sense.
Stalinism, on the other hand, which, especially in Stalin’s own hand, reads like the pedestrian maunderings of an inattentive seminarist, is at one and the same time inconsistent and incoherent. Stalin’s most inspired wheeze, as Al Richardson points out in his article, was to invent a totally spurious Leninism as a weapon with which to beat Trotsky, which the unfortunate L.D.T. could only counter by seeming to put himself at odds with Lenin. For the rest, Stalinism could accommodate contradictions as a dog provides a home for fleas. Today it might be let’s go left with Zinoviev, tomorrow it could be let’s go right with the Bukharinites. For Stalin, the ultra-left Third Period could give way without a word of explanation to a Popular Front against fascism, which in its turn could arbitrarily change to sucking up to Hitler, and all as if these were items in a natural progression with a brain at work throughout the piece.
Trotsky on substitutionism is brilliant and it is a pity that he did not subsequently call this to the attention of those in effective charge of the Fourth International in the 1930s. The theory of the Permanent Revolution is an astonishingly accurate preview of how the Russian Revolution actually took place. Less satisfactory were his later ideas on the ”Russian question”. To follow Trotsky through his self-constructed maze, running from Thermidor to Bonapartism, on to the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy that maintained state property only under the pressure of the masses, and finally in 1940 leaving the answer to the question in history’s safe hands, results in confusion rather than clarity. All this seems to have represented developments in Trotsky’s head, developments, unfortunately, cut short by Ramón Mercader’s ice-axe, rather than significant changes in the phenomenon he was describing. What we can say with some confidence is that the emphasis on the class nature of Russia and all the theories that failed to describe it or understand it illuminated nothing, and despite their alleged insight into the laws of motion of this new society none of them came within a mile of what actually happened.
Paradoxically, one of the most practical and inspired ideas of Trotsky was the Transitional Programme that he worked up for the founding conference of the Fourth International. Here was a programme, beautifully tailored to its time, with which a communist party firmly based in the working class could make genuine advances. Alas, there was no such party adhering to the FI – indeed, the membership figures quoted for the organisations at the founding conference were exaggerated and even at that they were in the tens and a few hundreds. The truth is that there were not even enough Trotskyists to attempt to promote the Transitional Programme in a social democratic party, despite the fact that most of them were engaged in some sort of entry tactic.
Regardless of that, however, in the real world the notion of transitional demands can be extended far beyond the original items set out in Trotsky’s 1938 programme. Within the trade unions, it is possible to develop a programme of transitional demands that can develop the struggle and set the stage for future political struggles. No Trotskyist organisation has made any serious attempt to develop such a programme, which is sad because the real dynamic of the 1938 founding conference was in the transitional method not in the construction of the first of a seemingly endless succession of Potemkin Internationals.
Most of us would support the proposition that there is a crying need for a World Party of Socialist Revolution. Unfortunately, it was not called into being by a handful of delegates in Rosmer’s back garden, and it is even less likely that it will be called into being from one or the other of the fragments from the sundered Pabloite and Healyite Internationals. Today as in 1938 there is no justification for building, with not one hundredth part of its forces, a tiny copy of the Communist International, especially as the CI cannot be said to have been overburdened with revolutionary successes, even during the brave early days covered by the first four congresses.
It is probably the case that Trotsky was loath to criticise the early CI in the same way as he failed to criticise not only the Lenin cult but also some of the organisational practices of Bolshevism, which come straight from Lenin as do some of the faults in the CI. This inability to come to terms with the legacy of the CI ensured that an international tendency with a total membership of a perhaps a couple of thousand acquired a centre staffed by Stalinist agents and recently ex-Zinovievites to direct the sections. Thus we find that Ruth Fischer, whose record of achievement in the KPD would have sent most people to a retreat for a long period of penitent silence and rigorous self-criticism, was telling the comrades in South Africa, a far away place of which she knew little, how to go about their revolutionary tasks. This did nothing to endear Ruth Fischer to the South African Trotskyists and did rather less than nothing for their revolutionary tasks.
One of the more instructive episodes in the history of the Fourth International, one that may justify the expenditure of a little space, concerns the British Trotskyists who, in 1938, had the temerity not to accept the fusion diktat of James P. Cannon, when he visited these shores to unite the British groups as part of the preparation for the FI’s founding conference. Unfortunately, the most recent split had taken place because some South African comrades were falsely accused of having misled African strikers and then decamped to England with the strike funds. Aided by rumour and gossip, this absurdity had managed to reach the International Executive Committee before being effectively scotched as a Stalinist canard originating in South Africa. All of this occurred in late 1937, and the passions aroused, that gave rise to the split, had hardly gone off the boil before Cannon arrived to unite to groups who were definitely not speaking to one another. He was not amused when the offended parties, Heaton and Ralph Lee, Millie Lee, Ted Grant and Jock Haston, refused the invitation. As a result they were branded as “a petit bourgeois group, with nationalist tendencies” at the Founding Congress and earned themselves the enduring hostility of James P. Cannon. (This unedifying episode is much more adequately dealt with in War and the International, by Al Richardson and Sam Bornstein.)
With the coming of the war the group led by Ralph Lee and Jock Haston, the Workers International League, was more successful than the Revolutionary Socialist League, the official section, under the clever but uninspired leadership of Denzil Harber. The WIL recruited in mines and factories, particularly the Royal Ordnance Factories, and in the forces, and maintained a lively propaganda, while the RSL, whose main enthusiasm seems to have been faction fighting, fermented gently in the Labour Party where the electoral truce meant virtually no activity at all. By 1944 the WIL had some 400 members while the RSL had about 70. As the war moved to its conclusion, Trotsky’s promises for the post-war world, the demise of Stalinism and the deep crisis of capitalism, with the imminent prospect of workers’ power, seemed about to be realised. The only thing missing from this revolutionary equation was a united British section of the Fourth International.
To rectify his failure of 1938, Cannon sent Sam Gordon over to assist the fusion. Gordon’s brief seems to have involved bringing together the malcontents from both organisations so that the new section, the Revolutionary Communist Party, could be presented with an augmented, virulent and internationally nurtured irritant from the very day of its foundation. The Healy-Lawrence faction was born. Having set his little time bomb in the RCP, Cannon set his mind to the FI, which during the war had been evacuated to the US. Obviously the FI should be based in Europe where the revolution was expected to start, but just to make sure that he was still in charge Cannon had his nominees Michel Raptis (Pablo) and Ernest Mandel (Germain) installed in the leadership. Pablo and Mandel became his “young men in Europe”. Naturally enough, part of Pablo’s responsibility was to oversee the work of Cannon’s acolytes in the UK, Healy and Lawrence.
In the light of subsequent events and such seminal works as Against Pablo Revisionism, it is amazing to learn that Healy was the most dedicated Pabloite in the International. His political line was supplied from Paris and his faction was afforded most favourable status by the IEC. So it continued. Pablo was given free rein to eviscerate the French section, freeing it from its most experienced and consequential leadership. With splendid opportunism he could commit the FI to supporting Tito in his little unpleasantness with Stalin. This experiment with Stalinism with a Yugoslav face became the prelude to a general softening of the line on Stalinism. This change was reflected in Pablo’s own works on the War-Revolution, Centuries of Deformed Workers’ States and his theory that significant sections of the Stalinist bureaucracy would come over to the revolution, under the pressure of the masses in the developing economic and political crisis.
Whatever your opinion on the validity of Pablo’s thought, it cannot be gainsaid that it was completely contrary to both the spirit and the word of Trotsky’s ideas. For Trotsky, the very notion of any kind of workers’ state which comes into being without the active intervention of the working class is an invention entirely alien to his politics. The War-Revolution, where the workers’ states defeat the capitalists and set up loads of deformed workers’ states lasting for the next few hundred years, was no less at odds with Trotsky’s thinking. He would have denied vigorously that the Stalinists were capable of any kind of revolutionary advance, or that large sections of the bureaucracy would come over to the revolution. On this point at least, history seems to be on Trotsky’s side of the vote.
Pablo might act up in Europe and play fast and loose with Trotskyist theory with impunity, but an attempt to interfere in Cannon’s SWP was an adventure too far. In short order, there were two organisations, the new International Committee of the Fourth International, covering the British section, the SWP USA and a French section plus a few odds and sods, and Pablo’s remaindered International Secretariat of the Fourth International. The unedifying spectacle of the FI and the manner in which it rapidly became the tiny stage on which even smaller men have strutted and plotted while maintaining the pretence that they are organising the emancipation of humanity is a piece of theatre with diminishing credibility. In another part of the forest, we have the British SWP with its not really a Fourth International, more a sort of Two-and-Five-Sixteenths International in which Alex Callinicos is apparently licensed to extirpate dissenters, or invent some dissent if none actually exists. Thus the American affiliate, the ISO, has been cast into the outer darkness and Callinicos like Healy, Pablo, Cannon and Zinoviev before him is proving a dab hand with bell, book and candle. Trotsky had a word for all this: substitutionism, a word that in its accusatory form could be used again and again in the 60-odd years since the FI was founded with so many brave hopes and so few possibilities.
Of course, the FI did not fail because Cannon, Pablo, Mandel and Healy were bad people, although come to think of it Healy was a bad person, but because the organisations in which they were pre-eminent had no connection with the working class, not at one, not even at two removes. The sections had virtually no workers and this inevitably led to a fatal disconnection between the real movement and the one where small meetings in pub rooms are lectured by gurus, with long standing subscriptions to the Economist and the Financial Times, about the class struggle. How such a section is to prepare the International with the meaningful information that would enable it to act as the General Staff of the revolution is not disclosed. Is it any wonder that in the strange amalgam of cloud cuckoo land and limbo there was a democracy of daft ideas that would set the faithful to bitter argument, faction fighting and splits that even today animates the most dedicated “Trotskyists”? The Fourth International really has no future because it has no past. No matter how much we pretend that a recitation of the bullet points in the Trotskyist canon can give it wings and a powerful engine, it will remain on the ground, immobile as a brick, invaded by weeds and suffering the corrosion of cruel reality.
Alongside the fetish of the International, our heritage has also included a similarly pious attitude to the party. At its lowest level this means that a collection of no hopers, nutters and bug-eyed zealots, so long as they call themselves “Bolsheviks” and operate a command system called “democratic centralism”, somehow acquires a hammerlock on history and a mystical communion with the working class. This particular foible is essentially Lenin’s organisational prescription for work in conditions of Tsarist illegality, mediated through Stalinist adaptations the better to crush opposition.
As Al Richardson points out in the introduction to the excellent Trotsky and the Origins of Trotskyism (Francis Boutle, 2002), the first international adherents of Trotsky’s opposition, Eastman, Ludwig Lore, Monatte, Rosmer and A.E. Reade, were sacrificed on the altar of the Russian party struggle. The second levy, James P. Cannon, Fischer, Maslow, Treint etc, were ex-Zinovievists, whose earlier experiments in Bolshevism, when they were in the leadership of their own Communist Parties, had been directed to expelling the first Trotskyists. It is from this unlikely group of “democrats” that Trotskyism acquired its close-mouthed, buttock-clenching style of democratic centralism. Anyone with any experience in the movement can tell some horror story, usually involving Gerry Healy, in which they were done wrong in some bizarre travesty of revolutionary justice. (In fact, although Gerry was an endlessly inventive disciplinarian, he was certainly not the first or the last man unwilling to give an opponent, real or imagined, an even break.)
John Gollan used to tell a story about his father, a member of the De Leonite SLP in Glasgow before the First World War. Being a good party man, Gollan senior was proud when selected to stand for the council on the party ticket. In the event he failed to win election by a substantial margin, harvesting only 32 votes. In the party inquest following the contest he was taken severely to task, it being argued that within the ward there were only 28 members of the SLP and the four additional votes were obviously obtained by making concessions to alien political creeds. Apart from the fact that Gollan probably made this story up, it nevertheless illustrates the closed mindset of the dedicated party patriot and I can think of a few comrades from the Trotskyist movement who would have found nothing wrong with that reasoning. The patriot’s mind closes with the spring-loaded bang of a rat trap and it is wise to keep any delicate sensibilities clear of the jaws. To quote another example from even further afield, let us mull over the case of Felix Dzerzhinsky who, when a member of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, wrote to the Executive Committee telling them not to bother sending him the arguments in the debates that preceded EC decisions, just the decisions would do. Now that is the sort of chap, given the choice, you would put in charge of the Cheka.
Closer still in time and space is the Communist Party of Great Britain, whose Weekly Worker I find compulsive reading. They seem to be an open and agreeable enough group, currently engaged in preliminary unity skirmishing with Sean Matgamna’s Alliance for Workers’ Liberty – I do advise they count their fingers before shaking on the deal. A regular feature in their journal, and one that worries me a bit, is the What We Fight For column. “Marxism-Leninism”, we are told, “is powerful because it is true.” What does this mean? That all of Marxism-Leninism is true? What, every single bit, all those bloody great volumes? Was this truth revealed to Jack Conrad on the road to Damascus, or the Cave at Hira? Or should we just take his word for it, because he has an honest face like Tony Blair?
Or take the “central aim” of What We Fight For: “to reforge the Communist Party of Great Britain. Without this Party the working class is nothing; with it, it is everything.” Leave aside the question, why reforge a party that you already proudly proclaim above the masthead? But surely the second part of the point is arse about face. Is it not rather the case that without the working class the CPGB is nothing? Even were the fusion with the AWL to be consummated, the aggregation of nothings would not add materially to the revolutionary forces, because the working class would be somewhere else engaged in less taxing projects.
I have used these examples from different traditions because we can see that the closed mind is not a peculiarly Trotskyist defence against a world that perversely disagrees with us most of the time. For the revolution, we may well need a revolutionary party, but that party will certainly have to be of an even newer kind. The Leninist model did well enough in 1917 but, in the 80-plus years since, it has not marked up any successes; indeed, the Stalinist variant used its command structure to ensure that there were no successes. A socialist organisation finds its justification in the fact that it provides the geographical spread, the publishing resources and a forum in which to discuss and learn from workers; within such a relationship there is a mutual growth and understanding. It is in this too that the possibility of developing transitional programmes can arise; the more successfully this policy is pursued the more the organisation grows in time with developing class awareness and struggle.
In so far as such organic growth takes place, so will the new reality clarify all but the most heavily fortified of closed minds. The is not the realisation of that other Trotskyist unity fantasy, where our membership figures prove to all the other groups that we were right all the time and that the rest had best line up behind the new Lenin. Not at all – this is a movement for the self-emancipation of the working class in which socialists can play a constructive part, not acting the fool as some kind of entrist with a secret agenda for the greater glory of an antediluvian sect.
This is important work because, as Cyril Smith says in his article: “Capitalism ... was and remains a danger to the future of humanity. Only the struggle of the working class movement can avert this danger.” It is now a rather more pressing danger since September 11-plus failure George W. Bush developed a taste for the nuclear-armed soundbite. It is, I think, with this in mind that Al Richardson commended Trotsky for his critique of popular frontism, and condemned cosy relationships with the Greens and the like (had his article been written a little earlier, he might have added with fundamentalist Islam). The business of socialists is socialism, and for a job like that you need the working class, not a campaign with some zero-growth Green, a species of Jonathon-Pol-Porritt.
The world has moved on and, no matter how much we might like make-believe swashbuckling in a historical drama, it merely confirms our irrelevance in the same way that the chaps who hurtle about firing muskets in re-enactments of Civil War battles achieve nothing except looking like prats. The communist tradition has, over the decades, acquired such an accretion of dross that its founders would be hard pressed to recognise it as their creation, and where they reject the child, we should be most careful not to adopt the bastard.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>The Assassination of Trotsky</h1>
<h3>(January 1973)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj054" target="new">No. 54</a>, January 1973, p. 25.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Leonard Mosley<br>
<strong>The Assassination of Trotsky</strong><br>
<em>Abacus 50p</em></p>
<p class="fst">Those of you who liked Losey’s film should nip smartly out and buy 50p worth of Mosley’s book. Those of you who found the film tedious, inaccurate and generally a pain will find no redress in this volume. This should surprise nobody. Mosley wrote the screenplay for the film and then presumably, in a white heat of creativity, went on to write the book of the film. This has the advantage of making the most of limited inspiration and cashing in on the film’s publicity. A note of uncharacteristic restraint is shown in resisting a nude cover to attract the dirty raincoat brigade.</p>
<p>Mosley has clearly not read widely either Trotsky’s work or that of any other Marxist writer. There are indications that he has read <strong>Their Morals and Ours</strong> and not understood a word of it. He has dipped unwarily into <strong>In Defense of Marxism</strong> and managed to make ridiculous and unrecognisable what was an argument of some intellectual power.</p>
<p>There are signs (although not mentioned in the “note on sources”) that he has read and been impressed by Bernard Wolfe’s execrable <strong>The Great Prince Died</strong>. Once again we see the notion that Trotsky fatalistically accepted the ice axe in expiation for his role at Kronstadt. This perverse view is not only psychologically nonsensical but leaves aside the fact that Trotsky’s role at Kronstadt was, personally, a big round nothing, as any halfway competent researcher would know. He took responsibility in the sense that a member of the Bolshevik leadership was responsible as part of the collective.</p>
<p>There is more of this sort of thing throughout the book, a book that has the appearance of being thrown together in a hurry. How else to explain the breathless style and crude metaphors. My favourite among this last appears on page 176: “He (Trotsky) is the other side of the coin from the blank tail of the assassin – the ineradicably recognisable lion’s head with his pince nez on his nose like balls.” Phew!!</p>
<p>Leonard Mosley, despite all this, seems quite fond of Trotsky. If this is the case perhaps he will now keep his ill-informed fingers out of matters he is clearly incapable of understanding or explaining. His book, in his own immortal words is: “like balls”.</p>
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Jim Higgins
The Assassination of Trotsky
(January 1973)
From International Socialism (1st series), No. 54, January 1973, p. 25.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Leonard Mosley
The Assassination of Trotsky
Abacus 50p
Those of you who liked Losey’s film should nip smartly out and buy 50p worth of Mosley’s book. Those of you who found the film tedious, inaccurate and generally a pain will find no redress in this volume. This should surprise nobody. Mosley wrote the screenplay for the film and then presumably, in a white heat of creativity, went on to write the book of the film. This has the advantage of making the most of limited inspiration and cashing in on the film’s publicity. A note of uncharacteristic restraint is shown in resisting a nude cover to attract the dirty raincoat brigade.
Mosley has clearly not read widely either Trotsky’s work or that of any other Marxist writer. There are indications that he has read Their Morals and Ours and not understood a word of it. He has dipped unwarily into In Defense of Marxism and managed to make ridiculous and unrecognisable what was an argument of some intellectual power.
There are signs (although not mentioned in the “note on sources”) that he has read and been impressed by Bernard Wolfe’s execrable The Great Prince Died. Once again we see the notion that Trotsky fatalistically accepted the ice axe in expiation for his role at Kronstadt. This perverse view is not only psychologically nonsensical but leaves aside the fact that Trotsky’s role at Kronstadt was, personally, a big round nothing, as any halfway competent researcher would know. He took responsibility in the sense that a member of the Bolshevik leadership was responsible as part of the collective.
There is more of this sort of thing throughout the book, a book that has the appearance of being thrown together in a hurry. How else to explain the breathless style and crude metaphors. My favourite among this last appears on page 176: “He (Trotsky) is the other side of the coin from the blank tail of the assassin – the ineradicably recognisable lion’s head with his pince nez on his nose like balls.” Phew!!
Leonard Mosley, despite all this, seems quite fond of Trotsky. If this is the case perhaps he will now keep his ill-informed fingers out of matters he is clearly incapable of understanding or explaining. His book, in his own immortal words is: “like balls”.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Trotskyism in the United States</h1>
<h3>(1997)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Revolutionary History</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm#v6n2-3" target="new">Vol. 6 No. 2/3</a>, Summer 1996, pp. 265-69.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">George Breitman, Paul LeBlanc and Alan Wald<br>
<strong>Trotskyism in the United States: Historical Essays and Reconsiderations</strong><br>
<em>Humanities Press, New Jersey, 1996, pp. 318</em></p>
<p class="fst">I FIRST came across the Trotskyist movement, and that in its Healyite manifestation, in the aftermath of Khrushchev’s <em>Secret Speech</em> to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. That speech, such a well-kept secret that the full text was in the next issue of the <strong>Observer</strong>, showed beyond dispute that Stalin was not only fallible, but also a mass murderer in the tradition of, and easily surpassing, Ivan the Terrible. The shock of all these revelations was rather like the one you might experience on hearing the Virgin Mary ask the procurator to take her first born into care. In that splintered aftermath of Khrushchev’s speech, I, together with thousands of others, came to realise that yesterday’s political certainty was but the prelude to today’s disillusion.</p>
<p>During that hand-wringing interregnum, where the most oft-heard phrase was ‘Oh God, where did it all go wrong?’, a few hundred of us were introduced to Trotskyism. The negative aspect was Gerry Healy, who on first, and all subsequent, sight looked as if he had recently been fulfilling an active rôle in the murkier recesses of an apocalyptic work by Hieronymus Bosch. The Healy factor was, however, heavily outweighed by the Trotsky effect, as expressed in his published works. The simple, not to say simple-minded, certainties of Stalinism were no match for the high tensile, armoured certainties of Trotskyism. This was not just any old suit of armour, it came fully equipped with hand-stitched lapels, waistcoat and two pairs of trousers. Not only could this theory answer all your questions, even those you had not the wit to ask, but it was also a complete defence against all the slings and arrows of any outrageous fortune that happened to be lurking about the place.</p>
<p>Ill-favoured Healy might have been, but he had the tremendous advantage of possessing a number of key texts by Leon Trotsky, such as <strong>The Revolution Betrayed</strong>. There are better books by Trotsky, but there are none that could have been more appropriate to the times than <strong>The Revolution Betrayed</strong> in the years 1956–57. These gems from the pen of the master came to us via the good offices of the US Socialist Workers Party. Whatever my subsequent criticism of the SWP, I shall always be grateful for that introduction into a world of grown-up Marxist politics.</p>
<p>Nowadays, I am told, the SWP not only eschews all generosity with Trotsky’s texts, they have also eschewed Trotskyism. Under their maximum leader Jack Barnes, the SWP declares itself to be a sister party of the Cuban Communist Party. Whether the Cubans’ own maximum leader entertains similar feelings of sisterhood toward Jack Barnes and his comrades is open to doubt. Holding such views, it is only proper that they should abandon Trotskyism, for even the most egregiously opportunist Trotskyist could not pretend that the working class had moved south, and was surreptitiously carrying through its revolutionary purposes in the disguise of an overweight, bearded Cuban petit-bourgeois. Whilst this is noted in the book here under review, it does not seem to excite much interest in the authors. This may be because Breitman is dead, and was in any case part of the leadership that first endorsed the assumption of Cuba into the pantheon of ‘workers’ states’, whilst LeBlanc and Wald joined the SWP after this great theoretical breakthrough had been made.</p>
<p>Right at the beginning of this book Paul LeBlanc writes: ‘Neither my collaborator Alan Wald and I are satisfied with the modest cross section provided here ...’ Well, they can add my name to the list as well. For them, Trotskyism in the United States is the Socialist Workers Party, the 18 years of the Workers Party-Independent Socialist League merit only passing reference, and the International Socialists no mention at all. Wald and LeBlanc are American academics, and both of them write in that clotted style which was pioneered by Erlichman and Haldeman, and was not the least of their crimes against humanity. Wald, who has the more interesting thesis, was clearly pulling ahead of LeBlanc in the race for my approval, when he introduced that abomination the verb ‘to critique’ as in ‘he critiqued ...’ I subjected him to a great deal of ‘critiquing’ for that, I can tell you. Breitman, who was self-educated, produces an altogether nicer class of prose.</p>
<p>What the authors do have in common is that they were all expelled from the SWP by Jack Barnes and his <em>camarilla</em>. For Breitman this must have been a particularly bitter experience, because he had been part of the Farrell Dobbs-Tom Kerry leadership that had selected Barnes in the first place. As LeBlanc explains: ‘The most serious errors by the SWP “old guard” were made after Cannon’s retirement from the central leadership. These were associated, in part, with the selection and grooming of Jack Barnes as the new central leader of the SWP. He was allowed to assemble his own leadership team, and the kind of authority that Cannon, Dobbs and Kerry enjoyed was conferred upon him.’ It is LeBlanc’s general thesis that, with one or two reservations, the SWP was essentially a sound organisation until Barnes was handed the franchise. Having acquired the job through a pose of ultra-Cannonism, it was not too long before he ‘undermined the party democracy that is essential to Leninism’.</p>
<p>Barnes, according to the convincing testimony of our authors, behaved in an undemocratic manner. What seems to have escaped their notice is that there is something amiss in a leadership approaching its sell-by date hand-picking its successor. James P. Cannon chose Farrell Dobbs to be his successor, as the man most likely to continue the traditions of Cannonism. To ensure that Dobbs kept to that tradition, Cannon set up a sort of parallel centre in California where he could, with no little embarrassment to Dobbs, correct any deviations from Cannonite rectitude. This is a style of selection that was popular in the Tory party, until it conferred leadership on Alec Douglas Home, which effectively discredited the whole procedure. Unfortunately, when Barnes, through a stunning display of devotion to the living thought of Cannon, acquired the franchise and then proceeded to divest himself of this heritage, there was no way of effectively calling him to order. It was now Jack Barnes’ party, and he could give it to Castro, or to anyone else his mean little heart desired.</p>
<p>I have little doubt that Jack Barnes is not the man you would want in charge of your favourite revolutionary party. Frankly, I would advise against having him in for baby-sitting, but it has to be conceded that the constitutional niceties were observed when he got rid of troublesome opponents. He just utilised the draconian rules enacted by the Kerry-Dobbs leadership to rid themselves of Tim Wohlforth and James Robertson. Later, given a little practice, Barnes began to get a bit inventive with his expulsion technique. The Internationalist Tendency were declared to be a separate organisation, and were not allowed to re-register. This cunning ploy ensured that they were not allowed to utilise the appeals procedure.</p>
<p>Lowering over the history of the SWP is the dominating presence of James P. Cannon. Of the three authors of the essays in this book, George Breitman is the most dedicated Cannonite. His view is encapsulated in the quote: ‘I am very satisfied with Marxism and Leninism and with the American version of that, which came to get the name of “Cannonism” in our movement.’</p>
<p>Alan Wald represents the opposite pole in the volume. He takes the view that Cannon, despite his manifest talents, inculcated a notion in the party that it represented the acme of revolutionary purity, an immaculate organisation, with muscles twangingly poised to lead the workers to power at a moment’s notice. This, which we might call self-deluding sectarianism, is beautifully summed up in Cannon’s <em>Theses on the American Revolution</em> of 1946: ‘The revolutionary vanguard party, destined to lead this tumultuous revolutionary movement in the US, does not have to be created. It already exists, and its name is the Socialist Workers Party... The fundamental core of the professional leadership has been assembled ... The task of the SWP consists simply in this: to remain true to its program and banner ...’ This was put even more sharply by Morris Stein (who was National Secretary whilst Cannon was in prison during the war) with the words:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘We are monopolists in the field of politics. We cannot stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution, can do it only through one party and one program ... This is why we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any pretence of being a working class revolutionary party. Ours is the only correct program that can lead to the revolution. Everything else is deception, treachery.’</p>
<p class="fst">If, on reading this, you do not experience something of the cold chill of the Lubyanka cellars, you almost certainly have your central heating turned up expensively high.</p>
<p>The middle ground in all this is occupied by Paul LeBlanc. His view is that the formative years of the SWP were the time when the opposing contenders for leadership in the working class were either Stalinism or Social Democracy. In the 1930s neither of these forces would accept work or discussion with Trotskyists, who were thus alone and must shout very loud to be heard.</p>
<p>Really though, the explicit sectarian vainglory in Stein is implicit in Cannon, because for good or ill he set his stamp on the SWP. Cannon was a native American revolutionary, experienced in working class politics before the founding of the CPUSA, and an influential figure within that party. He learned well and participated freely in the faction fights that enlivened the early years of American Communism, but he was always the junior partner in the combinations he joined. Early in the proceedings he became aware that advancement in the sections of the Communist International depended on choosing the right patron in its leadership. He was less concerned at the fact that Zinoviev and Stalin could impose a minority leadership on the majority of the US party, than that it was not his minority that was chosen. When it came to the much smaller world of Trotskyism, Cannon made sure that he was 110 per cent on the right side of L.D.T., and, whenever given the chance, operated in the Fourth International like a cut-price Zinoviev.</p>
<p>In the early years of the Left Opposition, if Cannon was the best known figure, he was, at least, associated with some other formidable personalities, the most outstanding being Max Shachtman. These two complemented each other very effectively in those formative years. Shachtman was the brilliant Socialist intellectual; witty, stylish, a ruthless polemicist and debater, and at the same time very funny and highly approachable, especially for the young. Cannon, an altogether more dour character, was given to dark depression when things were not going well, and in those moods was liable to withdraw from the struggle to commune with vast quantities of the hard stuff. Nevertheless, he was an exceptionally talented propagandist, both in print and on the platform. If Cannon was not in the same street as Shachtman intellectually, neither was Shachtman a patch on Cannon in the popular agitation stakes. Later on, others of considerable calibre joined the movement: James Burnham, A.J. Muste, Hal Draper, Felix Morrow, C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, to name just a few.</p>
<p>The movement has always been plagued by the proliferation of tiny groups, each with its founding guru, whose <em>raison d’être</em> is difficult to fathom, the quality of their cadre not discernible to the naked eye, and whose inevitable passing is unaccompanied by expressions of regret. The SWP, however, was not such an organisation. The people mentioned above would all have had some significant rôle to play in a movement that was infinitely more successful and with many more members than the SWP ever enjoyed. It was their tragedy, as it was for the rest of the Trotskyist movement, that they never connected with the working class in any but the most transitory and peripheral way. Perhaps, in general, it is true that the upper and nether millstones of Stalinism and Social Democracy ground the revolutionaries to dust, but in America Stalinism was never a mass party, and Social Democracy was even smaller. With the exception of the Teamsters, the SWP was hardly involved at all in the great upsurge of the CIO, and during the height of that union organising drive, the Trotskyists were engaged in two years of deep entry in the American Socialist Party.</p>
<p>None of this is to suggest that if they had had an orientation to the CIO it would have been a runaway success, but it is to say that in any set of circumstances where the revolutionary movement has a chance to connect with the workers, it should take it. You will not find the proletarian vanguard in Norman Thomas’ back pocket, any more than you will find it in Fidel’s beard, although there is at least one large petit-bourgeois behind that. The irony of the Trotskyists’ entry into the American Socialist Party is that they came out with more than double their original membership, having taken the Socialist Party’s youth movement almost lock, stock and barrel. This splendid young cadre formed the majority of Shachtman’s faction – and accompanied him out of the SWP in 1940.</p>
<p>The orientation to the working class is not just some fuddy-duddy old foible, it is the essence of revolutionary Marxism, but it is one of the easiest to forget in the over-heated enthusiasm for a new get-rich-quick theory. You can substitute the peasantry for the revolutionary class. You can witter on about ‘centuries of deformed workers’ states’, or Fabian-Stalinism, like Pablo; you might even see the revolution springing unchained from the junior common room; or you could hymn the praises of youth, and good luck to you mate; but none of that will have anything to do with Marxism. One of the besetting sins of our movement is what might be called ‘the Socialism of the peroration’. This is where we affirm our ‘undying faith in the working class’, and promise to ‘storm both heaven and earth’ in the very near future. Then we go home and try and think up some short cut that will save us from all the hard work, and frequent failure, of organising in the working class.</p>
<p>It is this sort of thing that Trotsky called substitutionism, that is, a besetting sin. In 1973 the SWP had around 1,000 members, and LeBlanc quotes someone called Sheir who reported that at that time it had 120 persons, most of them paid, working at the party HQ, with room for many more. George Novack boasted that the SWP had ‘an infrastructure for a party of about 100,000’. During the period in question, SWP branches had local branch offices and full-time organisers, and paid for their own leaflets and propaganda. The subs range was from $5 to $50 per week (with the average much closer to $5 than $50, I should think), and the balance after paying local costs was sent to the party. How the party financed its 120 full-time head office staff and all the associated expenses on this income is difficult to understand. It is even more difficult to understand why the party members kept sending the money when it is recalled that this vast army of party functionaries managed in just 12 months to increase the membership by a pathetic 140. A year later still, Barnes’ imaginative expulsion tactics had reduced the membership once more to 1,000. You pays your money, and Jack Barnes makes his choice.</p>
<p>Whilst we are discussing membership figures, it is quite interesting to note that the SWP never had a membership of more than 1,500, and that was the high point in 1938, as they exited from the Socialist Party. That was the time when they were claiming 2,500 at the founding congress of the Fourth International. In 1944 they had just 840 as they set out to arrange the future of the British section and control the Fourth International. The postwar SWP, whose membership was usually in the hundreds and never exceeded 1,250, threw its weight about internationally, and presumed to lecture the world on how to make the revolution. It is difficult to say who was the most deluded, the SWP for believing its own vainglory, or the rest of us for accepting it as good coin.</p>
<p>When Trotsky was murdered, Cannon saw himself as the natural successor to lead the forces of the Fourth International. In 1940, of course, the Fourth International had been put into lukewarm storage for the duration, but in 1944 Cannon sent his man Sam Gordon to the UK to sort out the British Trotskyists. This, Cannon’s second attempt to unify the British section of the Fourth International, involved setting up Gerry Healy as the opposition to the Haston-Grant leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party. This silly piece of politicking is alone enough to nullify the picture of the wise leader portrayed in LeBlanc’s essays, if the fault had not been further compounded by his selection of Michel Raptis (Pablo) as the man to run the Fourth International when it was returned to Europe.</p>
<p>Neither of these interesting sidelights into Cannon’s legacy are mentioned in the book, although LeBlanc does treat us to examples of praise for Cannon and the SWP from ex-members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency. Now this is odd, because LeBlanc is co-editor, along with Scott McLemee, of <strong>C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism</strong>, which suggests that he is familiar with the texts of the Johnson-Forest Tendency including, presumably, <em>The Balance Sheet Completed</em> (subtitled <em>Ten Years of American Trotskyism</em>), the tendency’s final farewell to Trotskyism. Here is what Johnson-Forest had to say, amongst other things, about the SWP:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Finally there was forced upon us a shocking recognition of the callousness, the brutality, the lack of elementary human decency, far less revolutionary principle and vigilance to which substantial elements of the most highly placed leadership had sunk ... As we understood ourselves and where we were, the cry became unanimous: “Let us get out of here at once. It is a political gas chamber. We do not trust this political leadership to carry out its own political line. None of our comrades who is in any difficulty can trust himself to them. Even those who are not degenerate are ready to support those who are when their crimes are discovered. We do not want to discuss with them. Such a discussion can only besmirch us. Let us get out of here as quickly as we can.” We hesitated for a moment, but the final, the ultimate certainty came with the discovery that the one with the most brains, authority and experience who had come to the rescue of the politically unstable and fortified the turn to Stalinism, was also at the disposal of any degenerate who might need protection.’</p>
<p class="fst">Now all of that, which might put you in mind of the last days of the Roman Empire or of the Weimar Republic – or Gerry Healy – is saying that for Johnson-Forest the SWP was a moral swamp, and one would have expected that an admirer of both James P. Cannon and C.L.R. James would, if he must quote Johnson-Forest in this context, have something to say about the tendency’s final considered word on the SWP.</p>
<p>Alan Wald, despite his addiction to the noun-verb, does cast a rather more critical eye on the SWP. He pays due homage to the high talents of some of the Trotskyist leaders, but points out that not only were they unsuccessful in their own terms, but were also failures by almost any comparison you like to make. Dogmatism was and is almost always confused with high principle, and this is nowhere more apparent than on the tortured question of the class nature of the Stalinist states. As Wald says in a footnote on page 285: ‘None of these theories [state capitalist, bureaucratic collectivism or workers’ state – <em>JH</em>] persuasively accounts for all aspects of these societies ... Unfortunately, for most Trotskyists, absolute fidelity to their particular interpretation of a specific theory of Soviet-type societies is their political touchstone.’ Wald, as you will see from this, has a definite grip on reality. He sums up his final essay: ‘Trotskyism!!! is dead. Long live Trotskyism.’ I do not mind seconding that particular proposition.</p>
<p>For the rest, this is an inadequate book that will be all but incomprehensible to young would-be Marxists who do not have any great knowledge of Trotskyism in general, or the SWP in particular. This may be because some of the material was originally written by LeBlanc and Wald as internal bulletins in obscure faction fights in the SWP. Whatever the reason, this is a pity, because there is the beginning of a worthwhile critique that might help us all to greater clarity and effectiveness.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Trotskyism in the United States
(1997)
From Revolutionary History, Vol. 6 No. 2/3, Summer 1996, pp. 265-69.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
George Breitman, Paul LeBlanc and Alan Wald
Trotskyism in the United States: Historical Essays and Reconsiderations
Humanities Press, New Jersey, 1996, pp. 318
I FIRST came across the Trotskyist movement, and that in its Healyite manifestation, in the aftermath of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. That speech, such a well-kept secret that the full text was in the next issue of the Observer, showed beyond dispute that Stalin was not only fallible, but also a mass murderer in the tradition of, and easily surpassing, Ivan the Terrible. The shock of all these revelations was rather like the one you might experience on hearing the Virgin Mary ask the procurator to take her first born into care. In that splintered aftermath of Khrushchev’s speech, I, together with thousands of others, came to realise that yesterday’s political certainty was but the prelude to today’s disillusion.
During that hand-wringing interregnum, where the most oft-heard phrase was ‘Oh God, where did it all go wrong?’, a few hundred of us were introduced to Trotskyism. The negative aspect was Gerry Healy, who on first, and all subsequent, sight looked as if he had recently been fulfilling an active rôle in the murkier recesses of an apocalyptic work by Hieronymus Bosch. The Healy factor was, however, heavily outweighed by the Trotsky effect, as expressed in his published works. The simple, not to say simple-minded, certainties of Stalinism were no match for the high tensile, armoured certainties of Trotskyism. This was not just any old suit of armour, it came fully equipped with hand-stitched lapels, waistcoat and two pairs of trousers. Not only could this theory answer all your questions, even those you had not the wit to ask, but it was also a complete defence against all the slings and arrows of any outrageous fortune that happened to be lurking about the place.
Ill-favoured Healy might have been, but he had the tremendous advantage of possessing a number of key texts by Leon Trotsky, such as The Revolution Betrayed. There are better books by Trotsky, but there are none that could have been more appropriate to the times than The Revolution Betrayed in the years 1956–57. These gems from the pen of the master came to us via the good offices of the US Socialist Workers Party. Whatever my subsequent criticism of the SWP, I shall always be grateful for that introduction into a world of grown-up Marxist politics.
Nowadays, I am told, the SWP not only eschews all generosity with Trotsky’s texts, they have also eschewed Trotskyism. Under their maximum leader Jack Barnes, the SWP declares itself to be a sister party of the Cuban Communist Party. Whether the Cubans’ own maximum leader entertains similar feelings of sisterhood toward Jack Barnes and his comrades is open to doubt. Holding such views, it is only proper that they should abandon Trotskyism, for even the most egregiously opportunist Trotskyist could not pretend that the working class had moved south, and was surreptitiously carrying through its revolutionary purposes in the disguise of an overweight, bearded Cuban petit-bourgeois. Whilst this is noted in the book here under review, it does not seem to excite much interest in the authors. This may be because Breitman is dead, and was in any case part of the leadership that first endorsed the assumption of Cuba into the pantheon of ‘workers’ states’, whilst LeBlanc and Wald joined the SWP after this great theoretical breakthrough had been made.
Right at the beginning of this book Paul LeBlanc writes: ‘Neither my collaborator Alan Wald and I are satisfied with the modest cross section provided here ...’ Well, they can add my name to the list as well. For them, Trotskyism in the United States is the Socialist Workers Party, the 18 years of the Workers Party-Independent Socialist League merit only passing reference, and the International Socialists no mention at all. Wald and LeBlanc are American academics, and both of them write in that clotted style which was pioneered by Erlichman and Haldeman, and was not the least of their crimes against humanity. Wald, who has the more interesting thesis, was clearly pulling ahead of LeBlanc in the race for my approval, when he introduced that abomination the verb ‘to critique’ as in ‘he critiqued ...’ I subjected him to a great deal of ‘critiquing’ for that, I can tell you. Breitman, who was self-educated, produces an altogether nicer class of prose.
What the authors do have in common is that they were all expelled from the SWP by Jack Barnes and his camarilla. For Breitman this must have been a particularly bitter experience, because he had been part of the Farrell Dobbs-Tom Kerry leadership that had selected Barnes in the first place. As LeBlanc explains: ‘The most serious errors by the SWP “old guard” were made after Cannon’s retirement from the central leadership. These were associated, in part, with the selection and grooming of Jack Barnes as the new central leader of the SWP. He was allowed to assemble his own leadership team, and the kind of authority that Cannon, Dobbs and Kerry enjoyed was conferred upon him.’ It is LeBlanc’s general thesis that, with one or two reservations, the SWP was essentially a sound organisation until Barnes was handed the franchise. Having acquired the job through a pose of ultra-Cannonism, it was not too long before he ‘undermined the party democracy that is essential to Leninism’.
Barnes, according to the convincing testimony of our authors, behaved in an undemocratic manner. What seems to have escaped their notice is that there is something amiss in a leadership approaching its sell-by date hand-picking its successor. James P. Cannon chose Farrell Dobbs to be his successor, as the man most likely to continue the traditions of Cannonism. To ensure that Dobbs kept to that tradition, Cannon set up a sort of parallel centre in California where he could, with no little embarrassment to Dobbs, correct any deviations from Cannonite rectitude. This is a style of selection that was popular in the Tory party, until it conferred leadership on Alec Douglas Home, which effectively discredited the whole procedure. Unfortunately, when Barnes, through a stunning display of devotion to the living thought of Cannon, acquired the franchise and then proceeded to divest himself of this heritage, there was no way of effectively calling him to order. It was now Jack Barnes’ party, and he could give it to Castro, or to anyone else his mean little heart desired.
I have little doubt that Jack Barnes is not the man you would want in charge of your favourite revolutionary party. Frankly, I would advise against having him in for baby-sitting, but it has to be conceded that the constitutional niceties were observed when he got rid of troublesome opponents. He just utilised the draconian rules enacted by the Kerry-Dobbs leadership to rid themselves of Tim Wohlforth and James Robertson. Later, given a little practice, Barnes began to get a bit inventive with his expulsion technique. The Internationalist Tendency were declared to be a separate organisation, and were not allowed to re-register. This cunning ploy ensured that they were not allowed to utilise the appeals procedure.
Lowering over the history of the SWP is the dominating presence of James P. Cannon. Of the three authors of the essays in this book, George Breitman is the most dedicated Cannonite. His view is encapsulated in the quote: ‘I am very satisfied with Marxism and Leninism and with the American version of that, which came to get the name of “Cannonism” in our movement.’
Alan Wald represents the opposite pole in the volume. He takes the view that Cannon, despite his manifest talents, inculcated a notion in the party that it represented the acme of revolutionary purity, an immaculate organisation, with muscles twangingly poised to lead the workers to power at a moment’s notice. This, which we might call self-deluding sectarianism, is beautifully summed up in Cannon’s Theses on the American Revolution of 1946: ‘The revolutionary vanguard party, destined to lead this tumultuous revolutionary movement in the US, does not have to be created. It already exists, and its name is the Socialist Workers Party... The fundamental core of the professional leadership has been assembled ... The task of the SWP consists simply in this: to remain true to its program and banner ...’ This was put even more sharply by Morris Stein (who was National Secretary whilst Cannon was in prison during the war) with the words:
‘We are monopolists in the field of politics. We cannot stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution, can do it only through one party and one program ... This is why we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any pretence of being a working class revolutionary party. Ours is the only correct program that can lead to the revolution. Everything else is deception, treachery.’
If, on reading this, you do not experience something of the cold chill of the Lubyanka cellars, you almost certainly have your central heating turned up expensively high.
The middle ground in all this is occupied by Paul LeBlanc. His view is that the formative years of the SWP were the time when the opposing contenders for leadership in the working class were either Stalinism or Social Democracy. In the 1930s neither of these forces would accept work or discussion with Trotskyists, who were thus alone and must shout very loud to be heard.
Really though, the explicit sectarian vainglory in Stein is implicit in Cannon, because for good or ill he set his stamp on the SWP. Cannon was a native American revolutionary, experienced in working class politics before the founding of the CPUSA, and an influential figure within that party. He learned well and participated freely in the faction fights that enlivened the early years of American Communism, but he was always the junior partner in the combinations he joined. Early in the proceedings he became aware that advancement in the sections of the Communist International depended on choosing the right patron in its leadership. He was less concerned at the fact that Zinoviev and Stalin could impose a minority leadership on the majority of the US party, than that it was not his minority that was chosen. When it came to the much smaller world of Trotskyism, Cannon made sure that he was 110 per cent on the right side of L.D.T., and, whenever given the chance, operated in the Fourth International like a cut-price Zinoviev.
In the early years of the Left Opposition, if Cannon was the best known figure, he was, at least, associated with some other formidable personalities, the most outstanding being Max Shachtman. These two complemented each other very effectively in those formative years. Shachtman was the brilliant Socialist intellectual; witty, stylish, a ruthless polemicist and debater, and at the same time very funny and highly approachable, especially for the young. Cannon, an altogether more dour character, was given to dark depression when things were not going well, and in those moods was liable to withdraw from the struggle to commune with vast quantities of the hard stuff. Nevertheless, he was an exceptionally talented propagandist, both in print and on the platform. If Cannon was not in the same street as Shachtman intellectually, neither was Shachtman a patch on Cannon in the popular agitation stakes. Later on, others of considerable calibre joined the movement: James Burnham, A.J. Muste, Hal Draper, Felix Morrow, C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, to name just a few.
The movement has always been plagued by the proliferation of tiny groups, each with its founding guru, whose raison d’être is difficult to fathom, the quality of their cadre not discernible to the naked eye, and whose inevitable passing is unaccompanied by expressions of regret. The SWP, however, was not such an organisation. The people mentioned above would all have had some significant rôle to play in a movement that was infinitely more successful and with many more members than the SWP ever enjoyed. It was their tragedy, as it was for the rest of the Trotskyist movement, that they never connected with the working class in any but the most transitory and peripheral way. Perhaps, in general, it is true that the upper and nether millstones of Stalinism and Social Democracy ground the revolutionaries to dust, but in America Stalinism was never a mass party, and Social Democracy was even smaller. With the exception of the Teamsters, the SWP was hardly involved at all in the great upsurge of the CIO, and during the height of that union organising drive, the Trotskyists were engaged in two years of deep entry in the American Socialist Party.
None of this is to suggest that if they had had an orientation to the CIO it would have been a runaway success, but it is to say that in any set of circumstances where the revolutionary movement has a chance to connect with the workers, it should take it. You will not find the proletarian vanguard in Norman Thomas’ back pocket, any more than you will find it in Fidel’s beard, although there is at least one large petit-bourgeois behind that. The irony of the Trotskyists’ entry into the American Socialist Party is that they came out with more than double their original membership, having taken the Socialist Party’s youth movement almost lock, stock and barrel. This splendid young cadre formed the majority of Shachtman’s faction – and accompanied him out of the SWP in 1940.
The orientation to the working class is not just some fuddy-duddy old foible, it is the essence of revolutionary Marxism, but it is one of the easiest to forget in the over-heated enthusiasm for a new get-rich-quick theory. You can substitute the peasantry for the revolutionary class. You can witter on about ‘centuries of deformed workers’ states’, or Fabian-Stalinism, like Pablo; you might even see the revolution springing unchained from the junior common room; or you could hymn the praises of youth, and good luck to you mate; but none of that will have anything to do with Marxism. One of the besetting sins of our movement is what might be called ‘the Socialism of the peroration’. This is where we affirm our ‘undying faith in the working class’, and promise to ‘storm both heaven and earth’ in the very near future. Then we go home and try and think up some short cut that will save us from all the hard work, and frequent failure, of organising in the working class.
It is this sort of thing that Trotsky called substitutionism, that is, a besetting sin. In 1973 the SWP had around 1,000 members, and LeBlanc quotes someone called Sheir who reported that at that time it had 120 persons, most of them paid, working at the party HQ, with room for many more. George Novack boasted that the SWP had ‘an infrastructure for a party of about 100,000’. During the period in question, SWP branches had local branch offices and full-time organisers, and paid for their own leaflets and propaganda. The subs range was from $5 to $50 per week (with the average much closer to $5 than $50, I should think), and the balance after paying local costs was sent to the party. How the party financed its 120 full-time head office staff and all the associated expenses on this income is difficult to understand. It is even more difficult to understand why the party members kept sending the money when it is recalled that this vast army of party functionaries managed in just 12 months to increase the membership by a pathetic 140. A year later still, Barnes’ imaginative expulsion tactics had reduced the membership once more to 1,000. You pays your money, and Jack Barnes makes his choice.
Whilst we are discussing membership figures, it is quite interesting to note that the SWP never had a membership of more than 1,500, and that was the high point in 1938, as they exited from the Socialist Party. That was the time when they were claiming 2,500 at the founding congress of the Fourth International. In 1944 they had just 840 as they set out to arrange the future of the British section and control the Fourth International. The postwar SWP, whose membership was usually in the hundreds and never exceeded 1,250, threw its weight about internationally, and presumed to lecture the world on how to make the revolution. It is difficult to say who was the most deluded, the SWP for believing its own vainglory, or the rest of us for accepting it as good coin.
When Trotsky was murdered, Cannon saw himself as the natural successor to lead the forces of the Fourth International. In 1940, of course, the Fourth International had been put into lukewarm storage for the duration, but in 1944 Cannon sent his man Sam Gordon to the UK to sort out the British Trotskyists. This, Cannon’s second attempt to unify the British section of the Fourth International, involved setting up Gerry Healy as the opposition to the Haston-Grant leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party. This silly piece of politicking is alone enough to nullify the picture of the wise leader portrayed in LeBlanc’s essays, if the fault had not been further compounded by his selection of Michel Raptis (Pablo) as the man to run the Fourth International when it was returned to Europe.
Neither of these interesting sidelights into Cannon’s legacy are mentioned in the book, although LeBlanc does treat us to examples of praise for Cannon and the SWP from ex-members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency. Now this is odd, because LeBlanc is co-editor, along with Scott McLemee, of C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism, which suggests that he is familiar with the texts of the Johnson-Forest Tendency including, presumably, The Balance Sheet Completed (subtitled Ten Years of American Trotskyism), the tendency’s final farewell to Trotskyism. Here is what Johnson-Forest had to say, amongst other things, about the SWP:
‘Finally there was forced upon us a shocking recognition of the callousness, the brutality, the lack of elementary human decency, far less revolutionary principle and vigilance to which substantial elements of the most highly placed leadership had sunk ... As we understood ourselves and where we were, the cry became unanimous: “Let us get out of here at once. It is a political gas chamber. We do not trust this political leadership to carry out its own political line. None of our comrades who is in any difficulty can trust himself to them. Even those who are not degenerate are ready to support those who are when their crimes are discovered. We do not want to discuss with them. Such a discussion can only besmirch us. Let us get out of here as quickly as we can.” We hesitated for a moment, but the final, the ultimate certainty came with the discovery that the one with the most brains, authority and experience who had come to the rescue of the politically unstable and fortified the turn to Stalinism, was also at the disposal of any degenerate who might need protection.’
Now all of that, which might put you in mind of the last days of the Roman Empire or of the Weimar Republic – or Gerry Healy – is saying that for Johnson-Forest the SWP was a moral swamp, and one would have expected that an admirer of both James P. Cannon and C.L.R. James would, if he must quote Johnson-Forest in this context, have something to say about the tendency’s final considered word on the SWP.
Alan Wald, despite his addiction to the noun-verb, does cast a rather more critical eye on the SWP. He pays due homage to the high talents of some of the Trotskyist leaders, but points out that not only were they unsuccessful in their own terms, but were also failures by almost any comparison you like to make. Dogmatism was and is almost always confused with high principle, and this is nowhere more apparent than on the tortured question of the class nature of the Stalinist states. As Wald says in a footnote on page 285: ‘None of these theories [state capitalist, bureaucratic collectivism or workers’ state – JH] persuasively accounts for all aspects of these societies ... Unfortunately, for most Trotskyists, absolute fidelity to their particular interpretation of a specific theory of Soviet-type societies is their political touchstone.’ Wald, as you will see from this, has a definite grip on reality. He sums up his final essay: ‘Trotskyism!!! is dead. Long live Trotskyism.’ I do not mind seconding that particular proposition.
For the rest, this is an inadequate book that will be all but incomprehensible to young would-be Marxists who do not have any great knowledge of Trotskyism in general, or the SWP in particular. This may be because some of the material was originally written by LeBlanc and Wald as internal bulletins in obscure faction fights in the SWP. Whatever the reason, this is a pity, because there is the beginning of a worthwhile critique that might help us all to greater clarity and effectiveness.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>The Asturian Uprising<br>
and the Warsaw Commune</h1>
<h3>(2002)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Revolutionary History</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm#v8n2" target="new">Vol. 8 No. 2</a>, 2002.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Manuel Grossi<br>
<strong>The Asturian Uprising: Fifteen Days of Socialist Revolution</strong><br>
Socialist Platform, London, 2000, pp140, £5.00<br>
Zygmunt Zaremba<br>
<strong>The Warsaw Commune: Betrayed by Stalin, Massacred by Hitler</strong><br>
Socialist Platform, London, 1997, pp45, £3.00</p>
<p class="fst">TO have been a socialist through a large chunk of the twentieth century was not all unalloyed pleasure. Of course, there were high spots, although I was not around during the “ten days that shook the world” or the nine days of the General Strike, they were certainly times to stir men’s souls. Harry Wicks, who was alive during both of these seminal events, could recreate in words the events of those few golden days that would give renewed enthusiasm to the most jaded of socialists. In particular, Harry’s stories of the General Strike, in which he was a committed and enthusiastic participant, gave an intimation of the power and excitement when virtually an entire class is on the move. In their different styles, Manuel Grossi and Zygmunt Zaremba give equally graphic accounts by people who were there in the thick of it.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, with all the inevitability of a sweep hand, nine days becomes ten and the high hopes of day one give way to regrets that last for years. The Asturian uprising was another of those episodes which testify to the courage, daring and inventiveness of the working class when it operates collectively in its own fundamental interest. Alas it is another of those events measured in days, just 15, brief maybe, but a fortnight to cherish. The working class of Asturias in 1933 was acknowledged to be the best organised in Spain. The close communities of the miners, who made up nearly half of the Asturian working class, gave a powerful boost to social, industrial and political solidarity. The main union organisation, the <em>Sindicato de obreros mineres de Asturias</em> (SMA), was closely linked to the Socialist Federation, highly bureaucratised in the social democratic manner, and despite its name recruited workers whether miners or not. In a rather inspired piece of opportunism in 1928, the SMA acquired a coal mine and, because the state guaranteed to buy the output, a useful source of income. In 1934, the money came in handy to purchase arms from Portuguese revolutionaries. This is a novel deviation from the social democratic norms as we know them in Britain, where it is usually the individual who starts out radical and ends up rich.</p>
<p>Early in 1933, the Workers and Peasants Bloc of Joaquín Maurín, convened a meeting in Barcelona to set up a Workers Alliance against the growing menace of fascism both abroad and in Spain. At first, there were few takers, the Communist Left (Trotskyists) and some left anarchists, but when the Nazis took power in Germany the need for the Workers Alliance became much clearer to many others. All workers’ organisations, political and trade union, were entitled to join and to place a representative on the committee. For Maurín, this was, despite certain differences, the Spanish expression of the soviet, a pure example of a class organisation. The Catalan Socialist Union was forced to withdraw from the Alliance because of its support for the bourgeois Catalan Generalitat. This wise exclusion policy was one that Maurín would have done well to remember when a few short years later he joined the bourgeois parties in a Popular Front government during the Civil War. The immediate cause of the uprising was the inclusion of three members of the extreme right in the national government. This was seen as a first significant opening to fascism. On 4 October 1934, the Asturian Committee of the Workers Alliance took the decision for the uprising. Despite the cache of Portuguese weaponry, the workers were not well armed. Hunting guns, and farm implements were freely available, but the miners’ weapon of choice was sticks of dynamite. It was readily available in the mines, and the miners were highly skilled in its use. In the battle for Oviedo, the dynamiters induced panic in the defenders, and were decisive in winning the day.</p>
<p>In Catalonia, the Generalitat presided over by Luis Companys, a Catalan nationalist, declared a Catalan state within the Spanish Federal Republic. The workers confidently expected that Companys would open the armouries and distribute the weapons them. Their confidence was misplaced, and the Generalitat put up no resistance to a force of 50 men and a general. Catalonia, the birthplace of the Workers Alliance, played no further part in the struggle.</p>
<p>Despite its isolation, the uprising enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the Asturian workers. Throughout the 15 days, the shortage of arms was a continuing problem. If they possessed the artillery, the shells had no fuses. They set about manufacturing what they could. Their home-made hand grenades were apparently of such high quality that not one failed to explode. They produced a device for lobbing their grenades into enemy trenches that proved wonderfully effective on several occasions. They developed a method of armour-plating trains, wagons and vehicles.</p>
<p>As in all such workers’ struggles, there was also an element of less than inspired decision-making. For example, they armoured an entire train with the exception of the engine, an oversight that proved fatal as soon as it came in range of enemy cannon. More importantly, having taken the radio station in Oviedo, they failed to broadcast any appeals for help and solidarity action to the Spanish or the world’s workers, on the spurious grounds that if they told the other Spanish workers of their struggle and successes, they would not send them help. This is just the sort of decision that a committee might well make in a demented moment of stress. In the end, of course, all the innovative weaponry and courage could not overcome the facts. Asturias was alone, they could not effectively arm themselves against the growing tide of the reactionary forces, in particular the air power of their adversaries. In Mieres the entire revolutionary committee decamped, with the exception of Manuel Grossi. Surprisingly, with the opposition advancing steadily, the workers’ spirit was not dampened, and at the end they could have had more men under arms if they only had the guns to give them.</p>
<p>The victory of the reaction was accompanied by indiscriminate slaughter and jailing of thousands; indeed, one of the demands that secured victory for the Popular Front in 1936 was for the release of the Asturian workers. Until the end, apart from some typical Stalinist sectarianism, the Workers’ Alliance worked well, it owed nothing, and made no concessions to any bourgeois liberal allies, for it had none. It was a serious and courageous attempt to pre-empt the fascist menace with socialism, a policy decision that the Comintern, the German Communist Party and German Social Democracy had been unable to make in 1933, a failure for which we all subsequently paid, and are still paying, the price.</p>
<p>In Poland, just a little less than 10 years after the Asturian uprising, in July 1944 things were not going well for the German army. The Russians were advancing on a broad front, and the Germans in Warsaw were frantically loading booty onto westward-moving transport, and building defences to face the oncoming Russians. By 29 July, the Russians were already on the left bank of the Vistula, just a few kilometres from Warsaw. Enthused by the closeness of the Russian forces, at about four o’clock in the afternoon of that day the Poles attacked the Germans. Surprise and the enthusiasm of the assault brought significant success, but as soon as they had overcome the initial shock, the Germans brought up men artillery and tanks to suppress the insurgency. Despite initial fears, the Poles developed a useful method for disabling Tiger tanks using petrol ignited by hand grenades. Interestingly enough, the Poles, like the Asturian workers before them, made their own hand grenades with explosive from captured shells. They also made a catapult device for firing their grenades at the Germans.</p>
<p>The similarity, unfortunately, does not end there. Throughout the struggle the Poles were always short of armaments. There is no greater tragedy than to have far more ready fighters than there are guns to go around. That they should have been short of weapons while the Russian army was 20 kilometres from Warsaw is a disgrace and another of the crimes to be laid at Stalin’s door. British, Canadian and Polish pilots flew a number arms runs to the insurgents, but the attrition rate was heavy, and they were refused landing facilities behind the Russian lines that would have eased the situation. All of this was well known to Stalin, who was lobbied by Churchill and Mikołajczyk, the Polish premier-in-exile, among several others. It was all to no avail, Stalin lied, evaded and finally put it about that these were irresponsible elements and reactionaries. For Stalin, a successful uprising by native Poles would have put in jeopardy the spoils that he expected to enjoy after the defeat of Hitler. At the time many were convinced by Stalin’s accusations because they could not believe that “Uncle Joe” would be so calculating as to consign thousands of anti-fascist fighters to death at the hands of the Germans. We, of course, who now know that this same “Uncle Joe” would, in his tireless pursuit of the interests of the world’s workers, give up entire Sundays to sit with his chum Molotov signing death sentences; if this is not actually the ultimate sacrifice, it certainly shows what he was made of.</p>
<p>After two months, the Warsaw commune surrendered. For two months it had held out despite the overwhelming force of the Germans and the treachery of Stalin. Its programme of nationalisation and workers’ control were as anathema to Stalin as they would be to any other counter-revolutionary.</p>
<p>Neither of the events detailed in these two excellent pamphlets lasted for long, although you might well say that given the difficulties it is a wonder they lasted as long as they did. It is always a tragedy when the good ones lose, as Albert Camus wrote somewhere: “Men learnt that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward.” Nevertheless, to understand the difficulty is not to give up the desire for the same end that the Asturian miners and the Warsaw workers were struggling to achieve.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The Asturian Uprising
and the Warsaw Commune
(2002)
From Revolutionary History, Vol. 8 No. 2, 2002.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Manuel Grossi
The Asturian Uprising: Fifteen Days of Socialist Revolution
Socialist Platform, London, 2000, pp140, £5.00
Zygmunt Zaremba
The Warsaw Commune: Betrayed by Stalin, Massacred by Hitler
Socialist Platform, London, 1997, pp45, £3.00
TO have been a socialist through a large chunk of the twentieth century was not all unalloyed pleasure. Of course, there were high spots, although I was not around during the “ten days that shook the world” or the nine days of the General Strike, they were certainly times to stir men’s souls. Harry Wicks, who was alive during both of these seminal events, could recreate in words the events of those few golden days that would give renewed enthusiasm to the most jaded of socialists. In particular, Harry’s stories of the General Strike, in which he was a committed and enthusiastic participant, gave an intimation of the power and excitement when virtually an entire class is on the move. In their different styles, Manuel Grossi and Zygmunt Zaremba give equally graphic accounts by people who were there in the thick of it.
Unfortunately, with all the inevitability of a sweep hand, nine days becomes ten and the high hopes of day one give way to regrets that last for years. The Asturian uprising was another of those episodes which testify to the courage, daring and inventiveness of the working class when it operates collectively in its own fundamental interest. Alas it is another of those events measured in days, just 15, brief maybe, but a fortnight to cherish. The working class of Asturias in 1933 was acknowledged to be the best organised in Spain. The close communities of the miners, who made up nearly half of the Asturian working class, gave a powerful boost to social, industrial and political solidarity. The main union organisation, the Sindicato de obreros mineres de Asturias (SMA), was closely linked to the Socialist Federation, highly bureaucratised in the social democratic manner, and despite its name recruited workers whether miners or not. In a rather inspired piece of opportunism in 1928, the SMA acquired a coal mine and, because the state guaranteed to buy the output, a useful source of income. In 1934, the money came in handy to purchase arms from Portuguese revolutionaries. This is a novel deviation from the social democratic norms as we know them in Britain, where it is usually the individual who starts out radical and ends up rich.
Early in 1933, the Workers and Peasants Bloc of Joaquín Maurín, convened a meeting in Barcelona to set up a Workers Alliance against the growing menace of fascism both abroad and in Spain. At first, there were few takers, the Communist Left (Trotskyists) and some left anarchists, but when the Nazis took power in Germany the need for the Workers Alliance became much clearer to many others. All workers’ organisations, political and trade union, were entitled to join and to place a representative on the committee. For Maurín, this was, despite certain differences, the Spanish expression of the soviet, a pure example of a class organisation. The Catalan Socialist Union was forced to withdraw from the Alliance because of its support for the bourgeois Catalan Generalitat. This wise exclusion policy was one that Maurín would have done well to remember when a few short years later he joined the bourgeois parties in a Popular Front government during the Civil War. The immediate cause of the uprising was the inclusion of three members of the extreme right in the national government. This was seen as a first significant opening to fascism. On 4 October 1934, the Asturian Committee of the Workers Alliance took the decision for the uprising. Despite the cache of Portuguese weaponry, the workers were not well armed. Hunting guns, and farm implements were freely available, but the miners’ weapon of choice was sticks of dynamite. It was readily available in the mines, and the miners were highly skilled in its use. In the battle for Oviedo, the dynamiters induced panic in the defenders, and were decisive in winning the day.
In Catalonia, the Generalitat presided over by Luis Companys, a Catalan nationalist, declared a Catalan state within the Spanish Federal Republic. The workers confidently expected that Companys would open the armouries and distribute the weapons them. Their confidence was misplaced, and the Generalitat put up no resistance to a force of 50 men and a general. Catalonia, the birthplace of the Workers Alliance, played no further part in the struggle.
Despite its isolation, the uprising enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the Asturian workers. Throughout the 15 days, the shortage of arms was a continuing problem. If they possessed the artillery, the shells had no fuses. They set about manufacturing what they could. Their home-made hand grenades were apparently of such high quality that not one failed to explode. They produced a device for lobbing their grenades into enemy trenches that proved wonderfully effective on several occasions. They developed a method of armour-plating trains, wagons and vehicles.
As in all such workers’ struggles, there was also an element of less than inspired decision-making. For example, they armoured an entire train with the exception of the engine, an oversight that proved fatal as soon as it came in range of enemy cannon. More importantly, having taken the radio station in Oviedo, they failed to broadcast any appeals for help and solidarity action to the Spanish or the world’s workers, on the spurious grounds that if they told the other Spanish workers of their struggle and successes, they would not send them help. This is just the sort of decision that a committee might well make in a demented moment of stress. In the end, of course, all the innovative weaponry and courage could not overcome the facts. Asturias was alone, they could not effectively arm themselves against the growing tide of the reactionary forces, in particular the air power of their adversaries. In Mieres the entire revolutionary committee decamped, with the exception of Manuel Grossi. Surprisingly, with the opposition advancing steadily, the workers’ spirit was not dampened, and at the end they could have had more men under arms if they only had the guns to give them.
The victory of the reaction was accompanied by indiscriminate slaughter and jailing of thousands; indeed, one of the demands that secured victory for the Popular Front in 1936 was for the release of the Asturian workers. Until the end, apart from some typical Stalinist sectarianism, the Workers’ Alliance worked well, it owed nothing, and made no concessions to any bourgeois liberal allies, for it had none. It was a serious and courageous attempt to pre-empt the fascist menace with socialism, a policy decision that the Comintern, the German Communist Party and German Social Democracy had been unable to make in 1933, a failure for which we all subsequently paid, and are still paying, the price.
In Poland, just a little less than 10 years after the Asturian uprising, in July 1944 things were not going well for the German army. The Russians were advancing on a broad front, and the Germans in Warsaw were frantically loading booty onto westward-moving transport, and building defences to face the oncoming Russians. By 29 July, the Russians were already on the left bank of the Vistula, just a few kilometres from Warsaw. Enthused by the closeness of the Russian forces, at about four o’clock in the afternoon of that day the Poles attacked the Germans. Surprise and the enthusiasm of the assault brought significant success, but as soon as they had overcome the initial shock, the Germans brought up men artillery and tanks to suppress the insurgency. Despite initial fears, the Poles developed a useful method for disabling Tiger tanks using petrol ignited by hand grenades. Interestingly enough, the Poles, like the Asturian workers before them, made their own hand grenades with explosive from captured shells. They also made a catapult device for firing their grenades at the Germans.
The similarity, unfortunately, does not end there. Throughout the struggle the Poles were always short of armaments. There is no greater tragedy than to have far more ready fighters than there are guns to go around. That they should have been short of weapons while the Russian army was 20 kilometres from Warsaw is a disgrace and another of the crimes to be laid at Stalin’s door. British, Canadian and Polish pilots flew a number arms runs to the insurgents, but the attrition rate was heavy, and they were refused landing facilities behind the Russian lines that would have eased the situation. All of this was well known to Stalin, who was lobbied by Churchill and Mikołajczyk, the Polish premier-in-exile, among several others. It was all to no avail, Stalin lied, evaded and finally put it about that these were irresponsible elements and reactionaries. For Stalin, a successful uprising by native Poles would have put in jeopardy the spoils that he expected to enjoy after the defeat of Hitler. At the time many were convinced by Stalin’s accusations because they could not believe that “Uncle Joe” would be so calculating as to consign thousands of anti-fascist fighters to death at the hands of the Germans. We, of course, who now know that this same “Uncle Joe” would, in his tireless pursuit of the interests of the world’s workers, give up entire Sundays to sit with his chum Molotov signing death sentences; if this is not actually the ultimate sacrifice, it certainly shows what he was made of.
After two months, the Warsaw commune surrendered. For two months it had held out despite the overwhelming force of the Germans and the treachery of Stalin. Its programme of nationalisation and workers’ control were as anathema to Stalin as they would be to any other counter-revolutionary.
Neither of the events detailed in these two excellent pamphlets lasted for long, although you might well say that given the difficulties it is a wonder they lasted as long as they did. It is always a tragedy when the good ones lose, as Albert Camus wrote somewhere: “Men learnt that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward.” Nevertheless, to understand the difficulty is not to give up the desire for the same end that the Asturian miners and the Warsaw workers were struggling to achieve.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Zionism</h1>
<h3>(1973)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info"><em>Background to the Middle East Crisis, Part One: Zionism</em>, <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj064" target="new">No.64</a>, December 1973, pp.15-21.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Last month this journal said: “The fight of the Arab armies against Israel is a fight against western imperialism ... there is only one way to real peace in the Middle East and that is through the destruction of the Zionist state, with its preferential citizenship rights along racial lines, and its replacement by a Palestinian state, in which Jews and Arabs have equal rights.”</p>
<p>This is a conclusion rejected by many people who consider themselves on the left. In recent weeks the official Labour party line – mouthed by such “left wingers” as Eric Heffer – has been even more rabidly pro-Israel than the Tory press. Others who would normally feel in close agreement with the revolutionary left find themselves confused as to why we take the position that we do.</p>
<p>One of the truly great propaganda exercises of our time has sold the Zionists’ pretensions to legitimacy in the Middle East. Israel has presented itself as the tiny victim of Arab intransigence, explaining its aggression and expansionism as a life or death pre-emptive strike. Zionism is equated with Jewishness and justified as the sole bastion against anti-semitism.</p>
<p>In almost every respect the propaganda pretensions of Zionism cannot stand even a cursory examination.</p>
<p>The first pervasive myth is that of its continuity with historical Jewry. It is claimed that Palestine has been the historic home of the Jews, from which they have been forcibly excluded and which they have some intrinsic right to inhabit, even at the expense of those who have lived there since.</p>
<p>But even the most ardent Zionists admit that the vast majority of the Jews have not lived in Palestine since the destruction of Jerusalem in 60 AD. And well before that most Jews lived not in Palestine, but throughout the Greek and Roman world. “The dispersal of the Jews does not date from the fall of Jerusalem. Several centuries before this event, the great majority of Jews were already spread over the four corners of the world. It is quite certain that well before the fall of Jerusalem, more than three-quarters of the Jews no longer lived in Palestine,” wrote Leon. <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a></p>
<p>For more than 1800 years successive generations of Jews, moving from country to country, did not consider returning to the land now claimed to be their natural home. Not until the closing years of the nineteenth century did a few thousand Jews begin to argue that because there was no possibility of fighting anti-semitism in Europe, it was necessary for the Jews to establish a state of their own. And even then, so weak were the alleged links between the Jews and Palestine that Herzl, who wrote the founding Zionist document, The Jewish State, considered Palestine as only one of several possible sites – including Argentina, Uganda and – interestingly enough – parts of Sinai.</p>
<p>As late as 1914, only 130,000 out of a world Jewish population of 13 million backed the Zionist programme of a return to Palestine. <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a></p>
<p>In 1882 the Jewish population of Palestine numbered only 23,000 – most of whom had lived on friendly terms with the Christian and Muslim population for hundreds of years and were hardly distinguishable from them. However, the French Baron de Rothschild had already built some 20 villages in which he settled 5,000 east European Jews, aiming to begin colonising the land in the interests of French imperialism, in the same way that Algeria was colonised.</p>
<p>But modern Zionism was not born until a congress held in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897. From the very beginning the movement and its leaders were clear that they must attach themselves to a leading power to achieve a Jewish state. They knew there was no other way to protect themselves from the wrath of the Arab population they aimed to displace. Zionism could only flourish by aligning itself with the forces that wanted to dominate and exploit the rest of the Middle East.</p>
<p>As Herzl’s deputy, Max Nordau, formulated Zionist foreign policy: “Our aspirations point to Palestine as a compass points north, therefore we must orient ourselves towards those powers under whose influence Palestine happens to be.” <a id="f3" href="#n3" name="f3">[3]</a></p>
<p>In this quest for client status, Herzl made unsuccessful approaches to the German Kaiser and the Turkish Sultan. In 1906, two years after Herzl’s death, Weitzman, his successor, had the first meeting with Balfour, a meeting that some 11 years later was to bear fruit in the Balfour declaration, which promised a “Jewish Homeland”. Balfour, incidentally, was head of the British Tory Government which pushed through in 1905 an Aliens Act deliberately designed to curtail the entry of East European Jewish refugees into Britain.</p>
<p>From the beginning, Weitzman made clear to the British his willingness to act on behalf of British interests. In a letter to Lloyd George in November 1914 he wrote: “We can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence and should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we would have in 20 or 30 years a million Jews, perhaps more; they could develop the country, bring back civilisation and form a very effective guard for the Suez canal.”</p>
<p>It must have been a matter of some satisfaction for Weitzman at the end of his life that all the predictions of this short paragraph eventually came true.</p>
<p>The Balfour Declaration was published in 1917. Although hedged with reservations on the cultural and political rights of the Arab Palestinians, it made clear the British government’s approval of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, and went on to promise the government’s “best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” Britain, of course, was disposing of war gains not yet made at the expense of the unconsulted and unconsidered Palestinians.</p>
<p>At the end of the First World War the British divided up the area with the French, giving the French the Lebanon and Syria, and taking Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan for themselves. They already ran Egypt.</p>
<p>The Zionists began to set up their shadow state protected by British power. The Zionist parties were subsidised by foreign funds funnelled through the Jewish Agency.</p>
<p>The case of the Histadrut is an example of the massive aid that supported the Zionist presence. The Histadrut the General Confederation of Jewish Workers in the Land of Israel, started in 1920 with only 5,000 members, strictly limited to Jews. Within a year it had a large public works company and a bank. Today Histadrut companies account for 25 percent of net national product and employs a quarter of Israeli workers. It builds roads and military installations in Turkey and luxury hotels in emerging African countries.</p>
<p>These developments were not financed by the subscriptions from the 5,000 Jewish workers but by money collected in Europe and America by the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organisation. As Pinhas Lavon, general secretary of Histadrut, said: “Our Histadrut is a general organisation to the core. It is not a workers’ trade union although it copes perfectly well with the real needs of the worker.” <a id="f4" href="#n4" name="f4">[4]</a></p>
<p>Besides being true, this revealing statement would not be out of place in the mouth of a functionary of one of Franco’s fascist syndicates.</p>
<p>On such a basis, the Zionist settlements were able to expand: by 1931 the percentage of Jews in the total population was nearly 18 percent and by 1939 it had risen to nearly one third. <a id="f5" href="#n5" name="f5">[5]</a></p>
<p>The benefits the British gained from the Zionist colonisation were shown in 1936, when a general strike was declared against French rule in Syria. It proved effective and on the whole successful, taking Syria well along the road towards political independence. This made a great impression in Palestine, where the Arab population began an uprising against British rule, together with a long general strike of its own. The effects of the strike, however, were dampened by the Zionist presence. The institutions run by the Jewish settlers took no part in the strike and took over many of the functions previously performed by the Arabs.</p>
<p>The armed rising tied down more than a third of the British Army’s total world wide strength, and the British authorities again looked to the Zionists for support. The mandatory government agreed to reinforce the Jewish police force in order to free British soldiers for guard duty, and it established the Jewish Settlement Police, which became the main camouflage of the Haganah, the Zionist secret army. In the spring of 1939 the combined Jewish auxiliary police forces numbered about 21,000 men. <a id="f6" href="#n6" name="f6">[6]</a></p>
<p>In the wake of the rebellion, the British sent out a Royal Commission under Lord Peel to discover the causes of Arab unrest. Its conclusion was that the mandate was unworkable and recommended partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. This ominous prelude to 1948 was accepted by the Zionist leaders, Ben Gurion and Weitzman. At the 21st Zionist congress in 1939 they declared: “The Jewish people will not acquiesce in the reduction of its status in Palestine to that of a minority, nor in the subjection of a Jewish National Home to Arab rule.” Never mind the fact that they were a minority in an Arab country.</p>
<p>By the beginning of the war, the Zionists recognised that Britain was in decline and that a more powerful star was in the ascendant, the United States. The Americans, who were trying to displace British influence in areas such as Saudi Arabia, were not slow to see the advantages of an alliance with the Zionists.</p>
<p>When Britain, as a sop to the Arabs, put quotas on Jewish immigration for five years, Roosevelt commented: “... it (the Palestinian mandate) did intend to convert Palestine into a Jewish home which might very possibly become preponderantly Jewish within a comparatively short time ...” <a id="f7" href="#n7" name="f7">[7]</a></p>
<p>There can be no doubt that liberal opinion was shocked at the restriction on Jewish immigration. At the time the Nazi extermination of the Jews was in full swing. Such shock would have been considerably tempered if it had been generally known that at the Bermuda Committee in 1943 Roosevelt suggested that all barriers be lifted for the immigration of Jews from persecution. To avoid offending British sensibilities, Palestine was excluded from consideration. Zionist reaction was immediate and hostile for the Zionists the alleviation of Jewish misery was to be via Palestine or not at all.</p>
<p>Hal Draper records that “Morris Ernst, the famous civil liberties lawyer, has told the story about how the Zionist leaders exerted their influence to make sure that the US did <em>not</em> open up immigration (into the US) to these Jews – for the simple reason that they wanted to herd these Jews to Palestine.” <a id="f8" href="#n8" name="f8">[8]</a></p>
<p>As Dr Silver told the 22nd World Zionist Congress: “Zionism is not an immigration or refugee movement, but a movement to re-establish the Jewish state for a Jewish nation in the land of Israel. The classic textbook of Zionism is not how to find a home for refugees. The classic textbook of our movement is the Jewish state.”<br>
</p>
<h4>The establishment of the Israeli state</h4>
<p class="fst">At the end of the war, the Zionists called for partition and were backed by America. Meanwhile, they began a terror campaign against the British troops – not designed to liberate Palestine from imperialist rule, but rather “to demonstrate to the British military authorities that without the goodwill of Palestine Jewry, the British troops in Palestine might be dangerously isolated.” <a id="f9" href="#n9" name="f9">[9]</a></p>
<p>When at the end of 1947 Britain finally announced its imminent withdrawal from Palestine, there were 1,203, 000 Arabs in the country, accounting for two-thirds of the population. 94 percent of the land was owned or settled by Arabs. The remaining 6 percent was Jewish owned and 85 percent of these Jews had immigrated since 1922. <a id="f10" href="#n10" name="f10">[10]</a> But the Zionists were determined to extend their area of control. In November 1947 Golda Meir met secretly with Abdullah, the British imposed ruler of Jordan, and they agreed to divide the territory of the Palestinians between them. <a id="f11" href="#n11" name="f11">[11]</a></p>
<p>In 1942 Weitzman had written: “... if any Arabs do not wish to remain in a Jewish state, every facility will be given to them to transfer to one of the many and vast Arab countries.” He had the good grace not to specify what facilities would be made available.</p>
<p>Mehachem Beigin, commander of the more extreme Zionist armed force, Irgun Zwei Leumi, was clear that the facilities would include guns, bombs, murder and extermination. He later said: “Our hope lay in gaining control of territory. At the end of January 1948 ... we outlined four strategic objectives: 1. Jerusalem, 2. Jaffa, 3. The Lydda, Ramleh Plain, 4. The Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm triangle.” All these towns were part of the Arab territory under the United Nations partition plan sponsored by the Zionists.</p>
<p>In April, the Irgun bombed the Arab town of Jaffa for three days. Haganah attacked the Arab community in Jerusalem. On 9 April the Irgun, in concert with the extreme Zionist Stern gang, which in the 1930s received training in Fascist Italy, attacked the Arab village of Dair Yassin and, in cold blood, murdered 254 women and children. Menachem Beigin and Avram Stern had learned well Hitler’s lesson in genocide. The news of the massacres and bombing set in motion the Palestinian refugees, some fleeing as far as the east bank of the river Jordan to escape the Zionists.</p>
<p>By these tactics the Zionist forces were able to increase their share of the partitioned state by 25 per cent before the UN resolution had been passed.</p>
<p>The first Arab-Israeli war of May 1948 was not, as Israeli propaganda would have us believe, an unprovoked Arab aggression. It was a response to the moving of Zionist forces into Arab Palestine. As the Zionists and Abdullah moved into areas inhabited by the Palestinians, Egypt and Saudi Arabia intervened – more out of fear of Abdullah than anything else.</p>
<p>If further proof is required, it should be noted that the only Arab army actually to invade the Jewish part of Palestine was that of the Egyptians, who sent a small force from Sinai into the Negev. All the other armies fought on Arab soil.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the armistice the Zionists’ spoils of victory and additional territory were quickly recognised by all the great powers. The partition plan was dead and Israel was born on the corpses and the land of the Palestinians.</p>
<p>Having expelled the Arabs by force, the Zionists went on to set a legal seal on the expropriation of Arab property.<br>
</p>
<h4>The expropriation of the Palestinians</h4>
<p class="fst">Even before the formal setting up of the state of Israel, the Jewish Agency appointed a Haganah officer to act as Custodian of Arab Property. Once it was set up, emergency legislation on 24 June 1948 set out the Abandoned Areas Ordinance. An abandoned areas was: “... any area or place conquered by or surrendered to armed forces or deserted by all or part of its inhabitants, and which has been declared by order to be an abandoned area.” This definition, which could have covered any land anywhere, Jewish or Arab owned, applied only to Arab land.</p>
<p>A category of Arab known as “absentee” was invented. This included not only those who had left but those who had merely left their homes to avoid the fighting. As Don Peretz, a non-Zionist but pro-Israeli author, wrote in his book <strong>Israel and the Arab Refugees</strong>:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Any Arab of Nazareth who might have visited the Old City of Jerusalem or Bethlehem on Christmas 1948, automatically became an “absentee” under the law. Nearly all the Arab refugees in Israel as well as the 30,000 inhabitants of the little Triangle, which become part of the state under the armistice with Jordan, were classified as absentees. Arabs, who during the battle of Acre, fled from their homes to the old city of Acre, lost their property ... All of the new city of Acre was turned over to the recent (Jewish) immigrants despite the fact that many of its Arab “absentee” home owners were living a few yards away ...</p>
<p class="fst">Arabs were “absentees” unless they could prove they were not.</p>
<p>In 1953 a new twist was added to the Land Acquisition law. The crux of this law was that land would become the property of the Development Authority if:</p>
<p class="quoteb">1. On 1 April 1952, it was not in the possession of its owners.</p>
<p class="quoteb">2. It was used or earmarked within the period 4 May 1948 to April 1952 for the purposes of essential development or security.</p>
<p class="quoteb">3. If it is still required for one of these purposes ...</p>
<p class="fst">The outstanding gall of the first of these meant that those who had been illegally thrown off their land could not have been in possession at 1 April 1952. That was their complaint. Catch 22 is alive, and well, and living in Israel.</p>
<p>An amendment was passed which made it possible for legal Arab residents to keep any property they might obtain in the future. As one commentator said: “They were not to be robbed of any property which they do not yet possess.” <a id="f12" href="#n12" name="f12">[12]</a></p>
<p>In this way, the Israeli government acquired practically all the available Arab land for Jewish settlement. Over one million dunams (i.e. 250,000 acres) were taken from the Arabs who did not flee from Israel under the land acquisition law. <a id="f13" href="#n13" name="f13">[13]</a></p>
<p>All told 4,574,000 dunams of cultivatable land were taken from the Arabs, out of a total area under cultivation of about six million dunams. <a id="f14" href="#n14" name="f14">[14]</a></p>
<p>Since 1967, the expansion of the area of Zionist colonisation has continued. Kibbutzim – which are effectively military fortifications – have been established in the occupied areas. A document recently produced by the Israeli Labour Party “makes it clear that Israel will continue to establish and develop new settlements in the occupied territories ... The policy document makes it clear that the Israeli land Authority will acquire land in the occupied area by every effective means.” <a id="f15" href="#n15" name="f15">[15]</a></p>
<p>Israel’s pose as a democratic beacon in the Middle East, a custodian of western liberal values, does not stand examination when the position of the Palestinians who remain inside Israel (let alone the millions and more who were driven out) is examined. Under Israeli law, a Palestinian may be limited in his movements merely by the say so of a military officer. There are cases of individuals who have been refused permission to leave their villages for as long as 20 years. <a id="f16" href="#n16" name="f16">[16]</a> but these are fortunate compared to those who are held in prison without trial. “The Israeli preventative detention law permits the imprisonment – without limit of time – of ‘any person’ whose confinement is deemed ‘necessary or expedient’.” <a id="f17" href="#n17" name="f17">[17]</a></p>
<p>The situation for the inhabitants of the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip is even worse. Although these areas have been effectively integrated into the Israeli economy, with 60,000 Arabs travelling to work inside Israel proper, the wages paid are 40 to 50 percent less than the wages paid to Israelis. <a id="f18" href="#n18" name="f18">[18]</a></p>
<p>Since it was occupied in 1967, the Gaza Strip has been turned into one massive festering prison. The refugees are flung out and their huts razed to the ground to build roads the better to police the area. In 1970 the Gazans spent 3700 hours under curfew. <a id="f19" href="#n19" name="f19">[19]</a> In 1971 the Israelis started a plan to move tens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, presumably intending to hand them over to Egypt at some future peace conference. The Israeli army moved into Jebalia, second largest camp in Gaza, (40,000 refugees) and it proceeded to bulldoze the huts and transport the inhabitants who had not fled to Al Arish in Sinai.</p>
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<h4>Israel and imperialism</h4>
<p class="fst">The rulers of Israel faced two problems after 1948. The first was developing the country so as to make it an attractive proposition to the hundreds of thousands of European Jews it wanted to attract as immigrants – people who are used to a European rather than a Middle Eastern standard of living. The second problem was to persuade the neighbouring Arab states to accept the vastly expanded frontiers of Israel and the permanent expropriation of the previous Palestinian inhabitants. They sought to solve both problems by proving that they were imperialism’s best friend in the area.</p>
<p>The talk of “making the desert bloom” is a bit less impressive when you look at the amount of aid Israel has received – particularly from America. Oscar Gass, an American economist who at one time acted as advisor to the Israeli government, has noted:</p>
<p class="quoteb">What is unique ... about this development ... is the factor of capital inflow ...During the 17 years 1949-65 Israel received six billion dollars more of goods and services than she exported. For the 21 years 1948-68 the import surplus would be in excess of seven and a half billion dollars. This is in excess of 2650 dollars per person for every person who lived in Israel. And of this supply from abroad ... only about 30 per cent came to Israel under conditions which call for a return outflow of dividends, interest or capital. <a id="f20" href="#n20" name="f20">[20]</a></p>
<p class="fst">It has been calculated that in 1968, Israel received more than 10 per cent of the total aid given to all underdeveloped countries. <a id="f21" href="#n21" name="f21">[21]</a></p>
<p>Only through this inflow of funds was the development of the Israeli economy possible. Despite the talk of “hardworking pioneers”, between 1949 and 1965 the net saving if the Israeli economy equalled zero, sometimes being +1 per cent and sometimes -1 per cent. Yet the rate of investment over the same period could average 20 per cent. <a id="f22" href="#n22" name="f22">[22]</a></p>
<p>In the light of such generosity from foreign sources it is hardly surprising that one or two parcels of the Negev have nurtured the odd rose.</p>
<p>It is true that much of this inflow of funds has come from collections from world Jewry, rather than from Western governments (which accounted for about 40 per cent of capital transfers in the period 1949-65); but it is also true that the very rich Jewish families in the US who have contributed such a large chunk of these funds would not have done so unless Israel was following a policy favourable to the class to which they belong – the American capitalist class.</p>
<p>A major plank of the governmental policy of the Israeli state has always been to secure recognition for the annexation of the Palestinian areas obtained in 1948. The first formal recognition came from the three western powers with imperialist interests in the area, Britain, France and the US, with the Tripartite Declaration of 1950. Since then the main Israeli aim has been to force the Arab states to concede similar recognition.</p>
<p>In the early 1950s, the US and Britain wanted to create a military alliance of Middle Eastern countries, as part of the global policy of establishing a chain of bases and military pacts around Russia. The Israeli leaders exerted themselves to help force the Arabs into the alliance. Whenever the governments of Egypt, Syria or Jordan attacked the Anglo-American schemes, Israel was used as a threat against them. These threats often materialised in armed raids by Israeli forces. Jordan, particularly, was raided during the period when the el-Nabulsi government there conducted anti-Western policies. Usually after such a raid, the Arab government concerned would ask the West for arms. The reply was always “Join the Bagdad Pact and you will get the arms.”</p>
<p>The policy was finally defeated when, after an Israeli raid on Gaza in April 1955 Nasser turned to the Russian bloc for arms. This development, followed by the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, drove Britain and France into desperation. Together with Israel they attacked Egypt in an attempt to seize back the canal for the Western shareholders and re-establish their own influence. <a id="f23" href="#n23" name="f23">[23]</a></p>
<p>The third Arab-Israeli war of 1967 was preceded by a similar period of rising struggle against British rule in Aden; the struggle against the Iman of Yemen represented a potential threat to the Saudi-Arabian monarchy; and the Syrian government was involved in a dispute with the US dominated Iraq Petroleum Company.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Israeli victory, the Western presence in the area was considerably strengthened. As the <strong>Economist</strong> out it at the time: “It is not only Israel’s chestnuts which have been drawn out of the fire; it is those of Britain and America as well ...” <a id="f24" href="#n24" name="f24">[24]</a></p>
<p>In recent years, the American government has been following a policy of guarding its interests in the Middle East by massively arming the most reactionary regimes. Israeli power on the Mediterranean coast has been matched by a massive military build-up in Iran (which now sends more than 2000 million dollars a year on arms) and a growing sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and the small states on the Persian Gulf. In this way, the US aim to have sufficient forces at its disposal to prevent the massively rich oil reserves in the Arabian peninsular – currently under the control of US oil companies – falling under the influence of the larger and more populous Arab states such as Iraq or Egypt, which might use some of the wealth for Arab ends. So for instance, when Iran agreed earlier this year t spend 2000 million dollars on the most modern US armaments, the US State Department observed that the deal would help reinforce “a point of stability” in the Gulf area. <a id="f25" href="#n25" name="f25">[25]</a> The Shah of Iran has said quite openly that “he would not tolerate a radical or subversive presence in the Gulf”. <a id="f26" href="#n26" name="f26">[26]</a></p>
<p>What stability means for the mass of the population in the Middle East is an accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few rulers, while the population of countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan live in abject poverty. The Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia recently complained that for his country oil revenues which are expected to rise to 10,000 million dollars a year, “would constitute a serious problem”. <a id="f27" href="#n27" name="f27">[27]</a></p>
<p>The arming of Israel and Iran is designed to ensure that this “problem” is not solved by a movement aiming to overthrow the reactionary monarchies and to use the oil to develop the whole Middle East for the benefit of the mass of the Arab population.</p>
<p>The editor of the Israeli daily paper <strong>Ha’aretz</strong> summed up Israel’s role in all this quite succinctly in 1951: “Israel has been given a role not unlike a watchdog. One need not fear that it will exercise an aggressive policy towards the Arab states if this will contradict the interests of the USA and Britain. But should the West prefer for one reason or another to close its eyes one can rely on Israel to punish severely those of the neighbouring states whose lack of manners towards the West has exceeded the proper limits.” <a id="f28" href="#n28" name="f28">[28]</a></p>
<p>The support of Israel for imperialism is not an accidental feature of the state, that could be overcome merely with a change of government. It follows necessarily from the attempt to establish an exclusively Jewish state in an area previously inhabited by non-Jews. To defend the settler state from the original inhabitants, an alliance with the imperialist exploiters of the Middle East has been, and remains, essential.</p>
<p>There can be no question of socialists supporting Israel. There is no justification for saying a plague on both your houses. In face of Zionism and its paymaster, socialists must give unconditional, if critical support to the Arabs. Israel, the artificial creation of Zionism, has to be destroyed before the working masses of the Middle East, Muslims, Jews and Christians have a chance to live together in peace. The very existence of Israel is the denial of any peace.</p>
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<h3>Notes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> A. Leon, <strong>The Jewish Question</strong>, p.30.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> J.M.N. Jeffries, <strong>Palestine, The Reality</strong>, p.13.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n3" href="#f3" name="n3">3.</a> Quoted by N. Israeli, <em>Israel and Imperialism</em>, <strong>IS 32</strong>.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n4" href="#f4" name="n4">4.</a> <strong>Moed</strong>, published by the department of culture and education of the Histadrut, 1960, p.3.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n5" href="#f5" name="n5">5.</a> M. Arakie, <strong>The Broken Sword of Justice</strong>, p.17.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n6" href="#f6" name="n6">6.</a> Y. Bauer, in <strong>New Outlook</strong>, Tel Aviv, September 1966.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n7" href="#f7" name="n7">7.</a> Arakie, <strong>op. cit.</strong>, p.25.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n8" href="#f8" name="n8">8.</a> <strong>New Politics</strong>, vol.6 no.1, p.16.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n9" href="#f9" name="n9">9.</a> J. and D. Kimche , <strong>Both Sides of the Hill</strong>, p.53.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n10" href="#f10" name="n10">10.</a> Arakie, <strong>op. cit.</strong>, p.70.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n11" href="#f11" name="n11">11.</a> For an account of the joint manoeuvrings of Abdullah and the Zionists see J. and D. Kimche, <strong>op cit.</strong></p>
<p class="note"><a id="n12" href="#f12" name="n12">12.</a> Hal Draper in the <strong>New International</strong>, Winter 1957.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n13" href="#f13" name="n13">13.</a> <strong>Ha’aretz</strong>, 7 January 1954.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n14" href="#f14" name="n14">14.</a> Don Peretz, <strong>Israel and the Arab Refugees</strong>, p.233.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n15" href="#f15" name="n15">15.</a> Economist Intelligence Unit, <strong>Quarterly Report, Israel</strong>, 1973 No.4.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n16" href="#f16" name="n16">16.</a> <strong>Report of Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights</strong>, distributed in August 1973.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n17" href="#f17" name="n17">17.</a> A. Dershowitz, in I. Howe and Chersham (ed), <strong>Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East</strong>, New York 1972, p.268.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n18" href="#f18" name="n18">18.</a> Wage figures for Arabs given in <strong>Financial Times</strong>, 7 May 1973.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n19" href="#f19" name="n19">19.</a> <strong>Guardian</strong>, 18 August 1971.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n20" href="#f20" name="n20">20.</a> <strong>Journal of Economic Literature</strong>, December 1969. Quoted in H. Hanegbi, Machover and A. Orr, <strong>The Class Nature of Israeli Society</strong>, (published by Pluto Press, London).</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n21" href="#f21" name="n21">21.</a> <strong>Le Monde</strong>, 2 July 1969.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n22" href="#f22" name="n22">22.</a> Figures from N. Halevi and R. Klinov-Malul, <strong>The Economic Development of Israel</strong>, quoted in N. Hangebi et al., <strong>op. cit.</strong></p>
<p class="note"><a id="n23" href="#f23" name="n23">23.</a> The preceding two paragraphs are based on Theses submitted for discussion by the Israeli Socialist Organisation in August 1966, published as <strong>The Palestine Problem, Israel and Imperialism</strong>, New England Free Press, Boston.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n24" href="#f24" name="n24">24.</a> <strong>The Economist</strong>, 10 June 1967.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n25" href="#f25" name="n25">25.</a> <strong>Middle East Economic Digest</strong>, 3 March 1973.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n26" href="#f26" name="n26">26.</a> <strong>Economist</strong>, 7 July 1973.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n27" href="#f27" name="n27">27.</a> <strong>Middle East Economic Digest</strong>, 19 January 1973.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n28" href="#f28" name="n28">28.</a> Quoted in H. Hanegbi et al., <strong>op. cit.</strong></p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Zionism
(1973)
Background to the Middle East Crisis, Part One: Zionism, International Socialism (1st series), No.64, December 1973, pp.15-21.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Last month this journal said: “The fight of the Arab armies against Israel is a fight against western imperialism ... there is only one way to real peace in the Middle East and that is through the destruction of the Zionist state, with its preferential citizenship rights along racial lines, and its replacement by a Palestinian state, in which Jews and Arabs have equal rights.”
This is a conclusion rejected by many people who consider themselves on the left. In recent weeks the official Labour party line – mouthed by such “left wingers” as Eric Heffer – has been even more rabidly pro-Israel than the Tory press. Others who would normally feel in close agreement with the revolutionary left find themselves confused as to why we take the position that we do.
One of the truly great propaganda exercises of our time has sold the Zionists’ pretensions to legitimacy in the Middle East. Israel has presented itself as the tiny victim of Arab intransigence, explaining its aggression and expansionism as a life or death pre-emptive strike. Zionism is equated with Jewishness and justified as the sole bastion against anti-semitism.
In almost every respect the propaganda pretensions of Zionism cannot stand even a cursory examination.
The first pervasive myth is that of its continuity with historical Jewry. It is claimed that Palestine has been the historic home of the Jews, from which they have been forcibly excluded and which they have some intrinsic right to inhabit, even at the expense of those who have lived there since.
But even the most ardent Zionists admit that the vast majority of the Jews have not lived in Palestine since the destruction of Jerusalem in 60 AD. And well before that most Jews lived not in Palestine, but throughout the Greek and Roman world. “The dispersal of the Jews does not date from the fall of Jerusalem. Several centuries before this event, the great majority of Jews were already spread over the four corners of the world. It is quite certain that well before the fall of Jerusalem, more than three-quarters of the Jews no longer lived in Palestine,” wrote Leon. [1]
For more than 1800 years successive generations of Jews, moving from country to country, did not consider returning to the land now claimed to be their natural home. Not until the closing years of the nineteenth century did a few thousand Jews begin to argue that because there was no possibility of fighting anti-semitism in Europe, it was necessary for the Jews to establish a state of their own. And even then, so weak were the alleged links between the Jews and Palestine that Herzl, who wrote the founding Zionist document, The Jewish State, considered Palestine as only one of several possible sites – including Argentina, Uganda and – interestingly enough – parts of Sinai.
As late as 1914, only 130,000 out of a world Jewish population of 13 million backed the Zionist programme of a return to Palestine. [2]
In 1882 the Jewish population of Palestine numbered only 23,000 – most of whom had lived on friendly terms with the Christian and Muslim population for hundreds of years and were hardly distinguishable from them. However, the French Baron de Rothschild had already built some 20 villages in which he settled 5,000 east European Jews, aiming to begin colonising the land in the interests of French imperialism, in the same way that Algeria was colonised.
But modern Zionism was not born until a congress held in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897. From the very beginning the movement and its leaders were clear that they must attach themselves to a leading power to achieve a Jewish state. They knew there was no other way to protect themselves from the wrath of the Arab population they aimed to displace. Zionism could only flourish by aligning itself with the forces that wanted to dominate and exploit the rest of the Middle East.
As Herzl’s deputy, Max Nordau, formulated Zionist foreign policy: “Our aspirations point to Palestine as a compass points north, therefore we must orient ourselves towards those powers under whose influence Palestine happens to be.” [3]
In this quest for client status, Herzl made unsuccessful approaches to the German Kaiser and the Turkish Sultan. In 1906, two years after Herzl’s death, Weitzman, his successor, had the first meeting with Balfour, a meeting that some 11 years later was to bear fruit in the Balfour declaration, which promised a “Jewish Homeland”. Balfour, incidentally, was head of the British Tory Government which pushed through in 1905 an Aliens Act deliberately designed to curtail the entry of East European Jewish refugees into Britain.
From the beginning, Weitzman made clear to the British his willingness to act on behalf of British interests. In a letter to Lloyd George in November 1914 he wrote: “We can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence and should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we would have in 20 or 30 years a million Jews, perhaps more; they could develop the country, bring back civilisation and form a very effective guard for the Suez canal.”
It must have been a matter of some satisfaction for Weitzman at the end of his life that all the predictions of this short paragraph eventually came true.
The Balfour Declaration was published in 1917. Although hedged with reservations on the cultural and political rights of the Arab Palestinians, it made clear the British government’s approval of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, and went on to promise the government’s “best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” Britain, of course, was disposing of war gains not yet made at the expense of the unconsulted and unconsidered Palestinians.
At the end of the First World War the British divided up the area with the French, giving the French the Lebanon and Syria, and taking Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan for themselves. They already ran Egypt.
The Zionists began to set up their shadow state protected by British power. The Zionist parties were subsidised by foreign funds funnelled through the Jewish Agency.
The case of the Histadrut is an example of the massive aid that supported the Zionist presence. The Histadrut the General Confederation of Jewish Workers in the Land of Israel, started in 1920 with only 5,000 members, strictly limited to Jews. Within a year it had a large public works company and a bank. Today Histadrut companies account for 25 percent of net national product and employs a quarter of Israeli workers. It builds roads and military installations in Turkey and luxury hotels in emerging African countries.
These developments were not financed by the subscriptions from the 5,000 Jewish workers but by money collected in Europe and America by the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organisation. As Pinhas Lavon, general secretary of Histadrut, said: “Our Histadrut is a general organisation to the core. It is not a workers’ trade union although it copes perfectly well with the real needs of the worker.” [4]
Besides being true, this revealing statement would not be out of place in the mouth of a functionary of one of Franco’s fascist syndicates.
On such a basis, the Zionist settlements were able to expand: by 1931 the percentage of Jews in the total population was nearly 18 percent and by 1939 it had risen to nearly one third. [5]
The benefits the British gained from the Zionist colonisation were shown in 1936, when a general strike was declared against French rule in Syria. It proved effective and on the whole successful, taking Syria well along the road towards political independence. This made a great impression in Palestine, where the Arab population began an uprising against British rule, together with a long general strike of its own. The effects of the strike, however, were dampened by the Zionist presence. The institutions run by the Jewish settlers took no part in the strike and took over many of the functions previously performed by the Arabs.
The armed rising tied down more than a third of the British Army’s total world wide strength, and the British authorities again looked to the Zionists for support. The mandatory government agreed to reinforce the Jewish police force in order to free British soldiers for guard duty, and it established the Jewish Settlement Police, which became the main camouflage of the Haganah, the Zionist secret army. In the spring of 1939 the combined Jewish auxiliary police forces numbered about 21,000 men. [6]
In the wake of the rebellion, the British sent out a Royal Commission under Lord Peel to discover the causes of Arab unrest. Its conclusion was that the mandate was unworkable and recommended partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. This ominous prelude to 1948 was accepted by the Zionist leaders, Ben Gurion and Weitzman. At the 21st Zionist congress in 1939 they declared: “The Jewish people will not acquiesce in the reduction of its status in Palestine to that of a minority, nor in the subjection of a Jewish National Home to Arab rule.” Never mind the fact that they were a minority in an Arab country.
By the beginning of the war, the Zionists recognised that Britain was in decline and that a more powerful star was in the ascendant, the United States. The Americans, who were trying to displace British influence in areas such as Saudi Arabia, were not slow to see the advantages of an alliance with the Zionists.
When Britain, as a sop to the Arabs, put quotas on Jewish immigration for five years, Roosevelt commented: “... it (the Palestinian mandate) did intend to convert Palestine into a Jewish home which might very possibly become preponderantly Jewish within a comparatively short time ...” [7]
There can be no doubt that liberal opinion was shocked at the restriction on Jewish immigration. At the time the Nazi extermination of the Jews was in full swing. Such shock would have been considerably tempered if it had been generally known that at the Bermuda Committee in 1943 Roosevelt suggested that all barriers be lifted for the immigration of Jews from persecution. To avoid offending British sensibilities, Palestine was excluded from consideration. Zionist reaction was immediate and hostile for the Zionists the alleviation of Jewish misery was to be via Palestine or not at all.
Hal Draper records that “Morris Ernst, the famous civil liberties lawyer, has told the story about how the Zionist leaders exerted their influence to make sure that the US did not open up immigration (into the US) to these Jews – for the simple reason that they wanted to herd these Jews to Palestine.” [8]
As Dr Silver told the 22nd World Zionist Congress: “Zionism is not an immigration or refugee movement, but a movement to re-establish the Jewish state for a Jewish nation in the land of Israel. The classic textbook of Zionism is not how to find a home for refugees. The classic textbook of our movement is the Jewish state.”
The establishment of the Israeli state
At the end of the war, the Zionists called for partition and were backed by America. Meanwhile, they began a terror campaign against the British troops – not designed to liberate Palestine from imperialist rule, but rather “to demonstrate to the British military authorities that without the goodwill of Palestine Jewry, the British troops in Palestine might be dangerously isolated.” [9]
When at the end of 1947 Britain finally announced its imminent withdrawal from Palestine, there were 1,203, 000 Arabs in the country, accounting for two-thirds of the population. 94 percent of the land was owned or settled by Arabs. The remaining 6 percent was Jewish owned and 85 percent of these Jews had immigrated since 1922. [10] But the Zionists were determined to extend their area of control. In November 1947 Golda Meir met secretly with Abdullah, the British imposed ruler of Jordan, and they agreed to divide the territory of the Palestinians between them. [11]
In 1942 Weitzman had written: “... if any Arabs do not wish to remain in a Jewish state, every facility will be given to them to transfer to one of the many and vast Arab countries.” He had the good grace not to specify what facilities would be made available.
Mehachem Beigin, commander of the more extreme Zionist armed force, Irgun Zwei Leumi, was clear that the facilities would include guns, bombs, murder and extermination. He later said: “Our hope lay in gaining control of territory. At the end of January 1948 ... we outlined four strategic objectives: 1. Jerusalem, 2. Jaffa, 3. The Lydda, Ramleh Plain, 4. The Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm triangle.” All these towns were part of the Arab territory under the United Nations partition plan sponsored by the Zionists.
In April, the Irgun bombed the Arab town of Jaffa for three days. Haganah attacked the Arab community in Jerusalem. On 9 April the Irgun, in concert with the extreme Zionist Stern gang, which in the 1930s received training in Fascist Italy, attacked the Arab village of Dair Yassin and, in cold blood, murdered 254 women and children. Menachem Beigin and Avram Stern had learned well Hitler’s lesson in genocide. The news of the massacres and bombing set in motion the Palestinian refugees, some fleeing as far as the east bank of the river Jordan to escape the Zionists.
By these tactics the Zionist forces were able to increase their share of the partitioned state by 25 per cent before the UN resolution had been passed.
The first Arab-Israeli war of May 1948 was not, as Israeli propaganda would have us believe, an unprovoked Arab aggression. It was a response to the moving of Zionist forces into Arab Palestine. As the Zionists and Abdullah moved into areas inhabited by the Palestinians, Egypt and Saudi Arabia intervened – more out of fear of Abdullah than anything else.
If further proof is required, it should be noted that the only Arab army actually to invade the Jewish part of Palestine was that of the Egyptians, who sent a small force from Sinai into the Negev. All the other armies fought on Arab soil.
In the aftermath of the armistice the Zionists’ spoils of victory and additional territory were quickly recognised by all the great powers. The partition plan was dead and Israel was born on the corpses and the land of the Palestinians.
Having expelled the Arabs by force, the Zionists went on to set a legal seal on the expropriation of Arab property.
The expropriation of the Palestinians
Even before the formal setting up of the state of Israel, the Jewish Agency appointed a Haganah officer to act as Custodian of Arab Property. Once it was set up, emergency legislation on 24 June 1948 set out the Abandoned Areas Ordinance. An abandoned areas was: “... any area or place conquered by or surrendered to armed forces or deserted by all or part of its inhabitants, and which has been declared by order to be an abandoned area.” This definition, which could have covered any land anywhere, Jewish or Arab owned, applied only to Arab land.
A category of Arab known as “absentee” was invented. This included not only those who had left but those who had merely left their homes to avoid the fighting. As Don Peretz, a non-Zionist but pro-Israeli author, wrote in his book Israel and the Arab Refugees:
Any Arab of Nazareth who might have visited the Old City of Jerusalem or Bethlehem on Christmas 1948, automatically became an “absentee” under the law. Nearly all the Arab refugees in Israel as well as the 30,000 inhabitants of the little Triangle, which become part of the state under the armistice with Jordan, were classified as absentees. Arabs, who during the battle of Acre, fled from their homes to the old city of Acre, lost their property ... All of the new city of Acre was turned over to the recent (Jewish) immigrants despite the fact that many of its Arab “absentee” home owners were living a few yards away ...
Arabs were “absentees” unless they could prove they were not.
In 1953 a new twist was added to the Land Acquisition law. The crux of this law was that land would become the property of the Development Authority if:
1. On 1 April 1952, it was not in the possession of its owners.
2. It was used or earmarked within the period 4 May 1948 to April 1952 for the purposes of essential development or security.
3. If it is still required for one of these purposes ...
The outstanding gall of the first of these meant that those who had been illegally thrown off their land could not have been in possession at 1 April 1952. That was their complaint. Catch 22 is alive, and well, and living in Israel.
An amendment was passed which made it possible for legal Arab residents to keep any property they might obtain in the future. As one commentator said: “They were not to be robbed of any property which they do not yet possess.” [12]
In this way, the Israeli government acquired practically all the available Arab land for Jewish settlement. Over one million dunams (i.e. 250,000 acres) were taken from the Arabs who did not flee from Israel under the land acquisition law. [13]
All told 4,574,000 dunams of cultivatable land were taken from the Arabs, out of a total area under cultivation of about six million dunams. [14]
Since 1967, the expansion of the area of Zionist colonisation has continued. Kibbutzim – which are effectively military fortifications – have been established in the occupied areas. A document recently produced by the Israeli Labour Party “makes it clear that Israel will continue to establish and develop new settlements in the occupied territories ... The policy document makes it clear that the Israeli land Authority will acquire land in the occupied area by every effective means.” [15]
Israel’s pose as a democratic beacon in the Middle East, a custodian of western liberal values, does not stand examination when the position of the Palestinians who remain inside Israel (let alone the millions and more who were driven out) is examined. Under Israeli law, a Palestinian may be limited in his movements merely by the say so of a military officer. There are cases of individuals who have been refused permission to leave their villages for as long as 20 years. [16] but these are fortunate compared to those who are held in prison without trial. “The Israeli preventative detention law permits the imprisonment – without limit of time – of ‘any person’ whose confinement is deemed ‘necessary or expedient’.” [17]
The situation for the inhabitants of the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip is even worse. Although these areas have been effectively integrated into the Israeli economy, with 60,000 Arabs travelling to work inside Israel proper, the wages paid are 40 to 50 percent less than the wages paid to Israelis. [18]
Since it was occupied in 1967, the Gaza Strip has been turned into one massive festering prison. The refugees are flung out and their huts razed to the ground to build roads the better to police the area. In 1970 the Gazans spent 3700 hours under curfew. [19] In 1971 the Israelis started a plan to move tens of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, presumably intending to hand them over to Egypt at some future peace conference. The Israeli army moved into Jebalia, second largest camp in Gaza, (40,000 refugees) and it proceeded to bulldoze the huts and transport the inhabitants who had not fled to Al Arish in Sinai.
Israel and imperialism
The rulers of Israel faced two problems after 1948. The first was developing the country so as to make it an attractive proposition to the hundreds of thousands of European Jews it wanted to attract as immigrants – people who are used to a European rather than a Middle Eastern standard of living. The second problem was to persuade the neighbouring Arab states to accept the vastly expanded frontiers of Israel and the permanent expropriation of the previous Palestinian inhabitants. They sought to solve both problems by proving that they were imperialism’s best friend in the area.
The talk of “making the desert bloom” is a bit less impressive when you look at the amount of aid Israel has received – particularly from America. Oscar Gass, an American economist who at one time acted as advisor to the Israeli government, has noted:
What is unique ... about this development ... is the factor of capital inflow ...During the 17 years 1949-65 Israel received six billion dollars more of goods and services than she exported. For the 21 years 1948-68 the import surplus would be in excess of seven and a half billion dollars. This is in excess of 2650 dollars per person for every person who lived in Israel. And of this supply from abroad ... only about 30 per cent came to Israel under conditions which call for a return outflow of dividends, interest or capital. [20]
It has been calculated that in 1968, Israel received more than 10 per cent of the total aid given to all underdeveloped countries. [21]
Only through this inflow of funds was the development of the Israeli economy possible. Despite the talk of “hardworking pioneers”, between 1949 and 1965 the net saving if the Israeli economy equalled zero, sometimes being +1 per cent and sometimes -1 per cent. Yet the rate of investment over the same period could average 20 per cent. [22]
In the light of such generosity from foreign sources it is hardly surprising that one or two parcels of the Negev have nurtured the odd rose.
It is true that much of this inflow of funds has come from collections from world Jewry, rather than from Western governments (which accounted for about 40 per cent of capital transfers in the period 1949-65); but it is also true that the very rich Jewish families in the US who have contributed such a large chunk of these funds would not have done so unless Israel was following a policy favourable to the class to which they belong – the American capitalist class.
A major plank of the governmental policy of the Israeli state has always been to secure recognition for the annexation of the Palestinian areas obtained in 1948. The first formal recognition came from the three western powers with imperialist interests in the area, Britain, France and the US, with the Tripartite Declaration of 1950. Since then the main Israeli aim has been to force the Arab states to concede similar recognition.
In the early 1950s, the US and Britain wanted to create a military alliance of Middle Eastern countries, as part of the global policy of establishing a chain of bases and military pacts around Russia. The Israeli leaders exerted themselves to help force the Arabs into the alliance. Whenever the governments of Egypt, Syria or Jordan attacked the Anglo-American schemes, Israel was used as a threat against them. These threats often materialised in armed raids by Israeli forces. Jordan, particularly, was raided during the period when the el-Nabulsi government there conducted anti-Western policies. Usually after such a raid, the Arab government concerned would ask the West for arms. The reply was always “Join the Bagdad Pact and you will get the arms.”
The policy was finally defeated when, after an Israeli raid on Gaza in April 1955 Nasser turned to the Russian bloc for arms. This development, followed by the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, drove Britain and France into desperation. Together with Israel they attacked Egypt in an attempt to seize back the canal for the Western shareholders and re-establish their own influence. [23]
The third Arab-Israeli war of 1967 was preceded by a similar period of rising struggle against British rule in Aden; the struggle against the Iman of Yemen represented a potential threat to the Saudi-Arabian monarchy; and the Syrian government was involved in a dispute with the US dominated Iraq Petroleum Company.
In the aftermath of the Israeli victory, the Western presence in the area was considerably strengthened. As the Economist out it at the time: “It is not only Israel’s chestnuts which have been drawn out of the fire; it is those of Britain and America as well ...” [24]
In recent years, the American government has been following a policy of guarding its interests in the Middle East by massively arming the most reactionary regimes. Israeli power on the Mediterranean coast has been matched by a massive military build-up in Iran (which now sends more than 2000 million dollars a year on arms) and a growing sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and the small states on the Persian Gulf. In this way, the US aim to have sufficient forces at its disposal to prevent the massively rich oil reserves in the Arabian peninsular – currently under the control of US oil companies – falling under the influence of the larger and more populous Arab states such as Iraq or Egypt, which might use some of the wealth for Arab ends. So for instance, when Iran agreed earlier this year t spend 2000 million dollars on the most modern US armaments, the US State Department observed that the deal would help reinforce “a point of stability” in the Gulf area. [25] The Shah of Iran has said quite openly that “he would not tolerate a radical or subversive presence in the Gulf”. [26]
What stability means for the mass of the population in the Middle East is an accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few rulers, while the population of countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan live in abject poverty. The Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia recently complained that for his country oil revenues which are expected to rise to 10,000 million dollars a year, “would constitute a serious problem”. [27]
The arming of Israel and Iran is designed to ensure that this “problem” is not solved by a movement aiming to overthrow the reactionary monarchies and to use the oil to develop the whole Middle East for the benefit of the mass of the Arab population.
The editor of the Israeli daily paper Ha’aretz summed up Israel’s role in all this quite succinctly in 1951: “Israel has been given a role not unlike a watchdog. One need not fear that it will exercise an aggressive policy towards the Arab states if this will contradict the interests of the USA and Britain. But should the West prefer for one reason or another to close its eyes one can rely on Israel to punish severely those of the neighbouring states whose lack of manners towards the West has exceeded the proper limits.” [28]
The support of Israel for imperialism is not an accidental feature of the state, that could be overcome merely with a change of government. It follows necessarily from the attempt to establish an exclusively Jewish state in an area previously inhabited by non-Jews. To defend the settler state from the original inhabitants, an alliance with the imperialist exploiters of the Middle East has been, and remains, essential.
There can be no question of socialists supporting Israel. There is no justification for saying a plague on both your houses. In face of Zionism and its paymaster, socialists must give unconditional, if critical support to the Arabs. Israel, the artificial creation of Zionism, has to be destroyed before the working masses of the Middle East, Muslims, Jews and Christians have a chance to live together in peace. The very existence of Israel is the denial of any peace.
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Notes
1. A. Leon, The Jewish Question, p.30.
2. J.M.N. Jeffries, Palestine, The Reality, p.13.
3. Quoted by N. Israeli, Israel and Imperialism, IS 32.
4. Moed, published by the department of culture and education of the Histadrut, 1960, p.3.
5. M. Arakie, The Broken Sword of Justice, p.17.
6. Y. Bauer, in New Outlook, Tel Aviv, September 1966.
7. Arakie, op. cit., p.25.
8. New Politics, vol.6 no.1, p.16.
9. J. and D. Kimche , Both Sides of the Hill, p.53.
10. Arakie, op. cit., p.70.
11. For an account of the joint manoeuvrings of Abdullah and the Zionists see J. and D. Kimche, op cit.
12. Hal Draper in the New International, Winter 1957.
13. Ha’aretz, 7 January 1954.
14. Don Peretz, Israel and the Arab Refugees, p.233.
15. Economist Intelligence Unit, Quarterly Report, Israel, 1973 No.4.
16. Report of Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, distributed in August 1973.
17. A. Dershowitz, in I. Howe and Chersham (ed), Israel, the Arabs, and the Middle East, New York 1972, p.268.
18. Wage figures for Arabs given in Financial Times, 7 May 1973.
19. Guardian, 18 August 1971.
20. Journal of Economic Literature, December 1969. Quoted in H. Hanegbi, Machover and A. Orr, The Class Nature of Israeli Society, (published by Pluto Press, London).
21. Le Monde, 2 July 1969.
22. Figures from N. Halevi and R. Klinov-Malul, The Economic Development of Israel, quoted in N. Hangebi et al., op. cit.
23. The preceding two paragraphs are based on Theses submitted for discussion by the Israeli Socialist Organisation in August 1966, published as The Palestine Problem, Israel and Imperialism, New England Free Press, Boston.
24. The Economist, 10 June 1967.
25. Middle East Economic Digest, 3 March 1973.
26. Economist, 7 July 1973.
27. Middle East Economic Digest, 19 January 1973.
28. Quoted in H. Hanegbi et al., op. cit.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Max Shachtman and His Left</h1>
<h3>(Spring 1995)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Revolutionary History</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm#v5n4" target="new">Vol. 5 No. 3</a>, Spring 1995, pp. 209–213.<br>
Transcribed by Alun Morgan for the <a href="../../../../history/etol/revhist/main.htm" target="new"><em>Revolutionary History Website</em></a>.<br>
Marked up by by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Peter Drucker<br>
<strong>Max Shachtman and His Left: A Socialist’s Odyssey Through the ‘American Century’</strong><br>
<em>Humanities Press, New Jersey 1994, pp. 346</em></p>
<p class="fst">THE NEWS today is that Joe Slovo is dead. Given the state of his health, this is not surprising. What is surprising is that the current General Secretary of the South African Communist Party and the ex-Chief of Staff of the ANC’s armed wing should receive such gushing obituaries from all sides of the South African press. The most knuckle-abraded hairy back is apparently grief-stricken at the death of this sweet-natured, nay saintly, old Stalinist hack. Of course, one does not unnecessarily speak ill of the dead. At the same time, it is not necessary to suppress one’s criticisms because one’s political foes have the good grace to shuffle off this mortal coil before they can add to their crimes.</p>
<p>These thoughts are occasioned by reading Peter Drucker’s book on Max Shachtman. First, it is necessary to say that Drucker is a member of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (that is the lot we used to blow raspberries at and call ‘Pabloite’; nowadays we cannot be bothered with them at all, and call them ‘Mandelistas’), and one would not expect such a partisan to take as his subject a man who came to the conclusion that the Fourth International was a farce, and that its leading cadres were actually beyond a joke. Despite this, Shachtman did make some seriously funny remarks about them. Here, for those unfamiliar with his distinctive style, is an example; his comments about Michel Pablo’s report of 10 years of the Fourth International at its Second World Congress in 1948:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The only claim to distinction the report could make is that it was one of the most lamentable performances in the history of the movement. For carefully scraped-out emptiness, it remained unexcelled by any of its rivals at other sessions.</p>
<p class="quote">‘To be sure, the reporter took care to refer to the reactionary character of the Stalinist and reformist parties; he noted with pride that the centrist organisations had not become mass movements, whereas the Fourth International, in the face of great difficulties, had not disappeared; he did not forget to dwell loudly on his unshattered faith in the working class, his confidence in Socialism, and his conviction that the Fourth International would overcome all obstacles — including, presumably, such reports as he was delivering.</p>
<p class="quote">‘It is debatable if the speech, sodden with cheerless commonplaces, would have been appropriate even at some anniversary celebration in a mountain village. Its suitability as a report of the Executive Committee to a congress was not debatable. Consequently, it was not debated — not at all, not by anyone, and not for a single moment ...’</p>
<p class="fst">This may give something of the flavour of Shachtman doing what came naturally, and what he was good at. In his debates and polemics, Shachtman took no prisoners. His enemies, one might even say victims, were pinned to the floor, and had the tops of the heads removed, the better to indicate the total absence of grey matter. At his best, he really took some beating. In the pre-war Trotskyist movement, he was, after Trotsky, probably the outstanding personality. Certainly, Trotsky thought highly of him, and at the height of the faction fight in the US Trotskyist movement in 1940, he made every effort to retain Shachtman, and even after the movement split, he kept him on as his literary executor. His magazine, the <strong>New International</strong>, was certainly the best of all the Trotskyist theoretical magazines, and is still well worth reading.</p>
<p>As a debater, Shachtman was in the top rank, and like all good debaters, he was well prepared to the point where he was primed to produce a seemingly off-the-cuff <em>bon mot</em> of great appositeness and brilliance. His debate in March 1950 with Earl Browder, the ex-General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USA, is a case in point. Although expelled from the CPUSA, Browder still defended Stalinism and the Soviet Union. When it came to the final rebuttal, Shachtman said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Suppose Browder’s Stalino-Socialists were successful in establishing their Socialism in this country ... who would be the first to go? Who would be the first to get the GPU bullet in the base of his skull? Who would be the first to be denounced in the obituary articles as a counter-revolutionary mad dog, a viper, a restorationist, a wrecker ...?</p>
<p class="quote">‘Rajk was the General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, and was shot, hanged or garrotted. Kostov was the General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party. And when I thought of them, I thought of the former Secretary of the American Communist Party, and I said to myself: There, but for an accident of geography, stands a corpse.’</p>
<p class="fst">At this point, Shachtman turned dramatically and pointed at the shaken and ashen-faced Browder. One almost, but not quite, feels sorry for Browder.</p>
<p>The only man who could hold a candle to Shachtman in the US movement was James P. Cannon (this is not strictly accurate, as C.L.R. James was also a member of the Socialist Workers Party after 1938, and he was certainly Shachtman’s intellectual equal, although he did not dispute with him until much later). Indeed, throughout their troubled relationship, Cannon and Shachtman often held, or hurled, candles, clubs and brickbats at one another. Cannon was no theoretician, even if he did give the impression that a native worker, such as himself, embodied theory in a special proletarian sixth sense. He was, however, a good organiser, with a wide experience of the working class movement and a good agitational style both in speech and the written word, if prone to fits of depression, which caused him to take unsanctioned leave of absence to do some in-depth research into bottles of whiskey. Shachtman, on the other hand, took to theory and theorising like a duck to water. He spoke several languages, and was genuinely interested in the international struggle. Cannon’s dream of internationalism, one felt, would have been satisfied by a very big congress of the Communist International in which he won all the votes. Together, though, the Cannon-Shachtman alliance was a formidable combination, and whenever it was operating, the SWP did reasonably well. Reasonably well is, of course, a relative term; the only time that they made a small breakthrough past the thousand member barrier, naturally enough, they had a split.</p>
<p>The 1940 split is the one that Cannon celebrated in his abysmal volume <strong>The Struggle for a Proletarian Party</strong> (incidentally, one of the better articles in it is James Burnham’s <em>Science and Style</em>, which, if you can bring yourself to forgive his grievous failure to believe in dialectics and his subsequent escapades, is quite refreshing after all that internal bulletin-type prose). With the benefit of 20–20 hindsight, a split on whether or not to support the Russian drive for the Karelian Isthmus seems pretty footling, particularly in the light of how recent events have proved all those years of self-indulgent prattling on the class nature of Russia to be as useful as origami or macramé. Shachtman took about 500 with him, mainly the youth and intellectuals, so having virtually no workers, he naturally called it the Workers Party.</p>
<p>The theory of bureaucratic collectivism, which became Shachtman’s political compass, and which eventually led him so far from home, was developed at about this time by Joe Carter, a long time adherent of Shachtman in the New York SWP. C.L.R. James, who was not above the odd sly dig on occasion, characterised the theory as ‘Carter’s little liver pill’. In the beginning, Shachtman took the view that bureaucratic collectivism was more progressive than monopoly capitalism. As the years wore on, he changed his mind on this one, and who is to blame him for that? However, when he came to reprint this article in his collection <strong>The Bureaucratic Revolution</strong>, he edited this same text to suggest that he had always been of the view that Russia was the absolute pits. For that he was condemned by Tony Cliff, a man who knows a thing or two about text tampering (as the careful reader of the first and second editions of his <strong>Rosa Luxemburg</strong> will be able to attest).</p>
<p>Whatever the sociological insights the theory of bureaucratic collectivism may have given, it was something of a poisoned chalice for Shachtman and his co-thinkers. The brave slogan ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism’ eventually gave way to Washington before Moscow at all times, and International Socialism nowhere. In the bitter dregs of his days, he ended up supporting the viciously right wing Democratic Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, a cold warrior of the nuclear persuasion.</p>
<p>It was a long day’s journey into night: from opposing Walter Reuther in the UAW to supporting him; from principled opposition to Social Democracy to complete assimilation into its bosom; from unremitting struggle against the labour fakirs to collaboration with George Meany and Jay Lovestone. And so on to solidarity with the swine who mounted the Bay of Pigs invasion. The anti-Vietnam War movement found Shachtman on the other side, the only man who was able to see a nascent bureaucratic collectivist in the underfed form of a chap in a lampshade hat and a pair of pyjamas.</p>
<p>Max Shachtman was larger than life, he was funny, he was witty, he was very intelligent, and, if he took the trouble, he could write exceptionally well and persuasively. He was boisterous and scandalous, and held court amongst his admiring followers. For hundreds of young people, he was the guru, the man who gave intellectual coherence to their lives, and enlisted them into his causes. It is part of the tragedy of his life that as his causes changed, his followers gradually fell away, and virtually nothing was left except the cold comfort of the labour fakirs, the machine politicians, and the sclerotic charms of the Socialist Party. Peter Drucker details all of the main events in Shachtman’s life, and, as I have indicated earlier, he seems to me to be overly concerned to justify the various twists and turns and the final betrayal. All I can say is that Max Shachtman at the height of his powers would have reduced his later, much diminished self to tatters, and we all would have felt the better for it.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Max Shachtman and His Left
(Spring 1995)
From Revolutionary History, Vol. 5 No. 3, Spring 1995, pp. 209–213.
Transcribed by Alun Morgan for the Revolutionary History Website.
Marked up by by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Peter Drucker
Max Shachtman and His Left: A Socialist’s Odyssey Through the ‘American Century’
Humanities Press, New Jersey 1994, pp. 346
THE NEWS today is that Joe Slovo is dead. Given the state of his health, this is not surprising. What is surprising is that the current General Secretary of the South African Communist Party and the ex-Chief of Staff of the ANC’s armed wing should receive such gushing obituaries from all sides of the South African press. The most knuckle-abraded hairy back is apparently grief-stricken at the death of this sweet-natured, nay saintly, old Stalinist hack. Of course, one does not unnecessarily speak ill of the dead. At the same time, it is not necessary to suppress one’s criticisms because one’s political foes have the good grace to shuffle off this mortal coil before they can add to their crimes.
These thoughts are occasioned by reading Peter Drucker’s book on Max Shachtman. First, it is necessary to say that Drucker is a member of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (that is the lot we used to blow raspberries at and call ‘Pabloite’; nowadays we cannot be bothered with them at all, and call them ‘Mandelistas’), and one would not expect such a partisan to take as his subject a man who came to the conclusion that the Fourth International was a farce, and that its leading cadres were actually beyond a joke. Despite this, Shachtman did make some seriously funny remarks about them. Here, for those unfamiliar with his distinctive style, is an example; his comments about Michel Pablo’s report of 10 years of the Fourth International at its Second World Congress in 1948:
‘The only claim to distinction the report could make is that it was one of the most lamentable performances in the history of the movement. For carefully scraped-out emptiness, it remained unexcelled by any of its rivals at other sessions.
‘To be sure, the reporter took care to refer to the reactionary character of the Stalinist and reformist parties; he noted with pride that the centrist organisations had not become mass movements, whereas the Fourth International, in the face of great difficulties, had not disappeared; he did not forget to dwell loudly on his unshattered faith in the working class, his confidence in Socialism, and his conviction that the Fourth International would overcome all obstacles — including, presumably, such reports as he was delivering.
‘It is debatable if the speech, sodden with cheerless commonplaces, would have been appropriate even at some anniversary celebration in a mountain village. Its suitability as a report of the Executive Committee to a congress was not debatable. Consequently, it was not debated — not at all, not by anyone, and not for a single moment ...’
This may give something of the flavour of Shachtman doing what came naturally, and what he was good at. In his debates and polemics, Shachtman took no prisoners. His enemies, one might even say victims, were pinned to the floor, and had the tops of the heads removed, the better to indicate the total absence of grey matter. At his best, he really took some beating. In the pre-war Trotskyist movement, he was, after Trotsky, probably the outstanding personality. Certainly, Trotsky thought highly of him, and at the height of the faction fight in the US Trotskyist movement in 1940, he made every effort to retain Shachtman, and even after the movement split, he kept him on as his literary executor. His magazine, the New International, was certainly the best of all the Trotskyist theoretical magazines, and is still well worth reading.
As a debater, Shachtman was in the top rank, and like all good debaters, he was well prepared to the point where he was primed to produce a seemingly off-the-cuff bon mot of great appositeness and brilliance. His debate in March 1950 with Earl Browder, the ex-General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USA, is a case in point. Although expelled from the CPUSA, Browder still defended Stalinism and the Soviet Union. When it came to the final rebuttal, Shachtman said:
‘Suppose Browder’s Stalino-Socialists were successful in establishing their Socialism in this country ... who would be the first to go? Who would be the first to get the GPU bullet in the base of his skull? Who would be the first to be denounced in the obituary articles as a counter-revolutionary mad dog, a viper, a restorationist, a wrecker ...?
‘Rajk was the General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, and was shot, hanged or garrotted. Kostov was the General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party. And when I thought of them, I thought of the former Secretary of the American Communist Party, and I said to myself: There, but for an accident of geography, stands a corpse.’
At this point, Shachtman turned dramatically and pointed at the shaken and ashen-faced Browder. One almost, but not quite, feels sorry for Browder.
The only man who could hold a candle to Shachtman in the US movement was James P. Cannon (this is not strictly accurate, as C.L.R. James was also a member of the Socialist Workers Party after 1938, and he was certainly Shachtman’s intellectual equal, although he did not dispute with him until much later). Indeed, throughout their troubled relationship, Cannon and Shachtman often held, or hurled, candles, clubs and brickbats at one another. Cannon was no theoretician, even if he did give the impression that a native worker, such as himself, embodied theory in a special proletarian sixth sense. He was, however, a good organiser, with a wide experience of the working class movement and a good agitational style both in speech and the written word, if prone to fits of depression, which caused him to take unsanctioned leave of absence to do some in-depth research into bottles of whiskey. Shachtman, on the other hand, took to theory and theorising like a duck to water. He spoke several languages, and was genuinely interested in the international struggle. Cannon’s dream of internationalism, one felt, would have been satisfied by a very big congress of the Communist International in which he won all the votes. Together, though, the Cannon-Shachtman alliance was a formidable combination, and whenever it was operating, the SWP did reasonably well. Reasonably well is, of course, a relative term; the only time that they made a small breakthrough past the thousand member barrier, naturally enough, they had a split.
The 1940 split is the one that Cannon celebrated in his abysmal volume The Struggle for a Proletarian Party (incidentally, one of the better articles in it is James Burnham’s Science and Style, which, if you can bring yourself to forgive his grievous failure to believe in dialectics and his subsequent escapades, is quite refreshing after all that internal bulletin-type prose). With the benefit of 20–20 hindsight, a split on whether or not to support the Russian drive for the Karelian Isthmus seems pretty footling, particularly in the light of how recent events have proved all those years of self-indulgent prattling on the class nature of Russia to be as useful as origami or macramé. Shachtman took about 500 with him, mainly the youth and intellectuals, so having virtually no workers, he naturally called it the Workers Party.
The theory of bureaucratic collectivism, which became Shachtman’s political compass, and which eventually led him so far from home, was developed at about this time by Joe Carter, a long time adherent of Shachtman in the New York SWP. C.L.R. James, who was not above the odd sly dig on occasion, characterised the theory as ‘Carter’s little liver pill’. In the beginning, Shachtman took the view that bureaucratic collectivism was more progressive than monopoly capitalism. As the years wore on, he changed his mind on this one, and who is to blame him for that? However, when he came to reprint this article in his collection The Bureaucratic Revolution, he edited this same text to suggest that he had always been of the view that Russia was the absolute pits. For that he was condemned by Tony Cliff, a man who knows a thing or two about text tampering (as the careful reader of the first and second editions of his Rosa Luxemburg will be able to attest).
Whatever the sociological insights the theory of bureaucratic collectivism may have given, it was something of a poisoned chalice for Shachtman and his co-thinkers. The brave slogan ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism’ eventually gave way to Washington before Moscow at all times, and International Socialism nowhere. In the bitter dregs of his days, he ended up supporting the viciously right wing Democratic Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, a cold warrior of the nuclear persuasion.
It was a long day’s journey into night: from opposing Walter Reuther in the UAW to supporting him; from principled opposition to Social Democracy to complete assimilation into its bosom; from unremitting struggle against the labour fakirs to collaboration with George Meany and Jay Lovestone. And so on to solidarity with the swine who mounted the Bay of Pigs invasion. The anti-Vietnam War movement found Shachtman on the other side, the only man who was able to see a nascent bureaucratic collectivist in the underfed form of a chap in a lampshade hat and a pair of pyjamas.
Max Shachtman was larger than life, he was funny, he was witty, he was very intelligent, and, if he took the trouble, he could write exceptionally well and persuasively. He was boisterous and scandalous, and held court amongst his admiring followers. For hundreds of young people, he was the guru, the man who gave intellectual coherence to their lives, and enlisted them into his causes. It is part of the tragedy of his life that as his causes changed, his followers gradually fell away, and virtually nothing was left except the cold comfort of the labour fakirs, the machine politicians, and the sclerotic charms of the Socialist Party. Peter Drucker details all of the main events in Shachtman’s life, and, as I have indicated earlier, he seems to me to be overly concerned to justify the various twists and turns and the final betrayal. All I can say is that Max Shachtman at the height of his powers would have reduced his later, much diminished self to tatters, and we all would have felt the better for it.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>TUC leaders back Labour – at our expense</h1>
<h3>(September 1976)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>Workers News</strong>, no.11, September 1976.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">IT really is slightly ironic that the self styled, “Right to Work bootboys” who marched to Brighton to gain a little publicity for their cause should in fact provide a disproportionate amount of publicity for the TUC.</p>
<p>This, unfortunately, was not from the power of their argument but because the TUC itself was such a foregone conclusion.</p>
<p>Its debates were so prearranged that it was difficult to find any excitement, apart from the spectacle of ageing trade union leaders being hotly pursued up Brighton side-streets by orange-jerkined marchers.</p>
<p>In a sense the Brighton Congress has been beside the point. Almost every union, including the Seamen, is committed to the social contract. The essential debate which did not take place is the one about what will follow the current TUC-Government agreement.</p>
<p>The ominous phrase, “an orderly return to collective bargaining”, much on the tongues of Messrs Jack Jones and David Basnett, is no doubt an attempt to administer the same bitter medicine in a different coloured bottle.</p>
<p>Mr Jones, rather after the style of a Roman Emperor giving the thumbs up sign to a defeated gladiator, suggests that – assuming inflation down to single figures by August – he would favour increases up to 10 per cent.</p>
<p>The question that arises from a consideration of this latest piece of kite-flying, is: can Jones work the oracle for the third year running?</p>
<p>The signs are that, this time he may have over-stretched himself. Mr Joe Gormley, responded angrily, indicating that the miners would not thank Mr Jones for more of this sage leadership.</p>
<p>This clearly reflects the fact that Mr Gormley was only just able to fend off a call for the £100 a week miner at his own union’s conference this year. He obviously does not fancy his chances of getting away with the same thing next year.</p>
<p>Of equal significance have been the disputes at British Leyland. Despite the horror stories, in the (press and management handouts, that Leyland will fall flat on its face unless the workers forego all strikes, the toolmakers and electricians have been on strike for a week for increased payments.</p>
<p>Perhaps more significant is the action of the Cowley management, in attempting to remove credentials from four shop stewards. With all the resources of the press, who are always willing to bear the latest witch-hunting comment from Reg Parsons, the Cowley Senior Steward, the management have yet to turn the workers against their militant representatives.</p>
<p>It is not unreasonable to suggest that Cowley workers are aware that a strong shop floor organisation will soon be needed.</p>
<p>Yet another straw in the wing is the Seamen’s strike call. Although the actual case for the NUS is an argument within the context of the social contract, the strike majority vote would almost certainly not have been obtained a few months ago.</p>
<p>If, as seems likely, the seamen do strike, then there is very little that the government or the TUC can do to force them back without at least some concessions.</p>
<p>If that occurs then the door will be open for, others to follow suit. A victory for the seamen, no matter how hedged about with `special circumstances’ will encourage other workers to fight for what they can gain.</p>
<p>In particular in a number of unions where there is only a small majority for the social contract, such a breakthrough could well throw the balance the other way.</p>
<p>Of particular importance here is the AUEW, already in difficulty over the arbitrary application of the contract, and bedevilled by differential problems.</p>
<p>It is against this background that the 1976 TUC should be viewed. The debates will take place, the overwhelming victories for the General Council will be counted, but the underlying trend in the real movement will not be reversed.</p>
<p>The Government and the TUC will be in deep trouble; for every half successful policy that eventually fails, they must work all the harder to construct another. A task that will be made even more difficult by their declining credibility.</p>
<p>The prospectus the TUC put forward early this year was that, with the social contract, there would be a decline in unemployment, a boost to the economy and a cut in the cost of living.</p>
<p>Unemployment is now over 1½ million and rising, The economy is not recovering and the cost of living shows little sign of moderating. They would seem to have sold us a pig in a poke.</p>
<p>The TUC has, more than ever before, put its trust in a Labour Government. That their trust was misplaced is of less interest than that we are paying the price.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
TUC leaders back Labour – at our expense
(September 1976)
From Workers News, no.11, September 1976.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
IT really is slightly ironic that the self styled, “Right to Work bootboys” who marched to Brighton to gain a little publicity for their cause should in fact provide a disproportionate amount of publicity for the TUC.
This, unfortunately, was not from the power of their argument but because the TUC itself was such a foregone conclusion.
Its debates were so prearranged that it was difficult to find any excitement, apart from the spectacle of ageing trade union leaders being hotly pursued up Brighton side-streets by orange-jerkined marchers.
In a sense the Brighton Congress has been beside the point. Almost every union, including the Seamen, is committed to the social contract. The essential debate which did not take place is the one about what will follow the current TUC-Government agreement.
The ominous phrase, “an orderly return to collective bargaining”, much on the tongues of Messrs Jack Jones and David Basnett, is no doubt an attempt to administer the same bitter medicine in a different coloured bottle.
Mr Jones, rather after the style of a Roman Emperor giving the thumbs up sign to a defeated gladiator, suggests that – assuming inflation down to single figures by August – he would favour increases up to 10 per cent.
The question that arises from a consideration of this latest piece of kite-flying, is: can Jones work the oracle for the third year running?
The signs are that, this time he may have over-stretched himself. Mr Joe Gormley, responded angrily, indicating that the miners would not thank Mr Jones for more of this sage leadership.
This clearly reflects the fact that Mr Gormley was only just able to fend off a call for the £100 a week miner at his own union’s conference this year. He obviously does not fancy his chances of getting away with the same thing next year.
Of equal significance have been the disputes at British Leyland. Despite the horror stories, in the (press and management handouts, that Leyland will fall flat on its face unless the workers forego all strikes, the toolmakers and electricians have been on strike for a week for increased payments.
Perhaps more significant is the action of the Cowley management, in attempting to remove credentials from four shop stewards. With all the resources of the press, who are always willing to bear the latest witch-hunting comment from Reg Parsons, the Cowley Senior Steward, the management have yet to turn the workers against their militant representatives.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that Cowley workers are aware that a strong shop floor organisation will soon be needed.
Yet another straw in the wing is the Seamen’s strike call. Although the actual case for the NUS is an argument within the context of the social contract, the strike majority vote would almost certainly not have been obtained a few months ago.
If, as seems likely, the seamen do strike, then there is very little that the government or the TUC can do to force them back without at least some concessions.
If that occurs then the door will be open for, others to follow suit. A victory for the seamen, no matter how hedged about with `special circumstances’ will encourage other workers to fight for what they can gain.
In particular in a number of unions where there is only a small majority for the social contract, such a breakthrough could well throw the balance the other way.
Of particular importance here is the AUEW, already in difficulty over the arbitrary application of the contract, and bedevilled by differential problems.
It is against this background that the 1976 TUC should be viewed. The debates will take place, the overwhelming victories for the General Council will be counted, but the underlying trend in the real movement will not be reversed.
The Government and the TUC will be in deep trouble; for every half successful policy that eventually fails, they must work all the harder to construct another. A task that will be made even more difficult by their declining credibility.
The prospectus the TUC put forward early this year was that, with the social contract, there would be a decline in unemployment, a boost to the economy and a cut in the cost of living.
Unemployment is now over 1½ million and rising, The economy is not recovering and the cost of living shows little sign of moderating. They would seem to have sold us a pig in a poke.
The TUC has, more than ever before, put its trust in a Labour Government. That their trust was misplaced is of less interest than that we are paying the price.
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<h2>James Higgins</h2>
<h1>Dead Scrolls?</h1>
<h3>(Spring 1961)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">James Higgins, <strong>Dead Scrolls?</strong>, International Socialism (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj004" target="new">No.4</a>, Spring 1961.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>To the Finland Station</strong><br>
Edmund Wilson. Fontana. 1960. 7s6d</p>
<p class="fst">Mr Wilson is a man of many parts who has in the course of his literary career written plain journalism, literary criticism, a memorable volume of short stories and a commentary on the dead sea scrolls for which last task he is reported to have learned Hebrew. This at least shows a consistent effort of scholarship even if most authorities on the scrolls disagree with him.</p>
<p>In 1940 Mr Wilson published his essay into the territory of socialist history, <strong>To the Finland Station</strong>, which Fontana Books have now republished as a paper-back at the not too modest price of seven and sixpence.</p>
<p>He approaches his task in a slightly oblique literary manner by way of Vico and Michelet and their attempts to systematize the study of human history, and proceeds through the decay of French Socio-literary criticism by way of Renan, Taine and Anatole France at each stage explaining the economic and political climate giving rise to them. Then back to Babeuf with a fine chapter on the Conspiracy of Equals and the degeneration of the French Revolution.</p>
<p>From here it is only a short trip to the meat of the book: a discussion of their work and theories of Engels and Marx. The criticism in this section has frequently been done more thoroughly and capably but never, I am sure, more entertainingly. Mr Wilson Considers the Dialectic to be a myth and that Marx in his adherence to the principles of thesis, antithesis and synthesis was looking for a substitute for the mystical trinity discarded in his youth. That this criticism can be made of many of the latter day saints of Stalinism is clearly true, but to suggest as Wilson does, that Marx’s theory of economic motivation is sound without giving due regard to the method by which he explained this theory is not playing the game.</p>
<p>There are further examples of this form of reasoning and despite the cogency of his argument no prizes will be given to readers of <strong>IS</strong> who conclusively answer Mr Wilson to their own satisfaction.</p>
<p>Lenin and Trotsky are also discussed as the title implies, the former as the Great Headmaster and the Latter as the Young Eagle. The headmaster rather more sympathetically than the eagle, presumably on the principle that its better to have a dead headmaster embalmed in the Kremlin than a live eagle close by in Mexico.</p>
<p>Despite this Mr Wilson is obviously a ‘good’ intellectual whose sympathies are on the side of the angels and his book, written in a style unlike most of its kind, does not read as if translated direct from the Russian. It should be read by all those interested in social and historical criticism.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
James Higgins
Dead Scrolls?
(Spring 1961)
James Higgins, Dead Scrolls?, International Socialism (1st series), No.4, Spring 1961.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
To the Finland Station
Edmund Wilson. Fontana. 1960. 7s6d
Mr Wilson is a man of many parts who has in the course of his literary career written plain journalism, literary criticism, a memorable volume of short stories and a commentary on the dead sea scrolls for which last task he is reported to have learned Hebrew. This at least shows a consistent effort of scholarship even if most authorities on the scrolls disagree with him.
In 1940 Mr Wilson published his essay into the territory of socialist history, To the Finland Station, which Fontana Books have now republished as a paper-back at the not too modest price of seven and sixpence.
He approaches his task in a slightly oblique literary manner by way of Vico and Michelet and their attempts to systematize the study of human history, and proceeds through the decay of French Socio-literary criticism by way of Renan, Taine and Anatole France at each stage explaining the economic and political climate giving rise to them. Then back to Babeuf with a fine chapter on the Conspiracy of Equals and the degeneration of the French Revolution.
From here it is only a short trip to the meat of the book: a discussion of their work and theories of Engels and Marx. The criticism in this section has frequently been done more thoroughly and capably but never, I am sure, more entertainingly. Mr Wilson Considers the Dialectic to be a myth and that Marx in his adherence to the principles of thesis, antithesis and synthesis was looking for a substitute for the mystical trinity discarded in his youth. That this criticism can be made of many of the latter day saints of Stalinism is clearly true, but to suggest as Wilson does, that Marx’s theory of economic motivation is sound without giving due regard to the method by which he explained this theory is not playing the game.
There are further examples of this form of reasoning and despite the cogency of his argument no prizes will be given to readers of IS who conclusively answer Mr Wilson to their own satisfaction.
Lenin and Trotsky are also discussed as the title implies, the former as the Great Headmaster and the Latter as the Young Eagle. The headmaster rather more sympathetically than the eagle, presumably on the principle that its better to have a dead headmaster embalmed in the Kremlin than a live eagle close by in Mexico.
Despite this Mr Wilson is obviously a ‘good’ intellectual whose sympathies are on the side of the angels and his book, written in a style unlike most of its kind, does not read as if translated direct from the Russian. It should be read by all those interested in social and historical criticism.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>More Years for the Locust<br>
<small>The Origins of the SWP</small></h1>
<h4>Cartoons by Phil Evans</h4>
<h3>(1997)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">Originally published by IS Group, London, 1997.<br>
Transcribed by <a href="mailto:[email protected]">Ted Crawford</a>. (<a href="trans.htm">Transcriber’s note</a>)<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h4>This book is dedicated<br>
to the memory of<br>
<big>Harry Wicks</big><br>
(1905 – 1989)<br>
revolutionary communist<br>
and a real working class hero</h4>
<p> </p>
<p class="link"><big><a href="pref.htm">Preface</a></big><br>
by Roger Protz<br>
<br>
<big><a href="intro.htm">Introduction</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap01.htm">Chapter 1</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap02.htm">Chapter 2</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap03.htm">Chapter 3</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap04.htm">Chapter 4</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap05.htm">Chapter 5</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap06.htm">Chapter 6</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap07.htm">Chapter 7</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap08.htm">Chapter 8</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap09.htm">Chapter 9</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap10.htm">Chapter 10</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap11.htm">Chapter 11</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap12.htm">Chapter 12</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap13.htm">Chapter 13</a><br>
<br>
<a href="chap14.htm">Chapter 14</a></big></p>
<p> </p>
<p class="link"><a href="app01.htm"><big>Appendix 1</big><br>
<br>
[Origins of IS]</a><br>
<br>
<a href="app02.htm"><big>Appendix 2</big><br>
<br>
[Cliff’s Rosa Luxemburg]</a><br>
<br>
<big><a href="app03.htm">Appendix 3</a></big><br>
<br>
<a href="app03.htm#cli"><em>Notes on Democratic Centralism</em></a><br>
<small>(by T Cliff 20/6/68)</small><br>
<br>
<a href="app03.htm#kid"><em>We Are Not Peasants: a note – and proposals – on IS organisation</em></a><br>
<small>(Hull IS, 10/10/1968 – written by Michael Kidron)</small><br>
<br>
<big><a href="app04.htm">Appendix 4</a></big><br>
<br>
<a href="app04.htm#natsec">Letter to IS Branches from National Secretary</a><br>
<small>(10th April 1974)</small><br>
<br>
<a href="app04.htm#dup">Duplicated letter to all IS Branches</a><br>
<small>dated as postmark (circa 12th April 1974)</small><br>
<br>
<a href="app04.htm#rpr">Extracts from <em>A Funny Way to Go</em></a><br>
<small>by Roger Protz</small><br>
<br>
<big><a href="app05.htm">Appendix 5</a></big><br>
<br>
<a href="app05.htm#way"><em>The Way Ahead for IS</em></a><br>
<small>by Tony Cliff (<em>IS Internal Bulletin</em>, May 1974)</small><br>
<br>
<a href="app05.htm#nel"><em>Who Is Our Audience</em></a><br>
<small>by Ruth Nelson (<em>IS Internal Bulletin</em>, June 1974)</small><br>
<br>
<big><a href="app06.htm">Appendix 6</a></big><br>
<br>
<a href="app06.htm#pla"><em>The Platform of the IS Opposition</em></a><br>
<br>
<a href="app06.htm#rep"><em>A Reply to Comrade Duncan Hallas</em></a><br>
<small>by the IS Opposition</small></p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
More Years for the Locust
The Origins of the SWP
Cartoons by Phil Evans
(1997)
Originally published by IS Group, London, 1997.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford. (Transcriber’s note)
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
This book is dedicated
to the memory of
Harry Wicks
(1905 – 1989)
revolutionary communist
and a real working class hero
Preface
by Roger Protz
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Appendix 1
[Origins of IS]
Appendix 2
[Cliff’s Rosa Luxemburg]
Appendix 3
Notes on Democratic Centralism
(by T Cliff 20/6/68)
We Are Not Peasants: a note – and proposals – on IS organisation
(Hull IS, 10/10/1968 – written by Michael Kidron)
Appendix 4
Letter to IS Branches from National Secretary
(10th April 1974)
Duplicated letter to all IS Branches
dated as postmark (circa 12th April 1974)
Extracts from A Funny Way to Go
by Roger Protz
Appendix 5
The Way Ahead for IS
by Tony Cliff (IS Internal Bulletin, May 1974)
Who Is Our Audience
by Ruth Nelson (IS Internal Bulletin, June 1974)
Appendix 6
The Platform of the IS Opposition
A Reply to Comrade Duncan Hallas
by the IS Opposition
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Is Almond a Nut?</h1>
<h3>(Spring 1967)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj028" target="new">No.28</a>, Spring 1967, p.30.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">G.A. Almond<br>
<strong>The Appeals of Communism</strong><br>
<em>Princeton/OUP, 22s 6d</em></p>
<p class="fst">The Carnegie Corporation of New York is presumably some sort of charitable foundation. If not, without even trying it has got the NAB knocked into a cocked hat. For four years it provided the funds that enabled Professor Almond and his three assistants to ponder over and provide their answers to the questions: Why do people join the Communist Party? What happens after they join? Why do they leave?! The result is a fun riot from its soft front cover clear through its soggy pages to its soft conclusions.</p>
<p>In part one they construct a picture of <em>The Communist Militant</em>. The novelty of their method is breath-taking in its intellectual audacity. Using what they describe as qualitative and quantitative analysis they took every page of <strong>Left Wing Communism</strong> and every other page of <strong>What is to be Done?</strong> and the <strong>History of the CPSU(B)</strong>, checking their conclusions by comparison by examination of <strong>Foundations of Leninism</strong> and <strong>State and Revolution</strong>. This it seems to me goes one better than the Seventh Day Adventists who have to read every word of every book of the Bible to prove something daft. But if the Carnegie Foundation would like to expend a few extra shillings in keeping me in the academic style to which I would like to become accustomed I am prepared to sleep on the <strong>Collected Works</strong> of Lenin and get my searching conclusions by osmosis.</p>
<p>Professor Almond and his team did not leave their research at the level of half-baked exegesis. One of the assistants (Herbert E. Krugman, author of <strong>The Interplay of Social and Psychological Factors in Political Deviance</strong>, and clearly not a man to be trifled with) earned his Carnegie handout by developing the interviewing schedules. The sociological and psychological interview guides are given in Appendix 2. Bedwetting, infant masturbation, pre-, post-, and extra-marital sex all feature in the guide. As one who always reads the back page first to see if there is a happy ending these items hit my eye as soon as I opened the book. My disappointment can be imagined when it turned out that there were no Kinsey-type tables by which I could measure my performance with those of the interviewees. There are however several case histories from all over Europe and America. Under the heading <em>Neurotic Susceptibility</em> they all seem for good reasons to have hated or despised their parents. The conclusion from all this is apparently that “the party makes it possible to dignify and ennoble these (anti-parent) hostile impulses ... and to direct them on other and safer targets ...” Now, big though my father is, I have never considered him to be in the same class for violence as a capitalist state (not even a small one) and for a soft option I will take on my old Dad any day.</p>
<p>The book is full of this sort of material and for those ex-Communists like myself with a formidable record of bed-wetting, infant onanism and kinky ideas about sex this is a must. Just drop me a line and I’ll lend it to you.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Is Almond a Nut?
(Spring 1967)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.28, Spring 1967, p.30.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
G.A. Almond
The Appeals of Communism
Princeton/OUP, 22s 6d
The Carnegie Corporation of New York is presumably some sort of charitable foundation. If not, without even trying it has got the NAB knocked into a cocked hat. For four years it provided the funds that enabled Professor Almond and his three assistants to ponder over and provide their answers to the questions: Why do people join the Communist Party? What happens after they join? Why do they leave?! The result is a fun riot from its soft front cover clear through its soggy pages to its soft conclusions.
In part one they construct a picture of The Communist Militant. The novelty of their method is breath-taking in its intellectual audacity. Using what they describe as qualitative and quantitative analysis they took every page of Left Wing Communism and every other page of What is to be Done? and the History of the CPSU(B), checking their conclusions by comparison by examination of Foundations of Leninism and State and Revolution. This it seems to me goes one better than the Seventh Day Adventists who have to read every word of every book of the Bible to prove something daft. But if the Carnegie Foundation would like to expend a few extra shillings in keeping me in the academic style to which I would like to become accustomed I am prepared to sleep on the Collected Works of Lenin and get my searching conclusions by osmosis.
Professor Almond and his team did not leave their research at the level of half-baked exegesis. One of the assistants (Herbert E. Krugman, author of The Interplay of Social and Psychological Factors in Political Deviance, and clearly not a man to be trifled with) earned his Carnegie handout by developing the interviewing schedules. The sociological and psychological interview guides are given in Appendix 2. Bedwetting, infant masturbation, pre-, post-, and extra-marital sex all feature in the guide. As one who always reads the back page first to see if there is a happy ending these items hit my eye as soon as I opened the book. My disappointment can be imagined when it turned out that there were no Kinsey-type tables by which I could measure my performance with those of the interviewees. There are however several case histories from all over Europe and America. Under the heading Neurotic Susceptibility they all seem for good reasons to have hated or despised their parents. The conclusion from all this is apparently that “the party makes it possible to dignify and ennoble these (anti-parent) hostile impulses ... and to direct them on other and safer targets ...” Now, big though my father is, I have never considered him to be in the same class for violence as a capitalist state (not even a small one) and for a soft option I will take on my old Dad any day.
The book is full of this sort of material and for those ex-Communists like myself with a formidable record of bed-wetting, infant onanism and kinky ideas about sex this is a must. Just drop me a line and I’ll lend it to you.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h4>Transport</h4>
<h1>Art for BR’s sake</h1>
<h3>(January 1976)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 24 January 1976, p.17.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The transport campaign is heating up very nicely. Mr Crosland has resurrected the term “codswallop”, Mr Sid Weighell has called Mr Crosland a “bloody liar”, railway workers have converged on the House of Commons protesting against any further cuts and that formidable publicist Mr William Camp is now orchestrating the campaign.</p>
<p>Let me say right away that I am with Mr Camp all the way. Just recently my undying support was confirmed as I left our local station, a grimy pile on the Euston-Watford suburban line, to be handed a leaflet. Having nothing to read I took one. Imagine my horror to discover the startling intelligence that as from January 1976 the trains on our line would run only half as frequently with half the number of carriages. So incensed was I that I almost rushed back into the station to assault the ticket clerk, a morose fellow, whose vocabulary completely omits the words “please” and “thank you”. I have had it in for him for some time. Second and wiser thoughts prevailed; he is squat but muscular and protected by an iron grille. Let us look, I thought, into the matter of alternative transport.</p>
<p>Cars I dismissed immediately. To my mind they are despicable heaps of rust-infected danger, impossible to park in central London and requiring more care than a whole raft of relations. Such transport is vulgar, anti-social and quite beyond my means.</p>
<p>Trains, a great love ever since my infant yearnings for footplate glory, are the most civilised means of transport but they are rapidly pricing themselves out of the market. Currently to travel the seven stops in to Euston I am required to pay 62p, the equivalent of 12s 6d in real money. One of the great certainties of my life is that in short order it will be even more expensive. How long, I wonder, before the British Rail slogan is: “A pound for the round trip”?</p>
<p>Fortunately there is a bus route at the end of our road that runs by a circuitous route to London Bridge, stopping on its way in the Grays Inn Road hard by the <strong>Spectator</strong> Offices in Doughty Street. With a certain low cunning I ascertained that those travelling between 9.30am and 4pm could go as far as they liked for 16p.</p>
<p>Armed with this information, warmed by thoughts of staggering economies and the chagrin of Richard Marsh when he discovered my ruse, I joined the bus queue a little after 9.30 am. My fellow travellers seemed to be entirely made up of old age pensioners, or senior citizens as the current cloying usage would have them. The day was decidedly brisk and as we waited, watching a steady procession of buses going in the opposite direction, I began to fear for the lives of the more bronchitic oldsters. Half an hour later a bus hove into sight, loaded to the gunwales with senescent passengers; although half a dozen got off nobody was permitted to board. A few minutes later another bus sailed past, en route, no doubt, to the garage, hot tea and bacon butties.</p>
<p>Forty minutes of total waiting time and a bus arrived purporting to be going to London Bridge. The conductor, a jolly fellow, jokingly called out to his prospective passengers: “Cash customers only”. This, I discovered, was a slighting reference to the fact that the senior citizen can obtain a free bus pass. It was an ill-advised sally, giving rise to coarse words and cries of “You’ll be old yourself one day”. Indeed, if age and the numbing cold had not taken their toll, the lad was in danger of being lynched. At the time I would have helped tie the noose.</p>
<p>Having mounted the bus, purchased my 16p ticket and exchanged a little light conversation with the charming old person sharing my seat, I settled down to enjoy the ride. Two stops later the bus crew alighted to be replaced by another who immediately changed the destination to Baker Street. The thought of another long draughty wait at Baker Street was too much to bear. I abused the blameless conductor, alighted and caught the train, 16p worse off and at least ten years older. Another experience like that and I too would qualify for a free bus pass.</p>
<p>There for a time it rested. Within a week my temperature was down to normal and the dog had stopped hiding in the coal bunker. Then I purchased my copy of the <strong>Evening Standard</strong> and everything was set at odds again. On the front page, under the banner headline: “Big Chance London Should Grab”, was an article by Mr Anthony Sampson on our London underground. Its burden, lengthily and breathlessly extended to page 3, was that London stations are pretty slummy places, ill-kept and with outdated decor. The oil deficit, pollution and the well-being of the populace would all be improved if the stations were brightened up, thus attracting the customers off the roads and into the subway. In Mexico City, we were told, “the platforms are lined with reproductions of Mayan and Aztec sculptures”; various “daring colour schemes” decorate the stations of the Mexican metro. The design of the Fleet and Victoria lines was slightingly compared to the dazzling artistic glories of Paris, Milan and Munich and other daring foreign cities. Well, it is a point of view, but someone might tell the <strong>Standard</strong> that we catch trains not for cultural sustenance but to get somewhere. No amount of artistic trimming can compensate for high fares, infrequent trains and bone-crushing overcrowding. Fond though I am of the notion of public art for the masses it would please me not at all to know that some latter-day Diego Rivera was painting a tasteful mural at Tottenham Court Road station if I cannot afford to get there.</p>
<p>Indeed, reverting to suburban stations, I can testify to the rugged charms of decaying railway buildings. There was one such station on the North London Line called Kentish Town West. It was quite the grottiest station I ever experienced, Paint peeled from its rotting, Victorian frescoes and woodwork. The platform, made of tar-dressed baulks of timber, was uneven and sadly in need of prompt remedial action. Nevertheless British Rail had given it a second class award for station tidiness and appearance. This may have been an uncharacteristic British Rail policy to encourage the staff. Otherwise I dread to think what a third class station looked like. For all that, trains used to stop there and carried passengers away with reasonable speed from Prince of Wales Road, in itself a public service of no mean value. And then, several years ago, Kentish Town West burned down. Having seen the Sampson piece I now have the sneaking suspicion that some early adherent of the Sampson school, his aesthetic sensibilities offended beyond bearing at its extreme squalor, put it to the torch.</p>
<p>My heart, and puny efforts, are at the service of Messrs Camp, Weighell and Buckton. When the combined brains of British Rail and London Transport cannot turn the trick then art will not suffice. I know that I am angry, frustrated and increasingly game for mayhem with each day that passes. Short of banning all cars (what a splendid thought) and making the trains run twice as often with double the carriages all for nothing, I have no immediate solution. In the meanwhile I have this small, modest economy wheeze. I shall continue to take the train and stop taking the <strong>Evening Standard</strong>. Laugh that one off, Sir Max.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Transport
Art for BR’s sake
(January 1976)
From the Spectator, 24 January 1976, p.17.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The transport campaign is heating up very nicely. Mr Crosland has resurrected the term “codswallop”, Mr Sid Weighell has called Mr Crosland a “bloody liar”, railway workers have converged on the House of Commons protesting against any further cuts and that formidable publicist Mr William Camp is now orchestrating the campaign.
Let me say right away that I am with Mr Camp all the way. Just recently my undying support was confirmed as I left our local station, a grimy pile on the Euston-Watford suburban line, to be handed a leaflet. Having nothing to read I took one. Imagine my horror to discover the startling intelligence that as from January 1976 the trains on our line would run only half as frequently with half the number of carriages. So incensed was I that I almost rushed back into the station to assault the ticket clerk, a morose fellow, whose vocabulary completely omits the words “please” and “thank you”. I have had it in for him for some time. Second and wiser thoughts prevailed; he is squat but muscular and protected by an iron grille. Let us look, I thought, into the matter of alternative transport.
Cars I dismissed immediately. To my mind they are despicable heaps of rust-infected danger, impossible to park in central London and requiring more care than a whole raft of relations. Such transport is vulgar, anti-social and quite beyond my means.
Trains, a great love ever since my infant yearnings for footplate glory, are the most civilised means of transport but they are rapidly pricing themselves out of the market. Currently to travel the seven stops in to Euston I am required to pay 62p, the equivalent of 12s 6d in real money. One of the great certainties of my life is that in short order it will be even more expensive. How long, I wonder, before the British Rail slogan is: “A pound for the round trip”?
Fortunately there is a bus route at the end of our road that runs by a circuitous route to London Bridge, stopping on its way in the Grays Inn Road hard by the Spectator Offices in Doughty Street. With a certain low cunning I ascertained that those travelling between 9.30am and 4pm could go as far as they liked for 16p.
Armed with this information, warmed by thoughts of staggering economies and the chagrin of Richard Marsh when he discovered my ruse, I joined the bus queue a little after 9.30 am. My fellow travellers seemed to be entirely made up of old age pensioners, or senior citizens as the current cloying usage would have them. The day was decidedly brisk and as we waited, watching a steady procession of buses going in the opposite direction, I began to fear for the lives of the more bronchitic oldsters. Half an hour later a bus hove into sight, loaded to the gunwales with senescent passengers; although half a dozen got off nobody was permitted to board. A few minutes later another bus sailed past, en route, no doubt, to the garage, hot tea and bacon butties.
Forty minutes of total waiting time and a bus arrived purporting to be going to London Bridge. The conductor, a jolly fellow, jokingly called out to his prospective passengers: “Cash customers only”. This, I discovered, was a slighting reference to the fact that the senior citizen can obtain a free bus pass. It was an ill-advised sally, giving rise to coarse words and cries of “You’ll be old yourself one day”. Indeed, if age and the numbing cold had not taken their toll, the lad was in danger of being lynched. At the time I would have helped tie the noose.
Having mounted the bus, purchased my 16p ticket and exchanged a little light conversation with the charming old person sharing my seat, I settled down to enjoy the ride. Two stops later the bus crew alighted to be replaced by another who immediately changed the destination to Baker Street. The thought of another long draughty wait at Baker Street was too much to bear. I abused the blameless conductor, alighted and caught the train, 16p worse off and at least ten years older. Another experience like that and I too would qualify for a free bus pass.
There for a time it rested. Within a week my temperature was down to normal and the dog had stopped hiding in the coal bunker. Then I purchased my copy of the Evening Standard and everything was set at odds again. On the front page, under the banner headline: “Big Chance London Should Grab”, was an article by Mr Anthony Sampson on our London underground. Its burden, lengthily and breathlessly extended to page 3, was that London stations are pretty slummy places, ill-kept and with outdated decor. The oil deficit, pollution and the well-being of the populace would all be improved if the stations were brightened up, thus attracting the customers off the roads and into the subway. In Mexico City, we were told, “the platforms are lined with reproductions of Mayan and Aztec sculptures”; various “daring colour schemes” decorate the stations of the Mexican metro. The design of the Fleet and Victoria lines was slightingly compared to the dazzling artistic glories of Paris, Milan and Munich and other daring foreign cities. Well, it is a point of view, but someone might tell the Standard that we catch trains not for cultural sustenance but to get somewhere. No amount of artistic trimming can compensate for high fares, infrequent trains and bone-crushing overcrowding. Fond though I am of the notion of public art for the masses it would please me not at all to know that some latter-day Diego Rivera was painting a tasteful mural at Tottenham Court Road station if I cannot afford to get there.
Indeed, reverting to suburban stations, I can testify to the rugged charms of decaying railway buildings. There was one such station on the North London Line called Kentish Town West. It was quite the grottiest station I ever experienced, Paint peeled from its rotting, Victorian frescoes and woodwork. The platform, made of tar-dressed baulks of timber, was uneven and sadly in need of prompt remedial action. Nevertheless British Rail had given it a second class award for station tidiness and appearance. This may have been an uncharacteristic British Rail policy to encourage the staff. Otherwise I dread to think what a third class station looked like. For all that, trains used to stop there and carried passengers away with reasonable speed from Prince of Wales Road, in itself a public service of no mean value. And then, several years ago, Kentish Town West burned down. Having seen the Sampson piece I now have the sneaking suspicion that some early adherent of the Sampson school, his aesthetic sensibilities offended beyond bearing at its extreme squalor, put it to the torch.
My heart, and puny efforts, are at the service of Messrs Camp, Weighell and Buckton. When the combined brains of British Rail and London Transport cannot turn the trick then art will not suffice. I know that I am angry, frustrated and increasingly game for mayhem with each day that passes. Short of banning all cars (what a splendid thought) and making the trains run twice as often with double the carriages all for nothing, I have no immediate solution. In the meanwhile I have this small, modest economy wheeze. I shall continue to take the train and stop taking the Evening Standard. Laugh that one off, Sir Max.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Breakthrough for the Trots?</h1>
<h3>(November 1977)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 12 November 1977.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">The revolutionary Left in Britain, or elsewhere for that matter, is like other religions – secular or spiritual – supremely logical in its development once the basic assumptions have been accepted. Even so, it is not always easy to plot its course because that so often depends upon rather subjective exegetics on the holy texts. Nevertheless, once these reservations have been made, it is possible for those with that sort of mind to find some <em>post facto</em> rationality in what might otherwise seem to be a perverse shift of direction, even a departure from principle. Without such reservations one might be forced to the conclusion that the pious are at best demented or at worst more than a touch dishonest.</p>
<p>So it is with the Socialist Workers’ Party, formerly the International Socialists. The SWP – following their spectacular piece of street theatre at Lewisham – have been gratified at the attention they have received from the press. If ambition were to be measured in column inches then the SWP has certainly attained one of its objectives, which is to outstrip the Communist Party. It was not always this way. In one or other of its several manifestations the SWP has been in existence for nearly thirty years; first as a faction within the official Trotskyist movement, later as a very small entryist group in the Labour Party, and finally, and most recently, as a more and more stridently self-proclaimed alternative to all other socialist organisations.</p>
<p>For the first sixteen odd years of its existence the SWP remained small (a hundred or less), dependent for survival on its parasitic role within the Labour Party. It had few prospects and little influence outside the overheated atmosphere of the Young Socialists. Then, in 1968, two unconnected events led to a certain take-off; first, and most significant, the May 1968 disturbances in France, and secondly the dockers’ march in support of Enoch Powell’s views on immigration. Contradictory though these two happenings may be, and at the time they both seemed to have a certain elemental character, they had the effect of galvanising a section of the student body in our universities. Such organisations as the Revolutionary Socialist Student Federation were formed. The International Marxist Group developed a theory of the universities as “red bases” from which the revolution would spread to the working class. The SWP was less euphoric about the revolutionary catalyst within the dreaming spires. It was, however, gaining useful, intelligent and idealistic recruits who could be directed to more fruitful fields of endeavour. The student cadre was “turned toward the class”, a euphemism for propaganda outside factories and in a few cases directing graduates to factory jobs, where they could “struggle for leadership”.</p>
<p>Although, at first sight it might seem an odd choice to thrust some pass degree sociology student into the maelstrom of Linwood, in many cases it worked. Ex-students did attain the eminence of shop stewards and, fortunately for them, the Tory government was elected on a union-bashing platform. The history of the escalating industrial strife that marked the Heath administration has been well documented, but less well noted was the growth in membership of the SWP during that period. That growth was, for the first time, at least half composed of industrial workers and white collar workers. By the time that the Tories were brought down by the miners the SWP had 4,000 members, a good sprinkling of whom occupied positions of some influence in trade union bodies.</p>
<p>For the SWP the perspective was one of ever-increasing industrial militancy, accompanied by massive growth in their organisation. Unfortunately for them, the Labour government was returned to power in February 1971, and after a brief period, in which wage rates were let rip, the Jack Jones-inspired social contract held sway. The life went out of wages militancy and the comrades were left with an infant National Rank and File movement, which they paid for and sustained, without the industrial suite to breathe life into it.</p>
<p>A new tactic was required, and as unemployment grew, the Rank and File movement was transformed, overnight, into the Right to Work campaign. In a rather slavish imitation of the pre-war hunger marches, contingents of young enthusiasts were conducted on foot from Manchester to London and then from London to Brighton. At the culmination of the Manchester march there was the fracas with the police at Hendon. The party was on the streets and engaging the agents of the class enemy. For all the spectacular mayhem, though, the campaign did not attract more than a few recruits.</p>
<p>It was the rise of the National Front and the adoption of anti-fascist activity, that gave the SWP its chance for publicity and recruitment. The slogan was to change the colour of the SWP; it had to be darkened by the infusion of coloured youth and workers. It was successful, at least in this objective. The NF, a disparate collection of ex-Nazis and apoplectic racialists, cannot mobilise a force on the streets of any significant size, whereas the SWP, if it pulls out the stops, can mobilise two, three or even more times their number. Punch-up politics are not without some pay-off for those who engage in them. SWP membership increased – as did that of the NF.</p>
<p>As part of “going public”, by-elections were fought and their ageing boy orator Paul Foot was trotted around the country on a well-organised speaking tours. It was all very exciting, but it was really marking time until the next breakthrough into the “real” working class.</p>
<p>That is the stage that seems to have arrived. The power workers have takers unofficial action. The miners are intent upon a large increase untrammelled by productivity strings. The SWP calculation is that a rerun of 1973-74 is the order of the day. The question that remains is: will the recent recruitment constitute as firm a base as that of 1968? There will undoubtedly be some attrition of these who joined on a wave of anti-fascist euphoria and can find no place in an industrially oriented strategy. Again, it is a big question whether they now have sufficient numbers to maintain a certain public political presence while putting the main emphasis on industrial struggle. That is certainly their intention: a broad anti-fascist body is in process of formation which will include some forty Labour MPs among its sponsors. At the same time a reconvened National Rank and File conference will take place for shop stewards and trade union militants in December. Whatever their ability to balance the conflicting demands of agitation, the justification will be found in some text from the Leninist canon and the <em>raison-d’etre</em> in industrial militancy.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Breakthrough for the Trots?
(November 1977)
From the Spectator, 12 November 1977.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The revolutionary Left in Britain, or elsewhere for that matter, is like other religions – secular or spiritual – supremely logical in its development once the basic assumptions have been accepted. Even so, it is not always easy to plot its course because that so often depends upon rather subjective exegetics on the holy texts. Nevertheless, once these reservations have been made, it is possible for those with that sort of mind to find some post facto rationality in what might otherwise seem to be a perverse shift of direction, even a departure from principle. Without such reservations one might be forced to the conclusion that the pious are at best demented or at worst more than a touch dishonest.
So it is with the Socialist Workers’ Party, formerly the International Socialists. The SWP – following their spectacular piece of street theatre at Lewisham – have been gratified at the attention they have received from the press. If ambition were to be measured in column inches then the SWP has certainly attained one of its objectives, which is to outstrip the Communist Party. It was not always this way. In one or other of its several manifestations the SWP has been in existence for nearly thirty years; first as a faction within the official Trotskyist movement, later as a very small entryist group in the Labour Party, and finally, and most recently, as a more and more stridently self-proclaimed alternative to all other socialist organisations.
For the first sixteen odd years of its existence the SWP remained small (a hundred or less), dependent for survival on its parasitic role within the Labour Party. It had few prospects and little influence outside the overheated atmosphere of the Young Socialists. Then, in 1968, two unconnected events led to a certain take-off; first, and most significant, the May 1968 disturbances in France, and secondly the dockers’ march in support of Enoch Powell’s views on immigration. Contradictory though these two happenings may be, and at the time they both seemed to have a certain elemental character, they had the effect of galvanising a section of the student body in our universities. Such organisations as the Revolutionary Socialist Student Federation were formed. The International Marxist Group developed a theory of the universities as “red bases” from which the revolution would spread to the working class. The SWP was less euphoric about the revolutionary catalyst within the dreaming spires. It was, however, gaining useful, intelligent and idealistic recruits who could be directed to more fruitful fields of endeavour. The student cadre was “turned toward the class”, a euphemism for propaganda outside factories and in a few cases directing graduates to factory jobs, where they could “struggle for leadership”.
Although, at first sight it might seem an odd choice to thrust some pass degree sociology student into the maelstrom of Linwood, in many cases it worked. Ex-students did attain the eminence of shop stewards and, fortunately for them, the Tory government was elected on a union-bashing platform. The history of the escalating industrial strife that marked the Heath administration has been well documented, but less well noted was the growth in membership of the SWP during that period. That growth was, for the first time, at least half composed of industrial workers and white collar workers. By the time that the Tories were brought down by the miners the SWP had 4,000 members, a good sprinkling of whom occupied positions of some influence in trade union bodies.
For the SWP the perspective was one of ever-increasing industrial militancy, accompanied by massive growth in their organisation. Unfortunately for them, the Labour government was returned to power in February 1971, and after a brief period, in which wage rates were let rip, the Jack Jones-inspired social contract held sway. The life went out of wages militancy and the comrades were left with an infant National Rank and File movement, which they paid for and sustained, without the industrial suite to breathe life into it.
A new tactic was required, and as unemployment grew, the Rank and File movement was transformed, overnight, into the Right to Work campaign. In a rather slavish imitation of the pre-war hunger marches, contingents of young enthusiasts were conducted on foot from Manchester to London and then from London to Brighton. At the culmination of the Manchester march there was the fracas with the police at Hendon. The party was on the streets and engaging the agents of the class enemy. For all the spectacular mayhem, though, the campaign did not attract more than a few recruits.
It was the rise of the National Front and the adoption of anti-fascist activity, that gave the SWP its chance for publicity and recruitment. The slogan was to change the colour of the SWP; it had to be darkened by the infusion of coloured youth and workers. It was successful, at least in this objective. The NF, a disparate collection of ex-Nazis and apoplectic racialists, cannot mobilise a force on the streets of any significant size, whereas the SWP, if it pulls out the stops, can mobilise two, three or even more times their number. Punch-up politics are not without some pay-off for those who engage in them. SWP membership increased – as did that of the NF.
As part of “going public”, by-elections were fought and their ageing boy orator Paul Foot was trotted around the country on a well-organised speaking tours. It was all very exciting, but it was really marking time until the next breakthrough into the “real” working class.
That is the stage that seems to have arrived. The power workers have takers unofficial action. The miners are intent upon a large increase untrammelled by productivity strings. The SWP calculation is that a rerun of 1973-74 is the order of the day. The question that remains is: will the recent recruitment constitute as firm a base as that of 1968? There will undoubtedly be some attrition of these who joined on a wave of anti-fascist euphoria and can find no place in an industrially oriented strategy. Again, it is a big question whether they now have sufficient numbers to maintain a certain public political presence while putting the main emphasis on industrial struggle. That is certainly their intention: a broad anti-fascist body is in process of formation which will include some forty Labour MPs among its sponsors. At the same time a reconvened National Rank and File conference will take place for shop stewards and trade union militants in December. Whatever their ability to balance the conflicting demands of agitation, the justification will be found in some text from the Leninist canon and the raison-d’etre in industrial militancy.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Are Journalists Often Red?</h1>
<h3>(May 1976)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 8 May 1976, p.12.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Buxton is a rather sad little town. It retains features of its former glory, but greyer and slightly frayed around the edges – a place where the pension queue is longer than the one for child allowances.</p>
<p>It was to Buxton that the National Union of Journalists came for their Annual Delegate Meeting. A few years ago that might well have been appropriate – the “never was” visiting the “never will be again”. But time, and the NUJ have changed. With what some consider unseemly haste the NUJ is showing signs of becoming a trade union in the accepted sense of the word.</p>
<p>The usual reason given for the transformation is that there has been an incursion of Trotskyists. The reds, it is suggested, have come out from under the beds, are ejecting the moderate occupants and playing havoc with the bedclothes in the process. It may come as a disappointment to some that it is not like that at all.</p>
<p>There are, of course, some Trotskyists in NUJ, as there are in a number of white collar unions. In the post-1968 student vanguard there were some who, having graduated, turned to journalism in the same way as all manner of moderate and non-political graduates did. Journalism, along with teaching, the civil service and other liberal professions, took its due proportion. But, to get the thing into perspective, the NUJ proportion, if vocal, is very small. Out of 300 delegates assembled at Buxton, I should be very surprised if snore than twenty-five were Trotskyists of any recognisable affiliation. The mistake that many of our distinguished commentators make is assume that any increase in trade union militancy is a result of left-wing activity and victory for their side. Such a view does them altogether too much honour and leaves out of account the simple fact that the finest agitator in the world is completely impotent if there is no clear and present grievance to agitate around. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the anguished theme of press freedom.</p>
<p>The story, designed like the fat boy in Dickens “to make yer flesh creep”, goes something like this: Mr Foot introduced the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act; by accident this raised the question of the closed shop in journalism. Coincidentally the left were in process of taking over the NUJ. In the final scene the reds would be censoring the news and filling the space left with class war propaganda. Now while I do know one or two reds who view such a situation with considerable relish, I know none who see it as any kind of possibility. For journalists, as for boilermakers, printers and a host of others, the closed shop is a tactic useful only in so far as it maximises their bargaining strength.</p>
<p>As to the left taking over the union, a brief glance at the election results for the NUJ Industrial Councils will indicate that the left did badly. They did even worse in the recent elections to the National Executive. At Buxton a left-wing attempt to suspend any further implementation of new printing technology was soundly rejected. What did happen at the meeting was that the campaign for the closed shop received an added impetus. But that has very little to do with revolutionary influence.</p>
<p>In Fleet Street there is a degree of over-manning, although this is rather overplayed, and rewards are comparatively high. In provincial newspaper, magazine and book publishing, staffing levels are low and the salaries are somewhat less than average industrial earnings. It is, perhaps, partly for these reasons that magazines and provincial newspapers are in general a great deal more profitable than national dailies.</p>
<p>Of late this situation has given rise to a number of wage disputes, sometimes breaking out into full-scale strikes. Unfortunately for the NUJ members involved, even if a majority join the strike, a few strike-breakers, the editor and a director or so can usually bring out some kind of newspaper. It was this realisation, rather than the machinations of sinister agitators, that built up pressure for a drive to the closed slop. It is this sort of spirit that now informs the deliberations of NUJ meetings.</p>
<p>In the great, and largely manufactured, panic at the threat to editorial freedom there have been a few notable misunderstandings. A prime example of this is the notorious “Barnsley case”. What was in fact a ludicrously small storm in a minuscule teacup has become a symbol to both sides in the controversy. The facts are that Barnsley NUJ has no reputation for militancy at all. In the past it was seldom active enough even to send a delegate to NUJ conferences. Until last December all the journalists in the town were members of the union, largely, one supposes, because the press card was a useful thing to have. Late in 1975 a check of the membership roll, not a long job as there were only thirty-five members, indicated that two of the number were over £25 in arrears. When this was called to their attention, the offending members noisily resigned and joined the Institute of Journalists. Somewhat incensed, the Barnsley NUJ wrote to local trade unions suggesting that only their members should be afforded press facilities by the local Labour movement. That letter is what caused all the furore, a quite unmerited response to a rather sordid little episode.</p>
<p>For all this though, the Buxton ADM, despite tendentious reports of “Russian style ovations”, looked to me rather more like a normal trade union conference than any other such NUJ gatherings I have attended. Part of the credit for this must go to the extreme competence of the president, the formidable Miss Rosaline Kelly, but mostly it was because the issues raised were straight trade union questions. As at almost every other union conference, the left generally lost the vote, there were some silly decisions and some sensible ones, and the junketing was suitably lavish.</p>
<p>It may be that there are those who view the idea of an effective NUJ with horror, but they are, no doubt, the same people who object to any effective trade unionism anywhere. What cannot be said, on the evidence of Buxton, is that the NUJ represents any threat to press freedom.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Are Journalists Often Red?
(May 1976)
From the Spectator, 8 May 1976, p.12.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Buxton is a rather sad little town. It retains features of its former glory, but greyer and slightly frayed around the edges – a place where the pension queue is longer than the one for child allowances.
It was to Buxton that the National Union of Journalists came for their Annual Delegate Meeting. A few years ago that might well have been appropriate – the “never was” visiting the “never will be again”. But time, and the NUJ have changed. With what some consider unseemly haste the NUJ is showing signs of becoming a trade union in the accepted sense of the word.
The usual reason given for the transformation is that there has been an incursion of Trotskyists. The reds, it is suggested, have come out from under the beds, are ejecting the moderate occupants and playing havoc with the bedclothes in the process. It may come as a disappointment to some that it is not like that at all.
There are, of course, some Trotskyists in NUJ, as there are in a number of white collar unions. In the post-1968 student vanguard there were some who, having graduated, turned to journalism in the same way as all manner of moderate and non-political graduates did. Journalism, along with teaching, the civil service and other liberal professions, took its due proportion. But, to get the thing into perspective, the NUJ proportion, if vocal, is very small. Out of 300 delegates assembled at Buxton, I should be very surprised if snore than twenty-five were Trotskyists of any recognisable affiliation. The mistake that many of our distinguished commentators make is assume that any increase in trade union militancy is a result of left-wing activity and victory for their side. Such a view does them altogether too much honour and leaves out of account the simple fact that the finest agitator in the world is completely impotent if there is no clear and present grievance to agitate around. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the anguished theme of press freedom.
The story, designed like the fat boy in Dickens “to make yer flesh creep”, goes something like this: Mr Foot introduced the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act; by accident this raised the question of the closed shop in journalism. Coincidentally the left were in process of taking over the NUJ. In the final scene the reds would be censoring the news and filling the space left with class war propaganda. Now while I do know one or two reds who view such a situation with considerable relish, I know none who see it as any kind of possibility. For journalists, as for boilermakers, printers and a host of others, the closed shop is a tactic useful only in so far as it maximises their bargaining strength.
As to the left taking over the union, a brief glance at the election results for the NUJ Industrial Councils will indicate that the left did badly. They did even worse in the recent elections to the National Executive. At Buxton a left-wing attempt to suspend any further implementation of new printing technology was soundly rejected. What did happen at the meeting was that the campaign for the closed shop received an added impetus. But that has very little to do with revolutionary influence.
In Fleet Street there is a degree of over-manning, although this is rather overplayed, and rewards are comparatively high. In provincial newspaper, magazine and book publishing, staffing levels are low and the salaries are somewhat less than average industrial earnings. It is, perhaps, partly for these reasons that magazines and provincial newspapers are in general a great deal more profitable than national dailies.
Of late this situation has given rise to a number of wage disputes, sometimes breaking out into full-scale strikes. Unfortunately for the NUJ members involved, even if a majority join the strike, a few strike-breakers, the editor and a director or so can usually bring out some kind of newspaper. It was this realisation, rather than the machinations of sinister agitators, that built up pressure for a drive to the closed slop. It is this sort of spirit that now informs the deliberations of NUJ meetings.
In the great, and largely manufactured, panic at the threat to editorial freedom there have been a few notable misunderstandings. A prime example of this is the notorious “Barnsley case”. What was in fact a ludicrously small storm in a minuscule teacup has become a symbol to both sides in the controversy. The facts are that Barnsley NUJ has no reputation for militancy at all. In the past it was seldom active enough even to send a delegate to NUJ conferences. Until last December all the journalists in the town were members of the union, largely, one supposes, because the press card was a useful thing to have. Late in 1975 a check of the membership roll, not a long job as there were only thirty-five members, indicated that two of the number were over £25 in arrears. When this was called to their attention, the offending members noisily resigned and joined the Institute of Journalists. Somewhat incensed, the Barnsley NUJ wrote to local trade unions suggesting that only their members should be afforded press facilities by the local Labour movement. That letter is what caused all the furore, a quite unmerited response to a rather sordid little episode.
For all this though, the Buxton ADM, despite tendentious reports of “Russian style ovations”, looked to me rather more like a normal trade union conference than any other such NUJ gatherings I have attended. Part of the credit for this must go to the extreme competence of the president, the formidable Miss Rosaline Kelly, but mostly it was because the issues raised were straight trade union questions. As at almost every other union conference, the left generally lost the vote, there were some silly decisions and some sensible ones, and the junketing was suitably lavish.
It may be that there are those who view the idea of an effective NUJ with horror, but they are, no doubt, the same people who object to any effective trade unionism anywhere. What cannot be said, on the evidence of Buxton, is that the NUJ represents any threat to press freedom.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>1917: Lenin and the Working Class</h1>
<h3>(Autumn 1967)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj030" target="new">No.30</a>, Autumn 1967, pp.16-20.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Theory, my friend is grey, but green is the eternal tree of life.”</em> Goethe (Quoted by Lenin, April 1917).</p>
<p class="fst">The fiftieth anniversary of the October revolution is upon us and no doubt it will be celebrated in differing ways in different places. In the West we shall be treated to analyses of the fatal conjuncture of the Slavic mood and the evil genius of Lenin. Weighty, and even weightier tomes, will thud from the academic presses adding obscurity to ignorance. While in China the event may be celebrated by the explosion of yet another and larger bomb, inspired by the pure clean thought of the “great helmsman” and containing a lot of very dirty strontium 90. In Russia, the cradle of the revolution, we can expect to see bigger and better sputniks, some devastating weaponry and record-breaking crowds shuffling past the obscene mixture of skin, bone and formaldehyde that rests in the Lenin mausoleum. In all this trafficking in myths and inappropriate symbols, the real content of the revolution will be lost. For Lenin, as for any serious revolutionary, the real subject of 1917 was, and is, the Russian working class. In eight short months these workers move from Tsarist autocracy to the consummation of the Soviet power. Encapsulated in this process is the conclusive proof of the infinite possibilities for the working class. In this article I shall attempt to show how Lenin’s thought and development through 1917 closely followed and interacted with the development and capacities of the Russian workers.</p>
<p>All this is in no way to suggest that Lenin proceeded by a kind of inspired opportunism. The bourgeois commentators who are unable to see a connection between Lenin, the enthusiastic participator in the pre-war factional struggles, and Lenin, the leader of the victorious Bolsheviks’ are reduced to analyses, in greater or lesser detail, of each episode without thought for the links. The execution of his brother Alexander in 1887 may have brought him into the movement against autocracy. The futility of Alexander’s death may or may not have turned him away from Narodnism and towards the notion of a disciplined revolutionary socialist party. This notion of the party leads inevitably to the struggles of 1903 and <strong>What is to be Done?</strong> The subsequent fight with the Menshevists, the Godseekers, the Otzovists etc. follows quite naturally from the need for theoretical clarity in such a revolutionary party. All this development has internal consistency and can be worked through as high points in the psychological development of one or two individuals if what is required is an instant gloss with the trappings of scholarship. But such an approach really answers nothing. It cannot answer the why of 1905 and 1917 because it leaves out of account the relationship of these struggles to the working class. The aim was the emancipation of the class and the agency the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. If this is not understood the result can be a degeneration into the petty-bourgeois ideology of Stalinism or the assumption of historical play acting, as in a number of Trotskyist groups, where, like characters in a Pirandello play, they dispute for the leading role of Lenin. To write polemics in the Lenin style is easy, to make a revolution requires talent of a much higher order.</p>
<p>In the discussion that preceded 1917 perhaps none illustrates more clearly Lenin’s attitude to the class than his polemics on the question of the Imperialist war and the antics of the centrists. Martov in the bulletin of the Organising Committee of RSDLP (April 1916) had spoken of the need to maintain contact with the social patriots in the working class in the following vein:</p>
<p class="quoteb">... The cause of revolutionary Social Democracy would be in a sad, indeed hopeless plight, if those groups of workers who, in mental development, approach most closely to the “intelligentsia” and who are most highly skilled, fatally drifted away from it towards opportunism.</p>
<p class="fst">To which Lenin replied:</p>
<p class="quoteb">By means of the silly word “fatally” and a certain sleight of hand the fact is evaded that certain groups of workers have already drifted away to opportunism and to the imperialist bourgeois. And that is the very fact that the sophists of the OC (Organising Committee) want to evade. They confine themselves to the official optimism that Kautskyite Hilferding and the others now flaunt: the objective conditions guarantee the unity of the proletariat and the victory of the revolutionary trend! We forsooth are “optimists” with regard to the proletariat!</p>
<p class="quote">But in reality all these Kautskyites – Hilferding, the OC supporters are optimists ... with regard to opportunism. That is the whole point.</p>
<p class="quote">The proletariat is the child of capitalism – of world capitalism and not only European capitalism, or of imperialist capitalism. On a world scale, fifty years sooner or fifty years later ... the proletariat of course “will be” united, and the revolutionary Social Democracy will “inevitably” be victorious within it. But that is not the point Messrs Kautskyites. The point is that at the present time, in the imperialist countries of Europe, you are fawning on the opportunists, who are alien to the proletariat as a class ..., and unless the labour movement rids itself of them it will remain a bourgeois labour movement. By advocating unity with the opportunists .. you are , objectively, defending the enslavement of the workers by the imperialist bourgeoisie with the aid of its best agents in the Labour movement. <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a></p>
<p class="fst">In this last paragraph there is none of the sentimental maundering that characterises many an intellectual’s attitude to the working class. There is a clear differentiation between class interest and bourgeois tendencies within the labour movement. To see this vital difference is to go a long way to understanding Lenin’s success and Martov’s failure in the course of the revolution. Martov was, despite his intellectual realisation of revolutionary necessity, incapable of acting because of past friendly associations with his present opponents. This lesson is one that the present-day Communist Party has either forgotten or never learned. In their grotesque hunt for “unity of the Left” they are prepared for every rotten compromise which, particularly in the trade unions, makes them virtually indistinguishable from every other Labour faker.</p>
<p>Before the revolution Lenin was living in Switzerland, where contrary to the myth of Lenin’s Russian exclusionism, he was an individual member of the Swiss Social Democratic party and worked assiduously for the Left of that organisation. The Swiss party was considered to be on the left of the Zimmerwald International but this and its own party programme adopted at the 1915 congress which called for “revolutionary mass action” were largely paper. In this situation Lenin produced a programme tailored to meet the needs of the Swiss problem but based on an intransigent internationalism. Its aim was to mobilise a campaign around the issue of the war, counterposing the overthrow of capitalism as the end of all war. He showed that the fact of Swiss neutrality was being imported into the internal affairs of labour and that while war profits mushroomed working-class standards diminished. He called for a heavy progressive taxation on wealth and property; and for large scale nationalisation together with a series of democratic demands: the emancipation of women, naturalisation of foreign workers – foreigners suffered specific economic disabilities in Switzerland – and the extension of the principle of the referendum to socialist objectives. It is of course true that such a programme would have received an affirmative response from most Social Democrats (at least from Kautsky leftwards); the significant difference is that Lenin insisted a programme is only a serious matter when it is put to the scrutiny of the working class. As a concomitant of the programme he called for mass leafleting and propaganda in the trade unions and the party, coupled with strikes, demonstrations and mass actions.</p>
<p>Lenin, both before and after the revolution, attempted to test his theories in actual discussion with workers. In Krupskaya’s <strong>Memories of Lenin</strong> she shows one of his less successful attempts; unsuccessful but nevertheless significant. Lenin and Krupskaya were at a Swiss sanatorium for treatment for Krupskaya’s illness, she writes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Among the visitors to the “Milk” sanatorium was a soldier ... his lungs were not particularly strong, and he had been sent for treatment. He was quite a nice fellow. Vladimir Ilyich hovered about him like a cat after lard, tried several times to engage him in conversation about the predatory character of the war; the fellow would not contradict him but was clearly not interested. <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a></p>
<p class="fst">In his <em>Lecture on the 1905 Revolution</em> Lenin develops this theme of the self-activity of the class and the tactics of the Social Democracy. He shows that under conditions of autocracy even a peaceful demonstration led by a Priest with simple demands for the easing of suffering, cannot succeed without going over to fight the autocracy. From humble petitions the people moved rapidly and inevitably to political strikes. Under the impetus of working-class action the peasants began to take over the large estates (2,000 estates burned and the produce distributed). The soldiers and sailors arrested many of their officers. In the first month of the 1905 revolution there were more strikers (440,0000 than in the previous ten years (430,000). “An eight hour day and arms” was the slogan of the Petrograd workers; it was these same workers who produced the “peculiar mass organisations” – the Soviets of Workers deputies. This development of the 1905 revolution led Lenin to say “The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic.” In this monumental upheaval Social Democracy developed from organisations numbered in hundreds to parties with tens of thousands of members. In Petrograd alone there were three Social Democratic papers with circulations ranging from 50,000 to 100,000. The limits set were the limits the workers themselves imposed. With the benefit of hindsight, Lenin was able to say the revolution of 1905 was “a bourgeois democratic revolution in its social content but a proletarian revolution in its methods of struggle.” <a id="f3" href="#n3" name="f3">[3]</a> 1905 was the direct precursor of 1917. In 1905 the Tsarist regime suffered a blow to which it succumbed twelve years later. The Russian workers appeared on stage for the first time and immediately took the primary role with the peasantry following their lead. If many of the lessons of 1905 were only half way learned by some, and not at all by other, valuable experience had been gained by the workers and Social Democracy.</p>
<p>The revolution of February 1917, when it actually broke, took most of the socialists by surprise (only a month before the revolution Lenin said “we of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of the coming revolution”). The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who formed the majority in the Soviet were unable to comprehend the dual power that the Soviet represented. The preconceptions created by generations of theorising blinded them to the new and complex reality. The autocracy had been smashed and, according to the blue-print, the era of capitalist democratic reform would be ushered in with the socialists acting as a loyal opposition. Socialism would only be on the order of the day when capitalism had fulfilled its classical role of developing the productive forces and creating a mass working class. Unfortunately reality was more complicated. The immediate problem of alleviating pressing misery was incapable of solution while the Provisional Government continued the war, but the soviet supported the Provisional Government. The solution of the agrarian problem was one of immense difficulty and without the arbitrariness of poor peasant seizure there was no clear cut distribution that would harmonise with the complicated class divisions on the land. The Provisional government refused to act and maintained the existing land tenure. At the same time the workers were in a state of turmoil, not immediately sure as to their objectives, but unconvinced that things must change and putting their trust in their own creation – the Soviet. In the first flush of the revolution they were prepared to take on trust the Mensheviks and SR leadership when they pointed to the “democratic regime” as the prime gain of the revolution and when they claimed that defence of the Provisional Government was defence of the revolution. But it was not only the Soviet majority that suffered from illusions; the Bolsheviks were, in the main, caught in the same trap. On 1 March the Executive Committee of the Soviet discussed the conditions for handing over power to the Provisional Government, and not a voice was raised against the Government despite the fact that there were 11 Bolsheviks on a Committee of 39 members. “In the Soviet the day after the Executive meeting, according to Shylapnikov himself, out of 400 deputies only 19 voted against the transfer of power to the bourgeoisie and this although there were already 40 in the Bolshevik faction.” <a id="f4" href="#n4" name="f4">[4]</a> the Petrograd committee of the Bolsheviks announced that it would not oppose the power of the Provisional Government. With the return of Stalin and Kamenev to take over direction of the party in early March the line moved smartly to the right. In the <strong>Pravda</strong> of 15 March they said “... the Bolsheviks will decisively support the Provisional Government in so far as it fights reaction or counter-revolution... the Russian soldier must stand firm ly at his post answering bullet with bullet and shell with shell. Our slogan is not the meaningless ‘down with war.’ Our slogan is: pressure on the Provisional Government with the aim of compelling it ... to make an attempt to induce all the warring countries to open immediate negotiations... until then every man remains at his fighting post.” <a id="f5" href="#n5" name="f5">[5]</a> for those who like to imagine that they see the degeneration of the revolution in direct line from Lenin’s policy it might be as well to examine the policies advocated by Lenin’s Bolshevik opponents in 1917, opponents who later took over the party not on the basis of Leninism but as a direct continuation of its opposite. The <strong>Pravda</strong> article of Stalin and Kamenev could well have been written at any time during Stalin’s “Peace” campaign; it reeks of opportunism, class collaboration and a complete ignorance of Marxism.</p>
<p>In Switzerland Lenin was chafing at his inability to return to Russia and to influence events directly. His <strong>Letters from Afar</strong> although written on the basis of press reports contain brilliant insights into the character of the Provisional Government and its “social patriot” camp followers. Away from the actual struggle, his mind was still cast in some of the old categories, “The democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants,” but even then, at a time when the social democrats were handing over power to Milyukov and Kerensky, Lenin was calling for the arming of the people under the auspices of the soviet. The letters warned against an “epidemic of excitement,” leading to calls for unity with the Centre and right wing Social Democrats. In a letter to Kollontai on 17 March he says, “On no account with Kautsky. Definitely a more revolutionary programme and tactics.” for Lenin, 1914 had been the great watershed that divided the revolutionaries from the Kautskys of the Second International; the issue of the imperialist war had definitely sorted the reformist sheep from the revolutionary movement.</p>
<p>More certainly than ever before he knew that the possibilities of the revolution could only be achieved by an uncompromising internationalism. The revolution was not the occasion for papering over differences but for new and more hopeful approaches to the working class. The <strong>Letters from Afar</strong> call on the workers to act with the rural wage labourers to forge a unity that would do more than rid the peasant of the feudal aristocracy and lead on to a social upheaval in the town and country.</p>
<p>That Lenin still retained some of the limitations of the old programme is clear from his <em>Farewell Letter to the Swiss Socialists</em> in which he says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Socialism cannot triumph there (Russia) immediately and directly. But the peasant character of the country, the vast reserve of land in the hands of the nobility, may... give tremendous sweep to the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia and may make our revolution the prologue to the world socialist revolution. <a id="f6" href="#n6" name="f6">[6]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Russia according to this formulation was merely the first incomplete break in international capitalism. The final solution to the problems in Russia would appear in the revolution in the West, particularly Germany. Whatever lack of precision there may be in this perspective for the revolution, he was quite clear that the attitude of the Bolsheviks in Petrograd was both wrong and unprincipled:</p>
<p class="quoteb">On the 17th of March, through friends in Stockholm, he wrote a letter filled with alarm: “Our party would disgrace itself forever, kill itself politically, if it took part in such deceit (support for the Provisional Government’s war aims – <em>JH</em>) ...I would choose an immediate split with no matter who in our party, rather than surrender to social patriotism.” <a id="f7" href="#n7" name="f7">[7]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Whatever had been Lenin’s attitude to the immediate limitations of the revolution and independent class activity, it underwent a rapid change on his return to Russia. He arrived on 3 April and next day he addressed a meeting of the Bolsheviks followed immediately by a delivery of the same address to the Mensheviks (<strong>April Theses</strong>). The theses, which shocked Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike, made a complete break with the old programme. All power to the soviets. No return to the Parliamentary Republic. Uncompromising opposition to the war. Abolition of the army, the police and the standing bureaucracy and its replacement by the armed people. Nationalisation of the land and the banks, the disposition of the land to be under the control of the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers. Social production and distribution under control of the Soviets of Workers Deputies. From the Bolsheviks he demanded an immediate party congress to change the name of the party to the Communist Party, to alter the programme and to call for a new International.</p>
<p>Lenin was accused of telescoping history, denying Marxism and of political hysteria. His Bolshevik critics argued that he was jumping over a stage when he dismissed the “democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants” as a necessary precondition for the fulfilment of bourgeois democracy. Lenin would have none of this ritualism:</p>
<p class="quoteb">... The revolutionary dictatorship of the workers and peasants has certainly become a reality, in a certain way and to a certain extent, in the Russian revolution, for this formula envisages only a relation of classes and not a concrete political institution ... The formula is now antiquated ... a new and different task faces us; to effect a split within this dictatorship between the proletarian elements ... And the small proprietors and petty-bourgeois elements who are opposed to moving towards the commune and are in favour of the bourgeois government. To deal with the question of the completion of the bourgeois revolution in the old way is to sacrifice Marxism to the dead letter. <a id="f8" href="#n8" name="f8">[8]</a></p>
<p class="fst">It is obvious that at this stage Lenin understands for the first time the significance of the Soviets. The working class that spontaneously produced the Soviets was capable of far more than the and plans of the “orthodox Marxists.” From this fundamental premise the need for a second revolution becomes clearer. The tactics within the Soviet must be to break with those elements whose real desire was to break the Soviet power and consolidate the bourgeois republic. To do this formally was not difficult but the success of the tactics and the programme depended on how closely they related to the workers’ own needs. It was to this that Lenin now addressed himself. He produced a stream of propaganda articles containing simple explanations of the Bolshevik policy. He described where the parties stood in relation to the war, the Provisional Government, internationalism, the land and workers power.</p>
<p>Later in April, Lenin fought for his point of view at the Bolshevik conference and emerged victorious. A furious press campaign was started against him and the Bolsheviks. But they persisted in their propaganda. On May Day, Milyukov announced that the Provisional Government had promised the Allies war to the victory. Two days later there was an armed demonstration against the war. A reshuffle of the Government became necessary and the “socialists” joined the Ministry with Kerensky as Minister of War. Early in May the Kronstadt Soviet declared itself the sole governing body for Kronstadt. The Bolshevik propaganda was beginning to bite.</p>
<p>To take some of the steam out of the situation the SR and Menshevik majority called for a demonstration “to show the enemy the unity and strength of democracy.” This took place on 18th June and half a million workers and soldiers answered the call, but the slogans in support of the “democracy” were in very short supply. Only the Bund, Plekhanovs tiny group and a Cossack regiment carried slogans in support of the Government. For the rest there was an abundance of Bolshevik slogans – “Down with the ten capitalist ministers,” “All power to the Soviets.” as Trotsky said “It was a great victory, and moreover it was won on the arena and with the weapons chosen by the enemy.” The real class issue was being joined. Lenin’s intransigence in refusing unity with the Mensheviks was being proved correct. With the benefit of the experience of successive Labour administrations, one can recognise the same hypocrisy in the “socialists” of the Soviet and provisional Government’ talk about socialism coupled to a profound respect for the status quo; the socialist objectives remain inscribed in the tablets but there is always some clear and present danger that makes there implementation a thing of the future. To defend democracy they smash democracy and anyone who calls for the real solution to present and future dangers is a wildcat, or whatever is the present cant abuse word. For Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the abuse worked out to be the unlikely combination of anarchists and spontaneous street demonstration which the Bolsheviks against their better judgement felt compelled to support, the Government took the opportunity to ban the Bolsheviks and arrest its leaders.</p>
<p>Lenin went into hiding for one hundred and eleven days. It was during this time that he was able to write his book <strong>State and Revolution</strong>. This is a book that unfailingly mystifies the bourgeois commentators. For them Lenin was seized with some kind of mental aberration when, during a period of revolutionary tumult, he felt it necessary to discuss at length and in detail the Marxist theory of the state. But it is precisely the fact that Lenin was one of the few Marxists who was prepared to think through the implications of working-class power and activity that made him a great revolutionary. In observing the movement in life itself and them measuring the basic principles against what he saw, he was doing what he had always done before: in 1903 and the party controversy, through the giant leap forward of 1905, to the realisation in 1917 that dual power existed but could not go on for ever. One side had to triumph;: the Soviet and parliamentary democracy were mutually antagonistic forms. Given the past struggle it was but a short step to the call for “Soviet Power.” In <strong>State and Revolution</strong> Lenin gives form to the theory of the workers’ state, cutting through all the obscurity and falsification of the “popes of Marxism.” The bourgeois state must be smashed; its forms are not just inappropriate, they are impossible. Only the working class, organised as the ruling class, can start the long slow climb out of barbarism. For a Marxist, as opposed to the bourgeois commentator, perhaps the most appropriate time for theoretical works on the state is when the question of power is on the agenda.</p>
<p>From 6 July to 25 October Lenin was virtually isolated from contact with the party and the workers, but he was writing a constant stream of articles and letters, refuting slanders, commenting on the developing situation and especially urging a more audacious course on the Bolsheviks. During his period the economy was declining rapidly, peasant unrest was boiling over, and Kornilov, weary of Kerensky’s vacillation in dealing with the Soviet, attempted a coup. The constant worsening of the situation in town and country gave added relevance to the Bolshevik programme. On 12 September Lenin wrote to the Central Committee:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The Bolsheviks, having gained a majority in the Soviets ... of both capitals (Petrograd and Moscow), can and must take power into their own hands. <a id="f9" href="#n9" name="f9">[9]</a></p>
<p class="fst">The situation, he argued, was such that only the implementation of the Bolshevik programme could save any gains of the February revolution, let alone make an advance. The SRs and the Mensheviks were for the war and support of the Provisional Government but neither the Government nor the Soviet could fight a war. The peasants were agitating for land and the Government was putting them down. The revolution was foundering on the incapacity of the government and its supporters. The objective conditions for the second revolution were ripe; it was necessary now to agitate among the workers:</p>
<p class="quoteb">... we must dispatch our entire group to the factories and the barracks. Their place is there, the pulse of life is there, there is the source of salvation for our revolution. <a id="f10" href="#n10" name="f10">[10]</a></p>
<p class="fst">In criticizing the Bolsheviks for their presence at the “Democratic Conference,” after it became clear that Kerensky was intent on a compromise with the army, Lenin said “Ten soldiers or ten workers from a backward factory who have become politically enlightened are worth a thousand times more than a hundred delegates hand picked by the Lieberdans.” (Lieberdan – Composite nickname from Lieber and Dan the Menshevik leaders – <em>JH</em>)</p>
<p>In a front page article in the Bolshevik paper <strong>Rabochy Put</strong>, 29 September, entitled <em>The Crisis Has Matured</em>, Lenin put the case for the second revolution in the context of the international socialist movement. The crisis, he said, was maturing in Germany, Italy and France. In Russia under the slogan of democracy the coalition of bourgeoisie and social patriots were smashing the peasant revolts in the tradition of Stolypin and preparing the defeat of the Soviets in the interest of continuing the war. In an addendum to the article which was circulated only to the Central Committee and the Moscow and Petrograd committees of the Bolshevik party, he called for a decision on the seizure of power, through Moscow, Petrograd and the Baltic Fleet. In the discussions in the Central Committee, Lenin again won the day. The resolution called on “all organisations and on workers and soldiers to make all round energetic preparations for an armed uprising.” But the insurrection was not and could not be a <em>putsch</em>:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Military conspiracy is Blanquism, if it is organised not by a party of a definite class, if its organisers have not analysed the political moment ..., if the party has not on its side the majority of the people ..., if the development of revolutionary events has not brought about a practical refutation of the conciliatory illusions of the petty bourgeoisie, if the majority of Soviet type organs ... have not been won over, if there is not a matured sentiment in the army against the government that protracts the war ..., if the slogans of the uprising have not become widely known and popular (All Power to the Soviets, etc.), if the country’s economic situation inspires hope for a favourable solution of the crisis by peaceable and parliamentary means. <a id="f11" href="#n11" name="f11">[11]</a></p>
<p class="fst">In this Lenin illustrates the whole maturing revolutionary crisis. An insurrection is inevitably an event that is decided secretly, what distinguishes the Bolshevik seizure of power from putschism is that it is based on the development of the consciousness of the working class.</p>
<p>On 25th October the Military Revolutionary Council led the insurrection which overthrew the Provisional Government. The same day power was handed over to the All Russian Congress of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. For the first time in history the workers gained power and kept it.</p>
<p>Lenin now moved on to the next great period in his life. A few short weeks saw the decrees on Workers’ Control, the Land, Rules for Office Employees, a declaration of the rights of the peoples of Russia which proclaimed complete equality for nationalities. On behalf of the Government, Lenin ordered Dukhonin, the Commander in Chief, to make an immediate offer of a ceasefire to all the belligerent nations. The Bolsheviks had begun to deliver on the programme that took them to power.</p>
<p>The importance of Lenin in 1917 cannot be overstated. It is literally true, as Trotsky said, that he “re-armed the Bolshevik party.” In the years of reaction and division, he maintained his position of socialist internationalism. He was prepared to reject old theories and old comrades in so far as they fell short of the ideal. The conventional portrait of Lenin misses his essence completely, his obsession was not with revolution for its own sake but with freedom and real democracy. The shifts and changes were not the dictates of a capricious mind but the result of a close analysis of the working class and its revolutionary possibilities. The development of Lenin’s thought from 1893 to 1917 mirrors at greater or lesser remove the development of the working class.</p>
<p>The future of the revolutionary movement is not in fruitless attempts to force 1967 into the mould of Lenin’s fifty year old prescriptions, but in an attempt to see as clearly as he the immediate and future capacities of the class.</p>
<p>Real human history began fitfully in October 1917; it is the task of the revolutionary movement to regain that impetus.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> Lenin, <strong>Works</strong>, Vol.23, p.110.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> Krupskaya, <strong>Memories of Lenin</strong>, Vol.2, p.187.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n3" href="#f3" name="n3">3.</a> Lenin, <strong>Works</strong>, p.239.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n4" href="#f4" name="n4">4.</a> Trotsky, <strong>History of the Russian Revolution</strong>, Vol.1, p.300.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n5" href="#f5" name="n5">5.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, Vol.1, p.305.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n6" href="#f6" name="n6">6.</a> Lenin, <strong>Works</strong>, Vol.23, p.371.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n7" href="#f7" name="n7">7.</a> Trotsky, <strong>op. cit.</strong>, Vol.1, p.308.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n8" href="#f8" name="n8">8.</a> Lenin, <strong>Works</strong>, Vol.24, p.44.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n9" href="#f9" name="n9">9.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, Vol.26, p.19.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n10" href="#f10" name="n10">10.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, p.27.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n11" href="#f11" name="n11">11.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, p.213.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
1917: Lenin and the Working Class
(Autumn 1967)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.30, Autumn 1967, pp.16-20.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
“Theory, my friend is grey, but green is the eternal tree of life.” Goethe (Quoted by Lenin, April 1917).
The fiftieth anniversary of the October revolution is upon us and no doubt it will be celebrated in differing ways in different places. In the West we shall be treated to analyses of the fatal conjuncture of the Slavic mood and the evil genius of Lenin. Weighty, and even weightier tomes, will thud from the academic presses adding obscurity to ignorance. While in China the event may be celebrated by the explosion of yet another and larger bomb, inspired by the pure clean thought of the “great helmsman” and containing a lot of very dirty strontium 90. In Russia, the cradle of the revolution, we can expect to see bigger and better sputniks, some devastating weaponry and record-breaking crowds shuffling past the obscene mixture of skin, bone and formaldehyde that rests in the Lenin mausoleum. In all this trafficking in myths and inappropriate symbols, the real content of the revolution will be lost. For Lenin, as for any serious revolutionary, the real subject of 1917 was, and is, the Russian working class. In eight short months these workers move from Tsarist autocracy to the consummation of the Soviet power. Encapsulated in this process is the conclusive proof of the infinite possibilities for the working class. In this article I shall attempt to show how Lenin’s thought and development through 1917 closely followed and interacted with the development and capacities of the Russian workers.
All this is in no way to suggest that Lenin proceeded by a kind of inspired opportunism. The bourgeois commentators who are unable to see a connection between Lenin, the enthusiastic participator in the pre-war factional struggles, and Lenin, the leader of the victorious Bolsheviks’ are reduced to analyses, in greater or lesser detail, of each episode without thought for the links. The execution of his brother Alexander in 1887 may have brought him into the movement against autocracy. The futility of Alexander’s death may or may not have turned him away from Narodnism and towards the notion of a disciplined revolutionary socialist party. This notion of the party leads inevitably to the struggles of 1903 and What is to be Done? The subsequent fight with the Menshevists, the Godseekers, the Otzovists etc. follows quite naturally from the need for theoretical clarity in such a revolutionary party. All this development has internal consistency and can be worked through as high points in the psychological development of one or two individuals if what is required is an instant gloss with the trappings of scholarship. But such an approach really answers nothing. It cannot answer the why of 1905 and 1917 because it leaves out of account the relationship of these struggles to the working class. The aim was the emancipation of the class and the agency the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. If this is not understood the result can be a degeneration into the petty-bourgeois ideology of Stalinism or the assumption of historical play acting, as in a number of Trotskyist groups, where, like characters in a Pirandello play, they dispute for the leading role of Lenin. To write polemics in the Lenin style is easy, to make a revolution requires talent of a much higher order.
In the discussion that preceded 1917 perhaps none illustrates more clearly Lenin’s attitude to the class than his polemics on the question of the Imperialist war and the antics of the centrists. Martov in the bulletin of the Organising Committee of RSDLP (April 1916) had spoken of the need to maintain contact with the social patriots in the working class in the following vein:
... The cause of revolutionary Social Democracy would be in a sad, indeed hopeless plight, if those groups of workers who, in mental development, approach most closely to the “intelligentsia” and who are most highly skilled, fatally drifted away from it towards opportunism.
To which Lenin replied:
By means of the silly word “fatally” and a certain sleight of hand the fact is evaded that certain groups of workers have already drifted away to opportunism and to the imperialist bourgeois. And that is the very fact that the sophists of the OC (Organising Committee) want to evade. They confine themselves to the official optimism that Kautskyite Hilferding and the others now flaunt: the objective conditions guarantee the unity of the proletariat and the victory of the revolutionary trend! We forsooth are “optimists” with regard to the proletariat!
But in reality all these Kautskyites – Hilferding, the OC supporters are optimists ... with regard to opportunism. That is the whole point.
The proletariat is the child of capitalism – of world capitalism and not only European capitalism, or of imperialist capitalism. On a world scale, fifty years sooner or fifty years later ... the proletariat of course “will be” united, and the revolutionary Social Democracy will “inevitably” be victorious within it. But that is not the point Messrs Kautskyites. The point is that at the present time, in the imperialist countries of Europe, you are fawning on the opportunists, who are alien to the proletariat as a class ..., and unless the labour movement rids itself of them it will remain a bourgeois labour movement. By advocating unity with the opportunists .. you are , objectively, defending the enslavement of the workers by the imperialist bourgeoisie with the aid of its best agents in the Labour movement. [1]
In this last paragraph there is none of the sentimental maundering that characterises many an intellectual’s attitude to the working class. There is a clear differentiation between class interest and bourgeois tendencies within the labour movement. To see this vital difference is to go a long way to understanding Lenin’s success and Martov’s failure in the course of the revolution. Martov was, despite his intellectual realisation of revolutionary necessity, incapable of acting because of past friendly associations with his present opponents. This lesson is one that the present-day Communist Party has either forgotten or never learned. In their grotesque hunt for “unity of the Left” they are prepared for every rotten compromise which, particularly in the trade unions, makes them virtually indistinguishable from every other Labour faker.
Before the revolution Lenin was living in Switzerland, where contrary to the myth of Lenin’s Russian exclusionism, he was an individual member of the Swiss Social Democratic party and worked assiduously for the Left of that organisation. The Swiss party was considered to be on the left of the Zimmerwald International but this and its own party programme adopted at the 1915 congress which called for “revolutionary mass action” were largely paper. In this situation Lenin produced a programme tailored to meet the needs of the Swiss problem but based on an intransigent internationalism. Its aim was to mobilise a campaign around the issue of the war, counterposing the overthrow of capitalism as the end of all war. He showed that the fact of Swiss neutrality was being imported into the internal affairs of labour and that while war profits mushroomed working-class standards diminished. He called for a heavy progressive taxation on wealth and property; and for large scale nationalisation together with a series of democratic demands: the emancipation of women, naturalisation of foreign workers – foreigners suffered specific economic disabilities in Switzerland – and the extension of the principle of the referendum to socialist objectives. It is of course true that such a programme would have received an affirmative response from most Social Democrats (at least from Kautsky leftwards); the significant difference is that Lenin insisted a programme is only a serious matter when it is put to the scrutiny of the working class. As a concomitant of the programme he called for mass leafleting and propaganda in the trade unions and the party, coupled with strikes, demonstrations and mass actions.
Lenin, both before and after the revolution, attempted to test his theories in actual discussion with workers. In Krupskaya’s Memories of Lenin she shows one of his less successful attempts; unsuccessful but nevertheless significant. Lenin and Krupskaya were at a Swiss sanatorium for treatment for Krupskaya’s illness, she writes:
Among the visitors to the “Milk” sanatorium was a soldier ... his lungs were not particularly strong, and he had been sent for treatment. He was quite a nice fellow. Vladimir Ilyich hovered about him like a cat after lard, tried several times to engage him in conversation about the predatory character of the war; the fellow would not contradict him but was clearly not interested. [2]
In his Lecture on the 1905 Revolution Lenin develops this theme of the self-activity of the class and the tactics of the Social Democracy. He shows that under conditions of autocracy even a peaceful demonstration led by a Priest with simple demands for the easing of suffering, cannot succeed without going over to fight the autocracy. From humble petitions the people moved rapidly and inevitably to political strikes. Under the impetus of working-class action the peasants began to take over the large estates (2,000 estates burned and the produce distributed). The soldiers and sailors arrested many of their officers. In the first month of the 1905 revolution there were more strikers (440,0000 than in the previous ten years (430,000). “An eight hour day and arms” was the slogan of the Petrograd workers; it was these same workers who produced the “peculiar mass organisations” – the Soviets of Workers deputies. This development of the 1905 revolution led Lenin to say “The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic.” In this monumental upheaval Social Democracy developed from organisations numbered in hundreds to parties with tens of thousands of members. In Petrograd alone there were three Social Democratic papers with circulations ranging from 50,000 to 100,000. The limits set were the limits the workers themselves imposed. With the benefit of hindsight, Lenin was able to say the revolution of 1905 was “a bourgeois democratic revolution in its social content but a proletarian revolution in its methods of struggle.” [3] 1905 was the direct precursor of 1917. In 1905 the Tsarist regime suffered a blow to which it succumbed twelve years later. The Russian workers appeared on stage for the first time and immediately took the primary role with the peasantry following their lead. If many of the lessons of 1905 were only half way learned by some, and not at all by other, valuable experience had been gained by the workers and Social Democracy.
The revolution of February 1917, when it actually broke, took most of the socialists by surprise (only a month before the revolution Lenin said “we of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of the coming revolution”). The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who formed the majority in the Soviet were unable to comprehend the dual power that the Soviet represented. The preconceptions created by generations of theorising blinded them to the new and complex reality. The autocracy had been smashed and, according to the blue-print, the era of capitalist democratic reform would be ushered in with the socialists acting as a loyal opposition. Socialism would only be on the order of the day when capitalism had fulfilled its classical role of developing the productive forces and creating a mass working class. Unfortunately reality was more complicated. The immediate problem of alleviating pressing misery was incapable of solution while the Provisional Government continued the war, but the soviet supported the Provisional Government. The solution of the agrarian problem was one of immense difficulty and without the arbitrariness of poor peasant seizure there was no clear cut distribution that would harmonise with the complicated class divisions on the land. The Provisional government refused to act and maintained the existing land tenure. At the same time the workers were in a state of turmoil, not immediately sure as to their objectives, but unconvinced that things must change and putting their trust in their own creation – the Soviet. In the first flush of the revolution they were prepared to take on trust the Mensheviks and SR leadership when they pointed to the “democratic regime” as the prime gain of the revolution and when they claimed that defence of the Provisional Government was defence of the revolution. But it was not only the Soviet majority that suffered from illusions; the Bolsheviks were, in the main, caught in the same trap. On 1 March the Executive Committee of the Soviet discussed the conditions for handing over power to the Provisional Government, and not a voice was raised against the Government despite the fact that there were 11 Bolsheviks on a Committee of 39 members. “In the Soviet the day after the Executive meeting, according to Shylapnikov himself, out of 400 deputies only 19 voted against the transfer of power to the bourgeoisie and this although there were already 40 in the Bolshevik faction.” [4] the Petrograd committee of the Bolsheviks announced that it would not oppose the power of the Provisional Government. With the return of Stalin and Kamenev to take over direction of the party in early March the line moved smartly to the right. In the Pravda of 15 March they said “... the Bolsheviks will decisively support the Provisional Government in so far as it fights reaction or counter-revolution... the Russian soldier must stand firm ly at his post answering bullet with bullet and shell with shell. Our slogan is not the meaningless ‘down with war.’ Our slogan is: pressure on the Provisional Government with the aim of compelling it ... to make an attempt to induce all the warring countries to open immediate negotiations... until then every man remains at his fighting post.” [5] for those who like to imagine that they see the degeneration of the revolution in direct line from Lenin’s policy it might be as well to examine the policies advocated by Lenin’s Bolshevik opponents in 1917, opponents who later took over the party not on the basis of Leninism but as a direct continuation of its opposite. The Pravda article of Stalin and Kamenev could well have been written at any time during Stalin’s “Peace” campaign; it reeks of opportunism, class collaboration and a complete ignorance of Marxism.
In Switzerland Lenin was chafing at his inability to return to Russia and to influence events directly. His Letters from Afar although written on the basis of press reports contain brilliant insights into the character of the Provisional Government and its “social patriot” camp followers. Away from the actual struggle, his mind was still cast in some of the old categories, “The democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants,” but even then, at a time when the social democrats were handing over power to Milyukov and Kerensky, Lenin was calling for the arming of the people under the auspices of the soviet. The letters warned against an “epidemic of excitement,” leading to calls for unity with the Centre and right wing Social Democrats. In a letter to Kollontai on 17 March he says, “On no account with Kautsky. Definitely a more revolutionary programme and tactics.” for Lenin, 1914 had been the great watershed that divided the revolutionaries from the Kautskys of the Second International; the issue of the imperialist war had definitely sorted the reformist sheep from the revolutionary movement.
More certainly than ever before he knew that the possibilities of the revolution could only be achieved by an uncompromising internationalism. The revolution was not the occasion for papering over differences but for new and more hopeful approaches to the working class. The Letters from Afar call on the workers to act with the rural wage labourers to forge a unity that would do more than rid the peasant of the feudal aristocracy and lead on to a social upheaval in the town and country.
That Lenin still retained some of the limitations of the old programme is clear from his Farewell Letter to the Swiss Socialists in which he says:
Socialism cannot triumph there (Russia) immediately and directly. But the peasant character of the country, the vast reserve of land in the hands of the nobility, may... give tremendous sweep to the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia and may make our revolution the prologue to the world socialist revolution. [6]
Russia according to this formulation was merely the first incomplete break in international capitalism. The final solution to the problems in Russia would appear in the revolution in the West, particularly Germany. Whatever lack of precision there may be in this perspective for the revolution, he was quite clear that the attitude of the Bolsheviks in Petrograd was both wrong and unprincipled:
On the 17th of March, through friends in Stockholm, he wrote a letter filled with alarm: “Our party would disgrace itself forever, kill itself politically, if it took part in such deceit (support for the Provisional Government’s war aims – JH) ...I would choose an immediate split with no matter who in our party, rather than surrender to social patriotism.” [7]
Whatever had been Lenin’s attitude to the immediate limitations of the revolution and independent class activity, it underwent a rapid change on his return to Russia. He arrived on 3 April and next day he addressed a meeting of the Bolsheviks followed immediately by a delivery of the same address to the Mensheviks (April Theses). The theses, which shocked Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike, made a complete break with the old programme. All power to the soviets. No return to the Parliamentary Republic. Uncompromising opposition to the war. Abolition of the army, the police and the standing bureaucracy and its replacement by the armed people. Nationalisation of the land and the banks, the disposition of the land to be under the control of the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers. Social production and distribution under control of the Soviets of Workers Deputies. From the Bolsheviks he demanded an immediate party congress to change the name of the party to the Communist Party, to alter the programme and to call for a new International.
Lenin was accused of telescoping history, denying Marxism and of political hysteria. His Bolshevik critics argued that he was jumping over a stage when he dismissed the “democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants” as a necessary precondition for the fulfilment of bourgeois democracy. Lenin would have none of this ritualism:
... The revolutionary dictatorship of the workers and peasants has certainly become a reality, in a certain way and to a certain extent, in the Russian revolution, for this formula envisages only a relation of classes and not a concrete political institution ... The formula is now antiquated ... a new and different task faces us; to effect a split within this dictatorship between the proletarian elements ... And the small proprietors and petty-bourgeois elements who are opposed to moving towards the commune and are in favour of the bourgeois government. To deal with the question of the completion of the bourgeois revolution in the old way is to sacrifice Marxism to the dead letter. [8]
It is obvious that at this stage Lenin understands for the first time the significance of the Soviets. The working class that spontaneously produced the Soviets was capable of far more than the and plans of the “orthodox Marxists.” From this fundamental premise the need for a second revolution becomes clearer. The tactics within the Soviet must be to break with those elements whose real desire was to break the Soviet power and consolidate the bourgeois republic. To do this formally was not difficult but the success of the tactics and the programme depended on how closely they related to the workers’ own needs. It was to this that Lenin now addressed himself. He produced a stream of propaganda articles containing simple explanations of the Bolshevik policy. He described where the parties stood in relation to the war, the Provisional Government, internationalism, the land and workers power.
Later in April, Lenin fought for his point of view at the Bolshevik conference and emerged victorious. A furious press campaign was started against him and the Bolsheviks. But they persisted in their propaganda. On May Day, Milyukov announced that the Provisional Government had promised the Allies war to the victory. Two days later there was an armed demonstration against the war. A reshuffle of the Government became necessary and the “socialists” joined the Ministry with Kerensky as Minister of War. Early in May the Kronstadt Soviet declared itself the sole governing body for Kronstadt. The Bolshevik propaganda was beginning to bite.
To take some of the steam out of the situation the SR and Menshevik majority called for a demonstration “to show the enemy the unity and strength of democracy.” This took place on 18th June and half a million workers and soldiers answered the call, but the slogans in support of the “democracy” were in very short supply. Only the Bund, Plekhanovs tiny group and a Cossack regiment carried slogans in support of the Government. For the rest there was an abundance of Bolshevik slogans – “Down with the ten capitalist ministers,” “All power to the Soviets.” as Trotsky said “It was a great victory, and moreover it was won on the arena and with the weapons chosen by the enemy.” The real class issue was being joined. Lenin’s intransigence in refusing unity with the Mensheviks was being proved correct. With the benefit of the experience of successive Labour administrations, one can recognise the same hypocrisy in the “socialists” of the Soviet and provisional Government’ talk about socialism coupled to a profound respect for the status quo; the socialist objectives remain inscribed in the tablets but there is always some clear and present danger that makes there implementation a thing of the future. To defend democracy they smash democracy and anyone who calls for the real solution to present and future dangers is a wildcat, or whatever is the present cant abuse word. For Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the abuse worked out to be the unlikely combination of anarchists and spontaneous street demonstration which the Bolsheviks against their better judgement felt compelled to support, the Government took the opportunity to ban the Bolsheviks and arrest its leaders.
Lenin went into hiding for one hundred and eleven days. It was during this time that he was able to write his book State and Revolution. This is a book that unfailingly mystifies the bourgeois commentators. For them Lenin was seized with some kind of mental aberration when, during a period of revolutionary tumult, he felt it necessary to discuss at length and in detail the Marxist theory of the state. But it is precisely the fact that Lenin was one of the few Marxists who was prepared to think through the implications of working-class power and activity that made him a great revolutionary. In observing the movement in life itself and them measuring the basic principles against what he saw, he was doing what he had always done before: in 1903 and the party controversy, through the giant leap forward of 1905, to the realisation in 1917 that dual power existed but could not go on for ever. One side had to triumph;: the Soviet and parliamentary democracy were mutually antagonistic forms. Given the past struggle it was but a short step to the call for “Soviet Power.” In State and Revolution Lenin gives form to the theory of the workers’ state, cutting through all the obscurity and falsification of the “popes of Marxism.” The bourgeois state must be smashed; its forms are not just inappropriate, they are impossible. Only the working class, organised as the ruling class, can start the long slow climb out of barbarism. For a Marxist, as opposed to the bourgeois commentator, perhaps the most appropriate time for theoretical works on the state is when the question of power is on the agenda.
From 6 July to 25 October Lenin was virtually isolated from contact with the party and the workers, but he was writing a constant stream of articles and letters, refuting slanders, commenting on the developing situation and especially urging a more audacious course on the Bolsheviks. During his period the economy was declining rapidly, peasant unrest was boiling over, and Kornilov, weary of Kerensky’s vacillation in dealing with the Soviet, attempted a coup. The constant worsening of the situation in town and country gave added relevance to the Bolshevik programme. On 12 September Lenin wrote to the Central Committee:
The Bolsheviks, having gained a majority in the Soviets ... of both capitals (Petrograd and Moscow), can and must take power into their own hands. [9]
The situation, he argued, was such that only the implementation of the Bolshevik programme could save any gains of the February revolution, let alone make an advance. The SRs and the Mensheviks were for the war and support of the Provisional Government but neither the Government nor the Soviet could fight a war. The peasants were agitating for land and the Government was putting them down. The revolution was foundering on the incapacity of the government and its supporters. The objective conditions for the second revolution were ripe; it was necessary now to agitate among the workers:
... we must dispatch our entire group to the factories and the barracks. Their place is there, the pulse of life is there, there is the source of salvation for our revolution. [10]
In criticizing the Bolsheviks for their presence at the “Democratic Conference,” after it became clear that Kerensky was intent on a compromise with the army, Lenin said “Ten soldiers or ten workers from a backward factory who have become politically enlightened are worth a thousand times more than a hundred delegates hand picked by the Lieberdans.” (Lieberdan – Composite nickname from Lieber and Dan the Menshevik leaders – JH)
In a front page article in the Bolshevik paper Rabochy Put, 29 September, entitled The Crisis Has Matured, Lenin put the case for the second revolution in the context of the international socialist movement. The crisis, he said, was maturing in Germany, Italy and France. In Russia under the slogan of democracy the coalition of bourgeoisie and social patriots were smashing the peasant revolts in the tradition of Stolypin and preparing the defeat of the Soviets in the interest of continuing the war. In an addendum to the article which was circulated only to the Central Committee and the Moscow and Petrograd committees of the Bolshevik party, he called for a decision on the seizure of power, through Moscow, Petrograd and the Baltic Fleet. In the discussions in the Central Committee, Lenin again won the day. The resolution called on “all organisations and on workers and soldiers to make all round energetic preparations for an armed uprising.” But the insurrection was not and could not be a putsch:
Military conspiracy is Blanquism, if it is organised not by a party of a definite class, if its organisers have not analysed the political moment ..., if the party has not on its side the majority of the people ..., if the development of revolutionary events has not brought about a practical refutation of the conciliatory illusions of the petty bourgeoisie, if the majority of Soviet type organs ... have not been won over, if there is not a matured sentiment in the army against the government that protracts the war ..., if the slogans of the uprising have not become widely known and popular (All Power to the Soviets, etc.), if the country’s economic situation inspires hope for a favourable solution of the crisis by peaceable and parliamentary means. [11]
In this Lenin illustrates the whole maturing revolutionary crisis. An insurrection is inevitably an event that is decided secretly, what distinguishes the Bolshevik seizure of power from putschism is that it is based on the development of the consciousness of the working class.
On 25th October the Military Revolutionary Council led the insurrection which overthrew the Provisional Government. The same day power was handed over to the All Russian Congress of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. For the first time in history the workers gained power and kept it.
Lenin now moved on to the next great period in his life. A few short weeks saw the decrees on Workers’ Control, the Land, Rules for Office Employees, a declaration of the rights of the peoples of Russia which proclaimed complete equality for nationalities. On behalf of the Government, Lenin ordered Dukhonin, the Commander in Chief, to make an immediate offer of a ceasefire to all the belligerent nations. The Bolsheviks had begun to deliver on the programme that took them to power.
The importance of Lenin in 1917 cannot be overstated. It is literally true, as Trotsky said, that he “re-armed the Bolshevik party.” In the years of reaction and division, he maintained his position of socialist internationalism. He was prepared to reject old theories and old comrades in so far as they fell short of the ideal. The conventional portrait of Lenin misses his essence completely, his obsession was not with revolution for its own sake but with freedom and real democracy. The shifts and changes were not the dictates of a capricious mind but the result of a close analysis of the working class and its revolutionary possibilities. The development of Lenin’s thought from 1893 to 1917 mirrors at greater or lesser remove the development of the working class.
The future of the revolutionary movement is not in fruitless attempts to force 1967 into the mould of Lenin’s fifty year old prescriptions, but in an attempt to see as clearly as he the immediate and future capacities of the class.
Real human history began fitfully in October 1917; it is the task of the revolutionary movement to regain that impetus.
Footnotes
1. Lenin, Works, Vol.23, p.110.
2. Krupskaya, Memories of Lenin, Vol.2, p.187.
3. Lenin, Works, p.239.
4. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, Vol.1, p.300.
5. Ibid., Vol.1, p.305.
6. Lenin, Works, Vol.23, p.371.
7. Trotsky, op. cit., Vol.1, p.308.
8. Lenin, Works, Vol.24, p.44.
9. Ibid., Vol.26, p.19.
10. Ibid., p.27.
11. Ibid., p.213.
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<h2>Robert James <small><small><a id="fa" href="#na" name="fa">[1*]</a></small></small></h2>
<h1>Why did you join the party?</h1>
<h3>(July 1973)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj060" target="new">No. 60</a>, July 1973, p. 11.<br>
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Paul Blackledge.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Years ago, a question much bandied about in the Communist Party was: ‘Why did you join the party?’. At this remove it is difficult to remember why this mild obsession took hold. Suffice it to say that the usual answer, in the immediate post-1945 period, had more to do with a feeling that ‘Joe Stalin would teach those bloody Germans a lesson’, than devotion to world revolution.</p>
<p>One or two of us would conjure up visions of lamp-posts tastefully decorated with hanging plutocrats, more to outrage our mums than as a short-term perspective for action. Apart from bloodthirsty juveniles, middle-aged Germanophobes, premature anti-fascists from the Popular Front and a sprinkling who actually joined when the CP was a revolutionary party, way back in the 1920s, there were also some splendid eccentrics. One I recall with considerable affection. His name was Fred; he was short, spare, wore a cap, muffler and Wellingtons and was seldom seen without an unlit, hand-rolled fag between his lips. These fags he seldom smoked; his intention seemed to be to dissolve them after the manner of boiled sweets. In the process they acquired a rich, juicy, brown appearance that defied combustion. At this stage Fred would pop them into a small cough lozenge tin. What he did with them then is not known, although there was some speculation that he used the soggy wrecks as a lethal insecticide in his job: tending the municipal gardens.</p>
<p>Fred seldom spoke at meetings, and despite the fact that he was obviously a poor man, kept a fully stamped card, paid all the party levies and his <strong>Daily Worker</strong> quota. Joining the party in 1929, he had lived, with complete unconcern, through the ‘Third Period’, the Popular Front, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the ‘imperialist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ phases of the war. A solid comrade, the backbone of the party, a dedicated street seller of the <strong>Daily Worker</strong> despite police harassment and the occasional arrest. He would never set the Thames alight – with his fags he would probably poison every fish in the lower reaches – but of such is the party built.</p>
<p>The last time I saw Fred to speak to was just after Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform. A local meeting had been convened for a party luminary to expose to us Tito’s long history of ‘Trostky Fascism’. Not many turned up and among those missing was the speaker – a not unusual occurrence. The chairwoman, a comrade much addicted to East European dirndl and extirpating heresy, permitted desultory chat until it became obvious that our speaker was engaged elsewhere. Marjorie, for that was her name, called the meeting to order and, so that the evening was not a complete loss, suggested that we explain – in turn – ‘why we had joined the party’. It may be that her object was to discover some comrade foolhardy enough to confess joining on a wave of sympathy for the Yugoslav partisans’ gallant struggles against the Chetniks and fascist hordes. If so, she was disappointed. Most of us had played the game before and had thumbnail sketches that reflected credit on ourselves, the party and, above all, Comrade Stalin.</p>
<p>That is, until we came to Fred. ‘Why did you join, Fred?’, he was asked. Crossing his legs, and in the process dislodging a fair-sized lump of council clay on the carpet, Fred took a long suck on his nauseating fag and explained: ‘I joined because I have been a life-long spiritualist. After considerable thought and communion with long-dead thinkers, I came to the conclusion that only under socialism could the genuine claims of spiritualism be scientifically tested and proved’.</p>
<p>Our chairwoman was caught in a horrid dilemma. Here was a splendid opportunity to denounce an insidious attempt to import religious opium into the party ranks, an attempt so subtle that it took 20 years in the unmasking. At the same time the culprit was an ace <strong>Daily Worker</strong> salesman, a top levy payer, a class war prisoner and a worker to boot. Before she could resolve this problem, one of the young female comrades, noted for light-mindedness, had asked Fred if he could read palms and bumps on the head, with the obvious intention of requesting an immediate investigation of her own bumps (a trick that most of us had been unsuccessfully attempting for some time).</p>
<p>Fred replied in the affirmative and proceeded with more enthusiasm than he had ever displayed before to disclose the secrets of life lines, mounds of Venus and other exotica. His dissertation was not without interest; it certainly beat Tito-bashing by a mile. It might well have gone on longer to our mutual edification and education, had it not been for one adolescent element, much given to tormenting his elders, who, removing his left shoe and sock, demanded to know if Fred could read feet. Apart from the objectively unwholesome character of the foot, Fred was clearly mortally wounded by such obvious lack of seriousness and the consequent hilarity among the younger and rowdier section of the branch. The meeting broke up if not in disorder, without the usual stirring injunction from Marjorie to go forth and multiply.</p>
<p>Fred never appeared at meetings again, although I did see him once outside the town hall sneering at the flowers, still sucking a soggy brown fag. By now he must be dead; he was an old man when I knew him. Perhaps, though, after the revolution he may get in touch again from the other side. All he needs to do is indicate the impossibility of reading feet and his 20 years for the party will not have been wasted.</p>
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<h3>Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="na" href="#fa" name="na">1*.</a> Robert James is a pseudonym used occasionally by Jim Higgins.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Robert James [1*]
Why did you join the party?
(July 1973)
From International Socialism (1st series), No. 60, July 1973, p. 11.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg, with thanks to Paul Blackledge.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Years ago, a question much bandied about in the Communist Party was: ‘Why did you join the party?’. At this remove it is difficult to remember why this mild obsession took hold. Suffice it to say that the usual answer, in the immediate post-1945 period, had more to do with a feeling that ‘Joe Stalin would teach those bloody Germans a lesson’, than devotion to world revolution.
One or two of us would conjure up visions of lamp-posts tastefully decorated with hanging plutocrats, more to outrage our mums than as a short-term perspective for action. Apart from bloodthirsty juveniles, middle-aged Germanophobes, premature anti-fascists from the Popular Front and a sprinkling who actually joined when the CP was a revolutionary party, way back in the 1920s, there were also some splendid eccentrics. One I recall with considerable affection. His name was Fred; he was short, spare, wore a cap, muffler and Wellingtons and was seldom seen without an unlit, hand-rolled fag between his lips. These fags he seldom smoked; his intention seemed to be to dissolve them after the manner of boiled sweets. In the process they acquired a rich, juicy, brown appearance that defied combustion. At this stage Fred would pop them into a small cough lozenge tin. What he did with them then is not known, although there was some speculation that he used the soggy wrecks as a lethal insecticide in his job: tending the municipal gardens.
Fred seldom spoke at meetings, and despite the fact that he was obviously a poor man, kept a fully stamped card, paid all the party levies and his Daily Worker quota. Joining the party in 1929, he had lived, with complete unconcern, through the ‘Third Period’, the Popular Front, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the ‘imperialist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ phases of the war. A solid comrade, the backbone of the party, a dedicated street seller of the Daily Worker despite police harassment and the occasional arrest. He would never set the Thames alight – with his fags he would probably poison every fish in the lower reaches – but of such is the party built.
The last time I saw Fred to speak to was just after Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform. A local meeting had been convened for a party luminary to expose to us Tito’s long history of ‘Trostky Fascism’. Not many turned up and among those missing was the speaker – a not unusual occurrence. The chairwoman, a comrade much addicted to East European dirndl and extirpating heresy, permitted desultory chat until it became obvious that our speaker was engaged elsewhere. Marjorie, for that was her name, called the meeting to order and, so that the evening was not a complete loss, suggested that we explain – in turn – ‘why we had joined the party’. It may be that her object was to discover some comrade foolhardy enough to confess joining on a wave of sympathy for the Yugoslav partisans’ gallant struggles against the Chetniks and fascist hordes. If so, she was disappointed. Most of us had played the game before and had thumbnail sketches that reflected credit on ourselves, the party and, above all, Comrade Stalin.
That is, until we came to Fred. ‘Why did you join, Fred?’, he was asked. Crossing his legs, and in the process dislodging a fair-sized lump of council clay on the carpet, Fred took a long suck on his nauseating fag and explained: ‘I joined because I have been a life-long spiritualist. After considerable thought and communion with long-dead thinkers, I came to the conclusion that only under socialism could the genuine claims of spiritualism be scientifically tested and proved’.
Our chairwoman was caught in a horrid dilemma. Here was a splendid opportunity to denounce an insidious attempt to import religious opium into the party ranks, an attempt so subtle that it took 20 years in the unmasking. At the same time the culprit was an ace Daily Worker salesman, a top levy payer, a class war prisoner and a worker to boot. Before she could resolve this problem, one of the young female comrades, noted for light-mindedness, had asked Fred if he could read palms and bumps on the head, with the obvious intention of requesting an immediate investigation of her own bumps (a trick that most of us had been unsuccessfully attempting for some time).
Fred replied in the affirmative and proceeded with more enthusiasm than he had ever displayed before to disclose the secrets of life lines, mounds of Venus and other exotica. His dissertation was not without interest; it certainly beat Tito-bashing by a mile. It might well have gone on longer to our mutual edification and education, had it not been for one adolescent element, much given to tormenting his elders, who, removing his left shoe and sock, demanded to know if Fred could read feet. Apart from the objectively unwholesome character of the foot, Fred was clearly mortally wounded by such obvious lack of seriousness and the consequent hilarity among the younger and rowdier section of the branch. The meeting broke up if not in disorder, without the usual stirring injunction from Marjorie to go forth and multiply.
Fred never appeared at meetings again, although I did see him once outside the town hall sneering at the flowers, still sucking a soggy brown fag. By now he must be dead; he was an old man when I knew him. Perhaps, though, after the revolution he may get in touch again from the other side. All he needs to do is indicate the impossibility of reading feet and his 20 years for the party will not have been wasted.
Note
1*. Robert James is a pseudonym used occasionally by Jim Higgins.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Luxemburg and Lenin</h1>
<h3>(Winter 1966/67)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj027" target="new">No.27</a>, Winter 1966/67.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Of late there has been a tendency among the writers of the weekend review fringe, to love up to safely dead revolutionaries – particularly those whose lives can be described as failures. One noted this first in the reviews of Deutscher’s trilogy on Trotsky. Deutscher’s work received deserved acclaim as a major work of biography. Trotsky was venerated as a great literary stylist, his superhuman struggles against personal and political adversity applauded. He was contrasted with Stalin, as a civilised and humane man. But his politics – received that amused contempt normally reserved for the enthusiasms of the very young. Cultured and civilised Trotsky might be, but he was clearly no match for the uncultured and uncivilised Stalin. The whole of Trotsky’s brilliant and penetrating analysis went for nothing. He was abstracted from the real situation in which his ideological struggles took place and, as a utopian dreamer, contrasted with the brutal but necessary Realpolitik of Stalinism.</p>
<p>Again, in the case of Victor Serge’s <strong>Memoirs of a Revolutionary</strong>, one detected the same nostalgia for a dead revolutionary hero in reviews which, apart from a notably illiterate attack in the <strong>Sunday Times</strong>, universally acclaimed the work.</p>
<p>Now it is the turn of Rosa Luxemburg. Her life contains all the elements to titillate palates jaded by long draughts of corrosive fellow-travelling. She was personally courageous; her love life was intense but unsatisfactory; she was physically handicapped; she spent time in prison – a lot of time – and perhaps best of all she died in a particularly brutal way at the hands of Freikorps thugs. Add to this her slightly hysterical (for my taste) attachment to the beauties of nature and the result is the perfect ikon with which to salve the unquiet liberal conscience.</p>
<p>At one point in his book <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a>, Mr Nettl comments on the strange position occupied by Rosa Luxemburg in the socialist pantheon. There is certainly a weird coalition of worshippers at her shrine. The Social Democrats claim her as their own on the basis of her polemics against the Bolsheviks, while the Stalinists revered her for her violent and cogently argued repudiation of the social democratic position. Nettl notes this phenomenon but suggests it is due to the timing of her death which occurred before she could have time to take sides in the controversies which rocked the Communist movement in the twenties and thirties. Later in the book, Nettl suggests that, had she lived, she would have had to fill her declining years by writing memoirs as a pensioner of some learned American foundation (à la Ruth Fischer) or to have lived out her days in what he (Nettl) imagines to have been the sterility of dispossessed revolutionary groups (à la Trotsky). This seems to assume a completely static view of history and the relationship between individuals and the revolutionary movement. It is true that except in very few instances one can point to an individual as the central factor in a revolutionary situation, and in the twentieth century probably only Lenin and Luxemburg have actually personified historical necessity. The conjunction of Lenin, the Bolshevik party and the Russian workers were the essential ingredients for the successful October revolution. On a number of occasions Trotsky wrote of the key role Lenin played in 1917. In the sense that nobody else among the Bolsheviks (certainly not Trotsky) had the prestige to alter the course of the party and set it firmly on the road to the seizure of power, then Trotsky is unquestionably right. The dialectical relationship between the three elements in the Russian revolution is demonstrated most clearly by Trotsky when he says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">... Lenin... did not fall from the skies. He personified the revolutionary traditions of the working class. For Lenin’s slogans to find their way to the masses there had to exist cadres even though numerically small at the beginning; there had to exist the confidence based on the entire experience of the past... The role and responsibility of the leadership in a revolutionary epoch is colossal. <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a></p>
<p class="fst">In the case of Luxemburg, the picture is less clear, if only because the importance of her role has been muddied by the apologists of German Communism and Social Democracy. Nevertheless it is to my mind virtually certain that the failure of 1919 would have had a totally different aftermath had she lived. It is impossible to imagine a German Communist party with Rosa Luxemburg at its head bowing to the dictates of a Zinoviev-directed Comintern or accepting the Stalin policy of “Socialism in One Country.” with the accession of the Independent Social Democrats to the KPD in October 1920, the building of a mass revolutionary party became a possibility; a possibility that Rosa would not have missed. The tragedy of 1919 would not have been repeated in the farce of 1924. The idiocy of the ’third period’ is unthinkable in terms of a Luxemburgist party. To consider the possibility of a successful German revolution is to rewrite subsequent world history. No Nazis; no Stalinism; no world war and the real chance for the international socialism so dear to Luxemburg’s heart. The Social Democratic leaders who connived at the assassination of Liebknecht and Luxemburg have more to answer for than complicity in murder.</p>
<p>It is inevitable that in any study of Luxemburg , her theoretical and political contribution will be contrasted with that of Lenin. Although perhaps less inevitable, it is unfortunately the case that most commentators come down squarely on the side of the super Marxist democrat, Luxemburg, against the wily Asiatic tyrant, Lenin, as if they represented separate incompatible poles. It cannot be denied that there were deep and passionately-argued differences between them. But were the differences of a fundamental character? Is it not true that the polemics concerned questions of revolutionary strategy and the potentialities for socialist activity, given the actual facts of capitalism at the time? In either case the argument was conducted from different vantage points based on dissimilar traditions and requirements. The debate was hard fought on a whole series of questions (imperialism, the nature of the party, the mass strike and later the form and content of the Russian revolution). At no time however was the argument conducted with the degree of intensity that characterised the debates with Bernstein and Kautsky. The debate with Lenin was conducted within the context of a shared revolutionary objective while the struggles against Revisionism and centrism resulted in a definite break. For example, in the polemic against What is to be done?, Luxemburg insists upon the free activity of the revolutionary class in the splendid formulation,</p>
<p class="quoteb">... Historically the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee. <a id="f3" href="#n3" name="f3">[3]</a></p>
<p class="fst">In this she cannot be faulted if one starts – as she does – from the accomplished fact of the mass German party. For Lenin the situation was quite different. The need in Russia was to build an organisation capable of making the connection between revolutionary theory and the Russian workers, under conditions of Tsarist autocracy. In any case the concept of trade union consciousness as the limit above which workers could not rise was not Lenin’s formulation but an import from German Social Democracy. As Dunayevskaya points out</p>
<p class="quoteb">... there was an element in Lenin’s theory of organisation ... which was specifically Leninist, the conception of what constitutes membership in a Russian Marxist group. Indeed the definition did not only rest on a “phrase,” that he is only a member who puts himself “under the discipline of the local organisation.” The disciplining by the local was crucial to Lenin’s conception that it held primacy over verbal adherence to Marxist theory, propagandising Marxist views, and holding a membership card. Undoubtedly you have something in your head that is at sharp variance with the prevailing Social Democratic conception when you are that stubborn about a “phrase.” <a id="f4" href="#n4" name="f4">[4]</a></p>
<p class="fst">With this in mind it becomes clear that Lenin’s conception not only involved traffic from the socialist intelligentsia to the workers but a two-way exchange which submitted the intellectuals to the discipline of work in concert with active proletarians. Further light is shed on this controversy when we recall the interesting fact that Luxemburg’s reply to <strong>What is to be Done?</strong> was originally published in <strong>Neue Zeit</strong> (the SPD theoretical journal) and only later translated into Russian for publication in <strong>Iskra</strong>. It would seem that Rosa was fighting here on two fronts. The bureaucratisation of the SPD was moving on apace. The victory over revisionist theory had not resulted in a victory over revisionist practice. In Luxemburg’s opinion the prescription for the German movement was not more direction from the centre but a releasing of revolutionary potential from the encumbrance of parliamentary manoeuvring and trade union economism. In many ways this argument between Lenin and Luxemburg is perhaps the most important for the socialist movement today. One of the tragedies of current revolutionary politics is the pathetic fervour with which many people cling to the particular organisational principles Lenin laid down in 1903. However appropriate they may have been in the Russia of the time there is no doubt that today they require drastic modification (as Lenin modified them in 1905 and again in 1917). In the British labour movement there is no shortage of leaderships and alternative leaderships all in search of a movement to lead. The problem is not to assume leadership of the working class (although I am prepared to offer a fine shade of odds against any of the current pretenders), but to put forward those ideas with analytical justification that will bring the existing movement into collision with the fabric of capitalist society. In this process the leadership and the revolutionary party will be formed. For the British labour movement in the mid-1960’s, Luxemburg is, on this question a better guide than the Lenin of <strong>What is to Be Done?</strong></p>
<p>If one pursues the investigation of the Lenin/Luxemburg controversies into the argument over the mass strike and the vexed question of spontaneity again one finds that those differences were rooted in the differences in objective conditions facing the two protagonists in their separate fields of activity. The dialectic of combined and uneven development in Russia meant the subordination of tens of thousands of first generation peasants to the inhuman discipline of large scale capitalist manufacture. The frequent resort to mass protest is, in some ways, an expression of the backwardness of Russian workers in terms of direct political consciousness and their ability, under the conditions, of Tsarism to give any meaning to a constitutional political protest. The Bolsheviks then did not need to emphasise the necessity for, nor the inevitability of, the mass strike – it was there on the ground. The problem in Russia was to canalise this spontaneous movement into socialist objectives. The German Left had quite the reverse problem. Their task was to set in motion the working class in conflict with society through the agency of the mass strike and the mass party. The German need was to revoke their parliamentary proxy while the Russians needed a revolutionary leadership. But the last words on the alleged irreconcilability between the ideas of Lenin and Luxemburg should come from two people who were opposed with equal fervour to both revolutionaries. The Menshevik Theodore Dan, in his history of the Russian movement said that Polish Social Democracy</p>
<p class="quoteb">... shared in its essentials the organisational principles of Lenin against which Rosa Luxemburg had polemicized at the birth of Bolshevism; it also applied these principles in the practice of its own party ...</p>
<p class="fst">Kautsky her bitter enemy, wrote in 1922</p>
<p class="quoteb">It does not even occur to me today to deny that in the course of the war Rosa drew steadily closed to the communist world of thought, so that it is quite correct when Radek says that “with Rosa Luxemburg there died the greatest and most profound theoretical head of communism”.</p>
<p class="fst">A problem that has bedevilled every genuine socialist tendency has been its relationship to the mass reformist party. Since 1914 the problem has been simplified in that the immutably reformist (in essence, reactionary) nature of Social Democracy has been abundantly and all too frequently displayed. But this realisation of the nature of Social Democracy has not been accompanied by the elucidation of a satisfactory tactic for work within, upon and about the mass parties. The solutions put forward are all, in their way, unsatisfactory in application if not in theory. They range from outright rejection, with the formation of a “pure” revolutionary party (RCP etc.); through open-ended organisations which nestle their roots in the compost of the reformist parties (SLL at various times); to those tendencies which are frequently indistinguishable from the mulch allowing themselves no more indulgence than the production of little journals. In all these examples, the inclination is to defend the tactic to the point where it becomes a principle, leaving no room for effective manoeuvre. Without giving way to mystical delusions about embryonic revolutionary parties, it should be possible for a small but flexible organisation to change the emphasis of its tactics to come into mutually fruitful contacts with workers. A combination of all three tactics can in no way be precluded if a changing situation demands a quick and audacious response.</p>
<p>The reason for this last somewhat discursive paragraph is not just to make a fairly obvious point but also to consider the problem of the pre-1914 German Left and what chance for success it might have had if it had been more effectively organised into a disciplined faction. It is a commonplace that Lenin’s definitive break (in an organisational sense) with the Mensheviks enabled the Bolsheviks to forge an organisation capable of taking power. Again, the roots of Polish Communism were established when Luxemburg and Jogiches broke from the PPS to form the SDKP in 1893. The PPS, they decided, was hopelessly out of tune with socialist objectives, an estimation that Rosa repeated in 1911 (if not earlier in regard to the SPD. Far earlier than Lenin, she had weighed Kautsky and found him short in the balance. It is at least arguable that at this stage (1911/12) the formation of a disciplined Left Opposition was in order. As Nettl shows (p.459), Luxemburg made no such attempt. The argument in support of Luxemburg follows something along these lines. The relationship of forces as between the Left and the SPD machine was horribly weighted against the Left. It is further suggested, to move into sharp opposition would have cut the Marxists off from the organised SPD working class, in a party which made a fetish of unity.</p>
<p class="quoteb">Ever since then (1875) Social Democracy had looked on any policy that might lead to a split not merely as a political error but as ultimate infamy – with the same moralistic fervour associated, say, with murder. <a id="f5" href="#n5" name="f5">[5]</a></p>
<p class="fst">There is some weight to be accorded these arguments. But, is it necessarily true that a principled opposition with a clear programme will always cut itself off from the workers in an active mass party? Surely the reverse is frequently the case. A party with a verbally radical programme and an active membership obviously cannot be assaulted frontally through its entrenched machine but at the margins where its verbal radicalism is put to the test of rank-and-file scrutiny. The post-1917 experience of the French and German Communist parties with their massive gains from Social Democracy is a case in point and much less significant but closer to home is recent experience in the Young Socialists. An opposition can in this sense operate on the mass party from without and within. That difficulties exist, is really beside the point; it is precisely in the formulation of an organisational and programmatic opposition that the necessary interaction between the revolutionaries takes place. An organisation in pre-war Germany that proceeded on this basis would have been appealing to workers over the heads of the SPD leadership with a programme that was more in accord with the workers’ situation. To disseminate and popularise such a programme there would have been no immediate need for a large following, but insofar as the programme is fought for and accepted, the growth of the opposition is assured. Brandler estimated that in 1915 the Gruppe Internationale (later Spartacusbund) had 4,000 loosely organised adherents. If this organisation had been formed earlier it is reasonable to suppose that the 4,000 could have been much larger, the anti-war propaganda more effective and by 1918 there might have been a fully-fledged Communist Party on the ground in many ways more capable than the Bolsheviks in Russia. The question, like all such historical “ifs”, is an open one, but it illustrates that perhaps Rosa, like many Marxists before and too many since, displayed a tactical rigidity not entirely consonant with the revolutionary task she set herself.</p>
<p>It is necessary to conclude a review of this kind with some evaluation of the job performed by the biographer. Mr Nettl has carried out a useful and long overdue service. The research involved has been monumental. Everything available that Luxemburg wrote, or that has been written about her, has been sifted and evaluated. People who knew her and are still living have been interviewed – particularly useful in this respect was the information obtained from Luise Kautsky’s friend, Blumenburg – and as a result a number of interesting and new insights into her life and character are displayed. One complaint that I have is that Jogiches never emerges as anything more than a rather shadowy figure: in a book of 984 pages, one would have hoped for a rather more rounded presentation. As against this one can congratulate Nettl on his perceptive analysis of Kautsky. He shows clearly that this “Pope of Marxism” was in reality a sterile propagator of orthodoxy without reference to the changing world and the necessary practical consequences of a revolutionary ideology, in fact, a classical centrist.</p>
<p>But there are some matters on which Mr Nettl not only goes against the facts but also against much that is implicit in his sown pages. One judgement in particular stands out like a sore thumb:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The great difference between Lenin and Luxemburg was that the former could have taken himself off to the moon and produced exactly the same thought and action from there. Rosa Luxemburg on the other hand needed not only society and Social democracy as the humus for her thought but the specific society if Imperial Germany and particularly the German Social Democracy that had grown with it.</p>
<p class="fst">This really is quite grotesque, the reverse of the real situation. In fact a Lenin divorced from the Russian Labour Movement just would not have existed before 1917. While Rosa, had she had the misfortune to be landed on the moon, would have settled down to educate and organise the green cheese against its maggot exploiters. Another cause of some irritation is Nettl’s use, on occasion, of intrusive sociological terms and categories, as in his characterisation of the SDKP leadership as a “peer group.” Nettl suggests:</p>
<p class="quoteb">This Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania was a group of intellectual peers long before it became a political party. It provided its members with all the attributes o a primary group, an association which all the emigrés lacked – a family, an ideology, a discipline, in short a constant and reliable source of strength ... – in some respects as conspiratorial as Lenin’s Bolsheviks, but outward and open looking in other. The discipline was largely voluntary and was confined to public action; for the rest it left large areas of freedom and choice to the participants, even room for profound intellectual disagreements ... Trotsky with all his friends, admirers and disciples, never had the benefit of a peer group; hence his difficulty in building a following before the revolution and the fragility of his support after 1923 (Nettl p.23).</p>
<p class="fst">If by all this he means that the Polish Marxists were an exceptionally talented lot, one can agree – even after 1917 there was a common saying in the Comintern, “The Russian party is the biggest and the Polish party is the best.” But to suggest that the SDKP leadership was qualitatively different from all other revolutionary groups because of this nice accident of togetherness in a “primary group” seems to me to be an error. In fact all revolutionary groups – including the Bolsheviks under Lenin and especially the Left Opposition after 1923 – have similar relationships. Circumstances may vary the degree of conspiracy, but intellectual disagreements always abound both “outward and inward.” One assumes that Nettl has no close acquaintance with the revolutionary movement except as an interested observer. But an academic observer (no matter how well disposed) can scrutinise the collected works from laundry list to magnum opus and still miss the essential flavour of a revolutionary organisation. It would have been better perhaps if someone more in sympathy with Rosa Luxemburg’s politics had written this book (Mr Nettl in his introduction refuses to let his own philosophical cat out of the bag; whatever it is, that cat is no Marxist) but they have not, and probably will not, until the coming Russian, German and Polish revolutions finally frees all the sources for the final evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg.</p>
<p>Of course the life and work of a revolutionary like Luxemburg will mean different things to different people. For the academic mind at its lowest level it will represent thesis fodder of a particularly rich variety. For the professional anti-Communist, careful selection can provide evidence for the impossibility of revolutionary success and if, by chance, the revolution does succeed prove that it’s awful anyway. For the religious Marxist it provides a useful additional banker in the permutation of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, when they make their genuflection. For the revolutionary Marxist, Luxemburg provides an object lesson in the application of the Marxist method to a particular time and place and of an uncompromising revolutionary position regardless of consequence. In this lies her heritage; a heritage of which she would have been justly proud.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> J.P. Nettl, <strong>Rosa Luxemburg</strong> (two volumes), Oxford, £6 6s, 984pp.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> <strong>The Class, the Party and the Leadership</strong>, Workers’ International Review Pamphlet No.2, London, n.d., p.7.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n3" href="#f3" name="n3">3.</a> <strong>Leninism or Marxism?</strong>, p.84., quoted Nettl, p.287.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n4" href="#f4" name="n4">4.</a> Raya Dunayevskaya, <strong>Marxism and Freedom</strong>, Twayne Publishers, New York 1964, p.180.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n5" href="#f5" name="n5">5.</a> Fischer, <strong>Stalin and German Communism</strong>.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Luxemburg and Lenin
(Winter 1966/67)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.27, Winter 1966/67.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Of late there has been a tendency among the writers of the weekend review fringe, to love up to safely dead revolutionaries – particularly those whose lives can be described as failures. One noted this first in the reviews of Deutscher’s trilogy on Trotsky. Deutscher’s work received deserved acclaim as a major work of biography. Trotsky was venerated as a great literary stylist, his superhuman struggles against personal and political adversity applauded. He was contrasted with Stalin, as a civilised and humane man. But his politics – received that amused contempt normally reserved for the enthusiasms of the very young. Cultured and civilised Trotsky might be, but he was clearly no match for the uncultured and uncivilised Stalin. The whole of Trotsky’s brilliant and penetrating analysis went for nothing. He was abstracted from the real situation in which his ideological struggles took place and, as a utopian dreamer, contrasted with the brutal but necessary Realpolitik of Stalinism.
Again, in the case of Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary, one detected the same nostalgia for a dead revolutionary hero in reviews which, apart from a notably illiterate attack in the Sunday Times, universally acclaimed the work.
Now it is the turn of Rosa Luxemburg. Her life contains all the elements to titillate palates jaded by long draughts of corrosive fellow-travelling. She was personally courageous; her love life was intense but unsatisfactory; she was physically handicapped; she spent time in prison – a lot of time – and perhaps best of all she died in a particularly brutal way at the hands of Freikorps thugs. Add to this her slightly hysterical (for my taste) attachment to the beauties of nature and the result is the perfect ikon with which to salve the unquiet liberal conscience.
At one point in his book [1], Mr Nettl comments on the strange position occupied by Rosa Luxemburg in the socialist pantheon. There is certainly a weird coalition of worshippers at her shrine. The Social Democrats claim her as their own on the basis of her polemics against the Bolsheviks, while the Stalinists revered her for her violent and cogently argued repudiation of the social democratic position. Nettl notes this phenomenon but suggests it is due to the timing of her death which occurred before she could have time to take sides in the controversies which rocked the Communist movement in the twenties and thirties. Later in the book, Nettl suggests that, had she lived, she would have had to fill her declining years by writing memoirs as a pensioner of some learned American foundation (à la Ruth Fischer) or to have lived out her days in what he (Nettl) imagines to have been the sterility of dispossessed revolutionary groups (à la Trotsky). This seems to assume a completely static view of history and the relationship between individuals and the revolutionary movement. It is true that except in very few instances one can point to an individual as the central factor in a revolutionary situation, and in the twentieth century probably only Lenin and Luxemburg have actually personified historical necessity. The conjunction of Lenin, the Bolshevik party and the Russian workers were the essential ingredients for the successful October revolution. On a number of occasions Trotsky wrote of the key role Lenin played in 1917. In the sense that nobody else among the Bolsheviks (certainly not Trotsky) had the prestige to alter the course of the party and set it firmly on the road to the seizure of power, then Trotsky is unquestionably right. The dialectical relationship between the three elements in the Russian revolution is demonstrated most clearly by Trotsky when he says:
... Lenin... did not fall from the skies. He personified the revolutionary traditions of the working class. For Lenin’s slogans to find their way to the masses there had to exist cadres even though numerically small at the beginning; there had to exist the confidence based on the entire experience of the past... The role and responsibility of the leadership in a revolutionary epoch is colossal. [2]
In the case of Luxemburg, the picture is less clear, if only because the importance of her role has been muddied by the apologists of German Communism and Social Democracy. Nevertheless it is to my mind virtually certain that the failure of 1919 would have had a totally different aftermath had she lived. It is impossible to imagine a German Communist party with Rosa Luxemburg at its head bowing to the dictates of a Zinoviev-directed Comintern or accepting the Stalin policy of “Socialism in One Country.” with the accession of the Independent Social Democrats to the KPD in October 1920, the building of a mass revolutionary party became a possibility; a possibility that Rosa would not have missed. The tragedy of 1919 would not have been repeated in the farce of 1924. The idiocy of the ’third period’ is unthinkable in terms of a Luxemburgist party. To consider the possibility of a successful German revolution is to rewrite subsequent world history. No Nazis; no Stalinism; no world war and the real chance for the international socialism so dear to Luxemburg’s heart. The Social Democratic leaders who connived at the assassination of Liebknecht and Luxemburg have more to answer for than complicity in murder.
It is inevitable that in any study of Luxemburg , her theoretical and political contribution will be contrasted with that of Lenin. Although perhaps less inevitable, it is unfortunately the case that most commentators come down squarely on the side of the super Marxist democrat, Luxemburg, against the wily Asiatic tyrant, Lenin, as if they represented separate incompatible poles. It cannot be denied that there were deep and passionately-argued differences between them. But were the differences of a fundamental character? Is it not true that the polemics concerned questions of revolutionary strategy and the potentialities for socialist activity, given the actual facts of capitalism at the time? In either case the argument was conducted from different vantage points based on dissimilar traditions and requirements. The debate was hard fought on a whole series of questions (imperialism, the nature of the party, the mass strike and later the form and content of the Russian revolution). At no time however was the argument conducted with the degree of intensity that characterised the debates with Bernstein and Kautsky. The debate with Lenin was conducted within the context of a shared revolutionary objective while the struggles against Revisionism and centrism resulted in a definite break. For example, in the polemic against What is to be done?, Luxemburg insists upon the free activity of the revolutionary class in the splendid formulation,
... Historically the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee. [3]
In this she cannot be faulted if one starts – as she does – from the accomplished fact of the mass German party. For Lenin the situation was quite different. The need in Russia was to build an organisation capable of making the connection between revolutionary theory and the Russian workers, under conditions of Tsarist autocracy. In any case the concept of trade union consciousness as the limit above which workers could not rise was not Lenin’s formulation but an import from German Social Democracy. As Dunayevskaya points out
... there was an element in Lenin’s theory of organisation ... which was specifically Leninist, the conception of what constitutes membership in a Russian Marxist group. Indeed the definition did not only rest on a “phrase,” that he is only a member who puts himself “under the discipline of the local organisation.” The disciplining by the local was crucial to Lenin’s conception that it held primacy over verbal adherence to Marxist theory, propagandising Marxist views, and holding a membership card. Undoubtedly you have something in your head that is at sharp variance with the prevailing Social Democratic conception when you are that stubborn about a “phrase.” [4]
With this in mind it becomes clear that Lenin’s conception not only involved traffic from the socialist intelligentsia to the workers but a two-way exchange which submitted the intellectuals to the discipline of work in concert with active proletarians. Further light is shed on this controversy when we recall the interesting fact that Luxemburg’s reply to What is to be Done? was originally published in Neue Zeit (the SPD theoretical journal) and only later translated into Russian for publication in Iskra. It would seem that Rosa was fighting here on two fronts. The bureaucratisation of the SPD was moving on apace. The victory over revisionist theory had not resulted in a victory over revisionist practice. In Luxemburg’s opinion the prescription for the German movement was not more direction from the centre but a releasing of revolutionary potential from the encumbrance of parliamentary manoeuvring and trade union economism. In many ways this argument between Lenin and Luxemburg is perhaps the most important for the socialist movement today. One of the tragedies of current revolutionary politics is the pathetic fervour with which many people cling to the particular organisational principles Lenin laid down in 1903. However appropriate they may have been in the Russia of the time there is no doubt that today they require drastic modification (as Lenin modified them in 1905 and again in 1917). In the British labour movement there is no shortage of leaderships and alternative leaderships all in search of a movement to lead. The problem is not to assume leadership of the working class (although I am prepared to offer a fine shade of odds against any of the current pretenders), but to put forward those ideas with analytical justification that will bring the existing movement into collision with the fabric of capitalist society. In this process the leadership and the revolutionary party will be formed. For the British labour movement in the mid-1960’s, Luxemburg is, on this question a better guide than the Lenin of What is to Be Done?
If one pursues the investigation of the Lenin/Luxemburg controversies into the argument over the mass strike and the vexed question of spontaneity again one finds that those differences were rooted in the differences in objective conditions facing the two protagonists in their separate fields of activity. The dialectic of combined and uneven development in Russia meant the subordination of tens of thousands of first generation peasants to the inhuman discipline of large scale capitalist manufacture. The frequent resort to mass protest is, in some ways, an expression of the backwardness of Russian workers in terms of direct political consciousness and their ability, under the conditions, of Tsarism to give any meaning to a constitutional political protest. The Bolsheviks then did not need to emphasise the necessity for, nor the inevitability of, the mass strike – it was there on the ground. The problem in Russia was to canalise this spontaneous movement into socialist objectives. The German Left had quite the reverse problem. Their task was to set in motion the working class in conflict with society through the agency of the mass strike and the mass party. The German need was to revoke their parliamentary proxy while the Russians needed a revolutionary leadership. But the last words on the alleged irreconcilability between the ideas of Lenin and Luxemburg should come from two people who were opposed with equal fervour to both revolutionaries. The Menshevik Theodore Dan, in his history of the Russian movement said that Polish Social Democracy
... shared in its essentials the organisational principles of Lenin against which Rosa Luxemburg had polemicized at the birth of Bolshevism; it also applied these principles in the practice of its own party ...
Kautsky her bitter enemy, wrote in 1922
It does not even occur to me today to deny that in the course of the war Rosa drew steadily closed to the communist world of thought, so that it is quite correct when Radek says that “with Rosa Luxemburg there died the greatest and most profound theoretical head of communism”.
A problem that has bedevilled every genuine socialist tendency has been its relationship to the mass reformist party. Since 1914 the problem has been simplified in that the immutably reformist (in essence, reactionary) nature of Social Democracy has been abundantly and all too frequently displayed. But this realisation of the nature of Social Democracy has not been accompanied by the elucidation of a satisfactory tactic for work within, upon and about the mass parties. The solutions put forward are all, in their way, unsatisfactory in application if not in theory. They range from outright rejection, with the formation of a “pure” revolutionary party (RCP etc.); through open-ended organisations which nestle their roots in the compost of the reformist parties (SLL at various times); to those tendencies which are frequently indistinguishable from the mulch allowing themselves no more indulgence than the production of little journals. In all these examples, the inclination is to defend the tactic to the point where it becomes a principle, leaving no room for effective manoeuvre. Without giving way to mystical delusions about embryonic revolutionary parties, it should be possible for a small but flexible organisation to change the emphasis of its tactics to come into mutually fruitful contacts with workers. A combination of all three tactics can in no way be precluded if a changing situation demands a quick and audacious response.
The reason for this last somewhat discursive paragraph is not just to make a fairly obvious point but also to consider the problem of the pre-1914 German Left and what chance for success it might have had if it had been more effectively organised into a disciplined faction. It is a commonplace that Lenin’s definitive break (in an organisational sense) with the Mensheviks enabled the Bolsheviks to forge an organisation capable of taking power. Again, the roots of Polish Communism were established when Luxemburg and Jogiches broke from the PPS to form the SDKP in 1893. The PPS, they decided, was hopelessly out of tune with socialist objectives, an estimation that Rosa repeated in 1911 (if not earlier in regard to the SPD. Far earlier than Lenin, she had weighed Kautsky and found him short in the balance. It is at least arguable that at this stage (1911/12) the formation of a disciplined Left Opposition was in order. As Nettl shows (p.459), Luxemburg made no such attempt. The argument in support of Luxemburg follows something along these lines. The relationship of forces as between the Left and the SPD machine was horribly weighted against the Left. It is further suggested, to move into sharp opposition would have cut the Marxists off from the organised SPD working class, in a party which made a fetish of unity.
Ever since then (1875) Social Democracy had looked on any policy that might lead to a split not merely as a political error but as ultimate infamy – with the same moralistic fervour associated, say, with murder. [5]
There is some weight to be accorded these arguments. But, is it necessarily true that a principled opposition with a clear programme will always cut itself off from the workers in an active mass party? Surely the reverse is frequently the case. A party with a verbally radical programme and an active membership obviously cannot be assaulted frontally through its entrenched machine but at the margins where its verbal radicalism is put to the test of rank-and-file scrutiny. The post-1917 experience of the French and German Communist parties with their massive gains from Social Democracy is a case in point and much less significant but closer to home is recent experience in the Young Socialists. An opposition can in this sense operate on the mass party from without and within. That difficulties exist, is really beside the point; it is precisely in the formulation of an organisational and programmatic opposition that the necessary interaction between the revolutionaries takes place. An organisation in pre-war Germany that proceeded on this basis would have been appealing to workers over the heads of the SPD leadership with a programme that was more in accord with the workers’ situation. To disseminate and popularise such a programme there would have been no immediate need for a large following, but insofar as the programme is fought for and accepted, the growth of the opposition is assured. Brandler estimated that in 1915 the Gruppe Internationale (later Spartacusbund) had 4,000 loosely organised adherents. If this organisation had been formed earlier it is reasonable to suppose that the 4,000 could have been much larger, the anti-war propaganda more effective and by 1918 there might have been a fully-fledged Communist Party on the ground in many ways more capable than the Bolsheviks in Russia. The question, like all such historical “ifs”, is an open one, but it illustrates that perhaps Rosa, like many Marxists before and too many since, displayed a tactical rigidity not entirely consonant with the revolutionary task she set herself.
It is necessary to conclude a review of this kind with some evaluation of the job performed by the biographer. Mr Nettl has carried out a useful and long overdue service. The research involved has been monumental. Everything available that Luxemburg wrote, or that has been written about her, has been sifted and evaluated. People who knew her and are still living have been interviewed – particularly useful in this respect was the information obtained from Luise Kautsky’s friend, Blumenburg – and as a result a number of interesting and new insights into her life and character are displayed. One complaint that I have is that Jogiches never emerges as anything more than a rather shadowy figure: in a book of 984 pages, one would have hoped for a rather more rounded presentation. As against this one can congratulate Nettl on his perceptive analysis of Kautsky. He shows clearly that this “Pope of Marxism” was in reality a sterile propagator of orthodoxy without reference to the changing world and the necessary practical consequences of a revolutionary ideology, in fact, a classical centrist.
But there are some matters on which Mr Nettl not only goes against the facts but also against much that is implicit in his sown pages. One judgement in particular stands out like a sore thumb:
The great difference between Lenin and Luxemburg was that the former could have taken himself off to the moon and produced exactly the same thought and action from there. Rosa Luxemburg on the other hand needed not only society and Social democracy as the humus for her thought but the specific society if Imperial Germany and particularly the German Social Democracy that had grown with it.
This really is quite grotesque, the reverse of the real situation. In fact a Lenin divorced from the Russian Labour Movement just would not have existed before 1917. While Rosa, had she had the misfortune to be landed on the moon, would have settled down to educate and organise the green cheese against its maggot exploiters. Another cause of some irritation is Nettl’s use, on occasion, of intrusive sociological terms and categories, as in his characterisation of the SDKP leadership as a “peer group.” Nettl suggests:
This Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania was a group of intellectual peers long before it became a political party. It provided its members with all the attributes o a primary group, an association which all the emigrés lacked – a family, an ideology, a discipline, in short a constant and reliable source of strength ... – in some respects as conspiratorial as Lenin’s Bolsheviks, but outward and open looking in other. The discipline was largely voluntary and was confined to public action; for the rest it left large areas of freedom and choice to the participants, even room for profound intellectual disagreements ... Trotsky with all his friends, admirers and disciples, never had the benefit of a peer group; hence his difficulty in building a following before the revolution and the fragility of his support after 1923 (Nettl p.23).
If by all this he means that the Polish Marxists were an exceptionally talented lot, one can agree – even after 1917 there was a common saying in the Comintern, “The Russian party is the biggest and the Polish party is the best.” But to suggest that the SDKP leadership was qualitatively different from all other revolutionary groups because of this nice accident of togetherness in a “primary group” seems to me to be an error. In fact all revolutionary groups – including the Bolsheviks under Lenin and especially the Left Opposition after 1923 – have similar relationships. Circumstances may vary the degree of conspiracy, but intellectual disagreements always abound both “outward and inward.” One assumes that Nettl has no close acquaintance with the revolutionary movement except as an interested observer. But an academic observer (no matter how well disposed) can scrutinise the collected works from laundry list to magnum opus and still miss the essential flavour of a revolutionary organisation. It would have been better perhaps if someone more in sympathy with Rosa Luxemburg’s politics had written this book (Mr Nettl in his introduction refuses to let his own philosophical cat out of the bag; whatever it is, that cat is no Marxist) but they have not, and probably will not, until the coming Russian, German and Polish revolutions finally frees all the sources for the final evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg.
Of course the life and work of a revolutionary like Luxemburg will mean different things to different people. For the academic mind at its lowest level it will represent thesis fodder of a particularly rich variety. For the professional anti-Communist, careful selection can provide evidence for the impossibility of revolutionary success and if, by chance, the revolution does succeed prove that it’s awful anyway. For the religious Marxist it provides a useful additional banker in the permutation of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, when they make their genuflection. For the revolutionary Marxist, Luxemburg provides an object lesson in the application of the Marxist method to a particular time and place and of an uncompromising revolutionary position regardless of consequence. In this lies her heritage; a heritage of which she would have been justly proud.
Notes
1. J.P. Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg (two volumes), Oxford, £6 6s, 984pp.
2. The Class, the Party and the Leadership, Workers’ International Review Pamphlet No.2, London, n.d., p.7.
3. Leninism or Marxism?, p.84., quoted Nettl, p.287.
4. Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom, Twayne Publishers, New York 1964, p.180.
5. Fischer, Stalin and German Communism.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h4>Equity</h4>
<h1>Lets Play Trade Unions</h1>
<h3>(November 1975)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 15 November 1975, p.629.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Equity is the trade union for actors. In the nature of the profession and character of the members it is rather different from most others. If its members are less prone to call one another brother or sister, it does not suggest a lack of fraternal feeling, merely that “darling” trips more readily off their tongues. I suppose that in a sense all trade union business is a specialised branch of show business. Bearing in mind this point it is a bit of a paradox that our thespians do not carry out their trade union role particularly well.</p>
<p>Equity was formed in 1931 as a result of a clarion call from such leading and famous actors as Godfrey Tearle, Edith Evans and Sybil Thorndike. Largely based in the West End it had but a few hundred members and its rules were therefore designed to cater for a small, like-minded group of people who could meet easily. The main objective was to institute the closed shop and control the profession and improve the conditions of a grossly exploited profession. It was not thought necessary to have branches or a delegate conference. General meetings of Equity were, and still are, the <em>levée en masse</em>.</p>
<p>To call a general meeting in Equity it is only necessary to get the signatures of 40 members in good standing on a requisition. To set in motion a referendum of all the members you need just 100 signatures. Having catered for this ultra-democratic procedure, those who drafted the rules then decided to confer on the executive council the right to ignore any general meeting decision they thought against the interest of the union. Now that seems final enough, but it is not. A decision of the council unpopular with 40 members will result in a special general meeting. If the decision of that meeting offends 100 other members the question can be put to a membership referendum. That decision is binding on the council but not on any collection of 40 members who can start the process going again with another general meeting, and so on ad infinitum.</p>
<p>But, you may well ask, how does this come about? Surely it is the case that the rules served quite well for forty years without their use, or abuse, becoming a matter of public scandal? The answer is, of course, that unions like other human institutions change under the pressure of events and the society in which they operate. When the dreaded Industrial Relations Act was wending its useless course through Parliament, the trade union movement set its collective face firmly against the Bill’s provisions. Equity, along with the Seamen’s union, was caught in a hideous dilemma. If it did not register under the Act they would lose the closed shop agreements and probably the union as well. If they did register they would be out of the TUC, a connection that brought some benefit to the industrially weak Equity. Having dithered about de-registering and then registering the council finally came down for registration and were chucked out of the TUC.</p>
<p>None of this was accomplished without considerable strain. A vociferous and not inconsiderable minority searched the rule book and found that there were endless possibilities for foiling almost anything. A succession of special meetings and referenda were held arriving at contradictory conclusions. When the raison d’etre for the original conflict hall passed away with Mr Heath’s administration and Equity were back in the TUC, the groups who had fought the fight remained, armed with their new understanding of the rule book.</p>
<p>Largest of the groups was GROPE (Campaign for Restructuring and Progress for Equity) sustained by such figures as Miriam Karlin and Ian Milton, moderate but left inclined actors more concerned with issues than ideology. Much smaller but very noisy was the Workers’ Revolutionary Party following, whose strength in the union is almost certainly less than 100, which makes it difficult to get a referendum but easy to get a special meeting. Its notoriety rests more on the recruitment of Vanessa Redgrave than any on real attachment to Trotskyism in Equity. In addition there is Entertainment Unions’ Rank and File Group. This spurt of activity by politically motivated actors gave rise to the reaction led by Marius Goring, and more recently joined Nigel Davenport and Lord Olivier, united in detestation of politics in the union.</p>
<p>If you are still with me we can now deal with the events of last Sunday. On that day, at the Coliseum, no less than three consecutive special meetings were held. The first requisitioned by the governing council was to attempt to break out of the vicious circle of non-decision-making. The rule change proposed was that no referendum vote could be overturned except by another referendum. Despite the general support for this within Equity, the council fell foul of two difficulties. The first was their own bad tactics – they called the meeting for 10 a.m. and as Peter Plouviez, the General Secretary, plaintively explained: ‘Some of our supporters were still in bed when the vote was taken’. The other problem was that to change the rules a two-thirds majority is required. By just twenty-five votes the council failed to reach the magic two-thirds.</p>
<p>Having lost that vote the council then opposed the Davenport motion to insert in the rules that Equity is non-political and non-sectarian. While this may seem to be of little more than symbolic significance it might well handicap the union in its dealings with government and could even put in jeopardy the TUC affiliation. And so, although a simple majority of the 1,957 actors present voted for Mr Davenport’s motion it failed to get over the two-thirds hurdle.</p>
<p>The final special meeting debated the question of a branch and delegate conference structure: a seemingly reasonable reform that would certainly overcome the current difficulties. It also fell, largely one feels because of the notion of ill-attended branch meetings falling under the sway of the Redgraves and other like elements.</p>
<p>Thus, having laboured mightily, spent £6,000, and gathered a record number of actors together, they have not even given birth to a mouse, nothing at all is changed. It is a great pity because actors just as much as boilermakers need a trade union. To engage in these theatrical high jinks must be destructive of the essential purpose of Equity. It is surely not unreasonable that the TUC should be invited to lend their support and advice to rational changes in Equity structure. Unfortunately Equity have not asked for this service, and the TUC would not dream of offering it. One thing is clear, however: unless something is done very soon we will have another replay of the longest running flop in theatrical history.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Equity
Lets Play Trade Unions
(November 1975)
From the Spectator, 15 November 1975, p.629.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Equity is the trade union for actors. In the nature of the profession and character of the members it is rather different from most others. If its members are less prone to call one another brother or sister, it does not suggest a lack of fraternal feeling, merely that “darling” trips more readily off their tongues. I suppose that in a sense all trade union business is a specialised branch of show business. Bearing in mind this point it is a bit of a paradox that our thespians do not carry out their trade union role particularly well.
Equity was formed in 1931 as a result of a clarion call from such leading and famous actors as Godfrey Tearle, Edith Evans and Sybil Thorndike. Largely based in the West End it had but a few hundred members and its rules were therefore designed to cater for a small, like-minded group of people who could meet easily. The main objective was to institute the closed shop and control the profession and improve the conditions of a grossly exploited profession. It was not thought necessary to have branches or a delegate conference. General meetings of Equity were, and still are, the levée en masse.
To call a general meeting in Equity it is only necessary to get the signatures of 40 members in good standing on a requisition. To set in motion a referendum of all the members you need just 100 signatures. Having catered for this ultra-democratic procedure, those who drafted the rules then decided to confer on the executive council the right to ignore any general meeting decision they thought against the interest of the union. Now that seems final enough, but it is not. A decision of the council unpopular with 40 members will result in a special general meeting. If the decision of that meeting offends 100 other members the question can be put to a membership referendum. That decision is binding on the council but not on any collection of 40 members who can start the process going again with another general meeting, and so on ad infinitum.
But, you may well ask, how does this come about? Surely it is the case that the rules served quite well for forty years without their use, or abuse, becoming a matter of public scandal? The answer is, of course, that unions like other human institutions change under the pressure of events and the society in which they operate. When the dreaded Industrial Relations Act was wending its useless course through Parliament, the trade union movement set its collective face firmly against the Bill’s provisions. Equity, along with the Seamen’s union, was caught in a hideous dilemma. If it did not register under the Act they would lose the closed shop agreements and probably the union as well. If they did register they would be out of the TUC, a connection that brought some benefit to the industrially weak Equity. Having dithered about de-registering and then registering the council finally came down for registration and were chucked out of the TUC.
None of this was accomplished without considerable strain. A vociferous and not inconsiderable minority searched the rule book and found that there were endless possibilities for foiling almost anything. A succession of special meetings and referenda were held arriving at contradictory conclusions. When the raison d’etre for the original conflict hall passed away with Mr Heath’s administration and Equity were back in the TUC, the groups who had fought the fight remained, armed with their new understanding of the rule book.
Largest of the groups was GROPE (Campaign for Restructuring and Progress for Equity) sustained by such figures as Miriam Karlin and Ian Milton, moderate but left inclined actors more concerned with issues than ideology. Much smaller but very noisy was the Workers’ Revolutionary Party following, whose strength in the union is almost certainly less than 100, which makes it difficult to get a referendum but easy to get a special meeting. Its notoriety rests more on the recruitment of Vanessa Redgrave than any on real attachment to Trotskyism in Equity. In addition there is Entertainment Unions’ Rank and File Group. This spurt of activity by politically motivated actors gave rise to the reaction led by Marius Goring, and more recently joined Nigel Davenport and Lord Olivier, united in detestation of politics in the union.
If you are still with me we can now deal with the events of last Sunday. On that day, at the Coliseum, no less than three consecutive special meetings were held. The first requisitioned by the governing council was to attempt to break out of the vicious circle of non-decision-making. The rule change proposed was that no referendum vote could be overturned except by another referendum. Despite the general support for this within Equity, the council fell foul of two difficulties. The first was their own bad tactics – they called the meeting for 10 a.m. and as Peter Plouviez, the General Secretary, plaintively explained: ‘Some of our supporters were still in bed when the vote was taken’. The other problem was that to change the rules a two-thirds majority is required. By just twenty-five votes the council failed to reach the magic two-thirds.
Having lost that vote the council then opposed the Davenport motion to insert in the rules that Equity is non-political and non-sectarian. While this may seem to be of little more than symbolic significance it might well handicap the union in its dealings with government and could even put in jeopardy the TUC affiliation. And so, although a simple majority of the 1,957 actors present voted for Mr Davenport’s motion it failed to get over the two-thirds hurdle.
The final special meeting debated the question of a branch and delegate conference structure: a seemingly reasonable reform that would certainly overcome the current difficulties. It also fell, largely one feels because of the notion of ill-attended branch meetings falling under the sway of the Redgraves and other like elements.
Thus, having laboured mightily, spent £6,000, and gathered a record number of actors together, they have not even given birth to a mouse, nothing at all is changed. It is a great pity because actors just as much as boilermakers need a trade union. To engage in these theatrical high jinks must be destructive of the essential purpose of Equity. It is surely not unreasonable that the TUC should be invited to lend their support and advice to rational changes in Equity structure. Unfortunately Equity have not asked for this service, and the TUC would not dream of offering it. One thing is clear, however: unless something is done very soon we will have another replay of the longest running flop in theatrical history.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Bristol fashion</h1>
<h3>(June 1976)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 19 June 1976, p.13.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">In March of this year the Sunderland ship repair yard, Greenwells, closed down and 400 skilled workers lost their jobs. Viewed from some Whitehall bureaucratic fastness, this fact may not cause much loss of sleep after all, the figure represents only 0.04 per cent of the total unemployed in Britain. Viewed from the harsher vantage-point of Sunderland, where a 12 per cent unemployment rate is twice the national average, it is a significant addition to the local dole queue.</p>
<p>In normal circumstances one might have expected a work-in or demands for the nationalisation of the yard. But the circumstances were not normal. Greenwells Dry Dock was already nationalised – acquired by the government as a by-product of the Court Line rescue operation two years ago.</p>
<p>The main assets of the dock, buildings and plant, are owned by Sunderland Shipbuilders, who are themselves an associated company of North East Coast Ship Repairers, with the whole lot nationalised under the control of the Department of Industry. There is some dispute about the profitability of Greenwells in the past. The government employed a firm of accountants, Touche Ross, who estimated losses over the last ten years at £796,000. Much of this was a capital write-off, however, and when the trading loss of £300,000 was probably a function of the complicated group financing of Court Line rather than an accurate indication of the Greenwells situation. Nevertheless, it was, like so many ageing shipyards, in need of capital. An estimated requirement of £750,000 seems to have been the prime cause for the DOI’s decision to close.</p>
<p>It was at this point that Mr Christopher Bailey, the highly successful owner of Bristol Channel Ship Repairers, became interested in the yard. Bailey has a proven record of success in resurrecting failed ship-repair yards. A few years ago he took over Swansea Dry Dock, which had made a loss for thirty years, from the government receiver. That dock now makes a profit and last year turnover was about £2 million. Just the man, one might have thought, to invest his own money in Greenwells and, in the process, to save quite a few jobs.</p>
<p>In January the DOI were told that Bailey was interested in the yard, but did not respond. In April the Labour MP for Sunderland, Mr Fred Willey, accompanied Christopher Bailey to meet officials of the DOI. At this meeting they were informed that, despite the fact that the DOI had closed the yard, its reopening would have to be negotiated with Sunderland Shipbuilders, North East Coast Ship Repairers and Sunderland Council (who own the land). Somewhat puzzled by the logic of all this to-ing and fro-ing, but wishing to get things moving, Bailey contacted the various parties. In the event Bristol Channel were more annoyed than puzzled when they received a demand, from Sunderland Shipbuilders, for a rental of £25,000 per annum for five years, at which point the rent would be increased to £100,000. This is really quite extortionate. Sunderland ship repairers have been paying a rent to the council of only £3,000 and the yard and its assets, being now completely unproductive, are a net drain on resources in maintenance costs.</p>
<p>The rigour of the rental demand gives rise to a strong suspicion that the DOI are more concerned to prevent another Bailey success, where they and others have failed, than to secure employment in the area. This suspicion is not confined to Bristol Channel. The Sunderland District Committee of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, with 10,000 members in the area, have come to the conclusion that “Bristol Channel is being presented with a set of grossly prohibitive terms to prevent the takeover of the dock”. Such is their anger that they are recommending their members to disaffiliate from the Labour Party.</p>
<p>All of this is quite absurd. Bristol Channel consider that at least £1 million will be needed to put Greenwells into successful operation. This is entirely within their means and their intention, if they acquire the yard. Mr Bailey, of course, is a comparatively rich man, the ex-Greenwell workers are not, despite the £300,000 redundancy pay and their continuing receipt of wage-related unemployment benefit. The government that has been prepared to dispense with all precedent in forcing through the ship repair nationalisation Bill, on the pretext of saving jobs, is simultaneously denying jobs to several hundred workers from that industry. It is all very depressing.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Bristol fashion
(June 1976)
From the Spectator, 19 June 1976, p.13.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
In March of this year the Sunderland ship repair yard, Greenwells, closed down and 400 skilled workers lost their jobs. Viewed from some Whitehall bureaucratic fastness, this fact may not cause much loss of sleep after all, the figure represents only 0.04 per cent of the total unemployed in Britain. Viewed from the harsher vantage-point of Sunderland, where a 12 per cent unemployment rate is twice the national average, it is a significant addition to the local dole queue.
In normal circumstances one might have expected a work-in or demands for the nationalisation of the yard. But the circumstances were not normal. Greenwells Dry Dock was already nationalised – acquired by the government as a by-product of the Court Line rescue operation two years ago.
The main assets of the dock, buildings and plant, are owned by Sunderland Shipbuilders, who are themselves an associated company of North East Coast Ship Repairers, with the whole lot nationalised under the control of the Department of Industry. There is some dispute about the profitability of Greenwells in the past. The government employed a firm of accountants, Touche Ross, who estimated losses over the last ten years at £796,000. Much of this was a capital write-off, however, and when the trading loss of £300,000 was probably a function of the complicated group financing of Court Line rather than an accurate indication of the Greenwells situation. Nevertheless, it was, like so many ageing shipyards, in need of capital. An estimated requirement of £750,000 seems to have been the prime cause for the DOI’s decision to close.
It was at this point that Mr Christopher Bailey, the highly successful owner of Bristol Channel Ship Repairers, became interested in the yard. Bailey has a proven record of success in resurrecting failed ship-repair yards. A few years ago he took over Swansea Dry Dock, which had made a loss for thirty years, from the government receiver. That dock now makes a profit and last year turnover was about £2 million. Just the man, one might have thought, to invest his own money in Greenwells and, in the process, to save quite a few jobs.
In January the DOI were told that Bailey was interested in the yard, but did not respond. In April the Labour MP for Sunderland, Mr Fred Willey, accompanied Christopher Bailey to meet officials of the DOI. At this meeting they were informed that, despite the fact that the DOI had closed the yard, its reopening would have to be negotiated with Sunderland Shipbuilders, North East Coast Ship Repairers and Sunderland Council (who own the land). Somewhat puzzled by the logic of all this to-ing and fro-ing, but wishing to get things moving, Bailey contacted the various parties. In the event Bristol Channel were more annoyed than puzzled when they received a demand, from Sunderland Shipbuilders, for a rental of £25,000 per annum for five years, at which point the rent would be increased to £100,000. This is really quite extortionate. Sunderland ship repairers have been paying a rent to the council of only £3,000 and the yard and its assets, being now completely unproductive, are a net drain on resources in maintenance costs.
The rigour of the rental demand gives rise to a strong suspicion that the DOI are more concerned to prevent another Bailey success, where they and others have failed, than to secure employment in the area. This suspicion is not confined to Bristol Channel. The Sunderland District Committee of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, with 10,000 members in the area, have come to the conclusion that “Bristol Channel is being presented with a set of grossly prohibitive terms to prevent the takeover of the dock”. Such is their anger that they are recommending their members to disaffiliate from the Labour Party.
All of this is quite absurd. Bristol Channel consider that at least £1 million will be needed to put Greenwells into successful operation. This is entirely within their means and their intention, if they acquire the yard. Mr Bailey, of course, is a comparatively rich man, the ex-Greenwell workers are not, despite the £300,000 redundancy pay and their continuing receipt of wage-related unemployment benefit. The government that has been prepared to dispense with all precedent in forcing through the ship repair nationalisation Bill, on the pretext of saving jobs, is simultaneously denying jobs to several hundred workers from that industry. It is all very depressing.
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<h2>Robert James <small><small><a id="fa" href="#na" name="fa">[1*]</a></small></small></h2>
<h1>Natalia Trotsky and the Fourth International</h1>
<h3>(December 1972)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj053" target="new">No.53</a>, December 1972, p.42.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst"><strong>Natalia Trotsky and the Fourth International</strong>, Pluto Press 7.5p</p>
<p class="fst">The Russian question was a problem for Trotsky throughout his life in opposition and exile.</p>
<p>His own eloquent but widely varying characterisation of Russia as a workers’ state are ample testimony of the analytical problems involved for serious Marxists.</p>
<p>It is probably true to say that the unfortunate, if perhaps understandable, tenacity with which Trotsky clung to his definition has succeeded in disorienting the Fourth Internationalist movement he founded. It requires some fairly large assumptions to suggest with absolute confidence that had he lived he would have changed his mind. One thing is clear, however, he would not have allowed his thought to remain fixed in the categories of 1940. The varying adaptations to Stalinism of his fissiparous followers would be unthinkable for Trotsky.</p>
<p>What Trotsky would have said or done in the light of the unthought of post-1945 reality is unknowable. We do however know what his life-long comrade and companion Natalia thought and what she, inevitably, was forced to do. She rejected the theory of the “degenerated workers’ state” and in time she broke with the organisation that had itself so grievously degenerated from its birth in 1938.</p>
<p>Her reward for her dedication to the principles of revolutionary socialism as against the compromised these of the Fourth International was to be abused (abuse in no way mitigated by its sorrowful tone) for desertion.</p>
<p>In the few pages of this pamphlet a whole period of revolutionary experience is brought into sharp focus and the organisation found wanting.</p>
<p>The future is with Natalia whose genuine faith in communism, the working class and the logical steps she took flowing from that faith made her the genuine representative of the political heritage of Leon Trotsky.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="na" href="#fa" name="na">1*.</a> Robert James is a pseudonym used by Jim Higgins.</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Robert James [1*]
Natalia Trotsky and the Fourth International
(December 1972)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.53, December 1972, p.42.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Natalia Trotsky and the Fourth International, Pluto Press 7.5p
The Russian question was a problem for Trotsky throughout his life in opposition and exile.
His own eloquent but widely varying characterisation of Russia as a workers’ state are ample testimony of the analytical problems involved for serious Marxists.
It is probably true to say that the unfortunate, if perhaps understandable, tenacity with which Trotsky clung to his definition has succeeded in disorienting the Fourth Internationalist movement he founded. It requires some fairly large assumptions to suggest with absolute confidence that had he lived he would have changed his mind. One thing is clear, however, he would not have allowed his thought to remain fixed in the categories of 1940. The varying adaptations to Stalinism of his fissiparous followers would be unthinkable for Trotsky.
What Trotsky would have said or done in the light of the unthought of post-1945 reality is unknowable. We do however know what his life-long comrade and companion Natalia thought and what she, inevitably, was forced to do. She rejected the theory of the “degenerated workers’ state” and in time she broke with the organisation that had itself so grievously degenerated from its birth in 1938.
Her reward for her dedication to the principles of revolutionary socialism as against the compromised these of the Fourth International was to be abused (abuse in no way mitigated by its sorrowful tone) for desertion.
In the few pages of this pamphlet a whole period of revolutionary experience is brought into sharp focus and the organisation found wanting.
The future is with Natalia whose genuine faith in communism, the working class and the logical steps she took flowing from that faith made her the genuine representative of the political heritage of Leon Trotsky.
Note
1*. Robert James is a pseudonym used by Jim Higgins.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h4>Trade unions</h4>
<h1>Democracy at the Top</h1>
<h3>(October 1975)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 18 October 1975, p.496.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Last week postal balloting commenced for several key posts in the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. It is the hope of some commentators with an interest in these things, and not a few engineering employers, that the result will signal a distinct lurch to the right on the Executive Committee, the union’s leading body. If Jimmy Reid, the telegenic Communist, and Bob Wright, the present incumbent of the North-West England seat, are defeated there will undoubtedly be a spurt of enthusiasm in the press for postal ballots. Democracy, it will be said, has triumphed. The innate good sense and moderation of the working man confirmed.</p>
<p>Already there is a growing lobby which calls for the compulsory introduction of postal balloting. An even larger school of thought, moderates to a man, suggest that the government should cover the costs of such ballots for any union adopting the system. It all seems a bit excessive just to ditch Messrs Reid and Wright, or their peers.</p>
<p>I have argued before in these pages that the failure of left-wing candidates in recent AUEW elections is less to do with the postal voting system, more the manifest failure of the current left regime to satisfy the members on wages and conditions. That, however, may not be the point; perhaps the issue is democracy. The old AUEW procedure was for ballot papers to be issued, for those with fully paid up cards, at branch meetings. Voting took place at the meeting and counting at the union headquarters. Nowadays the union head office posts the ballot papers direct to individual members, who, if they feel like it, send them back to the union for counting. Under the branch system returns seldom exceeded 5 per cent of those eligible to vote, while postal ballots have notched up scores of 30 per cent and more.</p>
<p>Now that dramatic broadening of the electoral base is a powerful argument in favour of postal voting. However, for those who advocate this system (to flush the reds from under our union beds) there must be one or two reservations. In a recent postal vote one Laurie Smith, a currently unaffiliated, independent Trotskyist, won a post as National Organiser, beating his right-wing and communist opponents. This result has so encouraged the International Socialists that they are running their man, Willie Lee, for another organiser job with an impressive list of sponsoring convenors and shop stewards.</p>
<p>The arguments for a reversion to branch voting are not just advanced by Communists and their fellow travellers. Districts firmly under right-wing control have lived happily with the system for years. It is argued, that all those members with passionately held moderate views should be prepared to test their convictions against the minor inconvenience of attending a branch meeting. More convincing perhaps is the point that those who do attend meetings are more likely to know the trade union record of the candidates, than those who take their advice from the <strong>Sun</strong> or Woodrow Wyatt.</p>
<p>On both sides of the argument, of course, there is an element of special pleading. For my own part I would be more impressed by those partisans of democracy in the AUEW if they would broaden their concern to other unions with less democratic procedures. Even if the leadership of these other unions is impeccably, even ‘multi-chromatically,’ moderate.</p>
<p>Until recently the General and Municipal Workers Union operated an informal but effective type of dynastic succession. Election to high office required ties of blood with existing office holders. The Transport Workers Union elects only one official, the General Secretary, and once in office only death, age sixty-five or spectacular malfeasance can remove him. In the Electrical Trade Union, Mr Frank Chapple managed to combine the posts of General Secretary and President at the same time, a ploy that his Communist predecessor, Frank Haxell, no mean hand at stuffing a ballot box, would have thought coming it a bit strong.</p>
<p>Some years ago Mr V.L. Allen carried out a survey of almost all TUC affiliates to discover their method of electing general secretaries. Some seventy-three were elected and the surprisingly high total of fifty-five were appointed. Only thirty-six of them were subject to periodic election, while eighty-four, barring accidents, were there for life. Since Mr Allen’s survey there have been a number of mergers and amalgamations, most of which have sunk elective unions into ones where appointments the order of the day.</p>
<p>In a sense all of this is beside the point, further inquiry shows that the tenure of office of periodically elected officials is the same as for their appointed, and once-only-elected, colleagues. History records only three general secretaries who failed to be re-elected when they were eligible and wanted to stand. One, in the Carpenters and Joiners Society, in 1862 another in the Engineering Union in 1913, and the aforementioned Mr Frank Haxell. Incidentally, the ETU seems to have had some sorry experiences with their leading officials; of the first four general secretaries, three were sacked for pinching the funds.</p>
<p>In the light of these simple facts, the attack on Hugh Scanlon for his alleged undemocratic behaviour in exercising his casting vote in favour of a return to his union’s traditional methods, do seem a bit harsh. Interestingly enough, one of the problems facing the AUEW is the difficulty of achieving a joint rule book with the recently acquired draughtsmen’s union, TASS. Prior to the amalgamation, and still today, TASS appointed all their officials. The stumbling block to their full integration is the Engineers’ insistence on popular, periodic election. It is a matter of some irony that if Mr. Scanlon and his left-wing colleagues were to agree to appointment, then a reasonable calculation would indicate a permanent left-wing majority for the united leadership.</p>
<p>Those with a concern for the development of trade union democracy might well turn they attention from the red herring of postal balloting and concentrate on the question of recall. The truth is that whatever system is used to acquire officials the result is something of a lottery. Bearing in mind the vagaries of the elective and appointive process, it is not surprising that occasionally the venal, the corrupt, the overly ambitious and plain stupid attain high office. This unfortunate effect is of course not confined to trade unions, as anyone with half an eye to politics or business can testify. It is, though, doubly unfortunate if, once in office the offender stays there until the grim reaper cuts him down.</p>
<p>It is surely not unreasonable that members signing a requisition in sufficient numbers (say a fifth or a quarter of the appropriate constituency) be able to submit the official to a re-election process, whatever the method by which he originally got the job. It will be said in reply to this scheme that trade unionists should not wish to impose on their officials a security of tenure worse than their own. The answer this is that no members have security of tenure to match their full-time officers, as many of the rank and file are discovering on our vastly expanded dole queues. Even if it were true the answer would still be: ‘Yes they should’.</p>
<p>If, as is so often claimed on May Day platforms, the trade union movement is not a business but a crusade, then it is only right that the mounted and caparisoned leaders should be more exposed than the poor bloody infantry. In any case as Doctor Johnson said, in the context of imminent execution: “It concentrates the mind wonderfully well.”</p>
<p> </p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Trade unions
Democracy at the Top
(October 1975)
From the Spectator, 18 October 1975, p.496.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Last week postal balloting commenced for several key posts in the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. It is the hope of some commentators with an interest in these things, and not a few engineering employers, that the result will signal a distinct lurch to the right on the Executive Committee, the union’s leading body. If Jimmy Reid, the telegenic Communist, and Bob Wright, the present incumbent of the North-West England seat, are defeated there will undoubtedly be a spurt of enthusiasm in the press for postal ballots. Democracy, it will be said, has triumphed. The innate good sense and moderation of the working man confirmed.
Already there is a growing lobby which calls for the compulsory introduction of postal balloting. An even larger school of thought, moderates to a man, suggest that the government should cover the costs of such ballots for any union adopting the system. It all seems a bit excessive just to ditch Messrs Reid and Wright, or their peers.
I have argued before in these pages that the failure of left-wing candidates in recent AUEW elections is less to do with the postal voting system, more the manifest failure of the current left regime to satisfy the members on wages and conditions. That, however, may not be the point; perhaps the issue is democracy. The old AUEW procedure was for ballot papers to be issued, for those with fully paid up cards, at branch meetings. Voting took place at the meeting and counting at the union headquarters. Nowadays the union head office posts the ballot papers direct to individual members, who, if they feel like it, send them back to the union for counting. Under the branch system returns seldom exceeded 5 per cent of those eligible to vote, while postal ballots have notched up scores of 30 per cent and more.
Now that dramatic broadening of the electoral base is a powerful argument in favour of postal voting. However, for those who advocate this system (to flush the reds from under our union beds) there must be one or two reservations. In a recent postal vote one Laurie Smith, a currently unaffiliated, independent Trotskyist, won a post as National Organiser, beating his right-wing and communist opponents. This result has so encouraged the International Socialists that they are running their man, Willie Lee, for another organiser job with an impressive list of sponsoring convenors and shop stewards.
The arguments for a reversion to branch voting are not just advanced by Communists and their fellow travellers. Districts firmly under right-wing control have lived happily with the system for years. It is argued, that all those members with passionately held moderate views should be prepared to test their convictions against the minor inconvenience of attending a branch meeting. More convincing perhaps is the point that those who do attend meetings are more likely to know the trade union record of the candidates, than those who take their advice from the Sun or Woodrow Wyatt.
On both sides of the argument, of course, there is an element of special pleading. For my own part I would be more impressed by those partisans of democracy in the AUEW if they would broaden their concern to other unions with less democratic procedures. Even if the leadership of these other unions is impeccably, even ‘multi-chromatically,’ moderate.
Until recently the General and Municipal Workers Union operated an informal but effective type of dynastic succession. Election to high office required ties of blood with existing office holders. The Transport Workers Union elects only one official, the General Secretary, and once in office only death, age sixty-five or spectacular malfeasance can remove him. In the Electrical Trade Union, Mr Frank Chapple managed to combine the posts of General Secretary and President at the same time, a ploy that his Communist predecessor, Frank Haxell, no mean hand at stuffing a ballot box, would have thought coming it a bit strong.
Some years ago Mr V.L. Allen carried out a survey of almost all TUC affiliates to discover their method of electing general secretaries. Some seventy-three were elected and the surprisingly high total of fifty-five were appointed. Only thirty-six of them were subject to periodic election, while eighty-four, barring accidents, were there for life. Since Mr Allen’s survey there have been a number of mergers and amalgamations, most of which have sunk elective unions into ones where appointments the order of the day.
In a sense all of this is beside the point, further inquiry shows that the tenure of office of periodically elected officials is the same as for their appointed, and once-only-elected, colleagues. History records only three general secretaries who failed to be re-elected when they were eligible and wanted to stand. One, in the Carpenters and Joiners Society, in 1862 another in the Engineering Union in 1913, and the aforementioned Mr Frank Haxell. Incidentally, the ETU seems to have had some sorry experiences with their leading officials; of the first four general secretaries, three were sacked for pinching the funds.
In the light of these simple facts, the attack on Hugh Scanlon for his alleged undemocratic behaviour in exercising his casting vote in favour of a return to his union’s traditional methods, do seem a bit harsh. Interestingly enough, one of the problems facing the AUEW is the difficulty of achieving a joint rule book with the recently acquired draughtsmen’s union, TASS. Prior to the amalgamation, and still today, TASS appointed all their officials. The stumbling block to their full integration is the Engineers’ insistence on popular, periodic election. It is a matter of some irony that if Mr. Scanlon and his left-wing colleagues were to agree to appointment, then a reasonable calculation would indicate a permanent left-wing majority for the united leadership.
Those with a concern for the development of trade union democracy might well turn they attention from the red herring of postal balloting and concentrate on the question of recall. The truth is that whatever system is used to acquire officials the result is something of a lottery. Bearing in mind the vagaries of the elective and appointive process, it is not surprising that occasionally the venal, the corrupt, the overly ambitious and plain stupid attain high office. This unfortunate effect is of course not confined to trade unions, as anyone with half an eye to politics or business can testify. It is, though, doubly unfortunate if, once in office the offender stays there until the grim reaper cuts him down.
It is surely not unreasonable that members signing a requisition in sufficient numbers (say a fifth or a quarter of the appropriate constituency) be able to submit the official to a re-election process, whatever the method by which he originally got the job. It will be said in reply to this scheme that trade unionists should not wish to impose on their officials a security of tenure worse than their own. The answer this is that no members have security of tenure to match their full-time officers, as many of the rank and file are discovering on our vastly expanded dole queues. Even if it were true the answer would still be: ‘Yes they should’.
If, as is so often claimed on May Day platforms, the trade union movement is not a business but a crusade, then it is only right that the mounted and caparisoned leaders should be more exposed than the poor bloody infantry. In any case as Doctor Johnson said, in the context of imminent execution: “It concentrates the mind wonderfully well.”
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Revolutionary Trade Unionism<br>
<small>(Part Two)</small></h1>
<h4>Dual Unionism in Britain</h4>
<h3>(April 1971)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj046" target="new">No.47</a>, April-May 1971, pp.14 & 19-23.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<table align="center" width="90%">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="c"><em>The first part of this article, which appeared in our last issue (<strong>IS 46</strong>), dealt with the early development of trade unionism in Britain, and with the experiences of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) in the US.</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<hr class="section">
<p class="fst">In 1903 the British SLP was formed from members of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). The immediate cause of the split was the support given by the SDF leadership (Hyndman, Quelch, etc.) for Kautsky’s compromise resolution on Millerand’s entry into a French government with Gallifet, the murderer of the French communards. The dispute was, however, much more far-reaching than this. Tom Bell indicates this in his book <strong>Pioneering Days</strong> <a id="f7" href="#n7" name="f7">[7]</a>:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The main line of the opposition was against all reformism: exposure of the Labour Party and trade union officials as fakers; for socialist trade unionism; against the monarchy and exposure of the futility of Labour parliamentarism’.</p>
<p class="fst">This line the official SDF nicknamed ‘Impossibilism’. In short, it was more or less complete De Leonism. The social composition of the small British SLP was mainly industrial workers, with a few clerical workers. <a id="f8" href="#n8" name="f8">[8]</a> The criteria for membership was absolute adherence to the programme and a refusal to be influenced by reformism, reformists or booze. The leading figures in the organisation were Connolly, Yates and Mathieson, all dedicated teetotalers. No official of a trade union was eligible for membership of the party. <a id="f9" href="#n9" name="f9">[9]</a> Presumably there was not too much danger of this for the party had only 80 members at its founding conference (the majority of these in Scotland). <a id="f10" href="#n10" name="f10">[10]</a> The members were excluded from dual membership in any other organisation which precluded any work in the Labour Party, where they might have had some chance of proselytising.</p>
<p>The main influence in the early period of the party was James Connolly. Connolly had returned from a trip to America in 1902 where he had come under the influence of De Leon. He became the first organiser of the SLP at a wage of 30s a week, when the money was available. According to Bell, Connolly toured all over Scotland recruiting for the organisation and it is, perhaps, as a result of his efforts that in 1904 the SLP reported a membership of 200 to the International. Connolly, besides being a brilliant organiser and speaker, was also an unusually accomplished writer. He wrote, handset, printed and dispatched copies of the party paper <strong>The Socialist</strong>. But despite the undoubted talent of Connolly, the singleness of purpose and dedication of the members, their exclusiveness</p>
<p>and insistence on complete agreement on all points would have made them as ineffective and irrelevant to the course of British socialist development as the SPGB had it not been for their adherence to industrial unionism and their efforts to spread these ideas to the Clyde.</p>
<p>With the founding of the IWW the British SLP decided to convene a conference in Glasgow to set up a propaganda organisation to popularise the idea of revolutionary industrial unionism. At this conference the Advocates of Industrial Unionism was founded. The programme indicated not only that De Leon’s advocacy of industrial unionism had been learned but also, and with much less reason, his attachment to dual unionism had been transported across the Atlantic. In the preamble to the programme this is made clear:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘... the trade unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars. The trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These sad conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organisation formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry or in all industries if necessary cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.’ <a id="f11" href="#n11" name="f11">[11]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Mitigation of the full rigour of the SLP programme was a measure of compromise that even De Leon had to accept at the IWW founding convention. The propaganda of the Advocates around the Clyde resulted in some support in a few Glasgow factories (Argyle Motor Works and Albion Motor Works are two mentioned by Bell <a id="f12" href="#n12" name="f12">[12]</a>, and particularly the Singer Sewing Machine Company on Clydebank). Factory gate meetings were held and study classes begun. In time most of the Singer departments had a group of supporters of industrial unionism. The SLP, on the basis of this limited success, decided to turn from propaganda to organisation. The Advocates of Industrial Unionism was transformed into the Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB). A vigorous campaign at Singer’s resulted in a large increase in membership (over 4,000 members). <a id="f13" href="#n13" name="f13">[13]</a> The slogan ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ caught on. The difficulty arose precisely on the basis of the slogan. The IWGB had proved that they could organise a union of sorts; they had to prove the efficacy of the slogan when someone was actually injured. One day a woman was dismissed. Strike meetings were held in all the shops and the management declared a lockout. Ten thousand workers were on the street and in the initial burst of enthusiasm many more joined the IWGB. But there were problems. The IWGB had little or no funds. The revolutionary phraseology of their leadership gave considerable offence to the large Catholic section of workers and gave a handle for the employers to drive a wedge into the workers’ ranks.</p>
<p>The company hit on the stratagem of sending a postcard to the workers on the firm’s books, whether they had worked there recently or not, asking them if they would like to return to work. The strike committee asked the workers to send in their cards to them and in all they received 4,000 cards. (This postcard ‘ballot’ shows an interesting similarity to events in the recent Pilkington’s strike.) Despite their opposition a return to work move began to gain steam. In a few days the strike was broken. Shortly after this the leading members of the IWGB and the SLP were sacked. The IWGB claim that these sackings merely served to disseminate the industrial union message to newer fields could not obscure the fact that the union had been defeated not least of all by the inadequacy of its programme for any struggle falling short of the socialist revolution.</p>
<p>The IWGB, after the Singer debacle of 1911, did not have another chance. Dual unionism, then as now, could only get a toehold in firms, like Singer’s, where the open shop principle applied. Even at Singer’s, the ASE (Amalgamated Society of Engineers – predecessor of the AEU) skilled tool makers did not join and worked throughout the strike. The degree of consciousness necessary among the members to make the slogan ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ stick across an industry, assuming that that degree of organisation can be attained, in reality presupposes an organisation that transcends unionism of any sort.</p>
<p>The SLP militants were not only active on the Clyde. They provided much of the theory behind the Labour College/Plebs League split from Ruskin in 1909. Connolly influenced Tom Mann in the direction of industrial unionism, although Mann was more influenced by French syndicalism. Mann, despite a thoroughgoing contempt for craft unionism and the trade union bureaucracy and an attachment to industrial unionism, firmly set his face against dual unions. In 1910 he was a moving spirit in the formation of the Syndicalist Education League. The resolution passed at the founding conference shows the line of the league: ‘Whereas the sectionalism that characterises the trade union movement of today is utterly incapable of effectively fighting the capitalist class and securing the economic freedom of the workers, this conference declares that the time is now ripe for the industrial organisation of all the workers on the basis of class, and not trade or craft, and that we hereby agree to form a Syndicalist Education League to propagate the principles of syndicalism throughout the British Isles, with a view to merging all existing unions into one compact organisation for each industry, including all labourers of every industry in the same organisation with skilled workers’.</p>
<p>At first sight the syndicalist approach seems much the same as the SLP. In fact there were differences, differences that sent the SLP into paroxysms of polemical rage. Not, only were they opposed to dual unionism, but the principle of the syndicalists, claimed the SLP, was the mines for the miners, the railways for the railwaymen, which denied the all-inclusive, working-class basis of industrial unionism. The syndicalists’ crimes did not end there. They also completely denied any validity in parliamentary politics. With the later IWW they believed in ‘direct action’, ‘sabotage’, ‘physical force’ and the ‘General Strike’. The SLP, following De Leon, believed in the ballot box to bring the SLP to a parliamentary majority, at which unlikely event the power would be handed over to the revolutionary industrial unions to organise society. (De Leon had said, in the American context: ‘Where the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World will sit there will be the nation’s capital.’)</p>
<p>In British terms Mann’s emphasis on ‘boring from within’ ensured a more lasting influence than the SLP. The movement for amalgamation began to gather momentum. The general propaganda on industrial unionism gave rise to developments in the trade unions probably unsuspected by the early militants. The post-1918 amalgamations gave rise to the AEU, the NUR and other federations. The discussion on the nature of the state and the form of socialist power induced a number of middle-class intellectuals to introduce the alternative blueprint of guild socialism. Hilaire Belloc climbed on the bandwagon, to hark back to the medieval simplicities in which the Roman Church had found its cosiest ideological niche, in <strong>The Servile State</strong>.</p>
<p>The period from 1910 until the war was one of unprecedented rank and file initiative. Each succeeding year saw an increase in the millions of days lost in strikes. An unwilling trade union leadership was forced into supporting and, if they could run fast enough, leading strikes. Max Beer, by no means a revolutionary socialist, describes the pre-1914 industrial unrest as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The years 1911 to 1914 will ever be memorable in the annals of British Labour. The United Kingdom witnessed for the first time a class war in which all its component parts were involved. English, Welsh and Scottish miners, English railwaymen and Irish transport workers were joining hands across the borders and seas. Robert Smillie, Tom Mann, James Larkin and James Connolly, all born fighters, led the new forces in battle array. Nothing like it had ever happened before; neither in comprehensiveness nor in numbers had that Labour upheaval any parallel in British social history’. <a id="f14" href="#n14" name="f14">[14]</a></p>
<p class="fst">The growth of a movement of the working class <em>for itself</em> was in process. The imposition of French syndicalist theory, and IWW non-theory admixed with guild socialist vapourings gave the movement a specific flavour but did not fundamentally alter its course, merely changed its direction and assisted, up to a point, in clarification. The organisation of revolutionaries that could have given firm leadership and direction to the militants was missing. The movement had to wait some years and go through the carnage of 1914-17 before the possibility of such an organisation could arise from the example of the Russian Revolution.</p>
<p>The objective and subjective reasons for the failure of the post-war CPGB have been discussed in previous issues of <strong>IS</strong>. <a id="f15" href="#n15" name="f15">[15]</a> The lost opportunities of the Minority Movement and the subsequent subordination of the Communist Party to Moscow in the 1920s betrayed a whole generation of socialist militants to futility and despair.<br>
</p>
<h4>Third Period</h4>
<p class="fst">The expensively bought and paid for experience with dual unionism in America and Britain were once more tried, at Russian insistence, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The idiocy of the ‘third period’ (so called after the arbitrary division of post 1917 periods of the revolution: 1917-1924 <em>Period of Revolutionary Offensive</em>; 1924-1928 <em>Period of Revolutionary Ebb</em>; 1928-1933 <em>Period of Renewed Revolutionary Offensive</em> – after the collapse of the third period we were not treated to any nomenclature for the succeeding periodic pains) may have been a logical extension of Stalin’s campaign to destroy the Bolshevik party, and with it the old Bolsheviks, but it had no connection with the realities faced by any of the non-Russian parties.</p>
<p>By 1928 Stalin, with the assistance of the right, had effectively broken the Left opposition led by Trotsky. ‘United front’ tactics internationally had resulted in the subordination of the foreign parties to nationalist and non-socialist allies. In China the Communists, at Stalin’s direction, played second string to the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai Shek until Chiang had no further use for the Communists and massacred them in Shanghai. The Anglo-Russian Committee in Britain was dead. The right phase of the Russian Party and the Comintern was ending its usefulness, together with Bukharin, the theoretician of the right wing. The development of state capitalism in Russia called for an altogether more ruthless exploitation of the workers and peasants. Stalin’s struggle against the Bukharin wing of the party began. In the process the whole line of the Communist International (CI) had to be recast. The united front was jettisoned in favour of the ‘class against class’ policy. The Russian struggle against the kulaks was mirrored in the foreign parties’ struggles against social democracy. Social democracy became overnight the ‘left cover of fascism’, more deadly because more insidious; social democracy equalled social fascism.</p>
<p>In trade union terms this meant the end of the period of work in the reformist unions, to build meaningful industrial factions. The French and British parties were bludgeoned into line; in the German party it was necessary to expel the opposition of Brandler and Thalheimer.</p>
<p>The effect of the new line on the Minority Movement was catastrophic. Yesterday’s denials of splitting and dual unionism were contradicted by today’s insistence on independent activity. The instructions from Moscow demanded that the MM should always attempt to wrest the leadership of strikes from the union machinery. Alternative strike committees were to be formed to become the basis of continuing factory committees that would eventually be amalgamated to form new trade unions. In a pamphlet, published in May 1929, Harry Pollitt indicated the ultra-left dual unionist position of the MM.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The Minority Movement is now the alternative national centre for the industrial movement of the British workers. Those who want Mondism, class collaboration, company unionism, can get it from the General Council of the TUC. Those who want a policy based solely on the interests of the working class, a policy of militant trade unionism, look to the MM for their leadership.’</p>
<p class="fst"><strong>The Worker</strong> in July 1929 went even further.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The issue therefore of fighting independently the daily struggle of the working class ... means a complete break with all the old conceptions of continuing our activities within the constitutional framework of trade union branches, District Committees, etc. New forces have to be won, new forms of organisation found.’ <a id="f16" href="#n16" name="f16">[16]</a></p>
<p class="fst">The reference to new forces was a denial, again at Russian insistence, of the previous line that only bona fide trade unionists could join the MM. The Comintern, for some unaccountable reason, believed that in a country, with the tradition and history of the working class like Britain, the non-unionist could be drawn directly into revolutionary unionism without even a passing acquaintance with the reformist model.</p>
<p>The actual practice of the MM in the application of the new line was somewhat mitigated by the fact that its influence had declined from the point where it had some sway over a few national unions. (One MM report on the Austin strike of March 1929, indicated that although the Austin Birmingham strike committee was against the union leadership, they were equally opposed to the outside leadership of the MM. <a id="f17" href="#n17" name="f17">[17]</a>)</p>
<p>But, mitigated or not, the new line managed to throw away any of the gains that remained from the past. The main areas of strength of the MM had been the mines, engineering and railways. The Scottish miners’ union was in the hands of the right wing. This leadership was supporting an unrepresentative and undemocratic clique in both the Fife and Lanark unions. In the circumstances the MM needed little encouragement to make a foray into dual unionism. In mid-1929 they set up a new union, The United Mineworkers of Scotland (The official union was the National Union of Scottish Mineworkers, NUSM). The UMS was completely under CP control and although they claimed 14,000 members – mainly in Fife and Lanark – there were, in the words of one delegate to the MFGB (Miners Federation of Great Britain) conference in 1930, ‘loud speakers and very few listeners in’. The UMS fought two strikes against wage cuts, both unsuccessfully, and by 1933 were attempting to merge with the NUSMW. Their overtures were rejected and in 193S the UMS went into voluntary liquidation.</p>
<p>The drive toward dual unionism in the Scottish mineworkers alienated much of the MM support in the MFGB, the most prominent – if not the most important – being A.J. Cook, the secretary of the federation. Cook denounced the UMS and broke with the MM in 1929. Arthur Horner, although opposed to the new line, did not break with the CP, but when the MM turned its attention to the South Wales coalfield, as an area where their independent influence could be displayed in a way that would impress the Comintern with the dedication the British Section, Horner spoke out against the indiscriminate advocacy of dual unionism. He soon, however, confessed his errors and was, for his sins, excluded from the Central Committee of the party. In 1931 he accepted the chairmanship of the South Wales Central Strike Committee during the strike of that year. But he opposed an independent strike committee and resigned from the Central Strike Committee (on which no officials were allowed to sit). The strike was called off after 15 days and when the MM tried to prolong the struggle they were completely isolated from the miners who went back to work <em>en bloc</em>. Horner was arraigned, for his lack of faith in the masses, before the British Party and the Comintern. By some strange quirk of fate he was not expelled, perhaps because he was one of the few remaining experienced and capable miners left to the party. Stalin, with a few jokes about the crime of Hornerism, allowed him to remain.</p>
<p>In engineering and the railways the story was the same. The MM did not have the strength to organise any breakaway unions, but they were able to cause a fuss over the very real difficulties that workers experienced in a period of mass unemployment. The application of the line on the unorganised led to a development of the thesis of ‘never mind about union membership’. <a id="f18" href="#n18" name="f18">[18]</a> The insistence that the union machine was rotten and that workers could really operate only outside its ambit was unconvincing at the congress of the CI and the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU); to workers who were recoiling from five years of defeats and mass unemployment, it was sheer lunacy. The emphasis on non-unionists and breaking with the unions was also deeply repugnant to most dedicated unionists who had fought hard to keep their organisation intact and to exclude the nons.</p>
<p>The purest expression, however, of the third period tactic was in a field where the party and the MM had always been strong, although it was a field well off-centre from the main arena of working class struggle – the Tailors and Garment Workers Union (NUTGW).</p>
<p>There was trouble in the tailoring trade long before the MM change of line. The introduction of the conveyor belt and machine cutting reduced the craft content of the job and increased the number of women employed. The NUTGW was based in Leeds and dominated by catholics. The largely Jewish and non-catholic membership in London were, with some justification, afraid that their problems were not being properly dealt with by the Leeds leadership. The London Organiser, Sam Elsbury was a founder member of the CP and the MM. When in October 1928, a dispute broke out over a non-unionist at the Rego factory in London, it was endorsed by the London District Committee. The unions national leadership would not sanction the strike because, they said, it was prejudicial to a new national agreement they were attempting to organise with the employers federation. The strike was well run with the strikers, mainly young women, holding marches, manning pickets and making street collections. Public sympathy was gained and considerable trade union aid forthcoming. After nearly three months the strike was settled with Rego’s recognising the union, but not the union shop, and the reinstatement of most of the strikers. At this stage the Leeds cabal took action against Elsbury, expelling him from the union and forcibly taking over the London office. In other times the CP and the MM would have mounted a full scale campaign for Elsbury’s reinstatement in the union, with some possibility of success. In 1929 such a course would have been to lose a glorious opportunity to strike a blow for independent revolutionary action against the rotten labour fakers. On the 7th March 1929 the United Clothing Workers Union (UCWU) came into existence. The new union recruited a majority of the London membership rapidly and a substantial minority of the Leeds membership. Elsbury was well satisfied with his work for the party line. What the new union needed more than anything else was a little time to consolidate the organisation and to build up the funds. Unfortunately it is a feature of all dual unions that they are never afforded the time to consolidate their position.</p>
<p>In the North London factory of Polikoff the overwhelming majority of members joined the UCWU and the management recognised the union. When NUTGW members applied for jobs in the factory they were informed they would have to transfer to the United Clothing Workers. The NUTGW complained to the Wholesale Clothiers Federation who successfully brought pressure to bear to withdraw recognition from the UCWU. Elsbury attempted to stave off the inevitable trouble, for his union was in poor shape to win, by insisting that his members were prepared to work alongside any trade unionist. Polikoff nevertheless refused to permit the collection of UCWU dues in the factory. Elsbury took his problems to the party. The Industrial Committee promised Elsbury that a sum of £500 would be available to meet strike pay, through collections and a subvention from the RILU in Moscow. Elsbury called a strike for union recognition. Arrayed against the UCWU were not only Polikoff (who according to most testimony was quite prepared to recognise both unions) but also the NUTGW, the TUC – in particular the T&GWU who threatened to black deliveries to Polikoff if the UCWU were recognised – the London Trades Council and the Employers Federation. The NUTGW were sending down their members to break the strike. A prominent member of the Executive Board of the UCWU, in fact the chairman, Dave Cohen suddenly acquired an affection for the NUTGW that had so recently expelled him from its ranks. At the same time he acquired the necessary finance to emigrate to Canada. The strike started on May 4th. By May 9th Polikoff s had applied to a magistrate for sixty seven summonses against UCWU strikers for breach of contract. Polikoff also indicated that they might find it necessary to apply for 500 or 600 summonses in all. Polikoff’s manager explained to the bench the reason for his actions:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘It is very difficult for me to say but we want to teach these people a lesson. At the present time they are members of what is known as a breakaway union – a Communist organisation – and they are not members of the orthodox union which is recognised by the TUC. We want to recover from them the money they have lost us ... the damages must be at least a week’s wages ... they have practically shut our works.’</p>
<p class="fst">20 On May 10th Elsbury arrived at CP headquarters for his first instalment of £500. Nobody could tell him anything about the money. He was urged to come back tomorrow. Each succeeding day brought the same response. Elsbury demanded a meeting of the Central Committee to enquire into the failure to provide the promised cash. The general isolation of the CP at this time is indicated by the fact that although they called for collections in their press and J.T. Murphy, who had been seconded to the UCWU for the duration of the strike, spent most of his time raising money, the total collected nowhere met the £500 minimum. The strike dragged on. Polikoff secured a conviction on May 23rd against one of the strikers, who was fined £4 15s 0d, and asked for a further eighty eight summonses. The remaining sixty six cases were adjourned for a fortnight, although there was little doubt as to their outcome. The same day Elsbury called a meeting of the strikers and confessed his inability to provide funds for the strike or to pay the fines. Amid tears and recrimination the strike was called off. Each returning worker was presented with a document to sign in which he or she promised not to join or pay subscriptions to any organisation not recognised by the TUC. Membership of an unofficial union would be punished by instant dismissal.</p>
<p>Shirley Lerner comments on this in a way that cannot be bettered:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘In trade union history, the “document” was an instrument which the employer used to prevent a worker from joining a union or to compel to join only a company union. As such it has been traditionally despised by the labour movement as a most obnoxious anti-union instrument. But in this case the “document” was used to compel the workers to abide by an agreement made by an established trade union and the employer; and therefore, there was no outcry against it by the official trade union movement.’ <a id="f19" href="#n19" name="f19">[19]</a></p>
<p class="fst">A few members rejoined the NUTGW, but most joined nothing. The whole brave venture had resulted in no profit to either union and a massive increase in apathy. A situation that kept Polikoff’s an open shop for over seven years.</p>
<p>The Communist Party had got the United Clothing Workers involved in a strike that Elsbury would have preferred to avoid, on the promise of funds. Elsbury expected a party enquiry to exonerate him; in fact the reverse was the case. Elsbury was ordered by the party to relinquish his post as secretary and to hand over to Pountney, a distributive worker, drafted in during the Polikoff dispute to assist as an organiser. Elsbury refused and resigned from the party, a resignation that was subsequently made official by his formal expulsion. The CP controlled Executive Board dismissed Elsbury from his post and forcibly expelled him from the UCWU office.</p>
<p>The election of Pountney was achieved at the inaugural National Conference, and the union affiliated to the MM, an unnecessary diversion considering that the union had until then, at least, been dealing direct with King Street. But the failure of the Polikoff strike, the brutal expulsion of Elsbury and the hostility of NUTGW in particular and the trade unions in general coupled to a chronic shortage of funds to pay provincial organisers denied the union any effective future. Pountney and the Executive attempted to lay the blame on the ‘renegade’ and ‘social fascist’ Elsbury, but the impetus was spent. The UCWU declined into a small East London Union of a few hundred dedicated adherents until, in 1935, it closed up shop completely. By the time of its demise the third period policy that brought it into existence had completely changed. The ‘Peoples Front’ was on the order of the day. With little or no explanation the ‘social fascists’ became important figures to be courted and made much of in the anti-fascist front. The MM that had started off with such high hopes in 1924, and such real possibilities, was quietly and unceremoniously interred. The very notion of a militant, class-war oriented, opposition within the unions was a thing of the past, best forgotten in the crusade to win friends and influence people in high places with the new soft, and soft headed, Russian line. This was the last time that the CP attempted to form a coordinated trade union opposition dedicated to a revolutionary purpose. Its decline into dual unionism was dictated not by considerations of British conditions or a genuine spontaneous movement of British workers, but solely at the behest of the Kremlin oligarchy. Since that time, despite an accession of new industrial cadres, the CP has been unable and unwilling to direct its industrial work in a coherent revolutionary direction.</p>
<p>In the post-1945 situation the CP earnestly pursued the industrial peace decreed by the continuation of the wartime alliance with Stalin. With the outbreak of the cold war the industrial factions moved neatly into line behind the ‘peace campaign’, and outbid the most extreme racialism of the Beaverbrook press in their anti-German and anti-American chauvinism. The partial cutting of the Russian leading-rein in 1956 rejuvenated nothing. The party was settled into a stagnant centrist rut, outflanked politically on the left by the growing left groups, not trusted – except in terms of vote organising – by the left trade union leaders. It has no role to fulfil except to stand in the way of the formation of a genuine revolutionary party. The CPGB is the only proof I know of, and that questionable, of the religious contention that there is some sort of life after death.<br>
</p>
<h4>Conclusions</h4>
<p class="fst">Where does this leave us? In general the attitude of revolutionaries should be against dual unionism. Does a re-examination of the past give us any reason to modify any of this traditional position? There can be little doubt that the lessons of Singer’s in 1911, through the MM’s third period to the adventures in the NASD <a id="fa" href="#na" name="fa">[1*]</a> and the most recent Pilkington’s dispute, show clearly that a dual union is not too difficult to form as there are, in all conscience, far too many good reasons why workers should be dissatisfied with their union; the problem is to nurse the union through its first difficult days without meeting disaster. None has succeeded so far.</p>
<p>The IWW was an inevitable development, not just because it is an historical fact, but also because the AFL was craft dominated, had high initiation and membership dues, and. was uninterested in the semi-skilled and unskilled, at a time when the massive consolidation of American capitalism was putting tremendous strains on the unorganised workers. The IWW was unable to fulfil its intentions because it failed to organise the industrial workers of the East. Not only did the IWW face massive repression but much of its effort was made nugatory by the basic theory it presented. The struggle was seen more in terms of the final combat with capitalism than in the economic terms of the workers. All this is understandable, if regrettable; the founding convention, in 1905, was held with the first Russian revolution as a background. The American militants, with some justice, thought that they were in a more favourable position to make the revolution than the backward Russian workers. They were wrong. The revolution is taking a much longer time to take place than they ever considered, and the vehicle for its consummation is not to be found in a militant industrial union isolated from contact with a revolutionary party. The CIO, that derived specifically from the experience of the IWW, had to employ many of the industrial tactics of the Wobblies without their revolutionary programme. John L. Lewis’s quarrel with the AFL and Roosevelt’s problems with the corporations meant that the money and the political climate was ripe for the CIO industrial union drive. Even at that the massive upsurge in mass, production industry nearly got out of the hands of the ‘responsible’ elements. A revolutionary party operating within and upon such a movement could have made all the difference to the eventual outcome. It is part of the unforgivable sins of Stalinism that a party did not exist.</p>
<p>There is no reason in principle why revolutionaries should be opposed, in all circumstances, to independent revolutionary unions, but it is difficult to conceive of the situation, while capitalism lasts, for them to exist. A trade union is, by definition, an all inclusive organisation. It must take its members, whether by trade or industry, as they are, not as some idealised image of the class conscious militant. Indeed if all workers had the same high level of consciousness we would not have a trade union but a revolutionary party. A revolutionary union today would be an organisation of friends, cosy perhaps, but without influence or purpose.</p>
<p>There is another, and more important, objection to the existence of a dual union, organised and directed by revolutionaries. The need for the maintenance of the independent existence of the union can spill over into an opportunist mitigation of the revolutionary politics.</p>
<p>In the 1930s the Dutch Trotskyists (organised in the RSAP – Revolutionary Socialist Worker’s Party – led by Henricus Sneevliet, a founder member of the Dutch CP) were in control of a small militant trade union federation, the NAS (National Labour Organisation) organising building workers, dockers and Amsterdam municipal workers, in opposition to the large reformist union federation. In Holland unemployment dole was paid by the government through the trade unions, including the NAS. For the Dutch trade unionist this was an important reason for maintaining union membership. In 1934 the government banned all municipal workers from maintaining membership of the red NAS. At a stroke the NAS membership was reduced from 25,000 to 12,000. The continued existence of the NAS depended on the tolerance of the bourgeois government. Sneevliet, a deputy in parliament, began to temper his criticism of the government. Trotsky wrote to him suggesting that whether the perspective was one of rising militancy or of increased repression the NAS should join the reformist trade union.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘When the great strike wave will begin in Holland, which should be regarded as highly probable if not certain, the reformist trade unions will grow mightily, absorb fresh elements into their ranks and in such a period the NAS will appear to the masses as aji incomprehensible splinter organisation. In consequence the masses will become unresponsive to the correct slogans of the RSAP ... I must say quite openly: systematic, solicitously arranged agitation inside the reformist unions seems to me the only means not only of preserving the RSAP as a genuine revolutionary party (for by itself this hasn’t any historical value) but also of carrying it to victory ... If. ... the development in Holland without passing through a revolutionary upsurge, goes directly ... into the reactionary ... we nevertheless come to the same conclusion: The NAS policy must became an obstacle to the party. The first assault of reaction has already ... cost it half its membership. The second assault will cost it its life. The excellent workers ... will then have to seek the road to the reformist unions in a dispersed manner ... The trade union cannot lead an illegal existence that the party can. But by means of this blow the party will be terribly hit, for an illegal revolutionary party must have a legal and semi-legal mass cover ... and at the same time an arena.’ <a id="f20" href="#n20" name="f20">[20]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Sneevliet and the RSAP refused to listen, and Trotsky broke with them:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘A party that doesn’t participate in the real trade unions is not a revolutionary party. The NAS exists only thanks to the toleration and financial support of the bourgeois government. This financial support is dependent upon your political attitude. That is the reason why the party didn’t, in spite of all our insistence, elaborate a political programme. That is also the reason why you, as a deputy, never gave a genuine revolutionary speech ... Your activity has a diplomatic and not a very revolutionary character ... The NAS itself is not a bridge to the masses but a wall separating you from the masses.’</p>
<p class="fst">The NAS was dissolved in 1940 at the beginning of the occupation; the RSAP split in 1942. Nothing remains of the NAS and not much more of the RSAP members. (Sneevliet was shot by the Nazis in 1942.)</p>
<p>The argument is often that opposition to dual unionism is alright in general, but in particular circumstances the union is so corrupt, so bureaucratised and the internal regime so draconian as to make work impossible. The argument is not new and begs the question – what about the members? The trade unions organise millions of workers, the majority of whom are at the lowest level of working class consciousness – a feeble and unenthusiastic grip on a trade union card. The task of revolutionaries is by patient, hard, painstaking work to influence and develop the consciousness of these workers. The nature of the bureaucracy and the extent of the harshness of the internal regime will determine the tactics but not the strategy of working in the mass trade unions. Lenin, in <strong>Left Wing Communism</strong> makes the revolutionary position clear, in his criticism of the German left communists and their predilection for revolutionary pure unions.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘... These gentlemen (the reactionary leaders of the reformist unions – <em>JH</em>) will no doubt resort to every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois governments, the clergy, the police and the courts to keep Communists out of the trade unions, oust them by every means, make their work in trade unions as unpleasant as possible, and insult and bait and persecute them. We must be able to stand up to all this, agree to make any sacrifice, and even – if need be – to resort to various stratagems, artifices and illegal methods ... as long as we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on communist work within them ... When Zubatov, agent of the secret police, organised Black Hundred workers assemblies and working-men’s societies (in 1905 – <em>JH</em>) for the purpose of trapping revolutionaries and combating them, we sent members of our party to these assemblies ... They established contacts with the masses, were able to carry on then agitation, and succeeded in wresting workers from the influence of Zubatov’s agents.’ <a id="f21" href="#n21" name="f21">[21]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Whatever may be said about the EPTU or the GMWU they cannot hold a candle to the Zubatov societies. The call for breakaway unions is most often a measure of impatience, shocked horror at the bureaucracy’s affront to the norms of decent behaviour, and desire for a short-cut. To win the unions from the bureaucracy is not the main question, except that an honest administration is better in pure trade union terms and gives greater access to greater numbers of workers. The task is to explain and agitate, to patiently set in a political context the day to day struggles of workers. In a word, to build a revolutionary fraction of the party. To see the struggle in any other terms is to condemn trade union work to revolutionary phrase-mongering without working class response or to be forced into the same compromises with capitalism that finished Sneevliet and the RSAP. So long as the masses remain in the reformist unions no amount of sophistry will be able to deny that the place of revolutionaries is in those unions. Trotsky, as usual, sums up the problem with admirable clarity.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Impatient leftists sometimes say that it is absolutely impossible to win over the trade unions because the bureaucracy uses the organisation’s internal regime for preserving its own interests, resorting to the basest machinations, repressions and plain crookedness ... This argument reduces itself in reality to giving up the actual struggle to win the masses, using the corrupt character of the bureaucracy as a pretext ... Why not abandon revolutionary work altogether, considering the repressions and provocations of the government bureaucracy. There exists no principled difference here, since the trade union bureaucracy had definitely become a part of the capitalist apparatus, economic and governmental. It is absurd to think that it would be possible to work against the trade union bureaucracy with its own help ... Insofar as it defends itself by persecutions, violence, expulsion, frequently resorting to the assistance of government authorities, we must learn to work discreetly, finding a common language with the masses but not revealing ourselves prematurely to the bureaucracy.’ <a id="f22" href="#n22" name="f22">[22]</a></p>
<p class="fst">It is, probably, unlikely that many revolutionaries today will be foolhardy enough to see in dual unionism any viable alternative to hard patient work in the mass reformist unions. The danger at present lies in the field of recently radicalised workes with little or no political experience seeing a breakaway as the only way to beat the bureaucracy and the bosses at the same time. It is the clear responsibility of revolutionaries to point out all the difficulties, all the problems to any workers who see this as the road to salvation.</p>
<p>In the final analysis salvation is to be found, not in one factory, not in one union, not in one union federation but in the mass movement of the whole class led and directed by a mass revolutionary party.</p>
<p class="link"> <br>
<a href="#top">Top of the page</a><br>
</p>
<h3>Footnote</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="na" href="#fa" name="na">1*.</a> The general opposition to dual unionism did not prevent the particular activity of certain ‘orthodox’ Trotskyists in involving themselves heavily in the NASD breakaway from the T&GWU in the Northern ports in the mid-1950s. Like other efforts in this direction there was little profit for the Trotskyists and none for the workers. See <strong>IS 2</strong>, R. Pennington</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n7" href="#f7" name="n7">7.</a> P. Renshaw, <strong>The Wobblies</strong>, p.37.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n8" href="#f8" name="n8">8.</a> Bell, <strong>Pioneering Days</strong><em>,</em> p.42.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n9" href="#f9" name="n9">9.</a> Kendall, <strong>op. cit.</strong>, p.68.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n10" href="#f10" name="n10">10.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, p.63.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n11" href="#f11" name="n11">11.</a> Bell, <strong>op. cit.</strong>, p.72.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n12" href="#f12" name="n12">12.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, p.72.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n13" href="#f13" name="n13">13.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong>, p.73.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n14" href="#f14" name="n14">14.</a> Beer, <strong>History of British Socialism</strong>, p.362.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n15" href="#f15" name="n15">15.</a> <em>On Strike</em>, quoted in Roderick Martin, <strong>Communism and the British Trade Unions</strong>.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n16" href="#f16" name="n16">16.</a> <strong>The Worker</strong>, 19 July 1929. Quoted in <strong>ibid.</strong></p>
<p class="note"><a id="n17" href="#f17" name="n17">17.</a> Quoted in <strong>ibid.</strong>, pp.155-6.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n18" href="#f18" name="n18">18.</a> <strong>Railwaymen’s MM Broadsheet</strong>, quoted in <strong>ibid.</strong>, p.132.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n19" href="#f19" name="n19">19.</a> Quoted in Shirley Lerner, <strong>Breakaway Unions and the Small Trade Union</strong>, from which much of this narrative is taken.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n20" href="#f20" name="n20">20.</a> Trotsky, <strong>Letters on the Dutch situation</strong>.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n21" href="#f21" name="n21">21.</a> Lenin, <strong>Collected Works</strong>, vol.31, pp.54-55.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n22" href="#f22" name="n22">22.</a> Leon Trotsky, <strong>On the Trade Unions</strong>, p.55.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Revolutionary Trade Unionism
(Part Two)
Dual Unionism in Britain
(April 1971)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.47, April-May 1971, pp.14 & 19-23.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The first part of this article, which appeared in our last issue (IS 46), dealt with the early development of trade unionism in Britain, and with the experiences of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) in the US.
In 1903 the British SLP was formed from members of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). The immediate cause of the split was the support given by the SDF leadership (Hyndman, Quelch, etc.) for Kautsky’s compromise resolution on Millerand’s entry into a French government with Gallifet, the murderer of the French communards. The dispute was, however, much more far-reaching than this. Tom Bell indicates this in his book Pioneering Days [7]:
‘The main line of the opposition was against all reformism: exposure of the Labour Party and trade union officials as fakers; for socialist trade unionism; against the monarchy and exposure of the futility of Labour parliamentarism’.
This line the official SDF nicknamed ‘Impossibilism’. In short, it was more or less complete De Leonism. The social composition of the small British SLP was mainly industrial workers, with a few clerical workers. [8] The criteria for membership was absolute adherence to the programme and a refusal to be influenced by reformism, reformists or booze. The leading figures in the organisation were Connolly, Yates and Mathieson, all dedicated teetotalers. No official of a trade union was eligible for membership of the party. [9] Presumably there was not too much danger of this for the party had only 80 members at its founding conference (the majority of these in Scotland). [10] The members were excluded from dual membership in any other organisation which precluded any work in the Labour Party, where they might have had some chance of proselytising.
The main influence in the early period of the party was James Connolly. Connolly had returned from a trip to America in 1902 where he had come under the influence of De Leon. He became the first organiser of the SLP at a wage of 30s a week, when the money was available. According to Bell, Connolly toured all over Scotland recruiting for the organisation and it is, perhaps, as a result of his efforts that in 1904 the SLP reported a membership of 200 to the International. Connolly, besides being a brilliant organiser and speaker, was also an unusually accomplished writer. He wrote, handset, printed and dispatched copies of the party paper The Socialist. But despite the undoubted talent of Connolly, the singleness of purpose and dedication of the members, their exclusiveness
and insistence on complete agreement on all points would have made them as ineffective and irrelevant to the course of British socialist development as the SPGB had it not been for their adherence to industrial unionism and their efforts to spread these ideas to the Clyde.
With the founding of the IWW the British SLP decided to convene a conference in Glasgow to set up a propaganda organisation to popularise the idea of revolutionary industrial unionism. At this conference the Advocates of Industrial Unionism was founded. The programme indicated not only that De Leon’s advocacy of industrial unionism had been learned but also, and with much less reason, his attachment to dual unionism had been transported across the Atlantic. In the preamble to the programme this is made clear:
‘... the trade unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars. The trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These sad conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organisation formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry or in all industries if necessary cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.’ [11]
Mitigation of the full rigour of the SLP programme was a measure of compromise that even De Leon had to accept at the IWW founding convention. The propaganda of the Advocates around the Clyde resulted in some support in a few Glasgow factories (Argyle Motor Works and Albion Motor Works are two mentioned by Bell [12], and particularly the Singer Sewing Machine Company on Clydebank). Factory gate meetings were held and study classes begun. In time most of the Singer departments had a group of supporters of industrial unionism. The SLP, on the basis of this limited success, decided to turn from propaganda to organisation. The Advocates of Industrial Unionism was transformed into the Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB). A vigorous campaign at Singer’s resulted in a large increase in membership (over 4,000 members). [13] The slogan ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ caught on. The difficulty arose precisely on the basis of the slogan. The IWGB had proved that they could organise a union of sorts; they had to prove the efficacy of the slogan when someone was actually injured. One day a woman was dismissed. Strike meetings were held in all the shops and the management declared a lockout. Ten thousand workers were on the street and in the initial burst of enthusiasm many more joined the IWGB. But there were problems. The IWGB had little or no funds. The revolutionary phraseology of their leadership gave considerable offence to the large Catholic section of workers and gave a handle for the employers to drive a wedge into the workers’ ranks.
The company hit on the stratagem of sending a postcard to the workers on the firm’s books, whether they had worked there recently or not, asking them if they would like to return to work. The strike committee asked the workers to send in their cards to them and in all they received 4,000 cards. (This postcard ‘ballot’ shows an interesting similarity to events in the recent Pilkington’s strike.) Despite their opposition a return to work move began to gain steam. In a few days the strike was broken. Shortly after this the leading members of the IWGB and the SLP were sacked. The IWGB claim that these sackings merely served to disseminate the industrial union message to newer fields could not obscure the fact that the union had been defeated not least of all by the inadequacy of its programme for any struggle falling short of the socialist revolution.
The IWGB, after the Singer debacle of 1911, did not have another chance. Dual unionism, then as now, could only get a toehold in firms, like Singer’s, where the open shop principle applied. Even at Singer’s, the ASE (Amalgamated Society of Engineers – predecessor of the AEU) skilled tool makers did not join and worked throughout the strike. The degree of consciousness necessary among the members to make the slogan ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ stick across an industry, assuming that that degree of organisation can be attained, in reality presupposes an organisation that transcends unionism of any sort.
The SLP militants were not only active on the Clyde. They provided much of the theory behind the Labour College/Plebs League split from Ruskin in 1909. Connolly influenced Tom Mann in the direction of industrial unionism, although Mann was more influenced by French syndicalism. Mann, despite a thoroughgoing contempt for craft unionism and the trade union bureaucracy and an attachment to industrial unionism, firmly set his face against dual unions. In 1910 he was a moving spirit in the formation of the Syndicalist Education League. The resolution passed at the founding conference shows the line of the league: ‘Whereas the sectionalism that characterises the trade union movement of today is utterly incapable of effectively fighting the capitalist class and securing the economic freedom of the workers, this conference declares that the time is now ripe for the industrial organisation of all the workers on the basis of class, and not trade or craft, and that we hereby agree to form a Syndicalist Education League to propagate the principles of syndicalism throughout the British Isles, with a view to merging all existing unions into one compact organisation for each industry, including all labourers of every industry in the same organisation with skilled workers’.
At first sight the syndicalist approach seems much the same as the SLP. In fact there were differences, differences that sent the SLP into paroxysms of polemical rage. Not, only were they opposed to dual unionism, but the principle of the syndicalists, claimed the SLP, was the mines for the miners, the railways for the railwaymen, which denied the all-inclusive, working-class basis of industrial unionism. The syndicalists’ crimes did not end there. They also completely denied any validity in parliamentary politics. With the later IWW they believed in ‘direct action’, ‘sabotage’, ‘physical force’ and the ‘General Strike’. The SLP, following De Leon, believed in the ballot box to bring the SLP to a parliamentary majority, at which unlikely event the power would be handed over to the revolutionary industrial unions to organise society. (De Leon had said, in the American context: ‘Where the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World will sit there will be the nation’s capital.’)
In British terms Mann’s emphasis on ‘boring from within’ ensured a more lasting influence than the SLP. The movement for amalgamation began to gather momentum. The general propaganda on industrial unionism gave rise to developments in the trade unions probably unsuspected by the early militants. The post-1918 amalgamations gave rise to the AEU, the NUR and other federations. The discussion on the nature of the state and the form of socialist power induced a number of middle-class intellectuals to introduce the alternative blueprint of guild socialism. Hilaire Belloc climbed on the bandwagon, to hark back to the medieval simplicities in which the Roman Church had found its cosiest ideological niche, in The Servile State.
The period from 1910 until the war was one of unprecedented rank and file initiative. Each succeeding year saw an increase in the millions of days lost in strikes. An unwilling trade union leadership was forced into supporting and, if they could run fast enough, leading strikes. Max Beer, by no means a revolutionary socialist, describes the pre-1914 industrial unrest as follows:
‘The years 1911 to 1914 will ever be memorable in the annals of British Labour. The United Kingdom witnessed for the first time a class war in which all its component parts were involved. English, Welsh and Scottish miners, English railwaymen and Irish transport workers were joining hands across the borders and seas. Robert Smillie, Tom Mann, James Larkin and James Connolly, all born fighters, led the new forces in battle array. Nothing like it had ever happened before; neither in comprehensiveness nor in numbers had that Labour upheaval any parallel in British social history’. [14]
The growth of a movement of the working class for itself was in process. The imposition of French syndicalist theory, and IWW non-theory admixed with guild socialist vapourings gave the movement a specific flavour but did not fundamentally alter its course, merely changed its direction and assisted, up to a point, in clarification. The organisation of revolutionaries that could have given firm leadership and direction to the militants was missing. The movement had to wait some years and go through the carnage of 1914-17 before the possibility of such an organisation could arise from the example of the Russian Revolution.
The objective and subjective reasons for the failure of the post-war CPGB have been discussed in previous issues of IS. [15] The lost opportunities of the Minority Movement and the subsequent subordination of the Communist Party to Moscow in the 1920s betrayed a whole generation of socialist militants to futility and despair.
Third Period
The expensively bought and paid for experience with dual unionism in America and Britain were once more tried, at Russian insistence, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The idiocy of the ‘third period’ (so called after the arbitrary division of post 1917 periods of the revolution: 1917-1924 Period of Revolutionary Offensive; 1924-1928 Period of Revolutionary Ebb; 1928-1933 Period of Renewed Revolutionary Offensive – after the collapse of the third period we were not treated to any nomenclature for the succeeding periodic pains) may have been a logical extension of Stalin’s campaign to destroy the Bolshevik party, and with it the old Bolsheviks, but it had no connection with the realities faced by any of the non-Russian parties.
By 1928 Stalin, with the assistance of the right, had effectively broken the Left opposition led by Trotsky. ‘United front’ tactics internationally had resulted in the subordination of the foreign parties to nationalist and non-socialist allies. In China the Communists, at Stalin’s direction, played second string to the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai Shek until Chiang had no further use for the Communists and massacred them in Shanghai. The Anglo-Russian Committee in Britain was dead. The right phase of the Russian Party and the Comintern was ending its usefulness, together with Bukharin, the theoretician of the right wing. The development of state capitalism in Russia called for an altogether more ruthless exploitation of the workers and peasants. Stalin’s struggle against the Bukharin wing of the party began. In the process the whole line of the Communist International (CI) had to be recast. The united front was jettisoned in favour of the ‘class against class’ policy. The Russian struggle against the kulaks was mirrored in the foreign parties’ struggles against social democracy. Social democracy became overnight the ‘left cover of fascism’, more deadly because more insidious; social democracy equalled social fascism.
In trade union terms this meant the end of the period of work in the reformist unions, to build meaningful industrial factions. The French and British parties were bludgeoned into line; in the German party it was necessary to expel the opposition of Brandler and Thalheimer.
The effect of the new line on the Minority Movement was catastrophic. Yesterday’s denials of splitting and dual unionism were contradicted by today’s insistence on independent activity. The instructions from Moscow demanded that the MM should always attempt to wrest the leadership of strikes from the union machinery. Alternative strike committees were to be formed to become the basis of continuing factory committees that would eventually be amalgamated to form new trade unions. In a pamphlet, published in May 1929, Harry Pollitt indicated the ultra-left dual unionist position of the MM.
‘The Minority Movement is now the alternative national centre for the industrial movement of the British workers. Those who want Mondism, class collaboration, company unionism, can get it from the General Council of the TUC. Those who want a policy based solely on the interests of the working class, a policy of militant trade unionism, look to the MM for their leadership.’
The Worker in July 1929 went even further.
‘The issue therefore of fighting independently the daily struggle of the working class ... means a complete break with all the old conceptions of continuing our activities within the constitutional framework of trade union branches, District Committees, etc. New forces have to be won, new forms of organisation found.’ [16]
The reference to new forces was a denial, again at Russian insistence, of the previous line that only bona fide trade unionists could join the MM. The Comintern, for some unaccountable reason, believed that in a country, with the tradition and history of the working class like Britain, the non-unionist could be drawn directly into revolutionary unionism without even a passing acquaintance with the reformist model.
The actual practice of the MM in the application of the new line was somewhat mitigated by the fact that its influence had declined from the point where it had some sway over a few national unions. (One MM report on the Austin strike of March 1929, indicated that although the Austin Birmingham strike committee was against the union leadership, they were equally opposed to the outside leadership of the MM. [17])
But, mitigated or not, the new line managed to throw away any of the gains that remained from the past. The main areas of strength of the MM had been the mines, engineering and railways. The Scottish miners’ union was in the hands of the right wing. This leadership was supporting an unrepresentative and undemocratic clique in both the Fife and Lanark unions. In the circumstances the MM needed little encouragement to make a foray into dual unionism. In mid-1929 they set up a new union, The United Mineworkers of Scotland (The official union was the National Union of Scottish Mineworkers, NUSM). The UMS was completely under CP control and although they claimed 14,000 members – mainly in Fife and Lanark – there were, in the words of one delegate to the MFGB (Miners Federation of Great Britain) conference in 1930, ‘loud speakers and very few listeners in’. The UMS fought two strikes against wage cuts, both unsuccessfully, and by 1933 were attempting to merge with the NUSMW. Their overtures were rejected and in 193S the UMS went into voluntary liquidation.
The drive toward dual unionism in the Scottish mineworkers alienated much of the MM support in the MFGB, the most prominent – if not the most important – being A.J. Cook, the secretary of the federation. Cook denounced the UMS and broke with the MM in 1929. Arthur Horner, although opposed to the new line, did not break with the CP, but when the MM turned its attention to the South Wales coalfield, as an area where their independent influence could be displayed in a way that would impress the Comintern with the dedication the British Section, Horner spoke out against the indiscriminate advocacy of dual unionism. He soon, however, confessed his errors and was, for his sins, excluded from the Central Committee of the party. In 1931 he accepted the chairmanship of the South Wales Central Strike Committee during the strike of that year. But he opposed an independent strike committee and resigned from the Central Strike Committee (on which no officials were allowed to sit). The strike was called off after 15 days and when the MM tried to prolong the struggle they were completely isolated from the miners who went back to work en bloc. Horner was arraigned, for his lack of faith in the masses, before the British Party and the Comintern. By some strange quirk of fate he was not expelled, perhaps because he was one of the few remaining experienced and capable miners left to the party. Stalin, with a few jokes about the crime of Hornerism, allowed him to remain.
In engineering and the railways the story was the same. The MM did not have the strength to organise any breakaway unions, but they were able to cause a fuss over the very real difficulties that workers experienced in a period of mass unemployment. The application of the line on the unorganised led to a development of the thesis of ‘never mind about union membership’. [18] The insistence that the union machine was rotten and that workers could really operate only outside its ambit was unconvincing at the congress of the CI and the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU); to workers who were recoiling from five years of defeats and mass unemployment, it was sheer lunacy. The emphasis on non-unionists and breaking with the unions was also deeply repugnant to most dedicated unionists who had fought hard to keep their organisation intact and to exclude the nons.
The purest expression, however, of the third period tactic was in a field where the party and the MM had always been strong, although it was a field well off-centre from the main arena of working class struggle – the Tailors and Garment Workers Union (NUTGW).
There was trouble in the tailoring trade long before the MM change of line. The introduction of the conveyor belt and machine cutting reduced the craft content of the job and increased the number of women employed. The NUTGW was based in Leeds and dominated by catholics. The largely Jewish and non-catholic membership in London were, with some justification, afraid that their problems were not being properly dealt with by the Leeds leadership. The London Organiser, Sam Elsbury was a founder member of the CP and the MM. When in October 1928, a dispute broke out over a non-unionist at the Rego factory in London, it was endorsed by the London District Committee. The unions national leadership would not sanction the strike because, they said, it was prejudicial to a new national agreement they were attempting to organise with the employers federation. The strike was well run with the strikers, mainly young women, holding marches, manning pickets and making street collections. Public sympathy was gained and considerable trade union aid forthcoming. After nearly three months the strike was settled with Rego’s recognising the union, but not the union shop, and the reinstatement of most of the strikers. At this stage the Leeds cabal took action against Elsbury, expelling him from the union and forcibly taking over the London office. In other times the CP and the MM would have mounted a full scale campaign for Elsbury’s reinstatement in the union, with some possibility of success. In 1929 such a course would have been to lose a glorious opportunity to strike a blow for independent revolutionary action against the rotten labour fakers. On the 7th March 1929 the United Clothing Workers Union (UCWU) came into existence. The new union recruited a majority of the London membership rapidly and a substantial minority of the Leeds membership. Elsbury was well satisfied with his work for the party line. What the new union needed more than anything else was a little time to consolidate the organisation and to build up the funds. Unfortunately it is a feature of all dual unions that they are never afforded the time to consolidate their position.
In the North London factory of Polikoff the overwhelming majority of members joined the UCWU and the management recognised the union. When NUTGW members applied for jobs in the factory they were informed they would have to transfer to the United Clothing Workers. The NUTGW complained to the Wholesale Clothiers Federation who successfully brought pressure to bear to withdraw recognition from the UCWU. Elsbury attempted to stave off the inevitable trouble, for his union was in poor shape to win, by insisting that his members were prepared to work alongside any trade unionist. Polikoff nevertheless refused to permit the collection of UCWU dues in the factory. Elsbury took his problems to the party. The Industrial Committee promised Elsbury that a sum of £500 would be available to meet strike pay, through collections and a subvention from the RILU in Moscow. Elsbury called a strike for union recognition. Arrayed against the UCWU were not only Polikoff (who according to most testimony was quite prepared to recognise both unions) but also the NUTGW, the TUC – in particular the T&GWU who threatened to black deliveries to Polikoff if the UCWU were recognised – the London Trades Council and the Employers Federation. The NUTGW were sending down their members to break the strike. A prominent member of the Executive Board of the UCWU, in fact the chairman, Dave Cohen suddenly acquired an affection for the NUTGW that had so recently expelled him from its ranks. At the same time he acquired the necessary finance to emigrate to Canada. The strike started on May 4th. By May 9th Polikoff s had applied to a magistrate for sixty seven summonses against UCWU strikers for breach of contract. Polikoff also indicated that they might find it necessary to apply for 500 or 600 summonses in all. Polikoff’s manager explained to the bench the reason for his actions:
‘It is very difficult for me to say but we want to teach these people a lesson. At the present time they are members of what is known as a breakaway union – a Communist organisation – and they are not members of the orthodox union which is recognised by the TUC. We want to recover from them the money they have lost us ... the damages must be at least a week’s wages ... they have practically shut our works.’
20 On May 10th Elsbury arrived at CP headquarters for his first instalment of £500. Nobody could tell him anything about the money. He was urged to come back tomorrow. Each succeeding day brought the same response. Elsbury demanded a meeting of the Central Committee to enquire into the failure to provide the promised cash. The general isolation of the CP at this time is indicated by the fact that although they called for collections in their press and J.T. Murphy, who had been seconded to the UCWU for the duration of the strike, spent most of his time raising money, the total collected nowhere met the £500 minimum. The strike dragged on. Polikoff secured a conviction on May 23rd against one of the strikers, who was fined £4 15s 0d, and asked for a further eighty eight summonses. The remaining sixty six cases were adjourned for a fortnight, although there was little doubt as to their outcome. The same day Elsbury called a meeting of the strikers and confessed his inability to provide funds for the strike or to pay the fines. Amid tears and recrimination the strike was called off. Each returning worker was presented with a document to sign in which he or she promised not to join or pay subscriptions to any organisation not recognised by the TUC. Membership of an unofficial union would be punished by instant dismissal.
Shirley Lerner comments on this in a way that cannot be bettered:
‘In trade union history, the “document” was an instrument which the employer used to prevent a worker from joining a union or to compel to join only a company union. As such it has been traditionally despised by the labour movement as a most obnoxious anti-union instrument. But in this case the “document” was used to compel the workers to abide by an agreement made by an established trade union and the employer; and therefore, there was no outcry against it by the official trade union movement.’ [19]
A few members rejoined the NUTGW, but most joined nothing. The whole brave venture had resulted in no profit to either union and a massive increase in apathy. A situation that kept Polikoff’s an open shop for over seven years.
The Communist Party had got the United Clothing Workers involved in a strike that Elsbury would have preferred to avoid, on the promise of funds. Elsbury expected a party enquiry to exonerate him; in fact the reverse was the case. Elsbury was ordered by the party to relinquish his post as secretary and to hand over to Pountney, a distributive worker, drafted in during the Polikoff dispute to assist as an organiser. Elsbury refused and resigned from the party, a resignation that was subsequently made official by his formal expulsion. The CP controlled Executive Board dismissed Elsbury from his post and forcibly expelled him from the UCWU office.
The election of Pountney was achieved at the inaugural National Conference, and the union affiliated to the MM, an unnecessary diversion considering that the union had until then, at least, been dealing direct with King Street. But the failure of the Polikoff strike, the brutal expulsion of Elsbury and the hostility of NUTGW in particular and the trade unions in general coupled to a chronic shortage of funds to pay provincial organisers denied the union any effective future. Pountney and the Executive attempted to lay the blame on the ‘renegade’ and ‘social fascist’ Elsbury, but the impetus was spent. The UCWU declined into a small East London Union of a few hundred dedicated adherents until, in 1935, it closed up shop completely. By the time of its demise the third period policy that brought it into existence had completely changed. The ‘Peoples Front’ was on the order of the day. With little or no explanation the ‘social fascists’ became important figures to be courted and made much of in the anti-fascist front. The MM that had started off with such high hopes in 1924, and such real possibilities, was quietly and unceremoniously interred. The very notion of a militant, class-war oriented, opposition within the unions was a thing of the past, best forgotten in the crusade to win friends and influence people in high places with the new soft, and soft headed, Russian line. This was the last time that the CP attempted to form a coordinated trade union opposition dedicated to a revolutionary purpose. Its decline into dual unionism was dictated not by considerations of British conditions or a genuine spontaneous movement of British workers, but solely at the behest of the Kremlin oligarchy. Since that time, despite an accession of new industrial cadres, the CP has been unable and unwilling to direct its industrial work in a coherent revolutionary direction.
In the post-1945 situation the CP earnestly pursued the industrial peace decreed by the continuation of the wartime alliance with Stalin. With the outbreak of the cold war the industrial factions moved neatly into line behind the ‘peace campaign’, and outbid the most extreme racialism of the Beaverbrook press in their anti-German and anti-American chauvinism. The partial cutting of the Russian leading-rein in 1956 rejuvenated nothing. The party was settled into a stagnant centrist rut, outflanked politically on the left by the growing left groups, not trusted – except in terms of vote organising – by the left trade union leaders. It has no role to fulfil except to stand in the way of the formation of a genuine revolutionary party. The CPGB is the only proof I know of, and that questionable, of the religious contention that there is some sort of life after death.
Conclusions
Where does this leave us? In general the attitude of revolutionaries should be against dual unionism. Does a re-examination of the past give us any reason to modify any of this traditional position? There can be little doubt that the lessons of Singer’s in 1911, through the MM’s third period to the adventures in the NASD [1*] and the most recent Pilkington’s dispute, show clearly that a dual union is not too difficult to form as there are, in all conscience, far too many good reasons why workers should be dissatisfied with their union; the problem is to nurse the union through its first difficult days without meeting disaster. None has succeeded so far.
The IWW was an inevitable development, not just because it is an historical fact, but also because the AFL was craft dominated, had high initiation and membership dues, and. was uninterested in the semi-skilled and unskilled, at a time when the massive consolidation of American capitalism was putting tremendous strains on the unorganised workers. The IWW was unable to fulfil its intentions because it failed to organise the industrial workers of the East. Not only did the IWW face massive repression but much of its effort was made nugatory by the basic theory it presented. The struggle was seen more in terms of the final combat with capitalism than in the economic terms of the workers. All this is understandable, if regrettable; the founding convention, in 1905, was held with the first Russian revolution as a background. The American militants, with some justice, thought that they were in a more favourable position to make the revolution than the backward Russian workers. They were wrong. The revolution is taking a much longer time to take place than they ever considered, and the vehicle for its consummation is not to be found in a militant industrial union isolated from contact with a revolutionary party. The CIO, that derived specifically from the experience of the IWW, had to employ many of the industrial tactics of the Wobblies without their revolutionary programme. John L. Lewis’s quarrel with the AFL and Roosevelt’s problems with the corporations meant that the money and the political climate was ripe for the CIO industrial union drive. Even at that the massive upsurge in mass, production industry nearly got out of the hands of the ‘responsible’ elements. A revolutionary party operating within and upon such a movement could have made all the difference to the eventual outcome. It is part of the unforgivable sins of Stalinism that a party did not exist.
There is no reason in principle why revolutionaries should be opposed, in all circumstances, to independent revolutionary unions, but it is difficult to conceive of the situation, while capitalism lasts, for them to exist. A trade union is, by definition, an all inclusive organisation. It must take its members, whether by trade or industry, as they are, not as some idealised image of the class conscious militant. Indeed if all workers had the same high level of consciousness we would not have a trade union but a revolutionary party. A revolutionary union today would be an organisation of friends, cosy perhaps, but without influence or purpose.
There is another, and more important, objection to the existence of a dual union, organised and directed by revolutionaries. The need for the maintenance of the independent existence of the union can spill over into an opportunist mitigation of the revolutionary politics.
In the 1930s the Dutch Trotskyists (organised in the RSAP – Revolutionary Socialist Worker’s Party – led by Henricus Sneevliet, a founder member of the Dutch CP) were in control of a small militant trade union federation, the NAS (National Labour Organisation) organising building workers, dockers and Amsterdam municipal workers, in opposition to the large reformist union federation. In Holland unemployment dole was paid by the government through the trade unions, including the NAS. For the Dutch trade unionist this was an important reason for maintaining union membership. In 1934 the government banned all municipal workers from maintaining membership of the red NAS. At a stroke the NAS membership was reduced from 25,000 to 12,000. The continued existence of the NAS depended on the tolerance of the bourgeois government. Sneevliet, a deputy in parliament, began to temper his criticism of the government. Trotsky wrote to him suggesting that whether the perspective was one of rising militancy or of increased repression the NAS should join the reformist trade union.
‘When the great strike wave will begin in Holland, which should be regarded as highly probable if not certain, the reformist trade unions will grow mightily, absorb fresh elements into their ranks and in such a period the NAS will appear to the masses as aji incomprehensible splinter organisation. In consequence the masses will become unresponsive to the correct slogans of the RSAP ... I must say quite openly: systematic, solicitously arranged agitation inside the reformist unions seems to me the only means not only of preserving the RSAP as a genuine revolutionary party (for by itself this hasn’t any historical value) but also of carrying it to victory ... If. ... the development in Holland without passing through a revolutionary upsurge, goes directly ... into the reactionary ... we nevertheless come to the same conclusion: The NAS policy must became an obstacle to the party. The first assault of reaction has already ... cost it half its membership. The second assault will cost it its life. The excellent workers ... will then have to seek the road to the reformist unions in a dispersed manner ... The trade union cannot lead an illegal existence that the party can. But by means of this blow the party will be terribly hit, for an illegal revolutionary party must have a legal and semi-legal mass cover ... and at the same time an arena.’ [20]
Sneevliet and the RSAP refused to listen, and Trotsky broke with them:
‘A party that doesn’t participate in the real trade unions is not a revolutionary party. The NAS exists only thanks to the toleration and financial support of the bourgeois government. This financial support is dependent upon your political attitude. That is the reason why the party didn’t, in spite of all our insistence, elaborate a political programme. That is also the reason why you, as a deputy, never gave a genuine revolutionary speech ... Your activity has a diplomatic and not a very revolutionary character ... The NAS itself is not a bridge to the masses but a wall separating you from the masses.’
The NAS was dissolved in 1940 at the beginning of the occupation; the RSAP split in 1942. Nothing remains of the NAS and not much more of the RSAP members. (Sneevliet was shot by the Nazis in 1942.)
The argument is often that opposition to dual unionism is alright in general, but in particular circumstances the union is so corrupt, so bureaucratised and the internal regime so draconian as to make work impossible. The argument is not new and begs the question – what about the members? The trade unions organise millions of workers, the majority of whom are at the lowest level of working class consciousness – a feeble and unenthusiastic grip on a trade union card. The task of revolutionaries is by patient, hard, painstaking work to influence and develop the consciousness of these workers. The nature of the bureaucracy and the extent of the harshness of the internal regime will determine the tactics but not the strategy of working in the mass trade unions. Lenin, in Left Wing Communism makes the revolutionary position clear, in his criticism of the German left communists and their predilection for revolutionary pure unions.
‘... These gentlemen (the reactionary leaders of the reformist unions – JH) will no doubt resort to every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois governments, the clergy, the police and the courts to keep Communists out of the trade unions, oust them by every means, make their work in trade unions as unpleasant as possible, and insult and bait and persecute them. We must be able to stand up to all this, agree to make any sacrifice, and even – if need be – to resort to various stratagems, artifices and illegal methods ... as long as we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on communist work within them ... When Zubatov, agent of the secret police, organised Black Hundred workers assemblies and working-men’s societies (in 1905 – JH) for the purpose of trapping revolutionaries and combating them, we sent members of our party to these assemblies ... They established contacts with the masses, were able to carry on then agitation, and succeeded in wresting workers from the influence of Zubatov’s agents.’ [21]
Whatever may be said about the EPTU or the GMWU they cannot hold a candle to the Zubatov societies. The call for breakaway unions is most often a measure of impatience, shocked horror at the bureaucracy’s affront to the norms of decent behaviour, and desire for a short-cut. To win the unions from the bureaucracy is not the main question, except that an honest administration is better in pure trade union terms and gives greater access to greater numbers of workers. The task is to explain and agitate, to patiently set in a political context the day to day struggles of workers. In a word, to build a revolutionary fraction of the party. To see the struggle in any other terms is to condemn trade union work to revolutionary phrase-mongering without working class response or to be forced into the same compromises with capitalism that finished Sneevliet and the RSAP. So long as the masses remain in the reformist unions no amount of sophistry will be able to deny that the place of revolutionaries is in those unions. Trotsky, as usual, sums up the problem with admirable clarity.
‘Impatient leftists sometimes say that it is absolutely impossible to win over the trade unions because the bureaucracy uses the organisation’s internal regime for preserving its own interests, resorting to the basest machinations, repressions and plain crookedness ... This argument reduces itself in reality to giving up the actual struggle to win the masses, using the corrupt character of the bureaucracy as a pretext ... Why not abandon revolutionary work altogether, considering the repressions and provocations of the government bureaucracy. There exists no principled difference here, since the trade union bureaucracy had definitely become a part of the capitalist apparatus, economic and governmental. It is absurd to think that it would be possible to work against the trade union bureaucracy with its own help ... Insofar as it defends itself by persecutions, violence, expulsion, frequently resorting to the assistance of government authorities, we must learn to work discreetly, finding a common language with the masses but not revealing ourselves prematurely to the bureaucracy.’ [22]
It is, probably, unlikely that many revolutionaries today will be foolhardy enough to see in dual unionism any viable alternative to hard patient work in the mass reformist unions. The danger at present lies in the field of recently radicalised workes with little or no political experience seeing a breakaway as the only way to beat the bureaucracy and the bosses at the same time. It is the clear responsibility of revolutionaries to point out all the difficulties, all the problems to any workers who see this as the road to salvation.
In the final analysis salvation is to be found, not in one factory, not in one union, not in one union federation but in the mass movement of the whole class led and directed by a mass revolutionary party.
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Footnote
1*. The general opposition to dual unionism did not prevent the particular activity of certain ‘orthodox’ Trotskyists in involving themselves heavily in the NASD breakaway from the T&GWU in the Northern ports in the mid-1950s. Like other efforts in this direction there was little profit for the Trotskyists and none for the workers. See IS 2, R. Pennington
Notes
7. P. Renshaw, The Wobblies, p.37.
8. Bell, Pioneering Days, p.42.
9. Kendall, op. cit., p.68.
10. Ibid., p.63.
11. Bell, op. cit., p.72.
12. Ibid., p.72.
13. Ibid., p.73.
14. Beer, History of British Socialism, p.362.
15. On Strike, quoted in Roderick Martin, Communism and the British Trade Unions.
16. The Worker, 19 July 1929. Quoted in ibid.
17. Quoted in ibid., pp.155-6.
18. Railwaymen’s MM Broadsheet, quoted in ibid., p.132.
19. Quoted in Shirley Lerner, Breakaway Unions and the Small Trade Union, from which much of this narrative is taken.
20. Trotsky, Letters on the Dutch situation.
21. Lenin, Collected Works, vol.31, pp.54-55.
22. Leon Trotsky, On the Trade Unions, p.55.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Amalgamating the engineers</h1>
<h3>(May 1976)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 29 May 1976, p.15.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Contrary to myth, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers is rather democratic. That bold statement, as is usual with such statements, requires immediate qualification. Within the amalgamated union there are four sections: Engineering with 1,200,000 members; the Constructional Engineers with 30,000; the Foundry workers with 50,000; and the Technical and Supervisory Staff (TASS) section with 130,000. The first three sections all elect their officials by periodic membership ballot; TASS appoints its officials. It was this last deviation from the AUEW norm that gave rise to much heart-searching and ill-concealed anger at the Engineering section’s annual policy-making National Committee in Scarborough last week.</p>
<p>The National Committee is composed of fifty-two delegates and is a committee rather than a conference, because – under the strange code of the AUEW – a committee can instruct, while a conference may only direct. It is the highest formal expression of the founding members’ insistence that the rank and file must have the last word. This admirable desire also gives rise to a very large rule book and the feeling that procedures are such as to prevent anyone from doing anything.</p>
<p>Practically all the members of the committee are men who have gown middle-aged in the union and its industrial activity, They are very experienced, convenors of large factories and district presidents. They also have a predeliction for addressing their fifty-one colleagues as if they were a mass meeting of thousands, a practice in no way abated by the fact that no one ever applauds. The atmosphere of ritual is further enhanced by the convention that, although everyone knows everyone else quite well, delegates refer to one another by their numbers. It does give the air of a rather liberal prison regime to hear someone say: “Number 33 is talking nonsense, but I agree absolutely with number 50”.</p>
<p>To complicate matters further, the committee is fairly evenly divided between left and right, with the right having the edge of late. That edge was expressed fairly clearly in the twenty-nine to twenty-two (one abstention) decision to support the TUC Government pay deal. Although again that is not exactly a left-right division, at least one delegate told me, in anguished tones, that he voted for the pay deal because he had always supported Hugh Scanlon and could not stop now. Of such touching loyalties are policies made and broken.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the National Committee was evenly split, twenty-six to twenty-six, on the question of full amalgamation of all the sections. Superficially, the argument centred around the question of the periodic election of the assimilated TASS officials. In practice it is fairly clear that the right’s objection is that TASS is firmly under the control of Communist Party members. To add the weight of TASS officials and delegates to the Executive committee and National Committee would seriously alter the balance in favour of the left. Because of their existing contracts of employment, the TASS officials could demand seats on the Executive that would be theirs for life. They would be sitting with members subject to quinquennial election and, at the same time, eligible for election to such powerful and prestigious posts as president and general secretary, without the danger of losing their sinecure it they fail to be elected.</p>
<p>This injustice, as real as it is apparent, gave the right wing a powerful peg on which to hang their objections to TASS. It also gave rise to the strange spectacle of the left, who in most other unions demand the periodic election of appointed officials, cautioning patience and undemanding of the TASS officials’ dilemma. It is indeed a dilemma for the TASS officials, since recent AEUW elections have shown a well defined tendency to oust sitting left-wingers and install those thought to be “moderate”. The TASS General Secretary, Mr Ken Gill, would undoubtedly find it extremely galling, having achieved the highest office of his union, to be out of a job in three years’ time.</p>
<p>The left, of course, argue that if the postal ballot were dropped in favour of branch balloting then TASS would be far more willing to accept the electoral principle in the future. This, however, is not a point that Mr Gill was prepared to confirm. His point, expressed with some force, is that the AUEW wishes to become the sole union in the engineering, industry. If the union makes it impossible for appointed officials to maintain their existing rights and conditions then any prospect of further amalgamation with other unions will be much circumscribed.</p>
<p>Now that is a point of some power. A few years ago the Engineering union made amalgamation proposals to the National Union of Vehicle Builders, a quite significant union in the car industry. Talks broke down on the engineers’ insistence that NUVB officials should be subject to election. Almost immediately Mr Jack Jones, a man with his eye to the main chance, nipped in and offered the security that the engineers refused. The NUVB is now an integral part of the Transport union and as a result the AUEW is in a minority position in a number of important car plants. It may be unlikely, but is not beyond the bounds of possibility, that if TASS are eventually rejected Mr Jones might make them an offer they could not refuse. Which would take his already massive union over the magic two million mark.</p>
<p>The very real fear of the right, and left, in the AUEW that Jack Jones will deprive them of their leading role in engineering was the factor that made the National Committee stop short of completely wrecking the amalgamation. By a narrow majority they passed a resolution that calls for election of all officials, a joint rule book, common subscriptions and benefits; but this is clearly a delaying or bargaining position, not an absolute condition. Amalgamation, in the full sense, will be delayed for another twelve months and perhaps put in jeopardy.</p>
<p>Why, you might ask, should we care about all these divisions in the AUEW? The answer is simple. The real problem of national wages determination is the possibility of foundering on differentials, particularly in engineering. Broadly speaking, large numbers of semi-skilled production workers are in the Transport union, with the overwhelming majority of skilled men in the AUEW. Inter-union rivalry will vastly exacerbate an existing problem. Trade union patriotism is as resistant to rationality as any other kind of chauvinism. Unions wish to maximise their membership and bargaining strength, while employers with any sense want to avoid demarcation and differential disputes. One union for engineering workers would seem to be a good way to satisfy everybody, but it will not happen this year.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Amalgamating the engineers
(May 1976)
From the Spectator, 29 May 1976, p.15.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Contrary to myth, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers is rather democratic. That bold statement, as is usual with such statements, requires immediate qualification. Within the amalgamated union there are four sections: Engineering with 1,200,000 members; the Constructional Engineers with 30,000; the Foundry workers with 50,000; and the Technical and Supervisory Staff (TASS) section with 130,000. The first three sections all elect their officials by periodic membership ballot; TASS appoints its officials. It was this last deviation from the AUEW norm that gave rise to much heart-searching and ill-concealed anger at the Engineering section’s annual policy-making National Committee in Scarborough last week.
The National Committee is composed of fifty-two delegates and is a committee rather than a conference, because – under the strange code of the AUEW – a committee can instruct, while a conference may only direct. It is the highest formal expression of the founding members’ insistence that the rank and file must have the last word. This admirable desire also gives rise to a very large rule book and the feeling that procedures are such as to prevent anyone from doing anything.
Practically all the members of the committee are men who have gown middle-aged in the union and its industrial activity, They are very experienced, convenors of large factories and district presidents. They also have a predeliction for addressing their fifty-one colleagues as if they were a mass meeting of thousands, a practice in no way abated by the fact that no one ever applauds. The atmosphere of ritual is further enhanced by the convention that, although everyone knows everyone else quite well, delegates refer to one another by their numbers. It does give the air of a rather liberal prison regime to hear someone say: “Number 33 is talking nonsense, but I agree absolutely with number 50”.
To complicate matters further, the committee is fairly evenly divided between left and right, with the right having the edge of late. That edge was expressed fairly clearly in the twenty-nine to twenty-two (one abstention) decision to support the TUC Government pay deal. Although again that is not exactly a left-right division, at least one delegate told me, in anguished tones, that he voted for the pay deal because he had always supported Hugh Scanlon and could not stop now. Of such touching loyalties are policies made and broken.
On the other hand, the National Committee was evenly split, twenty-six to twenty-six, on the question of full amalgamation of all the sections. Superficially, the argument centred around the question of the periodic election of the assimilated TASS officials. In practice it is fairly clear that the right’s objection is that TASS is firmly under the control of Communist Party members. To add the weight of TASS officials and delegates to the Executive committee and National Committee would seriously alter the balance in favour of the left. Because of their existing contracts of employment, the TASS officials could demand seats on the Executive that would be theirs for life. They would be sitting with members subject to quinquennial election and, at the same time, eligible for election to such powerful and prestigious posts as president and general secretary, without the danger of losing their sinecure it they fail to be elected.
This injustice, as real as it is apparent, gave the right wing a powerful peg on which to hang their objections to TASS. It also gave rise to the strange spectacle of the left, who in most other unions demand the periodic election of appointed officials, cautioning patience and undemanding of the TASS officials’ dilemma. It is indeed a dilemma for the TASS officials, since recent AEUW elections have shown a well defined tendency to oust sitting left-wingers and install those thought to be “moderate”. The TASS General Secretary, Mr Ken Gill, would undoubtedly find it extremely galling, having achieved the highest office of his union, to be out of a job in three years’ time.
The left, of course, argue that if the postal ballot were dropped in favour of branch balloting then TASS would be far more willing to accept the electoral principle in the future. This, however, is not a point that Mr Gill was prepared to confirm. His point, expressed with some force, is that the AUEW wishes to become the sole union in the engineering, industry. If the union makes it impossible for appointed officials to maintain their existing rights and conditions then any prospect of further amalgamation with other unions will be much circumscribed.
Now that is a point of some power. A few years ago the Engineering union made amalgamation proposals to the National Union of Vehicle Builders, a quite significant union in the car industry. Talks broke down on the engineers’ insistence that NUVB officials should be subject to election. Almost immediately Mr Jack Jones, a man with his eye to the main chance, nipped in and offered the security that the engineers refused. The NUVB is now an integral part of the Transport union and as a result the AUEW is in a minority position in a number of important car plants. It may be unlikely, but is not beyond the bounds of possibility, that if TASS are eventually rejected Mr Jones might make them an offer they could not refuse. Which would take his already massive union over the magic two million mark.
The very real fear of the right, and left, in the AUEW that Jack Jones will deprive them of their leading role in engineering was the factor that made the National Committee stop short of completely wrecking the amalgamation. By a narrow majority they passed a resolution that calls for election of all officials, a joint rule book, common subscriptions and benefits; but this is clearly a delaying or bargaining position, not an absolute condition. Amalgamation, in the full sense, will be delayed for another twelve months and perhaps put in jeopardy.
Why, you might ask, should we care about all these divisions in the AUEW? The answer is simple. The real problem of national wages determination is the possibility of foundering on differentials, particularly in engineering. Broadly speaking, large numbers of semi-skilled production workers are in the Transport union, with the overwhelming majority of skilled men in the AUEW. Inter-union rivalry will vastly exacerbate an existing problem. Trade union patriotism is as resistant to rationality as any other kind of chauvinism. Unions wish to maximise their membership and bargaining strength, while employers with any sense want to avoid demarcation and differential disputes. One union for engineering workers would seem to be a good way to satisfy everybody, but it will not happen this year.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Setting the Record Straight</h1>
<h3>(May 1972)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>International Socialism, Internal Bulletin</strong>, May 1972.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford, September 2012.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">In the <strong>Red Mole</strong>, No. 40 (17 April 1972), a letter from a number of NUM members appeared, together with a highly tendentious commentary from the IMG. The letter from the NUM members (a copy of which was sent to <strong>SW</strong>) is the result of some intensive lobbying by IMG members.</p>
<p>On the face of it the condemnation in the letter seems fairly damning. Three members of the Editorial Board and others complain (1) that the conference was not advertised to all organisation, (2) that an IS Conference had no right to add members to the Editorial Board of a rank and file miners paper.</p>
<p>The IMG complain further that they were excluded while Tony Cliff and Chris Davison were admitted. They complain that the Chairman (Peter O’Neill, NUM) refused to accept amendments to the draft programme in the <strong>Collier</strong>. He refused to accept a vote on the constitution of the paper. Why, they ask, was workers’ control (an item agreed at a previous meeting) not included in the agenda. They repeat the accusation that an IS miners’ conference added a member to <strong>The Collier</strong> EB.</p>
<p>Let us now examine the facts. The original decision to launch <strong>The Collier</strong> was taken at an informal <em>ad hoc</em> meeting in Barnsley on 27 February. This was intended to be an exploratory meeting with a few miners and 10 members. The IMG got wind of the meeting and decided to gatecrash. Because it would have been incomprehensible to the 40 odd miners who turned up at the meeting we made no attempt to exclude the IMG members (none of whom were miners).</p>
<p>This first Barnsley meeting resulted in an EB of six (four IS members and two nominated by the IMG). As the result of their ill-mannered intervention the IMG were somewhat cookahoop. In an IMG internal bulletin they wrote the following</p>
<p class="quoteb">“We are now in an excellent situation to extend our influence among the more militant miners and we can cash in on IS’s spadework. Two articles have been written for <strong>The Collier</strong> by IMG members and will be submitted to the editorial board by our contacts on it. It is now of prime importance that we are able to make an intervention in the conference in Leeds on the 19th. The IS are insisting that the conference is for miners only but it is almost certain that Cliff, Charlton, etc. will be there. This is something that we can use to insist that we be allowed in but (underlined) it is important that we have a base of support amongst the miners themselves. It should therefore become a major priority of all units of the organisation with contacts in the mining industry to mobilise support for the conference. There are already a few miners in the Yorkshire area who would be prepared to fight in the conference to let us in and if we could take even 20-30 miners with us to the conference it would prove practically impossible for the IS to stop us getting in. The fact that IS could not attempt to throw us out of the Barnsley meeting indicates that the political ties of these miners must be extremely tenuous and one or two good members from the IMG could have a big impact at the IMG (<em>sic</em>) conference This is the best opportunity we have had for some time to get our ideas across to industrial militants and at the same time hit IS where it politically hurts. It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.”</p>
<p class="fst">In the event, as was to be expected, they had only one or two miners at the conference.</p>
<p>Between the first Barnsley meeting and the conference an EB meeting was held at 6 Cottons Gardens. All the EB members were present, including the two IMG contact/nominees for the EB (these two comrades Cotter and Thornton subsequently signed the <strong>Red Mole</strong> protest letter). At this meeting the contents of the first issue were agreed and a lengthy discussion took place on the programme for the paper. <em>All</em> points in the final programme were unanimously agreed by <em>all</em> members of the EB. The final decision taken at that meeting, again unanimously, was the organisation of an <em>IS</em> miners conference. The EB, including comrades Cotter and Thornton, agreed that members of the IS National Committee (effectively, comrades Cliff and Charlton) and any NUM member of whatever political persuasion should be entitled to attend. Unless political tendencies had actual members in the NUM, who could put their point of view, the EB saw no point in allowing them to take up the time of the conference. In the event, a sizeable contingent of non-NUM members of the IMG turned up and were not admitted.</p>
<p>The IMG-inspired letter from the NUM members would seem incomprehensible. It is less so when we discover that signatures to the letter were obtained by the IMG without the text being available to all the signatories. According to comrades Cotter and Thornton they thought that IMG miners had been excluded from the conference and that the letter was calling for an open rank and file miners paper.</p>
<p>On the accusation that we added to <strong>The Collier</strong> EB at an IS conference, there is just a germ of truth, but only in the sense that the Chairman did not stop the conference electing another EB member. There is, however, a certain comedy in the IMG’s shocked reaction to this. The addition, comrade Ian Taylor (another signatory to the letter) is in fact one of the few (perhaps the only) IMG members in the NUM. If they deplore this procedure so much they should have instructed him to resign.</p>
<p>As to Peter O’Neil’s refusal to agree to programme amendments and a constitution. This again was a decision of the EB, taken on the ground that the programme was available to NUM members for a few days before the conference and that amendments would not be available at all. It was agreed that a further conference would be held in the Autumn at which, with adequate preparation, the programme, the style and the constitution of the paper could be discussed and amended in the light of several issues of the paper.</p>
<p>The final accusation, that workers’ control was not on the agenda, is nonsense. Workers’ control is in fact one of the points in the programme and anyone (assuming he was a miner) could have discussed the question.</p>
<p>What is clear from all this, including their own mouths, is that the IMG are attempting parasitically to take advantage of our consistent work in the coalfields. Last week, for example, they attempted, without consultation with any IS miners, to set up a ‘Barnsley Collier Group’. Again, due to their inexperience and inefficiency, only one miner turned up to the inaugural meeting.</p>
<p>In all conscience, we ourselves are weak enough but a group that feeds on the meagre crumbs dropping from our sparse table displays a weakness and lack of knowledge and principle that is truly alarming.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Setting the Record Straight
(May 1972)
From the International Socialism, Internal Bulletin, May 1972.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford, September 2012.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
In the Red Mole, No. 40 (17 April 1972), a letter from a number of NUM members appeared, together with a highly tendentious commentary from the IMG. The letter from the NUM members (a copy of which was sent to SW) is the result of some intensive lobbying by IMG members.
On the face of it the condemnation in the letter seems fairly damning. Three members of the Editorial Board and others complain (1) that the conference was not advertised to all organisation, (2) that an IS Conference had no right to add members to the Editorial Board of a rank and file miners paper.
The IMG complain further that they were excluded while Tony Cliff and Chris Davison were admitted. They complain that the Chairman (Peter O’Neill, NUM) refused to accept amendments to the draft programme in the Collier. He refused to accept a vote on the constitution of the paper. Why, they ask, was workers’ control (an item agreed at a previous meeting) not included in the agenda. They repeat the accusation that an IS miners’ conference added a member to The Collier EB.
Let us now examine the facts. The original decision to launch The Collier was taken at an informal ad hoc meeting in Barnsley on 27 February. This was intended to be an exploratory meeting with a few miners and 10 members. The IMG got wind of the meeting and decided to gatecrash. Because it would have been incomprehensible to the 40 odd miners who turned up at the meeting we made no attempt to exclude the IMG members (none of whom were miners).
This first Barnsley meeting resulted in an EB of six (four IS members and two nominated by the IMG). As the result of their ill-mannered intervention the IMG were somewhat cookahoop. In an IMG internal bulletin they wrote the following
“We are now in an excellent situation to extend our influence among the more militant miners and we can cash in on IS’s spadework. Two articles have been written for The Collier by IMG members and will be submitted to the editorial board by our contacts on it. It is now of prime importance that we are able to make an intervention in the conference in Leeds on the 19th. The IS are insisting that the conference is for miners only but it is almost certain that Cliff, Charlton, etc. will be there. This is something that we can use to insist that we be allowed in but (underlined) it is important that we have a base of support amongst the miners themselves. It should therefore become a major priority of all units of the organisation with contacts in the mining industry to mobilise support for the conference. There are already a few miners in the Yorkshire area who would be prepared to fight in the conference to let us in and if we could take even 20-30 miners with us to the conference it would prove practically impossible for the IS to stop us getting in. The fact that IS could not attempt to throw us out of the Barnsley meeting indicates that the political ties of these miners must be extremely tenuous and one or two good members from the IMG could have a big impact at the IMG (sic) conference This is the best opportunity we have had for some time to get our ideas across to industrial militants and at the same time hit IS where it politically hurts. It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.”
In the event, as was to be expected, they had only one or two miners at the conference.
Between the first Barnsley meeting and the conference an EB meeting was held at 6 Cottons Gardens. All the EB members were present, including the two IMG contact/nominees for the EB (these two comrades Cotter and Thornton subsequently signed the Red Mole protest letter). At this meeting the contents of the first issue were agreed and a lengthy discussion took place on the programme for the paper. All points in the final programme were unanimously agreed by all members of the EB. The final decision taken at that meeting, again unanimously, was the organisation of an IS miners conference. The EB, including comrades Cotter and Thornton, agreed that members of the IS National Committee (effectively, comrades Cliff and Charlton) and any NUM member of whatever political persuasion should be entitled to attend. Unless political tendencies had actual members in the NUM, who could put their point of view, the EB saw no point in allowing them to take up the time of the conference. In the event, a sizeable contingent of non-NUM members of the IMG turned up and were not admitted.
The IMG-inspired letter from the NUM members would seem incomprehensible. It is less so when we discover that signatures to the letter were obtained by the IMG without the text being available to all the signatories. According to comrades Cotter and Thornton they thought that IMG miners had been excluded from the conference and that the letter was calling for an open rank and file miners paper.
On the accusation that we added to The Collier EB at an IS conference, there is just a germ of truth, but only in the sense that the Chairman did not stop the conference electing another EB member. There is, however, a certain comedy in the IMG’s shocked reaction to this. The addition, comrade Ian Taylor (another signatory to the letter) is in fact one of the few (perhaps the only) IMG members in the NUM. If they deplore this procedure so much they should have instructed him to resign.
As to Peter O’Neil’s refusal to agree to programme amendments and a constitution. This again was a decision of the EB, taken on the ground that the programme was available to NUM members for a few days before the conference and that amendments would not be available at all. It was agreed that a further conference would be held in the Autumn at which, with adequate preparation, the programme, the style and the constitution of the paper could be discussed and amended in the light of several issues of the paper.
The final accusation, that workers’ control was not on the agenda, is nonsense. Workers’ control is in fact one of the points in the programme and anyone (assuming he was a miner) could have discussed the question.
What is clear from all this, including their own mouths, is that the IMG are attempting parasitically to take advantage of our consistent work in the coalfields. Last week, for example, they attempted, without consultation with any IS miners, to set up a ‘Barnsley Collier Group’. Again, due to their inexperience and inefficiency, only one miner turned up to the inaugural meeting.
In all conscience, we ourselves are weak enough but a group that feeds on the meagre crumbs dropping from our sparse table displays a weakness and lack of knowledge and principle that is truly alarming.
Jim Higgins
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h4>The unions</h4>
<h1>Out of Molehills</h1>
<h3>(January 1976)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 17 January 1976, p.10.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">It is an interesting fact that most people of my acquaintance do not know the name of the new head of British Leyland; they do, however, know both the name and the nickname of the shop steward for the internal transport drivers at Leyland’s Cowley assembly plant. I speak, of course, of Mr Alan Thornett, known to millions as, “the mole,” a reference to his talent for boring from within. This is not to say that Mr Thornett is a Fabian thinker of a new and original kind. Not at all, he is a revolutionary of a particularly intransigent type. Even so it is, at first blush, a little difficult to understand why, of over two hundred Transport and General shop stewards at Cowley, Mr Thornett should be singled out for so much attention in the national press and television.</p>
<p>To set the background to recent events it is necessary to know something of the general problems of Leyland’s labour relations. British Leyland is a vast sprawling industrial empire, its work force are organised within some 250 bargaining units (in contrast to the one unit at Ford). Even with a vastly superior management to the one they have, Leyland would have a difficult personnel problem. In addition to the complex arrangement for bargaining the corporation were very late in changing from piece work systems to measured day work. Over three years from 1971 to 1974 they managed, just, to get acceptance of the new work method. It is calculated by some Leyland managers that this changeover has decreased the number of disputes and halved the rate of wage increases. Although this must be good news to BLMC it did throw into stark relief the inadequacies of management planning. Under the piece work system the worker had some incentive to ensure the adequate supply of parts – his take-home pay depends on it. With a day wage system, no matter how many time and motion study men are used, if the management do not plan an even supply of parts the worker will have no personal reason for making up for this deficiency. Nowhere is this problem more acute than in an assembly plant, which brings us neatly back to Cowley.</p>
<p>Among the many Leyland factories Cowley has traditionally been one of the more militant, unlike the Longbridge plant – where the Communist, Dick Etheridge, earned company plaudits for statesmanship and accusations of “class collaboration” from the extreme left. Among the leading far left elements at Cowley were Mr Alan Thornett and Mr Reg. Parsons, both of them were members of the Workers Revolutionary Party, which had several adherents in the plant.</p>
<p>The WRP is a highly disciplined organisation requiring of its members activity throughout their waking hours and a lot of those hours generally reserved for sleep. In addition it demands absolute adherence to the current political line as expressed through the thought of the General Secretary, Gerry Healy. In a few words it is a sect of true believers, a political equivalent of the Exclusive Brethren. It was to the development and greater glory of this organisation that Messrs Parsons and Thornett devoted their not inconsiderable talents.</p>
<p>The cost to Mr Parsons, in personal terms was high. His marriage and family broke up and he came more and more to think that any sort of society arising from the efforts of the WRP would be considerably worse than anything that was currently on offer. He broke with them and joined the Labour Party and is now a fully paid up moderate. Mr Thornett also had his difficulties, he found that some of the wildest excesses of WRP policy were very difficult to even attempt to implement and he fought for a change of line. After a brief and very unequal struggle, Mr Thornett and some 200 supporters were expelled from the WRP. Nothing daunted the expellees set up their own organisation, the Workers’ Socialist League (known rather unkindly as the “Weasel” to others on the left, and began publishing a paper, <strong>Socialist Press</strong>, an uncomfortably close echo of the WRP’s <strong>Workers’ Press</strong>. The similarity does not end there for both journals are heavily biased in favour of long complicated attacks other groups who fail to accept their version of the revealed truth.</p>
<p>Coincidentally with his political trouble, Mr Thornett also experienced some difficult with the Cowley management. In late 1974 they withdrew their recognition from him as a deputy senior shop steward for, they claimed, his disruptive activities. An attempt to mount a full-scale strike of the Cowley workforce fizzled out with only Mr Thornett’s own section coming out. The Transport and General officials then negotiated an agreement with management, under the terms of which he would maintain his job as internal transport shop steward but could not take on a senior post.</p>
<p>There the matter rested until just before Christmas 1975, when the mole surfaced in a successful bid for the chairmanship of the TGWU 4,000-member branch serving the Cowley factory. This was achieved at a no more than usually ill-attended meeting and in face of a challenge from WRP member, Mr Tom White.</p>
<p>It was at this point that it emerged that Mr Thornett was also a candidate for two other union posts. The first was for the TGWU Regional Committee and the other for one of the seven Deputy Senior Shop Steward posts. British Leyland let it be known that that it would not recognise him if elected. Mr Parsons gave a press conference at which he pointed out the danger of Mr Thornett’s possible election and let it be known that the factory was full of disruption with not only the WRP and WSL operating within its walls but also the International Marxist Group and the International Socialists. He further threatened to resign as Senior Steward unless the election gave rise to a moderate majority.</p>
<p>A graphic illustration of the dread with which management viewed the prospect of a Thornett election is given by the following anecdote. Negotiations had been going on for some time about speeding up the Princess production line from sixteen to twenty cars per hour. The trade unions rejected the scheme and the management intended to introduce it, unilaterally, this Monday. They have now postponed the speed-up for a week on the grounds that a strike might help Mr Thornett’s chances and in any case a lot of workers might not be able to vote against him if they were home-bound strikers. Whether this ploy had much effect is open to doubt. What is clear, however, is that Mr Thornett’s defeat in his last two election bids, by overwhelming majorities, was primarily due to Mr Parsons’s carefully orchestrated press campaign. Leaving aside the lack of fairation in such a conflict – after all Mr Thornett with <strong>Socialist Press</strong>’s circulation of a few thousands is at a severe disadvantage against the several millions of the national press – is it not possible that the commentators are missing the point?</p>
<p>Someone, whose name, like the head of British Leyland I forget, once said there are no bad trade unions, only bad managements. Mr Thornett, whatever his talents as an agitator, cannot cause anything like the damage that a set of incompetent and inept managers can wreak. If revolutionary agitators had anything like the power that is so often ascribed to them then the socialist millennium would have been ushered in fifty years ago. Mr Thornett may well be a disaster as a Deputy Senior Steward but the increasing tendency of the press to intervene, in a highly sensitive and complex area, with their portrayal of simon pure moderates and black-hearted militants can prove even more disastrous. If the suspicion got abroad that the press, the employers and the trade union leaders were in a conspiracy to deny the members their right to choose, then Mr Thornett will have won a far greater victory than his little newspaper could ever give him.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The unions
Out of Molehills
(January 1976)
From the Spectator, 17 January 1976, p.10.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
It is an interesting fact that most people of my acquaintance do not know the name of the new head of British Leyland; they do, however, know both the name and the nickname of the shop steward for the internal transport drivers at Leyland’s Cowley assembly plant. I speak, of course, of Mr Alan Thornett, known to millions as, “the mole,” a reference to his talent for boring from within. This is not to say that Mr Thornett is a Fabian thinker of a new and original kind. Not at all, he is a revolutionary of a particularly intransigent type. Even so it is, at first blush, a little difficult to understand why, of over two hundred Transport and General shop stewards at Cowley, Mr Thornett should be singled out for so much attention in the national press and television.
To set the background to recent events it is necessary to know something of the general problems of Leyland’s labour relations. British Leyland is a vast sprawling industrial empire, its work force are organised within some 250 bargaining units (in contrast to the one unit at Ford). Even with a vastly superior management to the one they have, Leyland would have a difficult personnel problem. In addition to the complex arrangement for bargaining the corporation were very late in changing from piece work systems to measured day work. Over three years from 1971 to 1974 they managed, just, to get acceptance of the new work method. It is calculated by some Leyland managers that this changeover has decreased the number of disputes and halved the rate of wage increases. Although this must be good news to BLMC it did throw into stark relief the inadequacies of management planning. Under the piece work system the worker had some incentive to ensure the adequate supply of parts – his take-home pay depends on it. With a day wage system, no matter how many time and motion study men are used, if the management do not plan an even supply of parts the worker will have no personal reason for making up for this deficiency. Nowhere is this problem more acute than in an assembly plant, which brings us neatly back to Cowley.
Among the many Leyland factories Cowley has traditionally been one of the more militant, unlike the Longbridge plant – where the Communist, Dick Etheridge, earned company plaudits for statesmanship and accusations of “class collaboration” from the extreme left. Among the leading far left elements at Cowley were Mr Alan Thornett and Mr Reg. Parsons, both of them were members of the Workers Revolutionary Party, which had several adherents in the plant.
The WRP is a highly disciplined organisation requiring of its members activity throughout their waking hours and a lot of those hours generally reserved for sleep. In addition it demands absolute adherence to the current political line as expressed through the thought of the General Secretary, Gerry Healy. In a few words it is a sect of true believers, a political equivalent of the Exclusive Brethren. It was to the development and greater glory of this organisation that Messrs Parsons and Thornett devoted their not inconsiderable talents.
The cost to Mr Parsons, in personal terms was high. His marriage and family broke up and he came more and more to think that any sort of society arising from the efforts of the WRP would be considerably worse than anything that was currently on offer. He broke with them and joined the Labour Party and is now a fully paid up moderate. Mr Thornett also had his difficulties, he found that some of the wildest excesses of WRP policy were very difficult to even attempt to implement and he fought for a change of line. After a brief and very unequal struggle, Mr Thornett and some 200 supporters were expelled from the WRP. Nothing daunted the expellees set up their own organisation, the Workers’ Socialist League (known rather unkindly as the “Weasel” to others on the left, and began publishing a paper, Socialist Press, an uncomfortably close echo of the WRP’s Workers’ Press. The similarity does not end there for both journals are heavily biased in favour of long complicated attacks other groups who fail to accept their version of the revealed truth.
Coincidentally with his political trouble, Mr Thornett also experienced some difficult with the Cowley management. In late 1974 they withdrew their recognition from him as a deputy senior shop steward for, they claimed, his disruptive activities. An attempt to mount a full-scale strike of the Cowley workforce fizzled out with only Mr Thornett’s own section coming out. The Transport and General officials then negotiated an agreement with management, under the terms of which he would maintain his job as internal transport shop steward but could not take on a senior post.
There the matter rested until just before Christmas 1975, when the mole surfaced in a successful bid for the chairmanship of the TGWU 4,000-member branch serving the Cowley factory. This was achieved at a no more than usually ill-attended meeting and in face of a challenge from WRP member, Mr Tom White.
It was at this point that it emerged that Mr Thornett was also a candidate for two other union posts. The first was for the TGWU Regional Committee and the other for one of the seven Deputy Senior Shop Steward posts. British Leyland let it be known that that it would not recognise him if elected. Mr Parsons gave a press conference at which he pointed out the danger of Mr Thornett’s possible election and let it be known that the factory was full of disruption with not only the WRP and WSL operating within its walls but also the International Marxist Group and the International Socialists. He further threatened to resign as Senior Steward unless the election gave rise to a moderate majority.
A graphic illustration of the dread with which management viewed the prospect of a Thornett election is given by the following anecdote. Negotiations had been going on for some time about speeding up the Princess production line from sixteen to twenty cars per hour. The trade unions rejected the scheme and the management intended to introduce it, unilaterally, this Monday. They have now postponed the speed-up for a week on the grounds that a strike might help Mr Thornett’s chances and in any case a lot of workers might not be able to vote against him if they were home-bound strikers. Whether this ploy had much effect is open to doubt. What is clear, however, is that Mr Thornett’s defeat in his last two election bids, by overwhelming majorities, was primarily due to Mr Parsons’s carefully orchestrated press campaign. Leaving aside the lack of fairation in such a conflict – after all Mr Thornett with Socialist Press’s circulation of a few thousands is at a severe disadvantage against the several millions of the national press – is it not possible that the commentators are missing the point?
Someone, whose name, like the head of British Leyland I forget, once said there are no bad trade unions, only bad managements. Mr Thornett, whatever his talents as an agitator, cannot cause anything like the damage that a set of incompetent and inept managers can wreak. If revolutionary agitators had anything like the power that is so often ascribed to them then the socialist millennium would have been ushered in fifty years ago. Mr Thornett may well be a disaster as a Deputy Senior Steward but the increasing tendency of the press to intervene, in a highly sensitive and complex area, with their portrayal of simon pure moderates and black-hearted militants can prove even more disastrous. If the suspicion got abroad that the press, the employers and the trade union leaders were in a conspiracy to deny the members their right to choose, then Mr Thornett will have won a far greater victory than his little newspaper could ever give him.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Lenin</h1>
<h3>(April 1970)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <em>Socialist Worker</em>, 23 April 1970.<br>
Later issued as a pamphlet.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Lenin – Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk on 22 April 1870. His father was a teacher and inspector of schools in reasonably comfortable circumstances. Lenin was able to attend the classical Gymnasium and later the Kazan university, although he was subsequently expelled after his arrest for taking part in a student revolutionary discussion circle.</p>
<p>The 1880s were a period of extreme reaction, following the reforms of the early 1860s and an increase in populist terrorism. In 1887 Lenin’s brother Alexander was arrested for his part in the attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. In May of that year Alexander and his comrades were executed. Lenin was deeply attached to his brother and there can be no doubt that the execution had a considerable effect on the seventeen year old boy.</p>
<p>To suppose, as does the official Russian biography, that this traumatic event set him immediately on the road to a marxist view and against individual terrorism is dubious. What is clear, however, is that from 1888, when he read Marx’s <strong>Capital</strong> and joined a marxist group in Kazan, he was an uncompromising opponent of acts of terror (intended to galvanise the masses but which in fact led to apathy and despair) and the idealist notions of the Russian populists, the Narodniks (named after their group Narodnya Volya – People’s Will).</p>
<p>In a series of closely reasoned pamphlets he argued for the marxist method against populism. Between 1889 and 1891 he managed to translate the <strong>Communist Manifesto</strong> into Russian, write several major works (amounting to some 500 pages in all) on Social Democracy and Populism, to organise discussion circles and to pass his law examinations.</p>
<p>In 1895 Lenin went abroad to make contact with members of the emigré marxist group, The Emancipation of Labour. In Switzerland he met the leading Russian marxist theorist Plekhanov and made arrangements for the publication of a collection of articles.</p>
<p>On his return to Russia he set up the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class in Petersburg and made contact with a number of groups in other Russian towns. The attempt was made to break out of the closed circles of theoretical discussion groups and to make contact with industrial workers. Leaflets were distributed at factories and preparation made for an illegal newspaper. In December 1895, Lenin and most members of the League were arrested and the material for the paper seized.</p>
<p>Throughout 1896 and until his exile to Siberia in 1897 Lenin was under interrogation in the St Petersburg jail. In between interrogations he found time to write a draft programme for a Social Democratic Party (prior to 1917 all socialist parties, revolutionary or not, were called Social Democratic), an obituary of Engels, a leaflet and prepare material for his major work <strong>The Development of Capitalism in Russia</strong>.</p>
<p>In his draft programme and the explanatory notes it is interesting to see how early Lenin’s thought developed. In a sense, Lenin’s subsequent work was in developing his 1896 programme and fighting for the necessary tactical changes, in a changing situation. The programme puts at the centre of the analysis the working class. Agitation and propaganda are set by the actual condition of the workers.</p>
<p>In Russia, capitalism came very late on the scene and in consequence it was grafted on to Tsarist absolutism. Alongside the most modern large-scale industrial enterprises, the administrative machinery was autocratic, graft-ridden, feudal and inefficient. In this situation the employers were able to hide behind the autocracy. Instead of controlling the state directly they operated through corrupt officials. The working class were subjected to all the concentrated barbarism of capitalism without even the crumbs of political democracy.</p>
<p>The struggle for better conditions in these circumstances became, willy-nilly, a political struggle.</p>
<p>The task of socialists, in Lenin’s conception, was to encourage the day to day struggles against the employers, to advise on the relation of forces, assist in the preparation of demands and to cast all this within the framework of a political and democratic programme.</p>
<p>The employers were to be forced into taking the form as well as the content of state power. The workers needed “open struggle against the capitalist class ... in order that the intrigues and aspirations of the bourgeoisie may not be hidden in the anterooms of Grand Dukes, in the salons of senators and ministers ... And so down with everything that hides the present influence of the capitalist class ... the workers need the abolition of the government’s absolute rule only in order to wage an open and extensive struggle against the capitalist class.” (<strong>Collected Works</strong>, vol.2, pp.119-120). The programme, therefore, demanded the norms of capitalist democracy (universal suffrage, religious freedom, the eight hour day, equality before the law, right to strike, factory legislation, liberalisation of the land laws).</p>
<p>All this was to give the working class the possibility of independent activity In the process of this struggle the working class base of social democracy was to be assured. With variations, in his estimation of the capacities and strength of the different classes, Lenin maintained to the end the idea of a programme that set out to develop class consciousness and to set the scene for the next stage of struggle. The limits of any struggle were the limits of existing working-class consciousness.</p>
<p>In 1898 a few revolutionary social democrats met in Minsk at the First Congress of the Russian Social Democracy. Almost immediately a document called the Credo appeared. In it the democratic demands of social democracy were seen not as a stage in the development of the struggle but as sufficient ends in themselves. It said that socialists should restrict themselves to the economic interests of the workers and subordinate their politics to the liberal constitutional demands of the capitalists. “Economism” as a theory and tactics for socialist agitation entered the Russian movement at much the same time as the controversy over the German socialist Bernstein’s revisionism was exercising the minds of social democrats in the West.</p>
<p>Lenin in Siberian exile sprang to the defence of the independence of the working class and socialism against economism, while in Europe Rosa Luxemburg and Plekhanov attacked revisionism. The development of Lenin’s ideas in this controversy were to find fuller expression in his book <strong>What Is To Be Done?</strong>.</p>
<p>In late July 1900 Lenin left Russia for his first long exile. The immediate political task was, through the medium of a paper, to unite the growing circles of marxist intellectuals in Russia with the spontaneous wave of working class struggles and build a united socialist party. After some initial difficulties with Plekhanov, the paper, <strong>The Spark</strong> (<strong>Iskra</strong>), was produced. The earlier years of clarification began to pay dividends. A coherent body of ideas related to the Russian movement had been developed.</p>
<p>The need now was for an organisation capable of popularising and acting on those ideas and to make the vital connection with the working class. It is in this light that the much misused <strong>What Is To Be Done?</strong> and the controversy of 1902-3 on organisation must be viewed.<br>
</p>
<h4>A party of a new kind</h4>
<p class="fst">From 1901 to 1903 Lenin and his wife Krupskaya carried the main burden of work on <strong>Iskra</strong>. Some 13 issues appeared in 1901. Many British socialists will know the hard, grinding work involved in financing and producing a readable newspaper that combines socialist agitation with working class appeal.</p>
<p>The production of <strong>Iskra</strong> and its distribution in Russia multiplied these problems a thousand-fold. Some of the Russian distributors sold the paper and sent the cash but did not follow up their contacts and set up workers’ groups. Another unscrupulous rascal sold the copies and then used the money to publish a paper supporting economism.</p>
<p>The leading emigré Russian marxists were an exceptionally talented group: Axelrod, Plekhanov, Potresov, Martov were all capable of brilliant work but they were also undisciplined and argumentative. In the circumstances it is little short of miraculous that Lenin and his wife were able to produce a paper at all.</p>
<p>In Russia, alongside the development of an embryonic socialist party, the chaotic situation gave rise to a number of other political organisations. In 1901 the Social Revolutionary Party, claiming, with some justice, to be the inheritors of the People’s Will, was formed. At much the same time “liberal” sections of the professions and the middle class formed the Constitutional Democrat Party (Cadets).</p>
<p><strong>What Is To Be Done?</strong> is superficially an attack on economism but it is essentially the demand for a disciplined party, a party of a new kind. Lenin’s insistence on the inability of the working class to advance, unaided, beyond trade union consciousness was riot new, indeed it was a commonplace in international socialist circles.</p>
<p>What was new was his insistence that intellectuals, who were to bear the socialist massage to the workers, must be dedicated, full-time revolutionaries. The capriciousness and instability that characterised so many Russian intellectuals had to be subordinated to the living workers’ movement.</p>
<p>The party intelligentsia were to operate under the discipline of the workers in the party branches. It is this vital point that differentiates Lenin’s ideas from the rest. In the party controversy over who should be entitled to become a member, the argument turned not on a word or two ‘that only he is a member who puts himself under the discipline of the local organisation’ but over a whole conception of revolutionary struggle.</p>
<p>At the party congress in 1903 Lenin was defeated on the membership question. Later in the conference, however, he was successful in the elections to the editorial board of <strong>Iskra</strong>. It is from this victory that the terms Bolshevik (majority) and Menshevik (minority) derive. The split in the Russian movement was never really to be healed and in 1912 the two sections became separate organisations.</p>
<p>The divergence of 1903 and the emnity and bad blood that flowed from that event are often cited as an example of the cold calculation of Lenin and his inhuman attitude to his political opponents. The truth is, as usual, rather different.</p>
<p>Martov, his opponent in the party controversy, was a very close personal friend (even after the revolution Lenin maintained warm feelings towards him). The break with old comrades and the heat engendered in the debate made Lenin physically ill.</p>
<p>What is characteristic of Lenin is that despite the pain it caused him he was prepared, in the interests of the revolution, to break with anybody. The fact of a disciplined, effective party organically related to the working class was worth more than old acquaintance.<br>
</p>
<h4>1905: the first Soviet</h4>
<p class="fst">In the wake of the Russian defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905, the situation for the working class became more and more oppressive. A peaceful crowd went to petition the Tsar for the alleviation of their conditions. The crowd carried holy images and portraits of the “little father” – the Tsar.</p>
<p>The Tsar’s response was to fire on the crowd. From humble petitions the Petrograd workers moved rapidly to strikes, demonstrations and armed struggle. Their slogan “The eight hour day and arms” was given weight and real revolutionary content by the spontaneous development of Soviets – workers’ councils. The movement spread like wildfire. Thousands of estates were burned, hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike.</p>
<p>The real fight against Populism and Economism was won in the streets and the Soviets. Lenin’s description of the working class as capable of only trade union consciousness was transformed into: “The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic ... The special conditions of the proletariat in capitalist society leads to a striving for socialism: a union of them with the Socialist Party bursts forth with spontaneous force ...”</p>
<p>After five years of exile Lenin returned to Russia. At first he was suspicious of the Soviet, seeing in this novelty not an organ of working class power but a transitory combat organisation.</p>
<p>The Bolshevik organisation was small and with little influence. Lenin called for the recruitment of workers by the thousand. In a time of revolutionary ferment the restrictions of 1903 were unnecessary and redundant.</p>
<p>But the relation of forces in the revolution were against the working class. The autocracy maintained its army, the liberal middle class vacillated and the socialist forces were not strong enough. After several months the leaders of the St Petersburg Soviet were arrested and the subsequent strike in Moscow was bloodily suppressed.</p>
<p>The revolution ended with the Cadets in tortured doubt as to whether they should join Witte’s ministry, with some of the choicer examples of Tsarist reaction and a series of government inspired anti-semitic pogroms.<br>
</p>
<h4>The desert years</h4>
<p class="fst">The years that followed the defeat of the 1905 revolution have been called the “years of the desert”. The workers’ movement in Russia was in steady retreat. Revolutionaries, active until then, became tired and disillusioned. The most dedicated held on and survived – just.</p>
<p>In the absence of a living movement the emigre quarrels became bitter and inward looking. Immature, ultra-left tendencies developed in the party. Attempts were made by some to import Kantian idealism into marxist philosophy.</p>
<p>Lenin fought all these struggles, if not with enthusiasm, with vigour. The need to hold on and maintain the organisation was amply justified in 1917.</p>
<p>The struggles against the ultra left and the “God-seekers” are not, of themselves, of any great significance. But, as part of the process by which Lenin developed his ideas of organisation and the application of Marxism, the period of 1905 to 1917 is the period in which a party capable of taking power was built and that is certainly of more than passing importance.<br>
</p>
<h4>Against the war</h4>
<p class="fst">1914 was the real testing time for socialism and socialists. In country after country, yesterday’s revolutionary internationalists became today’s grovelling social patriots. Plekhanov in Russia, Hyndman in Britain, Guesde in France, almost the entire German Social Democracy, became enthusiastic participants in national defence.</p>
<p>Those who maintained a consistent position were pathetically few in number. The Russian Social Democracy, the Bulgarians, the Italians and a few isolated groups, such as Luxemburg’s in Germany, were all that kept the revolutionary tradition alive.</p>
<p>It is difficult today, with the experience of 50 years of social democratic betrayal to draw upon, to conceive of the shock that the treachery of the Second International in 1914 imposed on the internationalists. For years the hopes for the revolution had been placed, rather misplaced, in the International, particularly its German section.</p>
<p>To reject the moribund Second, with its passive millions, for a new international with a few adherents was a prospect that daunted all but the most uncompromising. Of these the most uncompromising was Lenin. At the anti-war conferences of Berne, Kienthal and Zimmerwald, the slogan “Turn the imperialist war into civil war” was advanced by the Bolsheviks against the pacifist slogans of “Peace without annexations and international reconciliation.”</p>
<p>In 1916 Lenin wrote his major contribution to internationalism in his book <strong>Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism</strong>. In this work, Lenin develops marxist theory on the connections between the metropolitan countries and the colonial world. He sees in this the root cause of war and reformism in the metropolitan centres. In its descriptions of the interdependence of the developed and underdeveloped countries, the book brings on to the stage of history for the first time the revolutionary role of the colonial peoples in the scheme of world revolution.</p>
<p>From 1914 to 1917 Lenin lived mainly in Switzerland. The war made contact with the Russian movement difficult and his time was spent in correspondence with those socialists abroad who were against the war. He joined and was active in the left of the Swiss Socialist Party.</p>
<p>He wrote not only his book on Imperialism but a host of articles and pamphlets on the war and the attitude of socialists. In this period he deepened his understanding of the fatal conjuncture of practical opportunism with verbal revolutionism, best exemplified by Kautsky (the erstwhile “Pope of Marxism”).<br>
</p>
<h4>1917 – then Stalin’s growing menace</h4>
<p class="fst">In Russia the ruling autocracy was finding the task of fighting a full-scale modern war impossible. The already unstable regime was literally falling apart under the pressure of events. Beaten in battle, unable to meet the minimal requirements of the working population and incapable of relinquishing even a shadow of power to anyone else, the Tsar and Tsarism were doomed.</p>
<p>In February 1917 a peaceful women’s demonstration demanding bread was fired on. The result, a general strike, the reinstitution of the Soviets – but this time Soviets that could take and could hold the power.</p>
<p>For a short time it was possible for the politicians to maintain the fiction that only they had the necessary intelligence and ability to govern, but not for long. In the beginning the predominant influence in the Soviets was Social Revolutionary and to a lesser extent Menshevik. For them, the Soviets did not represent working-class power but a means to a provisional government. Years of mechanical adherence to the marxist formula, that Russian socialism would have to wait until capitalism had fully developed and assumed complete political power, blinded them to the actual situation. The attempt to bend the revolution, despite the tangible evidence of workers’ power in the Soviets, to conform to their preconceptions led the Mensheviks into coalitions with capitalist government. Finally many of them found themselves on the side of open counter-revolution in the camp of Admiral Kolchak and Baron Wrangel.</p>
<p>In April 1917 Lenin returned to Russia. His last and longest exile was at an end. His programme (the <strong>April Theses</strong>) shocked not only the Mensheviks but also large sections of the Bolshevik Party.</p>
<p>In calling for all power to the Soviets, an end to the war, social production under the control of the Soviets, nationalisation of the banks, abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy, lie was breaking with a whole tradition of Russian Social Democracy and, in the eyes of many, capitulating to “Trotskyism”. The Bolshevik leadership in Petrograd, in the persons of Stalin and Kamenev, had pursued a policy little different from that of the Mensheviks.</p>
<p>Stalin in particular had indicated support for the provisional government and the war. In the brief but heated controversy that followed, Lenin threatened to take the take the fight out of the party and into the working class. In the end the Bolsheviks were convinced.</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="fst">From the recognition of the Soviets as the centre for socialist advance, it was but a short step to the actual seizure of power. The Bolshevik agitators were sent into the factories and the barracks. By June, a demonstration organised to show the workers’ support for the provisional government and its war aims brought half a million workers onto the streets almost all of them behind Bolshevik slogans: “All power to the Soviets, Down with the capitalist ministers.”</p>
<p>In May Trotsky returned to Russia. As Lenin’s views on the perspectives for the revolution converged with his, his own views on such previously disputed questions as the nature of the party converged with Lenin’s. In a short time he was accepted into a leading position in the Bolshevik Party and was to play a vital role in the struggle for power.</p>
<p>After an abortive street demonstration in July the government took the opportunity to arrest leading members of the Bolshevik Party (including Trotsky) and Lenin went into hiding. From July to October, Lenin was effectively cut off from the day to day affairs of the party. Besides writing a mass of detailed letters and articles on the changing situation, he also found time to write his book on the marxist theory of the state, <strong>State and Revolution</strong>.</p>
<p>The provisional government, now led by a “socialist”, Kerensky, was in a difficult situation. The war was becoming increasingly unpopular, while the allies were pressing for an offensive on the Eastern front. The army General Staff were restless, particularly General Kornilov, at the spread of democratic notions into the army and Kerensky’s inability to control the Soviet.</p>
<p>At the same time the Bolshevik slogans were taking deeper and deeper root among the working class. Something had to give. Kornilov marched on Petrograd to restore order, overthrow Kerensky, and set up a dictatorship. Kerensky, bereft of all but the trappings of power, had to turn to the workers and soldiers organised in the Soviets and. inevitably, to the imprisoned Bolsheviks. Trotsky and the rest were released and brilliantly organised the defence of the city. Kornilov was defeated and the direct road to the overthrow of the provisional government laid. On 25 October the Military Revolutionary Council led the insurrection.</p>
<p>The situation that shortly faced the Bolsheviks after the assumption of power was exceptionally grim: the complete breakdown of administration, the break up of the war front and a hostile army of Germans in the Ukraine together with an even more hostile internal opposition. The power had been taken and must be maintained until the revolution in the West could come to the rescue.</p>
<p>Peace with the Germans had to he achieved to allow a breathing space. At Brest Litovsk peace talks were begun. The result was a “robber’s peace”. With the end of the imperialist war and the defeat of the Germans the “robber’s peace” was annulled but some 22 foreign armies descended onto Russian soil to bring aid and comfort to the various White armies, to snuff out the Soviet Republic and to share the resultant spoils.</p>
<p>The creation of the Red Army by Trotsky and the eventual defeat of the interventionist and counter-revolutionary armies is not only a tribute to Trotsky’s genius as an organiser but is also confirmation of the very real support that the Bolshevik government had among the Russian masses.</p>
<p>Four years of imperialist war followed by four years of civil war left Russia prostrate. Transport was at a standstill, as was industrial production. Even more disastrous, the working class base of the Bolshevik Party had virtually disappeared from the factories. They had fought and died in the Red Army and had been taken into the government and party administration.</p>
<p>In the absence of the class, democracy disappears and power is exercised behind closed doors to satisfy the interests of the few. Stalin displayed special talents of an exceptionally high order for this type of skullduggery.</p>
<p>The last years of Lenin’s life and his failing health mirror the decline of the revolution. The monumental problems of reconstruction involved the Soviet state and the party in a number of situations where principle was, necessarily, subordinated to expediency. The New Economic Policy was adopted not as a development of socialism but as an attempt to put a little dynamism into a devastated economy. It is not without significance that Lenin uses the term “state capitalism” for this feature of Soviet life. The need to make these compromises was, however, seen as a temporary expedient.</p>
<p>Every day that the Soviets extended their life brought them that much closer to the revolution in the West, particularly in Germany. The internal situation, while Lenin was at the helm, was conditioned by the hopes for international revolution.</p>
<p>It was only under Stalin that the interests of the Third International (set up to aid the revolution abroad) were subordinated to the interests of Russian diplomacy and the internal situation in the Russian party.</p>
<p>The demobilisation of the Red Army made a massive contribution to the ranks of the party. Army officers were able to achieve high rank in the party and the government machine on the basis of some administrative skill and organising ability.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the skills acquired in an army, even the Red Army, are not entirely conducive to working-class democracy. It is on these formations and the lower rank leftovers from Tsarism that the Stalinist bureaucracy was based.</p>
<p>Lenin, due to his illness (in May 1922 he suffered a stroke that paralysed his right side and affected his speech) was at first slow to recognise the full import of the developments in the party and the administration.</p>
<p>As the full extent of the situation began to dawn on him, Lenin saw the need to reform the Party institutions, to cut out the plethora of bureaucratic committees and to increase the numbers on and the influence of the leading committees of the party.</p>
<p>In his view, the seven-man political bureau held too much power and its actions should be subjected to the discipline of a broader party committee. The essence of the change was to bring into the administration more workers: a return to the fundamentals of 1903</p>
<p>On the question of Georgian independence, Lenin fought an incomplete and ultimately unsuccessful fight against Stalin and his henchmen.</p>
<p>In the course of Lenin’s illness, Stalin utilised his own position as general secretary to keep news of developments in the Soviet Union from him. The doctors were given instructions not to permit Lenin to work.</p>
<p>It was only by laying down an ultimatum that he would ignore their advice completely, that he was able to gain a few minutes each day to read reports and dictate a few notes and letters. At one stage Stalin felt so confident that be threatened Krupskaya with a party court for permitting Lenin to dictate a short note.</p>
<p>Lenin did not discover this last episode until after he had completed his <strong>Testament</strong>. When he did he broke off all personal relations with Stalin. The <strong>Testament</strong> reveals the difficulty that Lenin faced. With the working class weak and small in number the only salvation for the regime lay within the party structure itself.</p>
<p>The danger of a split was analysed and the character of leading Bolsheviks discussed, not always to their advantage. But it is in an appendix, written some days later, that Lenin suggests that Stalin should be removed from the post of general secretary.</p>
<p>In the first months of 1923 Lenin feverishly began to prepare a case against Stalin. Directing his attention to the Georgian affair, Lenin let it be known that he was preparing a “bomb for Stalin”.</p>
<p>But on 7 March, Lenin suffered another attack. He was paralysed and never spoke again.</p>
<p>It is interesting to speculate as to the possible outcome of the struggle if Lenin had lived and regained his health. It is possible to argue, and often is argued, that the internal Russian and the external world situation would have imposed on a Leninist party the same development, with perhaps less barbaric methods that Stalin imposed.</p>
<p>It seems to me that such a view leaves out of account a whole series of considerations that are linked to the active participation of Lenin in the Russian party and the International. The grotesque theory of “socialism in one country”, the consequent subordination of the international communist movement to the needs of the Russian bureaucracy are, in my view, unthinkable in terms of a party or a government led by Lenin.</p>
<p>But such speculation, no matter how interesting, is not particularly fruitful. Lenin’s life was dedicated not to what might have been but in defining the goal, estimating the resources available, and then setting out the road to reach that goal.</p>
<p>Today we are too often presented with the spectacle on the one hand of those who have forgotten the goal, ignore the resources and wander round in ever decreasing circles. On the other hand we have those who only recognise the goal, have little or no resources and proceed to march smartly backward into the past.</p>
<p>For revolutionary marxists the goal is socialism, the available resources are the working class as it is, not as we would like it to be, and the road to that goal is the construction, with the active participation of advanced workers, of a revolutionary party.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Lenin
(April 1970)
From Socialist Worker, 23 April 1970.
Later issued as a pamphlet.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Lenin – Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk on 22 April 1870. His father was a teacher and inspector of schools in reasonably comfortable circumstances. Lenin was able to attend the classical Gymnasium and later the Kazan university, although he was subsequently expelled after his arrest for taking part in a student revolutionary discussion circle.
The 1880s were a period of extreme reaction, following the reforms of the early 1860s and an increase in populist terrorism. In 1887 Lenin’s brother Alexander was arrested for his part in the attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. In May of that year Alexander and his comrades were executed. Lenin was deeply attached to his brother and there can be no doubt that the execution had a considerable effect on the seventeen year old boy.
To suppose, as does the official Russian biography, that this traumatic event set him immediately on the road to a marxist view and against individual terrorism is dubious. What is clear, however, is that from 1888, when he read Marx’s Capital and joined a marxist group in Kazan, he was an uncompromising opponent of acts of terror (intended to galvanise the masses but which in fact led to apathy and despair) and the idealist notions of the Russian populists, the Narodniks (named after their group Narodnya Volya – People’s Will).
In a series of closely reasoned pamphlets he argued for the marxist method against populism. Between 1889 and 1891 he managed to translate the Communist Manifesto into Russian, write several major works (amounting to some 500 pages in all) on Social Democracy and Populism, to organise discussion circles and to pass his law examinations.
In 1895 Lenin went abroad to make contact with members of the emigré marxist group, The Emancipation of Labour. In Switzerland he met the leading Russian marxist theorist Plekhanov and made arrangements for the publication of a collection of articles.
On his return to Russia he set up the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class in Petersburg and made contact with a number of groups in other Russian towns. The attempt was made to break out of the closed circles of theoretical discussion groups and to make contact with industrial workers. Leaflets were distributed at factories and preparation made for an illegal newspaper. In December 1895, Lenin and most members of the League were arrested and the material for the paper seized.
Throughout 1896 and until his exile to Siberia in 1897 Lenin was under interrogation in the St Petersburg jail. In between interrogations he found time to write a draft programme for a Social Democratic Party (prior to 1917 all socialist parties, revolutionary or not, were called Social Democratic), an obituary of Engels, a leaflet and prepare material for his major work The Development of Capitalism in Russia.
In his draft programme and the explanatory notes it is interesting to see how early Lenin’s thought developed. In a sense, Lenin’s subsequent work was in developing his 1896 programme and fighting for the necessary tactical changes, in a changing situation. The programme puts at the centre of the analysis the working class. Agitation and propaganda are set by the actual condition of the workers.
In Russia, capitalism came very late on the scene and in consequence it was grafted on to Tsarist absolutism. Alongside the most modern large-scale industrial enterprises, the administrative machinery was autocratic, graft-ridden, feudal and inefficient. In this situation the employers were able to hide behind the autocracy. Instead of controlling the state directly they operated through corrupt officials. The working class were subjected to all the concentrated barbarism of capitalism without even the crumbs of political democracy.
The struggle for better conditions in these circumstances became, willy-nilly, a political struggle.
The task of socialists, in Lenin’s conception, was to encourage the day to day struggles against the employers, to advise on the relation of forces, assist in the preparation of demands and to cast all this within the framework of a political and democratic programme.
The employers were to be forced into taking the form as well as the content of state power. The workers needed “open struggle against the capitalist class ... in order that the intrigues and aspirations of the bourgeoisie may not be hidden in the anterooms of Grand Dukes, in the salons of senators and ministers ... And so down with everything that hides the present influence of the capitalist class ... the workers need the abolition of the government’s absolute rule only in order to wage an open and extensive struggle against the capitalist class.” (Collected Works, vol.2, pp.119-120). The programme, therefore, demanded the norms of capitalist democracy (universal suffrage, religious freedom, the eight hour day, equality before the law, right to strike, factory legislation, liberalisation of the land laws).
All this was to give the working class the possibility of independent activity In the process of this struggle the working class base of social democracy was to be assured. With variations, in his estimation of the capacities and strength of the different classes, Lenin maintained to the end the idea of a programme that set out to develop class consciousness and to set the scene for the next stage of struggle. The limits of any struggle were the limits of existing working-class consciousness.
In 1898 a few revolutionary social democrats met in Minsk at the First Congress of the Russian Social Democracy. Almost immediately a document called the Credo appeared. In it the democratic demands of social democracy were seen not as a stage in the development of the struggle but as sufficient ends in themselves. It said that socialists should restrict themselves to the economic interests of the workers and subordinate their politics to the liberal constitutional demands of the capitalists. “Economism” as a theory and tactics for socialist agitation entered the Russian movement at much the same time as the controversy over the German socialist Bernstein’s revisionism was exercising the minds of social democrats in the West.
Lenin in Siberian exile sprang to the defence of the independence of the working class and socialism against economism, while in Europe Rosa Luxemburg and Plekhanov attacked revisionism. The development of Lenin’s ideas in this controversy were to find fuller expression in his book What Is To Be Done?.
In late July 1900 Lenin left Russia for his first long exile. The immediate political task was, through the medium of a paper, to unite the growing circles of marxist intellectuals in Russia with the spontaneous wave of working class struggles and build a united socialist party. After some initial difficulties with Plekhanov, the paper, The Spark (Iskra), was produced. The earlier years of clarification began to pay dividends. A coherent body of ideas related to the Russian movement had been developed.
The need now was for an organisation capable of popularising and acting on those ideas and to make the vital connection with the working class. It is in this light that the much misused What Is To Be Done? and the controversy of 1902-3 on organisation must be viewed.
A party of a new kind
From 1901 to 1903 Lenin and his wife Krupskaya carried the main burden of work on Iskra. Some 13 issues appeared in 1901. Many British socialists will know the hard, grinding work involved in financing and producing a readable newspaper that combines socialist agitation with working class appeal.
The production of Iskra and its distribution in Russia multiplied these problems a thousand-fold. Some of the Russian distributors sold the paper and sent the cash but did not follow up their contacts and set up workers’ groups. Another unscrupulous rascal sold the copies and then used the money to publish a paper supporting economism.
The leading emigré Russian marxists were an exceptionally talented group: Axelrod, Plekhanov, Potresov, Martov were all capable of brilliant work but they were also undisciplined and argumentative. In the circumstances it is little short of miraculous that Lenin and his wife were able to produce a paper at all.
In Russia, alongside the development of an embryonic socialist party, the chaotic situation gave rise to a number of other political organisations. In 1901 the Social Revolutionary Party, claiming, with some justice, to be the inheritors of the People’s Will, was formed. At much the same time “liberal” sections of the professions and the middle class formed the Constitutional Democrat Party (Cadets).
What Is To Be Done? is superficially an attack on economism but it is essentially the demand for a disciplined party, a party of a new kind. Lenin’s insistence on the inability of the working class to advance, unaided, beyond trade union consciousness was riot new, indeed it was a commonplace in international socialist circles.
What was new was his insistence that intellectuals, who were to bear the socialist massage to the workers, must be dedicated, full-time revolutionaries. The capriciousness and instability that characterised so many Russian intellectuals had to be subordinated to the living workers’ movement.
The party intelligentsia were to operate under the discipline of the workers in the party branches. It is this vital point that differentiates Lenin’s ideas from the rest. In the party controversy over who should be entitled to become a member, the argument turned not on a word or two ‘that only he is a member who puts himself under the discipline of the local organisation’ but over a whole conception of revolutionary struggle.
At the party congress in 1903 Lenin was defeated on the membership question. Later in the conference, however, he was successful in the elections to the editorial board of Iskra. It is from this victory that the terms Bolshevik (majority) and Menshevik (minority) derive. The split in the Russian movement was never really to be healed and in 1912 the two sections became separate organisations.
The divergence of 1903 and the emnity and bad blood that flowed from that event are often cited as an example of the cold calculation of Lenin and his inhuman attitude to his political opponents. The truth is, as usual, rather different.
Martov, his opponent in the party controversy, was a very close personal friend (even after the revolution Lenin maintained warm feelings towards him). The break with old comrades and the heat engendered in the debate made Lenin physically ill.
What is characteristic of Lenin is that despite the pain it caused him he was prepared, in the interests of the revolution, to break with anybody. The fact of a disciplined, effective party organically related to the working class was worth more than old acquaintance.
1905: the first Soviet
In the wake of the Russian defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905, the situation for the working class became more and more oppressive. A peaceful crowd went to petition the Tsar for the alleviation of their conditions. The crowd carried holy images and portraits of the “little father” – the Tsar.
The Tsar’s response was to fire on the crowd. From humble petitions the Petrograd workers moved rapidly to strikes, demonstrations and armed struggle. Their slogan “The eight hour day and arms” was given weight and real revolutionary content by the spontaneous development of Soviets – workers’ councils. The movement spread like wildfire. Thousands of estates were burned, hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike.
The real fight against Populism and Economism was won in the streets and the Soviets. Lenin’s description of the working class as capable of only trade union consciousness was transformed into: “The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic ... The special conditions of the proletariat in capitalist society leads to a striving for socialism: a union of them with the Socialist Party bursts forth with spontaneous force ...”
After five years of exile Lenin returned to Russia. At first he was suspicious of the Soviet, seeing in this novelty not an organ of working class power but a transitory combat organisation.
The Bolshevik organisation was small and with little influence. Lenin called for the recruitment of workers by the thousand. In a time of revolutionary ferment the restrictions of 1903 were unnecessary and redundant.
But the relation of forces in the revolution were against the working class. The autocracy maintained its army, the liberal middle class vacillated and the socialist forces were not strong enough. After several months the leaders of the St Petersburg Soviet were arrested and the subsequent strike in Moscow was bloodily suppressed.
The revolution ended with the Cadets in tortured doubt as to whether they should join Witte’s ministry, with some of the choicer examples of Tsarist reaction and a series of government inspired anti-semitic pogroms.
The desert years
The years that followed the defeat of the 1905 revolution have been called the “years of the desert”. The workers’ movement in Russia was in steady retreat. Revolutionaries, active until then, became tired and disillusioned. The most dedicated held on and survived – just.
In the absence of a living movement the emigre quarrels became bitter and inward looking. Immature, ultra-left tendencies developed in the party. Attempts were made by some to import Kantian idealism into marxist philosophy.
Lenin fought all these struggles, if not with enthusiasm, with vigour. The need to hold on and maintain the organisation was amply justified in 1917.
The struggles against the ultra left and the “God-seekers” are not, of themselves, of any great significance. But, as part of the process by which Lenin developed his ideas of organisation and the application of Marxism, the period of 1905 to 1917 is the period in which a party capable of taking power was built and that is certainly of more than passing importance.
Against the war
1914 was the real testing time for socialism and socialists. In country after country, yesterday’s revolutionary internationalists became today’s grovelling social patriots. Plekhanov in Russia, Hyndman in Britain, Guesde in France, almost the entire German Social Democracy, became enthusiastic participants in national defence.
Those who maintained a consistent position were pathetically few in number. The Russian Social Democracy, the Bulgarians, the Italians and a few isolated groups, such as Luxemburg’s in Germany, were all that kept the revolutionary tradition alive.
It is difficult today, with the experience of 50 years of social democratic betrayal to draw upon, to conceive of the shock that the treachery of the Second International in 1914 imposed on the internationalists. For years the hopes for the revolution had been placed, rather misplaced, in the International, particularly its German section.
To reject the moribund Second, with its passive millions, for a new international with a few adherents was a prospect that daunted all but the most uncompromising. Of these the most uncompromising was Lenin. At the anti-war conferences of Berne, Kienthal and Zimmerwald, the slogan “Turn the imperialist war into civil war” was advanced by the Bolsheviks against the pacifist slogans of “Peace without annexations and international reconciliation.”
In 1916 Lenin wrote his major contribution to internationalism in his book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In this work, Lenin develops marxist theory on the connections between the metropolitan countries and the colonial world. He sees in this the root cause of war and reformism in the metropolitan centres. In its descriptions of the interdependence of the developed and underdeveloped countries, the book brings on to the stage of history for the first time the revolutionary role of the colonial peoples in the scheme of world revolution.
From 1914 to 1917 Lenin lived mainly in Switzerland. The war made contact with the Russian movement difficult and his time was spent in correspondence with those socialists abroad who were against the war. He joined and was active in the left of the Swiss Socialist Party.
He wrote not only his book on Imperialism but a host of articles and pamphlets on the war and the attitude of socialists. In this period he deepened his understanding of the fatal conjuncture of practical opportunism with verbal revolutionism, best exemplified by Kautsky (the erstwhile “Pope of Marxism”).
1917 – then Stalin’s growing menace
In Russia the ruling autocracy was finding the task of fighting a full-scale modern war impossible. The already unstable regime was literally falling apart under the pressure of events. Beaten in battle, unable to meet the minimal requirements of the working population and incapable of relinquishing even a shadow of power to anyone else, the Tsar and Tsarism were doomed.
In February 1917 a peaceful women’s demonstration demanding bread was fired on. The result, a general strike, the reinstitution of the Soviets – but this time Soviets that could take and could hold the power.
For a short time it was possible for the politicians to maintain the fiction that only they had the necessary intelligence and ability to govern, but not for long. In the beginning the predominant influence in the Soviets was Social Revolutionary and to a lesser extent Menshevik. For them, the Soviets did not represent working-class power but a means to a provisional government. Years of mechanical adherence to the marxist formula, that Russian socialism would have to wait until capitalism had fully developed and assumed complete political power, blinded them to the actual situation. The attempt to bend the revolution, despite the tangible evidence of workers’ power in the Soviets, to conform to their preconceptions led the Mensheviks into coalitions with capitalist government. Finally many of them found themselves on the side of open counter-revolution in the camp of Admiral Kolchak and Baron Wrangel.
In April 1917 Lenin returned to Russia. His last and longest exile was at an end. His programme (the April Theses) shocked not only the Mensheviks but also large sections of the Bolshevik Party.
In calling for all power to the Soviets, an end to the war, social production under the control of the Soviets, nationalisation of the banks, abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy, lie was breaking with a whole tradition of Russian Social Democracy and, in the eyes of many, capitulating to “Trotskyism”. The Bolshevik leadership in Petrograd, in the persons of Stalin and Kamenev, had pursued a policy little different from that of the Mensheviks.
Stalin in particular had indicated support for the provisional government and the war. In the brief but heated controversy that followed, Lenin threatened to take the take the fight out of the party and into the working class. In the end the Bolsheviks were convinced.
From the recognition of the Soviets as the centre for socialist advance, it was but a short step to the actual seizure of power. The Bolshevik agitators were sent into the factories and the barracks. By June, a demonstration organised to show the workers’ support for the provisional government and its war aims brought half a million workers onto the streets almost all of them behind Bolshevik slogans: “All power to the Soviets, Down with the capitalist ministers.”
In May Trotsky returned to Russia. As Lenin’s views on the perspectives for the revolution converged with his, his own views on such previously disputed questions as the nature of the party converged with Lenin’s. In a short time he was accepted into a leading position in the Bolshevik Party and was to play a vital role in the struggle for power.
After an abortive street demonstration in July the government took the opportunity to arrest leading members of the Bolshevik Party (including Trotsky) and Lenin went into hiding. From July to October, Lenin was effectively cut off from the day to day affairs of the party. Besides writing a mass of detailed letters and articles on the changing situation, he also found time to write his book on the marxist theory of the state, State and Revolution.
The provisional government, now led by a “socialist”, Kerensky, was in a difficult situation. The war was becoming increasingly unpopular, while the allies were pressing for an offensive on the Eastern front. The army General Staff were restless, particularly General Kornilov, at the spread of democratic notions into the army and Kerensky’s inability to control the Soviet.
At the same time the Bolshevik slogans were taking deeper and deeper root among the working class. Something had to give. Kornilov marched on Petrograd to restore order, overthrow Kerensky, and set up a dictatorship. Kerensky, bereft of all but the trappings of power, had to turn to the workers and soldiers organised in the Soviets and. inevitably, to the imprisoned Bolsheviks. Trotsky and the rest were released and brilliantly organised the defence of the city. Kornilov was defeated and the direct road to the overthrow of the provisional government laid. On 25 October the Military Revolutionary Council led the insurrection.
The situation that shortly faced the Bolsheviks after the assumption of power was exceptionally grim: the complete breakdown of administration, the break up of the war front and a hostile army of Germans in the Ukraine together with an even more hostile internal opposition. The power had been taken and must be maintained until the revolution in the West could come to the rescue.
Peace with the Germans had to he achieved to allow a breathing space. At Brest Litovsk peace talks were begun. The result was a “robber’s peace”. With the end of the imperialist war and the defeat of the Germans the “robber’s peace” was annulled but some 22 foreign armies descended onto Russian soil to bring aid and comfort to the various White armies, to snuff out the Soviet Republic and to share the resultant spoils.
The creation of the Red Army by Trotsky and the eventual defeat of the interventionist and counter-revolutionary armies is not only a tribute to Trotsky’s genius as an organiser but is also confirmation of the very real support that the Bolshevik government had among the Russian masses.
Four years of imperialist war followed by four years of civil war left Russia prostrate. Transport was at a standstill, as was industrial production. Even more disastrous, the working class base of the Bolshevik Party had virtually disappeared from the factories. They had fought and died in the Red Army and had been taken into the government and party administration.
In the absence of the class, democracy disappears and power is exercised behind closed doors to satisfy the interests of the few. Stalin displayed special talents of an exceptionally high order for this type of skullduggery.
The last years of Lenin’s life and his failing health mirror the decline of the revolution. The monumental problems of reconstruction involved the Soviet state and the party in a number of situations where principle was, necessarily, subordinated to expediency. The New Economic Policy was adopted not as a development of socialism but as an attempt to put a little dynamism into a devastated economy. It is not without significance that Lenin uses the term “state capitalism” for this feature of Soviet life. The need to make these compromises was, however, seen as a temporary expedient.
Every day that the Soviets extended their life brought them that much closer to the revolution in the West, particularly in Germany. The internal situation, while Lenin was at the helm, was conditioned by the hopes for international revolution.
It was only under Stalin that the interests of the Third International (set up to aid the revolution abroad) were subordinated to the interests of Russian diplomacy and the internal situation in the Russian party.
The demobilisation of the Red Army made a massive contribution to the ranks of the party. Army officers were able to achieve high rank in the party and the government machine on the basis of some administrative skill and organising ability.
Unfortunately the skills acquired in an army, even the Red Army, are not entirely conducive to working-class democracy. It is on these formations and the lower rank leftovers from Tsarism that the Stalinist bureaucracy was based.
Lenin, due to his illness (in May 1922 he suffered a stroke that paralysed his right side and affected his speech) was at first slow to recognise the full import of the developments in the party and the administration.
As the full extent of the situation began to dawn on him, Lenin saw the need to reform the Party institutions, to cut out the plethora of bureaucratic committees and to increase the numbers on and the influence of the leading committees of the party.
In his view, the seven-man political bureau held too much power and its actions should be subjected to the discipline of a broader party committee. The essence of the change was to bring into the administration more workers: a return to the fundamentals of 1903
On the question of Georgian independence, Lenin fought an incomplete and ultimately unsuccessful fight against Stalin and his henchmen.
In the course of Lenin’s illness, Stalin utilised his own position as general secretary to keep news of developments in the Soviet Union from him. The doctors were given instructions not to permit Lenin to work.
It was only by laying down an ultimatum that he would ignore their advice completely, that he was able to gain a few minutes each day to read reports and dictate a few notes and letters. At one stage Stalin felt so confident that be threatened Krupskaya with a party court for permitting Lenin to dictate a short note.
Lenin did not discover this last episode until after he had completed his Testament. When he did he broke off all personal relations with Stalin. The Testament reveals the difficulty that Lenin faced. With the working class weak and small in number the only salvation for the regime lay within the party structure itself.
The danger of a split was analysed and the character of leading Bolsheviks discussed, not always to their advantage. But it is in an appendix, written some days later, that Lenin suggests that Stalin should be removed from the post of general secretary.
In the first months of 1923 Lenin feverishly began to prepare a case against Stalin. Directing his attention to the Georgian affair, Lenin let it be known that he was preparing a “bomb for Stalin”.
But on 7 March, Lenin suffered another attack. He was paralysed and never spoke again.
It is interesting to speculate as to the possible outcome of the struggle if Lenin had lived and regained his health. It is possible to argue, and often is argued, that the internal Russian and the external world situation would have imposed on a Leninist party the same development, with perhaps less barbaric methods that Stalin imposed.
It seems to me that such a view leaves out of account a whole series of considerations that are linked to the active participation of Lenin in the Russian party and the International. The grotesque theory of “socialism in one country”, the consequent subordination of the international communist movement to the needs of the Russian bureaucracy are, in my view, unthinkable in terms of a party or a government led by Lenin.
But such speculation, no matter how interesting, is not particularly fruitful. Lenin’s life was dedicated not to what might have been but in defining the goal, estimating the resources available, and then setting out the road to reach that goal.
Today we are too often presented with the spectacle on the one hand of those who have forgotten the goal, ignore the resources and wander round in ever decreasing circles. On the other hand we have those who only recognise the goal, have little or no resources and proceed to march smartly backward into the past.
For revolutionary marxists the goal is socialism, the available resources are the working class as it is, not as we would like it to be, and the road to that goal is the construction, with the active participation of advanced workers, of a revolutionary party.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Harry Wasn’t</h1>
<h3>(1965)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj023" target="new">No.23</a>, Winter 1965/6, p.31.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">George Thayer, <strong>The British Political Fringe</strong>, Anthony Blond, 30s</p>
<p class="fst">There is an American academic fringe, plentifully supplied with cash, whose task is to present in popular style detailed studies of some obscure facet of British political life. The popular style is for sales and the obscurity to ensure that slipshod research passes unnoticed. The final product is usually rewarded with a PhD for the author, and a pain in the fundament for the half-way knowledgeable reader. Mr Thayer was not after a PhD – he has probably got one already – but his book is set firmly within this school of writing.</p>
<p>The field covered ranges with splendid impartiality from the Neo-Nazis to the Socialist Labour League, taking in on the way the Cornish nationalists, the Liverpudlian Protestant party and many others. For socialists, if not for others, it is this impartiality which invalidates the book as a serious contribution to politics. Whatever Gerry Healy’s enemies may say about him there is <em>no</em> basis for comparing him to Colin Jordan. The closest they have ever been to one another is in the pages of this book, a distance measured in chapters and nothing else. The thesis that all are slightly mad or exhibit a pleasant national eccentricity ignores the fact that the “outside Left” is part of an international tradition. To discover similar groups and parties Thayer need not have left America at all. It may well be that Colin Jordan’s existence as a rather specky nazi is the result of incomplete potty training as a child, but the British far Left, whether Thayer and Transport House like it or not, is an integral part of working-class politics in this country.</p>
<p>Mr Thayer owns to being “within the mainstream of American political thought.” This may explain some of his errors and patent lack of knowledge of the terms and controversies he attempts to describe: for example the early Trotskyists did not spend the years 1932 to 1938 arguing the question “was the USSR a ‘degenerated workers’ state’ or a ‘bureaucratic collectivist state’.” This particular controversy did not arise until 1940, and only in the most passing way did it impinge on the British Trotskyists – the whole thing was in fact an American deviation.</p>
<p>Mistakes of this sort abound, together with a number of simple factual errors. To instance a few of these; Harry MacShane has never been the editor of <strong>Labour Worker</strong>; <strong>Red Flag</strong> is not the most expensively produced paper on the left; Martin Grainger and Peter Cadogan were not members of the <strong>Socialist Review</strong> group; Socialist Current does not claim “that they alone hold the classical Trotskyist position,” and finally, the term for work in the Labour Party is entrism not “enterism” or “entryism.” The mistakes would be supportable were it not that they are well mixed with half facts and half truths, which it would be playing into the hands of Transport House to correct in this review.</p>
<p>I have no way of knowing if these errors are repeated in the sections on the fascists and the lunatic nationalists but it seems likely. Some of the anecdotes are amusing and it certainly gives one pleasure to imagine that Colin Jordan celebrating the Sun festival of Lammas – named after the Celtic Sun-God Lugh – around the camp fire. Who can be dangerous who is that daft? But leaving aside the stories which may or may not be true this is a bad book. Indeed, I would go so far to borrow a word from President Johnson, another strong swimmer in the “American political mainstream” – this is a “chickenshit” book.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Harry Wasn’t
(1965)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.23, Winter 1965/6, p.31.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
George Thayer, The British Political Fringe, Anthony Blond, 30s
There is an American academic fringe, plentifully supplied with cash, whose task is to present in popular style detailed studies of some obscure facet of British political life. The popular style is for sales and the obscurity to ensure that slipshod research passes unnoticed. The final product is usually rewarded with a PhD for the author, and a pain in the fundament for the half-way knowledgeable reader. Mr Thayer was not after a PhD – he has probably got one already – but his book is set firmly within this school of writing.
The field covered ranges with splendid impartiality from the Neo-Nazis to the Socialist Labour League, taking in on the way the Cornish nationalists, the Liverpudlian Protestant party and many others. For socialists, if not for others, it is this impartiality which invalidates the book as a serious contribution to politics. Whatever Gerry Healy’s enemies may say about him there is no basis for comparing him to Colin Jordan. The closest they have ever been to one another is in the pages of this book, a distance measured in chapters and nothing else. The thesis that all are slightly mad or exhibit a pleasant national eccentricity ignores the fact that the “outside Left” is part of an international tradition. To discover similar groups and parties Thayer need not have left America at all. It may well be that Colin Jordan’s existence as a rather specky nazi is the result of incomplete potty training as a child, but the British far Left, whether Thayer and Transport House like it or not, is an integral part of working-class politics in this country.
Mr Thayer owns to being “within the mainstream of American political thought.” This may explain some of his errors and patent lack of knowledge of the terms and controversies he attempts to describe: for example the early Trotskyists did not spend the years 1932 to 1938 arguing the question “was the USSR a ‘degenerated workers’ state’ or a ‘bureaucratic collectivist state’.” This particular controversy did not arise until 1940, and only in the most passing way did it impinge on the British Trotskyists – the whole thing was in fact an American deviation.
Mistakes of this sort abound, together with a number of simple factual errors. To instance a few of these; Harry MacShane has never been the editor of Labour Worker; Red Flag is not the most expensively produced paper on the left; Martin Grainger and Peter Cadogan were not members of the Socialist Review group; Socialist Current does not claim “that they alone hold the classical Trotskyist position,” and finally, the term for work in the Labour Party is entrism not “enterism” or “entryism.” The mistakes would be supportable were it not that they are well mixed with half facts and half truths, which it would be playing into the hands of Transport House to correct in this review.
I have no way of knowing if these errors are repeated in the sections on the fascists and the lunatic nationalists but it seems likely. Some of the anecdotes are amusing and it certainly gives one pleasure to imagine that Colin Jordan celebrating the Sun festival of Lammas – named after the Celtic Sun-God Lugh – around the camp fire. Who can be dangerous who is that daft? But leaving aside the stories which may or may not be true this is a bad book. Indeed, I would go so far to borrow a word from President Johnson, another strong swimmer in the “American political mainstream” – this is a “chickenshit” book.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Sectarianism, Centrism and the I.S. Group</h1>
<h3>(October 1971)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>IS Internal Bulletin</strong>, October 1971. <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a><br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">All sections of the organisation, including the “Trotskyist Faction”, should welcome the National Committee decision to hold a Special Conference on the proposal to dissolve the fusion with Matgamna’s group. This opportunity will clarify a number of questions, not only about revolutionary unity (that is, the unification of organisations with similar programmes and objectives, and the willingness to put in perspective those things on which they disagree in the interests of shared common struggle), but also about the norms of behaviour within a revolutionary party in a full, free, frank and democratic discussion.</p>
<p>The Matgamna group entered I.S. in late 1968. Let me say right at the outset that I believe the fusion to have been botched, whatever the good will on both sides. On the basis of some joint work in Manchester, discussion in Cliff’s front room, and the publication of a few patchy but hopeful issues of <strong>Workers Fight</strong>, the unity was consummated. One of the first lessons that can be drawn from the balance sheet of the last three years is that unity cannot be achieved in any meaningful sense in this way. Time, care, and serious analysis cannot be replaced by general feelings of good will. A lasting unity has to look further than the immediate situation. Organisational concessions may well be made – indeed would have to be made – to effect unity. But subordination of principled differences to achieve a fusion can only lead to difficulty and recrimination in the future.</p>
<p>Matgamna will argue, and indeed has argued, that his and his adherents’ entry was based on a wish on the part of the I.S. leadership to enlist their support in the turn to the class epitomised in the debate on democratic centralism. This assertion, like so many of Cde. Matgamna’s, is unproved and unprovable. In any case, whatever anyone on the I.S. EC may have thought about the usefulness of Cde. Matgamna in this debate, any hopes they had were to be dashed.</p>
<p>As was to happen so often in the future, the credit balance of Matgamna’s infrequent support was counter-balanced by the debit of his sectarian approach and his predilection for combination with anyone who was aggrieved or disagreed with the Group’s political line. The authors of the <em>Platform 4</em> document, a document originating in Manchester and critical of a number of points in Group policy, were the first to receive the dubious attention of the Matgamnaites. In short order, the Platform 4 comrades had quit Matgamna’s sectarian waiting-room, vowing never to patronise that particular line again.</p>
<p>Since this first essay into oppositional combination, Matgamna has been industrious in his search for disaffected partners, making overtures to libertarians at one time, and the erstwhile DC’s at another, without a blush or any apparent damage to principle, even though credibility took one or two hard knocks. Let any member of the NC or EC indicate some disagreement with a facet of current Group policy, and he or she will find himself encumbered with the embarassingly heavy-footed aid of Matgamna and his followers.</p>
<p>In all these attempts to combine with others to cause the maximum discomfort in the Group and to attract to their faction, the Matgamnaites have never attempted to form a faction that would transcend the closed sect of the “Trotskyist Faction”. They argue that all the disagreements that have arisen since their entry, where they have always supported the opposition to the leadership, though these disagreements may come up episodically, they are organically linked in the sense of the basically non-Marxist method of analysis employed by the current group leadership. In this sense, they presumably think that only their defined position is capable of countering our anti-Marxist for formulation. This may be so, but what is true is that at no stage have they attempted, either alone or in concert with others, to mount a debate on these questions that for serious people must be of paramount importance. Never mind their disagreement with Group methodology, they have never attempted to seriously discuss their own platform. Only when discussion has been forced on them, on their alleged basic position, have they been willing to discuss at all. The history of their existence within I.S has been to wait for an issue that causes controversy, and then to climb on the bandwagon, causing the maximum discord possible.</p>
<p>Why is this the case? It cannot be and should not be argued that the “Trotskyist Faction” contains a parcel of malevolent malcontents. To be sure, the faction includes some excellent people, whose dedication to the revolution is beyond question. But then, so does the RSL, the SLL and the IMG, to name but a few – and they, of course, have the decency to maintain their own organisations. The reason, then, is to be found in their estimation of I.S. Since joining, they have made no secret that they consider I.S. to be “Centrist”. It should also be said that the amount of work that they have done in arcing their position in a non-Factional way in the Group journal has been comparatively nil. For a faction that claims to represent the tradition of Trotskyism, one would have thought that they would welcome the opportunity to publish in the group’s theoretical magazine. Instead they preferred the internal publication of duplicated trivia. This of course is consistent with their objective of building the internal sect; it is, however, inconsistent with loyal work in I.S. and a desire for genuine fusion.</p>
<p>Let us be absolutely clear: For a Trotskyist with any claims at all to orthodoxy and a passing knowledge of the small change of the history of the movement, a larger organisation characterised as “Centrist” is ripe for entry, with any one of three perspectives a possibility: (1) To fight for the leadership and transform the subject organisation (as the Trotskyists tried in the ILP in the 30’s); (2) To split the organisation into separate healthy and unhealthy components, removing an impediment to the growth of a genuine revolutionary party (as with the SWP in the American SP in the mid-30’s); or (3) To increase the strength of the sectlet to be regurgitated as a sect by the offended organisation (as in the SFIO in the early 30’s). Parenthetically, it is worthwhile adding that the comparative mildness of the I.S. internal regime and the Matgamnaites’ lack of success in building an independent sectlet into a full-blown sect, recognised by one of the Fourth Internationals, gave added impetus and urgency to their decision to join I.S.</p>
<p>With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to see that Point (3) was the course chosen. Cde. Matgamna’s cadre was young, inexperienced, and dependent on his and one or two others’ frequently faulty knowledge of Trotskyist history and tactics. To make a bold stroke for the leadership was clearly out of the question, and would require hard work along the line of the I.S. Group’s orientation, so that a proved record of building the organisation could qualify them for leadership. In this context it needs to be pointed out that, with one or two exceptions, the Workers Fight comrades have not attempted to build the Group, but to recruit to their faction from those already in I.S. membership.</p>
<p>To seriously split I.S. would also require a far more disciplined and theoretically able cadre than the Matgamnaites possessed. Even Matgamna, in 1968, professed to be agnostic on the Russian question and the permanent arms economy. It may be, of course, that this agnosticism was of a diplomatic character, to enable him to influence those discontented I.S. members still adhering to traditional Group positions. If this is so, then it casts doubt on his loyalty both to the Group and to his factional comrades.</p>
<p>It is clear, then, if (1) and (2) are excluded, that (3) is the indicated course. A “Trotskyist Tendency” is built, battening on genuine disagreement, turning activist branches orientated on the working class, into talking-shops dedicated to discussion of orthodox sectariana and the sins of the leadership in general and T. Cliff in particular. Is it any wonder, that workers who joined the Group on our analysis of the industrial struggle (incomes policy, productivity bargaining, the rank and file trade union movement, etc.), and the political scene (the decline of social democracy and Stalinism, the Tory offensive, and the need for a revolutionary party, etc.), are repelled by a flood of carping sectarian criticism. It should surprise nobody that on occasion we have been forced to split branches into those who wish to build their own sect and those who wish to build a revolutionary workers’ party. This regrettab1e but necessary procedure has been described by the Matgamnaites as “ghettoisation”. If so, it is a ghetto they themselves have built by their refusal to see the main orientation of the Group on the working class and the building of the organisation as a priority by their refusal to conform to the norms of reasonable branch behaviour.</p>
<p>Since the discussion on the Common Market which they, as usual, opportunistically joined (not in concert with others, but as a separate, closed sect), they have been busily exporting their comrades to spread disaffection. The Common Market debate is for them not the opportunity to clarify politics, but the chance to attack the I.S. Group.</p>
<p>The Bolshevik Party of Lenin would not have permitted such conduct; No section of the Fourth International (ICFI, USFI, or Posadist) would permit such conduct; The I.S. Group has permitted it too long.</p>
<p>One of the real problems that confronts many loyal members of the organisation who find themselves at some time or another in disagreement with some part of Group policy or activity, is that they have continually to be looking over their shoulders to discover whether the Matgamnaites are attempting to make sect propaganda out of the issue. This was a feature especially of the Irish and Common Market disagreements. In a very real sense, the elucidation of politics for discussion and disagreement are stultified by the existence of this permanent sectarian opposition.</p>
<p>The “Trotskyist Faction” claim to be a tendency with a clear and distinct programme that sets them apart from mere transitory factions that find their <em>raison d’être</em> in arguments on specific points of disagreement. Leaving aside the question as to whether a finished programme exists in a religious-type devotion to the first four congresses of the CI, the Transitional Programme of Trotsky, and a call For the formation of a new Minority Movement or a new Militant Workers’ Federation (this last displaying a lamentable ignorance of the factors that made a Minority Movement and a Militant Workers’ Federation possible), coupled to a sneaking regard for the moribund USFI – leave all this aside. In the ghetto of their own minds, the Matgamnaites fondly imagine this rag-bag to be a programme. That being so, they are merely proving the case for dissolution of the fusion. In reality, at every point in both their contributions and published material, they are to all intents and purposes a separate organisation, with privileged recruiting rights within I.S.</p>
<p>In an attempt to deny the logic of their description of I.S. as “Centrist”, Cde. Matgamna at the October NC chose to see a difference between different sorts of Centrist: Centrists of the Martov/Andreas Nin variety, which he equates with I.S., being acceptable, while the Kautsky/Maxton brand were definitely <em>persona non grata</em>. This distinction indicates either a lamentable lack of knowledge of Marxist history, or an attempt to extend the miseducation of the “Trotskyist Faction” comrades to the Group at large. Martov, as with Kautsky, was ineligible politically to join the Communist International. Indeed, the statutes of the CI were specifically designed by Lenin to exclude Centrists of the Kautsky stripe, and with splendid impartiality, those of the Martov stripe as well. Andreas Nin, and the POUM (not the P.O.E.U., as one member of the “Trotskyist Faction” has it) were castigated by Trotsky with more vigour than Maxton and the ILP. For good reason: their Centrist crimes were greater, because their revolutionary possibilities and failures were so much greater. Indeed, those within the Fourth International at that time who solidarised themselves with the POUM (Vereecken and Sneevliet) were expelled from the international, and rightly so. Lenin and Trotsky preached at all times unremitting war against Centrism. It is clearly the duty or genuine revolutionaries to oppose and to attack Centrism wherever they can.</p>
<p>If I.S. is Centrist, then Matgamna and his co-thinkers are absolutely correct to oppose it, to fight it, to impede its progress, if necessary to smash it. (In this connection, the “Trotskyist Faction” has gone so far as to append to their latest platform document at least two signatures of comrades who do not subscribe to the document nor to the Trotskyist Faction. Two conclusions can be drawn from this: They care so little for their reputation within I.S. that they stoop to forgery; or, they are so careless as to suggest that their attitude to politics is light-minded. Either of these conclusions casts no credit on the authors of the document.) That they do think I.S. is Centrist is proved by their own publications, from their entry document through Cde. Hornung’s “Centrist Current” (Comrades will recall how he claimed with little modesty but some accuracy to be “driven on by the steam hammer of his own polemic”), to the latest effusion posing as their platform.</p>
<p>The accusation of Centrism is of course nonsense, whether the shade of Martov or Nin is conjured up to give the argument a shadowy substance or not.</p>
<ul>
<li>Are we for a revolutionary, democratic centralist workers’ party? – Yes, we are.</li>
<li>Do we stand for the primacy of the working class in revolutionary struggle? – Yes, we do.</li>
<li>Do we deny the possibility of a peaceful transition to Socialism? – Yes, we do.</li>
<li>Do we stand against Stalinism and the political and trade union wings of social democracy? – Yes, we do.</li>
<li>Do we unconditionally support workers in struggle and attempt to give them Marxist leadership? – Yes, we do.</li>
<li>Do we stand on the first four congresses of the Communist International? – Yes, we do.</li>
<li>Do we stand for a transitional programme, if not Trotsky’s? – Yes, we do.</li>
<li>Are we for a new revolutionary International? – Yes, we are.</li>
</ul>
<p class="fst">The I.S. Group now contains within itself the foundations of a revolutionary party. It would de criminal, in the current comparatively favourable climate, to waste more time in counter-productive bickering that cannot be, and will not be resolved. As the Group and its opportunities expand, we can afford even less the luxury of this time-wasting irrelevance.</p>
<p>The “Trotskyist Faction”, if the Conference passes the National Committee’s resolution, will have the opportunity of putting their ideas on organisation and politics to the test of the real world. The hard facts of that experience will turn them into either a tight little group of friends, parasitic for their discussion and documents on the “crimes” of I.S. and any other group that differs from them by a comma, or they will begin to understand the real ABC of Marxism in the working class movement. If the latter alternative (and we hope that it does) should take place, then a real and lasting unity can be forged; if the former, then of course we are not interested.</p>
<p>The history of our movement has been marred by the in-bred factionalism that derives from isolation and repression. The opportunities that revolutionaries lose are not regained easily. For perhaps a brief period we have the chance to make contact with larger numbers of workers than ever before. If precious time and resources are to be wasted in arguing with Matgamna and his circle, when we should be taking these chances to engage in real class struggle, then we deserve the irrelevance that has condemned, and condemns, too many revolutionary groups.</p>
<table width="100%">
<tbody><tr>
<td width="60%">
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>
<p class="fst"><em><strong>Jim Higgins</strong><br>
October 1971</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p> </p>
<h3>Transcriber’s Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> Higgins, a leading member of the EC of IS, here states why the fusion between the Matgamna group and IS must now come to an end. This was voted on by the membership and the transcriber, Ted Crawford, was among those voting for the ending of this fusion.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Sectarianism, Centrism and the I.S. Group
(October 1971)
From IS Internal Bulletin, October 1971. [1]
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
All sections of the organisation, including the “Trotskyist Faction”, should welcome the National Committee decision to hold a Special Conference on the proposal to dissolve the fusion with Matgamna’s group. This opportunity will clarify a number of questions, not only about revolutionary unity (that is, the unification of organisations with similar programmes and objectives, and the willingness to put in perspective those things on which they disagree in the interests of shared common struggle), but also about the norms of behaviour within a revolutionary party in a full, free, frank and democratic discussion.
The Matgamna group entered I.S. in late 1968. Let me say right at the outset that I believe the fusion to have been botched, whatever the good will on both sides. On the basis of some joint work in Manchester, discussion in Cliff’s front room, and the publication of a few patchy but hopeful issues of Workers Fight, the unity was consummated. One of the first lessons that can be drawn from the balance sheet of the last three years is that unity cannot be achieved in any meaningful sense in this way. Time, care, and serious analysis cannot be replaced by general feelings of good will. A lasting unity has to look further than the immediate situation. Organisational concessions may well be made – indeed would have to be made – to effect unity. But subordination of principled differences to achieve a fusion can only lead to difficulty and recrimination in the future.
Matgamna will argue, and indeed has argued, that his and his adherents’ entry was based on a wish on the part of the I.S. leadership to enlist their support in the turn to the class epitomised in the debate on democratic centralism. This assertion, like so many of Cde. Matgamna’s, is unproved and unprovable. In any case, whatever anyone on the I.S. EC may have thought about the usefulness of Cde. Matgamna in this debate, any hopes they had were to be dashed.
As was to happen so often in the future, the credit balance of Matgamna’s infrequent support was counter-balanced by the debit of his sectarian approach and his predilection for combination with anyone who was aggrieved or disagreed with the Group’s political line. The authors of the Platform 4 document, a document originating in Manchester and critical of a number of points in Group policy, were the first to receive the dubious attention of the Matgamnaites. In short order, the Platform 4 comrades had quit Matgamna’s sectarian waiting-room, vowing never to patronise that particular line again.
Since this first essay into oppositional combination, Matgamna has been industrious in his search for disaffected partners, making overtures to libertarians at one time, and the erstwhile DC’s at another, without a blush or any apparent damage to principle, even though credibility took one or two hard knocks. Let any member of the NC or EC indicate some disagreement with a facet of current Group policy, and he or she will find himself encumbered with the embarassingly heavy-footed aid of Matgamna and his followers.
In all these attempts to combine with others to cause the maximum discomfort in the Group and to attract to their faction, the Matgamnaites have never attempted to form a faction that would transcend the closed sect of the “Trotskyist Faction”. They argue that all the disagreements that have arisen since their entry, where they have always supported the opposition to the leadership, though these disagreements may come up episodically, they are organically linked in the sense of the basically non-Marxist method of analysis employed by the current group leadership. In this sense, they presumably think that only their defined position is capable of countering our anti-Marxist for formulation. This may be so, but what is true is that at no stage have they attempted, either alone or in concert with others, to mount a debate on these questions that for serious people must be of paramount importance. Never mind their disagreement with Group methodology, they have never attempted to seriously discuss their own platform. Only when discussion has been forced on them, on their alleged basic position, have they been willing to discuss at all. The history of their existence within I.S has been to wait for an issue that causes controversy, and then to climb on the bandwagon, causing the maximum discord possible.
Why is this the case? It cannot be and should not be argued that the “Trotskyist Faction” contains a parcel of malevolent malcontents. To be sure, the faction includes some excellent people, whose dedication to the revolution is beyond question. But then, so does the RSL, the SLL and the IMG, to name but a few – and they, of course, have the decency to maintain their own organisations. The reason, then, is to be found in their estimation of I.S. Since joining, they have made no secret that they consider I.S. to be “Centrist”. It should also be said that the amount of work that they have done in arcing their position in a non-Factional way in the Group journal has been comparatively nil. For a faction that claims to represent the tradition of Trotskyism, one would have thought that they would welcome the opportunity to publish in the group’s theoretical magazine. Instead they preferred the internal publication of duplicated trivia. This of course is consistent with their objective of building the internal sect; it is, however, inconsistent with loyal work in I.S. and a desire for genuine fusion.
Let us be absolutely clear: For a Trotskyist with any claims at all to orthodoxy and a passing knowledge of the small change of the history of the movement, a larger organisation characterised as “Centrist” is ripe for entry, with any one of three perspectives a possibility: (1) To fight for the leadership and transform the subject organisation (as the Trotskyists tried in the ILP in the 30’s); (2) To split the organisation into separate healthy and unhealthy components, removing an impediment to the growth of a genuine revolutionary party (as with the SWP in the American SP in the mid-30’s); or (3) To increase the strength of the sectlet to be regurgitated as a sect by the offended organisation (as in the SFIO in the early 30’s). Parenthetically, it is worthwhile adding that the comparative mildness of the I.S. internal regime and the Matgamnaites’ lack of success in building an independent sectlet into a full-blown sect, recognised by one of the Fourth Internationals, gave added impetus and urgency to their decision to join I.S.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to see that Point (3) was the course chosen. Cde. Matgamna’s cadre was young, inexperienced, and dependent on his and one or two others’ frequently faulty knowledge of Trotskyist history and tactics. To make a bold stroke for the leadership was clearly out of the question, and would require hard work along the line of the I.S. Group’s orientation, so that a proved record of building the organisation could qualify them for leadership. In this context it needs to be pointed out that, with one or two exceptions, the Workers Fight comrades have not attempted to build the Group, but to recruit to their faction from those already in I.S. membership.
To seriously split I.S. would also require a far more disciplined and theoretically able cadre than the Matgamnaites possessed. Even Matgamna, in 1968, professed to be agnostic on the Russian question and the permanent arms economy. It may be, of course, that this agnosticism was of a diplomatic character, to enable him to influence those discontented I.S. members still adhering to traditional Group positions. If this is so, then it casts doubt on his loyalty both to the Group and to his factional comrades.
It is clear, then, if (1) and (2) are excluded, that (3) is the indicated course. A “Trotskyist Tendency” is built, battening on genuine disagreement, turning activist branches orientated on the working class, into talking-shops dedicated to discussion of orthodox sectariana and the sins of the leadership in general and T. Cliff in particular. Is it any wonder, that workers who joined the Group on our analysis of the industrial struggle (incomes policy, productivity bargaining, the rank and file trade union movement, etc.), and the political scene (the decline of social democracy and Stalinism, the Tory offensive, and the need for a revolutionary party, etc.), are repelled by a flood of carping sectarian criticism. It should surprise nobody that on occasion we have been forced to split branches into those who wish to build their own sect and those who wish to build a revolutionary workers’ party. This regrettab1e but necessary procedure has been described by the Matgamnaites as “ghettoisation”. If so, it is a ghetto they themselves have built by their refusal to see the main orientation of the Group on the working class and the building of the organisation as a priority by their refusal to conform to the norms of reasonable branch behaviour.
Since the discussion on the Common Market which they, as usual, opportunistically joined (not in concert with others, but as a separate, closed sect), they have been busily exporting their comrades to spread disaffection. The Common Market debate is for them not the opportunity to clarify politics, but the chance to attack the I.S. Group.
The Bolshevik Party of Lenin would not have permitted such conduct; No section of the Fourth International (ICFI, USFI, or Posadist) would permit such conduct; The I.S. Group has permitted it too long.
One of the real problems that confronts many loyal members of the organisation who find themselves at some time or another in disagreement with some part of Group policy or activity, is that they have continually to be looking over their shoulders to discover whether the Matgamnaites are attempting to make sect propaganda out of the issue. This was a feature especially of the Irish and Common Market disagreements. In a very real sense, the elucidation of politics for discussion and disagreement are stultified by the existence of this permanent sectarian opposition.
The “Trotskyist Faction” claim to be a tendency with a clear and distinct programme that sets them apart from mere transitory factions that find their raison d’être in arguments on specific points of disagreement. Leaving aside the question as to whether a finished programme exists in a religious-type devotion to the first four congresses of the CI, the Transitional Programme of Trotsky, and a call For the formation of a new Minority Movement or a new Militant Workers’ Federation (this last displaying a lamentable ignorance of the factors that made a Minority Movement and a Militant Workers’ Federation possible), coupled to a sneaking regard for the moribund USFI – leave all this aside. In the ghetto of their own minds, the Matgamnaites fondly imagine this rag-bag to be a programme. That being so, they are merely proving the case for dissolution of the fusion. In reality, at every point in both their contributions and published material, they are to all intents and purposes a separate organisation, with privileged recruiting rights within I.S.
In an attempt to deny the logic of their description of I.S. as “Centrist”, Cde. Matgamna at the October NC chose to see a difference between different sorts of Centrist: Centrists of the Martov/Andreas Nin variety, which he equates with I.S., being acceptable, while the Kautsky/Maxton brand were definitely persona non grata. This distinction indicates either a lamentable lack of knowledge of Marxist history, or an attempt to extend the miseducation of the “Trotskyist Faction” comrades to the Group at large. Martov, as with Kautsky, was ineligible politically to join the Communist International. Indeed, the statutes of the CI were specifically designed by Lenin to exclude Centrists of the Kautsky stripe, and with splendid impartiality, those of the Martov stripe as well. Andreas Nin, and the POUM (not the P.O.E.U., as one member of the “Trotskyist Faction” has it) were castigated by Trotsky with more vigour than Maxton and the ILP. For good reason: their Centrist crimes were greater, because their revolutionary possibilities and failures were so much greater. Indeed, those within the Fourth International at that time who solidarised themselves with the POUM (Vereecken and Sneevliet) were expelled from the international, and rightly so. Lenin and Trotsky preached at all times unremitting war against Centrism. It is clearly the duty or genuine revolutionaries to oppose and to attack Centrism wherever they can.
If I.S. is Centrist, then Matgamna and his co-thinkers are absolutely correct to oppose it, to fight it, to impede its progress, if necessary to smash it. (In this connection, the “Trotskyist Faction” has gone so far as to append to their latest platform document at least two signatures of comrades who do not subscribe to the document nor to the Trotskyist Faction. Two conclusions can be drawn from this: They care so little for their reputation within I.S. that they stoop to forgery; or, they are so careless as to suggest that their attitude to politics is light-minded. Either of these conclusions casts no credit on the authors of the document.) That they do think I.S. is Centrist is proved by their own publications, from their entry document through Cde. Hornung’s “Centrist Current” (Comrades will recall how he claimed with little modesty but some accuracy to be “driven on by the steam hammer of his own polemic”), to the latest effusion posing as their platform.
The accusation of Centrism is of course nonsense, whether the shade of Martov or Nin is conjured up to give the argument a shadowy substance or not.
Are we for a revolutionary, democratic centralist workers’ party? – Yes, we are.
Do we stand for the primacy of the working class in revolutionary struggle? – Yes, we do.
Do we deny the possibility of a peaceful transition to Socialism? – Yes, we do.
Do we stand against Stalinism and the political and trade union wings of social democracy? – Yes, we do.
Do we unconditionally support workers in struggle and attempt to give them Marxist leadership? – Yes, we do.
Do we stand on the first four congresses of the Communist International? – Yes, we do.
Do we stand for a transitional programme, if not Trotsky’s? – Yes, we do.
Are we for a new revolutionary International? – Yes, we are.
The I.S. Group now contains within itself the foundations of a revolutionary party. It would de criminal, in the current comparatively favourable climate, to waste more time in counter-productive bickering that cannot be, and will not be resolved. As the Group and its opportunities expand, we can afford even less the luxury of this time-wasting irrelevance.
The “Trotskyist Faction”, if the Conference passes the National Committee’s resolution, will have the opportunity of putting their ideas on organisation and politics to the test of the real world. The hard facts of that experience will turn them into either a tight little group of friends, parasitic for their discussion and documents on the “crimes” of I.S. and any other group that differs from them by a comma, or they will begin to understand the real ABC of Marxism in the working class movement. If the latter alternative (and we hope that it does) should take place, then a real and lasting unity can be forged; if the former, then of course we are not interested.
The history of our movement has been marred by the in-bred factionalism that derives from isolation and repression. The opportunities that revolutionaries lose are not regained easily. For perhaps a brief period we have the chance to make contact with larger numbers of workers than ever before. If precious time and resources are to be wasted in arguing with Matgamna and his circle, when we should be taking these chances to engage in real class struggle, then we deserve the irrelevance that has condemned, and condemns, too many revolutionary groups.
Jim Higgins
October 1971
Transcriber’s Note
1. Higgins, a leading member of the EC of IS, here states why the fusion between the Matgamna group and IS must now come to an end. This was voted on by the membership and the transcriber, Ted Crawford, was among those voting for the ending of this fusion.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>The Fall of the Mekon</h1>
<h3>(9 November 1985)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 9 November 1985, p.22.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h4><em>Jim Higgins reviews the career of Gerry Healy, Trotskyite and alleged womaniser</em></h4>
<p class="fst">“God,” so they say, “does not pay his debts in money”. I was reminded of this wise old maxim when the news broke that Gerry Healy had been expelled from his creation the Workers Revolutionary Party for allegedly using his exalted position to extract sexual favours from young female comrades. For some 50 years, Healy has graced, or rather disgraced, the British Trotskyist movement. In that time, by a combination of low cunning, skullduggery and verbal and physical abuse, he has created almost as many ex-Trotskyists as Joe Stalin. It would not have surprised me at any time in the last 30 years it he had been expelled for grievous bodily harm, but that it should be for grievous bodily charm is extraordinary.</p>
<p>Physically, Gerry Healy is probably the least prepossessing man I have ever seen. Short, very stout and with an extremely large head that grows directly out of his torso, he is for all the world closest in appearance to the Mekon, that fearsome tyrant from the planet Venus, whose plans for universal domination were foiled by Dan Dare in the pages of the <strong>Eagle</strong>. The similarity does not end there: like the Mekon Healy is given to wild, splenetic rages when crossed.</p>
<p>On one famous occasion, a dissident member of the organisation was speaking at a meeting of the central committee, justifying his position. His speech was continually interrupted by Healy, who, becoming exasperated by the comrade’s (shortly to become an ex-comrade) persistence, gave tongue to the immortal phrase: “Stop speaking when I am interrupting.”</p>
<p>Reports that Healy has notched up a string of amorous successes are perhaps a significant plus for that dialectical proposition about the interpenetration of opposites. They are even more astonishing in the light of the fact that in the past Healy, has used the romantic indiscretions of his comrades to line them up in support of whatever factional dispute he happened to be conducting at the time. At his party’s summer camps and schools, the sexes were rigidly segregated and “purity patrols” were appointed to seek out and separate young internationalists whose political discussions were becoming too intimate.</p>
<p>That he found time for his dalliances is something that has surprised seasoned Healy-watchers. One thing however, that Healy has in abundance is energy. His schedule is formidable; hardly a day passes when he is not speaking at some meeting or another. In addition, he fits in political writing (in a style likened by one critic to a sandbag dragged through a puddle of glue), plotting and conspiring with a dedication to heresy hunting that would have put Titus Oates to shame.</p>
<p>Over the decades, it is this heresy hunting, that Healy has developed to a fine art. Let there be one dissident in John O’Groats and he will spring into his car and drive for hours to bring the traitor to book. Another ploy, which he has refined, is the midnight knock on the door for those thought to be wavering from strict orthodoxy, to engage in long and acrimonious theoretical discussions. Even the most stalwart has been known to wilt by five a.m. the next morning. Again, one of his smoother innovations – in the development of democratic centralism – has been what might be called “guilt by vote”. In this stratagem, a prominent oppositionist is expelled on whatever charge seems handiest. A resolution pledging support for the expulsion is then moved in all branches of the organisation and those who vote against it automatically expel themselves. Thus are anti-party elements kept to a minimum and their tenure made breathtakingly brief.</p>
<p>How, you might ask, did anyone as personally and politically repulsive as Healy maintain himself in a leading role in an organisation claiming direct links with anything as world-shattering as the Russian revolution and the civilised and fastidious personality of Leon Trotsky, let alone, as is claimed, notch up it tally of seductions that would make a man a third of his age seriously look to his laurels. Why did they put up with it? There are those who would point to a textbook on morbid psychology to find the answer to this mystery, but they are probably wrong. Because, despite all of the shifts and turns of Healy’s policies – as an open revolutionary in the 1940s, as an entryist in the Labour Party and a close supporter of the Bevanites in the 1950s, taking in during that decade Liverpool dockers and London building workers, through the campaign in the Young Socialists in the 1960s, then back to the open party in the 1970s and loving up to the “petit bourgeois nationalist”, Gaddafi – he has always been surrounded by a cadre of young, middle-class acolytes. It is to them that he has represented himself as the continuity of the movement made flesh, the heir to Lenin and Trotsky. Before this living embodiment of the Bolshevik vanguard, nothing less than total submission will do.</p>
<p>Dedication above and beyond the rigorous life of a Trappist monk is demanded. Meetings seven days a week, financial contributions of swingeing severity, large paper sale quotas and total loyalty to a wildly shifting political line, are a small price to pay for the emancipation of the world’s workers, particularly if you feel guilty about a comparatively privileged past and present. So great has this remorse been for some of the young and impressionable lady comrades that they seem, according to accusations, to have made the ultimate sacrifice.</p>
<p>Now he has been exposed, angry parents of young females lobby the central committee for redress and even his chosen successor, Michael Banda, has turned on him, leaving him bereft of support from all but the wilder reaches of the actors’ trade union. In a sense it is ironic that a man who spent 50 years attempting the revolutionary overthrow of international capitalism should be brought low by a series of sordid peccadilloes in a succession of Clapham apartments, with the ultimate indignity of having to dispatch Corin Redgrave to collect his old age pension book and wages from the party headquarters in which he can no longer set foot, a humiliation he had visited on many other full-time workers in the past.</p>
<p>With luck this will be the last we shall hear of him. If so, then I cannot improve on the concluding passage of a letter of resignation from his organisation by a tough-spirited lady comrade: “Goodbye, it has been very unpleasant knowing you.” <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a></p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> Supposed to have been said by Jan Pallis, wife of Chris Pallis. – <em>Note by TC</em></p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The Fall of the Mekon
(9 November 1985)
From the Spectator, 9 November 1985, p.22.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Jim Higgins reviews the career of Gerry Healy, Trotskyite and alleged womaniser
“God,” so they say, “does not pay his debts in money”. I was reminded of this wise old maxim when the news broke that Gerry Healy had been expelled from his creation the Workers Revolutionary Party for allegedly using his exalted position to extract sexual favours from young female comrades. For some 50 years, Healy has graced, or rather disgraced, the British Trotskyist movement. In that time, by a combination of low cunning, skullduggery and verbal and physical abuse, he has created almost as many ex-Trotskyists as Joe Stalin. It would not have surprised me at any time in the last 30 years it he had been expelled for grievous bodily harm, but that it should be for grievous bodily charm is extraordinary.
Physically, Gerry Healy is probably the least prepossessing man I have ever seen. Short, very stout and with an extremely large head that grows directly out of his torso, he is for all the world closest in appearance to the Mekon, that fearsome tyrant from the planet Venus, whose plans for universal domination were foiled by Dan Dare in the pages of the Eagle. The similarity does not end there: like the Mekon Healy is given to wild, splenetic rages when crossed.
On one famous occasion, a dissident member of the organisation was speaking at a meeting of the central committee, justifying his position. His speech was continually interrupted by Healy, who, becoming exasperated by the comrade’s (shortly to become an ex-comrade) persistence, gave tongue to the immortal phrase: “Stop speaking when I am interrupting.”
Reports that Healy has notched up a string of amorous successes are perhaps a significant plus for that dialectical proposition about the interpenetration of opposites. They are even more astonishing in the light of the fact that in the past Healy, has used the romantic indiscretions of his comrades to line them up in support of whatever factional dispute he happened to be conducting at the time. At his party’s summer camps and schools, the sexes were rigidly segregated and “purity patrols” were appointed to seek out and separate young internationalists whose political discussions were becoming too intimate.
That he found time for his dalliances is something that has surprised seasoned Healy-watchers. One thing however, that Healy has in abundance is energy. His schedule is formidable; hardly a day passes when he is not speaking at some meeting or another. In addition, he fits in political writing (in a style likened by one critic to a sandbag dragged through a puddle of glue), plotting and conspiring with a dedication to heresy hunting that would have put Titus Oates to shame.
Over the decades, it is this heresy hunting, that Healy has developed to a fine art. Let there be one dissident in John O’Groats and he will spring into his car and drive for hours to bring the traitor to book. Another ploy, which he has refined, is the midnight knock on the door for those thought to be wavering from strict orthodoxy, to engage in long and acrimonious theoretical discussions. Even the most stalwart has been known to wilt by five a.m. the next morning. Again, one of his smoother innovations – in the development of democratic centralism – has been what might be called “guilt by vote”. In this stratagem, a prominent oppositionist is expelled on whatever charge seems handiest. A resolution pledging support for the expulsion is then moved in all branches of the organisation and those who vote against it automatically expel themselves. Thus are anti-party elements kept to a minimum and their tenure made breathtakingly brief.
How, you might ask, did anyone as personally and politically repulsive as Healy maintain himself in a leading role in an organisation claiming direct links with anything as world-shattering as the Russian revolution and the civilised and fastidious personality of Leon Trotsky, let alone, as is claimed, notch up it tally of seductions that would make a man a third of his age seriously look to his laurels. Why did they put up with it? There are those who would point to a textbook on morbid psychology to find the answer to this mystery, but they are probably wrong. Because, despite all of the shifts and turns of Healy’s policies – as an open revolutionary in the 1940s, as an entryist in the Labour Party and a close supporter of the Bevanites in the 1950s, taking in during that decade Liverpool dockers and London building workers, through the campaign in the Young Socialists in the 1960s, then back to the open party in the 1970s and loving up to the “petit bourgeois nationalist”, Gaddafi – he has always been surrounded by a cadre of young, middle-class acolytes. It is to them that he has represented himself as the continuity of the movement made flesh, the heir to Lenin and Trotsky. Before this living embodiment of the Bolshevik vanguard, nothing less than total submission will do.
Dedication above and beyond the rigorous life of a Trappist monk is demanded. Meetings seven days a week, financial contributions of swingeing severity, large paper sale quotas and total loyalty to a wildly shifting political line, are a small price to pay for the emancipation of the world’s workers, particularly if you feel guilty about a comparatively privileged past and present. So great has this remorse been for some of the young and impressionable lady comrades that they seem, according to accusations, to have made the ultimate sacrifice.
Now he has been exposed, angry parents of young females lobby the central committee for redress and even his chosen successor, Michael Banda, has turned on him, leaving him bereft of support from all but the wilder reaches of the actors’ trade union. In a sense it is ironic that a man who spent 50 years attempting the revolutionary overthrow of international capitalism should be brought low by a series of sordid peccadilloes in a succession of Clapham apartments, with the ultimate indignity of having to dispatch Corin Redgrave to collect his old age pension book and wages from the party headquarters in which he can no longer set foot, a humiliation he had visited on many other full-time workers in the past.
With luck this will be the last we shall hear of him. If so, then I cannot improve on the concluding passage of a letter of resignation from his organisation by a tough-spirited lady comrade: “Goodbye, it has been very unpleasant knowing you.” [1]
Note
1. Supposed to have been said by Jan Pallis, wife of Chris Pallis. – Note by TC
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Now Let Us Praise Leon Trotsky</h1>
<h3>(July 1975)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index3.html#isj080" target="new">No.80</a>, July/August 1975, pp.27-30.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">LEON TROTSKY suffered a great deal during his life. The years of triumph were few and short-lived. For the rest it was a struggle against great odds with, in his later years, great, almost unbearable, personal tragedy. Since his death a romantic appreciation of his life, his style as a man, has for all but a few obscured the essence of his politics. Many of those who claim to be closest to every word of his work have, by sterile orthodoxy or opportunist adaptation, squeezed out the living revolutionary content of his thought. Isaac Deutscher’s biography is, deservedly, a much praised work, but in the end – particularly the third volume – it says more about Deutscher’s political distance from Trotsky than about the book’s subject.</p>
<p>Of course biography, good biography at least, is often written by people with strongly held views. In that sense the biography of one person contains elements of the author’s own autobiography. Historical objectivity, like absolute truth, is a bit of a lie. Even those historians dedicated to detailed exegesis on 18th century laundry lists can tell us little more than the irredeemable dullness of their own thought and the frequency of change of some dim Hanoverian’s small clothes – I assume it was infrequently and, if it is proved he changed three times a day, I shall further assume incontinence.</p>
<p>Recognition of this simple fact should not absolve historians from striving towards the ideal. This injunction applies with greatest force to those who wish to change the world by an examination of its history. The past can make fools of the most erudite scholars, even erudite, marxist scholars, unless they recognise their own subjectivity and the subjectivity in all written history.</p>
<p>Naturally we cannot demand the same rigorous conditions from those ‘historians’ writing from academic ambition or an ideological commitment to the status quo, and most of the time we do not get it. Given these reservations we should deal lightly and with understanding of Joel Carmichael’s <strong>Trotsky</strong> <a id="fa" href="#na" name="fa">[1*]</a>, subtitled ‘an appreciation of his life’. The book is an absurdity, a quite unnecessary and redundant absurdity. It leans oppressively on Deutscher and Trotsky’s own <strong>My Life</strong> (reprinted by Penguin at £1.50) and gets both of them wrong. It contains two central themes, first that Trotsky was overly troubled by being Jewish and second that the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was the result of Kaiser gold. The first point is bolstered by the assertion that: ‘he wrote about [the Jewish question – <em>JH</em>] more than any other revolutionary’, which is not true – Martov wrote more. Trotsky, like Martov and like a number of other Jewish revolutionaries, wrote about the Jewish question because they were internationalists. They disliked Jewish separation and detested Zionism for perfectly sound socialist reasons, which are equally valid today for Jews and non-Jews. Any half way intelligent reader of Trotsky on this question will be forced to the conclusion that he had an eminently sane approach to the question untrammelled by psychological trauma.</p>
<p>The <em>Kaisergeld</em> accusation rests, as it has for years, on the testimony of Eduard Bernstein. We are enjoined to trust Bernstein because: his ‘probity and acumen were never challenged’. Now the fact is that at the time Bernstein made his accusation the German Communist paper <strong>Rote Fahne</strong> called him a liar, which deals with the challenge to his probity, and his acumen had been challenged for years by Lenin, Luxemburg and countless other revolutionaries. The accusation was that the German government made a modest subvention of six hundred and sixty-six million dollars (equivalent) to the Bolsheviks. No need to read that again, it is not a misprint, 666 million dollars. The negative proof offered to prove this assertion is that the Bolsheviks had forty one papers in 1917. At 15 million dollars a throw you could have 41 papers in Britain today; whether, as a result, you would also have a revolution is another question. You can just imagine – or can you? – Ludendorff and Hindenburg discussing whether to equip another hundred divisions for the Western Front or give the cash to that bald headed little Russian: Lenin.</p>
<p>According to Carmichael, Trotsky knew all about the <em>Kaisergeld</em> and proved his guilty knowledge by never referring to it. No wonder he kept quiet when we learn, from the intrepid Joel Carmichael, that Trotsky had been in receipt of German cash since 1915. Here the money came, it is alleged – as did the much larger sum to the Bolsheviks – from Helphand for the purpose of carrying on anti-Allied propaganda. Now the real situation was that Trotsky had publicly and loudly broken with Helphand by 1915, a fact that Carmichael acknowledges and then has the unmitigated gall to say:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Yet his real relations with Helphand must have been more complex, perhaps just because they could not be disclosed.’</p>
<p class="fst">By the same fractured logic we might say that Edward Heath is a Trotskyist. He has undoubtedly read Marx, always speaks against Marxism and is never seen in the company of Marxists: all pretty sinister I think you will agree.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">JOEL CARMICHAEL, according to his publisher’s blurb ‘... has written extensively on Marxism and the USSR for magazines such as <strong>Encounter</strong> ...’ There really is not much you can add to that. If you want to know more about Trotsky and his life save your £5.95 and with the money buy the paper back Deutscher trilogy and <strong>My Life</strong>; they are actually worth the money. But enough of this persiflage, let us now talk about Trotsky.</p>
<p>It is clear, from whatever source – adulatory or condemnatory – that he was a great man and a great revolutionary. He was bountifully endowed with all those attributes of the popular revolutionary hero. Of striking appearance, reputedly the finest orator of his day, the equal of Jean Jaurès. A prolific writer, his published work is about twice the volume of Lenin’s, with a brilliant style that at its best enters the realm of art. As a Marxist theoretician he stands easily in the company of Lenin and Luxemburg. Like Lenin he was meticulously careful of the details as well as the broad sweep. In the Russian movement noted for unpunctuality, mess and inefficiency he was a shining example of the opposite virtues. Always tidy and well groomed he stood out among the more bohemian comrades. A frequent criticism was of a haughty aloofness, a certain arrogance. Those who knew him best deny this, his impatience was with anything that might detract from important business in hand. With comrades who could teach him something or who could themselves be taught he was patience incarnate. With errant but valuable comrades the degree of his patience and attention were only matched by the decisiveness of the break when all persuasion failed. At Coyoacan, in his last exile, he would apparently spend hours talking to an illiterate Mexican comrade. Joseph Hansen, in his introduction to <strong>My Life</strong>, recounts a story that confirms Trotsky’s continual search to learn something new. Apparently, a young American farm worker came to visit Trotsky, more as a tourist attraction than from political sympathy. The boy, it transpired, was a pacifist. Trotsky was keen that he should be approached to become a guard. It was explained that a Mid-West, pacifist, farm boy was not the most promising guard material. ‘But he is a real American peasant,’ Trotsky replied. This particular social class was one that Trotsky was anxious to study at first hand.</p>
<p>If in saying all this, the impression is given of an omnipotent genius whose life was unsullied by error, then that itself is an error. Trotsky was wrong on a number of occasions but to say that is merely to acknowledge his humanity. It does no honour to our old revolutionary heroes to describe infallibility as their main characteristic. Infallibility is for popes and those who want to build a church, not for revolutionaries who want to build a party of real people. Too often we find that, in order to enhance the eminence of a cherished historical figure, it is thought necessary to diminish the stature of any others who stand in the same plain. Just recently the market has been very bearish in Trotsky and very bullish in Lenin stock. In matters of this sort it is possible to enhance our own understanding through a fuller appreciation of all the leading Marxists of the past; polygamy, in these things if no other, is much to be preferred to monogamy.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">IT IS generally acknowledged that the three outstanding revolutionary socialist figures of the 20th century are Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin. If pressed hard I would put them in that order of ascending merit, but really it is not very helpful. All have to be considered in their own specific circumstances and time. In comparing Lenin and Luxemburg it is necessary to understand the quite different working-class situation they faced in their separate countries. Luxemburg had to break through the ossified structures of German Social Democracy, to let the class breathe. Lenin had to provide the hard framework in which the spontaneous action of the Russian workers could be guided to state power.</p>
<p>Even more in the case of a comparison of Trotsky and Lenin it is important to see the complementary nature of the relationship. The pre-1917 disputes where Trotsky called Lenin a cheap lawyer and Lenin called Trotsky a swine have a certain antique charm; the important thing, however, is that the last six years of Lenin’s life were spent in fruitful joint activity with Trotsky. Quite the reverse conclusion can be found in the Lenin relationship with Stalin. At one time Lenin called Stalin, ‘this marvellous Georgian’; years later, after the revolution, he called for Stalin’s removal and broke off all relations with him. Now that is significant, not because Stalin had not been a ‘marvellous’ chap, he probably was in comparison to many of his contemporaries, but because in later, much more important tasks Stalin fell far short of what was required.</p>
<p>It is true that Trotsky was wrong in 1903 to side with the Mensheviks against Lenin. He understood much later than Lenin that sometimes a split is preferable to unity around the wrong politics. But whatever his fault in this regard it certainly was not individualism. Trotsky was for the unity of social democracy, the party as it was, as the prerequisite for socialist victory. In a sense the individualist was Lenin. In the same spirit Lenin was wrong on his theory of the Democratic Dictatorship of the Workers and Peasants as against the Trotsky theory of the Permanent Revolution. As Adolf Joffe testified, on his death bed, Lenin had admitted to him that Trotsky had been right. For Lenin the limits of the revolution were the eight hour day, agrarian reform and political democracy. The recent suggestion that Lenin really had an open mind on the question, that his theory was modified by the notion: ‘<em>On s’engage, et puis ... on voit</em>’, which roughly translated means: Let’s have a bash and see what happens, does not bear too much examination and does less than justice to Lenin. The truth is that he was wrong and no amount of chuntering about the beauty of his dialectic can disguise the fact. The strength of both men is that while Trotsky could build in to his theory the capacity of the working class to go beyond the democratic tasks, Lenin could, when the event actually occurred, see through all the complexity of the present, and past obfuscation, to the class reality. In 1917 both men came together, neither capitulated, there was really no need so to do.</p>
<p>In his much quoted, and overrated, <strong>Revolutionary Silhouettes</strong>, Lunacharsky tells of how, in the first popular, mass phase of the revolution Trotsky seemed to outdistance Lenin:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘... the late M.S. Uritsky once said to me: “Here the great revolution has come, and there is a feeling that however able Lenin is, he is beginning to fade alongside the genius of Trotsky” ...’</p>
<p class="fst">Such was Trotsky’s popular following that Lenin suggested that he should be the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commisars – Trotsky refused. This tells something about both men, their dedication to the revolution without interest in personal pre-eminence. In the field of mass agitation, Trotsky clearly surpassed Lenin. But Lenin is in no way diminished, his authority in the party, his relationship to the leading cadre, and through them to the worker militants was the vital link in the success of the uprising. Both men were effective administrators, the scourge of slipshod methods and inadequate communication. In the task of mass and party agitation they complemented one another completely, this collaboration was repeated in the Soviet government.<br>
</p>
<p class="fst">IF FURTHER examples are required, we can go on to confess (if that is the word) that Trotsky was wrong when he called for the militarisation of labour during the trade union debate in 1922. But that is not sufficient explanation. The previous year Trotsky had called for the introduction of his own form of NEP. It was the rejection of that policy that forced him to see militarisation of labour as the logical next step if the policy of War Communism was to be continued. Again it must be said that Trotsky was right to oppose the invasion of Poland in 1920 and Lenin was wrong to insist on the offensive. But that does not tell all the story. The prize that awaited the success of the Polish adventure was to bring the revolution right to the German border, the heartland of the European working class. There is a certain irony in the fact, that Trotsky, who was later accused by Stalin and his henchmen of wishing to export the revolution on Red Army bayonets, should have opposed the only time it was tried.</p>
<p>From 1904 through to 1917 Trotsky was not a member of any group in the Russian Social Democracy. His role was as journalist, author and agitator. In 1905, the brief interlude of the first Russian Revolution brought him right to the forefront of the class struggle, as chairman of the Petrograd soviet. During that revolutionary upsurge he edited <strong>The Russian Gazette</strong> and took its circulation in a month from 30,000 to half a million. By way of comparison, the Bolshevik paper, <strong>New Life</strong>, had a circulation only one tenth of the <strong>Russian Gazette</strong>. At the same time Trotsky managed to virtually expropriate the Menshevik paper <strong>The Beginning</strong> and edit that as well.</p>
<p>From 1917 to 1923 Trotsky’s fortunes directly mirrored the fortunes of the revolution. With the fading of the chance for the international revolution, the <em>apparatchiks</em> began their long control of the party. It is some measure of the merit accorded to Trotsky by his opponents that no one individual could act as a counterweight. The triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev had to be thrown jointly into the scale to balance the lone Trotsky. The triumvirate was an alliance that rested far more in their mutual fear and respect for Trotsky than in any community of interest.</p>
<p>From 1923 until his murder, Trotsky fought for the re-establishment of the party as a revolutionary vanguard and he failed. As he told Zinoviev, to rebuild the party, re-establish democracy within it and to restore the revolutionary role of the Comintern was made extraordinarily difficult in the wake of the defeats in Germany, Britain and China. Even so there was, for him, nothing else to do but to fight, to swim against the stream. In exile from 1929 he struggled until 1933 to reform the Comintern. With the victory of fascism in Germany he devoted the rest of his life to the construction of a new revolutionary international. It is this last period of his life that his biographers leave very much out of account. Deutscher because he thought the whole thing was an aberrant irrelevance and Carmichael because he just does not know. In his <strong>Diaries in Exile</strong>, Trotsky wrote that he thought his work for the construction of the Fourth International was the most important in his life, because he was uniquely placed to carry it through. He was right. Not because the FI ever became anything like the revolutionary force he strained and worked so hard to construct. Not at all because he continued, against contrary evidence, to describe Russia as a ‘workers’ state’. Nor because he mistakenly assumed that the second world war would usher in the social revolution in its aftermath. He was right because in fighting to build the Fourth he was holding together a genuine revolutionary tendency. In fighting for revolutionary internationalism he maintained unbroken the tradition of Bolshevism. The greatest tribute he paid to Lenin, and he paid many, was his herculean efforts to build parties in the Leninist mould.</p>
<p>For many the history of Trotskyism in the 1930s has a slightly ridiculous cast. The small squabbles in the even smaller Trotskyist groups, compared to their cosmic pretensions can be made the subject of some jolly jokes. As a matter of fact the heated debates of the seemingly small change of controversy within Bolshevism before 1912 would look equally ridiculous were it not that the winter of discontent was made glorious summer in 1917. Lenin built the party with what there was to hand, some of his more dubious methods are not new principles of organisation for imitation, but products of a particularly difficult situation. Their justification rests in the fact that the party was built, despite Tsarist terror, jail and exile, in the seemingly barren soil of Russia.</p>
<p>For twenty five years after Lenin’s death, Trotsky kept alive, sometimes only just alive, the thin red line of the revolutionary tradition. If with a touch of condescension and a lot of hindsight we can look back with some amusement to the ‘dog days’ of the 1930s, congratulating ourselves on our own lack of error, we should still bear an important point in mind. We would not, could not, be here today – as we are – without the work of L.D. Trotsky. Even today a study of Trotsky’s writing can teach us a great deal. The rigour of class analysis (a perfect model of such writing-analysis, perspective and clear prescription for action – is in the writing on Germany). We owe to Trotsky the intensely practical and indispensable notion of transitional politics. He has a great deal to teach on the absolute necessity for internal democracy in the revolutionary organisation and what is a workers’ party. In the brilliance of his historical and theoretical writing he can illuminate many of our present tasks. As, I think, Isaac Newton once said: ‘The reason we can see much further is because we are standing on the shoulders of a giant’.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Footnote</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="na" href="#fa" name="na">1*.</a> <strong>Trotsky</strong> by Joel Carmichael, Hodder and Stoughton, £5.95.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Now Let Us Praise Leon Trotsky
(July 1975)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.80, July/August 1975, pp.27-30.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
LEON TROTSKY suffered a great deal during his life. The years of triumph were few and short-lived. For the rest it was a struggle against great odds with, in his later years, great, almost unbearable, personal tragedy. Since his death a romantic appreciation of his life, his style as a man, has for all but a few obscured the essence of his politics. Many of those who claim to be closest to every word of his work have, by sterile orthodoxy or opportunist adaptation, squeezed out the living revolutionary content of his thought. Isaac Deutscher’s biography is, deservedly, a much praised work, but in the end – particularly the third volume – it says more about Deutscher’s political distance from Trotsky than about the book’s subject.
Of course biography, good biography at least, is often written by people with strongly held views. In that sense the biography of one person contains elements of the author’s own autobiography. Historical objectivity, like absolute truth, is a bit of a lie. Even those historians dedicated to detailed exegesis on 18th century laundry lists can tell us little more than the irredeemable dullness of their own thought and the frequency of change of some dim Hanoverian’s small clothes – I assume it was infrequently and, if it is proved he changed three times a day, I shall further assume incontinence.
Recognition of this simple fact should not absolve historians from striving towards the ideal. This injunction applies with greatest force to those who wish to change the world by an examination of its history. The past can make fools of the most erudite scholars, even erudite, marxist scholars, unless they recognise their own subjectivity and the subjectivity in all written history.
Naturally we cannot demand the same rigorous conditions from those ‘historians’ writing from academic ambition or an ideological commitment to the status quo, and most of the time we do not get it. Given these reservations we should deal lightly and with understanding of Joel Carmichael’s Trotsky [1*], subtitled ‘an appreciation of his life’. The book is an absurdity, a quite unnecessary and redundant absurdity. It leans oppressively on Deutscher and Trotsky’s own My Life (reprinted by Penguin at £1.50) and gets both of them wrong. It contains two central themes, first that Trotsky was overly troubled by being Jewish and second that the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was the result of Kaiser gold. The first point is bolstered by the assertion that: ‘he wrote about [the Jewish question – JH] more than any other revolutionary’, which is not true – Martov wrote more. Trotsky, like Martov and like a number of other Jewish revolutionaries, wrote about the Jewish question because they were internationalists. They disliked Jewish separation and detested Zionism for perfectly sound socialist reasons, which are equally valid today for Jews and non-Jews. Any half way intelligent reader of Trotsky on this question will be forced to the conclusion that he had an eminently sane approach to the question untrammelled by psychological trauma.
The Kaisergeld accusation rests, as it has for years, on the testimony of Eduard Bernstein. We are enjoined to trust Bernstein because: his ‘probity and acumen were never challenged’. Now the fact is that at the time Bernstein made his accusation the German Communist paper Rote Fahne called him a liar, which deals with the challenge to his probity, and his acumen had been challenged for years by Lenin, Luxemburg and countless other revolutionaries. The accusation was that the German government made a modest subvention of six hundred and sixty-six million dollars (equivalent) to the Bolsheviks. No need to read that again, it is not a misprint, 666 million dollars. The negative proof offered to prove this assertion is that the Bolsheviks had forty one papers in 1917. At 15 million dollars a throw you could have 41 papers in Britain today; whether, as a result, you would also have a revolution is another question. You can just imagine – or can you? – Ludendorff and Hindenburg discussing whether to equip another hundred divisions for the Western Front or give the cash to that bald headed little Russian: Lenin.
According to Carmichael, Trotsky knew all about the Kaisergeld and proved his guilty knowledge by never referring to it. No wonder he kept quiet when we learn, from the intrepid Joel Carmichael, that Trotsky had been in receipt of German cash since 1915. Here the money came, it is alleged – as did the much larger sum to the Bolsheviks – from Helphand for the purpose of carrying on anti-Allied propaganda. Now the real situation was that Trotsky had publicly and loudly broken with Helphand by 1915, a fact that Carmichael acknowledges and then has the unmitigated gall to say:
‘Yet his real relations with Helphand must have been more complex, perhaps just because they could not be disclosed.’
By the same fractured logic we might say that Edward Heath is a Trotskyist. He has undoubtedly read Marx, always speaks against Marxism and is never seen in the company of Marxists: all pretty sinister I think you will agree.
JOEL CARMICHAEL, according to his publisher’s blurb ‘... has written extensively on Marxism and the USSR for magazines such as Encounter ...’ There really is not much you can add to that. If you want to know more about Trotsky and his life save your £5.95 and with the money buy the paper back Deutscher trilogy and My Life; they are actually worth the money. But enough of this persiflage, let us now talk about Trotsky.
It is clear, from whatever source – adulatory or condemnatory – that he was a great man and a great revolutionary. He was bountifully endowed with all those attributes of the popular revolutionary hero. Of striking appearance, reputedly the finest orator of his day, the equal of Jean Jaurès. A prolific writer, his published work is about twice the volume of Lenin’s, with a brilliant style that at its best enters the realm of art. As a Marxist theoretician he stands easily in the company of Lenin and Luxemburg. Like Lenin he was meticulously careful of the details as well as the broad sweep. In the Russian movement noted for unpunctuality, mess and inefficiency he was a shining example of the opposite virtues. Always tidy and well groomed he stood out among the more bohemian comrades. A frequent criticism was of a haughty aloofness, a certain arrogance. Those who knew him best deny this, his impatience was with anything that might detract from important business in hand. With comrades who could teach him something or who could themselves be taught he was patience incarnate. With errant but valuable comrades the degree of his patience and attention were only matched by the decisiveness of the break when all persuasion failed. At Coyoacan, in his last exile, he would apparently spend hours talking to an illiterate Mexican comrade. Joseph Hansen, in his introduction to My Life, recounts a story that confirms Trotsky’s continual search to learn something new. Apparently, a young American farm worker came to visit Trotsky, more as a tourist attraction than from political sympathy. The boy, it transpired, was a pacifist. Trotsky was keen that he should be approached to become a guard. It was explained that a Mid-West, pacifist, farm boy was not the most promising guard material. ‘But he is a real American peasant,’ Trotsky replied. This particular social class was one that Trotsky was anxious to study at first hand.
If in saying all this, the impression is given of an omnipotent genius whose life was unsullied by error, then that itself is an error. Trotsky was wrong on a number of occasions but to say that is merely to acknowledge his humanity. It does no honour to our old revolutionary heroes to describe infallibility as their main characteristic. Infallibility is for popes and those who want to build a church, not for revolutionaries who want to build a party of real people. Too often we find that, in order to enhance the eminence of a cherished historical figure, it is thought necessary to diminish the stature of any others who stand in the same plain. Just recently the market has been very bearish in Trotsky and very bullish in Lenin stock. In matters of this sort it is possible to enhance our own understanding through a fuller appreciation of all the leading Marxists of the past; polygamy, in these things if no other, is much to be preferred to monogamy.
IT IS generally acknowledged that the three outstanding revolutionary socialist figures of the 20th century are Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin. If pressed hard I would put them in that order of ascending merit, but really it is not very helpful. All have to be considered in their own specific circumstances and time. In comparing Lenin and Luxemburg it is necessary to understand the quite different working-class situation they faced in their separate countries. Luxemburg had to break through the ossified structures of German Social Democracy, to let the class breathe. Lenin had to provide the hard framework in which the spontaneous action of the Russian workers could be guided to state power.
Even more in the case of a comparison of Trotsky and Lenin it is important to see the complementary nature of the relationship. The pre-1917 disputes where Trotsky called Lenin a cheap lawyer and Lenin called Trotsky a swine have a certain antique charm; the important thing, however, is that the last six years of Lenin’s life were spent in fruitful joint activity with Trotsky. Quite the reverse conclusion can be found in the Lenin relationship with Stalin. At one time Lenin called Stalin, ‘this marvellous Georgian’; years later, after the revolution, he called for Stalin’s removal and broke off all relations with him. Now that is significant, not because Stalin had not been a ‘marvellous’ chap, he probably was in comparison to many of his contemporaries, but because in later, much more important tasks Stalin fell far short of what was required.
It is true that Trotsky was wrong in 1903 to side with the Mensheviks against Lenin. He understood much later than Lenin that sometimes a split is preferable to unity around the wrong politics. But whatever his fault in this regard it certainly was not individualism. Trotsky was for the unity of social democracy, the party as it was, as the prerequisite for socialist victory. In a sense the individualist was Lenin. In the same spirit Lenin was wrong on his theory of the Democratic Dictatorship of the Workers and Peasants as against the Trotsky theory of the Permanent Revolution. As Adolf Joffe testified, on his death bed, Lenin had admitted to him that Trotsky had been right. For Lenin the limits of the revolution were the eight hour day, agrarian reform and political democracy. The recent suggestion that Lenin really had an open mind on the question, that his theory was modified by the notion: ‘On s’engage, et puis ... on voit’, which roughly translated means: Let’s have a bash and see what happens, does not bear too much examination and does less than justice to Lenin. The truth is that he was wrong and no amount of chuntering about the beauty of his dialectic can disguise the fact. The strength of both men is that while Trotsky could build in to his theory the capacity of the working class to go beyond the democratic tasks, Lenin could, when the event actually occurred, see through all the complexity of the present, and past obfuscation, to the class reality. In 1917 both men came together, neither capitulated, there was really no need so to do.
In his much quoted, and overrated, Revolutionary Silhouettes, Lunacharsky tells of how, in the first popular, mass phase of the revolution Trotsky seemed to outdistance Lenin:
‘... the late M.S. Uritsky once said to me: “Here the great revolution has come, and there is a feeling that however able Lenin is, he is beginning to fade alongside the genius of Trotsky” ...’
Such was Trotsky’s popular following that Lenin suggested that he should be the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commisars – Trotsky refused. This tells something about both men, their dedication to the revolution without interest in personal pre-eminence. In the field of mass agitation, Trotsky clearly surpassed Lenin. But Lenin is in no way diminished, his authority in the party, his relationship to the leading cadre, and through them to the worker militants was the vital link in the success of the uprising. Both men were effective administrators, the scourge of slipshod methods and inadequate communication. In the task of mass and party agitation they complemented one another completely, this collaboration was repeated in the Soviet government.
IF FURTHER examples are required, we can go on to confess (if that is the word) that Trotsky was wrong when he called for the militarisation of labour during the trade union debate in 1922. But that is not sufficient explanation. The previous year Trotsky had called for the introduction of his own form of NEP. It was the rejection of that policy that forced him to see militarisation of labour as the logical next step if the policy of War Communism was to be continued. Again it must be said that Trotsky was right to oppose the invasion of Poland in 1920 and Lenin was wrong to insist on the offensive. But that does not tell all the story. The prize that awaited the success of the Polish adventure was to bring the revolution right to the German border, the heartland of the European working class. There is a certain irony in the fact, that Trotsky, who was later accused by Stalin and his henchmen of wishing to export the revolution on Red Army bayonets, should have opposed the only time it was tried.
From 1904 through to 1917 Trotsky was not a member of any group in the Russian Social Democracy. His role was as journalist, author and agitator. In 1905, the brief interlude of the first Russian Revolution brought him right to the forefront of the class struggle, as chairman of the Petrograd soviet. During that revolutionary upsurge he edited The Russian Gazette and took its circulation in a month from 30,000 to half a million. By way of comparison, the Bolshevik paper, New Life, had a circulation only one tenth of the Russian Gazette. At the same time Trotsky managed to virtually expropriate the Menshevik paper The Beginning and edit that as well.
From 1917 to 1923 Trotsky’s fortunes directly mirrored the fortunes of the revolution. With the fading of the chance for the international revolution, the apparatchiks began their long control of the party. It is some measure of the merit accorded to Trotsky by his opponents that no one individual could act as a counterweight. The triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev had to be thrown jointly into the scale to balance the lone Trotsky. The triumvirate was an alliance that rested far more in their mutual fear and respect for Trotsky than in any community of interest.
From 1923 until his murder, Trotsky fought for the re-establishment of the party as a revolutionary vanguard and he failed. As he told Zinoviev, to rebuild the party, re-establish democracy within it and to restore the revolutionary role of the Comintern was made extraordinarily difficult in the wake of the defeats in Germany, Britain and China. Even so there was, for him, nothing else to do but to fight, to swim against the stream. In exile from 1929 he struggled until 1933 to reform the Comintern. With the victory of fascism in Germany he devoted the rest of his life to the construction of a new revolutionary international. It is this last period of his life that his biographers leave very much out of account. Deutscher because he thought the whole thing was an aberrant irrelevance and Carmichael because he just does not know. In his Diaries in Exile, Trotsky wrote that he thought his work for the construction of the Fourth International was the most important in his life, because he was uniquely placed to carry it through. He was right. Not because the FI ever became anything like the revolutionary force he strained and worked so hard to construct. Not at all because he continued, against contrary evidence, to describe Russia as a ‘workers’ state’. Nor because he mistakenly assumed that the second world war would usher in the social revolution in its aftermath. He was right because in fighting to build the Fourth he was holding together a genuine revolutionary tendency. In fighting for revolutionary internationalism he maintained unbroken the tradition of Bolshevism. The greatest tribute he paid to Lenin, and he paid many, was his herculean efforts to build parties in the Leninist mould.
For many the history of Trotskyism in the 1930s has a slightly ridiculous cast. The small squabbles in the even smaller Trotskyist groups, compared to their cosmic pretensions can be made the subject of some jolly jokes. As a matter of fact the heated debates of the seemingly small change of controversy within Bolshevism before 1912 would look equally ridiculous were it not that the winter of discontent was made glorious summer in 1917. Lenin built the party with what there was to hand, some of his more dubious methods are not new principles of organisation for imitation, but products of a particularly difficult situation. Their justification rests in the fact that the party was built, despite Tsarist terror, jail and exile, in the seemingly barren soil of Russia.
For twenty five years after Lenin’s death, Trotsky kept alive, sometimes only just alive, the thin red line of the revolutionary tradition. If with a touch of condescension and a lot of hindsight we can look back with some amusement to the ‘dog days’ of the 1930s, congratulating ourselves on our own lack of error, we should still bear an important point in mind. We would not, could not, be here today – as we are – without the work of L.D. Trotsky. Even today a study of Trotsky’s writing can teach us a great deal. The rigour of class analysis (a perfect model of such writing-analysis, perspective and clear prescription for action – is in the writing on Germany). We owe to Trotsky the intensely practical and indispensable notion of transitional politics. He has a great deal to teach on the absolute necessity for internal democracy in the revolutionary organisation and what is a workers’ party. In the brilliance of his historical and theoretical writing he can illuminate many of our present tasks. As, I think, Isaac Newton once said: ‘The reason we can see much further is because we are standing on the shoulders of a giant’.
Footnote
1*. Trotsky by Joel Carmichael, Hodder and Stoughton, £5.95.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>A Weekend with the Lumpentrots</h1>
<h3>(Autumn 1963)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info"><span class="info">Source:</span> <em>Young Guard</em>, May 1964. It was written by Jim Higgins but attributed to Mike Caffoor as Jim was too old for the Young Socialists at the time.<br>
<span class="info">Proofread:</span> <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>. (July 2018)</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Alchemy was the mediaeval pastime of attempting to turn base metal into gold. But we progress, and on Saturday and Sunday, 9 and 10 May, at the West London Federation School held at the Clarion, the Alchemists of <strong>Keep Left</strong> managed to turn the pure gold of political discussion into the base metal of personal abuse and mindless vituperation. As an observer of, and a participant in, a number of political controversies in the past, it has never before been my misfortune to be assailed by this type of hysteria from a political tendency which claimed to be in any way serious.</p>
<p>A cursory glance at the syllabus for the school – containing as it did speakers like Ernie Roberts, John Palmer and Sheila Torrance <a id="f1" name="f1" href="#n1">[1]</a> – promised to provide an interesting and lively weekend. Lively it proved to be; interesting only if your tastes run to morbid psychology.</p>
<p>Ernie Roberts opened the Saturday discussion with his usual, and let it be said, arguable, plea for unity of the left. This reasonable, if somewhat centrist, contribution met with extreme displeasure from the <strong>Keep Left</strong> element. What, they asked him, was he doing about the possible expulsion of John Robertson? <a id="f2" name="f2" href="#n2">[2]</a> It was fairly clear that comrade Roberts hadn’t the vaguest idea who John Robertson was, and in the eyes of the ‘vanguard’ exposed himself as a ‘fake left’. It is a well-known fact the length of Clapham High Street that a close knowledge of John Robertson is the <em>sine qua non</em> of revolutionary purity.</p>
<p>Sunday morning, however, was to see the full flowering of <strong>Keep Left</strong> spleen. During the previous evening something of a palace revolution had taken place, the vice-chairman of West London Federation being replaced as chairman of the school by the ‘people’s choice’, Paddy O’Regan. <a id="f3" name="f3" href="#n3">[3]</a> After protests at this manoeuvre were brushed aside by the <strong>KL</strong> majority, Comrade O’Regan introduced Sheila Torrance, a member of the YS national committee no less (and if her powers of analysis and speaking ability are anything to go by she should be a lot less). She immediately set the tone for the discussion by indicating her intention of proving the right-wing connections of <strong>Young Guard</strong>, and their gross betrayal of working-class youth. This she attempted to do on the basis that <strong>YG</strong> is willing to print articles by such well-known agents of reaction as Ben Sawbridge and Willie Lomax. Not only this – <strong>YG</strong> had permitted both of these comrades to express anti-<strong>KL</strong> sentiments at a <strong>YG</strong> readers’ meeting. But worse is to come. <strong>YG</strong> had compounded this felony by putting the YS before John Robertson at the Easter YS conference, thus justifying the epithet political scabs. This type of accusation of guilt by association is the hallmark of every rascal who has disgraced the political scene from Titus Oates to that arch-mixer of amalgams J.V. Stalin.</p>
<p>After this badly-delivered diatribe, a number of Sheila Torrance’s supporters stood up and, referring to carefully-prepared notes, detailed a number of instances where alleged <strong>YG</strong> supporters had behaved in an anti-<strong>KL</strong> fashion in YS branches. One young lady who sat close to me had her speech prepared before the session began (presumably to give more substance to her spontaneous expressions of disgust at <strong>YG</strong> infamy). To detail all trivia would be tedious, and to answer it would be to elevate it to a question requiring serious consideration. Suffice it to say that the ‘stories’ were compounded of straight lies, distortion and plain misstatement of fact. It would seem from the discussion that anyone who has the temerity to oppose <strong>KL</strong> is in danger of acquiring the label of a <strong>YG</strong> supporter. John Austin had better watch out.</p>
<p>About the only approach to a serious political point that was made by these comrades was in their assertion that the youth will be providing the leadership in the coming struggles, and as solid proof of this they adduced the rioting at Clacton. Presumably the mods and rockers were disputing for the leadership of the working class. <a id="f4" name="f4" href="#n4">[4]</a></p>
<p>Having listened for two hours to futile accusations and counter-accusations in the morning, I looked forward to the afternoon session when John Palmer was billed to speak on <em>Perspectives for the Labour Movement</em>. In the event I was not disappointed in Comrade Palmer’s introduction. He gave a fairly comprehensive economic analysis in which he detailed the unfolding of the permanent arms economy, automation and the probability of larger technological unemployment. Because I broadly agree with his analysis does not in any way mean that I regard it as revealed truth. There are grounds for argument on a whole number of points, and one would have something sensible to say on the question. Indeed for a few minutes it looked as if sense would hold sway and that a little clarification would take place. The first two speakers referred specifically ‘to the speech’, and argued against it, if rather incoherently and with the odd aside about political scabbery, at least to the point. This could not be allowed to continue and Sheila Torrance bravely stopped the trickle of political discussion becoming a flood. We should return, she said, to the discussion of this morning. Politics was apparently unimportant; to expose the misdeeds of <strong>YG</strong> was the prime task of the revolutionary vanguard. Right on cue, her comrades responded. One young hopeful obviously ripe for promotion suggested that we examine John Palmer’s record in the YS. This he did, using as his text an obscure internal bulletin produced by an even more obscure organisation. From this he asserted that John Palmer had led the attack on George Brown’s <a id="f5" name="f5" href="#n5">[5]</a> May Day platform, personally wrestling the microphone from George’s nerveless grasp. Some weeks later when Palmer was being interviewed by the election subcommittee, George Brown is alleged to have smiled and said: ‘We have met before.’ This preposterous nonsense purporting to prove <strong>YG</strong>’s part in <strong>KL</strong>’s proscription was greeted by applause from the clique. The fact that photographic evidence of the May Day fracas proves quite conclusively that Palmer was nowhere near the platform is beside the point as far as <strong>Keep Left</strong> is concerned. The fact that the only way actually to know what was said at the NEC sub-committee is to be on intimate terms with George Brown, Sarah Barker <a id="f6" name="f6" href="#n6">[6]</a>, <em>et al</em>, is no argument to convince a <strong>Keep Left</strong>er with the bit between his teeth. Indeed if one had the sort of mind that dealt in conspiracies, one could hatch up quite a story on the basis of who does the right wing tell its secrets to.</p>
<p>After Palmer had wound up the discussion attempting to answer all the slanders (a monumental task), Comrade O’Regan closed the meeting with a few words most of which I didn’t hear because I left when he suggested that John Palmer and <strong>YG</strong> exposed themselves for fake lefts and political scabs. Flesh and blood, I felt, could stand only so much.</p>
<p>To conclude this weary saga of political cretinism, there are one or two points that ought to be made. To mis-educate the young is a job which capitalist education, the press, television and the cinema are able to do without assistance from <strong>Keep Left</strong>. The pathetic theory that youth and in particular the YS are the central focus of socialist struggle may please the youthful ego, but it has nothing to do with reality and even less with socialist theory. To even consider that with the present relation of forces that <strong>YG</strong>, even if the lies were true, is an obstacle in the path of socialist advance is to prove yourself blind to the real enemies of the working class. Political hardness is in no way enhanced by the repetition of slanders, the retailing of lying gossip, or the ability to lay your tongue to some choice personal abuse.</p>
<p>One supposes – rather sadly – that <strong>Keep Left</strong> provides a useful object lesson in how not to conduct oneself in the political movement, and it is unfortunate that one day most of them will wake up and find that the intoxicating delights of this form of politics are inevitably followed by a hangover.</p>
<p class="c"><strong>*</strong></p>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" name="n1" href="#f1">1.</a> Ernie Roberts was a leading member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union and later a left-wing Labour MP; Sheila Torrance was a long-time lieutenant of Gerry Healy and is today a leader of the rump Workers Revolutionary Party; John Palmer was at this time a member of the International Socialists.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" name="n2" href="#f2">2.</a> John Robertson was a member of Healy’s faction in the Young Socialists who was expelled after staging a provocation.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n3" name="n3" href="#f3">3.</a> Another Healyite youth leader, husband of Sheila Torrance, still with the rump WRP.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n4" name="n4" href="#f4">4.</a> In 1964 gangs of hooligan youth, besuited Mods on scooters and leather-clad Rockers on motorbikes, regularly staged punch-ups in British holiday resorts. Healy considered them as potential recruits to his organisation.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n5" name="n5" href="#f5">5.</a> George Brown was a leading right-wing Labour MP and notorious inebriate, subsequently a cabinet minister in Harold Wilson’s government.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n6" name="n6" href="#f6">6.</a> Sarah Barker was a leading Labour Party bureaucrat; her department kept voluminous files on party members.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
A Weekend with the Lumpentrots
(Autumn 1963)
Source: Young Guard, May 1964. It was written by Jim Higgins but attributed to Mike Caffoor as Jim was too old for the Young Socialists at the time.
Proofread: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. (July 2018)
Alchemy was the mediaeval pastime of attempting to turn base metal into gold. But we progress, and on Saturday and Sunday, 9 and 10 May, at the West London Federation School held at the Clarion, the Alchemists of Keep Left managed to turn the pure gold of political discussion into the base metal of personal abuse and mindless vituperation. As an observer of, and a participant in, a number of political controversies in the past, it has never before been my misfortune to be assailed by this type of hysteria from a political tendency which claimed to be in any way serious.
A cursory glance at the syllabus for the school – containing as it did speakers like Ernie Roberts, John Palmer and Sheila Torrance [1] – promised to provide an interesting and lively weekend. Lively it proved to be; interesting only if your tastes run to morbid psychology.
Ernie Roberts opened the Saturday discussion with his usual, and let it be said, arguable, plea for unity of the left. This reasonable, if somewhat centrist, contribution met with extreme displeasure from the Keep Left element. What, they asked him, was he doing about the possible expulsion of John Robertson? [2] It was fairly clear that comrade Roberts hadn’t the vaguest idea who John Robertson was, and in the eyes of the ‘vanguard’ exposed himself as a ‘fake left’. It is a well-known fact the length of Clapham High Street that a close knowledge of John Robertson is the sine qua non of revolutionary purity.
Sunday morning, however, was to see the full flowering of Keep Left spleen. During the previous evening something of a palace revolution had taken place, the vice-chairman of West London Federation being replaced as chairman of the school by the ‘people’s choice’, Paddy O’Regan. [3] After protests at this manoeuvre were brushed aside by the KL majority, Comrade O’Regan introduced Sheila Torrance, a member of the YS national committee no less (and if her powers of analysis and speaking ability are anything to go by she should be a lot less). She immediately set the tone for the discussion by indicating her intention of proving the right-wing connections of Young Guard, and their gross betrayal of working-class youth. This she attempted to do on the basis that YG is willing to print articles by such well-known agents of reaction as Ben Sawbridge and Willie Lomax. Not only this – YG had permitted both of these comrades to express anti-KL sentiments at a YG readers’ meeting. But worse is to come. YG had compounded this felony by putting the YS before John Robertson at the Easter YS conference, thus justifying the epithet political scabs. This type of accusation of guilt by association is the hallmark of every rascal who has disgraced the political scene from Titus Oates to that arch-mixer of amalgams J.V. Stalin.
After this badly-delivered diatribe, a number of Sheila Torrance’s supporters stood up and, referring to carefully-prepared notes, detailed a number of instances where alleged YG supporters had behaved in an anti-KL fashion in YS branches. One young lady who sat close to me had her speech prepared before the session began (presumably to give more substance to her spontaneous expressions of disgust at YG infamy). To detail all trivia would be tedious, and to answer it would be to elevate it to a question requiring serious consideration. Suffice it to say that the ‘stories’ were compounded of straight lies, distortion and plain misstatement of fact. It would seem from the discussion that anyone who has the temerity to oppose KL is in danger of acquiring the label of a YG supporter. John Austin had better watch out.
About the only approach to a serious political point that was made by these comrades was in their assertion that the youth will be providing the leadership in the coming struggles, and as solid proof of this they adduced the rioting at Clacton. Presumably the mods and rockers were disputing for the leadership of the working class. [4]
Having listened for two hours to futile accusations and counter-accusations in the morning, I looked forward to the afternoon session when John Palmer was billed to speak on Perspectives for the Labour Movement. In the event I was not disappointed in Comrade Palmer’s introduction. He gave a fairly comprehensive economic analysis in which he detailed the unfolding of the permanent arms economy, automation and the probability of larger technological unemployment. Because I broadly agree with his analysis does not in any way mean that I regard it as revealed truth. There are grounds for argument on a whole number of points, and one would have something sensible to say on the question. Indeed for a few minutes it looked as if sense would hold sway and that a little clarification would take place. The first two speakers referred specifically ‘to the speech’, and argued against it, if rather incoherently and with the odd aside about political scabbery, at least to the point. This could not be allowed to continue and Sheila Torrance bravely stopped the trickle of political discussion becoming a flood. We should return, she said, to the discussion of this morning. Politics was apparently unimportant; to expose the misdeeds of YG was the prime task of the revolutionary vanguard. Right on cue, her comrades responded. One young hopeful obviously ripe for promotion suggested that we examine John Palmer’s record in the YS. This he did, using as his text an obscure internal bulletin produced by an even more obscure organisation. From this he asserted that John Palmer had led the attack on George Brown’s [5] May Day platform, personally wrestling the microphone from George’s nerveless grasp. Some weeks later when Palmer was being interviewed by the election subcommittee, George Brown is alleged to have smiled and said: ‘We have met before.’ This preposterous nonsense purporting to prove YG’s part in KL’s proscription was greeted by applause from the clique. The fact that photographic evidence of the May Day fracas proves quite conclusively that Palmer was nowhere near the platform is beside the point as far as Keep Left is concerned. The fact that the only way actually to know what was said at the NEC sub-committee is to be on intimate terms with George Brown, Sarah Barker [6], et al, is no argument to convince a Keep Lefter with the bit between his teeth. Indeed if one had the sort of mind that dealt in conspiracies, one could hatch up quite a story on the basis of who does the right wing tell its secrets to.
After Palmer had wound up the discussion attempting to answer all the slanders (a monumental task), Comrade O’Regan closed the meeting with a few words most of which I didn’t hear because I left when he suggested that John Palmer and YG exposed themselves for fake lefts and political scabs. Flesh and blood, I felt, could stand only so much.
To conclude this weary saga of political cretinism, there are one or two points that ought to be made. To mis-educate the young is a job which capitalist education, the press, television and the cinema are able to do without assistance from Keep Left. The pathetic theory that youth and in particular the YS are the central focus of socialist struggle may please the youthful ego, but it has nothing to do with reality and even less with socialist theory. To even consider that with the present relation of forces that YG, even if the lies were true, is an obstacle in the path of socialist advance is to prove yourself blind to the real enemies of the working class. Political hardness is in no way enhanced by the repetition of slanders, the retailing of lying gossip, or the ability to lay your tongue to some choice personal abuse.
One supposes – rather sadly – that Keep Left provides a useful object lesson in how not to conduct oneself in the political movement, and it is unfortunate that one day most of them will wake up and find that the intoxicating delights of this form of politics are inevitably followed by a hangover.
*
Notes
1. Ernie Roberts was a leading member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union and later a left-wing Labour MP; Sheila Torrance was a long-time lieutenant of Gerry Healy and is today a leader of the rump Workers Revolutionary Party; John Palmer was at this time a member of the International Socialists.
2. John Robertson was a member of Healy’s faction in the Young Socialists who was expelled after staging a provocation.
3. Another Healyite youth leader, husband of Sheila Torrance, still with the rump WRP.
4. In 1964 gangs of hooligan youth, besuited Mods on scooters and leather-clad Rockers on motorbikes, regularly staged punch-ups in British holiday resorts. Healy considered them as potential recruits to his organisation.
5. George Brown was a leading right-wing Labour MP and notorious inebriate, subsequently a cabinet minister in Harold Wilson’s government.
6. Sarah Barker was a leading Labour Party bureaucrat; her department kept voluminous files on party members.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>What Is To Be Done With Lenin?</h1>
<h3>(1994)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>New Interventions</strong>, Vol,4., No.4 1994.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">QUITE A few years ago, when she was still interested in politics, Doris Lessing wrote a short story, <em>The Importance of Loving Stalin</em>. If memory serves me right, the story’s theme was the need in many communists for a father figure, an immaculate father who displayed none of the fallibility of the genuine parental article. Maybe it was more than just fatherly omniscience that was needed; perhaps it was a yearning for god, in the Greek rather than the Christian sense. In that age of innocence, before 1956, Stalin did no wrong. His actions might appear, superficially, to be misguided, unhelpful, capricious or plain bloody dangerous, but on closer examination the devotee could easily convince him- or herself that Stalin’s actions were dictated by the need to defend soviet power against the malign plots of Trotskyists, rootless cosmopolitans, wreckers and western imperialists. A rich amalgam, from which any of these bankers could be permutated into a nicely rounded conspiracy.</p>
<p>Nowadays, of course, nobody takes Stalin seriously – his stature is measured in terms of whether he was a greater scourge of mankind than Adolf Hitler. His embalmed corpse did not rest long beside Lenin before it was moved to a secluded spot in the Kremlin wall.</p>
<p>For those of us who rejected Stalin in 1956, and for those who never fancied him, there was still Lenin and, entering left, Trotsky. Setting aside the lies and obfuscation of Stalinist texts, and much aided by the Foreign Language Publishing House’s decision to produce the <strong>Collected Works</strong> in English, one’s researches tended to further convince one of Lenin’s greatness. In the years since that initial research, I have seen little that would cause me to modify that judgement. Lenin was a great man; the question is, was he a good thing?</p>
<p>There is a long-standing school of thought, composed of old-style social democrats, right-wing academics and disgruntled revolutionaries, who answer my question with an emphatic “NO”. For them there is a thread of malignancy that stretches from Lenin – his methods, his politics, his theoretical work, his organisation – that metastasises to every connected organ.</p>
<p>For this school, Stalin did not come out on top because of failed revolution, isolation and Russian backwardness, but because he was the true inheritor of Lenin and Leninism. It was the continuation of the same policy by the same means. Those who adhere to this point of view have to display a mental agility in the Olympic gold medal class. They must hurdle, without so much as a footnote to help, the content of Lenin’s last few months of conscious political life: the <em>Testament</em>, <em>On the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection</em>, and <em>Better Less But Better</em>. It was an attempt, in typical Lenin style, to wrench the party and government from the course it was pursuing. That it was probably doomed, whether Lenin lived or not, is beside the point; it was certainly not the action of a man who felt his life work was being ably continued by the faithful J.V. Stalin. Perhaps, then, he moved against Stalin in the manner of an oriental despot, jealous of the success of one of his ministers. If so, it was entirely out of keeping with the recorded instances in his life, where he was fulsome in his praise of those he thought were doing well. Psychologically, politically and on the record, the accusation does not hang together – it is a paper house built on the sand of insubstantial evidence.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the question remains, was Lenin infallible? Now here we must be on common ground with lots and lots of people. The answer is “No”. He was wrong to say, in <strong>What Is To Be Done?</strong>, that the workers could, unaided, only achieve trade union consciousness. Even so, he made a fundamental correction to that formula in 1905, where he opined that the workers were “instinctively social democratic”. He was wrong about the democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants, just as he was wrong about imperialism and the banning of factions. That is a varied list and one could find additions, but really not to much purpose. The mistakes are those of time, place and experience, and without 1917 would be of no consequence. Because the October revolution did take place and because Lenin led it, and because Stalin was able to filch it in the name of “Leninism” every error, at whatever time it was made and despite Lenin’s subsequent correction, became holy writ. The Lenin of <strong>What Is To Be Done?</strong> and the Lenin of <strong>State and Revolution</strong> are the same man, but the politics are very different. Both are revealed truth, however, according to the hagiographers. How often, in our movement, has an argument been conducted, about some current policy, by reference to selected quotes from Lenin that are 90 years old, are about something quite different and were commonplace when Lenin wrote. Never mind the article, feel the quotations.</p>
<p>Let us take another example: the Bolshevik form of party organisation. On balance, I think that this was the most appropriate for revolutionary organisation in Russia. Whether Russian democratic centralism operated with the same draconian force as in Healy’s WRP is extremely unlikely, if only because the distances were great, the leadership usually in a different country and the consciousness of the members extremely varied. To operate at all effectively, in conditions of Tsarist autocracy and repression, a tight disciplined organisation was needed. It is a pity, however, that Lenin did not say more than he did about the inapplicability of Russian forms when, in the early 1920s, the foreign parties went hog-wild in Bolshevisation campaigns. The fruits of this omission could be seen as late as 1974, when Cliff made much of the CPGB’s 1922 Commission on Party Organisation (authors, Palme Dutt, Harry Pollitt and Albert Inkpin), little knowing that in 1923 they had to issue a new report before everything got totally out of hand. Those who would learn from history should steer clear of the abbreviated version.</p>
<p>Lenin’s ultimate justification is the revolution. Almost alone, he saw the demise of Tsarism and the chronic incapacity of the bourgeois parties, together with the tremendous capacities of Russia’s workers. The <strong>Letters From Afar</strong> and the <strong>April Theses</strong> are masterworks which formed the basis for the seizure of power. It is probably true that Lenin, through all those tedious years polemicising in the wilderness, was the only one with the authority and prestige to set the party and the class on a revolutionary course. Trotsky certainly did not have the following. Of course, the revolution failed, was betrayed and turned into its opposite.</p>
<p>Of course, those with 20/20 hindsight can sneer a bit and point to another sad lesson of history. Unfortunately Lenin did not have 20/20 foresight – he made the revolution and confidently expected to hold on until the working class of Western Europe caught up. As the wars of intervention and the civil war laid waste to an already enfeebled country, Lenin struggled to hold the state and the party together until the German workers came to the rescue. In the process, all manner of mistakes were made, which were subsequently used by Stalin to stifle dissent and install his monolithic regime. It goes without saying that without Lenin no revolution, without the revolution no Stalin. All of which might lead us to suggest that perhaps the revolution should not have been made. Sad to tell, the alternative was not Kerensky, with his windy rhetoric and truncated bourgeois democracy, but General Kornilov with the distinct prospect that fascism would be a Russian rather than a Latin word.</p>
<p>The simple question has to be asked, because it is the acid test: whose side would you have been on in 1917? I cannot believe that any revolutionary socialist, whatever his or her reservations, could answer anything but Lenin and the Bolsheviks. It is for this that we mark the 70th anniversary of Lenin’s death; it is for this that it is worth trying to understand the reasons for, and the justification of, the triumphs and the failures. Not because we are preparing a whitewash job of our favourite whited sepulchre, but because Lenin provides an object lesson in how a revolution was made in Russia, given all the exceptional and particular circumstances of that time. Having done that, it is time to move on, to build parties of an even newer kind, with new strategies and perspectives for the 21st century. It is past time for Lenin to vacate the mausoleum and be finally laid to rest, alongside his mother, where he always wanted to be. Let him rest in peace.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
What Is To Be Done With Lenin?
(1994)
From New Interventions, Vol,4., No.4 1994.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
QUITE A few years ago, when she was still interested in politics, Doris Lessing wrote a short story, The Importance of Loving Stalin. If memory serves me right, the story’s theme was the need in many communists for a father figure, an immaculate father who displayed none of the fallibility of the genuine parental article. Maybe it was more than just fatherly omniscience that was needed; perhaps it was a yearning for god, in the Greek rather than the Christian sense. In that age of innocence, before 1956, Stalin did no wrong. His actions might appear, superficially, to be misguided, unhelpful, capricious or plain bloody dangerous, but on closer examination the devotee could easily convince him- or herself that Stalin’s actions were dictated by the need to defend soviet power against the malign plots of Trotskyists, rootless cosmopolitans, wreckers and western imperialists. A rich amalgam, from which any of these bankers could be permutated into a nicely rounded conspiracy.
Nowadays, of course, nobody takes Stalin seriously – his stature is measured in terms of whether he was a greater scourge of mankind than Adolf Hitler. His embalmed corpse did not rest long beside Lenin before it was moved to a secluded spot in the Kremlin wall.
For those of us who rejected Stalin in 1956, and for those who never fancied him, there was still Lenin and, entering left, Trotsky. Setting aside the lies and obfuscation of Stalinist texts, and much aided by the Foreign Language Publishing House’s decision to produce the Collected Works in English, one’s researches tended to further convince one of Lenin’s greatness. In the years since that initial research, I have seen little that would cause me to modify that judgement. Lenin was a great man; the question is, was he a good thing?
There is a long-standing school of thought, composed of old-style social democrats, right-wing academics and disgruntled revolutionaries, who answer my question with an emphatic “NO”. For them there is a thread of malignancy that stretches from Lenin – his methods, his politics, his theoretical work, his organisation – that metastasises to every connected organ.
For this school, Stalin did not come out on top because of failed revolution, isolation and Russian backwardness, but because he was the true inheritor of Lenin and Leninism. It was the continuation of the same policy by the same means. Those who adhere to this point of view have to display a mental agility in the Olympic gold medal class. They must hurdle, without so much as a footnote to help, the content of Lenin’s last few months of conscious political life: the Testament, On the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, and Better Less But Better. It was an attempt, in typical Lenin style, to wrench the party and government from the course it was pursuing. That it was probably doomed, whether Lenin lived or not, is beside the point; it was certainly not the action of a man who felt his life work was being ably continued by the faithful J.V. Stalin. Perhaps, then, he moved against Stalin in the manner of an oriental despot, jealous of the success of one of his ministers. If so, it was entirely out of keeping with the recorded instances in his life, where he was fulsome in his praise of those he thought were doing well. Psychologically, politically and on the record, the accusation does not hang together – it is a paper house built on the sand of insubstantial evidence.
Nevertheless, the question remains, was Lenin infallible? Now here we must be on common ground with lots and lots of people. The answer is “No”. He was wrong to say, in What Is To Be Done?, that the workers could, unaided, only achieve trade union consciousness. Even so, he made a fundamental correction to that formula in 1905, where he opined that the workers were “instinctively social democratic”. He was wrong about the democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants, just as he was wrong about imperialism and the banning of factions. That is a varied list and one could find additions, but really not to much purpose. The mistakes are those of time, place and experience, and without 1917 would be of no consequence. Because the October revolution did take place and because Lenin led it, and because Stalin was able to filch it in the name of “Leninism” every error, at whatever time it was made and despite Lenin’s subsequent correction, became holy writ. The Lenin of What Is To Be Done? and the Lenin of State and Revolution are the same man, but the politics are very different. Both are revealed truth, however, according to the hagiographers. How often, in our movement, has an argument been conducted, about some current policy, by reference to selected quotes from Lenin that are 90 years old, are about something quite different and were commonplace when Lenin wrote. Never mind the article, feel the quotations.
Let us take another example: the Bolshevik form of party organisation. On balance, I think that this was the most appropriate for revolutionary organisation in Russia. Whether Russian democratic centralism operated with the same draconian force as in Healy’s WRP is extremely unlikely, if only because the distances were great, the leadership usually in a different country and the consciousness of the members extremely varied. To operate at all effectively, in conditions of Tsarist autocracy and repression, a tight disciplined organisation was needed. It is a pity, however, that Lenin did not say more than he did about the inapplicability of Russian forms when, in the early 1920s, the foreign parties went hog-wild in Bolshevisation campaigns. The fruits of this omission could be seen as late as 1974, when Cliff made much of the CPGB’s 1922 Commission on Party Organisation (authors, Palme Dutt, Harry Pollitt and Albert Inkpin), little knowing that in 1923 they had to issue a new report before everything got totally out of hand. Those who would learn from history should steer clear of the abbreviated version.
Lenin’s ultimate justification is the revolution. Almost alone, he saw the demise of Tsarism and the chronic incapacity of the bourgeois parties, together with the tremendous capacities of Russia’s workers. The Letters From Afar and the April Theses are masterworks which formed the basis for the seizure of power. It is probably true that Lenin, through all those tedious years polemicising in the wilderness, was the only one with the authority and prestige to set the party and the class on a revolutionary course. Trotsky certainly did not have the following. Of course, the revolution failed, was betrayed and turned into its opposite.
Of course, those with 20/20 hindsight can sneer a bit and point to another sad lesson of history. Unfortunately Lenin did not have 20/20 foresight – he made the revolution and confidently expected to hold on until the working class of Western Europe caught up. As the wars of intervention and the civil war laid waste to an already enfeebled country, Lenin struggled to hold the state and the party together until the German workers came to the rescue. In the process, all manner of mistakes were made, which were subsequently used by Stalin to stifle dissent and install his monolithic regime. It goes without saying that without Lenin no revolution, without the revolution no Stalin. All of which might lead us to suggest that perhaps the revolution should not have been made. Sad to tell, the alternative was not Kerensky, with his windy rhetoric and truncated bourgeois democracy, but General Kornilov with the distinct prospect that fascism would be a Russian rather than a Latin word.
The simple question has to be asked, because it is the acid test: whose side would you have been on in 1917? I cannot believe that any revolutionary socialist, whatever his or her reservations, could answer anything but Lenin and the Bolsheviks. It is for this that we mark the 70th anniversary of Lenin’s death; it is for this that it is worth trying to understand the reasons for, and the justification of, the triumphs and the failures. Not because we are preparing a whitewash job of our favourite whited sepulchre, but because Lenin provides an object lesson in how a revolution was made in Russia, given all the exceptional and particular circumstances of that time. Having done that, it is time to move on, to build parties of an even newer kind, with new strategies and perspectives for the 21st century. It is past time for Lenin to vacate the mausoleum and be finally laid to rest, alongside his mother, where he always wanted to be. Let him rest in peace.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>Ten Years for the Locust<br>
<small>British Trotskyism 1938–1948</small></h1>
<h3>(Autumn 1963)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">First published in <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index.html#isj014" target="new">No. 14</a>, Autumn 1963.<br>
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h4>1. The Founding of the Fourth International</h4>
<p class="fst">September 1938 saw the culmination of five years’ work on the part of Leon Trotsky and at least some of his followers, in the founding congress of the Fourth International. The congress (attended by delegates from the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Holland, Greece and Latin America) instituted a new revolutionary international, based not upon a loose organisation of national sections but upon a world party of Bolshevism. The forces were small but the tasks they set themselves were no less than the World Socialist Revolution. <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a></p>
<p>The International was predicated upon the complete bankruptcy of both Stalinism and social democracy, in a world situation where capitalism was entering its death agony. The alternative was either socialist revolution or barbarism. If the mistakes and betrayals of the Comintern were to be avoided then the international vanguard must be organised to lead along the path of international proletarian revolution.</p>
<p>In Britain the Trotskyists had a history which went back to the left opposition groups in the Communist Party, the most famous of these being the “Balham Group” (c.1931). The Communist Party had, as always, a short way with dissenters and they were almost entirely expelled. For a time the Trotskyists worked as a left opposition attempting to secure readmittance to the party and to reform it from within. This of course was in line with Trotsky’s thesis of reforming the Comintern from inside. <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a></p>
<p>By 1933 it became clear to Trotsky and his followers that the possibilities of reform within the Comintern were nil. The grotesque antics of the Communist Party in the face of the rise of fascism in Germany made this plain. If the Comintern was bankrupt then a new milieu was essential. The British Trotskyists were not long in finding a home. Two groups, divided it would seem more on the grounds of personal antipathy than anything else, entered the Labour Party – one, led by Reg Groves, publishing a paper called <strong>Red Flag</strong>, the other, led by Harber, publishing <strong>The Militant</strong>. Alongside this a group existed in the Independent Labour Party publishing <strong>Controversy</strong>. This last group received considerable assistance from the accession to their group of C.L.R. James, a West Indian cricketer and journalist on <strong>The Manchester Guardian</strong>. <a id="f3" href="#n3" name="f3">[3]</a></p>
<p>In 1936 a group was formed in Paddington, independently of the existing groups and centred around an ex-member of the Communist Party, Jock Haston. This last group worked in the Labour Party, largely in the Labour League of Youth. For a short period this Paddington group joined up with Harber’s <strong>Militant</strong> group. But in a very short space of time differences arose over allegations of misconduct during a strike in South Africa organised by comrades of Haston. The allegations were farcical and the quarrel degenerated to such levels of abuse that a split was inevitable, a split which made it impossible to found the Fourth International with a united British section.</p>
<p>In 1938, as a prelude to the founding congress, a high-powered delegation led by James P. Cannon (General Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, the American Trotskyist party) arrived in Britain to effect a fusion of the various groups. Unity was in fact achieved between the ILP group, the <strong>Militant</strong> group and a small group of Socialist Labour Party members in Scotland. This new organisation was named the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) and at the founding congress was designated the British section of the Fourth International.</p>
<p>The Haston Group had opposed the fusion and maintained a separate existence, publishing two papers, <strong>Youth For Socialism</strong> and <strong>Workers International News</strong>. For this heretical behaviour they were dismissed as “a nationalist grouping in essence reactionary” by the founding congress. <a id="f4" href="#n4" name="f4">[4]</a></p>
<p>The RSL did not maintain its new-found unity for long, and within months of the foundation of the Fourth International the official British section was reduced effectively to Harber’s <strong>Militant</strong> group.</p>
<p>From this period Trotskyism in Britain was represented by two tendencies, the Workers International League (Haston’s group) and the RSL. The WIL was certainly the more active of the two, based upon the organising ability of Haston and the dedication of its small membership. <a id="f5" href="#n5" name="f5">[5]</a> The RSL, although an older group and at this stage with a larger membership, was superior to the WIL only in its ability to give birth to factional disputes, and in respect of organising ability was decidedly inferior.</p>
<p>Both these groups were pursuing an entrist tactic in the Labour Party although the emphasis of the WIL was more on the Labour League of Youth, where they met with modest successes, despite the fact that the League of Youth was very much under the influence of the Communist Party.<br>
</p>
<h4>2. The War Period</h4>
<p class="fst">At the outbreak of the war the line of the two groups differed widely. A section of the WIL leadership were directed to Ireland to prepare a parallel section to publish the papers and maintain the organisation against expected attempts to smash the “revolutionary vanguard”. This revolutionary romanticism, which does more credit to the comrades’ fervour and willingness to sacrifice than to their good sense, proved unnecessary and after experiencing some considerable privation they returned to England intent upon turning the war into civil war.</p>
<p>The RSL remained safely ensconced in the Labour Party and with the electoral truce which followed the formation of the Churchill-Attlee coalition government, they vegetated with the moribund Labour Party electoral machine.</p>
<p>Haston and his followers now began to move out into the open <a id="f6" href="#n6" name="f6">[6]</a> and from this time onward the story of British Trotskyism is the story of the activity of the WIL and the inactivity of the RSL. Nearly all the recruits to Trotskyism were taken into the WIL, while the RSL stagnated and declined.</p>
<p>In their paper <strong>Youth For Socialism</strong> the WIL told the workers: “The main enemy is at home ... Down with the war ... Defend the Soviet Union.” <a id="f7" href="#n7" name="f7">[7]</a> They denounced the Russo-Finnish war and in an article by Gerry Healy called upon the workers to stand firm in defence of conditions and hours. <a id="f8" href="#n8" name="f8">[8]</a> The call was made for the breaking of the electoral truce and for the Labour Party to take power the better to expose themselves. <a id="f9" href="#n9" name="f9">[9]</a></p>
<p>With splendidly impartial favour they castigated the Labour, Independent Labour and Communist Parties thus: “The role of the Second International has been even more openly chauvinist and traitorous than in the last war ... The workers cannot fail to observe the unprincipled nature of the twists and turns of the leadership of the Communist Party ... The policy of the ILP is covering the downright betrayal of the ‘defenders of democracy’ and the Stalinist International, and fails to place before the workers the revolutionary alternative to transform the war into civil war.” <a id="f10" href="#n10" name="f10">[10]</a></p>
<p>With the fall of France they called for the arming of the workers, and with the Nazi attack on Russia for “defence of the Soviet Union”, while denouncing the social patriotism of the Dutts and Pollitts.</p>
<p>By June 1941 the need was felt for a paper with a wider appeal than <strong>Youth For Socialism</strong>, and <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong> was launched. The paper was distinctly agitational in tone, and the politics, contrary to the revolutionary defeatism of the more orthodox Trotskyists, were what can best be called revolutionary defensist. The programme in the first issue of the <strong>Appeal</strong> was:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Labour to Power on the following programme:<br>
1. Arming and organising the workers under their own control to resist any danger from invasion or Petainism at home.<br>
2. Election of Officers by Soldiers.<br>
3. Establishment of special Officer Training camps financed by the Government and controlled by the Trade Unions, to train workers to become officers.<br>
4. Expropriation of the arms industry, the mines, banks, land and heavy industry.<br>
5. Workers’ control of production.<br>
6. Freedom for India and the colonies.<br>
7. A socialist appeal to workers in Germany and Europe for socialist struggle against Hitler.” <a id="f11" href="#n11" name="f11">[11]</a></p>
<p class="fst">Apart from the direct appeal of the <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong> programme, much of the WIL propaganda was directed to the Communist Party and against its pathetic capitulation to the Churchill government after Russia’s entry into the war. The Communist Party was designated “His Majesty’s Communist Party” in the pages of the <strong>Appeal</strong>. Their strike-breaking activities were denounced and a policy of industrial militancy advocated in opposition to the Stalinist line of class collaboration in the interests of the “Anti-fascist war”. <a id="f12" href="#n12" name="f12">[12]</a></p>
<p>The Communist Party were not long in reacting. A pamphlet, <strong>Clear Out Hitler’s Agents</strong> by William Wainwright <a id="f13" href="#n13" name="f13">[13]</a>, appeared in August 1942. This pamphlet, a prime example of what Trotsky called “The Stalin School of Falsification”, is a piece of ignorant viciousness compounded of straightforward lies and the more tortuous variety of the Moscow Trials. “Trotskyists”, it said, “oppose and hate the leaders of Russia. They want to see Russia defeated and Hitler victorious ... Hidden behind their slogan ‘Workers’ control for Britain’ is the Trotskyist aim to smash workers’ control in Russia.” In an attempt to build up a lynch mentality the pamphlet concludes, “Expose every Trotskyist you come into contact with. Show other people where his ideas are leading. Treat him as you would an open Nazi.” This rubbish was followed by even more grotesque nonsense in the <strong>Sunday Dispatch</strong>, which suggested that “Directives from Germany were transmitted to the British Trotskyists via a Workers’ Challenge Station”.</p>
<p>The WIL were undeterred by this smear campaign, which served to confirm them in their already inflated view of their own importance. Their outlook was one of extreme optimism. In the material for their conference in August 1942 <a id="f14" href="#n14" name="f14">[14]</a> they saw Britain entering a pre-revolutionary situation. In their perspective the Labour Party was heading for a split, with the left possibly joining up with the “centrist” ILP which would for a short time attract workers in large numbers. The need to enter the Labour Party and assist in this supposed differentiation was scorned. The entrist tactic “was to enter a reformist or centrist party which is in a state of flux, where political life is at a high pitch and where the members are steadily moving left. It is essentially a short-term perspective of work in a milieu where favourable prospects exist in a short space of time ... such work must be subordinated to the general strategy of building the Fourth International party”. <a id="f15" href="#n15" name="f15">[15]</a></p>
<p>With the benefit of hindsight we can see that this perspective was almost laughable in its arrogant wrong-headedness. But, despite its crudities and lack of economic analysis, it represented the spirit if not the letter of Trotsky’s perspective. The revolutionary upsurge was to be expected in a short space of time. In his recorded speech to the Socialist Workers Party (American section of the Fourth International), Trotsky said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Ten years were necessary for the Kremlin clique in order to strangle the Bolshevik Party and to transform the first workers’ state into a sinister caricature. Ten years were necessary for the Third International in order to stamp into the mire their own programme and transform themselves into a stinking cadaver. Ten years, and ten years. Permit me to finish with a prediction. During the next ten years the programme of the Fourth International will become the guide of millions and these revolutionary millions will know how to storm earth heaven.” <a id="f16" href="#n16" name="f16">[16]</a></p>
<p class="fst">For Trotsky, there was no other way. The Russian bureaucracy were a parasitic caste, consciously counter-revolutionary, incapable of defending Russia against world capitalism. Social democracy could no longer exist on the crumbs from the table of failing imperialism. The workers would be forced to take up a revolutionary stand under the leadership of the Fourth International.</p>
<p>In Britain the WIL were frantically waving this same banner under the noses of the proletariat. Tremendous efforts were made in selling <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong> and by 1943 the sale of the paper had been forced up to between 18,000 and 20,000 per issue and the organisation had grown to some 250 members. What made this circulation possible, aside from fantastically hard work, was the growth of militancy in industry, which had been repressed by three years of war production. Conditions of work and safety were deteriorating and <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong> supported all attempts by workers to defend their conditions. Besides industrial reporting the paper carried news from members and readers in the forces exposing conditions in the detention centres as well as in the army itself, this in a period when the Communists were opposing strikes, blacklegging, and allowing safety requirements to fall below the minimum.</p>
<p>During all this period the RSL remained stagnant and could report no advances comparable to those of the WIL. The Fourth International was in similar straits. Its European sections were smashed or ineffective and contact with other sections was practically nil. The International Secretariat was in Canada, afflicted by personal difficulties between members. The “World Party of Bolshevism” was, in fact, moribund.<br>
</p>
<h4>3. The Revolutionary Communist Party</h4>
<p class="fst">The disproportion between the successes of the British organisations gave rise to pressure for fusion between the two leagues. For 12 months, from 1943 to 1944, meetings were held and the form of the new organisation hammered out. The WIL needed the fact of official recognition by the Fourth International and the RSL needed the WIL’s energy. But, as is invariably the case in such matters, there were difficulties. The RSL was, despite its small numbers, split into three factions: the majority around Harber and <strong>The Militant</strong>; a “Trotskyist opposition” led by Hilda Lane <a id="f17" href="#n17" name="f17">[17]</a>; and a “left fraction” violently opposed to the fusion with the WIL, whom with unfortunate consistency they still characterised in the same terms that the founding congress had used in 1938. The “Trotskyist opposition” were sympathetic to the WIL and approved of their open activity, while the Militant group were in the hands of the International Secretariat. The trouble was that the WIL, on the basis of limited successes and a crazy perspective, favoured the formation of an open party while the RSL (at least as far as Harber and the “left fraction” were concerned) was firmly wedded to the Labour Party tactic. It was here that the International Secretariat took a hand. They made it clear that no British section, apart from the fused organisation, would be recognised by the International.</p>
<p>The fusion conference was held on 11 and 12 March 1944. 69 delegates attended, 17 from the RSL and 52 from the WIL. <a id="f18" href="#n18" name="f18">[18]</a> The resulting party was the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). It was agreed that the position of the RSL elements would remain the same as before, with <strong>The Militant</strong> as the party’s paper in the Labour Party, while <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong> and <strong>Workers International News</strong> would be the organs of the RCP. Hasten was elected the General Secretary and the air was full of optimism. (During the conference a strike of 100,000 miners was taking place.) The party was launched on the expectation of rising industrial militancy and war-weariness leading on to revolutionary victory.</p>
<p>In mid-1944 contact was established with a group of Tyne engineering apprentices who were opposed to the Bevin ballot scheme which was being used to conscript young workers into the mines. <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong> came out strongly in support of the apprentices and assistance was given in the preparation of leaflets calling for nationalisation of the mines under workers’ control and for a strike against the conscription of apprentices. The police became interested in the agitation and the apprentices were questioned at length. The result was a prosecution under the Trades Disputes Act of 1927. Those arrested were Heaton Lee, Roy Tearse, Ann Keen and Jock Haston. Tearse and Lee received sentences of 12 months, Haston of 6 months and Ann Keen 13 days. All the defendants took their stand on revolutionary principle but were somewhat handicapped by the fact that their barrister, Curtis Bennett QC, was not prepared to bring out the revolutionary lessons of the trial. The verdict was hailed in <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong> as an attempt to gag the vanguard leadership of the Fourth International party. <a id="f19" href="#n19" name="f19">[19]</a></p>
<p>Defence committees were set up <a id="f20" href="#n20" name="f20">[20]</a>, protest meetings held, and the support of MPs canvassed. Prominent among those supporting the imprisoned Trotskyists were Aneurin Bevan and Jimmy Maxton. In September 1944 the convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal. But the trial and conviction further embittered the RCP towards the Labour Party. (Bevin was the instigator of the prosecution under the Trades Disputes Act, a piece of Tory legislation resulting from the 1926 General Strike.)</p>
<p>The construction that the RCP put on the trial has some measure of truth. The industrial scene in 1944 was one of rising militancy. Some 3 million days were lost in strikes and the government were concerned at this serious threat to war production. Egged on by the Communist Party, they spoke darkly of agitators and subversives. The truth, of course, was that the RCP were only important in so far as they gave assistance after the accomplished fact of a strike. They were never in any continuous sense in contact with large numbers of workers.</p>
<p>By 1945 it was clear that the war had not long to run. But the promise of European revolution was not materialising. In 1944 the partisan activity in Italy had been hailed as the beginning of Europe’s revolution. It was not to be; the partisan movement which set up Soviets in some of the northern Italian towns swiftly came under Stalinist control and the continuity of Italian capitalism was assured. This was no surprise to the Trotskyists. Even if they overestimated the revolutionary possibilities of the European proletariat, they certainly did not underestimate the counter-revolutionary behaviour of the Stalinists. As a party competing for the leadership of the class they directed much of their effort to the CP-oriented militant and polemicised against the attitude of the Communist Party.</p>
<p>The call of the Communist Party for a continuation of the coalition government after the war was denounced in round terms. <a id="f21" href="#n21" name="f21">[21]</a> Their answer to the twin reformism of both Stalinism and social democracy was the revolutionary programme of the Fourth International and the RCP, which regarded the Labour Government as a necessary stage through which the workers would have to pass before they realised the correctness of the revolutionary programme. <a id="f22" href="#n22" name="f22">[22]</a></p>
<p>At a by-election in Neath in early 1945 Jock Haston stood as the RCP candidate. All the stops were pulled out and the workers of Neath were given the opportunity to respond to the voice of revolutionary Socialism. In <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, February 1945, the Neath workers were reminded that “A vote for Labour is a vote for Churchill and the Tories”.</p>
<p>The campaign resulted in a regurgitation of all the Stalinist filth and slanders against the Trotskyists. The Labour candidate, D.J. Williams <a id="f23" href="#n23" name="f23">[23]</a> was not averse to this form of electioneering. He was reported as saying “Haston is a Fascist” and “Haston is subsidised by the same people who subsidised Lord Haw Haw”. <a id="f24" href="#n24" name="f24">[24]</a> The Communist Party went even further. In a debate with Haston before an audience of some 1500 Alun Thomas, secretary of the West Wales Communist Party, stated, “If I had my way all those on this platform would be shot” <a id="f25" href="#n25" name="f25">[25]</a> (presumably he excluded himself from this blanket condemnation). Despite the smear campaign and a press blackout on the RCP campaign, some 3,000 copies of each issue of the paper were sold in Neath together with considerable quantities of Trotskyist literature. In his report to the Central Committee of the RCP on the by-election, John Lawrence (South Wales organiser of the RCP) reported that half the Independent Labour Party branch in Neath had joined the RCP. (The Neath ILP had 4 members.)</p>
<p>The vote however was disappointing:</p>
<table align="center">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<p class="fst">D.J. Williams Labour)</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>30,847</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="fst">W. Samuels (Nationalist)</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> 6,290</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="fst">J. Haston (RCP)</p>
</td>
<td>
<p> 1,781</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">The headline in <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, “1,781 Vote Revolutionary Communist”, could not conceal the fact that reformism had deeper roots in Neath than the RCP had thought possible.</p>
<p>The RSL-WIL fusion, as has been suggested earlier, was not unaccompanied by difficulties. The “left fraction” of the RSL (comprising about 20 people) had been violently opposed to unity with the WIL and had only joined after an ultimatum from the Fourth International. <a id="f26" href="#n26" name="f26">[26]</a> Further difficulty of a more serious nature arose from opposition led by G. Healy on the old vexed question of Labour Party entry. Healy and a minority of the membership were for entry, while the majority were for maintaining a small group in the Labour Party, but concentrating the main work in the open party and building the RCP.</p>
<p>As is usual in faction fights, accusations were bandied back and forth of empiricism, eclecticism, menshevism (both right and left varieties), left wing infantilism and, of course, the party regime was likened to Stalin’s.</p>
<p>The perspective of the minority was one of deepening capitalist crisis with masses of workers turning to social democracy, which would be unable to solve the crisis. At this juncture a differentiation would take place with the defeat of the right wing rump and, if the correct tactic were pursued, with the Trotskyists in a position to lead the left to victory. The minority’s view that there was not time to build a revolutionary party and that the field of work should be in the Labour Party was the only sensible part of their analysis. The majority denied the short-term catastrophe analysis of Healy (a view of capitalism to which Healy remains attached) although they were of course firmly wedded to it in the rather longer term. They suggested, with some justification, that post-war reconstruction together with the fag-end of Lend-Lease would ease the situation for British capitalism. The need to build the RCP was the primary task: entry into the Labour Party was still a tactic to be used only at the height of a left wing in social democracy and then only as a short-term visit, more in the way of a raid, and this only necessary if the revolutionary party was weak and unable to compete openly.</p>
<p>The arguments were all laid out in a succession of interminable internal bulletins. Conferences of the RCP were each year taken up with wrangles on the question of entrism. The minority received considerable support from the IEC whose perspective for the European revolution was closely followed by Healy. <a id="f27" href="#n27" name="f27">[27]</a> It is possible to look back now and to see that the minority were correct in their demand for entrism, although their theoretical basis for entry was nonsense. The majority’s views were less nonsensical but led them to the false position of the open party.</p>
<p>With the coming of Marshall Aid (a possibility excluded by all the Trotskyist factions and tendencies) the situation altered radically. Reformism and capitalist expansion got a new lease of life and the arms economy later secured their continuity. Stalinism was not dead and had in fact extended its empire into Eastern Europe. The possibility of short-term spectacular gains inside or outside the Labour Party became a dream. In 1948 Healy and about 50 of his followers were designated the official Labour Party group by the Fourth International, answerable only to the International and not to the RCP, and with their own organisation. Although no formal split occurred, the effect was the same. The Haston majority maintained the RCP for a few months with diminishing results and a growing tiredness on the part of the leadership, and in 1949 the party and the press were dissolved. Some of the members joined Healy in Labour Party work, some the Communist Party, while others disappeared into the political wilderness and apathy.<br>
</p>
<h4>4. Conclusions</h4>
<p class="fst">The period up to the dissolution was one where an attempt was made to explain the current world reality in terms of Trotskyist orthodoxy. The class nature of the Eastern satellites was in this respect rather baffling. Trotsky had defined Russia as a “workers’ state” (albeit degenerated) on basis of its state property, planning and the monopoly of foreign trade, together with its alleged continuity with the October Revolution. At the same time he made it clear that the bureaucracy were consciously restorationist and counter-revolutionary, incapable of defending state property except under pressure from the masses. In one respect therefore (state property etc) the eastern satellites were “workers’ states” but the class as an active force had not intervened in the installation of the Stalinist regimes. Indeed they had largely been installed at the points of the Red Army’s bayonets, at the instigation of the “restorationist, counter-revolutionary bureaucracy”. The RCP in the person of Jock Haston and the party’s theoretician, Grant, toyed for a while with the theory of state capitalism, only to reject this in favour of a form of abridged Stalinism which designated the Eastern satellites as workers’ states requiring unconditional defence.</p>
<p>At the second world congress of the Fourth International, in 1948, this RCP thesis was rejected at the instigation of the IEC. The congress characterised the “People’s Democracies” as capitalist countries with Bonapartist police regimes. This analysis did not outlast the Stalin-Tito rift when, with rare opportunism, the Fourth International jumped smartly on to Tito’s band-wagon. Yugoslavia was welcomed into the fold of workers’ states and so, by the same token, were the other less independent satellites who must have been pleased to learn (if they ever knew about it) that they were deformed workers’ states just like Mother Russia. The situation became theoretically impossible and laid the basis for subsequent splits in the Fourth International. The RCP went full circle and became once again a left critic of Stalinism, cheered by Stalin’s victories, but unable to affect their course; likewise without influence or effect on British politics. It died of lack of success, false perspectives, and wrong tactics – a sad and chastening experience.</p>
<p>The demise of British Trotskyism (and it died some time before the corpse was formally interred) cannot be blamed only on its tactical inadequacies. Although it is true that with a more realistic appraisal of the world they could have continued for much longer. But like Trotsky, they founded their attitude on an erroneous analysis of reformism and imperialism with a fundamental misappraisal of Stalinism. <a id="f28" href="#n28" name="f28">[28]</a> The characterisation of Russia as a counter-revolutionary abortion hid the fact of the profoundly capitalist nature of Russian economy, its dynamism and ability to survive. Far from being a shallow-rooted caste, the bureaucracy was, and is, an integral part of the Russian body politic.</p>
<p>Similarly with reformism. To assume in face of all the evidence to the contrary that reformism affected only a thin layer or crust of workers, with a revolutionary mass seething below, was to deny the facts of working-class life, the tendency for differentials to narrow and for larger and larger layers to become permeated with reformism. Capitalism and imperialism changed and the old simplistic ideas were not enough. The RCP foundered on its irrelevance and inability to accept reality. The chances for revolutionary change did not exist in Britain, and on the continent they were murdered by Stalinism.</p>
<p>In <strong>The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International</strong> Trotsky had suggested that the proletariat were crushed between the upper and nether millstones of reformism and Stalinism. The Fourth International in this scheme were to lead this same proletariat and smash both millstones. It did not happen, and as the story unfolded, it was clear that the Fourth International itself was being crushed by the self-same millstones, veering on occasions to Stalinism and on others to social democracy.</p>
<p>The sterility and iconography of the present-day Trotskyists is a chastening sight to behold. The ossification of the living thought of Leon Trotsky is a crime to the memory of a man who was always ready to jettison outmoded ideas. His whole political career is an example of the application of the marxist method to real situations. His epigones in doing honour to his every jot and tittle have obscured much that remains valid in his thought and turned what should be a continuous road of revolutionary consciousness into an obscure blind alley.</p>
<p>The history of Trotskyism in Britain is a history of failure but it is also a history of struggle and high endeavour ensuring that Trotsky’s revolutionary message was heard, if only in a distorted form. It is on this that we can build.</p>
<p class="c"><strong>*</strong></p>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> <strong>Statutes of the FI</strong>.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> “... the proletariat of the USSR has not forfeited the possibility of submitting the bureaucracy to it, of reviving the party again and of mending the regime of the dictatorship – without a new revolution, with the methods and on the road to reform.” <strong>Problems of the Development of the USSR</strong>, <em>Thesis of the International Left Opposition</em>, New York 1936, p.36.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n3" href="#f3" name="n3">3.</a> Author of <strong>World Revolution 1917-1938</strong> and <strong>Black Jacobins</strong>, both published by Secker and Warburg.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n4" href="#f4" name="n4">4.</a> <a href="../../../trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm" target="new"><strong>The Death Agony of Capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International</strong></a> (available, with foreword by C. Slaughter, from the Socialist Labour League, price 1s.).</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n5" href="#f5" name="n5">5.</a> In 1939 the membership of WIL was 30; the RSL 80. Despite this clear turn to open work the members of the WIL did not relinquish their Labour Party membership. This was the case even in the period of the RCP – neither the WIL nor the RCP was proscribed, an indication of the state of the LP machine at the time, which seems incredible today. From this period onward, however, the main activity and propaganda was away from Labour Party work.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n6" href="#f6" name="n6">6.</a> Despite this clear turn to open work the members of the WIL did not relinquish their Labour Party membership. This was the case even in the period of the RCP – neither the WIL nor the RCP was proscribed, and indication of the state of the LP machine, which seems incredible today. From this period onward, however, the main activity and propaganda was away from Labour Party work.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n7" href="#f7" name="n7">7.</a> <strong>Youth For Socialism</strong>, September 1939.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n8" href="#f8" name="n8">8.</a> <em>Trade Unionists Stand Firm</em>, <strong>Youth For Socialism</strong>, February 1940.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n9" href="#f9" name="n9">9.</a> <em>Expose The Labour Leaders, Force Them to Take Power</em>, <strong>Youth For Socialism</strong>, June 1940.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n10" href="#f10" name="n10">10.</a> <em>A Year Of Imperialist War, Its Lessons For the Workers</em>, <strong>Youth For Socialism</strong>, September 1940.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n11" href="#f11" name="n11">11.</a> <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, June 1941.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n12" href="#f12" name="n12">12.</a> In August 1941 Pollitt sent a letter to all CP branches in which he said, “... In supporting the Churchill government, we do it wholeheartedly and without reservation”.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n13" href="#f13" name="n13">13.</a> At present assistant editor of the <strong>Daily Worker</strong>.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n14" href="#f14" name="n14">14.</a> <strong>Preparing For Power</strong>, WIL, September 1942.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n15" href="#f15" name="n15">15.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong></p>
<p class="note"><a id="n16" href="#f16" name="n16">16.</a> Recorded address to SWP conference 1938, reproduced in <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, June 1942.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n17" href="#f17" name="n17">17.</a> Subsequently St Pancras Labour Councillor, and then a member of the CP: recently deceased.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n18" href="#f18" name="n18">18.</a> At the rate of one delegate per five members, the RSL had 75 members and the WIL 760. The RSL was however split into three delegations, seven from the Militant group, six from the Trotskyist Opposition, four from the Left Fraction. Information from the Fusion Conference minutes.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n19" href="#f19" name="n19">19.</a> <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, July 1944.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n20" href="#f20" name="n20">20.</a> The Anti-Labour Laws Defence Committee. Chairman Jimmy Maxton.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n21" href="#f21" name="n21">21.</a> The London District Committee of the CP issued a pamphlet in April 1945 which said: “... provided we get a new House of Commons with a strong majority of Labour, Communist and Liberal MPs. I believe the Labour Party should then form a new National Government and invite others, including Tories like Churchill and Eden to participate.”</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n22" href="#f22" name="n22">22.</a> <em>Where Is The Communist Party Going?</em>, D. James, <strong>Workers International News</strong>, November 1945.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n23" href="#f23" name="n23">23.</a> D.J. Williams, a “Labour Left” who in his earlier days as an NCLC tutor had been sympathetic to Trotskyism.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n24" href="#f24" name="n24">24.</a> <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, mid-May 1945.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n25" href="#f25" name="n25">25.</a> <strong>Ibid.</strong></p>
<p class="note"><a id="n26" href="#f26" name="n26">26.</a> The Left Fraction was eventually expelled for refusing to accept the authority of the leading committees of the RCP.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n27" href="#f27" name="n27">27.</a> The IS had a theory that Anglo-American Imperialism would set up Franco-type dictatorships in liberated countries, similar to De Gaulle in France and Bonomi in Italy. America would not aid the European countries and the subsequent miseries would lead to revolutionary action. See <em>First Phase of the Coming European Revolution</em>, <strong>RCP Internal Bulletin</strong>, December 1946.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n28" href="#f28" name="n28">28.</a> For a full treatment of this question see: <a href="../../../cliff/works/1957/06/rootsref.htm" target="new"><em>The Roots Of Reformism</em></a>, T. Cliff, <strong>Socialist Review</strong>; <a href="../../../kidron/works/1962/xx/imperial.htm" target="new"><em>Imperialism, Highest Stage But One</em></a>, M. Kidron, <strong>International Socialism</strong>, 9, Summer 1962; <a href="../../../cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm" target="new"><strong>Stalinist Russia, A Marxist Analysis</strong></a>, T. Cliff, London 1955.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Ten Years for the Locust
British Trotskyism 1938–1948
(Autumn 1963)
First published in International Socialism (1st series), No. 14, Autumn 1963.
Transcribed by Mike Pearn.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
1. The Founding of the Fourth International
September 1938 saw the culmination of five years’ work on the part of Leon Trotsky and at least some of his followers, in the founding congress of the Fourth International. The congress (attended by delegates from the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Holland, Greece and Latin America) instituted a new revolutionary international, based not upon a loose organisation of national sections but upon a world party of Bolshevism. The forces were small but the tasks they set themselves were no less than the World Socialist Revolution. [1]
The International was predicated upon the complete bankruptcy of both Stalinism and social democracy, in a world situation where capitalism was entering its death agony. The alternative was either socialist revolution or barbarism. If the mistakes and betrayals of the Comintern were to be avoided then the international vanguard must be organised to lead along the path of international proletarian revolution.
In Britain the Trotskyists had a history which went back to the left opposition groups in the Communist Party, the most famous of these being the “Balham Group” (c.1931). The Communist Party had, as always, a short way with dissenters and they were almost entirely expelled. For a time the Trotskyists worked as a left opposition attempting to secure readmittance to the party and to reform it from within. This of course was in line with Trotsky’s thesis of reforming the Comintern from inside. [2]
By 1933 it became clear to Trotsky and his followers that the possibilities of reform within the Comintern were nil. The grotesque antics of the Communist Party in the face of the rise of fascism in Germany made this plain. If the Comintern was bankrupt then a new milieu was essential. The British Trotskyists were not long in finding a home. Two groups, divided it would seem more on the grounds of personal antipathy than anything else, entered the Labour Party – one, led by Reg Groves, publishing a paper called Red Flag, the other, led by Harber, publishing The Militant. Alongside this a group existed in the Independent Labour Party publishing Controversy. This last group received considerable assistance from the accession to their group of C.L.R. James, a West Indian cricketer and journalist on The Manchester Guardian. [3]
In 1936 a group was formed in Paddington, independently of the existing groups and centred around an ex-member of the Communist Party, Jock Haston. This last group worked in the Labour Party, largely in the Labour League of Youth. For a short period this Paddington group joined up with Harber’s Militant group. But in a very short space of time differences arose over allegations of misconduct during a strike in South Africa organised by comrades of Haston. The allegations were farcical and the quarrel degenerated to such levels of abuse that a split was inevitable, a split which made it impossible to found the Fourth International with a united British section.
In 1938, as a prelude to the founding congress, a high-powered delegation led by James P. Cannon (General Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, the American Trotskyist party) arrived in Britain to effect a fusion of the various groups. Unity was in fact achieved between the ILP group, the Militant group and a small group of Socialist Labour Party members in Scotland. This new organisation was named the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) and at the founding congress was designated the British section of the Fourth International.
The Haston Group had opposed the fusion and maintained a separate existence, publishing two papers, Youth For Socialism and Workers International News. For this heretical behaviour they were dismissed as “a nationalist grouping in essence reactionary” by the founding congress. [4]
The RSL did not maintain its new-found unity for long, and within months of the foundation of the Fourth International the official British section was reduced effectively to Harber’s Militant group.
From this period Trotskyism in Britain was represented by two tendencies, the Workers International League (Haston’s group) and the RSL. The WIL was certainly the more active of the two, based upon the organising ability of Haston and the dedication of its small membership. [5] The RSL, although an older group and at this stage with a larger membership, was superior to the WIL only in its ability to give birth to factional disputes, and in respect of organising ability was decidedly inferior.
Both these groups were pursuing an entrist tactic in the Labour Party although the emphasis of the WIL was more on the Labour League of Youth, where they met with modest successes, despite the fact that the League of Youth was very much under the influence of the Communist Party.
2. The War Period
At the outbreak of the war the line of the two groups differed widely. A section of the WIL leadership were directed to Ireland to prepare a parallel section to publish the papers and maintain the organisation against expected attempts to smash the “revolutionary vanguard”. This revolutionary romanticism, which does more credit to the comrades’ fervour and willingness to sacrifice than to their good sense, proved unnecessary and after experiencing some considerable privation they returned to England intent upon turning the war into civil war.
The RSL remained safely ensconced in the Labour Party and with the electoral truce which followed the formation of the Churchill-Attlee coalition government, they vegetated with the moribund Labour Party electoral machine.
Haston and his followers now began to move out into the open [6] and from this time onward the story of British Trotskyism is the story of the activity of the WIL and the inactivity of the RSL. Nearly all the recruits to Trotskyism were taken into the WIL, while the RSL stagnated and declined.
In their paper Youth For Socialism the WIL told the workers: “The main enemy is at home ... Down with the war ... Defend the Soviet Union.” [7] They denounced the Russo-Finnish war and in an article by Gerry Healy called upon the workers to stand firm in defence of conditions and hours. [8] The call was made for the breaking of the electoral truce and for the Labour Party to take power the better to expose themselves. [9]
With splendidly impartial favour they castigated the Labour, Independent Labour and Communist Parties thus: “The role of the Second International has been even more openly chauvinist and traitorous than in the last war ... The workers cannot fail to observe the unprincipled nature of the twists and turns of the leadership of the Communist Party ... The policy of the ILP is covering the downright betrayal of the ‘defenders of democracy’ and the Stalinist International, and fails to place before the workers the revolutionary alternative to transform the war into civil war.” [10]
With the fall of France they called for the arming of the workers, and with the Nazi attack on Russia for “defence of the Soviet Union”, while denouncing the social patriotism of the Dutts and Pollitts.
By June 1941 the need was felt for a paper with a wider appeal than Youth For Socialism, and Socialist Appeal was launched. The paper was distinctly agitational in tone, and the politics, contrary to the revolutionary defeatism of the more orthodox Trotskyists, were what can best be called revolutionary defensist. The programme in the first issue of the Appeal was:
“Labour to Power on the following programme:
1. Arming and organising the workers under their own control to resist any danger from invasion or Petainism at home.
2. Election of Officers by Soldiers.
3. Establishment of special Officer Training camps financed by the Government and controlled by the Trade Unions, to train workers to become officers.
4. Expropriation of the arms industry, the mines, banks, land and heavy industry.
5. Workers’ control of production.
6. Freedom for India and the colonies.
7. A socialist appeal to workers in Germany and Europe for socialist struggle against Hitler.” [11]
Apart from the direct appeal of the Socialist Appeal programme, much of the WIL propaganda was directed to the Communist Party and against its pathetic capitulation to the Churchill government after Russia’s entry into the war. The Communist Party was designated “His Majesty’s Communist Party” in the pages of the Appeal. Their strike-breaking activities were denounced and a policy of industrial militancy advocated in opposition to the Stalinist line of class collaboration in the interests of the “Anti-fascist war”. [12]
The Communist Party were not long in reacting. A pamphlet, Clear Out Hitler’s Agents by William Wainwright [13], appeared in August 1942. This pamphlet, a prime example of what Trotsky called “The Stalin School of Falsification”, is a piece of ignorant viciousness compounded of straightforward lies and the more tortuous variety of the Moscow Trials. “Trotskyists”, it said, “oppose and hate the leaders of Russia. They want to see Russia defeated and Hitler victorious ... Hidden behind their slogan ‘Workers’ control for Britain’ is the Trotskyist aim to smash workers’ control in Russia.” In an attempt to build up a lynch mentality the pamphlet concludes, “Expose every Trotskyist you come into contact with. Show other people where his ideas are leading. Treat him as you would an open Nazi.” This rubbish was followed by even more grotesque nonsense in the Sunday Dispatch, which suggested that “Directives from Germany were transmitted to the British Trotskyists via a Workers’ Challenge Station”.
The WIL were undeterred by this smear campaign, which served to confirm them in their already inflated view of their own importance. Their outlook was one of extreme optimism. In the material for their conference in August 1942 [14] they saw Britain entering a pre-revolutionary situation. In their perspective the Labour Party was heading for a split, with the left possibly joining up with the “centrist” ILP which would for a short time attract workers in large numbers. The need to enter the Labour Party and assist in this supposed differentiation was scorned. The entrist tactic “was to enter a reformist or centrist party which is in a state of flux, where political life is at a high pitch and where the members are steadily moving left. It is essentially a short-term perspective of work in a milieu where favourable prospects exist in a short space of time ... such work must be subordinated to the general strategy of building the Fourth International party”. [15]
With the benefit of hindsight we can see that this perspective was almost laughable in its arrogant wrong-headedness. But, despite its crudities and lack of economic analysis, it represented the spirit if not the letter of Trotsky’s perspective. The revolutionary upsurge was to be expected in a short space of time. In his recorded speech to the Socialist Workers Party (American section of the Fourth International), Trotsky said:
“Ten years were necessary for the Kremlin clique in order to strangle the Bolshevik Party and to transform the first workers’ state into a sinister caricature. Ten years were necessary for the Third International in order to stamp into the mire their own programme and transform themselves into a stinking cadaver. Ten years, and ten years. Permit me to finish with a prediction. During the next ten years the programme of the Fourth International will become the guide of millions and these revolutionary millions will know how to storm earth heaven.” [16]
For Trotsky, there was no other way. The Russian bureaucracy were a parasitic caste, consciously counter-revolutionary, incapable of defending Russia against world capitalism. Social democracy could no longer exist on the crumbs from the table of failing imperialism. The workers would be forced to take up a revolutionary stand under the leadership of the Fourth International.
In Britain the WIL were frantically waving this same banner under the noses of the proletariat. Tremendous efforts were made in selling Socialist Appeal and by 1943 the sale of the paper had been forced up to between 18,000 and 20,000 per issue and the organisation had grown to some 250 members. What made this circulation possible, aside from fantastically hard work, was the growth of militancy in industry, which had been repressed by three years of war production. Conditions of work and safety were deteriorating and Socialist Appeal supported all attempts by workers to defend their conditions. Besides industrial reporting the paper carried news from members and readers in the forces exposing conditions in the detention centres as well as in the army itself, this in a period when the Communists were opposing strikes, blacklegging, and allowing safety requirements to fall below the minimum.
During all this period the RSL remained stagnant and could report no advances comparable to those of the WIL. The Fourth International was in similar straits. Its European sections were smashed or ineffective and contact with other sections was practically nil. The International Secretariat was in Canada, afflicted by personal difficulties between members. The “World Party of Bolshevism” was, in fact, moribund.
3. The Revolutionary Communist Party
The disproportion between the successes of the British organisations gave rise to pressure for fusion between the two leagues. For 12 months, from 1943 to 1944, meetings were held and the form of the new organisation hammered out. The WIL needed the fact of official recognition by the Fourth International and the RSL needed the WIL’s energy. But, as is invariably the case in such matters, there were difficulties. The RSL was, despite its small numbers, split into three factions: the majority around Harber and The Militant; a “Trotskyist opposition” led by Hilda Lane [17]; and a “left fraction” violently opposed to the fusion with the WIL, whom with unfortunate consistency they still characterised in the same terms that the founding congress had used in 1938. The “Trotskyist opposition” were sympathetic to the WIL and approved of their open activity, while the Militant group were in the hands of the International Secretariat. The trouble was that the WIL, on the basis of limited successes and a crazy perspective, favoured the formation of an open party while the RSL (at least as far as Harber and the “left fraction” were concerned) was firmly wedded to the Labour Party tactic. It was here that the International Secretariat took a hand. They made it clear that no British section, apart from the fused organisation, would be recognised by the International.
The fusion conference was held on 11 and 12 March 1944. 69 delegates attended, 17 from the RSL and 52 from the WIL. [18] The resulting party was the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). It was agreed that the position of the RSL elements would remain the same as before, with The Militant as the party’s paper in the Labour Party, while Socialist Appeal and Workers International News would be the organs of the RCP. Hasten was elected the General Secretary and the air was full of optimism. (During the conference a strike of 100,000 miners was taking place.) The party was launched on the expectation of rising industrial militancy and war-weariness leading on to revolutionary victory.
In mid-1944 contact was established with a group of Tyne engineering apprentices who were opposed to the Bevin ballot scheme which was being used to conscript young workers into the mines. Socialist Appeal came out strongly in support of the apprentices and assistance was given in the preparation of leaflets calling for nationalisation of the mines under workers’ control and for a strike against the conscription of apprentices. The police became interested in the agitation and the apprentices were questioned at length. The result was a prosecution under the Trades Disputes Act of 1927. Those arrested were Heaton Lee, Roy Tearse, Ann Keen and Jock Haston. Tearse and Lee received sentences of 12 months, Haston of 6 months and Ann Keen 13 days. All the defendants took their stand on revolutionary principle but were somewhat handicapped by the fact that their barrister, Curtis Bennett QC, was not prepared to bring out the revolutionary lessons of the trial. The verdict was hailed in Socialist Appeal as an attempt to gag the vanguard leadership of the Fourth International party. [19]
Defence committees were set up [20], protest meetings held, and the support of MPs canvassed. Prominent among those supporting the imprisoned Trotskyists were Aneurin Bevan and Jimmy Maxton. In September 1944 the convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal. But the trial and conviction further embittered the RCP towards the Labour Party. (Bevin was the instigator of the prosecution under the Trades Disputes Act, a piece of Tory legislation resulting from the 1926 General Strike.)
The construction that the RCP put on the trial has some measure of truth. The industrial scene in 1944 was one of rising militancy. Some 3 million days were lost in strikes and the government were concerned at this serious threat to war production. Egged on by the Communist Party, they spoke darkly of agitators and subversives. The truth, of course, was that the RCP were only important in so far as they gave assistance after the accomplished fact of a strike. They were never in any continuous sense in contact with large numbers of workers.
By 1945 it was clear that the war had not long to run. But the promise of European revolution was not materialising. In 1944 the partisan activity in Italy had been hailed as the beginning of Europe’s revolution. It was not to be; the partisan movement which set up Soviets in some of the northern Italian towns swiftly came under Stalinist control and the continuity of Italian capitalism was assured. This was no surprise to the Trotskyists. Even if they overestimated the revolutionary possibilities of the European proletariat, they certainly did not underestimate the counter-revolutionary behaviour of the Stalinists. As a party competing for the leadership of the class they directed much of their effort to the CP-oriented militant and polemicised against the attitude of the Communist Party.
The call of the Communist Party for a continuation of the coalition government after the war was denounced in round terms. [21] Their answer to the twin reformism of both Stalinism and social democracy was the revolutionary programme of the Fourth International and the RCP, which regarded the Labour Government as a necessary stage through which the workers would have to pass before they realised the correctness of the revolutionary programme. [22]
At a by-election in Neath in early 1945 Jock Haston stood as the RCP candidate. All the stops were pulled out and the workers of Neath were given the opportunity to respond to the voice of revolutionary Socialism. In Socialist Appeal, February 1945, the Neath workers were reminded that “A vote for Labour is a vote for Churchill and the Tories”.
The campaign resulted in a regurgitation of all the Stalinist filth and slanders against the Trotskyists. The Labour candidate, D.J. Williams [23] was not averse to this form of electioneering. He was reported as saying “Haston is a Fascist” and “Haston is subsidised by the same people who subsidised Lord Haw Haw”. [24] The Communist Party went even further. In a debate with Haston before an audience of some 1500 Alun Thomas, secretary of the West Wales Communist Party, stated, “If I had my way all those on this platform would be shot” [25] (presumably he excluded himself from this blanket condemnation). Despite the smear campaign and a press blackout on the RCP campaign, some 3,000 copies of each issue of the paper were sold in Neath together with considerable quantities of Trotskyist literature. In his report to the Central Committee of the RCP on the by-election, John Lawrence (South Wales organiser of the RCP) reported that half the Independent Labour Party branch in Neath had joined the RCP. (The Neath ILP had 4 members.)
The vote however was disappointing:
D.J. Williams Labour)
30,847
W. Samuels (Nationalist)
6,290
J. Haston (RCP)
1,781
The headline in Socialist Appeal, “1,781 Vote Revolutionary Communist”, could not conceal the fact that reformism had deeper roots in Neath than the RCP had thought possible.
The RSL-WIL fusion, as has been suggested earlier, was not unaccompanied by difficulties. The “left fraction” of the RSL (comprising about 20 people) had been violently opposed to unity with the WIL and had only joined after an ultimatum from the Fourth International. [26] Further difficulty of a more serious nature arose from opposition led by G. Healy on the old vexed question of Labour Party entry. Healy and a minority of the membership were for entry, while the majority were for maintaining a small group in the Labour Party, but concentrating the main work in the open party and building the RCP.
As is usual in faction fights, accusations were bandied back and forth of empiricism, eclecticism, menshevism (both right and left varieties), left wing infantilism and, of course, the party regime was likened to Stalin’s.
The perspective of the minority was one of deepening capitalist crisis with masses of workers turning to social democracy, which would be unable to solve the crisis. At this juncture a differentiation would take place with the defeat of the right wing rump and, if the correct tactic were pursued, with the Trotskyists in a position to lead the left to victory. The minority’s view that there was not time to build a revolutionary party and that the field of work should be in the Labour Party was the only sensible part of their analysis. The majority denied the short-term catastrophe analysis of Healy (a view of capitalism to which Healy remains attached) although they were of course firmly wedded to it in the rather longer term. They suggested, with some justification, that post-war reconstruction together with the fag-end of Lend-Lease would ease the situation for British capitalism. The need to build the RCP was the primary task: entry into the Labour Party was still a tactic to be used only at the height of a left wing in social democracy and then only as a short-term visit, more in the way of a raid, and this only necessary if the revolutionary party was weak and unable to compete openly.
The arguments were all laid out in a succession of interminable internal bulletins. Conferences of the RCP were each year taken up with wrangles on the question of entrism. The minority received considerable support from the IEC whose perspective for the European revolution was closely followed by Healy. [27] It is possible to look back now and to see that the minority were correct in their demand for entrism, although their theoretical basis for entry was nonsense. The majority’s views were less nonsensical but led them to the false position of the open party.
With the coming of Marshall Aid (a possibility excluded by all the Trotskyist factions and tendencies) the situation altered radically. Reformism and capitalist expansion got a new lease of life and the arms economy later secured their continuity. Stalinism was not dead and had in fact extended its empire into Eastern Europe. The possibility of short-term spectacular gains inside or outside the Labour Party became a dream. In 1948 Healy and about 50 of his followers were designated the official Labour Party group by the Fourth International, answerable only to the International and not to the RCP, and with their own organisation. Although no formal split occurred, the effect was the same. The Haston majority maintained the RCP for a few months with diminishing results and a growing tiredness on the part of the leadership, and in 1949 the party and the press were dissolved. Some of the members joined Healy in Labour Party work, some the Communist Party, while others disappeared into the political wilderness and apathy.
4. Conclusions
The period up to the dissolution was one where an attempt was made to explain the current world reality in terms of Trotskyist orthodoxy. The class nature of the Eastern satellites was in this respect rather baffling. Trotsky had defined Russia as a “workers’ state” (albeit degenerated) on basis of its state property, planning and the monopoly of foreign trade, together with its alleged continuity with the October Revolution. At the same time he made it clear that the bureaucracy were consciously restorationist and counter-revolutionary, incapable of defending state property except under pressure from the masses. In one respect therefore (state property etc) the eastern satellites were “workers’ states” but the class as an active force had not intervened in the installation of the Stalinist regimes. Indeed they had largely been installed at the points of the Red Army’s bayonets, at the instigation of the “restorationist, counter-revolutionary bureaucracy”. The RCP in the person of Jock Haston and the party’s theoretician, Grant, toyed for a while with the theory of state capitalism, only to reject this in favour of a form of abridged Stalinism which designated the Eastern satellites as workers’ states requiring unconditional defence.
At the second world congress of the Fourth International, in 1948, this RCP thesis was rejected at the instigation of the IEC. The congress characterised the “People’s Democracies” as capitalist countries with Bonapartist police regimes. This analysis did not outlast the Stalin-Tito rift when, with rare opportunism, the Fourth International jumped smartly on to Tito’s band-wagon. Yugoslavia was welcomed into the fold of workers’ states and so, by the same token, were the other less independent satellites who must have been pleased to learn (if they ever knew about it) that they were deformed workers’ states just like Mother Russia. The situation became theoretically impossible and laid the basis for subsequent splits in the Fourth International. The RCP went full circle and became once again a left critic of Stalinism, cheered by Stalin’s victories, but unable to affect their course; likewise without influence or effect on British politics. It died of lack of success, false perspectives, and wrong tactics – a sad and chastening experience.
The demise of British Trotskyism (and it died some time before the corpse was formally interred) cannot be blamed only on its tactical inadequacies. Although it is true that with a more realistic appraisal of the world they could have continued for much longer. But like Trotsky, they founded their attitude on an erroneous analysis of reformism and imperialism with a fundamental misappraisal of Stalinism. [28] The characterisation of Russia as a counter-revolutionary abortion hid the fact of the profoundly capitalist nature of Russian economy, its dynamism and ability to survive. Far from being a shallow-rooted caste, the bureaucracy was, and is, an integral part of the Russian body politic.
Similarly with reformism. To assume in face of all the evidence to the contrary that reformism affected only a thin layer or crust of workers, with a revolutionary mass seething below, was to deny the facts of working-class life, the tendency for differentials to narrow and for larger and larger layers to become permeated with reformism. Capitalism and imperialism changed and the old simplistic ideas were not enough. The RCP foundered on its irrelevance and inability to accept reality. The chances for revolutionary change did not exist in Britain, and on the continent they were murdered by Stalinism.
In The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International Trotsky had suggested that the proletariat were crushed between the upper and nether millstones of reformism and Stalinism. The Fourth International in this scheme were to lead this same proletariat and smash both millstones. It did not happen, and as the story unfolded, it was clear that the Fourth International itself was being crushed by the self-same millstones, veering on occasions to Stalinism and on others to social democracy.
The sterility and iconography of the present-day Trotskyists is a chastening sight to behold. The ossification of the living thought of Leon Trotsky is a crime to the memory of a man who was always ready to jettison outmoded ideas. His whole political career is an example of the application of the marxist method to real situations. His epigones in doing honour to his every jot and tittle have obscured much that remains valid in his thought and turned what should be a continuous road of revolutionary consciousness into an obscure blind alley.
The history of Trotskyism in Britain is a history of failure but it is also a history of struggle and high endeavour ensuring that Trotsky’s revolutionary message was heard, if only in a distorted form. It is on this that we can build.
*
Notes
1. Statutes of the FI.
2. “... the proletariat of the USSR has not forfeited the possibility of submitting the bureaucracy to it, of reviving the party again and of mending the regime of the dictatorship – without a new revolution, with the methods and on the road to reform.” Problems of the Development of the USSR, Thesis of the International Left Opposition, New York 1936, p.36.
3. Author of World Revolution 1917-1938 and Black Jacobins, both published by Secker and Warburg.
4. The Death Agony of Capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International (available, with foreword by C. Slaughter, from the Socialist Labour League, price 1s.).
5. In 1939 the membership of WIL was 30; the RSL 80. Despite this clear turn to open work the members of the WIL did not relinquish their Labour Party membership. This was the case even in the period of the RCP – neither the WIL nor the RCP was proscribed, an indication of the state of the LP machine at the time, which seems incredible today. From this period onward, however, the main activity and propaganda was away from Labour Party work.
6. Despite this clear turn to open work the members of the WIL did not relinquish their Labour Party membership. This was the case even in the period of the RCP – neither the WIL nor the RCP was proscribed, and indication of the state of the LP machine, which seems incredible today. From this period onward, however, the main activity and propaganda was away from Labour Party work.
7. Youth For Socialism, September 1939.
8. Trade Unionists Stand Firm, Youth For Socialism, February 1940.
9. Expose The Labour Leaders, Force Them to Take Power, Youth For Socialism, June 1940.
10. A Year Of Imperialist War, Its Lessons For the Workers, Youth For Socialism, September 1940.
11. Socialist Appeal, June 1941.
12. In August 1941 Pollitt sent a letter to all CP branches in which he said, “... In supporting the Churchill government, we do it wholeheartedly and without reservation”.
13. At present assistant editor of the Daily Worker.
14. Preparing For Power, WIL, September 1942.
15. Ibid.
16. Recorded address to SWP conference 1938, reproduced in Socialist Appeal, June 1942.
17. Subsequently St Pancras Labour Councillor, and then a member of the CP: recently deceased.
18. At the rate of one delegate per five members, the RSL had 75 members and the WIL 760. The RSL was however split into three delegations, seven from the Militant group, six from the Trotskyist Opposition, four from the Left Fraction. Information from the Fusion Conference minutes.
19. Socialist Appeal, July 1944.
20. The Anti-Labour Laws Defence Committee. Chairman Jimmy Maxton.
21. The London District Committee of the CP issued a pamphlet in April 1945 which said: “... provided we get a new House of Commons with a strong majority of Labour, Communist and Liberal MPs. I believe the Labour Party should then form a new National Government and invite others, including Tories like Churchill and Eden to participate.”
22. Where Is The Communist Party Going?, D. James, Workers International News, November 1945.
23. D.J. Williams, a “Labour Left” who in his earlier days as an NCLC tutor had been sympathetic to Trotskyism.
24. Socialist Appeal, mid-May 1945.
25. Ibid.
26. The Left Fraction was eventually expelled for refusing to accept the authority of the leading committees of the RCP.
27. The IS had a theory that Anglo-American Imperialism would set up Franco-type dictatorships in liberated countries, similar to De Gaulle in France and Bonomi in Italy. America would not aid the European countries and the subsequent miseries would lead to revolutionary action. See First Phase of the Coming European Revolution, RCP Internal Bulletin, December 1946.
28. For a full treatment of this question see: The Roots Of Reformism, T. Cliff, Socialist Review; Imperialism, Highest Stage But One, M. Kidron, International Socialism, 9, Summer 1962; Stalinist Russia, A Marxist Analysis, T. Cliff, London 1955.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h4>Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebknecht</h4>
<h1>For them there was only one nation –<br>
the working class</h1>
<h3>(1 March 1969)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Worker</strong>, <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/sw-gb/1969/index.html#n0111" target="new">No. 111</a>, 1 March 1969, pp. 2–3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="sm1"><small><strong>Born March 5, 1871 in Zamosc, Poland.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1886 joined socialist movement.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1889 left Poland for Zurich, Switzerland.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1894 formed the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1898 moved to Germany, joined the SPD.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1898/9 attacked the revisionist ideas of Eduard Bernstein in her Reform or Revolution.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1904 jailed for three months for ’insulting the Kaiser’.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1905/6 returned to Russian Poland to take part in the first Russian Revolution.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1906 arrested in Poland, served four months in jail, released because of ill health and deported to Germany.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1905–1910 debate with Kautsky and the SPD centre on the parliamentary method of struggle.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1913 most important theoretical work The Accumulation of Capital published.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1914 sentenced but not immediately detained, to 12 months for ‘inciting soldiers to mutiny’.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>February 1915–November 1918, held in prison.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>November 1918 released from prison by the revolution.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>December 1918 Communist Party of Germany formed.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>January 15, 1919 Luxemburg murdered.</strong></small></p><small>
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<p class="fst">ROSA LUXEMBURG was born in Russian Poland and as a schoolgirl of 15 she joined the revolutionary organisation Proletariat. Within a few years she was recognised as a leading theoretician of Polish socialism. In 1889, warned of impending arrest, she escaped to Switzerland hidden in a haycart. In opposition to the largest section of the Polish movement, Luxemburg was a thoroughgoing internationalist. She despised the nationalism of Pilsudski and saw the national movement as a diversion at best and counterrevolutionary at worst. Together with her friend Jogiches she mounted within the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) a campaign against any tendency to nationalism. Basing herself on Marx and observable facts, she argued that with the development of industry and capitalist economy, the Polish aristocracy, which had once led the national movement, were losing ground socially and economically and were turning to the Russian Tsar for support.<br>
</p>
<h4>Massive markets</h4>
<p class="fst">Polish industry found that it had a massive market in less developed Russia and was equally against the idea of national independence. ‘Poland’, Luxemburg said, ‘is bound to Russia with chains of gold ... Not the national state but the state of rapine corresponds to capitalist development.’ The working class, she claimed, also had no interest in national independence. Their interests were identical with the Russian workers and their future was indissolubly linked. Under capitalism there was no possibility of national independence and under socialism there was no need for it. This theory, although neatly interlocking, makes a number of quite unwarranted assertions. The description of the attitude of the respective classes involved certainly represented tendencies within those classes and was a fair estimation of what the various class interests should be, but the ideas inside people’s heads do not directly reflect their economic interest. There was a Polish national sentiment and the PPS right-wing did have some support in the country. To understand this uncompromising stand of the Luxemburgists it is necessary to see the context in which their ideas developed. The mainstream of the PPS was devoted more to the national idea than to the struggle for socialism. Pilsudski (later dictator of Poland) engaged in terrorist attacks, intrigues with foreign capitalist governments and the desire for war to fulfill the independence of Poland in the break up of the Russian Empire.</p>
<h4>Condemned</h4>
<p class="fst">Daszinski, PPS leader in Galicia, even went so far as to condemn Polish mass strikes because they tended to identify the struggle of the Polish workers with that of the Russian workers and undermine the national unity of the Poles. The opposition to the extreme nationalism of the PPS is understandable and perhaps merited, but the opposition to rights of self-determination is less so. The Russian socialist position, as outlined by Lenin, was more in tune with realities of the situation. The Polish socialists should avoid the establishment of a national state, the Russian socialists should fight for the right of the Poles to have their separate state if they so wished. Under these conditions the question of self-determination is not incompatible with the class struggle, but becomes, in the Russian Empire, an adjunct to the overthrow of Tsarism. As in her polemics with Lenin on the question of party organisation, Luxemburg was arguing from abstract principles derived from the experience of a particular set of circumstances and places. But in all this there is magnificently principled consistency. For her there was only one nation – the working class whose activity and struggle were the centre of socialism.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<a name="pt1"></a>
<h3>Reform or revolution – the struggle in the SPD</h3>
<p class="fst">THE LARGEST, the most influential and the most theoretically developed party of the Second International, was the SPD (German Socialist Party). A million party members, 2½ million trade union members, over 100 Reichstag deputies gave the impression of a powerful and well-nigh invincible organisation. Formed in 1875 as the result of a fusion between the followers of Lassalle and the followers of Marx, it displayed a formidable monolithic unity. Its founder member and great organiser was Bebel and its theoretician, ‘the Pope of Marxism’, was Karl Kautsky. But despite its formidable appearance, the SPD was in many ways an empty shell. Its large Reichstag contingent and its dedicated mass following disguised the fact that the real power in Germany was held by the Bundesrat (the council of princes) that ruled with semi-feudal privilege.<br>
</p>
<h4>Rotten centre</h4>
<p class="fst">The verbal adherence to Marx’s formulations, exemplified by Kautsky’s theoretical work, covered a profoundly reformist practice. It was to this rotten centre of world socialism that Rosa Luxemburg came in 1898. Her arrival coincided with the publication of a series of articles by Eduard Bernstein, who, under the influence of the British Fabians, produced a fundamental revision of marxism. He suggested that continuing prosperity, trade union pressure and increasing Reichstag representation made unnecessary and irrelevant the revolutionary content of the party programme. Luxemburg entered this struggle immediately and in a brilliant pamphlet <strong>Reform or Revolution</strong> she effectively answered Bernstein, demonstrating that the development of capitalism deepened its contradictions. In her own words, ‘Hardly had Bernstein rejected, in 1898, Marx’s theory of crises, when a profound crisis broke out in 1900’. The trade unions’ attempt to increase the share of the workers in society was doomed to failure because ‘This share is being reduced with the fatality of a natural process, by the growth of the productivity of labour.’ Parliament, she said, was not the citadel of power that was stormed by the aggregation of votes and could in no way be described as a socialist institution: ‘It is on the contrary, a specific form of the bourgeois class state.’ After the fashion of the SPD, the controversy was debated at the party congress and the ideas of Bernstein were rejected in theory but in practice the SPD continued as if he had been right.<br>
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<h4>Mass strike</h4>
<p class="fst">Rosa’s researches into the Belgian general strikes of 1891 and 1893, together with her experiences of the Russian revolution of 1905 in Russian Poland, led her to develop her theory of the mass strike. In brief, she saw the development of industry and the workers’ organisations as making redundant the old revolutionary idea of direct confrontation with the state power at the barricades. As the class became more mature and organised, its ability to participate en masse, breaking down the distinctions between unions and trades, became possible. The mass strike is seen as the first stage in the mobilisation for a revolutionary seizure of power. In this schema the party has a new role to play. It must develop the mass movement in demonstrations and strikes, ‘not as a party government – not as rulers, but genuinely as leaders, as the “advance guard’’ of the proletariat.’ The economic struggle leads on to the political struggle and after every political struggle, ‘there remains a fertile sediment from which sprout a thousand economic struggles’. The movement is thus self-sustaining and self-regenerating, with the revolutionary goal built in to each action. Not surprisingly, Luxemburg’s thesis was not welcomed by the SPD’s comfortable captains of controlled radicalism. Kautsky attacked her ideas and suggested that the revolution must come as the result of a parliamentary victory for the SPD (an incredibly poor joke in the light of H. Wilson). Luxemburg replied with quotations from Kautsky’s past verbal radicalism. The trade union bureaucracy, the SPD functionaries and the SPD centre sided with Kautsky in the argument. The theoretical struggle opened by Reform and Revolution against Bernstein reached its fulfillment in the break with Kautsky and the centre. The real dividing line was not only about who is <i>really</i> for the revolution but also whether the working class would occupy the centre of the analysis or be relegated to a stage army conjured up by the all-seeing, all-knowing leadership. Luxemburg and her co-thinkers were to remain in the SPD until the split in 1916, but the break was really made in 1910. Long before anyone else (including Lenin) Luxemburg saw the inadequacy and incapacity of classical social democracy.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<a name="pt2"></a>
<h3>Rosa – the ‘brightest star’</h3>
<p class="fst">FRANZ MEHRING said she was ‘The finest brain among the scientific successors of Marx and Engels’. Lenin thought of her as an eagle, Klara Zetkin saw her as the ‘brightest star on the socialist horizon’. There is no need to attempt to outdo them in praise of Rosa Luxemburg. The correct tribute to a revolutionary thinker and writer is to read her work, to place it and her actions in the perspective of her time and to apply that which is appropriate to our own action today. The task of reading and understanding her thought has been sadly neglected. In Stalin’s Russia she was posthumously designated a Trotskyist, an unconscious tribute to her own and Trotsky’s uncompromising revolutionism. At various times she has been claimed by all manner of anarchists, reformists and literary phrasemongers as a useful stick with which to beat Lenin, and it is true that their controversies were deeply felt and hard fought. But it is also true, and of far more importance, that they shared a common revolutionary socialist objective. In the fight for that objective they discarded and renounced, in their different ways, anarchism and reformism and all the other rubbish that stood in the way.<br>
</p>
<h4>Active factor</h4>
<p class="fst">The very core of her thought was the primacy of the working class as the active factor in socialist change. The structure and organisation of the party should be built from below.She knew that without the widest workers’ democracy ‘officials behind their desks would replace the workers’ hold on political power ... Socialism cannot be decreed by ukase’ (autocratic order). Her major theoretical work <strong>The Accumulation of Capital</strong> showed that imperialism, while stabilising capitalism for a time, also threatened mankind with war and barbarism. Liebknecht, when compared with Luxemburg, seems to be a much lesser figure. His activity until 1914 was largely carried out in the youth and anti-war agitation and his association with the revolutionary Left around Luxemburg was virtually non-existent. But during the war he completely dedicated himself to the whole Spartakist programme and activity. While he was no theoretician, his courage and activity as an orator and propagandist were an indispensable element in the struggle.Liebknecht was in incredibly brave and indomitable fighter. Luxemburg combined these qualities, with a genius for socialist theory and explanation. Their deaths robbed the international movement of their talents at a time when they were most needed. It is no exaggeration of their stature and importance to suggest that had they lived the whole of subsequent German and world history might have been very different. This is the fiftieth anniversary of their death, but it is not in its martyrs that the movement seeks inspiration. Death always wins in the end. The triumph and the inspiration is in the fight for the emancipation of the working class that filled the lives of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<a name="pt3"></a>
<h3>‘Down with the Imperialist War!’</h3>
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<p class="sm1"><small><strong>Born August 13, 1871.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1905 anti-war propaganda. 1907 sentenced to 18 months prison for anti-militarist agitation. While in prison elected to the Prussian Diet.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1912 elected to the Reichstag.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>December 1914 voted against the Kaiser’s War Credits.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>1915 Die Gruppe Internationale (The International Group) formed, later the Spartakusbund.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>January 1916 Liebknecht expelled from the SPD Reichstag group. February 1916 drafted into the army and posted to a punishment battalion.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>May Day 1916, calls on troops to ‘oppose the imperialist war’. Imprisoned.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>September 1916, first Spartakus letters published.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>March 1917 German sailors mutiny.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>October 1918, released from prison.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>November 9, 1918 Liebknecht proclaims the German Socialist Republic.</strong></small></p>
<p class="sm1"><small><strong>January 15, 1919 Liebknecht murdered.</strong></small></p><small>
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<p class="fst">WHEN WAR BROKE OUT in 1914, with the notable exception of the Italian, the Serbian and Russian Socialist Parties, all the sections of the Socialist International rallied to the support of their national regimes. With a complete disregard for their often repeated resolutions in the International Congresses, they voted the money and the men for the greater glory of their respective Kings, Emperors and Kaisers. In Germany 5 members of the Social Democratic Reichstag group called for a vote against the war credits. They were defeated in the caucus meeting and did not carry their opposition to the floor of the Reichstag. The long years of loyalty to the party line were too hard to break.<br>
</p>
<h4>Voted against</h4>
<p class="fst">It was not until December 1914 that Liebknecht broke discipline and voted against further war credits. Outside the Reichstag, even as early as December 1914, there was discontent with the war, particularly among the Berlin metal workers and several strikes took place. A letter, signed by Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, attacking the SPD’s war policy, stimulated the opposition within the party. By early 1915, the anti-war movement had struck roots in the Social Democratic sections in the trade unions. In large measure, it was around the figures of Liebknecht and Luxemburg that this opposition began to crystallise. In February 1915 Luxemburg, was arrested to serve a prison sentence passed the previous year. With the exception of a few short months in, 1916, she was to spend the rest of the war in prison. From this dubious vantage point she directed a stream of articles and letters against the war, the SPD policy and the International. In April 1915 the magazine <strong>Die Internationale</strong> was published. The police seized as many copies as they could get hold of, but not enough.For the first time the German socialists saw the rounded view of the revolutionary Left. On New Year’s Day 1916 the group around <strong>Die Internationale</strong> (Gruppe Internationale) met in Liebknecht’s flat and adopted Luxemburg’s document <strong>The Crisis of Social Democracy</strong> as their policy statement. Ten days later Liebknecht was expelled from the Social Democratic Reichstag caucus. The expulsion was followed in short order, by his induction into the army where he was posted to a punishment battalion. On May Day 1916, Liebknecht, in uniform, went to Berlin and posted himself near the main railway station, where troops were awaiting transport to the front. He shouted ‘Down with the imperialist war’, ‘Get out of the army, long live socialism’.<br>
</p>
<h4>Not lost</h4>
<p class="fst">At first sight this was a courageous but ridiculous action. but in fact the gesture was not lost on the growing numbers of workers who were rapidly tiring of the war. At the time of Liebknecht’s trial and his subsequent imprisonment there were large demonstrations and several strikes for his liberation. In September 1916 the first of the <strong>Spartakus Letters</strong> appeared and the Gruppe Internationale became known as the Spartakusbund. All the leading Spartakists were jailed and a number of their supporters in the trade unions were drafted to the front.</p>
<h4>Naval mutiny</h4>
<p class="fst">Small secret committees were formed, particularly among the sailors, and in March 1917, after a naval mutiny, two sailors were condemned to death and hundreds to long prison sentences.In the factories, trade union officials set up an underground organisation, the <i>Betriebsobleute</i> (shop stewards committees). The ceaseless propaganda of Luxemburg and Liebknecht was having its effect and the impact of the Russian revolution was nowhere felt more strongly than in Germany.The ingredients for the German revolution of 1918/19 were coming to the boil.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<a name="pt4"></a>
<h3>1918: the Red Flag flies over Berlin</h3>
<p class="fst">IN FEBRUARY 1918 the Petrograd Soviet elected Karl Liebknecht as an honorary member, the symbol of German resistance. Through Joffe and Bukharin at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, a deal of revolutionary propaganda was funnelled into Germany to add to the already swelling examples of the homegrown variety. Unrest at home and difficulties at the front were causing dissension in the higher echelons of imperial power. A measure of the unease felt by the General Staff is seen in the poster that General von Groner caused to be prominently displayed in Berlin: ‘Only a bastard would strike when Hindenburg calls for guns’. From then on he was known in the factories as ‘Groner the Bastard’. As a last despairing gesture the Naval High Command attempted to mount an offensive. On the eve of the sailing of the battle fleet (October 29, 1918) the Kiel sailors mutinied. Within days the mutiny spread to other ports and army regiments followed suit.<br>
</p>
<h4>General uprising</h4>
<p class="fst">In Kiel, Hamburg and Bremen, demonstrating soldiers and sailors were joined by thousands of striking workers. On November 7 the uprising was general in all the major towns. As the result of mass pressure, Liebknecht had been released in October. Making his way to Berlin he made contact with the clandestine shop stewards committees. Two meetings of the committees rejected by small majorities Liebknecht’s call for an uprising on November 2 and November 8. But the indecision of the shop stewards was being overtaken by the spontaneous rising itself.At a mass meeting on November 9 held in the grounds of the Imperial Palace, Liebknecht, standing under an improvised red flag (made from an imperial blanket) declared for the German Socialist Republic and world revolution. The right wing of the SPD who had been toying with the with the continuation of the monarchy under the Crown Prince were thrown into disarray by the speed of events.<br>
</p>
<h4>Mortally afraid</h4>
<p class="fst">Caught in the midst of negotiating a caretaker government with Prince Max of Baden they were forced to declare for the republic and set up a provisional government with six Social Democratic ‘People’s Commissars’. Mortally frightened of the revolutionary fervour in the streets, Ebert, the head of the government, hastened to make an accommodation with the army to quell the disorder.On the streets of Berlin newspaper offices were taken over, the Prussian police chief relinquished his office without a murmur to a Leftwing Social Democrat.All over Germany, state governments were handing over the reins of office to the Social Democrats. Strong points (government buildings, newspaper offices, etc) were temporarily seized and the shop stewards’ committees represented an increasingly substantial alternative focus of power. The government recognised that unless they moved swiftly they would go the same way as Kerensky in Russia the year before. The army was called in. Consisting of contingents of officers and NCOS and any reactionary filth that could be mustered from the remnants of the imperial army, the Reichswehr represented the needs of Prussian Junkerdom, the industrialists and a section of the middle class against the spectre or social revolution. On December 5 a mob of 2000 cavalry sergeants marched through Berlin calling for Ebert to assume dictatorial powers and for ‘Death to Liebknecht and Luxemburg’ and ‘Death to the Jews’. To the working class as a whole the reactionary plotting of the Social Democratic leaders was completely unknown. For them the SPD still represented the party of Wilhelm Liebknecht and Bebel, the uncompromising opponents of capitalism. At the first National Congress of the Workers and Soldiers Councils on December 16, the great majority of the delegates were trade union officials and party functionaries. The debates of the congress were frequently interrupted by delegations from the 250,000 demonstrators outside the hall, calling for the transfer of power to the Workers and Soldiers Councils. But the congress reaffirmed its support for the Ebert government. On December 30 the German Communist Party (KPD) was formed. Luxemburg, who had been released from prison in November, attempted to hold back the excessive enthusiasm of some of the delegates. She held that despite the disorders and intermittent street fighting, the masses were still too firmly wedded to the SPD for them to follow the newly formed KPD. The revolution was being slowly buried under the weight of war weariness and the Reichswehr. Liebknecht and Luxemburg, foolishly disregarding the danger, stayed in the homes of party workers. On January 15, 1919 they were arrested, taken to a hotel, beaten with rifle butts and shot. Luxemburg’s body was tossed into the Landswehr canal. The Freikorps thugs who murdered Rosa and Karl at the instigation of Ebert and Noske were the direct forerunners of the Nazis who in 1933 smashed the remnants SPD.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebknecht
For them there was only one nation –
the working class
(1 March 1969)
From Socialist Worker, No. 111, 1 March 1969, pp. 2–3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Born March 5, 1871 in Zamosc, Poland.
1886 joined socialist movement.
1889 left Poland for Zurich, Switzerland.
1894 formed the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland.
1898 moved to Germany, joined the SPD.
1898/9 attacked the revisionist ideas of Eduard Bernstein in her Reform or Revolution.
1904 jailed for three months for ’insulting the Kaiser’.
1905/6 returned to Russian Poland to take part in the first Russian Revolution.
1906 arrested in Poland, served four months in jail, released because of ill health and deported to Germany.
1905–1910 debate with Kautsky and the SPD centre on the parliamentary method of struggle.
1913 most important theoretical work The Accumulation of Capital published.
1914 sentenced but not immediately detained, to 12 months for ‘inciting soldiers to mutiny’.
February 1915–November 1918, held in prison.
November 1918 released from prison by the revolution.
December 1918 Communist Party of Germany formed.
January 15, 1919 Luxemburg murdered.
ROSA LUXEMBURG was born in Russian Poland and as a schoolgirl of 15 she joined the revolutionary organisation Proletariat. Within a few years she was recognised as a leading theoretician of Polish socialism. In 1889, warned of impending arrest, she escaped to Switzerland hidden in a haycart. In opposition to the largest section of the Polish movement, Luxemburg was a thoroughgoing internationalist. She despised the nationalism of Pilsudski and saw the national movement as a diversion at best and counterrevolutionary at worst. Together with her friend Jogiches she mounted within the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) a campaign against any tendency to nationalism. Basing herself on Marx and observable facts, she argued that with the development of industry and capitalist economy, the Polish aristocracy, which had once led the national movement, were losing ground socially and economically and were turning to the Russian Tsar for support.
Massive markets
Polish industry found that it had a massive market in less developed Russia and was equally against the idea of national independence. ‘Poland’, Luxemburg said, ‘is bound to Russia with chains of gold ... Not the national state but the state of rapine corresponds to capitalist development.’ The working class, she claimed, also had no interest in national independence. Their interests were identical with the Russian workers and their future was indissolubly linked. Under capitalism there was no possibility of national independence and under socialism there was no need for it. This theory, although neatly interlocking, makes a number of quite unwarranted assertions. The description of the attitude of the respective classes involved certainly represented tendencies within those classes and was a fair estimation of what the various class interests should be, but the ideas inside people’s heads do not directly reflect their economic interest. There was a Polish national sentiment and the PPS right-wing did have some support in the country. To understand this uncompromising stand of the Luxemburgists it is necessary to see the context in which their ideas developed. The mainstream of the PPS was devoted more to the national idea than to the struggle for socialism. Pilsudski (later dictator of Poland) engaged in terrorist attacks, intrigues with foreign capitalist governments and the desire for war to fulfill the independence of Poland in the break up of the Russian Empire.
Condemned
Daszinski, PPS leader in Galicia, even went so far as to condemn Polish mass strikes because they tended to identify the struggle of the Polish workers with that of the Russian workers and undermine the national unity of the Poles. The opposition to the extreme nationalism of the PPS is understandable and perhaps merited, but the opposition to rights of self-determination is less so. The Russian socialist position, as outlined by Lenin, was more in tune with realities of the situation. The Polish socialists should avoid the establishment of a national state, the Russian socialists should fight for the right of the Poles to have their separate state if they so wished. Under these conditions the question of self-determination is not incompatible with the class struggle, but becomes, in the Russian Empire, an adjunct to the overthrow of Tsarism. As in her polemics with Lenin on the question of party organisation, Luxemburg was arguing from abstract principles derived from the experience of a particular set of circumstances and places. But in all this there is magnificently principled consistency. For her there was only one nation – the working class whose activity and struggle were the centre of socialism.
*
Reform or revolution – the struggle in the SPD
THE LARGEST, the most influential and the most theoretically developed party of the Second International, was the SPD (German Socialist Party). A million party members, 2½ million trade union members, over 100 Reichstag deputies gave the impression of a powerful and well-nigh invincible organisation. Formed in 1875 as the result of a fusion between the followers of Lassalle and the followers of Marx, it displayed a formidable monolithic unity. Its founder member and great organiser was Bebel and its theoretician, ‘the Pope of Marxism’, was Karl Kautsky. But despite its formidable appearance, the SPD was in many ways an empty shell. Its large Reichstag contingent and its dedicated mass following disguised the fact that the real power in Germany was held by the Bundesrat (the council of princes) that ruled with semi-feudal privilege.
Rotten centre
The verbal adherence to Marx’s formulations, exemplified by Kautsky’s theoretical work, covered a profoundly reformist practice. It was to this rotten centre of world socialism that Rosa Luxemburg came in 1898. Her arrival coincided with the publication of a series of articles by Eduard Bernstein, who, under the influence of the British Fabians, produced a fundamental revision of marxism. He suggested that continuing prosperity, trade union pressure and increasing Reichstag representation made unnecessary and irrelevant the revolutionary content of the party programme. Luxemburg entered this struggle immediately and in a brilliant pamphlet Reform or Revolution she effectively answered Bernstein, demonstrating that the development of capitalism deepened its contradictions. In her own words, ‘Hardly had Bernstein rejected, in 1898, Marx’s theory of crises, when a profound crisis broke out in 1900’. The trade unions’ attempt to increase the share of the workers in society was doomed to failure because ‘This share is being reduced with the fatality of a natural process, by the growth of the productivity of labour.’ Parliament, she said, was not the citadel of power that was stormed by the aggregation of votes and could in no way be described as a socialist institution: ‘It is on the contrary, a specific form of the bourgeois class state.’ After the fashion of the SPD, the controversy was debated at the party congress and the ideas of Bernstein were rejected in theory but in practice the SPD continued as if he had been right.
Mass strike
Rosa’s researches into the Belgian general strikes of 1891 and 1893, together with her experiences of the Russian revolution of 1905 in Russian Poland, led her to develop her theory of the mass strike. In brief, she saw the development of industry and the workers’ organisations as making redundant the old revolutionary idea of direct confrontation with the state power at the barricades. As the class became more mature and organised, its ability to participate en masse, breaking down the distinctions between unions and trades, became possible. The mass strike is seen as the first stage in the mobilisation for a revolutionary seizure of power. In this schema the party has a new role to play. It must develop the mass movement in demonstrations and strikes, ‘not as a party government – not as rulers, but genuinely as leaders, as the “advance guard’’ of the proletariat.’ The economic struggle leads on to the political struggle and after every political struggle, ‘there remains a fertile sediment from which sprout a thousand economic struggles’. The movement is thus self-sustaining and self-regenerating, with the revolutionary goal built in to each action. Not surprisingly, Luxemburg’s thesis was not welcomed by the SPD’s comfortable captains of controlled radicalism. Kautsky attacked her ideas and suggested that the revolution must come as the result of a parliamentary victory for the SPD (an incredibly poor joke in the light of H. Wilson). Luxemburg replied with quotations from Kautsky’s past verbal radicalism. The trade union bureaucracy, the SPD functionaries and the SPD centre sided with Kautsky in the argument. The theoretical struggle opened by Reform and Revolution against Bernstein reached its fulfillment in the break with Kautsky and the centre. The real dividing line was not only about who is really for the revolution but also whether the working class would occupy the centre of the analysis or be relegated to a stage army conjured up by the all-seeing, all-knowing leadership. Luxemburg and her co-thinkers were to remain in the SPD until the split in 1916, but the break was really made in 1910. Long before anyone else (including Lenin) Luxemburg saw the inadequacy and incapacity of classical social democracy.
*
Rosa – the ‘brightest star’
FRANZ MEHRING said she was ‘The finest brain among the scientific successors of Marx and Engels’. Lenin thought of her as an eagle, Klara Zetkin saw her as the ‘brightest star on the socialist horizon’. There is no need to attempt to outdo them in praise of Rosa Luxemburg. The correct tribute to a revolutionary thinker and writer is to read her work, to place it and her actions in the perspective of her time and to apply that which is appropriate to our own action today. The task of reading and understanding her thought has been sadly neglected. In Stalin’s Russia she was posthumously designated a Trotskyist, an unconscious tribute to her own and Trotsky’s uncompromising revolutionism. At various times she has been claimed by all manner of anarchists, reformists and literary phrasemongers as a useful stick with which to beat Lenin, and it is true that their controversies were deeply felt and hard fought. But it is also true, and of far more importance, that they shared a common revolutionary socialist objective. In the fight for that objective they discarded and renounced, in their different ways, anarchism and reformism and all the other rubbish that stood in the way.
Active factor
The very core of her thought was the primacy of the working class as the active factor in socialist change. The structure and organisation of the party should be built from below.She knew that without the widest workers’ democracy ‘officials behind their desks would replace the workers’ hold on political power ... Socialism cannot be decreed by ukase’ (autocratic order). Her major theoretical work The Accumulation of Capital showed that imperialism, while stabilising capitalism for a time, also threatened mankind with war and barbarism. Liebknecht, when compared with Luxemburg, seems to be a much lesser figure. His activity until 1914 was largely carried out in the youth and anti-war agitation and his association with the revolutionary Left around Luxemburg was virtually non-existent. But during the war he completely dedicated himself to the whole Spartakist programme and activity. While he was no theoretician, his courage and activity as an orator and propagandist were an indispensable element in the struggle.Liebknecht was in incredibly brave and indomitable fighter. Luxemburg combined these qualities, with a genius for socialist theory and explanation. Their deaths robbed the international movement of their talents at a time when they were most needed. It is no exaggeration of their stature and importance to suggest that had they lived the whole of subsequent German and world history might have been very different. This is the fiftieth anniversary of their death, but it is not in its martyrs that the movement seeks inspiration. Death always wins in the end. The triumph and the inspiration is in the fight for the emancipation of the working class that filled the lives of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
*
‘Down with the Imperialist War!’
Born August 13, 1871.
1905 anti-war propaganda. 1907 sentenced to 18 months prison for anti-militarist agitation. While in prison elected to the Prussian Diet.
1912 elected to the Reichstag.
December 1914 voted against the Kaiser’s War Credits.
1915 Die Gruppe Internationale (The International Group) formed, later the Spartakusbund.
January 1916 Liebknecht expelled from the SPD Reichstag group. February 1916 drafted into the army and posted to a punishment battalion.
May Day 1916, calls on troops to ‘oppose the imperialist war’. Imprisoned.
September 1916, first Spartakus letters published.
March 1917 German sailors mutiny.
October 1918, released from prison.
November 9, 1918 Liebknecht proclaims the German Socialist Republic.
January 15, 1919 Liebknecht murdered.
WHEN WAR BROKE OUT in 1914, with the notable exception of the Italian, the Serbian and Russian Socialist Parties, all the sections of the Socialist International rallied to the support of their national regimes. With a complete disregard for their often repeated resolutions in the International Congresses, they voted the money and the men for the greater glory of their respective Kings, Emperors and Kaisers. In Germany 5 members of the Social Democratic Reichstag group called for a vote against the war credits. They were defeated in the caucus meeting and did not carry their opposition to the floor of the Reichstag. The long years of loyalty to the party line were too hard to break.
Voted against
It was not until December 1914 that Liebknecht broke discipline and voted against further war credits. Outside the Reichstag, even as early as December 1914, there was discontent with the war, particularly among the Berlin metal workers and several strikes took place. A letter, signed by Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, attacking the SPD’s war policy, stimulated the opposition within the party. By early 1915, the anti-war movement had struck roots in the Social Democratic sections in the trade unions. In large measure, it was around the figures of Liebknecht and Luxemburg that this opposition began to crystallise. In February 1915 Luxemburg, was arrested to serve a prison sentence passed the previous year. With the exception of a few short months in, 1916, she was to spend the rest of the war in prison. From this dubious vantage point she directed a stream of articles and letters against the war, the SPD policy and the International. In April 1915 the magazine Die Internationale was published. The police seized as many copies as they could get hold of, but not enough.For the first time the German socialists saw the rounded view of the revolutionary Left. On New Year’s Day 1916 the group around Die Internationale (Gruppe Internationale) met in Liebknecht’s flat and adopted Luxemburg’s document The Crisis of Social Democracy as their policy statement. Ten days later Liebknecht was expelled from the Social Democratic Reichstag caucus. The expulsion was followed in short order, by his induction into the army where he was posted to a punishment battalion. On May Day 1916, Liebknecht, in uniform, went to Berlin and posted himself near the main railway station, where troops were awaiting transport to the front. He shouted ‘Down with the imperialist war’, ‘Get out of the army, long live socialism’.
Not lost
At first sight this was a courageous but ridiculous action. but in fact the gesture was not lost on the growing numbers of workers who were rapidly tiring of the war. At the time of Liebknecht’s trial and his subsequent imprisonment there were large demonstrations and several strikes for his liberation. In September 1916 the first of the Spartakus Letters appeared and the Gruppe Internationale became known as the Spartakusbund. All the leading Spartakists were jailed and a number of their supporters in the trade unions were drafted to the front.
Naval mutiny
Small secret committees were formed, particularly among the sailors, and in March 1917, after a naval mutiny, two sailors were condemned to death and hundreds to long prison sentences.In the factories, trade union officials set up an underground organisation, the Betriebsobleute (shop stewards committees). The ceaseless propaganda of Luxemburg and Liebknecht was having its effect and the impact of the Russian revolution was nowhere felt more strongly than in Germany.The ingredients for the German revolution of 1918/19 were coming to the boil.
*
1918: the Red Flag flies over Berlin
IN FEBRUARY 1918 the Petrograd Soviet elected Karl Liebknecht as an honorary member, the symbol of German resistance. Through Joffe and Bukharin at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, a deal of revolutionary propaganda was funnelled into Germany to add to the already swelling examples of the homegrown variety. Unrest at home and difficulties at the front were causing dissension in the higher echelons of imperial power. A measure of the unease felt by the General Staff is seen in the poster that General von Groner caused to be prominently displayed in Berlin: ‘Only a bastard would strike when Hindenburg calls for guns’. From then on he was known in the factories as ‘Groner the Bastard’. As a last despairing gesture the Naval High Command attempted to mount an offensive. On the eve of the sailing of the battle fleet (October 29, 1918) the Kiel sailors mutinied. Within days the mutiny spread to other ports and army regiments followed suit.
General uprising
In Kiel, Hamburg and Bremen, demonstrating soldiers and sailors were joined by thousands of striking workers. On November 7 the uprising was general in all the major towns. As the result of mass pressure, Liebknecht had been released in October. Making his way to Berlin he made contact with the clandestine shop stewards committees. Two meetings of the committees rejected by small majorities Liebknecht’s call for an uprising on November 2 and November 8. But the indecision of the shop stewards was being overtaken by the spontaneous rising itself.At a mass meeting on November 9 held in the grounds of the Imperial Palace, Liebknecht, standing under an improvised red flag (made from an imperial blanket) declared for the German Socialist Republic and world revolution. The right wing of the SPD who had been toying with the with the continuation of the monarchy under the Crown Prince were thrown into disarray by the speed of events.
Mortally afraid
Caught in the midst of negotiating a caretaker government with Prince Max of Baden they were forced to declare for the republic and set up a provisional government with six Social Democratic ‘People’s Commissars’. Mortally frightened of the revolutionary fervour in the streets, Ebert, the head of the government, hastened to make an accommodation with the army to quell the disorder.On the streets of Berlin newspaper offices were taken over, the Prussian police chief relinquished his office without a murmur to a Leftwing Social Democrat.All over Germany, state governments were handing over the reins of office to the Social Democrats. Strong points (government buildings, newspaper offices, etc) were temporarily seized and the shop stewards’ committees represented an increasingly substantial alternative focus of power. The government recognised that unless they moved swiftly they would go the same way as Kerensky in Russia the year before. The army was called in. Consisting of contingents of officers and NCOS and any reactionary filth that could be mustered from the remnants of the imperial army, the Reichswehr represented the needs of Prussian Junkerdom, the industrialists and a section of the middle class against the spectre or social revolution. On December 5 a mob of 2000 cavalry sergeants marched through Berlin calling for Ebert to assume dictatorial powers and for ‘Death to Liebknecht and Luxemburg’ and ‘Death to the Jews’. To the working class as a whole the reactionary plotting of the Social Democratic leaders was completely unknown. For them the SPD still represented the party of Wilhelm Liebknecht and Bebel, the uncompromising opponents of capitalism. At the first National Congress of the Workers and Soldiers Councils on December 16, the great majority of the delegates were trade union officials and party functionaries. The debates of the congress were frequently interrupted by delegations from the 250,000 demonstrators outside the hall, calling for the transfer of power to the Workers and Soldiers Councils. But the congress reaffirmed its support for the Ebert government. On December 30 the German Communist Party (KPD) was formed. Luxemburg, who had been released from prison in November, attempted to hold back the excessive enthusiasm of some of the delegates. She held that despite the disorders and intermittent street fighting, the masses were still too firmly wedded to the SPD for them to follow the newly formed KPD. The revolution was being slowly buried under the weight of war weariness and the Reichswehr. Liebknecht and Luxemburg, foolishly disregarding the danger, stayed in the homes of party workers. On January 15, 1919 they were arrested, taken to a hotel, beaten with rifle butts and shot. Luxemburg’s body was tossed into the Landswehr canal. The Freikorps thugs who murdered Rosa and Karl at the instigation of Ebert and Noske were the direct forerunners of the Nazis who in 1933 smashed the remnants SPD.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h4>AUEW</h4>
<h1>Decline of a union</h1>
<h3>(September 1975)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 27 September 1975, p.401.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Consider the case of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. It is a sprawling giant of a union with one and a quarter million members. At one time it had branches in the United States; until comparatively recently it had branches in Japan and Australia. Once it was very rich, with a war chest of £18 million. I suppose that most people unacquainted closely with trade unionism would see it as the archetypical trade union – a disciplined industrial band of militant, <strong>Morning Star</strong> reading shop stewards joyfully ringing bells to get the lads to down tools. At the head of this grim-jawed army, Mr Hugh Scanlon, intent on a rapid march to the socialist millennium and only marginally deflected by the Maoist, Reg Birch, on the left and the Salvationist, Mr Boyd on the right.</p>
<p>Well, it is not like that at all. The union is in fact almost ungovernable. Its war chest has dwindled to £5 million. For the last twenty years its income from subscriptions has not met expenditure. Were it not for some wise investments, on solid capitalist principles, it would leave been bankrupt years ago. As one worried official told me recently: “We have a cash flow problem.”</p>
<p>The divisions and districts of the AUEW operate very much its independent fiefdoms: little power bases from which the local favourite sons sally forth to do battle, or just to enjoy the comforts of conference accommodation.</p>
<p>Today the current problems of the union and the slipping control of the dominant left wing group is not, as many commentators assume, in the institution of the postal ballot but in the fact that the current leadership has not won a major dispute for years. In 1973 the Scanlon strategy was to take on the engineering employers one at a time and roll through a massive and comprehensive claim. The opening battle was on the chosen site at Manchester, Mr Scanlon and the left’s power base. The number of shop stewards holding Communist Party cards ran into hundreds, the local officials were almost uniformly left wingers. After a protracted struggle of sit-ins, lock-outs and plain strikes the union settled for what they could have easily obtained by negotiation. In the aftermath a number of shop stewards found themselves replaced, and one of the officials, Mr Bernard Panter, failed to get re-elected. Since that time Mr Panter has relinquished his party card and is now employed by the more sedate and middle class Electrical Power Engineers Association.</p>
<p>From the Manchester debacle we can trace Mr Bob Wright’s difficulties, in his current bid for re-election to the executive council for that district. It is this problem that makes it necessary for Mr Scanlon to give his casting vote to the dubious manoeuvres to stop postal balloting and to alter the boundaries for electoral districts and the date for elections. Even so, while we hold up our hands in horror at these antics, we should recall the precedent set by governments who delay by-elections and hold up boundary changes to bolster their sagging electoral fortunes.</p>
<p>For the truth is that Mr Scanlon is, if otherwise a rather limited man, basically a democrat. In marked contrast to his predecessor, Lord Carron. Carron it was who set out what he called ‘Carron’s law’. The principle enunciated here was roughly as follows: conferences and delegations can vote the way they like but I will vote they way I like because I hold the block vote card. At one or two conferences the AUEW delegation were set into something of a turmoil from Carron’s somewhat arbitrary application of his law.</p>
<p>Hugh Scanlon is not like that. Indeed, it may well be that his attempts to run the AUEW rather like an oversized shop stewards’ committee – he was by all accounts a very accomplished convenor at Metro Vickers in the dim past – are at the root of some of his problems.</p>
<p>The basic malaise, however, is rather more deep-laid than the personality of Mr Scanlon. The AUEW is ungovernable because the men who drew up its constitution in the early 1920s had a well developed antipathy to being governed at all. Animated, as they were, by the confused principles of revolutionary syndicalism they built into the rules a whole series of checks and balances and a vastly complicated and cumbersome election machinery. The periodic election procedure does at least have the advantage of ensuring that the officials get round to see the members in the last twelve months of their office, rather in the manner of politicians kissing babies.</p>
<p>Another factor in the decline of the AUEW has been the widening, now almost unbridgeable, rift between Mr Scanlon and Mr Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers Union. In the past this formidable duo struck some terror in hearts as far apart as Cheltenham and the General Council of the TUC. When Mr Wilson told Hugh Scanlon to get his tanks off his lawn, during the 1968/69 confrontation on trade union legislation, there is little doubt that Mr Jones supplied the petrol that got them there.</p>
<p>Through their affiliation to local Labour Parties the two unions were able, by those little agreements that oil the wheels of progress, to ensure the selection of not a few left wing candidates for the parliament.</p>
<p>But all good things inevitably come to an end. With the election of the 1974 Labour Government Mr Jones was developing into a statesman. The TGWU, which elects its General Secretary once and that for life, invests its leader with immense power, including the selection of all the other officials. Such a union is capable of rapid and far reaching policy changes in the time that it takes Jack Jones to change his mind. The AUEW, with its cumbersome procedures would take years to accomplish similar shifts.</p>
<p>It was at Brighton for the 1974 TUC that the growing disenchantment between the two leaders became apparent. Mr Jones, acclaimed as the principle architect of the social contract, let it be known that he might well pop over and straighten out the AUEW delegation who were obtusely opposing his policy. Mr Scanlon who can, on occasion, turn a neat phrase, said ‘I do not care if Jack Jones is Jesus Christ, and he thinks he is, but he will not change the AEUW’s decisions.’ Significantly, perhaps, the AUEW did change their mind, taking the less than glorious course of abstention.</p>
<p>The apotheosis of Mr Jones is now complete. Where last year a few euphoric souls saw him as a future Labour Prime Minister, this year he is seen as rather more than the Labour Prime Minister we have got. As the Jones star rises that of Mr Scanlon declines. At the TUC this year he was unusually quiet. The main running for the AUEW was made by Ken Gill, the Communist leader of the Draughtsmen’s section. But it is not at all the same. Mr Gill, even if Jilly Cooper does think he is sexy, is no substitute for a confident Hugh Scanlon on form.</p>
<p>The reality of the AUEW is of a union with lots of members and not much money. Finances steadily flow away into the drain of a succession of expensive strikes. Its leadership is tired and very unsure of the future. Currently they have to fight court actions brought by their own members and produce a pay policy that is credible to the members. Nothing short of a spectacular breach of the pay limit could be counted a victory and that is not possible. The emperor is not only naked but manifestly impotent into the bargain.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
AUEW
Decline of a union
(September 1975)
From the Spectator, 27 September 1975, p.401.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Consider the case of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. It is a sprawling giant of a union with one and a quarter million members. At one time it had branches in the United States; until comparatively recently it had branches in Japan and Australia. Once it was very rich, with a war chest of £18 million. I suppose that most people unacquainted closely with trade unionism would see it as the archetypical trade union – a disciplined industrial band of militant, Morning Star reading shop stewards joyfully ringing bells to get the lads to down tools. At the head of this grim-jawed army, Mr Hugh Scanlon, intent on a rapid march to the socialist millennium and only marginally deflected by the Maoist, Reg Birch, on the left and the Salvationist, Mr Boyd on the right.
Well, it is not like that at all. The union is in fact almost ungovernable. Its war chest has dwindled to £5 million. For the last twenty years its income from subscriptions has not met expenditure. Were it not for some wise investments, on solid capitalist principles, it would leave been bankrupt years ago. As one worried official told me recently: “We have a cash flow problem.”
The divisions and districts of the AUEW operate very much its independent fiefdoms: little power bases from which the local favourite sons sally forth to do battle, or just to enjoy the comforts of conference accommodation.
Today the current problems of the union and the slipping control of the dominant left wing group is not, as many commentators assume, in the institution of the postal ballot but in the fact that the current leadership has not won a major dispute for years. In 1973 the Scanlon strategy was to take on the engineering employers one at a time and roll through a massive and comprehensive claim. The opening battle was on the chosen site at Manchester, Mr Scanlon and the left’s power base. The number of shop stewards holding Communist Party cards ran into hundreds, the local officials were almost uniformly left wingers. After a protracted struggle of sit-ins, lock-outs and plain strikes the union settled for what they could have easily obtained by negotiation. In the aftermath a number of shop stewards found themselves replaced, and one of the officials, Mr Bernard Panter, failed to get re-elected. Since that time Mr Panter has relinquished his party card and is now employed by the more sedate and middle class Electrical Power Engineers Association.
From the Manchester debacle we can trace Mr Bob Wright’s difficulties, in his current bid for re-election to the executive council for that district. It is this problem that makes it necessary for Mr Scanlon to give his casting vote to the dubious manoeuvres to stop postal balloting and to alter the boundaries for electoral districts and the date for elections. Even so, while we hold up our hands in horror at these antics, we should recall the precedent set by governments who delay by-elections and hold up boundary changes to bolster their sagging electoral fortunes.
For the truth is that Mr Scanlon is, if otherwise a rather limited man, basically a democrat. In marked contrast to his predecessor, Lord Carron. Carron it was who set out what he called ‘Carron’s law’. The principle enunciated here was roughly as follows: conferences and delegations can vote the way they like but I will vote they way I like because I hold the block vote card. At one or two conferences the AUEW delegation were set into something of a turmoil from Carron’s somewhat arbitrary application of his law.
Hugh Scanlon is not like that. Indeed, it may well be that his attempts to run the AUEW rather like an oversized shop stewards’ committee – he was by all accounts a very accomplished convenor at Metro Vickers in the dim past – are at the root of some of his problems.
The basic malaise, however, is rather more deep-laid than the personality of Mr Scanlon. The AUEW is ungovernable because the men who drew up its constitution in the early 1920s had a well developed antipathy to being governed at all. Animated, as they were, by the confused principles of revolutionary syndicalism they built into the rules a whole series of checks and balances and a vastly complicated and cumbersome election machinery. The periodic election procedure does at least have the advantage of ensuring that the officials get round to see the members in the last twelve months of their office, rather in the manner of politicians kissing babies.
Another factor in the decline of the AUEW has been the widening, now almost unbridgeable, rift between Mr Scanlon and Mr Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers Union. In the past this formidable duo struck some terror in hearts as far apart as Cheltenham and the General Council of the TUC. When Mr Wilson told Hugh Scanlon to get his tanks off his lawn, during the 1968/69 confrontation on trade union legislation, there is little doubt that Mr Jones supplied the petrol that got them there.
Through their affiliation to local Labour Parties the two unions were able, by those little agreements that oil the wheels of progress, to ensure the selection of not a few left wing candidates for the parliament.
But all good things inevitably come to an end. With the election of the 1974 Labour Government Mr Jones was developing into a statesman. The TGWU, which elects its General Secretary once and that for life, invests its leader with immense power, including the selection of all the other officials. Such a union is capable of rapid and far reaching policy changes in the time that it takes Jack Jones to change his mind. The AUEW, with its cumbersome procedures would take years to accomplish similar shifts.
It was at Brighton for the 1974 TUC that the growing disenchantment between the two leaders became apparent. Mr Jones, acclaimed as the principle architect of the social contract, let it be known that he might well pop over and straighten out the AUEW delegation who were obtusely opposing his policy. Mr Scanlon who can, on occasion, turn a neat phrase, said ‘I do not care if Jack Jones is Jesus Christ, and he thinks he is, but he will not change the AEUW’s decisions.’ Significantly, perhaps, the AUEW did change their mind, taking the less than glorious course of abstention.
The apotheosis of Mr Jones is now complete. Where last year a few euphoric souls saw him as a future Labour Prime Minister, this year he is seen as rather more than the Labour Prime Minister we have got. As the Jones star rises that of Mr Scanlon declines. At the TUC this year he was unusually quiet. The main running for the AUEW was made by Ken Gill, the Communist leader of the Draughtsmen’s section. But it is not at all the same. Mr Gill, even if Jilly Cooper does think he is sexy, is no substitute for a confident Hugh Scanlon on form.
The reality of the AUEW is of a union with lots of members and not much money. Finances steadily flow away into the drain of a succession of expensive strikes. Its leadership is tired and very unsure of the future. Currently they have to fight court actions brought by their own members and produce a pay policy that is credible to the members. Nothing short of a spectacular breach of the pay limit could be counted a victory and that is not possible. The emperor is not only naked but manifestly impotent into the bargain.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1><small>The Locusts, Cankerworms, Caterpillars and Palmerworms<br>
Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out</small></h1>
<h3>(1999)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>What Next?</strong>, No.14, 1999.<br>
Copied with thanks from the <a href="http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/" target="new">What Next?</a> Website.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
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<p class="quoteb">“I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army that I sent among you.” – <em>Joel</em> 2:25</p>
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<p class="note"><em>THIS ARTICLE is very loosely based on a talk I gave to the AGM of <strong>Revolutionary History</strong> in 1997. Although the overwhelming majority of this text is new, I believe it reasonably accurately reflects the spirit of what I said two years ago. Because I had just published a book about the IS/SWP, Ted Crawford who convened the meeting advertised the subject as</em> A History of IS<em>. At the time, having sated myself on the fractured rhythms of Cliff’s turgid prose, I could think of nothing more tedious than going through all that again so soon after I had said my last word on the subject. In consequence I chose to speak about the movement in general, emphasising that, regardless of differences on Russia, the Labour Party and much else, there was a common thread running through all the groups adhering to our tradition, one that we had to come to terms with if we were not to spend even more of our lives in grinding irrelevance. Having apologised for gathering the comrades under a false prospectus and, as a practised navigator of the revolutionary interstices, having laid the blame squarely, if unfairly, on Ted Crawford, this is roughly what I had to say.</em></p>
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<p class="fst">ALTHOUGH I HAVE been asked to speak on it, the IS/SWP is not the problem. It is just an integral part of the overall problem of the revolutionary left. That problem is of a movement that is almost totally irrelevant, one that is immured in a tradition that was once vibrant and alive but has become ossified, as a result of slavish adherence to form without reference to content or context. The SWP fondly imagines that it is building the British Bolshevik party. Others basing themselves just as rigidly in what they too see as the Bolshevik frame are rebuilding, reconstructing, organising for, or just plain proclaiming: the Fourth International.</p>
<p>The political justification for all this has not advanced one whit from the time when Lenin and Trotsky first enunciated it. Indeed the argument now takes on a course much like that of the oozelum bird, with a better than even chance of ending up like that unfortunate bird in a wisp of blue smoke. The working class, in so far as they see or hear us at all, find the theoretical underpinnings incomprehensible or just plain risible.</p>
<p>Strangely there are those among us who glory in their obscurantism, who boast of their utter fidelity to the work of L.D. Trotsky, who assiduously work through Lenin’s <strong>Collected Works</strong> looking for some apposite quotation that will set up today’s problem with the day before yesterday’s solutions. For some demented souls, merely to have found the quote is to have successfully concluded the discussion.</p>
<p>It is difficult to understand how anyone can believe that Lenin, who died 75 years ago, or Trotsky, who died 59 years ago, could have possibly produced answers to today’s difficulties. One would have thought that anyone with that kind of posthumous infallibility should have made a rather better job of things while they were alive. Surely it is unlikely that the chap who wrote <em>What Is To Be Done?</em>, promulgated the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants, insisted on the 21 conditions for affiliation to the Third International and banned factions in the Russian party will be an infallible guide about how to get close to the working class in the post Stalinist, post Social Democratic age of Tony Blair, even to someone as good at reading the chicken bones as a Sybil from Cumae or Tony Cliff.</p>
<p>As part of the homage to the Russian Revolution there is this romantic attachment to recreating the events of Petrograd in October 1917. Will the British Revolution not start until the leader has arrived at the Finland station in his sealed train? If the Bolsheviks took over the Smolny as their headquarters will the onlie begetters of British Bolshevism have to take over Cheltenham College for Young Ladies? What is the British equivalent of storming the Winter Palace? Balmoral I suppose, although how we are going to get the battleship <em>Aurora</em> up there God alone knows.</p>
<p>As one of those who came to the Trotskyist movement from the Communist Party in 1956, in my case after some nine years of CP membership, I can recall the various meetings where the contending Trotskyists set out their wares. Ted Grant’s pitch, as you might suppose, was delivered at enormous and infinitely tedious length. Unity it seemed was possible on the basis of the first four congresses of the Communist International, the <strong>Transitional Programme</strong> of 1938, <strong>Preparing for Power</strong>, nationalisation of the 100 biggest companies and the banning of under-21s from employment in billiard saloons. These high points were expounded like a recitation of the Stations of the Cross, a Via Dolorosa of the saddest kind, calculated to confer a certain charm on imminent crucifixion. Suffice it to say that I had no sense of a Damascene revelation nor any need to even consider joining the Revolutionary Socialist League. More to the point, neither did anyone else in a similar position to myself.</p>
<p>Gerry Healy, who was at that time adopting a smiling non-sectarian image, was much smarter. He addressed the actual concerns of the political minority among the 7,000 people leaving the CP. What had gone wrong? What was the cult of the individual? Was Marxism valid in the light of the experience of Stalin? These and much else were questions that were patiently and persuasively discussed.</p>
<p>The solid foundation to all this was a small arsenal of the works of Trotsky and especially, for that sort of audience, <strong>The Revolution Betrayed</strong>. The net result was that Healy’s Club took the overwhelming majority of ex-CPers who moved to Trotskyism – people of the calibre of Brian Behan, Peter Fryer, John Daniels, Ken Coates, Cliff Slaughter and Tom Kemp, to name but a few, and a small but not unimpressive sprinkling of experienced industrial militants. I yield to no one in my distaste for that truly dreadful man Gerry Healy, but for a brief year or so in the late 1950s he was the most serious exponent of revolutionary politics in Britain. In a few months in The Club I learned more about Marxism than I had done in the all the years in the CP. For that I am grateful.</p>
<p>But then having built it he proceeded to destroy it. Like the child who takes his ball home when he cannot have his own way, Healy felt the need always to be in control politically, personally and, it transpired, sexually – he was a small plump obnoxious embodiment of a power mania, of a similar character to domestic tyranny, but written just a little larger. As Brian Behan said, if the organisation gets so big that he cannot get into his Rififi-type Citroen (it was actually Tony Banda’s Rififi Citroen) and drive frantically round the country quelling any dissent, then he has to have a smash up. And in 1959 the smash up came and Healy’s organisation went from being the least sectarian of the 57 varieties to become the most exclusive and sectarian of the lot, a finely tuned machine for burning out the cadre.</p>
<p>The Socialist Review Group started off in 1950 as an orthodox Trotskyist group, with what it fondly hoped was a better theory on Russia. Its early correspondence files contain urgent appeals to Pablo and Co for SR to be installed as the British section in place of Healy’s Club. There were dreams of forming a rival Fourth International with Mangano in Italy, Chaulieu in France and maybe Shachtman in the US. In this scheme, the new International was to be headed by Natalia Trotsky – an example, perhaps, of that hereditary principle which was so fatal for the Romanovs, but more likely an early manifestation of Cliff’s inspirational opportunism. Like Healy, Cliff also believed briefly that Tito might take on a revolutionary orientation. The area of activity was the Socialist Fellowship (a left Labour organisation which served as a vehicle for the Pabloite deep entrism of Healy and Lawrence) and the recruitment area the ex-members of the Revolutionary Communist Party. In the circumstances the <strong>Socialist Review</strong> magazine was not at all like a Labour Party entrist paper, far more a Trotskyist journal replete with its cover picture of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.</p>
<p>After a brief time it became clear that the ex-members of the RCP were very few and far between. Discussions took place with Ted Grant’s group, who were slightly later expellees from Healy’s Club. These foundered on Ted’s view that state property was the most significant prerequisite for a workers’ state. Indeed, at the time he was debating whether the Labour government already had sufficient state property brownie points to qualify as a workers’ state.</p>
<p>Trotskyism was clearly approaching its post-war nadir. The movement was declining by the week, a condition that far from inducing conservation led to an acceleration of splits – the break in the FI (International Secretariat and International Committee), and the consequent splits in the sections.</p>
<p>Cliff, who learned the phrase from Trotsky, adopted primitive socialist accumulation as his guiding principle to build his minuscule group. The Labour Party was not a particularly fruitful area, but it was the place where a group of 30 could become 40 or at least replace lost members. <em>Socialist Review</em> became an entrist paper and the Labour Party a subject of investigation. It seemed that the workers were less enthused by the reforming abilities of Labour and more keen on do-it-yourself reform at the workplace, spearheaded in engineering with its tradition of shop stewards and local negotiation by lay union militants. This was indeed a profound insight and became dignified by the title “the Changing Locus of Reformism”. But like so much else in SR/IS theory, having elucidated a few insights that could be spatchcocked into the overall Group politics it no longer became necessary to elaborate or confirm that which was handy enough as it stood. Onto all this was added the Luxemburgist phase of the Group, in which Rosa’s organisational prescriptions were infinitely preferred to Ilyich’s. This approach was a great deal more attractive to the Labour left, CND and later Young Socialist audience that the Group’s magazine was addressing.</p>
<p>It has to be said that SR and IS were most pleasant organisations in which to be working in those halcyon days from 1959 to 1968. There was a great deal of inefficiency, but no more than I have personally experienced in far more Bolshevik organisations; there was a turnover, but an astonishingly large number of comrades stuck, and the group grew slowly but at a gently accelerating pace. By foresight or good luck, the growth of trade union militancy developed at the same time as the growth within the Young Socialists slowed down, and with the aid of IS theory on the rank and file it became possible to modestly recruit among militant workers, though the attrition here was greater, as the local struggles that secured recruits died down or were defeated. But recruit we did, sometimes spectacularly, as at ENV where we recruited a majority of the shop stewards’ committee.</p>
<p>It was this event that made us think of the way that transitional programmes could be worked out for industries and unions, which would promulgate comprehensible demands that would inevitably lead on to considerations of power and the need for political organisation to win the workers’ ultimate demands. The overall strategy would itself be the transitional bridge to the revolutionary party. It seemed to me at the time that this was a genuinely creative way to apply the inspired essence of Trotsky’s <em>Transitional Programme</em> of 1938. Once again this was an insight where, once it was discovered that it required little hammering to fit it into the Group’s overall political jigsaw, nothing much was done to elaborate the ideas.</p>
<p>Within IS and certainly among the leadership this was accepted as the line of march. Rank-and-file papers were produced and loose organisations grew up around them, and at their height they were distributed in tens of thousands. Here was a tenuous but hopeful base. Cliff produced two pamphlets that were successful in popularising the IS among industrial workers, one on incomes policy and the rank and file, and the other on productivity bargaining. Both sold in thousands of copies and were an earnest in themselves that non-sectarian activity addressed to advanced workers’ specific concerns brings its own rewards.</p>
<p>In 18 years the Cliff group had grown from 30 to about 800 members, practically all of that growth taking place in the course of the 1960s. It seemed to indicate that patient work which eschewed stunts and sudden changes of line might start to build a tenuous but real presence in the workers’ movement. During those years, most of them lonely and not rewarded with success, the recruiting focus changed from ex-RCP members, to Labour Youth, to CND and the Young Socialists, all of this to build a group that, it was hoped, would be able to recruit workers into a significant socialist organisation. The focus might change but the objective was unchanged.</p>
<p>For a time it seemed that the IS Group might transcend the constrictions of Trotskyist orthodoxy. If that was less the result of taking organisational thought than happenstance, then that is the way things actually happen in even the most Leninist organisation, including Lenin’s. It is at moments like this, where an organisation sits on the brink of modest successes, that the members should be most vigilant. It is just at such times that organic growth can be forsaken for some get rich in a hurry scheme.</p>
<p>The catalyst was Enoch Powell’s racist speech about “the Tiber foaming with much blood”, which caused a furore and gave an opportunity to some Mosleyite dockers at Tooley Street to set up a dockers’ demonstration in support of Powell. On the left there was a panicky discussion on the urgent menace of fascism, predicated on Powell acquiring a mass base among disaffected workers. In fact, there was no urgent menace and Powell was almost as surprised as the rest of us at London dockers rallying to his support – such fellows were hardly in accord with his romantic notions of empire. This did, however, provide Cliff with the opportunity to produce a plan of Baldrickesque cunning that, he fondly imagined, might make him member-rich at an accelerated rate. He embarked on a unity campaign, with approaches made to organisations ranging from the CP to Militant and taking in Healy’s Socialist Labour League and the International Marxist Group. Naturally enough, such a dive back into the past required the 1903 Lenin mode rather than the 1904 Luxemburgist style.</p>
<p>In the event, nobody answered the call, with the exception of Sean Matgamna and his minuscule James P. Cannon fan club. This particular “historic” fusion was arranged at a meeting between Cliff and Matgamna in the former’s back room. The IS Group acquired a fully fledged “Trotskyist Tendency” without its members or its elected committees having any say in the matter. This was hardly the result that had been planned, and the dubious benefits of a handful of extra members was made entirely nugatory by the time expended in rehashing old disputes, a pastime Sean enjoyed immensely and indulged in at tedious length. If today he rejects the Cannon Fan Club for the Max Shachtman Appreciation Society, he is still as prolix as he ever was. It is a measure of the liberal regime in the IS Group that it took three years of faction fighting to lose the Matgamna group, whereas Healy and Grant had previously dispensed with his membership far more expeditiously.</p>
<p>The failure of the unity campaign was of considerably less significance than the fact that the Group came out of it a markedly different organisation. It was not noticeably more efficient for all its democratic centralism, but it was markedly less tolerant of dissent than previously. Cliff, having invited Matgamna in on his own say so, felt that he should be able to banish him with equally arbitrary facility. The fact that an entire conference had devoted itself to framing a new “democratic centralist” constitution which enshrined the rights of factions seemed beside the point to Cliff. His Lenin bore an uncanny resemblance to Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts.</p>
<p>After the unravelling of the fusion with the Trotskyist Tendency in 1971, tolerance of any form of dissent was increasingly harshly treated and all too often a desire to carry on a discussion beyond Cliff’s patience was seen as a particular case of dissension. If the growing harshness of the regime could in part be attributed to the faction fight with Matgamna, this was merely the accelerant rather than the primary force. The theoretical underpinnings were provided by Cliff’s four volumes on Lenin. It was the story of the sort of man Lenin might have been if he had only had the advantage of reading Cliff’s biography of him. But the Group did grow, although whether there was any connection between the growth and the adoption of democratic centralism is doubtful.</p>
<p>Rather more significant was the growing industrial militancy and the development of the print shop into an asset capable of generating significant surpluses. This was effected by an extremely large donation from one comrade. It is possible to run a substantial apparat by exacting extortionate subscriptions and quotas from the members, but this will always be problematical because the largest costs are incurred in producing agitational and theoretical material. Not only that, if the membership falls it is just not possible to double up on the already high subscriptions to maintain the same infrastructure. All of which can mean that an organisational hiccough can become a downward spiralling crisis. Nothing beats a print shop for ironing out the bumps and troughs in the building of a small group. Print and paper for your own journals are at cost, printers come at full time revolutionary wage rates and jobbing work supplies the surpluses for full timers’ wages, posters, leaflets and travel expenses. The great technological breakthrough of web offset printing has been the making of many a revolutionary socialist group. The forerunner in this was Gerry Healy, of whose faction fight with John Lawrence it was said that he won because, although he had fewer votes, he had more shares in the <strong>Socialist Outlook</strong> publishing company. The Militant Tendency had their print shop and a vast complement of full time workers. Nowadays any group who can raise a few grand can, even if they cannot run to a web press, purchase a very serviceable sheet-fed machine. Thus, unfortunately, has photo-setting and offset technology conspired to give life to that which would otherwise have been happily stillborn. Otherwise poverty stricken organisations can now operate as a capitalist entrepreneur, able to maintain a subsidised full time apparatus far beyond anything they could afford on the basis of working class members’ subscriptions.</p>
<p>Local organisers are responsible to the centre and their tasks and instructions emanate from that location. In the early 1970s a number of IS membership campaigns were launched in which Cliff, with his charts and league tables, encouraged a spirit of competition among the organisers that had more than a passing resemblance to Stakhanovism. Last month’s inflated figures were surpassed by this month’s even more optimistic results, while both would be easily outstripped by next month’s daringly imaginative claims. The new members were rarely seen or heard from again, and I was reminded of a report sent in by Will Fancy some years before, which detailed the work of the Eltham Socialist Review Group branch. “Comrade X”, he wrote, “does not attend branch meetings, does not sell the paper and does not pay subs, but he can otherwise be considered a keen and enthusiastic member of the Group.”</p>
<p>The Group quite quickly became, whether as IS or as the Socialist Workers Party, a place where opposition was rapidly extirpated, and very soon a culture developed where there was no facility for disagreement and no culture of discussion or constructive debate. In its dash for the Leninist party, it had created something very similar to the pre-1956 Communist Party, without anything like that party’s industrial cadre.</p>
<p>The sort of complaints that IS and SWP expellees make are not new and can be replicated in other organisations. I remember talking to Harry Wicks who bitterly complained about how, in the early 1930s, Reg Groves maintained a correspondence with Trotsky on Prinkipo, which Harry only found out about in the 1960s when the American SWP published Trotsky’s replies from the archives. At the time, Harry and Reg were living in the same house.</p>
<p>The Revolutionary Socialist League of Denzil Harber and Starkey Jackson before the fusion of the British Trotskyists in 1944 maintained a regime of which Yezhov and Yagoda would have been proud. One particularly choice piece of Machiavellian sadism occurred during the war, when Harber’s faction, who happened to have a majority, put the Right faction, known as the Trotskyist Opposition and led by John Lawrence and Hilda Lane, under the direct and individual discipline of the Left faction. The RSL had perhaps 30 members at the time, although it was the British section of the Fourth International.</p>
<p>At the time of the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1944, James P. Cannon, doing his cut-price Zinoviev act, set up a minority faction led by Healy and Lawrence even before the fusion conference. After the war Pablo and Mandel, described by Cannon as “our young men in Europe”, carried on in the worst traditions of the Comintern, nurturing and sustaining Healy and making and breaking international leaderships while generally playing the fool with both the cadre and the politics of the International.</p>
<p>The RCP, which was in many respects the best of the bunch although a massively flawed organisation, found that all the brave promises of the Founding Congress of 1938 were empty, and drizzled away their remaining time in endless faction fights. As Jock Haston said: “We produced so many internal bulletins that we did not have time to do anything else even if there had been anything to do.”</p>
<p>The stories about Healy are beyond counting and his name has become a byword for everything that is obnoxious and repellent about our movement. There are those who say in his mitigation that he had a sense of humour, which is true. Whether you find gallows humour attractive or not is probably dependent on how close you are to dangling from the end of his gibbet.</p>
<p>The story is repeated again and again for different organisations. The Militant Tendency (now the Socialist Party) has over its long lifetime produced a few little gems that will sound familiar to practised malcontents. In a paper published on the Internet, Dennis Tourish of the University of Ulster, a specialist in Cultic Studies, produces this quotation from a disgruntled supporter of Ted Grant during the faction fight with Peter Taaffe:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“To cross the General Secretary would result in a tantrum or some kind of outburst. Comrades became fearful of initiative without the sanction of the General Secretary. Incredibly, even the opening of a window during an EC meeting would not go ahead without a nod from him! Under these conditions, the idea of ’collective leadership’ is a nonsense.... The EC as a whole – which is supposed to be a sub-committee of the CC – is out of control. In 99% of cases the CC is simply a rubber stamp for the EC.”</p>
<p class="fst">And so say all of us, because we have been saying something similar whatever organisation we happened to be talking about.</p>
<p>The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has developed from a couple of fusions with the Matgamnaite core that was defused from IS. First with the Left Faction, who were expelled from IS in 1974, and later with Alan Thornett’s group the Workers Socialist League. Strange to relate, for a man who was a serial expellee from the SLL, the RSL and IS and complained bitterly at this cavalier treatment, Sean had a fairly short way with his own dissenters, and before too long the Left Faction took on an independent role as Workers Power and Alan Thornett was working elsewhere on a less taxing project. The AWL’s journal <strong>Workers’ Liberty</strong>, has a spurious air of openness that is in fact a stratagem to solicit contrary opinions and then subject them to such a remorseless weight of Matgamna’s polemic as to make the <em>peine forte et dure</em> seem like a pleasurable alternative.</p>
<p>For group gurus, the organisation is an extension of their personality. Like some corner shopkeeper they retain it to themselves, defending their control with a fervour that can spill over into savagery. It fulfils their everyday needs, and nourishes their fantasies in a milieu in which they are definitely more equal than others. Matgamna is just such a case in point, and as editor of <strong>Workers’ Liberty</strong> he ensures that hardly an issue passes without an article of wearisome length and dubious relevance from his hand. In addition, and this has got to come close to abuse of privilege, he frequently puts in one of his own poems – and the most we can say about that is that Ireland now has its own champion to compete on equal terms with Scotland’s William McGonagall.</p>
<p>One of the other dubious characteristics that we have inherited from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party is the studied air of absolute certainty that suffuses their work. Lenin and Trotsky continually give the impression that Marxism is an exact science, and is because they say so, and that because they are Marxists then what they say is, by definition, correct. (Prior to 1917 their claims lacked a certain credibility because they argued violently with one another and they could not both be right.) This feature of their work, which is as much a matter of style as of anything else, has been adopted with particular enthusiasm by the Church of Latter Day Trotskyism. Those whose record of achievement should be accompanied by an attitude of modest stillness and humility are given to statements of such mind blowing arrogance as to make one’s colitis become general. I cite a statement from a 1977 internal bulletin of the Militant Tendency, which is a paradigm of this particular conceit:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“What guarantees the superiority of our tendency ... from all others inside and outside the labour movement is our understanding of all the myriad factors which determine the attitudes and moods of the workers at each stage. Not only the objective but the subjective ones too.”</p>
<p class="fst">If you believe this one, then you will readily accept that, despite my advancing years, nubile young women frequently mistake me for Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s hell I tell you, comrades.</p>
<p>This is the movement we inherited, and with all its faults it has maintained the thin revolutionary thread that would allow us to pass it on to the next generation. Without taking thought and making extensive amendments, I do not think we should. Its organisational forms have been the endlessly repeated vehicle for the petty careers of small time power maniacs, whose pathetic compulsion to be cock of their own small malodorous midden would be an object of sympathy if they had not wrecked far too many useful and irreplaceable comrades. We have all been here before, some of us several times, and as Denis Healy said: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Traditionally our movement’s response to this dilemma has been quite the contrary – the comrades are called upon to make an especial sacrifice to buy a bigger shovel and then, with passionate exhortation, directed to prolonged and frenzied digging on a three-shift system.</p>
<p>The Leninism of 1917 was addressing problems that have not existed for three-quarters of a century, and are of little help to revolutionary socialists in 1999. The Leninism of the 1930s, which we call Trotskyism, offers us the same thing only written very, very small. The yearning for an international leadership that would bestride the world workers’ movement turned out to be the plaything of Cannon, Pablo, Healy and Lambert. The brave hopes of 1938 have ended in the petty squabbles and squalid manoeuvrings that have characterised the years since Trotsky’s death. The organisational principles that were intended to sharply differentiate the revolutionaries from Social Democracy and Stalinism need to be re-examined in the light of the political demise of these false doctrines. The FI, which was to stand as a rallying point against the upper and lower millstones of Stalinism and Reformism, went into a flat spin when both of these abominations shuffled off the stage. Trotskyism seemed unable to define itself without the twin evils it never quite came to grips with.</p>
<p>The workers deserve much better than the spectacle of endless splits over trifles and unquestioning adherence to outdated formulae. I am in general against quotations from the pen of the masters, but there is one from Trotsky that I like to consider in moments of high emotion or depression: <em>Learn to Think</em>. If we apply this maxim seriously then there are no eternal verities, and everything is open to re-examination and argument.</p>
<p>Recently I have been cheered by the work that Cyril Smith has done, and Mike Jones is doing us all a service by shedding light on the early years of German Communism and the founding of the Communist International. Al Richardson, who has a splendid habit of blowing raspberries at radical chic, has challenged the myths that have for too long been our smelly comfort blanket. Whether they are right or wrong I don’t know nor do I care. They are doing what Marxists should be doing and have not done nearly enough – putting things up for scrutiny and deciding if they are needed on the voyage. <strong>Revolutionary History</strong>, <strong>New Interventions</strong> and <strong>What Next?</strong> are another welcome novelty of recent years. All of these journals are unaffiliated, open, intelligent, not afraid to deal with any subject and valued by a small but significant readership. Such independent publication is, of course, anathema to the confirmed sect-dweller and it will come as no surprise that Sean Matgamna has allowed himself several splenetic yelps of rage at the iniquities of these magazines.</p>
<p>This has been a long voyage and we have made much less progress than I imagined we would when I was a 12 year old who thought he was a Marxist. So there is still a long way to go and the journey will be that much easier if we clear out some self-constructed obstacles that bestrew our path. The broad socialist movement remains the place where we can transcend our own limitations and limited vision. Most of us have been at our best in that movement; it is where have experienced those fleeting certainties about how we can transform ourselves in the cooperative process of transforming society.</p>
<p>I would like to finish with a verse from a poem by Erich Fried, a German Socialist who died quite recently:</p>
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What was that?<br>
When will it come again?</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The Locusts, Cankerworms, Caterpillars and Palmerworms
Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out
(1999)
From What Next?, No.14, 1999.
Copied with thanks from the What Next? Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
“I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army that I sent among you.” – Joel 2:25
THIS ARTICLE is very loosely based on a talk I gave to the AGM of Revolutionary History in 1997. Although the overwhelming majority of this text is new, I believe it reasonably accurately reflects the spirit of what I said two years ago. Because I had just published a book about the IS/SWP, Ted Crawford who convened the meeting advertised the subject as A History of IS. At the time, having sated myself on the fractured rhythms of Cliff’s turgid prose, I could think of nothing more tedious than going through all that again so soon after I had said my last word on the subject. In consequence I chose to speak about the movement in general, emphasising that, regardless of differences on Russia, the Labour Party and much else, there was a common thread running through all the groups adhering to our tradition, one that we had to come to terms with if we were not to spend even more of our lives in grinding irrelevance. Having apologised for gathering the comrades under a false prospectus and, as a practised navigator of the revolutionary interstices, having laid the blame squarely, if unfairly, on Ted Crawford, this is roughly what I had to say.
ALTHOUGH I HAVE been asked to speak on it, the IS/SWP is not the problem. It is just an integral part of the overall problem of the revolutionary left. That problem is of a movement that is almost totally irrelevant, one that is immured in a tradition that was once vibrant and alive but has become ossified, as a result of slavish adherence to form without reference to content or context. The SWP fondly imagines that it is building the British Bolshevik party. Others basing themselves just as rigidly in what they too see as the Bolshevik frame are rebuilding, reconstructing, organising for, or just plain proclaiming: the Fourth International.
The political justification for all this has not advanced one whit from the time when Lenin and Trotsky first enunciated it. Indeed the argument now takes on a course much like that of the oozelum bird, with a better than even chance of ending up like that unfortunate bird in a wisp of blue smoke. The working class, in so far as they see or hear us at all, find the theoretical underpinnings incomprehensible or just plain risible.
Strangely there are those among us who glory in their obscurantism, who boast of their utter fidelity to the work of L.D. Trotsky, who assiduously work through Lenin’s Collected Works looking for some apposite quotation that will set up today’s problem with the day before yesterday’s solutions. For some demented souls, merely to have found the quote is to have successfully concluded the discussion.
It is difficult to understand how anyone can believe that Lenin, who died 75 years ago, or Trotsky, who died 59 years ago, could have possibly produced answers to today’s difficulties. One would have thought that anyone with that kind of posthumous infallibility should have made a rather better job of things while they were alive. Surely it is unlikely that the chap who wrote What Is To Be Done?, promulgated the democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants, insisted on the 21 conditions for affiliation to the Third International and banned factions in the Russian party will be an infallible guide about how to get close to the working class in the post Stalinist, post Social Democratic age of Tony Blair, even to someone as good at reading the chicken bones as a Sybil from Cumae or Tony Cliff.
As part of the homage to the Russian Revolution there is this romantic attachment to recreating the events of Petrograd in October 1917. Will the British Revolution not start until the leader has arrived at the Finland station in his sealed train? If the Bolsheviks took over the Smolny as their headquarters will the onlie begetters of British Bolshevism have to take over Cheltenham College for Young Ladies? What is the British equivalent of storming the Winter Palace? Balmoral I suppose, although how we are going to get the battleship Aurora up there God alone knows.
As one of those who came to the Trotskyist movement from the Communist Party in 1956, in my case after some nine years of CP membership, I can recall the various meetings where the contending Trotskyists set out their wares. Ted Grant’s pitch, as you might suppose, was delivered at enormous and infinitely tedious length. Unity it seemed was possible on the basis of the first four congresses of the Communist International, the Transitional Programme of 1938, Preparing for Power, nationalisation of the 100 biggest companies and the banning of under-21s from employment in billiard saloons. These high points were expounded like a recitation of the Stations of the Cross, a Via Dolorosa of the saddest kind, calculated to confer a certain charm on imminent crucifixion. Suffice it to say that I had no sense of a Damascene revelation nor any need to even consider joining the Revolutionary Socialist League. More to the point, neither did anyone else in a similar position to myself.
Gerry Healy, who was at that time adopting a smiling non-sectarian image, was much smarter. He addressed the actual concerns of the political minority among the 7,000 people leaving the CP. What had gone wrong? What was the cult of the individual? Was Marxism valid in the light of the experience of Stalin? These and much else were questions that were patiently and persuasively discussed.
The solid foundation to all this was a small arsenal of the works of Trotsky and especially, for that sort of audience, The Revolution Betrayed. The net result was that Healy’s Club took the overwhelming majority of ex-CPers who moved to Trotskyism – people of the calibre of Brian Behan, Peter Fryer, John Daniels, Ken Coates, Cliff Slaughter and Tom Kemp, to name but a few, and a small but not unimpressive sprinkling of experienced industrial militants. I yield to no one in my distaste for that truly dreadful man Gerry Healy, but for a brief year or so in the late 1950s he was the most serious exponent of revolutionary politics in Britain. In a few months in The Club I learned more about Marxism than I had done in the all the years in the CP. For that I am grateful.
But then having built it he proceeded to destroy it. Like the child who takes his ball home when he cannot have his own way, Healy felt the need always to be in control politically, personally and, it transpired, sexually – he was a small plump obnoxious embodiment of a power mania, of a similar character to domestic tyranny, but written just a little larger. As Brian Behan said, if the organisation gets so big that he cannot get into his Rififi-type Citroen (it was actually Tony Banda’s Rififi Citroen) and drive frantically round the country quelling any dissent, then he has to have a smash up. And in 1959 the smash up came and Healy’s organisation went from being the least sectarian of the 57 varieties to become the most exclusive and sectarian of the lot, a finely tuned machine for burning out the cadre.
The Socialist Review Group started off in 1950 as an orthodox Trotskyist group, with what it fondly hoped was a better theory on Russia. Its early correspondence files contain urgent appeals to Pablo and Co for SR to be installed as the British section in place of Healy’s Club. There were dreams of forming a rival Fourth International with Mangano in Italy, Chaulieu in France and maybe Shachtman in the US. In this scheme, the new International was to be headed by Natalia Trotsky – an example, perhaps, of that hereditary principle which was so fatal for the Romanovs, but more likely an early manifestation of Cliff’s inspirational opportunism. Like Healy, Cliff also believed briefly that Tito might take on a revolutionary orientation. The area of activity was the Socialist Fellowship (a left Labour organisation which served as a vehicle for the Pabloite deep entrism of Healy and Lawrence) and the recruitment area the ex-members of the Revolutionary Communist Party. In the circumstances the Socialist Review magazine was not at all like a Labour Party entrist paper, far more a Trotskyist journal replete with its cover picture of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
After a brief time it became clear that the ex-members of the RCP were very few and far between. Discussions took place with Ted Grant’s group, who were slightly later expellees from Healy’s Club. These foundered on Ted’s view that state property was the most significant prerequisite for a workers’ state. Indeed, at the time he was debating whether the Labour government already had sufficient state property brownie points to qualify as a workers’ state.
Trotskyism was clearly approaching its post-war nadir. The movement was declining by the week, a condition that far from inducing conservation led to an acceleration of splits – the break in the FI (International Secretariat and International Committee), and the consequent splits in the sections.
Cliff, who learned the phrase from Trotsky, adopted primitive socialist accumulation as his guiding principle to build his minuscule group. The Labour Party was not a particularly fruitful area, but it was the place where a group of 30 could become 40 or at least replace lost members. Socialist Review became an entrist paper and the Labour Party a subject of investigation. It seemed that the workers were less enthused by the reforming abilities of Labour and more keen on do-it-yourself reform at the workplace, spearheaded in engineering with its tradition of shop stewards and local negotiation by lay union militants. This was indeed a profound insight and became dignified by the title “the Changing Locus of Reformism”. But like so much else in SR/IS theory, having elucidated a few insights that could be spatchcocked into the overall Group politics it no longer became necessary to elaborate or confirm that which was handy enough as it stood. Onto all this was added the Luxemburgist phase of the Group, in which Rosa’s organisational prescriptions were infinitely preferred to Ilyich’s. This approach was a great deal more attractive to the Labour left, CND and later Young Socialist audience that the Group’s magazine was addressing.
It has to be said that SR and IS were most pleasant organisations in which to be working in those halcyon days from 1959 to 1968. There was a great deal of inefficiency, but no more than I have personally experienced in far more Bolshevik organisations; there was a turnover, but an astonishingly large number of comrades stuck, and the group grew slowly but at a gently accelerating pace. By foresight or good luck, the growth of trade union militancy developed at the same time as the growth within the Young Socialists slowed down, and with the aid of IS theory on the rank and file it became possible to modestly recruit among militant workers, though the attrition here was greater, as the local struggles that secured recruits died down or were defeated. But recruit we did, sometimes spectacularly, as at ENV where we recruited a majority of the shop stewards’ committee.
It was this event that made us think of the way that transitional programmes could be worked out for industries and unions, which would promulgate comprehensible demands that would inevitably lead on to considerations of power and the need for political organisation to win the workers’ ultimate demands. The overall strategy would itself be the transitional bridge to the revolutionary party. It seemed to me at the time that this was a genuinely creative way to apply the inspired essence of Trotsky’s Transitional Programme of 1938. Once again this was an insight where, once it was discovered that it required little hammering to fit it into the Group’s overall political jigsaw, nothing much was done to elaborate the ideas.
Within IS and certainly among the leadership this was accepted as the line of march. Rank-and-file papers were produced and loose organisations grew up around them, and at their height they were distributed in tens of thousands. Here was a tenuous but hopeful base. Cliff produced two pamphlets that were successful in popularising the IS among industrial workers, one on incomes policy and the rank and file, and the other on productivity bargaining. Both sold in thousands of copies and were an earnest in themselves that non-sectarian activity addressed to advanced workers’ specific concerns brings its own rewards.
In 18 years the Cliff group had grown from 30 to about 800 members, practically all of that growth taking place in the course of the 1960s. It seemed to indicate that patient work which eschewed stunts and sudden changes of line might start to build a tenuous but real presence in the workers’ movement. During those years, most of them lonely and not rewarded with success, the recruiting focus changed from ex-RCP members, to Labour Youth, to CND and the Young Socialists, all of this to build a group that, it was hoped, would be able to recruit workers into a significant socialist organisation. The focus might change but the objective was unchanged.
For a time it seemed that the IS Group might transcend the constrictions of Trotskyist orthodoxy. If that was less the result of taking organisational thought than happenstance, then that is the way things actually happen in even the most Leninist organisation, including Lenin’s. It is at moments like this, where an organisation sits on the brink of modest successes, that the members should be most vigilant. It is just at such times that organic growth can be forsaken for some get rich in a hurry scheme.
The catalyst was Enoch Powell’s racist speech about “the Tiber foaming with much blood”, which caused a furore and gave an opportunity to some Mosleyite dockers at Tooley Street to set up a dockers’ demonstration in support of Powell. On the left there was a panicky discussion on the urgent menace of fascism, predicated on Powell acquiring a mass base among disaffected workers. In fact, there was no urgent menace and Powell was almost as surprised as the rest of us at London dockers rallying to his support – such fellows were hardly in accord with his romantic notions of empire. This did, however, provide Cliff with the opportunity to produce a plan of Baldrickesque cunning that, he fondly imagined, might make him member-rich at an accelerated rate. He embarked on a unity campaign, with approaches made to organisations ranging from the CP to Militant and taking in Healy’s Socialist Labour League and the International Marxist Group. Naturally enough, such a dive back into the past required the 1903 Lenin mode rather than the 1904 Luxemburgist style.
In the event, nobody answered the call, with the exception of Sean Matgamna and his minuscule James P. Cannon fan club. This particular “historic” fusion was arranged at a meeting between Cliff and Matgamna in the former’s back room. The IS Group acquired a fully fledged “Trotskyist Tendency” without its members or its elected committees having any say in the matter. This was hardly the result that had been planned, and the dubious benefits of a handful of extra members was made entirely nugatory by the time expended in rehashing old disputes, a pastime Sean enjoyed immensely and indulged in at tedious length. If today he rejects the Cannon Fan Club for the Max Shachtman Appreciation Society, he is still as prolix as he ever was. It is a measure of the liberal regime in the IS Group that it took three years of faction fighting to lose the Matgamna group, whereas Healy and Grant had previously dispensed with his membership far more expeditiously.
The failure of the unity campaign was of considerably less significance than the fact that the Group came out of it a markedly different organisation. It was not noticeably more efficient for all its democratic centralism, but it was markedly less tolerant of dissent than previously. Cliff, having invited Matgamna in on his own say so, felt that he should be able to banish him with equally arbitrary facility. The fact that an entire conference had devoted itself to framing a new “democratic centralist” constitution which enshrined the rights of factions seemed beside the point to Cliff. His Lenin bore an uncanny resemblance to Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts.
After the unravelling of the fusion with the Trotskyist Tendency in 1971, tolerance of any form of dissent was increasingly harshly treated and all too often a desire to carry on a discussion beyond Cliff’s patience was seen as a particular case of dissension. If the growing harshness of the regime could in part be attributed to the faction fight with Matgamna, this was merely the accelerant rather than the primary force. The theoretical underpinnings were provided by Cliff’s four volumes on Lenin. It was the story of the sort of man Lenin might have been if he had only had the advantage of reading Cliff’s biography of him. But the Group did grow, although whether there was any connection between the growth and the adoption of democratic centralism is doubtful.
Rather more significant was the growing industrial militancy and the development of the print shop into an asset capable of generating significant surpluses. This was effected by an extremely large donation from one comrade. It is possible to run a substantial apparat by exacting extortionate subscriptions and quotas from the members, but this will always be problematical because the largest costs are incurred in producing agitational and theoretical material. Not only that, if the membership falls it is just not possible to double up on the already high subscriptions to maintain the same infrastructure. All of which can mean that an organisational hiccough can become a downward spiralling crisis. Nothing beats a print shop for ironing out the bumps and troughs in the building of a small group. Print and paper for your own journals are at cost, printers come at full time revolutionary wage rates and jobbing work supplies the surpluses for full timers’ wages, posters, leaflets and travel expenses. The great technological breakthrough of web offset printing has been the making of many a revolutionary socialist group. The forerunner in this was Gerry Healy, of whose faction fight with John Lawrence it was said that he won because, although he had fewer votes, he had more shares in the Socialist Outlook publishing company. The Militant Tendency had their print shop and a vast complement of full time workers. Nowadays any group who can raise a few grand can, even if they cannot run to a web press, purchase a very serviceable sheet-fed machine. Thus, unfortunately, has photo-setting and offset technology conspired to give life to that which would otherwise have been happily stillborn. Otherwise poverty stricken organisations can now operate as a capitalist entrepreneur, able to maintain a subsidised full time apparatus far beyond anything they could afford on the basis of working class members’ subscriptions.
Local organisers are responsible to the centre and their tasks and instructions emanate from that location. In the early 1970s a number of IS membership campaigns were launched in which Cliff, with his charts and league tables, encouraged a spirit of competition among the organisers that had more than a passing resemblance to Stakhanovism. Last month’s inflated figures were surpassed by this month’s even more optimistic results, while both would be easily outstripped by next month’s daringly imaginative claims. The new members were rarely seen or heard from again, and I was reminded of a report sent in by Will Fancy some years before, which detailed the work of the Eltham Socialist Review Group branch. “Comrade X”, he wrote, “does not attend branch meetings, does not sell the paper and does not pay subs, but he can otherwise be considered a keen and enthusiastic member of the Group.”
The Group quite quickly became, whether as IS or as the Socialist Workers Party, a place where opposition was rapidly extirpated, and very soon a culture developed where there was no facility for disagreement and no culture of discussion or constructive debate. In its dash for the Leninist party, it had created something very similar to the pre-1956 Communist Party, without anything like that party’s industrial cadre.
The sort of complaints that IS and SWP expellees make are not new and can be replicated in other organisations. I remember talking to Harry Wicks who bitterly complained about how, in the early 1930s, Reg Groves maintained a correspondence with Trotsky on Prinkipo, which Harry only found out about in the 1960s when the American SWP published Trotsky’s replies from the archives. At the time, Harry and Reg were living in the same house.
The Revolutionary Socialist League of Denzil Harber and Starkey Jackson before the fusion of the British Trotskyists in 1944 maintained a regime of which Yezhov and Yagoda would have been proud. One particularly choice piece of Machiavellian sadism occurred during the war, when Harber’s faction, who happened to have a majority, put the Right faction, known as the Trotskyist Opposition and led by John Lawrence and Hilda Lane, under the direct and individual discipline of the Left faction. The RSL had perhaps 30 members at the time, although it was the British section of the Fourth International.
At the time of the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1944, James P. Cannon, doing his cut-price Zinoviev act, set up a minority faction led by Healy and Lawrence even before the fusion conference. After the war Pablo and Mandel, described by Cannon as “our young men in Europe”, carried on in the worst traditions of the Comintern, nurturing and sustaining Healy and making and breaking international leaderships while generally playing the fool with both the cadre and the politics of the International.
The RCP, which was in many respects the best of the bunch although a massively flawed organisation, found that all the brave promises of the Founding Congress of 1938 were empty, and drizzled away their remaining time in endless faction fights. As Jock Haston said: “We produced so many internal bulletins that we did not have time to do anything else even if there had been anything to do.”
The stories about Healy are beyond counting and his name has become a byword for everything that is obnoxious and repellent about our movement. There are those who say in his mitigation that he had a sense of humour, which is true. Whether you find gallows humour attractive or not is probably dependent on how close you are to dangling from the end of his gibbet.
The story is repeated again and again for different organisations. The Militant Tendency (now the Socialist Party) has over its long lifetime produced a few little gems that will sound familiar to practised malcontents. In a paper published on the Internet, Dennis Tourish of the University of Ulster, a specialist in Cultic Studies, produces this quotation from a disgruntled supporter of Ted Grant during the faction fight with Peter Taaffe:
“To cross the General Secretary would result in a tantrum or some kind of outburst. Comrades became fearful of initiative without the sanction of the General Secretary. Incredibly, even the opening of a window during an EC meeting would not go ahead without a nod from him! Under these conditions, the idea of ’collective leadership’ is a nonsense.... The EC as a whole – which is supposed to be a sub-committee of the CC – is out of control. In 99% of cases the CC is simply a rubber stamp for the EC.”
And so say all of us, because we have been saying something similar whatever organisation we happened to be talking about.
The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has developed from a couple of fusions with the Matgamnaite core that was defused from IS. First with the Left Faction, who were expelled from IS in 1974, and later with Alan Thornett’s group the Workers Socialist League. Strange to relate, for a man who was a serial expellee from the SLL, the RSL and IS and complained bitterly at this cavalier treatment, Sean had a fairly short way with his own dissenters, and before too long the Left Faction took on an independent role as Workers Power and Alan Thornett was working elsewhere on a less taxing project. The AWL’s journal Workers’ Liberty, has a spurious air of openness that is in fact a stratagem to solicit contrary opinions and then subject them to such a remorseless weight of Matgamna’s polemic as to make the peine forte et dure seem like a pleasurable alternative.
For group gurus, the organisation is an extension of their personality. Like some corner shopkeeper they retain it to themselves, defending their control with a fervour that can spill over into savagery. It fulfils their everyday needs, and nourishes their fantasies in a milieu in which they are definitely more equal than others. Matgamna is just such a case in point, and as editor of Workers’ Liberty he ensures that hardly an issue passes without an article of wearisome length and dubious relevance from his hand. In addition, and this has got to come close to abuse of privilege, he frequently puts in one of his own poems – and the most we can say about that is that Ireland now has its own champion to compete on equal terms with Scotland’s William McGonagall.
One of the other dubious characteristics that we have inherited from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party is the studied air of absolute certainty that suffuses their work. Lenin and Trotsky continually give the impression that Marxism is an exact science, and is because they say so, and that because they are Marxists then what they say is, by definition, correct. (Prior to 1917 their claims lacked a certain credibility because they argued violently with one another and they could not both be right.) This feature of their work, which is as much a matter of style as of anything else, has been adopted with particular enthusiasm by the Church of Latter Day Trotskyism. Those whose record of achievement should be accompanied by an attitude of modest stillness and humility are given to statements of such mind blowing arrogance as to make one’s colitis become general. I cite a statement from a 1977 internal bulletin of the Militant Tendency, which is a paradigm of this particular conceit:
“What guarantees the superiority of our tendency ... from all others inside and outside the labour movement is our understanding of all the myriad factors which determine the attitudes and moods of the workers at each stage. Not only the objective but the subjective ones too.”
If you believe this one, then you will readily accept that, despite my advancing years, nubile young women frequently mistake me for Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s hell I tell you, comrades.
This is the movement we inherited, and with all its faults it has maintained the thin revolutionary thread that would allow us to pass it on to the next generation. Without taking thought and making extensive amendments, I do not think we should. Its organisational forms have been the endlessly repeated vehicle for the petty careers of small time power maniacs, whose pathetic compulsion to be cock of their own small malodorous midden would be an object of sympathy if they had not wrecked far too many useful and irreplaceable comrades. We have all been here before, some of us several times, and as Denis Healy said: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Traditionally our movement’s response to this dilemma has been quite the contrary – the comrades are called upon to make an especial sacrifice to buy a bigger shovel and then, with passionate exhortation, directed to prolonged and frenzied digging on a three-shift system.
The Leninism of 1917 was addressing problems that have not existed for three-quarters of a century, and are of little help to revolutionary socialists in 1999. The Leninism of the 1930s, which we call Trotskyism, offers us the same thing only written very, very small. The yearning for an international leadership that would bestride the world workers’ movement turned out to be the plaything of Cannon, Pablo, Healy and Lambert. The brave hopes of 1938 have ended in the petty squabbles and squalid manoeuvrings that have characterised the years since Trotsky’s death. The organisational principles that were intended to sharply differentiate the revolutionaries from Social Democracy and Stalinism need to be re-examined in the light of the political demise of these false doctrines. The FI, which was to stand as a rallying point against the upper and lower millstones of Stalinism and Reformism, went into a flat spin when both of these abominations shuffled off the stage. Trotskyism seemed unable to define itself without the twin evils it never quite came to grips with.
The workers deserve much better than the spectacle of endless splits over trifles and unquestioning adherence to outdated formulae. I am in general against quotations from the pen of the masters, but there is one from Trotsky that I like to consider in moments of high emotion or depression: Learn to Think. If we apply this maxim seriously then there are no eternal verities, and everything is open to re-examination and argument.
Recently I have been cheered by the work that Cyril Smith has done, and Mike Jones is doing us all a service by shedding light on the early years of German Communism and the founding of the Communist International. Al Richardson, who has a splendid habit of blowing raspberries at radical chic, has challenged the myths that have for too long been our smelly comfort blanket. Whether they are right or wrong I don’t know nor do I care. They are doing what Marxists should be doing and have not done nearly enough – putting things up for scrutiny and deciding if they are needed on the voyage. Revolutionary History, New Interventions and What Next? are another welcome novelty of recent years. All of these journals are unaffiliated, open, intelligent, not afraid to deal with any subject and valued by a small but significant readership. Such independent publication is, of course, anathema to the confirmed sect-dweller and it will come as no surprise that Sean Matgamna has allowed himself several splenetic yelps of rage at the iniquities of these magazines.
This has been a long voyage and we have made much less progress than I imagined we would when I was a 12 year old who thought he was a Marxist. So there is still a long way to go and the journey will be that much easier if we clear out some self-constructed obstacles that bestrew our path. The broad socialist movement remains the place where we can transcend our own limitations and limited vision. Most of us have been at our best in that movement; it is where have experienced those fleeting certainties about how we can transform ourselves in the cooperative process of transforming society.
I would like to finish with a verse from a poem by Erich Fried, a German Socialist who died quite recently:
Speak One More Time
About the joy of hoping for Joy
So that at least some will ask:
What was that?
When will it come again?
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>The Origins of the Communist Party</h1>
<h3>(October 1969)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info">From <strong>International Socialism</strong> (1st series), <a href="../../../../history/etol/newspape/isj/index2.html#isj040" target="new">No.40</a>, October/November 1969, pp.33-36.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Every individual, every organisation, every movement should be aware of their own history. In the case of individuals and most organisations and movements it is quite possible for them to live out their existence with a history built on myths, half-truths and plain untruths, indeed, in the case of many individuals and political organisations an objective and impartial history would be an absolute bar to further existence. For the socialist movement history as a collection of sustaining myths is possible but undesirable. Unfortunately that is often what it becomes. Too frequently, in our movement, the history books are resorted to provide a substitute for rational argument in the present, historical experiences are transposed to other and quite inappropriate situations. The words are examined, often with microscopic care, while the context in which they were written is studiously ignored. In extreme cases a type of historical lunacy is observed in which the sufferer relives the high points of the lives of great revolutionaries in the petty details of his own political work. A study of Walter Kendall’s book (<strong>The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900-1921</strong>, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 5 gns) will provide a welcome addition to much over-used Russian revolutionary heroes and villains in the lesser, but important, figures of British revolutionary history. More importantly it will, in its careful research and detailed exposition, provide an antidote to some of the more poisonous myths that abound. Most pernicious of the myths and one that was recently aired in the pages of <strong>New Left Review</strong> is that which denies the British working class any meaningful revolutionary tradition of militant organisation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ferment that took place in the British Labour movement under the influence of revolutionary ideas and revolutionaries in the early years of this century changed the face of the trade union and labour organisations in quite fundamental ways. The Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist Labour Party, the Shop Stewards Movement, the Plebs League and the syndicalist movement all acted and reacted in a medium that was ripe for change.</p>
<p>That all these organisations had shortcomings and made countless mistakes, some of cardinal importance, is a simple matter of record. They were sometimes opportunist, more frequently sectarian, oriented mainly on propaganda and more inclined to talk at the class rather than work with the class when the opportunity existed and their notion of revolutionary change and how it could take place was hazy in the extreme but through internal fights and splits, through the study of a rich international experience and in their own practice and experiment they maintained a clear revolutionary tradition that it is possible to trace to the present day.</p>
<p>It is fashionable today to find these early struggles rather naive and to treat them with condescension, but for all our latter-day sophistication none of us has been able to organise 4,000 out of 10,000 workers into a new radical industrial union (The Industrial Workers of Great Britain) and to maintain a strike for nearly three weeks as members of the SLP did at the Singers factory in 1911. John Maclean was considered such a dangerous adversary during the course of the 1914-18 war that he was sentenced to eight years in gaol for anti-war agitation. This same Maclean had 500 students enrolled in his Marxist economic classes in 1917. The great Dublin strike of 1913 <a id="fa" href="#na" name="fa">[1*]</a> was led and assisted by members of all the revolutionary groups. At its high point in 1912 the BSP (British Socialist Party) claimed 40,000 members and although this is probably exaggerated their average over the period 1900-1920 is probably in excess of 10,000 and while this is far from being a mass party it is rather better than we can muster today. The SDF (subsequently BSP), the largest and oldest of the British Marxist organisations, had, particularly under the Hyndman leadership, a somewhat chequered history punctuated by bouts of chauvinism and in Theodore Rothstein’s words a general assumption:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘that the educational work ... can be carried on mainly, if not solely ... by bringing our principles before the public ... things which, despite our professed programmes, very frequently leave us indifferent, are of the utmost importance to the proletarian class ...’</p>
<p class="fst">The trade unions and the organised workers were, despite the odd resolution to the contrary, seen as fixed entities that must accept the SDF’s message whole or be consigned to the outer darkness. But throughout its history there was a long battle against the line of the leadership, conducted by Rothstein, Maclean and many others, for a consistent revolutionary line on internationalism and working-class struggle. In 1916 Hyndman and his supporters split from the organisation, having clearly lost the fight against the now predominant, anti-war ‘Internationalist’ Wing of the party.</p>
<p>The Socialist Labour Party, which never numbered more than a few hundred members, derived from a split in SDF in 1903. Dedicated to a harsh Marxist orthodoxy, as revealed by Daniel De Leon, the British SLP had an influence on the tradition far beyond the areas of its strength (the Clyde) and its sparse membership. The reasons for its influence and, at the same time, its failure to reach take-off point as an organisation derive from an interesting contradiction. The SLP theory counterposed the revolutionary industrial union to ‘bread and butter’ trade unionism. The working-class through a pervasive industrial unionism would build up the organisation and experience to control society. Straight political and electoral activities were of secondary importance, at the moment of achieving electoral victory the party would hand over power to the industrial unions. The notion of the one big union arrived at a fortunate time. The existing trade unions were rotten with craft exclusiveness at a time when industrial expansion was bringing more and more unskilled and semi-skilled workers on to the scene. These workers were excluded from existing organisations at the same time as they occupied an important place in the productive process, potentially they were a powerful industrial force. It is in this context that a very few advocates of industrial unionism were able to recruit thousands of workers in the large-scale industries of the Clyde. It is at this stage with very real success to their credit that the problems began.</p>
<p>A too rigid revolutionary theory can be more disastrous than a reformist practice, with the latter it can at least be changed in the future, with the former every struggle has to be seen in cataclysmic terms. Every fight that is not the final battle with capitalism is seen as a capitulation, an accommodation with ‘bread and butter’ trade unions. The SLP was caught in this contradiction. The quite profound insight into the development of industrial society and the elucidation of a theory and tactics to approach the new working-class was made fruitless by an inability to lead them anywhere but direct to the promised land particularly if you have no boots, only a rudimentary map and no compass. While it is impossible to overthrow capitalism by licking its boots (no matter how rough your tongue) it is also impossible to deliver a knockout blow if it’s standing on your fingers.</p>
<p>The SLP’s rigid theory also encompassed rigid organisational discipline. The internal regime was such that probably only a member of the present-day SLL would find himself at home there (indeed, with the transposition of Trotsky for De Leon they could probably accommodate the lot, theory and all). Kendall, in his book quotes the example of one unfortunate SLPer who ‘had entertained Neil Maclean the expelled national secretary, in his home; he was threatened that he would be »severely dealt with« if he did it again’. Despite all this members of the SLP along with members of the BSP and affiliated and unaffiliated Marxists and syndicalists formed the backbone of the Clyde Workers Committee and the Shop Steward’s Movement, and subsequently the driving force for the formation of the Communist Party.</p>
<p>All of these developments are examined and explained with admirable precision and clarity in Walter Kendall’s book together with a great deal more. The syndicalist movement in Britain and its particular British development into dual Unionism is detailed. Its failure, inherent in the anarcho-syndicalist position, to unify the rank-and-file movement that it influenced because only through a coherent political organisation could the necessary links be made. This revulsion from politics affected many of the revolutionary militants and condemned the Clyde Worker’s Committee and the shop stewards generally to isolation and an inability to mobilise their full potential.</p>
<p>As I say all of this, and much more, is in Kendall’s book. As an explanation of the development and history of the organisations that eventually coalesced (in part or in whole) into the CPGB it fills a long felt want. It would be pleasant to continue in this vein and to be able to report that Walter’s conclusion flow logically from his material and that the continuing revolutionary tradition has at last been vindicated. Unfortunately this is not the case. Flying, as I believe, in the face of all his own evidence, Kendall marks an abrupt break in the British revolutionary tradition at the formation of the CPGB in 1921. His conclusion, and it is hardly original, is given most clearly on page 234 of the book, as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The view of the CPGB was in some sense the logical culmination of previous developments propagated by the Communist Party is far from the truth. The evidence suggests that the Russian ideological and organisational conceptions were so far divorced from the logic of British reality that, without outside intervention, and without the provision of relatively speaking enormous subventions, they would never have taken root at all.’</p>
<p class="fst">Now all this, and it is quite a lot, is a bit more sophisticated than the usual Moscow Gold type of analysis, and it is delivered in the text more in sorrow than in anger, but it comes from the same stable.</p>
<p>According to Kendall, Russian money, Russian ideology and Russian organisation combined to ensure the infant CP’s isolation from any meaningful participation in British politics and eventually condemned them to subservience to a Stalinised Comintern.</p>
<p>Superficially there is some evidence to support these conclusions. The Russian revolution did mark a turning point for British Marxists. The prestige of the Bolsheviks did confer added interest and validity to their organisational and ideological principles. It is almost certain that they disbursed money to the sections, or would be sections of the CI. But so what? I have no doubt that the man who discovered fire was considered something of a genius by his fellows and if he was kind enough to share a bit of the warmth a generous and splendid genius and certainly a chap to be listened to on practical matters like cooking and central heating; so with the Bolsheviks.</p>
<p>Walter Kendall’s proposition that the formation of the CP was out of line with the previous experience and tradition of British Marxism, is of major importance. It goes without saying that without the Russian revolution the development of the British movement would have been quite different, but then so would all of post-1917 history. The logical development of a Marxist organisation does not take place in isolation from the real world. In a very real sense the pre-war struggles in the BSP and SLP, the syndicalist experience and its limitations, the struggle against the war and a discredited social democracy prepared the disparate Marxist groups in Britain for a united revolutionary organisation. This did not happen in Britain alone, the situation that led Lenin and Luxemburg to break with the corpse of the Second International and to call for a new International were reflected to a greater or lesser degree throughout the international movement. That Lenin formulated his ideas with greater clarity and audacity does not detract from the fact that his conclusions were a brilliant exposition of the logic of the situation for revolutionary socialists. In Britain, as in Germany, France, etc., the experience of the Russian revolution and the assumption of the Soviet power clarified the ideas of a whole generation of the most dedicated revolutionaries. To say that would not have happened this way without the Russian revolution is not helpful, to say that it should not have happened that way is, if one is serious, to take on the responsibility of providing an alternative path that avoided the pitfalls (and there were many) of the CP on the one hand and on the other build a principled revolutionary organisation unencumbered by the crimes of social democracy, in a world that was polarised between the Soviet power and reformism. The ILP tried it, the KAPD tried it, the Swedish Social Democrats tried it and they all failed and failed miserably. To deny the necessity for the Third International in 1919 is to justify the Second International. This is, of course, a point of view and it is held by many, but for a Marxist to reject the 21 conditions for affiliation to the CI and then to swallow whole the traitors of 1914 and the allies of counter-revolution in 1917 and 1919 is to show a lack of discrimination that borders on the perverse.</p>
<p>What was the policy that the CI wished on the British Marxist Groups in the strict context of Britain? It was for a unified revolutionary party, working within the mass organs of the working class (the trade unions and the Labour Party) and dedicated to the overthrow of British capitalism. According to Kendall’s own testimony the organisations in Britain while paying lip service to the need for a unified party were busily paddling their own canoes. The BSP’s attitude to the trade unions was half hearted and sectarian, the SLP’s attitude was fixed in De Leonite orthodoxy imbued with syndicalist notions. With the exception of the BSP all the constituents of the united CP were violently opposed to Labour Party affiliation. Walter Kendall criticises and rightly criticises the policies of Shop Stewards, the BSP and the SLP and then complains when the advice and direction emanating from Moscow coincides with his own estimation of the situation. It is certainly not a matter for regret that the unity of revolutionaries in Britain was achieved. Anyone who has anything to do with attempts at regroupment of the left will be aware that probably no lesser event than the Russian revolution would be sufficient to unite the different groups and set them on a fundamentally correct political and industrial strategy. Walter Kendall’s second proposition concerns the malign influence of the Comintern functionaries and the effects of Russian money. In by far the least satisfactory chapter of the book (<em>The Russian Influence</em>) the evidence is produced. Most of it is hearsay and some of the sources are, to put on it the best construction, dubious. It is in this chapter that phrases like ‘it seems unlikely that ...’ or ‘it seems likely that ...’ occur frequently, as in:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘On February 26, 1918 Litvinov took Kamenev, a member of the Russian Politbureau to see the Webbs. That Litvinov would have introduced Kamenev to the Webbs and not the British revolutionaries seems unlikely. Tom Bell tells us that in February he was urgently called to London by MacManus, where he discussed the British and Russian situation with Litvinov. It seems likely that the other Russian present on this occasion was Kamenev.’</p>
<p class="fst">Leaving aside the fact that ‘the other Russian’ has crept into the text for the first time in the last sentence of this quotation there is still sufficient there for us to get the full flavour of the evidence. Further on we have the evidence of .a Special Branch Officer called Fitch who apparently arrested a man called Segal who ‘was an official representative of a powerful revolutionary society in Moscow who had brought with him £4,000 in gold and bonds ...’ with this money Segal was apparently going to set up a press ‘... for producing anarchist literature ...’ A courier called Zachariassen is alleged to have brought Sylvia Pankhurst ‘the sum of between £280 and £6,000’, let’s hope that the CI’s accounts were better arranged than Sylvia’s.</p>
<p>To bolster up his case of the lavish, scale of CI subventions to its sections Walter Kendall calls in aid that scandalous old gossip Angelica Balabanova. In 1917 Balabanova was working for the Bolsheviks in Stockholm. In her memoirs <strong>My Life as a Rebel</strong> (this is the quotation used in Kendall’s book, page 250) she quotes a letter from Lenin:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘... the work you are doing is of the utmost importance and I implore you to go on with it. We look to you for our most effective support. Do not consider the cost. Spend millions, tens of millions if necessary. There is plenty of money at our disposal. ...’</p>
<p class="fst">Now this, if true, is quite a significant piece of evidence, the lady, who was subsequently to become the secretary of the Comintern, is authorised by no less a person than Lenin to spend tens of millions to further the sinister Bolshevik design. Unfortunately it is not true, it is indeed a lie. The quotation above is taken from the 1938 edition of Balabanova’s book. In the German edition of her book (published in Berlin in 1927) the Lenin letter is quite different:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Bravo, bravo, your work, dear comrade, deserves the highest recognition. Please do not spare any means ...’</p>
<p class="fst">There are, you will see, no tens of millions and no promises of any. There is no reason, I suppose, why Walter Kendall should be aware of Balabanova’s tendency to bend the facts a little, but he does have some responsibility to evaluate his evidence. The best advocates always ensure that their witnesses can stand up to cross examination. Evidence from Special Branch men, distraught and disillusioned old ladies and speculation as to who met who and when are not evidence but hearsay.</p>
<p>It would of course be strange if the Comintern had not sent cash its more impoverished sections, indeed it would probably be cause for even greater criticism, if they had not. The scale of the aid was almost certainly less than Walter Kendall suggests and is undoubtedly less than Balabanova’s mythical ‘tens of millions’. The scale of the activities of the early CP do not suggest, despite the enthusiasm and energy of the members that the Comintern aid went further than the sort of fraternal assistance that one would expect. Whether the assistance was entirely disinterested or not – and how many members of political groups can truthfully say that when, for example, they assist workers on strike and make their donations to strike funds, they are totally completely disinterested – there can be no doubt that any whiff of suspicion that the price demanded by the Comintern in return for an organiser’s wages, or assistance with the printing bill would be conditional on being the CI line would have resulted in a considerable scandal. But why is all this important? Why should we feel it necessary to defend the early years of a Communist Party that did degenerate and degenerated rapidly, whose subsequent record of grovelling subservience to Stalin and Stalinism is second to none. The reason, and I have touched on this earlier, is that October 1917 did represent a watershed in the socialist movement. All that is genuine in the revolutionary tradition derives in some way from that experience. From the gains of October and the world communist movement came the left opposition as the revolutionary response to the isolation and degeneration of the Russian revolution. Of the pre-1917 British tradition that did not join the CPGB there remains the SLP, wrapped up by endless reprints of De Leon and with a member for each word of their name, the ILP was a past, lots of money and no future and the SPGB, fixed like an chicken in aspic in the halycon days of 1907. All of them bankrupt, if not in cash, in ideas.</p>
<p>There really is no other tradition of value and meaning (unless there is value in nostalgia and historical wishful thinking). The possibility for revolutionary change in the future resides in the inheritors of. the early communist movement.</p>
<p>The other and related reason to dissent from Walter Kendall’s conclusion is this: If it was the fact that the Leninist CI of 1919 imposed upon its sections an alien bolshevism that ensured the latter subjugation of each and every section to the dictate of Stalinism then there is completely justification and validity in the formula Leninism equals Stalinism.</p>
<p>If this is true then the ‘river of blood’ that divides Bolshevism from Stalinism is bridgeable, indeed it does not exist, one hundred and twenty years of Marxism have gone for nothing, the Russian revolution far from heralding the liberation of mankind is merely a more subtle instrument for mankind’s enslavement. A review of this kind is really not a place to argue against this proposition, for those who find it at all attractive I recommend a study of Trotsky’s work on the question, there is no better antidote for this particular poison.</p>
<p>It is unfortunate that in reviewing Walter Kendall’s book I have had to dwell at such length on, what I consider to be, its defects. There are in its pages a number of extremely good things. John Maclean is rehabilitated after years of smearing and character assassination at the hands of the CP and the grossly over-estimated Gallagher. Both Gallagher and Maclean are restored to their rightful places in importance in Kendall’s book. The chapter on the shop stewards is particularly useful and detailed and a useful corrective is given to those who over-emphasise the importance of Clyde Worker’s Committee. The book is a good one despite its faulty conclusions. It is this perverse judgement that stops the book from being of the highest quality.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Note by MIA</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="na" href="#fa" name="na">1*.</a> In the published version the date is given incorrectly as 1907.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The Origins of the Communist Party
(October 1969)
From International Socialism (1st series), No.40, October/November 1969, pp.33-36.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Every individual, every organisation, every movement should be aware of their own history. In the case of individuals and most organisations and movements it is quite possible for them to live out their existence with a history built on myths, half-truths and plain untruths, indeed, in the case of many individuals and political organisations an objective and impartial history would be an absolute bar to further existence. For the socialist movement history as a collection of sustaining myths is possible but undesirable. Unfortunately that is often what it becomes. Too frequently, in our movement, the history books are resorted to provide a substitute for rational argument in the present, historical experiences are transposed to other and quite inappropriate situations. The words are examined, often with microscopic care, while the context in which they were written is studiously ignored. In extreme cases a type of historical lunacy is observed in which the sufferer relives the high points of the lives of great revolutionaries in the petty details of his own political work. A study of Walter Kendall’s book (The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900-1921, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 5 gns) will provide a welcome addition to much over-used Russian revolutionary heroes and villains in the lesser, but important, figures of British revolutionary history. More importantly it will, in its careful research and detailed exposition, provide an antidote to some of the more poisonous myths that abound. Most pernicious of the myths and one that was recently aired in the pages of New Left Review is that which denies the British working class any meaningful revolutionary tradition of militant organisation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The ferment that took place in the British Labour movement under the influence of revolutionary ideas and revolutionaries in the early years of this century changed the face of the trade union and labour organisations in quite fundamental ways. The Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist Labour Party, the Shop Stewards Movement, the Plebs League and the syndicalist movement all acted and reacted in a medium that was ripe for change.
That all these organisations had shortcomings and made countless mistakes, some of cardinal importance, is a simple matter of record. They were sometimes opportunist, more frequently sectarian, oriented mainly on propaganda and more inclined to talk at the class rather than work with the class when the opportunity existed and their notion of revolutionary change and how it could take place was hazy in the extreme but through internal fights and splits, through the study of a rich international experience and in their own practice and experiment they maintained a clear revolutionary tradition that it is possible to trace to the present day.
It is fashionable today to find these early struggles rather naive and to treat them with condescension, but for all our latter-day sophistication none of us has been able to organise 4,000 out of 10,000 workers into a new radical industrial union (The Industrial Workers of Great Britain) and to maintain a strike for nearly three weeks as members of the SLP did at the Singers factory in 1911. John Maclean was considered such a dangerous adversary during the course of the 1914-18 war that he was sentenced to eight years in gaol for anti-war agitation. This same Maclean had 500 students enrolled in his Marxist economic classes in 1917. The great Dublin strike of 1913 [1*] was led and assisted by members of all the revolutionary groups. At its high point in 1912 the BSP (British Socialist Party) claimed 40,000 members and although this is probably exaggerated their average over the period 1900-1920 is probably in excess of 10,000 and while this is far from being a mass party it is rather better than we can muster today. The SDF (subsequently BSP), the largest and oldest of the British Marxist organisations, had, particularly under the Hyndman leadership, a somewhat chequered history punctuated by bouts of chauvinism and in Theodore Rothstein’s words a general assumption:
‘that the educational work ... can be carried on mainly, if not solely ... by bringing our principles before the public ... things which, despite our professed programmes, very frequently leave us indifferent, are of the utmost importance to the proletarian class ...’
The trade unions and the organised workers were, despite the odd resolution to the contrary, seen as fixed entities that must accept the SDF’s message whole or be consigned to the outer darkness. But throughout its history there was a long battle against the line of the leadership, conducted by Rothstein, Maclean and many others, for a consistent revolutionary line on internationalism and working-class struggle. In 1916 Hyndman and his supporters split from the organisation, having clearly lost the fight against the now predominant, anti-war ‘Internationalist’ Wing of the party.
The Socialist Labour Party, which never numbered more than a few hundred members, derived from a split in SDF in 1903. Dedicated to a harsh Marxist orthodoxy, as revealed by Daniel De Leon, the British SLP had an influence on the tradition far beyond the areas of its strength (the Clyde) and its sparse membership. The reasons for its influence and, at the same time, its failure to reach take-off point as an organisation derive from an interesting contradiction. The SLP theory counterposed the revolutionary industrial union to ‘bread and butter’ trade unionism. The working-class through a pervasive industrial unionism would build up the organisation and experience to control society. Straight political and electoral activities were of secondary importance, at the moment of achieving electoral victory the party would hand over power to the industrial unions. The notion of the one big union arrived at a fortunate time. The existing trade unions were rotten with craft exclusiveness at a time when industrial expansion was bringing more and more unskilled and semi-skilled workers on to the scene. These workers were excluded from existing organisations at the same time as they occupied an important place in the productive process, potentially they were a powerful industrial force. It is in this context that a very few advocates of industrial unionism were able to recruit thousands of workers in the large-scale industries of the Clyde. It is at this stage with very real success to their credit that the problems began.
A too rigid revolutionary theory can be more disastrous than a reformist practice, with the latter it can at least be changed in the future, with the former every struggle has to be seen in cataclysmic terms. Every fight that is not the final battle with capitalism is seen as a capitulation, an accommodation with ‘bread and butter’ trade unions. The SLP was caught in this contradiction. The quite profound insight into the development of industrial society and the elucidation of a theory and tactics to approach the new working-class was made fruitless by an inability to lead them anywhere but direct to the promised land particularly if you have no boots, only a rudimentary map and no compass. While it is impossible to overthrow capitalism by licking its boots (no matter how rough your tongue) it is also impossible to deliver a knockout blow if it’s standing on your fingers.
The SLP’s rigid theory also encompassed rigid organisational discipline. The internal regime was such that probably only a member of the present-day SLL would find himself at home there (indeed, with the transposition of Trotsky for De Leon they could probably accommodate the lot, theory and all). Kendall, in his book quotes the example of one unfortunate SLPer who ‘had entertained Neil Maclean the expelled national secretary, in his home; he was threatened that he would be »severely dealt with« if he did it again’. Despite all this members of the SLP along with members of the BSP and affiliated and unaffiliated Marxists and syndicalists formed the backbone of the Clyde Workers Committee and the Shop Steward’s Movement, and subsequently the driving force for the formation of the Communist Party.
All of these developments are examined and explained with admirable precision and clarity in Walter Kendall’s book together with a great deal more. The syndicalist movement in Britain and its particular British development into dual Unionism is detailed. Its failure, inherent in the anarcho-syndicalist position, to unify the rank-and-file movement that it influenced because only through a coherent political organisation could the necessary links be made. This revulsion from politics affected many of the revolutionary militants and condemned the Clyde Worker’s Committee and the shop stewards generally to isolation and an inability to mobilise their full potential.
As I say all of this, and much more, is in Kendall’s book. As an explanation of the development and history of the organisations that eventually coalesced (in part or in whole) into the CPGB it fills a long felt want. It would be pleasant to continue in this vein and to be able to report that Walter’s conclusion flow logically from his material and that the continuing revolutionary tradition has at last been vindicated. Unfortunately this is not the case. Flying, as I believe, in the face of all his own evidence, Kendall marks an abrupt break in the British revolutionary tradition at the formation of the CPGB in 1921. His conclusion, and it is hardly original, is given most clearly on page 234 of the book, as follows:
‘The view of the CPGB was in some sense the logical culmination of previous developments propagated by the Communist Party is far from the truth. The evidence suggests that the Russian ideological and organisational conceptions were so far divorced from the logic of British reality that, without outside intervention, and without the provision of relatively speaking enormous subventions, they would never have taken root at all.’
Now all this, and it is quite a lot, is a bit more sophisticated than the usual Moscow Gold type of analysis, and it is delivered in the text more in sorrow than in anger, but it comes from the same stable.
According to Kendall, Russian money, Russian ideology and Russian organisation combined to ensure the infant CP’s isolation from any meaningful participation in British politics and eventually condemned them to subservience to a Stalinised Comintern.
Superficially there is some evidence to support these conclusions. The Russian revolution did mark a turning point for British Marxists. The prestige of the Bolsheviks did confer added interest and validity to their organisational and ideological principles. It is almost certain that they disbursed money to the sections, or would be sections of the CI. But so what? I have no doubt that the man who discovered fire was considered something of a genius by his fellows and if he was kind enough to share a bit of the warmth a generous and splendid genius and certainly a chap to be listened to on practical matters like cooking and central heating; so with the Bolsheviks.
Walter Kendall’s proposition that the formation of the CP was out of line with the previous experience and tradition of British Marxism, is of major importance. It goes without saying that without the Russian revolution the development of the British movement would have been quite different, but then so would all of post-1917 history. The logical development of a Marxist organisation does not take place in isolation from the real world. In a very real sense the pre-war struggles in the BSP and SLP, the syndicalist experience and its limitations, the struggle against the war and a discredited social democracy prepared the disparate Marxist groups in Britain for a united revolutionary organisation. This did not happen in Britain alone, the situation that led Lenin and Luxemburg to break with the corpse of the Second International and to call for a new International were reflected to a greater or lesser degree throughout the international movement. That Lenin formulated his ideas with greater clarity and audacity does not detract from the fact that his conclusions were a brilliant exposition of the logic of the situation for revolutionary socialists. In Britain, as in Germany, France, etc., the experience of the Russian revolution and the assumption of the Soviet power clarified the ideas of a whole generation of the most dedicated revolutionaries. To say that would not have happened this way without the Russian revolution is not helpful, to say that it should not have happened that way is, if one is serious, to take on the responsibility of providing an alternative path that avoided the pitfalls (and there were many) of the CP on the one hand and on the other build a principled revolutionary organisation unencumbered by the crimes of social democracy, in a world that was polarised between the Soviet power and reformism. The ILP tried it, the KAPD tried it, the Swedish Social Democrats tried it and they all failed and failed miserably. To deny the necessity for the Third International in 1919 is to justify the Second International. This is, of course, a point of view and it is held by many, but for a Marxist to reject the 21 conditions for affiliation to the CI and then to swallow whole the traitors of 1914 and the allies of counter-revolution in 1917 and 1919 is to show a lack of discrimination that borders on the perverse.
What was the policy that the CI wished on the British Marxist Groups in the strict context of Britain? It was for a unified revolutionary party, working within the mass organs of the working class (the trade unions and the Labour Party) and dedicated to the overthrow of British capitalism. According to Kendall’s own testimony the organisations in Britain while paying lip service to the need for a unified party were busily paddling their own canoes. The BSP’s attitude to the trade unions was half hearted and sectarian, the SLP’s attitude was fixed in De Leonite orthodoxy imbued with syndicalist notions. With the exception of the BSP all the constituents of the united CP were violently opposed to Labour Party affiliation. Walter Kendall criticises and rightly criticises the policies of Shop Stewards, the BSP and the SLP and then complains when the advice and direction emanating from Moscow coincides with his own estimation of the situation. It is certainly not a matter for regret that the unity of revolutionaries in Britain was achieved. Anyone who has anything to do with attempts at regroupment of the left will be aware that probably no lesser event than the Russian revolution would be sufficient to unite the different groups and set them on a fundamentally correct political and industrial strategy. Walter Kendall’s second proposition concerns the malign influence of the Comintern functionaries and the effects of Russian money. In by far the least satisfactory chapter of the book (The Russian Influence) the evidence is produced. Most of it is hearsay and some of the sources are, to put on it the best construction, dubious. It is in this chapter that phrases like ‘it seems unlikely that ...’ or ‘it seems likely that ...’ occur frequently, as in:
‘On February 26, 1918 Litvinov took Kamenev, a member of the Russian Politbureau to see the Webbs. That Litvinov would have introduced Kamenev to the Webbs and not the British revolutionaries seems unlikely. Tom Bell tells us that in February he was urgently called to London by MacManus, where he discussed the British and Russian situation with Litvinov. It seems likely that the other Russian present on this occasion was Kamenev.’
Leaving aside the fact that ‘the other Russian’ has crept into the text for the first time in the last sentence of this quotation there is still sufficient there for us to get the full flavour of the evidence. Further on we have the evidence of .a Special Branch Officer called Fitch who apparently arrested a man called Segal who ‘was an official representative of a powerful revolutionary society in Moscow who had brought with him £4,000 in gold and bonds ...’ with this money Segal was apparently going to set up a press ‘... for producing anarchist literature ...’ A courier called Zachariassen is alleged to have brought Sylvia Pankhurst ‘the sum of between £280 and £6,000’, let’s hope that the CI’s accounts were better arranged than Sylvia’s.
To bolster up his case of the lavish, scale of CI subventions to its sections Walter Kendall calls in aid that scandalous old gossip Angelica Balabanova. In 1917 Balabanova was working for the Bolsheviks in Stockholm. In her memoirs My Life as a Rebel (this is the quotation used in Kendall’s book, page 250) she quotes a letter from Lenin:
‘... the work you are doing is of the utmost importance and I implore you to go on with it. We look to you for our most effective support. Do not consider the cost. Spend millions, tens of millions if necessary. There is plenty of money at our disposal. ...’
Now this, if true, is quite a significant piece of evidence, the lady, who was subsequently to become the secretary of the Comintern, is authorised by no less a person than Lenin to spend tens of millions to further the sinister Bolshevik design. Unfortunately it is not true, it is indeed a lie. The quotation above is taken from the 1938 edition of Balabanova’s book. In the German edition of her book (published in Berlin in 1927) the Lenin letter is quite different:
‘Bravo, bravo, your work, dear comrade, deserves the highest recognition. Please do not spare any means ...’
There are, you will see, no tens of millions and no promises of any. There is no reason, I suppose, why Walter Kendall should be aware of Balabanova’s tendency to bend the facts a little, but he does have some responsibility to evaluate his evidence. The best advocates always ensure that their witnesses can stand up to cross examination. Evidence from Special Branch men, distraught and disillusioned old ladies and speculation as to who met who and when are not evidence but hearsay.
It would of course be strange if the Comintern had not sent cash its more impoverished sections, indeed it would probably be cause for even greater criticism, if they had not. The scale of the aid was almost certainly less than Walter Kendall suggests and is undoubtedly less than Balabanova’s mythical ‘tens of millions’. The scale of the activities of the early CP do not suggest, despite the enthusiasm and energy of the members that the Comintern aid went further than the sort of fraternal assistance that one would expect. Whether the assistance was entirely disinterested or not – and how many members of political groups can truthfully say that when, for example, they assist workers on strike and make their donations to strike funds, they are totally completely disinterested – there can be no doubt that any whiff of suspicion that the price demanded by the Comintern in return for an organiser’s wages, or assistance with the printing bill would be conditional on being the CI line would have resulted in a considerable scandal. But why is all this important? Why should we feel it necessary to defend the early years of a Communist Party that did degenerate and degenerated rapidly, whose subsequent record of grovelling subservience to Stalin and Stalinism is second to none. The reason, and I have touched on this earlier, is that October 1917 did represent a watershed in the socialist movement. All that is genuine in the revolutionary tradition derives in some way from that experience. From the gains of October and the world communist movement came the left opposition as the revolutionary response to the isolation and degeneration of the Russian revolution. Of the pre-1917 British tradition that did not join the CPGB there remains the SLP, wrapped up by endless reprints of De Leon and with a member for each word of their name, the ILP was a past, lots of money and no future and the SPGB, fixed like an chicken in aspic in the halycon days of 1907. All of them bankrupt, if not in cash, in ideas.
There really is no other tradition of value and meaning (unless there is value in nostalgia and historical wishful thinking). The possibility for revolutionary change in the future resides in the inheritors of. the early communist movement.
The other and related reason to dissent from Walter Kendall’s conclusion is this: If it was the fact that the Leninist CI of 1919 imposed upon its sections an alien bolshevism that ensured the latter subjugation of each and every section to the dictate of Stalinism then there is completely justification and validity in the formula Leninism equals Stalinism.
If this is true then the ‘river of blood’ that divides Bolshevism from Stalinism is bridgeable, indeed it does not exist, one hundred and twenty years of Marxism have gone for nothing, the Russian revolution far from heralding the liberation of mankind is merely a more subtle instrument for mankind’s enslavement. A review of this kind is really not a place to argue against this proposition, for those who find it at all attractive I recommend a study of Trotsky’s work on the question, there is no better antidote for this particular poison.
It is unfortunate that in reviewing Walter Kendall’s book I have had to dwell at such length on, what I consider to be, its defects. There are in its pages a number of extremely good things. John Maclean is rehabilitated after years of smearing and character assassination at the hands of the CP and the grossly over-estimated Gallagher. Both Gallagher and Maclean are restored to their rightful places in importance in Kendall’s book. The chapter on the shop stewards is particularly useful and detailed and a useful corrective is given to those who over-emphasise the importance of Clyde Worker’s Committee. The book is a good one despite its faulty conclusions. It is this perverse judgement that stops the book from being of the highest quality.
Note by MIA
1*. In the published version the date is given incorrectly as 1907.
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<h2>Jim Higgins</h2>
<h1>The year of Scanlon?</h1>
<h3>(April 1976)</h3>
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<p class="info">From the <strong>Spectator</strong>, 10 April 1976, p.12.<br>
Published here with kind permission of the <strong>Spectator</strong>.<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">Last week British Leyland settled with their former second-in-command Mr John Barber. By a payment of “substantial compensation” they ended the long dispute over Mr Barber’s dismissal. Under the terms of his service contract, Mr Barber was entitled to a very large sum – not to be measured in under six figures.</p>
<p>Ironically, in the same week Leyland were prevented from settling with thirty-two toolmakers at their SU Carburettor plant, whom they were extremely anxious to maintain in full-time employment.</p>
<p>A further irony is that the toolmakers had an agreement which, if not as watertight as Mr Barber’s, was accepted by the company. The difference was one of degree. The SU toolmakers would have agreed to a once and for all payment totalling £3,200.</p>
<p>Why did so trifling a sum cause such a difficulty? It was not a “red plot”, Indeed the “reds”, if you so consider Mr Scanlon and Mr Reg Birch were at one with their moderate colleagues on the AUEW executive in ordering the men back to work. The explanation is complicated and the solution not at all clear. Not only that, the SU strike was only one of five to hit Leyland. There were in addition the toolmakers at Triumph Coventry, toolmakers at eight Rover plants, machine tool fitters at Drew Lane suspension works and press operators at Llanelli. All of them were strategically placed to cause considerable loss of production, and none more so than the SU workers. You cannot get a car off the production line, let alone sell it, without a carburettor.</p>
<p>The disputes are in fact grounded in a contradiction between the need to rationalise pay and grading structures in a period of rigid restraint. Leyland has grown through the takeover and assimilation of a number of car and truck firms: Austin, Triumph, Rover, to name but a few. While this enabled a great deal of rationalisation and integration in production terms, it also brought hundreds of different payments and negotiating procedures. It is a measure of the size of the problem that even after a long period of industrial relations reorganisation, there are still fifty-eight bargaining units in British Leyland’s thirty-two plants.</p>
<p>It is this anarchic organisation, plus bad management, that has given rise to the present rash of disputes. Before 1 April, in seven representative Leyland toolrooms the lowest pay (at SU) was £60 a week, while the highest (at Rover Solihull) was £70. Between these two were four different wage rates. Moreover, for these same toolroom workers there were five different pay review dates ranging fairly evenly over the year. British Leyland, the unions and the toolmakers were anxious to harmonise both rates and review dates. Previous settlements have included promises to this effect. But with a restriction of twelve months between settlements and a £6 pay norm, differentials as high as £10 could not be reconciled. Different review dates also ensured constant leapfrogging.</p>
<p>This was the dilemma that the SU carburettor men were attempting to force to an issue. In April 1975 they accepted, with true altruism, a £5.50 increase, which was £1 less than they could have obtained. They agreed to this because they accepted management statements about the sad state of the company and because they were promised a further review in December 1975 to bring their pay up to the highest toolroom rates. When December came they were caught by the twelve-month rule. They were prepared to acknowledge that they could not achieve complete parity but they wanted the full £6 from December, without having to wait a full year until this April. They did not get the money and on 9 March they struck work. Everyone was very sympathetic and did not begrudge them the actual cash – but to pay it would breach the previously immaculate pay rode and, according to the Department of Employment, provide a green light to some 80,000 similarly placed workers throughout the engineering industry. That is why this strike went on for three weeks.</p>
<p>At Triumph Coventry, 350 toolroom workers demanded £1.85 which would give them parity with the tinsmiths. But this too, would have broken the twelve-month rule. The next settlement date for these workers is October. Despite the local AUEW, who told the men to stay out, they have returned to work. At Rover, 400 toolroom workers are asking £2 a week extra backdated to February 1975 which, they claim, is due from a previous settlement and is also within the pay code. They will probably get it.</p>
<p>At Llanelli, it was not AUEW members who were on strike. There it was Transport Union members, 650 press operators, arguing about the rate and the form of their grade’s transfer to the more highly skilled press maintenance work – which, to complicate matters further, is an AUEW job. Last, there are the machine tool fitters at Drew Lane, where they make suspensions for Austin and Morris cars. These men are demanding parity with the demonstrators, which would increase their pay from £66 to £78 a week-and that would break the pay code every way, defying mediation. This is probably why the Drew Lane workers are the remaining group on strike, with Austin and Morris car production still in jeopardy.</p>
<p>What sort of men are these toolmakers who have displayed such bargaining strength? One thing is certain: they are not militants in any accepted sense of that abused word. They are highly skilled men, with pride in their abilities. Within their union, the AUEW, they have always been a moderating force. Their craft pride entails a certain elitism, heightened by the fact that the less skilled production workers are generally members of the TGWU. These men measure their skill, obtained after long, low-paid, apprenticeships in the simplest way: by cash differentials. The current pay policy has struck at their central concern and turned their basically conservative attitudes into effective bloody-mindedness.</p>
<p>By their feelings, and in displaying their industrial muscle, they have already brought about great changes in the thinking of the principal architects of the next round of pay policy. Mr Jack Jones has accomplished a great shift from his previous insistence on the flat rate principle. Now he and Mr David Basnett – secretary of Britain’s third largest union, the GMWU – are calling for a combination of flat-rate and percentage in Phase Two pay policy. But even this dramatic change of front may not be sufficient for the AUEW. Mr Scanlon, writing in the latest issue of <strong>Industrial Management</strong>, insists that only a percentage principle will satisfy his union. It is interesting to speculate that, with his recent conversion to a voluntary incomes policy and with the sure backing of his previously moderate skilled members, Mr Scanlon may displace Mr Jones as the main author of the Mark II policy. If 1975 was the year of Jack Jones, 1976 may be the year of Hugh Scanlon.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Higgins
Jim Higgins
The year of Scanlon?
(April 1976)
From the Spectator, 10 April 1976, p.12.
Published here with kind permission of the Spectator.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Last week British Leyland settled with their former second-in-command Mr John Barber. By a payment of “substantial compensation” they ended the long dispute over Mr Barber’s dismissal. Under the terms of his service contract, Mr Barber was entitled to a very large sum – not to be measured in under six figures.
Ironically, in the same week Leyland were prevented from settling with thirty-two toolmakers at their SU Carburettor plant, whom they were extremely anxious to maintain in full-time employment.
A further irony is that the toolmakers had an agreement which, if not as watertight as Mr Barber’s, was accepted by the company. The difference was one of degree. The SU toolmakers would have agreed to a once and for all payment totalling £3,200.
Why did so trifling a sum cause such a difficulty? It was not a “red plot”, Indeed the “reds”, if you so consider Mr Scanlon and Mr Reg Birch were at one with their moderate colleagues on the AUEW executive in ordering the men back to work. The explanation is complicated and the solution not at all clear. Not only that, the SU strike was only one of five to hit Leyland. There were in addition the toolmakers at Triumph Coventry, toolmakers at eight Rover plants, machine tool fitters at Drew Lane suspension works and press operators at Llanelli. All of them were strategically placed to cause considerable loss of production, and none more so than the SU workers. You cannot get a car off the production line, let alone sell it, without a carburettor.
The disputes are in fact grounded in a contradiction between the need to rationalise pay and grading structures in a period of rigid restraint. Leyland has grown through the takeover and assimilation of a number of car and truck firms: Austin, Triumph, Rover, to name but a few. While this enabled a great deal of rationalisation and integration in production terms, it also brought hundreds of different payments and negotiating procedures. It is a measure of the size of the problem that even after a long period of industrial relations reorganisation, there are still fifty-eight bargaining units in British Leyland’s thirty-two plants.
It is this anarchic organisation, plus bad management, that has given rise to the present rash of disputes. Before 1 April, in seven representative Leyland toolrooms the lowest pay (at SU) was £60 a week, while the highest (at Rover Solihull) was £70. Between these two were four different wage rates. Moreover, for these same toolroom workers there were five different pay review dates ranging fairly evenly over the year. British Leyland, the unions and the toolmakers were anxious to harmonise both rates and review dates. Previous settlements have included promises to this effect. But with a restriction of twelve months between settlements and a £6 pay norm, differentials as high as £10 could not be reconciled. Different review dates also ensured constant leapfrogging.
This was the dilemma that the SU carburettor men were attempting to force to an issue. In April 1975 they accepted, with true altruism, a £5.50 increase, which was £1 less than they could have obtained. They agreed to this because they accepted management statements about the sad state of the company and because they were promised a further review in December 1975 to bring their pay up to the highest toolroom rates. When December came they were caught by the twelve-month rule. They were prepared to acknowledge that they could not achieve complete parity but they wanted the full £6 from December, without having to wait a full year until this April. They did not get the money and on 9 March they struck work. Everyone was very sympathetic and did not begrudge them the actual cash – but to pay it would breach the previously immaculate pay rode and, according to the Department of Employment, provide a green light to some 80,000 similarly placed workers throughout the engineering industry. That is why this strike went on for three weeks.
At Triumph Coventry, 350 toolroom workers demanded £1.85 which would give them parity with the tinsmiths. But this too, would have broken the twelve-month rule. The next settlement date for these workers is October. Despite the local AUEW, who told the men to stay out, they have returned to work. At Rover, 400 toolroom workers are asking £2 a week extra backdated to February 1975 which, they claim, is due from a previous settlement and is also within the pay code. They will probably get it.
At Llanelli, it was not AUEW members who were on strike. There it was Transport Union members, 650 press operators, arguing about the rate and the form of their grade’s transfer to the more highly skilled press maintenance work – which, to complicate matters further, is an AUEW job. Last, there are the machine tool fitters at Drew Lane, where they make suspensions for Austin and Morris cars. These men are demanding parity with the demonstrators, which would increase their pay from £66 to £78 a week-and that would break the pay code every way, defying mediation. This is probably why the Drew Lane workers are the remaining group on strike, with Austin and Morris car production still in jeopardy.
What sort of men are these toolmakers who have displayed such bargaining strength? One thing is certain: they are not militants in any accepted sense of that abused word. They are highly skilled men, with pride in their abilities. Within their union, the AUEW, they have always been a moderating force. Their craft pride entails a certain elitism, heightened by the fact that the less skilled production workers are generally members of the TGWU. These men measure their skill, obtained after long, low-paid, apprenticeships in the simplest way: by cash differentials. The current pay policy has struck at their central concern and turned their basically conservative attitudes into effective bloody-mindedness.
By their feelings, and in displaying their industrial muscle, they have already brought about great changes in the thinking of the principal architects of the next round of pay policy. Mr Jack Jones has accomplished a great shift from his previous insistence on the flat rate principle. Now he and Mr David Basnett – secretary of Britain’s third largest union, the GMWU – are calling for a combination of flat-rate and percentage in Phase Two pay policy. But even this dramatic change of front may not be sufficient for the AUEW. Mr Scanlon, writing in the latest issue of Industrial Management, insists that only a percentage principle will satisfy his union. It is interesting to speculate that, with his recent conversion to a voluntary incomes policy and with the sure backing of his previously moderate skilled members, Mr Scanlon may displace Mr Jones as the main author of the Mark II policy. If 1975 was the year of Jack Jones, 1976 may be the year of Hugh Scanlon.
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