“The workers... battle-cry must be: 'The Permanent Revolution.'” — Marx and Engels, 1850

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Mike McNair: CPGB: Rehabilitating the Kautskyite centre

Revolutionary strategy: Marxism and the challenge
of left unity
Mike Macnair / November Publications Ltd / 2008 / £7.99

(For the PDF of this article click here)

Dave Esterson takes issue with a new book by Mike Mcnair that seeks to rehabilitate Karl Kautsky, a leader of the Second International, and his method of party building

Mike Macnair is a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He is a regular contributor to its paper Weekly Worker and a speaker on its behalf at various events. His book, Revolutionary Strategy, was printed by the CPGB’s publishing house. It is on sale at a CPGB bookstall near you. In short the political stance of the CPGB and Mike Macnair are closely identified.
Which raises the question – do the CPGB agree with the “revolutionary strategy” on offer from Macnair in his book? If not where do they differ? We ask because it would be useful to know if they explicitly break with the revolutionary Marxist tradition that is espoused by Macnair or if it is shared by (the majority of) his organisation.

Revolutionary Strategy claims to be the start of a critical re-examination of the “strategic ideas of socialists since Marx and Engels” which Macnair says is necessary to overcome the “impasse” facing today’s far left.

It isn’t. It is a “Dear John” letter to the revolutionary tradition telling it that the affair is over because Mike Macnair has discovered a new lover – Karl Kautsky. The book does not re-examine the revolutionary tradition with a view to developing it to meet today’s tasks. It is a rehabilitation of a major critic of the revolutionary tradition in the Second International, the German theoretician Karl Kautsky.

It is an attempt to revive Kautsky’s vapid political tradition – the Centre, or to give it its correct name, centrism.

Kautsky’s centrism

Kautsky was a classic centrist: Marxist words disguising reformist practice. His practice was a betrayal of Marxism, of the working class and of the fight for revolution. To achieve this rehabilitation Macnair plays on the ignorance of today’s readers about Kautsky. His actual role in the socialist movement – as the arch apologist for the right – is ignored. His scab role in relation to the Bolshevik revolution is replaced by the claim that many of his criticisms of Bolshevism can no longer be treated as “presumptively false” (p14). Presumably this means they may be true and denouncing a workers’ revolution is alright?

Macnair goes to great lengths to berate the Communist International for its supposedly negative impact on working class organisation in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. But his rescue job on Kautsky underplays the disastrous impact of Kautsky’s centrism on the strongest working class movement in Europe, the German movement. It was Kautsky who, at a theoretical and at a party organisational level, played a major role in disarming that movement in the face of the rise and eventual victory of fascism.

Lenin called Kautsky, after the Russian Revolution, a renegade. Macnair insists that, “. . . casting out ‘the renegade Kautsky’ cut off the communists from the western European roots of their politics.” (p146) He even entitles one of his chapters “The revolutionary strategy of the centre”.

The fact that Kautsky spent much of his life insisting why the Bolshevik revolution was wrong is not mentioned. The fact that his strategy did not result in a single revolution is not explained. Instead Macnair declares: “The centre’s strategy of patience was more successful than the other strategies in actually building a mass party. Its insistence on the revolution as an act of the majority, and refusal of coalitionism, was equally relevant to conditions of revolutionary crisis . . .” (p65)

Except that it wasn’t because, as Macnair admits, “. . . it addressed neither the state form, nor the international character of the capitalist state system and the tasks of the workers’ movement, the centre’s strategy collapsed into the policy of the right when matters came to the crunch.” (p65)

So this strategy of patience was not so effective after all. Rather, it built mass “Marxist” organisations which when faced with the first major test of a European-wide crisis collapsed and ended up playing a thoroughly reactionary role. This grand workers’ movement proved utterly useless to stop the war – like an umbrella with holes – great until it rains.

So while Macnair does occasionally identify some weaknesses of Kautsky, his explanation of how Kautsky came to collapse into the policy of the right is separated from his supposedly correct “revolutionary strategy”. The task today, is to emulate Kautsky’s centre with modifications. The left “needs a strategy of patience, like Kautsky’s: but one that is internationalist and radical democratic, not one that accepts the existing order of nation states.” (p172).

Patient internationalism is not explained. It is an empty phrase. But one thing is clear from this statement. Apparently the goal for Macnair is no longer socialism, but radical democracy, just as it was for Kautsky. And it was fidelity to this radical democratic goal that led Kautsky into his servitude to the right and into his scab role in relation to the Russian Revolution. It will do the same to Macnair, and to the CPGB to the extent that it follows his theoretical line of march.

Macnair regards the strategy of patience as the essence of Kautskyism. He believes it to be far superior to the coalitionism of the reformist right and to what he calls the “mass strike strategy” (a complete and unworthy caricature of the strategy outlined by the left in the Second International such as Rosa Luxemburg).

He extols Kautsky’s strategy of creating parties that would only seek power once they had won the majority to their policies and programme. Until this point these parties would remain an opposition – not taking power, nor allying themselves with the right in coalition. The pre-First World War Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is the model for today according to Macnair. It built up workers’ organisations – political, trade union, cultural and so on – as an opposition world within capitalism. It stood for radical democracy so that one day it could win a majority and then take power. So powerful and successful was this party that it was crushed by the Nazis in 1933 without a fight!

Whatever bedknobs and broomsticks Macnair attaches to his book, at its core it is an embrace of this brand of Kautskyite gradualism. The problems start with Macnair’s definition of Marxism: “Marxism itself is a strategy for the emancipation of the working class, through ­collective action for communism; and for the ‘emancipation of all human beings without distinction of sex or race’ – i.e. for communism – through the emancipation of the working class.” (p38)

That is one element of Marxism. It is the final goal. But there is considerably more to Marxism than this. For starters there is the question of the class struggle, what Marx and Engels called the “motor force of history”.

It is quite remarkable how little attention Macnair pays to the role of class struggle as a factor shaping events. There is virtually no analysis of the standpoints the different traditions within the socialist movement took in relation to the class struggle – of what side they were on – and of what that tells us about those traditions. Everything is analysed abstractly. The strategy of patience is good, we are told. It was merely errors on internationalism and the nation state that led Kautsky astray.

Really? What about his position on the general strikes in the struggle for the vote in Belgium and the fact that – as he did so often in the class struggle – he covered for the betrayals of the right by citing the need for patience?

What about his justification of the trade union bureaucracy’s hostility to rank and file strike action brought to a head in the debates on the mass strike by the 1905 Russian Revolution? Were these examples of Kautsky’s patience – or were they examples of his deliberate dislocation of Marxism from the actual course of working class struggles?

Because Macnair separates the development of Marxism and the socialist movement from developments in the class struggle he covers up the actual role of the Centre – its betrayals – and attacks those who sided with the working class in those struggles, the left and its “mass strike strategy”. He cannot even bring himself to openly side with the left in the great schism that occurred in the socialist movement at the beginning of the First World War, just as Kautsky himself couldn’t.

The split in the Second International

At the beginning of the First World War the majority of the Social Democratic and Socialist party leaderships came out in defence of their own national governments. This was a betrayal of the working class and the International. To put it bluntly they sent off their own members and the wider working class to die for the imperialist, annexationist aims of the major belligerent powers and to kill workers from other countries, possibly also members of the same political organisation as them, the Second International.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks argued forcefully that it was necessary to fight against these treacherous leaders. New organisations were needed to conduct this fight. Major class battles are informed by ideas, but they are fought by people organised into political parties. To oppose the war, to prosecute the policy of revolutionary defeatism and to ensure that real (not patient, i.e. false) internationalism prevailed, a split was necessary and historically justified.

Lenin was not only correct to split from the counter-revolutionary leaderships of the Second International, but was also correct to insist that all of the anti-war left within Social Democracy should break from the right wing and cease covering up the scale of their treachery.

Here we are talking about millions of lives – Lenin fought for a policy designed to save them. Kautsky covered up for the slaughter. Yet Macnair can barely bring himself to say that this was the correct policy, preferring to say that it was “probably” correct. Incredibly Macnair argues:

“In fact, if we look back on 1914-18 itself, it should be apparent from what I said in discussing the outbreak of war . . . that it was the specific military-political conditions of 1914-18 which allowed Lenin’s thesis [defeatism or turn the imperialist war into a civil war] to obtain the sort of political purchase it did. If the war had been fought on German soil, as Engels anticipated in 1891, a German revolutionary-defencist policy would have been vindicated. If it had been a short war, the issue would have been brushed aside.” (p74)

By leaving out of the equation the rise of imperialism he obscures what the war was actually about, why the possibilities he considers for it are absurd and why, therefore, the policies he speculates about (German defencism) are excuses for treachery. And the extension of these excuses was an attack on the one country that turned the policy of defeatism into the practice of workers’ revolution.
Was it necessary to build independent revolutionary organisations that opposed the imperialist slaughter and sought to use the situation to overthrow capitalism? Was it necessary to expose the treacherous leaderships of the Second International and to purge them, not just from the party, but from the working class movement? Not “probably” – definitely!

The Russian Revolution

Macnair’s analysis of the Bolshevik Revolution demonstrates the essence of his own centrism. The revolution is not explained by any consideration of what happened in Russia in 1917, of what choices socialists had to make in the context of the class struggle. There is no assessment of which of those choices were right, which were wrong. Rather Macnair analyses events from the standpoint of a schema– the need to patiently build up a mass party that can win the majority, establish radical democracy and then patiently and painlessly dismantle capitalism. The class struggle – whose side are you on? – doesn’t get a look in.

From this ahistorical vantage point Macnair concludes that the Bolshevik revolution was “a gamble on the Russian Revolution triggering a generalised socialist revolution in central and western Europe.

The gamble failed. In all probability it had already failed by January 1918.” (p13) It’s the Russian Revolution presented as Russian roulette!

The failure of Lenin’s bet, according to Macnair, was disastrous. It led to an impasse for the left and to the sorry state of revolutionary politics today. In order for the Bolsheviks to cling to power, almost from the outset, they began to take measures (and codify them as part of the revolutionary canon) that led to bureaucratisation.

Macnair also criticises the idea that the split within the workers’ movement between Social Democratic and Communist Parties, begun with the outbreak of the First World War, achieved the goal of purging the revolutionary workers’ movement of reformist and counter-revolutionary ideas. His view is that it just ended up creating the basis for groups claiming to be revolutionary to bureaucratise themselves, split, and produce sects:

“But the ‘victory of the Russian revolution’ on its own, or the course of the revolution after late 1917-early 1918, can no longer be taken as evidence for Bolshevik strategy as a package. What it led to was not a strategic gain for the world working class, but a 60-year impasse of the global workers’ movement and the severe weakness of this movement at the present date.” (p14)

No it didn’t. And to say otherwise is to write off the greatest achievement of the working class so far in history – just as the renegade Kautsky did.

First of all to characterise the revolution of the gamble is facile. Every action in the class war is a gamble – for the simple reason that victory is never the guaranteed outcome. If it were we wouldn’t be having this discussion now. But nor would we be discussing the outcome of strikes we have led, actions we have organised, campaigns we have waged. All of these things require two things, neither of which fit in to Macnair’s lifeless strategy of patience. They require first an estimate on our part as to how far we have won over the forces that could achieve victory. They require second, a willingness to test that assessment by engaging the enemy in battle.

Kautsky never wanted to engage the enemy in battle – and nor does Macnair. The Bolsheviks, and the entire revolutionary tradition in Marxism dismissed by Macnair, did. And they developed tactics capable of both winning over the necessary forces and winning the battles. Even though outcomes could not be decided in advance odds could be reckoned, gambles – and history – could be made.

The real question is, were the Bolsheviks right to gamble? The answer is yes, again and again and again – first, because conditions in Russia placed the workers’ revolution on the agenda as an immediate task, second, because Europe itself was ripe for a revolution that would have (and could have) taken history forward in a giant leap.

The only solution to the crisis faced by society that could advance Russia beyond war, chaos and famine was the one proposed by the Bolsheviks – all power to the soviets. Only the workers had the power, the will and the means to end war, to break the back of residual serfdom, to liberate the nations of the empire and to free production from the chains of exploitation that served to prop up Tsarism rather than get beyond it. The workers’ revolution led by the Bolsheviks was both necessary and legitimate from the standpoint of taking history forward. Of course, having the will to execute this course of action was also necessary. And in the Bolshevik Party the Russian workers had an enormous advantage. It combined revolutionary strategy with a will to succeed. To the extent that every action in the class war is a gamble, it was well worth it.

The same was true of the international context. War had made Europe as a whole ripe for a repeat of the events in Russia. Within a year of the Bolshevik revolution there was a German revolution. It effectively brought about the end of the First World War, brought down the monarchy and created dual power in Germany. There were other revolutions and revolutionary situations throughout Europe – Austria, Italy, Hungary and so on. There were monumental crises in Britain and France. There was a second revolutionary opportunity in Germany in 1923.

Class struggle, policies, the actions of parties and the triumph of counter-revolutions saved the European capitalists. Yet despite all this Macnair argues that it was the only the actions of the reckless gamblers in the Bolshevik Party who led us to the present impasse. In a certain sense it is axiomatic that where we are now is due to all that has preceded us. Or to put it another way the present day is the sum of all previous historical actions. The problem is what are the numbers involved in the sum.

The Bolsheviks were correct. Other revolutions did follow. It was not primarily the decisions, actions and policies of the Bolsheviks that led to the isolation of the Russian revolution in this period. The German revolution could have ended not with counter-revolution and, eventually, the rise to power of fascism, but with the working class taking power resulting in surge of revolutionary turmoil even more powerful than that caused by the Russian Revolution.

Who was responsible for the failure of the German revolution of 1918-19? It was the right wing, counter-revolutionary leadership of the SPD. Who was in alliance with these people? Macnair’s belovedKautsky and the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). What did they tell the German workers when the counter-revolution stove in the heads of the left wing with rifle butts wielded by the precursors of fascism? That Luxemburg, Lenin and the left were the real threat to … democracy. That, comrade Macnair, is what happens in class struggle. And it is a world far removed from your lifeless schema of patience and democracy.

That is why you will search long and hard to find any indication from Macnair that the impasse we find ourselves in today was in any way the responsibility of the treacherous SPD right or its apologists in Kautsky’s Centre. Instead he heaps all the blame onto the party that demonstrated in practice that the working class could be won to support a revolutionary socialist strategy – the Bolsheviks.
None of this is to deny that the history of both the Russian and German revolutions were full of errors as well as in positive lessons. But Macnair is not drawing a balance sheet of errors and lessons.

He is drawing a line between himself and the revolutionary tradition.

It is possible to re-evaluate the experience of the Bolshevik revolution and the development of the Comintern with a critical eye so that mistakes do not get repeated. We are not against re-examining the past and recognising the errors that were made. But we are against doing this on the basis of abandoning the strategy of revolution to achieve the goal of socialism and replacing it with a strategy of patience aimed at achieving the goal of radical democracy.

But Macnair blames the eventual outcome of the bureaucratisation of the Russian Revolution and its isolation on those who tried to make the world a better place, the Bolsheviks and the left, not on those whose strategy increased the odds against the “gamble” paying off – the executioners of the revolution of the left and their centrist apologists, like Kautsky.

Never mind that the soviets withered because the members died at the hands of the counter-revolution. Never mind that the party was cut off from its base because that base exhausted itself in years of war defending socialism. And never mind that the Comintern, in its early years, expended every effort trying to break the isolation that Russia faced but was blocked by reformism and Kautskyite centrism in the countries where it could have and should have found support. All of this is discounted and the lion’s share of blame is heaped upon the Bolsheviks themselves and the way in which they imposed bureaucratic centralism on the Comintern in order to turn it into a “fan club” of Russia.

Such an analysis will be welcomed by every Cold War hagiographer who has ever tried to make their theory of “Russian gold” stick. It is, to misquote Henry Ford, history as bunk.

The rise of Stalinism

Macnair argues that the failure of the gamble in Russia left the Bolsheviks in power in a majority peasant country. Their only realistic option was, he argues, a “controlled retreat” back to capitalism. Never mind that this would have meant death for thousands – such factors never enter into Macnair’s consciousness.

The main thing is that once it was clear the gamble had not returned a big pay out, the only option was to leave the gaming table. His criticism of Bolshevism in the 1918-23 period is that by failing to follow his option it left itself with only one other course of action – bureaucratisation. The party had to base itself on the peasantry and increasingly act in an authoritarian rather than a democratic fashion.

To avoid any confusion we will make some things clear. First, not everything the Bolsheviks, and by extension the Comintern, did in this period was either correct, or justified. Actions such as banning factions were to prove fatal for the health of the regime. The generalisation of the methods of terror employed during the civil war led to profound distortions of revolutionary policy. Attempts, by Trotsky and others, to militarise production and the unions were not only wrong, but dangerous.

But to highlight such errors and to ignore the fact that Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, the Workers’ Opposition and others, were not only able to oppose many wrong policies but sometimes successful in introducing powerful correctives to them, is to present a one sided and false history of post-1917 Bolshevism. Moreover it is, once again, to abstract both the measures and mistakes from the realities of the class war.

To win the civil war it was necessary for the Bolsheviks to carry through measures of centralisation and repression. Democracy does have a class content. Democracy for the active, murdering counter-revolutionaries would have been a signal that the Bolsheviks were not serious about holding onto power. This would have been a departure from the Marxist understanding of both the state and the revolution. The state, in the hands of the working class – and even in the circumstances of civil war by the working class party – has to be used as an instrument of repression against the enemies of revolution. Democracy has to be suppressed for such elements. Is this the norm – no. Is it a necessary and justifiable departure from the norm – yes.

To put it in simple terms, when workers go on strike, having taken a majority decision, they use repression against scabs. They do not extend democratic rights – on strike committees and the like – to scabs. They recognise that for the duration of the struggle the norms of “respecting everyone’s opinion” are suspended. Why? Because battle has commenced. This happens at a far higher level in a revolution. But we do not generalise from the conditions of war to say that in all circumstances we celebrate repression and suspend democracy. It is an exception.

In the case of Russia this meant forming the Red Army, and the army needed to eat which meant requisitioning grain from the peasants – at gunpoint. If Macnair believes we can only have a successful social revolution where at all times the government is able to rule by consent then he will be sorely disappointed and one can assume that he will be against any real revolutions that actually take place, for there has never been a social revolution without violence and coercion and there never will be.

It is certainly true that elements of the so-called Bolshevisation policy pursued by Zinoviev in the Comintern ignored the specific conditions that justified extreme measures and spread the idea that revolutionary parties should be monolithic. This in turn was utilised by the Stalinist bureaucracy to impose bureaucratic centralism.

But Macnair conflates all of these elements into one: bureaucratic centralism. It was established in 1918 and it led inexorably to Stalinism. He glosses over the entire struggle of both the United and LeftOppositions and suggests the outcome was all the product of the failed gamble. But then those struggles were class struggles – the representatives of the working class versus those of the petit bourgeois bureaucracy that Stalin was assembling to prop up his regime. And as we have established, Macnair does not include class struggle in his schema.

On the basis of his Kautskyite view of the party and belief that the immediate goal of the working class is radical (republican) democracy rather than socialism, Mike Macnair is championing a complete break with the revolutionary Marxist tradition. He has every right to do this. But under the Trades Description Act he should be prosecuted from the claim in the title of his book that this has anything to do with either “revolutionary strategy” or “the challenge of left unity”, as the subtitle runs.

His strategy is for a radical democracy that eschews the use of revolutionary strategy and tactics. And there is not a single paragraph in the book that explains why or how the abandonment of the struggle for socialism as the goal of revolution can contribute towards the establishment of left unity.

Which brings us back to the question we posed at the start – do the CPGB agree with Macnair’s position? We should be told.

Mike McNair Replies

Sun 01, March 2009 @ 18:25

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discussion of this article

bill j said…

Mike McNair and the CPGB make much of this Engels quote;

"First. If one thing is certain it is that our party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown."

This is supposed to demonstrate that a bourgeois stage of the democratic republic is necessary in the revolution, not on the basis of any class analysis but because Engels said so and ergo justify the split between the minimum bourgeois programme and the maximum socialist one.

If you read a little further on though Engels is explict that the democratic republic is not a socialist one - or indeed the dictatorship of the proletariat - he says;

"Probably few of these points should be included in the programme. I mention them also mainly to describe the system in Germany where such matters cannot be discussed openly, and to emphasise the self-deception of those who wish to transform such a system in a legal way into communist society."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm

Indeed the CPGB's fetish of the democratic stage/minimum programme echoes another remark of Engels;

"Even vulgar democracy, which sees the millennium in the democratic republic, and has no suspicion that it is precisely in this last form of state of bourgeois society that the class struggle has to be fought out to a conclusion..."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm

Mon 02, March 2009 @ 21:33

Chris S said…

If it all hinged on one quote I doubt anyone would back it, but it does not. The quote itself rests on the lessons of the Commune which Marx identifies in 'The Civil War in France' and elsewhere. You understand the democratic republic in the same way Kautsky did. Now everyone knows that you are such a big fan of Kautsky but to take his understanding of the democratic republic over Marx and Engels is a bit far don't you think?

The change in understanding of the democratic republic, that is the gutting of its revolutionary character was done to the best of my knowledge by Kautsky in his 1902 'Social Revolution', up until then everyone in the socialist movement knew that the democratic republic meant the dictatorship of the proletariat, the "republic of labour" and not a bourgeois republic like USA. Whilst these "democratic" republics may contain some features of the democratic republic (i.e. universal military training or election of all public officials) it can never be the "one and indivisible democratic republic" as this can only be achieved when the majority (the proletariat) take power to build socialism. You can't have a democratic republic under minority rule, as minority rule is the direct antithesis of democracy. Marx and Engels knew this, so should you.

The Democratic Republic is not a bourgeois democratic stage unless you happen to be a revisionist.

For all of your banging on against Mike's supposed Kautskyism, it is you who takes in Kautsky's deviations against Marx and Engels and socialism.

Thu 05, March 2009 @ 00:19

bill j said…

The minimum programme was one of bourgeois revolution, as was understood by every Marxist who has ever written on the subject. Trotsky summarises it quite well in his introduction to the Permanent Revolution 1929;

"In its essential features, the theory of the permanent revolution was formulated by me even before the decisive events of 1905. Russia was approaching the bourgeois revolution. No one in the ranks of the Russian Social Democrats (we all called ourselves Social Democrats then) had any doubts that we were approaching a bourgeois revolution, that is, a revolution produced by the contradictions between the development of the productive forces of capitalist society and the outlived caste and state relationships of the period of serfdom and the Middle Ages."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/prre.htm

Trotsky in his theory of permanent revolution explains how the tasks of the bourgeois revolution, the minimum programme, are solved by the working class seizure of power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the socialist insurrection;

"The theory of the permanent revolution, which originated in 1905, declared war upon these ideas and moods. It pointed out that the democratic tasks of the backward bourgeois nations lead directly, in our epoch, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and that the dictatorship of the proletariat puts socialist tasks on the order of the day."

Of course the CPGB/Mike McNair and co can try to re-write history all they like. But on this question there really is no doubt. And its frankly odd, not to say strange, that you can make this discovery nearly a century after the event. The reason the CPGB call for radical democracy and not socialism, is telling, but in the end a justified reflection of their politics, they are radical democrats not socialists, Mensheviks not Bolsheviks, Kautskyites not Marxists.

Thu 05, March 2009 @ 18:07

bill j said…

Of course if you were in any doubt about the minimum (bourgeois) nature of the Erfurt programme then why not read it?

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1891erfurt.html

As the Erfurt programme explains;

"Starting from these views, it combats, within existing society, not only the exploitation and oppression of wage­earners, but every kind of exploitation and oppression, whether directed against a class, a party, a sex, or a race.

Proceeding from these principles, the Social Democratic Party of Germany demands, to begin with..."

The minimum programme exists within the existing society. It does not overthrow it. Engels point was that this was too limited, that the programme should include the democratic republic, but even this was not socialism, not the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the last stage under which it socialism was fought for. Did Engels have a "stagist" theory of revolution? Absolutely he did, as did every other Marxist writing at the time. Hence the brilliance of Trotsky's theory, where the juxtaposition of bourgeois democratic, minimum programme, and socialist revolutionary, maximum programme was overcome through transitional demands.

Of course the CPGB, Mike McNair and co, reject the maximum programme, transitional demands and the permanent revolution. As Trotsky pointed out, the reason "communists" do not advocate transitional demands, the bridge to revolution, is simple. They have no need of a bridge as they have no intention of crossing it.

Thu 05, March 2009 @ 19:57

Jim Grant said…

Bill, a minimum programme is the lowest basis on which a party will assume power. To call "the" minimum programme bourgeois is essentially ridiculous, as ridiculous as calling "the" state bourgeois, or "the" borough feudal. It's a confusion that seems to run through your arguments with us, as you rush to give every person, place, thing and (especially) abstract concept a class content in order to stave off the menshevoid stalino-kautskyite assault on revolutionary marxism. A *given* minimum programme will be a programme for the proletariat, or a petty bourgeois programme, etc - just as a given state necessarily has a class content. A proletarian minimum programme should be one that allows the proletariat to rule - that is, that takes up the questions of state form denied by the Erfurt programme (and, in point of fact, denied in any serious fashion by the transitional programme and its desecendants).

As for the democratic republic, it is your good self who is concocting all these stages - now there is a stage between the workers party taking power and the dictatorship of the proletariat...that'll be an interesting one when we get to it, I'm sure.

Of course, in reality (remember that?), the CPGB makes it perfectly clear what is meant by the democratic republic, and even if it were the case that you could dig out a previously unknown letter from Marx that said "of course, the democratic republic is a meaningless abstraction which serves only to fool the workers into accepting bourgeois rule", *our* demands will not be diminished. You insist on trying to "prove" that we stand for other politics than we actually do, so we find ourselves in the faintly hilarious position that we are apparently both ultra-left for bringing up questions of the state and such in cosy single issue campaigns and call openly for workers militias etc, and mendacious Kaustskyites who do not seriously question the class rule of the bourgeoisie! I'm sorry, comrade, but we can't be both - and I assure you, we spend a lot more ink on militias than we do on defending bourgeois parliaments.

Lastly, we have this astonishing little nugget: "As Trotsky pointed out, the reason "communists" do not advocate transitional demands, the bridge to revolution, is simple. They have no need of a bridge as they have no intention of crossing it."

Trotsky was talking about 'Communists' whose political aims were intentionally to limit various revolutionary situations in the name of Soviet diplomacy. He was discussing actively counterrevolutionary currents. Either it's the most ludicrous comparison in the history of comparing things to other things, or you genuinely believe we're a pack of conscious saboteurs - in which case, who's the Stalinist now?

And frankly, one must point out the number of revolutionary movements successfully led over the 'bridge' by transitional programmes - that'll be zilch, then. Perhaps you should pay more attention to your own 'intentions'.

Sun 08, March 2009 @ 00:53

Jim Grant said…

Oh, and we "reject the maximum programme"! Bill, that's just a lie. We have a maximum programme, we stand by it and argue for it and all the rest. No amount of sophistry will make that accusation even half true.

Sun 08, March 2009 @ 00:56

bill j said…

Strong stuff. So is the minimum programme the minimum basis upon which the class seizes power?

Well certainly not according to Kautsky and the SPD, who in their programme, the Erfurt programme explained that the minimum programme fought for reforms "within existing society." So that's just flat wrong.

What about the democratic republic? The irony is that it was Luxemburg who used the Engels quote against Kautsky, as Kautsky refused to fight for the democratic revolution;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1910/theory-practice/ch01.htm

he did so on the basis of his committment to the strategy of patience. Now of course McNair denounces Luxemburg as a semi-Bakuninite and supports Kautsky before 1914. So what is one to make of this? Only I think that McNairs book doesn't even try to acquaint itself with consistency.

As you say the CPGB does make it clear what a democratic republic is. It is a capitalist economy which defends private property. As McNair explains;

"The self emancipation of the working class requires the working class to lay its hands collectively on the means of production. This does not mean state ownership of the means of production, which is merely a legal form."

Two diametrically opposed ideas lying next to each other. Does this not sum up the absurdity of McNairs book? The working class will lay hold of the means of production, but they will not own them. But ownership will not lie with the state, the capitalists will not be expropriated so private property will remain in their hands. And the working class will not have emancipated itself.

Its incoherence raised to the level of an art.

Indeed McNair makes it absolutely clear that he is against "separate national revolutions". Given that all revolutions begin as national revolutions, why not come straight out with it. He's against the expropriation of the capitalists - socialism - and he's against the revolution, ergo he's against socialist revolution - the maximum programme.

And if he supports it - show me just one quote.

Sun 08, March 2009 @ 20:25

bill j said…

And btw Luxemburg was quite clear about the difference between the minimum and the maximum programme;

"Here, comrades, you have the general foundation of the program we are officially adopting today, whose outline you have to read in the pamphlet What Does the Spartacus League Want? Our program is deliberately opposed to the standpoint of the Erfurt Program; it is deliberately opposed to the separation of the immediate, so-called minimal demands formulated for the political and economic struggle from the socialist goal regarded as a maximal program. In this deliberate opposition [to the Erfurt Program] we liquidate the results of seventy years’ evolution and above all, the immediate results of the World War, in that we say: For us there is no minimal and no maximal program; socialism is one and the same thing: this is the minimum we have to realize today. [Hear! Hear!]"

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/31.htm

Shame Mike McNair wasn't around to put her straight.

Sun 08, March 2009 @ 20:42

Jacob Richter said…

It's ashame that Macnair's commentary on the Programme of the French Workers' Party written by Marx and Guesde was written in 2007. Anyway, I'd like to say that the minimum program itself needs to be divided into two: one of workers' power, and one of immediate, intransigent opposition. Furthermore, both sides in this polemic need to reconsider their republicanism in terms of elections for officials, and look into demarchy.

Mon 09, March 2009 @ 04:31

bill j said…

Can't agree. The programme is a unified whole that leads from where we are to the struggle for power. It includes minimum reforms, transitional demands based around workers control and the maximum seizure of power - the socialist revolution.

If you read McNair he claims that reforms = power. He is no more correct than Kautsky. It is liberal reformism under another name.

The minimum programme is not a programme for power. The SPD/Bolsheviks etc. were explicit on this point. It is a programme of struggle "within the system".

McNair/the CPGB claim that by achieving the reform of capitalism - the entire minimum programme - then the workers will have taken power. This is ridiculous nonsense as any attempt to read McNair's book quickly makes clear. McNair/the CPGB are against the socialist revolution. If they were for it they would say so. But they never do. Rather they prefer the liberal - democratic republic - pretending that it is the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Funny dictatorship of the proletariat which leaves capitalist property rights in tact.

Mon 09, March 2009 @ 14:52

bill j said…

There's another ironic element to the CPGBs/Mike McNairs injunction that the left return to Kautsky.

Perhaps Kautsky's two major contributions to Marxist theory were his analysis of the role of the socialist party in fighting for socialism and on the national question.

Yet the CPGB/Mike McNair reject Kautsky on both.

Socialist consciousness

Kautsky explained - in a passage cited by Lenin in What is to be done? - that socialist ideas, the necessity of a socialist revolution, does not arise spontaneously out of the purely economic struggle between capitalist and worker.

Rather it was necessary for the revolutionary party to fight for socialism to raise the workers to revolutionary socialist consciousness. This key idea formed the basis for Lenin's work with the Bolsheviks.

"Thus, socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without [von Aussen Hineingetragenes] and not something that arose within it spontaneously [urwüchsig]."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm

Yet where or when do the CPGB/Mike McNair ever fight for socialism?

No where and never.

Its fair to say on socialism the CPGB/Mike McNair are well to the right of Kautsky.

And as Lenin remarks;

"Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is — either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a “third” ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology."

As the CPGB/Mike McNair rejects socialism they fight for a bourgeois ideology. Which as I've already pointed out quite a few times, explains their affinity for liberal reformism.

The National question

Kautsky systematised Marx and Engels writings on the national question to develop the idea of the right of all nations to self determination. He did so in opposition to ideas like "cultural national autonomy" of the Austrians.

Yet on the national question the CPGB/Mike McNair reject the self determination of nations and support reactionary partition and racist immigration controls. See Palestine/Israel again.

Once more they make Kautsky look a leftist.

Mon 09, March 2009 @ 19:11

Jacob Richter said…

According to the CPGB, the maximum program is the goal of communism itself, not "socialist revolution." The rediscovered minimum program before the Kautskyist orthodoxy is the DOTP plus some reform demands here and there. My "minimum program for workers' power" - which is demarchic and not republican:

1) All assemblies of the remaining representative democracy and all councils of an expanding participatory democracy shall become working bodies, not parliamentary talking shops, being legislative and executive-administrative at the same time and not checked and balanced by anything more professional than sovereign commoner juries;

2) All public offices shall be assigned by lot as a fundamental basis of the demarchic commonwealth, since the elections of such would be in fact oligarchic in the classical sense;

3) All public offices shall be free of any formal or de facto qualifications based on non-possessive property or, more generally, on wealth;

4) All public offices shall be compensated, but shall have standards of living that are no higher than that of an average worker; and

5) All public offices shall be subject to immediate recall in cases of abuse of office.

6) There shall be a reduction of the normal workweek – including time for workplace democracy, workers’ self-management, etc. through workplace committees and assemblies – to a participatory-democratic maximum of 32 hours or less without loss of pay or benefits, the minimum provision of double-time pay or salary/contract equivalent for all hours worked over the normal workweek and over 8 hours a day, and the prohibition of compulsory overtime.

7) There shall be full, lawsuit-enforced freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association, even within the military, free from anti-employment reprisals, police interference such as from agents provocateurs, and formal political disenfranchisement.

8) There shall be an expansion of the right to bear arms and to general self-defense towards enabling the formation of people’s militias based on free training, especially in connection with class-strugglist association, and also free from police interference such as from agents provocateurs.

9) All state debts shall be suppressed outright.

10) All predatory financial practices towards the working class, legal or otherwise, shall be precluded by first means of establishing, on a permanent and either national or multinational basis, a financial monopoly without any private ownership or private control whatsoever – at purchase prices based especially on the market values of insolvent banks – with such a monopoly inclusive of the general provision of commercial and consumer credit, and with the application of “equity not usury” towards such activity.

11) There shall be an enactment of confiscatory, despotic measures against all capital flight of wealth, whether such wealth belongs to economic rebels on the domestic front or to foreign profiteers.

Tue 10, March 2009 @ 02:14

Jacob Richter said…

Meanwhile, the other minimum programme, the one of "immediate, intransigent opposition" (notice the overlap):

1) The reduction of the normal workweek – including time for workplace democracy, workers’ self-management, etc. through workplace committees and assemblies – to a participatory-democratic maximum of 32 hours or less without loss of pay or benefits, the minimum provision of double-time pay or salary/contract equivalent for all hours worked over the normal workweek and over 8 hours a day, the prohibition of compulsory overtime, and the provision of one hour off with pay for every two hours of overtime;

2) Full, lawsuit-enforced freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association, even within the military, free from anti-employment reprisals, police interference such as from agents provocateurs, and formal political disenfranchisement;

3) The expansion of the right to bear arms and to general self-defense towards enabling the formation of people’s militias based on free training, especially in connection with class-strugglist association, and also free from police interference such as from agents provocateurs;

4) The combating of degenerative personality politics through the institution, in the various legislatures and executives, of the closed-list, proportional-representative form that allows mere parties to arbitrarily appoint to and remove from the halls of power the party-affiliated legislators, cabinet officials, and chief executives;

5) The institution of ever-progressive measures against the anti-meritocratic, upper-class inheritance of wealth in general and especially of productive and other non-possessive property, measures which include the abolition of all remaining monarchies;

6) [Abolition of the corporate person]

7) Socio-income democracy through direct proposals and rejections, at the national level, regarding all tax rates on all types of income – such as employment income, individual property income such as rent, both individual and corporate business income, both individual and corporate dividend income, and both individual and corporate capital gains – annual votes which include the right to create or raise upper tax rates, alternative minimum tax rates, and non-employment income gross-ups or multipliers;

8) The application of not some but all economic rent of land towards exclusively public purposes – such as the abolition of all indirect and other class-regressive taxation – by first means of land value “taxation”;

9) Guarantees of a real livelihood to all workers – beyond bare subsistence minimums – and for equivalent unemployment and work incapacitation provisions, including the universalization of annual, non-deflationary adjustments for all non-executive remunerations, pensions, and insurance benefits to at least match rising costs of living (not notorious government underestimations due to faulty measures like chain weighting, or even underhanded selections of the lower of core inflation and general inflation);

10) The institution of income-based or preferrably class-based affirmative action, especially in the sphere of education;

11) The mandatory private- and public-sector recognition of professional education, other higher education, and related work experience “from abroad,” along with the transnational standardization of such education and the institution of other measures to counter the underemployment of educated immigrants;

12) The abolition of all intellectual property laws and of all restrictions on the non-commodity economy of peer-to-peer sharing, open-source programming, and the like;

13) The genuine end of “free markets” by first means of non-selective encouragement of, and unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for, pre-cooperative worker buyouts of existing enterprises and enterprise operations, first as a counter to all workplace closures, mass sackings, and mass layoffs.

Tue 10, March 2009 @ 02:18

bill j said…

Like I said they oppose socialist revolution. How do you get to communism without that?

Tue 10, March 2009 @ 08:58

Chris S said…

Will reply more after the elections, but I would just like to point out how very odd and confused your posts are. You don't take up any of our politics, you are arguing against something which does not resemble our politics. Like I wrote above, you get your understanding of the Democratic Republic from Mensheviks and revisionsists whilst we look to Marx.

Tue 10, March 2009 @ 21:10

bill j said…

You look at Marx? What with?

Tue 10, March 2009 @ 22:45

Jacob Richter said…

"Like I said they oppose socialist revolution. How do you get to communism without that?"

What is "socialist revolution" in the first place? What is the program for "socialist revolution" in the first place? [I don't think it can properly be one of collective worker ownership and control of the MOP if "socialist revolution" refers merely to the overthrow of the bourgeois-capitalist state order.]

For example, both the CPGB and folks like myself call for people's militias *now*, not later as some sort of broad-economistic "transitional" demand (limiting militias to the workplaces).

"Full, lawsuit-enforced freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association, even within the military, free from anti-employment reprisals, police interference such as from agents provocateurs, and formal political disenfranchisement" covers *much* more than just "scrap anti-union laws," "end police brutality," and "criminals the right to vote." Granted, the CPGB's Draft Programme doesn't have this exact formulation as a combined whole (which is a weakness), but they have the components.

Wed 11, March 2009 @ 03:23

Jacob Richter said…

Oh, and unlike Macnair and the CPGB, I speak as an avowed "neo-Kautskyist" who supports by and large Kautsky's positions before The Road to Power in 1909, when his centrism of that time was one of revolutionary centrism and not of vulgar "centrism."

Lenin the revolutionary centrist: The difference between the conceptions “Marxist centre” (= independent policy, independent ideas, independent theory) and “Marsh” (= wavering, lack of principle, “turn table” (“Drehscheibe”), weathercock).

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/ni-alpha/marsh.htm

Wed 11, March 2009 @ 03:28

bill j said…

What is the socialist revolution? A telling question I think.

It is the overthrow of capitalism by the working class, the expropriation of the capitalists and the establishment of working class power - socialism.

You're against it. The CPGB are against it. Mike McNair's against it. Kautsky was against it.

Lenin did it.

That's the difference.

Wed 11, March 2009 @ 10:04

Jacob Richter said…

You may wish to look into a draft amendment to the RSDLP(B) program in 1917:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/reviprog/ch04.htm

"The party fights for a more democratic workers’ and peasants’ republic, in which the police and the standing army will be abolished and replaced by the universally armed people, by a people’s militia; all officials will be not only elective, but also subject to recall at any time upon the demand of a majority of the electors; all officials, without exception, will be paid at a rate not exceeding the average wage of a competent worker; parliamentary representative institutions will be gradually replaced by Soviets of people’s representatives (from various classes and professions, or from various localities), functioning as both legislative and executive bodies."

This was merely the preamble to the *minimum* political program. Meanwhile:

"The high level of development of capitalism already achieved in banking and in the trustified branches of industry, on the one hand, and the economic disruption caused by the imperialist war, everywhere evoking a demand for state and public control of the production and distribution of all staple products, on the other, induce the Party to demand the nationalisation of the banks, syndicates (trusts), etc."

This was merely part of the preamble to the *minimum* economic program. No "transitional" programs were used whatsoever.

As for "socialist revolution" itself:

"By introducing social in place of private ownership of the means of production and exchange, by introducing planned organisation of social production to ensure the well-being and many-sided development of all the members of society, the proletarian social revolution will do away with the division of society into classes and thereby emancipate the whole of oppressed humanity, for it will put an end to all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another."

"A necessary condition for this social revolution is the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the conquest by the proletariat of such political power as will enable it to suppress all resistance on-the part of the exploiters. Aiming at making the proletariat capable of fulfilling its great historic mission, international Social-Democracy organises the proletariat in an independent political party opposed to all the bourgeois parties, guides all the manifestations of its class struggle, reveals to it the irreconcilable antagonism between the interests of the exploiters and those of the exploited, and explains to the proletariat the historical significance of and the necessary conditions for the impending social revolution. At the same time it reveals to all the other toiling and exploited masses the hopelessness of their position in capitalist society and the need for a social revolution if they are to free themselves from the yoke of capital."

Wed 11, March 2009 @ 13:40

Jacob Richter said…

I'm not against "socialist revolution" at all. Consider something I've written (on RevLeft, if you're interested in discussing communism and worker struggles there):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=631

Once more, human labour – be it manual or mental – and its technological, labour-saving equivalent are the only non-natural sources of value production. The written history of all societies, up to and including the present, is primarily one of open and hidden class struggles over the exploitation of these non-natural sources of value production. The modern bourgeois-capitalist society has not abolished the very non-conspiracist class antagonisms, but has instead established in place of the old ones both new conditions of oppression – primarily the various forms of wage labour and hidden debt slavery – and new forms of class struggle, a very scientific concept which, fundamentally speaking, can no longer be taken for granted.

Nevertheless, without the technological, economic, political, and other developments associated with this society, the realistic possibility of abolishing the exploitation and alienation of human labour through, along with more emancipatory measures, the full establishment of collective worker control and responsibility over the economy – free from surplus labour appropriations by any elite minority, from private ownership of productive and other non-possessive property, and from all forms of debt slavery – could not have come about.

This socially revolutionary transformation, along with socially revolutionary transformations aimed at abolishing non-class oppression and alienation, cannot be brought about by any of the following: private philanthropy by the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie; scientific management and social engineering by the coordinators; social-statist legislation and administration within the framework of the bourgeois-capitalist state, especially those by the aforementioned classes; so-called “vanguardism” on the part of philosopher-conspirators who do not rely on a highly class-conscious, organized, and politico-ideologically independent working class; and mere spontaneous development, including social evolution, fashionable “identity politics,” and the class accommodation accompanying both. This necessarily transnational emancipation of labour, which has nothing to lose but its chains, can only be brought about by a highly class-conscious and organized working class independently, capturing the full political power of a ruling class in accordance with the slogan “WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!”

Class-Strugglist Social Labour (“the Social-Labourists”) disdains to conceal its view and its task regarding the above versus barbarism, the common ruin of the contending classes: Its anti-capitalist task is to educate, agitate, and organize the various divisions of the working class and their struggles into a class-conscious, collectively unified, and politico-ideologically independent whole, thereby making that open class struggle of the working class aware of its historic aim and capable of choosing the best means to attain this aim, ultimately in the form of the simultaneously transnational, social-revolutionary, class-strugglist, and worker-class-only “party” of at least the vast majority of the working class.

Wed 11, March 2009 @ 13:43

bill j said…

Well the date is pretty critical isn't it? May 1917. The Bolsheviks/Lenin was only in the process of breaking with the minimum programme and the limitation of that programme to the democratic republic. Reflecting on the relationship between the democratic (bourgeois) revolution and the socialist (proletarian) revolution in 1921 Lenin explained the relationship like this;

"The direct and immediate object of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic one, namely, to destroy the survivals of medievalism and sweep them away completely, to purge Russia of this barbarism, of this shame, and to remove this immense obstacle to all culture and progress in our country....

"Both the anarchists and the petty-bourgeois democrats (i.e., the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who are the Russian counterparts of that international social type) have talked and are still talking an incredible lot of nonsense about the relation between the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist (that is, proletarian) revolution....

"But in order to consolidate the achievements of the bourgeois-democratic revolution for the peoples of Russia, we were obliged to go farther; and we did go farther. We solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing, as a “by-product” of our main and genuinely proletarian -revolutionary, socialist activities. We have always said that reforms are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle. We said—and proved it by deeds—that bourgeois-democratic reforms are a by-product of the proletarian, i.e., of the socialist revolution. Incidentally, the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Martovs, Chernovs, Hillquits, Longuets, MacDonalds, Turatis and other heroes of “Two and-a-Half” Marxism were incapable of understanding this relation between the bourgeois-democratic and the proletarian-socialist revolutions. The first develops into the second. The second, in passing, solves the problems of the first. The second consolidates the work of the first. Struggle, and struggle alone, decides how far the second succeeds in outgrowing the first."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/14.htm

In other words the socialist revolution completed the bourgeois revolution. The minimum programme, limited as it was to bourgeois democracy, was completed by the socialist revolution and workers power.

But none of this counts for McNair/the CPGB/Kautsky and co. They are incapable of understanding the relationship between the two revolutions. And that's why the reject the struggle for socialism.

And there is simple proof of that. They never fight for it.

Wed 11, March 2009 @ 18:17

bill j said…

Lenin explained it well here;

"Can We Go Forward If We Fear To Advance Towards Socialism?

What has been said so far may easily arouse the following objection on the part of a reader who has been brought up on the current opportunist ideas of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Most measures described here, he may say, are already in effect socialist and not democratic measures!

This current objection, one that is usually raised (in one form or another) in the bourgeois, Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik press, is a reactionary defence of backward capitalism, a defence decked out in a Struvean garb. It seems to say that we are not ripe for socialism, that it is too early to "introduce" socialism, that our revolution is a bourgeois revolution and therefore we must be the menials of the bourgeoisie (although the great bourgeois revolutionaries in France 125 years ago made their revolution a great revolution by exercising terror against all oppressors, landowners and capitalists alike!). "

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm#v25zz99h-360

That's no problem for Mike McNair of course, who believes that the Russian revolution was doomed to failure - a reckless gamble bound to fail - because it introduced conscription!

Wed 11, March 2009 @ 18:45

Jacob Richter said…

From RevLeft comrade Rakunin (who's saying that the "orthodox Marxist" interpretation of "minimum program" is social-democratic and not class-strugglist):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/ever-happened-eight-t103404/index.html?p=1382820#post1382820

"The minimum programme is no longer possible" only if we rely on the bourgeosie for its implementation (instead of the working class).

That of "classical social democracy" where "[...] the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying" (Trotsky), is indeed "no longer possible". And I think the ICC refers to minimum programs of the reformist kind (Gotha, Chartre de Quaregnon, etc.), which demands reforms from the capitalist state, just like Trotsky did in his Transitional Program. There Trotsky defined the minimum program as a program "which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society".

*This emphasis on its limitation withing bourgeois society or bourgeois democracy comes from Kautsky. And I believe that's a mistake.*

These programs differ from minimum programs of the Marxist kind (which rely on working class struggle and working class self-organization). The Marxist minimum is about working class rule, not necessarily extending bourgeois democracy. Demanding that the army would be disolved in favor of arming the proletariat isn't really a demand "limited [...] within the framework of bourgeois society".

Btw, the full implementation of the Marxist minimum program is, in the minds of class conscious workers, somewhat transitional in character.

Thu 12, March 2009 @ 03:12

Jacob Richter said…

Notwithstanding my disagreements with the true founder of what is known today as "Marxism" (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/millenni/smith4.htm ; http://libcom.org/library/renegade-kautsky-disciple-lenin-dauve) on critical issues:

- Monetary "socialism" vs. labour-time vouchers and electronic labour credits

- "De-classing" (have the long-term interests of manual, clerical, and professional workers without becoming such)

- The nature of the state

- Demarchic commonwealth vs. both soviet republic and "democratic republic" (bourgeois interpretation's and the interpretation of Marx and Macnair)

- "Bourgeois revolution" vs. anti-feudal revolution (http://www.revleft.com/vb/classical-economic-rent-t103272/index.html)

On the question of politico-ideological independence (explicit class struggle, stringent anti-coalitionism except when other parties implement the DOTP) his words are, to quote his most well-known disciple, "profoundly true and important."

[What I've said in this post is a brief summary of my completed theoretical pamphlet and my programmatic work-in-progress.]

Thu 12, March 2009 @ 03:24

bill j said…

Don't know what you're on about.

Thu 12, March 2009 @ 07:35

Jacob Richter said…

Which one? The first post, or the second? If the second, what's your opinion on the first? To sum it up, the question is: what should be the definition of "minimum program" for class-strugglists today, considering that Marx had one definition while Kautsky and Lenin had another?

Thu 12, March 2009 @ 13:22

bill j said…

Still don't know what you're on about.

Let's summarise;

Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, the SPD, Plekhanov and everyone else, said that the minimum programme was one for struggle within the existing system. It was one for the reform of capitalism, for the completion of the bourgeois revolution. It stood in contradistinction to the socialist, working class, maximum programme which was for capitalisms overthrow.

The CPGB/Mike McNair say that the minimum programme is for the establishment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". But its a pretty funny dictatorship of the proletariat as it takes place without a socialist revolution and without the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. In other words its not the dictatorship of the proletariat by any objective standard.

So they are either flat wrong or they should make it clear they have changed the definition of the minimum programme to something different from that understood by everyone else who has written about it throughout history.

Of course they won't do that as being centrists the confusion suits them just fine. It misleads the gullible and means their theorists can't be pinned down.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks fought for the minimum programme the establishment of a "demcoratic dictatorship" which was the limit to which the bourgeois revolution could be pushed. After February 1917 however, Lenin realised that the only means of winning the bourgeois revolution and the minimum programme in full was by the socialist revolution, the working class taking power and overthrowing capitalism. He states this explicitly.

Kautsky opposed the struggle for a democratic republic. And fought for a series of reforms through parliament. The strategy of attrition. The CPGB/Mike McNair support Kautsky and denounce Rosa Luxemburg as a "sub Bakuninite".

Yet Luxemburg struggled for the democratic republic as outlined by Engels in his criticism of the Erfurt Programme. Something quoted by Mike McNair to defend his support of Kautsky. Unlike the liberal reformist Kautsky she realised it could not be won through votes in parliament but by the class struggle, hence the strategy of the mass strike. Something that was also proposed by the entire left wing of the Second International, Trotsky, Lenin, Pannekoek, Parvus etc.

In 1919 Luxemburg like Lenin realised that the divide between the minimum and maximum programme was wrong and that the minimum programme would be achieved through the socialist revolution i.e. the maximum programme.

This was synthesised further by the Comintern and Trotsky through the use of transitional demands based on working class control to bridge the divide between the two.

So today what should be the programme for the working class? It should be a programme which starts from where they are today and leads to the struggle for power. It should be a programme which learns from history and rejects the minimum maximum divide.

However, important qualification, programmes are ten a penny. Every little grouplet produces their own programme. Its not hard. They can be knocked out over tea.

These programmes mean less than nothing and are designed to entertain the members of these various groups who are berated to "fight" for them. This boils down to winning the odd member here and there and being rude or dishonest about everyone else.

If we are to construct a programme for today, it needs to be a lot more than a random (or more like tedious) list of demands. But needs to be based on an objective assessment of the state of capitalism and the workers movement today and what are the next steps forward.

Thu 12, March 2009 @ 13:46

Jacob Richter said…

"Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, the SPD, Plekhanov and everyone else, said that the minimum programme was one for struggle within the existing system. It was one for the reform of capitalism, for the completion of the bourgeois revolution. It stood in contradistinction to the socialist, working class, maximum programme which was for capitalisms overthrow."

"The CPGB/Mike McNair say that the minimum programme is for the establishment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". But its a pretty funny dictatorship of the proletariat as it takes place without a socialist revolution and without the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. In other words its not the dictatorship of the proletariat by any objective standard."

"So they are either flat wrong or they should make it clear they have changed the definition of the minimum programme to something different from that understood by everyone else who has written about it throughout history."

As I said above, I'm not sure about Engels. Like you said, "they have changed the definition of the minimum programme to something different from that understood by ***almost*** everyone else who has written about it throughout history" - that is, everyone else except Marx and perhaps Engels.

You should re-read the Programme of the French Workers Party and even the Erfurt Program:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm

Both programmes called for the "abolition of standing armies and the general arming of the people." The former also called for "suppression of the public debt" and "the Commune to be master of its administration and its police."

Especially in regards to mentioning some sort of "commune," I'd hardly call that political section reformist.

Fri 13, March 2009 @ 02:02

Jacob Richter said…

Regarding the DOTP, the Bolsheviks did not expropriate the bourgeoisie until War Communism was already underway. Until that time, the government nationalized or expropriated businesses beyond the banking system only when workers were begging it to do something. Had the Civil War come about later, this reticence would have been maintained with the Bolsheviks loudly proclaiming the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

Any thoughts on my list of demands above?

Fri 13, March 2009 @ 02:06

bill j said…

The abolition of armies and the arming of the people is a minimum demand. It is the most radical demand of the bourgeois revolution, the right of the population to bear arms. Its in the American constitution.

The Commune simply refers to the name of local government in France. It is not particular to the revolutionary Commune of 1870. As for the suppression of public debt, the British government did that last week through quantitative easing.

Like I said every Marxist who has ever written regarded the minimum programme as one within the existing framework of capitalism.

Frankly its not even in question.

The dictatorship of the proletariat existed after October 1917 because a socialist revolution organised through soviets had staged an insurrection on the back of a general strike and seized working class power.

According to the CPGB/Mike McNair this is unnecessary or wrong.

As for the list of demands, like I said, anyone can write a list.

Fri 13, March 2009 @ 08:55

Jacob Richter said…

On the back of a general strike??? I think you're mixing 1917 with 1905 here.

"The abolition of armies and the arming of the people is a minimum demand. It is the most radical demand of the bourgeois revolution, the right of the population to bear arms. Its in the American constitution."

So why do many Trotskyists regard these two demands as "transitional" - especially since they're stated in Lenin's April Thesis (political demands which they have used to justify the broad economism of the TP)?

Also, do you personally think that the DOTP equals socialism? Lenin distinguished between the two, emphasizing the former's *political* nature. That's what the CPGB's minimum program emphasizes, too.

[Given Lenin's economic stageism, however, he made the mistake of not distinguishing between what he called "socialism" (monetary state socialism) and the "lower phase of communism" (labour credits).]

Fri 13, March 2009 @ 23:54

bill j said…

No I'm not.

The abolition of standing armies and the arming of the people was a demand that arose in the American revolution of 1776 it arose again in the French Revolution of 1789. Bourgeois revolutions. It was the antithesis of the feudal standing army.

Hence it is a minimum demand - part of the bourgeois revolution.

As I quoted Lenin above the October revolution combined the demands of bourgeois and socialist revolutions - the bourgeois demands were completed through the socialist revolution, in other words the revolution was permanent. The counter position of the minimum/maximum programmes was overcome.

The CPGB, probably as a result of the Stalinist heritage, have retained a love of the minimum bourgeois democratic stage. They have been joined by Mike McNair a long time centrist of Trotskyist origin, who has now become a centrist of Kautskyite origin. Its not really that different. But the appalling electicism suits both sides.

But either way the bourgeois revolution - the minimum programme - is not the the dictatorship of the proletariat. For it was, a socialist revolution would be unnecessary. Something which of course the CPGB/Mike McNair also state. Through their opposition to the mass strike method of the left of the Second International - who were "sub-Bakuninite" quasi anarchos in their opinion.

If they were correct then the minimum programme would no longer be limited to reforms to the "existing system" as every Marxist (except the CPGB/Mike McNair) has stated, and as I have demonstrated above.

Final point you obviously don't know what economism is. It was simply the idea that the economic struggle alone cannot produce revolutionary socialist consciousness. Rather this had to be introduced from outside that relationship by the revolutionary party. This was in fact a positive contribution from Kautsky. But one which is paradoxically rejected by the CPGB/Mike McNair, who do not fight for socialism.

This is often confused, as in your case, and that of the CPGB/Mike McNair, with Althusser who said that economism was economic determinism. Althusser wanted to abandon the economic basis of Marxism. Hence his affinity to all the post modernists - another ramshackle gang who the CPGB approve of.

Sat 14, March 2009 @ 10:10

Jacob Richter said…

"Final point you obviously don't know what economism is. It was simply the idea that the economic struggle alone cannot produce revolutionary socialist consciousness. Rather this had to be introduced from outside that relationship by the revolutionary party. This was in fact a positive contribution from Kautsky."

http://www.revleft.com/vb/broad-economism-t97399/index.html

On the contrary, this "neo-Kautskyist" knows what economism is. You are writing about narrow economism, while I, like the true founder of "Marxism" and his most well-known disciple (Lenin), am writing about broad economism.

According to the revolutionary social-democrat Wilhelm Liebknecht, the struggle for socialism is economic, not political.

"Returning to the present, the class-collaborationist “social-democratic” left interprets “the political struggle” to refer to mere “social issues” – like “identity politics” based on race, gender, etc. and “Green politics” based on countering pollution – and “the economic struggle” to mean economic populism of the lowest common denominator (pertaining to taxation, subsidies, general spending, monetary policy, and international trade) and tred-iunionizm on the side. Meanwhile, most of the class-strugglist left interprets “the political struggle” to mean “the struggle for socialism” (note the shift from economic to political) and “the economic struggle” to mean immediate worker struggles, such as trade-union struggles."

Both the political struggle and the economic struggle each have a two-fold, minimum-maximum character. For the economic struggle: economic struggles promoting politico-ideological independence for the working class now, social labour ("socialism") later on . For the political struggle: politico-ideological class independence now, demarchic commonwealth instead of the state later on.

[There are also peripheral sociocultural struggles of a minimum-maximum character around various issues.]

The broad economism that plagues most of the left is due to the substitution of the struggle for socialism for the political struggle.

Sat 14, March 2009 @ 15:53

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