Part 2 of Saker’s interview with Straight-Bat on Marxism in the 21st century

Posted on January 1, 2023 by fada1

December 31, 2022

Note: the first part of this interview was posted here

Foreword: Apologies for the delay in contributing to the interview part 2 – I had to be busy with my professional life. Coming back to this interview, I feel that, adding supporting documents, statements and excerpts to my arguments has always been my strength. I’m extra careful this time while responding the questions put down by The Saker in the interview part 2 – each argument has been justified with logic, rationality, besides (as usual) facts and figures. I followed the suggestions of Mark Grimsley, who once remarked “A statement that fits an accepted world view requires little explanation and can therefore be outlined in a few words. In order to have any chance of being persuasive, a statement that challenges an accepted world view needs more than a sound bite.“

This write-up covers the significant Marxist socialist movements and its leaders during the period of 1860 to 1955 CE. If Almighty wishes, interview part-3 will cover 1955 to the present times.

During the course of this discussion, I will mention WEST EUROPE time and again. It may be noted that, I have assumed (from north to south) the western border of Finland, eastern coastline of Baltic Sea, the western border of the countries Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece as the eastern limit of West Europe.

Question: Was there any Marxist movement in Europe in 19th / 20th Century? Why it failed in the advanced West Europe?

Let me recall from the texts of part I of this interview –

“The Communist League, the FIRST MARXIST COMMUNIST PARTY with an international presence was established in June 1847 in London, Britain through the merger of the League of the Just and the Communist Correspondence Committee. It was on behalf of this party that, Marx and Engels wrote the ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ late in 1847” … “The Communist League was formally disbanded in November 1852 CE, following the Cologne Communist Trial. Hence, even if Marx and Engels represented one of the ‘communist’ groups among the early socialists, both of them mostly used the term ‘socialist’ in their works – it helped them to avoid uncalled for legal problems. Socialism was the word predominantly used by Marxists until WW-I, after which Lenin made the decision to restart use of the term communism (renaming the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to the All-Russian Communist Party).”

Both Marx and Engels being German, hence their writings needed to be translated into other major European languages like English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian etc. for the Europeans living in different west and east European kingdoms, empires, later on nation-states, and world-wide colonies before the nascent ideology propagated by Marx and Engels could make any impact among the politicians, revolutionaries, and trade-unionists (beyond Germany and Austria). In order to assess the Marxist movements in the 19th century Europe, we need to turn our attention to the political economy and society in Europe till 1914 CE (i.e. outbreak of WW I)

(A) Political Economy, and Social Structure in Europe till 1917 CE

To comprehend the status of Europe in the 19th century, one must take a glance backward to find that the early modern world including Europe was “one vast peasantry, where between eighty and ninety percent of the people lived from the land and from nothing else” (refer ‘Civilization and Capitalism: 15th-18th Century Volume I’ by Fernand Braudel). However, Europe was also the home to the thriving mercantile capitalism (though Bubonic Plague temporarily caused a damage) till 16th century CE particularly in the Italian Peninsula, the Low countries, and the Baltic coast. Economic historian John Day (1987) wrote “By the mid-14th century, merchant capitalism has already perfected the instruments of economic power and business organization that were to serve it for the next four hundred years: foreign exchange, deposit banking, risk insurance, public finance, international trading companies, commercial book-keeping”. Another ‘variant’ of capitalism, agrarian capitalism was in full bloom in England, and the Low countries 15th century CE onwards. Medieval era practice of farming on large open fields (and cultivation by individual yeomen or tenant farmers on strips of land) got transformed into enclosed holdings ‘consolidated into individually-owned or rented fields since late 15th century in England. Initiatives to enclose came mainly from England estate-owners (to maximise rental from their estates), with tenant farmers as a distant second (objective to improve their farms). Hence we come to know from the British parliament statistics that, “Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 enclosure Bills were enacted by Parliament which related to just over a fifth of the total area of England, amounting to some 6.8 million acres.” (refer link: https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/towncountry/landscape/overview/enclosingland/) What happened that transformed the society in Europe (to start with), and thereafter whole world towards urban industrial civilization? There have been intense debates among economists and historians about the evolution of human society (in Europe) from feudalism in the medieval ages to industrial capitalism after 1760 CE primarily in England, France, Low countries, and Germany – Dobb-Sweezy debate, and Brenner debate being most remarkable among them. The ‘endogenous’ side represented by Maurice Dobb and Robert Brenner locate the generative sources of capitalist social relations in the internal contradictions between serfs and landlords of feudal European societies, while the ‘exogenous’ side led by Paul Sweezy and Immanuel Wallerstein view capitalism as having developed from the growth of markets and trade in Europe over the 16th Century. It appears very logical that, both the ‘endogenous’ and the ‘exogenous’ factors played their roles simultaneously in the transformation towards industrial capitalism.

We notice two fundamental changes in the characteristics of how the sovereign political entities (like principalities, kingdoms, and empires) in Europe carried out their foreign affairs 1450 CE onwards –

Firstly, unlike the ancient and early medieval era when ruling aristocracy of a country would invade the contiguous lands and sea regions to annex the same and its people, and treat them as its own subjects, the late medieval era European entities would invade a distant land and proactively slaughter as many local people as possible (Portugal, probably was an exception in this matter – it invaded distant lands to set up colonies, but lacked the genocidal nature). Then they would setup a ‘colony’ in the new territory populated by their own elites and other people to control the annexed land and remaining local population in the newly acquired dominion – all of these were aimed at exploring new land, people, and natural resources for the sake of business and commercial interests (which itself gave rise to second aspect mentioned hereafter);

Secondly, the commercial relations were no longer established on the basis of spontaneous human endeavour to fulfil the necessities of common people and the political entities, but ‘economic systems’ occupied a central place around which most of the activities will get coordinated. The invader would engage remnants of the local population and would deploy slaves (people who were forcibly migrated from their society in Africa and Asia) in economic activities in the colony, benefit of which would be appropriated by the invading aristocracy and the exchequer of the kingdom. Thus, while the monarchy, and the aristocracy of Spain, and Portugal expropriated mineral resources and profited from plantation of cash crops in American colonies, in case of Holland, England, and France the beneficiaries primarily included joint-stock companies, beside the monarchy, and the aristocracy. In ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation’ Daron Acemoglu, and James Robinson stated that, “the main purpose of the extractive state was to transfer as much of the resources of the colony to the colonizer, with the minimum amount of investment possible.” Let us also quote Karl Marx from ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I’ to throw light on how capitalism took root in Europe, “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the expiration, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation….The different moments of primitive accumulation can be assigned in particular to Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England, in more or less chronological order. These moments are systematically combined together at the end of the seventeenth century in England; the combination embraces the colonies, the national debt, the modern tax system, and the system of protection. These methods depend in part on brute force, for example, the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the state, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition.” Between 1490s and 1890s CE ‘plantation capitalism’ (wherein the businessmen of west European colonial empires setup plantations of commercial corps like cotton, sugarcane, rubber, indigo, poppy in the invaded territories in North America, South America, Asia, Africa continents using slaves who were Africans forcefully evicted from their villages in African coasts or landless poor Asians) was in vogue. Similarly, during the same period ‘extractive capitalism’ (wherein the businessmen of west European colonial empires will setup a number of mining apparatus to extract gold, silver, mica etc. in the invaded territories in North America, South America, Asia, Africa continents using African slaves and Asian labourers) got developed as another vulgar expression of capitalism driven by the European capitalists. Substantially high portion of the benefits from the colonies would enrich the state coffers in each of the colonial empires which would engage in continuous struggle among themselves in order to expand their empire across the world.

The industrial capitalist society in the modern era originated in west Europe after 1760 CE with the First Industrial Revolution that brought mechanisation of factory production using steam power – weaving looms powered by steam engines, and steam-powered locomotives and ships introduced the practice of large-scale production of goods in factory (for consumption by general population and for usage by other factories as input materials) and moving goods across long distance in short time. Let me note down how the key aspects of the industrial capitalist system was facilitated by the previous forms of capitalism in Europe and its colonies:

  1. Finance Capital – By 1650 CE, the flow of precious metals from the colonies in Americas that reached Europe is estimated to be around at least 180 tons of gold and 17,000 tons of silver. This provided the capital for European merchants’ trade with Asia in textiles and spices, which in turn generated huge accumulation of capital that was later on channelled into industrial capitalism. It is said that, ‘The plundering of the Americas thus functioned as a central means of so-called primitive accumulation on a European wide basis. For throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain and Portugal acted as conduits for the transfer of much of the American bullion into the coffers of financiers in London, Amsterdam, Paris and Genoa. It is perhaps no coincidence that almost half of the gold and silver acquired by Spain ended up in Holland, the first state to experience a bourgeois revolution, ending up Marx’s ‘model capitalist nation of the seventeenth century’.’
  2. Labour – the (African) slave-trade by European traders provided the labour required to operate plantations and mines in the colonies in the Americas. Back home, surplus landless poor who were evicted from their rural households during the onset of agrarian capitalism in Europe formed the ‘labour class’ who will work for 12 hours in factory to earn a meagre wage
  3. Raw materials – not only European lands, but all colonies in South America, North America, Africa, Asia provided the raw materials like coal, minerals, and agro-products. By 1800, 25 percent of the cotton that landed in Liverpool, Britain originated in the USA (former colony of Britain); 50 years later, by 1850, 72 percent of the cotton consumed in Britain was grown in the USA
  4. Finished Goods market – large number of factory workers, and unemployed people became the source of ‘domestic demand’ (for finished goods). But more importantly, the colonies and large slave population became source of ‘external demand’ that propelled the industrial manufacturing system. Europe itself being too small a landmass, it possessed limited consumer markets (beside limited source of raw material and energy). With Asia, Africa, and Americas continents under the European empires, industrial capitalism boomed.

During the first wave of Industrialization, power of steam was harnessed (through burning of coal) and various consumer goods as well as industrial goods were manufactured using cotton (textile), and iron (heavy engineering). Britain led the way in textile, mining, shipping, railways with application of new technology to enhance productivity. As per Christian (2005), time taken for 100 pounds of cotton spinning was reduced from 300 hours in 1790s to 135 hours in 1830. British production of pig iron quadrupled between 1796 and 1830, and quadrupled again between 1830 and 1860 (Darwin 2009: 19). British foreign direct investment, rose from $500m in 1825 to $12.1b in 1900 and $19.5b by 1915 (Woodruff 1966: 150; Sassen 2006: 135-6).

After 1870, a second wave of industrialization took place, during which German and USA took the lead to explore new frontiers in electrical, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals. Energy from petroleum acted as catalyst to industrialization – the use of refined petroleum as liquid fuel ‘provided an impetus to the development of cars, planes, and ships’. Communication and transportation transformed beyond imagination – “by 1840 there were 4,500 miles of track worldwide, expanding to 23,500 miles by 1850, and 130,000 miles by 1870, by the end of the century, there was half a million miles of track worldwide, over a third of which was in Europe; Communication times between Britain and India dropped from a standard of around six months in the 1830s via sailing ship, to just over one month in the 1850s via rail and steamship, to the same day in the 1870s via telegraph”. The agrarian fear of famine was joined by modern industrial concerns of overproduction, and price collapse, as well as financial crisis (Hobsbawm 1975: 209). The 19th century’s great depression between 1873 and 1896 was the precursor to 20th century economic cycles (Hobsbawm 1975: 85-7). As a whole during the 19th century, global trade increased twenty-five times over (Darwin 2007: 501).

The socio-political environment of west Europe in modern times witnessed the rise of four new categories of SOCIAL ELITES in the society – (a) owners of manufacturing industry and related business, (b) controllers of banking and finance, (c) leaders of political parties, and bureaucrats who jointly controlled the state apparatus, (d) specialists who operated factories and mines in the era of industrial capitalism like engineers, managers, accountants – over and above the traditional five groups of social elites prevalent in medieval period like (a) aristocracy and state-officials which owned estate/land and controlled the state apparatus, (b) traders, and moneylenders, (c) clergy who controlled the Church and the religious affairs, (d) big farmers who owned much more land than required for subsistence, (e) burghers including guild craftsmen, legal and medical professionals. The new sub-class didn’t get created one fine morning, rather it was a slow but steady process of transformation of the old elite sub-classes into the new elites (which was again reclassified by Marx and Engels as ‘bourgeois’ and petit-bourgeois depending on their ownership of the means of production in the new economy). Apparently, between 1450 and 1870 CE there were significant social transformations that took place in the upper strata of the European society:

  1. Most of the families in medieval elite category (a) moved towards modern elite category (a), (b), (c)
  2. Most of the families in medieval elite category (b) moved towards modern elite category (a), (b)
  3. Most of the families in medieval elite category (c) moved towards modern elite category (c), (d)
  4. Most of the families in medieval elite category (d) moved towards modern elite category (b), (c).
  5. Most of the families in medieval elite category (e) moved towards modern elite category (a), (d).

During the same period, COMMONERS, the plebs so to say, were found to be loosely grouped into (a) peasants, (b) unskilled general population, (b) especially skilled population, (c) industrial workers, (d) slave population. Unskilled general population would be toiling in their various professions that will require low degree of skill but needed physical labour for their livelihood (such as services like helper in farming, cart-pulling, garbage cleaning etc.), while the especially skilled population would have relatively better lifestyle through earning by providing services related to carpentry, tailoring, bakery, or selling grocery items etc. A significant part of the unskilled general population would remain unemployed, and would always be ready to grab any opportunity of temporary work. The serfdom of the medieval Europe got abolished in Europe only to be replaced by slavery in the colonies in Americas, Africa, and Asia established as a result of imperialist invasions. Between 1760 CE, the onset of industrial economy and 1914 CE, when the ENTIRE world was reeling under competitive European imperialism, the nine categories of elites of Europe morphed into a structure where a core group of plutocrats (around 0.1% of population) became ‘masters’ surrounded by a well-knit team of ‘managers’, ‘engineers’, and ‘accountants’ (may be around 2% of population). This bourgeois ‘entity’ which was ‘localised’ in the sense of becoming the (bourgeois national) motive force behind each of the European countries, was simultaneously taking shape into a global force by means of interdependency in the banking and finance; it had two primary objectives:

(i) continue to wield power in every country of Europe and, the world

(ii) continue to accumulate wealth through economic activities in every country of Europe and, through robbery (disguised as commerce) across the world.

The bourgeois revolutions in England and France actually defeated the feudalist forces conclusively and brought the bourgeois forces near to the political power that was still with the aristocracy. As Hobsbawm mentioned, ‘Would it lead to the advance of civilization in the sense in which the youthful John Stuart Mill had articulated the aspirations of the century of progress: ‘a world, even a country, more improved; more eminent in the best characteristics of Man and Society; farther advanced in the road to perfection; happier, nobler, wiser’?. In a sordid tale of broken promises, outright lies, sneaky deception, and odious hypocrisy, the west European liberal and radical ‘revolutionaries’ first used the ‘social contract theory’ (advocating rights of citizens) during 17th and 18th centuries (embellished by Locke and Rousseau earlier) to find grounds for rejecting the conservative feudal beliefs and for destroying the social and political systems that rested on them through the English Revolution and the French Revolution, and then retreated to the ‘classical liberal theory’ (in which economic liberalism, laissez faire featured prominently) for establishing world-wide imperialist colonies either by butchering almost entire existing population (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) or by stationing military garrison (India, Myanmar, Indonesia, and many other Asian countries, and entire Africa except Ethiopia). Thus, during the 150-year period from 1760 to 1914 CE, while European societies slowly converted themselves into ‘bourgeois liberal democratic republics’ where structures of government and processes of governance across Europe got transformed, the entire world became the arena of their ‘capitalist imperialism’. During this period, interplay of six vectors of political economy in Europe shaped the political and economic contour of the modern world:

  1. Subjugation of science and technology to the interests of capital, as a result of which industrial capitalism made tremendous progress on using energy and machinery to replace human efforts; research and innovation became a permanent feature of both state-funded education system and private capital owning industrialists – ‘General Electric set up a research lab in commercial dynamos in 1900, followed by DuPont’s chemicals lab in 1902’ (even after passing of another century i.e. in the 2010s government funded research labs and private capitalist multinational corporations carry out pioneering developments in west Europe and USA in every sphere of knowledge to explore business benefits);
  2. Struggle among the ‘conservative’, ‘liberal’, and ‘radical’ lines of political thought, where the liberals imbued with democratic concepts (in reality, that was ‘bourgeois liberal democracy’) increasingly outmanoeuvred the conservatives who were still trying to balance feudal sentiments with (bourgeois capitalist) democracy AND the radicals trying to make sense of different hues of socialism; monarchy in Europe in the beginning of 19th century steadily transformed into bourgeois liberal democracy which took root along with the industrial capitalist economy in Europe (and Anglo-colonies like USA, Canada, Australia) – 80% population (the commoners) were hoodwinked to believe that they exercise their voting rights during ‘free and fair’ elections for electing their representative to country’s parliament and that their ‘democratic rights’ are non-violable and that the country’s elected government operates in their best interest (even after passing of another century i.e. in the 2010s people in Europe and Anglo-colonies behave similarly);
  3. The emergence of industrialization helped the governments on collection of large amount of tax revenue which was spent on modern infrastructural developments and poverty alleviation programmes. System of governance was further strengthened through civil services using which the state apparatus exercised its authority and controlled its people through modernised methods of repression. ‘States provided the institutional guarantees for market transactions, and assumed the monitoring and coercive functions required for capitalist expansion’. Simultaneously, ‘rational’ and ‘welfare’ state-policies were developed by the staunchly elitist ruling oligarchy to (a) provide a sustained pro-commoner façade of the government (b) influence the group of people with radical socialist views towards reformism;
  4. As noted by Marx, in peasant societies before the development of any form of capitalism, people lived off the crops they produced in their own plot, and exchange played a significant role only for rural artisans (only insignificant amount of surplus crops were sold at the local market). With the advent of capitalism, most of the rural (peasant) producers and urban industrial workers produce commodities targeted for exchange in the market. Capitalist class relations dictate that (unlike slaves bonded to their master or feudal serfs bonded to their lord’s estate) direct producers are neither personally tied to their exploiter nor have any significant ownership of means of production. But this ‘freedom’ is more than nullified by the fact that the industrial and farm workers are compelled to sell their labour to (bourgeoisie) class owning the means of production to secure their material necessities of survival. As the new era engulfed the European societies more and more people from rural areas internally migrated to urban regions to escape the poverty in village life, ending up in slums and ghettos of industrial towns and trading cities of Europe; thus between 1800 and 1900 CE, London grew from just over 1 million to 6.5 million inhabitants, while he population of Berlin rose by 1000%;
  5. Fake ideologies that legitimised brutal occupation, systematic extermination in imperialist colonies for making profits as nothing but mission to civilize the ‘uncivilized’ Africans, Asians and Latin Americans (the concept was mockingly called ‘the white men’s burden’), as a result of which elites/aristocrats of the victim societies became unabashed proponents of such western ‘missions’ and ‘values’; it must be noted that in some regions like Africa, and India the European imperialist ventures, western education and Christian missions gave rise to new social elite class that derided the commoners of their own countries. Virtually the whole of the other world belonged to west Europe, except for Japan, systematically ‘westernizing’ since mid-1800 and overseas territories settled by large populations of European descent;
  6. Political repression and economic deprivation in Europe resulted in massive forced migration of about “50 million Europeans … between 1800 and 1914, most of them to the United States, helping to increase the population of the US from 5 million in 1800 to 160 million in 1914” (refer Rosenberg 1994: 163-4, 168) who collectively became the torchbearer of industrialisation of USA, and unwittingly helped USA becoming the leader in Zionist-Capitalist world order.

A.1 Political Economy of Imperialism in the Era of Industrial Capitalism:

The extent of colonial empires built by west European powers can be guessed from Imperialism (edition 2) penned by J A Hobson. Table A.1.1 provide details of the comparative colonisation by the Western nations in 1905 (compiled from Statesman’s Year Book for 1900) and in 1935 (compiled from the Statesman’s Year Book for 1935, the Armaments Year Book for 1935, the League of Nations Year Book for 1934-35); the data for Britain and France colonies in 1876 CE has been picked up from V I Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism:

Table A.1.1

CountryNo. of ColoniesMother countryArea (sq. mile)ColoniesArea (sq. mile)Mother countryPopulationColoniesPopulation
Britain: 187619051935——8,687,250—251,900,000
50120,97911,605,23840,559,954345,222,239
—94,63313,270,79346,610,000449,378,000
France: 187619051935——347,490—6,000,000
33204,0923,740,75638,517,97556,401,860
—212,7504,617,51441,880,00065,179,000
Netherlands: 19051935312,648782,8625,074,63235,115,711
—13,128791,9078,290,00060,971,000
Germany: 1905193513208,8301,027,12052,279,90114,687,000
—181,822—65,350,000—
Italy: 190519352110,646188,50031,856,675850,000
—119,696906,21342,217,0002,393,000
Portugal: 19051935936,038801,1005,049,7299,148,707
—35,699807,6377,090,0008,426,000
Spain: 190519353197,670243,87717,566,632136,000
—194,21610,99324,242,0001,000,000
USA: 1905193563,557,000172,09177,000,00010,544,617
—3,026,000711,726126,000,00015,014,000

The outright loot and banditry that the west European colonial countries engaged in since 1760 CE resulted in a stunning reversal of economic state of affairs across the world – Bairoch (1981) estimated that, total GNP 35 billion USD of Europe and Anglo-colonies in 1750 increased more than 12 times to reach 430 billion USD in 1913 while the colonised continents‘ combined GNP didn’t even see a twofold rise!

Table A.1.2

YearTotal GNP (billion $)GNP per capita ($)
Developed countriesThird worldWorldDeveloped countriesThird worldWorld
175035112147182188187
180047137184198188191
183067150217237183197
1860118159277324174220
1880180164344406176250
1900297184481540175301
1913430217647662192364

To understand the mechanism of such massive transfer of wealth from every region of world to west Europe, as a case study, let’s look at the significant aspects of the economy of Indonesia when it was a colony of the Netherlands. Wikipedia mentions (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_Indies), “Between 1830 and 1870, 840 million guilder (€8 billion in 2018) were taken from the East Indies [by Dutch East India Company – by the interviewee], on average making a third of the annual Dutch government budget. The Cultivation System, however, brought much economic hardship to Javanese peasants, who suffered famine and epidemics in the 1840s … Dutch private capital flowed in after 1850, especially in tin mining and plantation estate agriculture. The Martavious Company’s tin mines off the eastern Sumatra coast was financed by a syndicate of Dutch entrepreneurs, including the younger brother of King William III. Mining began in 1860. In 1863 Jacob Nienhuys obtained a concession from the Sultanate of Deli (East Sumatra) for a large tobacco estate (Deli Company). From 1870, the Indies were opened up to private enterprise and Dutch businessmen set up large, profitable plantations. Sugar production doubled between 1870 and 1885; new crops such as tea and cinchona flourished, and rubber was introduced, leading to dramatic increases in Dutch profits. Changes were not limited to Java, or agriculture; oil from Sumatra and Kalimantan became a valuable resource for industrialising Europe … The colonial exploitation of Indonesia’s wealth contributed to the industrialisation of the Netherlands, while simultaneously laying the foundation for the industrialisation of Indonesia. The Dutch introduced coffee, tea, cacao, tobacco and rubber … The Dutch East Indies produced most of the world’s supply of quinine and pepper, over a third of its rubber, a quarter of its coconut products, and a fifth of its tea, sugar, coffee and oil. The profit from the Dutch East Indies made the Netherlands one of the world’s most significant colonial powers.” All three factors responsible for the success of Dutch imperialists – (a) superiority of European military technology, (b) modern technology based infrastructure, and (c) forced marketization of production relations in Indonesian society – were so absolute that, Dutch government had to spend a measly sum to govern Indonesia – in 1900 CE, only 250 European and 1,500 indigenous civil servants, 16,000 Dutch officers and 26,000 hired native troops, were required to rule 35 million colonial subjects.

Another example of extraordinary imperialist sophistry by British government was India. After 1814 CE Indian textiles were almost banned from Britain, while textiles manufactured in Britain were forcibly imported in India without duty – thus between 1814 and 1828, British textile exports to India rose from 800,000 yards to over 40 million yards, while during the same period, Indian cloth exports to Britain halved (refer J Goody 1996: 131).

In the colonies across the continents of Asia, Africa, and South America, forced transformation of agrarian class relations, forceful commercialization of agriculture, introduction of industrial economy, introduction of market, ebbs and flows of European metropolitan markets, commodity speculations and price fluctuations created havoc where old agrarian production was the cornerstone of economy. Famines and epidemics in the 1870s and 1890s killed millions of people around the world (Davis 2002: 6-7). In India, lands were privatized under British rule so that they could be used as a taxable resource. Simultaneously, communal granary was forcibly removed from villages so that basic food grains could be marketed. When droughts hit in 1877, at least 15 million people in India starved to death. “The British reacted by reducing rations to male coolies to just over 1,600 calories per day – less than the amount later provided in Nazi experiments to determine minimum levels of human subsistence” (Davis 2002: 38-9). Similar processes took place in China (whose normal granaries were closed to pay for trade deficits caused by military defeat in the Opium Wars and the unequal treaties signed with European powers.

Britain was the largest imperialist power in Europe controlling about 12 million sq. mile of foreign lands by 1905. One couldn’t fail to notice that two of the expenditure categories – military and national debt servicing – consumed between 70% to 80% of the annual net national expenditure of Britain for the period 1870 to 1901 CE (refer J A Hobson’s Imperialism edition 1). British bourgeois politicians never got tired to extol the virtues of modern imperialism. V I Lenin stated in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, “Chamberlain advocated imperialism as a “true, wise and economical policy”, and pointed particularly to the German, American and Belgian competition which Great Britain was encountering in the world market. Salvation lies in monopoly, said the capitalists as they formed cartels, syndicates and trusts. Salvation lies in monopoly, echoed the political leaders of the bourgeoisie, hastening to appropriate the parts of the world not yet shared out. And Cecil Rhodes, we are informed by his intimate friend, the journalist Stead, expressed his imperialist views to him in 1895 in the following terms: “I was in the East End of London (a working-class quarter) yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread! bread!’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism…. My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.” Writing in 2013 in ‘The global transformation: the nineteenth century and the making of modern international relations‘ (published in International studies quarterly, 59/1) Buzan, Barry and Lawson, George said, “During the mid-to-late 19th century, the industrial powers established a global economy in which the trade and finance of the core penetrated deeply into the periphery. During the century as a whole, global trade increased twenty-five times over (Darwin 2007: 501). As the first, and for a time only, industrial power, it was British industrial and financial muscle that led the way. British production of pig iron quadrupled between 1796 and 1830, and quadrupled again between 1830 and 1860 (Darwin 2009: 19). British foreign direct investment, led by London’s role as the creditor of last resort, rose from $500m in 1825 to $12.1b in 1900 and $19.5b by 1915 (Woodruff 1966: 150; Sassen 2006: 135-6). The industrial economy was constructed on the back of improvements engendered by railways and steamships, and by the extension of colonization in Africa and Asia – between 1815 and 1865, Britain conquered new territories at an average rate of 100,000 square miles per year (Kennedy 1989: 199). The opening-up of new areas of production greatly increased agricultural exports, intensifying competition and pushing down agricultural incomes (Davis 2002: 63). The agrarian fear of famine remained. But this fear was joined by modern concerns of overproduction, price collapse, and financial crisis (Hobsbawm 1975: 209).

While attempting to define modern capitalist IMPERIALISM, V I Lenin noted in his Imperialism and the Split in Socialism, “Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is three-fold: imperialism is

(1) monopoly capitalism;

(2) parasitic, or decaying capitalism;

(3) moribund capitalism.

The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism. Monopoly manifests itself in five principal forms:

(1) cartels, syndicates and trusts – the concentration of production has reached a degree which gives rise to these monopolistic associations of capitalists;

(2) the monopolistic position of the big banks – three, four or five giant banks manipulate the whole economic life of America, France, Germany;

(3) seizure of the sources of raw material by the trusts and the financial oligarchy (finance capital is monopoly industrial capital merged with bank capital);

(4) the (economic) partition of the world by the international cartels has begun. There are already over one hundred such international cartels, which command the entire world market and divide it “amicably” among themselves – until war re-divides it. The export of capital, as distinct from the export of commodities under non-monopoly capitalism, is a highly characteristic phenomenon and is closely linked with the economic and territorial political partition of the world;

(5) the territorial partition of the world (colonies) is completed.”

Identifying the distinct stages of the transformation of ‘competitive’ capitalism into ‘monopoly’ capitalism, Lenin mentioned (refer Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism), “the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following: (1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible, embryonic stage. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of development of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. (3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism.”

Looking into the presence of concentration of industrial production and business through the big corporates and industrial organisations, Lenin provided interesting readings on Germany and USA. He mentioned (refer Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism), “If we take what in Germany [in 1907] is called industry in the broad sense of the term, that is, including commerce, transport, etc., we get the following picture. Large-scale enterprises [those employing more than 50 workers], 30,588 out of a total of 3,265,623, that is to say, 0.9 per cent. These enterprises employ 5,700,000 workers out of a total of 14,400,000, i.e., 39.4 per cent; they use 6,600,000 steam horse power out of a total of 8,800,000, i.e., 75.3 per cent, and 1,200,000 kilowatts of electricity out of a total of 1,500,000, i.e., 77.2 per cent.” …

“[In USA] in 1904 large-scale enterprises with an output valued at one million dollars and over, numbered 1,900 (out of 216,180, i.e., 0.9 per cent). These employed 1,400,000 workers (out of 5,500,000, i.e., 25.6 per cent) and the value of their output amounted to $5,600,000,000 (out of $14,800,000,000, i.e., 38 per cent). Five years later, in 1909, the corresponding figures were: 3,060 enterprises (out of 268,491, i.e., 1.1 per cent) employing 2,000,000 workers (out of 6,600,000, i.e., 30.5 per cent) with an output valued at $9,000,000,000 (out of $20,700,000,000, i.e., 43.8 per cent).” …

Various estimates suggest that ‘the share of the leading 100 companies in British output rose from 15 per cent in 1907 to around 26 per cent in the later 1920s’.

Analysing the genesis of big corporates and industrial organisations, Lenin mentioned (refer Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism), “a very important feature of capitalism in its highest stage of development is so-called combination of production [integrated value chain – by the interviewee], that is to say, the grouping in a single enterprise of different branches of industry, which either represent the consecutive stages in the processing of raw materials (for example, the smelting of iron ore into pig-iron, the conversion of pig-iron into steel, and then, perhaps, the manufacture of steel goods) – or are auxiliary to one another (for example, the utilisation of scrap, or of by-products, the manufacture of packing materials, etc.).”

“Combination,” writes Hilferding, “levels out the fluctuations of trade and therefore assures to the combined enterprises a more stable rate of profit. Secondly, combination has the effect of eliminating trade. Thirdly, it has the effect of rendering possible technical improvements, and, consequently, the acquisition of super-profits over and above those obtained by the ‘pure’ (i.e. non-combined) enterprises. Fourthly, it strengthens the position of the combined enterprises relative to the ‘pure’ enterprises, strengthens them in the competitive struggle in periods of serious depression, when the fall in prices of raw materials does not keep pace with the fall in prices of manufactured goods.”

Tracing the development of cartels, Lenin (refer Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism) wrote, “Cartels come to an agreement on the terms of sale, dates of payment, etc. They divide the markets among themselves. They fix the quantity of goods to be produced. They fix prices. They divide the profits among the various enterprises, etc.” …

“The number of cartels in Germany was estimated at about 250 in 1896 and at 385 in 1905, with about 12,000 firms participating. But it is generally recognised that these figures are underestimations. From the statistics of German industry for 1907 we quoted above, it is evident that even these 12,000 very big enterprises probably consume more

than half the steam and electric power used in the country. In the USA, the number of trusts in 1900 was estimated at 185 and in 1907, 250. American statistics divide all industrial enterprises into those belonging to individuals, to private

firms or to corporations. The latter in 1904 comprised 23.6 per cent, and in 1909, 25.9 per cent, i.e., more than one-fourth of the total industrial enterprises in the country. These employed in 1904, 70.6 per cent, and in 1909, 75.6 per cent, i.e., more than three-fourths of the total wage-earners. Their output at these two dates was valued at

$10,900,000,000 and $16,300,000,000, i.e., 73.7 per cent and 79.0 per cent of the total, respectively.” …

“Monopolist capitalist associations, cartels, syndicates and trusts first divided the home market among themselves and obtained more or less complete possession of the industry of their own country. But under capitalism the home market is inevitably bound up with the foreign market. Capitalism long ago created a world market. As the export of capital increased, and as the foreign and colonial connections and “spheres of influence” of the big monopolist associations expanded in all ways, things “naturally” gravitated towards an international agreement among these associations, and towards the formation of international cartels”.

In his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin referred to the German economist, Kestner, who listed the methods the monopoly cartels/associations resort to for fending off competition: “(1) stopping supplies of raw materials … “one of the most important methods of compelling adherence to the cartel”); (2) stopping the supply of labour by means of “alliances” (i.e., of agreements between the capitalists and the trade unions by which the latter permit their members to work only in cartelised enterprises); (3) stopping deliveries; (4) closing trade outlets; (5) agreements with the buyers, by which the latter undertake to trade only with the cartels; (6) systematic price cutting (to ruin “outside” firms, i.e., those which refuse to submit to the monopolists. Millions are spent in order to sell goods for a certain time below their cost price; there were instances when the price of petrol was thus reduced from 40 to 22 marks, i.e., almost by half!); (7) stopping credits; (8) boycott”.

As industrial organisations grew in to monopoly cartels, there was a parallel transformation of numerous modest funding agencies into a handful of powerful banking monopolies “having at their command almost the whole of the money capital of all the capitalists and small businessmen and also the larger part of the means of production and sources of raw materials in any one country and in a number of countries.” In 2012 USA had two very big banks – Rockefeller and Morgan – who controlled a capital of 11,000 million marks. As per Eugen Kaufmann, in 1909 in France three very big banks (Crédit Lyonnais, the Comptoir National and the Société Générale) had a total of 1229 branches/offices with 887 million francs own capital and 4,363 million francs deposits. At the end of 1913 in Germany, Schulze-Gaevernitz estimated the deposits in the nine big Berlin banks at 5,100 million marks (49%) out of a total of about 10,000 million marks. Taking into account not only the deposits, but the total bank capital, this author wrote: “At the end of 1909, the nine big Berlin banks, together with their affiliated banks, controlled 11,300 million marks, that is, about 83 per cent of the total German bank capital.” In the next forty-eight mid-sized banks (with a capital of more than 10 million marks) 36% of total deposits were kept. One of the largest German bank, the Deutsche Bank group comprises directly and indirectly, 87 banks; and the total capital under its control was estimated at between 2000 and 3000 million marks. The Deutsche Bank had … > direct or 1st degree dependence in 30 other banks >

14 of the 30 had 2nd degree dependence in 48 other banks >

6 of the 14 had 3rd degree dependence in 9 other banks.

Commenting on the rise of finance capital during the 1890s and beginning of 20th century, in Finance Capital book R. Hilferding said, “A steadily increasing proportion of capital in industry ceases to belong to the industrialists who employ it. They obtain the use of it only through the medium of the banks which, in relation to them, represent the owners of the capital. On the other hand, the bank is forced to sink an increasing share of its funds in industry. Thus, to an ever greater degree the banker is being transformed into an industrial capitalist. This bank capital, i.e., capital in money form, which is thus actually transformed into industrial capital, I call ‘finance capital’.” … “Finance capital is [monopoly – by the interviewee] capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists.”

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin explored the same phenomenon as, “At the same time a personal link-up, so to speak, is established between the banks and the biggest industrial and commercial enterprises, the merging of one with another through the acquisition of shares, through the appointment of bank directors to the Supervisory Boards (or Boards of Directors) of industrial and commercial enterprises, and vice versa. The German economist, Jeidels, has compiled most detailed data on this form of concentration of capital and of enterprises. Six of the biggest Berlin banks were represented by their directors in 344 industrial companies; and by their board members in 407 others, making a total of 751 companies. In 289 of these companies they either had two of their representatives on each of the respective Supervisory Boards, or held the posts of chairmen. We find these industrial and commercial companies in the most diverse branches of industry: insurance, transport, restaurants, theatres, art industry, etc. On the other hand, on the Supervisory Boards of these six banks (in 1910) were fifty-one of the biggest industrialists, including the director of Krupp, of the powerful “Hapag” (Hamburg-Amerika Line), etc. From 1895 to 1910, each of these six banks participated in the share and bond issues of many hundreds of industrial companies (number ranging from 281 to 419).”

“The “personal link-up” between the banks and industry is supplemented by the “personal link-up” between both of them and the government. “Seats on Supervisory Boards,” writes Jeidels, “are freely offered to persons of title, also to ex-civil servants, who are able to do a great deal to facilitate (!!) relations with the authorities.”… “Usually, on the Supervisory Board of a big bank, there is a member of parliament or a Berlin city councillor.”

Lenin in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism quoted the German economist, Heymann to describe the holding system in detail, “The head of the concern controls the principal company (literally: the “mother company”); the latter reigns over the subsidiary companies (“daughter companies”) which in their turn control still other subsidiaries (“grandchild companies”), etc. In this way, it is possible with a comparatively small capital to dominate immense spheres of production. Indeed, if holding 50 per cent of the capital is always sufficient to control a company, the head of the concern needs only one million to control eight million in the second subsidiaries. And if this ‘interlocking’ is extended, it is possible with one million to control sixteen million, thirty-two million, etc.” Thus it was sufficient to own 40 per cent of the shares of a company in order to direct its affairs, since in reality a number of small and geographically scattered shareholders (of the company) would not be able to influence its business. In 1912, General Electric Company, Germany (A.E.G.) held shares in 175 to 200 other companies, dominating them through controlling a total capital of about 1,500 million marks. In Imperialism, … Lenin went on to add, “The “democratisation” of the ownership of shares, from which the bourgeois sophists and opportunist so-called “Social-Democrats” expect (or say that they expect) the “democratisation of capital”, the strengthening of the role and significance of small scale production, etc., is, in fact, one of the ways of increasing the power of the financial oligarchy.”

Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, quoted from the book Big Banks and the World Market written by E. Agalid, who divided the big Russian banks into two main groups: (a) banks that come under the “holding system”, and (b) “independent” banks (meaning independence of foreign banks). Agalid divided the first group into three subgroups: (1) German holdings, (2) British holdings, and (3) French holdings, and found that out of approximately 4,000 million roubles of invested capital of the big banks in Russia, more than three-fourths i.e. more than 3,000 million, belonged to banks which in reality were just “daughter companies” of foreign banks.

(a) banks under the “holding system”: Total Capital Invested 3,054.2 million roubles in October 1912. Break-up:

Four banks with German holdings – Siberian Commercial, Russian, International, Discount Bank – total 1,272.8 million roubles as ‘Capital Invested’

Two banks with British holdings – Commercial & Industrial, Russo-British – ‘Capital Invested’ total 408.4 million roubles

Five banks with French holdings – Russian-Asiatic, St. Petersburg Private, Azov-Don, Union Moscow, Russo-French Commercial – had total 1,373.0 million roubles as ‘Capital Invested’

(b) “independent” banks: Total Capital Invested 895.3 million roubles in October 1912. Break-up:

Eight local Russian banks: Moscow Merchants, Volga-Kama, Junker and Co., St. Petersburg Commercial (formerly

Wawelberg), Bank of Moscow (formerly Ryabushinsky), Moscow Discount, Moscow Commercial, Moscow Private.

Commenting on the extraordinarily high rate of profit obtained from the issue of bonds/securities (one of the principal features of finance capital) Lenin noted in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, “Neymarck estimates the total amount of issued securities current in the world in 1910 at about 815,000 million francs. Deducting from this sum amounts which might have been duplicated, he reduces the total to 575,000-600,000 million, which is distributed among the various countries as follows (I take 600,000 million):”

Table A.1.3

Financial Securities Current in 1910 (billion Francs)
CountrySecuritiesCountrySecuritiesCountrySecurities
Britain142Russia31Japan12
USA132Austria-Hungary24Belgium7.5
France110Italy14Spain7.5
Germany95Holland12.5Switzerland6.2

Hence, in 1910 four of the richest capitalist countries owned about 80% of world’s finance capital. Lenin analysed the transformation: capitalism 🡪 monopoly capital 🡪 surplus finance capital 🡪 export of finance capital and noted in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, “Capitalism is commodity production at its highest stage of development, when labour-power itself becomes a commodity. … England became a capitalist country before any other, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, having adopted free trade, claimed to be the “workshop of the world,” the supplier of manufactured goods to all countries, which in exchange were to keep her provided with raw materials. … On the threshold of the twentieth century we see the formation of a new type of monopoly: firstly, monopolist associations of capitalists in all capitalistically developed countries; secondly, the monopolist position of a few very rich countries, in which the accumulation of capital has reached gigantic proportions. An enormous “surplus of capital” has arisen in the advanced countries.”

“As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will be utilised not for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists, but for the purpose of increasing profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries. In these backward countries profits are usually high, for capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap. The export of capital is made possible by a number of backward countries having already been drawn into world capitalist intercourse”

While British capital were invested in the British colonies, French capital exports went mainly into Europe including Russia. Germany exported capital that were evenly between Europe and America (which were not colonies). The export of capital becomes a means of the export of commodities. Lenin mentioned in Imperialism… “A report from the Austro-Hungarian Consul at San-Paulo (Brazil) states: “The Brazilian railways are being built chiefly by French, Belgian, British and German capital. In the financial operations connected with the construction of these railways the countries involved stipulate for orders for the necessary railway materials.”

Table A.1.4

Approximate Distribution of Foreign Capital in Different Parts of the Globe in 1910 (trillion marks)
RegionBritainFranceGermanyTotal
Europe4231845
Americas3741051
Asia, Africa, Australia298744
Total703535140

Writing about Britain’s income from investments in colonies and other foreign countries Hobson noted (refer his Imperialism), “no exact or even approximate estimate of the total amount of income … is possible. We possess, however, in the income-tax assessments an indirect measurement of certain large sections of investments”.

Table A.1.5

Income From Foreign Investments Assured to Income Tax (British Pounds)
Elements188418921900
From Indian public revenue2,607,9423,203,5733,587,919
Indian Rails4,544,4664,580,7974,693,795
Colonial and foreign public securities etc.13,233,27114,949,01718,394,380
Railways out of UK3,777,5928,013,83814,043,107
Foreign and colonial investments9,665,85323,981,54519,547,685
Total33,829,12454,728,77060,266,886

During mid-19th century in six European countries did agriculture employ less than a majority of the male population – and these six: Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany were the core of the original industrial capitalism. Interestingly, except Britain, in all other five countries agriculture provided employment to about 40 – 45% of total employment. While industrial capitalism became the dominant driver of the economy of those six European countries in mid-19th century, it will take another half a century for USA to move into the same club. (it needs to be pointed out that these industrially advanced countries transformed their agriculture by implementing technology-driven commercialized farming).

While USA burst into the world of exports with both agricultural produces and manufactured items, the west European powers like Britain and France witnessed a steady shift of economic fortunes from the agriculture to industrial manufacturing and service activities which was made possible through colonial imperialism. As P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins noted in British Imperialism 1688-2015, “the predominance of non-landed wealth over land was not apparent until the end of the century; but since the statistics are for fortunes declared at death it can usually be assumed that the greater part of this wealth had been accumulated a generation earlier and that 1880 is roughly the point at which land ceased to be the outstanding source of great wealth in Britain. Working on the same generational principle, it is also apparent that there was a strong surge in the growth of large fortunes made in manufacturing, if the food, drink and tobacco industries are included, but that these sectors did not make further relative gains during the next 30 years.”

Table A.1.6

Non-landed fortunes at death, 1860 to 1939 (people who owned 0.5 million British Pound or more)
Source of Wealth1860-791880-991900-191920-39
Wealth%Wealth%Wealth%Wealth%
Manufacturing and mining4435.78236.712434.215330.4
Food, drink, and tobacco32.43616.14813.29719.3
Finance4032.54721.17921.99017.9
Commerce2923.54721.110127.913827.4
Other75,6114.9102.8244.8
Total non-landed123—223—362—502—
(Land)(280)—(174)—(140)—(91)—

Hobson further explored in Imperialism on how British economic power actually fared poorly vis-à-vis other West European industrial powers in terms of exports while remaining parts of the world became the destination of its exports (Fig. 5.5). Needless to say that, British power found the new challenges from the industrial powers like Germany unpalatable, and that became one of the most formidable backgrounds of WW-I.

Table A.1.7

CountryBritish trade in manufacturing, 1913 (in million British Pound)
ImportsExports & Re-exportsNet exports
Germany( – ) 56.1( + ) 30.2( – ) 25.9
Belgium( – ) 17.4( + ) 9.0( – ) 8.4
France( – ) 29.6( + ) 19.2( – ) 10.4
Switzerland( – ) 9.2( + ) 4.4( – ) 4.8
Other Foreign Countries( – ) 58.0( + ) 196.0( + ) 138.0
British Empire( – ) 23.4( + ) 181.0( + ) 157.6
Total( – ) 193.7( + ) 439.8( + ) 246.1

A.2 Military Face of Imperialism in the Era of Industrial Capitalism:

The enmeshing of ‘big capital’ (primarily owned by capitalist industrialists-bankers, and to a lesser extent the landed aristocracy) and the ‘big state’ (primarily managed by a combination of monarchy, bureaucracy, bourgeois liberal democratic political parties), shaped by protectionism in trade and commerce ratcheted up geopolitical competition after 1870. The proximity of industry and the state became a crucial factor to establish imperialist colonies.

Barry Buzan and George Lawson (in the paper ‘The global transformation: the nineteenth century and the making of modern international relations’ published in International studies quarterly, 59/1) gave a categorical description how even very small European country/ society like Belgium could transform into a colonial power: “Although many important changes to military techniques, organization, and doctrine took place in the centuries preceding the 19th century (Parker 1988; Downing 1992), modernity served as a new foundation for achieving great power standing. Manpower still mattered, so that a small country such as Belgium could not become a great power no matter how industrialized it was (although it could still become an imperial power). But the level of wealth necessary to support great power standing could now come only from an industrial economy. Equally important was the way in which industrial economies supported a permanent rate of technological innovation. Firepower, range, accuracy, and mobility of existing weapons improved, and new types of weapons offering new military options began to appear … The transformation from wood and sail to steel and steam took just fifty years. Across this half-century there was: a 33-fold increase in weapons range from 600 yards (HMS Victory 1850) to 20,000 yards (HMS Dreadnought 1906); a 26-fold increase in weight of shot from 32 pounds solid shot to 850 pounds explosive armour-piercing shell; more than a doubling of speed from 8-9 knots (HMS Victory) to 21 knots (HMS Dreadnought); and a shift from all sail (HMS Victory) to steam turbines (HMS Dreadnought), permitting all-weather navigation for the first time.” A ruthless western wit put it, with a little oversimplification: “Whatever happens, we have got || the Maxim Gun, and they have not” (refer Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire). Mentioning the extent of military expenditure by European powers, J A Hobson collated the following table in ‘Imperialism’ to show how they were armed to the teeth:

Table A.2.1

CountryMilitary Expenditure in 1869-1870 (million L)Military Expenditure in 1897-1898 (million L)Military Expenditure in 1934 (million L)
Britain22.4440.09114.2
France23.5537.0090.0
Germany11.2132.8043.8
Austria9.1016.0446.4
Italy7.0713.51—

Hobson specifically mentioned in Imperialism how Britain spent exuberantly to achieve unparalleled military power during initial two decades of 20th century – in Britain, at the lowest, the contribution of military expenditure towards gross expenditure was 30.4% during 1920 CE, while highest 67.8% was registered during 1914 (at the start of WW-I):

Table A.2.2

YearBritain – Net National Expenditure during 1904 to 1920 (in million British Pound)Ratio of Military & Total Expr.
Military & MunitionsCivil Services & Cost of CollectionEducationGrant to Local AuthorityNational DebtTOTAL
190466.0511.0415.5712.1231.36136.1748.5%
190659.198.4216.9412.5335.93133.0544.4%
190859.0213.0417.369.8234.91134.1743.9%
191067.8326.5918.749.8829.24152.3144.5%
191272.4329.1219.539.6534.85165.5943.7%
1914361.15118.8320.039.5222.66532.2267.8%
19151001.33530.0320.289.7560.241561.4064.1%
19161414.28697.7720.099.89127.252269.3062.3%
19171767.55954.3124.709.73189.852946.1560.0%
19181977.75820.1125.719.68269.963103.2363.7%
1919959.19645.2042.6110.74332.031989.7948.2%
1920386.49462.1458.3110.78349.591267.3430.4%

The academia and media in the post-industrial era never seriously traced the root cause of the prevailing geopolitical tensions in the world – however, anybody with the basic understanding of the history of the modern era will unanimously point out to the era of colonial imperialism as the root cause of all evils plaguing the society. In 2013, in ‘The global transformation: the nineteenth century and the making of modern international relations‘ Buzan, Barry and Lawson, George pointed out the five features of international relations that attempted to trace its origin to the era of brutal colonial imperialism:

“a) the emergence and institutionalization of a core-periphery international order which was first established during the global transformation;

b) the ways in which global modernity has served to intensify inter-societal interactions, but also amplify differences between societies;

c) the closeness of the relationship between war, industrialization, rational state-building, and standards of civilization;

d) the central role played by ideologies of progress in legitimating policies ranging from scientific advances to coercive interventions; and

e) the centrality of dynamics of empire and resistance to the formation of contemporary international order.”

(B) Socialist Movements & Marxist Inspiration in the Post-1848 Europe till 1917 CE

Revolutions of 1848 CE began in Sicily and spread to France, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, German states, Italian states, the Netherlands, the Austrian Habsburg Empire, and Romanian Principalities. Failure followed by state repression became the norm. Liberal (bourgeois) democrats and nationalists joined at the hip, looked to 1848 as a democratic revolution with demands for more participative democracy and reorganization of Europe into nation-states. Non-Marxist Socialists and Marxist Communists demanded better living standards and economic rights for the working class – but they were neither united nor organized. There was no dearth of revolutionary ideas and impetus during 1848 uprisings across Europe, but the most important aspects were certainly absent – political ideology and political organisation.

‘Communists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the legitimate demands of the proletariat’. And, the Communists were NOT off the mark! English Revolution initiated the process of removing the feudalist aristocracy from power (to be replaced by bourgeois elites), French revolution repeated the process, finally 1848 Revolution cleared the path for the bourgeois elites to wrest power (allying with the transformed feudalist aristocracy). Thus, the journey that commenced in 1640 CE to crush the monarchy as the epitome of European feudalism (by the agents of bourgeois class) ended around 1890 CE through establishment of liberal (read, capitalist) democracy where social-political-economic power would be bestowed upon a ‘political party’ (created and managed by the feudalist aristocracy, capitalist bourgeois, wealthy petty-bourgeois, and the Church elites). However, during this entire process spanning across two and a half centuries, 90% of the European population – the peasants, artisans, small shopkeepers, low-skilled industrial workers, jobless lower middle class people – didn’t have any platform, ideological and/or political to organize and rebel against their lords and exploiters! Not only the bourgeois reactionaries, but a sizeable section of the upper middle-class petty-bourgeois radicals took such confusing stand that ultimate failure of revolutions were foreseen by most of the rebel leaders half-way through the struggle.

Repressions were swift. Among the feudal monarchies, the Prussian Junkers, the House of Habsburg, and the House of Romanov were particularly repressive, working overtime to destroy any semblance of revolutionary and socialist ideas.

Astute readers of European history can’t help but notice that, the three modern society ‘phenomenon’ – ‘nationalism’ (quest to achieve ‘nation-states’), ‘democracy’ (quest to achieve universal suffrage), and ‘mass media’ (vehicle to form public opinion) – blossomed all over European landmass all of a sudden after 1848 CE. It was not that those concepts were entirely new (as a matter of fact, the concept of ‘democracy’ was about two and a half millennia old), but those concepts stole the thunder away from revolutionary enthusiasm. As if some invisible Director suddenly decided to introduce a new scene of the drama being staged on the socio-political arena of Europe. Through it, the common plebs of Europe were dragged out from the ‘dangerous’ association of revolutionary ideas – to control them ‘nationalism’, ‘democracy’ and ‘mass media’ were rapidly introduced which would actually prove to be the permanent infatuations (at least till now!). Meanwhile, the invisible drama Director – the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy – merrily chugged along the track of colonial imperialism and industrial capitalism that militarily occupied the entire globe and siphoned off wealth from all possible sources. With the help of sheer luck, the economy took an upward turn and maintained the positive vibes till 1914 CE except some temporary setbacks – a part of the European plebs got miniscule share of the global-scale loot (in Hobsbawm’s words, “… the small but genuine improvement which the great capitalist expansion brought to a substantial part of the working classes in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. And the gap which separated them from the bourgeois world was wide – and unbridgeable.”) and hence rapidly the popular mood swung away from revolution against the oligarchy to collaboration with the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy – exceptions were there in Paris and in Germany, but that only prove the general environment.

B.1 Spread of Marxism-inspired Movements in Europe and Anglo Colonies till 1914

After 1948, largest trade union of that era, the Chartist movement in Britain, friendly societies, syndicalist movements, anarchists, and other radical groups died out primarily because non-Marxist socialist thinkers turned out to be more philosophers than political activists during the eventful mid-19th century. Governments’ fear of the social problem resulted in ‘pressures for absolutism to become more ‘enlightened’ and for parliamentary systems to become more republican fostered demands for political representation (met by successive British Reform Acts), the provision of welfare (as in Bismarck’s ‘social insurance’ scheme), and mass education (which helped to increase rates of literacy and, in turn, fuel the rise of the mass media). Some of this was ‘decoration’ as old regimes sought to maintain their authority (refer Tombs 2000: 11). Marx-inspired Socialist movements took root in post-1848 Europe which can be traced more appropriately and thoroughly if we identify the movements, institutions and the political parties that were formed directly by Marx and Engels or formed by local figures with support from Marx and Engels.

  1. First International

In 1864 CE the International Association of Workingmen was formed in London under the guidance of Karl Marx. The ‘liberal-radical British trade-union Owenites’ and ‘left-wing French union militants’ and ‘old continental revolutionaries’ combined into one association couldn’t however co-exist for long. At its peak the First International reported having 8 million members. But, there was a wide and growing gulf between the ultimate goal of the First International, the communist revolution, and its immediate activities, coordination of the labour movements of the workers in different European countries. Thus, there were two principal contradictions within the First International:

(i) contradiction among the five different groups – Marx’s communist/socialist group, British liberal-radical Owenites, Proudhonist militant group, Blanquist proletarian revolutionaries, and Bakunin’s anarchist group;

(ii) ideological objectives of the association and day-to-day practice of labour movements

Unable to control the association, in 1872 CE Marx and Engels quietly transferred the First International’s headquarters to New York, where it was officially dissolved in 1876 CE. Founding the First International in London, in my opinion, was one of the major political mistakes in the life of Marx and Engels. Marx actually had a negative view of Blanquist proletarian revolutionaries in France, since he could never accept their underground mode of organization. It was one of the historic irony that Marx praised the Paris Commune (of 1871 CE) as a model of “proletarian revolution” (where Blanquists were in the forefront). Marx and Engels should have analysed beforehand that among all the groups of early socialists, and early communists, Blanquists would be the most promising partners for Marxist communist/ socialist groups to coordinate proletarian revolution across different European countries. Hence, instead of founding the headquarters of the International in London, Marx and Engels should have selected Paris.

  1. Marxist Socialist Movement in Germany

General German Workers’ Association founded in 1863 CE by Ferdinand Lassalle and Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany founded in1869 CE by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel joined together in 1875 CE to create Social Democratic Party of Germany, the first politically powerful Marxist socialist party in the world. Under the universal suffrage implemented by Bismarck, the socialist party became so popular (102,000 socialist vote in 1871 crossed 0.5 million in 1877) that Bismarck prohibited socialist political activity by law. Marx and Engels opined that elections in a democracy might provide a ‘peaceful power transfer’ to workers’ political party in Britain, and USA.

In one of the most profound and far-reaching turn of history, the mighty SPD took a path towards reformist ideology where nationalist and democratic tenets initially diluted the Marxist socialist ideology, and finally transformed SPD into an apologist of German colonialism-imperialism-capitalism at the onset of WW-I. (‘With two or three exceptions Socialist papers daily point out to the German workingman that a victory of the German arms is his victory. The capture of Maubeuge, the sinking of three English warships, or the fall of Antwerp aroused in the Social Democratic press the same feelings that otherwise are excited by the gain of a new election district or a victory in a wage dispute. We must not lose sight of the fact that the German labour press, the Party press as well as the trade union papers, is now a powerful mechanism that in place of the education of the people’s will for the class struggle has substituted the education of the people’s will for military victories’) It was foretold by Marx and Engels in a private circulation letter (First drafted by Engels) written in September 1879 to German SPD leadership – Bebel, Liebknecht, Fritzsche, Geiser, Hasenclever, Bracke – in response to an August 1879 article written by Karl Hochberg, Eduard Bernstein, and Carl August Schramm, entitled “Retrospect on the Socialist Movement in Germany” that advocated transforming the German Social-Democratic party from a revolutionary to a reformist platform — “It is inconceivable to us how the party can any longer tolerate in its midst the authors of that [Hochberg, Bernstein, Schramm] article. If the party leadership more or less falls into the hands of such people, the party will simply be emasculated and, with it, an end to the proletarian order.” Trotsky lamented (1923) in ‘The New Course’, “History offers us more than one case of degeneration of the “Old Guard.” Let us take the most recent and striking example: that of the leaders of the parties of the Second International. We know that Wilhelm Liebknecht, Bebel, Singer, Victor Adler, Kautsky, Bernstein, Lafargue, Guesde, and many others were the direct pupils of Marx and Engels. Yet we know that in the atmosphere of parliamentarism and under the influence of the automatic development of the party and the trade union apparatus, all these leaders turned, in whole or in part, to opportunism. We saw that, on the eve of the war, the formidable apparatus of the social democracy, covered with the authority of the old generation, had become the most powerful brake upon revolutionary progress.”

  1. Marxism-inspired Socialist Movements in Rest of Europe

Socialism became increasingly associated with newly formed trade unions, and later with newly formed political parties. Between 1871 and 1900 CE, about 30 parties representing as many European nationalities were formed that called themselves as social democrat, or socialist or labour party, some of which were:

(1) Portuguese in 1871

(2) Danish in 1876

(3) Czech in 1878

(4) French in 1879

(5) Spanish in 1879

(6) Dutch in 1881

(7) Belgian in 1885

(8) Norwegian in 1887

(9) Armenian in 1887

(10) Swiss in 1888

(11) Austrian in 1889

(12) Swedish in 1889

(13) Hungarian in 1890

(14) Bulgarian in 1891

(15) Italian in 1892

(16) Serbian in 1892

(17) Polish in 1893

(18) Romanian in 1893

(19) Independent Labour Party in UK was founded in 1893

(20) Croatian in 1894

(21) Slovenian in 1896

(22i) Russian in 1898

(23) Finnish in 1899

(24) Ukrainian in 1899

Hobsbawm mentioned, “The prospects of revolution, let alone socialist revolution, in the developed countries of Europe, were no longer a matter of practical politics and, … Marx discounted them.” For Marx and Engels, the main task became to help the union and political leaders of the European socialist and socialist-dominated parties to strengthen their respective parties’ (ideological and organisational) position in their own countries. But their efforts were in vain – not long after Marx and Engels departed, these parties took decisively ideologically reformist turn while being part of the Second International.

  1. Second International

The Second International was formed in July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which 384 delegates from 20 countries representing about 300 labour and socialist organisations participated. Out of the three prominent proletarian political groups in the then Europe, anarcho-syndicalist group was excluded from the beginning (because of non-reconciliatory antagonistic relationship between Anarchists and Marxists), while the other two factions – revolutionary Marxists and non-revolutionary reformist Possibilists – somehow managed to co-exist in the International till 1914 CE. The Possibilist faction of the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France was supported by the British Social Democratic Federation, and the Marxist faction of the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France was supported by the German SPD, the British Socialist League, and most of the other European delegates.

According to Moira Donald, for the nine congresses, France contributed 26%, Germany 16%, UK 16%, Belgium 9%, Switzerland 5%, Austria 4.5%, Russia 3.5%, Italy/ Sweden/ Bohemia/ Poland/ Denmark/ the Netherlands almost 3% of the delegates. Among the Second International’s far-reaching actions were its 1889 declaration of 1st May as the International Workers’ Day, and the international campaign for the eight-hour working day.

But the Second International finally turned into a den of reactionary apologists for militarism and imperialism. As Wikipedia noted, in July 1914, [..they..] declared “that it shall be the duty of the workers of all nations concerned not only to continue but to further intensify their demonstrations against the war, for peace, and for the settlement of the Austro-Serbian conflict by international arbitration.”’ But, the factional rift in 1889 CE developed into an unbridgeable gulf by 1914 CE – all the parties / unions who subscribed to the revolutionary Marxist concepts in 1889 were found to had transformed into reformist non-Marxist socialist nationalist outfits, while Russian social democrats and break-away group of German socialist democrats were found to defend revolutionary Marxism. The Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy who were the main power behind every ruling party in Europe always camouflaged its imperialist colonialist objectives of expanding its territory to find raw materials, get markets for its produces, and indulge in highly profitable business of selling military machinery, behind high-sounding sloganeering like ‘defending our nation against aggressors’ and ‘defending democracy against autocracy’ etc. while rushing ahead in WW-I. Due to treacherous upper level leadership of social democrat parties, the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy got full support from the established social democrat parties of belligerent nations. As a result, immediately after the outbreak of WW-I, German SPD and most of the major socialist parties in belligerent nations had issued statements in full support of war. Only Russian social democrats and Romanian social democrats proved to remain truly Marxist. And, few leaders like Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, and Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany raised their voice of Marxist reasoning and internationalist proletarianism against the imperialists’ war WW-I.

The last congress of the Second International was held at Geneva in July 1920. The WW-I split the Second International into three factions:

  1. the pro-war social democratic parties in the Central Powers
  2. the pro-war parties of the Triple Entente
  3. the anti-war parties, including the pacifist parties in neutral countries and revolutionary socialist parties

After the war, three international associations were created after realignment of ideological factions:

  1. The Communist International founded in March 1919 in Moscow led by Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev [refer link 🡪 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_International ] — the communist parties of Russia (Bolsheviks), Germany, German Austria, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Byelorussia, Estonia, Armenia, the Volga German region; the Swedish Social Democratic Left Party (the opposition), Swiss Social Democratic Party (the opposition), Balkan Revolutionary Social Democratic Federation; Norwegian Labour Party, Zimmerwald Left Wing of France; the Czech, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, British, French and Swiss Communist Groups; the Dutch Social-Democratic Group; Socialist Propaganda League and the Socialist Labour Party of America; Socialist Workers’ Party of China; Korean Workers’ Union were the main participants
  2. The International Working Union of Socialist Parties founded in February 1921 in Vienna led by Friedrich Adler, Otto Bauer, and Julius Martov – the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), the French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO), the Independent Labour Party (ILP) of Britain, the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (SPS), the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), and the Federation of Romanian Socialist Parties (FPSR, created by splinter groups of the Socialist Party of Romania), the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the Maximalist faction of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) were the significant constituents of this what was also called as Vienna International
  3. The Labour and Socialist International founded in 1923 in Hamburg led by Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, Rudolf Hilferding (of the Social Democratic Party of Germany), Arthur Henderson, Sidney Webb (of the British Labour Party); Friedrich Adler, Otto Bauer, Karl Renner (of Social Democratic Workers Party of Austria),as a merger between the Vienna International and the former Second International [refer link 🡪 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_and_Socialist_International ] — Social Democratic Party of Germany, Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Social Democratic Workers Party of Austria, Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party (in Austria), Belgian Labour Party, British Guiana Labour Union, Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party (Broad Socialists), Social Democratic Party of China, Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party, German Social Democratic Workers Party (in Czechoslovakia), Hungarian-German Social Democratic Party (in Czechoslovakia), Polish Socialist Workers Party (in Czechoslovakia), Social Democratic Federation of Denmark, Estonian Socialist Workers Party, Social Democratic Party of Finland, French Section of the Workers’ International, Social Democratic Labour Party of Georgia, Labour Party of Britain, Independent Labour Party (ILP) of Britain, Socialist Party of Greece, Hungarian Social Democratic Party, Világosság Socialist Emigrant Group, Social Democratic Party of Iceland, United Socialist Party of Italian Workers, Italian Socialist Party, Latvian Social Democratic Workers Party, Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, Workers Party of Luxembourg, Social Democratic Workers Party of the Netherlands, Social Democratic Labour Party of Norway, Norwegian Labour Party, Polish Socialist Party, German Socialist Labour Party of Poland, Independent Socialist Workers Party of Poland, General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, Ukrainian Socialist-Radical Party (in Poland), Portuguese Socialist Party, Romanian Social Democratic Party, Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks), Socialist Revolutionary Party of Russia, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, Social Democratic Labour Party of Sweden, Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, Socialist Party of Yugoslavia, Independent Socialist Party of Turkey, Ukrainian Social Democratic Labour Party, Socialist Party of Uruguay, Socialist Party of Argentina, Socialist Party of America were the significant constituents

B.2 Failure of Marxism-inspired Movements in Europe and Anglo Colonies till 1914

To mention that any other socialist/similar movement also failed in Europe would be fairly unnecessary but for the fact that ALL of those socialists (followers of leaders like Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon and Condorcet), and anarchists (followers of leaders like Proudhon, and Bakunin) actually got completely marginalised through self-inflicted damages (like lack of robust political objectives and planning for execution) by 1900 CE.

As Eric Hobsbawm wrote in ‘Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848’ about early (non-Marxist) Socialists, “Indeed, the ‘utopian’ socialists (the Saint-Simonians, Owen, Fourier and the rest) tended to be so firmly convinced that the truth had only to be proclaimed to be instantly adopted by all men of education and sense, that initially they confined their efforts to realize socialism to a propaganda addressed in the first plate to the influential classes — the workers, though they would undoubtedly benefit, were unfortunately an ignorant and backward group — and to the construction of, as it were, pilot plants of socialism—communist colonies and co-operative enterprises, mostly situated in the open spaces of America, where no traditions of historic backwardness stood in the way of men’s advance. Owen’s New Harmony was in Indiana, the USA contained some thirty-four imported or home-grown Fourieristic ‘Phalanxes’, and numerous colonies inspired by the Christian communist Cabet and others. The Saint-Simonians, less given to communal experiments, never ceased their search for an enlightened despot who might carry out their proposals, and for some time believed they had found him in the improbable figure of Mohammed AIi, the ruler of Egypt. … The extraordinary sect of the Saint-Simonians, equally suspended between the advocacy of socialism and of industrial development by investment bankers and engineers, temporarily gave him their collective aid and prepared his plans of economic development.” Hobsbawm further mentioned, “In France men who were to be the captains of high finance and heavy industry (the Saint-Simonians) were in the 1830s still undecided as to whether socialism or capitalism was, the best way of achieving the triumph of the industrial society. In the USA men like Horace Greeley, who have become immortal as the prophets of individualist expansion (‘Go west, young man’ is his phrase), were in the 1840s adherents of Utopian socialism, founding and expounding the merits of Fourierist ‘Phalanxes’”.

Theoretically and philosophically Marx and Engels provided documented inputs, which, even if were incomplete, nevertheless adequate to create an everlasting hope for a new dawn in human civilization. Having said that, I must point out towards the five key factors that frustrated the entire political processes in Europe between 1860 to 1914 CE that were being undertaken by the Marxism-inspired trade unions and socialist parties. Because of that the socialist movements in industrially advanced west Europe didn’t taste any success to seize state political power on their own.

1) Organizational factor – Appearance of “Labour Aristocracy”

Frederick Engels first mentioned about the “labour aristocracy” in a number of letters to Marx (late 1850s through the late 1880s). Engels argued that the British workers who established trade unions in factory – skilled workers in the iron, steel, machinery industries, cotton textiles – constituted a privileged and “bourgeoisified” layer of the working class, that can be termed as a “labour aristocracy.” British capital’s industrial and financial monopoly (discussed in the section A) permitted the employers to provide a better remuneration to the leaders of workers. Engels found the resulting privilege, as the material basis of the growing conservatism of the British labour movement (unlike Chartist movement).

Lenin expected that the European socialist leaders would oppose their ruling classes’ militarism with labour strikes and disruption. But he noted the triumph of opportunism in the socialist labour movements. In his article ‘The Collapse of the Second International’, Lenin argued: “The period of imperialism is the period in which the distribution of the world among the ‘great’ and privileged nations, by whom all other nations are oppressed, is completed. Scraps of the booty enjoyed by the privileged as a result of this oppression undoubtedly fall to the lot of certain sections of the petty-bourgeoisie and the aristocracy and bureaucracy of the working class.” This segment represents “an infinitesimal minority of the proletariat and the working masses”. While writing the preface to the French and German Editions of ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ Lenin mentioned categorically “Obviously, out of such enormous super profits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of the country) it is possible to bribe their labour leaders and an upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And the capitalists of the ‘advanced’ countries do bribe them: they bribe them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.”. In the most scathing appropriate and accurate analysis Lenin laid bare how the labour aristocracy among the socialists turned into stooges of the then Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy, “This stratum of bourgeoisified workers or ‘labour aristocracy,’ who have become completely petty-bourgeois in their mode of life, in the amount of their earnings, and in their point of view, serve as the main support of the Second International and, in our day, the principal social (not military) support of the bourgeoisie. They are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the labour movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, the real carriers of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers. take the side of the bourgeoisie, the ‘Versaillese’ against the ‘Communards’.”

The theory of the labour aristocracy was/is an important explanation of the tendency of labour unions and socialist parties towards reformism and conservatism in European countries. While the Communist Parties distanced themselves from the notion of the labour aristocracy since 1914, in course of time some pro-reformist factions also grew within the Communist Parties. During the post-WW-II period, this has been analysed again and again. In an incisive article with a mischievous headline ‘The Myth of the Labour Aristocracy – Part 2’, Charles Post (first published in ‘Against the Current’, No. 124, September–October 2006) deconstructed the background and architecture of labour aristocracy:

“The working class cannot be, as a whole, permanently active in the class struggle. The entire working class cannot consistently engage in strikes, demonstrations and other forms of political activity because this class is separated from effective possession of the means of production, and its members compelled to sell their labour power to capital in order to survive. They have to go to work!

“Put simply, most workers, most of the time are engaged in the individual struggle to sell their capacity to work and secure the reproduction of themselves and their families – not the collective struggle against the employers and the state. The “actually existing” working class can only engage in mass struggles as a class in extraordinary, revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situations. Because of the structural position of wage labour under capitalism, these must be of short duration. Most often, different segments of the working class become active in the struggle against capital at different times.

“In the wake of successful mass struggles, only a minority of the workers remain consistently active. Most of this workers’ vanguard – those who “even during a lull in the struggle…do[es] not abandon the front lines of the class struggle but continues the war, so to speak, ’by other means’” – attempts to preserve and transmit the traditions of mass struggle in the workplace or the community. However, a sector within this active minority, together with intellectuals who have access to cultural skills from which the bulk of the working class is excluded, must take on responsibility for administering the unions or political parties created by periodic upsurges of mass activity.

“This layer of fulltime officials – the bureaucracy of the labour movement – is the social foundation for “unconditional” reformist practice and ideology in the labour movement. Those workers who become officials of the unions and political parties begin to experience conditions of life very different from those who remain in the workplace.

“The new officials find themselves freed from the daily humiliations of the capitalist labour process. They are no longer subject to either deskilled and alienated labour or the petty despotism of supervisors. Able to set their own hours, plan and direct their own activities, and devote the bulk of their waking hours to “fighting for the workers,” the officials seek to consolidate these privileges.

“As the unions gain a place in capitalist society, the union officials strengthen their role as negotiators of the workers’ subordination to capital in the labour-process. In defence of their social position, the labour bureaucracy excludes rank and file activists in the unions and parties from any real decision-making power… The preservation of the apparatus of the mass union or party, as an end itself, becomes the main objective of the labour bureaucracy. The labour bureaucrats seek to contain working-class militancy within boundaries that do not threaten the continued existence of the institutions which are the basis of the officials’ unique life-style.

2) Organizational factor – Inadequate Support Base

In Europe during the 19th century Britain (the UK) was the most industrially advanced country, hence considering Britain will not be an appropriate approach for discussion – we also avoid non-industrialised countries of east Europe for the same reason. Hobsbawm in ‘Age of Empire’, “Though with a few special exceptions towns were more numerous and played a more significant role in the economies of the first world, the ‘developed’ world remained surprisingly agricultural. In only six European countries did agriculture employ less than a majority – generally a large majority – of the male population: but these six were, characteristically, the core of the older capitalist development – Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland. However, only in Britain was agriculture the occupation of a smallish minority of about one-sixth; elsewhere it employed between 50 and 45 per cent.” Let me consider France as an archetypal case, and draw the readers’ attention to the following table B.2.1 that provides economy sector-wise percentage of employment in France between 1806 to 1931 as available in ‘French Occupational Structure, Industrialisation, and Economic Growth, 1695 to The Present’ authored by Alexis Litvine [refer link 🡪 https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/occupations/outputs/preliminary/france_1695_present_al.pdf ]:

Table B.2.1

Economy SectorYear-wise Percentage of Occupation in France
180618311851188119111931
Primary66.762.558.648.539.032.0
Secondary19.322.124.428.432.736.5
Tertiary13.815.517.023.228.331.5
Active Population * (million)———13.2419.71 (1906)—
Total Population ** (million)29.1032.5735.7837.6239.6041.52

Note:

* marked data sourced from ‘Classifying Individuals by Their Participation in the Production System: The ‘Active’ and ‘Inactive’ Populations in Late 19th-Century France’ by Agnès Hirsch, Translated by Paul Reeve in ‘Population’ Volume 77, Issue 1, January 2022 [refer link 🡪 https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-population-2022-1-page-113.htm ]

** marked data sourced from Wikipedia [refer link 🡪 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France ]

Marxism not only identified the working-class people i.e. the proletarian class as the most exploited one, but more importantly Marx and Engels assigned the leading role of social transformation to the proletarian class (who should lead the other classes into a socialist/communist class-less society in the long run). As an astute observer noted, “In the decades leading up to the First World War, socialists influenced by Marx brought to workers in towns, villages, and urban precincts a new “single identity: that of ‘the proletarian’” along with a conveyance for acting upon that identity: the party or the trade union.” Hence, the socialist parties in Europe who used to call themselves as socialist / social democrat / labour party, officially represented the group of working people who were working in the secondary economic sector – however, in absolute numbers, secondary sector represented the minority portion of the total employed population. Whether France was still having Agriculture (i.e. primary) as dominant industry sector in 1831 or Industry (i.e. secondary and tertiary) fully dominated the economy as in 1931, France always had the manufacturing (i.e. secondary) employing less number of people than primary and tertiary combined. Further, if the ratio of secondary occupation and total population is considered, which in my opinion is the MOST IMPORTANT ratio – as per the information given in table B.2.1, in 1881 CE, in France people belonging to secondary occupation formed only 10% of the total population. In contrast, if primary and secondary occupation could join hands (meaning 77% of the working active people), in 1881 France, it would had meant 27% of the total population. (Any guess, what would had happened in Paris Commune?)

Most of the European leaders and activists of Marxist/socialist movements were drawn from secondary sector of economy with a few of them from the tertiary sector. It was not that the Marxists/socialists were unaware of the problem. In reality, ‘how the peasants can be pulled into the socialist political movement’ was a question that every top ideological / philosophical leaders had pondered with at some point of time. Alas, no one built a suitable organisational structure to get the entire primary classes of toiling mass on board!

3) Political Economy factor – Establishment of a New World-System Centred on USA

The imperialist colonies and empires built by the UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany witnessed substantial economic growth after 1850 CE that catapulted the industrial capitalism into the forefront of the global trade and commerce. Soon USA joined the fray and replaced the UK as the top most economy in terms of GDP output and technology base. The following tables provide key statistics on total population, immigrated population, total labour force, key sector-wise break-up of employment etc. of USA during 1830 to 1930 CE.

During the 17th century, approximately 400,000 English people migrated to the central part of North America continent, which came to be known as USA. They comprised 83.5% of the white population at the time of the first census in USA in 1790 CE (out of a total of 3,929,214). 400,000–450,000 of the 18th century migrants were Scots, Scots-Irish from Ulster, Germans, Swiss, French Huguenots – they made up about 16% of the white population at 1790 census. As Wikipedia mentioned [refer link 🡪 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States ], “The National Origins Formula was a unique computation which attempted to measure the total contributions of “blood” from each national origin as a share of the total stock of White Americans in 1920, counting immigrants, children of immigrants, and the grandchildren of immigrants (and later generations), in addition to estimating the colonial stock population descended from the population who had immigrated in the colonial period and were enumerated in the 1790 census.” Following this concept, the population that each national origin had contributed to the total stock of the USA population in 1920 CE has been presented below in table B.2.2:

Table: B.2.2

Country of originTotalColonial stockPostcolonial stock
TotalImmigrantsChildren ofGrandchildren of
#%#%#%#%#%#%
Austria843,0510.8914,1100.03828,9511.55305,6572.23414,7942.16108,5000.53
Belgium778,3280.82602,3001.46176,0280.3362,6860.4662,0420.3251,3000.25
Czechoslo1,715,1281.8154,7000.131,660,4283.10559,8954.08903,9334.71196,6000.95
Denmark704,7830.7493,2000.23611,5831.14189,9341.39277,1491.44144,5000.70
Finland339,4360.364,3000.01335,1360.63149,8241.09146,6120.7638,7000.19
France1,841,6891.94767,1001.861,074,5892.01155,0191.13325,2701.69594,3002.88
Germany15,488,61516.333,036,8007.3612,451,81523.261,672,37512.204,051,24021.116,728,20032.61
Greece182,9360.19−–182,9360.34135,1460.9946,8900.249000.00
Hungary518,7500.55−–518,7500.97318,9772.33183,7730.9616,0000.08
Ireland10,653,33411.241,821,5004.418,831,83416.50820,9705.992,097,66410.935,913,20028.66
Italy3,462,2713.65−–3,462,2716.471,612,28111.761,671,4908.71178,5000.87
Latvia140,7770.15−–140,7770.2669,2770.5156,0000.2915,5000.08
Lithuania230,4450.24−–230,4450.43117,0000.8588,6450.4624,8000.12
Netherlans1,881,3591.981,366,8003.31514,5590.96133,4780.97205,3811.07175,7000.85
Norway1,418,5921.5075,2000.181,343,3922.51363,8622.65597,1303.11382,4001.85
Poland3,892,7964.118,6000.023,884,1967.261,814,42613.231,779,5709.27290,2001.41
Portugal262,8040.2823,7000.06239,1040.45104,0880.76105,4160.5529,6000.14
Romania175,6970.19−–175,6970.3388,9420.6583,7550.443,0000.02
Russia1,660,9541.754,3000.011,656,6543.09767,3245.60762,1303.97127,2000.62
Spain150,2580.1638,4000.09111,8580.2150,0270.3624,5310.1337,3000.18
Sweden1,977,2342.09217,1000.531,760,1343.29625,5804.56774,8544.04359,7001.74
Switzerlnd1,018,7061.07388,9000.94629,8061.18118,6590.87203,5471.06307,6001.49
Turkey134,7560.14−–134,7560.25102,6690.7531,4870.166000.00
UK39,216,33341.3631,803,90077.027,412,43313.851,365,3149.962,308,41912.033,738,70018.12
Yugoslavia504,2030.53−–504,2030.94220,6681.61265,7351.3817,8000.09
Other Countries170,8680.183,5000.01167,3680.3171,5530.5293,8150.492,0000.01
All Quota Countries89,506,558100.040,324,40045.0549,182,15854.9512,071,28213.4917,620,67619.6919,490,20021.78
Non-quota Countries5,314,3575.60964,1702.344,350,1878.131,641,47211.971,569,6968.181,139,0195.52
USA Total94,820,915100.041,288,57043.5453,532,34556.4613,712,75414.4619,190,37220.2420,629,21921.76

Starting from mid-1840s USA experienced very high degree of population growth that continued till mid-1930s. As a result of which, during the 1920 census it was concluded that the post-colonial era migration (between 1790 and 1920 CE) resulted in about 56% of the population in 192. Now, the data related to the labour force and industry sector-wise employment has been presented below in table B.2.3 from ‘Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800’ edited by Dorothy S. Brady [refer link 🡪 http://www.nber.org/books/brad66-1 ]:

Table: B.2.3

YearTotal Population (million)*1st Gen. Immigrant (million)**Labour-force (million)Industrial sectors of employment (in millions)
AgriculMiningConstrManufTradeRailwyTeacherDomestc Services
183012.7850.114.202.960.02————0.030.16
18405.663.570.030.290.500.35—0.040.24
185023.1912.248.254.520.100.411.200.530.020.080.35
186011.115.880.170.521.530.890.080.110.60
187012.936.790.180.782.471.310.160.171.00
188050.1556.6817.398.920.280.903.291.930.410.231.13
189023.329.960.441.514.392.960.750.351.58
190075.99410.3429.0711.680.631.665.893.971.040.431.80
191037.4811.771.071.958.335.321.850.592.09
192041.6110.791.181.2311.195.842.230.751.66
1930122.77514.2048.8310.561.011.999.888.121.661.042.27
194056.299.570.921.8711.319.331.161.082.30
195065.477.870.903.0315.6512.151.371.271.99

Note: * and ** marked data has been provided from Wikipedia.

A couple of points need to be noted from tables B.2.2 and B.2.3:

  1. A total population of 12.78 million (0.8% from 1st generation immigrants) and labour force of 4.20 million in 1830 CE jumped to a total population of 50.15 million (13.3% from 1st generation immigrants) and labour force of 17.39 million in 1880 CE showed that the immigration from Europe contributed immensely to 400% increase in the population and labour force of USA in just 50 years
  2. Whether colonial-period settlement before 1790, or post-colonial immigration after 1790, Europeans flocked to USA as a result of which 94% of the 94.82 million population of USA in 1920 belonged to the European ethnicities
  3. In 1830, 70% of the workforce belonged to agriculture occupation, while only 26% of the labour force were engaged in agriculture during 1920; it has been proved in research on 19th century work-force in USA, that the descendants of the colonial-period settlers were mostly reluctant to join the secondary economic sector as proletarian and semi-proletarian workforce – the economic transformation of the USA from an agriculture economy in 1830 to world’s leading industrial state in 1920 happened largely due to the emigration from European states who left Europe to settle in USA in droves!

People from all over Europe who were unemployed, destitute, low-skilled workers, skilled workers with low-pay jobs made a beeline for migrating to USA (and to an extent to other Anglo colonies like South Africa, Australia, Canada), where industrial capitalism firmly spread its wings and a huge workforce got employed at somewhat decent salary/ wages. Even if Marx himself was actively organising socialist trade unions and/or revolutionary communism in USA, it never took roots there because of ‘labour aristocracy’ and conspiratorial murders of organisers. More or less, the largest section of USA urban population was from the working class and they found themselves as a privileged class (when compared to most of the urban Europe of that era except Britain, the Netherlands, and France). The not-so-secret charm of finding a better lifestyle in the ‘new world’ for the European proletarians, semi-proletarians, and petty bourgeois families proved to be more compelling than joining in the struggle against bourgeois Zionist-Capitalists in Europe!

In Imperialism, Hobson provided detail data to show how USA became a dominant country (which had only few colonial ventures unlike most of the west European powers) in the world export within four decades, with a very rapid rate of growth (even though exports net of imports would be a more robust parameter, in case of USA with abundant natural resources it can be safely assumed that imports were at very low level, hence exports as the parameter is appropriate):

Table B.2.4

YearExports of USA (million dollar)
TotalCrude (raw) materialsCrude (raw) foodstuffsManufactured foodstuffsSemi ManufacturesFinished ManufacturesRatio of Raw Material / Total Exports
1880663.6213.9158.8161.930.198.756.1%
1885774.6261.6162.7197.437.0115.754.7%
1890725.6276.7108.7181.540.0118.753.1%
1895876.3295.0150.8238.555.3136.450.8%
19001136.0296.6214.7272.7109.5242.345.0%
19051427.0432.0173.9316.2161.2343.542.4%
19101750.9554.7155.8317.3249.1473.840.5%
19152716.1591.2506.9454.5355.8807.440.4%
19208080.41882.5917.91116.6958.43204.834.6%

We should take a pause and ask a question: since 1495 CE Spain and Portugal has been brutally expanding their empire in North and South America that in course of time created a new variant of capitalism – plantation capitalism – apart from the ubiquitous mercantile capitalism, but in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th century the lands which we know as Brazil, Argentina, Peru, or Colombia no USA type state sprang up which will challenge the European industrially advanced states and within 50 years surpass all of them in economic output and technology! So, was there any special traits in the Europeans who entered the USA as immigrants? Was there a magic wand with the USA ruling party leadership? Answer is resoundingly, NO. It was the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy based in west Europe who understood after 1848 that the European masses can actually turn against the oppressors and exploiters someday in future, and made two simultaneous moves – firstly, corrupt the leadership of socialist unions and parties, and co-opt them so that they became lackeys instead of fighters for proletarians, secondly, create a new ‘core’ for capitalist economy where finance-trade-manufacturing all will grow unhindered in a new country that has large landmass, huge natural resources, free from socialist ideological past, and central banking controlled by the Zionist-capitalist oligarchy. History of 1914 to 1920 proved that both these moves ended in complete success both across Europe, and the USA!

It was said that ‘Imperialism has the tendency to create privileged sections among the workers, and to detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat’ – it was true with those European proletariats who moved to USA. But even those European masses who migrated to USA and their descendants realised much later that they were simply pawns in the game of political economy (of the Zionist-capitalist oligarchy) – history didn’t record their silent reactions on the ‘great depression’ that swept the USA economy during 1929 for at least half a decade. As it happened, during an economic growth phase, industry workers in the secondary and tertiary economic sectors employed by the large monopoly/ duopoly/ oligopoly business houses (the bourgeois owners of these business entities started controlling the state governments, political parties, media in order to establish firm ownership of the raw materials, energy, and markets in foreign lands) would be paid much better compared to the highly competitive medium/ small organisations – so the workers silently join the reformist trade union leaders (labour aristocracy). During economic downturn those workers would be worse off, but still better than the fiercely competitive medium & small sector workers. Only during closure of a factory, those employees would stare at a ruinous future – however, at that point of time those same opportunists corrupt labour leaders turn their follower’s attention towards a few ‘bogeyman’ of foreign (country) enemy and different ethnic or religious communities of same society and suggest that those bogeyman’ were responsible for the economic downturn. This privileged class of workers in Europe and USA (before 1914 CE there were hardly any modern industrial facility in Africa, Asia, and South America continents) simply never understood their potential as vanguard of revolutionary change in the way human civilization functions – instead many in Germany, Italy, USA became ultra-nationalist and racist. Moreover, the religious-minded workers would compare their lifestyle with the unemployed people and low-paid workers of Europe (their original home) and conclude that, God has given them a better lifestyle! The mass of workers seldom understood Marxist concepts and tenets let alone philosophy!

There were a few other aspects of the then Europe-centred global economy which favoured the Zionist-Capitalist programmes immensely:

(1) Discovery gold deposits in California and Australia that encouraged the expansion of credit. As noted by Hobsbawm, “within seven years the world gold supply increased between six and sevenfold, and the amount of gold coinage issued by Britain, France, and the United States multiplied from an annual average of 4.9 million pounds in 1848-49 to one of 28.1 million in each year between 1850 and 1856. Joining the UK as the Core — Sudden upward turn in economy & supply of credit after 1848

(2) In 30 years railways not only became the most stable and fast medium of transportation, but it opened a new area of business in capital sector. Between 1845 when Britain exported 1.29 million tons of rail iron and steel and 4.9 thousand tons of rail machinery and 1875 when the corresponding figures were 4.04 and 44.1, Britain achieved a mind-blowing growth of 3 times and 9 times!

(3) In two decades, between 1850 and 1870 world trade increased by 260%. It was ‘immaterial’ that the Chinese empire didn’t want opium in their country, but British Zionist-Capitalists earned astronomical profits from opium trade (exported from British India to Qing China)! It was a boom time for British and French foreign investments.

4) Political factor – Conspiracy by the Zionist-capitalist Oligarchy Against Marxists

With the successive publications of books/pamphlets on communism/socialism and active participation in 1848 CE revolutions by Marx and Engels, the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy of west Europe identified both of them as the long-term intellectual threat to their wealth-power-prestige. The publication of Marx’s ‘On the Jewish Question’ in February, 1844, the publication of Engels’ ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ in 1845, the publication of Marx’s ‘Wage Labour and Capital’ in April, 1849, and finally the publication of ‘The Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in February, 1848 convinced the new bourgeois class (mostly Jews, crypto-Jews, and Anglos) as well as the old feudal aristocrats (mostly Anglo-Saxon, French, German) that their future plan of JOINTLY maintaining the political power and controlling the economy and trade-commerce would be in jeopardy unless the new movement of Marxist socialist/communist groups can be discredited and nullified. The members of the oligarchy (joined through common aspirations) found out that the ‘new addition’ (followers of Marx-Engels) to the list of existing (early) socialist groups was a tough nut to crack – the communists led by two scholar-activists expressed deep empathy with the toiling masses which was tempered with rationality, they proposed an ideology that was rooted in the history-sociology-economics of Europe, they built the organizations and created support base that were reinforced by flawless logic! The Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy noted that, the socialist and communist leaders before Marx and Engels appeared on the horizon, would either approach the oligarchs requesting for funds/lands for setting up cooperative communities or would lead movements for more wage or would petition for voting rights or would hatch conspiracy to overthrow a government, none of which had potential to become long-term existential threat. Marxist communists (realised as existential threat to capitalist system and its beneficiary, the oligarchy), because of their robust ideological basis backed by facts, reason and logic, soon became the target for obliteration through disinformation, hate, and violence campaigns.

Bourgeois capitalists, feudal aristocrats, and bankers influenced the governments in countries across Europe so that they put up maximum resistance to the bourgeoning movements led by Marxist communists, in every possible way – detention by department of internal security, blind judiciary denying natural justice, summary execution etc. all types of state-sponsored repressions. The Zionist-Capitalist ruling oligarchy deployed a more sinister programme to destroy Marxist communist movements. They recruited two outstanding intellectual-activists (who were scholars of Marxism, socialism) as agents within the Marxist communist/socialist organisations at an early stage when the socialist movement was on the upswing, who would work for creating confusion within the ranks and derail the movement. The third element of the troika was not a human being, but a British organisation called Fabian Society.

Eduard Bernstein – [refer link 🡪 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Bernstein ] Bernstein was a former Rothschild banker and private secretary to “gold uncle” Karl Höchberg, a wealthy donor to the German SPD. It seems Bernstein was the first recruit of the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy much before the death of Marx in 1883. From 1896 to 1898 Bernstein wrote a series of articles “Problems of Socialism” in the SPD party theoretical journal, Der Neue Zeit, suggesting that Marxism needed a ‘revision’, he wanted to purge it of what he considered to be its dogmatic errors. He laid out his ideas in Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus and die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie in 1899 which was partially translated into English as Evolutionary Socialism and published in 1909.

Karl Kautsky – [refer link 🡪 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Kautsky ] It appears that Kautsky was recruited following the death of Engels’ in 1895. One of the close associates of Engels, Kautsky actually blocked publication of some of the works of Engels after his death. He wrote in 1887 ‘The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx’ in which Marxism was presented as an economic theory. Kautsky reduced the Marxist historical dialectic to a sort of (social) evolutionism. He rejected the idea of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry. From 1905 Kautsky turned into an avowed opportunist reformist.

Berstein-Kautsky duo went on to become the main conspirators against the revolutionary wing of the German communists (which ended in killing of the revolutionary leaders). During the Socialist revolution of 1918, Bernstein’s disciple Friedrich Ebert became Germany’s new Chancellor and later President. Bernstein was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Treasury, while his collaborator Kautsky was appointed to the Foreign Office.

Fabian Society – [refer link 🡪 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society ] It was founded in January 1884 in London as an offshoot of a society founded a year earlier, called ‘The Fellowship of the New Life’. Most prominent contemporary figures like Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb, Arthur Henderson, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Charles Marson, Sydney Olivier, Oliver Lodge, Ramsay MacDonald were members of the society. Britain’s Fabian Socialists who preached “evolutionary Socialism” were assisted by Kautsky and Bernstein regularly. British socialists who were reformists, created the Labour Party (that always considered Fabian Society as their basis/ foundation).

An observer noted, “The Fabians’ financial backers who held interests in mining, industrial plants, railway networks and other international ventures across the globe were leading advocates of “moral capitalism” and “liberal or enlightened imperialism”. In other words, they were at the forefront of the principal force that was transforming the world: the monopolistic tendencies within capitalism which secretly aimed to control natural resources, industries, markets and economies through financial means, while publicly calling for policies claiming to be “for the public good”. While the Fabians benefitted from the imperialists’ financial support, the imperialists used the Fabians’ “impartial” intellectual and academic output, such as works on international government, to legitimise their own internationalist policies.”

A prominent sponsor of Fabianism was David Rockefeller who in the 1930s wrote a senior thesis on Fabian Socialism at Harvard and did a post-graduate at the Fabians’ London School of Economics that was funded by Rockefeller family. While pursuing a successful banking career, he was also a leading sponsor of Fabian projects across the world. Willy Brandt, the German Chancellor ‘became president of the Fabians’ Socialist International and was appointed by US presidential adviser and World Bank president Robert McNamara, a Rockefeller associate, as chair of the UN Independent Commission on International Development Issues. In this role, he worked closely with Rockefeller associates such as Peter G Peterson, chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb (an ally of Rockefeller and Rothschild), on a new plan to restructure the world economy’ in line with the policies of the international bankers.

Frederick Engels (in Letters to Sorge, pg. 390) wrote about the Fabians on January 18, 1893: “a band of careerists who have understanding enough to realise the inevitability of the social revolution, but who could not possibly entrust this gigantic task to the raw proletariat alone. . . . Fear of the revolution is their fundamental principle“

And on November 11, 1893 (in Letters to Sorge, pg. 401), he wrote: “these haughty bourgeois who kindly condescend to emancipate the proletariat from above if only it would have sense enough to realise that such a raw, uneducated mass cannot liberate itself and can achieve nothing without the kindness of these clever lawyers, writers and sentimental old women.”

5) Ideological factor – Emergence of Britain as a ‘Model’ Nation-State

Earlier I mentioned that three modern society ‘phenomenon’ – ‘nationalism’ , ‘democracy’, and ‘mass media’ blossomed all over European landmass all of a sudden after 1848 CE. Certainly the European elites, aristocrats, intelligentsia, and Zionist-Capitalist bourgeois wanted to see a state that can be projected as a role model incorporating all three aspects. U.K. (as the core of British empire across the globe) soon became the poster boy for modernity or more aptly ‘the model nation-state in the modern era’.

The first electoral reform bill was introduced in Parliament in March 1831 and adopted in June 1832 that officially put an end to the political monopoly of the landed aristocracy, bankers and usurers. The doors of Parliament were opened only to the representatives of the industrial bourgeoisie. The proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie remained disfranchised. The second electoral reform law adopted in August, 1867 granted the franchise only to house-owners, householders and tenants of flats who paid an annual rent of no less than £10. Thus the petty bourgeoisie and the labour aristocracy were enfranchised. The urban proletariat, the small farmers, and the rural proletariat did not receive the right to vote. The third reform carried out in 1884 extended the 1867 law to rural district. Still about two million men and all women were barred from the polls.

Every single word V I Lenin wrote in his ‘Imperialism and The Split in Socialism’ was 100% accurate and appropriate for Britain and all other European states which were busy copying the British model, “On the economic basis referred to above, the political institutions of modern capitalism—press, parliament associations, congresses etc.—have created political privileges and sops for the respectful, meek, reformist and patriotic office employees and workers, corresponding to the economic privileges and sops. Lucrative an soft jobs in the government or on the war industries committees, in parliament and on diverse committees, on the editorial staffs of “respectable”, legally published newspapers or on the management councils of no less respectable and “bourgeois law-abiding” trade unions—this is the bait by which the imperialist bourgeoisie attracts and rewards the representatives and supporters of the “bourgeois labour parties”.

“The mechanics of political democracy works in the same direction. Nothing in our times can be done without elections; nothing can be done without the masses. And in this era of printing and parliamentarism it is impossible to gain the following of the masses without a widely ramified, systematically managed, well-equipped system of flattery, lies, fraud, juggling with fashionable and popular catchwords, and promising all manner of reforms and blessings to the workers right and left—as long as they renounce the revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of bourgeoisie. I would call this system Lloyd-Georgism, after the English Minister Lloyd George, one of the foremost and most dexterous representatives of this system in the classic land of the “bourgeois labour party”. A first-class bourgeois manipulator, an astute politician, a popular orator who will deliver any speeches you like even r-r-revolutionary ones, to a labour audience, and a man who is capable of obtaining sizable sops for docile workers in the shape of social reforms (insurance, etc.), Lloyd George serves the bourgeoisie splendidly, and serves it precisely among the workers, brings its influence precisely to the proletariat, to where the bourgeoisie needs it most and where it finds it most difficult to subject the masses morally.”

The following table provides the economic interests of the MPs in British House of Commons – most of the MPs were from elite, aristocrat, and bourgeois class. Could anything else happen? No. Because democracy, nationalism and mass media jointly acted as a glue to pull the plebs, the proletariat, semi-proletariat, and petty bourgeois classes towards the political parties that were the facades of the wealthy patricians, the landed aristocracy, bourgeois, military services etc.

 Table: B.2.5

Question: Are you for Gulags, political repressions, class warfare and world revolution?

The question and its choice of words clearly points out to the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, even if that has not been stated explicitly. Well, let me respond only with appropriate facts and figures.

After the departure of the two great masters of Marxism/socialism/communism, the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy influenced and indirectly established ideological control over most of the socialist/labour/social democrat parties and unions in European countries through the troika I mentioned above under section B.2. The minority factions of those European parties/unions who still thought revolutionary socialism was the only way, parted ways with the parent organisations. And, THIS WAS THE SITUATION IN EVERY COUNTRY OF EUROPE FROM BRITAIN IN THE WEST TO RUSSIA IN THE EAST. Marx and Engels were present with all their revolutionary concepts within the books in libraries! In 1910 CE, in the political/ economic/ social life of Europe, Marx and Engels didn’t make any difference whatsoever.

It was Lenin, a leader of the minority revolutionary faction of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in the first decade of 20th century, who rediscovered the original thoughts of Marx and Engels through a careful study of their works. It was Lenin who analysed theories of Marxism/socialism/communism, explored how the concepts can be practically implemented using a political party as a vanguard, formulated the strategies for successful takeover of the state power, analysed how capitalism manifested itself through colonial imperialism, and prepared for a revolution at the world stage. If Marx and Engels were the theoretical leaders, Lenin was the implementer of what the world came to know as Marxist Communism! Lenin brought Marx and Engels to the centre stage of the world politics in 1905 CE with the failed First Russian Revolution, ever since Marx-Engels-Lenin simply refused to move away from the limelight!

During the entire decade of 1901 to 1910, Lenin handled all the deficiencies that plagued the European socialist/labour/ social democratic parties. In ‘What Is To Be Done?’ in 1902 Lenin called for a party of professional revolutionaries, disciplined and directed, capable of defeating the police whose aim should be to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. For Lenin Russian revolutionary workers’ movement must include the peasants – in 1903, at the third congress of the party, he secured a resolution to this effect, after which ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ became ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’.

Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism (termed as ‘Leninism’ by Martov in 1904) was surely an orthodox one. Like Marx and Engels, he firmly believed that, ‘humanity would eventually reach pure communism, becoming a stateless, classless, egalitarian society’ where workers would be free from exploitation and alienation, people would control their own destiny, and abided by the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” According to Volkogonov, Lenin deeply believed that the path he was setting Russia on would ultimately lead to the establishment of this targeted communist society. In order to build socialism, and then communism, Lenin thought bringing the Russian economy under state control to be the primary task of Bolshevik Party. ‘He believed that the representative democracy of capitalist countries gave the illusion of democracy while maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’. He described the representative democratic system of the USA as the “spectacular and meaningless duels between two bourgeois parties led by astute multimillionaires”.

In 1908, in an article dedicated to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, Lenin characterised reformism as “It is quite natural that the petty bourgeois world outlook should again and again break into the ranks of the broad workers’ parties. It is quite natural that this should be so, and it will always be so, until the climax of the proletarian revolution; for it would be a great mistake to think that the “complete” proletarianisation of the majority of the population is necessary in order to bring about such a revolution. What we now experience more often on the mental plane only — discussions with theoretical additions to Marx what now emerges in working practice only on certain particular questions of the labour movement as tactical differences with the revisionists and splits on these grounds — the working class will have to experience to an immeasurably greater extent when the proletarian revolution makes all debatable questions acute, concentrates all the differences upon points which have most direct significance in determining the attitude of the masses and compels us, in the heat of the battle, to separate enemies from friends, and to expel bad allies in order to deliver decisive blows against the enemy.”

In ‘The Historical Destiny of the Doctrine of Karl Marx’ published in 1913 CE Lenin mentioned, “Socialist parties, basically proletarian, were formed everywhere, and learned to use bourgeois parliamentarism and to found their own daily press, their educational institutions, their trade unions and their co-operative societies. Marx’s doctrine gained a complete victory and began to spread. The selection and mustering of the forces of the proletariat and its preparation for the coming battles made slow but steady progress.

“The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists. Liberalism, rotten within, tried to revive itself in the form of socialist opportunism. They interpreted the period of preparing the forces for great battles as renunciation of these battles. Improvement of the conditions of the slaves to fight against wage slavery they took to mean the sale by the slaves of their right to liberty for a few pence. They cravenly preached “social peace” (i.e., peace with the slave-owners), renunciation of the class struggle, etc. They had very many adherents among socialist members of parliament, various officials of the working-class movement, and the “sympathising” intelligentsia.

“We do not regard Marx’s theory as something complete and inviolable,” wrote Lenin “on the contrary, we are convinced that … socialists must develop it in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life.”

(C) Russia Showed the Way to Marxism-inspired Socialism After 1917 Revolution

During the most eventful 8 months of Russian Revolution during 1917 CE, too many events of small and great significance happened in Russia which were part of history. I found Stalin’s version the main events as the most concise and crisp write-on on this subject. J V Stalin wrote (refer Trotskyism OR Leninism? … speech delivered at the Plenum of the Communist Group in the A.U.C.C.T.U. on November 19, 1924):

“Let us briefly review the history of the preparation for October according to periods.

1) The period of the Party’s new orientation (March-April). The major facts of this period:

a) the overthrow of tsarism;

b) the formation of the Provisional Government (dictatorship of the bourgeoisie);

c) the appearance of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry);

d) dual power;

e) the April demonstration;

f) the first crisis of power.

The characteristic feature of this period is the fact that there existed together, side by side and simultaneously, both the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry; the latter trusts the former, believes that it is striving for peace, voluntarily surrenders power to the bourgeoisie and thereby becomes an appendage of the bourgeoisie. There are as yet no serious conflicts between the two dictatorships. On the other hand, there is the “Contact Committee.” …

2) The period of the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses (May-August). The major facts of this period:

a) the April demonstration in Petrograd and the formation of the coalition government with the participation of Socialists;

b) the May Day demonstrations in the principal centres of Russia with the slogan of “a democratic peace”;

c) the June demonstration in Petrograd with the principal slogan: “Down with the capitalist ministers!”;

d) the June offensive at the front and the reverses of the Russian army;

e) the July armed demonstration in Petrograd; the Cadet ministers resign from the government;

f) counter-revolutionary troops are called in from the front; the editorial offices of Pravda are wrecked; the counter-revolution launches a struggle against the Soviets and a new coalition government is formed, headed by Kerensky;

g) the Sixth Congress of our Party, which issues the slogan to prepare for an armed uprising;

h) the counter-revolutionary Conference of State and the general strike in Moscow;

i) Kornilov’s unsuccessful march on Petrograd, the revitalising of the Soviets; the Cadets resign and a “Directory” is formed.

The characteristic feature of this period is the intensification of the crisis and the upsetting of the unstable equilibrium between the Soviets and the Provisional Government which, for good or evil, had existed in the preceding period. Dual power has become intolerable for both sides. The fragile edifice of the “Contact Committee” is tottering. “Crisis of power” and “ministerial re-shuffle” are the most fashionable catchwords of the day. The crisis at the front and the disruption in the rear are doing their work, strengthening the extreme flanks and squeezing the defencist compromisers from both sides. The revolution is mobilising, causing the mobilisation of the counter-revolution. The counter-revolution, in its turn, is spurring on the revolution, stirring up new waves of the revolutionary tide. The question of transferring power to the new class becomes the immediate question of the day. …

3) The period of organisation of the assault (September-October). The major facts of this period:

a) the convocation of the Democratic Conference and the collapse of the idea of a bloc with the Cadets;

b) the Moscow and Petrograd Soviets go over to the side of the Bolsheviks;

c) the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region; the Petrograd Soviet decides against the withdrawal of the troops;

d) the decision of the Central Committee on the uprising and the formation of the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet;

e) the Petrograd garrison decides to render the Petrograd Soviet armed support; a network of commissars of the Revolutionary Military Committee is organised;

f) the Bolshevik armed forces go into action; the members of the Provisional Government are arrested;

g) the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Petrograd Soviet takes power; the Second Congress of Soviets [from which the Mensheviks and the SRS and the Menshevik Internationalists all walked out leaving Bolsheviks in power] sets up the Council of People’s Commissars.“

Side-lining the endless discussions on the economic stage (i.e. feudal or capitalist or semi-feudal) at which socialist revolution would be successful in a society, Lenin held his ground convincingly, broke with the majority within RSDLP, and continuously year after year preached that the proletarians could organize and lead the democratic revolution in a predominantly agriculture economy if organisation and strategy are appropriate (so that the peasants join the revolution from the beginning). By then Lenin’s faction already became majority and came to be known as Bolsheviks.

The adversaries of Bolshevik communism, who also saw through the despicable lies of the Zionist-Capitalist media, noted the undeniable integrity of the Russian Bolshevik revolutionaries. “The Russian Communists,” wrote the American sociologist, Edward Alsworth Ross, after few years of the revolution, “were men with a vision of a regenerated society which they sought to realize. All the party leaders who in November, 1917, laid rude hands on Russian society to remould it by force were sincere men, since, for the sake of their ideal, they had made themselves targets for the inhuman persecutions that went on under the Czars. When freedom arrived in March, nobody had any standing with the Russian masses who had not stood up for them in those ghastly years when every spokesman for the robbed toilers had to skulk and run and burrow if he would remain at large. These fire-tested revolutionaries had behind them a record of personal disinterestedness and heroism which should put to the blush our smug captains of conservative opinion, who have never risked their lives or freedom for others yet affect to dwell on a higher moral plane than the Russian fighters.” (published in The Russian Soviet Republic, pg.8. New York, 1928.)

Pic C.1: Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, January 1918.

Lenin and his communist revolutionary comrades captured the state power in Russian, which finally proved that a Marxist movement could become a reality in a state. I will not discuss in detail how the Bolshevik Party led the workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ into Russian Revolution in 1917 – for that, so many well-documented books are available in the market. I will, instead, discuss the significant milestones and the myths that were constructed and propagated by the media and academia during the 20th century in European languages owned by the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy.

MYTH 1 – Since 1917 CE, there had been a consistent media and academia campaign across the world that, the Russian Revolution in November 1917 was a coup engineered by a ‘tiny group of zealots’ or ‘small band of conspirators’ unconnected to the Russian masses.

Reality –

I quote Dr. Alexander Rabinowitch, ex-Professor Emeritus, Indiana University and author of history books on Russian revolution, whose family fled Russia in 1918 CE during the terror unleashed by the Bolshevik Party [link 🡪 https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3615-myths-of-the-october-revolution-an-interview-with-alexander-rabinowitch ]:

“I found that far from being the small band of “conspiratorial followers by the numbers” of Lenin in seizing power, from February on the Bolsheviks tried to develop a mass party. They grew enormously among workers and soldiers. They made a great effort to build connections with factory committees in factories and in trade unions getting strength and among garrison troops. More than any other party they were concerned with building roots among the masses and they helped shape mass views but they also were shaped by mass views. The party and in 1917 – far from being a centralized troop movement that …, they became a mass party and a decentralized party with relatively democratic decision-making and this was terribly important in their success. It almost was catastrophic in July 1917 during the abortive July uprising when the left-wing of the party tried to overthrow the Provisional Government and transfer power to the Soviets too early. My sense was that Lenin was opposed to that and that was part of the price of having a decentralized party. But in the long run that internal democracy and that decentralization was critical to the party’s success. On two or three occasions in July, in September and October, Lenin issued orders to overthrow the Provisional Government which leaders on the spot turned down because they could see that it was very risky and probably doomed to failure with Trotsky helping lead and Lenin giving general directions from his hiding place in Finland they developed a strategy that ultimately led to their coming to power, their successful seizure of power. All the moves against the Provisional government were made in the name of “All power to the Soviets,” in the name of “Immediate peace” in the name of transferring power to the Constituent Assembly. When they came to power they got widespread support precisely because the masses were concerned that there would be another counter revolutionary attempt. There had been one attempt in August – the abortive Kornilov coup – they were afraid of another and they looked at the Bolsheviks not as “All power to the Bolsheviks” – that was never said – but “All power to the Soviets,” multi-party Soviets. What enabled the Bolsheviks to take power by themselves was that the Mensheviks and the SRS and the Menshevik Internationalists all walked out of the second Congress of Soviets that proclaimed the new government. The Left SR’s [and Menshevik-Internationalists’ – by the author] refused to get into the government with the Bolsheviks and so the Bolsheviks were able to form a government of their own …

“The April conference, Bolshevik conference, was the first conference after the revolution of the party and Lenin was able to participate. It was sharply divided into a Leninist, a center group and moderate Bolsheviks, right wing Bolsheviks — people like Kamenev and Zinoviev. They fought it out and while Lenin sort of won the main fight regarding the direction of the revolution and the continuation of the revolution and transfer of power to the Soviets, the voice of the moderates was very strong and almost half of the Central Committee were made up of moderates. And when some people on the Left said “Well wait a minute we don’t want all those moderates,” Lenin said, “No we need them. They have ties to the masses and Kamenev’s voice is important.” You’ll find that in the April conference protocols. So that Lenin tolerated that lively debate and that lively debate was essential in September when Lenin called for the immediate seizure of power in mid-September. It was way too early — it’s clear to all historians now that would have been too early — and a majority of the Central Committee and there was a National Conference in Petrograd at the time — a majority of it voted to ignore Lenin’s directives and that was to the good of the party. After the Revolution Lenin more or less conceded it.”

Organisation, not doctrine, was the chief contribution of Lenin’s Bolshevik communism to changing the world. So, three fundamental myth-busting points came out of the above excerpts:

(a) there was a well-established political organisation – RSDLP (Bolshevik communists/socialists) – which was steering the movement

(b) the Bolshevik party also had factions – left wing, centre wing, right wing – which engaged in lively debates before finalizing the course of action

(c) the Bolshevik party was indeed a mass-based party where workers, peasants, soldiers of Russia were preparing to seize power alone since Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries refused to join

MYTH 2 – Since 1917 CE, there has been a consistent campaign across the media world that, the top atheist leaders of Russian Revolution – Lenin and Trotsky – were stooges of Jewish bankers in USA and west Europe, who were instructed to utilise the money given by those bankers to wreck Tsarist Russian empire, Orthodox Church, and Orthodox society.

Reality –

After a decade of investigation into 10 largest archives in USSR, Dr. Alexander Rabinowitch stated, “what I found was that the Bolsheviks came to power not simply without an authoritarian legacy but also without a preconceived plan or concept of how they would govern.… The fact is that the Petrograd Bolsheviks had to transform themselves from rebels into rulers without benefit of an advance plan or even a concept.… Soviet political system were the realities the Bolsheviks faced in their often seemingly hopeless struggle for survival“

As it happened, after the Paris Commune, where for the first time in world history, a leftist revolutionary committee seized power and operated government from 18 March to 28 May 1871, Bolshevik communists repeated that feat for the second time in November 1917 – however, there was NO concept, plan, policy, or procedure of socialist/ communist governance that were successfully followed by the Paris communards or documentation prepared by any other source, for the Bolshevik leadership to refer to. Trotsky and Lenin took loans from the international banking families for managing the expenditures during 1917 revolution, which were repaid by the Bolshevik government after they came to power (post-revolution). But Lenin outmanoeuvred the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy and their governments like the USA, the UK, and France completely. Their revulsion about Lenin was so complete that they refused to recognise USSR while Lenin was alive! Only after his death on 21st January 1924, USSR was recognised by European and American imperialist powers – UK on 2nd February 1924, France on 28th October 1924, Italy on 7th February 1924, and USA on 16th November 1933. It was a completely different affair during the 1917 March revolution – within 12 days of abdication by Tsar, USA, UK, France, Italy governments recognised the Russian government by 24 March 1917.

For at least two centuries, Russian empire was one of the most unequal oppressive hierarchical feudal society, and people from industrial working class, peasantry, soldiers were spontaneously agitating for most basic of the rights – right for food. Historian Alexander Rabinowitch summarised the causes of February 1917 revolution: “The February 1917 revolution… grew out of pre-war political and economic instability, technological backwardness, and fundamental social divisions, coupled with gross mismanagement of the war effort, continuing military defeats, domestic economic dislocation, and outrageous scandals surrounding the monarchy”.

In ‘How The Bourgeois Utilises Renegades’ that was published in September 1919, Lenin copied from a letter written by an American observer that would provide an honest depiction of political instability and violence in Soviet Russia during the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution:

“ Sir:

The Allied governments have refused to recognise the Soviet Government of Russia because, as they state:

1. The Soviet Government is — or was — pro-German.

2. The Soviet Government is based on terrorism.

3. The Soviet Government is undemocratic and unrepresentative of the Russian people.

Meanwhile the Allied governments have long since recognised the present whiteguard Government of Finland under the dictatorship of General Mannerheim, although it appears:

1. That German troops aided the whiteguards in crushing the Socialist Republic of Finland, and that General Mannerheim sent repeated telegrams of sympathy and esteem to the Kaiser. Meanwhile the Soviet Government was busily undermining the German Government with propaganda among troops on the Russian front. The Finnish Government was infinitely more pro-German than the Russian.

2. That the present Government of Finland on coming into power executed in cold blood within a few days’ time 16,700 members of the old Socialist Republic, and imprisoned in starvation camps 70,000 more. Meanwhile the total executions in Russia for the year ended November 1, 1918, were officially stated to have been 3,800, including many corrupt Soviet of officials as well as counter-revolutionists. The Finnish Government was infinitely more terroristic than the Russian.

3. That after killing and imprisoning nearly 90,000 socialists, and driving some 50,000 more over the border into Russia — and Finland is a small country with an electorate of only about 400,000 — the white guard government deemed it sufficiently safe to hold elections. In spite of all precautions, a majority of socialists were elected, but General Mannerheim, like the Allies after the Vladivostok elections, allowed not one of them to be seated. Meanwhile the Soviet Government had disenfranchised all those who do no useful work for a living. The Finnish Government was considerably less democratic than the Russian.

And much the same story might be rehearsed in respect to that great champion of democracy and the new order, Admiral Kolchak of Omsk, whom the Allied governments have supported, supplied and equipped, and are now on the point of officially recognising.

Thus every argument that the Allies have urged against the recognition of the Soviets, can be applied with more strength and honesty against Mannerheim and Kolchak. Yet the latter are recognised, and the blockade draws ever tighter about starving Russia.

Stuart Chase Washington, D.C.

An American liberal [Stuart Chase – author] realises — not because he is theoretically equipped to do so, but simply because he is an attentive observer of developments in a sufficiently broad light, on a world scale — that the world bourgeoisie has organised and is waging a civil war against the revolutionary proletariat and, accordingly, is supporting Kolchak and Denikin in Russia, Mannerheim in Finland, the Georgian Mensheviks, those lackeys of the bourgeoisie, in the Caucasus, the Polish imperialists and Polish Kerenskys in Poland, the Scheidemanns in Germany, the counter-revolutionaries (Mensheviks and capitalists) in Hungary, etc., etc.”

Moreover, Lenin did NOT possess any extra feelings or agenda against the Orthodox religion or society other than his disdain for all that were part of bourgeois society and culture. In ‘Socialism and Religion’ published in Novaya Zhizn, No. 28, December 3. 1905, Lenin stated some obvious sociological facts and simply suggested that atheism could NOT be a programme even in a communist party [personally I had to agree to these statements even if I’m a deeply spiritual person – author], “Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven.

Religion must be declared a private affair…. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority.

That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various “Christians”. But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all.

Everywhere the reactionary bourgeoisie has concerned itself, and is now beginning to concern itself in Russia, with the fomenting of religious strife — in order thereby to divert the attention of the masses from the really important and fundamental economic and political problems, now being solved in practice by the all-Russian proletariat uniting in revolutionary struggle. This reactionary policy of splitting up the proletarian forces, which today manifests itself mainly in Black-Hundred pogroms, may tomorrow conceive some more subtle forms. We, at any rate, shall oppose it by calmly, consistently and patiently preaching proletarian solidarity and the scientific world-outlook – a preaching alien to any stirring up of secondary differences.”

I would also like to put to rest another myth which is an offshoot of this myth#2 – that the Russian Revolution is a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the Russian orthodox society. It was true that (Ashkenazi) Jews were a persecuted ethnic community across European states – mostly because they were hated across the European societies for being in the business of usury. It was / is true that the world-wide banking and financing system had been under the Jewish oligarchs since past one millennium. But there can be NO simple arithmetic calculation that ALL JEWS were banking elites. On the contrary there would be probably 200 such Jewish families across the world. Hence, majority population of the European Jewish community, who lived in urban ghettos, were still in petty-bourgeois or proletarian class in 19th and 20th century. They were drawn to revolutionary ideas more easily than the rural population of ethnic Europeans. Thus in Russian Revolution, Jews were in disproportionately high numbers compared to ethnic Russians and other minorities. It can’t be ruled, however, that a few of the Jewish leaders of Russian Revolution also formed close coterie (like Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky) and carried out repression against ethnic Russian people (as vengeance) which were NOT part of the Bolshevik Party agenda! That would be completely un-communist behaviour of those leaders, if true.

MYTH 3 – Since 1917 CE, there has been a consistent media and academia campaign in English, French, and Russian language that the leaders of Russian Revolution – the Bolsheviks – were selling out to Germany through signing of the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Reality –

At the onset of WW-I in 1914, Russian Empire consisted of the following regions which are geographically Europe:

• North-Eastern Warsaw-Lublin region of Poland

• Finland

• Estonia

• Latvia

• Lithuania

• Moldova (and Transnistria region)

• Russia (west of Ural Mountains)

• Ukraine except Galicia in western end

• Crimea

• Belorussia

German-Austrian advance was stopped at the end of 1915 on the line Riga–Dvinsk–Dünaburg–Baranovichi–Pinsk–Lutsk–Ternopil. Thus, the Russian Empire already lost the following regions/countries in Europe before 1915:

• Lithuania

• Large part of Ukraine

• Large part of Belarus

• Large part of Poland

Russian front line did not change significantly until March 1917 when ‘February Revolution’ was instigated by 3 parties – RSDLP-Menshevik (support base: industrial labour, intellectuals), Socialist Revolutionary Party (support base: peasantry, agrarian labour), and Constitutional Democratic Party (support base: professionals, academicians, lawyers) – to form a Provisional Government in Petrograd by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma. Gross industrial production in 1917 decreased by around 36% of what it had been in 1914. Real wages (inflation adjusted) fell to about 50% compared to what they had been in 1913. In and around Petrograd, discontent with the monarchy erupted into mass protests mainly against food rationing on 23 February (8 March). Mass demonstrations, violent clashes with police and gendarmes, industrial strikes continued for days. On 27 February (12 March) mutinous Russian forces sided with revolutionaries – 3 days later on 15 March Tsar Nicholas II abdicated ending Romanov dynastic rule. In the new post-Tsarist era, State Duma was led first by Prince Georgy Lvov and then by Alexander Kerensky. UK, France, Italy governments recognised the new Russian government on 24 March 1917, while recognition from USA government reached on 22 March.

Various estimates suggest Russian empire had around six million casualties (dead, missing, and wounded) during WW-I before January 1917. On the war front, by January 1917 everything was bleak – inadequate supply of arms-ammunition, food, incompetent officers, war-weariness among soldiers, mutinies among soldiers demanding end to war efforts, abnormally low level of morale among officers and soldiers, etc. And, on the home front burning issues like inflation, poverty, scarcity of food and consumer goods, overstretched railway network, and millions of refugees from German-occupied Russia combined to bring a nightmare in Russian empire. To restore Army’s morale Kerensky launched an offensive (Kerensky Offensive) on 1st July which ended in a military catastrophe – morale of the Russian Army went down further. The utter failure of Kerensky government in all aspects actually became a boon for Bolshevik party.

As soon as Bolshevik party came into power, Lenin issued The Decree on Peace called “upon all the belligerent nations and their governments to start immediate negotiations for peace” – peace may be decorative item for oligarchy and aristocracy, but peace is an essential element of plebeian life. Lenin’s call for cessation of hostilities in WW-I was backed by hard realities of poverty among common Russians and shortage of supplies for Russian Army – Lenin was neither swayed by the aristocratic ‘glory and glamour’ of the Tsarist empire nor influenced by ritualistic ‘patriotism’ parroted by bourgeois and Menshevik socialist politicians.

Trotsky was appointed Commissar of Foreign Affairs in new Bolshevik government. Trotsky appointed Adolph Joffe to represent the Bolsheviks at the peace conference with the Central Powers. The key events were:

(i) An armistice between Russia and the Central Powers (German empire, Austro-Hungarian empire, Bulgaria, and Ottoman empire) was concluded on 15th December 1917. A week later peace negotiations started in Brest-Litovsk

(ii) Kaiser Wilhelm II, Chief of Imperial German Army Paul Hindenburg, Army General Max Hoffmann, Army General Erich Ludendorff, Foreign Minister Richard Kuhlmann, these five high priests of German imperialism were the main actors on German side during negotiation. On the Russian side Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Stalin were main actors during negotiation.

(iii) Germany agreed to Russian demand of peace with “no annexations or indemnities”, but with proposition that Poland and Lithuania will be independent on the basis of ‘self-determination’ (obviously both the so-called independent state will align with German empire). One of the Russian negotiation team member, noted Marxist historian Mikhail Pokrovsky wept and asked how they could speak of “peace without annexations, when Germany was tearing eighteen provinces away from the Russian state”

(iv) On 1st January 1918, the Kaiser discussed with Hoffmann on future German-Polish border during which Hoffman suggested Germany should take a small slice of Poland. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were of different opinion who, being the winning side, wanted much more territorial acquisitions including Baltic countries. Ukrainian Rada declared independence from Russia, and demanded the Polish city of Cholm and its surroundings.

(v) During 1st week of February 1918, a group of ‘Left’ Communists comprising of Nikolai Bukharin and Karl Radek wanted to continue the war with a newly-raised revolutionary force while wait for socialist revolution in Germany, Austria, and Turkey. Trotsky wanted to “announce the termination of the war and demobilization without signing any peace”. Lenin advocated for signing an early deal rather than having even more disastrous treaty after a few more weeks of military defeats.

(vi) Peace negotiation started on 10th February 1918 and Trotsky proposed the German side his concept of ‘no war and no peace’, and abstained from drawing any conclusion

(vii) German General Hoffmann notified Russian team on 16th February 1918 that German Army would resume their attack on Russia because peace treaty was not signed. On 18th February 1918 Lenin’s resolution that Russia sign the

treaty was supported by Central Committee. Lenin convinced the majority of Bolshevik party leadership (most of whom, as a first choice, wanted a new war to be waged against imperialist Central Powers) that a peace treaty with the Central Powers is a must for the new Bolshevik revolution to sustain in the long run – historical facts show, extremely unfavourable environment at that point of time in Russia because (a) Food shortage was rampant which created large scale civil unrest, (b) Tsarist Army was in complete disorder while Red Army was being built from scratch, and (c) lack of strength of German socialist party to compel their government to cease offensive (as part of WW-I) on Russian front

(viii) Germany launched Operation Faustschlag on 18th February 1918. General Hoffmann advanced further into Russian territory till 22nd February 1918, and on 23rd February 1918 he tabled new terms for peace treaty that included withdrawal of all Russian troops from Finland and Ukraine

(ix) Trotsky resigned as foreign minister. Sokolnikov arrived at Brest-Litovsk to represent Soviet Russian Bolshevik government, and the peace treaty (called as Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) was signed on 3rd March 1918

(x) With this treaty, Russia had to renounce all territorial claims in

• Finland

• Estonia

• Latvia

• Lithuania

• Ukraine

• Crimea

• Belarus

• Bessarabia

• Russian part of Poland (was under possession of White Army);

Russia was also fined 300 million gold marks. Consequently, Russia lost one third of its population, half of its industrial land, one-fourth of its railway, three quarters of iron ore, and nine-tenth of its coalfields as German side insisted that

Russia has to cede more than 150,000 sq. km. of territories.

(xi) This treaty was annulled by the Armistice of 11th November 1918 when Germany surrendered to the Entente Powers (excluding Russia). The Bolshevik legislature (VTsIK) annulled the treaty on 13th November 1918.

There exists a view shared by so-called “nationalist” and “patriotic” leaders of past and present Russia – had Bolshevik party led by Lenin not interfered with Russia’s involvement in WW-I to sign a peace treaty with Germany (and its allies), Russia would have been in the ‘winning team’ of the Entente Powers and would have got a share of the booty flowing out of the Versailles Treaty signed just 8 months later. This view is untenable when scrutinised deeply. Had Russia been active on the WW-I war front even after February 1918, they could have lost even more territory that could include Russia proper. ‘By 1916, Russian Army was not only hopelessly short of food, clothing, ammunitions, and other logistics in the war front, but Russian Army morale was, to a large extent, shattered; moreover, Red Army was not yet in complete shape. Strategically, Lenin proved to be far-sighted – he could sense that, with USA officially entering the WW-I on 6th April 1917, Entente Powers would win against Central Powers, and those Zionist-Capitalist powers would directly control the vast east European territories (earlier part of Tsar Russia, but lost to Germany during WW-I). Lenin assessed that concluding a peace treaty with Germany in February 1918, while control of at least Russia proper was still with Bolshevik party, was administratively better than, simultaneously facing onslaught of German Army (in absence of a peace treaty) plus assault of White Army buttressed by active support from anti-communist governments of about 15 countries that included significant imperialist power like: UK, France, Italy, Japan, USA etc. History proved Lenin’s sagacity – after the conspiracy by British diplomat Bruce Lockhart to sabotage the Bolshevik government in 1918 got exposed, from 1918 till 1921 the Zionist-Capitalist hyenas were out to dismember Russia proper in dozens of pieces using the White Army generals Yudenich, Kolchak, Denikin, and few others, but with German Army neutralized along most of the front, the Red Army valiantly fought against them for unification of Soviet Russia.’

MYTH 4 – Since 1917 CE, there has been a world-wide propaganda across ALL European, Asian language media and academia about how Soviet Communist Party top leaders indulged in unlimited repression thereby murdering twenty to eighty millions of Russians from 1917 to 1942, of which Gulag was a special type.

Reality –

As per the first and only census done by Tsarist Russian empire, total population in January 1897 across entire empire was 125.640 million. Deducting the population of Poland (including western Ukraine and western Byelorussia), Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova and Romania, part of Bulgaria which were under the Russian Tsar empire but not part of Soviet Union after World War I when Bolshevik party came into power, the population in January 1897 was only about 95.602 million.

As per the first full census done by USSR after World War I, total population in December 1926 across entire union was 147.028 million – almost 50% increase from the corresponding figure of 95.602 million in 1897. Within this period during 1914 to 1917, WW-I killed-in-action, missing-in-action, and prisoner-of-war caused about 9 million reductions in population:

  • A study by the Russian military historian G.F. Krivosheev estimated the total mobilization as 15,378,000. Total war dead at 2,254,369 (killed in action 1,200,000; missing and presumed dead 439,369; died of wounds 240,000, gassed 11,000, died from disease 155,000, POW deaths 190,000, deaths due to accidents and other causes 19,000). Wounded 3,749,000. POW 3,343,900.
  • The USA War Dept. figures for Russian casualties are: Total mobilized force 12,000,000. Total casualties 9,150,000 (including Killed and died 1,700,000, wounded 4,950,000, prisoners and missing 2,500,000).
  • The UK War Office based on a telegram from Petrograd to Copenhagen in December 1918 listed military casualties of 9,150,000 (including 1,700,000 killed, 1,450,000 disabled, 3,500,000 wounded and 2,500,000 POW).

Apart from WW-I, there was another source of loss of population during the 1897 to 1926 period: loss of population during the civil war between 1917 and 1922 in Russia and other Soviet Union states due to terror-war-disease-famine-emigration. Anti-Bolshevik groups landowners, bankers, middle-class citizens, monarchists, army senior officers, and politicians like liberals-conservatives-democrats as well as non-Bolshevik socialists aligned against the Bolshevik Communist government. The anti-Bolshevik groups were collectively known as ‘White Army’ who controlled significant majority parts of the former Russian Empire between 1918 and 1920. White Army was actively supported by the anti-communist governments of about 15 countries that included UK and its colonies Australia-Canada, France, Italy, Japan, USA, Czechoslovakia, Romania etc. The infamous ‘Red Terror’ of Bolsheviks was actually a response to the ‘White Terror’ unleashed by the anti-revolution forces. The Red Terror was really initiated on August 30, 1918 following attack on Lenin. As the counter-move to the formation of White Army, Lenin entrusted Trotsky the task of creating the Red Army. From 1917 revolution to 1922 formation of the USSR, loss of population could be to the tune of 6 million:

  • 4 million civilian deaths due to disease and famine
  • 1 million deaths due to civil war including red terror and white terror killings
  • 1 million emigrations of elites and aristocrats sympathetic to the ‘White Army’

Let’s do a simple arithmetic calculation as below:

Census population in 1897 adjusting for loss of lands in WW-I = 96 million

Average annual rate of population growth till 1917 = 1.8%

In 1917, calculated population would become = 137.16 million

Deduct 9 million losses in WW-I, revised population in 1917 = 128.16 million

Average annual rate of population growth till 1922 = 1.8%

In 1922, calculated population would become = 140.11 million

Deduct 6 million losses in civil war, revised population in 1922 = 134.11 million

Average annual rate of population growth till 1926 = 1.8%

In 1926, calculated population would become = 144.0 million

Census population in 1926 = 147.0 million

My assumption that the Russian population experienced an annual growth rate of 1.8% during 1897 to 1926 period is probably an over-optimistic one, for Russian regions had notoriously low rate of survival due to extremely heavy death rates on account of disease, cold, and liquor. And, if that assumption holds good, the assumption on loss of population must have been slightly inflated that resulted in calculation of lower than actual population in 1926!

Now, let’s move into the next period 1927 to 1942. During 1927 to 1942 period there were two primary sources of unnatural reduction of population:

  • The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 was a famine in the major grain-producing regions of Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Volga Region, Kazakhstan, South Urals, and West Siberia. Wikipedia noted, “Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the Soviet Union. Major contributing factors to the famine include: the forced collectivization in the Soviet Union of agriculture as a part of the First Five-Year Plan, and forced grain procurement, combined with rapid industrialization and a decreasing agricultural workforce. Sources disagree on the possible role of drought”. In 2008, the Russian State Duma issued a statement about the famine, stating that within territories of Povolzhe, Central Black Earth Region, Northern Caucasus, Ural, Crimea, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus the estimated death toll was about 7 million people.

It is very easy to identify Stalin as the leader who made terrible mistake about the forced collectivization and the first 5-year plan. But, it is very difficult to point out the alternatives to Stalin even after 90 years! Hobsbawm wrote in his ‘Age of Extremes’, “One of the most sophisticated socialist economists of the 1930s, Oskar Lange, returned from the USA to his native Poland to build socialism, until he came to a London hospital to die. On his death-bed he talked to the friends and admirers who came to visit him, including myself. This, as I recall, is what he said: “If I had been in Russia in the 1920s, I would have been a Bukharinite gradualist. If I had advised on Soviet industrialization, I would have recommended a more flexible and limited set of targets, as indeed the able Russian planners did. And yet, as I think back, I ask myself, again and again: was there an alternative to the indiscriminate, brutal, basically unplanned rush forward of the first Five-Year Plan? I wish I could say there was, but I cannot. I cannot find an answer.” The First Five Year Planning truly changed USSR beyond recognition. “The vast scope of industrialization in the Soviet Union, as against a background of stagnation and decline in almost the whole capitalist world, appears unanswerably in the following gross indices. Industrial production in Germany, thanks solely to feverish war preparations, is now returning to the level of 1929. Production in Great Britain, holding to the apron strings of protectionism, has raised itself 3 or 4 per cent during these six years. Industrial production in the United States has declined approximately 25 per cent; in France, more than 30 per cent. First place among capitalist countries is occupied by Japan, who is furiously arming herself and robbing her neighbours. Her production has risen almost 40 per cent! But even this exceptional index fades before the dynamic of development in the Soviet Union. Her industrial production has increased during this same period approximately 3 1/2 times, or 250 per cent. The heavy industries have increased their production during the last decade (1925 to 1935) more than 10 times. In the first year of the five-year plan (1928 to 1929), capital investments amounted to 5.4 billion roubles; for 1936, 32 billion are indicated.

If in view of the instability of the rouble as a unit of measurement, we lay aside money estimates, we arrive at another unit which is absolutely unquestionable. In December 1913, the Don basin produced 2,275,000 tons of coal; in December 1935, 7,125,000 tons. During the last three years the production of iron has doubled. The production of steel and of the rolling mills has increased almost 2 1/2 times. The output of oil, coal and iron has increased from 3 to 3 1/2 times the pre-war figure. In 1920, when the first plan of electrification was drawn up, there were 10 district power stations in the country with a total power production of 253,000 kilowatts. In 1935, there were already 95 of these stations with a total power of 4,345,000 kilowatts. In 1925, the Soviet Union stood 11th in the production of electro-energy; in 1935, it was second only to Germany and the United States. In the production of coal, the Soviet Union has moved forward from 10th to 4th place. In steel, from 6th to 3rd place. In the production of tractors, to the 1st place in the world. This also is true of the production of sugar.”

  • Repression of Communist Party led by Stalin certainly caused huge numbers of death between 1934 and 1940. But question remains – how many? Equally important question remains – why the CPSU led by Stalin had to resort to execution in a large scale? The media and academia owned and controlled by the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy had been propagating the outright lies on 10 to 20 million deaths due to ‘Stalinist repression’ during this period in the USSR. To dispel the west European myth, in table 3.1, I will quote extensively from “Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years”, written by an international team consisting of Viktor N. Zemskov (Russian researcher), Gabor T. Rittersporn (French researcher), Peter A. Coclanis, J. Arch Getty, James L. Huston, Marc Raeff, Paul W. Schroeder, Carl Strikwerda (all USA professors) and first published in American Historical Review, October 1993. The statistics in table 3.1 shows not even 1 million deaths happened between 1934 and 1942. The statistics in table C.2 shows that only 12% to 33% of the Gulag inmates were due to politically motivated imprisonment

Table: C.1

Table: C.2

I wonder, after considering the above mentioned statistics, how could anybody continue to preach that Lenin-Stalin-Trotsky murdered 20 to 60 million Russians! However, I’m sure about a few of the commenters who will shut their eyes and repeat ad nauseam. HENCE IT IS CLEAR THAT THE ENTIRE GLOBAL MEDIA & ACADEMIA HAD BEEN LYING FOR OVER A CENTURY ABOUT THE COMPLETELY FABRICATED TALE OF A MASS MURDER BY THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY… AND THE FRAUD IS STILL GOING ON! – BUT EVEN IF THE ENTIRE WORLD REPEAT THE SAME LIE, THE LIE DOES NOT BECOME TRUTH!!!

A crucial point still remains to be discussed – why did Stalin resort to large scale repression after 1934? The most profound tragedies of pre-WW-II USSR were intertwined – (i) Sergei Kirov, the most brilliant communist leader among the youth, was killed in 1934 at the age of 48 years by a conspiracy in which most senior Bolshevik leaders (many of them were comrades of Lenin) were involved, (ii) Marshall Tukhachevsky, the most brilliant military general of the Red Army conspired with Nazi Germany to seize state power from CPSU and thereafter surrender large tract of the then USSR to Germany to make peace, (iii) many of the senior leaders of CPSU who were organisers of the revolution and ideologues, including Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Rykov, Radek conspired with militarist German and Japanese leaders to stage a coup and wrest state power from CPSU led by Stalin. People who would like to say that, all those tragedies were not real but fabrication by Stalin need to go through the well-researched book ‘Khruschev Lied’ by Grover Furr [refer link 🡪 https://ia802707.us.archive.org/5/items/pdfy-nmIGAXUrq0OJ87zK/Khrushchev%20Lied.pdf ].

Moscow trials – ‘Trial of the Sixteen’ in August 1936, ‘Trial of the Seventeen’ in January 1937, ‘Trial of the Twenty-One’ in March 1938 – conclusively proved that the defendants were guilty of conspiracy to overthrow the communist government of USSR. The defendants were neither threatened, nor tortured for any false confessions. The Zionist-Capitalist stooges among CPSU leadership of post-Stalin era (like Khrushchev, and Gorbachev) tried in vain to discredit the Moscow trials and prove the defendants’ confessions were false. However, the truth couldn’t be falsified!

Even considering and acknowledging the facts that:

After 1930 when Trotsky and other leaders of his coterie were completely thrown out of CPSU, they started conspiring with the Zionist bankers based in Europe/USA as well as German/Japanese leaders in order to create disturbances in USSR which would further weaken the USSR economy, and finally Trotsky could capture power, and Marshall Tukhachevsky and his team of Generals tried to seize state power with the help of German/Japanese military leaders

It must be mentioned that somewhat paranoid and autocratic behaviour of Stalin created a problem within the CPSU in terms of organisational disarray which pushed more and more senior leaders to become uneasy with Stalin’s style of functioning, that again created even more distrust in Stalin who finally resorted to massive purge; faced with impending purge, those senior leaders grouped among themselves and conspired, which got finally exposed. The organisational weaknesses were to be covered through increasing bureaucratisation. Hence during the Stalin-era, party congress was NOT held regularly – the 16th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during 26 June to 13 July 1930, the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during 26 January to 10 February 1934, the 18th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was held during 10 to 21 March 1939, finally the 19th Congress of the CPSU was held from 5 to 14 October 1952, the last under Stalin’s leadership.

MYTH 5 – Since 1924 CE, especially in the Russian, German, and English language media and academia there had been a continuous campaign that Lenin wanted to remove Stalin from leadership position in his ‘last testament’ and entrust Trotsky to lead the party, but Stalin manipulated to stay on.

Reality –

Lenin’s last testament on December 25, 1922 was taken down by M.V; Lenin didn’t want it to be published an discussed other than the CC; it was first published in 1956 in Kommunist (No. 9). It read:

“Our Party relies on two classes and therefore its instability would be possible and its downfall inevitable if there were no agreement between those two classes. In that event this or that measure, and generally all talk about the stability of our C.C., would be futile. No measure of any kind could prevent a split in such a case. But I hope that this is too remote a future and too improbable an event to talk about.

I have in mind stability as a guarantee against a split in the immediate future, and I intend to deal here with a few ideas concerning personal qualities.

I think that from this standpoint the prime factors in the question of stability are such members of the C.C. as Stalin and Trotsky. I think relations between them make up the greater part of the danger of a split, which could be avoided, and this purpose, in my opinion, would be served, among other things, by increasing the number of C.C. members to 50 or 100.

Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People’s Commissariat of Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work.

These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our Party does not take steps to avert this, the split may come unexpectedly.

I shall not give any further appraisals of the personal qualities of other members of the C.C. I shall just recall that the October episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev was, of course, no accident, but neither can the blame for it be laid upon them personally, any more than non-Bolshevism can upon Trotsky.

Speaking of the young C.C. members, I wish to say a few words about Bukharin and Pyatakov. They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the youngest ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of the dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it).

As for Pyatakov, he is unquestionably a man of outstanding will and outstanding ability, but shows too much zeal for administrating and the administrative side of the work to be relied upon in a serious political matter.”

In the above note (known as Lenin’s Last Testament) Lenin didn’t assign any role to Trotsky other than mentioning that Trotsky probably was the ‘most capable man’ among the leaders. Neither Lenin mentioned that Stalin had to resign from the position of Secretary-General of the party. He was concerned with the possible break-up between two top leaders, and he was more concerned about the negative characteristics of each of the young promising leaders! The supporters of Trotsky made the entire episode look like Stalin plotted against Trotsky.

Let us consider the track record of Stalin in Bolshevik Party – one of oldest members of the party and a man of the organisation who never distanced himself from the party, Stalin had support of the maximum numbers of the lower and middle level party leaders and activists. Stalin had been one of Lenin’s closest associates all along. Lenin valued Stalin’s traits like ‘firmness of character, tenacity, stubbornness, even ruthlessness and craftiness’.

Trotsky wasn’t a Bolshevik to begin with. Trotsky left the Menshevik Party and would join the Bolshevik Party only during the month of October’1917 when he became sure about the impending revolution. Undoubtedly Trotsky had been one of the most brilliant socialist revolutionary of that era, but his associations proved that he always desired power and position – in 1896 he was a Nardonik, in 1898 he joined RSDLP, in 1903 he joined the Menshevik faction, in 1904 he became a neutral social democrat, in 1915 he came back to the Menshevik Party, in October 1917 he joined the Bolshevik Party, in 1923 Trotsky led the Left Opposition faction of Bolsheviks, in 1926 he was part of the United Opposition of the Bolshevik Party. Thus, even if Trotsky played a leading role in both the Russian Revolution of 1905 and that of 1917, after Lenin’s death he fell out with Stalin primarily on the question of party leadership. After Lenin’s death Stalin would submit his resignation from the Politburo (of the CC):

“August 19, 1924

To the Plenum of the CC RCP

One and a half years of working in the Politburo with comrades Zinoviev and Kamanev after the retirement and then the death of Lenin have made perfectly clear to me the impossibility of honest, sincere political work with these comrades within the framework of one small collective. In view of which I request to be considered as having resigned from the Political Buro of the CC.

I request a medical leave for about two months.

At the expiration of this period I request to be sent to Turukhansk region or to the Iakutsk oblast’, or to somewhere abroad in any kind of work that will attract little attention.

I would ask the Plenum [of the C.C. – GF) to decide all these questions in my absence and without explanations from my side, because I consider it harmful for our work to give explanations aside from those remarks that I have already made in the first paragraph of this letter.

I would ask comrade Kuibyshev to distribute copies of this letter to the members of the CC.

With communist greetings,

J. Stalin.”

Not only the rank and file of the Bolshevik Party, but most of its leaders supported Stalin as the Secretary-General, because it was Stalin with whom they struggled shoulder-to-shoulder during two and a half decades – it was obvious that any newcomer like Trotsky would not be as familiar as an old comrade! Had Trotsky accepted that reality, things would not become too messy for him in future – it was a crying shame that the a revolutionary communist leader like Trotsky, the proponent of the theory of ‘permanent revolution’ (complementing Lenin’s attempt of world revolution) would stoop so low as to join hands with Fascist foreign leaders and Zionist international bankers for the sake of wresting political power in USSR.

MYTH 6 – This myth was created and transformed as a new curriculum in the subject of history in European languages – how the Communists under Stalin befriended the Fascists under Hitler to grab good old Poland. God knows how many PhD. Thesis were written and approved in Europe during past 80 years using this myth!

Reality –

It was the master plan of the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy who created the Nazi war-machinery in Germany so that it would fight against the USSR, and when both the sides would become weak due to continuous war of attrition, the Zionist-Capitalist dominated countries like the USA, the UK, and France would appear in the horizon as ‘peace-maker’ and occupy the Eurasian landmass – something which they tried during the Russian civil war but failed miserably!

Mao ZeDong wrote in ‘The Identity of Interests Between The Soviet Union And All Mankind’ on September 28, 1939,

“Some people say that the Soviet Union does not want the world to remain at peace because the outbreak of a world war is to its advantage, and that the present war was precipitated by the Soviet Union’s conclusion of a non-aggression treaty with Germany instead of a treaty of mutual assistance with Britain and France. I consider this view incorrect. The foreign policy of the Soviet Union over a very long period of time has consistently been one of peace, a policy based on the close links between its own interests and those of the overwhelming majority of mankind. For its own socialist construction, the Soviet Union has always needed peace, has always needed to strengthen its peaceful relations with other countries and prevent an anti-Soviet war; for the sake of peace on a world scale, it has also needed to check the aggression of the fascist countries, curb the warmongering of the so-called democratic countries and delay the outbreak of an imperialist world war for as long as possible. The Soviet Union has long devoted great energy to the cause of world peace. For instance, it has joined the League of Nations, signed treaties of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia and tried hard to conclude security pacts with Britain and all other countries that might be willing to have peace. After Germany and Italy jointly invaded Spain and when Britain, the United States and France adopted a policy of nominal “non-intervention” but of actual connivance at their aggression, the Soviet Union opposed the “non-intervention” policy and gave the Spanish republican forces active help in their resistance to Germany and Italy. After Japan invaded China and when the same three powers adopted the same kind of “non-intervention” policy, the Soviet Union not only concluded a non-aggression treaty with China but gave China active help in her resistance. When Britain and France connived at Hitler’s aggression and sacrificed Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union spared no effort in exposing the sinister aims behind the Munich policy and made proposals to Britain and France for checking further aggression. When Poland became the burning question in the spring and summer of this year and it was touch-and-go whether world war would break out, the Soviet Union negotiated with Britain and France for over four months, despite Chamberlain’s and Daladier’s complete lack of sincerity, in an endeavour to conclude a treaty of mutual assistance to prevent the outbreak of war. But all these efforts were blocked by the imperialist policy of the British and French governments, a policy of conniving at, instigating and spreading war, so that eventually the cause of world peace was thwarted and the imperialist world war broke out. The governments of Britain, the United States and France had no genuine desire to prevent this war; on the contrary, they helped to bring it about. Their refusal to come to terms with the Soviet Union and conclude a really effective treaty of mutual assistance based on equality and reciprocity proved that they wanted not peace but war. Everybody knows that in the contemporary world rejection of the Soviet Union means rejection of peace. Even Lloyd George, that typical representative of the British bourgeoisie, knows this. It was in these circumstances, and when Germany agreed to stop her anti-Soviet activities, abandon the Agreement against the Communist International and recognize the inviolability of the Soviet frontiers, that the Soviet-German non-aggression treaty was concluded. The plan of Britain, the United States and France was to egg Germany on to attack the Soviet Union, so that they themselves, “sitting on top of the mountain to watch the tigers fight”, could come down and take over after the Soviet Union and Germany had worn each other out. The Soviet-German non-aggression treaty smashed this plot. In overlooking this plot and the schemes of the Anglo-French imperialists who connived at and instigated war and precipitated a world war, some of our fellow-countrymen have actually been taken in by the sugary propaganda of these schemers. These crafty politicians were not the least bit interested in checking aggression against Spain, against China, or against Austria and Czechoslovakia, on the contrary, they connived at aggression and instigated war, playing the proverbial role of the fisherman who set the snipe and clam at each other and then took advantage of both. They euphemistically described their actions as “non-intervention”, but what they actually did was to “sit on top of the mountain to watch the tigers fight”.

None could express the geopolitical setup of Europe more succinctly than Mao did, as noted above. 1934 Onwards, the period when Hitler went on a steady military build-up in Europe, UK (world’s foremost colonial empire) Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Ramsay MacDonald as well as French (world’s second largest colonial empire) leader Edouard Daladier followed a compromising policy towards Nazi Germany – it was known as the ‘policy of appeasement’ (with German Nazi government). Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, who led foreign policy initiatives since 1934 (centred on concept of ‘collective security’ among all big European powers), commented on such policy of appeasement, “England and France are now unlikely to retreat from the policy they have set out for themselves, which boils down to unilateral satisfaction of the demands of all three aggressors – Germany, Italy and Japan. They will present their claims in turn, and England and France will make them one concession after another. I believe, however, that they will reach a point where the people of England and France will have to stop them. Then, probably, we will … return to the old path of collective security, because there are no other ways for preserving peace“.

Stalin delivered a speech that was broadcast on Soviet Union television on 10th March 1939, in which he not only identified the policy of appeasement, but, he also outlined the objectives of such policy, “The war is being waged by aggressor nations, which in every way infringe upon the interests of non-aggressor states, primarily England, France, and the United States, and the latter withdraw and retreat, making concession after concession to the aggressors. Thus, we are witnessing a blatant carving up of the world and its spheres of influence, at the expense of the non-aggressor states, without any attempt at resistance, and with even a bit of their acquiescence.”

Britain, France and Poland continued to sabotage the collective security talks proposed by Soviet Union. UK and France wouldn’t give any guarantees of attacking Germany in the West in case of war – on the contrary, the Zionist-Capitalist Anglo oligarchy was, in fact, in collusion with Nazi Germany. Poland was generally viewing Russia as a victim for its own colonial war (war between Russia and Poland after Russian Revolution over the Tsarist territory claims counterclaims

still were resonating with Polish leader Pilsudski) and Poland saw Germany as an ally for such an adventure. Poland would not agree to let the Red army engage Germans on Polish territory. Basically the USSR was offered nothing but would have to declare a war on Germany and wait till Germany is done with Poland and invades the USSR.

On March 18 1939, Litvinov again suggested convening a pan-European conference to be attended by Britain, France, Poland, Russia, Romania, and Turkey. During March and April 1939 Europe witnessed hectic parleys over possible tripartite alliance among UK-France-USSR as suggested by USSR through a documented proposal. In the UK Cabinet Committee on Foreign Policy on 24th April 1939, Neville Chamberlain opposed the Soviet proposition saying that, “The Soviet’s present proposal was one for a definite military alliance between England, France and Russia; It could not be pretended that such an alliance was necessary in order that the smaller countries of Eastern Europe should be furnished with munitions… Then there was the problem of Poland.” (Who oppose any agreement with USSR based on which USSR participate in fighting against Nazi Germany within Poland boundary). Communist USSR’s Joseph Stalin removed Maxim Litvinov and installed Vyacheslav Molotov thinking Molotov to be a dynamic negotiator. Molotov spent May and June 1939 to work out on the same tripartite alliance, but in vain.

In July 1939 Germany proposed a non-aggression pact to Molotov in which they suggested USSR can get control of most part of the former Tsar empire like:

  • The western parts of Ukraine and Byelorussia following the Curzon line of demarcation discussed during closure of WW-I (both erstwhile Tsar empire provinces, part of which were taken by Poland between 1918 to 1922)
  • Bessarabia (erstwhile Tsar empire province, part of which were taken by Romania),
  • Karelia (part of erstwhile Tsar empire Dutchy of Finland),
  • Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania in Baltic (erstwhile Tsar empire provinces, independent countries after WW-I)

And, as per the German proposal, rest of the East Europe will come under Nazi Germany sphere of influence either by direct annexation or formation of protectorate. Soviet leadership, after exasperating failure of 5 years of discussions on military pact with UK and France, and in the midst of a massive war since May 1939 with Japanese empire in Khalkhin Gol near Mongolian border, couldn’t miss ‘opportunity’ of getting few extra years (before Nazi assault). On 23rd August 1939 the German–Soviet nonaggression pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) was signed.

USSR regained control of western part of Ukraine and western part of Byelorussia in September 1939 from Poland, and Karelia region from Finland in November 1939. Then USSR moved into Baltic region and Bessarabia in June 1940. While discussing on the land annexation by Soviet Union, on 4th October 1939 Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax said in the House of Lords “… the Soviet government’s actions were to move the border essentially to the line recommended at the Versailles Conference by Lord Curzon… I only cite historical facts and believe they are indisputable.”

Formal military alliance i.e. ‘Berlin Pact’ was signed by Germany-Italy-Japan in September 1940 (original Axis Power). Later on Hungary joined in November 1940, Romania joined in November 1940, Bulgaria joined in March 1941. When Nazi Wehrmacht launched ‘Operation Barbarossa’, the largest military operation in documented history of humankind on 22nd June 1941 (officially authorized by Adolf Hitler on 18 December 1940, but got delayed due to delay in finishing Balkan campaign) across western border of USSR along a 2,900-kilometer war-front with nearly 4 million military personnel from ‘Berlin Pact’ countries, USSR found itself in life-death struggle against the Nazi Wehrmacht. After Red Army won in the most terrifying land battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad, it was the Battle of Kursk (largest tank battle in history) in July 1943 which completely turned the tide in favour of Soviet Red Army. Every passing day the Red Army became unconquerable force that decimated Nazi Wehrmacht single-handedly and liberated entire east Europe before capturing Berlin in May 1945. As analysed by Mikhail Meltyukhov (Russian military historian working at the Russian Institute of Documents and Historical Records Research), during a period of two and half years (from 1 January 1939 to 22 June 1941) when the non-aggression pact with Germany was in effect, USSR increased their military strength assiduously that finally helped the final destruction of Nazi Germany in their eastern front:

• Battle Divisions increased from about 131 to 316 (140% increase)

• Military Personnel increased from 2,485,000 to 5,774,000 (132% increase)

• Battle Tanks increased from about 21,100 to 25,700 (22% increase)

• Aircrafts increased from about 7,700 to 18,700 (143% increase)

On 28th April 1942, FD Roosevelt addressed to the USA: “These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies – troops, planes, tanks, and guns – than all the other United Nations put together.” Considering the four key perspectives – mobilization, viciousness of struggle, loss of life, and loss of infrastructure – Eastern front was far more significant compared to Western front of WW-II. In the opinion of Norman Davis: “German losses on the Eastern Front accounted for about 80 per cent of the total…”. At the end of the WW-II, Soviet Union had lost about 27 million people, Western Allies lost less than 2 million, Germany lost around 4 million troops in the Eastern front and 1 million on the Western front. Europe and indeed, the world was saved from Fascism by the Soviet citizens.

MYTH 7 – Stalin not only proposed a theory of ‘socialism in one country’ but practically went on to wreck the world revolution after he fell out with Trotsky. The same Zionist-Capitalist media and academia which castigated Stalin for causing harm to Soviet Union society with his ‘authoritarian rule’ simultaneously propagated that Stalin ditched the world revolution to establish order at home!

Reality –

Lenin advocated the core principles of Marx and Engels at every possible opportunity. While writing in ‘Opportunism And The Collapse of The Second International’ that was published in January 1916 in Vorbote No. 1, he mentioned, “What is the economic substance of defencism in the war of 1914-15? The bourgeoisie of all the big powers are waging the war to divide and exploit the world, and oppress other nations. A few crumbs of the bourgeoisie’s huge profits may come the way of the small group of labour bureaucrats, labour aristocrats, and petty-bourgeois fellow-travellers. Social-chauvinism and opportunism have the same class basis, namely, the alliance of a small section of privileged workers with “their” national bourgeoisie against the working-class masses; the alliance between the lackeys of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie against the class the latter is exploiting.

Opportunism and social-chauvinism have the same political content, namely, class collaboration, repudiation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, repudiation of revolutionary action, unconditional acceptance of bourgeois legality, confidence in the bourgeoisie and lack of confidence in the proletariat. Social-chauvinism is the direct continuation and consummation of British liberal-labour politics, of Millerandism and Bernsteinism.

The struggle between the two main trends in the labour movement — revolutionary socialism and opportunist socialism — fills the entire period from 1889 to 1914. Even today there are two main trends on the attitude to war in every country. Let us drop the bourgeois and opportunist habit of referring to personalities. Let us take the trends in a number of countries. Let us take ten European countries: Germany, Britain, Russia, Italy, Holland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Belgium and France. In the first eight the division into opportunist and revolutionary trends corresponds to the division into social-chauvinists and internationalists. In Germany the strongholds of social-chauvinism are Socialistische Monatshefte and Legien and Co., in Britain the Fabians and the Labour Party (the I.L.P has always been allied with them and has supported their organ, and in this bloc it has always been weaker than the social-chauvinists, whereas three-sevenths of the B.S.P. are internationalists); in Russia this trend is represented by Nasha Zarya (now Nashe Dyelo ), by the Organising Committee, and by the Duma group led by Chkheidze; in Italy it is represented by the reformists with Bissolati at their head; in Holland, by Troelstra’s party; in Sweden, by the majority of the Party led by Branting; in Bulgaria, by the so-called “Shiroki” socialists; in Switzerland by Greulich and Co. In all these countries it is the revolutionary Social-Democrats who have voiced a more or less vigorous protest against social chauvinism. France and Belgium are the two exceptions; there internationalism also exists, but is very weak….

Lenin, while preparing for the revolution in Russian Empire, was fervently looking forward to world revolution. Like Marx and Engels, Lenin was a complete internationalist and a keen supporter of world revolution. He wanted to reverse the direction of Euro-socialism that was nothing but opportunist treachery against the toiling masses, with a sincere belief that in a socialist society, the world’s nation-states would inevitably merge and result in a single world government.

While Lenin was abreast of the world-wide politics, economics, and cultural trends, and consequently he could clearly see the reasons for failure of the socialist parties and unions in Europe to seize power at state-level (discussed in detail in this write-up under section B.2 ‘Failure of Marxism-inspired Movements in Europe and Anglo Colonies till 1914’) we don’t have enough evidences to conclude if Lenin could see through the designs of the then Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy in creation of a new world-system centred on USA. However, I still feel had Lenin seen through those sinister plannings (post–1848 Revolutions) of the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy, he would certainly had postponed the world revolution at least for five years until the USSR mustered enough (economic and social) strength internally.

Under the direct guidance of Lenin, the Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was founded at a Congress held in Moscow on 2–6 March 1919 that advocated world-wide communism through world revolution. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to “struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state”.

During Lenin’s lifetime there were three significant failures of the revolutionary movements by the communists in European states as noted below [refer link 🡪 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_International ]:

  1. In Germany the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg led the party activists into a general strike and armed struggles in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It was against the SPD led by Friedrich Ebert (and Bernstein-Kautsky duo) programmes of social democracy. In 1914 Liebknecht and Luxemburg had founded the Marxist Spartacus League (Spartakusbund). The revolt was crushed by the overwhelming strength of government/paramilitary troops. The leaders – Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered in cold blood with the approval of SPD leaders;
  2. The Hungarian Soviet Republic, a short-lived Communist state existed from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919 which controlled about one-fourth of the Hungary’s historic territory. The leaders Sándor Garbai (head of the government) and Béla Kun (the foreign minister) from the Hungarian Communist Party led the government where in the beginning the majority were socialists. The governing councils exercised power in the name of the working class. The new regime failed to reach an agreement with the Triple Entente that would lead to the lifting of the ongoing economic blockade. A small volunteer army was organized primarily from Budapest factory workers who attempted to recover the lost territories at the hands of neighbouring countries. Initially, with support from the citizens and officers, the republican forces advanced against the Czechoslovakians. However, they finally lost out to the Romanian Army who managed to stop the offensive, and reached Budapest. After a few days, the soviet republic ended on 2 August.
  3. The Italian revolutionary period (Biennio Rosso) between 1919 and 1920 was followed by the violent reaction of the fascist blackshirts militia and eventually Benito Mussolini marched to wrest power at Rome in 1922. The economic crisis at the end of the WW-I with rising inflation, high unemployment and political instability in Italy was characterized by mass strikes and ‘self-management experiments through land and factories occupations’. The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the socialist trade union, the General Confederation of Labour (Confederazione Generale del Lavoro, CGL) increased its membership along with the anarchist Italian Syndicalist Union (Unione Sindacale Italiana, USI). In Turin and Milan, factory councils – which Antonio Gramsci considered to be the Italian equivalent of Russia’s soviets – were formed and many factory occupations took place under the leadership of revolutionary socialists and anarcho-syndicalists. ‘The agitations also extended to the agricultural areas of the Padan plain and were accompanied by peasant strikes, rural unrests, and armed conflicts between left-wing and right-wing militias. Industrial action and rural unrest increased significantly: there were 1,663 industrial strikes in 1919, compared to 810 in 1913. More than one million industrial workers were involved in 1919, three times the 1913 figure. The trend continued in 1920, which saw 1,881 industrial strikes. Rural strikes also increased substantially, from 97 in 1913 to 189 by 1920, with over a million peasants taking action. On July 20–21, 1919, a general strike was called in solidarity with the Russian Revolution. In April 1920, Turin metal-workers, in particular at the Fiat plants, went on strike demanding recognition for their ‘factory councils’, a demand the PSI and CGL did not support.’ By 1921, the movement was declining due to massive layoffs and wage cuts. The Fascist blackshirts militia created a reign of terror with the support of Italian industrialists and landowners. The March on Rome of Benito Mussolini installed the first fascist government in October 1922.

It was not that the socio-economic conditions of the common people in the states like Germany, Hungary and Italy were good due to which the people didn’t provide enough support to the revolutionary socialist/communist leaders – on the contrary, the organisational preparedness and campaign among the toiling masses were inadequate in those countries during 1918 to 1922 period. That was the single biggest reason for the successive defeats for the communist internationalists. And, it was also true that just one more success story (apart from Russia) would have created a domino effect in the European continent. After Lenin’s death in January 1924, Trotsky and Zinoviev didn’t find enough support within the Bolshevik Party to continue the programmes on world revolution. Stalin and Bukharin both became doubtful about communist success in Europe. The abandonment of world revolution was finalized as the state policy with Bukharin’s article ‘Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat? (April 1925)’ and Stalin’s article ‘On the Issues of Leninism’ (January 1926). Thereafter Comintern’s main objective became ‘defending the USSR’ while communist takeover of the state was turned into the secondary objective.

Geoff Eley summed up the change in attitude at this time as follows (refer p. 228 of ‘Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000’ published by Oxford University Press): “By the Fifth Comintern Congress in July 1924 […] the collapse of Communist support in Europe tightened the pressure for conformity. A new policy of “Bolshevization” was adopted, which dragooned the CPs toward stricter bureaucratic centralism. This flattened out the earlier diversity of radicalisms, welding them into a single approved model of Communist organization. Only then did the new parties retreat from broader Left arenas into their own belligerent world, even if many local cultures of broader cooperation persisted. Respect for Bolshevik achievements and defence of the Russian Revolution now transmuted into dependency on Moscow and belief in Soviet infallibility. Depressing cycles of “internal rectification” began, disgracing and expelling successive leaderships, so that by the later 1920s many founding Communists had gone.”

Stalin’s political purges of the 1930s affected Comintern activists. At his direction, the Comintern was infused with Soviet secret police and foreign intelligence operatives, which impeded the normal revolutionary activities by the local activists. To an extent this was also the response of the Bolshevik Party towards the saboteurs implanted by the foreign powers.

On 15 May 1943, a declaration of the Executive Committee was sent out to all sections of the third International, calling for the dissolution of the Comintern. In the international media and academia, the dissolution of Comintern was interpreted as Stalin’s message to his WW-II allies – FD Roosevelt and Winston Churchill – for full cooperation and to ‘keep them from suspecting the USSR of pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution in other countries’ especially which were allies of the USA and the UK.

It won’t be out of place to discuss a VERY SIGNIFICANT BACKGROUND of the world revolution. Marx and Engels definitely suggested world-wide revolution in which the proletarian class would seize power from the bourgeois class. But, none of them actually wrote that the proletarians would win the power struggle directly with the semi-feudal/ feudal class. Lenin and Trotsky opined that in world revolution, the proletarians could win the power struggle directly with any of the feudal / semi-feudal / bourgeois class. Lenin insisted that the proletarians must join with peasant (semi-proletariat) class to be successful while Trotsky’s original theory of permanent revolution assigned the lead role only to the proletarians. After 1917, Trotsky revised his permanent revolution theory to accept Lenin’s thesis. Interestingly, approach-wise Lenin created a new way which assumed that the bourgeoisie domination of the world was complete with the emergence of world-wide colonial imperialism in the late 19th century (something which Marx and Engels didn’t experience in totality), and hence at the national level the struggle could be against any of the classes that was in power. The relationship between international and national parameters in relation to capital and class remained uncertain and disputed during the 19th and 20th century world. WE WOULD COME BACK TO THIS POINT AGAIN IN ‘SECTION D’ TO DISCUSS HOW MAO ZEDONG OF CHINA WENT EVEN FURTHER TAKING A CUE FROM LENIN!

A note on Economic & Social Rejuvenation of the USSR Till mid-1950s

Since 1917, the Bolshevik Party had to go through a very unstable and unorganised turn of events which impacted the economy and the wellbeing of its citizens. The economic events, management of economy, and economic planning in Soviet Union had always been a much debated subject. Instead of following a standard process of describing what happened and how it happened (such descriptions were/are widely available), I’m more interested in providing some thoughtful clue as to conclude how much the Soviet leaders did correctly and what went wrong. In an article named ‘The rise and decline of the Soviet economy’ (published in Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol. 34, No. 4, November 2001), Robert C. Allen of University of British Columbia wrote:

“In 1928 the country had a small capital stock and a large, ineffectively employed, rural population. The rapid accumulation of capital was the key to rapid growth. The investment rate was pushed up from 8 per cent in 1928 to over 20 per cent in the mid-1930s (Moorsteen and Powell 1966, 364). As a result, the capital stock grew rapidly,” (table C.3).

Table C.3

ParameterPeriod: 1928 to 1940Period: 1950 to 1960
GNP5.85.7
Labour3.31.2
Capital9.09.5
Land1.63.3
Total inputs4.04.0
Productivity1.71.6

Allen continues, “The central issue is explaining this rise in investment. There are three policies or institutions that need to be analysed. The first was the allocation of producer goods. In the 1930s the Five Year Plans increased the fraction of producer goods – machinery and construction – allocated to the producer goods sector itself. Steel and machinery output were high priorities, and their output expanded explosively as the ever greater volumes of steel and machines were ploughed back into those sectors. How much of the accumulation was due to this investment policy?

The second was the collectivization of agriculture. In the industrialization debate of the 1920s Preobrazhensky (1926) is famous for having advocated that heavy industry be financed by the state’s turning the terms of trade against the peasants. In the ‘standard story’ Stalin accomplished this by herding the peasants into collective farms where they were forced to hand over a large fraction of agricultural output at low prices dictated by the state (Millar 1970). While important features of this story have been refuted – for example, agriculture’s terms of trade actually improved during the first Five Year Plan, owing to the thirty-fold inflation of food prices on the unregulated farmers’ markets (Ellman 1975) – the question remains whether investment could have been increased without impoverishing the rural population…

The third was the use of output targets and the corresponding provision of soft budgets to direct industrial enterprises. During the New Economic Policy, industry was organized into trusts and directed to maximize profits. Soft budgets first appeared in the mid-1920s, when the state tried to increased agricultural sales by lowering the prices of manufactured goods (Johnson and Temin 1993). In the 1930s soft budgets became general, as firms were given output targets and the bank credits to finance them. Kornai (1992) criticized these practices in the 1980s, when there was full employment. The question is whether employment-creating policies like soft budgets may have accelerated growth under the surplus labour conditions of the 1930s.”

Allen carried out extensive economic simulations, as he wrote in that article, “The simulations show that collectivization had a negative effect on all indicators – GDP, investment, consumption, and, of course, population – in the mid-1930s. However, collectivization pushed up the growth rate enough in the rest of the decade to raise GDP, capital accumulation, and consumption above the 1939 levels they would have realized had the agrarian system of the

1920s been preserved. Collectivization raised growth by increasing rural-urban migration: First, low procurement prices lowered farm incomes below the level they would have otherwise reached. Migration increased in consequence, since it was a function of the ratio of urban to rural income. Second, the deportation of ‘kulaks’ and state terrorism in general increased the rate of rural-urban migration at every ratio of urban to rural consumption. Terrorism increased economic growth to that small degree.”

Allen’s findings point towards three significant conclusions about economic development of the USSR under Stalin:

  1. “The New Economic Policy, which involved the preservation of peasant farming and a market relationship between town and country, was a conducive framework for rapid industrialization. Collectivization made little additional contribution to this effort”
  2. “The autarchic development of the producer goods sector was a viable source of new capital equipment. Exporting wheat and importing machinery – that is, following comparative advantage – was not necessary for rapid growth
  3. “The central planning of firm output in conjunction with the soft-budget constraint was effective in mobilizing otherwise unemployed labour. This additional employment made a significant contribution to output as well as distributing consumption widely”

The above inferences were more nuanced than the conclusions which were drawn from a position of bias – in short they proved (a) Central planning was effective as a concept and resulted in significant gains, (b) NEP was not an ineffective programme at all.

On the social front, Soviet Union achieved a tremendous success in improving the key index of ‘total life expectancy at birth’. Due to government-sponsored food-for-all, healthcare-for-all, education-for-all, housing-for-all programmes, the commoners benefitted the most – the life expectancy at birth increased phenomenally till 1958 CE (Figure C.1 as given below).

Figure C.1

https://cepr.org/sites/default/files/styles/flexible_wysiwyg/public/image/FromMay2014/harrisonfig5.png?itok=lHcMWI8v

‘By 1953 when Stalin died, USSR already changed beyond imagination. A country that had, 30 years back, one of the most oppressive society with extreme poverty, widespread illiteracy, very high mortality, and high concentration of wealth within the aristocracy, got transformed into a society where ALL citizens had guaranteed food-education-healthcare-housing-employment-vacation facilities. Soviet Union was the second most powerful country in terms of scientific research, atomic research (second country to test atomic bomb), space research (first country to send space craft), military machinery, and industrial machinery.’ Within three decades, the Communist party under Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into world’s second most powerful state struggling almost singlehandedly against the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy, their governments in Europe and colonies, and their monstrous Fascist offspring. Born to a shoemaker and a house cleaner, with a few years of studies in an Christian Orthodox seminary in Georgia, Stalin turned into a true anti-elitist Marxist Leninist revolutionary who even sacrificed his son during WW-II by refusing to exchange him (in German captivity) with German General (in Soviet captivity).

(D) Communist Party of China Followed Soviet Union With A Splendid Victory

The prospect of partitioning China by the colonial imperialist powers during the end of 19th century elicited from J A Hobson (refer Imperialism, London, 1902) the following economic appraisal: “The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a larger body of personal servants and workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods: all the main arterial industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and semi-manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa…. We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western states, a European federation of Great Powers which, so far from forwarding the cause of world civilisation, might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy. Let those who would scout such a theory [he should have said: prospect] as undeserving of consideration examine the economic and social condition of districts in Southern England today which are already reduced to this condition, and reflect upon the vast extension of such a system which might be rendered feasible by the subjection of China to the economic control of similar groups of financiers, investors [rentiers] and political and business officials, draining the greatest potential reservoir of profit the world has ever known, in order to consume it in Europe. The situation is far too complex, the play of world forces far too incalculable, to render this or any other single interpretation of the future very probable; but the influences which govern the imperialism of Western Europe today are moving in this direction, and, unless counteracted or diverted, make towards such a consummation.”

Among all the passionate groups of political activists around the world who would consider themselves as communists and/or Marxists, the Communist Party of China (CPC) was the most outstanding for two reasons: (a) the young leaders were very knowledgeable and analytical about the realities of their society from the Marxist point of view – apart from the Bolshevik leaders such capabilities were indeed rare, (b) those youthful leaders and their followers had tremendous perseverance that was matched ONLY by two other parties in the then world – Russian Bolshevik Party led by Lenin, and Vietnamese Communist Party led by Ho Chi Minh.

CPC leaders were quick to understand the social stratification and the political economy of China during 1920s – with the formal abolition of empire just a decade back, rise of a bourgeoisie democratic party, Kuomintang (KMT) few years back, and foreign imperialist powers recklessly manipulating the economy for their gain, the CPC leaders did their homework quite assiduously as Mao ZeDong wrote in March 1926 in ‘Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society’:

“What is the condition of each of the classes in Chinese society?

The landlord class and the comprador class. In economically backward and semi-colonial China the landlord class and the comprador class are wholly appendages of the international bourgeoisie, depending upon imperialism for their survival and growth.

The middle bourgeoisie. This class represents the capitalist relations of production in China in town and country. The middle bourgeoisie, by which is meant chiefly the national bourgeoisie, … the idea cherished by China’s middle bourgeoisie of an “independent” revolution in which it would play the primary role is a mere illusion.

The petty bourgeoisie. Included in this category are the owner-peasants, the master handicraftsmen, the lower levels of the intellectuals–students, primary and secondary school teachers, lower government functionaries, office clerks, small lawyers–and the small traders.

Although all strata of this class have the same petty-bourgeois economic status, they fall into three different sections. The first section consists of those who have some surplus money or grain, that is, those who, by manual or mental labour, earn more each year than they consume for their own support… while they have no illusions about amassing great fortunes, they invariably desire to climb up into the middle bourgeoisie.

The second section consists of those who in the main are economically self-supporting. They are quite different from the people in the first section; … They feel they cannot earn enough to live on by just putting in as much work as before. To make both ends meet they have to work longer hours, get up earlier, leave off later,

The third section consists of those whose standard of living is falling. Many in this section, who originally belonged to better-off families, are undergoing a gradual change from a position of being barely able to manage to one of living in more and more reduced circumstances…. They are in great mental distress because there is such a contrast between their past and their present.

The semi-proletariat. What is here called the semi-proletariat consists of five categories: (1) the overwhelming majority of the semi-owner peasants, (2) the poor peasants, (3) the small handicraftsmen, (4) the shop assistants and (5) the pedlars. … They feel the constant pinch of poverty and dread of unemployment, because of heavy family burdens and the gap between their earnings and the cost of living;

The proletariat. The modern industrial proletariat numbers about two million. It is not large because China is economically backward. These two million industrial workers are mainly employed in five industries–railways, mining, maritime transport, textiles and shipbuilding–and a great number are enslaved in enterprises owned by foreign capitalists…. The coolies in the cities are also a force meriting attention. They are mostly dockers and rickshaw men, and among them, too, are sewage carters and street cleaners…. By rural proletariat we mean farm labourers hired by the year, the month or the day. Having neither land, farm implements nor funds, they can live only by selling their labour power. Of all the workers they work the longest hours, for the lowest wages, under the worst conditions, and with the least security of employment.

To sum up, it can be seen that our enemies are all those in league with imperialism – the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right-wing may become our enemy and their left-wing may become our friend but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.”

In another interesting writing, Mao in May 1930 gave an instruction to party comrades about the approach of problem resolution in a relatively unknown pamphlet ‘Oppose Book Worship’:

“Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense.

It must be borne in mind that the bourgeois parties, too, constantly discuss their tactics of struggle. They are considering how to spread reformist influences among the working class so as to mislead it and turn it away from Communist Party leadership, how to get the rich peasants to put down the uprisings of the poor peasants and how to organize gangsters to suppress the revolutionary struggles.”

With such categorical understanding of the social-economic-political tenets of Marxism and problem-solving as noted above, it was no wonder that the disastrous policies of the Third International (Comintern) couldn’t result in complete rout of the CPC after the Shanghai massacre of April 1927 when the KMT butchered about 5000 CPC cadres followed by execution of another 10,000 communists in Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Changsha during June 1927. The Soviet Union was forced to officially terminate its cooperation with the KMT. In August 1927 CPC founded the Red Army to fight the KMT military, that grew under Mao Zedong and Zhu De to about 130,000 in 1933 before going down to about 8,000 after three Red Army fronts successfully completed their retreat journey over 8000 kilometre to north-west China in October 1935 escaping from the KMT forces (history called it as the Long March). Holding that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” Mao ZeDong and Zhou EnLai emphatically followed Leninist principle of revolutionary struggle of the vast majority of people (read proletarians and peasants) against the exploiting classes. Lenin added peasants to the original leading force of proletarians, Mao did the opposite – China being completely feudal agricultural economy with minimum industrial output, he created peasant army in rural China, waged guerrilla warfare, and simultaneously formed unions in the urban centres who would support the armed struggle by the Chinese Red Army (later renamed as People’s Liberation Army).

It was only a matter of time before the CPC bounced back into action. It won’t be an exaggeration to state that CPC was the most loyal follower of Lenin’s teachings – in July 1937 Mao wrote a pamphlet ‘On Practice: On the Relation Between Knowledge And Practice’ in which he stated: “From the Marxist viewpoint, theory is important, and its importance is fully expressed in Lenin’s statement, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice… Stalin has well said, “Theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory.“

On 1 October 1949, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China at the new nation’s founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. During the long and protracted civil war Mao Zedong lost his wife, a son, two brothers, and sister, Zhou Enlai lost all his children, while Zhu De found decapitated head of his pregnant wife nailed to the city gate. At the time, China was a backward agrarian economy with widespread poverty, lawlessness and illiteracy; of its five hundred million people, eight in every ten people were illiterate, one in every eight people was drug addict. It was a time when peasants had to give away two-thirds of their produce in rent/tax, and people sold themselves to avoid starvation.

The successful Chinese Revolution was a confirmation of the interplay between theory and practice – not in a static state but under a dynamic condition where managing the contradictions became the key to success. Mao was a perfect and sincere student of the teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin so far his intellectual orientation was concerned. Blended with, what we can call as the Chinese characteristics, Mao and Zhou were in perfect position to implement the Marxist tenets under Chinese conditions. Mao revised the Marxist theory to relate it to the Chinese socio-political conditions. An observer remarked that, “In the 1930s, when Mao talked about contradiction, he meant the contradiction between subjective thought and objective reality. In Dialectal Materialism of 1940, he saw idealism and materialism as two possible correlations between subjective thought and objective reality. In the 1940s, he introduced no new elements into his understanding of the subject-object contradiction. In the 1951 version of On Contradiction, he saw contradiction as a universal principle underlying all processes of development, yet with each contradiction possessed of its own particularity”.

In one of the most outstanding declaration in the post WW-II world, Zhou EnLai in December 1953 (during discussions with India about how to maintain relationship) outlined the shortest but most thoughtful policy of international relations in ‘Five Principles For Peaceful Coexistence’: “The principles that should govern relations between our two countries were put forward soon after the founding of New China, namely, the principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

A note on PLA Till mid-1950s

To assess the role of armed struggle in communist-dominated revolutions would be in itself a humongous task. In Russia, during 1917 Revolution ‘Red Army’ was created from scratch primarily under Trotsky; it fought against the White Army + forces of all bourgeois democratic European countries; after winning the civil war in December 1922 Soviet Union was proclaimed; it went through transformation after Marshal Tukhachevsky’s conspiracy was unearthed – Stalin rebuilt the Red Army; during the WW-II Red Army singlehandedly crushed combined European forces under Nazi command and USSR regained most of Tsar era lands by 1945. SO, ANY SERIOUS READER WOULD FIND THAT RED ARMY WAS A KEY INSTRUMENT OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY TO GAIN POWER IN USSR.

In China, the role of armed struggle was even MORE important. Unlike Russia, the Communist Party of Chinese created and nurtured Red Army / Peoples’ Liberation Army much early in the process. During 1927 ‘Red Army’ was created; it fought the civil war against the Kuo Mintang forces and undertook the ‘Long March’ in order to create a safe base by 1934; during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945, the Red Army formed two units (the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army) and battled the Japanese forces as a united front (with Kuo Mintang); after Japanese surrender in WW-II the two units of Red Army was merged and renamed as Peoples’ Liberation Army which resumed their fight against the Kuo Mintang forces; regular fighting in which PLA (assisted by the USSR) was engaged with the Kuo Mintang forces aided by the USA and the UK went on till 1950; from October 1950 to July 1953 the volunteer forces of PLA fought alongside the army of North Korean workers party/communists against the UNO forces led by the USA – PLA lost more than 100 thousand of soldiers, Mao ZeDong’s son being one of them. AGAIN, A DISCERNING READER CAN CONCLUDE THAT RED ARMY / PLA PLAYED A STELLAR ROLE IN ESTABLISHING THE COMMUNIST PARTY TO GAIN POWER IN CHINA.

A note on Economy of the PRC Till mid-1950s

Initial acts after taking over the state power, were swift and effective. The banking system was nationalized and People’s Bank of China became the central bank for the country. The government tightened credit, established value of the currency, implemented centrally controlled government budgets – all of these ensured that inflation was under strict control. CPC undertook a land reform programme through which 45% of the arable land were redistributed to the 65% of peasant families who owned little or no land. These peasants were encouraged to form sort of mutual aid teams among 7-8 households. CPC also nationalised most of the industrial units as soon as they came to power. By 1952, 17% of the industrial units were outside state-owned enterprises compared to about 65% during Kuo Min Tang government.

Senior leaders like Mao, Zhou, and Liu and their factions debated exhaustively on what would the 1st stage of socialism look like and how to achieve that. ‘Marx-Engels-Lenin mostly engaged in deliberating the advent of capitalism in European society, hence theoretical discussions and writings on socialism in ‘Asiatic’ society remained a far cry from what was expected by the 20th century socialist revolutionaries in China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. ‘Treading on the same path taken by Soviet Union, 1949 onwards China went on to implement a mode of production which was essentially ‘state capitalism’. Soviet Union as a state was the owner of the means of production and ‘commodity’ (which by definition is integrated with exchange-value i.e. ‘price’ in the ‘market’) that were produced. Following similar model, China created a new economy that also revolved around commodity production by state-owned enterprises, agricultural output production by state-owned communes and accumulation of capital by the state (through extraction of surplus from the rural agriculture and light industry). In Soviet Union and China, the ideologues termed it ‘socialist commodity’, however, socialism’ can’t theoretically accommodate production of ‘commodity’ that inherently refers to ‘market’. In fact, as Marxism suggests, the concepts of ‘commodity’, ‘market’, ‘capital’ and ‘surplus capital’ are intricately joined with ‘ownership’ of means of production. Marx and Engels were clear that these concepts don’t have place in socialist/ communist society. It is not true that ownership pertains to only ‘private’ citizens, even ‘state’ can own assets to be used as ‘capital’ and the profits out of business gets appropriated by the state authority and its close followers. Undoubtedly, Stalin and Mao being the most committed followers of philosophy and ideology of Marx-Engels-Lenin, were well aware of the final destination of the Marxist journey.’ But then for both of them, accumulation of enough capital was the first milestone which would provide opportunity to implement socialism afterwards. Mao wrote in ‘On State Capitalism on July 9, 1953 (as a comment on a document of the National Conference on Financial and Economic Work held in the summer of 1953), “The present-day capitalist economy in China is a capitalist economy which for the most part is under the control of the People’s Government and which is linked with the state-owned socialist economy in various forms and supervised by the workers. It is not an ordinary but a particular kind of capitalist economy, namely, a state-capitalist economy of a new type. It exists not chiefly to make profits for the capitalists but to meet the needs of the people and the state. True, a share of the profits produced by the workers goes to the capitalists, but that is only a small part, about one quarter, of the total. The remaining three quarters are produced for the workers (in the form of the welfare fund), for the state (in the form of income tax) and for expanding productive capacity (a small part of which produces profits for the capitalists). Therefore, this state-capitalist economy of a new type takes on a socialist character to a very great extent and benefits the workers and the state.”

‘The First Five-Year Plan (1953–57) followed the Soviet Union model which assigned primacy to development of heavy industry. Government of China controlled about 67% as directly state-owned enterprise and 33% as joint state-private enterprise. There was no more privately owned company. Key sectors like Coal and Iron ore mining, Electricity generation, Heavy Machinery manufacturing, Iron and Steel manufacturing, Cement manufacturing etc. were modernised by construction of hundreds of new factories with help from engineers sent by Soviet Union. Growth of industrial production increased at average rate of 19% per year during this period. During this period, more than 90% of cottage/handicraft industries were organized into cooperatives.’

The agricultural sector however didn’t perform as per expectation and only clocked average growth rate of 4% per year. From loosely constructed ‘mutual aid teams’, peasants were encouraged to form ‘cooperatives’, in which individual families still received some income on the basis of their contribution of land. In the next stage, ‘collectives’ were formed on which income was based only on the amount of labour contributed by each family. In addition, each family was allowed to retain a small plot to grow vegetables and fruit for their personal consumption. By 1957 the collectivization process covered 93% of all farm households.

A note on Chinese ‘New Democracy’ & Its Possible Impact On World Revolution

Under section C, while writing on MYTH 7, I discussed about the ‘world revolution’ from theoretical perspective – Marx-Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin were the main theorists on this VERY SIGNIFICANT subject. And, Mao took the thread from Lenin and developed it further with ingenuity. [I have never indulged in simulations on future geopolitics, before I started writing in The Saker. Here also, I couldn’t help myself but note down a very interesting ‘what-if’ scenario built on the last century. What would had happened if Stalin lived another 10 years when Mao was leading China? Possibility of almost entire Asia and Africa forming a socialist / revolutionary democratic block with USSR as the ‘leader’ and China as the ‘manager’ was VERY REAL! That was not really because of military strength, but because of two fundamentally important vectors in the then international relations – (a) entire Asia and Africa were reeling under colonial imperialism of the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy and its pet bourgeois democratic governments in Europe and the USA, to those oppressed countries 1945 to 1965 was the period of liberation, (b) Lenin’s hypothesis which was further embellished by Mao in 1940 could potentially line up all classes of the Asian and African nations against the colonial imperialist European powers during their liberation struggle. And, it need not be stated that, both Stalin and Mao had that capability, sagacity, and sincerity to complete the journey of ‘world revolution’ in the lands where three-fourth of the world’s population lived!]

The theory Mao suggested in ‘On New Democracy’ in January 1940 contained the following key concepts:

(i) “In terms of social classes, it was a united front of the proletariat, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the [national – by author] bourgeoisie.”

(ii) “a socialist state [USSR – by author] has been established and has proclaimed its readiness to give active support to the liberation movement of all colonies and semi-colonies”

(iii) “In this era, any revolution in a colony or semi-colony that is directed against imperialism, i.e., against the international bourgeoisie or international capitalism, no longer comes within the old category of the bourgeois-democratic world revolution, but within the new category. It is no longer part of the old bourgeois, or capitalist, world revolution, but is part of the new world revolution, the proletarian-socialist world revolution.”

(iv) “Although such a revolution in a colonial and semi-colonial country is still fundamentally bourgeois-democratic in its social character during its first stage or first step, and although its objective mission is to clear the path for the development of capitalism, it is no longer a revolution of the old type led by the bourgeoisie with the aim of establishing a capitalist society and a state under bourgeois dictatorship. It belongs to the new type of revolution led by the proletariat with the aim, in the first stage, of establishing a new-democratic society and a state under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes. Thus this revolution actually serves the purpose of clearing a still wider path [means development and accumulation of initial capital – author] for the development of socialism. In the course of its progress, there may be a number of further sub-stages, because of changes on the enemy’s side and within the ranks of our allies, but the fundamental character of the revolution remains unchanged.

(v) “Such a revolution attacks imperialism at its very roots, and is therefore not tolerated but opposed by imperialism. However, it is favoured by socialism and supported by the land of socialism and the socialist international proletariat…Therefore, such a revolution inevitably becomes part of the proletarian-socialist world revolution.”

I would like to conclude with my understanding on this issue in a few simple and straight-forward sentences –

If a communist revolutionary has to follow Marx-Engels line-by-line and word-by-word, then Marxism would essentially become another religion with a dedicated band of followers who will worship Marx and Engels along with coded rituals.

Lenin created the channels that will route the ‘sacred texts’ of Marxism towards practical implementation – he had established that (i) the proletarians could ONLY win in a revolution if they get the peasants, (ii) under a bourgeois-led imperialist economy a semi-feudal (industrially) backward country i.e. Russia, the communists could stage a revolution.

Mao went a step further and proved that (i) the combination of the proletarians, the peasants, the petty-bourgeois, the national bourgeois could ALSO win a revolution where the proletarians+the peasants would lead, (ii) in a semi-feudal semi-colonial (industrially) backward country i.e. China the economic growth would be supported by the inclusion of the national bourgeois, only if the proletarians+the peasants dominate the governance.

None of the Marxist leader-cum-theorists however seriously tried to develop any hypothesis/theory on how to achieve the first stage and second stage of communism. We will have to wait.

ANNEXURES

A note on annexures: The two great masters (Marx and Engels) penned dozens of books, and hundreds of pamphlets, all of which are priceless repository for Marxism-Socialism-Communism; outstanding leader-cum-philosophers (controversial or not) of Marxist movements like Lenin, Mao, Gramcsi, Lukács contributed hundreds of serious documents. I have selected 15 pieces — from the writings of the Marxist thinkers and leaders like Engels, Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Trotsky & few modern intellectuals like Robert Brenner, Charles Post — all of which, in my opinion, should be read, analysed and debated by every Marxist and non-Marxist political-social activists (who firmly believe in a new humanitarian dawn for the society will come through socialism/communism). These articles / thesis / chapter of book provide the most penetrating analysis regarding the significant undercurrents of history-economic-politics-sociology of the human society in the modern world – it is not that these are unquestionable, far from it, these call for lively debates through which the Marxist and non-Marxist revolutionary movements across the world can LEARN TO WIN IN FUTURE!!!

Annexure1: The English Elections by Frederick Engels

[First published in Der Volkstaat 4 March 1874 (published in book format in ‘Marx Engels On Britain’ by Progress Publishers in 1953)]

The English Parliamentary elections are now over. The brilliant Gladstone, who could not govern with a majority of sixty-six, suddenly dissolved Parliament, ordered elections within eight to fourteen days, and the result was — a majority of fifty against him. The second Parliament elected under the Reform Bill of 1867 and the first by secret ballot has yielded a strong conservative majority. And it is particularly the big industrial cities and factory districts, where the workers are now absolutely in the majority, that send Conservatives to Parliament. How is this?

This is primarily the result of Gladstone’s attempt to effect a coup d’état by means of the elections. The election writs were issued so soon after the dissolution that many towns had hardly five days, most of them hardly eight, and the Irish, Scotch and rural electoral districts at most fourteen days for reflection. Gladstone wanted to stampede the voters, but coup d’état simply won’t work in England and attempts to stampede rebound upon those who engineer them. In consequence, the entire mass of apathetic and wavering voters voted solidly against Gladstone.

Moreover, Gladstone had ruled in a way that directly flouted John Bull’s traditional usage. There is no denying that John Bull is dull-witted enough to consider his government to be not his lord and master, but his servant, and at that the only one of his servants whom he can discharge forthwith without giving any notice. Now, if the party in office time and again allows its ministry, for very practical reasons, to spring a big surprise with theatrical effect on occasions when taxes are reduced or other financial measures instituted, it permits this sort of thing only by way of exception in case of important legislative measures. But Gladstone had made these legislative stage tricks the rule. His major measures were mostly as much of a surprise to his own party as to his opponents. These measures were practically foisted upon the Liberals, because if they did not vote for them they would immediately put the opposition party in power. And if the contents of many of these measures, e.g., the Irish Church Bill and the Irish Land Bill, were for all their wretchedness an abomination to many old liberal-conservative Whigs, so to the whole of the party was the manner in which these bills were forced upon it. But this was not enough for Gladstone. He had secured the abolition of the purchase of army commissions by appealing without the slightest need to the authority of the Crown instead of Parliament, thereby offending his own party. In addition he had surrounded himself with a number of importunate mediocrities who possessed no other talent than the ability to make themselves needlessly obnoxious. Particular mention must be made here of Bruce, Minister of Home Affairs, and Ayrton, the real head of the London local government. The former was distinguished for his rudeness and arrogance towards workers’ deputations; the latter ruled London in a wholly Prussian manner, for instance, in the case of the attempt to suppress the right to hold public meetings in the parks. But since such things simply can’t be done here, as is shown by the fact that the Irish immediately held a huge mass meeting in Hyde Park right under Mr. Ayrton’s nose in spite of the Park ordinance, the Government suffered a number of minor defeats and increasing unpopularity in consequence.

Finally, the secret ballot has enabled a large number of workers who usually were politically passive to vote with impunity against their exploiters and against the party in which they rightly see that of the big barons of industry, namely, the Liberal Party. This is true even where most of these barons, following the prevailing fashion, have gone over to the Conservatives. If the Liberal Party in England does not represent large-scale industry as opposed to big landed property and high finance, it represents nothing at all.

Already the previous Parliament ranked below the average in its general intellectual level. It consisted mainly of the rural gentry and the sons of big landed proprietors, on the one hand, and of bankers, railway directors, brewers, manufacturers and sundry other rich upstarts, on the other; in between, a few statesmen, jurists and professors. Quite a number of the last-named representatives of the “intelligentsia” failed to get elected this time, so that the new Parliament represents big landed property and the money-bags even more exclusively than the preceding one. It differs, however, from the preceding one in comprising two new elements: two workers and about fifty Irish Home Rulers.

As regards the workers it must be stated, to begin with, that no separate political working-class party has existed in England since the downfall of the Chartist Party in the fifties. This is understandable in a country in which the working-class has shared more than anywhere else in the advantages of the immense expansion of its large-scale industry. Nor could it have been otherwise in an England that ruled the world market; and certainly not in a country where the ruling classes have set themselves the task of carrying out, parallel with other concessions, one point of the Chartists’ programme, the People’s Charter, after another. Of the six points of the Charter two have already become law: the secret ballot and the abolition of property qualifications for the suffrage. The third, universal suffrage, has been introduced, at least approximately; the last three points are still entirely unfulfilled: annual parliaments, payment of members, and, most important, equal electoral areas.

Whenever the workers lately took part in general politics in particular organisations they did so almost exclusively as the extreme left wing of the “great Liberal Party” and — in this role they were duped at each election according to all the rules of the game by the great Liberal Party. Then all of a sudden came the Reform Bill which at one blow changed the political status of the workers. In all the big cities they now form the majority of the voters and in England the Government as well as the candidates for Parliament are accustomed to court the electorate. The chairmen and secretaries of Trade Unions and political working-men’s societies, as well as other well-known labour spokesmen who might be expected to be influential in their class, had overnight become important people. They were visited by Members of Parliament, by lords and other well-born rabble, and sympathetic enquiry was suddenly made into the wishes and needs of the working-class. Questions were discussed with these “labour leaders” which formerly evoked a supercilious smile or the mere posture of which used to be condemned; and one contributed to collections for working-class purposes. It ,thereupon quite naturally occurred to the “labour leaders” that they should get themselves elected to Parliament, to which their high-class friends gladly agreed in general, but of course only for the purpose of frustrating as far as possible the election of workers in each particular case. Thus the matter got no further.

Nobody holds it against the “labour leaders” that they would have liked to get into Parliament. The shortest way would have been to proceed at once to form anew a strong workers’ party with a definite programme, and the best political programme they could wish for was the People’s Charter. But the Chartists’ name was in bad odour with the bourgeoisie precisely because theirs had been an outspokenly proletarian party, and so, rather than continue the glorious tradition of the Chartists, the “labour leaders” preferred to deal with their aristocratic friends and be .’respectable,” which in England means acting like a bourgeois. Whereas under the old franchise the workers had to a certain extent been compelled to figure as the tail of the radical bourgeoisie, it was inexcusable to make them go on playing that part after the Reform Bill had opened the door of Parliament to at least sixty working-class candidates.

This was the turning point. In order to get into Parliament the “labour leaders” had recourse, in the first place, to the votes and money of the bourgeoisie and only in the second place to the votes of the workers themselves. But by doing so they ceased to be workers’ candidates and turned themselves into bourgeois candidates. They did not appeal to a working-class party that still had to be formed but to the bourgeois “great Liberal Party.” Among themselves they organised a mutual election assurance society, the Labour Representation League,[1] whose very slender means were derived in the main from bourgeois sources. But this was not all. The radical bourgeois has sense enough to realise that the election of workers to Parliament is becoming more and more inevitable; it is therefore in their interest to keep the prospective working-class candidates under their control and thus postpone their actual election as long, as possible. For that purpose they have their Mr. Samuel Morley, a London millionaire, who does not mind spending a couple of thousand pounds in order, on the one hand, to be able to act as the commanding general of this sham labour general staff and, on the other, with its assistance to let himself be hailed by the masses as a friend of labour, out of gratitude for his duping the workers. And then, about a year ago, when it became ever more likely that Parliament would be dissolved, Morley called his faithful together in the London Tavern. They all appeared, the Potters, Howells, Odgers, Haleses, Mottersheads, Cremers, Eccariuses and the rest of them — a conclave of people every one of whom had served, or at least had offered to serve, during the previous Parliamentary elections, in the pay of the bourgeoisie, as an agitator for the “great Liberal Party.” Under Morley’s chairmanship this conclave drew up a “labour programme” to which any bourgeois could subscribe and which was to form the foundation of a mighty movement to chain the workers politically still more firmly to the bourgeois and, as these gentry thought, to get the “founders” into Parliament. Besides, dangling before their lustful eyes these “founders” already saw a goodly number of Morley’s five-pound notes with which they expected to line their pockets before the election campaign was over. But the whole movement fell through before it had fairly started. Mr. Morley locked his safe and the founders once more disappeared from the scene.

Four weeks ago Gladstone suddenly dissolved Parliament. The inevitable “labour leaders” began to breathe again: either they would get themselves elected or they would again become well-paid itinerant preachers of the cause of the “great Liberal Party.” But alas! the day appointed for the elections was so close that they were cheated out of both chances. True enough, a few did stand for Parliament; but since in England every candidate, before he can be voted upon, must contribute two hundred pounds (1,240 thaler) towards the election expenses and the workers had almost nowhere been organised for this purpose, only such of them could stand as candidates seriously as obtained this sum from the bourgeoisie, i.e., as acted with its gracious permission. With this the bourgeoisie had done its duty and in the elections themselves allowed them all to suffer a complete fiasco.

Only two workers got in, both miners from coal pits. This trade is very strongly organised in three big unions, has considerable means at its disposal, controls an undisputed majority of the voters in some constituencies and has worked systematically for direct representation in Parliament ever since the Reform Acts were passed. The candidates put up were the secretaries of the three Trade Unions. The one, Halliday, lost out in Wales; the other two came out on top: MacDonald in Stafford and Burt in Morpeth. Burt is little known outside of his constituency. MacDonald, however, betrayed the workers of his trade when, during the negotiations on the last mining law, which he attended as the representative of his trade, he sanctioned an amendment which was so grossly in the interests of the capitalists that even the government had not dared to include it in the draft.

At any rate, the ice has been broken and two workers now have seats in the most fashionable debating club of Europe, among those who have declared themselves the first gentlemen of Europe.

Alongside of them sit at least fifty Irish Home Rulers. When the Fenian (Irish-republican) rebellion of 1867 had been quelled and the military leaders of the Fenians had either gradually been caught or driven to emigrate to America, the remnants of the Fenian conspiracy soon lost all importance. Violent insurrection :had no prospect of success for many years, at least until such time as England would again be involved in serious difficulties abroad. Hence a legal movement remained the only possibility, and such a movement was undertaken under the banner of the Home Rulers, who wanted the Irish to be “masters in their own house.” They made the definite demand that the Imperial Parliament in London should cede to a special Irish Parliament in Dublin the right to legislate on all purely Irish questions; very wisely nothing was said meanwhile about what was to be understood as a purely Irish question. This movement, at first scoffed at by the English press, has become so powerful that Irish M.P.’s of the most diverse party complexions- Conservatives and Liberals, Protestants and Catholics (Butt, who leads the movement, is himself a Protestant) and even a native-born Englishman sitting for Golway — have had to join it. For the first time since the days of O’Connell, whose repeal movement collapsed in the general reaction about the same time as the Chartist movement, as a result of the events of 1848 — he had died in 1847 — a well-knit Irish party once again has entered Parliament, but under circumstances that hardly permit it constantly to compromise A la O’Connell with the Liberals or to have individual members of it sell themselves retail to Liberal governments, as after him has become the fashion.

Thus both motive forces of English political development have now entered Parliament: on the one side the workers, on the other the Irish as a compact national party. And even if they may hardly be expected to play a big role in this Parliament — the workers will certainly not — the elections of 1874 have indisputably ushered in a new phase in English political development.

Annexure2: The Peasant Question in France and Germany by Frederick Engels

[Written: between November 15-22, 1894; First Published: in Die Neue Zeit, 1894-95; Translated: by Progress Publishers; Transcribed: by director@marx.org, October 1993]

Part 1: France

The rural population in which we can address ourselves consists of quite different parts, which vary greatly with the various regions.

In the west of Germany, as in France and Belgium, there prevails the small-scale cultivations of small-holding peasants, the majority of whom own and the minority of whom rent their parcels of land.

In the northwest — in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein — we have a preponderance of big and middle peasants who cannot do without male and female farm servants and even day labourers. The same is true of part of Bavaria.

In Prussia east of the Elbe, and in Mecklenburg, we have the regions of big landed estates and large-scale cultivation with hinds, cotters, and day laborers, and in between small and middle peasants in relatively unimportant and steadily decreasing proportion.

In central Germany, all of these forms of production and ownership are found mixed in various proportions, depending upon the locality, without the decided prevalence of any particular form over a large area.

Besides, there are localities varying in extent where the arable land owned or rented is insufficient to provide for the subsistence of the family, but can serve only as the basis for operating a domestic industry and enabling the latter to pay the otherwise incomprehensibly low wages that ensure the steady sale of its products despite all foreign competition.

Which of these subdivisions of the rural population can be won over by the Social-Democratic party? We, of course, investigate this question only in broad outline; we single out only clear-forms. We lack space to give consideration in intermediate stages and mixed rural populations.

Let us begin with the small peasant. Not only is he, of all peasants, the most important for Western Europe in general, but he is also the critical case that decides the entire question. Once we have clarified in our minds our attitude to the small peasant, we have all the data needed to determine our stand relative to the other constituent parts of the rural population.

By small peasant we mean here the owners or tenant — particularly the former — of a patch of land no bigger, as a rule, than he and his family can till, and no smaller than can sustain the family. This small peasant, just like the small handicraftsman, is therefore a toiler who differs from the modern proletarian in that he still possesses his instruments of labour; hence, a survival of a past mode of production. There is a threefold difference between him and his ancestor, the serf, bondman, or, quite exceptionally, the free peasant liable to rent and feudal services. First, in that the French Revolution freed him from feudal services and dues that he owed to the landlord and, in the majority of cases, at least on the left bank of the Rhine, assigned his peasant farm to him as his own free property.

Secondly, in that he lost the protection of, and the right to participate in, the self-administering Mark community, and hence his share in the emoluments of the former common Mark. The common Mark was whisked away partly by the erstwhile feudal lord and partly by enlightened bureaucratic legislation patterned after Roman law. This deprives the small peasant of modern times of the possibility of feeding his draft animals without buying fodder. Economically, however, the loss of the emoluments derived from the Mark by far outweighs the benefits accruing from the abolition of feudal services. The number of peasants unable to keep draft animals of their own is steadily increasing.

Thirdly, the peasant of today has lost half of his former productive activity. Formerly, he and his family produced, from raw material he had made himself, the greater part of the industrial products that he needed; the rest of what he required was supplied by village neighbours who plied a trade in addition to farming and were paid mostly in articles of exchange or in reciprocal services. The family, and still more the village, was self-sufficient, produced almost everything it needed. It was natural economy almost unalloyed; almost no money was necessary. Capitalist production put an end to this by its money economy and large-scale industry. But if the Mark emoluments represented one of the basic conditions of his existence, his industrial side line was another. And thus the peasant sinks ever lower. Taxes, crop failures, divisions of inheritance and litigations drive one peasant after another into the arms of the usurer; the indebtedness becomes more and more general and steadily increases in amount in each case — in brief, our small peasant, like every other survival of a past mode of production, is hopelessly doomed. He is a future proletarian.

As such, he ought to lend a ready ear in socialist propaganda. But he is prevented from doing so for the time being by his deep-rooted sense of property. The more difficult it is for him to defend his endangered patch of land, the more desperately he clings to it, the more he regards the Social-Democrats, who speak of transferring landed property to the whole of society, as just as dangerous a foe as the usurer and lawyer. How is Social-Democracy to overcome this prejudice? What can is offer to the doomed small peasant without becoming untrue to itself?

Here we find a practical point of support in the agrarian programme of the French Socialists of the Marxian trend, a programme which is the more noteworthy as it comes from the classical land of small-peasant economy.

The Marseilles Congress of 1892 adopted the first agrarian programme of the Party. It demands for propertyless rural workers (that is to say, day laborers and hinds): minimum wages fixed by trade unions and community councils; rural trade courts consisting half of workers; prohibition of the sale of common lands; and the leasing of public domain lands to communities which are to rent all this land, whether owned by them or rented, to associations of propertyless families of farm laborers for common cultivation, on conditions that the employment of wage-workers be prohibited and that the communities exercise control; old-age and invalid pensions, to be defrayed by means of a special tax on big landed estates.

For the small peasants, with special consideration for tenant farmers, purchase of machinery by the community to be leased at cost price to the peasants; the formation of peasant co-operatives for the purchase of manure, drain-pipes, seed, etc., and for the sale of the produce; abolition of the real estate transfer tax if the value involved does not exceed 5,000 francs; arbitration commissions of the Irish pattern to reduce exorbitant rentals and compensate quitting tenant farmers and sharecroppers (me’tayers) for appreciation of the land due to them; repeal of article 2102 of the Civil Code which allows a landlord to on the distraint crop, and the abolition of the right of creditors to levy on growing crops; exemption from levy and distraint of a definite amount of farm implements and of the crop, seed, manure, draft animals, in shirt, whatever is indispensable to the peasant for carrying on his business; revision of the general cadastre, which has long been out of date, and until such time a local revision in each community; lastly, free instruction in farming, and agricultural experimental stations.

As we see, the demands made in the interests of the peasants — those made in the interests of the workers do not concern us here, for the time being — are not very far-reaching. Part of them has already been realised elsewhere. The tenants’ arbitration courts follow the Irish prototype by express mention. Peasant co-operatives already exist in the Rhine provinces. The revision of the cadastre has been a constant pious wish of all liberals, and even bureaucrats, throughout Western Europe. The other points, too, could be carried into effect without any substantial impairment of the existing capitalist order. So much simply in characterisation of the programme. No reproach is intended; quite the contrary.

The Party did such a good business with this programme among the peasants in the most diverse parts of France that — since appetite comes with eating — one felt constrained to suit it still more to their taste. It was felt, however, that this would be treading on dangerous ground. How was the peasant to be helped — not the peasant as a future proletarian, but as a present propertied peasant — without violating the basic principles of the general socialist programme? In order to meet this objection, the new practical proposals were prefaced by a theoretical preamble, which seeks to prove that it is in keeping with the principles of socialism to protect small-peasant property from destruction by the capitalist mode of production, although one is perfectly aware that this destruction is inevitable. Let us now examine more closely this preamble as well as the demands themselves, which were adopted by the Nantes Congress in September of this year.

The preamble begins as follows:

Whereas according to the terms of the general programme of the Party producers can be free only in so far as they are in possession of the means of production;

Whereas in the sphere of industry these means of production have already reached such a degree of capitalist centralisation that they can be restored to the producers only in the collective or social form, but in the sphere of agriculture — at least in present-day France — this is by no means the case, the means of production, namely, the land, being in very many localities still in the hands of the individual producers themselves as their individuals possession;

Whereas even if this state of affairs characterized by small-holding ownership is irretrievably doomed (est fatalement appete’ a dispaitre), still it is not for socialism to hasten its doom, as its task does not consist in separating property from labour but, on the contrary, in uniting both of these factors of all production by placing them in the same hands, factors the separation of which entails the servitude and poverty of the workers reduced to proletarians;

Whereas, on the one hand, it is the duty of socialism to put the agricultural proletarians again in possession — collective or social in form — of the great domains after expropriating their present idle ownership, it is, on the other hand, on less its imperative duty to maintain the peasants themselves tilling their patches of land in possession of the same as against the fisk, the usurer, and the encroachments of the newly-arisen big landowners;

Whereas it is expedient to extend this protection also to the producers who as tenants or sharecroppers (me’tayers) cultivate the land owned by others and who, if they exploit day laborers, are to a certain extent compelled to do so because of the exploitation to which they themselves are subjected —

Therefore the Workers’ Party — which unlike the anarchists does not count on an increase and spread of poverty for the transformation of the social order but expects labour and society in general to be emancipated only by the organisation and concerted efforts of the workers of both country and town, by their taking possession of the government and legislation — has adopted the following agrarian programme in order thereby to bring together all the elements of rural production, all occupations which by virtue of various rights and titles utilise the national soil, to wage an identical struggle against the common for: the feudality of landownership.

Now, for a closer examination of these “whereases”.

To being with, the statement in the French programme that freedom of the producers presupposes the possession of the means of production must be supplemented by those immediately following: either as individual possession, which form never and nowhere existed for the producers in general, and is daily being made more impossible by industrial progress; or as common possession, a form the material and intellectual preconditions of which have been established by the development of capitalist society itself; that therefore taking collective possession of the means of production must be fought for by all means at the disposal of the proletariat.

The common possession of the means of production is thus set forth here as the sole principal goal to be striven for. Not only in industry, where the ground has already been prepared, but in general, hence also in agriculture. According to the programme, individual possession never and nowhere obtained generally for all producers; for that very reason, and because industrial progress removes it anyhow, socialism is not interested in maintaining but rather in removing it; because where it exists and in so far as it exists it makes common possession impossible. Once we cite the programme in support of our contention, we must cite the entire programme, which considerably modifies the proposition quoted in Nantes; for it makes the general historical truth expressed in it dependent upon the conditions under which alone it can remain a truth today in Western Europe and North America.

Possession of the means of production by the individual producers nowadays no longer grants these producers real freedom. Handicraft has already been ruined in the cities; in metropolises like London, it has already disappeared entirely, having been superseded by large-scale industry, the sweatshop system and miserable bunglers who thrive on bankruptcy. The self-supporting small peasant is neither in the safe possession of his tiny patch of land, nor is he free. He, as well as his house, his farmstead, and his new fields, belong to the usurer; his livelihood is more uncertain than that of the proletarian, who at least does have tranquil days now and then, which is never the case with the eternally tortured debt slave. Strike out Article 2102 of the Civil Code, provide by law that a definite amount of a peasant’s farm implements, cattle, etc., shall be exempt from levy and distraint; yet you cannot ensure him against an emergency in which he is compelled to sell his cattle “voluntarily”, in which he must sign himself away, body and soul, to the usurer and be glad to get a reprieve. Your attempt to protect the small peasant in his property does not protect his liberty but only the particular form of his servitude; it prolongs a situation in which he can neither live nor die. It is, therefore, entirely out of place here to cite the first paragraph of your programme as authority for your contention.

The preamble states that in present-day France, the means of production — that is, the land — is in very many localities still in the hands of individual producers as their individual possession; that, however, it is not the task of socialism to separate property from labour, but, on the contrary, to unite these two factors of all production by placing them in the same hands. As has already been pointed out, the latter in this general form is by no means the task of socialism. Its task is, rather, only to transfer the means of production to the producers as their common possession. As soon as we lose sight of this, the above statement becomes directly misleading in that it implies that it is the mission of socialism to convert the present sham property of the small peasant in his fields into real property — that is to say, to convert the small tenant into an owner and the indebted owner into a debtless owner. Undoubtedly, socialism is interested to see that the false semblance of peasant property should disappear, but not in this manner.

At any rate, we have now got so far that the preamble can straightforwardly declare it to be the duty of socialism, indeed, its imperative duty,

“to maintain the peasants themselves tilling their patches of land in possession of the same as against the fisk, the usurer and the encroachments of the newly-arisen big landowners.”

The preamble thus imposes upon socialism the imperative duty to carry out something which it had declared to be impossible in the preceding paragraph. It charges it to “maintain” the small-holding ownership of the peasants although it itself states that this form of ownership is “irretrievably doomed”. What are the fisk, the usurer, and the newly-arisen big landowners if not the instruments by means of which capitalist production brings about this inevitable doom? What means “socialism” is to employ to protect the peasant against this trinity, we shall see below.

But not only the small peasant is to be protected in his property. It is likewise

“expedient to extend this protection also to the producers who, as tenants or sharecroppers (Metayers), cultivate the land owned by others and who, if they exploit day laborers, are to a certain extent compelled to do so because of the exploitation to which they themselves are subjected”.

Here, we are entering upon ground that is passing strange. Socialism is particularly opposed to the exploitation of wage labour. And here it is declared to be the imperative duty of socialism to protect the French tenants when they “exploit day laborers”, as the text literally states! And that because they are compelled to do so to a certain by “the exploitation to which they themselves are subjected”!

How easy and pleasant it is to keep on coasting once you are on the toboggan slide! When now the big and middle peasants of Germany come to ask the French Socialists to intercede with the German Party Executive to get the German Social-Democratic Party to protect them in the exploitation of their male and female farm servants, citing in support of the contention the “exploitation to which they themselves are subjected” by usurers, tax collectors, grain speculators and cattle dealers, what will they answer? What guarantee have they that our agrarian big landlords will not send them Count Kanitz (as he also submitted a proposal like theirs, providing for a state monopoly of grain importation) and likewise ask for socialist protection of their exploitation of the rural workers, citing in support “the exploitation to which they themselves are subjected” by stock-jobbers, money lender, and grain speculators?

Let us say here, at the outset, that the intentions of our French friends are not as bad as one would suppose. The above sentence, we are told, is intended to cover only a quite special case — namely, the following: In Northern France, just as in our sugar-beet districts, land is leased to the peasants subject to the obligation to cultivate beets, on conditions which are extremely onerous. They must deliver the beets to a state factory at a price fixed by it, must but definite seed, use a fixed quantity of prescribed fertilizer, and on delivery are badly cheated into t he bargain. We know all about this in Germany, as well. But,if this sort of peasant is to be taken under one’s wing, this must be said openly and expressly. As the sentence reads now, in its unlimited general form, it is a direct violation not only of the French programme, but also of the fundamental principle of socialism in general, and its authors will have no cause for complaint if this careless piece of editing is used against them in various quarters to their intention.

Also capable of such misconstruction are the concluding words of the preamble according to which it is the task of the Socialist Workers’ Party

“to bring together all the elements of rural production, all occupations which, by virtue of various rights and titles, utilize the national soil, to wage an identical struggle against the common foe: the feudality of landownership”.

I flatly deny that the socialist workers’ party of any country is charged with the task of taking into its fold, in addition to the rural proletarians and the small peasants, also the idle and big peasants and perhaps even the tenants of the big estates, the capitalist cattle breeders and other capitalist exploiters of the national soil. To all of them, the feudality of landownership may appear to be a common foe. On certain questions, we may make common cause with them and be able to fight side by side with them for definite aims. We can use in our Party individuals from every class of society, but have no use whatever for any groups representing capitalist, middle-bourgeois,or middle-peasant interests. Here, too, what they mean is not as bad as it looks. The authors evidently never even gave all this a thought. But unfortunately they allowed themselves to be carried away by their zeal for generalization and they must not be surprised if they are taken at their word.

After the preamble come the newly-adopted addenda to the programme itself. They betray the same cursory editing as the preamble.

The article providing that the communities must procure farming machinery and lease it at cost to the peasants is modified so as to provide that the communities are, in the first place, to receive state subsidies for this purpose and, secondly, that the machinery is to be placed at the disposal of the small peasants gratis. This further concession will not be of much avail to the small peasants, whose fields and mode of production permit of but little use of machinery.

Furthermore,

“substitution of a single progressive tax on all incomes upward of 3,000 francs for all existing direct and indirect taxes”.

A similar demand has been included for many years in almost every Social-Democratic programme. But that this demand is raised in the special interests of the small peasants is something new and shows only how little its real scope has been calculated. take Great Britain. There the state budget amounts to 90 million pounds sterling, of which 13.5 to 14 million are accounted for by the income tax. The smaller part of the remaining 76 million is contributed by taxing business (post and telegraph charges, stamp tax), but by far the greater part of it by imposts on articles of mass consumption, by the constantly repeated clipping of small, imperceptible amounts totalling many millions from the incomes of all members of the population, but particularly of tis poorer sections. In present-day society, it is scarcely possible to defray state expenditures in any other way. Suppose the whole 90 million are saddled in Great Britain on the incomes of 120 pounds sterling = 3,000 francs and in excess thereof by the imposition of a progressive direct tax. The average annual accumulation, the annual increase of the aggregate national wealth, amounted in 1865 to 1875, according to Giffen, to 240 million pounds sterling. Let us assume it now equals 200 million annually; a tax burden of 90 million would consume almost one-third of the aggregate accumulation. In other words, no government except a Socialist one can undertake any such thing. When the Socialists are at the helm there will be things for them to carry into execution alongside of which that tax reform will figure as a mere, and quite insignificant, settlement for the moment while altogether different prospects open up before the small peasants.

One seems to realize that the peasant will have to wait rather long for this tax reform so that “in the meantime” (en attendant) the following prospect is held out to them:

“Abolition of taxes on land for all peasants living by their own labour, and reduction of these taxes on all mortgaged plots.”

The latter half of this demand can refer only to peasant farms too big to be operated by the family itself; hence, it is again a provision in favor of peasants who “exploit day laborers”.

Again:

“Hunting and fishing rights without restrictions other than such as may be necessary for the conservation of game and fish and the protection of growing crops.”

This sounds very popular, but the concluding part of the sentence wipes out the introductory part. How many rabbits, partridges, pikes, and carps, are there even today per peasant family in all rural localities? Would you say more than would warrant giving each peasant jut one day a year for free hunting and fishing?

“Lowering of the legal and conventional rate of interest” —

hence, renewed usury laws, a renewed attempt to introduce a police measure that has always filed everywhere for the last two thousand years. If a small peasant finds himself in a position where recourse to a usurer is the lesser evil to him, the usurer will always find ways and means of sucking him dry without falling foul of the usury laws. This measure could serve at most to soothe the small peasant, but he will derive no advantage from it; on the contrary, it makes it more difficult for him to obtain credit precisely when he needs it most.

“Medical service free of charge and medicines at cost price” —

this at any rate is not a measure for the special protection of the peasants. The German programme goes further and demands that medicine too should be free of charge.

“Compensation for families of reservists called up for military duty for the duration of their service” —

this already exists, though most inadequately, in Germany and Austria and is likewise no special peasant demand.

“Lowering of the transport charges for fertilizer and farm machinery and products” —

is on the whole in effect in Germany, and mainly in the interest — of the big landowners.

“Immediate preparatory work for the elaboration of a plan of public works for the amelioration of the soil and the development of agricultural production” —

leaves everything in the realm of uncertitude and beautiful promises and is also above all in the interest of the big landed estates.

In brief, after the tremendous theoretical effort exhibited in the preamble, the practical proposals of the new agrarian programme are even more unrevealing as to the way in which the French Workers’ Party expects to be able to maintain the small peasants in possession of their small holdings, which, on its own territory, are irretrievably doomed.

Part 2: Germany

In one point our French comrades are absolutely right: No lasting revolutionary transformation is possible in France against the will of the small peasant. Only, it seems to me, they have not got the right leverage if they mean to bring the peasant under their influence.

They are bent, it seems, to win over the small peasant forthwith, possibly even for the next general elections. This they can hope to achieve only by making very risky general assurances in defence of which they are compelled to set forth even much more risky theoretical considerations. Then, upon closer examination, it appears that the general assurances are self-contradictory (promise to maintain a state of affairs which, as one declares oneself, is irretrievably doomed) and that the various measures are either wholly without effect (usury laws), or are general workers’ demands or demands which also benefit the big land-owners or finally are such as are of no great importance by any means in promoting the interests of the small peasants. In consequence, the directly practical part of the programme of itself corrects the erroneous initial part and reduces the apparently formidable grandiloquence of the preamble to actually innocent proportions.

Let us say it outright: in view of the prejudices arising out of their entire economic position, their uprising and their isolated mode of life, prejudices nurtured by the bourgeois press and the big land-owners, we can win the mass of the small peasants forthwith only if we can make them a promise which we ourselves know we shall not be able to keep. That is, we must promise them not only to protect their property in any event against all economic forces sweeping upon them, but also to relieve them of the burdens which already now oppress them: to transform the tenant into a free owner and to pay the debts of the owner succumbing to the weight of his mortgage. If we could do this, we should again arrive at the point from which the present situation would necessarily develop anew. We shall not have emancipated the peasant but only given him a reprieve.

But it is not in our interests to win the peasant overnight, only to lose him again on the morrow if we cannot keep our promise. We have no more use for the peasant as a Party member, if he expects us to perpetuate his property in his small holding, than for the small handicraftsman who would fain be perpetuated as a master. These people belong to the anti-Semites. Let them go to the anti-Semites and obtain from the latter the promise to salvage their small enterprises. Once they learn there what these glittering phrases really amount to, and what melodies are fiddled down from the anti-Semitic heavens, they will realize in ever-increasing measure that we who promise less and look for salvation in entirely different quarters are after all more reliable people. If the French had the strident anti-Semitic demagogy we have, they would hardly have committed the Nantes mistake.

What, then, is our attitude towards the small peasantry? How shall we have to deal with it on the day of our accession to power?

To begin with, the French programme is absolutely correct in stating: that we foresee the inevitable doom of the small peasant, but that it is not our mission to hasten it by any interference on our part.

Secondly, it is just as evident that when we are in possession of state power, we shall not even think of forcibly expropriating the small peasants (regardless of whether with or without compensation), as we shall have to do in the case of the big landowners. Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and private possession to cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose. And then, of course, we shall have ample means of showing to the small peasant prospective advantages that must be obvious to him even today.

Almost 20 years ago, the Danish Socialists, who have only one real city in their country — Copenhagen — and therefore have to rely almost exclusively on peasant propaganda outside of it, were already drawing up such plans. The peasants of a village or parish — there are many big individual homesteads in Denmark — were to pool their land to form a single big farm i order to cultivate it for common account and distribute the yield in proportion to the land, money, and labour contributed. In Denmark, small landed property plays only a secondary role. But, if we apply this idea to a region of small holdings, we shall find that if these are pooled and the aggregate area cultivated on a large scale, part of the labour power employed hitherto is rendered superfluous. It is precisely this saving of labour that represents one of the main advantages of large-scale farming. Employment can be found for this labour in two ways. Either additional land taken from big estates in the neighborhood is placed at the disposal of the peasant co-operative, or the peasants in question are provided with the means and the opportunity of engaging in industry as an accessory calling, primarily and as far as possible for their own use. In either case, their economic position is improved and simultaneously the general social directing agency is assured the necessary influence to transform the peasant co-operative to a higher form, and to equalize the rights and duties of the co-operative as a whole as well as of its individual members with those of the other departments of the entire community. How this is to be carried out in practice in each particular case will depend upon the circumstance of the case and the conditions under which we take possession of political power. We may, thus, possibly be in a position of offer these co-operatives yet further advantages: assumption of their entire mortgage indebtedness by the national bank with a simultaneous sharp reduction of the interest rate; advances from public funds for the establishment of large-scale production (to be made not necessarily or primarily in money but in the form of required products: machinery, artificial fertilizer, etc.), and other advantages.

The main point is, and will be, to make the peasants understand that we can save, preserve their houses and fields for them only by transforming them into co-operative property operated co-operatively. It is precisely the individual farming conditioned by individual ownership that drives the peasants to their doom. If they insist on individual operation, they will inevitably be driven from house and home and their antiquated mode of production superseded by capitalist large-scale production. That is how the matter stands. Now, we come along and offer the peasants the opportunity of introducing large-scale production themselves, not for account of the capitalists but for their own, common account. Should it really be impossible to make the peasants understand that this is in their own interest, that it is the sole means of their salvation?

Neither now, nor at any time in the future, can we promise the small-holding peasants to preserve their individual property and individual enterprise against the overwhelming power of capitalist production. We can only promise then that we shall not interfere in their property relations by force, against their will. Moreover, we can advocate that the struggle of the capitalists and big landlords against the small peasants should be waged from now on with a minimum of unfair means and that direct robbery and cheating, which are practiced only too often, be as far as possible prevented. In this we shall succeed only in exceptional cases. Under the developed capitalist mode of production, nobody can tell where honesty ends and cheating begins. But always it will make a considerable difference whether public authority is on the side of the cheater or the cheated. We, of course, are decidedly on the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all permissible to make his lot more bearable, to facilitate his transition to the co-operative should he decide to do so, and even to make it possible for him to remain on his small holding for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he still be unable to bring himself to this decision. We do this not only because we consider the small peasant living by his own labour as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of the Party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save from being actually hurled down into the proletariat, whom we can win to our side while they are still peasants, the more quickly and easily the social transformation will be accomplished. It will serve us nought to wait with this transformation until capitalist production has developed everywhere to its utmost consequences, until the last small handicraftsman and the last small peasant have fallen victim to capitalist large-scale production. The material sacrifice to be made for this purpose in the interest of the peasants and to be defrayed out of public funds can, from the point of view of capitalist economy, be viewed only as money thrown away, but it is nevertheless an excellent investment because it will effect a perhaps tenfold saving in the cost of the social reorganization in general. In this sense, we can, therefore, afford to deal very liberally with the peasants. This is not the place to go into details, to make concrete proposals to that end; here we can deal only with general principles.

Accordingly, we can do no greater disservice to the Party as well as to the small peasants than to make promises that even only create the impression that we intend to preserve the small holdings permanently. It would mean directly to block the way of the peasants to their emancipation and to degrade the Party to the level of rowdy anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it is the duty of our Party to make clear to the peasants again and again that their position is absolutely hopeless as long as capitalism holds sway, that it is absolutely impossible to preserve their small holdings for them as such, that capitalist large-scale production is absolutely sure to run over their impotent antiquated system of small production as a train runs over a pushcart. If we do this, we shall act in conformity with the inevitable trend of economic development, and this development will not fail to bring our words home to the small peasants.

Incidentally, I cannot leave this subject without expressing my conviction that the authors of the Nantes programme are also essentially of my opinion. Their insight is much too great for them not to know that areas now divided into small holdings are also bound to become common property. They themselves admit that small-holding ownership is destined to disappear. The report of the National Council drawn up by Lafargue and delivered at the Congress of Nantes likewise fully corroborates this view. It has been published in German in the Berlin Sozialdemokrat of October 18 of this year. The contradictory nature of the expressions used in the Nantes programme itself betrays the fact what the authors actually say is not what they want to say. If they are not understood and their statements misused, as has already happened, that is of course their own fault. At any rate, they will have to elucidate their programme and the next French congress revise it thoroughly.

We now come to the bigger peasants. Here as a result of the division of inheritance as well as indebtedness and forced sales of land we find a variegated pattern of intermediate stages, from small-holding peasant to big peasant proprietor, who has retained his old patrimony intact or even added to it. Where the middle peasant lives among small-holding peasants, his interests and views will not differ greatly from theirs; he knows, from his own experience, how many of his kind have already sunk to the level of small peasants. But where middle and big peasants predominate and the operation of the farms requires, generally, the help of male and female servants, it is quite a different matter. Of course a workers’ party has to fight, in the first place, on behalf of the wage-workers — that is, for the male and female servantry and the day laborers. It is unquestionably forbidden to make any promises to the peasants which include the continuance of the wage slavery of the workers. But, as long as the big and middle peasants continue to exist, as such they cannot manage without wage-workers. If it would, therefore, be downright folly on our part to hold out prospects to the small-holding peasants of continuing permanently to be such, it would border on treason were we to promise the same to the big and middle peasants.

We have here again the parallel case of the handicraftsmen in the cities. True, they are more ruined than the peasants, but there still are some who employ journeymen in addition to apprentices, or for whom apprentices do the work of journeymen. Let those of these master craftsmen who want to perpetuate their existence as such cast in their lot with the anti-Semites until they have convinced themselves that they get no help in that quarter either. The rest, who have realized that their mode of production is inevitably doomed, are coming over to us and, moreover, are ready in future to share the lot that is in store for all other workers. The same applies to the big and middle peasants. It goes without saying that we are more interested in their male and female servants and day laborers than in them themselves. If these peasants want to be guaranteed the continued existence of their enterprises, we are in no position whatever to assure them of that. They must then take their place among the anti-Semites, peasant leaguers, and similar parties who derive pleasure from promising everything and keeping nothing. We are economically certain that the big and middle peasants must likewise inevitably succumb to the competition of capitalist production, and the cheap overseas corn, as is proved by the growing indebtedness and the everywhere evident decay of these peasants as well. We can do nothing against this decay except recommend here too the pooling of farms to form co-operative enterprises, in which the exploitation of wage labour will be eliminated more and more, and their gradual transformation into branches of the great national producers’ co-operative with each branch enjoying equal rights and duties can be instituted. If these peasants realize the inevitability of the doom of their present mode of production and draw the necessary conclusions they will come to us and it will be incumbent upon us to facilitate, to the best of our ability, also their transition to the changed mode of production. Otherwise, we shall have to abandon them to their fate and address ourselves to their wage-workers, among whom we shall not fail to find sympathy. Most likely, we shall be able to abstain here as well from resorting to forcible expropriation, and as for the rest to count on future economic developments making also these harder pates amenable to reason.

Only the big landed estates present a perfectly simple case. Here, we are dealing with undisguised capitalist production and no scruples of any sort need restrain us. Here, we are confronted by rural proletarians in masses and our task is clear. As soon as out Party is in possession of political power, it has simply to expropriate the big landed proprietors, just like the manufacturers in industry. Whether this expropriation is to be compensated for or not will, to a great extent, depend not upon us but the circumstances under which we obtain power, and particularly upon the attitude adopted by these gentry, the big landowners, themselves. We by no mens consider compensation as impermissible in any event; Marx told me (and how many times!) that, in his opinion, we would get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole lot of them. But, this does not concern us here. The big estates, thus restored to the community, are to be turned over by us to the rural workers who are already cultivating them and are to be organized into co-operatives. They are to be assigned to them for their use and benefit under the control of the community. Nothing can as yet be stated as to the terms of their tenure. At any rate, the transformation of the capitalist enterprise into a social enterprise is here fully prepared for and can be carried into execution overnight, precisely as in Mr. Krupp’s or Mr. von Stumm’s factory. And the example of these agricultural co-operatives would convince also the last of the still resistant small-holding peasants, and surely also many big peasants, of the advantages of co-operative, large-scale production.

Thus, we can open up prospects here before the rural proletarians as splendid as those facing the industrial workers, and it can be only a question of time, and of only a very short time, before we win over to our side the rural workers of Prussia east of the Elbe. But once we have the East-Elbe rural workers, a different wind will blow at once all over Germany. The actual semi-servitude of the East-Elbe rural workers is the main basis of the domination of Prussian Junkerdom and thus of Prussia’s specific overlordship in Germany. It is the Junkers east of the Elbe who have created and preserved the specifically Prussian character of the bureaucracy as well as of the body of army officers — the Junkers, who are being reduced more and more to ruin by their indebtedness, impoverishment, and parasitism, at state and private cost and for that very reason cling the more desperately to the dominion which they exercise; the Junkers, whose haughtiness, bigotry, and arrogance, have brought the German Reich of the Prussian nation [3] within the country into such hatred — even when every allowance is made for the fact that at present this Reich is inevitable as the sole form in which national unity can now be attained — and abroad so little respect despite its brilliant victories. The power of these Junkers is grounded on the fact that within the compact territory of the seven old Prussian provinces — that is, approximately one-third of the entire territory of the Reich — they have at their disposal the landed property, which here brings with it both social and political power. And not only the landed property but, through their beet-sugar refineries and liquor distilleries, also the most important industries of this area. Neither the big landowners of the rest of Germany nor the big industrialists are in a similarly favorable positions. Neither of them have a compact kingdom at their disposal. Both are scattered over a wide stretch of territory and complete among themselves and with other social elements and compete among themselves and with other social elements surrounding them for economic and political predominance. But, the economic foundation of this domination of the Prussian Junkers is steadily deteriorating. Here, too, indebtedness and impoverishment are spreading irresistibly, despite all state assistance (and since Frederick II, this item is included in every regular Junker budget). Only the actual semi-serfdom sanctioned by law and custom and the resulting possibility of the unlimited exploitation of the rural workers, still barely keep the drowning Junkers above water. Sow the seed of Social-Democracy among these workers, give them the courage and cohesion to insist upon their rights, and the glory of the Junkers will be put to an end. The great reactionary power, which to Germany represents the same barbarous, predatory element as Russian tsardom does to the whole of Europe, will collapse like a pricked bubble. The “picked regiments” of the Prussian army will become Social-Democratic, which will result in a shift of power that is pregnant with an entire upheaval. But, for this reason, it is of vastly greater importance to win the rural proletariat east of the Elbe than the small peasants of Western Germany, or yet the middle peasants of Southern Germany. It is here, in East-Elbe Prussia, that the decisive battle of our cause will have to be fought and for this very reason both government and Junkerdom will do their utmost to prevent our gaining access here. And should, as we are threatened, new violent measures be resorted to to impede the spread of our Party, their primary purpose will be to protect the East-Elbe rural proletariat from our propaganda. It’s all the same to us. We shall win it nevertheless.

Annexure3: British Pacifism and the British Dislike of Theory by V I Lenin

[Written in June 1915, First published in Pravda No. 169 on July 27, 1924]

Political freedom has hitherto been far more extensive in Britain than elsewhere in Europe. Here, more than anywhere else, the bourgeoisie are used to governing and know how to govern. The relations between the classes are more developed and in many respects clearer than in other countries. The absence of conscription gives the people more liberty in their attitude towards the war in the sense that anyone may refuse to join the colours, which is why the government (which in Britain is a committee, in its purest form, for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie) are compelled to bend every effort to rouse “popular” enthusiasm for the war. That aim could never be attained without a radical change in the laws, had the mass of proletarians not been completely disorganised and demoralised by the desertion to a Liberal, i.e., bourgeois, policy, of a minority of the best placed, skilled and unionised workers. The British trade unions comprise about one-fifth of all wage workers. Most trade union leaders are Liberals; Marx long ago called them agents of the bourgeoisie.

All these features of Britain help us, on the one hand, better to understand the essence of present-day social-chauvinism, that essence being identical in autocratic and democratic countries, in militarist and conscription-free countries; on the other hand, they help us to appreciate, on the basis of facts, the significance of that compromise with social-chauvinism which is expressed, for instance, in the extolling of the slogan of peace, etc.

The Fabian Society is undoubtedly the most consummate expression of opportunism and of Liberal-Labour policy. The reader should look into the correspondence of Marx and Engels with Sorge (two Russian translations of which have appeared). There he will find an excellent characterisation of that society given by Engels, who treats Messrs. Sidney Webb & Co. as a gang of bourgeois rogues who would demoralise the workers, influence them in a counter-revolutionary spirit. One may vouch for the fact that no Second International leader with any responsibility and influence has ever attempted to refute this estimation of Engels’s, or even to doubt its correctness.

Let us now compare the facts, leaving theory aside for a moment. You will see that the Fabians’ behaviour during the war (see, for instance, their weekly paper, The New Statesman[2]), and that of the German Social-Democratic Party, including Kautsky, are identical. The same direct and indirect defence of social-chauvinism; the same combination of that defence with a readiness to utter all sorts of kindly, humane and near-Left phrases about peace, disarmament, etc., etc.

The fact stands, and the conclusion to be drawn—however unpleasant it may be to various persons—is inescapably and undoubtedly the following: in practice the leaders of the present-day German Social-Democratic Party, including Kautsky, are exactly the same kind of agents of the bourgeoisie that Engels called the Fabians long ago. The Fabians’ non-recognition of Marxism and its “recognition” by Kautsky and Co. make no difference whatever in the essentials, in the facts of politics; the only thing proved is that some writers, politicians, etc., have converted Marxism into Struvism. Their hypocrisy is not a private vice with them; in individual cases they may be highly virtuous heads of families; their hypocrisy is the result of the objective falseness of their social status: they are supposed to represent the revolutionary proletariat, whereas they are actually agents charged with the business of inculcating bourgeois, chauvinist ideas in the proletariat.

The Fabians are more sincere and honest than Kautsky and Co., because they have not promised to stand for revolution; politically, however, they are of the same kidney.

The long history of Britain’s political freedom and the developed condition of her political life in general, and of her bourgeoisie in particular, have resulted in various shades of bourgeois opinion being able to find rapid, free and open expression in that country’s new political organisations. One such organisation is the Union of Democratic Control, whose secretary and treasurer is E. D. Morel, now a regular contributor to The Labour Leader, the Independent Labour Party’s central organ. This individual was for several years the Liberal Party’s nominee for the Birkenhead constituency. When Morel came out against the war, shortly after its outbreak, the committee of the Birkenhead Liberal association notified him, in a letter dated October 2, 1914, that his candidature would no longer be acceptable, i.e., he was simply expelled from the Party. Morel replied to this in a letter of October 14, which he subsequently published as a pamphlet entitled The Outbreak of the War. Like a number of other articles by Morel, the pamphlet exposes his government, proving the falseness of assertions that the rape of Belgium’s neutrality caused the war, or that the war is aimed at the destruction of Prussian imperialism, etc., etc. Morel defends the programme of the Union of Democratic Control—peace, disarmament, all territories to have the right of self-determination by plebiscite, and the democratic control of foreign policy.

All this shows that as an individual, Morel undoubtedly deserves credit for his sincere sympathy with democracy, for turning away from the jingoist bourgeoisie to the pacifist bourgeoisie. When Morel cites the facts to prove that his government duped the people when it denied the existence of secret treaties although such treaties actually existed; that the British bourgeoisie, as early as 1887, fully realised that Belgium’s neutrality would inevitably be violated in the event of a Franco-German war, and emphatically rejected the idea of interfering (Germany not yet being a dangerous competitor!); that in a number of books published before the war French militarists such as Colonel Boucher quite openly acknowledged the existence of plans for an aggressive war by France and Russia against Germany; that the well-known British military authority, Colonel Repington, admitted in 1911 in the press, that the growth of Russian armaments after 1905 had been a threat to Germany—when Morel reveals all this, we cannot but admit that we are dealing with an exceptionally honest and courageous bourgeois, who is not afraid to break with his own party.

Yet anyone will at once concede that, after all, Morel is a bourgeois, whose talk about peace and disarmament is a lot of empty phrases, since without revolutionary action by the proletariat there can be neither a democratic peace nor disarmament. Though he has broken with the Liberals on the question of the present war, Morel remains a Liberal on all other economic and political issues. Why is it, then, that when Kautsky, in Germany, gives a Marxist guise to the self-same bourgeois phrases about peace and disarmament, this is not considered hypocrisy on his part, but stands to his merit? Only the undeveloped character of political relations and the absence of political freedom prevent the formation in Germany, as rapidly and smoothly as in Britain, of a bourgeois league for peace and disarmament, with Kautsky’s programme.

Let us, then, admit the truth that Kautsky’s stand is that of a pacifist bourgeois, not of a revolutionary Social-Democrat.

The events we are living amidst are great enough for us to be courageous in recognising the truth, no matter whom it may concern.

With their dislike of abstract theory and their pride in their practicality, the British often pose political issues more directly, thus helping the socialists of other countries to discover the actual content beneath the husk of wording of every-kind (including the “Marxist”). Instructive in this respect is the pamphlet Socialism and War,[1] published before the war by the jingoist paper, The Clarion. The pamphlet contains an anti-war “manifesto” by Upton Sinclair, the U.S. socialist, and also a reply to him from the jingoist Robert Blatchford, who has long adopted Hyndman’s imperialist viewpoint.

Sinclair is a socialist of the emotions, without any theoretical training. He states the issue in “simple” fashion; incensed by the approach of war, he seeks salvation from it in socialism.

“We are told,” Sinclair writes, “that the socialist movement is yet too weak so that we must wait for its evolution. But evolution is working in the hearts of men; we are its instruments, and if we do not struggle, there is no evolution. We are told that the movement [against war] would be crushed out; but I declare my faith that the crushing out of any rebellion which sought, from motive of sublime humanity to prevent war, would be the greatest victory that socialism has ever gained—would shake the conscience of civilisation and rouse the workers of the world as nothing in all history has yet done. Let us not be too fearful for our movement nor put too much stress upon numbers and the outward appearances of power. A thousand men aglow with faith and determination are stronger than a million grown cautious and respectable; and there is no danger to the socialist movement so great as the danger of becoming an established institution.”

This, as can be seen, is a naïve, theoretically unreasoned, but profoundly correct warning against any vulgarising of socialism, and a call to revolutionary struggle.

What does Blatchford say in reply to Sinclair?

“It is capitalists and militarists who make wars. That is true. . . ,” he says. Blatchford is as anxious for peace and for socialism taking the place of capitalism as any socialist in the world. But Sinclair will not convince him, or do away with the facts with “rhetoric and fine phrases”. “Facts, my dear Sinclair, are obstinate things, and the German danger is a fact.” Neither the British nor the German socialists are strong enough to prevent war, and “Sinclair greatly exaggerates the power of British socialism. The British socialists are not united; they have no money, no arms, no discipline”. The only thing they can do is to help the British Government build up the navy; there is not, nor can there be, any other guarantee of peace.

Neither before nor since the outbreak of the war have the chauvinists ever been so outspoken in Continental Europe. In Germany it is not frankness that is prevalent, but Kautsky’s hypocrisy and playing at sophistry. The same is true of Plekhanov. That is why it is so instructive to cast a glance at the situation in a more advanced country, where nobody will be taken in with sophisms or a travesty of Marxism. Here issues are stated in a more straightforward and truthful manner. Let us learn from the “advanced” British.

Sinclair is naïve in his appeal, although fundamentally it is a very correct one; he is naïve because he ignores the development of mass socialism over the last fifty years and the struggle of trends within socialism; he ignores the conditions for the growth of revolutionary action when an objectively revolutionary situation and a revolutionary organisation exist. The “emotional” approach cannot make up for that. The intense and bitter struggle between powerful trends in socialism, between the opportunist and revolutionary trends, cannot be evaded by the use of rhetoric.

Blatchford speaks out undisguisedly, revealing the most covert argument of the Kautskyites and Co., who are afraid to tell the truth. We are still weak, that is all, says Blatchford; but his outspokenness at once lays bare his opportunism, his jingoism. It at once becomes obvious that he serves the bourgeoisie and the opportunists. By declaring that socialism is “weak” he himself weakens it by preaching an anti-socialist, bourgeois, policy.

Like Sinclair, but conversely, like a coward and not like a fighter, like a traitor and not like the recklessly brave, he, too, ignores the conditions making for a revolutionary situation.

As for his practical conclusions, his policy (the rejection of revolutionary action, of propaganda for such action and preparation of it), Blatchford, the vulgar jingoist, is in complete accord with Plekhanov and Kautsky.

Marxist words have in our days become a cover for a total renunciation of Marxism; to be a Marxist, one must expose the “Marxist hypocrisy” of the leaders of the Second International, fearlessly recognise the struggle of the two trends in socialism, and get to the bottom of the problems relating to that struggle. Such is the conclusion to be drawn from British relationships, which show us the Marxist essence of the matter, without Marxist words.

Annexure4: Marxism and Revisionism by V I Lenin

[Published in 1908 in the symposium Karl Marx—1818-1883. Transcription by Marxists Internet Archive]

There is a well-known saying that if geometrical axioms affected human interests attempts would certainly be made to refute them. Theories of natural history which conflicted with the old prejudices of theology provoked, and still provoke, the most rabid opposition. No wonder, therefore, that the Marxian doctrine, which directly serves to enlighten and organise the advanced class in modern society, indicates the tasks facing this class and demonstrates the inevitable replacement (by virtue of economic development) of the present system by a new order—no wonder that this doctrine has had to fight for every step forward in the course of its life.

Needless to say, this applies to bourgeois science and philosophy, officially taught by official professors in order to befuddle the rising generation of the propertied classes and to “coach” it against internal and foreign enemies. This science will not even hear of Marxism, declaring that it has been refuted and annihilated. Marx is attacked with equal zest by young scholars who are making a career by refuting socialism, and by decrepit elders who are preserving the tradition of all kinds of outworn “systems”. The progress of Marxism, the fact that its ideas are spreading and taking firm hold among the working class, inevitably increase the frequency and intensity of these bourgeois attacks on Marxism, which becomes stronger, more hardened and more vigorous every time it is “annihilated” by official science.

But even among doctrines connected with the struggle of the working class, and current mainly among the proletariat, Marxism by no means consolidated its position all at once. In the first half-century of its existence (from the 1840s on) Marxism was engaged in combating theories fundamentally hostile to it. In the early forties Marx and Engels settled accounts with the radical Young Hegelians whose viewpoint was that of philosophical idealism. At the end of the forties the struggle began in the field of economic doctrine, against Proudhonism. The fifties saw the completion of this struggle in criticism of the parties and doctrines which manifested themselves in the stormy year of 1848. In the sixties the struggle shifted from the field of general theory to one closer to the direct labour movement: the ejection of Bakuninism from the International. In the early seventies the stage in Germany was occupied for a short while by the Proudhonist Mühlberger, and in the late seventies by the positivist Dühring. But the influence of both on the proletariat was already absolutely insignificant. Marxism was already gaining an unquestionable victory over all other ideologies in the labour movement.

By the nineties this victory was in the main completed. Even in the Latin countries, where the traditions of Proudhonism held their ground longest of all, the workers’ parties in effect built their programmes and their tactics on Marxist foundations. The revived international organisation of the labour movement—in the shape of periodical international congresses—from the outset, and almost without a struggle, adopted the Marxist standpoint in all essentials. But after Marxism had ousted all the more or less integral doctrines hostile to it, the tendencies expressed in those doctrines began to seek other channels. The forms and causes of the struggle changed, but the struggle continued. And the second half-century of the existence of Marxism began (in the nineties) with the struggle of a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism itself.

Bernstein, a one-time orthodox Marxist, gave his name to this trend by coming forward with the most noise and with the most purposeful expression of amendments to Marx, revision of Marx, revisionism. Even in Russia where—owing to the economic backwardness of the country and the preponderance of a peasant population weighed down by the relics of serfdom—non-Marxist socialism has naturally held its ground longest of all, it is plainly passing into revisionism before our very eyes. Both in the agrarian question (the programme of the municipalisation of all land) and in general questions of programme and tactics, our Social-Narodniks are more and more substituting “amendments” to Marx for the moribund and obsolescent remnants of their old system, which in its own way was integral and fundamentally hostile to Marxism.

Pre-Marxist socialism has been defeated. It is continuing the struggle, no longer on its own independent ground, but on the general ground of Marxism, as revisionism. Let us, then, examine the ideological content of revisionism.

In the sphere of philosophy revisionism followed in the wake of bourgeois professorial “science”. The professors went “back to Kant”—and revisionism dragged along after the neo-Kantians. The professors repeated the platitudes that priests have uttered a thousand times against philosophical materialism—and the revisionists, smiling indulgently, mumbled (word for word after the latest Handbuch) that materialism had been “refuted” long ago. The professors treated Hegel as a “dead dog”,[2] and while themselves preaching idealism, only an idealism a thousand times more petty and banal than Hegel’s, contemptuously shrugged their shoulders at dialectics—and the revisionists floundered after them into the swamp of philosophical vulgarisation of science, replacing “artful” (and revolutionary) dialectics by “simple” (and tranquil) “evolution”. The professors earned their official salaries by adjusting both their idealist and their “critical” systems to the dominant medieval “philosophy” (i.e., to theology)—and the revisionists drew close to them, trying to make religion a “private affair”, not in relation to the modern state, but in relation to the party of the advanced class.

What such “amendments” to Marx really meant in class terms need not be stated: it is self-evident. We shall simply note that the only Marxist in the international Social-Democratic movement to criticise the incredible platitudes of the revisionists from the standpoint of consistent dialectical materialism was Plekhanov. This must be stressed. all the more emphatically since profoundly mistaken attempts are being made at the present time to smuggle in old and reactionary philosophical rubbish disguised as a criticism of Plekhanov’s tactical opportunism.[1]

Passing to political economy, it must be noted first of all that in this sphere the “amendments” of the revisionists were much more comprehensive and circumstantial; attempts were made to influence the public by “new data on economic development”. It was said that concentration and the ousting of small-scale production by large-scale production do not occur in agriculture at all, while they proceed very slowly in commerce and industry. It was said that crises had now become rarer and weaker, and that cartels and trusts would probably enable capital to eliminate them altogether. It was said that the “theory of collapse” to which capitalism is heading was unsound, owing to the tendency of class antagonisms to become milder and less acute. It was said, finally, that it would not be amiss to correct Marx’s theory of value, too, in accordance with Böhm-Bawerk.[3]

The fight against the revisionists on these questions resulted in as fruitful a revival of the theoretical thought in international socialism as did Engels’s controversy with Dühring twenty years earlier. The arguments of the revisionists were analysed with the help of facts and figures. It was proved that the revisionists were systematically painting a rose-coloured picture of modern small-scale production. The technical and commercial superiority of large-scale production over small-scale production not only in industry, but also in agriculture, is proved by irrefutable facts. But commodity production is far less developed in agriculture, and modern statisticians and economists are, as a rule, not very skilful in picking out the special branches (sometimes even the operations) in agriculture which indicate that agriculture is being progressively drawn into the process of exchange in world economy. Small-scale production maintains itself on the ruins of natural economy by constant worsening of diet, by chronic starvation, by lengthening of the working day, by deterioration in the quality and the care of cattle, in a word, by the very methods whereby handicraft production maintained itself against capitalist manufacture. Every advance in science and technology inevitably and relentlessly undermines the foundations of small-scale production in capitalist society; and it is the task of socialist political economy to investigate this process in all its forms, often complicated and intricate, and to demonstrate to the small producer the impossibility of his holding his own under capitalism, the hopelessness of peasant farming under capitalism, and the necessity for the peasant to adopt the standpoint of the proletarian. On this question the revisionists sinned, in the scientific sense, by superficial generalisations based on facts selected one-sidedly and without reference to the system of capitalism as a whole. From the political point of view, they sinned by the fact that they inevitably, whether they wanted to or not, invited or urged the peasant to adopt the attitude of a small proprietor (i.e., the attitude of the bourgeoisie) instead of urging him to adopt the point of view of the revolutionary proletarian.

The position of revisionism was even worse as regards the theory of crises and the theory of collapse. Only for a very short time could people, and then only the most short-sighted, think of refashioning the foundations of Marx’s theory under the influence of a few years of industrial boom and prosperity. Realities very soon made it clear to the revisionists that crises were not a thing of the past: prosperity was followed by a crisis. The forms, the sequence, the picture of particular crises changed, but crises remained an inevitable component of the capitalist system. While uniting production, the cartels and trusts at the same time, and in a way that was obvious to all, aggravated the anarchy of production, the insecurity of existence of the proletariat and the oppression of capital, thereby intensifying class antagonisms to an unprecedented degree. That capitalism is heading for a break-down—in the sense both of individual political and economic crises and of the complete collapse of the entire capitalist system—has been made particularly clear, and on a particularly large scale, precisely by the new giant trusts. The recent financial crisis in America and the appalling increase of unemployment all over Europe, to say nothing of the impending industrial crisis to which many symptoms are pointing—all this has resulted in the recent “theories” of the revisionists having been forgotten by everybody, including, apparently, many of the revisionists themselves. But the lessons which this instability of the intellectuals had given the working class must not be forgotten.

As to the theory of value, it need only be said that apart from the vaguest of hints and sighs, à la Böhm-Bawerk, the revisionists have contributed absolutely nothing, and have therefore left no traces whatever on the development of scientific thought.

In the sphere of politics, revisionism did really try to revise the foundation of Marxism, namely, the doctrine of the class struggle. Political freedom, democracy and universal suffrage remove the ground for the class struggle—we were told—and render untrue the old proposition of the Communist Manifesto that the working men have no country. For, they said, since the “will of the majority” prevails in a democracy, one must neither regard the state as an organ of class rule, nor reject alliances with the progressive, social-reform bourgeoisie against the reactionaries.

It cannot be disputed that these arguments of the revisionists amounted to a fairly well-balanced system of views, namely, the old and well-known liberal-bourgeois views. The liberals have always said that bourgeois parliamentarism destroys classes and class divisions, since the right to vote and the right to participate in the government of the country are shared by all citizens without distinction. The whole history of Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the whole history of the Russian revolution in the early twentieth, clearly show how absurd such views are. Economic distinctions are not mitigated but aggravated and intensified under the freedom of “democratic” capitalism. Parliamentarism does not eliminate, but lays bare the innate character even of the most democratic bourgeois republics as organs of class oppression. By helping to enlighten and to organise immeasurably wider masses of the population than those which previously took an active part in political events, parliamentarism does not make for the elimination of crises and political revolutions, but for the maximum intensification of civil war during such revolutions. The events in Paris in the spring of 1871 and the events in Russia in the winter of 1905 showed as clearly as could be how inevitably this intensification comes about. The French bourgeoisie without a moment’s hesitation made a deal with the enemy of the whole nation, with the foreign army which had ruined its country, in order to crush the proletarian movement. Whoever does not understand the inevitable inner dialectics of parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy—which leads to an even sharper decision of the argument by mass violence than formerly—will never be able on the basis of this parliamentarism to conduct propaganda and agitation consistent in principle, really preparing the working-class masses for victorious participation in such “arguments”. The experience of alliances, agreements and blocs with the social-reform liberals in the West and with the liberal reformists (Cadets) in the Russian revolution, has convincingly shown that these agreements only blunt the consciousness of the masses, that they do not enhance but weaken the actual significance of their struggle, by linking fighters with elements who are least capable of fighting and most vacillating and treacherous. Millerandism in France—the biggest experiment in applying revisionist political tactics on a wide, a really national scale—has provided a practical appraisal of revisionism that will never be forgotten by the proletariat all over the world.

A natural complement to the economic and political tendencies of revisionism was its attitude to the ultimate aim of the socialist movement. “The movement is everything, the ultimate aim is nothing”—this catch-phrase of Bernstein’s expresses the substance of revisionism better than many long disquisitions. To determine its conduct from case to case, to adapt itself to the events of the day and to the chopping and changing of petty politics, to forget the primary interests of the proletariat and the basic features of the whole capitalist system, of all capitalist evolution, to sacrifice these primary interests for the real or assumed advantages of the moment—such is the policy of revisionism. And it patently follows from the very nature of this policy that it may assume an infinite variety of forms, and that every more or less “new” question, every more or less unexpected and unforeseen turn of events, even though it change the basic line of development only to an insignificant degree and only for the briefest period, will always inevitably give rise to one variety of revisionism or another.

The inevitability of revisionism is determined by its class roots in modern society. Revisionism is an international phenomenon. No thinking socialist who is in the least informed can have the slightest doubt that the relation between the orthodox and the Bernsteinians in Germany, the Guesdists and the Jaurèsists (and now particularly the Broussists) in France, the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party in Great Britain, Brouckère and Vandervelde in Belgium, the Integralists and the Reformists in Italy, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in Russia, is everywhere essentially similar, notwithstanding the immense variety of national conditions and historical factors in the present state of all these countries. In reality, the “division” within the present international socialist movement is now proceeding along the same lines in all the various countries of the world, which testifies to a tremendous advance compared with thirty or forty years ago, when heterogeneous trends in the various countries were struggling within the one international socialist movement. And that “revisionism from the left” which has taken shape in the Latin countries as “revolutionary syndicalism”,[4] is also adapting itself to Marxism, “amending” it: Labriola in Italy and Lagardelle in France frequently appeal from Marx who is understood wrongly to Marx who is understood rightly.

We cannot stop here to analyse the ideological content of this revisionism, which as yet is far from having developed to the same extent as opportunist revisionism: it has not yet become international, has not yet stood the test of a single big practical battle with a socialist party in any single country. We confine ourselves therefore to that “revisionism from the right” which was described above.

Wherein lies its inevitability in capitalist society? Why is it more profound than the differences of national peculiarities and of degrees of capitalist development? Because in every capitalist country, side by side with the proletariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors. Capitalism arose and is constantly arising out of small production. A number of new “middle strata” are inevitably brought into existence again and again by capitalism (appendages to the factory, work at home, small workshops scattered all over the country to meet the requirements of big industries, such as the bicycle and automobile industries, etc.). These new small producers are just as inevitably being cast again into the ranks of the proletariat. It is quite natural that the petty-bourgeois world-outlook should again and again crop up in the ranks of the broad workers’ parties. It is quite natural that this should be so and always will be so, right up to the changes of fortune that will take place in the proletarian revolution. For it would be a profound mistake to think that the “complete” proletarianisation of the majority of the population is essential for bringing about such a revolution. What we now frequently experience only in the domain of ideology, namely, disputes over theoretical amendments to Marx; what now crops up in practice only over individual side issues of the labour movement, as tactical differences with the revisionists and splits on this basis—is bound to be experienced by the working class on an incomparably larger scale when the proletarian revolution will sharpen all disputed issues, will focus all differences on points which are of the most immediate importance in determining the conduct of the masses, and will make it necessary in the heat of the fight to distinguish enemies from friends, and to cast out bad allies in order to deal decisive blows at the enemy.

The ideological struggle waged by revolutionary Marxism against revisionism at the end of the nineteenth century is but the prelude to the great revolutionary battles of the proletariat, which is marching forward to the complete victory of its cause despite all the waverings and weaknesses of the petty bourgeoisie.

Annexure5: Marxism and Reformism by V I Lenin

[Published on September 12, 1913 in Pravda Truda No. 2. Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala. Credit “Marxists Internet Archive”]

Unlike the anarchists, the Marxists recognise struggle for reforms, i.e., for measures that improve the conditions of the working people without destroying the power of the ruling class. At the same time, however, the Marxists wage a most resolute struggle against the reformists, who, directly or indirectly, restrict the aims and activities of the working class to the winning of reforms. Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital.

The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery. For that reason reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled.

And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx’s theory, i.e., realised the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continued to exist reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle.

The stronger reformist influence is among the workers the weaker they are, the greater their dependence on the bourgeoisie, and the easier it is for the bourgeoisie to nullify reforms by various subterfuges. The more independent the working-class movement, the deeper and broader its aims, and the freer it is from reformist narrowness the easier it is for the workers to retain and utilise improvements.

There are reformists in all countries, for everywhere the bourgeoisie seek, in one way or another, to corrupt the workers and turn them into contented slaves who have given up all thought of doing away with slavery. In Russia, the reformists are liquidators, who renounce our past and try to lull the workers with dreams of a new, open, legal party. Recently the St. Petersburg liquidators were forced by Severnaya = Pravda[1] to defend themselves against the charge of reformism. Their arguments should be carefully analysed in order to clarify an extremely important question.

We are not reformists, the St. Petersburg liquidators wrote, because we have not said that reforms are everything and the ultimate goal nothing; we have spoken of movement to the ultimate goal; we have spoken of advancing through the struggle for reforms to the fulness of the aims set.

Let us now see how this defence squares with the facts.

First fact. The liquidator Sedov, summarising the statements of all the liquidators, wrote that of the Marxists’ “three pillars” two are no longer suitable for our agitation. Sedov retained the demand for an eight-hour day, which, theoretically, can be realised as a reform. He deleted, or relegated to the background the very things that go beyond reforms. Consequently, Sedov relapsed into downright opportunism, following the very policy expressed in the formula: the ultimate goal is nothing. When the “ultimate goal” (even in relation to democracy) is pushed further and further away from our agitation, that is reformism.

Second fact. The celebrated August Conference (last year’s) of the liquidators likewise pushed non-reformist demands further and further away—until some special occasion—instead of bringing them closer, into the heart of our agitation.

Third fact. By denying and disparaging the “old” and dissociating themselves from it, the liquidators thereby confine themselves to reformism. In the present situation, the connection between reformism and the renunciation of the “old” is obvious.

Fourth fact. The workers’ economic movement evokes the wrath and attacks of the liquidators (who speak of “crazes”, “milling the air”, etc., etc.) as soon as it adopts slogans that go beyond reformism.

What is the result? In words, the liquidators reject reformism as a principle, but in practice they adhere to it all along the line. They assure us, on the one hand, that for them reforms are not the be-all and end-all, but on the other hand, every time the Marxists go beyond reformism, the liquidators attack them or voice their contempt.

However, developments in every sector of the working-class movement show that the Marxists, far, from lagging behind, are definitely in the lead in making practical use of reforms, and in fighting for them. Take the Duma elections at the worker curia level—the speeches of our deputies inside and outside the Duma, the organisation of the workers’ press, the utilisation of the insurance reform; take the biggest union, the Metalworkers’ Union, etc.,—everywhere the Marxist workers are ahead of the liquidators, in the direct, immediate, “day-to-day” activity of agitation, organisation, fighting for reforms and using them.

The Marxists are working tirelessly, not missing a single “possibility” of winning and using reforms, and not condemning, but supporting, painstakingly developing every step beyond reformism in propaganda, agitation, mass economic struggle, etc. The liquidators, on the other hand, who have abandoned Marxism, by their attacks on the very existence of the Marxist body, by their destruction of Marxist discipline and advocacy of reformism and a liberal-labour policy, are only disorganising the working-class movement.

Nor, moreover, should the fact be overlooked that in Russia reformism is manifested also in a peculiar form, in identifying the fundamental political situation in present-day Russia with that of present-day Europe. From the liberal’s point of view this identification is legitimate, for the liberal believes and professes the view that “thank God, we have a Constitution”. The liberal expresses the interests of the bourgeoisie when he insists that, after October 17, every step by democracy beyond reformism is madness, a crime, a sin, etc.

But it is these bourgeois views that are applied in practice by our liquidators, who constantly and systematically “transplant” to Russia (on paper) the “open party” and the “struggle for a legal party”, etc. In other words, like the liberals, they preach the transplanting of the European constitution to Russia, without the specific path that in the West led to the adoption of constitutions and their consolidation over generations, in some cases even over centuries. What the liquidators and liberals want is to wash the hide without dipping it in water, as the saying goes.

In Europe, reformism actually means abandoning Marxism and replacing it by bourgeois “social policy”. In Russia, the reformism of the liquidators means not only that, it means destroying the Marxist organisation and abandoning the democratic tasks of the working class, it means replacing them by a liberal-labour policy.

Annexure6: Imperialism and the Split in Socialism by V I Lenin

[Published in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2, December 1916. Transcription by Marxists Internet Archive]

Is there any connection between imperialism and the monstrous and disgusting victory opportunism (in the form of social-chauvinism) has gained over the labour movement in Europe?

This is the fundamental question of modern socialism. And having in our Party literature fully established, first, the imperialist character of our era and of the present war, and, second, the inseparable historical connection between social-chauvinism and opportunism, as well as the intrinsic similarity of their political ideology, we can and must proceed to analyse this fundamental question.

We have to begin with as precise and full a definition of imperialism as possible. Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is monopoly capitalism; parasitic, or decaying capitalism; moribund capitalism. The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism. Monopoly manifests itself in five principal forms:

(1) cartels, syndicates and trusts—the concentration of production has reached a degree which gives rise to these monopolistic associations of capitalists;

(2) the monopolistic position of the big banks—three, four or five giant banks manipulate the whole economic life of America, France, Germany;

(3) seizure of the sources of raw material by the trusts and the financial oligarchy (finance capital is monopoly industrial capital merged with bank capital);

(4) the (economic) partition of the world by the international cartels has begun. There are already over one hundred such international cartels, which command the entire world market and divide it “amicably” among themselves—until war redivides it. The export of capital, as distinct from the export of commodities under non-monopoly capitalism, is a highly characteristic phenomenon and is closely linked with the economic and territorial-political partition of the world;

(5) the territorial partition of the world (colonies) is completed.

Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism in America and Europe, and later in Asia, took final shape in the period 1898–1914. The Spanish-American War (1898), the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the economic crisis in Europe in 1900 are the chief historical landmarks in the new era of world history.

The fact that imperialism is parasitic or decaying capitalism is manifested first of all in the tendency to decay, which is characteristic of every monopoly under the system of private ownership of the means of production. The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated precisely because they are both rotting alive (which by no means precludes an extraordinarily rapid development of capitalism in individual branches of industry, in individual countries, and in individual periods). Secondly, the decay of capitalism is manifested in the creation of a huge stratum of rentiers, capitalists who live by “clipping coupons”. In each of the four leading imperialist countries—England, U.S.A., France and Germany—capital in securities amounts to 100,000 or 150,000 million francs, from which each country derives an annual income of no less than five to eight thousand million. Thirdly, export of capital is parasitism raised to a high pitch. Fourthly, “finance capital strives for domination, not freedom”. Political reaction all along the line is a characteristic feature of imperialism. Corruption, bribery on a huge scale and all kinds of fraud. Fifthly, the exploitation of oppressed nations—which is inseparably connected with annexations—and especially the exploitation of colonies by a handful of “Great” Powers, increasingly transforms the “civilised” world into a parasite on the body of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations. The Roman proletarian lived at the expense of society. Modern society lives at the expense of the modern proletarian. Marx specially stressed this profound observation of Sismondi. Imperialism somewhat changes the situation. A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations.

It is clear why imperialism is moribund capitalism, capitalism in transition to socialism: monopoly, which grows out of capitalism, is already dying capitalism, the beginning of its transition to socialism. The tremendous socialisation of labour by imperialism (what its apologists-the bourgeois economists-call “interlocking”) produces the same result.

Advancing this definition of imperialism brings us into complete contradiction to K. Kautsky, who refuses to regard imperialism as a “phase of capitalism” and defines it as a policy “preferred” by finance capital, a tendency of “industrial” countries to annex “agrarian” countries. Kautsky’s definition is thoroughly false from the theoretical standpoint. What distinguishes imperialism is the rule not of industrial capital, but of finance capital, the striving to annex not agrarian countries, particularly, but every kind of country. Kautsky divorces imperialist politics from imperialist economics, he divorces monopoly in politics from monopoly in economics in order to pave the way for his vulgar bourgeois reformism, such as “disarmament”, “ultraimperialism” and similar nonsense. The whole purpose and significance of this theoretical falsity is to obscure the most profound contradictions of imperialism and thus justify the theory of “unity” with the apologists of imperialism, the outright social-chauvinists and opportunists.

We have dealt at sufficient length with Kautsky’s break with Marxism on this point in Sotsial-Demokrat and Kommunist. Our Russian Kautskyites, the supporters of the Organising Committee (O.C.), headed by Axelrod and Spectator, including even Martov, and to a large degree Trotsky, preferred to maintain a discreet silence on the question of Kautskyism as a trend. They did not dare defend Kautsky’s war-time writings, confining themselves simply to praising Kautsky (Axelrod in his German pamphlet, which the Organising Committee has promised to publish in Russian) or to quoting Kautsky’s private letters (Spectator), in which he says he belongs to the opposition and jesuitically tries to nullify his chauvinist declarations.

It should be noted that Kautsky’s “conception” of imperialism—which is tantamount to embellishing imperialism—is a retrogression not only compared with Hilferding’s Finance Capital (no matter how assiduously Hilferding now defends Kautsky and “unity” with the social-chauvinists!) but also compared with the social-liberal J. A. Hobson. This English economist, who in no way claims to be a Marxist, defines imperialism, and reveals its contradictions, much more profoundly in a book published in 1902[4] . This is what Hobson (in whose book may be found nearly all Kautsky’s pacifist and “conciliatory” banalities) wrote on the highly important question of the parasitic nature of imperialism:

Two sets of circumstances, in Hobson’s opinion, weakened the power of the old empires: (1) “economic parasitism”, and (2) formation of armies from dependent peoples. “There is first the habit of economic parasitism, by which the ruling state has used its provinces, colonies, and dependencies in order to enrich its ruling class and to bribe its lower classes into acquiescence.” Concerning the second circumstance, Hobson writes:

“One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of imperialism [this song about the “blindness” of imperialists comes more appropriately from the social-liberal Hobson than from the “Marxist” Kautsky] is the reckless indifference with which Great Britain, France, and other imperial nations are embarking on this perilous dependence. Great Britain has gone farthest. Most of the fighting by which we have won our Indian Empire has been done by natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt, great standing armies are placed under British commanders; almost all the fighting associated with our African dominions, except in the southern part, has been done for us by natives.”

The prospect of partitioning China elicited from Hobson the following economic appraisal: “The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a larger body of personal servants and workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods: all the main arterial industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and semi-manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa…. We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western states, a European federation of Great Powers which, so far from forwarding the cause of world civilisation, might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy. Let those who would scout such a theory [he should have said: prospect] as undeserving of consideration examine the economic and social condition of districts in Southern England today which are already reduced to this condition, and reflect upon the vast extension of such a system which might be rendered feasible by the subjection of China to the economic control of similar groups of financiers, investors [rentiers] and political and business officials, draining the greatest potential reservoir of profit the world has ever known, in order to consume it in Europe. The situation is far too complex, the play of world forces far too incalculable, to render this or any other single interpretation of the future very probable; but the influences which govern the imperialism of Western Europe today are moving in this direction, and, unless counteracted or diverted, make towards such a consummation.”

Hobson, the social-liberal, fails to see that this “counteraction” can be offered only by the revolutionary proletariat and only in the form of a social revolution. But then he is a social-liberal! Nevertheless, as early as 1902 he had an excellent insight into the meaning and significance of a “United States of Europe” (be it said for the benefit of Trotsky the Kautskyite!) and of all that is now being glossed over by the hypocritical Kautskyites of various countries, namely, that the opportunists (social-chauvinists) are working hand in glove with the imperialist bourgeoisie precisely towards creating an imperialist Europe on the backs of Asia and Africa, and that objectively the opportunists are a section of the petty bourgeoisie and of a certain strata of the working class who have been bribed out of imperialist superprofits and converted to watchdogs of capitalism and corruptors of the labour movement.

Both in articles and in the resolutions of our Party, we have repeatedly pointed to this most profound connection, the economic connection, between the imperialist bourgeoisie and the opportunism which has triumphed (for long?) in the labour movement. And from this, incidentally, we concluded that a split with the social-chauvinists was inevitable. Our Kautskyites preferred to evade the question! Martov, for instance, uttered in his lectures a sophistry which in the Bulletin of the Organising Committee, Secretariat Abroad[9] (No. 4, April 10, 1916) is expressed as follows:

“…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 the most highly skilled fatally drifted away from it towards opportunism….”

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 bourgeoisie! And that is the very fact the sophists of the O.C. want to evade! They confine themselves to the “official optimism” the Kautskyite Hilferding and many others now flaunt: 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 O.C. supporters, Martov and Co.—are optimists… with regard to opportunism. That is the whole point!

The proletariat is the child of capitalism—of world capitalism, and not only of European capitalism, or of imperialist capitalism. On a world scale, fifty years sooner or fifty years later—measured on a world scale, this is a minor point—the “proletariat” of course “will be” united, and 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, who are the servants, the agents of the bourgeoisie and the vehicles of its influence, and unless the labour movement rids itself of them, it will remain a bourgeois labour movement. By advocating “unity” with the opportunists, with the Legiens and Davids, the Plekhanovs, the Chkhenkelis and Potresovs, etc., you are, objectively, defending the enslavement of the workers by the imperialist bourgeoisie with the aid of its best agents in the labour movement. The victory of revolutionary Social-Democracy on a world scale is absolutely inevitable, only it is moving and will move, is proceeding and will proceed, against you, it will be a victory over you.

These two trends, one might even say two parties, in the present-day labour movement, which in 1914–16 so obviously parted ways all over the world, were traced by Engels and Marx in England throughout the course of decades, roughly from 1858 to 1892.

Neither Marx nor Engels lived to see the imperialist epoch of world capitalism, which began not earlier than 1898–1900. But it has been a peculiar feature of England that even in the middle of the nineteenth century she already revealed at least two major distinguishing features of imperialism: (1) vast colonies, and (2) monopoly profit (due to her monopoly position in the world market). In both respects England at that time was an exception among capitalist countries, and Engels and Marx, analysing this exception, quite clearly and definitely indicated its connection with the (temporary) victory of opportunism in the English labour movement.

In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: “…The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.” In a letter to Sorge, dated September 21, 1872, Engels informs him that Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal Council of the International and secured a vote of censure on Marx for saying that “the English labour leaders had sold themselves”. Marx wrote to Sorge on August 4, 1874: “As to the urban workers here [in England], it is a pity that the whole pack of leaders did not get into Parliament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot.” In a letter to Marx, dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks about “those very worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.” In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”

On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: “The most repulsive thing here [in England] is the bourgeois ‘respectability’, which has grown deep into the bones of the workers…. Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one realises, what a revolution is good for, after all.”[10] In a letter, dated April 19, 1890: “But under the surface the movement [of the working class in England] is going on, is embracing ever wider sections and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest [Engels’s italics] strata. The day is no longer far off when this mass will suddenly find itself, when it will dawn upon it that it itself is this colossal mass in motion.” On March 4, 1891: “The failure of the collapsed Dockers’ Union; the ‘old’ conservative trade unions, rich and therefore cowardly, remain lone on the field….” September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Congress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day, were defeated “and the bourgeois papers recognise the defeat of the bourgeois labour party” (Engels’s italics throughout)….

That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an “aristocracy among the working class”, of a “privileged minority of the workers”, in contradistinction to the “great mass of working people”. “A small, privileged, protected minority” of the working class alone was “permanently benefited” by the privileged position of England in 1848–68, whereas “the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement”…. “With the break-down of that [England’s industrial] monopoly, the English working class will lose that privileged position…” The members of the “new” unions, the unions of the unskilled workers, “had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old unionists’” …. “The so-called workers’ representatives” in England are people “who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism…”

We have deliberately quoted the direct statements of Marx and Engels at rather great length in order that the reader may study them as a whole. And they should be studied, they are worth carefully pondering over. For they are the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist era.

Here too, Kautsky has tried to “befog the issue” and substitute for Marxism sentimental conciliation with the opportunists. Arguing against the avowed and naive social-imperialists (men like Lensch) who justify Germany’s participation in the war as a means of destroying England’s monopoly, Kautsky “corrects” this obvious falsehood by another equally obvious falsehood. Instead of a cynical falsehood he employs a suave falsehood! The industrial monopoly of England, he says, has long ago been broken, has long ago been destroyed, and there is nothing left to destroy.

Why is this argument false?

Because, firstly, it overlooks England’s colonial monopoly. Yet Engels, as we have seen, pointed to this very clearly as early as 1882, thirty-four years ago! Although England’s industrial monopoly may have been destroyed, her colonial monopoly not only remains, but has become extremely accentuated, for the whole world is already divided up! By means of this suave lie Kautsky smuggles in the bourgeois-pacifist and opportunist-philistine idea that “there is nothing to fight about”. On the contrary, not only have the capitalists something to fight about now, but they cannot help fighting if they want to preserve capitalism, for without a forcible redivision of colonies the new imperialist countries cannot obtain the privileges enjoyed by the older (and weaker) imperialist powers.

Secondly, why does England’s monopoly explain the (temporary) victory of opportunism in England? Because monopoly yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the world. The capitalists can devote a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe their own workers, to create something like an alliance (recall the celebrated “alliances” described by the Webbs of English trade unions and employers) between the workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other countries. England’s industrial monopoly was already destroyed by the end of the nineteenth century. That is beyond dispute. But how did this destruction take place? Did all monopoly disappear?

If that were so, Kautsky’s “theory” of conciliation (with the opportunists) would to a certain extent be justified. But it is not so, and that is just the point. Imperialism is monopoly capitalism. Every cartel, trust, syndicate, every giant bank is a monopoly Superprofits have not disappeared; they still remain. The exploitation of all other countries by one privileged, financially wealthy country remains and has become more intense. A handful of wealthy countries—there are only four of them, if we mean independent, really gigantic, “modern” wealth: England, France, the United States and Germany—have developed monopoly to vast proportions, they obtain superprofits running into hundreds, if not thousands, of millions, they “ride on the backs” of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people in other countries and fight among themselves for the division of the particularly rich, particularly fat and particularly easy spoils.

This, in fact, is the economic and political essence of imperialism, the profound contradictions of which Kautsky glosses over instead of exposing.

The bourgeoisie of an imperialist “Great” Power can economically bribe the upper strata of “its” workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million. And how this little sop is divided among the labour ministers, “labour representatives” (remember Engels’s splendid analysis of the term), labour members of War Industries Committees, labour officials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is a secondary question.

Between 1848 and 1868, and to a certain extent even later, only England enjoyed a monopoly: that is why opportunism could prevail there for decades. No other countries possessed either very rich colonies or an industrial monopoly.

The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era. Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys a monopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements, partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital.) This difference explains why England’s monopoly position could remain unchallenged for decades. The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; the era of imperialist wars has begun. It was possible in those days to bribe and corrupt the working class of one country for decades. This is now improbable, if not impossible. But on the other hand, every imperialist “Great” Power can and does bribe smaller strata (than in England in 1848–68) of the “labour aristocracy”. Formerly a “bourgeois labour party”, to use Engels’s remarkably profound expression, could arise only in one country, because it alone enjoyed a monopoly, but, on the other hand, it could exist for a long time. Now a “bourgeois labour party” is inevitable and typical in all imperialist countries; but in view of the desperate struggle they are waging for the division of spoils it is improbable that such a party can prevail for long in a number of countries. For the trusts, the financial oligarchy, high prices, etc., while enabling the bribery of a handful in the top layers, are increasingly oppressing, crushing, ruining and torturing the mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat.

On the one hand, there is the tendency of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists to convert a handful of very rich and privileged nations into “eternal” parasites on the body of the rest of mankind, to “rest on the laurels” of the exploitation of Negroes, Indians, etc., keeping them in subjection with the aid of the excellent weapons of extermination provided by modern militarism. On the other hand, there is the tendency of the masses, who are more oppressed than before and who bear the whole brunt of imperialist wars, to cast off this yoke and to overthrow the bourgeoisie. It is in the struggle between these two tendencies that the history of the labour movement will now inevitably develop. For the first tendency is not accidental; it is “substantiated” economically. In all countries the bourgeoisie has already begotten, fostered and secured for itself “bourgeois labour parties” of social-chauvinists. The difference between a definitely formed party, like Bissolati’s in Italy, for example, which is fully social-imperialist, and, say, the semi-formed near-party of the Potresovs, Gvozdyovs, Bulkins, Chkheidzes, Skobelevs and Co., is an immaterial difference. The important thing is that, economically, the desertion of a stratum of the labour aristocracy to the bourgeoisie has matured and become an accomplished fact; and this economic fact, this shift in class relations, will find political form, in one shape or another, without any particular “difficulty”.

On the economic basis referred to above, the political institutions of modern capitalism—press, parliament associations, congresses etc.—have created political privileges and sops for the respectful, meek, reformist and patriotic office employees and workers, corresponding to the economic privileges and sops. Lucrative an soft jobs in the government or on the war industries committees, in parliament and on diverse committees, on the editorial staffs of “respectable”, legally published newspapers or on the management councils of no less respectable and “bourgeois law-abiding” trade unions—this is the bait by which the imperialist bourgeoisie attracts and rewards the representatives and supporters of the “bourgeois labour parties”.

The mechanics of political democracy works in the same direction. Nothing in our times can be done without elections; nothing can be done without the masses. And in this era of printing and parliamentarism it is impossible to gain the following of the masses without a widely ramified, systematically managed, well-equipped system of flattery, lies, fraud, juggling with fashionable and popular catchwords, and promising all manner of reforms and blessings to the workers right and left—as long as they renounce the revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of bourgeoisie. I would call this system Lloyd-Georgism, after the English Minister Lloyd George, one of the foremost and most dexterous representatives of this system in the classic land of the “bourgeois labour party”. A first-class bourgeois manipulator, an astute politician, a popular orator who will deliver any speeches you like even r-r-revolutionary ones, to a labour audience, and a man who is capable of obtaining sizable sops for docile workers in the shape of social reforms (insurance, etc.), Lloyd George serves the bourgeoisie splendidly,[6] and serves it precisely among the workers, brings its influence precisely to the proletariat, to where the bourgeoisie needs it most and where it finds it most difficult to subject the masses morally.

And is there such a great difference between Lloyd George and the Scheidemanns, Legiens, Hendersons and Hyndmans, Plekhanovs, Renaudels and Co.? Of the latter, it may be objected, some will return to the revolutionary socialism of Marx. This is possible, but it is an insignificant difference in degree, if the question is regarded from its political, i.e., its mass aspect. Certain individuals among the present social-chauvinist leaders may return to the proletariat. But the social-chauvinist or (what is the same thing) opportunist trend can neither disappear nor “return” to the revolutionary proletariat. Wherever Marxism is popular among the workers, this political trend, this “bourgeois labour party”, will swear by the name of Marx. It cannot be prohibited from doing this, just as a trading firm cannot be prohibited from using any particular label, sign or advertisement. It has always been the case in history that after the death of revolutionary leaders who were popular among the oppressed classes, their enemies have attempted to appropriate their names so as to deceive the oppressed classes.

The fact that is that “bourgeois labour parties,” as a political phenomenon, have already been formed in all the foremost capitalist countries, and that unless determined and relentless struggle is waged all along the line against these parties—or groups, trends, etc., it is all the same—there can be no question of a struggle against imperialism, or of Marxism, or of a socialist labour movement. The Chkheidze faction, Nashe Dyelo and Golos Truda in Russia, and the O.C. supporters abroad are nothing but varieties of one such party. There is not the slightest reason for thinking that these parties will disappear before the social revolution. On the contrary, the nearer the revolution approaches, the more strongly it flares up and the more sudden and violent the transitions and leaps in its progress, the greater will be the part the struggle of the revolutionary mass stream against the opportunist petty-bourgeois stream will play in the labour movement. Kautskyism is not an independent trend, because it has no roots either in the masses or in the privileged stratum which has deserted to the bourgeoisie. But the danger of Kautskyism lies in the fact that, utilising the ideology of the past, it endeavours to reconcile the proletariat with the “bourgeois labour party”, to preserve the unity of the proletariat with that party and thereby enhance the latter’s prestige. The masses no longer follow the avowed social-chauvinists: Lloyd George has been hissed down at workers’ meetings in England; Hyndman has left the party; the Renaudels and Scheidemanns, the Potresovs and Gvozdyovs are protected by the police. The Kautskyites’ masked defence of the social-chauvinists is much more dangerous.

One of the most common sophistries of Kautskyism is its reference to the “masses”. We do not want, they say, to break away from the masses and mass organisations! But just think how Engels put the question. In the nineteenth century the “mass organisations” of the English trade unions were on the side of the bourgeois labour party. Marx and Engels did not reconcile themselves to it on this ground; they exposed it. They did not forget, firstly, that the trade union organisations directly embraced a minority of the proletariat. In England then, as in Germany now, not more than one-fifth of the proletariat was organised. No one can seriously think it possible to organise the majority of the proletariat under capitalism. Secondly—and this is the main point—it is not so much a question of the size of an organisation, as of the real, objective significance of its policy: does its policy represent the masses, does it serve them, i.e., does it aim at their liberation from capitalism, or does it represent the interests of the minority, the minority’s reconciliation with capitalism? The latter was true of England in the nineteenth century, and it is true of Germany, etc., now.

Engels draws a distinction between the “bourgeois labour party” of the old trade unions—the privileged minority—and the “lowest mass”, the real majority, and appeals to the latter, who are not infected by “bourgeois respectability”. This is the essence of Marxist tactics!

Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the “defenders of the fatherland” in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.

The only Marxist line in the world labour movement is to explain to the masses the inevitability and necessity of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for revolution by waging a relentless struggle against opportunism, to utilise the experience of the war to expose, not conceal, the utter vileness of national-liberal labour politics.

In the next article, we shall try to sum up the principal features that distinguish this line from Kautskyism.

Annexure7: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V I Lenin

[Chapter VII. Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism.

Written: January-June, 1916. Published: First published in mid-1917 in pamphlet form, Petrograd. Transcription\Markup: Tim Delaney & Kevin Goins (2008). Credit – Marxists Internet Archive]

We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly. Free competition is the basic feature of capitalism, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large-scale industry and forcing out small industry, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale industry, and carrying concentration of production and capital to the point where out of it has grown and is growing monopoly: cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of millions. At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system.

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.

But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

We shall see later that imperialism can and must be defined differently if we bear in mind not only the basic, purely economic concepts—to which the above definition is limited—but also the historical place of this stage of capitalism in relation to capitalism in general, or the relation between imperialism and the two main trends in the working-class movement. The thing to be noted at this point is that imperialism, as interpreted above, undoubtedly represents a special stage in the development of capitalism. To enable the reader to obtain the most well-grounded idea of imperialism, I deliberately tried to quote as extensively as possible bourgeois economists who have to admit the particularly incontrovertible facts concerning the latest stage of capitalist economy. With the same object in view, I have quoted detailed statistics which enable one to see to what degree bank capital, etc., has grown, in what precisely the transformation of quantity into quality, of developed capitalism into imperialism, was expressed. Needless to say, of course, all boundaries in nature and in society are conventional and changeable, and it would be absurd to argue, for example, about the particular year or decade in which imperialism “definitely” became established.

In the matter of defining imperialism, however, we have to enter into controversy, primarily, with Karl Kautsky, the principal Marxist theoretician of the epoch of the so-called Second International—that is, of the twenty-five years between 1889 and 1914. The fundamental ideas expressed in our definition of imperialism were very resolutely attacked by Kautsky in 1915, and even in November 1914, when he said that imperialism must not be regarded as a “phase” or stage of economy, but as a policy, a definite policy “preferred” by finance capital; that imperialism must not be “identified” with “present-day capitalism”; that if imperialism is to be understood to mean “all the phenomena of present-day capitalism”—cartels, protection, the domination of the financiers, and colonial policy—then the question as to whether imperialism is necessary to capitalism becomes reduced to the “flattest tautology”, because, in that case, “imperialism is naturally a vital necessity for capitalism”, and so on. The best way to present Kautsky’s idea is to quote his own definition of imperialism, which is diametrically opposed to the substance of the ideas which I have set forth (for the objections coming from the camp of the German Marxists, who have been advocating similar ideas for many years already, have been long known to Kautsky as the objections of a definite trend in Marxism).

Kautsky’s definition is as follows:

“Imperialism is a product of highly developed industrial capitalism. It consists in the striving of every industrial capitalist nation to bring under its control or to annex all large areas of agrarian [Kautsky’s italics] territory, irrespective of what nations inhabit it.” [1]

This definition is of no use at all because it one-sidedly, i.e., arbitrarily, singles out only the national question (although the latter is extremely important in itself as well as in its relation to imperialism), it arbitrarily and inaccurately connects this question only with industrial capital in the countries which annex other nations, and in an equally arbitrary and inaccurate manner pushes into the forefront the annexation of agrarian regions.

Imperialism is a striving for annexations—this is what the political part of Kautsky’s definition amounts to. It is correct, but very incomplete, for politically, imperialism is, in general, a striving towards violence and reaction. For the moment, however, we are interested in the economic aspect of the question, which Kautsky himself introduced into his definition. The inaccuracies in Kautsky’s definition are glaring. The characteristic feature of imperialism is not industrial but finance capital. It is not an accident that in France it was precisely the extraordinarily rapid development of finance capital, and the weakening of industrial capital, that from the eighties onwards gave rise to the extreme intensification of annexationist (colonial) policy. The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agrarian territories, but even most highly industrialised regions (German appetite for Belgium; French appetite for Lorraine), because (1) the fact that the world is already partitioned obliges those contemplating a redivision to reach out for every kind of territory, and (2) an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony. (Belgium is particularly important for Germany as a base for operations against Britain; Britain needs Baghdad as a base for operations against Germany, etc.)

Kautsky refers especially—and repeatedly—to English writers who, he alleges, have given a purely political meaning to the word “imperialism” in the sense that he, Kautsky, understands it. We take up the work by the English writer Hobson, Imperialism, which appeared in 1902, and there we read:

“The new imperialism differs from the older, first, in substituting for the ambition of a single growing empire the theory and the practice of competing empires, each motivated by similar lusts of political aggrandisement and commercial gain; secondly, in the dominance of financial or investing over mercantile interests.” [2]

We see that Kautsky is absolutely wrong in referring to English writers generally (unless he meant the vulgar English imperialists, or the avowed apologists for imperialism). We see that Kautsky, while claiming that he continues to advocate Marxism, as a matter of fact takes a step backward compared with the social-liberal Hobson, who more correctly takes into account two “historically concrete” (Kautsky’s definition is a mockery of historical concreteness!) features of modern imperialism: (1) the competition between several imperialisms, and (2) the predominance of the financier over the merchant. If it is chiefly a question of the annexation of agrarian countries by industrial countries, then the role of the merchant is put in the forefront.

Kautsky’s definition is not only wrong and un-Marxist. It serves as a basis for a whole system of views which signify a rupture with Marxist theory and Marxist practice all along the line. I shall refer to this later. The argument about words which Kautsky raises as to whether the latest stage of capitalism should be called imperialism or the stage of finance capital is not worth serious attention. Call it what you will, it makes no difference. The essence of the matter is that Kautsky detaches the politics of imperialism from its economics, speaks of annexations as being a policy “preferred” by finance capital, and opposes to it another bourgeois policy which, he alleges, is possible on this very same basis of finance capital. It follows, then, that monopolies in the economy are compatible with non-monopolistic, non-violent, non-annexationist methods in politics. It follows, then, that the territorial division of the world, which was completed during this very epoch of finance capital, and which constitutes the basis of the present peculiar forms of rivalry between the biggest capitalist states, is compatible with a non-imperialist policy. The result is a slurring-over and a blunting of the most profound contradictions of the latest stage of capitalism, instead of an exposure of their depth; the result is bourgeois reformism instead of Marxism.

Kautsky enters into controversy with the German apologist of imperialism and annexations, Cunow, who clumsily and cynically argues that imperialism is present-day capitalism; the development of capitalism is inevitable and progressive; therefore imperialism is progressive; therefore, we should grovel before it and glorify it! This is something like the caricature of the Russian Marxists which the Narodniks drew in 1894-95. They argued: if the Marxists believe that capitalism is inevitable in Russia, that it is progressive, then they ought to open a tavern and begin to implant capitalism! Kautsky’s reply to Cunow is as follows: imperialism is not present-day capitalism; it is only one of the forms of the policy of present-day capitalism. This policy we can and should fight, fight imperialism, annexations, etc.

The reply seems quite plausible, but in effect it is a more subtle and more disguised (and therefore more dangerous) advocacy of conciliation with imperialism, because a “fight” against the policy of the trusts and banks that does not affect the economic basis of the trusts and banks is mere bourgeois reformism and pacifism, the benevolent and innocent expression of pious wishes. Evasion of existing contradictions, forgetting the most important of them, instead of revealing their full depth—such is Kautsky’s theory, which has nothing in common with Marxism. Naturally, such a “theory” can only serve the purpose of advocating unity with the Cunows!

“From the purely economic point of view,” writes Kautsky, “it is not impossible that capitalism will yet go through a new phase, that of the extension of the policy of the cartels to foreign policy, the phase of ultra-imperialism,” [3] i.e., of a superimperialism, of a union of the imperialisms of the whole world and not struggles among them, a phase when wars shall cease under capitalism, a phase of “the joint exploitation of the world by internationally united finance capital.” [4]

We shall have to deal with this “theory of ultra-imperialism” later on in order to show in detail how decisively and completely it breaks with Marxism. At present, in keeping with the general plan of the present work, we must examine the exact economic data on this question. “From the purely economic point of view,” is “ultra-imperialism” possible, or is it ultra-nonsense?

If the purely economic point of view is meant to be a “pure” abstraction, then all that can be said reduces itself to the following proposition: development is proceeding towards monopolies, hence, towards a single world monopoly, towards a single world trust. This is indisputable, but it is also as completely meaningless as is the statement that “development is proceeding” towards the manufacture of foodstuffs in laboratories. In this sense the “theory” of ultra-imperialism is no less absurd than a “theory of ultra-agriculture” would be.

If, however, we are discussing the “purely economic” conditions of the epoch of finance capital as a historically concrete epoch which began at the turn of the twentieth century, then the best reply that one can make to the lifeless abstractions of “ultra-imperialism” (which serve exclusively a most reactionary aim: that of diverting attention from the depth of existing antagonisms) is to contrast them with the concrete economic realities of the present-day world economy. Kautsky’s utterly meaningless talk about ultra-imperialism encourages, among other things, that profoundly mistaken idea which only brings grist to the mill of the apologists of imperialism, i.e., that the rule of finance capital lessens the unevenness and contradictions inherent in the world economy, whereas in reality it increases them.

R. Calwer, in his little book, An Introduction to the World Economy, made an attempt to summarise the main, purely economic, data that enable one to obtain a concrete picture of the internal relations of the world economy at the turn of the twentieth century. He divides the world into five “main economic areas”, as follows: (1) Central Europe (the whole of Europe with the exception of Russia and Great Britain); (2) Great Britain; (3) Russia; (4) Eastern Asia; (5) America; he includes the colonies in the “areas” of the states to which they belong and “leaves aside” a few countries not distributed according to areas, such as Persia, Afghanistan, and Arabia in Asia, Morocco and Abyssinia in Africa, etc.

Here is a brief summary of the economic data he quotes on these regions.

Principal
economic
areas		AreaPopulationTransportTradeIndustry
Millionsq. mileMillionsRailways
(thou. km)		Mercantile
fleet(mill. ton)		Import-export
(thou. mill.
mark)		OutputNumber of cotton spindle
(million)
Of coal(mill. ton)Of pig iron
(mill. ton)
1) Central Europe27.6
(23.6)		388
(146)		2048412511526
2) Britain28.9
(28.6)		398
(355)		1401125249951
3) Russia2213163131637
4) Eastern Asia1238981280.022
5) America301483796142451419

NOTE: The figures in parentheses show the area and population of the colonies.

We see three areas of highly developed capitalism (high development of means of transport, of trade and of industry): the Central European, the British and the American areas. Among these are three states which dominate the world: Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Imperialist rivalry and the struggle between these countries have become extremely keen because Germany has only an insignificant area and few colonies; the creation of “Central Europe” is still a matter for the future, it is being born in the midst of a desperate struggle. For the moment the distinctive feature of the whole of Europe is political disunity. In the British and American areas, on the other hand, political concentration is very highly developed, but there is a vast disparity between the immense colonies of the one and the insignificant colonies of the other. In the colonies, however, capitalism is only beginning to develop. The struggle for South America is becoming more and more acute.

There are two areas where capitalism is little developed: Russia and Eastern Asia. In the former, the population is extremely sparse, in the latter it is extremely dense; in the former political concentration is high, in the latter it does not exist. The partitioning of China is only just beginning, and the struggle for it between Japan, the U.S., etc., is continually gaining in intensity.

Compare this reality—the vast diversity of economic and political conditions, the extreme disparity in the rate of development of the various countries, etc., and the violent struggles among the imperialist states—with Kautsky’s silly little fable about “peaceful” ultra-imperialism. Is this not the reactionary attempt of a frightened philistine to hide from stern reality? Are not the international cartels which Kautsky imagines are the embryos of “ultra-imperialism” (in the same way as one “can” describe the manufacture of tablets in a laboratory as ultra-agriculture in embryo) an example of the division and the redivision of the world, the transition from peaceful division to non-peaceful division and vice versa? Is not American and other finance capital, which divided the whole world peacefully with Germany’s participation in, for example, the international rail syndicate, or in the international mercantile shipping trust, now engaged in redividing the world on the basis of a new relation of forces that is being changed by methods anything but peaceful?

Finance capital and the trusts do not diminish but increase the differences in the rate of growth of the various parts of the world economy. Once the relation of forces is changed, what other solution of the contradictions can be found under capitalism than that of force? Railway statistics [6] provide remarkably exact data on the different rates of growth of capitalism and finance capital in world economy. In the last decades of imperialist development, the total length of railways has changed as follows:

RegionsRailways (000 kilometres)
18901913Net Addition
Europe224346+122
U.S.268411+143
All colonies82210+128
Independent and semi-independentstates of Asia and America43137+94
TOTAL6171104

Thus, the development of railways has been most rapid in the colonies and in the independent (and semi-independent) states of Asia and America. Here, as we know, the finance capital of the four or five biggest capitalist states holds undisputed sway. Two hundred thousand kilometres of new railways in the colonies and in the other countries of Asia and America represent a capital of more than 40,000 million marks newly invested on particularly advantageous terms, with special guarantees of a good return and with profitable orders for steel works, etc., etc.

Capitalism is growing with the greatest rapidity in the colonies and in overseas countries. Among the latter, new imperialist powers are emerging (e.g., Japan). The struggle among the world imperialisms is becoming more acute. The tribute levied by finance capital on the most profitable colonial and overseas enterprises is increasing. In the division of this “booty,” an exceptionally large part goes to countries which do not always stand at the top of the list in the rapidity of the development of their productive forces. In the case of the biggest countries, together with their colonies, the total length of railways was as follows:

Country / EmpireRailways (000 kilometres)
18901913Net Addition
USA268413+145
British Empire107208+101
Russia3278+46
Germany4368+25
France4163+22
TOTAL491830

Thus, about 80 per cent of the total existing railways are concentrated in the hands of the five biggest powers. But the concentration of the ownership of these railways, the concentration of finance capital, is immeasurably greater since the French and British millionaires, for example, own an enormous amount of shares and bonds in American, Russian and other railways.

Thanks to her colonies, Great Britain has increased the length of “her” railways by 100,000 kilometres, four times as much as Germany. And yet, it is well known that the development of productive forces in Germany, and especially the development of the coal and iron industries, has been incomparably more rapid during this period than in Britain—not to speak of France and Russia. In 1892, Germany produced 4,900,000 tons of pig-iron and Great Britain produced 6,800,000 tons; in 1912, Germany produced 17,600,000 tons and Great Britain, 9,000,000 tons. Germany, therefore, had an overwhelming superiority over Britain in this respect. [7] The question is: what means other than war could there be under capitalism to overcome the disparity between the development of productive forces and the accumulation of capital on the one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence for finance capital on the other?

Annexure8: ON CONTRADICTION by Mao ZeDong

[First published in August 1937; Credit – Marxists Internet Archive]

I. THE TWO WORLD OUTLOOKS

The metaphysical or vulgar evolutionist world outlook sees things as isolated, static and one-sided. It regards all things in the universe, their forms and their species, as eternally isolated from one another and immutable. Such change as there is can only be an increase or decrease in quantity or a change of place. Moreover, the cause of such an increase or decrease or change of place is not inside things but outside them, that is, the motive force is external. Metaphysicians hold that all the different kinds of things in the universe and all their characteristics have been the same ever since they first came into being. All subsequent changes have simply been increases or decreases in quantity. They contend that a thing can only keep on repeating itself as the same kind of thing and cannot change into anything different. In their opinion, capitalist exploitation, capitalist competition, the individualist ideology of capitalist society, and so on, can all be found in ancient slave society, or even in primitive society, and will exist for ever unchanged. They ascribe the causes of social development to factors external to society, such as geography and climate. They search in an over-simplified way outside a thing for the causes of its development, and they deny the theory of materialist dialectics which holds that development arises from the contradictions inside a thing. Consequently they can explain neither the qualitative diversity of things, nor the phenomenon of one quality changing into another.

As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes. Thus materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism. It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another. As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions. Similarly, social development is due chiefly not to external but to internal causes. Countries with almost the same geographical and climatic conditions display great diversity and unevenness in their development. Moreover, great social changes may take place in one and the same country although its geography and climate remain unchanged. Imperialist Russia changed into the socialist Soviet Union, and feudal Japan, which had locked its doors against the world, changed into imperialist Japan, although no change occurred in the geography and climate of either country. Long dominated by feudalism, China has undergone great changes in the last hundred years and is now changing in the direction of a new China, liberated and-free, and yet no change has occurred in her geography and climate. Changes do take place in the geography and climate of the earth as a whole and in every part of it, but they are insignificant when compared with changes in society; geographical and climatic changes manifest themselves in terms of tens of thousands of years, while social changes manifest themselves in thousands, hundreds or tens of years, and even in a few years or months in times of revolution. According to materialist dialectics, changes in nature are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in nature. Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new. Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis.

…

The famous German philosopher Hegel, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, made most important contributions to dialectics, but his dialectics was idealist. It was not until Marx and Engels, the great protagonists of the proletarian movement, had synthesized the positive achievements in the history of human knowledge and, in particular, critically absorbed the rational elements of Hegelian dialectics and created the great theory of dialectical and historical materialism that an unprecedented revolution occurred in the history of human knowledge. This theory was further developed by Lenin and Stalin.

II. THE UNIVERSALITY OF CONTRADICTION

The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.

Thus it is already clear that contradiction exists universally and in all processes, whether in the simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or ideological phenomena. But does contradiction also exist at the initial stage of each process?

What is meant by the emergence of a new process? The old unity with its constituent opposites yields to a new unity with its constituent opposites, whereupon a new process emerges to replace the old. The old process ends and the new one begins. The new process contains new contradictions and begins its own history of the development of contradictions.

III. THE PARTICULARITY OF CONTRADICTION

In order to reveal the particularity of the contradictions in any process in the development of a thing, in their totality or interconnections, that is, in order to reveal the essence of the process, it is necessary to reveal the particularity of the two aspects of each of the contradictions in that process; otherwise it will be impossible to discover the essence of the process.

In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. To be subjective means not to look at problems objectively, that is, not to use the materialist viewpoint in looking at problems. I have discussed this in my essay “On Practice”. To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly, for example, to understand only China but not Japan, only the Communist Party but not the Kuomintang, only the proletariat but not the bourgeoisie, only the peasants but not the landlords, only the favourable conditions but not the difficult ones, only the past but not the future, only individual parts but not the whole, only the defects but not the achievements, only the plaintiff’s case but not the defendant’s, only underground revolutionary work but not open revolutionary work, and so on.

Not only does the whole process of the movement of opposites in the development of a thing, both in their interconnections and in each of the aspects, have particular features to which we must give attention, but each stage in the process has its particular features to which we must give attention too.

It can thus be seen that in studying the particularity of any kind of contradiction–the contradiction in each form of motion of matter, the contradiction in each of its processes of development, the two aspects of the contradiction in each process, the contradiction at each stage of a process, and the two aspects of the contradiction at each stage–in studying the particularity of all these contradictions, we must not be subjective and arbitrary but must analyse it concretely. Without concrete analysis there can be no knowledge of the particularity of any contradiction. We must always remember Lenin’s words, the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.

IV. THE PRINCIPAL CONTRADICTION AND THE PRINCIPAL ASPECT OF A CONTRADICTION

There are still two points in the problem of the particularity of contradiction which must be singled out for analysis, namely, the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction.

There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.

For instance, in capitalist society the two forces in contradiction, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, form the principal contradiction. The other contradictions, such as those between the remnant feudal class and the bourgeoisie, between the peasant petty bourgeoisie ant the bourgeoisie, between the proletariat and the peasant petty bourgeoisie, between the non-monopoly capitalists and the monopoly capitalists, between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism, among the capitalist countries and between imperialism and the colonies, are all determined or influenced by this principal contradiction.

Hence, if in any process there are a number of contradictions, one of them must be the principal contradiction playing the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to funding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved. This is the method Marx taught us in his study of capitalist society.

the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed–a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.

in the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the productive forces are the principal aspect; in the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is the principal aspect; in the contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure, the economic base is the principal aspect; and there is no change in their respective positions. This is the mechanical materialist conception, not the dialectical materialist conception…. in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role.

V. THE IDENTITY AND STRUGGLE OF THE ASPECTS OF A CONTRADICTION

Identity, unity, coincidence, interpenetration, inter-permeation, interdependence (or mutual dependence for existence), interconnection or mutual co-operation–all these different terms mean the same thing and refer to the following two points: first, the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity; second, in given conditions, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite.

The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one another.

The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can anyone contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without “above”, there would be no “below” without “below”, there would be no “above”. Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without good fortune, these would be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no difficulty without difficulty, there would be no facility. Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected.

When we said above that two opposite things can coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other because there is identity between them, we were speaking of conditionality, that is to say, in given conditions two contradictory things can be united and can transform themselves into each other, but in the absence of these conditions, they cannot constitute a contradiction, cannot coexist in the same entity and cannot transform themselves into one another. It is because the identity of opposites obtains only in given conditions that we have said identity is conditional and relative. We may add that the struggle between opposites permeates a process from beginning to end and makes one process transform itself into another, that it is ubiquitous, and that struggle is therefore unconditional and absolute.

The combination of conditional, relative identity and unconditional, absolute struggle constitutes the movement of opposites in all things.

VI. THE PLACE OF ANTAGONISM IN CONTRADICTION

Contradiction and struggle are universal and absolute, but the methods of resolving contradictions, that is, the forms of struggle, differ according to the differences in the nature of the contradictions. Some contradictions are characterized by open antagonism, others are not. In accordance with the concrete development of things, some contradictions which were originally non-antagonistic develop into antagonistic ones, while others which were originally antagonistic develop into non-antagonistic ones.

Economically, the contradiction between town and country is an extremely antagonistic one both in capitalist society, where under the rule of the bourgeoisie the towns ruthlessly plunder the countryside, and in the Kuomintang areas in China, where under the rule of foreign imperialism and the Chinese big comprador bourgeoisie the towns most rapaciously plunder the countryside. But in a socialist country and in our revolutionary base areas, this antagonistic contradiction has changed into one that is non-antagonistic;

The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society and therefore also the fundamental law of thought. It stands opposed to the metaphysical world outlook. It represents a great revolution in the history of human knowledge. According to dialectical materialism, contradiction is present in all processes of objectively existing things and of subjective thought and permeates all these processes from beginning to end; this is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction. Each contradiction and each of its aspects have their respective characteristics; this is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. In given conditions, opposites possess identity, and consequently can coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other; this again is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. But the struggle of opposites is ceaseless, it goes on both when the opposites are coexisting and when they are transforming themselves into each other, and becomes especially conspicuous when they are transforming themselves into one another; this again is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction. In studying the particularity and relativity of contradiction, we must give attention to the distinction between the principal contradiction and the non-principal contradictions and to the distinction between the principal aspect and the non-principal aspect of a contradiction; in studying the universality of contradiction and the struggle of opposites in contradiction, we must give attention to the distinction between the different forms of struggle. Otherwise we shall make mistakes.

Annexure9: ON THE TEN MAJOR RELATIONSHIPS by Mao ZeDong

[Written April 25, 1956 ; Credit – Marxists Internet Archive]

In the past we followed this policy of mobilizing all positive factors in order to put an end to the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism and to win victory for the people’s democratic revolution. We are now following the same policy in order to carry on the socialist revolution and build a socialist country. Nevertheless, there are some problems in our work that need discussion. Particularly worthy of attention is the fact that in the Soviet Union certain defects and errors that occurred in the course of their building socialism have lately come to light. Do you want to follow the detours they have made? It was by drawing lessons from their experience that we were able to avoid certain detours in the past, and there is all the more reason for us to do so now.

I will now discuss the ten problems.

I. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEAVY INDUSTRY ON THE ONE HAND AND LIGHT INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE ON THE OTHER

The problem now facing us is that of continuing to adjust properly the ratio between investments in heavy industry on the one hand and in agriculture and light industry on the other in order to bring about a greater development of the latter. Does this mean that heavy industry is no longer primary? No. It still is, it still claims the emphasis in our investment. But the proportion for agriculture and light industry must be somewhat increased.

What will be the results of this increase? First, the daily needs of the people will be better satisfied, and, second, the accumulation of capital will be speeded up so that we can develop heavy industry with greater and better results.

II. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDUSTRY IN THE COASTAL REGIONS AND INDUSTRY IN THE INTERIOR

About 70 per cent of all our industry, both light and heavy, is to be found in the coastal regions and only 30 percent in the interior. This irrational situation is a product of history. The coastal industrial base must be put to full use, but to even out the distribution of industry as it develops we must strive to promote industry in the interior.

III. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMIC CONSTRUCTION AND DEFENCE CONSTRUCTION

One reliable way is to cut military and administrative expenditures down to appropriate proportions and increase expenditures on economic construction. Only with the faster growth of economic construction can there be greater progress in defence construction.

IV. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE STATE, THE UNITS OF PRODUCTION AND THE PRODUCERS

The relationship between the state on the one hand and factories and agricultural co-operatives on the other and the relationship between factories and agricultural co-operatives on the one hand and the producers on the other should both be handled well. To this end we should consider not just one side but all three, the state, the collective and the individual …

It’s not right, I’m afraid, to place everything in the hands of the central or the provincial and municipal authorities without leaving the factories any power of their own, any room for independent action, any benefits….

What proportion of the earnings of a co-operative should go to the state, to the co-operative and to the peasants respectively and in what form should be determined properly. The amount that goes to the co-operative is used directly to serve the peasants….

In short, consideration must be given to both sides, not to just one, whether they are the state and the factory, the state and the worker, the factory and the worker, the state and the co-operative, the state and the peasant, or the co-operative and the peasant.

V. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CENTRAL AND THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES

The relationship between the central and the local authorities constitutes another contradiction. To resolve this contradiction, our attention should now be focussed on how to enlarge the powers of the local authorities to some extent, give them greater independence and let them do more, all on the premise that the unified leadership of the central authorities is to be strengthened….

There is also the relationship between different local authorities, and here I refer chiefly to the relationship between the higher and lower local authorities. Since the provinces and municipalities have their own complaints about the central departments, can it be that the prefectures, counties, districts and townships have no complaints about the provinces and municipalities?

VI. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE HAN NATIONALITY AND THE MINORITY NATIONALITIES

The minority nationalities have all contributed to the making of China’s history. The huge Han population is the result of the intermingling of many nationalities over a long time. All through the ages, the reactionary rulers, chiefly from the Han nationality, sowed feelings of estrangement among our various nationalities and bullied the minority peoples.

VII. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARTY AND NON-PARTY

In our country the various democratic parties, consisting primarily of the national bourgeoisie and its intellectuals, emerged during the resistance to Japan and the struggle against Chiang Kai-shek, and they continue to exist to this day. In this respect, China is different from the Soviet Union. We have purposely let the democratic parties remain, giving them opportunities to express their views and adopting a policy of both unity and struggle towards them. We unite with all those democratic personages who offer us well-intentioned criticisms. We should go on activating the enthusiasm of such people from the Kuomintang army and government as Wei Li-huang and Weng Wen-hao, who are patriotic. We should even provide for such abusive types as Lung Yun, Liang Shu-ming and Peng Yi-hu and allow them to rail at us, while refuting their nonsense and accepting what makes sense in their rebukes. This is better for the Party, for the people and for socialism.

VIII. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION

The suppression of counter-revolutionaries still calls for hard work. We must not relax. In future not only must the suppression of counter-revolutionaries in society continue, but we must also uncover all the hidden counter-revolutionaries in Party and government organs, schools and army units.

IX. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG

A clear distinction must be made between right and wrong, whether inside or outside the Party. How to deal with people who have made mistakes is an important question. The correct attitude towards them should be to adopt a policy of “learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones and curing the sickness to save the patient”, help them correct their mistakes and allow them to go on taking part in the revolution

X. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHINA AND OTHER COUNTRIES

Our policy is to learn from the strong points of all nations and all countries, learn all that is genuinely good in the political, economic, scientific and technological fields and in literature and art. But we must learn with an analytical and critical eye, not blindly, and we mustn’t copy everything indiscriminately and transplant mechanically. Naturally, we mustn’t pick up their shortcomings and weak points.

We must firmly reject and criticize all the decadent bourgeois systems, ideologies and ways of life of foreign countries. But this should in no way prevent us from learning the advanced sciences and technologies of capitalist countries and whatever is scientific in the management of their enterprises.

…

In my opinion, China has two weaknesses, which are at the same time two strong points.

First, in the past China was a colonial and semi-colonial country, not an imperialist power, and was always bullied by others. Its industry and agriculture are not developed and its scientific and technological level is low, and except for its vast territory, rich resources, large population, long history, The Dream of the Red Chamber in literature, and so on, China is inferior to other countries in many respects, and so has no reason to feel conceited. However, there are people who, having been slaves too long, feel inferior in everything and don’t stand up straight in the presence of foreigners.

Second, our revolution came late. Although the Revolution of 1911 which overthrew the Ching emperor preceded the Russian revolution, there was no Communist Party at that time and the revolution failed. Victory in the people’s revolution came only in 1949, some thirty years later than the October Revolution. On this account too, we are not in a position to feel conceited.

Being “poor” and “blank” is therefore all to our good. Even when one day our country becomes strong and prosperous, we must still adhere to the revolutionary stand, remain modest and prudent, learn from other countries and not allow ourselves to become swollen with conceit.

…

These ten relationships are all contradictions. The world consists of contradictions. Without contradictions the world would cease to exist. Our task is to handle these contradictions correctly. As to whether or not they can be resolved entirely to our satisfaction in practice, we must be prepared for either possibility; furthermore, in the course of resolving these contradictions we are bound to come up against new ones, new problems.

Annexure10: Analysis of The Classes in Chinese Society, by Mao ZeDong

[Written March 1926; Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project. HTML revised 2004 by Marxists.org]

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies. A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses, and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolutionary party leads them astray. To ensure that we will definitely achieve success in our revolution and will not lead the masses astray, we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies. To distinguish real friends from real enemies, we must make a general analysis of the economic status of the various classes in Chinese society and of their respective attitudes towards the revolution.

What is the condition of each of the classes in Chinese society?

The landlord class and the comprador class.[1] In economically backward and semi-colonial China the landlord class and the comprador class are wholly appendages of the international bourgeoisie, depending upon imperialism for their survival and growth. These classes represent the most backward and most reactionary relations of production in China and hinder the development of her productive forces. Their existence is utterly incompatible with the aims of the Chinese revolution. The big landlord and big comprador classes in particular always side with imperialism and constitute an extreme counterrevolutionary group. Their political representatives are the Étatistes [2] and the right-wing of the Kuomintang.

The middle bourgeoisie. This class represents the capitalist relations of production in China in town and country. The middle bourgeoisie, by which is meant chiefly the national bourgeoisie, [3] is inconsistent in its attitude towards the Chinese revolution: they feel the need for revolution and favour the revolutionary movement against imperialism and the warlords when they are smarting under the blows of foreign capital and the oppression of the warlords, but they become suspicious of the revolution when they sense that, with the militant participation of the proletariat at home and the active support of the international proletariat abroad, the revolution is threatening the hope of their class to attain the status of a big bourgeoisie. Politically, they stand for the establishment of a state under the rule of a single class, the national bourgeoisie. A self-styled true disciple of Tai Chi-tao [4] wrote in the Chen Pao, [5] Peking, “Raise your left fist to knock down the imperialists and your right to knock down the Communists.” These words depict the dilemma and anxiety of this class. It is against interpreting the Kuomintang’s Principle of the People’s Livelihood according to the theory of class struggle, and it opposes the Kuomintang’s alliance with Russia and the admission of Communists [6] and left-wingers. But its attempt to establish a state under the rule of the national bourgeoisie is quite impracticable, because the present world situation is such that the two major forces, revolution and counter-revolution, are locked in final struggle. Each has hoisted a huge banner: one is the red banner of revolution held aloft by the Third International as the rallying point for all the oppressed classes of the world, the other is the white banner of counterrevolution held aloft by the League of Nations as the rallying point for all the counter-revolutionaries of the world. The intermediate classes are bound to disintegrate quickly, some sections turning left to join the revolution, others turning right to join the counter-revolution; there is no room for them to remain “independent”. Therefore the idea cherished by China’s middle bourgeoisie of an “independent” revolution in which it would play the primary role is a mere illusion.

The petty bourgeoisie. Included in this category are the owner-peasants, [7] the master handicraftsmen, the lower levels of the intellectuals–students, primary and secondary school teachers, lower government functionaries, office clerks, small lawyers–and the small traders. Both because of its size and class character, this class deserves very close attention. The owner-peasants and the master handicraftsmen are both engaged in small-scale production. Although all strata of this class have the same petty-bourgeois economic status, they fall into three different sections. The first section consists of those who have some surplus money or grain, that is, those who, by manual or mental labour, earn more each year than they consume for their own support. Such people very much want to get rich and are devout worshipers of Marshal Chao; [8] while they have no illusions about amassing great fortunes, they invariably desire to climb up into the middle bourgeoisie. Their mouths water copiously when they see the respect in which those small moneybags are held. People of this sort are timid, afraid of government officials, and also a little afraid of the revolution. Since they are quite close to the middle bourgeoisie in economic status, they have a lot of faith in its propaganda and are suspicious of the revolution. This section is a minority among the petty bourgeoisie and constitutes its right-wing. The second section consists of those who in the main are economically self-supporting. They are quite different from the people in the first section; they also want to get rich, but Marshal Chao never lets them. In recent years, moreover, suffering from the oppression and exploitation of the imperialists, the warlords, the feudal landlords and the big comprador-bourgeoisie, they have become aware that the world is no longer what it was. They feel they cannot earn enough to live on by just putting in as much work as before. To make both ends meet they have to work longer hours, get up earlier, leave off later, and be doubly careful at their work. They become rather abusive, denouncing the foreigners as “foreign devils”, the warlords as “robber generals” and the local tyrants and evil gentry as “the heartless rich”. As for the movement against the imperialists and the warlords, they merely doubt whether it can succeed (on the ground that the foreigners and the warlords seem so powerful), hesitate to join it and prefer to be neutral, but they never oppose the revolution. This section is very numerous, making up about one-half of the petty bourgeoisie.

The third section consists of those whose standard of living is falling. Many in this section, who originally belonged to better-off families, are undergoing a gradual change from a position of being barely able to manage to one of living in more and more reduced circumstances. When they come to settle their accounts at the end of each year, they are shocked, exclaiming, “What? Another deficit!” As such people have seen better days and are now going downhill with every passing year, their debts mounting and their life becoming more and more miserable, they “shudder at the thought of the future”. They are in great mental distress because there is such a contrast between their past and their present. Such people are quite important for the revolutionary movement; they form a mass of no small proportions and are the left-wing of the petty bourgeoisie. In normal times these three sections of the petty bourgeoisie differ in their attitude to the revolution. But in times of war, that is, when the tide of the revolution runs high and the dawn of victory is in sight, not only will the left-wing of the petty bourgeoisie join the revolution, but the middle section too may join, and even tight-wingers, swept forward by the great revolutionary tide of the proletariat and of the left-wing of the petty bourgeoisie, will have to go along with the “evolution.” We can see from the experience of the May 30th Movement [9] of 1925 and the peasant movement in various places that this conclusion is correct.

The semi-proletariat. What is here called the semi-proletariat consists of five categories: (1) the overwhelming majority of the semi-owner peasants, [10] (2) the poor peasants, (3) the small handicraftsmen, (4) the shop assistants [11] and (5) the pedlars. The overwhelming majority of the semi-owner peasants together with the poor peasants constitute a very large part of the rural masses. The peasant problem is essentially their problem. The semi-owner peasants, the poor peasants and the small handicraftsmen are engaged in production on a still smaller scale than the owner-peasants and the master handicraftsmen. Although both the overwhelming majority of the semi-owner peasants and the poor peasants belong to the semi-proletariat, they may be further divided into three smaller categories, upper, middle and lower, according to their economic condition. The semi-owner peasants are worse off than the owner-peasants because every year they are short of about half the food they need, and have to make up this deficit by renting land from others, selling part of their labour power, or engaging in petty trading. In late spring and early summer when the crop is still in the blade and the old stock is consumed, they borrow at exorbitant rates of interest and buy grain at high prices; their plight is naturally harder than that of the owner-peasants’ who need no help from others, but they are better off than the poor’ peasants. For the poor peasants own no land, and receive only half the harvest or even less for their year’s toil, while the semi-owner` peasants, though receiving only half or less than half the harvest of land rented from others, can keep the entire crop from the land they own. The semi-owner peasants are therefore more revolutionary than the owner-peasants, but less revolutionary than the poor peasants. The poor peasants are tenant-peasants who are exploited by the landlords. They may again be divided into two categories according to their economic status. One category has comparatively adequate farm implements and some funds. Such peasants may retain half the product of their year’s toil. To make up their deficit they cultivate side crops, catch fish or shrimps, raise poultry or pigs, or sell part of their labour power, and thus eke out a living, hoping in the midst of hardship and destitution to tide over the year. Thus their life is harder than that of the semi-owner peasants, but they are better off than the other category of poor peasants. They ate more revolutionary than the semi-owner peasants, but less revolutionary than the other category of poor peasants. As for the latter, they have neither adequate farm implements nor funds nor enough manure, their crops are poor, and, with little left after paying rent, they have even greater need to sell part of their labour power. In hard times they piteously beg help from relatives and friends, borrowing a few tou or sheng of grain to last them a few days, and their debts pile up like loads on the backs of oxen. They are the worst off among the peasants and are highly receptive to revolutionary propaganda. The small handicraftsmen are called semi-proletarians because, though they own some simple means of production and moreover are self-employed, they too are often forced to sell part of their labour power and are somewhat similar to the poor peasants in economic status. They feel the constant pinch of poverty and dread of unemployment, because of heavy family burdens and the gap between their earnings and the cost of living; in this respect too they largely resemble the poor peasants. The shop assistants are employees of shops and stores, supporting their families on meagre pay and getting an increase perhaps only once in several years while prices rise every year. If by chance you get into intimate conversation with them, they invariably pour out their endless grievances. Roughly the same in status as the poor peasants and the small handicraftsmen, they are highly receptive to revolutionary propaganda. The pedlars, whether they carry their wares around on a pole or set up stalls along the street, have tiny funds and very small earnings, and do not make enough to feed and clothe themselves. Their status is roughly the same as that of the poor peasants, and like the poor peasants they need a revolution to change the existing state of affairs.

The proletariat. The modern industrial proletariat numbers about two million. It is not large because China is economically backward. These two million industrial workers are mainly employed in five industries–railways, mining, maritime transport, textiles and shipbuilding–and a great number are enslaved in enterprises owned by foreign capitalists. Though not very numerous, the industrial proletariat represents China’s new productive forces, is the most progressive class in modern China and has become the leading force in the revolutionary movement. We can see the important position of the industrial proletariat in the Chinese revolution from the strength it has displayed in the strikes of the last four years, such as the seamen’s strikes, [12] the railway strike, [13] the strikes in the Kailan and Tsiaotso coal mines, [14] the Shameen strike [15] and the general strikes in Shanghai and Hong Kong [16] after the May 30th Incident. The first reason why the industrial workers hold this position is their concentration. No other section of the people is so concentrated. The second reason is their low economic status. They have been deprived of all means of production, have nothing left but their hands, have no hope of ever becoming rich and, moreover, are subjected to the most ruthless treatment by the imperialists, the warlords and the bourgeoisie. That is why they are particularly good fighters. The coolies in the cities are also a force meriting attention. They are mostly dockers and rickshaw men, and among them, too, are sewage carters and street cleaners. Possessing nothing but their hands, they are similar in economic status to the industrial workers but are less concentrated and play a less important role in production. There is as yet little modern capitalist farming in China. By rural proletariat we mean farm labourers hired by the year, the month or the day. Having neither land, farm implements nor funds, they can live only by selling their labour power. Of all the workers they work the longest hours, for the lowest wages, under the worst conditions, and with the least security of employment. They are the most hard-pressed people in the villages, and their position in the peasant movement is as important as that of the poor peasants.

Apart from all these, there is the fairly large lumpen-proletariat, made up of peasants who have lost their land and handicraftsmen who cannot get work. They lead the most precarious existence of all. In every part of the country they have their secret societies, which were originally their mutual-aid organizations for political and economic struggle, for instance, the Triad Society in Fukien and Kwangtung, the Society of Brothers in Hunan, Hupeh, Kweichow and Szechuan, the Big Sword Society in Anhwei, Honan and Shantung, the Rational Life Society in Chihli [17] and the three northeastern provinces, and the Green Band in Shanghai and elsewhere [18] One of China’s difficult problems is how to handle these people. Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolutionary force if given proper guidance.

To sum up, it can be seen that our enemies are all those in league with imperialism–the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right-wing may become our enemy and their left-wing may become our friend but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.

Annexure11: The Year 1905 by Leon Trotsky

[Chapter4: The Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution; First Published 1907 as part of Our Revolution; 1909 in German; 1922, first full edition, revised, in Russian. This edition by Vintage, by permission of Ralph Schoenman; Translated: Anya Bostock; Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters; Credit – Marxists Internet Archive]

A population of 150 million people, 5.4 million square kilometers of land in Europe, 17.5 million in Asia. Within this vast space every epoch of human culture is to be found: from the primeval barbarism of the northern forests, where people eat raw fish and worship blocks of wood, to the modern social relations of the capitalist city, where socialist workers consciously recognize themselves as participants in world politics and keep a watchful eye on events in the Balkans and on debates in the German Reichstag. The most concentrated industry in Europe based on the most backward agriculture in Europe. The most colossal state apparatus in the world making use of every achievement of modern technological progress in order to retard the historical progress of its own country.

In the preceding chapters we have tried, leaving aside all details, to give a general picture of Russia’s economic relations and social contradictions. That is the soil on which our social classes grow, live and fight. The revolution will show us those classes at a period of the most intensive struggle. But there are consciously formed associations which intervene directly in a country’s political life: parties, unions, the army, the bureaucracy, the press and, placed above these, the ministers of state, the political leaders, the demagogues and the hangmen. Classes cannot be seen at a glance – they usually remain behind the scenes. Yet this does not prevent political parties and their leaders, as well as ministers of state and their hangmen, from being mere organs of their respective classes. Whether these organs are good or bad is by no means irrelevant to progress and the final outcome of events. If ministers are merely the hired servants of the “objective intelligence of the state,” this by no means relieves them of the necessity of having a modicum of brain inside their own skulls – a fact which they themselves are too often apt to overlook. On the other hand, the logic of the class struggle does not exempt us from the necessity of using our own logic. Whoever is unable to admit initiative, talent, energy, and heroism into the framework of historical necessity, has not grasped the philosophical secret of Marxism. But, conversely, if we want to grasp a political process – in this case, the revolution – as a whole, we must be capable of seeing, behind the motley of parties and programs, behind the perfidy and greed of some and the courage and idealism of others, the proper outlines of the social classes whose roots lie deep within the relations of production and whose flowers blossom in the highest spheres of ideology.

The Modern City

The nature of capitalist classes is closely bound up with the history of the development of industry and of the town. It is true that in Russia the industrial population coincides with the urban population to a lesser extent than anywhere else. Apart from the factory suburbs which, for purely formal reasons, are not included within the boundaries of towns, there exist several dozen important industrial centers in the countryside. Of the total number of existing enterprises, 57 per cent, employing 58 per cent of the total number of workers, are located outside the towns. Nevertheless the capitalist town remains the most complete expression of the new society.

The urban Russia of today is a product of the last few decades. During the first quarter of the eighteenth century Russia’s urban population was 328,000, that is, approximately 3 per cent of the total population of the country. In 1812, 1.6 million people were living in towns, which still represented only 4.4 per cent of the total. In the middle of the nineteenth century the urban population amounted to 3.5 million people, or 7.8 per cent. Finally, according to the census of 1897, the urban population by then already amounted to 16.3 million or approximately 13 per cent of the total. Between 1885 and 1897 the urban population had grown by 33.8 per cent, whereas the rural population had increased by only 12.7 per cent. The growth of individual cities during this period was more dramatic still. The population of Moscow rose from 604,000 to 1,359,000, that is, by 123 per cent. The southern towns – Odessa, Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinoslav, Baku – developed at an even faster rate.

Parallel with the increase in the number and size of towns, the second half of the nineteenth century saw a complete transformation of the economic role of the town within the country’s internal class structure.

Unlike the artisanal and guild towns of Europe, which fought with energy and often with success for the concentration of all processing industries within their walls, but rather like the towns of the Asian despotic systems, the old Russian cities performed virtually no productive functions. They were military and administrative centers, field fortresses or, in some cases, commercial centers which, whatever their particular nature, drew their supplies entirely from outside. Their population consisted of officials maintained at the expense of the treasury, of merchants, and, lastly, of landowners looking for a safe harbor within the city walls. Even Moscow, the largest of the old Russian cities, was no more than a vast village dependent on the Tsar’s private lands.

The crafts occupied a negligible position in the towns, since, as we already know, the processing industries of the time took the form of cottage industries and were scattered over the countryside. The ancestors of the four million cottage craftsmen listed in the census of 1897 performed the productive functions of the European town artisan but, unlike the latter, had no connection whatever with the creation of manufacturing workshops and factories. When such workshops and factories did make their appearance, they proletarianized the larger part of the cottage craftsmen and placed the rest, directly or indirectly, under their domination.

Just as Russian industry has never lived through the epoch of medieval craftsmanship, so the Russian towns have never known the gradual growth of the third estate in workshops, guilds, communes, and municipalities. European capital created Russian industry in a matter of a few decades, and Russian industry in its turn created the modern cities in which the principal productive functions are performed by the proletariat.

The Big Capitalist Bourgeoisie

Thus large-scale capital achieved economic domination without a struggle. But the tremendous part played in this process by foreign capital has had a fatal impact on the Russian bourgeoisie’s power of political influence. As a result of state indebtedness, a considerable share of the national product went abroad year by year, enriching and strengthening the European bourgeoisie. But the aristocracy of the stock exchange, which holds the hegemony in European countries and which, without effort, turned the Tsarist government into its financial vassal, neither wished nor was able to become part of the bourgeois opposition within Russia, if only because no other form of national government would have guaranteed it the usurers’ rates of interest it exacted under Tsarism. As well as financial capital, foreign industrial capital, while exploiting Russia’s natural resources and labour power, had its political basis outside Russia’s frontiers – namely, the French, English, and Belgian parliaments.

Neither could our indigenous capital take up a position at the head of the national struggle with Tsarism, since, from the first, it was antagonistic to the popular masses – the proletariat, which it exploits directly, and the peasantry, which it robs indirectly through the state. This is particularly true of heavy industry which, at the present time, is everywhere dependent on state activities and, principally, on militarism. True, it is interested in a “firm civil rule of law,” but it has still greater need of concentrated state power, that great dispenser of bounties. The owners of metallurgical enterprises are confronted, in their own plants, with the most advanced and most active section of the working class for whom every sign that Tsarism is weakening is a signal for a further attack on capitalism.

The textile industry is less dependent on the state, and, furthermore, it is directly interested in raising the purchasing power of the masses, which cannot be done without far-reaching agrarian reform. That is why in 1905 Moscow, the textile city par excellence, showed a much fiercer, though not perhaps a more energetic, opposition to the autocratic bureaucracy than the Petersburg of the metalworkers. The Moscow municipal duma looked upon the rising tide with unquestionable goodwill. But when the revolution revealed the whole of its social content and, by so doing, impelled the textile workers to take the path that the metalworkers had taken before them, the Moscow duma shifted most resolutely, “as a matter of principle,” in the direction of firm state power. Counter-revolutionary capital, having joined forces with the counter-revolutionary landowners, found its leader in the Moscow merchant Guchkov, the leader of the majority in the third Duma.

The Bourgeois Intelligentsia

European capital, in preventing the development of Russian artisanal trade, thereby snatched the ground from under the feet of Russia’s bourgeois democracy. Can the Petersburg or Moscow of today be compared with the Berlin or Vienna of 1848, or with the Paris of 1789, which had not yet begun to dream of railways or the telegraph and regarded a workshop employing 300 men as the largest imaginable? We have never had even a trace of that sturdy middle class which first lived through centuries of schooling in self-government and political struggle and then, hand in hand with a young, as yet unformed proletariat, stormed the Bastilles of feudalism. What has Russia got in place of such a middle class? The “new middle class,” the professional intelligentsia: lawyers, journalists, doctors, engineers, university professors, schoolteachers. Deprived of any independent significance in social production, small in numbers, economically dependent, this social stratum, rightly conscious of its own powerlessness, keeps looking for a massive social class upon which it can lean. The curious fact is that such support was offered, in the first instance, not by the capitalists but by the landowners.

The Constitutional-Democratic (Kadet) party, which dominated the first two Dumas, was formed in 1905 as a result of the League of Landed Constitutionalists joining the League of Liberation. The liberal fronde of the Landed Constitutionalists, or zemtsy, was the expression, on the one hand, of the landowners’ envy and discontent with the monstrous industrial protectionism of the state, and, on the other hand, of the opposition of the more progressive landowners, who recognized the barbarism of Russia’s agrarian relations as an obstacle to their putting their land economy on a capitalist footing. The League of Liberation united those elements of the intelligentsia which, by their “decent” social status and their resulting prosperity, were prevented from taking the revolutionary path. The landed opposition was always marked with pusillanimous impotence, and our Most August dimwit was merely stating a bitter truth when, in 1894, he described its political aspirations as “senseless dreams.” Neither were the privileged members of the intelligentsia, those directly or indirectly dependent on the state, on state-protected large capital or on liberal landownership, capable of forming a political opposition that was even moderately impressive.

Consequently, the Kadet party was, by its very origins, a union of the oppositional impotence of the zemtsy with the all-around impotence of the diploma-carrying intelligentsia. The real face of the agrarians’ liberalism was fully revealed by the end of 1905, when the landowners, startled by the rural disorders, swung sharply around to support the old regime. The liberal intelligentsia, with tears in its eyes, was obliged to forsake the country estate where, when all is said and done, it had been no more than a fosterchild, and to seek recognition in its historic home, the city. But what did it find in the city, other than its own self? It found the conservative capitalist bourgeoisie, the revolutionary proletariat, and the irreconcilable class antagonism between the two.

The same antagonism has split to their very foundations our smaller industries in all those branches where they still retain any importance. The craft proletariat is developing in a climate of large-scale industry and differs only little from the factory proletariat. Other Russian craftsmen, under pressure from large-scale industry and the working-class movement, represent an ignorant, hungry, embittered class which, together with the lumpenproletariat, provides the fighting legions for the Black Hundreds demonstrations and pogroms.

As a result we have a hopelessly retarded bourgeois intelligentsia born to the accompaniment of socialist imprecations, which today is suspended over an abyss of class contradictions, weighed down with feudal traditions and caught in a web of academic prejudices, lacking initiative, lacking all influence over the masses, and devoid of all confidence in the future.

The Proletariat

The same factors of a world-historical nature which had transformed Russia’s bourgeois democracy into a head (and a pretty muddled head at that) without a body, also determined the outstanding role of Russia’s young proletariat. But, before we inquire into anything else, how large is that proletariat?

The highly incomplete figures of 1897 supply the following answer:

NUMBER OF WORKERS:

Mining and processing industries,transport, building and commercial enterprises3,322,000
Agriculture, forestry, fisheries and hunting2,725,000
Day laborers and apprentices1,195,000
Servants, porters, janitors etc.2,132,000
Total (men and women)9,272,000

In 1897, the proletariat, including dependent family members, comprised 27.6 per cent of the total population, that is, slightly over one-quarter. The degree of political activity of separate strata within this mass of workers varies considerably, the leading role in the revolution being held almost exclusively by workers in group A in the table above. It would, however, be a most flagrant error to measure the real and potential significance of the Russian proletariat by its relative proportion within the population as a whole. To do so would be to fail to see the social relations concealed behind the figures.

The influence of the proletariat is determined by its role in the modern economy. The nation’s most powerful means of production depend directly on the workers. Not less than half the nation’s annual income is produced by 3.3 million workers (group A). The railways, our most important means of transport, which alone are able to convert our vast country into an economic whole, represent – as events have shown – an economic and political factor of the utmost importance in the hands of the proletariat. To this we should add the postal services and the telegraph, whose dependence on the proletariat is less direct but nonetheless very real.

While the peasantry is scattered over the entire countryside, the proletariat is concentrated in large masses in the factories and industrial centers. It forms the nucleus of the population of every town of any economic or political importance, and all the advantages of the town in a capitalist country – concentration of the productive forces, the means of production, the most active elements of the population, and the greatest cultural benefits – are naturally transformed into class advantages for the proletariat. Its self-determination as a class has developed with a rapidity unequaled in previous history. Scarcely emerged from the cradle, the Russian proletariat found itself faced with the most concentrated state power and the equally concentrated power of capital. Craft prejudices and guild traditions had no power whatsoever over its consciousness. From its first steps it entered upon the path of irreconcilable class struggle.

In this way the negligible role of artisanal crafts in Russia and of minor industry in general, together with the exceptionally developed state of Russia’s large-scale industry, have led in politics to the displacement of bourgeois democracy by proletarian democracy. Together with its productive functions, the proletariat has taken over the petty bourgeoisie’s historical role as played in previous revolutions, and also its historical claims to leadership over the peasant masses during the epoch of their emancipation, as an estate, from the yoke of the nobility and the state fiscal organization.

The agrarian problem proved to be the political touchstone by which history put the urban political parties to the test.

The Nobility and Landowners

The Kadet (or, rather, former Kadet) program of enforced expropriation of large and medium landholdings on the basis of “just assessments” represents, in the Kadets’ view, the maximum of what can be achieved by means of “creative legislative effort.” But in reality the liberals’ attempt to expropriate the large landed estates by legislative means led only to the government’s denial of electoral rights and to the coup d’état of June 3, 1907. The Kadets viewed the liquidation of the landowning nobility as a purely financial operation, trying conscientiously to make their “just assessment” as acceptable as possible to the landowners. But the nobility took a very different view of the matter. With its infallible instinct it realized at once that what was at stake was not simply the sale of 50 million dessyatins, even at high prices, but the liquidation of its entire social role as a ruling estate; and, therefore, it refused point blank to allow itself to be thus auctioned off. Count Saltykov, addressing the landowners in the first Duma, cried: “Let your motto and your slogan be: not a square inch of our land, not a handful of earth from our fields, not a blade of grass from our meadows, not the smallest twig on a single tree from our forests!” And this was not a voice crying in the wilderness: the years of revolution were precisely the period of estate concentration and political consolidation for the Russian nobility.

During the time of darkest reaction, under Alexander III, the nobility was only one of our estates, even if the first among them. The autocracy, vigilantly protecting its own independence, never for a moment allowed the nobility to escape from the grip of police supervision, putting the muzzle of state control on the maw of its natural greed. Today, on the other hand, the nobility is the commanding estate in the fullest sense of the word: it makes the provincial governors dance to its tune, threatens the ministers and openly dismisses them, puts ultimata to the government and makes sure that these ultimata are observed. Its slogan is: not a square inch of our land, not a particle of our privileges!

Approximately 75 million dessyatins are concentrated in the hands of 60,000 private landowners with annual incomes of more than 1,000 roubles; at a market price of 56 billion roubles, this land produces more than 450 million roubles net profit per annum for its owners. Not less than two-thirds of this sum is the nobility’s share. The bureaucracy is closely linked with land ownership. Almost 200 million roubles are spent annually on maintaining 30,000 officials receiving salaries of more than 1,000 roubles. And it is precisely in these middle and higher ranges of officialdom that the nobility is noticeably preponderant. Lastly, it is once more the nobility which is in full control of the organs of rural local government and the incomes derived therefrom.

Whereas, before the revolution, a good half of the rural administrations were headed by “liberal” landowners who had come to the fore on the basis of their “progressive” activities in the rural sphere, the years of revolution have entirely reversed this situation, so that, as a result, the leading positions are now occupied by the most irreconcilable representatives of the land owners’ reaction. The all-powerful Council of the United Nobility is nipping in the bud all attempts by the government, undertaken in the interests of capitalist industry, to “democratize” the rural administrations or to weaken the chains of estate slavery which bind our peasantry hand and foot.

In the face of these facts, the agrarian program of the Kadets as a basis for legislative agreement has proved hopelessly utopian, and it is hardly surprising that the Kadets themselves have tacitly abandoned it.

The social democrats criticized the Kadet program principally on the grounds of the “just assessment,” and they were right to do so. From the financial viewpoint alone, the purchase of all landed estates bringing in a profit of over 1,000 roubles a year would have added a round sum of 5 to 6 billion roubles to our national debt, which already amounts to 9 billion roubles; which means that interest alone would have begun to swallow up three-quarters of a billion roubles a year. However, what matters is not the financial but the political aspect of the question.

The conditions of the so-called liberation reform of 1861, with the help of the excessive redemption fees paid for peasant lands, in fact compensated the landowners for the peasant “souls” lost (roughly to the extent of one-quarter of a billion roubles, that is, 25 per cent of the total redemption fees). On the basis of a “just assessment” the important historical rights and privileges of the nobility would really have been liquidated; the nobility therefore preferred to adapt itself to the semi-liberation reform, and was quickly reconciled to it. At that time, the nobility showed correct instinct, as it does today when it resolutely refuses to commit suicide as an estate, however “just” the “assessment.” Not a square inch of our land, not a particle of our privileges! Under this banner the nobility has finally acquired dominance over the government apparatus so badly shaken by the revolution; and it has shown that it is determined to fight with all the ferocity of which a governing class is capable in a matter of life or death.

The agrarian problem cannot be solved by means of parliamentary agreement with the landed estate, but only by means of a revolutionary onslaught by the masses.

The Peasantry and the Towns

The knot of Russia’s social and political barbarism was tied in the countryside; but this does not mean that the countryside has produced a class capable, by its own forces, of cutting through that knot. The peasantry, scattered in 500,000 villages and hamlets over the 5 million square versts of European Russia, has not inherited from its past any tradition or habit of concerted political struggle. During the agrarian riots of 1905 and 1906, the aim of the mutinous peasants was reduced to driving the landowners outside the boundaries of their village, their rural area and finally, their administrative area. Against the peasant revolution the landed nobility had in its hands the ready-made weapon of the centralized apparatus of the state. The peasantry could have overcome this obstacle only by means of a resolute uprising unified both in time and in effort. But, owing to all the conditions of their existence, the peasants proved quite incapable of such an uprising. Local cretinism is history’s curse on all peasant riots. They liberate themselves from this curse only to the extent that they cease to be purely peasant movements and merge with the revolutionary movements of new social classes.

As far back as the revolution of the German peasantry during the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the peasantry placed itself quite naturally under the direct leadership of the urban parties, despite the economic weakness and political insignificance of German towns at that time. Socially revolutionary in its objective interests, yet politically fragmented and powerless, the peasantry was incapable of forming a party of its own, and so gave way – depending on local conditions – either to the oppositional-burgher or to the revolutionary-plebeian parties of the towns. These last, the only force which could have ensured the victory of the peasant revolution, were however (although based on the most radical class of the society of that time, the embryo of the modern proletariat) entirely without links with the rest of the nation or any clear consciousness of revolutionary aims. They were without them because of the country’s lack of economic development, the primitive means of transport, and state particularism. Hence the problem of revolutionary cooperation between the mutinous countryside and the urban plebs was nor solved at that time because it could not be solved; and the peasant movement was crushed.

More than three centuries later, correlations of a similar kind were seen again in the revolution of 1848. The liberal bourgeoisie not only did not want to arouse the peasantry and unite it around itself, it actually feared the growth of the peasant movement more than anything else, precisely because this growth would have the primary effect of intensifying and strengthening the position of the plebeian, radical urban elements against the liberal bourgeoisie itself. Yet these elements were still socially and politically amorphous and fragmented and consequently were unable to displace the liberal bourgeoisie and place themselves at the head of the peasant masses. The revolution of 1848 was defeated.

Yet, six decades previously, the problems of revolution were triumphantly resolved in France, precisely through the cooperation of the peasantry with the urban plebs, that is, the proletariat, semi-proletariat, and lumpenproletariat of the time. This “cooperation” took the form of the Convention, that is, of the dictatorship of the city over the countryside, of Paris over the provinces, and of the sans-culottes over Paris.

Under contemporary Russian conditions, the social preponderance of the industrial population over the rural population is incomparably greater than at the time of the old European revolutions, and further, a clearly defined industrial proletariat has replaced the chaotic plebs. One thing, however, has not changed: only a party which has the revolutionary urban masses behind it, and which is not afraid, out of pious respect for bourgeois private property, to revolutionize feudal ownership, can rely on the peasantry at a time of revolution. Today only the Social Democrats are such a party.

The Nature of the Russian Revolution

So far as its direct and indirect tasks are concerned, the Russian revolution is a “bourgeois” revolution because it sets out to liberate bourgeois society from the chains and fetters of absolutism and feudal ownership. But the principal driving force of the Russian revolution is the proletariat, and that is why, so far as its method is concerned, it is a proletarian revolution. Many pedants who insist on determining the historical role of the proletariat by means of arithmetical or statistical calculations, or establishing it by means of formal historical analogies, have shown themselves incapable of digesting this contradiction. They see the bourgeoisie as the providence-sent leader of the Russian revolution. They try to wrap the proletariat – which, in fact, marched at the head of events at all stages of the revolutionary rising – in the swaddling-clothes of their own theoretical immaturity. For such pedants, the history of one capitalist nation repeats the history of another, with, of course, certain more or less important divergences. Today they fail to see the unified process of world capitalist development which swallows up all the countries that lie in its path and which creates, out of the national and general exigencies of capitalism, an amalgam whose nature cannot be understood by the application of historical cliches, but only by materialist analysis.

There can be no analogy of historical development between, on the one hand, England, the pioneer of capitalism, which has been creating new social forms for centuries and has also created a powerful bourgeoisie as the expression of these new forms and on the other hand, the colonies of today, to which European capital delivers ready-made rails, sleepers, nuts and bolts in ready-made battleships for the use of the colonial administration, and then, with rifle and bayonet, drives the natives from their primitive environment straight into capitalist civilization: there can be no analogy of historical development, certainly, but there does exist a profound inner connection between the two.

The new Russia acquired its absolutely specific character because it received its capitalist baptism in the latter half of the nineteenth century from European capital which by then had reached its most concentrated and abstract form, that of finance capital. The previous history of European capital is in no way connected with the previous history of Russia. In order to attain, on its native ground, the heights of the modern stock exchange, European capital had first to escape from the narrow streets and lanes of the artisanal town where it had learned to crawl and walk; it was obliged, in ceaseless struggle with the Church, to develop science and technology, to rally the entire nation around itself, to gain power by means of uprisings against feudal and dynastic privileges, to clear an open arena for itself, to kill off the independent small industries from which it had itself emerged, having severed the national umbilical cord and shaken the dust of its forefathers from its feet, having rid itself of political prejudice, racial sympathies, geographical longitudes and latitudes, in order, then, at last to soar high above the globe in all its voracious glory, today poisoning with opium the Chinese craftsman whom it has ruined, tomorrow enriching the Russian seas with new warships, the day after seizing diamond deposits in South Africa.

But when English or French capital, the historical coagulate of many centuries, appears in the steppes of the Donets basin, it cannot release the same social forces, relations, and passions which once went into its own formation. It does not repeat on the new territory the development which it has already completed, but starts from the point at which it has arrived on its own ground. Around the machines which it has transported across the seas and the customs barriers, it immediately, without any intermediate stages whatever, concentrates the masses of a new proletariat, and into this class it instills the revolutionary energy of all the past generations of the bourgeoisie – an energy which in Europe has by now become stagnant.

During the heroic period of French history we see a bourgeoisie which has not yet realized the contradictions of its own position, a bourgeoisie upon which history has placed the leadership of a struggle for a new order, not only against the outdated institutions of France, but also against reactionary forces in Europe as a whole. The bourgeoisie, personified by all its factions in turn, gradually becomes conscious of itself and becomes the leader of the nation; it draws the masses into the struggle, gives them slogans to fight for, and dictates the tactics of their fight.

Democracy unifies the nation by giving it a political ideology. The people – the petty bourgeoisie, the peasants and the workers – appoint the bourgeoisie as their deputies, and the orders issued to these deputies by the communes are written in the language of a bourgeoisie becoming conscious of its Messianic role. During the revolution itself, although class antagonisms become apparent, the powerful momentum of revolutionary struggle nevertheless consistently removes the most static elements of the bourgeoisie from the political path. No layer is stripped off before it has handed its energy over to the succeeding layers. The nation as a whole continues during all this time to fight for its objectives, using increasingly more radical and decisive means. When the uppermost layers of the property-owning bourgeoisie cut themselves off from the national nucleus which had thus been set in motion, and when they entered into an alliance with Louis XVI, the democratic demands of the nation, now directed against the bourgeoisie as well, led to universal franchise and to the Republic as being the logically inevitable form of democracy.

The great French Revolution was truly a national revolution. But more than that: here, within a national framework, the world struggle of the bourgeois order for domination, for power, and for unimpaired triumph found its classic expression.

By 1848 the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a similar role. It did not want to, and could not, assume responsibility for a revolutionary liquidation of the social order which barred the way to its own dominance. Its task – and this it fully realized – consisted in introducing into the old order certain essential guarantees, not of its own political dominance, but only of co-dominance with the forces of the past. It not only failed to lead the masses in storming the old order; it used the old order as a defence against the masses who were trying to push it forward. Its consciousness rebelled against the objective conditions of its dominance. Democratic institutions were reflected in its mind, not as the aim and purpose of its struggle, but as a threat to its well-being. The revolution could not be made by the bourgeoisie, but only against the bourgeoisie. That is why a successful revolution in 1848 would have needed a class capable of marching at the head of events regardless of the bourgeoisie and despite it, a class prepared not only to push the bourgeoisie forward by the force of its pressure, but also, at the decisive moment, to kick the political corpse of the bourgeoisie out of its way.

Neither the petty bourgeoisie nor the peasantry were capable of this. The petty bourgeoisie was hostile not only to the immediate past, but also to the possible future – to the morrow. Still fettered by medieval relations, but already incapable of resisting “free” industry; still centering itself on the cities, but already yielding its influence to the middle and higher bourgeoisie; sunk in its prejudices, deafened by the roar of events, exploiting and exploited, greedy and impotent in its greed, the provincial petty bourgeoisie was incapable of directing world events.

The peasantry was deprived of independent initiative to a still greater extent. Dispersed, cut off from the cities which were the nerve centers of politics and culture, dull-minded, its intellectual horizons hedged in like its meadows and fields, indifferent towards everything that the cities had created by invention and thought, the peasantry could not assume any leading significance. Appeased as soon as the burden of feudal tithes was removed from its shoulders, it repaid the cities, which had fought for its rights, with black ingratitude: the liberated peasants became fanatics of “order.”

The democratic intellectual, devoid of class force, trotted after the liberal bourgeoisie as after an older sister. It acted merely as its political tail. It abandoned it at moments of crisis. It revealed only its own impotence. It was confused by its contradictions – which had not yet fully ripened – and it carried this confusion with it wherever it went.

The proletariat was too weak and had too little organization, experience, and knowledge. Capitalist development had gone far enough to necessitate the destruction of the old feudal relations, but not far enough to advance the working class, the product of the new production relations, to the position of a decisive political force. The antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie had gone too far to enable the bourgeoisie to assume the role of national leadership without fear, but not far enough to enable the proletariat to grasp that role.

Austria provided a particularly acute and tragic example of this political unreadiness in the revolutionary period. The Vienna proletariat in 1848 gave evidence of selfless heroism and great revolutionary energy. Again and again it faced the fire of battle, driven solely by an obscure class instinct, having no general idea of the objective of the struggle, groping its way blindly from one slogan to the next. Surprisingly, the leadership of the proletariat passed into the hands of the students, the only democratic group which, because of its active nature, enjoyed considerable influence over the masses and, consequently, over the events.

But although the students could fight bravely on the barricades and fraternize sincerely with the workers, they were quite incapable of directing the general progress of the revolution which had handed over to them the “dictatorship” of the streets. When, on the twenty-sixth of May, the whole of working Vienna followed the students’ call and rose to its feet to fight against the disarming of the “academic legion,” when the population of Vienna took de facto possession of the city, when the monarchy, by this time on the run, had lost all meaning, when, under the people’s pressure, the last troops were removed from the city, when it seemed that Austrian state power could be had for the asking, no political force was available to take over. The liberal bourgeoisie consciously did not wish to seize power in so cavalier a fashion. It could only dream of the return of the Emperor, who had betaken himself from orphaned Vienna to the Tyrol. The workers were courageous enough to smash the reaction, but not organized nor conscious enough to become its successors. The proletariat, unable to take over, was equally unable to impel the democratic bourgeoisie – which, as often happens, had made itself scarce at the most crucial moment – to take this historic and heroic action. The situation which resulted was quite correctly described by a contemporary writer in the following terms: “A de facto republic was established in Vienna, but unfortunately, no one saw this . . .” From the events of 1848-49, Lassalle drew the unshakable conviction that “no struggle in Europe can be successful unless, from the very start, it declares itself to be purely socialist; no struggle into which social questions enter merely as an obscure element, and where they are present only in the background; no struggle which outwardly is waged under the banner of national resurgence or bourgeois republicanism, can ever again be successful.”

In the revolution whose beginning history will identify with the year 1905, the proletariat stepped forward for the first time under its own banner in the name of its own objectives. Yet at the same time there can be no doubt that no revolution in the past has absorbed such a mass of popular energy while yielding such minimal positive results as the Russian revolution has done up to the present. We are far from wanting to prophesy the events of the coming weeks or months. But one thing is clear to us: victory is possible only along the path mapped out by Lassalle in 1849. There can be no return from the class struggle to the unity of a bourgeois nation. The “lack of results” of the Russian revolution is only the temporary reflection of its profound social character. In this bourgeois revolution without a revolutionary bourgeoisie, the proletariat is driven, by the internal progress of events, towards hegemony over the peasantry and to the struggle for state power. The first wave of the Russian revolution was smashed by the dull-wittedness of the muzhik, who, at home in his village, hoping to seize a bit of land, fought the squire, but who, having donned a soldier’s uniform, fired upon the worker. All the events of the revolution of 1905 can be viewed as a series of ruthless object lessons by means of which history drums into the peasant’s skull a consciousness of his local land hunger and the central problem of state power. The preconditions for revolutionary victory are forged in the historic school of harsh conflicts and cruel defeats.

Marx wrote in 1852 (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

“Bourgeois revolutions storm swiftly from success to success; their dramatic effects outdo each other; men and things seem set in sparkling brilliance; ecstasy is the everyday spirit; but they are short-lived; soon they have attained their zenith, and a long crapulent depression lays hold of society before it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its storm-and-stress period. On the other hand, proletarian revolutions … criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created in which all turning back is impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out:

Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”

Annexure12: Marxism and the National Questio by J V Stalin

[Chapter 1. The Nation, Chapter 2. The National Movement; First Published: Prosveshcheniye, Nos. 3-5, March-May 1913; Transcription/Markup: Carl Kavanagh; Credit: Marxists Internet Archive]

I. THE NATION

What is a nation?

A nation is primarily a community, a definite community of people.

This community is not racial, nor is it tribal. The modern Italian nation was formed from Romans, Teutons, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, and so forth. The French nation was formed from Gauls, Romans, Britons, Teutons, and so on. The same must be said of the British, the Germans and others, who were formed into nations from people of diverse races and tribes.

Thus, a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people.

On the other hand, it is unquestionable that the great empires of Cyrus and Alexander could not be called nations, although they came to be constituted historically and were formed out of different tribes and races. They were not nations, but casual and loosely-connected conglomerations of groups, which fell apart or joined together according to the victories or defeats of this or that conqueror.

Thus, a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people.

But not every stable community constitutes a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, but nobody calls them nations. What distinguishes a national community from a state community? The fact, among others, that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a state need not have a common language. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish in Russia would be impossible if each did not have a common language, whereas the integrity of Russia and Austria is not affected by the fact that there are a number of different languages within their borders. We are referring, of course, to the spoken languages of the people and not to the official governmental languages.

Thus, a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation.

This, of course, does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all who speak one language necessarily constitute one nation. A common language for every nation, but not necessarily different languages for different nations! There is no nation which at one and the same time speaks several languages, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! Englishmen and Americans speak one language, but they do not constitute one nation. The same is true of the Norwegians and the Danes, the English and the Irish.

But why, for instance, do the English and the Americans not constitute one nation in spite of their common language?

Firstly, because they do not live together, but inhabit different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation.

But people cannot live together, for lengthy periods unless they have a common territory. Englishmen and Americans originally inhabited the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Later, one section of the English emigrated from England to a new territory, America, and there, in the new territory, in the course of time, came to form the new American nation. Difference of. territory led to the formation of different nations.

Thus, a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation.

But this is not all. Common territory does not by itself create a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic bond to weld the various parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such bond between England and America, and so they constitute two different nations. But the Americans themselves would not deserve to be called a nation were not the different parts of America bound together into an economic whole, as a result of division of labour between them, the development of means of communication, and so forth.

Take the Georgians, for instance. The Georgians before the Reform inhabited a common territory and spoke one language. Nevertheless, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for, being split up into a number of disconnected principalities, they could not share a common economic life; for centuries they waged war against each other and pillaged each other, each inciting the Persians and Turks against the other. The ephemeral and casual union of the principalities which some successful king sometimes managed to bring about embraced at best a superficial administrative sphere, and rapidly disintegrated owing to the caprices of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Nor could it be otherwise in economically disunited Georgia … Georgia came on the scene as a nation only in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of means of communication and the rise of capitalism, introduced division of labour between the various districts of Georgia, completely shattered the economic isolation of the principalities and bound them together into a single whole.

The same must be said of the other nations which have passed through the stage of feudalism and have developed capitalism.

Thus, a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation.

But even this is not all. Apart from the foregoing, one must take into consideration the specific spiritual complexion of the people constituting a nation. Nations differ not only in their conditions of life, but also in spiritual complexion, which manifests itself in peculiarities of national culture. If England, America and Ireland, which speak one language, nevertheless constitute three distinct nations, it is in no small measure due to the peculiar psychological make-up which they developed from generation to generation as a result of dissimilar conditions of existence.

Of course, by itself, psychological make-up or, as it is otherwise called, “national character,” is something intangible for the observer, but in so far as it manifests itself in a distinctive culture common to the nation it is something tangible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, “national character” is not a thing that is fixed once and for all, but is modified by changes in the conditions of life; but since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its impress on the physiognomy of the nation.

Thus, a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation.

We have now exhausted the characteristic features of a nation.

A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.

It goes without saying that a nation, like every historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its history, its beginning and end.

It must be emphasized that none of the above characteristics taken separately is sufficient to define a nation. More than that, it is sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be lacking and the nation ceases to be a nation.

It is possible to conceive of people possessing a common “national character” who, nevertheless, cannot be said to constitute a single nation if they are economically disunited, inhabit different territories, speak different languages, and so forth. Such, for instance, are the Russian, Galician, American, Georgian and Caucasian Highland Jews, who, in our opinion, do not constitute a single nation.

It is possible to conceive of people with a common territory and economic life who nevertheless would not constitute a single nation because they have no common language and no common “national character.” Such, for instance, are the Germans and Letts in the Baltic region.

Finally, the Norwegians and the Danes speak one language, but they do not constitute a single nation owing to the absence of the other characteristics.

It is only when all these characteristics are present together that we have a nation.

It might appear that “national character” is not one of the characteristics but the sole essential characteristic of a nation, and that all the other characteristics are, properly speaking, only conditions for the development of a nation, rather than its characteristics. Such, for instance, is the view held by R. Springer, and more particularly by O. Bauer, who are Social-Democratic theoreticians on the national question well known in Austria.

Let us examine their theory of the nation.

According to Springer, “a nation is a union of similarly thinking and similarly speaking persons.” It is “a cultural community of modern people no longer tied to the ‘soil.’” [5] (our italics).

Thus, a “union” of similarly thinking and similarly speaking people, no matter how disconnected they may be, no matter where they live, is a nation.

Bauer goes even further.

“What is a nation?” he asks. “Is it a common language which makes people a nation? But the English and the Irish … speak the same language without, however, being one people; the Jews have no common language and yet are a nation.” [6]

What, then, is a nation?

“A nation is a relative community of character.”

But what is character, in this case national character?

National character is “the sum total of characteristics which distinguish the people of one nationality from the people of another nationality – the complex of physical and spiritual characteristics which distinguish one nation from another.”

Bauer knows, of course, that national character does not drop from the skies, and he therefore adds:

“The character of people is determined by nothing so much as by their destiny…. A nation is nothing but a community with a common destiny” which, in turn, is determined “by the conditions under which people produce their means of subsistence and distribute the products of their labour.”

We thus arrive at the most “complete,” as Bauer calls it, definition of a nation:

“A nation is an aggregate of people bound into a community of character by a common destiny.”

We thus have common national character based on a common destiny, but not necessarily connected with a common territory, language or economic life.

But what in that case remains of the nation? What common nationality can there be among people who are economically disconnected, inhabit different territories and from generation to generation speak different languages?

Bauer speaks of the Jews as a nation, although they “have no common language”; but what “common destiny” and national cohesion is there, for instance, between the Georgian, Daghestanian, Russian and American Jews, who are completely separated from one another, inhabit different territories and speak different languages?

The above-mentioned Jews undoubtedly lead their economic and political life in common with the Georgians, Daghestanians, Russians and Americans respectively, and they live in the same cultural atmosphere as these; this is bound to leave a definite impress on their national character; if there is anything common to them left, it is their religion, their common origin and certain relics of the national character. All this is beyond question. But how can it be seriously maintained that petrified religious rites and fading psychological relics affect the “destiny” of these Jews more powerfully than the living social, economic and cultural environment that surrounds them? And it is only on this assumption that it is possible to speak of the Jews as a single nation at all.

What, then, distinguishes Bauer’s nation from the mystical and self-sufficient “national spirit” of the spiritualists?

Bauer sets up an impassable barrier between the “distinctive feature” of nations (national character) and the “conditions” of their life, divorcing the one from the other. But what is national character if not a reflection of the conditions of life, a coagulation of impressions derived from environment? How can one limit the matter to national character alone, isolating and divorcing it from the soil that gave rise to it?

Further, what indeed distinguished the English nation from the American nation at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, when America was still known as New England? Not national character, of course; for the Americans had originated from England and had brought with them to America not only the English language, but also the English national character, which, of course, they could not lose so soon; although, under the influence of the new conditions, they would naturally be developing their own specific character. Yet, despite their more or less common character, they at that time already constituted a nation distinct from England! Obviously, New England as a nation differed then from England as a nation not by its specific national character, or not so much by its national character, as by its environment and conditions of life, which were distinct from those of England.

It is therefore clear that there is in fact no single distinguishing characteristic of a nation. There is only a sum total of characteristics, of which, when nations are compared, sometimes one characteristic (national character), sometimes another (language), or sometimes a third (territory, economic conditions), stands out in sharper relief. A nation constitutes the combination of all these characteristics taken together.

Bauer’s point of view, which identifies a nation with its national character, divorces the nation from its soil and converts it into an invisible, self-contained force. The result is not a living and active nation, but something mystical, intangible and supernatural. For, I repeat, what sort of nation, for instance, is a Jewish nation which consists of Georgian, Daghestanian, Russian, American and other Jews, the members of which do not understand each other (since they speak different languages), inhabit different parts of the globe, will never see each other, and will never act together, whether in time of peace or in time of war?!

No, it is not for such paper “nations” that Social-Democracy draws up its national programme. It can reckon only with real nations, which act and move, and therefore insist on being reckoned with.

Bauer is obviously confusing nation, which is a historical category, with tribe, which is an ethnographical category.

However, Bauer himself apparently feels the weakness of his position. While in the beginning of his book he definitely declares the Jews to be a nation, he corrects himself at the end of the book and states that “in general capitalist society makes it impossible for them (the Jews) to continue as a nation,” by causing them to assimilate with other nations. The reason, it appears, is that “the Jews have no closed territory of settlement,” whereas the Czechs, for instance, have such a territory and, according to Bauer, will survive as a nation. In short, the reason lies in the absence of a territory.

By arguing thus, Bauer wanted to prove that the Jewish workers cannot demand national autonomy, but he thereby inadvertently refuted his own theory, which denies that a common territory is one of the characteristics of a nation.

But Bauer goes further. In the beginning of his book he definitely declares that “the Jews have no common language, and yet are a nation.” But hardly has he reached p. 130 than he effects a change of front and just as definitely declares that “unquestionably, no nation is possible without a common language” (our italics).

Bauer wanted to prove that “language is the most important instrument of human intercourse,” but at the same time he inadvertently proved something he did not mean to prove, namely, the unsoundness of his own theory of nations, which denies the significance of a common language.

Thus this theory, stitched together by idealistic threads, refutes itself.

II. THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT

A nation is not merely a historical category but a historical category belonging to a definite epoch, the epoch of rising capitalism. The process of elimination of feudalism and development of capitalism is at the same time a process of the constitution of people into nations. Such, for instance, was the case in Western Europe. The British, French, Germans, Italians and others were formed into nations at the time of the victorious advance of capitalism and its triumph over feudal disunity.

But the formation of nations in those instances at the same time signified their conversion into independent national states. The British, French and other nations are at the same time British, etc., states. Ireland, which did not participate in this process, does not alter the general picture.

Matters proceeded somewhat differently in Eastern Europe. Whereas in the West nations developed into states, in the East multi-national states were formed, states consisting of several nationalities. Such are Austria-Hungary and Russia. In Austria, the Germans proved to be politically the most developed, and they took it upon themselves to unite the Austrian nationalities into a state. In Hungary, the most adapted for state organization were the Magyars – the core of the Hungarian nationalities – and it was they who united Hungary. In Russia, the uniting of the nationalities was undertaken by the Great Russians, who were headed by a historically formed, powerful and well-organized aristocratic military bureaucracy.

That was how matters proceeded in the East.

This special method of formation of states could take place only where feudalism had not yet been eliminated, where capitalism was feebly’ developed, where the nationalities which had been forced into the background had not yet been able to consolidate themselves economically into integral nations.

But capitalism also began to develop in the Eastern states. Trade and means of communication were developing. Large towns were springing up. The nations were becoming economically consolidated. Capitalism, erupting into the tranquil life of the nationalities which had been pushed into the background, was arousing them and stirring them into action. The development of the press and the theatre, the activity of the Reichsrat (Austria) and of the Duma (Russia) were helping to strengthen “national sentiments.” The intelligentsia that had arisen was being imbued with “the national idea” and was acting in the same direction….

But the nations which had been pushed into the background and had now awakened to independent life, could no longer form themselves into independent national states; they encountered on their -path the very powerful resistance of the ruling strata of the dominant nations, which had long ago assumed the control of the state. They were too late!…

In this way the Czechs, Poles, etc., formed themselves into nations in Austria; the Croats, etc., in Hungary; the Letts, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, etc., in Russia. What had been an exception in Western Europe (Ireland) became the rule in the East.

In the West, Ireland responded to its exceptional position by a national movement. In the East, the awakened nations were bound to respond in the same fashion.

Thus arose the circumstances which impelled the young nations of Eastern Europe on to the path of struggle.

The struggle began and flared up, to be sure, not between nations as a whole, but between the ruling classes of the dominant nations and of those that had been pushed into the background. The struggle is usually conducted by the urban petty bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation against the big bourgeoisie of the dominant nation (Czechs and Germans), or by the rural bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation against the landlords of the dominant nation (Ukrainians in Poland), or by the whole “national” bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations against the ruling nobility of the dominant nation (Poland, Lithuania and the Ukraine in Russia).

The bourgeoisie plays the leading role.

The chief problem for the young bourgeoisie is the problem of the market. Its aim is to sell its goods and to emerge victorious from competition with the bourgeoisie of a different nationality. Hence its desire to secure its “own,” its “home” market. The market is the first school in which the bourgeoisie learns its nationalism.

But matters are usually not confined to the market. The semi-feudal, semi-bourgeois bureaucracy of the dominant nation intervenes in the struggle with its own methods of “arresting and preventing.” The bourgeoisie – whether big or small – of the dominant nation is able to deal more “swiftly” and “decisively” with its competitor. “Forces” are united and a series of restrictive measures is put into operation against the “alien” bourgeoisie, measures passing into acts of repression. The struggle spreads from the economic sphere to the political sphere. Restriction of freedom of movement, repression of language, restriction of franchise, closing of schools, religious restrictions, and so on, are piled upon the head of the “competitor.” Of course, such measures are designed not only in the interest of the bourgeois classes of the dominant nation, but also in furtherance of the specifically caste aims, so to speak, of the ruling bureaucracy.

But from the point of view of the results achieved this is quite immaterial; the bourgeois classes and the bureaucracy in this matter go hand in hand – whether it be in Austria-Hungary or in Russia.

The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, repressed on every hand, is naturally stirred into movement. It appeals to its “native folk” and begins to shout about the “fatherland,’; claiming that its own cause is the cause of the nation as a whole. It recruits itself an army from among its “countrymen” in the interests of … the “fatherland.” Nor do the “folk” always remain unresponsive to its appeals; they rally around its banner: the repression from above affects them too and provokes their discontent.

Thus the national movement begins.

The strength of the national movement is determined by the degree to which the wide strata of the nation, the proletariat and peasantry, participate in it.

Whether the proletariat rallies to the banner of bourgeois nationalism depends on the degree of development of class antagonisms, on the class consciousness and degree of organization of the proletariat. The class-conscious proletariat has its own tried banner, and has no need to rally to the banner of the bourgeoisie.

As far as the peasants are concerned, their participation in the national movement depends primarily on the character of the repressions. If the repressions affect the “land,” as was the case in Ireland, then the mass of the peasants immediately rally to the banner of the national movement.

On the other hand, if, for example, there is no serious anti-Russian nationalism in Georgia, it is primarily because there are neither Russian landlords nor a Russian big bourgeoisie there to supply the fuel for such nationalism among the masses. In Georgia there is anti-Armenian nationalism; but this is because there is still an Armenian big bourgeoisie there which, by getting the better of the small and still unconsolidated Georgian bourgeoisie, drives the latter to anti-Armenian nationalism. .

Depending on these factors, the national movement either assumes a mass character and steadily grows (as in Ireland and Galicia), or is converted into a series of petty collisions, degenerating into squabbles and “fights” over signboards (as in some of the small towns of Bohemia).

The content of the national movement, of course, cannot everywhere be the same: it is wholly determined by the diverse demands made by the movement. In Ireland the movement bears an agrarian character; in Bohemia it bears a “language” character; in one place the demand is for civil equality and religious freedom, in another for the nation’s “own” officials, or its own Diet. The diversity of demands not infrequently reveals the diverse features which characterize a nation in general (language, territory, etc.). It is worthy of note that we never meet with a demand based on Bauer’s all-embracing “national character.” And this is natural: “national character” in itself is something intangible, and, as was correctly remarked by J. Strasser, “a politician can’t do anything with it.” [7]

Such, in general, are the forms and character of the national movement.

From what has been said it will be clear that the national struggle under the conditions of rising capitalism is a struggle of the bourgeois classes among themselves. Sometimes the bourgeoisie succeeds in drawing the proletariat into the national movement, and then the national struggle externally assumes a “nation-wide” character. But this is so only externally. In its essence it is always a bourgeois struggle, one that is to the advantage and profit mainly of the bourgeoisie.

But it does not by any means follow that the proletariat should not put up a fight against the policy of national oppression.

Restriction of freedom of movement, disfranchisement, repression of language, closing of schools, and other forms of persecution affect the workers no less, if not more, than the bourgeoisie. Such a state of affairs can only serve to retard the free development of the intellectual forces of the proletariat of subject nations. One cannot speak seriously of a full development of the intellectual faculties of the Tatar or Jewish worker if he is not allowed to use his native language at meetings and lectures, and if his schools are closed down.

But the policy of nationalist persecution is dangerous to the cause of the proletariat also on another account. It diverts the attention of large strata from social questions, questions of the class struggle, to national questions, questions “common” to the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. And this creates a favourable soil for lying propaganda about “harmony of interests,” for glossing over the class interests of the proletariat and for the intellectual enslavement of the workers.

This creates a serious obstacle to the cause of uniting the workers of all nationalities. If a considerable proportion of the Polish workers are still in intellectual bondage to the bourgeois nationalists, if they still stand aloof from the international labour movement, it is chiefly because the age-old anti-Polish policy of the “powers that be” creates the soil for this bondage and hinders the emancipation of the workers from it.

But the policy of persecution does not stop there. It not infrequently passes from a “system” of oppression to a “system” of inciting nations against each other, to a “system” of massacres and pogroms. Of course, the latter system is not everywhere and always possible, but where it is possible – in the absence of elementary civil rights – it frequently assumes horrifying proportions and threatens to drown the cause of unity of the workers in blood and tears. The Caucasus and south Russia furnish numerous examples. “Divide and rule” – such is the purpose of the policy of incitement. And where such a policy succeeds, it is a tremendous evil for the proletariat and a serious obstacle to the cause of uniting the workers of all the nationalities in the state.

But the workers are interested in the complete amalgamation of all their fellow-workers into a single international army, in their speedy and final emancipation from intellectual bondage to the bourgeoisie, and in the full and free development of the intellectual forces of their brothers, whatever nation they may belong to.

The workers therefore combat and will continue to combat the policy of national oppression in all its forms, from the most subtle to the most crude, as well as the policy of inciting nations against each other in all its forms

Social-Democracy in all countries therefore proclaims the right of nations to self-determination.

The right of self-determination means that only the nation itself has the right to determine its destiny, that no one has the right forcibly to interfere in the life of the nation, to destroy its schools and other institutions, to violate its habits and customs, to repress its language, or curtail its rights.

This, of course, does not mean that Social-Democracy will support every custom and institution of a nation. While combating the coercion of any nation, it will uphold only the right of the nation itself to determine its own destiny, at the same time agitating against harmful customs and institutions of that nation in order to enable the toiling strata of the nation to emancipate themselves from them.

The right of self-determination means that a nation may arrange its life in the way it wishes. It has the right to arrange its life on the basis of autonomy. It has the right to enter into federal relations with other nations. It has the right to complete secession. Nations are sovereign, and all nations have equal rights.

This, of course, does not mean that Social-Democracy will support every demand of a nation. A nation has the right even to return to the old order of things; but this does not mean that Social-Democracy will subscribe to such a decision if taken by some institution of a particular nation. The obligations of Social-Democracy, which defends the interests of the proletariat, and the rights of a nation, which consists of various classes, are two different things.

In fighting for the right of nations to self-determination, the aim of Social-Democracy is to put an end to the policy of national oppression, to render it impossible, and thereby to remove the grounds of strife between nations, to take the edge off that strife and reduce it to a minimum.

This is what essentially distinguishes the policy of the class-conscious proletariat from the policy of the bourgeoisie, which attempts to aggravate and fan the national struggle and to prolong and sharpen the national movement.

And that is why the class-conscious proletariat cannot rally under the “national” flag of the bourgeoisie.

That is why the so-called “evolutionary national” policy advocated by Bauer cannot become the policy of the proletariat. Bauer’s attempt to identify his “evolutionary national” policy with the policy of the “modern working class” is an attempt to adapt the class struggle of the workers to the struggle of the nations.

The fate of a national movement, which is essentially a bourgeois movement, is naturally bound up with the fate of the bourgeoisie. The -final disappearance of a national movement is possible only with the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Only under the reign of socialism can peace be fully established. But even within the framework of capitalism it is possible to reduce the national struggle to a minimum, to undermine it at the root, to render it as harmless as possible to the proletariat. This is borne out, for example, by Switzerland and America. It requires that the country should be democratized and the nations be given the opportunity of free development.

Annexure13: The Problem of Reformism by Robert Brenner

[First published in Against the Current, No. 43, March/April 1993]

I WAS ASKED to talk about the historical lessons of revolution in the twentieth century. But since we are primarily interested in historical lessons that are likely to be relevant to the twenty-first century, I think it would be more to the point to consider the experience of reform and reformism.

Reformism is always with us, but it rarely announces its presence and usually introduces itself by another name and in a friendly fashion. Still, it is our main political competitor and we had better understand it.

To begin with, it should be clear that reformism does not distinguish itself by a concern for reforms. Both revolutionaries and reformists try to win reforms. Indeed, as socialists, we see the fight for reforms as our main business.

But reformists are also interested in winning reforms. In fact, to a very large extent, reformists share our program, at least in words. They are for higher wages, full employment, a better welfare state, stronger trade unions, even a third party.

The inescapable fact is that, if we want to attract people to a revolutionary-socialist banner and away from reformism, it will not generally be through outbidding reformists in terms of program. It will be through our theory—our understanding of the world —and, most important, through our method, our practice.

What distinguishes reformism on a day-to-day basis is its political method and its theory, not its program. Schematically speaking, reformists argue that although, left on its own, the capitalist economy tends to crisis, state intervention can enable capitalism to achieve long-term stability and growth. They argue, at the same time, that the state is an instrument that can be used by any group, including the working class, in its own interests.

Reformism’s basic political method or strategy follows directly from these premises. Working people and the oppressed can and should devote themselves primarily to winning elections so as to gain control of the state and thereby secure legislation to regulate capitalism and, on that basis, to improve their working conditions and living standards.

The Paradox of Reformlsm

Marxists have, of course, always counterposed their own theories and strategies to those of reformists. But, probably of equal importance in combatting reformism, revolutionaries have argued that both reformist theory and reformist practice are best understood in terms of the distinctive social forces on which reformism has historically based itself—in particular, as rationalizations of the needs and interests of trade union officials and parliamentary politicos, as well as middle-class leaders of the movements of the oppressed.

Reformism’s distinctive social basis is not simply of sociological interest it is the key to the central paradox that has defined, and dogged, reformism since its origins as a self-defined movement within the social democratic parties (evolutionary socialism) around 1900. That is, the social forces at the heart of reformism and their organizations are committed to political methods (as well as theories to justify them) that end up preventing them from securing their own reform goals—especially the electoral legislative mad and state-regulated labour relations.

As a result, the achievement of major reforms throughout the twentieth century has generally required not only breaking with, but systematically struggling against, organized reformism, its chief leaders and their organizations. This is because the winning of such reforms has, in virtually every instance, required strategies and tactics of which organized reformism did not approve because these threatened their social position and interests—high levels of militant now action, large-scale defiance of the law, and the forging of increasingly class-wide ties of active solidarity—between unionized and ununionized, employed and unemployed, and the like.

The Reformist View

The core proposition of the reformist world view is that, though prone to crisis, the capitalist economy is, in the end subject to state regulation.

Reformists have argued—in various ways—that what makes for crisis is unregulated class struggle. They have thus often contended that capitalist crisis can arise from the “too great” exploitation of workers by capitalists in the interests of increased profitability. This causes problems for the system as a whole because it leads to inadequate purchasing power on the part of working people, who cannot buy back enough of what they produce. Insufficient demand makes for a “crisis of underconsumption”—for example (according to reformist theorists), the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Reformists have also argued that capitalist crisis can arise, on the other hand, from “too strong” resistance by workers to capitalist oppression on the shop floor. By blocking the introduction of innovative technology or refusing to work harder, workers reduce productivity growth (output/worker). This, in turn means a slower growing pie, reduced profitability, reduced investment, and ultimately a “supply-side crisis”—for example (according to reformist theorists), the current economic downturn beginning at the end of the 1960s.

It follows from this approach that, because crises are the unintended result of unregulated class struggle, the state can secure economic stability and growth precisely by intervening to regulate both the distribution of income and capital-labour relations on the shop floor. The implication is that class struggle is not really necessary, for it is in the long term interest of neither the capitalist class nor the working class, if they can be made to coordinate their actions.

The State as Neutral Apparatus

The reformist theory of the state fits very well with its political economy. In this view, the state is an autonomous apparatus of power, in principle neutral, capable of being used by anyone. It follows that workers and the oppressed should try to gain control of it for the purpose of regulating the economy so as to secure economic stability and growth and, on that basis, win reforms in their own material interests.

Reformism’s political strategy flows logically from its view of the economy and the state. Workers and the oppressed should concentrate on electing reformist politicos to office. Because state intervention by a reformist government can secure long-term stability and growth in the interests of capital, as well as labour, there is no reason to believe that employers will stubbornly oppose a reformist government.

Such a government can prevent crises of underconsumption by implementing redistributive tax policies and prevent supply-side crises by establishing state regulated worker-management commissions in the interest of raising productivity. On the basis of a growing, increasingly productive economy, the state can continually raise spending on state services, while regulating collective bargaining so as to insure fairness to all parties.

Reformists would maintain that workers need to remain organized and vigilant—especially in their unions—and prepared to move against rogue capitalists who won’t be disciplined in the common interest: ready to take strike action against employers who refuse to accept mediation at the level of the firm or, in the worst case, to rise en masse against groups of reactionary capitalists who can’t abide giving over governmental power to the great majority and seek to subvert the democratic order.

But presumably such battles would remain subordinate to the main electoral-legislative struggle and become progressively less common since reformist state policy would proceed in the interest not only of workers and the oppressed, but of the employers, even if the latter did not at first realize it.

Responding to Reformism

Revolutionaries have classically rejected the reformists’ political method of relying on the electoral/legislative process and state-regulated collective bargaining for the simple reason that it can’t work.

So long as capitalist property relations continue top, the state cannot be autonomous. This is not because the state is always directly controlled by capitalists (social democratic and labour party governments, for example, often are not). It is because whoever controls the state is brutally limited in what they can do by the needs of capitalist profitability … and because, over any extended period, the needs of capitalist profitability are very difficult to reconcile with reforms in the interest of working people.

In a capitalist society, you can’t get economic growth unless you can get investment, and you can’t get capitalists to invest unless they can make what they judge to be an adequate rate of profit. Since high levels of employment and increasing state services in the interest of the working class (dependent upon taxation) are predicated upon economic growth, even governments that want to further the interests of the exploited and the oppressed—for example social democratic or labour party governments—must make capitalist profitability in the interest of economic growth their first priority.

The old saying that “What’s good for General Motors is good for everyone,’ unfortunately contains an important grain of truth, so long as capitalist property relations continue in force.

This is not of course to deny that capitalist governments will ever make reforms. Especially in periods of boom, when profitability is high, capital and the state are often quite willing to grant improvements to working people and the oppressed in the interests of uninterrupted production and social order.

But in periods of downturn, when profitability is reduced and competition intensifies the cost of paying (via taxation) for such reforms can endanger the very survival of firms and they are rarely granted without very major struggles in the workplaces and in the streets. Equally to the point, in such periods, governments of every sort—whether representative of capital or labour—so long as they are committed to capitalist property relationships, will end up attempting to restore profitability by seeing to it that wages and social spending are cut, that capitalists receive tax breaks, and so forth.

The Centrality of Crisis Theory

It should be evident why, for revolutionaries, so much is riding on their contention that extended periods of crisis are built into capitalism. From this standpoint, crises arise from capitalism’s inherently anarchic nature, which makes for a path of capital accumulation that is eventually self-contradictory or self-undermining. Because by nature a capitalist economy operates in an unplanned way, governments cannot prevent crises.

This is not the place for an extended discussion of debates over crisis theory. But one can at least point out that capitalist history has vindicated an anti-reformist viewpoint Since the later nineteenth century, if not before, whatever type of governments have been in power, long periods of capitalist boom (185Os-187(, 1890s-1913, late 1940s.c.1970) have always been succeeded by long periods of capitalist depression (1870s-1890s, 1919-1939, c1970to the present). One of Ernest Mandel’s fundamental contributions in recent years has been to emphasize this pattern of capitalist development through long waves of boom and downturn.

During the first two decades of the postwar period, it seemed that reformism had finally vindicated its political world view. There was unprecedented boom, accompanied by—and seemingly caused by—the application of Keynesian measures to subsidize demand, as well as the growing government expenditures associated with the welfare state. Every advanced capitalist economy experienced not only fast-rising wages, but a significant expansion of social services in the interest of the working class and the oppressed.

In the late ’60s or early 170s, it thus appeared to many that the way to insure continually improved conditions for working people was to pursue “class struggle inside the state—the electoral/ legislative victories of social democratic and labour parties (the Democratic Party in the United States).

But the next two decades entirely falsified this perspective. Declining profitability brought a long-term crisis of growth and investment Under these conditions, one after another reformist government in power—the Labour Party in the late 70s, the French and Spanish Socialist Parties in the ’80s, and the Swedish Social Democratic Party in the ’80s—found itself unable to restore pros-parity through the usual methods of subsidizing demand and concluded that it had little choice but to increase profitability as the only way to increase investment and restore growth.

As a result, virtually without exception, the reformist parties in power not only failed to defend workers’ wages or living standards against employers’ attack, but unleashed powerful austerity drives designed to raise the rate of profit by cutting the welfare state and reducing the power of the unions. There could be no more definitive disproof of reformist economic theories and the notion of the autonomy of the state. Precisely because the state could not prevent capitalist crisis, it could not but reveal itself as supinely dependent upon capital.

Why Reformism Doesn’t Reform

It remains to be asked why the reformist parties in power continued to respect capitalist property rights and sought to restore capitalist profits. Why didn’t they instead seek to defend working class living and working standards, if necessary by class struggle? In the event that that approach led capitalists to abstain from investing or to capital flight, why could they not then have nationalized industries and moved toward socialism? We are back to the paradox of reformism.

The key is to be found in the peculiar social forces that dominate reformist politics, above all the trade union officialdom and the social democratic party politicos. What distinguishes these forces is that, while they are dependent for their very existence on organizations built out of the working class, they are not themselves part of the working class.

Above all, they are off the shop floor. They find their material base, their livelihood, in the trade union or party organization itself. It’s not just that they get their salaries from the trade union or political party, although this is very important The trade union or party defines their whole way of life—what they do, whom they meet—as well as their career trajectory.

Asa result, the key to their survival, to the fluctuations in their material and social position, is their place within the trade union or party organization itself. So tong as the organization is viable, they can have a viable form of life and a reasonable career.

The gulf between the form of life of the rank and file worker and even the low level paid official is thus enormous. The economic position—wages, benefits, working conditions—of ordinary work-era depends directly on the course of the class struggle at the workplace and within the industry. Successful class struggle is the only way for them to defend their living standards.

The trade union official, in contrast, can generally do quite well even if one defeat follows another in the class struggle, so long as the trade union organization survives. It is true that in the very long run the very survival of the trade union organization is dependent upon the class struggle, but this is rarely a relevant factor. More to the point is the fact that, in the short run, especially in periods of profitability crisis, class struggle is probably the main threat to the viability of the organization.

Since militant resistance to capital can provoke a response from capital and the state that threaten the financial condition or the very existence of the organization, the trade union officials generally seek studiously to avoid it The trade unions and reformist parties have thus, historically, sought to ward off capital by coming to terms with it.

They have assured capital that they accept the capitalist property system and the priority of profitability in the operation of the firm. They have at the same time sought to make sure that workers, inside or outside their organizations, do not adopt militant, illegal, and class-wide forms of action that might appear too threatening to capital and call forth a violent response.

Above all, with implacable class struggle ruled out as a means to win reforms, trade union officials and parliamentary politicians have seen the electoral/legislative road as the fundamental political strategy left to them. Through the passive mobilization of an election campaign, these forces thus hope to create the conditions for winning reforms, while avoiding too much offending capital in the process.

This is not to adopt the absurd view that workers are generally chomping at the bit to struggle and are only being held back by their misleaders. In fact, workers often are as conservative as their leaders, or more so. The point is that, unlike the trade union or party officials, rank and file workers cannot, over time, defend their interests without class struggle.

Moreover, at those moments when workers do decide to take matters into their own hands and attack the employers, the trade union officials can be expected to constitute a barrier to their struggle, to seek to detour or derail it.

Of course, trade union leaders and party officials are not in every case averse to class struggle, and sometimes they even initiate it The point is simply that, because of their social position, they cannot be counted on to resist Therefore, no matter how radical the leaders’ rhetoric, no strategy should be based on the assumption that they will resist.

It is the fact that trade union officials and social democratic politicians cannot be counted onto fight the class struggle because they have major material interests that are endangered by confrontations with the employers that provides the central justification for our strategy of building rank and file organizations that are independent of the officials (although they may work with them), as well as independent working class parties.

Reformism Today and Regroupment

Understanding reformism is no mere academic exercise. It affects just about every political initiative we take. This can be seen particularly clearly with respect both to today’s strategic tasks of bringing together anti-reformist forces within a common organization (regroupment) and that of creating a break from the Democratic Party.

Today, as for many years, Solidarity’s best hope for regrouping with organized (however loosely) left forces comes from those individuals and groups which see themselves as opposed from the left to official reformism. The fact remains that many of these leftists, explicitly or implicitly, still identify with an approach to politics that may be roughly termed “popular frontism.”

Despite the fact that it was framed entirely outside the camp of organized social democracy, popular frontism takes reformism to the level of a system.

The Communist International first promulgated the idea of the popular front in 1935 to complement the Soviet Union’s foreign policy of seeking an alliance with the “liberal” capitalist powers to defend against Nazi expansionism (“collective security”). In this context, the Communists internationally put forward the idea that it was possible for the working class to forge a very broad alliance across classes, not only with middle class liberals, but with an enlightened section of the capitalist class, in the interest of democracy, civil liberties, and reform.

The conceptual basis for this view was that an enlightened section of the capitalist class preferred a constitutional order to an authoritarian one. In addition, enlightened capitalists were willing to countenance greater government intervention and egalitarianism in order to create the conditions for liberalism, as well as to insure social stability.

Like other reformist doctrines, the popular front based itself, in economic terms, on an underconsumptionist theory of crisis Underconsumptionism was in fact receiving a wide hearing in liberal, as well as radical-socialist, circles during the 1930s, receiving a particularly strong boost with the promulgation and popularization of Keynes’ ideas.

In the United States, the implication of the popular front was to enter the Democratic Party. The Roosevelt administration, containing as it did certain relatively progressive establishment types, was seen as an archetypical representative of capitalism’s enlightened wing. And the imperative of working with the Democrats was very much increased with the sudden rise of the labour movement as a power in the land.

The Communists had originally been in the lead in organizing the CIO, and had, in fact, spectacularly succeeded in auto largely by virtue of their adoption, for a very brief but decisive period (1935-early 1937), of a rank-and-file strategy much like that of Solidarity today. This strategy had, at the start, found its parallel in Communist refusal to support Roosevelt.

But by 1937, soon after the adoption of the popular front with its implied imperative not to alienate the Roosevelt administration, the CF had come to oppose labour militancy (sitdown strikes, wildcats) in the interest of the classically social democratic policy of allying with the “left wing of the trade union officials.

The implication of this policy was to reject the notion that the labour officialdom represented a distinct social layer that could be expected to put the interests of its organizations ahead of the interests of the rank and file—a notion that had been at the core of the politics of the left-wing of pre-World War I social democracy (Luxemburg, Trotsky, etc.) and of the Third International since the days of Lenin.

Instead, trade union officials ceased to be differentiated in social terms from the rank and file and came to be distinguished (from one another) by their political line alone (left, center, right).

This approach fit very well with the Communists strategic objective of getting the newly-emergent industrial unions to enter the Democratic Party. Of course, much of the trade union officialdom was only too happy to emphasize its political role inside the emergent reform wing of the Democratic Party, especially in comparison with its much more dangerous economic role of organizing the membership to fight the employers.

The dual policy of allying with the left” officials inside the trade union movement and working for reform through electoral/legislative means within the Democratic Party (hopefully along. side the progressive trade union leaders) has remained to this day powerfully attractive to much of the left.

A Rank-and-File Perspective

In the trade unions during the 1970s, representatives of tendencies that eventually ended up inside Solidarity were obliged to counterpose the idea of the rank-and-file movement independent of the trade union officials to the popular front idea of many leftists of supporting the extant “progressive” leadership.

This meant, in the first place, countering the idea that the progressive trade union officials would be obliged to move to the left and oppose the employers, if only to defend their own organizations.

Revolutionaries contended that, on the contrary, precisely because of the viciousness of the employers’ offensive, trade union officials would for the most part be willing to make concessions in the interest of avoiding confrontation with the employers. They would thereby allow the bit-by-bit chipping away of the labour movement virtually indefinitely.

The latter perspective has been more than borne out, as officials have by and large sat on their hands as the concessions movement has reached gale proportions and the proportion of workers in trade unions dropped from 25-30% in the ’60s to 10-15% today.

Equally to the point, revolutionaries in the trade union movement had to counter the popular front idea that the trade union leaders were “to the left of the rank and file. If you talked with many leftists in that period, sooner or later you’d get the argument that the rank and file were politically backward.

After all, many “progressive” trade union leaders opposed U.S. intervention in Central America (and elsewhere) more firmly than did the membership, stood much more clearly than did the membership for extensions of the welfare state, and, even, in a number of cases, came out for a labour party.

Our response to this argument was to contrast what “progressive” trade union leaders are willing to do verbally, “politically,” where relatively little is at stake, with what they are willing to do to fight the bosses, where virtually everything may be at risk It cost the well-known head of the IAM William Winpisinger virtually nothing to be a member of DSA and promulgate a virtually perfect social democratic world view on such questions as the reconversion of the economy, national health care, and the like.

But when it came to class struggle, we pointed out, Winpisinger not only came out clearly against Teamsters for a Democratic Union, but sent his machinists across the picket line in the crucial PATCO (air controllers) strike.

Over the past decade or so, many leftists have broken with the Soviet Union or China and become open to reexamining their entire political world view. But this does not mean that they automatically move in our direction. For their popular front political strategy corresponds in central ways with a still (relatively) powerful and coherent political trend—Le. social democratic reformism.

If we are to win over these comrades, we will have to demonstrate to them, systematically and in detail, that their traditional popular front strategy of working with the trade union “lefts” and penetrating the Democratic Party is in fact self-defeating.

Annexure14: The Myth of the Labour Aristocracy Part 1 by Charles Post

[First published in Against the Current, No. 123, July–August 2006]

THE PERSISTENCE OF reformism and outright conservatism among workers, especially in the imperialist centers of North America, Western Europe and Japan, has long confounded revolutionary socialists. The broadest outlines of Marxist theory tell us that capitalism creates its own “gravediggers” – a class of collective producers with no interest in the maintenance of private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist system’s drive to maximize profits should force workers to struggle against their employers, progressively broaden their struggle and eventually overthrow the system and replace it with their democratic self-rule.

The reality of the last century seems to challenge these basic Marxist ideas. Despite occasional mass militancy and even proto-revolutionary struggles, the majority of the working class in the developed capitalist countries have remained tied to reformist politics – a politics premised on the possibility of improving the condition of workers without the overthrow of capitalism.

While living and working conditions for workers in the “global North” have deteriorated sharply since the late 1960s, the result has not been, for the most part, the growth of revolutionary consciousness. Instead we have seen reactionary ideas – racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, militarism – strengthened in a significant sector of workers in the advanced capitalist countries. Since the late 1970s, nearly one-third of U.S. voters in union households have voted for right-wing Republicans. (1)

This paradox poses a crucial challenge for revolutionary Marxists. However, we need to avoid “mythological” explanations, imagined explanations for real phenomena, whether to interpret natural events or to explain the nature of society. Unfortunately, one of the most influential explanations within the left for working class reformism and conservatism – the theory of the “labour aristocracy” – is such a myth.

Theory of the “Labour Aristocracy”

Frederick Engels first introduced the notion of the “labour aristocracy” in a number of letters to Marx stretching from the late 1850s through the late 1880s. (2) Engels was grappling with the growing conservatism of the organized sectors of the British working class. He argued that those British workers who had been able to establish unions and secure stable employment – skilled workers in the iron, steel and machine making industries and most workers in the cotton textile mills – constituted a privileged and “bourgeoisified” layer of the working class, a “labour aristocracy.”

British capital’s dominance of the world economy – its industrial and financial “monopoly” – allowed key employers to provide a minority of workers with relatively higher wages and employment security. Engels saw the resulting relative privilege, especially when compared with the mass of poorly paid workers in unstable jobs, as the material basis of the growing conservatism of the British labour movement.

The contemporary theory of the labour aristocracy is rooted in the work of V.I. Lenin on imperialism and the rise of “monopoly capitalism.” Lenin was shocked when the leaders of the European socialist parties supported “their” capitalist governments in the First World War. The victory of what he called “opportunism” (his term for reformism) confounded Lenin, who had dismissed the development of “revisionism” (Edward Bernstein’s challenge to classical Marxism in 1899) as the ideology of socially isolated, middle-class intellectuals. Lenin believed the “orthodox Marxist” leadership of the socialist parties and unions had long ago vanquished the revisionist challenge.

Lenin had therefore expected that the European socialist leaders would fulfill their pledge, ratified at numerous congresses of the Socialist International, to oppose their ruling classes’ war drive with strikes and social disruption. By 1915, Lenin had begun to develop his explanation for the victory of opportunism in the socialist and labour movements. In his article The Collapse of the Second International, Lenin argued:

“The period of imperialism is the period in which the distribution of the world among the ‘great’ and privileged nations, by whom all other nations are oppressed, is completed. Scraps of the booty enjoyed by the privileged as a result of this oppression undoubtedly fall to the lot of certain sections of the petty-bourgeoisie and the aristocracy and bureaucracy of the working class.” (3)

This segment “represents an infinitesimal minority of the proletariat and the working masses” whose “adherence … with the bourgeoisie against the mass of the proletariat” was the social basis of reformism.

Lenin located the economic foundation of the labour aristocracy in the “super-profits” generated through imperialist investment in what we would today call the “third world” or “global South.” According to his 1920 preface to Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism:

“Obviously, out of such enormous super profits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of the country) it is possible to bribe their labour leaders and an upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And the capitalists of the ‘advanced’ countries do bribe them: they bribe them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert.

“This stratum of bourgeoisified workers or ‘labour aristocracy,’ who have become completely petty-bourgeois in their mode of life, in the amount of their earnings, and in their point of view, serve as the main support of the Second International [the reformist socialists – CP] and, in our day, the principal social (not military) support of the bourgeoisie. They are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the labour movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, the real carriers of reformism and chauvinism.” (4)

The theory of the labour aristocracy remains an important explanation of working-class reformism and conservatism for important segments of the far left in the industrialized countries. While the mainstream Communist Parties generally distanced themselves from the notion of the labour aristocracy as they moved toward reformist politics in the late 1930s (5), certain left-wing opponents of the Communist Parties continue to defend the theory.

Thus, in the “New Communist Movement” of the 1970s and 1980s, various currents defended the notion that a layer of U.S. workers shared in the “super profits” of imperialism and monopoly capitalism. Max Elbaum (the author of the influential Revolution in the Air (6)) and Robert Seltzer, then leaders of the prominent “new communist” group Line of March, published a three part explication and defence of the theory of the labour aristocracy in the early 1980s. (7)

More recently, Jonathan Strauss of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), one of the larger revolutionary organizations in the English-speaking world whose origins lie in Trotskyism, has published a series of articles in the DSP sponsored journal Links (8) that elaborates upon Elbaum and Seltzer’s defence of the theory of the labour aristocracy.

Important groups of activists, in particular those working with low-wage workers, are also drawn to the theory of the labour aristocracy. Four members of the People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), a workers’ center organizing mostly “low-wage/no-wage” workers of color in the San Francisco area, argued that:

”Another feature of imperialism that distinguishes it from earlier eras of capitalism is the imperialist powers’ creation of a ‘labour aristocracy.’ The dominant position of the imperialist nations allows these nations to extract super-profits. The ruling elite of imperialist nations use some of the super-profits to make significant economic and political concessions to certain sectors of that nation’s working class. Through higher wages, greater access to consumer goods and services and expanded social wage such as public education and cultural institutions, the imperialist elite are able to essentially bribe those sections of the working class …

”For a contemporary example of this, all we have to do is look at the 2004 presidential elections. Statistics show that working class whites in the United States voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush in an election that could be read as a referendum of the empire’s war on the Iraqi people. An analysis that solely focuses on class would suggest that working class whites had and have an interest in opposing a war that, if nothing else, is costing them billions in dollars. But clearly that ain’t what happened. Working class whites voted overwhelmingly in support of the war on the Iraqi people. The majority of working class whites, despite their own exploitation, tie their own interests to white supremacy and the dominance of “America” in the world.” (9)

Most current versions of the labour aristocracy thesis recognize some of the grave empirical problems (see below) with Lenin’s claims that higher wages for a significant minority of workers in the imperialist countries comes from the super profits earned from the exploitation of lower paid workers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. (10) Instead, they tend to emphasize how the emergence of “monopoly capitalism” allows large corporations that dominate key branches of industry to earn super profits, which they share with their workers in the form of secure employment, higher wages and benefits.

Contemporary defenders of the labour aristocracy thesis argue that prior to the rise of large corporations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, capitalism was in its “competitive” stage. Under competitive capitalism most branches of industry saw a large number of relatively small firms competing with one another through price cutting.

If any particular firm or industry began to experience higher than average profits because of the introduction of new machinery, it was relatively easy for its competitors to either adopt the new technology or shift investment from industries with lower profits to industries with higher profits. Through this process of competition within and between branches of production, new technology was rapidly diffused and capital easily moved between different sectors of the economy, resulting in uniform technical conditions within an industry and equal profit rates within and between industries.

According to Elbaum and Seltzer, Marx’s analysis of the equalization of the rate of profit (11) applied to the “competitive” phase of capitalism:

”In the era of competitive capitalism, profits above the average rate, i.e. surplus profits, were generally spasmodic and temporary. They were usually derived as a result of technological advances that enabled a capitalist to reduce costs below the industry average, or entrepreneurial skills that opened new markets. However, an abnormally high rate of profit by an individual firm, or in a particular branch of industry, was soon undermined by an inflow of capital seeking the higher rate of profit or by the relatively rapid adoption of cost-cutting innovations by competitors.” (12)

The rise of large scale corporations in the 20th century create “institutional or structural restrictions of this process” which “result in monopoly super profits.” (13) “Monopoly” or “oligopoly” – where a small number of firms dominate a given industry – replaced competition. Specifically, the enormous cost of new capital’s entering these industries (auto, steel, etc.) – the barriers to entry – allow these firms to limit competition and sustain above average profits in several ways.

These barriers to entry prevent the rapid diffusion of new methods of production across industries, creating what Ernest Mandel called “technological rents” or super-profits (14) for these monopoly corporations. These barriers also prevent capital from moving from low profitability to high profitability industries, blocking the equalization of profit rates. Finally, barriers to entry and restricted competition allow corporations to raise prices above their prices of production, securing super profits for the largest firms in the economy. (15)

In this view competition does not disappear under monopoly capitalism, but tends to operate primarily in those sectors of the economy where large numbers of relatively small firms continue to predominate. Cut-throat competition and the rapid depression of above average profits to the average rate persist in the “competitive” sectors (garment, electronics, etc.) of the economy. There the small scale of investment necessary to start a competitive firm lowers barriers to entry and allows a large number of small firms to survive.

The result is a “dual economy,” with two distinct profit rates:

”In the monopoly stage of capitalism, the tendency to form an average rate of profit still exists, since monopoly doesn’t obliterate competition in the system as a whole. But it is modified by monopoly power. Therefore, the surplus value of society is distributed both according to size of capital through inter-industry competition (which yields equal profit on equal capital as in competitive capitalism); and according to the level of monopolization (which yields monopoly super profits). Monopolies receive both the average profit and monopoly super profit. Consequently, there arise the phenomena of a relatively permanent hierarchy of profit rates ranging from the highest in the strategic industries with large-scale production and the strongest monopolies, to the lowest in weaker industries with small-scale production, intense competition and market instability.” (16)

According to Strauss, Elbaum and Seltzer, monopoly super profits become the primary source of the “bribe” for the contemporary labour aristocracy. The monopoly industries’ higher than average profit rates allow these firms to provide higher than average wages and benefits and secure employment to their workers. By contrast, competitive industries earn average (or below average) profit rates and doom workers in these industries to below average wages and benefits and insecure employment.

From this perspective, effective unions are only possible in the monopoly sector of the economy, where the absence of competition creates super profits and allows corporations to “bribe” workers with higher wages and more secure employment. Given the realities of racism and national oppression, “white” workers tend to be overrepresented in the higher paid sectors of the economy, while workers of color tend to be overrepresented in the lower paid sectors of the economy.

The labour aristocracy, as today’s theorists see it, is no longer made up primarily of skilled machinists and other industrial workers, as was the case in the early 20th century. Today, the more highly paid workers in the unionized monopoly and public sector constitute a labour aristocracy whose higher wages derive from the super-exploitation of workers in the competitive sectors of the advanced capitalist economies. (17)

Despite its intellectual pedigree and longevity, the labour aristocracy thesis is not a theoretically rigorous or factually realistic explanation of working-class reformism or conservatism. This essay undertakes an examination of the theoretical and empirical economic claims of the labour aristocracy thesis.

We will first evaluate the claim that super profits pumped out of workers in the global South underwrite a “bribe” in the form of higher wages for a minority of the working class in the global North. The essay then evaluates the claim that limits on competition flowing from industrial concentration in key sectors of the economy produces differential profits rates and wages. We will conclude our critique of the theory of the labour aristocracy with an analysis of the actual history of radical and revolutionary working-class activism in the 20th century.

Finally, I will present an alternative explanation of the persistence of working class reformism and conservatism – one rooted in the necessarily episodic character of working-class self-organization and activity, the emergence of an officialdom (bureaucracy) in the unions and pro-working class political parties, and the inability of reformist politics to effectively win or defend working-class gains under capitalism. (18)

Investment, Wages and Profits

Imperialist investment, particularly in the global South, represents a tiny portion of global capitalist investment. (19) Foreign direct investment makes up only 5% of total world investment – that is to say, 95% of total capitalist investment takes place within the boundaries of each industrialized country.

Of that five percent of total global investment that is foreign direct investment, nearly three-quarters flow from one industrialized country – one part of the global North – to another. Thus only 1.25% of total world investment flows from the global North to the global South. It is not surprising that the global South accounts for only 20% of global manufacturing output, mostly in labor-intensive industries such as clothing, shoes, auto parts and simple electronics.

Data for profits earned by U.S. companies overseas do not distinguish between investments in the global North and global South. For purposes of approximation, we will assume that the 25% of U.S. foreign direct investment in labor-intensive manufacturing in Africa, Asia and Latin America produces profits above those earned on the 75% of U.S. foreign direct investment in more capital-intensive production in western Europe, Canada and Japan. It is unlikely, however, that more than half of the profits earned abroad by US companies are earned in the global South.

Thus, assigning 50% of foreign profits of U.S. companies to their investments in the global South probably biases the data in favor of claims that these profits constitute a significant source of total U.S. wages. Yet even accepting such a biased estimate, the data (Table I and Graph I) for the period 1948–2003 supports Ernest Mandel’s assertion that U.S. profits from investment in the global South “constitute a negligible sum compared to the total wage bill of the American working class.” (20)

Prior to 1995 total profits earned by U.S. companies abroad exceeded 4% of total U.S. wages only once, in 1979. Foreign profits as a percentage of total U.S. wages rose above 5% only in 1997, 2000 and 2002, and rose slightly over 6% in 2003. If we hold to our estimate that half of total foreign profits are earned from investment in the global South, only 1–2% of total U.S. wages for most of the nearly 50 years prior to 1995 – and only 2–3% of total U.S. wages in the 1990s – could have come from profits earned in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Such proportions are hardly sufficient to explain the 37% wage differentials between secretaries in advertising agencies and “labour aristocracy” machinists working on oil pipelines, or the 64% wage differentials between janitors in restaurants and bars and automobile workers. (21)

Does this analysis mean that imperialism – rooted in the export of capital (and capitalist class relations) across the globe – has no impact on profits and wages in the global North? No – but the impact is quite different from what the labour aristocracy thesis predicts.

In Capital, Volume III (22), Marx recognized that foreign investment was one of a number of “countervailing” tendencies to the decline of the rate of profit. Put simply, the export of capital from the global North to the global South, especially when invested in production processes that are more labour intensive than those found in the advanced capitalist countries, tends to raise the mass and rate of profit in the North. There is indeed some evidence that foreign profits – from investments in both the global North and global South – constitute an important counter tendency to declining profits in the United States.

Profits earned abroad by U.S. companies as a percentage of total U.S. profits (Table I and Graph I) have risen fairly steadily since 1948, rising from a low of 5.19% in 1950 to a high of 30.56% in 2000. (23) The proportion of U.S. profits earned abroad jumped sharply after the onset of the long-wave of stagnation in 1966, jumping from 6.43% in 1966 to 18.36% in 1986.

Even more indicative is the relationship between annual percentage changes in domestic and foreign U.S. profits (Table II). In a number of years (1967–1970, 1972–1974, 1978–1980, 1986–1990, 1994–1995, 1997–2001, 2003), the annual percentage change for foreign profits was higher than the annual percentage change for domestic profits. In some of these years (1967, 1969–1970, 1974, 1979–1980, 1989, 1998, 2000–2001), total profits earned in the U.S. declined while total profits earned abroad increased.

Higher profits result in more investment across the board in the industrialized countries. More investment eventually brings a growing demand for labour (within limits set by investment in newer, more capital intensive technology), falling unemployment and rising wages for all workers in the industrialized capitalist countries.

Put simply, this means that imperialist investment in the global South benefits all workers in the global North – both highly paid and poorly paid workers. Higher profits and increased investment mean not only more employment and rising wages for “aristocratic” steel, automobile, machine-making, trucking and construction workers, but also for lowly paid clerical, janitorial, garment and food processing workers. As Ernest Mandel put it, “the real ‘labour aristocracy’ is no longer constituted inside the proletariat of an imperialist country but rather by the proletariat of the imperialist countries as a whole.” (24) That “real ‘labour aristocracy’” includes poorly paid immigrant janitors and garment workers, African-American and Latino poultry workers, as well as the multi-racial workforce in auto and trucking. (25)

Clearly, these “benefits” accruing to the entire working class of the industrialized countries from imperialist investment are neither automatic nor evenly distributed. Rising profits and increased investment do not necessarily lead to higher wages for workers in the absence of effective working- class organization and struggle.

During the post-World War II long wave of expansion, the industrial unions that had arisen during the mass strike wave of 1934–37 were able to secure rising real wages both for their own members and the bulk of the unorganized working classes. However, since 1973, the labour movement in the United States and the rest of the industrial countries has been in retreat.

Real wages for U.S. workers, both union and nonunion, have fallen to about 11% below their 1973 level, despite strong growth beginning in the late 1980s. (26) Higher than average profits have accrued, first and foremost, to capital, allowing increased investment; and to the professional-managerial middle class in the form of higher salaries.

Nor are the “benefits” of increased profitability and growth due to imperialist investment distributed equally to all portions of the working class. As we will see below, the racial-national and gender structuring of the labour market result in women and workers of color being concentrated in the labor-intensive and low-wage sectors of the economy.

Whatever benefits all workers in the global North reap from imperialist investment in the global South are clearly outweighed by the deleterious effects of the expansion of capitalist production on a world scale. This is especially clear today, in the era of neoliberal “globalization.”

Although industry is clearly not “footloose and fancy free” as some theorists of globalization claim – moving from one country to another in search for the cheapest labour (27) – the removal of various legal and judicial obstacles to the free movement of capital has sharpened competition among workers internationally, to the detriment of workers in both the global North and South.

The mere threat of moving production “off-shore,” even if the vast majority of industrial investment remains within the advanced capitalist societies, is often sufficient to force cuts in wages and benefits, the dismantling of work rules and the creation of multi-tiered workforces in the United States and other industrialized countries. Neoliberalism’s deepening of the process of primitive accumulation of capital – the forcible expropriation of peasants from the land in Africa, Asia and Latin America – has created a growing global reserve army of labour competing for dwindling numbers of fulltime, secure and relatively well paid jobs across the world.

Put simply, the sharpening competition among workers internationally more than offsets the “benefits” of imperialism for workers in the global North. (28)

Annexure15: The Myth of the Labour Aristocracy Part 2 by Charles Post

First published in Against the Current, No. 124, September–October 2006

Explaining Working-Class Reformism

How do we explain the fact that most workers, most of the time, do not act on their potential power? Why do workers embrace reformist politics – support for bureaucratic unionism (reliance on the grievance procedure, routine collective bargaining) and Democratic party electoral politics – or worse, reactionary politics in the forms of racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, militarism?

The key to understanding working-class reformism (and conservatism) is the necessarily episodic nature of working-class struggle and organization. The necessary condition for the development of class consciousness is the self-activity and self-organization of the workers themselves. The experience of mass, collective and successful struggles against capital and its state in the workplace and the community is what opens layers of workers to radical and revolutionary political ideas. (5)

The working class cannot be, as a whole, permanently active in the class struggle. The entire working class cannot consistently engage in strikes, demonstrations and other forms of political activity because this class is separated from effective possession of the means of production, and its members compelled to sell their labour power to capital in order to survive. They have to go to work!

Put simply, most workers, most of the time are engaged in the individual struggle to sell their capacity to work and secure the reproduction of themselves and their families – not the collective struggle against the employers and the state. The “actually existing” working class can only engage in mass struggles as a class in extraordinary, revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situations. Because of the structural position of wage labour under capitalism, these must be of short duration. Most often, different segments of the working class become active in the struggle against capital at different times.

In the wake of successful mass struggles, only a minority of the workers remain consistently active. Most of this workers’ vanguard – those who “even during a lull in the struggle…do[es] not abandon the front lines of the class struggle but continues the war, so to speak, ’by other means’” (6) – attempts to preserve and transmit the traditions of mass struggle in the workplace or the community. However, a sector within this active minority, together with intellectuals who have access to cultural skills from which the bulk of the working class is excluded, must take on responsibility for administering the unions or political parties created by periodic upsurges of mass activity.

This layer of fulltime officials – the bureaucracy of the labour movement – is the social foundation for “unconditional” reformist practice and ideology in the labour movement. Those workers who become officials of the unions and political parties begin to experience conditions of life very different from those who remain in the workplace.

The new officials find themselves freed from the daily humiliations of the capitalist labour process. They are no longer subject to either deskilled and alienated labour or the petty despotism of supervisors. Able to set their own hours, plan and direct their own activities, and devote the bulk of their waking hours to “fighting for the workers,” the officials seek to consolidate these privileges.

As the unions gain a place in capitalist society, the union officials strengthen their role as negotiators of the workers’ subordination to capital in the labour-process. In defence of their social position, the labour bureaucracy excludes rank and file activists in the unions and parties from any real decision-making power. (7)

The consolidation of the labour bureaucracy as a social layer, distinct from the rest of the working class under capitalism, gives rise to its distinctive political practice and world-view. The preservation of the apparatus of the mass union or party, as an end itself, becomes the main objective of the labour bureaucracy. The labour bureaucrats seek to contain working-class militancy within boundaries that do not threaten the continued existence of the institutions which are the basis of the officials’ unique life-style.

Thus what Ernest Mandel called the “dialectic of partial conquests,” the possibility that new struggles may be defeated and the mass organizations of the working class weakened, buttress the labour bureaucracy’s reliance on electoral campaigns and parliamentary pressure tactics (lobbying) to win political reforms, and on strictly regimented collective bargaining to increase wages and improve working conditions.

The labour bureaucracy’s stake in stable bargaining relationships with the employers and their credibility in the eyes of the capitalists as negotiators further reinforce their conservative ideology and practice. From the bureaucracy’s point of view, any attempt to promote the militant self-activity and organization among workers must be quashed. At this point, the bureaucracy’s organizational fetishism (giving priority to the survival of the apparatus over new advances in the struggle) produces a world-view that demands the workers’ unquestioning obedience to leaders who claim they know “what is best for the workers.”

While the unconditional ideological commitment to reformism grows organically from the privileged social position of the labour officialdom, how do we explain the conditional reformism of most workers? Why do most workers, most of the time accept reformism? Put bluntly, why is this conditional reformism the normal state of working class consciousness under capitalism?

In “normal times” – of working class quiescence and passivity – the majority of workers come to accept the “rules of the game” of capitalist competition and profitability. They seek a “fair share” of the products of capitalist accumulation, but do not feel capable of challenging capitalist power in the workplace, the streets or society. For most workers during “normal times,” mass, militant struggle seems unrealistic; they tend to embrace the labour officialdom’s substitution of liberal and reformist electoral politics, institutionalized collective bargaining and grievance handling.

However, the continued hold of reformism over the majority of workers requires that labour officials “deliver the goods” in the form of improved wages, hours and working conditions. As Bob Brenner points out:

”(G)iven even a minimum of working-class organization, reformism tends to be widely attractive in periods of prosperity precisely because in such periods the threat of limited working-class resistance – symbolized by the resolution to strike or a victory at the polls – actually can yield concessions from capital. Since filling orders and expanding production are their top priorities in the boom, capitalists will tend to find it in their interests to maintain and increase production, even if this means concessions to the workers, if the alternative is to endure a strike or other forms of social dislocation.” (8)

When capitalism enters one of its unavoidable periods of crisis and restructuring – like the one that began in the late 1960s through most of the capitalist world – the paradox of reformism becomes manifest. In a world of declining profits and sharpened competition, capitalists throughout the world went on the offensive at the workplace and at the level of the capitalist state. The restructuring of the capitalist production along the lines of lean production, and the neoliberal deregulation of capital and labour markets (9), required all-out war against workers and their organizations across the capitalist world.

At this point, reformism becomes ineffective. Workers can and have made gains against their employers in the past fifteen years – the success of the UPS strike and the “Justice for Janitors” campaigns in various cities cannot be ignored. However, these victories often required substantive rank-and-file organization and mobilization – including independent organizations, like Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU).

In fact, the reformist officialdom of the unions and social-democratic parties embraced realpolitik – adapting to the new “reality” of declining living and working conditions. As Mandel pointed out:

”(T)he underlying assumption of present-day social-democratic gradualism is precisely this: let the capitalists produce the goods, so that governments can redistribute them in a just way. But what if capitalist production demands more unequal, more unjust distribution of the ’fruits of growth’? What if there is no economic growth at all as a result of capitalist crisis? The gradualists can then only repeat mechanically: there is no alternative; there is no way out.” (10)

Eschewing militancy and direct action by workers and other oppressed people, the labour bureaucracy and reformist politicians in the West have no choice but to make concessions to the employers’ offensive and to administer capitalist state austerity. The spectacle of reformist bureaucrats shunning the struggle for reforms has been repeated across the capitalist world in the last three decades, with tragic results.

Again and again, the reformist bureaucrats have surrendered to the requirements of capitalist profitability. The Italian Communist party embraced austerity in the 1970s. The U.S. AFL-CIO officials have accepted concession bargaining since 1979, usually without even the pretense of struggle. Social-democratic regimes across Europe (Mitterand and Jospin in France, Blair in Britain, Schroeder in Germany) embraced neoliberal realism – cutting social services, privatizing public enterprises, and deregulating capital and labour markets.

Nor has the reformist retreat been limited to the imperialist countries. In the early 1990s, the ANC-COSATU-led government in post-apartheid South Africa has embraced what some have called the “sado-monetarism” of the IMF and World Bank. The debacle of the Lula regime in Brazil – attacking workers’ rights, opening the agricultural economy to transnational investment and systematically retreating from its promise of popular reform – fits the pattern all too well. Today, even the most moderate forms of social-democratic gradualism have become utopian, as the labour bureaucracy across the world has been unable to defend the workers’ past gains much less win significant new reforms in an era of crisis and restructuring.

Why Working-Class Conservatism?

The inability of reformism to “deliver the goods” for most working people also helps us make sense of the appeal of right-wing politics – racist, sexist, homophobic, nativist and militarist – for a segment of workers. The objective, structural position of workers under capitalism provides the basis for collective, class radicalism and individualist, sectoralist and reactionary politics.

Bob Brenner and Johanna Brenner point out, “workers are not only collective producers with a common interest in taking collective control over social production. They are also individual sellers of labour power in conflict with each other over jobs, promotions, etc.” As Kim Moody put it, capitalism “pushes together and pulls apart” the working class. As competing sellers of labour power, workers are open to the appeal of politics that pit them against other workers – especially workers in a weaker social position:

It appears possible for the stronger sections of the working class to defend their positions by organizing on the basis of already existing ties against weaker, less-organized sections. They can take advantage of their positions as Americans over and against foreigners, as whites over and against blacks, as men over and against women, as employed over and against unemployed, etc. In so doing, working people may act initially only out of what they perceive to be their most immediate self-interest. But over time they inevitably feel the pressure to make sense of these actions and they adopt ideas which can make their actions reasonable and coherent. These ideas are, of course, the ideas of the right. (12)

Bruce Nelson’s recent study of steelworkers details how relatively white workers in the steel industry struggled to defend their privileged access to better paying and relatively more skilled work after the establishment of industrial unionism. The rise of the CIO opened the possibility of classwide organization that began to reduce the racial/national segmentation of the working class.

As the CIO offensive ground to passed its peak by the late 1930s, and the industrial unions became bureaucratized during the second world war, white workers increasingly moved to defend their privileged access to employment (and with it housing, education for their children, etc.) against workers of color. In the steel industries, white workers militantly defended departmental seniority in promotion and layoffs against demands of Black and Latino workers for plant wide seniority and affirmative action in promotions in the 1960s and 1970s. (13)

As Marxists, we understand that such strategies are counter-productive in the medium to long term. Divisions among workers and reliance on different segments of the capitalist class only undermine the ability of workers to defend or improve their conditions of life under capitalism. (14) However, when reformism proves incapable of realistically defending workers’ interests – as it has since the early 1970s – workers embrace individualist and sectoralist perspectives as the only realistic strategy.

This is particularly the case in the absence of a substantial and influential militant minority in the working class that can organize collective resistance to capital independently of, and often in opposition to the reformist labour officials. (15)

Conclusion

Kim Moody has pointed out that everyday working class “common sense” is not “some consistent capitalist ideology” but instead:

”a clashing collection of old ideas handed down, others learned through daily experience, and still others generated by the capitalist media, education system, religion, etc. It is not simply the popular idea of a nation tranquilized by TV and weekends in the mall. “Common sense” is both deeper and more contradictory because it also embodies experiences that go against the grain of capitalist ideology.” (16)

Only through the experience of collective, class activity against the employers, starting at but not limited to the workplace, can workers begin to think of themselves as a class with interests in common with other workers and opposed to the capitalists. Workers who experience their collective, class power on the job are much more open to class – and anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-militarist, anti-nativist – ways of thinking.

As Marx pointed out, it is through the workplace and union struggles that the working class “becomes fit to rule” – develops the organization and consciousness capable of confronting capital. Such organization will require a struggle not only against “backward ideas” among workers, but against the officialdom of the unions and other popular mass organizations that are committed to reformist strategies, no matter how blatantly ineffective.

Workers’ self-organization and self-activity in the workplace struggles is the starting point for creating the material and ideological conditions for an effective challenge to working class reformism and conservatism. Clearly, militant workplace struggle is not a sufficient condition for the development of radical and revolutionary consciousness among workers. Struggles in working-class communities around housing, social welfare, transport and other issues; and political struggles against racism and war are crucial elements in the political self-transformation of the working class.

Successful workplace struggles, however, are the necessary condition for the development of class consciousness. Without the experience of such struggles, workers will continue to passively accept reformist politics or, worse, embrace reactionary politics.

This does not mean that workers of color, women and other oppressed groups in the working class should “wait” to fight until white and male workers are ready to act. White and male workers, because of the temporary but real advantages they gain in the labour market – preferential access to better jobs -are not likely to initiate struggles against racism, sexism or homophobia in the workplace or anywhere else. Self-organization and self-activity of racially oppressed groups are crucial to the development of anti-racist struggles and anti-racist consciousness.

However, a mass working-class audience for anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-militarist ideas will most likely be created in the context of mass, class struggles against capital. Today, the main audience for the idea that workers need to stand up to right-wing ideas and practices are the small layer of rank and file activists who are trying to promote solidarity, militancy and democracy in the labour movement.

Only if these activists, with the help of socialists in the labour movement, can succeed in building effective collective fight back will these ideas – the politics of class radicalism – achieve mass resonance.

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Book review: “France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values”

Posted on December 23, 2022 by uprootedpalestinians

December 22, 2022

I very rarely do book reviews, but in this case I felt that I simply *had* to share with you what I consider a true gem, one of those books which one simply has to read.  I am referring to the book “France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values” by Ramin Mazaheri, a PressTV correspondent and a regular contributor to the Saker blog.  Though we never met face to face, over the years Ramin and I have developed a real friendship, but that is not the reason for this review.  The reason for this review is simple: I want to convince as many people as possible to read this book.

Why?

That’s what my review will be all about.

The title of the book “France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values” gives a first indication of the scope of the book.  Yes, of course, it is about the Yellow Vests and how the state viciously repressed this truly popular, grassroots, movement.  But the book also discusses the so-called “western liberal democratic values”.  In fact, this book could be seen as two books in one.

The first part is an absolutely fascinating, and delightfully controversial, discussion of the evolution of what we now call western liberal democracy.  The second half discusses the Yellow Vests specifically (Chapter 1 through Chapter 8 deals with French history from 1789 until World War II. Chapter 9 through Chapter 18 deals with the Yellow Vests.)

To make his case, Ramin looked as far back as “The Glorious Revolution” of 1688, which is indispensable to understand the roots and evolution of western liberal democratic thought.  The book also includes a fascinating discussion of the French Revolution and of the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte.  Ramin also discusses the French Commune, Fascism and even Leon Trotsky!

What makes this book so fascinating is that the author is a Marxist, but a special kind of Marxist, one which does not hesitate to be extremely critical of other Marxists, which makes for a very refreshing, unpredictable and truly riveting read!  Ramin’s analysis is informed by Marxism, but it is truly original and his conclusions often surprising and unpredictable.

Personally, there is a lot I completely disagree with, especially Ramin’s apology for Napoleon, but here is the wonderful thing about this book: even when I disagreed with Ramin’s conclusion, I was compelled to rethink my own views due to his many excellent arguments.  Besides, Ramin does not want the reader to agree as much as he wants the reader to think and rethink his/her certitudes.

One of the most powerful aspect of the book is that it truly and indisputably shows the truly evil nature of western liberal democracy.  Just for that reason alone this should be an absolutely mandatory reading for anybody considering himself/herself has a proponent of western liberal democracy.  If that applies to you, then I challenge you to read this book.  If, after reading it, you will not have changed your views, then you will at least have tested your beliefs against Ramin’s arguments.  And if you do change your mind, you will be forever grateful to Ramin for his truly eye-opening book!

The second part of the book is a detailed analysis of the Yellow Vests phenomenon which Ramin personally saw from up close and which he truly understands.  His main conclusion is that unlike the innumerable fake-popular, fake-leftist, movement out there, the Yellow Vests are the “real thing”: a truly popular movement against the brutal class oppression of the French ruling elites.

Here I have to say that I fully concur with Ramin.  The Yellow Vests are definitely the real thing, and not a fully co-opted and controlled fake opposition (“caviar left” is the French expression) which we observe in almost all EU countries.  What is most amazing about the Yellow Vests is that many powerful actors tried to either bring them under control or use them for petty political, partisan, interests.  These attempts all failed and while COVID pandemic provided the perfect pretext to crack down even harder against the Yellow Vests, the movement has not been destroyed which, by itself, is quite amazing, especially considering the truly vicious and brutal violence unleashed by the French state against the Yellow Vests.

My purpose here is not to review the book chapter by chapter or thesis by thesis.  My intention is, rather, to “bait you” just enough to make you get the book and read it for yourself.  The reader can purchase it on Amazon in English and French, and in paperback or e-book form. They can also find it in participating bookstores in Europe via IngramSpark, but Amazon is the most certain and fastest way.

This is how the book is summarized on its Amazon page:

The most comprehensive book on the Yellow Vests, and from the journalist who knows them the best. No journalist in English or French reported at more Yellow Vest demonstrations than daily news reporter and author Ramin Mazaheri. Divided into two parts: The first gives new explanations for the European wars against French progressive politics from 1789-2017. The second is a complete analysis of the causes and victories of the truly progressive and totally misrepresented Yellow Vest movement. With over 100 quotations from actual, marching Yellow Vests no book gives their view such pride of place – decide for yourself. The Yellow Vests either end or begin a major era in French and European history, but their repression was certainly a once-in-a-century event for France. Finally find out why Western elites believed repressing them was – and still is – necessary.

It’s all true, but please do check it for yourself 🙂  I can promise you that you will not regret it.  And, do I need to mention that this book also makes a great present, especially if you want to open somebody’s eyes about the true roots and nature of the society we live in?

This book is one powerful “red pill” – make sure to have it in your “toolkit”!

Andrei

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France’s Yellow Vests at 4: The movement’s three greatest achievements

Posted on December 6, 2022 by fada1

Sunday, 04 December 2022 1:04 PM  [ Last Update: Sunday, 04 December 2022 1:04 PM ]

By Ramin Mazaheri

On December 1, 2018, the Yellow Vests announced themselves in France and the world, registering their name in history books with their revolutionary graffiti tagging of the Arc de Triomphe, one of the country’s most iconic monuments.

“The Yellow Vests will win” was a slogan that reverberated across the world, as the movement became the biggest, most organic, most devoted and truly revolutionary threat any Western country had faced for over half a century.

It was their third week of protest, and there was no going back now.

The world never expected a genuine resistance movement to sprout in France, a Western imperialist hub. The French were – many insisted – too self-righteous, too spoiled, too indoctrinated, and yet for the next six months every Saturday turned into a war zone across the country.

France was wholly gripped by the revolutionary frenzy at the time, and it was because the French way of life isn’t as extravagant as people may think.

The Yellow Vests didn’t bravely endure all this – at least 11,000 arrests, 1,000 political prisoners, 5,000 protesters seriously hurt, 1,000 critically injured, scores maimed for life and 11 deaths – because they have a luxurious lifestyle.

It is hard to say what was worse – the repression by the French regime, or the way Western media and NGOs slandered and ignored the weekly bloodletting, tear gas shelling and mass arrests.

The Yellow Vests are an immediate, permanent rejoinder to Westerners who claim that their governments are more protective of democracy and less brutal than those in non-Western countries. That’s one of the three great legacies of the Yellow Vests.

The key to understanding the Yellow Vests is this, and it’s implicitly understood by the average European, totally not understood in places like the United States, and has been intellectually mastered by the vanguard Yellow Vests.

Ever since the pan-European project was activated in 2009, it has failed to do anything. Prosperity, stability and democracy – none of these have been implemented. France is not really France anymore – not unless Brussels says so – and it’s becoming less like France with each passing day under a political system that is still new.

So the Yellow Vests were truly 10 years in the making. They even arrived after a decade full of major social movements, because the first war of the European Union wasn’t a proxy war against Russia but the social war it waged against its own citizens.

The problem was not just the Great Recession of 2008 but the fact that the European Union/Eurozone was the only macroeconomic bloc that implemented absolutely no major recovery plan.

Even worse, its response was to undemocratically ram through far-right austerity policies. The Yellow Vests were the “working-poor class” cemented by the changes in Brussels, and their opponents were the highly-unequal “bourgeois bloc” that only saw the pan-European project in a rainbow glow of total success.

The Yellow Vests disproved the insistence of the Anglosphere – whose cultures are politically conservative – that all populist groups in the West are necessarily on the far-right.

As soon as December 2018, it was clear in France that the Yellow Vests were steeped in left-wing economics, anti-imperialism and a non-Islamophobic, modern conception of healthy patriotism.

This explains the nearly 80 percent approval rate for the movement, and staggering popularity, especially in France which had grown extremely cynical due to undemocratic failures of the pan-European project.

If one word had to be given to describe the Yellow Vests, it would be “civic-minded”. Concern for fellow citizens and the downward spiral of non-elite masses is what basically propels such popular revolutions.

These simple, obvious and pro-community concepts are forbidden in the Western mainstream media. There is no “working-poor class” in France. There are only racist, backward, lazy, always-complaining Frenchmen. There is no “bourgeois bloc” but only an elite group of enlightened and deserving technocrats who decide for us what constitutes the “reality”.

These are truly the two classes of the 21st century West – forget “middle class”, because the pan-European project has dealt the final blow to what Reaganomics/Thatcherism began.

Fully understanding and opposing the West’s current social class reality is the second great achievement of the Yellow Vests, but of course, one cannot find class discussed in the English-speaking media. 

However, there is another achievement that is even greater but less discussed, probably because it requires a complete overview of modern Western politics, which began in 1789 with the anti-monarchy/anti-aristocrat/anti-privilege French Revolution.

The arrival and the repression of the Yellow Vests remind us all of the undeniable failures of “liberalism”. The Yellow Vests aren’t actually new but are integral to French revolutionary history transported from 1848-71.

The struggle today is the same as it was back then. It’s a struggle against elitist liberalism and its attendants: oligarchical and anti-democratic parliamentarianism, free-market chaos, anti-government ideology encapsulated by austerity cuts to social services, and encouragement of a rat race to “become bourgeois”.

The Yellow Vests took France and Europe back to 1848 when the “Second Republic” re-ended the French monarchy and claimed the mantle of the French Revolutionary “First Republic”. Liberalism was installed for the first time and immediately proved that it was plagued by all the problems described above.

Liberalism has proved a failure since 1848, and the liberalist principles (“neoliberal” is more commonly used today to differentiate it from the discredited, original “liberalism”) that underpin the pan-European project have failed today. They always fail.

The arrival, desperate passion and durability of the Yellow Vests are proof of this, and showing the hypocrisy, brutality and ineffectiveness of always-unequal liberalism is the third and greatest and historical achievement of the Yellow Vests.

Liberalism, infamously, does not promise anyone the right to a decent existence. Back in 1848, Karl Marx and other socialists demonstrated these facts about Western liberal democracies. The Yellow Vests have brought us back to these inescapable political and social truths. 

Why did the Yellow Vests “fail”? Quite simply because the French government scared people away from it through heavy-handed tactics such as violence, heavy fines, arrests and imprisonment. That’s why their protests slowly dwindled in scale and magnitude – owing to fear of state repression. 

The fear has had dramatic, lasting consequences: the French have been reduced from the most politically-active nation in the West to being apathetic and uninvolved – typical of Western liberal democracies.

The apathy surrounding this year’s re-election of French President Emmanuel Macron was completely atypical for the country but it showed there was no stopping the will of the 1 percent and their fanatical “bourgeois bloc” toadies.

The Yellow Vests recently marched to commemorate their fourth anniversary, but you probably didn’t hear about it. You also likely haven’t heard that they’ve been marching every Saturday since “Season 2” began in October 2021, following a year-and-a-half coronavirus pause – which no world leader embraced with more joy and relief than Macron. However, the media blackout on them actually began way back in June 2020.

France is no longer gripped in revolutionary fervor, but the Yellow Vests haven’t gone anywhere. The average person has put their reflective yellow vest back where it belongs by law – in the car – but the network, relationships and experiences created by this extraordinary movement ensure that they will be back one day.

And they will be back. The history of Western liberalism has proven over and over again that the average person’s right to live decently will never be guaranteed.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir

www.presstv.co.uk

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Imam Khamenei: Imam Khomeini Helps Young Generation Find Its Way

Posted on June 4, 2022 by uprootedpalestinians

June 4, 2022

By Staff, Agencies

Leader of the Islamic Revolution His Eminence Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei delivered a speech on the occasion of 33rd demise anniversary of founder of the Islamic Revolution Imam Khomeini [RA].

Every year, a commemoration ceremony is held in Imam Khomeini’s Mausoleum in southern Tehran province with the participation of Imam Khamenei, senior state and military officials as well as thousands of people from different walks of life.

This year’s ceremony is held at the Mausoleum after a two-year break due to the restrictions caused by coronavirus.

At the beginning of his speech, Imam Khamenei greeted all brothers and sisters taking part in the commemoration held in Tehran and some 900 other Iranian cities.

“Imam Khomeini is the soul of the Islamic Republic,” Imam Khamenei stressed, noting that the young generation has to know Imam Khomeini well as he can show them the best way how to rule the country in the future.

“Imam Khomeini led the greatest revolution in the history of revolutions,” Imam Khamenei said.

His Eminence also touched upon the most famous revolutions in the world such as the French and Russian revolutions and noted that after those two big revolutions, the most brutal tyrannical regimes ruled France and USSR which killed too many of their people.

However, Imam Khamenei said, Imam Khomeini led a revolution that turned the tyrannical regime of Shah to an Islamic Republic which is based on people’s votes.

The Leader went on to point out that Imam Khomeini introduced spirituality and morality to governance and said that the Imam separated the Islamic Republic from the capitalist-based liberal democracy and dictatorial-centered communism, and proposed a new model with the Islamic Republic.

Imam Khamenei said in the Islamic Republic that Imam Khomeini founded, both religion and people’s votes, both economic justice and people’s free economic activities are taken into account.

“We will strengthen the country’s knowledge and economy, as well as the defense and security of the country. Both national unity and integration must be observed, while the diversity of different views and tendencies are respected,” His Eminence underlined.

“We neither oppress nor we accept oppression,” Imam Khamenei underscored.

As Imam Khamenei emphasized that Imam Khomeini derived his thoughts from the Islamic teachings and proposed a modern and noble model of the Islamic Republic, he told people and officials that whenever they rely on their will they are going to achieve victory, and whenever they become lazy then they will fail.

“Imam Khomeini combined interest and knowledge together; he was knowledgeable and a brave man, and he was honest with his God and the people alike,” Imam Khamenei said.

Imam Khomeini used to pay attention to time, was confident in Allah and a believer in the divine promise; the infrastructure in all of the late Imam’s activities was worshipping Allah, and the aim behind worshipping Allah is spreading righteousness and justice, Imam Khamenei noted, underlining that Imam Khomeini was observing such characteristics.

“Imam Khomeini’s movement was significant on the level of being frank, outspoken, and permanently addressing the people; one of the Imam’s prominent features was trusting the people since day one,” His Eminence stressed.

Imam Khomeini led the people to the fields, took them out of despair, and in certain phases taught the people what the arenas of struggle are, Sayyed Ali Khamenei added.

He also hailed the people who didn’t abandon the Islamic Revolution, which was achieved in the Islamic Republic, in which they supported it in a general referendum.

The late Imam Khomeini -Founder of the Islamic Republic and Father of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran- passed away 33 years ago at the age of 86.

Imam Khomeini, who steered the popular uprising in Iran culminating in the fall of former regime of Shah, passed away on June 3, 1989.

He is known as one of the most influential leaders who inspired many other revolutions all across the world.

According to state-run IRNA News Agency, the occasion is marked on the 14th day of Khordad, the third month of the Iranian calendar year, and was set to be commemorated in 900 Iranian cities.

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Where the West is stuck: The fascism of the 1930s and the ‘fascism’ of the 2020s

Posted on April 24, 2022 by uprootedpalestinians

April 23, 2022

Source

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

by Ramin Mazaheri

Starting in 1917 the same reactionary European nations which attacked in the 7 European Wars Against the French Revolution now transferred this same refusal to make peace with the Soviet Union. The problem has always been an idea – anti-autocracy, the idea from which Socialist Democracy flows (and the Yellow Vests) – not a particular nation.

(This is the seventh chapter in a new book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. Please click here for the article which announces this book and explains its goals.)

There is a clear moment when France definitively handed over its longtime leadership of European progressive politics. It is not 1914, when, unlike the Soviet Bolsheviks, French socialists went along with World War I: it is the creation of the Popular Front (Front Populaire) following the death of 15 people in a right-wing riot in 1934. The idea that committed socialists must be united with everyone from fake-leftists to right-wingers in order to fight fascism proved to be a total catastrophe.

Yet this idea remains the policy of Western leftism today, and it is still producing catastrophes.

The European lesson of the 1930s is that the working and middle class handed power to the socialists and communists – who immediately gave power back to the bourgeois!

Ever since the Brexit vote against the neoliberal and neo-imperial European Union Western democracies are perpetually stuck in 1936: constantly warning of “fascism” and constantly producing failures as bad as the original Popular Front in France.

However, because there is a total misunderstanding of what “fascism” is it is critical for us to end the Western propaganda on the rise of Germanic National Socialism in order to properly understand European history then and now. It is “Germanic” and not just “German” because their adherents were from Austria, Hungary, Prussia and other longtime German language/culture areas.

Germanic National Socialism had something vital in common with socialism: a clear rejection of Western Liberal Democracy, which was first installed in France’s 2nd Republic of 1848. Without elucidating the common thread of post 1789 political history — that Western Liberal Democracy is an oligarchy which has been barely modified from autocracy – European history makes no sense in 1936 or after. We may as well say Napoleon Bonaparte wasn’t a leftist revolutionary!

We move from the Paris Commune to 1936 because what occurred in 1936 was extremely similar: In February 1936 the electoral victory of a Popular Front coalition in Spain led to a legal take-over by socialists and anti-monarchists, only to see an international coalition of reactionaries arise to prop up the dictator General Francisco Franco and to foment civil and international war.

The Popular Front in France actually created the disastrous policy of “nonintervention” – the French left created it order to not intervene in the neighbouring Spanish Civil War. Nearly all of Europe signed up to diplomatically isolate and economically blockade the Spanish Republic. Indeed, Western Liberal Democracy wants to talk honestly about the Spanish Civil War as much as they want to they want to talk honestly the Paris Commune, 1848 or the 7 European Wars Against the French Revolution.

In May 1936 what would become the final elections of the French 3rd Republic were held. Amid the Great Depression the centre-left and left finally won control of the government, with 60% of the vote, and via campaigns expressly against the unprecedented power of the historically-new banking oligarchy. In July the Spanish Civil War began, and despite massive French support for the Republican leftists France’s allegedly left-wing government colluded with the British on the policy of non-intervention. Viewed from the new center of progressive politics – Moscow – the Popular Front’s non-intervention confirmed to the USSR that Western Europe was never going to have a socialist revolution; that such an idea had been a fool’s errand for over three decades; that Western Europe was going to side with fascism and go over to it, as Vichy France soon would. The USSR and Mexico would be the only nations to provide armed support to the Spanish Republic.

The Popular Front and Leon Blum, the first Socialist to be Prime Minister in France, would do a U-turn on the promised domestic reforms he was elected to implement. This is exactly what the Socialists François Mitterrand and François Hollande would do in 1983 and 2012, respectively. 1936 marks the point when Western leftists indisputably proved that they have abandoned Socialist Democracy in favor of Western Liberal Democracy – a fundamentally right-wing ideology rooted in monarchism, autocracy and oligarchy – and are thus right-wingers on the global political spectrum.

In April 1938 France’s Popular Front collapsed after failure in almost every sense. Its colossal disappointment after such huge progressive excitement caused massive disillusionment and directly led to the establishment of fascism in France two years later. The Popular Front provided the death knell for Western Liberal Democracy. Rather it should have, but by 1946 fascists, royalists and Western Liberal Democrats would – to steal a phrase from Marx regarding a similar melding for all classes of wealth in the 19th century – “become bourgeois”, i.e. all meld into one in order to stop Socialist Democracy.

This is where the West remains today.

They are totally against Socialist Democracy at home and abroad, and claiming Popular Fronts are needed to elect fake-leftist candidates who inevitably prove to be tools of long-running oligarchies.

In September 1938, now led by the Reformists (this is the most accurate term for the very misleadingly named “Radical Party” of France), the Munich Pact saw France stab the USSR in the back on the Franco-USSR pact of 1935, which stipulated joint military action against German belligerence. The Munich Betrayal, as it’s also known, saw France and the United Kingdom collude with fascist Germany and Italy to hand a huge chunk of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Instead of combatting Germany’s war on Czechoslovakia the Popular Front preferred “appeasement” with fascism.

The collusion would continue: France and the UK recognised Franco in February 1939, even though he held just two-thirds of the country and not Madrid. (The army Franco originally led to start the war was the Spanish Army of Africa, based in Morocco. Much like France with Algeria in 1848, we see the pernicious domestic political effects of Europe’s Old World imperialism once again.)

Because we have located the start of neoliberalism and European neo-imperialism with the Paris Commune we see how these collusions make sense: these are Western Liberal Democratic countries, thus run by an oligarchical elite, thus opposed to any socialist-inspired country. They will always wage war against socialistic ideas which oppose oligarchical Western liberalism which, thanks to the domination of the banker class by the start of the 20th century, is more “globalist” than inter-marrying monarchs ever were. Popular Fronts are inevitably proven to be useless – they are mere safety valves for genuine leftism.

By June 1939 national polls showed that 84% of Britain favored an Anglo-French-Soviet military alliance – Britain’s Western Liberal Democratic politicians had no choice but to give the appearance of an effort. After six weeks of negotiations it became clear to Moscow that Britain’s appallingly minor representations were not interested in any sort of alliance with Socialist Democracy.

Only two days after they left a German delegation arrived in Moscow and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (a non-aggression pact and not any sort of alliance) was concluded precisely because the USSR saw that Western Liberal Democracies would never allow peaceful relations with socialist-inspired systems. Just as the revolutionary Napoleon Bonaparte wasted time in a burnt-down Moscow trying to make peace with an autocrat who never wanted it, so the USSR wasted time trying to make peace with autocrats and oligarchs.

Yellow Vest: “What I want for Christmas is for the Yellow Vests to join France’s social movements to stop Macron’s neoliberalism. But it would be even better if the whole world would become Yellow Vests to stop the ravages of high finance and globalisation.”

(Note: this book intersperses over 100 quotations taken from actual, marching Yellow Vests which were originally published in news reports on PressTV.)

Western leftists (mostly Trotskyists) howled that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a betrayal of leftist ideals. That’s a stunningly opportunistic and hollow claim, considering just how much France’s Popular Front and Western Liberal Democracies failed to defend Spain, and also how Western nations refused make peace with Moscow. Moscow had waited for 19 years for any other European country to turn socialist, but European progressive political thought was spent in Western Europe after 150 years.

Thus the USSR had given up, as it was clearly the eve of war. The Stalinists would certainly be proven right that fascism would sweep Germany, Austria, Spain and France – history clearly exonerates them, and indicts Western Liberal Democracy.

The USSR made a non-aggression pact with Germanic socialism because at the time so many assumed that fascism was going to fully replace totally discredited Western Liberal Democracies. That may seem hard to believe today, but the idea that Western Liberal Democracy was totally dead was a fundamental assumption of leftists, such as Trotsky.

It’s vital to understand this proper timeline of European history leading up to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact because it is entirely in keeping with the overarching theme of European history since 1789: collusion by oligarchical elites to rule in autocratic fashion, and in order to suppress Socialist Democratic ideas.

Of course Western Liberal Democracy has always tried to obscure this history, and they still do: a resolution adopted by the European Union in 2019 stated that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact “paved the way for the outbreak of World War II”, in a shameful rewriting of history. I don’t expect the EU to pass resolutions for the 7 European Wars Against the French Revolution, the failed Revolutions of 1848 or the Paris Commune anytime soon….

The West’s elite is fighting for Western Liberal Democracy, and thus they do not permit honest discussion and honest critiques of Western Liberal Democracy. This explains why there is no admission regarding the historical reality that Nazism and 1930s European fascism won power precisely because so many people grasped that Western Liberal Democracy was nothing but awful oligarchy.

Denying this historical reality is why Western politics has stopped making sense to the average Westerner: They simply cannot understand what fascism was, what it is, or how it arose – it arose via fascism’s successful, popular condemnation of Western Liberal Democracy.

The problem is that socialists don’t stress this point enough, in their nonsensical fear of being seen as colluding with fascism.

Knowing what ‘fascism’ truly is, and why socialists shouldn’t disavow it completely

Just as monarchy and feudalism was totally discredited to the average European by 1848, so Western Liberal Democracy and “debt feudalism/Bankocracy” was totally discredited by 1939.

This successful condemnation is why it’s simply inaccurate and absurd to say things like the “Nazis had no socialism”. To do so is tremendously counterproductive and simply false. Mussolini was the editor of Avanti!, the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party, and was once a leading Italian socialist. Socialists do not want to admit these things, but the failure caused by not explaining fascism’s relationship with socialism is that we cannot understand Western political history if we relinquish the incredibly necessary democratic criticism of Western Liberal Democracy and “Capitalism With Western Characteristics” as evidenced by fascism’s rise.

Hitler, reader of Marx, summed it up the initial similarities himself in 1922: Without his alleged “essential principle” – race – Nazism “would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground”.

However, instead of dispossessing a noble class via class politics he dispossessed races to creat a new noble class… and that is not really socialism, nor anything advocated in Marxism.

Why should socialists fear admitting the Marxism in Germanic socialism? If they do it’s probably because they seek the approval of Western Liberal Democrats. It’s clear that by including race – this is… not truly Marxism or socialism, but something different.

Or when Hitler rejected the class struggle, vital to socialism, by saying: “There are no such things as classes: They cannot be. Class means caste and caste means race.” Well, Nazism may include some Marxist analyses of political and economic historical development but this is… not really socialism, but something different.

Making an alliance with corporate powers, instead of appropriating from the greedy expropriators… this is not really socialism, either.

Choosing central guidance instead of central majority ownership… this is not really socialism.

Hitler was also the least internationalist politician you can think of – he totally rejected the internationalism of the class struggle and replaced it with a “community of the volk”. He only wanted to protect Teutonic citizens in his all-Germanic nation.

We can go on and on pointing out these differences.

But the rejection of Western Liberal Democracy – due to its decades of failures by an oligarchical, corrupt, plutocratic leadership barely different from 18th century monarchy – that actually is the same as socialism. The rejection of Western Liberal Democratic economics – due to the decades of failures by free market capitalism (i.e. the economic component of liberalism) – that is the same as socialism.

The Western Liberal Democrats of today simply do not want to talk about their often democratic rejection by people who feel its failures intimately.

Yellow Vest: “Our media have lost all credibility. Everything that you see on the mainstream media, and all of their reporters are under the boot of the government. For them the Yellow Vests don’t even exist anymore, on both the private and public stations.

So what was German National Socialism and Italian Fascism? It is socialism minus the hopeful egalitarianism and the internationalism, and replaced with pessimistic Darwinian elitism and racism. It’s a right-wing socialism whose only virtue is that it openly opposes the rich-are-smarter-and-should-rule ideology of Western Liberal Democracy, which opposed most of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, won the counter-revolutions of 1848, laid the foundations of the neo-imperial European Union in 1871, colluded to create World War I in order to forestall socialist revolution and which was ruining society in the 1930s just as it does today.

But proponents of elites who rule through a Bankocracy don’t want people to understand that fascism and Germanic National Socialism came to power by opposing the domination of international high finance and liberalism (whether “neo-”, “ultra-” or sans-préfixe it’s all the same: free markets, unregulated capitalism, rights only for those who can afford it), which forever is ultimately cover for an autocratic oligarchy.

So it can’t be stressed enough: Socialism has nothing to fear from free, honest, patient examination of the Nazis’ relationship with socialism. What needs to be rectified is the total disavowal of fascism which excludes its criticisms of Western Liberal Democracy.

However, Western Liberal Democracy has much to fear regarding true discussions of their relationship with the Nazis. They, over and over, allied with fascism against socialism in the 1930s; they colluded with the surviving Nazis and fascists after 1945; they encouraged 3rd-generation Nazis in places like Ukraine in the 21st century. Thus since the 1930s fascism and Western Liberal Democracy has been cooperating for more often than they have been fighting.

Where does fascism fit in the course of European economic development since 1492?

The fascists ultimately came to power by claiming they were different in their economic aims than Western Liberal Democrats.

By the turn of the 20th century industrialisation was no longer a novelty but the defining economic force. Landed wealth, Old World colonisation wealth, sea-trading wealth and mid-late 19th century industrial-financial wealth had been melded together into a banker-dominated financial system in which – of course – old money was predominant. The new banking system they created controlled the means of production and usuriously owned the land on which serfs recently lived. This is a clear timeline of economic history – it is not hard to understand, nor is it eternal.

Fascists promised to expropriate the wealth now held in the stewardship of banks and to do it via a new class – that of the magistrate; of individualist political power.

The word “fascism” stems from “fasces”, which is a bundle of sticks wrapped together topped by an ax. It’s originally an Etruscan symbol which symbolised the power of – not the people wrapped together – the magistrate. What was the magistrate in Rome? He was a high-ranking officer with both executive and judicial powers. Whatever the wealth or justice which Roman magistrates allowed to “trickle-down” was entirely up to them. It was an elitist, 1%-centered system and fascism’s advance was (allegedly) making the 1% class open to competition (which they said begins in one’s DNA) and cutting out the longtime aristocracy and new bankers. We see this is exactly like in Western Liberal Democracy today, and we now see why these two forces have allied together. The seal of the United States Senate, an aristocratic house of lords, features two crossed fasces.

Beyond autocratic powers for a non-monarchical elite, Western Liberal Democracy also mostly agreed with the key plank of the fascist’s economic program. “Central planning” does exist in modern Western countries – it is based around the military. For example, in the United States their economy is guided by the Pentagon, the world’s largest employer. The Pentagon hands out the fruits of their taxpayer-funded research to private companies; enriches their native bourgeoisie with hugely corrupt contracts; provides jobs for the masses terribly ineffectively; but it very effectively enriches their 1%.

Fascism was never for the people but dedicated to the power of those in power; for the status quo; for submission to essentially autocratic magistrates and politicians; against the redistribution of wealth and political power. It is only socialism which reduces the power of the magistrate, who makes him accountable and who improves the person of the magistrate by making sure he is not solely drawn from the elite, grasping class.

Fascism is different from the globalist class of Western Liberal Democracy by insisting on nationalist competition and national sovereignty. The arrival of the European Union, the euro and the Eurogroup, which will supersede national laws without any concern for ideals of democracy, will render these desires essentially irrelevant. The main sin of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, or of Marine Le Pen, is that these two fascist politicians both seek to restore some aspects of national sovereignty.

Trotsky wrote: “Fascism, as we know, is born between the union of the despair of the middle-classes and the terrorist policy of big capital.” Yet the West never takes a class view and elevates big capital to the status of demigods – this is why to them fascism must always be solely race-related and never economic-related. It’s simply a half-truth, and not understanding and combating this dooms Western politics – and their own history – to total misunderstanding.

The 1% and their lackeys immediately called the Yellow Vests fascists because it was a union of the lower and middle classes – like in the Paris Commune it also included a union of the lower class and the proletariat with the petty bourgeois small shopkeeper.

Yellow Vest: “For 10 years we have only created instability. 75% of France has serious economic difficulties. We have closed hospitals, nurseries, schools – everything is being closed, and this can’t go on!”

Due to there insistence on elitism, fascism could have only ever allied with Liberal Democracy – the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact is as far as it ever could have gone. However, if they had somehow allied with the USSR against Liberal Democracy what would they have permanently smashed? Answer: the Bankocracy which rules today.

It’s vital to recognise that, because the current usage of “fascist” completely lacks this historical-economic component.

The fascism of the 2020s is even more right-wing than the fascism of the 1930s

Due to the refusal to honestly talk about fascism – on both the Western left and the Western right – Western politics today are simply a catastrophe of nonsense and misinformation.

Their lack of knowledge allows them to obscure the fact that modern Western “fascists” are even more right-wing than Hitler, who was quite reliant on the Marxist explanation of 19th century history and economics. However, the modern right wing has expunged Marxism, and thus they cannot be actual fascists. Racism and fascism cannot be mere synonyms for each other – unless the goal is to neuter them of all meaning.

Being more right-wing than Hitler… that seems like something which should be understood, no? However, Western Liberal Democracy doesn’t want anything but propaganda regarding other systems and regarding its own failures and treasons.

The best term for today’s alleged “fascists” would be “Nalis” – Nationalist Liberalists: they have all the jingoism, militarism, authoritarianism and imperialism of 1930s fascists but combine it with right-wing Liberalist political structures, economic inequality and historical analyses.

It’s a simple and accurate political description, but only socialist-inspired countries which have fully rejected Western Liberal Democracy would ever apply the term “Nali”: Just as uninformed socialists don’t want to admit any ideological similarities with Nazism, so uninformed Western Liberal Democrats don’t want to admit that they are actually fighting internecine wars with their “National Liberalist” brethren. The use of “Nazi” or “fascist” is a way to distance themselves from each other despite the obvious similarities between each other.

And what do Western Liberal Democrats care if calling far-right Ukrainians “Nazis” in 2022 unfairly tarnishes socialism and spreads misinformation – both wings of Liberalists (one nationalist, the other globalist) are united in their anti-socialism.

Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen are two example of open Nalis, but so are two enemies – Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. The Russian military operation in Ukraine has been a catastrophe of misinformation on both sides regarding who is a “fascist” and who is a “liberal”, and precisely because neither can admit that fascism and liberalism coincide and almost always ally, historically. Thus this battle between two Nali states is either a historical anomaly or, as I predict, Russia’s invasion will mark a step away from their Nalism since 1991 and back towards Socialist Democracy. If Russia continues to insist that “Russophobia” totally equates with “Nazism”, then this will herald their failure to return the fold of progressive politics.

In France, by 2017 the Great Financial Crisis – just the latest periodic failure of liberalism – had inflamed the masses too much for every single politician to ignore: Marine Le Pen thus dropped the Reaganism of her father and made it to the second round of the presidential election. She defended economic ideas which were both similar to the French left and to the Germanic National Socialists of the 1930s. In the 2022 campaign Le Pen reverted back to far-right economics, dropping all her promises for things like a “Frexit” vote within six months of election and for repudiating banker debt, yet the mainstream media called her “fascist” throughout the entire time.

The modern French and Western model was essentially created from 1928-1945, and what it took from fascism and Germanic National Socialism is that economic planning must be limited to the military, and that xenophobia, identity politics and security are spectacles just big enough to dominate the headlines, and thus to ignore liberalism’s failures. To put it in 2022 presidential candidate Eric Zemmour’s terms: France’s economic problem is Muslim welfare, not banker welfare. It’s a pathetic intellectual analysis. When the unrest in Ukraine began France immediately realised that and Zemmour’s popularity quickly halved.

Yellow Vest: “If you look around here you see people of all colours and religions. For me it goes beyond questions of origin – it’s really a question of social justice, regardless of someone’s ethnicity or religion.”

During the 2022 campaign the convicted racist Zemmour said he was, “here to save the French people and France…not here to save the world.” It’s a telling, semi-messianic remark because it is truly straight out of Adolf Hitler’s platform in the 1930s.

But such a comparison was never made by the mainstream media, and it could never be made. Many have heard of Godwin’s Law, or the rule of Nazi analogies: an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches. However, an important corollary is that whenever someone compares someone or something to Nazism – that person has lost the argument and/or the argument is summarily over.

Essentially, the world is to accept that all discussions of Western politics cannot discuss the anti-Western Liberalism ideology which was Germanic Nazism.

Thus it was impossible for them to accurately describe a 2022 French election where the four top candidates were all on the far-right – either economically, politically, culturally or all three. In the two-week interim between their two rounds of voting any criticism of Emmanuel Macron’s record was immediately shouted down in the mainstream media as “support for fascism” – voters wondered which candidate they were referring to. The failure to delineate fascism from Western Liberal Democracy means that we also cannot understand where they have reconciled a century later, just as how liberalism and monarchy eventually reconciled.

The Western right is stuck in falsely believing that the right of 2020 is the same as in the 1930s, despite all the anti-racist gains made since then; the Western left is stuck in falsely believing that their “Popular Front” tactic is actual leftism, despite being neutered of Marxism and socialism. This is why Western versions of history and their political discourse today simply make no sense. It only makes sense if we remember that obscuring political truths is a hallmark of Western Liberal Democratic history, and thus their versions are not truthful nor complete at all.

Not wanting to accurately define fascism or liberalism, but certain in their rejection of Socialist Democracy, after the first round vote in 2022 all the losing candidates (except Zemmour) immediately called for a Popular Front against Le Pen, just as they did in 2017. What’s vital and new is that the Yellow Vests empathically refused this form of class-collaborationism. The People’s Front tactic must be seen for what it is: not an effort to fight fascism but as a way to cement fake-leftism.

Trotsky wrote: “The racists pillage the Marxist program, successfully transforming certain of its sections into an instrument of social demagogy. The ‘Communists’ (?) as a matter of fact refuse their own program, substituting for it the rotten refuse of reformism. Can one conceive of a more fraudulent bankruptcy?”

Trotsky wrote that in 1935 but anyone can see that this is where the West is stuck, still:

Racists reject certain sections of Western Liberal Democrat economics in order to preserve White citizens from the united Bankocrats, while left-wingers hysterically prop up right-leaning moderates who only seek to refine Liberalism into an ever-more unequal system. Can you conceive of a more fraudulent ideological bankruptcy than modern Western politics?

If “Nali” ever did catch on one thing is certain: it would be a huge improvement.

<—>

Upcoming chapter list of the brand-new content in France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. The book will also include previous writings from 2018 through the 2022 election in order to provide the most complete historical record of the Yellow Vests anywhere. What value!

Publication date: June 1, 2022.

Pre-orders of the paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the Kindle version may be made here.

Pre-orders of the French paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the French Kindle version may be made here.

Chapter List of the new content

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1788. China to Make Electric Tumbrils

Posted on April 24, 2022 by uprootedpalestinians

April 23, 2022

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By Fred Reed

We—I, and my spousal unit, Violeta—pulled into DC after a conventionally miserable flight from Guadalajara in seats apparently designed for dwarves with our feet almost in our pockets and Delta trying to sell us beer at seven dollars a can. I didn’t get it. If you can sell watery brew at seven balloonishly inflating greenbacks a can, why do you need an airline?

The occasion was a visit to a woman with whom I immediately became involved, though with Violeta’s permission. She weighs seven and a half pounds and has a smile that would make a dead man weep. This may have little geopolitical importance, though.

Anyway, the proud father celebrated having produced, or coproduced, a baby who probably deserves a world run by psychiatrically less fascinating adults, by taking about a dozen of us to Fogo da Something, a Brazilian restaurant on Pennsylvania across from the Trump Hotel. This costs $64 a head for all the meat and salad bar you could eat, desserts and drinks extra, so with tip you can crawl out, stuffed and economically depleted, for about $90. Salad bar good, desserts swell, meat tasteless. You can do better for a sixth the price at La Carreta, down the lake from us in Mexico.

The meal was a pre-guillotine experience, especially the restaurant. Or I hope so. The waiter says, “Hi! I’m Bruce and I am going to be your waitperson and do everything I can to make sure you have a wonderful, wonderful dining experience. We are orgasmically delighted to see you and….” When a waiter oozes like that, sure, he’s looking for tips, but I wonder, tips of what?

In Mexico waiters are courteous but you can tell they don’t want to sit in your lap or have a long-term relationship. In New York a waiter says, “What’ll it be?” and you say, “Eggs over medium, bacon on the side, cuppa mud,” and he says, “You got it.” Human. It gets the job done. You couldn’t write a Proust novel about it.

Anyway, the place was big, I’d guess between seventy-five and a hundred people doing the squat-and-gobble, likely disgorging on average a C-note per. This is DC, with the five richest counties in America, Montgomery, Loudoun, Fairfax, that kind of place, a city where the graft never stops, recession proof, where bribes run in freshets. Out there in Flyover Land, in Appalachia and the Rust Belt and the rural Deep South, families think going to Mickey D’s is a treat. And the swarming derelicts in the warm states increase in their medieval Ly diseased hordes.

Guillotine stocks. It’s the way to invest.

Washington is a rerun. In Paris in 1788 , creeping toward the Terror, the aristocracy was, like Washington’s upper crust, wealthy and schooled and cultured and cared not a withered farthing about the peasantry, as neither does Washington. Marie Antoinette didn’t really say, “Let them eat cake,” but they all thought it, and Hillary Antoinette, with her contempt for the Basket of Deplorables, expresses the same sentiment. There will be a price. Maybe anyway.

I spent two weeks in this diseased city wondering, “What are they thinking? The country is disintegrating internally, inflation growing like kudzu on a Georgia roadcut, living standards falling, the schools going to hell, and Washington is worried about…the Ukraine? Things crumble, resources are desperately needed domestically, and Washington buys the B-21, which Aviation Week prices at $640 million a copy of which, by design, you have probably never heard.”

It’s nuts. The racial situation is an intensifying disaster with continent-wide rioting, burning cities, ghetto kids graduating illiterate, desperate white people offing themselves with opioids, the rabble storming the Bastille—wait, this time I think it was the Capitol–but we need to raise prices by tariffs on China and Russia.

One night we went to eat with old friends from an earlier life. Like so many in DC, they were ninety-ninth percentile in intelligence, well educated, and decent people. We pondered, “Thai? Chinese? There’s a new Turkish place that’s supposed to be good.” Again, good people, though living in million-dollar houses, but…but…for much of the country Turkish, in some spiffy joint on Cap Hill or upper Connecticut Ave, would be the adventure of a lifetime. Washington has an ampleness of evil people, the Bidens, Blinkens, Victoria Newlands, Trump at one remove, but so many are just out of touch. There’s a new Turkish place in the city, and when was the last time they dined in Flint?

The media, a salt mine in which I once labored, are an embarrassment, utterly partisan, ranting and howling about Russia. OK, in war it is usual to cut the public off from information and to keep them stirred up with accounts of rape, human shield, “genocide,” chemical war, massacres, torture, a rule of television being to get a woman to cry and fill the frame. In Vietnam the media ran all over the country and actually reported what was happening, which eventually ended the war. This error is not being repeated.

{what bothers me is the apparent lack of curiosity, of doubt of official sources. Contrary to belief in some quarters, reporters are not given orders to adopt a particular point of view, though they know better than to contradict the publication’s line. No scribbler at the Washington Post will discuss racial differences in intelligence. But they are herd animals.}

Violeta, whose cynicism toward government—anybody’s government—would peel paint from a wall, watched a video clip purportedly of a Russian tank crushing a car occupied by Ukrainians. She noticed after research that the Russian tank was black without markings, like Ukrainian tanks, instead of green with markings, like all other Russian tanks. OK, maybe it was an undercover Russian tank. She also noticed in some of the Russian-destruction video, street signs are blurred out. Uh…, why dat? Anyone want to guess?

Why do reporters not pay attention? First, again, they are creatures of the pack. They live in the Beltway Terrarium, talk to each other, read each other, and so know they are right. Don’t their colleagues all say so? Second, they are painfully ignorant of matters military, knowing chiefly the bureaucracies involved in policy, contracting, and so on. This includes those for the WaPo, whom I knew—Gerge Wilson, Molly Moore, etc. As a comparison with the coverage of the Washington media, here is a piece by Scott Ritter, a former American intelligence officer stationed in, among other places, Moscow. It is long but contains the kind of knowledge that not one of the Beltways reporters, squalling, screeching, preening and yodeling has an earthworm’s grasp.

Why did Russia attack? Anyone who can read a map can see that since 1991 the US has been trying, with considerable success, to encircle Russia militarily. Russia has said over and over that it was not going to have American missiles on its border in the Ukraine any more than America would allow Chinese missiles in Tijuana. I encountered no one in DC who had even heard of this, though it has been going on for years. This is journalism?

Yes.

All things end, except those that don’t. On a cold rainy predawn morning we caught an Uber to Reagan National, returning to a country that has just left the Third World to one energetically returning to it. A stewardess aboard read the boilerplate about have a wonderful flight. She didn’t explain just how that laudable goal might be achieved. Remember, cometh the guillotine. Kachunk. Kachunk. Kachun.

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Le Pen-Macron: finally, a vote where the people can decide if it’s war or not

Posted on April 14, 2022 by martyrashrakat

April 13, 2022

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By Ramin Mazaheri

From 1792 to 1815 there were not one but seven “Coalition Wars” which involved most of Europe. It’s an era which should be properly termed the “7 European Wars Against the French Revolution”. Think the average European was thrilled about gutting their own economies – for 23 years! – in order to get involved in what was truly a civil war in a faraway land?

Even in England, the only nation which participated in every coalition fighting for counter-revolution, there were popular protests to finally end belligerence, and they occurred long before the start of France’s “Continental Blockade” against England’s intractable monarchists. Objections of unjust meddling in the sovereign affairs of another nation were even finally raised in England’s oligarchical parliament. It was all to no avail, because back then foreign policy was entirely decided in the royal courts of Europe. War went on, regardless of popular objections.

It’s not any different today.

The West still goes to war despite public opinion because the process is still dominated by the choices of the elite.

So it’s quite in line with historical trends: In 2022 the average European is being told to gut their economy for years in order to sanction Russia over the unrest in Ukraine, and of course there is no vote on this warmongering foreign policy. Europe’s leaders – usually working with the approval of actual royals – blithely tell their subjects to let them wear sweaters if heat has become too expensive.

Foreign policy is something which Western democracy has no tools with which to bring it under the aegis of the people. It relies on politicians which are willing to cede to public opinion. If that makes Europeans shudder, it should: The European Union is infamous for its constant disregarding of public opinion. Indeed, this is the primary political leitmotif since the Great Recession began.

Thus the upcoming 2nd round vote in France is so historically rare and valuable in that voters know if they pick one side war will continue – as sanctions (blockade) are an act of war – and if they pick another then war is likely to be averted.

Poll show the Macron-Le Pen race is a dead heat all of a sudden. It has surged from irrelevance to importance so quickly that major historical trends and institutions may topple so quickly that the royal courts of today cannot act quickly enough to stop it.

I believe the decisions French voters will make will come down to this: After a Great Recession, and an Era of Austerity, and the Yellow Vest Civil War era, and the Coronavirus Era… do you want a Russian Sanctions Era to gut – mentally, socially and economically – your already gutted standard of living?

It’s not just voting with your pocketbook and your national passport – it’s also voting with unprecedented foreign policy heft.

Macron on Ukraine – the straw that breaks the French voter’s back

Le Pen has opposed sanctions on Russia since 2014. She knows that those sanctions have had very tough effects on French farmers.b

Given the war hysteria she has no choice but to be in favor of some sanctions on Russia but she’s emphatic that they cannot include energy, and that includes coal, because of the impact it will have on French households. Last month in European Parliament she was one of the few dissenting votes on a resolution which called for a “total and immediate” embargo on all Russian energy imports.

“The only thing I don’t want is sanctions on raw materials which will have heavy consequences on the French and on the rest of the world, ” she said.

Throughout the campaign she’s accused the other candidates of not caring about the effect of sanctions on the average person, and these accusations will only grow louder when pointed solely at Macron.

“I do not want the French to commit hara-kiri on the grounds of sanctions decided by our leaders and which would not relate to the daily life of our compatriots,” she said in mid-March.

Last week she went much further:

“We have another choice. In reality, all the sanctions that have been put on the table and decided today are sanctions that have been designed to protect the interests of the financial markets and the real war profiteers,” she said. “All these sanctions are hitting our companies and individuals.”

What Ukraine has done is to drastically redefine Le Pen’s “M la France” 2022 slogan (M – aime – la France, get it?): it’s gone from being one of national identity to household solvency, and while still retaining the “national sovereignty” theme of 2017.

Frankly, it’s incredible: the European Union just can’t help but make sovereignty – either national or popular – the underlying issue of France’s elections. In 2012 Francois Hollande was going to end Germanic-imposed austerity, and in 2017 Le Pen was going to hold a Frexit vote within 6 months of her victory. “This election is also a referendum on Europe”, recently said Emmanuel Macron, because the EU is so unworkable and so resented that its existence is constantly called into question.

Le Pen has abandoned her 2017 Frexit vote stance even though recent polls showed 2 out of 3 French people were favourable to holding a vote on Frexit. It’s just too easy to caricature.

But as I wrote – ‘Remaining in the EU means peace’ – Ukraine explodes that Bourgeois Bloc idea. Endless Russia sanctions over Ukraine has discredited this Europhile bloc which is the base of Macron – they can afford to pay the knock-on inflation effects of years of Russia sanctions but the average voter cannot.

In a France which has had a series of chaotic eras I predict the threat of Ukraine spillover will primarily drive French voters. It’s a need for protection, and Le Pen is playing to exactly this need: “My obsession is to protect the French. I don’t want them to lose their jobs, to find themselves unable to heat their homes, feed themselves or drive to work.”

I had hoped that the French would realise Macron simply has to go: based on his record he should be totally discredited. If one has any respect for democracy they’d elect a ham sandwich before they’d re-elect Macron. I had hoped that French voters would realise that the arguments of 2017 were kaput: Macron proved to be more authoritarian than Le Pen could ever get away with, and almost as xenophobic. Ukraine has not replaced these ideas – it will hopefully be the coup de grâce which brings down lofty, arrogant, autocratic Macron.

It’s certainly not 2017 for 5 reasons:

  1. Macron is now the “mainstream”: In the 2017 second round this was the primary reason Macron’s voters said they voted for him – to sweep out the corrupt mainstream. The second reason was to block Le Pen, and the third reason (24%) was Macron’s actual policies and personality. We see from the first round vote total that he has barely been able to persuade anyone to his side. This is because:
  2. Macron has a record now: He’s not the neophyte Rothschild banker on whom you could project your unrealistic hopes. It’s an awful record, too: neoliberalism, authoritarian repression, autocratic style of governance, setting the record for ministers ousted for corruption just halfway into his term. This means that:
  3. Nobody will be duped by his “centrism”: This is something I warned of constantly in 2017. His neoliberalism implied far-right economics and a far-right style of governance, and it turns out he was even more willing to legalise Islamophobia than his two predecessors. The absurd and failed Trump- and Brexit-style PFAXIsm (Popular Front Against Xenophobia but for Imperialism) which was based on Macron’s alleged centrism simply will not work as effectively as it did in 2017. What’s more, people do not fear the alleged political extremes because:
  4. The Trump effect – he showed who the real extremists are: In France’s 2017 election Trump had only been in office for less than four months. Fear-mongering that dangerous politicians were going to start World War III was rife, and this had a major effect on the French voter back then. Five years later we know that if World War III is going to be started it’s by mainstream politicians and in:
  5. Ukraine: Want years of energy-caused penury? Want war to possibly spread to French borders? Then vote Macron. It’s not something he can hide from at all. Expect him to deflect and deflect on this issue until the debate, which is truly when the election will be decided.

The difference between Trump and Le Pen, so far, is this: Trump actually wanted it. After their debate in 2017 I wrote Le Pen clowns at debate instead of taking anti-austerity seriously because her behavior made it clear she didn’t care if she lost or won. Trump clowned mainly after taking office – he never stepped up and took on the Deep State – but he was a true competitor, at least.

Le Pen is learning from the failure of the now-retired leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who ran 3rd: she is courting the Yellow Vests, promising to install “RICs”, or citizen-initiated referendums. This was a top-3 demand of the Yellow Vests, and even the most important demand for some. I think many have put way to much emphasis on this – Switzerland has it and it’s hardly a democratic game-changer – but it will sway many Vesters to join her.

And joining Le Pen is something they do not want to do: The Yellow Vest program was the most similar to Melenchon’s, and the second candidate I heard them talk about the most was the (pseudo-) outsider Eric Zemmour. They are not Le Pen fans at all. People who haven’t set their boots in France for a long time may not realise that not only is Le Pen viewed by many as “mainstream” but that there is also a huge antipathy to the National Front in general.

If old people are voting for Macron in 2022 it’s because of this longstanding antipathy. Back when he expected an easy victory Macron gallingly and arrogantly promised to raise the retirement age to 65 this fall – he’s backtracking now, but this could prove to have been a fatal mistake.

The Yellow Vests emphatically reject Le Pen, but what can you do? Macron and Le Pen are the choices, and Macron has proven that he refuses to govern by consensus and only by autocracy.

The only alternatives are abstention (expected to be the highest since 2002, and around 30%), or a blank/spoiled ballot (expected to be a record, around 15%). Add the numbers – the true turnout will thus be around 55%.

Assuming every one of Macron’s 27.8% of first round voters turns out, that leaves 27.2% – it’s a dead heat, but all the trends clearly favor Le Pen. I crunched the numbers: she’ll gain a few hundred thousand more votes than Macron from those who voted for a losing first round candidate. It’s a dead heat there too.

Le Pen said at her first post-first round press conference: “By ferociously repressing popular protest movements like the Yellow Vests or social movements like the demonstrations against pension reform, Emmanuel Macron has installed the idea that nothing can be debatable, amendable, reformable.”

If you can quote the rules you can follow them – Le Pen is thus the “hope” candidate. Contrarily, a Yellow Vest at Macron’s campaign HQ (where I reported from on the night of Round 1) would have been immediately arrested.

These issues within French domestic politics have not become secondary to Ukraine – Ukraine has simply added to Macron’s obvious lack of democratic and patriotic bonafides.

The West can’t have both – war in Ukraine and Macron re-elected.

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Louis-Napoleon: The revolutionary difference between Bonapartism & Western Liberal Democracy

Posted on April 12, 2022 by uprootedpalestinians

April 11, 2022

Source

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

by Ramin Mazaheri

(This is the fifth chapter in a new book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. Please click here for the article which announces this book and explains its goals.)

For Marx all of society was divided into classes – classes which played political roles. What’s unfortunate is that he fundamentally believed that the average rural person – 85% of mid-19th century France – was incapable of playing a political role. It’s a major blind spot which seems to defy common sense, but it was actually a common mistake back then.

It’s a common mistake even now: Rejecting the part played by the rural voters continues to be a 175-year problem for Western leftists.

Yes, in 1848 Marx was a working socialist who was going to fight, write and lobby for socialism – and denigrate all the other parties vying for influence in the new 2nd Republic (1848-52) – but in 2022 we can see that his disregard for the rural masses was also a major factor in his rejection (and rather slandering) of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who was elected France’s first president in 1848.

In the previous chapter I noted how two crucial facts are always left out of any discussion of the 2nd Republic and Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup against the legislative branch (and subsequent establishment of the 2nd Empire: 1852-70):

1) the legislative branch voted to subordinate the 1848 constitution to the majority will of parliament – thus they made a coup against the people’s constitution, and 2) the legislative branch gutted 1848’s progressive advance of instituting universal male suffrage, thus they made a coup against the people and millions of new voters. Thus, it is the oligarchical parliament which made the first coup – the Bonapartist coup was a reaction to these outrages. Critically, it was approved in a referendum so large it was then the world’s largest referendum.

The simplest definition of “Bonapartism” is accepted as, “A political movement associated with authoritarian rule, usually by a military leader, supported by a popular mandate.” Of course I am not arguing for Bonapartism being progressive in the 21st century, but from 1799-1870 the Bonapartes were the only elected chief executives in Europe, and that certainly was progressive! The failure is in obscuring the Bonapartes’ historical context and judging solely by 21st century standards – which is ludicrous and dooms us to never understanding history and repeating the same mistakes.

Without embracing the will of a mainly rural French electorate intent on keeping the spirits of 1848 and 1789 not just alive but actually partially implemented via their election of the Bonapartes, we are stuck with siding with awful absolute monarchs or awful Liberal Democrats. It’s unfortunate that France has never selected Socialist Democracy, but that doesn’t mean Bonapartism wasn’t an advance over the other two.

By denigrating both Bonapartes leftists agree with conservatives that not only was 1848 a failure everywhere including the one place it reportedly succeeded – France – but that the French Revolution was a failure as well. This forces us to lose the thread of political history: moving away from unelected, theocratic autocracy and towards greater self-empowerment and democracy.

So, Marx got Louis-Bonaparte all wrong. He’s not as thrilling as his uncle, but he should no longer be portrayed as the “farce” in Marx’s famous history repeated as farce idea from his essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

What’s farcical is that people keep championing ruinous, repugnant Western Liberal Democracy even though it was voted out after just three years in France.

From Burke to Marx to ‘deplorable’ Brexiteers & Yellow Vests – both left and right have been biased against rural people

Marx’s Brumaire, a title which referred back to the similarly bloodless and similarly voter-ratified coup of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, clearly tried to obscure crucial truths: He waited until the absolute end of his famous essay to explain that Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s elevation to emperor was democratically approved and justifiably rests on his insistence on 1848’s unprecedented implementation of universal male suffrage.

“(Louis-Napoleon) Bonaparte represents an economic class, and that most numerous in the commonweal of France – the Allotment Farmer. As the Bourbons (ousted 1815) are the dynasty of large landed property, as the Orleans are the dynasty of money, so are the Bonapartes the dynasty of the farmer, i.e. of the French masses. Not the Bonaparte who threw himself at the feet of the bourgeois parliament (as Marx notes Louis-Napoleon did repeatedly from his election in 1848), but the Bonaparte who swept away (made a coup against) the bourgeois parliament is the elect of this farmer class. For three years the cities had succeeded in falsifying the meaning of the election of December 10 (1848, Louis-Napoleon’s election as president), and in cheating the former out of the restoration of the Empire. The election of December 10, 1848, is not carried out until the ‘coup d’etat’ of December 2, 1851.”

Marx asserts what the Yellow Vests assert and what this book asserts: the parliaments of Western Liberal Democracy refuse to implement the will of the average voter, and we have known this since at least 1848.

Marx’s vital analysis of democratic denial by parliament only comes after scores of pages of denigrating Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as personally unfit for office. However, 175 years later, we can see it clearly right there: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte partially confirmed the people’s victory of 1848 just as Napoleon Bonapartism partially confirmed the people’s victory of 1789 – both upheld the democratic will and opposed oligarchs.

The “allotment farmer” is the rural proletariat, whether they own their own small holdings or are sharecroppers. 1789 broke up the large estates of the church and created these small holdings, which was really the main economic blow to end French feudalism. It is facile to falsely slander the land redistribution post-1789 as something which only profited the richer peasants and professionals, because as the Revolution went on poor peasants were undoubtedly buying land. By the turn of the century 70% of land buyers were peasants and only 30% were noblemen, dealers, merchants and lawyers. Even if poor peasants could never afford their own land the French Revolution’s ending of tithe, seigniorial dues and primogeniture represented an enormous leftist leap for the lives of all peasants. One shouldn’t have to be a Maoist to grasp that finally giving peasants property and economic freedoms at the expense of the elite and an elite-infested clergy was a spectacular advance in its day. To not see all this as historical progress – even if not ideal – from feudalism is to lose the thread completely. In order to maintain it French farmers used arms, then the guillotine, then votes. The fear of a return to feudalism – especially in the context of a total failure of the 1848 Revolutions everywhere else across Europe – was a real, regular fear for the French peasant in the 2nd Republic.

Marx continues, and it’s clear that he sees the formally feudal masses as being incapable of embracing socialism; of a need for an urban vanguard party; that he could be describing the Yellow Vests 170 years later:

“The allotment farmers are an immense mass, whose individual members live in identical conditions, without, however, entering into manifold relations of one another. Their method of production isolates them from one another, instead of drawing them into mutual intercourse. In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and that place them in an attitude hostile toward the latter, they constitute a class; in so far as there exists only a local connection among these farmers, a connection which the individuality and exclusiveness of their interests prevent from generating among them any unity of interest, national connections and political organisation, they do not constitute a class.”

If rural farmers – in the breadbasket of Western Europe and in Europe’s then-richest and most politically advanced country – cannot constitute a political class (even with a vote for the males, even!) then Marx necessarily sees French politics as limited to urbanites and non-farmers. It’s an incredibly English-influenced view of politics: suffrage would be excluded for Britain’s agricultural workers until as late as 1884, until the Representation of the People Act. We see that the rural-urban divide in the Anglophone world, and their view that ruralites are second-class citizens who should be excluded from politics, is not since Brexit or the Yellow Vests but extends deep into the roots of even Socialist Democracy.

Yellow Vest: “What we have in common is that we share a feeling of injustice, about climate, about fiscal, about work. They are making laws about retirement, unemployed people, everything – so there is a lot of different people here today, but what we all have in common is a feeling of injustice.”

(Note: this book intersperses over 100 quotations taken from actual, marching Yellow Vests which were originally published in news reports on PressTV.)

Marx continues: “Consequently, they are unable to assert their class interests in their own name, be it by a parliament or by convention. They cannot represent one another, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power, that protects them from above, bestows rain and sunshine upon them. Accordingly, the political influence of the allotment farmer finds its ultimate expression in an Executive power that subjugates the commonweal to its own autocratic will.”

Because around 85% of France is incapable of political action (even with a vote for males!) for Marx, and only appreciates absolute autocrats (Then why did they fight for the French Revolution! Then why have Chinese farmers embraced a vast Party?!), then the only alternative is for political life be limited to a vanguard party drawn from urban classes. This urban snobbery is still rampant today across both sides of the spectrum, but the left rarely examines this “acceptable” prejudice they often display.

However, we need to stress that Marx was not at all alone. Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, shared the same incorrectly dim view of rural political capabilities as Marx. Interestingly, Burke also wrote in his Reflections on the Revolution in France that this new Western Liberal Democracy would perpetually depend on those classes which oppress the rural masses. He notes that it would be dominated by what I have often written about: not a vanguard class inspired by Socialist Democracy but Bankocracy.

“The whole of the power obtained by this (France’s 1789) revolution will settle in the towns among the burghers and the monied director who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the peasant have, none of them, habits or inclinations or experience which can lead them to any share in this sole source of power and influence now left in France. The very nature of a country life, the very nature of landed property, in all the occupations, and all the pleasures they afford, render combination and arrangement (the sole way of procuring and exerting influence) in a manner impossible amongst country people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all the industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm, jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business and dies in a day – all these things which are the reins and spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds of followers are not easily employed, or hardly at all, amongst scattered people. They assemble, they are, they act with the utmost difficulty and at the greatest charge. Their efforts, if they can be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot proceed systematically.

It is obvious that in the towns all things which conspire against the country gentleman come in favor of the money managers and director. In towns combination is natural. The habits of burghers, their occupations, their diversion, their business, their idleness continually brings them into mutual contact. Their figures and their vices are sociable; they are always in garrison; and they come embodied and half disciplined into the hands of those who mean to form them for civil or military action.

All these considerations leave no doubt on my mind that, if this monster of a constitution can continue, France will be wholly governed by the agitators in corporations, by societies in the towns, formed of directors of assignats, and trustees for the sale of church lands, attorneys, agents, money jobbers, speculators and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy founded on the destruction of the the crown, the nobility and the people. Here are all the deceitful dreams and lies of the equality and rights of men.”

They are always in garrison… a sycophant, yes, but Burke was also a great writer. He also foresaw that Western Liberal Democracy was going to culminate in an “ignoble oligarchy” formed of “agitators in corporations”, land speculators, “attorneys, agents, money jobbers, speculators and adventurers”. Who today would not admit that this is what it is?

What Burke failed to foresee is that Marx, Lenin, Russia, China, Cuba, Iran and others would create new systems which would wrest control from both monarchs and this group – which rules along with monarchs in Western Liberal Democracies – and give it to the masses.

So Marx was not alone in thinking that the rural masses are difficult to wrangle into politics, but the weekly roundabout protest and the Facebook page – where freedom of assembly and speech/writing are enjoyed (or at least they were at one point in the internet’s history) – has definitely ended the isolation of the rural class. This class, which was created by 1789 let’s recall, had to wait a very long time to challenge the capital’s death-grip on governance. What is the capital’s 21st century response? To both accuse this rural class of racism while at the same time promoting mainstream politicians who have explicitly pushed imperialist racism.

In 1852 socialism was not sufficiently developed. Ruralites understandably turned to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte after just 3 years of trying out bourgeois Western Liberal Democracy – the alternative was a return to feudalism, autocracy and the total death of 1789.

“The rooted thought of the Nephew becomes a reality because it coincided with the rooted thought of the most numerous class among the French.”

Marx was right to champion socialism, but 175 years later we can champion Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte for his popular democratic legitimacy, something which Marx knew, but refused to grudgingly champion:

If the bourgeois have no values at all, then not only does liberalism have no values but neither does the first years after 1789

Also coming at the end of his analysis, Marx has rather tossed in this defense of half the country.

“But this should be well understood: The Bonaparte dynasty does not represent the revolutionary, it represents the conservative farmer; it does not represent the farmer who presses beyond his own economic conditions, his little allotment of land, it represents him rather who would confirm these conditions; it does not represent the rural population, that, thanks to its own inherent energy, wishes, jointly with the cities to overthrow the old older. It represents, on the contrary, the rural population that, hide-bound in the old order, seeks to see itself, together with its allotments, saved and favoured by the ghost of the Empire.”

Yet Marx is wrong all over the place, in this effort to portray Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as the candidate of only the far-right farmer. Marx is wrong about who was a “conservative”: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected at a time when royalism was dominant across Europe and still a major part of France’s own political spectrum. To imagine that in 1848 all of France’s farmers had been converted to republicanism/anti-monarchism is certainly false – there were still plenty of royalist farmers, and they are the true conservatives. Furthermore, Marx is implying that farmers who want to preserve the gains of 1789 (which is hardly an “old order”) but are skeptical of 1848 are hidebound reactionaries even though this farmer and his family are the only ones to have thrown off the chains of autocratic feudalism in all of Europe. It’s tortuous logic, indeed.

What Marx failed to admit here is that the desire to hold on to a little allotment, at a time when Anglo-Germanic-Russian autocracy offered only continued feudalism, contains plenty of socialist revolutionary sentiment. It’s surprising that Marx fails to admit this, because in the Communist Manifesto Marx is clearly not against the property of the allotment farmer: “The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. … Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.”

Yet it’s clear: upholding 1789 was still a revolutionary act in 1848 Europe. I believe Marx was playing politics – he could not make a tactical support of Louis-Napoleon because he wanted the socialists to win.

Yellow Vest: “The Yellow Vests won’t stop until we get citizen-initiated referendums. We need some real democracy in our system, but the Yellow Vests can’t do it alone. I’m glad more help from other sectors is on the way next week.”

As in the previous chapter, Marx proves that Liberal Democracy does not even offer or defend the bourgeois rights of mere liberalism, but Marx goes too far in saying that the bourgeois have no virtues at all when compared to monarchists.

Marx differentiated between royal & bourgeois money and classes, but not between the differences between royal & bourgeois virtues

Marx views the rule of the bourgeois in the 2nd Republic as absolutely terrible, but it’s not really clear if he views them to be as absolutely terrible as monarchy: he truly hates them both. He also truly hates Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Marx is only on the side of socialism, which is fine, but he underestimates the non-royalists in how they reject the social order of the royalists, and this is a fundamental trend of history:

“All classes and parties joined hands in the (1848 uprising) June Days in a ‘Party of Order’ against the class of the proletariat, which was designated the ‘Party of Anarchy’, of Socialism, of Communism. They claimed to have ‘saved’ society against the ‘enemies of society’. They gave out the slogans of the old social order – ‘Property, family, religion, order’ – as the passwords for their army, and cried out to the counter-revolutionary crusaders: ‘In this sign thou wilt conquer!’”

I think we all get where Marx is coming from. He is also describing what the last chapter focused on: The February Revolution of 1848 was sold out over and over, culminating in the exclusion from power of all classes but the royalists, bourgeois wealth and the upper professionals.

But if we take a longer view of history we see that those were actually new slogans, as they come from a new liberalist republican mindset – those slogans are not the slogans of monarchy at all!

Autocratic monarchy doesn’t respect “property”: they confiscate and bestow at will. They don’t respect “family”: they enslaved your family, forced you to work in their self-glorifying projects and some had the right to rape your wife on your wedding night. They don’t respect righteous “religion” and good works: they conflate religion with praise of their person and total obedience to them, not God. They don’t respect “order”: the “order” in the mind of one king or queen, i.e. their despotism, is “disorder” to everyone else, as they live in fear of that one mind in charge.

Marx does not see that these 2nd Republic slogans have an actual force among liberalist republicans which was new in human history, even if their definition was misused by the royalists. Marx is making politics and thus was, fairly, more concerned with socialism winning power than delineating a progression of history.

In 2022 no socialist-inspired country is against “property”: it does certainly expropriates from the appropriator those goods which the public needs (i.e. electricity, transport, schools, hospitals, etc.). Socialism does not break up the “family”: it undoubtedly promotes the family with tax breaks for children, state-run nurseries, maternal and paternal leave, etc. Socialism is not against “religion”: the USSR proved that this was an immoral failure, and thus religion coexists in places like Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, etc. Socialism is not against “order”: it enforces an order based around equality, whereas the order of Western Liberal Democracy is based around the violence needed to prop up an oligarchy.

So the problem with the “Property, family, religion, order” upheld by Western Liberal Democracy is that these four things are of the conception held by a 1% who either champions or is still a part of the monarchical legacy, and not for and of the masses. Losing property to the 1%’s usury, losing family to the 1%’s hospital bills, losing religion to the 1%’s worship of individualistic sensation, losing order to the 1%’s idea of “slightly less despotism is offered by rule by our class” – this is not socialism, but it clearly is Western Liberal Democracy.

What the Party of Order did was subvert these ideals which liberalism and socialism, both born in 1789, agree are necessary. What they disagree is in the conception of them.

Where they agree is in a negative view of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.

It’s notable that he is so contemptible to Marx yet his Louis-Napoleon’s enemies (François Guizot) said of his coup: “This is the complete and definitive triumph of socialism.” A reassessment of Marx’s animus is clearly needed to clearly understand “the nephew”.

Marx disliked Louis-Napoleon the way a working socialist politician today dislikes Donald Trump

Marx spends an inordinate amount of Brumaire both suppressing the role of the rural masses and elevating the importance of the urban areas, as I have noted. He also repeatedly condemns Louis-Napoleon as the president of the “slum-proletariat”, or what he calls the “La Boheme” social classes: people without merit and without any desire to acquire work skills, combined with pseudo-artistic types, outright criminals and addicts.

And yet Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte seemed to be a man after Marx’s own leftist-writer heart? Sadly, he had the fortune/misfortune of being a Bonaparte. Louis-Napoleon was the son of whom the Dutch called “Louis the Good” – Napoleon’s brother Louis, who headed French Revolutionary Netherlands.

Louis-Napoleon clearly saw his political ideology as perpetuating the middle-of-the-road revolutionary path of Napoleon Bonaparte, which is based around ideas that government exists to serve the masses, stability while implementing progressive political changes, and a healthy and not jingoistic patriotism. A fuller, uncredited definition is: A popular national leader confirmed by popular election, above party politics, promoting equality, progress, and social change, with a belief in religion as an adjunct to the State, a belief that the central authority can transform society, a belief in the “nation” and its glory and a fundamental belief in national unity. I note that Iran’s revolutionary concept of what I term a “supreme leader branch” shares a lot of these characteristics.

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s path was quite similar to his uncle’s, and with similar conflicts – he started as a revolutionary republican, fighting Teutonic autocracy in Italy. But his personal attempts at revolution – himself at the head of a Bonapartist revolt – landed him in prison. It’s there that he starts to be much like a Marx – a widely-read socio-economic historian of a leftist variety. An major part of his 1848 electoral popularity is based on his works like The Extinction of Pauperism, which reveal his concern with the general good of the average French person – this puts him in stark contrast with the royalists and elite seated in the 2nd Republic’s first National Assembly in 1849. His philosophy is ultimately not socialism but Bonapartism, with himself obviously at the head – and for this Marx cannot ally with him.

However, equating Bonapartism with absolute monarchism or unelected authoritarianism is as foolish as it was in the era of Napoleon Bonparte. It also cannot be equated with Western Liberal Democracy.

I would like to ask Marx: How bad can Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte be when on October 10, 1851, he announces plans to restore universal suffrage and on October 16 his executive cabinet resigns over it? Marx commented:

Marx quotes Louis Napoleon, who concludes with a perfect analysis of the 1849-51 rule of Western Liberal Democracy, but still with no credit from Marx. I think it’s precisely because he, like so many Western leftists and unlike so many modern Muslim leftists, totally forgets the influence of monarchism:

“With such unhoped for successes, I am justified to repeat how great the French republic would be if she were only allowed to pursue her real interests and reform her institutions, instead of being constantly disturbed in this by demagogues, on one side, and on the other, by monarchic hallucinations. The monarchic hallucinations hamper all progress and all serious departments of industry. Instead of progress we have struggle only. Men, formerly the most zealous supporters of royal authority and prerogative become the partisans of a convention that has no purpose other than to weaken an authority that is born of universal suffrage. We see men who have suffered most from the (1848) revolution and complained bitterest of it proving a new one for the sole purpose of putting fetters on the will of the nation.” (emphasis mine)

Modern Iranians certainly know what it means to be disturbed by “monarchic hallucinations”. Marx failed to appreciate Louis-Napoleon’s railing against the royalist threat even though that is exactly what the average voter in France (a farmer) wanted to hear, because a return to feudalism was horrible to them and quite a real danger. Nor did he appreciate the average voter’s the brand-new goal: ending the self-interested oligarchy which is Western Liberal Democracy.

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is an advance in global political history because he is against the total domination of the bourgeois, here in the form of a parliamentary republic, which ended universal suffrage and which dominated in many ways more thoroughly than in absolute autocracy as Marx himself said.

Like his uncle, Louis Napoleon is far from a perfect political hero, but he is no Western Liberal Democrat, nor is he an absolute monarch, nor does he disbelieve in the ideals of 1789 – for that they elected them emperor.

What’s needed in 2022 is not a new emperor, but the reforms which make representative democracy truly representative across the West, and an ousting of all royal/aristocratic/technocratic “hallucinations” of their supposed superiority over people like the Yellow Vests.

Yellow Vests: “Yes, there are many Yellow Vests who are poor and unemployed, but there are countless Yellow Vests who have stable jobs. We are all together regardless of our ethnic or religious background, because the Yellow Vests are the true representative of a united France.”

Appreciating Bonapartism over Western Liberal Democracy isn’t being blind to its failures

Marx’s recap of the historic vote approving Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s self-coup here, which admits that his primary electoral support was the democratic mass:

“Suffice it here to say that it was a reaction of the farmers’ class, who had been expected to pay the costs of the February (1848) revolution against the other classes of the nation: it was a reaction of the country against the city. It met with great favor among the soldiers, to whom the republicans of the ‘National’ (a bourgeois republican newspaper – started by Adolphe Thiers) had brought neither fame nor funds; among the great bourgeoisie who hailed Bonaparte as a bridge to the monarchy; and among the proletarians and small traders, who hailed him as a scourge to Cavaignac. I shall later have occasion to enter closer into the relation of the farmers to the French revolution.”

I began this chapter where Marx concluded – the relation of the farmers to French politics.

At the end of the previous chapter I stressed the importance of Western Liberal Democracy’s first imperialist strongman, Louis-Eugène Cavaignac. He went from being the governor of Algeria to leading the repression of urbanites (“proletarians”) in the June Days of 1848, and thus was despised. The army’s rank and file was full of lower-class men who lacked better job offers precisely because the elites who would staff the 2nd Republic’s unicameral parliament abolished the National Workshops, a fundamental demand of the the revolution, which is what then set off the June Days uprising. So of course they approved of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and opposed the warmongering Cavaignac, probably just as the rank-and-file Western soldier probably opposed Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Indochine, Korea, the Falklands, etc. and etc.).

What Marx wants to stress, necessarily, is that Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was allied with both the rural masses as well as the new rich bourgeois. It’s the same failing of “the uncle”: neither were sincere Jacobins, i.e. socialists; it’s the same virtue – opposing the royalists.

“I have already indicated that, since the entry of Fould (a banker representing the stock exchange) in the Ministry that portion of the commercial bourgeoisie that had enjoyed the lion’s share in Louis Philippe’s reign, to wit, the aristocracy of finance, had become Bonapartist. Fould not only represented Bonaparte’s interests at the Bourse, he represented also the interests of the Bourse with Bonaparte.”

Marx also relates that this new “aristocracy of finance” had also grown to include government bonds – i.e the taxes and money of the people – which remain the lynchpin of the Western economic capitalist system today. The French stock exchange wasn’t until Napoleon Bonaparte – it was a new and slowly growing leviathan, and by 1848 it was able to leave the Bourbons and Orleanists behind.

Marx is relating how by 1851 the financial-industrial-imperialist wealth which had backed the House of Orleans coup in the 1830 Revolution (commonly referred to as the July Revolution) had continued to grow in power to the point where many broke free from the Orleanists to back Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. These two groups worked together, with the rural masses, to push out the Bourbons and the Orleanist monarchical autocrats out of power once and for all.

(I did not cover it in this book, but the July Revolution is often called the Trois Glorieuses in French (“Three Glorious [Days]”). Both terms are less descriptive and more purposely opaque than a contemporary term: the Second French Revolution, as it inspired revolutions in Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and led to the independence of Belgium. The political advance of the July Revolution was slight: replacing the ultra-royalist Charter of 1814, which provided a short bill of rights within a strong monarchy, similar to the UK, with the Charter of 1830, which barely expanded suffrage and loosened press controls. Popular dissatisfaction with the July Monarchy was constant, producing a week of revolution in 1832 (the June Rebellion of 1832/Paris Uprising of 1832), which was the subject of Hugo’s Les Miserables, and then the Revolution of 1848.)

Vitally, Marx believes the experience of the 2nd Republic proved to one and all that Western Liberal Democracy was a total failure, and thus they, too, approved of the self-coup! This is an entirely rational conclusion drawn from his experiences of the time, and in concordance with class warfare – the new royalists + bourgeoisie simply wanted to get back to business, and Western Liberal Democracy was not yet skilled enough to efficiently aid the oligarchy:

“It (the leaders of the “bourgeois republic”) declared unmistakably that it longed to be rid of its own political rule, in order to escape the troubles and dangers of ruling.”

So Marx reported that Western Liberal Democracy went down without a fight.

Marx quotes The Economist from Feb 1851 on Louis-Napoleon’s coup: “Now we have it stated from numerous quarters that France wishes above all things for repose. The president declares it in his message to the Legislative (National) Assembly; it is echoed from the tribune; it is asserted in the journals; it is announced from the pulpit; it is demonstrated by the sensitiveness of the public funds at the least prospect of disturbance, and their firmness the instant it is made manifest that the Executive is far superior in wisdom and power to the factious ex-officials of all former governments.” (emphasis mine)

France was becoming a modern Bankocracy, but royalist hallucinations were slowing this down.

From The Economist in November 1851: “The President is now recognised as the guardian of order on every Stock Exchange of Europe.”

Like in 1799 a Bonaparte was going to win democratic approval by finding a propertied ally against the royalists. In 1799 it was those whose profited from the sale of the assignats – in 1851 it was those who profited from industrial-financial-imperialist wealth. In both cases the peasants and proletariat supported the Bonapartists, even if Marx claims that only the slum-proletariat (and thus not the honest workers and artisans) supported “the nephew”.

Thus the essence of Louis-Napoleon is similar to his uncle’s: A France advancing politically too far ahead of the rest of Europe in 1848 and garnering total enmity, thus acquiescing to only a moderate revolution by 1852. The compromise gives the average Frenchmen unparalleled rights but with a price of not neutering a new, usurious aristocracy.

Thus we now have the essence of Louis-Napoleon: one half is the righteous rejector of Western Liberal Democracy (a parliamentary bourgeois republic) and unelected monarchy in favor of universal suffrage, but the other half is a refusal to tax the wealthy, prohibit the usurious methods of the new financial class against the recently-propertied allotment farmers, resume the National Workshops (which would have reduced the power of the industrial class), or confiscate the wealth of the landed royalists – all the things which 1917, 1949, 1959 and 1979 would do.

Because Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte did not stop the financial oligarchy this happened, Marx wrote in 1871:

“The Second Empire had more than doubled the national debt, and plunged all the large towns into heavy municipal debts. The war had fearfully swelled the liabilities, and mercilessly ravaged the resources of the nation. To complete the ruin, the Prussian Shylock was there with his bond for the keep of half a million of his solders on French soil, his indemnity for 5 billions, and interest at 5 percent on the unpaid instalments thereof. Who was to pay the bill? It was only by the violent overthrow of the (Paris Commune) republic that the appropriators of wealth could hope to shift on to the shoulders of its producers the cost of a war which they, the appropriators, had themselves originated. Thus, the immense ruin of France spurred on these patriotic representatives of land and capital, under the very eyes and patronage of the invader, to graft upon the foreign war a civil war – a slaveholders’ rebellion.”

That is a stunning historical passage which sums up much in 1871, and is addressed in the next chapter on the Paris Commune.

It’s about knowing the real enemies – it is not the Bonapartes

This chapter requires so much Marx because the birth of Western Liberal Democracy was such a rapid failure that it appears complicated. With Marx’s tremendous journalism its lifecycle was made clear.

Facing a reign of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and the rural will, the socialist Marx writes:

“All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its passage through purgatory. It does its work methodically. Down to December 2, 1851, it (the revolution) had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now fulfils the other half. It first ripens the power of the Legislature into fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has accomplished that the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of the Executive into equal maturity; it reduces this power to its purest expression; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject for reproof in order to concentrate against it all the revolutionary forces of destruction.”

Marx understood what many have covered up: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte expressed and achieved the total failure of the legislative branch in Western Liberal Democracy – your faith in Congress or the National Assembly or the Parliament of the United Kingdom is a total waste.

We see the reason that Western Liberal Democracy does not wish to remember the 2nd Republic – it was a total failure which saw parliament commit coups agains the constitution and the voters. It took an elected emperor to preserve the progressive idea of expanding democracy. Western Liberal Democracy hasn’t politically allied with the average person from its very beginning.

That passage also reveals Marx’s slandering of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte – he is “the sole subject for reproof” left. For Marx elite English parliamentarianism and been totally discredited – all that was left to do was to discredit the monarchical executive.

Yellow Vests: “People are angry because Macron has only represented just the interests of the rich class, billionaires and the bankers. Last year alone 500,000 more people fell under the poverty line in France, which is a direct result of Macron’s policies.”

Marx, as we will see with Trotsky, believed passionately that monarchy and Liberal Democracy had discredited itself – they were both right, but not enough agree with them. Who knows how many Emmanuel Macrons it will take?

It would take nearly 20 years, not just 3, for Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte to discredit himself and to be replaced by the Socialist Democracy of the Paris Commune.

Louis-Napoleon Bonparte’s real virtue is that he was fighting with the people against the dominant part of the oligarchy – the Bourbons and Orleanists, with all their accumulated wealth and influence. Of course Macron, the “president of the rich”, only fights against the people – he is totally bourgeois, and thus likes any and all rich people.

Macron is thus not like Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, and surely he never aimed to be such a populist. Macron more resembles the key figure from 1871, Adolphe Thiers, who also colluded with foreign powers to weaken France. But that is for the next chapter.

<—>

Upcoming chapter list of the brand-new content in France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. The book will also include previous writings from 2018 through the 2022 election in order to provide the most complete historical record of the Yellow Vests anywhere. What value!

Publication date: June 1, 2022.

Pre-orders of the paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the Kindle version may be made here.

Pre-orders of the French paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the French Kindle version may be made here.

Chapter List of the new content

Filed under: France | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off on Louis-Napoleon: The revolutionary difference between Bonapartism & Western Liberal Democracy

The ‘Counter-Revolutions of 1848’ stillborn child: Western Liberal Democracy

Posted on April 7, 2022 by fada1

April 07, 2022

Source

by Ramin Mazaheri

(This is the fourth chapter in a new book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. Please click here for the article which announces this book and explains its goals.)

The primary cause of the Revolutions of 1848 was the fact that it took 50 years for the sociopolitical ideas of the French Revolution to spread in a Europe dominated by autocratic monarchs. That’s how radical 1789 was, and how slow political history moves.

The secondary cause was the economic changes caused by the refusal to end feudal mindsets anywhere in Europe but in France, and amid the start of industrialisation. 1789 had changed all Europeans, but all monarchs – including the two dynasties in post-Napoleonic France – refused to govern according to the entirely new needs and demands of their citizens. It’s expressed in the primary slogan of 1848, “Bread and work, or lead!”

The primary result of the 1848 Revolutions was total failure everywhere but France. 1848 provided new upheavals to replace Europe’s memories of the Seven European Wars Against the French Revolution (1792-1815), and what replaced them was even worse absolute monarchies. Political gatherings and demonstrations were outlawed, censorship was not just rampant but total – in short, all European political life was back to where it was in 1847: underground, publicly nonexistent and ruthlessly repressed. There was no revolution – an accurate reading of European history would call this period the “Counter-Revolutions of 1848”.

So why isn’t it called that? For the same reason behind this long historical preface before an analysis of the achievements of the Yellow Vests: Western mainstream history and education is a catastrophe of elite bias and propaganda.

The secondary result of the Revolutions of 1848 was the very first establishment, and immediate popular rejection, of what we can finally start calling Western Liberal Democracy. It would last just three years before a coup against it was popularly approved 11 to 1 in what was then the largest democratic vote ever in history. It took just three years for Western Liberal Democracy to prove to voters its total, eternal inability to care for the masses and not for an elitist oligarchy.

This chapter will make that conclusion perfectly clear not only because we have 175 years of hindsight, but because we have the world-shattering journalism and analysis of one Karl H. Marx. His on-the-ground analysis of the actions of 1848 would shape politics for over a century, and inspire both true socialists and socialists-turned-fascists into breaking with Western Liberal Democracy.

Napoleon always draws the crowds – his nephew? Few even know he had one who was important. In between Napoleon’s demise and World War One there is an abyss of historical understanding in the West. In fact, they are instructed to not think of this era as significant at all – this chapter hopes to explain why.

Marx on France: The only country that mattered in 1848… and 1849

Simply look at the results:

Italy carried the torch of 1789 the most. After initially giving false hope, the Pope openly said that the Papacy could not be the leader of a unified Italian state. His refusal to mix religion and politics, even in a country which was so overwhelmingly of the same religion, was a major error. After 1848 the Papacy became totally anti-liberal, anti-national and supportive of absolutist regimes.

Hungary gave up after their ethnic-based revolt failed to take root – unsurprisingly – with the rest of the extremely multiethnic Hapsburg empire. Indeed, many seem to think that Germanic racial elitism was founded by Adolf Hitler?

Revolutionary France had ended the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, but the autocratic Hapsburgs held on after 1848 – the counter-revolutionary victory was primarily theirs… it’s a common theme.

Tsarist Russia was not affected by 1848. They would, in large part to keep Prussia weak, prop up their Austrian autocratic brethren.

Just like in the aftermath of Russia’s 1917 success, and the 1930s, and the Great Recession, Germany totally disappointed. The Germans were especially brutal in repressing their revolutions, and it would require World War One to finally end German despotism, at least in the monarchical form.

Yellow Vest: “We were so numerous in the beginning, but when people began to see how violent and ferocious the government repressed the Yellow Vests, then many got too scared to protest. The government did everything they could to make us disappear, just so they can govern us according to their selfish whims.”

(Note: this book intersperses over 100 quotations taken from actual, marching Yellow Vests which were originally published in news reports on PressTV.)

The broad outline of what happened across Europe in the year of 1848 is simply this: The nouveau riche, professional, and managerial classes were always quite content with mere liberal reformism, which was opposed by the monarchists. Those three groups initially allied with the artisans and students to push back against Anglo-Germanic-Russian enforced absolutism and repression. When this “bourgeois” triumvirate got the mild reformism they wanted (i.e. rights for themselves) these “liberal reformists” would no longer support the artisans and students – of course they never wanted to ally for long with the peasants and proletariat. They instead supported repression of the artisans, students and lower classes, and thus we have the Counter-Revolutions of 1848. These liberal reformers never wanted a revolution, but merely a bill of rights for rich people against autocratic monarchy. As all mere reformists do, they refused to incarcerate, confiscate or execute the counter-revolutionaries, and thus the counter-revolution won, as it always will when facing half-hearted reformism. 1848 stands as proof that the alleged heroes of liberalist reformism are actually right-wingers opposed to actual democracy.

The tertiary result of 1848 was the growth of nationalism, but rarely pointed out in the Anglo-Saxon world is that this nationalism was required to expel Anglo-Germanic theocratic autocrats. We certainly can’t blame the French revolutionaries who departed decades ago, but after planting the seed of anti-feudalism, anti-monarchism and patriotic pride. The rebellions across Europe were against the poor governance of the aristocratic oligarchies who had colluded to wipe out 1789. Some leftists see this rise of nationalism as a bad thing, but they have totally lost the thread.

1848 addressed the “political question”, of how governance should be arranged, and everywhere but France failed to install something which anyone could call “progressive”. Furthermore, France’s revolutionary victory also allowed for the first political discussions of the “social question” – how shall we transfer socially from feudal monarchy: liberal capitalism or socialism? – to be addressed and fought out in their new political structure. At least it was assumed at the start of 1848 that this would be a fair fight!

It took France 33 years (the length of a human generation), from the fall of Napoleon until 1848, for the French to get rid of an unelected executive – once again they were alone in this achievement. Universal (male) suffrage was also spectacularly achieved for the first time, as was the founding of a “right to work”. While all other Europeans gave up achieving any move away from pathetic monarchy France founded the 2nd Republic.

French history from the fall of Napoleon, and thus the end of the French Revolution, until 1848 can be quickly summarised: In 1815 Napoleon was imprisoned on St. Helena, and the Bourbons returned after having fled, again. The Bourbons only ruled until 1830, when Louis Philippe I of the House of Orleans was installed during that year’s “July Revolution”. For France 1848 was the result of 18 years of awful neglect from the Orleanists, who cared only about bleeding the country dry at the behest of the burgeoning financial elite, as it was this “bourgeois” who helped push the House of Orleans into power. 1848 deposed the House of Orleans, and France looked forward this new system we term “Western Liberal Democracy” – they would be disappointed.

In a country with universal male suffrage you would think the new parliament would endeavour to represent the interests of the masses, no? If so, you misunderstand who Western Liberal Democracy aims to serve. Marx summarised the Second Republic thusly, and according to his ideas of political progression: “Under the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe only the bourgeois republic could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the bourgeoisie, having (from 1830-48) ruled under the name of the king, now the whole bourgeoisie was to rule under the name of the people.”

Western Liberal Democracy inevitably turns out that way, but the revolutionaries of 1848 had certainly expected some power and wealth to be devolved to them. In a truly post-feudal France former serfs now had higher opinions of their value to society, their right to earn bread to eat, wanted the necessary stability provided by central planning, social welfare, etc. However, while the souls of the French serfs had grown, the power of the new financial-oriented class had grown at a usurious rate! This is thanks to the start of industrialisation, but also to the usurious abuses of the serfs-turned-sharecroppers. I say “start of industrialisation” because at the time of Napoleon the average workshop had just four workers and the only large businesses were arms manufacturers – not so 30 years later.

As the short-lived 2nd Republic progressed it became clear that this new form of governance was only there to benefit the old landed royalists, the post-1492 corporate trading enterprises and these new “bourgeois” industrialists and rentiers. The 2nd Republic is the start of when powers began to slowly stop being royal and start being monetary powers – when power became corporatised. This is what makes 1848 France so vital to understanding the 21st century.

Yellow Vests: “Our system has become totally rotten. They make the laws to suit their own needs, or the needs of corporations, and they have done nothing to resolve the huge problems of the average person. This is why the Yellow Vests will keep marching in the streets.”

It took the French three years to learn this, then to clear a path for 1848’s popularly-elected president to bloodlessly abolish the always-oligarchical parliament of Western Liberal Democracy. That president was Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose father was Louis “the Good” Bonaparte, who was appointed King of Holland in 1806 in a failed bid to make the Batavian Republic less subject to monarchical attacks.

The above analysis which condemns Western Liberal Democracy is why this chapter is needed: The mainstream historical analysis of 1848-52 France places way too much emphasis on economic changes – i.e. the industrial revolution – and the alleged dictatorship of a guy who was elected because stupid French hillbillies thought an elderly Napoleon had broken free from St. Helena. This faulty analysis exists because it allows for the sidestepping of what actually happened politically: the mismanagement of France’s first Western Liberal Democrats, their obvious bias against the bottom 90%, and the eventual rejection of this form of governance which only entrenched inequality and created regular crises.

On the social level what they were pushing for in 1848, but what the 2nd Republic failed to legislate, is what postwar Europe looks like! The revolutionaries of 1848 were proven right, and that can’t be disproven.

1848-1948 was an awful century for the European masses, but also the masses everywhere else – European imperialism created the tragedies, famines and inequalities which literally moulded a new “Third World”: prior to 1848 a peasant in Europe was in the same socioeconomic condition as a peasant in India, China, Latin America, etc.

Yellow Vest: “The movement will hold firm in the future. It will not disappear because their demands are so very solid and true. There are real reasons for a revolution in France, and we will always continue to play our part.”

Learning how the 1848 Revolution got off-track in the country where it had its greatest success is a major key to understanding governments of today, because it is this form of government which has ultimately prevailed despite instant and lasting popular disapproval!

Thus, the ‘Counter-Revolutions of 1848’, indeed.

Marx’s genius: tying together 1848 and 1789, which is the only way to understand 1848

There are three critical contributions Marx made to the understanding of France’s 1848-52 period. They are so critical because they illustrate how Western Liberal Democracy starts with fake-leftism and ends in oligarchy over and over and over. It should be considered quite important that the complaints of the 2nd Republic are the exact same as the ones heard today!

Firstly, Marx condensed the economic evolution of France in a time when society and economics were changing rapidly even without the complications of a successful 1848 revolution. He laid out how class economic interests twisted the 2nd Republic into something which nobody who was actually at the barricades would have fought for.

Shortly after the February Revolution of 1848 forced the abdication of the House of Orleans the “June Days” uprising scared the royalists and bourgeois republicans (i.e. anti-monarchists) to unite into the “Party of Order”. The Bourbons – who represented the power of landed property, the oldest basis of money – finally ended their royal squabbles with the Orleanists – who were installed to defend the increased power of nouveau riche industrial/financial property. This new unity is what Marx meant by writing, “…landed property has become completely bourgeois through the development of modern society.” Gone were disputes of old or nouveau – it was just riche versus poor. Thus, 1848 in France is the birth of modern class warfare – and the rich started it!

Secondly, Marx condensed what actually took place in the hectic few years after the 1848 Revolution, which culminated in the popular vote which sanctioned the coup of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte against the unicameral National Assembly. Marx’s charted the lifecycle of this new political structure, and how it discredited itself via the same oligarchical flaws which are eternally apparent in this system.

Thirdly, Marx showed how the new professional politicians, doctors, small-town lawyers, bank managers and other professional-types, who are the cadres in this new Western Liberal Democracy, joined with the richer categories of wealth (royalist, usurious, landed wealth and financial, means-of-production wealth) to engage in a style of governance which put all their own interests first and demonised the interests of anyone else as “socialism!”. Yes, as epitomised in the awful politics of the United States 175 years later, Marx was flabbergasted to see even calls for the most basic reforms and moves to reduce inequality tarred as “evil socialism” at the very first implementation of Western Liberal Democracy. Marx goes even further to permanently indict Liberal Democracy as being far inferior to Social Democracy. This is an old debate, and it should have been decided in the latter’s favor by 1852 France.

By succinctly condensing – in just the one paragraph below – Marx’s summary of the events from 1848 to the voter-backed coup of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in 1852, all three historical contributions will be made clear.

An uprising truly led by the people (i.e. a popular revolution) in February 1848 forced out King Louis Philippe of the Orleanists, but the modern leftist demands of the people would be betrayed by June. The people’s hopes for a “Democratic and Social Republic” were sold out by the Social Democrats, mostly the small traders who were content with cementing the unprecedented achievement of universal male suffrage. However, the Social Democrats were soon sold out by the bourgeois republicans – those richer cadres of Western Liberal Democracy – who don’t really want universal suffrage but merely liberal rights for the upper class only. However, the republican bourgeois are sold out by the “Party of Order” coalition in parliament, half of which still wants a royalist restoration and the other half of which wants a republic but cares not much for liberal rights, and especially universal suffrage. This faction prevails and eventually guts universal suffrage, and votes the subordination of the constitution to the majority decisions of the parliament – i.e. a true legislative coup against the people. Good news! After three years of inefficiency, grandstanding and state-sponsored looting of the country’s natural, social and labor resources the “Party of Order” is sold out by the Bonapartist party – the National Assembly is dissolved, and what is restored is a Bonapartist idea of a popularly-elected emperor who puts the will and good of the nation first.

This is why Marx famously wrote his opening lines in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (18th Brumaire is the French revolutionary calendar date for the coup of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799) of history repeating itself as farce: instead of the revolution trending upwards in the first several years with leftist successes, as in 1789-94, a similar time period in 1848 sees sees failure. “Accordingly, the revolution moves on a downward line. It finds itself in this retreating motion before the last February-barricade is kicked away.… ”

Having condensed Marx’s timeline of 1848, his comparison with the timeline of 1789 will be especially illuminating of both 1789 and 1848. This book does not dissect the pre-Napoleonic events of 1789-94, in large part because they have been perfectly analysed by Marx in one paragraph. I include in parenthetical my explanations of key 1789 terms/parties which may not be fully known by the average reader (Marx is in bold)

“In the first French revolution, upon the reign of the Constitutionalists (i.e., the start of the French Revolution via forcing the king to accept a constitution and to renounce total autocracy. Napoleon Bonaparte’s commitment to constitutionalism is precisely what made him a true political revolutionary of his day.) is succeeded by the Girondins (Truly the early martyrs of today’s Western Liberal Democrats. Most were from the department of Gironde, home of France’s slave-trade capital – Bordeaux -, and were committed to the free market, decentralisation and imperialist war. It’s decapitating them which Westerners call the “Reign of Terror”, precisely because neo-Girondins are what still rule in the West in the modern era. Napoleon Bonaparte clearly supported the Jacobins’ right to govern, fought against these rebels for years, was friends with Augustin Robespierre, etc.) and upon the reign of the Girondins follows that of the Jacobins. Each of these parties rests upon its more advanced element. … Just the reverse in 1848.”

It’s clear why outside of France the “Revolutions of 1848” are such a failure, but why is the French Revolution of 1848 such a failure for Marx? It’s because he was so very anti-Bonapartist. Marx was living in Paris during this era, after all, so we can understand his bias – we, however, do not. In 2022 it seems like a major mistake which loses the thread of political history: moving away from autocracy. I’ll deeply criticise his overly-strong condemnation of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in the next chapter, but what’s needed first is his analysis of France from 1848-52 – it’s critical because it is so reminiscent of Western politics today!

Both revolutionary eras fought against the very same political principle: autocracy, anti-democracy and the rule of an aristocratic elite. The Yellow Vest fight in the exact same way, even if the autocracy is only slightly less barbaric, although you should tell that to one of the many mutilated Yellow Vests.

What happened to France’s progressive revolution of 1848, then? Western Liberal Democracy happened!

The short answer is that Marx places the blame for the failure of 1848 on the half-revolutionary actions of France’s left wing in 1848, as well as the role played by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the above section I related in one paragraph Marx’s summary of the events from 1848 to the popular coup of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. A bit more information is needed on the major political events in between that start and finish.

The February Revolution of 1848 re-ended monarchy, but April’s voting results saw the new constituent (temporary) Assembly filled with royalists, elite and professionals who did not incarnate the socialistic demands which had propelled the popular revolution: the opposition to free markets and the demand for government works to create jobs. National Workshops had been immediately created in 1848 in order to fulfil the “right to work” and thus introduce governmental central planning into the economy.

So one should imagine the hundreds of thousands of workers now trying to ply a trade in Paris while, concurrently, the new temporary parliament to draw up a new constitution is full of capitalistic Western Liberal Democrats. Naturally, the people saw they were getting left behind. On May 15 a leftist demonstration entered and dissolved this temporary National Assembly. The National Guard – which had always played the decisive role in French revolutionary affairs – sided against the protesters. The ardent republicans and protest leaders were arrested; a banker would be installed as the new Paris Chief of Police; a lawyer would now head the restored Assembly.

In June the conservative National Assembly announced that the National Workshops would be closed, and the newly-unemployed workers could either join the army or go back home to the provinces – this sparked the June Days uprising. We see here how Western Liberal Democracy is never – not from it’s very earliest days – going to allow anything but an “invisible hand” to guide the economy, and also that imperialist war (which is not at all revolutionary war) is its primary answer to the economic question. Over 10,000 people were massacred, or 60% as many as were guillotined during the “Reign of Terror” (but without any trial). It also marks the last time French Catholic clergy tried to play a role in elections: The Archbishop of Paris literally entered into the Paris street fray as a mediator – he was shot, almost certainly by the conservative forces. The popular revolution was thus ended: death, prison and exile to Algeria for the leftists.

Yet the trader-class Social Democrats did not condemn the repression – they threw their weight behind November’s Constitution of 1848, which granted universal male suffrage. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected in December, and like his uncle he took a middle-of-the-road pro-revolutionary approach: he was neither like the leftist socialist candidates, nor the anti-socialist/pro-republican army chief who led the June Days repression, nor a liberalist lawyer. Marx was unwilling to reconcile with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who was also a leftist writer – his most famous book was the pro-working class The Extinction of Pauperism, which undoubtedly helps explain his massive victory.

After Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected 1850-onwards was an ineffective and nation-destroying combat between the executive and the legislative branch:

The legislative branch – as it will always do for the next 175 years – lost all popular support by rejecting to represent the populace and not just the upper class. The popular, bloodless coup of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte would be deemed “fascism installed by country rednecks”, and Marx’s own analysis is very similar to that, sadly.

The executive branch – as it will always do for the next 175 years – would jealously fight to acquire as much autocratic, dictatorial powers as it could, and employ jingoistic, imperialist wars to win popular opinion while mostly advancing the needs of the elite.

It took only three years to realise such a system was unworkable, and yet is this not still the alleged apex of governmental structure and efficiency for Western Liberal Democrats of today?

Yellow Vest: “After three years nothing has changed, except for the fact that things have gotten even worse for the average French person. Life has gotten so much more expensive, but Macron doesn’t care. Macron doesn’t see the demands of the Yellow Vests, or even the French people, as worthy of his attention.”

Weak leftism against a strong executive – France has the same problem today

In May 1849 the first National Assembly of the 2nd Republic was officially seated. This Assembly would eventually go on to approve total non-support for any other popular revolution sweeping Europe; to ban the reborn Sans-Culottes and other political parties; similar to Macron today, they would end the longtime practice of the National Assembly hearing petitions from grassroots special interest groups.

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte would immediately use foreign war to establish to the “Party of Order”, which had 64% of seats, that he, too, was a mighty man of (executive) “Order”. Even before the new parliament sat he violated the new constitution’s prohibition of military interference in the freedom of other nations by bombarding Rome to prop up an exiled Pope. This was at the expense of the nascent but doomed Roman Republic, which did not have popular support – it would have been nice if the Marxists had won, but it just wasn’t possible until 1917. This does not make either Bonaparte the equivalent of an absolute monarch, one must point out. France had arrived expected to be received as liberators, and also sought to prevent an invasion by Austria.

The opposition Mountain Party, with 26% of seats, who were republicans and neo-Jacobins, boldly voted to impeach Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been elected by a whopping 75% landslide. Propping up the Pope was popular among the average person, and now France’s “left party” (though actually petit-bourgeois small traders and minor professionals) were taking on an extremely popular president?

What cannot be disputed is how ineffectually the Mountain Party fought their fight. Marx’s superb analysis will remind people of the halfhearted, non-revolutionary struggle of fake-leftist parties across Western Liberal Democracy. We should remember that Marx was living in Paris at this time. He surely must have hoped that the Mountain were genuine leftists – after all, “fake-leftism” in a Western Liberal Democratic context had not yet ever been seen!

Following the Mountain’s impeachment vote the unarmed protests of June 1849 were held. The National Guard was there – in uniform, but unarmed. This pacifistic decision was fatal: they had no way to defend themselves from the subsequent army attack. The demonstration ended in total failure – it was the last “Revolutionary Day” of the 2nd Republic – and there were no casualties. Marx writes: “The chief error of the ‘Mountain’ was its certainty of being victorious.” (emphasis his). I don’t think France has had an official “Revolutionary Day” since, and probably because most French don’t know this history either?

Marx saw that the real leftism had been chopped out of the Mountain by the June Days of 1848 and replaced with smug, ultimately conservative, sense of false certainty. He saw these fake-leftists were doomed precisely because they accepted Western Liberal Democratic terms:

“If the Mountain wished to win in parliament, it should not appeal to arms; if it called to arms in parliament, it should conduct itself in a parliamentary way in the street; if the friendly demonstration was meant seriously, it was silly not to foresee that it would meet with a warlike reception; if it was intended for actual war, it was rather original to lay aside the weapons with which war had to be conducted. But the revolutionary threats of the middle class and of their democratic representatives are mere attempts to frighten an adversary….”

This certainly describes France’s union-led demonstrations and the “walks in a park” which are other European Social Democrat-led demonstrations. This same entrapping logic is what the Yellow Vests are told to submit to and what they still so bravely faced down Saturday after Saturday.

Yellow Vests: “France is waking up. The government continues to accuse all of us of being Black Bloc or thugs to make the country turn against us. But we are all united to prevent the destruction of France, and this unity will continue to increase.”

The “superstitious spell” the National Guard had on the French imagination – i.e. its ability to sway the army to back the people and the elite – was crucially broken here. They would be suppressed under Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and then banned at the start of the Third Republic in 1871, when Western Liberal Democrats would wrest back control from the Louis-Napoleon and the Bonapartists, who also existed in the interim between the two Bonpartes.

A clear difference between imperialist Liberal Democracy and anti-imperialist Social Democracy: the former clearly uses foreign war to gut the possibility of a marital spirit which would protect the rights of the people domestically. It also uses perpetual imperialist war to insist that such domestic rights are not convenient, and that such discussions certainly cannot involve anything but words.

The subsequent crackdown caused the remaining true leftist politicians, including many in the Mountain Party, and journalists to be arrested or go into exile – Marx went to London. With the real left gone the new Mountain Party was no opposition. The National Assembly embarked on a series of right-wing measures which turned everyone against them.

On June 13, 1848 they voted the subordination of the constitution to the majority decisions of the parliament – it was a coup against the constitutional rights of the people.

“So, indeed, did the republic understand it, to-wit, that the bourgeois ruled here in parliamentary form, without, as in the monarchy, finding a check in the veto of the Executive power, or the liability of parliament to dissolution. It was a ‘parliamentary republic’, as Thiers styled it.”

Thus we see the true emergence of the unstated dream of Western Liberal Democracy: a country ruled by a parliament of the rich; an expansion of absolute monarchy to a tiny coterie of aristocratic elite.

The last straw would come on May 31, 1850, when the assembly would vote to drastically undermine universal suffrage by millions of voters. Marx wrote, “The law of May 31, 1850, was the ‘coup d’etat’ of the bourgeoisie.” Against the voters, he means.

Thus the first coup in the 2nd Republic was actually made by the parliamentarians and not Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte! Bonaparte would restore universal suffrage, to his great credit.

Those two crucial facts are always left out of any discussion of the 2nd Republic and Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s “self-coup” (a coup where a legally-elected executive dissolves the legislative branch). In 2022 they should drastically change our assessment of him, and break from Marx’s negative, rather biased view.

That requires the next chapter – Louis-Napoleon: Confirmation of the revolutionary difference between Bonapartism & Western Liberal Democracy.

From the beginning Western Liberal Democracy showed what it wanted: A country ruled by a parliament of and for the rich

Marx writes in summation of the political discussion permitted in the first Western Liberal Democracy:

“Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever again, the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and unchanged: Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced socialistic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and likewise, socialistic national financial reform. It was socialistic to build a railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword.

This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion nor yet party tactics. The bourgeois receives correctly that all the weapons which it forged against feudalism thorn their edges against itself; that all the means of education which it brought forth rebel against its own civilisation; that all the gods which it made have fallen away from it. It understands that all its so-called citizens’ rights and progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its social foundation and its political superstructure – consequently have become ‘socialistic’. It justly scents in this menace and assault the secret of Socialism, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more correctly than the spurious so-called Socialism is capable of estimating itself and which, consequently, is unable to understand how it is that the bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to it, alike whether it sentimentally whines about the sufferings of humanity; or announces in Christian style the millennium and universal brotherhood; or twaddles humanistically about the soul, culture and freedom; or doctrinally matches out a system of harmony and well-being for all classes. What, however, the bourgeoisie does not understand is the consequence that its own parliamentary regime, its own political reign, is also of necessity bound to fall under the general ban of ‘socialistic’.” (Emphasis mine)

If you still believe in Liberal Democracy, may I suggest you read that again.

Not only does Marx show that Western Liberal Democracy refuses to protect the rights which Western Liberal Democracy claims to have created and to believe in, but that Western Liberal Democracy is a phoney “third way”: there is either socialism or autocracy/oligarchy/fascism.

“Accordingly, by now persecuting as Socialist what formerly it had celebrated as Liberal the bourgeoisie admits that its own interest orders it to raise itself above the danger of self government….” Western Liberal Democracy is not a resolution to class warfare, like Socialist Democracy claims to be, but the permanent institution of class warfare with the express goal of government by an elite.

“The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the decision of majorities – how can the large majorities beyond the parliament be expected not to wish to decide?” The parliamentarianism of Western Liberal Democracy is false and unrepresentative, culminating in rule by parties which are controlled by the elite. This is unlike the parliaments in Socialist Democracy, where cobblers become parliamentarians, as in Cuba’s 2018 legislative vote.

No wonder Western schools don’t want to discuss this era!

By examining the era of 1848-52 we see that Western Liberal Democracy totally discredited itself out of the gate, and that we have the same problems as we did 175 years ago: it is autocracy improved into aristocratic rule, but never popular rule. Western Liberal Democracy is so undemocratic that it is not even worthy of the moniker “Western Liberal Democracy”!

Thus the Revolution of 1848 in France was a success – ouster of an unelected king, universal male suffrage, installation of a new political system. It culminated in the 1852 referendum on Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s “self-coup” against parliament, and the replacement of the 2nd Republic with the 2nd Empire, to be headed by the new “Napoleon III”. It was approved by 97% of voters with 80% turnout. Over 8 million Frenchmen wanted to vote, and they only could in 19th century France by agreeing that the Bonapartist vision of the French Revolution was the only way to maintain the gains of the French Revolution amid a continent of absolute monarchy and failed revolutionaries AND by rejecting the Western Liberal Democracy of the 2nd Republic.

1848 succeed in France precisely because voters rejected Western Liberal Democracy entirely. Four years to figure it out is not so bad at all?

Thus the period between the 2nd and 3rd Republics is falsely slandered as being equivalent to all the other monarchies of the time. We have been through this before: we are talking about an elected Bonaparte, who naturally was detested by his autocratic contemporaries everywhere else in the region. History is repeated as farce in the modern leftist rejection of both Bonapartes, not in the difference between 1789 and 1848.

Without embracing the will of the inherently progressive French electorate – inherent because there was no other mass electorate at this time – and their eventual selection of the Bonapartes, we are stuck with siding with awful absolute monarchs or awful Liberal Democrats.

Absolute monarchy reigned long after 1848. The slighted Western Liberal Democrat, with all their arrogance, remained non-plussed, as Marx noted: “At all events the (social) democrat comes out of the disgraceful defeat as immaculate as he innocently went into it….” In 1871 the collusion of these two forces with Germany against both Social Democracy and Bonapartism/French Revolutionism led to the traitorous sieging of Paris (the Paris Commune) and then the restoration of Western Liberal Democracy, sadly.

However, in 2022 we must reject Marx’s condemnation and consider the Revolutions of 1848 a success in France. The preservation of universal male suffrage was a spectacular advance from the rest of Europe. This advance alone allows us to clearly see that the ideals of 1789 and the movement away from autocracy still progressed.

But 1848 was an advance for an even greater reason: it allowed the first implementation of modern Western Liberal Democracy… and its endemic flaws were immediately revealed. It became clear that Socialist Democracy was the only true solution – thus the Paris Commune – if one wants broad prosperity, stability and equality for the average person. Those who don’t realise that are stuck in a useless doom loop of 1849-52.

The rise of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is not as thrilling as that of his uncle’s – the former merely came to power via the vote. He is a modern politician, with plenty of flaws, but the French at the time knew he was a progressive option compared to absolute monarchy or Western Liberal Democracy.

The Algeria section

Before we get into Marx’s failure to appreciate the achievements of France’s 1848 Revolution and the rule of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in opposition to Western Liberal Democracy, we must briefly analyse Marx’s failure to take account of the role the conquest of Algeria played on the French mainland’s politics in 1848.

Marx’s focus was more on banking and industrial systems, instead of imperialism. It’s a significant omission: the treasures, resources and stolen wages of imperialism are enormous – we are talking of the gains of impoverishing an entire country. But where Marx really failed was in not noting the enormous political-cultural impact of being a coloniser.

What the events of 1848 proved, and which Marx failed to note, was how Western Liberal Democracy works hand in hand with militaristic imperialism to repress their nation’s own masses. This is an incredibly important analysis to take from 1848 because the French army went from being a Revolutionary Army in 1789 to an imperialist army in 1830.

The colonisation of Algeria was of an entirely different order than the colonisation of the New World, and we must delineate this difference: the colonisation of a Mediterranean space which saw Marseilles and Algiers socially interact for over two millennia is not at all the same thing as a (ignorant) Western perception of heathen savages who need to be converted. Yes, France had other imperialist domains but we cannot underestimate the power of French Algeria in French history from 1830 until today.

Algeria was invaded in 1830 to distract from and eventually legitimise the take-over by the House of Orleans, which ended the Bourbon Restoration since 1815 – this invasion happened at precisely the same time as the fall of Algiers. The finances and internal prestige of Louis Philippe I was enormously supplemented domestically by the occupation of Algeria. This new “imperialist class” was too ignored by Marx in the French events of 1848.

A proof of the political-cultural impact of this new “imperialist class” is found in the person of Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, who went directly from being governor of Algeria to quelling the June 1848 uprising. He was as vital a player in 1848 and beyond as anyone save Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, to whom he finished second in the 1848 presidential election. As Marx noted: “Cavaignac, the General of the bourgeois republican party, who commanded at the battle of June, stepped into the place of the Executive Committee with a sort of dictatorial power.” The election of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in December would end this dictatorship, but not before the imperialist Cavaignac ruled over the drafting of the November constitution which gave the elite class ruling power over France. This is not a small thing!

The person of Cavaignac thus represents the new capitalist-imperialist rot which would turn against its own people, like a CRS riot cop who aimed his rubber bullet gun at the faces of Yellow Vests. Marx fails to emphasise that it is the imperialism against Muslim Algeria which provided this muscle to topple 1848. Or that the beloved National Guard was sapped by this imperialist deployment. Or that French culture had certainly become hardened by a war which was not waged at all for progressive revolution.

Romaric Godin, economics reporter at top French media Mediapart, in his book La guerre social en France (The Social War in France) recognised Cavaignac’s import (even if Godin does not recognise the importance of imperialism) as both a new type of politician and its clear parallel with Emmanuel Macron. Godin wrote: “Democratic authoritarianism is that of Cavaignac in 1848 and Adolphe Thiers (the future president of the 3rd Republic who colluded with Bismarck to siege Paris) of 1871: that which uses the entire legislative capacity to repress opposition. This sort of abuse is sanctioned by the law and thus is perfectly legal.”

Western Liberal Democracy actually begins with Cavaignac, who suppressed those calling for Socialist Democracy, the National Workshops and a role for the peasants and the proletariat in politics in June 1848. We can draw a straight line from him to Macron’s crushing of the Yellow Vests, and both men are garlanded by Western Liberal “Democracy”.

Indeed, more and more seem willing to call 21st century France “democratic authoritarianism”. Muslim Algerians knew it back in 1830, and by 1848 everyone knew that authoritarianism is what Western Liberal Democracy has always truly been.

<—>

Upcoming chapter list of the brand-new content in France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. The book will also include previous writings from 2018 through the 2022 election in order to provide the most complete historical record of the Yellow Vests anywhere. What value!

Publication date: June 1, 2022.

Pre-orders of the paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the Kindle version may be made here.

Pre-orders of the French paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the French Kindle version may be made here.

Chapter List of the new content

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

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Modern political history makes no sense if Napoleon is not a leftist revolutionary

Posted on April 3, 2022 by martyrashrakat

April 02, 2022

Source

By Ramin Mazaheri

“The peasant was a Bonapartist because the Great Revolution, with all its benefits to him, was, in his eyes, personified in Napoleon.” – Karl Marx

(This is the third chapter in a new book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. Please click here for the article which announces this book and explains its goals.)

To be against Napoleon Bonaparte in the 19th century was to totally reject grassroots, democratic French opinion, and thus to be against the French Revolution itself. It was to cede the view of Napoleon Bonaparte to his enemies: the English snob, an in-bred Austrian king, a colluding and traitorous Italian noble, a Hungarian aristocrat, etc.

Modern Western political history simply makes no sense – it loses the thread of expanding power away from the absolute ruler – if we do not take the view that Napoleon Bonaparte was a leftist, as his citizen contemporaries did. Making Napoleon a demon of bloodlust and ambition, just another fascistic military man, a secret reactionary, etc. – all is designed to obscure the importance of 1789 and to reverse it.

The willing desire to lose the thread of progressive history was especially evident in the awful reporting surrounding the 200th anniversary of his death, in 2021. The coverage in France was surprising sparse and can be summed up with three words: “tyrant” and “controversial legacy”. A fake-leftist, and thus totally deluded, view was routinely proffered, typified by state media France24’s article: “Napoleon: Military genius or sexist, slaving autocrat?”

The official anti-Napoleon smokescreen was personified by President Emmanuel Macron’s speech on the bicentenary, which ended with: “I have no intention to say if Napoleon realised or instead betrayed revolutionary values. I will of course steer clear of such territory.” Of course he will steer clear – Western Liberal Democrats always do, because they are the ones who work to ensure that the revolutionary values of 1789 are never realised.

Here is your simplest retort to those who accuse “tyrant”: Napoleon was voted First Consul for life and then emperor by millions of people, and the “voted” part is what made it these appointments spectacular political advances for its era. The other monarchs of this era were merely more unelected dictators. Secondly, his constitutions were also ratified by many millions – another spectacular leftist advance. These things simply cannot be dismissed because it would be more than a century before they would be emulated in most of Europe. The number of referendums on monarchy in global history only total a few dozen, and nearly all were after 1950.

Simply ask if the king of Saudi Arabia, Morocco or the behind-the-scenes monarchs of Europe would ever put themselves to a public vote? When it comes to the schism between the Muslim and Western worlds perhaps the single largest problem is that the latter totally forgets the violent threat, the crude insult, the perpetual crime which is hereditary monarchy. Because the West forgets this they also fatally misunderstand their own European history since 1789, and they fail to see Napoleon Bonaparte as a leftist hero.

Making Napoleon Bonaparte worse than his absolute monarch peers is a preposterous revision of history and totally excludes the political view of the European peasant and working class. Ask a subject who never voted for his monarch: There is no “controversial legacy”.

Yellow Vest: “We are here to protest against the abusive government and this kingship-presidency of Emmanuel Macron. The Yellow Vests are here to promote a true vision of democracy and to redistribute our nation’s wealth. Every election there is more and more abstention because people don’t believe in mainstream politics anymore.”

(Note: this book intersperses over 100 quotations taken from actual, marching Yellow Vests which were originally published in news reports on PressTV.)

What an objective view reveals is this: Revolutionary France saw not just one but seven “Coalition Wars” to restore monarchy, privilege, feudalism, torture, inequality, racism and the oppression of an aristocratic elite. From 1792-1815 Europe’s elite refused to make peace with the socio-political advances of the French Revolution, which the French people democratically chose again and again and again. England was the only nation which participated in every war, and it repeatedly paid off other nations to join them.

The simplest retort to those who call the French Revolution “imperialist” is this: The French Revolutionary Empire at its greatest height – in 1808 – was the result of defensive wars which it won. All the Empire’s territory was gained as punishment for aggressive wars against France or lost by rebelling populaces choosing to side with France, with the sole exception of Portugal. All seven Coalition Wars were attacks on France, all to prevent democracy from spreading across autocratic Europe.

The “Napoleonic Wars” have absolutely no reason to be set off from the more accurate “European Wars Against the French Revolution” unless that reason is obfuscation. This 23-year period must be looked at as a whole, because it wouldn’t have mattered if it was Napoleon in charge or not as long as the ideals of the French Revolution were being employed – the Revolution would have always been aggressed. Like Iran, Cuba and the USSR know, 23 years of military invention by royalists or Western Liberal Democrats to stifle progressive, anti-elite political systems is simply de rigeur.

This chapter is not a whitewashing of Napoleon Bonaparte, but a refusal to say that his entire revolutionary career from 1789 to 1815 should be judged on the basis of the last few years. Napoleon’s primary leftist and anti-revolutionary failure was his development of dynastic intentions. However, we are not taking about this turn to personal gain until 1810, when he married Marie-Louise, a princess of the Austrian Hapsburgs, the corrupt and wasteful absolute monarch ruler of most of the continent. In Napoleon: The Myth of the Savior, Jean Tulard, perhaps the pre-eminent French historian of this era (and not a pro-Napoleon one in my estimation) wrote, “On St. Helena, Napoleon, ‘brutally awakened from his dream of monarchic legitimacy’ confided that he should have married a French woman and, above all, not a princess. He saw clearly, but too late.” Napoleon’s error was in forgetting that he already enjoyed more leftist legitimacy than any monarch ever – he was the first to be voted in. The counter-revolutionary monarchs of everywhere else would never accept that because the French Revolution was – above all – against unsanctioned autocracy. Similarly, putting his brothers in charge of countries which willingly joined France was another leftist error in line with dynastic intentions, but this wasn’t really unpopular until the imposition of Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, who replaced the feudal Bourbons, in 1808. Napoleon himself said that one of his greatest mistakes was reintroducing the ranks of the nobility, also in 1808. The three criticisms here are all related – the restoration of elite privilege and hereditary oligarchy – but we would be inaccurate and unfair to not emphasise that this trend occurred two decades into Napoleon’s spectacularly successful revolutionary career!

Was Napoleon’s vision of the French Revolution that of the left of the Revolution, epitomised by Robespierre and the Jacobins? No, but calling a lifelong revolutionary soldier like Napoleon Bonaparte a “non-revolutionary” because he was not completely on the left side of the revolutionary spectrum is to absurdly say there is no “revolutionary political spectrum”. It is to say that the “revolutionary political spectrum” is the same as the non-revolutionary, typical “political spectrum”, in a total falsehood. It is to undemocratically excise the revolutionary viewpoints of his millions of comrades, and also of the democratic majority of his time. What is certain is that it is to reveal essentially no first-hand experience with any real revolution at all, as such a view of revolution is a fool’s fairy tale of pure idealism.

By distorting Napoleon – by saying that Elvis was always “fat Elvis” and never the king of rock and roll who shook the world – today’s 1% can keep 1789 totally dead. Napoleon is the key to keeping 1789 alive and continuing to implement its most progressive, leftist ideals.

It is simply astounding that the left doesn’t find so much to embrace in Napoleon Bonaparte. As much as I would like to write 10,000 words about Napoleon’s career in order to give a modern leftist appraisal, I simply do not want to alienate readers (and translators, LOL). I promise that I could. What I list before the conclusion section is only the absolutely critical facts of his political career which demonstrate his leftism.

The 1790s: Napoleon’s leftism was vetted over and over by the revolution

Prior to the Revolution Napoleon was born a minor noble in Corsica, putting him in the top 2% of France. However, being a minor noble in poor Corsica was to have title and little property – it’s not Burgundy. When half of France’s nobles exiled themselves over the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen Napoleon was already in the 1%. Napoleon Bonaparte – like Mao, Castro and others – was another leftist hero who defied the dominant view of his elite class.

Napoleon grew up in the aftermath of the repression of Corsica’s independence movement. The incredibly progressive Corsican Republic (1755-69) included a liberal constitution, the first implementation of female suffrage and was the first-ever practical application of the modern political ideas of people like Voltaire and Rousseau. France took control of the island, and they were a big improvement from the previous landlord, Genoa. When the French Revolution began Napoleon saw it as capable of bringing even more progress to Corsica. Thus Napoleon was one of the very first of many “foreigners” (he was born shortly after France took control of the island, and thus was truly French) to seek domination not by France but by the ideals of the French Revolution.

As the 1790s went by Napoleon was obviously vetted over and over by the Revolution. In 1793, Napoleon was friendly with none other than Augustin Robespierre, Maximilien “The Irreproachable” Robespierre’s brother, who surely would have sniffed out someone not committed to the ideals of 1789. When the brothers were executed in 1794, marking the end of the leftist Jacobin era and the start of the Directorate era (1794-99), the Directorate tried to get him to quit by downgrading him to the infantry.

Lucky for them Napoleon refused to leave: in Paris on October 5, 1795, he would save the Revolution from a major royalist revolt using what was the undoubted foundation of his military genius – his knowledge of new artillery technology.

He became a national hero, and thus the Directorate spied on him to check for dangerous traits. Their spying general wrote back to the Directorate: “It is a mistake to think he is a party man. He belongs neither to the royalists, who slander him, nor to the anarchists, whom he dislikes. He has only one guide – the Constitution.” Facts: Robespierre was anything but an anarchist, and being a constitutionalist in Europe in 1796 made one a revolutionary. Failure to accept this will create misperceptions which will extend to misunderstandings of our present day.

Confidence renewed, the Directorate gave Napoleon command of the Army of the Alps. He started by immediately court-martialling two of his soldiers for shouting “long live the king”.

Of course the Italians and others embraced the revolution being offered by France’s peasant army! In liberated lands we find the same actions of the French Revolutionaries: feudal dues and tithes abolished, Jews not forced to wear the star of David and Muslims no longer second-class citizens, the first uncensored newspapers allowed to open, slavery abolished, the first constitutions legalised. Keep all that in mind the next time you read of how Napoleon “enslaved Europe” – such total reversals of reality are only used for the truly great leftist leaders. It was so popular ex-Papal states petitioned to join the new Cisalpine Republic. “In annexed countries teaching was allowed to keep its own identity; French did not become an obligatory second language, there was no attempt to destroy the soul of conquered provinces,” writes Tulard. The French Revolution, itself intensely patriotic, fostered patriotism elsewhere – this would be called “nationalism” and is part of the reason the French were eventually forced out in annexed countries, ironically.

The great man-ism inherent in Western Liberal Democracy wants to talk about Napoleon’s military genius in things such as issuing bold flanking orders. It’s foolish: We can credit Napoleon’s military genius for doing something without precedent – storming a bridge under heavy fire – or we can credit the revolutionary inspiration of the actual troops that did the storming. Napoleon’s ability to inspire (well-known, and real) is still not at all the same as the zeal inspired by revolutionary principles.

Napoleon biographer Vincent Cronin writes in Napoleon Bonaparte: An Intimate Biography: “In analysing why Napoleon won battles in Italy, one is also analysing why he always – or nearly always – emerged successful from a battlefield. The first quality was discipline. Napoleon, with his legal forbears, was a great person for law and order. He insisted that officers issue a receipt for everything requisitioned, be it a box of candles or a sack of flour. … In letter after angry letter he condemned sharp practice by army suppliers…. Napoleon was merciless towards these men and when one of them made him a gift of fine saddle horses, hoping that would close his eyes to embezzlement, Napoleon snapped: ‘Have him arrested. Imprison him for six months. He owes us 500,000 ecus in taxes.’” Here we see the moral legitimacy which won him followers in the army, and that is better than issuing bold flanking orders.

Egypt: After examining and giving up the idea of invading England, invasion of Egypt was

the best way of striking always counter-revolutionary England, and not mere adventurism. Napoleon read the Koran on the way to Egypt and declared it “sublime”. He was inspired enough to say in his first declaration, “Cadis, sheiks, imams – tell the people that we too are true Muslims.” The French Revolution was universal in scope, like Islam, and Napoleon did not believe in the Trinitarianism of Roman Catholicism, like Islam. The muftis found Napoleon sincere as a person but not actually willing to become a Muslim – they proclaimed Napoleon’s God messenger and a friend of the Prophet. With humanitarian ideals and actions, and replete with the famed scientific corps, it is thus totally different from France’s imperialist invasion of Algeria in 1830.

In August 1799 he got his first news from Europe (due to the British blockade) that the 2nd European War Against the French Revolution had begun and that France was collapsing: Russian-Anglo forces in the Netherlands (which had joined the Revolution willingly), Austro-Russian forces in Switzerland (joined willingly as well) and Italy (joined willingly as well), Turco-Russian force in Corfu, Greece. Napoleon waded into that for personal glory, some say – to save the Revolution, say the less cynical.

As First Consul: Good leaders get elected and then re-elected – this truly all started with Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon made a political alliance with none other than Abbot Emmanuel Sieyès, the same “abbé Sieyès” whose 1789 manifesto What is the Third Estate became the manifesto of the French Revolution and the literal groundwork for the entry of the lower class into politics. (The pamphlet begins, famously: “What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing. What does it desire to be? Something.”) Still not leftist enough for some, though…?

The undoubtedly revolutionary principle of constitutionalism upon which Napoleon rested is reflected in the poster put up after his participation in the coup of 1799 (Coup of 18 Brumaire) and the start of the Consulate era (1799-1804): “THEY HAVE ACTED IN SUCH A WAY that there is no longer a Constitution.”

Was constitutionalism the only demand of the French Revolution from 1789-1799? No, it was simultaneously revolutionary and “middle-of-the-road”. Napoleon never did side with the royalists – that would have been undeniable betrayal of the Revolution – nor with the Jacobins, nor with their executors the less-leftist Thermidorians who ran the 5-man Directorate (one of whom was currently asking for 12 million francs to restore the Bourbons). Instead, Napoleon placed himself above party politics and alongside the concept of constitutionalism which, along with his repeated military defences of France and the Revolution, won him popular acclaim. Of course Napoleon embraced many other primary political ideals of the Revolution: an end to feudalism, an end to absolute monarchy, the division of common land, civil equality, the suppression of tithes and seigniorial rights, and nationalisation of the property of the Roman Catholic Church. What’s vital to recognise is that the social aspects of the revolution – free education, health care, food – weren’t even much discussed until 1796, via leftist hero Gracchus Babeuf, the continuer of the Robespierreian left. Faulting Napoleon for not holding out for free education for the masses is to critically forget that these social questions were in the infancy of political expression, and certainly were limited to the progressive vanguard of an already unprecedentedly progressive revolution.

In 1800 his coup and his constitution were both overwhelmingly approved by millions in a vote – a vote totally unprecedented in scope, reach and political progress. People who wish to ignore these votes are simply baffling, and biased. The coup was bloodless, as well. Napoleon – the alleged new dictator – is credited with giving the new constitution the idea of universal male suffrage and not just for property owners.

France won the Second European War Against the French Revolution – a bit of peace, finally. Napoleon the general became Napoleon the elected public servant. His administrative energy was as amazing as his martial energy: “The ox has been harnessed – now it must plow,” he said.

Napoleon took great interest in consolidating the best of Roman, custom/precedent and Revolutionary laws into the new Code Civil: equality before the law, end to feudal rights and duties, right to choose one’s work, inviolability of property, right to divorce and freedom of conscience. All were unprecedented leftist advances. The Code Civil is not at all the “Napoleonic Code” but more accurately the “French Revolutionary Code”. It was “an instrument of war against feudalism,” to quote Tulard, and its influence is inestimable and global.

Napoleon curbed widespread brigandage and pacified rebellions which had lasted years. He brought peace to France after a decade of civil war, and yet he did not give the army a privileged position. He even forbade them from getting involved in civil matters, something he considered “madness”.

He declared an amnesty for those living abroad, which anyone personally familiar with revolution knows has an inestimable positive effect, but also some negative ones.

Napoleon ended yet another war in 1801, when French churches finally reopened after the signing of the Concordat. The agreement okayed French nationalisation of Church lands (the sales of which did the most to effectuate the economic revolution downwards), maintained religious freedom, did not declare Roman Catholicism the official religion of the state, allowed the French state to pay clerical salaries (giving them a decent standard of living), had the clergy swear an oath of allegiance to the state, and banned nearly all the monasteries (viewed as parasitical and useless in France, whereas the useful teaching nun orders would soon be doubled). Of course, this recently-installed Pope would ultimately side with the monarchists against the Revolution, but there’s no doubt that Napoleon secured the Revolution’s aim in neutering the Church’s power in France, a major goal.

On only two occasions did he involve himself in local governance of the prefects: one of them was to stop a prefect from forcing vaccinations. Draw your own inference regarding the coronavirus epidemic of 2020-22.

The currency never had to be devalued, the cost of living became stable, he spent more on education than anything else, built three great roads, canals and ports each, attained full employment, stable prices, positive trade balance, increasing population, and presided over a 180-degree shift in public spirit after a decade of civil violence.

So of course he was popular – he was making the principles of the French Revolution law, which broke with the absolute monarchy which reigned essentially everywhere else.

Elected emperor: Democracy combines old forms with new ideas – conservatives are overdramatic

By 1802 Napoleon had committed the crime of making the Revolution workable, peaceful and – worst of all – attractive. A Third Coalition was declared; at home royalists keep trying to assassinate him.

“Thus the need to establish monarchical power in France for the sake of permanent peace was put forward. The word ‘form’ was essential. The spirit of the Revolution would be respected but the outwards appearances of executive power would need changing; it required a a title which would fit in with those of other European countries,” writes Tulard.

In 1802 he was was voted Consul-for-life by 3.5 million people (against 0.008 million opposed), a staggeringly progressive occurrence for the time – ignoring this is to lose the entire thread and principles of the French Revolution! However, it’s easy to lose this thread when one ignores the constant attacks on your country’s revolution, which is not allowed to evolve in peace.

“It was in fact precipitated by the renewal of conflict with England (in 1803). … Rather, there was a tendency to increase his power in order to ensure the defence of the land. A dictatorship of public safety was needed. How could it be entrusted to anyone other than Bonaparte? At this moment the Royalists inopportunely chose to renew their plotting…. The revolutionaries saw in the consolidation of the First Consul’s power… the only bulwark against attempts to restore the monarchy.”

It is with this lifetime appointment in 1802 that many Republicans were dismayed and many leftists say the Revolution ended. If one wants to call it “despotism”, it’s false: it’s “elected despotism”. It’s a paradox, it’s revolutionary, it’s provoked by foreign aggression, it’s better than anyone else’s around, it’s an emperor and empire but it’s still leftist! “It seemed, above all, to be the surest means of maintaining a stable government putting an end to intrigue and plotting. This in no way represented the acceptance of a Bourbon-style dynasty. The Empire was first and foremost a dictatorship of public safety, designed to preserve the achievements of the Revolution.” Again, that’s from an author who is not strongly pro-Napoleon – he is, however, a Frenchman who understands his country’s history.

Napoleon has still not betrayed the revolution at this point in any serious way! In a move which was preceded by much discussion, he took the crown of Emperor from the Pope’s hands in a public coronation (another first) not because of the bosh about how it was his own arrogant and usurping personal power which won the crown, but because it was the people which had crowned him, and no one else. This is all a huge difference from the divine, theocratic right of kings, which Prussia, Russia, Austria and countless other local kings would insist on in total autocratic form until 1914.

If the French Revolutionary Emperorship was a typical emperorship – and thus no ideological threat – why did it not cause the European Wars Against the French Revolution to stop? The answer is obvious to those who are objective.

In 1806 the Fourth Coalition saw Prussia and Russia attack – France wins again and Prussia is compelled to finally renounce serfdom.

In 1808, popular revolt against the Spanish king in the “Tumult of Aranjuez”, which is still celebrated today, ended the Bourbon dynasty. The overthrow of the Bourbons, and the sheltering of the new ideals of the French Revolution, allowed Latin America to win their independence.

The French Revolution has spread to the New World. It had already spread to the oldest of the Old World: Mohammad Ali founded modern Egypt in 1805 after France had defeated the Mamluks.

The French Revolution starts to topple – revolutionary zeal starts to wane following decades of foreign attacks

This is where things start to turn badly: 1808 Spain is not yet at the point of 1789 France. Proof? After 1815 Spain is the only place where feudalism would actually be restored. The guerrilla war saps France, which is supported by Spain’s progressives, abolished the Inquisition and ended feudal rights – hardly a terrible legacy.

The war in Spain coincides with when Napoleon starts to let the emperorship go to his head and thinks more of preserving his dynasty than of the Revolution – he is always thinking of France, however. His Continental Blockade against England would have bankrupted them… if France didn’t also have to fight in Spain and Russia, too. The French Revolution is always attacked from all autocratic sides – this must be remembered because it so greatly shapes their possible choices. After a few years the Continental Blockade turns into pro-French economic imperialism, in a non-leftist mistake. Spain, the Blockade, dynasty – these are the three key mistakes Napoleon made. However, he does not deserve a permanent “Ogre” caricature for these three because two of them are fights against autocracy.

The Fifth Coalition of 1809 saw the awful Hapsburgs’ last stand, the arrival of huge modern wars of attrition, conscripted armies, and the growth of nationalist movements which Revolutionary France had expressly fostered.

Tsar Alexander refuses to allow Napoleon to marry into the royal family, so he marries into the Hapsburgs instead. The marriage did not cement an alliance for peace – which was entirely the aim – because Austrian royalty, like the simply awful Metternich, were not only Teutonic racists but completely aware that France represented revolutionary change which was incompatible with autocracy. It was Metternich (who takes the mantle from France’s Talleyrand as the most dreadful and shameless politician of his generation) who is credited with the propaganda theme of “Napoleon as mere personal ambition”.

France invades Russia because Moscow refused to end their threats to the revolution – first Russia, then England, then peace, finally, was the plan.

Why didn’t the French Revolution free the serfs? Certainly leftists today would have acclaimed Napoleon more. He said: “They wanted me to free the serfs. I refused. They would have massacred everyone; it would have been frightful. I warred against Tsar Alexander according to the rules; who would have thought they’d ever burn Moscow?” Such objections miss the entire point of the French invasion of Russia – to force the Tsar to accept peace towards the French Revolution, and there would have been no peace if the serfs had been freed. France was already trying to administer the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and other places – how could they administer huge Russia as well?

Indeed, who could have guessed that the Tsar would defeat his own peoples in order to defeat Napoleon, i.e. the scorched earth tactic, which Clausewitz proved “were only applied accidentally by headquarters,” per Tulard. Say slaver monarchs defeated Napoleon – it makes fools of Russian serfs to say that their sacrifices were correct instead of manipulated; they would get their revenge against such misguided, brutal managers a century later.

Napoleon was keeping 250,000 seasoned troops in Spain at this time, let’s recall. He said his two main mistakes were not wintering in Vitebsk, Belarus, and and instead going to Poland. He ignores the original option – staying in Moscow – which had plenty of noble-abandoned supplies to live off of. The second was in trying to get peace from the Russian monarchists, who never wanted peace, like all monarchists. “I thought that I should be able to make peace, and that the Russians were anxious for it. I was deceived and I deceived myself.” The Tsars liked their autocracy, old Nap!

After the disastrous retreat the monarchs of Europe jumped on Revolutionary France in 1813 with the immediate Sixth Coalition, the first knockdown blow to the French Revolution after 20 years of trying. Not far from Paris Napoleon resolved to die in battle – to pass the throne on to his son – and though he went where fire was thickest and his uniform was tattered by shot he was not killed.

The fall of Paris was shocking: Paris, which hadn’t seen a foreign invader since Joan of Arc 400 years earlier, spectacularly fell without even a full day of fighting because the re-propertied nobles had spread defeatism, paid for subversion and colluded to reverse the French Revolution, which of course they still hated. The elitist concept of royalism would still play a major role in French politics for another 65 years, keep in mind.

After decades of fighting not only were his marshals old and worn out, but so was the original revolutionary generation. What Napoleon needed was a Cultural Revolution to refresh the ideals of the French Revolution, but of course such a thing had not been invented yet. Such a leftist idea would have led to more civil war in France, which was only able to end its civil war with the moderate Napoleon adopting many of the forms of monarchism, after all.

Banished to Elba, he famously returned. When France saw that the Bourbons wanted to push the clock back to 1788 this did have the immediate effect of a Cultural Revolution, restoring the vitality of the ideals of the French Revolution. Napoleon landed and dared people to fire on him all alone, ever the anti-civil war patriot. He was literally pushed all the way to Paris by the peasants and urban proletariat – the army would only rally to him later. He entered like a hero and totally avoided bloodshed – all it took was the sight of him in his overcoat and bicorne hat. It’s really rather stunning, and something only a leftist – a man of the people – could have ever done.

The Bourbons fled, of course. The “Additional Act” was added on to the Constitution, which added checks to the power of Napoleon, granted total freedom of expression, an enlarged electoral college (Napoleon again oversees a broadening of democracy), the right to elect mayors in towns less than 5,000 inhabitants, trial by jury and was approved by 1.6 million voters. It wouldn’t be until 1867 that Britain’s electorate would reach that size.

The vote enraged royalist autocrats continent-wide, and they resolved to immediately overturn the progressive democratic will of France, again. Metternich spread the fiction of Napoleon as ambition personified and rejecting peace.

Above all, what France needed was a period of peace to consolidate these changes – Napoleon’s aura was not the same, liberal ideas were taking further root and France had been awakened to the fact that their revolution was powerful but not invincible. They almost had it: Wellington declared Waterloo “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life”, but instead of wiping out Wellington the next day Napoleon spent the morning visiting the wounded – Napoleon the quick had become a sentimental old soldier. The Coalition refused to make peace – of course. Instead of dissolving the National Assembly, as a dictator would, he trusted it and asked for full powers: they told Napoleon to abdicate or be deposed.

Now the French Revolution was truly over. It would be 33 years until there would be another vote.

The defeat of Napoleon – tyrant, slaver, sexist – heralds not a left-wing renaissance, but a right-wing one, really?

Just as Napoleon and the French had warned for decades, the clock was wound back across Europe: Poland was re-wiped off the map by Russia and Prussia, Hapsburgs in north Italy, Bourbons in Naples and Spain, Pope Pius VII restored the Inquisition and the Jewish ghettoes, England responded to calls for parliamentary reform with the massacre at Peterloo – vicious counter-revolution everywhere. The censorship imposed by Metternich is total, with spies everywhere – Europe is a true police state for the benefits of monarchs and aristocrats… again. The French Revolution was truly over because a monarchical oligarchy conspired to stop it.

In 1821, living in cruel imprisonment imposed by Britain on the island of St. Helena, Napoleon died of stomach cancer, like his father, at the age of 51. His last words: “France – army – head of the army – Josephine”.

They act as if Napoleon waged wars on the peoples of Europe, instead of on the autocrats of Europe?

They act as if he won his royalty by birth, marriage or violence, instead of by vote?

They act as if his administration was marked by corruption instead of revolutionary ideas, progress and domestic unity?

Bah… the haters of Napoleon – what can be done? He deserves the longest chapter in this book, because to smear Napoleon Bonaparte is to smear the French Revolution. The two are not synonymous, as Napoleon once claimed – but now, I think, you know what he meant.

In 1823 his memoirs, The Memorial of Saint Helena, would become the 19th century’s best-selling book, moulding the worldview of several generations.

It is truly amazing how relatively few things there are in France named after Napoleon. However, his stunning tomb at Invalides is – thankfully – not a military shrine but a monument to his 10 greatest achievements as a domestic revolutionary politician. It’s truly amazing: comparing the negative view which so many have Napoleon, and the 10 progressive political advances etched in marble at Invalides.

The common leftist criticism that Napoleon Bonaparte used foreign war to liquidate the revolution, domestic conflict and class conflict completely ignores the fact that the Seven European Wars Against the French Revolution were defensive and not initiated by France.

The criticism which equates Bonaparte with Bourbon – calling them two absolutist systems, with the former merely being more allied with the nouveau riche bourgeois class – completely ignores the historic votes, constitutions, and the quality of governance. It also totally ignores the peasant gains stemming from the French Revolution’s ending of feudalism.

The claim that the French Revolution was “imperialist” totally ignores the fact that the French Revolution wasn’t even “French”: Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium – these are just the countries where the people were able to join the Revolution, and certainly many more wanted to.

All great revolutions are always externalised – ideas do not know national boundaries. The 1979 Iranian Revolution, for example, both spread and was a part of an idea that spread: in 1978 the Saur Revolution in Afghanistan established the socialist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan; in 1979 the Grand Mosque of Mecca was under siege for two months to oppose the House of Saud monarchy; in 1982 Saddam Hussein committed the massacre of the Islamic Dawa Party, the crime for which he would be ultimately sentenced to death. Where does Iran 1979 fit in this, who can say with total precision? France, Haiti, the Cisalpine Republic, the Batavian Republic (Netherlands 1795-1806) even the USA and League of Iroquois – where does 1789 France fit, precisely? What makes France and Iran different is that their revolutions succeeded and lasted, and thus they must be celebrated and learned from.

In a quote of Trotsky’s which sounded the death knell of capitalism entirely too early, Napoleon Bonaparte represented “the bourgeoisie’s impetuous youth”. We must, therefore, look at the “impetuous youth” of Bonaparte’s bourgeois victory as a victory for the people precisely because it was the only victory which could be permanently extracted in that awful autocratic era – the liberal rights which 1789 fought for were advancements; bourgeois rights were advancements; peasants, not nobles, getting land should not be derided as a “bourgeois revolution” but were advancements. It is the West’s total blind spot regarding the social evil of monarchy – which is the only accurate standard of comparison Napoleon and the French Revolution can be compared to: their peers – which blinds them to the obvious historical truth.

We can expect the right to paint Napoleon poorly, but what the left seems to ignore is that what every historian eventually admits is that the peasants and the working class – the mass of the people – wanted, trusted, elected and re-elected Napoleon Bonaparte as the French Revolution’s chief. This makes Napoleon Bonaparte just like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Khomeini, etc.

Now we grasp the Western Liberal Democratic campaign against Napoleon’s legacy: he was a true, beloved leftist.

Napoleon truly must be reclassed with those figures along the left. We cannot allow reactionaries to say that Napoleon, the dominant personage of that 26-year era – somehow did not embody it, but rather embodied its negation. What an absurdity!

Perhaps the whole point of this chapter – to fellow leftists – is to prove: We can admire Robespierre, Danton, Marat and Babeuf while also admiring Napoleon. Napoleon certainly must be reclaimed from today’s aristocratic bourgeoisie – this chapter should make it clear why they would never even want a leftist like him.

Gaining the trust of the democratic mass explains – more than any other factor – how Napoleon was able to lead France to stability in 1799 and beyond. Western Liberal Democrats haven’t been able to do either – gain the trust of the masses or provide stability for them – from its very conception. As de Tocqueville observed:

“On coming to power Bonaparte imposed an additional 25 centimes of tax and nothing is said. The people do not turn against him; on the whole what he did was popular. The Provisional Government was to take the same measures in 1848 and was to be cursed immediately. The former was making a much-desired revolution, the second was making an unwanted one.”

What was unwanted across Europe in 1848 was the success of the counter-revolutions, which successfully refused to implement the ideals of 1789. In France, however, what was quickly unwanted was the first implementation of Western Liberal Democracy.

<—>

Upcoming chapter list of the brand-new content in France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. The book will also include previous writings from 2018 through the 2022 election in order to provide the most complete historical record of the Yellow Vests anywhere. What value! Publication date: June 1, 2022.

Pre-orders of the paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the Kindle version may be made here.

Pre-orders of the French paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the French Kindle version may be made here.

Chapter List of the new content

  • New book announcement – ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s best values’ – March 15, 2022
  • Introduction: A Yellow Vests’ history must rewrite both recent & past French history – March 20, 2022
  • The UK’s endless reaction: 1789 & feudalism’s end creates modern conservatism – March 25, 2022
  • Glorious Revolution of 1688: England declares ‘death to all other revolutions’ – March 29, 2022
  • Modern political history makes no sense if Napoleon is not a leftist revolutionary
  • The Revolutions of 1848: Because Liberalism can’t say the ‘Counter-Revolutions of 1848’
  • Louis-Napoleon: The revolutionary differences between Bonapartism & Western Liberal Democracy
  • The Paris Commune: The true birth of neoliberalism and EU neo-imperialism
  • Where the West is stuck: The fascism of the 1930s and the ‘fascism’ of the 2020s
  • On ‘Leon Trotsky on France’ in order to reclaim Trotsky from Trotskyists
  • The Yellow Vests’ childhood: Seeing French elites, only, swayed by neoliberalism
  • No one here is actually in charge: How the EU empire forced the Yellow Vests
  • The radicalisation by Europe’s ongoing Lost Decade: the Great Recession changes France
  • To Yellow Vests he’s the radical: Macron and ‘Neither Right nor Left but the Bourgeois Bloc’
  • Yellow Vests: At worst, the most important French movement for a century
  • Who are they, really? Ask a reporter whose seen a million Yellow Vest faces
  • Yellow Vest Win: Ending the West’s slandering of all popular movements as far-right xenophobes
  • Yellow Vest Win: The end of Western anarcho-syndicalism & unions as leftism’s hereditary kings
  • Yellow Vest Win: The end of Western parliamentarianism as the most progressive government
  • Yellow Vest Win: Reminding us of the link between fascist violence & Western democracy
  • What the Yellow Vests can be: a group which can protect liberalism’s rights, at least
  • The 2022 vote: The approach needed for ‘Before’- what came ‘After’ polls closed

Filed under: Dictatorship, Egypt, France, Russia, Spain | Tagged: , , , , , , | Comments Off on Modern political history makes no sense if Napoleon is not a leftist revolutionary

The Curious History of American Exceptionalism

Posted on April 1, 2022 by martyrashrakat

March 31, 2022

Source

by Jimmie Moglia

Francois Mitterrand, the longest serving president of France (1981-1985), not long before he died (1996), he made this quite extraordinary statement:

“France does not know it, but she is at war with America. A permanent, vital, economic war, and only apparently a victimless war.

Yes, the Americans are inexorable, they are voracious, they want undivided power over the world… It is an unknown war, a permanent war, a war without apparent deaths and yet a war to the death.”

Such sentiments from a modern French president seem extraordinary – after all, France was and still is a historic American ally.

To test the truth of Mitterrand’s words we have, as usual, to remove the dust of history and return to the time of America’s birth. No intent here of re-writing history, but to subject to reason certain opinions that custom or prejudice have exempted from scrutiny or alternative interpretation.

Immediately we face perhaps the hardest task of any historian or of anyone attempting to make sense of history. I calculated that the average human has about 21 million minutes available in his life to make decisions.

A historian has then the task to decide which among the compounded millions of decision made by many individuals involved in the politics of a nation are historically important. Which means that any choice or selection a historian makes is arbitrary.

While admitting these limitations I will extract out of the chronicles and legends surrounding the history of the United States some less known but relevant events, which in the view of some have historical significance and portend of things to come at large.

Starting with the American declaration of independence, the conventional line about the grievances of the American colonists against England, their mother country, is that the Americans wanted political representation in England and England refused. This has been condensed in the punch line, “No taxation without representation.” Which is not entirely true but let’s not discuss it.

Suffice to say that, then as now, propaganda likes punch-lines, which have greater appeal than subjecting facts to scrutiny. On the other side of the Atlantic and typical of a certain British counter-spirit was the famous assertion by Dr. Johnson about the Americans, “They are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them, short of hanging.” Even so, many colonists continued to read and admire Dr. Johnson. Both George Washington’s and Thomas Jefferson owned a copy.

The tipping point, the grievance triggering the war for independence had to do with the tax the British government decided to apply to imported tea – tea having become a popular drink in America. Whereupon the Americans rebelled and threw the tea carried by a British ship, into Boston harbor.

This is only partially true, because the London-based East India company had accumulated a large surplus. The idea was to apply the tax, but to reduce the original price so that the cost at retail would be less than that paid for smuggled tea. And smuggling tea had grown into a flourishing business.

It may be a coincidence, but the first financier of the war of independence was John Hancock, whose family had amassed a fortune with smuggling.

The elites of Boston and the other colonies wanted to ensure that their profits remained in their own pockets. It was then necessary to use the masses, being careful that their anger could be properly directed.

During the riots against the earlier stamp tax, promptly abolished, the commander of the British military forces in America had observed:

“The masses of Boston, fomented by certain influential people, and attracted by the idea of being able to plunder … destroyed several houses… the promoters of the riot began to be terrified by the spirit they had fomented, since the popular fury was out of control. And they, too, were afraid of being the next victims of the rapacity of the people.”

Anyway, the independentists converted the artfully fomented winter of discontent into a quest for independence. Or rather, they convince the multitudes that choose by show (then like now), that the already rampant social inequality was the fault of English rather than of local exploiters. Today NGOs in foreign lands, with suitable adaptation, carry an equivalent responsibility. The US government finances them via its overseas embassies, or via even darker entities with equal or more nefarious motives (e.g. Soros et alia).

In America it was the classic case of catching two birds with one stone. The elite already relished the “freedom” to seize new western lands ad libitum and to do away with the various standing Indian treaties established by England – while wresting political power from the historic establishment. At the same time, anger, bitterness and popular resentment had to find an outlet that would safeguard the elite.

Consequently, the desire for a more even social structure, ready to break out into revolution, was converted into a struggle for independence. The elite could not predict the outcome of the war of independence, but it averted the danger of an internal revolution.

The Declaration of Independence is a document with almost the status of a Gospel. I find it therefore necessary to insist that I, an atom in the universe, have no right to impugn the value of such a legendary document. This is a critique, which does not imply rejection or disrespect. But it is possible to find in the declaration the seeds of much that followed in American history, including American exceptionalism.

“We hold that these truths are self-evident: that all men are created equal…” – is the famous beginning. To which we may add – purely for the sake of logical consistency – less the Negroes, because they did not count, the Indians, because they were not white, the women, because they were not men, and the poor, because they were not rich – and therefore couldn’t vote.”

It could be argued that applying logic to history is unhistorical. Agreed, except that even in the history written today, notorious states use or pretend to use logic even in their most murderous enterprises. The reader will no doubt recall many examples of ill-weaved western ambition turned deadly.

Back to the declaration. Apart from the limitations of applicability, those to whom the opening statement applied were endowed by the Creator with “certain inalienable rights,” and among these rights were life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness.

None would disagree but a related anecdote is meaningful. One draft of the declaration, instead of “the pursuit of happiness” had “the right of property,” which no reasoning mind would object to. Why then the substitution with the somewhat vague pursuit of happiness? ‘Pursuit of happiness’ is an abstraction and turning an abstraction into a right compares with discovering that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun. It is a pearl of meaninglessness. Not even Genghis Khan, that I know of, forbade his Mongols to pursue happiness.

Yet better safe than sorry. If you want the poor to fight on behalf of the rich, proclaiming the preservation of property as a means to reduce inequality may perhaps raise some questions even among the distracted multitude, who like not in their judgment but their eyes.

In practice, the Declaration of Independence replaced the old with a new authority, the monarchical with a new Republican ruling class, founded on property, class distinction and inheritance, just as in the previous regime.

The great difference – and here lies the crux of the unresolved American question – is that Americans could not admit distinctions of class and heritage. Distinctions that were the foundation of the new society as they were, indeed, of the old one, which they had detached themselves from.

This paradox created a chasm between practice and theory – between the theory of egalitarianism, used to create the new nation, and the practice of competition that necessarily creates winners and losers.

The whole further reinforced by a mental attitude condensed into the very Yankee expression, “Winner takes All.” A sentence extracted from the rules of a game that expresses both an aspiration and an acceptable and recognized mode of thought and way of life.

But this tension between theory and practice, between egalitarianism and antagonism could not be officially admitted. Therefore it remained not only unresolved, but even concealed. And the frauds, hypocrisies, and illusions necessary to conceal the tension between words and deeds were and have become part of America’s history.

Some may argue that this subterfuge is necessary to create a ‘great’ nation. Someone else may say that the tension between theory and practice is not America’s exclusive legacy. Certainly, but America is the one country in the world that – from birth – has officially pretended that the problem does not exist.

One other key element of the American political psyche – not sufficiently acknowledged, I think – is that the authority that fixes the rules of foreign trade and foreign exchange is also the authority that fixes all others.

Therefore, we have a commercial interpretation of liberty and a perception of international trade quite different, for comparison, from another revolution, the French revolution that followed not long later, based on liberte’, fraternite’, egalite’ – however difficult it may have been to convert that vision into practice. Still, one of the first actions of the French revolutionaries – usually unknown to most – was to abolish slavery, in 1792.

And now let’s examine another symbolic but actual and important cornerstone of the American worldview since 1776. Or rather, to have an idea of how the American collective political psyche views the world, we may focus our observation on the famous US dollar bill.

The front features the portrait of George Washington, himself the owner of 300 slaves.

But in France, in 2005, the 200th anniversary of the legendary victory of Napoleon at Austerlitz, against the Russians and the Austrians, was not celebrated because Napoleon had re-introduced slavery. A small detail in the immense cauldron of history, but sufficient, I think, to perceive one significant difference between the political psychologies of peoples.

When we then examine the back of the one-dollar bill, we find the statement, “In God we Trust”. In different ways we may all do so. But we know that money can be the ‘worse poison to men’s souls…, ‘that too much of which will make black white, foul fair, wrong right, base noble, old young, etc.’ Therefore that “In God we Trust” sounds like a virtual jarring note. It almost equates to printing “we trust in virginity” on the door of a brothel.

Furthermore for Christians thus directly associating God with money has the sound of blasphemy. For it contrasts dramatically with the famous answer given by Jesus to those who tried to trick him by asking him if citizens should pay taxes.

“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”, replied Jesus.

Another item on the back of the dollar bill is the Great Seal, a masonic symbol carrying the date 1776. This is historically congruent, because masonic societies have been largely responsible for revolutions both in the United States and in France. And masonry is considered the antithesis of God, being based on the Cabal, arcane symbolisms etc.

Equally meaningful is the banner below the Great Seal, “Novo Ordo Seclorum,” a Latin sentence meaning “The New Order of Centuries” –the new eternal order of the world. In corporate lingo this would be a veritable mission statement. It suggests the objective for America to establish a new timeless world order. It proposes and promises an imperial mission – which became dramatically evident for the first time in 1812, the first imperial war to annex Canada, under the presidency of James Madison.

Andrew Jackson, who was a general in the war of 1812 and later a president, made a prophetic statement: “We will make prevail our right to free-market exchange, and open the market for the products of our soil so as to duplicate the exploits of ancient Rome.”

A remarkable declaration, especially given the then small number of US inhabitants, about 7 million, mostly dedicated to agriculture. Yet a statement foreshadowing the intent or mission to become a Roman-style empire.

The Americans did not win the Canadian war – even if, in population they outnumbered the Canadians by a ratio of 25 to one.

During their first attempt to invade Canada the Americans crossed the Detroit river to meet a joint force of Canadian and Indian armies. Leading the Indians was the legendary Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, the Canadians were led by Isaac Brock, who, by choice of chance, was born in the island of Guernsey, where I lived for 5 years. Incidentally, Tecumseh had witnessed the massacre of his people and the invasion of Shawnee land by the Americans.

Leading the Americans was General William Hull, who, after crossing the border, issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Canada. I quote it in full because of the startling implications it contains.

“Inhabitants of Canada!

The Army under my command has invaded your country, and the standard of the United States now waves over the territory of Canada.

“To the peaceable, unoffending inhabitant it brings neither danger nor difficulty. (subtext, if you surrender we will allow you to live). I come to find enemies, not to make them. I come to protect you not to injure you… I tender to you the invaluable blessings of civil, political, and religious liberty… That liberty which has raised us to an elevated rank among the nations of the world (we can read here the seeds of the ‘exceptional nation’).

Remain at your homes, pursue your peaceful and customary avocations, raise not your hands against your brethren… I have a force that will look down on all opposition, and that force is the vanguard of a much greater. If, contrary to your own interests and the just expectation of my country (notice that ‘just expectation’), you should take part in the approaching contest, you would be considered and treated as enemies, and the horrors and calamities of war will stalk before you. If… the savages be let loose to murder our citizens and butcher our women and children, this would be a war of extermination. The first stroke of the tomahawk, the first attempt with the scalping knife, would be the signal of one indiscriminate scene of desolation. No white man found fighting by the side of an Indian would be taken prisoner; instant destruction would be his lot.”

Having the war ended without a winner, a peace treaty was signed in the city of Ghent, Belgium in 1814.

Incidentally and anecdotally, to the 1812 Canadian war is directly attributable the reason why the White House is called the white house. During the war, an attack by British naval forces that had sailed up Chesapeake Bay, overpowered the American resistance, reached Washington and literally burned up the seat of government. The fire blackened the building, which had to be refurbished and repainted in white. Hence the name White House, now sealed in history.

However, the efforts to annex Canada did not end in 1814. I will skip the history of failed subsequent attempts. More interesting are the snares used to achieve the desired results, on the part of the United States. Strategy and snares still successfully applied today.

In 1854 – 40 years after the treaty of Ghent, the backers of the annexation movement succeeded in pushing the British government to negotiate, on behalf of the five eastern Canadian colonies, a so-called ‘reciprocity agreement’. Which meant free trade in natural products, opening Canadian waterways to US shipping, and free access by the United States to the Canadian maritime fishery.

The interesting part of the ‘Reciprocity Agreement’ is how it was achieved. The US government sent a secret agent named Israel D. Andrews to influence the course of events. He used means, or rather a new strategy that, though distant in time, is quite similar to events occurring during our historical present.

Of agent Israel Andrews, by a quirk of fate, his related expense account is extant and it tells us more than many books. To push the annexation and free-trade agreement he paid, in the Canadian province of New Brunswick,

$5,000.00 to an editor – read corrupting the Canadian press

$5,000.00 to the attorney general – read corrupting the justice system

$5,000.00 to an inspector of trade – read corrupting the administration

$15,000.00 to a member of the New Brunswick assembly – read corrupting a politician.

Today, in refined Orwellian language, the procedure is called of course lobbying. Incidentally, we owe the term lobbying to President Ulysses S. Grant who so described the action of people accosting him in the lobby of the Willard Hotel sometime in the 1860s.

On May 14, 1854 Andrews wrote to the Department of State as follows,

“… I have therefore taken such measures, as the circumstances of the case required in New Brunswick, to moderate the opposition and keep the public mind in a quiet state… I was able to reach Fredericton before the New Brunswick legislature adjourned, and prevent any discussion of the proposition now under consideration, or any legislative action of a character adverse to our interests.”

In other words, in this new type of war it was/is important to disorient public opinion guided by media paid-for pied pipers. Besides, in the mind of the Americans the free-trade agreement was the equivalent of, or the prelude to, annexation.

In all Andrews spent more than $100,000 – equivalent to several millions today – trying to persuade prominent individuals in Canada to support either annexation or, as a second choice, free trade with the United States. But the amount was a mere trifle, he wrote, “in comparison with the immensely valuable privileges to be gained permanently, and the power and influence that will be given forever to our Confederacy.” (meaning the Americans).

And this describes perfectly the undeclared war that caused French President Mitterand to say what I quoted earlier on. And, as shown in the recent posture towards Ukraine, the EU is, or behaves as, a US colony.

Unbeknown to most, contrary to conventional history, but supported by ample documentation, the primary promoters and pushers of the European Union were not European men, cosmetically turned into prophets of peace and prosperity, but the Americans, starting with Eisenhower et alia.

Back to the attempts at Canadian annexation. The ‘reciprocity agreement’ ran from 1854 until 1866. After six years from its implementation, the American consul in Montréal reported to the secretary of state of the time, Lewis Cass, that the treaty was “quietly but effectually transforming those five provinces into States of the Union,” meaning American.

Some in Canada viewed things differently. For example a Canadian lumber man, in 1862 said as follows, ”… as regards lumber Canada lost millions by the treaty… The raw material which now will be worth millions of dollars… never returned a farthing to the operators of this country … Labor expended in manufacturing added to the wealth of our neighbors across the line… They and they only were the gainers by reciprocity in lumber, while nearly all on this side engaged in supplying their wants were ruined.”

This sequence of events finds echoes in the process whereby the American Midwest was converted into the properly named ‘Rust Belt’ via the comprehensive shutting down of the industrial powerhouse of America and its transfer to China or elsewhere where labor was cheaper.

Which may be considered as an interesting twist and application of the “In God we trust” principle applied to money at work. For now, to “duplicate the exploits of ancient Rome” – as per Andrew Jackson’s mission statement previously quoted – the time had come to further broaden the horizon, behind the conquest/annexation of Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines.

China would be a somewhat larger bite to swallow, but if there is a will there is a way. That the process did not entirely go to plan (until now) is due to temporary setbacks, for the web of life is of a mingled yarn, where good and ill go together.

Returning to history, the issue of Canada’s annexation became entangled with the American Civil War, when it appeared that Britain, and therefore Canada sided with the South. Incidentally, Canada had abolished slavery in 1793, 72 years before the US did. Anyway, it was the threat of forced annexation by the United States that prompted the leaders of the Canadian colonies to join forces and create what is today the Confederation of Canada.

But as late as 1888, the vice secretary of state John Sherman said, “The annexation of Canada will not be achieved through hostile measures but by making amicable propositions. This annexation is a historic inevitability.” There are echoes here of Obama’s reference to the US as the ‘indispensable nation’)

Sherman’s war, with methods not used before, can be called war by enticement, or even better, making an offer that cannot be refused.

In 1948 the US pushed again for a free-trade agreement, but in the parliament of Ottawa John Deutsch responsible for these negotiations stated, “The price to pay for a custom union with the United States is the loss of our political independence – because we will not have any longer control on our political decisions, which will be made in Washington.”

If we abandon the ballast of bias and use the telescope of reason, the parallel between US efforts to annex Canada and the creation of the European Union and NATO is inevitable. Where the European Union, as current events show to all but those who refuse to see, is but the political annex of the United States, and NATO a branch of the US military.

That the empire-building enterprise treats citizens as expendable fodder and contemptible fools should not surprise. For understanding is the child of reason and the powers-that-be have refined the means to surprise the unawareness of the thoughtless, and taught them to believe anything provided it is quite incredible. The artists of lying censure those who don’t believe the lie, and propaganda is a machine that has little care to preserve probability in its narrative.

With Russia, at least for now, the same powers have bitten more than they could chew. But malignity never sleeps and can easily inflict wounds not easily to be cured. And hoping for a cleansing of evil would be to transgress the bounds of probability.

Filed under: Britain, Canada, EU, Russia, US-led NATO Alliance, USA | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off on The Curious History of American Exceptionalism

Glorious Revolution of 1688: England declares ‘death to all other revolutions’

Posted on March 30, 2022 by martyrashrakat

March 29, 2022

Source

By Ramin Mazaher

(This is the second chapter in a new book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. Please click here for the article which announces this book and explains its goals.)

Modern conservatism was hugely inspired by Edmund Burke’s constant assertion that one is not permitted to remake society into something new because to wipe out the historical context which shaped that society would be immoral. It’s the crux of his anti-revolution thesis.

This is the precise logic of modern reformism – i.e., slow reform and improvement of English-style parliamentarianism, which is the political backbone of Western Liberal Democracy.

But it’s a cardinal error of the ardent and overdramatic conservative – to give entirely too sweeping a brush to any revolution. Nobody could totally wipe away a nation’s historical and cultural context – what’s done is done and won’t be forgotten, but it can be looked at differently. The past often should be left behind in order to implement a new, more humane legal foundation, which is always the basic goal of any revolution – anything else is a mere “coup”, after all.

Modern conservatives and Burke, the acknowledged philosophical founder of Western conservatism, ultimately want to continue to be the elite arbiters of what legal, economic and cultural changes get made, whereas Socialist Democracies insist that the mass of the people – the Third Estate, the proletariat & peasantry, the 99%, etc. – should be the arbiters.

Burke had the opportunities and status he did because he was an aristocrat (the House of Burke was a centuries-old noble dynasty), an imperialist (of Ireland – Burke was born there) and, ironically, because of revolution. The previous chapter summarised Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and it is equally a defense of England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688 – both of its methods and its results – as it is an assault on the new ideas of 1789 France. It’s truly a book which covers two revolutions, and it distinctly marks the political-cultural schism between both Anglophone and Francophone cultures and between revolutionary and conservative cultures.

The methods: A royal coup in England which installed a foreign royal (William of Orange, from the Netherlands). What the English like to focus on is not this anti-patriotic, “monarchy-as-the-original-globalist-1%ers” class aspect, but the fact that it was done without bloodshed, and that it ended a four decade era of civil war and political changes.

The results: The coup was effectuated by the Whigs, the new social class which had been created off the new profits from Western Hemisphere imperialism and its explosion in commercial trading. I mentioned this in the Introduction: 1492 created a slow but certain economic revolution by making war/imperialism and trade newly hyper-profitable for Europe. By 1688 the Whigs were able to use these profits to force in a foreign king, pass the English Bill of Rights and establish the prominence of parliament for the first time in English history.

Burke was a Whig and, sycophantic Whig that he was, wrote that all revolutions to the post-Glorious Revolution status quo should be denounced as awful – this explains how Reflections marks the birth of Western anti-revolutionism. Burke is writing about France but also saying, expressly, that the 1688 intra-elite coup which encoded rights to the noble class is the only revolution which should ever be glorified, and long live the reign of the Whigs.

Thus it’s total self-interest; it’s total class war long before Marx; it’s an alliance of the allegedly-noble rich, whether landed, royal and theocratic rich or nouveau imperialist-trader rich; and it’s totally reactionary (which is defined as: opposing progressive political or social reforms). It is this eventual unification of all types of wealth – land-based, commercial/imperial, then 19th century financial/industrial – and then their united struggle against the 99% which is what made the Marxist analysis of 19th century European history so provokingly revolutionary. Marx drained the nobility of their Burkean pretensions to a deserved grandeur by pointing out: all you care about is money.

The Glorious Revolution has gone global, partially, like every successful revolution inevitably does – it has become inseparable from Western Liberal Democracy.

While I do apologise for the way this book on the Yellow Vests ballooned, LOL, I am just trying to get back to the root of the matter. Ultimately, the Yellow Vests are rebelling against the latest failure of Western Liberal Democracy. 1688 is the feudal-era basis of this ideology, which hasn’t been “modern” since 1789.

Yellow Vest “It’s clear that the government is selling us a democracy which is actually a total illusion. When we see how much violence there has been to the peaceful Yellow Vests, it’s clear that French democracy is a dream and not reality.”

(Note: this book intersperses over 100 quotations taken from actual, marching Yellow Vests which were originally published in news reports on PressTV.)

Why England’s and America’s revolutions are not the start of modern politics

Crucially, because the 1688 revolution is based not on the empowerment of the average person and democracy but is instead based on protecting elite privilege, it cannot be considered as the revolution which births modern politics.

It’s far more accurate to say that 1688 was the last organised resistance by European elite aimed at containing modern politics. 1688 erected the most vigorous bulwark against modern politics, sadly. The religious emphasis of the English Civil Wars also make the 1688 Revolution far less suitable than 1789 to mark the start of the modern political era, which is defined by class politics – religious wars belong to the earlier era. Nor should the culmination of the colonisation of Ireland during this era permit 1688 to serve as the start of the neo-imperial project of the European Union (that date is 1871, as I explain later) – for one thing, England is not even in the EU. The proof is also right there in the pudding: from 1688 until today the British Isles are the seat or co-seat of seemingly every effort worldwide to fight against the ideals of 1789 and socialist democracy.

But history is a slow process, and we should acknowledge the merits in the Glorious Revolution lest we lose the key thread of political history – the move of away from autocracy. Is that not what the average person has been fighting for since 1789? A major effort of this book is to show how monarchical concepts – such as autocracy and rule by a small elite – didn’t stop with 1979 Iran but still drastically shape Western Liberal Democracy today.

1688 was important, and not just for its shortcomings:

Firstly, it produced the Bill of Rights of 1688, which should be considered far more important than the Magna Carta of 1215, though the latter is better remembered. The Magna Carta is only a big deal within England – it wasn’t even the biggest expansion away from absolute monarchy in its own era. In 13th century Hungary their aristocracy was far more inclusive and egalitarian: 5% of the country was nobility and the “Golden Bull” decree of 1222 made them all equal, even giving them the right to vote in the most weighty matters of state. (Indeed, the parallels and legacies between this longstanding Hungarian elite class and the modern “Austrian School” of political economics are too numerous to list here.)

Secondly, 1688 effectively ended the world’s worst – and most historically prevalent – type of theocracy: the divine right of kings. The Puritan Revolution and Oliver Cromwell had done its work and could not be reversed: “Christ, not man, is King” is the epitaph on his tomb. I think a better epithet would be “God, not man, is King”, but I’m Muslim. I certainly appreciate Cromwell’s point. The awful lovers of monarchy, such as Burke, who opposed Cromwell and his Protectorate republic (1653-59) exhumed his corpse in 1660, the year monarchy was restored – they stuck Cromwell’s skull on a pike and placed it on the roof of Westminster Hall for 30 years.

Thirdly and lastly, the Bill of Right can be best described as a “Rights of Man and of the Citizen… but only Aristocrats are Men or Citizens”. It took 100 years for the idea to take root that all humans – and not just nobles – have rights. I noted in the Introduction that this egalitarian concept did not derive from England but from the indigenous in the New World. Regardless of provenance, spread it did, and the aristocrat Burke opposed 1789’s attempts to spread it just as much as kings, prior to 1688, opposed the idea that nobles have rights.

But the Glorious Revolution was indeed a true advance, and it’s with some justification that England thought itself the most progressive nation in Europe. However, 1789 changed this self-perception, and the allegedly post-feudal United Kingdom was now behind the times. It remains there, sadly.

England’s Bill of Rights has 13 key articles, and it is nearly identical to the 10 articles of the United States Bill of Rights. Indeed, it is a part of US domestic propaganda to portray the US Bill of Rights as some sort of spectacular advance when it was clearly modelled on something a century old. The American Bill of Rights was written in 1789, the same year as the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Absolutely crucially, the 27 articles of France’s declaration goes so very, very much further than the American declaration.

It’s entirely accurate to say that the Americans did not join with the French conception of human rights but with England’s: The Glorious and American Revolutions did not remake their social orders but merely established a limited view of human rights. This explains why modern Western Liberal Democracy easily embraces both the constitutional monarchies of Europe (Spain, Sweden, etc.) as well as the constitutional republics of the US (and France, Italy, etc.). The UK is one of the handful of countries which still doesn’t have a constitution, along with Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The US merely codified an oligarchy – American oligarchs were now in charge on the Eastern seaboard, not English oligarchs – and this allows us to explain why modern politics doesn’t begin with the American Revolution of 1776 either.

For the common man the Glorious English and American Revolutions are truly “internal coups” more than “revolutions”. In neither was there an attempt to fundamentally reshape society – an autocracy expanded slightly to oligarchy is hardly a revolution. 1688 and 1776 are important, no doubt, but it is a complete misunderstanding of modern politics to believe that they are as important as 1789.

It’s incredibly telling that Burke barely commented on the revolutionary experience of the United States – it’s not that he didn’t know what to make of it, which is one reading of his reticence, it’s that he both found it entirely good sense but also threatening to the English empire to which he was such a toady.

Yellow Vest: “Macron is a puppet. He has a program which aims to ruin the French people in order to benefit a few billionaires. Look at how he refuses to allow a referendum on the proposed privatisations of the airports of Paris. He wants everyone to shut their face and accept whatever he wants, but that’s not the way France should be.”

But, history is a slow process, and we should acknowledge the merits in the American Revolution lest we lose the thread.

The American Revolution was an undeniable advance as well because it represented the start of the end of 284 years of European domination of the Western Hemisphere – now the locals (some locals) had some rights and sovereignty. Of course, the aboriginals were not included in the new system of rights in the United States – more proof of how elitist, and not progressive, Western Liberal Democracy has been from its very foundations.

Yes, the French Revolution was overturned, and The Declarations of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen wouldn’t be firmly embedded in a French constitution until 1945, but that’s only due to the anti-1789 machinations of its enemies. The French Revolution, while overturned in 1815 via a restored monarchy, was a true advance in Europe’s very low level of political consciousness and away from monarchical despotism.

The Russian Revolution would be an even greater advance because it finally extended human rights to all – even the poorest landless peasant – inaugurating an entirely new era of political history. All revolutions after 1917 (China, Cuba, Iran, etc.) are socialist-inspired and their main obstacle is the same as France’s was from 1792-1815: all these other nations, led by the United Kingdom, which seek to pull them back to the old era of political history, one of rights limited to monarchs, sheiks and the affluent. This is the clear, simple pattern of Western politics and global history.

This analysis can only be considered invalid or temporary if one believes that Western Liberal Democracy is truly the apex of political thought. The longstanding demand of many French leftists, and not just the Yellow Vests, to found a new republic undermines that claim, as does the incredible repression of the Yellow Vests.

Burke himself was emphatic: 1688 was actually NOT a revolution

It’s not just me who argued that 1688 wasn’t a major revolution – it’s a key thesis of Burke’s book!

The glory of England’s Glorious Revolution is that change had come without civil war, without any absence of government and without any rule by revolutionaries – thus we see how today’s conservatism has absolutely carried this Whiggish banner which demands that change only come through peaceful reformism.

However, the great unsaid of English parliamentarianism and then Western Liberal Democracy is that this peaceful reformism must be entirely guided by the ruling oligarchical elite. Class analysis, and an objective accounting of modern history, tells us that this oligarchy will always fear losing their power and privileges to the people – thus, Western Liberal Democracy is aristocratic to its marrow.

Part of the conservative retort to revolution has always included that even a temporary absence of government is a fearful Rousseauian “state of nature”, which can only result in either an alleged anarchy of socialism or a civil war that features pure hysteria and zero ideology. Order must be kept… because the oligarchy must not lose power, of course. “Keep calm and carry on” – the English phrase which swept the Anglophone world during the economic collapse of 2008 – perfectly incarnates this view of a slave which loves the order provided by his master.

The analysis that England’s 1688 Revolution is the true foundation of modern democracy is something which Anglophones will persist in, mainly because they have not actually read Burke.

Specifically what shocked Burke in Reflections was the presumption: “that we have acquired a right:

  1. to choose our own governors
  2. to cashier them for misconduct
  3. to frame a government for ourselves”

Burke does not only reject these basic democratic rights for the French in 1789 but he asserts that the Glorious Revolution did not employ these rights either!

Therefore don’t believe my opinion that 1789 is the true start of modern politics – Burke himself says that 1789 cannot claim to be following any democratic precedent allegedly set by 1688. Burke himself says that the Anglophone system rejects anything but an unaccountable autocracy.

1789 was thus rejected by English conservatism, just as they obviously also reject 1917, 1949, 1959, 1979, etc. We all expect English and modern conservatives to reject everything from 1917 on, but what’s rarely admitted is how modern conservatives fully reject 1789. This rejection persists in the 21st century even though by the 1970s the ideals of 1789 had become commonplace across the West.

Burke continues after his 3-part list:

“This new and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in the name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. They utter disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their country made at the time (1688) of that very Revolution which is appealed to in favor of the fictitious rights claimed by the Society which abuses its name.”

Both “their faction” and “Society” refers to the Revolution Society of England, a group which supported the French revolution. Burke correctly notes that none of these three principles are found in the Bill of Rights, which is the practical and legal embodiment of the principles of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

French revolutionaries, Napoleon Bonaparte included, had initially been inspired by England as a model. They soon realised that they were seriously mistaken. This is expressed by Burke in the above phrase, “of that very Revolution which is appealed to in favor”. Burke repeats this French disenchantment with English oligarchy in greater, necessary detail:

“Your leaders in France began by affecting to admire, almost to adore, the British constitution; but as they advanced they came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt. The friends of your National Assembly amongst us have full as mean an opinion of what was formerly thought the glory of their country. The Revolution Society has discovered that the English nation is not free. They are convinced that the inequality in our representation is a ‘defect in our constitution so gross and palpable as to make it excellent chiefly in form and theory’.”

Yes, France’s revolutionaries took a closer look and realised that they were totally mistaken about England’s relationship with democracy. Perhaps someone misinformed them that Cromwellism had prevailed?

The conservatives who knowingly or unknowingly cling to 1688 or 1776 are either rewriting or misunderstanding history, but Burke was well aware that the admiration of the British model quickly changed to contempt in France – all it took was a proper understanding of the limited rights England offers the common man. France’s riposte was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a spectacular leap ahead of Britain and the US.

Indisputable: 1789 launches modern politics – the fight against monarchs and Macronian autocrats is the fight of today’s politics

Burke’s account of the Glorious Revolution in Reflections would eventually dominate English thought on two subjects. He became the explainer of two revolutions – one “preserving” and one “destroying”. His flaw is being totally wrong on which one should receive which treatment.

Yellow Vest: “There is no way the Yellow Vests will stop until the government responds to our needs and our democratic demands. As long as the government doesn’t change, neither will our insistence on real changes.”

The modern Western conservatism which thwarts all progressive revolutions is not interesting, but the enormous flaws, egotisms and the lust to implant illogic in human affairs which abound in Burke’s philosophy must be exposed for its fallacies.

And yet, the coming chapters will see me further quoting Burke for his accurate predictions for and criticisms of what will become known as Western Liberal Democracy, which becomes rooted in the disastrous 2nd Republic of 1848-52 France.

Above all, Burke is vital to remind us of what exactly modern conservatism has to “conserve”: an anti-patriotic, 1%er, class warfare view of human society. The only name for this used to be “monarchy”, the first system which put class loyalty above national loyalty:

“But a more decisive proof cannot be given of the full conviction of the British nation that the principles of the (Glorious) Revolution did not authorise them to elect kings at their pleasure, and without any attention to the ancient fundamental principles of our governed, than their continuing to adopt a plan of hereditary Protestant succession in the old line, with all the dangers and all the inconveniences of its being a foreign line full before their eyes and operating with the utmost force upon their minds.”

Burke admits that the principle of hereditary possession, of religious segregation and of democratic repression override any patriotic concern.

Burke also admits that the invasion of a foreign Dutch army was just solely because it ended the threat of Cromwellian republicanism possibly flowering into the ideals of 1789, thus threatening the Whig oligarchy.

“The Revolution of 1688 was obtained by a just war, in the only case in which any war, and much more a civil war, can be just. Justa bella quibus necessaria. (Livy: Wars are just when they are necessary.) The question of dethroning or, if these gentlemen like the phrase better, ‘cashiering kings’, will always be, as it has always been, an extraordinary question of state, and wholly out of the law – a question (like all other questions of state) of dispositions and of means and of probable consequences rather than of positive rights.”

The bold and underline emphasis of mine is added because it is my treat for enduring the galling, elitist, sycophantic, abstruse, conservative claptrap which is Burke, but also because this quite fair restitching makes it clear:

Modern conservatism means that no one has the right to depose a king or president – no matter how repressive or poorly they govern – because it’s not about rights but of consequences, the consequences being the end of the oligarchy’s dominance. Political leadership is a “question of state” – i.e. a question for the elite to handle among themselves.

Modern conservatives collude, for the absurd reasons enumerated by Burke’s book and summarised in the previous chapter, to uphold this undeserved dominance. Modern conservatism has not changed from Burke – they continue to use his same faulty, elitist rationales.

The status quo cannot be dethroned! The French Revolution disagreed, and Napoleon Bonaparte – the focus of our next chapter – would not be enthroned but voted into the throne, something Burke surely would have fainted at.

<—>

Upcoming chapter list of the brand-new content in France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. The book will also include previous writings from 2018 through the 2022 election in order to provide the most complete historical record of the Yellow Vests anywhere. What value! Publication date: June 1, 2022.

Pre-orders of the paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the Kindle version may be made here.

Pre-orders of the French paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the French Kindle version may be made here.

Chapter List of the new content

  • New book announcement – ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s best values’ – March 15, 2022
  • Introduction: A Yellow Vests’ history must rewrite both recent & past French history – March 20, 2022
  • The UK’s endless reaction: 1789 & feudalism’s end creates modern conservatism – March 25, 2022
  • Glorious Revolution of 1688: England declares ‘death to all other revolutions’
  • Modern political history makes no sense if Napoleon is not a leftist revolutionary
  • The Revolutions of 1848: Because Liberalism can’t say the ‘Counter-Revolutions of 1848’
  • Louis-Napoleon: The revolutionary differences between Bonapartism & Western Liberal Democracy
  • The Paris Commune: The true birth of neoliberalism and EU neo-imperialism
  • Where the West is stuck: The fascism of the 1930s and the ‘fascism’ of the 2020s
  • On ‘Leon Trotsky on France’ in order to reclaim Trotsky from Trotskyists
  • The Yellow Vests’ childhood: Seeing French elites, only, swayed by neoliberalism
  • No one here is actually in charge: How the EU empire forced the Yellow Vests
  • The radicalisation by Europe’s ongoing Lost Decade: the Great Recession changes France
  • To Yellow Vests he’s the radical: Macron and ‘Neither Right nor Left but the Bourgeois Bloc’
  • Yellow Vests: At worst, the most important French movement for a century
  • Who are they, really? Ask a reporter whose seen a million Yellow Vest faces
  • Yellow Vest Win: Ending the West’s slandering of all popular movements as far-right xenophobes
  • Yellow Vest Win: The end of Western anarcho-syndicalism & unions as leftism’s hereditary kings
  • Yellow Vest Win: The end of Western parliamentarianism as the most progressive government
  • Yellow Vest Win: Reminding us of the link between fascist violence & Western democracy
  • What the Yellow Vests can be: a group which can protect liberalism’s rights, at least
  • The 2022 vote: The approach needed for ‘Before’- what came ‘After’ polls closed

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

Filed under: United Kingdom UK | Tagged: , , , , | Comments Off on Glorious Revolution of 1688: England declares ‘death to all other revolutions’

The UK’s endless reaction: 1789 & feudalism’s end creates modern conservatism

Posted on March 26, 2022 by martyrashrakat

March 25, 2022

Source

By Ramin Mazaher

(This is the first chapter in a new book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. Please click here for the article which announces this book and explains its goals.)

It would be boring to defend the French Revolution by showing the moral and intellectual worth of its left spectrum – of Danton and Robespierre, Marat and Babeuf. What’s far more interesting is to examine the right’s assessment and criticisms of 1789. If we do so we will be exceptionally rewarded – after all, we unearth the very foundation of Western conservatism.

Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is the Bible of modern conservatism, with Burke regarded as that ideology’s indisputable philosophical founder. It is no exaggeration to call him the “Marx of conservatism”. For those who don’t believe that – simply read this first section.

It’s not only Burke’s political philosophy which has become dominant in the West, but his economic philosophy prevails today as well. Read Adam Smith’s evaluation of Burke: “…the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us.”

Additionally, just as conservatives today despise the “fake money” of Bitcoin – which is creating a new class (both a class of monied persons and a class of investment type) – so Burke railed against the French Revolution’s creation of paper “fake money”. The assignats were paper bonds created by the projected bonanza which would be reaped from the sales of the newly confiscated estates of the Roman Catholic Church in France. Burke’s condemnation of this – and his promotion of wealth only based in land, gold and commerce – has become adored by stingy conservatives who distrust going off the gold standard in 1971, Quantitative Easting, Modern Monetary Policy and cryptocurrency. Burke was a member of the Whig Party, which established the Bank of England – the first central bank – giving him even more economic relevance to our era of banker domination.

As Burke fears a newly monied class will reduce the power of the established upper class, Reflections is full of apparently tolerant concerns (Burke was a Protestant) for the future of the Roman Catholic Church. Burke’s concerns are nothing but false piety masking his class interests, but Reflections is considered by today’s conservatives to be a righteous and modern call to defend your true church. Burke defends Christian monarchy as being free from despotism, it being Christian, after all. As for the aristocracy beneath the holy autocrat, Burke simultaneously insists that aristocrats in Christendom have always practiced the true faith… but they have been converted to atheism en masse in France over the last century. This mix of multicultural tolerance (as long as that culture is Christian) and loyalty to an unchanging establishment religion (no matter how infested with nobility and disregard for the poor) is quite similar to the religious stance of modern Western conservatives.

Burke also rails against calls for subverting the aristocratic world – a world full of hard-won merit, he insists – by a new media-political-intellectual class which has become divorced from the longtime forces of traditional wealth and the church. In the 21st century technocrats and meritocracy’s allegedly-deserving victors denounce a new intelligentsia: that of the masses, which is found on Facebook, social media, blogs, etc., which dare to contradict the mainstream media of sacred Western Liberal Democracy, which is – in fact – actually being run ever so well by the establishment’s elite.

Burke writes little about 1789’s abolition of seigneurial rights, mainly because it’s such an indefensible position – in typical English fashion it was certainly bad “manners” to talk of such things openly. Or rather, it had just become bad manners. Burke insisted that a truly noble nobility justifiably rules and oppresses because of the English triumph of social “manners” over ancient, individualistic and barbarous Greek “virtue”. This idea translated into the alliance between culture and aristocracy which so dramatically moulded the art of the subsequent Victorian Era. Again, Burke’s importance resonates with Marxian reach. The Western condemnation of “deplorable” Yellow Vests, Trumpers and Brexiteers for their lack of respect and awe is above all a continuation of Victorian repugnance for the “ill-mannered” and certainly ill-bred masses.

But wait, there’s more!

It’s said that much of Burke’s modern appeal is that he allegedly discovered the roots of modern totalitarianism: He was first intellectual to be spooked by the “spectre of 1789”, which is synonymous with the spectre of socialism, which modern conservatives falsely conflate with totalitarianism. What’s obvious to all is that the accusations against socialism as “totalitarian” from a class of hyper-privileged persons who fear losing their privileges – even if these privileges are abused and then revoked by popular, democratic revolution – are intellectually invalid barring extraordinary proofs of intellectual objectivity. Burke fails that test all over. Therefore the true base of Burke’s appeal here to modern conservatism is so hard to categorise that we can only call it psychological. It is easy to define, however: A desire to privilege illogic and inefficiency – the role of an “invisible hand” – in both economic and social affairs, something rejected by socialism’s central planning and demands for equality. Logic, science and mathematical reasoning must always appear terribly totalitarian to those, like Burke, who invariably resort to using an “invisible hand” in their equations which explain and order societal affairs. Burke does not use an “invisible hand” that is truly Godly, because it is not all-embracing and all-levelling, but instead the unplanned order found in hereditary right, unregulated markets, slavishly following an unchangeable tradition/past, and the unplanned order of the unpredictable eccentricities produced by a totally unchecked individuality/autocracy/libertarianism. Modern conservatives agree: an “invisible hand” ultimately rules, somehow, and all humans can do is work around it. Planning against the “invisible hand” is personally anathema to modern conservatives, especially rich ones.

Therefore, in economics, religion, intellectualism, culture and psychology you should see why I am starting off this book with Burke – he combines to become the absolute cornerstone of Western conservatism. Reflections on the Revolution in France distills what reasoning is used, and which is used still, to oppose every modern, progressive revolution.

Burke is the man who stood up to the Yellow Vests of 1789 and shouted them down as people who were trashing and upending the economy, who were godless demons that respected nothing, who were too stupid to be listened to much less govern, who were unmannered berserkers, who failed to comprehend that incomprehensibility in human affairs must be endured, and who must stop their critiques of monarchism on pain of being sent to the Bastille, which must be retaken.

Marx had Burke’s number: In a single word – “sycophant”.

Yellow Vest: “Our recent governments serve only the rich class, instead of serving the people – that’s the problem. France has enough money and produces many goods, but these are not distributed fairly. At the same time, our government is taking away the social rights we fought decades to win.”

(Note: this book intersperses over 100 quotations taken from actual, marching Yellow Vests which were originally published in news reports on PressTV.)

Burke hated 1789, but few realise he wrote just as poorly of nascent Western Liberal Democracy

However, it would be unfair and incorrect to say that conservatism in Western Liberal Democracy can be reduced to encouragements to become a slavish sycophant to the status quo because “conservatism” has universal values like family cohesion, respect for religion, thrift, hard work and modest pride in a modest amount of property. Such traditional concepts are easily also found in Confucianism, Hinduism, the Islamic World and even nomadic life. Therefore, to pin all the West’s faults on “conservatism” is illogical, foolish and doomed to failure.

Of course, many Western fake-leftists do exactly that – in the US, for example, the constant claim is that the Republican Party is the sole party responsible for all the evils at home and abroad. This totally ignores the failures of the Democratic Party and of Western Liberal Democracy itself. It’s easier to blame conservatism than to refine and enlighten one’s own leftism.

But read Burke’s masterwork and it’s truly impossible not to be struck by what a tremendous toady this Irishman was to English royalty! If the noble class were one-tenth as noble, blameless and competent as he repeatedly claims then nobody would have ever had the slightest notion to overthrow them. If the revolutionary class in France – which is to say, millions of people – were as vile, clueless and without merit as he claimed then they could not even have had the intelligence to tie their shoes much less envision an unprecedentedly democratic and egalitarian type of society.

Examples of his toadying are legion – his fairy-tale account of meeting Marie Antoinette produced eye-rolling even in Burke’s own day – so I will not waste time listing giving examples. Simply open Reflections on the Revolution in France to any page, stick your finger on a sentence and it will likely be describing the noble class as nothing but people who make Marcus Aurelius look unwise, every small-town cleric as improvers upon the philosophy of Jesus son of Mary, and the king as being an entity of – per the writing of one similar Hindu toady (whose name I forget) – such cosmic goodness that lighting bolts of pure enlightenment shoot out of his big toenail.

Burke’s book has become a manifesto because Western conservatives want to be affirmed in the idea that slow reformism of the status quo is the only sociopolitical solution, universally. “Keep calm and carry on”, universally, as opposed to discussing and implementing revolutionary changes which aim to improve equality immediately. He’s wrong: oligarchy disguised as ineffectual parliamentarianism (with a monarch or a prime minister or a president) is a less democratic and egalitarian system than those proposed by Socialist Democracy, and this was precisely the cry and proposed solution from the French Revolution up to the Yellow Vests.

But few read Burke for this: His book is also the ultimate takedown of modern Western Liberal Democracy at its very conception.

Therefore, we can read him and – undiscussed by modern conservatives – find some very just and salient criticisms of Western Liberal Democracy precisely when the child has first been placed in the cradle. This is the opposites of what modern conservatives usually mine Reflections on the Revolution in France for – to find criticisms of Socialist Democracy, which was also born in 1789.

What’s vital to realise is that Burke’s critique of Socialist (and Liberal) Democracy was not written after “the Terror” or after the rise of Napoleon or – shockingly – even after capital punishment was pronounced for Louis XVI. It was written at the very start of the revolution, in 1790: Burke is writing merely after the fall of the Bastille and the declaration of the end of feudalism! The king lives, but the god has been defiled by the hands of commoners, and Burke pauses in his sucking-up to write a very long letter, in a very protracted style, to a fellow aristocrat in France.

This change in the nature of medieval society is enough to shock Burke the Whig, who is a proto-Western Liberal Democrat because of his acceptance of monarchical oligarchy. He’s an aristocrat shocked at losing his privileges over the life and property of his workers. He can’t imagine that society doesn’t openly declare that his DNA is a cut above the “swinish multitude”. Burke’s shock helps explain why, as I will discuss in the next chapter, the 1688 Glorious Revolution – the birth of English parliamentarianism – is not the birth of modern democracy. It was merely the first limitation on European absolute autocracy, which is not modern.

This shock at the very start of the French Revolution form the completely counter-revolutionary basis of his passionate reflections, which are sent in letter form to a fellow aristocrat in France. The letter becomes history’s best example of intellectual opposition to the French Revolution from the point of view of both monarchy and modern Anglophone conservatism, and thus early Western Liberal Democracy. By examining the text which first criticised the actions of the obvious forebears of the Yellow Vests, we can see how the criticism of the Yellow Vests’ demands is not recent, but goes back over 230 years.

Yellow Vest: “For us it was not the ‘Great Debate’ but the ‘Great Smokescreen’. This is why many Yellow Vests quickly refused to participate. We know that nothing concrete will come from those one-way debates. It will ultimately make people even more disappointed in the government, and turn to the Yellow Vests with even more support.”

The notion of ending aristocratic rule: As shocking to the elite of yesterday as it is for today’s Western elite

The opposition to monarchy/autocracy and a demand for an equitable redistribution of wealth and political power – this is the battle of modern politics. Whether or not the autocrat is Emmanuel Macron, ruling by executive order and smashing the Yellow Vest demonstrations, or Louis XVI makes no difference in 2022: both their means and their ends are the same – political autocracy. From the time of Reflections publication to the Yellow Vests the demands have always been the same: More grassroots rights to political power and wealth for the masses than Western Liberal Democracy is willing to offer its citizens.

The great, galvanising crime for Burke was threefold, and I think only the last would be seriously debatable today, and even then only by a few: making the king finally answerable to a single parliament (no House of Lords) composed mainly of non-nobility, the abolition of feudal titles and rights and France’s nationalising of the Roman Catholic church.

Beginning with the last: It should be reminded that what we can call the “nationalisation” of the Roman Catholic church and the dissolution of the Roman Catholic monasteries occurred in England – via the creation of the Church of England – under Henry VIII, more than 250 years earlier than in France. The Whig Burke decried this for France even though the Whig Party’s early members came to economic prominence in a large part from royal land grants of former Roman Catholic Church lands in England! This book will not debate the merits of Europe’s Protestant Revolution – I will simply take that revolution as a grassroots, honest desire for greater emancipation from the Vatican in many ways, economics included. Therefore, England had already profited from their spiritual independence for centuries, yet France should be faulted for doing the same so very much later? Cui bono – not monied Whigs invested in France, but a French nouveau riche and the French peasant, and thus Burke’s opposition.

What 1789 demanded was not a complete separation between republic and church, but a pledge of allegiance of the Roman Catholic Church to the new republic in order to create a better, more progressive and more locally-devoted clergy. Fifty-five percent of French clergy would accept to take this new Constitutional Oath, which (again, I am not entering into religious discussions here) can be fairly viewed as a modern and progressive demand to serve your local laypeople well and firstly. Contrarily, the Church of England in 1789 was precisely the same as their aristocratic parliament: a hierarchy headed by sycophants, largely limited to fellow nobles, who were engaged in maintaining the deeply embedded socioeconomic class disparities created by English feudalism. Napoleon’s Concordat of 1801 will make peace with the Vatican regarding these changes, and also cement a new and more progressive clergy for France. A complete separation between church and state would not occur until the passage of the “1905 French Law on the Separation of the Churches and State”. This pledge from a clergy towards a national democratic revolution was frightening to Burke because it exposed the alleged progressivism of England – which in 1788 had a claim to be perhaps the most progressive country in Europe – for what the nation remains today: an unmodern oligarchy with a rich, landowning church that refuses to engage in a serious questions of redistribution of wealth or political power.

Nationalising the church, attacking the social and economic privilege of the nobility via ending feudalism and constraining the king’s power with a parliament which doesn’t aim to collude in preserving an aristocratic oligarchy – these three crimes alone joined together to galvanise Burke into warning how the French Revolution heralded the slow death of the autocratic order of the oligarchy.

So the French Revolution has just begun and barely a drop of royal blood has been shed but Burke simply can’t believe his eyes – he thought that the era of aristocratic autocracy, supported by a clergy which looked the other way and an intelligentsia restricted to sanctioning the first two estates (as Burke did) would go on for ever.

Yellow Vest: ”France has turned into a system of oligarchy which is run by high finance, and we cannot take it anymore. This is why the Yellow Vests are demanding citizen referendums, especially regarding France’s banks and our economic policy. That’s the only way we can create jobs, schools, hospitals and peace in our country.”

The Western Liberal Democrats who oppose the Yellow Vests are precisely the same: they are modern day aristocrats who support the autocracy of the French executive, the elite-only justice of the judicial branch, care not that the legislative branch is just for show, who are unhindered by any appeals from a politically-active clergy, and who either decide to join or bow down to the dictates of the 21st media mainstream media intelligentsia.

Why do you think like this, Burke?!

This is why reading Reflections is so important – to find the initial but enduring justifications for autocracy, faux-meritocracy, technocracy of the inept, spiritual guidance from the unrighteous righteous and minds bent on subservience, i.e. a modern Western conservative whose conservatism exceeds just limits.

Natural law: We can do nothing about that which justifies every inequality

Burke’s ultimate rejoinder to attack the ideals of 1789 is that – and here we see the same justifications of Western Liberal Democratic leaders from the slave-trading time, to the start of imperialism in the Western hemisphere, to the eugenics movement, to today’s false “the rich deserve to stay rich because of ‘meritocracy’”: caste is “natural”.

Indeed, it’s that simple to Burke.

Don’t kill the messenger – I can’t be faulted for relating the faults of modern conservatism: logic, nor a study of history which aims to be as scientific as the subject will allow, nor humanity’s finest emotions and desires are a basis for society, but only an invisible hand of “natural” laws which dictate that a high and a low must be created and perpetually preserved.

This “natural” law is the basis of “conservatism” from England, to the caste of India, to the very rigid hierarchical view of Confucius, to the frightened and xenophobic worldview of tribes and nomads, etc. It’s a “bad” conservatism, as it refuses to be compatible with equality and modern, not medieval, justice.

Over and over in Reflections Burke justifies the privileges of the aristocracy based on some sort of “natural” superiority and the “natural” need for a subservient class in society in order to prevent proto-socialist “anarchy”, which a modern reader sees Burke confusing with the barest “equality”.

Absolutely crucially, he backs their theocratic right to rule – divinity is God-given via birth and bloodline. Burke believes that the highness is real and natural of “His and Her Royal Highness”. It’s so astoundingly forgotten that until the bloodletting of World War I nearly all of Europe was not just feudal police states but also theocracies: kings were kings by “divine right” and were often the heads of churches. England still is this way!

This is something which appears staggeringly obvious to Muslim readers of modern European history, but this incredibly awful theocratic rule in Europe seems to be totally unrecognised in Western descriptions of their political history and situation? It is totally unrecognised how this legacy affects Europeans of today? Europeans act as if they are as many millennia removed from caveman-ism as they are from being ardent supporters of the most irreligious type of theocracy?

Burke is not from the final era of total scoffers at the French Revolution’s Rights of Man and of the Citizen, but the very first. Again, it is glossed over in the West how even Liberal Democratic rights are so very new in Europe – the upcoming chapters will remind how the entire 19th century was a victory of Anglo-Germanic monarchical repression 1789. The wilful historical blindness of the Western mainstream – in order to promote ideas of Western exceptionalism and superiority – has lead to total ignorance regarding how monarchy is the cardinal sin of domestic culture.

Beyond this “natural law”, it’s clear that to Burke and conservatives that money matters, and it matters so much because the presence of money, to conservatives, bestows merit; papers over hypocrisies; make criticism easy to luxuriously ignore. Beyond the ending of harvest taxes, church tithes and other redistributions of wealth from the bottom upwards, the confiscations of the church estates in France began the rise of a revolutionary new “paper” assignat money, and as Burke scholar J.G.A. Peacock wrote: “This is the key to all his analyses of the Revolution, and is bound to remind us of earlier Tories who, in the reign of Queen Anne (reign: 1665-1714) had attacked the Whig ‘monied interest’ and declared that ‘the Church was in danger’.” I see his point, but beyond just the arrival of a paper money which went beyond the crux of the English economy at this time – an unparalleled extension of credit (also the crux of the United States in our time), the key to Burke’s analyses of the Revolution is more accurately: that of a typical modern conservative to any socialist redistribution of wealth or political influence.

Yellow Vest: “We will be marching every Saturday to demand our human rights and our human dignity. We are here because there is no economic justice in France. France is an oligarchy composed of political elite, union leaders and high finance. They suck the life and riches out of the real producers of our nation’s wealth – the workers.”

The Whigs were modern conservatives in their view that all money – whether landed, trade gained from imperialism or industrial wealth – were in harmony, unity and striving towards progress. As Marx would put it decades later – all wealth to the rich eventually “becomes bourgeois”. Burke opposed the paper assignat – his class would soon relent and profit from this type of financial instrument. Modern conservatism will, eventually, accept Bitcoin wealth because they eventually sanction any and all wealth. This is why Burke is a proto-Western Liberal Democrat despite his opposition to the end of absolute monarchy. Both Burke and the modern conservative believe the class war is wrong – the only just war is to fight your way up in class.

Conclusion: A Whiggish clerisy to sanction monied nobility until Judgment Day, which doesn’t exist

Many Whigs of the 21st century are attached to their own religion, but there, too, has been a reconciliation; an accommodation just as significant as between monarch and president/prime minister in Western Liberal Democracy – that of secularism, the new Western state religion, which is also a new religion founded on the state itself. In France it is called laïcité, and it has been employed as a major cultural distraction since the start of the Great Recession. The spate of terror attacks – in which France’s foreign policy in Syria, Mali, Afghanistan and elsewhere was seemingly always cited – gave laïcité even more media space.

In modern conservatism secularism is the iron law. Secularism necessarily promotes the production of a spiritually-indifferent, neutered, class-unconscious clerisy; secularism doesn’t make every citizen this way, but it necessarily produces a class dedicated to preserving secularism. This new clerisy can be attached to an established religion, or public agnosticism, or outright atheism, or even a bizarre new polytheism – as long as said new cleric does not promote mixing religion and politics/economics.

Yellow Vest: “The fire at Notre Dame touched everybody, but there is a big controversy over how we could raise a billion euros for a church so quickly, and why we can’t raise such an amount for poor people. There is a lot of anger, and a fire at Notre Dame is not going to change this mental reality.”

Western society considers itself to be the apex of progress because it has deposed the clergy but not nobility. The basis of this society is shaky: while it declares humans radically equal irrespective of religion it also declares humans radically unequal as regards to class.

Modern conservatism is Whiggish in that it conflates not just love of the nobility, or the neo-nobility, with patriotism, but religion with mere property: property is sacred, even though it is merely property, and to attack property is heresy in Western Liberal Democracy. (Except, of course, when that property is of those who choose a path different from Western Liberal Democracy, like Iranians, Cubans, Russians, etc. To such persons and nations religious feeling is not extended.)

Burkean conservatism is not modern but ancient. As applicable to modern society as Marx is Burke is as inapplicable, despite Burke’s present-day proponents. He is not modern because he writes not to defend the average person’s home, goods and religion but only those of a hereditary aristocracy, which any modern person must disavow. I am speaking of the vital difference between the right to personal conservatism and a political, social and economic conservatism which combats society’s efforts to introduce modern, humane equality.

Therefore it is vital that the modern leftist wrests justified conservatism from the elitists like Burke in favor of a conservatism which also supports revolutionary political ideals – and egalitarianism has always been revolutionary in Europe.

Conservative types of values are what help anchor society, and that includes revolutionary societies – the difference is in the political-economic bedrock on which your society is founded.

The next chapter, Glorious Revolution of 1688: England declares ‘death to all other revolutions’, examines Burke’s primary thesis: That one is not permitted to remake society into something new because to wipe out the historical context which shaped that society would be immoral. It’s a nice, stable, conservative point of view – but only if you are currently on the top of the pyramid!

Upcoming chapter list of the brand-new content in France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values. The book will also include previous writings from 2018 through the 2022 election in order to provide the most complete historical record of the Yellow Vests anywhere. What value! Publication date: June 1, 2022.

Pre-orders of the paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the Kindle version may be made here.

Pre-orders of the French paperback version will be available immediately.

Pre-orders of the French Kindle version may be made here.

Chapter List of the new content

  • New book announcement – ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s best values’ – March 15, 2022
  • Introduction: A Yellow Vests’ history must rewrite both recent & past French history – May 20, 2022
  • The UK’s endless reaction: 1789 & feudalism’s end creates modern conservatism
  • Glorious Revolution of 1688: England declares ‘death to all other revolutions’
  • Modern political history makes no sense if Napoleon is not a leftist revolutionary
  • The Revolutions of 1848: Because Liberalism can’t say the ‘Counter-Revolutions of 1848’
  • Louis-Napoleon: The revolutionary differences between Bonapartism & Western Liberal Democracy
  • The Paris Commune: The true birth of neoliberalism and EU neo-imperialism
  • Where the West is stuck: The fascism of the 1930s and the ‘fascism’ of the 2020s
  • On ‘Leon Trotsky on France’ in order to reclaim Trotsky from Trotskyists
  • The Yellow Vests’ childhood: Seeing French elites, only, swayed by neoliberalism
  • No one here is actually in charge: How the EU empire forced the Yellow Vests
  • The radicalisation by Europe’s ongoing Lost Decade: the Great Recession changes France
  • To Yellow Vests he’s the radical: Macron and ‘Neither Right nor Left but the Bourgeois Bloc’
  • Yellow Vests: At worst, the most important French movement for a century
  • Who are they, really? Ask a reporter whose seen a million Yellow Vest faces
  • Yellow Vest Win: Ending the West’s slandering of all popular movements as far-right xenophobes
  • Yellow Vest Win: The end of Western anarcho-syndicalism & unions as leftism’s hereditary kings
  • Yellow Vest Win: The end of Western parliamentarianism as the most progressive government
  • Yellow Vest Win: Reminding us of the link between fascist violence & Western democracy
  • What the Yellow Vests can be: a group which can protect liberalism’s rights, at least
  • The 2022 vote: The approach needed for ‘Before’- what came ‘After’ polls closed

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

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Iran at 43: Linking with & learning from the world’s other great revolutions

Posted on February 6, 2022 by fada1

February 06, 2022

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

By Ramin Mazaheri and cross-posted with PressTV

We shouldn’t be surprised the West doesn’t understand the Iranian Islamic Revolution, even after 43 years. After all, they don’t even understand their own political revolutions.

I’m writing a new book on the brutal repression of the Yellow Vests in France – which should be out before April’s election – and it’s forced me to freshen up on my modern Western political history, which begins with the French Revolution of 1789.

Ask an average Frenchman, and I have asked many – they aren’t taught much about their own revolution, and certainly not the era of Robespierre and Danton.

They are told to have – even if the average Frenchman implicitly feels this is wrong – an ambivalent attitude towards the man who did more than anyone to solidify and defend the primary principles of the French Revolution: Napoleon Bonaparte.

Nor are they taught the history of the mid-late 19th century, when the birth of Western Liberal Democracy created not just famines on purpose in places like Iran, India, Ireland and elsewhere, but the inequalities and catastrophes which literally created the Third World as we know it today. They don’t know who I am talking about when I bring up Adolphe Thiers, the French liberal politician who collaborated with the German Empire’s Bismarck to lay siege to France’s capital for months in what’s known as the Paris Commune of 1871. The treasons of Western Liberal Democracy are as hushed up as they are rewarded – Thiers became the first president of France’s Third Republic.

This is not to denigrate the average Frenchman’s intelligence whatsoever – they are denied a modern political education in a domestic intellectual famine routinely imposed by Western Liberal Democracy. Nor is France exceptional, because the same goes for places like the United States, where the greatest political system ever in the history of mankind was established… by slaveowners who waged merciless war on the aboriginal peoples.

The UK is the most screwed up, being the intractable counter-reactionary subversive of every progressive political movement since 1789, yet somehow seeing in its own mirror the beacon of fair play.

Iran’s primary revolutionary motto was to refuse defining itself in contrast to the history of others: “Neither East nor West but the Islamic Republic”. Admirable, certainly, but after 43 years Iran’s revolution has become entrenched in global political history as the most successful political revolution of our contemporary era. That’s not an opinion – who is even close?

Thus, after 43 years the Iranian Revolution must be seen as what it is: a spectacularly successful redistribution of income and political power towards the lower classes – via totally unprecedented principles and methods – in a revolution which can now only be compared with 1789 and the Soviet Union in 1917.

This is true even if the West cannot see it; even if the West, led by the UK (as always), wages war on it.

They all start the same – down with the privileges of kings and the arrogant

What is the fundamental basis of the Iranian Revolution, even more than national sovereignty? It is the abolishment of monarchy.

Monarchy: the cardinal sin of domestic politics, just as invasion is the cardinal sin of international politics.

It’s truly the root of all political evils; it creates humanity’s most appalling privileges, arrogance and anti-social behavior; it exists today all over Europe and, due to Europe’s propping up, it exists across the Muslim world; it’s truly the first globalist class! Iran continued a fight started in 1789.

Modern political history begins in 1789 because it begins with the fight against the absolute autocracy of monarchy, and humanity’s shift towards greater and greater democracy. It does not begin in 1688 with England’s Glorious Revolution because all that faux-revolution did was legitimise monarchical oligarchy, which still exists today in England, in Saudi Arabia, in Morocco, and in all monarchies because that’s what monarchy is: collusion on behalf of a few against democracy, equality and humanity.

Monarchies, we must always remember, are the worst of all theocracies: the king claims to be God on earth, and even divine. This is not just despicable but socially and politically reactionary. It took until 1789 for the Eastern Hemisphere to realise this; some have learned, but some still have not and chant “God save the Queen”.

The West is ok with monarchy. They are ok with a privileged few. They are ok with inequality. They are ok with invasions. They think Western Liberal Democracy is the apex of political morality.

That’s all not just immoral, but it’s certainly nonsense history.

It may be interesting to supporters of the Iranian Islamic Revolution to know what did Napoleon say was perhaps his biggest mistake? Restoring the property of the old nobility, whom he had allowed back to France in an amnesty.

He did these things in a misguided effort to heal a country truly torn by years of civil war, which is what all revolutions essentially require; in a country whose revolution was attacked by all the monarchies of Europe (which is to say all of Europe, as 1789 was the first salvo against aristocratic privilege, let’s recall) almost ceaselessly for 20 years. The “Napoleonic Wars” are more accurately titled “the Wars Against the French Revolution”.

If we cautiously assume that they are over, the wars against the Iranian Revolution were shorter – only the bloodiest conflict of the last quarter of the 20th century – but the multinational coalition was just as big. And it even included the USSR, let’s recall.

Why? Because of the historic political advancement behind the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Ultimately, the French Revolution restored the nobles and thus only nationalised the wealth of the Roman Catholic clergy. They only ended monarchy. (Napoleon was voted emperor by millions of people, and the “voted” part is what made it a spectacular political advance for its era, and not just another typical monarchy.)

The Russian Revolution went further: it restored to the people the wealth of both the clergy and the monarchy, fully empowering the lower classes for the first time.

The Iranian Revolution’s genius is to also end monarchy and to fully empower the lower classes, but to not wage war on the clergy. 1979 empowered the lower classes while also elevated a politically righteous clergy, and in France, Russia, China, Cuba and elsewhere – this had never been done. The results have been a spectacular progress which puts Iran on the level of those historic political advances.

Iran has learned from the politically progressive lessons of 1789, as well as the lessons of 1917 (including not emulating their disastrously unpopular attempted eradication of religion), and now it humbly acts to create some lessons for their own people. Sadly, Iran’s acts inspire the same war by the privileged elite as they did in 1789 and 1917.

Every Iranian has witnessed the radical overturning of the political, economic and social pyramid since 1979. They also see the myriad number of failed Western client states, such as Egypt and Morocco – what Iran would have been had they not willed a popular revolution, and willed to maintain it.

Islam works politically, 1979 also proved. Even the Christian/secular/atheistic West is obsessed with Islam now – in stopping it from “competing in a free marketplace of ideas”, to use an oft-heard Western phrase. This is precisely because of the established success of 1979.

The current talk is that Washington is ready to restore the JCPOA. If so, great. If it’s followed by more stalling – perhaps this is just to give Joe Biden and the Democrats an election win for the midterms, or simply more time for their usual anti-revolutionary subversions – then we shouldn’t be surprised: Revolutionary France saw not just one but seven “Coalition Wars” to restore monarchy, privilege, feudalism, torture, inequality and the oppression of an aristocratic elite. They simply refused to make peace with the socio-political and socioeconomic advances of the French Revolution, which the French people democratically chose again and again and again.

If Iran wants to see its revolution continue it should learn from Napoleon: In 1814, during the 6th Coalition’s War Against the French Revolution, Paris – which hadn’t seen a foreign invader since Joan of Arc 400 years earlier – spectacularly fell without even a full day of fighting because the re-propertied nobles had spread defeatism, paid for subversion and colluded to reverse the French Revolution, which of course they still hated.

Iran has encouraged most exiles to return in an effort to heal the country – this is not necessarily the problem: Revolutionary France’s fault was in allowing inequality to return. Iran must ceaselessly implant the revolution’s principles and root out inequality, both political and economic – then the revolution can never be undemocratically subverted from within and from above, as both the French and Russian Revolutions ultimately were.

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نصرالله عصر التنوير وماكرون محاكم التفتيش Nasrallah – the Age of Enlightenment, Macron – the Inquisition

Posted on April 24, 2021 by martyrashrakat

ناصر قنديل

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العلمانية التي ظهرت كنظام سياسي وعقد اجتماعي للدولة الأوروبية المعاصرة، هي منتج سياسي وقانوني لثقافة أعمق نهضت على أكتاف الثورة الصناعيّة وتجسّدت في القرنين الثامن عشر والتاسع عشر بثورة العقل والمنطق. وما عُرف بعصر التنوير الذي قاده عمالقة بحجم فولتير وروسو ومونتسكيو، وتبلورت شعاراتها السياسية بالحرية والأخاء والمساواة في الثورة الفرنسية، بينما تبلورت فلسفته العميقة بالاحتكام للعقل، وكانت قطيعة مع تاريخ معاكس مثلته محاكم التفتيش الكاثوليكية التي دفع فيلسوف كبير مثل برونو وعلماء كبار مثل كوبرنيكوس وجاليلو ثمناً باهظاً لها بتهمة الهرطقة على قاعدة تحريم الاحتكام للعقل والعلم، بينما سياسياً واجتماعياً طورد الإصلاحيون باسم التبرؤ من البدع كما حدث مع الفيلسوف ميشال سيرفيه الذي أحرق حياً في جنيف بتهمة رفض عقيدة التثليث، فيما شكلت جرائمها بحق المسلمين في الأندلس أبرز ما حمله سجلها التاريخي تحت عنوان فحص الولاء لله، وشكلت فكرياً وثقافياً وجهاً من وجوه استمرار الحملات الصليبية.

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في ما يشبه استعادة مناخات الحروب الصليبية يتبادل الرئيسان الفرنسي والتركي عبثاً بالعقائد والعواطف والانفعالات المنبثقة عنها، حيث يصب كل منهما من طرفه وفي البيئة التي يخاطبها زيتاً على نار حرب عبثية، لا يتورّع فيها الرئيس الفرنسي امانويل ماكرون عن التحدث عن أزمة في الإسلام، وإرهاب إسلامي، وفاشية إسلامية، أملاً بأن يتزعم جبهة تضم العلمانيين بداعي الدفاع عن حرية التعبير في شقها المتصل بالتغطية على ما يطال المقدسات الإسلامية، وتضم المتطرفين المسيحيين، الذين لا يخفون ضيقهم من تنامي حضور وتعداد المسلمين في فرنسا خصوصاً وأوروبا عموماً، وإلى الفريقين تضم اليمين الوطني الرافض لتكاثر المهاجرين من البلاد الإسلامية، أملاً بأن يشكل هذا الثلاثي مصدر زعامة تشبه زعامات بناها قادة الحروب الصليبية، بينما يسعى الرئيس التركي رجب أردوغان، وفي ظل نزاع مصلحي بين الدولتين الفرنسية والتركية، لقيادة جبهة تضم الجاليات الإسلامية المقهورة تحت ظلم سياسات عنصرية في أوروبا، وتضم التنظيمات الإرهابية التكفيرية التي تشغّلها تركيا، وكانت فرنسا شريكها في التشغيل طوال سنوات الحرب على سورية، وتضم ثالثاً الشعوب العربية من المسلمين التي تسمع بصعوبة كلاماً منخفض الصوت لحكوماتها الواقعة تحت تبعية ذليلة لحكومات الغرب، فتعجز عن التجرؤ لمخاطبة الحكومات الغربية، والرئيس الفرنسي في المقدمة بلغة شجاعة تنتقد وتصحح وتعترض. وهذه الحكومات التابعة هي شريك لحكومات فرنسا وأوروبا في رعاية الجماعات الإرهابية وتشجيع الفكر التكفيري، لكن بغرض استعمال نتاج هذه الرعاية في ليبيا وسورية وليس في أوروبا.

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في هذا القحط الفكري، والانفلات القاتل للعصبيّات، يخرج رجل دين معمّم من أتباع الرسول وعشاقه ليقود الدعوة للتعقل وتحمّل المسؤولية، ووضع النقاط على الحروف، مستعيداً المعاني العميقة لشعارات الثورة الفرنسية ودعوات روسو وفولتير، حيث الحرية هي الاحترام العميق لحرية المعتقد. وهو في الأولوية معتقد الأقلية والضعفاء والمقهورين، والأخاء هو الترفّع عن منطق التمييز العنصري على اساس الدين والعرق واللون والجنس، والمساواة هي نزاهة تطبيق معيار المحاكمة العقلية للمفاهيم قبل أن تكون المساواة أمام القانون، حيث لا يستوي نص تحريم الحرية والعقل تحت شعار معاداة السامية، ولو التزما كل التحفظ العلمي والضوابط الأخلاقية، وتطلق حرية بث الكراهيّة، ولو تمت بصورة عبثية تستخف بالضوابط الأخلاقية والقيمية للأخوة الإنسانية، تحت شعار حرية التعبير، فجادل رجل الدين المعمم، بلغة عصر التنوير كوريث لمنجزات الحضارة الإنسانية، من يفترض أنه الوصي على تنفيذ منتجاتها من الموقع الدستوري والسياسي، بعدما ارتضى أن يتحول إلى قائد جيش في الحرب الصليبية أو رئيس غرفة من غرف محاكم تفتيش.

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كلام السيد حسن نصرلله في ما تشهده علاقة المسلمين والجاليات الإسلامية بالقضايا المثارة على مساحة أوروبا من وحي قضية الرسوم المسيئة للرسول والجرائم الإرهابية المتذرّعة بها، مرافعة فلسفية عقلانية تستعيد روح عصر التنوير والاحتكام للعقل، والحل الذي تبنّاه ختاماً لمرافعته، مستعيداً مقترح الأزهر بتشريع عالمي لتحريم النيل من المقدسات، حجر متعدد الأهداف في يوم الوحدة الإسلامية، بينما يتساءل بعض رجال القانون في فرنسا، لماذا لا تتم محاكمة أصحاب الرسوم المسيئة للرسول تحت بند العداء للسامية، أليس الرسول من أحفاد سام بن نوح، وقد روى الترمذي أن الرسول هو القائل بأن “سام أبو العرب ويافث أبو الروم وحام أبو الحبش”؟

Nasrallah – the Age of Enlightenment, Macron – the Inquisition

2/11/2020

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Secularism is a political regime and a social aspect of the contemporary European state, it is a political and legal outcome of a deeper culture that emerged as a result of the Industrial Revolution and was embodied in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the revolution of reason and logic or as was called the Age of Enlightenment led by the giants as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. Its political slogans called for freedom, brotherhood, and equality during the French Revolution. But this movement was faced with counter thinking represented by the Catholic Inquisition which a great philosopher as Bruno and great scholars as Copernicus and Galileo had paid a high cost in charge of heresy based on the prohibition of resorting to reason and science. Politically and socially, many reformists were chased under the name of the disavowal of heresies, as happened with the philosopher Michael Servetus who was burnt alive in Geneva on the accusation of rejecting the doctrine of Trinity. Its history was known for its crimes against Muslims in Andalusia under the name of loyalty to God, so intellectually and culturally it formed an aspect of the continuation of the Crusades.

As in the Crusades, the French and the Turkish Presidents exchanged in vain beliefs, emotions, and the outcome feelings. Each one of them has tried to evoke a futile war. The French President Emmanuel Macron did not hesitate to talk about a crisis in Islam, Islamic terrorism, and Islamic Fascism, hoping to lead a front that includes the secularists in order to defend the liberty of expression about Islamic sanctities, the Christian extremists, who are fed up with the growing number of Muslims in Europe in general and in France in particular, and the National right which rejects the growing number of immigrants from Islamic countries, hoping that this front can be a source of leadership as the leaderships of the Crusades. While the Turkish President Recep Erdogan was seeking to lead a front that includes the oppressed Muslim communities due to the tyranny of the racist policies in Europe, the takfiri terrorist organizations backed by Turkey, and the Arab Muslim nations who are suffering from their governments that are subordinated to the governments of the West, and do not dare to address them bravely, criticize or oppose. These governments are partners of the governments of France and Europe in sponsoring the terrorist groups and supporting the takfiri belief in order to be operated in Libya and Syria not in Europe.

In this intellectual aridity and fatal chaos of fanaticism, a religious man from the followers and lovers of the Prophet emerged to lead the call to be rational, to bear the responsibility, and to be clear, recalling the deeper meanings of the slogans of the French Revolution and the calls of Rousseau and Voltaire where freedom means the respect of the freedom of belief which is the belief of the minority, the weak, and the oppressed, and where brotherhood means to be away from the logic of the racial discrimination on the basis of religion, race, color, and gender, and where equality is the fairness of applying the mental judgment of concepts before it is governed by law, and where the texts of prohibiting freedom and reason cannot be dealt with under the slogan of anti-Semitism even if scientific reservation and moral controls were taken into consideration, and the freedom of  feeling hostile cannot be spread irrationally underestimating all moral controls of the human brotherhood under the slogan of the liberty of expression. Therefore, this religious leader has argued in the language of the Age of Enlightenment “as a heritage of the achievements of the human civilization” the man who is supposed to be the trustee constitutionally and politically not an army commander in the Crusades or a head of one of the inquisitions.

The words of Al Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah regarding the relationship of Muslims and the Islamic communities with the issues rose in Europe after the offensive drawings against the Prophet and the terrorist crimes relating are a philosophical and rational argument that recalls the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment and the resorting to reason. He adopted the suggestion of Al Azhar of an international legislation to prohibit the underestimation of sanctities as a base in the Day of the Islamic unity. While some jurists in France are wondering why the owners of the offensive drawings are not prosecuted under the name of anti-Semitism, Is not the Messenger one of the grandsons of Sam Bin Noah?! Al Tirmidhi narrated that the Prophet “peace be upon him” said: “Sam was the father of Arabs, Ham the father of the Ethiopians, and Yafith the father of the Romans”.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,

Filed under: Europe, Takfiris, War on Syria | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on نصرالله عصر التنوير وماكرون محاكم التفتيش Nasrallah – the Age of Enlightenment, Macron – the Inquisition

Washington’s Bastille

Posted on January 19, 2021 by martyrashrakat
Washington’s Bastille

January 16, 2021

by Jimmie Moglia for the Saker Blog

Trump’s supporters, having found the vanity of conjecture and inefficacy of expectations, resolved to prove their own existence, if not by violence, at least by physical presence.

They came forth into the crowded capital with an almost juvenile ambition that their numbers would be counted, their voice heard and their presence noticed.

But every upheaval, from Spartacus to the Bastille, is subject to unexpected developments. However peaceful the intents may be, the man involved in a turmoil is forced to act without deliberation, and obliged to choose before he can examine. He is surprised by sudden alterations of the state of things, and changes his measures according to superficial appearances.

Still, the corporate media, whose intestinal refuse is paraded as news, triumphs in every discovery of failure and ignores any evidence of success.

But, revolutionarily speaking, the storming of Washington was a success. And Trump did not expect, inspired or willed the unfortunate deaths.

If and when some reliable evidence will be produced, it will be probably found that parasitic elements, with dubious sponsors and of dubious character, joined the crowd.

This would only surprise the unawareness of the thoughtless. Even in Kiev, the ‘revolutionaries’ included characters who actually shot into the crowd from sundry buildings – as documented, in an intercepted phone call, by a then female president-of-something in the European Union.

Yet, when all is said and done, Washington may prove more eventful than the actual Bastille. For the date of the Bastille’s capture (July 14, 1789), became a French national commemorative event only through a convenient historical post-scriptum.

The punctilious historian may remember that the Bastille, like the Capitol dome in Washington, was visible from all of Paris – a medieval fortress, 100 ft high. At the time of the riot it only held seven prisoners, nor the mob gathered to free them. They wanted the ammunitions stored inside the wall.

When the prison governor refused, the mob charged and killed him. His head was carried round the streets on a spike.

Of the seven liberated prisoners one, a mentally-ill, white-bearded old man was paraded through the streets while he waved at the crowd, four were forgers who disappeared among the rabble, another, also mentally ill, was later re-incarcerated into an asylum. The only nobleman, and potentially an ‘enemy of the people’, was the Count de Soulange, who had been imprisoned at the request of his family for sexual misconduct.

The irony continues. Insensible to its possible historical value, the revolutionaries contracted with an enterprising bourgeois to demolish the tower.

After subduing the revolution Napoleon did not like the suggestive ideological connotations of the Place de la Bastille and thought of building there his ‘Arc de Triomphe’ (the one now in the ‘Etoile’), but that did not prove popular.

Therefore he ordered, instead, to build a huge bronze statue of an imperial elephant. A plaster model, a facsimile of the future finished product was built and inaugurated, but the wars made funding difficult. Waterloo and the Restoration did not help either. The plaster elephant stood in the iconic square from 1814 to 1848 when irreparable decay prompted its demolition.

But I digress.

As for the Washington’s Bastille, the related and subsequent events have openly shown the essentially unlimited power of the swamp, which, Don Quixote-like, Trump said he would attempt to drain.

Most of us know that the UUABLPPTH [Unmentionables Unless Accompanied By Lavish Praise plus their lackeys – hereinafter referred to as the ‘unmentionables’] make up the core of the swamp. I will return to them later, but the massively falsified elections, incontrovertibly show, among other things, how much the unmentionables hate the deplorables – in the instance and probably 60% of the nation.

Generally speaking and under often-recurrent conditions, elections are a rite enabling citizens to believe or continue to pretend that they live in a democracy rather than in an authoritarian regime.

By tradition, the absolute obedience of the population to absurd and incoherent decrees (“Patriot Act” et als.) has repeatedly reassured the masters that whatever they impose, the deplorables will accept.

For example, the Vietnam war protesters of old, plus peace-loving, cultural-marxists and amphetamines-laden youths met with policemen and waved flowers under their nose as an act of rebellion. But the war only ended seven years later. Meanwhile the richer and/or well-heeled dodged the draft, while the poorer didn’t. Besides, that ‘flower-inspired’ rebellion was not aimed at ending the war (or the war would have ended), but at turning upside down universally accepted ethics, and with ethics, perhaps unbeknown to them, the world as we know it.

Nevertheless I don’t think we should single out Americans for blame. Already in 1552, the young Frenchman Etienne de la Boetie wrote his “The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude” to address the central problem of political philosophy, namely the mystery of civil obedience.

Why do people, asked Etienne, in all times and all places obey the commands of the government, which always constitutes a small minority of the society? To him the spectacle of general consent to despotism (or in the recent American case, to fraud) is puzzling and appalling. “All this havoc – says he – descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourself render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in our cities. He has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves?”

Good question, we may say, but the problem remains. It is understandable in general, but only confusedly answerable in detail, due to the infinite intricacies of our individual lives. Therefore, a blanket indictment of the deplorables for letting themselves be driven by the unmentionables is theoretically logical but practically unjustified.

Still, during the Washington’s Bastille and for the first time that I recall, the unmentionables felt some concern for their ass. It is tragic that some of the revolutionaries died, because, as we know, the intent of the rally was peaceful and nothing compared to what was witnessed throughout America in 2020.
The lackeys’ official horror and concern for ‘democracy’ show that there is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts. All that wringing of arms and shows of deprecation are falser than oaths made in wine. For none of the Capitoline lords would answer why they didn’t want to recount the votes. Leading the average deplorable to conclude that there is no more faith in them (as a lot) than in a stewed prune. For their intoxication with themselves will give no way to reason.

Equally, the Washington’s Bastille brought to the attention of many how much the Constitution has sunk under the feet of the unmentionables. Here is but one example – not to repeat what the readers already know, but to show the arrogance associated with the systems of censure the country is subjected to.

After the death of Ms. Ashly Babbit, shot by a policeman, an Internet friend of mine published the following post on his FB account, along with her picture.

“This is Ashly Babbitt. She was shot and killed by law enforcement during a protest in America. No one will take the knee for her. There will be no murals in her honor. The media will not mourn her death. She is white therefore her life does not matter for the establishment.”

FB returned this message,

“Your account has been restricted for 30 days because your post did not follow community standards.”

To comment on FB’s response the author said, “Mourning the death of this woman on Facebook is banned. Yet we have spent many months mourning the death of a drug addict, a criminal, an abuser, a man who broke into a woman’s home and put a gun to her stomach in order to extort money out of her. We have been paying our respect to this man all over the world for the best part of last year. And this woman who proudly served her country, she is now dead and you cannot even pay your respects to her own social media.”

The restraint and politeness of the censored statement are beyond question. And its censuring should make us pause. For it shows the scorn of the enemy for the rest of us. A scorn that should include the concurrent barrage of nauseating platitudes and the unrestrained bubbling to the surface of a diabolical hatred, no-longer disguised but steeped deep in history.

The Internet is yesterday’s telephone and Zion did not invent the Internet, nor computers, computing and communication software. Yet, the communication engines and components, companies and operations, Google, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are owned and controlled by the unmentionables.

From his soul in hell, Coudenhove-Kalergi must be laughing his head off. His predicted new world, made up of ancient-Egyptians-looking deplorables lorded over by the unmentionables, cannot any longer be branded as a conspiracy theory. Under our own eyes there is the shape of things to come at large.

For he who controls speech controls opinion. Opinion molds thought and thought drives action. Therefore monopoly of opinion leads to control of action, and action includes just about every aspect of life and liberty.

Besides, free speech is ultimately vital to being human. It is the most important aspect of everything we refer to as freedom. Lack of freedom is the triumph of tyranny. And the train of tyranny drags in tow injustice, repression, murder, corruption, unjust and unnecessary wars.

Even earlier and more primitive media, newspapers and radio, controlled by a few, were the engines of persuasion and coercion to drive millions into quasi-genocidal world wars.

As an aside and in this respect, Germans owe a debt of historical gratitude to the Soviet Union. For it was fear of the Soviets that prevented the implementation of the “Morgentau Plan”, already signed by Roosevelt and Churchill, to be carried out after the end of WW2 – a plan that included the sterilization of all Germans. Disbelievers may wish to consult the details of the plan, as well as the book, “Germany Must Perish” printed in the US during the war.

Restricting free speech is necessary in every war and every tyranny. And we can identify tyranny by how much freedom of speech we have and by how much we can criticize the rulers. For reason and truth can outweigh lies and corruption. But massive suppression and an avalanche of lies and propaganda can make a mockery of factual truth and stuff the ears of men with false reports. Many, sick of show and weary of noise, turn off the set, how many we know not.

In this respect, technology and the power of global corporations to corrupt the minds have never been more powerful and ominous, in all history.

Furthermore, media of all types can now control feelings as well as the more primitive emotional parts of the brain. Never has government been bigger and more able to repress freedom with an infrastructure that includes the FBI, CIA, NSA and their counterparts in individual states and nations.

Never past tyrants better controlled their subjects than the globalists today. The threat to the freedom of the western peoples of the world is the greatest threat to their existence. Suppression of freedom of speech is exampled in the attitude of a controlled media, which is totally against the common feelings of the majority.

Most peoples of the world and nations want to preserve their nationality, country, customs, habits, religion and way of life. None of the corporate channels reflect these beliefs and objectives.

The axis of movies, Zionist Hollywood, ever since the abolition of the “Motion Pictures Production Code” act (1954), has been an extremely powerful engine of persuasion and shaper of belief, custom, habits and action, as well as an inculcator of hatred, let alone depravity. For reference read this article [ https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/01/14/the-jewish-role-in-promoting-cannabis-and-why-its-bad-for-you/ ]

The sum of these forces led to the US summer of 2020. Which was not a summer of discontent, but an extended season of Hollywood and media-inspired hatred. And mass hatred, as opposed to individual hatred, is an organized phenomenon.

The current biggest shapers of thought and human action are the networks of social media, primary tools for sharing ideas and learning things.

Owning and controlling these organizations are a few people, whose ethnic affiliation is undisputed and unmentionable. They can decide what the world can see, say, hear and consequently think.

Dismissing the reality and the consequences of this ideological monopoly as a ‘conspiracy theory’ is an insult to the minds of millions.

The conspiratorial element of a theory depends on identifiable circumstances and hypotheses. Even historically sanctified characters such as president Franklin Roosevelt stated as follows,

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way…” The point is that many of the major world events that shape our destinies occur because there is a plan behind them.”

In the same line of thought, if we were merely dealing with the law of averages, half of the events affecting a nation’s well-being should be good for that nation. If it were just a matter of incompetence, the leaders should occasionally make a mistake in favor of the deplorables. Instead it is planning and foresight that form the shape of things to come at large.

Not that chance is necessarily ruled out. According to his biographers, even Hitler firmly believed in grasping at fleeting opportunities. In a speech or lecture to his adjutants given in 1938 he said, “There is but one moment when the goddess of fortune wafts by, and if you don’t grab her then by the hem you won’t to get a second chance.”

The quote came to mind in thinking about the disparagers who have compared Trump with Hitler. Stupidity is sometimes invincible but, probably unbeknown to his detractors, Trump as a president, shared some characteristics associated with leaders who reach power outside the canonical paths – canonical paths that often include corruption, opportunistic servitude and/or crime.

For one, by all appearances Trump had far less authority on his advisers and subordinates than what we think a president has – an authority that seemingly weakened with each passing year. Also, a characteristic of heads of state who over-rely on advisers is a conscious desire ‘not to know.’ Even if they are later deemed directly responsible for what happened.

It is total speculation but the assassination of the Iranian General Suleimani may be one such instance. Though in other cases the reverse is true. The opening towards Kim Yong Sun of North Korea fits with Trump’s general style.

On the other hand, the policy towards Venezuela, though justified imperialistically, does not fit the profile. The ‘self-proclaimed’ Guaido’ is a puppet worthy of a Simpsons cartoon. Based on what I know of the country (readers may also consult my article “Don’t Cry for Me Venezuela”), the regime is anything but what described by the unmentionable media. The tight economic sanctions, the equivalent of a war, the arbitrary freezing of Venezuela’s gold reserves in London, the theft of CITGO, (the Venezuelan oil company operating in the US), the placing a bounty of 15 million $ on the head of Maduro, the many failed coups d’etat – quite open in planning and gross in execution – do not seem consistent with Trump’s character, at least as displayed in his general demeanor and other occasions.

Incidentally, the two ‘ambassadors’ of the Guaido’ puppet, in the US and Britain, are unmentionables. And there is an extant recording of the UK ‘ambassador’ Newman where she discusses assigning the Esequibo mineral-rich area – disputed between Venezuela with Guyana since the early 1800 – to an Exxon consortium of sorts.

Besides, in my view and independently of ideological convictions, in oratory, consistence, intelligence and demeanor Maduro towers over all former and latter members of the Trump administration put together. A remarkable achievement, I think, for someone who started as a bus driver and union leader to become the president of Venezuela. And although I cannot, of course, verify its accuracy, there is information among some Venezuelan sources that Trump expressed a secret admiration for Maduro.

To conclude, most records of history are but narratives of successive villainies, treasons and usurpations, massacres and wars – of which professional historians explain causes and effects.

As a non professional historian but a rude mechanical who earns his bread upon the Athenian walls I offer here an extremely arbitrary theory. On the ground that, just as a right line describes the shortest passage from point to point, a plausible historical explanation is that which connects distant truths by the shortest of intermediate propositions.

Therefore I select few key events – constituting an arbitrary beginning and its connecting causal links to the present. In the instance, fractional banking, 1968, Reagan and the Washington Bastille.

Fractional banking is a generally familiar idea whose implications, I think, are not sufficiently realized due to the apparently neutral effect of the term ‘fractional’. Risking the contempt of professionals and economists I will reduce the notion to its core with an example.

A bank that owns, says, 10 k$ in gold can loan out 100 k$ in money that does not exist – at say, 10% yearly interest.

After one year, globally, the borrowers return 110 k$ to the bank, (loans plus interest). Of the globally returned 110 k$, 100k$ are the money that did not exist, but the 10 k$ paid as interest correspond to the labor expended by the borrowers.

Let’s for a moment overlook where the borrowers got the additional 10k$ from, because for the purpose of this demonstration, the point is not important.

The bottom line is that with an investment of 10 kS of actual money (gold for example) the banker realizes an interest of a real 10k$ or 100%. Now with 20 k$ of actual money he can lend out 200k$ of non-existing money and so on.

It follows that the bank’s wealth increases exponentially. Consequently, sooner or later, the bank or banking system will essentially own and control – directly and indirectly – everything that has a demonstrable commercial value.

Fractional banking became the operating system of the first modern capitalism only at the end of the 17th century, with the establishment of the Bank of England. Which, unknown to many, was a private bank that lent money to the crown for conducting business and waging wars. Money paid back from the taxes on citizens.

The system is so brilliant in its simplicity that we must wonder why was it not applied centuries before.

And here we meet again with the unmentionables. Christianity, as well as Islam for that matter, considered interest usury and usury a sin.

The philosophical tricks by which Christian rulers tried to skirt the issue are ingenious and often amusing. Suffice to say, with a gross generalization, that it was found more expedient to let the unmentionables handle the matter. From thereon begin their path to unstoppable power.

As for 1968 – the second selected event – there took place a brilliant ideological operation, and again I generalize for simplicity. For the 1968 ‘revolution’ launched the ideology aimed at the deconstruction and destruction of the family, customs, traditions and gender distinctions. Destruction leading eventually to the assault on nationalities and ethnicities.

That destruction is in progress. I suspect without proof that the unmentionables’ hatred for Trump stems from his effort, however feeble, to mount an opposition. Opposition to a new world order where humans become merchantable individual atoms, drifting on the smooth world plane of exchangeable merchandise.

As for Reagan, with his background as a Coca-Cola cowboy, he was the perfect president for cutting the taxes of the rich, under the now all-but-forgotten theory of ‘trickle-down economics.’ Perhaps a thinly-disguised reference to the parable of the rich Epulon, from whose table fell the crumbs for the starving deplorables of the time.
From then on and on a planetary scale the already exorbitant assets of the overclass, began to increase immeasurably. And deregulation triggered a race to the concentration of capital and activities. Resulting in the stratospheric wealth of the few, with which they can buy everybody and everything, and become a dominant power over the traditional states, as even the events of the last few weeks unquestionably prove.

Remember Reagan’s, “The state is not the solution of problems, the state is the problem”. And now the state, the law and even health (e.g. Covid) are turning into a mockery of themselves.

In the end and in my view, the Washington’s Bastille was but the externation of long repressed and related feelings of helplessness.

To those who cannot but feel nauseated by the means used to impose the current presidential ticket on the rest of us, I will quote the answer, attributed to the wife of a Turkish diplomat at the court of King Lois XV. A courtier was asking her what happiness consisted in. “My lord – she replied – our happiness depends on the circulation of the blood.” [… ma foi, Monsieur, notre bonheur depend de la facon que notre sang circule.]

The others may reflect that, after all, man is little more than an instrument in an orchestra directed by the muse of history.

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On Revolution and Counter-Revolution

Posted on January 4, 2021 by uprootedpalestinians
On Revolution and Counter-Revolution

January 03, 2021

by Francis Lee for The Saker Blog

‘‘A party of order or stability, and a party of progress and reform, are both the necessary elements of a healthy state of political life’’. Wise words – John Stuart Mill. But unfortunately not the reality in the present political dispensation. (1)

It is interesting to note that the current global political and social turbulence has been both cause and effect of deep social and political shifts in the body politic. In addition, these subterranean disturbances have also been accompanied by a strange melange of rank stupidity and quasi-religious fanaticism. The nouveau regime of monied interests consisting of the alliance of financial, political and corporate power is now mobilising to impose a radical new global order. These political/economic centres of power have also been given the imprimatur of legitimation by the controllers of the propaganda apparatus – the mass media and its priesthood.

However, there seems to be a general lack of understanding with regard to the nature of the perpetrators of this ongoing political project and its (reactionary) set of end-goals. This distinctive feature of the present crisis has not received much in the way of a characterisation as a political phenomenon and is in need of serious analysis. Strange to say that what appears to be a revolutionary movement, that is, a political upheaval from below with the object of overthrowing tyranny, is, in the present instance, a movement (coup-putsch) from above whose object is to establish it. It is this new order which is being foisted on society from above by those who have used their social and economic power and position to break apart the old order which was established during the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) and consolidated after WW2.

The Great Reset – as it is now called – is a de facto class-based counter-revolutionary movement which involves the political and economic apparatus and its overseers and is directed toward the expropriation of the masses and an imposition of naked class rule. However, what is notable is that many of the opponents of the above reactionary movement who tend to be conservative (small c) intellectuals seem disposed to conflate the Great Reset with the French, Russian, English, and American Revolutions – in short between revolutions and counter-revolutions. Granted, theirs is a well-argued position but it seems to miss the obvious political nature of elite rule by, and composed of, privileged class forces. The conservative analysis also tends to identify what we have been, where we are, and how we got here, but doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of where we might be going. There appears to be an almost religious impulse at the bottom of most conservative philosophy: to wit, man is a fallen angel, imperfect and always will be from being guilty of original sin. Even Sigmund Freud weighed in with this dual aspect to human nature, i.e., Eros and Thanatos (see Civilization and its Discontents).

The Conservative Ideology

Without wishing to seem cavalier I think that the conservative position can be briefly stated as follows: According to this outlook the French revolution, indeed all revolutions, lead to bloodshed, anarchy, and mayhem as well as the many other evils which were brought about by lifting the lid of a political Pandora’s Box. In one sense this certainly is the case. But then comes the great conservative non-sequitur: namely, that all revolutions must fail due to the imperfections of human nature. And apparently the world should stand still at contemplate their collective navels at this political juncture! But there is no reason to believe this will always be the case, and in addition that it is more of a political assertion than a matter of fact. Furthermore it doesn’t leave much room to engage in political change from those who have most to gain from it and who are, by hook or by crook, involuntarily disengaged from any genuine peaceful road to change by the existing swindle mechanisms which are managed and controlled by a decadent ruling elite.

Edmund Burke – 1729-1797 – The Conservative:

The archetype of conservative political philosophy in this respect was Edmund Burke. In his Reflections of the Revolution in France, Burke, the Irish Whig politician was to put forward the most widely read summation as to why revolutions fail. Published in 1790 the Reflections, Burke argued that the French Revolution would end disastrously because its abstract foundations, purportedly rational, ignored the complexities of human nature and society. Further, he focused on the practicality of solutions instead of the metaphysics, writing: “What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In this deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor”.  Following St. Augustine and Cicero, he believed in “human heart”-based government.’’

Nevertheless, and in somewhat way strange manner, he was contemptuous and afraid of the Enlightenment, inspired by the writings of such intellectuals as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, who disbelieved in divine moral order and original sin. Burke’s view was that society should be handled like a living organism and that people and society are limitlessly complicated, leading him to conflict with Thomas Hobbes‘ assertion that politics might be reducible to a deductive system akin to mathematics.

As a Whig, Burke advocated central roles for private property, tradition, and prejudice (i.e. adherence to values regardless of their rational basis) and to give citizens a stake in their nation’s social order. He argued for gradual, constitutional reform, not revolution (in every case, except the most qualified case), emphasizing that a political doctrine founded upon abstractions such as liberty and the rights of man could be easily abused to justify tyranny (sic) … and so on and so forth.

Other conservatives have argued in much the same vein. One such, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten – I think it might have been Thomas Carlyle – sums up the conservative philosophy in simple terms: ‘What is, is right.’ For the orthodox conservative, therefore, we must prostrate ourselves before the spirit of the ages, for therein lies true wisdom and good conscience. Hmmm?

Thomas Paine (1736-1809) – The Radical

Mr Paine came from a more radical political tradition. He argued that the current generation needs to be in control of their society, and not under the control and tutelage of a society formed by the past generation, most of which is dead. He argues,

“The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in any man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.” He attacks Burke’s motive, saying Burke never believed there would even be a revolution because the French lacked the spirit and the fortitude, “but now that there is one, he seeks an escape by condemning it … Every act and every generation must be free to act for itself, in all cases as did the ages and generations which preceded it.’’ (2)

He continues.

‘’Whether a man reflects on the condition which France was in from the nature of her government he will see other causes for revolt than those which immediately connect themselves with the person or character of Louis XVI. There were, if I may say so express it, a thousand despotisms to be reformed in France, which had grown up under the despotism of monarchy, and became so rooted as to be in great measure independent of it. Between the monarchy and the parliament, and the church, there was a rivalship of despotism, besides the feudal despotism operating locally, and the ministerial despotism operating everywhere. But Mr Burke, by considering the King as the only possible object of revolt, speaks as if France were a village, in which everything which passed must be known to its commanding officer, and no oppression could be acted but what he could immediately control. Mr Burke might have been in the Bastille his whole life, as well as under Louis XVI and Louis XIV and neither one nor the other had known that such a man as Mr Burke existed. The despotic principles of the government were the same in both reigns, though the dispositions of the men were as remote as tyranny and benevolence. (3)

Paine is arguing that these revolutions from below – taking The French Revolution as a prototype – had to be understood in the social and political context that gave rise to such an explosive rebellion. The masses do not make revolutions at the drop of a hat or as if they had nothing better to do. When the steam cooker blows its top it is because the valve had been screwed down too tight for too long. Such is the logic of all revolutions in recent years (other than the fake colour variety). The Iranian revolution of 1979 was, like it or not, another peoples’ revolutionary upsurge which fundamentally changed the existing order – i.e., the western controlled Shah and his SAVAK murderers – for good. And why shouldn’t the Iranian people throw off the yoke of imperialist rule – a despotic regime whose power was mediated through western imperialism’s local vassals?

The Royalist/Aristocratic class rule in France, summed up by the ‘Let them eat cake’ ancien regime, typified the disposition of the old order, and was overthrown in a peoples revolution, and the fact that Edmund Burke wasn’t too keen on it, it was nonetheless a genuine revolution from below; an expropriation of the power and position of the aristocratic ascendency.

In England in the 17th century a conflict arose between who should rule: Parliament or the King. A revolution and civil war between Parliament and Charles 1 began in 1642 which Charles lost as a result of the military victories of the Parliamentary New Model Army led jointly by Oliver Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax at crucial battles – Marston Moor in 1644, and Naseby in 1645 – this was also a revolution. King Charles then lost his head – quite literally – in 1649, for Treason. The war raged on as a Scottish army was defeated at the battle of Dunbar and until 1651 with the final battle of Worcester – when the Royalists effectively threw in the towel – which was another (final) victory for the Parliamentary forces. In passing Thomas Fairfax’s descendants migrated to America and settled in Virginia, there is a suburb in Washington which bears their name – Fairfax.

It is also worth mentioning in this respect that a great number of millenarian, political, religious, and quasi-religious movements were quite common in this period. These were comprised of inter alia Baptists, early anarchist groups, the Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Quakers. There was much radicalism in the land, and although a period of Reformation followed, Parliamentary sovereignty was eventually established and represented a massive step forward for democracy and ordinary folk.

One would have to ask the question of which of to-day’s conservatives among us whose side would they be on during these upheavals? Cromwell, Fairfax, Parliament and the New Model Army, or the King sitting on his throne, immovable, and granted godly rights to remain there forever by the deity?

Revolution and Consolidation

However, as was the normal historical pattern the usual explosive period of revolutionary fervour was followed by a partial reformation to the earlier status quo. But the push back was never as far back as from its original starting point. The great German social theorist, Max Weber (1864-1920) put it very succinctly when he noted that charismatic authority was over time replaced by legal-rational authority. Most of the gains of the revolution which had now lost its momentum were nonetheless embedded in the new social order. So Charles 1 was replaced by Cromwell who in turn was replaced by Charles 2 but the divine right of Kings was gone, and was ultimately replaced by Parliamentary democracy, Mao Tse Tung was replaced by Chou En Lai, Trotsky was replaced by Stalin. (4)and on and on.

Which brings us to the American revolution. This anti-imperialist Revolution was both an ideological and political event which occurred in colonial North America between 1765 and 1783. The American settlers, with help from England’s arch-enemy the French, whose fleet had bottled up the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.* In the Thirteen Colonies the American militias defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and by so doing gained independence from the British Crown and establishing the United States of America, the first modern constitutional liberal democracy.  The Continental Congress declared King George III a tyrant who trampled the colonists’ rights as Englishmen, and they declared the colonies free and independent states on July 2, 1776. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, and they proclaimed that all men are created equal.

Unfortunately in contemporary America, the money-changers – who were the bête noir for FDR – have not only gained access to the temple but have actually taken it over, lock stock and barrel. Worse still the anti-imperialism of a prior era has given way to a dangerous, rampaging, rogue elephant of contemporary American imperialism. But this is not necessarily the end of the story. For good or ill the great wheel of history turns. The last 2 centuries have been tumultuous and uncoordinated affairs and unkind to any of those who wished to lead a quiet life. But like the man said.

‘’Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given, and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.  And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language.” (5)

Conservative disengagement

Men make history, history makes men, as Marx noted. But it would appear that present-day conservative thinkers apparently prefer to abstain from history making – a dirty, shoddy business – and retire into an aloof detachment, and taking Voltaire’s advice to cultivate their gardens. This is of course the position of all conservative elites and their paid-up servant polemicists. In the case of the British Empire such elites consisted of Cecil Rhodes, George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Alfred Milner, Lord Nathaniel Rothschild et al, (see Mathew Ehret – works, in this respect.)

Their apologists were the tribe of conservative scribes past and present including Burke, Hobbes, Ortega Y Gasset, De Maistre, who basically made a living by the simple proclamation that ‘‘All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.’’ This as enunciated in Voltaire’s novel Candide. But such a view is now associated principally with the satire, and so is almost never used sincerely. However it is used to describe this kind of all to common complacent self-assurance that apparent injustice or other evil could not be avoided or was somehow necessary in the grand scheme of things. And that seems to be the essence of conservatism, ancient and modern.

Contemporary spokespersons include (deceased and current) inter alia Michael Oakshott, Peter Hitchens, Peter Lavelle, Roger Scruton, Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand (a particularly toxic specimen) and so forth, the list is extensive. These are often intelligent and literate people, but alas, they seem to spend most of their time agonising about the state of the world and then advocate doing nothing about it. But this is wholly consistent with the entire conservative philosophy. It seems to be an almost monastic calling among conservative thinkers and intellectuals. But history won’t let them rest. The West’s decaying and decadent elites are determined to enforce their will on their respective societies by an all-encompassing and total putsch from above – the Great Reset no less. Yet the conservatives still contend that the world is in the process of being over-run by a revolution carried out by the sans-culottes and énrages of George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, The Atlantic Council the Council For Foreign Relations, The Silicon Valley giants, Google, Apple, Facebook, Visa, The Federal Reserve, The IMF/World Bank The Financial Times, The New York Times Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Uncle Tom Cobley and All. I have even heard Soros described as a ‘Cultural Marxist’ (sic!) – words fail one! But this is the level of political illiteracy to which we have unfortunately descended. Revolutions are no easy option and,

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.’’ (6)

NOTES

(1) John Stuart Mill – On Liberty, Chapter 2 Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.

(2) Thomas Paine – The Rights of Man.

(3) Paine – Ibid.

(4) Max Weber – Economy and Society – Ibid.

(5) Karl Marx -The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

*On this day in history, August 30, 1781, the French fleet arrives at the Chesapeake Bay to assist the Americans in their assault on British General Charles Cornwallis and his 9,000 troops at Yorktown, Virginia. The arrival of the fleet under Admiral Francois-Joseph Paul, the Comte de Grasse, played a decisive role in the British defeat at Yorktown.

(6) Thomas Paine – December 1776.

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The ‘Third Way’ Scam

Posted on October 28, 2020 by martyrashrakat
The ‘Third Way’ Scam

October 27, 2020

By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog

Historically speaking “left” ‘’right,” and ‘centre” has been the political configuration dating from the French Revolution. In the 1789 French National Assembly, the nobility and high clergy sat to the right of the chair, while the third estate and lower-status clergy sat on the left. The benches in the middle became associated with political moderation.

Over the next century-plus, most European polities allowed for a “centrist” presence. Even the design of the European parliaments where the seating arrangements were horseshoe shaped and still are, except that is for the British parliament where the contending parties sit directly facing each other; initially Tories and Whigs but from the 20th century onwards Labour and Conservative. There were the cross-benches where the minor and generally ineffective parties sat. But Centrism will likely be distressed to learn that the first recorded appearance of the word “centrist,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was an 1872 insult from London’s Daily News correspondent in France, who assailed “that weak-kneed congregation who sit in the middle of the House, and call themselves centrists.’’

In the UK the centre was traditionally moderate, providing a seating space for a small Liberal party, until that is, the late Celtic arrivals of Irish, Welsh and Scottish militant nationalists – Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party who began to make their presence felt.

But it was the European party structures and their Parliamentary expression that led invariably to coalition governments; this was the case even in Nazi Germany where Hitler had to form an alliance with the Zentrum Liberal party to get an absolute majority in the Reichstag. This was quite different from the Anglo-American two party systems where the Government could de facto be elected on a one-party vote.

Nonetheless, centrism had its more forthright defenders. In the US at the dawn of the Cold War, liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger celebrated political moderation as a vigorous “Third Force” in his 1949 book The Vital Centre. Rather than left or right, he wrote, the real conflict was “freedom vs. totalitarianism.” The United States’ goal presidential election — which saw the resounding defeat of George McGovern in 1972 — occasioned a rightward shift in centre-left parties. Smarting from defeat and the Nixon triumph Democratic elites moved to retake control for a new direction for the party. And it was this that set the tone, not merely for the United States but also in Europe. In 1992 the man of the moment William Jefferson Clinton had arrived. But there was much work to be done. The sabotage of the tools that had underpinned the prosperity of the Golden Age of Capitalism (1945-75) also created unprecedented challenges for the political parties of the ‘soft’ left. Infused with what were thought to be new ideas they now began to look for new paths forward less hostile to finance and big business.

‘’We have moved past the sterile debates between those who say that government is the enemy, and those who say that government is the answer, said Clinton who, along with his wife Hilary had studied at Yale school during the 1970s, and Bill had an unfinished stint at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in the late 60s (1) ‘My fellow Americans we have found a ‘Third Way’

THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE THIRD WAY

The ‘Third Way’ was a rather slippery and nebulous concept. In purely policy terms, however, the Clinton reforms were a mixed bag and differed from the postulates laid down by the former Reagan administration. In his 1992 presidential campaign Clinton promised that, if elected, he would bring about the “end of welfare as we know it.” This catchy election pledge aimed to address middle class concerns about so–called welfare dependency while also arguing that the government had an important role to play in fighting poverty and unemployment. Clinton’s Third Way position, at best, offered a way out of the liberal/conservative impasse on how to effectively reform America’s welfare system. At worst, Clinton’s position undermined the concept of welfare entitlements that the Democratic Party had established in America at an earlier period. In 1996 during the lead up to that year’s presidential election, President Clinton signed into law the most significant federal welfare Act since the 1960s. However, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) that Clinton signed had largely been drafted by congressional Republicans. Then came NAFTA, the bitterly contested policy which still rankles.

But possibly the most politically significant piece of legislation authorised by the Clinton administration was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. This Act had prevented ordinary commercial banks owning excess of certain types of dubious and dangerous financial companies, which had been considered so useful that it had survived until it was repealed in 1999 under Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former Goldman Sachs banker.

Of course this was manna from Heaven for the banking and financial fraternity, and it indicated the President’s choice of policies which had little in common with his professed ‘Third Way’ beliefs. In conclusion the failure of Clinton’s Third Way welfare agenda opened the way for more conservative reforms. This experience is illustrative of the pitfalls of Third Way politics with its mix of post–entitlement welfare policies and hard–nosed electoral positioning.

That being said the US economy began to move into high-gear during the 1990s and even managed a budgetary surplus. Alas, however, as with all upturns comes the downturns and the long-run, dot.com blow-out of 1999/2000, the US boom of the roaring 90s turned into a secular decline, and this was followed by even deeper economic crises in 2008 and now in 2020.

It could be argued in terms of cyclical political movements that there exists a rough correspondence between political and economic phases. In political terms this is usually a cyclical period between progress and reaction, movement, and order, conservative or radical, revolution and restoration. The great German social and political theorist, Max Weber, (1864-1920) would have argued that the Clinton restoration being based upon the Reagan/Thatcher ascendency was an example of charismatic authority that was superseded by legal-rational authority. In broad illustrative terms the MaoZedong period in China was followed by Chou En Lai, Trotsky was followed by Stalin, Napoleon by Louis XVIII, Cromwell was followed by the reinstallation of Charles II. As day follows night Revolution is followed by Restoration. But the restoration is never complete, and there can be no turning back to the status quo ante. But the strange thing was that during the second half of the 20th century a reactionary right-wing movement, best illustrated by Reagan and Thatcher was replaced by a milder ‘Third Way’ version of the same theory. The ‘Third-Way’ was beginning to take on rather familiar social and political forms, although its proponents would argue otherwise.

THE THIRD WAY CROSSES THE BIG POND

By 1997 the Clinton ascendancy – the Third-Way – had come to the attention of an ambitious young man who was trying to find an occupational niche for himself in the London milieu. Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, who preferred to be called ‘Tony’ (of course) and described himself as a ‘regular kind of guy’ (goes without saying) was the son of a barrister, Blair attended Fettes College in Edinburgh (a school often viewed as ‘‘Scotland’s Eton’’) and Saint John’s College of the University of Oxford, where he combined the study of law with interest in religious ideas and popular music. But he displayed little enthusiasm for politics until he met his future wife, Cherie Booth. He graduated from Oxford in 1975 and was called to the bar* the following year. While specializing in employment and commercial law, he became increasingly involved in Labour Party politics and in 1983 was elected to the House of Commons to the safe Labour parliamentary seat of Sedgefield, a tight-knit former mining district in north-eastern England. His entry into politics coincided with a long political ascendancy of the Conservative Party (from 1979) and Labour’s loss of four consecutive general elections (from 1979 through 1992). He stood as leader of the Labour party and won an overwhelming victory (1997) over a divided, dispirited and out-of-ideas, Conservative party.

Blair was one of those archetypal politicians – unfortunately one of many – who didn’t have a political notion in their heads; and as a complete opportunist he was, as was the case with Clinton, able to latch on to some of the fashionable threadbare and dubious political and economic ideas current at that time. One of those fashionable notions was the ‘Third Way’ in politics.

In fact the ‘Third Way’ was a pretty simple idea.

‘’It was an attempt by the parties of the left to stake out a new middle-ground in politics. Fuddy-duddy socialist ideas were considered distinctly de trop. Globalization as its proponents would argue, was considered inevitable, so countries should embrace it and adapt to it, hitching a ride on the growth of global financial markets, then shaving off globalizations rough edges with progressive social policies and dollops of good old-fashioned redistribution. As Blair and Germany’s Gerhard Schröder summarised it in a joint declaration in 1998, the Third Way stands out not only for social justice but also for economic dynamism and the unleashing of creativity and innovation.

But this third way was always an offshore model, a recipe for countries effectively to turn themselves into tax havens in order to prosper in rough, globalizing seas. The model was, in turn, driven by the competitiveness agenda, the notion or ideology, that states must be ‘open for business’ constantly dangling enticements to large multinationals and banks and to rootless global money – for fear that they will decamp to more hospitable or ‘competitive’ places like Dubai, Singapore or Geneva. (2)

THE IDEOLOGICAL ASSIMILATION OF THE OLD LEFT

But behind the rhetoric of a new golden age which awaited the electorates on both sides of the pond was the familiar sound of disappointment among the loyal supporters and believers who were somewhat sceptical about the new order – with good reason. The newly entrenched and consolidated Third-Way involved strict de-regulation of labour markets and only light-touch regulation – if at all – of financial markets. In the meantime financiers, were still relatively untouched by the pseudo-rhetoric of globalization. The whole dreary neo-classical credo was trotted out namely that that if left alone, financial markets would reward efficient firms and punish inefficient ones which would go out of business. Meanwhile financiers could help with mergers and transfers of ownership of the more efficient. This reasoning also bolstered demand for the privatisation of state enterprises, which was soon embraced with almost as much enthusiasm by social democratic parties as by their right-wing opponents – witness the French socialist government of Lionel Jospin and the renamed ‘New Labour’ government of Tony Blair.

The period of debt-financed growth got into gear in the early 80s during which it was sustained up until the start of the 21st century. That time bore witness not only to economic issues but also to political and ideological questions and concepts; a reactionary milieu established itself where decadence had become de rigueur. The presence of rampant individualism, obsession with self, contempt for failure was contained in Ayn Rand’s view of life. Doyenne of the new age Ms Rand’s rise in popularity coincided with the widest gap between rich and poor in the history of the US. Her books are today actually more popular than when she lived, and attempts are being made by very wealthy parties to sell her ideology as the philosophy of our era.

Ms Rand has been accused of Vulcanism, that is of exhibiting an attitude of pure logic unbalanced by empathy and humanity like the character Spock from Star Trek, who is from planet Vulcan. When people of high intelligence lack human empathy, they can be intellectually arrogant, even narcissistic.

One of the major criticisms of Ayn Rand is that all her heroes are self-centred sociopaths, as she is: they are concerned only with themselves, with their own purpose and ambition, and they are entirely unconcerned with others.

Rand also ignores context in her assessment of reality: the persistence of her logic leads to places where philosophy gets utterly divorced from common sense and reality. Philosophical materialists must contend with the facticity that we are woven into in its entirety, even with those aspects of our facticity that are what she would view as not heroic, like the hunger of the masses.

Okay it can be generally agreed that the idiosyncratic Ms Rand is a little bit over the top, but her generalisations roughly ring true with today’s ailing social and moral societal collapse.

But as Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) once noted:

‘If, in activities that almost completely fill all of our days, we follow no rule save that of our own self-interest, as we understand it, how then can we acquire a taste for altruism, for forgetfulness of self and sacrifice? Thus the lack of any economic discipline cannot fail to produce damaging social effects that spill over beyond the economic sphere, bringing with it a decline in morality.’’(3)

One wonders whether or not Ms Rand actually believes in her virulent anti-social messages, or, what I rather suspect, she is simply out to shock the more gullible by voicing what are in essence simply crackpot outpourings.

That being said she certainly has a following particularly among those well-heeled denizens who seem intoxicated with these rantings.

IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID

Turning to economics the situation goes from bad to worse. This is hardly surprising since the attempt to abolish the trade cycle, a rather eccentric and fashionable notion since the early 1980s, was bound to result in an economic nemesis. It has been argued that:

‘’Whilst all capitalist systems are premised on the monopolisation on the gains of growth by the people who own the assets, under finance led growth these dynamics become more extreme. Rising private debt might conceal this fact during the upswing of the economic cycle, but when the downturn hits it becomes clear that finance-led growth is based upon trickle-up economics, in which the gains of the wealthy come directly at the expense of ordinary people. This is because financialization involves the extraction of economic rents from the production process – income derived from the ownership of existing assets that does not create any new value. (4)

Paper currency is not value, it is a claim on value, a promissory note. Value is produced in the production process, whereas economic rent – rent on land, titles of future ownership claims (stocks, shares, bonds) monopolistic pricing, patents – is produced in the extractive process. It is fictitious capital. The financial economy is essentially parasitic on the productive economy.

When corporations generate ‘growth’ it should be understood that the Central Bank enables this ‘growth’ when it showers the same corporations with QE monies who simply buy-back their own shares/stocks and become richer! In the same manner when large corporations buy other smaller businesses – through mergers and acquisitions M&A, they also become ‘richer’ but in fact no new wealth has been created, what has occurred is a shift of wealth from one sector of the economy to another, this is a zero-sum game where the central bank determines the winners and losers in this rigged fixture: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Another side of this process is the increasing market concentration with the growth of monopolies/oligopolies and the monopoly rents that go with it.

Having painted itself into a corner the economics institutions, both public and private, seem unable to extricate themselves from an ever-tightening process of slow economic and political strangulation.

In summation we may say without reservation that the ‘Third-Way’ was a rather transparent con-trick reminiscent of the second-rate magician in Thomas Mann’s allegorical novel Mario and the Magician. In this particular work the sorcerer, Cipolla, is analogous to the fascist dictators of the era with their fiery speeches and rhetoric designed to hoodwink his political audience into believing that what appears to be real is in fact not real. In our own time this simulacrum is the product of modern advertising techniques designed to mask the reality behind a stream of psychological manipulation and conditioning of the audience. How long this process and phenomenon will last is problematic. Western civilization seems standing at the crossroads without a plan B.

It’s rather like Gerald Celente always says: ‘‘When everything else fails, they take you to war.’’

NOTES

(1) As the 2016 presidential campaign closed in on the finish line, the Washington Post published  an eleven-year-old tape of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s making controversial remarks about women. The inevitable partisan rancour that ensued largely targeted the behaviour Bill Clinton, husband of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, including the repetition of rumours that he had been expelled from Oxford University in 1969 for raping English classmate Eileen Wellstone.

The allegations weren’t new — Republican opposition research strategist Roger Stone had tweeted about them a year earlier:

The backdrop for these rumours was that just prior to his graduation from Georgetown University, Bill Clinton won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at University College, Oxford, for two years and headed off to England for the 1968-69 academic term — but he returned to the United States (under a pall?) before finishing out the full two-year course of study.

There was additionally the Lewinsky affair. Yes, Mr Clinton certainly had a penchant for the ladies.

(2) Nicholas Shaxson – The Finance Curse – Chapter 5 fn 10 – p.97) In the words of Peter Mandelson, Blair’s Svengali and his co-author Roger Liddle in their book – The Blair Revolution – the main aim of the Third Way project was to ‘… overcome Britain’s continued slide into international competitiveness … based upon partnership or private and public sectors and create a more equal and cohesive society.

(3) Emile Durkheim – The Division of Labour in Society – p.xxxiv.

(4) Grace Blakeley – Stolen – p.14.

* ‘Called to the Bar’ This has nothing to do with going for a drink in a licensed establishment! It is a term used by the legal profession signifiying the entrance of the candidate into the legal profession and practising of law thereof.

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Back to French tear gas in the morning: smells like austérité

Posted on September 23, 2019 by indigoblue76

Back to French tear gas in the morning: smells like austérité

September 22, 2019

by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog

September 21 (hello autumn) was the worst day of violence in Paris since May 1st. That day is best remembered for when “centrist” politicians and citizens were enraged that Yellow Vest/union/old lady demonstrators would dare to seek refuge in a hospital rather than stand there and get tear gassed prior to getting charged and beaten by cops.

President Emmanuel Macron knew a black mark day was coming – not just Yellow Vests but unions and climate change protesters would also be marching – so he made a major concession: he gave a public interview. Noblesse oblige!

Macron waited two years before giving his first press conference, so we shouldn’t have expected a miracle, but France’s #1 public servant could have considered to talking to French media, at least. Instead he spoke with US magazine Time.

In the land of Ayn Rand, where the petit bourgeois boss is the undisputed chief in a million hillbilly fiefs, Macron may have been playing to his audience when he said: “In our country, we want leadership, but we also want to kill the leaders.” Who can forget Louis XVI?

However, I thought of all the French leaders who weren’t hacked to death by a vengeful populace. Louis I, for example. Louis II – there’s another one. Louis III, him too. In fact, Louis IV through Louis XV all were not assassinated, so why is Macron so worried about public retribution?

Look deeper into French history – despite #MeToo claims of universality it’s not even a gender thing: (2018’s 43,434th-most popular name) Ermentrude of Orléans, (don’t call me “Big”) Bertha of Burgundy and that lousy job-stealing immigrant Clementia of Hungary all escaped assassination despite being the nation’s #1 lady. Joan the Lame was a regent, and thus held the real power, and yet she wasn’t beheaded even though she must have been pretty easy to catch. They did destroy Joan’s tomb during the French revolution – she couldn’t run forever.

I also note that way back in the Merovingian era Engelbert the Humperdinck was not assassinated either, despite his many crimes which fell harshly on the ears of his suffering subjects.

To clarify for Macron: France wants leadership but they also want to kill their leaders sometimes. Other times they build huge statues to their leaders, like Charles de Gaulle and Joan of Arc. It seems to rather depend on the leader, and I thus think this allegedly French sentiment may actually be universal.

Jokes aside, Macron is obviously not trying to get re-elected, and thus he shows the biggest loophole in Western bourgeois democracy: the one in which opportunists temporarily accept public service in order to exploit it for personal gains.

(Contrarily, I’m not sure Iran’s Supreme Leader is even allowed to resign? He is there expressly to be a permanent patriotic force within a democratic system – presidents came and go but the Leader does not – and to mediate among different societal groups for the good of the national well-being.)

I look at Macron’s cover of Time and I see Brazil’s Michel Temer.

There is a clear contradiction between the image and caption on the cover of Time: Macron is frankly and aggressively rolling up his sleeves, yet the words about his “troubled presidency” indicate contrition, guilt and a desire for reconciliation. Anybody need to roll up their sleeves before a fraternal embrace? Anyway, Time got it fundamentally wrong: In June Macron declared he was on “Act 2” of his presidency, which is not at all a reset but an advance, a progression. Macron is rolling up his sleeves because his current pension and unemployment system rollbacks are the most divisive and most sweeping of his presidency. Like Temer, he couldn’t care less about the consequences – he has work to do, and the work is the social dismantling ordered by neoliberal austerity ideology and Brussels. Both Macron and Temer act on the orders of their 1% friends – the only reset for them is personal and after their terms, when they get the cushy lives and private, ego-stroking conferences where their hurt, under-appreciated egos can be revived.

But why should Time journalists have any real idea about what the “French Street” thinks? They aren’t there, haven’t been there and ain’t gonna be there – they hold the Yellow Vests in the same contempt as US Zionists do the “Arab Street”.

What Time would have seen on the worst day of violence since May 1

The tear gas and police brutality started at 10 am. I’m not sure what time it was in Hong Kong?

The first tear gas always provokes the most dramatic symptoms – I imagine it is because your body is telling you, “What the hell is this you’re inhaling now? Get it out of here.” Your skin burns more, you are expectorating excessively via the mouth and nose, your heart rate is elevated well after the “conflict adrenaline” has worn off. The next gassings are much easier, provided you are not at ground zero of course.

I have taken so much tear gas in “the birthplace of human rights” I wonder just how much poison I have built up in my bloodstream? I wonder if I can sue the French government for creating a hazardous work environment after organ failure from cyanide poisoning? Probably not.

Tear gas was falling from the skies regularly, and especially loud Yellow Vests were being individually targeted for violent arrest, but for whatever reasons – programming, shift change, etc. – after my 12pm live interview PressTV didn’t want another interview until 2pm. Being the die-hard activist journalist me and my cameramen are, we went on lunch break.

Hey, we gotta eat sometime. We’re workers, and Macron hasn’t revoked our right to a lunch break yet. And we can’t be there for every gassing/beating/rubber bullet – it’s not possible; furthermore, if we, did eventually our time would come and then there’d be no more reports at all. Gotta play the long game.

By the time we returned the Champs the crowds had really thinned out, after looking like there would be enough to hold it all day. Cops were being totally brutal: gas, confuse and punish, push people off the Champs, and then don’t allowing them back in, thus locking down the world’s greatest mall/boulevard. But we had an interview scheduled, so we stuck around with the perhaps 500 die-harders still hoping unionists, climate changers and Black Bloc would show up to retake this iconic mall-evard from the hated regime.

So we go live and do our interview, and we probably contributed to the violence. This is what often happens: The Yellow Vests know they’re on TV all of a sudden, cuz some monkey with a microphone is yammering in front of a camera, and they want to represent. They get loud and rowdy. In this way the presence of journalists hypes up the crowd in a way similar to, but actually very different, the presence of hyper-armed cops agitates a crowd. For political protesters journalist coverage is a sign that they matter and that they are doing something right and worthy of comment: that’s what makes it so sad that my French media colleagues are never covering the Yellow Vests – if they were, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people would join the protests again. Of course, the vast police repression since late March is the main reason the average Frenchmen isn’t showing up.

We finish live French protest interview #481 (I truly and humbly contend that no journalist in France has covered as many demonstrations as I have in the past decade – that number I gave is my honest estimate) and the little crowd is back to being the Yellow Vest engine that could.

Heartwarming… let’s get out of here. And we left because we had to go find another demonstration to cover – newsroom bosses want you to be where the action is, and there was a huge climate change protest there. Frankly, and sadly, I think much of the crowd had dissipated because they wanted to go join the eco-nuts, who are have as much backbone for a political fight as tofu.

Why was I going to the climate change protest and not the union demonstration? Because only one of the nine major unions ultimately decided to demonstrate that day – total betrayal of a day which was supposed to be so huge, but that’s the “virtue” of “independent” trade unions, right?

As we are leaving and I take one last look and – the tear gas is flying again. Of course it was: cops fear rowdy protesters whom they haven’t totally beaten into silence and submission, thus – launch some more gas.

Nothing we can do for ya, Vesters. We gotta think of where the action will be 45 minutes from now, and y’all had been kettled (boxed in by cops) and y’all knew they were going to gas you, drive you out and put the Champs on lockdown and if ya didn’t know then now ya know.

What teases we journalists are! Get ‘em all excited, and then leave ‘em in their moment of need. Don’t blame me, lady – blame the system.

The alternative hypothesis is that the cops saw that the only camera-wielding journalists around were leaving, and that the coast was clear for more gassing. Then it is still our presence which provoked it, and more shame on my well-heeled French media colleagues for not being there.

The final hypothesis is that the cops were about to gas them anyway and the timing of our leaving was purely coincidental. That is certainly mathematically logical, given the rates of tear gassing by French cops on Saturdays.

Regardless, that was an interesting anecdote which proves the journalistic corollary to quantum mechanics – the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon. Again, what would the effects be if the French media were actually there? Or even journalists from Time?

The eco-kooks: fake-leftist politics at its most pathetic

I can’t stand covering ecological protests – what a waste of time.

Firstly, climate change requires a cooperative solution on an international level, and obviously capitalism is predicated on competition at an international level. Therefore, there is no reason at all to do a damned thing about environmental issues – the only solution is to get socialism first. No socialism? Then no possible climate solution.

Secondly, is climate change a news beat which is not being covered enough already? Hardly – there are 900 billion Western journalists who simply adore covering this story. I note that the roughly 900 billion climate change articles in Western media on any given Tuesday hasn’t done much good. Don’t tell that to the eco-freaks, though – they think they’re God’s favourite servants.

Definitely don’t point out to them that the 1% just adores you wasting your political energy on climate change instead of class issues. Climate change is inherently neutered of any class aspect: billionaires and homeless alike all litter or leave a “climate impact” (or whatever) or don’t compost properly.

Climate change protests are thus so very, very useless that I cannot give a damn, and the protesters directly acknowledged this: they had one big ballon, which read “Give a f***”. Classy. And they’re the only ones who give a f***, right?

Smug punks. And climate change protesters are punks with a capital P – too many examples to list, but here’s a quick few:

The presence of alcohol at French political demonstrations is lamentable – this is not a party – but only at eco-protests do you see Champagne.

The presence of loud music at protests – instead of loudly-chanted slogans or even silence – is… acceptable, I guess. But for many people Saturday wasn’t a protest but a rave, celebrating Mother Earth – techno music boomed it’s 4-on-the-floor “pound my tiny soul into submission” with the idiot hipster/bobo DJ calmly, slowly saying (for the people there on ecstasy or MDMA) “Feeeeeeeeeeel the earth…. don’t let it die.” Nothing says “I protest” like dancing during a protest march.

The presence of mimes at protests… can only happen in France, of course. I have no idea what political purpose they served, but I must admit they were amusing. I must also admit I was hoping they would also be tackled by cops for their very minor vandalisms, because they they would have to say something. Mimes are a good symbol for ecological protesters in general: they are there to be seen. And, I’d add, to feel good about and receive praise for their nonsensical works.

The presence of tear gas at ecological protests is not expected because WHAT a buzzkill, amirite? When the first tear gas flew the eco-warriors were so panicked thousands of them all ran in the wrong direction… and just kept marching that way. LOL, later comrades!

That was a new one. But I was hopeful, because instead of heading in the exact opposite direction of the Champs (as the eco-route had planned), they were now heading toward it – let’s retake the Champs, yes!

No, eco-warriors planned to march in the exact opposite direction of the Champs (east, not west) and they were determined to make sure they stayed away from any possible conflict with cops that could create bad karma/force them to shower (the tear gas off) later. Eventually, the thousands all just turned around and marched in the proper direction. Inwardly, they were likely too egotistical to ask themselves if they looked like idiots.

Black Bloc must have got the address wrong

The violence which spooked the eco-kooks was provided by Black Bloc. We had arrived just in time to see it happen:

The usual. Targeted vandalism against banks, real estate agencies (10,000 euros per square meter now in Paris, so believe me when I say that my landlord – whom I have made rich – can take a long walk off a short pier), and sexist ads (lotta Black Bloc are women).

There was a twist, and you gotta admit Black Bloc is up on things: they attacked the Egyptian Central Centre… obviously in solidarity with the anti-Sisi protests in Egypt going on that day. These Blocers were up on the news, found out the Egyptian Cultural Centre was on the eco-route, and took action. I got that wrong in this live interview from the scene among the debris – maybe Black Blocers could do my job better? Cut me some slack – live interviews are hard: I got it right in time for the day’s official report.

(I talked with the lone Egyptian worker at the Centre, and whom you can see in that video – he said the Centre was clearly targeted. He showed me an empty vodka bottle they had thrown inside, but Black Bloc isn’t a bunch of drunks. I felt bad for the poor guy – who knows if he supports Sisi or not? He’s just manning a cultural centre in some far away place – Egyptians need cultural centres, after all.)

Ok, there was some damage which was not purely political – two motorcycles were set on fire. However, when I claw my way to the top and become dictator of France the first thing I will do is ban those damned loud lawnmowers they call transportation. You have to live in Paris to understand just how much extra reverberations motorcycles make in this walled city – noise pollution is a much bigger problem than regular pollution (which is also a problem) – so I personally view anti-motorcycle actions as 100% justified; it is social, if not necessarily political. On top of their annoying and perpetual noise, motorcycle riders do nothing but drive between car lanes and break every law imaginable. I truly believe Paris has become more dangerous to drive in than Tehran, and that is pretty amazing. (Of course, in the past few decades Iran has actually invested in driver infrastructure whereas Paris just makes more bike lanes; Iran now has many more traffic cops, which is a type of public worker you’ll never seen in Paris – maybe they were there pre-austerity?)

Seeing as how our job is to be at the front line, we had to be at the front line fire. I made a rookie mistake – never be in a situation where you have to flee down a side street, always stay on the main thoroughfares and close to the wall. So, they gassed us (women, elderly, children) to clear way for the fire trucks to put out the fire. Here’s the thing: the crowd was already moving back to clear a way – the gassing was not at all necessary but punitive. The tear gas cans exploded mid-air so close to me I could see them ignite clearly, and that’s when you lose an eye. Alhamdulillah, me and my colleague were ok. Pretty badly gassed, but we’ve had worse. The worst part? I was only so close because I was scheduled to do a live interview from the craziness, but our damned connection wasn’t good enough! So I was gassed, crying, running and yelling at Tehran to put me on the damned air all at the same time. It happens.

But I admit it humbly: with my awesome-sounding French in my PressTV Français recap at the end of the day (not posted yet), I was not critical enough of Black Bloc – they can do more harm than good. Mainly when they go where they are not wanted – like that ecological protest instead of the Champs.

Immediately after the violence and mid-demonstration Greenpeace and Youth for Climate tweeted that they were revoking their leadership of the march and that everyone should leave the protest. Tough kids, eh?

I talked with a Black Blocer just prior to the gassing: a woman who was very voluptuously built. She was probably one of those defacing sexist ads, as she is likely subject to constant objectification when walking down the street (a hejab undoubtedly gives women a break from that, but let’s leave that issue there): heaven forbid she violently object to female nudity in public advertising, because that’s proof France is so “sexually progressive” and “respectful of women”, right? She took off her mask when she saw I was one of the good journalists – her pretty young face was flushed from leftist exertion. Dressed head to toe in black, she said she wasn’t Black Bloc but merely rocking the “Goth” look. A lovely figure, pretty face, guts and a sense of humour? Of course I was so smitten I could not identify her to authorities if ever forced to do so, such was the mass of stars, hearts and bright lights swirling around her.

I would have talked to a Youth for Climateer but they were retreating too fast… yet somehow they were able to tweet at the same time? Millennials – so talented!

Another Saturday in France, more long-term lung damage

The reality, which is still difficult to grasp as we left Yellow Vest #45 and filmed an old man whose face was red and bloodied from cops, as well as a bleeding, handcuffed old woman, is that things are only going to get worse: As I wrote, the pension and unemployment systems will have the broadest immediate impact of any of Macron’s “deforms”, thus they will provoke the broadest protests.

Such protests go beyond the Yellow Vests’ capability. September 21 was significant because it was the “Yellow Vest Day Without the Yellow Vests” – most did not wear them. The idea was to finally converge the Vesters with the various social struggles (unions, NGOs, mainstream leftist political parties, even eco-kooks, etc.). After 10 months, they have to join forces with the right groups.

They are talking about an unlimited transport strike in December, and I never recall hearing that before. No Christmas vacation for me, I guess.

The only TV media openly covering the Yellow Vests remains Iran (in English, French, Spanish and Farsi) and RT. I have seen France’s LCI (the government channel) openly there for about 6 weeks, and once or twice last month I saw TF1, but that’s it. I’m sure the fake-leftist MSM was all over the climate change march – because they always are – and I hope they got more tear gas than I did.

However, the process of lasting revolution is long – it takes years of struggle, and victory is not assured until households and families are forced to choose sides against each other. I am not promoting familial disharmony, just reporting what I have read of previous revolutions – the simplest, most moral and most effective choice, of course, is to side with the lower classes.

The thing about a “reset” in a video game is that you just go right back to the same beginning, and you have totally erased from memory all the bad you did. Why would Macron deserve a reset from the French public?

Too bad for Macron that civil service and politics are not a video game, or a hippie rave. Too bad for everyone in the global economy that austerity continues.

The reality is that Macron doesn’t even know his own country’s history: since the 9th century less than five of France’s just over 100 leaders have been killed. France doesn’t kill their leaders – they exile them, even those of the First Republic (1792-1804). This is another false cliche Macron has accepted as fact which is mainly promoted by fearful, reactionary English monarchists. Beheadings aren’t necessary – just ask any Frenchman: what could be a worse fate than to not live in France?

Macron will likely wind up exiled as well – who doesn’t imagine the young Macron being feted like an emperor in the Anglophone business world after he isn’t re-elected in 2022?

So Macron needn’t worry – he’ll probably just have his tomb desecrated like Joan the Lame. Probably a lot of other similarities between Macron and Joan the Lame, I imagine….

The question Macron should ask himself is: what is it that he is doing which is causing him to have regicide on his mind?

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of “I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China”.

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