Articles

Articles posted by Radical Socialist on various issues.

France: The NPA in Crisis

Details: Published on Sunday, 29 January 2012 05:43

France: The NPA in Crisis

— Jason Stanley

FRANCE’S NEW ANTI-CAPITALIST Party (NPA) is in crisis. While only two years ago many on the international left talked about the NPA as one of the brightest lights on an otherwise dim revolutionary horizon, today the Party is hemorrhaging members and struggling to stay afloat.

Founded in 2009, the NPA brought together members of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and a number of diffuse anti-capitalist, anti-globalization and identity-based movements in France. Whereas the LCR had been a party that sprouted from the fertile terrain of the May 1968 moment, the NPA was to be a party of the new, post-Berlin Wall left.

Some on the revolutionary left had doubts about the move away from explicitly socialist, Marxist politics, towards something more in line with the broad global justice movement. Yet growth and momentum — at least apparent momentum — brushed those concerns aside.

At its founding convention, the NPA had 9,123 members spread over 467 local branches. Approximately 5,900 members participated in the Party’s local congresses leading up to its national congress.

All this promised a level of commitment and dynamism to be reckoned with. Even before the NPA was founded, many on the left felt that a window had opened for revolutionary politics. In 2002, the LCR’s candidate in the country’s Presidential election, Olivier Besancenot (later to become the NPA’s Presidential candidate), received 4.25% of the national vote, while a second revolutionary party (Workers’ Struggle) scored 5.72%.

This was better than either party had ever performed in a national election and, significantly, each of the two revolutionary parties had out-competed the long dominant and often stifling French Communist Party (PCF).

Five years later, in the 2007 Presidential election, Besancenot tallied 4.08% of the vote, outdistancing the PCF by an even larger margin. Coupled with a political climate that gave rise to large-scale social mobilizations that won key victories against neoliberal attacks, this appeared to be a special moment.

Yet only two years after the NPA’s founding congress, the Party looks to be on life support. By early 2011, it had lost over one-third of its members. Eight months later, activists close to the Party suggest numbers had continued to decline precipitously. Perhaps more importantly, the sense of hope and dynamism that pervaded the Party in 2009 has been displaced by disappointment and shock.

Shifting Majorities

The immediate crisis in the NPA was precipitated by a subtle but important shift in support among members for one strategic direction over another. In 2009, party members voted in favor of a leadership slate (including eventual Presidential candidate Olivier Besancenot) that supported guarded electoral engagement with a newly formed political coalition — the Left Front — that had uncomfortably close ties to the social-liberal Socialist Party.

One segment of the NPA membership wanted the Party to more fully cooperate with the Left Front to build a broad anti-capitalist coalition. Another segment wanted just the opposite — a turn away from emphasis on electoral activity, and specifically away from the wishy-washy Left Front, towards a concerted effort to build a party committed to revolution. The slate that won offered a compromise between these two positions.

This compromise held until 2011, when a new leadership vote tipped slightly in favor of those opposed to engagement with the Left Front. For those on the winning side, the Left Front offered a reformist lure that was sure to undermine revolutionary politics. This meant that the best strategy was to dig in for the long haul, slowly building the Party through a difficult conjuncture.

Yet for many of those who favored some form of unity with the Left Front, this shift was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The strategy of guarded engagement pursued between 2009 and 2011 had rarely offered enough left unity to satisfy these members, yet it had at least offered enough engagement to keep alive hope for greater unity in the future. By contrast, the 2011 shift signaled a turn towards isolation and sectarianism. Consequently, a number of leaders and members stormed out of the Party, publicly chastising it on the way.

This fracture has taken a considerable toll on the NPA in recent months. Yet a close look at the Party’s brief history suggests that other challenges have been festering for some time.

Personalization of the Party

In May 2011, Olivier Besancenot stepped aside as the NPA’s Presidential candidate and spokesperson, leaving a gaping hole for the party. Besancenot inferred his decision should come as no surprise, as he had repeatedly said that the party needed to regularly replace its spokespersons in order to avoid over-identification with and over-dependence on individual personalities.

Yet over-personalization and over-dependence was precisely what had occurred over the two years preceding his decision to step aside. For many in France, Besancenot was the NPA. On the surface, this was driven by the media’s practice of identifying a single channel to which it could turn for positions from the party. More generally, a cult of personality had arisen in French party politics since 1962 when the position of president was opened up to direct universal suffrage, granting it greater legitimacy and power than had been the case previously.

Yet, if the political environment made an over-personalization of party politics difficult to avoid, the NPA itself did little to deflect attention away from Besancenot. A young, hip, passionate,and eloquent spokesperson, Besancenot had become a media darling. He enjoyed more press attention than the revolutionary left had ever seen (so much so that some on the broader left were suspicious that economic and political elites on the right were pulling media strings in ways to legitimize the far left just enough to fracture the overall left’s vote share).

This media attention was tantalizing for the NPA. Here was an opportunity to broadcast a well-spoken and well-defended revolutionary politics to a national — not even international — audience at a time when the global economy was in crisis and an angry population was looking for new paths forward. Besancenot was regularly invited for interviews and debates on media programs previously dominated by the most mainstream of political elites. What was not to love about this newfound spotlight?

The over-identification of the NPA with Besancenot created two challenges for the party. First, it raised questions over how the NPA would proceed once Besancenot stepped down, as he’d promised he would.

Many have looked to the party’s two new spokespersons new presidential candidate to fill this void, yet the media has found them less compelling. Members and leaders alike agree that the over-personalization of the party was dangerous, but the sense of disappointment in the loss of Besancenot’s charm is still palpable.

The second challenging effect of Besancenot’s fame was the impact it had on recruitment. Widespread media attention meant that it was increasingly common for new members to have come across the party and its politics on television or in a newspaper, rather than in interaction with activists in social movements or trade unions.

This brought many new recruits who identified with some element of the party’s message but had little or no experience with the challenging work of building movements over the long term. The churn in membership increased as more and more recruits came to the party through these channels, only to leave not long after.

Recruitment was also affected by the particular kind of revolutionary politics on display in Besancenot’s media engagements. He spoke often of protest, disobedience, the need for a general strike, and the importance of revolution — in short, his message was overwhelmingly one of insurrection, and often had a tone of impatience.

Consequently, those who came to the Party upon identifying with its public message were sometimes difficult to retain once it became clear that mass disruption was either not on the agenda or not effective in turning back the attacks, as in the mobilization against pension cuts in 2010 [1].

Seeds of Sectarianism

For some who recently left the party, the turn away from any electoral engagement with the Left Front represents an intensification of a sectarian tendency that was already present in the latter days of the LCR’s history and that has remained a factor since the founding of the NPA.

Among the various groups on the far left of French politics, the LCR had long had a reputation for non-sectarian work, yet there were signs that this orientation was under threat by the early 2000s.

The LCR’s actions in the wake of the 2005 campaign against the proposed constitutional treaty for the European Union offer a good example. Much to the surprise of political elites on both the right and center-left, the proposed treaty provoked enormous opposition from trade unions, anti-neoliberal organizations, social movements, and all political parties to the left of the Socialist Party. The far right similarly mobilized to block the treaty, but the “No” campaign was overwhelmingly constituted and driven by the left.

One of the most exciting aspects of the campaign was the appearance of roughly 1,000 “unity committees” in communities throughout the country, bringing together activists from a range of unions, movements, and parties, and attracting large numbers of citizens with little experience in organized politics. These committees gave the campaign a motor that no party or union had control over. They also made possible genuine cross-party and cross-union bridges on the left [2].

In the wake of the victory of the No campaign, the potential for left unity was abundant. Yet it took only months for much of this potential to fizzle away as the LCR pulled back from efforts towards left unity, leaving little counter-weight to the overly controlling French Communist Party (PCF). It surprised few, though still disappointed many, when the PCF pushed to take over and run the local unity committees. The energy and dynamism of the committees soon dissipated, and any hope of building upon the nascent anti-capitalist unity evident in these committees dissolved.

The hubris that grew out of the LCR’s electoral successes in the early 2000s no doubt played a role in these decisions. In both 2002 and 2007, the Trotskyist left had outscored the long-dominant PCF in Presidential elections. In 2002, a second revolutionary party (Lutte Ouvriere, “Workers’ Struggle”) had done just as well as the LCR, but by 2007 the LCR stood out as the party of choice for the majority of voters to the left of the social-liberal Socialist Party.

The PCF still had a sizeable membership of older activists, but party obituaries appeared by the hundredfold — this was a party on the verge of extinction. Why seek unity with a collapsing dinosaur? Instead, the LCR saw itself as a pole to which an anti-capitalist left would gravitate, even as it understood the need to create a new political vehicle that appealed to a new generation of global and social justice activists.

It was from these circumstances that the NPA sprouted. Yet just as the NPA was created, France saw the rise of a new political formation, also to the left of the Socialist Party. The Left Front brought together the newly created Left Party, the French Communist Party, and smaller groups of activists in favor of left unity, including some who had split from the LCR.

At times, the NPA has engaged with the Left Front constructively, especially in parts of the country where regional committees are more open to unity work and where Left Front committees are more openly opposed to cooperation with the Socialist Party. Yet the NPA’s overall approach towards the coalition has been to treat it as little different from the Socialist Party itself.

While the NPA and the Left Front have political platforms that are virtually indistinguishable, the NPA has refused almost all efforts towards common electoral work unless and until the Left Front agrees to promise that it won’t, under any eventuality, cooperate with the Socialist Party in governing. Seeing such a promise about an unpredictable future as unreasonable and unrealistic, the Left Front has refused to meet the NPA’s condition, even as it continues to urge the NPA to consider unity a priority.

In the meantime, the NPA has continued to act as if it is the natural pole to which activists and voters to the left of the Socialist Party will gravitate. Each election since the founding of the NPA has suggested that this is not the case, while the ongoing departure of the Party’s own members and leaders suggests it will not likely be the case in the future.

No one can say for sure what the future holds for the NPA, but for now the hope and dynamism of the party seems to have all but disappeared.

Notes

1. Stanley, Jason (2011) “France: Battling over pensions,” Against the Current, #151 (March-April), available at: http://solidarity-us.org/current/node/3198.

2. Wolfreys, Jim (2005) “How France’s referendum caught fire,” International Socialism, No. 107, available at: http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=121&issue=107.

January/February 2012, ATC 156

Fourth International Strategy for Building New Parties: A Critique from Ireland

Details: Published on Sunday, 29 January 2012 05:35

New Parties of the left: Experiences from Europe - Bensaid, Sousa et al Resistance Books, London 2011. price: €9, £7 John McAnulty
20 January 2012
I have a unique qualification as a reviewer of this book. 28 years ago I experienced in Ireland what would now be called a left regroupment. As with many of the case studies in the book, it followed a defeat - in this case the defeat of the Irish hunger strikes.
Mass activity on the streets declined. Many small socialist, feminist and trade union and community groups disappeared. However Sinn Fein saw a substantial growth and major electoral victories.
It was against this background that a group in the leadership of the Fourth International section in Ireland, then called People's Democracy, supported by the FI leadership, proposed that we joined many republican leftists and community activists in entering Sinn Fein.
This was a very extreme version of left unity. For all its radical rhetoric Sinn Fein was not a socialist organization. The electoral programme was that of bourgeois nationalism and was edging towards an accommodation with British imperialism. Not only that, but Sinn Fein did not have a functioning internal democracy and political currents were not allowed.
So what was being proposed was not entryism or the construction of a current fighting for socialism - it was simply entry. The majority of our organization described this as liquidation and the organization split. Those who entered Sinn Fein moved sharply to the right and few are now politically active. Sinn Fein itself is now a full-blown bourgeois nationalist organization, a member of a colonial government applying a major austerity drive against the workers. It still however appears on platforms organised by the Fourth International.
A space to the left?
From this perspective the book generates an intense feeling of déjà vu. Rather than presenting Marxist analysis it largely relies on narrative. Insofar as it bases the narrative on analysis the analysis is cursory and unconvincing.
A number of entries are intensely irritating in that the narrative is full of content that appears to be part of the discourse of revolutionary socialism but, on further reading, leaves a fog of confusion. Are the writers guilty of deliberate deception, dressing a pretty tired electoralism and reformism in a sort of pidgin Marxism? Or are they themselves no longer able to distinguish between reform and revolution?
This confusion is inevitable because this is a book about organizations and shifts in electoral representation. It is not about the working class and the movement of class struggle but rather about obtaining parliamentary representation for the class. This is an important distinction. It is quite clear from the narrative that the programme developed by the Trotskyist movement is not the basis for electing representatives. A revolutionary programme is by implication an obstacle to electoral success and in the weaker entries it is silently suppressed.
The assumptions on which the various narratives are based are presented in a few lines by Fred Leplat on page 11. Capitalist offensives on the working class, plus the fall of the USSR, meant that Social Democratic and Stalinist parties had moved right and opened a space to the left of social democracy. The left currents cannot fill this space. New broad, pluralist parties are needed.
This position only has credibility as long as it is posed in organizational terms. Posed in class terms it is hard to justify. The working class did suffer substantial defeats and the fall of the USSR to capitalism was a shattering defeat. In these circumstances the workers retreat and their organizations move right. The struggle for revolutionaries then arises around preserving their organizations and political programme.
By imagining a left space separate from the general retreat of the class and a pluralist party necessary to occupy that space the contributors to this book set themselves tasks diametrically opposed to the historical tasks of revolutionaries. In the majority of the case studies it leads them to dispense with the programme and dissolve the organization.
Explaining this project runs into trouble right away when Bertil Videt, in his introduction, attempts to define regroupment by using documents of the 14th world congress of the Fourth International in 1995. We run immediately into a problem endemic throughout the book - a fog of contradictory definitions and formulations that leave the reader bemused.
The 1995 document referenced regroupment with "fragments .... breaking with the social democratic policy of joint responsibility for the economic crisis." A few lines further on the author says that (the fragments) should break with social democratic policy. (p14)
Breaking with a specific social democratic policy is clearly not the same as breaking with social democracy, so it becomes unclear what is required from the objects of regroupment. It is much clearer what is required from the FI members - fusion will make their programme redundant.
If there is any doubt about this the approving reference to the Brazilian Workers Party as a forerunner to regroupment clarifies matters. The participation of Trotskyites in ministerial positions in the capitalist government headed by Lula is seen by critics as a catastrophe, underlined by the decimation of the FI section in Brazil, yet in 2011 the experience is still put forward as a model! (p15)
In any case Videt breezily announces that different regroupments require different forms and settles for a list - a ragbag of different organizations, a number of which are defunct and others of which are clearly social democratic. He ends with the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France - a party which "regrouped" with its own periphery.
Clearly the use of regroupment as a term explaining the movement of Fourth International sections into these groups is highly suspect. Labouring to find a class analysis in the context of the book is difficult. One suspects that Bertil lacks the political perspective that would produce clarity when he remarks that:
"social democratic leaders, for whatever reason, did not produce explicit left wing policies." (p16) When did Marxist expect Social Democratic governments to produce left policies?
The article then dives into tables of electoral voting and membership that are utterly meaningless in the absence of a clear definition of the nature of regroupment parties, ending with the cheerful insistence that history is still being written.
France: “a field of unstable forces”
The late Daniel Bensaid adds at great deal of style without adding clarity. The (space to the left social democracy) is not empty, but "a field of unstable forces" (p32) pulling to the left and right. This offers two "options" with which we can classify the new parties. One option is represented by Die Linke in Germany with the task of pressurising Social democracy, the other, represented by the NPA in France aim to create "a real strategic alternative to mild social liberalism".
Again all is confusion. If there are unstable forces they would work both inside and outside parties. Broad parties would include all these currents, as the trajectory of the NPA subsequently showed, so the distinction between the two groups is not fundamental. Parties represent different social forces if they have different programmes, but what is "a real strategic alternative to mild social liberalism" other than a series of platitudes? (p34) It is clearly not the programme of Trotskyism, for the only certainty to come from the foundation of the NPA is that the LCR and its revolutionary programme no longer exists.
Bensaid is followed by Alain Krevine. His narrative account lists elements of French history from the second world war, with little in the way of explanation. Like Bensaid, a lot of attention is devoted to the French socialist and communist parties and to electoral strategy, amidst protestations that the NPA will be a pole against reformism.
Krevine undertakes an uncomfortable discussion of internationalism. The LCR is a section of the fourth International. The NPA is not, nor is it asked to be. LCR members remain individual members of the International, but they do not campaign as a tendency for the NPA to do so. This is justified by appeal to a non-existent fifth international, but clearly the FI and its historical programme have nothing to do with this.
Perhaps the greatest shock is Alain Krevine's acknowledgement that the French experience will not serve as a model (p50). The LCR leadership were the most enthusiastic purveyors of the "space to the left" model and spent many years seeking alliances with left factions of the communist party. No new left space emerges. The Communist Party collapses to the right. The socialist party become absorbed completely into the bourgeois programme of austerity.
Luckily the LCR do not collapse to the right. Instead they dissolve their organization, abandon their programme and fuse with their own periphery and with other small Trotskyist groupings – a strategy seen by the FI majority as the antithesis of the “broad left” strategy. This is a new form of politics. The external observer might be forgiven for believing that the comrades are simply abandoning the weapons of political programme and fleeing in a rout from the ideological offensive of capital.
Any review of French accounts of the birth of the NPA should note an extraordinary omission. That is the call by the LCR to vote for Chirac, the representative of French imperialism, as a defence against the far-right Le Pen candidate. This was not a mistake. It was a crime that indicates that many of the LCR leadership had passed through a political event horizon where the lessons of working class history were no longer visible.
Left unity in Denmark
In contrast the report by Michael Voss on the evolution of the Red-Green alliance is remarkably detailed and honest. As a result it is immediately clear that the mechanism involved is not that of advancing into a left space, but rather of a struggle for survival amongst fragmentation and retreat and at a time when the workers were inactive or only episodically active.
The issues are organizational considerations, parliamentary representation, and the result a minimalist programme that relies on consensus. As Michael Voss himself admits, these conditions - in reality a sort of popular front - militate against political discussion and education.
One outcome was the Asmaa case (p66), where the RGA defended a Muslim RGA candidate from attack from the right, without understanding that her own reactionary views should have banned her from membership.
A new challenge faces the RGA with a social democratic coalition in place in government. Sections of the RGA argue for the need to defend the government - in practice this means supporting austerity against the workers. Sections of the RGA have already swung right in local government and implemented austerity policies.
The desire of the FI section, the SAP, to prevent this turn is apparent. The long years in which they avoided presenting a revolutionary programme make it all the more difficult now to press forward this struggle. Although one can admire Michael Voss for his relatively straightforward account and for his acceptance of a movement towards social democracy as a real danger, one can only feel despair when he concludes with a call for business as usual and a the continuation of the SAP role as a loyal opposition in the alliance.
Left Unity and RESPECT in Britain
The British contribution, by Alan Thornett and John Lister, is another detailed and accurate attempt to provide an account of attempts to build a new party - some would say too detailed, as it ploughs through an alphabet soup of British left groups and their front organizations. They make an important change in formulation from the earlier accounts - here the party is to be composed of (revolutionaries) "and those from a social democratic background''. There is no clarification of the need to break from social democracy.
The authors restate succinctly the central contradiction of the book. They assert that the need for "pluralist" parties has existed for 20 years - yet the left, a large section of whom have been committed to left unity, "is weaker than it has been for many years" (p75).
Why is this? The paper is unable to tell us. It is, yet again, an account of organizations and elections. The enormous changes in the class struggle are largely absent. So too is the political programme on which left unity is to be built. It appears that unity is itself a policy.
Where this becomes most confusing is in the account of the RESPECT coalition. All that is said about the founding programme is that it was: "strong enough in its socialist content to represent an alternative to new labour and broad enough to create a wider coalition". "It replaced ... An anticapitalist party with one which was more social democratic (at least its key components...)". "it represented a shift to the right..." "It could reach out to... muslim activists". Sections of the left denounced it as a popular front. (p87)
Then some electoral successes are listed. Do these resolve the political debate about the nature of the new organization? We are then given an account of Socialist Resistance's intervention into RESPECT. These amount to calls to democratise the movement and to build a party structure. Again unity seems a sufficient programme, with no explicit discussion of the tasks facing the working class.
A concentration on organization is linked with a remarkably deferential attitude to the trade union bureaucracy and a polite approach to new labour. Trade union leaders are seen as "reluctant" to oppose new labour (p84) or "largely passive" in the face of the austerity (p100). New Labour are seen as "ineffective and timid." Strange weasel words about a party committed to austerity and a bureaucracy dedicated to returning them to government.
The comrades document the drawn-out decay of RESPECT, dominated by events such as the appearance of George Galloway on a reality TV show and battles over democracy between Galloway and the British Socialist Workers Party in which both sides seem dishonest. There is no discussion of the tendency of the new parties to produce celebrity leaders outside any democratic control.
They discuss groups such as the Scottish Socialist party, No2EU and TUSC. Again the critique is about democracy and organization. No2EU was criticized as making adaptations to English chauvinism. Is this the case? Did the Scottish Socialist party adapt to Scots nationalism? Were there any political grounds for the failure of these organisations? We aren't told.
The article ends with another call for a democratic party. Unity is an aim in itself. The idea that unity requires an object or that that object is the working class programme - that is entirely absent.
Die Linke in Germany: The need for an exit strategy
Klaus Engert, in his examination of the evolution of Die Linke in Germany, presents us with the transition from theory to practice. The theory of a space to the left of social democracy is put to the test and found wanting.
German social democracy did indeed move to the right, with a series of attacks on the working class and moves to expand German imperialism and the role of German militarism.
As Klaus accepts, in part this is associated with German socialists first experiment with a "space to the left" - the formation of the German Green party. The experiment led to a coalition government, a mass offensive on workers and the collapse of the Greens. Many of the socialists who had conducted the experiment continued on the rightward trajectory that the rhetoric of new leftism had obscured.
Undeterred, the German socialists began the experiment again. In this case, as the social democrats proposed a neo-liberal agenda, a political space did open up. Unfortunately it was not a space that pointed in any specific direction. With a base in the lower levels of the trade union bureaucracy and political positions ranging from socialism through social democracy to Christian democrats, the new formation, WSWG, had many characteristics familiar in earlier chapters. (p105)
Unity came before programme, electoral and parliamentary activity before policy and working class action.
These tendencies continued when WSYG went on to merge with the former (some not so former) Stalinists of the old East German ruling party and formed Die Linke.
Die Linke is now a large party but, as Klaus Engert attests, in local government it is little different from other bourgeois parties. Its practice is electoral and parliamentary, its programme social democratic, the social composition of its activists a mixture of reformists and opportunists. The small socialist layer that aims to act outside parliament and support the self-organization of the working class were dismissed by a (former socialist) leader Gregor Gysl: "every party has its 10% of crazy people." (p109)
So the new party is not driven by broad social movements or by a radical mass movement. It is not moving left, but simply occupying the vacant space left by the social democrats (p113).
Under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that socialists ask if Die Linke is an obstacle to socialist politics. (p114) The writer sees an urgent need to build a common radical strategy of the left inside Die Linke. (ibid) and also to develop an exit strategy. (p115)
A strange place to be, decades into the search for a new space on the left!
Italy's Refondazione: "What have we done to deserve all this?"
A key article should be the report on Italy's Refondazione. Nothing tests a model like destruction and, as Salvatore Cannavo, admits frankly in an introduction entitled "What have we done to deserve all this?" (p117) The collapse of the Refondazione project and the scale of defeat it involved were truly on an epic scale.
Unfortunately the article offers reportage rather than analysis or explanation. The language is rather poetic and this is rather confusing - "a surfing political line" (p125) rather than the more technical term opportunism. The greatest weakness of the piece is that it is written from the perspective of the organization rather than that of the working class or of political programme.
In the absence of this context the account is difficult to follow, even with the aid of a timeline in an appendix provided by Dave Kellaway. (p145)
Some elements of the Refondazione collapse are very clear and are listed by Salvatore Cannavo:
· A failure to resolve the stalinist past of the majority of the organization
· Opportunism
· A reliance on bureaucratic methods
· A reliance on parliamentary forms
· Detachment from workers struggles
· Dependence on the celebrity of the leadership which operates independently of the membership. (see the report on Georg Galloway in RESPECT).)
We are told of the weaknesses but there is no explanation of how they arose, no record of consistent opposition and the alternative, when it arrives, is rather unsubstantial. There should be social mobilization on the basis of anti-capitalism. There should be a broad discussion of the ideas of a wide range of Marxist thinkers.( p139) A new class struggle movement should be built. We should build a left party that links radical social democracy with revolutionary socialism. (p144) Isn't this where Refondazione started?
The account is not complete. The comrades of the opposition did not go up to the edge with the leadership of Refondazione, they went over the edge and voted for imperialist war credits. Now, having drawn back, they want to run the film again. They agree a long struggle lies ahead, but do not consider that the first step might be for the Trotskyites to assert their own programme.
Left Bloc in Portugal: Beyond the event horizon
Two reports are given of the Portugeese Left Bloc. In the first Miguel Romero of the Spanish magazine Viento Sur interviews Francisco Louca.
Romero, in an introduction, expands on the meagre theory of the "space to the left of Social Democracy." This is a shifting space - not always in the right direction. Organizations like the Scottish Socialist Party, Respect and Refondazione have "stumbled." This is of little concern. We will concentrate on the successes.
How does Romero justify throwing away the 50% of the evidence that does not support his views?
"We are not interested in ideological issues ...What attracts us most is the different or even contradictory options that arise... This is a good vaccine against "models." (p149)
We are in an Alice in Wonderland world of obscurantism where Romero rules out any possibility of rational discussion. Things mean whatever he wants them to mean.
He is well matched by Francisco Louca, who provides a mixture of administrative detail and poetry:
"Somehow, we filled a space that did not exist, a political space that had not yet been recognized." (p155)
The space becomes somewhat more recognizable when we learn that the bloc has endorsed a member of the Socialist Party left as presidential candidate. (p.163)
Louca makes it clear that the bloc has no international perspective:
"Today a socialist programme would undoubtedly be strangled by the European Union. An active socialist policy has to deal with the EU institutions to transform the conditions of European politics." (p162)
This "space that did not exist" is now completely recognizable. It is the most transparent and unselfconscious reformism, laced with nationalism. The idea that the working class may organise class struggle independently of European institutions is simply inconceivable to Francisco, as is the idea that the nation state is itself designed to prevent the workers coming to power.
In case Miguel and Francisco lack conviction we are presented with another organizational account by Alda Sousa and Jorge Costa. A short FAQ is followed by a timeline by Sousa.
We learn that "the idea that most demands can only be fulfilled under socialism may turn out to be dangerous and demobilising." (p179)
Most telling of all is the bloc's response to the bank bailout.
· We should have an audit of the debt.
· We should renegotiate the debt
· We should have a bailout fund financed by tax evaders.
So we end with a programme endorsed by trade union bureaucrats across Europe. The workers should not repudiate the debt. They should seek a better fairer way for it to be paid.
Unlike the comrades of Die Linke, the correspondents in the Bloc see no need for an exit strategy. They have passed beyond the event horizon into the black hole of social democracy.
The role and tasks of the Fourth International: speaking in tongues
The book ends with the text of the role and tasks of the Fourth International adopted at the 2010 congress. This statement is simply tacked on, but there are some things that should be said about it.
It is a statement that says little, and compensates for its defects by speaking in tongues.
In the immediate aftermath of the credit crunch the declaration is innocent of any explanation or analysis of the crisis of capitalism. In the first lines it jumbles and conflates a crisis of capital, of the environment and of patriarchy. This jumble is related less to the working class and more to the "popular classes." (p187)
For anyone at any distance from the leadership of the Fourth International the main text is incomprehensible. In the absence of a clear statement of the working class as the subject of revolution we have a form of committeespeak that lumps together anti-capitalist, feminist, environmentalist, transgender, nationalist and democratic movements. Much of the language harks back to the anti-globalist movement and the world social fora.
These movements, whatever their strengths and weaknesses, were specifically not movements of the working class and now play a peripheral role. The convulsions since the credit crunch show the working class moving to centre stage, even if not yet a class for itself with its own programme and independent forms of organization. In these circumstances the text of the role and tasks of the Fourth International is entirely insufficient.
There is a long wade through the text to find policy on the broad anticapitalist parties that is the object of the book and on the associated question of the Fourth International. The formulations then presented are almost unreadable - more poetic obscurantism that appears designed to conflate and obscure political differences.
What does it mean when in: "Left reformist parties ...we build anti-capitalist tendencies linked to social movements"? (p194) What is an anticapitalist, internationalist, ecologist and feminist left"? (ibid) "A left ... that cannot govern with the political representation with which it wants to break"? (ibid) "A pluralistic left rooted in the social movements and workplaces" (ibid)
The document declares: "Building broad anticapitalist parties is the current response we offer to the crisis in the workers and the left movement." (p195) What is the left movement separate from the workers? If this is the response we offer to the working class why is there no balance sheet of the parties already constructed?
In this context the role of the international is explained as follows: "We must discuss how to strengthen and transform the Fourth International in order to make it an effective tool in the perspective of a new international grouping." (p197) In other words we must build the Fourth International in order to do away with it.
Sorting out this confusion is made possible when we observe what is absent. That is a revolutionary programme. In its absence protestations of applying a united front policy (p198) - where revolutionaries can unite with others while continuing to advance their own programme - are meaningless.
Conclusion
The new parties being proposed appear as popular front organizations, beloved of Stalinists, where revolutionary policies are suppressed in the name of unity. The programme advanced is the most minimal of minimum programmes: No to coalition in capitalist governments, progressive views on social questions.
In the case of some sections of the British movement RESPECT the second condition was optional, with much tip-toeing around traditional Muslim hostility to the gay community. The no coalition demand is simply laughable. Many reformist current are anti-coalition until the offer of a place in government is made. In any case the damage they do in the real world of the streets, unions and workplaces puts into context their posturing in parliament. A movement advancing this as a central demand is already captive to parliamentary reformism.
This book advances a thesis: There is a space to the left of social democracy that can be filled by broad mass parties. It examines six case studies. In two cases, that of Respect and Refondazione, the project has "stumbled" and the organizations have collapsed. In three cases the parties are successful in the sense of electoral success. From the perspective of the self-organization of the class their success is more doubtful. In the case of Denmark the author, Michael Voss, accepts a tendency towards Social democracy but proposes no change in the orientation of the Trotskyists. Klaus Eugert seeks an escape route from Die Linke in Germany. The comrades in the Portuguese Left Bloc are in the same difficulty but are blind to any need to escape. The issue of the NPA in France is unresolved. All we can say with certainty is that the programme of the old LCR no longer applies and that that organization, afraid decades of effort, did not find a "space to the left of social democracy" and liquidated into its own periphery with the addition of some small Trotskyist groups.
The Fourth International declares in 2010 the centrality of building broad mass parties, but has no assessment of the actually existing parties, nor any analysis of the crisis of capital or indication of the tasks facing the working class.
Is there an alternative to the "space to the left of social democracy" model? The commonsense answer is that there is indeed a long period of working class retreat and that the socialist movement is itself bound up in that retreat. The political expression of that is liquidation - militants abandon the working class programme and adopt positions that allow them to retain a base in specific social layers.
In a number of cases this is a conscious process - as when Miguel Romero rejects "ideology" and "models." There are few grounds for discussion here. In other cases the process is unconscious and expressed in a concentration on organization and tactics to the exclusion of programme. Other comrades still hold to the historic programme of the International but in terms of sentiment and position, rather than as a guide to action.
Those who accept this analysis are in a difficult position. The contradiction of liquidation is not dogmatism. There is nothing to be gained by simply repeating the words of Trotsky as a magic incantation. Any serious socialist would have been active in the parties listed in this book, albeit around an independent revolutionary programme.
Our own experience in Ireland is that advancing a socialist programme has not gained us recruits. We are in fact rather isolated. What it has done is allow us to survive as an organization of revolutionary socialists, able to collectively analyse the evolution of the class struggle and advance the case for socialist revolution. We still believe that the survival of that programme and of a group of comrades organised around it remains an historic gain not lightly to be surrendered.
That, in my view, represents the way forward. The programme of the working class consists of the political tasks the workers have to undertake if they are to assert themselves. Revolutionary socialists can draw on Marxist theory and on the history of class struggle to attempt to make those tasks explicit. We should not approach this task as a factional battle inside the Fourth International. It is a task for everyone. Let those who are willing stand forward.

Note from Administrator

John McAnulty is a veteran irish Trotskyist and a member of the fourth international, active in the organisation Socialist Democracy

Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha Press Release on Demise of Maitreyi Chatterjee

Details: Published on Thursday, 19 January 2012 01:39

NARI NIRJATAN PRATIRODH MANCHA

PRESS RELEASE

Eminent writer, feminist activist, and art, drama and music critic, Maitreyi Chatterjee passed away peacefully on 17 January, 2012.

She was the Founder Member and Convenor of Nari Nirjantan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum against the Oppression of Women), one of the first rights-based women’s groups in Kolkata in 1983, that continues to play a significant role in the women’s rights movement in West Bengal. A room in her flat continues to be the meeting place for the group.

She was active in advocating for the release of non criminal women prisoners in 1985. She also deposed before the Bantala Commission after conducting an independent enquiry in the case, and campaigned tirelessly for justice for Archana Guha and for the punishment for Runu Guhu Neogi.

She wrote extensively in the newspapers and magazines including Desh, Sabala, Pratikhan, Kalantar, Chalar Pathey, Protibidhan, Manabi, Anik, Joutha Mahila Udyog, Shethu etc. on women’s issues with a feminist perspective. Her books dealing with women’s rights, communalism, healthcare, education, literature and a variety of other issues are widely acclaimed. She co-edited a book on the attack of women in Gujarat and her work also includes a book on women artists and creators and a special Puja literary issue dedicated to women.

Her passing leaves a void in the women’s movement and her voice against State Oppression will be sorely missed.

On behalf of Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha

Mira Roy – 98301 93003

Saswati Ghosh – 98302 46265

Address: 29/1A , Old Ballygunj 2^nd Lane, Kolkata 700019

Contact Numbers: Mira Roy – 98301 93003 , Saswati Ghosh – 98302 46265

A balance sheet of the December movement

Details: Published on Saturday, 14 January 2012 09:13

Russian Socialist Movement

On the occasion of the elections to the State Duma on December 4, thanks to Internet and with information provided by thousands of voluntary observers, Russian society has been able to take the measure of the massive vote-rigging to the advantage of the party led by Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev, United Russia. The protest meeting organized on December 5 was the starting point for a movement of protest against the present political system, a movement which is still accelerating. On December 10, massive mobilizations “For honest elections” organized by opposition groups coming from different political tendencies took place in Moscow and in almost all the big cities of Russia.

According to various estimates, there were between 40,000 and 60,000 people in Balotnaya Square in Moscow. In St. Petersburg there were nearly 10,000 demonstrators, and in some regions (Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Rostov and others), between 3,000 and 5,000. The spontaneous character of the mobilizations constitutes one of the elements which most differentiates these events from, for example, the “Orange revolution” of 2004 in Ukraine. The opposition was absolutely not ready for a sudden politicization of society, nor did it expect people to take to the streets. The movement did not have a clearly defined leadership and the majority of the participants in the meeting on December 10 did not indicate support for one or the other of the known political personalities who were occupying the stage. Two weeks later, on December 24, a new meeting brought together more than 100,000 people in Moscow. That makes it the most massive mobilization in the entire history of post-Soviet Russia.

The political forces

The parties represented in Parliament, which form an integral part of the system of “guided democracy” and which won seats in the new Duma, - the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), the centre-left party Fair Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) of Vladimir Zhirinovksy, a populist formation surfing on a wave of nationalism) - expressed their disagreement with the result of the elections but accepted it de facto. They did not support the demands for the annulment of the December 4 elections and the organization of a new poll, just as they refused to support the incipient movement. Although representatives of the CPRF and Fair Russia spoke at the meetings on December 10, the vast majority does not regard these parties as forces capable of leading the movement. So there were about 1,000 people at the meeting organized by the CPRF on December 18.

It is in fact the political forces which have been excluded for many years from the Putin system and which can count on their experience of public activity and of organizing street demonstrations that are playing a major political role in the movement: the liberals (especially the “Solidarnost” movement of Boris Nemtsov), the far Right (“Russian” movements, “against illegal immigration”, etc.) and the far Left (Left Front, Russian Socialist Movement (RSD), anarchists). Moreover, citizens’ organizations such as the movement of independent observers, defenders of human rights and the “white ribbon” movement “are also very active.

Although for the moment the liberals occupy centre stage, both the far Right and the far Left are trying to affirm their presence, take part in the organizing committee and propose speakers. The “battle for the stage” is accompanied by conflicts. So the Right whistles and shouts during the interventions of the liberals and the Left, and the Left does the same during the interventions of the Right.

The leaders

Among the leaders who have made their name known and won popularity in the framework of the mobilizations we find Alexeï Navalnyi, a young activist coming from civil society and from the struggle against corruption, who is not a member of any party. He advocates a synthesis between the “moderate” liberals and nationalists, maintaining openly many contacts with the far Right, which he regards as “an important part of the movement which is representative of the population”. We also find the liberal leaders Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov, who began their careers in the 1990s in the “Yeltsin camp”. They have the support of the liberal media but their past largely discredits them in the eyes of the majority of the participants. We must also mention Sergueï Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front, a young social and political activist with a post-Stalinist past. It seems that the authorities regard Udaltsov as the most dangerous of the leaders of the movement. He was taken into custody and has been held by the police for nearly a month by means of charges that have been fabricated, linking him to petty crime. His release was one of the demands of the meetings on December 10 and 24. His video intervention on December 24 received massive support. Ilya Ponomaev, a member of Parliament for Fair Russia who is close to the Left Front also plays a very active role. In addition, among the participants in the meetings are figures known as “apolitical” - journalists, writers and actors holding mainly liberal views - who enjoy the greatest popularity.

The masses

We can safely say that the absolute majority of the participants in the mobilizations do not support any political force. On December 10 and 24, many people present did not listen to the speakers on the stage but showed great interest in the political exchanges and discussions inside the meeting. According to interesting sociological data collected by the Levada centre, at the meeting on December 24 in Moscow 60 per cent of the participants were men, 62 per cent had higher education qualifications, 31 per cent were between 25 and 39 years old, nearly 25 per cent were less than 25 and 23 per cent were between 40 and 55. The majority of people described themselves as “specialists” (46 per cent) or “students” (12 per cent). In reply to the question concerning political convictions, the majority answered “democratic” (31 per cent), “social-democrat” (10 per cent) or communist/left (13 per cent). We can also affirm that many representatives of the “middle-class”, employees in the public sector and pensioners were present at the meetings.

The tactics of the Left

From the start, the Left – the Left Front, the RSD, anarchists and others – has played a big role in the course of events. In Saint-Petersburg members of the RSD spoke during the meetings and were part of the organizing committee. In Moscow a representative of the RSD would have spoken on December 24, but finally he did not because of manoeuvres by the liberals. In several regions (Irkutsk, Perm, Novosibirsk, Kaluga, Yaroslavl) the RSD was among the organizers and our representatives spoke during the meetings.

From the beginning, we in the RSD spoke in favour of the closest possible cooperation between all the representatives of the radical Left during the mobilizations, for a common tactic, for the formation of what we describe as a “left pole” during the mass meetings.

Since December 5 we have taken an active part in the permanent meetings of the left groups, where we discuss the situation and the coordination of our actions. The Left Front, the anarchists, the “Communists of Russia” (a faction of the CPRF), the Communist Workers’ Party and others also take part in them.

The principal common orientation consists of creating alternative spaces within the meetings and drawing passers-by into discussion. On the 24th, in Moscow, the RSD had a stand where it laid out its literature and it organized a workshop for making placards in which anyone who wanted to could take part. A “live microphone” was put at the disposal of everyone. There was also a thematic stand against the privatization of education in which the teachers’ union and groups of students took part. The anarchists had their own “open microphone”.

The future

It is obvious that after the 24th we must expect a temporary drop in activity, due to winter and the end of year festivities. However, everyone understands that the presidential elections on March 4 will be decisive and that they are close. Putin will try to stay in power by winning in the first round, to do which he must get 50 per cent of the votes. With his popularity in freefall, it seems obvious that this is only possible through massive vote-rigging. The next big gathering is planned for February 1, the date of the launching of the presidential campaign.

We intend to continue the work of strengthening of the RSD (which can count on a stream of new members) as well as the negotiations for the formation of a united front of the left organizations, in particular with the Left Front and others. Our angles of attack for the presidential elections are: not one vote for Putin, for popular control over the elections, for a social programme (against privatizations and austerity measures, control over big corporations and natural resources), for the development of massive mobilizations as the principal condition for a change of system.

The Russian Socialist Movement was formed in 2011 by the fusion of Vpered (Forward, Russian section of the Fourth International) and Sotsialisticheskoye Soprotivleniye (Socialist Resistance).

The Comintern and the Concept of a Workers' Government

Details: Published on Sunday, 08 January 2012 12:20

Comintern’s 1922 World Congress: A ‘workers’ government’ as a step toward socialism

John Riddell

The concept of a workers' government is the awkward child of the early Communist international.

The thought it expresses is central to Marxism: that workers must strive to take political power. But in the early Comintern, it was attached to a perspective that was contentious for Marxists then and is so now: that workers can form a government that functions initially within a still-existing capitalist state.

As French Marxist Daniel Bensaid commented, “The algebraic formula of a ‘workers’ government’ has given rise over time to the most varied and often contradictory interpretations.” [1]

Let us see what light can be shed on this question by the record of the Comintern’s 1922 World Congress, recently published in English. [2] This was the gathering that held the Comintern’s most extensive discussion of the workers’ government question and adopted its initial position.

The congress debate focused on countries like Germany where sustained, mass workers’ struggles posed the possibility that working people might form a government. It was therefore necessary to pose the concept of workers’ power not just as a long-range perspective but in terms of the existing workers’ organizations, with their strengths and weaknesses.

On the other hand, workers in Germany, Italy, France, and neighbouring countries did not then possess a network of revolutionary workers’ councils similar to the Russian Soviets of 1917. Most of the organized workers’ movement was still directed by pro-capitalist leaders, and Communists were still a minority current in the working class. The question of workers’ power had to be addressed in that framework.

In that context, the Comintern had launched efforts to build a united front of workers’ struggle, challenging the organizations led by pro-capitalist officials to join in efforts to win immediate demands such as opening the capitalists’ financial records, workers’ control of distribution of food, shifting the tax burden to the rich, and arming workers for self-defense against reactionary gangs. How could such a program be implemented? By a government of all workers’ parties, the Comintern answered — a “workers’ government.” [3]

Introducing this concept to the Fourth Congress in November 1922, Comintern President Gregory Zinoviev conceded that this was an issue that “has not been sufficiently clarified.” [4] Delegates did indeed advance varied and contradictory interpretations. The text proposed for adoption went through more drafts than any other congress document. Even after its adoption, three different versions were circulated to Comintern parties. [5] Most subsequent English-language discussion has focused on a preliminary draft that differs substantially from the text that the Congress finally adopted.

The debate had opened two years earlier, during a general strike by German workers. The head of the Social Democratic trade unions, Carl Legien, called for formation of a government of workers’ parties and trade unions. His goal, to be sure, was to end the strike and begin to re-establish bourgeois order, as a united Social Democratic government had done after the German revolution of November 1918.

But circumstances had changed. Power no longer rested with revolutionary workers’ councils, as in November 1918, but with a bourgeois coalition regime. A workers’ government would draw its authority not from parliament, where deputies from workers’ parties were a decided minority, but from the workers’ mass movement. The German Communist party stated that, under these conditions, “formation of a socialist government … would create extremely favourable conditions for vigorous action by the proletarian masses,” and expressed conditional approval of the proposal. [6]

A call for a workers’ government of this type in Germany was included the next year in the Comintern resolution launching a campaign for a workers’ united front. This gave rise to an extended debate, which carried over into the Fourth World Congress in 1922.

Pseudonym or transition

The central issue was whether the term “workers’ government” was merely a pseudonym for the rule of workers’ councils under Communist leadership – a dictatorship of the proletariat – or whether it represented a transitional stage to that goal. The latter concept, warned Amadeo Bordiga, central leader of the Italian Communist Party, implied that the working class can take power “in some way other than through the armed struggle for power.”

Ruth Fischer, who led the leftist minority in the German party, warned that the concept of revolution was being watered down by “styling its hair in ‘Western’ fashion, creating democratic transitional stages between what we have and what we aim for.” Initially, Zinoviev also had held this view. He retracted it as the congress opened but continued to express the underlying thought in more guarded form. [7]

Leaders of the German party majority and Karl Radek, on the other hand, argued that the workers’ government was not a pseudonym for a workers’ dictatorship but a “point of transition” toward it. Achievement of a workers’ government can “lead to a phase of sharpened class struggles through which a proletarian dictatorship will ultimately emerge,” said Ernst Meyer. It will be parliamentary “only in a subordinate sense” and “must be carried by the masses.” Karl Radek called such a government “the starting point of a struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.” [8]

During the editing process, the congress text was progressively aligned with a “transitional” concept of a workers’ government. The final text sharply counterposed it to a parliamentary-based “bourgeois-Social-Democratic coalition, whether open or disguised.” A workers’ government can be sustained only by the struggles of the masses, the final draft states; its enumerated tasks begin with “arming the proletariat” and end with “breaking the resistance of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.” [9]

Communists should stand ready to “form a workers’ government with non-Communist workers’ parties and workers’ organizations,” the resolution states, but only “if there are guarantees that the workers’ government will carry out a genuine struggle against the bourgeoisie along the lines described above,” and subject to other safeguards.

Illusory workers’ governments

The clarity of this position was seriously undermined, however, by the simultaneous use of the term “workers’ government” to describe rule by bourgeois workers’ parties that, while introducing some reforms, acted as loyal administrators of the capitalist order. This concept was voiced mainly by Zinoviev, who thus managed to stand simultaneously on both the left and the right wings of the discussion. Zinoviev used the expression “liberal workers’ government” to describe the Labour regimes that had administered the Australian capitalist state after 1904 and a future Labour Party government in Britain. Such a regime, he said, “could be the jumping-off point for revolutionizing the country,” could take many steps “objectively directed against the bourgeois state,” and “can finish in the hands of the left wing.” Surprisingly, Zinoviev saw a parallel here with the role of the Russian Mensheviks in 1917. [10]

This position was opposed by leaders of the German delegation, who submitted an amendment distinguishing between “illusory” and “genuine” workers’ governments. The amendment also specified that the illusory “liberal” or “Social Democratic” workers’ governments

"…are not revolutionary workers’ governments at all, but in reality hidden coalition governments between the bourgeoisie and antirevolutionary workers’ leaders. Such “workers’ governments” are tolerated at critical moments by the weakened bourgeoisie, in order to deceive the proletariat … fend off the proletariat’s revolutionary onslaught and win time. Communists cannot take part in such a government. On the contrary, they must relentlessly expose to the masses the true nature of such a false “workers’ government.” [11]

Although adopted unanimously, the amendment was not incorporated into the published Russian version of the resolution, which has served as the basis for translations into English. As a result, English-language comment on this issue, singling out Zinoviev’s position for attack, has criticized the congress for the very weakness that its delegates sought to remedy.

Two unaddressed questions

Two other important aspects of the workers’ government issue, although posed in the congress, were left unaddressed.

The first concerned the role of peasants. During the congress debate, Vasil Kolarov, the senior delegate from Bulgaria, said that “the workers’ government is not posed in agrarian countries like the Balkans.” The final resolution, by contrast, referred to the possibility of a “government of workers and the poorer peasants” in regions such as the Balkans and Czechoslovakia. [12]

This question was most urgently posed in Bulgaria, governed by a radical peasant party that was facing a threatened coup by rightist forces. Here, an ideal opportunity to apply the concept of a workers’ and peasants’ government was blocked by the Bulgarian Communists’ hostility to ruling peasant party. No congress delegate mentioned the situation in Bulgaria. Only a few months later, the Bulgarian Communists’ sectarianism contributed to a tragic defeat of the workers’ movement.

The second unaddressed issue concerned the nature of workers’ rule. The resolution’s final text stated that “a genuinely proletarian workers’ government … in its pure form can be embodied only in the Communist Party.” Zinoviev said that only this variant “is indeed a pseudonym for the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The implication was that if Communists allied with non-Communist forces in a revolutionary government, this was only a temporary expedient until the Communists were strong enough to rule alone.

A comment by Leon Trotsky suggested quite a different approach. Describing the Bolsheviks’ alliance with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the first months of Soviet rule, Trotsky said the Left SRs had been ousted from the government on their own initiative, not that of the Bolsheviks. [13]

Nothing further was said on this point. As published, the resolution suggests a lack of clarity on the difference between workers’ rule and rule by the Communist Party.

An empirical approach

The resolution contains a typology of workers’ governments with five categories. In each case, delegates were thinking of a specific context, as follows:

* Illusory: Liberal workers’ government (Britain).

* Illusory: Social-Democratic workers’ government (Germany).

* Genuine: Government of workers and peasants (Balkans).

* Genuine: Workers’ government with Communist participation. (Germany).

* Genuinely proletarian workers’ government (Soviet Russia). [14]

Zinoviev stressed to congress delegates that this list was not complete and that other types of workers’ governments could occur. He warned that “in the search for a rigorous scientific definition, we might overlook the political side of the situation.” [15] In other words, the Comintern’s approach was not prescriptive but empirical. It sought to analyze situations actually posed in the struggle at that moment.

There were at that time three previous examples of workers’ governments, none of which fit neatly into this five-point schema. Thus:

* The Paris Commune, an elected revolutionary workers’ government at war with a still-existing bourgeois regime.

* The early Soviet republic: as noted, a coalition regime based on revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ soviets.

* The revolutionary governments of Bavaria and Hungary in 1919, where, as Chris Harman and Tim Potter have noted, “bourgeois power virtually collapsed…. The workers’ government came into being and afterwards had to create the structure of proletarian power.” [16]

The resolution also said nothing regarding the government that might result in the colonial and semi-colonial countries from the struggle for an anti-imperialist united front. This question was urgently posed in the years following the congress in China, where a mistaken Comintern policy resulted in a calamitous defeat. In the year of that setback, the United Opposition in the Bolshevik Party, led by Trotsky and Zinoviev, formulated a governmental proposal for China based on the Bolshevik strategic arsenal from the years before 1917: a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. [17] A heated debate broke out in both the German party and the Comintern as to whether this stand was appropriate. Trotsky was soon to repudiate the concept. Nonetheless, it remains among the possible variants of a workers’ and peasants’ government.

Long-term relevance?

Almost a century has passed since the Comintern debated the workers’ government question. The revolutionary era that began in 1914 has passed away; we are headed toward new revolutions, under new conditions. There is no equivalent today of the mass Communist parties of the 1920s. The Comintern’s decisions on governmental policy were rooted in a political environment that no longer exists.

It can be harmful to employ the Comintern decisions as a template to be imposed on a vastly different reality. The relevance of its workers’ government discussion lies rather in alerting us to the possibility that working people should strive for governmental power even in the absence of a soviet-type network of workers’ councils.

The Fourth Congress decision suggest that workers’ efforts to form a government, far from representing a barrier to socialist revolution, can be a significant transitional step toward its realization. The decision also sketches out conditions under which a workers’ government may actually exist within a capitalist state, for a transitional period, with positive results.

The early Comintern position retains its relevance to struggles for socialism in the new century. This gives us good reason to revisit the debates in the Comintern’s first half-decade of activity over its awkward but vigorous child, the concept of a workers’ government.

John Riddell, January 1, 2012

Notes

[1] Daniel Bensaid, 2011, La Politique comme art stratégique, Paris: Éditions Syllepse, p. 69.

[2] John Riddell (ed.), 2012, Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922 (hereafter TUF), Leiden: Brill.

[3] See “When “Security” Looms Larger Than Tsunami–” on ESSF website (article 1127).

[4] TUF, p. 129.

[5] For the three texts, see “The Comintern’s unknown decision on workers’ governments.” on ESSF (article 22599) website.

[6] Pierre Broué, 2005, The German Revolution 1917–1923, Leiden: Brill, 369.

[7] TUF, pp. 182, 147.

[8] TUF, pp. 139–40, 167.

[9] TUF, p. 1159.

[10] TUF, pp. 266–7.

[11] TUF, pp. 1098–9.

[12] TUF, pp. 243, 1161.

[13] TUF, p. 1161, 267, 1003.

[14] TUF, p. 1160–1.

[15] TUF, p. 267–8.

[16] Chris Harman and Tim Potter, “The Workers’ Government,” in International Socialism, February 7, 2007.

[17] Leon Trotsky 1980, Challenge of the Left Opposition, vol. 2, New York: Pathfinder, p. 369.

* http://johnriddell.wordpress.com/20...

* This working paper was presented as part of the International Communist Movement stream of the Eighth Historical Materialism Annual Conference in London, England, on November 11, 2011.

Mumia Abu-Jamal : Death Penalty Overturned

Details: Published on Sunday, 08 January 2012 12:15

No Death Sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal

Jeff Mackler

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced on Wednesday, Dec. 7, that he would NOT seek a new sentencing hearing to execute innocent death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. On October 11, 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court, affirming two federal court decisions in the same case, effectively ruled that the sentencing portion of Mumia's 1982 trial was a violation of the U.S. Constitution. This mandated that Williams either conduct a new sentencing hearing OR place Mumia Abu-Jamal in the general prison population to serve a life term without possibility of parole. Williams and Pennsylvania officials chose the latter, thus eliminating the possibility of Mumia's being executed.

Mumia's attorneys and supporters are now focused on the fight for a new trial before a new jury where evidence of Mumia's innocence can for the first time be presented in full public view. Mumia's 1982 racist frame-up trial has been widely condemned, with organizations ranging from Amnesty International, the European Parliament and the NAACP to heads of state in France and South Africa demanding a new trial.

Winning a new trial for anyone convicted of murder is no easy task. Mumia's legal team must meet an extremely high legal standard. This includes presenting "compelling and not been previously litigated new evidence" that could not have been "previously discovered through due diligence." A special investigator and associated team has been hired to begin this difficult and arduous process.

We have reached the end of one struggle and the beginning of another. But, better to fight on for Mumia's freedom in the context of a threat of execution NOT hanging over his head.

In truth, the recent Supreme Court action, essentially affirming previous decisions of the Federal District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that Mumia's death sentence was unconstitutional, was a political decision as well as an affirmation of the "letter of the law," one that was 30 years in coming and one that never would have come had it not been for a massive national and international effort on Mumia's behalf.

A Philadelphia, if not national decision, was obviously made at the highest levels to avoid a new sentencing hearing where evidence of innocence could have been presented that would have exposed the entire racist and frame-up nature of Mumia's 1982 trial.

Such a hearing, the DA likely judged, might have led to a level of public outrage and exposure of the criminal "justice" system sufficient in itself to force a new trial despite formal legal restrictions to the contrary. The risk to an institution where the racism inherent in U.S. society, expressed in the actions and mentality of corrupt police officers, judges, prosecutors and reactionary laws, makes justice for the poor and oppressed an impossibility, was too great to contemplate. Mumia's trial and "conviction" classically revealed all of the elements of a rigged racist and classist judicial system. Philadelphia officials chose to avoid any further risk to its credibility.

One fact is certain. After 30 years of insisting that justice has been done – that Mumia's rights were fully protected – the State of Pennsylvania has been proven, through state institutions of its own choosing, to have violated the U.S. Constitution. Mumia has been unconstitutionally held in a tiny death row cell, in virtual isolation from all family and friends - all physical contact barred - for thirty years.

This constitutional violation was scored by Mumia's legal team almost three decades ago when Mumia's first appeal included the simple assertion that the presiding Judge Albert Sabo violated the law by falsely instructing the jury regarding their deliberation. This is the same "hanging judge" Sabo who stated before two witnesses in his private antechambers that he was "going to help 'em fry the n****r."

Sabo falsely told the jury that in order to not execute Mumia and instead arrive at a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, they had to be unanimous with regard to considering any and all mitigating circumstances. Contrary to Judge Sabo the law states clearly in the Supreme Court's 1988 Mills v. Maryland case, that a single juror is sufficient to place any mitigating circumstance sufficient to negate a death penalty decision, before the jury for its consideration.

Sunday, December 11 at 2:00 pm is set for a mass meeting to open a new phase in the struggle for Mumia's freedom. Join us at the Laney College Forum, Oakland, CAat 2 pm. (one block from the Lake Merritt BART station). Speakers include: Angela Davis, Ramona Africa, Barbara Becnel, Jeff Mackler, Boots Riley, Crystal Bybee, Bishop Desmond Tutu (via video) and Michelle Alexander (via video). Admission free for Peralta students. All others $10 sliding scale. See attached flyer.

In Philadelphia, a parallel meeting featuring Cornel West is set for Friday, Dec. 9,7:30 PM at the National Constitution Center.

On the West Coast contact Jeff Mackler for further information: 510-268-9429jmackler@lmi. net. In Philadelphia contact: 267-760-7344

Consuming seriously damages your health… and that of the planet

Details: Published on Sunday, 08 January 2012 12:10

Consuming seriously damages your health… and that of the planet

Esther Vivas

"A woman, desperate to get the best offers in the Wal-Mart sale, discharged pepper-spray at people in order to drive them away from the items she wanted.” This could be a scene from a Pedro Almodovar film had it not been seen in real life. On the 25/11/2011 such a story appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

With that in mind, we could suggest that the large shopping centres, especially during sales, place prominent warning signs, parodying the Health Authorities’ -”Consuming seriously harms your health". Moreover… irrational, superfluous and unnecessary consumerism, as promoted by the capitalist system, not only can affect our health, in such an unexpected and direct manner as a “pepper-spray assault”, but above all, affects the "health" of the planet.

Just to give an example, if everyone consumed like the average American we would need five planet earths to feed such voracity, but alas we only have one and it’s not big enough. We have become too used to living mindless of the fact that the world we inhabit is finite and capitalism has taken good care of that. Progress is accredited to the consumer society but progress towards what, is the question we must ask ourselves, and for whom, and at what cost and who pays.

The latest songs of the Sirens insist that buying will make us happier, despite such happiness never showing, no matter what we spend. "Splash out and drown your sorrows” seems to be capitalism’s slogan these days, but our dissatisfaction never stays satisfied. Happiness does not come instantly, bagged with a receipt

We are told to buy sunglasses by Chanel, a Tous teddy bear or Mango jeans as the only means to feel like Claudia Schiffer, Jennifer Lopez or Gerard Piqué. The days of selling just a product has passed into history. Now, as all good schools of marketing teach, they sell us the celebrity and package with the promise of "health, money and love". And we pay, pleased as Punch, the price of our dream.

They sell us the incidental as indispensable and the trivial as life or death, and create for us a whole range of spurious needs. Change of clothes every season, a mobile of the latest generation, a plasma TV and so on, and so on … With a consequent pile, of technological, electronical, and sartorial waste...that vanishes once out the door, going to swell the scrap heaps of the Global South, polluting water and land, and threatening community health.

Or else, the system’s counter offence of programmed obsolescence... planning expiry dates for all that we buy, so that after the determinate amount of time, it fails and you have to buy another. What good is an everlasting light bulb, stockings that resist ladders or a computer that does not work? All bad business. Here, he who sells is the only winner.

Perhaps the time is ripe to instil the idea that we could “live better with less" and to examine the complicity desired of us, with a system imposed upon us that benefits only the same as always. We are told that there is a consumer society because we love to consume, but - aside from our own individual responsibility - no one, to my knowledge, chose this society in which we happen to live or at least I myself was never asked. It’s just that, from diapers until dentures we are bombarded with "buy... buy... buy" and their message continues today, we will leave this crisis ‘consuming’. I ask myself, "consuming" or "being consumed"?

http://esthervivas.wordpress.com/

Esther Vivas is a member of the Centre for Studies on Social Movements (CEMS) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is author of the book “En pie contra la deuda externa” (Stand Up against external debt), El Viejo Topo, 2008, and co-coordinator of the books also in Spanish “Supermarkets, No Thanks” and “Where is Fair Trade headed?” among other publications, and a contributor to the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org. She is also a member of the editorial board of Viento Sur.

From http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2436

Subcategories

Gender

Article Count:

43
Environment

Article Count:

64
World Politics

Article Count:

258
National Situation

Article Count:

102
Statements of Radical Socialist

Article Count:

125
Socialist and Peoples History

Article Count:

54
Marxist Theory

Article Count:

57
News

Article Count:

117
Fourth International

Article Count:

44

Page 72 of 124

Radical Socialist

Articles