A Future That Works

A Future That Works
NO2aTory/Liberal coalition - Vote with your feet for an alternative to a neo-liberal economy and neo-conservative state Yes2aLeftFront and a Red/Green Left Alliance

Saturday 23 July 2011

What Is To Be Done?

‘‘In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international’’

(Vladimir Ilyich Lenin 1901)

33 comments:

  1. Lenin's theoretical, strategic and flexible tactical insights was what made him one of the great socialist revolutionary leaders, who used his theoretical understanding and practical political instincts to realise revolutionary potential for working-class globally.

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  2. ‘‘Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a ‘‘third’’ ideology)’’

    (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin 1901)

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  3. Marx said that ‘‘the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe’’ and that ‘‘All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed’’ and that ‘it compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves’’.

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  4. Marx and Engels saw the development of large-scale economic units as necessary before bourgeois nationalism which can be said to include social democratic nationalism or social chauvinism could be replaced by a proletarian internationalism or international socialism.

    We can observe the truth of these statements in the process and that capitalism is now a global system therefore the working class must respond as a global class. The class struggle against the interests of global capitalism can only succeed if the working classes act as a united class as Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto of 1848

    ‘‘Workers of all countries, unite!’’

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  5. Socialist Unity

    Some ‘‘Leftist’’ see proletarian internationalism as impossible, arguing that social realities such national loyalties and cultural prevent working class internationalism whereas the capitalist classes can understand the cross-national interest of their class.

    Marxists such as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg all saw patriotism and nationalism as opposing the interests of the working classes.

    ‘‘Wars between capitalist states are, as a rule, the outcome of their competition on the world market, for each state seeks not only to secure its existing markets, but also to conquer new ones. In this, the subjugation of foreign peoples and countries plays a prominent role. These wars result furthermore from the incessant race for armaments by militarism, one of the chief instruments of bourgeois class rule and of the economic and political subjugation of the working class.’’ (Second International, 1907)

    From a Marxists-Leninist perspective therefore as the class struggle intensifies internationalism should overtake petty nationalisms as workers across nations discover they have more in common with other workers than the bourgeoisie capitalist classes of their own country.

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  6. Notes on Contemporary Imperialism

    By Prabhat Patnaik

    ‘‘Since finance capital itself becomes international in character, the controllers of this international finance capital constitute, to borrow Lenin’s expression, a global financial oligarchy’’ (Prabhat Patnaik December 2010)

    Countries are drawn into the vortex of globalized finance and subject to ‘‘the vortex of globalized finance’’ and subjected to ‘‘the caprices of the global financial oligarchy’’. Finance ministers, governors of central banks, the IMF World Bank ‘‘constitute what has been called an “epistemic community”. …they…share the same world view….the same theoretical positions’’.

    Ideological thinkers and strategists that promote this belief system in the interests of global finance perpetuating the hegemony of international finance capital.

    In the developed world such as the USA, Britain and Europe we see a current account deficit and in the developing world such as China we see a current account surplus. It has become harder for advanced ‘‘capitalist nation-States’’ to adopt Keynesian demand management strategies and in the developing world it’s harder for ‘‘bourgeois-led State’’ to protect peasant farmers and small producers from displacement by multi-national corporations and agribusiness.

    Therefore we see social costs in both the developed and developing world from the dominance of international finance capital. In ‘‘Lenin’s sense’’ transitional demands act as an educational device mobilizing the working classes and their allies. In the developed world this is ‘‘the working class, the immigrants, the so-called “underclass”, together with the white-collar employees and the urban middle class’’, in the later ‘‘the peasants, petty producers, agricultural labourers, marginalized sections like the tribals and dalits, and the working class’’.

    These two groups will be engaged in two distinct struggles against the effects of globalization and international finance capital. In the first instance to defend the real gains made in the social-democratic Keynesian phase of capitalism and in the second against disposition of indigenous peoples and falling into destitution and super exploitation by global capitalism.

    From this it’s possible to see real possibilities for either regression or the advance of the reactionary far-right in the developed world and in the developing world fundamentalist organizations or for the combination of circumstances to produce the dynamics for a socialist transition in the developed world on one front and the developing world on a second front.

    http://www.pragoti.in/node/4234

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  7. Lenin dated the imperialist phase of capitalism, which he associated with monopoly capitalism, from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the process of centralization of capital had led to the emergence of monopoly in industry and among banks. The coming together (coalescence) of the capital.

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  8. Lenin also said imperialism is the highest and final stage of capitalism, let’s prove he was correct and that whilst the social-democratic reformist model of welfare capitalism saved the system after the Second World War the neo-liberal free-market and neo-conservative state and imperialist wars bring it demise, that’s the role of a vanguard Marxist-Leninist party.

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  9. ‘‘Lenin highlighted the economistic practices of those which ‘‘have contacts with the workers and rest content with this’’ they ‘‘help expose factory abuses….injustice of the laws and measures that hamper the freedom to strike’’ but are still only engaging in economic struggle against employers and governments (V I Lenin, What is to be Done?, pp144, 145) reducing social-democracy/socialism to the level of trade-unionism. Lenin argued that in order to develop political consciousness the revolutionary socialist ‘‘must go amongst all classes of the population as theoreticians, as propagandists, as agitators and as organizers’’ (V I Lenin p146).

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  10. This is where I would argue the French Left parties are acting both economically and politically whereas the British Left parties are restricting themselves to economic activity within the trade-union movement. What we see with Jean-Luc Melenchon and Pierre Laurent’s leadership is a solid Marxist theoretical base and propaganda of the Front de Gauche campaign which is building concrete resistance to the neo-liberal/neo-conservative treaties from the EU and ECB/IMF directives.

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  11. This is where I am arguing that the French Left parties are acting as Marxist/Leninist revolutionary parties and the British Left parties are acting purely on the economic front as trade-unionists and not as Marxist-Leninist revolutionary parties and not even a Social-Democratic reformists, they are content with being theoretical study circles which have contacts with workers through the trade-unions.’’

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  12. The vanguard needs to guide the struggle of workers, students and liberal strata in the overthrow of the autocracy ‘‘to direct’’ the thoughts of the disaffected them to the idea that the entire political system is worthless (Lenin, p149). As people of all social strata see ‘‘the autocracy’’ (in the 21st century this is the institutions of global governance i.e. The IMF, World Bank, WTO, ECB and EU as well as the nation state) ‘‘is unbearable and must inevitably fall’’, in ‘‘every manifestation of discontent’’ against the tyranny of the institutions of global capitalism and the capitalist state its necessary to have a leadership that can attract other social classes and not just the workers and trade-unions.

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  13. It’s in this respect that ‘‘a party which unites….the assault on the government (and governance of globalization) in the name of the entire people….the guidance of the struggle of the working class’’ (Lenin, p153) acts as the vanguard Marxist/Leninist party in theory and in practice. This is why it’s my view that Rob Griffiths, Peter Taaffe and Bob Crow are acting in a trade-union and economistic fashion, whereas Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Pierre Laurent and Danielle Obono are acting as a Marxist/Leninist Vanguard applying theory in practice both economically and politically at the national and with Lothar Bisky at the international level through the French Left Front (Parti Communiste Français, Parti de Gauche, Convention for a Progressive Alternative and Gauche Unitaire) and European Left and European United Left / Nordic Green Left.

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  14. In Britain the broad left see the connection between the trade-unions and the Labour Party as the corner-stone of the working class movement and this is the analysis of the Communist Party of Britain as expressed in the various incarnations of the BRS since 1951. But we have to accept that whilst this remains the case and all calls by the Socialist Party for a new mass party of labour seem utopian, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see how the labour movement can reclaim the Labour Party from the neo-liberal/neo-conservative clique which took control on the late 1990’s.

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  15. The Labour Party always represented a bourgeois party even in its most social-democratic/socialist incarnation and government of 1945. From Jim Callaghan to Gordon Brown it move increasingly to the right politically, except for the caretaker period under Michael Foot. Today it has another caretaker in Ed Miliband which has stalled the neo-liberal/neo-conservative move further to the right for the time being.

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  16. So whilst it’s true that under the FPTP electoral system the labour movement still needs to exert whatever influence it can on the Labour Party through its economic financial position and the votes of levy paying trade-unionists. It would appear that the broad left need another strategy for defending the concrete gains made by social-democracy in the 20th century and for reviving any socialist political agenda.

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  17. The ‘Left’ has a crisis of leadership and an ideological crisis of political and economic struggle against the hegemony of neo-liberal/neo-conservative ideology and political and economic class power by the class and the institutions of national and international governance of capital. The possibility of building socialism in one country seems an infantile and utopian dream.

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  18. If this is the case the then the only way forward for the British Left is to unite with the European and Scandinavian Left. How can this be achieved, the Communist Party of Britain, Socialist Party and their supports such as Bob Crow still advocate British withdrawal from the EU, and presumably believe if this happened they could/would be able to build socialism in one country.

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  19. I would suggest that what would happen is Britain would move more to the right and the Anglo-American neo-liberal economic and neo-conservative political model of capitalism. Why else would the Euro-sceptic Tory right and the ultra-right parties such as UKIP and BNP want Britain out of the EU?

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  20. If you accept my scenario the best/only option is to fightback against neo-liberal economics and a neo-conservative state is to defend social-democratic welfare capitalism from within the EU and resist the working classes of Britain, Europa and Scandinavia against the class offensive of the Tory/Liberal coalition and directives from the ECB, IMF, WTO and World Bank alongside the parties European and Scandinavian Left.

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  21. This is why in my view the leadership of the CPB and SP have failed to understand the historical and geographic dialectics or dynamics of international finance capital and global governance and are fighting a purely trade-union economistic battle at the national level which cannot succeed. Len McCluskey and the Unite union have links with the German metal workers union as well as links through the TUC with the ETUC, the Left needs a political equivalent with the EL and GUE/NGL led by Pierre Laurent and Lothar Bisky in my view.

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  22. Rob Griffiths, Peter Taaffe and Bob Crow in my view fail to grasp the implications of Capital or Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism and therefore they are in error in their theory and practices if they take a narrow nationalistic road against the Tory/Liberal coalition and international finance capital. The Marxist Left parties should be allied to the EL and GUE/NGL just as the Labour Party is allied to the social-democratic PES if they are to have any real political strategy for defending the gains achieved by social-democracy and putting socialism back on the agenda.

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  23. Len McCluskey is stepping up to the mark in the same way that Hugh Scanlon did in the 1970’s, will the political leadership of the class struggle equal the economic leadership in Britain? The political leadership of the Left parties in France are proving to be up to the challenge, but without a similar engagement with the working classes here what will be done isn’t equal to what is to be done.

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  24. Obviously the French labour movement will have to engage in economic resistance just as the British labour movement led by the likes of Len McCluskey here have to resist the neo-liberal economic agenda of the Tory/Liberal coalition. The difference in France would be greater than it is in Britain between a neo-liberal/neo-conservative Tory/Liberal or New,Blue-Labour neo-liberal/neo-conservative government because Hollande is a social-democrat even if he is pressured by the IMF/ECB and the markets, he is still more susceptible to pressure from organized labour than Tony Blair/Gordon Brown was or a Labour government led by Yvette Cooper would be if the right-wing in the Labour Party displace Ed Miliband.

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  25. We can be utopian and part of what Lenin called the infantile left, or we can engage in a strategy which weakens the neo-liberal economic and neo-conservative political agenda of the capitalist classes, institutions of governance and the international markets. It’s my view that the Front de Gauche are engaging in the class struggle in a way that combines Marxist theory within the framework of a bourgeois democratic state so as to develop the economic and political struggle from a social-democratic to a socialist political fightback. This is therefore an engagement in theory and practice in the social-democratic phase as advocated by Lenin a hundred years ago when capitalism was in a similar phase of economic and political crisis.

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  26. A recent poll found that 35% of the French electorate think Jean-Luc Melenchon (Front de Gauche) the best candidate for defending the interests of workers, followed by François Hollande at 30% followed by François Bayrou 16%, Nicolas Sarkozy 12% and Marine Le Pen 10%, others at 8% or less. Amongst the ‘‘working class’’ François Hollande leads with 31% followed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon at 25% with François Bayrou, Nicolas Sarkozy and and Marine Le Pen all on 10%.

    http://www.tns-sofres.com/points-...8F6109BB4CFFAF32FBA2DA15AE1E.aspx

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  27. The vanguard needs to guide the struggle of workers, students and liberal strata in the overthrow of the autocracy ‘‘to direct’’ the thoughts of the disaffected them to the idea that the entire political system is worthless (Lenin, p149). As people of all social strata see ‘‘the autocracy’’ (in the 21st century this is the institutions of global governance i.e. The IMF, World Bank, WTO, ECB and EU as well as the nation state) ‘‘is unbearable and must inevitably fall’’, in ‘‘every manifestation of discontent’’ against the tyranny of the institutions of global capitalism and the capitalist state it’s necessary to have a leadership that can attract other social classes and not just the workers and trade-unions.

    ReplyDelete
  28. It’s in this respect that ‘‘a party which unites….the assault on the government (and governance of globalization) in the name of the entire people….the guidance of the struggle of the working class’’ (Lenin, p153) acts as the vanguard Marxist/Leninist party in theory and in practice. This is why it’s my view that Rob Griffiths, Peter Taaffe and Bob Crow are acting in a trade-union and economistic fashion, whereas Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Pierre Laurent and Danielle Obono are acting as a Marxist/Leninist Vanguard applying theory in practice both economically and politically at the national and with Lothar Bisky at the international level through the French Left Front (Parti Communiste Français, Parti de Gauche, Convention for a Progressive Alternative and Gauche Unitaire) and European Left and European United Left / Nordic Green Left.

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  29. This why it’s my view the British Left need to get on board with the European Left led by Pierre Laurent of the French Communist Party and the European United Left/Nordic Green Left Group of MEP’s led by Lothar Bisky of the Die Linke party in Germany.

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  30. Lenin argued that the struggle would be fought on two plains the developed bourgeois democracies and the developing and underdeveloped nations. In the latter it takes the form of national liberation against the imperialist forces of ‘global’ finance capital and military interventions. In the developed world its an internationalist struggle rather than nationalist liberation.

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  31. It seems that the CPB have made the trade-unions the corner-stone of their strategy for class struggle and are hedging their bets on reclaiming the Labour Party as the mass party of social-democracy within a bourgeois state. Rather than developing the economic struggle and political struggle together into a revolutionary socialist class struggle they have reduced proletarian struggle to a purely economic struggle and cannot advance.

    This reflects the crisis of leadership which criticises theoreticians like David Harvey, John Bellamy Foster and Joel Kovel for not having any basis in the working class when their legitimate role is theoretical analysis and research, whereas the role of Rob Griffiths and Peter Taaffe as leaders of the communist and socialist parties is to lead the political class struggle and explain the nature of the crisis to the people thorough party propaganda and party activists to act as agitators rather than concentration on study groups and Morning Star fund raising at trades councils.

    This is why I came to the conclusion the Communist Party of Britain has become a ‘‘revolutionary bureaucracy’’ acting under the slogan ‘‘class struggle’’ and in Lenin’s words playing at ‘‘militant Marxism’’ through the achievements of ‘‘economic struggle’’ and neglecting the ‘‘political struggle’’. What is to be done? put equal emphasis on the economic and political struggle as the vanguard leading the social-democratic phase towards the socialist revolutionary phase of the class struggle. Maybe the LRC could invite Pierre Laurent and Lothar Bisky to give a talk on the EL, GUE/NGL and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Pierre Laurent and Danielle Obono could give a talk on the Front de Gauche.

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  32. Since Jim Callaghan in the late 1970’s and certainly since Tony Blair what has been taken to be social-democracy is neither Marxian revolutionary socialism or the reformist social-democracy of Bernstein but has regressively moved from social-liberalism to economic-liberalism incorporating the conservative authoritarian state hence the neo-liberal/neo-conservative economic/political ideological hegemony post Thatcher and Reagan.

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  33. Whilst the CPB and SP are marginal in terms of bourgeois democracy unlike the PCF in France or the GUE/NGL in Europe and Scandinavia. As the main parties of the Marxist Left the CPB and SP are the main representatives of the theoretical political groups in Britain. If the non-Marxist Left within the Labour Party cannot reclaim it for social-democracy and/or if the current crisis of finance capital and the realization/fiscal crisis cannot be solve in a way that reconciles the antagonisms between the majority and the minority class we need an alternative that looks beyond social-democracy in its reformist incarnation.

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