Letters

No revolution?

In response to Tony Clark (Letters, February 8), I thought my position regarding the permissibility of factions within a Communist Party was perfectly clear. They should not be permitted. The correct operation of democratic centralism organised on the basis of Marxism-Leninism allows ample opportunities for members in their branches and on elected higher committees to influence and shape the party’s policies, leadership etc.

For reasons I explained in my letter of February 1, the very existence of minority factions actively disrupts and undermines the democracy of the whole party - compounded by the fact they are themselves internally highly undemocratic and top-down. They have to be, in order for a small, unelected leadership core to be able to issue orders from the top and for them to be carried out unquestionably by their foot soldiers. Factions are inherently secretive, conspiratorial and manipulative. Collective voting and decision-making on the basis of individual judgements and consciousness, and actually listening to debates and discussions, are replaced by mindless bloc voting based on factional orders from above.

It is not just a question of whether factions are formally banned within the party’s rules or whether or how the party leadership chooses to enforce this in specific cases. It is that individual party members fully understand they have rights and obligations, and that they operate with sufficient self-discipline to avoid any factional or other illegitimate activity within the party. It is these basic working class concepts of discipline and self-discipline which appear to be so alien to the petty bourgeois liberals, reformists and so-called ‘ultra-left’.

Tony Clark persistently asserts the Bolsheviks should not have made revolution in Russia in 1917. So what should they have done? What would have been his alternative?

There is no doubt whatsoever that Russia was deep in a pre-revolutionary situation in 1917 - riven with explosive contradictions due to objective factors, and irrespective of the role and impact of the Bolsheviks: being part of the world imperialist and capitalist system and first world imperialist war; having sharply growing elements of industrial capitalism, yet dominated by a predominantly backward peasant economy. A cold blooded ruthless monarchical autocracy viciously repressing workers and peasants alike; workers and peasants struggling and losing their lives and liberty for the most very basic of democratic demands; Russia as a country and people exhausted by pointless war and devastation; the autocracy itself facing an extreme rightwing militarist response to alleged weaknesses in trying to respond to the interrelated and interlocking set of crises and the impending catastrophe (from the landowners, aristocracy and capitalist point of view).

Lars T Lih and Jack Conrad in this paper have comprehensively demonstrated that the programme of the Bolsheviks in these circumstances was for the workers and peasants - the majority of the population - to seize the vlast (power) in Russia, in order to start to resolve the contradictions and crises in favour of the majority of working people, and to establish a democratic republic. Is this what Tony opposes? Again, what was Tony’s alternative?

The Bolsheviks did not attempt to instantly introduce socialism in 1917 or afterwards, as is Tony’s implication. The revolutions of 1917 were a practical implementation of the long-standing Bolshevik strategy of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship (rule) of the workers and poor peasants (the majority, hence democratic). The Bolsheviks, of course, never made any secret of their ultimate aim of socialism.

But the majority of working people taking power in October 1917 could not and should not have been limited to the ‘classic’ tasks of the ‘bourgeois-democratic’ revolution. How could it, when it was the majority working people who had taken state power? To meet the fundamental economic, political and democratic interests of the majority working masses, their new rule simply had to at the same time make decisive moves towards socialism: ie, the full economic and political power of the working people.

‘War communism’ was an immediately necessary response to the war of intervention launched by the western imperialist powers. Once the existential civil war emergency was over, the shattered state of the industrial and agricultural economies required the reversion to the New Economic Policy. This was never a straight retreat from the aims and objectives of socialism. The core leadership of the Soviet Communist Party was absolutely crystal-clear: this was a period of class struggle between the growing proletariat and proletarianising majority of the peasantry and the growing role and strength of the capitalist elements. Growth of the industrial and agricultural economies temporarily met the needs and interests of both the new vlast and the capitalist elements, but was hardly sustainable in the medium term.

It was only when both the industrial and agricultural economies had recovered to a certain extent under the NEP, and the capitalist elements in both industry and agriculture were starting to increase their resistance to the vlast, that, having grown in absolute terms within the economy, and being backed by world imperialism and capitalism, the Soviet Communist Party in the late 1920s launched both rapid industrialisation and mass collectivisation, to resolve these growing and new economic and political contradictions in favour of socialism.

So the October 1917 revolution was not about any sort of leap into ‘instant socialism’, as Tony seems to imply. It was about overthrowing the rule of the landlords and capitalists - ensuring the complete rout of the monarchical autocracy still in the background; ending the ruinous involvement in the imperialist war; and trying to develop Russia as an independent economy and society in favour of real democracy and socialism.

Of course, capitalism in Russia had not created all the requisite material and cultural preconditions for socialism by October 1917. Lenin’s response to those critics at that time was: “If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism, why cannot we begin by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture in a revolutionary way, and then, with the aid of the workers’ and peasants’ government and soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations? You say that civilisation is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilisation in our country as the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving towards socialism?”

There was no bourgeois-democratic option available in 1917. The principal options were: national catastrophe, complete collapse of the state and society; an extreme rightwing counterrevolutionary military coup; or the radical, revolutionary option taken by the Bolsheviks in October - slicing through the Gordian Knot of capitalist, feudal and imperialist contradictions, in which Russia was then enmeshed.

Tony is opposed to the latter, so what should the Bolsheviks have done? Sit on their backsides and wait for decades for capitalism in Russia to ‘evolve naturally’ into a bourgeois democracy? Wait even more decades for Russian capitalism to ‘evolve naturally’ into some form of ‘democratic socialism’?

Meanwhile, 500 years later ...

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Tusc and Sparts

I read with interest your report on the appearance of the Spartacists at the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition’s February convention (‘Farcical Labour Party mark two’, February 8).

The assembled dignitaries may well have been impressed by Eibhlín McColgan’s statement that “the Spartacist League supports Tusc” and asking that “other groups should do the same” (Workers Hammer supplement, February 9), but did any of the delegates peruse the front-page article in the latest issue of Workers Hammer (winter 2023-24)? It states in no uncertain terms that the “Socialist Party is desperately promoting Tusc, an openly reformist ‘broad church’ electoral coalition, to revive the Corbyn movement, oblivious to the fact that Corbynism already proved its bankruptcy precisely because of its reformist ‘broad church’ programme”.

To add insult to injury, they even have a graphic drawn by their resident cartoonist, comrade Vincent, entitled ‘Reformists in swimsuits’, depicting one of the ‘reformists’ handing out a Tusc leaflet to a betrayed striker.

Did comrade Eibhlin experience a road-to-Damascus moment in the minibus conveying the 10 comrades to Birmingham?

Matt Kelly
email

Counterrevolution?

Simple logic, based on the meaning of words, says that if there is a counterrevolution it must have been preceded by a revolution - or at least a perceived threat to the ruling order, as happened in Chile in 1973. Gerry Downing writes that there was a “US-sponsored counterrevolutionary coup in 2014” in Ukraine (Letters, February 8). But where was the revolution then?

And who were the revolutionaries? Were they Viktor Yanukovych, the super-rich, super-corrupted then-president of Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin, leader of the Russian kleptocracy, who eight years later started a war of aggression against Ukraine? I’ve never heard anyone calling these characters revolutionaries.

Hannu Reime
Helsinki

Close down Elbit

Activists from Palestine Action are blockading the Bristol HQ of Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems. By attaching themselves to each other using lock-ons, they are preventing access into the central hub of Elbit’s lethal business.

Using Elbit’s weaponry, Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Most recently, the occupiers have begun massacring Palestinians in Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians were told to go in order to be safe. Over the past few months, over 28,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 12,000 of whom are children.

Elbit Systems produces military drones, munitions, combat vehicles, missiles and other Israeli weaponry. The majority of their arms are marketed as “battle-tested”, as they’ve been developed by conducting bombardments of the Palestinian people. The Israeli weapons firm is crucial to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as claimed by Elbit’s CEO.

The owners of Elbit’s Bristol HQ, Somerset council, were recently targeted by locals, who crashed their executive meeting in order to call for the council to terminate the lease with Elbit.

A Palestine Action spokesperson has said: “Whilst Israeli weapons companies operate on our doorstep, which assist in occupying, displacing and massacring the people in Gaza, it’s up to the people to take direct action to shut Elbit down. Every other method, including marches, petitions and lobbying, has failed to end British complicity in the occupation. We have the power, the ability and the will to shut the war criminals down ourselves.”

Palestine Action
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