WeeklyWorker

Letters

Paucity of inches?

Given the quantity of reporting in the past year on the ‘communist fusion’ process, I have been disappointed by the paucity of column inches given over to discussing the formation of factions within Your Party, which seems to offer a much more plausible opportunity for the reconstitution of Marxist forces within a more unified left.

Like many, I was excited to learn of the launch of the Democratic Socialists caucus, an organisation I joined at the start of September. The caucus has made significant achievements - particularly due to the initiative of Tina Becker, who ensured that the Sheffield Your Party assembly was a much more democratic process than others.

Unfortunately the commitments of the caucus to democracy are not entirely clear. Many members appear to believe that freedom of speech/dissent should not apply to those with reactionary views on trans rights, and my persistent arguments to the contrary led to me becoming something of a hate figure on the caucus WhatsApp chat. On November 2 I was contacted by a member of the executive committee, who asked me to explain why multiple formal complaints had been lodged against me - a difficult question to answer, given that the content of those complaints was not shared with me. Although the EC member encouraged me to remain a member of the caucus, a few hours later, on the morning of November 3, I was removed from all caucus WhatsApp chats. The fact that I had been expelled was not formally communicated to me until I contacted the EC to seek clarification. Not quite what I expected from a ‘democratic’ organisation!

An alternative vehicle for Marxists might prove to be the revolutionary caucus proposed by the Spartacist League. Although a proposal for the caucus was published on the Weekly Worker letters page on October 2, an engagement with its contents has been conspicuously absent from subsequent issues. While one can only assume that the CPGB believes joint enterprise with the Spartacist League to be without merit, those of us who appreciate the work of the CPGB in developing a programmatic approach to communist politics would greatly benefit from a comradely critique of the Sparts’ initial attempt at producing a ‘draft platform’ for communist unity.

At the moment it seems that the “paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity” is more interested in publishing easy criticisms of the Socialist Workers Party and Revolutionary Communist Party than in working constructively with genuine revolutionaries.

Finn
Leeds

Zarah for leader

The founding conference of Your Party is fast approaching. However, the conference promises to be anything but a walk in the park. All the accumulated tensions of recent months are bound to erupt in one way or another. With thousands of delegates, and infighting at the top, we can expect confused debates, clique fights and manoeuvres of all kinds. So how can we navigate the chaos?

The task of socialists at this conference is to fight for political clarity. The only way to do this is to put politics first. We must push back against distractions, tertiary disputes and turf wars, and always fight to bring the debates back to the question of what should this party stand for? This is how we can focus the discussions on the most important questions. This is also how we can fight so that the lines of division - because there will be divisions - remain on clear political questions, and not on confused organisational issues or personal allegiances.

We think that, in order to succeed, Your Party must be a radical, socialist and working class party, ready to wage war against the ruling class. This is how we can win back workers (including those who look to Farage), fight Labour and distinguish ourselves from the liberal Greens. Vague calls for ‘peace’, ‘justice’ and even ‘socialism’ will not cut it. The party must stand for a radical break with the status quo, and this will require a struggle on the conference floor.

We urge socialists to fight to adopt clear positions against Nato, against Zionism, for class-struggle politics and for working class power against the British imperialist rulers. Furthermore, we should fight to put the people who share those politics in leading positions. Zarah Sultana stands out as a leader who has argued for clear socialist and anti-imperialist positions. She, as well as those who take a clear side with her on these questions, must be put in the strongest organisational positions.

Achieving this would be a victory against the conservative and liberal elements in the party, who will no doubt oppose these positions. It would also be a first step to establishing Your Party as a fighting alternative that is able to speak to working class anger. Even if revolutionaries remain a minority, a debate on these questions will show where everybody stands. But, to get there, we must avoid the pitfalls ahead.

One of the greatest dangers is that the debates and polarisations at the conference will be exclusively over organisational matters. Most of the founding documents are purely about the structure of Your Party, with the political statement being an afterthought. And many socialists are organised in the Democratic Socialist caucus, whose main focus is the organisational rules of the party. This is a false and dangerous road, which we must warn against.

It would be a disaster if the central polarisation at the founding conference of a new socialist party is purely over organisational structure. An acrimonious fight for or against sortition, over the minutiae of branch structures or for or against co-leadership will only bring confusion and sideline debates over what the party should stand for.

Those around the Democratic Socialists argue: “If members can win a democratic party with a mediocre programme, the programme can be replaced later; if we win a perfect programme but have no way for members to hold their leaders accountable, then neither is secure” (K Glasssmith Prometheus, November 10). This is a totally wrong view of politics.

Politics isn’t a rule book - it is an expression of the class struggle. And parties are groupings which represent classes. Now, there is a battle raging over which class Your Party will represent: the working class or the liberal middle class. The decisive element in this struggle is not the organisational rules, but political positions, which reflect contending class interests. Understood this way, one can see how placing structure over programme not only misses the entire struggle unfolding, but is a way to reconcile the working class, socialist trend with the liberal, middle class one.

Let’s be concrete and look at Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. Corbyn won two landslides in leadership contests despite the countless anti-democratic rules put in place by the Blairites to sabotage the left. The key element was that Corbyn struck a chord among workers and youth, who were animated because he spoke to their class aspirations in opposition to the Blairites. Fast-forward four years: Corbyn’s leadership ended in disaster, not because of the structure of the Labour Party (or Momentum), but because Corbyn never wanted to wage a real struggle against the Blairites. He capitulated to the Zionist offensive and ended up campaigning for the European Union. This totally undermined his support, particularly among workers.

Corbyn’s rise and fall in Labour shows that what is decisive in politics is not the rules. What is decisive is what class interests you are fighting for. There is no organisational talisman against capitulating to the ruling class.

This isn’t to say that structure is unimportant, or ‘not political’. Sometimes, differences over structure hide broader differences over aims. So we do need to fight for party democracy at the conference. We must oppose sortition, oppose the ban on dual membership - a threat to the left - and support the possibility of recalling leaders, etc. We support such measures because they can assist the fight for socialism. But these measures in themselves are not decisive. So, don’t get bogged down in organisational discussions. Politics is the crucial element.

Some in Your Party will agree with opposition to Nato, Zionism and for working class power. But they will then argue against making these positions party policy in the name of ‘unity’: ie, we do not want to scare off more conservative elements. Again, here, the question is, what type of party are we building?

To undercut Farage, it isn’t sufficient to simply oppose him. The Greens, Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru are all against Farage. But they fight Reform UK by defending the status quo, which is fuelling it. To really undercut Farage, we need a party that will wage war against the status quo. This is one of the reasons why opposing Nato or Zionism are not abstract questions. Support to Nato and Israel are clear red lines for the ruling class. We cannot fight the status quo, nor fight for a fairer Britain, if we remain part of Nato and the American empire.

The point isn’t to shout slogans or to throw out everyone who disagrees with these positions. Rather, it is to fight for Your Party to be a real, working class and radical alternative to the status quo - and making the case as to why these points are key to this purpose.

Many at conference are wary of left groups. They see them as a nuisance who seek to push their own little brand at the expense of the movement - or else as splitters and wreckers. Unfortunately, many leftists in their actions only reinforce these views. Groups like the SWP are jockeying for organisational positions in a covert manner. The RCG, while correctly pushing for key political positions, insist on the need for a premature split and openly declare that they are not interested in building Your Party. Each of these discredits the Marxist left as a whole.

The task of Marxists at the conference must be to demonstrate in front of the whole membership why, in order to succeed in the struggles of today, Your Party needs Marxism. This requires putting one’s own narrow partisan interest aside and placing the interests of the movement first.

Again, the only way this can be done is if we concentrate on the key political questions facing Your Party. Marxists will be a minority at this conference. We will not have organisational control, nor should we seek to obtain it through manoeuvres and power plays. Rather, we must use this conference to cohere a revolutionary trend within Your Party on the basis of an open struggle for our ideas.

Obviously, this would be much easier if revolutionary groups came together in a united front on common positions. This is why we are supporting (with criticisms) Zarah Sultana. Not only does she draw a number of clear socialist lines, but every socialist can get behind what she is currently pushing.

This conference will likely be a mess. The way to cut through the confusion and endless debate is to put politics first. Put secondary considerations to the side, hammer out clear socialist lines, link up with those who agree with you and always keep your eyes on the goal: building a working class, socialist party. Join us in this struggle!

Vincent David
Spartacist League

Nat separatist

I am curious as to the political purpose of your somewhat hostile introduction to comrade Steve Freeman’s article, ‘Call for a Political Statement boycott’ (November 6). In the article he argues correctly that Your Party at present is committed to a “social-monarchist unionism”. You chose to preface it by stating that he “calls for dividing the working class movement in Britain along national lines”.

I would like to present the following arguments in support of Steve and his comrades in the Republican Labour Education Forum from myself as a republican socialist and YP member, based in Scotland.

You appear to have a kind of Whiggish perspective that views the creation of the UK as a ‘good thing’, whose integrity is required to unite the British working class. A more materialist view would, I think, argue that the modern UK state developed out of the early development of capitalism in England. A political revolutionary process begun during the Cromwellian period (which included the defeat of the English Levellers) and resulted in the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, This led to the Act of Union of 1707, which incorporated Scotland into a greater Britain.

Importantly, consolidation of the Union State settlement also required the defeat of democratic and republican struggles across these islands, including the United Irishmen (1798), the Scottish Rising and general strike of 1820, and the Merthyr (1831) and Newport (1839) risings in Wales. The UK is a capitalist state built on the defeat of more progressive alternatives. It is their state, not ours.

On the question of the integrity of the UK state aiding working class unity, I would point out that the UK ruling class has a permanent policy of ‘divide and rule’, which takes a multitude of forms. One of these forms is to bombard the people of England and Wales with an anti-Scottish agenda, usually involving how the UK state subsidises feckless Scotland amid disparaging references to ‘sweaty socks’ (Jocks). This ferments an anti-Scottish feeling-among the working classes of England in particular.

The mirror image of that is to bombard the people of Scotland with the idea that Scotland is too poor, too weak, too lacking in resources to stand on its own two feet. Expressions of Scottish culture - in particular the languages of Scotland - are disparaged. Until recently Scottish history wasn’t taught in Scottish schools except as an adjunct of English/British history. These processes nurture an anti-English sentiment amongst the more backward members of the population. A more sophisticated response is a more democratic, anti-Westminster, anti-the-crown-in-parliament, republican response. It is no accident that Scotland’s greatest Marxist thinkers, James Connolly and John Maclean, were both republicans and they both advocated the break-up of the UK state. To overcome these divisions requires the people of Scotland being allowed to express their right to national self-determination.

Reform type English/British nationalism has echoes amongst smaller ethno-nationalist movements in Scotland and Ireland. Either socialists and the Labour movement can ignore this and continue with what are economistic arguments about ‘nationalism dividing the working class’, or we can recognise the democratic and republican content of the desire for independence and seek to steer this process in a progressive and democratic direction.

In the United Kingdom the process of uniting the working class and building a left hegemonic force capable of carrying through the necessary democratic transformation requires the breaking and ending of the power of the UK unionist state and the abolition of the undemocratic crown powers. This is the argument for the strategic perspective of independence and republican democracy.

In our present situation the YP in Scotland should aim to aid the working class in its self-organisation to achieve national leadership and become the hegemonic class. This cannot happen if it confines itself to narrow class issues (economism). It must also consider the wider popular democratic aspirations and struggles of the people, which may not necessarily have an overt class character. Through such a strategy we can win independence on terms favourable to not just the Scottish, but the whole British working class, opening up the path for a further radical reshaping of society and the economy. I believe that there is no UK/Westminster road to socialism. Ending the union through a democratic dissolution of the UK union should be the socialist strategy.

In the case of YP this points to the need for a Scottish party which is both unequivocally pro-independence for Scotland and is itself a fully independent Scottish party. It should be a sibling party of YP parties in England and Wales. It’s time for a republican strategy, that champions the democratic sovereignty of the people and the creation of independent national republics on the island of Britain as a necessary step towards socialist transformation of society.

Bob Goupillot
Republican Socialist Platform

Green time

I have read Carla Roberts insightful articles about Your Party’s internal goings-on with interest. Carla points out that many people who were looking to join YP have had second-thoughts, and have therefore joined the Green Party instead. I am one of them.

The 800,000 people who registered an interest in YP is a red herring. The ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign headed by Mick Lynch (RMT) and Dave Ward (CWU) had 500,000 registered supporters, but these disappeared into the ether. This has also happened to the 800,000 Your Party supporters.

Since the charismatic Zack Polanski became Green Party leader two months ago, membership of the Greens has risen from 68,000 to more than 150,000. Two recent opinion polls have put the Greens on 18%, three points ahead of Labour. It is entirely possible that at the next general election the Greens will have 50 seats or more.

Unlike the undemocratic Your Party. which will not have any branches, the Green Party has local branches - and regional and national conferences, where motions from rank-and-file members can be debated and become party policy.

Green Party policies, which all Marxists would support, include:

Instead of wasting time with the stillborn disaster of Your Party, all Marxists should join the Greens.

John Smithee
Cambridgeshire

Trans liberation

In the opposite spirit of one of the most amazing titles ever given to a piece of my writing (‘Trans rant’ Letters, September 24 2024), I would like to congratulate the CPGB for the recent theses on trans liberation outlined in the last issue of the Weekly Worker (‘Communism and trans liberation’, November 13).

I have my disagreements, and I will continue to argue for them. Comrade Roberts’ amendments, I thought, were politically sound and on a personal level I would have voted for them. But that is the spirit of democracy. What is more important in my mind is to see the CPGB develop a solid line on this issue - a heartening experience, especially when one surveys, to be blunt, the depression-inducing scene of the British left on trans liberation.

Compared to the reactionary, backwards-looking perspective of the CPGB (Marxist-Leninist), and the pathetic cowardice of the Morning Star group, to see an openly communist group in the UK taking up the banner of trans liberation genuinely does warm my heart. As a small contributor to the Weekly Worker’s letters pages, and to the debate on trans liberation, I am also somewhat vindicated by this, so I hope comrades will forgive me for being slightly smug.

There is a long road to go yet, but if the CPGB can consistently argue for trans liberation and against the reactionary and, to be blunt, delusional bugbears dragged out by the sects of Great Britain around trans women, then this step will be an even bigger one forward.

Brunhilda Olding
Australia

Pile of drivel

Mike Macnair in his new theses on ‘Communism and trans liberation’ concludes his introduction with: “… the Communist Party of Britain - and this paper’s letters column’s resident Stalinist, Andrew Northall, as in his letter last week (November 6) - identify separatist feminism as the ‘official leadership’ of the women’s movement, and as a result tail-end the politics of feminists who have gone over to a conservative form of feminism and become ‘useful idiots’ for the cynical scheme devised by US Republican Party political operatives to use the ‘gender question’ as an entering wedge for Christianist patriarchalism.”

What an absolute pile of drivel, nonsense and gibberish! Not even one word of truth or anything with the slightest connection with any reality. Macnair is a complete charlatan and a fantasist.

Apparently, the BBC have “put together” a video to show Robert Griffiths addressing a Christian fundamentalist fringe meeting at a Republican Convention … No, not really.

Almost as a nervous tick, Macnair repeatedly litters his articles with the same phrases: “the trinity of class, race and gender of the CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA)”, “managerialism”, “intersectionalism”, “Eurocommunism”, “popular frontism” and “Maoism”. If we are really unlucky, we get a repeated account of his own factional and sectarian history in some weird Pabloist tendency in the 1970s, which neither has the faintest interest or relevance for the present day (or any day, to be frank). His latest contribution manages around nine out of 10 for these repeated ritual references.

I suspect, given the ritual nature of his repeated references, Macnair knows as little about the CPUSA, Eurocommunism, intersectionalism, etc as he does about the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Macnair asked in the letters column if the SPGB would be in favour of “forced collectivisation of small farmers and businesspeople”. Anyone who knows anything about the SPGB would not put forward such a breathtakingly ignorant and stupid question.

Macnair has managed to sucker the Weekly Worker group, including in theses 10 and 11, that the “phenomenon” of violence against women, trans people, ethnic minorities, gay people, including by the police and other state forces, etc, is “at root driven by the performance of competitive heterosexuality”!

So nothing about the nature of a class-divided, exploitative, capitalist society. Nothing about the state being an organ of class rule. Nothing about the state generally having monopoly of force or even violence to maintain the subjection of the majority and the continuation of class rule. Apparently, the dreadful murder of Sarah Everard was driven primarily by “competitive heterosexuality” rather than the fact the perpetrator had access to a police warrant card and was a member of a violent state paramilitary force.

I am not even sure what “competitive heterosexuality” is, or why Macnair should be so personally bothered about the alleged concept. Does this apply to women or is it a purely anti-male slogan? Ironically, it sounds like a very extreme concept of the most extreme ‘intersectionalists’.

Ironically, not even the most extreme “Eurocommunists” (I assume Macnair is referring to the tendency in the CPGB in the 1970s and 80s, which had very little in common with the real Eurocommunism in western Europe) would have been so crass or stupid as to suggest “competitive heterosexuality” was at the root of state violence in modern capitalist society.

I don’t particularly like the concept of “intersectionalism” which implicitly suggests that the oppression of different groups or sections in society ‘intersect’ or ‘cut across’ each other. I prefer concepts like ‘overlay’ or ‘overlap’.

Macnair asserts that “Eurocommunism”, “the CPUSA”, “the ‘broad democratic alliance’ of the CPGB”, were about separating out struggles: for example, women for women’s liberation, black people for black liberation, gay people for gay liberation, etc. No, completely and utterly wrong. Not even tilting at straw windmills, just those in Macnair’s sectarian imagination.

Let’s take the Communist Party here in Britain, as one example of a western CP. Since the war, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and later the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), have consistently advocated that (although some of the wording of precise concepts has evolved) proceeding from the basis that the broadly defined working class in Britain is the overwhelming majority of the people in this country, and the fact that ‘advanced capitalism’ has produced a modern working class of ever increasing diversity and complexity, the central strategic task is for the organised working class, the labour movement, to build a broad, popular, democratic alliance, directed against monopoly capitalism.

Ironically, Tricia Davis, a leading ‘Eurocommunist’ in the CPGB in the 1980s put this central strategic concept remarkably well in the July 1984 Marxism Today: “The working class movement is currently deeply divided by sectionalism, sexism and racism. The meaning of a politics of alliance is not to create networks of mutual support as ends in themselves: it is rather to develop these alliances in such a way that, through ridding itself of sectionalism, sexism and racism, a united working class, with a self-conscious sense of its own political identity and historical role, can emerge. The broad democratic alliance, then, is a description of a process for the transformation of the working class into an organised political force.” So, fundamentally, about transforming the working class from being a “class in itself” into a “class for itself”.

The broad popular democratic alliance (the precise term has changed over the years) has never been about an arithmetical adding together of different groups of society or their individual demands into a shopping list manifesto. It has always been about transforming the labour movement, so it becomes conscious of all the range of oppressions in society and increasingly champions their interests and demands as its own. It is also about transforming the movements and groups advocating and campaigning for their own specific interests: transforming all these democratic movements to greater awareness and consciousness of how exploitation and oppressions in modern capitalist society are all interrelated and interacting, and therefore need to be challenged in a much more joined up, unified and integrated manner.

Only through working class organisations championing the rights and demands for emancipation, equality and social justice, for women, people who are ethnic minorities, gays, lesbians, trans, migrants, disabled, etc, can the true leading role of the working class be realised and the prospect that any real social and economic progress be achieved.

Communists are active, involved and frequently play leading roles in all these struggles. They should and do inject the politics of class and of Marxism-Leninism into all such struggles, where appropriate.

We can and must make genuine progress in achieving these demands in current society, including, as a start, by making major inroads into the wealth and power of the monopoly capitalist class. Ultimately, of course, we need to overthrow this class and establish a socialist society, which will give us the foundations to truly eliminate the sources of exploitation, oppression, discrimination and prejudice.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Ignorant distortion

Lars T Lih has written a 13,514-word analysis of the February 1917 revolution (‘Duelling editorials’ November 6).This focussed on the March 12 1917 editorial by Irakli Tsereteli (Menshevik) and the one from Lev Kamenev (Bolshevik) on March 14.

This methodology allows him to distort the whole picture of the Russian Revolution: how the political situation evolved from the 1905 failed revolution, where the soviets first appeared, to the dual power standoff between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd soviet in particular (resolved when soviet power was established in October by the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky). This was the greatest single event in human history, unequalled since then, as all subsequent attempts at socialist revolution have failed. The methodology of the piece allows Lars T to mention Kamenev 63 times, Lenin 29, Stalin 25 but Trotsky once only (and that a passing reference, when he complains that Kamenev is not given the historical pride of place he deserves).

Lars T rejects the importance of Lenin’s ‘Letters from afar’ and his April theses: “The automatic assumption of historians is that Lenin’s April theses were aimed at his fellow Bolsheviks. Why did Lenin call for no support for the government? Because (we are told) Pravda had earlier been calling for such support, and Lenin wanted to rebuke it and its editors. But the April theses contain no explicit attack on Pravda, and our look at the duelling editorials show that in fact this automatic assumption is highly dubious. Indeed, a closer look shows that Lenin sided with Kamenev and Stalin on some key issues.”

We must remember that the Mensheviks saw the coming revolution as a bourgeois revolution, led by the bourgeoisie who would develop the productive forces after an extended rule and so make the socialist revolution viable. The Bolsheviks also saw the coming revolution as bourgeois.

However, if we look at what Lenin said about this, we get the correct picture. The April theses did seek to change the Bolshevik position. He wrote that those who supported the “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” were “behind the times” and should be “consigned to the archive of ‘Bolshevik’ pre-revolutionary antiques”. He made this statement in his ‘Letters on tactics’ in April 1917, shortly after returning to Russia from exile.

To understand his statement, it is important to know the meaning of the key terms:

n “Revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”: This was a long-standing Bolshevik slogan developed by Lenin in the 1905 revolution. It described the necessary ‘bourgeois’ phase of the revolution in Russia. Since Russia’s bourgeoisie was weak and tied to the tsar, the task of overthrowing feudalism and establishing a democratic republic would fall to an alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry.

n “Old Bolsheviks”: This referred to long-time members of the Bolshevik Party who clung to the pre-1917 political line and were not ready to adjust to the new conditions after the February Revolution of 1917. If we look up the four-page section in volume 24 of Collected works, we see that he is referring in particular to Kamenev and Zinoviev, but also to the majority of the Bolshevik leadership at the time.

Following the February Revolution, which overthrew the tsar, many Bolsheviks believed the first, or ‘bourgeois-democratic’, stage of the revolution was complete. Lenin, however, argued that this stage had resulted in an unstable “dual power” situation. The Provisional Government, representing the bourgeoisie, held official power. The soviets (councils of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ deputies) possessed the real authority of the masses.

In his April theses, Lenin argued that the Bolsheviks must move past the “revolutionary democratic dictatorship” and immediately push for the second, “socialist” stage of the revolution. In his view, the path forward was to work toward transferring all state power to the soviets, which would form the basis of a “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Lenin was directly criticising party members, such as Lev Kamenev, who opposed his new position and defended the old formula. Lenin argued that clinging to the old slogan was no longer a revolutionary position. He famously dismissed their arguments as “antiquated”, “worthless” and “dead”. He felt that the old line was holding the party back from seizing the opportunity for a socialist revolution.

After the Bolshevik central committee voted on October 23 1917 in favour of Lenin’s motion for an armed insurrection, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev feared it would lead to civil war. Without the central committee’s authorisation, Kamenev and Zinoviev publicly voiced their opposition in the Menshevik paper Novaya Zhizn. This was a major breach of party discipline and threatened to derail the Bolsheviks’ plans for seizing power. In response, Lenin wrote a proclamation calling Kamenev and Zinoviev “deserters” and demanded their expulsion from the party. He never forgot this betrayal, even referencing it later in his ‘Testament’. The outcome: despite the damage caused by the publication, the Bolsheviks proceeded with the insurrection, which succeeded with surprisingly little resistance and resulted in the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

We must insist that it was one revolution begun in March and completed in October. There were ‘two stages’ in one sense, but not in the Stalinist counterrevolutionary sense, where first a feudal or fascist regime is overthrown to allow capitalism to develop the productive forces or allow a democratic capitalism to reestablish itself, and then they might be ready for the socialist revolution.

We can only conclude that if both Irakli Tsereteli and Lev Kamanev are largely ignored by historians left and right, then that is because a real revolution exposed them as not revolutionary. Given Kamenev’s vacillation after October 1917, his alliance with Zinoviev and Stalin against Trotsky after Lenin’s death, his brief participation in the Joint Opposition against Stalin over China, and his final ‘confession’ in the Moscow Trials, we can only agree with Trotsky that he was already a political corpse before he was executed.

Gerry Downing
Socialist Fight