13.05.1999
Distortion of democracy
Dave Craig responds to Tom Delargy’s criticisms (Weekly Worker April 15)
The first point on the platform of the Revolutionary Democratic Communist Tendency says that we are “for revolutionary democracy”. It explains:
“We hold a revolutionary democratic attitude to all questions of bourgeois democracy (eg, civil liberties, women’s rights, the national question, racism, constitutional change, etc). We utilise bourgeois democracy, defend it against all anti-democratic forces, including the capitalists and the fascists. We seek to extend all democratic rights by mass struggle and revolutionary action. We consider the working class is the only genuinely democratic class under capitalism. We consider that the working class can become the leading force in society by championing the struggle for democracy.”
The second point deals with the question of workers’ power. It says:
“We support the democratic self-organisation of the working class in trade unions, workplaces and communities. We are in favour of workers’ control of all industries and services. We are in favour of replacing parliamentary democracy with a more advanced form of democracy, based on workplace and workers’ councils electing delegates to a workers’ parliament. This must be defended by an armed working class organised as the state (ie, the dictatorship of the proletariat).”
This statement is endorsed by the CPGB, the Revolutionary Democratic Group and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. The Communist Tendency have endorsed the slogan of revolutionary democracy and workers’ power. I have no reason to believe they disagree with the above statement. Even the British section of the International Bolshevik Tendency say they do not disagree with it.
This statement has been printed on at least five separate occasions in the Weekly Worker. There have been numerous articles on the subject. There have been a number of debates on this, in which I have been involved. My views have been spelt out in detail on many occasions, as regular readers may know. If Tom Delargy was serious he would have started to criticise the above statement concretely and shown how and why it is wrong. He has not done this so far and, until he does, he cannot be treated seriously, at least on this issue.
Instead of dealing with the revolutionary democratic message, he is trying to discredit the messenger. It is an old Stalinist trick. So he calls me a liar, a slanderer, a non-Marxist and a Kautskyite. In last week’s Weekly Worker (May 6) he had calmed down a little and only called me “somewhat less than honest”, and a “dubious source”. I was accused, without any concrete evidence, except statements made by comrade Delargy himself and attributed to me, of having “rightwing Kautskyite politics”. The slogan of revolutionary democracy was attacked as nothing more than the “meaningless soundbite politics” of Dave Craig.
I object to all of this nonsense. I protest most strongly against this method of polemic. But even if it were all true and I was a total and absolute bastard as well (as no doubt some people think!), it would not change one jot or comma or undermine the truth of the politics of the joint statement. Neither would it make any difference if Tom Delargy was to claim that I am the heir to a dry cleaning fortune.
Let us begin with the central question which Tom Delargy considers to be unanswered and unanswerable - “What is revolutionary democracy?” He claims: “The question I pose is not just troublesome for the Revolutionary Democratic Group. Their Revolutionary Democratic Communist Tendency partners [ie, the CPGB] are no less in need of tackling it.” Even before I can put pen to paper Tom has marked me down as someone not having “a firm enough grasp of Marxism to be capable of offering a considered response”.
Tom’s mission is to save us. As he says so eloquently, “Patronising though this might sound, when I come across talented revolutionary socialists making serious errors (or what I take to be errors), I see it as my duty to try to shift them onto the right path.” Sad to say, this ‘help’ is intended only for the CPGB. The RDG comrades are beyond the pale and beneath contempt.
Tom invents his own theory of revolutionary democracy. He defines it as “an above-class democracy, an abstract democracy, a pure democracy”. This “pure democracy”, thinks Tom, must be some kind of state. In which case who is in charge? Who is the ruling class? He then triumphantly hits us with Lenin’s pamphlet on the “renegade Kautsky”. “Pure democracy,” says Lenin, “is the mendacious phrase of the liberal who wants to fool the workers.”
Tom then claims that revolutionary democracy must be a stage prior to workers’ power. If “this means anything at all, it must be an oblique reference to dual power”. You might think from this that I had made this “oblique reference” as part of my alleged general evasiveness on the
subject. But you will recall that I stand accused of refusing to say anything at all on the subject. Clearly the oblique reference to dual power did not come from me. In fact it was Tom who calls revolutionary democracy “a stage prior to dual power” and then exposes himself as guilty of making this “oblique reference”.
Tom then comes up with the idea that dual power could be turned “into a constitutionally stable entity”. This is then correctly attributed to Hilferding and Kautsky, whose “centrist project was, and remains, an objectively counterrevolutionary project”. This, on the basis of zero evidence, is supposed to represent the views of revolutionary democrats!
Tom’s theory of revolutionary democracy is certainly Kautskyism. It is so easy for any Marxist to shoot this nonsense down in flames. We do not even need quotes from Lenin. There can be no such thing as pure, non-class democracy. Every state is the dictatorship of a ruling class, even the most democratic. This includes the former bureaucratic USSR, which was also a class dictatorship. There is no such thing as a constitutionally stable ‘dual power’ situation.
Unfortunately the Delargy method of polemic is worse even than his theory of revolutionary democracy. His idea of a good debate is to invent this nonsense and attribute it, without any evidence whatsoever, to his opponents. If he, or indeed any of the Trotskyite economists, want to have a serious debate, they have to argue with and expose what is wrong with what we revolutionary democrats actually say.
Let me once again explain the RDG’s views on revolutionary democracy. It provides a distinct approach to communist politics which we have called the ‘revolutionary democratic road to communism’. The essential features of this are the revolutionary struggle to extend democracy, the democratic revolution, and the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat.
Let us examine the meaning of the “revolutionary struggle to extend democracy”. How far can democracy be extended? It can be extended up to and including workers’ power. The RDCT statement calls this “a more advanced form of democracy, based on workplace and workers’ councils” supported by armed militia. We call this the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat. This term emphasises the revolutionary and democratic character of the workers’ state. This is not ‘dual power’.
The best of the Trotskyists understand and agree. Those who are politically honest will accept that we revolutionary democrats are in favour of this. Only the most unprincipled scoundrels amongst them keep repeating the lie that revolutionary democrats only want a bourgeois republic or want to go no further than dual power.
Whilst we are in favour of the workers’ state, the maximum extension of democracy, are we in favour of more limited extensions? Yes, genuine communists fight for partial democratic reforms within bourgeois democracy. Such partial extensions of democracy do not in themselves contradict the aim of a workers’ state. Fighting for universal suffrage or votes for women or annual parliaments does not undermine or diminish the struggle for a democratic workers’ state. On the contrary every real extension of democracy provides a better terrain for the class struggle. The only qualification to this is that every situation must be looked at concretely and tactics weighed up on that basis.
Let us turn to the question of revolutionary struggle as the means to extend democracy. What is the highest form of revolutionary struggle? What is the most radical method of extending democracy? The answer is the democratic revolution. This is the process through which the broad masses become active participants in the struggle to extend democracy. The old constitution is not extended, but overthrown. Society awakes and mobilises. Democracy, no longer the preserve of the ‘chattering classes’, becomes the product of direct action by the masses and the working class themselves. Democratic revolution uproots the old order and extends democracy more rapidly in the broadest and deepest way. If revolution is the locomotive of history, then democratic revolutions are the express trains of democracy.
It is worth noting that the Stalinists and many varieties of Trotskyists reject democratic revolution. According to their ‘iron law of stages’, democratic revolution is not possible in an advanced country. They think that, since the UK has already had a democratic revolution, it has passed the historic stage when such revolution is possible. Therefore, insofar as democracy can be extended, democratic reform is the only possible method. Democratic revolution is ruled out. This is why we accuse them of being democratic reformists.
How can democracy be extended when there is no general democratic revolution? We contrast revolutionary methods to legal-constitutional, reformist methods. The revolutionary struggle to extend democracy involves the mass use of force to decide the issue. The IRA has deployed extra-parliamentary force in their struggle for an extension of democracy in Ireland: that is, a united Ireland. Mass demonstrations, strikes, general political strikes and armed uprisings also constitute the use of force. This in turn requires the organisation of self-defence against the violence of the state.
Take the example of the poll tax. The legal-constitutional method was to wait patiently to elect a Labour government, who might perhaps abolish the tax. But a mass extra-parliamentary campaign of civil disobedience was built up. It was an illegal and unconstitutional campaign. This came to a head in the demonstration and riot in Trafalgar Square. The state used force against the masses, who fought back with sticks and stones and set fire to buildings. Mass violence for political ends was an, albeit limited, form of revolutionary action. It had a major impact on the Thatcher government, which was left with no option but to retreat. Nobody waited for Neil Kinnock to be elected. The use of mass force did not overthrow the constitution or begin a democratic revolution. But this violence did a great deal to force Thatcher out of office and pave the way for Blair’s constitutional reforms.
We have many examples of the use of extra-parliamentary force to achieve democratic gains from Cromwell, the Chartists, the French Jacobins, the women workers in Petrograd in February 1917 and the use of force by the Bolsheviks to overturn Kerensky’s government. Tom Delargy provides his own example. He says: “Consider the German revolution of 1918. The monarchy was brought crashing down, and a republic proclaimed.” As we know, the social democrats were able to seize the moment and organise counterrevolutionary force against the workers. But Tom’s main argument is to dismiss the achievement of a republic. Look, he says, the republic was a bourgeois state and butchered the workers. These murders were carried out by the very social democrats who always condemned the use of force by the working class in favour of peaceful-legal reforms.
In his rush to oppose the republic he fails to notice his own words. He says, “The monarchy was brought crashing down.” Who brought it crashing down? Was it by the peaceful and legal methods of parliamentary reform? No, it was brought crashing down by the use of mass revolutionary action led by the sailors and workers. This revolutionary democratic action by the German masses brought counterrevolutionary violence by the bourgeoisie. But it also began a
German revolution which did not finally end until 1923.
Trotsky, writing on Britain in the 1920s, gives many examples of the connection between revolutionary democratic mass force and the process of reform. He says, for example: “The revolutionary movement of Chartism led in 1844-47 to the introduction of the 10-hour working day and in 1846 to the repeal of the Corn Laws” (L Trotsky Writings on Britain London 1974, Vol 2, p26). He notes that the “radical reorganisation of the administration of Canada, giving much greater autonomy, was carried out only after the rising in Canada of 1837-38”. He says that “the Russian Revolution of 1917 was an important stimulus to this reform”, and connects this to electoral reform in Britain in 1918. He concludes from these and many other examples that, “even for the passing of reforms, the principle of gradualism is insufficient and the real threat of revolution is necessary” (p26).
In bourgeois democracies, the legal-constitutional reformist want to ban the use of force to extend democracy. Democracy must be extended only by peaceful parliamentary means. Trotsky pours scorn on this. He asks: “Which countries does the ban on force [by reformist democrats] cover? Can for example a state be called a democracy where there is a monarchy and an aristocratic chamber? Is it permissible to adopt revolutionary methods to topple these institutions?” Every revolutionary democrat, including Trotsky himself, answers ‘yes’. Trotsky goes further. He later says: “We have shown above that the present British parliament forms a monstrous distortion of the principle of bourgeois democracy and that without adopting revolutionary force one can hardly obtain in Britain even an honest division of parliamentary constituencies or the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords.” Nothing that has happened in the 70 years since Trotsky wrote this brilliant insight into British politics has changed that assessment or proved it wrong.
It is important to note that Trotsky measures democracy not simply by crudely counterposing it to a pure workers’ democracy. He examines British democracy in its own terms, as a very undemocratic form of bourgeois democracy. When Lenin wrote State and revolution he did not simply contrast bourgeois to workers’ democracy. He followed Marx in examining and contrasting a variety of forms of bourgeois democracy, dealing with the differences for example between a constitutional monarchy, federal republic and centralised republic. This is absolutely vital information for revolutionary democrats engaged in a revolutionary struggle to extend democracy. It is irrelevant for ultra-leftism and anarchists who simply and solely oppose bourgeois democracy against workers’ democracy.
Tom Delargy was outraged and offended that I called him a reformist democrat. But this was the logic of his own position. If he continues to reject revolutionary struggle for democracy, then simple logic tells us that he is either a reformist democrat, a conservative democrat or an anti-democrat. Tom Delargy should explain his view of democracy, rather than invent more rubbish about our position.