23.08.2000

Land and Bolshevism - part four

In February 1917 the Romanov dynasty was overthrown by a 'spontaneous' revolution. Though the working class of Moscow, Kiev and above all Petrograd - in combination with the peasantry in the form of conscripted soldiers - did the fighting and bore the brunt in terms of loss of life, the end of tsarist autocracy was sincerely welcomed by many aristocratic landlords, the bourgeoisie and wide layers of the state bureaucracy. High society had lost confidence in Nicholas II and his immediate entourage; much to the consternation of the traditional governing elite, both tsar and tsarina acted under the malign spell of the notorious mystic and libertine, Rasputin.

And aided and abetted by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries - obeying their mechanical programmatic shibboleths - it was from the ranks of the bourgeoisie and the old bureaucracy that the first provisional government was selected. Power thus passed to the bourgeoisie - not, as they once expected, safely handed over by a morally persuaded tsar, but courtesy of timid revolutionaries. For Lenin, it hardly needs saying, this transfer of power from below to above represented an act of supreme folly.

Yet despite the legally enshrined status of the provisional government the soviets of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies constituted the real power - eg, at its first full meeting the Petrograd Soviet voted to recruit a strong workers' militia. In other words Russia had acquired two, inherently contradictory and ultimately antagonistic, states - dual power.

1. A unique form of dual power

The provisional government, formed at 3pm on March 15 1917 - the result of a deal struck between the provisional committee of the duma and the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary leaders of the Petrograd Soviet - was headed by prince Lvov and the Octobrist, Guchkov. Also included in the administration were the Cadet leader, Milyukov, and Alexander Kerensky, of the Trudovik peasant group, who gladly accepted the post of minister of justice. In furthering his Bonapartist career he supplied the government with a much needed left face.

Tied firmly to the mast of their stageist programme, the Mensheviks initially considered it an elementary Marxist duty to support the provisional government - albeit as an 'extreme' opposition. Seemingly in confirmation of the correctness of their strategy Menshevik influence in the main cities grew enormously. The Socialist Revolutionaries too saw their fortunes rise. Peasant soviets recorded sweeping SR majorities.

None of the socialist parties - all illegal and with leaderships in exile - actually played any direct part in the February Revolution. Nor had they foreseen it. They were, as EH Carr, comments, "at first nonplussed" (EH Carr The Bolshevik Revolution Vol 1, Harmondsworth 1975, p81). Outwardly Russia seemed subdued, inert and decidedly unhopeful.

The Bolsheviks were no exception. Lenin, in Switzerland, along with his deputy Zinoviev, only half-jokingly offered the opinion in 1916 that he might never see a revolution in his own lifetime. Within Russia the Bolsheviks barely functioned: "The Party appeared not to exist; it was dispersed and broken"(G Zinoviev History of the Bolshevik Party London 1973, p192). The entire Petrograd committee languished in prison or Siberian detention, as did the five Bolshevik worker-deputies elected to the tsar's duma. So the Bolsheviks could not provide any active lead.

Nevertheless, as Trotsky forcibly points out, the whole proceeding history of socialist education, combined with the invaluable practical experience of the great dress rehearsal of 1905, was responsible for organically building up the popular consciousness which made February possible. In that sense he insists the idea of a spontaneous revolution is "deeply mistaken, or at least meaningless" (L Trotsky History of the Russian Revolution Vol 1, London 1967, p148). Overstated perhaps, but a telling corrective. Either way, the Bolshevik Party arose from the ashes of disorganisation and metamorphosed into a mass movement. Bolshevism secured its first representative majority in May 1917 at a conference of Petrograd workers. The shape of things to come.

By July the mounting tide of discontent forced the provisional government to shift defensively far to the left. Alexander Kerensky took over as prime minister and formed a cabinet consisting overwhelmingly of Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Suffice to say, it was business as usual. Despite much revolutionary prate the coalition of 'sensible socialists' kept Russia fully involved in the imperialist slaughter of World War I. Showing their fear of the outcome, they put procedural obstacles, one after the other, in the way of convening a constituent assembly. A decree was also issued forbidding illegal land seizures - not surprisingly a step which "appeared to the peasantry as conservative" (M Ferro The Bolshevik Revolution London 1985, p116).

True, with much fanfare, the provisional government did order an enquiry into peasant opinions and the formation of a hierarchy of land committees - but declined to define their functions. Naturally the peasants believed they ought to redistribute the land to the tillers. The aristocracy thought they should protect their latifunda. Cleverly Kerensky's ministers announced that the exact role of the land committees must be decided by the constituent assembly. When it finally met. Evidently another cynical delaying tactic. Hence in spite of the exodus of Lvov and the capitalist ministers, the power of the proletariat and peasantry, at least as embodied in the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary majorities in the soviets, continued the political programme of the big bourgeoisie.

Here was a paradox. The bourgeoisie had in many ways lost out in February. Under tsarism capital confidently ruled over living labour in the factories, mills and mines. During the course of World War I the influence of the capitalist class found its way into every crevice of the state by way of duma committees, arms contracts, advisory panels, etc. Tsarism and capital intertwined.

After February not one policeman remained in Russia. Demoralised, the army rapidly dissolved; peasants in uniform deserted the front in droves and returned, radicalised, to the countryside. In the hothouse of Petrograd and Moscow rank and file soldiers elected officers and joined street demonstrations en masse. The barracks took their cue from the factories. There workers viewed themselves as masters and treated the bosses as unwelcome guests. As for the railways, post office and telegraph, they only carried out instructions if countersigned by the soviets.

Peasant unrest reached new heights and landowners effectively ceased to be landlords. Old scores were settled. Rents remained uncollected and uncollectable. From May onwards seizures of estates gathered pace. Peasant soviets sprung up everywhere and began laying down rules and regulations. Villagers started to carry out what they imagined to be the government's programme ... only without waiting for any government go-ahead. The peasants saw no reason why they should not take hold of the land of the aristocracy - vast and often uncultivated - while "poverty and death threatened the peasant's household because of the smallness of its plot" (M Ferro The Bolshevik Revolution London 1985, p116).

Bourgeois political power therefore rested primarily on the consent of soviets which were as a concomitant politically disarmed by their Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary misleaders. Trotsky wittily termed the situation as one of "dual powerlessness" (quoted in EH Carr The Bolshevik Revolution Vol 1, Harmondsworth 1975, p101).

Behind the impotence of the bourgeoisie and its tortured reliance on the soviets lay the unresolved social crisis triggered by the February Revolution. Russia did not possess a stable dual power state of the sort that characterised Britain or Germany in the late 19th century: ie, a constitutionally established regime within which, no matter how much they conflicted, both bourgeois and aristocratic interests were contained and promoted. In the last analysis these classes shared a common social basis which bound them together as exploiters.

The double sovereignty that existed in Russia stemmed not from any settled equilibrium or neat division of labour between oppressors. Nor did it result from an exhausted impasse, a momentary stabilisation brought about by a temporary balance of forces between the rising new and the beleaguered old. The new, the soviets, had the power, but were intent on giving it away.

Dual power in Russia was a unique confluence, a stage in the revolution which, despite the subjective wishes of the Mensheviks and SRs, still posed the necessity of securing a single authority - either positively, via continuing the worker-peasant revolution all the way to the point where their power stands alone, or negatively by bloody counterrevolution. Civil war decides. Needless to say, the bizarre dual power constitution later advocated by Karl Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding and other such alchemists of centrism plays directly into the hands of counterrevolution. Civil war cannot be institutionalised.

2. Lenin's strategic programme

What was Lenin's strategic programme during the first stage of the 1917 revolution? Did he discard his long-standing Bolshevik strategy en route from Switzerland and step on to the Finland Station as Lev Bronstein's most famous convert, as claimed by Tony Cliff and virtually every latter-day Trotskyite? In my opinion pure fiction. There are, as we shall see below, more grounds for suggesting that Lenin swapped the Bolshevik's agrarian programme for that of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Did that make him a Narodnik?

We have already detailed in part three of this article how Lenin's strategy of uninterrupted revolution and Trotsky's strategy of permanent revolution coincided in all essentials. Differences were, as we showed, merely those of nuance. Needless to say, the myth of Lenin breaking with 'old' Bolshevism endures. So, before proceeding with our discussion of Bolshevism and the land question and Lenin's hijacking of the SR's agrarian programme, it is necessary, once more, to defend Leninism against its Trotskyite friends.

On return from exile in April 1917 Lenin issued the call for the Bolshevik Party to amend "our out-of-date minimum programme" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p24). To emphasise the point for the sake of bone-headed dogmatists, that did not imply ditching the minimum programme. By no means. At the Party's 7th Conference in May 1917 Lenin's resolution on revising the programme merely called for altering various sections of the "minimum programme" - ie, certain pivotal economic and political formulations, so as to bring it up to date (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p280). Obviously soviets of workers and peasants now existed and the demand to overthrow the tsar was, thanks to February, obsolete.

The key for Lenin was to combat 'honest' popular illusions in the provisional government and raise sights. In the soviets the Bolsheviks formed a small minority. Their task was to become the majority by agitating for the confiscation of the landlords' estates and the nationalisation and redistribution of land, the abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy, and the amalgamation of the banks into a single bank under workers' control.

This agitation would prepare the conditions for the "second stage of the revolution" and the transfer of all power into "the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants". The "only possible form of revolutionary government" was a "republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p23). Lenin made no claims that the Party's "immediate task" was to "introduce" socialism. Only that production and distribution had to be put under workers' control to prevent the impending meltdown of the economy.

Do these 'stageist' programmatic formulations and the perspective of a workers' and peasants' republic indicate an abandonment or a development of Lenin's strategy in light of new and unexpected circumstances? I make no excuse for turning to Lenin himself for an answer.

In the article, 'The dual power', he writes the following: "The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about a dual power. This fact must be grasped first and foremost: unless it is understood, we cannot advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old 'formulas', for example, those of Bolshevism, for while they have been found to be correct on the whole, their concrete realisation has turned out to be different. Nobody previously thought, or could have thought, of a dual power" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p38). That is, a unique dual power whereby constitutional counterrevolution gains strength courtesy of the organs of revolution.

Lenin faced stiff opposition from amongst the 'old Bolsheviks', including the top duo of Zinoviev and Kamenev. Their confused and semi-Menshevik position brought about by the unexpected situation was for Lenin summed up by Kamenev in Pravda: "As for comrade Lenin's general scheme, it appears unacceptable, inasmuch as it proceeds from the assumption that the bourgeois democratic revolution is completed, and builds on the immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist revolution."

The criticism was incorrect on two counts. Firstly, though state power had been transferred, that did not fully meet the immediate programmatic aims of the Bolsheviks. Things were very complex. The old Romanov order had been politically overthrown. To that extent, argued Lenin, the programme has been fulfilled. But the 'revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants' in the form of the soviets had voluntarily ceded power to the bourgeoisie.

Life for the moment was in that sense closer to the programme of the Mensheviks. To bring it in line with that of the Bolsheviks required carrying through the agrarian revolution - the landlords still legally held their huge estates - and splitting the peasants from the bourgeoisie. "That," asserted Lenin in April 1917, "has not even started" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p44).

Repetition of the slogan 'democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry', in general had become a mere abstraction. Events had "clothed it with flesh and bone, concretised it and thereby modified it" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p45). The soviets were real. The Bolsheviks, or those whom Lenin was now calling the communists, had to deal with the actual situation, where instead of coming to power this 'revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry' existed side by side with, and subordinate to, a weak government of the bourgeoisie. Lenin energetically fought for the Party to struggle for influence in the soviets. Once the Bolsheviks became a majority, the programme could genuinely be completed.

The dictatorship (rule) of the proletariat and peasantry had tethered itself to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The Russian Revolution had gone further than the classical bourgeois revolutions of England 1645 or France 1789, but in Lenin's words "has not yet reached a 'pure' dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p61). There can be dual power, but no dual power state that unites oppressor and oppressed (whether it be a monarchy, a theocracy or a democratic republic). One power must die for the other to live.

Secondly, there was Kamenev's fear of voluntarism, of going straight to socialism. Lenin swore that there was no such intention: "I might have incurred this danger," explained Lenin, "if I said: 'No tsar, but a workers' government.' But I did not say that; I said something else": that is, that power must pass to the workers' and peasants' soviets (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p48). The peasant movement could not be "skipped". The idea of playing at the seizure of power by a workers' government would not be Marxism, but Blanqism. Power had to be exercised by the majority.

Far from carrying through "a complete break" (Tony Cliff) with his old formulation of the 'democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry', Lenin actually quotes his 1905 Two tactics pamphlet to back up his concrete application of it in 1917. Like everything else such a slogan had a "past and a future". Its past is "autocracy, serfdom, monarchy and privilege ... Its future is the struggle against private property, the struggle of the wage worker against the employer, the struggle for socialism" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p52).

Kamenev and the 'old Bolsheviks' could only see the past. That is why they sought unity with the Mensheviks. But in 1917 the future had begun, above all around the attitude towards 'defencism' and preventing the economic collapse caused by the imperialist war. Russia and its people could only be saved by the soviets of workers and peasants. That was not socialism. It would though bring socialism nearer.

Again I ask why the Trotskyite friends of Leninism are so determined to belittle Lenin and paint him a programmatic Menshevik prior to February 1917? The answer is certainly to be found within modern Trotskyism. Motes and beams come to mind. Modern Trotskyism peddles a thoroughly economistic approach to contemporary politics, whereby democratic questions are viewed at best as secondary, if not irrelevant.

Bolshevism hardly serves here. After all Bolshevism distinguished itself from every other Marxist trend in Russia precisely with the stress it placed on the working class gaining hegemony over all democratic questions. Ergo, invent a post-February 1917 Lenin who purportedly turns his back on pre-February 1917 Bolshevism. Very convenient, but very wrong. But that is the subject for another article.

3. Lenin's agrarian programme

In the immediate period following February Lenin remained totally committed to the Bolshevik agrarian programme - unlike today's SWP he treated programmes with the utmost seriousness. Vestiges of serfdom had to be swept away forthwith. Peasant backwardness was rooted in the duties and obligations they owed to the great landlords. All land must therefore be nationalised without compensation. Disposal of it to the tillers should pass "exclusively" to the regional and local peasant soviets and be handled in a highly democratic and thoroughly organised manner - bureaucracy and officialdom must be avoided (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p71).

The latifunda ought not to be broken up into small plots. So as to improve production techniques and increase output the Bolsheviks would seek to persuade the peasant committees to transform "every confiscated landed estate into a large model farm controlled by the soviet of agricultural labourers' deputies" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p72). Lenin was afraid of famine and concurrently wanted to split the poor peasants from the rich peasants. There had to be an alliance between the proletariat and the rural labourers and poor peasants.

In contrast to comrade Mutumburanzou in Zimbabwe, the Bolsheviks were not enamoured by "small-scale farmers" and their being the "mainstay of agriculture" (Socialist Worker Zimbabwean version, May). The Bolsheviks stood against all such petty bourgeois phrase-mongering. As the party of the proletariat the Bolsheviks "must make it clear that small-scale farming under commodity production cannot save mankind from poverty and oppression" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p72).

Nor did the Bolsheviks belittle the importance of scientific expertise. Big farms in the hands of the peasant soviets should wherever possible be "directed by agricultural experts ... using the best machines, seeds and most efficient methods" (VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p168). Without such an approach the urban masses faced hunger. You cannot eat land reform. Famine was already knocking on the door of Petrograd.

The Bolsheviks, alone of all the socialist parties, eschewed all legalistic and liberal notions. Class struggle, not law, was their guiding principle. The peasants should wait neither for the constituent assembly nor the provisional government. On the contrary they were urged to carry through the reform of agriculture at once, using their own soviets and their own illegal methods. Lenin was determined to press home his wooing of the peasantry. Without revolutionary initiative you will have neither the law nor the land. To its credit, the International Socialist Organisation in Zimbabwe too says that landless peasants "should not wait for the courts, the law or so-called orderly land redistribution" (Socialist Worker Zimbabwean version, May). 'Take it now' is their slogan.

4. Stealing the SR programme

In late August 1917 Izvestia Soveta Krestyanskikh Deputatov, journal of the All-Russian Peasants' Congress, which was under the control of the SRs, published a 242-point programme drawn up as a result of its survey of peasant demands. The demands were familiar. Expropriation of landlords' estates, land to the people, redistribution of land on the basis of equality and periodic redistribution, etc.

Even though he was hiding in an obscure bolt hole in rural Finland, Lenin was convinced that events moved inexorably in favour of the Bolsheviks. Hatred of the provisional government grew in every quarter - Bolshevik majorities were gained in Petrograd and Moscow, counterrevolutionary generals plotted their coups. An armed uprising and seizing all power for the soviets was therefore a matter of urgency. Peasant support would, of course, be vital if the workers in the cities were to retain power. Lenin had always recognised the centrality of the peasants in Russia. He undertook an audacious tactical turn.

The 242-point peasant programme was acceptable to the Bolsheviks ... with one proviso. It could only be put into effect by instituting the rule of the people. Any government that "hesitates to introduce these measures should be regarded as a government hostile to the people that should be crushed by an uprising of the workers and peasants" (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p64). The insistence on large-scale farms and scientific techniques - hammered home by Lenin only a few months before - was for the moment allowed to quietly drop out of sight.

The SRs found themselves completely outmanoeuvred. Lenin and the Bolsheviks rained polemical blows down upon their heads. They had sold out, gone over to the landlords. Though in government, the SRs refused to implement their own programme: ie, the demands of the peasants for the expropriation of the landlords. Instead the SRs proposed a halfway house land bill. Lenin branded it a "fraud" and championed the 242-point peasant programme (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p228). Peasants warmed towards the Bolsheviks. The SRs would soon cleave into an anti-Bolshevik right and a pro-Bolshevik left. The lefts proved by far the most popular. They won a majority at the next, second, Congress of Peasant Soviets; its leader, Maria Spiridonova, being elected presiding officer.

One of the first acts of the Soviet government after the October Revolution was to issue a decree on the land based on the 242-point peasant programme. Its five clauses run as follows:

1. Landed proprietorship is abolished forthwith without any compensation.
2. The landed estates, as also all crown, monastery and church lands, with all their livestock, implements, buildings and everything pertaining thereto, shall be placed at the disposal of the volost land committees and the uyezd soviets of peasants' deputies pending the convocation of the constituent assembly.
3. All damage to confiscated property, which henceforth belongs to the whole people, is proclaimed a grave crime to be punished by the revolutionary courts. The uyezd soviets of peasants' deputies shall take all necessary measures to assure the observance of the strictest order during the confiscation of landed estates, to determine the size of the estates, and the particular estates subject to confiscation, to draw up exact inventories of all property confiscated and to protect in the strictest revolutionary way all agricultural enterprises transferred to the people, with all buildings, implements, livestock, stocks of produce, etc.
4. The ... peasant mandate, compiled by the newspaper Izvestia Soveta Krestyanskikh Deputatov from 242 peasant mandates ... shall serve everywhere to guide the implementation of the great land reforms until a final decision on the latter is taken by the constituent assembly.
5. The land of ordinary peasants and ordinary Cossacks shall not be confiscated.

Subsequently Lenin defended his grand programmatic theft on two grounds. Firstly, adopting it was democratic. Even if one disagreed with elements of it, the 242-point peasant programme expressed the "absolute will of the vast majority of the class-conscious peasants" (VI Lenin CW Vol 26, Moscow 1977, p260). A democratic government of the people cannot ignore their stated wishes.

Secondly, experience teaches. The peasants could implement the programme either in the individualistic spirit of the SRs or the collectivist spirit of the Bolsheviks. The peasants would quickly discover who is right. The Bolshevik leadership therefore rejected all attempts to amend the decree on land. The peasants themselves must decide what to do.

Nonetheless where they had toeholds of influence in the countryside the Bolsheviks sought to carry through an orderly confiscation of landed estates without violence and destruction. The Bolsheviks remained firmly opposed to a 'black partition'. Moreover they tried to preserve intact "intensely cultivated estates": for example, orchards, stud farms, the growing of beet flax, cotton, etc. (EH Carr The Bolshevik Revolution Vol 2, Harmondsworth 1976, p46) Finally the Bolsheviks pressed for the equal distribution of all land - later skilfully shifted into equal use of the land. That meant siding with the poor peasant and against the kulaks. The Right SRs defended the kulaks and only wanted the landlords' estates subject to redistribution. The Left SRs too eventually found themselves at odds with the Bolsheviks.

Yet while the short-lived coalition with the Left SRs lasted there was a certain truce on the part of the Bolsheviks when it came to advocating collectivist measures (the Left SR, AL Kalegayev, was in nominal charge of agriculture). Petty bourgeois egalitarianism ruled. Plots carved out from the landlords' estates were to be of the same size ... small. According to Teodor Shanin, the revolutions of 1917 therefore "re-established the essentials of 19th century peasant customary law" (T Shanin Peasants and peasant societies Harmondsworth 1979, p35). More correct would be to say Russia maintained traditional peasant agriculture, but without landlords' rents, without the obligation to work for the landlords and without landlords' estates. The subordinate half of the Asiatic mode of agricultural production was thereby generalised. Be that as it may, though there was no economic regression the net result was a low level of productivity.

Mindful of Russia's entrenched backwardness, the Bolsheviks included stipulations encouraging intensive farming and collectivist measures in the February 1918 law socialising land. Eg, "To develop the collective system of agriculture, as being more economic in respect both of labour and of products, at the expense of individual holdings, in order to bring about the transition to a socialist economy" (quoted in EH Carr The Bolshevik Revolution Vol 2, Harmondsworth 1976, p50). Tragically it was Stalin who terroristically pushed through universal collectivisation from 1928 as a component part of his counterrevolution within the revolution. Productivity plummeted and peasants were effectively re-enserfed. Again though, that is the subject of another article.

What I have tried to establish here is that the interests of the class struggle and making the revolution justified the Bolsheviks lifting the SRs' agrarian programme. However, that did not mean they turned Narodnik. Indeed, as briefly illustrated above, Lenin and the Bolsheviks stayed faithful to their original agrarian programme of land nationalisation and efficient large-scale and intensive agriculture.

5. Conclusion

In opening part one of this study I referred to Mugabe's demagogic campaign of land seizures in Zimbabwe (Weekly Worker July 20). Quite clearly this desperate bid for electoral popularity had nothing to do with anti-imperialism - a political category that cannot be separated from furthering the immediate rights and long-term interests of the working class. Mugabe's land seizures went hand in hand with a state terror directed against the working class in general and the Movement for Democratic Change in particular.

Yet, as the reader will be aware, throughout my discussion of Bolshevism and the land question I have also felt the need to criticise the International Socialist Organisation for bowing before peasant spontaneity. In the pages of their paper Socialist Worker the comrades basically outline a programme of Mugabeism without Mugabe.

Though a persuasive parallel might be drawn between the ISO and the Bolsheviks, vis-à -vis the agrarian programme of the SRs, let us not forget the vital differences between Zimbabwe and pre-revolutionary Russia. The demand for seizing white-owned farms is perfectly correct. And, of course, the farms taken by Zanu-PF big wigs in the name of anti-colonialism - they ought to be seized as well.

However, these farms are not pre-capitalist, but capitalist through and through. They are integrated into the world economy and the world market. Good. We Marxists favour globalisation, out of which soil grows that class whose emancipation embraces "all countries in which modern society exists" (K Marx, 'General rules of the International Working Men's Association' CW Vol 23, Moscow 1988, p3). Those toiling on Zimbabwe's big farms do so not as serfs - ie, due to extra-economic compulsion. They are wage labourers, rural proletarians. Communists and genuine revolutionary socialists have no interest in breaking up these farms into tiny plots, fit only for self-sufficient agriculture. Peasants ought to be proletarianised, not proletarians peasantised.

The correct perspective must be to preserve intact the big farms and place them under the control of the rural workers and landless peasants. They, not Zanu-PF officials, must decide who stays, what is grown, when it is harvested, etc. Technical expertise, even if it exists in between white ears, must of course be treasured and passed on. It is not "racist" to suggest that white farmers are "better farmers" than African and Asian subsistence peasants (Socialist Worker Zimbabwean version, May). One of the significant advances made by Zimbabwe over the last couple of years has been the emergence of class politics over and against race and tribal politics.

A final point. Russia's working class-led revolution could hope for success and uninterrupted progress towards socialism due to Europe. Not Europe as a piece of geography. Nor imperial Europe. Rather socialist Europe at the forefront of which stood the Social Democratic Party in Germany and then the Communist Party of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Russia could confidently expect to spark off the European socialist revolution because of its high level of working class consciousness, culture and organisation.

Criticism of comrades in countries such as Zimbabwe is thus offered in the full knowledge that we have a mountain to climb before communists and revolutionary socialists here in Britain and the European Union (not forgetting North America and Japan) can seriously call upon those in capital's periphery to make revolution. Workers gain nothing from suicidal gestures. For our part, we expect - or rather, we demand - open criticism of the sectarianism, the theoretical poverty, the amateurism, the rootlessness, the national isolation, the disunity of the forces of the revolutionary left in Britain and the EU. Such is the duty of proletarian internationalists in order to further our common cause.