WeeklyWorker

04.01.2007

Workers' militia and burning necessity

Is workers' defence a question for the future or should communists champion the right to bear arms today? Jim Moody looks at the issues

A basic tenet of the international working class movement in the 19th century was the demand for workers' self-defence units or militias. Despite the crucial role played by workers' militias in the Russian Revolution and sporadically elsewhere, so-called revolutionaries in  the 20th century eventually abandoned this essential, strategic instrument, putting our movement in peril.

Today many on the left prefer not to discuss workers' self-defence, considering somehow that we have to put off such questions for the moment. It seems somewhat ironic, then, that in relatively stable, capitalist Switzerland the population has been armed to the teeth for many years, inside and outside its mass militias, and the government untroubled that it has no idea, even to the nearest million, how many firearms are held by Swiss civilians. We have to ask why militias are fine for capitalist Switzerland, but not so fine for those who claim to be revolutionaries.

Part of the reason for this 'forgetting' by 'revolutionaries' derives from their economistic approach, putting off to the (distant) revolution what are today's tasks, and substituting trade union and reformist demands as a paean (of failure) to pale, contemporary tracings of Trotsky's Transitional programme. Many subscribe to unquestioned and seemingly commonsensical views opposing workers' self-defence that are in fact to the right of the right wing of the early socialist movement.

An example of this spurious and blinkered approach appeared a few months ago in this paper. In the words of Owen Jones of the Labour Representation Committee and Socialist Youth Network: "Supporters of the John McDonnell campaign are calling for realistic demands that are relevant to the working class and that relate to working class consciousness as it is today. For example, demands for a workers' militia are propagated by sects precisely because they do not have any roots in the working class itself, as it is in reality. We cannot have abstract programmatic demands that have no relevance to today's struggles. We must assess the situation as it is."[1]

Several questions immediately spring to mind. How do members of the John McDonnell campaign reckon they will implement the policy and programmatic elements that they advocate? Do they expect the state to offer the protection of its police and armed forces, or even let them stand idly by while the policies are implemented? And if active state antagonism is expected, what should be done now to prepare the working class? Surely these are far from "abstract programmatic" questions.

Whereas at the time of the Russian Revolution, discussion of militias centred around the nature of such organisations (ie, were they workers' or bourgeois militias?), nowadays it has become a dirty word for some, often applied spuriously to unrepresentative and anti-democratic armed squads. This is diversionary and plainly wrong for our purposes. It is time, then, to recover what revolutionaries used to mean and need to mean when they talk of workers' self-defence formations, or workers' militias. It seems, too, that we need to discuss why we need them now, not at some time in the rosy, revolutionary future. In fact, organised workers' defence is nothing new. It is just that its legacy in Britain, as in much of the world, has been deliberately forgotten.

The Second International was certainly exercised by the question of militias. Following a British parliamentary delegation to Switzerland in 1907 to investigate the longstanding militia setup there, the editor of Justice, Harry Quelch, wrote: "Briefly, the socialist proposal, as formulated and re-affirmed from time to time at its international congresses, is the abolition of all standing armies, all professional soldiery, and the military organisation of all the citizens on the basis of the Swiss militia system, with, of course, such modifications in a democratic sense as may be necessary. This means that military training should be obligatory on all citizens capable of bearing arms. That there should be no term of military service and no military law; that there should be no special punishment or course of procedure for military offences: that is to say that the military training should not abrogate the civil law or deprive a man of his civil rights, and that the officers should not be drawn from any special social class, but should, subject to necessary qualification, be appointed by the men themselves. These, we maintain, are the only conditions of military organisation compatible with popular liberty and democracy."[2]

Justice was the weekly paper of Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation, edited by Quelch until his death in 1913; his Social Democrat article takes for granted the existing position of Second International socialists and the working class movement generally on the question of militias and argues his own position within it. True, although he was to the left of Hyndman, his particular support for the idea of a citizen army (and an 'adequate' navy) seems to have been put forward as part of his social-chauvinist opposition to German expansionist aims. Nonetheless, while bifurcating generally into the enemy camp, his attitude broadly draws on arguments about militias that were to the fore amongst radicals and within the British and international working class movement from at least the early 1800s.

Switzerland

Even today, article 58.1 of Switzerland's 1999 constitution lays down that the army is "in principle" organised as a militia, allowing only a small number of professional soldiers. In fact, currently here are 3,600 professional armed forces staff, half of whom are either instructors or staff officers. After two serious, but failed attempts in the last few years to abolish the Swiss army altogether through referenda, it was shrunk for a second time under the Armee XXI military reform project to 220,000 (excluding reserves) in 2004. But a militia force it remains, even if a bourgeois one.

Members of the Swiss armed forces keep their rifles and uniforms in their homes for immediate mobilisation, as well as 50 rounds of ammunition in a sealed tin, to be used for self-defence while travelling to mobilisation points. The box and its seal are checked during every service, at least once every year. Swiss authorities claim to be able to mobilise the entire population for warfare within 12 hours. Despite having a militia, firearm ownership rates in Switzerland are comparable to such countries as Canada, Finland and Norway.

Switzerland's tradition of community service, under which citizens take on public office that is performed alongside their normal jobs, is referred to as a whole as the 'militia system'. Politicians are regarded as part of the same militia system. Thus, members of the federal parliament do not give up their former jobs when they take their seats. In fact, Switzerland's mainstream political system and culture broadly exhibits four elements: the militia principle, direct democracy, federalism, and what is described as 'consociationalism' (harmony in segmented societies maintained through the distinctive roles of elites and the autonomy of organised interests).

In England, the right to keep and bear arms originated during the reign of Henry II in the year 1181 under the Assize of Arms, and developed as part of common law. These rights no longer exist in the UK. Regulation of firearms in modern times in Britain began with the Gun Licence Act 1870, though this was little more than an excise tax. This act required a person who wished to carry a firearm "outside the curtilage of his dwelling house" to purchase a licence at the post office, valid for one year. But no licence was required to get a firearm in the first place: they were available to whoever could pay for one.

However, the 1903 Pistols Act forced a person to have a valid gun licence in order to acquire a firearm with a barrel less than nine inches in length. After World War I, the government, fearing revolution spreading from Russia as well as the tumult in Ireland, commissioned a report that led to the Firearms Act 1920. This required a firearms certificate from the local police prior to the purchase and possession of rifles and pistols of all types. Amended to include shotguns with barrels less than 20 inches in length and to ban machine-guns, eventually the prohibitions and licensing system were consolidated into the most restrictive Firearms Act 1937.

Russia

It is easy to see why the British state was nervous. In Russia, the Bolsheviks had always taken the question of workers' self-defence seriously, as a universal essence to enable the working class to act for itself. In the words of Lenin:

"To arm the people with a sense of the burning necessity to arm is the constant, common duty of the social democrats [communists] always and everywhere, and it can be applied equally to Japan as it can to England, to Germany as it can to Italy. Wherever there are oppressed classes struggling against exploitation, the doctrine of the socialist, from the very start, and in the first place, arms them with a sense of the burning necessity to arm, and this 'necessity' is present when the labour movement begins. Social democracy has only to make this burning necessity a conscious one, to bring home to those who are conscious of it the need for organisation and planned action, the need for considering the whole political situation."[3]

The defeat of the 1905 revolution in Russia and the resulting reactionary period removed many possibilities for working class organisation. Subsequently, however, following the Bolsheviks' stand against World War I - in line with the declarations of the Second International - and on the crest of the rising revolutionary wave, the question of workers' militias was brought to the fore. It was part and parcel of the Bolsheviks' declared aim of converting imperialist war into civil war.

Once the February 1917 revolution had overthrown tsarism, the Bolshevik intention was "... to create a real class and revolutionary force, a proletarian militia that will enjoy the confidence of all the poor strata of the population, and they constitute the vast majority, and will help them to organise, help them to fight for bread, peace, freedom".[4]

The primary importance of organising a militia to oppose the Kerensky bourgeois regime, which planned to rebuild the police force, was trumpeted by the Bolsheviks: "What kind of militia do we need, the proletariat, all the toiling people? A genuine people's militia: that is, one that, first, consists of the entire population, of all adult citizens of both sexes; and, second, one that combines the functions of a people's army with police functions, with the functions of the chief and fundamental organ of public order and public administration."[5]  It is evident from this, and borne out in the event, that the militia at this stage of revolutionary struggle forms the basis of new state forms, the basis of the workers' state.

In fact, during the February 1917 revolution 70,000 small arms were appropriated by militias: "Throughout the factories of Petrograd, workers were elected or volunteered to serve in these militias in order to maintain law and order in the locality, protect life and property, and register inhabitants. The factory committees established militia commissions and appointed commissars to oversee the militiamen. The latter did not leave their jobs permanently to serve in the local workers' militia, but served according to a rota drawn up by the factory militia commission."[6]

Attempts were made, and repulsed where the working class was strongest, to absorb the workers' militias into the bourgeois civil militias. The duality of power existing at this time was expressed vividly by the end of March 1917 in that "... some 10,000 militiamen, out of a total of 20,000, were organised into specifically workers' militias."[7]  And at the May 27 conference of Petrograd workers' militias, the integration of all militias into one civil bourgeois militia was roundly denounced as an attempt "to impose on the populace a police force of the western European type which is hated throughout the world by the majority of the people, the poorer classes."[8]  The same conference went on to agree a Bolshevik proposal to reorganise the workers' militia as a transitional stage toward arming all Petrograd's people.

In addition to these more widely organised militias, whose effectiveness in the changing revolutionary situation was lessening, the Bolsheviks organised small groups of Red Guards. How correct this was can be seen from the reaction of the Mensheviks, who "blamed it on agitation by 'Leninists' and said that the attempt to create Red Guards revealed a deplorable lack of confidence in the army".[9]

A decree of November 10 1917 signed by Rykov, people's commissar of the interior, underscored the primacy of the Red Guards:

"1. All soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies shall form a workers' militia.

"2. This workers' militia shall be entirely at the orders of the soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies.

"3. Military and civil authorities must render every assistance in arming the workers and in supplying them with technical equipment "[10]

Comintern

At the Third Congress of Comintern two seminal decisions of particular importance were made. Firstly, under its programme of action, contained in the July 12 1921 resolution, 'The struggle against the Amsterdam (scab) trade union International', a clear direction is given:

"12. The struggle of the workers' organisations against the individual employer or groups of employers should, while adapting itself to national and local conditions, also draw on all the experience acquired in previous struggles for working class emancipation. Every important strike, for example, needs to be thoroughly prepared. Furthermore, from the outset the workers must form special groups to fight the strike-breakers and combat the provocative action of the various kinds of rightwing organisation which are encouraged by the bourgeois governments. The fascists in Italy, the German technical emergency relief, the civilian organisations in France and Britain whose membership is composed of former officers and NCOs - all these organisations have as their object the destruction and suppression of all working class activity, not only by providing scab labour, but by smashing the working class organisations and getting rid of their leaders. In such situations the organisation of special strike militias and special self-defence groups is a matter of life and death.

"13. These defence organisations should not only resist the factory owners and the strikebreaking organisations - they should take the initiative in stopping the dispatch of goods to and from the factory where the strike is in progress. The transport workers' union should play a particularly prominent role in such activity: it is its responsibility to hold up goods in transit, which can only be done, however, with the full support of all the workers in the area."[11]

And even more specifically, in the resolution 'On tactics' agreed by the Congress on the same day, the Comintern showed its awareness that, "Over the last year the capitalist offensive has become increasingly bold. One can observe that the bourgeoisie is no longer satisfied with the usual state institutions and in every country has created under its protection various legal and semi-legal White Guard organisations which have been playing an important role in all the major economic confrontations.

"When the Lloyd George government in England was faced with the threat of a strike, it called for volunteers prepared to defend property and 'the right to work' by scabbing on the strikers and destroying their organisations.

"Not only must communists be at the forefront and explain fundamental revolutionary tasks to those participating in the struggle, but they must also work with the most dedicated and active elements of the industrial workforce, create proletarian military organisations and workers' defence groups, oppose the fascists and prevent the jeunesse dor ée of the bourgeoisie slandering and attacking strikers.

"The Communist Party, and particularly its trade union cells, must devote special attention to the extremely important question of counterrevolutionary organisations. A good intelligence and communication network must be organised which can keep a constant watch on the military organisations and forces of the White Guards, their headquarters and arms depots. It must check on the links between the White Guard headquarters and the police, the press and the political parties, and must have detailed contingency plans ready for defence and counterattack.

"The Communist Party must work through words and actions to convince the widest sections of the proletariat that, given the right combination of circumstances, every economic and political conflict can develop into a civil war which raises the question of the seizure of state power."[12]

General Strike

Even in Britain, where the Communist Party was the among the least revolutionary in Europe, some consciousness about self-defence produced sporadic, but important results during the 1926 General Strike: "I remember going down to the [strike] headquarters when the first company were going to resume the picketing, and as they came up with their sergeant in front, he shouted, 'Eyes left'. You could see the arms swinging rigidly because they were concealing pokers, hammers, etc. The picket took up its post on the road ... In spite of the fact that there was a big contingent of police they stopped every vehicle that came along. It was a marvellous display of organised disciplined activity."[13]

After the strike the Workers' Weekly of June 11 1926 carried a report about the council of action set up by Methil Trades Council in Fife, which showed as clearly as anything could the potential for workers' militias: "After police charges on mass pickets the defence corps, which 150 workers had joined at the outset, was reorganised. Its numbers rose to 700, of whom 400, commanded by workers who had been NCOs during the war, marched in military formation through the town to protect the picket. The police did not interfere again."[14]

But these experiences were not more generalised: the Communist Party leadership contented itself with complaining testily that the trade union bureaucracy had failed to do what the party had called for (actions that the party itself should have been carrying out): "The rightwing leaders refused to make working class counter-preparations... They turned down the proposals for propaganda among the forces of the capitalist state and for setting up workers' defence corps."[15]

Level of class struggle

Workers' militias require communist leadership: that is the inescapable conclusion. The failure of Connolly and the Citizen Army in 1916 illustrates this, as does the Austrian socialists' Schutzbund in 1936. Both examples tell a tale of unpreparedness for armed struggle except in narrowly defined, limited ways: in the Irish case, of a cavalier approach, and in the Austrian, dilettante. By contrast workers' militias in various forms in 1917 Russia first protected the gains of February, then advanced those gains to the revolutionary triumph of October.

It is as natural for the working class movement to have workers' militias as it is to have trade unions, or as it was to develop consumer cooperatives. The class struggle dictates what level of offensive is required of our class and what can be achieved; our class response, then, must not be limited at all by delusions about the state, its agencies or any of its armed bodies, including the police and army. This is why the CPGB has as a key part of its Draft programme the question of workers' militia. This is what it says:

"Communists are against the standing army and for the armed people. This principle will never be realised voluntarily by the capitalist state. It has to be won by the working class developing its own militia.

"Such a body grows out of the class struggle itself; defending the picket line, mass demonstrations, workplace occupations, fending off fascists, etc. As the class struggle intensifies, the conditions are created for the workers to arm themselves and win over sections of the military forces of the capitalist state. Every opportunity must be used to take even tentative steps towards this goal. As the circumstances allow, the working class must equip itself with the most advanced, most destructive weaponry available.

"To facilitate this we demand:

Unless we raise this question in the working class movement now, it will emerge weakly in a spontaneous way as the class struggle intensifies: as revolutionaries we should then have been caught unawares and indeed unready for advance. That would negate our role as the emergent party prepared to spearhead our class's struggle.

We must put forward concrete forms of workers' defence commensurate to current levels of class struggle, to begin with in the form of propaganda.

Notes

 1. Weekly Worker September 21 2006.
 2. The Social Democrat October 1907, pp584-91.
 3. VI Lenin Proletary November 7 1905: CW Vol 9, p432.
 4. VI Lenin, ‘Concerning a proletarian militia’,
March 24 1917: CW Vol 23, p321.
 5. Ibid pp327-328.
 6. SA Smith Red Petrograd Cambridge 1983, pp98-99.
 7. Ibid p99.
 8. Ibid p100.
 9. Ibid p101.
 10. Quoted by John Reed in Ten days that shook the world London 1961, p293.
 11. Theses, resolutions and manifestos of the first four congresses of the Third International London 1983, p272.
 12. Ibid pp292-93.
 13. J Skelley (ed) The General Strike 1926 London 1976, p157.
 14. Reprinted in J Klugmann History of the Communist Party of Great Britain Vol 2, London 1969, p155.
 15. Workers’ Weekly June 4 1926.
 16. CPGB Draft programme: www.cpgb.org.uk/documents/cpgb/draftprog.html.