Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways.  The point however is to change it.  Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
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No 0866 Tuesday August  13th 1996                                                                                                                    10p

British colonial dominance driven further into retreat. Ignorance on the national question, and fear of revolutionary working-class dictatorship, is combining to confuse 'left' policy on Ireland and the programme for Britain as well. Lenin explained things better.

The further indications of imperialist defeat in Ireland over the weekend provide another good example of how the dissection of just one small sample of the international balance and conflict of class and national forces can reveal the pattern of the overall world struggle and provoke better insights into particular difficulties elsewhere.

The fight to complete Irish self-determination is sometimes linked in a bogus and confusing way to remaining issues of the national question inside the rest of the 'United Kingdom', so termed. Such artificial connections to the 'democratic deficit' and 'demand for self-determination' concerning Scotland and Wales (or English regions) largely pander to nationalism, - aroused by the local bourgeoisie as a diversion to what is really posed by capitalism's crisis which is the socialist revolution and the workers state.

Firstly, to deal with the latest developments which, as the highest point yet in the evolution of all the class and national forces relevant to the battle in Ireland, potentially always offer the clearest picture, if interpreted correctly, of where the present situation has come from and where it could and should go to next.

The squaring up to each other over the militaristic parades is symbolic of the whole historic conflict between the Irish population (routinely mislabelled 'nationalist' or 'catholic') and their British colonial-settler conquerors (routinely mislabelled 'loyalist' or 'Ulster Unionist' or 'protestant').

The Occupied Zone of Ireland (routinely mislabelled 'Northern Ireland') is the parts of six of Ulster's nine counties which were seized by force and the threat of force by British imperialist forces in 1921 at the negotiated conclusion of the 1918-1921 Irish national-liberation war which saw eventual full independence for the 26 counties (out of the 32) of Ireland comprising the present Republic.

The retained 'British' territory with its artificially gerrymandered 'border' was then turned into a bogus 'new country' called 'Northern Ireland', with roughly two-thirds of its population being the remnants of the colonising settler community (British loyalist) and one third being the native Irish, permanently trapped inside the built-in Orange-fascist tyranny, and permanently cut-off from their nation's self-determination in the 26 counties of the Republic.

It is misleading to liken this British imperialist tyranny, dictated at bayonet-point in modern living memory, with the murky 'voluntary union' between Scotland and England at the end of the feudal period so as to win better joint spoils in the coming capitalist-colonialist epoch, and the even more dubious takeover-merger between English and Welsh feudal monarchical interests of an earlier period still.

A modern revolutionary national-liberation war was fought by the Irish, formally ending in 1921 only because of British imperialist threats to re-invade and utterly destroy the whole of Ireland if Partition was not agreed, and not remotely because of any Irish 'agreement' with the disgraceful dictated 'peace' conditions. The national-liberation war was bound to continue in some form or other, at some stage, to complete Ireland's self-determination as a bourgeois right. For the full flourishing and emancipation of the workers of Ireland, of course, only the socialist revolution is of any use. A re-united Ireland will be just as vulnerable to the underlying reality of all difficulties in the modern world, - the crisis of the capitalist system, - when there is one Ireland as when there are two.

But in the concrete political and economic circumstances surrounding Great Britain and Ireland in the 20th century, the struggle to complete the full self-determination for the Irish people against the long-declining power of British colonial imperialism, fast losing all its positions and influence internationally, was inevitable.

Not surprisingly, it was the petty-bourgeois nationalism of Sinn Féin and the IRA which won the leadership of the civil-rights/self-determination movement which unfolded with real historical purpose and venom at the end of the 1960s, - given that the politics of all the 'left' and 'socialist' rivals to the Provos were so castrated and confused by their anti-communist sectarianism. It is possible that a serious powerful Leninist movement might have been able to capture the leadership of the national revolt, as was happening in Cuba and Vietnam, etc, but there was not a scrap of leadership available in Ireland (or in Great Britain) with even a glimmering of a correct world-revolutionary outlook. The Provos were easily the most determined and clear thinking national-guerrilla force, and they won the leadership contest hands down.

The SNP (Scottish Nationalist), Plaid Cymru, and others have attempted to establish a similar 'self-determination/democratic deficit' challenge to British imperialism on behalf of Scotland and Wales, but in these cases it is just an anti-communist petty bourgeois diversion to provide the possibility of attacking London's rule without getting involved in denouncing the capitalist imperialist system because of its incurable crisis which is what is really dictating economic and political conditions and widespread social discontent, disruption, and unease. Such bourgeois nationalist diversions need attacking as such.

On a strict grasp of the bourgeois right of self-determination, the arguments are just wrong anyway. The SNP already can be voted in on a total independence ticket, and if it won the vast majority of Scottish seats and decided to meet as a completely independent parliament in Scotland (as Sinn Féin did in 1918 as the overwhelming winner of the all-Ireland elections, founding the Dáil in Dublin and getting war blitzed for doing so), there is not the slightest chance that English army units would then invade Scotland to deny this fully 'democratic' Scottish bourgeois right. This is not 1918, British imperialism no longer rules the world, and in fact is now so weak that it cannot even defeat the tiny forces of IRA/Sinn Féin drawn from a population of half a million. A Scotland self-determination struggle, forced to fight by an English army invasion, would have a nearly six million population to call on. The referee would have to stop the fight in the first round to save the English from further punishment. Exactly the same is true for Wales if Plaid Cymru won a vast majority of Welsh seats for immediate independence from England.

The Irish trapped behind the military-colonial Partition have no such bourgeois-democratic right to self-determination. The bogus 'Northern Ireland' Occupied Zone was specifically constructed precisely to prevent them ever being able to exercise such a theoretical right by ensuring that the Irish MPs elected would always he outnumbered in the OZ by the Ulster Unionist (British colonist) MPs, - while still enabling London to say that the Irish "have every democratic right" to campaign fully about all their grievances, and therefore do not need to resort to "terrorism".

And the nature of any 'democratic deficit' which exists in Scotland and Wales is obviously very different from what was imposed on the Irish in the Occupied Zone, where virtual racist apartheid was inflicted in the commercial workplace and all public sector appointments, plus permanent grotesque discrimination in all such matters as housing, amenities, law-and-order, etc, - and all of it backed by endless open tyranny of abuse, intimidation, and victimisation by both the official state forces of the 'Unionist' colony, plus the even more savage persecution by the unofficial armed 'loyalist' gangs like the UVF, UFF, etc, etc, etc, etc. Such systematic racially-based officially-condoned fascist-imperialist tyranny against the Scots in their own homeland, or against the Welsh in theirs, by English forces is unheard of and unhearable of. Thus there is no comparison between the self-determination claim by Irish nationalists discriminated against in the Occupied Zone, and the claim by Scottish nationalists that the capitalist system run in Scotland, Wales, and England by Scots, Welsh, and English (and foreign) ruling-class capitalists is 'unfair' to Scotland.

Whatever 'deficits' exist are created mainly by the workings of the monopoly-capitalist free market, and the English capitalists themselves have just as many grievances against how they get carved up by US, Japanese, German, and French capital, etc, as the Scots do about how the market gives London an advantage. What do those recommending a capitulation to Scots bourgeois nationalist claims wish to see happening in England, - that the English nationalists should be tail-ended when they complain about the 'democratic deficit' with the European Union or other international trading arrangements? 'No' to EU withdrawal; just bring down capitalism.

There are real or imaginary 'deficits' all round under imperialism by its very nature as a monopoly-accumulation/exploitation system. Greater 'national self-determination' under continuing capitalism is the reactionary direction in which every craphead petty-bourgeois political tendency will degenerate as the world economic crisis deepens, - just as they all so degenerated towards social-chauvinism in 1914 in the Second International, (founded by Engels and officially Marxist one hundred percent), - with the exception of the Leninist party, of course, and a couple of other continental groups.

But the only real answer to these 'democratic deficit' postures is to get rid of the imperialist free-market system. Any continuation of the imperialist free market after any 'democratic deficit' rearrangements will see hardly any real or worthwhile changes in the workings of the capitalist system at all. Monopoly-imperialist economic power will continue to strengthen its domination of the planet whatever happens. It is totally the wrong epoch for capitalism to be able to fabulously extend 'democracy' on a local, - or international, - basis.

This becomes particularly obvious when the specific bourgeois-parliamentary 'reforms' are considered, such as the Scottish parliament and what powers it should have, and what positions should be adopted towards any referendum questions on the matter. Nothing can be said about an improved performance for a bourgeois parliament which does not instantly make itself a laughing stock because the entire record of parliamentary democracy (at this now very late stage in its history) has come to he seen universally in modern class-conscious eyes as nothing but a means of defrauding and bamboozling the masses anyway, however 'democratic' and however many 'reforms'. Parliamentary democracy is THE system of bourgeois dictatorship and brainwashing, and criminal deception, - parliamentary cretinism as communist revolutionaries correctly described it, using it only as a platform for trumpeting the need for the revolutionary overthrow of the entire capitalist 'democracy' system. To depict Westminster as "just a talking shop where MPs do not even have the right to set their own agenda" in the context of taking a participatory role in agitating for a separate Scottish parliament, - is just an exercise in self-derision and foolishness.

Lenin discussed the national question only in the light of the specific historical period being passed through, doubtful whether even an expression of "the negative demand for recognition of the RIGHT to self-determination", as he described it, to which "the proletariat confines itself" was worth expressing at all in the advanced West European countries unless one wanted "to betray one's ignorance of the ABC of Marxism":

The categorical requirement of Marxist theory in investigating any social question is that it be examined within definite historical limits, and, if it refers to a particular country (e. g., the national programme for a given country), that account he taken of the specific features distinguishing that country from others in the same historical epoch.

What does this categorical requirement of Marxism imply in its application to the question under discussion?

First of all, it implies that a clear distinction must be drawn between the two periods of capitalism, which differ radically from each other as far as the national movement is concerned. On the one hand, there is the period of the collapse of feudalism and absolutism, the period of the formation of the bourgeois-democratic society and state, when the national movements for the first time become mass movements and in one way or another draw all classes of the population into politics through the press, participation in representative institutions, etc. On the other hand, there is the period of fully formed capitalist states with a long-established constitutional regime and a highly developed antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie—a period that may be called the eve of capitalism’s downfall.

The typical features of the first period are: the awakening of national movements and the drawing of the peasants, the most numerous and the most sluggish section of the population, into these movements, in connection with the struggle for political liberty in general, and for the rights of the nation in particular. Typical features of the second period are: the absence of mass bourgeois-democratic movements and the fact that developed capitalism, in bringing closer together nations that have already been fully drawn into commercial intercourse, and causing them to intermingle to an increasing degree, brings the antagonism between internationally united capital and the international working-class movement into the forefront.

The same applies to the national question. In most Western countries it was settled long ago. It is ridiculous to seek an answer to non-existent questions in the programmes of Western Europe. In this respect Rosa Luxemburg has lost sight of the most important thing—the difference between countries, where bourgeois-democratic reforms have long been completed, and those where they have not.

The crux of the matter lies in this difference. Rosa Luxemburg's complete disregard of it transforms her verbose article into a collection of empty and meaningless platitudes.

The epoch of bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Western, continental Europe embraces a fairly definite period, approximately between 1789 and 1871. This was precisely the period of national movements and the creation of national states. When this period drew to a close, Western Europe had been transformed into a settled system of bourgeois states, which, as a general rule, were nationally uniform states. Therefore, to seek the right to self-determination in the programmes of West-European socialists at this time of day is to betray one's ignorance of the ABC of Marxism.

In Eastern Europe and Asia the period of bourgeois-democratic revolutions did not begin until 1905. The revolutions in Russia, Persia, Turkey and China, the Balkan wars—such is the chain of world events of our period in our “Orient”. And only a blind man could fail to see in this chain of events the awakening of a whole series of bourgeois-democratic national movements which strive to create nationally independent and nationally uniform states. It is precisely and solely because Russia and the neighbouring countries are passing through this period that we must have a clause in our programme on the right of nations to self-determination.

(May 1914) The right of nations to self-determination

Marxists are, of course, opposed to federation and decentralisation, for the simple reason that capitalism requires for its development the largest and most centralised possible states. Other conditions being equal, the class-conscious proletariat will always stand for the larger state. It will always fight against medieval particularism, and will always welcome the closest possible economic amalgamation of large territories in which the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie can develop on a broad basis.

Capitalism’s broad and rapid development of the productive forces calls for large, politically compact and united territories, since only here can the bourgeois class—together with its inevitable antipode, the proletarian class—unite and sweep away all the old, medieval, caste, parochial, petty-national, religious and other barriers.

The right of nations to self-determination, i.e., the right to secede and form independent national states,- will be dealt with elsewhere.* But while, and insofar as, different nations constitute a single state, Marxists will never, under any circumstances, advocate either the federal principle or decentralisation. The great centralised state is a tremendous historical step forward from medieval disunity to the future socialist unity of the whole world, and only via such a state (inseparably connected with capitalism), can there be any road to socialism.

The Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers must work together, and, as long as they live in a single state, act in the closest organisational unity and concert, towards a common or international culture of the proletarian movement, displaying absolute tolerance in the question of the language in which propaganda is conducted, and in the purely local or purely national details of that propaganda. This is the imperative demand of Marxism. All advocacy of the segregation of the workers of one nation from those of another, all attacks upon Marxist “assimilation”, of attempts, where the proletariat is concerned, to contrapose one national culture as a whole to another allegedly integral national culture, and so forth, is bourgeois nationalism, against which it is essential to wage a ruthless struggle.

The question of the “national culture” slogan is of enormous importance to Marxists, not only because it determines the ideological content of all our propaganda and agitation on the national question, as distinct from bourgeois propaganda, but also because the entire programme of the much-discussed cultural-national autonomy is based on this slogan.

The main and fundamental flaw in this programme is that it aims at introducing the most refined, most absolute and most extreme nationalism. The gist of this programme is that every citizen registers as belonging to a particular nation, and every nation constitutes a legal entity with the right to impose compulsory taxation on its members, with national parliaments (Diets) and national secretaries of state (ministers).

Such an idea, applied to the national question, resembles Proudhon’s idea, as applied to capitalism. Not abolishing capitalism and its basis—commodity production— but purging that basis of abuses, of excrescences, and so forth; not abolishing exchange and exchange value, but, on the contrary, making it “constitutional", universal, absolute, “fair", and free of fluctuations, crises and abuses — such was Proudhon’s idea.

Just as Proudhon was petty-bourgeois, and his theory converted exchange and commodity production into an absolute category and exalted them as the acme of perfection, so is the theory and programme of “cultural-national autonomy” petty bourgeois, for it converts bourgeois nationalism into an absolute category, exalts it as the acme of perfection, and purges it of violence, injustice, etc.

Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the “most just”, “purest”, most refined and civilised brand. In place of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances internationalism, the amalgamation of all nations in the higher unity, a unity that is growing before our eyes with every mile of railway line that is built, with every international trust, and every workers’ association that is formed (an association that is international in its economic activities as well as in its ideas and aims).

The principle of nationality is historically inevitable in bourgeois society and, taking this society into due account, the Marxist fully recognises the historical legitimacy of national movements. But to prevent this recognition from becoming an apologia of nationalism, it must be strictly limited to what is progressive in such movements, in order that this recognition may not lead to bourgeois ideology obscuring proletarian consciousness.

The awakening of the masses from feudal lethargy, and their struggle against all national oppression, for the sovereignty of the people, of the nation, are progressive. Hence, it is the Marxist’s bounden duty to stand for the most resolute and consistent democratism on all aspects of the national question. This task is largely a negative one. But this is the limit the proletariat can go to in supporting nationalism, for beyond that begins the “positive” activity of the bourgeoisie striving to fortify nationalism.

To throw off the feudal yoke, all national oppression, and all privileges enjoyed by any particular nation or language, is the imperative duty of the proletariat as a democratic force, and is certainly in the interests of the proletarian class struggle, which is obscured and retarded by bickering on the national question. But to go beyond the strictly limited and definite historical limits in helping bourgeois nationalism means betraying, the proletariat and siding with the bourgeoisie. There is a border-line here, which is often very slight and which the Bundists and Ukrainian nationalist-socialists completely lose sight of.

Combat all national oppression? Yes, of course! Fight for any kind of national development, for “national culture” in general?—Of course not. The economic development of capitalist society presents us with examples of immature national movements all over the world, examples of the formation of big nations out of a number of small ones, or to the detriment of some of the small ones, and also examples of the assimilation of nations. The development of nationality in general is the principle of bourgeois nationalism; hence, the exclusiveness of bourgeois nationalism, hence the endless national bickering. The proletariat, however, far from undertaking to uphold the national development of every nation, on the contrary, warns the masses against such illusions, stands for the fullest freedom of capitalist intercourse and welcomes every kind of assimilation of nations, except that which is founded on force or privilege.

Consolidating nationalism within a certain “justly” delimited sphere, “constitutionalising” nationalism, and securing the separation of all nations from one another by means of a special state institution—such is the, ideological foundation and content of cultural-national autonomy. This idea is thoroughly bourgeois and thoroughly false. The proletariat cannot support any consecration of nationalism; on the contrary, it supports everything that helps to obliterate national distinctions and remove national barriers; it supports everything that makes the ties between nationalities closer and closer, or tends to merge nations. To act differently means siding with reactionary nationalist philistinism.

There can be no doubt that “national culture”, in the ordinary sense of the term, i. e., schools, etc., is at present under the predominant influence of the clergy and the bourgeois chauvinists in all countries in the world. When the Bundists, in advocating “cultural-national” autonomy, say that the constituting of nations will keep the class struggle within them clean of all extraneous considerations, then that is manifest and ridiculous sophistry. It is primarily in the economic and political sphere that a serious class struggle is waged in any capitalist society. To separate the sphere of education from this is, firstly, absurdly utopian, because schools (like “national culture” in general) cannot be separated from economics and politics; secondly, it is the economic and political life of a capitalist country that necessitates at every step the smashing of the absurd and outmoded national barriers and prejudices, whereas separation of the school system and the like, would only perpetuate, intensify and strengthen “pure” clericalism and “pure” bourgeois chauvinism.

On the boards of joint-stock companies we find capitalists of different nations sitting together in complete harmony. At the factories workers of different nations work side by side. In any really serious and profound political issue sides are taken according to classes, not nations. Withdrawing school education and the like from state control and placing it under the control of the nations is in effect an attempt to separate from economics, which unites the nations, the most highly, so to speak, ideological sphere of social life, the sphere in which “pure" national culture or the national cultivation of clericalism and chauvinism has the freest play.

In practice, the plan for “extra-territorial" or “cultural-national” autonomy could mean only one thing: the division of educational affairs according to nationality, i.e., the introduction of national curias in school affairs. Sufficient thought to the real significance of the famous Bund plan will enable one to realise how utterly reactionary it is even from the standpoint of democracy, let alone from that of the proletarian class struggle for socialism.

(October 1913) Critical remarks on the national question

As can be seen, Lenin is even challenging the 'progressiveness' of separate nationality-based schooling system inside a unitary advanced capitalist state, implying that the different Scottish education, and the religious-denomination schools in Britain should generally be regarded as brakes on society's systemic standardisation and modernisation on all cultural matters under advancing monopoly-imperialist technology and organisation, preparing the basis for socialism.

Lenin clearly regarded Britain as a foremost country of advanced and completed bourgeois-democratic reforms for which the next appropriate historic development would by the socialist revolution under a workers state. British imperialism is heading for the grave, not a period of democratic renewal and reform. And as the inter-imperialist trade-war crisis deepens, it will more and more become a question in Britain of only the socialist revolution or a brief period of extreme reaction in general class-war terms. The current Labour and Tory cut-back programmes to savage past welfare-state 'civilised reforms' shows the direction backwards in which developments in Britain are being forced by its declining relative international trade-war strength. If there is a concession or two to local nationalism on the constitutional front, then it will only be done in the expectation that it will lead to even more ruthless public spending cuts in order to "make the national finances healthy and strong again", etc.

And even if, against all logic of historic development, further room for 'progressive democratic reforms' can miraculously be espied within sclerotic British imperialism, and even if a return to nationalist narrowness and petty local chauvinism could be interpreted as 'progress' in the well-integrated and assimilated British unitary state, - then the Bolshevik policy even for such a prison-house of nations as Tsarist Russia (only just overthrown by brand-new and undeveloped bourgeois democracy) was still just for a Soviet Ukraine, a workers state.

The capitulation to the SNP's petty-bourgeois nationalist diversion in Scotland is insultingly declared to have become unavoidable because of somehow, the de-proletarianisation of the Scottish working class, (which already in 1920 was almost ripe for a fullscale Bolshevik Revolution, such was its consciousness) the explanation offered by the Euro-communist revisionist liquidators of the Communist Parties such as Hobsbawm and Jacques.

This is fantasy. Jobs change, experience frustrates, militancy ebbs, consumer culture atomises, boom affluence breeds individualism, - but the working class remains the working class, and alienation and exploitation remain alienation and exploitation. A major revisionism of Marxism has to be announced if it is claimed that at the decaying end of the imperialist epoch, the revolutionary proletariat starts to disappear.

What is really vanishing is not the Scots working class and its legendary fighting ability, but the quantity and quality of worthwhile revolutionary leadership that is on offer from the 'left' parties and groups. It is the useless vacuum where political leadership should be that has been de-proletarianised, - swamped by philistine light-mindedness, dilettantism, opportunism, and revisionist anti-communism. The fake-'left' is describing its own weak ignorance only when it pretends that the working class in Scotland can no longer respond to a revolutionary lead, and that the only approach that can get a hearing is the tail-ending of the Scots Nats bourgeois nationalist diversion by calling for self-determination and a federal republic as the immediate programme.

A political leadership needs building with a specifically developed and confident grasp of the whole Marxist-Leninist science of imperialist crisis and proletarian dictatorship which will tell Scottish workers what they really want to hear, - that the capitalist system is a bent and inadequate racket and that only a workers state building planned socialism can do ANYTHING to seriously halt the crisis, - and that EVERY shade of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois opinion, especially the nationalists, has deep-down historic class motivations for only one thing when promoting their national chauvinism, - namely to head off a proletarian revolution at all costs. The promotion of the national issue at this stage of imperialist decay and capitalist crisis will play one objective role only, - to delay or obstruct the real class conflict now poisoning society, - the decision whether society should remain the plaything of bourgeois 'market forces', grotesque injustice, consumerist sleaze, cultural decadence, and universal opportunist criminality, - or whether society should be seized by a revolution of the masses and totally reconstructed on a planned, civilised, purposeful basis, under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

That is the choice. All the rest is just 'left'-posturing reformist dilettantism.

Particularly silly is the attempt to describe the call for a workers state in Scotland as 'economism', a term of abuse Lenin employed against 'left' reformists who only wanted workers to agitate on wages and conditions, but not politically for the social revolution.

A workers state in Scotland means the social revolution. It is not a wages demand.

It is an incomparably more advanced level of political struggle than tail-ending the SNP for a pointless 'right to self-determination and a federal republic', which does not challenge the real depths of the capitalist SYSTEM crisis one little bit.

Of course the Scots, and every other nation, must always have the 'right' to anything they choose for themselves, but this vague abstract bourgeois right is simply not saying anything relevant to the present crisis where the integrated and assimilated proletariat of Britain is facing a unified-state ruling class in all-out conflict over the only next viable stage in the history of civilisation, - the overthrow of decadent monopoly-imperialist class power by the dictatorship of the proletariat, meaning the workers of Scotland, England, and Wales taking the power away from THE ruling class. If the deliberate organisation and political agitation towards this end gets known in Scotland popularly as 'for a Scottish workers republic', it will not affect the class political essence of what needs to be done.

All this confusion over basic theoretical questions has then begun clouding Marxist clarity over Ireland.

In the Weekly Worker, Martin Blum has again challenged part of the EPSR's position, declaring it 'idealist' and 'stageist' as well as 'wishful thinking' to call on British imperialism to dismantle its colonial partition before leaving, which allegedly breaches "the unconditional right of the Irish to self-determination which includes dismantling imperialist structures as THEY see fit, not calling on the British ruling class to 'clean up its mess'".

In other words, let potentially one million Orange-led colonist population keep all their official and unofficial arms and state-dictatorship institutions (RUC, Special Branch, local army units and army intelligence, MI5 detachments, prisons and prisons service, etc, etc,) and then let the Irish 'clean it up themselves' in order to get a good feeling that they have been allowed the 'unconditional' right to complete their country's reunification and full emancipation 'themselves'. In other words, a total bloodbath.

To which the half-million Irish still persecuted inside the Occupied Zone will all say together: 'Thanks a lot, Martin'. And even if the complacent 2.5 million Irish in the south decided to lend a hand, it would still be a colossal bloodbath.

This is all just naïve posturing, and nothing to do with Marxism. Unconditionally, it is the right of the Irish to fight to end imperialist colonisation in any way they choose. Unconditionally, it is the right of the 32-county Ireland to decide the country's future themselves, after imperialist colonialism has withdrawn. 

Requiring the British to dismantle their armed partition tyranny and take their murderous hardware away with them does not remotely cast doubt on the achievement of Irish independence. On the contrary, it underlines the strength and victory of that achievement. In no way does requiring British imperialism to dismantle its colonial-partition tyranny confer some 'progressive' role on imperialism. On the contrary, it adds to British imperialist humiliation for all to see that the foul structure imposed at bayonet-point in 1921 is a historical abomination which the whole world wants to see swept out of sight and existence as soon as possible. Calling on the British to dismantle their monstrous police-military-dictatorship state structure implies no more 'progressive' behaviour than if they just quit Ireland anyway, without dismantling, (instead of the reactionary alternative which is to still try to hang onto the colony). In fact, just pulling out and leaving a disgraceful infamous bloodbath behind, if the British ruling class was minded to head off in such a reactionary direction, might imply some nasty strength and resilience left in the moth-eaten imperialist lion.

In reality, it is a defeated historical entity.

Not least in importance in drawing up demands to give political leadership, what is going to happen anyway in Ireland? Are the British just going to pull out and leave the mess behind? Or are they slowly going to dismantle the 'Northern Ireland' state machinery and leave power in the hands of bourgeois reunification on an all-Ireland basis? Clearly via latter, - as is already happening, - under the pressure not of a 'progressive turn' by British imperialism, but under the pressure of an undefeatable revolutionary guerrilla war which has begun to be far too costly for moth-eaten British imperialism to sustain for much longer (the re-construction of Manchester centre alone is now to cost more than £1 billion, plus the shattering of English bourgeois confidence, and growing English working-class contempt for Britain maintaining any hold on Ireland at all), & has long been threatening to destroy London's reputation for security and commercial advantage, and has been causing terrible splits in the British ruling class; and simultaneously under the pressure of Britain's imperialist-rival 'allies' (particularly the USA and the European Union) who have long been urging London, for various reasons, to admit defeat in Ireland and get out, - in as dignified and orderly manner as possible, observing only one significant condition, that the withdrawal should be so hidden and confused with propaganda that on no account should any victory for the IRA/Sinn Féin national-liberation war be detectable in all the 'peace' manoeuvring. And who falls for it?

It is the inability for 'left' posturing to see any defeat for imperialism at all within the negotiated peace process that leads to false historical analogies with events such as Vietnam, where US imperialism scrambled out, hanging onto the skids of its helicopters, — a different situation entirely with no colonial Americans involved at all.

In Ireland, the task is to neutralise the past dominant colonial-governor role of the 'loyalist' community. This is not stageism but a real and significant historical development in the decay of imperialism. The inability to grasp this results from confusion that this is an epoch of imperialist "resolution of hot-spots" instead of an epoch of imperialist crisis; and that the British socialist revolution is the real key to Ireland's complete self-determination instead of Marx's clear understanding that reality was the other way about, that English workers would remain tied to imperialism until Ireland won its independence:

At first Marx thought that Ireland would not be liberated by the national movement of the oppressed nation, but by the working-class movement of the oppressor nation. Marx did not make an Absolute of the national movement, knowing, as he did, that only the victory of the working class can bring about the complete liberation of all nationalities. It is impossible to estimate beforehand all the possible relations between the bourgeois liberation movements of the oppressed nations and the proletarian emancipation movement of the oppressor nation (the very problem which today makes the national question in Russia so difficult).

However, it so happened that the English working class fell under the influence of the liberals for a fairly long time, became an appendage to the liberals, and by adopting a liberal-labour policy left itself leaderless. The bourgeois liberation movement in Ireland grew stronger and assumed revolutionary forms. Marx reconsidered his view and corrected it. “What a misfortune it is for a nation to have subjugated another.” The English working class will never be free until Ireland is freed from the English yoke. Reaction in England is strengthened and fostered by the enslavement of Ireland (just as reaction in Russia is fostered by her enslavement of a number of nations!).

Things turned out differently. Both the Irish people and the English proletariat proved weak. Only now, through the sordid deals between the English Liberals and the Irish bourgeoisie, is the Irish problem being solved (the example of Ulster shows with what difficulty) through the land reform (with compensation) and Home Rule (not yet introduced). Well then? Does it follow that Marx and Engels were “Utopians”, that they put forward “impracticable” national demands, or that they allowed themselves to be influenced by the Irish petty-bourgeois nationalists (for there is no doubt about the petty-bourgeois nature of the Fenian movement), etc.?

No. In the Irish question, too, Marx and Engels pursued a consistently proletarian policy, which really educated the masses in a spirit of democracy and socialism. Only such a policy could have saved both Ireland and England half a century of delay in introducing the necessary reforms, and prevented these reforms from being mutilated by the Liberals to please the reactionaries.

The right of nations to self-determination (May 1914)

The capitalist press itself confirms the latest situation. The national-liberation movement is succeeding, led by petty-bourgeois nationalists, - a victory for the IRA/Sinn Féin, and a defeat for British imperialism (and all imperialism). The colonists are having to accept that their dominance is to be negotiated away at the peace talks. Hence their symbolic climb-down over their previously unchallengeable right to parade triumphally all over 'their' province wherever they wanted. And now even the Labour worms are getting the message that their masters, the British ruling class, are giving in over Ireland, and dismantling the 'Unionist veto', i.e. colonial power:

Drumcree has made the IRA’s case more eloquently than its own members could ever do. The past month has seen the concept of ‘consent’ broadened to take on a quite new meaning in the politics of the province. In the past it has been applied to the need for Unionist consent to any constitutional change. Since Drumcree, Sinn Féin has demanded that loyalists should only be allowed to march through Catholic areas if local people consent. This is bitterly resented by Unionists, who see it as an infringement of an unconditional right.

This argument reflects the broader political debate and the need for the consent of the nationalist community, including those represented by Sinn Féin, to any new political: structures. It has been suggested that this has been orchestrated by Sinn Féin. Unionist politicians point out that the local groups which have organised resistance to the Orange marches have been led by men who have served sentences for IRA offences. Mr Hume had tried to broker an agreement between the Apprentice Boys and the Bogside Residents’ Group, but without success. Appeals from church leaders and business people had gone unheard. By Friday morning the city seemed set for a weekend of violence. Then came McGuinness’ plea for tolerance and, suddenly, the Bogside Residents’ Group accepted the arguments for compromise. In Derry yesterday one Sinn Féin member said: ‘The British have kept us out of the talks, ignored our supporters. Well these are the alternative negotiations — on the streets.’

Back on the bus to Derry, the Apprentice Boys heard on the radio that their grand committee was still behind closed doors deciding what to do. The passengers rolled their eyes. Another surrender was imminent, and as we got off the bus in the Protestant-dominated East Bank of Derry, it was confirmed. The Apprentice Boys had decided not to walk the walls at all.

SHADOW Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam believes the current round of peace talks is likely to fail and is considering a new initiative under which a Labour government would strip Unionist leaders of their veto on political progress.

Rumours that she is privately thinking the unthinkable, including cantonisation or repartition, are firmly denied, but sources close to Ms Mowlam say she has been holding detailed discussions on a Labour peace strategy. Labour sources believe leading Unionists are not reflecting a grassroots desire for peace. They point to initiatives at local level that have shown a greater degree of political co-operation since the proclamation of the IRA ceasefire in August 1994. They also cite Protestant businessmen who have taken an open-minded approach over issues such as cross-border co-operation, especially in the context of possible economic and monetary union.

Clive Soley, chairman of the cross-party Commons Northern Ireland Select Committee and one of the Labour politicians with whom Ms Mowlam most frequently discusses Northern Ireland, said last night: ‘If the current round of talks makes no progress, and many of us are pessimistic, then no party should have a veto. It will be incumbent on the British and Irish Governments to proceed in whatever way they think necessary to stabilise the situation and move the political process forward. Our fear is the present peace process has run into the sand and got into a situation where it is impossible for republicans or Unionists to agree an outcome.’

Labour accepts senior Unionist politicians cannot be bypassed entirely, but believes more needs to be done by London to dictate the agenda. It is also being argued that decommissioning paramilitary weapons will have to be sidelined as a precondition, regardless of Unionist objections, as it is clear neither Protestant nor Catholic paramilitaries will hand over arms before a final settlement.

Certainly imperialism wishes to try to keep control of the process, as best it can. But the process is one of relentless imperialist decay and defeat. Build Leninism. RB

Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. VI Lenin
South West Bulletin
[P&P Bulletin Publications (South West), BOX 32, 82 Colstom St., Bristol BS1 5BB]
No. 183.  Saturday 10th August 1996

Letters

Socialist Labour: Don’t "refound" confusion.

If it's true that Scargillism is in many respects still trying to read 1996 as though it were 1975 (see last week's issue), it seems that a 'theoretical' justification for this atavism is already at hand, in the summer edition of Class and Capital (Number 59).

What is most obviously missing from Heron's “Birth of Socialist Labour" effort is any sense of the way in which all politics are being turned inside out by the impact of the world crisis of imperialism. Yet without this basic perspective, all the subsequent ruminations over Old Labour, New Labour, Socialist Labour etc. are doomed to remain stuck at the level of shuffling around the pieces of an academic jigsaw puzzle.

Central to Heron’s whole argument is the fiction that Labourism has always had a mysterious proletarian "class character", which only now is "unravelling". Seen from this angle, for example, the clearing away of the empty Clause 4 appears as a "deep ideological setback for the working-class movement". Clause 4 supposedly had stood for "the fact that the working class and the poor had to have its own class party in capitalist society".

Constantly intruding on this is the real counter-revolutionary history of Labourism, and the ruthless exposure of that history throughout by Marxism-Leninism. What with pretending to agree with Engels and Lenin over the bourgeois character of trade unionism and Labourism, whilst at the same time claiming that, from its birth up till the demise of Clause 4, Labour stood for the "class, political independence" of the proletariat, Heron is forced into some really mind-numbing rigmaroles:

Labour was born in a period of immense working class creativity. From 1880 until 1920 the working class movement in a series of countries across the world set about forming new political organisations and cultures. The great battalions of workers in industry in the West made new, mass unions and then sought political representation. Inside and outside Russia, political groups formed and reformed basing their development on the most politically advanced working class in one of the most backward countries. This tremendous upsurge of energy and power was realised in different ways, and at different levels, across the globe. In 1917 in Russia the working class took the cities, put itself at the head of a peasant revolt and conquered a country. At the other end of the spectrum, in Britain a new mass party was formed at the heart of the most powerful empire of the day, an empire that was a monument to political stability where (fumed Engels a few years earlier) even the workers were bourgeois.

The winning, or more accurately, the wresting away, of class independence by the workers, from the capitalists, their parties, societies and even in one ease, from their global monopoly of power, was an achievement without parallel in human history. Never before, had a subordinate class established its own politics and culture and organisations at the heart of the social system by which it was oppressed. This conscious effort for change by millions of toilers to build their own mass organisations, was the exact opposite of the progress of capitalism which tore at the feudal order; first by the unconscious power of the market and only later through its political programmes and its armies. The power of the workers’ movement in 1918 owed nothing to the gradual and spontaneous enlargement of the sphere of socialistic or communistic modes of production within the capitalist economy, and everything to the conscious political efforts of countless numbers of the most oppressed of the earth.

Across the world the achievement of class, political independence by the working class was, necessarily, riven with contradictions. In Britain the achievements in the field of class independence were of the most rudimentary kind. In effect the bureaucratic, liberal-supporting leadership) of most of the trade union movement, thwarted in its desire for political representation, accepted a united front with other sections of the workers’ movement and the oppressed around the proposal that there should be working men (sic) representatives in parliament. The organisation, first the Labour Representation Committee and then the Labour Party, that this process created, became, in Lenin's words, the political expression of the labour bureaucracy as opposed to the whole of the working class. That labour bureaucracy was, itself an expression of the emergence of a labour aristocracy of skilled, sectional and relatively secure male workers and their families, emerging after the defeat of Chartism in the second half of the nineteenth century in Britain. Another by-product of the corruption of empire.

Nevertheless, to continue with Lenin’s ungainly phraseology, what was produced was a mass workers’ party of a special type, a bourgeois workers’ party. This was clearly an organisation in which the two main, classes in capitalist society had a stake. That class contradiction at the heart of the British Labour Party has moved, over the years, essentially in one direction only; in favour of the bourgeoisie.

To turn a "bourgeois Labour party" (Engels) into a bastion of the proletariat's "class, political independence", it is first necessary to distort history and pass off a cheap conjuring trick as dialectical materialism.

The defining moment of this century, the October revolution, inspired the world proletariat with hope, and the bourgeoisie with terror. The bourgeois politics of the Labour party and trade unionism were a terrified retreat from revolution, not any kind of "achievement in the field of class independence", however "rudimentary". This is the obvious significance in the 20th century of Engels' foreseeing description of a "bourgeois labour party".

The politics of Labourism were from the first a deadly allergic reaction AGAINST the growth of proletarian revolutionary aspirations inspired by the example of October, not just some diluted version of the same "class independence" struggle "at the other end of the spectrum".

Least of all was Labourism establishing some kind of "class independent" beachhead within bourgeois society, some halfway house to socialism, as is slyly pretended, with the formation of "a new mass party...at the heart of the most powerful empire of the day” supposedly amounting to the "wresting away of class independence by the workers".

Heron’s chosen historical ground of proof (contrast between anti-feudal and anti-capitalist revolution) in fact proves the opposite of what the 'half way house' argument requires. The historical record makes it clear that in many cases the nascent bourgeoisie precisely DID begin to establish "its own politics and culture and organisations at the heart of the social system by which it was oppressed”, long before bourgeois political authority was able to impose itself society-wide. Capitalism in its infancy was assisted in so doing by the social transformations being wrought beneath the feudal surface by its own economic activity.

It is the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie, which is prevented from winning its "own culture and organisations" within the "social system by which it is repressed". The proletariat is systematically cheated out of its "class independence" by the all -pervasive presence of bourgeois ideology, creating a situation where the only POSSIBLE expression of "class independence" comes out in the fight for revolutionary proletarian dictatorship science.

Heron actually admits as much in so many words (everything hangs on "the conscious political efforts of countless numbers of the most oppressed of the earth"), without betraying any awareness how this flatly contradicts his own daft assertions about Labour’s special organisational status as guardian of the proletariat's "class independence", despite being a "bourgeois labour party".

Lenin's characterization of Labour as the political expression of the imperialism-corrupted labour aristocracy, which Heron says he agrees with, is the correct one. It cannot be reconciled with the incorrect view of Labour as an expression of the working class's "independence" within bourgeois society - to which Heron also doggedly subscribes.

Least of all can it be reconciled by playing academic games with the Marxist science of contradictions. What is intended by the statement that "the two main classes in capitalist society had a stake" in Labour? If it means simply that there was always a contradiction between the leading political ideas (bourgeois) and the traditional class identity of most of its members (workers), then it's formally true, if a bit obvious. (In a similar truistic vein it could be said that capitalists and workers both have a stake in capitalist production, disregarding the interesting question of who owns the factory.)

But when we are informed that this class contradiction has been moving from the workers towards the bourgeoisie, a process culminating in the defeat of Clause 4 and the victory of Blair, and the final loss of the "class, political independence" reputedly "wrested” from British capitalism early in the century, then it's clear that what is really meant is a contradiction at the level of ideology, a battle for the class identity of the Labour party.

So all the lip-service paid to the Marxist-Leninist description of Labour as a "bourgeois labour party" turns out to have been so much whitewash. The whole purpose of pretending that Engel's uncompromising phrase can somehow be squared with a kinder view of Labourism (as having all the same stood for some kind of political, or sub-political, "class independence") was to achieve one end only: to slip in the false notion that, after all, right up until the demise of Clause 4, there really was a live contradiction being fought through inside the Labour party between socialism and capitalism, which socialism had all the way through at least a theoretical chance of winning, however high the odds piled up against it. What price all Heron's scorn against Trot entryism, now that he has given their illusions the fanciest 'Marxist' justification?

And now that Blair is judged to have finally, after all these years, resolved this contradiction in the capitalists' favour, what needs to be done? Why, "refound" another party of proletarian "class independence" within which the contradiction between bourgeois ideas and proletarian socialist ideas can resume! Will another century be long enough for this 'contradiction' to sort itself out? And what particular reason does Heron have for supposing that this time the 'contradiction' will go the right way - especially given his gloomy assurance of "global defeat" inflicted at large by imperialism?

The reality is that Labourism has long been a key weapon in imperialism's counter-revolutionary arsenal, and its liquidation is a welcome feature of the collapse of revisionism which imperialist crisis has precipitated.

The self-inflicted defeat of the Soviet and allied workers states at the hand of their own revisionists, though a tragic setback, is a secondary feature of this all decisive crisis of world imperialism. Correctly understood, the disintegration of revisionist political influence on communist and anti-imperialist struggles around the world, at the very moment when imperialism in crisis is going back on full brutal revolution-provoking display, will prove a far huger disaster in the long run for world imperialist rule than for the progress of the revolutionary challenge of the world's masses to that rule.

And if this is true in relation to the tragic setbacks in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where the collapse of revisionism has sadly been accompanied by the wiping out of the hard-won workers state gains so long and courageously defended against imperialist invasion and subversion, how much more obviously true it is when it’s a question of Labourism hitting the buffers, - a stinking counter-revolutionary tradition, which never put the tiniest dent in imperialism, never achieved anything for the working class, and should by rights have been drowned at birth.

Only don't try telling Heron any of this:

We now face the removal of most of the gains of class independence registered in the period 1880-1920 whether at the level of states which expressed an independence from the global market, however fragile, or at the level of mass political organisations, which, albeit in such a bureaucratically distorted way as the British Labour Party, expressed class independence from capitalist politics."

There it is in an unbelievable nutshell. Seventy-odd years of planned socialist achievement under proletarian dictatorship, (the only "class independent” expression in reality worth fighting for by the working class) is coolly registered merely as an example of "independence from the global market, however fragile". The Labour party however, for all its sins, is said to have "expressed class independence from capitalist politics".

So shallow and inconsistent are these special-pleading arguments that only a page earlier a very different emphasis was being put on the strength of Labour’s claimed "class independence" when compared with the Soviet workers state, when he had to dual with sniping from those who inconveniently go on pretending to believe this crap about Labour being something to do with proletarian class politics, even after it’s been explained to them that 'the contradiction has now been resolved'  etc:

Livingstone (and others) have written that the class character of Labour could only collapse under the flail of much more massive defeats of the working class than we have witnessed. Indeed the triumph of fascism - or the like - would be necessary before the working class bottom dropped out of the Labour pot. 

But, ultimately, fascism was not required to bring down the Communist Party Government of the USSR or the Berlin Wall. Is the British Labour Party such a granite institution of class independence that it might withstand the pressures which overwhelmed these institutions? To put the same question another way; will a competitively savage capitalist class, which oversaw the destruction of the USSR and targets welfare in the west, not see the dismantling of the old working class parties as part of the same programme?

In all this tortuous attempt to have his cake and eat it, all that remains constant is the defeatism.

Contrary to Heron's defeatist assertions, so far from 'overseeing' the destruction of the USSR, imperialism was caught more completely on the hop by events than even the soft-headed Gorbachevites themselves.

Fourteen imperialist armies tried to 'oversee' the destruction of the young Soviet republic's "class independence", and failed. WWII German imperialism threw everything into 'overseeing' the destruction of the USSR, and failed. And through the whole Cold War of attempted subversion and nuclear encirclement by the greatest imperialist power in history, the USA likewise failed to 'oversee' the Soviet Union's destruction.

The reality is that the Soviet workers state was opened up to the destructive anarchy of free market forces by the hand of its own revisionist leadership. The escalating "competitive savagery" of the battle for markets WITHIN IMPERIALISM ITSELF certainly had a role to play, but only in deflecting Washington from its anti-Soviet crusading long enough to give Moscow revisionism enough rope to hang itself.

Proletarian dictatorship in the Soviet Union indeed proved to be like "granite" in contention with its world capitalist enemies, falling prey alone to its own homegrown revisionist idiocies.

If the worst enemy in the end proved to be the self-imposed retreat from unrelenting class struggle for proletarian dictatorship clarity on every aspect of the developing crisis of world imperialism (so much so that even the undefeated, centrally planned, highly cultured, superbly defended REAL "class independence" of 1/4 billion Soviet workers could simply be handed on a plate to the bourgeois wolves), then there are surely some hard lessons to be learned about the role of proletarian dictatorship science in the revolution. And these are lessons which need learning by everybody, not just the cruelly deceived former Soviet citizenry.

How is it possible now for anyone who claims any interest at all in socialist advance to carry on dodging around the serious meaning of Leninism's contention that 'without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement'? No honest socialist can go on smoothing away this challenging assertion, now that its truth has been so richly confirmed both positively and negatively, in the winning and the losing of proletarian dictatorship in the world's first workers state.

Without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary movement. How is it possible to any longer ignore or deny that THIS ALONE is the correct way round philosophically to tackle all questions of socialist development in the workers movement, and NEVER AGAIN should the approach of 'let's get a bit of "class independent" movement going, then maybe see if we can't eventually find some trick to bump-start it into revolution’ be allowed to prevail?

This is positively the LAST lesson Heron has planned for himself and the SLP. However. Instead of making a break with all the dire revisionism of the past, Trotskyite and Stalinist alike, Heron grafts onto his Trotskyism (damning the Soviet Union with faint praise and making a complete muddle between proletarian dictatorship in the workers states and social democratic bourgeois politics under capitalism) the very worst of Stalinist bureaucratic complacency:

Returning the arguments of those who accept, at one level or another, that the definitive class character of New Labour is not at issue in British society, if not already decided, there are three working propositions which need examination. First, is the argument of those whose politics are framed by the immensely powerful British Road to Socialism. This document has been underrated by the left, especially the ‘new’ left, for decades. It is a coherent and attractive argument, not least because it is the only argument for socialism in Britain which is based on any actual experience. According to this conception the role of socialists is to build up a mass movement, particularly based on the trade unions, which can force a parliamentary wing into collaboration to pass socialist laws. The British Communist Party supported this perspective, as did dozens of Labour MPs as well as all sorts of varieties of 'centrists’, including Militant with its ‘enabling Act’ schema, as do various left political groups today. The attraction of this view not only rests on the experience of the most radical government we have had in Britain this century, the ’45-48 Labour Government. It also emerges with the least friction from the unitary nature of the British labour movement, and its single, mass party. The obvious corollary of the British Road is that efforts to build socialism which lie outside its framework are doomed to exist in a political wasteland.

Against this perspective the far left theory of socialist change always looked puny with its appeals to dual power and British soviets, remote abstraction compared with the robust realities of the actually existing movement of the working class, its tremendous record of fighting for parliamentary representation and its ‘division of labour’ between the unitary ‘industrial and political wings'. This latter sort of thinking went so deep it became the common sense of hundreds of thousands of militants, way beyond active membership of the Labour or Communist parties.

The truth is the analyses and prognoses of the British Road to Socialism have proved to be false. It is no longer popularly conceivable that the leadership of New Labour would be pressured into a socialist programme. 

On the other side of the argument about the perilous future of class independence if it is left in the hands of the New Labour leadership, lie those, mainly coming from Britain’s far left tradition, who see the answer as the amalgamation of the already existing left. 

...In the end, all these experiments on the far left are unable to touch the heart of the matter.

Socialist Labour has infinitely richer potential. Its leadership from the NUM and Women against Pit Closures has a unique legitimacy when it comes to the construction of alliances as shown in 1984-6, and again in the early 90s. Its potential reach into the crisis of New Labour’s identity crisis is fundamental. That fact gives it greater potential purchase inside the trade union movement and among the politically volatile and dispossessed than any previous formation to the left of Labour.

All this means that Socialist Labour is a genuine (and credible) attempt at ‘refoundation’. The technicalities are not the most important thing... 

The point is refoundation. In Britain, with its one mass party and trade union movement, feeble far left political groups and very limited traditions of struggle, the movement for refoundation has come from the only labour movement leadership which has fought in the last fifteen years. It was the only potential, credible centre for the regroupement that could commence a process of refoundation. It deserves to succeed. 

Rival Stalinist and Trot revisionist perspectives are academically rehearsed, to the exclusion of any attempt at a non-revisionist analysis of his own, but the reality is that idealist projections (about what precise forms will be thrown up as a future revolutionary situation unfolds) so beloved of Trot subjective idealism are just the flip side of the uncritical popular frontism (accommodating to the political backwardness of the labour movement as bequeathed by imperialist history) which has been Stalinism's worst influence in the West.

The 'even-handed' parading of British Trotskyism and British Stalinism clarifies nobody. On the contradiction which really does need clarification, that between proletarian dictatorship science and revisionist muddle (all forms), not one word is said.

Instead, the BRS barminess, whilst having been formally recognized as having got it wrong (about Labour eventually being pushed into a socialist programme to transform the class basis of British rule through Westminster), is then, without one word of explanation, pressed back into the service of the SLP. What a farce!

If the false analyses and prognoses of BRS revisionism proved to be a disaster when applied postwar to the "rich potential" of a working class which, despite being crippled by appalling class-collaborating misleadership throughout, had already rallied around "Hands off Russia" campaigns, the General Strike, Spanish anti-fascism etc., why should it be supposed that the "unique legitimacy" of the "alliances" arising from the Great Miners' Strike should fare any better if now left to curl up and die under the same baleful revisionist perspectives?

If the analysis is "false", then what is urgently required is an EXPLANATION, not a shower of confetti over Scargill's impeccable working class credentials and the discovery of a new buzzword, "refoundation". Only the most complete contempt for theory, and the most shallow fascination with what is "popularly conceivable" or "credible" (at the expense of explaining clearly to the working class how things stand in class-struggle development), could in one breath declare the BRS analyses to have been proved "false", and in the next go straight back to the same old Stalinist vomit without turning a hair or offering a word of justification.

The Miners Strike was both the most thorough expression of what marvels of organization, solidarity and tactical inventiveness the working class can display, and the most thorough demonstration that even the best of such class struggle is fatally undermined so long as it continues to be waged behind the perspective of fighting for a socialist Labour government to implement the 'Plan for Coal', - the thin end of a reformist wedge, the fat end of which is made up of all the imperialist-contaminated class-collaborating filth from which Scargillism strives so valiantly to distance itself.

For "the only labour movement leadership which has fought in the last fifteen years" to get "greater potential purchase inside the trade union movement and among the politically volatile and dispossessed", it is above all necessary to deal with the disastrous revisionist misanalysis.

Trot end Stalinist alike, which continues to spread confusion about the nature of the epoch we are in (imperialist crisis, leading to wars and revolutions) and consequently confusion about everything else as well.

Study Leninism.
Paddy Chambers