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 0891 February 18th 1997                                                                                                                             10p

Obstacles to the SLP taking the working class forward placed by ideological casualties of Cold War anti-communism are doomed to failure. A new party spirit and inspiration is essential, and the sceptics and self-righteous individualists will be routed. Trot and Western anti-Sovietism has only left the world with even bigger problems. Anti-SLP 'Popular Front' sneers in reality expose only the accusers. Soviet mistakes can be avoided, - but not by liquidating leadership. Workers need a bolder lead in all questions to scuttle the petty-bourgeois tyranny of 'politically correct' reformism. 'Homophobia' accusations are driving good sense back into the closet.

One tragic circumstance which has long hampered the fight for socialism in Britain (and elsewhere in the West) is cynicism about leadership.

Generations of rotten sell-out reformist leaders under capitalism, plus the mistakes made in the workers states building socialism which could be ascribed to arbitrariness or authoritarianism, - have created suspicion and fear of all or any leadership.

One of the most destructive aspects of this widespread general political cynicism, which is deliberately cultivated by certain sections of the bourgeoisie, - is that fan-worship of outstanding individuals (whether or not they have any real talent) has reached unprecedented extremes in all other walks of life such as pop music, the world of television and movie personalities, fashion, sport, etc.

People are also more susceptible to being led into cults of different bizarre kinds than ever before in modern history.

And in politics itself, if the demagogy is outrageous, intolerant, or weird enough, - quite seriously unhealthy leadership can still prevail, which is what various fascist or ultra-imperialist circles hope to rely upon.

Only to the hindrance of more rational politics does this phenomenon of petty-bourgeois cynicism about leadership have its damaging effect.

The Trotskyite hostility to the Socialist Labour Party is a prize current example, - just as the Trots' hatred of all the workers states (and their leaders) basically built up this artificial leadership fear earlier this century.

Workers building socialism, or socialist movements, certainly should tackle all mistakes frankly. Parties building socialism or socialist movements certainly must be courageous enough to admit mistakes if things do go wrong, and above all to analyse those mistakes and how they arose so that everyone becomes much the wiser.

But Trotskyism's contribution to history has basically been to establish hysteria about all leadership questions, throughout the West, in the ranks of petty-bourgeois 'revolutionaries' and working-class intelligentsia.

All that this shallow philosophy of individualism and subjective-idealism has achieved has been to create widespread apathy and cynicism which invariably responds to difficulties in the anti-imperialist struggle by wanting to throw out the baby of correct leadership with the bathwater of mistakes which have been made.

The Trots are classically summed up by their insane, reactionary, and counter-revolutionary attitude to Cuba's workers state, building socialism heroically and with colossal worldwide historical significance in the teeth of unprecedented imperialist hostility and sabotage.

Some of the organised 57 varieties who have infiltrated the SLP around Vauxhall and Southwest London branches have just conducted a manifesto-writing competition to try to displace SLP policy for the coming General Election. These included the demand for a "political revolution" to overthrow Castro's Cuba.

Now apart from being totally contrary to SLP policy (as were most other things in these barmy manifestos - of which more later) which properly has taken a public stand of unconditional support for socialist Cuba against every aspect of imperialist sabotage and bourgeois criticism, - this "down with Castro" insanity is, of course, exactly the dearest wish of the most powerful and reactionary imperialism the world has ever known, - the US international economic, military, and CIA domination.

So precisely what sort of 'socialist' is this 'super-socialist' infiltration into the SLP by these middle-class Trotskyite 'revolutionaries'?

It is the 'socialism' of psychotic subjective-idealist individualism which is utterly alien to the materialist philosophy of Marxism-Leninism, and which harbours a paranoid fear of all successful working-class leadership, - which is why in reality it hates Scargill's SLP.

They live in cloud-cuckoo land. Just consider the situation in Cuba where Castro is phenomenally and overwhelmingly popular.

Only a deranged mind to start with, dealing in fantasies, could imagine that workers in Cuba would respond to a British middle-class 'socialist' call to overthrow Castro with anything other than derision and a punch on the nose.

So what effect do such calls have? To allow the CIA's worldwide propaganda and disinformation agencies to set up provocations, that is all, - e.g. to allow more subversion leaflets to be dropped over Cuba (as they regularly are) saying something like "British workers' party calls for the overthrow of Castro"; or to allow maybe a question to be planted against Scargill on his next visit there, saying: "I hear your party is calling for Castro's overthrow", etc, etc.

These Trotskyite stooges (for god-knows-what) play no better role here against the Socialist Labour Party.

For months, they have been campaigning against Arthur Scargill as "Stalin-dictator" as the Weekly Worker termed him, the bible of the 'Left Opposition' infiltrators into the SLP.

Their hate-filled provocative contempt for the SLP is unlimited, as in the following examples [Quote]:

'Expect gerrymandering and underhand manoeuvering. Correspondence will be lost in the post or mislaid. Branches will be closed, forgotten or not recognised. Resolutions will be ruled out of order or referred to the NEC. Two dozen different constitutional 'amendments' from two dozen different branches will allow the NEC to divide and rule by arranging it that what they find most detestable be talked off the agenda. In all likelihood the NEC will have in reserve their own batch of amendments and will encourage others to submit their own amendments to soak up time.

On these two short subsections pivots the whole system of witch hunting and fear. They have been used to void and cower comrades. They are used to justify anti-communism and the imposition of a bureaucratic regime.

President Arthur Scargill coolly informs public rallies that his draft constitution is no draft, but binding law. It was "adopted" by the membership at the inaugural conference of May 4, he maintains. The Fiscites make exactly the same mendacious claim. The draft constitution is being used to straightjacket the SLP politically and organisationally. Nevertheless the ham-fisted way in which it is being done shows how fragile the leadership considers its hold over the SLP. Bureaucratic manipulation and barefaced lying are not signs of strength, but profound weakness.

This petty-bourgeois individualism, reeking of Trotsky's "everything is rotten" defeatism, regards anything SLP beyond Weekly Worker or Revolutionary Platform involvement as "anti-democratic", "anti-communist", "McCarthyite", "they wish to atomise us", "wrecking", "sectarian", "to the glory and edification (sic!) of the leadership", "loathsome little life forms in the SLP", "the slimy invertebrates of the SLP right", "little confidence in struggle and militancy", "great confidence in the scheming and manoeuvring of the various bureaucracies", "like flies unto shit, witch-hunters attract all manner of embittered failures, would-be sadists, and sectarian misfits. The Fiscites readily welcomed the Stalin Society into the SLP", "oscillation between the iron grip of bureaucratic control and the opposition emerging from advanced workers", etc etc, - all that from just one issue (Nov 7) of the Weekly Worker.    (EPSR 887).

Last week, they tried to undermine a tremendously successful public rally addressed by Scargill in Wythenshawe, Manchester.

The most criminal thing about these middle-class provocations is their monstrous hypocrisy, leafletting everyone present with an A4 sheet pretending to be urging them to "Join the Socialist Labour Party", - continuing these Trot entryists pretence that they are the "best and most loyal members of the SLP"

But consider the sly destructive tone of 90% of this bogus appeal to 'join the SLP':

Workers have had enough of parties and unions claiming to be for us while keeping a lid on the membership; keeping a lid on our struggles and our ideas while they stitch up a deal with someone else. This is the history of the Labour Party. It serves the bosses and always has done, so the last thing the we need now is a Labour Party Mk II. And we should be concerned that the SLP might follow this well worn path to betrayal and ruin. The Campaign for a Democratic Socialist Labour Party has been formed to chart a course away from bureaucratisation and forward to workers controlling their own party as a prelude to controlling the state.

Workers' organisations need democracy, like we need the air we breath. While discipline makes us strike with one fist, only freedom of ideas can make us strike at the right target. We must be able to speak and organise openly. We must fight for a party to which all partisans of the working class will rally. Only then will the SLP become the mass party of the working class in Britain. Current indications however, mark a dangerous departure from these principles. The catalogue of difficulties experienced by the rank and file is (long and unhappy:

Bans enacted by the constitution are used against revolutionary organisations, but the constitution has never been voted on by a congress.

Members suspected of revolutionary sympathies are witch-hunted. In an amazing sleight of bureaucratic hand members of many months active membership have been told they never were members after all. Disciplinary charges are heard without representation, expulsions are made on the basis of secret reports, and no appeal is allowed. Whole branches, like Greater Manchester Branch, have been liquidated against the wishes of the members, because the members didn't agree with the actions of the leadership.

Candidates for elections have been imposed, selection procedures flaunted.

The constitution which is sacrosanct in preventing affiliations, is flaunted when the leadership wants to delay conference, and reshuffle top jobs without elections.

To any logically-minded worker, such a leaflet can only possibly have one message: "Do not, whatever you do, join the Socialist Labour Party. It is an utterly corrupt, totally undemocratic, treacherous confidence-trick on the working class. The last thing it can do is help the fight for socialism. It can only betray that fight."

And this has been the mentality of these anti-communist sectarians from the start. They all went into the SLP knowing that it was a party they hated, and wanted to destroy.

What these parasites want is a federated swamp of a party where every single Trot sect, - all 57 varieties, - can frolic to their hearts content, poaching members off each other, undermining SLP organisation in favour of their own secret separate organisation, and basically devoting all of their time to the ridicule of leaders and leadership, including SLP leadership.

As Lenin described some of their predecessors (Martov, Plekhanov, Trotsky, etc, and their anti-Bolshevik sects), they are "in fact nothing more nor less than an alliance of bourgeois intellectuals directed against the workers".
(EPSR 885).

Scargill & Co have launched anything but a Labour Party Mark II, of course; and the SLP is anything but a failure, - as these bogus "SLP Democratic Campaign Members" viciously put it about.

The real pro-capitalist treachery by Blair's New Labour was torn apart by Scargill in his speech. The total abolition of capitalism was spelt out in graphic detail, replaced by complete public ownership without a penny compensation, - unless it was to demand compensation as well from the private owners and investors for their theft of publicly-created services and industries. All private medicine and education would be banned, and all surplus grand homes and buildings confiscated to immediately solve the housing problem. All unemployment would be likewise instantly and permanently outlawed by immediate work redistribution through early retirement on full pay and a four-day week for everyone. The British imperialist nuclear war machinery would all be stopped at once to help finance such changes.

Meanwhile, international working-class cooperation would replace British imperialist support for the division and occupation of Ireland, Cyprus, Palestine, etc. The EU Common Market monopolisation would be opposed, and the environmental pollution and spoilage from roads and road transport and dirty power supplies would be replaced by railways and clean-fuel technologies.

No one should vote Labour ever again, and the first act of an SLP government would be to abolish the Monarchy and the House of Lords.

All this, and much more in this vein, should have, and did have, any normal worker wholeheartedly supporting it. No such prominent, credible, and respected labour movement leader has been heard saying such things for generations.

But the sour infantile SLP Trots were not remotely supportive. They naturally scowled at such an exhibition of powerful and confident working-class leadership. They hate Scargill just for being a good leader with a great reputation which the working class will follow for its principled courageousness, proved in the three mighty miners strikes which were the highest points in the class-war struggles since 1945.

The CPGB's stooges could not join in the rest of the working-class audience's delight at the SLP secretary's address because their secret agenda of deep-rooted class hostility to communism, - i.e. actual living workers states where the capitalist ruling class really has been expropriated, - dominates their petty-bourgeois individualist mentalities.

The latest Weekly Worker demonstrates this psychotic behaviour.

The SLP was founded as a unitary, anti-federal party with a single loyalty, its political character clearly established by Scargill and his close supporters who launched it, and confirmed by a constitution which specifically and deliberately rules out all affiliations or factionalising by rival political credos.

The CPGB's stooges and all the Trot 57 varieties have solely 'joined' the Socialist Labour Party in order to completely disrupt and undermine the SLP's intended character and direction. Their whole relationship with the SLP is on a fraudulent and dishonest basis, and they know it!

Their chosen tactic is to brazenly plant themselves like cuckoos into the SLP nest, and to defy Scargill & Co to get them out! Hence the practice of expelled CPGB stooges turning up to "their branch meetings", and refusing to leave, - a tactic deliberately selected to try to create the maximum provocations against the SLP, and to get the police and bystanders involved against the party, or get the SLP banned from using meeting rooms, etc.

This blatant and astonishing arrogance by these CPGB and other Trot sect stooges, - telling a rival party (the SLP, which they fundamentally disagree with as to the type of party it aimed to be and the constitution it wanted for itself) that they will "enter" that party (the SLP) and prevent it having what it wants for itself, - comes not by accident but from the amazing subjective conceit at the very heart of Trotskyite philosophy itself.

They have the mentality of the eternal individualist outcast just like their mentor, Trotsky, who was despised and ridiculed by Lenin throughout the 14 years it took the Bolshevik Party to prepare the Great October Socialist Revolution following the 1903 split in the ranks of the would-be revolutionaries.

As late as February 1917, Lenin was writing about this sectarian individualist:

... Trotsky arrived, and this scoundrel at once ganged up with the Right wing of Novy Mir against the Left Zimmerwaldists!! That's it!! That's Trotsky for you!! Always true to himself - twists, swindles, poses as a Left, helps the Right, so long as he can
V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Vol35, p. 288

Trotsky crept back into the Communist Party in August, just weeks prior to the Revolution, played an organising role for a couple of years while continuing to oppose Leninist scientific understanding on many issues, but then went back into his outcast's role, the incurable individualist, in the last year of Lenin's life, setting the anti-communist tone for the whole of the subsequent Cold War epoch.

His know-all contempt for mass communist party struggle is still unmistakable in his current CPGB imitators, who pontificate this week:

The SLP unites a thin, but important layer of socialists, communists and class conscious workers. And, despite left reformist liquidationism, together we stand on policies which are an anathema to every establishment party, pundit and publication - The Guardian, The Sun and the Daily Telegraph would dearly love to see the SLP collapse amidst internecine civil war.

Needless to say there still exists a window of time for comrade Scargill to rediscover his former self and reinvent his present self as a working class politician ready for the 21st century. The comrade should take a lead in ridding the SLP of its Old Labourite 'constitution' and drafting another - one firmly based on class unity and affiliation, full democracy and open debate. If this is done, comrade Scargill and the SLP will become a focal point for rallying the left and in due course re-articulating the entire working class movement.

A Martian reading this would be convinced that the SLP was anyone's idea but Scargill's, and that far from being the inspiration of the party, there might be a role for him if he behaved himself and carried out the instructions which his betters were kindly spelling out for him.

Now this is not some chance megalomaniac who just happens to have slipped into the Weekly Worker's ranks and fancies himself/herself as a latter-day Trotsky.

They all think and act like this, - like the unwanted expelled member declaring "I will attend the next branch meeting, whatever your party decisions".

The even bigger joke, of course, is that this swamp 'party' of all the 57 varieties which they propose so generously to the Scargillites (after climbing on Scargill's back to make the offer, naturally) would be the back-stabbing, paralysed, faction-ridden, hot-air farce of the century, - the ultimate disaster for the cause of socialism.

And they never answer the question: Why do not these Trots simply get on and built their great 'unity' party themselves? Why have they never done it in the past, with free affiliation for all? Why do they have to drag Scargill and his party in, who does not want to join?

The answer is obvious, as Leninism established about these bourgeois intellectual sectarians 80 years ago, - that they are incurably posturing workerless groups who only have their middle-class individualist conceit, and no appeal to the working class whatever.

The Trots were parasites on the mass Labour Party, growing fat in the process. The CPGB Trots were parasites on the small-mass Communist Party. All the Trots desperately need to be parasites on the Socialist Labour Party or they will remain sectarian outcasts on very thin pickings indeed.

And the biggest joke of all about their unchanging fear of Scargill's strong leadership of a mass workers party (such as the Bolsheviks became under Lenin, hostile to and destructive of Trotskyite splitting and factionalising) - is that they are the ones with a leadership complex, and they are the ones who cause the internecine warfare, just as currently in the SLP. Trot entryist life revolves around the capturing of positions, - taking the chair at meetings, becoming the candidate, writing the programme or manifesto, etc.

And the most monstrously domineering regimes which have ever existed in British workers politics, of course, have all been down to Trotskyite posturing sects of middle-class 'revolutionaries'.

All that the Trots are effectively saying to Scargill & Co is that building the SLP will be fine - as long as the Trots are really in charge!

And yet it is Scargill who is accused of wanting to be the Stalin-dictator, - for giving the leadership to his own party which was always earmarked for it and which has won the overwhelming support of its membership.

And so sick is the Trots' cynicism, and so deep-rooted is their class-based psychotic individualism, - that their wish to take over the SLP, or to chair anything, is as much to ensure that other people should not run it, especially successfully, as to create a triumphant mass movement themselves. Which is why Trotskyism has only ever existed in never-ending splits and factions, and has never come remotely close to taking power and building a workers state.

Their modern form is a political product of Cold War anti-communism, which is why they attempt to ridicule the SLP as a dinosaur of a party, out of date, - exactly as the rest of the bourgeoisie seeks to pour scorn.

It was clearly deeply significant, and no mere accidental phrasing, that the Weekly Worker should liken a Scargill socialist Britain to a deprived gulag where the masses would be without their...'Bordeaux wines and Brie cheese'(see EPSR 890).

These petty-bourgeois 'revolutionaries' may inflict lies, humbug, and provocations on the international workers movement, delaying the revolution and prolonging the starvation and suffering of the Third World billions by their Trot subjective-idealist illusions, - but at least their middle-class stomachs are in the right place.

If half of mankind, - three thousand million people, or ten times the population of the whole European Union, could just get reliable clean drinking water, their lives would be miraculously transformed; or a guaranteed crust or bowl of rice a day.

Is it possible that these Trots actually calculate that if their international 'revolution' did provide the Third World's billions at least with decent sanitation, the CPGBers would be left alone to savour Sainsbury's best wines and cheese, - with only Scargill's SLP likely to spoil the fun?

These really are bizarre freaks, totally out of touch with the real world.

It is these weird people who are currently running rampant in the Vauxhall and Southwest London SLP, proposing scrappy 'election manifestos' to put to the working class in place of the SLP's policy statements, - which include such vital and 'progressive' immediate changes to working-class life as "Homosexuality to be treated identically as heterosexuality; sexuality to be no bar in the custody of children, applications for adoption, or IVF treatment; all consensual sexual acts should be legal, - abolish the age of consent; armed workers defence groups against homophobic attacks", etc, etc..

And any criticism of this sick self-seeking nonsense, - a complete paedophiles charter, - will be met with non-stop abuse in the Weekly Worker as 'homophobia'.

Those who cringe before the unbalanced hysteria of these 'politically correct' zealots and imbeciles, faulting the EPSR for its allegedly "insensitive language" on the subject, need to come out from their own closets and declare exactly where they stand on this sick stupidity reflecting the confusion, shallowness, and lack of confident social aspirations of decadent capitalist society.

Let everyone declare their positions publicly on "homosexuality to be treated identically as heterosexuality" allied to "abolish the age of consent", and then say honestly if they would invite an openly camp male neighbour or local council child-welfare-officer, notorious for their promiscuous pederasty, to baby-sit for their children.

No, they will discriminate all right, - but they will also refuse to make any statement about their discrimination. They will just make snide comments about the EPSR for having the courage to make such statements.

Paedophilia, pederasty, and lesbianism will never not be describable as emotional and sexual malfunctions, or a major disruption of natural evolution. Persecution of such abnormalities is a barbaric instinct and will die out under socialism. But differentiation and discrimination on many matters where sexual orientation remains a key factor in the outcome (child upbringing; all education; protection of minors; sensible use of resources; health concerns; acceptable public order and workplace conduct; practising and being susceptible to exploitation; counter-revolutionary agitation; etc) in societies which are yet struggling to build a stable socialist order from the varied human material inherited from degenerate capitalism, but still sabotaged and surrounded by hostile imperialism and chaotic bourgeois ideology, - is a separate question entirely.

That these minorities have produced valued geniuses throughout history is unquestioningly accepted, as are countless individual records of enormous responsibility and good influence in personal, family, and local circumstances. It is equally obvious that the overwhelming majority of dangerous and treacherous untrustworthiness in life is caused by routine heterosexual society.

But the current controversy over permanent public identification of paedophiles only renews the still-unresolved contradiction between social responsibility and the so-called 'civil liberties rights of the individual'.

Individualism will always put the stress on personal liberty. Marxism has always insisted that a real concept of freedom is only valid if it recognises the social necessities which have governed the whole evolution of civilised mankind.

The understanding that in communist society, the free development of every individual is the condition for the free development of all, can obviously only mean that the full right to flourish for those with malfunctioning sexual and emotional orientation, (if such phenomena persist once clear of screwed-up capitalist society), cannot be at the expense of even the remotest danger or interference at all to the unhindered flourishing of everyone else from the cradle to the grave.

In other words, if malfunctioning sexual orientation persists, then it could only not be a problem if it continued in complete openness, i.e. with the known proclivities to paedophilia of male homosexuals, for example (as well as of sick heterosexuals, obviously) universally openly acknowledged, and the individuals at risk identified.

If society eventually establishes that heterosexual procreation remains the basic natural evolutionary pattern for the species, then cleverly rationalised deviations from this by emotionally-charged male or female homosexuals in a position to strongly influence the education of minors is clearly going to remain a potential problem, possibly requiring continued differentiation (or discrimination) within child care and the teaching professions. In other words, "homosexuality to be treated identically as heterosexuality" will always be nonsense. They are different. They will remain different.

To abandon all such questions to the tyranny of 'political correctness', - the last great reformist delusions of feminism, gay rights, equal opportunities, etc, - is just to capitulate to the worst kind of counter-revolutionary posturing reaction, created by the petty-bourgeoisie solely to try to ensure that capitalist society does not have to be abolished.

This cringing before the self-righteousness of 'political correctness' is yet another expression of fear of confident working-class leadership. Shell-shocked by the Cold War and the humiliation of the CPSU revisionist bureaucracy's self-liquidation, - faint-hearted 'communists' would do anything for a quiet life.

The SLP could do with some sterner stuff. Daft accusations continue pouring on the SLP, alleging imminent capitulation to a score or so of 'left' Labour MPs who might come across to the SLP after the coming election, and capitulation to Popular Frontism thereafter.

The correct answer is to tell these discredited Trot 'revolutionary experts' to keep their nose out and put their own rotten historical house in order, stooges for every major anti-Soviet and anti-communist stunt and provocation dreamed up by the CIA and counter-revolutionary imperialism throughout 70 years of Cold War and uneasy temporary wartime alliance.

Revisionist philosophy badly misled the anti-imperialist movement for decades, spawning such monstrous nonsense as the parliamentary class-collaborating complacency of the peaceful road to socialism and eventually the Eurocommunist self-liquidation, continuing Popular Frontism to its rotten logical conclusion.

But Trotskyism throughout played an infinitely worse role with its class-collaborating entryism into the most reactionary reformist parties, internationally stabbing revolution after revolution in the back on the grounds that their socialist aspirations were not good enough (!), and ceaselessly parroting every vile anti-communist slander and provocation that the CIA's worldwide news-agency control could invent or fabricate.

As Scargill told the Wythenshawe rally, his own record denouncing publicly the mistakes and failures of the workers states is clear, but at the same time he stood out against such propaganda rackets as the counter-revolutionary stunt organised by the CIA around Lech Walesa and his bogus Solidarnosc 'trade union', where every Trot group fell for this Cold War sabotage.

Scargill correctly identified the fear of discussion as one obvious sign of the old communist movement becoming too complacent and authoritarian, and accurately described the SLP as being a completely new development in the struggle for socialism, - much more in touch with reality and with the wishes and understanding of its members.

He explained that far from launching a sectarian initiative with the SLP, he had invited every socialist tradition to join up on the same basis of a fresh start with all previous membership allegiances abandoned. Most had refused, like the CPB, which was now losing members to the SLP.

The last thing the SLP leadership should do is hold public discussions, least of all with its Trot opponents, about any tactical negotiations with Labour MPs who might be getting ready to abandon capitalism and Blairism, and go over to the SLP.

Any change in policy, implied or threatened, which such a development might vaguely entail, can easily be discussed by the Socialist Labour Party when the right time comes. Trot sneers at such a possibility are just kite-flying exercises to throw more mud at the SLP over phoney 'democracy' demands, and give extra opportunities for anti-leadership provocations.

The SLP's problem is not having too few constituencies to fight in against pro-capitalist candidates, but in having too few resources to mount more than a limited number of electoral fights.

Defecting Labour MPs will be welcome, and will immediately be required to accommodate themselves to the SLP's clearcut 'abolish capitalism' programme, and membership disciplines. This is yet another bogus 'problem' which anti-SLP Trot hostility regularly keeps inventing to try to knock the party off course and to undermine confidence in its leadership and perspectives.

The peculiar Militant response to the SLP is yet another variant in empty Trotskyite posturing. Suffering publicity-starvation and membership-and influence-loss since Labour closed the doors to these parasites, these nastiest of anti-communists and opportunists have decided to pour scorn on Scargill for not letting them factionalise inside the SLP, and to change their own name into 'Socialist Party'. Why?

Yet, to the new generation who will emerge to political and industrial struggle, the word 'militant' can sometimes sound 'too aggressive'. The capitalist media have also quite consciously linked the name to 'terrorism' or 'Islamic fundamentalists'. We want nothing in our name which will prove a barrier to these workers supporting our ideas and entering our ranks.

Or in other words, the entire Militant Trotskyite entryist racket has turned out to be nothing but a catastrophic historical failure, - exactly as the serious Marxist-Leninist science has always explained was bound to happen.

And so now the change of brand-name and image! What another complete waste of time! The whole Trotskyite philosophy is an anti-communist fraud on the working class and socialism. It needs relentlessly routing.

The SLP's leadership can deal with reality, and can tell workers honestly that since the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe with all its faults, life there has nevertheless become a thousand times less tolerable for the ordinary people.

In other words, history has already demonstrated that the answer to the mistakes and failures of the workers states was to create much better workers states, not to overthrow them and their planned economies and universal welfare benefits in favour of bogus capitalist 'democracy', which basically only means endless exploitation, insecurity, and corruption.

Trotskyites cannot describe the real world in this way or otherwise it would destroy the whole meaning of their entire lives which were dedicated to the destruction of the workers states via the non-existent 'political revolution' such as they quietly still call for in Cuba now, just as they called for this fantasy in East Europe.

History has now demonstrated, with no remaining doubt, what Marxist-Leninist science had already clearly explained, - that only counter-revolution lay in wait for any workers state which gave up the philosophical understanding, the perspectives, and the leadership courage to just step up the fight to improve the situation and correct mistakes when things went wrong.

Gorbachevism did not understand the first thing about the international struggle against imperialism, - the whole purpose of Marx, Engels, and Lenin's life, and the only ultimate guarantee of building socialism on earth, - or about the scientific historic requirements of socialist state structures in the epoch of surrounding hostile imperialism, - or about the role of the party of revolutionary theory as the crucial leadership for the work of building socialism, and its vital internationalist understanding of the need to overthrow imperialist and build socialism worldwide.

It was the crassly ignorant and philistine Gorbachevism which finally unleashed the 'political revolution'.

What a total counter-revolutionary catastrophe, - exactly as Leninist science has always made clear was inevitable if workers state-building under the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leadership of the party was ever lost sight of. It is to be hoped that Castro, and the comrades in China, Korea, and Vietnam, remain made of sterner stuff, and more scientifically literate about the fate of world imperialist history, and the absolute necessity for international socialist planning under the working class to eventually replace free-market anarchy everywhere before the planet perishes.

Gorbachevism was yet another variant of an individualist petty-bourgeois mentality which was so weak and stupid that it feared to give proper leadership, and just did not know how -(from long revisionist retreat from the needed understanding about completing the world socialist revolution as soon as possible.)

Out of modesty and the ever-present possibility of giving practical example, Marxism-Leninism never wrote a lot about leadership as such, and its obviously crucial role in the history of human affairs.

Accused all his life of being a bully and a dictator, Lenin had to take up this anti-leader hypocrisy in 'Leftwing Communism, an Infantile Disorder'. Lenin explains that the historical exposure of social-chauvinist class-collaborating traitors gives no grounds at all for obsessive rank-and-file posturing which distrusts all leadership for its own sake. Repudiation of the party principle, is how Lenin terms this bogus workerist 'democracy'. He goes on to explain (already clear in April 1920) that a very long period of proletarian dictatorship would be inevitable before a socialist society would be strong enough to stand up to surrounding imperialist sabotage and subversion without firm party leadership.

Gorbachevism ended up going in the completely opposite direction, - dismantling the leading role of the party, and dismantling the dictatorship of the proletariat entirely, - with predictable catastrophic consequences, - as the EPSR has never stopped explaining.

Many of these latter questions are still not even on the horizon in Britain. To pour Trot defeatist scorn on the SLP leadership for such provocative and shallow 'reasons' before the fight to abolish capitalism has even got started again, - is just an infantile disorder.

Build Leninism. RB

The mere presentation of the question—"dictatorship of the party or dictatorship of the class; dictatorship (party) of the leaders, or dictatorship (party) of the masses?"— testifies to most incredibly and hopelessly muddled thinking. These people want to invent something quite out of the ordinary, and, in their effort to be clever, make themselves ridiculous. It is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes;          /that as a rule and in most cases—at least in present-day civilised countries—classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is clear and simple. Why replace this with some kind of rigmarole, some new Volapuk? On the one hand, these people seem to have got muddled when they found themselves in a predicament, when the party's abrupt transition from legality to illegality upset the customary, normal and simple relations between leaders, parties and classes. In Germany, as in other European countries, people had become too accustomed to legality, to the free and proper election of "leaders" at regular party congresses, to the convenient method of testing the class composition of parties through parliamentary elections, mass meetings, the press, the sentiments of the trade unions and other associations, etc. When, instead of this customary procedure, it became necessary, because of the stormy development of the revolution and the development of the civil war, to go over rapidly from legality to illegality, to combine the two, and to adopt the "inconvenient" and "undemocratic" methods of selecting, or forming, or preserving "groups of leaders"—people lost their bearings and began to think up some unmitigated nonsense. Certain members of the Communist Party of Holland,* who were unlucky enough to be born in a small country with traditions and conditions of highly privileged and highly stable legality, and who had never seen a transition from legality to illegality, probably fell into confusion, lost their heads, and helped create these absurd inventions.

On the other hand, one can see simply a thoughtless and incoherent use of the now "fashionable" terms: "masses" and "leaders". These people have heard and memorised a great many attacks on "leaders", in which the latter have been contrasted with the "masses"; however, they have proved unable to think matters out and gain a clear understanding of what it was all about.

The divergence between "leaders" and "masses" was brought out with particular clarity and sharpness in all countries at the end of the imperialist war and following it. The principal reason for this was explained many times by Marx and Engels between the years 1852 and 1892, from the example of Britain. That country's exclusive position led to the emergence, from the "masses", of a semi-petty-bourgeois, opportunist "labour aristocracy". The leaders of this labour aristocracy were constantly going over to the bourgeoisie, and were directly or indirectly on its pay roll. Marx earned the honour of incurring the hatred of these disreputable persons by openly branding them as traitors. Present-day (twentieth-century) imperialism has given a few advanced countries an exceptionally privileged position, which, everywhere in the Second International, has produced a certain type of traitor, opportunist, and social-chauvinist leaders, who champion the interests of their own craft, their own section of the labour aristocracy. The opportunist parties have become separated from the "masses", i.e., from the broadest strata of the working people, their majority, the lowest-paid workers. The revolutionary proletariat cannot be victorious unless this evil is combated, unless the opportunist, social-traitor leaders are exposed, discredited and expelled. That is the policy the Third International has embarked on.

To go so far, in this connection, as to contrast, in general, the dictatorship of the masses with a dictatorship of the leaders is ridiculously absurd, and stupid. What is particularly amusing is that, in fact, instead of the old leaders, who hold generally accepted views on simple matters, new leaders are brought forth (under cover of the slogan "Down with the leaders!"), who talk rank stuff and nonsense. Such are Laufenberg, Wolffheim, Homer,18 Karl Schroder, Friedlich Wendel and Karl Erler,* in Germany. Erler's attempts to give the question more "profundity" and to proclaim that in general political parties are unnecessary and "bourgeois'' are so supremely absurd that one can only shrug one's shoulders. It all goes to drive home the truth that a minor error can always assume monstrous proportions if it is persisted in, if profound justifications are sought for it, and if it is carried to its logical conclusion.

Repudiation of the Party principle and of Party discipline—that is what the opposition has arrived at. And this is tantamount to completely disarming the proletariat in the interests of the bourgeoisie. It all adds up to that petty-bourgeois diffuseness and instability, that incapacity for sustained effort, unity and organised action, which, if encouraged, must inevitably destroy any proletarian revolutionary movement.

From the standpoint of communism, repudiation of the Party principle means attempting to leap from the eve of capitalism's collapse (in Germany), not to the lower or the intermediate phase of communism, but to the higher. We in Russia (in the third year since the overthrow of the bourgeoisie) are making the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism or the lower stage of communism. Classes still remain, and will remain everywhere for years after the proletariat's conquest of power. Perhaps in Britain, where there is no peasantry (but where petty proprietors exist), this period may be shorter. The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists—that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) he transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work. They surround the proletariat on every side with a petty-bourgeois atmosphere, which permeates and corrupts the proletariat, and constantly causes among the proletariat relapses into petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternating moods of exaltation and dejection. The strictest centralisation and discipline are required within the political party of the proletariat in order to counteract this, in order that the organisational role of the proletariat (and that is its principal role) may he exercised correctly, successfully and victoriously. The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle— 'bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative — against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force. Without a party of iron that has been tempered in the struggle, a party enjoying the confidence of all honest people in the class in question, a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, such a struggle cannot be waged successfully. It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to "vanquish" the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie. Whoever brings about even the slightest weakening of the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during its dictatorship), is actually aiding the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

Parallel with the question of the leaders—the party— the class—the masses, we must pose the question of the "reactionary" trade unions. But first I shall take the liberty of making a few concluding remarks based on the experience of our Party. There have always been attacks on the "dictatorship of leaders" in our Party. The first time I heard such attacks, I recall, was in 1895, when, officially, no party yet existed, but a central group was taking shape in St. Petersburg, which was to assume the leadership of the district groups.20 At the Ninth Congress of our Party (April 1920)21 there was a small opposition, which also spoke against the "dictatorship of leaders", against the "oligarchy", and so on. There is therefore nothing surprising, new, or terrible in the "infantile disorder" of "Left-wing communism" among the Germans. The ailment involves no danger, and after it the organism even becomes more robust.

In Russia today, the connection between leaders, party, class and masses, as well as the attitude of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its party to the trade unions, are concretely as follows: the dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organised in the Soviets; the proletariat is guided by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which, according to the figures of the latest Party Congress (April 1920), has a membership of 611,000. The membership varied greatly both before and after the October Revolution, and used to be much smaller, even in 1918 and 1919-22 We are apprehensive of an excessive growth of the Party, because careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably do all they can to insinuate themselves into the ranks of the ruling party. The last time we opened wide the doors of the Party—to workers and peasants only—was when (in the winter of 1919) Yudenich was within a few versts of Petrograd, and Denikin was in Orel (about 350 versts from Moscow), i.e., when the Soviet Republic was in mortal danger, and when adventurers, careerists, charlatans and unreliable persons generally could not possibly count on making a profitable career (and had more reason to expect the gallows and torture) by joining the Communists.

In its work, the Party relies directly on the trade unions, which, according to the data of the last congress (April 1920), now have a membership of over four million and are formally non-Party. Actually, all the directing bodies of the vast majority of the unions, and primarily, of course, of the all-Russia general trade union centre or bureau (the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions),  are made up of Communists and carry out all the directives of the Party. Thus, on the whole, we have a formally non-communist, flexible and relatively wide and very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of which the Party is closely linked up with the class and the masses, and by means of which, under the leadership of the Party, the class dictatorship is exercised. Without close contacts with the trade unions, and without their energetic support and devoted efforts, not only in economic, but also in military affairs; it would of course have been impossible for us to govern the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years. In practice, these very close contacts naturally call for highly complex and diversified work in the form of propaganda, agitation, timely and frequent conferences, not only with the leading trade union workers, but with influential trade union workers generally; they call for a determined struggle against the Mensheviks, who still have a certain though very small following to whom they teach all kinds of counter-revolutionary machinations, ranging from an ideological defence of (bourgeois) democracy and the preaching that the trade unions should be "independent" (independent of proletarian state power!) to sabotage of proletarian discipline, etc., etc.

Then, of course, all the work of the Party is carried on through the Soviets, which embrace the working masses, irrespective of occupation. The district congresses of Soviets are democratic institutions, the like of which even the best of the democratic republics of the bourgeois world have never known; through these congresses (whose proceedings the Party endeavours to follow with the closest attention), as well as by continually appointing class-conscious workers to various posts in the rural districts, the proletariat exercises its role of leader of the peasantry, gives effect to the dictatorship of the urban proletariat, wages a systematic struggle against the rich, bourgeois, exploiting and profiteering peasantry, etc.

Such is the general mechanism of the proletarian state power viewed "from above", from the standpoint of the practical implementation of the dictatorship. We hope that the reader will understand why the Russian Bolshevik, who has known this mechanism for twenty-five years and has seen it develop out of small, illegal and underground circles, cannot help regarding all this talk about "from above" or "from below", about the dictatorship of leaders or the dictatorship of the masses, etc., as ridiculous and childish nonsense, something like discussing whether a man's left leg or right arm is of greater use to him.

We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion.

The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from the workers' disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation. When the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the highest form of proletarian class organisation, began to take shape (and the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses) the trade unions inevitably began to reveal certain reactionary features, a certain craft narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political, a certain inertness, etc. However, the development of the proletariat did not, and could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through the trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party of the working class. The proletariat's conquest of political power is a gigantic step forward for the proletariat as a class, and the Party must more than ever and in a new way, not only in the old, educate and guide the trade unions, at the same time bearing in mind that they are and will long remain an indispensable ''school of communism" and a preparatory school that trains proletarians to exercise their dictatorship, an indispensable organisation of the workers for the gradual transfer of the management of the whole economic life of the country to the working class (and not to the separate trades), and later to all the working people.

In the sense mentioned above, a certain  "reactionism" in the trade unions is inevitable under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not to understand this means a complete failure to understand the fundamental conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism. It would he egregious folly to fear this "reactionism" or to try to evade or leap over it, for it would mean fearing that function of the proletarian vanguard which consists in training, educating, enlightening and drawing into the new life the most backward strata and masses of the working class and the peasantry. On the other hand, it would be a still graver error to postpone the achievement of the dictatorship of the proletariat until a time when there will not be a single worker with a narrow-minded craft outlook, or with craft and craft-union prejudices.

The art of politics (and the Communist's correct understanding of his tasks) consists in correctly gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the proletariat can successfully assume power, when it is able—during and after the seizure of power—to win adequate support from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the non-proletarian working masses, and when it is able thereafter to maintain, consolidate and extend its rule by educating, training and attracting ever broader masses of the working people.

Further. In countries more advanced than Russia, a certain reactionism in the trade unions has been and was bound to be manifested in a far greater measure than in our country. Our Mensheviks found support in the trade unions (and to some extent still do so in a small number of unions), as a result of the latter's craft narrow-mindedness, craft selfishness and opportunism. The Mensheviks of the West have acquired a much firmer footing in the trade unions; there the craft-union, narrow-minded, selfish, case-hardened, covetous, and petty-bourgeois ''labour aristocracy", imperialist-minded, and imperialist-corrupted, has developed into a much stronger section than in our country. That is incontestable.

We are waging a struggle against the "labour aristocracy" in the name of the masses of the workers and in order to win them over to our side; we are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet it is this very absurdity that the German "Left" Communists perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that... we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and artificial forms of labour organisation! This is so unpardonable a blunder that it is tantamount to the greatest service Communists could render the bourgeoisie. Like all the opportunist, social-chauvinist, and Kautskyite trade union leaders, our Mensheviks are nothing but "agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement" (as we have always said the Mensheviks are),  or  "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class", to use the splendid and profoundly true expression of the followers of Daniel De Leon in America. To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labour aristocrats, or "workers who have become completely bourgeois" (cf. Engels's letter to Marx in 1858 about the British workers 28).

This ridiculous "theory" that Communists should not work in reactionary trade unions reveals with the utmost clarity the frivolous attitude of the "Left" Communists towards the question of  influencing the "masses", and their misuse of clamour about the "masses". If you want to help the "masses" and win the sympathy and support of the "masses", you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the "leaders" (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations—even the most reactionary—in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found.

It is sad to see people who no doubt consider themselves Marxists, and want to be Marxists, forget the fundamental truths of Marxism. This is what Engels — who, like Marx, was one of those rarest of authors whose every sentence in every one of their fundamental works contains a remarkably profound content — wrote in 1874, against the manifesto of the thirty-three Blanquist Communards: "'We are Communists' [the Blanquist Communards wrote in their manifesto], 'because we want to attain our goal without stopping at intermediate stations, without any compromises, which only postpone the day of victory and prolong the period of slavery.'

"The German Communists are Communists because, through all the intermediate stations and all compromises created, not by them but by the course of historical development, they clearly perceive and constantly pursue the final aim—the abolition of classes and the creation of a society in which there will no longer be private ownership of land or of the means of production. The thirty-three Blanquists are Communists just because they imagine that, merely because they want to skip the intermediate stations and compromises, the matter is settled, and if 'it begins' in the next few days—which they take for granted—and they take over power, 'communism will be introduced' the day after tomorrow. If that is not immediately possible, they are not Communists.

"What childish innocence it is to present one's own impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!" (Frederick Engels, Programme of the Blanquist Communards).

Of course, to very young and inexperienced revolutionaries, as well as to petty-bourgeois revolutionaries of even very respectable age and great experience, it seems extremely "dangerous", incomprehensible and wrong to "permit compromises". Many sophists (being unusually or excessively "experienced" politicians) reason exactly in the same way as the British leaders of opportunism mentioned by Comrade Lansbury: "If the Bolsheviks are permitted a certain compromise, why should we not be permitted any kind of compromise?" However, proletarians schooled in numerous strikes  (to take only this manifestation of the class struggle) usually assimilate in admirable fashion the very profound truth (philosophical, historical, political and psychological) expounded by Engels. Every proletarian has been through strikes and has experienced "compromises" with the hated oppressors and exploiters, when the workers have had to return to work either without having achieved anything or else agreeing to only a partial satisfaction of their demands. Every proletarian—as a result of the conditions of the mass struggle and the acute intensification of class antagonisms he lives among—sees the difference between a compromise enforced by objective conditions (such as lack of strike funds, no outside support, starvation and exhaustion)—a compromise which in no way minimises the revolutionary devotion and readiness to carry on the struggle on the part of the workers who have agreed to such a compromise — and on the other hand, a compromise by traitors who try to ascribe to objective causes their self-interest (strike-breakers also enter into "compromises"!), their cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to flattery from the capitalists. (The history of the British labour movement provides a very large number of instances of such treacherous compromises by British trade union leaders, but, in one form or another, almost all workers in all countries have witnessed the same sort of thing.)

Of course, in politics, where it is sometimes a matter of extremely complex relations—national and international— between classes and parties, very many cases will arise that will be much more difficult than the question of a legitimate "compromise" in a strike or a treacherous "compromise" by a strike-breaker, treacherous leader, etc. It would be absurd to formulate a recipe or general rule ("No compromises!") to suit all cases. One must use one's own brains and be able to find one's bearings in each particular instance.

"Left-wing" communism — an infantile disorder