Marxism and the United Front Tactic Today

 

The Struggle for Proletarian Hegemony in the Liberation Movement and the United Front Tactic Today

On the Application of the Marxist United Front Tactic in Semi-Colonial and Imperialist Countries in the Present Period

 

By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, May 2016, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

Contents

 

List of Tables

List of Figures

 

Introduction

 

I.             Summary of the Nature of the United Front Tactic

 

II.            The United Front Tactic in the History of the Revolutionary Workers Movement

Marx and Engels on the United Front

Application of the United Front Tactic by Lenin and the Bolsheviks

Codification of the United Front Tactic by the Communist International

Trotsky and the Fourth International on the United Front Tactic

 

III.          The Struggle for Proletarian Hegemony under Present Day Conditions: Social and Economic Changes

The Shift to the South of Today’s World Proletariat

The Misery of the Poor Peasantry and the Urban Poor

 

IV.          The Struggle for Proletarian Hegemony under Present Day Conditions: Political Changes

The Crisis of Bourgeois Workers’ Parties

The Marxist Classics on the Labor Bureaucracy

The Rise of New Reformist Parties and Petty-Bourgeois Populism

The Marxist Classics on the Struggle for Proletarian Hegemony

 

V.            The United Front Tactic and Petty-Bourgeois Nationalist and Populist Parties in the Semi-Colonial World

Workers’ Party or a Workers’ and Peasants’ Party?

Entry Tactics in Petty-Bourgeois Populist Parties

Marxists and Petty-Bourgeois Populist Parties: Electoral Tactics and Governmental Slogans

The Transformation of a Petty-Bourgeois Populist Party into a Bourgeois Party and Electoral Tactics

 

VI.          Traditional Reformist Parties, New Workers Party and Electoral Tactics

Fighting for the New Workers’ Party (or “Labor Party”) in the Present Period

Engels, Lenin and Trotsky on the Labor Party Tactic

The Traditional Reformist Parties and Electoral Tactics Today

 

VII.        Revolutionary Tactics and Petty-Bourgeois Populist Parties in Imperialist Countries

Should Marxists call for Critical Electoral Support for Podemos in Spain?

The Trotskyists and the Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) in the USA in the 1930s

Discussing a Comparison: The Green Parties in the 1980s and 1990s

 

VIII.       The United Front Tactic and the Liberation Struggle of National Minorities and Migrants in the Imperialist Countries

Increasing Mobilizations of National / Ethnical Minorities and Migrants on Democratic Issues

The Experience of the Austrian Section of the RCIT

Britain: Respect as a Petty-Bourgeois Populist Party based mostly on National / Ethnical Minorities and Migrants

A useful Analogy: Trotsky on Organizations of the Black Minority in the USA

Excurse: Lenin on the Role of the Party as the Vanguard of all Oppressed Classes

 

Appendix: RCIT-Theses on the United Front Tactic

Document of the International Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, 9 April 2016

 

Bibliography

 

About the Author

 

List of Tables:
Table 1: Wage Laborers as a Share of Total Employment, 1999 and 2013
Table 2: Distribution of Wage Laborers in Different Regions, 1995 and 2008/09
Table 3: Distribution of Labor Force in Industry in different Regions, 2013
Table 4: Numbers and Share of Employment by Broad Occupation (Skill), World and Regions, 2013 (in thousands)
Table 5: Share of Employment by Broad Occupation (Skill), World and Regions, 2013
Table 6: Distribution of Contract Type of Wage Laborers (%)
Table 7: Shares of Status in Total Employment, World and Regions, 2013 (%)
Table 8: Trade Union Density (%) in Selected OECD Countries, 1978-2013
Table 9: Trade Union Density in Latin America

 

List of Figures:
Figure 1: Wage and Salaried Employment (% of total employment), World and Regions, 1991-2014
Figure 2: Developing Countries’ Share in World Manufacturing Employment, 1980–2008
Figure 3: Global Industrial Labor Force in Developed and Developing Countries, 1950–2010
Figure 4: Distribution of Supporters of Political Parties in Spain, 2015
Figure 5: Price Indices of Selected Groups of Commodities, August 2013–September 2015

 

 

Introduction

The following document is intended to provide an explanatory background to the Theses on the United Front Tactic which the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) recently adopted at an international leadership meeting. ^[1] We therefore suggest that when readers study these Theses they do so in conjunction with the present document.

The purpose of this document is both to summarize the main ideas of the Marxist united front tactic while explaining the development and modification of this tactic which we have elaborated in the Theses.

As we have stated in the preface to the earlier document, the theses we present there are based on similar ones put forth by the RCIT’s predecessor organization – the League for a Revolutionary Communist International – which we adopted in January 1994. However, the class struggle and the political formations of the working class and the oppressed have seen important changes and developments in the last two decades. Furthermore, our experience has also shown that the theses adopted then, irrespective of their general correctness and principled character contained some weaknesses which needed to be corrected in order to apply the united front tactic in an authentically communistic way.

Consequently, the RCIT has substantially reworked the old theses so that the Theses and the present explanatory document can be characterized as new.

In the following chapters we will first briefly summarize the main characteristics of the united front tactic and elaborate the approach of the Marxist classics on this issue. ^[2] We will than outline important social developments in the working class and the popular masses as well as in their political formations in the past decades. We will then proceed to discuss how the united front tactic should be applied in light of a number of new developments (the rise of petty-bourgeois populist parties, the decline of the classic reformist parties, the role of national minorities and migrants in imperialist countries, etc.)

Finally, we note that when speaking about the revolutionary party, what is written applies equally to smaller pre-party formations, i.e., the state in which revolutionaries currently find themselves.

We wish to express our special thanks to comrade Gerard Stephens who performed the English-language editing for this book.

 

I.             Summary of the Nature of the United Front Tactic

 

The goal of the united front tactic is to assist communists in deepening their relations and influence among the working class and the oppressed. The Communist International summarized this goal at its Third World Congress in 1921 in the slogan “Towards the Masses.” In order to achieve this, communists must be able to work together as closely as possible with workers who, for now at least, do not share their opinions. This is in order to establish the greatest possible unity with all workers and oppressed in our common struggle against the ruling class and imperialism.

 

At the same time, communists must use this joint experience of fighting side by side with non-revolutionary workers and oppressed in order to raise political consciousness of the latter since – as the father of Russian Marxism, Georgi Plekhanov, so poignantly formulated – “the sole purpose and the direct and sacred duty of the Socialists is the promotion of the growth of the class consciousness of the proletariat.” Using the own experiences of the workers and oppressed, communists must help them to better understand the failure and betrayal of their traditional leaders, and convince them of the superiority of the revolutionary party.

 

The principles of the united front tactic can be summarized in the military metaphor “march separately, strike together.” This means that revolutionaries join forces with other non-revolutionary organizations in order to organize practical, common actions for specific goals against a specific enemy. However, while doing so, communists retain their full political and organizational independence. In other words, the revolutionary organization disseminates its own propaganda and agitation, which may differ significantly from the respective points of views of the various forces with whom they are allied in the united front. Such propaganda and agitation may, under dire situations, even include important warnings about, or criticism or denunciations of these same allies, for example when the latter are about to betray the struggle for the jointly agreed-upon goals. In short, communists should use the united front tactic to achieve unity of action against a common enemy with other forces, while always maintaining their own political and organizational independence. For this reason, communists should not undertake the production of joint propaganda with non-revolutionary forces with whom they are allied in a united front. The only common publications which communists can contribute to must specifically be associated with the united front activities (e.g., strike committee bulletins, preparing leaflets to announce demonstrations, etc.), and these should only focus on agitating for the united front demands and objectives.

 

At the same time, unlimited freedom of propaganda for revolutionaries (as well as for all forces participating in the united front) must be agreed upon in advance. As implied in what we wrote above, this freedom must include the right to criticize, if necessary, reformist and populist leaders participating in the common action.

 

The united front should be based on concrete and precise demands. Revolutionaries oppose self-indulgent political declarations or joint propaganda for long-term goals. The latter only serve to obscure the real purpose of the united front and can readily create the mistaken impression that revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries are in agreement about a common, long-range political agenda.

 

In general, as the first priority communists direct the united front tactic to mass organizations which have a base inside the working class; but they also approach groups with roots among other oppressed layers and classes (e.g., the peasantry, the urban poor, oppressed nations, migrants). Usually these are reformist (social democratic or Stalinist) or petty-bourgeois-populist forces (e.g., Castro-Chavista organizations in Latin America, various Islamist-populist organizations in the Middle East and Asia, petty-bourgeois nationalists of oppressed nations, etc.) which are at times objectively clashing with or confronting reactionary forces (e.g., ruling class, imperialist powers, racist or fascist forces). Naturally, the role of petty-bourgeois populist forces in the class struggle among oppressed classes and layers is much more important in the semi-colonial world than in the imperialist countries. (More on this issue below.)

 

Under exceptional circumstances the united front tactic can also be directed towards bourgeois forces in the semi-colonial world – e.g., when the latter is fighting against an imperialist invasion in a semi-colonial country.

 

In this context it is important to emphasize that the difference between a legitimate united front and an illegitimate popular front is not in itself the open participation of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois forces, but rather the political subordination by the proletariat to the platform of the bourgeoisie. In other words, an illegitimate popular front is a bloc between bourgeois forces and workers organizations in which the latter accept programs that restrict the workers within the limits set by private property and which protect the bourgeois state.

 

History has demonstrated numerous times that such a popular front is a death trap for the working class and the oppressed. It results in the official reformist or populist leaderships’ defense of the capitalist social system and thereby only strengthens the bourgeoisie, not the working class. The political subordination of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie weakens the former and allows the ruling class or even fascist forces to crush the resistance of the working class and the oppressed. Spain in 1936, Chile in 1973, and Greece in 2015 are just a few examples of the devastating consequences of the popular front strategy for the proletariat.

 

The united front tactic should be applied in numerous fields and to all issues related to the class struggle. It should direct the work of revolutionaries with and inside trade unions, other mass organizations of the working class and the oppressed, as well as towards parties (including “entry work” within such parties). It is a crucial tactic in the daily struggle for economic demands, for democratic demands, against imperialist or national oppressions, etc. These various issues give rise to the different forms of the united front (workers’ united fronts, democratic or anti-imperialist united fronts). However, all these forms are basically subject to the same principles of the general united front tactic.

 

The united front tactic can, under specific circumstances, also be extended to the electoral field. Communists should utilize election periods – which usually are periods of heightened political interest among the popular masses – in order to address those class-conscious workers and oppressed who still have illusions in reformist workers’ parties or populist parties. In contrast to the claims of sectarians, these sectors of the working class are usually much larger than the numbers of the workers and oppressed who have already overcome such illusions and have moved on to a higher, more left-wing class consciousness. When revolutionaries are too weak to put forth candidates of their own, they should deploy the Leninist tactic of critical electoral support for reformist workers’ parties (usually these are social democratic or Stalinist parties). Revolutionaries can even legitimately apply critical electoral support to petty-bourgeois populist parties with a strong base among militant workers and oppressed when social democratic or Stalinist parties do not exist at all, they merely constitute a numerically insignificant phenomena, or where they have are already been thoroughly bourgeoisified.

 

Naturally, there are important exceptions or limitations to the application of critical electoral support. As we stated in the Theses: “In situations, when a bourgeois workers party (usually as a governmental party) acts as whip or executioner of serious attacks on the working class – austerity programs, imperialist wars, racist hatred, attack on democratic rights, etc. – it is necessary that revolutionaries do not call for electoral support for such a party in order to help the vanguard workers to break with it.”

 

The united front tactic was also extended by Lenin and Trotsky to the adoption of slogans about the government to be called for. Where large sectors of class-conscious workers and militant oppressed layers still have illusions in the “parties of petty bourgeois democracy” (Trotsky) – i.e., social democrats, Stalinists, petty-bourgeois populists – communists should call on them to break with the bourgeoisie and respectively struggle for “a workers’ and peasants’ government” (in a semi-colonial country) or a workers’ government (in most imperialist countries). Furthermore, the adopted slogans should demand that such governments take decisive actions to expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie, to nationalize the key sectors of the economy under workers’ control, to expropriate the big landowners and give the land to the poor peasants, etc. Such a government is an authentic workers’ government allied with poor peasants and the urban poor if it is based on workers’ and popular councils and militias and if it implements a program that opens the road to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Otherwise, it is merely a reformist, and in the final analysis, bourgeois “workers’ and peasants’” government which will invariably constitute an objective obstacle for the working class struggle, and which will ultimately defend the capitalist system.

 

Finally, under certain circumstances revolutionaries will also have to apply the united front tactic to the field of party building. Naturally, the central goal of communists is the construction of a World Party of Socialist Revolution with national sections in each country. However, in light of the numerical weakness of revolutionaries, and given the fact that in many countries even bourgeois workers’ parties do not exist (and in those countries where they do exist they are often thoroughly bourgeoisified), revolutionaries have to apply the united front tactic in the way that they call upon the trade unions and other mass organizations of the working class to build a New Workers Party (or Labor Party). Such parties would, in the beginning, involve not only revolutionary workers and oppressed but also many non-revolutionaries. In fact, revolutionaries would most likely constitute only a small minority of the party when first founded. However, they would openly argue for their program, i.e., a revolutionary and not a reformist program. But they would not necessarily leave such a new workers’ party if they fail to win a majority of the members for their point of view, but would continue to fight for a revolutionary program from within.

 

II.            The United Front Tactic in the History of the Revolutionary Workers Movement

 

These principles of the united front tactic have been born out and tested in the class struggle and have been part of the arsenal of Marxism from the very start, when Marx and Engels first developed them shortly before the 1848 revolution. On the basis of their experience and that subsequently gained by the Bolsheviks, the Communist International codified these lessons in the early 1920s. After its degeneration by the Stalinist bureaucracy, Trotsky and the forces of the future Fourth International further developed this tactic based on the rich lessons of intense class struggles during the 1920s and 1930s.

 

Marx and Engels on the United Front

 

Friedrich Engels, first in his Principles of Communism and later together with Marx in the Communist Manifesto, laid down the fundamental ideas of the united front tactic. In these documents they explained the necessity of undertaking joint actions with reformist workers’ organizations, with radical petty-bourgeois groups and, in situations in which the bourgeoisie has still not become the ruling class, even with the latter.

 

“The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution. In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois. In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846. In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie. But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin. (…) In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” ^[1]

 

These tactical guidelines were also put into action by Marx and Engels and their supporters. In Cologne and other German cities, the members of the Communist League led by Marx and Engels collaborated with radical democrats while advancing the communist program. ^[2]

 

Elaborating the lessons of the revolutionary struggles and their defeats in the 1848-49 revolution in Europe, Marx and Engels warned communists to take care not to blur their slogans with those of the petty-bourgeois democrats, since the betrayal of the later was inevitable. In their famous “Address of the Central Authority to the League” of March 1850, the founders of the communist movement emphasized the necessity of organizational and political independence, while at the same time being prepared for joint action with such petty-bourgeois forces.

 

“Consequently, while the democratic party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, organised itself more and more in Germany, the workers' party lost its only firm foothold, remained organised at the most in separate localities for local purposes and in the general movement thus came completely under the domination and leadership of the petty-bourgeois democrats. An end must be put to this state of affairs, the independence of the workers must be restored. (…) The relation of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything by which they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests. (…) The petty-bourgeois democratic party in Germany is very powerful; it comprises not only the great majority of the burgher inhabitants of the towns, the small people in industry and trade and the master craftsmen; it numbers among its followers also the peasants and the rural proletariat, insofar as the latter has not yet found a support in the independent urban proletariat. The relation of the revolutionary workers' party to the petty-bourgeois democrats is this: it marches together with them against the faction which it aims at overthrowing, it opposes them in everything by which they seek to consolidate their position in their own interests. (…) At the present moment, when the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach in general unity and reconciliation to the proletariat, they offer it their hand and strive for the establishment of a large opposition party which will embrace all shades of opinion in the democratic party, that is, they strive to entangle the workers in a party organisation in which general social-democratic phrases predominate, and serve to conceal their special interests, and in which the definite demands of the proletariat must not be brought forward for the sake of beloved peace. Such a union would turn out solely to their advantage and altogether to the disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose its whole independent, laboriously achieved position and once more be reduced to an appendage of official bourgeois democracy. This union must, therefore, be most decisively rejected. Instead of once again stooping to serve as the applauding chorus of the bourgeois democrats, the workers, and above all the League, must exert themselves to establish an independent secret and public organisation of the workers' party alongside the official democrats and make each community the central point and nucleus of workers' associations in which the attitude and interests of the proletariat will be discussed independently of bourgeois influences. (…) In the case of a struggle against a common adversary no special union is required. As soon as such an adversary has to be fought directly, the interests of both parties, for the moment, coincide, and, as previously so also in the future, this alliance, calculated to last only for the moment, will come about of itself.” ^[3]

 

Marx and Engels would later apply the united front tactic to many other situations, including when they founded the First International in 1864. David Riazanov, a Russian Marxist and the best expert of Marx and Engels during his time before his arrest and execution by Stalin in 1938, describes in his book on the history of the political life of Marx and Engels how they had to carefully fight against the politics of the French Proudhonists, the English trade unionists, the anarchist supporters of Bakunin and others. At the same time they tried to avoid premature splits and win over the rank and file supporters of their opponents.

 

Application of the United Front Tactic by Lenin and the Bolsheviks

 

The Bolsheviks later applied the same tactic in the struggle against Tsarism. They concluded numerous practical agreements (concerning demonstrations, strikes, armed resistance, practical issues of underground work, etc.) with other organizations of the workers, peasants – like the Mensheviks, the Jewish Bund, the Socialist-Revolutionaries [S.R.], the Trudoviki, the S.R. Maximalists, various nationalists, etc. – and students and even bourgeois liberals in the struggle against the Tsarist autocracy. This tactic included not only practical collaboration but also, at times, even the creation of a formal joint party with the Mensheviks. Under the pressure of the workers’ vanguard, the Bolsheviks were even prepared to formally unite with the Mensheviks between 1905 and 1912, even though they continued to wage a difficult factional struggle against them, and in reality most of the time acted as an independent force. The Bolsheviks also repeatedly concluded practical agreements with petty-bourgeois democratic peasant forces (the Trudoviki and the S.R.) and, at the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Lenin even tried to collaborate with the Russian Orthodox priest Georgy Gapon. The Bolsheviks also conducted tactical agreements with the Trudoviki and the S.R.’s in the Duma elections of 1907 and 1912. ^[4]

 

During the revolutionary process between February and October 1917, the Bolsheviks applied the united front tactic and demanded from the largest reformist parties representing the workers and peasants at the time – the Mensheviks and the S.R.’s – to break with the bourgeoisie and take power into their own hands. After the Bolsheviks successfully took power in October, they formed a coalition with the left-wing of the S.R.’s. During all these periods in which they applied the united front tactic, despite these combined practical activities, the Bolsheviks retained their independent propaganda and sharply criticized the other organizations participating in the front.

 

In his book ’Left-Wing’ Communism – An Infantile Disorder written in 1920, Lenin explained that the Russian revolutionaries had to apply the united front tactic many times and under various conditions:

 

“After all, the German Lefts cannot but know that the entire history of Bolshevism, both before and after the October Revolution, is full of instances of changes of tack, conciliatory tactics and compromises with other parties, including bourgeois parties! (…) Prior to the downfall of tsarism, the Russian revolutionary Social-Democrats made repeated use of the services of the bourgeois liberals, i.e., they concluded numerous practical compromises with the latter. In 1901-02, even prior to the appearance of Bolshevism, the old editorial board of Iskra (consisting of Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Martov, Potresov and myself) concluded (not for long, it is true) a formal political alliance with Struve, the political leader of bourgeois liberalism, while at the same time being able to wage an unremitting and most merciless ideological and political struggle against bourgeois liberalism and against the slightest manifestations of its influence in the working-class movement. The Bolsheviks have always adhered to this policy. Since 1905 they have systematically advocated an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, against the liberal bourgeoisie and tsarism, never, however, refusing to support the bourgeoisie against tsarism (for instance, during second rounds of elections, or during second ballots) and never ceasing their relentless ideological and political struggle against the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the bourgeois-revolutionary peasant party, exposing them as petty-bourgeois democrats who have falsely described themselves as socialists. During the Duma elections of 1907, the Bolsheviks entered briefly into a formal political bloc with the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Between 1903 and 1912, there were periods of several years in which we were formally united with the Mensheviks in a single Social-Democratic Party, but we never stopped our ideological and political struggle against them as opportunists and vehicles of bourgeois influence on the proletariat. During the war, we concluded certain compromises with the Kautskyites, with the Left Mensheviks (Martov), and with a section of the Socialist-Revolutionaries (Chernov and Natanson); we were together with them at Zimmerwald and Kienthal, and issued joint manifestos. However, we never ceased and never relaxed our ideological and political struggle against the Kautskyites, Martov and Chernov (when Natanson died in 1919, a “Revolutionary-Communist” Narodnik, he was very close to and almost in agreement with us). At the very moment of the October Revolution, we entered into an informal but very important (and very successful) political bloc with the petty-bourgeois peasantry by adopting the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian programme in its entirety, without a single alteration—i.e., we effected an undeniable compromise in order to prove to the peasants that we wanted, not to “steam-roller” them but to reach agreement with them. At the same time we proposed (and soon after effected) a formal political bloc, including participation in the government, with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who dissolved this bloc after the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and then, in July 1918, went to the length of armed rebellion, and subsequently of an armed struggle, against us.” ^[5]

 

As is well known, the Bolsheviks were strengthened by these various applications of the united front tactic. However, these temporary alliances and maneuvers did not at all diminish their ideological and political struggle. Only the combination of these two elements – organizational and political independence on the one hand, together with joint actions on the other – allowed the Bolsheviks to grow and strengthen themselves as a party.

 

Codification of the United Front Tactic by the Communist International

 

The Communist International (Comintern), founded at the initiative of the Bolsheviks in March 1919, attempted to generalize the lessons of the past, that of the Russian revolutionaries having naturally played a particularly significant role. This was not an easy task, and Lenin and Trotsky faced enormous obstacles in their attempts to win the Comintern to their points of view. On the one hand, they had to contend with remnants of the opportunistic past of social democracy, while on the other they were faced with various shades of ultra-left adventurism based on the inexperience of many earlier communist parties.

 

However, eventually Lenin and Trotsky succeeded to win the Comintern over to the principles of the united front tactic, and the Third (1921) and Fourth congresses (1922) codified them. The following extensive passage summarizes the lessons which were agreed upon by the Comintern in its Fourth Congress:

 

“There is consequently an obvious need for the united front tactic. The slogan of the Third Congress, “To the masses”, is now more relevant than ever. The struggle to establish a proletarian united front in a whole series of countries is only just beginning. (…) The Communist International requires that all Communist Parties and groups adhere strictly to the united front tactic, because in the present period it is the only way of guiding Communists in the right direction, towards winning the majority of workers. At present the reformists need a split, while the Communists are interested in uniting all the forces of the working class against capital. Using the united front tactic means that the Communist vanguard is at the forefront of the day to day struggle of the broad masses for their most vital interests. For the sake of this struggle Communists are even prepared to negotiate with the scab leaders of the social democrats and the Amsterdam International. Any attempt by the Second International to interpret the united front as an organisational fusion of all the ‘workers’ parties’ must of course be categorically repudiated. (…)

 

The existence of independent Communist Parties and their complete freedom of action in relation to the bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionary social democracy is the most important historical achievement of the proletariat, and one which the Communists will in no circumstances renounce. Only the Communist Parties stand for the overall interests of the whole proletariat. In the same way the united front tactic has nothing to do with the so-called ‘electoral combinations’ of leaders in pursuit of one or another parliamentary aim. The united front tactic is simply an initiative whereby the Communists propose to join with all workers belonging to other parties and groups and all unaligned workers in a common struggle to defend the immediate, basic interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie. Every action, for even the most trivial everyday demand, can lead to revolutionary awareness and revolutionary education; it is the experience of struggle that will convince workers of the inevitability of revolution and the historic importance of Communism. It is particularly important when using the united front tactic to achieve not just agitational but also organisational results. Every opportunity must be used to establish organisational footholds among the working masses themselves (factory committees, supervisory commissions made up of workers from all the different parties and unaligned workers, action committees, etc.). The main aim of the united front tactic is to unify the working masses through agitation and organisation. The real success of the united front tactic depends on a movement “from below”, from the rank-and-file of the working masses. Nevertheless, there are circumstances in which Communists must not refuse to have talks with the leaders of the hostile workers’ parties, providing the masses are always kept fully informed of the course of these talks. During negotiations with these leaders the independence of the Communist Party and its agitation must not be circumscribed.” ^[6]

 

The Comintern required its sections to follow the same principles in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, while adapting there to a different set of concrete circumstances. The same resolution stated:

 

“In the colonial and semi-colonial countries the Comintern has a dual task: (1) to create a core of communist parties which represent the interests of the proletariat as a whole, and (2) to support to the utmost the national revolutionary movement which is directed against imperialism, to become the vanguard of this movement, and to emphasize and expand the social movement within the national movement.” ^[7]

 

The Comintern went into more detail on the anti-imperialist united front in a special resolution which was discussed and adopted at the same congress. This resolution explained the importance for revolutionaries to join the struggle for democratic tasks, for national independence, against imperialist domination, etc.

 

“The chief task which is common to all national revolutionary movements is to bring about national unity and achieve political independence. The real and logically consistent solution of this question depends on the extent to which such a national movement is able to break with the reactionary feudal elements and to win over the broad working masses to its cause, and in its programme to give expression to the social demands of these masses. Taking full cognizance of the fact that those who represent the national will to state independence may, because of the variety of historical circumstances, be themselves of the most varied kind, the Communist International supports every national revolutionary movement against imperialism. At the same time it does not forget that only a consistent revolutionary policy, designed to draw the broadest masses into active struggle, and a complete break with all adherents of reconciliation with imperialism for the sake of their own class domination, can lead the oppressed masses to victory.” ^[8]

 

At the same time the resolution emphasized the necessity for communists to keep their organizational and programmatic independence given the vacillating character of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders of the anti-imperialist struggles.

 

“The expediency of this slogan follows from the prospect of a prolonged and protracted struggle with world imperialism which demands the mobilization of all revolutionary elements. This mobilization is the more necessary as the indigenous ruling classes are inclined to effect compromises with foreign capital directed against the vital interests of the masses of the people. And just as in the West the slogan of the proletarian united front has helped and is still helping to expose social-democratic betrayal of proletarian interests, so the slogan of the anti-imperialist united front will help to expose the vacillation of various bourgeois-nationalist groups. This slogan will also promote the development of the revolutionary will and the clarification of the class consciousness of the working masses and put them in the front ranks of those who are fighting not only against imperialism, but also against the survivals of feudalism.” ^[9]

 

The communists put these principles into practice in numerous ways. One of the first applications was an initiative of German metalworkers in the Stuttgart local of the trade union federation ADGB in December 1920. Here the Communist Party (KPD) had important influence and they got the local to adopt a resolution calling on the leadership of their union, and of all unions, to launch a joint struggle for immediate demands to improve workers’ conditions. (Reduction of food prices; increase of unemployment benefits; reduction of taxes paid by workers and an increase in taxes on great private fortunes; establishment of workers’ control of supply and distribution of raw materials and foodstuffs; disarmament of reactionary gangs and arming of the workers.)

 

While the trade union leadership first ignored this campaign, it soon received support from many other union locals. As a result the KPD leadership, mainly Paul Levi and Karl Radek, drafted an Open Letter which was based was an extended version of the Stuttgart initiative. This letter was directed both at the reformist workers parties (SPD, USPD; and also the small ultra-left KAPD) as well as to all trade unions. While the labor bureaucracy did not agree to joint actions with the communists, this campaign increased the influence of the communists in the working class and in particularly in the trade unions. ^[10]

 

The Comintern extended the united front tactic also to the field of governmental slogans and developed respective slogans for a “workers’ government” a “workers’ and peasants’ government.” The Comintern stated: “The parties of the Second International are trying to 'save' the situation in these countries by advocating and forming a coalition government of bourgeois and social-democratic parties. (…) To this open or concealed bourgeois-socialdemocratic coalition the communists oppose the united front of all workers and a coalition of all workers' parties in the economic and the political field for the fight against the bourgeois power and its eventual overthrow. In the united struggle of all workers against the bourgeoisie the entire State apparatus must be taken over by the workers' government, and thus the working class's positions of power strengthened.” ^[11]

 

Lenin similarly explained the need for communists to deploy the united front tactic in election campaigns. Taking the example of Britain, where the Communist Party was small and the reformist Labour Party dominated the workers’ movement, Lenin advocated that the communists give critical electoral support to the reformists.

 

“The Communist Party should propose the following “compromise” election agreement to the Hendersons and Snowdens: let us jointly fight against the alliance between Lloyd George and the Conservatives; let us share parliamentary seats in proportion to the number of workers’ votes polled for the Labour Party and for the Communist Party (not in elections, but in a special ballot), and let us retain complete freedom of agitation, propaganda and political activity. Of course, without this latter condition, we cannot agree to a bloc, for that would be treachery; the British Communists must demand and get complete freedom to expose the Hendersons and the Snowdens in the same way as (for fifteen years – 1903-17) the Russian Bolsheviks demanded and got it in respect of the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens, i.e., the Mensheviks. If the Hendersons and the Snowdens accept a bloc on these terms, we shall be the gainers, because the number of parliamentary seats is of no importance to us; we are not out for seats. We shall yield on this point (…). We shall be the gainers, because we shall carry our agitation among the masses at a time when Lloyd George himself has “incensed” them, and we shall not only be helping the Labour Party to establish its government sooner, but shall also be helping the masses sooner to understand the communist propaganda that we shall carry on against the Hendersons, without any reticence or omission.

 

If the Hendersons and the Snowdens reject a bloc with us on these terms, we shall gain still more, for we shall at once have shown the masses (…) that the Hendersons prefer their close relations with the capitalists to the unity of all the workers. (…). We shall gain immediately, because we shall have demonstrated to the masses that the Hendersons and the Snowdens are afraid to beat Lloyd George, afraid to assume power alone, and are striving to secure the secret support of Lloyd George, who is openly extending a hand to the Conservatives, against the Labour Party. It should be noted that in Russia, after the revolution of February 27, 1917 (old style), the Bolsheviks’ propaganda against the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (i.e., the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens) derived benefit precisely from a circumstance of this kind. We said to the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries: assume full power without the bourgeoisie, because you have a majority in the Soviets (at the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets, in June 1917, the Bolsheviks had only 13 per cent of the votes). But the Russian Hendersons and Snowdens were afraid to assume power without the bourgeoisie, and when the bourgeoisie held up the elections to the Constituent Assembly, knowing full well that the elections would give a majority to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks (who formed a close political bloc and in fact represented only petty-bourgeois democracy), the Socialist- Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were unable energetically and consistently to oppose these delays. If the Hendersons and the Snowdens reject a bloc with the Communists, the latter will immediately gain by winning the sympathy of the masses and discrediting the Hendersons and Snowdens; if, as a result, we do lose a few parliamentary seats, it is a matter of no significance to us. We would put up our candidates in a very few but absolutely safe constituencies, namely, constituencies where our candidatures would not give any seats to the Liberals at the expense of the Labour candidates. We would take part in the election campaign, distribute leaflets agitating for communism, and, in all constituencies where we have no candidates, we would urge the electors to vote for the Labour candidate and against the bourgeois candidate. (…)

 

At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (…), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany.” ^[12]

 

Later, at the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920, Lenin also advocated the entry of the British Communist Party into the Labour Party in order to better influence the rank and file workers.

 

As Lenin explained, all these tactics had nothing in common with softness on reformism, but were an application of the urgent desire of communists to build closer ties with the still non-revolutionary masses as well as the urgent need to discredit the reformist leaders before their own supporters; this by demonstrating to them in practice that these leaders are unwilling and incapable of consistently fighting for the interests of the working class.

 

Similarly, the communists applied the anti-imperialist united front tactic in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. In China, they supported the struggle of Sun Yat-sen against the reactionary war lords who acted as agents of foreign imperialist powers. In autumn 1922 the communists, at the suggestion of Henk Sneevliet (a Dutchman who later joined the Fourth International for some time), even entered the Sun Yat-sen’s party – the Kuomintang. This tactic offered the communists, who initially were only a small group of intellectual without roots among the working class, the possibility of overcoming their isolation and becoming a mass party. Unfortunately the Stalinists later transformed this successful tactic into an opportunistic capitulation to the Chiang Kai-shek, the new leader of the Kuomintang after Sun Yat-sen’s death – instead of auspiciously splitting with this petty-bourgeois populist party when it became an obstacle for the class struggle. This resulted in the infamous massacre of tens of thousands communists in 1927 at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek’s army.

 

Even earlier, Sneevliet has played a crucial role in building a revolutionary organization in Indonesia (a Dutch colony at that time) – the Indische Sociaal-Democratische Vereeniging (ISDV). This organization engaged in anti-imperialist activities and would later join an Islamist mass organization which was active against the colonial administration – the Sarekat Islam (Islamic Union). When the conservative leadership of the Islamist organization finally expelled the revolutionaries in 1921, the communists had already won over many workers and peasants. They would go on to found the first Asian section of the Comintern – Perserikatan Komunis di Hindia (PKH; Communist Union of the Indies). ^[13]

 

Likewise the Soviet Union supported the struggle of Turkey led by the bourgeois nationalist Kemal Pasha against British imperialism and its Greek allies.

 

Trotsky and the Fourth International on the United Front Tactic

 

Leon Trotsky, continuing the struggle for the revolutionary banner of the working class struggle after the Stalinist bureaucracy had taken power in 1924, upheld the Marxist method of the united front tactic as it had been developed by Lenin and the Comintern. In fact, he was – besides Lenin – the main advocate of the united front tactic when it was adopted by the Comintern at its Third Congress.

 

Against the Stalinists opportunist maneuvers with the British trade union bureaucracy in the mid-1920s Trotsky defended the fundamental principles of the united front tactic: “The tactic of the united front still retains all its power as the most important method in the struggle for the masses. A basic principle of this tactic is: “With the masses – always; with the vacillating leaders – sometimes, but only so long as they stand at the head of the masses.” It is necessary to make use of vacillating leaders while the masses are pushing them ahead, without for a moment abandoning criticism of these leaders. And it is necessary to break with them at the right time when they turn from vacillation to hostile action and betrayal. It is necessary to use the occasion of the break to expose the traitorous leaders and to contrast their position to that of the masses. It is precisely in this that the revolutionary essence of the united front policy consists. Without this, the struggle for the masses always threatens to turn into an opportunist kowtowing …” ^[14]

 

Later the Stalinists distorted the united front tactic and replaced it with their theory of “social fascism” according to which social democracy was only the “twin” of Hitler’s fascism. Consequently, the Stalinists rejected any united front with the social democrats, a stance which helped the reformist leaders to justify their betrayal and which allowed them to support several right-wing Bonapartist governments along with taking no action against the rise of the NSDAP before 1933.

 

Trotsky similarly defended the application of the united front tactic in anti-imperialist and democratic struggles. For example he called for critical but unconditional support of Chiang Kai-shek’s struggle against the Japanese invaders in the late 1920s and 1930s (despite the fact that the latter murdered tens of thousands of communists in 1927!): “Quite so: as against imperialism it is obligatory to help even the hangmen of Chiang Kai-shek.” ^[15]

 

Trotsky strongly rejected the criticism of those Ultra-leftists who refused to join an anti-imperialist struggle under a bourgeois leadership on the grounds that this would constitute a form of popular-frontism. He called revolutionaries in 1937 to participate and support the military struggle against Japan under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek as long as they are not strong enough to replace him. He compared the necessary tactic for revolutionaries with those during a workers’ strike under the leadership of treacherous reformist bureaucrats. It would be the duty of every class-conscious worker to join such a strike without giving any political support to the bureaucrats. Trotsky’s attitude becomes clear from a document he wrote on the Chinese war against Japan in 1937 from which we shall quote extensively:

 

“But Chiang Kai-shek? We need have no illusions about Chiang Kai-shek, his party, or the whole ruling class of China, just as Marx and Engels had no illusions about the ruling classes of Ireland and Poland. Chiang Kai-shek is the executioner of the Chinese workers and peasants. But today he is forced, despite himself, to struggle against Japan for the remainder of the independence of China. Tomorrow he may again betray. It is possible. It is probable. It is even inevitable. But today he is struggling. Only cowards, scoundrels, or complete imbeciles can refuse to participate in that struggle.

 

Let us use the example of a strike to clarify the question. We do not support all strikes. If, for example, a strike is called for the exclusion of Negro, Chinese, or Japanese workers from a factory, we are opposed to that strike. But if a strike aims at bettering— insofar as it can—the conditions of the workers, we are the first to participate in it, whatever the leadership. In the vast majority of strikes, the leaders are reformists, traitors by profession, agents of capital. They oppose every strike. But from time to time the pressure of the masses or of the objective situation forces them into the path of struggle.

 

Let us imagine, for an instant, a worker saying to himself: “I do not want to participate in the strike because the leaders are agents of capital.” This doctrine of this ultraleft imbecile would serve to brand him by his real name: a strikebreaker. The case of the Sino-Japanese War, is from this point of view, entirely analogous. If Japan is an imperialist country and if China is the victim of imperialism, we favor China. Japanese patriotism is the hideous mask of worldwide robbery. Chinese patriotism is legitimate and progressive. To place the two on the same plane and to speak of “social patriotism” can be done only by those who have read nothing of Lenin, who have understood nothing of the attitude of the Bolsheviks during the imperialist war, and who can but compromise and prostitute the teachings of Marxism. (…) But Japan and China are not on the same historical plane. The victory of Japan will signify the enslavement of China, the end of her economic and social development, and the terrible strengthening of Japanese imperialism. The victory of China will signify, on the contrary, the social revolution in Japan and the free development, that is to say unhindered by external oppression, of the class struggle in China.

 

But can Chiang Kai-shek assure the victory? I do not believe so. It is he, however, who began the war and who today directs it. To be able to replace him it is necessary to gain decisive influence among the proletariat and in the army, and to do this it is necessary not to remain suspended in the air but to place oneself in the midst of the struggle. We must win influence and prestige in the military struggle against the foreign invasion and in the political struggle against the weaknesses, the deficiencies, and the internal betrayal. At a certain point, which we cannot fix in advance, this political opposition can and must be transformed into armed conflict, since the civil war, like war generally, is nothing more than the continuation of the political struggle. It is necessary, however, to know when and how to transform political opposition into armed insurrection.

 

During the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 we attacked the policies of the Comintern. Why? It is necessary to understand well the reasons. The Eiffelites claim that we have changed our attitude on the Chinese question. That is because the poor fellows have understood nothing of our attitude in 1925-27. We never denied that it was the duty of the Communist Party to participate in the war of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of the South against the generals of the North, agents of foreign imperialism. We never denied the necessity of a military bloc between the CP and the Kuomintang. On the contrary, we were the first to propose it. We demanded, however, that the CP maintain its entire political and organizational independence, that is, that during the civil war against the internal agents of imperialism, as in the national war against foreign imperialism, the working class, while remaining in the front lines of the military struggle, prepare the political overthrow of the bourgeoisie. We hold the same policies in the present war. We have not changed our attitude one iota. The Oehlerites and the Eiffelites, on the other hand, have not understood a single bit of our policies, neither those of 1925-27, nor those of today.

 

In my declaration to the bourgeois press at the beginning of the recent conflict between Tokyo and Nanking, I stressed above all the necessity of the active participation of revolutionary workers in the war against the imperialist oppressors. Why did I do it? Because first of all it is correct from the Marxist point of view; because, secondly, it was necessary from the point of view of the welfare of our friends in China. Tomorrow the GPU, which is in alliance with the Kuomintang (as with Negrin in Spain), will represent our Chinese friends as being “defeatists” and agents of Japan. The best of them, with Chten Tu-hsiu at the head, can be nationally and internationally compromised and killed. It was necessary to stress, energetically, that the Fourth International was on the side of China as against Japan. And I added at the same time: without abandoning either their program or their independence.

 

The Eiffelite imbeciles try to jest about this “reservation.” “The Trotskyists,” they say, “want to serve Chiang Kai-shek in action and the proletariat in words.” To participate actively and consciously in the war does not mean “to serve Chiang Kai-shek” but to serve the independence of a colonial country in spite of Chiang Kai-shek. And the words directed against the Kuomintang are the means of educating the masses for the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek. In participating in the military struggle under the orders of Chiang Kai-shek, since unfortunately it is he who has the command in the war for independence—to prepare politically the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek . . . that is the only revolutionary policy. The Eiffelites counterpose the policy of “class struggle” to this “nationalist and social patriotic” policy. Lenin fought this abstract and sterile opposition all his life. To him, the interests of the world proletariat dictated the duty of aiding oppressed peoples in their national and patriotic struggle against imperialism. Those who have not yet understood that, almost a quarter of a century after the World War and twenty years after the October revolution, must be pitilessly rejected as the worst enemies on the inside by the revolutionary vanguard. This is exactly the case with Eiffel and his kind!” ^[16]

 

In the Transitional Program, the founding document of the Fourth International written in 1938, Trotsky once again attempted to generalize the experience of the Bolsheviks and show how important it is for communists to put forth demands at reformist and petty bourgeois mass parties of the workers and the oppressed in order to reach out to their rank and file.

 

“This formula, “workers’ and farmers’ government,” first appeared in the agitation of the Bolsheviks in 1917 and was definitely accepted after the October Revolution. In the final instance it represented nothing more than the popular designation for the already established dictatorship of the proletariat. The significance of this designation comes mainly from the fact that it underscored the idea of an alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry upon which the Soviet power rests.

 

When the Comintern of the epigones tried to revive the formula buried by history of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,” it gave to the formula of the “workers’ and peasants’ government” a completely different, purely “democratic,” i.e., bourgeois content, counterposing it to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Bolshevik-Leninists resolutely rejected the slogan of the “workers’ and peasants’ government” in the bourgeois-democratic version. They affirmed then and affirm now that. when the party of the proletariat refuses to step beyond bourgeois democratic limits, its alliance with the peasantry is simply turned into a support for capital, as was the ease with the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries in 1917, with the Chinese Communist Party in 1925-27, and as is now the ease with the “People’s Front” in Spain, France and other countries.

 

From April to September 1917, the Bolsheviks demanded that the S.R.s and Mensheviks break with the liberal bourgeoisie and take power into their own hands. Under this provision the Bolshevik Party promised the Mensheviks and the S.R.s, as the petty bourgeois representatives of the worker and peasants, its revolutionary aid against the bourgeoisie categorically refusing, however, either to enter into the government of the Mensheviks and S.R.s or to carry political responsibility for it. If the Mensheviks and S.R.s had actually broke with the Cadets (liberals) and with foreign imperialism, then the “workers’ and peasants’ government” created by them could only have hastened and facilitated the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But it was exactly because of this that the leadership of petty bourgeois democracy resisted with all possible strength the establishment of its own government. The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favorable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (S.R.s, Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.

 

Nevertheless, the demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the S.R.s: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!” had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and S.R.s to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks.

 

The central task of the Fourth International consists in freeing the proletariat from the old leadership, whose conservatism is in complete contradiction to the catastrophic eruptions of disintegrating capitalism and represents the chief obstacle to historical progress. The chief accusation which the Fourth International advances against the traditional organizations of the proletariat is the fact that they do not wish to tear themselves away from the political semi-corpse of the bourgeoisie. Under these conditions the demand, systematically addressed to the old leadership: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power!” is an extremely important weapon for exposing the treacherous character of the parties and organizations of the Second, Third and Amsterdam Internationals. The slogan, “workers’ and farmers’ government,” is thus acceptable to us only in the sense that it had in 1917 with the Bolsheviks, i.e., as an anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist slogan. But in no case in that “democratic” sense which later the epigones gave it, transforming it from a bridge to Socialist revolution into the chief barrier upon its path.

 

Of all parties and organizations which base themselves on the workers and peasants and speak in their name, we demand that they break politically from the bourgeoisie and enter upon the road of struggle for the workers’ and farmers’ government. On this road we promise them full support against capitalist reaction. At the same time, we indefatigably develop agitation around those transitional demands which should in our opinion form the program of the “workers’ and farmers’ government.”

 

Is the creation of such a government by the traditional workers’ organizations possible? Past experience shows, as has already been stated, that this is, to say the least, highly improbable. However, one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie. In any case one thing is not to be doubted: even if this highly improbable variant somewhere at some time becomes a reality and the “workers’ and farmers’ government” in the above-mentioned sense is established in fact, it would represent merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

However, there is no need to indulge in guesswork. The agitation around the slogan of a workers’-farmers’ government preserves under all conditions a tremendous educational value. And not accidentally. This generalized slogan proceeds entirely along the line of the political development of our epoch (the bankruptcy and decomposition of the old bourgeois parties, the downfall of democracy, the growth of fascism, the accelerated drive of the workers toward more active and aggressive politics). Each of the transitional demands should, therefore, lead to one and the same political conclusion: the workers need to break with all traditional parties of the bourgeoisie in order, jointly with the farmers, to establish their own power.” ^[17]

 

Thus we see the significance which Trotsky gave to the issue of the united front tactic as a tool to strengthen and unite the class struggle of the workers and oppressed, as well as to increase the influence of the revolutionary party among the working class and popular masses, and to undermine the hegemony of the “parties of petty-bourgeois democracy.” In addition, Trotsky considered the united front tactic as a crucial tool for revolutionaries not only in relation to bourgeois (Menshevik-type) workers’ parties, but also towards petty-bourgeois populist (S.R.-type) forces which have a mass following among the non-proletarian oppressed classes and layers.

 

 

 

III.          The Struggle for Proletarian Hegemony under Present Day Conditions: Social and Economic Changes

 

Note of the Editorial Board: The following Chapter contains several figures. They can only be viewed in the pdf version of the book here for technical reasons.

 

In the previous two chapters we have outlined the principles of the united front tactic and have shown how the Marxist classics developed their understanding of it. Before we discuss some specific questions of the application of the united front tactic today, we need to take into account important changes which have taken place since the times of Lenin and Trotsky. We shall start with a summary of the economic and social developments.

 

In our book The Great Robbery of the South we have analyzed important changes in the composition of the world proletariat. ^[1] Let us summarize here the most important conclusions combined with actual data.

 

The Shift to the South of Today’s World Proletariat

 

The RCIT has always stressed that the focus of global capitalist production, and therefore of the international proletariat, has shifted during the past half century from the old imperialist metropolises (i.e., North America, Western Europe and Japan) to the South (i.e., the semi-colonial world plus new imperialist powers, in particular China). The basis for this shift has been a process of massive industrialization in the countries of the global South. This was caused on the one hand by the general economic upswing during the long boom of the 1950s and 1960s (accompanied by a rise in productivity in agriculture, accelerated urbanization, etc.) and by the massive shift of capital export of the imperialist monopolies to the South, in their desire to increase their profits by intensifying super-exploitation. ^[2] For part of this time, the industrialization of the Stalinist degenerated workers’ states in Eastern Europe, East Asia and Cuba also contributed to this development.

 

The massive growth of the global labor force during the past decades took place mainly in the semi-colonial world. In 2014, 51.5% of the global labor force was engaged in wage labor out of total of three billion working people ^[3] (See Figure 1). As shown in this graph, since 1991 the share of wage laborers has increased on all continents. ^[4]

 

Figure 1: Wage and Salaried Employment (% of total employment), World and Regions, 1991-2014 ^[5]

 

Such proletarization has also taken place among women. Today 46% of all working women are wage laborers. ^[6]

 

Table 1 expresses the growth of the working class in the world’s regions by percentages since just before the turn of the millenium.

 

Table 1: Wage Laborers as a Share of Total Employment, 1999 and 2013 ^[7]

Region                                                                                   1999                       2013

Africa                                                                                    24.6%                    26.2%

Asia                                                                                       30.7%                    40.2%

Latin America and the Caribbean                              59.0%                    62.8%

Middle East                                                                        71.9%                    80.3%

Eastern Europe and Central Asia                               74.9%                    78.3%

Developed economies                                                    84.1%                    86.4%

 

 

 

The process of industrialization has necessarily led to a massive shift in weight of the proletariat from the imperialist metropolises towards the poorer countries and in particular to Asia (where 60% of the global industrial workforce lives today). A hundred years ago – at the time of Lenin and Trotsky – the proletariat in the colonial and semi-colonial world was still quite small. Capitalist industrialization outside of Europe, North America and Japan had taken place only to a relatively small degree.

 

Since then the growth of the working class in the South has accelerated. As a result, the huge majority of the world working class today lives outside the old imperialist metropolises. This is clearly demonstrated by the following tables and figures. Table 2 shows the increase of the wage laborers living in the so-called “developing countries” from 65.9% (1995) to 72.4% (2008/09). If one excludes the semi-colonial EU states the figure for 2008/09 is even higher (75%). In other words, three quarters of today’s wage laborers live and work in the semi-colonial and emerging imperialist countries.

 

 

 

Table 2: Distribution of Wage Laborers in Different Regions, 1995 and 2008/09 ^[8]

                                                                                                                                                                Wage earners (in percent)

                                                                                                                                                                1995                       2008/09

World                                                                                                                                                    100%                     100%

Countries with low and middle income                                                                                    65.9%                    72.4%

Countries with high income                                                                                                          34.1%                    27.6%

Countries with high income (without semi-colonial EU-States)                                        -                               25%

Countries with low and middle income (including semi-colonial EU-States)              -                               75%

 

 

 

This shift is also visible if we examine the core sector of the working class – the industrial workers. In Table 3 we see that in 2013, 85.3% – or more than 617 million – of all industrial employees (the overwhelming majority of them workers) lived outside the old imperialist metropolises, where “only” 14.7% – or 106.8 million – of all those employed in industry were living. At the same time, nearly two third (62.5%) of all industrial workers were living in Asia (except Russia and the ex-USSR republics).

 

 

 

Table 3: Distribution of Labor Force in Industry in different Regions, 2013 ^[9]

 

                                                                                Labor force                                                         Distribution of

 

in Industry (in Millions)                  industrial Labor force

 

World                                                                    724.4                                                                      100%

 

Developed economies                                      106.8                                                                      14.7%

 

Eastern Europe & ex-USSR                            44.8                                                                        6.2%

 

East Asia                                                              250.1                                                                      34.5%

 

South-East Asia                                                 59.0                                                                        8.1%

 

South Asia                                                           144.3                                                                      19.9%

 

Latin America                                                    58.3                                                                        8.0%

 

Middle East                                                         18.7                                                                        2.6%

 

North Africa                                                       13.0                                                                        1.8%

 

Sub-Saharan Africa                                          29.3                                                                        4.0%

 

 

 

 

Figures 2 and 3 confirm this tremendous shift by showing the increase in the proportion of manufacturing workers living in the South from about 50% (1980) to about 73% (2008). Bear in mind that in 1950 only 34% of industrial workers around the world were living in the South. ^[10] Note, however, that the numbers for employment in manufacturing and industrial employment in the statistics provided here are not synonymous, since manufacturing includes all industrial labor force but, in contrast to industrial employment, excludes those employed in the mining and the building sectors.

 

 

 

Figure 2: Developing Countries’ Share in World Manufacturing Employment, 1980–2008 ^[11]

 

Figure 3: Global Industrial Labor Force in Developed and Developing Countries, 1950–2010 ^[12]

 

The RCIT has repeatedly pointed out that, in fact, the actual shift of the proletariat towards the semi-colonial and emerging imperialist countries is even bigger than official statistics indicate. Why? Because, as noted above, the bourgeois category "wage earners" includes not only workers. Generally speaking, one can say that in the rich imperialist countries, a considerable minority of wage earners are not part of the working class, but are part of the salaried middle class (supervisory personnel, police, lower-grade manager etc.). ^[13] In an extensive analysis of the class’s structure, we have estimated that, in the imperialist countries, the number of wage earners – making up to 90% of the total working population – can be divided into two, with approximately 2/3 working class while 1/3 are middle layer. ^[14] In the poorer countries, the salaried middle classes are much smaller.

 

Furthermore, we also need to take into account the labor aristocracy, the uppermost part of the working class (e.g., certain sectors of the highly-paid skilled workers, etc.). It is the sector of the proletariat which is literally bribed by the bourgeoisie with various privileges. In the imperialist countries, this layer constitutes a much larger proportion of the working class than it does among the semi-colonial proletariat. The financial sources to pay off the labor aristocracy in the imperialist countries, and thereby undermine its working class solidarity, are derived precisely from the extra profits which the monopoly capitalists so readily obtain by super-exploiting the semi-colonial countries as well as migrants in the imperialist metropolises. Without any smoke or mirrors, monopoly capital uses part of these extra profits to gain the support of sectors of the working class in the imperialist countries, for it is at home that the capitalists need stability first and foremost. Thus, the “bought off” labor aristocracy can be a much smaller sector of the proletariat in the semi-colonial world.

 

Together with this, the labor aristocracy – along with its twin, the labor bureaucracy – plays a dominating role inside the trade unions and the reformist parties in the imperialist countries.

 

At the same time, as we have elaborated elsewhere, ^[15] the lower strata of the working class – and in particular migrants – have significantly gained in their relative numbers inside the imperialist countries. In the USA, for example, the share of migrants among the overall population rose from 5.2% (1960) to 12.3% (2000) to more than 14% (2010). In Western Europe, the migrants’ share of the population grew from about 4.6% (1960) to nearly 10% (2010). ^[16] According to latest data from the United Nations, 172.6 million migrants are officially living in the old imperialist countries (“high-income countries”), representing 13% of the total population. ^[17] As we have repeatedly pointed out, such official statistics invariably underestimate the number of migrants, as they do not include migrants with no legal status as well as migrants of the second or third generation.

 

The comparable proportion of foreign migrants in “middle-income” and “low-income countries,” i.e., the semi-colonial countries and the emerging imperialist China, is only 1%. ^[18]

 

In particular, migrants constitute a crucial sector of the proletariat in the urban centers of the imperialist metropolises. For example, in the early 2000s half of all resident workers in New York were black, Latino, or belonged to other national minorities. In inner and outer London, respectively 29% and 22% of residents were classified as ethnic minorities in 2000. ^[19] In our study on racism and migrants, we showed that in Vienna (the capital of Austria) migrants represent 44% of the population. Two thirds of them come from the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, or the Eastern European EU States. ^[20]

 

It is also important to realize that low and medium-skilled laborers constitute the vast majority of wage earning workers and oppressed, while highly-skilled employees constitute only a minority (even in the old imperialist countries). While the figures displayed in Tables 4 and 5, below, are not exclusively for the working class, and while the level of skill is not directly parallel to being positioned in the lower or middle strata vs. the upper and aristocratic strata of the working class, these figures still provide a useful approximation of the relative proportions composing the proletariat – both globally and by specific region.

 

 

Table 4: Numbers and Share of Employment by Broad Occupation (Skill), World and Regions, 2013 (in thousands) ^[21]

 

 

 

World region                                       Low-Skilled                         Medium-Skilled                  High-Skilled

 

World                                                    502,153                                 2,077,789                              566,584

 

                                                                100%                                     100%                                     100%

 

Developed Economies                     46,668                                   241,654                                 186,693

 

                                                                9.3%                                      11.6%                                    32.4%

 

Developing Economies                   455,485                                 1,836,135                              379,891

 

                                                                91.7%%                                                88.4%                                    67.6%

 

 

 

Table 5: Share of Employment by Broad Occupation (Skill), World and Regions, 2013 ^[22]

 

 

 

World region                                                       Low-Skilled                         Medium-Skilled                  High-Skilled

 

World total                                                          16.0%                                    66.0%                                    18.0%

 

Developed Economies                                     9.8%                                       50.9%                                    39.3%

 

Central & South Eastern Europe                  14.1%                                    52.4%                                    33.5%

 

East Asia                                                              8.2%                                       79.7%                                    12.1%

 

South East Asia and the Pacific                    22.0%                                    65.6%                                    12.4%

 

South Asia                                                           27.7%                                    58.5%                                    13.8%

 

Latin America and the Caribbean               19.0%                                    61.3%                                    19.8%

 

Middle East and North Africa                      12.0%                                    65.7%                                    22.4%

 

Sub Saharan Africa                                          16.2%                                    79.2%                                    4.6%

 

 

 

These actual data from the UN’s International Labour Office demonstrate that low- and medium-skilled workers represent 82% of the global labor force, 61.7% in the old imperialist countries and 85.8% in the semi-colonial world and the emerging imperialists, namely China and Russia. Their share is even bigger than the figures shown in these tables suggest because – as we have said before – a minority of the wage earners are not part of the working class at all, but rather belong to the middle class. Naturally, the share of high-skilled laborers is much greater among the middle layers than among the working class. In short, these data support our theses concerning the composition of the working class as we outlined it in the RCIT’s Manifesto as well as we have described in greater detail in our book, The Great Robbery.

 

In addition, the proletariat in the poorer countries is larger in size than the numbers in these official statistics would appear to indicate. A considerable proportion of the workers in these countries are formally counted not as wage laborers, but as formally self-employed, due to the large informal sector. However, in fact, they are part of the working class. ^[23]

 

In general, the growing working class and other oppressed layers are very heterogeneous in terms of their employment status. The recently published ILO data for the employment status of the working population as a whole (i.e. including workers, peasants, self-employed, unpaid family workers, employers [albeit the later are insignificant in terms of numbers]) are extremely interesting. According to them, only around 26.4% of laborers are employed on a permanent contract, with around 13% on a temporary or fixed-term contracts and the significant majority (60.7%) work without any contract. Naturally, here too, there are huge differences between the situation for laborers in the old imperialist countries and those in the South. In the old imperialist countries (“high-income economies”), more than three-quarters of laborers are on a permanent contract (of which less than two-thirds are full-time), a further 9.3% are hired by temporary contracts, and only 14% work without a contract. Among advanced semi-colonies and emerging imperialist countries (“middle-income countries”), nearly 72% of all laborers are employed without a contract, while only 13.7% work under a permanent contract. Across the less developed semi-colonial countries, only 5.7% of laborers are employed with a permanent contract, while nearly 87% of laborers having no contract at all; the majority of these are working either as own-account workers or contributing family workers. ^[24]

 

If we calculate the existing ILO data for the wage laborers, we reach the conclusion that only 51.2% of all wage laborers have a permanent contract while the rest are only employed under temporary contracts or with no contract at all (see Table 6). Here again, there are extreme differences between the old imperialist countries on one hand and the semi-colonial countries and the emerging imperialist powers on the other. In the former, those designated by the ILO as “high-income economies,” the share of wage laborers with a permanent contract is 88.1%. However, this share is much lower in the countries of the global South (30.7% resp. 32.4%).

 

 

Table 6: Distribution of Contract Type of Wage Laborers (%) ^[25]

 

                                                                                Permanent                           Temporary                           No Contract

 

All Countries                                                      51.2%                                    25.0%                                    23.8%

 

High-Income Countries                 88.1%                                    10.7%                                    1.3%

 

Middle-Income Countries                             30.7%                                    32.3%                                    37.0%

 

Low-Income Countries                                   32.4%                                    42.6%                                    24.8%

 

 

 

Wage laborers with a permanent contract should again be divided, comparing those employed full-time and those who work only part-time. Unfortunately, for this issue the ILO provides data only for the imperialist countries where only 73.7% of all full-time workers have a permanent contract (but among women the share is even lower at 64.5%).

 

Furthermore, one has to take into account the rising number of unemployed workers. The latest ILO report gives the official figure of 201.3 million workers without a job in 2014. Or in other words, 5.9% globally. ^[26]

 

Let us now summarize our brief overview of the world proletariat today. We have shown that the international working class has shifted its focus to the South where about three-quarters of the wage laborers are located. Given the higher share of salaried middle class in the old imperialist countries (compared to the South), the proportion of the proletariat in semi-colonial and the emerging imperialist countries throughout the world could be as high as 80%. This being the case, we can conclude that today the heart of the world proletariat is in the South and in particular in Asia.

 

That does not mean that the proletariat in the old imperialist metropolises (i.e., the relatively rich countries of Western Europe, North America and Japan) has become irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. The proletariat of Western Europe, North America and Japan continues to play a central role in the international class struggle. But it is vital for revolutionary communists to recognize the increased importance of the semi-colonial countries in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, as well as of the emerging imperialists, China (and Russia). In other words, the process of the World Revolution is not one in which the front is located in and the entire issue will be decided upon in the old imperialist countries. Rather the proletariat in the semi-colonial world and the emerging imperialist China will play a decisive role. The Arab Revolution reinforced this thesis of the increasing importance of the semi-colonial proletariat.

 

We have summarized the ramifications of these important changes in the composition of the world working class in our program “The Revolutionary Communist Manifesto.” International workers’ organizations must pay particular attention to the South. The huge weight of the Southern proletariat must be reflected not only in their massive participation in international workers’ organizations, but also in the leaderships of these forces. And questions of particular importance for the Southern working class – their super-exploitation, their national liberation struggles against imperialism, etc. – must play a central role in the organizations’ propagandistic and practical work. ^[27]

 

The Misery of the Poor Peasantry and the Urban Poor

 

Irrespective of the growth of the global proletariat, Marxists must not ignore the fact nearly half of the global working population – and a clear majority in the semi-colonial world – still belong to the poor peasantry or the urban petty bourgeoisie. The figures in Table 6 give an indication about the general social composition of the working population. However, here too we repeat that, for reasons outlined above, the ILO category Wage Laborers is not synonymous with the Marxist concept of the working class. This reservation is also applicable for the ILO’s Own Account Laborers category which is also not equivalent to the Marxist category of the non-exploiting peasantry and urban petty-bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the figures given below are useful approximations.

 

If we leave aside the very small number of capitalists (employers), which are most numerous in the imperialist countries, we see that peasants and self-employed (and their contributing family members) represent 55.4% of the working population in the countries of the South. However, even here there are important distinctions to be made. For example, while in the emerging imperialist China the share of wage laborers is 56% of the working population and the self-employed and their contributing family members “only” 42.4%,^[28] the self-employed and their contributing family members constitute 80.8% (!) of all working people in the less developed semi-colonial countries. (See Table 7)

 

Table 7: Shares of Status in Total Employment, World and Regions, 2013 (%) ^[29]

 

                                                                Wage                     Employers            Own Account                      Contributing

 

                                                                Laborers                                               Laborers                               Family

 

                                                                Laborers

 

Advanced Economies                     86.3%                    3.6%                       9.0%                                       1.0%

 

Developing Countries                    42.6%                    2.0%                       40.5%                                    14.9%

 

Least Developed Countries          18.0%                    1.2%                       53.2%                                    27.6%

 

Lower Middle

 

Income Countries                             31.7%                    2.1%                       50.5%                                    15.7%

 

Emerging Economies                      58.2%                    2.2%                       29.0%                                    10.6%

 

 

 

Capitalism means misery not just for the working class but also for the rural population and the urban poor. In order to understand this, we now provide some data about inequality and poverty among the world’s peasantry. According to data summarized by the ETC Group (AGETC), of the 450 million farms in today’s world, 382 million (85%) are worked by small peasants and have a size of 2 hectares or less. Nearly all of these (close to 380 million) are situated in the global South. Again, the overwhelming majority of them (370 million) are worked by indigenous peasants. In total, peasants work approximately half of the world’s cropland. It is estimated that, of the 1.56 billion arable hectares under permanent cultivation globally, 764 million hectares are worked by peasants; no less than 225 million hectares are cultivated by big farmers; and mid-size farmers would consequently hold approximately 571 million hectares.

 

An estimated 640 million peasant farmers and an additional 190 million pastoralists raise livestock for their own consumption and local markets. Furthermore, there are about 30–35 million full-time fishermen, but probably more than 100 million peasants are involved to some extent or another in fishing and the processing and distribution of the yield of this activity as food.

 

There are also an estimated 800 million peasants who are involved in urban farming. Of these, 200 million produce food primarily for urban markets, and this activity provides full-time employment for about 150 million family members. On average, the world’s cities produce about one-third of their own food consumption. Finally, there are at least 410 million people who live in – or adjacent to – forests and derive much of their food and livelihood from them. ^[30]

 

Brazil provides an important example of the unequal distribution of land globally and the dire situation of poor and landless peasants in the age of decaying capitalism. About 26,000 Brazilian landowners possess 50% of all agricultural lands, large parts of which are either being poorly utilized for agriculture or are not being cultivated at all. At the same time, in Brazil there are 12 million landless peasants.

 

The urban poor are another, increasingly important layer of world’s population. They have no fixed class position, but rather include various and transitional elements. Most slum dwellers have no permanent job, but are unemployed, informally employed, or self-employed. Thus, they mostly belong to the lower strata of the working class, and either constitute semi-proletarian elements who are often involved in urban agriculture, are among the poor petty-bourgeoisie, or belong to the lumpenproletariat. Their extremely precarious position in the workplace increases the relative importance of their particular living and housing conditions. For these reasons we can speak of the urban poor as a specific layer.

 

It is estimated that about a third of the global urban population (32.7%) live in slums in the big cities, especially in the semi-colonial world. The proportion of people living in slum conditions in urban areas is particularly high in sub-Saharan Africa (61.7%). However, slum dwellers also constitute an important share of the urban population in Southern Asia (35%), in Southeastern Asia (31.0%), in Eastern Asia (28.2%), in Western Asia (24.6%), in Latin America and the Caribbean (23.5%), and in North Africa (13%). ^[31]

In short, we see that the poor peasantry and the urban poor constitute huge and important classes and layers. They too suffer daily, throughout their precarious lives, from the devastating consequences of capitalism in decay. It is a crucial task of the working class, and this means the vanguard of this class – the revolutionary party – to be in the front line to win these oppressed layers over as allies for the struggle against capitalist rule.

 

 

 

IV.          The Struggle for Proletarian Hegemony under Present Day Conditions: Political Changes

 

Note of the Editorial Board: The following Chapter contains several figures. They can only be viewed in the pdf version of the book here for technical reasons.

 

After having outlined some crucial social and economic developments that have transpired in recent decades, we shall now move on to examine the field of politics. We will outline in summary the most important changes that have taken place among the parties which claim to represent the interests of the workers and oppressed.

 

The Crisis of Bourgeois Workers’ Parties

 

One of the most important developments in the past two or three decades has been the extraordinary bourgeoisification of the traditional reformist parties of the social democratic and Stalinist hue. At the same time, we have witnessed a surge of new left-wing reformist or petty-bourgeois populist forces. These changes constitute the crucial backdrop for the development and the application of the Marxist tactic of the united front during the present period.

 

Let us examine these developments and changes in more detail. The most important factor in the world situation – and this is even truer today than at the time of Trotsky in the 1930s – is the complete lack of a strong revolutionary world party. Trotsky’s words – „Without the slightest exaggeration it may be said: the whole world situation is determined by the crisis of the proletarian leadership“ ^[1] – are even more relevant today, more than half a century after the political and organizational collapse of the Fourth International, when the numbers of authentic revolutionary forces are so abysmally small compared with the historic task ahead of us. ^[2] This absence of a world party for socialist revolution is the main reason why so many class struggle eruptions leading to pre-revolutionary and revolutionary situations are ultimately defeated. And it is precisely for the same reason that the right-wing shift of traditional reformism resulted in the surge of new left-wing reformist and populist political formations.

 

The historic crisis of social democracy and Stalinism expresses itself in a dramatic political shift to the right, a bourgeoisification of its composition and leadership, and its precipitous decline in membership and electoral strength. Let us examine some examples.

 

The German SPD led Germany – in a governmental coalition with the Green Party – to the country’s first war abroad when NATO attacked Serbia in 1999. They did the same in Afghanistan in 2001 and during the imperialist occupation afterwards. The SPD imposed the draconian Hartz IV reforms which led to substantial cuts in unemployment benefits and social subsidies. Since then this party has been the junior partner in pro-austerity coalitions with the CDU, the conservative party of Angela Merkel, in the years 2005-09 and once again since 2013.

 

It is hardly surprising that this neoliberalization of the SPD had dramatic effects on its support and membership. Its electoral support has declined from 40.9% (1998) to 23.0% (2009) and 25.7% (2013). The number its members has more than halved between 1990 and 2014 (the latest available data). While the party had 943,402 members in 1990, this figure has dropped to 459,902 by the end of 2012. ^[3] 50% of these members are aged 60 years and above and only 16% are below the age of 40! The social composition of the party is particularly revealing: pensioners constitute the largest group (34%), followed by “Beamte” (a German word for privileged employees in the public sector, 23%), white-collar employees (15%), blue-collar workers (8%) and unemployed (5%). The remaining 15% are housewives, students, self-employed, etc. ^[4]

 

True, none of this means that the SPD has ceased to be a bourgeois workers’ party, given its close connections with the trade union federation and other workers’ organizations. Furthermore, many pensioner members were previously workers. But it is clear that the party has substantially weakened its links with the working class and barely represents the working class in its composition, but rather the oldest and most-privileged (Beamte!) sectors of the working class as well as a sector of the lower middle class.

 

The situation is similar to that of the Spanish PSOE. The party has moved dramatically to the right and has for decades adhered to the neoliberal agenda. Its electoral support has halved since the beginning of the new historic period which began with the start of the Great Recession – dropping from 43.9% (2008) to 22.0% (2015) of the votes cast. The party’s constituency is dominated by “inactive” people (i.e., pensioners) who constitute 41.4% of its entire membership ^[5] (see Figure 4).

 

 

Figure 4: Distribution of Supporters of Political Parties in Spain, 2015 ^[6]

 

 

 

 

However, despite this decline and the progressive aging of its membership, a majority of them are from the working class. Also, the PSOE still maintains close relations with the UGT, one of the two major trade union federations in Spain. However, this close relationship helped bring the UGT leadership (together with the Stalinist-led CCOO union), to sign a “social pact” with the then PSOE-led government. This pact is more appropriately termed an “anti-social pact,” and included increasing the official retirement age from 65 to 67.

 

The French Socialist Party, too, is deeply in crisis, having been transformed into a neoliberal party long ago. This crisis has accelerated since President Hollande’s ascension to power in 2012. Under his leadership, the PSF has waged unprecedented attacks on democratic rights (an indefinite “state of emergency,” since November 2015; anti-democratic amendments to the constitution; thousands of raids against Muslim migrants, etc.). Furthermore, Hollande’s government has engaged in a series of imperialist wars in Mali, the Central African Republic, Iraq and Syria.

 

Unsurprisingly, these developments go hand in hand with the decline of the party. While it officially had a membership of 203,000 in 2009, this figure declined to about 120,000 in 2015. Since Hollande took power, 40,000 of the PSF’s members have left the party. ^[7]

 

No less important is the traditionally petty-bourgeois social composition of the PSF – a characteristic which doubtless has exacerbated in the last few years. According to the French political scientists Laurent Bouvet, only 16% of PSF members are workers and low-ranking wage earners as opposed to 35% who belong to higher management and the professions. The party’s membership is also strongly dominated by the relatively privileged public sector employees (58% of all members). Like all other social democratic parties, PSF members has a high average age (67% being above 50 years old). Furthermore, Bouvet reports: “It [the PSF’s electorate, Ed.] comprises mainly voters from the middle and upper strata and few from the working classes (especially from the social and occupational groups »employees« and »workers,« who represent more than 50 percent of the active population in France). Furthermore, the proportion of voters from the public sector is particularly significant in relation to their weight in the active population.” ^[8]

 

Furthermore, nearly one quarter of all party members are elected representatives in municipal, regional, or national parliaments, governmental authorities, etc. [9]

 

The British Labour Party underwent a very similar development until the summer of last year (2015). When the Blair government took power in 1997, it abolished the party’s close links with the trade unions (albeit these links still do exist) and deleted the party program’s famous Clause 4 which declared the goal of nationalizing key sectors of British industry. Blair’s government implemented a neoliberal agenda and was a driving force in the imperialist war offensive in the Middle East. In fact, the “social democrat” Blair was the closest collaborator of US-President Bush and his militaristic, neo-conservative administration. Likewise the Labour Party has proven to be a loyal supporter of Israel and the latter’s colonial wars against the Palestinian people. Recently, despite the new left-reformist leadership of Corbyn, the party has started to expel Anti-Zionist members. ^[10]

 

Like in other countries, the Labour Party’s membership figures declined from about 400,000 individual members in 1997 to about 200,000 in 2015. However, with the successful campaign of the left-reformist Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn in summer 2015, this decline has been turned around. Despite open hostility by the pro-Blairite party establishment, Corbyn’s campaign was based on an anti-austerity and anti-militaristic platform which created huge enthusiasm among young people. In the space of a few months, the Labour Party’s “membership jumped from 201,293 on 6 May 2015, the day before the general election, to 388,407 on 10 January 2016.” ^[11]

 

This development is an important indicator that bourgeois workers’ parties, even after a long period of decline, can revive and be rejuvenated if newly-radicalized youth and workers see no alternative to them to politically express their desire for change. Labour’s membership comeback also demonstrates how wrong numerous centrists (like, for example, the CWI) were when they declared in the early 1990s that the Labour Party (and social democratic parties in general) are no longer bourgeois workers’ parties. We authentic Marxists have always rejected this assumption while, at the same time, having also consistently denounced the opportunistic adaption to Labourism and never-ending entryism as practiced by the CWI’s former comrades, the IMT of Ted Grant and Alan Woods.

 

While we are not aware of a concrete study of the party’s social composition, an internal report which was recently published contains some interesting conclusions. The British newspaper The Guardian reported about the findings of this report: “The report portrays a party in transition, attracting a higher proportion of new members from wealthy inner-city areas. While there has been a dramatic rise in members across the entire party, Labour’s traditional supporters from poorer parts of society are now a smaller proportion of the total membership. (…) But the report’s summary warns: ’Groups which are over-represented as Labour party members tend to be long-term homeowners from urban areas (particularly inner city area) who have high levels of disposable income.’ ’Those who are under-represented tend to be either young singles/families who rent properties on a short-term basis and require financial assistance or those who live in rural communities.’ (…) It points out that ‘high-status city dwellers living in central locations and pursuing careers with high rewards are highly over-represented.’ ’As a group they make up 4% of the general population in contrast to 11.2% of party membership,’ it says.” ^[12]

 

Similar developments can be observed in the Austrian social democratic party and even more in the Irish Labour Party. The latter suffered an historic defeat in the 2016 elections after having participated in an aggressive pro-austerity government since 2011. It lost two third of its voters (dropping from 19.5% to 6.6% of the votes cast) and most of its parliamentary seats (from 37 to 7).

 

Finally, one should not forget the sad fate of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party in Italy. Both the PSI as well as the PCI simply dissolved themselves and fused with openly bourgeois parties.

 

The Stalinist and ex-Stalinist parties have faced a somewhat different fate, but they too are in crisis. With important exceptions, they have not participated in government coalitions and thus have avoided the same sharp decline in membership that the neoliberalized social democratic parties have experienced, because they could still present themselves as anti-austerity opposition parties which enabled them, to a certain degree, to attract workers and youth who were disgusted by social democracy. This, for example, was evinced with electoral rise of the Italian Partito della Rifondazione Comunista which split from the PCI when the latter dissolved. A similar manifestation occurred in Germany with the founding of LINKE after the ex-Stalinist PDS in Eastern Germany fused with the West German WASG, which had previously split off from the SPD. And in France, the Front de Gauche (FdG) – a fusion of the ex-Stalinist PCF and the Parti de Gauche, the latter having split from the PSF – experienced some electoral successes, as did the Spanish Izquierda Unida (which was initiated by the Stalinist PCE).

 

However, the respective successes of these ex-Stalinist parties – most of which are united in the Party of the European Left (PEL) – was not sustainable. In France, the PCF participated in the neoliberal PSF-led government of Lionel Jospin in 1997-2002 which implemented many privatization programs and took part in the NATO wars against Serbia and Afghanistan. The PCF was severely punished for this betrayal during the 2002 presidential election when its general secretary, Robert Hue, received only 3.37% of the vote, less than the centrist-Trotskyist candidates Arlette Laguiller (5.72%) and Olivier Besancenot (4.25%). Later, after the creation of the FdG, the PDF revived. But in the last several years, the FdG has been plagued by internal tensions and PdG leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon – the FdG’s candidate in the 2012 presidential elections who received 11.1% of the vote –is currently preparing a separate project.

 

In Germany, LINKE has continually been moving to the right. In the first decade of the new millennium, this party participated in a regional coalition government in Berlin with the SPD and was responsible for implementing various privatization programs. Some of its leaders openly supported Israel’s wars against Gaza in 2008/09 and subsequently. The party officially forbids its members to support solidarity activities with the Palestinian people in Gaza (like participating in the Freedom Flotilla) or supporting the boycott campaign against the apartheid State of Israel. ^[13] Locally, Sahra Wagenknecht, the chairwomen of the LINKE parliamentary group, recently stated that refugees in Germany are only “guests” and if they do not behave like “guests” and respect the German law, they should be expelled from the country! ^[14] LINKE’s obvious pandering to the ruling class in order to be accepted as a coalition partner is both embarrassing and disgraceful.

 

In passing, we note that the same pro-imperialist and pro-Zionist policy has being practiced for years by the LINKE’s sister party in Austria – the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ). As we have reported elsewhere, leading officials of the PEL and the KPÖ (as well as their Zionist pro-war allies) have for more than a decade repeatedly made public accusations against the RCIT – including in the bourgeois press – claiming that we espouse “Anti-Semitism,” “revolutionary insanity,” etc. ^[15]

 

Despite all their opportunism, or rather because of it, LINKE continues to lose members – dropping from 78,046 (2009) to 60,547 (2014). ^[16] In contrast to right-wing parties, it has proven itself completely incapable of profiting from the decline of social democracy and increasing unrest among the working class and youth.

 

The same is true for the Spanish IU. After some electoral successes, it suffered several defeats and has been overshadowed by the rise of the left-wing populist Podemos party. During the most recent, December 2015 elections, IU received only 3.7% of the vote. In addition to its working class base, IU somehow remarkably still counts among its supporters a significant sector of very professional, well-paid middle class individuals – the gauche divine, as the Spanish sociologist Jorge Galindo calls them. ^[17]

 

In Italy, Fausto Bertinotti’s PRC collapsed after it twice entered neoliberal governments and supported austerity attacks as well as the imperialist occupation of Afghanistan. Since its collapse, the PRC has been unable to garner sufficient votes to pass the electoral threshold and thus currently has no seats in parliament.

 

Other Stalinist parties who remained outside of the PEL also face stagnation. Despite years of general strikes and political upheavals in Greece, the KKE has been unable to make any electoral advances, and draws an unimpressive 4-6% of the vote. Similarly, in Portugal the PCP, which runs together with the Green Party, has steadily maintained only 7-8.8% of the vote in all elections since 1991. None of these traditional reformist parties has proven itself capable of gaining in strength despite repeated waves of radicalization among the youth and workers, who instead have more readily been able to identify with newer formations (like SYRIZA or the Portuguese Bloco de Esquerda).

 

The decline of the traditional reformist parties has gone hand in hand with a substantial weakening of the trade unions. While an extensive study of the trade union movement is beyond the scope of this present document, we must nevertheless point to the fact that in the old imperialist countries (North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia), on the average trade unions have lost about half of their members since the 1980s. Trade union density in the OECD countries has decreased from 34% (1978) to 17.0% (2010). In France, the decline has been even more severe during the same period, membership having shrunken from 20.5% to 7.7%. In Germany, membership approximately halved from 35.5% to 18.1%, in Britain the drop was similar, from 48.8% to 25.8%, and in Italy, while the negative trend has been less precipitous, the reduction in trade union membership has gone from 50.4% to 37.3% (see Table 8).

 

 

 

Table 8: Trade Union Density (%) in Selected OECD Countries, 1978-2013 ^[18]

 

1978                       2013

 

Australia                              49.7%                    17.0%

 

France                                   20.5%                    7.7%

 

Germany                             35.5%                    18.1%

 

Italy                                       50.4%                    37.3%

 

Japan                                    32.6%                    17.8%

 

Britain                                  48.8%                    25.8%

 

USA                                       34,0%                    10.8%

 

OECD                                   34,0%                    18.1%

 

 

 

The bourgeoisification and decline of the reformist parties has not been confined to Europe alone, but has been witnessed in a number of important semi-colonial countries. In South Africa, the Stalinist SACP has undergone intense bourgeoisification. As part of the ANC, the SACP has been part of the government for more than two decades (1994). Today the party has five ministers and three deputy ministers in the coalition cabinet. Its thoroughly reactionary nature was shockingly revealed during the Marikana massacre of 2012 when the SACP leadership supported the killing of miners on strike. Later they sided with the collaborationist pro-government COSATU leadership against the more militant unions which coalesced around NUMSA. The SACP is a prime example of a party which formally adheres to the principles of “Marxism-Leninism” while in practice acts as a spearhead of capitalist counterrevolution. ^[19]

 

A similar example is the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) in Brazil. The PT emerged in the 1980s as a militant left-reformist workers’ party closely related with the radical trade union movement. However, it subsequently formed a popular-front coalition with bourgeois forces (like the PMDB) and has been in power since 2002. (This, of course, is liable to change in the upcoming weeks and months with the coup d’état engineered by right-wing forces – at this stage manifesting itself in the senate trial of the impeached president Dilma Rousseff). As a result of its bourgeoisification, PT increasingly acquiesced to neoliberal demands by pursuing austerity programs. The party is intimately connected with various prominent capitalist tycoons, and thus has unsurprisingly been involved in various corruption scandals. ^[20]

 

In India too, we have a good example of the bourgeoisification and decline of a reformist parties in the evolution of the Indian CPI(M). This party ruled West-Bengal, the fourth most populous states in the country, for 34 consecutive years (1977-2011). During this period, the party not only suppressed peasant rebellions but increasingly collaborated with imperialist monopolies. It dispossessed peasants whose land was handed over to multi-national corporations, while unleashing the police and its own party thugs against those who fought back. Unsurprisingly, on the backdrop of massive protests, the CPI(M) lost power in the elections of 2011. ^[21]

 

The Marxist Classics on the Labor Bureaucracy

 

All these developments are hardly surprising, because both the reformist parties as well as the trade unions are dominated by the conservative labor bureaucracy and their social base – the labor aristocracy, i.e., the upper strata of the working class which is extremely privileged and bribed by the bourgeoisie. Marxism characterizes the labor bureaucracy in their twin versions – in the reformist party as well as in the trade union – as agents of the ruling class inside the workers’ movement. The labor bureaucracy is inextricably linked with the capitalist state and the bourgeoisie via countless bonds (positions in parliaments, social security institutions, other state institutions, corporations, etc.) These privileges are based on the super-exploitation of oppressed peoples by the imperialist monopolies and constitute the objective economic sources from which the labor bureaucracy and labor aristocracy are bribed, and in this way tie them to the rule of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

 

Of course, since the working class forms the social base of the labor bureaucracy, the latter can come under pressure from below in periods of heightened class struggle. In such periods it can even be positioned at the top of a strike movement – or better, be dragged there – and half-heartedly implement reforms as a governmental party. However, it will always act with the purpose of undermining all forms of independent proletarian activity and liquidate any radical movement which could endanger the capitalist system.

 

The following quotes from Lenin and Trotsky demonstrate that this was the view of the Marxist classics. Hence, the leader of the Bolshevik stated in 1916: „… objectively the opportunists are a section of the petty bourgeoisie and of a certain strata of the working class who have been bribed out of imperialist superprofits and converted to watchdogs of capitalism and corruptors of the labour movement.“ ^[22]

 

In a preface for his book on imperialism, written in 1920, Lenin explained the economic basis of reformism and the role of its leaders:

 

“Obviously, out of such enormous superprofits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their "own" country) it is possible to bribe the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy. And that is just what the capitalists of the "advanced" countries are doing: they are bribing them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect, overt and covert. This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism. In the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie they inevitably, and in no small numbers, take the side of the bourgeoisie, the "Versaillese" against the "Communards". Unless the economic roots of this phenomenon are understood and its political and social significance is appreciated, not a step can be taken toward the solution of the practical problem of the communist movement and of the impending social revolution.” ^[23]

 

And in another document Lenin stated: „Opportunism, or reformism, inevitably had to grow into a phenomenon of world-wide importance, socialist-imperialism, or social-chauvinism, because imperialism brought to the fore a handful of very rich, advanced nations, engaged in plundering the whole world, and thereby enabled the bourgeoisie of those countries, out of their monopolist superprofits (imperialism is monopoly capitalism), to bribe the upper strata of the working class.“ ^[24]

 

After Lenin’s death, Trotsky and his co-fighters continued the struggle for revolutionary Marxism. Based on the experience of reformism, and in particular its English version, Trotsky wrote:

 

„The question of the source of this bureaucratic danger is no less important. (…) In the capitalist states, the most monstrous forms of bureaucratism are to be observed precisely in the trade unions. It is enough to look at America, England and Germany. Amsterdam is the most powerful international organisation of the trade union bureaucracy. It is thanks to it that the whole structure of capitalism now stands upright above all in Europe and especially in England. If there were not a bureaucracy of the trade unions, then the police, the army, the courts, the lords, the monarchy would appear before the proletarian masses as nothing but pitiful and ridiculous playthings. The bureaucracy of the trade unions is the backbone of British imperialism. It is by means of this bureaucracy that the bourgeoisie exists, not only in the metropolis, but in India, in Egypt, and in the other colonies. One would have to be completely blind to say to the English workers: “Be on guard against the conquest of power and always remember that your trade unions are the antidote to the dangers of the state.” The Marxist will say to the English workers: “The trade union bureaucracy is the chief Instrument, for your oppression by the bourgeois state. Power must be wrested from the hands of the bourgeoisie, and for that its principal agent, the trade union bureaucracy, must be overthrown.” Parenthetically, it is especially for this reason that the bloc of Stalin with the strikebreakers was so criminal.

 

From the example of England, one sees very clearly how absurd it is to counterpose, as if it were a question of two different principles, the trade union organisation and the state organisation. In England, more than anywhere else, the state rests upon the back of the working class which constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population of the country. The mechanism is such that the bureaucracy is based directly on the workers, and the state indirectly, through the intermediary of the trade union bureaucracy.

 

Up to now, we have not mentioned the Labour Party, which in England, the classic country of trade unions, is only a political transposition of the same trade union bureaucracy. The same leaders guide the trade unions, betray the general strike, lead the electoral campaign and later on sit in the ministries. The Labour Party and the trade unions – these are not two principles, they are only a technical division of labour. Together they are the fundamental support of the domination of the English bourgeoisie. The latter cannot be overthrown without overthrowing the Labourite bureaucracy. And that cannot be attained by counterposing the trade union as such to the state as such, but only by the active opposition of the Communist Party to the Labourite bureaucracy in all fields of social life: in the trade unions, in strikes, in the electoral campaign, in parliament, and in power.“ ^[25]

 

These conclusions have not lost their relevance. Quite the contrary, given the crisis of revolutionary leadership and the massive expansion of resources to bribe the labor bureaucracy and aristocracy through the intensification of the imperialist super-exploitation of oppressed peoples, these features have even substantially increased. We drew attention to this development already in the RCIT Program where we stated: “In this deep crisis of leadership - combined with the possibilities of the imperialist bourgeoisie for the systematic bribery of the labour bureaucracy and aristocracy - the ultimate cause can be found in the extraordinary bourgeoisification of the labour movement and the De-revolutionisation of Marxism, as is has been distorted by left reformism, centrism and the left-wing academics in recent decades.” ^[26]

 

Furthermore, as we have repeatedly emphasized, the deepening of the capitalist crisis in the age of globalization and in particular in the present historic period of capitalist decay which commenced in 2008, have only accelerated this development. The capitalist crisis forces all governments to intensify the attacks on the working class and oppressed people and to accelerate the rivalry against other capitalist states. The ruling classes are forced to implement bigger and bigger austerity packages, to attack more and more democratic rights at home, to wage more and more colonial wars in the South, and to whip up chauvinism against imperialist rivals. As we stated above, the entire raison d'être of the labor bureaucracy is to be admitted by the bourgeoisie into the government and other areas of the state apparatus. For this reason, the reformists are forced (not too much against their will) to adapt to the policy of the ruling class which again is adapted to the objective needs of imperialist capitalism. Therefore it is unavoidable that social democracy and Stalinism become more and more bourgeois and reactionary.

 

Of course, this is not a unilateral process. Since reformism is a contradictory phenomenon – with the labor bureaucracy constituting a petty-bourgeois stratum serving the bourgeoisie but based on the upper strata of the working class – the class contradictions in the society leave their mark on reformism too. Hence under specific circumstances, reformism can again temporarily swing to the left, albeit mainly in words but hardly in deeds (as we currently observe in Corbyn’s Labour Party).

 

However, in such a period the possibilities substantially increase that the accelerated contradictions between the classes and the radicalization of the working class and the youth lead to either splits in the reformist parties and / or the emergence of new reformist or petty-bourgeois left-wing populist formations. This is exactly what we have seen in the recent years.

 

The Rise of New Reformist Parties and Petty-Bourgeois Populism

 

Latin America clearly was the most important region in which petty-bourgeois populist formations dramatically grew during recent years. This rise took place after two decades of unchecked neoliberal offensives by the imperialist monopolies and their local bourgeois governments, with devastating consequences for the workers, peasants and urban poor. ^[27]

 

As a result this has led to a substantial weakening of the trade unions, with the important exception of Brazil, in the 1980s and 1990s as we see in Table 9.

 

 

 

Table 9: Trade Union Density in Latin America ^[28]

 

Country                                                1982                       1998                       Change                  Percent Change

 

Argentina                                            42                           22                           –20                         –47

 

Bolivia                                                  25                           9                              –16                         –65

 

Peru                                                       21                           6                              –15                         –73

 

Venezuela                                            26                           14                           –12                         –47

 

Uruguay                                               21                           12                           –9                           –43

 

Colombia                                             9                              6                              –3                           –36

 

Mexico                                                  25                           22                           –3                           –11

 

Honduras                                            8                              6                              –2                           –30

 

Ecuador                                                11                           9                              –2                           –21

 

Costa Rica                                           13                           12                           –1                           –9

 

Chile                                                      12                           13                           1                              8

 

El Salvador                                          4                              5                              1                              28

 

Dominican Republic                        12                           14                           2                              19

 

Brazil                                                    15                           24                           9                              57

 

 

 

However, with the turn of the millennium, Latin America experienced a sharp upswing in class struggle. At the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002, the popular masses in Argentina rose up in a spontaneous rebellion against the neoliberal government of Fernando de la Rúa. These “revolutionary days” or “Argentinazo” resulted in the overthrow of four presidents in only one week! Furthermore popular assemblies were created in Buenos Aires and other cities, and a number of factories abandoned by capitalists were occupied and run by workers. ^[29]

 

Likewise, the workers and poor in Bolivia heroically rebelled against reactionary liberal governments resulting in a series of strikes and uprisings in 2003-05. ^[30]

 

Venezuela already witnessed the heroic popular uprising against the IMF-dictated austerity program in February and March 1989 which resulted in a brutal crackdown by the government in which about 2,000 people killed (“Caracazo”).

 

Given the lack of revolutionary leadership these mass protests resulted in the strengthening of existing left-reformist or populist formations.

 

In 1998, Hugo Chavez won the presidential election after he transformed his underground organization MBR-200 into an open political party (Movimiento V [Quinta] República, MVR). Chavez successfully built the MVR as a mass party rooted among the urban poor. For this he utilized the so-called Circulos Bolivarianos which spontaneously emerged in 2000 and which were a kind of community groups which addressed issues such as health and education. Each circle had 7-11 members. After some time the party officially had 200,000 circles (as the branches were called) and 2.2 million members (in a country of 30 million people!). These figures may have been inflated, but beyond doubt the MVR had built a significant social base among the popular masses. However, the populist leadership under Chavez never actually wanted that these Circulos become real organs of power (like the soviets in Russia 1917), but rather that they should remain pressure-groups to increase the influence of the party among the masses and fight back against the counter-revolutionary mobilizations of the right-wing opposition. They proved particularly valuable during the mass demonstrations against the failed reactionary coup d’état in April 2002. ^[31]

 

In Bolivia, Evo Morales built a party which was later named Movimiento al Socialismo–Instrumento Político por la Soberanía de los Pueblos (Movement for Socialism–Political Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples, MAS-IPSP). This was a radical petty-bourgeois populist party based strongly on the coca growing peasants and the indigenous people. Among its founding member organizations were the largest peasant federation – the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB) – as well as another peasant union (the Confederación Sindical de Colonizadores de Bolivia). The party also created close links with the Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas de Bolivia, a mass movement representing the indigenous peoples. (The indigenous peoples together constitute 59% of the Bolivian population and, historically, have been severely discriminated against by the white minority.)

 

Later the MAS-IPSP also succeeded in getting the support of important workers’ and popular organizations like the Regional Workers Centre (COR) from El Alto, the rural teachers federation and Fencomin which represents the mining cooperatives (founded by former miners who played a crucial role in all revolutionary events in Bolivia since the 1940s, but which were crushed after an heroic uprising in 1985).

 

In Brazil, as already stated above, the PT could tremendously strengthen itself. From 1988 onwards it won a number of local and regional elections. In 2002 its leader, Lula da Silva, won the presidential elections and formed a popular-front government.

 

Similar developments took place in other Latin American countries. In Argentina, a progressive, bourgeois-populist force which emerged out of the Peronist movement coalesced around the Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. First Néstor and later Cristina Fernández de Kirchner headed the country as president from 2003 until 2015. Kirchnerism succeeded in incorporating numerous popular organizations which had emerged during the Argentinazo in 2001/02.

 

Likewise, in Ecuador we saw the Alianza Patria Altiva y Soberana (PAIS, Proud and Sovereign Fatherland) led by Rafael Correa who became president of the country in 2007. This alliance combines a nationalist program with socialist rhetoric and social reforms. PAIS has an official membership of 1.5 million people (in a country of 16 million people!)

 

In their first phase, most of these political movements can be characterized as progressive petty-bourgeois populist forces. (Exceptions are Kirchernism in Argentina, given the decades-long bourgeois-populist character of the Peronist movement which spawned it, and the Brazilian PT which was founded as a workers’ party.) These progressive populist forces formations were not workers’ organizations, since their main base was not in mass working class organizations (like the trade unions, etc., or key parties like the Stalinists); neither were they bourgeois parties, as their emerged out of radical mass mobilizations and struggles against the bourgeoisie. Rather they were dominated by petty-bourgeois forces (poor peasants, the lower urban middle class, etc.) which were dramatically affected by the devastating consequences of capitalist globalization. Furthermore, in many cases they succeeded in gaining the support of important sectors of the working class including trade unions. For all these reasons we characterize these parties, in their first phase, as progressive petty-bourgeois populist forces which had strong roots among the popular masses.

 

However, as Marxists know, in the long run petty-bourgeois parties cannot play an independent role. They have to follow either the working class – represented by a revolutionary mass party – or the bourgeoisie. The temporary coalition government of the Bolsheviks with the Left S.R. from October 1917 until the summer of 1918 is an example of the first case. However, if there is no Bolshevik-like party, sooner or later the petty-bourgeois parties align themselves with sectors of the bourgeoisie and imperialism.

 

Trotsky summarized this historic lesson in his book on the permanent revolution:

 

“[N]o matter how great the revolutionary role of the peasantry may be, it nevertheless cannot be an independent role and even less a leading one. The peasant follows either the worker or the bourgeois. (…) A democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, as a regime that is distinguished from the dictatorship of the proletariat by its class content, might be realized only in a case where an independent revolutionary party could be constituted, expressing the interests of the peasants and in general of petty bourgeois democracy – a party capable of conquering power with this or that degree of aid from the proletariat, and of determining its revolutionary programme. As all modern history attests – especially the Russian experience of the last twenty-five years – an insurmountable obstacle on the road to the creation of a peasants’ party is the petty-bourgeoisie’s lack of economic and political independence and its deep internal differentiation. By reason of this the upper sections of the petty-bourgeoisie (of the peasantry) go along with the big bourgeoisie in all decisive cases, especially in war and in revolution; the lower sections go along with the proletariat; the intermediate section being thus compelled to choose between the two extreme poles. Between Kerenskyism and the Bolshevik power, between the Kuomintang and the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is not and cannot be any intermediate stage, that is, no democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants.” ^[32]

 

Indeed, in Russia we could see that first the Mensheviks and the right wing of the S.R. aligned themselves with the White counterrevolutions after the October uprising. Later, they were joined by the left S.R. after the latter broke with the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1918.

 

This experience has been repeated numerous times. For example, with the end of the 1911-1917 civil war which broke out following the Mexican Revolution, the new regime kept the capitalist relations of production and consolidated the power of the bourgeoisie (albeit with some reforms and a different political regime). ^[33]

 

A similar development took place in Bolivia after the revolution of 1952 brought the MNR to power with the help of the working class – in particular the miners. While many mines were nationalized and some land reforms took place, the bourgeoisie could again consolidate its power under the regime of the MNR which ruled until 1964. ^[34]

 

It is crucial to understand that, once they take power, petty-bourgeois populist parties are invariably forced to transform their character since they must find a stable social base from which they can consolidate their power. In other words, they have to align themselves with one of the main social classes in society, i.e. the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. Under the conditions of capitalism, taking power usually mean that a radical petty-bourgeois populist party has to create close bonds with sectors of the bourgeoisie. Since the party does not aim to abolish capitalism, the bourgeoisie invariably retain their economic and social power as the ruling class. Furthermore, the capitalist state apparatus – i.e., the bureaucracy of the army, police, legal authority, public administration, etc. – is kept in place, which also plays an important factor in integrating and bourgeoisifying a populist party which recently took power. In short, all petty-bourgeois populist parties which take over the government in a capitalist system eventually build links with sectors of the bourgeoisie and one imperialist power or another. In this way they become popular-front bourgeois parties.

 

Of course, we cannot exclude here the possibility for exceptions. One important such exception was Castro’s Movimiento 26 de Julio which took power in Cuba in January 1959 and which was later forced – under the pressure both of US imperialism and the revolutionary upheaval of the workers and peasants – to go much farther then it initially planned. As we have elaborated elsewhere, ^[35] as a result of these developments, the Castroites established a bureaucratic anti-capitalist workers’ government in the summer of 1960, which in turn led to the creation of a degenerated workers’ state in Cuba. But here again, while the Castroites expropriated the bourgeoisie in the economic field, the also expropriated the working class in the political field.

 

Such an exception was already foreseen by Trotsky himself as he wrote in the Transitional Program:

 

“Is the creation of such a government by the traditional workers’ organizations possible? Past experience shows, as has already been stated, that this is, to say the least, highly improbable. However, one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie. In any case one thing is not to be doubted: even if this highly improbable variant somewhere at some time becomes a reality and the “workers’ and farmers’ government” in the above-mentioned sense is established in fact, it would represent merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictatorship of the proletariat.” ^[36]

 

However, as we have already said, usually the petty-bourgeois populist party in power eventually becomes a bourgeois populist party, as it fuses with the bourgeois state apparatus and with a sector of the capitalist class. In cases where it undertakes substantial nationalizations, it may also create a new sector of the capitalist class – a class of state-capitalist managers and associated businessmen. This has been the case in countries like Mexico, Iran or, more recently, Venezuela.

 

Through such a process, such a party becomes a popular front because it combines sectors of both the capitalist class as well as of the popular masses. Likewise, in power such a populist party will establish relations with one imperialist power or another. For example, the Mexican predecessor organizations of the PRI under Plutarco Calles and Lázaro Cárdenas tried to get the support of US imperialism against the British. So did the Peruvian APRA. Another example is the attempt of Indian nationalists under Subhas Chandra Bose who, while not in power, aligned with the German and Japanese imperialists in order to liberate India from the British.

 

A similar process took place in Latin America during the past decade. The petty-bourgeois populists – also dubbed “Castro-Chavistas” – defended capitalist property relations after coming to power. While they introduced several political, economic and social reforms under the massive pressure of the popular masses (including nationalization or reform of some key enterprises like the oil industry), they didn’t touch the economic base of the capitalist class as such – their private property in the industrial, service and financial sectors. Nor did the Castro-Chavistas fundamentally change the apparatus of the state. Of course they replaced a number of key figures, but the bureaucratic caste as a whole with its tens of thousands of state officials, remained in place.

 

This meant that the old ruling class, while allowing the new populist forces to take over the government, could essentially keep its wealth and its economic base. Consequently, when the populists in power lose much of their popular support, the old ruling class is still in possession of all the resources they need to easily remove them from power.

 

Furthermore, the Castro-Chavistas channeled the revolutionary energy of the popular masses towards passive support in elections or – in emergency situations – used them for temporary and controlled mass mobilizations against the counter-revolutionary forces (as, for example, happened in Venezuela in April 2002 when their was an attempted coup against the regime of Chavez).

 

In fact, Chavez, Morales, Correa, etc. have altered the concrete configuration of the capitalist system by expanding the state-capitalist sector (similar to a number of Western European capitalist countries after World War II). In this way they formed close relations with the Boliburguesía, as the Bolivarian capitalists are called in Venezuela. ^[37]

 

The stint of the Castro-Chavistas in power also enabled them to expand social benefits for the popular masses (like the Misiones Bolivarianas in Venezuela or the Bolsa Família in Brazil). This was, however, only possible because of exceptional and temporary circumstances. During the first decade of the new millennium, various Latin American countries reaped tremendous economic gains from the global rise of prices of raw materials – in particular oil and gas, but also soya in the case of Argentina and lithium in the case of Bolivia.

 

In addition, the rise of China as a new great power rivaling US imperialism – which traditionally dominated Latin America – granted the Castro-Chavista governments some room to maneuver and withstand the pressure of US imperialism and the IMF. As a result, China has become one of the largest trading partners of and investors in Latin America. ^[38]

 

However, the decline of the world economy has led to a fall in export commodity prices – in particular for oil and soya (see Figure 5) – with disastrous effects on the liquidity of the Castro-Chavista governments and their ability to fund the social benefits they previously instituted.

 

 

Figure 5: Price Indices of Selected Groups of Commodities, August 2013–September 2015 ^[39]

 

 

 

 

 

It is precisely on this backdrop that we have witnessed the exacerbating crisis and decline of the various populist or popular front governments in Latin America since 2015. These circumstances have has already resulted in the Macri victory in Argentina, the impeachment process against Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, and the MUD victory at the last elections in Venezuela. ^[40]

 

In Cuba, the Stalinist Castro leadership has opening led the country towards capitalism, with massive layoffs of workers in state industries and the opening of its economy to Chinese, US and other foreign corporations. ^[41]

 

This is hardly a surprising development, as the Castro-Chavistas never even attempted to expropriate the capitalist class. As a result, they were invariably unable to overcome the fundamental causes of poverty and unemployment. They were able to temporary mitigate the consequences of the fundamental economic contradictions in their countries by taking advantage of the raw material price boom. But when this boom ended, the social reforms had to stop and the Castro-Chavistas, having already demoralized their supporters during many years of bureaucratically-imposed political passivity, have now themselves started to implement austerity policies.

 

Historically, the ideological origins of Bolivarian populism can be traced back to the Russian S.R. party which similarly sought to define a theoretical hodgepodge composed of the working class, the peasantry and the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia as a single unity they called the "revolutionary people." The S.R., and Bolivarian populism in its wake, rejected the strict division of these social forces into distinct classes, with the working class being the only consistently revolutionary force and the other social layers constituting its allies. ^[42]

 

However, despite the current crisis of the Castro-Chavista regimes, it is important to indicate that these petty-bourgeois populist parties both still exist and continue to exert massive influence on the workers and oppressed. Secondly, as long as there is no mass-based revolutionary party as an alternative, a revival of these petty-bourgeois populist parties can by no means be precluded, let alone the emergence of some new influential petty-bourgeois populist parties.

 

As we have stated in our Theses on the United Front Tactic and in various other documents, the emergence of petty-bourgeois populist forces is by no means limited to Latin American. We need only cite Julius Malema‘s EFF in South Africa; various Islamist-type petty-bourgeois populist forces like Hamas, Dr. al-Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT, Pakistan People's Movement), and the Houthis in Yemen; and various democratic nationalist or Islamist rebel organizations in Syria, Libya, and Egypt.

 

Similarly, various petty-bourgeois populist forces of the nationalist-type have played leading roles in the national liberation struggle of oppressed peoples in the semi-colonial world as well as in some imperialist countries. Until its defeat and demise in 2009, the LTTE (“Tamil Tigers”) in Sri Lanka was a prominent example of this, as were various petty-bourgeois nationalist forces in Kashmir and Balochistan (Pakistan). The Sinn Fein/IRA in Northern Ireland, before its 1998 capitulation, is another example. Herri Batasuna in the Basque Country and Candidatura d'Unitat Popular in Catalonia are also important progressive petty-bourgeois nationalist forces active within the Spanish state.

 

Recently Sinn Fein, which has for a long time been an opposition party in the Republic of Ireland, has significantly increased its influence by playing a leading role in the Right2Water campaign, which has become the largest social movement in Ireland for decades in its struggle against the imposing of water fees by the government as part of its austerity program to make ordinary citizen pay for the crisis of the banks. In the latest election (2016), Sinn Fein received 13.8% of the votes cast becoming the third-biggest party in Ireland’s parliament.

 

Yet another example of a specific type of petty-bourgeois populist party in an imperialist country is the Respect Party in Britain. Its most prominent leader is George Galloway, a long time MP from the left wing of the Labour Party. Galloway has been playing a prominent role in the movement against the imperialist wars in the Middle East and in solidarity with the Palestinian people. (However, he has also taken reactionary positions as, for example, his support for the Assad dictatorship against the Syrian Revolution and his collaboration with the right-wing racist UKIP party in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU). After Galloway’s 2003 expulsion from the Blairite Labour Party for his opposition to the imperialist war in Iraq, he founded Respect together with the centrist SWP and with the support of a number of Muslim migrant organizations. This amalgamation was the result of the anti-war movement in which Muslim migrant organizations played a major role. While Respect never succeeded in building a stable organized mass constituency, it has nevertheless been able to achieve some electoral successes, most prominently Galloway’s two elections to parliament (first in Bethnal Green and Bow 2005–10 and later in Bradford West 2012–15). These two successes were almost entirely based on the support of Muslim migrant communities who had previously supported the Labour Party, but who had broken with it given Labour’s submissive support for British participation in the imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and the rise of Islamophobic racism in Britain itself. There is no question that these Muslim migrant communities were politically dominated by a small, petty-bourgeois layer of small businessmen, doctors, religious leaders, etc. However, this does not change the fact that Respect has for some time become a political expression of the anti-imperialist and anti-racist protest of migrants.

 

There are also numerous petty-bourgeois populist organizations of migrants in other imperialist countries, as well as among the oppressed black and Latino minorities in the USA.

 

Of particular importance for revolutionaries are those developments in the working class which led to the formation of new workers’ parties. Naturally, revolutionaries advocate such a process, because it helps the workers’ vanguard to become politically independent both of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois parties on the one side or of rotten bureaucraticised bourgeois workers’ parties on the other. The most spectacular examples of new parties emerging from the workers’ movement in recent years have been the foundation of the Democratic Labor Party in South Korea, the Partido de los Trabajadores in Bolivia, SYRIZA in Greece and the Bloco de Esquerda (B.E.) in Portugal.

 

In Korea, the Democratic Labor Party is strongly tied to the KCTU, South Korea’s militant trade union federation. Founded in 2000, the DLP won 10 seats in the 2004 parliamentary election. However, the party later split and ultimately merged with other petty-bourgeois populist forces to constitute the Unified Progressive Party. The latter became the third largest party in parliament but was recently outlawed by the South Korean state because of its anti-imperialist position against US aggression towards North Korea.

 

The Bolivian Partido de los Trabajadores was created in 2013 with the support of the COB union federation, in particular that of the national miners union FSTMB. This development was a result of the disillusionment of many workers with Morales’ MAS government.

 

Another example, which has still not matured into a party, is the so-called United Front in South Africa. This is a political alliance which was initiated by the metal workers union NUMSA, the largest union in the COSATU federation until its split with the latter’s leadership. Unfortunately, the COSATU leadership is determined to follow the trodden path of the reformist Freedom Charter, the old ANC program from 1955, and could not bring itself to form a political party which would stand for election against the main government party, the ANC.

 

SYRIZA in Greece has been a somewhat different phenomenon since its emergence in 2004 as a coalition of Synaspismós (a “Eurocommunist” split from the Stalinist KKE) and several smaller left-reformist and centrist organizations. While for a number of years it remained a party with meager support, it experienced an electoral breakthrough in 2012, becoming the second largest party in parliament after garnering more than 16% of the vote. In the next elections (January 2015), SYRIZA was victorious wining 36.3% of the vote. It gained such mass support because of its anti-austerity program and its denunciation of the corrupt “old political class.” However, once in power it completely betrayed the interests of the workers and poor. It organized a popular referendum on the Memorandum of the EU Troika in July 2015 which ended with a resounding victory for “OXI” – “No” to the EU austerity programs. However, only weeks later the SYRIZA government signed the EU memorandum! ^[43]

 

The Portuguese Bloco de Esquerda, founded in 1999, is also a coalition of several centrist organizations of Trotskyist and Maoist origin. Like SYRIZA, it has gained popularity as a representative of the struggle against austerity. It soon entered parliament and in the most recent elections (October 2015) received 10.2% of the vote.

 

While both SYRIZA and B.E. were formed by organizations of the workers’ movement, initially neither had any significant organized mass base in the working class (B.E. still doesn’t have on). However, since their political reputation had remained unimpaired by participation in previous governments and the corrupt political establishment, they were able to become an expression of the political radicalization of sectors of the working class and the youth.

 

A somewhat different phenomenon is the Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores (FIT) in Argentina which is not a party but only an electoral alliance of three centrist Trotskyist organizations (PO, PTS and IS). However, its candidates gained 812,530 votes or 3.23% of the ballots cast in the presidential elections of November 2015.

 

Finally, there is Podemos in Spain which was founded in 2014 after years of mass protests and social polarization in the country. In 2011, Spain experienced a mass democratic movement (“Indignados”) and in the following years witnessed a number of protests against the harsh austerity programs of the conservative PP government and rising unemployment (half of Spain’s youth are without jobs). Podemos organized a mass demonstration in January 2015 in which more than 100,000 participated. Despite its brief existence, it has already become the second largest political party in Spain in terms of membership with nearly 400,000 members. It focuses its protests against the government’s austerity program, the monarchy, and the corrupt political system, and defends the right of national self-determination for the Basque region, Catalonia, etc.

 

Podemos is a progressive, petty-bourgeois populist party with a leadership strongly orientated towards the program and organization of the Chavista model. [44] Its social base is dominated by the youth of the impoverished lower middle strata. [45] However, there are also a number of workers among its supporters, as attested to by a number of circulos (local party branches) in working class districts in large cities. As can be seen in Figure 4 (above), 35% of Podemos supporters are either unemployed or have only a fixed-term contract.

 

Furthermore, Podemos has close relations with various grassroots organizations of workers and the lower middle class like committees of nurses, of victims of evictions from their apartments or houses because of the debt crisis. ^[46]

 

In summary, Podemos is yet another important example illustrating how, despite the lack of authentic revolutionary leadership, in the context of the historic crisis of capitalism, the coupling of traditional reformist parties and the radicalization of sectors of the working class and youth can, in the short run at least, successfully find expression in a non-revolutionary organizations.

 

As we have seen in the examples given above, circumstances can lead to one of three possible scenarios:

 

i) They can provoke the creation of new reformist workers’ parties or tremendously strengthen ones that were previously small (e.g., the PT in Bolivia, DLP in South Korea, SYRIZA in Greece, B.E. in Portugal).

 

ii) They can result in the formation of new (or very much strengthened) petty-bourgeois populist parties, not only in semi-colonial countries, but even in the imperialist countries (e.g., Castro-Chavismo in Latin America, PAT in Pakistan, Sinn Fein in Ireland, CUP, HB and Podemos in the Spanish State, Respect in Britain).

 

iii) They can also lead to the transformation of an old reformist party, through the mass influx of new and radical supporters, thereby transforming it into a left-reformist party (e.g., the Labour Party in Britain under Corbyn).

 

However, given the greatly volatile, revolutionary nature of the present historic period, it is hardly surprising that all these new reformist and populist formations are very instable. They can grow rapidly but, given their petty-bourgeois adaption to capitalism and their lack of a clear program and perspective, they fail to build a stable working class cadre. This, in short, explains the extremely instable nature of these parties.

 

The Marxist Classics on the Struggle for Proletarian Hegemony in the Liberation Movement

 

The united front tactic constitutes a crucial element in the revolutionary struggle for proletarian hegemony in several ways. First, by definition, the struggle for proletarian hegemony implies breaking the current petty-bourgeois or bourgeois hegemony of the liberation movement. In other words, the revolutionary party must strive to replace the current leadership position of the Castro-Chavista, Islamist-populist, left reformist, and other non-revolutionary forces. These leaderships – through their conciliations to the ruling class, their pacification of the revolutionary energy of the masses, through absorbing (or isolating) the best elements into the bourgeois state apparatus once they take power, etc. – obstruct the maturing and further development of the proletarian liberation movement. In this way they don’t serve the interests of the working class but rather those of the ruling class. Hence, only their replacement with a revolutionary leadership can ensure that the working class and the oppressed can successfully overthrow capitalism. This is the first and foremost task of the struggle for proletarian hegemony.

 

Secondly, and related to the first, revolutionaries must strive to overcome the petty-bourgeois dominance in the parties and organizations which stand at the head of the working class and oppressed. These parties are often dominated by a petty-bourgeois bureaucracy which obstructs the activity of the rank and file workers. Furthermore, there is often a disproportionally high influence of the petty-bourgeoisie (academics, lawyers, small businessmen, affluent community leaders, etc.) in the upper echelons of such parties.

 

Many times Lenin emphasized that it is crucial for revolutionaries to be aware of the internal social stratification of both the working class as well as of the poor petty-bourgeoisie. This, he argued, makes the united front tactic even more urgent.

 

„Capitalism would not be capitalism if the proletariat pur sang were not surrounded by a large number of exceedingly motley types intermediate between the proletarian and the semi-proletarian (who earns his livelihood in part by the sale of his labour-power), between the semi-proletarian and the small peasant (and petty artisan, handicraft worker and small master in general), between the small peasant and the middle peasant, and so on, and if the proletariat itself were not divided into more developed and less developed strata, if it were not divided according to territorial origin, trade, sometimes according to religion, and so on. From all this follows the necessity, the absolute necessity, for the Communist Party, the vanguard of the proletariat, its class-conscious section, to resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises with the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of the workers and small masters. It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply these tactics in order to raise – not lower – the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win.“ ^[47]

 

Finally, the popular front is the highest (or, more properly put, lowest), form of political subordination of the working class to the bourgeoisie. As we have mentioned above, this is a political alliance of parties of the proletariat and the peasantry with openly bourgeois forces. Such popular fronts constitute the biggest danger for the working class, since they inherently involve the workers’ political and organizational subordination to the bourgeoisie, lulling the former into a rosy program of pacifist and reformist illusions. Such subordination only weakens the working class and makes it incapable of struggling against future severe attacks by the ruling class. Hence Trotsky characterized the issue of the popular front as the “main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch.” Faced with the experience of the popular front in France and Spain in 1936, Trotsky wrote in a document adopted by a conference of the Movement for the Fourth International at that time:

 

“The July days [in Spain, Ed.] deepen and supplement the lessons of the June days in France with exceptional force. For the second time in five years the coalition of the labor parties with the Radical bourgeoisie has brought the revolution to the edge of the abyss. Incapable of solving a single one of the tasks posed by the revolution—since all these tasks boil down to one, namely, the crushing of the bourgeoisie—the People’s Front renders the existence of the bourgeois regime impossible and thereby provokes the fascist coup d’etat. By lulling the workers and peasants with parliamentary illusions, by paralyzing their will to struggle, the People’s Front creates favorable conditions for the victory of fascism. The policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie must be paid for by the proletariat with years of new torments and sacrifice, if not by decades of fascist terror.” ^[48]

 

Hence, the central task of united front tactic is to help the proletariat to overcome all these forms of subordination and to establish its hegemony within the liberation movement, i.e., to free itself from any bourgeois influence and to lead its allies – the poor peasantry, the urban poor, the impoverished lower middle strata, etc. – into the revolutionary liberation struggle against the capitalist system.

 

Lenin emphasized this issue many times.

 

“What must the policy of the Social-Democrats be? Either abstain, and, as socialists, stand aside from the liberals, who betray liberty and exploit the people, or give the lead to the democratic petty bourgeoisie that is capable of struggle, both against the Black Hundreds and against the liberals. (…) The latter policy is obligatory when the conditions of a bourgeois-democratic revolution obtain, when, in addition to the working class, there are certain bourgeois and petty-bourgeois strata capable of struggle for the democracy that is essential to the proletariat. In present-day Russia the second policy is obligatory. Without ever forgetting their socialist agitation and propaganda, and the organisation of the proletarians into a class, Social-Democrats must, jointly with the democratic petty bourgeoisie, crush both the Black Hundreds and the liberals, as the situation may demand.“ ^[49]

 

Explaining a key difference between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, he wrote in another article: “The struggle between Bolshevism and Menshevism is inseparably bound up with that history, being a struggle over the question whether to support the liberals or to overthrow the hegemony of the liberals over the peasantry.” ^[50]

 

In another article, he explained: “The hegemony of liberalism in the Russian movement for emancipation inevitably implies the weakness of this movement and the impregnability of the dominance of the die-hard landlords. Only the brushing aside of the liberals by the proletariat and the hegemony of the latter have afforded victories for the revolution and can give more of them in the future.” ^[51]

 

In the years following Lenin’s death, the Stalinists accused Trotsky of “neglecting” the necessity of the working class to seek an alliance with the poor peasantry. This was utter nonsense and only served the Stalinists to cover their own strategy of subordinating the interests of the working class to the political leaders of the petty bourgeoisie and the labor bureaucracy (e.g., the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee in 1925-27, Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, etc.).

 

Against these accusations, Trotsky replied that the alliance of the working class with the poor peasantry is crucial element of the Bolshevik strategy. However, such an alliance can be established on firm and stable ground only if it is not achieved by subordinating the proletariat to the leadership of the petty bourgeoisie (whose desire is rather to become part of the bourgeoisie), but rather in an alliance under the leadership of the working class. In fact, this is an indispensable part of his theory of permanent revolution.

 

In his book on permanent revolution, Trotsky explained:

 

„Then wherein lies the distinction between the advanced and the backward countries? The distinction is great, but it still remains within the limits of the domination of capitalist relationships. The forms and methods of the rule of the bourgeoisie differ greatly in different countries. At one pole, the domination bears a stark and absolute character: The United States. At the other pole finance capital adapts itself to the outlived institutions of Asiatic mediaevalism by subjecting them to itself and imposing its own methods upon them: India. But the bourgeoisie rules in both places. From this it follows that the dictatorship of the proletariat also will have a highly varied character in terms of the social basis, the political forms, the immediate tasks and the tempo of work in the various capitalist countries. But to lead the masses of the people to victory over the bloc of the imperialists, the feudalists and the national bourgeoisie – this can be done only under the revolutionary hegemony of the proletariat, which transforms itself after the seizure of power into the dictatorship of the proletariat.“ ^[52]

 

In summary, the struggle for proletarian hegemony and the united front tactic are inseparably linked one with the other. Without the united front tactic, the struggle for proletarian hegemony takes place in a vacuum, because it is only in direct practical collaboration and political confrontation with the reformist and populist forces that revolutionaries can remove them from their positions of leadership. Without the struggle for proletarian hegemony the united front tactic degenerates into opportunistic maneuvering with the petty-bourgeois leaders and hence does not advance the revolutionary class struggle but rather helps the ruling class.

 

V.            The United Front Tactic and Petty-Bourgeois Nationalist and Populist Parties in the Semi-Colonial World

 

After providing an overview of the most important social and political developments of the working class and oppressed, as well as their organizations, we shall now move on to a discussion of several issues related to this revolutionary tactic.

 

We have shown that petty-bourgeois populist parties have become important forces in recent years, and it is therefore crucial for revolutionaries to apply the united front tactic towards such forces. Clearly this includes the call for joint actions against neoliberal governments, imperialist aggression, etc.

 

What should be the attitude of revolutionaries towards petty-bourgeois populist parties? And how should they apply the united front tactic to such parties during elections as well as when formulating slogans calling for the desired type of governmental control?

 

“Workers’ Party” or a “Workers’ and Peasants’ Party”?

 

While revolutionaries support progressive mass struggles led by petty-bourgeois populist parties against the ruling class and imperialism, they strive towards the creation of a workers’ party, not a cross-class party. We have repeatedly stressed the crucial importance of the alliance of the working class and the other oppressed classes and layers. However, this is an alliance of different classes and it would be a grave mistake to confuse the proletariat and the petty-bourgeoisie. Furthermore, this alliance can only lead to the liberation of the working class and the petty-bourgeoisie, if the former leads the latter and not the other way round. If the working class is the leading force, this alliance can open the road to socialism. If the petty-bourgeoisie dominates the working class, it will result in a defeat for both classes.

 

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a powerful confirmation for this. Between February and October of that year the Soviets and, shortly after, the Provisional Government were dominated by the petty-bourgeois Social-Revolutionary Party as well the Mensheviks, which by that time had already been transformed into a bourgeois workers’ party. The Provisional Government not only failed to expropriate the capitalists, remove Russia from the war, and liquidate poverty, but also proved incapable of appropriating the lands of the big landowners and distributing them to the peasants, i.e., to satisfy the needs of the rural petty-bourgeoisie. This only could be achieved when the working class – led by the Bolshevik Party – took power in October 1917 and founded the dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the poor peasantry. They did so, in the first period up until the summer of 1918, in coalition with the left wing of the S.R. party.

 

The last decade in Latin America has illustrated yet again that, when petty-bourgeois populist parties take power without an alliance with a Bolshevik-type of party, particularly because such a force does not currently exist, the populist parties inevitably act as defenders of capitalism and ultimately become transformed into bourgeois parties related to a sector of the capitalist class. These recent illustrations are nothing new, but merely repeat what has already been demonstrated in Bolivia after Torres’ MNR came to power in 1952, or by the numerous petty-bourgeois nationalist movements in Africa and Asia when they took power after the colonial powers were forced to withdraw and accept the formal independence of their former colonies in the 1950s and 1960s.

 

It is a crucial axiom for Marxists that a revolutionary party must have a clear class character. It must be a party rooted in and based on the working class. This is necessitated by the central position of the proletariat in the process of production, i.e., as the only class which creates capitalist value. Thus, it is the only class which produces surplus value (i.e., the basis for capitalist profits) and hence is the creator of the wealth for the ruling class. The working class does not own the means of production as private property, and therefore must sell its labor to the owners of the means of production. Furthermore, by nature it is a collective class, as the very process of production involves the uniting together of the workers while production and reproduction are based on a division of their collective labor. This reality and these dynamics differentiate the proletariat from all other oppressed classes and layers, like the peasants or the urban petty-bourgeoisie, who are characterized by their desire to individually own a piece of land (even if only a small one) or a shop, or the salaried middle layers.

 

This class contradictions between the proletariat and the capitalists constitute the basis for the economic and political organization of the former against the latter. Marx elaborated this in his polemic against the French utopian socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon:

 

“The first attempts of workers to associate among themselves always take place in the form of combinations. Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another. Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance — combination. Thus combination always has a double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can carry on general competition with the capitalist. If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages. This is so true that English economists are amazed to see the workers sacrifice a good part of their wages in favour of associations, which, in the eyes of these economists, are established solely in favour of wages. In this struggle — a veritable civil war — all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character. Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The domination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have pointed out only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.” ^[1]

 

He and Engels further developed this thought in the Communist Manifesto:

 

“But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots. Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle.” ^[2]

 

Does this mean that only workers can be members of a workers’ party? Of course, not! Members of all classes are welcome in a revolutionary party; however under one pre-condition: they must identify themselves fully with the political position of the working class.

 

In our book on the revolutionary party, we have outlined how the Bolshevik Party in Russia – the most successful revolutionary party in the history of the workers’ movement – had been a party based on a primarily proletarian membership nearly from the beginning. Naturally, the party also had peasants and militants from the middle class in their ranks, but the workers were predominant. ^[3]

 

Hence, when in the 1920s Stalin introduced the idea that communists should build not workers’ parties but workers and peasants parties, this was a major revision of the orthodox Marxist position. Lenin and Trotsky had defended the necessity to build proletarian parties. Indeed, this was a major difference between the Russian Marxists and the petty-bourgeois populists of the S.R., as Lenin elaborated numerous times.

 

„The petty bourgeois, the peasant included, is naturally closer to the liberal than to the proletarian; he is closer as a proprietor, as a petty producer. It would, therefore, be politically ridiculous and, from the standpoint of socialism, downright reactionary, to unite the petty bourgeoisie and the proletarians in one party (as the Socialist-Revolutionaries would like to do).“ ^[4]

 

“’The alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry’, let us note in passing, should not in any circumstances be understood as meaning the fusion of various classes, or of the parties of the proletariat and the peasantry. Not only fusion, but any prolonged agreement would be destructive for the socialist party of the working class, and would enfeeble the revolutionary-democratic struggle. That the peasantry inevitably wavers between the liberal bourgeoisie and the proletariat follows from its position as a class;” ^[5]

 

And in a polemic against the S.R., Lenin elaborated in 1909:

 

“ [T]he Social-Democrats maintained that the proletariat and the peasantry were distinct classes in capitalist (or semi-feudal, semi-capitalist) society; that the peasantry is a class of petty proprietors that can “strike together” against the landlords and the autocracy, “on the same side of the barricades” with the proletariat in the bourgeois revolution, and that in this revolution it can, in certain cases, march in “alliance” with the proletariat, while remaining quite a separate class of capitalist society. The Socialist-Revolutionaries denied this. The main idea in their programme was not that an “alliance of the forces” of the proletariat and the peasantry was necessary, but that there was no class gulf between them, that no class distinction should be drawn between them, and that the Social-Democratic idea concerning the petty-bourgeois character of the peasantry, as distinct from the proletariat, is utterly false. (…) [T]here was a Socialist-Revolutionary programme, and the whole difference between it and the programme of the Social-Democrats was that the fundamental, theoretical section of the former was based on the denial of the petty-bourgeois character of the peasantry, the denial of any class distinction between the peasantry and the proletariat. There was a revolution, my dear sirs, and the chief lesson it taught was that in their open mass actions the peasantry displayed a class nature of their own, distinct from that of the proletariat, and proved themselves to be petty-bourgeois.” ^[6]

 

This principle of the Marxist party theory has been confirmed numerous times in history. The S.R. – first the right-wing and later the left-wing as well – went over to the camp of capitalist counter-revolution during the Russian civil war 1918-1921. Later the Chinese Kuomintang turned against the workers and peasants and slaughtered tens of thousands of communists. Trotsky summarized the lessons of this experience as follows:

 

“Had the vanguard of the Russian proletariat failed to oppose itself to the peasantry, had it failed to wage a ruthless struggle against the all-devouring petty-bourgeois amorphousness of the latter, it would inevitably have dissolved itself among the petty-bourgeois elements through the medium of the Social Revolutionary Party or some other "two-class party" which, in turn, would inevitably have subjected the vanguard to bourgeois leadership. In order to arrive at a revolutionary alliance with the peasantry-this does not come gratuitously—it is first of all necessary to separate the proletarian vanguard, and thereby the working class as a whole, from the petty bourgeois masses. This can be achieved only by training the proletarian party in the spirit of unshakable class irreconcilability.” ^[7]

 

He also drew attention to the fact that, before Stalin, it was precisely the social democratic opportunists who advocated the idea of “workers and peasants parties”:

 

“It is fatal that in this question, fundamental for the entire East, modern revisionism only repeats the errors of old social democratic opportunism of pre-revolutionary days. Most of the leaders of European social democracy considered the struggle of our party against S.R.’s to be mistaken and insistently advocated the fusion of the two parties, holding that for the Russian "East “a two-class workers' and peasants' party was exactly in order. Had we heeded their counsel, we should never have achieved either the alliance of the workers and the peasants or the dictatorship of the proletariat. The "two-class” workers' and peasants' party of the S.R.’s became, and could not help becoming in our country, the agency of the imperialist bourgeoisie, i.e., it tried unsuccessfully to fulfill the same historic role which was successfully played in China by the Kuomintang in a different and "peculiar" Chinese way, thanks to the revisionists of Bolshevism. Without a relentless condemnation of the very idea of workers' and peasants' parties for the East, there is not and there cannot be a program of the Comintern.” ^[8]

 

In summary, Marxists categorically oppose the populist conception of workers’ and peasant parties. The revolutionary party must have a proletarian character or none at all. In fact, the existence of a separate proletarian party is the precondition for the construction of an alliance of the working class with the peasantry and other oppressed non-proletarian layers, since such an alliance can only be successfully built if it is led by the working class, i.e. its party. Workers’ and peasants’, i.e. petty-bourgeois populist, parties on the other hand are an obstacle for the liberation struggle of the working class and the oppressed.

 

Entry Tactics in Petty-Bourgeois Populist Parties

 

What does this mean under conditions in which no workers’ party exists, or only a very small or very bureaucratically degenerated one does, while at the same time there are petty-bourgeois populist parties with a mass following among the working class? Of course, as we have already stated, Marxists have to call for the founding of a workers’ party (more on this below). However, as we have outlined in out Theses on the United Front, it would be completely sectarian for Marxists to limit themselves to purely denouncing such populist parties. They should also develop tactics towards such parties. Obviously this means to apply the united front tactic in various forms. This will include – given the numerical weakness of revolutionaries today – joining practical activities of the class struggle led by such parties and working side by side with their members.

 

Under specific circumstances this could also mean that revolutionaries should enter such parties in order to work more closely side-by-side with militant members of these parties and to win them over to a revolutionary perspective. Of course, revolutionaries must take care – as this is always the case when applying the entry tactic – that they avoid opportunistic adaption to the dominating petty-bourgeois leadership of the party. Rather, they must constitute a revolutionary wing with a clear platform. They must disseminate their independent propaganda and agitation and try to organize militant workers and youth against the petty-bourgeois leadership. Likewise such entryism can only be a temporary tactic, as Trotsky stated:

 

“Entry into a reformist centrist party in itself does not include a long term perspective. It is only a stage which, under certain conditions, can be limited to an episode. . . To recognise in time the bureaucracy’s decisive attack against the left wing and defend ourselves from it, not by making concessions, adapting or playing hide and seek, but by a revolutionary offensive.” [9]

 

The goal must be to use this tactic in order to help the formation of an authentic workers’ party without a petty-bourgeois leadership.

 

While various centrists oppose such a tactic in principle, Marxists refuse such dogmatism. As is well known, Marx and Engels deployed such a tactic during the 1848-49 revolution in Germany when they entered petty-bourgeois democratic forces. ^[10]

 

Revolutionaries have also made important use of such entry tactics during the 20^th century. The pioneer of this tactic was the Dutch Hernik Sneevliet. Sneevliet was a Marxist in the left wing of social democracy in the Netherlands as well as an important trade union leader. In 1913 he went to Indonesia, a Dutch colony at the time, where became a leader of the militant railway union (VSTP) that had a number of Indonesian workers in its ranks. One year later he founded the Indian Social Democratic Association (ISDV). The ISDV – after the reformist wing split away – first cooperated with the Indonesian-nationalist group Insulinde and later with the Sarekat Islam. The latter was a petty-bourgeois nationalist and Islamist mass movement with a mass following among the lower urban strata and the peasantry and a petty-bourgeois semi-intellectual leadership. In 1914 it had a membership of more than 366,000 Indonesians. ^[11]

 

Sneevliet understood well the importance of Sarekat Islam and the ISDV began entry work inside this mass movement. He succeeded in transforming the ISDV into an organization of a few hundred cadres with a majority of Indonesian members. By the time they also gained substantial influence inside Sarekat Islam and formed a left-wing. The ISDV transformed itself into the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) in 1920. With the growing influence of the communists, the petty-bourgeois religious leaders of Sarekat Islam eventually initiated a split. As a result of its successful entry tactic, the PKI became the first communist mass party in Asia. [12]

 

Sneevliet himself was expelled from Indonesia by the Dutch colonial administration in 1918 because of his revolutionary activities. He went on to play an important role in the work of the Communist International in Asia. He had a number of discussions with Lenin before and during the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920 and was elected to the important position as the secretary of the congress’ Commission on the National and Colonial Question with Lenin as its chairman. He was one of the key architects (together with Lenin) of the communist program of the anti-imperialist united front tactic. Later, in 1933, Sneevliet and his Revolutionary Socialist Party in the Netherlands joined the Trotskyist movement and stayed there until 1938. [13]

 

Later the communists in China – following the advice of Sneevliet who acted as a Comintern emissary – deployed a similar tactic. The communists were very small at that time and had to find links and roots to the working class and the rural poor. They correctly entered the Kuomintang party in 1922 and worked as a revolutionary faction. However, given the Stalinist turn in the Comintern they were instructed to turn a revolutionary tactic into an opportunist, liquidationist strategy which ended in disaster. As a result the communists did not leave the Kuomintang in 1925 when the workers’ strikes and the agrarian revolutionary movement were intensifying and failed to fight openly for the creation of soviets. They rather subordinated themselves to the right wing of the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-check until the latter was strong enough to defeat the revolutionary movement of the workers and peasants in 1927. ^[14]

 

Trotsky and the Left Opposition fought against this Menshevik capitulation of the Stalinist bureaucracy. They declared that the party should have left the Kuomintang in time and openly fought for a revolutionary strategy. ^[15]

 

Trotsky was not always certain that the communists’ entry into the Kuomintang in 1922 was wrong in principle or not and, hence, we have contradictory statements by him on this issue. However, there are a number of statements which indicate that he did not consider it an illegitimate tactic in itself. As he wrote in September 1926:

 

“The participation of the CCP in the Guomindang was perfectly correct in the period when the CCP was a propaganda society which was only preparing itself for future independent political activity, but which, at the same time, sought to take part in the ongoing national liberation struggle.’ And he goes on to say that the ‘immediate political task’ of the CCP ‘must now be to fight for direct independent leadership of the awakened working class’: ‘The CCP must ensure its own complete organizational independence and clarity of political programme and tactics in the struggle for influence over the awakened proletarian masses.” ^[16]

 

He repeated this assessment in 1928. ^[17] Later in the 1930s, when the Bolshevik-Leninists had acquired more experience with entrism, Trotsky again stressed that there was nothing wrong in principle with temporarily entering a petty-bourgeois populist party.

 

„The temporary entry into the SFIO, or even the Kuomintang, is not an evil in itself; however, it is necessary to know not only when to enter, but also how to leave.“ ^[18]

 

“The entering in itself in 1922 was not a crime, possibly not even a mistake, especially in the south, under the assumption that the Kuomintang at this time had a number of workers, and the young Communist party was weak and composed almost entirely of intellectuals (this is true for 1922?). In this case, the entry would have been an episodic step to independency, analogous to a certain degree to your entering the Socialist Party. The question is what was their purpose in entering, and what was their subsequent policy?” ^[19]

 

Such an entry tactic can also be legitimate today under the condition that the vanguard sectors of the working class and the oppressed respectively organize to orient themselves towards entry in such petty-bourgeois populist parties. As historic examples for such movements, we could refer to the FLN in Algeria or the Black Panthers in the USA.

 

Marxists and Petty-Bourgeois Populist Parties: Electoral Tactics and Governmental Slogans

 

Is it legitimate to call for critical support for petty-bourgeois populist parties in elections? And when should Marxists call for such parties to take power? In our opinion, Marxists should also apply the united front tactic in election campaigns as well as in their sloganeering about the government which such parties can form or conditionally participate in. ^[20] The most important condition is that such petty-bourgeois populist parties are rooted among the workers and the oppressed, and that they are associated with mass struggles against imperialism and the local ruling class. Furthermore, and this is decisive, is whether, at the same time, there is a workers’ party around which the workers’ vanguard has rallied. In such a case, revolutionaries should direct their electoral tactics towards such a party rather than towards any petty-bourgeois populist party.

 

However, there are numerous cases in which no such workers’ party exists, but a radical populist formation rallying the vanguard of the workers and oppressed does. Examples of this are the MAS in the period after 2003 or Chavez’ MBR-200 movement in the late 1990s. Other examples might include Julius Malema‘s EFF in South Africa, the Palestinian Balad party, as well as the Joint List in Israel, or militant parties of the Tamils in Sri Lanka like the TNA.

 

In such situations Marxists should join workers and poor peasants who vote these parties. They should say to them: “You believe that your party can bring an improvement to your living conditions. As you might know we don’t share your hopes. We believe that this party will, once in power, not go the full way and ensure a lasting victory for the workers and oppressed. It will rather strike a compromise with the capitalists and the imperialists. However, since you don’t believe us we say: go on, elect your parties to office, force them to attempt such measures if you can, but you must make preparations and mobilize your mass organizations and your parties for the inevitable bourgeois declaration of civil war if your leaders will take any serious measures which threaten private property. We will critically support your parties’ electoral victory and defend them against bourgeois attack.“

 

Based on the same method, Marxists should also carefully and precisely word their slogans regarding the type of government which such petty-bourgeois parties can conditionally form or participate in. For example, when the petty-bourgeois Sandinista FSLN party overthrew the Nicaraguan dictatorship of Somoza in 1979, instead of taking power by itself, it formed a coalition with bourgeois-liberal forces like businessman Alfonso Robelo and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (the widow of the newspaper La Prensa's director, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro). Under such conditions revolutionaries, would have called upon the Sandinistas to dissolve any coalition with bourgeois parties and take power exclusively into their own hands. Naturally, it is crucial that revolutionaries also warn workers about any illusions in petty-bourgeois parties like the Sandinistas. However, in addition to such warning, revolutionaries should make demands on such a government, calling on it to implement radical social reforms, to expropriate the big landowners and the bourgeoisie, to renounce paying the country’s debts to the imperialist monopolies and Great Powers, etc. ^[21]

 

Such an approach is based on the method first elaborated by Marx and Engels and later systematized by Lenin and Trotsky.

 

When elections for the first Duma took place in Russia following the 1905 Revolution, the Bolsheviks – along with most of the vanguard of the working class – called for boycott them. However, when the revolutionary tsunami had receded in 1906, Lenin advocated that the party no longer boycott Duma elections. He insisted on this policy even though it was obvious that the Tsarist regime granted very few rights to this institution, and rigged and manipulated the elections. According to the historian Abraham Ascher, as a result of all the regime’s repression and manipulation, many workers and peasants didn’t bother to vote at all. In fact, only about 19% of the eligible voters (in 67 cities of European Russia) participated in the elections to the Third Duma in the autumn of 1907. In the previous elections (of 1906), voting participation had been 55%. ^[22]

 

Lenin and the Bolsheviks emphasized the need for social democrats – as Marxists called themselves at the time – to run as an independent party with their own list of candidates for the elections. This was particularly urgent in elections of the worker curia of the Duma. At that time, the social democrats had already become a mass party of the working class and were the hegemonic force in Russia’s large factories. [23] Lenin also emphasized the need to fight against the Cadet party – the party of bourgeois liberalism which then played an important role as the official voice of the opposition against the Tsarist regime. Lenin urged social democrats – despite Menshevik opposition to his call – to fight against the liberal bourgeoisie so that the working class can become the hegemonic force of the popular masses and lead them to revolution. ^[24] Consequently, Lenin argued that the Duma elections be used to create an alliance between the working class with the poor peasantry. [25] For this reason he emphatically rejected any electoral alliance or bloc with the Cadets (which is what the Mensheviks advocated) but favored for a bloc with the parties representing the poor peasantry (the Trudoviks and the S.R.). ^[26] Thus, we see that Lenin sharply distinguished between bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, and that he exclusively reserved the systematic application of the united front tactic to the latter.

 

Lenin explained these ideas in 1906, during the party’s discussions about the tactics to be used in the elections for the Second Duma.

 

„To sum up. We must take into account the experience of the Cadet Duma and spread its lessons among the masses. We must prove to them that the Duma is “useless”, that a constituent assembly is essential, that the Cadets are wavering; we must demand that the Trudoviks throw off the yoke of the Cadets, and we must support the former against the latter. We must recognise at once the need for an electoral agreement between the Social-Democrats and the Trudoviks in the event of new elections taking place.“ ^[27]

 

„The facts relating to the parties compel the following conclusion: no agreements whatsoever at the lower stage, when agitation is carried on among the masses; at the higher stages all efforts must be directed towards defeating the Cadets during the distribution of seats by means of a partial agreement between the Social-Democrats and Trudoviks, and towards defeating the Popular Socialists by means of a partial agreement between the Social-Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries.“ ^[28]

 

„In the cities, where the working-class population is mostly concentrated, we must never, except in case of extreme necessity, refrain from putting up absolutely independent Social- Democratic candidates. And there is no such urgent necessity. A few Cadets or Trudoviks more or less (especially of the Popular-Socialist type!) are of no serious political importance, for the Duma itself can, at best, play only a subsidiary, secondary role. It is the peasantry, the gubernia assemblies of electors, that are of decisive political importance in determining the results of the Duma elections, and not the cities. In the gubernia assemblies of electors, however, we shall achieve our general political alliance with the Trudoviks against the Cadets far better and more certainly, without in the least infringing our strict principles, than at the lower stage of the elections in the countryside.“ ^[29]

 

These ideas became the official position of the Bolsheviks as well as of other left-wing forces inside the Social Democratic Workers Party of Russia, and were summarized in an official resolution for a party conference:

 

„The principal objects of the Social-Democratic election and Duma campaigns are: firstly, to explain to the people the uselessness of the Duma as a means of satisfying the demands of the proletariat and the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie, especially the peasantry. Secondly, to explain to the people the impossibility of achieving political liberty by parliamentary methods as long as the real power remains in the hands of the tsar’s government, and to explain the necessity of an armed uprising, of a provisional revolutionary government and of a constituent assembly elected by universal, direct and equal suffrage by secret ballot. Thirdly, to criticise the First Duma and reveal the bankruptcy of Russian liberalism, and especially to show how dangerous and fatal it would be for the cause of the revolution if the liberal-monarchist Cadet Party were to play the predominant and leading role in the liberation movement. As the class party of the proletariat, the Social-Democratic Party must remain absolutely independent throughout the election and Duma campaigns, and here, too, must under no circumstances merge its slogans or tactics with those of any other opposition or revolutionary party. Therefore, at the first stage of the election campaign, i.e., before the masses, it must as a general rule come out absolutely independently and put forward only its own Party candidates. Exceptions to this rule are permissible only in cases of extreme necessity and only in relation to parties that fully accept the main slogans of our immediate political struggle, i.e., those which recognise the necessity of an armed uprising and are fighting for a democratic republic. Such agreements, however, may only extend to the nomination of a joint list of candidates, without in any way restricting the independence of the political agitation carried on by the Social-Democrats. In the workers’ curia the Social-Democratic Party must come out absolutely independently and refrain from entering into agreements with any other party. At the higher stages of the election, i.e., at the assemblies of electors in the towns and of delegates and electors in the countryside, partial agreements may be entered into exclusively for the purpose of distributing seats proportionately to the number of votes cast for the parties entering the agreement. In this connection, the Social-Democratic Party distinguishes the following main types of bourgeois parties according to the consistency and determination of their democratic views: (a) the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Polish Socialist Party and similar republican parties, (b) the Popular Socialists and the Trudoviks of a similar type; (c) the Cadets. “ ^[30]

 

Lenin also defended such an approach in the 1912 elections for the Fourth Duma, by which time the Bolsheviks had become the hegemonic force among the proletariat in the major industrial regions and consequently won the seats for deputies in the worker curiae of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Kostroma, and Vladimir Gubernia. Lenin explained the electoral tactic of the Bolshevik Party in 1912:

 

„There remains the second urban curia. Here there are quite a few workers and voters close to the workers: shop assistants, worker tenants, pensioners, etc. (…) The liberals are thus more than three times as strong as the Rights, whose strength is practically equal to that of the democrats. As a rule, therefore, there can obviously be no question here of any danger of a Black-Hundred victory. It is further obvious that the main task of working class democrats in this curia is to fight the liberals. At the present juncture particularly, when, as even the liberals, Octobrists and Purishkeviches admit, there is undoubtedly a general swing to the left in the country, this fight must be put in the forefront. Obviously, in the first stage of the elections the working-class candidates must wage an absolutely independent struggle, putting forward a hundred per cent working-class election lists. In the second stage, at the second ballot, it will in the majority of cases be a question of a fight of democrats against liberals. (…) Inasmuch as the second urban curia is the one in which there will be the greatest number of cases of a second ballot, the principal line to be pursued by the workers at the second ballot is precisely this: with the democrats against the Rights and against the liberals.(…) In cases of a second ballot, primarily in the second urban curia, common cause is to be made more often with all democrats against the liberals and against the Rights; and only subsequently it may be necessary at the second ballot to join the general opposition bloc against the reactionaries. “^[31]

 

Quoting from his book Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, we have demonstrated that Lenin absolutely defended this approach to electoral tactics until his death. So did Trotsky who, as we have shown with the lengthy quotation from his Transitional Program (cited above), generalized from the experience of the Bolsheviks in their united front tactic towards the Mensheviks and the S.R., even after these latter two factions had already been transformed into social-imperialist parties, the relevant part of which we repeat here for the reader’s convenience:

 

“[T]he demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the S.R.s: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!” had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and S.R.s to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks. The central task of the Fourth International consists in freeing the proletariat from the old leadership, whose conservatism is in complete contradiction to the catastrophic eruptions of disintegrating capitalism and represents the chief obstacle to historical progress. The chief accusation which the Fourth International advances against the traditional organizations of the proletariat is the fact that they do not wish to tear themselves away from the political semi-corpse of the bourgeoisie. Under these conditions the demand, systematically addressed to the old leadership: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power!” is an extremely important weapon for exposing the treacherous character of the parties and organizations of the Second, Third and Amsterdam Internationals. The slogan, “workers’ and farmers’ government,” is thus acceptable to us only in the sense that it had in 1917 with the Bolsheviks, i.e., as an anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist slogan. But in no case in that “democratic” sense which later the epigones gave it, transforming it from a bridge to Socialist revolution into the chief barrier upon its path.” ^[32]

 

After the founding of the Communist International, revolutionaries sought to generalize from the experience of the Bolsheviks. Of course, in most colonial and semi-colonial countries of the time there were no elections. However, from the case of Mexico we find an example of how the Comintern – in its healthy period before the Stalinists took power – was nevertheless able to apply the united front tactic to the field of elections in a semi-colonial country.

 

In August 1923, the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) sent a long letter to the Mexican party which was published in English by the US section as a pamphlet. In this letter the ECCI elaborates the method of the united front tactic and how it should be applied to the concrete conditions of the Mexican class struggle of the time. It calls upon the mass organizations of both workers and peasants (including their respective parties and leaderships) to undertake joint actions to defend the interests of the popular masses:

 

“The tactic of the united front is the revolutionary fight of the' Communist Party to win the wide organized and unorganized working and peasant masses for a common struggle for common demands". The Communist Party therefore openly turns towards the leaders of the reformist, syndicalist, and so-called independent trade union organizations and requests their participation in a joint Committee of Action. The same thing applies to the laborites and the Agrarian Party. The object of the Committee of Action is organized centralization of the fight for definite demands. The Committee of Action does not bind any of the participating parties or trade unions to its political agitation and propaganda or to its activity in general Above all, the right of criticism of every Party will be fully preserved.” ^[33]

 

Furthermore, the ECCI analyzed the conflict between the bourgeois government of De La Huerta and the petty-bourgeois democratic opposition led by Calles. It warns that if Calles comes to power he too will betray the workers and peasants. But the ECCI also urged that, in light of the mass support for Calles and the popular illusions in his petty-bourgeois movement, communists should call for critical electoral support for him, combined with critical warnings and a program of demands directed towards him. Such a tactic could assist breaking workers and peasants away from his petty-bourgeois leadership and help the small Communist Party – at that time it had about 1,500 members – win more influence among the masses. ^[34]

 

“The first task of the Party must be to state clearly and plainly what the station is and how it will develop. Secondly it must be clearly realized that it is not a matter of indifference for the revolutionary labor movement whether Calles or De La Huerta betray the working classes, even though both will end in the same results The whole situation is not a comedy, as it might appear, but a real tight. It is an attempt on the part of petty-bourgeois democracy to keep its head above water, and it can do that only by possessing political power. The interests of the working class are also involved in this struggle, for the only allies on which the petty-bourgeoisie can rely, are the working class and the peasantry. Calles must therefore make concessions to these classes. It is already apparent that the overwhelming majority of the workers and peasants will support the candidature of Calles. If the whole working class participates in this struggle, the Communist Party must not stand aside and look on; it must fight with the others, for Calles today means protection for the masses from reaction and clerical domination But it is the duty of the communists to combat the illusions of the masses as to the ability of the Calles Government actually to give this protection. Throughout the period of Obregon's regime, Calles silently participated m the attacks of the Government on the working class Calles will behave on a national scale just as Felipe Carrillo behaved on a local scale in Yucatan. He will suppress the trade unions opposed to him and persecute the communists; he will not hesitate to shoot them down if necessary. In spite of this, the Communist Party must participate in the elections on behalf of Calles. Certainly not as enthusiastic followers of the coming government This tactic is merely a necessary halting place on the road to the Workers and Peasants' Government, on the road to the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The result developing from the Calles Government will open the eyes of the Mexican proletariat to the impotency of reformism, to the powerlessness and corruptibility of opportunistic and petty-bourgeois anarchist phraseology. The Mexican workers and peasants will recognize that there exist but two kinds of politics; the one that leads to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and the one that leads to the domination of the proletariat, and which is represented by the slogan: All power to the workers and peasants. Many honest workers will say to the communists: If you are already prophesying the treachery of Calles, then your participation in the fight is nothing but a manoeuvre to compromise Calles. But such a statement of the question is incorrect and undialectical. That Calles will compromise himself does not depend on us, but on his opportunistic policy of compromise with the bourgeoisie. But we, on the contrary, point to the only path by which bankruptcy can be avoided, that is, the path to the realization of the proletarian revolution. But will Calles follow this path? We have sufficient reasons not only to doubt this but to answer in the negative. Calles, Morones, Felipe Carrillo, Soto y Gema, etc. are the Kerenskis, the Eberts, the Noskes, and the Scheidemanns of Mexico. They will wed themselves to Gompers and his whole treacherous clique. But in our propaganda we must as far as possible force the socialists and agrarians to the left. We must demand a declaration today from Calles on the disarming of the peasants which Obregon instigated; we must demand protection for striking workers; punishment for the officials guilty of the murder of workers in Vera Cruz and San-Angel; a ruthless struggle against the fascists; the regulation of Articles 27 and 123 ; measures against the housing crisis ; the division of large estates without recompense to the landlords, etc.” ^[35]

 

Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International did not deal in detail with the application of the electoral tactic in semi-colonial countries. However, Trotsky did repeat the methodological approach of the Comintern when he emphasized in the Transitional Program the need to apply the united front tactic to the “parties of petty bourgeois democracy,” by which he meant both bourgeois workers’ parties (Stalinists, Social Democrats, etc.) as well as petty-bourgeois populist parties of the S.R. type in Russia (see the lengthy quote from the Transitional Program at the end of Chapter II, here). This is the most effective way to rally the workers and oppressed who still retain illusions in non-revolutionary parties around “anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist slogans.”

 

So in summary we note that both Lenin and Trotsky emphasized that the main task of revolutionaries is to build a revolutionary workers’ party. They also emphasized that revolutionaries have to try to win over the poor peasants for an alliance led by the revolutionary proletariat. To do so, revolutionaries must apply the united front tactic, including in the realm of elections. It can be applied both to bourgeois workers’ parties as well as to petty-bourgeois populist parties (especially in situations where no significant workers party, not even a bourgeois one, exists). Such electoral support must include placing demands on such parties, so that while fighting side-by-side with the reformist rank and file workers and oppressed, we warn them lest they have any illusions in the efficacy and consistency of their leaderships, all with the hope that they will ultimately join us as true revolutionaries.

 

We in the RCIT believe that such a method is extremely relevant today, in the wake of the significant and dramatic rise of petty-bourgeois populist movements and parties the semi-colonial world (but not there alone!). Of course, a precise electoral tactic can only be formulated after a concrete study is made of the specific national conditions. For this reason, here, in this document, we can only outline some methodological arguments regarding which political formations are potentially qualified for electoral support by revolutionaries.

 

We believe that the early phases of the Bolivarian movements in Latin America are good examples of such formations. By “early phases” we mean the period when they constituted petty-bourgeois populist parties which were opposed to the neoliberal governments and rallied the aspirations of millions of workers, poor peasants and urban poor. Specifically, we’re talking about Chavez’ MBR-200 movement in the late 1990s and Evo Morales’ MAS in the first half of the 2000s, when these parties acted as a catalyst for the rising class struggle of the workers and oppressed; it was then vital to politicize and radicalize the popular masses who were directing their hopes to the Castro-Chavista leaderships. However, as we will outline below, once such parties had come to power and were transformed into openly bourgeois, popular front parties, it would have been out of question for revolutionaries to vote them.

 

Another example in which such electoral tactics can still be discussed by South African revolutionaries is that of Julius Malema‘s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa. This party originated in 2012/13 resulting from a split from the ANC – the historical petty-bourgeois nationalist party of the black people in South Africa which led the liberation struggle against the Apartheid regime from the 1940s on. However, the ANC was transformed into a bourgeois popular front party when it became the largest party forming the government in 1994 and subsequently ruled the country in the interests of the big corporations. Julius Malema and the EFF defended the Marikana mine workers in 2012, and presented themselves, hypocritically, as a “revolutionary opposition against the ANC government.” While the EFF’s declared membership of more than half a million is certainly exaggerated, there is no doubt that this party has succeeded in rallying the aspirations of the workers and poor.

 

Sinn Fein in the Republic of Ireland is yet another example of a petty-bourgeois populist party which has recently become the vehicle for mass protests of the working class, particularly in the context of the Right2Water campaign. In the 2016 elections, socialists could have correctly called for critical electoral support for the candidates of centrist lists – Anti-Austerity Alliance (mainly SP supporters in Ireland) and People before Profit (mainly SWP supporters in Ireland) – in those districts where they had some mass support. In other districts, it would have been legitimate for socialists to call for support for Sinn Fein on the basis of the critical electoral support tactic outlined above.

 

The Transformation of a Petty-Bourgeois Populist Party into a Bourgeois Party and Electoral Tactics

 

We consider it as crucial to differentiate between petty-bourgeois populist parties and openly bourgeois, popular front parties. True, there is no Great Wall of China dividing the two: Every petty-bourgeois populist party is a potential popular front party (which is why it is easy to mix these categories). The petty-bourgeois composition – at least at the leadership level – predestines such parties to transform their character and to become open bourgeois parties.

 

Such a transformation can take place under various conditions. One such condition occurs when such parties enter the government of a capitalist state. In such a situation, the party eventually comes into close contact with the bourgeoisie ruling class and integrates into the bourgeois state apparatus. Usually this leads, after some time, to its fusion with a sector of the bourgeoisie. In Venezuela, this sector is called Bolivarian bourgeoisie or Boliburguesía.

 

Naturally, such a fusion with a sector of the bourgeoisie and the state apparatus can take place even before a party becomes part of the government or entirely takes power. It is also possible for such a popular front party to split (e.g., after being expelled from government) and one faction – maybe even the majority of the party – transforms itself once again back into a petty-bourgeois populist party. Examples for such splits and transformations are the Montoneros in Argentina, who were expelled from the Peronist party in 1974, and the South African EFF mentioned above.

 

Clearly, when such a party becomes an openly-bourgeois, popular front party, it is entirely impermissible for revolutionaries to give it any critical electoral support or to involve its members in the wording of slogans.

 

On the other hand, fighting against this “crossing the lines into the bourgeois camp” does not release revolutionaries from their obligation to defend such a popular front government against a counterrevolutionary coup d’état. [36] Lenin explained this in August 1917 when the Bolsheviks were faced with the need to defend the popular front Kerensky government against a right-wing coup d’état by the forces of General Kornilov.

 

“Like every sharp turn, it calls for a revision and change of tactics. And as with every revision, we must be extra-cautious not to become unprincipled. It is my conviction that those who become unprincipled are people who (like Volodarsky) slide into defencism or (like other Bolsheviks) into a bloc with the S.R.s, into supporting the Provisional Government. Their attitude is absolutely wrong and unprincipled. (…)

 

Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled. We may be asked: aren’t we going to fight against Kornilov? Of course we must! But this is not the same thing; there is a dividing Line here, which is being stepped over by some Bolsheviks who fall into compromise and allow themselves to be carried away by the course of events. We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. It is rather a subtle difference, but it is highly essential and must not be forgotten.

 

What, then, constitutes our change of tactics after the Kornilov revolt? We are changing the form of our struggle against Kerensky. Without in the least relaxing our hostility towards him, without taking back a single word said against him, without renouncing the task of overthrowing him, we say that we must take into account the present situation. We shall not overthrow Kerensky right now. We shall approach the task of fighting against him in a different way, namely, we shall point out to the people (who are fighting against Kornilov) Kerensky’s weakness and vacillation. That has been done in the past as well. Now, however, it has become the all-important thing and this constitutes the change.

 

The change, further, is that the all-important thing now has become the intensification of our campaign for some kind of “partial demands” to be presented to Kerensky: arrest Milyukov, arm the Petrograd workers, summon the Kronstadt, Vyborg and Helsingfors troops to Petrograd, dissolve the Duma, arrest Rodzyanko, legalise the transfer of the landed estates to the peasants, introduce workers’ control over grain and factories, etc., etc. We must present these demands not only to Kerensky, and not so much to Kerensky, as to the workers, soldiers and peasants who have been carried away by the course of the struggle against Kornilov. We must keep up their enthusiasm, encourage them to deal with the generals and officers who have declared for Kornilov, urge them to demand the immediate transfer of land to the peasants, suggest to them that it is necessary to arrest Rodzyanko and Milyukov, dissolve the Duma, close down Rech and other bourgeois papers, and institute investigations against them. The “Left” S.R.s must be especially urged on in this direction.” ^[37]

 

Similarly, in the context of the Spanish Civil War, Trotsky explained the importance of defending a bourgeois democracy with a popular-front government from reactionary assaults while, at the same time, giving this government no political support:

 

“Before 1934 we explained to the Stalinists tirelessly that even in the imperialist epoch democracy continued to be preferable to fascism; that is, in all cases where hostile clashes take place between them, the revolutionary proletariat is obliged to support democracy against fascism. However, we always added: We can and must defend bourgeois democracy not by bourgeois democratic means but by the methods of class struggle, which in turn pave the way for the replacement of bourgeois democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This means in particular that in the process of defending bourgeois democracy, even with arms in hand, the party of the proletariat takes no responsibility for bourgeois democracy, does not enter its government, but maintains full freedom of criticism and of action in relation to all parties of the Popular Front, thus preparing the overthrow of bourgeois democracy at the next stage.” [38]

 

At the same time, Trotsky considered it unprincipled for revolutionaries to vote for a popular front or to call for a popular front party to take power. ^[39] This also holds true in situations when such a popular front party or candidate runs against a fascist list or candidate in elections. For example, in March 1937 there was a by-election for a parliamentary seat from Brussels in which a fascist leader was opposed by Premier Paul van Zeeland of the Catholic Party. The Belgian Labor Party and the Communist Party helped van Zeeland by not running their own candidates. The majority of the Belgian section of the “Movement for the Fourth International” – as the Trotskyists called themselves at that time – decided also not to run a candidate and hence also indirectly supported van Zeeland.

 

Trotsky and the International Secretariat of the Fourth International sharply condemned this position: “The attitude of the Belgian leadership during the by-election is a severe blow to the prestige of the Fourth International and especially to its Belgian section. On this question we are fully in agreement with the IS and the Paris Lutte ouuriere.” ^[40]

 

“Several days ago I received the statement of Comrade V. concerning the municipal elections. V.'s arguments against participation seemed to me false from beginning to end. You know that I considered and still consider our party's support to Van Zeeland to be an extremely serious and dangerous error.” ^[41]

 

Trotsky opposed electoral support for a popular front party not only in imperialist countries, but in semi-colonial countries as well. When the Mexican trade union bureaucracy called to support the “progressive “ bourgeois candidate Ávila Camacho in the presidential elections of 1940, Trotsky rejected this. He explained that support for a bourgeois candidate was illegitimate: “At the present time there is no workers party, no trade union that is in the process of developing independent class politics and that is able to launch an independent candidate. Under these conditions, our only possible course of action is to limit ourselves to Marxist propaganda and to the preparation of a future independent party of the Mexican proletariat.” ^[42]

 

When Diego de Rivera, a famous Mexican painter who had for some time been a supporter of the Fourth International, left the movement and advocated the formation of a new party in order to support a bourgeois candidate at the elections, Trotsky replied:

 

“The idea that one can create a party “ad hoc" for a concrete conjuncture is absolutely incredible and opportunistic in its essence. A workers' party with a so-called minimum program is eo ipso a bourgeois party. It is a party which makes the workers support bourgeois politics or bourgeois politicians. A revolutionary Marxist workers' party could discuss the question of whether or not it was advisable in this concrete situation to support one of the bourgeois candidates' We are of the opinion that under the given conditions it would be false. ” ^[43]

 

In summary, while we consider critical electoral support for petty-bourgeois populist parties as legitimate under specific circumstances, communists can never call for voting for or the taking of power by parties or candidates of the bourgeoisie – neither in imperialist nor in semi-colonial countries. Revolutionary Marxists advocate a workers’ and peasant government and not a government of the workers, peasants and sectors of the bourgeoisie. The latter would be a popular front government. Electoral support for such a party would not represent a step towards class independence but rather a step backwards to the subordination of the workers and oppressed to the bourgeoisie.

 

 

VI.          Traditional Reformist Parties, New Workers Party and Electoral Tactics

 

In this chapter we will deal with the tactics of fighting for a new workers’ party – both in countries where no labor party exists at all as well as in countries in which one or more reformist workers’ parties already do exist. We will discuss the conditions under which revolutionaries can advance such slogans. Furthermore, we discuss the electoral tactics towards the traditional reformist parties – i.e., social democrat and Stalinist – under the present conditions.

 

Fighting for the New Workers’ Party (or “Labor Party”) in the Present Period

 

Concerning the New Workers’ Party tactic we wrote in our theses:

 

“In countries, where no bourgeois workers’ party (not even a reformist one) exists or where the existing bourgeois workers’ parties are already so degenerated that they repel the workers’ vanguard, revolutionaries call upon the workers’ vanguard and mass organizations to found a new workers’ party (or “Labor Party”). Here, too, interim stages are conceivable. Revolutionaries might support alliances towards such a goal or the foundation of new organizations of oppressed layers (e.g., migrant organizations) which could also stand at elections.”

 

We have explained that the call for a Labor Party is a special application of the united front tactic used by small communist forces in countries where a mass bourgeois workers’ party does not exist. In such countries revolutionaries call on larger working class formations (e.g., trade unions) to enter the political field by forming independent workers’ parties. Such a party must be entirely independent of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois parties. In the USA, for example, we call on the trade unions to break with the Democratic Party and to found a Labor Party. The same tactic is applicable in Argentina towards the Peronist-dominated unions, or to the CTA in South Africa, where COSATU is bound to the popular front ANC government. It is also applicable in Egypt, where the independent trade unions are subordinated to bourgeois politicians. Basically, this tactic is applicable for the majority of the countries in the world.

 

Such a labor party must not refrain from running in elections against bourgeois and petit-bourgeois parties. Revolutionaries should fight against the “natural” tendency of opportunist labor leaders to hesitate and avoid confronting such parties on the electoral field.

 

In periods of intensified working class struggle, this tactic can be successful as, to a certain extent, we have seen in recent years in South Africa. Here NUMSA, the largest single trade union, split with COSATU after the latter continued to support the government despite the Marikana massacre and the government’s austerity policy. Subsequently NUMSA leaders founded the “United Front,” which while a political movement is still not a party running in elections.

 

Another example of such a labor party is the Workers Party (PT) in Brazil which was founded and led by Lula in the late 1970s in the period of the military dictatorship. However, it later degenerated into a reformist party.

 

The call for a New Workers’ Party (or “Labor Party”) is always an appropriate tactic in such countries where no workers’ party exists. Naturally, there will be more opportunities to apply it as agitation during periods of intensified working class struggle. In other words, it will be a particular relevant tactic in the coming period, given the acceleration of the political, economic and social contradictions in the historic period which began in 2008.

 

Revolutionaries fight against the danger of a reformist degeneration of such a new workers’ party. They do so by advocating a revolutionary program, i.e., a full transitional program as the program of this party. They will build a revolutionary tendency within such a party which will fight for the leadership of the party by exposing the betrayal of the reformists and the centrists in actual struggles. This can be done by putting forward a number of appropriate minimum and transitional demands which unify and mobilize the workers and the oppressed against the capitalist class enemy. On such a basis, revolutionaries should use the tactic of the united font with other forces against the common enemy according to the principle "march separately, strike together."

 

However, revolutionaries must not be ultimatimists. In other words, they don’t enter such a labor party, present their program and if rejected immediately leave the party. Such a sectarian tactic would only be in the service of reformist forces trying to control such a party. Communists must attempt to win over rank and file workers and youth and left-wing forces within the party by proposing concrete campaigns which help to advance the class struggle and the political development of the party in a militant, socialist direction.

 

Of course, sooner or later the party will stand at a crossroads: either it will develop into a revolutionary direction and become a truly socialist party or it will degenerate bureaucratically and be transformed into a reformist force. When revolutionaries prove too weak to halt the reformist degeneration of such a party, they will be obliged to split.

 

While the labor party tactic was originally developed for countries in which there no reformist workers’ party, today it can also be applied in countries where such a party exists. Why? The answer lies in the massive degeneration of the traditional reformist parties in recent years. As we outlined above, the period of neoliberal globalization has accelerated the degeneration of the social democratic and Stalinist parties. It has pushed them to the right; it has intensified the links between the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie; it has increased the influence of the middle class and weakened the links with the working class.

 

Similarly, there has been a substantial bourgeoisification of the ex-Stalinist parties too. On the one hand this process has not developed as rapidly as in their social democratic twins. The reason for this is simply that they have, to a far lesser degree, been integrated in the executive of the capitalist state, i.e., they have been less often part of governments. On the other hand, a number of these parties also had fewer roots in the working class. In any case, in recent years we were witness to the increasing influence of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals in these parties (e.g., the Transform network of the Party of the European Left)

 

This does not mean, in most cases, that these parties have ceased to be bourgeois workers’ parties. However, while it is true that most of them are dominated by a bureaucracy with close links to businessmen and managers, they nevertheless still retain important links to the working class, mostly via their close relationships with trade unions. Marxists must undertake a concrete examination of each such traditional reformist party and, in each case, judge whether or not they have crossed the Rubicon and thereby have ceased to be bourgeois workers’ parties, and have thus been transformed into openly-bourgeois parties or, more precisely, popular front parties.

 

For example, in Europe the slogan calling for a new workers’ party is particularly relevant for Italy. The transformation of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) into the Partito Democratico is an example of such a development. In this case, the PCI transformed itself in the early 1990s first into the Democratici di Sinistra (Democrats of the Left) and later the Partito Democratico, via its fusion with other, openly-bourgeois parties. This is a classic case of regression from being a bourgeois workers’ party into a popular frontist or openly bourgeois party. While initially a left-reformist party existed in the form of the Partito della Rifondazione Comunista led by Fausto Bertinotti (its split when the PCI transformed it into a popular front party), this party entirely discredited by its participation in neoliberal governments, and consequently failed to get a single seat in parliament in the last elections.

 

However, opposite trends cannot be excluded – at least temporarily. Under certain circumstances such parties can even experience an initial rejuvenation (see, for example, the British Labour Party under Corbyn). [1] Nevertheless, the “neoliberalization“ of social democracy incites the breaking away from it of significant sectors of the workers’ vanguard and the proletarian masses. However, at the same time, the consciousness of these proletarian sectors is not sufficiently advanced to join a revolutionary organization. In such cases, revolutionaries must apply the New Workers’ Party tactic, directing a call to found a new workers’ party to those sectors of the vanguard and the working class who are ready to break with traditional reformist parties, but still do not have a revolutionary class consciousness. The principles of this tactic are the same as with the Labor Party tactic.

 

Such a tactic should not be confused with the opportunistic tactic of adopted by various left-reformists and centrists who advocate the formation of a pluralistic reformist party. Of course it is likely that, in the first phase, there will be reformist, centrist as well as revolutionary tendencies within such a new party. Bolshevik-Communists are not sectarian and don’t fear the application of the united front tactic under such circumstances.

 

But centrists consider such a party as a solution, a permanent model of a “pluralist left party.” They believe that this type of party can exist for an extended period of time. As a result, they don’t advocate a revolutionary program of struggle but “realistically” propose a left-reformist program. Rather than fight against the emerging reformist bureaucrats, they cooperate or “peacefully co-exist” with them.

 

In contrast to such an opportunistic approach, as Bolshevik-Communists, we would work inside such a party while openly advocating our independent program. While cooperating with other forces within the party, we would uncompromisingly fight against reformist and centrist tendencies. We would try to patiently convince the majority of the party to adopt a revolutionary perspective. If this fails and the party degenerates into an ossified reformist formation, revolutionaries would draw the conclusions and split from such the party, taking with us all amenable militant workers and oppressed, and found an authentic revolutionary party.

 

The present period characterized by the decay of traditional reformist parties is fertile ground for Marxists to advocate the slogan for new workers’ parties, taking advantage of the growing desire of significant sectors of the proletariat for a new alterative to these neoliberalized parties. Agitating for such a new alternative by no means involves ignoring those sectors of the vanguard and the working class who are still attached to the traditional reformist parties. But there can be no doubt that, in the current period of upheaval, revolutionaries have to outline a perspective that points forward in the forming of a new workers’ party and a new workers’ international.

 

The significant rise and growth in recent years of new political formations which base themselves on reformist or populist critiques of neoliberal capitalism and advocate the rights of workers specifically and popular democratic rights in general is ample justification for the RCIT’s tactic calling for the formation of new workers’ parties. Examples of this trend is the tremendous growth of SYRIZA in Greece, the electoral successes of centrist forces as well as Sinn Fein at the elections in Ireland, and the spectacular growth of Podemos founded only two years ago. While, in the formal sense, SYRIZA and Sinn Fein are not new parties, in recent years they have only constituted small forces but have now begun to grow because of the decay of the traditional reformist parties.

 

Of course, as we have indicated above, no one should have any illusions about these new reformist or populist parties. Ultimately they will betray the working class and the oppressed either when they have the opportunity to enter a government or when they play the leading role in a mass struggle. It is for this reason that revolutionaries must warn the masses in advance about the true nature of the leaderships of these parties. But at the same time, Marxists must not ignore the politicization and radicalization of sectors of the working class and the youth which currently find their expressions in support for these new parties. Any sectarian abstentionism against this process would only guarantee the isolation of revolutionaries. This is why critical electoral support for such parties, in addition to entryism under certain circumstances, can be a legitimate instrument for Marxists in the current period.

 

Engels, Lenin and Trotsky on the Labor Party Tactic

 

The Labor Party tactic was first developed by Marx and Engels. As is well know, in the late 19^th century there were countries in which the growth of the trade union movement did not go hand in hand with the formation of independent workers’ party. [2] The most prominent cases were Britain and the USA. In Britain the trade unions entered into a political alliance with the openly-bourgeois Liberal Party. Only after decades did they break with the Liberals and turn to independent political representation. First, they founded the reformist Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and then, in 1906, they established the Labour Party.

 

Marx and Engels argued that it is essential for the working class to overcome its political subordination to the parties of the bourgeoisie and to constitute their own parties. Doing so would constitute an important step in their development of a political class consciousness. Hence, Marx and Engels supported every practical step towards the formation of an independent workers’ party, even when this process was fraught with reformist illusions in the minds of many participants.

 

In 1886 this is what Engels wrote in a letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge:

 

“The worst aspect of the Knights Of Labor is their political neutrality whose only result is the sharp practice of the Powderlys, etc. But this last has had its sting drawn by the response of the masses in the November elections, more especially in New York. In a country that has newly entered the movement, the first really crucial step is the formation by the workers of an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is distinguishable as a labour party. And this step has been taken far sooner than we might have expected, and that's the main thing. That the first programme of this party should still be muddle-headed and extremely inadequate, that it should have picked Henry George for its figurehead, are unavoidable if merely transitory evils. The masses must have the time and the opportunity to evolve; and they will not get that opportunity until they have a movement of their own — no matter what its form, providing it is their own movement — in which they are impelled onwards by their own mistakes and learn by bitter experience.” ^[3]

 

Later Lenin and the Communist International generalized this tactic. Lenin himself wrote in 1907:

 

“Engels stressed the importance of an independent workers’ party, even with a poor programme, because he was speaking of countries where there had formerly been not even a hint of the workers’ political independence and where, in politics, the workers mostly dragged along behind the bourgeoisie, and still do.” ^[4]

 

Later, after the foundation of the Communist International, Lenin wanted to further generalize this tactic. At the Second World Congress in 1920 he met with the US representative, Louis C. Fraina, and asked him his opinion about the applicability of the labor tactic in the USA. However, Fraina rejected the idea and Lenin did not push this matter. ^[5] However, Lenin saw to it that the Comintern would continue to discuss this issue. He raised it again in discussions around the Third Congress in 1921 and, by 1922, the Comintern and the American Party – now renamed the Workers’ Party after the name “Communist Party” had been declared illegal in America – adopted the labor party as the specific form of the united front in the USA. ^[6]

 

This correct approach was explained the same year in a pamphlet – “For a Labor Party” – published by the Workers’ Party and written by the Comintern representative in the US, John Pepper. It outlined the Comintern position on this issue. It called for the AFL – the US trade union federation – to build such a Labor Party:

 

“The December Conference owes it to the American Labor movement to create a big independent political party of the workers, the Labor Party. If this Labor Party is to grow, it must be built on the trade unions. If the new Labor Party is not to sink into a swamp without any principles, it must admit the left wing of the working class, the Communistic Workers Party and the Proletarian Party. The Labor Party must adopt a class-conscious program. A program not considering the interests of the capitalists, but only the interests of the workers. A program clearly seeing the goal: the abolition of wage slavery the establishment of a workers' republic and a collectivist system of production. Sooner or later, a Labor Party will inevitably adopt such a program. It should do so at the moment of its birth.” ^[7]

 

However, against the backdrop of the Stalinist degeneration of the Comintern, Pepper and the Workers’ Party’s leadership would soon replace the principled application of the labor party tactic with an opportunist tactic of building a cross-class Farmer and Labor Party. This experiment ended in a complete failure. ^[8]

 

Later, Trotsky would develop the labor party tactic into its most refined revolutionary form. In a discussion with leaders of the SWP – the US-American Trotskyist party – Trotsky explained what he considered the correct approach on the labor party question.

 

“Question: How do you reconcile this with the original statement that we cannot advocate the organization of a reformist labor party? I would like to get clear in my mind what concretely does our comrade do when his trade union is affiliated to the LNPL and he is sent as a delegate to the labor party. There the question comes up of what to do in the elections and it is proposed: “Let us support LaGuardia.” (This was a Republican congressman and later mayor of New York City in 1917-45, Ed.) Concretely, how does the matter present itself to our comrades?

 

Trotsky: Here we are in a trade union meeting to discuss the affiliation to the LNPL. I will say in the trade union: First, the unification of the unions on a political plan is a progressive step. There is a danger that it will fall into the the hands of our enemies. I therefore propose two measures: 1) That we have only workers and farmers as our representatives; that we do not depend on so-called parliamentary friends; 2) That our representatives follow out our program, this program. We then map out concrete plans concerning unemployment, military budget, etc. Then I say, if you propose me as a candidate, you know my program. If you send me as your representative, I will fight for this program in the LNPL, in the labor party. When the LNPL makes a decision to vote for LaGuardia, I either resign with protest, or protest and remain: “I can’t vote for La Guardia. I have my mandate.” We get large new possibilities for propaganda ...

 

The dissolution of our organization is absolutely excluded. We make absolutely clear that we have our organization, our press, etc., etc. It is a question of the relationship of forces. Comrade Dunne says we cannot yet advocate in the unions support for the SWP. Why? Because we are too weak. And we can’t say to the workers: Wait till we become more authoritative, more powerful. We must intervene in the movement as it is ...

 

Question: If there were no movement for a labor party and we would be opposed to the creation of one, how does that affect the program itself – it would still be our transition program. I don’t understand when you say we can’t advocate a reformist party but we do advocate and become champions of labor-party movements for the purpose of imposing the workers’ will politically.

 

Trotsky: It would be absurd to say that we advocate a reformist party. We can say to the leaders of the LNPL: “You’re making of this movement a purely opportunistic appendage to the Democrats.” It’s a question of a pedagogical approach. How can we say that we advocate the creation of a reformist party? We say, you cannot impose your will through a reformist party but only through a revolutionary party. The Stalinists and liberals wish to make of this movement a reformist party but we have our program, we make of this a revolutionary…

 

Question: How can you explain a revolutionary labor party? We say: The SWP is the only revolutionary party, has the only revolutionary program. How then can you explain to the workers that also the labor party is a revolutionary party?

 

Trotsky: I will not say that the labor party is a revolutionary party, but that we will do everything to make it possible. At every meeting I will say: I am a representative of the SWP. I consider it the only revolutionary party. But I am not a sectarian. You are trying now to create a big workers’ party. I will help you but I propose that you consider a program for this party. I make such and such propositions. I begin with this. Under these conditions it would be a big step forward. Why not say openly what is? Without any camouflage, without any diplomacy.” ^[9]

 

The Traditional Reformist Parties and Electoral Tactics Today

 

As we have outlined in our United Front Theses, the RCIT has always supported the tactic of critical electoral support for reformist parties as developed by Lenin and Trotsky. We have repeatedly explained that, where communist forces are very small, they should advocate the tactic of critical support for parties of the working class and the oppressed in their relations with the non-communist masses.

 

Our method of critical support implies raising a program of immediate and certain transitional demands which address the most burning needs of the masses. The purpose is to mobilize workers in the struggle and force a reformist party to take this or that act in the interests of workers. Such demands must always be combined with slogans for organizing the workers and oppressed, and which focus on establishing action committees composed of ordinary workers in workplaces and neighborhoods, and which are not controlled by the bureaucracy. This is crucial because, first, mass mobilizations are the only way to force the reformist bureaucracy to implement even limited progressive actions. And second, such organizing slogans can lay the groundwork for the workers to struggle for these demands independently if their bureaucratic leaderships refuse to carry them out.

 

In our predecessor organization, we explained the tactic of critical support in our Theses on Reformism:

 

“Both of these elements of critical support—demands on reformists, and organising independent struggle in pursuit of these demands—are crucial because a government of a bourgeois workers’ party (i.e. a bourgeois workers’ government) will inevitably be the tool of capital against the working class. Organising for struggle is vital to prevent defeat and demoralisation amongst the masses when this becomes clear in practice. At the same time, the communists put forward their own programme, counterposing it to the reformist programme, even where they do not stand communist candidates. To win workers to a revolutionary alternative it is necessary to spell out, even for the duration of the united front (in this case, basically the election campaign) what the alternative is. The tactic of critical electoral support flows solely from the existence of the organic relationship between the bourgeois workers’ party and the working class. It is not in any way predicated upon the programme or promises of the reformists. Communist agitation and propaganda for electoral support must not be open to interpretation as support for the reformists as a “lesser evil” than the open bourgeois parties. The purpose of bringing the reformists to power is precisely to put them to the test, to prove that they are indeed as willing as the open bourgeois parties to defend the class rule and state power of the bourgeoisie and to attack the working class to serve that end.” ^[10]

 

Unfortunately, a number of centrists and ultra-leftists believe that critical support for reformist parties, which have repeatedly betrayed the working class, would be a contradiction of Marxist principles. This is absolutely incorrect. In fact, Lenin explained a very long time ago that the issue is not whether we, the communists, understand the treacherous nature of the reformists, but if the mass of the working class understands this. In his famous book ’Left-Wing’ Communism – An Infantile Disorder written in 1920, Lenin advised the British communists to lend critical electoral support to the reformist Labour Party:

 

“If we are the party of the revolutionary class, and not merely a revolutionary group, and if we want the masses to follow us and unless we achieve that we stand the risk of remaining mere windbags) we must, first, help Henderson or Snowden to beat Lloyd George and Churchill (or rather compel the former to beat the latter because the former are afraid of their victory!); second, we must help the majority of the working class to be convinced by their own experience that we are right; i.e. that the Hendersons and Snowdens are absolutely good for nothing, that they are petit-bourgeois and treacherous by nature, and that their bankruptcy is inevitable; third, we must bring closer the moment when on the basis of the disappointment of most of the workers in the Hendersons, it will be possible, with serious chance of success, to overthrow the government of the Hendersons at once." ^[11]

 

At the time, the communists in Britain were a very small force numbering only a few hundred and were not yet united into a single party. [12] Nevertheless, or precisely for this reason, Lenin called his comrades to approach the mass of the working class with a tactic that addressed their current, non-communist, reformist consciousness:

 

“We would take part in the election campaign, distribute leaflets agitating for communism, and in all constituencies where we have no candidates, we would urge the electors to vote for the Labour candidate and against the bourgeois candidate. Comrades Sylvia Pankhurst and Gallagher are mistaken in thinking that this is a betrayal of communism, or a renunciation of the struggle against the social traitors. On the contrary, the cause of communist revolution would undoubtedly gain thereby. At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a communist and call upon them to vote for Henderson and against Lloyd George, they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of “bourgeois democracy") but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man- that the impending establishment of a government of Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany." ^[13]

 

Later Trotsky would continue to advocate such a method in relation to reformist mass parties. He emphasized that communists give critical support to reformists not because they have a better program or policy than openly-bourgeois parties, or because they are the “lesser evil.” He argued that communists should apply the united front tactic on the electoral field only because of the organic relationship between the reformists and the working class. For the same reason, he would criticize the centrist ILP in Britain when the latter called for critical support only for those candidates of the Labour Party who opposed imperialist sanctions against Italy after its 1935 invasion of Abyssinia.

 

“No. Economic sanctions, if real, lead to military sanctions, to war. The ILP itself has been saying this. It should have given critical support to oll Labour Party candidates, that is, where the ILP itself was not contesting. In the New Leader I read that your London division agreed to support only anti-sanctionist Labour Party candidates. This too is incorrect. The Labour Party should have been critically supported not because it was for or against sanctions but because it represented the working class masses. The basic error which was made by some ILPers who withdrew critical support was to assume that the war danger necessitated a change in our assessment of reformism. But as Clausewitz said, and Lenin often repeated, war is the continuation of politics by other means. If this is true, it applies not only to capitalist parties but to Social Democratic parties. The war crisis does not alter the fact that the Labour Party is a workers' party, which the governmental party is not. Nor does it alter the fact that the Labour Party leadership cannot fulfill its promises, that it will betray the confidence which the masses place in it. In peacetime the workers will, if they trust in Social Democracy, die of hunger; in war, for the same reason, they will die from bullets. Revolutionists never give critical support to reformism on the assumption that reformism, in power, could satisfy the fundamental needs of the workers. It is possible, of course, that a Labour government could introduce a few mild temporary reforms. It is also possible that the League [of Nations] could postpone a military conflict about secondary issues-just as a cartel can eliminate secondary economic crises only to reproduce them on a larger scale. So the League can eliminate small episodic conflicts only to generalize them into world war. Thus, both economic and military crises will only return with an added explosive force so long as capitalism remains. And we know that Social Democracy cannot abolish capitalism. No, in war as in peace, the ILP must say to the workers: ‘The Labour Party will deceive you and betray you, but you do not believe us. Very well, we will go through your experiences with you, but in no case do we identify ourselves with the Labour Party program.’ Morrison, Clynes, etc., represent certain prejudices of the workers. When the ILP seeks to boycott Clynes it helps not only Baldwin but Clynes himself. If successful in its tactic, the ILP prevents the election of Clynes, of the Labour government, and so prevents their exposure before the masses. The workers will say: "If only we had had Clynes and Morrison in power, things would have been better."” ^[14]

 

Trotsky repeated Lenin’s advise not to confuse the political conclusions of revolutionaries with those of the mass of the working class.

 

“It is argued that the Labour Party already stands exposed by its past deeds in power and its present reactionary platform. For example, by its decision at Brighton. For us – yes! But not for the masses, the eight millions who voted Labour." ^[15]

 

Precisely because revolutionaries advocate electoral support for reformist parties not for their program but for their relationship with the working class, we usually do not give electoral support to small reformist or centrist lists. Their non-revolutionary program gives us no reason to support them, and because they lack a mass base in the working class, such a tactic would not help revolutionaries to come closer to non-revolutionary workers and the oppressed. Consequently, any support for such candidates would only be misinterpreted as support for their politics, something which communists can never give.

 

We have always insisted that it is foolish to believe that workers’ illusions in reformist parties can readily be overcome. This is particularly true in light of the absence of a large revolutionary party. The longevity of these illusions in reformist parties is related to the historic roots of the social democratic and Stalinist parties among the working class. Therefore, these illusions don’t automatically disappear when such parties enter a government.

 

However, while this has been the case for a number of decades after the World War II, important changes have taken place in the past 10–15 years. As we noted above, most reformist parties have not ceased to be bourgeois workers’ parties, but there have been significant breaks of sectors of the working class with these parties. These ruptures either led to the formation of new parties or to fusions with other, smaller reformist parties. In other cases, this development only results in a higher rate of abstention from elections.

 

As we have said above, raising the slogan for a new workers’ party does not necessarily mean that revolutionaries should drop the tactic of critical electoral support for the traditional reformist parties. It is the role of revolutionaries to alert workers to the need for building a new party. However, as long as this process has not taken shape, it may still be useful to relate in our electoral tactics to workers who – despite being fed up – still vote for the traditional reformist party as “the lesser evil.”

 

We therefore stated in our Theses that in general, “critical support for non-revolutionary workers parties is a legitimate tactic for helping class-conscious workers to overcome their illusions in reformist leaderships.”

 

At the same time, we must take into account that the decay of the reformist parties and their increasing discrediting in light of the pro-austerity, pro-war, and racist policy with which they are complicit because of their participation in the government, provokes more and more such ruptures with sectors of its working class base. For this reason, revolutionaries have to carefully study under what conditions the progressive sectors of the working class view the reformist party as a tool to resist the offensive of the bourgeoisie and when this is no longer the case, and these workers would rather turn away from the reformist party.

 

The latter situation is particularly likely when a bourgeois workers’ party is part of the government and serves as a whip or executioner in the implementation of severe attacks on the working class – austerity programs, imperialist wars, racist hatred, attacks on democratic rights, etc. Such a situation arose, for example, in France when Hollande imposed the state of emergency regime in 2015 or in Austria in 2016 when the government – led by the social democratic party – imposed harsh laws against refugees. Similar situations existed in Britain in the first decade of the new millennium when the Blair-led Labour Party became the strongest supporter of Bush’s imperialist war offensives in the Middle East.

 

In such circumstances it would be wrong for revolutionaries to call for the electoral support of these reformist parties. Here the aim is rather to relate to the vanguard workers who have already broken with them. In such cases Marxists should either call for critical support for another party which better reflects the desire of the progressive workers and oppressed to fight back or, if such a party does not run in the upcoming elections, call for a blank vote.

 

Let us illustrate our approach with the following example. The Austrian section of the RCIT called for a critical vote for the social democratic party (SPÖ) in Vienna’s regional elections in October 2015. As we have explained – in addition to the SPÖ’s traditional relations with the organized working class – our position was based on a certain rallying in the weeks before the elections of important sectors of the vanguard and the working class as a whole around this party. The reasons for this shift towards the SPÖ were, on the one hand, the fear of a victory of the right-wing racist FPÖ party and, on the other, the positioning of the SPÖ as a "Refugees are welcome" party in distinct contrast to the anti-migrant position of the right-wing racists. Our assessment was vindicated in the polls by SPÖ’s receiving more than 39% of the vote.

 

However, in the April 2016 Austrian presidential elections, we no longer called for critical support for the SPÖ candidate. This is because, in the period following the October 2015 elections, the SPÖ had diametrically shifted its policy and – as the leading party in the governmental coalition – implemented a harsh anti-refugee policy. Consequently, the vanguard and a huge proportion of former SPÖ voters turned away from the party and, as a result, the SPÖ candidate won only 11% of the vote – a historic low for this party. [16]

 

We note, in passing, that the Austrian section of the RCIT has had some successful experiences applying the united front tactic towards social democratic activists. For example, in the autumn of 2014, our section recruited the majority of social democratic youth organization activists from the largest and most proletarian branch in Vienna. [17]

 

In other words, revolutionaries have to relate their electoral tactics to an attentive study of the political development of the vanguard sectors of the working class and their readiness to break with the traditional reformist parties. This is particularly relevant in a situation of accelerated class contradictions when the chances for a rupture of sectors of the working class with the traditional reformist parties are higher.

 

On the other hand, revolutionaries must also carefully analyze the dynamic relationship of the working class and reformist parties, because under specific circumstances the progressive sectors of the working class might rally once again under the banner of social democracy or Stalinism in an attempt to form a defense line against a right-wing, neoliberal onslaught.

 

 

VII.        Revolutionary Tactics and Petty-Bourgeois Populist Parties in Imperialist Countries

 

In this chapter we will discuss how to assess a somewhat new phenomenon which has appeared in recent years– the emergence of petty-bourgeois populist parties in imperialist countries. By this we don’t mean parties like Respect which are to an important degree the (petty-bourgeois) political expression of the resistance of migrants and national and ethnic minorities. Rather we mean parties like Podemos in Spain which we have already briefly characterized in Chapter IV.

 

Should Marxists call for Critical Electoral Support for Podemos in Spain?

 

In our Theses on the United Front Tactic we stated that critical electoral support “could also be applicable to new petty-bourgeois populist parties in imperialist countries.” At this point we discussed, and confirmed, the applicability of such a tactic concerning parties like Respect (see more on this below in Chapter VIII). However, here we will discuss whether such a tactic would also be legitimate for new petty-bourgeois populist parties like Podemos in Spain.

As we have described above, Podemos is a new party which emerged out of the powerful Indignados movement which played a powerful role in 2011. It has strong support among the lower middle class which faces unemployment and social decline. It also has substantial support among sectors of the working class. This is not only reflected in the social composition of their supporters but also in their political agenda. Podemos gives high priority to social issues like the minimum wage, housing rent, and personal debt.

We maintain that it would be principled for Marxists to call for critical electoral support for Podemos in the present situation. Podemos reflects both the progressive protest of sectors of the lower middle class which are moving towards unity with the working class, as well as the protest of workers dissatisfied with the highly-bureaucratized and treacherous official leaderships (PSOE, the leaderships of the UGT and the CCOO). This characteristic of Podemos has been underlined by the rapid growth of its membership in the shortest possible time – up to nearly 400,000 members since the party’s founding in 2014 – their mass demonstration of more than 100,000 people in January 2015, as well as the growth of branches in working class districts. Furthermore, the party receives significant electoral support in working class areas.

It is true that there exist at the same time two bourgeois workers’ parties – the social democratic PSOE and the ex-Stalinist IU. However, the PSOE is widely (and correctly) seen as a party of the ruling class. As a result, the most dynamic sectors of the working class have moved away from the PSOE. To call for critical electoral support for such a party when, at the same time, there are other parties which reflect the dynamism of the militant proletariat, would be cowardly, right-wing opportunism.

In contrast to PSOE, the IU has not been historically aligned with governing the capitalist system, as it was never part of a national coalition government. Through its connections with the CCOO it retains some organic links with the organized working class, even though these links have become weaker in recent years (along with the concomitant weakening of the trade unions themselves). IU relates more to militant sectors of the working class than PSOE does. This is why critical electoral support for IU has been a legitimate tactic in past years.

However, the IU failed to attract the growing number of militant workers and people from the lower middle class, resulting in a substantial electoral losses for the party. During the last elections (December 2015) IU received only 3.7% of the vote. However this can potentially change in the future.

Naturally, there should be no doubt that the case of Podemos is an exception. In general, Marxists direct their electoral tactics in imperialist countries either to workers’ parties or to petty-bourgeois parties representing oppressed layers (national minorities, migrants). However, in Spain we witness the combination of a number of factors which create a situation in which critical electoral support for Podemos is legitimate. These factors include: the emergence of the powerful Indignados movement in 2011; the failure of IU to attract the radicalized sectors of the workers and the lower middle class; and, in parallel, the successful constitution of Podemos as a party reflecting the desire of these layers for radical change.

Furthermore, it is important to understand that parties like Podemos are an unstable, transitional phenomenon. Its petty-bourgeois character and the lack of institutionalized links with established mass organizations make it unlikely that the character of Podemos will remain as it presently is for any significant time. Rather, it is far more likely that the party will either shift to the right, and thereby lose many of its active members, or will undergo a split with one wing moving further to the left. A split is by no means out of question given divisions which already exist between the current majority around Pablo Iglesias and a number of minorities, the two principal ones being that presently led by the Mandelite „Anticapitalistas" Teresa Rodríguez and Miguel Urbán, and the other currently formed around the post-Marxist and anti-globalization intellectual Íñigo Errejón. [1]

 

The Trotskyists and the Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) in the USA in the 1930s

 

We are fully aware that our tactics towards Podemos represent an innovation of the Marxists’ tactic in imperialist countries. However, we think that our tactic is not without historical precedents.

As we have already outlined above, Lenin and the Bolsheviks considered it legitimate to lend electoral support to the S.R. party, which was based on the poor peasantry but which also had support among sectors of the working class. ^[2] As the Bolsheviks have stated many times, Russia at that time was an, albeit backward, imperialist country. [3] However, one can argue that this is not a useful example, since Russia before 1917 still had not completed its bourgeois-democratic revolution, and contained semi-feudal economic structures as well as an absolutist state apparatus.

However, we also refer readers to another example: the Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) in the USA. The FLP existed as a mass party in some states (e.g., Minnesota). It was composed of a number of farmers’ organizations – like the Non-Partisan League, an organization of poor farmers – as well as local trade unions. In Minnesota, the FLP repeatedly won – from 1918 until 1942 – elections for a number of US congressmen as well as senators. Furthermore, candidates of the FLP were elected as the governor of Minnesota between 1931 and 1939 (Floyd B. Olson, Hjalmar Petersen and Elmer A. Benson).

In short, the FLP was not a workers’ party but rather a “farmers and workers party,” i.e., a cross-class party or, in other words, a petty-bourgeois populist party.

However, under concrete circumstances, this populist party represented an important break of workers and small farmers with the two dominant capitalist parties – the Democrats and the Republicans. Under these conditions the US-Trotskyists developed specific tactics in the 1930s towards the FLP. These tactics included a call for critical electoral support for this party as well as entering the FLP and forming a revolutionary faction from within. ^[4] Farrell Dobbs writes in a book about the Teamsters struggle:

“Confronted with these unique circumstances, the Communist League of America (as the Trotskyist organization was named at that time, Ed.) shaped a special policy for political work in Minnesota, deciding that FLP candidates for public office could be accorded critical support. That meant they could be backed in election campaigns, as against their capitalist opponents; but such support at the polls would be accompanied by criticism of the FLP’s reformist program and of the politics followed by its elected representatives.” ^[5]

Yet another manifestation of such an approach was Trotsky’s advocacy of a workers’ and peasant government in the USA which he concretized as a transitional slogan in order to build a bridge to reformist and populist workers and peasants: “For a government of Lewis, Green and LaFollete”. The first two were the central trade unions leaders and the latter was a populist who had a strong following among many small farmers.

“In our mind it leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. We say to the workers and farmers: You want Lewis as president—well that depends upon his program. Lewis plus Green plus La Follette as representative of the farmers? That, too, depends upon the program. We try to concretize, to make more precise the program, then the workers’ and farmers’ government signifies a government of the proletariat which leads the farmers.” ^[6]

In summary, under specific circumstances, revolutionaries have to apply the united front tactic – including electoral support and entryism – to petty-bourgeois populist parties even in imperialist countries like the US-Trotskyists did in the 1930s.

 

Discussing a Comparison: The Green Parties in the 1980s and 1990s

 

One could draw some parallels with the Green parties which emerged in German, Austria and other countries during the 1980s and onward. Of course, there are indeed some parallels. The Greens emerged in the early 1980s out of the environmental as well as peace movement. We have – in our predecessor organization – always characterized the Greens in their initial period as petty-bourgeois parties. While they were largely progressive petty-bourgeois organizations – initially they were strongly dominated by ex-Maoists and other leftists in Germany and Austria – they never had any connection with the workers’ movement. Furthermore they had no orientation whatsoever to the burning economic problems of the working class: wages, housing, social benefits; none of these subjects ever played any role in the politics of the Green parties.

As we have stated in past analyses, the Greens – after their initial “radical” period – were transformed from progressive petty-bourgeois parties into openly-bourgeois liberal parties. Since then, they had been part of numerous regional and national coalition governments in many countries.

The question which is of interest for us at this point is the following: would it have been legitimate for Marxists to consider electoral critical support for the Greens in their initial period in the 1980s when they constituted progressive petty-bourgeois parties?

Our answer is a clear and unambiguous NO. By definition there are many different variations of petty-bourgeois parties. In addition to right-wing chauvinist parties there are also various forms of petty-bourgeois protest parties like the so-called “Pirates.” In Italy we have the Five Star Movement led by the popular comedian Beppe Grillo – a populist party combining attacks on the corrupt parliamentary system with racist anti-migrant positions and an alliance in the European Parliament with the British right-wing racist UKIP party. Critical electoral support for any of these parties would be completely unprincipled for Marxists as they all do not represent a progressive political mobilization of the petty-bourgeoisie and the middle-class towards the working class.

This was also true of the Green parties in the 1980s, as was reflected in their political agenda (ignoring burning social and economic issues of the working class) as well as their electoral support base. While they succeeded in gaining some support at the universities and in middle-class districts, they always achieved far below the average voting results in working class districts.

There is also an objective social-economic base for this different development (compared with Podemos). When the Greens emerged and grew as a progressive petty bourgeois party, the middle class in its huge majority faced a prosperous future. Today, given the historic crisis of capitalism which began in 2008, this has dramatically changed. Today, significant sectors of the middle class face unemployment and severe social decline. It is therefore not surprising that Podemos attract sectors of the lower middle class as well as workers by putting issues like the minimum wage, housing rents and personal debt in the focus of its political agenda.

To summarize: in general the RCIT rejects electoral support for petty-bourgeois parties in imperialist countries. The case of Podemos is an exception due to the specific conditions of the new historical period and the political constellation in Spain (Indignados movement, failure of IU to attract the radicalized sectors of the workers and the lower middle class, etc.).

VIII.       The United Front Tactic and the Liberation Struggle of National Minorities and Migrants in the Imperialist Countries

 

We have outlined in our theses that it is often the case that petty-bourgeois nationalist forces play an influential role among national or ethnical minorities and migrants in imperialist countries. To give a few examples: the Black Panthers in the USA in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the numerous forces engaged in the #BlackLiveMatters movement today; Puerto Rican nationalists in the USA; Sinn Fein and the IRA in Northern Ireland during their struggle against the British occupation until 1998; Herri Batasuna in Basque Country; and Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (CUP) in Catalonia in the Spanish State.

 

Increasing Mobilization of National / Ethnical Minorities and Migrants on Democratic Issues

 

It has been our traditional position to lend critical support to petty-bourgeois nationalist forces that stand in confrontation with the imperialist state. This is why our predecessor organization in Britain, Workers’ Power, traditionally called for the support of Sinn Fein and the IRA which stood at the head of the Irish national liberation struggle against the British occupation. This application of the united front tactic also included critical support for Sinn Fein in elections. ^[1] Naturally, this tactic ended when the leadership of Sinn Fein/IRA around Gerry Adams capitulated to British imperialism by signing the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Given the importance of liberation struggles of oppressed nations – i.e., national and ethnical minorities (including migrants) – in imperialist countries, it is clear that such an approach has to be generalized. The increasing share of migrants among the working class in the imperialist countries, the acceleration of racism, the expansion of the police state and bonapartist forms of government, the subsequent attacks on democratic rights – all these ensure that the struggle against national oppression (as well as for democratic rights in general) are rapidly becoming one of the key issues of the political class struggle in the early 21^st century. As we pointed out in our booklet on the relevance of the theory of permanent revolution in imperialist countries, today we are witnessing a groundswell of the democratic question.

“Thus while during the 19^th century democracy was still suppressed or threatened by the pre-capitalist nobility, the absolutist bureaucracy and the opportunist bourgeoisie, today it is threatened by imperialist monopoly capital and its lackeys in the semi-colonial countries. Yes, today there are no semi-feudal modes of production within the imperialist countries, but this does not at all imply that capitalism has become “pure.” What we are facing instead is decaying, rotten imperialist capitalism. Such a system creates new contradictions and exacerbates long-existing ones. As the reactionary offensive of the imperialist bourgeoisie accelerates, it makes immediate and democratic demands an increasingly more important part of the program for permanent revolution within the imperialist countries.” ^[2]

Trotsky’s statement about the thoroughly reactionary role of imperialism is highly relevant: “While destroying democracy in the old mother countries of capital, imperialism at the same time hinders the rise of democracy in the backward countries.” ^[3]

As already mentioned, petty-bourgeois nationalists of oppressed nations have played an important role in the Spanish state in recent years. Another important development has been the political movement of migrant workers (mostly Latinos) in the USA fighting for the rights of illegal migrants. This movement resulted in mass protests between March and May 2006 with a general strike on May Day of that year as a high point. [4]

One of the most important political movements in Europe during the past 15 years has been the anti-war movement which became a huge mass phenomenon with the Iraq war in 2003. At that time millions of migrants – particularly those of Muslim background – participated in mass demonstrations. Later mass protests with a high proportion of Muslim migrants continued to take place. They focused mostly on solidarity with Palestine during the Gaza wars in 2008/09, 2010 (the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla), 2012 and 2014. Add to this the numerous actions of migrant organizations in solidarity with the Arab Revolution (in particular for Syria and Egypt). Furthermore migrants as well as national and ethnic minorities have played an important role in mobilizations against police brutality and racism during the past 15 year.

All these mobilizations demonstrated the relevance of migrant organizations for democratic and anti-imperialist struggles in Europe and North America.

 

The Experience of the Austrian Section of the RCIT

 

Hence it has been obligatory for Marxists to apply the united front tactic to these organizations. The Austrian section of the RCIT has done this for many years. We have always actively participated in activities against the imperialist wars as well as in solidarity with Palestine and the Arab Revolution. In contrast to all centrists, we refuse an arrogant social-imperialist approach towards the migrants and their organizations viewed as “backward” by the centrists – and thereby forget how backward in the political sense of the word the left is with its nearly totally white, middle-class composition, and its accommodation to social-imperialist petty-bourgeois prejudices! [5] We call this phenomenon the “aristocratism” of the reformist and centrist left. It is worth noting that not only the Austrian left, but also the Turkish and Kurdish migrant left, always ignored these mobilizations against imperialist wars and solidarity with Palestine and the Arab Revolution. ^[6]

Furthermore the combination of our anti-Zionist positions, our solidarity with the Arab Revolution, and our practical orientation to the lower strata of the working class (including the migrants) has provoked sharp hostility from most sectors of the reformist and centrist left against our organization, as well as from the bourgeois state. This has led on, one hand, to attempts by the state to prosecute leaders of the Austrian section – i.e., the attempts to put on trial Johannes Wiener (in 2012/13) and Michael Pröbsting (2016) – as well as attempted physical attacks on us at demonstrations by Zionist members of the social democratic and Stalinist youth organizations, as well as from the autonomous milieu. ^[7]

Another result is a slanderous academic thesis published by the university of Vienna and written by a former member of the Communist Party’s student organization with the title: “’Israel kills Children!’ Antizionism and Antisemitism in socialist and anti-imperialist Groups in Austria using the example of the RKOB and the (Neue) Linkswende”. ^[8]

Naturally we have experienced a number of hurdles in our work. As communists we initially faced mistrust by the migrant masses and hostility from its leaders. However, we regularly participated as an active force in their mobilizations and managed to overcome the mistrust of many migrants. We had to engage in various bold tactics and confrontations with leaders of migrant organizations who didn’t want to let us speak from the platform at their demonstrations and rallies. However, gradually we have succeeded in gaining a reputation among several migrant communities which has led to our having been invited many times to their events and have even been asked to address them. At the same time, we did not attempt to conceal in our propaganda our political criticism of various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces which have a strong influence among these same migrant communities.

An example of the improvement in our reputation among a number of migrant communities took place as follows: On 2 February 2015, a mass demonstration against a small rally of right-wing racists took place in Vienna which was initiated by a broad alliance of nearly all centrists and left-reformists. The leading forces among them – social democratic youth and university student organizations, as well as Stalinists – were united in excluding the Austrian section of the RCIT from the speakers’ platform of any such demonstration. Unfortunately for them, they had to reserve for the powerful Muslim migrant organizations the right to nominate two speakers. To the astonishment and dismay of the centrists and left-reformists, the Muslims nominated a young Egyptian brother and Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the RCIT! The Muslim organizations were, of course, aware that comrade Pröbsting is a communist and an atheist, but through our solidarity work on anti-racist and anti-imperialist issues during the past 15 years, we have gained a reputation as serious activists. ^[9]

When several migrant organizations formed a list for the municipal elections in Vienna in the summer of 2015, some migrant organizations invited us to participate in the list. In the end, the project failed because some bourgeois migrant leaders managed to dominate this list and directed the project away from a militant democratic orientation into a liberal-opportunist one. As a result, we didn’t participate in this project. ^[10] Nevertheless, this development also reflected the reputation which we have gained over the years.

We think that, in principle, revolutionaries should encourage and support the formation of new political forces which reflect the struggle of migrants against racism and for their rights. Furthermore, revolutionaries should contribute to such a process a revolutionary perspective, focusing on the most burning issues of the struggle of the oppressed. They should also try to widen the list to integrate progressive sectors of the workers’ movement who are prepared to accept migrants as equal partners.

All these experiences demonstrate that it is truly possible for communists to engage in systematic united front work with migrant organizations. Furthermore, our orientation to these sectors of the working class has also helped us to recruit a substantial share of migrants to our organizations.

Such an orientation is crucial for us as Bolshevik-Communists since we consider it of utmost important to build an organization which is not solely fighting for the working class interests but which is also fighting together with the workers and through the workers. Naturally, when we speak about the workers, we don’t mean the upper, privileged strata – the labor aristocracy – but rather the class’ huge majority, i.e., the “mass proletarian elements” as the Comintern called it.

In other words, an authentic revolutionary organization must orientate itself to the lower and middle strata of the working class among which the migrants constitute a crucial sector in imperialist countries. We have explained many times the need for such an orientation and its grounding in the writings of the Marxist classics. ^[11] Here we will limit ourselves to only one quote from Leon Trotsky:

“The characteristic thing about the American workers’ parties, trade-union organizations, and so on, was their aristocratic character. It is the basis of opportunism. The skilled workers who feel set in the capitalist society help the bourgeois class to hold the Negroes and the unskilled workers down to a very low scale. Our party is not safe from degeneration if it remains a place for intellectuals, semi-intellectuals, skilled workers and Jewish workers who build a very close milieu which is almost isolated from the genuine masses. Under these conditions our party cannot develop – it will degenerate. We must have this great danger before our eyes. Many times I have proposed that every member of the party, especially the intellectuals and semi-intellectuals, who, during a period of say six months, cannot each win a worker-member for the party, should be demoted to the position of sympathizer. We can say the same in the Negro question. The old organizations, beginning with the AFL, are the organizations of the workers’ aristocracy. Our party is a part of the same milieu, not of the basic exploited masses of whom the Negroes are the most exploited. The fact that our party until now has not turned to the Negro question is a very disquieting symptom. If the workers’ aristocracy is the basis of opportunism, one of the sources of adaptation to capitalist society, then the most oppressed and discriminated are the most dynamic milieu of the working class. We must say to the conscious elements of the Negroes that they are convoked by the historic development to become a vanguard of the working class. What serves as the brake on the higher strata? It is the privileges, the comforts that hinder them from becoming revolutionists. It does not exist for the Negroes. What can transform a certain stratum, make it more capable of courage and sacrifice? It is concentrated in the Negroes. If it happens that we in the SWP are not able to find the road to this stratum, then we are not worthy at all. The permanent revolution and all the rest would be only a lie.” ^[12]

 

Britain: Respect as a Petty-Bourgeois Populist Party based mostly on National / Ethnic Minorities and Migrants

 

A more elaborated example of these potential developments is the Respect party in Britain led by George Galloway. As already mentioned, this petty-bourgeois populist party succeeded – in some places electoral districts – to gain substantial support among migrant communities and national and ethnic minorities. Unfortunately, our predecessor organization in Britain, Workers’ Power, ignored the significance of Respect as a radical political expression of the democratic and anti-imperialist struggle of some of the most oppressed sectors of the working class. As a result, it refused to give critical electoral support to this party and passed up considering any entry work within Respect. This was clearly a mistake. In our opinion, it is legitimate to give critical electoral support to Respect candidates in districts where they have roots among the masses. As a consequence, the RCIT in Britain called for a critical electoral support for Respect leader George Galloway as a candidate from Bradford West in the 2015 parliamentary elections.

It is pointless to discuss in retrospect whether an entry tactic into Respect would have been correct in the first years after its foundation in 2004. Such a decision would necessarily have to depend on many concrete conditions. But it certainly would not have been unprincipled for revolutionaries to do so, as it could have helped them to build stronger links with the migrants and national and ethnic minorities.

 

A Useful Analogy: Trotsky on Organizations of the Black Minority in the USA

 

Our elaborations of a revolutionary strategy towards migrant organizations and the application of the united front tactic are founded on the Trotsky’s approach to the liberation struggle of the black minority in the USA. In their most developed form, Trotsky’s ideas have been expressed in his discussions with the black revolutionary C.L.R. James which were held in the summer of 1939.

In these discussions, C.L.R. James and Trotsky elaborated some ideas about how the US-American section of the Fourth International could take initiatives to launch a mass organization for the black people. They took into account the political “backwardness” of the masses of the black people as a result of their historic oppression. Trotsky remarked:

„Your project would create something like a pre-political school. What determines the necessity? Two fundamental facts: that the large masses of the Negroes are backward and oppressed and this oppression is so strong that they must feel it every moment; that they feel it as Negroes. We must find the possibility of giving this feeling a political organizational expression. You may say that in Germany or in England we do not organize such semi-political, semi-trade-union, or semi-cultural organizations; we reply that we must adapt ourselves to the genuine Negro masses in the United States.“ ^[13]

He also considered it as possible to support a candidate of a black non-revolutionary organization for elections even if such a candidate is a member of a bourgeois party (like the US’s Democratic Party).

“It is a question of another organization for which we are not responsible, just as they are not responsible for us. If this organization puts up a certain candidate, and we find as a party that we must put up our own candidate in opposition, we have the full right to do so. If we are weak and cannot get the organization to choose a revolutionist, and they choose a Negro Democrat, we might even withdraw our candidate with a concrete declaration that we abstain from fighting, not the Democrat, but the Negro. We consider that the Negro’s candidacy as opposed to the white’s candidacy, even if both are of the same party, is an important factor in the struggle of the Negroes for their equality; and in this case we can critically support them. I believe that it can be done in certain instances.” ^[14]

We think that Trotsky’s considerations are highly relevant for the Marxist strategy today towards migrant organizations in imperialist countries. Such organizations have to be approached on the basis of a united front in order to engage them in joint struggles – in particular against racism and state oppression as well as for solidarity activities (e.g., with the Arab Revolution and the Palestine liberation struggle). Such a strategy is crucial for revolutionaries in order to draw closer to the lowest and most oppressed strata of the working class in the imperialist metropolises.

 

Excurse: Lenin on the Role of the Party as the Vanguard of All Oppressed Classes

 

There is a widespread misunderstanding amongst many Marxists that revolutionaries should only be interested in the struggle of workers, but not of other oppressed classes. Such an idea is in complete contradiction with the teachings of the Marxist classics.

The entire conception of Marxism in based on the understanding that capitalism is not simply an economic system with politics, society, ideology, etc. as its appendages. Rather, these different aspects interact and influence each other reciprocally, while naturally — as already stressed by Friedrich Engels — the decisive aspect is ultimately the economy.

“We see economic conditions as that which, in the final analysis, determines historical development. (…) Here, however, there are two points which should not be overlooked: a) Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But each of these also reacts upon the others and upon the economic basis. This is not to say that the economic situation is the cause and that it alone is active while everything else is mere passive effect, but rather that there is reciprocal action based, in the final analysis, on economic necessity which invariably prevails.” ^[15]

Consequently, Marxists understand that the class struggle has to be waged not only on the economic level but also on all other levels – political, ideological, cultural, etc. Engels pointed this out in his 1874 preface to his book The Peasant War in Germany:

„It must be said to the credit of the German workers that they have exploited the advantages of their situation with rare understanding. For the first time since a workers' movement has existed, the struggle is being waged pursuant to its three sides — the theoretical, the political and the economico-practical (resistance to the capitalists) — in harmony and in its interconnections, and in a systematic way. It is precisely in this, as it were concentric, attack that the strength and invincibility of the German movement lies.“ ^[16]

Such an approach is only guaranteed if revolutionaries take into account all contradictions of the capitalist class society and integrate them into a comprehensive revolutionary strategy. This was also the thinking behind Trotsky’s Transitional Program, as the German Bolshevik-Leninists pointed out in one of the preparatory documents for the founding congress of the Fourth International held in 1938. [17]

Lenin emphasized that revolutionaries must not ignore the oppression of other classes by the ruling class, but rather must also fight against this and connect it with the proletarian liberation struggle. He harshly condemned those reductionist economists who characterize all non-proletarian classes as “reactionary.”

„The proletariat must strive to form independent political workers’ parties, the main aim of which must be the capture of political power by the proletariat for the purpose of organising socialist society. The proletariat must not regard the other classes and parties as “one reactionary mass”; on the contrary, it must take part in all political and social life, support the progressive classes and parties against the reactionary classes and parties, support every revolutionary movement against the existing system, champion the interests of every oppressed nationality or race, of every persecuted religion, of the disfranchised sex, etc.“ ^[18]

From this follows the obligation for Bolsheviks to conduct systematic propaganda and agitation not only among the proletariat but also among the other oppressed classes and layers.

„It cannot be too strongly maintained that this is still not Social-Democracy, that the Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade-union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.“ ^[19]

Lenin gave a few concrete examples for such struggles of non-proletarian oppressed layers:

“The point we were discussing was the possible and necessary participation of various social strata in the overthrow of the autocracy; and not only are we able, but it is our bounden duty, to guide these “activities of the various opposition strata”, if we desire to be the “vanguard”. Not only will our students and liberals, etc., themselves take care of “the struggle that brings them face to face with our political régime”; the police and the officials of the autocratic government will see to this first and foremost. But if “we” desire to be front-rank democrats, we must make it our concern to direct the thoughts of those who are dissatisfied only with conditions at the university, or in the Zemstvo, etc., to the idea that the entire political system is worthless. We must take upon ourselves the task of organising an all-round political struggle under the leadership of our Party in such a manner as to make it possible for all oppositional strata to render their fullest support to the struggle and to our Party. We must train our Social-Democratic practical workers to become political leaders, able to guide all the manifestations of this all-round struggle, able at the right time to “dictate a positive programme of action” for the aroused students, the discontented Zemstvo people, the incensed religious sects, the offended elementary schoolteachers, etc., etc.” ^[20]

Naturally, today revolutionaries will not deal with “Zemstvo people” but instead with oppressed nationalities, women’s struggle, etc. However, other examples of Lenin are still relevant, like protests of petty-bourgeois university students, oppressed religious minorities like the Muslim migrants in Europe, etc.

Lenin denounced those economistic critics who reject the support for protests of non-proletarian oppressed layers because it supposedly would water down the revolutionary class struggle:

“But if we have to undertake the organisation of a really nation-wide exposure of the government, in what way will then the class character of our movement be expressed? (…) The reply is manifold: we Social-Democrats will organise these nationwide exposures; all questions raised by the agitation will he explained in a consistently Social-Democratic spirit, without any concessions to deliberate or undeliberate distortions of Marxism; the all-round political agitation will be conducted by a party which unites into one inseparable whole the assault on the government in the name of the entire people, the revolutionary training of the proletariat, and the safeguarding of its political independence, the guidance of the economic struggle of the working class, and the utilisation of all its spontaneous conflicts with its exploiters which rouse and bring into our camp increasing numbers of the proletariat.” ^[21]

Some people object that this approach of Lenin was only valid for backward capitalist countries which have not experienced a bourgeois-democratic revolution. This, too, is utter nonsense. Lenin was quiet clear that Marxists must not ignore oppression outside the economic field or that of non-proletarian layers in imperialist countries.

As we have already pointed out in our booklet on the democratic question in the imperialist countries, how the imperialist bourgeoisie is accelerating chauvinism, militarism and bonapartism in the current period, and thereby giving peculiar importance to the struggle for democratic rights.

Lenin himself already pointed this out: „The political superstructure of this new economy, of monopoly capitalism (imperialism is monopoly capitalism), is the change from democracy to political reaction. Democracy corresponds to free competition. Political reaction corresponds to monopoly. “Finance capital strives for domination, not freedom,” Rudolf Hilferding rightly remarks in his Finance Capital. It is fundamentally wrong, un-Marxist and unscientific, to single out “foreign policy” from policy in general, let alone counterpose foreign policy to home policy. Both in foreign and home policy imperialism strives towards violations of democracy, towards reaction. In this sense imperialism is indisputably the “negation” of democracy in general, of all democracy, and not just of one of its demands, national self-determination.“ ^[22]

For example in his draft resolution on the agrarian question for the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920, Lenin emphasized that revolutionaries have to support the struggle of the small peasants not only in the colonial and semi-colonial countries but also in the imperialist countries.

“The working and exploited people of the countryside, whom the urban proletariat must lead into the struggle or, at all events, win over, are represented in all capitalist countries by the following classes: first, the agricultural proletariat, (…),second, the semi-proletarians or peasants who till tiny plots of land, i.e., those who obtain their livelihood partly as wage-labourers at agricultural and industrial capitalist enterprises and partly by working their own or rented plots of land, which provide their families only with part of their means of subsistence. (…), third, the small peasantry, i.e., the small-scale tillers who, either as owners or as tenants, hold small plots of land which enable them to satisfy the needs of their families and their farms, and do not hire outside labour. (…) Taken together, the three groups enumerated above constitute the majority of the rural population in all capitalist countries. That is why the success of the proletarian revolution is fully assured, not only in the cities but in the countryside as well. (…) [T]hat although the three enumerated categories of the rural population – who are incredibly downtrodden, disunited, crushed, and doomed to semi-barbarous conditions of existence in all countries, even the most advanced – are economically, socially, and culturally interested in the victory of socialism, they are capable of giving resolute support to the revolutionary proletariat only after the latter has won political power, only after it has resolutely dealt with the big landowners and capitalists, and only after these downtrodden people see in practice that they have an organised leader and champion, strong and firm enough to assist and lead them and to show them the right path.” [23]

Lenin’s approach was adopted in the Comintern’s resolutions on the agrarian question in both the Second and Fourth Congress. [24] This represented an important break with the tradition of the II. International, until its collapse in 1914, since it largely ignored the poor peasantry in Western Europe and hence failed to win them as allies for the proletariat. [25]

Trotsky continued this approach, as can be seen, to give only one example, in the Program of Action for France, written in 1934:

”The proletarian state must rest on the exploited peasants as well as on the workers of town and country. Our program answers the needs of the great rural masses as well as those of the working class.” [26]

Of course, the peasantry has been massively reduced both numerically as well as in its relative social weight in the old imperialist countries. Today, the peasantry doesn’t play a central role in the class struggle in these regions. [27] Instead, today, the lower strata of the salaried middle layers play an important role in the old imperialist countries. Add to this the important struggles of the special oppressed layers – women, migrants, youth, national minorities, etc. – of whom many are part of the working class. What we have tried to demonstrate with these references to the writing of Lenin and Trotsky is that Marxists do not limit themselves in promoting the struggle only of the workers, but also support the protests of non-proletarian classes against the bourgeoisie in order to win them over as allies for the proletariat. This is not only true for semi-colonial countries, but also for imperialist states. Naturally, today these allies may differ from those in the times of Lenin and Trotsky. But the fundamental issues have not changed.

The approach of Marxists on this issue differs fundamentally from that of various left-reformists in the following way: the left social democrats, the Party of the European Left, etc. look for to form alliance with the middle layer in which the proletariat subordinates itself to the petty-bourgeois program of the intellectual representatives of the middle layers. As a result, the left-reformists end up in constructing a popular front in which the working class becomes a subordinate – via the leadership of the middle class intellectuals – to the bourgeoisie.

By contrast, Bolshevik-Communists also look to form an alliance with the middle layer, but one in which the proletariat plays the hegemonic role. They desire to win over the lower strata of the middle layers by advancing the proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie as well as by fighting against the petty-bourgeois ideas of the intellectual representatives of the middle layers.