Rise of the working class
Source: Labor College Review
First published: 1986
Transcription, mark-up: Steve Painter
For many years debate has raged in the workers movement as to which road the revolution should take in the undeveloped world. Furthermore, the debate is neither academic nor of purely historical interest. In Ireland, the Philippines and South Africa the question is of central importance. What sort of revolution is required in these countries and which class should lead it?
The debate first arose in Russia at the turn of the century. The official Marxists, such as Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin (until April 1917) considered Russia too backward politically and economically for the working class to take power in its own right.
Accordingly, they said the revolution in Russia must bring the Russian bourgeoisie to power, supported by the workers. A stage of capitalist development would follow that would create conditions at a later date for the working class to impose its interests on society.
Leon Trotsky from 1905 onwards argued that the revolution would not proceed according to stages. Trotsky argued that Western imperialists domination of the new Russian industry meant the revolution would not be led by the native bourgeoisie, who were more fearful of the Russian working class and certainly not prepared to risk everything in a struggle against the tsar and the British and French capital that stood behind the tsarist state.
When, in April 1917, Lenin proposed to a shocked Bolshevik Party that the workers should take power in their own right, embodied in the call “All power to the soviets” (workers councils) he finally abandoned the stages theory that both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had held since the turn of the century.
Of course, the working class revolution of November 1917 could not have taken place without support from the poor peasantry, but it was the working class that led the revolution.
It was only with the consolidation of the Soviet bureaucracy under Stalin that the stage theory of the Mensheviks re-emerged as part of the bureaucratic political war against the Left Opposition.
The opposition was fighting to preserve working class control of the soviet state, and in particular fighting the growing dominance of soviet institutions by careerist opportunists whose loyalty lay to the emerging bureaucracy and not the working class, which was demoralised and depleted by civil war, famine and unemployment.
The stages theory was applied in China and subsequently elsewhere, with disastrous results. Chiang Kai Shek was made an honorary member of the Communist International and the Chinese Communist Party was instructed to submit to Chiang, who in 1927 turned on the communists, beheading some 5000 of them in Shanghai public square.
Despite this, the Chinese Communist Party at Stalin’s instruction sought in vain an alliance with Chiang, who seemed more interested in killing Communists than fighting the Japanese invaders.
The stages theory was pursued until 1945, when the Communist Party, facing physical liquidation, finally broke with Chiang. Nonetheless Mao Zedong and the Communist Party never shifted from the politics of the stage theory, so that as late as October 1949 Mao stressed that the CP’s aim was not a workers’ government, as in Russia in 1917, but a Chinese capitalist system.
Accordingly, when power was finally won it was under the fiction that it was a bloc of four classes, a People’s Democracy of workers, peasants, bourgeois and intellectuals. In reality, imperialism and the Chinese bourgeoisie, now largely in Taiwan, had been dealt a mortal blow.
The stage theory, with its necessary alliance with the national bourgeoisie at the expense of the independence and combativity of the working class, has led to disaster after disaster. Most relevant to Australia was the disaster of Indonesia in 1965, when the bourgeoisie turned on the workers and slaughtered between 500,000 and one million people.
The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), with three million members and more than 10 million sympathisers in mass organisations, did not struggle to put the working class and the poor peasants into state power.
Instead it pursued a “united national front” and became uncritical supporters of the Sukarno group, which represented the national bourgeoisie.
The Communist Party joined a coalition government with this bourgeoisie, which included the ultra-reactionary head of the army. Everything, including fighting for the interests of workers and peasants, was subordinated to a national front with those responsible for the misery of the masses.
Here is how PKI chairman Aidit explained the essence of the policy in December 1961:
In carrying out our national struggle, we must hold firmly to the basic principle: place the interests of the class and of the party below the national interest, that is, place the national interest above the interests of the class and of the Party!” (Cited in The Communist Party of Indonesia, 1951-1963 by Donald Hindley.)
Thus the PKI carried to its logical conclusion the Stalinist theory of revolution by stages. The illusion that the national bourgeoisie would lead a consistent struggle against imperialism once more led to disaster.
In reality, the development of national revolutionary struggles has nowhere proceeded according to the stages theory despite the consistent efforts of Stalinist and neo-Stalinist parties to confine the national liberation struggle to the stage of capitalist society.
The period after World War II brought the beginnings of revolutions throughout the colonies. There was nowhere in the world that had not felt the impact of European and American imperialism. Asia, Africa and Latin America had become vast sources of super-profits for the imperialists.
The colonial empires’ influence took many forms, ranging from direct political control, as the British had established in India and Ceylon, to more indirect political control favoured by the United States, which tended to operate through native client governments. Various Caribbean and central American states were virtually run by US corporations.
By 1970, when most of the former colonies had achieved independence, the average per capita income in the US was $3000, yet there were more than 40 countries where the average less than $120. Indeed, more was spent by Americans on cosmetics every year than the combined annual budgets of all African states that had supposedly freed themselves from colonial rule. By contrast, five million children still die of hunger each year in India, although India has been independent for some 40 years.
The irony is that the undeveloped countries are not poor. Latin America has the richest supply of natural materials in the world, yet poverty is the reality for the vast majority of the people.
This poverty is due to imperialism, not some cruel trick of nature. In 1962, the advanced industrial countries got 98 per cent of their coffee from the undeveloped world, 78 per cent of sugar, 93 per cent of oil, 96 per cent of jute, 61 per cent of cotton, 76 per cent of rubber, 49 per cent of iron, 58 per cent of copper, 86 per cent of tin and 88 per cent of bauxite for aluminium. The undeveloped countries supply these items to the rest of the world and yet they remain desperately poor.
Of 200 hundred million in Latin America, 100 million are illiterate, 100 million suffer from endemic disease and 140 million are poorly fed.
The former colonies were bases for the export of capital, plentiful cheap labour and cheap supplies of raw materials, as well as a market for the export of industrial products and finished goods.
The undeveloped countries are handicapped. They lack an adequate economic infrastructure and have a low national income at their disposal. It follows that they cannot accumulate sufficient capital because of limited income and the fact that a large part goes back to imperialism.
Local capital in these countries tends to be involved in money lending, speculation, trading profits and rent. Accumulation under such conditions is difficult, and impossible at the 15-20 per cent necessary for large-scale industrialisation. The strengthening of the workers’ states after World War II assisted the colonial revolutions, and formal independence was granted to Indian in 1947, Ceylon 1948 and elsewhere in Asia and Africa right throughout the 1950s.
Formal independence from imperialism, however, provided no answers, for what was required was a general liquidation of the whole aftermath of imperialism, and all the fetters — economic, social, regional religious and tribal — on economic development and industrialisation.
Faced with the colonial revolution, the imperialist powers were forced to resort to more indirect and flexible forms of control. Some powers, such as France and Belgium, fought short wars in an attempt to maintain their hold. The Belgians in the Congo and the French in Vietnam and Algeria failed to hold on, while the British got out in time to safeguard their interests.
This they did through transferring power to local elites, which imperialism fostered and bribed with its greater economic and political power.
The Portuguese empire resisted abandonment of direct rule until 1975 because its colonies contributed a large slice of the national income and enabled the dictatorship to continue. Once its colonies achieved independence, the dictatorship rapidly crumbled.
The US colonial policy is more varied. In some areas it operates through dictatorial states, such as Chile and South Korea without regard for its professed love of democracy.
In Africa, where it confronts rival imperialism powers, it plays the role of liberal critic.
The advanced capitalist countries still heavily rely on the undeveloped countries for supplies of raw materials and cheap labour as well as markets for the export of industrial goods.
To survive, imperialism relies upon the native bourgeoisie; yet it does not wish this bourgeoisie to grow too strong, as this will reduce the share of wealth taken by imperialism. Consequently, native bourgeoisies vary in strength and character.
The usual native comprador oligarchy obtains its income from land, rent, usury, trading profits and direct pay-offs from imperialism. Typical were Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, most of the Latin American dictatorships, Thailand and Malyasia.
In the absence of a revolution that destroys capitalism in these countries there is a tendency for the ruling strata to be replaced by new social formations, which grow out of emerging industrial development. Such strata are often excluded from political power, as in Nicaragua and the Philippines. In such situations they try to corner the leadership of the revolution against the corrupt dictatorship, successfully in the Philippines under Cory Aquino, unsuccessfully in Nicaragua.
In countries such as India, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and Chile, there is already a genuine home-grown bourgeois class sufficiently coherent to take political power even if it risks losing it sometimes to more direct agents of imperialism.
Another variant is a Bonapartist regime that represents the interests of the bourgeoisie while largely exclude that bourgeoisie from direct political power. Sukarno, Nasser and Nkrumah were all examples of this, although all are now gone. Everywhere the standard form of rule of the native bourgeoisie tends towards a Bonapartist dictatorship.
It is only this form that gives the native bourgeoisie the ability to face the feudal elements in their society as well as facing imperialism and the workers and peasants. As such states are also an object of exploitation through bribes and corruption, they further enrich and strengthen the national bourgeoisie.
We should have no illusions about the national bourgeoisie. In its formation in struggles against imperialism it will work with the workers and peasants, and even nationalise industries, sometimes extensively as in the case of Nasser’s Egypt.
The rhetoric of socialism or the mixed economy is often used, but the local rulers soon show their true colours and turn against the working class. They draw closer to imperialism by freeing their “mixed economy” to attract foreign investment. Such was the story of India, Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Argentina, Brazil, Zimbabwe and Southern Ireland.
The greatest danger for the workers and peasants in the undeveloped world is to be lulled into the mystique of national unity with their bourgeoisie and to sacrifice their autonomous class policy and the political independence of their organisation.
Countries where the national bourgeoisie holds power are unable to complete the bourgeois revolution, including the tasks usually associated with a bourgeois democratic victory. Tasks such as agrarian reform, removal of feudal and regional barriers to development and full national independence are left incomplete.
India, for example, has not become socialist, has no semblance of a planned economy, real agrarian reform or real national unification, all of which are required for rapid economic development. In fact it is going in the opposite direction, and increasingly wide-open to foreign capital. Because the antiquated structure of India could not yet be fundamentally overturned the economic goals of the bourgeoisie remained limited and subordinated to foreign capitalist aid.
The only partly shaken feudal structures prevented a proper resolution of regional antagonisms, customs, languages and religions, which stood in the way of real unification of the country’s economy. Add to this alarming population increases, a stifled economy, pressures of economic successes in neighbouring China, and the parliamentary framework in India rested upon shaky ground.
The national bourgeoisie, where it hold power, has been unable to nationalise the essential part of the surplus value that is carried off by imperialism as well as the land rents taken by the feudal-style landowners. Nowhere has the semi-colonial bourgeoisie been willing to expropriate without indemnity imperialist enterprises in agriculture, mining or trade. Nowhere has it taken the landlords’ land and given it to the peasants, or been prepared to plan the economy.
Only where a workers’ state has come into being have any of these things been done.
The theory of permanent revolution holds that the full realisation of the historic tasks of the bourgeois revolution (the national democratic revolution) in the less developed countries is impossible without the conquest of political power by the working class supported by the peasantry, ie without the destruction of the capitalist state and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
These tasks include not only formal political independence from imperialism, but also social and economic independence. The bourgeois state is an obstacle because it fears the mobilisation of the workers and peasants against imperialism because the social and economic interests that it protects clash with the needs and interests of the mass of the people — the workers and peasants.
Permanent Revolution thus reflects a historical process and a strategy necessary for bringing that process to a successful conclusion. It does not suggest that the bourgeois regime cannot begin some of these tasks, but that their efforts will be fragmented, haphazard and distorted.
Secondly, the conquest of political power is not possible unless the working class and its party gain the national leadership through being recognised as the political leader of the nation.
The revolution will begin not with advanced working class demands or even socialist demands, but with national and democratic demands such as national independence, overthrow of a dictatorship or land for the peasants. The working class and their parties must form a united front with other layers in support of these demands and win leadership in the course of this struggle.
The struggle for the full realisation of national democratic demands will require the workers’ party to convince the workers and peasants that the native bourgeoisie will not break with imperialism, will not enact radical agrarian reform or democratisation.
Most importantly, the working class must keep its political and organisational independence and must not hold back national mobilisation in the name of unity with other class forces.
The working class cannot conquer state power without defending its own class interest. Once state power is won in the fight, usually for largely national and democratic demands, the workers’ and peasants’ state will from the same state carry out some socialist and anti-capitalist measures, which often are started well before the revolution.
From these initial socialist measures to the full-scale realisation of the socialist task, there will be a delay, the length of which will depend on the particular conditions in the country and most importantly on the pace of the class struggle.
The revolution is thus permanent because there is no stage in which the working class will not fight for its interests (ie its own self-organisation and self-emancipation) or for its own specific anti-capitalist measures. Also, there is no stage in which the dictatorship of the proletariat can or will abstain from carrying out at least some of its demands. The revolution grows over from the fight for national and democratic tasks into a socialist revolution without any interruption of continuity.
This does not mean that the struggle is unleashed in a dogmatic or premature way. The choice is whether to lead and consequently support the real self-emancipation of the working class or to oppose it in the name of unity with the treacherous native bourgeoisie. Such opposition will not be purely verbal but will necessitate repression of the workers struggle.
There is no break between the state that undertakes the democratic national tasks and the so-called socialist tasks. They are both tasks of the same government — a government of workers and peasants.
Revolution begins on the national level, unfolds internationally and can only be completed by the victory of the socialist revolution in at least the main advanced capitalist countries.
In other, words socialism cannot be built in a single country. This does not mean that the working class cannot take power in a single country and advance towards socialism. The revolution continues its process within a single country. If, because of extended isolation, backwardness or imperialist encirclement the working class power is usurped by a privileged bureaucracy, a phase in which this bureaucracy must be overthrown through a political revolution may be required.
However, if the workers are able to hold on to economic and political power, the gradual restriction of market forces will continue. There will be gradual decline of small commodity production and a gradual dissolution of the centralised state in favour of democratically self-administering bodies based on the direct power of the workers and peasants.
Even victory of socialist revolution on a world scale will not end the process. All the basic relations of production will be continually transformed, as will all the superstructural relations that rest upon them. Family, culture, ideology, art, ethics, social behaviour, relations between the sexes all will begin to subtly but inevitably change.
As Trotsky put it in Literature and revolution:
It is difficult to predict the extent of self-government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psycho-physical self-education will become two aspects of one and the same process. All the arts — literature, drama, painting, music and architecture — will lend this process beautiful form. More correctly, the shell in which the cultural construction and self-education of communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonised, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.
The case of the Cuban Revolution shows that even at the point of seizing power the leadership of the revolution may not have been decided. After the dictator Batista fled, the new president of Cuba tried to reconstruct the smashed bourgeois army, but the tremendous mass mobilisation triggered by the general strike of January 2, 1959, destroyed these attempts. The decision to unleash a radical agrarian reform destroyed the remaining bourgeois opportunities to restore the state, and confirmed a state based on the workers and peasants. Cuba has solved more national democratic problems (food, health, education), and has a higher living standard than any other country in Latin America.