A Different May Day in 1918

Our latest translation from Kommunist is the editorial to issue number 2. It was
translated some time ago but we decided to issue it now as an alternative to
those dreary spectacles which have once again become the ritual May Day of the
reformists.

For Russian revolutionaries these were indeed “days of hope” and the editorial
reflects that. It actually contrasts with much of the rest of the content
of Kommunist. After all the journal was set up by the Left Communists
specifically because they feared that the revolution which they had supported, a
revolution based on the self-activity of the Russian working class, was already in
danger of taking a wrong turn. We have already published some of these
criticisms and will continue publishing them until all five issues are in English.

In the meantime this editorial not only demonstrates the depth of the gulf
between social democratic reformism and genuine revolutionary politics based on
the formation of class bodies like workers’ councils, but also shows that “the
victory of the proletariat is impossible without international action”. No-one in
the Bolshevik Party or indeed in the wider working class really believed that it
was possible to establish socialism in Russia alone. Internationalism, as even
historians hostile to the October Revolution are forced to agree, was at the heart
of working class action in an unprecedented way.

Unsurprisingly then, May Day 1918 in Russia was a genuine celebration of both
the revolution that had taken place and also the future international revolution
that would come to make the vision of socialism possible.
It is a sad contrast to today where trades union rituals have replaced the real
class movement and class struggle origins of May Day have long been forgotten.
As our comrade in Battaglia Comunista wrote in the May Day edition of their
paper, today “There is nothing to celebrate, there is only a struggle for a society
without classes or exploitation.” And today the outcome of such a struggle
becomes more critical with each passing year.

The First of May

Editorial from Kommunist 2

For the fourth time the proletariat is celebrating its festival during the storms of
the First World War. And for the first time the Russian proletariat is celebrating it
by being in power, after having overthrown the national bourgeoisie on the way
to overturning the capitalist order. Whilst the looting of the world war continues
to monstrously destroy human culture, the international revolution overthrew the
yoke of the Russian bourgeoisie in a single blow, and is ready to deliver further
blows – this is the picture on 1 May 1918.

This “workers’ holiday” draws the line between two periods of development of
the proletarian socialist movement, between peaceful reformism and the
domination of the Second International, [1] and that of the “assault and the
‘socialist’ storm” with the new Third International [2], that of the all-conquering
proletarian councils in the course of the communist revolution.

The Second International, which had given birth to the celebration of May Day
[3], killed it at the same time. The Workers' Day should have been a review of
revolutionary forces, the parade of the army of the proletariat ready to do battle.
It gradually turned into a peaceful bourgeois celebration, and the theorists of the
Second International who spoke of the meaning of the First of May did not go
beyond a suggestion of disarmament and verbal protests against the militarist
yoke. Pacifism is the banner carried by the Second International. It is not
surprising that this passive tactic, lacking fight and revolutionary spirit has
inevitably led to the results we are seeing: the complete bankruptcy, the
infamous fall, the odious degradation of the Second International, its
decomposition into “national” guard dogs of the capitalist state, stifling the
revolutionary energy of the masses.

If, on its international festive day, the proletariat used to raise the flag of
disarmament and peace, from now on it waves the rebel flag of the socialist
revolution, the one of arming of the workers and the class war against the
bourgeoisie. A lasting peace is impossible as long as capital is not overthrown.
Liberation from the militarist yoke is not possible as long as the bankocracy
holds power: this is what the bloody experience of war and the great Russian
revolution of the working class teaches us.
But this experience also teaches us something else. It demonstrates that that
the victory of the proletariat is impossible without international action. The
Russian proletariat attacked by international capital sees it; the worker
suffocated by the bloody hands of the Finnish bourgeoisie, with the help of
German troops, sees it [4]; the Ukrainian proletariat devoured by the plundering
states of Central Europe sees it; the German and Austrian working class, which
the imperialist rapists transform into the executioner of the socialist revolution,
sees it.

So this bright spring day becomes a terrible new day of revolutionary

demonstration. Those who are chained to the bourgeois state, to the homeland,
like the convict to his wheelbarrow [5], refuse to celebrate this big day. But the
ranks of the toiling workers, who celebrate it, and go out on the street without
being afraid of the Schutzmann sabres [6] and machine guns of police
ambushes, are full. The bourgeois peaceful festival is becoming a combative
action around which workers close ranks in their revolutionary struggle against
the imperialist state.

Russia is the first country where the assault of revolutionary workers has broken
through the front of the capitalist state. It is the first country where the
revolution is celebrated by a working class that has taken power, where the May
Day celebration is organised by the workers' power, by the proletarian State,
where the revolutionary workers’ councils form the backbone of the proletarian
army. For workers from Berlin and Vienna, to Budapest and London, Dublin and
Paris, this first May will not be an intoxicating day of enjoyment of total victory
and rest after a severe struggle, but a terrible day of preparation for great
battles, a first outing. Thus, for the Russian proletariat, this May Day will be the
day to review the armed and civilian forces of the red socialist republic.

We are the fighting detachment of the communist revolution. More than anyone
else, we have the opportunity to prepare our forces, to form the red regiments.
"To whom much is given, much is demanded." We listen to the May Day
preparations of our comrades. We know that on that day, they will be at our
side. We know that, every hour, their forces increase, whatever monstrous
cannons the Krupp company [7] points at them, and even if the "democrat"
Lloyd-George is enraged. The will to revolution and its final international victory:
that is our flag! The international insurrection of the proletariat – that is our
slogan! This May Day, let us proclaim the words of the Communist Manifesto:

It is no accident that the ruling classes tremble at the threat of a communist

revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a
world to win. Workers of all countries, unite!

Notes

[1] Formed in 1889 by the federation of the Socialist parties of several countries
the Second International passed many resolutions at Congresses in Stuttgart,
Copenhagen and Basle as well as mobilising large working class demonstrations
against war between 1910 and 1912. At Basle in 1912 the resolution passed
concluded that the coming war could only be imperialist and thus should be
opposed by all socialists. In the event only the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party and the parties associated with it in Serbia, Bulgaria and Poland stuck to
the policy. In Germany, Austria, France and Britain the class war was called off
in defence of the nation. [See leftcom.org and leftcom.org for more on this]. The
Second International thus ceased to exist.

[2] The Third International would not be formed until March 1919 but the editors
of Kommunistare here referring to those elements (based on the left at the
conferences of Zimmerwald (1915) and Kienthal (1916) who were already ready
to turn the imperialist war into a class war.

[3] May Day was instituted by the Second International in July 1889 in response
to the events of 1886 in Chicago and the subsequent state repression there. The
first formal International Workers May Day was held in 1891, but from 1904 its
principle demand was to call for the eight hour day.

[4] A former Tsarist Grand Duchy, Finland declared its independence on

December 6 1917, and this was formally recognised by the Soviet Government
twelve days later. In January 1918 a “red” government was established (mainly
in the southern cities of Tampere and Helsinki) which led to a brutal civil war
between “reds” and “whites” backed by Germany. The Soviet Government was
then in no position to offer much support to the Finnish workers and 30,000 of
them (mostly Red Guards) were massacred. Many more died in appalling
concentration camps in the months that followed (all in a country of just 3
million inhabitants).

[5] In Tsarist Russia convicts, serving a second or further sentence, who tried to
escape, were locked up with the feet and hands chained to a wheelbarrow heavy
enough to prevent their movements and small enough to be slipped under their
bench at night. See Anton Chekov, Sakhalin Island (One World Classics, 2007)

[6] A German word for police agent. The sabre was used by mounted police.

[7] The Krupp company was a steel firm specialising in the production of
machine guns and armoured vehicles and a major component of the German
military-industrial complex in two World Wars.

Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic

Our latest translation from the journal Kommunist is of an article by Béla Kun. It is a lucid and
perceptive analysis of the relationship between Austria-Hungary, and its more powerful German
ally at the end of the First World War. However it is not clear how much of a “proletarian” or
“Left” communist Béla Kun was. He only contributed two articles to Kommunist(he wrote a lot
more for Pravda [1] at this time) and both articles were on the crisis of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire (the Dual Monarchy of the title) at the end of the First World War. The first of them,
from Kommunist 2, is reproduced below (translated from the book La Revue
Kommunist (Editions Smolny) by a comrade of Klasbatalo). There is a certain irony that the
future leader of the first soviet republic to be formed after the one in Russia should provide an
analysis of some of the factors which, less than a year later, would lead to the establishment of
the Hungarian Soviet Republic. As the translation’s appearance coincides with the centenary of
that event we should add a few words about it and the author of this piece.

Béla Kohn was born on 20 February 1886 in Transylvania (now in Romania) and became a
journalist supporting the Hungarian Social Democratic Party. He “magyarised” his surname to
Kun in 1904 in common with many of Jewish heritage at that time under pressure from the
Austro-Hungarian Empire to “assimilate”. Called up to fight in the First World War, he was taken
prisoner by the Russians in 1916. In a POW camp in the Urals he now began to read about
communism and joined the Bolsheviks. Shortly before writing the article below he had founded
the “Hungarian Group” of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) with other former POWs,
many of whom he had recruited himself through his skill as a speaker, a factor which impressed
Lenin when he met him at that time. With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in
November 1918 he returned to Budapest with several hundred others of his group.

The newly formed state of Hungary, like much of the rest of Europe, was already on the brink of
revolution. It had arisen from the collapse of the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary which had
been unable to conduct a modern war in a context of rising national and social unrest. There had
been a series of strikes against the war from 1915 on. In Hungary workers had already set up
workers councils by June 1918 in imitation of the Russian model, and the further economic
collapse which accompanied the political demise of the old order helped to radicalise more and
more of the working class. Kun quickly formed the Hungarian Communist Party, founded a paper
and launched a class attack on the liberal/Social Democratic coalition government of Count
Károlyi. This had only come to power due to the pressure from the working class but it proved no
better at dealing with the crisis than the parties of the reactionary landlords. Kun was soon
arrested, and beaten up in gaol, but observers noted at the time this did not halt the strikes and
protests which only intensified. The final straw for the Károlyi Government was that the Entente
powers (headed by France) suddenly decided to cut Hungarian territory even further than
envisaged in the original treaty. Károlyi resigned, and with workers on strike and in the streets,
the Social Democrats now came to negotiate with Kun in his cell. He held all the cards but played
them badly. Instead of insisting on the separateness of his growing Communist Party, he formed
a joint organisation with the Social Democrats (telling a concerned Lenin not to worry since he
was in control) and set up a Soviet government which only had 4 Communists amongst its 13
ministers. During its short spell in power the Soviet Government issued over 500 decrees but by
allowing the Social Democrats (who were all the time secretly negotiating with the Entente
powers and waiting for the soviet republic to falter) to be part of the government he failed to
expose their reactionary character. This left the way open for the Social Democrats to stab the
Soviet Republic in the back when the military situation shifted against the soviets.

Kun was also convinced that the Bolshevik Revolution had been too timid, and was determined
to establish “socialism” without reference to the real balance of class forces in Hungary. He
passed a land reform which basically tried to turn the old latifundia of the “agrarians” (Kun
mentions them in the article below) into communes. But this overlooked the fact that, unlike
their Russian counterparts, Hungarian peasants had no tradition of such organisations and
simply wanted land. In fact what often happened was that the old landlord remained on his
estate and became director of the “commune”. The Hungarian Soviet government also aroused
the incredulity of Lenin when they wasted time and energy on nationalising the theatres and
other expressions of the arts.

More successful was the founding of an effective Red Army, which even managed to enter
Slovakia, and set up a short-lived Soviet Republic there. Eventually, however, when the
Romanians refused to honour a deal Kun made with the Entente, and did not retreat from
Hungarian territory, he launched an attack. The Romanians retreated to pre-prepared defensive
positions from where they launched a counter-attack which brought down the Soviet Republic. It
had only lasted 133 days. Kun had hoped that the Soviet Republic in Russia would be able to
come to his aid, but in 1919 the Russians were themselves under threat thus were in no position
to aid their class comrades in Hungary.

After that a White Terror, led by Admiral Horthy, led to the deaths of some 5000 workers (ten
times the number killed by Tibor Szamuely’s “Lenin Boys” in their earlier “Red Terror” when
putting down a counter-revolutionary coup), Kun returned (via prison in Vienna) to Russia.
However his association with the “proletarian” or left communists in March-April 1918 does not
seem to have survived his experience in Hungary. In 1920 he achieved notoriety for his part in
the killing of some 60,000 White Russians in the Crimea who had surrendered on the promise of
being spared.
He then worked for the Communist International where he became a follower of its leader,
Zinoviev, and his theory of the Permanent Offensive. He attempted to carry this policy out in the
disastrous March Action in Germany in 1921. For his part in this catastrophe he was roundly
condemned by Lenin as a “radical leftist” (this was in a letter to his mentor, Zinoviev!) for his
“bêtises” (stupidities) but remained a Comintern operative. Impatient radical Kun may have been
but there is no indication in any of his writings published in English that he shared the other left
communists' concerns about the growth of state capitalism in the RSFSR or the stifling of the
initiative of the working class in that period. Indeed he wrote in 1923 that “the power of the
Soviets is alive and strong to-day” and the reason for this was not the self-activity of the working
class but “lies first of all in the close organization of the Party” and its “iron discipline”. [2] Kun
was thus already (in 1923) part of the myth-making of the ideal of the Stalinist Party. It was to be
a costly choice.

He opposed the adoption of the Popular Front in 1935 and the infighting amongst Hungarian
communists at the time led to them all to label each other as “Trotskyists”. This, alongside his
previous support for Zinoviev, probably sealed Kun’s fate. He was arrested in 1937 and never
seen again.

Notes to the Introduction

[1] For his articles in English see marxists.org

[2] See: marxists.org

Abroad: Inside the Dual Monarchy

MILITARY FORCES ARE CURRENTLY REGROUPING inside the Austro-Hungarian monarchy: troops
are being dispatched from the Italian front to Prague, Budapest and Vienna. Austro-Hungarian
imperialism, having feverishly awaited the opportunity to send its armies from the eastern front
to Italy, must now fight on new fronts by force of circumstance. Its capacity for aggression long
gone, it fights only because it has to. The State apparatus is relinquishing its functions on the eve
of its complete disintegration, with certain elements no longer acting coherently. And thus
Austro-Hungarian imperialism’s hands are tied on both fronts, internally and externally.

All government-led offensives of the united dual monarchy, within the country or beyond its
borders, have been driven back in an impotent retreat. It was the stronger, more active German
imperialism that forced the government of Emperor Karl [1] to carry out military offensives;
within the country the last planned offensive became a defensive operation. And both were
already beyond its powers.

The government crisis in Austria and Hungary, the resignation of Czernin [2] and Wekerle [3] are
above all the consequence of the disintegration of the state apparatus, unable even to fullfil its
commitments to Germany, the strongest imperialism.

All changes within the government participate in the attempt to conserve the monarchy's
apparatus, even in its helplessness – deregulated and ready to break down – in trying to reshape
it at any cost.
Austro-Hungarian capitalism, in a state of decomposition even before the war, had no
perspective, because it was already supported by foreign capital. Before the war, Germany had
easily expanded its sphere of influence on the back of the dual monarchy. German capital alone
had invested four billion marks in Austria and one and a half billion in Hungary before the war. In
addition to these five and a half billion marks from Germany, France invested two billion francs;
the Hungarian railways were financed by English capital; even American capital attracted by high
profits had begun to invest more and more often in the Hungarian market notwithstanding the
risks that were almost as high as in the Turkish market. Thus, the capital invested in Austria-
Hungary by the Entente powers was comparable to German capital.

German hegemony in Austria was not determined by the volume of capital invested, but by
Germany's favourable geographical location and imperialist superiority.

German capital has invested mainly in military companies and loans.

Its aggressive character became evident long before the war. With each new loan, the vice
tightened around Austro-Hungarian imperialism, which once claimed autonomy and dominance
through its customs policy. In compensation for every million marks invested in Austria, Germany
demanded the signing of new military agreements, extended its influence into new territories
and appropriated new sources of raw materials. This aggressive German policy towards Austria
and its internal affairs can be illustrated by the classic example of Wilhelm’s intervention, which
caused a long parliamentary obstruction by the Hungarian petty bourgeoisie trying to achieve its
"national aspirations", which then ended in the refusal to vote military credits.

This was also confirmed by the monopolisation of Transylvania's rich gas fields by the "Deutsche
Bank" despite the more advantageous offers of British and American capitalists.

As for English capital, it mainly financed the local Hungarian railways owned by public limited
companies. So therefore, it could not exert much influence on the internal affairs of the dual
monarchy. French capital invested two billion francs in government bonds. It was easier to deal
with French capital because it never asked for high profits or sought rewards in industry or
agriculture.

Sympathies towards France in certain influential Hungarian circles led by Count Károlyi [4], and
even the propaganda of alliance between France, Russia and Hungary, can be explained mainly
by the aggressive policy of Austro-German capital. However, from a military point of view,
friendship with French capital came up against a serious obstacle that ultimately ensured the
domination of German capital. It was over competition with French capital in the Balkans, mainly
in Serbia.

This competition has forced Austrian entrepreneurs into an alliance with the Hungarian
agrarians. [5] Although their interests were opposed in the Balkans, they tried to act in perfect
harmony.

The memorable conflict of customs protectionism between Serbia and Austria-Hungary [6], the
first fruits of the bloody global tragedy, which lasted from 1906 to 1911 except for a 7-month
respite, was very profitable for Hungarian landowners. The absence of Serbian agricultural
products on the Austro-Hungarian market for five years increased the price of products from the
latifundia of the Hungarian agrarians. On the other hand, Austro-Hungarian capitalists lost the
Serbian arms market: 45 million crowns that France has taken over.

German capital also expanded its influence because, during the customs conflict between
Austria and Serbia and the latter's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina [7], the French stock
exchange flooded the monarchies with Austrian bonds hitherto held towards it.

All in all, German capitalism bolstered its influence. Under such conditions, the idea of an
alliance in Central Europe was dreaded by Austria-Hungary. The war and the colossal expenses
involved only tightened the noose with which German imperialism dragged behind in its
triumphal chariot, its young colleague – or rather, much smaller brigand.

⁂
The current war has revived all the issues that had long been buried in Austria and which
Hungary had resolved in barbaric manner, through police coercion. All the discontent arising
from the oppression of the masses, but hidden to an extent by the bourgeoisies of the different
ethnic groups, oppressed and oppressive – Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Romanian,
Ukrainian – and which they have tried to disguise with nationalist ideology, explodes, dealing a
hard blow to the ailing organ of the state, which was finding it increasingly difficult to solve its
own insoluble problems.

In this country exhausted by the length of the war, capitalism can no longer satisfy all its
demands or solve all the questions it raises. Even at the beginning of the Brest-Litovsk talks,
famine and the lack of raw materials took on a cataclysmic form. The Austrian krone's price has
been aligned with that of the Russian rouble. Even Germany, called upon to help, has driven
down the Austrian krone to cheaply supply itself with Hungarian agricultural products.

Attacked from all sides (from without, within and below), the state apparatus of the monarchies
was unable to carry out "prison socialism", the policy that Germany had so well conducted.

The Emperor's letter – shown to be a lie on the matter of the Alsace-Lorraine – and on the
double-dealing of the "pacifist" Czernin are both the result of pressure from all sides on the
Austro-Hungarian government. [8] They are beginning to rattle the weakest of the European
powers whose capitalist apparatus is most incapable of any resistance.

The ministerial crisis is grasping at straws in its feverish attempt to keep capitalist Austria-
Hungary, already condemned, alive.

The Viennese newspaper Arbeiter Zeitung, a supporter of the idea of the "great Austrian power"
and Austro-Hungarian capitalism, paints dark prospects for the sinister future of the monarchies:
the official organ of Austrian and German social democracy offers the proletariat only the rescue
of the monarchy as an alternative means of salvation against all the incredible evils and barbarity
resulting from the war. We hope that the Austrian proletariat will disapprove of the policies of
the party's leaders and will not struggle to save capitalism. [9]

⁂
The Austro-Hungarian army, already having its doubts, is tired of war. This was already revealed
in 1915 when Brusilov [10] managed to push it back to the Carpathians where German troops
had stopped it. [11] But the army could still maintain order inside the country as long as the
proletariat did not spontaneously rebel in all regions. Hungarian troops barbarically repressed
demonstrations by the Czech proletariat demanding peace and bread, while in Budapest, Czech
troops got back at the Hungarians; in Croatia the insurrection of the poor was repressed by the
Austrian troops in Linz and Vienna.

With the deepening of capitalism’s decomposition, all these seemingly isolated demonstrations
are becoming increasingly widespread. At the same time, the army is breaking down. Now, of
the entire army, only four Tyrolean regiments remain reliable. The others are afflicted by the
revolutionary contagion which has taken on the character of a real epidemic.

We cannot free ourselves from the evils and barbarism enflamed through war by following
recommendations of the official journal of Austrian social democracy. This would be to avoid
Charybdis in order to fall into Scylla, to replace one imperialism with another. The proletariat
understands this despite all the efforts of its great leaders. That is why, at a time when the
edifice of capitalism is threatening to collapse, it will try to preserve itself rather than the
bourgeois state. It will leave the salvation of the "homeland" to those who wish to perpetuate
the misfortune of the masses.

Naive were those who represented the international revolution as a solidarity strike in the early
days of the Russian revolution, during the days of the "honeymoon" of the bourgeois and
proletarian leaders of the time. The Russian revolution and a foreign policy of the dictatorship of
the proletariat based on international revolution: that is the reality.

Austro-Hungarian capitalism, in breaking down, is no longer able to subdue the masses; it is

unable to put up any real resistance. It is too weak to compete with the forces driving the
proletariat to insurrection. This weakness is further aggravated by the fact that the bourgeoisie
of all the dissatisfied ethnic groups which promote the disintegration of monarchies, aids the
proletariat.

The bourgeoisies of the dominant and oppressed ethnic groups still have enough time to agree
on how to prevent proletarian insurrection. But the crisis is brewing within the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy. This is the first sign of the reality of the international revolution ripening within the
Austro-Hungarian proletariat. The revolution cannot be triggered by external pressure, but once
it has matured, it can no longer be suppressed. In no way do we share the fear that the Prussian
soldier will crush the revolution.

Béla Kun

Notes

[1] Karl Franz-Josef of HABSBURG-LORRAINE (1887-1922): last emperor of Austria (22 Nov. 1916
- 12 Nov. 1918).

[2] Count von Czernin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria-Hungary since December 22, 1916,
resigned on April 14, 1918 as a result of the "Sixtus Affair": In March 1917 Emperor Charles had
more or less considered the possibility of a negotiated peace with the French government
through negotiations with the Belgian Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, arguing that he
considered the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine legitimate. These secret approaches did not
succeed, particularly because of Czernin's policy. On April 2, 1918, the latter gave a speech to the
Vienna town council where he welcomed the alliance with Germany, then in the midst of an
offensive, and where he was reckless enough to suggest that Clemenceau had made him peace
offers. The latter retaliated by arguing that it was Austria, on the contrary, which since 1917 had
been trying approaches in this direction and then made public a handwritten statement of 24
March 1917 in which Emperor Charles suggested that "if Germany refused to go down the path
of reason, he would be forced to abandon his alliance to make a separate peace with the
Entente". Faced with the crisis caused by Czernin's "fault" which made public the Emperor's
duplicity towards Germany, Charles I had to publish a refutation that ended up placing Austria
under the Reich's dependence.

[3] Sándor WEKERLE (1848-1921): Hungarian politician, Hungarian Prime Minister on three
occasions (1892-1895, 1906-1910 and 1917-1918), moderately reformist but largely manipulated
by the Conservatives, resigned on 17 April 1918, he trained a new coalition government with
István Tisza (1861-1918), opposing any extension of the electorate.

[4] Count Mihály Károlyi de Nagykároly (1875-1955): Hungarian aristocrat and politician,
supporter of national autonomy for Hungary, he was President of the Hungarian Democratic
Republic in 1918-1919.

[5] Social movement for the defence of rural interests, which originated in the first half of the
19th century.

[6] This customs dispute (known as “the Pig War”) had used the ban on the import of pigs from
Serbia as a pretext to protect the interests of Hungarian landowners.

[7] This annexation was formalized on October 5, 1908.

[8] On this "crisis" see note 2 above

[9] The Austrian Social Democratic Party, under the leadership of Victor ADLER (1852-1918), had
joined in August 1914 under the banner of German militarism and the impotent Austro-
Hungarian monarchy of Franz Joseph in the name of... defending the achievements of the
working class! Victor Adler's own son, Friedrich ADLER (1879-1960), in opposition to party policy,
assassinated, the Prime Minister Count Stürgkh on 21 October 1916 , who he believed was
responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffocation of the parliament. The Social
Democratic Party had the lowliness to condemn this act of "individual terrorism". Victor Adler
went so far as to plead before the Psychiatric Disorders Court to excuse his son's action, even
though he was proclaiming its political significance. Sentenced to death, then to 18 years of
fortress, Friedrich Adler was finally pardoned by the revolution in 1918.

[10] Alexei Alexevich BRUSILOV (1853-1926): Russian general, famous commander during the
First World War, joined the Soviet power during the civil war.

[11] Brusilov was then commander of the 8th Russian army on the southwest front in Galicia. He
pushed the Austrians over 150 kilometres before having to turn back from the summer of 1915,
partly in view of the defeats suffered elsewhere by the Russian army. Ironically, Brusilov
commanded some of the most important future white generals in his army: Denikin, Kaledin and
Kornilov!
History: 1974, revolution in Portugal

History

25 April 2004

Manny Thain

A half-century of fascist rule was swept aside in a day.

It started at 12.25 am on Thursday 25 April 1974 when the rebel song, Grandola Vila Morena,
played on the radio. By early evening the end of dictatorship was announced. The Movimento
das Forças Armadas (MFA), radical mid-ranking officers, had executed the plan devised by
Captain Otelo de Carvalho. Troops secured Lisbon and the second city, Porto. Key installations
were taken, ministers arrested.

THE news of the regime’s downfall spread like wildfire. People flooded the streets. MFA vehicles
were mobbed by adoring crowds. Thousands of school students marched, shouting "Down with
fascism". Red carnations, the symbol of the revolution, blossomed in rifle barrels and festooned
the streets in this festival of freedom.

The ex-dictator, Marcello Caetano, cowered in National Guard barracks. He was the successor to
the fascist regime consolidated in the early 1930s by António Salazar. Paramilitary groups
terrorised left-wing and industrial militants. Independent trade unions and the right to strike
were illegal. The secret police had a massive network of agents and informers. Torture was
systemic.

Even under these conditions, workers resisted. Illegal trade unions operated. The Partido
Comunista Português (PCP) maintained a clandestine organisation. Student protest flared up.

Colonial revolution

But it was the armed African liberation struggles - especially Angola, Guinea-Bissau and
Mozambique - begun in the early 1960s, which drove the final nails into the coffin of the fascist
regime. Many mid-ranked officers had been influenced by the Marxism they read in counter-
insurgency training. Radicalisation continued in Africa with the brutal repression meted out to
the people fighting for their freedom. A policy of fast-tracking new officers fuelled the anger.
For Caetano’s regime, the colonies meant the difference between Portugal being regarded as an
insignificant nation or an international power. But Portugal was also the poorest country in
Western Europe, its economy underdeveloped, centred around the export of sardines, textiles,
cork and wood. The wars consumed over 40% of the budget.

The MFA set up a ’junta of national salvation’ to rule until a provisional government was formed.
Elections were promised within a year. It announced freedom of association and expression, and
an amnesty for political prisoners.

Spínola and the MFA

General António de Spínola was made acting president. The son of a friend of Salazar, Spínola
had impeccable fascist credentials. He had, however, called for the easing of direct colonial rule,
which gave him a certain amount of support.

The MFA reflected a wide range of political views. The lefts, including Carvalho and Vasco
Gonçalves, were strongly influenced by the ’socialism’ (Stalinism) of Eastern Europe, Cuba or
Algeria. Others, such as Melo Antunes, were linked with the social democrats around Mário
Soares.

Having suffered at the hands of bosses and landowners linked to the regime, workers drove
them out of the factories and off the land. The editor of the daily, Diário de Notícias, was forced
out on 7 June after print workers seized the presses, publishing a front-page article exposing his
fascist connections. Homeless people occupied empty properties. Shipyard and underground
workers went on strike for a 50% pay rise. Car workers won a 40-hour week. Bakery and textile
workers struck. Train and tram conductors refused to collect fares.

Spínola’s coalition included politicians with ties to the old regime - for example, the new,
conservative Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) - alongside the PCP, Partido Socialista (PS) and
the MDP/CDE (linked with the PCP). Mário Soares, PS leader - a well-known lawyer funded by
social democratic parties (and the CIA) - returned from exile on 28 April. Álvaro Cunhal, PCP
leader, got back on 30 April after 14 years in exile in Eastern Europe. Almost immediately, they
were sharing power.

Spínola aimed to use the PS and the PCP to turn back the revolutionary tide. Both parties saw
explosive growth. PS membership rose from 200 in April 1974 to 60,000 in early 1975, its
support mainly from white-collar workers and professionals. The PCP strongholds were among
agricultural workers in the south, and in the industrial centres.

Horrified and impotent, the imperialist powers looked on as the PCP joined the government of a
Nato country. They feared the effects of a ’communist’ state in Western Europe, especially on
Franco’s dying dictatorship in Spain.

There was little base for reaction, the US superpower had just emerged humiliated from
Vietnam, and the worldwide economic recession limited the scope for action.

The workers’ parties

Unfortunately, influential leaders like Cunhal based themselves on the methods of the Soviet
Union’s ruling bureaucracy, not on independent mass action by the workers towards socialism.
The working class was mobilised as and when its support was required, while PCP leaders relied
on their influence with the MFA left, exerted in meetings behind closed doors.

The radical measures taken by the MFA were in response to the mass movement from below
rather than as part of a conscious socialist programme. A minimum wage of £55 a month
affected 65% of the workers. Controls on prices and rents were introduced, taxes imposed on
under-utilised farmland on the big estates. A thousand leading company directors were
dismissed.

Thirty thousand postal workers struck from 17-21 June. Rail, electricity, shipping, and major
industries saw strikes. Frantically trying to control the movement, the PCP tried to hold back the
workers.

Its newspaper, Avante, criticised bosses for conceding wage increases which were "too high"!
And the PCP helped introduce a trade union law which both legalised and attempted to restrict
industrial action. Workers had the right to picket but not to occupy or organise solidarity action.

The PS cynically condemned the restrictions - part of a strategy to win over the working class,
away from the PCP and far-left. Soares frequently called for the ’socialist transformation of
society’. Once the revolutionary heat had cooled, however, he planned to direct the movement
down a safe, reformist, capitalist road.

Attempted coup

Spínola called a ’silent majority’ demonstration for 28 September. He was testing the balance of
power. Rumours circulated of a right-wing coup. But armed workers set up roadblocks to stop
reactionaries moving on Lisbon. And as the silent majority evaporated, a dejected Spínola called
it off. Right-wing officers and civilians were arrested.

Political confrontations were becoming increasingly violent. The first national congress of the
right-wing Centro Democrático Social (CDS - based around members of the former regime), in
Porto on 25 January, was besieged by left-wing protesters and cancelled. Soldiers sided with the
demo.

On 7 March, a PPD meeting in the industrial city of Setúbal was broken up. Two protesters were
shot dead in clashes with the police.

Spínola made one more pathetic bid for power, on 11 March 1975. But the paratroopers he
mobilised mutinied. The fact that six members of the Espírito Santo banking family were
implicated in the coup fiasco fuelled further outrage.

The colossal economic and political power wielded by the banks meant that they were
particularly hated by workers and much of the middle class.

The bank workers’ investigation revealed that the Espírito Santo family had siphoned off money
allocated to provide jobs for demobbed troops, to safeguard the family’s wealth in the event of
nationalisation. It was funding right-wing parties. Workers occupied the banks, preventing the
bosses from removing documents or transferring funds. On 14 March, Portuguese banks were
nationalised!
On 11 July, the PS withdrew from the government in protest over the takeover of the pro-PS
República newspaper by Communist print workers. Soares accused the armed forces of
attempting to impose a ’communist-style police state’. On 17 July, the PPD also withdrew, and
the fourth coalition government in 15 months collapsed.

Matters were coming to a head. A triumvirate of President Francisco de Costa Gomes, Prime
Minister Gonçalves, and Carvalho gave the impression that the PCP/MFA-left had been
strengthened in the corridors of power. But right-wing parties were growing in confidence, with
attacks on PCP and MDP-CDE offices and members intensifying, particularly in the north.

Counter-revolution in ’democratic’ clothes

The MFA pro-Soares wing around Antunes was emboldened. On 29 August, Gonçalves was
removed and a group supported by the PS and PPD emerged to lead the MFA.

MFA troops refused to intervene when 30,000 construction workers surrounded the assembly on
13 November demanding higher wages and the nationalisation of building sites. Carvalho was
dismissed and PCP members were kicked out of the ministries.

Right-wing groups mobilised farmers - mainly poor smallholders from the north - setting up
barricades on 24 November to try to isolate ’Red Lisbon’. Next day, troops under right-wing
Lieutenant Colonel António Eanes occupied military bases. A state of emergency was called.

’Order’ was restored. However, it would take years of militant defensive struggles before the
bosses could take back what they had been forced to concede: far-reaching reforms on land,
health, education, housing, social services, wages and conditions, and the nationalisation of
three-quarters of the economy.

Lessons

Without a revolutionary programme, the Portuguese working class had ensured that 50 years of
brutal dictatorship ended - another magnificent achievement. The scale of the movement,
however, meant that it could have achieved much more.

A socialist revolution was on the agenda. A clear socialist direction - which can only be provided
by a revolutionary party respected by the working class - was missing. Nonetheless, Portugal’s
workers set a high standard - maybe a world record - for revolutionary initiative, energy and
determination. They will have to call on these rich traditions in many battles to come.

what the cwi said in 1974

"Only a revolutionary leadership is missing"

Militant, the forerunner of the socialist, carried articles immediately after the 25 April coup.

They were translated into Portuguese and circulated in the workers’ parties, particularly the
Socialist Party and the Young Socialists. The material explained the criticial role of the workers’
parties and their leaders in successfully transforming society along socialist lines. In particular, it
compared this task confronting the PCP and PSP leaders with the successful revolution carried
out in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1917.
"The Socialist Party has had no tradition of struggle under the Salazar/Caetano regime.
Nevertheless, it will undoubtedly grow into a mass workers’ movement under the present
conditions, just as the Mensheviks [a reformist party] became a mass force in February 1917...
The millions of politically naive, untutored masses pouring on to the political arena will not at
first distinguish between the different working-class tendencies. That makes it all the more vital
that the Communist Party, with its prestige among industrial militants, should tirelessly and
patiently explain the danger of leaving power in the hands of the capitalists.

"That is how the Bolsheviks won the overwhelming support of the Russian workers within a few
hectic and stormy months and led the world’s first socialist revolution in conditions far less
favourable than those existing today in Portugal."

... "So far the role of the CP has been to limited to policing the workers in the interests of the
junta. The CP has condemned the workers’ spontaneous action in occupying the factories, and
now a planned steel strike has been called off after an appeal by the CP."

... "If either the Socialist or the Communist Party were revolutionary parties, the workers could
be in power today. But instead, we see all the authority of these parties prostituted at the
service of the capitalist class."

Free elections

The elections on 25 April 1975 were the first based on universal suffrage in Portugal’s history.

More than six million people were eligible to vote.

A massive 91.73% voted. The PS gained 37.9% (115 seats), PPD 26.4% (80), PCP 12.5% (30), CDS
7.7% (16), MDP-CDE 4% (5), UDP 0.8% (1 seat). In total, 58.5% had voted for left-wing parties
(including those which did not win seats).

This showed the widespread support for socialist ideas in general. There was also a deep
suspicion of Stalinism. The model provided by the former Soviet Union was unattractive to the
working class, and the PS exploited this genuine fear for its own gain.

Special feature from The Socialist, paper of the Socialist Party, cwi in England and Wales

Limerick 1919: all power to the Irish soviets

 April 30, 2019

 Written by Sean Ledwith

 Published in History


Members of the Limerick Soviet, April 1919. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Marking the centenary of its emergence, Sean Ledwith looks at the history of the Limerick
soviet

For most people today the word ‘soviet’ conjures up images of Russia in 1917 with workers,
soldiers and peasants bringing down the tsar and forming the world’s first socialist state. In the
immediate aftermath of that epochal achievement, however, the concept of the soviet - or
workers’ council - spread around the world and was embraced by the oppressed in multiple
countries. One of the most remarkable examples of this emancipatory contagion occurred in
Ireland in the city of Limerick one hundred years ago.

Epicentre

Britain’s oldest colony at that time was in the throes of a nationalist rebellion that would
ultimately lead to the creation of the Republic of Ireland a few years later. For a brief period
before partition in 1921, however, the military resistance to British occupation from the IRA
merged with mass workers’ struggle from below to create one of the most advanced examples
of class consciousness ever seen in the British Isles. Inspired by their counterparts in Russia,
workers in Limerick spontaneously formed a soviet in April 1919, which took control of the city
and ran its economy and services in defiance of the British colonial power. The city was not an
isolated case and became the epicentre of a remarkable wave of soviets that sprang up around
Ireland in the midst of what became known as the War of Independence. An estimated 100
workers’ council were formed across the country in the period following WW1.

Connolly’s legacy

Following the defeat of the 1916 Easter Rising, the British imposed a regime of repression in
Ireland in an attempt to stem the tide of the movement for independence. The execution of
sixteen of the Easter rebels, however, provoked a level of resistance that the colonial power
would find ultimately impossible to hold down. The nationalist forces of Sinn Fein and the IRA
dominated the campaign for Irish independence but the country was also host to an advanced
labour movement that had spawned the Dublin Lockout of 1913 and James Connolly’s left-wing
Irish Citizens Army. Connolly’s execution in 1916 had robbed the Irish left of its most dynamic
leader but the layers of trade union organisation and consciousness he had promoted remained
intact as the campaign against British occupation escalated in the aftermath of WW1.

For a time, this progressive class consciousness was even able to bridge the sectarian divide in
the North of Ireland as Catholic and Protestant workers united in Belfast in early 1919 to form
the first soviet. At the same time as better known uprisings in Berlin and Glasgow, the working
class of Ireland’s industrial powerhouse sent a shiver down the collective spine of the ruling
class. Spearheaded by Belfast’s engineers and shipyard workers pursuing a shorter working
week, the soviet brought the city to a standstill for the first few months of 1919. A reporter for
the Manchester Guardian observed:

'Soviet' has an unpleasant sound in English ears, and one uses it with hesitation; but it
nevertheless appears to be the fact that the Strike Committee have taken upon themselves, with
the involuntary acquiescence of the civic authority, some of the attributes of an industrial soviet.

Shoot to kill

In April, the soviet model surfaced in Limerick. The trigger was the shooting of local IRA activist,
Robert Byrne. He had been arrested in January and had organised a hunger strike among other
Republican prisoners to demand political status. Byrne’s comrades in the IRA outside prison
arranged a rescue attempt in early April but the operation left its target fatally injured. Many in
the wider population believed the pro-British Royal Irish Constabulary deliberately targeted
Byrne as part of a shoot-to-kill policy. Ten thousand people turned a couple of days later as
Byrne’s tricolour-draped coffin was laid to rest. Tension was already high in the area as the IRA’s
guerrilla campaign against British occupation was intensifying.

The senior British commander in Ireland, General Griffin, panicked and issued an order for de
facto martial law in Limerick and its environs. Griffin sent extra troops into the city and initiated
a permit system that required every person travelling into or out of the are to possess approved
identification. On the 13th, the local trades’ council, representing 25 local trade unions, met to
discuss its response. The outcome was the historic declaration of the Limerick Soviet, created in
explicit defiance of Griffin’s order and with the conscious intention of supplanting British power.
The following day the newly formed strike committee issued the following decree:
The workers of Limerick, assembled in Council, hereby declare cessation of all work from 5 am on
Monday April 14, 1919, as a protest against the decision of the British Government in compelling
them to procure permits in order to earn their bread.

Soviet power

For almost two weeks from that point, onwards the Limerick Soviet conducted the affairs of the
city. The episode achieved global publicity as, coincidentally; many international journalists were
assembled there for a pioneering attempt to cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane. Fifteen thousand
workers were involved in the shutdown across a range of industries and services including the
trains, banks, retail, hotels and the post office. The Soviet ensured that the forces of the colonial
power were stalled but not at the expense of the welfare of the city’s 40 000 inhabitants. Food
shops were permitted to open for a few hours in the afternoon but could only sell at prices
capped by the Soviet. A consignment of imported Canadian grain was appropriated from the
docks and distributed among the population. Transportation in and out the city was run entirely
on the basis of a permit system organised by the Soviet itself-much to the chagrin of Griffin
whose crude attempt at his own version had provoked the conflict.

It was widely observed that the only sector of local industry not interrupted was the printworks-
but only because it was involved in producing a daily strike bulletin in the name of the Soviet.
Perhaps most impressively, the political consciousness of those involved was such that they
started to organise a local currency to replace the British version.

Grand slam

The Soviet at its peak was able to draw on support not just from the labour movement of the
city but also significant sections of the middle class aswell. The draconian measures of the
British forces across the country had alienated elements of the business community who felt it
was time for homegrown elite to run the economy. The Soviet also initially attracted the support
of some grassroots Catholic clerics who perceived it as fulfilling the New Testament message of
helping the poor. A correspondent for the Daily Express articulated the fear inspired by the
Soviet among the ruling class:

The city is as much in military occupation as Cologne...There is nothing comparable with the
situation today, outside certain Continental European countries. The leadership mean to win, and
it certainly seems as if the workers of Ireland were with them... I have witnessed many strikes in
England but never one bearing any resemblance to this. It is the grand slam, and it
suggests possibilities on which it is not pleasant to ponder.

The Church strikes back

The diversity of support enjoyed by the Soviet in its early stages, however, turned out to be one
of the sources of its undoing. Middle class elements sympathetic to the orthodox nationalism of
Sinn Fein began to turn away as the dispute entered its second week in accordance with that
organisation’s ideology of prioritising the campaign for independence ahead of social and
economic agitation. Clerics on the ground may have expressed solidarity with the aims of the
strikers but the hierarchy of the Irish Catholic Church eventually re-established control and
started to denounce the similarities between the Limerick Soviet and its counterparts backed by
the officially atheistic regime in the USSR.

End of the experiment

The ultimate downfall of this remarkable experiment in workers’ democracy was caused by the
uneven political consciousness of the same trade union movement that had spawned it. Unlike
the soviets of Petrograd and Moscow, the leadership of the Limerick version remained tied to
the official trade union bureaucracy, in their case that of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union
Congress (ILPTUC). Despite their audacity in creating the soviet, the local leadership also lacked
a figure of Lenin’s calibre, rooted in the revolutionary movement for decades and with an
independent organisation under his command that could realistically challenge for power. It was
clear to many that, after a fortnight of dual power in the region, a decisive confrontation with
the armed power of the British state would be necessary if the Soviet was to sustain its control
of the city. William O Brien, treasurer of the ILPTUC, however, perceived the effectiveness of the
soviet model was as much a threat to the authority of the established trade union machine as it
was to the British colonial power.

In addition to his own reservations about the situation in Limerick, O Brien came under pressure
from the middle class leaderships of Sinn Fein and the Catholic Church to ensure the spectre of
workers’ power was put firmly back in the bottle and did not threaten their hegemony of the
campaign for national freedom. When the instruction to abandon the dispute came from the
ILPTUC, the local executive of the Limerick Soviet lacked the self-confidence and tradition of
independent activity to defy O Brien. On the 27 th April, workers in the city were left with no
choice but to return to work and to carry the hated permits that General Griffin had tried to
force on them two weeks earlier.

Missed opportunity

The Limerick Soviet was a glorious chapter in the history of the Irish working class but also,
tragically, represented a missed opportunity. Subsequently the struggle against British rule was
dominated by the narrowly nationalist agenda of Sinn Fein and the focus on exclusively military
activity in the hands of the IRA. The ability of Irish workers to shape the direction of the anti-
colonial struggle was gradually suppressed and social and economic questions were
marginalised. Instead of evolving into a class war that could have ignited the rest of the UK, the
Irish War of Independence culminated in the double disasters of partition and civil war that
stunted national development for decades. Nevertheless, the Limerick Soviet should primarily be
remembered as a spectacular vindication of James Connolly’s vision of permanent revolution in
Ireland. If he had lived to see it - and even helped lead it - the fears of the British ruling class may
have been realised in 1919.

A People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution - book review

 April 25, 2019

 Written by Orlando Hill

  Published in Book Reviews

The Portuguese Revolution needs to be studied more thoroughly, and Varela’s book is good place
to start, finds Orlando Hill
 Raquel Varela, A
People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution (Pluto Press), 334 pp.

Forty-five years ago, in 1974, Europe experienced its most profound revolution since the Second
World War. It caught the US state department by surprise and had the European and American
ruling class worried that the Mediterranean would turn Red. It was a revolution in Western
Europe, ‘within the NATO sphere, which took 19 months to defeat.’ And it was not defeated by
violence and restoring the dictatorship, but ‘instead by consensus and with very large social
reforms won by the working class’ (p.266). Yet it is one of the least studied and most overlooked
of revolutions. That is a shame for it has many lessons for revolutionaries in Europe and in the
world. Raquel Varela’s book is an excellent start in filling this lacuna.
As a young activist in Brazil, the Portuguese Revolution was an inspiration. Portuguese
revolutionary songs such as Grandola Vila Morena (the song that was used as a signal for the
beginning of the revolution) and Somos Livres were the sound track of the student movement.
This was a revolution spoken in Portuguese. No subtitles were needed. If they could do it so
could we. As Chico Buarque, one of Brazil’s most famous song writers, sang in Fado Tropical, we
wanted to convert Brazil into an immense Portugal. We were still under the boots of a military
dictatorship when Buarque wrote another song, Tanto Mar, lamenting how much sea there was
between us and how much we still needed to navigate to be able to join the party. When the
revolution changed course, he changed the lyrics to express his sadness that the party was over,
but left hope for the future. The party might have wilted, but a seed was left forgotten in a
corner of the garden.

The Portuguese Revolution did not only galvanise young Brazilian activists. It was a sign of hope
that only seven months after the bloody defeat of Allende’s government in Chile, workers were
once again winning. By the end of the revolutionary process over 10,000 foreign activists had
visited Portugal. Among these revolutionary tourists was twenty-five-year-old Bob Light. He
joined a demonstration by the striking postal workers. He was surprised to be among workers
marching towards the army barracks, and then to see uniformed soldiers ‘giving the clenched fist
salute and waving red carnations’ (p.48).

Revolution, Europe and empires

The Carnation Revolution was the latest of a line of workers’ movements starting in May 1968 in
Paris, continuing into the 1969 ‘hot autumn’ in Italy, strike waves in Germany and Britain in the
early 1970s and the struggle in Greece against military rule in 1973-4. Tony Cliff argued that
‘Portugal, the weakest link in the capitalist chain in Europe can become the launching pad for the
socialist revolution in the whole of the continent’ (p.220).

So why didn’t it? Instead of becoming ‘the launching pad of the socialist revolution’, the
Portuguese was to be the last revolution in Europe before the onslaught of neoliberalism. Varela
tells the story of the revolution from the events that led to the coup of 25 April 1974 to its defeat
in November 1975 while pointing out important lessons that we should all heed.

Revolutions are about the state. They happen at a moment when the state can no longer govern
as it used to, and those underneath are no longer willing to be governed. They erupt at the point
where the tensions are concentrated. In the Portuguese case it was the colonial war in Africa.
Portugal was the first and the last colonial power in Europe. It hung onto its colonies well after
other European powers had relinquished theirs. If the revolution seemed like a big party in the
metropole, a revolution without deaths, it was because of thirteen years of horror in the
colonies. The revolution began in Africa.

A revolution cannot be understood outside the context of global capitalism. In the late 1960s,
Europe’s oldest dictatorship recognised the need to modernise and reorganise its economy.
Multinationals attracted by cheap labour and a friendly regime were invited to set up plants
mostly in the industrial belt of Lisbon. The offer of jobs attracted migrants from the
impoverished countryside adding to the urban working class and the shanty towns. Portugal
became a semi-colony of Western imperialism. By 1968, foreign direct investment accounted for
52.2% of Portugal’s total manufacturing investment. As the weakest capitalist economy in
Europe, Portugal was the worst hit by the crisis of the 1970s.

The Carnation Revolution

On 25th April, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) opened the gates of the revolution. Initially
the masses, described by Varela as ‘not organised groups with a political program, hence … a
disoriented, disruptive mass’ (p.257), were not invited to participate in the party. The first MFA
communiqué appealed ‘to the residents of the city of Lisbon to go to their homes and remain in
the utmost calm’ (p.19). But the population didn’t listen, and gate crashed the party. Young
people rode on the back of tanks. Carnations of all colours and other flowers, along with soup
and ham were handed out to the soldiers. Since red is the colour of the left and more
photogenic than other colours, the red carnation became the symbol of the revolution.

Revolutions since the Paris Commune have been described as the festival of the oppressed; it
was no different in Lisbon. It empowered people. Confidence grew daily. People who for decades
were forced into silence started discussing the situation of workers in Europe and South
America. ‘Even the prostitutes of Lisbon organised and campaigned to sack their pimps’ (p.26).
What began as a democratic revolution evolved into a social revolution.

Over forty years of dictatorship had left a vacuum of organisations. Workers’ commissions
(comissões de trabalhadores) and residents’ commissions (comissões de moradores) emerged to
occupy the vacuum. Residents’ commissions represented the occupation movements which
started in Porto and quickly spread to Lisbon and other cities. Workers occupied factories, farms
and shipyards. Some of these could not really be considered occupations simply because the
owners had abandoned their properties and fled to Brazil. However, Varela stresses that the
occupations were about workers’ self-management and not workers’ control. She quotes a
worker from Lisnave Margueira shipyard: ‘There will not be workers’ control if we merely intend
to run the bosses’ businesses’ (p.144). The occupations and workers’ self-management rose
awareness among workers of the importance of taking over political power. The Portuguese was
the last revolution in Europe, and maybe in the world, to call into question the private ownership
of the means of production.

Defeat of the revolution

So, what went wrong? Using the Russian Revolution as a metaphor, why didn’t February
metamorphose into October? Why was the April 1974 revolution defeated in November 1975?
Varela discusses some factors that contributed to the defeat and lays a large part of the
responsibility on the broad shoulders of the Communist Party (PCP). In an attempt to contain the
widespread political activity from below, the pro-Soviet Communist Party was invited to take
part in the First Provisional Government in May 1974 and took part in all the six provisional
governments thereafter.

The Communist Party was ‘the only force that effectively resisted fascism’ (p .45) and paid a
heavy price with many members in prison. In April 1974, the party had no more than three
thousand militants. A year later it had grown to 100,000. The Communist Party shared the Soviet
cold-war view of the world as one of peaceful co-existence. Supporting this policy was the idea
that the division of the world between the socialist and capitalist bloc should be respected. The
strategy of the PCP was to win rights for the workers, not to seize political power.

Revolutions will always reach a point when the issue of power comes to the forefront. By the
summer of ’75 the country had become increasingly divided. The Socialist Party knew that the
favourable outcomes in the elections for the Constitutional Assembly and in the trade unions
were not enough to defeat the workers’ control movement which had spread since February. A
clear alliance was formed with the Church, the upper hierarchy of the armed forces and the
moderates in the MFA, known as the Group of Nine.

On 25th November, the Group of Nine moved against a group of left-wing soldiers organised in
the Soldados Unidos Vencerão(Soldiers United for Victory or SUV). The SUV was a rank and file
organisation that aimed to prepare the ‘conditions that would permit the destruction of the
bourgeois Army and the creation of the armed wing, the Power of Workers, a People’s
Revolutionary Army’ (p.225).

Previously, the fear was of a Chileanization of the Portuguese Revolution. The fear was that the
counter revolution would be inspired by fascism and would come from outside the MFA, and not
from those who had supported the 25 th April. The workers and soldiers were not prepared for a
social-democratic counter revolution. Too much trust was put on the officers of the MFA and ‘no
real structure of organisation of the rank and file existed able to lead at the testing time’ (p.245).

The need for revolutionary organisation

There was resistance against the coup and in support of the soldiers, mainly by groups of
building workers who used walkie-talkies, and commandeered enormous earth-movers and
concrete-mixers, in order to block the advance of commandos of the Group of Nine who were on
the road to arrest members of the SUV. The problem of the 25 th November was that there was
not a centralised command that organised the resistance, and neither the unions nor the
workers’ commissions, controlled by the PCP, were interested in resisting.

The fact that the Communist Party agreed not to resist the move against the SUV weighs heavily
on their shoulders. The Socialist Party and the Church initially did not want the Communists in
the government, but sectors of the military knew of the strength and influence of the Party
among the soldiers and demanded it:

‘The Portuguese Communist Party was prepared to abandon its radical army supporters (and a
great many others) in exchange for a continued stake in government. The military left had
become a burden on the Communist Party because its performance undermined the balance of
power with the Nine and peaceful coexistence agreements between the USA, Western Europe
and the USSR. Some 200 soldiers and officers, plus a handful of building workers, were arrested’
(p.246).

Forty-five years after the Revolution its memory is in dispute. The Socialist Party and the
establishment will try to portray it ‘as a long process of extending democracy, of the
accumulation of forces and rights and the convincing of or neutralisation of social enemies’
(p.254). Representative democracy is thus shown as the destination of the revolution. According
to Varela, by contrast, representative democracy defeated direct democracy. In her book launch
in the Marx Memorial Library in London, Varela described the Portuguese ruling class as being
forced to give their rings so as not to lose their fingers.

This 25th April should be celebrated and remembered as a moment when the working class
attempted to seize power and show the world that an alternative is possible.

Miners’ Strike 35 Years On

written by Mike Simons March 19, 2019

35 years on, and the impact of the great miners’ strike of 1984–85 still reverberates. Mike
Simons, executive producer of the film Still the Enemy Within, takes a look back at this
extraordinary struggle.

The 1984-85 miners’ strike was the longest, most bitter national strike in British working class
history. For 12 months the miners of Britain fought an unprecedented battle to defend their jobs
and communities against the full might of the government and ruling class.

The miners fought a government that first provoked the strike and then prosecuted it like a civil
war. They withstood unprecedented police brutality, travesties of justice in the courts, poverty,
hunger and media harassment, holding firm for a year.

Almost 10,000 miners were arrested during the strike. More than 180 miners spent time in jail
and 700 were sacked in its aftermath. Welfare and social services agencies were turned into a
weapon by the Tories, denying miners and their families the benefits they were entitled to, in a
bid to starve them back to work.

Rather than surrender the mining communities transformed themselves. Men and women
joined picket lines, travelling the country speaking at meetings to raise funds, organising food
kitchens and stiffening the backbone of wavering strikers. After 12 months the miners were
forced back to work but their heroism inspired millions around the world.

Class War

In the immediate aftermath of the strike and in the 35 years since, a political battle has raged
about why the miners went down to defeat. Some simply say that the strike was doomed from
the start – that the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) should not have taken up the Coal
Board’s challenge, coming as it did in the spring and at a time when coal stocks were at
unprecedented levels.

But workers are often forced to fight in less than ideal conditions. Had the miners’ capitulated in
March 1984 without a fight, then Thatcher’s offensive against the British working class would
indeed have seemed unstoppable. The length and scale of the strike, its political and financial
cost to the Tories, revealed the miners’ strength, and the impact workers can have when they
fight back.

Others say, then and now, that the refusal to hold a national strike ballot doomed the strike to
defeat; but the decision not to hold a ballot in March 1984 was not about democracy in the
abstract. The miners had voted in a ballot to oppose pit closures. The ballot call in March 1984
was made when tens of thousands of miners were already out on strike, in line with a
democratically decided union policy to fight for jobs

The Tories and those in the Labour Party, who then and now, denounced the lack of a ballot have
a highly selective attitude to democracy. They favour secret ballots when they win them; when
they lose, their attitude changed. Thatcher herself shamelessly denied workers at the
government’s GCHQ monitoring centre, a vote over the withdrawal of their trade union rights,
just a few weeks before she provoked the miners’ strike.

Had the miners held a ballot and voted to strike, does anyone think that Thatcher would have
behaved differently? Does anyone think she would have not mobilised the police in such vast
numbers and contemplated using the army against the strikers? No one in 1984 had any doubts
and no one should today.

An inevitable defeat?

Some argue that the strike was doomed from the start, that pickets could never beat the police
and the state, that workers’ solidarity was a thing of the past.

These claims fly in the face of the facts – facts that were apparent 35 years ago and which have
been confirmed by the release of the Cabinet Papers from 1984. The Cabinet Papers give the lie
to Thatcher’s claims in 1984 that the dispute was not of the government’s making. They show
her daily micromanagement of the dispute and the way the law was twisted and turned to suit
the Tories’ aims.

The Cabinet Minutes reveal Thatcher lambasting chief constables in the early days of the strike
because they were reluctant to order the arrest of miners who had committed no crime. It was,
she said, “essential to stiffen the resolve of chief constables”. She demanded a special report to
see if the police were “adopting the more vigorous interpretation of their duties which was
being sought.”

Two months into the strike and after 900 arrests in the Nottinghamshire coal field, Lord
Hailsham, the government’s top legal officer advised Mrs Thatcher that the Chief Constable of
Nottinghamshire had “expressed reservations about the quality of some of the evidence upon
which the arrests have been made, and for this reason is not anxious for dates of trial to be fixed
too soon.” It was given short shrift and the government sent in scores of stipendiary magistrates
to dispense rough justice.

These are just two of a myriad of examples from the 1984 Cabinet minutes that show the reality
of power beneath the thin veneer of parliamentary democracy. In the end, however, it wasn’t
the might of the police and the courts that beat the miners, it was the failure of the trade union
leaders to deliver the solidarity they promised and that the miners needed.

The miners came close to victory many times during the dispute. At the start of the strike the
flying pickets almost shut the whole of the mining industry. They stunned the government and
coal board, forcing them to use the police in unprecedented numbers to physically prevent
Yorkshire miners getting their arguments about pit closures across to their fellow union
members in Nottinghamshire.
Had the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire NUM leaders been more resolute, Thatcher could have
been forced to back down.

Isolating the Miners

As the strike progressed the Tories tried desperately to avoid fighting on two fronts at once. They
suddenly found extra money for left wing Labour controlled inner city councils, and to give rail
and other workers inflation busting pay rises. Tragically, every time a second front looked like
opening union leaders grabbed whatever extra the government offered rather than join the
miners in their fight.

The Tories panicked when the dock workers walked out on strike in defence of the dock labour
scheme which had ended the casualization of the industry. The Cabinet Minutes show Thatcher
telling her war council the priority was to “settle the dock strike as quickly as possible in order to
allow the government to concentrate on winning the miners’ strike.”

Ministers were instructed to reassure dock workers the government had no intention to “alter or
abolish” the dock labour scheme which provided guaranteed employment. It was, of course, a
lie, but the dockers’ leaders fell for a phoney deal.

Again, when the coal board picked a fight with the NACODS, the pit deputies union, Thatcher
ordered Ian MacGregor the union buster she appointed to head the National Coal Board, to
cobble together a compromise, telling him “the fate of the government was in his hands”.

For even the most stupid trade union leader, the stakes were clear when Thatcher made her
notorious speech declaring the miners the ‘Enemy Within’. This should have been a signal to the
rest of the trade union movement that the miners’ strike was not a normal industrial dispute,
but a fight for the survival of the whole movement, that it was time for action as well as words.

In September 1984, the TUC Congress promised to deliver solidarity that would stop the use of
coal and oil imported to break the strike, but nothing was done. Despite the resolution at the
TUC congress overwhelmingly backing the miners, not a single leaflet or poster was distributed,
not a single march called.

Worse, when the courts removed the elected representatives of the NUM from control of the
union funds and appointed a receiver, the TUC refused point blank to help. They offered no
official support for fear that it might leave them “in contempt of court”.

As the legal attacks on the NUM mounted, rather than step up the solidarity, the leaders of the
power station workers’ unions relaxed their “guidelines” against using scab coal, oil and gas.
These guidelines, the miners had been assured back in the autumn of 1984, would bring power
cuts within weeks. And so it was that the government got through the winter without blackouts.

Even as the union leaders were turning their backs on the miners, the strikers were winning
support at home and abroad that showed what could have been achieved.

Solidarity

While the Tories imported coal from Russia and Poland to break the strike, a message of support
came from Solidarnosc, the independent trade union in Poland that was fighting the military
regime. As the Tories imported coal from apartheid South Africa, black South African miners
organised collections for the NUM. In Australia dockers and seafarers refused to handle coal
bound for Britain; while in Denmark, dockers fought a pitched battle with riot police to stop coal
being exported to undermine the strike.

In Britain, there were many shining examples of solidarity. At Coalville, in the middle of the
working Leicestershire coalfield, no coal was moved by rail for 35 weeks. Railworkers were
barred from virtually every pub and club in the area but they stood firm.

At the Sun newspaper, print union workers refused to handle one of the most obnoxious front
pages, which likened Arthur Scargill to Hitler and then closed the paper down for three days in
protest when the management refused to publish a half page statement from them in support of
the miners.

As the strike dragged on millions of ordinary workers, watching the now almost daily police
assaults on the picket lines, responded by delivering unprecedented financial support to mining
communities and joining a massive campaign to twin pit villages with union branches and
community groups. This could have been mobilised to deliver strikes, but while grassroots
solidarity grew, trade union leaders were busy undermining it.

A series of days of action called by regional TUCs were condemned by Len Murray, then General
Secretary of the TUC, who was subsequently knighted by Thatcher.

Defeat

Even after Xmas 1984 and a new year drift back to work, the Tories weren’t invulnerable. News
began to emerge of the price in oil imports the government had paid to keep the lights on and
there was a massive run on the pound. Instead of seizing the time to campaign for solidarity,
Norman Willis, Murray’s successor, spent days ensconced in the plush home of Coal Board chief
Ian MacGregor, drinking whiskey and drawing up a surrender document to impose on the NUM.

Despite everything stacked against the miners, they fought on for a whole year, before marching
back to work in March 1985 behind their banners with their heads held high.

The miners did not achieve the victory they deserved, but they stopped the Thatcher
government in its tracks, for the first time in five years. The epic scale of the miners’ resistance
broke the back of a Tory offensive that had been designed to smash the British trade union
movement and dramatically cut working class living standards and boost profits.

It also showed a whole set of values that are as relevant today as they were 35 years ago – that
people come before profit, that workers don’t have to bow down to market forces, that
solidarity can overcome isolation and fear, and that ordinary people can transform themselves
and their communities when they unite together against the ravages of free market capitalism
and globalisation.

ames Joyce: A Literary Rebel

written by Michael Collins June 28, 2018

Looking back at the impact of an author much revered by Irish society today, Michael Collins
discusses how James Joyce’s writings posed a threat to the status quo of his time.

James Joyce is widely celebrated by the great and the good of Irish politics today. His statue
adorns North Earl Street in Dublin and streets are named after him. The annual Bloomsday
celebration in June includes literary tours, pub crawls and dramatic re-enactments from Ulysses
and attracts thousands, including luminaries such as Leo Varadkar, eager to honour the legacy of
one of Ireland’s most celebrated literary figures. Just this month, President Michael D Higgins
took the opportunity to visit the James Joyce Foundation and Joyce’s graveside in Zurich.

Despite the clamber by Irish politicians to associate themselves with James Joyce today, during
his life he was viewed with hostility by elites in the Catholic clergy and Irish politics. When he
wrote he posed a threat to the status quo, and wrote scathingly of both Church and Irish society,
challenging time and again the boundaries of what was deemed morally acceptable in literature.
When the Irish government was notified of his death in 1941, the Department of External Affairs
(of which Éamon De Valera was Minister) responded saying, “Please wire details about Joyce’s
death. If possible find out if he died a Catholic? Express sympathy with Mrs Joyce and explain
inability to attend funeral.” Accordingly, no representative of the Irish state was to be found in
attendance at the funeral.

Dangerous Ideas

Joyce often worked in abject poverty, estranged from his native homeland in a self-imposed
exile, where he struggled to make ends meet or even get his works published. Ulysses in
particular provoked such outrage that it wouldn’t find its way onto a bookshop shelf in Britain
until 1936, some 14 years after it was completed. At the time, the British Director of Public
Prosecutions Sir Archibald Bodkin banned the book and issued an official statement deciding
Ulysses was “filthy” and that “it should not be allowed to be imported into the country.” This,
despite Bodkin’s own admission of having “only read the final 40 or so pages of Molly Bloom’s
soliloquy.” 500 copies of Ulysses were duly burned by the US customs office, leading Joyce to
despair. He wrote of these rejections, “It is not my fault the odour of ashpits and old weeds and
offal hangs around my stories. I seriously believe you will retard the course of civilisation in
Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one look at themselves in my finely polished
looking glass.”

The novel’s profane words were cause for concern amongst the self-appointed literary
watchdogs of the day. References to “the scrotumtightening sea”, “Telemachus”, and “well
pleased pleasers, curled conquistadores” (penises) provoked a collective scowl from high-brow
quarters. Many of Joyce’s contemporaries thought the experimental language itself had
deviated wide of the mark of acceptable literature, and would be unintelligible to ordinary
people. Amongst his critics was HG Wells who famously wrote of Ulysses, “Now with regard to
this literary experiment of yours. It is a considerable thing because you are a considerable man
and you have in your crowded composition a mighty genius for expression which has escaped
discipline. But I don’t think it gets anywhere. You have turned your back on common men, on
their elementary needs and their restrictive time and intelligence. What is the result? Vast
riddles.” He ended by describing Joyce’s pending masterpiece a “dead end.” Virginia Wolf too,
unceremoniously described Joyce’s work as that of “a queasy undergraduate scratching his
pimples.”

Not all of his contemporaries were so sceptical. T.S Elliot and Vladimir Nabokov were among
those who lobbied publishers to print Ulysses, the latter admitting “compare me to Joyce by all
means, but my English is pat ball to Joyce’s champion game.” Ulysses is now widely regarded as
one of the greatest works of Western literature, invariably topping lists of best novel categories
and holding the record as the most expensive 20th century first edition book to sell at auction.

A Classic

Set entirely during the course of one day in Dublin (June 16th), the novel chronicles a day in the
life of Leopold Bloom and his fellow Dublin counterparts and is a modern re-working of Homer’s
tale The Odyssey. The twist, of course, is that while the Odyssey tells of Odysseus’ epic 10 year
trek home to Ithaca following the Trojan war and the many adventures he must face, Joyce’s
parallel story finds the epic in the most seemingly mundane and benign aspects of everyday
existence. While Odysseus is a cunning warrior, the estranged King of Ithaca and the hero of the
Trojan war, Leopold Bloom is a middle aged advertising salesman, estranged as a Jewish émigré
living in Dublin. While Odysseus must battle a raging cyclops, defeating him by thrusting a
burning stake in his eye and escaping a hail of boulders, Joyce’s parallel episode sees Leopold
Bloom in an altercation with an anti-semitic pub-goer in Barney Kiernan’s bar. Bloom waves a
cigar in his face and escapes from the pub as the man launches biscuits at him.

Joyce was undoubtedly an admirer of The Odyssey, but he believed that it celebrated war and
violence by romanticising the tale of the Trojan war. As Ulysses was written during the period of
the First World War, with unprecedented numbers being sent to their deaths in the trenches,
Joyce set about his re-rendering of The Odyssey with a pacifist and anti- imperialist message.

Epic storytelling, for Joyce, was not about romanticising tales of death and destruction. He set
out to show that the everyday aspects of human life could inform the most exciting literature.
Some of the scenes which caused controversy in Ulysses, such as episode 4, Calypso, which ends
with Leopold Bloom unceremoniously defecating, led critics like Ezra Pound to exclaim “Leave
the stool to George Robey!”, a popular music-hall comedian who performed lewd humour at the
time. The closing passages of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, which ends with her orgasm, was the
enough to offend the sensibilities of every clergyman, publisher and politician in Ireland, and led
Joyce to quip “Africa is probably the only place that will publish it.”

Yet Joyce remained adamant there would be no edits to Ulysses. He was appalled by suggestions
from the literary purists that his work was obscene. He was committed to exploring the guilty
pleasures of the human consciousness and the dark underbelly of Dublin life. George Bernard
Shaw was another fellow writer who criticised Joyce’s use of obscenities. He described Ulysses as
“a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilisation”, but to Joyce’s great pleasure Shaw added
“but to me it is all hideously real. I have walked those streets and known those shops and heard
and taken part in those conversations… At last someone has felt deeply enough about it to face
up to the horror of writing it all down and using his literary genius to force people to face it.”

Realism
It was this devotion to the realism of inner city Dublin life that stood Joyce in stark contrast to
other Irish writers of his day. Others devoted their energies to the Irish Literary Revival, a
movement which found artistic expression through Irish folklore and romanticised notions of the
Irish peasantry. To Joyce this was nothing but “ill informed, formless caricature” and signified a
step backwards for Irish literature. For him a story like Two Gallants, from his original publication
Dubliners (also banned) was much more reflective of contemporary Ireland. It tells the story of
two down and out Dubliners who wander the streets in the hope of procuring a drink, and
conspire to swindle money from an aristocrat’s maid.  He argued, “Two Gallants – with the
Sunday crowds and the harp in Kildare Street and Lenehan – is an Irish landscape.”

Joyce often described himself as a socialist but in reality, no political tradition could legitimately
try to claim him as its own. There is, none the less, more than a whiff of hypocrisy when people
like Leo Varadkar or Michael D Higgins rush to celebrate Joyce’s achievements. Enda Kenny even
went so far in 2015 as to name and commission an Irish Navy Vessel after him: the LE James
Joyce. The bitter irony of this would not be lost on Joyce and his legions of fans. His family’s
attempts to repatriate his body home to Ireland have fallen on deaf ears from successive Irish
governments. In reality, he was a cause of great embarrassment to the Irish political and
religious establishment. Joyce was a literary rebel in every sense of the word. If he was around
today, it is likely that Varadkar and his cronies would be rushing to distance themselves from
Joyce, just as their predecessors did.

Searching for Alternatives in Eastern Europe

Tamás Krausz Interviewed by Róbert Nárai

by Tamás Krausz and Róbert Nárai

(Apr 01, 2019)

Topics: History , Philosophy , Socialism

Places: Eastern Europe , Europe

Statue of György Lukács.

Tamás Krausz is professor emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He is the editor
of Eszmélet and author of Reconstructing Lenin (Monthly Review Press, 2015), winner of the
2015 Deutscher Memorial Prize. Róbert Nárai is a construction worker and a member of Socialist
Alternative and the Victorian Socialists in Australia.

This interview was conducted in November 2017 by Róbert Nárai, with help from Eszter Bartha.
It has been adapted from the version in Yearbook 2019 of transform! europe. Many thanks to
Éva Nagy and Eric Canepa for their help.

Róbert Nárai: In the 1960s, György Lukács—under the slogan Back to Marx!—called for a
“renaissance” of Marxism within Eastern Europe. Your political and theoretical work is very much
an answer to this call. Could you begin by telling us about what this renaissance entailed?

Tamás Krausz: To understand the nature of this renaissance we have to understand the many
important questions that the Hungarian uprising of 1956 raised for the anti-Stalinist left across
the world. I will only touch on what is relevant to the impact it had on those of us inside Hungary
and Eastern Europe more broadly.

After the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, following the
investigations into the phenomenon of Stalinism, many people began to realize the sharp
contrast between the historical and social conditions that led to the Russian Revolution and its
emancipatory goals, and that of our own situation.

In regard to Lukács on this question, he deduced the “limitations” of the Russian Revolution from
the “non-classical nature” of the revolution and Soviet development. This was not merely a
matter of the limitations posed by its “semi-peripheral” economic and cultural conditions,
“uneven development,” authoritarian traditions, or the global fight against the Soviet Union. But
rather, it was a consequence of the disintegrating conceptual unity between production and the
economy, and democracy. This despite the fact that since Plekhanov, and in fact since Karl Marx,
Eastern European Marxism, including its Soviet variety, has understood the question of political
democracy in relation to the economy, accumulation, and the mode of production. In this
theoretical tradition, democracy is understood as an intrinsic feature of the economy and mode
of production. Later, István Mészáros described this condition as “substantive democracy.” In this
conception, democracy is not an isolated political demand within the revolutionary wing of the
Marxist tradition; it is also, at the same time, a working-class economic demand.

Following 1956, the deepest, immediate issue that every current of anti-Stalinist Marxism had to
address was that of repairing the unity between the economy and democracy that existed in the
early years of the Russian Revolution. To all those on the anti-Stalinist left across the world it
seemed that the workers’ councils of 1956 were institutional attempts at reestablishing this
unity. This was in fact what was at stake in the theoretical work of Lukács, a “minister of the
1956 revolution,” and numerous other thinkers throughout the 1960s and ’70s. However,
influenced by the unfolding events in 1956, Hungarian party officials, with János Kádár at the
helm, naturally deployed a different conceptual framework. While Lukács associated the
workers’ councils of 1956 with the Russian workers’ councils of 1917, the official party stance
characterized the councils as counterrevolutionary forces. The events of 1956 reset the
theoretical problem as an immediately practical question.

Marxists from a wide range of perspectives sought to forge a kind of “third way”—a tertium
datur, as Lukács put it—between the preservation of state socialism and the restoration of
capitalism, as a way back to a Marxist politics that could lead to authentic socialism. It turns out,
based on the correspondence between Mészáros and Lukács, that Lukács raised the question of
tertium datur after 1956, claiming that Stalinism could be left behind without restoring
capitalism.

In the West, the problem was that, after 1968, theoretical thinking was hardly “disturbed” by
practice, as no real socialist experiment had been possible in the absence of large revolutionary
parties. The large Italian and French Communist Parties were unable to respond to the events of
1968 in a revolutionary way—they were unable to lead people and had no alternative
anticapitalist economic program. In Eastern Europe, genuine Marxist thinkers had to break with
the legitimation ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Neither the new revolutionary left nor the older
Communist Parties had adequate programs that put forward an alternative to capitalism.

In Hungary, the sinologist and philosopher Ferenc Tőkei, as well as Lukács and his followers (later
referred to as the Budapest School), were chewing over the same theoretical questions as others
in the region, such as the Praxis school in Yugoslavia and others in Poland. These thinkers had
broken with the ideological approach that saw history as a mechanical product of blind
necessity, one which bound the interpretation of history within the confines of abstract
theoretical models. This was an important development in terms of both Soviet theory and
historiography.

One of the main points of debate in historical theory concerns the alternative nature of historical
development—that is, the historical possibility of an alternative to present reality, as Lukács
argues in his Ontology of Social Being. Practically ahead of all others, Isaac Deutscher raised the
fundamental historical question regarding Soviet development, the “great breakthrough,” the
“revolution from above” (forced collectivization, superindustrialization, planned economy, etc.):
Was there any alternative? The question was especially relevant in Eastern Europe at the time
because it seemed as if the 1960s would produce some radical alternatives. Later, at the time of
perestroika, it was only natural that the question arose once again. In this sense, the new Third
Party Program, accepted at the Twenty-Second Party Congress in 1961, is important because it
defined “communist society as the system of social self-organization.” Though Nikita
Khrushchev’s reforms were out of sync with the theory, they nevertheless opened up the
possibility for socialist thought to engage with more philosophical issues. Thinkers in the East
could outline socialist perspectives detached from concrete practical tasks. I refer particularly to
the theoretical groundwork for the concept of the alternative in Lukács’s the Ontology.

In the Ontology, Lukács based his argument on Marx’s well-known idea that “men make their
own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected
circumstances,” proceeding to add: “For there are no alternatives that are not concrete ones;
they can never be separated from their hic et nunc [here and now].”1
These alternatives “give rise to causal chains,” while the actors in every historical situation have
to consider the options concretely. As we know, alternatives are not simply in existence, but,
rather, are actively brought into being. Lukács illustrated this point with Vladimir Lenin’s role in
the Russian Revolution of 1917. The degree to which individuals—and society itself—are able to
recognize the possibility of alternatives is an intrinsic factor in how a particular historical
situation is addressed.

Whatever our evaluation of the historical significance of the Hungarian uprising might be, one
matter is indisputable: it did not leave the future of the Soviet regime, and Eastern European
regimes more generally, unaffected. It was impossible to avoid raising the question posed by
Trotsky: What is the Soviet Union and where is it going? Khrushchev’s famous speech at the
Twentieth Party Congress and the events of 1956 and 1968 all invalidated the stagist Stalinist
theory of social formations, which had served to equate socialism with Stalinism and render
impossible the search for democratic, socialist alternatives. As a result, and not independently of
the rise of the left in the West and the positive effect of the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial
struggles, the future of socialism had to be rethought on a global scale as well. The progress of
socialism itself became an acute question. All of this was an important part of the “renaissance
of Marxism” Lukács was calling for.

RN: So, the theory of state socialism—namely a critical theory of so-called actually existing
socialism grounded in the theory of social formations—fit into this attempt, as you put it, to
“rethink the future of socialism” from your Eastern European situation?

TK: Yes, that is quite correct.

Until the 1960s, theoretical perspectives in the West were determined by debates and concepts
drawn from before the Second World War. Between 1929 and 1941, the notion of state
capitalism as a theory describing Soviet development was most popular among Western leftists
and even Marxists who, of course, were not members of the official Communist Parties and were
detached from the tradition of the Comintern. However, the unilinear template fit well with the
“vulgar-materialistic” atmosphere of the period, which assumed the chronological sequence of
five social forms—primitive communism, ancient slave society, feudalism, capitalism, and
communism—from one to the other, in a mechanical and predetermined fashion.

In Eastern Europe, and especially Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union, there was no notable
influence of the theory of state capitalism on circles of critical Marxists, because it could not be
adapted to Marx’s theory of social formations—it is simply impossible to describe the Stalinist
system as a profit-oriented economy, as a capitalist market economy, in which accumulation of
private ownership is carried on in the interests of a state bourgeoisie.

In 1947, Tony Cliff reformulated the theory of state capitalism (and a whole movement came to
be organized on its basis), pitting the question of ownership against the question of power. The
Marxian social-formation theory reconstructed by Ferenc Tőkei in a philologically credible
manner aimed, among other things, to supersede such antitheses. The problem of the nature of
the Soviet system necessarily posed the question of social formations as a whole, which
essentially concerned the relationships between state, private, and communal (collective)
ownership. In order to change the existing division of labor in the long term, you need to change
ownership and power relations.

The Hungarian Marxist philosopher András György Szabó, who has since passed away,
reconstructed Marx’s terminology in order to conceptually define the essence of the state-
socialist system. Inspired by Szabó’s work, three fundamentally different positions emerged in
the process of debate.

The first position was that, as a system, state socialism originated in Stalinist development and
that its downfall would be the consequence of its own internal contradictions. In essence, it was
a modernization experiment. Proponents of this position see no real difference between
capitalist and Stalinist attempts at modernization.

The second was that the old state-socialist system, in spite of all its failures, was a development
that could be continued, and repudiating it would serve the prevailing power structure in its
ideological claims to legitimacy. Therefore, its fundamentally positive elements must be
protected in order to preserve the anticapitalist tradition. Its collapse would be a result of
imperialist intrigue and betrayal.

The third position was that state socialism was the product of a particular historical constellation
and, as such, should not be repeated. Its downfall was caused essentially by internal factors, but
a number of cultural-intellectual and social elements were amassed in the course of its
development, which certainly constitutes a heritage worth preserving. We can list among these,
first of all, the theoretical and practical tradition of weak but existing social self-government,
self-organization, and the defense of the lower classes. These are the traditions that the “revival
of social self-organizations” in the 1960s, especially in 1968, helped develop and deepen.

The concept of state socialism refers to an irreconcilable contradiction.

On the one hand, the old state socialism could not disconnect from the world capitalist system,
with its global division of labor. It came into being dependent, and continued its existence partly
dependent, on the center region, which in some historical periods even threatened it with
military and/or economic liquidation.

On the other hand, the state-socialist system eliminated the profit-producing society, the
accumulation of private capital, and the capitalist structure based on the money and market
economy. State socialism undoubtedly worked as a politically and socially motivated system for
the extraction of surplus labor. In state socialism, in addition to the expropriation of the
bourgeoisie and its economic and financial institutions, the capitalist market economy was
substituted by various forms and institutions of state planning and distribution. A new specific
class society came about (still to be explored in terms of social history) determined by the
traditional division of labor. But in this society, according to the constitution, state property was
by definition neither inheritable nor open for sale or purchase—it belonged, in principle, to
society.

Throughout its history, one might say that state socialism as a system, basing its legitimacy on its
revolutionary origins, continued an ideological war—of a rather changeable and paradoxical kind
—with the capitalist market economy and the privileged bureaucracy, whose upper echelons
disposed of state property.

Through this ideological war, the regime only conspired to hide what was really important,
namely, that in spite of its anticapitalist features, it upheld a whole range of social inequalities
and hierarchies that are also typical of Western societies. But whatever name the system is
given, the fundamental problem from the start concerned how to socialize state property
brought about through the nationalization of capitalist property and capitalist assets. Despite the
fact that it was called communal in the constitution, state property held under state socialism in
fact had the character of bureaucratic state ownership. After the change of regimes, liberals also
considered state property to be social property, which had to be privatized.

The alternative that we put forward is self-governing, socialism that is democratic, which is
diametrically opposed to the traditional state as a structure.

RN: Moving onto 1968: How did the events of the Prague Spring—not to mention Germany, Italy,
France, the United States, and so forth—have an impact on what was taking place politically and
intellectually in Hungary at the time?

TK: First, we need to point out that 1968 collapsed internationally because it had no visions or
practices for an alternative economy. This gap was filled by neoliberalism later in the 1970s. The
demands for liberty, gender equity, and human rights were not connected to the practice of a
nonhierarchical and nonexploitative economic system. The year 1968 had little to say concerning
wage labor as the official left parties could not think beyond the neo-Keynesian model and
lacked a real socialist program. Thus, neoliberalism could appropriate the heritage of 1968,
absorbing many of its demands while preaching the free movement of capital as opposed to the
welfare state.

Moreover, the “world revolution” of 1968 meant two basic things for Eastern Europe: economic
reform and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Both distanced us from socialism, rather than
bringing us closer, but both took place under the banner of socialism. In the official Communist
Parties in the East, the “dogmatists” and the “revisionists” fought with each other, the first trying
to further “centralize” bureaucratic control, while the second supported market-oriented
reforms. The revisionists had varying success in Eastern Europe but in the end always
compromised to remain in power and prevent any real socialist, democratic experiment.

In this regard Hungary reflected the fundamental contradictions. Economic reforms followed,
meaning a transformation of the command economy, decentralization, and the introduction of
material interests and market incentives. But at the same time, political reforms were stalled and
“socialist democracy” was hollowed out. Lukács tried in vain to inform the world that economic
reforms in themselves, without the democratization of production and consumption, the
establishment of a needs-centered economy, and the participation of the producer classes,
would pave the way for the establishment of a bourgeois transformation, the “consumer
society,” recapitalization. In contrast to this development, Lukács put forward the tertium datur
—namely, the search for a non-Stalinist, noncapitalist alternative—in his 1968 Demokratisierung
Heute und Morgen, in which he revived the historical experiences of workers’ councils and direct
democratic control.
To put it in Lukácscian terms, the “alternative” in any part of Eastern Europe involved three
abstract possibilities of development: the preservation of the status quo, the restoration of
capitalism, or the transformation of the system toward socialism. All three possibilities were
manifestly at work in the events in Czechoslovakia, the “new economic mechanism” in Hungary,
the Solidarność movement in Poland, as well as the Yugoslav transformation. In a latent form, of
course, the alternative was present in the Soviet Union as well, even if Khrushchev did not
understand it. Yet, twenty years later, the period of perestroika made it clear that these triple
possibilities of development are not equally likely.

RN: In what way was your own work in this period—the 1970s and 1980s—a response to this
conjuncture?

TK: In the 1970s and ’80s, as a young historian, I was engaged in exploring the viable (humanist)
elements of Marxism with many of my colleagues. Most of all, I worked with Miklós Mesterházi,
who went on to become a scholar at the Lukács Archívum, on the Bolshevik reception to the
early Lukács. With Tütő Lászlóval, I tried to reconstruct Lenin’s concept of socialism, and then the
concept of socialism in Trotsky, but in general I was interested in the Soviet development of the
1920s and the reasons for the rise of Stalinism. By 1989, all of this led me to believe that I
understood the theoretical, political, and moral message of Lukács’s tertium datur. The questions
I was dealing with were inextricably linked to my attempt to reconstruct a viable, humanist
Marxism.

RN: So, the unity of these concerns led to, on the one hand, the establishment of the
journal Eszmélet and, on the other, the opposition within the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP)?

TK: To understand the formation of Eszmélet, one has to understand what happened to our
“renaissance.” Most of the Marxists coming from the Lukácsian tradition eventually arrived at a
liberal acceptance of, and even support for, the change of regimes, having worked their way
through communal socialism and workers’ self-government. However, at the beginning of the
1980s, Ferenc Fehér, Agnes Heller, and György Márkus, already an émigré, wrote the following in
the introduction to their book, eloquently titled Dictatorship Over Needs: “We, all three, are
convinced that the world needs more, not less socialism than it has today.” 2

That same year, in their 1983 book, A szovjet típusú fejlődés marxista szemmel (The Soviet Type
of Development from a Marxist Perspective), György Bence and János Kis proposed that the
demolition of the cement walls of state ownership should be succeeded by community and
group ownership, and workers’ self-government. Then, in the mid–1980s, after the movement
for workers’ self-government suffered a defeat in the Polish labor union Solidarność, a sudden
drop in the number of those thinking about the realization of the workers’ movement, of
socialism as a tertium datur, could be felt in Hungary as well. At this point, another, different
attempt to prepare the philosophical, historical, and, in part, political grounds for the new self-
governing socialism in the womb of the old system led to the creation of the Hungarian
journal Eszmélet, which was supported by a civil organization called Left-Wing Alternative.

The first issue of our journal, Eszmélet, was published in the beginning of 1989 under its current
name, which made reference to the similar attempt by István Mészáros and other distinguished
Hungarian intellectuals to establish a journal of the same name in 1956, in the spirit of an anti-
Stalinist and anticapitalist tradition. We maintained a friendly and fruitful relationship with
Mészáros throughout his life. He unfortunately passed away in 2017. In retrospect, even under
the old system, but in a more liberal climate, György Aczél, a leading cultural politician, also
supported the creation of this Marxist journal, because by then a liberal journal and a nationalist
journal had also been established.

Eszmélet, a unique organ in 1989 within Eastern Europe, is still in existence thanks to our vast
international connections. At the beginning of the 1990s, many well-known figures of the
European radical left wrote for our publication and spoke at our events. As a starting point, our
journal had been concerned with conveying and developing the main achievements of our
theory of social formations. One of our contentions was that during the transition there would
be no dawn of a “good capitalism,” and we rejected the ideologies that legitimated such views.
Instead, we based our perspective on the humanist, socialist project as an alternative at the level
of theory.

In terms of translating these theoretical perspectives into an orientation toward real-world

praxis, we built up an independent platform within the MSZP between 1989 and 1990. In the old
“state socialism,” the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) did not have an organized left
—all that existed were the dogmatists and the revisionists. The former’s politics were based on
the status quo, while the latter reached the standpoint that capitalism should be restored. Both
trends were opposed to the democratic transformation of state socialism. As I have already
mentioned, Lukacs’s students, such as János Kis or György Bence, were initially committed to
Lukács’s project, but in the 1980s, under the banner of liberalism, became the main advocates
for capitalism’s restoration. They came to believe that democracy and capitalism were
synonymous. We, of course, did not fall into this trap.

RN: How did the Marxist theory of social formations inform your analysis of the transition? How
did it differ from the other dissident currents at the time?

TK: Eastern Europe is an area with a very specific conjunction of semi-peripheral, gentry
capitalist, and autocratic traditions: according to historian Emil Niederhauser’s definition, it
extends from the Baltic region, through Poland and Hungary, down to Croatia. This “belt” is
clearly delineated from the three other subregions of Eastern Europe: Russia-Ukraine-Belarus
(“Eastern Eastern Europe”), the Balkans (minus Croatia and Slovenia), and Czech Republic-
Croatia-Slovenia (“Western Eastern Europe”), which is the most embourgeoisied region.

The theory of social formations was essential in our analysis of contemporary world history. The
methodological background certainly played a role in the prognosis that a group of historians
made, even in a small country like Hungary, that, on the basis of this theory, the restorative
changes of regimes made between 1989 and 1991 would not lead to the celebrated “catching
up” to the West that the ideologues spoke of.

It was clear that the 1989 project of “catching up” to Western development was as much
nonsense in the theoretical sense, and served only political goals, as the later phantasmagoria
about the “end of history.” In a large part of the Eastern European region, including, of course,
Poland and Hungary, “catching up” and the whole project of a bourgeois democracy was
doomed to failure from the very beginning. We argued that the new, oligarchic (we called
it nomenklatura) capitalism can only function through the maintenance of authoritarian regimes
in line with the Eastern European-Russian traditions, draped in nationalist robes—even under
European-American patronage. The argument that 1917 Russia lacked the social preconditions
for a bourgeois democratic transformation is spectacularly proved by the fact that even now,
thirty years since 1989, no such regime has been established in Hungary. It was evident for us
even in 1989 that it is impossible to build a bourgeois democracy without a democratic
bourgeoisie. It is impossible to create a democratic bourgeoisie from above, by the state.
Transitology and modernization theory and terminology, let alone the various concepts of
totalitarianism, always contain—overtly or covertly—several old and new characteristics of
subordination to the global capitalist system.

Historians cannot be surprised at the formation of these authoritarian regimes that have been
historically determined in the region, both from a national and global perspective. The
intellectual “return” of these regimes to the historical antecedents of the interwar era, to the
cult of Miklós Horthy, in a completely different world and social structure is not at all
paradoxical. Eastern Europe then and now is defined by its semiperipheral position in the world
system.

Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, the system-critical historiography could not
imagine “catching up” on a capitalist basis. Lenin was right when he underlined the plundering
and parasitic character of modern capitalist accumulation. “The epoch of imperialism,” he wrote,
“is one in which the world is divided among the ‘great’ privileged nations that oppress all other
nations.”3 However, the local ruling classes and privileged groups are also interested in the
maintenance of this world order. In spite of the great economic and social changes over the past
one hundred years, capitalism has failed to solve any of its major contradictions, which may lead
to the destruction of humankind.

In a structural sense, contemporary debates about the concept and nature of neoliberal
capitalism remind us of the polemics that were conducted one hundred years ago—on the
accumulation of capital, the end of capitalism, the elimination of crisis, modes of management,
imperialism, world government, and so on. I think a historian who deals with global history
cannot avoid these debates. The essence of Marxism is to describe scientifically the structure
and exploitative system of capitalism, and to figure out how to move beyond it.

Therefore, 1989 as a “conservative revolution” should have been foreseeable and its reactionary
nature fit all the specificities of Eastern European development. Like Isaac Deutscher, or Lukács
in his time, Marxist circles did not press for an immediate destruction of the state-socialist
system in 1989, because we predicted that the system change would result in the oligarchic,
ethno-nationalist “gangster capitalism” typical in the semiperiphery of the global system.
Between 1989 and 1990, the anticapitalist movement saw its main task as protecting and
representing the cause of labor’s self-defense, the formation of the workers’ councils.

And yet, the socio-political substance of the change of regimes was misunderstood and
misinterpreted by many, even on the left in the West, from radicals to social democrats. It is
widely known that our friend Ernest Mandel actually felt the fever of a new socialist revolution
in 1989, although, it must be added, he later had the courage to reassess his position. The most
typical narrative explained the events as a “rectifying revolution”—this is what Jürgen Habermas
was arguing—that carries the people back from a failed experiment to the world of bourgeois
democracy. Transitology—the main paradigm that dominated the literature of the 1990s—
advocated a developmental “catching up” that for the Eastern European masses and politicians
meant catching up with the Western European levels of consumption and material prosperity
once they implemented Western European types of political institutions and “introduced”
capitalism in the region. This was, of course, illusory.

Catch-up development has been criticized for its theoretical shortcomings by many critical
thinkers who have pointed out the ideological and teleological implications of this so-called
theory. The assumption that Eastern Europe can catch up to the Western European capitalist
countries economically and socially proved to be fundamentally wrong. One can indeed argue
that in some respects the West has been “Easternized,” in terms of the shrinking of the welfare
state, a growing precariat, and the appearance of ethno-nationalist and populist political parties.

In proximity to the events, what we could observe from Budapest to Moscow and from Moscow
to Warsaw evidenced that there was a ferocious battle unfolding between various factions of the
local elites and global representatives of capital around the redistribution of power and property,
over the heads of society. Already in 1989, we believed that all of this could lead, at best, to new
types of ethno-nationalist authoritarian regimes descending on the region.

The regime-change elites all wanted to make us believe the opposite, and to do so specifically
with regard to two related questions. One was pushing the notion that the question of
ownership was not important, as workers are only interested in good wages. The other
concerned democracy. They introduced the rule of law, but placed employment under the
control of capital. They killed the first statement with the second. We were sure of two things,
nevertheless, and this knowledge deepened over time: the question of ownership is the
question of questions, because it simultaneously concerns both production and consumption,
unemployment and exclusion, on the scale of society as a whole. Capital is not afraid of occupied
spaces and occupied streets, but rather of occupied workplaces. Here, capital can accept no
compromise—either concerning worker ownership, workplace occupation, or self-governing
democracy. And all of this was justified by the asinine ideology of catching up to the West,
without even bothering with the fact that it was Stalin who had originally come up with this
idea. That is all that need be said about who had illusions about what.

We never forgot that social self-government has a rich historical experience regionally and
globally, and it is no coincidence that capital and the state had to repress such experiments again
and again. We believe that humankind can find no other way out of this system of incurable
structural crisis under the rule of capital. The task we had set out to accomplish so many years
ago, though under changed conditions, still stands here before us.

The second issue concerns how, in many aspects, capitalism still underperforms old state
socialism in a number of countries, which inevitably contributes to its discrediting in the eyes of
the people. When all of this will reach a boiling point cannot be foreseen. Without any favorable
external conditions—for example, an upturn in social and working-class struggles throughout
Europe and elsewhere—no significant change can be expected in our region.
RN: What were the political lessons you and your comrades drew from this internal fight within
the MSZP? These sorts of questions have recurred time and time again throughout the history of
our movement. For example, the debates on entryism in the Trotskyist movement; the question
of whether revolutionaries should enter the British Labour Party now that Corbyn is at the helm
and it expresses a certain politicization taking place among a layer of people in British society;
whether it was correct for revolutionaries to intervene into the SYRIZA project, and so forth?

TK: I believe that there can be no “resurrection” of the left without European and international
cooperation. Venezuela, Brazil, Greece, and so on—their experiences show us not only that
socialism cannot be created in isolated countries, but even capitalism as a universal mode of
production is not really possible in an isolated country. Great Britain is no exception. The
breakup of capitalist private property will hardly be on the agenda for a Labour victory. Without
changing property ownership and the control over the movement of capital, serious change
cannot happen.

We all know the history of the British Labour Party—there has been a left and a right throughout
its history, but revolutionaries know that this party is unable to develop socialism in Great
Britain. There are three main reasons for this I want to mention here. The first is the Labour
Party’s extensive intertwining with the bourgeois state and the large groups of social democrats
in it, who are committed to the current order. Second, the Labour Party has no alternative
anticapitalist economic program—it merely promises to “reload” the welfare state. Third, the
collapse of the Soviet Union removed the historical challenge of a socialist alternative, which
weakened the position of labor in the core countries as well. Nevertheless, a Labour victory can
give political and organizational strength to workers’ self-defense against capital and the state.
Therefore, the dilemma for revolutionary organizations, the dilemma of outside or inside always
arises in times like these when there is a shift to the left.

Since the system change in Hungary, this dilemma no longer exists, since the MSZP has gradually
become an appendage of the state and capital, and there is no situation that could purge those
politicians whose “livelihoods” depend on being such an appendage. When the MSZP was
formed in autumn 1989, its objective was still that of democratic socialism, because, at that
point in time, our anticapitalist platform was very strong. We were then gradually dislodged from
the organizational center, and the party leadership (under Gyula Horn) embarked on restoring
capitalism, making the turn to neoliberalism, and entering the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). Things turned even worse after Horn and the war criminal Tony Blair became the model
for Ferenc Gyurcsány. Neoliberalism is now embedded into the soul of the MSZP. Under a left-
wing banner, it pursued a right-wing austerity program that ultimately undermined its legitimacy
among working people and created the conditions for the two-thirds parliamentary majority
that Viktor Orbán, of the right-wing Fidesz party, achieved in the 2010 elections. Germany’s and
Austria’s social democratic parties exemplify many of the same devolutional tendencies.

The overriding lesson we learned from our battle within the MSZP was that without working-
class people, without a social base in the class, without social movements, and so forth, a
serious revolutionary organization is impossible. During the transition and into the 1990s,
working-class consciousness and militancy was declining, not rising. Under the Kádár regime, the
working class had a real chance to be part of the middle class: they could buy apartments, build
houses, own weekend cottages, and purchase durable consumer goods. Undoubtedly, the
exclusion from the political sphere reinforced material and consumer values, which led to the
erosion of the propagated revolutionary consciousness. In the 1990s, there was a gradual
impoverishment of the bulk of the socialist working class—this, however, failed to translate into
political action thanks to the former depoliticization of the working class and the lack of political
parties that could organize the workers. In addition, almost all politicians believed in catch-up
development: that the new Eastern European capitalist societies could “catch up” to the
consumption levels of the advanced Western countries. This illusion contributed to the lack of
working-class activism after 1989.

Let us be clear: it is not the old Communist party that needs to be reestablished. Rather, we
need work on the defense of labor and social opposition to capital, as this is the right terrain for
the battle. And by the term working class I refer to the absolute majority of the population,
those working for wages or who are unemployed, exactly in the same way as Marx understood
it. A new party can only be born out of a new labor movement.

We never accepted the privatization of public services and nationalized industries, and I
abandoned the left platform in the beginning of 2009 because I understood that we could not
fight for our position any longer. Everything was buried under neoliberalism. I never gave up my
criticisms of privatization or oligarchic capitalism; I was an independent thinker in this respect. I
understood that the MSZP as a force of the left was finished. The MSZP is a centrist, bourgeois
party. Today, it resembles many of the former so-called social democratic parties: hollowed-out
bureaucracies with no roots in the working-class movement.

RN: What do you see as new about the Orbán regime compared to the regimes that came before
it?

TK: International conditions have played an important role in the formation of this regime. Both
the European Union and the United States have persistently taken a paternalistic attitude in
criticizing Orbán’s government for its antidemocratic, authoritarian political moves, its
concentration of power, and its open anti-Semitism and anti-Roma sentiments. However, they
have never attacked its legitimacy, since the government maintains a low budgetary deficit, pays
back debt as scheduled, and gives large-scale tax exemptions to multinationals. The majority of
the population does not know about this since much of the media is controlled by Orbán. We
should understand that the Orbán regime is the embodiment of the new populist far right, which
is capable of implementing restrictive neoliberal policies under the banner of antiglobalist
ideological campaigns, and which stresses the defense of European so-called Christian values.

By now it is well recognized that the Eastern European and Soviet system change was
inseparable from the neoliberal restructuring of the global capitalist system and from the new
forms and challenges of multinational capitalist power. The solution of the “communist
reformers” to the Soviet Union’s inability to compete economically and militaristically against the
West was to “integrate” it into capitalism with the help of the core Western countries. A regime
like Orbán’s is the ultimate local consequence of this.

The main aims of the state in the beginning of the socialist period were the elimination of the
national bourgeoisie and the abolition of private property. It was illegal to trade state property.
The new system acts in the opposite direction. While in 1987 the democratic opposition still
spoke of “mixed ownership,” by 1990 all major political forces supported full-scale privatization.

This first era, which was mainly dominated by the socialist-liberal coalition, established the first
“generation” of native capitalists. At first, Fidesz presented itself as a critic of the ills of
privatization, but it soon became evident that they merely want to create their own bourgeoisie.
They continued to privatize communal services, land, and other types of property in favor of the
new bourgeoisie, which the government has itself created.

The newly introduced bourgeois class has flourished in the Fidesz era since it first received its
capital from public funds. It has an especially parasitic character. Under a nationalist banner and
with the help of the upper strata of society, certain groups of the renewed power elites are
today trying to make their privileges inheritable, thereby avoiding competition with foreign
capital or other political forces, such as social democrats and liberals. It has no objection to the
strengthening of its own bourgeoisie—in fact, its present policy has been targeted at the
creation of a loyal “service class,” which happens to be bourgeois. As a result, they have
restructured the system of distribution and deepened social-cultural inequalities in society. The
same can be seen across the region in Ukraine, Latvia, Bulgaria, Belarus, and Romania.

We are not surprised at the authoritarian turn taken by the regimes in Eastern Europe since the
new oligarchic capitalism can only be maintained through authoritarian means. The experiment
of a bourgeois democracy has failed because it cannot be built without a democratic
bourgeoisie. The journal Eszmélet had developed several prognoses for this already by the time
of the regime changes.

The new ruling class pinned their hope in Orbán’s “Christian-national” government; it represents
their values, social interests, and meager culture, while privileging their capture of budgetary
resources. These layers of the new ruling class specifically fell back on government support
because they did not know how to discipline the continuously growing masses of unemployed
and impoverished workers. In other words: How can an impoverished society be restrained and
disciplined under a returning economic crisis?

The social-liberal coalition that ruled between 2002 and 2010, prior to Fidesz, had no solution,
oscillating between old-fashioned, routine neoliberal economic policy and propaganda, based on
EU gobbledygook. Hence, their political representation lost its backing and dissolved into a
shrunken group of irrelevant “survival” politicians. While the far right (Jobbik) gained strength,
the “Christian-national” coalition of Fidesz and the Christian Democratic People’s Party won the
2010 elections on a supermajority mandate that allowed them to enforce their own “solution”
to the nation’s problems. Since then, Jobbik has changed its image to downplay its racism, anti-
Semitism, and violent hostility to the Roma. Subsequently, Fidesz has shifted to the right to pick
up the votes of the far right in the spring elections.

In Hungary and other Eastern European countries, those in power soon came to understand the
need to introduce an authoritarian regime that would hollow out the parliamentary form and
political-party system. They promised undisturbed mechanisms of governance to both the
European leadership and the Hungarian public in return for European legitimation of their so-
called system of national cooperation. Everyone who could or would not fit into such a
framework came to be considered an enemy of the nation: communists, atheists, liberals, Jews,
Roma, foreigners, and all of their supposed patrons. The anti-Semitic campaign against George
Soros is a classic example of populist demagogy, comprising the “struggle” against multinational
capital and the fight against refugees and migrants in the name of national self-defense.
Nevertheless, I think it is doubtful that Orbán will continue to block immigrants from entering
the country as 10 percent of working-class youth have left Hungary in a very short period of
time. Capital needs new cheap labor and thus refugees. This will in turn decrease the price of
the labor force. Many believe that it is liberals and socialists who are bringing the immigrants in,
but, in reality, it is capitalism that uproots people in and outside Europe, and the bloody wars of
the United States and NATO that produce refugees.

The elections in April showed the conservative, backward nature of Hungary, with Fidesz winning
two-thirds of parliamentary seats. The nationalist party stoked the fears of the poor strata of the
population in rural areas with populist, far-right, anti-migrant propaganda. In Budapest, the anti-
Orbán opposition won, but in the absence of any real left-wing opposition.

RN: Despite the dire situation you have described, there have still been sparks of resistance to
the Orbán regime. For instance, the protests against the closure of the Central European
University (CEU), the struggles of public-sector workers, and the fight against the closure of the
Lukács Archívum. What opportunities do you see for resistance in the coming period?

TK: The attempt to close down the Lukács Archívum symbolizes the profound hatred of Marxism
and socialism. Not long ago, the statue of Lukács erected after 1989 was demolished. The fight
to protect CEU has also been lost. Liberals have no real social roots in Hungarian society.

The main political question in Hungary at the moment tells you a lot about the severity of the
situation. On the one hand, you have those who want to collaborate with Jobbik against Orbán;
on the other, there are those who think this is insanity. The former orientation totally discredits
progressive forces and, from this perspective, it logically follows that they do not have any kind
of economic program that can challenge Orbán.

The mainstream liberals and “socialists” speak only of political and juridical problems, they speak
only about the “restoration of democracy” in Hungary, but for the majority of people in Hungary,
democracy is about social, economic, and political rights and practical possibilities. The most the
“socialists” can speak about is some kind of neo-Keynesianism, which I believe is impossible
within our historical conjuncture. In Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, people feel that
the “oppositional parties” do not have any serious alternatives, much like elsewhere in the
world. In Eastern Europe, the social-democratic vision of a new “welfare state” is nothing but a
shallow utopia lacking any material and social basis. In Eastern Europe, the welfare state was
state socialism. Do we really want to go back to it?

Another decisive question is whether a “New Left” emerges with the strength to challenge the
hold of mainstream liberalism on our region. The best grassroots organizations deal with the
problem of poverty, but how can they defend this society against capital, against the state, and
so forth? These small organizations are very important, but they do not have a political party.
And because the poorest strata of society will not vote, these organizations do not have enough
social weight to have a meaningful impact on the political terrain. However, they are morally,
politically, and, in every sense of the word, very good, potentially anticapitalist organizations. But
there is little practical experience to demonstrate that the precariat can be organized at all.
Historical experience suggests that the subproletariat in its ultimate despair may support any
political force that exhibits strength and promises support, as with the rise of ethno-nationalist,
right-wing populist parties.

RN: Could you tell us a bit more about these organizations?

TK: Unfortunately, the anticapitalist and antisystemic organizations and networks are deeply
divided among themselves. One can distinguish three currents.

First is the Hungarian United Left or Magyar Egyesült Baloldal (MEBAL), which brings together
groups such as ATTAC Hungary and Foundation Hungarian Social Forum. Most of its initiators and
activists are Marxist intellectuals, mainly of an older generation. Their members and supporters
amount to a few hundred. As is the case with similar groups in Western Europe and Russia, this
network does not, for now, concern itself with the founding of a political party, but focuses on
social projects that are meant to serve the protection of the lower classes. In public statements,
MEBAL emphasizes its rejection of the foundation of new political parties under current
conditions, because it considers it impossible for the radical left to get anywhere close to
parliamentary representation without significant financial means and infrastructure, and
especially without widespread popular support. According to MEBAL, a left turn can only be
imagined if the question of property is placed at the center of the struggle: we need to start a
fight for the legalization of communal property forms, productive-economic self-governance,
which goes beyond market relations.

The second significant current is the party Green Left (Zöld Baloldal). The Green Left was
established by the merger of the Alliance of Green Democrats, the European Feminist Initiative
for a Different Europe, and the Workers’ Party of Hungary 2006 (Magyarországi Munkáspárt
2006, member of the Party of the European Left). While the party participated in the elections of
2010 and 2014, it did so without being able to even put together a list of candidates anywhere.
Similarly, in the parliamentary elections of spring 2018, they were unable to send even a single
candidate to the parliament.

The third camp in the antisystemic left consists of anarchist and anarcho-communist groups,
which compete among each other. These groups attack both the state and any traditional form
of political organization. They embody the idea of the left as a political subculture. Happenings
reported in the liberal press are more important to many of them than mass action. The
representatives of this camp see themselves as antifascist and antiracist.

All these groups are part of the region’s anticapitalist traditions, which, through the self-
organization of society, want to disconnect themselves from capitalism. Those traditions can be
traced back to 1905, 1917, and 1989–91 in Russia and the Soviet Union, to the years between
1945 and 1947 in Eastern Europe in general, to the Yugoslav experiment, later to the workers’
wing of Solidarność in Poland, and to the self-organized workers’ councils and committees in
Hungary in 1956 that strove for the socialization of state property. Under the pressure of the
neoliberal global order and capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe, however, it is hardly possible
to powerfully reconnect to these radical experiments of self-organization. Yet even today, years
after the insurrection of 1956, the Hungarian state expends a great deal of energy in disowning
the memory of 1956. A propaganda campaign as has never been seen before and
megaconferences at universities are spreading the Fidesz program of “national understanding”
and legitimizing the current system. At the same time, since 1989, the tradition of the workers’
councils of 1956 is either completely concealed or falsified. This serves as more evidence for the
extreme weakness of the labor and trade-union movement even twenty-five years later.
Nationalism is the best and most effective weapon against socialism. We can see it in the light of
all historical experiences.

RN: Despite the weaknesses you have identified, do you see a possibility that things could take a
turn for the better for the left?

TK: The key question is whether or not it is possible in today’s situation to build up organized
centers of anticapitalism. This is not about building a bureaucratic apparatus. These centers are
the self-organizations of producers. The idea of a network-like organization, which already
appears in Lenin’s writings, has a certain genius to it, both in an ideological-theoretical and a
practical-political sense, for it seeks out the weak points of the capitalist system. The network to
which I am referring includes features of voluntary organization during the process of creating
workplace- and neighborhood-based social communities. The real anticapitalist content comes
when human communities are organized in the field of production as well. This is the essence of
the Russian revolutionary experience: namely, anticapitalism and the change of property
relations.

We should not conceive of parties as political parties, but as aids to create an antisystemic
alternative. The bourgeois parliament is unfit to realize any kind of alternative socialist vision.
Whoever does not understand this will understand little from the history of the past century. The
fundamental goal of the party that I refer to is the advocacy of a social development that is
organized from below. Bourgeois democracies maintain the rule of the various elite groups, but
the party should represent the remaining 80 percent of the people and advance the new society.
It is the message of the Russian Revolution for today.

Over a hundred years ago, the purely political revolution (that is, without accompanying
economic and social revolutions), which today is no longer possible, started out from such an
“organized center.” Today, capitalist exploitation in Europe is organized in a different way, the
crisis has a different structure, and therefore, the organized centers also need to take on a
different shape than that of Lenin’s time. It is likely that civil movements will replace the political
organization that grew detached from the producers: new movements that are organized for the
solution of concrete economic and political-power issues in local and broader contexts. There is
a general declining trust in party officials who are paid regular salaries for their work. Without a
wider social self-organization, the total destruction of humankind could become a realistic
scenario. A powerful anticapitalist movement without a labor movement is impossible. In a
situation in which capital and the state effectively keep social movements away from
workplaces, comprehensive attempts at organization involving the sphere of work would be of
particular importance.

However, the most complicated problem is that today’s antisystemic organizations are not
reaching young workers and have not even prioritized this. The capitalist organization of labor
has been fragmenting the organized resistance of the working class, and its consciousness has
been effectively manipulated by the ethno-nationalist and racist propaganda eclipsing the
outlook of socialist class struggle. Moreover, capital intends to form new military zones
worldwide, which always result in destruction and mass flight. These masses are being
configured as the new enemy: as Orbán stated recently at the inauguration of a monument, “our
main enemies are the migrants, the Soros plan, and Marx.” The Soros-terv (Soros plot) alleges
mythical global forces, which seek to destroy European civilization through the settlement of
migrants in Europe. From Trump to Orbán, there is a great variety of “new” images of the enemy.

RN: You mentioned Lenin, which brings me to my final question: you have claimed that the
primacy of Lenin’s Marxism is not a thing of the past. Could you elaborate on how Lenin’s
Marxism is relevant to the political conjuncture today in both Hungary and elsewhere?

TK: I believe the main ways in which Lenin can speak to us today can be briefly summarized as
follows, under the rubric of the class struggle against nationalism and capital.

The challenge for today’s left is the constitution of a new social subject, independent of
liberalism, within the dispersed masses of working and oppressed people. It is unavoidable that
the left will have to do the painstakingly hard work of developing large-scale organizations from
very small ones, combined with developing a radical socialist program, both at the local and
global level. The work of Lenin is indispensable in this regard. It is impossible to build such a left
within a small country in an isolated manner. Without anticapitalist, antisystemic traditions there
is also no internationalist movement, as we learn from the intellectual heritage of Lenin.

I also believe it is of the utmost importance that the left restores the political and moral
creditability of Marxism, since many people in the former socialist countries identify the left with
the upper strata of society. It is all the more urgent because, thanks to this mass disillusionment,
many workers join far-right political forces.

An important element of Lenin’s political and moral integrity was the courage to take a stand
against the system, to go against every injustice, every crime that this system inflicts upon
people.

Last but not least, the link between revolutionary intellectuals and the working class, bridging
the gap between theory and practice, is crucial in conceiving the transition to a world “beyond
capital” (István Mészáros), as there is no solution within the capitalist framework. Poverty,
inequality, unemployment, environmental destruction, war, and genocide are inescapable
aspects of this system of barbarism. Lenin is the “theoretician of practice” (as Gramsci put it)—
his “actuality” consists in raising these problems to the level of a political resolution in the
organizational form of the revolutionary party. This, however, took place in the era of
revolutions. For our conjuncture, we too must be prepared for a new revolutionary era, because
it will not come about by itself. We should not be afraid of accusations of utopianism for holding
onto such a framework. One thing is certain, however: the key to the “leap beyond capital” lies
not in the alienated sphere of bourgeois politics and its violence and treachery, but in bringing
revolutionary politics into the sphere of production, into the sphere of everyday life. Lenin would
say we must not only occupy Wall Street, but the factories and our workplaces as well. The
realization of this goal, as I have already mentioned, will require much hard work and sacrifice.
Within our present conjuncture, recognizing the opportunities that allow us to start breaking
down the divide between revolutionary intellectuals and the working-class movement, that is
where the alternative is situated, and the possibility that a new “renaissance” of Marxism will be
born. Of course, I do not conceive of such a revival in a deterministic, teleological sense; history,
rather, is an alternative process in which socialism has a great chance because there are no other
real alternatives to capitalism. This is the reason why Marx is so reviled in Eastern Europe.
Nevertheless, in the absence of a socialist perspective, humankind might face total self-
destruction. This is also a realistic alternative.

Notes

o ↩Georg Lukács, Marx’s Basic Ontological Principles (London: Merlin, 1978), 76; Karl
Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers,
1963), 15, 19.

o ↩Ferenc Fehér, Agnes Heller, and György Márkus, Dictatorship Over Needs (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983), xiii.

o ↩Vladimir Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International, 1915, available at

http://marxists.org.

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The Debs Way

by Leo Huberman

(Apr 01, 2019)

Topics: History , Marxism , Socialism

Places: Americas , United States

Eugene V. Debs, 5 times Socialist candidate for President, set free from prison on Christmas Day.
1921. Courtesy: Library of Congress.

Leo Huberman was a founding editor of Monthly Review, 1949–1968. “The Debs Way” is the
text of an address Huberman delivered at the Debs Centennial Meeting held at the Fraternal
Clubhouse in New York City on November 28, 1955. It was first published in Monthly Review 7,
no. 9 (January 1956).

In 1912, as the Socialist Party’s candidate for President of the United States, Debs received over
897,000 votes. This was 6 percent of the total popular vote for the Presidency, or the equivalent
of roughly 3 million votes in the 1948 election.

There were, in 1912, many Socialists in state legislatures, and thirty-three cities and towns had
Socialist heads of government.

The popular interest in socialism was reflected in the enormous sale of socialist literature;
pamphlets by socialists were printed in editions of hundreds of thousands; books by socialist
authors often ranked with the best sellers of the day.

The Appeal to Reason, the most important national socialist newspaper of the period, had a
subscription list of over 300,000 and on special occasions it reached a circulation of over
600,000.

While it is true that much of the radical strength of that period came from immigrants,
particularly from the needle trade workers in the East, it is a mistake to assume, as many people
so often do, that this was the most important part of the Left movement. It was not. Socialist
Party strength was widely distributed—in the Middle West and Far West, as well as in the East.

Some time ago, I read through several years of the Appeal to Reason. In the issue of August 15,
1908, I found a breakdown of the subscription list of 300,000, by states. Oklahoma led the list
with 24,402, California was second with 20,852, and New York was fifteenth with only 8,580
subscribers. Of the states ahead of New York, nine were west of the Mississippi.

The year 1912 represented the peak of radical voting strength; since that time it has declined.
Today, one hundred years after the birth of Debs, the Left movement in the United States is at its
lowest ebb—not only in respect to vote-getting but in every other respect—strength of
organization, numbers, influence, interest, literature. In regard to the radical press, this is easily
demonstrated: take the circulation of the four journals represented on this platform [I. F. Stone’s
Weekly, Monthly Review, American Socialist, and National Guardian], add to it the circulation of
the entire Socialist Party and Communist Party press, The Call, The Daily Worker, Peoples
World, Political Affairs, Masses & Mainstream, throw in the weeklies of the DeLeonites and the
Trotskyites, and include, too, the circulation of even the liberal journals, The Nation, The New
Republic, and The Progressive. Add them all up together and the total figure won’t reach 200,000
—not even two-thirds of the circulation of the old Appeal to Reason.

The decline in influence of the Left press is a measure of the decline of the strength of the Left—
its isolation from the main currents of American life, its lack of influence, its loss of membership.
And this deeply disturbing situation in the United States occurs at precisely the moment in
history when a large proportion of the rest of the world is moving toward socialism at a rapid
rate. Why? Why has socialism become a dirty word in our country at the very time that in other
countries it is a beacon of hope?

This is an important question. Some of the answers are known to us now, others still require
further research and study. Of greater importance is the question: What shall we do now, how
shall we remedy the situation in which we find ourselves?

In seeking an answer to this question, it is fitting, on the occasion of a Debs Memorial meeting,
that we begin by reflecting on the legacy left us by that extraordinary man. To all Americans,
regardless of their politics, he left a legacy whose elements are unmistakable—genuine nobility
of character, absolute honesty and integrity, unflinching courage to do right as he saw it, hatred
of injustice, sympathy for suffering. Remember his memorable words at the beginning of his
statement to the court before being sentenced to prison: “Your Honor, years ago I recognized my
kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the
meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, while
there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Coming from any other American, then or now, this statement would sound maudlin; coming
from Debs, it was convincing—because it was true.

Who in public life today can match the legacy which Debs left to all Americans?

But it is the legacy which he bequeathed to the American Left which is of more immediate
concern to us tonight. Let me indicate the most important elements of that particular legacy:

1. The unswerving conviction that capitalism, this system of profit making and greed, is
irrational, unjust, and evil; that men were meant to be brothers, and that the only
system worthy of humanity is one based on cooperation, not exploitation.

2. That the profit-making system is on the way out.

3. That there is a class struggle; and it is the task and honor of the working class to be
capitalism’s grave digger.

4. That socialism is an honest and human enterprise; its ends cannot be obtained by
stealth, intrigue, cunning, or double-dealing, but by militant struggle, class-conscious
education, outspoken resolve, self-abnegation, and finally, the loyal cooperation of the
mass of the people.

These principles, I suggest, are part of Debs’ heritage to the American Left. At least one of the
reasons for the present plight of the American Left, to my mind, is the fact that it has tended to
squander this heritage, to ignore or forget these principles.

How else can one explain the fruitless debate between those who would dabble in the internal
politics of the capitalist parties, and those who would use up our time and energy in the creation
of an independent—not plainly socialist—party which hasn’t the slightest chance of success?

Or the totally unrealistic approach of those who continually call workers to non-existent
barricades in the mistaken belief that simply because they are workers, it naturally follows that
they hate the boss and the profit-making system?
Or the narrow sectarian approach of those who insist that because “socialism is the only
answer,” we should therefore not concern ourselves with anything that smacks of reform?

Or the equally wanting—albeit more persuasive and more popular—approach of those who
confine the struggle merely to reforms, with never a word about the socialist goal?

None of these, I suggest, was Debs’ way. Once he understood the nature of the evil and its cure
(in his own words, “it was like passing from midnight darkness to the noontide light of day”),
once he discovered that capitalism must be replaced by socialism, he never stopped saying so.
He coupled the day-to-day struggle with socialism. He didn’t feel, as do many believers in
socialism today, that the fight for immediate issues would, of itself, bring socialist consciousness.
No. He knew, and acted upon the knowledge, that the trade-union struggle and the political
struggle must be wedded to socialism to bring class consciousness and socialist consciousness to
the workers.

And Debs’ way, let us remember, was Karl Marx’s way too. In 1865, Marx delivered an address to
the General Council of the First International in which he said:

The working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday
struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of
those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction;
that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be
exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights.… Instead of the conservative motto: “A
fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary
watchword: “Abolition of the wages system.”

This revolutionary watchword was, indeed, inscribed on the banner of the IWW—of which Debs
was one of the founders.

And, in this connection, Debs’ way was V. I. Lenin’s way, too. In January 1917, Lenin wrote a
letter to Charles Naine, a member of the International Socialist Committee in Switzerland. This is
what he said:

Who does not know that we Social-Democrats are not opposed to fighting for reforms, but that,
unlike the social patriots, unlike the opportunists and reformists, we do not confineourselves to
the struggle for reforms…? We are not opposed to elections and reforms for the purpose of
reducing high prices, but we attach primary importance to telling the masses the truth, namely
that it is impossible to combat high prices excepting by appropriating the banks and the big
factories, i.e., by social revolution.

That was Debs’ way. He had enough faith in the working class to tell them the truth—all of it. He
called a spade a spade in talking about our present social and economic system. It is rotten
through and through. It cannot be patched up. It must be replaced by a decent social order. This
Debs believed—and this he said. And we who believe these things must be just as outspoken.
We must say these things now, because they are still true.

I realize, of course, that there have been many changes for the better since Debs’ day—and that
the task of converting people to socialism is, therefore, much more difficult. The minimum
program for which Debs and the socialists fought in the 1900s and after, has now become a
reality. We have won the eight-hour day, old-age pensions, minimum wages, abolition of child
labor, direct income tax, unemployment insurance, workmen’s compensation.

But that does not mean that the basic problems to which Debs and his socialist followers
addressed themselves have been solved. Not at all. The basic problems still exist.

In spite of the present big boom, the unprecedented prosperity, the gadget heaven so many
people have entered on the wings of the biggest consumer debt in our history, we have not yet
conquered poverty. Not according to the latest government figures contained in the October
1955, report of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Economic Report. That document tells
us that in 1954, of the 41,934,000 families in the United States: 20 of those families, or one out
of every five, had incomes of less than $2,000 a year. Forty dollars per week for a family, in the
year 1954. 32 percent of those families, or roughly one out of every three, had incomes of less
than $60 per week.

Unemployment, too, is still a problem. What will it be like when automation really gets going?
Right now, in this peak prosperity year, there are some 3 million unemployed. The Joint
Committee Report says, ”A paradox of modern economic society is the continuing existence,
during periods of full employment, of geographic pockets in which chronic unemployment and
underemployment are excessively high.”

It says further: “While the Nation as a whole has displayed healthy indications of economic
expansion during the past 10 years, it is still a fact that a significant portion of its population has
not shared in the overall increase in economic well-being.”

The figures on housing prove that point. This is what the Public Health Service reported on May
9, 1953: “About a third of the 46 million dwellings in the country have basic health deficiencies…
almost one in three lacks hot and cold running water,” and more than one in four lacks “decent
toilet facilities.”

Our trade-union movement is today bigger than ever before in history. Yet only one fourth of the
total working force is unionized, and millions of unorganized workers still work for substandard
wages in substandard conditions.

In Debs’ day the growth of trusts was a point of agitation for socialists. But the biggest of the big
of his day would be as pigmies compared to the corporate giants of today when some 250
corporations own almost two-thirds of the entire country’s manufacturing facilities. The
employees, with their families, of just four of the leading industrial concerns outnumber the
population of eleven of the forty-eight states.

Nor can it be denied that, in spite of the widespread prevalence of cars, refrigerators, television,
and so on, gross inequalities still exist in wealth, income, and opportunities. As a matter of fact,
the poorest 30 percent of the people get a smaller percentage of the total national income today
than they did in 1910.

How much our cultural life has been warped by a system which places dollars before lives is
apparent everywhere around us. Today capitalist ethics and capitalist morality have reached the
point dictated by their own inner logic. No longer can the American people be aroused by
revelations of stealing and grafting by public officials—such behavior is accepted as normal. The
1951 Senate report on “Ethical Standards in Government” puts it this way: “There is a tolerance
in American life for unscrupulous methods which bring immediate rewards, even though these
methods, if they should become universal, would destroy the very society in which they are
tolerated.”

That these methods are fast becoming universal was suggested in a speech by Senator
Hendrickson of New Jersey on June 17, 1954. As chair~ man of a special Senate subcommittee
investigating juvenile delinquency, he told of a poll of high school and college students in New
Jersey which showed that: 12 percent did not consider stealing particularly wrong; 15 percent
saw no traits of delinquency in destruction of property; 75 percent “brushed aside lying and
cheating as acts which are not considered delinquent.”

The inherent drive of the capitalist system toward war as the solution to the ever-present
problem of overproduction is certainly as marked today, if not more so, than it was in Debs’ day.

The basic problems, then, still remain today—in spite of the undoubted gains that have been
made in some fields. But the task of reaching people is admittedly more difficult, both because
of the manufactured hysteria and attendant repression, and because the noise of the motor in
the car bought on the installment plan, and the soothing tones of the television’s propagandist
for capitalism, drown out the few voices of protest.

Nevertheless, there are some things that can be done, some steps that can be taken toward the
application of Debs’ principles to our world of today.

We must recover our faith in the ability of the worker to play a leading role in our society. We
tend to lose that faith every time George Meany opens his mouth. But the present situation, I
assure you, is not permanent.

We must quite realistically face the fact that with the Left as weak and pulverized as it is, we are
deluding ourselves if we think we can exert any significant influence on American politics today.
Nor should we continue to kid ourselves into thinking that we have only to water down our
program a bit, accommodate here, and compromise there—and we will be a force again.

Not so. That is the road to our own extinction. For what do we gain if our voice is finally heard
again—but the message it proclaims is garbled, or so modified as to be no longer worth hearing?

Let us, instead, do what we can do—speak out honestly and clearly for what we stand for. Let us
proclaim—and teach—our socialist faith; anywhere and everywhere, to the many or to the few.
Let us stop worrying about the size of our movement and think more of its quality. Let us study,
let us work hard, let us carry on the struggle to spread the gospel of socialism, so the younger
generation will be equipped to understand the forces that make for the rule of gold, and those
that strive for the Golden Rule.

This responsibility is ours—and we can perform it best by calling the shots as we see them—
without hedging, or trimming, or flinching. Let us tell the truth—the whole truth—about the
world we live in.

That, I repeat, was Debs’ way.

Venezuela: Guaidó’s botched coup – what does it mean and what's next?
  Print

Jorge Martin

01 May 2019

Venezuela Featured

Image: fair use

Share
Tweet

Just before dawn on 30 April, the Venezuelan opposition launched yet another attempt at a
military coup. By the end of the day, the botched coup attempt seemed to have failed, with one
of its leaders seeking refuge in the Spanish embassy, 25 of the soldiers involved requesting
asylum at the Brazilian embassy and Juan Guaidó in hiding or on the run.

The coup started at 5.46 am with a video message by Guaidó, who proclaimed himself president
in charge on 24 January at a street rally, but who has not moved an inch closer to Miraflores
Palace since. In the video, he appeared outside La Carlota military airbase in the east of Caracas,
together with a small group of army soldiers. Also present was Leopoldo López, the opposition
leader under house arrest for his role in the deadly guarimba riots of 2014. Apparently, he had
been released by the SEBIN intelligence officers in charge of guarding him.

Guaidó’s message was clear: “I am with the main military units of our Armed Forces starting the
final phase of ‘Operation Freedom’”. This was the final battle against ‘usurpation’. The presence
of López was a powerful prop. However, as was to become clear in the following hours, his
claims to have the support of the “main military units” was a lie. He did not have control of any
military units or bases, no commanding officers were on his side. In fact, despite claims to the
contrary he was not inside La Carlota base, but outside. He had not taken control of any TV or
radio stations.
Hands Off Venezuela@HOVcampaign

Reflections from Editor of @marxistcom Fred Weston, on foiled coup attempt in Venezuela.
@HOVcampaign #HandsOffVenezuela

49

11:52 - 1 May 2019

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Guaidó called on the people to come out on the streets nationally. Some joined him in the east
of Caracas and clashed with the National Guard protecting the air base. At one point, the
hundreds of rioters, which included a few soldiers, managed to breach the outside perimeter,
but were repelled with tear gas volleys. Not what you would expect from a ‘proper’ military
coup.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Caracas, thousands had gathered outside the Miraflores Palace
after an appeal made by Maduro on Twitter just after 10am, where he also said that he had
contacted the chiefs of all military units and that they were all loyal to his government. A few
high-ranking Bolivarian officials spoke, particularly Diosdado Cabello, but other than that the
stage was given to representatives of the chavista left and rank-and-file organisations, which
never feature in the official demonstrations. The mood was one of determination, there was a
spirit of resistance.

Imperialist support

Of course, the US rushed to support the coup in Venezuela with tweets and statements by
Trump, Pompeo, Elliot Abrams, Marco Rubio et al. They were followed by the presidents of
Brazil, Colombia, Chile and even the European Parliament. Organisation of American States
secretary general, Almagro also joined the chorus.

During the day, Pompeo and Bolton made all sorts of statements and insinuations in an attempt
to bolster Guaidó’s effort. Pompeo hinted that high-ranking officials in Venezuela had agreed in
talks with the US to remove Maduro. Bolton specifically mentioned Defence Minister Vladimir
Padrino, military counter-intelligence (DGCIM) and Presidential Guard chief Ivan Hernandez, and
Supreme Court of Justice Maikel Moreno. "Key figures in the regime” had been “talking to the
opposition over these last three months”, he said and appealed to them to “make good on their
commitments to achieve the peaceful transfer of power from the Maduro clique.” Later on,
Bolton declared that Maduro had had a plane ready to leave for Cuba but had been dissuaded by
the Russians. Despite all this boasting and psychological pressure, Padrino came out in a
televised address expressing, once again, his loyalty to the government.

Things on the ground in Venezuela were not going well. Some of Guaidó’s soldiers took the first
opportunity to defect, claiming they had been tricked. One of them explained how officers had
given them weapons at the Helicoide, the SEBIN headquarters, and told they were going to put
down a mass jailbreak.

After being repelled at La Carlota, and when it became clear that the coup was fizzling out,
Guaidó still tried another trick. He led a few thousand of his supporters, including some of the
soldiers he had in his video in the morning, westwards towards Miraflores Palace. This was an
attempt to repeat the script of the 2002 coup, when the opposition leaders marched their
supporters to the presidential palace, where they would be attacked by snipers hired to create a
justification for a military coup. As Marx once said, history repeats itself, first as a tragedy and
then as a farce.

Guaidó did not have the hundreds of thousands the opposition commanded on April 2002, and
his triumphant march was swiftly blocked by the National Guard. He quickly retreated to
Altamira in the east.

A pitiful defeat

As dawn approached in Caracas, Leopoldo Lopez and his family had hidden in the Chilean
embassy and 25 soldiers were asking for asylum at the Brazilian embassy. There was an
announcement that Guaidó was going to address the nation at 6pm, but the time came and
went and nothing happened. The coup seemed to have completely fizzled out. Later on, Lopez
and his family moved to the Spanish embassy.

Trump was so frustrated that he issued even more threats against Cuba:

“If Cuban Troops and Militia do not immediately CEASE military and other operations for the
purpose of causing death and destruction to the Constitution of Venezuela, a full and complete
embargo, together with highest-level sanctions, will be placed on the island of Cuba.”
Guaidó is on the run, Lopez is hiding in the Chilean embassy, and 25 defector soldiers are seeking
asylum in the Brazilian embassy. This shambolic coup has gone down to defeat / Image: fair use

This is completely preposterous. The reason why the attempts at regime change by the US in
Venezuela have so far failed is not because of “operations” by “Cuban Troops” to cause
“destruction to the Constitution”, but rather a combination of the stupidity and miscalculations
of the Venezuelan opposition and its masters in Washington, the resilience and anti-imperialist
spirit of a large section of the Venezuelan people, and the support that Russia and China are
providing the government. In fact, US sanctions, its seizure of Venezuelan assets and other
imperialist measures are certainly causing death and destruction!

It is clear that Trump thinks that, by exerting pressure on the Cuban Revolution, he will be able
to break the back of the Maduro government. The US has already toughened up sanctions
against Cuba, including implementing, for the first time, a clause in the Helms-Burton act that
allows US citizens to sue companies in third countries using property in Cuba that was
expropriated during the revolution. This is a scandalous act of imperialist aggression, which can
have a very negative impact on the already fragile Cuban economy.
Finally, at 8.24pm, Guaidó came out with a delirious video message on Twitter. Rather than
admitting the failure of his attempt, he announced “tomorrow [May 1] we will continue the
implementation of Operation Freedom,” he thanked the Armed Forces for their “support” while
insisting that “Maduro does not have control of the Armed Forces”.

The problem for Guaidó and Trump is that they have built the momentum to a “day of
reckoning” twice already, on January 24 and February 23, and failed on both occasions. Very
soon, if the situation does not turn in Guaidó’s favour today, we will start to see the fracturing of
the opposition amongst mutual recriminations and backstabbing. The opposition ranks, mainly
drawn from middle-and-middle-upper class layers, will feel disappointed and betrayed by their
own leaders, once again, as was the case with the 2014 and 2017 guarimbas.

Why did the coup fail?

The failed coup yesterday raises a number of questions. This was a completely botched attempt:
the coup did not control any military bases nor units, had no support from any commanding
officers, no TV or radio stations were taken and it was dispersed with tear gas, so, why did they
launch it?

Did they expect support which did not materialise? Did they believe their own lies about mass
support amongst the population and an amy that was ready to crack and all that was needed
was a spark in the form of action? Was it pure desperation at their lack of success? Why did they
not wait until 1 May, when they had announced mass demonstrations? Did they fear the turn
out was not going to be massive?

The government, for its part, seems to have acted in a very indecisive manner. No TV statements
by Maduro for 15 hours, no use of the army to crush the coup, no high-ranking government
officers at the rally in Miraflores. Was it an attempt to prevent bloodshed in an open military
clash, as Maduro argued in his TV address last night? Was the government unaware of how far
the conspiracy went? Was it not sure that it could count on military units to use them against the
coup?

Some are saying the coup had high-ranking support from SEBIN, DGCIM and other units, but it
was launched prematurely, and that it had been planned for 2 May, after the intended
opposition rallies on 1 May. This would go some way to explaining today's somewhat bizarre
events, and it would be a worrying sign for the future, as it would mean military commanders
were involved, but recoiled at the last minute. From what we know, there were elements in
SEBIN involved in the coup. Some of the soldiers taking part declared that they had been given
weapons at the SEBIN headquarters. Apparently, SEBIN director Manuel Christopher Figuera was
removed from his position and arrested.

All along, we have said that the fight against the coup cannot be left to the army generals. They
have their own interests and that is what they will defend. As long as they think these are best
defended by the Maduro government, they will remain loyal. If they think this government is
going down and is no longer able to protect their interests, they will seek to intervene in order to
guarantee them in the short, medium and long term.
Jorge Martin@marxistJorge

1) To all intents and purposes the botched coup today in Venezuela has collapsed. Leopoldo
Lopez is in the Chilean embassy. 25 coup soldiers are in the Brazilian embassy. Guaidó is on the
run.

Thousands came out to defend the Miraflores Palace.

178

00:00 - 1 May 2019

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The continuation of the economic crisis, aggravated by sanctions, together with international
pressure, might, at a certain stage push key players within the Armed Forces to want to save
their own skins by removing Maduro.

Even now, the situation is not completely under control. Guaidó has led an actual coup attempt,
with troops, and has not yet been arrested. Lopez has not been arrested either and remains free
to hop from one embassy to another.

The IMT and the Venezuelan comrades from Lucha de Clases in Venezuela have argued since
January that Guaidó should be arrested, the National Assembly disbanded and strong measures
taken against coup plotters, including arming and developing the militia and expropriating the
coup plotters and imperialism. Furthermore, we argued against moving Leopoldo Lopez from jail
to house arrest. Events yesterday are a further demonstration that we were right.

Today is May Day, and there will be opposition and chavista demonstrations in Caracas and
across Venezuela. The fact that Washington’s coup attempts have been so far unsuccessful does
not mean they are going to abandon their aims. Yesterday, Yahoo News published a report about
the proposal by private mercenary company, Blackwater to create a 5,000 strong mercenary
army to intervene in Venezuela. US sanctions and seizing of Venezuelan assets are having a
crippling impact on an economy already weakened by five years of recession.

Our duty is to oppose this imperialist aggression, as we have consistently done since this latest
attempt began on 24 January. At the same time, we must point out the only methods that can
guarantee victory over the counter-revolution. The Venezuelan comrades of Lucha de Clases
were outside Miraflores Palace yesterday. In a statement, they put forward the following slogans:
Jail Guaidó, disband the coup-plotting National Assembly, strengthen and spread the Bolivarian
militias, respond to the seizing of assets by expropriating imperialist multinationals, expropriate
the coup-plotting bourgeoisie, workers control of production, down with bureaucracy, complete
the revolution with rank-and-file organisation.

 The Hungarian Soviet Republic – Revolutionary Movements in Hungary in 1918-1919

 By Lajos Csoma | 19 Apr 18

 I

The wave of world revolution between 1917 and 1923 that swept through the entire globe was a
fundamental event of the twentieth century. The Russian Revolution in February 1917 proved to
be the spark that initiated a series of revolutionary movements all over the world in the years to
follow. Revolts, uprisings, and land and factory occupations took place from Canada to
Argentina, from Siberia to Italy, and from Egypt to China, and various revolutionary governments
emerged. All these developments mutually reinforced each other and formed a coherent
tendency. The establishment of a new society appeared to be a realistic alternative for wide
segments of society. As Thomas Mann put it in one of his letters at the time, ‘“Communism” as I
understand it, contains much that is good and human. Its goal is ultimately the total dissolution
of the state (which will always be dedicated to power), the humanization and purification of the
world by de- politicalizing it. At bottom, who would be against that?’ 1

The revolts in Bulgaria and in Hamburg, Germany of 1923 can be regarded as the closing of the
revolutionary wave, though significant events also occurred in the years to follow. If World War I
is often taken as the closing of the nineteenth century, then the wave of world revolution can be
considered as the beginning of the twentieth century. The first half of the twentieth century was
dominated by fascism, which evolved from the counter-revolutionary terror, while the second
half was characterised by the Cold War, the bipolar world, where the Soviet Union – which
emerged from the revolutionary movements – stood for one of the poles.

The ending of the world war was the most visible achievement of the world revolution. The
military defeat of the Central Powers was hardly debatable by autumn of 1918, yet it was the
uprisings within the armed forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary that ended the military
operations. After the world war, for several years fierce clashes took place between the
revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces; moreover, great empires disappeared from the
map of Europe, new states were established, and various revolutionary governments emerged.
The focus of the conflict was in Central and Eastern Europe. 2
Then, after years of serious struggle, the wave of revolutions subsided. The Hungarian Council
Republic of 1919 was an integral part of the international revolutionary movement; it was a
significant but not unique episode of the 1917-1923 period.

II

The Kingdom of Hungary had been fully incorporated into the Habsburg Empire by the
eighteenth century, and in 1867 it became a ‘member state’ of the Austrian-Hungarian
Monarchy. Hungary was integrated into the larger economic framework of the Monarchy after
1867, which brought about rapid industrialisation and the emergence of modern big cities and
industrial centres. Although the proportion of those employed in agriculture remained high
(more than 60 percent), the proportion of those employed in industry and commerce exceeded
20 per cent, and the proportion of industrial workers made up 15 per cent. Hungary was a multi-
ethnic country, with more than 50 per cent of its 20 million-strong population belonging to an
ethnic group other than Hungarian in 1914. The emergence of nation-states took place only after
World War I in East Central Europe, and after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
a considerable part of the population of Hungary sympathised with the idea of becoming citizens
of a nation-state because the Hungarian ruling class had earlier strictly opposed the rights of
ethnic minorities. The nationalist sentiment turned out to be an important factor in repressing
the revolutionary movement, and, eventually, nationalism gained the upper hand over
internationalism.

The imperialist interests of the Hungarian ruling class also played a role in the outbreak of World
War I since Serbia blocked all further expansion in the Balkans and supported those southern
Slavic ethnic groups which wanted to secede from the Monarchy. However, the world war had
unexpected consequences: the Habsburg Empire not only ended on the losing side but its
economy went bankrupt.

The revolt of the military preceded the complete debacle. By that time the anti-war movement
had grown stronger due to the Russian Revolution. General strikes were organised with more
than half a million participants in Hungary in January 1918, and then in June. Illegal workers’
councils were set up in many factories as well as soldiers’ councils within the military units.
Desertion and non-compliance with military orders became prevalent. By the autumn of 1918
discipline could no longer be maintained on the fronts, nor could the government control the
hinterland.

III

In October 1918 a new government, the so-called National Council, was established in Budapest,
headed by Mihály Károlyi, a popular anti-war liberal politician. Massive demonstrations filled the
streets of Budapest on 31 October, while the soldiers’ council disarmed the military units, and
the King appointed Károlyi as Prime Minister of Hungary. Two weeks later the republic was
proclaimed. The Social Democratic Party, which had a considerable influence on industrial
workers at the time, also joined the new government. In the countryside, soldiers returning from
the war became leaders of the revolutionary movement; stores and aristocrats’ palaces were
looted, and the lives of the representatives of the previous regime endangered. It took several
weeks and some heavy fighting for the National Guard – which was hastily established – to
restore order.

Though the new administration introduced several social measures, the dynamics of the
revolutionary movement made the workers increasingly radical. The workers occupied many
factories, discharged the general directors, and the workers’ councils took over. In the
countryside the local workers’ councils often took charge of the local administration, ensuring
provision and supplies for the public. The government issued a decree on partial land reform,
but it benefited only a few. At the same time land was occupied by force in many places, and
agricultural cooperatives were even organised in some counties with the support of the
Budapest Workers’ Council.

The Communist Party of Hungary (CPH) was established in November 1918, merging left-wing
Social Democrats and other left-wing groups. The bourgeois-democratic government tried to
restrain the revolutionary movement, arresting the leaders of the CPH on 20 February 1919, but
this only made the Communists more popular. The government did not dare consign the leaders
to strict confinement, so their prisons cells soon began to operate like party offices. The masses
were not satisfied with the implemented reforms and demanded more. One of the cabinet
ministers described the situation as follows: ‘By March the Socialist and Bolshevik masses
demonstrated together on the streets of Budapest, and all differences between them have
disappeared. This could readily be seen in their demands concerning material benefits, which
were first raised by the Communists, but by then the entire proletariat was backing these
demands.’3 The same process was highlighted by President Károlyi who later wrote that ‘the
actual power had already been exclusively in the hands of organised labour for months by that
time’.4 In that situation the two parties, the Social Democrats and the Communists, merged, and
took over the government. This is how the 133-day story of the Hungarian Council Republic
began on 21 March 1919.

At that time the Central European entente allies, mainly Romania and the emerging
Czechoslovakia, whose armies were stronger than that of Hungary, were interested in the
greatest feasible expansion of their territories. Defence from foreign intervention was a major
challenge for the Hungarian Council Republic all through its existence, and the intervention was
a principal cause of its collapse.

The major question for the Hungarian Social Democratic Party in the spring of 1919 was whether
to follow the example of Lenin or Noske.5 The Social Democrats were a mass party not just in
Germany but also in the Habsburg Empire already before the world war. The revolutionary
moment in 1918 opened a great window of opportunity for the Social Democrats whose
response differed from country to country. Social Democracy grew increasingly revolutionary the
further East one looked. The German Social Democratic Party joined forces with the counter-
revolutionary military and participated in repressing the revolution. 6 In Austria, the Social
Democrats successfully stabilised parliamentary democracy, while in Hungary they supported
the proletarian revolution. In Russia, they took the lead in advancing the revolution.

The left wing of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party was ready to embrace socialism. The
party’s centrists were realistic enough to see that with the downfall of the bourgeois-democratic
government only the proletarian parties had an adequate social base for assuming the
responsibilities of government. Though the centrist politicians participated in establishing the
Revolutionary Council of Government, by summer they began to entertain the idea that they
could govern without the Communists. The right wing of the party stepped back from this, but
they started to develop plans for the future, for the period after the Council Republic.

IV

The Hungarian Council Republic was established by a coalition of Communists and Social
Democrats, and this meant that its government programme was complex and sometimes
contradictory.

Local left groups together with former Hungarian prisoners of war returning from Russia
established the Communist Party of Hungary (CPH) in Budapest on 24 November 1918. Its basic
strategy was to radicalise the revolutionary movement, and its main objective was to accomplish
the dictatorship of the proletariat, but it lacked a clear idea of exactly what the dictatorship of
the proletariat should look like. The Red Journal, the daily paper of the CPH, advocated the self-
administration of workers and called on industrial workers to occupy the factories; however,
when in government, the Communists approached the autonomy of the workers in a different
way.

During the months following the Revolution in October 1918 the workers’ councils became
increasingly powerful; in many factories they discharged the managing directors or even
assumed ownership of the factory. In smaller settlements, the workers’ councils took over the
tasks of public administration. The composition of these local workers’ councils varied from
region to region. For instance, in western Hungary the better- off farmers and middle
landowners were in charge in many places, while the more radical landless peasants took the
lead in poorer regions. In the industrial regions, the radical left-wing workers became the leaders
of the workers’ councils. The bourgeois-democratic government did not succeed in reducing the
influence of the workers’ councils, even though in January 1919 they issued a decree excluding
Communist members from the workers’ councils, which in most places, however, was not
implemented.

The Communists were gaining ever more control over the Soldiers’ Council, which was the most
important leading body of the military. It became the executive centre of the entire defence
force as the wartime military leadership dissolved in autumn of 1918, and it remained the top
military body until the creation of the Council Republic government.

Parliamentary elections had been announced for April 1919, but the Revolutionary Council of
Government cancelled them and decided to hold council elections instead. Following these, the
local councils sent delegates to the National Council. In each settlement the executive power
was in the hands of the so-called Direktorium whose operation was supported by the local
workers’ council. Direktoriums had already been formed before 21 March in many places, and
they took over the administration. The franchise was further enlarged – it had been extended by
the previous government after October 1918 – giving all adults over 18 the right to vote but
excluding factory owners, large shareholders, and priests. In fact, the 500 members of the
Central Workers’ Council in Budapest possessed the real power because the National Assembly
of Councils held sessions only for a short period. The Central Workers’ Council, just like the
Revolutionary Council of Government, was a locus of party rivalry. The centrist Social Democrats
tried to slacken the pace of events, while the radical Communists tried to accelerate social
changes. At the centre stood Béla Kun, leader of the Communist party, who was much more of
an authoritarian politician and intriguer than a revolutionary. He succeeded in preventing the
radical elements within the Communist party from launching an organisation on their own.

The Revolutionary Council of Government sought to gain control over the workers’ councils and
therefore appointed production commissioners to the larger factories. One of the first decrees of
the council government nationalised factories employing more than 20 workers. 7 After this the
workers in smaller factories began to demand nationalisation of their plants; in some cases, the
workers simply took over control of the factory. All stores – except for food stores and
pharmacies – were closed down, and their stocks were nationalised and then centrally
distributed. This led to serious shortages; at the same time furniture was distributed to those in
need as part of the government’s social policy. The government tried to improve the food supply
among other ways by selling hens and geese directly to industrial workers. The landed peasantry
was unwilling to accept the official banknotes issued by the Council Republic, 8 which made the
food shortage even worse. Apartment buildings were also nationalised, and rents were
decreased by 20 percent. Large apartments were broken up into smaller ones, so that workers’
families could move into middle-class homes and fancy villas. A decree was issued ordering
those who had a bathroom in their apartments to share it with others; they were also instructed
to provide soap and towels if necessary. A complete ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages was
introduced, which was relaxed only during the summer. Important measures were also
introduced in the fields of culture and education. Museums, theatres, and private collections
were made accessible to all, and private parks were opened to the public. Compulsory school
attendance age was raised to 14, then to 18 years. Centrally organised summer holiday tours
were offered to workers’ children.

The agricultural policy of the Council Republic was contradictory. Although the new government
after the world war proclaimed that the latifundia were to be divided up, the Revolutionary
Council of Government did not understand that for the peasants, land reform was a fundamental
goal. In line with the prevailing Social Democratic conception, the revolutionary government
nationalised all landed property larger than 100 acres, aiming at establishing agricultural
cooperatives in the belief that collective property was superior to private property. The newly
established agricultural cooperatives were centrally directed so that they actually operated like
state farms. Despite this central initiative to set up cooperatives, the latifundia were parcelled
out to peasants in places where the locals strongly asked for this and were backed up by the
local council. The revolutionary government issued a confidential decree to the effect that the
landed property of large landowners could be parcelled out if local peasants very strongly
demanded it but that each family could obtain five acres at most. Altogether around 10 or 20
thousand peasants received agricultural land in this way. The government’s central control of
agricultural production actually resulted in the former landowner becoming in effect the
production commissioner, and so the landowners’ former managers remained in place.

The peasants with medium-sized landed property – who hoped to possess even more land –
were mostly hostile to the revolutionary government, and they were among the major
supporters of counter-revolutionary armed action. The smallholders wavered but tended to
accept the political leadership of the wealthy peasants because they regarded private property
as a cornerstone of society. However, many among the landless peasants joined the agricultural
cooperatives.

In 1918, following the world war, the new government repressed the peasants’ revolution with
firing squads. In 1919, the Council Republic used centralisation as a tool for blocking the
peasant’s movement for self- determination. The spontaneous anarchism of the poverty-stricken
peasants could only partially join forces with the Communist labour movement.

A significant part of the intelligentsia was in favour of the Council Republic in the beginning. It
was obvious for politically informed public opinion that the Kingdom of Hungary was a thing of
the past, and it was conceivable that a new historical period would have to emerge. Many of the
lower-rank intelligentsia, such as young school teachers and engineers, supported the
revolutionary government. Even more accepted was the government’s cultural policy measures,
such as the extension of public education and state subsidy for culture. However, the restrictions
imposed on freedom of the press – with the justification that the paper shortage did not permit
the publication of bourgeois newspapers – and the policy of religious intolerance alienated many
intellectuals. The petty bourgeoisie was also distrustful of the new regime because
nationalisation was also extended to their small shops and workshops.

When the Hungarian Council Republic was proclaimed on 21 March, the foreign policy situation
was hopeless for Hungary because the Central European allies of the entente demanded ever
more territory. The council government proclaimed the project of ‘revolutionary home defence’.
For the working class and the landless peasants this meant the defence of the revolution, while
for the middle class and the military officers it meant national defence. The Hungarian Red Army,
which was established in only a few weeks, achieved significant successes at first. It pushed back
the Romanian army to the eastern side of the Tisza River in eastern Hungary, and in June drove
out the Czechoslovak forces from the northern part of the former Kingdom of Hungary (which
was largely inhabited by Slovaks). However, the revolutionary government was not able to
convert military success into political success. The entente powers promised to withdraw from
eastern Hungary in exchange for the Hungarian Red Army giving back the northern, would-be
Czechoslovak territory. The Red Army withdrew from the north – and with that the short-lived
Slovak Council Republic fell – but the Romanian troops did not move. Then in July, Red Army
troops crossed the Tisza River to attack the Romanian forces, but by that time the morale of the
revolutionary army had languished due to the fiasco in the north. It took many by surprise that,
especially in the beginning, a large number of professional military officers joined the Red Army;
actually, their motivation was to defend the historical boundaries of Hungary and they thought
that they had no other choice but to join forces with the Council Republic. However, most of the
military officers had turned away from the revolutionary government by July. Their morale was
so low that secret information was leaked even from the General Staff of the Red Army to the
Romanian generals. Distrust was spreading on all levels of the military, and supply for the
combat troops was hindered even by some of the highest-ranking officers.

The working class and the landless peasantry, which made up the main base of the Council
Republic, were losing their faith. The four-year-long world war had already inflicted serious
losses on them, and they grew tired of fighting more wars. Some of the Social Democrats openly
criticised the Council Republic, claiming that if the Communists were expelled from the
government the entente would recognise a full Social Democratic cabinet. They suggested that
this would end the armed conflict, their government would still represent the workers, and life
would improve.

The industrial as well as the agrarian proletariat were disappointed. The peasants did not receive
agricultural land, and workers’ control over the factories was not complete; production was
faltering and even basic needs were not met. The leadership of the Council Republic became
more and more divided in the course of the summer. Some Social Democrats initiated talks with
the entente powers, while the radicals among the Communists wanted the removal of Béla Kun
and the Social Democrats from government and the introduction of ‘a genuine dictatorship of
the proletariat’. Favouritism was widespread, which many members of the top leadership,
including Béla Kun, were inclined to practise. By and large, it can be said that quite a few leaders
in the Revolutionary Council of Government acted like standard politicians. Genuine
revolutionary enthusiasm was more characteristic of the lower levels of leadership and of the
local Direktoriums. These activists, who used to be Social Democrats for the most part, truly
believed that the time of socialism had come, and that a new age had begun in the history of
humankind.9

The social base of the Council Republic was diminishing, the conflicts within the leadership
became irreconcilable, and opposition to the regime grew stronger and stronger, but it was the
foreign military intervention that caused the fall of the regime. The Romanian forces were able
to stop the offensive of the Hungarian Red Army because the military plan for the offensive was
leaked to them; then they launched a counterattack. This fiasco completely demoralised the Red
Army soldiers, and consequently the Hungarian forces fell apart; the road was open to Budapest.
The majority in the Revolutionary Council of Government was in favour of giving up the struggle,
and so the revolutionary government resigned on 1 August. Its leading politicians, along with
several thousand left-wing activists, fled to Austria. The right-wing Social Democrats formed a
new cabinet, but a coup soon removed them. When the Romanian troops left Budapest in
November, Admiral Miklós Horthy and his followers gained actual control over the state
administration. Horthy and his military officers initiated a vengeance campaign against the
activists of the Council Republic. There is no reliable data, but it is estimated that more than a
thousand people were killed by the white terror in 1919. Which of the two terrors, red or white,
was bloodier in Hungary is an ongoing debate, but in general historical experience the number of
victims tends to be much higher in counter- revolutionary atrocities than in revolutionary ones.

The number of Hungarian casualties in the First World War reached 600 thousand, not counting
the injured. Some dozens from the elite of the Habsburg Empire were killed in October 1918, but
the forces of order of the new bourgeois government murdered several hundred people,
particularly in villages. The Romanian occupying forces were responsible for the death of
another few hundred. The number of those killed for political reasons during the Council
Republic was about 100 to 200 persons; they were the victims of red terror. The number of those
executed by Miklós Horthy and his followers – who proudly labelled themselves’counter-
revolutionary’ – was much higher. Thousands were imprisoned or sent to detention camps, and
thousands emigrated for political reasons.10

Miklós Horthy was elected Governor of Hungary on 1 March 1920, and the entente powers also
recognised him as the legitimate head of government. It was the Horthy regime that signed the
peace treaty, as a result of which several parts of Hungary with a majority Hungarian population
were transferred to the neighbouring countries. The Hungarian right-wing ‘national mythology’
has always blamed the revolutionary governments of 1918-1919 for the loss of territories,
ignoring that the secession of non- Hungarian ethnic groups from the Kingdom of Hungary was
an inevitable process inherent in the establishment of nation-states.

VI

The 1918-1919 Revolution has never occupied the place it deserves in Hungarian historical
memory. The anti-Communist and anti-Semitic authoritarian regime of the interwar period
based its legitimacy on the repression of the 1918-1919 Revolution. When Hungary became a
part of the Soviet bloc after 1945, the Council Republic was largely ignored because many of its
leaders had fallen victim to the Stalinist terror in the Soviet Union. After 1956, under the
government led by János Kádár, a distorted picture was projected of this historical period.
Although the regime considered its predecessor to be ‘the Council Republic led by Communists’,
it wanted to conceal its real revolutionary substance. Historical perception rapidly shifted to the
right after 1990, and the official views soon revived the attitude of the interwar Horthy-
government towards the Revolution. This attitude has remained dominant up to the present day.

Notes

1. Letter to Josef Ponten, Munich, March 29, 1919, The Letters of Thomas Mann:
1899-1955, selected and translated by Richard and Clara Winston, New York:
Vintage Books, 1975, p. 86.

2. A summary overview of these developments can be found in F.L.

Carsten, Revolution in Central Europe 1918-1919, Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1972.

3. Tibor Hajdu, A Magyarországi Tanácsköztársaság, Budapest: Kossuth

Könyvkiadó, 1969, p. 21.

4. Hajdu, p. 411.

5. Gustav Noske, one of the leaders of the German SPD, was willing to ‘play the
role of bloodhound’ in directing the repression of the Berlin revolt in January
1919, in cooperation with the Freikorps.

6. Sebastian Haffner accurately describes the role of German Social Democracy

during the revolution in his ruthless essay Die verratene Revolution Deutschland
1918/19, Munich: Scherz, 1969.

7. The economic policy of the Hungarian Council Republic was presented by the
renowned economist and former people’s commissioner, Eugen (Jenő) Varga in
 his Die wirtschaftspolitischen Probleme der proletarischen Diktatur, Hamburg:
Verlag der Kommunistischen Internationale, Carl Hoym Nachf., 1921.

8. These banknotes were called ‘white money’ because only one side was printed
due to ink shortages.

9. This optimism was well described by the Communist writer, Ervin Sinkó, who
held various positions during the Council Republic, in his novel The Optimists,
which was set in the period of the Hungarian Council Republic.

10. Like Béla Lugosi, a leader of the actors’ trade union, who later became a
Hollywood star in the role of Dracula.

The Bauhaus school of design was founded in Weimar Germany a century ago. Born of the
spirit of transformation that followed the horror of the First World War, it has arguably not
been surpassed in its breadth and radicalism. Siobhan Brown explains the movement’s
context.

This month marks the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus. It was the most celebrated art,
design and architecture movement of the 20th century. It is still hugely influential: from big
things, like the buildings we inhabit, to the small things, such as the chairs we sit on. Even the
success of Ikea can be put down to its influence.

There is a packed programme taking place across Germany celebrating the movement. The
breadth of its influence is clear. As well as design shows and art exhibitions, there is a Bauhaus
ballet being performed at Berlin Academy of Arts. Critics have noted the surprising
contemporary relevance of the programme in its aesthetic but also collaborative values.

The school continues to have influence in the art world today. In 2015, the Turner Prize was won
by the design group Assemble Collective. This signified a renewed move away from the idea of
the great solo artist and instead reflected a more cooperative way of doing things, with a focus
on the functional yet elegant. Assemble can be considered very Bauhaus.

The term “Bauhaus” — literally “building house” — means different things to different people. It
is easy for art historians and critics to remove so influential a movement from the historical and
political context in which it was rooted.

The First World War had shaken the world. In 1919 there was a battle to reshape it. Germany
was a society in turmoil.

The war had ended with the overthrow of the Kaiser and the establishment of workers’, soldiers’
and sailors’ councils in cities across Germany. In late 1918 a battle took place between the
revolutionaries — including Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Shop
Stewards’ movement — and the reformist Social Democratic Party (SPD) about the future of
Germany.
After the failed Spartacus rising of January 1919, the reformists gained the upper hand. They
established a parliamentary democracy known as the Weimar Republic. Though progressive in
many ways, the Weimar Republic was primarily an attempt to stabilise the capitalist order in
Germany.

But for the next decade Germany continued to be racked by war debts, hyperinflation, economic
crises and eventually mass unemployment. There was dramatic political conflict and the growth
of both the Communist Party and the Nazis.
Inevitably, artists too were grappling with the problems of their age.

Cultural life in Weimar Germany was rich and varied. The period produced the literature of
Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Erich Maria Remarque. It gave us the radical theatre of Bertolt
Brecht and Ernst Toller, and the socially critical art of George Grosz and Käthe Kollwitz. The
lifespan of the Bauhaus was also exactly that of the Weimar Republic itself — coming to a
crashing halt with the seizure of power by Hitler’s Nazis in 1933.

Hopes of the era

The Bauhaus school was founded in April 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius. The initial
manifesto (see box) was a stark representation of the hopes of the era and the reformist vision
to improve society. Gropius described how “the old human spirit is invalidated and in flux toward
a new form. We float in space and cannot yet perceive the new order.” Hopes were high, but in a
bitterly contested situation.

The manifesto set out a number of ambitious aims. It challenged the traditional “high art”
aesthetic order.

The first aim was to train craftspeople and artists to embark on cooperative projects in which
their skills would be combined. It sought to elevate the crafts — making “things” — to the status
that fine art already enjoyed.

It also set out a different way of teaching art and design. Each workshop was not taught by a
teacher, but two co-masters — one who taught practical skills and one with a more traditional
art background.

It had a programme of unlearning knowledge of art materials and starting from scratch. This
meant its designs used the essential essence of the material and did away with the clutter and
decoration of Edwardian and Victorian gothic styles.
The Bauhaus also sought to connect technology and art in new ways.

Radical reformism

Some of the Bauhaus artists came from a revolutionary background. Others had always been
committed to the reformist project. The dominant thread of the Bauhaus artists was not one of
revolution, but of radical reformism which pervaded the 1920s.

The Bauhaus years were divided into three phases. The school was first based in Weimar. The
Bauhaus Manifesto sought to bring all artistic and creative tasks under the ultimate aim of “the
building”. During the early years of the Bauhaus the focus was on developing the school style. It
moved from its original log-cabin style and drew on the modernising influence of architects such
as Le Corbusier, a key proponent of European modernism.

The designs were functional yet elegant. The school was mostly building models and show
houses for exhibitions, with state authorities generally reluctant to plough money into their
unusual designs.

During this time, the Weimar government was undertaking public building projects on a scale
never seen before in Germany. The focus shifted from business and power towards a more
people-centred approach. There were housing developments, shops and schools designed and
built in the interest of people.

But — perhaps surprisingly — the Bauhaus school were not the initiators of extensive Weimar-
era housing. It was the city architects of Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt who should be credited
with the progressive housing of the period.

The overarching emphasis was on functionality, and the importance of community-building. This
is in stark contrast to how homes and public buildings are conceived for the private market
today. Take the battle between the Tate Modern and its neighbours, fed up of visitors looking
into their luxury flats. In the architecture of Weimar Germany, residents were encouraged —
through design — to look into one another’s homes as a way to foster community-building.

The major exhibition at the school in 1923 reflected the ideas of art and technology coming
together, and showed the wide range of pursuits undertaken by students. It combined painting,
sculpture, architecture and craft in new ways.

Conservative forces

In 1924 more conservative forces asserted themselves during what is known as the Stresemann
era, after Germany’s chancellor. It was the most stable of the Weimar period.

But financial support was withdrawn from the school. It closed down and was forced north to
the industrial town of Dessau. Here the political environment was better: the local mayor was
supportive of the school and it became the municipally funded school of design. There was the
potential of good links to local industry — important in allowing the school to start making
products for the mass market to ensure its financial survival.

The new building was hugely influential. It was commissioned by the council and built, alongside
masters’ houses for Gropius and other masters to live in, in 1925-26.

In 1928 Gropius stepped down as director of the school and was replaced by Hannes Meyer.
Meyer was already a prolific architect. He was also a communist.

He brought the school some real building commissions: an apartment block in Dessau and the
ADGB Trade Union School. In 1929 the Bauhaus made money — but Meyer was forced out in
1930. The mayor of Dessau sacked him, saying that “things in the Bauhaus get more and more
unbearable every day”. He noticed that “communist students were becoming trendsetters” and
put this down to Meyer’s influence.
The relationship with even left wing local governments was tense, and without state backing, the
school was unable to raise the money to continue let alone start major building programmes.

Increasingly polarised

By the end of the 1920s the balance of political forces in Germany was changing rapidly. Most
significantly, the Nazis were on the rise. They made sweeping gains in elections at every level.
German society become increasingly polarised.
In 1931 the Nazis won local elections in Dessau, the home of the Bauhaus, and shut the school
down. They described its ethos as “cultural bolshevism”.

This was part of a wider culture war against modern art. As Mark Brown described in this
magazine earlier this year, “for the Nazis any art work that reflected the abstract, non-
naturalistic or discordant traits of modernism was, by definition, ‘degenerate’”.

Many of the Bauhaus artists left Germany and set up across the world, most notably in the US. In
1937 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago. The other place where Bauhaus
influence is in plain sight is Tel Aviv. The “White City” is a collection of over 4,000 buildings
designed and built by Jewish Bauhaus-trained architects who eventually settled in Palestine.

The Bauhaus demonstrates what radical reformist culture can look like — visionary, sometimes
progressive, but held very tightly within the limits of reformism. It didn’t focus as much on
brilliant individuals. Its output was sometimes radical, using materials in new ways and
experimenting with form and colour.

The Bauhaus played a crucial role in the development of Modernism and in the way that art is
still taught today. But it had its limitations — and that was because an art school alone, however
fundamental its influence, cannot change society without society changing first.

Battles around art, culture and expression can still be part of challenging an existing order and
moving towards a new society. They reflect the remarkable creativity and confidence that is
unleashed by struggles to change the world. For revolutionaries, cultural battles are not merely
an adjunct to political struggle.

They can be examples of rebel sentiment, creativity and pushing boundaries. They can look
towards a future that is not yet made.

Women in the Bauhaus

Tate Modern’s recent blockbuster exhibition celebrated the Bauhaus designer and weaver Anni
Albers. Albers was one of the most prominent female Bauhaus artists. Sadly many others have
been forgotten or overlooked.

In an increasingly socially liberal society, a battle for the “new woman” was ongoing. Women
were at least more visible in public life, despite a number of setbacks, and debates were raging
about their role in society.
In 1919 more women than men applied to join the Bauhaus. But it was not progressive when it
came to the women in its ranks. Although Gropius said that there would be “no difference
between the beautiful and strong sex” he also did not believe women could think in three
dimensions — so architecture was out for them.

Students would first follow the Vorkurs, a preliminary training course in basic forms, textures and
colours. They would then dedicate themselves to one workshop. Men (the “strong” sex) were
fielded into carving and painting, whereas women (the “beautiful”) found themselves in the
workshops most linked to traditional feminine roles, such as toy making and ceramics. Albers
joined the weaving class. It became known as the “Women’s Workshop”.

By 1930, when the Bauhaus became more heavily focused on architecture, there was little space
for women to thrive. Albers’ biggest success came after her move to Black Mountain College in
the US where she taught until 1949.

US Master Plan to Destroy Bolivarian Venezuela

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 30, 2019

Granma

A sinister plan is underway, its objective: to destroy Bolivarian Venezuela. The details of this
project appear meticulously specified in a secret document dated February 23, 2018, that bears
the signature of Admiral Kurt Walter Tidd, current commander-in-chief of the U.S. Southern
Command.

The first phase was launched before the last Venezuelan elections, but did not succeed in
overthrowing President Nicolás Maduro, thus Plan B was implemented, which projected
recruiting several countries to demand a “multilateral force” to intervene militarily, along with a
media campaign by the imperialist propaganda apparatus and more violent actions in “defense
of democracy.”

The document calls for encouraging popular dissatisfaction by increasing the process of
destabilization and shortages, to ensure the irreversible discrediting of the current “dictator,”
reminding us of the plan described by Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory, on April 6,
1960, aimed at putting an end to the Cuban Revolution, calling for weakening the country’s
economic life, causing the Cuban people hunger and despair, which would lead to revolutionary
government’s demise.

This perverse subversion project includes harassing and ridiculing Venezuelan President Nicolás
Maduro, “to pose him as symbol of awkwardness and incompetence. “ The plan is designed to
be implemented quickly and effectively to undermine the alleged “dictatorship” in Venezuela.

MASTERSTROKE PART I

– Increase internal instability to a critical level, by “intensifying the undercapitalization of the

country, the leaking out of foreign currency and the deterioration of its monetary base, bringing
about the application of new inflationary measures.”
– The document suggests exacerbating divisions between members of the government,
emphasizing the difference between the population’s living conditions and those of their
leaders, and making sure that these are exaggerated.

– “Fully obstruct imports, and at the same time discouraging potential foreign investors in order
to make the situation more critical for the population .”

– Appeal “to domestic allies as well as other people inserted from abroad in the national
scenario in order to generate protests, riots and insecurity, plunders, thefts, assaults and
highjacking of vessels as well as other means of transportation with the intention of deserting
the country in crisis through all borderlands and other possible ways, jeopardizing in such a way
the National Security of neighboring frontier nations.”

– The plan emphasizes the importance of “causing victims” and “holding the Venezuelan
government responsible.”

– Promote internationally the idea that the country is facing a humanitarian crisis.

– Spread lies about extensive government corruption.

– Link the government to drug trafficking to discredit the Maduro administration before the
world and among Venezuelan supporters.

– Promote “fatigue inside the members of the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela),
inciting annoyance and inconformity among themselves, for them to break noisily from the
government.”

– Design a plan to incite “the profuse desertion of the most qualified professional from the
country, to leave it with no professionals at all, which will aggravate even more the internal
situation, and along these lines, putting the blame on the government.”

PART II

– Encourage dissatisfaction with the Maduro regime.

– Highlight “the incompetence of mechanisms of integration created by the regimes of Cuba and
Venezuela, specially (sic) the ALBA and PETROCARIBE, in order to tackle the situation of the
country and their inability to find solutions to the problems that citizens are facing.”

– One section of the document is entitled: “Using the army officers as an alternative of definite
solution.”

– Continue preparing “conditions inside the Armed Forces to carry out a coup d’etat before
ending 2018, if the crisis does not make the dictatorship collapse, or the dictator does not decide
to move aside.”

– Continue “setting fire to the common frontier with Colombia, multiplying the traffic of fuel and
other goods. The movement of paramilitaries, armed raids, and drug trafficking. Provoking
armed incidents with the Venezuelan frontier security forces.”
– Recruit “paramilitaries, mainly in the campsites of refugees in Cúcuta, la Guajira, and the north
of Santander, areas largely populated by Colombian citizens who emigrated to Venezuela and
have returned.”

PART III

– Prepare “involvement of allied forces in support of Venezuelan Army officers, or to control the
internal crisis.”

– Establish “a speedy timeline that prevents the Dictator … winning control of the internal
scenario.”

– Obtain support and cooperation from “friendly countries (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Panama,
Guyana)”

– Organize “provisioning, relief of troops, medical and logistical support from Panama.”

– Make “good use” of electronic surveillance and intelligence signals; of hospitals and equipment
deployed in Darién (Panamanian jungle), Plan Colombia’s drone equipment , as well as the
“landing fields” at the former Howard and Albroock military bases in Panama; as well as those of
Río Hato; and the United Nations Humanitarian Regional Center, designed for catastrophe
situations and humanitarian emergencies, which has “an aerial landing field and its own
warehouses.”- Proposed is “moving on the basification of combat airplanes and choppers,
armored conveyances, intelligence positions, and special military and logistics units, police,
military district attorneys, and prisons.”

– Develop “the military operation under international flag, patronized by the Conference of
American Armies, under the protection of the OAS, and the supervision, in the legal and media
context of General Secretary Luis Almagro.”

– Declare the “necessity of the continental command be strengthened to act, using the
instrument of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, in order to avoid the democratic rupture.”

– “Binding (sic) Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Panama to the contribution of greater number of
troops, to make use of their geographic proximity and experience in forest regions.”

– Strengthen the “international” nature of the operation “with presence of combat units from
the United States and the other named countries, under the command of a Joint General Staff
led by the USA.”

– Promote “international participation in this effort, as part of a multilateral operation with

contributions from States, Non-profit Organizations, and international bodies. Supplying the
adequate logistic, intelligence, surveillance, and control support,” anticipating as key
geographical points “Aruba, Puerto Carreño, Inirida, Maicao, Barranquilla, Sincelejo in Colombia,
and Roraima, Manaos and Boavista in Brazil.”

MEDIA PLAN
– Increase within the country, via local and international media, the dissemination of messages
designed and based on testimony and publications originating in the country, making use of all
possible capacity, including social media.

– “Justifying and assuring through violent means the international backup to the deposal of the
dictatorship, displaying an extensive dissemination, inside the country and to the entire world,
through all open means and the capacities of the psychological war of the U.S. Army.”

– Back up and “strengthen” the image of the OAS, as a multilateral institution to resolve regional
problems.

– Promote “the request of a dispatch of a UNO military force for the imposition of peace, once
Nicolas Maduro’s corrupt dictatorship is defeated. “

SOURCE: U.S. Southern Command “Plan to overthrow the Venezuelan dictatorship:

Masterstroke,” revealed by Argentine intellectual Stella Calloni

El imperialismo, "Imperialism,
fase superior the highest
del phase of
capitalismo”, de capitalism", by
Lenin, ayer y Lenin,
hoy yesterday and
Por Marcelo Ramal today
El presente texto es un desarrollo
de la exposición del autor como By Marcelo Ramal
panelista en la mesa “Imperialismo This text is a development of the
y Revolución”, en el Seminario por author's exhibition as a panelist at
los Cien Años de la Revolución the table "Imperialism and
Rusa realizado en la Facultad de Revolution", in the Seminar for the
Ciencias Sociales de la UBA en Hundred Years of the Russian
noviembre de 2017 Revolution held at the Faculty of
Social Sciences of the UBA in
November 2017
Entre tantas revalorizaciones
históricas, el centenario de la
revolución de Octubre es también Among so many historical
una oportunidad para poner en su revaluations, the centenary of the
lugar a El Imperialismo, fase
superior del capitalismo, de Lenin
(1916), una de las obras que
contribuyeron decisivamente al
programa y la acción de quienes
iban a encabezar la revolución de
Octubre. Esa contribución, por
parte de Lenin, se completaría con
las Tesis de Abril (1917), y El
Estado y la Revolución (agosto
1917).
El lugar del El imperialismo… ha
sido a veces minimizado y, muchas
otras, malversado. La más común
de estas presentaciones
engañosas se escuda en su
carácter breve o en el estilo
popular de su redacción. En otros
casos, se presenta a la obra de
Lenin como la mera enumeración
de un conjunto de
transformaciones que
caracterizaron al capitalismo del
último cuarto del siglo XIX: la
concentración del capital industrial
y la emergencia del monopolio
capitalista; la consiguiente
concentración del capital de los
bancos y sus consecuencias -la
“unión personal” de los bancos con
la industria y el surgimiento del
capital financiero-; el tránsito de la
exportación de mercancías
-característico del capitalismo de la
libre competencia- a la exportación
de capitales; el reparto del mundo
entre los grupos monopolistas; el
copamiento definitivo del mundo
colonial entre las grandes
potencias que albergan a aquellas
corporaciones y la lucha -política y
militar- por “un nuevo reparto del
October Revolution is also an
opportunity to put in place
Imperialism, the superior phase of
capitalism, of Lenin (1916), one of
the works that contributed
decisively to the program and
action of those who they were
going to lead the October
revolution. That contribution, on the
part of Lenin, would be completed
with the Theses of April (1917), and
The State and the Revolution
(August 1917).
The place of imperialism ... has
sometimes been minimized and,
many others, embezzled. The most
common of these deceptive
presentations is cast in its brief
character or in the popular style of
its writing. In other cases, Lenin's
work is presented as the mere
enumeration of a set of
transformations that characterized
the capitalism of the last quarter of
the nineteenth century: the
concentration of industrial capital
and the emergence of the capitalist
monopoly; the consequent
concentration of banks' capital and
its consequences - the "personal
union" of banks with industry and
the emergence of financial
capital; the transit of the export of
merchandise - characteristic of the
capitalism of the free competition -
to the export of capitals; the
division of the world among the
monopolistic groups;
But is this all the contribution of
imperialism ... Lenin? If it were for
the mere presentation of capitalist
transformations at the end of the
mundo”. nineteenth century, Lenin himself
admits having collected them, to an
Pero ¿es éste todo el aporte de El
important extent, from two works
imperialismo…, de Lenin? Si fuera
that preceded his. In the first place,
por la mera presentación de las
the Study of Imperialism (1902), by
transformaciones capitalistas de
the liberal John A. Hobson, a
fines del siglo XIX, el propio Lenin
monumental work -in terms of
admite haberlas recogido, en
compiling evidence and
importante medida, de dos obras
denunciations- regarding the
que precedieron a la suya. En
hoarding of the world by the great
primer lugar, el Estudio del
capitalist powers and the
imperialismo (1902), del liberal
corporations that emerged in
John A. Hobson, un trabajo
they. Then, and in all that referred
monumental -en términos de
to the articulation between the
compilación de evidencias y
banking capital and the industrial
denuncias- respecto del
capital, Lenin had like reference to
acaparamiento del mundo por
the financial capital (1913), of the
parte de las grandes potencias
Austro-German socialist Rudolf
capitalistas y las corporaciones
Hilferding.
que emergieron en ellas. Luego, y
en todo lo referido a la articulación Another of the vulgarizations of
entre el capital bancario y el capital Lenin's work is to present it as the
industrial, Lenin tuvo como mere description of the passage
referencia a El capital financiero "from capitalism of free competition
(1913), del socialista austro- to monopoly [1] ". If this were the
alemán Rudolf Hilferding. El case, there would be nothing
carácter singular de la obra de original in that text: Marx himself,
Lenin no reside en la pretendida both in Misery of Philosophy and in
‘popularización’ de esas Capital, had developed the
elaboraciones anteriores, sino en contradictory relation between
lo que él denominó la “crítica del competition and monopoly in the
imperialismo” o, más adelante en evolution of capitalist development.
el mismo texto, el “lugar histórico
Historical transition
del imperialismo”.
By the way, the imperialism of
Otra de las vulgarizaciones del
"Lenin" does not refer to a "market
trabajo de Lenin consiste en
form" - as neoclassical economics
presentarlo como la mera
presents to monopoly - but to a
descripción del pasaje “del
historical transition. Capitalism has
capitalismo de la libre competencia
completed its 'civilizing' work, the
al monopolio[1]”. Si se tratara de
accumulation of capital has spread
ello, no habría nada de original en
to the whole planet. The bitter
ese texto: el propio Marx, tanto en
struggle for a "new division of the
Miseria de la Filosofía como en El
capital, había desarrollado la
relación contradictoria entre
competencia y monopolio en el
devenir del desarrollo capitalista.
Transición histórica
Por cierto, el imperialismo de
“Lenin” no se refiere a una “forma
de mercado” -tal como presenta al
monopolio la economía neoclásica-
sino a una transición histórica. El
capitalismo ha completado su labor
‘civilizatoria’, la acumulación de
capital se ha extendido al conjunto
del planeta. La lucha encarnizada
por un “nuevo reparto del mundo”
abre un período histórico de
“guerras y revoluciones”.
En su texto, Lenin advirtió sobre la private economy and property
tentativa de convertir a esta
categoría histórica en una mera
taxonomía: “Los publicistas
burgueses (…) defienden el
imperialismo en una forma
encubierta, velando (…) sus raíces remain in a long state of
profundas, esforzándose en
colocar en primer plano las
particularidades y los detalles
secundarios”[2]. Lenin asociaba
estas interpretaciones a las
tentativas de reforma del
capitalismo monopolista, tales
como “el control policíaco a cartels Imperialism ..., already raised in its
y trusts”, una referencia a las
llamadas “regulaciones anti-trust”. capitalism - or in the words of Lenin
En oposición a estas visiones,
señala que “las relaciones de
economía y propiedad privadas
constituyen una envoltura que no
corresponde ya al contenido, que
debe inevitablemente
descomponerse si se atrasa
world" opens a historical period of
"wars and revolutions".
In his text, Lenin warned about the
attempt to turn this historical
category into a mere taxonomy:
"The bourgeois publicists (...)
defend imperialism in a covert way,
watching (...) its deep roots, striving
to place in the foreground the
particularities and secondary
details " [2]. Lenin associated these
interpretations with attempts to
reform monopoly capitalism, such
as "police control of cartels and
trusts", a reference to the so-called
"anti-trust regulations". In
opposition to these visions, he
points out that "the relations of
constitute an envelope that no
longer corresponds to the content,
which must inevitably be
decomposed if its suppression is
artificially delayed, which can
decomposition during a relatively
long period. (in the worst case, if
the cure of the opportunistic tumor
is prolonged too much) but that,
nevertheless, it will be ineluctably
suppressed ". From this arises the
central conclusion of
title - that is, the "superior" stage of
himself,
Capitalism inaugurates a new
development, characterized by the
expansion of monetary capital that
circulates as a mere right or
promise to the perception of an
income (fictitious capital), and well
artificialmente su supresión, que
puede permanecer en largo estado
de descomposición durante un
período relativamente largo (en el
peor de los casos, si la curación
del tumor oportunista se prolonga
demasiado) pero que, sin
embargo, será ineluctablemente
suprimida”. Surge de aquí la
conclusión central de El
imperialismo…, ya planteada en su
título -o sea, la etapa “superior” del
capitalismo- o en las palabras del
propio Lenin, “un capitalismo en
transición, o más propiamente,
agonizante”.
El capitalismo inaugura un nuevo
desarrollo, caracterizado por la
expansión del capital monetario
que circula como mero derecho o
promesa a la percepción de una
renta (capital ficticio), y muy por
encima de sus posibilidades de
intercambio con el capital
productivo; por la hipertrofia del
crédito como recurso para cubrir el
antagonismo entre producción y
consumo; por la militarización y la
tendencia a la guerra que añade, a
los ‘viejos’ objetivos de pillaje y
acaparamiento, la ‘nueva’ función
de liquidar fuerzas productivas y
habilitar -al costo de catástrofes
sociales y humanitarias- a un
nuevo equilibrio en la acumulación
de capital. Este es el contenido del
capitalismo declinante o maduro
que caracteriza Lenin.
Es cierto que El imperialismo...
constituyó un arma de lucha
política y teórica en torno de la
gran divisoria de aguas de esos
above its possibilities of exchange
with productive capital; by the
hypertrophy of credit as a resource
to cover the antagonism between
production and consumption; by
militarization and the tendency to
war that adds, to the 'old' objectives
of pillage and hoarding, the 'new'
function of liquidating productive
forces and enabling - at the cost of
social and humanitarian
catastrophes - a new equilibrium in
the accumulation of capital. This is
the content of the declining or
mature capitalism that
characterizes Lenin.
It is true that imperialism ...
constituted a weapon of political
and theoretical struggle around the
great watershed of those years
-between the opportunism that
accompanied the imperialist
bourgeoisies in the carnage of the
First War, on the one hand, and the
handful of revolutionaries who
called for transforming the
imperialist war into war against the
bourgeoisie itself, on the other. But
to the extent that Lenin succeeded
in associating war and barbarism
with the definitive decadence of
capitalism, his "imperialism" is
projected, even more strongly, into
the present.
Imperialism, ultraimperialism,
"globalization"
One of the central conclusions of
Imperialism ... refers to the
impossibility of its peaceful "reform"
or "correction". This was, precisely,
the vision of Hobson, when it
años -entre el oportunismo que
acompañó a las burguesías
imperialistas en la carnicería de la
Primera Guerra, de un lado, y el
puñado de revolucionarios que
llamó a transformar a la guerra
imperialista en guerra contra la
propia burguesía, del otro. Pero en
la medida que Lenin acertó en
asociar la guerra y la barbarie con
la definitiva decadencia del
capitalismo, su “imperialismo” se
proyecta, con más fuerza todavía,
en el presente.
Imperialismo, ultraimperialismo,
“globalización”
Una de las conclusiones centrales
de El imperialismo… refiere a la
imposibilidad de su “reforma” o
“corrección” pacífica. Esta fue,
precisamente, la visión de Hobson,
cuando caracteriza al imperialismo
británico como “un mal negocio, ya
que, tras exigir enormes costos, no
ha significado sino un incremento
pequeño, malo e inseguro de los
mercados, y ha puesto en peligro
toda la riqueza de la nación al
suscitar la animadversión de otros
países. Podemos preguntarnos,
¿qué indujo a la nación británica a
embarcarse en tan mal negocio?
La única respuesta posible es que
los intereses económicos de la
nación están subordinados a los de
ciertos grupos privados que
usurpan el control de los recursos
nacionales y los usufructúan en
beneficio personal”.[3] Hobson no
puede percibir el carácter
históricamente necesario del
acaparamiento perpetrado por
characterizes British imperialism as
"a bad business, since, after
demanding enormous costs, it has
meant only a small, bad and
insecure increase in the markets,
and has endangered all the wealth
of the nation by arousing the
animosity of other countries. We
can ask ourselves, what induced
the British nation to embark on
such bad business? The only
possible answer is that the
economic interests of the nation
are subordinated to those of certain
private groups that usurp the
control of national resources and
use them for personal gain.
" [3]Hobson can not perceive the
historically necessary character of
the hoarding perpetrated by such
"private groups" (the capitalist
monopolies) and "recommends"
the British empire a way to reform
or correct its abuses.
But Lenin is even more implacable
with Karl Kautsky, who in
1914/1915 declares that
imperialism is only the "preferred
policy" of capitalism of the time. In
Kautsky's vision, imperialism is
characterized "by the tendency of
each industrial nation to annex or
submit to increasing agrarian
regions." Lenin qualifies this
definition at least as unilateral. He
points out that it is not the industrial
capital that predominates, but the
financial one over the other forms
of capital - be they agrarian or
industrial and, mainly, the fight of
prey for the markets, marked by
violence and political reaction. In
tales “grupos privados” (los
monopolios capitalistas) y le
“recomienda” al imperio británico
una vía de reforma o corrección de
sus abusos.
Pero Lenin es aún más implacable
con Karl Kautsky, el cual en
1914/1915 declara que el
imperialismo es sólo la “política
preferida” del capitalismo de
entonces. En la visión de Kautsky,
el imperialismo se caracteriza “por
la tendencia de cada nación
industrial a anexionarse o a
someter regiones agrarias cada
vez mayores”. Lenin califica a esta
definición cuanto menos como
unilateral. Señala que no es el
capital industrial el que predomina,
sino el financiero sobre las otras
formas del capital -sean agrarios o
industriales y, principalmente, la
lucha de rapiña por los mercados,
signada por la violencia y la
reacción política. En su crítica a
Kautsky, Lenin lo coloca incluso
‘por detrás’ del liberal Hobson, el
cual, con los límites señalados,
había destacado la tendencia a la
disputa entre los ‘imperios rivales’ y
visualizado -al menos
descriptivamente- el predominio
del capital financiero sobre las
otras formas del capital.
Contra la pretensión reformista de
un desarrollo “armónico” de todas
las formas de producción
-industrial y agraria- en los países
donde se genera un exceso de
capital, Lenin señala que, si ello
fuera posible, “el capitalismo
dejaría de ser capitalismo, pues el
his criticism of Kautsky, Lenin
places him even "behind" the
liberal Hobson, who, with the limits
outlined,
Against the reformist pretension of
a "harmonious" development of all
forms of production -industrial and
agrarian- in countries where excess
capital is generated, Lenin points
out that, if this were possible,
"capitalism would cease to be
capitalism, because the unequal
development and the standard of
living of the semi-hungry masses
are the basic conditions and
premises, inevitable of this mode of
production " [4]. And he concludes:
"In backward countries, the benefit
is ordinarily high, because capital is
scarce, the price of land is
relatively small, low wages, cheap
raw materials. (...) The (...) export
of capital is determined by the fact
that in some countries capitalism
has 'matured' excessively, and (in
the conditions created by the
insufficient development of
agriculture and by the misery of the
masses ) does not have a land for
the 'lucrative' placement of capital
" [5] .
This rationale raises the need - and
not the mere historical possibility -
of imperialism, and is in 'direct line'
with Marx's development on the
tendential fall in the rate of profit
and its counteracting causes. Lenin
attributes the export of capital to
the search for means of production
not produced (land, natural
resources) and cheap labor
force; that is, a resource to oppose
desarrollo desigual y el nivel de the declining performance of
vida de las masas capital, which is the result of the
semihambrientas son las increasing replacement of living
condiciones y las premisas labor - value creator - for dead
básicas, inevitables de este modo labor - only value transmitter. [6]
de producción”[4]. Y concluye: “En
Next, Lenin attacks the more
los países atrasados, el beneficio
general consequences of Kautsky's
es ordinariamente elevado, pues
claim: if imperialism is not the
los capitales son escasos, el precio
necessary form of capitalist
de la tierra relativamente poco
decline, then it can lead to a new
considerable, los salarios bajos, las
progressive phase: "the application
materias primas baratas. (…) La
of cartels policy to politics outside,
(...) exportación de capital se halla
ultraimperialism "(Kautsky). The
determinada por el hecho que en
"final" concentration of capital
algunos países el capitalismo ha
would thus lead "to the union of the
‘madurado’ excesivamente, y (en
imperialisms of the whole world,
las condiciones creadas por el
the phase of the cessation of wars
desarrollo insuficiente de la
and of the general exploitation of
agricultura y por la miseria de las
the world by financial capital united
masas) no dispone de un terreno
internationally" [7] . Accordingly, the
para la colocación ‘lucrativa’ del
global domination of financial
capital”[5].
capital would attenuate the
Este fundamento plantea la contradictions of the world
necesidad -y no la mera economy. The cartels would act,
posibilidad- histórica del thus, as a moribund factor of the
imperialismo, y está en ‘línea crises.
directa’ con el desarrollo de Marx
Lenin rejects this vision of Kautsky,
sobre la caída tendencial de la tasa
demonstrating that "financial capital
de ganancia y sus causas
and trusts accentuate the
contrarrestantes. Lenin atribuye la
difference in the rate of growth of
exportación de capitales a la
different parts of the world
búsqueda de medios de
economy." And it describes, at this
producción no producidos (tierra,
point, the ruthless plundering of the
recursos naturales) y fuerza laboral
imperialist powers over colonies
baratos; es decir, un recurso para
and semi-colonies. Lenin, then,
oponer al rendimiento declinante
asks about the possibilities of a
del capital, que es resultado del
lasting and stable alliance between
reemplazo creciente de trabajo
imperialist powers for the
vivo -creador de valor- por trabajo
"peaceful" distribution of the
muerto -sólo transmisor de valor.[6]
colonial world. And he responds in
Enseguida, Lenin arremete contra the following way: "The distribution
las consecuencias más generales of the world is related to the
del planteo de Kautsky: es que si el
imperialismo no es la forma
necesaria de la declinación
capitalista, entonces puede
conducir a una nueva fase
progresiva: “la aplicación de la
política de los cartels a la política
exterior, el ultraimperialismo”
(Kautsky). La concentración “final”
del capital conduciría así “a la
unión de los imperialismos de todo
el mundo, la fase de la cesación de
las guerras y de la explotación
general del mundo por el capital
financiero unido
internacionalmente”[7]. De acuerdo
con ello, la dominación mundial del
capital financiero atenuaría las
contradicciones de la economía
mundial. Los cartels actuarían, así,
como un factor morigerador de las
crisis.
Lenin rechaza esta visión de
Kautsky, demostrando que “el
capital financiero y los trusts
acentúan la diferencia en el ritmo
de crecimiento de las distintas
partes de la economía mundial”. Y
describe, en este punto, el saqueo
despiadado de las potencias
imperialistas sobre colonias y
semicolonias. Lenin, se pregunta,
entonces, sobre las posibilidades
de una alianza duradera y estable
entre potencias imperialistas para
el reparto “pacífico” del mundo
colonial. Y responde del siguiente
modo: “El reparto del mundo se
relaciona con la fuerza económica
general, financiera, militar, etc. Y la
fuerza no se modifica de un modo
idéntico. Es imposible bajo el
general economic, financial,
military strength, etc. And the force
is not modified in an identical
way. It is impossible under
capitalism the equal development
of different companies, of different
trusts, etc. (...) Peaceful alliances
prepare wars and, in turn, emerge
from the bosom of war,[8] As we
will see below, this critique of
"ultraimperialism" will gain
enormous validity a century later.
Imperialism, monopoly and
competition
The claim to reduce the historical
category of imperialism to a kind of
monopoly theory has led to other
distortions of Lenin's work. For
example, the one that attributes to
the theory of imperialism a
"theoretical duality" and a
distancing from the Marxian theory
of value. According to Rolando
Astarita [9] , there would be two
theories: that of "Hilferding and
Lenin, (who) maintain that prices
are established by the market
power of corporations", and that of
"Marx, who maintains that prices
are determined objectively in the
markets. " [10] The theory of
imperialism, in this way, would be
contradictory with the law of value
itself.
But the alleged opposition between
prices fixed by the "power of
corporations" and others by the
"market" is alien to Imperialism ...,
which, following Marx, develops the
dialectical unity between monopoly
and competition. In the chapter
capitalismo el desarrollo igual de
las distintas empresas, de los
distintos trusts, etc. (…) las
alianzas pacíficas preparan las
guerras y, a su vez, surgen del
seno de la guerra,
condicionándose mutualmente,
engendrando una sucesión de
formas de lucha pacífica y no
pacífica sobre una misma base de
relaciones imperialistas y de
relaciones recíprocas en la política permanent way and for a prolonged
y la economía mundiales”.[8] Como
veremos enseguida, esta crítica del the causes of the absurdity of the
“ultraimperialismo” cobrará enorme
vigencia un siglo después.
Imperialismo, monopolio y
competencia
La pretensión de reducir la
categoría histórica del imperialismo between monopolies backed by
a una suerte de teoría del
monopolio ha llevado a otras
tergiversaciones de la obra de
Lenin. Por ejemplo, la que atribuye the war.
a la teoría del imperialismo una
“dualidad teórica” y un
distanciamiento respecto de la
teoría marxista del valor. Según
Rolando Astarita[9], existirían dos
teorías: la de “Hilferding y Lenin,
(que) sostienen que los precios se
establecen por el poder de
mercado de las corporaciones”, y
la de “Marx, que sostiene que los
precios se determinan de manera
objetiva en los mercados”.[10] La
teoría del imperialismo, de este
modo, sería contradictoria con la
propia ley del valor.
Pero la pretendida oposición entre
precios fijados por el “poder de las
referring to the "parasitism and
decomposition of capitalism", Lenin
mentions the "monopolistic prices"
- which govern "temporarily" - and
the barriers to competition - such
as patents - that "cause the
stimulant causes to disappear to a
certain extent. of technical progress
". But, at once, he adds that
"monopoly can not suppress
competition in the world market in a
period (this is, incidentally, one of
theory of ultraimperialism).
" [eleven] For Lenin, monopoly
capitalism, which emerges as a
negation of competition, ends up
rethinking it in a more acute and
bitter phase: that of the struggle
their states, where economic
despotism must necessarily take
the form of political reaction and
The link between imperialism and
the law of value exists, then, in a
very different way from how it is
presented in the cited text. In truth,
monopoly is an extreme attempt,
on the one hand, to control or
nullify the action of the law of value,
which operates within the
framework of competition and
which leads to the decline of the
rate of profit. And on the other, an
attempt to overcome the anarchy
proper to the capitalist production
regime, which operates outside any
plan or regulation.
The great capitalist corporation,
with its internal division of labor and
corporaciones” y otros por el its rigorous strategic planning,
“mercado” es ajena a El constitutes a 'general rehearsal' of
Imperialismo…, el cual, siguiendo society subjected to a conscious
a Marx, desarrolla la unidad plan [12] . In order to achieve this,
dialéctica entre monopolio y however, the gigantic material and
competencia. En el capítulo technical base that exists must
referido al “parasitismo y break with the "wrapping" of private
descomposición del capitalismo”, property, which repeats anarchy
Lenin menciona a los ‘precios and waste on a larger scale all the
monopolistas’ -los cuales rigen time-that of competition between
“temporalmente”- y a las barreras a monopolies, corporations, and
la competencia -como las corporations. your States.
patentes- que “hacen desaparecer
In relation to the law of value, the
hasta cierto punto las causas
monopoly violates its validity
estimulantes del progreso técnico”.
temporarily when, through the
Pero, enseguida, añade que “el
formation of cartels or agreements
monopolio no puede suprimir la
of another type, self-assigns prices
competencia en el mercado
that assure its participants a yield
mundial de un modo permanente y
higher than the average profit
por un período prolongado (en esto
rate. By stopping the competition,
consiste, dicho sea de paso, una
the capitalists delay the tendency
de las causas de lo absurdo de la
to incorporate technical means to
teoría del ultraimperialismo)”.
overcome their rivals: with it, they
[11] Para Lenin, el capitalismo
contain the replacement of live
monopolista, que emerge como
work - value creator - by the one
negación de la competencia, la
who only transmits it, and they
termina replanteando en una fase
delay, therefore, the tendency to
más aguda y encarnizada: la de la
the fall of the profit rate. But as
lucha entre monopolios
Lenin points out, agreements are
respaldados por sus Estados,
only precarious
donde el despotismo económico
truces. Contradictorily, the
debe cobrar necesariamente la
obtainment of extraordinary
forma de la reacción política y de la
benefits within the monopolistic
guerra.
cartels constitutes a formidable
El vínculo entre el imperialismo y la stimulus for the foreign capitals to
ley del valor existe, entonces, de try to enter their markets [13].
una forma muy diferente de cómo
On the other hand, the monopoly
es presentada en el texto citado.
"fixes" of prices or market shares,
En verdad, el monopolio es una
which preserve the profit rate of the
tentativa extrema, por un lado, de
capitalists involved, block the
controlar o anular la acción de la
accumulation of capital to the
ley del valor, que opera en el
extent that they cancel out their
marco de la competencia y que
conduce a la declinación de la tasa
de ganancia. Y del otro, un intento
de superar la anarquía propia del
régimen de producción capitalista,
que opera por fuera de todo plan o
regulación.
La gran corporación capitalista,
con su división interior del trabajo y
su rigurosa planificación
estratégica, constituye un ‘ensayo
general’ de la sociedad sometida a
un plan consciente[12]. Para
alcanzarlo, sin embargo, la
gigantesca base material y técnica
existente deberá romper con la
“envoltura” de la propiedad
privada, la cual relanza todo el
tiempo la anarquía y el dispendio a
una escala superior -la de la
competencia entre monopolios,
corporaciones y sus Estados.
En relación con la ley del valor, el
monopolio viola su vigencia
temporalmente cuando, por medio
de la formación de cartels o
acuerdos de otro tipo, se
autoasigna precios que aseguran a
sus participantes un rendimiento
superior a la tasa de ganancia
media. Al frenar la competencia,
los capitalistas retrasan la
tendencia a incorporar medios
técnicos para superar a sus rivales:
con ello, contienen el reemplazo de
trabajo vivo -creador de valor- por
aquel que sólo lo transmite, y
retrasan, por lo tanto, la tendencia
a la caída de la tasa de ganancia.
Pero como señala Lenin, los
acuerdos son sólo treguas
precarias. Contradictoriamente, la
driving force-competition. This is
the reason why antitrust laws have
emerged - from the Sherman law
(1890, United States) onwards. The
big lawsuits related to monopolistic
maneuvers - from the dissolution of
Standard Oil, from Rockefeller, to
the recent sanctions against
Microsoft - are the "judicialized"
scenario of this ruthless struggle of
capitalist monopolies, among which
they shield their market to obtain
super-profits and the that struggle
to break those barriers to enter. It is
noteworthy, at this point, that the
arbitration of the capitalist State -
which is always presented as a
moribund or regulating factor of the
'market' or competition - acts in this
case to promote it, thus confessing
that monopoly capitalism -
presented by reformism as a
principle or guarantee of
accumulation harmonic - is,
ultimately, a factor of delay or
blocking to such accumulation. But
as Lenin pointed out, the truces
between monopolists are
ephemeral, they hardly give the
time for the "rearmament" and the
renewed struggle for the hoarding
of the markets. The law of value,
despite attempts to contain and
regulate it, ends up imposing and
operates through despotism and
violence. thus confessing that
monopoly capitalism -presented by
reformism as a principle or
guarantee of harmonic
accumulation- is, ultimately, a
factor of delay or blockage to such
accumulation. But as Lenin pointed
out, the truces between
obtención de beneficios
extraordinarios al interior de los
cartels monopolistas constituye un
formidable estímulo para que los
capitales ajenos a él intenten
ingresar en sus mercados[13].
Por otra parte, los “arreglos”
monopolistas de precios o repartos
de mercados, que preservan la
tasa de ganancia de los
capitalistas involucrados, bloquean
la acumulación de capital en la
medida que anulan a su fuerza
motriz -la competencia. Esta es la
razón por la cual han surgido las
legislaciones antitrusts -desde la
ley Sherman (1890, Estados
Unidos) en adelante. Los grandes
litigios relacionados con maniobras
monopolistas -desde la disolución
de Standard Oil, de Rockefeller,
hasta las recientes sanciones a
Microsoft- son el escenario
“judicializado” de esta lucha
despiadada de monopolios
capitalistas, entre los que blindan
su mercado para obtener
superganancias y los que pugnan
por romper esas barreras para
poder ingresar. Es de notar, en
este punto, que el arbitraje del
Estado capitalista -que siempre es
presentado como un factor
morigerador o regulador del
‘mercado’ o la competencia- actúa
en este caso para promoverla,
confesando así que el capitalismo
monopolista -presentado por el
reformismo como un principio o
garantía de acumulación armónica-
es, en última instancia, un factor de
retraso o bloqueo a tal
monopolists are ephemeral, they
hardly give the time for the
"rearmament" and the renewed
struggle for the hoarding of the
markets. The law of value, despite
attempts to contain and regulate it,
ends up imposing and operates
through despotism and
violence. thus confessing that
monopoly capitalism -presented by
reformism as a principle or
guarantee of harmonic
accumulation- is, ultimately, a
factor of delay or blockage to such
accumulation. But as Lenin pointed
out, the truces between
monopolists are ephemeral, they
hardly give the time for the
"rearmament" and the renewed
struggle for the hoarding of the
markets. The law of value, despite
attempts to contain and regulate it,
ends up imposing and operates
through despotism and violence.
On the other hand, and against the
claim that the theory of imperialism
would be contradictory with the law
of value, it is Marx himself who
shows that the law is fulfilled in the
-contradictory- interaction of the
"many" capitals. Its compliance is
verified on the capital considered
as a whole or, if you like, on a
global scale. Within it operate more
or less monopolized branches, and
more or less technification (organic
composition). The transfer of
surplus value between one and
another does not deny that, as a
whole, the social wealth produced
is the representation of the general
work invested in them. But the law
acumulación. Pero como señalara
Lenin, las treguas entre
monopolistas son efímeras,
apenas otorgan el tiempo para el
“rearme” y la lucha renovada por el
acaparamiento de los mercados.
La ley del valor, a pesar de los
intentos por contenerla y regularla,
se termina imponiendo y opera a
través del despotismo y la
violencia.
Por otra parte, y contra la
pretensión de que la teoría del
imperialismo sería contradictoria
con la ley del valor, es el propio
Marx el que demuestra que la ley
se cumple en la interacción
-contradictoria- de los “muchos”
capitales. Su cumplimiento se
verifica sobre el capital
considerado en su conjunto o, si se trust" [15]. Day notes that, for
quiere, a escala mundial. Al interior Bukharin, imperialism exacerbates
de él operan ramas más o menos
monopolizadas, y de mayor o
menor tecnificación (composición
orgánica). La transferencia de
plusvalor entre unas y otras no
desmiente que, en su conjunto, la
riqueza social producida es la
representación del trabajo general above and together with it, giving
invertido en ellas. Pero la ley del
valor, bajo la actual transición
histórica, opera bajo la forma
convulsiva de la competencia entre
monopolios, de la disparidad entre
ramas y países, de la vigencia del
desarrollo desigual.
Como bien destaca el historiador
marxista Richard Day[14], Lenin
desenvolvió este punto de vista,
incluso en oposición a otras
visiones del imperialismo que
of value, under the current
historical transition, operates under
the convulsive form of competition
among monopolies, of the disparity
between branches and countries,
of the validity of unequal
development.
As the Marxist historian Richard
Day [14] emphasizes , Lenin
developed this point of view, even
in opposition to other visions of
imperialism that existed within the
Bolshevism, for example, that of
Nicolás Bujarin. In effect, the latter
argued that "the combination of the
unions of industries and banks
unify the totality of national
production, which assumes the
form of a company of companies,
becoming a state capitalist
competition only on the level of
antagonisms between the
imperialist nations, and their
respective "state
capitalisms." Lenin, on the contrary,
points out that "monopolies do not
eliminate competition, but exist
rise to a cluster of very sharp and
intense antagonisms, frictions and
conflicts" [16] .
In the same line of Astarita, the
Mexican economist Diego
Guerrero [17]it lashes out at the
"theoretical current" that fed the
concepts of monopoly capitalism
and, later, imperialism, and
qualifies Lenin as "its most vulgar
exponent". Like Astarita, Guerrero
opposes the law of value to the
existían al interior del bolchevismo,
por caso, la de Nicolás Bujarin. En
efecto, éste último sostenía que “la
combinación de los sindicatos de
industrias y bancos unifican a la
totalidad de la producción nacional,
la cual asume la forma de una
compañía de compañías,
convirtiéndose en un trust
capitalista de Estado”[15]. Day
señala que, para Bujarin, el
imperialismo exacerba la
competencia sólo en el plano de
los antagonismos entre las
naciones imperialistas, y sus
respectivos “capitalismos de
Estado”. Lenin, por el contrario,
señala que “los monopolios no
eliminan la competencia, sino que
existe por encima y junto a ella,
dando lugar a un cúmulo de muy
agudos e intensos antagonismos,
fricciones y conflictos”[16].
En la misma línea de Astarita, el
economista mexicano Diego
Guerrero[17] fustiga a la ‘corriente
teórica’ que alimentó los conceptos
de capitalismo monopolista y,
luego, de imperialismo, y califica a
Lenin como “su exponente más
vulgar”. Como Astarita, Guerrero
opone la ley del valor a las
“relaciones de fuerza” que
prevalecen en el capitalismo de los
monopolios. Pero en la era del
imperialismo, la guerra y la
reacción política son la
manifestación, no de la negación
de la ley del valor, sino de su
vigencia. Es la competencia en su
forma extrema -la guerra- que se
termina imponiendo por sobre los
"relations of force" that prevail in
monopoly capitalism. But in the era
of imperialism, war and political
reaction are the manifestation, not
of the denial of the law of value, but
of its validity. It is the competition in
its extreme form -the war- that ends
up imposing itself over the
"controls" and agreements of the
capitalist monopolies. The claim
that the law of value could only
operate as a 'metabolic' or abstract
phenomenon of mercantile
regulation, irrespective of the
superstructure and political action
of the classes, that is, of
commercial, political or military
wars,
On the occasion of capitalist crises
-which always reflect an excess of
capital in relation to the prevailing
valuation conditions- the law of
value operates under the action of
social catastrophes, wars,
devaluations and the destruction of
productive forces. As a whole,
imperialism expresses capital's
most extreme attempt to master its
insurmountable contradictions. On
the one hand, the monopoly and
centralization of capital impose the
most extreme socialization, in an
attempt to overcome the anarchy
that will end up reopening in more
intense and acute terms. On the
other, financial capital, and the
more sophisticated forms of credit,
try to overcome the contradiction
between upward production and
consumption necessarily
constrained by the growing
magnitude of unpaid labor. The
“controles” y acuerdos de los
monopolios capitalistas. La
pretensión de que la ley del valor
sólo podría operar como un
fenómeno ‘metabólico’ o abstracto
de la regulación mercantil, con
independencia de la
superestructura y de la acción
política de las clases, o sea, de las
guerras comerciales, políticas o
militares, reduce el marxismo a un
“modelo económico”, y lo sustrae
de una comprensión general de la
dinámica de la sociedad humana a
través de la lucha de clases.
En ocasión de las crisis capitalistas
-que reflejan siempre un exceso de
capital en relación a las
condiciones de valorización
vigentes- la ley del valor opera bajo
la acción de catástrofes sociales,
guerras, devaluaciones y
destrucción de fuerzas productivas.
De conjunto, el imperialismo
expresa la tentativa más extrema
del capital por dominar sus
contradicciones insuperables. Por
un lado, el monopolio y la
centralización del capital imponen
la socialización más extrema, en
un intento por superar la anarquía
que terminará reabriéndose en
términos más intensos y agudos.
Del otro, el capital financiero, y las
formas más sofisticadas del
crédito, intentan superar la
contradicción entre una producción
ascendente y un consumo
necesariamente restringido por la
magnitud creciente del trabajo no
retribuido. Las crisis capitalistas,
finalmente, reencuentran al
capitalist crises, finally,
Imperialism and capitalist
decline
The publication of Imperialism ...
takes place within the framework of
the first steps of the Third
International, and its opposition to
the imperialist war. But it also
establishes the historical
framework of the October
revolution: the extension of
capitalism and the working class
itself to the scale of the entire
planet; consequently, the
indifferentiation between mature
and immature nations for the social
revolution; the penetration of
capital in the backward nations,
which accentuates the unequal
development of its productive
forces and signifies the inability of
the native ruling classes to
emancipate themselves from
imperialist domination. That
emancipation, and the overcoming
of the backwardness, will become
an episode of the socialist
revolution. But in turn, the October
revolution could only be conceived
as the first step of the world
revolution.
Imperialism, as the debut of the
decline of capitalism and the
historical necessity of the socialist
revolution, is a scenario historically
overcome? It is the point of view of
a text by Claudio Katz [18], which
points out that imperialism "as the
superior stage of capitalism,
characterized by historical decline,
was conditioned by the interwar
capitalismo imperialista con la ley
del valor.
Imperialismo y declinación
capitalista
La publicación de El
imperialismo… tiene lugar en el
marco de los primeros pasos de la
III internacional, y de su oposición
a la guerra imperialista. Pero
establece también el marco
histórico de la revolución de
octubre: la extensión del
capitalismo y de la propia clase
obrera a la escala de todo el
planeta; en consecuencia, la
indiferenciación entre naciones
maduras e inmaduras para la
revolución social; la penetración
del capital en las naciones
atrasadas, que acentúa el
desarrollo desigual de sus fuerzas
productivas y signa la incapacidad
de las clases dominantes nativas
para emanciparse de la
dominación imperialista. Esa
emancipación, y la superación del
atraso, pasarán a ser un episodio
de la revolución socialista. Pero a
su vez, la revolución de octubre
sólo podía ser concebida como el
primer paso de la revolución
mundial.
El imperialismo, como debut de la
declinación del capitalismo y de la
necesidad histórica de la
revolución socialista, ¿es un
escenario históricamente
superado? Es el punto de vista de
un texto de Claudio Katz[18], que
señala que el imperialismo “como
etapa superior del capitalismo,
war catastrophe." Thus, and
instead of an optics focused on a
"mega-stage of historical decline",
he proposes to study "the different
stages that capitalism went
through", rejecting the thesis of a
historical decline of this social
regime. To sustain it, Katz affirms
that "such a decline did not figure
in Marx's vision, which had limited
his periodisations to the processes
of gestation of this system
(primitive accumulation) and to
modalities of his industrial
development (cooperation,
manufacturing, large
industry)" [ 19] .
Contrary to this point, Capital
contains a monumental forecast
about the evolution of capitalism
and the tendency towards its
dissolution, as a result of the laws
that signify its
development. Volume III develops
the conditions that lead to the
collapse of the studied system -
capitalism - under the weight of
capital accumulation itself.
But let us go further: the
characterization of mature or
superior capitalism as a "turning
point" and a historical transition to
another social regime is present
even in Hilferding. Its development
on the role of cartels and trusts and
the transformation of capital into
financial capital accounts for how
imperialism 'objectively' prepares
the conditions for its
overcoming. "Financial capital,"
says Hilferding, "means the
creation of social control over
caracterizada por la declinación
histórica, estuvo condicionada por
la catástrofe bélica de
entreguerra”. Así, y en lugar de una
óptica centrada en una “mega-
etapa de descenso histórico”,
propone estudiar “las distintas
etapas que atravesó el
capitalismo”, rechazando la tesis
de una declinación histórica de
este régimen social. Para
sustentarlo, Katz afirma que “tal
decadencia no figuraba en la visión
de Marx, que había limitado sus
periodizaciones a los procesos de
gestación de este sistema
(acumulación primitiva) y a
modalidades de su desarrollo fabril
(cooperación, manufactura, gran
industria)”[19].
A contramano de este
señalamiento, El capital contiene
una monumental previsión sobre el
devenir del capitalismo y la
tendencia a su disolución, como
resultado de las propias leyes que
signan su desarrollo. El tomo III
desarrolla las condiciones que
conducen al derrumbe del sistema
estudiado -el capitalismo- bajo el
peso de la propia acumulación del
capital.
Pero vayamos más lejos: la
caracterización del capitalismo
maduro o superior como “punto de
inflexión” y transición histórica
hacia otro régimen social está
presente incluso en Hilferding. Su
desarrollo sobre la función de los
carteles y trusts y la transformación
del capital en capital financiero da
cuenta de cómo el imperialismo
production. But it is a socialization
in antagonistic form; the domination
over social production remains in
the hands of an oligarchy. The
struggle for their dispossession
constitutes the last phase of the
class struggle between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat
" [20]. Hilferding's conclusion,
however, will be to "transform with
the help of the State, with the help
of conscious regulation, this
economy organized and directed
by the capitalists in an economy led
by the democratic State" [21] -
either , that socialism would
become, in a harmonious and
painless way, the own development
of monopoly capitalism. But even
this reformist vision admitted that
capitalism had reached "its highest
point"! Katz's rejection of
imperialism as a historical transition
is not only opposed to Lenin. It
leaves aside the most important
pillar of the "critique of political
economy" -that is, the
characterization of capitalism as a
transitory regime, whose
development is at the same time
that of the historical conditions of
its negation and overcoming.
The pretense of presenting
imperialism as a historical period
"limited" to the times of Lenin leads
Katz to other capricious
assertions. For example, to
question the dominance of financial
capital over the other forms of
capital, which would be refuted "by
industrial supremacy during the
post-war boom." But it can not be
‘prepara’ objetivamente las presented as "industrial
condiciones de su superación. “El supremacy" to the reconstruction of
capital financiero -afirma Hilferding- the industrial park of the main
significa la creación del control imperialist powers after the
social sobre la producción. Pero es fantastic destruction of productive
una socialización en forma forces during the Second World
antagónica; la dominación sobre la War. That reconstruction, which, on
producción social queda en manos the other hand, only spanned two
de una oligarquía. La lucha por su decades of the last century, was
desposesión constituye la última triggered by a program of credits
fase de la lucha de clases entre la aimed at ensuring the political and
burguesía y el proletariado”[20]. La economic penetration of Yankee
conclusión de Hilferding, sin imperialism in Europe (Marshall
embargo, será la de “transformar Plan) - that is, that it was an
con la ayuda del Estado, con la 'industrial supremacy' guided by
ayuda de la regulación consciente, financial capital. As soon as this
está economía organizada y process was concluded, all the
dirigida por los capitalistas en una tendencies to overaccumulation
economía dirigida por el Estado emerged - that is, to the excess of
democrático”[21] -o sea, que el monetary capital in relation to its
socialismo devendría, en forma possibilities of valorization.
armónica e indolora, del propio
desarrollo del capitalismo
monopolista. ¡Pero incluso esta
visión reformista admitía que el
capitalismo había llegado “a su
punto más alto”! El rechazo de
Katz al imperialismo como
transición histórica no sólo se
contrapone a Lenin. Deja de lado
al más importante pilar de la
“crítica de la economía política” -a
saber, la caracterización del
capitalismo como régimen
transitorio, cuyo desarrollo es al
mismo tiempo el de las
condiciones históricas de su
negación y superación.
La pretensión de presentar al
imperialismo como un período
histórico “acotado” a los tiempos
de Lenin lleva a Katz a otras
afirmaciones caprichosas. Por
caso, la de cuestionar el dominio
del capital financiero sobre las
otras formas del capital, lo cual
estaría refutado “por la supremacía
industrial durante el boom de
posguerra”. Pero no puede
presentarse como “supremacía
industrial” a la reconstrucción del
parque industrial de las principales
potencias imperialistas al cabo de
la fantástica destrucción de fuerzas
productivas durante la Segunda
Guerra. Esa reconstrucción, la
cual, por otra parte, sólo abarcó a
dos décadas del último siglo, fue
disparada a través de un programa
de créditos orientados a asegurar
la penetración política y económica
del imperialismo yanqui en Europa
(Plan Marshall) -o sea, que se trató
de una ‘supremacía industrial’
guiada por el capital financiero.
Apenas ese proceso concluyó,
emergieron todas las tendencias a
la sobreacumulación -o sea, al
exceso de capital monetario en
relación a sus posibilidades de
valorización.
En ese mismo trabajo, Katz
presenta a la caracterización de
Lenin sobre la declinación
capitalista como una hipótesis de
“estancamiento perdurable”, lo
cual, como ya desarrollamos, es
otra tergiversación de El
imperialismo…, Lenin, por el
contrario, señala que “sería un
error creer que esta tendencia (a la concludes that the vision of
creación de Estados-usureros)
descarta el rápido
desenvolvimiento del capitalismo.
In that same work, Katz presents
Lenin's characterization of the
capitalist decline as a hypothesis of
"enduring stagnation", which, as we
have already developed, is another
misrepresentation of imperialism ...
Lenin, on the contrary, points out
that "it would be It is an error to
believe that this tendency (to the
creation of usurers) rules out the
rapid development of
capitalism. No: certain industrial
branches, certain sectors of the
bourgeoisie, certain countries,
manifest, in the epoch of
imperialism, with greater or lesser
force, and one, and another of
those tendencies. As a whole,
capitalism grows with an
incomparably greater speed than
before, but this growth is not only
increasingly unequal, but that
inequality also manifests itself, in a
particular way, in the
decomposition of the strongest
countries in capital. "[22]
Following Marx, Lenin deduces the
tendency towards the decline of
capitalism, not from its stagnation,
but from the more intense
character of capital accumulation,
which is, at the same time, an
accentuation of all preexisting
imbalances. Imperialism is not
"stagnation", but the expanded
reproduction of all the
contradictions of the prevailing
social regime. Finally, Katz
imperialism as a "mega-stage of
historical decline" "exaggerates the
scope of crises and forgets the
No: ciertas ramas industriales,
ciertos sectores de la burguesía,
ciertos países, manifiestan, en la
época del imperialismo, con mayor
o menor fuerza, ya una, ya otra de
esas tendencias. En su conjunto el
capitalismo crece con una rapidez
incomparablemente mayor que
antes, pero este crecimiento no
sólo es cada vez más desigual,
sino que esa desigualdad se
manifiesta asimismo, de un modo
particular, en la descomposición de
los países más fuertes en capital”.
[22]
Siguiendo a Marx, Lenin deduce la
tendencia a la declinación del
capitalismo, no de su
estancamiento, sino del carácter
más intenso de la acumulación de
capital, que es, a la vez, una
acentuación de todos los
desequilibrios preexistentes. El
imperialismo no es
“estancamiento”, sino la
reproducción ampliada de todas
las contradicciones del régimen
social imperante. Finalmente, Katz
concluye en que la visión del
imperialismo como “mega-etapa de
descenso histórico” “exagera el
alcance de las crisis y olvida el
papel determinante de la acción
política”. Las cosas son al revés:
es la comprensión de la
descomposición capitalista -la
“recontramadurez” de las
condiciones objetivas- lo que pone
al rojo vivo la cuestión de una
dirección revolucionaria. Cuando
esto se soslaya, entonces el
retraso de la revolución se atribuye
decisive role of political
action." Things are the other way
around: it is the understanding of
capitalist decomposition-the
"recontramaturity" of objective
conditions-that sets the question of
a revolutionary leadership red
hot. When this is ignored,
Imperialism and socialist
revolution
The political struggle that transpires
Imperialism ... -between Marxism
and opportunism "- was rethinked
vividly in our time. The theory of
globalization opened the illusion of
a prolonged period of harmonious
and integrated development of the
world under the aegis of
corporations. To the illusions about
the end of history, the founding of
the World Trade Organization and
the European Union and the
creation of the euro were added.
Although they did not recognize
Kautsky's copyright, the "general
exploitation of the world by the
united financial capital" seemed to
have taken place. The theorists of
the 'globalization of capital'
foresaw, in turn, a political
harmonization that could put an
end to international political
disputes and wars. The theory of
globalization served as a cover and
justification to the restorationist
bureaucracies for their intertwining
with world capital, this, with the
argument that their states could not
compete with "globally articulated"
capital. And, in the same way, it
protected the theoretical and
a una supuesta vitalidad que el
capitalismo ha dejado largamente
de ofrecer.
Imperialismo y revolución
socialista
La lucha política que trasunta El
imperialismo… -entre el marxismo
y el oportunismo”- se replanteó
vivamente en nuestra época. La
teoría de la globalización abrió la
ilusión de un período prolongado
de desarrollo armónico e integrado
del mundo bajo la éjida de las
corporaciones. A las ilusiones
sobre el fin de la historia, se
añadieron la fundación de la
Organización Mundial de Comercio
y la Unión Europea y la creación
del euro.
Aunque no le reconocían derechos economic and political imbalances,
de autor a Kautsky, la “explotación by the multiplication of wars and
general del mundo por parte del
capital financiero unido” parecía
haber tenido lugar. Los teóricos de still 'shone' when the world
la ‘mundialización del capital’
previeron, a su turno, una
armonización política que podría
poner fin a las disputas políticas
internacionales y a las guerras. La
teoría de la globalización sirvió de
cobertura y justificación a las
burocracias restauracionistas para
su entrelazamiento con el capital
mundial, ello, con el argumento de
que sus estados no podrían
competir con el capital
“globalmente articulado”. Y, del
mismo modo, amparó al reciclaje
teórico y político de los stalinistas
de todo el planeta, los cuales,
después de la bancarrota de los
political recycling of the Stalinists of
the whole planet, which, after the
bankruptcy of the regimes that they
supported, they closed the
historical stage of the October
revolution and were revised as
direct apologists for capital. In this
field, "Trotskyism" was also noted,
which "resignified" the role of
bourgeois democracy and even
characterized the European Union
as the "necessary overcoming" of
national antagonisms, and not as
the new oppressive envelope of
financial capital over the peoples of
Europe.
But very soon, "globalization" and
the "end of history" turned heads
with their forecasts: the alleged
'new' historical stage aggravated all
the most intense dismemberments
national The theory of globalization
witnessed the Balkanisation of the
Balkans, in the context of the war
of prey for the hoarding of Eastern
European economies and markets.
History confirmed Lenin again, not
only in the general painting of an
"era of wars and revolutions" but
also in the foundations he had used
to characterize that historical
transition. Indeed: it is not possible
to understand the convulsive
character of the capitalist
restoration without seeing that it
operates within the framework of a
"senile, mature, declining
capitalism", as Lenin characterized
it. As a way out for surplus capital,
regímenes que apoyaban, dieron
por clausurada la etapa histórica
de la revolución de octubre y
pasaron a revistar como
apologistas directos del capital. En
este campo se anotó también el
‘trotskismo’ que ‘resignificó’ el
papel de la democracia burguesa e
incluso caracterizó a la Unión
Europea como la “superación
necesaria” de los antagonismos
nacionales, y no como la nueva
envoltura opresiva del capital
financiero sobre los pueblos de
Europa.
Pero muy pronto, la “globalización”
y el “fin de la historia” se dieron de
cabeza con sus pronósticos: la
pretendida ‘nueva’ etapa histórica
agravó todos los desequilibrios
económicos y políticos, por la
multiplicación de las guerras y los
más intensos desmembramientos
nacionales. Todavía ‘brillaba’ la
teoría de la globalización cuando el
mundo asistió a la “balcanización”
de los Balcanes, en el marco de la
guerra de rapiña por el
acaparamiento de las economías y
mercados de Europa del Este.
La historia volvió a confirmar a
Lenin, no sólo en la pintura general one hand, the speculative wave
de una “época de guerras y
revoluciones” sino también en los
fundamentos que había empleado century, but that ended in the
para caracterizar esa transición
histórica. En efecto: no es posible
entender el carácter convulsivo de consequences are still in full
la restauración capitalista sin ver
que ésta opera en el marco de un
capitalismo “senil, maduro, en
declinación”, como lo caracterizó
the capitalist takeover of the USSR
and China ended up accentuating
the tendencies to overproduction
and over-accumulation, and
generating sharp antagonisms
within the states where capital had
been expropriated. Capitalist
penetration in China pushed the
cities to a peasant mass that
served as a semi-slave labor force
for export industrial enclaves. The
restoration, therefore, he followed
the brutal laws of the imperialist
era, which are those of unequal
development, and not those of the
progressive and "harmonious"
creation of an internal market, as
occurred under rising
capitalism. Thus, the accumulation
of capital in China financed, on the
one hand, the speculative wave
that rescued the US economy at
the beginning of this century, but
which ended in the bankruptcy of
2007/2008, whose economic and
political consequences are still in
full development. And on the other,
it developed inside the Chinese
borders an industrial overcapacity
and real estate bubble of explosive
reaches. the accumulation of
capital in China financed, on the
that rescued the North American
economy at the beginning of this
bankruptcy of 2007/2008, whose
economic and political
development . And on the other, it
developed inside the Chinese
borders an industrial overcapacity
and real estate bubble of explosive
Lenin. De vía de salida para los
capitales sobrantes, el copamiento
capitalista de la URSS y China
terminó acentuando las tendencias
a la sobreproducción y
sobreacumulación, y generando
antagonismos agudos al interior de
los estados donde había sido
expropiado el capital. La
penetración capitalista en China
empujó a las ciudades a una masa
campesina que sirvió de mano de
obra semiesclava a los enclaves
industriales exportadores. La
restauración, por lo tanto, siguió
las leyes brutales de la era
imperialista, que son las del
desarrollo desigual, y no las de la
creación progresiva y “armónica”
de un mercado interior, como
ocurriera bajo el capitalismo en
ascenso. Así, la acumulación de
capital en China financió, por una
parte, a la ola especulativa que
rescató a la economía
norteamericana en el comienzo de
este siglo, pero que concluyó en la
bancarrota de 2007/2008, cuyas
consecuencias económicas y
políticas aún están en pleno
desarrollo. Y por el otro,
desenvolvió al interior de las
fronteras chinas una
sobrecapacidad industrial y burbuja
inmobiliaria de alcances
explosivos.
Los partidarios de la “globalización”
se enfrentan hoy al colapso de sus
instituciones -al empantanamiento
de la Organización Mundial del
Comercio; a la crisis de la Unión
Europea, a los tiempos del Brexit y characterized as a fantastic
reaches. the accumulation of
capital in China financed, on the
one hand, the speculative wave
that rescued the North American
economy at the beginning of this
century, but that ended in the
bankruptcy of 2007/2008, whose
economic and political
consequences are still in full
development . And on the other, it
developed inside the Chinese
borders an industrial overcapacity
and real estate bubble of explosive
reaches.
The supporters of "globalization"
today face the collapse of their
institutions -the bogging down of
the World Trade Organization; to
the crisis of the European Union, to
the times of Brexit and Trump. The
clashes between free trade claims
and recurrent protectionism
accentuate another contradiction -
between the accumulation of
capital, which needs a global
framework, and national states.
The present scenario, of
accentuation of the commercial war
and of multiplication of the localized
wars, adds to the struggle for the
"sharing of the world" the question
of the definitive destiny of the
capitalist restoration in the USSR
and China, which can not be solved
without passing for major political
and military confrontations and,
eventually, for another war of a
general nature.
In light of this scenario, Lenin's
imperialism ... should be read and
de Trump. Los choques entre las anticipation of the evolution of
pretensiones librecambistas y el decaying capitalism: the imperialist
proteccionismo recurrente dispute over markets-with its
acentúan otra contradicción -entre sequel of 100 million deaths in two
la acumulación de capital, que world wars and wars subsequent
necesita de un marco mundial, y successive; the dominance of
los Estados nacionales. financial capital and the
exacerbation of national
El escenario presente, de
oppression, expressed in the so-
acentuación de la guerra comercial
called 'debt economy'; the
y de multiplicación de las guerras
hypertrophy of the means of
localizadas, añade a la lucha por el
payment, where financial
“reparto del mundo” la cuestión del
derivatives have multiplied several
destino definitivo de la restauración
times over the gross product and
capitalista en la URSS y China,
world trade; finally, the
que no podrá resolverse sin pasar
accentuation of social polarization
por mayores enfrentamientos
and the rebellions of the exploited
políticos y militares y,
against capital.
eventualmente, por otra guerra de
carácter general. The construction of a revolutionary
subjectivity is the understanding of
A la luz de este escenario, El
this historical transition, and its
imperialismo… de Lenin debería
consequences in terms of program
ser leído y caracterizado como una
and political action.
anticipación fantástica del devenir
del capitalismo en descomposición:
la disputa imperialista por los
mercados -con su secuela de 100
millones de muertos en dos
guerras mundiales y las guerras [1] . Guerrero, Diego: "Competition
sucesivas posteriores; el dominio and monopoly in globalized
del capital financiero y la capitalism", Critical Marxism,
exacerbación de la opresión February 2007.
nacional, expresada en la llamada
[2] . Lenin, VI: Imperialism, the
‘economía de la deuda’; la
superior phase of capitalism, Ed.
hipertrofia de los medios de pago,
Anteo, 1973, p. 139
donde los derivados financieros se
han multiplicado varias veces por [3] . Hobson, John A .: Study of
encima del producto bruto y del imperialism, Ed. Alianza Madrid,
comercio mundiales; finalmente, la 1981. Cap. Four.
acentuación de la polarización
[4] . Lenin, VI, ob. cit., p. 78
social y las rebeliones de los
explotados contra el capital.
La construcción de una
subjetividad revolucionaria es la
comprensión de esta transición
histórica, y de sus consecuencias
en términos de programa y acción
política.
[1]. Guerrero, Diego: “Competencia underconsumer visions of the
y monopolio en el capitalismo
globalizado”, Marxismo crítico,
febrero 2007.
[2]. Lenin, V.I.: El imperialismo,
fase superior del capitalismo, Ed.
Anteo, 1973, pág. 139.
[3]. Hobson, John A.: Estudio del
imperialismo, Ed. Alianza Madrid,
1981. Cap. 4.
[4]. Lenin, V.I., ob. cit., pág. 78.
[5]. Lenin, V.I., ob. cit., pág. 78. impossibility of sustained
[6]. Este señalamiento le quita
sustento a la afirmación de
Rolando Astarita, con quien luego
polemizaremos, cuando señala
que la visión de Lenin del
imperialismo estaría apoyada en
una visión “subconsumista” de las
crisis capitalistas. Lenin ya había Imperialism ..., op. cit., p. 119
polemizado con las visiones
subconsumistas de los narodniki
rusos, que derivaban de la
“inviable realización” de las
mercancías la propia inviabilidad
del capitalismo en Rusia. Luego, y
aunque Rosa Luxemburgo y Lenin
coincidieron en la crítica y la
función política del imperialismo,
Lenin -y Nicolás Bujarin-
[5] . Lenin, VI, ob. cit., p. 78
[6]. This statement takes away the
support of the assertion of Rolando
Astarita, with whom we will later
polemicize, when he points out that
Lenin's vision of imperialism would
be supported by a "sub-
consumerist" vision of capitalist
crises. Lenin had already
polemicized with the
Russian narodniki, which derived
from the "unfeasible realization" of
commodities the very impracticality
of capitalism in Russia. Then,
although Rosa Luxemburg and
Lenin agreed on the criticism and
political function of imperialism,
Lenin - and Nicolás Bujarin -
rejected - for "underconsumption" -
the economic foundation of
Luxembourg, which attributed
imperialist expansion to the
accumulation. in a "pure" capitalist
environment, and the need to
continue such accumulation
moving towards "non-capitalist"
regions.
[7] . Kautsky, K .: Die Neue Zeit
(1915), cited by Lenin in
[8] . Lenin, VI, ob. cit., p. 152
[9] . Astarita, Rolando: "Imperialism
in Lenin, critical analysis" (2011), in
www.rolandoastarita, blog.
[10] . Although we only mention
Rolando Astarita, this point of view
is widely spread among
contemporary "critical" economists,
rechazaron -por “subconsumista”-
la fundamentación económica de
Luxemburgo, que atribuía la
expansión imperialista a la
imposibilidad de una acumulación
sostenida en un entorno capitalista
“puro”, y a la necesidad de
continuar tal acumulación
avanzando hacia regiones “no
capitalistas”.
[7]. Kautsky, K.: Die Neue Zeit
(1915), citado por Lenin en El
imperialismo…, op. cit., pág. 119.
[8]. Lenin, V.I., ob. cit., pág. 152.
[9]. Astarita, Rolando:
“Imperialismo en Lenin, análisis
crítico” (2011), en
www.rolandoastarita, blog.
[10]. Aunque sólo mencionamos a
Rolando Astarita, este punto de
vista está ampliamente difundido
entre economistas “críticos”
contemporáneos, como el caso ya
citado de Diego Guerrero.
[11]. Lenin, V.I., ob. cit., pág. 126.
[12]. Sorprendentemente, y en
oportunidad de recibir el premio
Nobel (1991), el economista anglo-
norteamericano Ronald Coase
(1910-2013), profesor de la
Universidad de Chicago y
apologista del monopolio como
factor de “eficiencia y organización
económica”-parangonó a la URSS
como “una suerte de fábrica única”.
Ver. Coase, R.: La empresa, el
mercado y la ley, Alianza Editorial.
[13]. Esta cuestión ha sido
estudiada por economistas
such as the aforementioned Diego
Guerrero case.
[11] . Lenin, VI, ob. cit., p. 126
[12] . Surprisingly, and on the
occasion of receiving the Nobel
Prize (1991), the Anglo-American
economist Ronald Coase (1910-
2013), professor at the University
of Chicago and apologist for the
monopoly as a factor of "efficiency
and economic organization"
-paranged the USSR as "a kind of
unique factory". See. Coase, R .:
The company, the market and the
law, Editorial Alliance.
[13] . This question has been
studied by non-Marxist industrial
economists such as Joe Bain
(1912-1991). See "Barriers to New
Competition" (1956).
[14] . Day, Richard: "Dialectical
Method in Political Writings of
Lenin and Bukharin", Canadian
Journal of Political Science, June
1976.
[15] . Bukharin, Nicolás:
Imperialism and the world
economy, 1915, cited by Richard
Day.
[16] . Lenin, VI, quoted by Richard
Day.
[17] . Guerrero, D., ob. cit.
[18] . ¿ End or early stage of
imperialism ?, Claudio Katz (2011),
especially for Argenpress.
[19] . Katz, C., idem 4.
[20] . Hilferding, Rudolf: The
financial capital, Tecnos, Madrid,
industriales no marxistas como Joe 1973.
Bain (1912-1991). Ver “Barriers to
[21] . Hilferding, ob. cit.
New Competition” (1956).
[22] . Lenin, VI, ob. cit., p. 159
[14]. Day, Richard: “Dialectical
Method in Political writtings of
Lenin and Bukharin”, Canadian
Journal of Political Science, junio
* Marcelo Ramal is an economist
de 1976.
and teacher at the University of
[15]. Bujarin, Nicolás: El Buenos Aires and Quilmes, former
imperialismo y la economía legislator for the Workers Party of
mundial, 1915, citado por Richard the City of Buenos Aires.
Day.
[16]. Lenin, V.I., citado por Richard
Day.
[17]. Guerrero, D., ob. cit.
[18]. ¿Etapa final o temprana del
imperialismo?, Claudio Katz
(2011), especial para Argenpress.
[19]. Katz, C., ídem 4.
[20]. Hilferding, Rudolf: El capital
financiero, Tecnos, Madrid, 1973.
[21]. Hilferding, ob. cit.
[22]. Lenin, V.I., ob. cit., pág. 159.

* Marcelo Ramal es economista y

docente en la Universidad de
Buenos Aires y de Quilmes, ex
legislador por el Partido Obrero de
la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.