Apartheid regime shaken by mass revolt

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PW Botha, Natal, 15 August- "I receive advice from some people who want to help me Apartheid regime shaken by mass revolt MIR Autumn 1985: South Africa will be to the forefront of this struggle. The next Labour government will be entirely different to any of the postwar Labour governments. It will be the sum of pressure and counterpressure that will decide the path it follows. Instead of bowing the knee to capital and hoping to run capitalism better then the Tories, it should immediately push through an emergency 'Enabling Act' through Parliament. This was orginally a concept of Attlee's in the mid 1930s arising from the experience of the debacle of 1931. Such mediately the House of Lords and Monarchy to be abolished and the top 200 monopolies, banks and insurance companies to be nationalised, under democratic workers control and management. Compensation should only be paid on the basis of proven The attempts by big business to prevent and sabotage these measures must be met by the full mobilisation of the labour movement. The Allende government in Chile only went half way and took over 40 per cent of industry: which failed to break the power of the capitalists. As a result big business, with economic power still in from the frying pan into the fire' THE COURAGE and determination displayed by the workers and youth of South Africa has been an inspiration to workers throughout the world. For an unprecedented twelve months the struggle has been maintained in the face of the most brutal repression. Despite the sickening tally of over 600 thousands 2,000 arrested, the movement has not been quelled. Detainees are routinely tortured and beaten but still the youth flood onto the streets in defiance of the regime. The unrestrained savagery of the police and army, granted 'immunity' for every atrocity carried out under of Emergency, has failed completely to temper the heroic determination and bravery of the black workers and youth.

With even capitalist commentators talking freely about the 'road to revolution' many labour movement activists will be trying to understand the significance of the current events in South Africa. Can the murderous regime repeat the vicious wave of repression that followed the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, and similarly set the movement back for another decade? its hands, was able to sabotage the economy, stoke up middle-class opposition and prepare the ground for the Pinochet military coup. If half-way measures provoke the ruling class, then the initiative should be taken to boldly carry through a rounded-out socialist programme. Why stop quarter or half-way in such circumstances which satisfies nobody? Unused resources Only by taking these emergency measures so that the 'commanding heights' are brought into common ownership will the laws of capitalism be ended and a proper planning of resources be instituted. That is the only realistic solution to the problems faced by the working class. A socialist plan of production, harnessing all the resources of society, both human and material, will end unemployment and human talent and initiative, and lay the foundations for a massive expansion of the productive forces according to the needs of society as a whole. The wastage of resources in capitalist Britain stands at over £50 billion each year. If these unused Can new points of support for white supremacy be built amongst the Indian and coloured middle classes? Or amongst the Africans through constitutional manoeuvres involving figures such as Buthelezi or Bishop Tutu? While 'reform,' or proposals for reform, alternate or are combined with repression, how strong in fact is the regime? Workers defy regime Fundamentally the current movement reveals in vivid fashion the complete impasse that capitalism has reached in South Africa. The capitalist system in South Africa has rested for decades on the super profits extracted from the cheap black labour that has been provided by the apartheid regime. The racial classification and division of society; the denial of the vote or even citizenship to Africans; the 'resettlement' of black people from the urban areas or the 'white farming areas' to the so-called 'Homelands'; the pass laws —all these measures were used to achieve total state control over the mobility of black workers, the foundation of the system of cheap labour. resources alone were harnessed in a socialist plan of production it would be enough to give every man, woman and child an extra income of £20-£25 per week. This would be the bare minimum. A gigantic rise in production, through the rebuilding and modernisation of state industry, would usher in enormous prosperity for all. By using the latest advances in science and technology, the introduction of a four-hour, four-day week throughout industry would working people to be involved in the democratic day to day running of society. It would allow the mass of people to enjoy expanding living standards and the time to appreciate culture to the full-which remains at the present time the privilege of a tiny parasitic minority.

A future of undreamed of plenty would become possible as the forces of nature become controlled and utilised by mankind. A democratic socialist Britain would stand out as a shining example to the rest of the crisis-ridden capitalist world, and would be a concrete step to the socialist transformation of Europe and the world. By Clive Heemskerk But despite the apartheid apparatus, backed up by detention without trial, police brutality and massacres, over the past 12 years the capitalists have found it increasingly difficult to rule in the 'old' way. The controlled movement of black workers into 'white • South Africa' is beginning to break down. In the face of forced removals, involving over 3.5 million people since 1960, and pass law arrests - 163,862 last year alone-the families of black workers and unemployed blacks have continued to settle on the edges of 'white' urban areas. And above all, through tenacious struggle, black workers have started to build powerful independent trade unions in the key centres of industry. The capitalists have been increasingly unable to operate a system that is unbearable for the masses.

It was this which propelled Botha onto the path of 'reform.' The 'new Constitution' of 1984 aimed to create a new social base for the continuation of

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The mass movement of the townships has shattered Botha's

white supremacy amongst the Indian and Coloured middle classes, through a tricameral arrangement of 'racial parliaments' , while excluding the African majority. This system also gave the President more ability to manoeuvre between the racial groups and classes without being as tightly constrained by the white parliament. These elements of Parliamentary Bonapartism allowed Botha, for example, to conduct repression under the State of Emergency without control by the white parliament, let alone the Coloured or Indian Chambers. At the same time the greater freedom, within limits, of the executive is necessary to allow the bourgeois to experiment with new methods in the political control and exploitation of black workers-changes which will inevitably erode the privileges, job reservations etc of the white workers and middle classes

Collaborators

But all these plans, dealt hard blows by the successful boycott of the Indian and coloured 'elections' of 1984, have been irredeemably shattered by the mass movement in the black townships and in the industrial areas. The 'reforms' of 1984 created local 'community councils' in some black areas with a limited degree of local autonomy. But this mockery of representation has not satisfied the aspirations of the mass of black workers and youth. On the contrary, as they face growing poverty, unemployment and deprivation, the attempt to build points of support for the regime

has merely fuelled the anger of the townships. Since the mass movement began in September, around 120 coun cillors have been attacked and a mayor and two deputy-mayors killed. 147 councillors, including the entire councils of seven townships, have resigned. No one has offered to stand in the new elections. Of the 38 councils with the highest level of 'autonomy' under the new system, only two are still functioning.

A further graphic illustration of the anger of the masses at those who collaborate with the regime is shown in the fate of the black policemen. Half of South Africa's 45,000 strong police force is black. This was part of a deliberate strategy by the regime. But since September '84, hundreds have been expelled from the townships, forced by the anger of the masses to huddle together in tents and police station compounds in the safety of the white suburbs!

The collapse of the 'reform initiative' of 1983-84 in the face of mass opposition from black Africans has forced the regime to turn once again to repression, including the State of Emergency introduced on the 21 July. At the time of writing it seems as if this gamble by the regime- it was the first State of Emergency since the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960—has failed to significantly stem the tide of protest.

Particularly amongst the more sober representatives of capitalism in the South African government there is growing realisation that the regime cannot inflict a defeat like that suffered by the mass movement in the after-

math of Sharpeville. A decade of reaction followed then in which, for example, the trade unions of African workers that had been built through the 1950s were physically crushed. It is ruled out that this could be repeated at this stage.

Even commentators in the capitalist press have had to point to the deep roots developed in the townships by the different youth groups, community groups, student organisations etc which form the basis of the United Democratic Front, not to mention the potentially decisive forces of the independent Trade Unions which have built a far more powerful position than the unions established in the struggles of the 1950's. The Sunday Times, 28th July quoted the director of the South African Institute of Race Relations, reflecting the understanding of the bourgeoisie: "Sixteen years elapsed between Sharpeville and the Soweto riots, eight years between Soweto and the start of the present upheavals. Does this mean that the next state of emergency is but four years away?"

Crisis fuels revolt

Of course, it is not a question of mathematics. The current events are part of a long process of revolt. This has developed, with inevitable setbacks and periods of temporary retreat, during the past twelve years. It has been underlined by the developing crisis of South African capitalism. With its reliance on the super-exploitation of cheap black labour South African

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MIR Autumn 1985: South Africa capitalism is unable to expand the domestic market. This partially explains why, despite super profits, the South African capitalists are re-investing a smaller and smaller share of the surplus back into new technique in industry. In the last 13 years they have been unable to achieve the annual growth in productivity achieved even by the diseased economy of British capitalism. The backward nature of South African industry, relative to the major capitalist powers, increasingly limits its ability to compete on the world market. In the last eight years golds' share of South African exports has risen from less than one third to well over half. South African capitalism is in the throes of a terminal decline.

Influx control According to the Governor of the South Africa, with a Reserve Bank, debt of over $20 billion, is technically bankrupt. Unemployment has risen by 68% over the past year. The manufacturing centre of Port Elizabeth is now referred to as coast". In his Natal speech Botha touchingly appealed to the private sec- "stand up and be counted"' in this crisis. But Fords, General Motors. ducers, are operating at half capacity with sales figures for June 52% down on June 1984. It has been these fac tors that, in the words of the Sunday Telegraph, sent 'portfolio investors to the exit doors before the first whiff of gunsmoke.' The underlying crisis of South African capitalism meant that foreign capital was Africa before the current movement. It was not incidental that profits from Barclays National Bank had collapsed from £38 million in the first half of 1984 to £10 million in this first half year- which prompted Barclays Bank UK to reduce their holdings in South Africa. Of course the mass movement has added to the fears of foreign capitalists for their investments with Frost Sullivan, a New York 'Political Risk Consultancy' dropping Soutr "a par with some of the higher risk Third World countries"! But while the system becomes more and more intolerable for the African masses the capitalists cannot break their dependence on cheap labour. Instead, like a heroin addict, they have become completely reliant on their last asset-apartheid, the system of superexploitation. The main strength of the reaction of the 1960's lay in the long. upswing-although the economic development of industry in this period healed many of the wounds of the reaction and strengthened the potential power of the working class. Now the developing crisis of capitalism internationally and in South Africa undermines the regimes programme of reaction and, for that matter, 'reforms'. This is revealed in the controversy over the proposed 'improvement' of influx control. Botha's reference to influx control as being 'outdated and too costly' was heralded as a keynote in his speech to the Natal National Party Congress. The Sunday Times has referred to such proposals as the abolition of influx control as representing an 'extraordinary change'.

earlier, influx control has begun to be despite the measures of the state. This has prompted some sections of the capitalist class such as Gavin Relly of the mining monopoly, Anglo-American, to urge abolition- to satisfy international more practically, to transfer some of unemployment of the 'Homelands' to the urban areas which could be used as a lever to weaken Trade Union organisation and drive down wages.

However, without the infrastructure and social reforms that would be needed in the urban areas to accomodate the families of black workers, the terrible social 'homelands' - with for example infant mortality at 240 per thousand live births-would also be transferred to the cities, bringing new explosive conditions into the heart of 'white' South Africa. Botha's announcement of a R 1 billion programme of spending at the Natal NP Congress is a drop in the ocean - but with a debt of R50 billion as much as the regime could concede. This gives a further insight into the impasse facing the regime.

business organisation, the Afrikaanse Handelsinstitut, opposes the abolition of influx controls "under the present depressing economic conditions.' Nonetheless they criticised Botha's Natal speech as not being 'more specific in pointing the nation more positively in the direction of reforms' On the other hand even limited increases in spending on social reforms for black people increases the reaction of the white workers and middle classes who are also being squeezed by the economic crisis. All this over an issue which would not introduce genuine freedom of movement of black people in South Africa and which would not satisfy the demands and aspirations of the African masses! Precisely for these reasons the South African bourgeoisie are vacillating ever more desperately between 'reforms' and repression, or combining both, in an attempt to contain the mass movement of the black workers and youth. The other so-called 'highlight' of the Natal National Party Congress was the partial endorsement of the proposal by Chief Buthelezi for a joint administration of 'white' Natal and Kwazulu, the of South Africa's five million Zulus.

But this 'reform' would in no way weaken the ruling classes' domination of central state power. And any sup port that Buthelezi has - and it is precisely his ability to keep the movement in check that makes him useful for the capitalists - would be rapidly lost if he accepted a place in the through, for example a seat in President's Council. That would be the fate ultimately of any black leader who abandoned the demand of 'one person, one vote in a unitary state', or who lent any semblance of support to the system. The Observer, 28 July 1985, for example, reported on the 'distinct coolness' which greeted Bishop Tutu's denounciation of the campaign against the collaborators and stooges of the regime: "His words are lost on the wind". Indeed in an unconscious admission of the impasse facing the regime -and therefore the impotence for a 'negotiated agreement' - Tutu lamented that Botha is unable to talk to some one like Chief Buthelezi.

myself it seems unlikely he would be able to talk to someone more radical." There is the essence of the 'problem' for the capitalists. So long as the black masses are excluded from shaping the central government through their vote they will blame their lack of the franchise for the miserable conditions they face. Universal adult suffrage in an undivided South Africa with a common citizenship is the non-negotiable demand of the masses. But precisely because the capitalists realise that the democratic transformation of South Africa would threaten the very existance not just of the cheap labour system but of the whole regime, they implacably oppose majority rule. And because anything short of majority rule will not meet the aspirations of the African masses but on the contrary, in the current situation, would inflame the mood in the townships, Botha, after days of vacillation and indecision in-

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AS WE go to press the SA NUM strike has been suspended. The miners do not regard the suspension as a defeat. The strike threat had split the Chamber of Mines and forced huge concessions out of Anglo-American where the NUM is most organised. It was at the recalcitrant companies like Gencor and Anglovaal that intimidation, arrests and guntoting police with teargas and rubber bullets were used against the union. Now the union will be fighting to fully organise the miners in every company. But the economic crisis and apartheids political weakness could still push the regime and the ruling class to new depths of repreicion against the NUM.

cluding rumours of splits and resignations within the government, drew back from announcing any reforms in his Natal speech.

But it would be mistaken to believe that the outline of fundamental splits that are beginning to surface amongst the capitalists have, at this stage, fatally debilitated the forces of their state in the face of this impasse. The social base for the regime and for capitalism, the white workers and middle classes, have not been directly affected by the current mass movement. in the short term an escalation of repression may restrain the movement. On the other hand were the Chamber of Mines to provoke an all-out confrontation with the South African NUM, this would involve the white workers and middle classes through the largescale mobilisation of army reservists, thus straining the social reserves of the regime.

An all-out conflict with the SANUM would be the most important industrial battle in the history of the regime. It would undoubtedly provoke new reserves of black workers and youth into struggle against the regime. But while the armed forces would be stretched as never before, the bloody conflict would reveal not only the potential strength of the South African working class but also the formidable power still vested in the apartheid regime. If the strike were to result in a defeat for the NUM it could act as a brake on the entire mass movement for a period. Nevertheless, in the present context, the setback would not be decisive or recessarily long-lasting. At the time of *ing, with the government apparent-

ly distancing itself from the Chamber of Mines, it is not clear whether concessions may be made to the SA NUM, which itself would raise the tempo of the mass movement, or an all-out confrontation provoked.

But the miners strike decision has a significance wider than its immediate impact on the current movement. With 38% of the 542,000 miners, migrant workers from Lesotho, Mozambique, Botswana and other countries, Botha's threat to expell 'foreign' workers thrust the SA NUM into the 'political arena'. The Guardian, 6th August 1985 reported that the NUM had 'been subject to intense grassroots pressure to take a clear stand on political issues" The SANUM congress took an historic decision in deciding to organise a national all-out strike should Botha repatriate migrant workers, and to support the UDF initiated boycott of white businesses.

Workers' decisive role

This drawing together of the unions with the movement in the townships is a significant development in the struggle in South Africa, building on the 800,000 strong Transvaal general strike of November 1984. Other indications of this important process have been the recent 'stayaway' in protest against the Emergency by thousands of black workers from the townships of Mamelodi and Soshanguwe, coordinated with the boycott of white owned shops in nearby Pretoria and a school boycott in the townships, and the general strike in Howick and Pietermaritzburg area organised by the BTR

workers to defeat the use of scab labour. Earlier in July 3500 Volkswagen workers struck against plans by the company to offer free transport for the now abandoned New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa, the workers striking in opposition to "international links which do not further the interests of the oppressed in South Africa'

These events completely vindicate the perspectives of the Marxists concerning the decisive role of the black working class: their trade unions must inevitably become instruments not just of 'economic' struggle but of struggle for liberation. They point the way forward to the development of a mass movement uniting the youth of the townships with the organised workers on an even higher level of struggle than the current movement.

The mass of the black population, because of historical traditions, is striving to unite its forces under the banner of the ANC. To make the revolutionary movement effective it will be necessary for the organised working class to give leadership to the whole movement by building the AVC on a clear socialist programme. The ANC with this class basis and with clea policies for socialism and workers democracy, could begin to open up the class divisions amongst whites sp::. ting or neutralising the social base c the regime. This would bring forward the hour of the revolutionary overtrai of the regime and the socials: 3-s gr mation of South Africa are doud become a fortress in the strugge ig socialism throughout the wors 1 September 1985

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The following statement has been received by the MIR. We reprint the statement here Four ANC Marxists expelled- SA 'Communist Party strikes factional blow for the information of our readers. WITH THE flames of revolt sweeping through the townships and ihdustrial areas of South Africa, all the forces of the liberation struggle should be concentrating their united efforts against the murderous apartheid regime and the capitalist exploiters. Yet the South African 'Communist' Party, which dominates the apparatus of the African National Congress in exile, has chosen this moment to turn its fire against Marxists in the ranks of the (The SA 'Communist' Party, though claiming to be Marxist, stands for Stalinism-ie for bureaucratic dictatorship over society on the lines of the Soviet Union today-and opposes the Marxist idea that workers' democracy is necessary for socialism.) Four comrades, who were suspended by the ANC in London in 1979 for putting forward their ideas on policy, strategy and tactics in SACTU and the ANC, have now been expelled. What have the Marxists argued for over the years? • -That the working class movement in South Africa should be prepared politically and armed for insurrection against the racist, capitalist regime; -That wholehearted support should be given to the growing independent trade union movement; -That national liberation and democracy, together with the basic material needs of the working people, can only be achieved through the victory of the working class and the socialist transformation of South Marxism proved by events.

Precisely as the correctness of these ideas is being proved in the arena of living struggle-when the leadership can no longer avoid shifting, albeit partially and in words, closer to these positions-those comrades who have most consistently put them forward within the ranks of the ANC have been This was done without expelled.

debate, and without the comrades being given a hearing-in blatant violation of the ANC constitution itself. The expulsions have been carried out, not in the interests of the ANC, not as a serious step by ANC activists to protect the movement, but on the contrarv in the narrow factional interests of the Stalinists.

The youth have shown tremendous reserves of courage and heroism. They will show the same energy in building a mass ANC within SA with a socialist programme. was made by the "Consultative ference" in Zambia (the first since 1969), where the vast majority of participants, being exiles dependent upón, the official apparatus for their very existence, were effectively screened and controlled by the 'Communist' Party leadership. '

allowed a voice in this conference. The decision was announced on 23 July, in Britain, in the pages of the pro- Moscow Morning Star-days after Botha had announced the State of South Africa. The Emergency in British CP is disintegrating in the throes of a major split between Stalinism and liberal Reformism. This paper is the voice of the Stalinst faction, which openly supports the privileged bureaucratic dictatorship in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe against the masses' demands for a workers' democracy.

Writing on behalf of the ANC, comrade Francis Meli (a well-known SACP leader whose very name is constructed from the initials of the "Marx-Engels- Lenin Institute" of Stalinist ideology in Moscow) describes the Consultative Conference.

"It is impossible," he writes, "to exhaust in a few paragraphs what was discussed in some days. But I need to mention a resolution which I think is important for the labour movement in this country. This is the text of the resolution:

1 A 'The Second National Consultative Conference of the ANC, held in Zambia June 16 to 23 1985, considered the decision of the Regional Political Committee in London to suspend the following:

1. Rob Petersen 2. Paula Ensor 3. Martin Legassick 4. David Hemson "It found that, after having been suspended in 1979 by the London region of the ANC for their disruptive activities in SACTU, the group organised itself outside the ANU under the title, 'The Marxist Tendency within the ANC', and produced Inqaba ya Basebenzi, a journal claimed to be produced by a 'Marxist wing' of the ANC.

SACTU "This group contacted trade unions and solidarity organisations in several countries using a mailing list stolen from SACTU "In violation of SACTU's policy, they have encouraged and maintained bilateral contacts with trade unions inside the country..

"Recently, some of them were arrested and expelled from Zimbabwe for activities contrary to the interests and independence of that country. "Conference considers that the decision of the RPC in London to suspend this faction was correctly taken. It fur-

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ther resolves to expel the abovementioned from the ANC"

It must be stated first and foremost that the organisational charges against the expelled comrades are groundless. Far from "disrupting SACTU" , we played an active role, from 1976 to 1979, in reviving SAC- TU and re-establishing its paper Workers' Unity, which under CP control had become defunct. We played an active and constructive part also in units of the ANC. What the Stalinists regard as "disruptive activities" , in fact, is any democratic questioning of their policies and methods.

Far from organising "outside" the ANC, we continued the discussion of Marxist ideas only through the official channels controlled by the Stalinists themselves-until they stamped out discussion, using administrative measures, including the closing down of an entire committee, when they could not reply to our political arguments.

After we were unconstitutionally suspended, we maintained a clear and public position of loyalty to the ANC and commitment to the task of building the ANC on a mass basis of black workers and youth within South Africa. At the same time we had, of course, the revolutionary duty to continue to put forward our ideas within the movement and contribute as best we could to the clarification of programme, strategy and tasks.

In this context we certainly contacted trade unions and solidarity organisations in several countries, with which we maintain many fraternal links in a common cause. The claim, however, that we used "a mailing list stolen from SACTU" is a blatant lie which the leadership know to be a lie. The SACTU mailing list, created by our own efforts on metal addressograph plates, remained intact in the SACTU office when we were ejected. The addresses of "trade unions and solidarity organisations in several countries" are well known, not least to ourselves, and are a matter of public record. It requires no "stolen mailing list" to discover them.

This charge of a "stolen mailing list" is a classic example of Stalinist smear tactics, unscrupulously used to cloud the issues when they can offer no political answer to their opponents' case.

If the organisational charges against us are groundless, the political charges merely bring to light the bankruptcy of the Stalinists' ideas.

They persist in maintaining outright opposition to direct links between the labour movement abroad and trade unions inside South Africa. It is scandalous that this position is endorsed without a murmur by the ANC Con-

One success of the campaign for direct links between the unions abroad and the trade unions inside South Africa has been the recognition of the SA NUM by the British NUM.

sultative Conference as official "SAC- TU policy".

For our part, we are proud to plead "guilty" to "encouraging and maintaining bilateral contacts with trade unions inside the country" • We are proud to be guilty of promoting direct support for the independent non-racial and black trade unions in SA and to have helped mount campaigns in support of strikes and boycotts called by these unions.

Our achievements in this regard have been all too modest-but among them has been the successful campaign (against the combined obstruction of the British and South African 'Communists') to secure recognition of the SA NUM by the British NUM.

Inqaba

Basebenzi

deny that we are "organised... outside the ANC under the title 'The Marxist Tendency within the ANC'." However, individually, we support the ideas put forward in Inqaba ya Basebenzi, the journal of the Marxist Workers' Tendency of the ANC.

A "tendency" is a current of opinion. There are many currents of opinion within the ANC-both in exile and in the broad mass movement which gathers under the ANC colours in the heat of the revolutionary struggle in South Africa.

There are, for example, tendencies which support compromise with the SA ruling class; which are prepared to accept less than "one person one vote" in an undivided South Africa; which are willing to water down the Freedom Charter and abandon the nationalisation clause; which are willing to negotiate even the maintenance of influx control. In the main, these represent the confusion and vacillation of

middle-class elements afraid of losing controi to a working-class revolutionary movement.

On the other hand, there is the "tendency" of the great majority of he working class rank-and-file ANC members and supporters, some of whom are guerillas in the camps of the ANC outside South Africa, but most of whom are fighting in the mass batallions of the movement in the factories, mines, townships and schools inside South Africa.

Overwhelmingly these comrades are striving to bring about a thoroughgoing revolutionary transformation of South Africa, often at the cost of their own lives. They know that nothing less than the overthrow of the regime by the mass movement can bring genuine liberation. They know that for this purpose the movement must be powerfully organised, united, armed with clear policies, strategy and leadership, and ultimately equipped with the weapons necessary for a victorious insurrection. They demand to be free both of racist oppression and capitalist exploitation. They want a democratic and socialist South Africa.

Comrades of the Marxist tendency stand four-square together with the mass of ANC members and supporters in fighting for these goals. Fundamentally, Marxists explain that only through the conquest of power by the working class and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie can national liberation and democracy be achieved in South Africa, and the way opened to a socialist transformation. It is not through guerilla actions, but through the organisation and arming of the mass movement that this can be achieved. Inqaba ya Basebenzi sets out the policies, the perspectives, strategy and tactics which, from the standpoint of Marxist theory and the

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MIR Autumn 1985: ANC expulsions • international experience of the working class movement, offers a way forward to victory.

What, then, of the SA 'Communist' Party? The SACP is more than a , more than an organised "tendency", faction in the ANC. It is a rigidly controlled bureaucratic apparatus, which leans for support upon workers in the ANC, but relies fundamentally on political and material aid from the ruling bureaucracy of the Soviet Union. It proclaims "socialism" (Moscowstyle) as its 'eventual' goal. In this way, and by the use of guerilla actions, it maintains its revolutionary credentials and holds on to its working-class supporters. But at the same time, within the ANC, it joins forces with and indeed props up the middle-class tendencies reinforcing their utopian idea that "democracy" can be achieved without a workers' revolution, by putting pressure for negotiations upon the ruling class.

Under the cover of the false "twostage" theory-democracy workers' rule and socialism only "later"-the CP leadership take their stand against the independent assertion of power by the black working class. In this they represent the policy of the Moscow bureaucracy, which fears the threat to its own dictatorial and privileged rule if revolutions in important industrial countries should bring to power regimes of genuine workers' democracy and socialism. The clause in the expulsion resolution which refers to Zimbabwe makes the reactionary position of the Stalinists absolutely plain. Precisely what activities of any of the expelled comrades were "contrary to the inand independence of that country"?

Zimbabwe One of the four comrades (David Hemson) was arrested and deported from Zimbabwe for carrying on work of socialist education among black trade unionists and ZANU(PF) members. Using powers inherited from Smith, the white-led Zimbabwean CIO arrested him together with a number of leading black trade unionists and local militants of the ruling party with proven records of struggle. What was their "crime"? They openly defended trade union rights in Zimbabwe against a new Labour Relations law which subjects the unions to total government control and wipes out their independence. They campaigned against corruption among trade union officials. They criticised the compromise of the Mugabe government with the capitalist class. They steadfastly maintained that only the socialist transformation of Zimbabwe Inqaba ya Basebenzi Journal of the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC Issue no 16/17 with special supplement on SA perspectives, 75p Individual copies, or bulk orders to sell, available from: World Socialist Books, 3 - 13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB For individual subscriptions write to: Inqaba ya Basebenzi, BM 1917, London WC1N 3XX Congue from heir ape SA im and SA im- Zimbabwe from perialist pressures, workers and peasants across the tribal divide. While critically supporting ZANU(PF) against its bourgeois enemies, they posed this task before the workers' movement and the youth in Zimbabwe, urging the closest links of mutual support with the revolutionary working class movement in ANC leadership, Stalinist influence, describe "contrary to the interests and independence" of Zimbabwe-and that is endorsed by the Consultative Conference without a peep of protest! Comrades of the ANC leadership, now openly defending the policy of the Mugabe regime in consolidating capitalism, defending the white farmers' land, bulldozing urban squatters, taxing workers and promising not to nationalise the property of the South African companies other imperialists who exploit Zimbabwe? To find favour with Mugabe, are vou now prepared to support the imprisonment and torture of genuine trade unionists and socialists? Have the comrades forgotten even their fellow-combatants from the 1968 Wankie campaign now serving indefinite detention without trial in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison? We have always opposed the terrorist methods of the ex-ŻIPRA 'dissidents' in Matabeleland, but have opposed no less the counter-terror of the Harare regime. Are you prepared to justify the national oppression of the Ndebele minority who suffer massacres, torture and detention? That is the consequence of bowing down uncritically to the present regime in Zimbabwe, and of failing to stand up for workers' unity, workers' power and which are the only way forward in Southern Africa.

On the vital questions of the South African revolution, as well as on the the Stalinists represent an obstacle to liberationwithin the ANC. Marxists in the ANC are duty-bound to oppose their ideas and their influence, and struggle for the building of the ANC on the basis of correct ideas. Neither we, nor any ingaba YA BASEBENZI class-conscious worker aware of the facts, could agree to submit and abandon our revolutionary ideas merely because the SACP presently holds effective control of the ANC apparatus in exile and is thus capable of "expelling" us.

In fact, these expulsions— six years after we were suspended and our ideas declared dead and buried by the leadership!-merely confirm the growing strength of Marxism within the movement. The expulsions are intended as a warning by the bureaucracy to the rank-and-file. That is why they have been carried out precisely at this time of enormous revolutionary ferment within South Africa.

Build ANC with socialist programme Together with the many other comrades in the ranks of the ANC, the UDF, the trade unions and the youth movement in South Africa who support the ideas of Inqaba ya Basebenzi, we will not be deterred by these expulsions any more than we were by the suspensions in ministrative measure taken by Stalinists in their own narrow factional interests can separate us from the movement. No amount of expulsions • will halt the spread of Marxist ideas. We remain determined to build the ANC as an effective vehicle for the unity of the revolutionary movement and the conquest of power by the working class. We are confident that we will be reinstated with honour to full formal membership of the ANC once substantial numbers of workers and youth become conscious of the issues and the facts, and take into their own hands the task of building and transforming the ANC.

, A MASS ANC WITH A FOR SOCIALIST PROGRAMME! FOR- WARD TO WORKERS' POWER, DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM!

Statement issued in London, 31 July, 1985, by expelled comrades.

[page 16]

In June 1982 Israeli tanks smashed into Lebanon to destroy PLO bases there and thereby intimidate the growing movement of the powerful West Bank Arab workers. It was a disastrous move. Three years later, with the Palestinians' national aspirations undimmed, crisis grips Israeli Invasion of the Lebanon-Israel's Vietnam? society...

THE INVASION of the Lebanon by Israel on 6 June 1982 may prove to have been a significant turning point in Middle East developments. The ensuing war provoked the greatest foreign policy crisis for the United States in the whole Presidency of Ronald Reagan. It resulted in the heaviest casualties of US combat troops since Vietnam, it strengthened the general strategic position of Syria in the region and reinforced the 'de facto partition of Lebanon. But it is probably in Israel that the greatest long term effect will be evident. The war cost Israel 650 lives and $1 million a day for three years and has provoked the most profound crisis, socially, economically and politically since the foundation of that state. The invasion was launched ostensibly to prevent attacks by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation on towns and villages in the North of Israelhence the name of the operation 'Peace in Galilee.' But in the course of the war Israel created for itself a new enemy more potent than the PLO, in the form of the Shi'ite Moslem militia, Amal. War aimed to subdue West Bank Since its army has withdrawn, the Lebanon-Israel border has now been marked by a fifteen foot ditch. The lost on some Israelis themselves.

"After losing all chese young lives, all that money and our good international name", bitter resident of Metulla in Upper Galilee, "It is hard to believe we have reduced to defending ourselves with a medieval moat". war did not bring peace to Galilee" said another, 'it has only brought us greater uncertainty".

In fact before the invasion Galilee had been peaceful. Since the summer of 1981 there was an unofficial cease fire between the PLO and Israel, negotiated by a special United States envoy, Phillip Habib. The attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador in London in early 1982 was used by Jerusalem as a pretext for massive bombing raids on Palestinians in April 1982. The PLO did not respond and gave only a limited response to a second air attack on 9 May. But after a massive Israeli bombing raid in June in which more than 200 were killed, overwhelmingly civilians, the PLO responded with a full-scale barrage of Northern Israel, although even then it By John Pickard resulted in only one death, and that by heart failure. But this bombardment, in reality provoked by the bombing raid, was itself used as the pretext for the invasion of Lebanon.

As General Eitan, Israeli Chief of Staff admitted himself, the real motives of the invasion were political, to destroy the PLO base in Lebanon and thus destroy its political influence, in order the better to intimidate the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank and force them to accept Israeli occupation. In March and April of that year there had been massive movements, strikes, demonstrations and protests by Arabs on the West Bank. Because of the mass character of these protest movements, and because of the brutality used by the Israeli occupation force to suppress them, these protests had a profound effect within Israel itself. It was largely to undermine the protests and opposition movements in the occupied areas, particularly the West Bank, that the Israeli government, particularly the Prime Minister Begin and Defence Minister Sharon, launched the invasion of Lebanon.

As long as the Israeli government could maintain the pretence that it was for "Peace in Galilee" the invasion had popular support in Israel. But as soon as it became clear that Begin and Sharon had more grandiose plans, opposition to them began to develop. Rather than occupy a wide-40kmstrip along the Lebanese border as Begin declared his original intentions to be, the Israeli army was driven further and further north. At the height of the invasion an Associated Press despatch from Beirut estimated that the Israeli army used nine armoured divisions with 90,000 troops, 1,300 tanks and an equal number of armoured personnel carriers. With such massive superiority in numbers, armour and air power, Israel quickly captured the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon and drove on north to Beirut. The opposition to the war began to grow both in Israel and internationally as the civilian casualties mounted and as television sets around the world blitzkreig on Lebanese cities. Despite denials to the contrary, there was ample evidence of the use of anti-personnel bombscommonly known as cluster bombsand the use of phosphorous bombs 17 against civilian areas. Opposition began to develop, including, in a development without precedent in wartime, within the armed forces One soldier described how he organised a group against the war amongst Israeli reservists called up to fight, which was known as "There is "This group was organised very quickly in the first week of the war. We were suprised to find that instead of getting, like 10, 15, 20 people, the group suddenly managed to get several hundred very quickly." Another reserve soldier, who served as a captain in the paratroopers, described how his opposition to the "It started in Tyre. We war began.

prepared ourselves to fight, to conquer this Tyre, and surrounded with people, with citizens, with women and children, begging for water, everything was changed— we were going to attack and suddenly we were attacked by citizens (they were very frightened)-the only thing they wanted was water". In Tyre nearly 500 Lebanese (not counting Palestinians) were killed and several hundred wounded; the toll for Sidon was even Protests in Army Thirty-five soldiers of the elite commando unit that had carried out the raid on Entebbe in Uganda, signed a protest letter to Prime Minister Begin: "It is clear to me that I had been deceived and that I have been called to the first war in Israel's history that was not a war of defence but a dangerous gamble to achieve political goals"

'. So wide was the opposition to the blanket bombing of civilians that at one point some Israeli airforce officers refused to take part in missions that involved bombing civilian areas. Colonel Geva, a young and celebrated Israeli war hero, even resigned his commission rather than lead his armoured unit into attack upon the sprawling and populous alleys of West Beirut to where the remnants of the PLO had retreated.

To have occupied West Beirut against the resistance of the PLO would have produced massive casualties all round, not least for the Israeli army. For a whole period therefore, Israel subjected Beirut to a terrifying siege. For nine weeks, Beirut was bombarded from land, sea and air.

[page 17]

It was starved of electricity, water and food. Between June and August an estimated 5,000 were killed and 15,000 injured, once again the vast majority being non-combatants. In the face of mounting opposition back home, and pressure from American imperialism, the Israeli government agreed to a ceasefire to allow 9,000 militia men of the PLO to be evacuated, escorted from Beirut by American, French and Italian troops and at sea by the United States fleet and units from several NATO countries.

Israel then imposed its own man in the Presidency in Beirut, Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the extreme right-wing Christian Maronite Phalangist militia. After • the withdrawal of the multi-national (US, French and Italian) force from Beirut and the assassination of Gemayel, Israeli troops occupied West Beirut and it was under their control and orders that Phalangist units were sent into the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla to "clean them out."

The subsequent massacre of 3,000 camp residents, including women and children of all ages, evoked horror and revulsion around the world. Strikes and protest demonstrations took place in almost every Arab country. In Israel itself hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv, reaching a maximum when demands were made for an inquiry, of 400,000 demonstrators. The subsequent Israeli government commission of inquiry which was forced on them by the weight of the protests, condemned the Israeli army officers and government ministers for sending into the camps an organisation known to have been in-

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ISRAEL

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Sunni militias

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volved in the massacre of Palestinians in the past and whose political leader had been assassinated only two days earlier. The Sabra and Chatilla slaughter was for Israel a turning point in the war.

International and domestic support reached an all-time low, with the government coming under enormous pressure because of the political and economic costs of the war and because of the mounting Israeli casualties.

Within the army itself there were increasing demands for a withdrawal. Anti-war leaflets and newspapers circulated freely among Israeli troops, who when on leave in Israel actively participated in anti-war demonstrations.

Lebanon shattered

From then on, the Israeli government has been forced into a series of withdrawals, leaving eventually only a strip of the Lebanese border controlled by Israeli-backed Christian units. The attempt to impose a Lebanese government amenable to Israeli interests was broken by the assassination of Bashir Gemayel and by the growth in power of • the two main Lebanese muslim militias, Amal (the Shi'ite militia) and the Progressive Socialist Party (Druze militia). These two together effectively destroyed the Phalangist militias in the south as Israel withdrew. The Amal effectively forced the evacuation of the multinational 'peace-keeping' force which had returned after the Sabra and Chatilla massacres.

Suicide bombers killed 269 at United States embassy and at United States Marine HQ, and

the the

French soldiers at their HQ. The constant harrassment of the Israeli army in the South forced the Israeli government into an accelerated withdrawal rather than face a bloody guerrilla war to maintain the occupation.

What was once Beirut is now a wreckage; what was Lebanon is now a series of petty statelets each run by a separate army or militia. The once powerful Christian Maronite community is reduced to a small enclave to the east and north of Beirut, around the port of Jounieh. The Druze militia dominate the area immediately south and south east of Beirut, from the Chouf mountains to the sea. Amal, now the most powerful paramilitary force, controls West Beirut and almost the whole of Southern Lebanon. The North and East of the country remain occupied by Syria, but now with its strategic position greatly enhanced. It was by Syrian sponsorship and arm-

of both the Druze and Amal militias, that allowed these forces to harrass the Phalangists and Israeli armies so effectively. So great is Syrian influence now, that Damascus may be able to enforce at least a temporary ceasefire between the Muslim militias and the Phalangist Christians, even isolating the Maronite President Amin Gemayel, the brother of the late Bashir.

The President has virtually no real power outside his presidential palace. He has so little in fact, that during the Beirut hijack and hostage crisis a few months ago, it seemed that everyone was involved in negotiations-the Minister of Justice the Amal leader Nabih Berri, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the Syrian government, and various other go betweens-but no one

[page 18]

bothered to consult the President of Lebanon in his palace in Beirut. The military base of the PLO in Lebanon has been decisively broken by the war, not only by the Israeli induced evacuation of September 1982, but also by the hostility of the Syrian government and the Amal to the Palestinians. In the Beka valley controlled by Syria, those PLO units remaining mutinied against the leadership of Yasser Arafat. Syria encouraged and supported the mutinies because the Assad regime in Damascus, often at odds with Arafat, sought to establish a leadership prepared to pursue Syrian interests.

Syria wanted a Palestinian movement radical sounding enough to oppose any diplomatic initiatives by Arafat, but well enough under Syrian military control for Syria to prevent any Palestinian guerrilla raids into Israel which might get out of hand and embroil Syria in large-scale clashes with Israel.

The PLO split But the Amal militia also has fought against the re-emergence of Palestinian military strength. When the invasion first began in 1982, some Shi'ite peasants in southern Lebanon were so militias-who they looked upon almost as an army of occupation-that many welcomed the arrival of the Israeli troops. Indeed, many Shi'ites consider the whole bloody affair as a product of Palestinian provocations rather than an internal Lebanese affair, and they were not overly impressed with the PLO's placement of anti-aircraft guns and artillery in heavily-occupied residential areas of Beirut, inviting the murderous Israeli air raids of June, July and August 1982.

Since the withdrawal of the Israeli army and the strengthening of the Amal, therefore, the latter are determined not to allow PLO units to reestablish themselves in the Palestinian camps, even being prepared to go to the lengths themselves, of storming and occupying the camps.

Yasser Arafat probably still retains a wide degree of political support from the Palestinian communities, in the camps in and around Beirut, in the West Bank and Gaza occupied by Israel, and among the large exiled Palestinian communities elsewhere. The Amal assault on the camps had the affect at least temporarily, of unifying the remnants of the PLO militias behind him. But in the long run it is likely that Arafat's influence in Lebanon is on the decline. As an independent military force, the PLO has been broken in Lebanon.

The Marxists in the labour movement in Britain have always been opposed to the methods and policies of the leadership of the PLO. While supporting fully the aspirations of the Palestinian people for their national and social emancipation, socialists have explained that any policy based upon individual terrorism or guerrilla were always doomed to failure. Mobilised as a mass force, the Palestinian population in Lebanon, on the West Bank and Gaza, could have been and could still be an enormous political lever. In the past, demonstrations, general strikes and popular mass movements on the West Bank have rocked the Israeli establishment. In April and May 1982, protests leit 30 dead, 300 injured and 4,000 arrested and convicted. But because of the massive popular character of this movement, it produced a profound effect on Israel itself.

In Lebanon, the 500,000 Palestinians could have been welded to the most oppressed Lebanese, the Shi'ites, as well as poor Sunni Muslims and Christians, to build a mass movement to overthrow Lebanese capitalism. But a perspective for a mass movement among Palestinians would have demanded a programme and policy of struggle, directed against capitalism and zionism in Israel and, no less, against capitalism and landlor dism in the Arab states. But this policy was one the PLO leadership From the beginning the PLO has always based itself on an armed minority-on individual terrorism, or militia men-rather than a mass move- Moreover there was not one iota of class content in all the radical sounding words of Arafat. The Palestinian struggle was always and everywhere a national issue, without class content. In reality the reactionary Arab regimes in Jordan, the Gulf, Egypt and elsewhere are no less a barrier to the emancipation of the Palestinian working masses than is Zionism. A genuine revolutionary movement of the Palestinian masses always carries with it the threat of socialist revolution in the Arab countries, and therefore the Arab leaders have always supported the 'Palestinian cause'-but only to the extent that the movement avoided genuine revolutionary struggle.

Therefore the quid pro quo for the financial and diplomatic patronage of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the other Arab states, was a PLO leadership that kept well clear of any revolutionary strategy that would upset the Arab apple cart.

The PLO leadership took the movement into one disaster after another. During the revolutionary crisis in Jordan in 1970, by not being prepared to IMIR Autumn 1985: Middle East lead a revolutionary struggle to overthrow the weak and rotten regime of King Hussein, Arafat allowed the Jordanian monarch time and space to manoeuvre and prepare. The PLO leadership had sufficient political influence, and even military strength to have overthrown the Jordanian regime, where the majority of the population were in any case Palestinian. But the PLO policy as announced by Al-Fatah leader, Abu Omar (New York Times, 14 June 1970) was as follows: "Our policy is not to interfere in the affairs of Jordan. The only condition is that the government does not interfere in our affairs to organise and arm ourselves". Yasser Arafat himself had earlier said in an interview with a French newspaper that "there is no interference on our part in the internal affairs of the Arab countries". The PLO leadership thus created the illusion that the Jordanian government, in a period of crisis, could tolerate the existence of a state within a state, with impunity. By September "Black September, ' Hussein's position had recovered sufficiently for him to be able to batter and bombard the Palestinian refugee camps and drive the PLO out of Jordan and into 1975 Civil War Five years later in Lebanon the PLO leadership made exactly the same mistake, turning their backs on the class struggle on the grounds that the PLO were only "guests" in Lebanon. The Lebanese civil war of 1975-76 began as a social conflict, as a struggle of the most downtrodden against the Lebanese capitalists.

The Financial Times correspondent referring to the sectarian character of the conflict, commented (12 September 1975), that "grafted to all this is a ideological spearheaded by the left, to level the power of the rich and produce a socialist solution. This has a powerful appeal among the huge numbers of deprived here who see the rich getting The Economist (26 January 1974) also commented: "The majority of the commercial firms are in Christian hands, but much of the real estate and the expanding industrial projects is held by Sunni Moslems. That wealthy Moslem class would normally tend to side with the conservative Christians were it not for the divisive outside issues. Similarly the poor Christians— and there are many-might side with the ,Shi'ite Moslems in Southern Lebanon and the Beka who make up the majority of the poorest sections of the population, were it not for the traditional Christian fear of Moslem

[page 19]

MIR Autumn/1985: Middle Eastl domination".

One Maronite liberal commented: 'The struggle is between the underprivileged of both religions on the one hand, and the Christian and Moslem who are bourgeoisie on the other, flaunting their wealth. The Phalange is a fascist party which is helping to hem Christians in the ghetto and split them off from the Moslems with whom they have perforce to live". The Palestine Liberation Organisation with a Marxist leadership, with a military apparatus, could have linked up the national struggle of the Palestinian masses with the class struggle of the Lebanese workers and peasants. The overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers' state based upon workers' democracy and internationalism would have had a huge effect on Israel, Syria and Jordan. The whole region would have been transformed.

But the PLO leadership stood aloof from the developing revolution. Abdel Jawad Saleh, then a member of the executive, later said: "We did everything possible to steer clear of the Lebanese civil war. Many times Yasser Arafat tried to reach an understanding with Bashir Gemayel (the then Phalangist leader) even if it meant becoming alienated from the Lebanese Left". It was only because of the attacks by Phalangists, forcing the Palestinians to defend their areas, that the PLO, willy-nilly, became involved. But what began as a revolutionary class conflict became more overlaid with sectarianism: a struggle between the Maronite Christians against Moslems, Druze and Palestinians. There was no labour movement alternative provided that would cut across the sectarianism with class policies. The civil war continued until the Syrian army intervened on the side of the beleaguered Maronites, to impose its own enforced peace. Although occupying the north and east of the coun try, the Syrian presences has not stop ped sectarian conflict re igniting trom time to time in other areas, and given the sectarian character of these conflicts, it was inevitable that a new bout of sectarian conflict would splinter Lebanon into separate statelets, each based on its own militia.

Lebanon today, at least in the south where the recent fighting took place devastated. Berut, once one of the most modern capitals in the Arab world, lies in ruins. Hardly a street exists without the pockmarks of bullets on the walls. During their ariel bombardments in 1982, the Israelis thought nothing of demolishing whole tower blocks, usually crushing hundreds of inhabitants sheltering in the In the first three months of the invasion, nearly 18,000 were killed and over 30,000 wounded, the vast majority civilians. Between 500,000 and 800,000 were made homeless. Sectarian fighting since then has produced even greater population shifts as thousands of Maronites, Druze or Shi'ite families have been forced to take refuge in safer areas, closer to their co-religionists.

For the Palestinian masses the war has been no less disastrous. Many were made refugees for the third or fourth time in a generation. Large areas of the refugee camps at Sabra, Chatilla and Bourj Barajueh were devastated in the 1982 fighting, further destroyed by the Israeli occupation, and then again in June 1985 when the Amal militia stormed the camps. An independent West Bank?

The June fighting alone left over 650 dead and 2,500 injured, to add to the terrible toll of the Israeli invasion. 70 per cent of Sabra and Chatilla are partially or completely destroyed. Reconstruction has been held up because of Syrian and Shi'ite fears of a resurgence of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in any newly constructed camps. Compared to the position before 1982, therefore, Palestinians in Lebanon have an even more uncertain future and their great insecurity is now compounded by a lack of protection.

But the issue of the Palestinians and the struggle of its people is not dead There still remain the two million or so Palestinians who live in Israel and the areas occupied after 1967, the West Bank and Gaza. One element in the coming economic convulsions in Israel will undoubtedly be increased unrest in the occupied territories. The war in Lebanon will have done nothing to dampen the struggle of these Palestinians for their rights. On the contrary the removal of the militias from Lebanon as an 'alternative' focus will force West Bankers to rely increasingly upon their strength and organisation.

A huge revolutionary potential exists among West Bank Arabs, a threat of an explosion recognised if not by Israeli capitalists, then certainly by imperialism neighbour, King Hussein. The last thing the King of Jordan wants is a repeat of the revolutionary crisis of 1970. West Bank Arabs have close cultural and family ties to East Bankers and any revolutionary upheavals in Israeli occupied areas, such as the general strike and demonstrations of Spring 1982, inevitably have repercussions in Jordan 20 where a majority of the population are United States' moves to recognise the PLO or to sponsor PLO/Hussein negotiations with Israel-even if the PLO representatives are unofficial-ie. designated merely as "Palestinians" are dictated merely by their mutual fear of mass Even if it were possible for the USA to persuade Israel into giving up control of the the West Bank, it would on ly be to impose military rule from Amman rather than from Jerusalem. For the same reason that Israel, the United States, Jordan and all the Arab states are afraid of social upheaval on the West Bank, they are also bitterly opposed-whatever their public rhetoric-to a genuinely independent Palestinian state in West Bank and Gaza. Tri-partite talks between Israel, the USA and a Jordanian/Palestianian delegation are a trap for the Palestinian masses and will not bring them an inch nearer to their national aspiraor their democratic rights. Palestinians will continue to fight for their rights on their own behalf, but the fortunes of the population of the West Bank and Gaza now are more and more indissolubly linked with those of workers in Israel, both Arabic and Jewish.

The Lebanese war has brought about a profound crisis in Israel. The state was an artificial creation from its very beginning, in the sense that it could only have survived initially and then developed because of the support, particularly financial support in the form of war reparations, grants and loans, from the imperialist powers. But even with massive financial support, the Israeli economy is in crisis. The Israeli capitalist class have followed a policy of imperialist expansion, occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, then the Golan Heights and Sinai in 1973 and, effectively, occupying parts of Southern Lebanon today. Scores of Jewish settlements have been built on the West Bank and Gaza, so far only housing between 30,000 and 40,000 settlers, but having con-• agricultural land formerly used by the much more populous Arabs.

The Arab economy and infrastructure in the occupied areas and in pre-1967 Israel have been strangled the democratic rights of population crushed by military rulewhile lavish sums are invested in the Jewish settlements. Each settlement has become a focus of bitter opposition by the Arabs and a source of instability in the region. Two million Arabs in Israel and the occupied areas cannot be legislated out of existance and as long as the Israeli Zionist state denies

[page 20]

their rights they will move into struggle again and again.

Five major wars-in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982—are witness to the enormous instability created by the policy of Zionism. The insecurity of the state and the occupation of Arab areas has led to Israel almost taking on the form of a permanently armed camp with compulsory military service for all youth, massive mobilisations in time of war (proportionally greater than the Arab states) and a huge arms bill that now drags on the economy like a millstone.

The government budget deficit represents about 16 per cent of the Gross National Product. It has largely been financed by the printing press so inflation has been in three figures for the last six years and now stands at 260 per cent. The total foreign debt of Israel is about $25 billion, the largest per capita debt of any country in the world, and co-incidentally, roughly equivalent to the amount invested in West Bank settlements.

Crisis in Israeli society

The burden of the economic crisis will increasingly be put onto the shoulders of Israeli workers. Despite vigorous protests by the Histraduth trade union federation, including a general strike in July of this year, the government will continue to press for large scale redundancies in the Civil Service (10,000 is the present proposal), cuts in index wage rises and cuts in subsidies on basic necessities.

The future for young Israelis therefore, is a bleak one indeed. The theory of Zionism was based upon the establishment of a homeland for Jews, a safe haven from worldwide harrassment, pogroms and oppression. But Israel is turning out to be anything but a safe haven.

Zionism offers young Israelis little more than wars, economic sacrifices and upheavals. All the noble ideals which the official spokesmen claimed for Zionism have been blown away by the huge civilian casualties, the atrocities and devastation committed by Israelis in the Lebanese war, adding further to the social and psychological crisis in Israel, especially among the youth.

Israeli tradition is steeped in the history of the Holocaust, one of the most profound and horrifying traumas to effect any people. There is as a result a strong current of anti-fascism in large sections of the Israeli working class. Yet ironically, today, the most extreme forms of Zionism assume semifascist methods. Rabbi Kahane, leader of the Kach Party, has called for the expulsion of the two million Arabs from all of the area currently occupied

ISRAEL MUST LIVE

MUST OTHERS DIE®

A massive Israeli anti- war protest against

by Israel. Many Israeli liberals have been saddened and demoralised by the apparent success and popularity of the extreme racist propaganda of this party, particularly among the youth.

Many Israelis, especially those most able to pay the exorbitant 'exit tax' of $300, have declared their lack of confidence in the future by leaving Israel. Since the foundation of the state, 400,000 have emigrated. Last year, the country set up as a 'safe homeland' for Jews saw 17,000 more emigrating than immigrating. This year the difference is likely to be 35,000.

Israeli society has always been divided on class lines, but the economic crisis and social instability will ensure that these divisions will grow. Oriental Jews (Sephardim), those whose origins are in Arab or African countries, have traditionally been more disadvantaged than the Ashkenazim Jews of European extraction. The Sephardim have generally the worst paid jobs, the poorest housing and education and are grossly under-represented in political influence.

Becase of their own social position, their insecurity, their proximity to the Arabs, also well down on the social ladder, and not least, because their own family roots are often associated with anti-Jewish pogroms in Arab countries, the Sephardim are the main base of support for the right wing Likud. They are the most open to the rabid anti-Arab propaganda of the right wing Zionist parties.

The Labour Alignment was in continuous power for almost 30 years, and in that time the Sephardim, who had supported Labour, saw no change in their position in relation to Western Jews. As a result in 1977 they swung away from Labour to the Likud coalition led by Begin.

The even greater economic insecuri-

the Beirut massacres.

ty of the last few years has made sections of Jewish workers, especially Oriental Jews, more prey to the vicious anti-Arab demagogy of the right wing parties. After the murder of three Jews on the West Bank recently a wave of anti-Arab sentiment swept over large numbers of Jewish workers. Arabs were beaten by Jewish mobs and Arab workers were sacked from their jobs. An opinion poll indicated increased support for Rabbi Kahan.

So great has the social tension between the extreme right and the left become that many Israeli political commentators gloomily talk about a future Civil War of Jew fighting Jew.

The workers'

organisations

During one anti-war demonstration in 1982 a Jewish member of the peace movement was killed by another Jew who threw a hand grenade.

Members of Jewish terrorist organisations, actively involved in bombings, killing and maiming Arabs, have recently been convicted and imprisoned. Right wing ministers in the government refer to them in glowing terms, and call for their release.

All these are indications of the growing crisis that effects all facets of Israeli society. National and sectarian issues play a prominent part in Israeli politics but as the economic 'sacrifices' begin to bite, it is inevitable tha: class issues will come to the fore, especially among Oriental Jews who will be the hardest hit. The recent strike wave against the government's emergency austerity measures are a pointer to developments in the future. Almost every section of workers was involved in one sort of protest strike or another and at its peak over 1 million were on strike in a country with a population of only 4 million.

[page 21]

MIR Autumn 1985: Middle East Faced with a revolt on the shop floor the leadership of the Histraduth Federation were in danger of losing control. Large sections of workers threatened an indefinite general strike. In this situation the Histraduth were able to persuade the government to many of the proposed withdraw measures, at least temporarily, to head off more strikes. Faced for the first time with a daily struggle to survive and a constant battle for a job and decent living standards the basic economic issues must assume a far greater importance among Israeli These developments will also have an effect inside all the workers organisations-in the Labour Party (Mapai) the Labour Left (Mapam) and in the Histraduth. More than at any other time since the foundation of the state of Israel, the Jewish workers will be open to new ideas because of their disillusionment with official Zionism. Under such conditions leftward moving workers in the Mapai, Mapam and in the Histraduth will be open to socialist arguments and ideas that offer a genuine alternative and a future for Jewish workers. Many young Jews have already broken with the more traditional parties, especially since the Lebanese war, and these, in the 'Civil Rights Party' and in the 'Peace Now' movement, will also be amenable to ge- The basis of any programme put forward by Marxists in Israel would be the call for a Socialist Federation of Middle East States, which would include a socialist, state of Israel, established within agreed borders, and guaranteeing full democratic rights for all national and religious minorities, including the right of return for the Palestinians displaced in 1948 and 1967. A Socialist Federation would also include a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, or linked with Jordan, which ever the Palestinan peoples themselves wished.

It is clear that Israeli, capitalism, while heavily subsidised by American imperialism, is increasingto provide the basic necessities of life for its Jewish people. Even less could it provide the means of existance for a population swollen by returning Palestinians.

But a socialist Israel, as part of a federation of socialist states, could harness the necessary technique and manpower in a plan of production.

capitalism would mean the state ownership of the majority of industries, commerce, finance and land both in Israel and the Arab states. Whereas at present millions of dollars are wasted on arms production, these enormous resources could be used for beneficial social and economic development.

The struggle for socialist change would be directed towards a socialist revolution in the Arab countries as much as in Israel. The reactionary diametrically opposed to their own masses, never mind Jews or Palestinians. They are barriers to social progress as much as the Zionist capitalist class in Israel. Indeed the Israeli ruling class and the Arab leaders lean upon each other. The Israeli leaders use the threat of Arab pogroms, and the destruction of the state of Israel, to stampede Israeli workers into supporting the policies and methods of the Similarly the Arab leaders use the question of the Palestinians and the imperialist policy of Zionism, as a diversion from the revolutionary movement that always threatens them on their own doorstep. Without an implacable revolutionary opposition to the reactionary Arab regimes, it would be impossible to gain any influence among Jewish workers.

Jewish workers open to new ideas It is absolutely clear that the fortunes of Palestinian and Jewish workers are inaxtricably linked to one another. They are involved in the same cycle of insecurity, wars, oppression and economic hardship. They live side by side in the same regions, often in the same area or town. They have the same basic aspirations held by all workers-for peace, security and democratic freedoms and reasonable standards of living. Marxists would therefore base themselves on the common interests of all workers and fight for the establishment of an organisation and a programme of common struggle. The day to day economic struggles of Jews and Arabs will tend to draw them together in the trade unions in Israel. Arab workers are involved in the Histraduth and in some sectors, like the building industry, form an absolute majority. Common needs will tend to develop common economic and trade union struggles among these workers and it is upon these foundations that Marxists would seek to build support for socialist The greater the alternative lead given the more quickly left wing currents will develop in the Histraduth and the workers organisations. The crisis of capitalism, that is the crisis of the private ownership of the means of production, and the crisis of the nation state are conspiring to create the conditions for huge political convulsions in Israel. The most important element of all, is the subjective factor. The movement to provide a Marxist leadership has yet to be built. Such a movement would have to be rooted in the daily lives, needs and economic struggles of the workers but it would also be based upon the most implacable opposition tionary nationalist ideas of Zionism and Arab nationalism. In so far as this nationalism represents only the humble aspirations of workers to live their lives in peace and security, with no disadvantage deriving from their culture, language or religion, the Marxists would support and uphold it. But socialism must be inflexibly opposed to the nationalism of the ruling classes who seek to oppress other nations, all the easier to oppress their working classes. Socialism, therefore, must stand in opposition to the Zionist imperialism of the Israeli capitalist class and the reactionary nationalism of the Arab regimes. Capitalism und Stalinism are in crisis on a global scale. Upheavals, wars, revolutions and crises in all coun tries have international repercussions because of the greater interpenetration and interdependence created by the world market in the modern epoch. In the advanced countries of Capitalism and in the under-developed world, the next two or three decades will be the most unstable in the whole of human history. Political parties, social institutions, and above all attitudes and consciousness will undergo huge changes, sometimes with lightening rapidity. Time after time after time workers will enter the path of strug gle with the intent to overcome the contradictions and limitations of the old society by building a new one. It will be impossible for Israel, Lebanon, or any other Arab or Middle East state to stand aside from these general world processes. International developments and events will reinforce the shake up in consciousness that is already beginning to develop in Israel among Jewish workers. For example the establishment of even one democratic workers state in an advanced country would immediately transform the whole world balance of forces. Basing themselves on workers democracy, on internationalism and on the common struggle of all workers in the Middle East, Marxists can be confident that genuine socialist ideas will find an echo in that part of the world. The road out of the swamp of wars, bloodshed, pogroms, norance and misery lies in the socialist transformation of the Middle East. There are no half measures or short cuts. It is up to the labour movement, armed with Marxist ideas, to put its indelible stamp on events and launch society in that direction.

[page 22]

Science Report

Star Wars

REAGAN'S 'Star Wars' plans mark another twist in the nightmare of the arms race. Initial research costs will be $26,000 million, with the final bill, if the plans are implemented, reaching anything up to £500,000 million, although, of course, this figure must be speculative. Does the 'Star Wars' plan, or Strategic Defence Initiative as it is formally known, represent a major new threat of nuclear war or is just a fantasy of Reagan which will never get off the ground?

The idea behind 'Star Wars' is to place 150 battle stations in orbit which will have devices on board to detect 'enemy' missiles when they are launched. A beam weapon, probably mounted on the battle station, will then be activated to shoot the missile down. It will have to perform the whole operation automatically and in a few seconds to be effective. The most 'promising' idea for a beam weapon with sufficient energy to shoot down a missile is an X-ray laser, which will harness the power of X-rays from a small, localised nuclear explosion in space.

X-ray lasers

The aim of the project is to provide a nuclear shield which will prevent any Russian missiles landing on America. If this is successful it would obviously fundamentally alter the so-called 'balance of terror' and would give American imperialism a free hand to 'deal' with the Soviet Union, including having the capability of a successful first strike. It would effectively throw out of the window the current arrangement between the US and the Stalinist bureaucrats, of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) in the event of either side starting a nuclear war.

However most

serious strategists and technical analysts in the US Administration, in private, regard 'Star Wars' as a fantasy and agree that a 100% nuclear defence is impossible.

Compiled by Pete Dickinson

None of the technology for the

detection of missiles or beam

weapons exist at present, even in

the most basic conceptual form.

Even if it did, the destabilisation of

the current balance of terror in the

decades it would take to imple-

ment the scheme, would create

profound dangers for US im-

perialism which it would not be in

their interests to run, especially in

view of the economic crises which

Steel stress

Sizewell nud

THE INQUIRY into the building of the Sizewell B nuclear power station heard evidence about the serious dangers inherent in the project. The main steel pressure vessel at the heart of the system could fail, fracturing the surrounding concrete containment building and leading to radioactive discharge, according to Rodney Fordham, a leading nuclear engineer who resigned from the UK Atomic Energy Authority to publicise the risks in the proposed system. The source of the danger is cracks in the pressure vessel. They may be only one thousandth of an inch long, but under certain conditions, could increase in length at the rate of several hundred miles an hour causing the vessel to fracture without warning. Cracks of this size can be very difficult to detect.

All steel structures have imperfections of microscopic proportions. If there is a certain critical combination of size, shape and position of the imperfection or crack, a fracture can occur. This type of failure is due to very high stresses being set up in the region of the tip of the crack, even though the average stress in the whole structure is relatively small and presents no obvious danger.

A lack of understanding of this phenomenon caused the tragic Comet airline disaster in 1958 which killed many members of the Manchester United Football team.

loom ahead

The most likely outcome is that the project will be quietly scaled down and shelved after Reagan has gone. A much modified system may be developed just to protect missile silos which, although representing a new twist in the arms race, would not change the 'strategy' of Mutually Assured Destruction.

could produce

clear disaster

The portholes in the Comets were

of a rectangular shape with sharp

corners. This meant that the

stresses in the region of the tip of

the corner were much higher than

in the fuselage as a whole. These

very high local stresses made it

easy for cracks to enlarge very

quickly, spreading out from the

porthole and causing the fuselage

to fracture. The highest stresses

occur on landing and taking off

which led to the tragedy. You will

notice that the portholes on

modern aircraft have smoothly

rounded corners!

Airline disasters

There is an additional danger in the case of the proposed pressurised water reactor at Sizewell. The pressure vessel will operate at very high pressures and temperatures. Under these conditions what is known as 'creep' can occur. This means that the size of the vessel can gradually increase, even though there is no increase in the loads acting on it. It is the combination of the effects of cracks, known as stress concentrations, and creep that can have unpredictable and dangerous consequences.

A very good book which explains this subject in non-technical language is: The New Science of Strong Materials by J E Gordon and published by Penguin.

[page 23]

Economic

The dollar

Stamps

AS WE predicted in this column in the last issue of Militant International Review, the bubble has finally burst for the American economy and the dollar. We argued that the US boom in output (which reached nearly 7 per cent) was falsely founded, not on an extension of productive investment in manufacturing machinery and labour, but on the demand created by huge expenditure on armaments.

The US government had financed this expenditure by running up a record budget deficit, funded by borrowing from foreign investors, particularly Japan. The government had raised this money by holding up US interest rates, thus attracting a flow of funds from overseas. At the same time this extra demand for goods and services was not met by American manufacturers but by the more competitive Japanese, and to a lesser extent, European companies. As a result the US trade deficit reached astronomical proportionsheading for over $170 billion this year.

This situation could not continue indefinitely and the longer it did, the harder would be the fall afterwards. As we forecast, US growth has now been squeezed to a halt by the high interest rates and the strong dollar. They are destroying US manufacturers production and investment plans at home and their markets abroad. By the end of June 1985, US output growth had slumped to an under two per cent per annum rate.

Pound overvalued

Eventually this situation would damage the value of the dollar on international foreign exchange markets, as overseas producers of goods for the American market begun to wonder if their supplies would be paid for. However, even up to April 1985, just before the big fall in the dollar's value began, the Reagan administration went blithely on predicting further economic growth and a secure dollar. The Commerce Secretary commented as late as 29 April that he expected only a fall of 20 per cent in the value of the dollar over two years. James Baker, the Treasury Secretary, confidently stated "I don't think there is going to be a runaway from the dollar."'

This easy confidence was not mirrored by the European financiers. Kit McMahon, the Deputy Governor of the

Notes

By Bob MicKee

As US growth slows, unemployment rises.

Bank of England, was more worried. He predicted a substantial fall in the dollar in a series of steepish falls interspersed with periods of relative stability, over just a few months. As it was, 'by early July the dollar had fallen 26 per cent against the pound, 16 per cent against the French Franc, and most importantly 15 per cent against the German Mark since late March. The very thing that the Americans denied was going to happen had taken place in very short time.

Now Paul Volcker from the US Reserve Bank, America's Bank of England, has commented that the dollar's fall was no problem so far but that a further collapse "posed the greatest threat to the progress we have made against inflation."

So how much further can it fall, and what effect can it have on the prospects for world capitalist production, trade, employment and inflation?

Recently, John Williamson of the Institute for International Economics worked out how much exchange rates would have to be realigned, if the distortions created by world money markets and trade barriers were taken into account, to preserve a harmonious balance in world trade and production between the different capitalist nations. He calculated that the dollar was overvalued against a weighted average of other currencies at the end of 1984 by 43 per cent-and the pound was

Jobless in Detroit.

overvalued by 17 per cent. Against the German Mark, the dollar was overvalued by 50 per cent and the pound by 28 per cent.

That means that the pressure of real productive forces must be to drive the dollar (and the pound) downwards against other currencies-even now there is still a long way to go against the mark and the Japanese yen, which should be closer to DM2.0 or Y200 to the dollar respectively rather than DM3.0 or Y250 to the dollar as at present.

Financial Times' fears

Now the argument of the US economists is that if the fall is gradual then it can only benefit US manufacturers and also the world economy. It will make American goods more competitive, reduce the trade and budget deficit and thus lower interest rates allowing investment and production to pick up in the USA.

But if the fall is too quick and too sharp it could force up inflation, driving interest rates up further and so stifle any expansion in investment and production. And if the US economy continues to decline as it has in the first six months of 1985, then demand for Japanese and European goods will fall, causing a generalised slump in production and trade.

All the evidence points

[page 24]

likelihood of further sharp falls in the dollar, perhaps accompanied by a similar decline in the pound which is also overvalued. As a result the latest forecasts for economic growth in the USA predict only 3 per cent for 1985 and lower in 1986, while the UK will find growth in 1986 below 2 per cent (including the contribution of North Sea oil).

It could be that the fear expressed by the Financial Times at the end of May of a 1929 type crash may be unduly pessimistic but all the signs are that 1986 is going to see a new and even more extensive depression for world capitalism.

Autumn 1985: Economic notes

deficit of £358m, ie a loss on actually digging coal. But this loss included £130 million for early retirement payments and the £245m for subsidence payments. If these were removed the deficit is turned into an operating surplus of £17m. In other words during 1983-4 the British Coal Board made a profit out of digging coal. But it had to make other payments nothing to do with coal mining, but to do with closing the industry down!

Woolf cannot understand why the NUM did not analyse and demonstrate the false basis of the Coal Board's accounts. But in fact they did, when Andrew Glyn published his paper on the Case for Coal which matched many of Woolf's findings. But just because you have the truth does not mean that it will be publicised by those who do not want it known -and the Tory press and media made sure the real position of coal mining was never exposed to the public.

So while British industry as a whole saw a decline in profits expressed as a percentage of total capital costs, the giant companies increased their returns, squeezing the smaller ones even harder.

Peru's debt

crisis

Accounting

for coal

THE TRUE cost of the Tory government's attempt to crush the miners' union is now slowly being revealed by the accounts of the various nationalised industries, as they are published, to cover the period from April 1984 to March 1985. The total figure as a cost to these industries alone is reaching anything between £6bn and £8bn, much larger than the Tories claimed it would ever be — and these costs do not account for losses to the taxpayer from police expenditure and social security, or for the losses created by businesses in the mining areas going bankrupt etc.

And what did the Tories say it was all for - to smash Scargill or to make a loss-making industry profitable? During the dispute Peter Walker, the Energy Secretary told everybody that the coal industry had lost £ 1334 million in the year up to March 1984, according to the Coal Board's own accounts. According to Walker that meant paying £130 per week to each miner then in the industry.

However, a recent analysis of the Coal Board's accounts by a highly reputed accountant, Emile Woolf, a senior partner in Kingston Smith, shows that Walker's assertions were completely false. The so-called £1.3bn deficit was made up of: 1) £634m spent on the cost of closing pits, paying redundancies and early retirement schemes (in other words spending not to dig coal but to stop doing it!); 2) £245m of payments for subsidence claims, most of which MacGregor, the Coal Board Chairman, revealed to a House of Commons Committee were phoney, and 3) f402m in interest payments back to the government for loans in previous years used to lay off miners! The Board claimed an operating

rae giants take:

a giant's share

of the cake

IT USED to be argued by some economists that small businesses tend to be more profitable and grow more quickly than the lumbering giants who are not prepared to make inovations or take risks. Perhaps there is some truth in this argument when there is a general expansion of the market and there is 'room' for smaller companies to achieve higher profits by innovation and new techniques.

But in period of stagnation, crisis and recession when markets are shrinking, the smaller companies are quickly devoured by the larger, who begin to take a giant's share of the available profit.

A recent report entitled 'The strategy and performance of British Industry 1970-1980' sheds some light on this situation. In an analysis of 496 companies producing 80 per cent of Gross National Product, the report found that the top 100 companies in the UK accounted for over 80 per cent of manufacturing output.

And during the relatively stagnant 1970s it was the larger companies that performed better. Between 1970-80 the largest 25 British companies increased their rate of profit by 40 per cent and the next 75 by 23 per cent, while others suffered a fall in their rates of profit by an average of 3 per cent.

Poverty in Latin America.

THE DEBTS owed by Latin American governments to international banks continue to rise, now reaching £360bn. While many governments have agreed to make repayments under the severe terms imposed by the International Monetary Fund— even Argentina has made such an agreement-the problem remains: how can these debts be paid for without provoking massive movement of the people in these countries which could end the rule of imperialism altogether.

Peru's new leader, Alan Garcia, is attempting another method of avoiding this crisis. He has announced that Peru is going to pay back its debts only at 10 per cent of annual export earnings, whatever the IMF or the international bankers say. He hopes that this will avoid too great a burden on Peru's people -where inflation is now at 200 per cent a year, unemployment is 30 per cent and real wages for workers are at the level of 20 years ago!

But Garcia will not avoid trouble. Peru owes $ 14bn in foreign debt and has not paid any back for over a year, running up another $ 500m in interest payments. 10 per cent of export earnings is equivalent to $300m which is twice what the last Peruvian President paid. Clearly Garcia's statements are not so radical and Peru's workers and peasants are in for an even harder time if this 10 per cent commitment is to be met.

[page 25]

Part two in a series of articles by Alan Woods, editor of the MIR, on the history of the Bolshevik Party.

IN 'THE Birth of Russian Marxisne,' published in MIR No 29 Alan Woods outlined how Plekhanov's Emancipatron of Labour Group was formed in 1883. In part two of a series of articles on the History of Bolshevism he explains how from these apparently insignificant beginnings, Marxists, in cluding the young Lenin, began to establish firm points of support in the growing movement of the Russian workers of the 1880s and 1890s. The series will be continued in the next edition of the MIR.

'The revolutionary movement in Russia can triumph only as a revolutionary movement of the workers. For us there is no other way out, nor can there be." -Plekhanov, speech to the International Socialist Congress, Paris, 1889.

HEGEL ONCE remarked that:

"When we want to see an oak with all its vigour of trunk, its spreading branches, and mass of foliage, we are not satisfied to be shown an acorn instead". Yet within the embryo of a healthy plant or animal is contained all the genetic information necessary for its future development.

It is no different with the development of a revolutionary tendency. The "genetic information"

here is represented by theory, which contains within itself a rich store c! generalisa. tions based upon past experience. Theory is primary: all subsequent development stems from this. Despite the smallness of its size, the primitiveness of its organisation and rather amateur methods, the Emancipation of Labour Group's great contribution was to lay down the theoretical roots of the movement. Of necessity, the initial work of the Group was confined to winning the ones and twos, of educating and training cadres, of hammering home the fundamental principles of Marxism. "With all our hearts"

wrote Plekhanov, "we seek to work for the creation of a literature which is accessible to the understanding of the whole peasant-worker masses; we, nevertheless are obliged for the time being to confine our popular literary efforts to the narrow circle of more or less 'intellectual' leaders of the working class"

A decisive decade The writings of Plekhanov during this period served to lay the theoretical basis for the building of the party. Many of them remain classics to the present time, although they do not students of Marxism. Not by chance, Lenin strongly recommended the republication Plekhanov's philosophical writings after the revolution, when the two men had long been political enemies. Socialism and the Political Struggle, Our Differences, and, above all, Plekhanov's masterpiece, On the Development of the Monist View of History are masterly re-statements of the fundamental ideas of dialectical and historical materialism, for a Russian audience. These works at once laid the foundation stone for the development of the new party and simultaneously carried out a devastating demolition jub on the old theories of Narodnism. Plekhanov challenged the most prestigious ideologists of Populism to a kind of theoretical single combat. Theory is primary His remorseless logic drove them into a corner. The brilliant cut and thrust of his polemical style was always accompanied with a razor-sharp wit, so even a reader convinced by Plekhanov's arguments might reserve for his opponent a feeling akin to that which one might have for an unfortunate mouse being worried by a cat. Plekhanov was not a man to harbour doubts about himself. Friend and foe alike recognised in him one of the most impressive intellects of his time. Such a man was necessary to nurture the still weak forces of Russian Marxism, to give them confidence in themselves, in the ideas and in the inevitability of their future triumphs.

Plekhanov's onslaught threw the Narodnik leaders into disarray. Unable to provide a coherent answer to the Marxist case, they resorted to bitter complaints and spiteful allegations about the new group. Vestnik Narodnoy Voli (no 2, 1884) alleged that "for them (the Marxists) the polemic with Narodnaya Volya is more topical than the struggle with the Russian government and with other exploiters of the Russian people."

How often have Marxists heard allegations throughout our history! For the crime of insisting on theoretical clarity, for attempting to draw a clear line of demarcation between itself and other political tenden. cies, Marxism is always accused of the hideous sin of "sectarianism", of being against "lefi unity" and so on and so forth. It is one of the great ironies of history that one of Plekhanov's main Narodnik critics, Tikhomirov ("'NV") who accused the group of disrupting revolutionary unity and submissively accepting the yoke of capital, himself later went over to the camp of Monarchist reaction. Not for the first or last time, the advocator of unprincipled "unity" ended up by uniting with the enemies of the working class!

The real reason for the whimpering of the Narodniks about "sectarianism and "splitters" was the effect which the ideas of Marxism were having on their own followers. It is difficult to overestimate the impact which works like Our Differences (1885) had on the young revolutionaries inside Russia who were avidly looking for a way out of the impasse of Narodnism, which was now in a phase of self-evident decadence.

Exiled in Switzerland, the members of the Emancipation of Labour Group set about the Herculean labour of translating the works of Marx and Engels and attempting to get them into the interior. Among these numerous translations were:

'Ludwig Feuerbach,' 'On Social Relations in Russia,' 'The Poverty of Philosophy,' "The Housing Question,' 'Wage, Labour and Capital, 'The Civil War in France, and "The Communist Manifesto.'

The work of penetrating the movement in Russia, however, proceeded with painful difficulty. The illegal transportation of literature posed enormous problems. Professional people and students, studying abroad, were enlisted to carry illegal literature when going back home on holiday. At various times, members of the Group were sent into Russia to establish contacts. Such journeys were extremely hazardous and frequently ended in arrests.

People from the interior who managed to establish direct contact with the Group were few and far between, and regarded like gold. In 1887-8, there was an attempt to set up a Union of Russian Social Democrats abroad, headed by the student, Rafail Soloveichik who had left Russia in 1884. But he clashed with the Group,

[page 26]

went back to Russia, was arrested in 1889 and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, during which he became mentally deranged and committed suicide. Another member of the Grigor Gukovsky, a young student in Zurich, was arrested in Aachen and handed over to the saron, novelso committed There were many such cases. The arm of the tsarist authorities was long. The Group constantly faced the danger of infiltration by police spies and provocateurs. Une such spy was Christian Haupt, a worker who was engaged by the police to infiltrate the Russian Social Democratic organisations in exile. Unmasked by the German Social Democrats as a police spy, Haupt was expelled from Worst of all was the sensation of complete political gravated by the inevitable rows and squabbles of exile life. The emigre Narodniks, stung by Plekhanov's criticism, gave vent to their hurt feelings by heated protests at being call- 'Bakuninists' and demands for public apologies. The overwhelming majority of the exiles were Narodniks, and implacably hostile to the new group which they regarded as traitors and splitters. Years later, Plekhanov's wife recalled that "The Narodnaya Volya people and NK Mikhailovsky at that time controlled the hearts and minds of the Geneva emigres and the Russian students' 1 Impasse of Narodnism These were difficult times. The old Narodnik trend was in a complete impasse. Having burnt their fingers with terrorism, tionaries' effected another 180° somersault and eventually ended up in the camp of the Liberal philistines, preaching a cowardly policy of 'small and harmless educational work. Commenting on the decay of Narodnism Martov wrote: "The fall of the revolutionary People's Freedom was at the same time the collapse of Populism as a whole. Broad circles of the democratic intelligentsia were profoundly demoralised and aisappointed in politics and their own heroic mission. A modest 'cultivation' in the service of the liberal segments of the possessing classes: this was the sign under which the part of the intelligentsia that had remained loyal to Populism entered the grey epoch of the '80s". 2 On all sides there was retreat, ideological backsliding and cowardly apostasy. In order to find a road to the young generation, Plekhanov was obliged to seek collaboration with all kinds of confused and semi-Narodnik elements. One such group published a small journal Suobodnaya Rossiya which in the leading article of its first impossibility of issue argued the "Organising the workers and peasants action" and around revolutionary argued against putting forward ideas which might frighten liberal sympathisers. 3 of alienating which "believed in 'terror' as a god" Plekhanov against his better judge. ment, bent under pressure and included a reference to the 'terrorist struggle' in the first draft programme of the Group. It would be a simple thing now, of hindsight to reproach Plekhanov for opportunism. But one has to bear in mind the extremely difficult conditions and extreme isolation in which the Marxists were working at the time. Plekhanovalong with Lenin, Trotsky and all Russian Marxists, stood implacably opposed to individual terrorism. The unfortunate reference was dropped in the second (much improved) draft and never made a re-appearance in the whole history of the party. Ironically, it was precisely at this time that the Narodnik leaders were hastily repudiating terrorism and moving over openly to the camp of bourgeois liberalism.

The advocacy of terrorism and the capitulation to bourgeois liberalism were head and tail of the same coin. At the bottom of the radical phrasemongering about individual terror lay profound the scepticism and pessimism of the petit-bourgeois revolutionary with his ingrained distrust of the masses. Under conditions of political reaction, such an animal can turn very quickly into its opposite. The rightward shift of the Narodnik leaders reached its culminating point with the open renegacy of Tikhomirov-the target of many of Plekhanov's polemics — who in 1888 published a pamphlet with the ti- 'Why I ceased to be revolutionary".

The collapse of the old revolutionary Narodnism had a profound effect among the youth inside Russia, producing a polarisation between the proliberal reformist elements and the best elements of the youth, striving to find a road to revolution. Towards the end of 1887, SN Ginsburg having recently returned from Russia, wrote in a worried tone to the Narodnik leader PL Lavrov: "Our Political Differences and Socialism and the Political Struggle have had their influence, strong one, which we must come to terms with... The importance of the individual, the importance of the intelligentsia in the revolution, are completely destroyed by them, and I have 27 personally seen people who have been crushed by his theories. And the main thing is his tone, bold as if he was convinced of his rightness, his negation of all that has gone before, the reduction of all predecessors to a nil-all this is definately having an influence. 4 Fighting against the stream Ginsburg's letter shows how, unbeknown to the exiled Marxists, new groupings were crystalising in the interior, discussing the failures of the past, drawing up a balance sheet and seeking a new way. Here the ideas of Plekhanov fell upon fertile ground. Krupskaya, in her memoirs of Lenin gives a glimpse of the kind of discussion which must have been commonplace in underground circles: "The conference was disguised as a pancake party... The question came up as to what ways we should take. Somehow general agreement was lacking. Someone (I believe it was Shevlyagin) said that work on the Illiteracy Committee was of great importance. Vladimir Ilyich laughed, and his laughter sounded rather harsh (I have never heard him laugh that way " 'Well if anyone wants to save the country by working in the Illiteracy Committee', he said, 'let him go ahead'." 5 This incident took place in 1893, when the tide had already begun to turn in favour of Marxism. But for ten years previously, the Emancipation of Labour Group was forced to fight a weary battle against the stream. Contact with Russia resembled a game of blind man's bluff. The situation with the exiles could hardly have been worse. The frustrations of the Group are shown in the correspondence of Plekhanov with his closest

[page 27]

MIR Autumn 1985: Bolshevism Part Two collaborators.

Even the literary activity of the Group was fraught with difficulties. The Emancipation of Labour Group lived in an atmosphere of continuous financial crisis. Being small in number, and with limited scope for raising cash, they usually depended on what are the American theatrical , wealthy sympathisers prepared to finance their literary ventures, like V Ignatov, one of the Group's first adherents, who had provided the funds for the Group's initial work. Sometimes, these people were not even socialists, Guryer who put up the cash for the 'three-monthly" Sotsial Demokrat. In general, the publications of the Group came out on a very irregular basis. Yet, in spite of everything, they managed, against all the odds, to keep the still weak voice of Marxism alive Russia. Under that represented a for- At times, the task must have seemed well-nigh hopeless. In the summer of 1885, Plekhanov wrote to Axelrod in terms verging on desperation: "But really we are standing over an abyss of all sorts over debts, and don't know and cannot think what to catch hold of to stop ourselves falling in. It's bad". 6 Throughout the dark days of the '80s Plekhanov and his family lived in extreme poverty. At times he gave private lessons in Russian literature for a small salary, living in the cheapest "pension"

owned by a butcher who fed him exclusively on soup and boiled meat! Bad food and living conditions undermined his health. For a while he was dangerously ill with pleurisy, the effect of which lasted the rest of his life.

Working under enormous difsuffering remorseless pressure from all sides, the Emancipation of Labour Group was held together by faith in its ideas, but also by the towering moral and political authority of Plekhanov.

Within the Group, Plekhanov reigned supreme. Their very isolation made the members rally round in a closelyknit circle, welded together by strong and personal ties. Not for nothing did they later acquire the Plekhanov was the indisputable head of the "household"- intellectually, he towered above the others, and yet there existed between them a strong sense of mutual dependence born of years of struggle and sacrifice in a common cause. In such circumstances it was hardly surprising that personal and political questions should become intermixed. Plekhanov was a tower of strength to the others, giving them moral support in times of doubt and personal crises.

For two decades, the membership of the Emancipation of Labour Group stayed virtually the same. Of its founders, VN Ignatov died too early to leave much of an imprint. Lev Deutsch was the heart and soul of the organisational side of the work, such as the arrangements for printing and distribution of literature. Pavel Axelrod was an extremely talented propagandist who made a big impression on the young Lenin and Trotsky. His name was for a long time inseperable from that of Plekhanov.

Vera Zasulich The part played by Vera Zasulich in the Group deserves a mention apart. Her personal courage and dedication to the revolutionary cause was already shown when, as a young girl, she carried out her terrorist attempt on the notorious torturer Trepov. A sincere, warm-hearted and impulsive person, Vera Zasulich suffered more than most from the trauma of exile. Ever impatient to close the gap between the Emancipation of Labour Group and the new generation of revolutionaries in Russia, she was forever taking up the cudgels on behalf of the youth overcoming the resistance Plekhanov and encouraging new initiatives-usually unsuccessfulwith the youth groups in exile. Her relationship with Plekhanov was paradoxical. Heavily dependent on him for moral and political support, she, more than any of the others, was not afraid to confront him with the sharpest criticism and make him aware of his shortcomings. Given the enormous intellectual gulf between Plekhanov and the rest of his small band of followers, such a role was of inestimable value. The fact that the tetchy Plekhanov was prepared to submit humbly to the rebukes of Zasulich on more than one occasion indicated that he, more than anyone, was aware of this fact.

The tragedy of people like Axelrod and Zasulich had a two-fold character. Under different historical conditions, these talented individuals could have played a far bigger role in the shaping of events. Long years of isolation in exile had a disasterous effect upon their psychological and intellectual development. Working under Plekhanov's shadow, their evolution became stultified to the extent that, when conditions changed, they were unable to adapt and were lost to the revolution. In the conditions in which the Group was compelled to work for decades traces of a narrow propaganda circle mentality would almost inevitably tend to creep in. Such factors could not have a fundamental significance in the early years, the long, slow period of theoretical preparation and tiny propaganda circles. Only at a later date, when the Russian Marxist movement was faced with the necessity of stepping over the limitation of the pro paganda phase did the negative features of the Emancipation of throughout the 1890s, the group began to enjoy an enormous authority in the eyes of the increasing numbers of Marxist youth, and the name of Plekhanov was known in every underground propaganda circle and every police station in Russia. Despite all the difficulties, the slow, patient work of the Marxists now began to bear fruit. Marxist groups were springing up all over Russia. In imitation of the ELG, they called themselves: "Leagues of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class". Ai the same time the movement of the workers was assuming a mass character.

The turn of the tide "Well, brother, I can't think what's gotten into them these days, sending us all these political 'muzhiks all of a sudden! Before they used to bring us all upper class people and students, real gentlemen. But now in walk the likes of you-just • a common 'muzhik'-a worker!" 7 With these words the prison warder of the Taganskaya prison greeted the arrival of MN Lyadov, one of the leaders of the Moscow Workers' League in the year 1895. In his own way, the old warder had grasped the profound change which had taken place in the Russian revolutionary movement in the 1890s.

The fierce arguments between the Marxists and Narodniks about the inevitability or otherwise of the development of capitalism in Russia were being resolved in practice by the rapid growth of industry and the increasing. y apparent existence of class polarisation within the peasantry, with the crystalisation of a class of rich peasants or "kulaks" and a mass of landless rural poor who increasingly drifted to the towns in search of work. By the end of the 1860s, there were only 1,600 kilometres of railway lines in the whole country. In the following two decades this figure had increased 15 times. In the ten years between 1892 and 1901, no fewer than 26,000 kilometres of railway lines were built. Alongside the traditional industrial centres of Moscow and St Petersburg, new ones sprang up in areas such as the Baltic, Baku and Donbass. Bet-

[page 28]

ween 1893 and 1900, the production of oil experienced a two-fold increase and that of coal went up three times.

True, the development of industry did not have the organic character of the rise of capitalism in Britain, described by Marx in Capital. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 provided the material premise for the development of capitalism. But the Russian bourgeoisie came on the stage of history too late to take advantage of the opportunity. The puny and underdeveloped forces of Russian capitalism could not compete with the powerful developed bourgeoisie of Western Europe and America. In common with the ex-colonial countries today, Russian industry was heavily dependent upon foreign capital which exercised a crushing domination over the economy, principally through its control of the banking and financial system:

"The confluence of industry with bank capital," wrote Trotsky, "was also accomplished in Russia with a completeness you might not find in any other country. But the subjugation of the industries to the banks meant, for the same reasons, their subjugation to the Western European money market. Heavy industry (metal, coal, oil) was almost wholly under the control of foreign finance capital, which had created for itself an auxiliary and intermediate system of banks in Russia. Light industry was following the same road. Foreigners owned in general about 40 per cent of all the stock capital of Russia, but in the leading branches of industry that percentage was still higher. We can say without exaggeration that the controlling shares of stock in the Russian banks, plant and factories were to be found abroad, the amount held in England, France and Belgium being almost double that in Germany."8

The penetration of Russian society by foreign capital gave a sharp impetus to economic development, shaking the giant out of 2,000 years of barbarism and into the modern era. But precisely this gave rise to an explosive social situation. Large numbers of peasants were torn from the changeless routine of village life and thrust into the inferno of large-scale capitalist industry.

The Marxist theory of combined and uneven development found its most perfect expression in the extremely complex social relations in Russia at the turn of the century. Side by side with feudal, semi-feudal and even prefeudal modes of existence there sprang up the most modern factories, built with French and British capital on the latest models. This is precisely the phenomenon we now see in the whole of the so-called Third World, in Africa,

Asia and Latin America.

In just 33 years-from 1865 to 1898, the number of factories employing over 100 workers doubled-from 706,000 to 1,432,000. By 1914, more than half of all industrial workers were actually employed in plants with over 500 hands, and nearly one quarter in plants with over 1,000 hands—a far higher proportion than in any other country. Already in the 1890s, seven big factories in the Ukraine employed two-thirds of all the metal workers in Russia, while Baku had almost all the oil workers. Indeed, until 1900, Russia was the largest oil producer in the world. g

Nevertheless, despite the tempestuous upsurge of industry, the general picture of Russian society remained one of extreme backwardness. The mass of the population still lived in the villages, where the rapid development of class differentiation was given a powerful impulse by the crisis in European agriculture in the 1880s and early 1890s.

The falling price of grain ruined whole layers of the peasantry, the appalling nature of whose existence is starkly portrayed in Chekhov's short stories, In the Ravine and Muzhiks. The rural semi-proletariar., deprived of land, hawking his labour around the villages, became a common sight. On

Development of Capitalism in Russia were written to settle accounts with the Narodniks. Not by accident, either, these works are based on the irrefutable language of facts, figures and arguments.

The development of capitalism in Russia also meant the development of the proletariat which soon served notice on the whole of society of its intention to place itself in the front rank

Table

880

885

890

No of strikes No of workers Participating (in

01 99

221 223

81 70

From /storiya KPSS, Volume one, p 96

the other end of the social spectrum the new class of emerging rural capitalists, the kulaks, growing rich at the expense of the village poor, could afford to buy land from the old landowners—a situation reflected with great wit and insight in Chekhov's famous play The Cherry Orchard.

In spite of all the attempts of the I'sarist regime to shore it up, the old village community, the "mir", which according to the Narodnik theoreticians was to provide the basis for peasant socialism, was rapidly breaking up along class lines. Those unable to find work in the village swarmed into the towns, providing an immense pool of cheap labour for the newly established capitalist enterprises.

The old debates between the Narodniks and Marxism were thus conclusively settled by the march of events. Not by accident, Lenin's earliest works, such as New Economic Developments in Peasant Life, On the so-called Market Question and The

of the struggle for change.

The highly concentrated character of Russian industry rapidly created industrial armies of workers, organised and disciplined, and placed at the strategic points of society and the economy. The graph of the strike movement (Table 1) clearly indicates the rising confidence and class consciousness of the Russian working class in this period.

The Morozov Strike

Starting in the Spring of 1880, industry was hit by a crisis which lasted several years. This was a period of mass unemployment, in which the employers ruthlessly pushed down the already miserable wages of he workers. In addition to all the orber problems, the workers were continual ly oppressed with all kinds of pert! restrictions and arbitrar: riles design. ed to keep them in subservience Chie! among these was the custor of impos

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MIR

11985: Bolshevism Part Two

ing fines for a whole series of real or imagined offenses against • the employers.

Lenin's masterly pamphlet An Explanation of the Law on Fines 10 shows how, before 1886, a worker could be fined as much as half of his wages. The indignation and accumulated discontent of the workers finally exploded in a wave of labour agitation in 1885-86 in Moscow, Vladmir and Yaroslavl, which culminated in the famous strike at the Nikolskoye Mill owned by IS Morozov.

The 11,000 workers at the Morozov works had their wages cut no fewer than five times in two years. At the same time, swingeing fines were imposed for singing, talking loudly, walking past the manager's office with a cap on, and so on. These fines frequently amounted to a quarter of a worker's wage, and sometimes one-half! Finally, the workers' patience ran out, and on the 7 December 1885, they staged a strike.

All the pent-up rage and frustration at the years of petty vexations, theft and arbitrariness burst forth with elemental force. The leader of the

Anisimovich strikes, Pyotr Moiseyenko (1852- 1923) was an experienced revolutionary, an ex-member of Khalturin's Northern Union, who had served a term in Siberian exile. A remarkable man, one of those natural leaders of the working class, Moiseyenko later wrote that: "I first learned to understand, then to act" Nevertheless, the spontaneous nature of the strike is revealed Moiseyenko's own account in an anniversary speech delivered in 1923 (he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917).

"We decided," he recalls, "that we had to go into the factory, and then we would see what else was to be done"

The enraged workers vented their anger by smashing up the factory foodstore, where the "truck" system operated compelling them to buy food at inflated prices, and the home of the hated foreman Shorin.

Alarmed by the vicience of the outbreak, the governor of Vladimir province drafted in troops and Cossacks. The workers presented the governor with their demands, but were met with repression. 600 workers were arrested. Troops surrounded the factory and the workers were forced back to work at the point of a bayonet. Nevertheless, such was the mood of the workforce that the factory was not fully operational until one month later.

The Morozov strike thus ended in a defeat. Yet the effect it had on the minds of workers all over Russia transformed the whole situation. In the trial of the strikers held in Vladimir in May 1886, Moiseyenko and the other defendents put up a

spirited defence which turned into such a devastating indictment of factory conditions that the charges were quashed and the workers' case upheld!

The verdict of the Morozov triai sent a shock-waye throughout Russian society. Thoroughly alarmed, the reactionary Moskouskiye Vedmosti protested: "But it is dangerous to joke with the mass of the people. What must the workers think, following the not-guilty verdict of the Vladimir court? The news of this decision spread like lightning through the whole of this manufacturing area. Our correspondent, who left Vladimir immediately after the announcement of the verdict, heard of it at all the stations... " 12

For the first time, the Morozov strike showed the enormous potential power of the proletariat. The lesson was not lost on the Tsarist regime, which, for all its support for the factory-owners, decided that it would have to make concessions to the workers. This it did on 3 June 1886 when the Law on Fines was passed, limiting the amount which could be imposed and stipulating that the proceeds should not be appropriated by the employers, but be deposited in a special benetit fund for the workers.

The first

propaganda circles

As always, reform is a by-product of the workers' revolutionary struggle to change society. Like the "10 hour bill" legislation passed in Britain in the last century, the Law on Fines was an attempt to pacify the workers and prevent them from moving in a revolutionary direction, while simultaneously trying to lean on the workers to curb the demands of the bourgeois liberals. Such "benevolent" legislation did not prevent the savage repression of strikes and the wholesale arrest and deportation of workers' leaders in the coming period.

Nor did the new law have the desired effect of dampening down the strike movement. The Morozov strike inspired the workers with fresh courage, while the concessions granted by the all-powerful autocracy showed what could be gained by boldly fighting for your interests. In 1887, the total number of strikes exceeded those of the two previous years put together. Two years later, police chief Plehve was forced to report to Alexander I! that in turn 1889 was "richer than 1887 and 1888 in disorders called forth by factory conditions"

The elemental upsurge of the strike movement indicated the increasing awareness of the workers themselves as a class and a force within society. The more advanced

strata, represented by people like Moiseyenko, were groping for ideas which could shed light upon their condition and show the way forward.

This movement had a two-fold significance. On the one hand, these spontaneous outbreaks, frequently accompanied by acts of Luddism which bore witness to its as yet unorganised and semi-conscious nature, announced to the world the emergence of the Russian working class on the stage of history. On the other hand, it furnished irrefutable proof of the correctness of the theoretical arguments of Plekhanov and che Emancipation of Labour Group. In the white-heat of the class struggle, the basis was now laid for the coming together of the still numerically weak forces of Marxisn and the powerful, but as yet incoherent forces of the Russian proletariat.

From the Marxist point of view, the importance of a strike goes far beyond the fight for immediate demands over hours, wages and conditions. The real significance of strikes, even when lost, is that the workers learn. In the course of a strike-particularly a major strike-the mass of workers, their wives and families, inevitably become aware of their role as a class. They cease to think and act like slaves, or cogs in a machine, and begin to raise themselves up to the stature of real human beings with a mind and will of their own. That is the real lesson of the heroic strike of the British miners last year, which repeats with a delay of almost exactly one hundred years, many of the experiences of the Russian proletariat.

The stormy events of the class struggle in their external aspects readily capture the imagination long after they have passed into history. But the silent, subterranean process of the development of working class consciousness—what Trotsky described in that most memorable phrase, "the molecular process of the development of class consciousness"-is all too easily overlooked. Yet this is the most important fruit of the long and arduous history of the workers' movement.

Through their experience of life and of struggle-particularly of great events-the masses begin transform themselves. Beginning with the most active and conscious layer, the workers become profoundly discontented with their lot, and keenly feel their own limitations. Defeats, still more than victories, force upon the worker-activist the burning need for a clear understanding of the workings of society, of the mysteries of economics and politics.

Throughout history, the ruling class has held firmly in its grasp a weapon far more potent than all its armies and

[page 30]

police forces for the subjugation of the majority: that weapon is none other than the monopoly of the means of culture.

Not by accident, every revolutionary class in history has begun its assault the powers-that-be upon by a thoroughgoing criticism of the ideas and culture of the old ruling class. Thus the bourgeoisie, prior to overthrowing the feudal monarchies, first de-throned the spiritual monarch by carrying out the Reformation. Throughout history, of all the chains which bind the working class, one of the most powerful is ignorance. The first blow for the emancipation of the working class must be struck against this. Through its advanced guard first of all, the working class feels the need to conquer ideas and theory as an essential pre-requisite to the conquest of power and the re-construction of society on a new and higher. foundation.

The growth of capitalist industry itself produces a mighty army of the proletariat. But even the best army will be defeated if it lacks generals, ma- Jors and captains well schooled in the business of war. The stormy strike battles of the 1880s proclaimed to the world that the heavy battalions of the Russian proletariat were ready and willing to fight. But they also revealed the weakness of the movement, its spontaneous, unorganised and unconscious nature, its lack of direction and leadership. The army was there. What was necessary was to prepare the future general staff. This conclusion now dawned irresistibly on the consciousness of the best workers. with the serious and single- And minded approach which characterises worker-activists the world over, they settled down to learn.

The struggle for theory Despite all their efforts, the Narodniks were completely incapable of link. ing up with "the people"

, nor could they ever hope to do so, on the basis of false theories, programme and methods. Yet this seemingly intractable problem was now solved with complete ease by the Marxists. A solid bridgehead was rapidly constructed to link the latter with the workers. In all the major centres of industry, study circles, educational classes and "Sunday schools" sprang up, providing the seed-bed for a whole new generation of working class revolutionary Marxists, the backbone of the future party of October.

Thus began the so-called period of propaganda or "kruzhovshchina" (based on the Russian word for studycircle). Here after an exhausting day's work under appalling conditions, Revolutionaries in prison at Kara in Siberia. many a horny-handed factory worker, fighting off mental and physical fatigue, spent long hours wrestling with the difficult chapters of Marx's Capital-that same book which the tsarist censor considered too dry and abstruse to represent a danger. Not for the last time, a dictatorial regime underestimated both the revolutionary significance of Capital and the intelligence of the working class! So great was the workers' desire to learn that many a volume of Capital was torn apart in order to distribute it, chapter by chapter, among the largest possible number of people.

When set beside mass strikes, battles with the police and speeches from the dock, this kind of slow, uninspiring educational work seems to pale into insignificance. Yet this painstaking, patient and arduous task of theoretical education was the solid bedrock upon which Russian Marxism was built. It represented enormous self-sacrifice on the part of the workers, whose achievements on the theoretical plane were every bit as important for the future of the revolution as the struggles in the workplace. From the cradle of the mass Russian workers' movement, the indissoluble link between theory and practice was being forged.

At the same time that Plekhanov and his collaborators were establishing the Group for the Emancipation of Russian Labour abroad, the first genuine Social Democratic (ie Marxist) circle appeared in St Petersburg, setup by a young Bulgarian student called Dimiter Blagoev—the future leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party (1856-1924). In 1884, his group took the name "The Party of the Russian Social Democrats" and even began to publish a paper-Rabochii (''The Worker"). However, the group did not last long before it was smashed by the police.

But the process was now too far advanced to be halted by police action. The following year another Social Democratic group was formed in the capital, this time with cłoser links with the working class. The group of PV Tochissky included apprentices and and styled itself craftsmen the "Brotherhood of St Petersburg Artisans".

Poland and Lithuania Further afield in the Volga area of Central Russia, another of the pioneers Russian Marxism, Nickolai Fedoseyev (1871-98) organised a group of students in Kazan, one of the members of which was a young student by the name of Vladimir Ulyanov, later Lenin. This group disintegrated when Fedoseyev was arrested in the summer of 1889. 14. But the first seeds had been planted, and the first recruits had been won, albeit in tiny handfuls, in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saratov, Rostov-on-Don, and other towns in the region.

The development of industry took place very early on in the Western fringes of the Russier Empire, the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. More industrialised than the East, more literate, and with a strong German influence, these areas were quickly penetrated by the Social Democracy. However. the workers

[page 31]

MIR Autumn 1985: Bolshevism Part Two movement here was immensely complicated by the national question. Oppressed by tsarist Russia, the Polish workers and peasants had a double yoke to bear.

In addition, the sizeable Jewish population in these areas, with its numerous artisans and businesses, lived permanently on the brink of the abyss. The most oppressed layer of society, the Jewish workers and artisans naturally provided fertile ground for the spread of revolutionary ideas. Not by accident, Jewish revolutionaries provided the Marxist movement with a number of leaders out of all proportion to their specific weight within society. Cosmopolitan Vilno, with its large concentration of Jewish workers and artisans, was one of the earliest strongholds of the Social Democracy in the Russian Empire. The tsarist authorities, especially sensitive about unrest in the Polish provinces, cracked down ruthlessly on the first Polish Social Democratic groups with arrests, torture and long sentences of hard labour. But the like a hydra-headed movement, monster, reacted to the lopping off of one head by immediately sprouting two new heads. New groups sprang up in Minsk, Warsaw and Vilno, where Leo Jogiches (Jan Tyszka) set-up a group in 1887. The Baltic soon became a focal point of Marxist agitation and propaganda, serving as the entry-point respondence between the emigre Emancipation of Labour Group and the Marxist underground in the This is a period of many namesmostly strange and unfamiliar to the modern reader. The small which sprang up in one town after another must have appeared to the Tsarist authorities as the result of some virulent and inexplicable virus. Through the pages of the police archives, the faces and numbers of arrested revolutionaries passed with monotonous regularity -just so many bacilli isolated and removed for the health of the body politic. Most of these men and women have long passed into obscurity. And yet upon the bones and nerves of these heroes and martyrs, the Russian workers' movement was painfully constructed. Working against tremendous odds, under intolerable difficulties and always at personal risk, they stubbornly persevered in their task. The great majority of them never lived to see the result of their labour. They never fought in the final great battles, nor did they see the old, hated structures of society topple. Their role was the hardest task of all: the arduous task of beginning, of building the movement out of nothing, of patiently winning over the ones and twos, of explaining, arguing, convincing, of attending to the thousand-and-one mundane, routine day-to-day tasks of building an organisation, which pass unobserved by historians, but which lay at the heart of a great historical enterprise.

From propaganda to agitation Perhaps the most vivid account of how these early Marxist propaganda circles functioned is contained in Krupskaya's book about Lenin. Contact was made through a workers' study circle, where the teaching of the "3 Rs" would be skilfully combined with at least the elementary ideas of socialism: "It was a kind of silent conspiracy. We were actually able to talk about anything in the school, although there was rarely a class without a spy; one had to refrain from using the terrible 'strike', etc and the most fundamental problems could be referred to. But, officially, it was forbidden to discuss anything at all: on one occasion they closed down the so-called recapitulatory group, because an inspector who had put in an unexpected appearance discovered that the tentimes table was being taught there, whereas, according to the syllabus, only the four rules of arithmetic were allowed to be taught". 15 She goes on to describe how Lenin worked in the circle:

"Vladimir Ilyich was interested in the minutest detail describing the conditions and life of the workers. Taking endeavoured to grasp the life of the worker as a whole-he tried to find what one could seize upon in order better to approach the worker with revolutionary propaganda. Most of the intellectuals of those days badly understood the workers. An intellectual would come to a circle and read the workers a kind of lecture. For a long time a manuscript translation of Engels' booklet, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, was passed round the circles. Vladimir Ilyich read with the workers from Marx's Capital, and explained it to them. The second half of the studies was devoted to workers' questions about their work and labour conditions. He showed them how their life was linked-up with the entire structure of society, and told them in what manner the existing order transformed. The combination of theory with practice was the particular feature of Vladimir Ilyich's work in the circles. Gradually other members of our circle also began to use this ap- In 1891 and 1892, a terrible famine 32 swept the country, causing widespread starvation in the villages and a steep rise in food prices. Hungry peasants flooded into the towns, willing to accept work at any price. The resulting hardship produced a wave of strikes, especially in the Centre and West of Russia, the centres of the textile industry, accompanied with clashes with police and Cossacks.

At this time, a nineteen-year old student called Yuri Martov, expelled from St Petersburg for revolutionary activity, arrived in Vilno, already a thriving centre of the Social Democracy. Here, in Lithuania and Byelorussia, the Jewish workers and the wholly Russified Jewish intelligentsia was carrying on a kind of agitation which was far more broadly based than the limited propaganda circle activity common in Russia proper. They published leaflets written in the language of the mass of Jewish workers-Yiddish-which dealt with the immediate demands of the masses. Watching the situation attentively from afar, Plekhanov immediately understood that a fundamental change was taking place which demanded a shift in the methods hitherto employed by the Russian Marxists. The famine had exposed the bankruptcy of the autocracy to an unparalleled degree. Its effects were felt by all sections of society-not just the workers and peasants, but even the bourgeois liberals, shaken out of the slough of despond, began to organise relief agencies to compensate for the complete paralysis of the state, using the local government "Zemvstvo"

tions. The idea of a representative assembly, a "Zemsky Sobor" began to gain ground among the liberal intelligentsia. Plekhanov seized the opportunity with both hands.

In his pamphlet All-Russian Ruin published in Sotsial Demokrat no 4, Plekhanov explained that the causes of the famine were not natural but social. Setting out from the chaotic situation brought about by the corruption and ineptitude of the authorities, he showed the need to conduct widespread propaganda and linking the concrete demands of the masses to the central idea of the overthrow of the autocracy. Of course, the slogan of a "Zemsky Sobor" in the hands of the liberals was given a completely reformist and therefore utopian character. Plekhanov, displaying a keen revolutionary instinct, advanced this demand as a militant, fighting slogan, as a means of mobilising the masses and attracting the best sections of the democratic intelligentsia to the idea of an open struggle against Tsarism. " All those honest Russians", "who do not belong to the world of

[page 32]

...

mere money-makers, kulaks, and Russian bureaucrats must at once begin to agitate for the Zemsky Sobor" Plekhanov's article represented the first concrete attempt to come to grips with the question of how to relate the workers' movement to the movement of other oppressed classes against the common enemy, tsarism. Under conditions of Tsarist enslavement, temporary and episodic blocs with the most radical elements of the petty bourgeoisie or even the bourgeois liberals inevitable.

Such were agreements, however, in no sense presupposed the existence of programmatic agreement. Un the contrary, the prior condition thereof was precisely that every party should march under its own banner: "march separately and strike together"

Revolutionary use of democratic slogans While defending the petty bourgeois democrats against tsarist persecution, and occasionally arriving at episodic agreements for practical questions such as the transportation of illegal literature, defence of arrested comrades the Marxists etc, simultaneously subjected them to a merciless and unremitting criticism for their vacillations and confusions. Such a policy was designed to make use of each and every opportunity to push the movement strengthening the position of Marxism and the independent class standpoint of the proletariat, in the same way that a mountain climber skilfully makes use of every chink and crevace in order to haul himself up to the summit. This policy had nothing in common with the latterday policies of the Mensheviks and Stalinists who, under the progressive , try to subordinate the working class movement to the so-called "progressive"

bourgeoisie. Both Plekhanov and, poured scorn on the idea of a "People's Front" which a section of the Narodniks were peddling even at this time. Before he became a Menshevik, when he still defended the ideas of revolutionary Marxism, Plekhanov answered those who accused him of frightening the liberals with the following rebuff: "In any case, we consider that the most harmful kind of 'frightening' is the frightening of socialists with the spectre of frightening the liberals". 17. The main thrust of Plekhanov's argument was that the economic ruin of our country can be averted only by its complete political emancipation".

• The appalling problems of the masses directly posed the question of revolutionary struggle against tsarism, in which the working class would play the key role. While, at this stage, no-one yet spoke of the possibility of a socialist revolution in Russia, the skilful use of revolutionary-democratic demands, like the convening of a Zemsky Sobor, undoubtedy played an important agitational role ın marshalling the revolutionary forces around the Marxist programme. The new emphasis upon mass revolutionary agitation caught many by surprise. Future Economists like Boris Krichevsky were not slow to criticise the Emancipation of Labour Group for alleged "constitutionalism", not understanding the need to advance democratic slogans alongside the elementary class demands of the proletariat. At the same time, many of the old hands even in Russia were reluctant to recognise the changed situa tion. The old habits of small propaganda circle activity died hard. In many cases, the transition to mass agitation was only accomplished after painful arguments and divisions.

Many years later, basing himself upon the experience of Russian Marxism, Trotsky wrote that: "Every working class party, every faction, during its initial stages, passes through a period of pure propaganda, ie the training of its cadres.

The period of existence as a Marxist circle invariably grafts habits of an abstract approach onto the problems of the workers' movement. Whoever is unable to step in time over the confines of this circumscribed transformed into a conservative sectarian".

• 18.

In his article On the Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats during the Famine in Russia (1892) Plekhanov gave the classic Marxist definition of the difference between propaganda and agitation:

"A sect can be satisfied with propaganda in the narrow sense of the word: a political party never... A propagandist gives many ideas to one or a few people, while an agitator gives only one or only a few ideas but to the mass of people... Yet history is made by the masses Thanks to agitation, the necessary link between the 'heroes and the 'crowd', between 'the masses' and 'their leaders' is forged and tempered." 19.

Plekhanov stressed the urgent necessity for the Marxists to penetrate the broadest layers of the masses with agitational slogans, beginning with the most immediate economic demands, such as the eight-hour day: the most backward—workers will be clearly convinced that the carrying out of at least some socialist measures is of value to the working class...

Such economic reforms as the shortening of the working day are good if only because they bring direct benefits to the workers". This gives the lie to the reformist opponents of Marxism who argue that the Marxists are "not interested in reform". On the contrary, throughout history, the Marxists have been in the forefront of the struggle for the improvement of the lot of the workers, fighting for better wages and conditions, shorter hours and democratic rights. The difference between Marxism and reformism does not consist in "acceptance" or otherwise of reforms (you only have to pose the question to see its patent absurdity, but, on the one hand, in the fact that serious reforms can only be won by mobilising the strength of the working class in struggle against the capitalists and their state and, on the other, that the only way to consolidate the gains made by the workers and to guarentee all their needs, is to break the power of Capital and carry out the socialist transformation of society. The latter is, however, unthinkable without the day-to-day struggle for advance under capitalism which serves to organise, train and educate the working-class, preparing the ground for the final settling of accounts with its enemies. The Vilno Programme I'he idea of agitation immediately caught the imagination of the youth inside Russia. Already many of the youngsters were growing impatient with the limitations of work in the pro paganda circles. The trial was blazed by the Social Democrats in the Western areas of Lithuania and Poland, where the Lodz strike and May Day demonstration of 1892 in. dicated the explosive nature of tbe situation.

The success of the Wilno group led

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MIR'Autumn 1985: Bolshevism Part Iwo

them to publish a pamphlet which caused quite a stir at the time: On

Agitation, written by Arkady Kremer

and Martov, became known as "The

Vilno Programme". • Despite traces of "spontaneism" ', the document, with its central idea that the task of the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves

aroused a lot of interest in the period

1893-97 when furious discussions

were taking place everywhere on the turn to agitation. It basically represented a healthy reaction against the narrow "small circle" mentality and a desire to forge contacts with the masses.

In her Memories of Lenin, Krup-

skaya recalls that:

"When the Vino pamphlet On Agitation appeared the following year, the ground was already fully prepared for the conducting of agitation by leaflets. It was only necessary to start work. The method of agitation on the basis of the wörkers' everyday needs became rooted deeply in our party work. I only fully understood how fruitful this method of work was some years later when, living as an emigre in France, 1 observed how, during the tremendous postal strike in Paris, the French Socialist Party stood completely aside and did not intervene in the strike. It was the business of the trade unions, they said. They thought the work of the party was simply the political struggle. They had not the remotest notion as to the necessity for connecting up the economic and industrial struggles". '. 21.

The success of the new approach is reflected in Trotsky's autobiography:

"We found the workers more susceptible to revolutionary propaganda than we had ever in our wildest dreams imagined. The amazing effectiveness of our work fairly intoxicated us. From revolutionary tales. we knew that the workers won over by propaganda were usually to be counted in single numbere. A revolutionary who converted two or three men to socialism thought he had done a good job of work, whereas with us, the number of workers who joined or wanted to join the groups seemed to be unlimited. The only shortage was in the matter of instruction and in literature. The teachers had to snatch from each other in turn the single soiled copy of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels that had been translated by many hands in Odessa, with many gaps and mutilations of the text.

"Soon we began to produce a literature of our own: this was, properly speaking, the beginning of my revolutionary work, which almost coincided with the start of my revolutionary activities. I wrote proclama-

Members of the St Petersburg Union for the Liberation of the Working Class. In the centre is Lenin. To his left, seated, is Martov.

tions and articles and printed them all out in longhand for the hectograph. At that time we didn't even know of the existence of typewriters. I printed the letters with the utmost care, considering it a point of honour to make them clear enough so that even the less literate could read our proclamations without any trouble. It took me about two hours to a page. Sometimes I didn't unbend my back for a week, cutting my work short only for meetings and study in the groups.

"But what a satisfied feeling I had when I received the information from the mills and workshops that the workers read voraciously the mysterious sheets printed in purple ink, passing them about from hand to hand as they discussed them! They pictured the author as some strange and mighty person who in some mysterious way had penetrated into the mills and knew what was going on in the workshops, and twenty-four hours later passed his comment on events in newly-printed handbills".

By means of a bold participation in agitation, the influence of Marxism grew by leaps and bounds among ever wider layers of the working class. Despite the smallness of their forces and the tremendously difficult objective situation, the Marxists had at last broken down the barriers separating them from the masses. The road was now open for the creation of a strong united party of the Russian proletariat. Part three of Alan Woods' series of articles on the History of Bolshevism will appear in the next edition of the MIR.

Footnotes

1. Perepiska Aksel'roda, p87.

2. Quoted in T Dan's "The Origins of Bolshevism' p 141.

3. Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB Aksel'roda, p66.

4. Op cit p61.

5. Krupskaya, 'Memories of Lenin', pp12-13.

6. Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB Aksel'roda, p21.

7. Bor'ba za Sozdanie Marksistskoi partii v Rossii (1894- 1904) p3.

8. Trotsky 'History of the Russian Revolution', p32.

9. Figures from I Dan 'The Origins of Bolshevism', p150 and BH Sumner 'Survey of Russian History, pp324-331. 10. Lenin, 'Collected Works, Volume 2, pp29-73.

1l. Speech reprinted in 'Nachalo Rabochego Duizheniya i Rasprostranie Marksisma v Rossii (1883-1894) p96. 12. Lenin, 'Collected Works, Volume 2', p38. 13. Istoriya KPSS, Volume One, p100. 14. Many years later, in December 1922, Lenin was to write a brief note on Fedoseyev to the Party History Commission in which he described his old mentor as "this exceptionally talented and exceptionally devoted revolutionary". Lenin, 'Collected Works, Volume 33', pp432-3. 15. Krupskaya, 'Memories of Lenin', p6. 16. Krupskaya, Op cit pp 6-7. 17. Plekhanov, Sochineniya Volume 1, p403. 18. Trotsky, 'Writings 1935-36', p153 19. Quoted in V Akimou, 'On the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism', p17.

20. Op cit, p17.

21. Krupskaya, 'Memories of 22. Trotsky 'My Life', p110.

V Plekhanova i PB

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Letters

THE EDITORS welcome all reports, suggestions or criticisms from our readers about the journal, the response it receives from labour movement activists, or comments on general developments in society or the labour movement. We do, however, reserve the right to shorten letters which are excessively long.

Letters for inclusion in the next issue should be sent by 18 October to the MIR, Letters, 3 - 13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB. The views expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect the ideas of the Editorial Board.

Dear MIR,

May I congratulate the editors of the MIR for the exceptional improvements achieved in the latest issue (No 29) of the journal. There is still, of course, room for further developments both in terms of size and content. In that respect I have some suggestions for the editors to consider.

From reading the Militant pamphlet, 'Britain in Crisis' by Ted Grant, it is obvious that during the next decade or so the opportunities will arise for the working class to take power. This would confront the working class, and the Marxists within or at the head of the workers organisations, with the task of begining the construction of a socialist society. Alas there is not a great deal of writing on the actual tasks involved in constructing such a society, especially on the problems an advanced industrial country would face.

There is a lot of theoretical literature by the great writers on the need for a Marxist leadership, its role and methods in bringing about a socialist transformation of society. Also most Marxists have an understanding of how a socialist society will be run after capitalist society is swept aside, the workers have consolidated themselves in power, and socialism has established itself. But the transformation from the old order to the new is rarely touched upon, although it is likey that in our lifetime we will experience such an event. I believe that this is a compelling reason why an article or series of articles

on the question of what would be called the transitional period from capitalism to socialism should appear in the MIR to bring this question into the minds of our readers.

Although specific problems obviously cannot be foreseen it should be possible in general terms to explain how society would be run in the transitional period from a theoretical understanding of the likely developments.

Although we have the Russian revolution of 1917 and the events that followed to draw upon, we still have never had a successful transformation in an advanced industrial country and hence the transitional period that would follow is in a lot of ways unchartered ground. For instance, some grey areas that would need attention would be the legal system, the courts, judges, police etc. What would they be replaced with and by what means? Because the coming to power of the workers is only the first step to socialism the evils generated through the system of capitalism will still be prevalent and unfortunately will not disappear overnight. To mind come crimes such as rape, child offences etc. Another question would be in relation to the defence of the revolution. Would there still be a need to keep a standing army trained in the sophisticated techniques of modern conventional warfare?

Finally 1 think that for socialists merely to say that to break with capitalism the state machine needs to be smashed, is not enough. Marxists have a duty to explain that much used statement to understand what is meant by it. I hope that the editors will be able to produce some articles on the transitional period for the reader of the MIR to discuss and understand.

Yours fraternally

Andy Price

London FBU member

Dear Militant,

Congratulations on the latest MIR and I keenly await the next issue, particularly because of the editorial which for me pulls together all the confusing events and changes that are going on in

Britain, giving a much clearer view of what is actually happening.

But I'm specificly writing to you about the article on famine and food production, which has caused some controversy among the comrades that I know.

This is particularly relevant in the light of the recent, well publicised, Live Aid for Africa concerts. Events in which largely working class people have given large sums of their hard earned money to feed the victims of famine and starvation in Africa. This, I believe destroys the reactionary myth about workers being inherently racist and also reflects the growing anger among youth about the things that are going on in the world around them and what can be done about it.

The arguments from the article ranged around the possibilities inherent in science. Some of the more bizarre examples quoted were given without any real explanation and the thrust of the article seemed to be that any developments in science were naturally an advantage and desirable.

One comrade (apparently following this to its conclusion) put it to me that if some people were concerned about the feelings of animals, all we would need to do was breed animals without brains. Apart from doubting the practicallity of this I don't think that we'd want to be doing things like that.

Anyway I thought that some of the ideas in the article were put across in too bald a manner.

I believe that the point is, that only when the working people of the world establish a socialist society will they be able to use science and technology to feed the world and within that, they will decide what is necessary • and desirable.

We might well decide that raising animals for food, the methods of factory farming, or even eating meat are unnecessary and undesirable.

Yours fraternally

Chris Parry

Postman/driver

Bristol

[page 35]