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To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the 1926 general strike the MIR prints two articles by Leon Trotsky, the first a preface to Where is Britain going? (second German edition), written on 6 May 1926. A General Strike... The sharpest form of class struggle Yemen will probably consolidate their rule and perfect a one party totalitarian state which would not allow for any further opposition to develop within the framework of the ruling party. Thus the fate of South Yemen is the fate of all the countries where deformed workers' states have been set up, progressive on the one hand with the abolition of landlordism and capitalism, but reactionary in the setting up of one-party dictatorships without democracy for the workers and peasants. The final fate of South Yemen will be decided during the course of the revolution in Asia, in Europe and in the industrialised countries of the world.
A YEAR ago the Conservative government was still on its honey. moon. Baldwin was preaching social peace. With nothing to oppose to Conservatism, MacDonald rivalled it in hatred of revolution, civil war and class struggle. The leaders of all three parties pronounced the institutions of Britain entirely adequate to ensuring peaceful collaboration between the classes. Naturally, the revolutionary prognosis for the future of the British Empire made in this book (Where is Britain Going-Ed) was declared by the whole of the British press-from the Morning Post to Lansbury's Labour Weekly-to be hopeless drivel and Moscow phantasmagoria.
Today the situation looks somewhat. different. Britain is convulsed by a huge mass strike. The Conservative government is carrying on a policy of onslaught. From the top, everything is being done to provoke open civil war. The contradiction between basic social facts and the fraud of an outlived Parliamentarianism has been revealed in Britain as never The mass strike arose from the imbalance between the current position of the British economy on the world market and the traditional industrial and class relations within the country. Formally the question at issue was one of reducing miners' wages, lengthening their working day and throwing part of the sacrifices necessary for a serious reorganisation of the coal industry onto the workers' shoulders. Put in this way the question is insoluble. It is perfectly true that the coal industry, and indeed the British economy as a whole, cannot be reorganised without sacrifices on the == of the British proletariat, and For further reading see the article by Ted Grant 'The Colonial Revolution and the deformed workers states'
in Militant International Review, No 14, Summer 1978, 50p, postage included, from World Socialist Books, 3/13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB.
substantial ones at that. But only a wretched fool can imagine that the British proletariat will agree to shoulder these sacrifices on the old foundations of private property. Capitalism has been portrayed as a system of continual progress and consistent improvement in the lot of the labouring masses. This used to be the case to a certain extent, at least in some countries during the nineteenth century. In Britain the religion of capitalist progress was more potent than anywhere else. And it was just this that formed the foundation of the conservative tendencies in the labour movement itself and especially in the trade unions. Britain's wartime illusions (1914- 1918) were, more than anywhere else, capitalist might and social 'progress'. Roots of conflict In the victory over Germany these hopes were supposed to find their highest fulfilment. Yet now bourgeois society says to the miners: 'If you want to secure for yourselves at least the kind of existence you had before the war, you must reconcile yourselves to a worsening of all your conditions of life over an indefinite period'. Instead of the perspective of uninterrupted social progress recently held out to them, the miners are invited to move down one step today so as to avoid tumbling down three or more steps tomorrow. This is a declaration of bankruptcy on the part of British capitalism. The general strike is the answer of the proletariat, which will not and cannot allow the bankruptcy of British capitalism to signify the bankruptcy of the British nation and 19 MILITANT TERNATIONAL ISSUE No 14 TERNATIONAL SUMMER 1978 40p INSIDE:
The Colonial The Brutal Face Resolution and 01 lors ism the Workers'
hehind the States 'Liberal' mash This answer, however, has been dictated by the logic of the situation far more than by the logic of consciousness. The British working class had no other choice. The struggle, whatever its backstage mechanics, was thrust upon it by the mechanical pressure of the whole set of circumstances. The world position of the British economy did not leave the material basis for a voluntary compromise. The Thomases, MacDonalds and the rest ended up like windmills whose sails turn in a strong wind but tail to produce a single pound of flour because there is no corn for them to grind. The hopeless emptiness of present-day British reformism has round itself so convincingly unmasked that the reformists were left with no other recourse than to take part in the mass strike of the proletariat. This revealed the strength of the strikebut also its weakness.
A general strike is the sharpest form of class struggle. It is only one step from the general strike to armed insur- This is precisely why the rection.
general strike, more than any other form of class struggle, requires clear, distinct, resolute and therefore revolutionary leadership. In the current strike of the British proletariat there is not a ghost of such a leadership, and it is not to be expected that it can be conjured up out of the ground. The General Council of the Trades Union Congress set out with the ridiculous statement that the present general strike did not represent a political struggle and did not in any event constitute an assault upon the state power of the bankers, industrialists and la= downers, or upon the sanctits c: British parliamentarianism. This 50=: loyal and submissive declara: = ::
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General MIR Summer war does not, however, appear the least bit convincing to the government, which feels the real instruments of rule slipping out of its hands under the effect of the strike. State power is not an 'idea' but a material apparatus. When the apparatus of government and suppression is paralysed the state power itself is thereby paralysed. In modern society no-one can hold power without controlling the railways, shipping posts, telegraphs, power stations, coal and so on. The fact that Mac- Donald and Thomas have sworn to renounce any political objectives may typify them personally but it in no way typifies the nature of the general strike which if carried through to the end sets the revolutionary class the task of organising a new state power. Fighting against this with all their might, however, are those very people who by the course of events have been placed 'at the head' of the general strike. And in this the main danger lies. Men who did not want the general strike, who deny the political nature of the general strike, and fear above all the consequences of a victorious strike, must inevitably direct all their efforts towards keeping it within the bounds of a semi-political semi-strike, that is to say, towards emasculating it.
1986: General Strike
Leadership decisive
We must look facts in the face: the principal efforts of the official Labour Party leaders and of a considerable number of official trade union leaders will be directed not towards paralysing the bourgois state by means of the strike but towards paralysing the general strike by means of the bourgeois state. The government in the shape of its most die-hard Conservatives will without doubt want to provoke a small-scale civil war so as to gain the opportunity of applying measures of terror before the struggle has fully unfolded and so throw the movement back. By depriving the strike of a political programme, dissipating the revolutionary will of the proletariat and driving the movement up a blind alley the reformists are thereby pushing individual groups of workers on to the path of uncoordinated revolts. In this sense the reformists go towards meeting the most fascist elements in the Conservative Party. There lies the principal danger of the struggle now opening up.
Now is not the time to predict the duration, the course and still less the outcome of the struggle. Everything must be done on an international scale to aid the fighters and improve their chances of success. But it must be clearly recognised that such success is possible only to the extent that the British working class, in the process of the development and sharpening of
the general strike, realises the need to change its leadership, and measures up to that task. There is an American proverb which says that you cannot change horses in mid-stream. But this practical wisdom is true only within certain limits. The stream of revolution has never been crossed on the horse of reformism, and the class which has entered the struggle under opportunist leadership will be compelled to change it under enemy fire. The conduct of the really revolutionary elements in the British proletariat and above all the communists is predetermined by this. They will uphold the unity of mass action by every means; but they will not permit even the semblance of unity with the opportunist leaders of the Labour Party and the trade unions. An implacable strug gle against every act of treachery or attempted treachery and the ruthless exposure of the reformists' illusions are the main elements in the work of the genuine revolutionary participants in the general strike. In this they will not only aid the fundamental and protracted task of developing new cadres, without which the victory of the British proletariat is wholly impossible, but they will directly assist the success of this strike by deepening it, uncovering its revolutionary tendencies, thrusting the opportunists aside and strengthening the position of the revolutionaries. The results of the strike, both the immediate and the more remote, will be the more significant the more resolutely the revolutionary force of the masses sweeps away the barriers erected by the counter-revolutionary leadership.
The strike cannot of itself alter the position of British capitalism, and the coal industry in particular, on the
world market. This requires the reorganisation of the whole British economy. The strike is only a sharp expression of this necessity. The programme for reorganising the British
economy is the programme of a new power, a uew sute and a new class.
The fundamental importance of the general strike is that it poses the question of power point-blank. A real victory for the general strike lies only in
the winning of power by the proletariat and the establishment of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. In view
of the insolvency of British capitalism,
the general strike is less able than at
any other time to be made a vehicle of
reforms or partial gains. To be more
precise, even if the mineowners or the
government were to make this or that
economic concession under pressure of
the strike, such concessions could not,
by virtue of the whole situation, be of
a profound, still less of a lasting
significance.
This in no way means, however, that
the present strike faces the alter-
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native: all or nothing. If the British proletariat had a leadership that came near to corresponding to its class strength and the ripeness of the conditions, power would pass out of the hands of the Conservatives and into the hands of the proletariat within a few weeks. But such an outcome cannot be relied upon. This again does not mean that the strike is futile. The more broadly it develops, the more powerfully it shakes the foundations of capitalism and the further back it thrusts the treacherous and opportunist leaders the harder it will be for bourgeois reaction to go over to the counter-offensive, the less proletarian organisations will suffer, and the sooner will follow the next, more decisive stage of the fight.
A tremendous lesson
The present collision of the classes will be a tremendous lesson and have immediate consequences, quite apart from its immediate results. It will become plain to every proletarian in Britain that Parliament is powerless to solve the basic and most vital tasks of the country. The question of the economic salvation of Britain will henceforth confront the proletariat as a question of the conquest of power. All the intervening, mediating, compromising pseudo-pacifist elements will be dealt a mortal blow. The Liberal Party, however much its leaders may twist and turn, will emerge from such an ordeal even more insignificant than it entered it. Within the Conservative Party the most die-hard elements will obtain a preponderance. Within the Labour Party the revolutionary wing will gain in organisation and influence. The Communists will advance decisively. The revolutionary development of Britain will take a gigantic stride towards its denouement.
In the light of the mighty strike wave now under way, the questions of evolution and revolution, of peaceful development and the use of force, of reforms and class dictatorship, will grip the consciousness of British workers in their hundreds of thousands and millions, with all their acuteness. Of this there can be no doubt. The British proletariat, kept by the bourgeoisie and its Fabian agents in a state of horrifying ideological backwardness, will now spring forward like a lion. Material conditions in Britain have long been ripe for socialism. The strike has placed on the agenda the replacement of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state. If the strike itself does not produce this change, it will bring it far closer. The exact date we cannot say. But we should be prepared for it to be early.
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