Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism (Torkil Lauesen)

Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism
Author	Torkil Lauesen
Publisher	Iskra Books
First published	2024
Type	Book
PDF	https://annas-archive.org/md5/9dac3994453ab0cf3ba51d92fefb8ace

Introduction: Why This Book?

Let me begin on a personal note—my motivation to write the book. I have been studying the political economy and history of capitalism since the late 1960s, collecting a pile of puzzle pieces of information. When one gets old, there is a tendency to move towards “grand theory.” One wants to assemble the puzzle and get the full picture and understand the process, trying to envision in which direction it is moving.

Most of my writing has been concerned with critiquing capitalism and imperialism. Sometimes I have been challenged with this question: “I share your critique of capitalism, but what about the alternative? There have been many attempts to build socialism in the past, but they have not been very successful, neither in terms of delivering material goods nor democracy.” In this book, I respond to this line of argument. When one tries to write the history of the efforts to build socialism, one writes not only against hundreds of years of the European sense of superiority and anticommunism, but also against the disillusioned socialists whose ideals have been betrayed. However, the establishment of socialism is not some kind of ingenious social engineering. Socialism is developed based on technology and knowledge—the productive forces of capitalism. When the capitalist mode of production—the way it manages society—stands in the way of the development of the productive forces, then the transformation to socialism becomes possible. How is this contradiction expressed? In the form of structural political and economic crises and in the current destruction of the foundation of human life itself. These crises give rise to class struggles, which contain within them the transformative power towards socialism. Industrial capitalism has now lasted for two hundred years and is reaching a turning point where it has become a serious burden for the development of humanity on earth.

Unfortunately, we have inherited more than just technology and scientific knowledge from capitalism: its culture of selfishness and greed will not simply disappear, nor will the ecological problems it has created. Socialism is not destined to succeed capitalism. Capitalism can collapse in a brutal, chaotic endgame of wars and natural disasters. To avoid this is our task; and to accomplish that task, we must fulfill the transition to socialism. To do this, we need to learn from the past and mobilize, organize, and develop a strategy for future struggles. The purpose of analyzing the attempts to build socialism is not just to understand the world as it is; but to develop the strategies to produce the world as it should be. To see the struggle for socialism as a long process of global transformation since the mid-nineteenth century is also somehow comforting on a psychological level for an old man. The struggle and suffering of millions of communists and socialists for the past two hundred years have not been in vain, but are contributions to this long process of crating a better world. To be part of this process—a tiny cogwheel in the machinery of transformation—and give it a little push in the right direction seems to be “the meaning of life.” Not founded in some religion or a belief in life after death, but founded in historical materialism and the meaning of life before death—to hand over a world more equal and in balance with nature to future generations. The problem for the next generation, however, is that we are running out of time. Our task—as the subjective forces—is to work for a transformation of the system into a more democratic and equal world order, in balance with nature, in the next several decades.

In this book, I examine the major revolutionary attempts from 1848 to the present to see what can be learned in terms of building an organization and developing political and economic strategies. There are many revolutions and struggles that I do not cover, or which are only mentioned in passing, due to space constraints of a book that is already long.

To see the transition as a long and global process is not only a matter of theory: it also has practical political implications. The current lack of confidence in socialism is to a great extent due to the disappointment with the experiences of socialism in the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam, Mozambique, and so on. However, these experiences were not experiences of socialism. They were a series of efforts to build socialism within the sea of capitalism. In fact, only Stalin claimed that socialism was established in the Soviet Union in 1936.

These transformations towards socialism have taken place within the framework of, and in dialectical relations with, capitalism. The different stages of the development of capitalism have had a huge impact on the attempt to build socialism, and the attempts to build socialism have modified the development of capitalism. I have described the history of capitalism in my book The Global Perspective; however, in this book, I focus instead on socialism itself to draw some lessons for the development of a strategy for the coming struggle.1

The quest for socialism is as old as capitalism, and the idea of a society without exploitation is much older. Thomas More (1478–1535) wrote Utopia in 1516 about a society where the community came before profit, private property was unknown, and in which workers controlled the means of production. The French author Pierre Leroux (1797–1871) is credited for coining the term “socialism,” derived from the Latin word socialis, meaning sociable. In the beginning, it was connected to the idea of a “social contract.” Robert Owen (1771–1858) used the word as early as 1835. In the 1840s the word socialism was used to mean a social system based on state or other forms of collective ownership of the means of production and regulation of distribution to common benefit for all members of society. The word “communism” derived from the Latin communis, meaning common, and appeared in the 1840s as a theory that promotes the abolition of private property and the organization of work to the benefit of all members of society.

In the first part of the 1840s, Karl Marx and Frederich Engels were not very accommodating to these early utopian forms of socialism and communism. Theorists such as Moses Hess (1812–1875) and Wilhelm Weitling (1808–1871) dragged Marx and Engels toward socialism. Weitling, a prominent figure in early German communism, was a tailor. As opposed to the utopians, he did not believe in reforms from the ruling classes; instead, the workers should organize themselves and carry out the revolution. Later, in April 1846, Marx broke off his relationship with Weitling due to differences over how to organize the working class. In 1890, Engels, in a new preface to the Communist Manifesto, described the socialist and communist movement in 1847:

'Nevertheless, when it appeared, we could not have called it a socialist manifesto. In 1847, two kinds of people were considered socialists. On the one hand were the adherents of the various utopian systems, notably the Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France, both of whom, at that date, had already dwindled to mere sects gradually dying out. On the other, the manifold types of social quacks who wanted to eliminate social abuses through their various universal panaceas and all kinds of patch-work, without hurting capital and profit in the least. In both cases, people who stood outside the labor movement and who looked for support rather to the “educated” classes. The section of the working class, however, which demanded a radical reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political revolutions were not enough, then called itself Communist. It was still a rough-hewn, only instinctive and frequently somewhat crude communism. Yet, it was powerful enough to bring into being two systems of utopian communism—in France, the “Icarian” communists of Cabet, and in Germany that of Weitling. Socialism in 1847 signified a bourgeois movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, quite respectable, whereas communism was the very opposite. And since we were very decidedly of the opinion as early as then that “the emancipation of the workers must be the task of the working class itself,” we could have no hesitation as to which of the two names we should choose. Nor has it ever occurred to us to repudiate it.' 2

During their lifetimes, Marx and Engels developed their perception of socialism and communism without pointing out or explaining the differences, perhaps because they did not believe in a fixed and ideal definition of socialism. It was a mode of production that would originate out of a specific historical situation which to a large extent would define its content.

Engels, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, identifies the founders of socialism as Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), Owen, and Charles Fourier (1772–1837), and he refers to the “actual communistic theories” of Étienne-Gabriel Morelly and Gabriel Bonnot de Mably.3 Proudhon and Louis Blanc both produced plans for a communist organization of society in the first part of the nineteenth century. Marx was familiar with this tradition and assimilated, criticized, and modified many of his predecessors’ ideas. From Saint-Simon stems the idea of a planned economy; from Proudhon Marx heard that “property is theft”; from Louis Blanc the precept “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Lenin states that Marx’s ideas are a synthesis of French socialism, German idealist philosophy, and British political economy. 4 However, there is something more to add.

Marx’s work was part of the scientific breakthroughs of the mid-nineteenth-century and the subsequent organization of knowledge into modern academic disciplines. Besides the significant developments in the social sciences, there were major discoveries in natural science, the earth’s geological history, biological cells, the origins of species, and energy transformation. Marx’s ideas were highly influenced by natural science. One example is Marx’s theory of the metabolic rift.5 It was built on the German chemist Justus von Liebig’s observations of how nutrients were systematically removed from the soil in the form of agricultural products and shipped hundreds and even thousands of miles to the new urban centers. The result was pollution in the cities and less fertile soil. Based on Liebig’s research, Marx’s critique of political economy included an ecological critique dialectically connected to his overall analysis of capitalist production. The capitalist mode of production disrupted human relations to nature and thereby “provoke[d] an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself.”6 Marx also developed the notion of sustainability, arguing that humans do not own the earth but need to sustain it for future generations as “good heads of the household.” Socialism was defined in Volume III of Capital as the rational regulation by the associated producers of the metabolism of nature and society to conserve energy and promote human development. 7

The new scientists, such as Charles Darwin and Liebig, shared the same materialist perception of how and why things happen. Marx was an empirical scientist par excellence. He used statistics, reports, parliamentary proceedings, figures, and trade and shipping logs as empirical support for his theories. What makes Marx special among contemporaneous scientists was that he connected different parts of science into a systemic theory: history, sociology, economics, and different parts of natural science

What distinguished Marx and Engels from their predecessors is that communism was no utopian dream but a realistic endeavor based on a scientific theory of history: historical materialism. Just as the rising bourgeoisie had overthrown feudalism to create capitalism, the working class would overthrow capitalism and construct communism. Marx did not specify how a socialist society should be run. However, he reckoned that progress in technology would upend classes, abolish capitalism, and make an equitable and prosperous future possible and likely. One of the first times that Marx and Engels wrote about communism is in The German Ideology, written in 1845-46:

'This ‘alienation’ (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism. Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers – the utterly precarious position of labour – power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life – presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical” existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history. Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.' 8

What Marx and Engels are doing here is giving a credible forecast of the possible development of communism. As it does not exist, one cannot analyze it. The premise for the development of communism is that the vast majority of the masses are proletarians: propertyless wage laborers. A certain level in the development of the productive forces is also necessary. Socialism with less developed productive forces would only mean the generalization of poverty. Another strategic insight is that it is hard to imagine that communism can exist as a local project: it would produce hostility with the surrounding capitalist world. And finally, that communism is not “an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself,” it is a “movement which abolishes the present state of things” on the conditions of the existing world. All these thoughts were presented in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Communism and socialism are no longer utopian ideas of a better society, but a prognosis built on an analysis of history, sociology, and a critique of political economy.

Abstract of The Book

I take a long and global perspective in my investigation of the struggle for socialism. Since capitalism was born, developed, and accumulated as a world system, the analytic perspective has to be global. In addition, the transformation towards socialism must comprise the vast majority of the world system to be effective. The many local and national attempts to build socialism in the past two centuries have to be seen as part of a long transition process rather than failures, attempts which have contributed to the progress of the transition by modifying capitalism, as well as to the learning process of how to develop socialism. Historical periods do not follow one another as one step follows the other. “History moves often in leaps and bounds and in a zigzag line,” as mentioned by Engels, and the different modes of production interpenetrate and coexist over a long period of time. 9 Any national revolution is a factor in changing the nature of not only a single nation, but also the entire world system. The way capitalism works today is a product of the Russian Revolution and Soviet industrialization, the anti-colonial uprisings in the Third World, the 1968 uprising, and the current Chinese development of socialism.

This book is divided into three parts. In the first part, I present my method, its core concepts and some theoretical and philosophical reflections to be used in the analysis. As the development of capitalism is a global process, this process has a principal contradiction, which shapes the transformation towards socialism. The principal contradiction is the specific historical presentation of the general contradiction in capitalism between the development of the productive forces and the mode of production. The principal contradiction changes over time as the balance of its aspects changes, through feedback from class struggle generated by the contradiction. Since the theme of the book is the transition from capitalism to socialism, I also discuss the basic difference between the two modes of production. The first part ends with a discussion of some moral aspects of political struggle.

In the second part, I use these methods and concepts to analyze the history of major revolutions and their interactions with the capitalist world system. The Russian and Chinese revolutions and their subsequent attempts to construct socialism are of course important elements of my analysis. So are the revolutionary spirit of “the long sixties” and the various other attempts to build socialism in the Third World. However, this is not primarily a history book. I focus on forms of political action, types of movements and their form of organization, strategies, and tactics. What are the lessons to be learned from different struggles?

Marx and Engels had a general vision of the transition from capitalism to socialism as a series of revolutions starting in Western Europe and spreading globally driven by a proletarian struggle with a degree of international coordination and solidarity. Hence the need to organize “The International.”

With Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the creation of a new type of long-term professional revolutionary, the strategy for the world revolution, and the construction of socialism became a bit more specific. The revolutionary center had moved from the core of the advanced capitalist countries to its margins—Russia and China—due to their position as “weak links” in the capitalist world system.

This development was a consequence of the polarizing effect created by the colonial expansion of capitalism, which dampened the revolutionary spirit in the advanced countries in the West, yet amplified the need for a revolution in the East.

This change of location within the world system also changed the model of transition from capitalism to socialism. In traditional Marxist thinking, the socialist mode of production does not develop within the old capitalist mode of production (as capitalism within feudalism), but rather replaces it when capitalism has exhausted its possibility to develop productive forces. However, in Russia and China, capitalism was under-developed: the revolutions occurred because their route to the development of productive forces within the world system was blocked by imperialism. The long transition from capitalism to socialism has therefore evolved not only through the class struggle between capital and labor on the national level, but also through struggles between states who wanted to promote capitalism and the post-revolutionary states who want to use elements of capitalism to develop their productive forces in order to build socialism.

On the one hand, we have a history of two hundred years of unsuccessful attempts to end capitalism and construct socialism. The term “socialism” in this process is discredited in many ways. On the other hand, it is obvious to more and more people that capitalism cannot continue, as its form of accumulation creates misery along with the destruction of the global environment. Capitalism is ripe for replacement by another mode of production, which can provide an equal, democratic world in balance with nature. But this leaves many questions: replacement by what, and how? Which way is China heading? Are new revolutions on the horizon as consequences of the capitalist crises? Will capitalism break down in chaos from which a “lifeboat socialism” will emerge?

The third part of this book draws some lessons on how to construct socialism. The socialist mode of production is not an ideal utopia—it is a solution to the problems caused by centuries of capitalism. The capitalist mode of production has turned from a dynamic system, leading to the huge development of the productive forces, to a system that blocks the solution to global problems and thereby the continuation of human development on Earth. The continued development of the productive forces demands a socialist mode of production. The task is to develop this mode of production as a realistic, rational praxis of how we manage society. How do we produce, divide, and consume the social products to solve global inequality and ecological problems?

In the final part of the book, I analyze the structural crises of capitalism and try to cast some light on possible roads toward socialism. I do not believe that capitalism will survive this century. Capitalism reached its zenith around 2000. It is still dominant, but is in decline, reflected in the turn from neoliberal economic globalization towards military defense of a US hegemony that is no longer economically based. The decline of US hegemony and the rise of China as a driver for a more multipolar world system can lead to a geopolitical balance, in which social movements and nations in the global South can move in the direction of socialism. The situation has some similarities with the “long sixties” (1955-1975) when the balance between the US and the socialist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, opened up space for decolonization with a socialist perspective. However, at that time Western capitalism was still virile. It was superior in technological terms, as it was leading in industrial production and it ruled the world market. The Third World couldn’t turn national liberation into economic liberation from imperialism. The socialist bloc at the time did not have the technological and economic strength to support such a change. The Third World was not able to cut off the pipelines of imperialism. Instead, US imperialism wriggled free of the anti-imperialist offensive and launched neoliberal globalization as a counterattack, which gave it forty golden years under US hegemony. The situation is different today. The US is no longer the driving force in the development of the productive forces on a global scale. They do not have a monopoly on high-tech development, and they do not dominate global trade.

While the socialist bloc already was in a political and economic downturn in the late 1970s, China has a tailwind. It is the leading industrial producer and the biggest actor in the world market. It is the driving force behind the effort to establish a multipolar world-system. The inter- governmental organization BRICS has united the largest Global South economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. In August 2023, it also added Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates. As the membership indicates, it is not a socialist bloc, or even an anti-imperialist bloc. It includes very reactionary and conservative capitalist regimes. What unites them is that they no longer believe that the interests of the West are equivalent to their interests. They want to develop an alternative to the U.S. dollar-dominated trade and financial system. Many other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are supporting this agenda. This is significant for shifts in the world balance, as it is now increasingly South-South after 500 years of uneven North-South economic relations. The decline of US hegemony and the emerging alternative financial world-system may give the Third World the possibility to accomplish the economic transformation it could not make in the 1970s.

Imperialism is crumbling. The ruling elite has calculated that the U.S. cannot compete with China economically, making China’s rise an existential threat to the future of U.S.-led imperialism. This made the U.S. switch strategies from economic competition to geopolitical territorial rivalry. However, in this process of economic warfare—using boycotts, blockades, and economic punishment packets—the transnational institutions built under neoliberalism are eroding. The globalized market of neoliberalism is split apart. The U.S. is destroying the goose which, for the past few decades, was laying golden eggs.

The transformation towards socialism can be smooth as the Global South gradually delinks from imperialism, building socialism with different national characteristics and creating an alternative international economic world order. Or, the transformation can be traumatic, result ing in global wars, including the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Then the transition will be, if not “the end,” then starting from scratch. We must avoid this outcome; we must avoid revolutionary adventurism in our strategy. If capitalism is still dominant in the second part of the century, then catastrophic economic and social problems related to climate change will play a huge role. It is in these unstable and dramatic circumstances that the end-game of capitalism must be played out. The strategy for this struggle is discussed at the end of the book.

In my analyses and discussions, I hope to develop a form of applied thinking that does not reduce itself to pragmatic or cynical reformism, nor turn into a critique based on abstract or romantic ideals of communism, nor devolve into explanations based on conspiracy and personal treason. Much discussion related to the development of socialism has focused on the struggle between different political lines within communist parties operating first in the Soviet Union and later in China instead of the actual material conditions which these lines represent. My judgment of these struggles does not rest on some sacred socialist values but on being rational. When things go wrong, it is not necessarily because of mistakes or treason of subjective forces, nor because of communists betraying the “true” values of socialism. The history I want to review is not a history of morals. For a materialist approach, the questions of betrayal or rectitude have only minor relevance. The struggle for socialism is a collective project, created by the effort and support of millions over the past two hundred years. A specific economic and political constellation in the world system can make it impossible to move in the direction of social- ism at any given point in history. A detour might be necessary. This does not mean that there are always excuses when things go wrong. Mistakes and treason do happen. However, we should be careful to not retreat to idealism and hand down a quick verdict, but rather conduct a dialectical historical materialist analysis of the facts so we might learn from history.

Marx and Engels were hesitant to describe communism in specific details because the development of the new mode of production would not be the result of ideal imagination. Marx and Engels “rigidly refused to paint pictures of future communist society,” as Eric Hobsbawm says. Marx did not paint pictures with brush and oil: he took photographs of the world. That is to say, he sought the development of communism in the context of the real movement.10 An analysis of the “real movement” is a necessary step toward developing a communist practice worthy of its name. The possibility of a successful and stable transition towards socialism will be limited if it only takes place in one country or region. There has not been one sole socialist country at any point in time. Not in the Soviet Union nor in China or elsewhere. Socialism in one country has obviously not been a success. A genuine and comprehensive transfer from capitalism to socialism has to involve the majority of the world. Capitalism is a global system, and the attempts to escape it from any nation-state have immediately been confronted by the surrounding dominant capitalist powers. However, the road towards global socialism passes necessarily through national struggles. The national state is still the primary political framework in the world system. Thus, any national struggle has to be fought with a clear understanding of the global perspective, prioritizing internationalism both in terms of economic and political cooperation.

There have been many attempts to build socialism in the past. Their failure does not necessarily mean that their strategies were wrong, that their attempts were fruitless, or that their mission is impossible. The transformation from capitalism toward socialism is a long ongoing historical process of effort, learning, and trials as the capitalist mode of production runs out of options and declines. As the capitalist mode of production is reaching its limits in economic, political, and ecological terms, the transition towards socialism becomes urgent if we are not to end up in a chaotic collapse of capitalism.

Part 1: Perspectives, Methods and Concepts

There are many reasons why people want socialism. Some people want socialism because they can hardly earn a living despite hard work. Others want socialism because capitalism is in the process of destroying the earth’s ecosystem, or because it leads to war. Yet others want socialism because the current system causes alienation and stress, and they want more community, less inequality, more common property, and so on. Without anger and a burning desire to change the world, it is not possible to mobilize and organize the forces that will create radical change. It is these forces we call the subjective forces of revolution.

However, it is also a common experience that revolution and the establishment of socialism do not occur just because people want it. In the 1960s and 1970s, millions of people wanted to, and did, fight and die for socialism. They were in dozens of strong revolutionary movements with a socialist perspective from Southeast Asia across the Middle East to Africa and Latin America. Even in North America and Europe, the movements of 1968 put socialism on the agenda. However, this wave fizzled out. The possibility of radical change depends on not only the wish, will, and organizational strength of the subjective forces. It also depends on the contradiction within the mode of production: the objective conditions.

Chapter 1: My Method

Historical and dialectical materialism are very broad terms, covering many approaches and reaching very different conclusions. Therefore, I need to be more specific on my definition of historical and dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism is not just a research method. It is the conscious capacity of seeing society as a process and of understanding the direction and the eventual goal of that process. The world is in constant transformation. Any phenomenon has a past and a future growing out of a synthesis of external and internal contradictions of this past; it presents itself to us in its current form. This is already due to the action of its own combination of contradictions, changing and giving rise to different future possibilities. The future world both preserves traces of the past and gives rise to new relationships, structures, activities, and ideas.

The meaning of seeing things as a whole lies in the ensuing capacity to act in line with reality thus understood. This future is dependent on the action of people, who under the influence of internal and external contradictions, change the present through transformative praxis. What distinguishes Marxist analysis is that it produces the theoretical insight that complements the kind of action that changes the world. My interpretation of dialectical materialism is not very philosophical: it is more a tool for analysis to develop strategy, and thereby practice.1

My method rests on three pillars. The first is the global perspective, which understands the world as a whole, as Marx writes in “Conclusions from the Materialist Conception of History.”

'…the more the original isolation of the separate nationalities is destroyed by the developed mode of production and intercourse and the division of labour between various nations naturally brought forth by these, the more history becomes world history.' 2

The global perspective is grounded in both the history of capitalism as a world-system 3 and the development towards a global value of labor and goods within that system. 4 Taking the global perspective might seem obvious, but it is not so. Most political strategies take the starting point of the local perspective, and then add the international perspective as an afterthought.

The second pillar is the “driver” of this process, the contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the mode of production. This general contradiction has taken different forms in the history of capitalism as the system attempts to find a way to continue the development of the forces of production within the capitalist mode.

This leads us to the third pillar, “the principal contradiction.” 5 If the development of global capitalism is one process, then this process has a principal contradiction. The principal contradiction determines the outcome of the local contradiction, but is at the same time modified by it. In this interaction, the principal contradiction changes over time. The concept of the principal contradiction takes us from the general level to the specific level. It is a tool for developing strategy and practice. Let us look at these three assumptions in detail.

The Global Perspective

First, I want to emphasize the use of the global perspective, the understanding of the world-system, as a multiplicity of cultures and political systems integrated into an extensive division of labor within a single world economy. Capitalism was born in a long process of global colonization from 1500-1900, giving rise to the development of this particular economic system in Europe.6 Wallerstein has described this process in de- tailed historical and political terms in his four-volume work: The Modern World System. Wallerstein argued that capitalism is a historical system that has gradually built northwestern Europe and North America as the core, a few other countries as the semi-periphery, and most of the world as the periphery. 7 The process of colonialism connected and polarized the world simultaneously into an imperial center and its exploited periphery. The arrangement was necessary for the continued accumulation of capital. The extra surplus value generated by the exploitation of low-wage labor in the periphery secured the rate of profit and funneled the spoils of this ever-expanding market toward the imperial core.

Wallerstein’s theoretical framework originates from “dependency theory,” which was a response to the “development theory” of the 1950s, according to which the underdeveloped countries in the Third World had to “progress” on a similar path as the U.S. and Europe. A group of scholars turned this paradigm around and claimed that Europe has developed due to the plunder and exploitation of the Third World. André Gunder Frank’s The Development of Underdevelopment (1966), Giovanni Arrighi’s The Political Economy of Rhodesia (1968), Arghiri Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange (1969), Samir Amin’s Accumulation on a World Scale, (1970), Ruy Mauro Marini’s The Dialectics of Dependency (1973) and Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1974) are examples of discussions within and between radicals of Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s. Emmanuel and Amin underlined the “transfers of value” by unequal exchange between the so-called underdeveloped countries to so-called developed countries and that this is the essence of capitalist accumulation on a world scale. Amin argued that Marx’s bourgeoisie and proletariat could be mapped to nations of the globe rather than merely as classes within nation-states. The current iteration of capitalism is not just enclosure. It is also the appropriation of wealth from the colonies.

Emmanuel and Amin were central in sparking world-systems analysis but they were also influential in extending this analysis into the realm of political economy by describing the creation of global value. The worldwide law of value operates through a truncated market that integrates goods and capital globally, but this is not applied to the labor force, and hence, not to the price of labor—the wage. In today’s system of neoliberal capitalism, there is a global market for capital and commodities, with globalized production chains linking together labor-power in the North and South. Furthermore, with the increased industrialization of the Global South over the last several decades, the level of technology and management regimes are also becoming similar on a global level. The value of a commodity is no longer based on varied and isolated national conditions. The value is based on global conditions, and as such, labor-power has a globalized value. As Samir Amin explained:

'My major contribution concerns the passage from the law of value to the law of globalized value, based on the hierarchical structuring—itself globalized—of the price of labor-power around its value…this globalized value constitutes the basis for imperialist rent.' 8

The seaport worker who loads containers in Shanghai creates as much value as the port worker in Rotterdam who unloads them, assuming that the work is of the same intensity and uses the same technology. The price of labor-power—the wage—varies due to the different histories, social relations, and political conditions, and the limited mobility of labor, as Samir Amin noted:

'Capitalism is not the United States and Germany, with India and Ethiopia “only halfway” capitalist. Capitalism is the United States and India, Germany, and Ethiopia, taken together. This means that labor-power has but a single value, that which is associated with the level of development of the productive forces taken globally. In answer to the polemical argument that had been put against him—how can one compare the value of an hour of work in the Congo to that of a labor-hour in the United States?'

Arghiri Emmanuel wrote:

“just as one compares the value of an hour’s work by a New York hairdresser to that of an hour’s labor by a worker in Detroit. You have to be consistent. You cannot invoke ‘inescapable’ globalization when it suits you and refuses to consider it when you find it troublesome! However, though there exists but one sole value of labor-power on the scale of globalized capitalism, that labor-power is nonetheless recompensed at very different rates.” 9

The combination of globalized value and low wages in the South is the basis for the extraction of super-surplus-value, which generates super-profits for capital and relatively low commodity prices relative to Northern wage levels. The difference between the value of labor and its price, therefore, corresponds to a transfer of value from the South to both capital and labor in the North. 10 Therefore, my global perspective is founded on the historical development of the world-system and the prevalence of globalized value in capitalism.

Productive Forces and The Mode of Production

What is the driver of the development of capitalism? What is the contradiction that forces it to move ahead and constantly expand and change its appearance? The conventional Marxist answer is class struggle. However, change depends not only on the subjective conditions. It also depends on the objective conditions, as Marx explains it:

'In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.' 11

The prospects of revolution are determined by whether the existing relations of production promote or inhibit the development of productive forces. The status of that contradiction is what we call the material or objective conditions for revolution. Let me elaborate on this. Marx and Engels write in The Communist Manifesto:

'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle… Oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.' 12

Class struggle is a manifestation of an underlying contradiction. What Marx and Engels discovered was the foundation on which class struggle takes place: on the one hand, production maintains and develops society through a comprehensive division and organization of labor (the social character of production), but on the other hand, there exists the private ownership of the means of production, and thus the drive for private profit, regardless of the social needs or consequences. With this contradiction in mind, Marx and Engels laid the foundations of historical materialism. As Marx wrote in 1859:

'In studying such transformations, it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.' 13

If we look at society as a whole, the fundamental contradiction is between the development of productive forces and the relations of production. The productive forces stand for technologies, practical and scientific knowledge, logistics, and management. The relations of production stand for the relations that humans enter into when using productive forces: first and foremost, they concern property relations. The contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production exist in all societies. It defines societies and their classes. In capitalism, it takes the form of the contradiction between the social character of production and the private ownership of the means of production, or—as Engels puts it in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific—“the contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation.” 14 This refers to the fact that, on the one hand, production creates the basis of our lives, and develops society with the help of an extensive division of labor between workers as well as between corporations, while, on the other hand, this is done based on the means of production being privately owned.

Despite the damaged “brand” of socialism, in the past decades, this contradiction is expressed in common everyday considerations: Why not share and have more common wealth instead of individual consumption? Why are the financial capitalists so greedy and rich while there are so many poor people? Why do humans not live in balance with nature and instead destroy the living conditions of future generations? Because the conflict between capital and labor is the class expression of the basic contradiction of society; it is obvious that it ultimately determines when the class contradiction assumes the form of open antagonism and develops into revolution. When the property relations—that is, the way we produce and consume—conflicts with the development of the productive forces, then economic, political, and ecological crises develop, and revolution is around the corner. As Marx continues:

'At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.' 15

It is worth noting the formulation “Then begins an era of social revolution.” In such an era, different revolutionary processes develop, each of which can be explained only based on specific national contradictions and their interaction with the global principal contradiction at the time. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels apply this law to the bourgeois revolution, which breaks out when “feudal relations of property’ come into contradiction with ‘the already developed productive forces.” Looking at the history of the transformation from feudalism to capitalism, we find that in no instance do we encounter a “pure” bourgeois revolution. 16 Similarly for the transition period from capitalism to socialism, there is no “pure” socialism. It is also important to underline what Marx writes in the next sentence in The Critique of Political Economy:

'No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.' 17

In addition, a positive—socialist—outcome is not given, and it is not mechanically determined by the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production. The outcome depends on how prepared the proletariat is ideologically, politically, and organizationally. Over the last two hundred years, there have been several severe crises in capitalism, creating multiple national attempts to develop socialism within the surrounding dominant capitalist world-system. However, capitalism has shown an extraordinary ability to roll back these attempts and assimilate its critiques, finding new escape routes from its problems. The capitalist mode of production has developed the productive forces at a speed and extent never seen before in history, creating growth in the earth’s population from 0.9 billion in 1800 to 1.65 billion in 1900 to 7.8 billion in 2020. Fueled on fossil energy and constant innovations of new technology, capitalism has developed an enormous variety and volume of products for sale. However, it has also created hunger and misery for the majority of the world’s population that cannot afford to buy the goods they need.

'Yet the scale of decent-living poverty is astonishing: 2.4 billion people lack food security; 3.2 billion cannot afford a healthy diet; 3.2 billion do not have a clean cooking stove; 3.6 billion do not have safely managed sanitation facilities; 3.8 to 5 billion people do not have access to essential health services. This is not because there is a deficit of productive capacity (on the contrary, these goods could be provided for everyone on the planet quite easily), but because production remains overwhelmingly organized around capital accumulation and profit maximization rather than around human needs and well-being.' 18

The historical development of capitalism is determined by the interaction between the economic laws of the accumulation of capital and class struggles, entailed by the consequences of these laws. Certain conditions must be fulfilled to secure the accumulation of capital. The laws of accumulation can even be expressed in mathematical formulas, such as the rate of profit. But “actually existing capitalism” is not a machine that functions exclusively through laws and rules of accumulation. Nor is it a system of balance and harmony. Quite the opposite: it is characterized by the constant struggle between the different aspects of its contradictions. For capitalism to function, it must constantly seek a specific historical form that allows it to secure profits and continue to accumulate capital. This historical form is determined by class struggle. The economic laws create class struggles that affect these laws by modifying the relations of production, creating new frameworks for a continued development of the productive forces. This happens not only on the national level but also in the world-system of nation-states. The class struggle on a national level shapes the economy and policy of the state, which is part of the world-system. The states interact and compete to secure their development based on their class character. The national class struggle affects the world system, which in turn affects the national class struggle. Thus, in the dialectic between economics and class struggle, we should avoid complete determinism and instead think in terms of conditioning.

The contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the mode of production had to find different historical forms of existence in which the accumulation of capital could continue. In the 19th century, wealth and raw materials were sucked from the colonial periphery into the center to develop industrial capitalism and the imperial mode of living. The development of “unequal exchange” became the historical solution to mediate the contradiction between capitalism’s need to expand production on one hand, and the ability of consuming power to absorb the produced commodities on the other hand. To be more specific: The development of colonialism via super-exploitation in the periphery, generated the value transfer needed to raise the wage-level in the center—which was necessary to consume the growing production—and thereby realizing the profit of the sale. This was not a cunning plan by capital. It was the result of the development of colonialism and the struggle of the working class in Europe. In this specific way “history” found a way in which the contradiction in the capitalist mode of production could move ahead and continue in the development of its productive forces. It created a dynamic economic development in the center and a permanent crisis in the periphery. In the last quarter of the 20th century, new forms of imperialist relations had to be developed to maintain the profit rate, introducing massive outsourcing of industrial production to the periphery to take advantage of the low wages.

The dialectical process between the economic laws of capitalism, their political and social consequences, and the related class struggles, drives the development of capitalism—a development that takes winding roads and is characterized by ruptures. During certain periods, the economic and political system appears relatively stable. Even when revolutionary movements try hard to change it, the system keeps its balance. However, the system will always be affected by revolutionary efforts: it does not remain the same afterward. During other periods, the system finds itself in crisis: it is no longer able to keep its balance and thus becomes unstable, at which point revolutionary efforts take on special significance and revolutionaries turn into butterflies whose flapping wings can turn into a storm. The division of the world system into different political entities means that the transformation of capitalism into a new mode of production will require many revolutions and can be subject to reversal, as we have seen. The transitional state will continue to be characterized by class struggle on the national level and by the inter-state conflict between pro-capitalist and pro-socialist states. The transformation from one mode of production to another is a long process. Capitalism first took shape over several hundred years, from the Italian city-states of the fifteenth century to the industrial revolution in England 400 years later. The transformation from capitalism to socialism will be a long process as well. There have been devious roads and dead ends. However, at this point in history, it seems that capitalism is running out of both humans and nature to exploit. There is no spatial fix, as forecasted by Rosa Luxemburg in 1913:

'Once this is reached, Marx’s model becomes valid: i.e. further expansion of capital becomes impossible. Capitalism comes to a dead end, it cannot function any more as the historical vehicle for the unfolding of the productive forces, it reaches its objective economic limit.' 19

The Principal Contradiction

If we have a capitalist world-system in the historical sense of Immanuel Wallerstein, and in the economic sense of Samir Amin, and if we consider the world-system as one process, then at any given point in time, this process has a principal contradiction emerging from the multiple contradictions in the capitalist mode of production, driving its development forward.

The principal contradiction affects all national, regional, and local contradictions decisively. 20 Like other contradictions, the principal contradiction changes during the course of history. The interaction between the principal contradiction and other contradictions is not one-sided. Particular national and local contradictions affect the principal contra- diction. This feedback affects the struggle between the aspects of the principal contradiction, and can change the direction of its development.

Mao says this about the principal contradiction:

'If in any process there are a number of contradictions, one of them must be the principal contradiction playing the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must de- vote every effort to finding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved.' 21

The expression “readily solved” should be taken with a grain of salt, not least when talking about social problems and the revolution in a country the size of China. What Mao means when he says “readily” is that you have a reliable guide for further analysis once you identify the principal contradiction. In other words, the critical problem of defining useful strategies, policies, means of propaganda, and military efforts are solved. Additionally, it is important to find the dominant aspect in the contradiction. As Mao states:

'It is a big mistake to look at the two aspects of any contradiction as though they are equal. Of the two aspects, one is inevitably the principal and the other the secondary aspect, and the former is the aspect, which plays the contradiction’s so-called guiding role. In actuality which aspect is principal? It is necessary to observe the situation of the development of a process, and it will be determined under definite conditions.' 22

In defining the principal contradiction, we move from the abstract and general to the specific and concrete—to practice. When we act, we do it where we are situated. What else can we do? However, we should act locally from a global perspective and bear in mind the principal contradiction.

A determinate historical situation is characterized by a variegated multiplicity of conflicts; and every conflict involves the presence of a multiplicity of individuals and classes who express different, opposing interests and ideas. To analyze and get one’s bearings in such a complex situation, it is necessary to examine not only the internal configuration of each contradiction, but also how they interact and are structured in a concrete totality. Mastering this is a challenge theoretically, as well as politically. 23

To identify the principal contradiction at a certain point in history, we must consider more than the general, abstract contradictions. Contradictions such as “productive forces vs. relations of production,” “proletariat vs. bourgeoisie,” and “imperialism vs. anti-imperialism” usually do not cause much controversy among Marxists. Disagreements begin when we move from general to specific contradictions and when we need to identify the principal contradiction at a given time and place, the contradiction with the highest revolutionary potential. Note that Mao speaks of “finding” the principal contradiction in the quote above. This cannot be done by theoretical speculation. Contradictions are concrete phenomena: they reveal themselves in economic developments, in political action, and popular movements.

As I emphasize the global perspective and the principal contradiction, it is important to underline the dialectic. The world-level theory and universal trends consist of all the particularities. It is through the particular and local that we can act. We need to see how the principal contradiction is created and formed by the multitude of particularities and how the principal contradiction determines the outcome of particular contradictions.

This is not only a theoretical issue. The grand theory of the global perspective without the dialectical understanding of the relation to the particular is of no practical use. It may give you pleasure in “understanding how the world works” and a platform from which to voice how un- just and unequal the world is and how it needs to be changed. However, “grand theory” alone offers no viable path toward an effective praxis. The meaning of seeing things as an interconnected whole lies in the ensuing capacity to act in line with reality thus understood. The purpose of identifying the principal contradiction is to intervene in it. It is the conscious capacity of seeing the world system as a process, and of under- standing the direction and the eventual goal of that process. We cannot create contradictions, but we can influence the aspects of existing ones so that the contradictions move in a way that serves our interests. Identifying the principal contradiction tells us where to start.

To sum up: in the historical analysis in Part II, I will examine how the general contradiction—productive forces versus relation of production—manifests itself in the specific revolutionary process on the national level. Moreover, I will examine how these national and regional contradictions interact with the changing principal contradiction on the global level. Historical changes happen in qualitative leaps. The productive forces change constantly, and with them, power relations between classes. Eventually, this leads to tensions that shatter the framework of the old society and make way for a new one.

To then analyze the transition from capitalism to socialism, I have to specify the very concept of socialism.

Chapter 2: What is The Difference Between Capitalism and Socialism?

A utopian and ideal definition of a socialist (communist) society is a classless, stateless system of direct democracy (participatory democracy) that has overcome the exploitation and alienation of humans and the devastating exploitation of nature. Production is based on the communal ownership of the means of production and is generated by the socialist (communist) mode of production, where you contribute according to ability and consume according to need. Critical arguments against attempts to build socialism have been made from such ideal defi- nitions of how a socialist society ought to look, neglecting the historical, economic, and political circumstances under which these attempts were made.

When we look at the historical attempts to construct socialism in the last century, you may ask: if a planned economy should be better than capitalism, how is it that the living standards in the U.S. or Scandinavia are so much higher than in the old Soviet Union or contemporary China? Liberal economists and politicians often talk about the superior effectiveness of capitalism with reference to how the consumer market looks in capitalist and socialist states. In planned economies, there are queues in front of the stores, the selection of goods are limited and of lower quality than in the capitalist market economy, in which all kinds of goods are always available, etc. Why could the Soviet Union only produce an outdated copy of an old Fiat—the Lada—while customers in the West could choose between huge selections of stylish cars?

When actually existing socialism is compared to actually existing capitalism, you have to take into account that imperialism generated a polarized world system. Capitalism is not only the United States and Germany, but also Bolivia and Kenya. The shopping malls may look overwhelming, but that does not necessarily mean that the system fulfills the needs of the population. Abundance in the market is not always a sign of effectiveness in distribution and wealth. It can also be the result of an imbalance between the size of production and the power of consump- tion, which is generated by production. The capitalist market economy is an effective producer, but it has always been a problem to distribute the social product in accordance with the needs of the producers. There are all kinds of goods available to the consumer in both Copenhagen and Manila if the need is backed by purchasing power. This is, however, unequally distributed. Overproduction of food and hunger exist side by side within the system.

In comparing the two systems, one must take into consideration that the first attempt to develop actually existing socialism (Russia in 1917) took place in the least developed economy in Europe, and the rest of the Soviet Union was feudal or based on subsistence farming with no industrial development at all. If one wants to compare actually existing socialism and real existing capitalism, it would be fairer to compare the economic development of China with India, or Cuba with Haiti.

However, let us return to the fundamental difference between the capitalist and socialist modes of production. Humans are social beings. To appropriate nature and reproduce, we need to cooperate. In all historical modes of production, there is a certain division of labor inside each community. Some make bread, some make coats, others cut hair, etc. The division of labor implies rules of how to produce and divided production—that is, the exchange and distribution of the social product among the participants—based on class relations. However, it does not follow from these premises that the only way to make decisions on investment, the division of labor, and production should be the individual, or that the distribution of the goods should be determined by market forces, as in capitalism.

The basic problem in human production is the allocation of resources to a different kind of production. The solution to this question is determined by the social relations of production. In a socialist mode of production, the division of labor—and the rules of production and distribution—are the primary inseparable processes set up by a decision-making body tasked with planning the economy. The plan asks: what are the priority of needs? What are our human and natural resources and our technology? The plan then determines who is going to produce, what is necessary to fulfill these needs, and how.

The essence of a planned economy is that decisions on investment, production, and distribution are political, and determined beforehand (“upstreams”) and not as a result of the capitalist market forces (“down-streams”). This means there exists the possibility for a democracy far more advanced and substantial than the bourgeois parliamentary democracy, in which the core economic decisions are in the hands of a minority, the owners of capital. Liberal political democracy can modify and regulate these private decisions to a certain degree, but the capitalist economy is the framework of society, and its laws set limits on the decisions of liberal democracy. Capital accumulation has to be secured.

The ownership of the means of production can take different collective forms to facilitate worker control and a fair distribution of income. However, collective ownership alone does not cancel the capitalist dynamic. Cooperatives and publicly owned companies within a market economy still function within the logic of capitalism. In an economy dominated by market relations, the producer’s collective or privately organized production is inevitably motivated by competition to lower production costs and expand production to capture a bigger share of the market. Those who fail to do so will be threatened by a lower income or bankruptcy.

In an economy with a large-scale division of labor, there are only two types of institutional arrangements. The allocation of productive re- sources and the distribution of goods can be done either through market mechanisms or by planning. In a market economy, investment decisions are made on the prospect of profits, which is dependent on the realization of sales in the market. A planned economy is defined as an allocation of productive resources according to decisions made by a political institution. This presupposes the social ownership of the means of production.

In a capitalist economy, the relationship between production and consumption is turned upside down. The size of production, and the types of goods, are decided by market forces. Human needs are only valid if they are backed up by purchasing power. It is this private exchange that determines the future division of labor through independent decisions taken at the level of individual producers. Nothing is produced without an expectation of selling it, and anything will be produced if it can be sold. There may be idle hands and underutilized resources on the one hand, and an urgent need for food, clothing, and shelter on the other, and yet there will exist no possibility of these needs ever being met. In capitalism, the purchasing power is not just a matter of the distribution of the product: it is the very condition of its scale, and the nature of production. It is a common experience that you can get the goods you want if you have money. But, you cannot always get money for the goods you have. And so, capitalist crises occur when there is a lack of purchasing power to consume the produced goods.

We have become accustomed to this as the natural way of economics. But to make production dependent on consumption is to turn things upside down, and it has not always been that way. In most social formations before capitalism, the limiting factor for the fulfillment of needs was the ability to produce. Pre-capitalist societies produced what was possible according to the available natural resources, technology, management form, and the size of the workforce. Then production was distributed based on the prevailing social power relations and rules. There may be hunger or unfulfilled needs due to natural conditions, war, primitive technology, or labor shortages. However, it would be absurd to starve or stop the pro- duction of products in need because of some rules of consumption. As Hickel and Sullivan observe:

'It is not difficult to meet basic subsistence requirements, and historical data suggests that human communities are normally capable of doing so, even in pre-industrial contexts, with their own labor and with the resources available to them in their environment or through exchange. The main exceptions to this are in cases of natural disaster, or under conditions in which people are cut off from land and commons, or when their labor, resources, and produc- tive capacities are appropriated by a ruling class or an imperial power. The historical data we review shows that it was the process of colonization and capitalist integration that mainly pushed people into extreme poverty and caused social indicators to deteriorate.' 1

The colonization of India, Africa, and Latin America, and the destruction of pre-capitalist production systems, caused extensive hunger and the death of millions.

In capitalism, the problem is marketing a saleable product. In socialism, the limiting factor for fulfilling needs is the ability to produce. The most advanced technology and effective governance enhances this ability: to transform human needs via a political process (and planning technologies) into priorities of production and rules for distribution.

In a planned economy, it is possible to decide the quantity and nature of the goods to be produced beforehand through an assessment of the capabilities of production and the priorities of the needs in society. The goods are produced according to the demands of society, so to speak. As soon as the goods are produced, they can be distributed by the rules adopted by society. All of this entails an enormous capacity to process information, which has been a historical problem for planned economies. However, with the development of new information and communications technology, this problem has been reduced.2 The imbalance between the size of production and purchasing power, which haunts capitalism, does not need to exist in a planned economy. A planned economy does not have overproduction crises, as it can create its own market through political measures.

Therefore, the distribution of goods—the market—looks and works very differently in a planned economy as opposed to a capitalist system. The capitalist market is a buyer’s market. The supply of goods is overwhelming and there is a variety in the designs of everything from clothing to cars. Huge sums are spent for branding and marketing to promote consumption. However, the “market” in a planned economy is the producer’s “market.” There is no pressure from advertising to buy more; on the contrary, the less unproductive consumption, the more there is for new productive investment to fulfill urgent needs in the future. In the transition-process towards socialism, it is possible to have a mixture of a planned economy—which decides major strategic investments—and a market economy, which allocates resources to the production of final consumer goods.

The planned economic system has the advantage of handling the relationship between investment in the production apparatus and the final consumption of goods in a rational way. The surplus generated by an economy—capitalist or planned—can be used in two ways: final consumption (food, clothes, furniture, consumer electronics, etc.) or investment in a new circle of extended production (development of new technology, etc.). The two parts are inversely proportional. The more that is used in final consumption, the less there is for investment, and vice versa. However, in capitalism, investment in production presupposes the consumption of final goods. Hence the need to treat final consumption and investment in production as directly proportional. The wish to invest in extended production is greatest when the available capital is lowest.

The different ways in which the market operates in a capitalist versus planned economy is also reflected in the labor market. Unemployment, which haunts the capitalist system, is not a problem in planned economies. A planned economy can use all the labor power they can get to fulfill the needs of society.

Conventionally, we think of the transition from capitalism to socialism within a national framework, although both Marx, and later Lenin, were aware that socialism could only be realized as a world system—or at least as a major part of the world. In the last five hundred years, the division of labor has taken an international form, which has polarized the world into rich and poor countries. However, one can very well conceive a socialist planned economy implementing the division of labor and the distribution of products on a planetary scale, one which promotes equality. In fact, it will be necessary for the solution to the planet’s ecological and social problems.

On the one hand, two hundred years of industrial capitalism developed the productive forces to a level where there is no technological barrier to the solution of global social problems. Capitalism has paved the way for socialism. On the other hand, the capitalist imperative of growth has created a mode of production that has spawned social problems, and has threatened to destroy the global ecological balance. Marx’s emphasis on the importance of the productive forces for the development of a society is very different from the capitalist preoccupation with the need for constant economic growth. In capitalism, the development of the productive forces are a double-edged sword. The development of productive forces make possible increasing emancipation from natural, as well as social, constraints. However, two hundred years ago, before today’s climate problems, Marx wrote that capitalism can only develop the productive forces at the expense of the two ultimate sources of all wealth: nature and human beings.

'Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the labourer.' 3

Capitalism is—through its own logic of accumulation—forced to constantly develop technology, increasingly mechanize labor, and apply scientific knowledge to material production in order to force uninterrupted economic growth. By its very nature, it develops the productive forces—not as an end in itself, but as a way to increase profit. Through the development of the productive forces, capitalism in the end turns into a destructive force, blocking future progress.

'In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief and are no longer productive but destructive forces.' 4

This prediction by Marx has taken on its full meaning in an era haunted by the possibility of atomic war, pandemics, pollution of soil and water, and climate crises. Nevertheless, the development of the productive forces under capitalism constitutes a favorable basis for the development of a future socialist mode of production. Assuming that the resources and technology available to humanity today are applied rationally—free from the demand of profit accumulation—the standard of living in the Global South would rise by leaps and bounds.

A social revolution will change the way we produce and consume goods from systems based on privatization to ones based on collectivization. It will not only change our choices and our ends, but will also rationalize and speed up the creation of the means of production themselves. For this, we must improve technology and increase the productivity of living labor. Socialist production is not less advanced than capitalist production. Au contraire, a socialist mode of production desires to use the most advanced technology possible in order to produce higher quality sustainable goods with less labor power.5 Robot industries are better than assembly line factories. Windmills and solar energy are better than power plants fueled with fossil energy.

Socialism is not only concerned with eliminating poverty within the national framework, but also creating a more equal world. Within the capitalist mode of production, it is not possible to raise the living standard of billions of poor people in the Global South to the level of the U.S. or Germany. There are simply not enough natural resources. To accommodate their needs, what is required is not only a change in the relations of production and the patterns of consumption, but also a continued development of, and implementation, of the most advanced technology. On this Emmanuel writes:

'Steel, aluminum and copper of which the masses of the center consume today such extravagant quantities, do not serve only to produce automobiles and gadgets. They produce doctors or books as well (It takes a tremendous amount of steel, cement or energy to produce a doctor or to school a village.)

While no one up to now has laid out the model of this “anti-consumption” society, there exists at least one point on which everyone is in agreement. That is the absolute priority of the maximization of available leisure, time being the prerequisite for the quality of life. How then can we rid ourselves of “productivism,” since for any given physical consumption, whatever its volume, leisure time is an increasing function of the return on time passed at work?

Naturally, if it is shown that the “consumer society” is in any case a material impossibility on a world scale, the question of choice no longer presents itself for four-fifths of humanity. However, the idea that the remaining one-fifth, which has the privilege of this type of society, would profit from the change is not a statement so obvious that one could excuse oneself from demonstrating.' 6

The socialist mode of production is not only about economic rationality and technology, but the means to fulfill needs. The definition of needs and the rules of distribution of social products is of a political nature. With advanced technology and changed consumption patterns, a raise in the quality of life and de-growth is possible.

The State in the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

When you grow up in a capitalist society in the imperial core, its logic, norms, and values are internalized; it can be difficult to imagine that things can be organized differently. The American philosopher Frederic Jameson stated in 2003, that “someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.” 7 However, it is important to keep in mind that capitalism is like all other historical modes of production: it had a beginning and must have an end, and another world is possible.

One major factor of the transition is the role and character of the state. All revolutions with a socialist perspective, from the Paris Commune onwards, have organized a bureaucracy to run the economy and have established some kind of security to maintain the power of the proletariat against internal and external enemies. The form and role of this “bureaucracy” has constituted a problem for all new revolutionary states since.

In the first part of the transition period, from the moment the proletariat takes power to the moment when they reorganize the economy, the yield of the economy will fall. This happened in Russia and China. This was the experience of Cuba in the 1960s, of the Allende government in Chile in 1970, and in Venezuela today. To get through this difficult period, until the planned economy begins to function, the proletariat must organize itself for the direct exercise of political power.

The economic problem is not some supposed inefficiency of nationalized enterprises. The problem is that the capitalists will divest. They will salvage as much as can be salvaged from the economy while dilapidating the rest. This is not only a problem on the national level. The world market has enormous power in terms of the movement of capital, exchange rates of currency, and determining the price of commodities. President Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” in Chile to prevent Allende from building socialism.8 Often, the pressure from the capitalist world system takes the form of outright economic sanctions and military intervention.

The attempt to defeat neocolonialism by transforming national liberation into economic liberation failed in many socialist-oriented states in the 1960s and 1970s in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Their weak economies, often skewed by hundred years of colonialism, could not stand the weight of the internal and external pressures of capitalism. Despite the intention to build socialism, their economies slid back into capitalism under pressure from global neoliberalism.

Liberal ideology presents the difference between capitalist and socialist state management as respectively democratic and authoritarian political rule: the “free choice” in a market economy supplements the free choice between political parties in government, while a planned economy generates a bureaucratic authoritarian state. However, this connection is false. In 1970, the socialist Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile and began to nationalize industry and rural estates to transform Chile’s economy from capitalism towards socialism. However, after a CIA-supported military coup in 1973, Chile became a testing ground for neoliberal economic ideas. The CIA, with the help of neoliberal economists from Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of Economics, provided the economic policy that Chile’s junta enacted immediately after seizing power. 9 It is ironic that Friedman, who wrote the book Capitalism and Freedom, driving home the argument that only economic liberalism could support political democracy, could so easily disentangle economics from politics, when the economic theories he advocated coincided with a fascist regime. 10 There is no fixed link between the capitalist or socialist mode of production and the political rule of the system.

The Chinese political historian Zhang Weiwei has challenged Western liberal conceptions of “formal” market-based democracy. According to Zhang, China, while lacking in formal democracy in Western terms, has been successful in the development of a “substantive democracy.” Western democracy means the election campaign is based on political marketing paid for by capital and lobby organizations. “Substantive” democracy, in Zhang’s terms, means “good governance,” relying on both meritocratic selection and elections, so as to generate a political system that draws on the full range of abilities of the wider population, while focusing on satisfying their real developmental needs, in line with popular opinion. 11

So called “actually existing socialism” covers a variety of attempts to establish transitory economic and political systems within a dominant capitalist world system, using a mixture of planned economy, capitalist investment, and market forces. The former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, and Cuba are examples of such states. For these states, situated in the periphery or semi-periphery of the world system, opening towards the surrounding capitalist world has been necessary to import technology, and thereby to develop their productive forces. The focus on advancing technological progress does not mean that social relations are irrelevant. The link between technology and social relations is flexible enough to enable the usage of the first to change the second, as Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro thought.12 They all wanted to use the latest technology and methods developed by capitalism to fulfill social needs within a planned economy.

What has constituted a problem in the past (and certainly still does), both in theory and in practice, is the political form of the state, which corresponds to the period of transition to socialism—that is, between the proletariat seizing state power on the one hand and the substitution of cooperative production for all remaining capitalist forms of production and distribution on the other hand. Socialism is not established by a magic stroke, as when Fidel Castro and Che Guevara drove into Havana in 1959, or when Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Taking state power can happen over a relatively short period, but the transition from capitalism to socialism is a long and complex transformative process. The transformation process is as complicated as the subsequent development of the socialist mode of production, which has to take place within a dominant capitalist world market.

What kind of specific state is needed to keep the proletariat in power in relation to both internal national class struggles and the surrounding hostile capitalist world system? How should the economy and political system be organized to fulfill this task? A new revolutionary government must try to answer these kinds of questions.

Following lessons learned during the Paris Commune, Marx and Engels formulated their thesis concerning the role of the state in its transformation towards socialism in the preface of the new 1872 edition of The Communist Manifesto: The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made machinery and wield it for its own purposes. 13

The revolutionary forces have to establish their own, novel form of the state, as the old capitalist state is built to serve the interest of capital. They need to defend this state against counterrevolutionary forces. The proletariat needs to organize itself directly into a state apparatus. It is this exercise of power that constitutes what Marx labeled the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” 14 This concept is often misunderstood because of Marx’s polemic use of the word “dictatorship.” It is actually an argument for democracy, as the rule of the working class, which establishes new institutions with which to dictate the will of the proletarian majority over the bourgeois minority. After the proletariat has established itself as the ruling class, it exercises its power as the class struggle continues both inside the state and between the new state and the surrounding capitalist world system.

The “dictatorship of the proletariat” is distinct from two other dominant perceptions of the state among socialists at the time: the reformist, represented by Ferdinand Lassalle, and the anarchists, represented by Mikhail Bakunin. The reformer wanted to take over the bourgeois state and use its institution to introduce socialism, while the anarchists argued for the abolition of the state entirely. However, what the reformers failed to realize is that the state at hand is an expression of the economic and political logic of capitalism. It cannot be used as a tool for introducing socialism by the class that it exists to oppress.. And what the anarchists failed to realize is that as long as capitalism exists as a major force within the borders of the nation, and in the world-system, the proletariat needs a state to implement its policy, a dictatorship of class interests.

In all class societies, a coercive state ensures the existing order and preserves the social equilibrium. The bourgeois class set up an apparatus occupied by a permanent staff; the creation of its own hierarchy endowed with a degree of bureaucratic autonomy, in the sense that the office becomes its own end, making “efficiency” its ultimate goal. To accomplish this, it had to run the system according to the rules of the capitalist economy. Under the conditions of a dominating market economy, a so-called independent state apparatus cannot help but become an instrument of capitalist dynamics.15

This was the problem of the Allende government in Chile in 1970, both in terms of economic policy and state power. The old state machinery—the police and the military—could not serve the interest of the new socialist government, and so they turned against it. It is not enough to have power in the parliament; it takes “the dictatorship of the proletariat” to transform society.

However, this apparently necessary coercive apparatus has the potential to create a new ruling caste of bureaucrats. Within specific, unfavorable national and international relations of forces, the proletarian revolution thus has to face a dilemma: weakness and inefficiency or strength and bureaucracy.

To sum up the tasks of the state in the transition period, it must (a) develop the economic preconditions as well as the forces of production in terms of size, differentiation, and technological level in order to progress toward the socialist mode of production; and (b) to maintain the security of the state during the transition period from attacks from the class enemy from within and by the surrounding capitalist world.

Chapter 3: Morals and Politics

Throughout history, humans have committed atrocities against their fellow human beings in pursuit of power and wealth; or for family, clan, class, or (in modern times) nation. However, love, compassion, and solidarity are also part of human history. Humans are biological creatures with certain biological needs and abilities, but humans are not by “nature” evil or good. Humans are social “animals” organized in societies to fulfill their needs and express their abilities. Violence is not inherent in certain trans-historical ideas or cultural values—nor are these related to certain ethnic groups. It is historically specific and related to the material basis of social reproduction.

Violence is endemic to class society. The wars and violent suppression of people in the Third World throughout the 20th century were necessary for capitalist accumulation. Without violence, there cannot be the super-exploitation of labor, which cheapens the costs of production and gives rise to unequal exchanges between the center and periphery in the world system. 1 In addition to being an essential precondition of the accumulation of capital in general, war is itself an industry. The weapons industry produces arms and reaps super-profits. War employs people to kill people. Violence intensely consumes labor at a high rate of exploitation. The productive life of a soldier is short. 2 War was also a method for primitive accumulation, the genesis of capitalism through colonial plunder and slavery, which costs millions of lives. The wars in Iraq have had a similar effect, handing over the nation’s oil resources to U.S. companies. The major inter-imperialist wars in the first half of the twentieth century caused millions of deaths. The early quests for socialism were partly a reaction to these atrocities. Since World War II, there have been more than one hundred armed conflicts in the Third World, causing the deaths of more than twenty million people.

Politicians often take a moral stand and reject violence as a method for political means, even if their country’s wealth is built upon violence. The global North possesses the vast majority of military hardware. U.S.-centered military alliances account for three-fifths of global military spending, and yet they are now looking to spend even more at an unprecedented rate.

In political practice, there is a dilemma between the means and the ends. What means are just and suitable to obtain the desired ends? The use of violence for political means has always been controversial. But in the historical quest for socialism, the ends are not petty issues: they are the end of exploitation and the suppression of millions, and to stop destruction of the ecological balance of the planet. Does this end justify any means? Alternatively, do the ends never justify the means? Do the wrong means compromise the ends? You will inevitably encounter these dilemmas as a political militant.

Machiavelli's Use of 'The Ends Justifying The Means'

The reasoning that the ends justify the means is considered a cynical attitude in common mainstream thinking. It is often used as a critique of what is considered the use of excessive means to obtain a certain goal. The statement that “the ends justify the means” is often ascribed to Niccoló Machiavelli (1469-1527), the Italian philosopher of power and author of The Prince, a little book written in the early sixteenth century. 3

Machiavelli was living in a tumultuous era in which wars were being waged against Italian city-states as France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire battled for power. Political and military alliances continually changed, and mercenary army leaders changed sides without warning, causing the rise and fall of many short-lived governments. Machiavelli served as a civil servant and diplomat for different rulers of Florence. In 1513, the Medici rulers accused him of conspiracy and had him imprisoned. Despite being subjected to torture, he denied involvement and was released after three weeks. After that experience, Machiavelli retired to his farm estate, where he devoted himself to studying and writing political treatises.

The Prince was written in 1513, but only published after his death in 1532. It is a manual for the art of governing. It includes Machiavelli’s justifications for violence as a means to secure power: “a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil.” His personal experience showed him that politics have always been played with deception and treachery. Machiavelli considered that violence might be necessary for the successful stabilization of power and the introduction of new political institutions. 4 Force may be used to eliminate political rivals, destroy resistant populations, and purge others who will inevitably attempt to replace the ruler.5 Essentially, the book is a description of how power functions, regardless of ideological and moral considerations. One can read The Prince in various ways. To read it as a cynical manual for how to gain and defend power is one option. Machiavelli himself, however, suggests another reading:

'…it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it…' 6

Machiavelli is considered the first modern empirical political scientist, to draw generalizations from experience and historical facts. He was also one of the Renaissance’s first secular thinkers. He wrote about separating religion (the dominant form of morality at the time) and politics. He refused to analyze political realities based on religious dogma. He was, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, a realist. He could not avoid noticing how far removed the theological idealizations were from the real and harsh world of politics.

Not all interpretations of Machiavelli are cynical. Antonio Francesco Gramsci (1891– 1937), founding member and former leader of the Communist Party of Italy, until he was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime, argued that Machiavelli’s audience was not the ruling class, but rather the common people, because rulers already knew of these methods by way of their education. Gramsci was inspired by Machiavelli’s writings on morals and how they related to state-building and revolution. Popular notions of morality and ethics could be manipulated as part of establishing a hegemony to control society. 7 It is also said that Stalin carefully read The Prince and annotated his own copy. 8 However, The Prince is far from the first text to discuss the relationship between ends and means. In the tragedy Electra, the Greek dramatist Sophocles asked in 400 BC whether “the end excuses any evil,” while, in 10 BC, the Roman poet Ovid concluded in his lyrical collection Heroides that “the result justifies the deed.” The dilemma is as old as humanity.

Let us—for a moment, in line with Machiavelli—consider political reality rather than noble rhetoric. Towards the end of the Second World War, the U.S. government was ready to use excessive power to achieve a quick end to the war. The Air Force dropped two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, killing 226,000 people, mostly civilians. The minutes of the “target committee” who selected these means were declassified years ago, and it was revealed that the committee settled on two objectives:

'It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released.' 9

A more recent example of balancing means and ends in U.S. policy is from the war in Iraq. On December 5, 1996, shortly after being appointed U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Lesley Stahl for the TV program “60 Minutes”:

Lesley Stahl: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And—and you know, is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.” 10

Apparently, when it came to the war in Iraq, the end, to get rid of Saddam Hussein, justified a high price in terms of Iraqi civilians’ lives.

If the motto of the ends justifying the means implies that you can use any means you want (without any consideration for the consequences for others) in order to achieve any end you have decided to pursue, it means that you have lost your moral compass. The same goes for the motto that the ends never justify the means. After all, there is a third option, which—in fact—is much more realistic than the other two: not all ends justify all means, but, depending on the circumstances, some ends justify some means. It is a position, of course, that implies challenges. One has to consider and balance three factors: ends, means, and circumstances. It is not always easy to draw the right conclusions.

I do not claim that Albright would argue that all means are justified once you have decided to pursue a certain goal—although half-a-million dead children, 700,000 casualties, and four million displaced Iraqis are evidently justifiable to her. With stakes like these, political actors have to be very clear about both their ends and their means. Morality plays an important role in this discussion, but a reference to moral principles alone is not enough. In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant argued that the ends alone can never justify the means, and that means need to be justifiable in and of themselves. This is a reminder that the means we employ need to be carefully examined. But Kant’s argument does not rid us of the responsibility to go through a political discussion that clearly lays out the ends and means and how to balance them. For example, the threat of the use of nuclear weapons, and the climate crises, make the balancing of means and ends an existential question in the endgame of capitalism.

The Use of Violence in The Struggle for Socialism

How do we judge the use of violence in the quest for socialism? Besides evaluating social and economic facts, we must perceive political-moral choices. The struggle against exploitation and oppression has often taken a violent turn and caused immense human suffering. As Mao stated after the Shanghai Kuomintang massacre of communists in 1927, where thousands of people were killed:

'A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.' 15

The efforts to defend the revolution and build socialism in poor countries, surrounded by a hostile capitalist world system, have also resulted in forms of violence and suffering—conditions that are in stark contrast with socialist ideals. To evaluate such cases often seems cynical, but these dilemmas cannot be avoided if one is part of the struggle, and not merely an observer.

The Hungarian philosopher György Lukács (1885–1971), originally a neo-Kantian, was drawn towards communism by the Russian Revolution. The change is evident between his two essays, “Bolshevism as an Ethical Problem” from 1918, in which he rejected Bolshevism on ethical grounds, as a part of “the endless, senseless chain of struggle”16 and “Tactics and Ethics” (1919), in which he publicly declared his commitment to the revolutionary cause after joining the Hungarian Communist Party in December 1918.17 In “Tactics and Ethics” Lukács transcended his previous neo-Kantian position, and commitment to nonviolence, and accepted the need for the moral “sacrifice” of the use of violence in revolutionary action. 18

'The individual’s conscience and sense of responsibility are confronted with the postulate that he must act as if on his action or inaction depended on the changing of the world’s destiny.' 19

Lukács reintroduced a classic dilemma formulated by Sophocles in the tragedy Antigone (441 BC).20 The theme in Antigone is the right of the individual to reject society’s infringement on her freedom to perform a personal obligation. Antigone upholds the idea that state law is not absolute and that it can be broken in civil disobedience in extreme cases, such as one’s obligations toward the Gods. To this Lukács adds that, in the case of the revolutionary, if the “soul” is to be saved, the “soul” must be sacrificed. The revolutionary is forced to become a “realpolitiker” and to violate the absolute commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” and thus maintains no obligations to any institution, state or religion. 21 Lukács ends his essay “Tactics and Ethics” by referring to Friedrich Hebbel’s interpretation of the myth of Judith, from the Old Testament. 22 Judith beheaded the brutal general Holofernes who had placed a siege on the Jewish city of Bethulia. Hebbel’s play, entitled Judith, written in 1840, focuses on the dilemma between the sin of killing and the struggle to save the freedom of her city.

A short while after he wrote “Tactics and Ethics,” Lukács was appointed People’s Commissar of Education and Culture during the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. As such, he discussed the ethical dilemma of the revolution. As a fellow communist, József Lengyel indicated in his memoirs, it was determined in the discussions that:

'…we communists should take the sins of the world upon ourselves, so that we may be capable of saving the world…Just as God could order Judith to kill Holophernes—that is, to commit a sin—so may he order the communists to destroy the bourgeoisie, both metaphorically and physically.' 23

For Lukács, ethics relate to the individual, but are mediated by class, giving rise to a historically generated totality. 24

Similar sentiments were captured by an acquaintance of mine, the late Patrick Mac Manus, an Irish-Danish political activist, who wrote an article called “Angels no longer exist” as a response to the Danish left-wing party Enhedslisten’s (Unity List) critique of the use of violence by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

'A struggle for liberation or resistance stems in itself from profound violations of human rights, and in many cases will invariably lead to a continued violation of these rights. War is in itself a violation of the most fundamental human right, the right to life. That’s how it is in the real world. And in all its imperfection, that is the world that exists…Any resistance must seek to maintain ethical standards of its own conduct, regardless of state terror, regardless of the bitterness that every civil war brings with it. Every legitimate resistance is animated by love for the country and for the population for which it is fought. Terror is destructive, it is nihilistic. Liberation struggle is, also regardless of its pain, fundamentally creative…While Enhedslisten may be waiting for the true liberation movement, a movement of angels with arms adorned with nacre, we must point to the world and say: here it is, here are the young women and men fighting in the world, here is the pain and suffering, here are the mistakes that belong to an imperfect world, here is the world, and here it must be changed.' 25

From my own praxis of committing robbery to finance revolutionary activities, and coming from a well-behaved middle-class background, I can, on my small scale, relate to the problems of “sinning” for a greater purpose.26 We witnessed the liberation struggle in the Third World during the 1960s on the one hand and lived privileged lives in a Scandinavian country on the other. We concluded that we had to act. We felt that there existed an incredible injustice in the world, and we wanted to contribute to a profound change. We also felt that we were in a position that allowed us to act and that it would have been inexcusable if we did not. If you want to act politically, you cannot escape such reflections. In the eyes of the Danish state and most people, we were criminals, pure and simple. From our perspective, transferring value from the rich countries to the poor, particularly if they were received by liberation movements, was justified.

This is not a free pass. The choice to use violence as a means of action should never be taken lightly. However, when you have seen and understood exploitation and oppression, you cannot turn a blind eye. Doing nothing becomes as much of a political act as resistance. You cannot claim to be an innocent bystander, because you know what is going on.

The quest for a better and more just world does not begin with a cost-benefit or philosophical analysis. It begins with a simple statement: “Enough!” Reflections about what you can achieve, and at what price, come later. Bear these thoughts on means and ends when you read the historical evaluation in Part II, which, taken in isolation, can seem rather cynical.

Part 2: The History of Revolutions

Chapter 4: The Communist Specter of 1848

In the first decades of the 19th century—an era marked by the English monopoly on industrial capitalism—the principal contradiction was between the enormous growth of production and the corresponding lack of consumption power, leading to recurring overproduction/under-consumption crises.

In November 1847, Marx and Engels were given the task to write the program of The Communist League (at the time a secret organization): The Communist Manifesto. At the time when The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, Marx and Engels believed that capitalism would be a rather short episode in history, to be swiftly replaced by some kind of socialism in the advanced countries of Europe, as Engels wrote in 1847:

'Wherever we look, the bourgeoisie are making stupendous progress…They intend to shape the whole world according to their standard; and, on a considerable portion of the earth’s surface, they will succeed…They are so short-sighted as to fancy that through their triumph the world will assume its final configuration. Yet nothing is more clear than that they are everywhere preparing the way for us, for the democrats and the Communists; than that they will at most win a few years of troubled enjoyment, only to be then immediately overthrown. Behind them stands everywhere the proletariat…So just fight bravely on, most gracious masters of capital!...You have to clear the vestiges of the Middle Ages and of absolute monarchy out of our path; you

have to annihilate patriarchalism; you have to carry out centralisation; you have to convert the more or less propertyless classes into genuine proletarians, into recruits for us; by your factories and your commercial relationships you must create for us the basis of the material means which the proletariat needs for the attainment of freedom. In recompense whereof you shall be allowed to rule for a short time…but do not forget that “The hangman stands The Communist Specter of 1848 55 at the door!” (Heinrich Heine in Ritter Olaf ).' 1

The Manifesto marked a turning point in the history of socialism because it pointed away from utopian idealism and towards an analytical framework from which the struggle for socialism could take place. In bitter polemics, debates, and organizational battles, Marx and Engels struggled to shift the socialist movement to a materialist perspective of class struggle.

In the same year The Communist Manifesto was published, a wave of social unrest swept over Europe. The causes of the uprisings were a mess of actors and ideas. There were democratic aspirations of middle-class liberals who wanted to get rid of various monarchs’ reactionary regimes and get a share of the political power. Nationalism was another component of the revolutionary hot pot. Today’s Germany and Italy were fragmented into petty states, and there was a demand for more unified democratic states. However, most prominently, the late 1840s were characterized by an economic slump, creating massive unemployment and social misery in the overcrowded new industrial cities of Europe. On top of this, bad harvests and high food prices created what was called “the hungry forties.”

The first of the revolts of 1848 was a bourgeois nationalist uprising in Sicily in January; however, the revolt in Paris soon overshadowed it. The bourgeoisie had not forgotten the French Revolution of 1789-92, which saw the royal family guillotined and noble privileges abolished. They thought the revolution had gone too far and feared their heads were the next to go. Socialist thinkers like Gracchus Babeuf declared that the problem was not just feudal property but private property in general. Conditions in Europe had long been building up for such an outburst. In France, the liberal politician Alexis de Tocqueville, speaking in the Chamber of Deputies to his colleagues just before the outbreak of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, said that:

'Do you not hear them repeating unceasingly that all that is above them is incapable and unworthy of governing them; that the present distribution of goods throughout the world is unjust; that property rests on a foundation, which is not an equitable foundation? And do you not realize that when such opinions take root, when they spread in an almost universal manner, when they sink deeply into the masses, they are bound to bring with them sooner or later, I know not when nor how, a most formidable revolution? This, gentlemen, is my profound conviction: I believe that we are at this moment sleeping on a volcano.' 2

The insurrection in France began on February 22, 1848, when a demonstration outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris was fired upon, killing 52 protestors. After that, street fighting erupted all over the city. The National Guard was called out to restore order, but they refused to fire upon the citizens. King Louis Phillipe’s fate was sealed, and he fled the country. Tocqueville describes the situation in Paris on February 25:

'Although the working classes had often played the leading part in the events of the First Revolution, they had never been the sole leaders and masters of the State, either de facto or de jure; it is doubtful whether the Convention contained a single man of the people; it was composed of bourgeois and men of letters…The Revolution of February, on the contrary, seemed to be made entirely outside the bourgeoisie and against it…Throughout this day, I did not see in Paris a single one of the former agents of the public authority. The people alone bore arms, guarded the public buildings, watched, gave orders, punished; it was an extraordinary and terrible thing to see in the sole hands of those who possessed nothing all this immense town, so full of riches…

I found in the capital a hundred-thousand-armed workmen formed into regiments, out of work, dying of hunger, but with their minds crammed with vain theories and visionary hopes. I saw society cut into two: those who possessed nothing, united in a common greed; those who possessed something, united in a common terror. There were no bonds, no sympathy between these two great sections; everywhere the idea of an inevitable and immediate struggle seemed at hand.' 3

Out of the 300,000 proletarians living in Paris at the time, more than 10,000 participated actively in the revolt. The monarchy was gone, but it was not clear what would replace it. Paris’s cafés and public squares buzzed with political excitement. Revolutionaries from all over the continent poured into Paris. Marx, who was expelled from Brussels, arrived in Paris in early March at the invitation of the revolutionary government. However, conservative forces reorganized and managed to form a new government in April. In an effort to discipline the rebellious working class in Paris, they conscripted all workers between the age of 18 and 25 to the army; others would be sent to the province to clear land for the peasants. It provoked a new outburst of anger in Paris in June. For three days, the proletariat fought against the forces of the French regular army. Rapidly, over 1,000 barricades were built to defend working-class neighborhoods. Artillery hammered at the barricades. Parts of the city were laid in ruins. The disorganized insurgent army was defeated piecemeal. In the end, thousands of soldiers outgunned the more or less spontaneous uprising, with its barricades and primitive weapons. The June uprising was drowned in blood. After killing tens of thousands, thousands more were sentenced to forced labor or deported to the colonies.

Revolutionary events happened across Europe, in Rome, Milan, Munich, Brussels, Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, and Stockholm. Mostly students and the middle classes participated in revolts in these cities, as the working class was smaller than in Paris. Besides social questions, which were predominant in the Paris uprising, demands were made to put an end to monarchy, to establish republics, expand suffrage, and implement freedom of speech.

From Paris, in April 1848, Marx and Engels issued a statement on behalf of the Communist League. They demanded that Germany be proclaimed a republic and that royal and feudal estates, together with the mining industry and transport sector, were to be nationalized. They also demanded the establishment of publicly owned workshops, and that the state should provide education for all children. In June, Marx moved from Paris to Cologne and founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Rhenish Newspaper). Its support for revolution caused the Prussian regime to deport Marx from Germany. He returned to Paris in May 1849, but the political climate had changed, and he was denied permission to stay in the capital. Forced into a difficult situation, Marx decided to leave France for England. Engels took part in the armed struggle in the southwestern part of Germany, but he was also forced to return to England via Italy.

By the end of 1849, it was clear that reaction had triumphed throughout Europe. The revolutions of 1848 never really had a chance. Despite the anger and revolutionary spirit, the working class was too disorganized and did not have the necessary strength in terms of military force and strategy to counter the regular army of the state. The bourgeoisie was of the opinion that the democratic reforms would be a threat to the order of the existing system, so the uprisings had to be crushed—and they were. In the following decades, the forces of reaction were in firm control throughout most of Europe, from France to Sweden.

Despite the meager result of the 1848 uprisings, the events were important for the development of Marx and Engels’ theory of social transformation. In the article “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League,” written in 1850, they concluded that the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie betrayed the interests of the working class and popular masses:

'We told you already in 1848, brothers, that the German liberal bourgeoisie would soon come to power and would immediately turn its newly won power against the workers. You have seen how this forecast came true. It was indeed the bourgeoisie which took possession of the state authority in the wake of the March movement of 1848 and used this power to drive the workers, its allies in the struggle, back into their former oppressed position.' 4

The mass movements of 1848 were largely proletarian. However, they relied on liberal politicians to transmit their demands via the parliament to the state. The liberal parliamentary projection of the political movement attests to its political incapacity to rule the state. Hence the recurrent theme of the politicians in power betraying the political movement. The crucial question was the power of the state. The lesson for future struggles was that the bourgeoisie and the middle classes could not be trusted in the struggle, the proletariat had to take the lead themselves. As Marx summed up in the Address:

'…they themselves must contribute most to their final victory, by informing themselves of their own class interests, by taking up their independent political position as soon as possible, by not allowing themselves to be misled by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic petty bourgeoisie into doubting for one minute the necessity of an independently organized party of the proletariat. Their battle-cry must be: The Permanent Revolution.' 5

Another lesson learned was that the working class must gain and maintain its own arms to be able to match the armed forces of the bourgeois state:

To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory... The workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard... Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.' 6

The lessons from the Paris rebellion of June 1848 was of great importance for the strategy for future struggles for socialism:

'Thus only the June defeat has created all the conditions under which France can seize the initiative of the European revolution. Only after being dipped in the blood of the June insurgents did the tricolor become the flag of the European revolution—the red flag! And we exclaim: The revolution is dead! Long live the revolution!' 7

Major historical crises were characterized by the conjunction of multiple, contradictory class struggles. Rather than presenting themselves in a direct economic guise, the class struggle assumed varied political forms: social struggles, popular revolts, national insurrections—all repressed using force. There was a need in theory and practice to put in order the different forms of class struggle—that is, to identify the principal contradiction—to develop a strategy with which victory would be achieved, a capacity that the movements did not have at the time. The results of the uprisings of 1848-9 were primarily bourgeois reforms: getting rid of remaining feudal institutions and establishing parliamentary rule. Modern state administration was to be the framework for renewed development of the productive forces after the capitalist crises in the mid-nineteenth century. But it was also the first step for the anti-capitalist forces in terms of organizing and developing strategies for the long transition from capitalism toward socialism.

The Foundation of The International

After the 1848 uprising, Marx became a refugee in London, his base for the rest of his life. The Communist League had been dissolved in 1852 after the arrest of the leadership of the German section. As the revolutionary spirit of 1848 petered out in Europe, Marx shifted his perspective from the immediate social revolution to the building of an international movement of workers aimed at overthrowing the capitalist system. In the 1850s, the capitalist mode of production only covered a small part of the planet: England, the Netherlands, Belgium, the northern parts of France, and the Westphalian part of Germany. One would think that capitalism then still had a vast potential for expansion. This was foreseen by Marx, who in 1858 wrote in a letter to Engels:

'The proper task of bourgeois society is the creation of the world market, at least in outline, and of production based on that market. Since the world is round, the colonisation of California and Australia and the opening up of China and Japan would seem to have completed this process. For us, however, the difficult question is this: on the [European] Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character. Will it not necessarily be crushed in this little corner of the earth, since the movement of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant over a far greater terrain?' 8

It was precisely this colonial expansion, both in terms of economics and migration of European settlers to “the New World,” that eased the pressure on the social kettle in Europe. Raw materials for industrial production—sugar, tea, coffee and food products—became cheaper, new markets opened, and the industrial output of cotton material and iron doubled in the 1850s. Migration reduced unemployment and wages grew rapidly.

The attempts to construct socialism in Europe failed primarily because capitalism still had options for growth, both in terms of terrain and in terms of developing productive forces. The inclusion of the non-European world into a center-periphery structure postponed the world revolution.

Nevertheless, Marx and Engels predicted that social revolution would occur within a few decades in Europe. They ruled out Britain to be the first, even though it was the most advanced capitalist country and therefore ripe for a transition to socialism. Tributes from Ireland and overseas colonies to the British economy smoothed out the political contradictions in the country. Engels wrote in 1858:

'[T]he English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.' 9

After a short break in 1857, the economic boom continued in the 1860s and 1870s. In England, liberal trade union laws were passed in 1867, and in the following years, revolutionary politics diffused into a liberal scramble for the proletarian vote. However, on the European continent, particularly in France, the revolutionary socialist movement advanced.

The recognition that capitalism was an expanding international system led to the argument that the working class had to organize internationally as well. On the 28th of September 1864, Marx finally saw his idea of The International Working Men’s Association (The First International) realized, an organization he proposes in The Communist Manifesto.

The First International had its historical roots in the general strike of London workers in 1859 and their radical trade union. Marx attended a mass meeting of The London Trades Council in March 1863, in which the members proclaimed their support for the war against slavery and their opposition to British intervention on the side of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Another incident that played a role in the founding of the International was the efforts of European workers to support Italian and Polish workers’ liberation struggles. The final push, which led to the establishment of the International, was an effort to counter the threat from leading capitalists to bring workers from France, Belgium, and Germany to act as strikebreakers in their struggle against British trade unionism. 10

Marx was one of the German delegates at the founding meeting and was elected to write the inaugural address. In the text, he linked economic and political struggles, and made internationalism an essential part of the struggle. Marx was also elected to the General Council and became a leading figure in the organization. He drafted all its main resolutions and prepared all its congress reports. Yet, the maintenance of unity was difficult at times. Marx’s clear anti-capitalism clashed with a majority reformist opinion. Marx managed to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable, and formulated a non-exclusionary, yet firmly class-based, political program that changed the initial moderate political strategy of the organization into a coherent anti-capitalist platform.

The majority of the French and German Social Democrats were initially against the strike as a weapon of struggle. However, from late 1866 onward, strikes intensified in many European countries, and their positive results convinced all the tendencies in the International that strikes were a fundamental weapon of labor struggle.

It was also a dominant trend in the early years of the International that workers should only fight for socioeconomic improvements through trade union struggle and not to organize for political power. Marx tried to argue for political struggle; however, it was the experience of the Paris Commune that convinced the International, and the labor movement more generally, that they had to establish proper political organizations to fight capitalism. The International also created awareness among workers that the emancipation of labor could not be won in a single country, but was an international objective.

From the beginning, the International was persecuted by nervous governments on the European continent. At the time of the Basel Con- gress of the International in 1869, it had around fifty thousand affiliated trade union members. The International was successful in increasing the efficiency of strikes, with workers across Europe helping each other financially in times of action. However, the organization was soon wracked by political differences. At the Brussels Congress in 1868, there were disputes between Marxists and Proudhonists, who rejected state ownership of the means of production in favor of production co-operatives. The Basel Congress in 1869 was characterized by harsh debates between followers of the anarchist Bakunin and Marx.

Adding to this fracturing of the working class, the Italian and German unification, and the strengthening of the nation-state in general throughout Europe, caused nationalism to grow within the labor movement, reflected in labor’s support of each European nation’s colonialism. The proletariat in the colonies were not at all represented in the First International. The repression of the organization following the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 was yet another blow. All these factors weakened the First International more and more until it was finally dissolved in 1876.

Chapter 5: The Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune

The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 opened the stage for the Paris Commune. France and Germany had long competed to be the dominant power in continental Europe. In a dispute on the succession of the Spanish throne, Otto von Bismarck maneuvered an overconfident Napoleon III into a declaration of war in July 1870 and then whipped up German nationalist fervor against the French, even managing to get the Lasallian faction of the German socialist movement to support the war effort.

The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 caused problems for the International. Marx wrote a statement on behalf of the International in which he called for class solidarity with the workers of both France and Prussia against the “fratricidal feud” concocted by the ruling classes. 1 At a meeting of the International in Chemnitz, Germany, delegates representing 50,000 Saxon workmen unanimously adopted a resolution to this effect:

'We declare the present war to be exclusively dynastic... We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to us by the workmen of France... Mindful of the watchword of the International Working Men’s Association: Proletarians of all countries, unite, we shall never forget that the workmen of all countries are our friends and the despots of all countries our enemies.' 2

However, the International was faced with the fact that the working class in Germany would respond to a war of national defense against the French army. On the other side of the border, the French workers would fight against an invasion by the Prussian army in spite of their resistance against the regime of Napoleon III. The International had the difficult task of curbing the nationalism and anti-French hysteria in the German working class. At the same time, Marx hoped that the Germans would prevent the reactionary Napoleon III from triumphing. The International proved powerless to stop the slaughter despite their call for cross-border solidarity. It was an early warning of the catastrophic result of national chauvinism in the working class that would erupt in 1914.

The French army soon collapsed, and Napoleon III himself was captured. When the news reached Paris, crowds poured onto the streets, and the Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris on September 4, 1870. The International called on Prussia to make peace, but the Prussian army headed for Paris. However, the French National Guard in Paris refused to hand over the city to the Prussian army, directly disobeying the French government. Social tensions grew due to hunger, unemployment, and overall misery under the siege of the Prussian Army. French troops in Paris loyal to the government tried to disarm the National Guard, but people poured into the street and attacked the soldiers, and two generals were lynched. The response of the National Guard was to hold an election on the 26th of March and set up a civil administration of the city: the Paris Commune. The assembly included members of the International, workers, artisans, shopkeepers, and radical intellectuals. Similar communes were set up in Lyon, Marseilles, and Toulouse, but they were quickly suppressed.

The establishment of the Paris Commune proved that a war between capitalist states could be a “window of opportunity” to bring the national class struggle to a head. The Communards rose and seized the opportunity. Napoleon III’s ousted government, which escaped from Paris to Versailles, regarded the Commune as a threat to bourgeois society and called for the remaining French army to attack. On April 2, 1871, the Germans retreated in order to give French troops the possibility to turn their attention to the communist rebels. The Germans also released prisoners of war to help strengthen the French Army. Germany did not want a socialist Commune at its doorstep to serve as an inspiration for the socialist movement in Germany. The French Army moved into Paris and faced the Commune in a nearly two month street-to-street battle. Around twenty thousand communards lost their lives and the subsequent executions. Around 50,000 were taken prisoner, many of whom were later put in prison or deported to French colonies in Africa and New Caledonia. The rise and fall of the Paris Commune were determined by the French-German inter-capitalist struggle over dominance of the European continent. We will see this pattern of inter-state rivalry and the opportunity for revolution repeated up through the 20th century.

The French government accused the International of being the mastermind behind the establishment of the Paris Commune. In February 1871, Marx was practically unknown outside of a dozen small circles of left-wing revolutionaries; by the end of the year, Marx was infamous. The Paris Commune generated a “red scare” across Europe. The French government and the bourgeois press managed to organize a crusade against the International throughout Europe. Britain and Switzerland were among the few states where the organization was not banned.

In this atmosphere of growing nationalism in Europe, and repression from state power, the political struggle between the Marxist and anarchist lines inside the International intensified. The influence of anarchism was growing in Italy, Spain, France, and Switzerland. In 1872, the Marxist faction of the International held a congress in New York. The anarchist-dominated faction held their congress in Saint-Imier in Switzerland, where they declared themselves to be the true and legitimate International. Consequently, they were expelled by the New York Congress. This was the end of the first attempt to organize the proletariat across frontiers. The International was formally dissolved in 1876.

Despite The Communist Manifesto’s call for internationalism and its claim that the proletariat has no motherland, the history of the socialist movement is a history of national movements operating within the boundaries of the modern world system of nation-states. Consequently, the idea of revolution has mainly revolved around seizing state power and controlling national governmental institutions. On the one hand, this focus enabled national revolutions. On the other hand, it stood in the way of socialism because the socialist mode of production, and its political system, cannot be fully realized in an isolated national context, particularly in a world system where economics and politics are becoming more and more transnational, a lesson that would be repeated again and again in the history of socialist revolutions.

The Paris Commune is the first case in which the proletariat assumed the task of transforming society. Based on the experience of the Commune, Marx came to the conclusion, in his pamphlet The Civil War in France, that the bourgeois state machine must not only be “conquered” but broken, giving way to a new kind of state. Marx praised the Commune’s abolition of a professional army in favor of directly arming the people, as well as the election of new civil servants. However, state-building was a difficult task for the first Commune. Marx deplored its statist incapacities: its lack of military expertise, its inability to define financial priorities, and its shortcomings in spreading the idea of the Commune to the provincial masses—the peasants.

The solution to these deficiencies became the establishment of a Communist Party, not only as the organizer of a centralized, disciplined capacity to struggle for state power, but also to govern the new state, “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The party realizes the ambiguity of Marx’s account of the Commune and gives it a body. The French Philosopher Alain Badiou writes:

'It becomes the political site of a fundamental tension between the non-state, even anti-state, character of a politics of emancipation and the statist character of the victory and duration of that politic…The party-state is endowed with capacities designed to resolve problems the Commune left unresolved: a centralization of the police and of military defense; the complete destruction of bourgeois economic decisions; the rallying and submission of the peasants to workers’ hegemony; the creation of a powerful international, etc. It is not for nothing that, as legend has it, V.I. Lenin danced in the snow the day Bolshevik power reached and surpassed the seventy-two days in which the Paris Commune’s entire destiny was brought to a close.' 3

The party-state may solve the problem that the Commune was unable to resolve—of how the proletariat could achieve and execute state power—but, as we will see, the party-state raised other problems.

Marx wrote his pamphlet The Civil War in France as an obituary for the Commune, which contained political lessons for the future of communism, concerning the organization and the use of armed struggle. Marx and Engels nevertheless saw the uprisings of 1848 across continental Europe, and the Paris Commune, as the prelude to new proletarian revolutions. In France, the repression which followed the defeat of the Commune turned mere membership in the International into a criminal offense. It took years for the socialist movement in France to reorganize. However, the situation in Germany was quite different: here Engels had high expectations for the revolutionary movement.

Chapter 6: From Revolutionary France to German Reformism

Europe after the 1848 rebellions and the Paris Commune was different from the world in which Marx and Engels formulated The Communist Manifesto. Unification transformed Germany: rapid industrialization in the 1860s created a large urban proletariat. Thus, the center of gravity of the socialist movement moved from England and France toward Germany. The German socialist movement grew rapidly in the form of trade unions and political parties. One of the first was Ferdinand Lassalle’s Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiter-Verein (German General Workers’ Association) founded in May 1863. Though a former member of the Communist League, Lasalle believed in reformist tactics to achieve socialism within a bourgeois political framework. To this end, he was prepared to cooperate with Prime Minister Bismarck in exchange for labor reforms. Marx regarded this approach as a betrayal. Matters came to a head when Lassalle launched the Workers Association in May 1863 with a program consisting of universal suffrage and state support for producer’s co-operatives. Marx declared that there was no possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism in Prussia. When Lassalle died a year later in 1864, in a duel over a love affair, Marx was invited to take over the leadership of the party, but he declined due to fundamental disagreements.

In 1869, the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany) was founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel. In the first years of its existence, the social democrats were on par with Marx’s revolutionary line. However, as the growing strength of the working class resulted in higher living standards, matters changed. In a move to consolidate their reformist position, the General Workers’ Association and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party held a meeting in Gotha in 1875, where they merged into the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany). The “Gotha Program” adopted by the nascent party called for universal suffrage, progressive income tax, free elementary education, freedom of association, limits on the length of the working day, and other laws protecting the rights and health of workers.1 The aim of the Gotha Program was still socialism, but a socialism developed by peaceful means within the capitalist system:

'…the socialist labor party of Germany endeavors by every lawful means to bring about a free state and a socialistic society, to effect the destruction of the iron law of wages by doing away with the system of wage labor, to abolish exploitation of every kind, and to extinguish all social and political inequality.' 2

The leading ideologue of the German Social Democratic Movement, Eduard Bernstein, believed that Marx was wrong on several points. In his book The Prerequisites of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy, Bernstein explained that Marx’s thesis on capitalism’s polarization of poverty on one pole and wealth on the other was wrong.3 Bernstein argued that the standard of living of the German working class was in fact rising. Furthermore, Bernstein criticized Marx’s statement in The Communist Manifesto that: “The working men have no country.” According to Bernstein, the working class had gained rights by social democratic struggle and had become citizens in the nation. The struggle of social democrats was therefore to reconcile the interests of the working class and the nation. Thus, the Social Democrats were in favor of German colonialism. Bernstein argued in the section “On the Military Question, Foreign Policy, and the Colonial Question” that Germany had the right to conquer new colonies to process extracted tropical raw materials. Moreover, Bernstein concluded that it is possible for the working class to achieve improvements in wages, and thus living standards, and to conquer ever-increasing rights within capitalism. Using parliamentarian struggle, the working class—which, after all, constitutes the majority of the population—can, without revolution, gain the power of the state and quietly and incrementally introduce socialism. Bernstein’s revision of Marx became the backbone of social democracy, which, in future historical situations, caused social democrats to choose the side of capital and the nation-state instead of class-based internationalism. However, the German Social Democrats’ nationalist strategy was successful in drawing voters. Led by Karl Kautsky, it became Europe’s strongest social democratic party. The Gotha Program became the model for social democrats across Europe. 4

The rising wage levels and expanded political rights strengthened the belief in the possibilities of reforms within the system, which again made it less risky for the capitalists to make compromises that softened the class struggle. The change of strategy of the socialist movement in Germany mirrored a changed response from the state towards reforms. In the 1880s, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced a series of social reforms and welfare measures. These were intended to ensure internal class peace while the state intensified an aggressive foreign policy of colonialism and foreign market penetration, which more than compensated the bourgeoisie for its social welfare expenses. Furthermore, in order to finance investment in weapons manufacturing and shipbuilding, Bismarck introduced a state tobacco monopoly in 1882 and the nationalization of the railways.

At the same time that the social reforms were implemented, repressive laws were adopted to weaken the ability of the radical wing of socialists to organize. The laws outlawed social democratic organizations and trade unions but allowed social democrats as individuals to participate in elections. This left the party in the odd position of being illegal as an organization, even while its representatives operated openly in parliament. This also left the political line of the party in the hands of the parliamentarians, which reinforced their pragmatic reformist line. In the 1912 elections, the Social Democrats became the largest party, with 34.8% of the votes. Like other socialist parties in Europe, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) voted for war grants in 1914. Thus, the SPD allied itself with capital in Germany’s conflict with France and England over the imperialist division of the world. The social democrats in Germany were drawn into the system, their representatives became members of parliament, entered into governments, and became administrators of a capitalist society. Their integration was complete when, аs a social democratic government, under the leadership of Friedrich Ebert and defense minister Gustav Noske, they used the army and paramilitary forces to suppress the communist uprisings of 1919.

Marx and Engels’ Critique of Reformism

As early as 1847 in The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx drew attention to a reality ignored by bourgeois economists, when they claimed capitalism’s capacity to improve the conditions of the working class:

'…in speaking of improvement, the economists were thinking of the millions of workers who had to perish in the East Indies so as to procure for the million and a half workers employed in England in the same industry three years’ prosperity out of ten.' 5

Likewise, Marx wrote a harsh criticism of the Gotha Program in 1875 admonishing its reformism and lack of internationalism:

'It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organize itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle—insofar as its class struggle is national, not in substance, but, as the Communist Manifesto says, “in form.” But the “framework of the present-day national state,” for instance, the German Empire, is itself economically “within the framework” of the world market, politically “within the framework” of the system of states. Every businessman knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck consists, to be sure, precisely in his pursuing a kind of international policy.

And to what does the German Workers’ party reduce its internationalism? To the consciousness that the result of its efforts will be “the international brotherhood of peoples”—a phrase borrowed from the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom, which is intended to pass as equivalent to the international brotherhood of working classes in the joint struggle against the ruling classes and their governments. Not a word, therefore, about the international functions of the German working class! And it is thus that it is to challenge its own bourgeoisie—which is already linked up in brotherhood against it with the bourgeois of all other countries—and Herr Bismarck’s international policy of conspiracy...

The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men’s Association. This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for the activity; an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which it gave but which was no longer realizable in its historical form after the fall of the Paris Commune.

Bismarck’s Norddeutsche6 was absolutely right when it announced, to the satisfaction of its master, that the German Workers’ party had sworn off internationalism in the new program.' 7

Internationalism also had to include the struggles of people in the colonies. Capitalist relations penetrated these societies and generated forces of national resistance. Engels defined the Chinese resistance at the time of the Second Opium War in 1856 as “a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality,” and Abd el-Kader’s struggle in Algeria as national resistance against the French. 8

Resistance against slavery in the U.S., and resistance against colonialism, was to grow in frequency and scale as an integrated part of the struggle for world socialism, affecting the development of the working-class movement both nationally and internationally. The English working class could not liberate themselves on the backs of the Irish working class, and “Labour in a white skin,” as Marx wrote in Capital regarding the U.S. Civil War, “cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in black skin.” 9

Marx was critical of the abstract “universal brotherhood of peoples” expressed in the Gotha Program. Internationalism had to have a concrete form, connecting it dialectically to national struggles. It had to take on the same global dimensions as capitalism itself. Marx sent his critique as an internal letter to the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany with whom Marx and Engels were in close association. As Engels explains in a letter to SPD leader August Bebel, considering the importance of the program, they believed it was necessary to step in:

'People imagine that we run the whole show from here, whereas you know as well as I do that we have hardly ever interfered in the least with internal party affairs, and then only in an attempt to make good, as far as possible, what we considered to have been blunders—and only theoretical blunders at that. But, as you yourself will realise, this programme marks a turning-point which may very well force us to renounce any kind of responsibility in regard to the party that adopts it.' 10

Marx’s critique did not affect the program. Marx and Engels refrained from criticizing the SPD’s theoretical shortcomings in public, but it remained a constant concern. In the late 1870s, the ideas of Eugen Dühring were gaining influence in the SPD, including among the leaders Bebel and Bernstein. Dühring criticized what he considered Marx’s economic determinism and revolutionary strategy. Engels took up the task of refuting Dühring’s ideas by publishing Anti-Dühring in 1878.11 Engels’ work aimed at demolishing Dühring’s influence inside the SPD, but he also wished to popularize the point that a revolutionary movement requires a revolutionary philosophy and strategy.

When Bismarck passed the Anti-Socialist Laws, outlawing the organization of the SPD but not the legality of its members of parliament, the SPD parliamentary faction, including the leader Wilhelm Liebknecht, signaled its willingness to compromise with the German government by remaining within the law and by voting for tariffs and the state budget. In September 1879, Engels responded to the policy of SPD parliamentarians:

'For almost 40 years we have emphasized that the class struggle is the immediate motive force of history and, in particular, that the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is the great lever of modern social revolution; hence we cannot possibly co-operate with men who seek to eliminate that class struggle from the movement. At the founding of the International we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. Hence, we cannot co-operate with men who say openly that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must first be emancipated from above by philanthropic members of the upper and lower middle classes. If the new party organ is to adopt a policy that corresponds to the opinions of these gentlemen, if it is bourgeois and not proletarian, then all we could do—much though we might regret it—would be publicly to declare ourselves opposed to it and abandon the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German party abroad.' 12

Engels demanded that the SPD oppose the capitalist state outright and reject collaboration with all bourgeois parties, as well as advocate the primacy of class struggle and working-class emancipation.

At its 1891 Congress in Erfurt, the SPD decided to adopt a new program written by Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein. The rhetoric was still revolutionary, but the practical demands were deeply reformist. As a response to the Erfurt Program, Engels decided to go public with a critique. His first move was the publication of Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme. In particular, he highlighted its emphasis on the importance of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and how this was a problem for the SPD leadership. In the Reichstag, SPD deputy Karl Grillenberger publicly repudiated Marx and declared that “for us, there was never any question of a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” 13 Engels answered back by releasing a new introduction to Marx’s Civil War in France. In the final paragraph of the introduction, Engels states:

'Of late, the Social Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat.' 14

Engels was worried that the party’s parliamentary successes and their focus on opportunism threatened its class character and wrote to Lafargue in 1894 that:

'[Bebel] complains with reason that the party is going bourgeois. That is the misfortune of all extreme parties when the time approaches for them to become “possible.”' 15

Imperial Socialism and Settlerism

Drawing attention to the national liberation struggle and colonial question was necessary because colonialist ideology was making inroads into working-class parties. Marx noted in 1870, that far from being in solidarity with the Irish worker, the English worker:

'…feels himself to be a member of the ruling nation…His attitude towards him (Irish worker) is roughly that of poor whites to the “niggers” in the former slave states of the American Union.' 16

The British working class was simultaneously sliding into chauvinism, racism, and reformism. However, it was not only the profit from colonial investments, which allowed capital to raise wages and promote reformism. Settler-colonialism also played a significant role in the rise of imperial socialism both in the country the emigrants left and in the settler colonies. Followers of the utopian socialists Charles Fourier and Henri de Saint-Simon tried to construct enclaves of “socialist” communities from North America to Algeria on land that was taken in brutal colonial wars. 17

Settlerism was partly a consequence of the poverty and distress that resulted from the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe, and partly a result of the possibilities created by colonialism and a new means of transport, which enabled millions of Europeans to settle in the “New World.” Approximately 70 million people emigrated from Europe throughout the nineteenth century. They were often “surplus” laborers in the countryside who could not find work in the cities. Poverty and famine, as in Ireland and Sweden, drove the emigrants across the globe: 36 million to the United States, 6.6 million to Canada, 5.7 million to Argentina, 5.6 million to Brazil, and others to Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Algeria. A significant number of the emigrants settled and claimed land, often displacing and dispossessing the original population in bloody conflicts. Overall, the proportion of emigrants accounted for more than 17 percent of the 408 million people living in Europe in 1900. This settler colonialism was different from ordinary colonialism. The settler did not want to just pass on the values from colonial exploration to the mother country. They wanted to become the new mother country. Hence, the American War of Independence in 1776. The settler colonies, which were successful in eliminating most of the Indigenous population, became clones of the center. The U.S. even overtook the British Empire by the turn of the century.

By acquiring land or work in the New World, emigrants helped to reduce the “reserve army of labor” in their old homelands, thus securing the remaining workers a better starting point in the struggle for higher wages. Emigration was a safety valve alleviating social unrest in Europe. In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin quotes the businessman and later Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes:

'I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for “bread! bread!” and on my way home I wondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism…My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.' 18

In the United States, impoverished European workers and peasants turned into settlers, in a nation that was on the verge of replacing England as the leading global power. The success of the settler state was based on the dispossession of the Indigenous population and the exploitation of enslaved Africans. Imperialist profits from Latin America, along with land speculations and the practice of slavery, generated the capital necessary for the fast-growing U.S. economy.

This racist hierarchy, embedded in the foundations of the American state, positioned immigrants from Northwestern Europe as an upper part of the working class. Between 1830 and 1860, 4.5 million immigrants from Europe arrived in the United States. These new Irish, German, Scandinavian, Italian, and Polish workers supplemented the former generations of European immigrants. The original settlers, the first generations of Anglo-Saxon origin, retained their privileged positions in skilled jobs or as foremen in charge of teams of workers. At the time, they received the highest wages of any worker in the world, approximately double the wages in Britain. The result was that, by 1900, the American working class was divided by national origin into three main groups: at the top, the Euro-American labor aristocracy, a privileged layer of “born in the U.S.A.” workers who constituted approximately 25 percent of the industrial working class. They got the best-paid skilled jobs and were protected by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Below them were a layer of workers made up of the new immigrants from Europe, which comprised between 50 and 75 percent of the industrialized working class in the northern states. They were mostly unorganized and were systematically excluded from the AFL, and thus from the better-paid jobs. However, their wage levels were significantly above salaries in Northwestern Europe at the time. At the bottom were the “colonial proletariat” of African, Latin American, and Asian origin. They did the hardest work for the lowest wages—on the railways, in construction, in mining, as well as on the plantations of the southern states.' 19

Gerald Horne describes how European settlers were able to climb up “the class ladder with sugar stalks and Africans as the rungs” by acquiring a share of the profits from land privatization and speculation, and the benefits from slavery.20 A racist ideology of white supremacy was gradually shaped as “pan-Europeanism: an invented solidarity between Europeans that transcended class, ethnic, and religious lines.” Through the journey across the Atlantic and the confrontation with the Indigenous population, as well as slavery, an identification of belonging to the white race was strengthened. Racism against Black and Indigenous people, Latin Americans, Indian, and Chinese immigrants, combined with an identity as Anglo-Saxon Protestants of Northwest European origin, lent a particular quality to American nationalism. The United States was “God’s own land,” ruled by the white man. Racism and nationalism blocked the development of solidarity based on class consciousness. The trade unions, along with the socialist and communist movements never succeeded in establishing as strong a foothold as they did in Europe. Not even social democracy developed in the United States. But racism and, as a consequence, the anti-racist struggle, has been prominently recurring features of U.S. history, and white supremacy has characterized U.S. domestic and foreign policy right up to the present day.

These effects of colonialism confirm that class struggle seldom presents itself in the pure state—workers versus capitalists. In Britain, the bourgeoisie could consolidate their rule thanks to the colonial subjugation of Ireland. In Ireland itself, colonialism made the social class struggle take the form of a national liberation struggle. In the U.S., as Engels wrote in 1850:

'There, (in North America) the class contradictions are but incompletely developed; every clash between the classes is concealed by the outflow of the surplus proletarian population to the west.' 21

Class struggle was defused via the expropriation and deportation of the natives, as the settlers moved to the West. Later, during the American Civil War, Marx observed that whites of “modest means” espoused the cause of the slave owners and often formed the mass base for attempts to export slavery to Central America:

'Only by acquisition and the prospect of acquisition of new territories, as well as by filibustering expeditions [like that which saw William Walker conquer Nicaragua in the mid-nineteenth century and reintroduce slavery], is it possible to square the interests of “poor whites” with those of the slaveholders, to give their restless thirst for action a harmless direction and tame them with the prospect of one day becoming slaveholders themselves.' 22

Thus, class struggle within the white community was also diffused through the enslavement of African Americans. Although supporting the Irish people against British colonialism, Marx did not shy away from mentioning the reactionary, anti-abolitionist role played by immigrants of Irish origin before and during the Civil War in the U.S. As they crossed the Atlantic Ocean, emigrants changed from poor proletarians to settlers, finding their place in the class hierarchy. As Marx writes: “The Irishman sees the Negro as a dangerous competitor.” 23

As the communist specter haunted Europe, theories emerged demanding that the annexation of land in the colonies should be assigned to the property-less class in the capitalist metropolis. In 1868, in France, Ernest Renan attacked the French Revolution of 1789 for having prevented: “the development of colonies…thereby obstructing the only route by which modern states can escape the problems of socialism,” a thesis he repeated three years later, following the Paris Commune: “Large-scale colonization is a political necessity of the first order. A nation that does not colonize is irrevocably condemned to socialism, to war between rich and poor.” It was necessary to put “inferior races’ to work for the benefit of the conquering race.” It was clear that “the Europeans are a race of masters and soldiers. Reduce this noble race to work for life like Negroes and Chinese, and it will revolt.”24

Some decades later, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, recommended the colonization of Palestine as an antidote to the ascendant revolutionary movement in Europe. A “proletariat that instills fear” should be diverted towards a territory that “requires men to cultivate it.” Freeing itself of “a surplus of proletarians and desperate men,” the European metropolis could at the same time export civilization to the colonial world:

'Hand in hand with this increase in civilization and order would go the emasculation of revolutionary parties. In this connection, it must be recalled that we are everywhere at grips with revolutionaries and will detach young Jewish intellectuals and workers from socialism and nihilism to the extent that we hold out a purer popular ideal.' 25

Indeed, socialists and anarchists of Jewish descent were “converting to Zionism,” or the Zionist form of settler-colonial socialism, in the form of the kibbutz movement. The first Kibbutz, “Degania Alef,” was established in 1910 in northern Palestine. The kibbutz’s attracted thousands of young volunteers from North America and Western Europe to work in these settler colonial projects, regarding them as socialist. European antisemitism and the Nazi Holocaust added to the Zionist colonization of Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel. A “garrison state” that, from the start, was supported by the U.S. as its “battleship,” controlling its interests in the region.

The late Italian philosopher Domenico Losurdo (1941–2018) notes that on the eve of the First World War, the nationalist political leader Enrico Corradini called on Italian socialists to support their own country’s colonial expansion, taking to heart the British example:

'The British worker knows that in the massive British Empire, spread over five continents, an activity occurs on a daily basis of which he is part, and which has a far from negligible impact on his household budget: this is Britain’s immense trade, which is strictly dependent on British imperialism. The London worker knows that Egypt and the Cape and India and Canada and Australia contribute and compete to increase his welfare and, above all, to disseminate it to an ever-greater number of British workers and British citizens.' 26

Five years after Engels’ death, writing in the Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly Bulletins), the German Social Democratic Party leader Eduard Bernstein noted:

'[I]f, in England and elsewhere, many nutritious and flavorsome tropical products have become staple items of popular consumption; and if the great American and Australian ranges and fields supply cheap meat and bread to millions of European workers, we must thank the colonial enterprise…Without the colonial expansion of our economy, the poverty that still exists in Europe today, which we are trying to eradicate, would be much worse and we would have much less hope of eliminating it. Even when counter-balanced by the crimes of colonialism, the benefits derived from colonies always weigh much more heavily in the scales.' 27

Concurrent to Bernstein’s writing, Germany committed genocide against the Herero people in Namibia, expropriating their land for settler farmers and cattle breeders. In the preparatory materials for his writing on imperialism, Lenin transcribed passages from a German historian on the matter, with the comment: “‘...rob the land and become landowners!’—this was how the imperialist powers proposed to resolve the social question.” 28

Like the British Labour Party, Bernstein’s Social Democrats resolved that promoting colonial expansion to obtain social reforms was the right strategy. “Imperial socialism” was progressing in the most authoritative socialist party of the time, spreading to the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

The advance of “imperial socialism” made the connection between reformism and imperialism explicit, drawing attention to the revolutionary potential of colonial peoples. The anti-reformist communist movement needed to develop an analysis of the totality of political and social relations, national and international, as a precondition for the formation of revolutionary strategy. Along with the colonial question, inter-imperialist contradictions in the prelude to the First World War demonstrated the need for a global perspective on class struggle.

CHAPTER 7: The Establishment of the Second International

After the repression of the Commune, the situation for French socialists only improved at the end of the 1870s. A new socialist party, Parti Ouvrier (Workers’ Party), was founded in Marseilles in 1879. The Party’s leading figure, Jules Guesde, asked Marx to assist him in writing the new program in 1880. In the preamble, Marx got the chance to present his position in a concentrated form.

'Considering: That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without distinction of sex or race. That the producers can be free only when they are in possession of the means of production. That this collective appropriation can arise only from the revolutionary action of the productive class—or proletariat—organized in a distinct political party. That such an organization must be pursued by all the means the proletariat has at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus be transformed from the instrument of deception that it has been until now into an instrument of emancipation.' 1

However, after just three years, the party experienced a large breakaway led by Paul Brousse. He founded the Fédération des Travailleurs Socialistes de France (The Federation of the Socialist Workers of France) as a protest against Marx’s revolutionary thrust of the Parti Ouvrier. Brousse preferred a more accommodating approach that worked within the framework of the parliamentary system.

In 1889, Brousse and Guesde’s factions convened in Paris to establish an organization to succeed the dissolved International. The rivalry between the two was intense, with delegates wandering back and forth between them. Though Guesde’s Marxist faction would triumph, with four hundred delegates from twenty countries, the establishment of the Second International was ravaged by conflicts between the reformist and revolutionary lines from the start.

Nationalism Engulfs the Left

The assumption in the Communist Manifesto that proletarians have no “fatherland” did not match reality. The basis for such a proclamation was that all proletarians were exploited by capital and that this common relation would transcend their citizenship. This was not an unlikely assumption in 1848. Proletarians worldwide shared more or less the same living conditions and they did not owe anything to the national state. However, this situation changed. Colonialism—the globalization of capitalism—was a polarizing process, dividing the world into a system of center, semi-periphery, and periphery. Exploitation was not only confined to the relationship between the worker and capital, but it was also a relation between nation-states. The gains from imperialism trickled down to the citizens of the imperialist countries, including the working class, increasing their nationalist feelings.

In 1904, Lenin noted a correlation between the absence of a militant English communist movement, the political strength of the organized trade unions, and the growing foreign investment of English capital. 2 Despite this, he continued to advocate for proletarian internationalism while arguing against reformism and national chauvinism in the Second International. The strength of nationalism became clear in 1914, when rows of people lined the streets in England, France, and Germany, hailing their troops as they marched to war. The German SPD, as the leading power of the Second International, had, as late as July 25, 1914, spoken out against militarism. However, the SPD had only one foot in the pacifist camp. The party guidelines issued in 1891 by August Bebel nourished patriotic sentiment:

'The soil of Germany, the German fatherland, belongs to us the masses, as much as and more than to the others. If Russia, the champion of terror and barbarism, went to attack Germany…we should be as much concerned as those who stand at the head of Germany.' 3

After Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, the majority of the SPD newspapers shared their enthusiasm for the war—the so-called “Spirit of 1914.” Because of the general enthusiasm for the war among the population, many SPD deputies worried that they might lose their voters if they followed the pacifist line expressed by the congress of the Second International.

On August 4th, 96 SPD deputies, including Friedrich Ebert, approved war bonds, arguing that hostilities had been forced on Germany. This decision made the full mobilization of the German Army possible. The Kaiser welcomed the so-called political “truce” in the Reichstag, declaring: “I no longer see parties, I see only Germans!” 4

The SPD decision had fatal consequences for the Second International. The immediate reaction of the other parties was disgust, but with the desertion of the antiwar position by the best-organized social democratic voice in the setup, other parties soon fell into line behind their respective governments. After August 4, 1914, the parliamentarian social democrats and radical socialists took very different paths. Lenin urged all true socialists to leave the Second International.

When information of the deaths of millions in the trenches reached Paris, Berlin, and London, despite suffocating censorship, some social democrats regretted their first flush of patriotism. However, the SPD leadership expelled members of parliament who were against the war effort and continued to support their government and the Kaiser, a sign of what the social democratic government’s role in post-war Germany would be.

An evaluation of the strategy to obtain socialism in the second half of the nineteenth century might conclude that the revolutionary approach of 1848, and the Paris Commune of 1871, led to a massive loss of human lives, while the reformist strategy successfully gave the working class a better living standard. But what was the cost of the lives of colonial projects and the inter-imperialist wars, which were supported by social democratic policy?

The Architect of Revolution

By the end of his life, Marx turned his hope towards Russia as the site for a possible socialist revolution, despite its less developed capitalism and hence, smaller working class. However, there were other factors at play. The polarizing dynamics of capitalism had trapped a semi-peripheral country like Russia in a deadlock, which made it impossible for it to develop its productive forces and catch up with the more advanced center countries in Europe and North America. The destruction of pre-capitalist modes of production, and the ruthless exploitation at the margins of the world system, caused social upheaval. By the turn of the century, the revolutionary spirit had moved from Northern and Western Europe to the weak links of capitalism in the semi-periphery (Russia) and to the periphery (China and Mexico). Russia had a revolutionary upheaval in 1905 and China a huge peasant revolt in 1911, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Moreover, Latin America gave the world its first peasant revolution in 1910, the Zapatista Revolution.

With the outbreak of the war in 1914, the contradiction between the leading capitalist powers in Europe became the principal contradiction in the world system: this created a window of opportunity for a new revolution in Russia.

Lenin became the main architect of the Russian revolution. In the first half of the 1890s, he had already begun to develop his ideas concerning how to revolutionize Russia. Marx had not left much advice on how to build socialism, apart from some remarks in his critique of the Gotha Programme. The young Lenin was forced to develop an alternative to capitalism himself. First, he rejected utopian socialism. In his book, What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats, written in 1894, he criticized the dreamy visions of socialism espoused by the Narodniks. 5 Lenin argued instead that socialism becomes a historical possibility when the existing mode of production becomes a fetter upon the development of the productive forces. This was the situation created by the tsarist regime in Russia. However, the construction of socialism had to take as its starting point the productive forces developed by capitalism. 6 Lenin reflected in 1914 on how capitalism prepared for socialism:

'The Taylorist system—without its initiators knowing or wishing it—is preparing for the time when the proletariat will take over all social production and appoint its own workers’ committees for the purpose of properly distributing and rationalizing all social labor. Large-scale production, machinery, railways, and telephony all provide thousands of opportunities to cut by three-fourths the working time of the organized workers and make them four times better off than they are today. And these workers’ committees, assisted by workers’ unions, will be able to apply these principles of the rational distribution of social labor when the latter is freed from its enslavement by capital.' 7

The problem was that Russia was not a developed capitalist society ripe for socialism in terms of the development of its productive forces. It was Russia’s position on the margins of capitalism that blocked its development. The construction of socialism in Russia necessitated catching up technologically as well as changing its mode of production to unblock the development of its productive forces. But the first step for the Bolsheviks was to take state power—the revolution.

In January 1917, Lenin was based in Switzerland. At that time, he publicly stated that his generation may not live to see the triumph of the revolution in Russia. He had been in exile since 1900, following his banishment to Siberia for three years on charges of revolutionary activities. In Switzerland, he built—together with other exiled Russians—a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries: the Bolsheviks. His argument for that organization is set out in the essay What is to be Done?, written in 1902. 8 Lenin argued that to execute a revolution, it is necessary to have an organization that could act fast, decisively, and in unison—hence the principle of democratic centralism, that is, a practice of democratic elections that elevates members into a position of hierarchical responsibility. Policy decisions are then freely debated by these members until a decision is reached, after which all dissent has to cease for unity in action. The organization should then have the capability to coordinate various kinds of political activities: parliamentary struggles, influencing the workers in self-elected councils (Soviets), and organizing party cells within army units. This last task was important, as it was necessary for a secret, armed Red Guard to assist in seizing the power of government when the time was right. All this demanded a high degree of organizational strength: a vanguard party to lead the working class. In his preparation for founding this organization, Lenin had studied Marx and Engels’ evaluations of the Paris Commune and the civil war in France carefully, hence the emphasis on an independent, disciplined working class party to struggle for state power, and the subsequent rule of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lenin was shocked by the behavior of the leaders of the Second International in 1914 and he branded them as “traitors to socialism.” Contrary to the social democrats, Lenin was calling on socialists to “transform the present imperialist war into a civil war.” 9

CHAPTER 8: The Russian Revolution of 1917

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia was a semi-feudal society under a tsarist regime in the semi-periphery of capitalist Europe, with its development blocked by imperialism. The Dutch Marxist theorist Anton Pannekoek also noted an ideological difference between the Western European and Russian bourgeoisie:

'During the Middle Ages, England, France, Holland, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia, had a strong bourgeoisie with petty-bourgeois and primitive capitalist production methods; when feudalism was defeated, a strong, independent class of farmers emerged, who were also masters in their own little economies. Upon this foundation, bourgeois spiritual life developed a definite national culture.' 1

The situation in Russia was different: there was no strong bourgeois culture to dominate intellectual life. In the East, the masses were less engulfed in bourgeois liberal politics and so might be more receptive to leaping over capitalism and into the idea of socialism. Simultaneously, the First World War created the external conditions for the Russian Revolution. The inter-imperialist contradictions amplified Russia’s national contradictions and opened up a “window of opportunity” for revolutionary change in a weak link within the capitalist world system. In 1917, this crisis became acute in the final phase of the war. Lenin defined the revolutionary situation as follows:

We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) When it is impossible for the ruling class to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis in one form or another, among the “upper classes,” a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to want” to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way. (2) When the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual. (3) When, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace time,” but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the upper classes themselves into independent historical action. Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The totality of all these objective changes is called a revolutionary situation. 2

Without these preconditions, there is no revolution, but even with them, there may not necessarily be revolution. It is not mechanical, therefore, as Lenin goes on to say:

'Such a situation existed in 1905 in Russia, and in all revolutionary periods in the West; it also existed in Germany in the sixties of the last century, and in Russia in 1859-61 and 1879-80, although no revolution occurred in these instances. Why was that? It was because it is not every revolutionary situation “that gives rise to a revolution”; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis “falls,” if it is not toppled over.' 3

A successful revolution is a combination of objective conditions and subjective forces. The Bolsheviks managed to seize the opportunity of the revolutionary situation. The tsarist regime was overthrown. The Russian working class and poor peasants were forced by the intransigence of the ruling class to rise up in desperate self-defense, demanding three things: peace, land, and bread. Taking into consideration the actual situation in Russia and the world of 1917, the Bolsheviks were the only force that could end the war and make the wheels of the economy turn again, making possible the development of the forces of production. Taking state power was, however, only the first step: how, then, to proceed? Lenin wrote State and Revolution as late as August and September 1917, which deals with the problems of constructing socialism. Following Marx, Lenin’s interpretation of socialism was the establishment of communal ownership of the means of production and direct control over the workplace through the soviets of workers. However, the theorizations in State and Revolution conflicted with the practicalities of the times after the revolution.

The Bolsheviks had to face a very difficult situation: after a bloody civil war and a Western military intervention, the Soviet Union had to navigate under unfavorable “objective” circumstances. The Bolsheviks were confronted with the task of developing methods to govern a state transitioning to socialism in a hostile surrounding world. And last, but not least, the “Russian backwardness,” which in some sense facilitated the revolution, made the realization of socialism difficult. Lenin hoped that revolutions in Western Europe would create a socialist bloc, assisting the development of productive forces in the Soviet Union. However, the Bolsheviks had to change their views faced with the defeat of the German revolution. As a result, the desired plan to develop socialism had to be modified, and history moved toward building what became so-called “actually existing socialism” in its peculiar Russian form, something Lenin had wanted to avoid.

CHAPTER 9: The Attempt to Build Socialism under Lenin

The new Soviet state had to develop their productive forces rapidly to meet the most urgent needs of the population while also struggling to stay in power. The attempt to build socialism became a devious road, determined by interactions between national contradictions and the changing global principal contradiction. We can periodize the post-October Revolution into (1) a short attempt to establish a “mixed economy,” (2) “war communism” from May 1918 until Spring 1921, (3) “state capitalism” of the New Economic Policy (NEP), and (4) collectivization during the first years of Stalin.

From 1917 to 1921, the situation in the Soviet Union was unstable in every respect. The establishment of the Soviet Union cut off a part of the world market from the capitalist center, and the existence of the Soviet Union inspired revolutionary uprisings in Germany, Hungary, and Finland. From the point of view of capital, the Soviet Union had to be destroyed. This led to foreign interventions during the Russian Civil War. France, England, the U.S., Canada, and Japan supported the counterrevolutionaries. In 1920, there were about 250,000 foreign troops on Russian soil. Winston Churchill stressed the importance of “strangling Bolshevism in its cradle.” 1

Lenin had believed that the Russian Revolution was the beginning of a socialist world revolution. He emphasized repeatedly that an understanding of the roots of opportunism—primarily the benefits from imperialism—and the fight against social chauvinism was the main task of Western European revolutionaries. 2 His political strategy for Western Europe was to bypass the highest-paid layers of the working class (the labor aristocracy) and to mobilize the proletariat properly for the revolution. This strategy was applied not least in Germany, which had lost the war, been stripped of its colonies, and made to pay war reparations. Lenin saw the revolution in Germany as essential for the survival of the Russian Revolution, and for the further advance of the world revolution. In a political report to the Central Committee on March 7, 1918, Lenin wrote:

'Regarded from the world-historical point of view, there would doubtlessly be no hope of the ultimate victory of our revolution if it were to remain alone, if there were no revolutionary movements in other countries…I repeat, our salvation from all these difficulties is an all Europe revolution.' 3

However, the German revolution did not transpire, and this placed the Soviet Union in a difficult position. The Bolsheviks had to prioritize defending their own revolution while awaiting future progress in the world revolution.

The Mixed Economy in the Wake of the Revolution

The priority of the Bolsheviks’ policy just after the revolution was to preserve state power and to develop the economy so they could provide the essential needs of the population. It was a day-to-day battle for survival. At the congress of the Communist Party on March 6-8, 1918, Lenin stated that it was an illusion that socialism could be introduced by decrees, considering the fact that 80% of the population was illiterate. Lenin concluded that capitalism, as a sector, would have to remain as part of the economy for some time:

'If we decided to continue to expropriate capital at the same rate at which we have been doing up to now, we should certainly suffer defeat…[instead we must be] utilizing bourgeois specialists for proletarian state power.' 4

Yet Lenin was aware of a possible corruption of the system:

'The corrupting influence of high salaries—both upon the Soviet authorities and upon the mass of the workers—is indisputable…We have introduced workers’ control as a law, but this law…is only just beginning to penetrate the minds of broad sections of the proletariat.' 5

Lenin thought that the development of socialism depended on “combining the Soviet organization of administration with the up-to- date achievements of capitalism.” 6

War Communism

The civil war left the economy in ruins. The plan to establish a mixed economy under proletarian supervision became impossible in the spring of 1918. Famine ravaged the cities. In May 1918, the state-supervised mixed market economy was transformed into a state subsistence economy called “War Communism.” It included forced requisitioning of foodstuffs, redistribution of land, nationalization of industry, state management of production, centralization of resource allocation, state monopolization of trade, partial suspension of money transactions, and the introduction of strict labor discipline. During War Communism, housing and meals at work were free and wages were paid in kind, at low subsistence levels. The time of War Communism is also associated with the institutionalization of the one-party state and increased party discipline.

The state, primarily as a military force of authority, acted as the director of the economy. Property rights were reduced. War Communism was the collectivization of poverty. Some Bolsheviks regarded poverty as a condition of purity and moral excellence, an attitude criticized in The Communist Manifesto:

'Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty?' 7

By focusing on the distribution of wealth, one tends to neglect the development of productive forces. The Communist Manifesto again criticized this attitude: “...the ‘first movements of the proletariat’ are often characterized by demands stamped by ‘universal asceticism and social leveling’ in its crudest form.” 8

To be certain, Lenin did not identify War Communism with socialism: it was an emergency economy. The Soviet government implemented War Communism under the pressure of concrete circumstances, without foreseeing its internal effects. The forced requisitioning of foodstuffs was unpopular with the peasants, who responded by sowing less grain and hiding food. As a result, the food shortage became even more acute. The industrial output fell and aggravated the economic crisis, which was topped by a trade blockade initiated by the capitalist West. The masses grew tired of the hardship and sacrifices. For Lenin, a sailors’ uprising at Kronstadt in March 1921, along with frequent peasant revolts, signified that War Communism was a dead end and the thumbscrews on the economy had to be eased. The response to the economic crisis was the New Economic Policy (NEP).

The New Economic Policy (NEP)

To overcome mass poverty, it was necessary to restart the economy and develop the Soviet Union’s productive forces. When the chaotic years of War Communism had passed, the Bolsheviks realized that they had to develop the economy to fulfill the basic needs of the population and broaden support for revolutionary power. It was also necessary not to lag in economic development compared to the capitalist countries. It was necessary that the Soviet Union be prepared for defense, as the threat of foreign intervention continued to loom.

Lenin believed that the Soviet Union was far from the level of development which would make socialism possible. For Lenin, NEP was a necessary step backward in the transition to socialism. In a speech in 1921, Lenin posed the alternatives for Russia:

'We must face this issue squarely—who will come out on top? Either the capitalists succeed in organising first—in which case they will drive out the Communists and that will be the end of it. Or the proletarian state power, with the support of the peasantry, will prove capable of keeping a proper rein on those gentlemen, the capitalists, so as to direct capitalism along state channels and to create a capitalism that will be subordinate to the state and serve the state…You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them. Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running the economy, and only when you do that will you be able to build up a communist republic.' 9

The Bolsheviks needed investment and new technology. Already on November 23, 1920, Lenin introduced a law giving concessions and advantages to foreign investors. In 1921, the NEP was formally adopted, instituting market conditions over War Communism’s militarized production, strict state distribution, and the compulsory appropriation of grain.

The Soviet state gave preferential treatment to organized large-scale capital. The Bolsheviks used the technology and management associated with capitalism to boost production. Under NEP, a return to capitalism was permitted in trade, agriculture, and small-scale manufacturing. The requisitioning of food was replaced by a graduated tax. Moreover, the peasants were allowed to sell their surplus on the market, rent land, and employ labor. Other policies included monetary reform in 1922, and a docket of laws meant to attract foreign capital.

However, the “commanding heights” of the economy, such as finance, infrastructure, large industry, and mining remained in the hands of the state. 10

The Russian working class had seized power before the preconditions for socialism were present. Lenin’s strategy was to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat while developing the material conditions. Lenin criticized those who interpreted Marx as arguing that the working class should never seize power until capitalism had developed large-scale industry and had made it the dominant factor in society. Lenin knew that the revolution, and victory in the civil war, had not made the Soviet Union socialist. He wrote in 1921:

'Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organization, which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution. At the same time, socialism is inconceivable unless the proletariat is the ruler of the state.' 11

The Soviet state had survived the first years, but there was a lack of skilled cadres for the administration of the state. There were internal party splits and outright revolts, such as the rebellion at Kronstadt. Although Lenin was surrounded by a disparity of comrades, he faced this reality in the article “Better Fewer, But Better”:

'[A]t the present time we are confronted with the question—shall we be able to hold on with our small peasant production, and in our present state of ruin, until the West-European capitalist countries consummate their development towards socialism?... They are not consummating it through the gradual “maturing” of socialism, but through the exploitation of some countries by others, through the exploitation of the first of the countries vanquished in the imperialist war combined with the exploitation of the whole of the East. On the other hand, precisely as a result of the first imperialist war, the East has been definitely drawn into the revolutionary movement, has been definitely drawn into the general maelstrom of the world revolutionary movement… We must display extreme caution so as to preserve our workers’ government and to retain our small and very small peasantry under its leadership and authority. We have the advantage that the whole world is now passing to a movement that must give rise to a world socialist revolution…Can we save ourselves from the impending conflict with these imperialist countries?...In the last analysis, the outcome of the struggle will be determined by the fact that Russia, India, China, etc., account for the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe. And during the past few years it is this majority that has been drawn into the struggle for emancipation with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this respect there cannot be the slightest doubt what the final outcome of the world struggle will be. In this sense, the complete victory of socialism is fully and absolutely assured.' 12

There was no giving up in Lenin’s mind. He sought a longer, more devious path, but one that would enable him to reach the summit. He describes this procedure in his article “On Ascending A High Mountain.”

'Let us picture to ourselves a man ascending a very high, steep and hitherto unexplored mountain. Let us assume that he has overcome unprecedented difficulties and dangers and has succeeded in reaching a much higher point than any of his predecessors, but still has not reached the summit. He finds himself in a position where it is not only difficult and dangerous to proceed in the direction and along the path he has chosen, but positively impossible. He is forced to turn back, descend, seek another path, longer, perhaps, but one that will enable him to reach the summit. The descent from the height that no one before him has reached proves, perhaps, to be more dangerous and difficult for our imaginary traveler than the ascent—it is easier to slip; it is not so easy to choose a foothold; there is not that exhilaration that one feels in going upwards, straight to the goal, etc…Russia’s proletariat rose to a gigantic height in its revolution, not only when it is compared with 1789 and 1793, but also when compared with 1871…We accomplished the task of getting out of the most reactionary imperialist war in a revolutionary way…We have created a Soviet type of state and by that we have ushered in a new era in world history, the era of the political rule of the proletariat, which is to supersede the era of bourgeois rule. Nobody can deprive us of this, either, although the Soviet type of state will have the finishing touches put to it only with the aid of the practical experience of the working class of several countries. But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile powers of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting this bitter truth; for we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism—that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism.

We are still alone and in a backward country, a country that was ruined more than others, but we have accomplished a great deal. More than that—we have preserved intact the army of the revolutionary proletarian forces; we have preserved its maneuvering ability; we have kept clear heads and can soberly calculate where, when and how far to retreat (in order to leap further forward); where, when and how to set to work to alter what has remained unfinished.

Those Communists are doomed who imagine that it is possible to finish such an epoch-making undertaking as completing the foundations of socialist economy (particularly in a small-peasant country) without making mistakes, without retreats, without numerous alterations to what is unfinished or wrongly done. Communists who have no illusions, who do not give way to despondency, and who preserve their strength and flexibility “to begin from the beginning” over and over again in approaching an extremely difficult task, are not doomed (and in all probability will not perish).' 13

It is worth pointing out that Lenin was completely open about the consequences of NEP—it was introducing elements of capitalism. There was no beating around the bush or paraphrasing. The NEP was a descent—to find another path toward the summit of socialism. The use of capitalist elements had been used before, however now they came into play in a much more structured manner. A special form of capitalism had come into being in Russia, one previously unknown to history: capitalism under the control of a state committed to developing socialism. In 1922, Lenin suggested the term “state capitalism” for the relations of the transitional period:

'State capitalism would be for us, and for Russia, a more favorable form than the existing one…We did not overrate either the rudiments or the principles of socialist economy, although we had already accomplished the social revolution. On the contrary, at that time in 1918 we already realized to a certain extent that it would be better if we first arrived at state capitalism and only after that at socialism.' 14

Lenin’s speech at the Eleventh Party Congress in 1922 stressed that during the NEP, various forms of economies compete and therefore mobilize different social forces. Small proprietors, the state capitalist, the state socialist, and self-governing cooperative sectors, together formed a system of market economies, which meant that the direct realization of socialism as a system was taken off the political agenda for the time being. 15 However, this was a transition period, in which the possibilities to develop socialism could mature both in terms of the development of productive forces and in the mode of production.

During the 1920s, direct communal production was established either in the form of voluntary associations or by way of state mediation, though only in a small fraction in agricultural and industrial production.

Lenin called them “islands of socialism” and imagined that this model could be the way to establish socialism in the longer run. In the article “On Cooperation,” written in January 1923, he argued that cooperatives are part of the road toward socialism:

'All we actually need under NEP is to organize the population of Russia in cooperative societies on a sufficiently large-scale, for we have now found the degree of combination of private interest, with state supervision and control of this interest, that degree of its subordination to the common interests, which was formerly the stumbling block for very many socialists…It is this very circumstance that is underestimated by many of our practical workers. They look down upon cooperative societies, failing to appreciate their exceptional importance, first, from the standpoint of principle (the means of production are owned by the state), and second, from the standpoint of transition to the new system by means that are the simplest, easiest and most acceptable to the peasant…It is one thing to draw out fantastic plans for building socialism through all sorts of workers associations, and quite another to learn to build socialism in practice in such a way that every small peasant could take part in it. We went too far when we reintroduced NEP, but not because we attached too much importance to the principal of free enterprise and trade—we went too far because we lost sight of the cooperatives, because we now underrate cooperatives, because we are already beginning to forget the vast importance of the cooperatives from the above two points of view… In conclusion: a number of economic, financial and banking privileges must be granted to the cooperatives—this is the way our socialist state must promote the new principle on which the population must be organized.' 16

Though the NEP was meant to be functional for a longer period, Lenin did not remove socialism from his agenda. Incorporating the whole population into voluntary cooperatives of production and consumption would take a longer period to realize. The cooperatives, as Lenin wrote about in “On Cooperation,” are the products of capitalism; they are “collective capitalist institutions” in which the future of socialism can be glimpsed. He spoke about the possibility of coexisting state socialist and cooperative socialist enterprises, though a differentiation between the two forms of cooperative, state and self-governed, would soon come. 17 By the mid-1920s, nearly 10 million people worked in state-organized and state-subsidized consumer cooperatives. Lenin explicitly stressed that a shift must be made from the interpretation of socialism previously reached (war communist, state powered, and politicized) to the position of “cooperative socialism.”18 As Lenin states at the end of “On Cooperation”:

'Now we are entitled to say that for us the mere growth of cooperation…is identical with the growth of socialism, and at the same time we have to admit that there has been a radical modification in our whole outlook on socialism…the emphasis is changing and shifting to peaceful, organizational, “cultural” work. I should say that emphasis is shifting to educational work, were it not for our international relations, were it not for the fact that we have to fight for our position on a world scale.' 19

The development of the Soviet Union’s productive forces had to enable the fulfillment of the needs of the people. This required the transfer of technology and knowledge from the advanced European states, combined with the development of the ability of the population in the new state to command these productive forces. The fact that 80% of the population were illiterate constituted a barrier. There was a lack of skilled workers and engineers.

The Soviet Union was the first genuine attempt in history to build socialism, and which survived its traumatic birth. It represents historical experience, which remains relevant when we evaluate current attempts to overcome capitalism. What kind of socialism would be viable in replacing capitalism in our current situation? Is it an updated edition of state socialism taking advantage of new information technologies for effective and democratic planning? Does it take the direction of self-governing socialism of workers’ councils and different forms of cooperatives? Certainly, socialism will take different forms from country to country in the world system depending on the specific history and culture of each nation.

Under NEP there was still no centrally planned economy. Economic organizational forms, such as collectivized farming, and five-year plans, which came to define “actually existing socialism” in the 1930s and onwards, were still unknown. No one had a clear idea of what socialist economics and political governance might look like in praxis by the time the revolution was firmly consolidated.

The Debate About the NEP

The NEP worked to some extent—development of the productive forces began to take place. The living conditions of the masses improved because social wealth increased, and desperate hunger disappeared, yet social inequalities increased. These inequalities provoked a feeling of betrayal of the original ideals of socialism. Domenico Losurdo writes:

'Literally tens of thousands of Bolshevik workers tore up their party cards in disgust at the NEP, which they re-named the New Extortion from the Proletariat…A rank-and-file militant very effectively described the spiritual atmosphere prevailing in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution—the atmosphere arose from the horror of war caused by imperialist competition in plundering the colonies in order to conquer markets and acquire raw materials, as well as by capitalists searching for profit and super-profit: “We young Communists had all grown up in the belief that money was done away with once and for all…If money was reappearing, wouldn’t rich people reappear too? Weren’t we on the slippery slope that led back to capitalism?”' 20

The idealist attitude toward the construction of socialism was not confined to devoted Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. When the young German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) published the first edition of Spirit of Utopia in 1918, he called on the Soviets to implement the “transformation of power into love” and to put an end not only to “every private economy,” but also to any “money economy” and with it the “mercantile values that consecrate whatever is most evil in man.”21 When the second edition of Spirit of Utopia was published in 1923, Bloch had deleted the passages. However, these idealist attitudes towards the construction of socialism did not vanish in either the Soviet Union or elsewhere. The transition to NEP found passionate critics among the militant Bolsheviks as well as among Western communist leaders. At the 11th Congress of the Communist Party in 1922, Lenin said:

'…at the last extended Plenary Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, moved by the best communist sentiments and communist aspirations, several of the comrades burst into tears because—oh horror!—the good Russian Communists were retreating…At every step you find a certain mood of depression. We even had poets who wrote that people were cold and starving in Moscow, that “everything before was bright and beautiful, but now trade and profiteering abound.” We have had quite a number of poetic effusions of this sort.' 22

Yet Antonio Gramsci had a very different evaluation of War Communism:

'Collectivism of poverty and suffering will be the principle. But those very conditions of poverty and suffering would be inherited from a bourgeois regime…The suffering that will come after peace will be tolerated only because the workers feel that it is their will and their determination to work to suppress it as quickly as possible.' 23

The “collectivism of poverty and suffering” is justified by the specific situation in the Soviet Union in the immediate post-revolutionary period. However, it had to be overcome as quickly as possible. Therefore, Gramsci had no objections to NEP as he made clear in a letter from the Politburo of the Italian Communist Party to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party:

'The reality of the Soviet Union put us in the presence of a phenomenon “never before seen in history.” A politically “dominant” class “as a whole” finds itself “in living conditions inferior to certain elements and strata of the [politically] dominated and dependent class.” The masses of people who continued to suffer a life of hardship were confused by the spectacle of “the NEP-man dressed in fur who has at his disposal all the goods of the earth.” And yet this should not constitute grounds for a scandal or feelings of repugnance, because the proletariat, as it cannot gain power, also cannot even keep power if it is not capable of sacrificing individual and immediate interests to the “general and permanent interests of the class.”' 24

NEP was not the return of capitalism in the Soviet Union. It was introduced as an instrument to resolve the problem of mass poverty. The return of an economically privileged class does not necessarily mean that they are the politically dominant class in charge of the state.

The debate in Western Europe on the development in the Soviet Union focused on whether the October Revolution had been bourgeois or socialist, or whether a potentially proletarian revolution was degenerating into a bourgeois one, due to the absence of a Western European revolution, or due to political mistakes made by the Bolshevik leaders. The idea that the transition from capitalism to socialism would be a long historical process, in which different social and economic transitional forms of states might occur, was not within the mindset at that time. From 1918, Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), the leader of the German Social Democrats, carried on a persistent criticism against Bolshevism. The revolution was in the wrong place and premature. Socialism could only be established in a highly developed capitalist society like Germany. Therefore, the Bolshevik attempt to force the establishment of socialism through a coup d’état, promulgated as a revolution, could only result in a historically impossible deformity. Since bourgeois social relations persisted, either an old or a new exploiting class held power in Russia. 25

Lenin responded in an article published in Pravda on November 7, 1919, stressing that the transition from capitalism to communism:

'…must combine the features and properties of both forms of social economy (and encompassed) a historical era…crying scandal because of the co-presence of heterogeneous social relations during the transition meant bemoaning the fact that the conquest of power did not betoken the cessation of class struggle…petty-bourgeois democrats are distinguished by an aversion to class struggle, by their dreams of avoiding it, by their efforts to smooth over, to reconcile, to remove sharp corners. Such democrats…avoid recognizing any necessity for a whole historical period of transition from capitalism to communism.' 26

On the left wing in Germany, the communist Rosa Luxemburg argued against Kautsky’s interpretation that Russia, due to its economic backwardness, was not “ripe” for a socialist revolution. Kautsky’s position would write off the idea of the world revolution, as Luxemburg writes in 1918:

'It is not Russia’s un-ripeness which has been proved by the events of the war and the Russian Revolution, but the un-ripeness of the German proletariat for the fulfillment of its historic tasks. And to make this fully clear is the first task of a critical examination of the Russian Revolution.' 27

Luxemburg’s position was that any criticism had to be based on fundamental solidarity with the new Soviet state. This does not mean that she did not have critical points. First, she was concerned about the rural policy of the Bolsheviks immediately after the revolution. By redistributing land and allowing the peasants to divide the large feudal estates, a more communal approach to property had not been strengthened; instead, a new form of private property had been created. The new class of property-owning peasants would defend their land and obstruct the future socialization of agriculture.

Her second point of criticism concerned the national question. After the revolution, Lenin fought against Russian nationalism and granted the different nationalities a certain degree of autonomy with the Soviet Union. Luxemburg agitated against the demand for the self-determination of nations inside the Soviet Union. If the workers have no country, as proclaimed by The Communist Manifesto, nationalities did not exist. The “fatherland of the workers,” she wrote once, was the socialist international. 28 Luxemburg feared that the Bolshevik policy on the national question would lead to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. One nationality after the other would use its new autonomy to make connections with imperialism and promote counter-revolution. Through their rural and their national policy, the Bolsheviks had created powerful opponents for themselves, which would crumble their attempts to construct socialism. 29

Luxemburg’s critique of the Russian Revolution was not directed at the Bolsheviks taking power—at this point she was in full agreement with Lenin. She criticized German Social Democrats like Ebert and Kautsky and exposed their hypocrisy and defended the revolution in the following terms:

'Let the German Government Socialists cry that the rule of the Bolsheviks in Russia is a distorted expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was or is such, that is only because it is a product of the behavior of the German proletariat, in itself a distorted expression of the socialist class struggle…The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of historical possibilities. They are not supposed to perform miracles. For a model and faultless proletarian revolution in an isolated land, exhausted by world war, strangled by imperialism, betrayed by the international proletariat, would be a miracle. What is in order is to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, the kernel from the accidental excrescences in the politics of the Bolsheviks.' 30

Luxemburg’s critique of the October Revolution is from the perspective of the future, when the seeds laid by the Bolsheviks in 1917 could lead to a betrayal. In this way, Luxemburg’s critique opened, from the perspective of a participant in the revolutionary project, the possibility of reexamining the revolution itself. 31

György Lukács responded in 1923 to Luxemburg’s criticism. 32 He claimed that Luxemburg failed to see that the process of bourgeois and proletarian revolutions was qualitatively different. It was characteristic of a bourgeois revolution that capitalism could develop within the feudal order. The revolution was just the political and juridical adjustment on the level of the state to economic changes, which had already occurred. That was the reason why bourgeois revolutions proceeded relatively smoothly. 33 The proletarian revolution was a completely different process. A socialist economy could only be built after the proletariat had seized political power, which explained why proletarian revolutions were much more complicated than bourgeois revolutions. This process had to be guided by a conscious political strategy, in which the revolutionary vanguard party played an important role. Consequently, it was imperative for “the proletariat to use all the means at its disposal to keep the power of the state in its own hands.” 34 No playbook of the correct method to implement socialism could be written in advance. The state in the hands of the proletariat must have a free hand to maneuver in the difficult national and international context. Lukács considered that no other course of action than the one followed by the Bolsheviks had been possible. Luxemburg had not recognized this, because she had presented the process of the proletarian revolution too simplistically: “She constantly opposes to the exigencies of the moment the principles of future stages of the revolution.” 35

The Bolsheviks themselves were not silent in this debate. In his pamphlet The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Lenin replied to the various arguments by Kautsky that the Bolsheviks had gone too far, and socialism had no future in Russia. According to Lenin, there had been no other possibility:

'Yes, our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, as long as we march with the peasantry as a whole. This has been as clear as clear can be to us, we have said it hundreds and thousands of times since 1905, and we have never attempted to skip this necessary stage of the historical process or abolish it by decrees... But beginning with April 1917, long before the October Revolution, that is, long before we assumed power, we publicly declared and explained to the people: the revolution cannot now stop at this stage, for the country has marched forward, capitalism has advanced, ruin has reached unprecedented dimensions, which (whether one likes it or not) will demand steps forward, to socialism.' 36

In 1923, a few months before his death, Lenin criticized people who concluded that the October Revolution had been in vain. The situation in Russia, and the world as a whole, had made the revolution possible. Lenin wrote about the common allegation that the development of the productive forces in Russia had not attained the level that makes socialism possible:

'All the heroes of the Second International…keep harping on this incontrovertible proposition in a thousand different keys, and think it is the decisive criterion of our revolution... What if the complete hopelessness of the situation, by stimulating the efforts of the workers and peasants tenfold, offered us the opportunity to create the fundamental requisites of civilization in a different way from that of the West- European countries? Has that altered the general line of development of world history? Has that altered the basic relations between the basic classes of all the countries that are being, or have been, drawn into the general course of world history? If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism (although nobody can say just what that definite “level of culture” is for it differs in every West- European country), why cannot we begin by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture in a revolutionary way, and then, with the aid of the workers’ and peasants government and the Soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations?' 37

However, the debate about whether the West or the East was ripe for socialist revolutions was answered by historical events.

Chapter 10: Europe—The Revolutions that Failed

The establishment of the Soviet Union inspired revolutionary attempts in many parts of Europe. “Actually existing socialism” had immense importance. Socialism was no longer a utopian dream, but a possibility. In neighboring Finland, a civil war occurred between January and May 1918. On one side stood the “reds,” socialists and communists, which consisted of urban and rural workers in the south of Finland. On the other side stood the “whites,” the Swedish-speaking middle and upper class and the farmers in the north. The “whites” were receiving support from the German government, which was concerned by socialism spreading from the east, but they also received support from the social democratic government in Sweden, which harbored the same fears. After the “white” victory in Finland in May 1918, suspected “reds” were interned in concentration camps where thousands died. 37,000 people perished in connection with the civil war in Finland.1 Again, we see how foreign intervention from a hostile surrounding capitalist world interfered in a possible transition towards socialism.

In Hungary in 1919, the communist leader Béla Kun proclaimed the Soviet Republic of Hungary. However, its lifespan was short. Only 133 days later, the revolution ended with the entry of the “white” Rumanian army into Budapest. There were also communist uprisings in Warsaw and Vienna in 1919, and in Belgrade, Montenegro, Kosovo, South Serbia, and Macedonia in 1920. In Bulgaria, there were worker unrest, strikes, and a communist uprising from 1919-1920. But the most important and decisive event in the future development of socialism in Europe was the revolutionary attempt in Germany.

At the end of the First World War, conflicts began to sharpen in Europe. The war was exhausting both civilians and soldiers. The stress of confronting the realities of the war emphasized the differences among German Social Democrats. By 1917, they had split into factions. On the left was a small revolutionary faction called the Spartacists, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The rump was the biggest part of the SPD, which Lenin called “social patriots.” Now that the left wing had decamped, the remaining SPD’s desire for respectability could flourish without being reminded of its revolutionary past. In SPD’s congress, towards the end of the war in October 1917, a delegate from Hamburg and leader of the National Construction Workers Association, August Winning, expressed the mood in the party:

'It was our historical error to believe before the war... that we should achieve something through a revolutionary ideology. A working class whose progress is guaranteed by organizational and parliamentary work will never let itself be persuaded to the risk of revolution.' 2

However, the revolutionary events in Russia were electric. Strikes broke out in Germany in April 1917 involving hundreds of thousands of workers. Workers’ councils were formed, inspired by Petrograd. The SPD and the trade unions saw these actions as a threat to the German war effort. Philipp Scheidemann, co-chairman of the SPD and future Prime Minister, called them “a serious danger to peace.” 3

In 1918, the German people wanted an end to war. In November, marines in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, who did not want to die in a losing war, rebelled against their officers and refused to go into battle. Troops sent to suppress the trouble went over to the rebels, who formed councils and hoisted the red flag on their battleships. The SPD saw its opportunity to prove how useful it could be to the establishment. It dispatched one of its leaders, Gustav Norske, to calm down the marines, but instead the rebellion spread. On the 6th of November, workers’ and soldiers’ councils controlled the ports of Bremen and Hamburg. In cities all over Germany, people took to the streets in huge demonstrations. On the 9th of November, the Kaiser abdicated. Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the SPD, formed a new government. Liebknecht was offered a place, but refused to give a left cover to an SPD government. Friedrich Ebert appointed Gustav Noske as Minister of National Defense. Noske, who was a butcher by trade, had worked his way up in the SPD. On his appointment as minister, he stated that: “someone must be the bloodhound.”4 Scheidemann proclaimed the establishment of the republic from the balcony of the Reichstag in the afternoon. Karl Liebknecht raised the red flag two hours later on the roof of the royal palace.

The task facing the German revolutionaries was difficult. Except for the Spartacists, which were a rather small organization, the radical elements had no united organization of their own. While strikes and street fighting were enough to bring down the old regime, they were not sufficient in creating a new order. Lacking leadership and strategy, and in the absence of a clearly formulated alternative, workers were inclined to look to their traditional leaders. Many were taken by the seemingly radical rhetoric of the SPD leaders. The SPD government was welcomed by a large meeting of workers’ and soldiers’ representatives. They elected fourteen workers and fourteen soldiers to an “Executive Committee of the Revolution” to participate in the government’s work. The councils might have possessed the trappings of a revolution, but beneath the surface the old framework survived. The parliamentary road did not lead SPD to change the system, but to become the system.

Rosa Luxemburg took the initiative to build an organization able to lead the revolutionary struggle. The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was founded at the end of December 1918, consisting of approximately 3,000 members. The KPD’s program focused on the self-activity of the working class themselves:

'In my view and in that of my most intimate associates in the Party, the economic struggle will be carried on by the workers’ councils. The direction of the economic struggle and the continued expansion of the area of this struggle must be in the hands of the workers’ councils. The councils must have all power in the state.' 5

Luxemburg insisted that the revolution was still in its early stages:

'We must not…repeat the illusion of the first phase of the revolution…thinking that it is sufficient to overthrow the capitalist government and set up another to bring about the socialist revolution…The conquest of power will not be seized with one blow. It is a question of fighting step by step in order to take and transfer all the powers of the state bit by bit from the bourgeoisie to the workers’ and soldiers’ councils. But before these steps can be taken, the members of our own Party and the proletarians in general must be educated… We must make the masses understand that the workers’ and soldiers’ council is in all senses the lever of the machinery of state, that it must take over all power and must unify the power in one stream—the socialist revolution. The masses of workers who are already organized in workers’ and soldiers’ councils are still miles away from having adopted such an outlook, and only isolated proletarian minorities are clearly conscious of their tasks.' 6

However, the majority of the delegates did not share Luxemburg’s strategy of a long-term struggle for power. She was also unable to prevent the Party from breaking with the unions and labeling them “reformist” institutions. Revolutionary shop stewards had been expected to join the Party, but as a consequence of the positions adopted by the KPD Congress, the Party lost the possibility to include some of the most influential workers’ leaders in its ranks. The impatience of the majority of the Party was not surprising considering the political developments at the beginning of 1919. The army was falling apart, and a strike wave was bringing more and more workers into struggle. Yet, in the Party paper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) on January 7th, Luxemburg stressed the difference between the fighting mood of the masses and the fatal indecision of the leaders, and warned that the government was preparing to destroy the revolution:

'The Ebert-Scheidemann clique are not wasting their time in endless discussion. Behind the scenes they are preparing to act with the usual cunning and energy of counterrevolutionaries; they are loading their weapons for the final surprise attack to destroy the revolution…Disarm the counter-revolution. Occupy all positions of power. Act quickly!' 7

Luxemburg was right; the SPD government began to destroy the revolutionary movement. Norske used a volunteer group of right-wing ex-officers called “Freikorps,” together with regular troops, to wipe out disorganized left-wingers in Berlin. The Social Democrat paper Vorwärts (Forward) openly called for the death of the Spartacist leaders. On January 15, 1919, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were found and murdered, and their bodies were thrown in the river. The murder of the Spartacist leaders created an outrage in Berlin. On March 2nd, a general strike was called on and street fighting broke out on a large scale. Again, the government used the Freikorps to crush the opposition with brutal force. This was the end of the German revolutionary attempt. In an article written on January 14, 1919, and published shortly after she was murdered, Luxemburg recognized the defeat of the revolution:

'“Order prevails in Berlin!” So proclaims the bourgeois press triumphantly, so proclaim Ebert and Noske, and the officers of the “victorious troops,” who are being cheered by the petty-bourgeois mob in Berlin waving handker- chiefs and shouting “Hurrah!”...Was the ultimate victory of the revolutionary proletariat to be expected in this conflict? Could we have expected the overthrow of Ebert-Scheidemann and the establishment of a socialist dictatorship? Certainly not, if we carefully consider all the variables that weigh upon the question. The weak link in the revolutionary cause is the political immaturity of the masses of soldiers, who still allow their officers to misuse them, against the people, for counterrevolutionary ends…

Because of the contradiction in the early stages of the revolutionary process between the task being sharply posed and the absence of any preconditions to resolve it, individual battles of the revolution end in formal defeat. But revolution is the only form of “war”—and this is another peculiar law of history—in which the ultimate victory can be prepared only by a series of “defeats”...The whole road of socialism—so far as revolutionary struggles are concerned—is paved with nothing but thunderous defeats. Yet, at the same time, history marches inexorably, step by step, toward final victory! Where would we be today without those “defeats,” from which we draw historical experience, understanding, power and idealism? Today, as we advance into the final battle of the proletarian class war, we stand on the foundation of those very defeats; and we cannot do without any of them, because each one contributes to our strength and understanding… There is but one condition. The question of why each defeat occurred must be answered. Did it occur because the forward-storming combative energy of the masses collided with the barrier of unripe historical conditions, or was it that indecision, vacillation, and internal frailty crippled the revolutionary impulse itself?

Both! The crisis had a dual nature. The contradiction between the powerful, decisive, aggressive offensive of the Berlin masses on the one hand and the indecisive, half-hearted vacillation of the Berlin leadership on the other is the mark of this latest episode. The leadership failed. But a new leadership can and must be created by the masses and from the masses. The masses are the crucial factor. They are the rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be built.' 8

What are the lessons from the European uprising in the wake of the First World War? We are again presented with dilemmas on how to organize the revolutionary forces. A vanguard party and centralized command like the Bolsheviks, or Workers’ Councils and “people in arms”?

Lenin held out great hopes for the German revolution, both to ease the pressure on the Soviet Union and to continue the world revolutionary process. However, the defeat of the German revolution confirmed Lenin’s belief—much in line with the above evaluation by Luxemburg— that a disciplined organization backed by a well-organized “red armed force” was necessary to win a revolution, and most of all to sustain it.

The idea of a vanguard party has been criticized by the contention that only the masses can “liberate themselves.” However, to do so, the masses have to organize themselves. The ability to act in unity, quickly, and coordinated at the right moment does not flow spontaneously from the depths of the mass movement. It takes an organization in close contact with the masses to be able to concentrate and formulate the demands and plan the strategy to reach them.

Taking the global perspective on the German Revolution, we have to remember that unlike the Russian Revolution, which happened in the semi-periphery, the German revolutionary attempt took place in the imperialist center of the world-system. Germany was an imperialist power striving to be a dominant world power. The main reason for the defeat was the split in the socialist movement (and the working class) between revolutionaries and social democrats—a split caused by imperialism—which became apparent in the struggle in the Second International leading up to the First World War. The social democrats abandoned the international class position and turned against the revolutionaries to defend the capitalist state. Social democracy arrives at this end through an emphasis on sharing the results of capitalism in the sphere of circulation. Capital pays, and pits one section of the working class against another to secure itself. And yet, the communist movement, in line with Luxemburg, did not consider the failed revolutions in Europe the end of the transition to socialism. The world revolution, including new attempts in Europe, was still high on the agenda in 1919.

Chapter 11: The Third International: COMINTERN

When judging the legacy of the Soviet Union, its significance was not solely that it was the world’s first experience constructing “actually existing socialism.” The Soviet Union was the major architect of the Communist International (COMINTERN), the third attempt to organize the proletariat on a world scale and promote the idea of the unification of anti-imperialist struggle and socialist revolution. The COMINTERN could not have been established without the prestige of Lenin and the success of the Russian Revolution. It had a unifying impact on the communist movement worldwide.

When 44 delegations assembled on March 2, 1919 at the founding congress, they thought the world revolution was underway. Their hosts were the world’s first state founded by a proletarian revolution and a wave of revolutionary uprisings was engulfing central Europe. Lenin assured the delegates that they would one day “see the founding of the World Federative Republic of Soviets.”1 The driving force behind the founding of the COMINTERN was the division of the Second International between the social democrats who supported nationalism and imperialism, and the communist faction, who decided to establish a Third International dedicated to promoting and coordinating world revolution. The COMINTERN would provide assistance and disciplined leadership, serving as the Political Bureau (Politburo) of world communism. The COMINTERN defined its aims in the “Manifesto of the Communist International to the Proletariat of the Entire World”:

'If the First International predicted the future course of development and indicated the roads it would take, if the Second International rallied and organized millions of proletarians, then the Third International is the International of open mass struggle, the International of revolutionary realization, the International of action.' 2

In contrast to the Second International, the COMINTERN’s position on anti-imperialism was clear cut. A resolution passed at the congress in 1919 read:

'At the expense of the plundered colonial people, capital corrupted its wage slaves, created a community of interest between the exploited and the ex- ploiters against the oppressed colonies—the yellow, black and red colonial people—and chained the European and American working class to the imperialist “fatherland.”' 3

The COMINTERN still assumed that the decisive battles for world revolution would be fought in Europe. The aforementioned Manifesto read:

'The workers and peasants not only of Annam, Algiers and Bengal, but also of Persia and Armenia, will gain their opportunity of independent existence only in that hour when the workers of Britain and France, having overthrown Lloyd George and Clemenceau, have taken state power into their own hands…Colonial slaves of Africa and Asia: the hour of proletarian dictatorship in Europe will also be the hour of your liberation!' 4

Their strategy was to prioritize the mobilization of the European proletariat below the top tier of the unionized workers, but it failed. Revolutionaries within the workers’ movement and most trade unions were not able to challenge the reformist leadership. In Germany, their influence remained strong, even after the revolution’s defeat in 1919, but subsequent communist uprisings were crushed with brute force by the SPD government. The situation was the same in Vienna and in the Balkans. In Hungary, the Soviet Republic was defeated and Belá Kun managed to escape and join the COMINTERN. In England and Scandinavia, social democrats benefited from the post-war economic crises, forming governments backed by the working-class majority. In Europe, reforms seemed safer than revolution.

The 1920 Second Congress of the COMINTERN: East or West?

In July 1920, one hundred and sixty seven delegates, now including sections from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, met at the COMINTERN’s Second Congress. The response to the defeats in Europe was to increase discipline so as to eliminate reformist and nationalist tendencies. “Twenty-one Conditions for Admission to the Communist International” were adopted and all affiliates of the COMINTERN had to accept its decisions as binding. The congress undertook to create a link between the struggle for socialism in Europe and the anti-colonial struggle. Lenin labeled the British working class stance toward the struggle of oppressed nations “treachery”:

'…the rank-and-file British worker would consider it treasonable to help the enslaved nations in their uprisings against British rule…the jingoist and chauvinist-minded labour aristocrats of Britain and America present a very great danger to socialism and are a bulwark of the Second International…We must proclaim this publicly for all to hear, and it is irrefutable. We shall see if any attempt is made to deny it.' 5

Even among Europe’s communists, support for anti-colonial struggles was often half-hearted and it was widely believed that communist movements in the imperial core were more important than those in the periphery. Communists from Asia criticized these attitudes. Pak Din Shoon, the Korean delegate at the 1920 COMINTERN congress, attempted to point attention “to the East, where the fate of the world revolution may very well be decided.”6 The Indian delegate Manabendra Nath Roy, head of the COMINTERN’s Far Eastern Bureau, declared the exploitation of the colonies to be the limitation for European revolution:

'Super-profits gained in the colonies are the mainstay of modern capitalism,and as long as these exist, it will be difficult for the European working class to overthrow the capitalist order…By exploiting the masses in the colonies, European imperialism is in a position to make concession after concession to the labor aristocracy at home.' 7

One of the previously mentioned “Twenty-One Conditions” adopted at the 1920 congress, was the demand of every member party “...to denounce without any reserve all the methods of ‘its own’ imperialists in the colonies,” complemented by the demand to work for the “expulsion of its own imperialists from such colonies.” 8 However, the European communist parties had great difficulty abiding by these demands. A few months after the congress, Lenin met with a delegation of English workers and discussed the issue with them. He reported the following:

'They made faces…They simply could not get into their heads the truth that in the interests of the world revolution, workers must wish the defeat of their government.' 9

At the 1920 congress, there was an intense debate between Nath Roy and Lenin concerning communist strategy in the colonies. Due to the relative weakness of communist parties there, Lenin suggested that they should forge alliances with bourgeois democratic movements. Roy, however, opposed any collaboration with the Indian National Congress, which he considered to be a “debating society.” Lenin pointed out that there was no functional communist party in India, and that, under these circumstances, the idea of communists acting alone was doomed to fail. 10 He added that there was “not the slightest doubt that every national movement can only be a bourgeois-democratic movement.”11 The COMINTERN adopted a series of positions on the “national and colonial question.” Communists in Asia were directed to immerse themselves in the struggle for national independence and to form alliances with other movements for colonial freedom. The revolutions in the colonial world were seen as a two-stage process: first, a national bourgeois revolution against colonial rule, and then a socialist revolution.

In China, at the time a semi-colonial country, the May Fourth Movement sparked an uprising in 1919. The movement also resulted in the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921, and this provided a testing ground for the COMINTERN’s strategy. By the mid-1920s the Communist Party of China had, under the COMINTERN’s direction, established an alliance with the Kuomintang, China’s nationalist party, in an attempt to create a bourgeois revolution. The communists had allowed the Kuomintang to take military leadership in the struggle against the warlords; however, the Kuomintang turned against their partners.

This led to the Shanghai massacre of communists in 1927. It took years to rebuild the movement. While Mao Zedong—who would soon be appointed commander-in-chief of the Chinese Red Army—concurred with the COMINTERN that the Chinese revolution first had to be a national revolution, he also stressed the importance of communist leadership in the struggle.

The Baku Conference

In September 1920, the COMINTERN organized a “Congress of the Peoples of the East” in Baku, Azerbaijan. Nineteen hundred delegates attended, a mix of communists, anarchists, and radical nationalists. The congress was the first forum where anti-colonial militants met to discuss the future of the peoples of the East. The goal was to establish a common understanding of the fight against imperialist domination and capitalist exploitation, and to form an alliance between the COMINTERN and the anticolonial liberation movements in Asia, with the ultimate objective being to win them fully to communism.12

Two documents were adopted, a “Manifesto of the Peoples of the East” and an “Appeal to the Workers of Europe, America, and Japan,” a call to workers in the imperialist countries to support the anti-imperialist struggle. Both ended with a new slogan: “Workers of All Lands and Oppressed Peoples of the Whole World, Unite!” “Oppressed peoples” had now emerged alongside “workers” as fully-fledged revolutionary subjects. This formulation represented an innovation vis-à-vis Marx and Engels—not to abandon the perspective of class struggle and internationalism, but an attempt to grasp the peculiar configuration assumed by each of them in a world system characterized by increasing international colonial in- equality.

An executive body was elected to carry out the COMINTERN’s work in the East. At a time when the Soviet Union was close to bankruptcy and facing severe famine, Moscow allotted 750,000 gold rubles to establish two radio stations with a range of 20,000 kilometers—among the farthest-reaching in the world—to broadcast anti-imperialist propaganda to the colonized nations of Asia.13

The Third Congress of 1921

At the third congress in the summer of 1921, the COMINTERN developed a structure of a central institution with regional bureaus, local agents, and various political, cultural, and trade union front organizations. The COMINTERN had imbued trust with the leaders of every national Communist Party, and relied on them to willingly accept orders directly from the COMINTERN. This process was accompanied by a merging of the COMINTERN and Soviet foreign policy, as it moved from an emphasis on the continuation of world revolution to the defense of socialism-in-one-country. This was reflected in article 15 of the 21 conditions for membership in the COMINTERN:

'15. It is the duty of any party wishing to join the Communist International selflessly to help any Soviet republic in its struggle against counter-revolutionary forces. Communist parties must conduct incessant propaganda urging the workers to refuse to transport war materials destined for the enemies of the Soviet republics; they must conduct legal or illegal propaganda in the armed forces dispatched to strangle the workers’ republics, etc.' 14

The Fifth Congress of the COMINTERN and the League Against Imperialism

In late 1923, after Lenin’s death, Ho Chi Minh traveled from Paris to Moscow and began to work for the COMINTERN. He met with Bolshevik leaders such as Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Karl Radek, and Joseph Stalin. He also participated in the Fifth Congress of the COMINTERN in 1924, where he criticized the communists of Europe for ignoring the colonial question:

'You must excuse my frankness, but I cannot help but observe that the speeches by comrades from the mother countries give me the impression that they wish to kill a snake by stepping on its tail. You all know today the poison and life energy of the capitalist snake is concentrated more in the colonies than in the mother countries…Yet in our discussion of the revolution you neglect to talk about the colonies…Why do you neglect the colonies, while capitalism uses them to support itself, defend itself, and fight you?' 15

He went on to lay out his critique in detail:

'So long as the French and British Communist Parties have not brought out a really progressive policy with regard to the colonies, have not come into contact with the colonial peoples, their programme as a whole is and will be ineffective because it goes counter to Leninism…According to Lenin, the victory of the revolution in Western Europe depends on its close contact with the liberation movement against imperialism in enslaved colonies and with the national question, both of which form a part of the common problem of the proletarian revolution and dictatorship…As for our Communist Parties in Great Britain, Holland, Belgium and other countries—what have they done to cope with the colonial invasions perpetrated by the bourgeois class of their countries? What our Parties have done in this domain is almost worthless. As for me, I was born in a French colony, and am a member of the French Communist Party, and I am very sorry to say that our Communist Party has done hardly anything for the colonies.' 16

The communist parties of Europe never took Ho’s criticism to heart. In 1925, Ho moved to Canton to deepen contacts with the newly formed Communist Party of China on behalf of the COMINTERN. He also visited Siam (present day Thailand) and other Asian countries to coordinate COMINTERN activities.

The COMINTERN had not given up trying to forge an alliance between the communists of the West and the East. In the mid-1920s, its leadership employed the help of German communist Willi Münzenberg to establish a broad-based front organization for the struggle against imperialism, The League Against Imperialism (LAI). An “Anti-Imperialist Commission” was established in Moscow to oversee the process of launching the LAI. It was important to mobilize the workers in the imperialist countries for the anti-imperialist struggle, first of all denouncing the social democratic position as “direct support of imperialism.” 17

Berlin was chosen as the base of LAI’s work. Germany had lost its colonies in World War I and as a result, the government wasn’t much concerned by anti-colonial movements. In 1927, the LAI was launched at a congress in Brussels, attended by 174 delegates representing 134 organizations from 34 countries.18 Albert Einstein, appointed honorary president, proclaimed in the opening speech: “In your congress, the solidly united endeavor of the oppressed to achieve independence takes bodily shape.”' 19

For many militants from the colonies, the LAI congress was an opportunity to meet militants from other colonies. They exchanged experiences and discussed future strategies. This explains the historical significance of the event. When Sukarno, as Indonesia’s president, opened the Bandung Conference in 1955, he explicitly mentioned the 1927 LAI congress as a crucial stepping stone in the development of the anti-imperialist struggle.

While its headquarters remained in Berlin, the LAI also established bureaus in Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Boston, which were supposed to advance anti-imperialist politics in collaboration with the various communist parties. The results were modest. European communists simply did not prioritize anti-imperialist work. They knew that it wasn’t a burning issue for the European working class and certain factions even deemed it unpatriotic.

The LAI never lived up to the expectations of the COMINTERN. In 1933, when the Nazis took power in Germany, its headquarters moved to Paris. When Germany occupied France in 1940, the LAI ceased to exist. Ho Chi Minh’s doubts concerning the mobilization of European workers for anti-imperialist politics was justified. However, LAI had been an important factor in the embrace of Marxism-Leninism by many national liberation movements. Communists became leading figures in the struggle for the colonies’ freedom.

The Sixth Congress of the COMINTERN

In 1928, COMINTERN again adopted a new mode of confrontation with the reformist West and the social democrats, who, in June 1928, had formed a new government in Germany. The COMINTERN’s Sixth Congress in 1928 was also meant to reorganize activities in the East after the Shanghai massacre of communists by the Kuomintang. 20

Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party, summed up the attitudes of Europe’s social democrats:

'The Social Democrats have become colonial politicians. They recognise the possession of colonies as something which their countries could never renounce and that, when their country has no colony, it is up to them to demand a colony in a more or less open manner.' 21

Togliatti pointed out that Social Democracy had always had a colonial policy, “one which consisted in allying itself with or directly participating in the colonial enterprises of the bourgeoisie.”22 The Italian social democrats had always voted in support of the colonial agenda. At a 1927 congress for Italian social democrats, it was declared that the “postwar problems” could not be solved without colonies. The French social democrats supported military intervention in Syria to crush the nationalist movement there. In the Netherlands, the Socialist Party did not even discuss whether there should be colonies or not: the only question was how to govern them. They condemned the communist-led mass rebellions in Western Sumatra and Java in 1926 as being orchestrated by “Moscow or Canton.” In Germany, the SPD repeatedly bemoaned the fact that Germany had lost its colonies and demanded their return. In England, the Labour Party made it very clear that it did not support decolonization. Rather, it was ready to “defend the rights of British citizens who have overseas interests,” concluding that “as for this community of races and peoples of different colors, religions and different stages of civilization which is called the British Empire, the Labour Party is in favor of its maintenance.”23 The 1929–1931 Labour government under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald rejected all demands made by the Egyptian government to withdraw British troops, constrain British capital, and cede control over the Suez Canal. The harsh critique leveled at the social democrats during the 1928 Congress reflected the COMINTERN’s new strategy of “Class against Class.” Yet problems remained concerning anti-imperialist politics in the communist movement itself. The COMINTERN secretary Otto Kuusinen, who had left Finland for the Soviet Union after the defeat of the Reds in the Finnish Civil War, presented a document entitled “Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries.” It addressed the lackluster approach to anti-imperialist politics by Europe’s communist parties:

'It must be admitted that, up until now, not all the parties in the Communist International have fully grasped the decisive importance which the establishment of close, regular and unbroken relations with the national revolutionary movements in the colonies has in affording these movements active and practical help.' 24

For Kuusinen, engaging in anticolonial politics was “one of the weakest sides of COMINTERN’s activity.” In his opinion, since the COMINTERN’s inception in 1919, communist parties had either ignored anti-colonialism or regarded it as a waste of time.25 All efforts by COMINTERN leaders to rectify this had been in vain. Kuusinen suggested the creation of a commission, headed by the British communist Robin Page Arnot, to visit the communist parties of Western Europe to discuss anticolonial politics and prepare a “Colonial Conference” to be held in 1929. Arnot first went to London where he attended the Communist Party’s 1929 congress. He reported that the anti-colonial question was raised, but only in passing, and on the final day. The British communists had simply disregarded the directives of the COMINTERN. 26 Arnot’s next stop was Paris. If anything, the French communists’ interest in the anti-colonial question was even lower than that of the British. Arnot saw all aspects of Ho’s critique confirmed.27 His experiences in Belgium and the Netherlands were similar. In short, the anticolonial work of the European communists was close to nonexistent. Even the simplest tasks, such as establishing contact with militants in the colonies, had not been carried out. Arnot summed up his impressions in the “Report on the Parties,” in which he dryly concluded that “at the moment not much is being done.” 28

The Colonial Conference of 1929

After receiving Arnot’s report, the commissioners of the Colonial Conference deemed it necessary to rewrite the position paper on the colonial question. This task was assigned to the Hungarian operative Lajos Magyar. In his paper titled “The Organisation of the Colonial Work of the European Communist Parties,” he reached the following conclusion:

'The most important task of the Communist Parties of the imperialist countries with regard to the colonial question is…the establishment of a direct contact between the Communist Parties and the revolutionary trade union organisations…The relationships existing up to now between the Communist Parties and the revolutionary movement in the respective colonial countries cannot be considered…satisfactory…Not all of the Parties have so far grasped the great significance of regular close connections with the revolutionary movements in the colonies for the practical support of these movements. Only to the extent that the Communist Parties in the imperialist countries actually support the revolutionary movement [and] assist the struggle of [the] colonial countries against imperialism, can their position with regard to the colonial question be accepted as truly Bolshevik.' 29

Magyar identified five tasks for the parties to focus on: producing political literature to be distributed effectively in the colonies; sending out members to the colonies as regular workers—that is, not as representatives of the COMINTERN—to find employment and organize on a grassroots level; establishing contacts with sailors, workers, soldiers, and students from the colonies living in Europe; and, finally, penetrating the communities of people from the colonies living in Europe to exert “communist influence” among them.30 Entirely absent from Magyar’s paper were any recommendations on how to mobilize the working classes in the metropolis to act against imperialist war and racism.

The Seventh Congress of the COMINTERN: From Anti-Imperialism to the Popular Front

The repeated efforts of the COMINTERN to get the communist parties of Europe to make the anticolonial question a priority were largely in vain. Many Europeans were convinced that the main purpose of the colonies was to serve their colonizers and this was in their own best interest, since it would bestow civilization upon them. The undeniable suffering that this process entailed was seen as “collateral damage.”

The German Marxist Fritz Steinberg criticized Lenin and the COMINTERN for having unrealistic expectations. In 1935 he wrote:

'As Lenin misjudged the real strength of Reformism so did his epigones even more. He never gave a systematic analysis of the sociological prerequisites which formed the basis of Reformism, and which prevented it from being shaken during the period up to the victory of Fascism. The Comintern has contented itself with slogans. It has never made it clear that the differentiation in the pre-war years within the working class took place based on the increasing wages of the entire class. The Comintern has not corrected Lenin’s mistake as to the question of the labor aristocracy and thus the evaluation of the real strength of Reformism. On the contrary: it has made it even deeper.' 31

Sternberg’s critique must be read against the background of German politics in the 1930s. In 1933, the Nazis had risen to power with significant working-class support. When Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg, social democratic party leaders had advised against mass protests.32 After much internal debate, the majority of SPD Reichstag delegates (48 out of 65) even endorsed Hitler’s “commitment to peace,” made at a Reichstag speech in May 1933. In her 1993 book German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism, historian Donna Harsch writes about the vote in the Reichstag:

'When the Social Democratic deputies rose as a body to vote with the bourgeois parties, the chamber, including Hitler, broke into a storm of applause. The German Nationalists burst into Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, and many Social Democrats joined in. Bavarian member of parliament Wilhelm Hoegner later reflected, “It was as if we Social Democrats, ever cursed as the prodigal sons of the fatherland, for one eternal moment clasped Mother Germany to our hearts.”' 33

A few months later, the SPD was declared illegal, and its leaders were forced into exile. The social imperialist policies they had pursued now helped cement Nazi power.

The ruling class in Europe was horrified by the destruction of the old order in Russia. In order to stay in power, they were prepared to form alliances with anyone who would keep the communists at bay. This helped to pave the way for fascism, first in Italy in 1922 and then in Germany in 1933. One of the first things Hitler did after becoming chancellor was to suppress the Communist Party.

This made the COMINTERN change one more policy. Due to the danger of fascism, it abandoned its revolutionary “Class against Class” strategy. The new COMINTERN leader Georgi Dimitrov was a key figure in this policy change. Dimitrov argued that the rise of fascism demonstrated the danger of a divisive conflict on the left. It had to be replaced by a “popular front” approach that sought cooperation with social democrats and others now opposed to fascism. France was the only country where the popular front became a success. In the general election in April 1936, the popular front of Communist, Socialist, and Liberal Radicals gained an absolute majority in the parliament, 378 seats out of 618. Seventy-two of the seats were communist. In Britain, the Communist Party’s attempt to affiliate with Labour was rebuffed. In Germany, it was too late. However, the relevance of this strategy was confirmed by the Anti-COMINTERN pact signed by Japan and Germany in 1936. Fascism was an immediate threat against communism.

The COMINTERN’s central concern was now the defense of the Soviet Union. At the Seventh Congress of the COMINTERN, it became clear that the pursuit of world revolution, and the focus on the countries of the East, were no longer priorities. The sense was, once again, that the future of the Soviet Union would be decided in Western Europe. Stalin had no illusions about the working classes there. In communication with Dimitrov, Stalin wrote:

'Without their colonies they [the imperialist powers] could not exist. The workers know this and fear the loss of the colonies. And in this connection, they are inclined to go with their own bourgeoisie. Internally, they are not in agreement with our anti-imperialist policy. They are even afraid of this policy. And for just this reason it is necessary to explain and approach these workers correctly…We can’t immediately and so easily win millions of workers in Europe.' 34

During the Seventh, and last, Congress of the COMINTERN in 1935, the anti-colonial struggle was hardly mentioned. After listing various groups that could aid in the struggle against fascism—social democrats, Catholics, anarchists, unorganized workers, peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and the intelligentsia—Dimitrov now called the peoples’ struggles in the colonies an “important reserve for the world proletariat.”35 Dimitrov made it clear that the priority of the communist parties was “the struggle for peace and the defense of the USSR.” Communists, he declared, were “irreconcilable opponents, on principle, of bourgeois nationalism…but we are not supporters of national nihilism and should never act as such.” He insisted that communist organizations must persist in educating the working classes in the “spirit of proletarian internationalism,” but must not “sneer at all the national sentiments of the wide masses of working people.”36

The COMINTERN’s revised position on nationalism in the imperialist countries was confirmed in the May Day statement one year later in 1936. The declaration asserted that the Bolsheviks had been correct in insisting that the proletariat had to defeat the national bourgeoisie in the Russian Revolution, but that “today the situation is not what it was in 1914.”37 In a statement on the 1938 Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia, the reversal of the COMINTERN’s stance on nationalism was even more pronounced. The paper proclaimed that the working class had “begun to revise its relationship with the nation” and had “won a place” in it. Essentially, this meant that the COMINTERN accepted the power-sharing agreement between the capitalists and the working class in the imperialist countries. The leaders of the COMINTERN even went so far as to accuse the bourgeoisie of “betraying the national interests,” declaring that: “it is the working class and its Communist Party which takes over the legacies of the bourgeois revolution, maintains them against the traitors and develops them to a richer and fuller life.” 38

The COMINTERN’s Popular Front strategy came to an abrupt end with the signing of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in August 1939. Stalin signed the pact because he feared that the Western powers would sit back and clap their hands while Germany destroyed the Soviet Union. Within weeks, the COMINTERN’s strategy of antifascist unity had been abandoned in favor of peace at all costs. The Soviets’ efforts to avoid a military confrontation with Nazi Germany were in vain. Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941 and the Soviets entered into an alliance with the Allies. This caused the COMINTERN to revive the Popular Front tactic.

This approach meant that anti-colonial struggles were no longer a priority. In fact, Soviet leaders feared that they might distract the imperialist powers from confronting the Nazis in Europe. The COMINTERN urged the working classes of Britain and France to stand with their governments in defense of the colonies in Asia, which were “menaced by Japanese imperialism.” 39

This completed the transformation of the COMINTERN from an organization to enhance world revolution to one defending the national interests of the Soviet Union. The consequences for the colonies were disastrous. The opportunism of the Communist Party of India (CPI) serves as an example. Before 1941, the CPI had always tried to take advantage of Britain’s difficulties. At the outbreak of World War II, its leaders cheered: “Never again shall we get an opportunity like this. The Empire is cracking. It cannot survive this crisis.”40 But by the summer of 1942, when social unrest engulfed India, the CPI had accepted the COMINTERN’s position, that national liberation had to be delayed until the Soviet Union’s survival was secure. The Party helped prevent the uprising of the masses and urged people to support the British in their war efforts. Shortly after, the CPI was declared legal by the British authorities for the first time. 41

In 1943, the Soviet government decided to dissolve the COMINTERN. Stalin explained the decision by pointing to the fact that communist parties outside of the Soviet Union were constantly accused of being “agents of a foreign state.”42 But many felt that the dissolution of the COMINTERN was mainly a concession to the Soviet Union’s imperialist allies. The demise of COMINTERN was not met by resistance from its member sections. The change of the COMINTERN into an instrument of Soviet foreign policy had laid the roots of the post-war disintegration of the communist movement as a unified international political force. Instead, a variety of different national roads to a transition toward socialism developed.

In an assessment of why the international communist movement turned from a force with worldwide revolutionary ambitions into the servant of the Soviet Union, historian Neil Redfern writes:

'It is one of the great ironies of history that the Comintern, founded in a rupture with the “social-patriots” of 1914-1918 itself became primarily an organisation of “social-patriots,” even if this was perceived as an internationalist defense of the Soviet Union. How can we explain this? For the present writer, the fundamental reason was a materialist reason—the strength of bourgeois ideology, in the imperialist countries, including in the communist movement.' 43

I would like to add that the “strength of bourgeois ideology” was rooted in imperialism, that is, in the fact that the majority of the working class of the imperialist countries benefited from imperialist profits.

During the 1920s, the COMINTERN genuinely tried to establish a worldwide, class-based, and revolutionary communist movement. It failed. The division of the global working class proved too big an obstacle. In the imperialist countries, “social patriotism” reigned. Workers identified first and foremost as citizens of their respective nation-states. They were integrated into the nation-state’s political system and the political parties representing them were often included in government—sometimes even leading it. The stratification between the working class in the imperialist center, and the exploited in the periphery, was a fact during the history of the COMINTERN.

In retrospect, one of the important effects of the Russian Revolution was the establishment of COMINTERN. It was the first—and until now, the only—well-organized and serious attempt backed by a state to enhance a communist world revolution. It did not succeed. But the COMINTERN was a crucial factor in bringing the revolutionary torch from the West to the East and South. In this sense, the Russian Revolution opened up the anti-colonial struggle from the end of the First World War until the mid-1970s. The revolutions of China and Vietnam—along with the processes of decolonization—would have moved more slowly, if not for the establishment of COMINTERN.

Since the dissolution of COMINTERN, there has not been an effective International. After his expulsion from the Soviet Union, Trotsky established a Fourth International in 1938. However, the Fourth International never gained much influence, except in narrow Trotskyist circles, and has since been haunted by splits. Today the Fourth International exerts no major influence.

The communist movement never achieved unity in ideology and action as during the time of Lenin. Instead of the main road towards a coordinated socialist World Revolution, the transition was to move on national roads, developing socialism with different national characteristics.

But let us return to socialist development in the Soviet Union itself, as it may shed some light on the changing policies of COMINTERN.

Chapter 12: Stalin: From the World Revolution to Socialism in One Country

The revolution, the civil war, and the economic policy in the first years of the Soviet Union did not produce the governance which Lenin envisioned in his State and Revolution, written just before the Bolshevik revolution. In the book, Lenin described the proletarian dictatorship as a state without professional army or police, a state constituted by “a people in arms,” before progressively “withering away.” This was a great concern of Lenin towards the end of his life. Out of the thirty years in which Lenin was active in politics, he exercised state power in only six, from 1917-23. During this period, his theoretical positions were tested by experience: he had to revise and admit errors. The Soviet state he created, with a powerful army and political police, was unlike the ideal model in State and Revolution. For sure, the Bolshevik vanguard party had been effective in carrying out the revolution; however, it was not the ideal organizational form to rule the state and develop socialism.

Lenin felt he had to retreat from his ideals under the pressure of circumstances. A “people in arms” could not defend the revolution against the professional armies of reactionary powers—a lesson learned from the Paris Commune. A centralized army was needed. Moreover, the political police were indispensable in suppressing internal counterrevolution. The chaos of revolution had to be handled by a strong state, particularly through the transitional period of unpredictable duration. This conviction gave Lenin self-confidence in his course of action. The single-party state began to take shape.

Under NEP, the economy reached a pre-war level, and the food market began to function; however, it did not produce the industrialization necessary for economic development. Left-wing Bolsheviks criticized NEP for favoring the peasants over the workers. Inequalities re-emerged. The partial reinstatement of capitalist conditions entailed a restructuring of social classes and a change in their relationships. Lenin had hoped that the NEP would be a decade-long transition period, before returning to a more communal form of economic development. However, history went in another direction.

The state apparatus also transformed. During the civil war, the competing Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary parties ceased to exist, but instead of achieving unity, different factions inside the Bolshevik party proliferated. At the Tenth Party Congress in 1921, the formation of factions were banned on pain of expulsion, as divisions demonstrated weaknesses, which could be exploited by enemies inside and outside of the Soviet Union.

When Lenin died, the question of whether the NEP should continue became part of the struggle for succession. Stalin, who was one of five members of the Politburo, used Lenin’s ban on factions to eliminate his rivals. Stalin was elected as General Secretary of the Central Committee on April 3rd, 1922. From this position, he controlled the agenda of the Politburo and the appointment and demotion of the high-level party functionaries. This enabled Stalin to fill posts with his supporters, and thereby secure his position.

Nearing his death, Lenin realized that centralizing power had gone too far. During his last Party Congress, in March-April 1922, he surveyed the factors of the situation: the isolation of the Russian revolution; the poverty and the backwardness of Russia; the individualism of the peasantry; the weakness and demoralization of the working class. But another problem now struck him: state power had been concentrated in the hands of a few Bolshevik leaders.

In May 1922, a stroke left Lenin partially paralyzed. In his last weeks, Lenin dictated a series of letters to his wife Krupskaya, addressed to the Central Committee. In the letters, later called “Lenin’s testament”, he proposed changes to the structure of the Soviet governing bodies and gave his evaluation of the different Bolshevik leaders: Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Bukharin, and Stalin. He warned of the possibility of a damaging split in the party leadership between Trotsky and Stalin:

'Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand, as his struggle against the C.C. on the question of the People’s Commissariat of Communications has already proved, is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C., but he has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work. These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders of the present C.C. can inadvertently lead to a split, and if our Party does not take steps to avert this, the split may come unexpectedly.' 1

In a post-script, Lenin wrote:

'Stalin is too coarse and this defect…becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc. This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a [minor] detail, but a detail which can assume decisive importance.' 2

It was only after Lenin’s death, on January 21, 1924, that Krupskaya turned the documents over to the Central Committee Secretariat. The letters were read to the delegates of the Thirteenth Party Congress in May 1924 under the condition that they should be kept secret.3 Because of Lenin’s words, Stalin offered to withdraw as General Secretary. How- ever, he was asked to remain in his post by the Central Committee. 4 In 1923, Stalin had already formed a coalition against Trotsky. The first issue which divided the two sides was whether socialism could be built in one country or whether, as both Lenin and Trotsky had believed, the revolution had to be spread to the most advanced countries in Europe. This was the dividing line, far more than any difference in internal outlook. Trotsky was no different in perspective on the Party than any other Bolshevik. At the Thirteenth Party Congress, in May 1924, he stated:

'None of us desires or is able to dispute the will of the Party. Clearly, the Party is always right…We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right. The English have a saying, “My country, right or wrong”...We have much better historical justification in saying whether it is right or wrong in certain individual concrete cases, it is my party…And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.' 5

Trotsky also agreed on the need for purges, “of a police character,” to “review the whole Soviet system and cleanse it ruthlessly from all the accumulated filth.”6 Taking Trotsky’s record as the leader of the Red Army in the Civil War in mind, I think it is incorrect to assume that a party led by Trotsky would not have used repression in “the cause of revolution.”

In 1924, Stalin published Problems of Leninism, which claimed that a proletarian revolution could build socialism in one country. 7 In 1925, the Fourteenth Party Conference accepted this strategy. The construction and defense of socialism in one country had top priority. Trotsky became isolated, and Zinoviev and Kamenev began to criticize the NEP from a left position. The three formed an “united opposition” against Sta- lin. As a consequence, they were accused of forming a faction and thereby violating the decree on Party unity. All three lost their seats in the Politburo, and in 1927 were expelled from the Party. Trotsky was exiled to Kazakhstan, and then later deported from the Soviet Union in 1929.

In his campaign against the “united opposition,” Stalin was allied with the “right-wing” of the party: Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky, who supported a continuation of the NEP. However, once the “united opposition” had been defeated, Stalin decided to terminate the NEP and swept away both capitalist production and market and communal forms of production—a switch from “state capitalism” to so-called “state socialism.” The reasons for the shift were motivated by problems in food production and the desire for rapid industrialization so the USSR could effectively resist the eventuality of an invasion. A precondition for increased industrialization was to control food production so the industrial workers could be fed. If War Communism and the NEP were difficult for the people of the Soviet Union, still harder times awaited.

Collectivization

The Bolsheviks formed an alliance between workers and peasants during the revolution by redistributing feudal land. However, this had not increased agricultural production, as many small farmers had reverted to subsistence cultivation during the chaos of the civil war. With the NEP, agricultural production increased, but often the peasants hoarded grain to force the price up. To enforce rapid industrialization, Stalin had to se- cure delivery of food for the cities. Part of the new industrial labor force came from rural areas, so those that remained had to supply more food to the cities than before. Rapid collectivization became the answer. The number of collective farms rose from 4 percent in 1929 to 58 percent in March 1930. Farmers were forced to pool their resources and work as a collective. The state purchased most of the production at fixed prices, although the collective farms were allowed a small plot and some livestock for private consumption. As a response, many peasants slaughtered their livestock, burned their grain, and destroyed their farming tools. Fearing that the peasants would refuse to sow summer crops, the collectivization campaign came to a temporary halt in the spring of 1930. Many peasants used this opportunity to leave the collectives. The collectivization was resumed in the summer of 1930, creating around 250,000 collective farms. The process was opposed by the majority of peasants, especially the kulaks—the richer farmers. Stalin wanted to “liquidate the kulaks as a class.” Their property was appropriated, and they were deported to remote areas. Thousands died in the process. The opposition to collectivization and acquisition of grain for the cities—combined with unusually severe cold and drought—caused famine in rural areas of the Soviet Union in 1932-33, costing millions of lives and ending the forced transition to collective farming.

Industrialization

The Bolshevik party under Stalin was convinced that rapid industrialization was necessary to develop socialism and repel Western aggression. At the Sixteenth Party Congress in June 1930, Stalin stated: “We are on the eve of transformation from an agrarian into an industrial country.”8 The ambition for such a transformation was not new; it had been an objective since the revolution. To facilitate this process, the Soviet Union imported advanced technology from the West to accelerate the development of their productive forces. However, in 1929, Stalin shifted from the NEP to a new form of management—the centrally planned economy, implemented through Five Year Plans. The first was launched in April 1929. In 1925-26, under the NEP, the state sector constituted 46 percent of the economy; by 1932, this had risen to 91 percent.9 Instead of market forces, political decisions were to decide what should be produced. Production targets set by economic planners dominated life, eliminating remnants of pluralism in the political sphere. Simultaneously, harsh discipline was introduced in the labor force. Even arts, sciences, and philosophy were subordinated to support reaching the goals set by the planned economy.

The priority of the first Five Year Plan was the production of capital goods, with a focus on heavy industry, machinery, and energy supply. The total production of any society can be divided into two inversely proportional sectors: capital goods and goods for final consumption. The fewer goods produced for final consumers, the more goods can be produced for expanded production. The second Five Year Plan from 1933-37 followed the same lines. The results were astonishing. The industrial workforce increased from 4.3 million in 1928 to 11.6 million in 1937. After less than a decade of industrialization, the Soviet Union’s industrial output was greater than Germany and England. It was only surpassed by the United States. The Moscow metro was constructed, and a vital defense industry was established. But only a portion of the fruits of industrialization became available to Soviet citizens. The majority was appropriated by the state for military expenditure and further industrialization. In the first Five Year Plan, defense was 5.4% of total expenditures, but by January 1941, it had reached 43.4%. In 1931, Stalin stated: “We are 50-100 years behind the advanced countries. We have to traverse this distance in ten years. We will either accomplish it or else we will be crushed.”10

By the time of Hitler’s invasion in June 1941, “‘the industry had produced 2,700 modern aircraft and 4,300 tanks.’ Judging by these figures, it cannot be said that the USSR arrived unprepared for its tragic appointment with war.”11 The Soviet Union achieved industrial development in a decade—an achievement which had taken Europe a hundred years—all during a time when the rest of the world was in an economic depression.

Though Stalin’s priority was “socialism in one country,” the Soviet Union still managed to support revolution internationally. Leading up to the Second World War, the Soviet Union supported the anti-fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War.12 In total, the Soviet Union provided Republican Spain with 806 planes, 362 tanks, and 1,555 artillery pieces.

The Soviet Union was the Republic’s far most important source of weapons, without which the Republic would not have lasted long. In 1936, the USSR dispatched 50% of its precious annual production of military aircraft to Republican Spain.13 The Soviet government provided credit to the Republic, knowing it had no chance of remuneration. Besides that, the COMINTERN urged communists all over Europe to support Republican Spain. Thousands of Communist Party members around the world joined the International Brigades as volunteers.

The Purges

Besides the economic transformations, there were also political changes in the state and the Party. Stalin conducted purges of opponents against his political line. This method of resolving political differences was egregious and damaging to the development of socialism. Besides the sheer brutality, it hindered the development of policy inside the party and weakened popular support. It damaged the reputation of socialism as a liberating project inside and outside the Soviet Union and has had negative consequences for the communist movement to this day.

This is not to say that purges are always wrong. Class struggles are sometimes transmitted to political struggles inside the Party, and they can take an antagonistic form in which exclusion of members is a method to enforce a political line. However, political differences in a communist party should not be solved by criminalization or the physical elimination of opponents.

Inside the Bolshevik party, there had been fierce political struggles since the revolution. Lenin’s call to storm the Winter Palace was considered a deviation from Marxism by Kamenev and Zinoviev. They alerted the Mensheviks of Lenin’s plans, risking the revolution and inviting the accusation of betrayal from other Bolsheviks.14 Long before Trotsky made the accusation that the revolution had been betrayed, such allegations loomed like shadows over the party.

However, during the early history of the Soviet Union, it was Trotsky, as commander of the Red Army, who was labeled a brutal dictator and a traitor of socialist ideals. During the civil war, he had to secure the very existence of the newborn state.

In 1918-21, elements of the peasantry were quite indifferent to the needs of the cities for supplies of food. Instead, they were inclined to establish spontaneous “peasant republics” centered on subsistence production. Deserters from the Red Army also claimed to represent “authentic” socialism, creating the “Free Republic of Deserters” in the district of Bessarabia. They appealed to Lenin to support them against state administration. The situation was the same in Kronstadt, where Soviet marines revolted.

Trotsky was in charge of ending these revolts and was considered the “defender of a bureaucratic organization.” Trotsky, for his part, suspected Zinoviev of having encouraged the Kronstadt revolt by wielding the banner of “worker democracy.”15

The accusation of betrayal has occurred in many revolutions when ideals meet reality, and these accusations are often linked to personal ambitions and power struggles. It is important to differentiate between political struggle and personal ambition.

In December 1934, Politburo member Sergei Kirov was assassinated. This led to a paranoiac purge. Most of the Bolshevik Old Guard from the revolution were arrested and sentenced to death or imprisoned in labor camps. The result was that 70% of the Central Committee, and over 90% of the delegates of the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934, were no longer able to attend the Eighteenth Congress in 1939. Their replacements were people with a more technocratic outlook, and were also more loyal to Stalin. In the end, one of the central figures in the execution of the purges, the chief of the secret police (the NKVD) N.I. Ezhov was purged, and Lavrentiy Beria took charge of NKVD. At the Eighteenth Congress Stalin declared that:

'It cannot be said that the purge was not accompanied by grave mistakes. There were unfortunately more mistakes than might have been expected. Undoubtedly, we shall have no further need of resorting to the method of mass purges. Nevertheless, the purge of 1933-36 was unavoidable and its results, on the whole, were beneficial.' 16

Stalin’s method “to solve” disagreement was a disaster, as it created a political atmosphere that could not lead to innovations in the development of socialism. The leading Bolsheviks developed into a new privileged layer in society. While Lenin was still alive, no party member was allowed to earn more than a skilled worker. This principle was formally abolished in 1932.17 Of importance for the development of this privileged class were also several perks and special treatments. Party leaders, and so-called “apparatchiks”—leading bureaucrats, administrators, and “comrades in responsible positions”—lived a different life than the general population. They were provided with special apartments with modern amenities, free cars with drivers, access to shops with food and luxury goods, free holiday stays, etc.18 The Bolshevik party lost legitimacy as the people’s party. Rather than regulating the “general production” to the benefit of the people, the bureaucracy alienated themselves from society. From 1924 to 1934, the political climate in the Soviet Union radically changed. However, this was seldom criticized by European communists (except in Trotskyist circles). The contrast between economic depression and the spread of fascism in the West—and the rapid modernization in the Soviet Union—led many Western Marxists to tone down their criticism of Stalin’s authoritarian tendency. One example of this attitude can be seen in the Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer. He had initially been critical of the Soviet Union, but he revised his opinion. In his 1936 book Between Two World Wars? he defends Stalin’s policy as a historical necessity:

'Yet just as terrible the sacrifices which the great industrialisation and collectivisation process incurred, just so intoxicating are its consequences.' 19

The Ideology of “Actually Existing Socialism”

One mistake made by Stalin was his statement that socialism had been realized in the Soviet Union. In his report to the Eighth Extraordinary Soviet Congress in November 1936, he declared that “socialist construction” had been successfully completed:

'As a result of all these changes in the sphere of the national economy of the U.S.S.R., we now have a new Socialist economy, which knows neither crises nor unemployment, which knows neither poverty nor ruin, and which provides our citizens with every opportunity to lead a prosperous and cultured life. Such, in the main, are the changes which have taken place in the sphere of our economy during the period from 1924 to 1936. This means that the proletariat of the U.S.S.R. has been transformed into an entirely new class, into the working class of the U.S.S.R., which has abolished the capitalist economic system, which has established the Socialist ownership of the instruments and means of production and is directing Soviet society along the road to Communism.' 20

On the same occasion, Stalin proclaimed that the Soviet Union was “the most developed democracy” in the world—indeed the only consistent democracy.

'In a few days’ time the Soviet Union will have a new, Socialist Constitution, built on the principles of fully developed Socialist democratism. It will be an historical document dealing in simple and concise terms with the facts of the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R., with the facts of the emancipation of the working people of the U.S.S.R. from capitalist slavery, with the facts of the victory in the U.S.S.R. of full and thoroughly consistent democracy.' 21

All this was an illusion. The Soviet Union was not socialist. While it was the first attempt to develop a socialist economy and state within a dominating capitalist world system, it was on the wrong track.

In Marx and Engels’ definitions of socialism in the Communist Manifesto, they write about a society where the free development of the individual is the condition for the free development of all. In The Civil War in France, Marx wrote about “the despicable state machinery” and the necessity to “shatter the state.” This was hardly the situation in the Soviet Union in 1936. The Soviet Union had eradicated illiteracy and managed to provide free healthcare; it had overcome famine and developed its productive force to a level comparable with states in the West. But socialism? No. It was a state-centered economy run by a party-state bureaucracy.

However, there are pragmatic reasons why Stalin proclaimed “the realization of socialism” in 1936. One reason was the mobilizing effect. The idea of the Soviet Union as a “first mover” in a global transition towards socialism could generate enthusiasm and help drive the modernization process forward. Through media, literature, film, theater, painting, and the educational system, this “image” of the Soviet Union as the “existing utopia” was spread.

It was a tale about the first country of the world where workers and peasants had taken power. It was the story of the abolition of poverty.

It was an ideology about international solidarity between the oppressed and exploited. However, it was not “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” The story of “socialism in one country” had elements of truth. Children received an education, and the health system was effective. When Stalin died in 1953, millions of Soviet citizens mourned him—the largest demonstration of public mourning in Soviet history. This fact has caused problems for anti-Stalinist academic research, which emphasize the psychological “fascination of Stalin” to explain the phenomena, instead of using a balanced historical materialist analysis. 22

In the latter part of the 1930s, and during World War II, the ideology of “actually existing socialism” moved in a more nationalistic and conservative direction. “The great retreat” from the revolutionary policies of 1920. 23 An example of this could be seen in criminal law. In the 1920s, punishment was inspired by Anton Makarenko’s principles of upbringing and resocialization of children and young people. New institutions had been established to bring child gangs and juvenile delinquents “back to a normal life.” However, in 1935, the death penalty was reintroduced starting from the age of 12.24 In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks supported Evgeny Pashukanis’ philosophy of law, in which it was argued that criminal law would gradually vanish with the economic change from capitalism to socialism.25 However, in 1936 the criminal system was strengthened in order to serve the state. 26 Family law was also moved in a conservative direction; abortion bans were reintroduced, and divorce laws tightened.

On the cultural front, the Proletarian Writers’ Association (RAPP), was dissolved in 1932 and replaced with a “Writers’ Union,” which praised the industrialization, collectivization, and glorified Russian history—all in the form of “social realism.” Alexei Tolstoy wrote an ode to Peter the Great. The director Sergei Eisenstein—who, in his 1926 film Battleship Potemkin, had depicted a heroic mutiny during the 1905 revolution—now paid tribute to the despots of the past in his films Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. 27

There was a parallel development in historiography. The leading Soviet historian of the early 1930s, Mikhail Pokrovsky, emphasized the ruthlessness of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great.28 Pokrovsky’s heroes were the leaders of the great uprisings in Russia’s history: Kondraty Bulavin, Stenka Razin, and Yemelyan Pugachov, all of whom were portrayed as forerunners of the “proletarian revolution.” However, after Pokrovsky’s death to cancer in 1932, scholars were given the task by the Politburo to write a new history textbook. Pokrovsky’s attack on the old tsarist regime as a “prison of peoples” was deemed to be anti-patriotic. To eliminate this “national nihilism,” a new Russian nationalist historical orthodoxy was established in which rebels were portrayed as “bandits” with no political significance. 29

Leading Marxist theorists of the late 1920s, such as Abram Deborin, David Ryazanov, and Isaak Rubin, were purged and replaced by theorists like Mark Mitin and Vladimir Adoratsky—with Stalin being the final authority in all theoretical-philosophical questions. Even in architecture, the idea of grandiose nationalism had its influence in what was to be called “Stalin Baroque.” In Moscow, central districts were demolished, and streets widened to accommodate processions and parades.

Conservative tendencies and strong nationalism were introduced in the Red Army as well. New uniforms, with the old-time epaulets for officers’ uniforms, were reintroduced. There were special officers’ clubs, and military academies were established according to the tsarist model. Any recruit for the Red Army had hitherto sworn that he would: “devote all (his) deeds and (his) thoughts to the great goal, to liberate the workers and to fight for the Soviet Union and for socialism and brotherhood between the peoples.” Now, it was changed to: “I will for my last breath serve my fatherland and my government.” The political commissars in the army were abolished in 1943 and World War II was later referred to in Soviet history as “The Great Patriotic War.”30

In Stalin’s speech from atop Lenin’s Mausoleum on November 7, 1941—while soldiers marched from Red Square directly to the frontlines, just outside Moscow—he gave the troops some examples of historical figures to emulate:

'The war you are waging is a war of liberation, a just war. Let the manly images of our great ancestors—Alexander Nevsky, Dimitry Donskoy, Kuzma Minin, Dimitry Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov—inspire you in this war! May the victorious banner of the great Lenin be your North star!' 31

Among these 7 figures were four despotic rulers and one saint.

In 1943, the COMINTERN was disbanded, and in 1944, “The Internationale” was replaced with “The Soviet Anthem.” The ideology of “actually existing socialism” legitimized state institutions and leaders, mobilized the population, and strengthened their labor efforts. For European communists, the myth of a “real existing socialist state” translated to hope in an era marked by economic crisis and the rise of fascist movements.

Today, the postulate that “actually existing socialism” is socialism has been persistently cultivated by liberals, as well the right-wing, with success. The political function is obvious: use Stalin’s myth of a socialist Soviet Union to damage the entire “brand” of socialism.

The Great Patriotic War

The development of Soviet military capacity was enhanced by the delay of the German invasion, secured by the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which Stalin agreed to in 1939 following his failure to secure an alliance with Britain and France. Between 1939 and 1941, the Soviet Union used this postponement to expand its number of military personnel by 132.4%; guns and mortars by 110.7%; tanks by 21.8%; and aircraft by 142.8%. 32

On June 22, 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded. By July, German forces had penetrated Soviet territory from Odessa in the South to a hundred miles short of Leningrad in the North. However, pockets of resistance left behind by this rapid advance did not capitulate as the Germans had experienced in Poland, Belgium, and France. Fierce and unpredictable counter attacks impeded Germany. The resistance of Soviet forces was unbroken. This gave the Soviet Union time to transfer resources and industry eastwards and thereby keep up their defense production. Nazi Germany was never able to conquer Moscow, Leningrad, or Stalingrad, and by 1943 the tide had turned.

The contributions made by the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany were decisive for the result of the Second World War as a whole. The Third Reich suffered its heaviest losses on the eastern front: more than 75% of its soldiers, tanks, aircraft, and artillery.33 In the winter of 1944-45, the Red Army advanced through Eastern Europe and ended the Holocaust. In October 1944, Red Army soldiers uncovered the horrors of the concentration camps in central Poland and, after fierce fighting, liberated the prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945. It is often forgotten that in addition to the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide, at least 20 million Soviet civilians were deliberately exterminated in two hundred prison camps across occupied Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union suffered the most casualties of the war—between 24-26 million. The losses suffered by Western European and the U.S. were significantly lower.

The Soviet Union as a World Power

In April 1945, the Red Army conquered Berlin. The British and French empires were weakened by the war. The U.S. emerged as the leading imperialist power. The Soviet Union, however, was also triumphant. Its military strength proved powerful enough to overcome the German war machine. Despite the war’s immense costs, the Soviet Union had established itself as an important political player in the world system.

The communist resistance across Europe strengthened the position of the Soviet Union. But the split within anti-Nazi movements between “Western-oriented” and communist forces intensified, such as in Poland, where bloody infighting started during the occupation and continued years after the war had ended. The U.S. and Britain attempted to contain Soviet influence in Europe. The primary objective of the Soviet Union immediately after 1945 was to avoid war with its former allies. The United States’ willingness to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki suggested that any military confrontation with imperialism would end in catastrophe.

The Soviets also enjoyed diplomatic influence, as at the Yalta Conference in 1945, where Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin divided Europe into spheres of influence so as to avoid armed confrontation—at least in Europe. East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania had been wrested from German control by the Red Army and declared peoples’ republics under Communist Party leadership in the late 1940s. The communist led National Liberation Movement in Yugoslavia and Albania liberated themselves from Italians, Germans, and local fascists.

Even in Western Europe, communist often led resistance struggles. Many of the communist partisans got their first military experience as volunteers in Spain. Italy and France—both with strong communist movements—were liberated by U.S. and English forces and ended up in the Western camp. The Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, a former hardliner in the fight against the social democrats, declared that the task of the Italian workers was not revolution but to rebuild the nation. This required loyalty to the Allied forces. His position did not change, even when the Allies disarmed communist partisans who, in April 1945, had seized power in several towns in northern Italy.34 The Italian Communist Party helped impose the rule of capital and was included in the country’s first postwar government. The situation was similar in France, where the French Communist Party participated in the coalition government that ordered the brutal suppression of anticolonial revolts in Algeria and Indochina.35

This flirtation between the bourgeoisie and the communists in Italy and France didn’t last long. By 1947, collaboration with communists was unacceptable. Delegates across Europe established the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) as a new alliance of communist organizations. Soviet delegate Andrei Zhdanov declared that the world was now divided into an “imperialist camp” headed by the U.S., and an “anti-imperialist camp” headed by the Soviet Union. The Yugoslav delegate Edvard Kardelj criticized the Italian and French communists for adopting “Social-Democratism.”36 For the Yugoslav communists, the formation of the Cominform signaled an offensive against imperialism. For Stalin, the foundation of the Cominform was a defensive measure against the Marshall Plan. These different interpretations between the Soviet Union and the communists in the Balkans led to a conflict within the international communist movement.

The Communist Party of Greece maintained its armed forces after the German occupation had ended. The British liberation of Greece from Nazi Germany meant the restoration of a bourgeois regime and the suppression of the communist forces that had led the liberation struggle.

Albania rejected British “aid” and instead received support from the Soviet Union. 37 While the Yugoslav communists demanded aid to be given to the Greek communists, Stalin deemed any challenge to the postwar arrangement too risky. In a meeting with Churchill in 1944, Stalin agreed that Greece would remain in the British sphere of influence. In 1948, he told Milovan Djilas, a Yugoslav partisan and politician, that the uprising of the Greek communists had “no prospect of success” and had to be stopped “as quickly as possible.”38 Diplomatic relations were broken off between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the Cominform denounced the latter as revisionist.

The principal contradiction in the world during World War II was between the Axis powers and the Allies. Toward the end of the war, another contradiction rose in importance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Churchill desperately wanted Western Allied forces to reach Berlin before Soviet troops to limit Soviet influence in Germany. The establishment of peoples’ republics in Eastern Europe created a socialist bloc in the world system. The principal contradiction was written along the “Iron Curtain” declared by Churchill, later the Berlin Wall, and the frontiers of NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

The Soviet Union and Post-War Anti-Imperialism

The situation in Asia was different from Europe. Here there was no agreed balance of power, and the communist parties did not abide Moscow. Communists had withstood Japan and used the post-war confusion to take the offensive. In 1946, the Communist Party of Vietnam launched a campaign against French colonialism. China’s communists fought Japan and the Kuomintang, and in 1949 proclaimed the People’s Republic.

The Soviet Union offered assistance to the anticolonial armed struggle. In the Korean peninsula, the communists fought Japanese colonialism. At the Cairo Conference of 1943, the U.S., Britain, and China agreed that Korea should become independent once the country was freed from Japan.

After the surrender of Japan, on September 6, 1945, the People’s Republic of Korea (PRK) was proclaimed based on a system of People’s Committees. But Korea was divided into two occupation zones, with the Soviet Union occupying the north, and the U.S. occupying the south. In the south, the U.S. military government outlawed the PRK on December 12, 1945. In the north, the Soviet authorities merged the People’s Committees into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Along with arming the DPRK, the Soviet Union provided technical personnel and equipment.39 Only the strength of the Soviet Union could prevent the wholesale U.S. takeover of Korea in the aftermath of the Second World War. Yet Stalin warned Kim Il-Sung against pursuing a war of national liberation in U.S.-occupied Korea.

However, Stalin’s position would change after the liberation of China in 1949, and Kim Il-Sung then proceeded with his attempt to unify Korea.40 The result was a war in Korea from June 1950 to July 1953. To prevent communist forces from uniting the country, more than 428,000 bombs were dropped on Pyongyang—the capital of the DPRK— roughly one bomb for each resident at that time. In all, 600,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Korea, 3.7 times the amount of ordnance dropped on Japan during World War II. The U.S. killed 1,231,540 civilians in northern Korea during the three-year war.41 Blaine Harden quotes American officers and political leaders:

'“Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.' 42

The U.S. bombing was, in per capita terms, the deadliest in history:

'The war was endorsed by the newly established United Nations under the control of the US, UK, and France. The Soviet delegation was boycotting the Security Council and Chiang Kai-shek, who had fled to Taiwan, held China’s seat.' 43

The Korean war has to be situated within the wider geopolitical framework of the time, which includes the anticolonial movement and the U.S effort to “contain” the Soviet Union and China. As U.S. forces invaded North Korea in October 1950 and drove north, China entered the war and forced them back to the thirty-eighth parallel. In February 1950, the Soviet Union and China entered the Sino-Soviet Treaty, committing to defend one another, just as Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. army in the Far East, agitated for nuclear war on China. In April 1951, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drafted orders authorizing nuclear attacks on Manchuria and the Shandong Peninsula in East China, but were uncomfortable about giving them to MacArthur, for fear that he might prematurely carry out his orders.

'In the end, President Truman considered a war with China too dangerous. However, MacArthur’s belligerence enjoyed support in anti-communist circles which viewed the wars in Korea and Vietnam as ways to contain China. The confrontation with North Korea was, in geopolitical terms, about China.' 44

All this shows the complicated and dangerous position Stalin had to navigate in the immediate post-war period. The assistance provided to Eastern Europe, China, and Korea are demonstrative examples that even in the context of postwar devastation, the Soviet Union under Stalin was willing to provide significant assistance to countries in the name of anti-imperialism.

An Evaluation of the Stalin Era

The Stalin era is a prime example of the difficulties of evaluating socialist history. Due to the “Cold War” and its intense anti-Soviet rhetoric, there is pressure to denounce Stalin completely. You cannot say anything positive about Stalin and still remain in good company. This problem extends to the left in the West. Here it is difficult to have a balanced discussion of the Stalin era. If you say something positive or negative, depending on the company, feelings grow and anger bursts. However, I think it is necessary “to face the music” and commit to a balanced evaluation, because the Stalin era had an enormous impact on the quest for socialism—and we must learn from it. In my historical account, I have tried to be pragmatic. I have tried to take into consideration the historical context and possible choices of action that existed at the time.

We have to evaluate the Stalin era from the perspective of the long transition from capitalism to socialism. The loss of human life in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s cannot only be explained by mistakes and malice of Stalin. An assessment must also be based on the modernization processes and concrete historical circumstances under which they took place.

In the years 1927-1938, it is estimated by Alec Nove that 10 million people lost their lives.45 Richard Overy claims a total number of 6-7 million. 46 Approximately 5 million of these deaths were caused by the famine of 1931-33—a combination of cold, drought, and the consequences of the collectivization process. 47

The transition from a peasant society to industrial capitalism in Europe and North America was no less violent, but a significant part of the violence was “exported” to Latin America, Africa, and Asia in the form of colonialism. On the two American continents, the indigenous population was between 60 and 100 million, of which more than half died during the European induced genocides.48 In the United States, the native population was estimated to have been between 4 and 9 million at the time of colonization. By the year 1900, it was 237,000—95% of the indigenous population had been exterminated.49 “We shall destroy all of them,” declared the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson.50 The capture, transportation, and enslavement of millions of humans ruined societies in Africa and cost uncountable lives. Under Belgian King Leopold II’s regime of terror in the Congo alone, 8 million Congolese died.51 In Australia, white settlers exterminated approximately 80% of the indigenous population. 52

Liberal “democratic” institutions were no obstacle to mass murder. Theodore Roosevelt, an admired social liberal U.S. President declared:

'I do not go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.' 53

The U.S. and Australia were democratic states for the white population, and fascist states for colonized peoples. On several occasions, Hitler referred to the U.S. genocide of indigenous peoples as an example to follow. 54 The emphasis on communist-induced starvation in the Soviet Union elides the imperialists’ same atrocities. Historian Mike Davis writes in Late Victorian Holocausts about colonial famines in northeastern Brazil, India, and China in the late nineteenth century. Cases of famine were the result of ruthless colonial exploitation, which cost between 31 and 61 million lives. 55 Concerning British colonialism in India, Hickel and Sullivan write:

'If we estimate excess mortality from 1891 to 1920…we find 165 million excess deaths in India between 1880 and 1920. This figure is larger than the combined number of deaths from both World Wars, including the Nazi holocaust.' 56

In 1943-44, there was yet another widespread famine in Bengal, India. The famine was not caused by war action, but by English policy. In 1943, food prices suddenly rose by 300%, causing three million civilians in the poorest rural classes to starve to death. The English government had just printed rupees to cover the huge expenditures of Indian foodstuffs provided to the Allied forces in the east, causing inflation. The measures leading to the price rise were introduced by the advice of none other than Maynard Keynes, the top adviser for the English finance minister at the time. 57 Widespread hunger is still a recurring phenomenon in the capitalist world system today. This is not to diminish the millions who died during Stalin’s rule, but one must put the numbers in historical perspective.

As the intensity of the “Cold War” grew, anti-Stalin rhetoric hardened. The criticism of Stalin from the 20th Communist Party Congress in 1956 was a gift to the anti-communist ideologues in the West. Intellectuals and liberal politicians could forget the sympathy they had for Stalin during the war and castigate him as an evil communist dictator who was single handedly responsible for the 1932-33 famine, the purges, and the gulags. This critique disconnected historical-structural preconditions from the actor’s choices and actions. It became common to put Stalin in line with Hitler, and the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. Hannah Arendt put forward the idea of “totalitarianism” as a distinct political movement.58 In Arendt’s view, although many totalitarian movements existed in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, only the governments of Stalin and Hitler successfully implemented totalitarian aims. Arendt’s criticism of Stalin was absurd for the German author Thomas Mann, who fled Nazism in 1933:

To place communism and Nazi-fascism on the same moral place, in the measure that both are totalitarian, is superficial at best, fascism at worst. Anyone who insists on this comparison could very well be considered a democrat, but deep in their heart a fascist is already there, and naturally they will only fight fascism in a superficial and hypocritical way, while they save all their hatred for communism. 59

It is sometimes claimed that Stalinism emerged from Lenin’s mistakes. The NEP chose the goal of catching up with the West over constructing an alternative social formation. The consequence was the centralization of state power and the formation of a class of bureaucrats, which allowed for the state’s unrestrained power, and hence, its misuse.

Collectivization was the price. The severing of the worker-peasant alliance engendered by collectivization was the abandonment of revolutionary democracy and the autocratic turn of the Soviet state.

However, if the country had neglected rapid industrialization, with all its costs, it would probably have brought an end to the Soviet Union in 1943 and the consequences of that would have created a completely different world. The Soviet Red Army was the decisive element in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

While the vanguard party was able to execute the revolution, it was less adequate for the development of a socialist state. The two tasks are very different. The day before the revolution, you sabotage infrastructure; the day after, you rebuild it. Secrecy in preparation and unity in action are important characteristics for a revolutionary process, but not necessarily for developing democratic structures. For Stalin, the preservation of the first socialist state meant that any opposition had to be crushed, at any cost. This political line was the only bulwark that could protect the fragile revolution from its many enemies. Yet after Stalin, the Communist Party was never able to regain its popular legitimacy. The Party became a bureaucratic elite apart from the people. This is one reason that there was apathy towards the Party when the Soviet Union was dissolved by Yeltsin in 1990.

Stalin was the first to promote the idea of building “socialism in one country” instead of giving priority to the world revolution as a necessary condition for developing socialism on the national level, but he was certainly not the last. All the revolutions that followed gave priority to the national development of socialism at the expense of the world revolution—except, perhaps, for Cuba. One reason for this was that all subsequent revolutions took place in a colonial or semi-colonial context, and therefore had a substantial element of national liberation. Communist organizations were able to take the lead in revolutions which were nationalist as much as they were socialist.

Throughout the 20th century, it seemed that the national road towards socialism was the only viable way, particularly in a world-system still dominated by economic, political, and military capitalism. However, this strategy had implications on how far the transition toward socialism was possible—especially in a world system which became more and more globalized. Nationalism, just as it had done in the 19th century, hindered socialists from the realization of Marx and Engels’ vision of a strong internationalist trend in the building of socialism.

Stalin’s change of strategy coincided with the defeat of revolutionary attempts in Western Europe and looming fascism. This might have been a wise decision with socialism on the backfoot, but it was not “the realization of socialism,” as proclaimed by Stalin in 1936. The Soviet Union was only the first attempt to construct socialism. An acknowledgment of this would create better opportunities for the future development of socialism.

The Soviet Union came out of the Second World War as a major world power. It recovered remarkably fast from the destruction of the war. It acquired nuclear weapons in 1949, which created a “balance of deterrence” in the “Cold War,” important for the progressive forces in the decolonization of the Third World. However, it acted more and more as a superpower in the world system, with its own national interest rather than as a promoter of the socialist world revolution. Its construction of “actually existing socialism” started to fade and lost its inspirational power.

Mao’s Critique of Stalin

While Khrushchev ruthlessly criticized Stalin at the 20th Congress in 1956, Mao and the Communist Party of China assessed Stalin in a more balanced way. The Chinese evaluation did not suffer from an inherent Eurocentrism, and it was made by a party that had experienced similar dilemmas as that of the Stalin era.

Mao’s main critique rested on the fact that Stalin failed to recognize—following collectivization, nationalization, and the introduction of a planned economy—that the class struggle continued, and this struggle was then reflected within the Communist Party as different political lines.

'For a long time, Stalin refused to recognize that under the socialist system contradictions between the relations of production and the forces of production and contradictions between the superstructure and the economic base [continue to exist]... Since the Second World War, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the parties in some countries in East Europe have no longer concerned themselves with the fundamental principles of Marxism. They are no longer concerned about class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leadership of the Party, democratic centralism, and the connection between the Party and the masses.' 60

According to Mao, the Bolshevik party under Stalin never developed proper relations with the masses. The Party wanted to change society for the masses from above, instead of using the mass line of mobilizing the masses to change society for themselves. As a specific example of this failure, Mao mentioned the political struggle within the Party leading up to the purges. In Party conflicts, Stalin relied entirely on security agencies instead of the masses to resolve the conflict. Stalin confused contradictions among the people with contradictions between the people and the enemy. This led him to unjustly imprison and execute a great number of people. Mao writes:

'We must distinguish clearly between the two categories of contradictions. The first category of contradictions between the enemy and ourselves, cannot be confused with the second category of contradictions among the people. On the subject of the socialist society, [we must recognize that] it does have contradictions, and contradictions do exist [in it]. Stalin—in the period immediately after Lenin’s death—[allowed for] a relative liveliness and activity in the domestic life in the Soviet Union… They had all sorts of [political] parties and factions, even some well-known people like Trotsky… There were also some other people in the society who were allowed to say all sorts of things, including criticizing the government. Then later, things became very dictatorial. [Stalin] would not allow for criticism. He was afraid of people who wanted to criticize, to let a hundred flowers bloom. He would only allow for the blooming of fragrant flowers. He was afraid also of letting a hundred schools contend. At the slightest hint of suspicion, he would say that it was a counterrevolutionary [incident] and would have people arrested or executed.' 61

Mao continues in his “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”:

'There were two sides to him (Stalin). One side was the elimination of true counterrevolutionaries; that was the correct side. The other side was the incorrect killing of numerous people, important people. On the question of heavy industry, light industry, and agriculture, the Soviet Union did not lay enough emphasis on the latter two and had losses as a result. In addition, they did not do a good job of combing the immediate and the long-term interests of the people. In the main they walked on one leg…Another point: Stalin emphasized only technology, technical cadre. He wanted nothing but technology, nothing but cadre; no politics, no masses. This too is walking on one leg!' 62

More generally, after the pre-war transformations of industry and agriculture, Stalin seemed to resign himself to the continuation of the existing relations of production. Mao writes:

'Stalin’s book [Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR] from first to last says nothing about the superstructure. It is not concerned with people; it considers things, not people… The basic error is mistrust of the peasants… Essentially Stalin did not discover a way to make the transition from collective to public ownership… Communism cannot be reached unless there is a communist movement.' 63

Mao’s evaluation of the COMINTERN is also mixed:

'When Lenin was alive, the Third International was well led. After Lenin’s death, the leaders of the Third International were dogmatic leaders (for instance, leaders [like] Stalin, Bukharin were not that good…Of course, the Third International had [its] merits as well, for instance, helping various countries to establish a [communist] party. Later on, [however] the dogmatists paid no attention to the special features of various countries [and] blindly transplanted everything from Russia. China [for one] suffered great losses.' 64

After the Second World War, according to Mao, Stalin tended to be too frightened of the imperialist powers, and attempted to prevent revolutions in other countries because he feared they might lead to the involvement of the Soviet Union in yet another world war. On August 22, 1945, Stalin sent a telegram to Mao saying that the Communist Party of China must hold onto the road of peaceful development. He believed the Nationalists and the Communists should reach a peace accord because a civil war would destroy the Chinese nation. He insisted that Zhou Enlai and Mao go to Chongqing for negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek. After receiving Stalin’s cable, an angry Mao remarked:

I simply don’t believe that the nation will perish if the people stand up and struggle [against the Kuomintang].

65 According to Mao, the Soviet distrust of the Chinese communists continued:

'Stalin wanted to prevent China from making a revolution, saying that we should not have a civil war and should cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek, otherwise the Chinese nation would perish. But we did not do what he said. The revolution was victorious. After the victory of the revolution, he next suspected China of being a Yugoslavia, and that I would become a second Tito. Later, when I went to Moscow to sign the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance, we had to go through another struggle. He was not willing to sign a treaty. After two months of negotiations, he at last signed. When did Stalin begin to have confidence in us? It was the time of the “Resist America, Aid Korea” campaign, from the winter of 1950. He then came to believe that we were not Tito, not Yugoslavia.' 66

Despite Mao’s criticisms of Stalin, he regularly repeated that “Stalin was 30 percent bourgeois, 70 percent Marxist,” a bluntly quantitative way of evaluating a political line. 67 Let us now turn to Mao’s home country to investigate the next major revolutionary process from its beginning.

Chapter 13: The Chinese Revolution

Imperial China

If Russia was the semi-periphery of the European capitalist center in 1917, then China was the periphery; or rather, it had been turned into the periphery by nineteenth-century imperialism. In the preceding eight centuries, China was actually more developed than Europe. During the Song dynasty (960-1279), China developed commercial capitalism, managed within the framework of an imperial state. In the following centuries, a market economy proliferated across China and long-distance trade linked China with other parts of the world-system. 1 All the key features of capitalism, as defined by Marx, were present: commodity production for exchange on the market, money as the universal commodity, and accumulation of capital based on the exploitation of labor power.

China’s manufacturing ranged from silk and cotton textile factories to ceramic, porcelain, prints, and furniture production. 2 This early form of manufacturing and mercantile capitalism also influenced agricultural production. China developed a system of buying and selling real estate property by deeds, enforced through the imperial judicial system. Tenant farming and agricultural day labor grew in importance. Farming became commercialized by producing for market distribution. 3

The attributes of capitalism developed in their own historically specific forms throughout the Yuan and Ming dynasties. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, China’s commercial capitalism flourished, as the international demand for Chinese goods such as tea, porcelain, silk, and cotton textiles drew increasing amounts of silver—first from Japan, and then from the mines of the New World via European galleon trade. Foreigners were allowed to trade with China in a regulated system at the port of Guangzhou, known to Westerners as Canton. The trade had mainly been one way—Chinese goods for gold and silver. However, with the industrial revolution, Britain prioritized “free” trade, desiring to open more ports in China and have a permanent diplomatic presence in Beijing. The Qianlong emperor declined these requests and reminded the British, in a letter in 1793 to King George III, that:

'Our celestial empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There is, therefore, no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce.' 4

As late as 1820, China was the world’s largest economy, accounting for 33 percent of the world’s economic output. However, contradictions within the existing mode of production in China were intensifying, and the rise of England’s industrial revolution brought both goods to compete with China’s domestic products and the military capacity to force the Qing government to open the empire to Western imperialism.

Chinese manufacturing capitalism generated a stratum of urban-based merchants and rural-based landowning elite that, through their domination of the civil service, controlled the operations of the imperial government. In ancient Confucian thought, there was a tradition of aversion to commercial wealth; however, with the emergence of the commercial elite, these ideas began to erode.

Members of the rural elite invested some of their wealth into the businesses of merchants and manufacturers, resulting in a convergence of interests rather than a relationship of antagonism. This is in contrast with the history of class conflict between the rising bourgeoisie and the feudal aristocracy in Europe, but not entirely. In the German industrial revolution, there was a similar fusing of interest between the landowning Junkers and the upcoming bourgeoisie. 5

The convergence of the urban-rural elite in China was reflected in the policy and administration of the imperial state. The state-sponsored construction and maintenance of roads and canals facilitated long-distance trade. State intervention in the grain market served to stabilize prices and buffer extreme market fluctuations. Fundamental to the imperial political culture was the idea that the state’s primary purpose was to create and maintain stability and security. 6

The Breakdown of The Imperial Order

The Industrial Revolution in Europe reconfigured the global economic and political order. It was in this context that China was subordinated to Western imperialism. China’s commercial capitalism, already under pressure from internal contradictions, had to give in to foreign competition. China assumed a subordinate role as a source of raw materials and as a market for European manufactured products.

China was never properly colonized, but it became a semi-colonial country in which foreign powers established enclaves around Shanghai and other big cities and enjoyed extraterritorial privileges, such as their own administration, courts, and police. To reverse the flow of silver from Europe to China, Britain decided to flood China with opium. When China resisted this poisoning of its people, the British initiated the first Opium War (1839-42), which ended with the “Treaty of Nanjing” in which Britain took possession of Hong Kong and imposed upon the Chinese the rule of opium. British officials reported in 1844 that:

'... almost every person possessed of capital who is not connected with government employment, is employed in the opium trade... opium is in general traded along the whole coast.' 7

The decline of the imperial order continued during the Taiping Rebellion from 1851-64. The peasant revolt was one of the bloodiest civil wars in world history, with an estimated 20 to 30 million dead. However, it was not just an internal class conflict; it also had a nationalist dimension. This surge of nationalism was a consequence of the humiliation, financial drain, and breakdown of the whole nation caused by the first Opium War. The rebels struggled to put an end to a dynasty that had capitulated to the aggression of British narco-traffickers.8 In the areas controlled by the rebels, the consumption of opium was prohibited—a direct challenge to the London government, which had propped up the eroding dynasty.

After China lost the second Opium War (1856-60), British and American traders continued to flood the country with opiates. Britain’s East India Company, and the British firm Jardine, Matheson & Company, led the way—followed by Americans entrepreneurs like Samuel Russel, Warren Delano, and Robert Forbes. Millions of Chinese people became addicted to opium and foreign powers continued to extract China’s silver. The British and French also imposed war indemnities on China to the amount of 32 million ounces of silver, which China had to then borrow from European banks. 9

The weakening of the Chinese Empire caused resentment against Western influence. The response was yet another huge peasant revolt, the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1900). Foreign powers like the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan sent troops to crush the uprising. This time, they imposed war indemnities on China to the tune of 450 million ounces of silver. The formerly mighty empire had been brought to its knees.

In 1904-05, the Russo-Japanese War, which affected northeast China, triggered a nationalist revolutionary movement under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen. This eventually led to the republican Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which ended the Qing dynasty and four thousand years of monarchic rule. But the revolution failed to create national unity. China became more and more fragmented. The following years were characterized by peasant uprisings and feuds between different warlords.

The effect of western capitalist penetration into China in the late nineteenth century was described by Mao as:

'the collusion of imperialism with the Chinese feudal forces to arrest the development of Chinese capitalism…their purpose is to transform China into their own semi-colony or colony.' 10

The western powers divided up the largest Chinese towns and cities and made them into foreign concessions. They took control of customs and communication networks and dominated China’s exports and imports. At the same time, the imperialist forces kept feudalism alive—and later, propped up the warlord regime and Chiang Kai-shek. In the absence of the former coherence of imperial state regulation, the extraction of surplus from agricultural production by rural elites intensified and was exacerbated by warlord taxation and the corrupt practices of the Chiang Kai-shek regime. The consequence was the underdevelopment of productive forces in China, which led to a hitherto unprecedented impoverishment of the population. This historical background set the scene for the establishment of the Communist Party of China.

The Formation of the Communist Party of China

After the defeat of the German Revolution, the COMINTERN and the Soviet Union turned their focus to the east in their hopes of continuing the world revolution. In East Asia, colonialism created a prime environment for the development of revolutionary socialism, inspired by the Leninist theory of imperialism. Yet because of underdevelopment, Lenin proposed that the small communist parties in the colonies should enter into alliances with bourgeois democratic movements in order to secure national liberation. In China, the “May Fourth Movement”—a nationalist uprising led by students in 1919—became a touchstone of the COMINTERN’s strategy. The movement led to a reorganization of the bourgeois nationalist party, the Kuomintang, later led by Chiang Kai-shek. The COMINTERN advised the small numbers of Communists to ally themselves with the Kuomintang while basing themselves within the urban working class.

According to Party documents, The Communist Party of China was founded July 23-24, 1921, at secret meetings, the first of which, in Shanghai’s French Concession, was disturbed by security forces, leading to the delegates leaving for nearby Zhejiang province, with the proceedings being completed on a houseboat on a lake to avoid further disruption. These meetings were attended by at most 13 people, including Mao Zedong. They represented just 53 members. In addition, two representatives of the COMINTERN were present as advisers.

The COMINTERN strategy for China was contentious. Part of the new Party was pushing for a socialist revolution, while others questioned its feasibility. The different positions were represented by the two founding members of the Party—Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu. In January 1920, Li Dazhao had already put forward the concept of a “proletarian nation.”

According to Li, there was a difference in position between the proletariat in the colonies and in the imperialist center. In Europe, the proletariat was only oppressed by the national capitalist class, but in China, the imperialist powers oppressed the entirety of the Chinese people. China as a whole was a proletarian nation. Li’s conception of the Chinese nation being proletarian meant that he included the peasants as a revolutionary force. In a letter dated March 20, 1921, Li wrote:

'…If one asks whether or not the economic conditions of present-day China are prepared for the realization of socialism, it is first necessary to ask whether or not present-day world economic conditions are tending toward the realization of socialism, because the Chinese economic situation really cannot be considered apart from the international economy. The contemporary world economy is already moving from capitalism to socialism, and although China itself has not yet undergone a process of capitalist economic development such as occurred in Europe, America, and Japan, the common people [of China] still indirectly suffer from capitalist economic oppression in a way that is even more bitter than the direct capitalist oppression suffered by the working classes of the various [capitalist] nations…Therefore, if we want to develop industry in China, we must organize a government made up purely of producers in order to eliminate the exploiting classes within the country, to resist world capitalism, and to follow [the path of ] industrialization organized upon a socialist basis.' 11

According to Li, although it lacked developed industrial capitalism and a well-defined proletariat as preconditions for building socialism, China was ready for a socialist revolution because China as a nation suffered under the yoke of imperialism.

The strength of the Communist Party at the beginning of the 1920s was limited. Party membership developed slowly, reaching only a thousand by 1924. Heeding the advice of the COMINTERN, the Party thus allowed the Kuomintang to take the lead in the national liberation struggle. In January 1923, the Soviet Union signed a pact with Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang to wage a campaign against the other warlords in China. The Communists and Kuomintang established a joint military academy—with Kai-shek in charge and the communist Zhou Enlai as second in command. Another key figure in the new military cooperation was Mao; in fact, he was so successful that he was elected to the Central Executive Committee of Kuomintang. However, in March 1925, Sun Yat-sen died and Chiang Kai-shek, representing the right wing, seized the party. The joint military campaign of the Kuomintang and the Communists was successful. In the spring of 1925, the Communists led a successful strike in Shanghai, and within a few months, their membership reached 30,000. As the Kuomintang army approached Shanghai in March 1927, the workers, under Zhou Enlai’s leadership, seized the city.

From the beginning of his takeover of the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai- shek had tried to undermine the influence of the Communists, and now he sought to eliminate them. He used criminal gangs in the city to attack workers of Shanghai while the Kuomintang army laid siege. On April 12, 1927, a massacre ensued. Thousands of Communists and unionists were killed. Zhou, with a bounty of 80,000 dollars on his head, managed to escape. The “Shanghai Massacre” initiated the nationwide destruction of the urban communist movement. Uprisings in Guangzhou, Changsha, and Nanchang were crushed. In the space of twenty days, more than 10,000 communists across China’s southern provinces were arrested and executed. By 1928, it is estimated that as many as 300,000 people died in the Kuomintang’s anti-communist extermination.12 This was a turning point in the Communist Party of China’s strategy in terms of alliances and the class basis of the Party.

The Development of Chinese Marxism

As the cities became unsafe for the Communists, many members transferred to the countryside, where they began to develop relationships with the peasants. Mao retreated to the isolated hills on the border of Jiangxi province, which became a communist base. It was here that Mao developed the skills of guerrilla warfare, learning much from local bandits— the lumpenproletariat.

A mainstream interpretation within Marxism posits that class position is determined by a people’s ability to function in the sphere of production and distribution. But that is not the only way classes are formed in real existing capitalism.13 Capitalism can give birth to class-positions by criminalizing people out of their old socio-economic roles, or by destroying their basis of existence through war and expulsion.

The lumpenproletariat consist of people without a steady relation to the labor market—unemployed people who live on casual work and are often supported by friends, family, and clan relations. It can include homeless people, beggars, petty criminals, gang members in organized crime, and sex workers. In general, traditional Marxism has a negative attitude towards the lumpenproletariat.14 The claim is that they lack a clear class position towards capitalism and are more likely to be mobilized by reactionary forces, as was the case in the Shanghai Massacre. However, if you look carefully into the history of uprisings, you will see that the lumpenproletariat has been an important factor in the revolutionary process. This was the case in the Paris Commune; however, one of the major examples of this mobilization is the Chinese Revolution. Mao wrote in his class analysis of Chinese society in 1926:

'…there is the fairly large lumpenproletariat, made up of peasants who have lost their land and handicraftsmen who cannot get work. They lead the most precarious existence of all…One of China’s problems is how to handle these people. Brave fighters but apt to be destructive, they can become a revolutionary force if given proper guidance.' 15

Mao knew the lumpenproletariat very well. In 1929, he stated that “the lumpenproletariat constitutes the majority of the Red Army,” which was scornfully called the “vagabond army” by the Kuomintang. The lumpen brought to the Red Army combat experience and tactical knowledge from gang activity, as well as an extreme toughness. Here they were met with acceptance instead of prejudice. When Edgar Snow asked the soldiers of the Red Army about the reasons for their adhesion to the armed struggle undertaken by the Communist Party they responded:

'…the Red Army has taught me to read and write…Here I have learned to operate a radio, and how to aim a rifle straight. The Red Army helps the poor…Here everybody is the same. It’s not like the White districts, where poor people are slaves of the landlords and the Kuomintang.' 16

The Communist Party promoted social mobility in its own ranks, in the army, and in the liberated zones. In May 1928 Mao welcomed Zhu De, an ex-bandit who had joined the Party and was to become a famous general in the Red Army. Together they created a strategy for guerrilla warfare. Mao was influenced by the Chinese philosopher and general Sun-Tzu (500 BC). Together with Zhu’s practical experience, they formulated their plan of action:

'The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.' 17

The Communists distributed to the peasants land seized from rich landowners and recruited thousands of members. Mao stressed Party discipline to the troops:

'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.' 18

Mao also issued “Eight Points for Attention” to the Red Army when they were in contact with civilians:

1. Be polite when speaking

2. Be honest when buying and selling

3. Return all borrowed articles

4. Pay compensation for everything damaged

5. Do not hit or swear at others

6. Do not damage crops

7. Do not harass women

8. Do not mistreat prisoners 19

By 1930, the Red Army had established the Chinese Soviet Republic in the provinces of Jiangxi and Fujian, comprising 3 million people. In the areas controlled by the Communists, they began to organize the economy as a coexistence of different forms of property. Edgar Snow described the economy in the “liberated” areas:

'Soviet economy in the Northwest was a curious mixture of private capitalism, state capitalism, and primitive socialism. Private enterprise and industry were permitted and encouraged, and private transactions dealing in the land and its products were allowed with restrictions. At the same time the state owned and exploited enterprises such as oil wells, salt wells, and coal mines, and it traded in cattle, hides, salt, wool, cotton, paper, and other raw materials. But it did not establish a monopoly in these articles and in all of them private enterprises could, and to some extent did, compete. A third kind of economy was created by the establishment of cooperatives, in which the government and the masses participated as partners, competing not only with private capitalism but also with state capitalism!' 20

As the focus of the Chinese revolution shifted from the industrial proletariat to the peasant class, Mao continued Li’s adaptation of Marxism to China’s specific conditions, rather than the more Eurocentric COMINTERN edition of Marxism. Li was quickly won over to the new strategy, which fit well with his views of the multi-class nature of the Chinese Revolution.But the focus on the peasant class brought Mao into conflict with core members of the Party, including Chen Duxiu. Chen’s priority was a revolution like that of Russia in 1917, led by the working class. Chen saw the defeat of this strategy as demonstrating the futility of working toward a socialist revolution in China. Instead, he opted for a Bourgeois-democratic revolution led by the capitalist class. Chen denied that a radical land policy and the vigorous organization of the rural areas under the Communist Party was the way forward. Chen also opposed Mao’s rejection of the major role of the national bourgeoisie in the revolution. This division within the Party came to a head after Chen and many of the elder Party members refused to publish one of Mao’s essays, “An Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society,” in the central executive organ.21 However, the masses did not care about these disputes within the Party, as Mao observed in reference to the seminal peasant movement in Hunan Province:

'In a very short time, in China’s central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. Every revolutionary party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they decide. There are three alternatives. To march at their head and lead them? To trail behind them, gesticulating and criticizing? Or to stand in their way and oppose them? Every Chinese is free to choose, but events will force you to make the choice quickly.' 22

The difference in strategy concerning alliances led Mao to campaign against his opponents, accusing them of being de facto agents of the Kuomintang. In December 1931, when the campaign turned violent, the Party replaced Mao with Zhou Enlai as Secretary of the First Front Army and political commissar of the Red Army. The conflict was discussed at the Party Conference in Ningdu in 1932. 23 Liu Bocheng, Lin Biao, Zhu De, and Peng Dehuai all criticized Mao’s tactics. Mao received support from Zhou Enlai, but it was not enough. Mao was demoted to figurehead status.

The COMINTERN placed two political commissars, Bo Gu and Otto Braun, alias Li De, a German communist, in Jiangxi. As emissaries of the COMINTERN, they had the authority to dictate policy. Because they disagreed with Mao’s guerrilla strategy, they used their power to exclude him from the Central Committee. In the autumn of 1934, Braun assumed command of the Red Army, together with Bo and Zhou Enlai. Braun and Bo enforced a conventional strategy. Braun advocated a direct attack on the larger, better-equipped Kuomintang. This strategy played into the hands of Chiang Kai-shek, and the communist army suffered great casualties. Slowly, the Kuomintang army encircled Jiangxi. Within a year, the Communists lost sixty thousand soldiers and half of their territory. They had no alternative but to retreat to a more secure remote area.

The Long March

On October 16th, 1934, the remaining Red Army soldiers and party cadres, led by Bo Gu and Otto Braun, began the “Long March.” The conditions of the Red Army’s forced withdrawal demoralized some leaders, but Zhou Enlai remained calm and retained his command.24 After escaping encirclement, it was obvious that the Kuomintang Army intended to pursue what remained of the Red Army. There were disputes between Bo/Braun and Mao on both route and military tactics.25 In these confrontations, Zhou supported Mao’s proposals and encouraged other leaders to overrule the objections of Bo and Braun. It was decided that all military plans had to be submitted to the Politburo for approval, depriving Braun of the right to direct military affairs. On January 15, 1935, the Red Army captured Zunyi, the second-largest city in Guizhou. Zhou used the opportunity to call an enlarged Politburo meeting.26 In the meeting, Mao again opposed Braun and Bo’s military tactics. Their direct attacks were costing too many lives of the Red Army. Instead, Mao suggested that their smaller, poorer equipped forces should retreat when under pressure and make surprise pinprick attacks, using the guerrilla tactics for which Mao was to become famous. Many military leaders agreed with Mao. Braun and Bo were removed as commanders and Mao became Zhou’s assistant leader of the Long March.27 After this conference, the COMINTERN was pushed aside as an influential force in the Communist Party.

The March was long both spatially and temporally. The retreat to Yan’an traversed over 9,000 kilometers, 18 mountains, and 24 rivers in 370 days. The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain in western China. During the Long March, the Communist Army confiscated property and weapons from warlords and landlords and recruited new members from the peasants and lumpenproletariat. Nonetheless, only 8,000 troops out of the 86,000 who tried to escape from the Kuomintang Army ultimately survived. The Long March gave the Communists a secure base needed to recuperate and rebuild. The Communists used the base in Yan’an for planning, experimenting, and building a new society. In November 1935, Mao became the Chairman of the Military Commission, with Zhou and Deng Xiaoping as Vice-Chairmen.

The Long March had a profound impact on the Communist Party of China. All the major figures in the following decades were participants: Mao, Zhou, Deng, Lin Biao, Wang Jiaxiang, and Liu Shaoqi. The Long March was vital to the Chinese Communists in translating their Marxism from an urban workers’ perspective into a rural, peasant perspective. It not only created a physical distance between the Communists and the Kuomintang, but also a political distance between the COMINTERN’s Eurocentric interpretation of Marxism and the Chinese interpretation of Marxism.

To make his analysis, Mao used the philosophical method of Marxism: dialectical materialism. Mao wrote his philosophical writings “On Practice” and “On Contradiction” in the guerrilla camp in Yan’an, based on notes from many lectures he gave for cadres in the camp. The style is accessible, for the content had to be understandable by people without an academic background. For Mao, dialectics is not just an interesting philosophy, but a practical tool with which to develop strategy, particularly during dramatic times in which the conditions were rapidly changing. Based on the concept of contradiction, Mao analyzed Chinese history as a constant struggle of opposites: workers vs. capitalists, peasants vs. landlords, imperialists vs. nationalists, and the old vs. the new. Contradictions were seen as absolute, harmony as temporary, and revolution as frequent.

Mao’s understanding of revolution is also more complex than the traditional Leninist one, in which seizing state power is the key to transformation. In Mao’s understanding, the transition from capitalism to socialism is a long process consisting of several stages—many revolutions. The process was characterized by waves; setbacks on the long road to socialism were followed by steps forward, taking us ever closer to our final destination. As Daniel Frost formulates it:

'The process of the “long revolution” is neither a triumphant and linear climb to a peak, nor a leisurely stroll along the slopes of history. It is trudging out with a sense of our destination in mind, never forgetting the importance of placing one foot in front of the other, of knowing where our next step must fall, fully cognizant of our surroundings and of the sacrifices involved in coming this far. And it is doing so together.' 28

What Mao did during the Long March and in Yan’an was to adapt Marxism and the experience of the Soviet Union to the specific Chinese situation. The term “Sinification” of Marxism was coined by Mao in 1938 for the re-issue of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, where he used the term instead of his original phrase of “concretion of Marxism in China.” The term “Sinification” seemed more apt since the basic principles of Marxism belong to the world, not only to China. Each revolution has to apply Marxism to its specific time and place. “Copy and paste” does not work. The concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is not a post-Mao development. In his report to the Central Committee of the Party in 1938 Mao said:

'A Communist is a Marxist internationalist, but Marxism must take on a national form before it can be put into practice. There is no such thing as abstract Marxism, but only concrete Marxism. What we call concrete Marxism is Marxism that has taken on a national form, that is, Marxism applied to the concrete struggle in the concrete conditions prevailing in China, and not Marxism abstractly used. If a Chinese Communist…talks of Marxism apart from Chinese peculiarities, this Marxism is merely an empty abstraction. Consequently, the sinification of Marxism—that is to say, making certain that in all its manifestations it is imbued with Chinese characteristics, using it according to Chinese peculiarities—becomes a problem that must be understood and solved by the whole Party without delay.' 29

National Liberation Struggle

In July 1937, a new factor entered the equation of the Chinese revolution—the Japanese invasion from Manchuria overran the majority of China’s largest cities within two years. Amidst a complex civil war and Japanese invasion, Mao used the concept of the principal contradiction to develop a strategy. The revolutionary class struggle now consisted of resistance to Japanese imperialism—a national struggle. In a 1938 article Mao wrote:

'…to subordinate the class struggle to the present national struggle against Japan—such is the fundamental principle of the united front…In a struggle that is national in character, the class struggle takes the form of national struggle, which demonstrates the identity between the two. On the one hand, for a given historical period the political and economic demands of the various classes must not be such as to disrupt co-operation; on the other hand, the demands of the national struggle (the need to resist Japan) should be the point of departure for all class struggles. Thus, there is identity in the united front between the national struggle and the class struggle.' 30

The Japanese invasion had forced the Communists to ally with the Kuomintang. This was not an easy step after two decades of life and death struggle with the Kuomintang army. However, the United Front strategy—based upon the principal contradiction of the time, between the axis powers and the Allied forces—only lasted until 1941, when hostilities resumed between the Communists and the Kuomintang.

The Japanese atrocities during World War II made the Chinese population turn to the Communists. Party membership rose to 800,000 and the Red Army swelled to half-a-million dedicated fighters. This mass influx of membership underwent intensive political schooling. With the Japanese now defeated, the civil war between the Communists and the Kuomintang resumed. Unlike prior to the war, the Red Army now dominated. This was partially due to assistance from the communist intelligence service. Chiang Kai-shek’s Assistant Chief of Staff, General Fei, was a communist spy, and all Kuomintang military plans were sent to the Red Army in advance. Demoralized, the Kuomintang sent a delegation to negotiate a ceasefire, with assistance from the U.S.

In October 1949, Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China from the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Peking. Nearly 100 million Chinese lost their lives in the years between 1840 and 1949 as a result of foreign intervention, civil wars, and famine. Mao’s first words in the proclamation were: “The Chinese People Have Stood Up!” a reflection of not only the humiliations of a century, but also of the mobilization of human power under the leadership of the Communist Party.

On December 10th, 1949, Communist troops laid siege to Chengdu, the last Kuomintang-controlled city in China. Chiang Kai-shek was evacuated to Taiwan. Two million people—consisting mainly of soldiers, members of the ruling class, intellectuals, and business elites—were also evacuated from mainland China to Taiwan, adding to a population of approximately six million on the island. The U.S. Navy patrolled the waters between mainland China and Taiwan, preventing the Communist forces from pursuing the remnants of the Kuomintang army and liberating Taiwan.

In 1949, the U.S. did not have the capacity to roll back communist forces in China and block the Soviet Union in Europe at the same time. In the first years after the Second World War, Europe was the U.S. priority. Mao described the situation as follows:

'The US policy of aggression has several targets. The three main targets are Europe, Asia and the Americas. China, the centre of gravity in Asia, is a large country with a population of 475 million; by seizing China, the United States would possess all of Asia…But in the first place, the American people and the peoples of the world do not want war. Secondly, the attention of the United States has largely been absorbed by the awakening of the peoples of Europe, by the rise of the People’s Democracies in Eastern Europe, and particularly by the towering presence of the Soviet Union, this unprecedentedly powerful bulwark of peace bestriding Europe and Asia, and by its strong resistance to the US policy of aggression. Thirdly, and this is most important, the Chinese people have awakened, and the armed forces and the organized strength of the people under the leadership of the Communist Party of China have become more powerful than ever before.' 31

The Chinese Revolution forced the U.S. to abandon its plans of including China in its sphere of influence. As early as 1945, Douglas MacArthur argued for U.S. military intervention in China on the side of Chiang Kai-shek, but the U.S. government limited itself to sending money and weapons. The contradiction between the Communists and the Kuomintang in China was resolved nationally, without direct foreign intervention, because other contradictions took precedence: the U.S. versus the Soviet Union and the U.S. versus the old colonial powers in Europe.

To sum up the Chinese Revolution: it came about for similar reasons as those in Russia. There was a need to break the restrictive fetters which hampered the development of the forces of production. In China, as in Russia, the power of the workers and poor peasants—mobilized through the Communist Party—was a necessary condition in order to set the wheels of industry turning again. The effect of western capitalist penetration into China was the disintegration of the old feudal economy, but imperialist intervention also converted China into a semi-colony. The Chinese people rose up spontaneously with two basic demands: foreigners must leave and the wheels of the economy must turn again. To fulfill these demands, the Communist Party led a people’s war. Since China lacked a developed working class to lead the struggle, the peasants had to be looked upon as an effective force of proletarian revolution. If the preconditions for socialism were absent in China, then the reorganization of Chinese society under the proletariat, represented by the Communist Party, was even more necessary to achieve these preconditions. Taking into consideration the situation that existed in China and the world in the 1920s-40s, only the power of the working class and the poor peasants, under the leadership of the Communist Party, was able to force through the necessary policies for the development of the forces of production in China. All other forces in society—the landlords, the great capitalists, and the petty bourgeoisie—either resisted because of their own narrow economic interests, or were too weak when faced with imperialism. There was no other road open to the development of the forces of production other than the forced removal of the old rulers of the country and the dismantling of imperialism. That is why the revolution occurred—and because the Communist Party was able to fulfill this mission, it won.

China 1949 – 1965: Constructing the “Iron Rice Bowl”

The attempt to construct socialism in China had its own peculiarities, which distinguished it from the Soviet attempts. Compared to the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution was a long process that took more than twenty years to complete. Mao was aware of the tensions between nationalism and socialism. He tried to ensure that the Communist Party did not lose sight of the ultimate goal: a socialist society. Even during the conflict with Chiang Kai-shek, and during the war against the Japanese, the commitment to the production and development of the economy with a socialist profile in the liberated areas became a priority of the Communist Party. The People’s Liberation Army made land reforms in areas under its control. Coming to power in 1949, revolutionary China was in quite a different situation than the Soviet Union in 1917. While China was under pressure from U.S. imperialism, it was also not alone in the world as the new born Soviet state had been. The Soviet Union’s position in the post-war period provided some security for the new People’s Republic. The Soviet Union also provided technological and economic assistance, despite its own heavy losses in the Second World War. Instead of proclaiming a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” as in the Soviet Union, Mao called for a “people’s democratic dictatorship” as the first step on the long road toward socialism:

'All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several de- cades teaches us to enforce the people’s democratic dictatorship…Who are the people? At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism—the landlord class and bureaucrat-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomint- ang reactionaries and their accomplices—and suppress them…Democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people…The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people’s democratic dictatorship.' 32

In 1820, China was the world’s largest economy, accounting for 33 percent of global economic output. By 1949, China’s share of the global economic output was reduced to less than 5 percent.33 After one hundred years of colonialism, imperialism, and civil war, China had become one of the poorest countries in the world—even poorer than India. In 1949, 90% of the Chinese population was illiterate, and life expectancy dipped to 38 years. The new republic was in a state of destitution.

In addition, China was soon embroiled in the Korean War and was completely blockaded by the West.34 The Korean War was a test of the new state’s capacity, as the Chinese army came to the aid of the Koreans and fought the U.S. military to a standstill. China’s half-starved army of illiterate peasants was able to hold off the most advanced military power in the world.

A national economy was gradually sewn together out of separate economic sub-regions. Yet the most fundamental characteristic of China’s national economy was the cross-country division between city and countryside. The development of the economy had to link the two together. A precondition for industrialization was the channeling of resources from the countryside to the city. Yet how could this task be accomplished while at the same time increasing the country’s total social wealth? How could it be possible to implement an agrarian revolution—allowing for equality and not just distributing poverty—without also undermining the basis of that egalitarian project? Could this task be accomplished while not privileging geographically concentrated industrial zones and generating new hierarchies through urbanization?

To put this task in perspective, we need only to remember that compared to China in 1943, Russia in 1913 had already manufactured three times as many tons of steel, twice the tonnage of iron, had double the kilometers of railways, and produced thirty times the amount of petroleum. And this does not even take into consideration the much larger Chinese population. 35

After taking power in 1949, the Communists inherited the hyperinflation that had plagued the Chinese economy for decades—yet they solved it in one year. They accomplished this by putting an end to the speculative economy and establishing an economy related to the real production of goods. The stability and credibility of the new currency, the renminbi (RMB, the people’s currency), was consolidated, linking its value to the price of essential supplies used in daily life, such as rice, cotton, oil, and coal. The state took control of finance, and the nationalization of the banking system was completed by 1952. This was combined with a political campaign called San Fan Wu Fan, meaning “against corruption, bureaucratization, theft of state property, tax evasion, and shoddiness.” The campaign was a self-cleansing movement to solve economic problems by political means.

The land reform, which had already begun in liberated areas during the civil war, stabilized the rural sector.36 After the revolution, a comprehensive land reform was implemented nationally; 300 million peasants were given land, sweeping away the last vestiges of the old landowning class in the countryside, while collectivizing property and giving small farmers the right to use the land, thereby building a new agricultural system based on collective ownership and planned development. 37

The new government emphasized the expansion of agricultural production. In just three years, from 1950-1952, 420,000 kilometers of em- bankments along rivers in China were repaired and reinforced. Twenty million people participated in irrigation infrastructure construction. The earthworks were estimated to be over 1.7 billion cubic meters, the equivalent of 23 Suez Canals. 38 Dams and irrigation facilities were constructed on rivers that used to be plagued by floods. This opened up thousands of acres of land for crop production. Between 1949-1952, total arable land area increased by 10.25% and grain production increased by 46.1%.39 The significance of land reform cannot be overstated. By handing over land, the Party had handed the people a reason to support the communist state. Agrarian reform could also be seen as the extension of a revolutionary tactic (the strategy of encircling cities from villages) to an economic dimension. It brought a divided nation together. The distribution of land to the tillers mobilized the nation for the construction of a socialist economy. Internal mobilization, thus achieved, became a tool for economic liberation. It was the ability to delink from imperial dependency and to realize sovereignty.

In 1950, the peasants were 80% of the workforce and the urban proletariat represented less than 7%. The Chinese Revolution was a peasant revolution. But while the Party concentrated on rural land reform, the task in the city became the revival of production. If the Chinese state could not get the factories running again, agricultural production could not be modernized, leaving the peasantry to suffer from recurrent floods and famine. In the cities, the workers and unemployed were literally living in the rubble left by twenty years of war. As the West’s blockade of the People’s Republic began, the country was starved of necessary imports. If China was to rebuild its cities, it would need to produce its own concrete, steel, electricity, and, most importantly, grain to feed the workers at every stage of this process. In June 1949, on the eve of the conquest of power, Mao clarified the Communist Party’s position towards the remaining capitalist elements in the economy:

'The national bourgeoisie at the present stage is of great importance. Imperialism, a most ferocious enemy, is still standing alongside us. China’s modern industry still forms a very small proportion of the national economy… only about 10 per cent of the total value of output of the national economy. To counter imperialist oppression and to raise her backward economy to a higher level, China must utilize all the factors of urban and rural capitalism that are beneficial and not harmful to the national economy and the people’s livelihood, and we must unite with the national bourgeoisie in common struggle. Our present policy is to regulate capitalism, not to destroy it. But the national bourgeoisie cannot be the leader of the revolution, nor should it have the chief role in state power.' 40

This distinction between the political expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie’s propensity toward economic expropriation, which had emerged during the Soviet NEP, was repeated. In the summer of 1958, Mao reiterated his point: “There are still capitalists in China, but the State is under the leadership of the Communist Party.” 41

In early 1950, China and the Soviet Union signed the Sino-Soviet Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance Treaty. The Soviet Union was a vital ally, given the U.S. embargo and the complete absence of any overland routes between China and other industrial nations. Of equal importance was the fact that the Soviet Union was the world’s only nuclear power besides the U.S., in an era when General MacArthur was threatening China and Korea with nuclear attacks.

Both the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China agreed that China should develop national capitalism, as opposed to domination by foreign capital. Only after establishing mass industrial production could China be transformed into a socialist country. The Communist Party aimed to complete the “bourgeois revolution” in the cities. This was effectively appeasement of the remaining urban capitalists, who would be gradually bought out of their own industries by the state in exchange for offering their technical expertise to the project of recovery and development.42

As the state pushed for industrialization, it had to rely on extracting surplus from the rural sector. By restoring the peasant economy through agrarian reform, a “land reform dividend” was gained, colloquially ex- pressed as “nine peasants are capable of supporting one urban citizen.” 43

Compared to Europe, which accomplished primitive accumulation and industrialization partly through revenues from colonization, China had to industrialize through an internal accumulation process. The basic policies were to advance gradual industrialization under national capitalism and enhance commodity circulation between the light textile industry in cities and the rural sector. The industrial base would be expanded to facilitate the development of large industries. Mao emphasized that he opposed “peasant socialism” and stressed that only after the completion of industrialization and socialized production would the Communist Party push for socialism with the consensus of the people.44 In the early 1950s, small and medium-sized private production was maintained in the cities within limits, preserving at the same time the absolute control of the State over key sectors such as banking, foreign trade, and wholesale trade. Thus, in the mid-1950s, China had a mixed economy made up of the State-owned sector, the cooperative sector, the private and individual sectors (artisans), and the peasant sector (small farmers).

The first Five-Year Plan, from 1953 to 1957, intentionally focused on industry at the expense of agriculture. Between 1952 and 1958, 51.1 percent of capital went to industry, while only 8.6 percent to agriculture. 45 During this period, China was completely delinked from the capitalist world market, a decision that was not necessarily voluntary, as the U.S. and Western Europe tried to isolate the racialized enemy. The “Yellow Peril” was now considered more dangerous than the “Red Scare.” How- ever, the Korean War changed China’s international situation. China received strategic aid from the Soviet Union—military and heavy industry was rendered as state capital. Within a short period of time, state capitalism became dominant. The Soviet Union gave China blueprints, technical assistance and turn-key ready factories on a massive scale. “The most extensive transfer of techniques in the whole history of humanity,” wrote Leo Orléans in an OECD report.46 China’s industrialization in the 1950s was dominated by Soviet strategic investment made possible by the Cold War alignment.

Oriented toward the Soviet Union, China developed a state capitalist industrial sector located mainly in large and medium cities. During China’s first Five-Year Plan, the Soviet Union provided know-how and investment to China, while the latter set up institutions complying with Soviet management models. The superstructure had to be brought into conformity with the economic base. Soviet experts coming to China not only worked as managers in factories and enterprises, but also helped to overhaul the entire superstructure of China. Chinese governmental and university systems were copied from the Soviet Union.

The tension between state capital and private capital soon became aggravated. Facing internal and external contradictions, China pushed for more state ownership, beginning in 1953. The New Democracy strategy of promoting private capital through a traditional market economy became obsolete. Private capital was banned in 1956 and the state acquired the three essential factors of the economy: land, labor, and capital. Zheng Zhenqing writes:

'From 1952 to 1956, state ownership rose from 19.1 percent to 32.2 percent of the economy; cooperatives increased from 1.5 percent to 53.4 percent, and joint state-private ownership increased from 0.7 percent to 7.3 percent. Meanwhile, the individual economy fell from 71.8 percent to 7.1 percent, and the capitalist economy fell from 6.9 percent to zero. State ownership, cooperatives, and joint state-private ownership together accounted for 92.9 percent of the economy.' 47

In purely economic terms, the overall result was one of the most extensive industrializations ever seen in human history. National income doubled between 1949 and 1954, and more than tripled by 1958.48 Every year between 1952 and 1957 saw industrial production expand by an astounding 17%, and the groundwork for sustained future growth was laid through massive investments in education and worker training. This allowed for rapid social mobility, as farmers moved into the city and young people entered college. For decades after, this period would be remembered nostalgically as a golden age for urbanites, marked by peace, progress, and prosperity. 49

Despite this performance, some of the Chinese leadership remained critical of the economic and institutional transition according to the Soviet model, known as “Sovietization.”50 It was seen as fostering bureaucratization, dogmatism, and formalism. The industrial economy led by state capital in the cities stood in opposition to the traditional peasant economy rehabilitated in rural China after the agrarian reform. A labor force of 100 million was mobilized to abandon agricultural production and move into the cities to assist in industrialization. This drastic cut in the labor force had a great impact on peasant agricultural production. It was only with the formation of rural cooperatives that the government was able to extract surplus value from the countryside to purchase staple foods, build agricultural infrastructure, and provide pensions for the families of soldiers killed in Korea. The burden on cooperatives, however, became heavy. Some peasant households chose to withdraw from the cooperatives rather than deliver their product at a low fixed price to the state. 51

To aggravate matters, at the end of the 1950s, the Soviet Union began to withdraw investment from China because of growing political disagreements on economic development and foreign policy. The Chinese communists felt that the Soviet Union was acting like a paternalistic big brother, knowing what was best for China, as the Soviets claimed to lead the world communist movement. The relationship with the Soviet Union soon became a question of Chinese sovereignty—an issue on which China was uncompromising.

“The Great Leap Forward”

When the Soviet Union began to withdraw its investment and support in autumn 1957, China began to change its industrialization strategy. Without foreign aid, heavy-industry development, relying on external investment, became unsustainable. The Second Five-Year Plan (1957-61), prepared with assistance by Soviet experts, was aborted. In 1958, the government instead proposed to localize formerly centralized industrial construction to substitute for the disrupted foreign capital input. The mobilization of local public funds was barely able to support a heavy-industry oriented economy. In addition, mass mobilization became a relatively effective means to extract surplus from the labor force and to substitute for capital. Not only workers and peasants, but also soldiers, officials, and intellectuals were mobilized to contribute their labor to infrastructure building essential to industrialization. China emphasized “self-reliance” instead of Soviet aid. Mao was part of the faction, which was critical of Sovietization, primarily because it compromised Chinese sovereignty, but also because the agricultural sector was squeezed too much to create surplus for industry. Additionally, the Soviet model created a bureaucratic administration.

Mao insisted on a Chinese version of socialism, in which the modernization of industry and the collectivization of agriculture would go hand in hand. This was the aim of the policy called the “Great Leap Forward” of 1958–1961, but it was easier said than done. Lacking road, rails, electricity, and access to petroleum products, much of the Chinese countryside required enormous investment just to make technologies such as tractors and electrified food-processing or fertilizer plants functional. This presented central planners with a catch: in order to invest in this sort of infrastructure, urban industry needed to be built up; but in order to build up urban industry, agriculture needed to be modernized to feed the growing industrial workforce, largely composed of new migrants from the countryside. The central planners’ solution to this dilemma was not to slow the process and implement modernization piecemeal—a politically unfeasible option when the possibility of renewed global war was still a salient fear—but instead to intensify extraction of surplus from the peasantry and introduce “intermediate” technologies to agricultural production that required less infrastructural support and less technical prowess. 52

In an effort to develop agriculture without modern technology, rural labor was collectivized. The process had begun in the 1950s with the formation of collectives, allowing the smallholding economy to be “economically viable” by sharing scarce resources, but now it was intensified. 53 Supply and marketing cooperatives were also integrated into a purchasing system as private merchants were forced out of the agricultural market.54 While only 2% of rural households were members of cooperatives in 1954, by the end of 1956, 98% had joined. 55 But the production of the agricultural surplus was growing slower than expected and, due to this, disagreements within the Communist Party began to emerge concerning the speed of rural transformation. Mao and others pushed for a more rapid shift, despite the lack of an industrial base that could provide for the mechanization of agriculture, since they regarded the slowing growth of agricultural production as a roadblock to rapid industrialization.

From 1956 to 1957, in a new stage of collectivization, the former producers’ cooperatives were turned into collectives, called “higher agricultural producers cooperatives,” in which individual households gave up their ownership of land, livestock, and agricultural implements to collectives of between 40 and 200 households.56 The larger size of these collectives made it easier for the state to collect the agricultural surplus it needed to feed the cities.

In 1958, the “Great Leap Forward” began with the emergence of even larger collectives called communes—the final stage of collectivization. These rural communes consisted of, for the most part, a small marketing town and its surrounding villages, with tens of thousands of members. The commune was formed to mobilize a larger labor force for infrastructure works. As a critique of Sovietization’s emphasis on heavy industry, Mao proclaimed the need to “walk on two legs,” meaning that large-scale, capital-intensive urban industries should develop alongside labor-intensive, low-capital rural ones.57 Agriculture was to be techno- logically modernized not by the import of industrial inputs, but instead by low-tech local industrial production—a process of self-reliance. The countryside had to mobilize its own labor for its own development, all while much of its surplus was being deployed for urban industries. This meant mobilizing and diverting part of the rural labor into non-agricultural production. Seven and a half million new small low tech factories were set up in rural areas in less than a year at the beginning of the Great Leap Forward. 58 In the winter of 1957-1958, as many as 100 million peasants worked in irrigation and water conservancy projects.59 Most famously, backyard iron and steel factories sprang up all over rural China. Farm labor declined as a share of total rural employment during the Great Leap Forward, and output soon followed. With the diversion of workers out of agriculture, harvests were neglected, and food rotted. Grain production dropped, with the 1962 output at just 79% of that of 1957. Though the Great Leap Forward was meant to sustain economic development, as the Soviet Union pulled out, it ended by disrupting production and transferring surplus grain from the countryside to the city. This caused widespread famine.

The conversion of the strategy for modernization during the Great Leap Forward, and the fact that China had to pay its $5.4 billion debt to the Soviet Union in agricultural and pasture products—all during severe floods and bad weather—led to a shortage of agricultural products, which had disastrous consequences. The estimation of China’s population changes during 1960-1962, known as the “three years of natural disaster,” has been controversial. According to the data published by the Chinese government in 1982, the population growth curve turned downwards during these three years, failing to reach estimated projections of 20 million. Most of this was caused by declining fertility and infant mortality due to malnutrition. Part of the rising adult mortality could be attributed to starvation. 60

Western scholars have painted a dire picture of the Great Leap Forward, claiming that it caused a famine the likes of which was unprecedented in Chinese history. They also portray the Mao era as one of ceaseless suffering. The Indian economist Utsa Patnaik has refuted these claims and considers them ideologically motivated.61 Historian Dongping Han, who grew up in rural China during the Great Leap Forward and has done extensive research on the subject, also doubts the numbers. Few deny that people in the countryside suffered during the Great Leap Forward, but China experienced natural disasters during this period, and the suffering was not only the consequence of economic policies. Local officials shared the hardships of the people.62 William H. Hinton, an American farmer who spent several years in China and authored the influential book Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, observed:

'Isn’t it indeed strange that this famine was not discovered at the time but only extrapolated backward from censuses taken 20 years later, then spinning the figures to put the worst interpretation on very dubious records.' 63

A case study carried out by historian Mobo Gao confirms that there was widespread famine in China in 1959-1960, but that there is uncertainty about the causes and the role played by the Great Leap Forward. 64 It must not be forgotten that natural disasters and famine were by no means new phenomena in China. They had haunted the population for centuries, claiming millions of lives. In fact, the famine of 1959-1960 was the first and only famine during Mao’s thirty-year rule and during the entire history of the People’s Republic. Dreze and Sen point out:

'…despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former…[E]very eight years or so more people die in India because of its higher regular death rate than died in China in the gigantic famine of 1958-61.' 65

In general, the health of the Chinese population improved markedly after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, with the death rate dropping to 6 per 1,000 by 1978. India and many other low-income capitalist states did not approach this level until the 2010s.66 Since the end of the Great Leap Forward, China’s rural sector has succeeded in feeding 22% of the world’s population with only 6% of the world’s arable land.67 It is a result of an agricultural policy prioritizing self-sufficiency of food, with massive infrastructure projects controlling the rivers and irrigation systems. 68 The recovery of the economy in 1962-1963 was due to changes in the rural policy. Traditional peasant economy based on village communities was again prioritized. Rural industries were shuttered, and the remuneration and distribution systems were continually reformed to raise production. This meant restructuring control over production decisions and labor management from the huge communes to a much smaller scale. Villages within the commune were split into production teams of 10 to 50 households, which were given control over land and production decisions. Because of it, agricultural production gradually recovered. 69

The key problem was how to increase work incentives for agricultural labor—that is, how to improve economic output and raise quality, on the one hand, while not increasing inequality and destroying the collective system, on the other. The post-1962 new smaller type of commune became a flexible system for organizing rural production both to sustain the peasants and for the extraction of agricultural surplus to the cities.

The collective system led to a spreading of risk across the collective, reducing the risks to individual farmers. Meanwhile, rural living standards increased in terms of health and education. 70 Basic medical care came to the countryside, which cut child death rates dramatically and raised life expectancy. Rural school enrollment doubled from the 1960s into the 1970s. 71 In addition, the rural commune was efficient at accumulating collective welfare funds that ensured a minimum of survival during normal times for disadvantaged families. 72

Another factor that contributed to the rise in agricultural production was that the unemployed labor force from the cities was transferred to the rural sector through ideological mobilization to assist the peasants and learn from them. The countryside has often functioned as a sponge to absorb economic and political problems and provide a soft landing for crises in China. 73 An example was the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages” movement in 1960, which involved the transfer of a large-scale surplus of urban labor to people’s communes and state-owned collective farms.

By 1964, conditions had improved such that a new investment push was initiated. But international conditions had changed significantly since the first industrialization campaign in the 1950s. The United States, which still had tens of thousands of soldiers stationed in Korea, intensified its wars against Third World countries pursuing a socialist development, staging a failed invasion of Cuba and intensifying its military intervention in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Sino-Soviet relations had completely broken. China had lost its primary trading partner and source of international aid. At the beginning of the 1960s, China found itself increasingly isolated. Not surprisingly, the logic of self-sufficiency and national security became important components of economic policy.

In 1964, China developed its nuclear bomb and initiated an industrial expansion called the “Third Front,” which focused investment on China’s interior. The tense international situation forced China to use huge amounts of its resources to secure its safety. As Mao said, “Even a beggar must have a stick to drive off dogs.”74 The goal was to create an entire industrial base that would provide China with strategic independence by building factories in “remote and mountainous” inland regions.75 The new industrial expansion had to be undertaken without the Soviet aid and technical support offered in the 1950s, signaling a period in which “self-sufficiency” would become one of the most important watchwords of Chinese socialism.

The economic problems triggered by the cut of Soviet support and the changing economic policies of the central state led to resistance against government measures in both rural areas and the cities. This was reflected in the political struggles in the Communist Party on how to respond. The Communist Party of China is not a monolith. Different political lines have existed since its foundation in 1921. Nor is it a Lenin-style vanguard party. The party stressed the “mass line,” a policy developed during the revolutionary period. The essential element is investigating the conditions of people, learning about and participating in their struggles, gathering ideas from them, and creating a plan of action based on the concerns of the people. In short: from the masses to the masses.

With millions of members, the Party has always consisted of different factions reflecting the class struggle in China and changes in global contradictions. These dynamic political struggles within the Party are often expressed in campaigns and slogans simplifying the different political positions and have caused constant shifts in the political line. One of the recurrent divergent issues has been how to handle the relationship between rural development and urban industrialization, and on the use of voluntarist methods or more economic incentives in the development towards socialism.

The economic crises and the famine in the early 1960s weakened Mao’s socialist voluntarist line within the Communist Party and strengthened a line that wanted to use more economic incentives as a means to develop the economy, at that time represented by Liu Shaoqi. Mao’s response was to launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1965, to which we will return, after placing it in the developments of the global contradiction in the 1960s.

Chapter 14: The Third World on the Rise

China was not the only revolution to come out of the Second World War. The war had determined who was to become the new hegemon after the British Empire. This struggle created a “window of opportunity” for liberation movements in what became called the Third World.

The old colonial powers in Europe were weakened by the destruction of the war. The new hegemon, the U.S., pushed for decolonization to open the former European colonies for U.S. investment and trade—the transformation from colonialism to neo-colonialism. But the counter-hegemon, the Soviet Union, balanced the U.S. and viewed new states opposed to colonialism as possible new allies against Western capitalism.

The 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia convened the Asian and African countries from the first wave of decolonization. They stressed the importance of independence from both East and West and the development of their national economies. The Bandung conference was not a new Communist International that strived for the socialist world revolution like the COMINTERN in 1919, but the expression of the national liberation struggle against colonialism, in which communists sometimes took precedence.

Sukarno, leader of the nationalist movement in Indonesia, declared the country independent in 1945. Iran nationalized its oil industry in 1951; Egypt took control of the Suez Canal in 1956; Iraq experienced a nationalist revolution and the nationalization of its oil industry in 1958. At the same time, liberation movements from Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines in the East to Algiers, Angola and Kenya in Africa to Guatemala and Cuba in the West went on the offensive. If they were victorious, imperialism’s reach would shrink even further than the third of the globe it had already lost to the socialist bloc. In other words, from the perspective of the U.S., they had to be fought.

In 1928, Mao wrote an article titled “Why Is It that Red Political Power Can Exist in China?” When it was published in 1951, Mao added a note explaining the Communist Party’s position on decolonization after World War II:

'During World War II, many colonial countries in the East formerly under imperialist rule were occupied by the Japanese imperialists. Led by their Communist Parties, the masses of workers, peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie and members of the national bourgeoisie in these countries took advantage of the contradictions between the Western imperialists on the one hand and the Japanese imperialists on the other, organized a broad united front against fascist aggression, built anti-Japanese base areas and waged bitter guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. Thus the political situation existing prior to World War II began to change. When the Japanese imperialists were driven out of these countries at the end of World War II, the Western imperialists attempted to restore their colonial rule, but, having built up armed forces of considerable strength during the anti-Japanese war, these colonial peoples refused to return to the old way of life. Moreover, the imperialist system all over the world was profoundly shaken because the Soviet Union had become strong, because all the imperialist powers, except the United States, had either been overthrown or weakened in the war, and finally because the imperialist front was breached in China by the Chinese revolution. Thus, much as in China, it has become possible for the peoples of the colonial countries in the East to maintain big and small revolutionary base areas and revolutionary regimes over a long period of time, and to carry on long term revolutionary wars in which to surround the cities from the countryside, and then gradually to advance to take the cities and win nation-wide victory.' 1

In the late 1940s and 1950s, communists across East Asia followed this strategy. As a response the U.S.’s position on decolonization was characterized by: (1) The demand for decolonization in the context of the U.S.’s position towards the old European colonial powers; and (2) The governments of the newly independent countries had to support the U.S.’s confrontation with the “socialist bloc.” Therefore, the British, who fought a barbaric colonial war against Malaya, got full U.S. support because the Malayan liberation movement was led by communists. The same applied to the French fighting anti-colonial movements in Indochina. On the other hand, the Netherlands was forced by the U.S. to grant Indonesia independence because Sukarno’s vision for the country had become acceptable to U.S. interests. The U.S. also made it clear to the French that the countries of Indochina should become independent once the communists were defeated. The U.S. eventually intervened in Indochina when the French were humiliated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, decolonization advanced, but not primarily as a result of successful liberation struggles. Not many national liberation movements, whether communist or of a different kind, formed governments during this period. In various colonies, Madagascar and Malaya among them, communist liberation movements were brutally repressed before they could get to that point. Instead, U.S.-friendly regimes were installed. In Africa, decolonization happened either without any liberation movements or with liberation movements whose influence on independence was very limited. Africa’s destiny was, once again, decided without Africans. The decisive factors were economic developments in capitalism’s center and the contradictions between imperialist powers, first and foremost between the U.S. and the old colonial powers of Europe. Most of the newly independent countries in Asia and Africa were under petty-bourgeois leadership and tried to position themselves as the Third World between the West and the East. This was the message of the 1955 Bandung Conference. But there were exceptions: in Algeria, the National Liberation Front seized power in 1962 after many years of fighting against France and European settlers, at the cost of one million lives. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 took the U.S. entirely by surprise and the attempt to correct this misjudgment through the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1959 failed miserably.

The “Cold War” was Hot in the South

The “Cold War” period was not only defined by the threat of a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The term “Cold War” is Eurocentric; the confrontation between the U.S. and communism was boiling hot in the Global South.

The Korean War, the historical zenith of bombing as an instrument of war, exemplified the dangers of picking the wrong analogy. The war and continued hostility from the West motivated North Korea to delink totally from the surrounding capitalist system. However, this isolation has caused severe economic problems, and led to the ideological affirmation of full self-reliance (the “Juche” ideology), and idiosyncratic forms of Party structure, and leadership.

Another hot war was in Indochina, focused primarily on Vietnam, but spreading into Laos and Cambodia. In 2008, the British Medical Journal estimated that more than 3 million lives were lost during the American phase of the Indochina wars. 2 From 1965 to 1973, the U.S. Air Force dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than all those dropped during the Second World War. Landmines have stolen 40,000 Vietnamese lives since 1973.

American anti-communist warfare brought on another wave of blood-letting in Indonesia. From 1965 to 1966, the Indonesian Army, and paramilitary bands supported by the U.S., murdered as many as 500,000 suspected Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) supporters and overthrew Sukarno, the founder of the world’s fourth most populous country, and leader of the Afro-Asian movement. 3

The Revolutionary Spirit of the Long Sixties

In 1956, the 20th Congress the Communist Party of the Soviet Union lost its revolutionary spirit in the opinion of many communists, especially in the Third World. By introducing peaceful coexistence, the Soviet Union chose to compete with the capitalist system on capitalist terms instead of pursuing a qualitatively different road. The Soviet Union and the U.S. competed in armament, space programs, and on producing consumer goods. The Soviet Union tried to provide the same standard and form of living as in the developed capitalist world. But in the end, Lada, GUM, and Trabant lost to Ford, Hollywood, and McDonald’s. Without an imperialist contribution to its economy, “Actually Existing Socialism” could not compete with Western capitalism in providing consumer goods.

The consequence of a full-scale nuclear war during the “Cold War” would have been a catastrophe of proportions not yet seen in human history, and such an event was a real possibility, as the historical documentation has proven. In that sense, the Soviet policy of peaceful coexistence may have saved the world from nuclear winter. But nevertheless, the world revolutionary spirit moved to the Third World, where imperialist exploitation made rebellion an imperative. Through the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, with its climax in the 1968 uprisings, a revolutionary wave washed over the world. On September 23, 1960, the Soviet Union put forward a resolution for decolonization. This resolution was opposed by the entire Western bloc, led by the United States. Less than three months later, forty-three countries from Africa and Asia affirmed the Bandung principles and put forward their own resolution with the same content as the Soviet resolution. On December 14, 1960, the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution: Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.4 Eighty-nine countries—including the Soviet Union—voted for it, and no one voted against, but nine countries abstained: Australia, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, the Dominican Republic, the Union of South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In Cuba and Algeria, the revolutionary spirit continued in the mid-sixties. They were involved in support for revolutionary movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—the tricontinental movement. The wave of revolutionary socialist movements surged in Vietnam, Palestine, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Chile and more.

China took the idea of a continuous world revolution seriously, thus supplanting the Soviet Union in providing a revolutionary spirit. China’s inspiration for world revolutionaries relied on both the Cultural Revolution from 1965-69, which promoted radical egalitarianism at home, and confrontation with imperialism internationally.5 In Southeast Asia, Chinese influence on communist parties and their anti-imperialist armed struggles was huge. The Communist Party of Vietnam had been under the influence of China since its foundation. Ho Chi Minh worked for the COMINTERN and moved to Canton in 1925 to deepen contact with the Communist Party of China. The Vietnamese people’s war against France and the U.S. was inspired by Mao’s military strategy of a people’s war. In India, the Communist Party fractured during the Sino-Soviet split, creating a large pro-China faction called the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1964. However, the CPI(M) saw armed struggle as peasant self-defense, rather than a struggle for a full-scale communist revolution. 6 This led to a new split when the Naxalbari peasant uprising broke out in 1967, founding the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). The leading figure, Charu Majumdar, declared “China’s Chairman is Our Chairman.”7 Naxalbari, together with Nepal and the Philippines, remain areas where Maoist parties still play a prominent role.

Chinese influence in Africa was not only ideological. Insurgents from Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, both Republics of Congo, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa all received training from China in the 1960s. 8

Maoist China also exercised influence on revolutionary nationalists and communists who pursued armed struggle in Latin America. For nationalists, China provided a model for independent economic development in a semi-colonial context. To communist revolutionaries who waged armed struggle, the Chinese people’s war and Maoist guerrilla tactics were an inspiration. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was an example of an armed struggle that could lead the way to socialism, but the Cubans developed their own variant of guerilla struggle—the “foco” strategy. 9 The Cuban example fueled the emergence of guerrilla struggles across Latin America in contrast to the line of peaceful coexistence.

In Western Europe, Maoism was an inspiration for the student revolt in Paris. The Maoist newspaper La Cause du peuple was a major organ for the movement. In Germany, it influenced the student leader Rudi Dutschke.10 My own organization, the Communist Working Circle, was founded in 1964 by people who left the Danish Communist Party, which was loyal to the Soviet Union. It was precisely the compromising attitude of Moscow and the revolutionary spirit of China that led to the forma- tion of the organization, which I joined.

In the United States, Maoist China’s most important influence was on radical African American movements. Malcolm X directed the movement to study the Chinese experience with his 1963 “Message to the Grassroots.”11 The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), which followed Malcolm X’s position in situating the Black liberation struggle in the context of Third World liberation, served as a milieu in which many activists adopted Maoist ideas. Among them were Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, founders of the Black Panther Party. The Black Panthers adopted many Maoist ideas and popularized the idea that domestic armed struggle against the U.S. government was possible, which was then practiced by the Black Panthers and later the Weathermen and Black Liberation Army.12

Inspired by the anti-imperialist victories in Cuba and Algeria, and the successful resistance in Vietnam, strong revolutionary movements appeared in numerous countries: Laos, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Palestine, Lebanon, South Yemen, Oman, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico. In some of these countries, socialist movements came to power. In the decade from 1965-75, the principal contradiction on the world level was between imperialism, led by the U.S., and the numerous anti-imperialist movements and progressive Third World states, which tried to build socialism. The guerrilla fighter was the new revolutionary subject. From revolutionary practice, liberatory theory was generated in the Third World by Mao, Ho Chi-Minh, Che Guevara, Franz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, and others.

However, national liberation would prove easier to obtain than ending imperialist exploitation. The anti-colonial movements were well aware that the struggle to develop the forces of production was a continuation of national liberation. Following the Algerian revolution’s military victory, the key question became the production front. In a speech on December 23, 1964, in Algeria, Che Guevara said:

'This is a time for construction, something much more difficult, and seemingly less heroic, but demanding all the nation’s forces…It is necessary to work, because at times like these that is the best way of struggling…Fatherland or death.' 13

To echo Che in 2006, the Vice-President of Bolivia, Garcia Linera, launched the slogan “industrialization or death.”14 While the Cuban “Fa- therland or death” expresses the identity, in specific circumstances, of the class and national struggle, “industrialization or death” expresses the idea that political independence proves illusory if not sustained by economic independence sustained by the development of the productive forces.15 In Algeria, Frantz Fanon posed the problem of a national liberation movement’s transition from the politico-military to the politico-economic. The worker replaced the guerrilla as the revolutionary subject.

'Today, national independence and nation building in the underdeveloped regions take on an entirely new aspect…every country suffers from the same lack of infrastructure…But also, a world without doctors, without engineers, without administrators…When a colonialist country, embarrassed by a colony’s demand for independence, proclaims with the nationalist leaders in mind: “If you want independence, take it and return to the Dark Ages,” the newly independent people nod their approval and take up the challenge. And what we actually see is the colonizer withdrawing his capital and technicians and encircling the young nation with an apparatus of economic pressure. The apotheosis of independence becomes the curse of independence. The sweeping powers of coercion of the colonial authorities condemn the young nation to regression…The nationalist leaders then are left with no other choice but to turn to their people and ask them to make a gigantic effort. An autarkic regime is established and each state, with the pitiful resources at its disposal, endeavors to address the mounting national hunger and the growing national poverty. We are witness to the mobilization of people who now have to work themselves to exhaustion while a contemptuous and bloated Europe looks on. Other Third World countries refuse to accept such an ordeal and agree to give in to the terms of the former colonial power. Taking advantage of their strategic position in the cold war struggle, these countries sign agreements and commit themselves. The formerly colonized territory is now turned into an economically dependent country.' 16

After the end of the Second World War and the subsequent tide of decolonization, over a hundred new nations were born. But these countries weren’t big like the Soviet Union and China, where more diverse economic land reforms, a planned economy, and “delinking” from the world market had created viable national economies. Most of the newly independent countries in the Third World remained dependent on exporting to the global market to survive. They were not able to develop their productive forces in a capitalist world market, trapped by dependency and exploited via unequal exchange caused by their low wages. To acquire foreign exchange for technology imports, they had to export their raw materials and agricultural products at world market prices.

Political independence led, in most cases, to capitalist applications of “development economics.” Unlike their western colonial predecessors, they could not transfer the costs of industrialization and welfare to other nations, and therefore most were caught in the “development trap,” leading to huge debt and sliding back to an exploited position in global capitalism.

The Soviet Union, China, and Cuba had to transfer the social costs of industrialization internally—meaning to the rural communities—or mitigate the problem of capital scarcity by mobilizing a large amount of labor at a low cost in the construction of state projects. It contributed to China’s successful industrialization that the Communist Party, through voluntarism, was able to substitute capital with labor. In decades after the revolution, millions of people were willing to sacrifice themselves for the socialist primitive accumulation. This created the foundation for China to escape the polarizing tendency within global capitalism, between a rich core and a poor periphery.