Che-Lives.com E-Zine http://www.revleft.com/vb/ Forum Led by: To be announced en Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:57:14 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/misc/rss.jpg RevLeft - RevLeft Articles http://www.revleft.com/vb/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ Participatory Socialist International? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Che-lives/~3/uum5jAhh-r0/showthread.php Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:49:52 GMT *Participatory Socialist International?: Critique of Michael Albert and Hugo Chavez on Internationals* CARACAS – In late November 2009,... Participatory Socialist International?: Critique of Michael Albert and Hugo Chavez on Internationals



CARACAS – In late November 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez addressed the International Encounter of Left Parties by making an announcement: that “it is time to convene the Fifth International, and I dare to make the call, which I think is a necessity. I dare to request that we create my proposal.” Agreeing to the proposed establishment of “the Fifth Socialist International as a space for socialist-oriented parties, movements and currents in which we can harmonize a common strategy for the struggle against imperialism, the overthrow of capitalism by socialism” were, among others: the ruling Movement Towards Socialism in Bolivia, the Proposal for an Alternative Society in Chile, and the recently strengthened Socialist Alliance in Australia (resulting from the revolutionary liquidation of the Democratic Socialist Perspective). Even the ruling party, the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), affirmed this resolution in its First Extraordinary Congress held a day after.

Things were not entirely smooth, however. Delegates from the mass reformist parties Die Linke in Germany and the Parti de gauche in France “expressed interest in the proposal but said they would consult with their various parties.” A representative from the ruling Brazilian reformist party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), said the Sao Paolo Forum was sufficient. Many Communist parties opposed the proposal, stating that their own regular meetings of “Communist and Workers parties” were sufficient. Also in attendance, unfortunately, were delegates from the ruling revisionist (or post-revisionist) parties in China in Vietnam, not to mention the left Peronistas ruling Argentina and the former long-standing ruling party in Mexico, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).

Nevertheless, a global conference was scheduled for April 2010, and the resolution allowed undecided parties to join at a later time.

What, then, is the significance of the proposed Fifth Socialist International?

History

Despite the official reason for many Communist parties’ opposition to the proposal, perhaps the real reason lies in Chavez’s own account of past internationals. The president cited the International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA) founded in 1864 by Karl Marx, the original Socialist International founded in 1889 but more commonly known as the Second International, the Communist International (Comintern) founded in 1919 in response to the collapse of its predecessor towards imperialist warfare, and the so-called “Fourth International” founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. These Communist parties, despite their own nation-oriented politics, simply do not recognize what the Marxist Louis Proyect acknowledged as a “sectarian mistake” not recognized much beyond parties in France, Argentina, Sri Lanka, and very few others: the so-called “Fourth International” and its splinter successive groups. Therein was Chavez’s diplomatic blunder towards unity with these Communist parties.

The bigger problem with Chavez’s historical account of internationals lies in what was not mentioned, most likely due to a lack of knowledge. Key resolutions passed by the IWMA go against the president’s own politics, ranging from the latter’s deeming of “the working class as the motor of socialism” to be “obsolete” to measures of the Paris Commune not implemented in Venezuela. The ways in which the Second International helped propel the working class towards real mass organization were not acknowledged. Moreover, other international groups serve as (generally) positively relevant lessons for the new international, over and above one negatively irrelevant sectarian mistake.

The most important of these groups was the short-lived International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP) formed in 1921, derisively called the “Two and a Half International” by an increasingly out of touch Comintern, which became more and more an infantile, nutter-ish fan club for the Soviet leadership. This “centrist” international acknowledged that any revolutionary period which had arisen in Europe just before the war and which lasted a few years into the Russian revolution had receded; mass hostilities towards bourgeois regimes, majority political support (not just electoral support) for such hostilities towards parties even more hostile towards those regimes, and instability within the organs of those regimes were absent. Among the mass parties of this international were: the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO), the main Social-Democratic parties in Austria and Switzerland, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, and what Die Linke’s Dietmar Bartsch contemporarily called “an outstanding role model for left politics today” which “paid attention to the daily demands and needs of workers without yielding its claim to revolutionary, anti-capitalist politics” – the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, or USPD). Unlike the Comintern, the short-lived IWUSP retained the key lesson from the Second International on real mass organization, which revolved around what Vernon Lidtke called a party-based “alternative culture”: cultural organizations, sports clubs, and funeral homes all back in the day – today including food banks and larger humanitarian organizations. All these went beyond newspapers, protests and other street agitation, promotions of trade union militancy, and election campaigns.

Of course, the former realo wing (to borrow from the German language on politics) of the Comintern that drifted into the IWUSP was not strong enough to win decisively against vacillators and liquidationist renegades in that international who were too cozy with the war criminality that was right-wing Social Democracy. This is why the IWUSP should be seen at best as “generally positive” and not plainly “positive.” Mirroring this, obviously, was the unwelcome presence of most of the parties mentioned in the second paragraph of this discussion.

“Participatory Socialist International”

In late January 2010, the pareconist Michael Albert (parecon: “participatory economics” as a substitute label for “socialism”) wrote a very constructive article reflecting on Chavez’s proposal:

Thus, lesson one, already familiar to most: If a new International marches to the beat of past drumming, no matter what its members might want, and no matter how courageously its members might seek their worthy dreams, the support they gain will be too limited and their efforts will be too compromised by past destructive residues to generate desirable 21st century outcomes.

The "subject matter" of a new international should and will inevitably address all concerns which go into and are part of developing and sustaining a liberated society and world but there is no reason to think all sensible and caring people would or should agree about all such matters. Much will have to be worked out in practice. Much will differ from country to country. Maybe there is a best position - but we don't yet know it. Maybe most people think they know a best position, but a few people differ, and perhaps the few will prove right later.

This indicates that regarding unity we ought to settle only on a minimalist but profoundly important set of principles and commitments that would characterize a new International. What minimal commitments would a new International need to adopt to do its job well. Those who agree with essential inviolable commitments, could join. Those who don't agree with them, might want to join, but couldn't.

Few would doubt that a new International should be centrally concerned with economics, gender and kinship, culture and community, politics, international relations, and ecology. Further, however, there is no need for, and we have learned in recent decades there is also no point trying to elevate any one of these focuses above the rest. They are all centrally important and powerfully entwined. Thus, it should be the case that a group in a new International might in some country, or at some time, or for some purpose, be primarily focused on one or another of these focuses, but to be part of the new International it would also have to acknowledge that their priority was just one among many, and that other priorities should inform their work as well as be informed by their work.

[…]

Finally a new International will of course have to have an attitude about decisions, participation, and power. At a minimum a new International would presumably commit to the value called "democracy." For myself, however, I would hope it would reach further to a more inspiring conception of "people's power," or "participatory democracy," or "self management." And that it will seriously assess the kinds of structural changes and innovations essential to ensure informed, confident, participation by all citizens in political, economic, and social life - perhaps also including, for example, changes in the way labor is divided and carried out, the way education is conceived and implemented, and of course the way preferences are debated, explored, resolved, and implemented. Perhaps that will prove possible, too!

At any rate, given its place and time of origin, suppose a new International adopts a name like Participatory Socialist International (PSI), where "participatory" connotes that it isn't our forebears' International, but is really new.

[…]

One possibility is to include and celebrate "currents" that serve as vehicles for contending views. There might be a current composed of various member organizations, projects, and/or movements who share a particular contested economic goal (such as participatory economics or market socialism, etc.), or a certain contested strategic orientation (such as electoralism or nonviolence, etc.). The International's various currents would not be seen as a weakness undermining unity but as a strength warding off sectarianism and guaranteeing constant growth. The respectfully contending positions would all be part of the International, together interactively exploring their disagreements in hopes of reaching new insights.

[…]

Every member group would have its own agenda for its own separate operations which would be inviolable. At the same time, each member group would presumably be strongly urged to make its own operations consistent with the norm, practices, and shared programmatic agendas of the International. There would be solidarity among member organizations, but, regarding their separate operations, there would also be autonomy. The International would have shared program, policies, norms, and rules to continually decide on, as well as having to decide on gatherings to hold, campaigns to support or undertake, and perhaps much else.

[…]

More ambitiously, an International might also decide on campaigns and projects of its own, financed via its membership. It might settle, for example, on a massive international focus on immigration, on ending a war, on shortening the work week all over the planet, and/or on averting climatic catastrophe. There might then be materials to prepare, education to convey, activist campaigns to carry out, boycotts to initiate and sustain, support for local efforts to engender, and even efforts to provide material aid and participants for events occurring across borders.

[…]

Finally, regarding program, clearly one reason to have an International is to help organizations, movements, and projects escape single issue loneliness by becoming part of a larger process encompassing diverse focuses and united by agreements on various major shared endeavors.

[…]

Is it only a dream that worldwide parties, movements, organizations, and projects could operate with intellectual and programmatic respect and mutual aid, with deep diversity and sharp focus, with strong solidarity and equally strong autonomy, with profound coherence and commitment and also with material and social equity and overarching self management?

Yes, today this is a dream, or a wish, or a hope. But tomorrow, and literally, this April, it could become a reality. Wouldn't that be a huge and historic step forward?

General Class Politics and Class Backgrounds

Even if parties forming this new international were to implement Michael Albert’s suggestions above, there are still lingering problems. Take for example, Albert’s statement that “there is no need for, and we have learned in recent decades there is also no point trying to elevate any one of these focuses above the rest.” While this could be applied to the Green left’s emphasis on ecology, unfortunately it is also used, with more devastating results, against class politics (a concept buried in Albert’s list of principles).

Before the formation of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) through the liquidation of the main French Trotskyist party, a similar assertion to Albert’s was made more explicitly and noted by Mike Macnair of the UK-based Weekly Worker:

Durand’s arguments, and in a certain sense those of Artous on ‘alliances’, suggest that the core claim of Marxism - that the struggle for socialism is the struggle for the emancipation of the working class and that the emancipation of the working class can only be achieved through the struggle for socialism - is false. Instead, the struggle for the emancipation of the working class is part only of the struggle for human liberation: “Relations of oppression or exploitation arising from patriarchy, humanity’s predatory conduct towards the rest of the biosphere, racism, the denial of political and individual freedom, choice of sexual orientation or minority cultures” are equally important and cannot be “mechanically transferred back to the resolution of the central economic conflict” (Durand).

[This discussion is not intended to be an extended political promotion for Mike Macnair’s material on revolutionary strategy, which has been compiled into the book Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the Challenge of Left Unity. More discussion on class politics, so-called “social movements” based primarily on non-class politics, and genuine party-building can be read in that book.]

Albert’s reiteration of lingering New Left dead ends is important, because class politics is something that needs to be explored at a deeper level, inside and outside this new international. As I mentioned before, the alternative culture model from the Second International (primarily from the pre-war SPD) and carried over into the short-lived IWUSP is one such aspect that needs to be revived. Key IWMA resolutions need to be carried over into this international.

Take, for example, the class demographics of this new international. The modern working class: exists within the wage-labour system (even in retirement by receiving income from past wages), contributes to the development of society’s labour power and its capabilities, and has no significant-influence ownership or factual control over the means of production. This class is comprised of the traditional manual workers and service-providing manual workers mistaken for the whole class (by both the mainstream and many on the left), the clerical workers (office workers, bank tellers, bartenders, and others), and the professional workers (teachers, professors without subordinate research staff, engineers, nurses, and many accountants). One of the resolutions of the IWMA was to increasingly adopt a policy restricting voting membership to individuals in this class, in full accordance with the classic slogan on the self-emancipation of the working class.

[Small left organizations such as Hekmatist groups, the UK-based Independent Working Class Association, and the Workers Party in America are the only ones upholding this policy, realizing that this is a better “link” to the working class at large and to primarily non-unionized worker movements than mere labour parties based on ever-myopic trade union movements.]

Contrast the modern working class to the class backgrounds of the leading figures in this new international; all of them exist within the (legal) wage system, but they may not contribute to the development of society’s labour power and its capabilities. Those with this dubious distinction (and more than one class has this) include: artisans, judges, lawyers, police officers, private security guards and strikebreakers, and the ever-unproductive self-employed (most notoriously consultants without employees). Even some mistakenly thought of as being part of the working class but not doing the “work necessary to the support of the direct producers” (according to Paul Cockshott and Dave Zachariah) have this distinction – being employed in, among others: armaments manufacturing, manufacturing and retail of luxury goods, wholesale and commission trade, real estate services (even if not self-employed), public administration (the government bureaucracies proper), most non-profit organizational activity, and even butlers and housemaids.

If those figures do contribute to the development of society’s labour power and its capabilities, they may belong to the proper petit-bourgeoisie, or they may belong to what Albert himself calls the “coordinator” class – the very class that drove him and others to conceptualize “participatory economics” as an alternative to bureaucratic socialism like that in the former Soviet Union. Because of the productive-unproductive labour divide, the Marxist definition of this class is limited to productive occupations like mid-level managers of large enterprises, all non-owning managers of small businesses, and tenured professors with subordinate research staff (such as the Canadian Marxist Leo Panitch).

Above all, there is the lingering question about the class status of those belonging to the so-called “Student Left.” In a stratum outside the wage-labour system that enables class mobility, their respective class statuses are not yet determined by anything other than the class background of their parents or by their previous occupation (for the more adult students who are changing careers).

“Dispossessed Classes” and the Volkspartei Problem

“Social democracy is from the outset by its very nature an international party. But it has also the tendency, ever more a national party, that is a Volkspartei to be in the sense that the representative not only of industrial wage workers but all working and exploited classes, so the vast majority of the population is, of what one usually calls ‘the Volk’.” (Karl Kautsky)

In my theoretical pamphlet, I used an older English translation of Kautsky’s authoritative commentary on the Erfurt Program of 1891, the leading program of the Second International. In any case, towards the end of his commentary, Kautsky described how Social Democracy in his day tended to become a “people’s party” that represents even the class interests of independent craftsmen, where “independent” means “self-employed.” Little could he imagine, of course, about the one reactionary mass that flocked to the anti-tax populism of self-employed jocks like Joe the Plumber in the 2008 US presidential elections, or another such reactionary mass of primarily the self-employed responsible for the anti-tax populist amateurisms that are the so-called “Tea Parties.” The main reason, of course, is that the self-employed are by no means dispossessed.

The mistaking of traditional manual workers for the working class as a whole by both the mainstream and many on the left – not helped at all by myopic tred-iunionizm – has led to the emergence of new terms and related politics, none of which are appropriate. The most notorious of these terms is the post-modernist “multitude,” which is the class-collaborationist culmination of putting equal emphasis on typical class politics, New Left identity politics (race, gender), radical Green politics, and so on – to the point of including blatantly non-worker demographics subscribing to New Left identity politics and radical Green politics. The Canadian Marxist Leo Panitch, himself a coordinator (tenured professor with subordinate research staff) is subtler with his usage of the term “working classes” – as if traditional manual workers, service-providing manual workers, clerical workers, and professional workers are separate classes.

A more appropriate term and related politics can be derived from the accumulation by dispossession thesis of Marxist geographer David Harvey, but without repeating Panitch’s mistake: dispossessed classes. This Volk encompasses the modern working class in all its sectoral distinctions, the coordinators (because they too are estranged from owning the means of production), the proper lumpenproletariat outside the legal wage system (preferring legal work to the illegal work that they do), and those dispossessed elements who nevertheless perform unproductive labour.

The demographics of the leading figures and base of the new international pose both a challenge and an opportunity. First, there clearly needs to be a mass sub-organization within the new international itself that restricts voting membership in that sub-organization to affiliates that themselves restrict voting membership to working-class individuals – as an initial means to the “formation of the proletariat into a class” for itself (from the Communist Manifesto on proper proletarian parties). Second, that sub-organization should push the modern working class towards exercising leadership over all dispossessed classes, but without compromising its own class interests by a single inch – thus the “overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy” (again, from the Communist Manifesto on proper proletarian parties) by means of establishing proletarian hegemony. Third, in this period of late capitalism, the broader international itself should adopt a dispossessed-only membership and affiliation policy, and also deem all non-dispossessed classes as – in the words of the not-so-revolutionary but nevertheless great anti-liberal fighter for working-class independence known as Ferdinand Lassalle – “one reactionary mass.”

“Conquest of Political Power By the Proletariat”

The third and last goal of a proper proletarian-not-necessarily-communist party, as opposed to reformist labour parties that never seek to fulfill the first two aims, and as opposed to “vanguardists” who forget about the first aim in their schemes for putsches, is indeed something that should be on equal footing with Albert’s assertion that “economic production, consumption, and allocation should be classless - which of course includes equitable access for all to quality and accessible education, health care and the requisites of health like food, water, and sanitation, housing, meaningful and dignified work, and the instruments and conditions of personal fulfillment.”

For too long the left has been plagued by broad economism. The “struggle for socialism” is an economic struggle and not a political one, and this is something most of the left has long forgotten. The political struggle is the expropriation of ruling-class political power by the working class itself. As quoted above, Albert wrote about “structural changes and innovations essential to ensure informed, confident, participation by all citizens.” I will therefore end this discussion with an almost-complete program of such structural changes and innovations, based on the Paris Commune but incorporating two or more key elements from Athenian demokratia missing too long on the left:

Taking into account modern developments and critiques, the consistent advocacy of this core of a minimum program for political power – as opposed to the more common and orthodox “minimum program” for continued opposition even after complete fulfillment – emphatically solves the problem of broad economism throughout the class-strugglist left by being much greater than the sum of its political and economic parts. While individual demands could easily be fulfilled without eliminating the bourgeois-capitalist state order, the complete, consistent, and lasting implementation of this minimum program in the pre-orthodox sense (as formulated by Marx himself) would mean that the working class will have captured the full political power of a ruling class, thus establishing the so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat”:

01) All assemblies of the remaining representative democracy and all councils of an expanding participatory democracy shall become working bodies, not parliamentary talking shops, being legislative and executive-administrative at the same time and not checked and balanced by anything more professional than sovereign commoner juries. The absence of any mention of grassroots mass assemblies is due to their incapability to perform administrative functions on a regular basis. Also, this demand implies simplification of laws and of the legal system as a whole, dispensing entirely with that oligarchic and etymologically monarchic legal position of Judge and at least curtailing that legalese-creating and overly specialized position of Lawyer.
02) All political and related administrative offices shall be assigned by kleros (random selection or lot) as a fundamental basis of the demarchic commonwealth. This is in stark contrast to elections for all such public offices, the central radical-republican demand that completely ignores electoral fatigue. With this demand comes the possibility of finally fulfilling a demarchic variation of that one unfulfilled demand for annual parliaments raised by the first politico-ideologically independent worker-class movement in history, the Chartist movement in the United Kingdom.
03) All political and related administrative offices shall be free of any formal or de facto disqualifications due to non-ownership of non-possessive property or, more generally, of wealth. The Chartists called similarly for “no property qualification for members of Parliament – thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.” While the struggle against formal property qualifications was most progressive, even freely elected legislatures are almost devoid of the working poor, especially those who are women. Unlike the Chartist demand, by no means does this demand in the grammatically double negative (“disqualifications” and “non-ownership”) preclude the disenfranchisement of the bourgeoisie – and other owners of the aforementioned types of property – as one of the political measures of a more obvious worker-class rule. In fact, the original Soviet constitution deprived voting rights from the bourgeoisie and others even on more functional criteria such as hiring labour for personal profit.
04) All political and related administrative offices shall operate on the basis of occupants’ standards of living being at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers. On the one hand, formulations that demand compensation for such public officials to be simply no more than “workman’s wage” fail to take into account the historic worker-class demand for legislators to be paid in the first place, first raised by the worker-class Chartists, “thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country.” On the other hand, even freely elected legislators, many of whom have additional sources of income through businesses, tend to increase their collective level of expense allowances beyond the median equivalent associated with professional work. A combination of appropriate pay levels and expense allowances, mandated loss of regular occupations (since these offices should be full-time positions), and other measures can fulfill this demand.
05) All political and related administrative offices shall be subject to immediate recall in cases of abuse of office. This can be fulfilled effectively under a radical-republican system of indirect elections and hierarchical accountability, as opposed to the current system of direct electoralism (based on mass constituencies) that require significant numbers of constituents to sign recall initiatives. However, like the two preceding demands, this demand is best fulfilled not just when all such public offices function with the aforementioned hierarchical accountability, but also when all such public offices are assigned by lot, thereby minimizing interpersonal political connections.
06) There shall be an ecological reduction of the normal workweek – including time for workplace democracy, workers’ self-management, broader industrial democracy, etc. through workplace committees and assemblies – to a participatory-democratic maximum of 32 hours or less without loss of pay or benefits but with further reductions corresponding to increased labour productivity, the minimum provision of double-time pay or salary/contract equivalent for all hours worked over the normal workweek and over 8 hours a day, and the prohibition of compulsory overtime. In addition to the extensive analysis provided in the next chapter, it must be noted that proposals for an eight-hour day were made but not implemented within the Paris Commune, and that the development of capitalist production is such that time for workplace democracy and so on should be part of the normal workweek and not outside of it.
07) There shall be full, lawsuit-enforced freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association for people of the dispossessed classes, even within the military, free especially from anti-employment reprisals, police interference such as from agents provocateurs, and formal political disenfranchisement. If one particular demand could neatly sum up the struggle for the politico-ideological independence of the working class – before and even just after having captured the full political power of a ruling class – it is this one by far.
08) There shall be an expansion of the ability to bear arms and to general self-defense towards enabling the formation of people’s militias based on free training, especially in connection with class-strugglist association, and also free from police interference such as from agents provocateurs. The aggressive advocacy of this demand separates class-strugglists from the most obvious of cross-class coalitionists, even if the likes of Bernstein pushed for this demand in less formal workers’ action programs.
09) There shall be full independence of the mass media from concentrated private ownership and control by first means of workplace democracy over mandated balance of content in news and media production, heavy appropriation of economic rent in the broadcast spectrum, unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for independent mass media cooperative startups – especially at more local levels, for purposes of media decentralization – and anti-inheritance transformation of all the relevant mass media properties under private ownership into cooperative property. Although this is an applied combination of more general demands that are in and of themselves not necessary for workers to become the ruling class, a comprehensive solution to the mass media problem of concentrated private ownership and control (not to mention bourgeois cultural hegemony as discussed by the Marxist Antonio Gramsci) is a necessary component of any minimum program in the pre-orthodox sense.
10) All state debts shall be suppressed outright. Unlike the more transformative suppression of all public debts on a transnational scale, the minimum character of this demand was long established by the historical precedent of the 19th-century imperialist powers periodically going into debt to fund their wars and then defaulting upon them on an equally periodic basis.
11) All predatory financial practices towards the working class, legal or otherwise, shall be precluded by first means of establishing, on a permanent and either national or multinational basis, a financial monopoly without any private ownership or private control whatsoever – at purchase prices based especially on the market values of insolvent yet publicly underwritten banks – with such a monopoly inclusive of the general provision of commercial and consumer credit, and with the application of “equity not usury” towards such activity. The usage of the word “multinational” instead of “transnational” signifies the minimum character of this demand, given the multinational structure of the European Union and given that, as mentioned earlier, a single transnational equivalent should put to an end the viability of imperialist wars and conflicts more generally as vehicles for capital accumulation.
12) There shall be an enactment of confiscatory, despotic measures against all capital flight of wealth, investment strikes, and other elitist economic blackmail, whether the related wealth belongs to economic rebels on the domestic front or to foreign profiteers. Ultimately, the flight of gold from Parisian banks by those in control over same banks weakened the workers of 1871 Paris and financed the ruthless suppression of the Paris Commune.



REFERENCES



Venezuela’s Chavez Calls for International Organisation of Left Parties by Kiraz Janicke, Venezuelanalysis.com [http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4946]

Chavez’s Historic Call for a Fifth Socialist International by Federico Fuentes, Venezuelanalysis.com [http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4965]

Louis Proyect Home Page by Louis Proyect [http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mypage.htm]

Sr. Presidente: sin Marx, Lenin y la clase obrera, no hay socialismo posible (parte I) by Miguel Angel Hernández [http://www.aporrea.org/trabajadores/a39036.html]

The Road to Power by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/archive/kaut...power/ch06.htm]

German Left Party honours the founding of the centrist Independent Social Democratic Party by Stefan Steinberg [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/ma...left-m10.shtml]

The Alternative Culture: Socialist Labor in Imperial Germany by Vernon Lidtke [http://www.amazon.ca/Alternative-Cul.../dp/0195035070]

Fifth International?! by Michael Albert, ZNet [http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23692]

Revolutionary strategy and Marxist conclusions by Mike Macnair [http://www.iran-bulletin.org/Marxism/Macnair%20-2.htm]

Hunting Productive Work by Paul Cockshott and Dave Zachariah [http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/unprod3b.pdf]

Das Erfurter Programm by Karl Kautsky [http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/arch...enkampf.htm#14] ]]> RevLeft Articles Jacob Richter http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=128368 http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=128368 Anti-Imperialism: Nationalist and Internationalist Paths http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Che-lives/~3/6NQpoKe5i90/showthread.php Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:38:48 GMT "Stalin indeed looked forward to profiting from an Anglo-German conflict. In a letter of September 7 [1939] to Georgii Dimitrov, the head of the Communist International, Stalin wrote that 'we are not against' a war between capitalist states in which they 'would weaken each other.' Hitler, nolens volens [aka unwillingly], was on his way to destroying the capitalist system. Poland, Stalin added, was just another 'bourgeois fascist state,' and 'What would be wrong if in the destruction of Poland [as a bourgeois state] we spread the socialist system to new inhabitants in new territories?'"
(Alfred Erich Senn. Lithuania 1940: Revolution from Above. New York: 2007. p. 21.)

"We do not only recognize, but we also give full support to the principle of self-determination, wherever it is directed against feudal, capitalist and imperialist states. But wherever the fiction of self-determination, in the hands of the bourgeoisie, becomes a weapon directed against the proletarian revolution, we have no occasion to treat this fiction differently from the other 'principles' of democracy perverted by capitalism."
(L. Trotsky. Between Red and White, Chap. IX. 1922.)

All too often we see many Communists and Anarchists oppose imperialism (specifically social-imperialism, which shall be my focus) based on "national" grounds. That is, that the disappearance of a state automatically constitutes "imperialism." This is the logic used when, for example, the Soviets moved into eastern Poland or when the Baltic states became Union Republics.

Indeed, even some "internationalist" Anarchists can use "national" reasoning in debates when up against "Stalinist" opponents. For example, I am aware of an Anarchist who, during a debate between me and him on the subject of the Winter War between the USSR and Finland, took up the banner of the latter. His argument amounted to: "What right did the Soviet Union have in asking Finland to lease territory to the Soviets?" There was, of course, the issue of Leningrad being exposed to a German invasion and the overall pro-German foreign policy of Finland at that time, but our Anarchist continued. "Finland deserved to defend itself," he said, "the Soviets were being imperialistic."

This is where we run into one massive problem. You see, imperialism is about economic exploitation. It is not about "national" concerns. The very reason why self-determination is so relevant is that those peoples who rise up and agitate for independence are almost always the same types who are also collectively economically exploited as a group of people. When the people of Africa advocated and fought for self-determination, they fought, ultimately, for economic reasons and the battle between colonialists and anti-colonialists was waged with economic control in mind. On the mass level, of course, culture and the "nation" could not help but play a vital part in this struggle.

The errors made by "national" arguments produce a worldview which is not based on historical materialism.

Let us take the very founding of the Soviet Union as an example of "national" versus "international" disputes in regards to the issue of imperialism and self-determination.

When the Russian Empire broke apart in the 1917-1918 period following the declaration of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (aka Soviet/Bolshevik Russia), self-determination was proclaimed for all oppressed nationalities within the former territories of the Empire. Within the Empire the various nationalities (besides, of course, the Russians and certain segments of other European nationalities) suffered under a rule which was at best chauvinist in favor of Russian interests and at worst was outright colonialism within the areas of the Far-East and Turkestan. The Bolsheviks did not want to revive the Empire. They instead had in mind a union of various socialist republics grouped around the major nationalities of the former Russian Empire.

With the springing up of other socialist republics (such as the Ukraine) there was always the question of what form Russia itself would take within this new Union. The Russian Revolution was just that; a Russian revolution. There were plenty of Bolsheviks in other portions of the Empire, but it was very clear to Lenin, Stalin, and others that any Union would face initial Russian domination.

The answer to said domination, however, would be viewed as less than ideal by most people today:
"The Bashkir leader, Zeki Velidi Togan, writes (years later) that in 1920 Lenin had told him that the problem in the colonial countries was that they lacked a proletariat. In communist theory the proletariat was to dictate and to lead, but the peasantry of the East did not have an industrial working class to do that for them. In effect this meant that the peoples of the East were not yet ready to exercise their right to be free. According to Togan, Lenin said that even after the socialist revolution had succeeded everywhere in the world, the former colonies of the European Great Powers would have to remain in tutelage to their former masters until such a time as they developed an industrial working class of their own."
(David Fromkin. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: 2001. Holt Paperbacks. p. 476.)

Such a policy could only result in a paternal Russian attitude towards the "backwards" Republics until they could, with Russian assistance, draw upon themselves for native government posts. In the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, for example (and it was repeated in every other "backwards" Republic), native Turkmen were trained in Marxism and the administration of modern governments, and were also taught how to manage their own affairs. By 1991 every nationality represented by their corresponding Republics had evidently learned much, as all of those Republics were able to achieve independence with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

But within the Union itself there were nationalist elements that used the pretext of Russian chauvinism to forward their Republic's own agendas. A good example of this was the "Georgian Affair." Georgia had been under a right-wing Menshevik Government up until 1921 when the native Bolsheviks with Red Army assistance were able to topple it. Before we continue, let us ask a question: was this imperialist?

I would reply in the negative. Why would the downfall of a bourgeois regime be considered an "imperialist" action? If one were "nationally" oriented, then one would find much to condemn about the invasion. But those internationalists would have little in the way of problems with it. Georgia had become Bolshevik; it joined the newly-formed Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic with Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1922 with the formation of the Soviet Union at that same time.

The Transcaucasian experiment did not last. Nationalism inspired by economic differences (and subsequent foot dragging) would cause its inglorious demise in 1936. A foreboding of this event would come in 1923 with the efforts of two Georgian nationalists, Makharadze and Mdivani, to secure a Georgia autonomous (or rather, practically exempt) from Transcaucasia.

Stalin, then Commissar of Nationalities, stated the following:
"The point is that the bonds of the Transcaucasian Federation deprive Georgia of that somewhat privileged position which she could assume by virtue of her geographical position. Judge for yourselves. Georgia has her own port—Batum—through which goods flow from the West; Georgia has a railway junction like Tiflis, which the Armenians cannot avoid, nor can Azerbaijan avoid it, for she receives her goods through Batum. If Georgia were a separate republic, if she were not part of the Trans-caucasian Federation, she could present something in the nature of a little ultimatum both to Armenia, which cannot do without Tiflis, and to Azerbaijan, which cannot do without Batum. There would be some advantages for Georgia in this. It was no accident that the notorious savage decree establishing frontier cordons was drafted in Georgia...

Then there is yet another reason. Tiflis is the capital of Georgia, but the Georgians there are not more than 30 per cent of the population, the Armenians not less than 35 per cent, and then come all the other nationalities. That is what the capital of Georgia is like. If Georgia were a separate republic the population could be reshifted somewhat—for instance, the Armenian population could be shifted from Tiflis. Was not a well-known decree adopted in Georgia to 'regulate' the population of Tiflis, about which Comrade Makharadze said that it was not directed against the Armenians? The intention was to reshift the population so as to reduce the number of Armenians in Tiflis from year to year, making them fewer than the Georgians...

It is these geographical advantages that the Georgian deviators do not want to lose, and the unfavourable position of the Georgians in Tiflis itself, where there are fewer Georgians than Armenians, that are causing our deviators to oppose federation. The Mensheviks simply evicted Armenians and Tatars from Tiflis. Now, however, under the Soviet regime, eviction is impossible; therefore, they want to leave the federation, and this will create legal opportunities for independently performing certain operations which will result in the advantageous position enjoyed by the Georgians being fully utilised against Azerbaijan and Armenia. And all this would create a privileged position for the Georgians in Transcaucasia. Therein lies the whole danger.

Can we ignore the interests of national peace in Transcaucasia and allow conditions to be created under which the Georgians would be in a privileged position in relation to the Armenian and Azerbaijanian Republics? No. We cannot allow that."
(J.V. Stalin. Speech to the Twelfth Congress of the RCP(b). April 1923.)

In this same speech he also stated that:
"The chief danger that arises from this is that, owing to the N.E.P., dominant-nation chauvinism is growing in our country by leaps and bounds, striving to obliterate all that is not Russian, to gather all the threads of government into the hands of Russians and to stifle everything that is not Russian. The chief danger is that with such a policy we run the risk that the Russian proletarians will lose the confidence of the formerly oppressed nations which they won in the October days, when they overthrew the landlords and the Russian capitalists, when they smashed the chains of national oppression within Russia, withdrew the troops from Persia and Mongolia, proclaimed the independence of Finland and Armenia and, in general, put the national question on an entirely new basis. Unless we all arm ourselves against this new, I repeat, Great-Russian chauvinism, which is advancing, creeping, insinuating itself drop by drop into the eyes and ears of our officials and step by step corrupting them, we may lose down to the last shreds the confidence we earned at that time. It is this danger, comrades, that we must defeat at all costs."

This affair has been elevated to something slightly above that of a footnote because of Lenin's shift from supporting Stalin and Cheka leader Dzerzhinsky against Mdivani and Makharadze, to suddenly opposing them; probably on the grounds of the two former men being too "rude" (a charge he would levy at Stalin both as General Secretary of the Party and in conduct with Lenin's wife) or perhaps too dismissive of general complaints against Russian chauvinism, as the bedridden Lenin himself processed events from the isolated confines of his room.

The point, however, is that nothing was "lost" with the defeat of the "deviators." A nationalist Georgia which sought to "nationalize" its Republic by deporting Armenians and Azerbaijanis does not particularly seem defensible from an internationalist point of view. Economic questions were not put forward. The entire debate was over nationalist reasons and as such some misdirected figures may condemn Stalin for acting in an "imperialist" manner towards the Georgians; misunderstanding imperialisms essential economic character as they do this.

While the Georgian "deviators" were temporary (although their line eventually and essentially won out in 1936), a far more interesting figure was active at the same time though less known. His name was Mirza Sultan-Galiev, and although he attacked the Union primarily from a cultural and rightist perspective (putting forward the thesis of "proletarian nations" exploited by "bourgeois" ones), he acutely predicted that the Union as it stood would be susceptible to Russian dominance irregardless of the modernization of the various other nationalities and their Republics. His answer, then, was to unite all Islamic and Turkic peoples within the Union to achieve far greater autonomy or independence.

Sultan-Galiev's positions present a good point to ponder. The idea of Russians "civilizing" the "backwards" nationalities was bound to lead to an unequal situation between the Russians and the "civilized" nationalities. Whether those "enlightened" nationalities would be allowed to assert their independence, then, is notable.

Alas, Sultan-Galiev was a rightist. His fate, then, was unsurprising:
"Sultan-Galiev, aware that Lenin had invited Trotsky to attack Stalin on the nationalities question at the April 23 Party Congress, approached Trotsky to form an alliance against Stalin. Trotsky was not interested... In April 1923, the center intercepted two conspiratorial letters written by Sultan-Galiev, which revealed he had Basmachi ties and indicated his willingness to exploit them to further his faction's agenda. With this evidence in hand, Stalin engineered Sultan-Galiev's arrest in May 1923 and his formal denunciation at the June 1923 TsK conference on nationalities policy." (Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. first ed. New York: Cornell University Press, 2001., p. 230. Citing Bulat Sultanbekov, "Vvedenie," Stat'i, 14.)

Unlike the European nationalities within the Union, the "backwards" nationalities did not fare quite as well. Distrusts of the loyalty of the Chechen people, the Tatars, etc. during the opening months of World War II, irregardless of overall security concerns, no doubt greatly aided Russian chauvinism. The focus from the 1930s onwards from Great-Russian chauvinism to National-Republic chauvinism (e.g. Georgian treatment of the Abkhaz people or, more importantly, Kazakh treatment of the descendants of Russian colonialists) and the meteoric rise of Russian nationalism in an effort to incite an ever more determined fighting spirit during the war also played their parts in solidifying Russian chauvinism and dominance over the Union.

By the 1970s this would evolve into clear economic exploitation within the Central Asian Republics and would manifest itself in actual Russian chauvinism within Georgia. (See Chapter 26 of The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union by Bill Bland)

So in examining these two cases of "national" concerns over imperialism: one based purely on opportunist nationalism, the other on more substantiated anti-colonialism—albeit from a rightist and "national" angle, we can see that misinformed people seem to care far more about "national" incidents such as the former "Georgian affair" due to its later role in demonizing Joseph Stalin rather than on its own merits, as opposed to the genuine concerns of Sultan-Galiev, who while less known is significantly more interesting and contributive to overall Marxist discourse on the subject.

We will now go to the years 1939-1948, wherein the charges of "Soviet imperialism" under Stalin are commonplace. It is also when a particularly "national" form of "anti-imperialism" emerges in defense of the "sovereignty" of the right-wing republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, along with the right-wing government of Finland and the overall reactionary government of Poland. A more fundamental discussion on the state itself is also in order.

By 1939 the former Nationalities Commissar was now in control of the Union itself. In the previous years he had been focusing on the coming war between the USSR and Nazi Germany. In between these two states were the aforementioned Baltic states and the Poles, along with the pro-German Finland. Efforts at forming an anti-Nazi alliance between the USSR and the countries of Britain and France fell silent on the side of the latter two states, and the prospect of dealing with Nazi Germany itself was becoming increasingly inevitable.

Grover Furr, Professor at Montclair State University, has written an excellent article on the "division" of Poland entitled "Did the Soviet Union Invade Poland in September 1939?" To summarize, he notes the following:
1. The Germans wanted to invade Poland;
2. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact established the Curzon Line as an area in which the Nazi forces would not be allowed to pass without breaking non-aggression.
3. When the Nazis did invade, the Polish Government essentially fled in a panic and the Nazis declared that there was no one to negotiate with.
4. Since the original protocols of the Pact involved Poland as a state, new negotiations had to be started (as they were by the end of September).
5. Until this time the Nazis could have freely proclaimed a puppet government or protectorate in the territory of the former Polish state.

Days after the initial Nazi invasion, the Soviets entered what was (as Furr notes) generally considered to have been the territory of the former Polish state in order to uphold the Curzon Line as a still-valid border.

As Stalin said to Dimitrov (see the very beginning of this article), Poland as a bourgeois state had ceased existence. But where is the imperialism? More specifically, where is the economic exploitation? Where is the persecution of the Polish people? "National" anti-imperialists point to the "dividing up of Poland" as "proof" of Soviet imperialism in this period, but just because a state falls does not mean that because of that whatever other country caused or hastened its fall must be imperialist.

If one still considers the Soviet intervention to be imperialist; if one still has a "national" fixation on anti-imperialism, this should at least be kept in mind:
"The Red Army stopped at the Bug River, which coincided with the Curzon line, and most Jews were sent to safety beyond the Urals. Among them was a young man by the name of Menachim Begun, later to become premier of Israel, and an inveterate enemy of all things socialist. Still, in his UN speech, December 10, 1945, Albert Einstein expressly noted that only the Soviet Union opened its borders to Jews in 1939 and saved tens of thousands from the Holocaust, almost at a time when a ship seeking safety in Cuba, under Batista, was turned back to Germany. In 1938 the Poland of the Colonels refused to repatriate thousands of Polish Jews from Germany, thus dooming most to death. Choose your morality: immoral to cross the Polish border or moral to save the lives of thousands of Jews?"
(Phillip Bonosky. Devils in Amber: The Baltics. New York: International Publishers. 1992. p. 87.)

What of the Baltic Republics?

A good overview of the whole period of 1917-1991 (with focus on Lithuania) can be found in a previously cited book, Phillip Bonosky's Devils in Amber: The Baltics, and I will have it in mind as I write the following.

The three Baltic states got their start rather ingloriously. Independent from the Russian Empire and its assorted inequalities, a dilemma soon developed after the native Bolsheviks of all 3 states were defeated in civil war: namely, how to achieve self-defense. There is indeed some strength to the argument that if a country is incapable of defending itself that its basis of separate existence (not the separate existence of a nation, obviously) cal be called into question.

While the Baltic states jockeyed for protection from Britain, Germany and (in Estonia's case) Finland, Communists remained persecuted; the NSDAP came to power in Germany in 1933, and tensions arose between not only the Baltic states and the Soviet Union (since all 3 states were by 1939 led by anti-communist dictators), but in the case of Lithuania even Germany and Poland had tensions over it. Poland had occupied the de jure Lithuanian capital of Vilnius since 1920, and Germany had claims to Klaipeda (Memel in German) on account of the region's significant German population.

As Germany looked towards the east it was clear that the Baltics were now free to either enjoy German Fascism or autonomous status within the Soviet Union. As the Baltic states were incapable of self-defense and were impeccably anti-communist, they chose the former. "Lithuania stands under the protection of the German Reich" said the content of a treaty drafted by the Germans after the fall of Poland, successfully topping the previous annexation of Klaipeda by Germany months before as a sign of the pseudo-independence of the Baltic states.

As part of Molotov-Ribbentrop it was decided to allow for the Soviets to intervene in Finnish and Baltic affairs without German interference. Both the Baltic states and Finland had significant Communist movements, and the ability of the USSR to work within both areas with the agreement of German non-intervention seemingly secured sounded like a good deal. When Poland fell and the few days later when the Soviets moved in, Vilnius was given back to Lithuania by the Red Army.

The Baltic states went quickly. Unable to defend themselves, their right-wing governments proved to be wholly dependent on outside support when it came to dealing with the Soviets. To use Lithuania as an example, the Soviets forced the pro-German government to sign a mutual defense treaty. Knowing that despite this the government was obviously still pro-German, Commissar of Foreign Affairs Molotov first called for the Lithuanian Government to dismiss its Interior Minister in order to provide for a more friendly figure on that front. When it became clear that the government was so reactionary yet so undermined by the abandonment of the Germans, Molotov a few days later called for the Lithuanians to form a new government which would work with the Soviet Union.

As American journalist Anna Louise Strong reported:
Quote:
The events of the previous days may be briefly summarized. In early June the Soviet Union had presented an ultimatum, demanding the formation of a government in Lithuania which would fulfill the treaty of mutual assistance signed the previous autumn. The ultimatum was accepted and, on June 15, a considerable force of the Red Army entered the country where smaller units had been present since the signing of the treaty. Tanks, cavalry, infantry in trucks rolled through the streets of Kaunas and passed on to appropriate camping places. They did not mix with the Lithuanians' internal life at all. The Red Army gave concerts and dances to the Lithuanian army, as allied armies should. Otherwise it was known to be out in the woods near the border.

But long-oppressed Lithuanians, whose champions had been thrown into prison for the fourteen years of the Smetona dictatorship, took heart and began to talk and organize. President Smetona fled; Prime Minister Markys thus became president, appointed Justas Paleckis, a brilliant progressive journalist, as prime minister and himself resigned. Thus Paleckis in turn became president and appointed a cabinet of ministers consisting of well-known intellectuals, later adding a few Communists.
Strong continues: "Paleckis' first decree set free about a thousand political prisoners—including Communists and Communist sympathizers. Within a week after Paleckis came to power, the first of the big popular demonstrations took place. Tens of thousands of workers marched through the streets of Kaunas demanding the legalization of the Communist Party, and secured it."

The end of Lithuania as a bourgeois state was imminent. Until then, however, the Lithuanian workers arose in unity. Regardless of what one thinks of Lithuania after it became a Union Republic, Strong's portrayal of the initial days following the fall of Smetona remains interesting:

Quote:
Shumauskas spoke: "To secure a better life for us all, the working class must be organized. Kaunas workers have always been leaders; now you must organize the whole land...

"Choose from your ranks your best organizers to go to all parts of Lithuania over the weekend...."

Hands went up and questions piled in by the dozens. One question suggested another, and the vast variety of them indicated the initiative of the Lithuanian workers and the wide expanse of their problems.

"In factories where committees are already elected, do these stand?"

"For the present, yes," said Shumauskas. "We have already our wage demands for our factory. Shall we present them directly to the boss or bring them to the union meeting?" "The union will make a wage scale for all the factories at once," was the reply....

"The boss is hiring new people, not serious workers but gangsters. Must these be accepted into the union?" "What are the rules for accepting or rejecting members?" "Is membership voluntary or compulsory?" "So far the Communist Party fraction does the organizing in our factory. Will this now be done by the trade union or the Party?" "What shall we do if we see that the owners are trying to close down the factory? This will throw us all out of work."...

"You take the third floor balcony and choose your organizing committee with delegates on it from every textile factory. By tomorrow this committee should be everywhere at work enrolling members and holding elections of factory committees where these have not yet taken place ... Railroad workers to the fourth floor; leather workers the third floor offices; metal workers second floor balcony; printers...."
Elections were held in which women were given the vote. The Communists won. Bonosky notes: "Of the 79 representatives in the new parliament only 38 were Communists. The final makeup of the new parliament (seimas) consisted of 24 peasants, 21 workers, 30 intellectuals, 4 soldiers. By national origin they broke down into 67 Lithuanians, 4 Jews, 3 Poles, 1 Russian, and 1 Latvian." On July 21, 1940, after the previous days were spent pursuing the nationalization of land, the Sejm (legislature) voted to have the country become the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Under Soviet governance not only were the Baltic states allowed to retain their cultural autonomy under an autonomous local government, but their economies grew on an all-round basis. Unlike the Central Asian Republics, we can safely say that the Baltic states were not economically exploited.

But what of the Baltic economies before their admission into the Union? We'll let Bonosky have the last word (p. 156):
Quote:
Between 1920 and 1940, all three Baltic republics were ruled by the bourgeoisie—which meant, by the power of banks, international financial powers, by the clergy and landowners. At the very outset, those who called the tune took steps to cut not only political ties with Russia—to which they had been attached for centuries—but economic ties. Then, as now, the economy of the Baltic countries was intertwined with the economy of Russia. Industry had advanced noticeably in Latvia, with Riga, the capital, having 90,000 workers in a city of less than 500,000 population. The industrial plants manufacturing textiles, shipbuilding, canning, rubber and metal were supplied raw materials from Russia and it was to Russia that the finished products were largely exported.

Obsessed by the drive to separate from Russia, the new rulers of Latvia abruptly cut vital industrial ties, disregarding the catastrophic consequences bound to follow. It was a case of the blind leading the blind—of cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Once the separation was made, key plants immediately shut down. In Riga, the Dvigatel car building plant laid off, or put on short time, 15,000 workers. The Becker wire-drawing factory which had employed 15,000 workers also fired most of them, leaving only less than a thousand on part-time. The Krenhold mills in Narva were cut from 12,000 workers to less than 2,000.

Naively, the new lords of the nation had turned to the West, believing that what they had lost in the Russian market they could recoup in the West. But there is no charity in business. He who lags or falls behind is devoured by the wolves. And, although the West was ready to spend millions (not their own money but the people's) to support an interventionist army, when it came to business, even class loyalty had to yield to what the profit and loss columns said.

Suddenly it was discovered that Latvia (and Lithuania and Estonia) weren't meant to be industrial nations after all. Except for Estonia's shale, they lacked all the necessary sources for building an industrial society—no deposits of coal (peat, yes), no deposits of iron ore, no inexhaustible sources of energy to power industry, no vast prairies for growing grain. Their natural bent was bucolic. It seemed—they were now told—that they had an inborn talent for raising pigs and cows. They were "potato republics."


What of Finland?

We believe that the Finnish situation can be summed in the words of Albert E. Kahn, writing in The Great Conspiracy Against Russia (1946, pp. 348-350):
Quote:
The most intimate working relationship existed between the German and the Finnish High Commands. The Finnish military leader, Baron Karl Gustav von Mannerheim, was in close and constant communication with the German High Command. There were frequent joint staff talks, and German officers periodically supervised Finnish army maneuvers. The Finnish Chief of Staff, General Karl Oesch, had received his military training in Germany, as had his chief aide, General Hugo Ostermann, who served in the German Army during the First World War. In 1939, the Government of the Third Reich conferred upon General Oesch one of its highest military decorations...


With the aid of German officers and engineers, Finland had been converted into a powerful fortress to serve as a base for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Twenty-three military airports had been constructed on Finnish soil, capable of accommodating ten times as many airplanes as there were in the Finnish Air Force... As the Mannerheim Line neared completion in the summer of 1939, Hitler's Chief of Staff, General Halder, arrived from Germany and gave the massive fortifications a final inspection...

During the first week of October, 1939, while still negotiating its new treaties with the Baltic States, the Soviet Government proposed a mutual assistance pact with Finland. Moscow offered to cede several thousand square miles of Soviet territory on central Karelia in exchange for some strategic Finnish islands near Leningrad, a portion of the Karelian Isthmus and a thirty-year lease on the port of Hango for the construction of a Soviet naval base. The Soviet leaders regarded these latter territories as essential to the defense of the Red naval base at Kronstadt and the city of Leningrad.

The negotiations between the Soviet Union and Finland dragged on into the middle of November without results. In order to reach some agreement, the Soviet Government made a number of compromises. "Stalin tried to teach me the wisdom of Finnish as well as Soviet interest in compromise," declared the Finnish negotiator, Juho Passikivi, upon his return to Helsinki. But the pro-Nazi clique dominating the Finnish Government refused to make any concessions and broke off the negotiations.

By the end of November, the Soviet Union and Finland were at war. "The Finnish nation," declared the Finnish Government, "is fighting for independence, liberty and honor... As the outpost of Western civilization, our nation has the right to expect help from other civilized nations."

The anti-Soviet elements in England and France believed that the long-awaited holy war was at hand. The strangely inactive war in the west against Nazi Germany was the "wrong war." The real war lay to the east. In England, France and the United States, an intense anti-Soviet campaign began under the slogan of "Aid to Finland."

Prime Minister Chamberlain, who only a short time before had asserted his country lacked adequate arms for fighting the Nazis, quickly arranged to send to Finland 144 British airplanes, 114 heavy guns, 185,000 shells, 50,000 grenades, 15,700 aerial bombs, 100,000 greatcoats and 48 ambulances. At a time when the French Army was in desperate need of every piece of military equipment to hold the inevitable Nazi offensive, the French Government turned over to the Finnish Army 179 airplanes, 472 guns, 795,000 shells, 5100 machine guns and 200,000 hand grenades.

While the lull continued on the Western Front, the British High Command, still dominated by anti-Soviet militarists like General Ironside, drew up plans for sending 100,000 troops across Scandinavia into Finland, and the French High Command made preparations for a simultaneous attack on the Caucasus, under the leadership of General Weygand, who openly stated that French bombers in the Near East were ready to strike at the Baku oil fields.

Day after day the British, French and American newspapers headlined sweeping Finnish victories and catastrophic Soviet defeats. But after three months of fighting in extraordinarily difficult terrain and under incredibly severe weather conditions, with the temperature frequently falling to sixty and seventy degrees below zero, the Red Army had smashed the "impregnable" Mannerheim Line and routed the Finnish Army.

Hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union ended on March 13, 1940. According to the peace terms, Finland ceded to Russia the Karelian Isthmus, the western and northern shores of Lake Lagoda, a number of strategic islands in the Gulf of Finland essential to the defense of Leningrad. The Soviet Government restored to Finland the port of Petsamo, which had been occupied by the Red Army, and took a thirty-year lease on the Hango peninsula for an annual rental of 8,000,000 Finnish marks.

Addressing the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. on March 29, Molotov declared: -

The Soviet Union, having smashed the Finnish Army and having every opportunity of occupying the whole of Finland, did not do so and did not demand any indemnities for expenditures in the war as any other Power would have done, but confined its desires to a minimum... We pursued no other objects in the peace treaty than that of safeguarding Murmansk and the Murmansk railroad...


The undeclared war of Nazi Germany against Soviet Russia went on...

On the day that Finnish-Soviet hostilities ceased, General Mannerheim declared in a proclamation to the Finnish Army that "the sacred mission of the army is to be an outpost of Western civilization in the east." Shortly afterwards, the Finnish Government began to construct new fortifications along the revised frontier. Nazi technicians came from Germany to supervise the work. Large armament orders were placed with Sweden and Germany. German troops began arriving in considerable numbers in Finland. The Finnish and the German commands set LP joint headquarters and held joint army maneuvers. Scores of Nazi agents swelled the staffs of the German Embassy at Helsinki and the eleven consulates around the country.
A more detailed article on Finland during this period was written for Alliance Marxist-Leninist entitled "The Soviet-Finnish War (1939-40)"

One thing stands out in the minds of those who dispute the defensive nature of the conflict in regards to the Soviets: what of the Finnish Democratic Republic?

This "Democratic Republic" was a stillborn attempt at achieving something akin to Lithuania in between the fall of Smetona and the declaration of Union Republic status (though this does not necessarily mean that Finland was on the road to becoming a SSR if this Republic had come to power). Recognizing the Democratic Republic as the legitimate government of the masses of Finland against war, it was not really remarkable in comparison to the various "popular" (worker-peasant-based) governments set up by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War.

The affiliated Peace and Friendship Society of Finland and Soviet Union was founded shortly after, with around 35,000 members at maximum. It organized protests with the aid of 115 separate branches and became a fairly potent force as far as Communist movements went. Patriotism, however, proved to be particularly strong in Finland. Indeed, Arvo Tuominen, head of the Finnish Communist Party, was selected as the leader of the newly constituted Democratic Republic. Instead Tuominen (then in Sweden) refused to cooperate and spent the rest of the war condemning the Soviet Union, Communism in general, and advocating the continuance of Finnish war against the Soviets. He died a right-wing social-democrat.

With the prospect of open British intervention by the Western Powers and perhaps even German intervention in spite of the non-aggression pact, it was decided to simply agree to the terms previously negotiated which would give the USSR leases on various territories in which it could defend Leningrad against the prospect of a German invasion. The Democratic Republic unceremoniously ceased existence just as Transcaucasia had.

Finnish nationalism reared its head once more in 1948. As with Lithuania, the Soviets wanted to ensure a government which would not be opposed to further treaties with the Union. Yrjö Leino, who would son pull a Tuominen, became Interior Minister of the Finnish Government.

The anti-Soviet yet interesting article "Stalin's Insistent Endeavors at Conquering Finland" by Carl O. Nordling shall now be used.

The Soviet Union was hoping for more Communists to enter and for propaganda to spread among the workers and government officials, among the police and the army, etc. Instead this is what happened:
Quote:
Said Zhdanov: "Dismiss the old police commissioners and appoint new ones."

Leino: "That would be against the Constitution."

Zhdanov: "What the hell are you talking about? Those are the laws of the bourgeois regime, but don't you know that you are supposed to serve the proletariat on your post as Minister of the Interior?"

Leino: "I still have to follow the law that remains in force in Finland."

Zhdanov: "In that case you must institute laws that conform better with our aims."
Matters deteriorated throughout 1948. "Zhdanov accused Leino of being responsible for the decrease in the Communist votes in the recent elections and for not having secured any Communist influence in the Confederation of Trade Unions. He then told Leino: 'The Soviet Government have dealt with your case and decided that you must resign from your post as Minister of the Interior.' A few days after this incident, Zhdanov complained to Milovan Djilas: 'We made a mistake in not occupying Finland. Everything would have been set up if we had.'"

Leino, still Interior Minister, was allegedly asked to play his part in a coup d'état against the Finnish Government. The coup was to involve the Communist-infiltrated police. Amid discussions and the imminent ratification of a Mutual Aid Pact between the Soviet and Finnish Governments, the Head of the Helsinki Police Force disarmed the whole Mobile Police Force just two days before the plot was to come into action. The attempted coup, then, became an epic failure. Leino joined Tuominen in becoming an anti-communist social-democrat.

Conclusions?

The 1948 attempt at securing popular government "from above" was, if indeed true, utterly desperate. But was it imperialism? Was Soviet involvement in the Baltic states imperialism?

What, exactly, is imperialism?

Imperialism is, essentially, economic exploitation. It has little to do with "national" concerns. When anyone opposes imperialism, we should know well not to point to any "extraordinary" attributes in the cultures of anyone. We do not talk of "fair" Lebanese or "good-willed Zimbabweans." The capitalist system has imperialism as its highest stage; national discrimination follows with a peculiar exploitation of entire peoples on such grounds as can constitute imperialism and neo-colonialism.

One interesting thing to note, however, is the extreme caution required in "exporting" the revolution. Had the alleged Finnish coup been carried out, how many people would condemn the coup and proclaim the "glories" of the Finnish nation?

With Stalin's death and the formation of the Warsaw Pact in 1955 one could see a far more significant basis for claiming Soviet imperialism. The USSR no longer looked at itself as an exporter of revolution, but rather as a "defender" of Russian interests. The 1968 Czechoslovak invasion was a sign of Soviet social-imperialism to solidify the Russian grip over the states which it dominated. The foundations of the anti-revisionist movement in the 1960s showed the ideological and economic degeneracy of the Soviet revisionists.

In 1979 the Soviets invaded an allegedly "socialist" nation (Afghanistan) and killed its hitherto "socialist" leader because he (Hafizullah Amin) had wanted independence from the Soviet sphere. Though the Soviets under Stalin had employed treaties to undermine bourgeois regimes, the revisionists used these same tactics to unseat "disloyal" figures within governments. The "Socialist division of labor" as preached by Khrushchev and Co. condemned economic diversification in favor of a Warsaw Pact economy that ultimately revolved around Soviet interests.

The USSR, the "reservoir" of international socialism, could not have been more bastardized.

In the end it should be apparent that the support of native Communist movements is the goal of all Socialist Governments. All Communists should be wary of "exporting" revolutions, and especially of issuing "top-down" revolutions, if only because such revolutions undermine the role of the proletariat itself—or at least run the risk of doing so.

The alleged coup attempt in Finland in 1948—if it was indeed true—represents two things:
1. To Communists it should represent a "new world" which was to witness the growth of distinctly non-socialist and pseudo-socialist (e.g. Nasserism and "African Socialism") trends. In such conditions, as Enver Hoxha noted, "the programs of these communist parties were reduced more and more to democratic and reformist minimum programs, while the idea of the revolution and socialism became ever more remote. The major strategy of the revolutionary transformation of society gave way to the minor strategy about current problems of the day which was absolutized and became the general political and ideological line."

2. To Communists it should also represent the rise of the USSR to a new position within world affairs. No longer had it become an isolated and poverty-stricken state which felt besieged on all fronts in a battle for its very existence. It had become, in a geopolitical sense, a world power. The intertwining of the interests of the world communist movement and of Soviet interests, and the subsequent tying-together of both in the eyes of the Marxist-Leninist movement on a worldwide basis, could only produce tragedy in the years to come.

Perhaps, then, it would be wise to follow the words of Stalin in 1936.

"You see, we Marxists believe that a revolution will also take place in other countries. But it will take place only when the revolutionaries in those countries think it possible, or necessary. The export of revolution is nonsense. Every country will make its own revolution if it wants to, and if it does not want to, there will be no revolution. For example, our country wanted to make a revolution and made it, and now we are building a new, classless society.

But to assert that we want to make a revolution in other countries, to interfere in their lives, means saying what is untrue, and what we have never advocated."
(Interview Between J. Stalin and Roy Howard. March 1, 1936. Works, Vol. 14. Red Star Press Ltd., London, 1978.)

And at this same time we should keep in mind our internationalist perspective on imperialism, and we should not err on the side of bourgeois regimes and their "self-determination" to exploit the workers. The state is an organ of class struggle, so to speak of any "national" defense against "imperialism" (as applied in the debates over the Baltic states and Poland, specifically) would be in error. The issue of anti-imperialism should always be tied up with and serving the interests of fighting (and strangling) capitalism.
]]> RevLeft Articles Ismail http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=128292 http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=128292 The Production and Consumption of Media http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Che-lives/~3/IG_2N5n22Ow/showthread.php Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:03:38 GMT Literature is an important communication medium whose analysis can provide a deeper understanding of the interests, lives and perceptions of those... Literature is an important communication medium whose analysis can provide a deeper understanding of the interests, lives and perceptions of those who read and write it.

I say “read and write” because I think that mode, degree and focus of the consumption of literary works is perhaps more important than the actual creative process – that is, the ideas and perceptions which cause someone to write a piece of literature, as well as the method and character of that production. When journalists report on issues, it is a lot more meaningful (in regards to the study of literature as a cultural phenomenon, at least), for instance, what papers are being read rather than the specifics of what is being reported. An unpopular journalist may indeed provide a much clearer, honest expression of the issue s/he discusses, but if their articles are largely being ignored, they can only provide a valuable asset to understanding the issue, not the character of literature in society.

Subsequently, I would say this of literature: while it is a very real expression of the lives and thoughts of those who write it, I would be wary of investing much trust in the medium in general. History, for instance, is almost uniformly understood through the eyes of specific historians and authors who documented their own ideas. It is for this reason that ancient and classical history especially suffer from a very narrow perspective provided solely from a few, crucial and overbearing sources. In turn, contemporary literature suffers from a similar bottleneck, which occurs more through the presence of mainstream media and the uniformity of primary education, as well as the honing of the perceived interests of the American people through other forms of social and economic conditioning.

As an American, and for the aforementioned reasons, literature can be a serious asset or a serious hindrance in the furtherance of our own interests as a people. To study historical sources in our society, be they fiction or nonfiction, is to have a certain one-way relationship with a viewpoint which has passed, and the social, educational and economic conditions which created these viewpoints may or may not continue to present themselves in society. It is my opinion, therefore, that as American people we should be consistently and reiteratively studying and criticizing all major forms of communication. Those who have serious criticisms of literature should be heard and understood, because all democratic function relies on the fundamental respect and understanding of those who present an attack on the established social norms.
Above all else, though, the interests of those who participate in the production and consumption of communications, especially those involved in the possession of the assets needed to produce such communications, should be intimately understood, and all communications derived from these sources must be judged from this perspective. If this is not achieved, which I don’t think it is to any serious, widespread degree, we will have what Adam Smith would describe as “a conspiracy against the public” by those who control the resources needed to produce and widely disseminate communication, especially literature. ]]> RevLeft Articles Dean http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=128150 http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?t=128150