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ABC of Marxism
The theory and program of Marxism analyse human society and describe the goal of the working class movement. They do not include the means by which the program is realized. These means are summed up in the laws of strategy, tactics and organization. Strategy consists of the general principles underlying the whole system of day-to-day actions, by which these partial struggles are developed into a broad revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system. Tactics. “By party tactics we mean the political behavior of the party, or the character, tendency and methods of its political work.” – Lenin. Correct tactics are the actions, maneuvers and methods by which strategic aims and, finally, the program are attained. False tactics hamper the movement. In critical situations tactics are decisive for the life and death of the movement. Setting the date for the insurrection in October 1917 led to the seizure of power. Setting it too early or too late would have meant a smashing defeat.
Day-To-Day Tactics: The United Front, as developed by the Bolsheviks under Lenin, is a tactic for uniting the masses in action against the capitalist class through temporary agreements with working class organizations for immediate demands. Since the opportunists split the working class politically, unity can be achieved only when the Marxist party succeeds in separating the workers from their opportunists leaders and winning them for communism.
Union and Unemployed Work: The Marxist party takes as its basis for trade union and unemployed work the fight against class collaboration and for class struggle policies. To be successful in union strategy the workers should fight every struggle on two fronts: against the capitalists and against their labor agents in the unions. The following are some of the main lines of revolutionary strategy in the unions:
Revolutionary Parliamentarism: The elections system today, unlike the preceding epoch, can no longer be used to improve the lot of the working class.
“It is the immediate historic task of the working class to tear this apparatus out of the hands of the ruling class, to break it and destroy it, and to create in its place a new proletarian apparatus.” – Theses of the II Congress of the C.I.
Election Campaigns are carried on to secure the maximum mobilization of the masses around slogans of proletarian revolution. The campaigns, wherever possible, are conducted in closest contact with strikes, demonstrations and movements among soldiers and sailors.
Negro Question: American capitalism freed the Negro from chattel slavery and integrated him into the economic structure, but it did so on the basis of race subjugation and double exploitation. The industrialization of the South is transforming him from a share-cropper into a propertyless and unemployed worker. In the North he is an essential part of the proletariat in the basic industries.
Imperialism dominates the Negro populations of Latin America: Haiti, Santo Domingo, Brazil, etc.
The Negro question can be solved only by proletarian revolution. The class conscious worker of the Negro race in the United States has the historic task of sharing the leadership of the workers’ struggle both in the United States and in the suppressed Latin American countries and throughout the world. The white worker has the greater responsibility in cementing the unity of the black and white workers. The main slogans for this fight are: Full economic, political and social equality! Whites and Negro workers – smash Jim Crowism! Armed defense against lynch law!
The Youth Question: Conditions of working class youth in all capitalist countries are miserable. Working longer hours for lower wages, underfed, underdeveloped, deprived of the leisure and means for higher education, deprived of political rights, the first victims of capitalist war and militarism, the working class youth is faced with special conditions giving him a unique place in the class struggle. It is the primary task of the party to defend their rights to social and cultural opportunities from the greed of capitalism for cheap labor. In the course of this struggle special tactics, demands and forms of organization are created.
Work in the Army and Navy: Persistent and systematic propaganda and agitation is necessary in the armed forces where communist groups should be formed. Wherever such work is suppressed it must be done illegally. Refusal to carry on such work is equal to treason to the revolutionary cause.
Illegal work: Communists can have no confidence in bourgeois laws. As the class struggle enters the phase of civil war, or in time of reactionary attacks on the proletariat, or in time of war, the bourgeoisie will make arrests, indictments, raids on union and party halls for the purpose of gagging it. Illegal forms of agitation and organization must be prepared beforehand to function alongside of the legal apparatus so that the communists will be able to carry on their work when it is proscribed.
A revolutionary situation occurs when:
Dual Power:
“What constitutes dual power? The fact that, by the side of the government of the bourgeoisie there developes another, as yet weak, embryonic, but undoubtedly real and growing government – Councils of Workers and Soldiers Representatives ... The fundamental characteristics of this type of power are: (1) it originates not in law previously considered and passed by parliament but in the direct initiative of the masses from below, in outight ‘seizure’, to use a popular expression; (2) instead of the police and the army (institutions separated from and opposed to the people) there is the direct arming of the whole people’s orderly government is thus insured by the armed workers and farmers themselves, by the armed people itself; (3) officials, bureaucrats are either displaced by the direct rule of the people, or at any rate, placed under special control; officers are not only elected by the people but are also subject to recall at the initiative of the people; they are reduced to the position of plain representatives; from a privileged social stratum, occupying snug, highly remunerative ‘berths’ they are changed in workers, skilled in handling certain ‘tools’, receiving salaries not exceeding those of average skilled workers …” – Lenin
The Insurrection: The very possibility of proletarian insurrection implies an extremely advanced disintegration of the capitalist state. Civil war in general and the armed insurrection in particular must be studied.
“To be successful the uprising must be based not on a conspiracy, not on a party, but on the advanced class. That is the first point. The uprising must be based on the revolutionary upsurge of the people. This is the second point. The uprising must be based on the crucial point in the history of the maturing revolution, when the activity of the vanguard of the people is at its height, when the vacillations in the ranks of the enemies, and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted undecided friends of the revolutions are at their highest point. This is the third point.” – Lenin
The Insurrection and the General Strike: The working class cannot achieve victory over the bourgeoisie by means of the general strike alone, by the policy of folded arms. In conjunction with the armed uprising, however, the general strike becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of the proletariat to paralyse capitalist state power.
The Agrarian Question: Under the leadership of the city industrial and agricultural proletariat the small, tenant and share-cropping farmers who constitute the majority of the agrarian population, can save themselves from the ruin of capitalist landlordism and imperialist wars only through the overthrow of capitalism. They are economically, socially and morally benefited by the victory of the proletariat. After the workers have taken power and the owners of large estates and the capitalists have been done away with, after they are able to see in practice that the working class is their organized leader and helper, powerful and firm in its guidance, the farmers will constitute an important support of the proletarian dictatorship. But not the landed farmers, rural bankers and plantation owners. They are capitalists in agriculture. The small, tenant and share-cropping farmer, under the leadership of the working class, will deal a crushing blow to this reactionary class. Their estates will be confiscated without compensation.
The Revolution in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies: The spread of imperialism, the investment of capital in the backward colonial countries such as China, India, Cuba, has given birth to a native bourgeoisie which, in its desire to expand, comes into conflict with the capitalists of the great powers. A vital working class has arisen in these countries which, together with the peasantry, is doubly oppressed: by imperialism and by its own bourgeoisie. These conditions continue to create revolutionary situations which threaten to destroy the foundations of capitalism. Movements for redistribution of land and national liberation have given rise to numerous uprisings which have been suppressed, as in China, India, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc. The first stages of the colonial revolution are agrarian, anti-imperialist, national liberationist and are fought in cooperation with the native bourgeoisie. Under the leadership of the Marxists the masses pass through the struggle for petty-bourgeois reforms such as the redivision of the land to the organization of peasants and workers councils and the establishment of the workers state.
In such struggles the colonial bourgeoisie finds itself in a peculiar position. To fight the imperialists it needs the workers and peasants. But for fear the workers and peasants will get out of hand and destroy it, it cannot bring the struggle for national liberation and democratic rights to completion. As the masses begin to show independent strength, the bourgeoisie, to save its neck, makes alliances with the imperialists powers against the workers and peasants. Therefor the colonial problem cannot be solved by the bourgeoisie. The aims of the colonial nationalists movements everywhere are to win freedom for the native bourgeoisie to dominate the country. But it is for liberation from capitalism as a whole that the workers and peasants struggle.
The colonial Marxist party strives to develope class consciousness in the working class, to overthrow capitalism and establish a workers republic. Proletarian revolutions in the colonies undermine world capitalism. It is the historic task of the working class and the Marxist parties in the imperialist countries, therefore, to collaborate with the colonial Marxist parties for the general advancement of the revolutionary movement.
The National Question: The imperialist war of 1914–18, the twenty one years of “peace” and the events of the last few years clearly demonstrate the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie with regard to the freedom of small nations and national self-determination. The League of Nations was an insurance policy by which the victors of 1918 guaranteed their gains by tearing some states asunder and artificially creating others. The vanquished nations began to work for the “re-union of alienated territories” to gather forces for new wars. While the proletariat is interested in re-uniting nationalities artificially torn asunder, this can be accomplished only by the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Equality of nations is impossible under capitalism. For the establishment of national equality a free federation of workers’ republics is necessary.
Tasks of the Proletarian Dictatorship: The first task of the proletarian dictatorship is to defeat the exploiters completely, to crush their resistance, to render impossible any attempts on their part to reimpose the yoke of capitalism. The second task is to inspire, enlighten, or organize, instruct, and discipline the entire mass of workers and those exploited by capital, to wrench this enormous majority of the population in all capitalist countries out of their state of dependence on the bourgeoisie, to instil confidence in them through practical experience, in the leading role of the proletariat, and its revolutionary vanguard. The third is to neutralize or render harmless the inevitable fluctuations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between bourgeois democracy and the workers power, on the part of the small owners and proprietors in agriculture, industry, commerce and the layers of intellectuals, employees, etc. The fourth task is to extend the revolution to other countries, as summarized in the theses of the Second Congress of the Comintern:
“Proletarian internationalism ... demands (1) the subordination of the interests of that struggle on an international scale. (2) the capability and readiness on the part of any one nation which has gained a victory over the bourgeoisie of making the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capitalism.”
“The emancipation of labor is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists.” – Preamble and Rules of the International Workingmen’s Association (First International)
These tasks make possible the great historic objective of the complete reorganization of economy, the transformation of industry and agriculture into a production plant based on social need and the scrapping of the entire profit system, the creation of a new social discipline and a free union of free workers.
The strategy of the bourgeoisie in imperialist war is summed up by Lenin as follows:
“To seize lands and to conquer foreign nations, to ruin competing nations, to pillage their wealth, to divert the attention of the laboring masses from domestic political crisis ..., to disunite the workers and fool them with nationalism, to annihilate their vanguards in order to weaken the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, such is the real essence, the significance and meaning of the present war.” – War and the Second International
Imperialist wars shake the foundations of capitalist society and heap unbearable burdens on the working class.
Revolutionary Defeatism: The workers have no interest in the defense of the “fatherland”. Under no conditions, directly or indirectly, can the support of a war conducted by an imperialist government be justified. On the contrary, the class and its party must fight such a war.
“Turning the ... imperialist war into civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan ... however difficult such a transformation may appear at one time or another, socialists will never relinquish systematic, resistant, unflinching preparatory work in this direction once the war has become a fact.”
“Revolution in war time is civil war; and the TRANSFORMATION of war between governments into civil war is, on the one hand, facilitated by military reverses (‘defeats’) of governments; on the other hand, it is IMPOSSIBLE really to strive for such a transformation without thereby facilitating defeat ... THIS SLOGAN ALONE implies a consistent appeal for revolutionary action against one’s own government in wartime.” – Lenin
To the social reformists who advocate “revolutionary national defense” in one form or another, the class conscious proletariat answers: only on condition that state power is on the hands of the proletariat.
The frenzy with which the capitalist class embraces fascism is explained economically by the falling rate of profit which forces them to more ruthless exploitation of the working class. The resistance of the working class to these measures is met by fascist policy when other government forms fail. Bands of declassed petty-bourgeoisie crazed by the collapse of capitalism are organized by finance capital to smash the workers, to disorganized them, and annihilate their organizations and leadership.
Marxism counterposes the social revolution to fascism as the solution of the crisis of capitalism. This task is approached through the tactics of the united front of labor organizations for defense of democratic rights, based on extra-parliamentary mass action. These united defense actions consolidate the proletariat, give it confidence in its own strength. Eventually the struggle for democratic rights developes into an offense against fascist reaction. The proletariat arms itself, organizes and centralizes its councils, military committees and militias into national councils of workers’ representatives (dual power) which challenges and finally overthrows the bourgeois state and establishes the workers’ state. In countries where fascism has conquered, the scattered proletariat reassembles its forces by underground activity. While the proletarian organizations can be destroyed, the proletariat itself cannot be, since it is essential to capitalist production. Underground struggles for democratic rights under fascism, not with the perspective of the restoration of an outworn bourgeois democracy but for the building of a movement led by the proletariat for the establishment of a worker’ republic. There is as yet no historical precedent for this development, but Marxian science points to this course as the revolutionary solution of the historic contradictions of fascism.
A party cannot be satisfied with the best of programs. A Marxist program is indispensable but it is in itself not sufficient. The party must know how to apply this program to the conditions within the country, within sections of the country, within given struggles, and within different stages of the class struggle. By correct application of the program the party is enabled to reach the masses. Theory and action are coordinated in one application.
The Party and the Class: In capitalist society there are only two decisive class forces: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The historic mission of one is to maintain the capitalist system, that of the other is to overthrow it. The petty-bourgeoisie is unable to create its own state or party. All so-called parties of the petty-bourgeoisie are in reality bourgeois parties. Where several capitalist parties exist they serve the special interests of bourgeois groups. By claiming to represent the interests of the oppressed classes they really aim to tie them to the bourgeoisie. Anti-trust parties, farmer parties, farmer-labor parties, progressive parties, labor parties, reformist workers parties (Social-Democratic or Salinistic) – in fact all parties except the class party of the proletariat are therefore bourgeois parties whose special purposes are subordinated to the common aims of that class, that of defending the rule of the bourgeoisie and its state. The fact that certain parties appeal to and recruit their members from the working class does not make of them parties of the proletariat. There is and can be but one such party, that which works for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Two Class Parties: The interests of two classes cannot be represented by one party, without subordinating the interests of one class to the other, small proprietors to the big capitalists, or workers to small owners (and through them to the big capitalists). Under no circumstances, said Lenin in 1906, may the non-possessors organize together with the possessors, “even though they be small ones, even though they ‘labor’.”
A Labor Party is a reformist bourgeois party. It is an instrument of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, and secondly an instrument of the petty-bourgeoisie who utilize the workers for their purposes against the big bourgeoisie. The aim of the Labor Party is to reform (i.e. support) capitalism. Affiliation to a Labor Party means subjectively to most workers in the United States a step forward to independent political action. But in terms of the class interests of the workers it is a step backward. The Labor Party builds up a philosophy of gradualism, legality, parliamentarism, and thus prevents the workers from taking real steps toward independent political action. Objectively, therefore, the Labor Party is not a preparation for the formation of a revolutionary class party, as the centrists claim, but is the most effective way of blocking it. It is a trap for holding the workers back from the road to revolution. The role of the British Labor Party, the American Labor Party, the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party as a brake on the development of the proletariat should be sufficient warning against building this formidable obstacle to the road to power. The party is an instrument of STATE POWER. There is only ONE road to power, and only ONE kind of party that can lead to this goal: the revolutionary Marxist party.
There can be no such thing as a REVOLUTIONARY Labor Party. All such parties are reformist. They deny the role of the Marxist party. Such substitutes cannot fill the bill. They pave the way for war and fascism, just as the reformist Social-Democracy did in 1914, in 1922 in Italy and in 1933 in Germany. Only a revolutionary class party can lead the struggle against WAR AND FASCISM.
Syndicalism: In contrast to Marxism, syndicalism (economism) is the point of view that political consciousness, active leadership, and a mass movement must spring or develop spontaneously from the economic struggle. It glorifies the backwardness of the working class and shirks the issues arising from the struggle for power and the necessity of a revolutionary party.
“The basic error (in economism) is the idea that political consciousness can be developed in the workers from within out of, for example, the economic struggle; that is, proceeding entirely or mainly from this struggle ... Political consciousness can only be impressed on the workers from the ourside; that is, outside the economic struggle, outside the sphere of the relations between workers and employers.” – Lenin
Without an independent political party, the working class is like a body without a head.
Composition of the Party:
“Men must be trained who will devote to the revolution not only their free evenings, but their whole lives; an organization must be developed of such dimensions that within it there can be carried out a precise division of labor for the various kinds of work that we want of them.” – What Is to Be Done
The party must be formed of the best, most intelligent, self-sacrificing and far-seeing workers. Advanced workers reach class consciousness in different ways, at different times. The working class as a whole does not participate in the creation and development of the party, but only the advanced workers, the vanguard. The dilution of the party by inclusion of sections of the mass who are still permeated with bourgeois ideology renders the party unfit for its historical task and its day to day activity in the class struggle.
Character of the Party:
The Party and the Revolution: The party is the driving force, the nerve center and the inspiration of the proletarian revolution. Without it the working class cannot seize power and hold it, no matter how favorable the objective factors may be, no matter how heroic and self-sacrificing its struggle may be.
The Party and the Workers Councils: The working class cannot take power through the existing governmental apparatus. It can do so only by smashing the state machinery of the capitalist class and establishing in its place its own state power. This power is the workers councils, a representative dictatorship by the working class against any and all who would destroy this rule. By graining a wide influence and the majority within the councils, the revolutionary party of Marxism enables these councils to carry out their historic functions as instruments of the revolution. The party directs the work of the councils as well as of the revolutionaries industrial unions. “Left” communists assert that the party must “adapt” itself to the ideas prevailing in the councils. This is a hazy expression of the reactionary idea that the party should dissolve itself into the councils and that the councils should take over the functions of the party. To perform its historic duty, the party must not adapt itself to the vacillating ideas that may prevail at certain points in the council, but must see to it that the councils do not adapt themselves to the bourgeoisie and to their opportunist agents. Conversely, no concession can be made to those who advocate the “democratic” coexistence under the dictatorship of parties who oppose a complete proletarian revolution alongside of the revolutionary Marxist party.
The Party and the Proletarian Dictatorship: The role of the party after the acquisition of power by the working class becomes more important than before. By having within its ranks the best part of the working class it is possible for the party to overcome the difficulties that arise in the dictatorship after the victory of the proletariat. The problem of organizing the Red Army, the practical abolition of the bourgeois government machine, the construction in its place of a new proletarian state apparatus, the struggle against local and provincial “patriotism”, clearing the way for the creation of a new cooperative labor discipline - in all these undertakings decisive leadership is given by the party, whose members by their own example animate, guide the majority of the workers./archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/index.htm
The Withering Away of the Party: The necessity for a political party of the proletariat ceases with the complete abolition of classes. The party will disappear when Communism ceases to be an object of struggle, and the whole of society shall become communist.
The Communist Manifesto – [Marx & Engels] pp. 30–1 (International Publishers)
Theses on the Role of the Party – II Congress of the CI
Infantile Sickness of Leftism – Lenin
Civil War in France – Marx
What Is To Be Done – Lenin
War and the Second International – Lenin
Road to Power – Karl Kautsky
Militarism and Anti-Militarism – Karl Liebknecht
History of Russian Revolution – Trotsky: Vol. III
Lenin on Organization – Art of Insurrection
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Last updated: 7 August 2019