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{ "content": "Cochran and the other editors of the American Socialist were reared in the Leninist school and played a considerable role in building the Socialist Workers party and defending its basic principles. They were an integral part of the Trotskyist cadre shaped in hard struggles such as the one against the Shachtman-Burnham deserters. Their break, beginning in 1952, with the program, theory and tradition of the SWP understandably resulted in a severe internal struggle.The Cochran group did not, of course, commence with an open declaration against Marxism and against the Leninist concept of the party. As Rosa Luxemburg observed in 1899 in her instructive essay against the reformist revisionism of Eduard Bernstein:“To expect an opposition against scientific socialism, at its very beginning, to express itself clearly, fully and to the last consequence on the subject of its real content; to expect it to deny openly and bluntly the theoretic basis of Social Democracy [Marxism] – would amount to underrating the power of scientific socialism. Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time would declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine. On this account, we must, unconcerned by its outer forms, pick out the sheathed kernel of Bernstein’s theory.” (Reform or Revolution?)The revisionists of the Cochran group ran true to form in this respect. For some time they held to ambiguous formulas with double meanings which could be read different ways by different people. In the Socialist Workers party a minority is guaranteed full opportunity to present its views but the Cochranites were slow to spell out their thinking.When they finally made their position more or less clear it went as follows: Trotskyism was all right in its time but the events of the postwar world have upset the old Trotskyist conceptions. The Stalinists were able to lead a revolution in China, they argued. In Eastern Europe the Kremlin initiated a bureaucratically rigged social revolution. With Stalin’s death, Malenkov and the other heirs of the dictator turned toward democratic reforms. Here in the US the Reuther wing of the labor officialdom is to the left of the workers in some respects. Now if revolutions, however distorted, can be led by Stalinists and without a Marxist program, and some labor bureaucrats are quite leftist, who are we to say that it can’t happen that way right here in America? Then what’s the point of insisting on the need for a Leninist combat party? Why make sacrifices for socialist ideals? Why go through the ordeal of election campaigns with limited forces? Why put time and energy in party-building projects?To understand this mood it is helpful to recall the social pressures at the time. The Korean War was still on. The McCarthyite witch hunt was mounting in fury. The trade-union bureaucracy had been transformed into a direct agency of the cold war and was collaborating with the FBI in hounding radicals out of the plants and unions. Less dramatic, perhaps, but profoundly important in its effects was the transformation taking place in what had formerly been the most militant and advanced section of the American working class. A DOZEN years of war and armaments boom substantially changed the economic position and political outlook of the militant industrial workers of the thirties. This was supplemented by the cold-war hysteria. The normal influx of youth into the radical movement was reduced to a trickle. These were rough years for a revolutionary party, rough on the nerves, rough on staying power and on the composition of the membership. The Cochran faction in the last analysis reflected this heavy pressure by falling into a mood of despondency and inclination to give up what seemed like a lost cause.It might appear that the developments of this period elsewhere in the world should have offset the pressures bearing down on American radicals. The Chinese revolution had gained a sweeping victory against imperialism and its native supporters; in Korea its forces had held back the world’s most powerful imperialist army; in Eastern Europe capitalism had been replaced by workers states even if via military-bureaucratic action and without the independent revolutionary struggle of the masses. In Western Europe powerful mass Communist and Socialist parties and trade unions still existed although capitalism had succeeded in regaining relative stability. Situations like the general strike in France in the summer of 1933 indicated the workers’ urge to struggle.Yet, through doctrinaire reasoning, the Cochran group responded to these encouraging international developments in a pessimistic and demoralized way. Instead of seeing in these world revolutionary advances, whatever their form, a source of fresh confidence and inspiration, a vertification of the theory of Marxism, they became disoriented. The revolutionary advances took place without first settling accounts with Stalinism. Therefore, they argued, Trotskyism (or “the old Trotskyism”) had to be “junked” and everything rethought from the beginning. As if Marxist analysis could be reduced to a simple logical sequence and its power judged on how perfectly this sequence fitted the actual history of the destruction of Stalinism!Instead of seeing the revolutionary advances as a premise for further progress of the international socialist movement and therefore as a prelude to the most profound crisis of Stalinism, they took the momentary appearance for the whole reality. The Communist parties in China, Yugoslavia, etc., stood at the head of the movement, they reasoned. Therefore, this brought into question the need for Leninist-type revolutionary parties in bringing about a successful revolutionary change.The consequences of such reasoning – or, better, such emotional reaction – could not but be devastating to a disheartened group in the US. If Stalinism, or labor bureaucracies in general, can act as the prime agencies of social change, why bother to build a Leninist party in the US? Every effort involving party building became intolerably burdensome to them." }

{ "content": "A section of the Cochran group was composed of trade unionists who had experienced in their own way some wear and tear. Beginning as militants devoted to the socialist cause, these unionists had become isolated and softened with prosperity until they came to feel that nothing “real” or tangible was left in the Marxist program. They were ripe for systematic adaptation to the “reality” in the labor movement; that is, to the powerful bureaucratic machines that proscribe organized socialist activity.In this the Cochran group was hardly guilty of innovation. During the rise of the CIO almost every section of the radical movement was ridden with the opportunist disease of finding new virtues in the labor bureaucracy or the equally fatal sectarian disease of “rejecting” the CIO because it was headed by the bureaucracy. The American Trotskyist movement, however, retained its Marxist balance. It stressed the dual character of the development – the enormous progressive significance of the appearance of industrial unionism and the new ground for struggle it gave against the regrouped and reinforced labor bureaucracy. The Trotskyists saw the CIO as the auspicious beginning of the mass radicalization of the American workers, requiring more than ever a revolutionary left wing and continuous struggle against the capitalist-minded labor bureaucracy.The Cochran group was familiar with this. Some of them were organizers during the rise of the CIO. But they seemed to suffer from amnesia. They looked at world phenomenon comparable in its main lines to their own experience as if it were utterly without precedent. This reaction to the big world events, which was really a way of caving in to isolation and prosperity-reaction resulted in a pell mell flight from Marxism, a new and awed attitude towards entrenched bureaucracies and a general throwing overboard of principles, program and – above all – “tradition.”Unfortunately, this is still not the whole story. Marxists are capable of withstanding pressures greater than these. To suffer such precipitous collapse one more impulsion was required: authoritative backing from within the Trotskyist movement itself. This they received from a most unexpected source, a source that should have remained firmly against them, the group in the European Trotskyist movement in charge of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International.This was an important test of the world Trotskyist movement since the assassination of its founder. The challenge of the Cochran group to the basic ideas of Trotskyism raised a question of international importance: does the Trotskyist movement represent the continuity of Leninism? Were the cadres assembled by Trotsky capable of carrying on the work after his death? History has answered these questions in the affirmative, we believe, but the answers were not given without struggles.In response to the new world developments since World War II, the group of Trotskyists entrusted with the grave responsibility of co-ordinating the international efforts of the Trotskyist movement, began to see “new features” in Stalinism, not in the sense of its decay but in its possibly playing a progressive role under certain circumstances. Ordinarily such new opinions in the Fourth International and organizations like the Socialist Workers party which sympathize with it are submitted to rigorous and fully democratic discussion. In the process differences are generally resolved without too much difficulty. However, the incipient conciliationism towards Stalinism displayed by this European Trotskyist group, which was headed by Michel Pablo, greatly encouraged such groups as the Cochranites. On top of this Pablo used his formal authority as secretary to encourage and inspire the Cochran group to more vigorous action along the course it had taken. UNDOUBTEDLY Pablo regarded Cochran with some hopes in 1954 as a possible American protagonist. Cochran, however, wasn’t interested in any subtle revisions of the Trotskyist program, once he had launched his faction on a course of split. He wasn’t interested in conciliation with Stalinism. As subsequent events showed, Cochran was moving away from Marxism without any intention of taking it stage by stage in the manner described by Rosa Luxemburg. But while he was forming his faction he was not averse to using the authority of Pablo for the moment to pick up support from Trotskyist workers in the US intensely devoted to the concept of internationalism. In fact, he couldn’t have taken many of them with him in his break from the Socialist Workers party without this assistance from Pablo. Under fire from the SWP majority, Cochran needed the cover and direct assistance supplied by Pablo.This is the bitter truth about what happened. It is a tragic irony that immediately after the split, the Cochran group was designated by the Pablo leadership as the “official Trotskyists” in the United States. This probably gave the Cochran group some amusement. They shortly explained to their European allies that they hadn’t the slightest intention of playing such a game and in fact weren’t much interested in further correspondence.While we are on the point, we might add that Pablo’s role in encouraging this kind of a split-off from the Marxist movement in the US was reproduced in both France and England. The startling shift of the Lawrence group in England and the Mestre group in France from Trotskyism to Stalinism demonstrated that when a revisionist tendency is in flight from revolutionary socialism, it is unwise to take surface adherence to the phrases of Marxism for good coin. And it is fatal to provide such groups with the cover of subtle arguments to facilitate their transition to the camp of anti-Marxism, as Pablo did.Pablo and his group did not follow Cochran. Undoubtedly they were even surprised by its “sudden” evolution to anti-Trotskyism. This did not say much for the capacity of these leaders to forsee and to prepare – and not to persist in repeating the same mistake because of prestige considerations.Six months following the split of the Cochran group from the SWP, Harry Braverman, one of its leaders, summed up its “achievements” in a speech published in the June 1954 Educator, a mimeographed publication. Braverman said:“We carried through the split and re-formed our ranks in excellent order. We remained just about 100% solid.”" }

{ "content": "The major accomplishment, according to Braverman, in addition to the launching of the American Socialist was “the decision not to conduct a polemic with the SWP.”This curious accomplishment meant a refusal to explain to militant workers, or anyone else, why they left the SWP, what the issues in dispute were, and on what program they now stood. The reason Braverman gave for such a suicidal political course was that“.. the Trotskyist movement had wasted away so badly that there was absolutely no periphery – I repeat and underline – absolutely no circle of sympathetic opinion before whom we had to wrestle with them. Second, the point of view against which we would be polemicizing is not a natural growth representing a trend of opinion in the US, but a hothouse product of sectarianism, and as such entirely without interest for any part of American labor or radical circles, and by that I mean any part ...”The empirical facts provided some justification for Braverman’s explanation of why the American Socialist group decided to make an anonymous entry on the stage of radical publications. His description of the SWP periphery at that time is not greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless, the decision was a fatal mistake and expressed in its way the basic defect of the group which foredoomed it to impotence.Any political group which conceals its programmatic origins (for whatever reason, be it “shrewd” tactical duplicity, or the claim that no one is interested) has broken with the most elementary requirements of Marxism. Once the discipline of programmatic accounting is tossed aside, a group becomes highly vulnerable to impressionism, moods-of-the-moment, personal caprice and arbitrary regimes.Laboratory proof of this is offered by the experience of the American Socialist group. Having launched themselves as a group solidly agreed on acting like political amnesiacs unable to remember where they came from, the “100% solid” very soon discovered they had disagreements. Did they then engage in a serious internal discussion allowing each point of view full rights of expression, as they were accustomed to in the SWP? Of course not! That would have been reverting to the habits of sectarianism. Instead Cochran simply struck the names of the dissident editors, including George Clarke and Mike Zaslow, off the masthead, and threw a large majority of the New York membership out of the organization. That’s living, nonsectarian politics! This split, too, was not reported or explained to anyone.The Socialist Workers Party, meanwhile, repaired the breach left by the desertion. Younger members moved forward into positions of responsibility and leadership. A few retrenchments had to be made but all the party institutions were saved. Despite the witch hunt, new recruits joined. By 1956 the party was able to swing into the presidential election campaign in effective fashion.In that same year came a test that was to prove decisive in the further development of both the American Socialist group and the Socialist Workers Party, if not every tendency in the American radical movement. This was the regroupment opportunity.The faction led by Cochran made much of its eagerness to influence the radical movement and its know-how in accomplishing this aim in contrast to the “old” Trotskyists who were much too rigid, inflexible and altogether too dead to play any role in this. However, when the great shakeup of the American radical movement came, following Khrushchev’s famous revelations and smashing of the Stalin cult, it was the SWP that moved into the crisis, mapped out a flexible policy, began joint discussions and common actions and – this is now admitted by the SWP’s worst enemies – emerged from the regroupment process as the only gainer in relation to either the radical movement or new forces.The capacity of a Marxist movement to inspire a new generation of radical youth is a decisive measure of its freshness, vigor and determination. Beginning with 1956 it was the SWP alone of all the radical groups that attracted a dynamic youth movement genuinely interested in revolutionary socialist politics and participation in the struggles of young people both North and South, Negro and white. THE American Socialist group, in contrast, displayed the obverse side of organic opportunism during the regroupment period; namely, sectarian aloofness, snobbishness, a you-come-to-us-or-else attitude, and, finally, an Olympian pronouncement on the eve of the big shakeup that everyone’s bankruptcy barred anything coming of the whole turmoil. The Cochran group proved utterly incapable of building a youth following – and it must be admitted that if good journalism is sufficient they had every chance to succeed at it. The American Socialist was well written and well illustrated. It published informative articles that took a general socialist point of view. But it had no theoretically grounded program and therefore no plan to organize a serious movement. Thus it could not really inspire new converts to socialism to work for the goals that inspired past generations of socialists.In the same conference, six months following their split, the Cochran group adopted a resolution, Our Orientation. (This was never publicly distributed.)“Our purpose,” the resolution reads, “is to bring our ideas into the mass movement, and to gradually raise the consciousness of the ranks to the historic tasks. But the last thing in the world we should attempt is to inculcate the ranks with the necessity of adopting our specific traditions, and impressing upon them the truth of all the evaluations and proposals broached by Trotsky from 1923 on.”All this sounds very broadminded and realistic. In the atmosphere of the prosperity-crazed, McCarthyized, hysteria-ridden US it gave the impression of having one’s feet planted solidly a good distance from immature sectarian nonsense. On closer examination you get a different impression. After all, what are these “evaluations and proposals broached by Trotsky from 1923 on\"? They happen to be nothing less than the systematic exposition of the Marxist class-struggle policy for every situation of major importance in the international workers’ movement for more than a quarter of a century. They happen to be also the Marxist evaluation of the causes for some major catastrophes such as the working class falling victim to fascism, to pauperizing depressions, and a second world war." }

{ "content": "All this is dismissed as simply outward trappings, inner-group jargon, family circle memories and old grudges lingering from ancient factional squabbles! But in the regroupment test this absence of theory proved fatal. On the other hand the doctrines, methods and theory to which the SWP adhered gave another indication of how practical they really are.In their despairing Statement to Readers, the editors of American Socialist dolefully express the feeling that what is happening in the radical movement across the Atlantic in Britain is much superior to what is happening in the US.“What has been done in Britain in the past two years,” they say, “was not and could not be duplicated here.”We don’t know specifically what the editors regard as hopeful in Britain. But they are right in concluding that real progress is being made there. This, however, is a result of following the very course they turned their backs on. In Britain during the past two years a major group of highly qualified intellectuals and workers in the mass movement broke away from the Communist party. The break was programmatic, entailing thorough review and study of the very “Stalin-Trotsky dispute” which Cochran and his collaborators put in the same category as the Dempsey-Tunney fight. Among those in Britain who have broken definitively with Stalinism there has been impressive ideological ferment. A significant group, having studied the programmatic issues to the end, turned toward fusion with the British Trotskyists. This resulted in formation of the Socialist Labor League, a group within the Labor party and the unions dedicated to advancing the Marxist view.As an organizing center of both class-struggle action by militant unionists and theoretical struggle for Marxism, the SLL has been selected as a target for witch-hunting. The British capitalist press and the right-wing trade-union bureaucrats are displaying the keenest alarm over the fact that the SLL has become an inspiring and attractive force for radical youth, for trade-union militants, for the entire left wing in the Labor party. The SLL is in the forefront of every struggle to unite workers, students and intellectuals in the fight against British imperialism, for withdrawing British troops from every part of the world, for ending the H-bomb tests, strengthening the socialist program of the Labor party and defeating the right wing’s attempt to scuttle the party’s stand in favor of public ownership.The SLL is taking the lead in the fight for full democracy in the unions, the Labor party and in every aspect of British life. The SLL has shown its fighting mettle in beating back racist attempts to whip up a lynch movement against Negro workers in London.Where did this magnificent movement come from? It is obviously without a trace of sectarianism or disdainful aloofness from the actual movement and life of the working class. It is popular, energetic and colorful in its public appeal.The real secret of the strength of the SLL is in its concern for the theoretical basis of socialism, its “pre-occupation,” if you please, with the “old disputes” and its rejection of every attempt at light-minded improvisation in the field of principle. This is true of the SLL and its leadership as a whole, both those who came recently from the Communist party as well as the older Trotskyist cadre.The British Trotskyists prepared for the opening of the kind of opportunities prevalent in their country today and that will surely confront us in the US tomorrow, by struggling against their own Cochran faction, the Lawrence group, back in 1953. They faced the same problem as the American Trotskyists in coping with destructive factional intervention on the part of Pablo. They, too, had to overcome the effects of a split that was unnecessarily deep due to Pablo’s influence. Their success in overcoming the internal dispute in a principled way, in strict accordance with Leninist tradition, is what prepared them to play their magnificent role today. [1]Historically England “mirrors” the future of the United States. Marxists have long felt that the American trade unions will eventually follow the British example and organize a Labor party. The differences between the US and Britain assure that such a development will most likely occur at a far swifter tempo and depth in this country than it did across the Atlantic. We hope that when this time arrives – and it can be relatively soon – the Socialist Workers party will prove itself capable of living up to the Marxist traditions as well as the British Trotskyists have. To put such ventures as the American Socialist under the microscope, as we have tried to do in this post-mortem, is part of the necessary preparation. Footnote1. Pablo has not displayed precociousness in learning. He has persisted in sniping at the British Trotskyists despite all their successes, as if he were still fighting the battle of 1953-54 and had hopes of turning up another Cochran. In the witch-hunting attack on the Socialist Labor League, Pablo has failed, up to this time at least, to take a public stand in defense of the victims. This was not due to lack of time, for he has busied himself with getting in touch with the few intellectuals who buckled under the pressure. He has even gone so far as to defend members of the Labor party who took an equivocal stand on the witch-hunt attack against the Socialist Labor League. It is difficult to see what advantage he sees in this for his faction in the Fourth International. It would seem more practical, and certainly a lot more principled, for a leading member of the Fourth International, whatever faction he belongs to, to make clear which side of the picket line he stands on, above all where Trotskyism is the principal target.Top of pageWeiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main PageLast updated: 28.1.2006" }

{ "content": "Weiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index   |   ETOL Main PageMurry WeissTwo Concepts of Socialist UnityWhat Basis for Regroupment?(Winter 1957)From International Socialist Review, Vol. 28 No. 1, Winter 1957, pp. 3–11.Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).The question of the regroupment of revolutionary socialist forces has been posed before the radical “workers in the US for close to one year – that is, since the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union disclosed a severe crisis in Soviet society and precipitated crises in the Communist parties throughout the world.The discussion on regroupment obviously signifies a profoundly altered relation of forces among the three basic tendencies in the international working class movement – Stalinism, Social Democracy and revolutionary Marxism. It is a discussion that can lead to far-reaching progressive changes in the political life of the advanced section of the working class.It is therefore timely to consider the following questions:Precisely what do the various tendencies in the working class mean by regroupment? In what direction are these tendencies and their various sub-groups moving in their actual political evolution? Our Approach to RegroupmentA brief comment is in order on the approach of the American Trotskyists to the problem of revolutionary socialist regroupment so that the reader may bear in mind the standpoint from which we evaluate the positions of other tendencies.We believe that the discussion on regroupment arises primarily from the mass action of the working class in the Soviet orbit. The revolutionary motion of the Soviet and East European working class has already resulted in the toppling of the Stalin cult – the main ideological pillar in the system of bureaucratic rule in the Soviet Union. With the revelations emanating from the Twentieth Congress and the revolutionary ferment in Eastern Europe – Poznan in June 1956, the October days in Poland, the October-November insurrection in Hungary – the bureaucratic equilibrium of the Communist parties throughout the world was irreparably disrupted. A chronic crisis developed in all these parties. In turn, this altered drastically the situation in the working class movement as a whole. The crisis of Stalinism raised all basic questions of socialist program and practice for millions of Communist workers. In all radical organizations it reopened the question of the character of Stalinism, the prospects for a socialist solution to the crisis in the Soviet orbit and all the problems of building revolutionary socialist parties in capitalist countries. “Closed” programmatic questions which had become fixed into traditional positions of the various tendencies were unlocked and became subject to re-evaluation.In our opinion the revolutionary upsurge of the Soviet orbit working class is in its first stages. The struggle is bound to spread and become more intense. The working class and youth in the Soviet Union itself are heading for open mass struggle. The goal of this struggle is the overthrow of the Soviet bureaucracy and the restoration of workers democracy on the foundations of the socialized property forms established by the October 1917 revolution.This means that the forces which gave rise to the crisis of Stalinism and posed the problem of regroupment can be expected to continue to operate with even greater power. At the same time world capitalism is suffering all the agonies of a dying social system. Round after round of colonial uprisings is undermining imperialism and preparing the conditions for a revolutionary upsurge in the most powerful centers of world capitalism. The crisis of capitalism, no less than the crisis of Stalinism, sharply poses the need for building revolutionary socialist parties. The Significance of ProgramWe think the circumstances call for a thorough discussion of program as the prelude to organizational steps leading towards actual regroupment. The question of program, in our opinion, is decisive. Mere unity, without a correct program, can be just as catastrophic for the fate of socialism as working class disunity. History offers many examples of powerful and unified labor organizations and political parties which, because of false programs, suffered devastating defeats.A Marxist program is decisive because it embodies the distilled experience of the international working class in centuries of struggle against capitalism; it organizes and systematizes our understanding of the lessons of these struggles; it assimilates the lessons of the first victorious working class revolution against capitalism in Russia and the decades of struggle to defend the Soviet Union against imperialist attack as well as struggle against Stalinist degeneration of the first workers state. The Marxist program incorporates the invaluable and bitterly learned lessons of the victory of fascism over the German, Italian and Spanish workers; it enables us to grasp the significance of the vast upheavals in the colonial world and their place in struggle against world capitalism.For the American workers a Marxist program is decisive because the problem of problems in this country is to free the American labor movement from the blight of class collaborationism in the economic and political fields. A struggle for a Marxist program in the US is not, as some depict it, the preoccupation of sectarian dogmatists and hair-splitters; it is a life and death matter for the class-conscious vanguard to wage this struggle and to pit the Marxist program of class-struggle socialism against the pro-capitalist ideology of the class-collaborationist labor bureaucracy." }

{ "content": "Radical workers fighting for a socialist society are divided by program. The basic dividing line is class struggle versus class collaboration, i.e., revolutionary Marxism versus reformism. The two major proponents of class collaboration are Stalinism and Social Democracy. For all the difference between these two tendencies, the theory and practice of class collaboration is the one thing they have in common. In the case of the Social Democracy, class collaboration operates through a labor bureaucracy wedded in its material privileges and political ideology to the capitalist system. In the case of Stalinism, subordination to an oppressive bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union has led the Communist parties to advocate their own brand of class collaboration – with the “progressive” and “liberal” capitalists, of course. The task of regroupment, in our view, does not consist in ignoring or watering clown the programmatic differences between revolutionary Marxism on the one hand and Stalinism and Social Democracy on the other. On the contrary, the task is to regroup the radical workers around the program of revolutionary Marxism and thereby create the class-conscious vanguard that will enter the mainstream of the working class to bring militant socialist consciousness to its struggle. The Next StepHow is this task to be carried out? What are the next steps that should be taken in view of the deep ferment in the radical movement? In its statement on Regroupment of Revolutionary Socialist Forces in the United States, published in the Militant, Jan. 11, the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party poses the problem as follows :“In the next stage of the discussion [on regroupment] two different ways of proceeding are counterposed: (1) Shall we first attempt a general unification, leaving the discussion and clarification of programmatic questions for a later time? Or (2) shall we first explore the different views, clarify the various positions, and try to reach agreement and unification on at least the minimum fundamentals? It seems to us that the latter procedure is preferable and that the serious elements taking part in the discussion will agree that programmatic issues have to be considered and clarified before durable organizational conclusions can be reached.”To be sure, there undoubtedly will be situations where political organization appears to take precedence over clarification of programmatic questions. If, for example, a mass political breakaway from capitalist politics were taking place in the US and the formation of a Labor Party were on the order of the day, revolutionary socialists would participate in the organization of such a party despite the inadequacy or falsity of its program. The struggle for a revolutionary socialist regroupment would then take place within the arena of such a mass political party of the American workers.But in this case the very formation of a Labor Party would signify the enormous advance of the programmatic principle of independent working class politics.In the present situation, however, the immediate prospect for such a Labor Party does not yet exist. And certainly the necessary conditions for such a development will not, in our opinion, be brought into existence by merely uniting the various radical formations on an undefined and confused program, or worse yet, on the program of the very tendencies – Social Democracy and Stalinism – whose bankruptcy has provoked the regroupment discussion.Moreover, we will find that the proposals for “unity first, discussion of program later,” have a definite programmatic content. The unity-first advocates often try to make it appear that it is merely a question of putting aside the “old divisive issues.” But on closer examination it turns out that programmatic conditions, and even ultimatums, are closely tied in with their proposals for unity. We think it is wiser to discuss questions of program under conditions free of such organizational pressures and maneuvers, with all opinions openly expressed.Now let us turn to the evolution of the different positions on regroupment and the political tendencies they express. The Communist PartyAfter the first impact of the Twentieth Congress and even before the Khrushchev revelations became public, Eugene Dennis, in his report to the April 28-May 1 meeting of the National Committee of the Communist Party of the US, said:“Not the least important of the new and serious problems we should concern ourselves with as we probe and re-assess the present status of our Party – is the question that keeps coming to the forefront in respect to the possibility of organizing a new and broader mass party of socialism ... This of course does not call for any move to form a new party of socialism prematurely ... Considerable headway can surely be made in this direction in the next year or two. But this will be a process. It will necessitate sharp political and ideological struggles, as well as collective participation with the bulk of the socialist-minded elements in united front activity in concert with other progressive forces.”The fact that this was no mere routine comment was established shortly by the opening of a series of symposiums and debates on socialist program in different parts of the country in which the representatives of the Communist Party appeared on the same platform with representatives of other tendencies in the radical movement. To be sure the CP leaders inclined, at first, to engage in such discussions primarily with the Social Democrats and pacifists, but it is notable that they did in time agree to include representatives of the revolutionary socialist position in these discussions.In any case the Twentieth Congress impelled the CP not only to open an internal discussion on the question of the Stalin cult, it was also compelled to redefine its attitude and relations to the other political tendencies in the working class. This was a most welcome and heartening development.The Khrushchev revelations prompted the Daily Worker editors to emphasize strongly the re-groupment issue. In an editorial, June 6, on The Khrushchev Speech they said:" }

{ "content": "“The present situation in our opinion, underlines the urgency of the outlook put forward by Eugene Dennis at the National Committee meeting of the Communist Party of a new ‘mass party of socialism in our country’ and the need to ‘create conditions for such a necessary and historic development.’ We believe that the situation calls for an all-out effort and co-operation of all socialist-minded forces, in order to bring about such a new party without unnecessary delay, and as quickly as circumstances will permit.” The Gates GroupIt should be noted that this emphatic formulation of the question came from the group of Daily Worker editors headed by John Gates, who, by this time, had emerged as a faction in the CP characterized by a more outspoken criticism of the Kremlin. While the Gates faction, along with the rest of the CP leadership, has failed up to now to probe the fundamental questions regarding the roots of Stalinism, it certainly has reflected the feeling of revulsion against the Kremlin oligarchy in the ranks of the party. Side by side with this tendency at least to loosen, if not break, the ties with the Kremlin, the Gates group has displayed a disposition to accentuate all the reformist and class-collaborationist dogmas implicit in Stalinism. In this respect it appears to propose that the crisis in the CP be overcome by a reconciliation with the American labor bureaucracy and Social Democracy. Nevertheless, the Gates group should be viewed as an important expression of the break-up of Stalinist monolithism in the American CP. Undoubtedly there are many in the ranks of the party who look to it for leadership in breaking with Stalinism in a revolutionary socialist direction. The most hopeful aspect of the Gates group in this respect is that it has been the most insistent on maintaining the discussion within the CP as well as participating in the interchange of views in the radical movement as a whole.The Gates group’s position on the regroupment issue found its way into the draft resolution of the Communist Party NC, not without some modification of course. The Draft Resolution, issued Sept. 13, states:“For some months our Party has had under consideration the question presented in Eugene Dennis’ report to the National Committee meeting last April, of our attitude towards the perspective of a united party of socialism in this country. The new developments point to a certain revitalization and growth of socialist-oriented and pro-Marxist currents and groupings. In the past we tended to assume that all that was worth while in other socialist currents and groupings would inevitably flow into our own organization. This assumption was always incorrect and should be replaced by a serious and painstaking effort to assist in the eventual development of the broadest possible unity of all socialist-minded elements. Such a development can by no means be expected as a quick and easy solution to the common problems of all socialist groupings, or to the specific problems of our own Party.” Differences on RegroupmentThis agreed-upon formulation in the Draft Resolution merely covered up the actual disagreements between the two factions in the leadership, headed respectively by Gates and William Z. Foster. In the October 1956 issue of Political Affairs Foster directs the following attack at the Gates position:“The Right [Gates group] also seized upon Comrade Dennis’ proposal at the April meeting of the National Committee to the effect that the Party should look forward to the eventual formation of a ‘new mass party of Socialism’ through a merger of the Communist Party and other Left groups in this country ... The Rights, by giving the whole project an air of immediate possibility, also used this slogan in a liquidationist manner. For there would be no point in rebuilding the Communist Party if it were soon to be replaced by a new and glittering mass party.”Gates retorted to this in the November 1956 issue of Political Affairs:“I do not agree with those who say the slogan of a new united party of Socialism should be de-emphasized and put on the shelf. In actuality this would mean to discard it and not to work seriously for it. Of course it will not come about overnight, but we must be foremost in working for socialist unity.”Apparently in the heat of the factional struggle within the CP, Foster found that his frontal attack on this point met with considerable disfavor in the ranks. Whereupon he beat a retreat. In the CP Discussion Bulletin No. 5, issued Jan. 15, Foster makes this revealing remark:“Another basic lesson newly learned by practically our entire Party is that henceforth we must take a more cooperative attitude towards other Left groupings. This has been a serious weakness in the past. Our Party will – has in fact – abandoned its erstwhile conception, actual or implied, that it has a ‘monopoly’ upon the propagation of socialism in this country. It must also orient upon the expectation of eventually merging with some of these groups into a United Party of Socialism. Early tendencies to look upon such a development as an immediate possibility have been at least partly liquidated. Only a political novice could ignore the political unifying effect in the Party of this new attitude towards the broad Left, which is being almost unanimously accepted.” (Our emphasis)For a time, as the Foster faction pressed an offensive against the Gates group, there was a toning down in the Daily Worker of any mention of a “new mass party of Socialism.” More recently, on the eve of the Communist Party convention, Gates again expressed himself on this question in a manner which would indicate that he feels considerable confidence in a popular reception for his position on regroupment in the party ranks. In the Feb. 11 Worker he says:" }

{ "content": "“There are many differences among forces on the Left, serious and important. In the first place, we need to discuss these differences with each other, argue things out; we must also strive to work together and act together on those things about which we Can agree, and in these discussions together, working together, acting together, we will be able to achieve – finally – organizational unity on a socialist program ... But if we cannot learn to respect the differences within our ranks in the Communist party, we will never learn to respect the opinions of others, outside our ranks.” The Foster GroupWhy is the idea of regroupment so popular in the ranks of the Communist Party? We should not discount the appeal it has for such elements that would like to return to the days when the CP had close relations with the labor bureaucracy and the capitalist liberals. Such elements probably think of re-groupment in that sense. But at a deeper level, the workers in the party who are striving towards a revolutionary socialist solution to the crisis, see in the idea of orienting towards a new, unified socialist party two basic things:They see a means for assuring a genuine break with Stalinism and the bureaucratic domination of the Kremlin over the Communist parties; andthey see a means for continuing the discussion within the CP and among all radical organizations.Foster’s barbs at the Gates group on the question of regroupment are not directed against the Social Democratic and “liquidationist” tendencies implicit in the Gates position. On all fundamental questions which touch on attitude towards reformist, class collaboration and the labor-bureaucracy, Foster is at one with Gates. The leaders of both factions favor support of the Democratic Party and “multi-class coalition” politics. Neither Gates nor Foster have broken with Stalinist people’s frontism in favor of the position of class struggle socialism.Foster’s antagonism to the re-groupment idea stems from his determination to restore Stalinist monolithism in the Communist Party. This determination has been strengthened by the recent “back to Stalinism” declarations of Khrushchev and Co. Foster wants to end the crisis within the CP by reimposing the rule of the gag on all criticism and discussion. His appeal to the workers in the party against Gates’ liquidationism is purely demagogic. Yet many workers in the party, according to all evidence, recoil from the Gates group and tend toward the Fosterites, precisely because of the fear that Gates and his associates want to break with Stalinism only to lead them into the swamp of State Department “socialism.” On the other hand, these same workers display a keen hostility towards Foster’s thinly disguised plans to turn back the clock and re-establish the power of the old bureaucratic machine in the party.We see, therefore, that the devoted revolutionary militants within the CP have been unable thus far to find a focal point in the national leadership for their strivings to get back to the revolutionary path. The rank and file CPers have a generally low opinion of all the leaders and see inadequacy and grave faults in both groups. This has resulted in the appearance, on a local basis, of a number of groups in the secondary leadership and the rank and file that are seeking to work out the basic programmatic problems, acquire an understanding of how Stalinism arose, and determine how revolutionary workers can reorient in this crisis.This process requires time and patience. The break-up of Stalinism and the socialist regroupment of worker-revolutionists who adhered to it is a painful and tortuous process. It will vary in form and tempo from country to country. In the US, where the pressure of prosperity-reaction continues to be dominant, the process confronts additional and exceptional difficulties. Above all the process requires the continuation of the discussion and its advancement to a higher level. That is the main point that the rank and file of the Communist Party appear to be grasping and that is why they favor the idea of regroupment, however it may have been formulated.The greatest help that can be given to the continuation and maturing of the discussion within the Communist Party is to advance the broader discussion within the radical movement as a whole. The broad discussion can help prevent the hard-shelled Stalinists from abruptly reimposing their bureaucratic regime on the CP. It can also help considerably to provide nourishment to elements within both the Foster and Gates groups who are seeking a way to revolutionary Marxist conclusions. In addition the broad, organized and inclusive discussion provides an arena for the thousands of revolutionary elements who have left the Communist Party during the recent years and for additional thousands who were in the periphery of the American Stalinist movement.We must therefore regard Foster’s policy as the greatest threat to the progressive outcome of a discussion on revolutionary socialist regroupment. Foster’s policy, however, is not the only obstacle to the discussion that has appeared. A threat has also appeared from the direction of the American Social Democracy. Thomas Walks OutAfter the first impact of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the iSoviet Union had registered on the consciousness of the radical workers in the US, an important meeting took place May 27 in New York City at Carnegie Hall at which both Norman Thomas and Eugene Dennis were present on the platform. This meeting, while excluding revolutionary socialist representation from the speakers’ list, was the beginning of the process of interradical organization discussion.At the May 15, 1956 meeting of the National Action Committee of the Socialist Party the following discussion was noted in the minutes:“It was reported that the Fellowship of Reconciliation was sponsoring a meeting at Carnegie Hall at which speakers would include Norman Thomas, Eugene Dennis, General Secretary of the Communist Party, A.J. Muste and William DuBois. There was discussion as to the advisability of cooperating in programs which give an audience to Communist Party spokesmen.”" }

{ "content": "By the beginning of September, 1956 the “discussion as to advisability” had already led to outright opposition to such activities. At the Sept. 1-2 meeting of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party it was reported that the Los Angeles Local was scheduling a debate with the Communist Party. The NEC passed the following motion:“That it is the feeling of the NEC that the cause of American socialism is not advanced by the actions of the Socialist Party groups which engage in joint activity with the Communist Party or any of its affiliates.”On Nov. 15, when a bitter dispute on the Hungarian revolution was raging in the Communist Party, the NEC took note of a projected symposium in Detroit that was to include Norman Thomas and a representative of the CP. A motion was passed.“To delegate Comrade Myers to convey to Norman Thomas the NEC feeling that it is unwise for Socialist Party speakers to appear on panels with spokesmen for the Communist Party and various Trotskyite groups.”Thomas then publicly withdrew from the speakers’ list. Moreover, he wrote an article for the December Socialist Call in which he laid down the conditions for unity with anyone who was “tainted” by previous association with both “Stalinists and Trotskyists.” In this article Thomas said that while he was “inclined to accept the belated sincerity of American Communists who, since Khrushchev gave them permission for criticism, have gone beyond him in their reaction to Soviet intervention in Hungary” he would “want a period of probation to put the sincerity of Communist reformation to the test.” He spelled out exactly what he meant by “reformation.” “We must insist,” he declared, “that reformed Communists, Stalinists and Trotskyists, must repudiate doctrines and practices set up not by Stalin but by Lenin.”Thus the discussion on regroupment was confronted with two actions by the Socialist Party leadership:A ban on discussion with representatives of the Communist Party, any affiliates of the Communist Party, any representative of the Socialist Workers Party (the American Trotskyists), or with any groups that had previously been in the CP or SWP. An ultimatum to these organizations demanding that they renounce Lenin and Leninism as a pre-condition for any discussion of unity. SP-SDF MergerThis policy of Thomas and the Socialist Party developed against the background of the approaching merger between the SP and the Social Democratic Federation which was consummated in New York, Jan. 18–19, on the program and conditions of the right wing Social Democrats. The political character of this merger and its relation to the struggle for a revolutionary socialist regroupment, is clearly revealed in the documents of the SP left wing, organized in the Committee for a Socialist Program. The left wing mustered one third of the Socialist Party votes against the merger. (The vote was 200 in favor to 100 against.)In a mimeographed letter, Nov. 3, David McReynolds, leader of the SP left wing, traced the struggle he had waged to promote unity with the SDF on “a more socialist statement than the 1955 ‘memorandum’ on merger.” McReynolds said he “made every effort in this direction,” but in the end “was finally convinced that merger with the SDF” on the basis of the 1955 memorandum “would not be socialist unity, and would be a block to socialist unity.” (Emphasis in original)McReynolds therewith resigned from the unity negotiations committee in order to carry on his programmatic fight against the merger.In his Nov. 3 letter McReynolds said:“To accept the shamefully inadequate ‘memoranda’ would be politically wrong. I am not a political purist. We must compromise at times. But there are some things you do not compromise. You do not – ever – compromise socialist support of democracy. But merger with the SDF, which has given silent (and at times active) support to the totalitarian liberals, means just such compromise. You do not – ever – compromise socialist opposition to militarism and imperialism. But merger with the SDF means full support for the worst, most shameful policies of the State Dept. and John Foster Dulles.” (Our emphasis)Another aspect of the Memorandum of Understanding was later spelled out by Louis P. Goldberg, Chairman of the SDF, at the merger convention. “We are organizing a new political party,” Goldberg explained, “which is pledged by our unity agreement not to rush rashly into the electoral field.” He concretized this delicate understatement by the following reassuring comment:“The expression of fear in some corners that a new socialist party would interfere with labor’s political action is unfounded. Carrying out our document on political action, we will not nominate for public office candidates in opposition to those endorsed by the legitimate labor movement.”The National Executive Committee of the merged SP-SDF indicated its attitude towards participation in the discussion on re-groupment in a motion passed at its Jan. 20 meeting:“That no member, branch or local shall enter into any joint activity or project with any other political organization without the express permission or direction of the NEC or NAC, except as specifically provided in Section 6 of the Memorandum of Understanding in the report on political perspectives.”Section 6 of the “Memorandum” urges “members of the United Party” who are in “liberal-labor organizations” that generally support the Democratic Party, “to stress the importance of independent political action.” However, section 7 says, “it shall be the privilege of individual state and local organizations to allow their individual members to support candidates for public office who have been endorsed by liberal and labor groups.” Thus, while denying freedom of SP-SDF branches to participate in either discussions or united actions with other working class organizations, the NEC provides full leeway for labor bureaucrats and others to act without restriction in support of capitalist parties and politicians." }

{ "content": "In sum, the SP-SDF merger has the following political basis: acceptance of the foreign policy of the State Department socialists; support of the labor bureaucracy’s Democratic Party politics; support of the Second International program and organization including all “socialists in power” and, therefore, support of the imperialist policy pursued by these “socialists”; a ban on all discussion with any organization in the radical movement that does not get “cleared” by renouncing Leninism.We cannot, therefore, consider this unification as helpful to a revolutionary socialist regroupment. On the contrary, it is a calculated blow at such a regroupment. It replaces the necessary process of programmatic discussion with ultimatums to capitulate to State Department socialism. It obstructs the efforts of radical workers to free themselves from the hopeless morass of capitalist politics. It can offer no acceptable way out to the workers caught in the crisis of Stalinism. The Collapse of SP Left WingAll the more regrettable is the fact that David McReynolds and a number of other leaders of the SP left wing defaulted on their pledge to carry out, to the very end, a principled fight against this obstruction to revolutionary socialist unity.In his Nov. 3 letter McReynolds said:“I propose to fight the issue every step of the way. The moderation we exercised at the Party convention in June, when we were working out, with our fellow socialists, ways of building the Party – that moderation will certainly not be evident in January when we will be meeting with non-socialist and undemocratic elements.”He closed this letter with the emphatic promise:“We shall never accept the ‘memoranda’ as the basis for unity.” (Emphasis in original)Unfortunately, this promise was not kept. Instead, after the SP left wing had lost the referendum, in a letter dated Jan. 9, 1957, “urging every comrade remain in the Party and support unity,” McReynolds said, “It is politically meaningless for us to leave the Party. Where would we go?” He expressed the curious notion that “without question it [the merger] will be a blow to the left wing of the Party. But I believe it will strengthen the Party as a whole.” Accordingly he slipped into referring to “the value of unity.”In this letter McReynolds proposes to abandon altogether the basic fight against the merger:“Since it still seems quite possible to block unity at the convention itself I want to go into some detail as to why we not only should be united in remaining in the Party but should now support unity with the SDF and make no attempt to block it.” (Our emphasis)The first reason he gave to abandon the fight is the following:“If we ‘sabotage’ now then all the enthusiasm generated among right-wing socialist elements will be dashed to the ground. In the long run this will do us no good. On the other hand, the left wing socialist community wouldn’t see that any great principled stand had been taken, but would only assume we were being sectarian.”McReynolds apparently forgot that in his Nov. 3 letter he had said,“Comrades, do not feel you are being sectarian if you reject these merger proposals. You are simply being a good socialist.” (Emphasis in original)Another reason McReynolds gave in his Jan. 9 letter for switching from opposition to support of SSP-SDF unity was even more revealing than the first:“It is true that if we were in control of the Party we would doubtless formulate a better and more principled basis for uniting the socialist movement. However we are not in control of the Party. We are a minority. We are strong enough as a minority to block unity or to split the Party – but a minority that is that strong betrays the socialist movement if it gives way to emotional manifestoes. We are quite strong enough – PROVIDED WE ALL REMAIN IN THE PARTY – to bring victory out of defeat and to see to it that the present unity convention is one step toward a really effective, power-fully organized democratic socialist movement.” An About FaceIn this one brief paragraph McReynolds reverses everything he had been saying during the entire previous struggle – without attempting the slightest explanation for the switch. He refers to a “more principled” basis for unity, as if it were a question of mere degree rather than the unbridgeable gulf between the principled position of revolutionary socialism and the principles of “socialists” who give “full support for the worst, most shameful policies of the State Dept. and John Foster Dulles.” He forgets that he had persistently characterized the merger proposal as a “block to socialist unity” and replaces that with the thought that if the minority used its strength to block this kind of unity it would be guilty of giving way to “emotional manifestoes.” He forgets his very good formulations on how socialists “never” compromise basic principles and replaces it with the proposition that unity with those who have abandoned these principles is the highest law of conduct for socialists.The collapse of the left wing leadership was so complete that they didn’t even come through on a promise to make a last-ditch fight at the merger convention on the issue of the party name. The name “Socialist Party” McReynolds said in his Jan. 9 letter, “is one of the few important assets the Party has left ... This matter is sufficiently important that I think it might very well be better – despite all that I have said about the value of unity – to break off further negotiations rather than give up the name which has so much value for us at this moment.”When the convention took place, however, the left wing leaders didn’t conduct a serious fight on this or any other question. In truth they displayed an even greater “moderation” when face to face with “non-socialist and undemocratic elements” than at the June convention of the SP when they felt they were discussing with comrades. The Role of ShachtmanAnother link in this chain of capitulation to the right wing Social Democrats is provided by the Independent Socialist League, headed by Max Shachtman.In the Jan. 9 letter proposing capitulation, McReynolds said:" }

{ "content": "“I have also been relieved following recent talks with Max Shachtman since it seems the ISL (Independent Socialist League) looks upon unity with the SDF as a first step toward a re-built socialist movement under the banner of the Socialist Party and will therefore refrain from that sectarian crossfire I had feared. In fact I thought it rather ironic that when I last met with Shachtman to urge the ISL to suspend judgment on the merger since I thought it might not prove as disastrous as I had earlier expected, that before I could even set forth this view of things, Comrade Shachtman was saying how important it was that the ‘left-wing not leave the party in a huff, but remain and help make the best of the unity.”Shachtman has since explained the basis for his encouraging the SP left wing to abandon its programmatic struggle against their merger. He calls on all radical organizations to merge with the SP-SDF as the ideal vehicle for building a mass socialist movement in the US. He urges that all positions on the “Russian Question” be “frozen” in the united party. Since its program on the “Russian Question” would affect the basic character of the party and its attitude towards the foreign policy of American capitalism, it is interesting to inquire as to what Shachtman believes the official position of the united party should be on the Soviet Union.Shachtman is quite clear on what the official position shouldn’t be. We can have such a united party on “one condition” he says, “and we state it frankly as a condition.” Here is how Labor Action reports this condition, quoting Shachtman’s speech at a Jan. 18 forum in New York:“The movement must not take as its official position ‘the position that the present totalitarian regimes in Russia and the satellites represent a socialist or working-class state.’ Individuals or tendencies have the right to hold it inside, ‘but the movement itself cannot expect to represent a fruitful unity if it is committed to any such proposition.’ In this case it would be ‘doomed in advance to failure’ in the American labor movement.”A second and derivative condition is reported in the same article:“The working class must not feel ‘that this regrouping is a defender or apologist for the totalitarian regime in Russia, or is committed to defending it and helping it to victory, including military victory, in any conflict it wages’.” Everybody Freeze! Except ...We will not deal with the many distortions and provocative misrepresentations contained in Shachtman’s version of the position of radical organizations on the character and defense of the Soviet Union. It is sufficient to point out that he lumps together the diametrically opposed Stalinist and Trotskyist positions on the question. The point here is Shachtman’s position on regroupment.The question immediately arises: Having ruled out an official position calling Russia a degenerated workers state and defending it, despite bureaucratic deformations, from imperialist attack aimed at restoring the system of capitalism, what position does Shachtman believe the party should take officially?From his whole line of conduct we must conclude that Shachtman believes that everybody should “freeze” their positions on this crucial question – except the right wing Social Democrats! Nowhere in his discussion of merger with the SP-SDF does he utter a word of criticism of the official Social Democratic position on the Soviet Union, contained in the Memorandum of Understanding between the SP and the SDF as follows:“Such a crusade must not be based on any illusion that peace can be achieved by appeasement of the Communist imperialism that threatens the world’s peace and freedom ... We realize that until universal, enforceable disarmament can be achieved, the free world and its democratically established military agencies must be constantly on guard against the military drive of Communist dictators.” (Our emphasis)Isn’t this the position that McReynolds described as “the worst, most shameful policies of the State Dept. and John Foster Dulles.” But apparently Shachtman sees nothing wrong in the united party holding this official position. He sees nothing wrong with accepting the position of the Social Democratic enemies of the Russian Revolution and with hurling ultimatums at the anti-imperialist, anti-Stalinist defenders of the basic social conquests of the Russian Revolution.To show that they mean business, the followers of Shachtman gave full and uncritical support to an SP-SDF rally on the Hungarian revolution at which the principal speaker was the Social Democrat, Anna Kethly. In advertising this meeting the Socialist Call said: “Miss Kethly will ... call for a United Nations Emergency Force to be dispatched to Hungary.” Not a word of dissent was uttered by Shachtman or Labor Action against this brazen call for imperialist intervention. And when Miss Kethly actually made such an appeal to the United Nations on Jan. 28, again there wasn’t a murmur of protest from the Shachtmanites. Instead they characterized the Kethly meeting as “solidarity with a socialist revolution.”Doesn’t this single episode show that by unity Shachtman means unity with the State Department socialists on their program? Support of Democratic PartyIn his speech to the above-mentioned forum,“Shachtman explained that he did not want to deal here with any of the other important questions, including the so-called ‘American Question,’ that a regrouping would face, ‘in order to make it clear that so far as we are concerned, differences on such questions are not the cause of split in the socialist movement and should not be allowed to divide socialists’.”There is only one possible meaning to this statement: Shachtman calls on the radical workers to merge into the SP-SDF and agree in advance that they will go along with the policy of supporting the Democratic Party in the elections. It was precisely this issue which split the Socialist Party in 1936 when the right wing of the SP walked out of the party because the majority favored independent Socialist candidates and the struggle to form a Labor Party. Now Shachtman proposes to reverse matters and ask the class-conscious workers to return to the SP under the terms of the Old Guard." }

{ "content": "There are two interconnected premises for Shachtman’s position and we believe both must be rejected if a revolutionary socialist regroupment is to be achieved. Shachtman holds thatSocial Democracy is progressive in relation to the present stage of development of the American working class; we should, therefore abandon the conception that our differences with Social Democracy are irreconcilable and fuse into one party with them even if it means that their pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist-party politics would determine the nature of the party; and we must renounce all thoughts of splits from such a united party and pledge in advance that differences over such questions as support of imperialism or capitalist parties “should not be allowed to divide socialists.”We disagree with both propositions. Social Democracy is not progressive in any sense whatsoever. It is, as much as Stalinism, a blight on the workers’ movement. Social Democracy takes the American form of the trade union bureaucracy. This parasitic formation must be broken up and removed as an obstacle to the progress of the labor movement. We disagree with the idea that unity with the ideological representatives of the labor bureaucracy, the American Social Democracy, is the duty of revolutionists. Splits and FusionsSecondly, we cannot agree with a notion that flatly ignores the many-sided aspects of splits in the life of the workers’ movement. In our opinion splits are just as much a part of the regroupment process as fusions. In the struggle to create the mass revolutionary party of the working class splits have played a constructive as well as a destructive role. It depends on what splits are referred to. Those that are necessary, inevitable and historically justified help to achieve unity of revolutionary workers on a correct program.We think the split in the American Socialist party following the Russian Revolution was necessary and justified. It marked the emergence of the Communist movement in America, as well as internationally. Shachtman now deplores this split as the original sin which, in his opinion, accounts for the weakness of the American radical movement today. We can only say that following this logic, one must trace the split back to the struggle between Menshevism and Bolshevism in Russia and deplore the victory of the Russian Revolution of 1917 itself. For it was the Russian Revolution, that great divide in the history of the modern working class movement, which separated revolutionists from reformists the world over.As a matter of fact the entire aim of revolutionary socialist policy in the United States should be to split the American labor movement away from the Democratic Party and towards the organization of its own class party – even if a few die-hard bureaucrats want to remain entangled in capitalist politics. Such a split would be just as progressive as the split which gave birth to the CIO and enabled the “fusion” of mass production workers into industrial unions. That split, we are convinced, laid the groundwork for a higher unity of American labor, going far beyond the present limited AFL-CIO stage.We think that if the revolutionary and independent elements in the American Communist Party today were confronted by Foster with a split threat, it would be erroneous and fatal for them to give up their struggle for the sake of unity on a false program. A left wing of the American Communist Party which broke with Stalinism would rapidly accelerate the process of revolutionary socialist fusion.The problem before us is how to facilitate the regroupment of revolutionary socialist forces. This is not the same as the flight of ex-revolutionists into the Social Democracy or back to Stalinism.Shachtman’s proposition cannot serve the interests of a revolutionary socialist regroupment. It can only provide a cover for the attempt of the Social Democrats, who, no less than the Fosterite Stalinists, are working against such a regroupment. Shachtman wants to begin the necessary discussion among the radical organizations with an ultimatum as to how it must end. We, for our part, want to begin by placing our views before the radical working class public, subject them to the forum of criticism and debate, examine all other programmatic positions fairly and without prejudice, and in that way explore the basis for a fruitful and lasting unification of radical organizations on the necessary minimum points of programmatic agreement. It is only along this road that a firmly founded revolutionary socialist party can be created that will lead to the victory of the American working class in its coming struggle for Socialism. Top of pageWeiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main PageLast updated: 29 February 2020" }

{ "content": "Weiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index   |   ETOL Main PageMurry Weiss and Bert DeckMoscow and the Chinese Revolution(Spring 1962)From International Socialist Review, Vol.23 No.2, Spring 1962, pp.40-45.Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).THE first explicit support of the Russian position versus the Chinese position in the current Sino-Soviet dispute has appeared in the US over the signatures of the editors of the Monthly Review, Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy. On the other hand, those publications which usually reflect the views of the Communist Party, The Worker and Political Affairs, have yet to mention the existence of this conflict. Like Moscow, which factionally attacks the Chinese CP leaders by pretending that its main dispute is with – Albania, the American CP follows suit. It is, of course, impossible to begin a serious discussion of the Moscow-Peking debate if one persists in treating it as an “unfact.”The MR editors have abandoned such evasions and have frankly entered this discussion, broadly speaking, as defenders of socialism and the Sino-Soviet bloc of nations. While defending Moscow against Peking, they support both against the imperialist cold war. Thus they obviously hold that a responsible public discussion of this major division in the “socialist” world will not provide aid or comfort for imperialism.In their December 1961 issue, after a summarized description of the two positions, the editors write, “When it comes to their evaluation, we have no doubt whatever that the Russians are right and the Chinese wrong.” In the February 1962 issue the editors report that there was “more than the usual number of letters praising or criticizing” the editorial statement on this dispute and said:“Further discussion would definitely be in order, but we think it can proceed fruitfully only if we can get a candid expression of the Chinese position, not from official sources but from some relatively detached observer who has studied the official materials with care and believes that the Chinese are right. So far we have not been able to find anyone who fits this description and is also willing to commit his views to paper. We will be looking.”We certainly welcome the decision of the Monthly Review to open a discussion in its columns on this important question. We for our part have been urging, for some time, the need for at least a report on the Chinese CP viewpoint in the American radical press and the need for a discussion. Eleven years ago, in the December 25, 1950 Militant, George Breitman expressed the Trotskyist evaluation of the incipient struggle between the Chinese CP and the Kremlin as follows:“Capitalist propaganda persists in depicting the Mao Tse-tung regime as a Chinese puppet of Stalin, but it must fly in the face of the facts to do so. The Chinese CP came to power without help from the Kremlin or the Soviet army, just as the Yugoslavs did, and it is therefore no more disposed than they were to blindly obey Stalin’s orders. Their [Peking’s] alliance with the Kremlin – as partners – will last only so long as they believe they are benefiting from it ... If Stalin has his hands full maintaining ‘law and order’ in Eastern Europe, where Russian bayonets put his stooges in power, he will have a ten times harder job trying to regiment revolutionary Asia, which will decline to surrender to anyone the independence it is winning with its own blood and muscle. But Stalin will seek sooner or later to impose his dictation because the nature of Stalinism does not permit any power within its sphere of influence to indefinitely retain independence of the Kremlin. That is why it is superficial reasoning to view the victories of the anti-imperialist movements as elements contributing to the permanent strengthening of Stalinism.” MORE recently, two years ago on May 9, 1960, The Militant editorially said:“We have made clear that despite our thoroughgoing disagreement with the Chinese CP leaders on many questions, we believe they are absolutely right in their appraisal of the real policy of American imperialism. We think the Chinese have every right to be worried about a reactionary ‘summit’ deal behind closed doors at the expense of their country ... In the meantime, the American Communist Party continues to remain silent about the position of the Chinese CP. The Worker and Political Affairs have not even reported the Chinese viewpoint let alone commented on it ... It must also be noted that a similar silence has afflicted other radical publications like the National Guardian and the Monthly Review. Isn’t it high time that the debate be reported and frankly discussed in the American radical press?”At this time we want to confine ourselves to preliminary comments on the view presented by the Monthly Review in the spirit of beginning, at last, what promises to become a thorough and fruitful discussion.The MR editors have assessed the depth and intensity of the differences between the two regimes.“When division is publicly admitted,” they say, “it may therefore be taken as evidence that a crisis has long been building up and that no resolution is in sight.”The editors say that their“... description of the Chinese and Soviet positions ... should be enough to show that on a number of extremely important issues the gap between the views of the two powers is wide indeed. Moreover, these are not recondite ideological questions ... They concern the analysis of the actual international situation with all its complexities and dangers. Above all, they lead to divergent and often sharply conflicting conceptions of the right policy for the socialist camp to follow.”We share the view that the Moscow-Peking conflict is indubitably severe. We would add here, however, that the quantity of divergences and the qualitative depth of ideological differences signify a historical crisis within the workers states themselves, within the association of workers states in the Soviet orbit, within each of the Communist parties, and the world socialist movement at large." }

{ "content": "The MR editors attempt an explanation of the divergences. More accurately, they seek the fundamental basis for the Chinese views. But they do not propose to uncover the social, historical and economic roots of the Russian position since this position is believed to be realistic and flexible and therefore doesn’t require probing into its understruc-ture. Here is what is behind Peking’s position, according to the MR:“China’s dogmatic leftism today would seem to be rooted in both the domestic and international situations which confront the country. Domestically, China is in what may be called a ‘heroic’ period of revolutionary construction, the inevitable tensions of which have been greatly aggravated by what appears to have been ant almost unprecedented series of natural disasters affecting the country’s crucially important agricultural economy. Such circumstances, by fostering a mood of revolutionary intransigence and militancy, always predispose to dogmatic leftism. China’s unique international situation has not only worked in the same direction but also has imposed on the Chinese a special view of the world of the mid-twentieth century. The new China’s experience with imperialism has been almost exclusively in the form of a malignantly hostile United States ...” BEFORE considering some of the historical roots of this struggle we must note that the editors’ theory of an ultra-left domestic policy as the basis of an ultra-left foreign policy simply does not match up with the facts. Actually the Chinese leadership domestically has been moving away from adventures and ultra-leftism. In agriculture they have seriously retreated from the earlier “great leap” to communism and now are accommodating themselves more to the real situation on the countryside. Politically they have revived the “hundred flowers” campaign as an accommodation to the intellectuals. Whatever one may think of these more recent policies, concerning nothing less than the major economic and political problems, they can hardly be described as ultra-left.But back to the real roots of the conflict. The Stalinist Monolith“It should hardly be necessary to stress that the Soviet and Chinese positions are built on common Marxist foundations,” writes the Monthly Review. This is inaccurate. It is far closer to truth to say that the original organizational and programatic foundations of the Soviet and Chinese leaders was Stalinism.There is no record of open political disagreement between the present leaders of the Soviet Union and China with Stalin while the latter was alive. All subscribed publicly to the dogmas of “socialism in one country,” the “popular front,” “collective security” and even “peaceful coexistence,” – the political expressions of the Stalinist monolith. All submitted to the “cult of the individual,” the organizational expression of the monolith.The breakup of this Stalinist monolith since the second world war, provides the basic context for an evaluation of the Moscow-Peking dispute; it is the most important of its “roots,” so to speak. What, therefore, was the nature of the Stalinist monolith and how is it being undermined?The undemocratic aspect of the Communist parties arose as the product and instrument of the ruling, privileged, bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union, during the period of the ebb of the Russian and international revolution. This bureaucracy, after destroying the institutions and traditions of the Russian revolutionary workers democracy, engulfed the system of world Communist parties and the Communist International itself; the enormous authority of the Russian Revolution and the power of the Soviet state apparatus made this take-over possible. This process rendered impotent the independent revolutionary capacity of these Communist parties and replaced revolutionary leaders with servile functionaries; the end result of this was a series of tragic defeats for the working class, which permitted the growth of fascism and the outbreak of the second world war. ON THE other hand, the increasing barbarities of capitalism: fascism, colonial oppression, genocide, war, gave rise to revolutionary impulses which could not be contained within the Stalinist monolith, itself invaded by these impulses. While the Kremlin was capable of “pacifying” the proletariat of France, Italy and Greece, it could not restrain the masses of Yugoslavia and China; revolutionary breakthroughs occurred; the day of the unchallenged grip of the Soviet bureaucracy on Communist policy had passed; the interests of the working class were once again beginning to be expressed in the Communist movement.The specific theory of Stalinism, the ideological incarnation of the Soviet bureaucratic caste, was the invention of Stalin himself: socialism in one country. And the Monthly Review has presented the gist of this theory in its formulation of the Soviet position in the current dispute:“The best way to fight imperialism, contrary to the paper tiger view [reference to the alleged Peking position], is to negotiate, compromise, settle specific disputes as they arise – above all, avoid war and gain the necessary time for clear and convincing demonstration of the overwhelming superiority of the socialist over the capitalist system. As this superiority is driven home to the peoples of the world, the third camp will prove to be a mere way station on the road from imperialism to socialism and ultimately there will be mass desertions from the inner core of imperialism itself. In the meantime, a premature showdown could lead to a disaster for all concerned.”The specific and significant point of the theory of socialism in one country under Stalin and today under Khrushchev is not related to the need of a workers state to negotiate, trade, compromise and gain time as well as strive to gain overwhelming superiority. Here is the kernel of this theory: above all avoid the risk of socialist revolution against capitalism. It means not simply to avoid war and disastrous plunges into military adventures; no, it is the bureaucratic concept that the task of the Communist parties and allied movements is at all costs to avoid revolutionary showdowns. And the fact that the Chinese CP finally did not abide by this prescription is certainly one of the roots of the present conflict." }

{ "content": "The early years (1925-27) were marked by the growth of a vast democratic revolution led by the Chinese bourgeoisie, its party, the Kuomintang, and its leading figure – General Chiang Kai-shek. The Chinese proletariat led by the Communist Party was moving on the road of Bolshevism modeled on the October Revolution of 1917. The Chinese CP was independent of the national bourgeoisie; it possessed its own daily press. An armed proletariat in Shanghai was moving towards a showdown with the aim of completing the democratic revolution.Cutting across this revolutionary development was the intervention of the Stalinist machine which imposed a “realistic” course upon the Chinese CP. According to Stalin, the next step toward socialism in China, a backward, colonial country unripe for a socialist revolution, was to be achieved through the collaboration of the Chinese proletariat and the bourgeoisie for an extended period.The consequences of this policy foisted by the Russian bureaucracy on the Chinese CP were tragic. The Chinese CP in the face of an advance on Shanghai by Chiang Kai-shek, was ordered by Stalin to hail Chiang as a conquering revolutionary leader. While Stalin was honoring Chiang as a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the Generalissimo was engaged in butchering the Chinese proletariat, just as the Trotskyist opposition had warned. The Central Committee of the Chinese CP in effect submitted to the monolithic control of Stalin, gave up its independence, its organization, its press; and above all, disarmed the working class. When Chiang entered Shanghai on April 12, 1927, tens of thousands of Communist workers perished. Following this betrayal, Stalin persisted in repeating this course in another round of submission to the bourgeoisie, this time shifting to the “left” Kuomintang, led by Wan Chin Wei, with the same consequences: the arrests and massacres of Communist Party members in the bloody coup of July 14, 1927 in Hankow.After these tragic defeats, Stalin veered from ultra-right opportunism to ultra-left adventurism by directing the Chinese CP to engage in continuous putchist uprisings. Finally, the abortive Canton uprising took place on December 11, 1927. It was crushed in fifty hours at the cost of 5,700 workers, among them, the best remaining revolutionary cadres. THE loss of the Chinese revolution in terms of casualties and demoralization is impossible to calculate. But despite these frightful consequences the Chinese revolution survived and eventually revived. Revolution Breaks ThroughStalin made a deal with the Western imperialists at Yalta in 1945, stipulating that the Chinese CP would accept a government coalition with Chiang Kai-shek giving the Generalissimo veto power, and thus refrain from the “risk” of a socialist revolution; and, for this, Stalin would receive military agreements and the settling of post-war boundaries.But there was one stumbling block: the Chinese CP refused to give up its own armed forces, the Red Army, in the course of its coalition attempts with Chiang Kai-shek. This key decision in turn enabled and even compelled the Chinese CP to stand at the head of a socialist revolution. (The same held true in essence for the Yugoslav CP during and after the second world war.) This historic event in 1949-50 completely upset the Stalinist perspective; namely, that after World War II a stable peaceful coexistence of mutual assurances would prevail. The Kremlin banked on maintaining control of the CPs and revolutionary forces. This control would prevent revolutions and the capitalists in turn would promise not to attack the Soviet Union.Stalin during World War II had no confidence whatever in the possibility of a socialist revolution. He particularly ordered the Chinese CP to avoid any head-on clash with Chiang Kai-shek. Granted the premise of a non-revolutionary perspective, Stalin’s peaceful coexistence advice appeared “reasonable,” “realistic” and “mature.” But the Chinese thought otherwise. [1]Were the Russians right in opposing the Chinese socialist revolution? Or were the Chinese right? If the Chinese nationalist bourgeoisie headed by Chiang had remained in power would this have strengthened a perspective of genuine peace or heighten the prospect of an imperialist drive for World War III? Since, in our opinion, the victory of the Chinese socialist revolution has been an enormous deterrent to World War III, we think it has considerable bearing on the roots of the present controversy about peaceful coexistence. And by the same token one’s stand on the current Sino-Soviet dispute requires taking sides on the earlier dispute between the Chinese CP and Stalin over the question of revolution.The Chinese revolution was a refutation of the Stalinist theory of socialism in one country, as were all the socialist revolutionary transformations during the post-war period. That is why these victories resulted in a crisis of the Stalinist conservative, narrow, national, bureaucratic policies; that is also why the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union itself endures a breakdown of equilibrium, de-Stalinization and finally, that is why this is all accompanied by the fragmentation, cracks and fissures in all components of the monolithic structure.The current debates should properly be viewed against this theoretical and historical background. It is this background which explains the “unexpected” eruption of public disagreement. The Chinese lack of confidence in the Russians is not a momentary mood. It has been a long time coming. The beginning goes way back and the end is not yet in sight.The cracking of the Stalinist monolith, a result and a cause of the Sino-Soviet conflict, has let loose a storm of political currents and cross-currents within the international working-class vanguard movements. New or previously suppressed points of view are getting a hearing; whole tendencies and even parties are shifting positions; new alliances are being forged. There is a very real struggle for ideas, methods and goals. This takes place as a contention of political tendencies leading eventually to the establishment of a new revolutionary leadership based on a new program. Such a world regroupment process has promoted a vigorous atmosphere of “bloom and contend,” review and revaluate, test and retest in the crucible of new revolutions." }

{ "content": "The international communist vanguard originated in the Russian Bolshevik cadre. The great authority won by the Bolsheviks in their victory of 1917 permitted them to become the nucleus of a world organization of a new type. THE subsequent degeneration of the Russian Communist Party under Stalin strangled the Communist parties and the Communist International as an effective revolutionary weapon. Stalinism, however, produced its own opposites within the Communist parties; first, in the form of Trotskyism and more recently, new revolutionary socialist forces. The Left Opposition, or Trotskyism, arose in the nineteen-twenties as a defender and continuator of the traditions of Leninism against the onslaught of Stalinist reaction. In the decades of working class defeats caused in great measure by Stalinist policy, the Trotskyist movement succeeded in “remembering” October; thereby maintaining the historical thread of Marxist theory as it was expressed through the action of Lenin’s party.In the Forties and Fifties under completely altered conditions the new revolutionary forces have emerged through breaks with Stalinism, Social Democracy and bourgeois nationalism. These forces displayed no outward signs of similarity or even direct relationship to the cadres of Trotskyism. They did not originate as self-conscious, ideological and theoretical oppositions to Stalinism, relating themselves to the classic revolutionary Left Opposition. The de facto anti-Stalinist, or non-Stalinist revolutionary formations began on the field of action, over differences of tactics and strategy.But the course of history points to a fusion of the movements of Leninist continuity with today’s newly aroused revolutionary forces. Although from different starting points, the Trotskyist program and the revolutionary forces breaking with Stalinism have an area of intersection. However, there is nothing in this process that is determined a priori: it is a central target of revolutionary will and revolutionary struggle. An AnalogyIn general, every forward leap by the workers movement has witnessed a breakup within the leadership of the established organizations. In the US in the Thirties, the mass upsurge by the working class split the AFL bureaucracy into two distinct wings. One group, led by John L. Lewis, accommodated themselves to the insurgents, even providing leadership to the movement that was eventually to form the CIO.Although analogies are always limited, the present dispute between Mao and Khrushchev can be usefully compared to that fight between Lewis and Green: both cases involve a division in the top apparatus of a workers movement.We support the Chinese in the same sense that the revolutionists of the Thirties supported Lewis. Support of Lewis was a way of manifesting identification with the semi-revolutionary wave he was riding. The great need of the moment was the organization of the industrial workers. Support to the CIO furthered that cause. While recognizing in Lewis’ break with Green a significant contribution to the forward march of American labor, the revolutionists, at the same time, were aware that Lewis’ action had outstripped his own consciousness: that he was not aware of the implications of what he had done, and most assuredly was not programatically prepared for the further requirements of the situation. In addition Lewis had not broken with his own privileged position. (In that regard he remained in the same category with Green.)Thus, support to Lewis was “conditional,” or “critical,” which permitted the revolutionists to support and identify with the forward step of the masses in such a way as to allow them (at least in program) to go further than Lewis eventually was prepared to go. In a word, the revolutionists of the Thirties were supporters of Lewis without becoming “Lewisites.” IN A comparable manner today, we support Mao without being Maoists. To be more concrete: on the main theoretical questions in dispute between the Russians and the Chinese, we think the Chinese are correct. In addition, the Chinese leaders base themselves on revolutionary social strata aroused by 650 million people entering the arena of history. On the other hand, the Chinese leaders have yet to probe the source of their disagreement with the Kremlin, to ask the question: how is it that the leaders of the Soviet CP could arrive at such a treacherous position? The Chinese dissolve this problem in an abstract “revisionism” which becomes, in their theoretical structure, the original source of all evil. Were the Chinese courageously to undertake to answer this question, were they to dig behind the Khrushchev interpretation of peaceful coexistence and discover the very real material interests of a privileged bureaucracy – in the Soviet Union as in China; were they, in a word, to discover the essential source of Stalinism and their own historic relationship to it, then it would be possible to state with confidence that Maoism is the modern version of Bolshevism. Then it would be possible to assess more positively the Chinese CP claim to constitute the new international revolutionary leadership.Will the Maoists have the capacity to continue the excellent progress they have been making in their break with Stalinism? Will they be able to proceed from their trenchant polemics against specific Stalinist theories to an understanding of Stalinism, per se, including the latter’s role in the Chinese revolution itself? Only further experience can answer these questions. It is sufficient at this point to note that the success of the Chinese against the Russians in the current dispute is having beneficial effects: it further weakens the grip of the Khrushchev brand of Stalinism on important workers movements around the world in favor of revolutionary tendencies. The growth of the revolu-toinary tendencies by reflex action may in turn further the progressive development of the Maoist leadership.The Moscow-Peking conflict constitutes a beginning, by no means final, stage in the process of international re-groupment of the revolutionary movement. The victory of Peking at this stage would be, in our opinion, a significant step forward.Every serious political analysis implies a prediction of the future. Understanding the dispute in the manner they do, the MR editors foresee that the solution to the current conflict will occur in the following manner:" }

{ "content": "“In general, it is only a change in the objective situation itself that undermines a dogmatic leftist position and leads to its abandonment. And this we believe will turn out to be true in the case of China, as it has in other cases in the past.”They, then, indicate the nature of the predicted change in the objective situation:“... China is now suffering from a severe case of dogmatic leftism. The disease will abate and eventually disappear, one would suppose, when China is admitted to its rightful place among the nations of the world, especially if this takes place against determined United States opposition; and when the internal situation in the country eases as the great efforts of socialist construction begin to yield their fruits.”This seems, at first, very much like begging the question. How China will be able to win “its rightful place among nations” is the subject of the disagreement. The fact of the matter is, however, the MR editors, as they themselves say, agree with Khrushchev on the question of world perspectives. They expect that Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence will be successful; that clever diplomacy will prevent the imperialists from launching World War III; and that, in the meantime, the Soviet bloc will increase in wealth and power, paralyzing all opposition by force of example. In such a manner China will gradually be moved out of her present isolated position into one of strength and “acceptance”; and the ideological divergences between Moscow and Peking will disappear as the Chinese recognize the folly of their infantile measles. AS THE Chinese assert, the real perspective is the opposite of the one expected by the Russians. The growth of the revolutionary forces emerging from the second world war has by no means reached its peak. The recent victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba is but one more piece of evidence of this fact. The masses, in the imperialist sector, grinding under heavy poverty in most cases, inspired by the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, do not display any mood of quiet patience awaiting the miracles supposedly contained in Summit Diplomacy. On the other hand, the masses in the non-capitalist sector, their desires awakened by their own revolutionary victories, see in the imperialist domination of two-thirds of the globe an excruciating, therefore impermissible brake on their own progress.The growth, since World War II, of Soviet-bloc industry is undeniable. But encouraging as this economic development is, it has been far outstripped by the swift rise of the revolutionary movement, which more immediately affects events. Looked at from this aspect, Khrushchev’s program is an appeal to the masses to restrain their revolutionary “impatience,” keeping their demands and the tempo of their struggles in accord with the relatively slower tempo of Soviet industrial growth. The emergence of the Chinese position within the Soviet bloc indicates a mass sentiment to reject the Kremlin’s go-slow prescription. Khrushchev will not succeed where Stalin failed.All signs point to an epoch of increasing social tensions, violent eruptions, that is, an epoch of explosive class struggle leading to the victory of socialism throughout the world. There will be a “resolution” of the Moscow-Peking conflict on this variant as well. But in this context the Chinese position, rather than appearing as aberrations of one-sided leftists will seem to be the valid theoretical expression of the urgent needs and desires of the most underprivileged sectors of the world’s population. The Kremlin position, of necessity by-passed in such a process, will appear for what it really is: the theoretical expression of, actually an apology for, the needs and desires of an economically privileged and conservatized sector of Soviet society. Footnote1. Isaac Deutscher in the London Observer, January 28, 1962, refers to the well-known break between the Chinese CP leaders and Stalin over the question of the revolution. In connection with the current dispute he wrote:“Is the quarrel then mainly over the ‘wrong’ done to Stalin posthumously? But Mao had been, throughout his career, in tacit conflict with Stalin – he seized power against Stalin’s advice. After the Twentieth Congress he sought, with his ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom,’ to out-do Khrushchev in de-Stalinization.”Top of pageWeiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main PageLast updated: 28.1.2006" }

{ "content": " MIA: History: ETOL: Document: Education for Socialist Bulletin: Struggles Against Fascism at the End of World War II 1. Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line—Socialist Workers Party [US] Education for Socialist Bulletins— Struggles Against Fascism at the End of World War II 1. Section Two: Struggles Against Fascism at the End of World War II The conclusion of the war saw a revival of fascist activity, along with a revival of labor militancy. Counting on an economic downturn to put wind in their sails, the fascists offered their services to big business as a combat force against a new labor upsurge. The most active of the fascist leaders was Gerald L. K. Smith. Smith began in Louisiana as an aide to Huey Long and an organizer of his “Share the Wealth” movement. After Long’s assassination, Smith lost a fight to take control of Long’s machine. Shortly thereafter, Smith emerged as a fascist demagogue. In 1942 he formed the Christian National Front and began to publish The Cross and the Flag. In 1945, he began an energetic effort to build a mass base through national tours. His meetings were met with mass protests in Detroit, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and other cities. These were often initiated by the SWP. The biggest anti-fascist actions occurred in Los Angeles which Smith tried to establish as a major base. “Report on the Los Angeles Antifascist Campaign,” by Murry Weiss details the tactics used by the SWP in encouraging and building a united front that built a mass meeting of 17,000 against Smith on June 21, 1945. Similar tactics brought a further success on October18 when 20,000 picketed a Smith meeting. This brought Smith’s large-scale efforts in Los Angeles to an end. An article from the August 31, 1945 issue of the Militant and the comments by Vincent A. Dunne on this action describe the setback Smith experienced in Minneapolis. While Smith’s star went into decline, other fascist forces began to emerge out of the government apparatus and the two-party system. The leader of this incipient fascist tendency was Senator -Joseph A. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Smith played an active role in supporting McCarthy in the next period. Today, Smith retains a tiny following, primarily in the South. 1. Report on the Los Angeles Antifascist Campaign (abridged) By Murry Weiss from SWP Discussion Bulletin, Vol. VII, No. 8, August 1945 The first stage of the antifascist campaign launched by the Los Angeles Local on June 21st has been concluded. Now it is necessary to sum up a body of extraordinarily valuable experience. This experience is all the more precious in view of the inevitable development of the struggle against fascism on a broader scale in the period that lies immediately ahead. American fascists, such as Gerald L, K. Smith, are already busy preparing for large-scale operations. They scurry up and down the country seeking concentration points. Their natural arena are the large population-swollen industrial centers such as Detroit and Los Angeles where monopoly capital is harried by present and future “labor troubles.” In these areas they try to build a mass base among the dislocated and discontented middle-class; the old-age pension movement, veterans groups, religious sects, etc. In our analysis of the Smith movement, we must avoid exaggerations. To overestimate Smith’s present strength or to exaggerate his ties with big business in Southern California is in some respects as dangerous as the softheaded evaluation of Smith as a lunatic and an “inconsequential rabble-rouser.” G.L.K. Smith, a typical product of the pioneer American fascist movements, came to Los Angeles to persuade big business in Southern California that he could be useful to them in settling accounts with the labor movement. For this purpose he had to show strength, dynamic abilities, a large movement. Has he succeeded in doing this? No doubt powerful elements among the rich farmers and capitalists toy with the idea of utilizing Smith. But it is obvious that Smith has not yet been given the go-ahead signal and the necessary finances to accomplish his purpose. Our analysis of Smith’s campaign and his tactics must proceed from this premise—he seeks to make a show of strength. He seeks to impress the big powers with his potentialities as an organizer of anti-union combat forces and with his skill in manipulating race antagonisms and provoking race riots. The ranks of labor in Los Angeles are swollen with new recruits from the deep South, both Negro and white. Large masses of reactionary middle-class elements are mobilized in and around Los Angeles by the very process of the war. The zoot suit riots, carefully studied by the fascists, gave an indication of how soldiers and sailors could be incited against racial minorities and how a pogrom atmosphere can be created in an American city. Smith’s activities constitute a mortal threat to the working-class. This was and remains our starting point. Smith’s movement is not the isolated German-American Bund, wearing storm-troopers’ uniforms and meeting in the Deutsches-Haus. He moves behind a heavy defensive covering of “Christians Unite” and “Against Fascism and Communism!” He works through the churches, the old age pension movement, and every other possible defensive camouflage; Thus when we formulated the policy of our antifascist campaign, our central thought was to force the organized working class into consciousness of who Smith was and the necessity of fighting him. In the first period this was the main need. " }

{ "content": "The line of the campaign was to mobilize the organized forces of the working class for a struggle against Smith. We reasoned: Smith is here to build a mass movement; to win financial support from influential capitalists; to organize combat groups; to unite all reactionary forces under a single banner; to explode the tinder box of racial tension into riots and pogroms; to turn it all into an attack on the labor movement and on the unemployed who tomorrow will struggle for jobs and security. But Smith is only in the initial stage of his campaign. Therefore, we must not allow him to gain time and a foothold but we must smash back with great power and boldness, with overwhelming preponderance of force. This was the objective need. This was the message our party would bring to the workers organizations. When the Section Executive Committee first opened the discussion on our tactics in the struggle against Smith, the leaders of most sections of the labor movement were completely passive to the fascist threat. Others were following a feeble and cowardly policy. In the Stalinist movement and its periphery a great deal of pressure to “do something” against Smith was to be observed. The Jewish organizations were feeling the pressure of the alarmed and apprehensive masses of worker and middle-class Jews. The policy of those labor leaders who showed at least an awareness of Smith (the Stalinists and the Jewish leaders) contained two main elements. One was what has since been termed the “hush-hush” policy: “Smith is a lunatic crackpot; ignore him, leave him alone and he’ll kill himself.” When the rising tide of pressure from the militant workers, the Jewish people and other racial minority groups became sufficiently acute, the Stalinists and the Jewish leaders developed the second element of their policy: “Pressure on the existing law-enforcement agencies and auditorium owners.” A large scale telephone and letter-writing campaign was organized. Auditorium owners were petitioned to refuse Smith access to their halls. At one point an “anti-lunatic-fringe” committee was formed with a few prominent Stalinist trade unionists at the head. This Committee died still-born and is interesting only as a symptom of the policy that was being followed. With each successful meeting of Smith, hammer blows were struck at the policy of “hush-hush.” Cowardly silence and petitions to auditorium owners proved their ineffectiveness. More and more workers were being drawn into the movement for antifascist action. We learned later of pressure being applied by various militant CIO unionists. It is on this background that the Section Executive Committee considered the campaign and worked out policy. At the meeting of the SEC on June 21st, the discussion at first revolved around the question: Shall we picket Smith’s Philharmonic meeting of June 25th? We had a proposal from the Schachtmanites for a united front picket demonstration on the 25th. The proposal of the Schachtmanites served one purpose. It forced us to seriously consider the whole question of the fight against Smith—something we had not done previously. As the debate on this question developed, it became clear to all the comrades that a much broader question was involved: the need for an energetic long-term campaign against Smith was agreed upon; the main tactical orientation of propelling the labor movement into action was also agreed on. The letter from the WP [Workers Party—the organization Shachtman formed after he split from the SWP in 1940] was addressed to the Socialist Party, Socialist Labor Party, Industrial Workers of the World, and the Socialist Workers Party. Their proposal stemmed from the main line they followed throughout the campaign. Draper expressed it clearly when he told us, “We expect, nothing from the labor movement at this time in the struggle against the fascists. It is up to the socialists to act.” All the SEC members, including the comrades who favored a picket line, appraised the policy of the Shachtmanites as sterile and adventuristic. If it is true that Smith is a fascist bent on destroying the labor movement, then obviously what is needed is a resolute and persistent campaign to organize the united front of all the powerful workers’ organizations. This is the force that will crush fascism! How can a serious revolutionary policy fail to orient from the basic consideration of a united front tactic towards the Stalinist organizations? Why did the Shachtmanites appeal to the SLP for a united front and to the CPA (Communist Political Association)? Why did they fail completely to see the need for a united front campaign in the labor movement? It will be seen in the future development of the events how the Shachtmanites miscalculated the entire situation (“we expect nothing from the labor movement at this time”), based themselves primarily on a heckling attack on us, provided comfort to the fascists, and were overwhelmed by the, real course of events. Comrades Weiss and Tanner were absent from the June 21st SEC meeting because of illness. They proposed in a memorandum to the Committee “the Los Angeles Local should immediately open an anti-fascist campaign” and outlined a proposed plan of attack. The Committee adopted the proposal for the campaign as a whole; dividing on the question of the tactic for June 25th Smith meeting, a majority in favor of the tactic proposed in the Weiss-Tanner document. We Launch the Campaign " }

{ "content": "The comrades of the Section Executive Committee were fully aware of the pressure the Shachtmanites would attempt to exert on the party when we adopted our policy. If we had considered the question from the point of view of factional pluses and minuses, of “getting the best” of the Shachtmanites in a petty sense, we would have gone out and picketed. This would have facilitated our work of getting next to a few workers the Shachtmanites had recruited and were carefully hiding from us. The Shachtmanites put on a campaign of pressure. At two Sunday night lectures on Stalinism conducted by our party, their leading speakers took the floor and presented their policy; called for party members to participate with them in the picket line. At our anti-fascist mass meeting at which we presented our program for the struggle against Smith, three Shachtmanite speakers dominated the discussion period. The congenital Abernite, Max Sterling, presented himself to a group of our youth as a “raw worker” undecided between us and the Shachtmanites, but inclining towards them because of their militant position on the antifascist struggle. In a word, they threw everything they had into a campaign to shake the party. We anticipated this and took it into the bargain. We had confidence that the correctness of our line would be confirmed. Our new members and our workers cadre would learn from the first-hand experience with Shachtmanism, with the petty-bourgeois adventurers in action. We can state with absolute certainty that as regards this aspect of the question, that is, the Shachtmanite “offensive”, it netted them exactly zero in influence or gains in our ranks. On the other side of the ledger, we succeeded in inoculating the relatively new party members against the old Shachtmanite virus and in developing contact with a few workers who had accidentally joined the WP. We opened the campaign with a whole series of record moves. We sent telegrams to all labor bodies, racial minority groups, the Communist Political Association, etc. Naturally we had no illusions that this would bring results in and of itself, but it provided the basis for the effective agitational campaign we developed during the following weeks. We struck out along three main lines. Within the framework of the general united front tactic we developed a special united front maneuver towards the Stalinists. We regarded the Stalinist movement as the key to the situation. The Stalinists control the apparatus of the CIO; the Stalinists have a large Jewish following; there was considerable sentiment in the Stalinist ranks for “action”; and finally, the Stalinist ranks were in the midst of the crisis of their turn [the expulsion of Browder] manifesting a greater susceptibility to our ideas than we have witnessed in many years. We decided to place as much power as we could behind the united front campaign directed towards the Stalinists. The evidence shows that we were very successful in driving our appeal for the united front deep into the ranks of the Stalinist movement. Our open letter was distributed widely at Stalinist mass meetings, at the Hollywood Citizens Committee meeting, at the CIO Council and in the garment center. It was mailed to our contact list as information. Most important of all, it was a weapon for our comrades in the shops and unions. The open letter became the occasion for an approach to Stalinist shopmates. Even a number of leading Stalinist workers, members of the Section Committee of the CPA, were contacted in this way and made favorable comments. In one case, our comrade presented the open letter to a Stalinist worker in the shop, a die-hard anti-Trotskyist, who declared he was convinced we were right on this point. He then showed the open letter to two other Stalinist workers in the shop, one of whom asserted that the Trotskyists were “certainly sincere in their struggle against fascism.” Among the militants in the CIO and in leading Negro circles our united front tactic towards the Stalinists made a good impression. When we observe how our campaign, our tactics and slogans are being carried into the factories, we can mark it down as a new stage of our development. Here, in the shops, we have the greatest testing ground for our slogans, and here is where we are strongest. The second line of action was the presentation of resolutions in the unions. We started modestly, but quickly realized the extent of possibilities and tried to step up the introduction of resolutions and the content of the resolutions accordingly. At each union meeting we observed that the temper of the workers was relatively hot on this question. The ease with which our resolutions passed prompted us to work on the idea of proposing that one union body, for example, the Auto Council, shall take the initiative in calling for the formation of a Trade Union Committee to combat Smith. We envisaged this as the next step in making the united front a reality. We are convinced that this would have been entirely possible and a trade union committee would have taken shape “from below,” so to speak, i.e., from the action of various local unions in meeting together. In the meantime, however, the accumulated pressure from a number of different directions, ours not least of all, had forced the Stalinists into a more serious move. The fascists planned to hold a mass meeting at the shrine Auditorium on July 20th. It was clear that all of the previous efforts of the official leaders to stop Smith had fizzled. The pressure of the workers had also forced the AFL and Railroad Brotherhoods tops into stirring. The united front took shape “from above.” Our tactics in the resolutions campaign were accordingly adjusted to this new situation, and we shifted over to resolutions endorsing the united front and calling for support to the united front mass meeting, a counterdemonstration to the Smith Shrine meeting, at the Olympic Auditorium on July 20th. " }

{ "content": "Although the full effectiveness of our resolutions campaign cannot be measured by the list of unions in which we passed resolutions, the score is nevertheless impressive. In all cases the unions forwarded the resolutions to other unions with a “snowballing” effect. Through the direct initiative of the party, we passed resolutions characterizing Smith, condemning him and calling for militant united labor action against him, in the following unions: Marine Fireman’s Union; the Consolidated Steel Local of the USWA; the Joint Board of the ILGWU; the United Auto Council, UAW-CIO; Local 9 of the Shipyard Workers Union-CIO (the largest CIO union on the West Coast); an IAM Local at Lockheed Aircraft; and the San Pedro Longshoreman’s Union. In a number of other unions resolutions were slated to go through, but further developments made them unnecessary. The key character of the union bodies listed will show why we can realistically state that our resolutions campaign played an important role in mobilizing sentiment for action, putting pressure on the bureaucrats and in developing the antifascist united front of the Los Angeles labor movement. The third main line of our campaign was work among the racial and national minorities organizations. We very quickly utilized our excellent relations with the Negro press to publicize the party’s campaign and its united front slogans. Three of the local Negro newspapers published our press releases. In our discussions with the editors of the Negro press and various Negro worker leaders, our policy was warmly received and approved. The Sunday before the Olympic Auditorium demonstration the party mobilized forces to go into the Negro neighborhood and the Negro churches. Our comrade spoke before 1200 Negro youth in a large church. Our contact with Jewish organizations has been fruitful in at least one instance. Mr. Gatch, the editor of the California Jewish Voice , has taken a militant position on the struggle against Smith. Before the news of the United Front Olympic Auditorium demonstration was announced, he proposed in a lead article that 10,000 antifascists picket the Shrine meeting. Smith has printed photostatic copies of this article as evidence of the violent Jewish plot against him and his “Christians Unite” campaign. Our relations with this editor and a number of other Jewish organizations around him promise to develop into a bloc within the united front. Recently it has come to light that fascist vigilante elements are organizing, in the agricultural valleys, rifle clubs with anti-Semitic slogans. Gatch has indicated that he is planning to demand from the authorities decisive action against this ominous move, and if immediate action is not forthcoming, he will call for the formation of Jewish youth “Health” clubs. There are other small signs that such sentiment is developing among the Jewish, Mexican, and Negro population. We will of course be in the forefront in raising the slogan of Defense Guards. In every case we will try to deepen the effect of the slogan by inking it to such concrete events or threats as the valley rifle clubs. If the Jewish Voice calls for the formation of Jewish Youth clubs for defense, we will advocate joint Jewish, Mexican, Negro, youth, and workers’ defense groups. Two Smith Meetings The Smith meetings at the Philharmonic auditorium on June 25th, and at the Ham’n’Eggers Hall on June 28th were organized on an ostensibly closed basis, admittance by invitation only. Both were overflow meetings of thousands of people. The Shachtmanites called for mass picketing at both meetings. They issued leaflets and conducted a publicity campaign. In our opinion, separate and apart from the question of whether the SWP should have called a picket demonstration, the Shachtmanites’ picket demonstrations were puny and ineffective. At the Philharmonic Auditorium, they mobilized from the street a hundred and fifty people. Very few of these came down in response to the call, but were obviously antifascist passersby who joined in the picket line for a short time. Can this demonstration, which was called to “stop the fascists,” be considered effective? Can it be compared with the Madison Square Garden demonstration or Los Angeles antifascist demonstrations of 1938? When the party called the workers to demonstrate against the fascists at the Deutsches Haus in Los Angeles in 1938, we had 2,000 workers outside to a few hundred frightened fascists inside. We had unions and factories represented officially in the demonstration, speaking over our sound truck loudspeaker. We held siege on the fascist meeting so that they didn’t dare leave the meeting till long after midnight. Many of them were then severely beaten by Mexican workers from the Dura Steel factory, who had been called out to demonstrate by the party. In New York comrades know what a mass outpouring of working-class strength there was in response to our call. If there remains a shadow of doubt over the estimate of the Shachtmanite tactic, this is eliminated when we examine the results of their picket line three days later! Here the Smith meeting was conducted in an off street with very few passersby. The real drawing power of the Shachtmanites and a test of the mood of the workers, their willingness to respond to a call from a small organization, could be observed more accurately. Instead of maintaining their 100 to 150 pickets, the second picket line dropped to from twenty-five to fifty according to the most generous estimates! " }

{ "content": "At both meetings Smith made great capital out of the feeble showing of the Shachtmanites. “We are thousands and they are 25 or 50 at the most, and they talk of breaking up our meeting. If we went out and said ‘boo’ they’d run. Even the left-wing CIO is not represented out there.” In general, he employed the occasion to raise the morale of his meetings, to picture his movement as unconquerable and the opposition as disorganized and feeble. The Shachmanites, however, proclaimed these demonstrations as “victories”. How a “Picket Smith’s Meetings” movement which records a sharp decline from its first to its second action, can be depicted as a victory is very hard to grasp. Overflow fascist meetings are successfully held. They aren’t to the slightest extent shaken from enthusiasm and confidence but, on the contrary, draw strength from observing that instead of a mass demonstration of workers’ strength, a small handful of “radicals” parade before their meeting. This can be proclaimed an anti-fascist victory only by irresponsible braggarts who are deaf, dumb, and blind to the teachings of Bolshevik tactics. Shortly after their second picket demonstration, the Shachtmanites again proposed to meet with us to discuss joint activity in the struggle against Smith. Our Section Executive Committee decided to authorize the organizer to meet with them. In accordance with our traditional policy we were ready to act jointly with any group or individual in the labor movement. We were ready to bloc with them on any question of action that could be commonly agreed upon. We didn’t think there were many such actions but we were ready to listen to any proposals. We met with the Shachtmanites, and they presented a united front proposal in a number of variations. A. That the SWP and the WP and perhaps the SP shall set up a joint Labor Committee for the fight against fascism. This “Labor Committee” they did not envisage as a trade union body. It was at this meeting that Draper, their representative, stated, “We expect nothing from the labor movement at this time. The Socialists will have to act alone.” Of course we rejected this, explaining that our orientation was towards forming a united front of unions and other large working-class organizations. B. A united front mass meeting of both parties. We explained that this was unrealistic since it simply meant a proposal that we provide them with a platform and we preferred to speak from our own platform in party meetings and could see no benefit from a joint mass meeting. C. A united membership meeting to discuss the antifascist struggle. Again we explained that they had been provided with ample opportunity to remain in the party and have full rights in discussion as an opposition faction. Since they treacherously split with the SWP, it was unreasonable for them to demand the rights of members within our organization. D. United front picket lines against any future meeting Smith may hold. We gave them the same answer; that we were orienting to the formation of such a united front with the working-class organizations that really represented the mass of workers in the city and thereby the power of the workers in the city. As regards future demonstrations of Smith, we would appraise the question of purely party demonstrations on the basis of the relationship of forces at a given time. E. They proposed blocs to pass resolutions in the unions. Here we agreed to consider such blocs on the basis of any concrete situation that offered possibilities along this line. They could cite only one, Local 9, Shipyard Workers. We could think of no other. In this union we had formed a bloc with a Negro militant, the vice-president of the state CIO, a former Stalinist, who had agreed to present our resolution. Nevertheless, we agreed to refer the question to our fraction with a recommendation that our fraction consult with their fraction; mainly because we were concerned with restraining them from any blundering interference with the arrangements we had made. This is precisely what occurred. Our fraction representative met with theirs. They arrogantly insisted on proposing their own resolution with their own speaker. We finally persuaded them to refrain from doing so until a far more effective arrangement could be put through. This was the extent of our bloc with the Shachtmanites in Local 9. The United Front is Formed Smith announced plans for his final rally for July 20th at the Shrine Auditorium at a small secret meeting in Clifton’s Cafeteria. We had observers present at this meeting and were the first to spread the alarm throughout the labor movement and Jewish organizations. We called up representative individuals and appraised them of the plans of Smith. Immediately the movement for antifascist action was spurred forward. As we reported before, one Jewish newspaper called for a mass picket demonstration. A Jewish workers cultural organization pledged its 300 members in support of a picket line at the Shrine meeting. The pressure of our campaign was developing considerably in the CIO. The Stalinist rank and file and periphery were dissatisfied with the official policy. The first news we heard of the development of a united front and a counterdemonstration for July 20th came from Slim Connally, a Stalinist CIO leader, who told one of our comrades that the CIO was calling a counterdemonstration at the Olympic Auditorium on the same night as Smith’s Shrine meeting. He told our comrade, a Negro trade unionist, to spread the word among the Negro people. Our comrade immediately came down to the Central Branch meeting of the party and announced the news. At the same time we heard that a meeting of all antifascist organizations was to take place at the Royal Palms Hotel on Tuesday, July 17, to lay the plans for the final buildup for the Olympic Auditorium demonstration. " }

{ "content": "The Tuesday meeting proved to be an extremely representative gathering of the trade unions, racial minority organizations, religious and Hollywood groups. A sprinkling of bourgeois politicians decorated the occasion with the typical Stalinist attempt to distort a united front into a peoples’ front masquerade. Official representatives of the CIO, AFL, and Railroad Brotherhoods were present. A good number of local unions, mostly CIO, were also represented. A mystery of sorts surrounds the question of precisely which organization took the initiative in calling this united front. Attorney General Kenney and Assemblyman ALBERT Decker were assigned the roles of official chairman and convener. Our first information led us to believe that the CIO had called for the Olympic meeting and the Royal Palms united front gathering. This accounts for the fact that the Militant characterized the Olympic meeting as a CIO demonstration rather than a united front demonstration at which the CIO AFL and Railroad Brotherhoods participated together with racial organizations and other “community” groups. It is possible that the Stalinists started with the CIO as sponsor and then obscured its role when they found such widespread support from other organizations and individuals. In our opinion, organization control of the Olympic Auditorium meeting and the initiative in calling the Royal Palms meeting lies with the Stalinists The question of which organization was officially responsible recedes into the background once it is clear that the Stalinists were the most powerful force which controlled the apparatus of both meetings What then is our analysis of this set up? Is it a genuine united front? There can be no question that it was a real united front, but as is always the case with institutions that arise out of the reality of the struggle, as distinguished from textbook definitions, this concrete united front has its peculiarities, determined by the entire situation. The ground swell of workers antifascist sentiment for action was sufficient to jar the official apparatus of labor and of the Stalinist party into action. This workers’ sentiment, when combined with the state of excitement and anxiety of the Jewish organizations, proved sufficient to bring together in one Council an extremely wide representation of the labor movement and the racial minority groups. However, the movement of the workers from below has not yet reached the point where it could express itself in a united front of action which would be representative of the labor organizations from top to bottom. What was striking at the Tuesday Royal Palms meeting was the inordinate importance and weight held by political shysters, Hollywood stars, accidental figures, and the summits of the labor movement There were too many religious quacks and too few factory workers. This signifies an early stage in the united front struggle against fascism; The Stalinists are working might and main in this early stage to derail the movement; to switch it on to the path of peoples’ frontism, to stifle the initiative of working-class ranks. This is the characteristic element of their policy at the Royal Palms and Olympic meetings. The Party in Action How did the party participate in this movement? We immediately declared our full support to the idea of a counterdemonstration against the fascists Our leaflet calling for the workers to pack the Olympic Auditorium was the first announcement of the demonstration on the streets. The campaign that was organized during that one week in some respects surpassed the election campaign. The SEC declared a state of full mobilization, and that proved to be no idle phrase. It was understood by the overwhelming majority of the party membership to mean an extraordinary demand on their time and energy, and they acted accordingly. The week was notable for our utilization of a long unused medium of agitation, the open air meeting, which has now become a regular feature of our campaign. We decided to launch a new series of radio broadcasts, and attempted to arrange the schedule in time to announce it to the workers gathered at the Olympic Auditorium but we were blocked in this by the refusal of the broadcasting companies to sell us the time. The first part of the week was concentrated on getting out the leaflet, beginning its mass distributions, preparing a mailing to 4 000 subscribers and contacts and in preparation for the Tuesday meeting All our fractions were instructed to work wherever possible to represent their unions at the Tuesday meeting In most cases the shortness of time prevented the democratic election of delegates and thereby cut down our own representation. Union officials would, as a rule, appoint one of their group to attend. Yet we had four trade union delegates at the united front meeting. We had three delegates from the party, and about thirty comrades participated as individual observers. " }

{ "content": "There were approximately 400 present at the Tuesday meeting. The night before at the SEC we had elaborated a three-point policy to be following by the party caucus. (1) Continue the united front after the Friday meeting as an organ of struggle against fascism; (2) For a preponderance of representatives of the labor movement on the speaker’s rostrum. Instead of Hollywood celebrities, let’s have the leaders of the labor movement, Green, Murray, and Lewis, fly out here and speak at the meeting; (3) We proposed the Olympic Auditorium demonstration should have a brief program and should then be transformed into a giant parade to march on the Shrine. The Olympic Auditorium is one mile from the Shrine. Our proposal was to march the parade past the Shrine in a peaceful display of antifascist strength and to demobilize a few blocks past the Shrine. On Tuesday we had two speakers get the floor at the United Front meeting. Following a speaker from an Italian organization, who stated that if workers had organized in time and fought back, fascism would never have triumphed in Italy and Germany, Comrade Cappy got the floor and presented the proposal for adjourning the Olympic meeting early and parading to the Shrine. Then Comrade Tanner was recognized. She spoke for fifteen minutes, outlining the proposals of the party. The party proposal for a march became the pivotal point for all further discussion. Her speech was received with considerable applause as well as some subdued heckling from the Stalinists. The People’s World reported the next day that “speaker after speaker” came out against Myra Weiss, leader of the local Trotskyites who had proposed a parade past the Shrine after a brief meeting at the Olympic. In the course of a debate at the Wednesday party membership meeting Comrade Cappy developed the idea that our proposal for a march was adventuristic and represented a succumbing to the pressure of the Shachtmanites. The reporter for the SEC, Comrade Weiss, held that it was precisely this proposal which had marked off the left-wing of the United Front; that the proposal was entirely realistic; that it was feasible to call for the organization of an antifascist parade when the forces we were addressing this proposal to represented all the official organizations of the labor movement; that taking into account the real strength of the fascists, such a parade would have the effect of a powerful sledgehammer attack. It would. weaken Smith immensely. As for the comparison with. the Shachtmanites, it was held that our difference with them was over the question of proceeding with a tiny force in an ineffective display of weakness against the fascists; whereas we were appealing to the strong workers’ organizations to act against the fascists. Although it was not disputed that many tens of thousands of workers were still unaware of the character of the Smith movement, there were other tens of thousands, still in the minority, who were ready to take militant action once they saw a realistic possibility of doing so. An official decision of the labor movement to act, parade past the Shrine, would call forth a tremendous burst of enthusiasm and action from tens of thousands of militant workers in this area. Furthermore to underscore that we were not proposing a march led by us alone, we had stressed in our formulation of the proposal that if the majority of the united front opposed such a parade, we would be bound by that decision. The Friday Meeting Across the platform of the meeting was paraded the usual Stalinist handpicked assortment .of phony politicians, religious leaders, Hollywood stars, etc. However, the heads of the AFL and CIO Los Angeles Council spoke. The greatest ovation was received by Philip Connally, the head of the CIO Council. The most spirited applause occurred when the speakers struck a militant note. When Connally said: “We do not believe in free speech for the fascists,” the enthusiasm of the audience reached its height. What was most characteristic of the whole program and the meeting—and it went to about 11:30—was the fact that not one speaker told the workers what they should do in the struggle against Smith. Attorney General Kenney painted the picture of the war boom industries threatening to collapse, the danger of unemployment, the sharpening of a social crisis as a result of it; and cited this as the reason for Smith’s activity in this area. He said: “The way to fight Smith and other fascists is to keep industry going at capacity with full employment.” All he failed to do was to tell the audience how. The Stalinists pushed to the fore the question of Rankin’s forthcoming investigation of Hollywood. It became apparent that they are utilizing this united front, both at the Olympic meeting and at future meetings, to shield themselves from the red scare attack that the reactionaries are trying to whip up in Hollywood. The Olympic meeting was the product of a real movement from below. The Stalinists are not capable of calling such meetings at will. When Philip Murray came to Los Angeles in 1943, the Stalinists, who were then trying to impress Murray, tried to gather a large meeting together at the Olympic with Hollywood stars featured and an enormous publicity campaign. However, the meeting was poorly attended with a very low level of enthusiasm. It is hard to say what the composition of the Friday meeting was. The Stalinists and their periphery were there in full force. There was a strong middle-class professional grouping. Without doubt there were many thousands of industrial workers present and quite a large number of Negroes. Some comrades believe that the largest percentage of workers were turned away in the overflow crowd; those who couldn’t arrive early enough due to working hours. " }

{ "content": "We distributed our leaflet in over 8,000 copies. The four proposals are the pivotal points around which we propose to agitate in the shops and the unions during the coming period. The slogans for antifascist shop committees we regard as extremely potent in possibilities. There, the initiative will more and more fall into our hands. In the last analysis, the united front that has emerged represents all the weaknesses of the existing state of the labor movement; the union tops disconnected from the workers in the shops, the Stalinist political and trade union apparatus, the heavy middle-class element. As the struggle sharpens, the party will bring the slogans of the left-wing of the united front into every factory where we have contact. At a certain point the formation of antifascist factory committees will provide the medium for the organization of vital combat forces. One of the possibilities of the formation of workers’ defense guards is linked up with the factory committees, although it is not excluded that the workers’ defense guards will have an initially neighborhood, or even racial minority origin. The third point of our proposal is obviously the most immediate. It is our opinion that if we follow the right tactic with sufficient energy, we can meet the next wave of fascist activity with labor demonstrations and mass picketing. It is not a question of can we “get by” with some small picket lines of the “radical” parties. It is a question of how to mobilize masses of workers for struggle, without ignoring the reality of their existing organizations and leadership. Every party venture, every party tactic must be calculated to further this end. The fourth point (the labor party) has become particularly timely after the results of the British elections and is now prominently lifted to the place of an independent and immediate campaign of agitation for the party as a whole. All the comrades at the meeting reported that our leaflet was read carefully by those they could observe around them. Not one leaflet was found thrown away; this despite the fact that tremendous amounts of literature were being distributed at the entrances. Before the meeting our distributors succeeded in contacting a few new Shachtmanite recruits, who have since been followed up and look to be very promising. The distribution squad was caught outside with the thousands of workers who couldn’t get in, and engaged in many fruitful discussions in the street. After the police dispersed the crowds, we filled the available cars with contacts and brought them to the headquarters. When the others returned after the meeting, it was as if we had a mass meeting in our own hail. Although it was after midnight, the new workers contacted were anxious to hear a word from the party speakers. Our observer at the Shrine meeting reported how Smith ascribed the poor attendance at his rally (5,000) to “the Communists and the Jews who had packed the streetcars en route to the Shrine and Olympic Auditoriums.” Comrades Tanner and Weiss announced our determination to continue the open air meetings on the East Side and our plans to develop a free speech fight if the police interfered again as they had done earlier. Since then we have held three successful street meetings on the same corner without any further difficulties. Summary and Perspectives The campaign is in a moment of lull. Smith has left town for speaking engagements in the East, promising to return soon. His threat to make Los Angeles a national headquarters was not carried out. It is not even a West Coast headquarters. For the moment he is working under the surface once again. How long will this last? Will he start a new campaign of meetings? Will someone else of the same caliber raise a new threat? These questions cannot be answered in detail. We base ourselves on the inevitable development of further fascist activities. The reported rifle clubs in the valleys can become the point of departure for a new offensive in the antifascist campaign. We are investigating the activities of local supporters of Smith. Generally speaking, there is no lack of vigilante and fascist activities in Southern California. The party then prepares for a new big push in its campaign. What better preparation can there be than the assimilation of the lessons of the first stage of the campaign? The contrast between our policy and the Shachtmanites had a clear and finished character. The two lines of policy were submitted to the test in a short time. It is useful and instructive to draw up a balance sheet. The Shachtmanites proceeded by a superficial analogy to the Madison Square Garden demonstration of 1938. They “expected nothing from the labor movement at this time,” and they thought that a mere signal from anyone was sufficient to bring a mass of anti-fascist workers into the streets. If one is serious about summoning masses to action, it must be conceded that they miscalculated on both counts. The antifascist masses would not in these circumstances move against the Smith type of fascist movement without first exhausting the possibility of utilizing the defensive covering and power of their own mass organizations. In this they display a far better grasp of the difference between the Smith fascists and the German-American Bund than the Shachtmanites do. The militant workers did not answer the call to picket because they felt the need to move with and through the unions. Moreover they estimated that it was possible to get action from their organizations and proceeded to apply pressure. That is why we found that we were not alone in our efforts to push for the united front and for antifascist action in the unions. Everywhere other militants were following the same line. " }

{ "content": "Our tactic was fully confirmed by the course of events. The objective implications of Smith’s activity were so ominous in the setting of the present economic and political situation, that the trade union officials, the Stalinists, the Negro and Jewish leaders could not fail to be alarmed. Our task was to hammer home the meaning of the fascist threat and to organize the pressure of the workers to force the organizations of labor onto the road of struggle. It is necessary to understand clearly that the Shachtmanites did not simply add to the tactics we carried out, by organizing a picket line. They followed a totally different course. They could not see the reality or effectiveness of a struggle for the united front in the unions, and they had no conception whatsoever of a united front tactic with the Stalinists. They complain: “You claimed you had no time for preparing a joint demonstration with us, but you were ready in the available time to act jointly with the Stalinists.” Of course! In uniting with the WP we could calculate mainly on our own forces to act. For this we lacked time and the necessary relationship of forces. If we could unite with the Stalinists instead of the WP this would signify an enormous change in the relationship of forces and the time factor would alter accordingly. The Shachtmanites cannot understand that this is the reason why we fight for the united front with the Stalinists. It is not because we hate the WP worse than we hate the Stalinists, or because of our natural bureaucratic affinity for the Stalinists. It is because in one direction a mass of workers are concentrated; in the other, little more than a handful of renegades from Marxism. This is not the place for an estimate of the antifascist campaigns of 1938-39. Certainly the demonstrations in New York and Los Angeles were of great significance. However, in my opinion the. model of antifascist activity for the party is to be found in Minneapolis. The relative weight of their antifascist tactics as against the other ventures of the party is much greater precisely because they operated through the mass movement of the workers. It is this aspect of the Minneapolis experience that should be assimilated by the party now. The question remains: Could anything have been lost by joining in a picket demonstration with the Shachtmanites at the Philharmonic on June 25th? Yes! A great deal would have been lost. Adding a few hundred to such a picket line would not have raised its effectiveness qualitatively. What was needed was a demonstration of the overwhelming preponderance labor possessed in the contest. Even the Olympic Auditorium demonstration accomplished this. By mobilizing 17,000 thousand in a counter-demonstration to the fascist 5,000, a demoralizing blow was struck at them. But could anything have been lost? In following such a tactic we would have become divorced from the mainstream of militant workers who were pressing hard on the lever to lift their organizations into action. By concentrating on helping them press this lever, we solidified our connection with them. Many workers were irritated and contemptuous of the policy of a “show of weakness.” Had we followed that course we would be arguing to this day with the Stalinist workers about the question of whether the Trotskyists are “hotheads” and “ineffective.” “Look how small their demonstration was. Why do they jump the gun?” As it is, we decisively reject responsibility for the WP antics. We point to our record of struggle for the united front and we propose action to the workers’ organizations. The perspective of the antifascist campaign is very broad and converges with other campaigns. This distinguishes it from the more narrow party campaigns with their succinct objectives and delimited time. We compensate for this by introducing into the broad campaign the element of organization objective whenever possible. When there is a lull we exploit it for analysis and preparation, rather than for artificial campaign-mongering. Right now campaign activity is confined to open air meetings. At the same time we are searching for an opening that will allow us to lift the struggle to a higher level. There is a possibility for organizing a meeting with a number of Jewish. groups who hold militant positions on the tasks of the united front. In a bloc with them we could present our proposals for militant action at the next united front conference, which will occur on August 26th. If we mobilize the forces of the party and its sympathizers in the trade unions we can have a large group at the united front meeting. The same tactic can be developed toward Negro and Mexican organizations, who are keenly aware of the threat of fascism with its physical violence and terror. In the solidification of such a bloc lies the possibility of, in the next immediate period, calling united front demonstrations and picket lines. In the next stage of the campaign, through the radio, through demonstrations, through the deepening of our united front tactics, we shall draw even closer to our banner the sympathetic periphery of Militant readers and contacts. We will recruit many of them. The party will grow stronger. We want the comrades nationally to know that when the Los Angeles Local raised the slogan of “No headquarters for Smith in Los Angeles,” we did so in deadly earnest. We are committed to this slogan to the marrow of our bones. For the Socialist Workers Party: the struggle against fascism is to the death. August 7, 1945 Return to the Fighting Fascism Index Page | Return to the ETOL Document Page Return to the ETOL Home Page" }

{ "content": "Weiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index   |   ETOL Main PageMurry WeissThree Radical Parties and the 1960 Elections(Summer 1960)From International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No.3, Summer 1960, pp.67-69, 85.Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).NEVER has the need been greater than now, in the 1960 elections, for socialists to conduct a campaign for their own program and in their own name against the bipartisan program and machines of US capitalism, the Democrats and Republicans. Yet, of the three main socialist organizations in the country – the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation, the Communist Party, and the Socialist Workers Party – only the SWP is vigorously fighting in the electoral field.The last few months have been rough on the illusion that the Democratic and Republican parties can somehow be used as instruments of struggle for civil rights, for civil liberties and against nuclear war.The SP-SDF and the CP have been, each in its own special way, both the victims and the perpetrators of policies based on this illusion among radical workers and youth.But how does the policy of supporting “good” capitalist politicians stand up when we examine the conduct of the Democratic and Republican parties and all their major spokesmen during the events of the last few months?In April and May we witnessed a worldwide wave of mass demonstrations, strikes and revolutionary uprisings aimed at a whole string of despotic regimes, firmly linked to US imperialism as “free world” allies. The movement swept through South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and Japan. The Cuban revolution in the same period deepened and reverberated throughout Latin America, despite the all-out campaign of slander, economic pressure and military threats from Washington. And in the North and South of the United States a new generation of youth, with the Negro students of the South leading the way, made its dramatic entrance onto the stage of social and political struggle against racism, witch hunting and preparations for war.In these events the bipartisan cold-war bloc in the US Congress acted as one with the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department in lining up solidly with reaction and counter-revolution against the revolutionary masses. Not a single leader of the Democratic or Republican parties favored an economic boycott against South Africa to compel the white-supremacist regime to stop the massacre of workers and youth fighting for their elementary human rights.Not a single one of them favored the just cause of the South Korean students against the US-backed dictatorship of Syngman Rhee; instead they joined in making pious statements “deploring,” in effect, the fact that our gallant “free world” ally had been caught red-handed stuffing ballot boxes, murdering political opponents, strangling all freedom of speech and press and filling the jails with trade unionists and students.The bipartisan cold-war bloc joined to a man in the chorus of lies against the Cuban revolution. On this question, which directly touches the vital interests of Wall Street’s colonial empire in Latin America, the capitalist politicians do not permit themselves even the slightest leeway of “criticism”: they are all as one in trying to whip up a frenzy of hatred against a valiant people who have dared to take their fate into their own hands.And where is the Democratic or Republican contender for the presidency who has walked a picket line with the Negro students fighting for equal rights? Nor did one of them at least have the guts to differ publicly with the foul racist attack of Harry Truman against the Negro student lunch counter sit-ins.Look at the way the two capitalist parties acted in the cold-war crisis brought about by the collapse of the Summit Conference in Paris. The Paris blowup put a spotlight on the aggressive military and espionage policies of US imperialism. The cynical mendacity of Washington in demanding nothing less than the “right” to invade Soviet territory with impunity shocked the entire world.Facts emerged in clear view: It isn’t the Soviet Union that has built a ring of military, naval and aircraft bases for launching a nuclear bomb attack around the borders of the United States. It happens to be exactly the other way around. The Soviet Union doesn’t have troops stationed at the US borders in Mexico and Canada. The troops and the nuclear-armed aircraft of the US are instead poised at the borders of the Soviet Union. These facts have begun to dawn on millions of people in the US.But when the provocations of Eisenhower and the State Department around the U-2 incident led to the collapse of the Summit Conference, was there a single voice in the Democratic “opposition” party that dared to utter the truth and call for a basic change in US foreign policy? Not one. The Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination lined up with their Republican colleagues in a common oath never to be divided by the “aggressive” Russians.Then came the most despicable fraud of all: the Republicans and the Democrats agreed to “debate” the U-2 incident during the presidential election. What is to be debated, however, is not basic foreign policy. That would be giving aid and comfort to the Enemy. Such debates are conducted in secret, in the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department. What the American people will be allowed to hear is a censored squabble over whether “bungling,” “mis-timing” and inter-departmental slip-ups didn’t hurt the effectiveness of the cold-war, bipartisan foreign policy.For all the adjectives he uses, Stevenson, the foremost “critic” of Eisenhower’s handling of the Summit Conference, isn’t saying a thing more than: I can run this cold war better than Ike; I can lie quicker and more skillfully than he can – so I ought to be the Democratic candidate for President." }

{ "content": "This is all that the “peace forces” in the Democratic party have done. Yet the Communist party is enthralled once more with Stevenson. A headline in the May 29 Worker reads: “Stevenson’s Blast on Ike Gains Wide Support.” And on page four of the Midwest Edition: “Stevenson Urges Change in US Foreign Policy.” Read Stevenson’s speech, however, and you discover that he proposes nothing of the sort. He proposes only to carry out US foreign policy more effectively than Eisenhower. Is this something to cheer about? Or should we not understand and explain that if their common foreign policy were to be carried out more effectively it would bring the human race that much closer to destruction?It is, of course, completely possible for two wings of American imperialism to differ on what is the best foreign policy for capitalism. Under such conditions socialists, in our opinion, never become partisans of one capitalist policy versus another. They advance their own foreign policy for the country, utilizing the debate for that purpose. But in this instance there hasn’t even been a real breach in the bipartisan line-up behind Wall Street’s cold-war foreign policy. Nor has the Democratic party dared as yet to seize the issue of peace for an all-out demagogic campaign – as it has done so often in the past. The CP nevertheless is sinking its forces deeper into the Democratic party mire – today in the “Boost Stevenson” committees. And tomorrow? Will Kennedy or Symington be too much for them to swallow? Past experience with the CP in relations to cold-war politicians like Harriman and Wagner has shown that once embarked on the opportunist path in the Democratic party, nothing is too much for them.The Communist party leaders justify their policy with the argument that it helps promote the cause of “peaceful coexistence.” According to this conception of peaceful coexistence, first introduced by Stalin and “perfected” by Khrushchev, the class struggle and the socialist revolution have become antiquated as means for fighting imperialist war and bringing about a lasting peace. Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, which proved that the imperialist drive towards war was not a matter of evil choice but stemmed from the inexorable laws of capitalism to expand, subjugate the colonial people, and crush all attempts of the working class to free itself from exploitation, was also declared “outmoded” by Stalin and Khrushchev.Instead of the Leninist concept of struggle for peace the Stalinists introduced the theory and practice of seeking salvation from war by appealing to the “peace-loving” elements in the warmaking capitalist class. Thus the Communist parties are transformed from revolutionary workers organizations fighting for socialism into agencies for finding “peace-loving” capitalist politicians and then helping them to ascend to supremacy within the capitalist parties.This very policy has led to such devastating defeats and demoralization in the past few decades that It may appear to some that there is no point in debating it again. But it is far from pointless. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of the human race. A revolutionary class struggle policy is the only way to link the advanced sections of the working class to the great social revolutionary movements in the world today. And only these movements have prevented capitalism from pushing the world into the abyss of war. The militant students of Japan are striking more powerful blows for peace than a hundred Paris conferences – even if they were held – could dream of accomplishing.There are many independent radicals who agree with Khrushchev’s “peaceful coexistence” policy. Yet it is instructive that among these there is a growing number who refuse to go with the CP in its policy of supporting capitalist politicians. We differ with these socialists about many questions but we believe that their position is of vital importance to the future of the socialist movement. We think that their support of independent socialist electoral action, including support of the SWP candidates, despite differences they have with some of the points in the party’s program, will lead to a re-examination by them of the source of the CP’s ruinous policy.Such a re-examination would disclose, we believe, that there is a profound difference between peaceful coexistence as the policy of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky’s leadership, and the Stalinist concept of peaceful coexistence. In the first case, the Bolsheviks simply recognized that negotiations, trade agreements, concrete diplomatic and military arrangements, etc., between a workers state and capitalist countries was not only permissible but necessary. Trotsky was one of the main teachers of the socialist movement on this question, conducting many a battle against infantile “leftist” misconceptions on this score.But negotiations and concrete pacts are one thing and the political subordination of the working class parties to the political parties of their class enemies – for the sake of diplomatic deals – is something quite different. That is not peaceful coexistence – it is peaceful suicide.The special illusion dispensed by the SP-SDF has fared no better than those of the CP. The Social Democrats accept the premise of the whole cold-war lie: that the US is crusading for freedom against totalitarian tyranny. The function of socialists, according to the SP-SDF, is to be critical (constructively, of course) of how Washington conducts this “crusade for freedom” and to work in the two capitalist parties for more “progressive” and “liberal” methods in fighting the Soviet Union." }

{ "content": "It is, however, this very premise of the cold war that is now beginning to be questioned by the American people and particularly by the new generation of youth. The stream of lies and brazen provocations emanating from Washington during the recent crisis has shaken large sections of the population from complacent acceptance of the cold-war mythology. Doubt and distrust is heard in many quarters. Young people are asking: If they lie so automatically about spy planes, and then justify lying as the highest form of patriotism, maybe they are also lying when they claim that the US is fighting for freedom, truth and justice among men? Maybe there is something to the charge that they are really fighting to police the world for the almighty American dollar.Isn’t it monstrous, then, for people who claim to be socialists, to continue to subscribe to the Big Lie and cover it with the good name of socialism at this time?That is just what the recent convention of the SP-SDF has done. It refused even to demand that the US government disarm. Instead it adopted what the New York Times described as a “liberal platform” on this issue. It decided furthermore not to put up candidates in the 1960 Presidential elections. The reasons for this were given by Norman Thomas in the spring issue of the Socialist Call:“The increasing complexity and difficulties of getting on the ballot in fifty states”;“the increasing costs of campaigning”;“the increased opposition of the AFL-CIO to any candidates who might draw votes from the candidates it endorses.”The first two reasons are certainly weighty considerations – as the SWP can testify. But the difficulties are not insurmountable in all the states – not if socialists believe what they say and take seriously the task of saying it not merely to themselves but to the working people and youth of the United States.The third reason is of a completely different order. The opposition of the labor bureaucrats to independent socialist campaigns is not a valid reason for abandoning the electoral field. It is rather one of the chief reasons for socialists to enter the elections.The official union leaders have foisted a political policy on labor that has left it wide open to the onslaught of reactionary, union-crippling legislation and reduced the organized working class to political impotence. They have imprisoned the unions in the party of the racist Dixiecrats; the party of the union-busting, open shop, corporate interests; the party that authored the notorious Kennedy-Landrum-Griffin Act; the party whose chief assumed the responsibility for dropping the first atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the party that launched the cold war, massacred millions of Koreans in Truman’s authorized “police action”; the party that organized and inspired the witch hunt, perpetrated the crude frame-up and the cruel murder of the Rosenbergs, and sent Morton Sobell to prison for thirty years.Should socialists cringe before the displeasure of labor officials whose political ties are not with the working class and the Negro people but with these capitalist enemies of labor?The SP-SDF thinks so, and the Communist party is completely at one with them in this respect. But we doubt that the rank and file of either the CP or the SP-SDF will carry out this policy with anything but revulsion; and many will break with it in the course of the campaign – even before they enter the voting booth.The SWP has entered the campaign with its candidates, Farrell Dobbs for President and Myra Tanner Weiss for Vice President, with the aim of arousing sentiment for a break with the capitalist political policy of the labor officials. The SWP candidates will call for the formation of a labor party, democratically based on the unions and the mass organizations of the Negro people. They will spread the socialist platform on all the great issues to millions of people.The hour-long television debate Dobbs had with a McCarthyite in Los Angeles, in which the standard slanders against socialism were refuted one after another before an audience of hundreds of thousands, is worth all the effort it took to launch the campaign. Many youngsters listening to that program got their first real view of socialism from a veteran union organizer and socialist leader.The 1960 election campaign has exceptional significance for us because for the first time in many years a new generation of radical youth is stirring to life and gaining its first political experience. It would be a historic crime to allow these precious replacements to be dispatched into the political graveyard of “work in the Democratic party.” If the SWP campaign did nothing more than to save this promising cadre of radical youth from such a fate it would be performing a service of incalculable value.Top of pageWeiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main PageLast updated: 29.1.2006" }

{ "content": "Weiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index   |   ETOL Main PageMurry WeissThe Vindication Of TrotskyismKhrushchev’s Report on Stalin’s Crimes(Summer 1956)From International Socialist Review, Vol.27 No.4, Summer 1956, pp.79-83.Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).The following article is based on a speech given in New York City, June 15THE Soviet Union is today in a stronger position in relation to the capitalist world than at any point since the revolution of October 1917. It is sufficient to mention that 600 million people of China after expelling the imperialists and overthrowing the capitalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek, are now allied to the Soviet Union.Economically, the USSR has attained with unprecedented speed the status of the second industrial power in the world.The authority and prestige of the Soviet Union is at an all-time high among the colonial and semi-colonial peoples who are fighting for their independence.It would seem that the regime in power in the USSR should be enjoying its greatest stability and popularity. And yet, there is unmistakable evidence that the very progress the Soviet Union has made, the improvement of its position in relation to world capitalism, and the enlargement of its orbit of influence, has brought about the eruption of the deepest contradictions in Soviet society.What are these contradictions? How will they be resolved? What place does the present turmoil in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have in the struggle for world socialism? These are the questions before us.The most recent clue to the nature of the crisis unfolding in the land of the October Revolution is the revelations issuing from the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union last February and in particular the report on Stalin made by Khrushchev to the closed session of the Congress.Let us therefore consider the most important revelations contained in Khrushchev’s speech:In the first group are those pertaining to Stalin’s regime of mass murder and terror. On this point Khrushchev admitted:The Moscow Trials of the thirties were frame-ups.The charge that the Trotskyists were spies, wreckers and terrorists was fabricated.The confessions that formed the basis of the Moscow Trials were obtained by means of psychological and physical torture summed up by Stalin in the formula: “Beat, beat, and again beat!”The assassination of Kirov, which was the starting point of the Moscow Trials, appears to have been carried out by Stalin’s secret police.The whole generation of Bolsheviks associated with Lenin in the leadership of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was murdered, many of them after being tortured into confessing falsely that they were spies and terrorists.Frame-ups, false confessions and mass murder were practiced on tens of thousands of members of the Communist Party and hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants.Revolutionary legality and workers’ democracy were destroyed and replaced by police rule under the direct supervision of Stalin.The second group of Krushchev’s admissions relate to the question of nationalities. As you know, the Soviet Union is a federation of numerous Republics. The October 1917 revolution gave freedom and autonomy to the national minorities, who had lived under the oppression of Great Russian chauvinism in what was called “the Czarist prison of the peoples.”Under the Stalin regime, Khrushchev revealed a number of small nations were subjected to mass deportations to faraway places in the course of which millions perished.The third set of revelations deals with Stalin’s crimes and blunders as a war leader: Here Krushchev recounts how Stalin ignored all evidence of political reality and refused to believe Hitler would attack the Soviet Union.Thus, Khrushchev points out, the Soviet Union was unprepared economically and militarily for the fascist onslaught in 1941.Moreover, thousands of the best officers of the Red Army, from the company level up to the general staff had been liquidated in the purges and this badly disorganized the army.Stalin, according to Khrushchev, was demoralized and helpless in the first stage of the war. Later he exerted his authority to commit military blunders that in one instance alone cited by Khrushchev cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.In short, Khrushchev shows that contrary to his own words at the Nineteenth Congress, in which he assigns the credit for the victory of Russia in the war to “Stalin’s genius,” the truth was that Stalin’s regime brought the USSR to the edge of disaster during the war and cost the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians.The fourth group of Khrushchev’s counts denouncing Stalin pertain to the “cult of the individual.”Khrushchev goes into considerable detail on this point. He describes how Stalin replaced the government, the party, the Central Committee and the courts and established a one-man system of rule. He describes how Stalin demanded of one and all, not merely obedience to his command, but the utmost servility. Those who failed to shower Stalin with declarations of unbounded praise for his Godlike genius were immediately suspect and subsequently fell under Stalin’s terror.In connection with the cult of the individual Khrushchev relates how Stalin personally edited histories and biographies to falsely depict his role as the all-wise, infallible, genius-leader.The fifth group of revelations concern the relations of the Stalin regime to other workers’ states, notably Yugoslavia. It is likely that a fuller text of the speech will reveal a lot more regarding China. But the evidence contained in Khrushchev’s speech, plus what is already well known, establishes fully that Stalin adopted the same attitude toward the new workers’ states outside the Soviet Union as he did toward the national minorities within the USSR.The sixth and final point of Khrushchev’s indictment of Stalin deals with Soviet agriculture. Khrushchev shows that contrary to the myth that Stalin was a deep student of the agrarian question and the leader of the great social transformations in Russian agriculture since the revolution, he was in reality abysmally ignorant of the problem. According to Khrushchev, Stalin’s only contributions to the solution of agrarian problems consisted of sabotagingall serious efforts to alleviate severe crises and proposing fantastically unreasonable taxation. (At one point Stalin proposed to tax the peasants an amount greater than their total income for the given period.) Unrevealed Atrocities" }

{ "content": "There are many things that Khrushchev did not reveal in his report. The atrocities against the leaders of Jewish culture were not mentioned. Neither was Stalin’s international murder-machine. Nor was anything said on how this machine was used in Spain, how it was used to liquidate Trotsky’s secretaries, and how it was used to assassinate Leon Trotsky himself. We can expect that more revelations will come and more details will be given on what was already admitted.The truth, as is well known, makes its way slowly, for long periods of time – but once it gains momentum it moves with great speed.Now it is irrefutably established that the Trotskyist movement told the world working class the truth about the crimes of Stalinism. Each and every crime revealed by Khrushchev was exposed by the Trotskyists many years ago. Any fair-minded person can verify this by consulting the record of our movement – merely by looking through the files of The Militant since 1928.* * *The Twentieth Congress disclosed one gigantic fact: The Russian workers are beginning the historic work of overthrowing the bureaucratic caste and restoring the democratic foundations of the revolution. This is the basis for a Marxist understanding of the feverish movement on the surface and at the summits of Soviet society.The US State Department propagandists are attempting to depict the Khrushchev revelations as a proof of the “inherent evil of communism.”* * *In the first place this pitiful effort rests on accepting the Stalinist falsehood that socialism has been victoriously achieved in one country – the Soviet Union, On that premise, it is, of course, not difficult to prove that socialism is not what the founders of the socialist movement said it would be.However, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky and the whole Bolshevik party, including Stalin up to 1924, never dreamed of a reactionary utopian concept like achieving socialism within the boundaries of one country. The Russian Revolution established a society transitional to socialism. Socialism itself will be achieved only on the premise of the victorious revolution over capitalism in its main centers. The socialist society will be founded on the highest technological achievements of capitalism, as a world-wide productive system liberated from the fetters of national boundaries and capitalist private property. State Department PropagandaBut let’s take the State Department propagandists on their own premise for a moment. If the crimes of the Stalin cult are the expression of the “evils of communism,” what is the exposure of these crimes ? Why are these crimes being repudiated?The New York Times, US News and World Report, and other authoritative spokesmen for Big Business, agree that the only plausible explanation for the repudiation of the Stalin cult – the only factor that can explain why the present rulers would take the grave risk of destroying the very keystone of the whole Stalinist structure, is the movement of the Soviet people from below. But they don’t dare say that this movement is pro-capitalist in its thought or direction!Any hopes they had, that an uprising against Stalinism in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union would favor the return of capitalism were smashed by the June 17, 1953 insurrection of the East German working class. This working-class insurrection, highly organized and magnificently disciplined, and embracing the entire East German industrial working class was anti-capitalist and socialist through and through.As a matter of fact, only the Stalinist bureaucrats, tried to pin the label of a pro-West, imperialist-inspired movement on this revolutionary uprising. The capitalists knew better, as all the evidence shows. They were therefore unable to intervene.Evidently, therefore, the so-called “evils of Communism” are being countered by an insurgent movement of the working people who have no thought of returning to capitalism but are bent on removing the barriers in the path to the free society of world socialism.And then, if the bureaucratic degeneration that gripped the first workers state in history are to be depicted as the “evils of communism” what term will the State Department propaganda flunkeys use to describe the two world wars, the world depression, the ten-year hell of Hitlerism, the 20-year rule of Mussolini and the dictatorship of the fascist butcher Franco? Are these not the expression of the “inherent evils of capitalism”?Correctly understood, Stalinism itself is an expression of the evils of capitalism besetting an isolated workers’ state. While the October Revolution established the foundations of a new social order, the weight of the Czarist past and the pressure of capitalist encirclement of a backward country imposed a cruel burden of bureaucratic parasitism and terror on the Russian people.* * *Khrushchev opened his speech with a dissertation on the views of Marx, Engels and Lenin on the “cult of the individual.” But although he uses the term “Marxist-Leninist” in practically every other paragraph of his speech, Khrushchev’s method has nothing in common with Marxist thought on this question.He reduces the question to one of modesty versus vanity. Marx was modest, he tells the audience. So was Engels; Lenin was very modest. But not Stalin. Stalin ceased to be modest and raised himself above the party and what is worse the Central Committee. Then he began to murder people who disagreed with him, and then still others for no reason at all. He began to commit all kinds of hideous crimes – all because he forgot that a Marxist-Leninist is modest. Empty ExplanationsKhrushchev says: “It is clear that in the situation of Socialist victory there was no basis for mass terror in the country.” Then why the mass terror?Khrushchev answers the question of “Why the Stalin cult?” with an empty tautology. The Stalin cult arose because Stalin raised himself above the Party and the Central Committee. It’s the same as explaining the crimes of Stalin by his criminal conduct.If a socialist society has been established, this signifies that mankind has raised its productive powers to the point where the class division of society has been eliminated. The elimination of the class struggle eliminates the need of a state with its special body of armed men to impose by force the rule of the dominant class." }

{ "content": "If the Soviet Union has indeed entered the domain of socialism, then, how explain the fact that instead of witnessing the withering away of the functions of the state, it experienced, during the last three decades, the enormous growth of an oppressive state apparatus that maintained its rule by perpetrating the most heinous crimes against those subjected to its rule.Surely, a Marxist-Leninist must see in such phenomena the expression of extremely acute, social contradictions. But, no, Khrushchev views the phenomenon of the growth of a repressive state which practiced mass murder for 22 years according to his reckoning, as a result of an erroneous theory, that somehow got into Stalin’s head, namely, the theory that precisely with the advent of socialism class strife sharpens.How did this theory get into Stalin’s head despite the achievement of a socialist society? Apparently it is associated with Stalin’s tendency to lack modesty and to raise himself above the Central Committee. Purely arbitrary and half-baked idealist constructions! In Khrushchev’s explanations there is not a trace of the Marxist method of materialist dialectic in which the role of the individual in history is regarded as a function of the struggle of classes and social strata within classes. Trotsky’s MethodThe method of the cult of the individual is not abandoned in this type of explanation – it is only turned inside out. Instead of a god – we are presented with a devil. Contrast to this method the method of Trotsky, who 20 years ago, in his basic work The Revolution Betrayed, explained the Stalin cult as follows:“The increasingly insistent deification of Stalin is, with all its elements of caricature, a necessary element of the regime. The bureaucracy has need of an inviolable super-arbiter, a first consul if not an emperor, and it raises upon its shoulders him who best responds to its claim for lordship. That ‘strength of character’ of the leader which so enraptures the literary dilletantes of the West, is in reality the sum total of the collective pressure of a caste which will stop at nothing in defense of its position. Each one of them at his post is thinking: L’etat – c’est moi. [I am the State.] In Stalin each one easily finds himself. But Stalin also finds in each one a small part of his own spirit. Stalin is the personification of the bureaucracy. That is the substance of his political personality.”The “personification of the bureaucracy” – that is the clue to understanding the role of Stalin. The bureaucracy that rose to power after the Russian Revolution is an historically illicit force. It came to power on the wave of reaction – in a country exhausted by years of imperialist war, revolution and civil war.The vanguard of the proletariat was bled white. The great ocean of petty peasant enterprise predominated over industry. The initial defeats of the European revolution further sapped the strength and revolutionary vitality of the Russian workers. With every defeat of a workers revolution abroad the bureaucratic tendencies in the Soviet Union were strengthened and with the strengthening of the bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union it was able to crush the revolutionary wing of the party of Lenin. And then utterly crush the party itself. Bureaucratic UsurpationThe bureaucracy expressed its hunger for privilege amidst universal poverty in its adherence to Stalin. Stalin had the best qualifications for the job. His record as an old Bolshevik provided the necessary disguise for the process of bureaucratic usurpation.That’s why Khrushchev must say over and over again in his speech that Stalin was politically right as against Trotskyism. He means by that to justify the triumph of the bureaucratic caste over the Bolshevik party of Lenin and Trotsky.Fundamentally that is what the great struggle was about. It was a struggle between a bureaucratic reaction which lifted the Stalinist oligarchy to power and the proletarian Left Opposition led by Trotsky that fought to defend the Bolshevik party, the Soviets and the trade unions from strangulation by the bureaucracy. It was the re-enactment on a vast historical scale, of the same kind of struggle that has taken place in many unions, which started under fighting leadership, practiced wide internal democracy, conducted a policy of militant class struggle, reached out the hand of solidarity to workers in every industry – but subsequently, under different social conditions, with the receding of the class struggle, became bureaucratized and headed by what Daniel DeLeon described as the “labor lieutenants of capitalism in the ranks of the working class.” Khrushchev RefutedKhrushchev says:“We must affirm that the party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyists, rightists and bourgeois nationalists and that it disarmed ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. The ideological fight was carried on successfully ... Here Stalin played a positive role.”The facts refute Khrushchev as completely on this question as on the later frame-ups in the Moscow Trials.Trotskyism was not defeated by ideological means. The record shows that bureaucratic usurpers, utilizing the pressure of a deep social reaction to the revolution, silenced their opponents from the beginning by methods of frame-ups and terror. If Stalin defeated Trotsky’s Bolshevik opposition by “ideological means” what were thousands of Trotskyists doing in jail from 1927 on?The Stalinist faction did not fight for Leninism. On the contrary, as documentary evidence shows, Lenin opened a fight in the last years of his life against the Stalinist faction as the expression of the ominous bureaucratic tendency. Lenin fought the rise of Stalin and Stalinism from his deathbed and Trotsky continued the fight after Lenin’s death.Khrushchev says that Stalin was right in the fight against Trotskyism because without that fight Russia would have failed to industrialize or collectivize agriculture. One is almost compelled to stand in awe before the sweep and audacity of this lie." }

{ "content": "Actually, it was the Trotskyist opposition that as early as 1923 proposed that the Soviet Union embark on a central industrial plan and that a struggle be opened to collectivize agriculture as a weapon against the growing kulak (capitalist) element in the countryside. This proposal was hooted down derisively by the Stalinist faction. Trotsky was called a fantastic super-industrialist, a dreamer and a charlatan. Stalin, the great expert on agriculture, said what the Russian peasant needed was not a plan but a good rain.For his proposal to fight the growing power of the rich peasant kulak, Trotsky was accused of “underestimation of the peasantry.” In a bloc with the right wing of the party, led by Bukharin, the Stalin faction conducted reactionary propaganda among the kulak elements to incite them against Trotskyism. They didn’t even refrain from using anti-Semitism in this campaign.Thus, while leaning on the social pressure of the capitalist elements, the bureaucracy throttled the opposition and expelled it from the party, drove the workers who supported the Left Opposition out of the factories and opened a reign of terror. Left Opposition ConfirmedWithin months after the expulsion of Trotsky, the position of the Left Opposition was confirmed to the hilt. The kulak threat, which the Stalinists claimed did not even exist threatened to engulf the Soviet regime. The Stalinist faction then made a 180-degree turn. They took over Trotsky’s program, and applied it. Industrialization? The first five-year plan was launched and it quickly confirmed the Left Opposition’s estimates of the possibilities of planned economy. However, the bureaucracy gave its own distorted version to these measures – relying not on the creative power of the masses but on bureaucratic decree.These historical questions are of urgent importance to the revolutionary movement. Not a single question confronting the radical workers today can be understood without tracing the struggle waged by Trotskyism from 1923 down to the present day. And the struggle of Trotskyism was only a continuation of the line of struggle of Marx, Engels and Lenin as it was tested and enriched by the October revolution.Take the question of peaceful coexistence and the peaceful road to socialism – these so-called new theories of the Twentieth Congress, revising Lenin’s conception of our epoch as “the epoch of imperialist war, proletarian revolution and colonial uprisings.” Khrushchev and Company have not announced new theories, as the Stalinist leader in the US, Eugene Dennis, would have us believe. Peaceful coexistence between capitalism and socialism is the basic theory of Stalinism. That question was fought out in the great dispute over the theory of “socialism in one country” versus the Leninist-Trotskyist conception of permanent revolution.The peaceful road to socialism? A bloc with the liberal capitalist? A multi-class coalition government? That was the program of the reformist right wing of the Second International which was vigorously opposed by Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and Liebknecht.In the Russian workers’ movement these were the questions that demarcated Bolshevism and Menshevism since 1903. Bolshevism and MenshevismIt was the essence of Menshevism to seek to ally the working class with the liberal bourgeoisie. Such an alliance results in the defeat of the proletariat, with the liberals turning up in the camp of reaction.The essence of Bolshevism, defended by Lenin and Trotsky from 1905 through 1917 and to the end of their lives, was to organize the working class independently, against the parties of capitalism.The arguments of the CP leaders about why we must work in the Democratic party are the very arguments, the sophistries of the lesser evil, that Lenin waged a life-long struggle against. It is all the more important to go back to the basic teachings of Lenin on these principled questions because his name and authority are invoked by the Stalinist falsifiers – to support the very theories and arguments Lenin demolished. The Basic QuestionThe question of class collaboration versus class struggle – this is at bottom the question dividing Stalinism and Trotskyism in the United States, in the Soviet Union and throughout the world.The Daily Worker editors berate themselves for having blindly and subserviently parroted all the lies of Stalin. Why don’t they ask themselves: How did it happen that a revolutionary party, which by its very nature must be headed by critical-minded independent leaders, tested in the class struggle, became headed by spineless bureaucrats who defended every crime, no matter how monstrous, that issued from the Kremlin?The answer isn’t hard to find. The CP in the US, like all Communist Parties, was destroyed as an independent revolutionary party, following the expulsion of the Trotskyists in 1928. The Stalinist bureaucracy used its power and prestige to pervert the Comintern into its factional instrument. All communist leaders who opposed this were bureaucratically driven out of their respective parties. Those who were willing to become the creatures of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR lost their capacity to be revolutionists at home. They lost their class bearings. They became capable, as a matter of course, of any deed of treachery.The position of the Soviet Union in relation to the capitalist world has, as we stated in the beginning, become considerably stronger since World War II. At the same time the power of the Stalinist regime has been undermined. For those who identified the destiny of the Soviet Union with Stalinism, this comes as a completely unexpected and bewildering phenomenon.The Trotskyists, however, foresaw and were completely prepared for this development. They alone analyzed the basic contradiction in Soviet society as the contradiction between the new property forms of nationalized and planned economy established as a result of the October revolution and the domination of the workers’ state by a bureaucratic oligarchy." }

{ "content": "This contradiction, Trotskyism taught, manifested itself in the struggle between the Soviet working class and the dictatorship of the bureaucratic caste. The fate of the struggle between the workers and the bureaucracy was tied to the fate of the world-wide struggle of classes. Stalinism, the politics of the bureaucracy, was born and prospered in an epoch of defeats of proletarian revolution – it was the refraction of capitalist pressure and reaction within the Soviet Union and the world workers’ movement. A major factor in promoting defeats, Stalinism became strengthened by them. The Thunder of RevolutionBut despite the obstacle of Stalinism the anti-capitalist forces in the world and the Soviet Union have become enormously strengthened. The Soviet working class, now 50-million strong and augmented by the industrial working class of Eastern Europe, expresses this profound shift in the world relationship of forces by a revolutionary resurgence. The Twentieth Congress heard the echo of this revolutionary thunder in the halls of the bureaucracy. Everything they did there and everything they have done since is in the nature of panicky preparations for the onrushing revolutionary storm.The world revolution and the world working class movement have entered a new stage marked by the appearance of the Soviet masses in the political arena. This stage can only culminate in the downfall of the Soviet bureaucratic caste, the victory of Russian bolshevism and the triumph of the world socialist revolution.Top of pageWeiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main PageLast updated: 28.1.2006" }

{ "content": "Weiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index   |   ETOL Main PageMurry WeissThe Fracturing of the Monolith(Spring 1961)From International Socialist Review, Vol.22 No.2, Spring 1961, pp.44-47, 54.Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Despite the claims of cold-war propaganda the anti-capitalist revolutions have created for the Kremlin “a world they never wanted”THE Moscow-Peking dispute over “peaceful coexistence” is a fresh indication that the Kremlin’s monolithic control exercised in Stalin’s heyday over the Communist parties throughout the world is disintegrating. Nothing but good can come from this for the cause of revolutionary socialism, as Moscow’s control has been wielded essentially for the preservation of the status quo. That is the real meaning of the Stalinist conception of “peaceful coexistence,” which Khrushchev seeks to perpetuate and which the Chinese CP leaders – though they don’t depart from the basic Stalinist policy – challenge in its current application.Stalin imposed his reactionary foreign policy on the Communist parties thirty-five years ago as an extension of the bureaucratic totalitarian rule he had imposed on the Soviet Union.Once Stalinism secured its grip on the Soviet workers state, destroyed the democracy of the Bolshevik party, the Soviets and the trade unions, it was only a matter of time before his police regime extended over the Communist parties everywhere else. The Communist International was scuttled as a revolutionary force. Supinely subservient to Stalin’s bureaucratic machine, the Communist parties substituted class-collaboration for class struggle and reformism for revolution.The international working class has paid heavily for the domination of the Stalinist monolith over major sections of the working-class movement. Many revolutionary opportunities were lost, and many actual revolutionary struggles were betrayed. Fascism came to power as a result of the Stalinist course, and the second world war was rendered inevitable. The fascist onslaught in that war nearly destroyed the Soviet Union.The Stalinist policies of class collaboration achieved their crassest expression during World War II. The Communist parties desisted from all class-struggle activities in those “democratic” imperialist countries allied with the Soviet Union and from national-independence activities in the colonial possessions of the “democratic” imperialists. On the other hand, Stalin’s chauvinist propaganda – so alien to the spirit of Leninist internationalism – lumped the German people together with their Nazi overlords. This repelled the German workers and helped prevent them from making common cause with the Soviet Union. The Grand AllianceThe opportunist policy of the Kremlin was based on the “Grand Alliance” of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. Stalin undertook to help stabilize the capitalist system throughout the world under this arrangement. All Communist parties were strictly to refrain from any threats to the capitalist order. In return, the victorious imperialist powers were not to threaten the Soviet system in Russia nor to interfere with Moscow’s political control of Eastern Europe. In this way, the world was to be divided among the Big Three on a status quo basis. This was the essential content of the agreements concluded at the Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam international conferences between 1943 and 1945.To the best of his ability Stalin kept his promises. Several examples will bear this out. Thus, in Greece, a revolutionary struggle against the Nazi occupation was in progress during 1943 and 1944. It was conducted by the ELAS, primarily a workers and peasants partisan movement, led by the Communist party. ELAS victories over the Nazis, raised the perspective of a workers and farmers government in Greece. But British imperialism didn’t cherish the prospect of winning the war against the Germans, only to lose Greece (a virtual British colony prior to the war) to the workers. The revolutionary Greek workers looked to the Soviet Union for guidance. They identified Stalin’s regime with the Russian Revolution and hoped, by extending this revolution to their own country, to open new, liberating vistas. But in accordance with Stalin’s pledges to his imperialist partners, the Greek Communist party leaders were instructed to allow the British to re-occupy Athens and to place their puppet once more on the Greek throne. Stalin’s service to British imperialism won him a compliment from Churchill. “Stalin always carries out his agreements,” Churchill said.The French partisans also had state power within their grasp as they fought the Nazi occupation. Many capitalists who had collaborated with the Germans (it was among the capitalists that the Nazi occupiers found their principal support) fled the country in fear of retribution at the hands of the workers. Others went into hiding until the arrival of the US troops. It was common for the newspapers in those days to describe France as a “power vacuum” and to express fears as to how the “vacuum” would be filled. But Stalin kept his promise that communism would not take over. After the Nazis evacuated Paris, the French CP told the workers, who had been the main force in the partisan movement, to give up their arms. The CP leaders joined in bolstering a new government headed by De Gaulle.One more example should be cited – that of the policy pursued by the Communist party of this country during World War II. The right-wing labor officials, as might be expected, lined up behind the American capitalist class during the war. They imposed a “no strike” policy on the unions. And the Communist party collaborated to the hilt with the right-wing bureaucrats. They even outdid the latter in trying to enforce the no-strike pledge. In addition the CP leaders told the Negro people that now was not the time to fight for civil rights – “Don’t you know there is a war on?” they truculently asked. They also endorsed the government’s attacks on civil liberties.But the capitalists showed Stalin no gratitude in the postwar period. They launched the cold-war against the Soviet Union and began a merciless witch-hunt against the Communist party in the US The right-wing labor bureaucrats – the Stalinists’ erstwhile partners in curbing the unions ranks – of course promptly enlisted in the cold war and in the witch hunt." }

{ "content": "The foregoing examples disclose what the Kremlin’s “peaceful coexistence” policy looks like in practice. But Stalin’s hopes for an indefinite preservation of the status quo – one which would allow the privilege-seeking Soviet bureaucracy to rule unhampered at home – was rudely shattered by the course of history. Not only did American imperialism break the status-quo arrangements by launching the cold war, but in a number of key areas of the globe the revolution broke through despite Kremlin policy and made impossible any lasting world stabilization by agreement between the Kremlin and imperialism.Stalin lived up to his Teheran-Yalta-Potsdam commitments as long as he could. He even attempted for a time to maintain his deal with the imperialists in Eastern Europe. Capitalism was to be preserved there through a coalition of the Communist parties with the bourgeois parties, although these countries were recognized to be clearly within a Soviet zone of influence. To preserve capitalism meant that the working-class movement had to be curbed. And the Red Army commanders actually threatened the workers with reprisals should they undertake to change the property relations. But the East European capitalists had no stomach for the Red Army occupation even on those terms. They fled to the West with whatever wealth they could salvage hoping to come back one day in the wake of imperialist armies. The West, through the Marshall Plan, attempted to retrieve the concessions they had given Stalin, thus breaking their end of the “peaceful coexistence” bargain. It was only then that the Kremlin responded by abolishing capitalism in Eastern Europe and by establishing planned economies. A Distorted RevolutionThis social transformation was carried out by military and bureaucratic methods, preventing the working class from accomplishing the change in its own name and with its own revolutionary objectives. The development of the Eastern European countries was further distorted when the plans were so drawn up and executed as to serve principally the needs of economic reconstruction in the Soviet Union. In plain words, the Kremlin fleeced Eastern Europe. Nevertheless the economic aid which the industrialized sections of East Europe are now able to provide for the struggling underdeveloped countries was made possible by the new property relations.Moreover, the new mode of production – despite the Stalinist tyranny that had been imposed alongside of it – won firm adherence from the East European working class. The new social relations gave rise to the demand for socialist democracy, and this demand led, in 1956, to revolutionary upheavals against bureaucratic despotism in Poland and Hungary. In the creation of workers councils in these two countries during the revolutionary events, informed observers saw the revival of the institutions of workers’ democracy – the Soviets – which in October 1917 replaced the institutions of capitalist rule in Russia. Thus by transcending his policy of “peaceful coexistence” in Eastern Europe, Stalin unwittingly laid the basis for new revolutions which though aimed immediately against his brand of dictatorship, promised to carry the anti-capitalist struggle onto higher and firmer ground.But even before the explosions in Hungary and Poland, the Yugoslav Communist Party had brought the conflict between the Kremlin and revolution to general public attention. The Yugoslav CP had led the working class and peasantry in their struggle against the Nazi occupation. The Yugoslav king was in exile in London, waiting for the British to return him to his throne. To accomplish this, the British armed and financed a highly publicized “partisan” force under the reactionary General Michaelovitch. This outfit spent most of its energy fighting not the Germans but the Proletarian Brigades organized by Tito and his associates. Stalin, in accordance with his agreements with the British, ordered the Yugoslav Communists to disband the Proletarian Brigades into an amorphous partisan movement and to establish harmonious relations with Michaelovitch, the British agent. He also ordered the Yugoslavs to confine their objectives to defeating the Nazis militarily.The Yugoslav Communist party had been under Moscow control up to that time, but under the given circumstances the leaders found it impossible to carry out Stalin’s orders. The struggle against the Nazis could not be waged without rousing the proletarian and peasant mass against all their exploiters – the native capitalists and landlords (most of whom collaborated with the Nazis) as well as the fascist occupiers.The Titoists subsequently learned that Stalin’s sabotage of their struggle consisted not only in trying to foist a ruinous policy on them – which fortunately they disregarded. Stalin also refused to send them arms and medicines and actually sent this vitally needed material aid to Michaelovitch. And while the Tito-led partisans fought the Nazis at the front, Michaelovitch shot at them from the rear – with Russian as well as British-made bullets.To win their national-liberationist struggle the Yugoslavs had to carry through a socialist revolution. By 1948, the Yugoslav CP had established a workers state and launched a planned economy. Unlike other CPs in Eastern Europe, it did not owe power to Soviet military occupation. Stalin feared the potential independence that possesion of a popular base in the country gave Tito and his associates and began maneuvering to get rid of them so as to absorb Yugoslavia on the same terms as the other East European countries. When the Yugoslav leaders resisted, this led to near military collision between the two countries, and the Titoites were once more compelled to mobilize the working masses in defiance of the Kremlin.Tito’s later deals with imperialism in no way diminishes the principled significance of the earlier struggles. The Kremlin had clashed with the Yugoslavs when the latter were moving left. The Yugoslavs had successfully defied the Kremlin and thus established the first great schism in in the Stalinist monolith. East Germany" }

{ "content": "The next big open break appeared in June 1953, a few months after Stalin’s death. Two million East German workers organized a general strike for economic improvements and democratic rights. The presence of 300,000 Kremlin troops did not deter them. The German Communist party was temporarily shattered by this uprising. Sections of the bureaucracy turned toward the strike movement; other sections stood aside waiting for its force to spend itself so that they could inflict punitive action on the workers. The Stalinist military and police terror had temporarily lost its effect.The East German workers did not win that round of the struggle, but the repercussions of their revolt spread throughout the world. All of Eastern Europe was shaken. And in the Soviet Arctic Circle, the political prisoners in the Vorkuta concentration camps waged a political strike upon hearing the news from East Germany. Khrushchev RevealsNew and insistent demands were made on Stalin’s heirs by the Soviet workers and students. The pressure of fifty million Soviet workers on the ruling bureaucracy was unmistakably evident at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist party in February, 1956. It forced Khrushchev to make his “secret-session” speech denouncing Stalin. Khrushchev sought to shift the blame for bureaucratic tyranny from the shoulders of the parasitic caste of privilege-seekers, in whose interests Stalin had ruled, to those of the individual dead leader. He wanted to prevent the Russian workers from organizing against the bureaucracy and to raise their hopes that conditions would steadily improve now that Stalin was out of the way. The result of Khrushchev’s admissions about Stalin’s true role was to create new cracks in the world Stalinist monolith and to deepen the fissures already opened by the extension of the revolution.It was in the wake of the Twentieth Congress that the Polish and Hungarian uprising broke out. In both countries sections of the Communist parties supplied much of the leadership to the insurgent workers and students. As monolithic structures, these parties disintegrated in the red-hot fires of revolt – with their worker and intellectual adherents lining up against the bureaucrats. In Hungary, the Soviet bureaucracy was able to defeat the workers and youth only through the naked armed force of the Russian troops. In Poland, Khrushchev allowed Gomulka, one of Stalin’s purge victims, to take the helm of the country but prescribed strict limits within which reforms might be carried out. The threat of Russian military intervention kept the Polish revolutionaries from pressing their demands for a regime of workers councils. Since October 1956, when Gomulka came to power, his government has taken back many of the freedoms and economic concessions won in the revolutionary days. However, the Gomulka regime still retains a measure of independence from the Kremlin, testifying to the continuing tendency of world Stalinism to produce cleavages within itself.There was hardly a single Communist party anywhere in the world that was not shaken to its roots by Khrushchev’s revelations at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist party and by the Hungarian and Polish upheavals. American, Italian and Chinese party leaders openly criticized the Soviet leadership for not going far enough in attacking the Stalin cult or for its handling of the Hungarian uprising. In the Soviet CP itself, the Twentieth Congress and its aftermath touched off two major power struggles within the bureaucracy from which Khrushchev emerged victorious both times.By the end of 1957, the unity of world Stalinism as well as the unity within the separate Communist parties had been more or less restored. But many genuinely revolutionary forces who had heretofore been held captive in the Stalinist movement were liberated from it as a result of the crisis that shook the monolith in 1956. In this way new gains for the revolution were made possible. For example, in Japan last year, the leadership of the magnificent demonstrations against US imperialism was in the hands of left-wing formations which had broken off from the CP sometime after the Hungarian events. (One of these groups had fused with the Trotskyists.) Significantly, too, the schisms in international Stalinism had weakened the influence of the Japanese CP and thereby lessened the effect of the party leaders’ attempts to place a brake on the demonstrations. Thus as a direct result of its international crisis, Stalinism was being outflanked on the left.An even more outstanding example of this outflanking is the victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba, which by-passed the Communist party entirely. Unhampered by Stalinist ideology, the cadres led by Fidel Castro learned from experience that their revolution could not be confined within a bourgeois-democratic framework, that the realization of their objectives required the creation of a workers state and a planned economy. The Cuban revolution in turn widened the already existing fissures in the Stalinist movement, permitting fresh, revitalized forces to regroup and push toward new revolutionary victories. Moscow-PekingMeanwhile, the unity of the world Stalinist movement, recemented in 1957, has again been disrupted by the current Moscow-Peking dispute over summitry. This dispute began in the summer of 1958, but manifested itself as a difference of doctrinal pronouncements in September 1959. The Chinese CP leaders insisted then that any peace-like moves of the US government were in reality designed to screen imperialist war preparations. The Soviet CP leaders, on the other hand, praised President Eisenhower for joining with Khrushchev in establishing the so-called “Geneva spirit” and declared that his intentions were of the best. After the U-2 incident last year disrupted the “Geneva spirit” the Soviet CP leaders have aimed at restoring it at a new summit conference with Kennedy. The Chinese leaders, on the other hand, have denounced the Democratic administration in the same terms as its predecessor. Moscow has emphasized the need to revise Lenin’s teachings that imperialism breeds war, whereas Peking has reaffirmed them. Moscow also proclaims the possibility of peaceful evolution to socialism in “democratic” capitalist countries, whereas Peking upholds the classic Marxist-Leninist standpoint that the capitalist class will seek to block, by violent means if necessary, the change to socialism anywhere in the world." }

{ "content": "Although the Soviet CP leadership and the Chinese CP leadership forego naming one another in their denunciations of “dogmatism” and “revisionism,” and although they have joined in common resolutions, their dispute is known to be bitter and deep-seated. And if Moscow now elevates “peaceful coexistence” to the status of a new Marxist “scientific” principle and Peking publicly subscribes to this doctrinal pronouncement, the struggle between them will nevertheless continue, muffled but irrepressible. Its roots are too deep to be covered by new terminology. Indeed, though waged between two groups of Stalinist-type bureaucrats, what underlies the conflict is once more the clash between revolution and the reactionary nature of Stalinism. For the Maoists, in leading China’s revolutionary upheaval – second in importance only to the Russian Revolution of 1917 – had their own set of “experiences” with the Kremlin.Stalin had a consistent policy of opposition to the socialist revolution in China dating back to 1925. Moscow at that time forced the Chinese Communist party leadership to support Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, a policy which resulted in a counterrevolutionary bloodbath of workers and peasants, as Chiang established his brutal dictatorship.Again, at Potsdam, Stalin agreed that China should be a neutral country under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1945, the Soviet government recognized Chiang’s regime as the lawful government of China although he had already opened civil war against the Chinese Communist party. As the civil war unfolded, the revolutionary workers and peasants of China rose to free themselves from ancient feudal enslavement as well as from the exploitation of foreign and domestic capitalists. Chiang, acting for the imperialists and the landlords, sought to crush the revolution by means of a liberal supply of US arms. All to no avail. The revolution proved to be more powerful than American imperialism, than the Kuomintang – and than the policies of Stalin.The Chinese CP leaders, though they sought at first to abide by Stalin’s deals, had to violate them or face defeat in the civil war. After their conquest of state power in 1949, Mao and his associates still tried to keep the revolution within bourgeois-democratic channels, in accordance with the established Stalinist policies for underdeveloped countries. But in 1950, American imperialism counterattacked. It intervened in the Korean civil war, hoping to use Korea as a base against China. US troops massacred millions of Koreans and Chinese in the effort to halt the tide of revolution in Asia. This, however, accelerated the revolution in China forcing the Chinese CP to expropriate all foreign capitalist holdings and to turn in the direction of a planned economy.Although the hot war in Asia came to an end. the Chinese CP leaders have remained locked in struggle with American imperialism to this day. Washington refuses to extend diplomatic recognition to Peking and uses the Chinese territory of Taiwan – ninety miles from the mainland – as a staging area for further attacks on the Chinese revolution. The Kremlin, in the last few years, has evidently sought to conclude “peaceful coexistence” deals with American imperialism without giving the Chinese the slightest guarantee that such agreements would provide for the end of US non-recognition of China. Nor does the Kremlin seem to have been seriously pressing for the evacuation of American forces from Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits. The Chinese CP leaders, as a result, don’t trust Khrushchev to protect China’s interests in his negotiations with imperialism and have put his policy of seeking summit conferences with imperialism in question.In this way, the problems of the defense of the Chinese revolution, whose victory Stalin’s policies never provided for in the first place, have created a new fissure in the Stalinist monolith. Every Communist party in the world is bound in time to be affected by the Moscow-Peking division.For nearly four decades, the working class struggle for socialism has been perverted by Stalinism. It seemed to many people that the Soviet bureaucracy, through its manipulation of the Communist parties, possessed an unassailable monolithic structure capable of indefinitely maintaining its control over the revolutionary sections of the proletariat. The post-war period has seen the overturn of capitalism in Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, China and, most recently, Cuba. As a result, the Stalinist monolith has been fractured in many places – although it is certainly not yet shattered. The fate of the world revolution is tied to the further disintegration of Stalinism and its eventual pulverization.Ever since 1924, the Trotskyists, equipped only with the ideological weapons of Marx and Lenin have fought against the Stalinist bureaucracy. Today the power of revolution is delivering hammer blows against it. This will help immeasurably in assembling forces within a genuine world revolutionary socialist party whose ascendancy in the working-class movement is essential to the victory of world socialism.Top of pageWeiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main PageLast updated: 29.1.2006" }

{ "content": "Murry Weiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index   |   ETOL Main PageMurray WeissCP-Frankensteen Forces ProposeAid to FBI Hounding of Unions(22 November 1941)From The Militant, Vol. V No. 48, 29 November 1941, p. 2.Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).LOS ANGELES, Nov. 22. – The Stalinists have found a new way to aid the Gestapo-FBI to hound militant union men. Last week at the North American Aircraft local of the United Automobile Workers, CIO, in Los Angeles, they attempted to push through a resolution calling for the establishment of a union “Fact Finding Committee” of ten to ferret out all information concerning activities of workers which “hamper the progress of national defense.”The information thus gathered could then be distorted by the FBI and other anti-labor forces to persecute the Union and its members. Regular union activity could be lumped indiscriminately under the heading of activities obstructive to “national defence,” and linked with “subversive activities.”It will be recalled that the Stalinists who led the North American strike last June were themselves victims of the FBI and the Army officials who took over the plant. Some of the secondary Stalinist leaders in the North American local are still being victimized, by being denied their jobs, for their participation in that strike. They have been charged with being “subversive.” Militants OpposedAn extremely heated discussion took place on the resolution. Militant workers of all political opinions launched a vigorous attack against the Stalinist-Frankensteen machine. They pointed to the obvious danger of this committee being used to persecute and get rid of militant union men. They insisted that it was treachery to the interests of the labor movement to call the labor-hating, union-busting FBI into the affairs of the union.Highly significant was the action of a group of young Stalinists who split openly with the Stalinist fraction on this issue. They fought side by side with the militants in defeating this vicious resolution.The Stalinist-Frankensteen machine in control of the local was forced to retreat. This obviously reactionary plan for an FBI “Fact Finding Committee” within the union aroused such a storm of protest that the chairman quickly suppressed all discussion and adjourned the meeting. The resolution was referred to a committee of three for “study.”Progressive unionists in all industries must be on guard against this campaign which represents the latest treachery of the Communist Party. Under the guise of innocuous-sounding “fact finding committees” the Stalinists are seeking to assist the FBI in its efforts to strait-jacket the labor movement. Top of pageMurry Weiss Archive   |   Trotskyist Writers Index  |   ETOL Main PageLast updated: 22 March 2019" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysOn The Trial of SokratesIn the year 399 B.C, an Athenian dikastery, consisting of a panel of 500 citizens, sentenced to death an aged compatriot named Sokrates. Two accounts of the case have come down to us, both by pupils and admirers of the accused: Plato and Xenophon. A comparison shows that the first at least is coloured by the literary ability of the reporter. It is reasonably clear from both that Sokrates did not defend himself on legalitarian grounds, but on those of what might be called the rights of man as regards freedom of speech. The legal aspect of the case can be seen fully discussed in any book that deals with causes celebres; the trial, in fact, is usually the first of any historically arranged series of famous trials. And jurists, Lord Birkenhead among them, come rather shamefacedly to be sure- to the conclusion that as the law existed in that age, the verdict was justified. What gives the trial its interest is not the constitutional problem but the personality of the philosopher himself, which has grown enormously with the passing of centuries. Plato considered him the wisest, justest, and best of all men that he had ever known (concluding sentence of Phaedon); but there was no public regret at his death in Athens, or elsewhere in Greece. The arch-driveller Plutarch did not see fit to include him for biographical purposes among the great men of antiquity (not that this proves very much, as Epaminondas is also omitted). But the trial has an aspect of martyrdom, inasmuch as the prisoner at the bar deliberately baited the jury and took a high tone with his judges; he preferred the alternative of a death sentence to that of stopping to teach and discuss; moreover, the law as administered gave him a certain amount of time in which escape into exile was possible, and actually arranged by his friends, but refused indignantly by himself. He waited thirty days in prison with chains on his legs, and calmly drank off his cup of poison at the end. The nature of the charge was that Sokrates was a perverter of youth. This looks startling, but is true in that those who listened to him were more apt to be young men than old, and that their respect for established institutions was almost certain to be dissolved by his methods. It is of interest to Marxists that his method was the dialectic one, questioning and cross questioning, showing up the contradictions in a plausible and even accepted statement till, by a succession of negations, some sort of a valid conclusion was reached. By this, he is given the position of the very founder of moral philosophy, as he raised questions on every sort of ethical problem that could affect any person. Nothing of his has survived except what appears through Plato's Dialogues; on the other hand, Plato, Boswell- like, has allowed his own views, if he had any, to appear only through the mouth of his Guru. But there is no doubt that Sokrates's questionings dispersed the mist of vague belief that surrounded the mind of the citizens-at-large in Athens, as it surrounds those of citizens-at-large anywhere today. Arguments on the trial have too often been based on the susceptibility.of democracy to weaknesses of the crowd-mind. Most historians take up one position or the other in this matter, for or against democracy. Even our own Jawaharlal draws the conclusion, \"Evidently governments do not like people who are always trying to find out things; they do not like the search for truth\" (Glimpses of World History vol. I, p. 68). This view would seem quite natural considering the political circumstances of the date of writing and the government of the day in India. But I propose to examine the matter a little closer, as regards the trial in question. Athens can hardly be called a democracy in the modern sense of the word, as the vast mass of the population had little in the way of political power. The slaves, women, and foreign traders or foreign craftsmen (the metics) had no rights to speak of, though the last class did receive a much fairer deal by law than elsewhere-which accounts for a great deal of Athenian, progress in industry and trade. The citizen population was roughly graded by income, though old tribal divisions persisted and were revised as necessary. Taxes were also graded, and office was usually restricted to the wealthiest, who had to pay very heavily for it by bearing the costs of entertaining the whole (free) populace at certain annual festivities. Legal power vested in the citizens as a body; they alone had the right to bear arms; every citizen had to serve by turn also as a paid juror, the vote of the jury being binding in both civil and criminal cases upon the magistrate. The whole constitution after Kleisthenes implies a high degree of culture in the male citizen population, and understanding of the laws, particularly as there were no lawyers even for court business. This contention is borne out by the brilliant literature of the period, best of all by the dramas of the age which were meant for the entertainment of the general public, but have remained a model of the art for all times. " }

{ "content": "The philosopher was aged seventy at the time of his trial, and had led an exemplary public life except for his unfortunate habit of \"perverting youth\". He began life as sculptor, but left the field, to Pheidias and others of that rank, to betake himself to an incessant examination of the foundations of every possible contemporary belief. This did not improve his material circumstances, as he despised the sophists (to whose class he nevertheless belonged) who charged a fee for teaching the arts of examination and defence of any cause, so necessary in view of the forensic duties of every Athenian citizen; it decidedly soured the temper of his spouse Xantippe, who has had no sympathy at all from history for managing the household on a minute and irregular income. Sokrates fought with vigour and distinction on the battlefield of Delium. At the naval battle of Arginusac eight commanders allowed the joy of victory to blind them to the necessity of rescuing more than a thousand citizens drowning upon some of the shattered hulks of the Athenian navy; after their return, they were impeached by mass-trial, contrary to law which called for individual trial; only one of the responsible men present dared to hold out for law against public sentiment: Sokrates. One might think that this made him a marked man to the Athenian rabble; but when, a little later, Kritias had established the aristocratic dictatorship of the Thirty at Athens, Sokrates again refused his compliance to an illegal and unjust order. Let us add that throughout his life, he had been a friend of \"the very best people\". At this stage, his trial apparently becomes quite incomprehensible. One fact is ignored by both jurists and philosophers. The whole generation before the death of Sokrates had been taken up in a disastrous war: the Peloponnesian war. This was an out-and-out imperialistic clash, begun under the leadership of the moderate imperialist Perikles, the great statesman of Athens. The contradiction it was meant to resolve was the rise of a new mercantile class in opposition to the landed aristocracy; and that of limited power for an individual at home with unlimited power abroad. Athenian private enterprise, beginning as industrial pseudo- capital, had penetrated the Aegean hinterland very rapidly, and citizens not only owned mines in outlying places, but controlled trade routes, managed private armies, owned small forts, and interfered as much as necessary in the local governments of the less developed regions such as Macedonia. The islands near Athens had formed a maritime league for defence against Persia; Athens exploited the other members of the league as shamelessly as possible, and inevitably ran into a war with Sparta, hegemon of the land-league. Both sides forgot their original purpose, and called in the help of the Persians. This twenty-seven year war of attrition finished the obstreperous common citizenry of Athens, and finished Athens as a powerful state. In and just after this period there were two violent attempts at a dictatorship of the aristocracy: the Four Hundred and the Thirty, with a bloody restoration of the democracy each time. And the notable circumstance here is that the oligarchs forgot that they were enemies of the Spartans, and called in Spartan aid to suppress their own democratic citizenry. This was granted very willingly, as the Spartans were thoroughgoing oligarchs on their own account, who naturally hated democracy in any form. One imperialism fighting another, but helping dictatorship to establish itself in a rival state is not a new phenomenon.Now Sokrates is supposed to have been willing to teach anyone or enter into a discussion with him, regardless of rank or wealth. Yet, if we look into the dialogues of Plato, our only sources of information, we find a curious emphasis on just one class of people: the extreme aristocrats who misdirected the steadier imperialism of Perikles, and who later tried again and again for a coup d'etat. Kritias was the leader of the Thirty, and he is not only mentioned several times, besides having a fragmentary dialogue in his own name, but left the impression upon the Athenian citizens that Sokrates had taught him his actions. Another in the same category, so far as public rumour went, is Alkibiades, the handsome and noble (Kalos k' agathos) son of the aristocrat Kimon. This youngster, from all records, .was the closest friend of Sokrates. The Symposium of Plato bears testimony to this, and for some unknown reason, is considered by many litterateurs as a high water mark of civilization ( cf. Clive Bell: Civilization). Alkibiades reduced every question to a personal one, and was a ruinous friend and a deadly enemy to both the Athenians and the Spartans by turn. The Athenians exiled him for his treachery; the Spartans eventually sentenced him to death without a trial. In personal character, he can only be described as a bounder, in spite of the admiration he excited in Greek bosoms. His undoubted military ability was never used in a good cause or in a reliable manner. There is, by the way, a Platonic dialogue named Alkibiades. " }

{ "content": "To mention just one other name, familiar to readers of the Dialogues, we take Nikias, the successor to Perikles. He was responsible for the most disastrous venture in the whole course of the Peloponnesian war: the Sicilian expedition. He lost his own life in it, being put to death by the Spartans when taken, with 7000 men. The flower of the Athenian armed forces, their best general (Demosthenes) and almost the whole of the regular navy were wiped out in an expedition of the type against which Perikles had earlier left a clear warning. Had this enterprise succeeded as originally planned, it would \"have led to a dictatorship or at least an oligarchy at Athens itself, Alkibiadf's had a hand in this to\", as he had gone over to the Spartan side at the time, and was responsible ultimately for directing operations in a manner that proved fatal to Athens. Both Alkibiades and Nikias were in political control of Athens when the Athenians (416 B.C.) took the island of Melos, giving an argument that stands to this day as a statement of pure, naked imperialism (Thucydides, Book V, 85-116). The proposal after the conquest was that all men of military age be put to death, and the women and children sold into slavery! But Nikias and his fellow aristocrats were, in spite of the war, friendly with the Spartans, pro-Spartan at times, and hated the men of the people like Kleon, or Hyperbolus the lamp-seller's son, who rose to power in Athens on the strength uf their persuasiveness, without the backing of birth, tradition, prestige, or landed inheritance. I do not say that the Sokratic teaching was alone responsible for the actions of these men, but I do maintain that the rugged individualism to which the Sokratic dialectic could be such tremendous encouragement was undoubtedly to the advantage of the ruling classes, or of the would-be dictators, as against the citizens in a group. If the Republic of Plato, supposedly a narrative from the mouth of Sokrates himself, be any guide, the Sokratic ideal of a state was not the Athenian democracy. The training given there would have been nearer to that of the Spartans, and useful primarily for war. That a people trained for war without common ownership of the means of production will ultimately be tempted to fight for conquest and dominion is never thought of. It has been remarked that Sokrates himself would never have been tolerated for more than a week in his own Republic. It is also recorded that the common man tended to be suspicious of the Sokratic dialectic on its own grounds; it probably made him out a fool. Let me point out that the chief disciple of Sokrates, Plato, was allowed to continue teaching afterwards at Athens, and lived to a ripe old age himself; yet, in his youth, he had been directly involved in the temporarily successful attempt of Kritias and the Thirty at setting up a dictatorship, only to withdraw at an early stage when the differences between the ideal and the practice of an aristocratic rule became manifest.It is clear, then, that the verdict against Sokrates was not brought about by the vulgar multitude, but by responsible people of his own day. The structure of society had not been essentially altered, except that the forces that demanded an imperialist expansion had been severely crippled by a long war and two rebellions. His condemnation did not cause a furore even among the aristocrats, for they had nothing more to gain from him except long after he was dead, when his case was useful as an argument against democracy. But there is a very important moral that I have kept till the last: Sokrates behaved as he did because, in his own words, he was guided by an inner voice; a divine, or daemonic message was conveyed to him in times of stress, and he never allowed fear of the consequences to divert him from obedience. It is unfortunate that a person of his intelligence, ability, uprightness, and courage was told nothing by the Gandhian inner voice about the condition of the masses at large; about changing the means of production; about allowing workers (slaves) to participate in that sort of liberty which had already brought such an access of vigour to the Greeks as to enable them to hold out against the much more powerful Persian empire. The inner voice could have told him nothing about the far distant future: that liberalism in 19th century England would flourish because of Grote's close study of Athens in his days; that a study of the classics would be an important political asset for both democrats and reactionaries. But I do think that the inner voice should have made it clear to him that a certain class of people would twist his teaching to their own profit as against the well-being of the body politic. And when the attempts of this class failed, the class itself was content to look on while the sadly damaged state gave him a choice between keeping quiet or being executed.Fergusson & Willingdon College Magazine, July 1939, pp. 1-6. I As regards Sokrates and his background, the reader will find much better information in: (1) A. D. Winspear and T. Silverberg: Who Was Socrates (New York, 1943), (2) Benjamin Farrington: Greek Science (2 vol.) Pelican Books. (3) A. D. Winspear: The Genesis of Plato's Thought (New York, 1940).“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysThe Kanpur RoadHe sat there in his doorway like some great idol. A sad, benign smile-a smile of pleasure, not necessity-on that strong brown face heightened the impression. But his stiff white beard, parted and curled away from the middle, wide shoulders that bore their years lightly, the shining medals strung across a mighty chest, all showed a fighter. \"Sardar\", for I saw that such was his rank, \"do you know the Kanpur Road?\" \"Aye, baba (my son). I have a scar for every mile of the way.\"\"You fought in the Mutiny?\"\"A little\". \"No, I know better. Tell me about it. Please!\" \"Nay, there is nothing to tell. We held the enemy while the main body retreated. Yes, even as you say, it was there I earned this star. How? There was little to do. The heart ached more than the arm after it was done. A rebel cut down the brigadier as he and I were reconnoitring one night. I fought and killed that rebel with this same worn sword. I carried the brigadier to his own men. It was not very hard. What has the heart to do with it? It was my own brother that I killed. It could not have been otherwise. Had I not eaten British salt? Had I not given my word to defend them against whatsoever enemy? Were they not, at least then, out- numbered, without hope? Then could I, a Sikh, have done otherwise? But I buried my brother first with his sword in his hand. And I would not dress the wound that he gave me on the cheek. So, it festered. Now the left side of my face cannot smile, nor show any emotion at all. The star I wear, not to show others my glory, but to remind myself of my grief. But I digress...\" He never did show me the Kanpur Road. But he did tell a great deal about himself to the wide-eyed youngster before him. He had campaigned in Abyssinia with Napier, entered Kabul and Kandahar with Roberts, fought in almost every outpost of the desert, mountains, swamp, and wilderness that mark India's savage frontier. His choice was ever the desperate enterprise, the forlorn hope, the lonely task. When, at the end of each campaign, the inevitable medal came to be pinned upon his chest, his thoughts always went back to his first decoration, the award for fratricidal loyalty. Then the great, livid scar began to hurt again, his face tightened up more than ever into a frozen bronze mask. The coldness with which his extraordinary commissions were carried out, the lack of warmth with which he received the medals, the chill stare with which he met all praise, caused acute discomfort to his officers which made them transfer him from division to division. Thus it was that his sword opened the first secure path for the grimy civilisation of Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield in many an unhappy comer of the world. When, finally, the time came for retirement, he accepted from the Government, as a reward for the loyalty that he had ever shown to the salt that he had eaten, a gift of land near Kanpur; far away from his native Punjab, but as near as possible to his brother's unmarked grave. As I listened to him, I forgot the parched earth, the dull haze that seemed the smoke of an all-consuming fire. I forgot the pain of hunger, the terror in my green young soul at the unknown future that was in store for me even if I managed to reach the city of Kanpur. The dispirited peasantry, drifting aimlessly in the background between the repellent poles of a countryside squeezed out by famine and the newly opened factories at Kanpur glutted with cheap labour, no longer numbed me with the fright that came from the sharp consciousness that I, too, was one of them. After all, I thought, I can always find the road to Kanpur, but where could I meet another such as Sardar Govind Singh, as honourable a man as ever obeyed his code? He was worthy to have gazed upon those pure-souled heros and demi-gods of our mythological antiquity who fought their superhuman battles with mysterious weapons to turn back the forces of darkness from the rule of this world. He was worthy to have stood with King Pauravas on that fateful day when the tricky manoeuvres of Yavana invaders prevailed against simple bravery. Our village school teacher, now dead of starvation and cholera, had told me the story. The invaders did not fight man to man; one could not come to grips with them. A sudden Hank attack by their cavalry wiped out the Indian chariots, upset the elephants. Before order could be restored, there appeared on the plain a fearful engine of destruction, the Macedonian phalanx: sixteen thousand men locked into a precise, compact formation by their enormous twenty-one-foot spears. The shattering impact of their charge swept away the rabble. Yet dauntless king Pauravas held out with a loyal handful on a lonely knoll by the riverside till it became clear that all was indeed lost. The bravery of his defence, the matchless dignity of his surrender, wrung words of admiration from the youthful conqueror; Alexander converted a noble foe into a loyal friend by restoring his lands and adding to them. Even, so, thought I, had Govind Singh come by tokens of appreciation and a gift of land from our modern conquerors. But it was not he who showed me the road to Kanpur. " }

{ "content": "I repassed this scene of a childhood memory in 1938 and thought it symbolic that the Sardar never did guide me to my destination. The way I had travelled through the intervening years would never have been his way. My struggles, too, had been in many lands, but chiefly in classrooms, laboratories, factories. I did volunteer for the Republican army in Spain) only to reach Franco's prison without being able to fire a single effective round on the actual field of battle. I had neither medals nor land. My scars had been seared into my mind by the turmoil of social upheavals. The first of these scars was earned on Boston Common the night they electrocuted Sacco and Vanzetti. In fact, what had brought me again to Kanpur was a gigantic strike, and I knew that it was not our leadership, nor the heroic efforts of the workers that had been the decisive factor in our victory. We won primarily because the capital and capitalists ranged against us were foreign, not Indian. [My reward, which came soon afterwards when leading a strike against our own millowners at Ahmedabad, turned out to be jail and tuberculosis.] The peasants of that region recalled the grim Sardar only as a master more oppressive than the usual run of landlords. They brushed aside my queries as to the declining years and manner of death of such a person. Something of my reputation must have spread out from Kanpur, because I was asked again and again, \"You have helped the mill-hands obtain I higher wages; but what of a better deal for the farm labourer? Your speeches foretold the day when the mazdur would take over his factory; when will the kisan own the land he cultivates?\" And the light of hope that shone from within upon toil-worn faces made it clear that Govind Singh had not only killed a brother, but had dealt mortal wounds to his own historic period, cutting at long centuries of stagnant agricultural production. The regions he had helped to open up were now held not by armies of occupation but by the far deadlier grip of banks and factories. To me, his memory was like a beacon pointing out a deserted road, the road of abstract loyalty and unthinking courage. We had to follow another path, in order to free both worker and peasant from slavery to human masters, to the machine, and to the soil. Govind Singh had never eaten British salt; only Indian salt taxed by the British. The lands that Alexander bestowed upon King Pauravas were Indian lands that could never have been garrisoned by the conqueror's mutinous soldiers.[My place was not with the heroes, but with the rabble, with the men who had been pressed into the ranks by force of arms, or force of hunger, with nothing to fight or work for and little to gain; whose function in the epics was to be slaughtered by the heroes; whose role, according to the historians, was to provide a mere background for the deeds of great men. The heroes of a money-making society rose from the people, at the expense of 'the people; I could rise only with the common people.] Fergusson & Willingdon College Magazine, Poona, 1939, pp.10-12 The initial two-thirds of this story was written as an English At theme at Harvard in 1924.“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysINTRODUCTIONOccasional letters show that these essays (and the short story) still continue to attract some readers. Re-publication has been undertaken at their request in the hope that the demand is not restricted to those who voiced it. At any rate, the journals of the first publication are not readily accessible. Emendation, restricted to a minimum, was necessary because proofs were generally not shown to the author by the periodicals concerned. Substantial additions are given in square brackets. A note at the end contains a reference to the original publication and, where necessary, supplementary remarks to illustrate the main theme. Had the analysis not stood the test of time, had an occasional passage, which first read like an unlikely forecast of things to come, not been justified by the event, there would have been no point in dragging these writings out of their obscurity. The essential is the method followed, which is the method of dialectical materialism, called Marxism after the genius who first developed its theory and used it systematically as a tool. Dialectical materialism holds that matter is primeval, and the properties of matter are inexhaustible. Mind is an aspect of matter, being a function of the brain. Ideas, therefore, are not primary phenomena, but rather the reflection of material processes and changes upon human consciousness which is itself a material process. Therefore, ideas are formed ultimately out of human experience. Matter is not inert, but in a constant state of interaction and change; it is a complex of processes rather than an aggregate of things. In every stage, there resides an inherent quality of challenge, an \"inner contradiction\", which leads eventually to a negation (not necessarily unique) of that stage or condition. The negation, quite naturally, is again negated, but this does not mean a simple return to the original condition, rather to a totally different level. There is thus a fundamental unity of opposites. Mere change of quantity must eventually lead to a change of quality; quite often, this is an abrupt change after the quantity reaches some critical (\"nodal\") value. Finally, life is a mode of existence of certain forms of matter, particularly those containing organic compounds such as proteins. Its characteristic mode of existence is that, to preserve its special quality as living matter, it has to interact with a suitable environment in a specific manner, at a certain minimum rate. Then, for non-isolated complete organisms, there is normally an increase in numbers (change of quantity) to a critical level. Non-living matter, on the contrary, retains its characteristics best, the less it interacts with the environment.On the level of human society, the environment is furnished to a considerable extent by the society itself. The rate and the quantity of interaction with natural surroundings depend upon the instruments of production, and the technique employed: food-gathering, the pastoral life, agriculture, machine production. The distribution of the product among the various members of society is a matter for the relations of production, such as class division, ownership rights etc, whereof the forms are not determined simply by the economic level, nor immediately by the tools, but depend also upon the previous social history of the particular group of men. However, the tools are basic; feudalism or a bourgeoisie is not possible for stone- age people any more than is an atomic pile, or the differential calculus. The progress of mankind, and its history, thus depends upon the means of production, i.e. the actual tools and the productive relationships. Society is held together by the bonds of production. It is not the purpose here to prove these elementary principles all over again, but rather to show how they can be and have been fruitfully applied to a certain class of important problems. To remain a living discipline, Marxism must continue to work successfully with newer discoveries in science (including archaeology) and must yield new valid results in history. Its importance lies not only in the interpretation of the past, but as a guide to future action. By its correct use, men can make their own history consciously rather than suffer it to be made as helpless spectators or merely to study it after the event.Certain opponents of Marxism dismiss it as an outworn economic dogma based upon 19tb century prejudices Marxism never was a dogma. There is no reason why its formulation in the 19tb century should make it obsolete and wrong any more than the discoveries of Gauss, Faraday and Darwin which have passed into the body of science. Those who sneer at its 19th century obsolescence cannot logically quote Mill, Burke and Herbert Spencer with approval, nor pin their faith to the considerably older and decidedly more obscure Bhagawad Gita. The defencegenerally given is that the Gita and the Upanishads are Indian; that foreign ideas like Marxism are objectionable This is generally argued in English the foreign language common to educated Indians; and by persons who live under a mode of production (the bourgeois system forcibly introduced by the foreigner into India.) The objection, therefore seems less to the foreign origin than to the ideas themselves which might endanger class privilege. Marxism is said to be based upon violence, upon the class-war in which the very best people do not believe nowadays. They might as well proclaim that meteorology encourages storms by predicting them. No Marxist work contains incitement to war and specious arguments for senseless killing remotely comparable to those in the divine Gila. From the opposite direction, the Indian Official Marxist (hereafter called OM)have not failed to manifest their displeasure with, an interloper's views. These form a decidedly mixed category indescribable because of rapidly shifting views and even more rapid political permutations and combinations. The OM included at various times several factions of the CPI, the Congress Socia1ists, the Royists and numerous left splinter. Their standard objection has been that such writings are \"controversial\". If consistently pressed this would also exclude the main work of Marx,Engels, Lenin, the best of Stalin and MaoTse-tung. The only successful way of dealing with adverse views presented in all good faith is a careful, detailed, and factual " }

{ "content": "answer. The OM Marxism has too often consisted of theological emphasis on the inviolable sanctity of the current party line, or irrelevant quotations from the classics. Marxism cannot, even on the grounds of political expediency or party solidarity, be reduced to a rigid formalism like mathematics. Nor can it be treated as a standard technique such as work on an automatic lathe. The material, when it is present in human society, has endless variations; the observer is himself part of the observed population, with which he interacts strongly and reciprocally. This means that the successful application of the theory needs the development of analytical power, the ability to pick out the essential factors in a given situation. This cannot be learned from books alone. The one way to learn it is by constant contact with the major sections of the people. For an intellectual, this means at least a few months spent in manual labour, to earn his livelihood as a member of the working class; not as a superior being, nor as a reformist, nor as a sentimental \"progressive\" visitor to the slums. The experience gained from living with worker and peasant, as one of them, has then to be consistently refreshed and regularly evaluated in the light of one's reading. For those who are prepared to do this, these essays might provide some encouragement, and food for thought. It is a great pleasure to thank the editors of the original publications. My thanks are also due to Mrs. V. V. Bhagwat and Mr. R. P. Nene for the trouble they have taken over this edition.Deccan Queen,October 2, 1957D. D. KOSAMBI“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysThe Bourgeoisie Comes of Age in India The long-awaited publication of Jawaharlal Nehru's book on India [Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, (Calcutta, 1946)], past and present, has in many ways justified the great hopes raised by the author's distinguished record in the struggle for India's freedom, and by his active share in the struggle against war. His career is too well known for further comment here; those who do not know it would be well advised to read his Autobiography as well as this book. No person knows India better than Pandit Jawaharlal. He is able to express himself brilliantly both in Hindi and Urdu, as friends and admirers among Hindus as well as Muslims will admit. Most important of all, he has an intimate acquaintance with the British ruling class because of his education in England. The book in question is, therefore, a damning indictment of British rule in India; but more than that, its ambitious scope includes the history of India culturally as well as politically in a single perspective. The performance is all the more remarkable when it is considered that the work was essentially completed in jail, under the most distressing circumstances, with full consciousness on the part of the author that a struggle against Hitlerism was being waged without his help, though he himself had always been an unswerving opponent of fascism and all that fascism represents. The very fact that so able a personality should be jailed without trial while a considerable number of British agent were foisted upon India to fight the war from the safety of office chairs had an unfortunate result for the Indian population; for while the British officials and a larger number of Indian business men filled their pockets with vast quantities of paper currency, the people at large had the benefit of inflation, famine, epidemics and shortages. To explain just what this means in terms understandable to an American is beyond the reach of any sensitive person who had the misfortune to be an eye-witness of the happenings in India during the war years. The book cannot be too strongly recommended to the general reader. The present writer wishes to make it clear that he himself is a humble admirer of the author. This is to prevent misunderstanding, for the bulk of this communication is necessarily devoted to pointing out a certain number of flaws. For the ancient history of India, little need be said because such sources as we possess are extremely meagre and their interpretation puzzles even those who have devoted a lifetime to their study; on this score we need not hold the author responsible. In some ways it is unfortunate that he has not had the leisure to study Indian sources more critically and that he has relied so heavily upon comparatively popular accounts by British authors. This, however, may be condoned on the ground that Indian political prisoners hardly have reference libraries at their disposal. One feature that may strike the reader as rather surprising is a curious attitude towards the much abused term \"race\"; denunciation of racialism and of imperialism occurs on p. 386f, but on p. 387 we read: \"psychology counts and racial memories are long.\" Just what racial memory means is not clear, particularly in the case of a country that had forgotten the splendid Mauryan and Gupta periods, including the very script of those times; that ascribes almost every cave of any date to the mythical Pandavas; and is capable of pointing out as prince Pratap Sinha, the statue of Outram (a butcher of the 1857 revolt) on the Esplanade at Calcutta. It was noticeable on the contrary that class memories are extremely short, or at any rate strikingly different from what Nehru imagines to be race memories. For example, the British Commissioner of Police in Bombay whose name was execrated for his incompetent or deliberately provocative handling of popular discontent at the end of January, 1946 (ending in a real blood-bath in the working class areas of Bombay) was nevertheless a guest May, along with the Congress ministers, at the ri weddings of the year in Bombay. On p. 431 we read: \"old races develop that attitude [of quietism] to life:' Just what this means is also not clear, for ethnologically there is no evidence that any race is older than any other. In fact if the sentence can be taken as applying to the Indian races, it is quite impossible to explain why quietism has been on the wane since 1940 at least, and has given place to the constant ferment of political activity in this country . " }

{ "content": "Far more serious to the present reviewer is the absence of the question \"why.\" No attempt at history can be regarded as mature which does not, within the framework of the author's ideology, make some attempt at analysis. For the ancient period we find considerable difficulty in explaining certain facts for the simple reason that the facts themselves are not always clear; but for the modern period it seems to me that the author's present approach cannot stand unchallenged. I may go further and venture the statement that this vague use of the term \"race,\" the absence of the question as to why certain changes take place at certain times, are intimately bound up with another remark- able feature of the book, the absence of a class analysis. The author could have asked himself one question with the greatest of advantage, namely, cui bono; what is the class that called for or benefited by a certain change at a certain period of history? This might have clarified one issue noted by the author, that the British have fought desperately and till now effectively against granting India the same kind of social and political rights of which the English themselves are so proud in England. It is quite obvious that the class of Englishmen who fought for the suppression of local governments and civil liberties in India have also fought desperately against the lower classes in England; but when the pressure of the working class in England became too great, the bourgeois front was breached in some one place and a local amelioration was won. Then the losing section of the bourgeoisie necessarily fought for the imposition of restriction against all other owners of means of production and ultimately put a good face on the whole matter, provided that they, the rulers, had granted certain reforms at their own sweet free will. There was comparatively little class opposition from India as the British had taken every care to preserve as much feudal and religious prerogative as possible. It may be further suggested that the absence of developed modern capital in the Muslim community as well as the great relative poverty of the Muslims in India might explain (as Nehru does not) both the case against the Muslim League (p. 466) and Muslim backwardness (p. 468) as well as the reactionary attitude of the Muslim upper classes in India. Nehru has himself pointed out (p. 437) that Indian business men demand exactly the same kind of protection in Ceylon which they rightly resent having given to British business interests in India. He is undoubtedly aware of the fact that Indians in South Africa, backed whole-heartedly by the Indian trading community there, are fighting hard for equality; but for equality with the whites and not equality with the Negroes also. The absence of class analysis vitiates the peculiar presentation of provincial differences and growth of industry (p. 392-398). We read that the people of Gujarat, Kathiawar and Kutch were traders, manufacturers, merchants and seafarers from ancient times. Now it is undeniable that the great majority of people in just those districts are definitely not traders, although people from the localities mentioned occupy so prominent a place in the capitalistic section of India today. The reason is that early contact with Mohammedan traders enabled this small fraction to develop early contact with the British and thereby introduced them to a new system of production: that is, production based on machinery and modern capital. The best example of this perhaps is the tiny Parsi community which, in its original situation in Gujarat, was one of the most shamefully oppressed of refugee minorities and is today one of the most advanced, cultured and powerful of communities in India; solely because of their adoption of modern industrial and finance capitalism. On the other hand the case is totally different with the Marwaris of Rajputana (p. 394-96) who did control finance and money-lending in the old days but had no political rights whatsoever. If Nehru will take the trouble to look up the records he will see how often such moneylenders backed the British in the days of British expansion in India. Of course that may not lead him to realise a basic contemporary phenomenon: the change of pseudo-capital thus accumulated into modern productive money. The changeover is now actually so rapid that even the most backward and degenerate of Indians, the feudal princelings, are becoming shareholders on a large scale. The days are gone when shares were issued at a face value of Rs.30/- to be quoted today (1946) at well over Rs.3,000/- or when a stock was issued at Rs.100/-, of which Rs.99/- was given back as a capital repayment, to give a dividend of over Rs.150/- today, being quoted at Rs.2,300/ -. Those stocks had a much longer start in the race for modernisation of industry, but the total volume of such capital was negligible and has now been tremendously increased by the conversion of primitive accumulation as well as by the uncontrolled inflation and profiteering of the war period. " }

{ "content": "Not only has Nehru neglected to take note of this accumulation, but he has also been unable to grasp just what this quantitative change has done qualitatively to the character of the- Indian middle class, a class which may now be said to be firmly, in the saddle. A few drops from the banquet (generally from the excess profits) have been scattered as a libation in the direction of education, scientific research, and charity; a considerable slackening of the ancient rigidity of manners, and unfortunately of morals also, is duly noticeable. Yet this is nothing compared to the principal characteristic of this class, the ravening greed which is now so obvious in the black market, in enormous bribes spent in making still more enormous profits, in speculation in shares and an increasingly callous disregard for the misery and even the lives of their fellow Indians). The progressive deterioration in the living conditions of our peasant workers (over 50 per cent of the population), of our factory labour and even the lower-paid office workers and intellectuals affords a striking contrast with the wealth that flows into the pockets of the upper middle class, though the gain may be camouflaged by the ostentatious simplicity of white khaddar (homespun) and the eternal Gandhi cap. The new constitution for India, in the gaining of which Nehru and his friends have spent so many of the finest years of their lives in jail, will come only as a recognition of the power of this newly expanded Indian middle class. Actually the negotiations of the British Cabinet Mission are nothing if not recognition of the position of the new bourgeoisie in India. The old trusteeship theory no longer yields monopoly profits either by investment or by export; the British bourgeoisie which must export and invest has admitted the necessity of coming to terms with their Indian counterpart which needs capital goods. It is surely not without significance that the modern industrialists and financiers contribute to Congress (by which I mean the Indian National Congress Party in this note) funds, while the leadership of the Muslim League is on noticeable good terms with the Mohammedan owners of money in India; it may be suggested that one reason for the conflict between these two middle class political organizations is not only the fact that the Muslim minority forms one-third of the population of the country with less than one-tenth of its wealth, but further that the wealth in Muslim hands is based predominantly on barter pseudo-capital or semi-feudal agrarian production, both of which look for protection to the British. In the light of all this, which Nehru does not acknowledge explicitly, it is interesting to note his comments on the Indian Communist Party (p. 524 and 629). Nehru does not realize that the Indian Communist Party (never ideologically powerful had in 1941 been suppressed to the point of ineffectiveness and that their increasing force in Indian politics today, though still virtually negligible as against that of the bourgeoisie, is due solely to their having really gone down to the peasant workers and the very small industrial proletariat-two sections of the Indian population among which the Congress and the Muslim League both have much less influence today than they did before 1943. In speaking of the Congress Planning Committee (p. 482-84) it is curious to note that the findings of the committee had apparently no influence whatsoever on the provincial Congress governments then functioning. Nehru might have studied with profit the differences between the Congress programme and the actual performance of the Congress ministries.There is no evidence at all that the Congress as constituted today is in the remotest danger of drifting (like its planning committee) towards socialism. With the Muslim League leadership, of course, it is difficult to observe anything except pure opportunism and reaction. Without going deeper into the statistics or capital investments, it may be stated-and verified by a reference to the newspaper advertisements of the period-that the years 1937-39, when the Congress ministries ruled, show in their particular provinces a considerable number of new enterprises being started. The investor certainly demonstrated his confidence in the Congress, whether or not the British and the Congress Planning Commission gave any attention to that aspect of the matter. Of course this cannot compare with the almost explosive increase in capital today. " }

{ "content": "In dealing with the stirring events of August, 1942 (p. 579f.), Nehru has given the parliamentary side of the question in a straightforward manner. The external observer, however, may be struck by one noteworthy point which has not even been visualized in the book. When the All India Congress Committee met at Bombay, the members knew that arrest was imminent and most of them had prepared for the event by setting their family affairs and personal finances in excellent order against all contingencies that might arise for the next year or two. What strikes this writer as remarkable is that not one of these worthy and able delegates, though aware that the British adversary was about to strike, ever thought of a plan of action for the Congress and for the nation as a whole. The general idea was \"the Mahatama will give us a plan\", yet no especial impression was made by the Mahatma's speech just before the arrests-though that address to the assembled delegates on the eve of an anticipated popular explosion is not only not revolutionary in character, nor a plan of action of any sort, but seems, when taken objectively, to be on the same level as a comfortable after-dinner speech. Why is it that knowledge of popular dissatisfaction went hand in hand with the absence of a real plan of action? Does it mean, for example, that the characteristic thought then current among the Indian bourgeoisie had in effect permeated the Congress leadership? One may note that on a class basis the action was quite brilliant, no matter how futile it may have seemed on a national revolutionary scale. The panic of the British government and jailing of all leaders absolved the Congress from any responsibility for the happenings of the ensuing year; at the same time the glamour of jail and concentration camp served to wipe out the so-so record of the Congress ministries in office, thereby restoring the full popularity of the organization among the masses. If the British won the war it was quite clear that the Congress had not favoured Japan; if on the other hand the Japanese succeeded in conquering India (and they had only to attack immediately in force for the whole of the so-called defense system to crumble) they could certainly not accuse the Congress of having helped the British. Finally, the hatred for the mass repression fell upon the thick heads of the bureaucracy, while having the discontent brought to a head and smashed wide open would certainly not injure the Indian bourgeoisie.In this connection we may again recall Lenin's words that \"only when the lower classes do not want the old and when the upper class cannot continue in the old way then only can the revolution be victorious. Its truth may be expressed in other words: Revolution is impossible without a national crisis affecting both the exploited and the exploiters.\" You look in vain in Nehru's book for any recognition of the undeniable fact that, in 1942, while the toiling masses had begun to taste the utmost depths of misery and degradation, the Indian bourgeoisie was flourishing as never before. War contracts, high prices, the ability to do extensive black-marketing, had given the financiers and industrialists what they wanted; furthermore even the lower, middle classes who had normally been the spearhead of discontent in India had begun to experience an amelioration because of the great number of new clerical and office jobs created by the war and the expanding war economy. Taking cognizance of this and of the further truth that the British in India had consistently allowed investors to make an increasing amount of profit in this country, one may be able to account for the lack of a plan in 1942 and for the successive deadlocks that followed in spite of mass pressure in the direction of revolution.History has thrust upon Nehru the mantle of leadership of a very powerful organization which still commands a greater mass support than any other in India, and which has shown by its unremitting and painful struggle that it is determined to capture political control of the entire subcontinent. But will Nehru's orientation towards Marxism change when the interests of the class which now backs Congress so heavily diverge from the interests of the poorer classes; or will his lack of a class analysis lead only to disillusionment? It would be silly to proclaim that Mahatma Gandhi, than whom no more sincere person exists, is a tool of the capitalists in India. But there is no other class in India today, except the new bourgeoisie, so strong, so powerfully organized, and so clever as to exploit for its own purposes whatever is profitable in the Mahatma's teachings and to reduce all dangerous enunciations to negative philosophical points. This bourgeoisie needs Nehru's leadership, just as India has needed the class itself. As I read the omens, the parting of the ways is clearly visible; what is not clear is the path Nehru himself will choose in that moment of agony. Science and Society (New York), vol. X 1946, pp. 392-398. " }

{ "content": "The OM thesis at this time was that the British would never transfer power to the Indian National Congress. The OM solution was that the Hindus and the Muslims, somehow equated to the Congress and the Muslim League, should unite to throw out the foreign imperialists. The question of the class structure behind the two parties was never openly raised, perhaps because the writings of W. Cantwell Smith led the OM to believe that the Muslim League was, in some mysterious way, at heart anti-British and on the road to socialism. One sure test of effective anti-imperialism, namely how many of the leaders were jailed or executed by the rulers of empire, was not applied. The intransigence and the open alliance with the British, so profitable to the leading personalities in the League, and the insistence upon the \"two nations\" theory were dutifully ignored. No emphasis has been laid upon the total disruption of advanced peasant movements in the Punjab and in Bengal by the 1947 separation of Pakistan. For that matter, the OM had dismissed the Satara peasant uprising (patri sarkar) of 1942-43 as pure banditry.“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysImperialism and PeaceScience and FreedomIn 1949, I saw that American scientists and intellectuals were greatly worried about the question of scientific freedom, meaning thereby freedom for the scientist to do what he liked while being paid by big business, war departments, or universities whose funds tended to come more and more from one or the other source. These gentlemen, living in a society where he who pays the piper insists upon calling the tune, did not seem to realize that science was no longer 'independent' as in the days when modern manufacturing production was still expanding at the lower stage of technical development, and the scientist who made the most essential discoveries was looked upon as a harmless individual toying with bits of wire, chemicals, perhaps collecting odd specimens in out of the many places. The scientist now is part of a far more closely integrated, tightly exploited, social system; he lives much more comfortably than Faraday, but at the same time under the necessity of producing regular output of patentable or advertising value, while avoiding all dangerous social or philosophical ideas. As a result, the worthies I mention were quite worried about the lack of scientific freedom in a planned society, but only indirectly and perhaps subconsciously as to what was actually happening to their own freedom in an age and time of extensive witch-hunting, where being called a communist was far more dangerous than being caught red handed in a fraud or robbery. These considerations, however, are mentioned only because they lead one astray from the main facts. There is an intimate connection between science and freedom, the individual freedom of the scientist being only a small corollary. freedom is the recognition of necessity; science is the cognition of necessity. The first is the classical Marxist definition of freedom, to which I have added my own definition of science. Let us look closer into the implications. As an illustration, consider the simple idea of flying. I am told that our ancestors in India had mastered some mysterious secrets of yoga whereby they could fly hundreds of miles in an instant. I don't believe it; these are flights of the fancy rather than of the body. Attempts to imitate the birds had very limited success, but gliders were more successful. Then came the posing of the elements of the problem, namely sources of power, methods of propulsion, laws of aerodynamics- all scientific and experimental truths. Mankind was not free to fly till the flying machine was invented. Today, anyone can fly without yoga- provided he has the means to enter an airplane. This, as society and its property relations are constituted, implies that either he owns the plane, or someone who does allows him admission; ultimately, the question is whether or not our flying human has money, i.e. the necessary control over means of production. In the abstract, nothing prevents him from sprouting a pair of wings and flying off like a bird; nor from becoming a yogi and soaring into the atmosphere by mere exercise of will-power. Such freedoms nevertheless, are illusory; necessity compels man to find other, more feasible technical methods. Take a commoner case, of eyesight. Five hundred years ago, extreme short sight or extreme farsight would have been regarded as varieties of blindness; they were written off as afllictions from heaven, or concomitants of old age. Glasses have to be invented for the restoration to normal sight of such people. This means today the science of optics, some know- ledge of eye-structure, of glass, including its chemistry, lens- grinding technique, factories, and workshops. There are still many people who suffer from eye-defects that could easily be corrected by glasses; they are legally free to wear glasses. Only lack of funds prevents them. In India the number of pairs of glasses really necessary but not available would run into the millions. We observe, then, that to recognize the necessity implies scientific experiment; in addition, there is a technical level which cannot be divorced from the experimental. Finally, there is a social structure that is not only intimately connected with the technical level, but also conditions the freedom of the individual by introducing a social necessity that in the abstract seems unnecessary but exists nevertheless. Some of my statements about science are not likely to be disputed; that Science knows only one test, that of validity, of material proof. Science is nothing if it does not work in practice. Science is direct investigation of properties of matter, hence materialistic. Scientific results are independent of the individual who carries out the experiment, in the sense that the same action gives identical results. Finally, as the search for causes and their effects, science is cumulative: science is the history of science. Every scientific discovery of any importance is absorbed into the body of human scientific knowledge, to be used thereafter. Schoolboys can repeat Galileo's experiments, and first year college students learn more mathematics than Newton knew; the young students must go through much the same mental processes, stripped of inessentials and repeated according to modern points of view, when they study. But they do not have to read Galileo's dialogues, nor the Principia. Here science differs essentially from the arts, for in painting, the modem painter need not study the prehistoric bisons in the cave of Altamira, nor the poet read Kalidasa. On the other hand, we can appreciate works of art and literature of all ages, for they are not subsumed in their successors in the manner of scientific discovery. Aesthetically, they have a survival value, a lack of obsolescence that the scientific work lacks. However, not all aesthetic effects have this survival value; the rapidly changing fashions that most ruling classes think necessary in their garments become as quickly ridiculous. " }

{ "content": "The other statements may also be briefly illustrated. Two painters painting the same scene will produce substantially different pictures; two people clicking the shutter of the same camera pointed at the same object will not. The fruits of ritual depend upon the rank of the celebrant, and only the king, medicine-man, shaman, or brahmin have the power or the right to draw down certain benefits for mankind; science tells us that these supposed benefits are imaginary, and fertility of the soil is better obtained by special agrotechniques, chemical fertilizers, and so on, than by fertility rites. Moreover, the chemicals and techniques work in the same way independently of who applies them. Now I give these examples deliberately, because both art and ritual performed at one time the functions that have been displaced by scientific observation. Primitive ritual was a substitute for what we now call scientific theory though primitive technique was correct. In India the menstrual taboo is still observed, though dying out in the cities, where the hurly-burly of industrial life deprived it of all meaning. Our workmen worship their tools on one day in the year, a custom not without charm which can be traced back to the oldest known times; but lathes, turbines, electric motors and railway trains have made it clear that there is none of the workman's personal mana that resides in the tool. I note in the market that the humble vegetable vendor makes the first sale of the day with a humble salutation to the balances, and to the goddess Bhavani; the sharemarket speculator may spend considerable sums on astrologers, but doesn't neglect the market quotations, and relies upon study of trends and comers in shares, stocks, bonds, and such modern financial jugglery which is absent in his and the astrologer's scriptures. The millions that bathe even now at the time of a solar eclipse can point with pride to the fact that their prayers have been successful, that the sun has always been freed from the maw of the demon who swallows him; but astronomical theory which predicts the eclipse to the minute has crept into our traditional pancanga almanacs, through the Western ephemerides, so that people cannot really believe in what has come to be an obsolete practice. In science, practice and theory cannot be divorced. This does not mean that scientists have never held a wrong theory, but only that they keep on making better and better approximations to the truth, knowing that there is no final truth simply because the properties of matter are infinite and inexhaustible. In ritual, no one dares make an experiment; the older the precept the more sure its grip. Religion develops from ritual when primitive society acquires a class structure, a tighter organisation of its originally varied components into a larger whole. This need not be elaborated here. What most of us do not realize is that science is also a social development; that the scientific method is not eternal and that science came into being only when the new class structure of society made it necessary. Of course, science really comes into its own with the machine age, which camlot develop without science and which in turn contributes highly useful technical aid to scientific discovery. But the fundamental inner connection is that machine production, like science, is cumulative. The machine accumulates human labour time towards the fulfilment of a specific human purpose. Yet modern science, as we know it, came into being before the machine age, and for the same purpose, namely to serve the new social needs. Moddem science is the creation of the bourgeoisie. " }

{ "content": "One of the major contributions of science is that it separates theory from technique, specifically from productive technique. If you look at our village workmen, you find them still producing excellent work with quite inferior tools simply because the workman masters the individual tool, makes it an extension of his person. Only he can handle the particular bit of metal efficiently enough to obtain good results. But his production is not standardized. If he makes two complicated devices of the same type, the parts will not be interchangeable, though both may have the same design and function. In the modern factory, on the other hand, the lathe or the loom is independent of the person handling it, just as the scientific experiment is independent of the experimenter, provided in each case the worker has the minimum efficiency necessary to keep the mechanism from damage. A village weaver is whole ages and social layers apart from the village potter; a worker on the assembly line can easily shift from one type of factory to another. In the case of the handicrafts-man, theory is not divorced from the tool, his knowledge is acquired as well as expressed through his fingers. The result is that the transmission of such knowledge is slow, craft workers tend to form into closed guilds (in India small sub-castes), and a long apprenticeship is necessary for the production of more workmen, their numbers and production being severely limited. This was the situation in Renaissance Europe, for example, when considerable accumulation of money with the merchant princes (and its overflow) made it necessary to find new methods of making money grow. The older usury was limited in scope: more than a certain profit could not be extracted from the debtors tied to the older mode of production. Confiscating the mortgaged tools of a craftsman may lead to starvation for him and his family but the tools are unproductive bits of metal and wood to the usurers. There is needed a new class which can produce goods efficiently without long training, and whose surplus labour can be appropriated by an employer. This turns the mere usurer into a capitalist, the craftsman into a proletarian. But to manage such enterprises, there is needed some theory of material processes that works in practice, and serves the managing class which does not handle the tools of production. This is precisely the role of science. If you look into Galileo's researches, for example, you will find them concerned with such practical things as why pumps don't suck up water above a certain height -which leads to hydrostatics, and also to better pumps. Accurate time-keeping is made possible by his observations upon the pendulum; but it is factory production, where many men have to be brought together simultaneously for coordinated labour, that needs acccurate time-keeping; not cottage industries. Galileo cast or recast horoscopes, rather badly. His astronomy was revolutionary because he turned a telescope upon the heavens, to interpret what he saw in a perfectly natural manner. The man in the moon disappeared, to be replaced by mountains. But what made his astronomy dangerous was the fact that it shook a system of the universe taken for granted by the ruling class and by the church that served it; by implication, the rest of the social system was also laid open to challenge, something that no man is free to do without risk. " }

{ "content": "Science is not mere accumulation of experimental data. No experiment is great unless it settles some disputed theory; no theory is a striking advance unless it explains puzzling experimental data, or forecasts the results of unperformed expefiments. But one has only to look at the way the scientific centre of Europe has shifted to see the intimate connection between science and production, between the coming to power of a new bourgeoisie and the local age of discovery. Leeuwenhoek was a janitor in Delft who ground his own lenses and made the first good microscopes, which he turned upon drops of water and the smallest insects. It was the Royal Society of London that sent its secretary to visit him, and published his papers, just as they published Redi's communications against the doctrine of spontaneous generation, which helped solve the very practical problem of food storage. But the idea of giving credit to him who publishes first is comparatively new. Even Newton did not like to give away his discoveries light-heartedly, and the further back we go the stronger we find the tendency to keep a precious secret concealed as a monopoly. It is the social mode of production that changes the fashion, though private ownership of the means still insists upon patents, cartels, monopolies at level of technique and manufacture. Now is it an accident that the very century during which two revolutions placed the bourgeoisie in power in England produced Newton? How is it that the French revolution, which cleared off the rubbish of feudalism in France saw the greatest of French anti European scientists: Lagrange, Laplace, Ampere, Berthelot? They rose with the bourgeoisie and survived Napoleon. Gauss, the great name in German science, appears on the scene at about the time the German bourgeoisie becomes the real power in its own country; and he is not alone. If we wrote all these off as accidents, we should be in the ridiculous position of denying the possibility of a scientific basis for the origins of science, by taking the history of science as a series of fortunate coincidences, though science is its own history and has always progressed by seeking the reason behind suspicious coincidences. I might go further and say that Greek science was (in spite of all the admiration lavished upon it, and in spite of its logical method having served as inspiration to the Renaissance) not science in the modern sense at all, but pseudo-science, much as Greek and Roman capital can at best be called pseudo- capital in spite of modern imperialist tendencies and actions. The aim of Greek science was to reduce all phenomena to reasoning from the techniques that had originated the very discoveries. That too was a social necessity, for in classical society the work was done by slaves, whose existence was taken as a law of nature, a necessity which reflected itself in the scientific outlook of the time. This should dispose of the idea that science is the creation of gifted individuals, thinking for 'purely' scientific purposes along problems which came to them out of some realm of the mind. There are gifted individuals in every age and society. but the manner in which they exercise their gifts depends upon the environment, just as much as the language in which they choose to do their thinking. It is as impossible for the mind to exist without thought as for the body to exist without motion. There are still people in India who speculate upon the relative merits of Sankara's and Ramanuja's philosophy, though they do not thereby presume to acquire the prominence of those two founders. If I repeat Newton's experiment with the prism, I shall get the same results, but certainly not the same credit as a scientist or founder of optics. The weight, the significance of a scientific discovery depends solely upon its importance to society. This is why the college student, knowing more mathematics than all of Newton's contemporaries, is still not a prodigy. A discovery that has been assimilated is reduced to the level of useful technique. A discovery made before it is socially necessary gains no weight and social necessity is often dependent for its recognition upon the class in power. Leonardo da Vinci, whose 500th anniversary is now being celebrated, is the most famous example of this. He still served feudal masters, who were not interested, for example, in the manufacture of pins ( from which Leonaido expected to make a fortune) , and who used his mechanical talents for stage effects. A hundred years later, his fame as an artist would have been far less than an inventor. That social development, both in technique and in needs of production, evoked scientific discovery long before the days of organized research is clear from the independent and simultaneous discoveries made so often in the history of science. For example, the liquefaction of gases, so long considered an impossibility, was done by two different people in France at once. The Raman effect, whose theory is still imperfect, was discovered simultaneously in the USSR and India. The credit rightly belongs to Raman, who realized at once that while the rest of the world had been looking for an atomic effect, this was a molecular phenomenon. The experiments he devised proved it, and gave us a valuable technique of analysis which does not change the substance. " }

{ "content": "But occasionally, as with Priestley, the conflict between the scientist and the class that dominates society becomes too great for the individual and for his discoveries to gain proper recognition. This is not a characteristic merely of the bourgeois period. During the middle ages, we find Europeans turning to meditation, the monastic life, theological speculation. Such tendencies were highly respected and advertised, with the assistance of an occasional miracle. However, the theology was not independent of the class structure of contemporary society; dangerous speculations led a man to the stake. Not only feudal rulers, but the later merchant classes used theology, protestantism in the latter case. The early saints and martyrs upon whose reputation the church was apparently founded, did not suffice in the later period. When the Church itself became a great holder of feudal property, abbacies and bishoprics turned into the prerogatives of particular rich families, or groups of families; this happened, incidentally even with Buddhism as may be seen from the history of the Barmecides, or of the few ruling families of Tibet till its recent liberation, or from the history of the richer monasteries in Ceylon. The foundations of Sankara, Ramanuja, and even a real people's saint like Tukarama are now chiefly preoccupied with methods of increasing their wealth, retaining outworn prerogatives, avoiding taxes. The wealthy Church in Europe needed the Inquisition to support its claims; that holy office found Galileo's thought dangerous. The crusades were diverted to strange aims, such as the conquest of Constantinople, and the suppression of a popular movement in the Albigeois. The Index Expurgatorious shows the church's attitude towards certain type of advanced thinking, while the last Spanish civil conflict demonstrated what steps the church in Spain, as Spain's greatest owner of property, was capable of taking against a democratic government. A fairly close parallel could be drawn on the thesis that science is the theology of the bourgeoisie; at least it replaces theology whenever the bourgeoisie- capitalist mode of production displaces the feudal. The scientist must remain comparatively poor like the monk, but is admired, admitted to the board of the capitalist baron just as the cleric was to that of the feudal lord. His discoveries must be patentable, but he rarely makes the millions; Pasteur and Faraday received a beggarly pittance of the profit made from their discoveries. A press-agent may make the scientist's miracles known, but only if they are acceptable to the lord of the press, hence to the ruling class. And most striking of all, in the period of decay, witch-hunting is as prominent in its own way as with the end of feudalism. Though a creation of the bourgeoisie, science is not its monopoly, and need not decay with the bourgeoisie. The art of dancing began as part of ritual, but is now one of society's aesthetic pleasures even though the witch-doctors who initiated it have mostly vanished. Music is no longer necessary to promote the growth of plants; even as I write, I can hear the primitive rhythm of tomtoms and ancient chants being practised at midnight- not for better crops but for the sake of some relief from the daily grind of life by people who are milkmen, factory workers, and house.servants. Sculpture does not mean the underground mysteries of pre-historic French grottos; the Parthenon statuary is admired in the British Museum, but no longer worshipped. There is no reason for science to remain bound any longer to the decaying class that brought it into existence four centuries ago. The scientist needs this freedom most of all, namely freedom from servitude to a particular class. Only in science planned for the benefit of all mankind, not for bacteriological, atomic, psychological or other mass warfare can the scientist be really free. He belongs to the forefront of that great tradition by which mankind raised itself above the beasts, first gathering and storing, then growing its own food; finding sources of energy outside its muscular efforts in the taming of fire, harnessing animals, wind, water, electricity, and the atomic nucleus. But if he serves the class that grows food scientifically and then dumps it in the ocean while millions starve all over the world, if he believes that the world is over-populated and the atom-bomb a blessing that will perpetuate his own comfort, he is moving in a retrograde orbit, on a level no beast could achieve, a level below that of a tribal witch-doctor. After all, how does science analyse necessity? The sciences are usually divided into the exact and the descriptive, according to their being based upon a mathematical theory or not. This distinction has faded away because the biological sciences have begun to feel the need for exact numerical prediction, while physics and chemistry have discovered that, on the level of the individual particle, exact prediction is not possible as with the movement of the solar system. Both have found the new mathematical technique, based upon the theory of probability, that they need. In the final analysis, science acts by changing its scene of activity. It may be objected that astronomy does not change the planets or the stars; is it not purely a science of observation? Astronomy first became a science by observing the changes in the position of heavenly bodies. Further progress was possible only when the light that reaches the astronomer was changed by being gathered into telescopes, broken up by passage through spectrographs, or twisted by polarimeters. Parallel observations of changes, say in metallic vapours, in the laboratory enabled conclusions to be drawn about the internal constitution of the stars. There is no science without change. " }

{ "content": "If this be admitted, we are near the end of the inquiry. The reason why the scientist in a capitalist society today feels hemmed in and confined is that the class he serves fears the consequences of change such as has already taken place over a great part of the world's surface. The question of the desirability of such change cannot be discussed dispassionately, cannot be approached in a scientific manner, by the supposedly 'free' scientist. The only test would be to see the two systems in peaceful competition, to see which one collapses of its own weight, succumbs to its own internal contradictions. But the scientist who says that this should be done finds himself without a job if he is on the wrong side of the \"'iron curtain\". The real task is to change society, to turn the light of scientific inquiry upon the foundations of social structure. Are classes necessary, and in particular, what is the necessity for the bourgeoisie now? But it is precisely from cognition of this great problem of the day that the scientist is barred if a small class .should happen to rule his country. Perhaps the crisis cannot be considered immediate in new democracies like India, where the bourgeoisie is itself a new class? This is incorrect. The new class did not develop its own science any more than it invented its own Indian steam engine and motor car. Just as they import the best paying machinery, the science they need is also imported in ready-made form. They are also ready to import any political ideology that serves their end. This means that instead of the centuries of development from medieval to modern as in Europe we can expect at best decades in India, under the leadership of a bourgeois-capitalist class that has only re-oriented but not lost its colonial mentality. Monthly Review (New York), vol. 4, 1952, pp. 200-205, with addi- lions, as printed here, in Vijnan-Karmee, vol. IV, October 1959, pp. 5.11.“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysThe Quality Of Renunciation In Bhartrihari's PoetryIEven the comprehensive work of Winternitz (Geschichte d. lndischen Literatur III, 137-145) gives us next to no definite information about the person of Bhartrihari, one of the greatest of all Indian poets and the first to be presented to the West. The reason is simply that no substantial information exists that would seem convincing to any critical mind. The poet could not have been a king, nor the brother of Vikramaditya, whatever the fablists narrate. That he was not a Buddhist is clear from the ardent and perhaps sincere vedantic verses in praise of Shiva that occur in his Centuries (V. 85-91 etc.). His identity with the author of the Bhaktikavya, or with the grammarian, or with the royal disciple of Gorakshanatha is very doubtful. Some of these negations need no proof, others will be justified later in passing. Only the uniformity of Indian tradition remains to assure us of the existence of a single person who wrote the Niti- shataka (N) , the Vairagyashataka (V) and the ShriIigara- shataka. Certainly, these works in their present form, whether the work of one or of many authors, succeed in creating a marked impression of a pronounced literary physiognomy. It is the Bhartrihari or the pseudo-Bhartrihari, or even the Bhartrihari syndicate of the N. and the V. that I mean to analyse here as a literary personality without further discussing the vexed question of his existence. The nature of the dissection must, therefore, deal less with the author as a historical personage than with the total mass of literary tradition handed down to us in his name; it will also affect the class of people whose extraordinary powers of appreciation enabled them to preserve a dazzling poetical treasure while completely erasing the author's biography. Well in keeping with the lopsided traditions of this uncritically appreciative class is the (sixth) edition, cited here, of the N. and the V. by M. R. Kale, still so popular as a text in our schools and colleges. Kale's own able Sanskrit commentary, with the slipshod printing of the text itself, and his positively gruesome English translation (which can be used only as a powerful argument against the employment of English as a medium of instruction in India) are all completely characteristic. In what follows N., N'. and V., V'. indicate the verses that Kale takes as authentic and as apocryphal in the two books respectively. IIIt must be understood at the very outset that the poet is worthy of any critic's efforts: that he is a great poet. When confronted with the lines written and the sentiments expressed by some of the world's greatest poets, the comparison will not always be in his favour. But let it be clear that at the very least he sustains the comparison, as no second-rate poet would, without fading immediately into obscurity. Many in India have tried to imitate his verses, without even approaching his success. If for nothing else, Bhartrihari would deserve a place in the front rank of world literature for his consummate handling of so difficult a language as Sanskrit. Variety , ease, facility, clarity, emphasis, and, when necessary, ornate imagery are all at his command without degenerating into the mere rank floridity of later \"poet's poets\". Few could exceed the force of his epigrams, the finality with which the sentiment is rounded out in many of his concluding half-lines. No ordinary versifier could possibly write such polished phrases, the translator's despair, as: \"Life leaks away like water from a cracked jug\" (V.39)\"unsipped, at moonrise, the potion of the fair one's tender lips; our youth has passed away fruitless like a light (burning) in an empty house\" (V.47: \"how lovely the beloved's face stained with hot, scintiIlating tears of anger. (V .80: The senseless and sometimes revolting mannerisms such as the ever ferocious lion, the rutting elephant (N .29, 30,38), and the mythical rain-thirsty chataka bird are unhappily too discernible, but not fatal as they would have been to a lesser craftsman. It would be difficult to match the sweetness of (N. 51; apocryphal) : \"O friend rain-bird, listen carefully for a moment (to my advice). There are many clouds in the sky, but they are not all alike. Some drench the earth with their downpour, and some just thunder in vain; don't beg pitifully from everyone that you see. In fact, our Bhartrihari must have been not only a poet by profession, but one fully conscious of the nobility and permanence of his calling. According to him, if a good poet went unrewarded, it was the heavy- witted king and not the poet himself who was at fault (N. 15). He speaks in the first person when matching a king's neglect with his own royal scorn (V. 52,53). Poetry confers immortality: \"Victorious are the great poets, masters of sentiments and emotions, alchemists possessed of the elixir of life; the body of their fame fears neither senility nor death.\" (N. 24 ). Here the poet transcends time and space to join a kindred spirit, Dante, in his reliance on fame as a second life ( cf. the seconda morte): \"If I should be a timid friend to Truth, I fear to lose my life among those who will call this time antiquity\" (Par. XVII, 118- 120: e s' io al vero son timido amico/temo di perder viver tra coloro/ che questo tempo chiameranno antico. ) . III" }

{ "content": "Unfortunately, our hero does not always show the same fol1rsquare stance to the blows of fortune as does Dante ( \"Iosto ben tetragono ai colpi della fortuna\"). Both speak of the misery of enforced voyages in strange places, the bitter taste of a stranger's bread (Tu proverai si come sa di sale/lo pane altrtrl e come e duro calle/lo scendere e'l salir per l'altrui scale. Par. XVII, 58-60). But Dante's exile was due to a firm stand by his civic principles (Epistole, XII), a refusal of amnesty with even the slightest tinge of dishonour. Bhartrihari claims only the motivation of greed, and his chief lament is that there was, after all, no real gain: (V. 4) . \"I wandered through difficult mountainous territory quite fruitlessly, rendered service after jettisoning proper pride of class and family-unrewarded; with a complete abandon of self- respect, I ate in strangers' houses with the timidity of a crow (picking up scraps); and thou, o sin-loving greed, waxest and art not yet satisfied.\" Our poet claims to have tried other trades: dug for treasure, smelted ores, crossed the ocean, served kings, slept in cemeteries to fulfil magic rites; and he begs greed to leave him because he gained never a penny (V. 3). By contrast with the divine restlessness of Dante's Ulysses (Inf. XXVI, 112-120) Bhartrihari's efforts as well as his renunciation seem ignoble, earth-bound. No sense of adventure, none of the true explorer's spirit, the exhiliration of visiting absolutely unknown territory, the joy of treading where no human foot had trod before (non vogliate negar l'esperienza/di retro al sol del mondo senza gente ) seems ever to have moved any Indian poet who has survived the passage of time. Rather than with Dante, one is led to compare Bhartrihari with that thoroughly earthy figure of the Italian Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini; and here again our poet suffers by the comparison. Cellini too served princes, crossed the Alps, worked with metals-without actually smelting ores, and tried necfomancy by night ( V ita, I, xiii) .But whatever he gained or lost, he had no regrets, remained always the whole man, the typical Renaissance figure concentrating all his energies on the task in hand. And he took pleasure in the effort, whether the end was merely the satisfaction of his lust or the production of a masterpiece in the history of art. The world was always the richer for his activities; even his autobiography, with its blunt, forthright, unadorned prose remains a master- piece of its kind. Old age brings no peace of mind to our poet nor any real repentance for the misdeeds of youth: only regret for pleasures no longer accessible:- \"The body is contracted, the gait totters, teeth fall out, eye sight is lost, deafness increases, and the mouth slobbers. Relatives no longer respect one's utterance, one's wife neglects her care; alas for the travails of old age when even the son becomes unfriendly (V.74). On seeing white hair on the head, the white hag of a man's surrender to old age, the girls avoid you from afar as they would a well for untouchables marked by its bundle of (bleached) bones (hung on top as a warning)\" (V. 75). All these sentiments ring painfully true but, as means of inspiring renunciation, rather ignoble. Even that most thoroughgoing of rakes, Casanova, took old age more gracefully than this. We know of at least one great European poet who felt in his ripe old age the pangs of unrequited love, the mortification of having his advances repulsed by a young maiden. Further, Goethe was also dependent on a petty Court and served, in various capacities, the princeling of Weimar. He actually did the many things Bhartrihari only claims to have done, and had an excellent technical knowledge of many trades-mining and refining ores among them. Goethe had a tremendous literary store and mastery of many. verse forms some of which he was the first to introduce into his own language. From such a person, one might expect something similar to the two shlokas cited above, and yet one finds this: Ueber allen Gipfeln, Ist Rub, In allen Wipfeln Spurest du; Kaum einen Hauch; Die Vogelein schweigen im Walde, Warte nur, balde Ruhest du auch. [ Over all the peaks is peace, in all the tree-tops can'st thou discern hardly the stir of a breath; the little birds fall ; silent in the woods. But wait, thou too shalt soon have thy rest. ]This famous 'Wandrers Nachtlied' conveys its message in the simplest possible language. Night must fall and with it will come rest for the wanderer, whether it be rest from the wandering of a day or the final rest from the long journey of a whole lifetime. Goethe's Faust, blind and near death, still plans with his last remaining spark of life the vast project of draining a fenland (Faust, II, Act V, 11559-11586) and thinks that the achievement of this service to his people might be the finest moment of his life. But it is to be noted that Faust hates the very idea of renunciation; for him activity is life itself; therefore he typifies the restless German ef the age of industrial expansion following Goethe, just as Dante's Ulysses foreshadows all the great trade-seeking explorers of the Renaissance. Renunciation is, after all, a form of negation; and negation is the function of Mephistopheles: Ich bin der Geist, der stets vemeintl " }

{ "content": "But surely the comparison with an European poet of so recent a date is hardly fair to Bhartrihari, because of the difference in the means of production of their respective environments. So let us first look at the poetry of Sadi, also an oriental poet. one who lived in a world whose means of production could not have been unrecognizably different from those that prevailed in the time of the Indian. As both addressed essentially the same type of audience, the similarities between them are profound, Sa'di's Karimti is filled with maxims comparable to those of the N., and written with a clarity that dooms it like- wise to use as a school text, Some resemblances of phrase might even seem too close to be purely accidental (N.70):               = nehad shakh pur meval. sar bar zamin, The tree or the branch loaded with fruit becomes humble, bows down to the ground. Perhaps, Sa'di's traditional visit to the court of Delhi might have something to do with this concordance, though this is not the place for tracing the origin of the particular phrase or of other resemblances between the two poems. What must interest us much more is the striking difference between the two poets. With the use of simpler language, the Persian (Gulistan ) is far more vivid and colourful, more of a human being, because of the range of his sympathies and experience. He did not wander for sordid motives. but for the love of travel and adventure. He knew the routine of courts, of camps, and of caravans. His figures of speech do not disdain even the trader.s vocabulary, Bhartrihari mentions trade and agriculture only once ( N. 107 ), and then shows about as much acquaintance with them as he does with aviation when-in the very next line-he mentions the possibility ol \"passing birdlike through the broad sky, with the utmost effort.;besides, the moral of the couplet is that the force of destiny is superior to all human endeavour. As a good Muslim, Sa'di must have believed in destiny, but the tough old man who could chide his soul for not having lost its childishness at the age of forty (chehal sal 'umre .azizat guzasht mizaje, to az hale tifli nagasht) would hardly have given up so easily. IVComparing Bhartrihari with foreign poets can only lead to defects in the structure of his philosophy. No criticism can be called substantial that does not judge an author on the basis of his own axioms, within the frame-work of the author's own implicit universe of discourse. For this purpose, the N. is of very little value, since what maxims it does contain are of a lower middle-class outlook on life; and there is no real arrangement or unification, in spite of various efforts by commentators, that could show the full contours of a pragmatic philosophy. As a guide to action the N. is practically useless. The sensuous love-poetry of the Shringara would be better, but no one dares take it as the author's highest effort, whatever its beauty of expression. In fact, the point even of those lascivious verses is supposed to be the vanity of mere enjoyment, preparation for a final renunciation of the worldly life. I take the liberty of doubting this common assumption, because I for one find it difficult to say, in many cases, without a conscious effort of memory and on the basis of internal evidence alone, to which of the three centuries a given sloka belongs. Let us, therefore, not take any of the three centuries as characteristic, but rather look critically at Bharhihari's summum bonum: let us see with clear and unprejudiced eyes just what sort of vairaigya the poet desires: (V.99) \"Fixed in the padmasana seat upon a Himalayan slab on the banks of the Ganges, lost in a yogic trance in the contem- plation of the Eternal, shall I ever see those blessed days, when old untimid stags rub their bodies against mine?\" Now, clearly, this is not the utterance of a man who has actually tried the joys of yogic contemplation, but of one who feels how happy he might be if he achieved it, in the yet distant future. The composer of these lines still hankers after physical sensation, such as that of the stags rubbing themselves against him: sensation which would be completely inhibited by any really successful trance, yogic or otherwise. The perfect yogi must, as in all Indian tradition, beg his food, wear rags (V.66, V.l00); in addition, Bhartrihari wants the performance to take place at Banaras:(II v. 66, also v. 88, V'. 13). The begging and the rags are apparently an end in itself, an actual part of the final achievement. The Buddhist almsman, on the other hand, was made to beg for entirely different reasons, at least by the founder of the religion. He was to have no attachment to any sacred place; begging was necessary to prevent the accumulation of property and the return of worldly attachmentS therewith. The Buddhist monk was originally supposed to be a wandering public teacher, one,whose function was to educate society in a new social doctrine. Bhartrihari's is a purely individual effort which could never have been adopted by the whole of society; one which does not involve any social obligations, not even a thought for that unfortunate portion of the popula. tion which has no such renunciatory yearnings and is therefore condemned to produce the grub that the yogi must beg and to weave the original cloth from which the yogi's garment of rags must be pieced together. The real nature of this renunciation becomes clearer when we look at its fruits ( V. 95, cf. V'. 31) . " }

{ "content": "\"The earth an attractive bed, his arm an ample pillow, the sky a canopy, the breeze a serviceable fan, the moon for a bright lamp and detachment his mistress, the peaceful ash-besmeared ascetic sleeps as happy as any king\". That is, our ascetic at bed- time fairly wallows in all the pleasures of the worldly life which he claims to have renounced, down to a mistress. Only, instead of the real thing, he has substitutes. I-tsing wrote of a Bhartrihari who alternated no less than seven times between the pleasures of worldly and monastic life, and Winternitz believes the legend to be derived from the history of our poet. But the couplet just cited seems at best to indicate neither the monastic ideal nor a full share of worldly enjoyment; only the satisfaction of a man who utilised, contemplative life to find palatable substitute, for, what he he has mised during his pursuit of the vita activa. A look at the Dhammapada how the real thing should have gone: \"Happily ,shall we live, those who have nothing at all; on the food of universal love, we have become like the abhassara gods.\" (At best V' 16, which is the only verse I can find of Buddhist type, has a very faint resemblance to this.) By contrast, Bhartrihari's can only be called \"Ersatz- Entasgung\". One should no longer be surprised on finding that this renunciation is not recommended for all: (V 67) \"If, before you, you have the songs of accomplised southern poets and behind you tbe tinkle of ornaments worn by whisk-bearing attendant, maidens, then be a glutton for worldly pleasures; but if yon haven't these things, o mind, hasten to enter into undisturbed contemplation\". That is if you are a king and can make a good thing of it, carry on; otherwise, give up the pleasures of the world which are beyond your reach. At the very least, this should dispose of the legend that Bhartrihari actully was a king; one feels that he would have taken his own advice and carried on. VStarting with praise and recognition of a high literay position, we have kicked Bhartrihari all the way down the literary ladder. Before closing this note, we have to raise him up again to his proper level, to show that whatever his failures by his own or by any other standards, he does achieve one outstanding success which explains rge survival of his poetry and which gives him an indisputable cklain to greatness.I hope that I have dismissed the superstition that the East is naturally more philosophical than the West, and in particular that it is Bhartrihari's professed philosophy that makes for his greatness. As a matter of fact, for appreciation of pure intellectual beauty, none of his verses will compare with Shelly's Ode; Keats is more of a kindred spirit. Horace shows a far deeper appreciation of the duties and of the lasting pleasures of life, pleasures that do not lead to the renunciation of satiety or of non-attainment. But then Horace knew what it meant to renounce the wide range of careers offered to any well- connected Roman by the early empire, and to achieve a proper renunciation by concentrating, not without effort, upon his poetry; so, he also knew enough to envy the \"tough guts of the peasants\". Virgil planned and began, if he did not live to com- plete, what would probably have been the most grandiose ')f the world's literary masterpieces; but the author of the Aeneid was still enough of a rustic to write good poetry in the Georgics. In a different medium, Holbein's dance of death (Totentanz) expresses more real philosophy than one can easily distil out of the Centuries. Sometimes, it seems to me that more philosophical content than in a dozen slokas is expressed by Holbein's single diminutive woodcut of a toil-bent peasant behind his plough, helped on by compa:osionate Death towards a shining city on the sunset horizon. Certainly, Giotto's campanile and its reliefs convey more to me of the worthiness of human life in its various possible fields of endeavour than does the whole of the N. Nevertheless, I repeat, Bhartrihari is a great poet for what he does succeed in portraying. He is unmistakably the Indian intellectual of his period, limited by caste and tradition in fields of activity and therefore limited in his real grip on life. The only alternatives open to any member of his class seem to have been the attainment of patronage at court, or retirement to the life of an almsman. The inner conflict, the contradiction latent in the very position of this class, could not have been made clearer than by the poet's verses. This also explains the \"popularity\" of the verses themselves in the face of far superior and more philosophically inclined doctrine available in all Indian literary forms. That is, precisely this class was, and still is, interested in the preservation of Bhartrihari's poetry. The varying aspects of such class-life naturally render any orderly arrangement of the subject matter superfluous, and had hitherto made it impossible to do anything in the why of stripping the quasi- philosophic renunciatory guise from the writings themselves. Had the limited aspirations, the general futility of that class-life been made explicit and unmistakable, a more complete negation presented beyond the \"renunciation\", the poetry would have become intolerable to the class itself, and would not have survived. The poetical physiognomy of Bhartrihari is actually the physiognomy of the Indian intelligentsia of an age that has not yet passed away. We might illustrate this in detail by inspecting Bhartiihari's attitude towards women. They have a frank lustful attraction for him which he reveals with gusto. A young nymph crushed by the act of love ( N.44 , a beautiful woman's ripe breasts and thighs (V.46: devastating glances (V. 48: N. 85: : generate attraction, admiration, desire, which he can never conceal even in these two centuries. The third, of course, is devoted almost exclusively to the topic with an appetite that makes Ovid seem pale and colourless in comparison. Entrancing maidens (N. 104): " }

{ "content": "are among the fine gifts of good fortune! There is no overspiced Hellenistic aberration here, and certainly no Freudian repression of the libido; not even Archilochus could have been more frank and unashamed as to his weaknesses. One can only pity the miserable pedagogue who, even in the strongly anaesthetic atmosphere of a modern Indian classroom, has the completely unenviable task of paraphrasing in an unerotic and decent manner, to a mixed class of adolescent boys and girls, such juicy bits as: By degrees, excess and satiety creep in, women become snares and temptations, (V.65, V'.9, 19, 20, 34, 38-44) to be treated with hydriotaphic avoidance (V'.19: The logical destiny of this attitude is to lead to absolute disgust for what once seemed charming-and may again become irresistible (V. 17) :etc., which should be compared for repulsive effect with Juvenal's description of the female after finishing her gladiatorial exercises. But there is always the notable distinction that the Roman wants a cure for the social evils of his time, whereas the Indian only looks to his own individual salvation. There seems in Bhartrihari to be not even the consciousness of the fact that woman is herself a human being, has her share of this world's sufferings, and might also feel the need for renunciation, for freedom from: her own peculiar sorrows and problems. Yet, the picture so far is not only incomplete, it is actually false to the poet's own sentiments. One stanza breaks with quite incredible force through the general impression hitherto produced to give the unbiassed reader a profound if brief glimpse of the truth usually missed by professional critics and litterateurs, true but not very worthy members of Bhartrihari's own class. (V.22: ) \"If he did not visualize his wife as sad-faced, unfed, miserable, with her worn raiment constantly tugged at by pitiful, hungry, crying children, what man of self-respect would ever beg for the sake of his own accursed belly, in quavering, broken words that die in his very throat for fear of refusal?\" ( cf. also V'.12). This betrays the real fear of the poet's life, the grim spectre of starvation that confronts him and his family unless he can beg his way into favour. No member of the modern un- propertied, technically incompetent, intelligentsia in this country can read the lines without a shudder; those who talk of the peculiar situation of the Bhadralok in Bengal might consider whether the same dread does not stalk them too. Surely.. this is not the obvious attitude for a man who shuttled between the court and the monastery, who alternately enjoyed and re- pented of his enjoyment of life. The solitary effort shows a far deeper feeling for the family tie than would be proven by a whole new Century on the virtues of a householder's life. Even in bourgeois-capitalist countries, the dread of unemployment is always the most potent factor in the maintenance of an outworn productive system; with what greater force must this motive have acted when the capitalist forms of production had not cast their shadow upon India, and no real employment existed for our intelligentsia apart from the favour of a wealthy patron or resort to the almsbowl? The promiscuity of the Centuries is not so much a characteristic of this country as of the class and of certain forms of the artistic temperament; it exists to as great an extent in the West except that no one there ever has had the courage to express it so frankly. For the rest, Bhartrihari did know something about women of pleasure, as he mentions varangana (N.47), panyangana (V.66). And he did not live in a society that professed belief in the ideal of monogamy, whatever may have been its general practice. So, his single lapse into sincere consideration for wife and children seems all the more significant, by sheer contrast. Whether or not it might seem to us a proper subject for poetry or social philosophy, the appreciation of a little wealth and the extreme dread of poverty are quite convincing in our poet's words. \"All those identical limbs, the same actions, that undamaged intellect and the very speech: yet how strange, that without the warmth of wealth, the same man becomes instantaneously someone else\" (N.40): (Also, N. 39, 41, 44, 49). This is even more strikingly put in an epigram which the editor relegates to the apocrypha: An exhausted penniless being rushes to the cemetery and begs a corpse to rise and take off his load of poverty for an instant, in order that he might enjoy forever its death-bom happiness; but the corpse, knowing that death was far, far better than poverty, is silent! (V'18) : From this economic oppression, escape was possible only by the sudden accession of wealth, or renunciation of all such desire. For the first, there were no regular social paths; no success stories of the \"From Log Cabin To White House\" type, nothing to interest Horatio Alger. Only luck can bring a windfall; hence the general fatalistic bent, at its strongest in N . 90-108. On the other hand, renunciation too requires a strength of character not usually developed by our penurious intellectual. Either the gain of wealth or successful renunciation are impossible for the entire class as such without a complete social revolution; even the individual achieving either thereby manages to declass himself. So, we have a more practical way of escape, the purely literary expression of sensual enjoyment (which in actual practice would be impossible except for one of considerable means); or, its continuation, an equally literary expression of the joys of renunciation. Bhartrihari's verse does not express the supposed \"dual personality of the Indian\", forever oscillating between two extreme poles: renunciation of the senses and their voluptuous gratification. It is on the contrary, and par excellence, literature of escape. Bhartrihari's philosophical beauty is just a facade erected by the members of his class, to mask their real use of his poetry . VI" }

{ "content": "Bhartrihari, then, is the poet of his class; a class that had not fulfilled its function, and a poet who, try as he might, could not but lay bare the class yearnings and weaknesses. This at once explains his success and his failure. But he is not a poet of the people. The Indian poets who made a real and lasting place for themselves in the hearts of the people came from the people themselves, and not from this narrow helpless stratum shut off from the masses by birth, training, occupation or the lack of it, language and culture. Those poets spoke the languages of the people, addressed themselves to the people and not to the court. Every child knows their names, and every peasant their songs. Even our intellectuals, as scholiasts and editors, try to suck a little of their vital blood. Kabir, Tukarama, Tulasidasa: what portion of the country does not pussess its own poet of the sort? But only one Bhartrihari sufficed, because the intelligentsia could and in fact needs must take the trouble to learn his language; and he had put their case in words that could not be matched. This class was perhaps the most convenient tool of the ruling power, whether indigenous or foreign, in the enslavement of the Indian people. To a considerable extent, it still maintains this anomalous position. One of my critics holds that all Sanskrit literature is im- personal; that neither Bhartrihari nor any other Indian poet of unknown biography can be judged by what he claims to have done, in his own verses. This would be relevant if my critique were directed towards the private life, and not the writings alone, of Bhartrihari. After all \"impersonality\" is a characteristic of all literature, not specially of Indian poetry. The great author need only project himself into an experience, not neces- sarily have had the experience itself; as witness so many touch- ing passages relating the thoughts and behaviour of a character on the point of death. But the mechanism of this projection, the images and phrases which the writer utilizes, must unconsciously reflect the structure of the society in which he func- tions, must inevitably bear the stamp of the class to which he belongs. That Bhartrihari must have been a brahmin seems reasonably certain. His most convincing figures of speech ~re brah- manical (N. 42,48). The king's wrath burns even those who serve him, as the fire might its officiating priest ( N. 57: (original in Sanskrit missing)When begging, the pious high caste people whose doorways are blackened with the smoke of many sacrificial fires are to be approached by preference (V. 24: (original in Sanskrit missing)What is the point of reading scriptures (V. 72: (original in Sanskrit missing)when realizing the inner joy is the proper \"activity\" for man? If there be wealth, all the virtues and caste itself might go to the nether world (N. 39: (original in Sanskrit missing)By con- trast with these, the rare mention of the kshatriya's profession seems ridiculous, such as \"splitting elephants' heads with the sword\" (V. 47:(original in Sanskrit missing)But he must have been a brahmin of a comparatively late period. Certainly, he could not have belonged to that earliest of all stages when the brahmins were yet to develop as an in- integral part.of the social system; when they were still fulgitivcs in the woods, living spiritually on the exaggerated memories of a culture destroyed by fighting invaders ( later to become the kshatriya caste) and subsisting upon roots, wild fruit, cattle. This period, however, left its mark on the language in the form of two bits of wish- thinking: the cow and the vine that fulfil all desire: kamadhenu and kalpalata; these are reflected in the advice our poet gives to the king as to the best means of exploiting the earth (N. 46). Even the later ideal of retiring to a sylvan life after having enjoyed that of a householder is absent in Bhartrihari, whose renunciation hardly rises above complete aesthetic paralysis (V. 97, V'. 8, 29: N. 81). He can only have belonged to the period after the Mauryan \"universal monarchy', after the brahmins had saturated all petty royal courts as ministers and advisers, had saturated the lower sociaI strata as priests, had finished their chief contribution to religious and productive organization by outmoding the age of great monasteries, and were at the beginning of their last great phase, a literary expansion of secular type. This can hardly have been much before the fourth century A.D., and might not have taken place simultaneously over the whole country. Any attempt to assign a very early date for Bhartrihari would have to cope with the reference to the ten incarnations of Vishnu (N. 100: ,and to the hermaphrodite Shiva (V. 18: (original in Sanskrit missing)The authenticity of these two stanzas can be challenged, as also of the Shringara verse, which extols the pale golden complexion of Shaka maidens. But the word samanta, originally 'neighbour', can only mean 'feudal baron' in V. 42. This usage, though current in the 6th century, would be difficult to establish before the Gupta period. Therefore, the late 3rd century A.D. would be the earliest reasonable period for the Bhartrihari who saw this beginning of Indian feudalism, but no empire of any size. At no period had the brahmin caste, whether priests or not, a position fully comparable with that of the Roman clergy. It lacked the organization, the popular recruitment that gave a possibility of close contact with the masses; it could never have performed the function of sheltering the germination of new productive forms concentrated in the free ecclesiastical cities, which meant the end of feudalism in Europe. It had never a regular and official means of livelihood. At best, the caste was like the mistletoe: a beautiful parasite regarded witll superstitious reverence by the multitude, but whose unlimited proliferation was at least a symptom if not the cause of decay. " }

{ "content": "The greatness of an author does not lie in mere handling of words. Indeed, the finest craftsmanship of such manipula- tion is impossible without the expression of a new class basis. This does not mean that every writer who seeks enduring fame must express only the glory of the dictatorship of the proletariat: it is doubtful if Shakespeare could have grasped the meaning of the word (proletariat) itself except perhaps as a mass of Calibans. But in Shakespeare's day there were other classes, the new trading gentry for example, that had begun to force their way to the front and had yet to become, in their turn, obstacles to human progress. One must remember that, 'dur- ing the course of its struggle against the old, every new class tends to assimilate and identify itself with the entire oppressed section of the human race-to take its own victory as the total desideratum of the progress of civilisation. In our own day and country, we have seen the worst aspect of this phenomenon only too often. How many talk of India and its needs when they are really making a case for a little greater share of the spoils for themselves and their minute group? [This brings us, in passing, to the problem of literature for a classless society, after a socialist revolution. How is it that the new literature in those countries where such revolutions have been completed does not yet show the same relative power in the way of new authors and impressive new literary forms that may be seen with the earlier social changes? In all pre- vious cases, the new class had formed in the womb of the old, and had begun to express its new ideals, needs, and aspirations in literary form precisely because political expression was not feasible at the earliest stage. This is manifestly impossible in a true socialist revolution where the common working-class people, the vast and often illterate majority, must necessarily assume power. The transition has never been smooth, according to modern history, but on the contrary the result of the grimmest possible social and economic disasters. The urgent problem before such a post-revolutionary society is to overtake and to surpass the anti-socialist but technically more advanced countries. At the same time, there is a costly struggle with this hostile environment, which constantly attempts to crush the dangerous innovation, to strangle the new social forms. Nothing in all extant literature was composed in or for a society without division into antagonistic classes- not even the utopias that visualized such societies. The writers who continue to function in the new society bear the stamp of the old. Even the 'progressive' writers cannot help the smell of decay which they carry from the rotting away of the class that supplied their models, to which they generally belonged, and towards which they were oriented in their formative years. This inner contradiction, which leads so often to the. dismal 'boy-loves-tractor' school of literature, is not to be cured by party directives, nor by fiery resolutions at writers' conferences. The cure can only come through the fully developed literary taste of the entire new society, which means universal literacy, and full availability of the classical writing in that particular language. The development of new art forms and the changed relative position of literature has also to be considered. The cinema, television, radio should have, at least on occasion, produced scripts that could be additions to literature. But the deadly influence of the newspaper with its advertising meant to sell any goods for private profit, its processing of news to sell shoddy ideas for class profit, and the vile sensation-mongering that sells the paper while diverting attention from serious cracks in the foundations of the social structure-all these have completely changed the function of the written word even in bourgeois society. The new society will, in some way, have to link its aesthetic problems directly to those of production. New social art forms must develop in a radically different way, just as dance, music, poetry, drama, painting, and sculpture developed out of primitive, pre-class fertility rites, initiation ceremonies, and sympathetic magic. It is difficult to imagine Plato's \"music and gymnastics\" in a modern factory, only because we have not yet begun to develop the units and forms of real social production that will dominate the future, and therefore not even visualized the innate harmony and the unforced natural rhythm that must accompany such production.] The great poet in a class society must not only express the position and aspirations of an important class, but must also transcend the class barriers, whether explicity or implicity .He must lay bare some portion of the structure of society, pointing the way to its future negation. (Where Bhartrihari fails to do this effectively his greatness is fictitious, loaned to him by the class itself ). This is most easily done in the period of class emergence, and explains why, in so many great literatures, the greatest names come at the beginning and not at the end of their historical development; why the Alexandrians could only gloss the Homeric epics, not create them. It also explains the power of such writing to attract readers centuries after the society that was heralded arose, flourished, and passed away. Often, the newly developing class takes so much time to assume its rightful place that the new poet has little chance of contemporary material success, and passes his life in obscurity. The Indian asks for far less. Having forgotten his petty lusts. trifling fears, vain longings, he speaks to his relations the elements, with the loving and noble humility of a St. Francis of Assisi, a gentle word in that final moment of the ultimate sublimation of personality . Fergusson & Willingdon College Magazine, (Poona), 1941. under the pseudonym \"Vidydrthi\". Reprinted with minor changes in Bhliratiya Vidyd, vol. IV, 1946, pp. 49-62. The critical text or Bhartrihari's stanzas is in my editio princeps: \"The Epigrams Attributed to Bhartrihari\" (original in Sanskrit missing) Singhi Jain Series no.23, Bombay 1948. “Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysImperialism and PeaceWe do not have, today, the peace yearned for by millions all over the world. In Korea we see a full-scale modern war waged relentlessly against an entire nation whose one wish, for centuries, has been unity, with independence from foreign aggression. In Malaya and Indo-China two decaying imperial powers struggle desperately to maintain the privileges of an outworn colonial system over the opposition of people who will no longer be denied freedom. Military operations in Greece, Indonesia, Kashmir, Palestine, have shown us for five years other facets of the same malignant activity. Yet the supporters of peace have a power which can stop this violence and bloodshed. For all these wars and acts of aggression-even the war in Korea-have been waged in the name of establishing peace. At first, we were given various mutually contradictory reasons why the Koreans were to be saved from themselves. Then we were told that General Mac-Arthur meant to supply the aggressive leadership which is all that Asiatics can appreciate. He seems to think that we Asiatics will naturally appreciate saturation bombing of peaceful villages, destruction of schools and hospitals, savage reprisals against civilians and prisoners of war. But this is an error. What we do appreciate is that his utterances show quite clearly who is the real aggressor in Korea. We Asiatics also belong to the human race; we also are made of flesh and blood; we tread the same earth, breathe the same air. The peace we want means true democracy. The experience of millennia has shown us that no other kind of peace will last. No man shall claim to be another's master whether by divine right, the right of birth, the right of armed conquest, or the right vested in accumulated private property. Such rights can only be exercised by fraud and violence against the vast majority of the people, by destroying the very foundations of peace, namely, truth and justice. The lowest in the land must raise himself to full stature as an individual member of a great society. He must exercise in full, by actual participation in governing himself and others, his right to receive according to his needs, his duty to contribute according to his ability. Formal recourse to the ballot-box for a periodic but ineffective change of masters will not suffice. The stale proclamations of all imperialisms, from Rome to the present day, have again been proved false in the British, French, and Dutch empires. The people of China rejected, in favour of democracy, the aggressive leadership of Chiang Kai- shek, who was so amply supplied with foreign arms and money. But the only lesson imperialism can draw from these rebuffs is that puppets are unreliable, that open intervention is a far better road to conquest- provided the other side is poorly armed. The Pax Romana and the Pax Britannica should now be replaced by a dollar peace, the Pax Americana. Tacitus gave a candid opinion of a contemporary Roman emperor: \"He made a desert and called it peace.\" A modern historian might say of Hitler: \"He waged total war, and called it peace. This kind of \"peace\" did not succeed in Europe, nor will it in any other part of the world. Let us trace this crazy logic to its source. The issue of peace or war does not depend upon a single individual who is ostensibly at the helm of a nation, but upon the dominant class which really holds the power. We are all convinced of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt's liberalism and sincere desire for world peace. Yet in attempting to \"quarantine the aggressor\" in Spain, he only helped to destroy the democratic victims of fascist aggression. Hitler's advance into Czechoslovakia went unchecked, as did Mussolini's into Abyssinia, Japan's into China. We can trace this kind of aggression right back to World War I and its aftermath, to the grim intervention against the young Soviet Union which had sounded the call for peace at its very birth. There is indeed a broad continuity of policy against peace and against democracy. This undercurrent has never changed its direction, no matter what appear on the surface. Leaders like Mr. Churchill just carry out the interests of the dominant class and would get nowhere without its backing; they are merely a symptom, not the main cause. Look at another aspect of this underlying policy. Ploughing cotton back into the soil, burning up or dumping millions of tons of food into the ocean were desperation measures introduced at the beginning of Roosevelt's New Deal. Instead of changing the ownership of the means of production, or designing a better distribution mechanism, these transitional measures rapidly became a permanent feature of the American way of life. The United States government began regularly to pay subsidies to produce food which was then destroyed to keep prices up. Up to 1950, American farmers were paid by their government to destroy mountainous heaps of potatoes and to feed to livestock wheat produced by the most modern farming technique; at the same time, Canadian wheat was being imported into the United States because, even after paying the protective tariff, it was cheaper than the subsidised American product. This insane economic system shows exactly the same kind of twisted logic as that of modern imperialism which wages war in the name of peace and calls any move toward, peace an act of warlike aggression, which bombs people indiscriminately to save them from Communism. " }

{ "content": "The crooked roots of imperialism lie deep in the need for profits and ever more profits- for the benefit of a few monopolists. The \"American way of life\" did not solve the world problem of the great depression of 1929-33. In the United States this was solved by World War II. But only for a time. Korea shows that the next step is to start a new war to stave off another depression. The one lesson of the last depression which stuck is that profits can be kept up by creating shortages where they do not and need not exist. War materials are produced for destruction. Producing them restricts consumer goods, which increases profits in double ratio. Any logic that proves the necessity of war is the correct logic for imperialism and for Big Business, which now go hand in hand. Mere contradictions do not matter for this sort of lunatic thinking where production of food is no longer the method of raising man above the animals, but merely a way of making profit while millions starve. Let us now consider the deeper fact that food is itself a weapon-a negative weapon, but no less deadly than the atom- bomb for bacteriological warfare. A bomb or a bullet shortens a man's life. The lack of proper nourishment also shortens a man's expectation of life by a calculable number of years, even when there is no actual famine or death by starvation. Deprive a man of food and you make him prey not only to hunger but to disease; do it year after year, generation after generation, and you produce a race whose minds and bodies are stunted, tortured, warped, deformed. You produce monstrous superstitions, twisted social systems. Destroying stockpiles of food is the same kind of action as building up stock-piles of atom- bombs. But the war waged by means of food is different in one very important respect from national and colonial aggression. It is war against the whole of humanity except that tiny portion to whom food is a negligibly small item of expenditure, war also against millions of American workers. In a word, it is class war, and all other wars of today stem from attempts to turn it outward. Even the Romans knew that the safest way to avoid inner conflict, to quiet the demands of their own citizens, was to attempt new conquests. Quite apart from the destructiveness of total war, the crooked logic of Big Business and warmongers is fatal to the clear thinking needed for science. The arguments that modern science originates with the bourgeoisie, that the enormous funds devoted to war research are a great stimulus to science, are vicious. The scientific outlook came into being when the bourgeoisie was a new progressive class, struggling for power against feudal and clerical reaction. Science is cumulative, as is large-scale mechanised production which congeals the result of human labour and technical skill in increasingly large and more efficient machines. But for modern capitalists, a class in decay, the \"findings of science (apart from profit-making techniques) have become dangerous; and so it becomes necessary for them to coerce the scientist, to restrict his activity. That is one reason for vast expenditure on secret atomic research, for putting third- raters in control to bring big-business monopoly to the laboratory. The broad co-operation and pooling of knowledge which made scientific progress so rapid is destroyed. Finally the individual scientist is openly and brutally enslaved for political reasons. Science cannot flourish behind barbed wire, no matter how much money the war offices may pay to \"loyal' mediocrities. Freedom is the recognition of necessity; science is the investigation, the analysis, the cognition of necessity. Science and freedom always march together. The war mentality which destroys freedom must necessarily destroy science. The scientist by himself can neither start nor stop a war. Modern war has to be fought by millions in uniform and greater numbers in fields and factories. But a scientific analysis of the causes of war, if convincing to the people at large, could be an effective as well as a democratic force for peace. We have to make it clear to the common people of the world that any aggression anywhere is, in the last analysis, war against them. We have to tell them not to be misled by the familiar but insidious whisper: \"Things were better when we had a war\". This is just like a criminal drug peddler saying to his victim: \"See how much better it was for you when you had the drug than when you sobered up afterwards. Buy another dose.\" The real problem is how to straighten out our thinking and to change our economy, to transfer control of all production to society as a whole. Only then can we have real democracy and lasting peace. It must be understood quite clearly that the war between nations, World War III, is not inevitable and can be stopped by pressure of public opinion. The inner conflict, the class war, on the other hand, must be settled within each country without foreign armed intervention. The peace movement cannot deny to any people the right to revolution (including counter-revolution), nor even the right to wage civil war. It can only demand that no nation's armed forces should go into action upon foreign territory. That is aggression even when done under cover of \"defence\", restoration of law and order, or a forced vote in the United Nations: The purpose of the United Nations was to settle all international differences without war, not to provide a joint flag for the ancient imperialist \"police actions\". If unchecked, such an adventure is a clear invitation to the aggressor to initiate the next world war as can be seen by the history of appeasement during the 1930's. " }

{ "content": "But there is one important difference between that period and the present. There were then large powers such as the British Empire and the United States which could assume a position of formal neutrality while fascism was being built up as a military and political counterpoise to Communism. Even this formal neutrality is impossible today; only mass action by the common people of the world remains as the bulwark of peace. Monthly Review, (New York) 3,1951, pp. 45-59. Colonial liberation greatly promotes world peace because it wipes out the great tension between the imperial power and the subject people, and because it does away with the outcry for colonies by the \"have-not\" nations of the West. The previous exploiting nation will actually profit, for it would logically be the best source of help for the liberated colony to develop its own resources on a free and equal basis. This is because of long' contact, cultural influences, and local knowledge. The loss to the small group of people who monopolised colonial profits and made money out of armaments would be negligible as compared to the national savings in armaments and the total profit by the new trade. The sole condition for all these mutual benefits is that liberation should take place before the colonial population is enraged beyond all limits. The British seem to have learned this lesson (except in places like Kenya where there is virtually no strong native bourgeoisie), whereas the French show by their behaviour in Algeria that the lesson of Vietnam has not yet gone home.“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysThe Function of Leaders in a Mass MovementTo what extent do \"mere agitators\" determine the course of a revolution? Would it be possible to suppress all such upheavals by the judicious and timely action of a few people? Or is a change of nature inevitably the inner contradictions of a system are manifested in leadership inevitable too? Dialectical materialism leads to the latter conclusion, but the nature of this inevitability has be closely examined, even from a dialectical point of view.This view claims that a change of quantity inevitably leads to a change of quality. Water cooled indefinitely remain a fluid, but must solidify into ice when enough heat been lost; the same liquid, when it has absorbed no will be transformed into a gas, steam. Similarly, contradictions latent in any form of production develop, the form of society will inevitably change. This is simple enough, but the circumstances that prevail at the critical point need further examination. First, there is a minimum or threshold value below no transformation can possibly take place. Secondly, this threshold value can be surpassed, sometimes to a surprising extent, if certain conditions, which are otherwise insignificant do not obtain. To give an illustration: we can never get the solution of a given salt to solidify, i.e., change of a mass of crystals, unless the solution is concentrated. But supersaturated solutions can always be obtained with a 1ittle care. If a small crystal be added to such a supersaturated solution, the whole mass will crystallize, often with amazing rapidity. The small parent crystal, which does not appreciably increase percentage of supersaturation of the total solution, is necessary for the crystallization. Moreover, some substances can exist in several distinct crystalline forms; then the crystal added will determine the form of crystallization for the whole mass. I submit that this analogy explains the position of leadership in a social movement. Below the threshold level of objective conditions in the society as a whole, little can be done. But good leadership recognizes when this level has been surpassed, and can produce the desired transformation with very little supersaturation. Of course, if the social forces are strong enough, they can overcome the handicap of an indifferent or even bad leadership, but the entire process of transformation must naturally take place at a correspondingly later stage of development. It is this postulation that explains why the communist revolution was successful in Russia, but failed in Germany where Marx and Engels expected it to occur first because of greater concentration of productivity. Trotsky, in his history of the Russian revolution, says, \"Lenin was not a demi- urge of the revolutionary process, ...he merely entered into a chain of objective historic forces. But he was a great link in that chain.\" Our present analogy seems to me more constructive than that of a chain. Lenin recognised that the war of 1914 was a purely imperialist clash; he alone insisted upon carrying out the resolution of the second international which suggested the conversion of such an outbreak into civil war. It was he, of all the socialists in Russia, who first recognised the true function of the soviets as the organ of the proletariat, and brushed aside the wobbling theorists who postulated an intermediate bourgeois-liberal democratic stage in the development of the revolution. His letter drove the communists to armed insurrection on November 7, 1917; the time was ripe for such procedure in the seizure of power, and probably no other method could then have been as effective. Not only in the beginning, but even in after years, when the revolution had to be saved by strategic retreats such as unfavourable treaties with hostile aggressors and the New Economic Policy, Lenin showed what leadership can really accomplish. The other revolutions in Europe, i.e. Hungary, Germany, Italy etc., were lost not simply because the social conditions were relatively less favourable but because the guiding spirits were less able. On the other hand, we may note that Lenin himself, in his Geneva exile, could not shake the complacent inertia of the Swiss working class. Now there is another type of leadership (that we have often seen in history) which does not itself participate in the upheaval in a manner similar to the above example. We see this in most religious movements, which gain head suddenly, become revolutionary for a while, put a new set of rulers in power, and then settle down to a parasitic routine, all without the least apparent change of ideology. Of course, the change is there in practice, if not in theory. One can hardly expect the poor of any era to understand and to fight for abstract theological problems which even learned bishops could not settle. Why should the people of one age fight for Athariasius against the Arians while, a couple of centuries after the creed was established, their descendants fought with much less vigour against Islam? The fact is not that there are periods of sudden theological understanding for the masses, but that the religious leadership knew how to stand firm on some point in a way that suddenly activated the social discontent. The analogy here is not with our supersaturated solutions, but rather with the position of catalysts in chemical reactions. Many reactions take place very slowly, or not at all unless substances like sponge-platinum or kaolin are present. These substances remain unassimilated and undiminished after the reaction has been completed, but their presence does materially accelerate the reaction. " }

{ "content": "Finally, we have seen cases of leadership by dispersion as well as leadership that concentrates social forces. This often happens when a class not in power gains its predominance by uniting with a lower class which it must normally exploit. In that case, methods have to be devised for the dissipation of the excess of energy available; methods that usually come with the label of \"restoration of law and order.\" Some Marxists (of whom I am one) claim that a part of the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi must fall under this head. When the 1930 Satyagraha got out of hand and was about to be transformed into a fundamentally different movement by the no-rent and no-tax campaigns in 1932, he discovered the need for the uplift of our untouchables, and the whole movement was neatly sidetracked. At Rajkot this year, he put himself at the head of a campaign that would have lighted a fire not easily put out in the kindling of our social discontent and that too was effectively sidetracked by newer and finer points in the theory of non-violence-points of a purely theological minuteness. Both of these had a pre- cursor in the cancellation of the first civil disobedience movement after Chouri-Choura. But in the two later cases, it was quite clear that the forces of social change were scattered precisely at a stage when their continued focussing would have been dangerous to the class that wanted power, the Indian money-owners. This is not to say that the leadership was a deliberate, conscious act. That is why the Congress movement had its periods of glum depression. Its usefulness to the class mentioned was low in just those times. At least one difference exists between a social group and the solutions that we have used for the purposes of analogy: the lack of uniformity. The concentration in a social movement need not be the same throughout the whole region affected. This leads to two distinct types of development after the initial stages. Either the transformation that has taken place in a small portion will spread over the rest of the social group-which again implies the existence of a minimum threshold value over the entire aggregation, or there will be produced a deconcentration, a rarefaction as it were, over the untransformed portion. In the latter case, the transformed portion must temporarily isolate itself, or again dissolve into its surroundings. I take it that this will explain why the Marxist revolution in one part of the world did not spread with the rapidity that was expected of it. Its very occurrence in that part sharpened the contradictions that existed elsewhere; but it threw hesitant leaders back into a reactionary attitude, because they had not themselves developed to the necessary level. Fergusson and Willingdon College Magazine, (Poona) 1939, pp. 6-9. One of the obvious conclusions is that when the major, immediate objective of the mass movement has been gained, both the people and the leadership must remain vigilant against the ripening of inner contradictions by studying the needs of the next stage. Class-reaction and the cult of personality can be avoided only by the broadest active participation of the whole people in the transformed movement, e.g. after a revolution, in self-government and in national planning. On the other hand, the very success of national planning and resultant increase in the quantity of production-even socialist planning and socialist production-must inevitably lead to a change of quality in the leadership. This accounts at least in part for the 'de-Stalinization' policy of the USSR, which is now the second greatest industrial country in the whole world, with the greatest output of trained technicians, engineers, and scientists.Fergusson & Willingdon College Magazine, Poona, 1939, pp.10-12 The initial two-thirds of this story was written as an English At theme at Harvard in 1924.“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysThe Decline of Buddhism in IndiaThe Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Chuang (630 A.D.) saw images that had sunk into the damp Indian soil, and was told local prophecies to the effect that the religion of the Teacher would vanish completely when the image had sunk out of sight altogether. Shashanka, king of Bengal, who had systematically destroyed Buddhist religious structures, cut down and burned the sacred tree at Gaya under which the Buddha had attained enlightenment twelve centuries earlier. The tree was soon nursed back to growth from a sprout discovered by Pumavarman, the last descendant of Ashoka. Harsha repulsed Shashanka, restored the devastated Buddhist foundations, and built many new ones. Monasteries by the thousand still housed and fed a vast army of monks. The richly endowed University of Nalanda was at the zenith of its fame. All seemed well. The real damage came from within, and may be discerned in the report of the same Chinese traveller, though he was perhaps not conscious of what his words signified: \"(The Buddhist scholar who) can explain three classes (of sacred texts) has allotted to him different servants to attend and obey him. ...He who can explain five classes is then allotted an elephant carriage. He who can explain six classes of books is given a surrounding escort if one of the assembly distinguish himself (in disputations) by refined language, subtle investigation, deep penetration, and severe logic, then he is mounted on an elephant covered with precious ornaments, and conducted by a numerous suite to the gates of the abbey. If, on the contrary, one of the disputants breaks down in his argument, or uses poor and inelegant phrases, or if he violates a rule in logic, they proceed to disfigure his face with red and white, and cover his body with dirt and dust, and then carry him off to some deserted spot or leave him in a ditch. Thus they distinguish between the meritorious and the worthless, between the wise and the foolish.\" This was surely not the way merit had been judged in the days of the Buddha. The original function of the ever-wandering almsmen had been to explain the way of righteousness to all, in the simplest possible words, and the languages of the common people. The new class of disputatious residents of wealthy monasteries cared nothing for the villagers whose surplus product maintained them in luxury. The original rules laid down and followed by the Buddha had permitted only the mendicant's trifling possessions without even the touch of gold, silver or ornaments. The Buddhas of Ajanta are depicted wearing jewelled crowns, or seated upon the costliest thrones. Similarly, the old Buddhism had turned Ashoka away from war to the path of peace. His edicts state that the army would henceforth be used only for spectacles and parades. The devout emperor Harsha, on the other hand, managed to reconcile war with Buddhism just as he reconciled his worship of the Sun god and Maheshwar. Harsha's army increased during thirty years of constant, aggressive warfare to 60,000 elephants, 100,000 cavalry, and a still larger number of foot soldiers. He was Buddhist enough to forgive the assassin whom he had disarmed, when the assembled kings and nobles demanded the death punishment. The common people, who had to pay for his wars and for the triumphal pageantry, might have preferred his putting the assassin to death and killing less people on fewer battlefields. In a word, Buddhism had become uneconomic. The innumerable monasteries and their pampered inmates were a counterpart of the costly military establishment. Buddhism had, from the very beginning, favoured the growth of a universal monarchy which would stop petty warfare. The Buddha is chakravartin, spiritual counterpart of the emperor. But such great, personally administered empires had themselves become uneconomic; Harsha's was about the last of the sort in India. Thereafter, kingdoms were much smaller till feudalism from below gave the state a new basis of feudal landowners. The administration gradually drifted into the hands of a feudal hierarchy growing from below with new (feudal) property rights in land. The village defeated both the empire and the organised religion that accompanied it. The self-contained village was hereafter the norm of production. Taxes had to be collected in kind and consumed locally, for there was not enough trade to allow their conversion into c1ash. Transport of grain and raw material over long distances would have been most difficult under medieval Indian conditions. Harsha travelled constantly with court and army, through his extensive domains. The Chinese piligrim states that Indians rarely used coins for trade, which was conducted by barter. This seems confirmed by the absence of coins struck by Harsha, which contrasts with the tremendous hoards of punch-marked coins that had circu1alted under the Mauryans. Buddhism owed its initial success precisely to its fulfillment of a great social need. Society in the Gangetic basin of the 6th century B.C. was not organised into peaceful villages producing mostly for themselves. The much thinner population was divided into a set of warring semi-tribal principalities, and some tribes not yet on the level of agrarian production with the plough. Vedic Brahaminism and tribal cults were fit only for the pastoral tribe at war with all neighbours. The Vedic animal sacrifices were far too onerous for a developing agrarian economy. The thin pre-Mauryan settlement required trade in metals, salt, and cloth over long distances, which could not be conducted without the protection of a powerful state. The passage from a group of tribes to a universal society, therefore, needed a new social philosophy. " }

{ "content": "That the universal monarchy and the religion of the universal society were parallel is proved by the rise of both in Magadha, at about the same time. Not only Buddhism, but numerous other contemporary Magadhan sects preached about the same thing: the Jains, Ajivikas, and others all denied the validity of Vedic sacrifice, and the need for killing. Buddhism accompanied and protected the first traders into wild country, peopled by savage tribes. This is shown by the ancient monuments at Junnar, Karle, Nasik, Ajanta, and elsewhere on the junctions of primitive trade routes. The major civilizing function of Buddhism had ended by the seventh century A.D. The ahimsa doctrine was universally admitted, if not practised. Vedic sacrifices had been abandoned except by some rare princeling whose revivalist attempt had little effect upon the general economy. The new problem was to induce docility in the village cultivators, without an excessive use of force. This was done by religion, but not by Buddhism. The class structure in the villages appeared as caste, always scorned by the Buddhists. Primitive tribesmen were enrolled as new castes. Both tribesman and peasant relied heavily upon ritual, which the Buddhist monk was forbidden to practise; ritual remained a monopoly of the Brahmin. Moreover, the Brahmin at that time was a pioneer who could stimulate production, for he had a good working calendar for predicting the times of ploughing, sowing, harvest. He knew something of new crops, and trade possibilities. He was not a drain upon production as had been his sacrificing ancestors, or the large Buddhist monasteries. A compromise could also be effected by making the Buddha an avatara of Vishnu. So, formal Buddhism inevitably faded away. Its main lesson need never be lost: that good thoughts require cultivation and training of the mind by the individual's personal efforts, no less carefully than good singing that of the voice or craftsmanship that of the hand. The value of the thoughts, on the other hand, is to be judged by the social advance which they encourage.From the Times of India, May 24, 1956, by kind permission of the editor; the title has been changed from \"Buddhism in history\" and minor corrections made. The topic may be pursued further, by those interested, in my book: Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Bombay, 1956).“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysOn The Revolution In ChinaNo honest and reasonably alert visitor to China can fail to be impressed by the remarkable changes in the country and the people. The material advances shown by the new system since so recent a year as 1952 leap to the eye. New factories, mines, oil-fields, steel works, dams, co. operatives, roads, buses, hospitals, schools, cultural palaces, theatres have sprouted virtually overnight. Literacy is almost universal and the language is being reformed. The rise in the general standard of living is equally remarkable. The normal noonday meal even of the unskilled labourer now compares with his rare holiday feast in the old days. Conditions of work have improved out of all recognition. Coal mines in whose untimbered pits eight or ten famished peasant labourers dropped dead, or were killed by accident every day, have now death rates among the lowest in the world, and are decent places to work in, with excellent automatic machinery for the bulk of the production. The former, incredible stench and filth have disappeared from the workers' slums. once the most dreadful in the whole world and even the older hutments are free of vermin. But far more remarkable than all these are the changes among the people themselves. The current Chinese standard of honesty would have been astoundingly high in any country. Even in pre-war Sweden. Shanghai. once notorious for the incidence of pilfering in spite of the watchful eyes of the foreign concession police has not had a single petty crime reported for over ten months. After just two years of better living conditions, the children in the new workers, tenements show what socialism can mean; they are healthier. more cheerful and rush spontaneously to welcome the stranger without the least trace of shyness or rudeness. The unshakable calm, inner courtesy, love of culture, and fundamental good nature in all strata of Chinese society cannot be written off as 'national character which has nothing to do with the revolution.' The relaxed, well-adjusted Chinese of the People's Republic are not to be found in Hong Kong, or Formosa. Yet the mainland is under constant threat of attack from modern atomic bases scattered from Japan to Formosa, while the other two regions have a perpetual flood of foreign gold poured into them to make them happy bastions of genuine Western Democracy. The intelligentsia of Peking also show a remarkable contrast with those of great cities in other countries. Their enthusiasm and animation, particularly among the younger intellectuals, compares favourably with the lack of interest and rather fearful attitude that seems to characterize their counterparts in New York, and the rather casual, almost inert, and often lackadaisical approach to serious questions on the part of so many Muscovites. They certainly do not manifest the concentrated opportunism, thoroughgoing superficiality, and intolerable brag of the new middle-class Indian. Yet China is by no means a paradise. Serious new problems arise on every level, and have to be faced where other countries manage to ignore them or to deny their existence. Under these circumstances, why are the police so much less in evidence in new China than in most other countries, including the USA and the USSR? Why is there no counterpart to the un-American activities committee, no witch-hunting in any form? All criticism is carefully studied and sincerely welcomed if useful. People are now genuinely free to express any political opinion they like, including the belief that capitalism is superior to socialism. If they wish to study the speeches of Chiang Kai-shek, scrupulously accurate versions will be provided so that the reader can judge for himself what Chiang's ideas of democracy really meant. This freedom does not extend to certain types of action. The possible lover of \"free enterprise\" is not free to practice its most rapidly profitable aspects, to indulge in black-marketing, adulteration of goods, opium smuggling, and such unsocial activities. However, former Kuomintang generals are now employed in high and responsible administrative posts, as for example Fu Tso-yi, at present minister of water conservancy, in charge of important projects like the new dam construction in Sanmen gorge. Even Chiang Kai-shek will be given a similar position, if he dares to make his peace with his own countrymen. At the same time, those who fought against these two for so many bitter years are found in all ranks of the army, and at all levels of the government, but do not have to be coerced to agree to this strange return. Their position is not remotely comparable to that of the best resistance fighters in Germany, France and Italy, who see the resurgence of the most hated elements to power, and the recession of the goal for which the anti-fascists had worked so long. Many enterprises function very well under joint state and private ownership. There is no question of a surrender to capitalism; yet the capitalists have not been '1iquidated' by shooting, but converted into useful citizens. These features of contemporary Chinese society must be, in some way, traceable to the course of its revolution, which we proceed to analyse, in order to explain this extraordinary new civilisation. " }

{ "content": "Ultra-Marxists find that the Chinese revolution had a peasant basis and leadership and not a proletarian; hence, they conclude that the revolution cannot be socialist, or communist. A view that need not be discussed seriously is that it is just one of the periodic upheavals which begin every three centuries or so in China as peasant revolts, to settle down after a change of regime; since the last such change came in 1644, with the Manchus, one was astrologically due now! Nevertheless, serious arguments are still heard that the Chinese revolution is only a long overdue reform and modernisation of a backward semi- colonial country; that socialism in China is merely a political slogan, very far from realisation. This is the main question that will be discussed here: Is the Chinese revolution socialist or has some other description to be found for it? The discussion has to be in the context of a given world situation and the specific situation in the country. The answer will necessarily imply a great deal about imminent or necessary changes in the rest of Asia and other under-developed areas. Some tacit conclusions also follow about other methods of advance to socialism than by armed insurrection. To avoid misunderstanding, it is necessary to define the fundamental terms. By revolution is meant the overthrow of a government by a major group of the governed, by methods regarded as illegal under the system existing before the overthrow. We have to exclude the mere coup d'etat when the new group belongs essentially to the same governing class, as happens so often in South America. Changes of this nominal type are symptomatic of a large, passive, unresisting stratum among the governed. In South American countries, the real Americans (strangely called Indians) have hardly begun to figure on the political stage, and their very languages have yet to be recognised to the extent of being taught in schools. A genuine revolution, as distinguished from a change of regime, takes place only when the governed will not submit to the old way and the governing classes cannot carry on in the old way. This is the common factor to the American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions. Sometimes, the overthrow occurs in effect before its formal recognition, in which case the revolution appears a comparatively peaceful transfer of power. This happened in India and a few other British colonies, where local bourgeoisies had developed under British colonial rule, and it became much costlier to suppress their demand for political power than to surrender it on condition that bourgeois property rights were not to be touched. However, the struggle was, even then, regarded as illegal and the attempts to suppress it employed outright violence. Our definition excludes such developments as the Industrial Revolution, and the pseudo-revolutions by foreign intervention. Socialism is the system where means of production are owned by society as a whole, not private persons; and where opportunity and the rewards of labour are equitably proportioned under the slogan 'equal pay for equal work'. Communism is a more developed form under which each individual contributes to society according to his ability and receives a share of the social product according to his needs. Both of these imply a high degree of modern, mechanised, co-operative production before there can be more than a redistribution of poverty; but co-operative production is not by itself sufficient, for all factory production is possible only by the highest degree of social co-operation, Similarly, most societies recognise the needs of infants, the ill, and the aged even when people in these categories can add little or nothing to the social produce; but that does not suffice to make those societies communist. In the strictest sense of the word, a \"pure\" socialist revolution is possible only when the productive capacity (surviving after the revolution) suffices for the needs of the whole population on the level that its citizens recognise as equitable. The only country where raw materials, installed machinery, power supply, and available technicians fulfil these conditions today is the USA, which has not had a revolution since 1776, when these conditions did not prevail and socialism was unknown. However, it is clear that the Soviet revolution at least is fundamentally different from the French or the American revolutions. So, let us agree to call a revolution 'socialist' when the new regime can, and plans to, progress directly to socialism without the necessity of further violent change in the government. In abstract theory, this would be possible in the USA, while Britain and India have openly proclaimed peaceful transition to socialism as their goal, The main question is whether the class in power wishes it, and tallies its actions with political declarations, or whether the socialist aim (if professed) amounts only to a means of deceiving the electorate, by promises which cannot be fulfilled by the methods adopted. One of the necessary (though not sufficient) conditions for a revolution to be socialist is that the power thereafter should not be in the hands of a minority class. The reason is simply that such a class cannot logically be expected to usher in a classless society. The Chinese revolution satisfies this condition. However, Marx and his followers had asked for a further condition, namely that the revolution should establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. This conclusion was drawn from the experience of the great French revolution, which had some hope of progressing to socialist liberty, equality, fraternity as long as Robespierre lasted. It turned into reaction and military dictatorship as soon as the new urban bourgeoisie, and their rural counterpart the peasants, had liquidated the privileges of feudal ownership and acquired control over the new forms of property. The further experience of 1848 and of the Paris Commune of 1870-71 did nothing to shake the conclusion. Nor did the Tai Ping rebellion in China, which would only have meant a change of dynasty but for foreign intervention. The Indian revolt of 1857 had nothing to offer but a renewal of feudal power. " }

{ "content": "The Paris Commune was lost precisely because the peasantry was not drawn into the struggle on the side of the workers. The Russian revolution was completed by the triple alliance of workers, soldiers and peasants. The fundamental contradiction between (the essentially co-operative) modern factory production and the essentially petty-bourgeois peasant production remained. It could not be solved, as in the USA, by methods that led ultimately to the creation of the Dust Bowl, price supports, and wanton destruction or senseless hoarding of \"surplus\" food by the state. The problem had to be solved quickly in the USSR, and a regular food supply ensured which could not be shaken by famine, epidemics, or foreign intervention. The solution was found in collectivisation of the land, but under the guidance of people not themselves peasants, whose approach was generally doctrinaire, and methods often coercive. The new productive basis withstood the cordon sanitaire and the most deadly armed invasion of World War II. The very existence of the USSR was encouragement to socialist movements throughout the world, while new China could not have progressed so rapidly without its protection against foreign intervention and its capital aid. However, in conjunction with the antagonistic external pressures, Soviet methods left the aberrant legacy of unhappiness, mistrust, espionage, twisting of the national character, which has slowly to be cleared out. The Chinese revolution followed a totally different course. The workers' commune of Canton was brutally suppressed. Shanghai fell quickly to the Kuomintang forces only because of the great workers' rising planned and organised by Chon En-lai. The reward was the unparalleled blood-bath of 1921 in which about 50,000 workers and left-wing intellectuals were tortured and put to death by that pillar of Western Democracy, Chiang Kai-shek, whose latest writings bemoan his own naive trust of communists and his great leniency. Comintern theorists wrote many futile theses about the workers' revolution. The sole effective action was organised by Mao Tse-tung and Chu Deh, on the basis of armed guerrilla insurrection with peasant bands. To survive, the centre of resistance had to be shifted, by means of the famous Long March, to the extreme hinterland of China, very far from any factory or proletarians. The communists did not enforce co-operative production in the areas under their control. The land was redistributed for petty, small-scale primitive production, and not all the land, but only that portion owned by oppressive semi- feudal landlords who had run away from the vengeance of the peasantry. The complete land-reform came in 1952. From 1936-7, the communists actually put the revolution in abeyance to co-operate in a common anti-Japanese front with Chiang. Impartial observers like Stilwell and Evans Carlson have made it clear that they fought the Japanese much more effectively than the Kuomintang. Does all this not smack of reformism, of the will to abandon socialism at the slightest excuse? Actually the armed insurrection made the political work effective. The poorest peasant and landless agrarian worker had been psychologically conditioned during two thousand years of misrule to being kicked around by official, warlord, landlord, and merchant. He now learned that his destiny rested in his own hands. Re-division of landlords' property united all the peasantry, rich and poor, behind the regime. The new leaders lived a life of the utmost simplicity. Taxes were very light, and there was no speculation. As the Chinese workers were hardly a step removed from the peasants, they backed the communists solidly whenever they had the chance. The united anti-Japanese front drew all patriotic intellectuals and petty-bourgeois into the struggle, and showed them that no other leadership could be effective. During the course of the struggle, the Red Army performed a feat that exceeds even the Long March in importance. It proved that a guerrilla force starting with the poorest weapons, but correctly based upon the people as a whole, and properly led, could convert itself during the very course of the war into a full-fledged modern army, supplied with weapons and technicians taken over from the far better-equipped opponents. This, in fact, symbolises the entire course of the Chinese revolution in its uninterrupted advance towards socialism. The peasant in a capitalist environment has necessarily to be a petty-bourgeois, but not necessarily on, in an ancient, backward, pre-bourgeois country which is overpopulated relatively to the available food supply. In such a country, it is absolutely futile to wait for a full development of the bourgeois mode, the creation of a large and strong proletariat, then a strong workers' party, and finally a socialist revolution in our sense of the word. The new bourgeoisie in such a country will fall very far behind the creative role of the first bourgeoisies such as in England. Specifically, China had simultaneously the worst features of the old feudalism on land, imperialist- colonial intervention by foreign powers, and an indigenous fascism based on strong internal monopoly of weakly developed capital. The monopoly, in fact, was of the notorious Four Families (Chiang, Soong, Kung, Chen), who reduced all other private capitalists to their servants and the whole administration to their lackeys. The heaviest profits came directly from bleeding the people, without industrialisation. " }

{ "content": "The essential point is very simple. No revolution (as defined above) today in a backward country has any chance of effectiveness, or even of survival, unless it is planned and carried out as a socialist revolution. Industrialisation is not a prerequisite of socialism in such countries, as so many theorists continue to believe, but the very converse is necessary. The advanced non-socialist countries (taken together) are over- producing, in the sense that their markets lack the purchasing power necessary to absorb the full-capacity product. The existence of cheap (but inefficient) labour and raw materials in the underdeveloped areas cannot but aggravate this fundamental economic contradiction. Technical advances like automation increase the stress. The strong possibility that the USSR can and will supply capital goods to all backward countries, socialist or not, to develop without the domination of foreign capital also brings the crisis nearer. The only solution is to begin with a socialist revolution so that effective demand rises indefinitely, and planning makes overproduction impossible. One lesson that might be drawn from China is the correct socialist approach to the cult of mere bigness in a backward country. The USSR, with its different historical background, and the urgent need to establish the first base for socialism, without external aid and in the face of a deadly, unremittingly hostile environment, had to industrialise regardless of cost. This meant human cost, in the absence of capital aid, but the viability of socialist production was proved. In China, the same pace of industrialisation would have meant intolerab1e shortage of consumer goods at a time when immediate relief had to be shown from the incredible misery into which the Kuomintang and the Four Families (with US aid), had plunged the country. It would also mean serious unemployment, at least an 'excess of manpower', in the interim period, not to speak of heavy waste of capital assets in short supply. So, their immediate plans are being modified so as to encourage co-operative handicraft production and un- mechanised agriculture in tune with basic industrialisation. They can utilise the stored experience of the remarkably successful Gung Ho industrial co-operatives set up during the anti-Japanese war in the remotest hinterland. This contrasts with the heavy opposition aroused by even the trifling, slap-dash co-operation announced by the Indian government. Certainly, the Chinese would not set up the Ambar Charkha hand-spinning scheme, had they so powerfully developed a textile industry as India and such ample foreign aid. The dam in the gorges of the Yangtse will be bigger than those in most Indian schemes. But in a country that has a monsoon, the essential is to hold the rain- water back as long as possible, to prevent quick erosion of valuable top- soil. That is, flood control and efficient food production in India would be far better served by a hundred thousand, properly coordinated, small dams rather than a few big ones costing more. The Chinese have their own schemes for atomic energy research, but for use, not empty prestige. In India, the money poured out could have been much better utilized in harnessing the decidedly more abundant solar energy which only blasts the country over eight months or more of the year. All we have achieved so far is a remarkably useless sun-cooker. Both countries have to cope with a dense population and high birth-rate, but birth control propaganda catches on quickly in China, because the people know that in old age, they will have comfortable maintenance from their co-operative group, even when there are no children. To plan the population without planning how the population is to make a reasonably decent living is as ridiculous as it is futile. Thus, when one speaks of many different paths leading to socialism, it is necessary to ask, \"what sort of socialism?\" Germany produced National Socialism under Hitler; the socialist government in France attacked Egypt for the sake of the Suez Canal Company, and did not hesitate to continue the brutal war of colonial repression in Algeria. " }

{ "content": "The Chinese method had one advantage over all others, including the Russian, in that the confidence of the food producers, with accurate knowledge and full control of the food supply, were assured from the start over an increasingly larger area. The arts of genuine persuasion were mastered by the technique developed in the Yenan days, when not more than a third of the local councils and committees were allowed to consist of communist party members. Co-operation has caught on very well, without the least show of force on the part of the state among the peasants. For example, during the lean months at the end of winter, peasant co-operatives about Peking (which have not enough land for the necessary surplus) send many of their members out to work at transport, carpentry, and odd jobs. Till last year, the individual kept 15 out of the average monthly wages of 50 Yuan earned by such labour, and put the rest into the cooperative. Now, without any suggestion from the government, all the money is voluntarily put into the common fund, and each family assigned enough (by the co- operative) for its needs during those three hard months of the year. Contrast this with other countries in Asia. The Indian five-year plan allots about 11% of the total plan budget to heavy industry, and effectively spends less. The rest goes in services, ancillary plant, transport, power supply, irrigation and the like, which does not touch private monopoly in food production (which can be broken only by a tax in kind and efficient grain storage); nor in most consumer goods, nor some very important heavy industry. The Indian State has absolute power and uses it to settle questions like the linguistic division of Bombay state by tear gas and bullets instead of the logical, democratic plebiscite and ballot. It is openly admitted that this all-powerful state is powerless to collect evaded taxes, to curb inflation, to control food prices, or to raise money by expropriation of the primitive accumulation of money- lender, landlord, and profiteer, in place of sales and consumer taxes. This amounts to a confession that the classes in power have not the least desire for socialism, and will not allow their profits to be touched even if it means the failure of industrialisation. The remaining Asian countries, including those in the Middle East, and Turkey have found insurmountable obstacles of every type on the road to industrialisation. The moral should be reasonably clear. Monthly Review (New York), 1957. M. N. Roy, writing on Revolution and Counter-revolution In China (1946) to justify those actions of his that had led to his expulsion from the Comintern, reached the conclusion that the Chinese revolution did not follow a pattern which could be approved by Marxists. He said that the 'so-called Communist Party' of China 'preferred to base itself on the village paupers, necessarily inclined towards banditry'. 'Having learned from experience, the Communists in China today are communists only in name'. The refusal to learn anything from experience, and the insistence upon keeping the name unsullied by effective action are characteristic of Roy's type of OM. While accusing the communist leaders in China of 'relapse into opportunism which may be justified as clever strategy', Roy had not discovered the existence of Mao Tse-tung in 1930, and even in 1946 dismissed Chairman Mao's united national front as another 'doctrinaire preoccupation.' 'The task of the revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries now (1946) is to establish Radical Democracy' -a task in which Roy himself failed dismally on his return to India while the bourgeois, colonial struggle was being fought out and won under the leadership of the Congress, without benefit of Roy. As late as 1951, the CPI portentously reserved final judgement upon the Chinese revolution, on the grounds that the whole affair might turn out to be reformist in character as compared with the purity of the struggle in India. Other Indians, formerly OM, continue to ignore China, and devote their energies to such urgent problems as the woes of Yugoslavia or Hungary. Therefore it might be of use to re- examine the content and meaning of a socialist revolution. Otherwise, it is fatally easy to slip into a form of socialism which is socialism in everything but name. It is to be feared that recent developments in India and frantic appeals for dollar aid imply this trend in the ruling class and its party. It does require a peculiar genius to undercut socialism while supposedly building it by peaceful methods, but the country might be happier if such talent were more innocuously utilised.“Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }

{ "content": "D. D. KosambiExasperating EssaysOn The Class Structure of IndiaA hundred years ago, Karl Marx was a regular correspondent of the New York Tribune, one of the direct ancestors of today's New York Herald-Tribune. Among his communications was one, published on August 8, 1853, entitled \"The Future Results of British Rule in India.\" Though he knew little of India's past, and though some of his predictions for the future have not been borne out by subsequent events, Marx nevertheless had a remarkably clear insight into the nature and potentialities of Indian society as it existed in his time. \"[The British] destroyed [Hindu civilisation],\" he wrote, \"by uprooting native industry, and by levelling all that was great and elevated in the native society.\" Political unity was imposed by the Indo-British army, strengthened by the telegraph, the free press, the railroad, and ordinary roads that broke up village isolation-all noted by Marx as instruments of future progress. But he stated clearly: All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but of their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation? The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, ti!l in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the British yoke altogether. At all events, we may safely expect to see, at a more or less remote period, the regeneration of that great and interesting country...A hundred years have passed, including nearly a decade of freedom from British rule. What is the situation today and the outlook for the period ahead? One frequently hears the argument that India still has a backward economy combining elements of different historic social forms, that feudalism is still powerful, that the country has not outgrown its erstwhile colonial framework, and that it is relapsing into the status of a dependency of the great imperialist powers, Great Britain and the United States. We shall comment on these various questions as we proceed. But one point needs to be made with all emphasis at the outset. There can be no doubt, it seems to me, as to who rules India today: it is the Indian bourgeoisie. True, production is still overwhelmingly petty bourgeois in character. But this cannot be more than a transitory stage, and already the nature of the class in power casts a pervasive influence over the political, intellectual, and social life of the country. THE DECLINE OF FEUDALISMFeudalism's decline in India may be said to date from the inability of Indian feudalism to defend the country against British penetration. To be sure, the British conquered and held the country by means of an Indian army, paid from India's resources and under British discipline; though in this respect the feudal powers of the day were not so different as might at first appear, since their own armies, also maintained at Indian ex pense, were often staffed by European drill sergeants and artillery experts. The difference-and it was a crucial difference- was that the British paid all their soldiers regularly in cash every month, in war or peace, paying also for supplies acquired during the march or for the barracks. The contrast is pointed up by the opposing Indian factions that fought the Battle of Panipat (A.D. 1761). Ahmad Shah Durrani's soldiers mutinied after winning the battle because they had not been paid for years; while their opponents, the Marathas, maintained themselves by looting the countryside. Faced with opposition of this kind, British-led arms were bound to triumph. (The same contrast-again involving the spoils of India, though indirectly- could be observed a few years later when the British defeated Napoleon in Spain; the French army lived off the countryside while the British used their superior wealth, much of it extracted from India, to pay the very Spaniards they were defending for all supplies.) Indian feudalism tried its strength against the British bourgeoisie for the last time in the unsuccessful rebellion of 1857. Soon thereafter, the British abandoned their long-standing policy of liquidating feudal principalities and instead began to bolster up remaining regimes of this kind-provided they were weak enough to be dependent and hence compliant. Marx noted that the very same people who fought in the British Parliament against aristocratic privilege at home voted to maintain far worse rajahs and nabobs in India-as a matter of policy, for profit. Despite British support, and in a sense because of it, Indian feudalism no longer had any independent strength and vitality of its own. Its economic basis had been ruined by the construction of railroads, the decay of village industry, the establishment of a system of fixed assessment of land values and payment of taxes in cash rather than in kind, the importation of commodities from England, and the introduction of mechanised production in Indian cities. The role of the village usurer changed. Previously he had been an integral part of the village economy, but he had been legally obliged to cancel a debt on which total repayment amounted to double the original loan: there was no redress against default since land could not be alienated nor could a feudal lord be brought to court. With British rule came survey and registry of land plots, cash taxes, cash crops for large-scale export to a world market (indigo, cotton, jute, tea, tobacco, opium), registration of debts and mortgages, alienability of the peasants' land-in a word, the framework within which land could gradually be converted into capitalist private property which the former usurer could acquire and rent out and exploit. " }

{ "content": "How thoroughly British rule undermined Indian feudalism has been dramatically demonstrated by events of recent years. The police action undertaken in 1948 by India's central government against Hyderabad, the largest and most powerful remaining feudal state, was over in two days. Political action in Travancore and Mysore, direct intervention in Junagadh and Kashmir, indirect intervention in Nepal, the absorption of Sikkim, the jailing of Saurashtra barons as common criminals- all these events showed that feudal privilege meant nothing before the new paramount power, the Indian bourgeoisie. It should not be overlooked, however, that the decline of Indian feudalism had another side to it-the partial amalgamation of the old ruling class into the new. Just as the rise of factories and mechanised production converted primitive barter into commodity production and the usurer's hoard into capital, so too it opened a way for the feudal lord to join the capitalist class by turning his jewellery and his hoarded wealth into landed or productive capital. What the feudal lord could not do was to claim additional privileges not available to the ordinary investor, or any rights that would impede the free movement of Indian industrial or financial capital. This process of converting feudal lords into capitalists began relatively early: even before World War I, the Gaekwar of Baroda became one of the world's richest men by investing his large feudal revenues in factories, railways, and company shares. Another process involving the liquidation of feudalism is exemplified by what has been happening since independence in the Gangetic basin. There the East India Company had created the class of Zamindars, tax collectors whose function was to extract tribute in kind from the peasants and convert it into cash payments to the company. As time went on, the Zamindars acquired the status and privileges of landholders and in return provided valuable political support for British rule. In recent years, a new class of capitalist landlords and well-to-do peasants of the kulak variety has been substituted for the zamindars by legislative action (the zamindars, of course, receiving compensation for their expropriated holdings) . Everywhere in India, by one means or another, feudal wealth has already become or is rapidly becoming capital, either of the owner or of his creditors. [Every feudalism known to history rested, in the final analysis, upon primitive handicraft production, and upon a special type of land ownership. The former of these is no longer basic in India, and the latter does not exist.] Talk of fighting feudalism today is on a level with talk of fighting dinosaurs. No part of the mechanism of coercion is now in feudal hands. The legislature is bourgeois (and petty bourgeois) in composition. The armed forces, the police, the judiciary are all directly under bourgeois control, where these functions would formerly have been carried out by feudal levies, retainers, or the feudal lords themselves. Even the beginnings of capitalist production in agriculture may be seen, notably the introduction of tractor cultivation in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, but with smaller manifestations all over the country, especially where industrial crops like cotton are grown and where transport conditions are exceptionally favourable. The liquidation of Indian feudalism, then, is general and complete. But it is necessary to guard against drawing unwarranted conclusions from this undoubted fact. The older privilege is being replaced or expropriated only with the due compensation. No basic improvement has been effected in the condition of the rural population, still the overwhelming majority of the Indian nation. All agrarian reforms-community schemes, voluntary (bhoodan) redistribution of land, scaling- down of peasant indebtedness, counter-erosion measures, afforestation, and so forth-have turned out to be piddling. Hunger, unemployment, epidemic disease remain the permanent and massive features of Indian society. The sole achievements have been the elimination of older property forms (with recruitment of most former owners into the bourgeoisie) and the creation of a vast class of workers with no land and no prospect of absorption into industry as long as the social structure of India remains what it is. BOURGEOISIE AND PETTY BOURGEOISIEExcept possibly in a few negligible corners of recently integrated backward areas, Indian production today is bourgeois 'in the sense that commodity production is prevalent and even a small plot of land is valued and taxed in rupees. But it is still petty production, consisting for the most part of the growing of foodstuffs from small holdings by primitive, inefficient methods; the produce is still largely consumed by the producer or in the locality of production. Nevertheless, the petty bourgeoisie, inhomogeneous as it is in all but its greed, completely dominates food production and, through middlemen, controls the supply to towns and cities. Though roads and other means of communication have increased, still the density of the transportation network i$ very low by American, British, or Japanese standards. The present national Five Year Plan estimates the annual national income at 90 billion rupees (one rupee equals 21 cents), which it proposes to increase to 100 billion by 1956. But the total value of all productive assets in private hands (excluding fields and houses for rent, but including plantations) is estimated at no more than 15 billion rupees, while the central and local governments' own facilities are worth more than 13 billion rupees in the field of transport, electricity, broadcasting and other means of communication, and so on. These figures prove conclusively the petty-bourgeois nature of the economy as a whole and indicate clearly that the industrialisation of India under bourgeois management can proceed only through tight co-operation between government and private capital. " }

{ "content": "Therefore, the fact that the government is the biggest capitalist, the main banker, the greatest employer, and the ultimate refuge or ineffable solace of the bootlicking intelligentsia makes for only a formal, superficial, difference. The main question to ask is: what special class-interest does this government serve? Whenever it seems to rise above the classes, or act against the bourgeois interests, does it go beyond regulating individual greed, or at most holding the balance between the petty and the big bourgeoisie? Do the government's ineffective food regulations and costly food imports mean anything beyond assuring the petty-bourgeois food-producer his pound of vital flesh while the cities are supplied with food cheap enough for the industrial labourer to maintain himself at subsistence level on the wages the factory owners are willing to pay? The government today is undoubtedly in the hands of the bigger bourgeoisie, a fact which is shown no less by its personnel than by its policies which favour Big Business and impose only such restraints as serve the interests of the sub-class as a whole and prevent any single capitalist group from dominating the rest. Moreover, there is no question that the big bourgeoisie wants industrialisation. In this connection, it is interesting to recall the economic plan hopefully drawn up (with the aid of tame economists) by the biggest capitalists and promulgated in 1944 (published at that time as a Penguin Special, No. S148). The scheme, to be financed from unspecified sources, called for a 500 per cent increase in industry, a 130 per cent increase in agriculture, and a 200 per cent increase in \"services\" within 15 years. The basic figures used by planners, however, related to the year 1932 and were hence way out of date. Not only did wartime inflation and its aftermath balloon the national income beyond the dreams of the capitalist planners, but the planned agricultural output would not have sufficed to feed the population even at starvation levels (for some years after the war, India was obliged to import a billion rupees worth of food annually and the imports still continue irregularly) . To a far greater extent than is generally realised, the big Indian bourgeoisie owes its present position to two war periods of heavy profit making. World War I gave Indian capital its first great impetus and initiated the process of Indianising the bureaucracy. World War II vastly expanded the army and Indianised the officer corps; further, it swelled the tide of Indian accumulation and enabled the capitalists, by rallying the masses behind the Congress Party, to complete the process of pushing the British out of the country. How great the accumulation was during the most recent war and postwar period of inflation is indicated by changes in the relative importance of different taxes as sources of revenue: the agricultural (land) tax now accounts for less than eight per cent of total state revenue as compared to 25 per cent in 1939, while taxes on what by Indian standards may be called luxury goods (including automobiles) rose from negligible importance to 17 per cent of the total in the same period. [The government asked in 1957 for appropriations about 100 times the central budget at the beginning of World War II. The other side of the coin as always in periods of marked inflation, has been a decline in the real income of workers and other low-income groups. It is interesting to note that the current national Five Year Plan aims to restore the general living standard of 1939-then universally recognised as totally inadequate-without, of course curtailing the immense new power and wealth that have accrued to the bourgeoisie in the intervening years. We encounter here one of the basic contradictions of the Indian economy, the decisive roadblock to rapid development under present conditions. The civilised money-makers of advanced capitalist countries are accustomed to looking on a five percent return as something akin to a law of nature, but not so their Indian counterparts. The usual rate of return on black- market operations in recent years is 150 percent, and even the most respectable capitalist's idea of a \"reasonable\" profit is anywhere from 9 to 20 percent. [The very same capitalists who ask for and obtain tariff. protection for their manufactures even before beginning to produce them for the market do not hesitate to hoard smuggled gold and jewellery to the tune of (a reasonably estimated) 100 million rupees per year. This not only shows their contempt for their own government, its laws, and its plans for industrialisation in the 'private sector', but further illustrates the petty bourgeois mentality even in the wealthiest Indians.] This kind of profiteering, however, is incompatible with the balanced development of India's economy as a whole. Seventy percent of the population still works on the land or lives off it, holdings being mostly less than two acres per family and cultivated by primitive methods. Wages are low and prevented from rising by the relative surplus population which is always pressing for available jobs. In the countryside, at least 50 percent of the population is made up of landless labourers. These conditions spell low mass purchasing power and restricted markets. When even these restricted markets are ruthlessly exploited by a capitalist class snatching at immediate maximum profits, the result can only be industrial stagnation and growing poverty. And indeed this is precisely what we observe in fact. Idle plant is widespread; night shifts have disappeared in most textile mills; other industries show machinery and equipment used to 50 percent of capacity or even less. It is the familiar capitalist dilemma, but in a peculiarly acute form: increase of poverty and idle resources but with no adequate incentives to invest in the expanded production which is so desperately needed. This is the pass to which bourgeois rule has brought India. There is no apparent escape within the framework of the bourgeois mode of production. [The situation was changed for a while by the \"pump-priming\" of the First Five-Year plan- a curious jump from a colonial to a pseudo-New-Deal economy; but future prospects are decidedly gloomier.] COLONIALISM AND FOREIGN DOMINATION" }

{ "content": "In a sense the tragedy of the Indian bourgeoisie is that it came of age too late, at a time when the whole capitalist world was in a state of incurable crisis and when one-third of the globe had already abandoned capitalism forever. In fact, the Five Year Plans mentioned above are self-contradictory in that they are obviously inspired by the great successes of Soviet planning without, however, taking any account of the necessity of socialism to the achievement of these successes: effective planning cannot leave the private investor free to invest when and where he likes, as is done in India, nor can its main purpose be to assure him of profitable opportunities for the investment of his capital. The Indian bourgeoisie cannot be compared to that of England at the time of the Industrial Revolution, nor to that of Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nor again to that of Germany from the time of Bismarck. There are no great advances in science that can be taken advantage of by a country with preponderant illiteracy and no colonies to exploit. Under the circumstances, as we have already seen, rapid industrialisation runs into the insuperable obstacle of a narrowly restricted domestic market. Do all these unfavourable facts mean that capitalist India must inevitably fall under the domination of foreign industrialists and financiers with their control over the shrinking capitalist world market? Must we see signs of such a relapse into colonial status when, for example, the Indian government invites powerful foreign capitalist groups to invest in oil refineries on terms apparently more favourable than those granted to Indian capital, including guarantees against nationalisation? The bogey of a new economic colonialism can be quickly disposed of. For one thing, the Indian bourgeoisie is no longer bound to deal with one particular foreign capitalist power, and the answer to stiff terms from the United States and Britain has already been found in the drive to recovery of Germany and Japan. The Indian government has invited Krupp-Demag to set up a steel plant; the Tata combine comes to quite reasonable terms with Krauss.Maffei for locomotive works and foundries, and with Daimler-Benz for equipment to manufacture diesel-engine transport. The more advanced capitalist powers, in short, can be played off against each other (and even better against the USSR ) , as they could not be in the days of British rule. And for another thing, the guarantees against nationalisation granted to the great British and American oil monopolies are really no more than Indian Big Business itself enjoys. The only industries that have been nationalised in India are those which, in private hands, hinder the development of larger capital (for example, road transport in Bombay State, taken over without compensation) or those in which there was danger of big investors losing money (for example, the nationalisation of civil aviation, with heavy compensation to the former owners). The Indian bourgeoisie has taken its own precautions against genuine nationalisation and hardly needs to give itself the formal guarantees demanded by foreign capitalists. [Perhaps, the strongest of these, and the most crippling to the supposedly planned advance towards socialism, is the systematic creation of revenue deficits. The first deliberate step in this direction, taken as a sweeping measure in Bombay state (where the bourgeoisie is at its strongest) was the costly, wasteful, and palpably inefficient prohibition policy. Now, deficit state budgets seem quite the normal fashion, while parallel outcries against the Five Year Plan become louder]. No, the invitation to foreign capital does not mean sudden, unaccountable lunacy on the part of those now in power, those who fought so desperately only a few years ago to remove foreign capitalist control from India. Entry is not permitted in fields where Indians have investments and mastery of technique, as for example in textiles. Even in the new fields opened up to the foreigners-fields in which Indians lack both know- how and the assurance of sufficiently large and quick returns to justify heavy investment-a \"patriotic\" strike or two could ruin the foreign enterprises should they ever become a threat or a nuisance to the Indian bourgeoisie. Fissionable materials (uranium, monazite, ilmenite) which foreign interests wanted to buy at the price of dirt are being processed by a company financed by the government and directed by Tatas. (On the other hand, high-grade Indian manganese ore is still being exported unrefined for lack of a sufficiently strong profit incentive to Indian capital). THE ALTERNATIVEInvitations to foreign capital, however, do have one function in addition to that of giving a fillip to industrialisation (which could have been secured by inviting much more technical aid from the USSR and the People's Democracies). That additional function is to provide a measure of insurance against popular revolt. The Indian bourgeoisie shows unmistakable signs of fearing its own masses. The leading bourgeois party (the Congress) has not yet exhausted the reservoir of prestige built up during the period of its leadership in the struggle for national independence. In addition, the bourgeoisie controls the bureaucracy, the army, the police, the educational system, and the larger part of the press. And there are the opposition bourgeois parties, like the Praja-Socialists, which can be relied upon to talk Left and act Right, to win election on an anti- Congress platform and then turn around immediately after to a policy of co-operation with Congress politicians, as they did after the Travancore-Cochin elections last spring. Nevertheless, \"defence\" expenditures continue to take about two billion rupees a year, about half the central budget (and a half that the Five Year Plans do not even mention); and police expenditures mount strangely and rapidly under the direction of those who took power in the name of Gandhian non-violence. Extra- legal ordinances, (against which the bourgeoisie protested so vigorously when the British first applied them to suppressing Indian nationalism), are actually strengthened now for use against the working class; the Press Acts remain in force; and on the very eve of the first general election, important civil liberties were removed from a constitution on which the ink was scarcely dry. " }

{ "content": "All these factors together, however, will not prevent rapid disillusionment at promises unfulfilled, nor the inevitable mass protest against hunger, the ultimate Indian reality. There may come a time when the Indian army, officered by Indian bourgeois and aided by a transport system designed for an army of occupation, may not suffice. The Indian capitalists calculate, quite understandably, that it is safer to have foreigners interested so that they could be called upon to intervene with armed force in case of necessity. But note that neither special political rights, nor monopolies, nor military bases have been given to any foreign power, and that even those (France and Portugal, backed by the United States and Britain) which still have pockets on Indian soil are being vigorously pushed out, by popular action as well as by politico-diplomatic demands. Colonial status would mean foreign control of Indian raw materials and domination of the Indian market, both today unmistakably at the hands of the Indian capitalists themselves. And there is always the hope that a third world war will lead to even more fantastic profits for a neutral India-as the ruling class dreams of neutrality. The solution for India, of course, would, be socialism, which alone can create a demand rising with the supply, a solution which can be utilised not only by advanced countries but by backward countries ( as China is demonstrating) , and without which planning is futile. But just as the Indian bourgeoisie imports the latest foreign machinery for production, so, when all else fails, the latest capitalist developments in politics will also be imported. And this means fascism, in the long run the only possible alternative to socialism. Already the talk in circles that count is of the need for a \"strong man.\" And models are at hand, from nearby Thailand to faraway Egypt and Guatemala. Monthly Review (New York) , vol. 6, 1954, pp. 205-213. Nationalism, and its logical extension provincialism, are manifestations of the bourgeoisie. In the feudal period, the Peshwas defeated the Nizam more than once, but saw nothing wrong in leaving Marathi-speaking regions in the Nizam's possession. The political reorganisation of India on a linguistic basis into new states was thus an index of bourgeoisie development and competition. The in- violability of private property as guaranteed by the Constitution no longer suffices. Each local bourgeoisie wants full political control over its own hinterland to safeguard investments and to exclude powerful competitors. This was seen in the bitter strife over the creation-not even by pretence of freely expressed public opinion, but by police action--of the new, enlarged, hybrid, anomalous, bi- lingual state of Bombay. The quarrel passed off as one between Gujarathi and Maharashtrian. The real fight, however, was between the veteran, entrenched capital of Bombay city, and the newer money of Ahmedabad. The Maharashtra petty-bourgeoisie remained characteristically helpless in disunity, to the end. Those who doubt that the big bourgeoisie can do what it likes with the government might give some thought to the TELCO affairs being discussed publicly (for the first time) since September 5, 1957. The chances of fascism have not been diminished by the 1957 election. These showed that the only state government able to show an honest, incorruptible, bourgeois administration, able to raise funds without deficit finance for an honest attempt to carry out the Nehru policy was led by the communists in Kerala. In addition, this regime had at least made a start towards dealing with the most serious fundamental questions: food, agrarian production, re-division of land, employment, education, yet within the bourgeoisie framework, without touching bourgeois property relations. The dangers of this example cannot have escaped the brighter minds of the ruling class, whose cleverness far outstrips their honesty. “Exasperating Essays” Index  |  Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library" }