Side by side with the imperialist bloodbath the industrial struggle between the exploiters and the workers is intensifying
In spite of ideological chloroform administered by pulpit, press, labour "leaders' and the so-called "communist" party, the resurgent workers refuse to be quelled so far, at any rate, as the wage struggle is concerned
Strikers have been fined and gaoled wholesale, yet no sooner is one dispute "settled" than another breaks out.
In America the coal miners are on the eve of a first-class trial of strength and the 250,000 Appalachian miners now out may swell to half a million men in a matter of hours.
This struggle is being featured as a clash between Lewis and Roosevelt, but we should know from experience that Lewis will only go as far as he is pushed by the workers! He is not without an eye on the White House, and is on record as supporting a "reasonable" rate of interest to the capitalist.
This strike will be hailed as 'sabotage' by the social-patriots; but in point of fact the strike Will prove an incalculable stimulus to the German and Italian workers to do likewise! And, consider again, what repercussions there could be if this huge walk out had been for a political object as well; say for a declaration of Workers' Peace Terms!
Like Churchill in this country Roosevelt asserts that the country being at war, any strike is an attack on the government - the State.
COAL MINERS ON THE DEFENSIVE
Actually the miners are not on the offensive at all. They are only resisting the attempt to "freeze" wages; whilst living costs are steadily rising.
But the State is not a workers' State.
As Peter Kropotkin says, "There are some who like to confuse the State with Society. This confusion is to be met with even among the best thinkers, who cannot conceive society without State concentration; and thence arises the habitual reproach cast on Anarchists of wanting to 'destroy society'.
Yet to reason thus is to ignore entirely the progress made in the domain of history during the last thirty years; it is to ignore that men have lived in societies during thousands of years before having known the State; it is to forget that for European nations the State is of recent origin, that it hardly dates from the sixteenth century; it is to fail to recognise that the most glorious epochs in humanity were those in which the liberties and local life were not yet destroyed by the State and when masses of men lived in communes and free federations."
So we see, then, that the State is a power placed over society for the domination of the poor in the interests of the exploiters.
A well-worn argument of certain Marxists is that the State controls the army, navy, air force, etc, so we must get control of the State. In normal times the Labour Exchange can direct us to a particular job, but they can't decide what we'll do in a revolutionary crisis! The same applies to the forces.
The Trotskyists advocate getting into the Army, etc, when possible, to get the members on the side of the workers. Why not join the police force for the same reason? The majority of the members of the forces are members of the working class, and their outlook is just as progressive as the outlook of the best of the workers. Our job is not to get shackled with the discipline imposed on the forces. Nor should we encourage the capitulation of principle involved in joining the oppressive apparatus of Capitalist Imperialism, but from the outside by means of our propaganda - showing all sections of the working class the need for Socialism.
Anyway, the members of the forces, having strong working class connections, will in a period of crisis - develop a revolutionary outlook. This can also be encouraged from the outside by the mass solidarity of the rest of the working class. A few would-be leaders surreptitiously whispering in the barrack-roan corners will cut little ice. In army life propaganda is "verboten", and soldiers have to do what they are told. Revolutionary conditions, however, will make the soldiers as well as the workers think fast and to the point.
After the Paris Commune, Karl Marx and Engels admitted that sane parts of the Communist Manifesto had became antiquated. They said: "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machine and wield it for its own purpose." (Quoted by Lenin in State and Revolution).
What are the working class to do then? Smash the Capitalist State? Yes. But are they to set up another government which may also became tyrannical?
Marx in a letter dated 12th April 1871 to Kugelman said, "If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will find that I say that the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer as before; to transfer the bureaucratic military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it; and this is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent."
On page 73 of State and Revolution, Lenin says, "while the state exists there is no freedom. When freedom exists there will be no state.
On page 87 Lenin explaining the difference between Marxists and Anarchists, says that the Marxists want to conquer the state then abolish whereas the Anarchists want to smash it right away. Lenin goes on to say, "In this controversy it is Pannekoek and not Kautsky who represents ~ for it was Marx who taught that it was not enough for the proletariat simply to conquer state power in the sense that the old state apparatus passes into new hands, but that the proletariat must smash, break this apparatus and substitute a new one for it."
So both sides agree to the smashing of the state, but Lenin covers up his position, his power complex, by saying the workers will "substitute a new one". The workers are going to overthrow one state ~ then allow themselves to be 'bossed' by another power?
Lenin criticising Kautsky, when he quoted as saying that as we will still have bureaucrats under Socialism we will still have bureaucracy replies by saying, "...they will cease to be such (bureaucrats) in proportion as, in addition to the election of officials, the principle of recall at any time is introduced, and as the salaries are reduced to the level of the wages of the average worker, and as the parliamentary institutions are superseded by working bodies, executive and legislative at the same time." On this basis therefore, it is clear that we have not yet got Socialism in Russia. Trotskyists and Leninists of course, attack Stalinism as a departure from Bolshevism, but the workers of Russia were "bossed around" as far back as 1921.
Trotsky in his book Dictatorship Versus Democracy, states on page 142, "The Labour State considers itself empowered to send every worker to the place where his work is necessary."
They do this in Britain today; but do not pretend it is in the name of Socialism.
The "withering away" state has failed to wither and on the contrary has became more and more unrepresentative and tyrannical.
True, of course, the failure of the European revolution to materialise is partly responsible for this and we beer a large portion of that responsibility.
But "party" Marxism, however, is a contributory cause giving, as it does, a psychological cover for the dictatorship complex, latent in most politicians.
The Workers' Revolutionary League accepts the probability of a "transition period" but insists that the workers control their own destiny by an administration with an Industrial base, subject to recall from below.
Forward to WORKERS' INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC: Classless, Stateless Society.
(February-May 1943)
Back to the Introduction to Part One
This page hosted by
Get your own Free Home Page