Click here for Exit the Cuckoo's Nest's posting standards and aims.
Click here to sign the People's Proclamation and send it to everyone you know.
Source: Red Fire
Proletarian Political Revolution: Myth and Reality
25-05-2023: An essential element of the lexicon of Orthodox Trotskyism is the concept of the proletarian political revolution. From 1933, Russian revolutionary leader LD Trotsky (co-leader with VI Lenin of the October Revolution of 1917) and his supporters called for a proletarian political revolution in the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), after conservative bureaucrats led by JV Stalin had taken power via a political counter-revolution from 1924. This led to the epoch-making betrayal of the Stalinist ruled Comintern (Communist International) allowing and even enabling the ascension to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. A political revolution is the forcible overthrow of the ruling political caste which does not aim to overthrow the underlying relations of production nor the state. In relation to the USSR in the 1930s and beyond, a proletarian political revolution had the goal of the removal of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the restoration of workers’ democracy.[1]
Trotsky foresaw that either: (1) the workers remove the Stalinist excrescence sitting atop the Soviet workers’ state which would open the road to socialism (alongside international developments) OR (2) the Stalinist bureaucracy retains political power which would lead to the restoration of capitalism to the advantage of imperialism. Unfortunately, in 1991, this prognosis was confirmed in the negative via a capitalist counter-revolution which destroyed the USSR. This epoch changing event verified the Trotskyist analysis that Stalinism – the bureaucratic stranglehold over economic, political and cultural life in the USSR, the betrayal of revolutionary struggle and the appeasement of imperialism internationally[2] – was at the very least a grotesque perversion of socialism. At the same time, the Trotskyists maintained that despite a monstrous bureaucratic degeneration, the then Soviet state remained the historical instrument of the working class insofar as it assured the development of the economy and culture on the basis of nationalised means of production.[3]
The call for proletarian political revolution in the USSR, as opposed to a new “socialist” revolution which overthrows the state, was a recognition of the dual role of Stalinism. Trotsky wrote that the Stalinist ruling caste would today defend the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (to use Marxian terms), as long as there is no Marxist leadership currently existing or forthcoming as yet – but this petty-bourgeois caste would do so with methods which would lead to the victory of the capitalist class enemy sooner or later.[4] Trotsky himself did not live to see the emergence of workers’ states in Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam, Korea, Laos and Cuba due to his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. Even though these subsequent workers’ states were bureaucratically deformed from their inception, (as opposed to being first healthy, then later suffering a political counter-revolution), authentic Trotskyists extended the call to bring about proletarian political revolution to these states, as part of their battles with other wavering Trotskyists in the Fourth International which had been founded in 1938. Today, with the almost unstoppable rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the world’s most powerful deformed workers’ state (and perhaps even the foremost world power), the position of defending these states while simultaneously working towards proletarian political revolutions, remains crucial for the working class internationally if capitalism is to be overthrown worldwide.
Who claims to uphold proletarian political revolution?
The interpretation and application of the defence of workers’ states while calling for proletarian political revolution was pioneered by the Spartacist League[5] (SL) and subsequently upheld by their off shoots such as the Internationalist Group[6] (IG), the International Bolshevik Tendency[7] (IBT) and the Bolshevik Tendency[8] (BT). The Workers League agrees that the SL has made important contributions to the development of Leninist-Trotskyism, to which workers are somewhat in debt. However, we argue that the SL/IG/IBT/BT have always misinterpreted and misapplied Trotsky’s eminently correct call for proletarian political revolutions – which today still needs to be applied to the five remaining deformed workers’ states, viz., the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Laos People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR) and the Republic of Cuba (RoC). When put to the test historically, the SL/IG/IBT/BT imagined what were essentially reactionary political upheavals to be bona-fide examples of proletarian political revolution.
They were, and remain, mistaken. Moreover, these programmatic errors were so fundamental that they formed a barrier between the SL/IG/IBT/BT and authentic Leninist-Trotskyism. Arguably, they became one of the sources of their epic capitulation to the pressure of capitalist imperialism from March 2020 onwards, when all of them wilted before corporate state power in the name of a fraudulent “pandemic”, under the rubric of “Covid”. The SL/IG/IBT/BT, along with almost the entire political left, effectively merged with the state of finance capital and helped the ruling class impose scarcely imaginable political repression against the working class, offering “public health” as the flimsiest excuse. The capitalist state, which they swear they oppose, was supposedly now one which is benevolent and which extends every effort to “save people’s lives” ! Needless to say, such positions were a clear indicator of the bridging of the vast gulf which separates labour from capital, and no working-class struggle or indeed working-class politics at all would be possible if this was the case.
Primarily, where the SL/IG/IBT/BT raise false alarms about supposed proletarian political revolutions, or at least attempted ones, is in relation to four significant events during the 20th century. These are: Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 and China (Tiananmen Square in Beijing) in 1989. When pressed, the SL/IG/IBT/BT will admit that none of these actions had a Marxist or socialist party or organization leading it, or anything even approximating such. Nonetheless, they claim that a Leninist leadership could have emerged out of these uprisings, and thus it was the duty of workers in those countries and internationally to rally behind it, to solidarise with the protagonists, and assist them to achieve what may result in the removal of Stalinist or Maoist (after Mao Zedong) bureaucracies and the restoration of a much more socialist path in Eastern Europe and the PRC.
To be sure, let us grant that under some circumstances, a Leninist leadership could potentially arise out of a political movement in a deformed workers’ state which is genuinely left-wing, pro-working class, and anti-imperialist. For this to be the case, though, there would need to be very clear indications that the political demands raised and the political forces involved had no illusions in Western capitalism, were ardently pro-socialist, and were crystal clear about only removing a hardened (Stalinist) bureaucracy while defending a largely nationalised and planned economy and the proletarian apparatus of state power. They would have to have no connections whatever to official and unofficial organs of Western imperialist power, would seek to at least appeal to real workers’ movements internationally, and convey that they are a part of a worldwide movement to end global capitalism. In short, they would need to be more pro-Marxist than the lip service the Stalinists in the deformed workers’ state paid to their woefully distorted “Marxism”. Unfortunately, not only was this not the case, the political leaderships of the events in East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 and Beijing in 1989 were the polar opposite of how they are portrayed in the Western corporate media, and subsequently by the SL/IG/IBT/BT. This is not to say that some participants did not have legitimate grievances against bureaucratic and Stalinist rule, or that there were no grounds for protest. Wherever Stalinism holds the levers of state power, there remains a need to remove it via a real proletarian political revolution.
German Democratic Republic (GDR) 1953
The German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) was one of the deformed workers’ states which emerged out of the victory of the USSR over the Nazis in World War II despite Stalinist leadership. In 1952, the West rejected Stalin’s offer to reunify East and West Germany by a national election. In response, Stalin ordered the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) to carry out a rapid statification of industry and the collectivisation of agriculture in the East. The SED was formed out of a merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1946. In April 1953, shortly after the death of Stalin, SED leader Walter Ulbricht appealed for aid from the USSR. The Stalinist Soviet leadership refused but advised that in order to persuade the West not to integrate West Germany into NATO, the SED should make huge concessions to capitalism – such as returning much of the economy to private hands. The SED leadership baulked at this and decided instead that the 10% increase in industrial quotas, which had previously been implemented, remain in place to pay for the concessions.[9]
Tensions erupted on June 16-17, when East German workers at the Henningsdorf steel plant north of Berlin went on strike against the quotas. They marched into East Berlin, and the demonstrations extended into other towns such as Magdeburg.[10] One of the demands was for an end to the price rises of basic goods, but other political demands soon became prominent. They demanded the resignation of the government – to be replaced by “free elections”, i.e., elections in which anyone including pro-capitalist parties and candidates could run. They demanded the dissolution of the army, and the abolition of all borders with the West. In the process, they tore Soviet propaganda down from the walls, and some school children defenestrated Russian textbooks.[11] Even though there were calls for a “workers’ victory” in the “free elections”, the thrust was for reunification with West Germany on the basis of capitalism, not socialism.
The rioting was suppressed within two days, with Soviet assistance. It is telling that after this, June 17 became a holiday in West Germany, notably labeled as the “Day of German Unity”. The West clearly saw these events as those which were aimed at the restoration of capitalism in all of Germany, and an end to the incipient socialistic workers’ state in the East. The liberal Jacobin publication blithely compares June 17 1953 to the “mass movements” in 1989 (!).[12] Yet these “movements” in 1989 brought down the entirety of the GDR, and collapsed it into capitalist West Germany, which ironically was the main driver of June 16-17, 1953. The overturn of any form of socialistic rule, whether in the form of a healthy or a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state, is certainly the forever driving aim of liberals such as those at Jacobin, but it is directly antithetical to what Marxists should ever advocate.
What was the response of US imperialism to this supposedly pro-socialist workers movement? Washington immediately acted to prolong the uprising in order to build support for the West. They did this by beginning a large scale “food relief” program in West Berlin, which commenced on July 27, 1953 and continued until October that year. The US government pledged $15 million (not a small amount in 1953) towards “Eisenhower packages” (after US President Dwight D Eisenhower) distributed through distribution centres in West Berlin. They were accessible, however, to anyone who could gain access through East Berlin. The packages contained lard, peas, flour and pasteurized milk.[13] In effect, it was almost a replay of the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49. Understandably, this ramped up tensions between the West and with the East and the USSR still further. It should be needless to say that if an “uprising” has the open support of the highest levels of US imperialism in its battles against the then USSR, then it can scarcely be one for which workers and socialists should ever be spruiking. Despite this, the SL quote the US Socialist Workers Party (SWP) at the time for hailing June 17 1953 as an “East German Proletarian Uprising”.[14] If this was the case, Washington would of course want nothing to do with it.
Hungary 1956
Of all the ostensible proletarian political revolutions, the one that is most widely misrepresented as a flat out “revolution” are the events which took place in Hungary in 1956. According to almost all wings of political opinion from anarchism on the “left” to the US state department on the right, workers in Hungary in 1956 waged a heroic battle for either a “workers’ revolution” or fought for “freedom, democracy and human rights”. From the outset, this should ring giant alarm bells. While a proletarian political revolution in a deformed workers’ state is of vital importance, if both left-wing and right-wing anti-communists hail an “uprising” it is a clear indicator of their joint opposition to the “dictatorship of the proletariat” – the rule of the working class crystallised in a workers’ state which guards the major means of production and administers a planned economy. However distorted by bureaucratic Stalinism this was in Hungary at the time, workers make a fatal error if they join forces with those opposing incipient socialism from the right. In this case, as in others, most anarchists, so-called “left-communists”, liberals, and the SL/IG/IBT/BT traipse down the garden path hand in hand with imperialism against “Soviet totalitarianism”.
Peter Fryer was a member of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), and a correspondent for its then newspaper the Daily Worker. He reported on the events in Hungary 1956 as an eyewitness, but soon found that his reports were being rejected by the CPB and was subsequently suspended from the party for ‘publishing attacks on the Communist Party in the capitalist press’. His response was to write the book Hungarian Tragedy,[15] in which he outlined his support for the Hungarian “uprising”, believing it to be a genuine pro-socialist movement against Stalinism. Fryer was mistaken about the political character of the events, misunderstanding the political motivations of its proponents. In amongst rhetorical calls for “freedom” and the removal of statues of Stalin (an entirely legitimate demand) was a political program which clearly aimed at the overthrow of socialistic rule entirely. Notwithstanding the Stalinism of the CPB, in practice they were correct to reject Fryer’s reports on Hungary and question the trajectory of his intentions.
Fryer’s errors are the same as those made by the SL/IG/IBT/BT ever since. A political revolution in a deformed workers’ state has to be a proletarian political revolution – and this is why Trotsky emphasised that only a political revolution which was assuredly proletarian in political character could, if it succeeded, restore a genuinely socialist path forward. The SL/IG/IBT/BT will occasionally admit the presence of politically reactionary forces – and even fascists – in the events in Hungary 1956. However, they still insist that, overall, it was an uprising only against the stifling political repression which Stalinism practices. It was not, they aver, an attempt to overthrow the economic and political basis of socialistic rule in Hungary. As we will see, on this issue they have never removed their rose-coloured glasses.
After the death of Stalin in March 1953, there were some signs of change in Hungary. In July 1953, Matyas Rakosi was deposed as prime minister in favour of Imre Nagy, who pledged a number of easing reforms such as an end to the forced development of heavy industry, more consumer goods and the release of political prisoners. However, Nagy was himself dismissed from office in 1955 and expelled from the ruling party, which reinstated Rakosi who resumed the previous pro-Stalinist course as before. However, he was then again dismissed in July 1956, to be replaced by Erno Gero.[16] Yet Gero was as much a “pro-Moscow” hardliner as Rakosi. Allegedly Nikita Krushchev’s “secret speech” delivered at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956 emboldened Hungarians to demand more changes, leading to the “uprising” of October-November.
Fryer writes that the first demonstration was entirely peaceful – apart from the tearing down of red stars wherever they saw them! He claims that this was not a desire for the restoration of capitalism,[17] but for an end to the Soviet “occupation”. This is a dubious assertion, to say the least. It is plausible that the school children in Hungary were taught about the supposed infallibility of Stalin, and that Russian was the only foreign language taught. Yet other demands advanced by the uprising reveal more about who they were. They demanded the return of Imre Nagy, the withdrawal of Soviet troops, along with academic freedom, freedom of the press and “free elections”.[18] Free elections, in this context, was a demand for anti-communist and pro-capitalist forces to be “free” to run in them.
Fryer also admits that a part of the uprising was seized with a lust to exterminate Communists. He alludes to the fact that some innocent people were lynched to death in this anti-communist violence, yet he claims these excesses were ultimately a result of suppression by the AVH (secret police).[19] This is another very dubious assertion. Even some anarchist supporters of the uprising do admit that it was characterised by nationalism, anti-semitism (Rakosi and three other top Communist leaders were of Jewish origin[20]), that open fascists took part, and that they made plain appeals to Western imperialist governments to intervene on their side. Above all, the uprising put forth a demand for the economy to be run by “specialists”, i.e., that there be a total abandonment of a planned economy.[21] In addition, the demand for the withdrawal of Soviet troops could only have benefited NATO[22] and this was most likely the intention of the “insurgents”. In fact, the notorious CIA in those years had only recently begun its anti-Soviet activities in many countries around the world, as the first Cold War began in earnest. This included the encouraging, financing and arming of extremely right-wing groups to gauge the response of the USSR. The CIA’s Radio Free Europe at the time significantly increased its broadcasts directed towards Hungary leading up to the events in 1956.[23]
The “rebels” often cut a hole in the Hungarian flag where the pro-socialist coat of arms was, as part of their demand to replace it with the Kossuth coat of arms.[24] Again, we can assess the overall political character of the uprising by the response of Washington. At the time, the US representatives led calls in the United Nations (UN) to condemn the Soviet intervention, but they also created a special immigration quota for refugees from the purported “communist crackdown”. By May 1957, more than 30 000 Hungarians had settled in the US through that program.[25] Needless to say, the US government is hardly going to welcome pro-Marxist revolutionaries! In 2006, on the 50th anniversary of 1956, former US President George W Bush visited Budapest and compared the Hungarian events to the struggles of Iraq for “democracy”.[26] This was barely three years after Bush led the criminal invasion of Iraq which led to at least 1 million dead, and a country which has yet to recover.
If this was not enough, on the 60th anniversary of 1956, NATO held a special commemoration event at its headquarters in Brussels. Secretary General Jens Stoltenburg stated that this chapter of Hungarian history shows that “freedom is stronger than oppression and democracy is stronger than dictatorship”.[27] These words were a cruel hypocrisy then, and even more so now that NATO is pushing the world to the edge of a nuclear catastrophe with its proxy war on Russia via Ukraine, governed by a pro-NATO regime infested with Nazism. To reiterate, if NATO as the strongest pillar of US led imperialism is among the most enthusiastic backers of your “revolution”, it can scarcely contain even vaguely progressive content. The pro-worker, pro-socialist element of the Hungarian events in 1956 is a myth propagated by those who are covering for their advocacy of a veritable counter-revolution. The SL/IG/IBT/BT are capable of rejecting the political pressure of imperialism on a number of issues, but when it really counts, they come up short.
Czechoslovakia 1968
If workers cannot rally behind Hungary 1956, surely they can laud the so-called “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia in 1968, because it aimed at “Socialism with a Human Face” ? This is what the SL/IG/IBT/BT claim, following the lead of the Western corporate media. Unfortunately, the Prague Spring had the same revanchist goal as Hungary 1956, but it did so under the false cover that its goal was “humane” socialism. Alongside innocuous sounding demands for “less censorship” and “freedom of speech” was the barely hidden drive for the restoration of an economy operating on private ownership of the means of production. To be sure, the demands for less censorship and for free speech would be progressive and even pro-socialist in a deformed workers’ state if they were aimed only at Stalinist political and bureaucratic control. Yet in the Prague Spring, they were coupled with the demand for the “liberalisation” of the economy, i.e., the return of capitalism.
The so-called Prague Spring began on January 5, 1968 with the election of Alexander Dubček as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC).[28] Known as a Slovak reformist within the party, Dubček had pushed aside the pro-Stalin hardliner Antonin Novotny. Yet Dubček was also a Stalinist, who later switched sides to openly abandon socialism following the lead of many former Eastern Bloc “Communist” politicians. During the first half of 1968, Czechoslovakia was awash with the talk of “democratisation” and “liberalisation”, but this was in the sphere of culture, not economics. Dubček did pledge that Czechoslovakia would remain within the Warsaw Pact (Soviet defensive alliance against NATO) and the Comecon (Communist Economies), but this did not reassure the ruling Soviet bureaucrats. Despite the Stalinism of the Soviet leadership, it did have reasonable fears. For, alongside demands for less censorship, freedom of speech and a reduction in the activities of the secret police, were demands for the legalisation of political opposition groups and a reintroduction of capitalist elements into the Czechoslovakian economy.[29]
In practice, this meant allowing political parties who would agitate for capitalism, i.e., the overthrow of the economic basis of the deformed workers’ state. In addition, the overt demand for the reintroduction of capitalist “elements” into the economy would, if carried out, quickly erode the socialist pillars. Fidel Castro, the petty-bourgeois anti-imperialist leader of the then recent Cuban revolution, despite his own interpretation of Stalinism, made two speeches in August 1968 supporting the Warsaw Pact intervention to suppress the “Prague Spring”. He recognised that a “liberal fury” had been unleashed by Dubček, with political slogans advanced in favour of the development of parties which were openly anti-Marxist.[30] What would be acceptable within a format of proletarian political revolution, would be a demand for the legalisation of parties with a different interpretation of Marxism to that of the Stalinists. Yet that was not Castro’s understanding. Nevertheless, while Castro backed the military intervention of the Warsaw Pact, he maintained that it was a violation of the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia.[31] For this reason, the Soviet Stalinist leadership did not publish Castro’s two speeches.
While the talk within Czechoslovakia during the first half of 1968 centred on the more cultural and political “reforms”, the Dubček leadership was widening and deepening “free enterprise”, was granting material incentives to privileged layers of the population, and was subordinating central planning to the capitalist market.[32] In April 1968, Ota Sik was named vice premier and economics minister under Dubček.[33] Sik urged the creation of a “realistic” price system based on the market, which had previously made Czechoslovakia one of the world’s most egalitarian nations. For Sik and Dubček, the “market” was necessary to end the “absurdity” of relatively equal wages.[34] Sik proposed that unprofitable firms no longer be subsidised, despite admitting that this would cause social problems and some unemployment. Sik also suggested that Czechoslovakia should join the International Monetary Fund (IMF).[35] Of note is the fact that the New York Times of May 18, 1968, reported that Dubček had the support of the intellectuals, journalists, artists, students and the urban middle class, but not the workers and peasants who would be hit hardest by the “reforms”.
Dubček’s foreign policy was also unquestionably in favour of US imperialism, and anti-Soviet, despite his words otherwise. One of the first aims was to cut off Czechoslovakia’s aid to the international socialistic allies of the USSR, claiming that economic problems were caused by some shipments of food and weapons to Cuba.[36] At that time, Cuba was only a few years into its revolution, and needed assistance to stare down and repel the hostile advances of the USA, only 140 miles to its north. An indicator of Dubček’s foreign trade direction was the negotiation to purchase $200 million worth of Iranian oil, whereas since 1948 all Czechoslovakian oil had been bought from the USSR. At that time, prior to the Iranian revolution in 1979, all Iranian oil was US controlled.[37] As Trotsky emphasised, it is the international outlook which primarily defines one’s politics, not views on domestic affairs. The international direction of the so-called “Prague Spring”, and of Dubček himself, was pro-USA and anti-USSR at the height of the West’s anti-Soviet Cold War despite Dubček’s words about remaining loyal to socialism.
In the end, Dubček simply abandoned even his words in favour of socialism, and heartily joined forces with the full-throated counter-revolution in 1989. Absurdly dubbed the “Velvet Revolution”, the Czechoslovak deformed workers’ state was overturned and capitalism, with all of its inequality and exploitation of working people, was restored. Dubček received applause from the pro-US crowd on November 24, 1989, when he appeared alongside the ultra-reactionary pro-capitalist future president Václav Havel on the Melantrich building balcony overlooking Wenceslas Square. In 1990, he gave the commencement address at The American University in Washington DC in his first visit to the USA.[38] It is superfluous to say that this would not be possible unless Washington was sure they had on their hands someone who had totally rejected his “socialist” background to adopt the dark depths of reaction dressed up as “freedom and democracy” offered by the West.
What was the response of NATO to the Czechoslovakian events in 1968? NATO was following all events closely since the January 5, 1968 election of Dubček but was eventually unable to prevent the Warsaw Pact military intervention later that year. Some pro-Western pundits dubbed this “the politics of collective inaction”,[39] though declassified documents that came to light decades later indeed revealed that the US and British governments were seriously discussing plans for a military conflict with the USSR in the wake of the Warsaw Pact intervention.[40] In 2008, NATO hosted a special display at its headquarters in Brussels devoted to the Prague Spring.[41] If the SL/IG/IBT/BT seriously claim that the Prague Spring was an incipient proletarian political revolution, which aimed at the refounding of genuine socialism enlivened by Marxist theory – they need to give a detailed explanation of why they exalt this “uprising” alongside its veneration by Washington and NATO.
Tiananmen Square (Beijing) 1989
If the SL/IG/IBT/BT did not learn the lessons of the political consequences of taking the same position as NATO and Western imperialism in previous “uprisings” which they grossly mischaracterised as potential “proletarian political revolutions”, they doubled down with similar errors in relation to the events in Beijing in 1989. Joining hands once again with Washington, they wrung their hands about an alleged “massacre” of protestors in Tiananmen Square on June 4. They continue on this misguided path even after 2011, when Wikileaks (hardly a Marxist organisation) revealed secret cables from the US Embassy in Beijing at the time which confirmed that there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square in June 1989.[42] Despite confirmation from the US Embassy (!) that there was no “massacre”, the BT at the time loudly denounced this non-existent “massacre”, and claimed that while the “democracy” movement was contradictory, it was “clearly not anti-socialist in its overall character”.[43] The BT is a much belated split from the IBT which, after more than a decade, correctly insisted that Russia is not an imperialist state according to Lenin’s analysis of capitalism having arrived in its final stage of finance-monopoly decay. While we can admit that not every protestor in Beijing in 1989 was explicitly anti-socialist, it is clear that the leadership of these actions, in cahoots with familiar world powers, bitterly opposed socialistic rule.
In practice, there were two sets of protests which began in Beijing in April 1989. The one led by students began as a type of memorial to the passing away of former Communist Party of China (CPC) General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who spearheaded many of the “market reforms”, and attempted to push them further. Hu Yaobang was CPC General Secretary until 1987, when he was demoted by the party for fears that he was taking on too much of a bourgeois-liberal agenda.[44] That these students were mourning the passing of the leader of the pro-capitalist wing of the CPC at that time, despite still claiming to support socialism, speaks volumes. These students shunned and excluded workers who tried to join the protests. Then there was also another group of workers who set up barricades in Muxidi, an area about five kilometres from Tiananmen Square. But there was much which was suspicious about this group of “workers”.
In Muxidi, these “protestors” set up barricades in the street with demands which appeared to be separate to those of the students in Tiananmen Square. These elements initiated extreme violence when PLA (People’s Liberation Army) units began clearing these barricades to open the streets to traffic. They were armed with hundreds, if not thousands, of petrol bombs at a time when petrol was being rationed in Beijing. They hurled these at PLA vehicles, setting them on fire. Many soldiers were burnt to death if they could not escape the flames. Other soldiers were beaten to death, and their corpses were strung up and hung from the vehicle remains. Most of these rioters sported headbands, and some others tried to prevent them from killing the PLA soldiers, who were unarmed. More than 1000 vehicles were torched, including military trucks, armoured cars, police cars and public buses.[45]
This murderous violence cannot in any meaningful sense be described as a “protest”. It is also unlikely that perhaps thousands of petrol bombs were brought to these actions without assistance from wealthy benefactors outside of China. In addition, there were cases of the rioters stripping rifles from soldiers unable to stop them due to crowd numbers. Some of them were thus armed as the PLA approached the centre of Beijing. Ten and twenty years later, such actions are clear indicators of US government sponsored “colour revolutions”, but in 1989 the term colour revolution was unknown. It is now known that the US government funded Voice of America (VoA) was involved in pumping pro-Western propaganda into China at a time when there was no restriction on such activities. From mid-April when the protests began, VoA increased its coverage to 11 hours per day, in Chinese languages. These broadcasts were targeted to some 2000 satellite dishes within China, many of them at that time operated by the PLA.[46] While it is true that some participants in the protests were there for legitimate reasons, such as demands for less inequality and less government corruption, the outside interference and deliberate invocations to violence indicate something much more nefarious was afoot.
There were clashes between the PLA and “protestors” bent on violence, and most often the PLA soldiers suffered more than those who assaulted them. Yet there was no massacre of unarmed students in Tiananmen Square. This was a myth propagated by the Western corporate media to win public sympathy for counter-revolution in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).[47] The students themselves erected a huge Statue of Liberty in the middle of Tiananmen Square, signaling that their loyalties were firmly with capitalism and with US led imperialism in particular. They proclaimed that the protests would continue until the government was ousted.[48] If this does not sound like a proletarian political revolution – the removal of the political control of a Stalinist bureaucracy and the establishment of workers councils to strengthen socialism – it is because it was not anything of the sort.
The SL/IG/IBT/BT will grant that there were ultra-reactionary elements involved in Tiananmen Square in 1989 – but they then go on to claim that, nonetheless, a pro-socialist leadership could have emerged out of the protests. While it is true that we cannot expect a proletarian political revolution in a deformed workers’ state to have Leninist leadership from its inception, it is fanciful in the extreme to imagine that even progressive outcomes can result from a movement with a leadership of pro-capitalist, pro-Western students and lynching rioters armed with petrol bombs! Arguably the most prominent leader of Tiananmen Square 1989 was Han Dongfang. For his role in the riots, he spent two years in prison in China, after which he fled to the US, and later to Hong Kong. There he became the long-term Executive Director of the China Labour Bulletin,[49] and has a weekly radio show on Radio Free Asia, the open media arm of the US government attempting to eliminate all traces of socialism in Asia.
The IG even recognise the role of Han Dongfang and admit that the founder of the so-called “Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation” is now the “free Union” spokesperson for US government backed Radio Liberty, as part of what is dubbed the “AFL-CIA”.[50] The IG – ‘better than SL pristine Trotskyism’ – admit this, but still claims some kind of pro-socialist direction could have been achieved from Tiananmen Square 1989. Yet it was not only Han Dongfang whose loyalties were with US imperialism. In 2014, the Financial Times carried a report on Operation Yellowbird, which was the evacuation from China of some 800 leaders of the 1989 protests to the West, orchestrated by the United Kingdom’s MI6 and the CIA. Many of them were handed prestigious scholarships at Ivy League Universities in the USA. One of these leaders, Chai Ling, admitted in an interview that the intention of the protests was to provoke the Chinese government into causing a “river of blood” throughout Tiananmen Square, but they were not able to say that at the time to the people who joined the protests.[51] Try as they might, the SL/IG/IBT/BT cannot identify even one leader of the 1989 protests in Beijing who was not an ally or agent of the West, who was not pro-capitalist, or whose aim was to save socialism. It is hard to believe they will ever find them.
Today, the role of hedge fund billionaire anti-socialist regime change specialist George Soros is relatively well known. There is scarcely a colour-revolution attempt these days which occurs without the deep involvement of Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), usually hiding behind a “Non-Government Organisation” or a “Civil Society Organisation”. Back then, Soros had opened the Fund for the Reform and Opening of China (China Fund) in Beijing in 1986, at that time with the endorsement of the CPC. However, barely two months after the Tiananmen Square actions in 1989, the Chinese government moved in and arrested at least 14 staff of the China Fund, which they had identified as a base of foreign subversion.[52] The very name of Soros’ fund gives the game away. The “opening up” of China means in fact the overthrow of the PRC state, by utilising politically reactionary elements on the ground. Soros and his operations were effectively banned from the Chinese mainland after 1989, but the OSF remained active in Hong Kong. In 2019, Soros actually cheered the ultra-violent Blackshirt riots in Hong Kong as “the most successful rebellion”.[53]
For actual proletarian political revolutions
Giving thanks for small mercies, the SL (and the IG/IBT/BT) correctly identify the 2019 riots in Hong Kong as a “counterrevolutionary rampage”.[54] Yet these so-called authentic Trotskyists cannot see the same forces carrying out the same work in Beijing 30 year prior. Nor can they see the covert (or overt) hand of imperialism in action in Germany 1953, Hungary 1956 or in Czechoslovakia 1968. After identifying the class enemy in Hong Kong in 2019, barely a year later they collapsed at a stroke when global capitalism launched a civil war against the working class under the false guise of a “Covid pandemic”, along with almost every other left party they had criticised for decades. It is ludicrous to claim, in the manner of the SL/IG/IBT/BT, that imperialist finance-monopoly capital was primarily concerned about the effects of “Covid” on the welfare of the working-class and was motivated by “public health”. The SL/IG/IBT/BT demonstrated an utter abandonment of the Marxist theory of the state as a tool of the property-owning classes as explained by the great Marxist leaders from Engels to Lenin. Neither the pre-capitalist feudal monarchies of centuries past, nor the modern imperialist rulers of today, have any concern for the working classes – particularly those deemed superfluous and disposable, such as the aged and the ailing. Arguably, the primary cause for their world historic capitulation in 2020 was their de-facto alliance with imperialism in 1953, 1956, 1968 and 1989. Today, there is little reason to believe that the SL/IG/IBT/BT can ever recover.
Instead of impossible expectations that a genuine Leninist leadership could emerge from “progressive” forces that were in word and deed allying with capitalism and even directly operating as agents of imperialism, the proper call would have been to build an authentic Leninist vanguard party on the ground, intervening in any public forums and workplaces that are open to the formation of workers’ councils while guarding the gains of a nationalised and planned economy, such as relatively full employment, provided healthcare and education, and so on. This would expose the Stalinist misleaders as conservative bureaucrats blocking the path to better conditions domestically as well as betraying international socialism. In addition, demands to exclude and remove reactionary pro-capitalist individuals and parties from a surge towards workers’ councils would need to be paramount. Obviously, pro-socialist workers could never participate in any chaotic violence or political terror aimed at disruption or destablisation – much less overthrow – of the state, however bureaucratised it may be.
None of this obviates the dire necessity of proletarian political revolutions in the remaining deformed workers’ states, most especially in the largest and most powerful one – the PRC. Yet the hard facts are that while Trotsky’s pioneering analysis and fundamental corrective remains critical, a genuine proletarian political revolution in a deformed workers’ state has never been attempted. This indicates that it is most likely that without socialist revolutions in the West, and the tremendous boost towards international socialism which this would entail, the working class in China, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos and Cuba will continue to identify socialism with the particular form of Stalinism which maintains political rule in their respective locales. This is not absolute, and history will surely provide a counterexample which may disprove this prognosis. Regardless, the urgent necessity of forging internationally linked Marxist vanguard parties anchored in the theory of Permanent Revolution remains critical, to drive towards socialist revolutions in the West, and proletarian political revolutions in the East. An alliance of workers’ states is but the first step towards the liberation of humanity from all forms of oppression and exploitation, and the consigning of antagonistic classes to history.
Workers League
E: workersleague@protonmail.com
[1] www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm#political-revolution (18-05-2023)
[2] www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/1990/trotskyism.html (18-05-2023)
[3] www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/02/ws-therm-bon.htm (18-05-2023)
[4] www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/10/sovstate.htm (18-05-2023)
[5] www.icl-fi.org (18-05-2023)
[6] www.internationalist.org (18-05-2023)
[7] www.bolshevik.org (18-05-2023)
[8] www.bolsheviktendency.org/ (18-05-2023)
[9] www.libcom.org/article/east-germany-june-1953 (19-05-2023)
[10] www.adst.org/2013/06/the-east-berlin-uprising-june-16-17-1953/ (19-05-2023)
[11] www.jacobin.com/2016/06/june-17-east-germany-gdr-berlin-uprising-strike/ (19-05-2023)
[12] Ibid, 11.
[13] www.history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/east-german-uprising (19-05-2023)
[14] www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1135/qotw.html (19-05-2023)
[15] www.archive.org/details/HungarianTragedy (20-05-2023)
[16] www.britannica.com/place/Hungary/The-Revolution-of-1956 (20-05-2023)
[17] www.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-fryer-the-hungarian-tragedy (20-05-2023)
[18] Ibid, 17.
[19] Ibid, 17.
[20] www.jta.org/2006/10/25/lifestyle/1956-crises-decimated-two-communities (20-05-2023)
[21] www.americanhungarianfederation.org/1956/1956_hungarian_revolution.htm (20-05-2023)
[22] www.thesanghakommune.org/2017/03/15/ussr-defeats-fascism-hungarian-counter-revolution-insurrection-1956/ (20-05-2023)
[23] www.wiki2.org/en/CIA_activities_in_Hungary (20-05-2023)
[24] www.freedomfirst1956.com/the-16-points-that-demanded-a-democratic-hungary/ (20-05-2023)
[25] www.2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/lw/107186.htm (20-05-2023)
[26] www.rferl.org/a/1069384.html (20-05-2023)
[27] www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_136339.htm (20-05-2023)
[28] http://www.kafkadesk.org/2021/01/05/on-this-day-in-1968-the-prague-spring-began-with-the-election-of-alexander-dubcek/ (21-05-2023)
[29] www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z9hnqhv/revision/3 (21-05-2023)
[30] www.trotskyist.blogspot.com/2008/02/castro-on-czechoslovakia-1968.html (21-05-2023)
[31] www.walterlippmann.com/hansen-castro-czechoslovakia-1968.html (21-05-2023)
[32] www.marxists.architexturez.net/history/etol/writers/marcy/czech/czech02.html (21-05-2023)
[33] www.britannica.com/biography/Ota-Sik (21-05-2023)
[34] www.workers.org/marcy/cd/samczech/czech/czech04.htm (21-05-2023)
[35] Ibid, 33.
[36] Ibid, 33.
[37] Ibid, 33.
[38] www.private-prague-guide.com/article/alexander-dubcek-the-leader-of-the-1968-prague-spring/ (21-05-2023)
[39] www.jstor.org/stable/26925030 (21-05-2023)
[40] www.english.radio.cz/nato-braced-european-war-soviets-after-1968-invasion-8045620 (21-05-2023)
[41] www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_43631.htm?selectedLocale=en (21-05-2023)
[42] www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html (22-05-2023)
[43] www.bolsheviktendency.org/2020/06/03/for-workers-political-revolution-in-china/ (22-05-2023)
[44] Baker, A., Socialistic Rule and Workers Struggle in China, (Trotskyist Platform), 2014.
[45] www.greanvillepost.com/2019/09/25/tiananmen-square-the-failure-of-an-american-instigated-1989-color-revolution/ (22-05-2023)
[46] www.greanvillepost.com/2014/06/04/what-really-happened-in-tiananmen-square-25-years-ago-today/ (23-05-2023)
[47] www.workers.org/2022/06/64607/ (23-05-2023)
[48] www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/ (23-05-2023)
[49] www.clb.org.hk/en/content/listening-voices-china’s-workers (23-05-2023)
[50] www.internationalist.org/Internationalist06web.pdf (23-05-2023)
[51] www.peoplesdispatch.org/2019/06/10/the-myth-making-around-tiananmen-square/ (23-05-2023)
[52] www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/08/08/funds-representatives-arrested-in-china/24e8b72c-d6fe-4753-a007-51d181239cb6/ (23-05-2023)
[53] www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1234613.shtml (23-05-2023)
[54] www.spartacist.org/english/wv/1160/hong_kong.html (23-05-2023)
Photo: Residents surround Soviet tanks outside the Czechoslovak Radio Building in central Prague on August 21, 1968. http://www.rarehistoricalphotos.com
No comments:
Post a Comment