Struggle-La Lucha is publishing this article by Sam Marcy, one of the leading Marxist thinkers and fighters of the second half of the 20th century, to mark the 30th anniversary of the counterrevolutionary developments in Romania.

Dec. 26, 1989 — Let there be no mistake about it. Let there be no hypocritical assertions by the imperialist governments that they regret the murder of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena.

It was an act of undisguised assassination. It was a coup by the most reactionary forces of the army brass in collaboration with the remnants of the old bourgeois ruling class of Romania. It was a wanton act of murder, wholly in accord and characteristic of the period of the 1920s and 1930s, when assassination of political leaders was common, when a reign of terror from ruling-class reactionary groups was on the order of the day.

Clerical reaction, anti-Semitism

What the millions saw on U.S. television, for instance—the burning of public buildings, the shooting up of libraries—is characteristic of the period long ago when the bourgeoisie, in fear of discontented and rebellious peasants, redirected their hatred against the boyars (the landlords) into anti-Semitic channels.

Anti-Semitism has disappeared as an official policy. But we are seeing its recurrence in another form. How else can one take the proclamation that the “anti-Christ” (meaning Ceausescu) was fittingly killed on Christmas Day? The forces of deepest reaction now claim control of the Bucharest government. This is a recrudescence of the vicious, reactionary clericalism that dominated the political scene there for the whole period stretching from the First to the Second World War.

Let us look again at the television scenes of the so-called popular uprising. There is nothing in them to suggest that it was in any way a proletarian uprising. It was altogether uncharacteristic of the traditional struggle of the Romanian workers. There were no working-class, no trade union slogans. It was a rising of all the decayed, leftover bourgeois social strata who have been reawakened to life mostly on the basis of international factors of enormous significance.

Budapest and the national question

It will be proven absolutely correct that these operations were planned not in Bucharest, nor in any other Romanian city, but in Budapest, the haven of the so-called dissidents over a period of years. That is where the conspiracy was hatched, and might have remained dormant or have disintegrated were it not for the intervention of new, powerful influences which made it a certainty that the Budapest reactionaries would become the instrument for the forces of bourgeois counterrevolution and imperialist penetration.

It has been decades now since it became public knowledge that there was a dispute between Hungary and Romania over the treatment of the Hungarian minority in Romania. For years there have been negotiations, but it wasn’t so long ago that both Nicolae Ceaușescu and Hungarian leader Janos Kadar had each affirmed in separate interviews that “We communists will not allow the national question to divide us.”

The question of ethnic minorities has always been the acid test for communists. Fraternal solidarity was always one of the basic teachings of Leninism and was really an extension and development of the Marxist doctrine of the class struggle as it applied to national oppression.

The efforts of the Ceausescu regime, and to some extent that of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-dej earlier, to distance themselves from the Soviet government have deep historical roots in the Balkans, with their fierce small-nation nationalism. They have been able to eke out an existence by maneuvering between the great powers, going from one camp to another in order to retain a modicum of independence, almost always remaining a pawn of one or another of the great powers, whether it be Germany, Austria, Russia, Turkey or France, and lately U.S. imperialism.

The history of the 19th century was filled with the struggles of the smaller nations to free themselves, then again becoming subjected to or being traded away by one great power to another.

It is not the existence of many nations which is a regressive factor in historical development; it is the existence of states which embody the political power of the ruling classes. That is the real source of national fervor, of so-called fanaticism, aside from the mutual antagonism of states and statelets which become the greatest source of antagonism between the workers of different nationalities.

When the Communist Manifesto arrived in 1848, it was a breath of fresh air. It was precisely at a time when the workers were becoming weary of the old nationalism and were looking with open arms for the message of working class solidarity, of workers of the world unite against the common enemy — the bourgeoisie.

Growth of Hungarian bourgeoisie

There were many, many avenues open for the resolution of the national problem between Hungary and Romania on the basis of fraternal socialist solidarity, and indeed it seemed in the early eighties that it was on the road to solution. What changed? What gave it an impetus to become a full-blown struggle between two apparently fraternal socialist countries, tied together in a common organization (CMEA or COMECON, as it is called in the West) and with a common socialist objective?

One can name innumerable retreats away from orthodox revolutionary Marxism-Leninism over the years and decades, but none is more compelling than the series of bourgeois reforms in the USSR under the Gorbachev administration. They have delivered a momentum in the direction of bourgeois restoration which seemed inconceivable only a decade ago.

However, bourgeois reforms were inaugurated as early as 1956 in Hungary. Over a period of years, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, they were remaking the class physiognomy of Hungary to an extent that it only required a push for the Hungarian regime to become a bourgeois state, if not in all its aspects, certainly in some of its most essential ingredients, especially the abandonment of centralized planning and the beginning of the dismantling of state industry.

Hungary had gone over the brink when it canceled its agreement with the German Democratic Republic controlling the borders. It was this flagrant violation of a socialist friendship treaty, passed over by the other socialist countries, which made it possible for the Romanian counterrevolutionary elements to utilize Hungary as a base of operations for what has become open warfare.

This in turn changed the character of the struggle between Romania and Hungary. The Hungarian regime, under the aegis of the new bourgeois leadership, converted the national question, the question of the ethnic minority in Romania, into a state-to-state struggle. In effect, Hungary became a haven not just for incidental reactionary elements but for political counterrevolution.

Soviet pressure in CMEA

However, the Hungarian bourgeois regime would not have dared go beyond certain limits on its own. It must be taken account of that the Soviet reforms were not meant merely as a national policy, given the socialist, centralized economic planning in the USSR. They were also to be imported into its coordinating body for economic relations among the socialist countries, the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). Let this aspect of the struggle not be overlooked.

Thus, at the 42nd Session of the CMEA, held in Bucharest on Nov. 3, 1986, Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov made it clear in his speech that the Soviet reforms were directly linked to similar reforms in the CMEA countries. According to Ryzhkov, the implementation of the so-called Joint Program for the Development of Science and Technology could only become effective if progress were made on economic reforms. It was at this session back in 1986 that both Romania and Czechoslovakia made it clear they were opposed to establishing reforms of the type then being introduced in the Soviet Union.

The significance of this dispute should not be disregarded. By making the Soviet reforms contingent in one form or another on reforms in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union was not merely making some abstract recommendation or economic prognosis; it was in effect using a form of economic pressure on its fraternal socialist allies to weaken socialist planning in favor of the bourgeois market.

The USSR’s perspective of a new, more viable coexistence with the imperialist West therefore meant that Eastern Europe would become a free market area for imperialist penetration. It was for this reason that both Czechoslovakia and Romania objected.

Hungary, which was already on the road to the restoration of the bourgeois market and the dismantling of the centralized economy, took the opportunity following this meeting to accelerate its public attacks on Romania. It blew up the issue of the status of the Hungarian minority into a virtual war scare.

The national question became converted into an instrument of bourgeois attack against a socialist country. The national aspect of the Hungarian minority was lost altogether. All this could not but awaken the counterrevolutionary elements in Romania.

U.S.-USSR coordination

Nevertheless, this alone could not have accounted for the fascist-like coup d’etat by Romanian bourgeois reactionaries. Implicit in all of this was the support of the Gorbachev regime and its utter hostility to the Romanian socialist government. To all this has to be added the influence of the imperialist bourgeoisie, which was not standing outside of Romanian politics with its arms folded.

Wasn’t it just this Sunday, Dec. 24, that Secretary of State James Baker on NBC-TV’s Meet the Press gave U.S. approval for a Soviet intervention to support the “revolution” in Romania? Not screams about Soviet intervention, but encouragement for it! What could be plainer?

And on Thursday, Dec. 21, in an editorial entitled “Rumania: Remarkable Common Ground,” the New York Times spoke ecstatically about how Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze had attacked the Ceausescu government. Where? At a NATO meeting in Brussels! This imperialist paper saw this as “a meeting of minds between East and West” that enhanced the possibilities for “drawing the East into any common response” against the Ceausescu government.

How could all of this happen?

The way it is presented in the bourgeois press, the army stood with the “popular uprising” against the security forces, as though they alone were the defenders of the government.

One thing must be clear about the character of the Romanian revolution: it was unlike the Russian, Chinese, Cuban or Vietnamese revolutions. They were all carried out entirely by the masses, by the workers and peasants. That’s where the revolutionary armed forces came from that, in the words of Marx, crushed the old repressive state apparatus. Not so in Romania and other East European socialist countries, with the exception of Yugoslavia.

The intervention of the Soviet Red Army was the most significant and fundamental factor in the overthrow of the old regime. Over 286,000 Soviet soldiers were killed fighting against the Nazi quisling regime alongside Romanian partisans.

Background of Romanian Army

The Romanian bourgeoisie had sided with the Nazis in the war, and Romanian troops fought with the Germans at Stalingrad. But toward the end of the war, when the collapse of Germany was imminent, there was a coup d’etat in Romania; a coalition government under Gen. Constantin Sanatescu signed an armistice with the Allies under which it agreed to supply 12 infantry divisions to the struggle against Germany. This positioned the Romanian Army to play a political role once the war was over.

After the war, there wasn’t a thorough “denazification” of the army as there was in East Germany, for instance. On the contrary, many of these same units were integrated into the reorganized military force.

Notwithstanding that almost 45 years have passed, there is still a vast difference between the Romanian Army and those popular forces wholly drawn from the masses of workers and peasants, as in Russia, China and elsewhere. The old customs, habits and ideology, while kept underground, nevertheless remained.

There is a fundamental difference when the old state apparatus is completely crushed and a new people’s army arises from the ashes of the old one. Even Napoleon’s army, for instance, was almost wholly drawn from the peasantry, as were many of his generals. In Romania, the class struggle was sharp but the counterrevolutionary elements were never destroyed. The army brass were drawn from the older ruling classes and the gentry. They became integrated into the defense establishment. If socialism were to be built, it had to have not merely their acquiescence but their complete loyalty. Thus, what for 40 years appeared not much different from the great revolutions of China, Cuba and the Soviet Union has ultimately proven to be decisively different.

The bourgeois press pours vials of wrath on the security forces of the government. They were the only ones drawn directly from the people. Like in the French Revolution, with its Committees of Public Safety drawn from the masses, they were the eyes and ears of the revolution.

Secret armies? It’s perfectly okay to glorify the FBI and the CIA, because they’re in the service of the bourgeois ruling class. But security police in the service of a government seeking to establish socialism? They become the most reprehensible elements. Yet the bourgeois press in all the imperialist countries can’t help but note that these security forces are fighting to the end in an uneven battle.

Ceausescu tried to maneuver

Of course, such a fascist-type coup could only take place where there has been an accumulation of errors by the government. Not the least was its effort to maneuver between the camp of imperialism and the socialist camp. The outstanding example of this was its effort to ally itself with the West when it sided with Israel during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.

Earlier, it refused to join the other socialist countries in the 1968 intervention to stop a counterrevolution in Czechoslovakia, which it might have done out of solidarity even while publicly making clear its disagreement. All of these efforts were calculated to free it from dependence on the USSR and the other East European socialist countries, to gain some economic as well as commercial advantages, and to boldly enter the world of capitalist trade and commerce.

But no significant advantages accrued to Romania as a result of its effort to accommodate to imperialism. As in the Arab-Israeli war, the most Romania got out of its pro-Western diplomatic maneuvers was an exemption from the U.S. government’s discriminatory trade practices aimed at the socialist countries. It was granted “most favored nation” (MFN) status and admitted into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

But Romania soon learned that political conditions were attached. Finally, early this year, the Romanian government announced it would not seek a renewal of the MFN status, precisely because of the political requirements which inhibited the free development of socialist construction.

Program to urbanize villages

Probably the most significant error of a domestic character was to embark upon a vast urbanization of rural life in certain areas of Romania, the effect of which would be to modernize the social structure of the villages and lead them on the way to communism more rapidly than mere collectivization. In severely underdeveloped rural areas, collectivization often merely changes the legal but not the economic conditions.

On March 3, 1988, the Romanian government announced plans, to be completed by the year 2000, that would involve about half of Romania’s 13,000 villages. They intended to move the peasants into agro-industrial complexes with apartments and modern communal civic centers, like those in the large cities.

It was similar to an idea presented by Khrushchev at one time during the Stalin era. The purpose was to move collectivization further on the road toward communization. But the idea was dropped. Roy Medvedev, the dissident Soviet historian, referred to it as utopian. The idea was nevertheless progressive, even if impractical. But if impractical for the Soviet Union, with its vast resources and industrial-technological apparatus, it would certainly seem like a much more hazardous plan for Romania, particularly in the light of its almost total isolation from other socialist countries.

Nevertheless, we can’t accept the interpretation of the bourgeoisie and the counterrevolutionaries everywhere, that it was repressive, destructive and virtually the annihilation of all civilized life. All this was merely ideological preparation by the bourgeoisie for an assault against the government. A big hullabaloo was raised that it was an attempt at genocide against the Hungarian minority. This is pure hocum. It involved at most 56,000 families. It didn’t endanger the existence of the Hungarian minority, and the whole thing could have been solved amicably within the framework of an economic plan. But it was precisely the fear that the plan might succeed after all that frightened the bourgeois reformers in Hungary and also irritated the Gorbachev grouping, which had firmly set a course in an utterly opposite direction.

Repayment of debt

Another error (which can only be assessed as such in retrospect) was the desperate attempt by the Romanian government to free itself from Western indebtedness to the banks. Not only did they decide to pay the interest on billions in indebtedness (in contrast to Poland and Hungary, which haven’t been able to), but they paid back the principal as well.

During the 1970s, the Romanian government was able to sell its oil and gas on the world market at skyrocketing prices. OPEC was riding high and it seemed like an endlessly upward spiral. But this ended abruptly and a decline in oil revenues became a significant factor in Romania.

Therefore, the decision to pay back the interest and principal, while a bold act to demonstrate political independence, could only be achieved through severe austerity measures of the type proposed by the IMF in other countries. It seems self-defeating.

The majority of the workers seemed to remain loyal to the regime, but the burden of the austerity program became ever more evident. Relenting on some of the Ceausescu experiments became inevitable. Had the regime made it possible for a responsible working-class opposition to function, either within the Party or without, the government might have been able to pull back somewhat on its plans and embark upon some immediate practical solutions.

The Romanian effort to extricate itself from the Central European arena and to strike out into the West, while retaining a socialist economic system entirely antagonistic to Western imperialism, appears to have been visionary and impractical, as well as hazardous. While the imperialists welcomed Ceausescu’s maneuvers, such as his position on the Czech intervention and the Arab-Israeli war, they gave him nothing of substance in return.

Nevertheless, these subjective errors alone could not account for the counterrevolutionary overturn. It is also the virtual economic blockade and political sabotage by the imperialists and fraternal socialist governments like in Hungary that made possible the emergence of the real counterrevolutionary elements.

In the end, what the bourgeoisie really wants is the overturn of the social system and the return of capitalist exploitation and oppression.

November 7, 2019, marks the 102nd anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, led by the Bolshevik Party. Struggle-La Lucha is sharing this article by Sam Marcy, a leading Marxist thinker and fighter of the second half of the twentieth century, which reviews some of the important lessons of that great workers’ and peasants’ revolution and its continued significance for the workers and oppressed. 

October 30, 1982

It is astonishing that 65 years after the October Revolution in Russia so many profound lessons are still relevant today as they were the day after the victory of the revolution.

Take the question, for instance, of the struggle against war. Its urgency proclaims itself every day in the headlines of the world press.

There have been two world wars; two predatory wars in Asia – in Korea and Vietnam; three wars in the Middle East; a whole series of decades-long interventions both overt and covert in Africa and Latin America; a missile crisis in the Caribbean that threatened a world holocaust; and capping all this, the most rece”Peace. Land. Bread.” Women lead the 1917 Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks said that in the event of an imperialist war, the workers’ party would, in accordance with the International’s resolution, strive to utilize the economic and political crisis of the bourgeoisie and the war it created to overthrow it.nt genocidal war, again in the Middle East, against Lebanon.

Such is the glorious record of the imperialist free enterprise system in this century, a century of the most stupendous technological and scientific discoveries and inventions, the most splendid achievements which would assure peace and happiness for suffering humanity were it not for the incubus of monopoly capitalism.

The Damocles Sword of nuclear war, which has hung over the planet ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is more threatening than ever.

(Legend has it that Dionysius the Elder (430-367 BCE), a cruel and oppressive ruler, had a sword suspended by a single hair from the ceiling of a banquet hall above the head of Damocles. This was meant to punish the courtier for his servility and excessive obsequiousness and to demonstrate the precariousness of his rank.)

One might well say that the war danger in general and nuclear peril in particular is history’s punishment to humanity for the failure of the leadership of working-class parties to assimilate the great anti-war lessons of the October Socialist Revolution.

War and revolution

The war not only contributed heavily to making the revolution possible, it also provoked a revolutionary situation in almost every leading capitalist country in the world.

Most importantly, it brought about revolutionary struggles in Germany, Italy, and Hungary, and caused a tremendous revolutionary upsurge in France. Mutinies in the armed forces followed. It also brought about a rapid leftward swing of the working class in Britain; the great General Strike of 1926 was really a continuation of the consequences of the imperialist war.

Yet despite the unsurpassed suffering of the masses as a result of the havoc wrought by the war, nowhere else in Europe did a proletarian revolution succeed.

The war in and of itself could not have brought the Bolsheviks to power. The war merely accelerated all the social, political, and economic processes which existed during peacetime.

While the imperialist war interrupted the progress of the working-class movement in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, once the war was on in earnest, once the carnage and suffering took an ever-increasing toll, the very same processes which had been either submerged or driven underground began to surface and accelerate.

The class struggle, even when it appears to be almost dormant, nevertheless exists. It can be muffled, stifled, mutilated. But the objective process of capitalist exploitation is remorseless and relentless. And in time of imperialist war, it accelerates and intensifies.

War, therefore, is not some utterly external factor which suddenly collapses over the heads of the masses. It is an outgrowth of peacetime tendencies inherent in the mode of capitalist production.

Socialist International and World War I

The reason the war was a central factor contributing to the victory of the October Revolution, but failed to have the same effect in France, Italy, or even Germany, must be traced to the position taken toward the approaching conflict by the great socialist parties of Western Europe in the peacetime period immediately before the war.

It is often mistakenly said that the outbreak of the First World War caught the leadership of the socialist parties completely off guard. It is certainly true that the masses as a whole were taken off guard in the light of the official leadership’s default. Large sections of the working class and lower ranking and middle officials of the Social Democratic parties were also taken by surprise.

But certainly the official leadership of the Second International, if it was taken by surprise, should not have been. It had no cause to be.

The years preceding the outbreak of the war were characterized by considerable anti-war agitation on the part of the socialist parties of Germany, France, and other European countries. There were also a variety of bourgeois pacifist organizations such as exist in many parts of the West today.

However, it was socialist and working-class agitation against the war which was predominant. In a general way the anti-war struggle was carried on as an inseparable part of the struggle against capitalism.

It was, of course, limited by the times, which were considered a period of so-called peaceful capitalist development. It was also limited by the large metropolitan cities where it was strong — Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Marseilles and, in a different way, London – where the socialist movement was developing agitation against militarism.

It is important to know that there was a strong, working-class peace movement and that anti-war agitation was one of the political aspects of the socialist and working-class struggle. Any talk about the leadership of the Second International being surprised or overwhelmed by a totally unexpected outbreak of war is false.

The Socialist International, as it existed at the time, held frequent international congresses where the anti-war struggle was discussed. There were at least two socialist congresses where the approach of war was very seriously discussed and acted upon with firmness and resolution.

These congresses are of singular significance. They mark the apex of the growth of the socialist and working-class movement in Europe. They demonstrate the highest point of class consciousness and working-class internationalism which the working-class movement had known up to that time.

Stuttgart and Basel Congresses

The first of these congresses was held in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1907. Five years later, in 1912, another congress in Basel, Switzerland, discussed and reaffirmed Stuttgart resolution.

It is extremely illuminating to examine this resolution in detail. It has been quoted many times in the polemics of Lenin against Karl Kautsky, the leader and outstanding theoretician of the Second International and the right-wing Social Democrats during the war.

It is to be noted that the Basel meeting was not regarded as just another congress. It was entitled an “Extraordinary International Socialist Congress.” It was held on November 24-25, 1912, and the Basel Manifesto was subsequently published in the Vorwarts, the organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

“If a war threatens to break out,” said the resolution,” it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved, supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of the war. …

“In case war should break out anyway,” the resolution continues, “it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.

“The congress urged the proletariat … to devote the utmost force and energy to planned and concerted action. On the one hand,” the resolution continues, “the universal craze for armaments has aggravated the high cost of living, thereby intensifying class antagonisms and creating in the working class an implacable spirit of revolt; the workers want to put a stop to this system of panic and waste.” (Emphasis in original.)

It warns “the ruling classes of all states not to increase by belligerent actions the misery of the masses brought on by the capitalist method of production.”

It continues, “Let the governments remember that with the present condition of Europe and the mood of the working class, they cannot unleash a war without danger to themselves. Let them remember that the Franco-German War of 1870 was followed by the revolutionary outbreak of the Paris Commune. That the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 set into motion the revolutionary energies of the peoples of the Russian Empire. That competition in military and naval armaments gave the class conflicts in England and on the continent an unheard-of sharpness, and unleashed an enormous wave of strikes.

“Furthermore, it would be insanity for the governments not to realize that the very idea of the monstrosity of a world war would inevitably call forth the indignation and the revolt of the working class.

“The proletarians consider it a crime to fire at each other for the profits of the capitalists, the ambitions of dynasties, or the greater glory of secret diplomatic treaties.”

Finally it calls upon the workers of all countries “to oppose the power of the international solidarity of the proletariat to capitalist imperialism.” It ends with a clarion call to the workers: “To the capitalist world of exploitation and mass murder, oppose in this way the proletarian world of peace and fraternity of all peoples!”

‘Use war crisis to end capitalist rule’

It is to be noted that this resolution, passed at both the Stuttgart and Basel congresses, did not confine itself to mobilizing the masses to end the war only after the war is on. It does not merely confine itself to the peace theme. And it doesn’t suffer from separating the economic struggle from the political struggle.

On the contrary, the resolution directs itself to the working class and warns that if war breaks out, then the working class must utilize the economic and political crisis not merely to end the war but to arouse all the people and thereby hasten the downfall of capitalist rule.

This resolution is remarkable because it brought up to date the strategic approach and tactical orientation of the working class in a new period of capitalist development. In the earlier, so-called progressive period of capitalist development, it had been permissible to side with one’s own capitalist country if it were acting to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution in the struggle against feudalism, if it were carrying out a struggle essential to the development of a unified capitalist state, in order to attain autonomy within its own borders.

That was the epoch of the bourgeois national revolutions. It was the epoch in which the bourgeoisie constituted itself within the framework of a national state, without which it could not fully develop.

It was therefore a period when the criterion for support of and participation in a bourgeois war was whether or not it promoted a progressive and necessary tendency of the bourgeoisie in the struggle against dangerous feudal remnants and in order to constitute the bourgeoisie in a national, that is centralized, state.

The Stuttgart and Basel resolutions recognized, by implication if not by explicitly saying so, that it was now the epoch of imperialist wars, that the previous progressive period of capitalism had ended. The capitalist class could no longer carry on a war on a progressive basis, and the workers therefore ought not to support it.

These resolutions were also the highest theoretical exposition of the Marxist approach to capitalist wars at the time. Indeed, the very idea of formulating the question of war as it was done at these two socialist congresses was in itself an expression of the high degree of class-consciousness and working-class international solidarity that the socialist movement had achieved at the time.

Significance of Basel still in dispute

As we noted earlier, Basel was a specially convened congress to consider the war danger. The resolution gave expression, to the fullest extent possible, to the yearnings of the working class for peace and at the same time to their readiness to struggle.

Efforts to downplay the significance of the resolution as merely a ceremonial act lacking in real significance are post-war lies of right-wing social-democrats and bourgeois historians.

The congress was attended by the most important leaders in the world movement. It met at the time of the Balkan war crisis, which, as the resolution pointed out, had a potential of engulfing all of Europe. And it specifically warned the British, French, and German governments that the Socialist International knew what they were up to.

On no account can it be said that the resolution was just one of those things passed at socialist congresses. It wasn’t.

It was a question, however, whether the leadership of the Socialist International had the will, determination, and readiness to follow up the mandate given by the International and utilize the crisis created by the war to overturn the capitalist system.

There is another school of thought which, decades after the resolution on imperialist war, minimized the significance of the legacy of Stuttgart and Basel. According to this interpretation, the resolutions were framed by “the leftists.”

The insidious thought behind this is that a small group of fanatics positioned themselves in the resolutions committee and put over a line really contrary to the “moderate, reasonable, and pragmatic” positions of the European socialist leaders.

Prestige of the left

It is true, of course, that the resolutions were written by Lenin (on behalf of the Bolsheviks), Julius Martov (who was in the left-wing of the Mensheviks), and Rosa Luxemburg. The truth of the matter, of course, is that Lenin, Martov, and Luxemburg represented the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the great strike struggles that were developing in Russia, especially around the time of the Basel congress.

The Russian revolutionary movement had tremendous prestige on the European continent, very much like the heroic Vietnamese, Cubans, Palestinians, and other oppressed peoples who are carrying on a revolutionary struggle against imperialism. In many ways, Russia at the time was in the category of a somewhat backward country which was oppressing its peoples at home, but was also an oppressor abroad in concert with the other imperialist powers.

The prestige of the left, as represented by the Russian and Polish delegations, was something the opportunists had to reckon with. At the same time, it is to be noted that no one really challenged the validity of the resolutions.

It should be added that in an effort to go even further to the left than the resolution, Jaures from France, in a left opportunist maneuver, tried to amend the key paragraph (relating to the utilization of the economic and political crisis created by the war to overthrow capitalist class rule) by calling the workers to “insurrection.” This was, however, properly defeated.

It was typical of Jaures at the time that he cast himself in the role of being more left than the leadership, and at the same time was a proponent of ministerialism — the practice of accepting posts in a bourgeois cabinet.

The Copenhagen congress of 1904 had condemned the opportunist practice of taking cabinet posts in a bourgeois government. Jaures frowned at this manifestation of adhering to orthodox Marxist principles and impugned the motives of the German Social Democratic leaders, especially Kautsky, who, along with the other socialist leaders of the International, at the time still opposed the practice of accepting cabinet posts in a bourgeois government.

“It is all well and good for you, German comrades,” said Jaures, “to speak against accepting cabinet posts in the bourgeois government. Is it because you are unable to get such posts, since no German government would offer any at all?”

Whatever the motivation, the fact remains that all the German Social Democratic leaders, along with most of the French, Italian, Belgian, Dutch, Swedish, and Japanese, when they were able to attend, took the position of the congress as embodied in the resolutions.

What made the Bolsheviks different?

What distinguished the Bolsheviks from the various socialist parties in the Second International in Europe, and their Russian counterpart, the Mensheviks?

The Bolsheviks, especially Lenin, took most seriously that last, exceptionally significant, sentence quoted above. In the event of an imperialist war, the workers’ party would, in accordance with the International’s resolution, strive to utilize the economic and political crisis of the bourgeoisie and the war it created to overthrow it. Lenin’s conception, in particular, gave the workers the opportunity to intensify the class struggle against the bourgeoisie.

War, according to Lenin, was merely a continuation of the politics of the bourgeoisie by other means. Of course, Kautsky himself knew this very well, as did other leaders. Yet a profound gulf separated the Bolsheviks from the other socialist parties, except for the emerging left wings within the latter. Only the Bolsheviks had pursued a resolute, irreconcilable class struggle against the bourgeoisie and at the same time had fought relentlessly against any softening, watering down, diversion, or distortion of the anti-war thesis in the working-class movement with vigor and perseverance.

Struggle against opportunism

This in essence was what the struggle against opportunism was all about. Opportunism means the sacrifice of the larger issues affecting the working class in the interest of illusory, minor, everyday gains. Opportunism in varying degrees is a common phenomenon in all the labor movements of the world. But it took on an exceptional character in Western Europe in this period when the working-class movement grew in breadth, as Lenin put it, yet at the same time accumulated practices and distortions of socialist tactics in the class struggle that militated against firm adherence to principle.

It was in the struggle against opportunism that the Bolsheviks grew strong.

This was not so in the other European parties. It is true that in 1899 Kautsky and others had taken up the theoretical cudgels to defend Marxism from the revisionism of Bernstein. But by and large that was a long way from a steady, consistent struggle against opportunism and all its manifestations in the trade unions, among the trade union leaders, in the parliamentary fraction of the German Social Democratic Party within the Reichstag, and on the many other fronts.

The trend toward opportunism in practice, as distinguished from revolutionary phraseology, was permitted to grow automatically as though it were an inevitable and necessary accompaniment to socialism and a demonstration of the variety of thought and diversity of tendencies which all contributed progressively to making social democracy a mighty movement of the working class and its allies.

It was in the fight against opportunism and the struggle to pursue a rigidly working-class approach that Leninist doctrine over the years created a qualitatively different party in Russia than that which existed in Western Europe.

National chauvinism vs. revolutionary defeatism

As is well known, the Socialist International broke down as a result of the war and each of the socialist parties took a chauvinist position toward the war. In Russia itself, the Bolsheviks struggled against the Mensheviks, the social-democratic minority who generally leaned in the same direction as their European counterparts.

The sharpness and clarity with which Lenin fought against the war showed that he had a qualitatively different class approach than did the Mensheviks in Russia or the social democrats abroad. The formula which Lenin devised in the struggle against the war is aptly summed up in his sentence, “The defeat of one’s own capitalist government is the lesser evil in the struggle against the war.” (“The Defeat of One’s Own Government in Imperialist War,” Selected Works of Lenin in 12 Volumes, Vol. 5, page 142.)

In this way, Lenin was updating the formula proposed at the Stuttgart and Basel congresses of utilizing the difficulties created by the imperialist war to overthrow the capitalist class.

“A revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot but desire the defeat of its own government.

“This is an axiom,” says Lenin. “It is disputed only by conscious partisans or by the helpless satellites of the social-chauvinists.”

Lenin continues, “The opponents of the defeat slogan are simply afraid of themselves when they refuse to recognize the very obvious fact that there is an inseparable connection between the revolutionary agitation against the government and facilitating defeat.”

Further on he says, “To repudiate the defeat slogan means reducing one’s revolutionary actions to an empty phrase or mere hypocrisy.”

If the French, German, British, Russian, and Italian workers, as well as the Americans and Japanese, Lenin reckons, had all in the course of this imperialist war devoted their energies to defeating the war effort of their respective capitalist countries, it would have been an act of international proletarian solidarity on the part of each of them.

Those who were promoting the defeatist strategy of Lenin were in reality also promoting international solidarity as against the artificial divisions which the world imperialist bourgeoisie had created in the interest of imperialist super-profits.

Other socialist organizations said they were for stopping the war, were for peace. But, with the exception of the Bolsheviks and the Serbian Social Democratic Party, they all said the continuation of the war was necessary in order to stop the aggression of the other imperialist powers. In this way, French workers were ordered to kill German workers, and German workers were ordered to kill French workers, until aggression was stopped and imperialist peace achieved – after an imperialist war.

A difference in class approach

Thus, one of the fundamental and most significant differences between the Bolsheviks and all other socialist organizations was not merely on how to stop the war. It was a different class approach.

With the other socialists, the class struggle stopped with the outbreak of the war and national unity became the order of the day.

The defense budget took preeminence, just as it does today in all of the capitalist countries. Cuts in the living standard of the workers became necessary to overcome the crisis created by war expenditures. The workers would have to wait for an improvement until after the war – if they were still alive.

With the Bolsheviks, the class struggle did not stop with the outbreak of the war but took on a more intensified and vigorous form and had to be prosecuted to the end.

When the first Russian revolution, which overthrew the czar, broke out in February, there was no thought among the Menshevik leaders of really stopping the war or overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie.

But Lenin’s way was to continue the class struggle so as to make sure the government would not participate on behalf of the bourgeoisie in the continuation of the war.

On each and every question, no matter how small, the issue always revolved itself around the attitude to the bourgeoisie. How to win the peasants away from the landlords and enlist them on the side of the proletariat. How to rally them all under the banner of the working class and separate them out from the bourgeoisie while isolating the latter.

All throughout the peaceful period preceding the war, during the war, and during the course of the whole revolution, a red thread runs through all of Leninist strategy and tactics. The struggle against the war in peacetime as in wartime is a struggle against the bourgeoisie. It is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism. To defeat the efforts of the warmakers, it is necessary to defeat the ruling class, making no fundamental distinction between the ruling class at war and the ruling class during peacetime.

Further reading: “The Bolsheviks and War” by Sam Marcy 

In conjunction with the worldwide #ClimateStrike actions on Sept. 20, Struggle-La Lucha presents this article by the Marxist thinker and fighter Sam Marcy, written for the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in April 1990.

Back in the Middle Ages, when a natural catastrophe like a crop failure or storm devastated large areas of a country, reducing the mass of the peasants to starvation while the lord’s manor was well stocked with provisions, it was considered wise policy for the lord to call the peasants into the courtyard. There a priest would intone the old biblical adage that the meek, the humble, the submissive will inherit the earth.

Today’s giant predatory corporations know the efficacy of such a tactic. They also resort to an even earlier practice, from the era of ancient Rome, when rebellious slaves were pacified with bread and circuses.

The monopolies which have vandalized the environment respond to the fear of an ecological catastrophe by encouraging a festive, carnival atmosphere on Earth Day, diverting what should be a serious anti-government, anti-capitalist demonstration away from the real polluters.

The largest corporations in this country, and the worst polluters, including Exxon, Mobil, Weyerhaeuser and Dow Chemical, to name only a few, have assembled a sophisticated media and political campaign aiming to show that they have done their utmost to use their immense technology for environmentally sound purposes, all for the good of the people.

The first Earth Day

Twenty years ago, on the first Earth Day, the environmental movement was officially born in the United States. In that year, 1970, millions of workers, young and old, men and women, able and disabled people, gay and straight, and nationalities from all over the world demonstrated their keen desire to avoid the terrible ill effects of pollution and the destruction of the physical elements of the environment.

It was a day of great promise, an outpouring of mass enthusiasm for ending the environmental damage that was rampant throughout the world but affected the industrialized countries, especially the U.S., most of all.

Today, 20 years later, there is more pollution, more damage to the air, the forests, the oceans, the rivers, indeed to all life. Acid rain, the ozone layer, global warming, toxic and radioactive wastes, and endangered species have become household words.

Earth Day 1970 came in the midst of the bloody carnage in Vietnam. That year, the U.S. invaded Cambodia. The Nixon government was under acute pressure from the anti-war and civil rights movements. It was a year in which huge masses of people were awakening to the real problems facing this country: war, hunger, racism, sexism, pollution.

For another five years, the U.S. government got around the movement, continuing the war while making promises of an alluring peace, at which time all these problems would be solved and, above all, there would be an effort to clean up the environment.

Finally, the mass protests against the Vietnam war in the U.S. and all over the world put an end to it. Glowing promises then began to flow freely like water in a stream. Now, it was said, the air would be cleaned up, nuclear waste would be eliminated, and environmentally clean plants would be built. Polluting sources of energy like coal, petroleum and nuclear energy would be put under strict governmental control. The damage would first be reduced and eventually, certainly by 1990, would be eliminated.

Promises of peacetime conversion

Such were the promises 20 years ago. You can look them up in the yellowed pages of the old newspapers. “Conversion planning” was the buzzword. Military-related companies especially were anxious to show they had already drawn up the blueprints for converting to cleaner, more peaceful methods of production.

What happened to them? Was it all fraud? Was it make believe? Or was it both?

The fact of the matter is that no sooner was the war in Vietnam ended than the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex began not to scale down the armaments, not to beat their swords into plowshares, but to expand and modernize on an unprecedented scale.

This is of critical importance to all questions relating to the security of the physical environment, for there is no greater polluter of the air, the water and the land than the military. Even when it is not actually using them, the Pentagon is constantly testing all kinds of weapons — conventional, nuclear, chemical and biological.

Trillions for the Pentagon

Scientists may argue over how old the planet is, how fragile is its ecology, or its degree of warming, but there can be no disagreement that since Earth Day 1970, literally trillions of dollars have been spent by the Pentagon.

Since Earth Day 1970, countless acts of war have been carried out or supervised by U.S. forces in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Libya, Lebanon and Afghanistan, lately in Peru and Bolivia, and innumerable covert operations in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and dozens of other countries. Large-scale military exercises take place each year in Korea, Germany and the Caribbean, as well as in the U.S. itself.

Today, just like 15 years ago at the end of the Vietnam war, there is a flood of peace promises. Congress is agog with them. The White House has given its blessings. Even the Pentagon speaks of the peace dividend. But is there any substance to it?

The kind of Pentagon operation just referred to is expanding more rapidly than ever. Of course, redundant nuclear weapons are being discarded on both sides of the East-West confrontation line. But mark well. Not one nuclear test related to the modernization of the nuclear fleet, submarines, aircraft carriers or the new “super-supersonic” planes has been canceled, except for reasons of bad weather or malfunction. The brave men and women of Greenpeace and other groups that have tried to stop these tests can tell you what is really going on with the alleged reduction of the nuclear threat.

The greatest of all polluters, the biggest offender and the most significant element in the vandalism of the environment remains the Pentagon.

As this is being written, Secretary of Defense Cheney is opposing even the smallest cuts in sea-based missiles. On the contrary, they are continuing to MIRV the sea-based missiles (add multiple warheads), which means multiplying their capacity for devastation.

War-related industries and banks

Lest some think we are taking a narrow, pacifist view by focusing in on the war-making establishment, let it be said that the Pentagon is, of course, not an island unto itself. Every single one of the 100 largest banks in the U.S. lends to, holds deposits of or floats securities for corporations in league with the so-called defense industry. That’s a lot of banks.

Of all the 15,000 banks in the U.S., small, medium and large, not one would relinquish the profits it gets in connection with defense orders. There is not one bank, not one huge corporation that will put people ahead of profits. Such is the reality of the situation on Earth Day 1990.

It is now estimated that the bailout of failing banks will cost the government $500 billion. The amount appropriated for the environment is a mere pittance, a tiny fraction of this gigantic sum.

Of the giant industries which play a key role in the U.S. economy, petroleum and coal pollute and vandalize the environment the most, even though hundreds of thousands of workers have been displaced from these industries. All manufacturers, especially in the petrochemical industry and pharmaceuticals, and including those using the most sophisticated technologies, contribute their share to pollution. For the most part they are completely unregulated; any government supervision is strictly superficial.

Good will vs. profits

To get to the core of the problem, one must take into account that it is profits which motivate the operations of the capitalist economic system in the U.S. Ever fewer and more powerful groupings of industrial and financial magnates control the means of production and run the country, from the local county offices all the way up to the White House.

If we overlook this fact, if we believe that just protesting, just appealing to the good will and humanitarian instincts of these giant, avaricious and predatory elite financiers and industrialists will change the situation for the better, we will be building upon illusions.

The mass of the people have been told over and over again to be patient, to have good will toward their oppressors, that in time good behavior on the part of the masses would reach the consciences of the evildoers. The meek shall inherit the earth.

But the meek in history have never made it. There’s not a single example over hundreds of years where the rich and powerful have given way to the poor, to the ordinary workers and peasants, just because they have been good and subservient and passive.

To appeal to the good will, common sense and even self-interest of the big financiers and industrialists is to expect them to be able to abandon the lucrative profits, exploitation and oppression which are linked to pollution. This is a bankrupt theory, unsuitable in this or any other age.

The history of the environmental struggle shows that relying on the multinational corporations, on the banks, on the insurance companies and on capitalist politicians brings no results.

At this critical phase in world history, it is only the deliberate activity of the masses themselves, when they intervene and threaten the system of capitalist exploitation and oppression, that can sweep away the polluters like the hazardous waste they have created on this planet.

On the evening of July 13, 2019, parts of Manhattan’s Midtown and Upper West Side were plunged into darkness for several hours by an electricity outage. The outage, whose cause is still being investigated, disrupted subway service throughout the city and shut down much of the Times Square tourist district on a busy Saturday night. 

Corporate media drew comparisons to the much more serious power outage that happened exactly 42 years earlier, on July 13-14, 1977. That shutdown affected nearly all of New York City and sparked a rebellion by oppressed workers that has been slandered and demonized ever since. There is every reason to believe that a prolonged power outage could lead to a similar outbreak in today’s conditions of growing poverty and austerity, homelessness and gentrification, and racist terror by police agencies like the New York Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The following article drawing the lessons of that rebellion, written by Marxist leader Sam Marcy, originally appeared in the July 22, 1977, edition of Workers World.

By Sam Marcy

The electricity blackout should not be permitted to obscure or diminish the very real importance and profound lesson of the mass rebellion which took place in New York. It should be kept in mind that it took place in widely separated areas of oppressed communities — Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East Harlem, the South Bronx, etc.

By no stretch of the imagination could it in any way be implied that there was coordination, planning or premeditation involved in the huge popular participation by the masses.

The police, the city officialdom, the bourgeois media and press would have been delighted to find some “small group of terrorists,” “arsonists” or “left adventurers” who “misled” the people. However, there simply was not the shadow of a possibility or time to concoct such convenient evidence in the present situation.

Wholly spontaneous uprising of oppressed

The uprising, and that is its right name, was of a wholly spontaneous, elemental and instinctive character. It was precisely this which invested the rebellion with a special significance. It is also what has caused the entire bourgeois establishment to become fanatically enraged and terrified.

Had the rebellion been initiated by a handful of people or had it been under the direction of some small grouping, it would surely have amounted to no more than scattered, sporadic activity and would have been doomed to sterility or died aborning. Under such circumstances it would have been justifiably condemned by the broad mass of the oppressed people.

As it developed, however, the mass character of the rebellion, and particularly its spontaneity, came out as plain as daylight and as clear as crystal. It was a popular rising — a collective coming out of the people.

The blackout merely masked the deep significance of this extraordinary event. The bourgeoisie speaks of it as an evil that happened as a result of the darkness. It was done, they say, and repeat ad nauseum, “in the dead of night.” Were it not for that, they continue, “it would not have happened.” So say all the learned bourgeois commentators with a unanimity worthy of their class interests.

But the fable that the darkness was the cause of it is a huge, unmitigated lie. It was not at all the darkness that occasioned the rising. The masses all over the world have lived in darkness over many, many centuries, and darkness has never been the cause of the hundreds and thousands of rebellions in the long struggle against the possessing classes by the oppressed masses. There was no rebellion during the blackout of 1965, when a false war prosperity meant less unemployment.

It was not the absence of light that occasioned the rising. It was the absence of the repressive state forces during the critical period of midnight to 4 a.m., when the rebellion took on full momentum and when the largest amount of participants gathered and controlled the streets. The failure of the combined forces of the state and the city to mobilize the repressive forces in time is what made the rebellion possible.

What a great lesson in the relationship between the oppressive capitalist state and the oppressed masses! Between 12 midnight and 4 a.m. more than one-third of the police force in this city did not show up at all, according to the New York Times of July 15, notwithstanding frantic calls from police headquarters and the officialdom of the city, including the mayor.

Authorities feared broadening rebellion

The failure to show up was not due to vacation time, illness or assignment to different areas for duty. Those who were mobilized moved slowly by order of the city and state authorities. This order was by no means actuated by humanitarian sentiments for the rebellious masses. It was motivated by fear of the rebellion being converted into a general conflagration.

The heavy state apparatus and all its city subsidiaries were in constant turmoil. Happily, the city and state capitalist officialdom were temporarily divided by acute contradictory, immediate, conflicting clique interests. The internal wrangling between the mayor, facing an election in a few months, and a governor mindful of his larger interests on the statewide arena made them cautious in answering calls to mobilize the National Guard. The vulnerability of the Guard was clear from the outset, as it is almost 90 percent white and from suburban areas.

Valuable time lost because of acute contradictions at the summits of the ruling capitalist establishment in the city and the state encouraged the masses to broaden the assault into the wee hours of the morning. Only when the state and city officialdom had arrived at an agreeable formula for assault on the masses did the repressive forces make their presence felt in the communities. Only then did the rebellion begin to subside.

What does this show?

That it is only by virtue of the unrestrained use of force and violence and terror that the masses in the oppressed communities are held in subjection.

This is the central element in understanding the uprising. The deeper causes, the hunger, unemployment and general poverty, are too well known to be dwelt upon here. But the uprising cannot be explained without reference to the absence, at a specific juncture in time, of the terrorist apparatus of the bourgeoisie.

All the previous rebellions, beginning with Watts, Detroit, New York and Newark, were all provoked, according to the police mind, by some “isolated incident with no racial overtones,” the usual description of a police provocation. Here, for the first time, no such development took place. It was a clear-cut massive assault against the whole oppressive system.

Small shops were only available target

The fact that small shopkeepers, the pawnbrokers and jewelers, the mini-markets and retail shops, the mainly white “settlers” in the Black and Latin ghettos, were the immediate object of the wrath of the masses is in the long view of history incidental. It was merely because these were in the immediate vicinity, were the only means for alleviating the hunger of the masses, providing small objects for human consumption and the necessities of life that the attack was directed against them. The masses could find no other outlet for their pent-up anger and frustration.

When a historic opportunity presents itself, the masses instinctively follow that line of struggle which at the moment is of least resistance. It’s a way of feeling out the situation, at first cautiously. Then, as it appears safer, the momentum accelerates. The mass grows in larger and larger numbers, gains strength and confidence by the sheer weight of numbers. Moving cautiously at first, incurring the least casualties, enabled the momentum to grow at an accelerated pace.

All movements of the oppressed, as distinguished from individual groupings, begin slowly by following that which is easiest, safest, that will incur the least casualties. Of course, the monopolist press and media are crying “anarchy,” “destruction of property.” That’s not really true. It was not the destruction of property which motivated the masses. It was mass expropriation of property that urged the masses on. That is a qualitatively different matter.

Individual appropriation of objects of consumption by starving, hungry masses is understandable. But proletarian revolutionaries do not, as a rule, encourage or promote it. This is not at all in obedience to bourgeois legality or, even worse, bourgeois morality.

Individual appropriation must be distinguished from mass expropriation. The latter is in the nature of a class action, a movement of the class, in this case as representative of the oppressed nation or at least a viable part of it.

All who are progressive, all who are in real sympathy with the struggle for liberation, for an end to national oppression and class exploitation, must side with the class in this situation.

Which side are you on?

By the time this is written, all the bourgeois politicians will be saying that the anger and frustration of the masses because of unemployment and poverty is “entirely understandable.” But then they inevitably will add, “Lawlessness must not be condoned.” “That is not the way.” “It is a wrong tactic.” In one form or another, from extreme right to left, while the argument may vary in form, in essence they are all condemnatory of the rebellion.

What matters in a rebellion of the class or oppressed nation is not which argument is presented, however persuasive it may sound. The question really is: Which side are you on? Which class are you defending?

Those who, either because of ignorance or fraud or hypocrisy or downright fear, stand on the position of “not condoning” the tactics in the rebellion in reality stand on the exploiters’ side of the class barricades. All who are progressive, all who are class-conscious and truly devoted to the liberation struggle must stand on the other side.

There can never be a genuine, successful revolutionary upheaval of the masses without there being one of those elusive historic opportunities, without there being that rare combination of circumstances which is almost universally unforeseen, but which inevitably comes about in the course of historical development and which so frequently goes unrecognized even by authentic leaders. The opportunity then slips by and it takes time and not mere effort alone for it to occur again. Thus, the opportunity came on the evening of the 13th day of July. The opportunity was there because the guardians of bourgeois property could not make their presence felt in time. This alone puts in bold relief that which really holds down the masses.

It is true that a labyrinthine complex of social and political institutions of the bourgeoisie enslaves the masses and holds them in a vice. But in the final analysis, it is the gargantuan, swollen repressive apparatus of the state which keeps the masses at bay. This is the truly significant lesson that emerges from the extraordinary development of the July 13 rebellion.

Of course, it was also an opportunity for leadership in a broader, less restricted orientation.

The rebellion came at a specific time. It must be viewed as a particular stage in the political evolution of the struggle. It must not be viewed from the standpoint of bourgeois legality or morality, which the ruling class does not abide by in any case.

But (it will be asked) was there no better way to go about the struggle? Here one must distinguish between what is possible and that which is inevitable. What inevitably happens as a result of the mass action of the class, of the oppressed nation, must be defended against the onslaught of the class enemies and the appropriate lessons must be learned. Failure to defend the class under attack because it could not follow conventional norms of revolutionary conduct under the circumstances is a renunciation of allegiance and loyalty in the struggle against national oppression and class exploitation.

The unrestrained orgy of racist vilification and denunciation of the rebellion which has saturated the mass media can best be understood by the fact that the rebellion infringed upon the holy of holies of bourgeois rule of conduct for the masses.

The rebellion was a massive invasion of bourgeois property rights. Marx brilliantly explained that a hundred years ago. He said the church hierarchy would be willing to forgive the masses for their violation of 38 out of the 39 articles of the ecclesiastical canons of conduct. But should the masses infringe upon 1/64th of the church’s vast property, then it’s a holy war for the suppression of the masses to the end.

Imperialism relies on control over white workers

The rebellion of the oppressed took place in the citadel of imperialism, the source of strength of world imperialism. But this strength, this power of finance capital which seemingly is omnipotent over so many large areas of the world, is relative and in many respects superficial. Wherein lies its omnipotence? Wherein lies its real source of strength? It is not in the technological and scientific prowess of its military-industrial complex, although that, of course, is of formidable proportions. It does not lie wholly in the vast and intricate terrorist and repressive apparatus which at times seems omnipresent.

Its source of strength doesn’t lie in the cruise missile or the neutron bomb or the MX missile. The true measure of its power lies in the social stranglehold it has over the white workers, which is vast, powerful, significant and numerous. It is this social stranglehold which enables monopoly capitalism to maintain such a vast portion of the globe in bondage. It is this stranglehold which must be broken.

The privileged position of the white workers, built over a century of capitalist expansion and monopolist domination, is rapidly coming to an end. The epoch of sharp decline in the fortunes of U.S. finance capital is not merely leveling the privileges of the white workers; it is ravaging, pillaging, and plundering its standard of living, and bringing about an inevitable insurgency.

It is this capitalist crisis that is creating objectively and stimulating subjectively a firmer, more genuine basis of class solidarity between Black and white, between the white workers and all the oppressed nationalities. At the same time, Black and Latin workers are bringing heightened militancy to all the most important industries.

Only this class solidarity, which differs like heaven from earth from the solidarity of the imperialist pirates, their allies and puppets, holds out the true promise of emancipation for all humanity from the ravages of moribund monopoly capital.

In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court released a wave of decisions, as it does every year at the end of its session. Among them was a ruling giving the responsibility for decisions on partisan gerrymandering to state governments — a big attack on voting rights for Black and other oppressed peoples and all workers. 

With the court now having a far-right majority that includes Trump-appointed anti-woman bigot and serial abuser Brett Kavanaugh, many workers fear what future Supreme Court sessions may bring on reproductive rights, LGBTQ2S equality, police abuse and a host of other issues.

Following are excerpts from a talk given in July 1989 by Sam Marcy, a leading Marxist thinker and fighter, on the history of the Supreme Court and its role in the U.S. capitalist system.

By Sam Marcy

Comrades and friends, we all know that the U.S. Supreme Court last Monday dealt a very heavy blow to the women’s movement in the United States, and by implication, to all of the oppressed and the working class. [The court’s decision in the 1989 case Webster v. Reproductive Health Services upheld a Missouri law prohibiting the use of public facilities, employees or funds to provide abortion counseling or services. The law also placed restrictions on physicians who provided abortions.] Its aim was to set back the women’s movement, the civil rights movement and the liberation struggle everywhere. 

I believe my task in connection with this vicious Supreme Court decision is to put it in the historical and political context, show its connection with the previous historical movement of the workers and oppressed in this country, and how it came to be that a group of appointed, not elected, people, can invalidate the rights of the overwhelming majority of the people in this country.

It is very important for us to know the processes by which this happens so that we are not misled to believe that it is just the Reagan appointees, just Bush, just the negligence of Congress.

For weeks and months the capitalist press played up how the Constitution, adopted 200 years ago in 1789, was one of the most revolutionary documents, that it affirmed a form of government never seen before in the history of humanity, that it was the very paragon of democracy and accorded equal rights to all.

But it is this Constitution, this structure of government and of the state, that explains how these and other decisions have been made and carried out that are so contrary to the opinion of the majority of the people.

Our job is not only to condemn the Supreme Court’s decision but to know why and how this came about and how this decision of the judicial branch of the government relates to the Congress and to the presidency. We must see it in relation to the three branches of the capitalist government and know to what extent the masses of the people, the workers, all of the oppressed, can express themselves within the framework of that government.

When they sat down to frame the Constitution in 1789, they discussed what the powers of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court should be. We’ve been told again and again that the purpose of having the government divided into three branches is to see that one doesn’t carry out aggression against the other, that they complement and balance each other so that equal rights are afforded to the majority.

Now mind you, they did not mean the Native people. Nor were the slaves considered. We all know that.

In framing the Constitution they argued for weeks on how to divide the power and what the president should have, because they were not sure whether they wanted a monarchy or a republic. At that time they were not afraid of the Supreme Court. The issue was whether Congress or the president was to have the ultimate authority.

Long history of anti-people decisions

But in 1803 an important decision came up in what seemed a minor dispute. The issue was, did the Supreme Court have the right to nullify a law of Congress? And this decision affirmed that the last word was not with the Congress, not with the elected branch of the government. The last word was with an appointed group of people.

So how did that happen? Was it just a mistake that could be corrected by the next president and Congress? But there came new Congresses, new presidents, new secretaries of state and new judges. That decision was never revoked and hasn’t been to this day.

The abortion decision confirms that whenever the bourgeoisie is in a crisis, they will let nine people, unelected, appointed for life, decide the most critical issues concerning life in the United States.

With something that happened in 1803, so long ago, you could say it was an isolated decision. But in 1853, 50 years later, the court affirmed slavery with the Dred Scott decision. If there was any doubt as to where the real power was, it was right there in affirming the rights of the slave owners as against a majority of the people opposed to slavery.

I want to give you one more example. During the Depression the Roosevelt administration was forced to institute the National Recovery Act in order to save capitalism. It granted the workers the right to organize and established some forms of social insurance, all under the pressure of the working class. 

As soon as it became clear that the capitalist recession was slowly ending, in one day the Supreme Court nullified this whole mass of legislation in the infamous Schechter case and began to roll back the progressive legislation. And to this day the Supreme Court has upheld the anti-labor strike-breaking policies of the National Association of Manufacturers, of the multinational corporations and of the banks. The plight of labor today, at least from the point of view of legality, can be shown to come from this — that in the last resort the ruling class resorts to an instrumentality that is as undemocratic as it is reactionary.

Every day we see new and more glittering inventions that hold so much optimism for the future; they disclose what is happening in outer space, under water. The processes of the physical universe are being disclosed every day. But what about the social processes, the relations between people, between the classes, between the workers and the bosses, the oppressed and the oppressors? At a time when technology uncovers the variety and multiplicity of processes in the physical universe, the real relations in human society are covered up.

It is a contradiction that we as a revolutionary Marxist party must continually unravel. You see, from the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to the present day there has been a gradual democratization of the political process. The franchise used to be denied to the Native people, to Black people, to women, to the youth. But over years of struggle the franchise has been won.

However, alongside this bourgeois democratization of the political process, there has been a simultaneous social and economic process which is superior in strength. That is the process of the concentration of power in undemocratic bodies. It comes from the concentration of the means of production in the hands of a ruling class which holds the power and distributes it in areas most conducive to them. So it’s not an accident that power should ultimately be exercised by the Supreme Court. That’s most reliable to them, most conservative, responsive only to those who have appointed them.

Concentration of wealth and power

So much talk goes on about democracy, about the rights of the people to vote and to elect, but when it gets down to the really critical issues, political power is concentrated in undemocratic bodies that are removed from the control of the masses.

The Congress has power to declare war or to stop war, but it hasn’t done that in a long time. Not in the Vietnam war, the war in Lebanon, the merciless war carried on by the Israeli stooges of U.S. imperialism, or in South Africa, or elsewhere. The Congress does not exercise the power.

We ourselves are in the forefront of fighting to retain, widen and make more effective democratic political rights, not giving up any of them. But we must recognize that alongside this political process of democratizing the organs of the capitalist state, there is the process of concentration of wealth which leads to the concentration of power in the most undemocratic and reactionary elements of the capitalist government.

If we need an example of how the capitalist government deals with democracy, just the other day the Congress unanimously passed an anti-China sanctions bill. First, the capitalist media carried out a monstrous media blitz and cowered all the congress people, and in a couple of hours they passed this law, some of them not even reading it.

While they were doing all this, the Boeing Corporation was meeting with the White House and telling them: You’re forgetting Boeing has a big contract with China for jetliners worth some $400 million. So you’d better not cut that off. So the congressmen got up the next morning and saw that it got stricken from the bill.

And who do you think objected? The competitors of Boeing. Not anybody else. It shows the farcical character of the democratic process.

We don’t wish to convey the impression that we’re against participation in the congressional campaigns, or in any way want to undermine the enthusiasm or militancy of workers, and particularly the oppressed, to try in every way to utilize the capitalist electoral process for progressive purposes. But it’s very necessary to know what we are doing. It’s necessary to know that the politicians do not control the vast machinery of the capitalist state but are controlled by it, and that the state machinery is controlled by the industrialists and above all by the biggest banks.

Kim Il Sung, leader of the Korean Revolution and founding president of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), died 25 years ago on July 8, 1994. The Korean people are commemorating the anniversary with mass political meetings, performances and commemorations. The following appreciation of Kim Il Sung by Marxist leader Sam Marcy is abridged from an article originally published in the July 21, 1994, issue of Workers World newspaper.

By Sam Marcy 

Comrade Kim Il Sung devoted his whole life to the Korean people’s struggle for national self-determination and the international working-class struggle for socialist emancipation. With his leadership, the Korean people defeated the Japanese colonial occupation and soon after brought about the first defeat of the U.S. imperialist military machine.

For over 40 years since the armistice, the U.S. military has continued to occupy the south of Korea with troops and nuclear weapons. This occupation has been the chief obstacle to peaceful reunification of Korea and poses the chief danger of a new war on the peninsula.

The recent nuclear crisis is the latest episode in a long history of Pentagon threats and provocation against Korea. At a time when the people of the United States are suffering from unemployment, racism and a general decline in living standards, another U.S. war against Korea would be a terrible crime against the poor and working people of the U.S. as well as against the people of Korea.

Comrade Kim Il Sung worked tirelessly to bring about the peaceful reunification of Korea and to forge a lasting peace on the peninsula. … Comrade Kim Il Sung’s great efforts to achieve peace and reunification met the aspirations of the Korean people and also benefited the poor and working people of the U.S.

It is Kim Il Sung’s remarkable achievement that in his own lifetime he became a symbol of national liberation and reunification for the Korean people, and a symbol of the anti-imperialist and socialist struggles of all the world’s peoples. Although U.S. imperialism tried at every opportunity to blockade, threaten and sabotage the construction of socialism in the north, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea stands strong. The accomplishments of socialist construction will be a lasting monument to the leadership of Comrade Kim Il Sung.

International developments in the last few years have created great difficulties for the working class and oppressed peoples of the world. And in the face of these difficulties some have wavered or even abandoned the struggle. But Comrade Kim Il Sung and the Workers’ Party of Korea refused to let go of the principles of revolutionary socialist internationalism.

Leadership in times of great difficulties is what makes a leader truly great.

We are proud to have known Kim Il Sung as a great leader and a comrade in the international communist movement. And it is with the most profound sense of loss that we mark his passing. Yet it is also with the greatest revolutionary optimism that we are confident that Comrade Kim Il Sung’s legacy will live on with your efforts to win new victories for the Korean people. His contributions and achievements for the cause of international socialism for all humanity will never be forgotten.

The year 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 uprising of workers and students in France. In light of the Yellow Vests protest movement shaking France today and the continued relevance of the lessons of 1968 for anti-capitalist struggles, Struggle-La Lucha is publishing a series of articles written at that time by Sam Marcy, one of the leading Marxist thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. This piece (Part 5 in the series) originally appeared in the July 18, 1968, issue of Workers World newspaper.

July 15 — Now that the revolutionary tide in France has receded for the moment, it is possible to take a closer look at the political character of the de Gaulle regime. This can be fruitful and instructive in preparing for the next phase of the struggle.

Much has been written about the de Gaulle regime. However, most of it is extremely superficial and positively tendentious. It is calculated to blur its true class character and distort its basic political feature. The de Gaulle regime is a special type of Bonapartism, that is, Bonapartism as Marxists have understood that term since Engels first analyzed the phenomenon in his “Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State” — and as Lenin further developed it in his “State and Revolution.”

“The contemporary representative state,” said Engels, “is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labor by capital. By way of exception, however, periods occur when the warring classes are so nearly balanced that the state power, ostensibly appearing as a mediator, acquires, for the moment, a certain independence in relation to both.”

Examples of this, says Lenin in commenting on this passage, “were the absolute monarchies of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Bonapartism of the First and Second Empires in France, and the Bismark regime in Germany.” There have been numerous examples since then, including the period immediately before Hitler took power in Germany, during the Von Papen and Schleicher regimes.

“Above classes” — for the bourgeoisie

De Gaulle is a Bonapartist because in his entire tenure as head of the French state, he has tried to assume the role of mediator between the basic classes in French society. As such, he has deemed it to be his duty to muffle the irreconcilable class antagonisms between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie by putting himself in the pretended position of one who is allegedly acting independently of both classes and is seemingly aloof from the so-called partisan politics of the various groups and parties in France.

De Gaulle, unquestionably a man of the right from the very outset of his career, has tried to lean first on the bourgeoisie, when faced with a challenge from the workers, and then again, also lean on the workers for political support, when he was challenged by the ultraright section of the bourgeoisie.

During the Algerian crisis, when he was faced with an imminent attempt at a coup d’état by the ultraright, he openly called on the working class for support, and were it not for that spontaneous and elemental surge of the masses during those momentous days, he surely would have been overthrown. But once the ultras were defeated, he veered back again to his usual politics of straddling the fence between the classes, leaning this time heavily on the bourgeoisie.

But whether he was veering towards right or left, he was acting in the interests of bourgeois society — in the interest of the bankers, industrialists and landlords. He was always trying to save the social foundation of the bourgeoisie from the excesses of the extreme right, which could endanger the social system, or from the proletariat, which could overthrow the bourgeoisie and put an end to the system of capitalist exploitation altogether.

De Gaulle’s wartime role was unquestionably that of a Bonapartist. Without the Resistance Army (Maquis), which was mainly composed of revolutionary young workers, students and peasants, de Gaulle would have been left with nothing but the shadow of a bourgeois ruling clique, since the larger section of the bourgeoisie had actually capitulated to Hitler and were for the most part either open or covert collaborators of the Vichy Regime. Couve de Murville, the present premier and the financier who married into the Schweisguth family, another wealthy banking group, was an official in the Vichy government.

Bonapartism obscured by stability

The decadelong period from 1958 to 1968 after the defeat of the ultraright obscured the Bonapartist role of de Gaulle. This was because he leaned more and more openly on the bourgeoisie for support, while the working class, led by the French Communist Party and General Confederation of Labor (CGT), abandoned any type of meaningful political struggle against the de Gaulle regime.

A principal characteristic of Bonapartist rule, especially as manifested by de Gaulle in recent years, is the almost total reliance on rule through the police, army and occasionally the parliament. In fact, in order to be able to maneuver between the basic classes of society, a Bonapartist ruler must necessarily turn more and more to rely ultimately on the police and the army and whatever coalition he is able to obtain by parliamentary maneuvering.

It is by this combination in one form or another that de Gaulle by dexterous juggling has been able to maintain himself in power. But whenever a truly momentous sharpening of the class struggle develops, a Bonapartist regime invariably exposes its fundamental weakness, its isolation from both class camps.

A truly revolutionary situation existed in France in May-June 1968. And it was a splendid example of how a Bonapartist regime, which hitherto apparently enjoyed such wide popular support because it was presumed to have had one of its two legs in each of the class camps, suddenly seemed not to have a shred of support in either camp.

Rulers looked for new savior during crisis

During the critical days, the struggle of the French working class reached its peak and was pulling along with it untold hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. The bourgeoisie itself seemed to be pulling away from support of de Gaulle and was looking elsewhere for a new savior or a political combination of leftist politicians which could draw the support of the workers and students and return them to order. But now, the crisis of Gaullism seems to have been temporarily overcome, the acute internal convulsions which had wracked it have been publicly disclosed, and they can be examined more carefully.

An analysis shows that de Gaulle had become isolated not only from the broad masses of people but that the bourgeoisie was on the verge of abandoning him and that his own political family was so much torn by inner strife that its members were at each other’s throats. For the moment, the Bonapartist regime of de Gaulle had become paralyzed as a result of the unprecedented revolutionary mass pressure exerted upon the regime by the workers and the students, as well as by the urban and rural poor.

Whenever a Bonapartist regime is faced by a genuine revolutionary struggle and both class camps seem to be in an irreconcilable conflict, the isolation of the regime becomes fully apparent and its tendency to resort to naked military-police pressure becomes enormously accelerated. That is precisely what happened with de Gaulle.

The military maneuvers which de Gaulle embarked upon, and which we covered in preceding articles, unfortunately proved successful, only because the working-class leaders became cowed and surrendered before de Gaulle’s threats of the use of force.

Whether he could have marshalled the necessary force to quell the revolutionary uprising is another story. For, as a true Bonapartist regime during times of social crisis, its isolation from both class camps became much too apparent and its only supports were in the military and the police, and even these seemed of a dubious character.

Abandoned by his own deputies

In addition, the facts now show that his regime was hopelessly split. It is now admitted that the inner strife in de Gaulle’s official clique was so sharp that his own “parliamentary group came close to demanding the resignation of President de Gaulle.” (New York Times, July 12, 1968)

That is a fact of enormous significance. If de Gaulle couldn’t rely on his own parliamentary faction, it must be that his parliamentary deputies had become terror-stricken by the dimensions of the struggle that the workers and students were putting up and that even the right-wing bourgeois elements that these deputies represented were for abandoning de Gaulle.

Even more significant was the deep cleavage which had developed between de Gaulle and Pompidou. It had gotten to the point where, as we pointed out earlier, de Gaulle had accused Pompidou of treason.

Now, the relationship between President de Gaulle and Premier Pompidou can be likened to the relationship that exists between the chairman of the board of a corporation and its chief executive officer. In this case, Pompidou is the chief executive officer, and has all the operating ends of the bourgeois corporation in his hands.

Furthermore, Pompidou at the moment was urging the resignation of de Gaulle. This moment indeed was the very apex of the crisis in the camp of the bourgeoisie. Pompidou was not merely an official or just another parliamentary figure in de Gaulle’s political entourage. He also is a banker and representative of huge industrial and financial interests of the bourgeoisie. His vacillations and fears pointed out the acuteness of the crisis which was rending the Gaullist clique.

It was Pompidou who was negotiating with the trade union leaders. It was in the negotiations with them that he was able to gauge much better than others the mood of the workers which in one way or another had filtered through the leaders of the CGT and was passed on to him.

But with the recession of the crisis, the relationship reversed. De Gaulle has temporarily strengthened his personal rule and reorganized his clique, and Pompidou has been ousted.

From the point of view of the class interest of the proletariat, there is no fundamental difference between de Gaulle and Pompidou. Each in his own way was seeking a means of subduing the workers and students and getting them to submit peacefully to the same old oppressive system of exploitation. But these two bourgeois leaders had become hopelessly entangled on the method of solving the crisis which the massive character of the strike had brought on.

When the leadership of the bourgeoisie becomes entangled as a result of its own contradictions, shows signs of vacillation, hesitation, coupled with concessions, it not only shows weakness but also shows that it is incapable of acting in unison. What a splendid opportunity for the leadership of the workers to take advantage of the disorder and chaos in the ruling class and press the advantage to the hilt. This was their bounden duty to the workers and to the people of France in general. But they didn’t do it.

Once de Gaulle gave up the idea of the referendum, it was an indubitable sign of a split in his ruling group. Together with the fact that the Gaullist parliamentary faction showed signs of favoring the exit of de Gaulle, the Bonapartist character of de Gaulle’s rule had completely exposed itself as lacking any major support even in the camp of the bourgeoisie.

Only option — the army and police

De Gaulle, therefore, was left only with the possible support of the army and police. And although de Gaulle had visited Baden-Baden in Germany and Mulhouse in Alsace, as well as Taverny, and conspired with the fascist generals, it is an open question whether in a showdown he could have counted on his ultraright-wing conspirators and rivals to go through a military assault on the French workers and students, in view of the unprecedented popular support they had, and in view of the inner divisions within the military establishment of France, which is wracked by as many clique struggles as is the civilian part of the government, if not more.

All this is important to recall, because the so-called massive electoral victory obtained by de Gaulle seems to give the appearance of a solid phalanx of support for his rule.

This electoral support, which suffices in normal times to stabilize the regime, restore the equilibrium between the antagonistic classes and insure the continued exploitation of the working people by finance capital, does not hold in times of revolutionary crisis.

And France is still in the throes of a revolutionary crisis. The working class has not been vanquished. They have gone back to work, but as Time magazine aptly describes the mood of the workers: “They went back with rage in their hearts.” That is not a defeatist mood, not by any means.

And scarcely has a fortnight passed since the elections and the students are once again on the move.

All that the electoral victory for de Gaulle means is that he has papered over the social crisis, but has not solved it.

True to his role as a Bonapartist, de Gaulle has once more shifted to a leftist posture. He has passed down the word that his “new” scheme for social reform will mean vast changes for the betterment of the workers, the students and the farmers, and so on. His plan for reform, which goes under the label of Participation, is nothing but a new catchword for an old hoax whereby the workers are supposed to be given a say in the management of the economy.

But de Gaulle’s new political stance will not fool the workers. Once the scare of civil war by which he managed to mobilize the bourgeoisie and all its duped followers wears off, all the grievances which the workers, the unemployed and the poor peasants had faced before the revolutionary struggle began will once again stare them in the face. The class struggle will be resumed.

What we are witnessing now is a pause between one phase of the revolutionary class struggle in France and the transition to another.

Part 1 – Revolutionary situation in France 1968: Which road for the mass struggle?

Part 2 – Decisive question in France 1968: Revolutionary or reformist leadership?

Part 3 – Lesson of France 1968: Workers must declare themselves in power

Part 4 – Tactics after 1968 uprising in France

When is it correct to boycott rigged elections?

The year 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 uprising of workers and students in France. In light of the Yellow Vests protest movement shaking France today and the continued relevance of the lessons of 1968 for anti-capitalist struggles, Struggle ★ La Lucha is publishing a series of articles written at that time by Sam Marcy, one of the leading Marxist thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. This piece originally appeared in the July 5, 1968, issue of Workers World newspaper.

It seems only yesterday that the entire structure of capitalist France was tottering and on the verge of utter collapse. The ruling class was reeling under the blows of the student rebellion as well as the most massive and most widespread general strike in Western European history.

Has the so-called landslide election which gave the Gaullists a sweeping majority changed all this? Indeed not! Only those who are victims of parliamentary cretinism, only those who view the truly great revolutionary significance of the May-June class struggle of the French workers as some sort of psychological aberration can take the election figures for good coin or as a true reflection of the living reality of France today.

None of the deep-seated economic issues have in any way been resolved, nor is there any reason to believe that they will be in the future. The so-called “massive” wage increases, which everyone is talking about, are of purely nominal character and are at the mercy of a galloping rise in the cost of living (which, of course, [Prime Minister Georges] Pompidou promises to “control”). The acute class antagonisms which are at the bottom of the struggle and which broke violently through the surface in May can at best be muffled for a short period of time but can never be eradicated or resolved.

Of course, the massive majority whipped up by the Gaullists has significance, but only if it is properly understood in the light of the living struggle of class forces. Gaining a parliamentary majority became the issue in France only because the Communist Party of France—General Confederation of Labor (CGT) leadership permitted de Gaulle to take the initiative of calling for elections without a struggle. Naturally, the bourgeoisie would triumph in an election rigged by the Gaullists.

However, the issue should not have been whether the police dictatorship of de Gaulle could muster a majority of the electorate to vote for his regime, but whether it was proper for the leadership of the CP and CGT to urge the masses to participate in a farce whose outcome was a foregone conclusion.

But was there an alternative choice left open to them? Yes, indeed. A boycott of the elections, even if it went badly, could scarcely have caused as much damage as did the participation in the electoral fraud in which the masses were dragooned to cast their votes for de Gaulle. To begin with, the CP-CGT leadership and its allies among the masses had every legal right to boycott the election and disrupt the election machinery.

Election held under military threat

Why? First of all, this was not a general election in accordance with the constitutional provisions. It was a special election decided upon by de Gaulle himself. Moreover, and this is far more important, the election was called and arranged by de Gaulle under duress and the threat of the use of force. Nothing could fly in the face of bourgeois legality more than the threat of the use of force on the eve of an election. Such an election is considered rigged. Participating in such an election is validating a fraud.

It is instructive to recall the manner in which de Gaulle prepared for the election while the events are still fresh in the minds of the millions. At a time when the revolutionary strike wave was at its height with the economy virtually in the hands of the workers, de Gaulle suddenly disappeared. Where did he go? He went to confer with one of his principal co-conspirators in the military, Gen. Jacques Massu. He is the general who commands the French forces in Germany and who worked with de Gaulle during the Algiers period as a captain. De Gaulle’s departure to meet Massu and other fascist generals was deliberately leaked to the press to threaten and intimidate the leadership as well as the masses with military force.

The holding of an election under these circumstances is constitutionally illegal. The CP-CGT leadership and its bourgeois allies among the politicians pride themselves on standing for “law and order.”

Well, the conspiracy of de Gaulle and his military chiefs in Taverny was a most flagrant breach of bourgeois legality. Why didn’t the CP-CGT leadership take advantage of that? This breach became open and most impudent when he began to move tanks toward the capital. If this is not conducting an election under duress, then nothing is. From then on the CP-CGT leadership had every right, on the basis of elementary bourgeois law, not to submit to military threats by a conspiracy of the fascist generals with de Gaulle at its head.

The case for denouncing de Gaulle’s election maneuver will be more easily understood by U.S. readers who know contemporary American labor history and the struggle of workers to win collective bargaining rights. It has now become well settled law governing U.S. labor relations that a collective bargaining election which takes place during a period when the employer uses threats, coercion, intimidation and duress is invalid and the union has every right not merely to boycott the election but to call a strike to avoid casualties and demoralization in the plant.

Employers do not want collective bargaining elections when the spirit of the workers is high. Rather they seek to dampen that spirit by the use of all foul methods including bribery and intimidation of the leaders to demoralize the workers and then have a rigged election. How many times has this been repeated in contemporary labor history in the U.S.?

Lenin and 1905

Marxist tactics and strategy governing boycotts of parliamentary elections were discussed by Lenin almost fifty years ago in his famous book “Left-Wing Communism” and are considered ABC today. Lenin gives two pertinent examples from Russian history relating to parliamentary elections: when to boycott and when not to boycott.

The boycott of the parliament in 1906, said Lenin, was a mistake because no extraparliamentary struggle of great dimensions was taking place at the time. On the contrary, there was a definite recession of the struggle. However, says Lenin, the boycott in 1905 was correct.

“When, in August 1905,” says Lenin, “the Czar announced the convocation of an advisory ‘parliament,’ the Bolsheviks — unlike all the opposition parties and the Mensheviks — proclaimed a boycott of it.” What was the objective situation in 1905 according to Lenin? It was “one that was leading to the rapid transformation of mass strikes into a political strike, then into a revolutionary strike and then into insurrection.”

Commenting on this later, Lenin says: “We see that we succeeded in preventing the convocation of a reactionary parliament by a reactionary government in a situation in which extraparliamentary, revolutionary mass action (strikes in particular) was growing with exceptional rapidity.”

Of course, the situation in Russia in 1905 and the situation in France in May-June 1968 are different in many respects. However, the essential characteristics of an objective situation making a boycott not only desirable but obligatory prevailed in France in May-June 1968 just as in Russia in 1905.

In other words, the Czar, like de Gaulle, decided to convene the parliament in the midst of a revolutionary situation. The Bolsheviks, even though they felt that the revolution might not be successful, decided to boycott the elections because the main struggle was in the street and around the factories. All the other parties, including the Mensheviks, participated, thereby showing their preference for bourgeois parliamentarism over revolutionary struggle.

Had the CP-CGT leadership tried “to prevent the convocation of a reactionary parliament” by the reactionary de Gaulle government in a situation in which there was so much absolutely unprecedented revolutionary mass action, de Gaulle would not be where he is today.

Part 1 – Revolutionary situation in France 1968: Which road for the mass struggle?

Part 2 – Decisive question in France 1968: Revolutionary or reformist leadership?

Part 3 – Lesson of France 1968: Workers must declare themselves in power

Nov. 25, 1983 

Of all the great domestic political problems facing the working class and the oppressed people, none surpasses in importance the relationship of national oppression to the class struggle.

Indeed, one may say that it is at the heart of the basic social problem in the United States. It touches every form of social existence, and no sector of society is free from it.

For Marxists in particular, it is the acid test of the correctness of their general political program. It is also a test of the revolutionary integrity of the party, in particular as this is manifested in day-to-day practical application. Probably nowhere else is theory so severely tested by practice as in the field of the national question.

Upon the solution of the national question may very well depend the destiny of the working class in the struggle against capitalism as well as the future of socialism.

The national question, or, as it is sometimes called, the race question, has for centuries been covered up by a plethora of lies and deceit. The intent is to convey the impression that it does not exist, or, if it does exist, it is being solved, or at least its significance is diminishing due to the glory and virtues of the democratic processes of monopoly capitalism.

The deepening of the capitalist crisis, notwithstanding the current ephemeral recovery, is bound to intensify national oppression in the U.S. This will be so not only because of the growing unemployment, of which the oppressed people bear the brunt, but also perhaps of equal importance because of the direction of U.S. foreign policy toward military adventurism on a global scale unprecedented in history.

The burden of all this is bound to become more and more intolerable for the working class and the oppressed peoples.

The ruling class can be relied upon to desperately attempt to divert the course of the struggle of the workers and the oppressed into divisive and frustrating channels, while reaping a huge harvest in the form of super profits for itself.

The many millions of the oppressed and exploited masses meanwhile find it more difficult to gather their huge and invincible forces into a united front against the ruling class — the most monstrous and dangerous ever to inhabit this planet, who keep it in constant peril of utter destruction.

National vs. class struggle

To many in the progressive and working-class movement the relationship between national oppression and class conflict appears as a choice between two supposedly contradictory phenomena.

To socialists of the pre-World War I generation and to many avowed Marxists of that period (and even of decades later), choosing or giving priority to the national question, or as some put it, “giving priority to the struggle against racism,” meant the abandonment of the class struggle and a surrender to bourgeois nationalism.

Needless to say, such a view of Marxism, in addition to being an error in principle and a violation of basic Marxist theory on the national question, was mostly propounded by whites, even those who saw themselves as adherents of socialism and even of Marxism.

Early socialist movement

Notwithstanding the avowed anti-capitalist struggle of the socialists of that period, their propaganda for socialism, their espousal of the class struggle, and even the militant class battles between the working class and the capitalist class that they led, this type of pursuit of the class struggle tended to completely ignore the very existence of the semi-slavery, oppression, persecution and disenfranchisement of the Black people.

It goes without saying that the struggle of the Native people was completely disregarded by them, to the point where it seldom if ever occupied any part in the struggle of the socialists of the time or in their political polemics or discussions.

In Marx’s time, the struggle against capitalism was seen primarily as one in which the working class as a whole was conducting the socialist class struggle against the bourgeoisie and winning democratic demands not only for itself but for all others deprived of democratic rights.

However, it was understood at that time that, as long as capitalism existed, only minor reforms could be won, not only for the workers as a whole but for those who were disenfranchised and denied democratic rights. Socialist propaganda emphasized the overall objective of the abolition of the capitalist system. It pointed out the acute and insoluble contradictions under capitalism, the slavery of the wage system, the impoverishment of the farmers, the disappearance of small industry in favor of monopoly.

Just as the socialist struggle could not really bring lasting and basic reforms to capitalism, so it could not solve the racial, that is the national question, under capitalism. The latter would have to wait until the victory of the socialist revolution.

It was then thought that fighting for the enfranchisement of the oppressed nationalities — Black, Latin, Asian and Native — was important, as was women’s suffrage. But only successive electoral victories culminating in the ultimate overthrow of the capitalist system would attain social and political equality.

It is not to be wondered at, then, that on the eve of 1916, when there were already dozens of socialist mayors throughout the country, there was scarcely even one Black representative nominated for the hundreds of city, county and state offices to which socialists were elected.

Clearly, such Marxism could not have much appeal to Black and other oppressed nationalities. It was also inevitable that a large section of the right wing of the Socialist Party, led by Victor Berger of Milwaukee and Morris Hillquit of New York, would be invested with what would today be regarded as outright racism.

The left wing, headed by Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood, was eloquent in its defense of Black people. But it was utterly incapable of influencing the course of the Party’s struggle at the time in a progressive direction on the national question, as well as on other political problems.

Impact of Russian Revolution

It was not until the arrival of the October Revolution in Russia and the ensuing years of revolutionary struggle on a world scale that a theoretically correct appreciation of the national question in relation to the class struggle found its way to the U.S.

Lenin’s long years of struggle on the question of the right of nations to self-determination and his relentless exposure of chauvinism as arising from the failure to correctly apply this right constituted a virtual treasury of new thinking that was soon introduced here and in other metropolitan imperialist countries.

In addition to writing voluminously on the right of nations to self-determination, Lenin reformulated Marx’s world famous slogan about united the working class of the world.

In Marx’s time the slogan, as stated in the Communist Manifesto, was, “Workers of the world unite.” Lenin updated this to reflect the changed character of capitalism. So-called progressive, peaceful, competitive capitalism had evolved into monopoly, which not only required vast expansion at the expense of oppressed peoples around the world but also exacerbated and intensified every type of national oppression at home.

To the slogan “Workers of the world unite!” Lenin added the oppressed peoples. So now it reads, “Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite!”

It introduced a substantial difference in the approach to the oppressed peoples abroad and, no less important, the super exploited and oppressed people at home in the internal colonies.

While many decades have passed since Lenin’s formulation of the question, it now more than ever needs a proper application since the assault of monopoly capitalism becomes ever more onerous and threatening day by day.

No political equality

What was not understood by the early socialists, and remains a mystery to this day to many who proclaim themselves Marxists, is that the bourgeois revolution, so far as it pertained to Black people everywhere in this country, was never completed politically or even judicially. There is still no real political equality between Black and white in this country.

This is not only attested to by the wide differential between Black and white in income and social status generally, but is especially evident on the parliamentary front and is made very obvious during electoral campaigns.

It may be formally true that Black people generally have the same right to vote as whites do. There are any number of elected Black officials in various cities, counties and state subdivisions. But by and large there is a glaringly wide discrepancy between the political effectiveness of whites during national elections and that of Black people.

One merely has to take a look at the U.S. Senate. It has 100 senators, but not one is Black.

And out of 435 representatives in the House, there are scarcely 30 Black and Latin people put together.

This glaring inequality as expressed in the bourgeois parliamentary system attests to the fact that the bourgeois democratic revolution began in the 1860s has not yet been completed. The same bourgeois democratic rights which white workers have been entitled to for two centuries are still not available to Black workers and Black people generally.

Marxists can ignore this only at the risk of losing their historic revolutionary mission in capitalist society. One cannot reduce the question to one of mere racial discrimination which, as the saying goes, is diminishing with the passage of time.

On the contrary, the mere passage of time does not guarantee a gradual evolution to full political rights, that is, to the democratic rights won by white workers and white people generally.

The centuries-old prevalence of social and political inequality attests to the fact that Black people in the U.S., like Native people, constitute a nation. The struggle against inequality thus has to be viewed politically in the context not merely of waging a fight against racial discrimination but of the right to self-determination.

The year 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 uprising of workers and students in France. In light of the Yellow Vests protest movement shaking France today and the continued relevance of the lessons of 1968 for anti-capitalist struggles, Struggle★ La Lucha is publishing a series of articles written at that time by Sam Marcy, one of the leading Marxist thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. This piece originally appeared in the June 20, 1968, issue of Workers World newspaper.

Up until the present time, there has been no successful proletarian revolution in the Western capitalist countries. The apologists for Western imperialism seem never to forget to remind us of this fact.

The revolutions in Eastern Europe that came during World War II were to one degree or another aided by the strong intervention of the Red Army, even where the Communist Party was very strong and had large popular support among the workers and peasants. There were, of course, attempts at proletarian revolution immediately after World War I in Germany and in Italy. There were also favorable opportunities for proletarian revolution in Germany during the period immediately preceding the Nazi takeover by Hitler and in France and Spain in the years immediately following Hitler’s seizure of power.

In the view of many, there also existed favorable opportunities in Italy and France after World War II, when large sections of the popular masses were armed and the capitalist state in both countries seemed on the verge of utter collapse.

At this writing, all of the imperialist publicists and commentators are busily writing obituaries to the French Revolution 1968. But as Mark Twain noted, in a different context, “Reports of my death are highly exaggerated.” And, of course, the broad implication of their propaganda is that the Western proletariat is congenitally incapable and uninterested in carrying out the proletarian revolution. As Sanche de Gramont in the Sunday, June 16, New York Times Magazine summed up their (wishful) thinking: “The French workers don’t want to wreck the affluent (affluent for whom? – S.M.) society. They just want to participate in it.”

Of course there is no question that the revolutionary situation in France as it has developed in the last four weeks has experienced a certain ebb tide. No revolutionary situation can continue consistently and steadily on the upgrade unless there is a seizure of power by the working class and its allies. Failing that, a recession is bound to set in. And that is what has happened.

Workers must declare themselves in power

A general strike such as the one which engulfed France these last few stormy weeks cannot endure indefinitely. The leadership of the working class in general and the trade union leadership in particular must make a conscious bid for state power. They must try to orient the working class toward a general seizure and maintenance of the plants, industry and economy with the revolutionary aim of declaring itself — we repeat, declaring itself — to be the legal, that is, the political authority in the country as against the police, the military and the pro-fascist dictatorship of [President Charles] de Gaulle, which has been repudiated by the popular, decisive masses in the streets and factories.

Unless this is done, the revolutionary tide cannot but begin to recede. In fact, it has begun to recede. But it is only a recession. There has been no definitive, no decisive defeat for the working class and its allies among the city and rural poor. Conversely, there has not been a decisive victory for the bourgeoisie.

De Gaulle calls on hated fascists

The de Gaulle regime is as shaky as it ever has been. Its condition both economically and politically is as desperate as it has ever been. And as we have indicated in previous articles, it is torn by a thousand inner class contradictions which it cannot resolve.

Imagine the plight of de Gaulle. He has had to call upon his worst personal enemies for help. He has had to lean on none other than Bidault, Salan & Co., the outright fascist elements so bitterly hated by the overwhelming majority of the French people. These elements only yesterday were plotting his assassination. Can he really have a stable united front with them?

De Gaulle’s so-called reconciliation with the army generals is only of a pro-forma character. The various cliques in the military camarilla make it highly questionable whether they can act in unison in a showdown. The reliability of the army rank and file and of sections of the police once the revolution begins in earnest can only be tested in the crucible of the actual struggle itself.

Decisive battles yet to come

As of now, neither of the major social classes on the opposite sides of the class barricades has been vanquished. Whatever has been lost or won, whatever may have been won by the bourgeoisie and lost by the proletariat and its allies, has been strictly in the field of political maneuver. This has not resulted in major casualties.

True, there have been some killings and brutal, savage beatings of students and workers. Measured by the scale of revolution, however, these can only be regarded as initial skirmishes. No major battle has yet been fought. All that the bourgeoisie has won is a psychological victory.

The lull before the storm

The workers have gone back to work, certainly. But their spirit has not been broken. Their class consciousness has not evaporated. On the contrary, it has been enhanced and enriched. This is the key factor in this great historical situation. This is precisely what the bourgeois press here and everywhere wants to hide. At any rate, most of the workers have gone back only because the French Communist Party-General Confederation of Labor (CGT) leadership has urged them to. The CP-CGT leadership has accepted de Gaulle’s edict to engage in a parliamentary contest with the ruling class for electoral seats rather than wage a revolutionary contest for proletarian state power.

This is where the situation rests at the present time. It is a lull before the next storm. It also affords the opportunity for the revolutionary elements which side with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie to take stock of the situation, reassess their tactics and prepare for the next stage of the struggle.

Objective conditions, class relations still favorable for revolution

The mass mood of the workers, students and rural poor may have changed. Some of the enthusiasm may have evaporated. Anger and disillusionment with the official leadership of the working class and the trade unions may have led to temporary pessimism. But this again is only a mood. The objective relationship of the classes and the relationship of the political forces in the country remains the same.

The actual living conditions of the overwhelming majority of the workers and peasants and a large section of the middle class have not materially changed except perhaps for the worse. The bankers, industrialists and financiers in whose behalf de Gaulle is mounting his counterrevolutionary offensive are not about to grant such major economic and political concessions as would materially influence the conditions of the mass of poor and exploited. Even if the rulers would, the question is still whether they could.  

Therein lay the tremendous material advantages in favor of the further prosecution of the proletarian revolution.

But how? The problem revolves almost entirely around the question of bourgeois parliamentarism — a centuries-old deception carefully cultivated by the bourgeoisie to ensnare, dupe and frighten the masses in the same way in which priests during the feudal period used to frighten the peasants with dire consequences if they refused to purchase indulgences.

‘From revolutionary action to a majority!’

Joseph Barry, former Paris correspondent for the New York Post, reporting in the June 13 Village Voice, writes:

“Two days ago a man handed me a leaflet saying de Gaulle’s requested Civic Action Committee would have its first organizational meeting for my 6th arrondissement in the local government mairie [town hall]. I already had a leaflet from the left-wing Action Committee for the 6th arrondissement ending with the slogan: ‘Not from an electoral majority to revolutionary action, but from revolutionary action to a majority!’ (De Gaulle’s dissolved parliament has a Gaullist majority, yet the action leading to its dissolution was in the street not in parliament.)”

Whatever was the political position of the writers of the slogan: “Not from an electoral majority to revolutionary action, but from revolutionary action to a majority!” even though somewhat vague, they were correct in principle and it reflects the objective tasks of the proletariat.

The idea that the working-class party must win a majority of the masses in a bourgeois parliamentary election supervised by a bourgeois government under a bourgeois system is one that is not easy to overcome. All the political parties of the left in France, as everywhere else in the West, have continually and uninterruptedly in one way or another sustained and strengthened this deception. Now the apologists say, “We are not a majority, we are one-fourth, maybe one-third of the electorate, we need to win an electoral majority.”

De Gaulle conspires with general: the revolution cannot wait

But what if the proletarian revolution is on the doorstep before a majority in an election can be won? What if a neofascist type of police dictatorship threatens the very political existence of the working class, its rights and liberties? What then? What if the revolution can’t wait for a parliamentary majority? What if fascist dictatorship is on the doorstep of every worker’s home? What then?

It took the bourgeoisie centuries to develop its parliamentary system and to “educate” the masses to accept it. The ruling class permitted universal suffrage only after it was absolutely sure that its parliamentary system worked in its favor.

For centuries, the vote was only permitted to property owners. Only after the bourgeoisie felt that it had pacified the masses and “educated” them to its ways did it permit universal suffrage. To the bourgeoisie, universal suffrage and the parliamentary system in general have always been an ideological weapon for the domination and political subjugation of the proletariat, of the exploited, the poor and the oppressed.

The proletariat in power will win all humanity

Marx and Engels took pains to explain that universal suffrage under a bourgeois system can at most, at best, be merely “an index of the maturity” of the working class for power. It can never be more. The truth of this generalization has been proven by the entire history of bourgeois parliamentarism throughout the West.

However, the working class can and will win a majority of the people, and a great deal more than a majority, not under the system of bourgeois parliamentarism, but under a working-class system where the proletariat has the power and the means to educate the population under its and not under the bourgeoisie’s ideological tutelage.

Yes, working-class leaders, students and their allies can say proudly, let us exercise power, real power, by taking the reins of society in our own hands. We will run society on a socialist basis, free from the parasitic, mercenary landlords, bankers, industrialists and other exploiters. We will win more popular support through our state, through our system (because it is a socialist system) than the bourgeoisie could ever win, because we can rectify all the basic ills of society and the bourgeoisie cannot and will not. They can only aggravate them.

It is not too late even if de Gaulle and his pro-fascist coalition should win a majority in his rigged parliament, the parliament of the bourgeoisie. It will not end the acute class struggle which has been brought to the surface in recent weeks. It has only temporarily subsided. It will re-emerge with greater force, with greater vitality than ever.

As against the rigged bourgeois parliament, the working-class organizations, the students, the rural poor and the exploited and oppressed of the cities must strive to build a unified, parallel center, a center of proletarian power — the next phase of the struggle.

Part 1 – Revolutionary situation in France 1968: Which road for the mass struggle?

Part 2 – Decisive question in France 1968: Revolutionary or reformist leadership?