[Militant No. 355, 13th May 1977, p. 9]
Dear Comrades
In his letter Monty Johnstone (in a passage unfortunately left out by a printing error) repeats the assertion that ‘The Bolsheviks struggled up to 1917 for a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, specifically distinguished from working class power.” But in the article by Lenin to which MJ refers in his letter (and elsewhere) “Letters on Tactics” (April 1917) (see Lenin ‘Collected Works’ vol 24 pp 42-54) Lenin is actually arguing against the “old Bolsheviks” (like Kamenev) who were putting forward exactly the same arguments that MJ is still trying to retail today.
We do not have space to go into all the points made by Lenin. But what did he say? He said that the “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry has been realised, but in a highly original manner and with a number of important modifications.” (p. 46) He said it existed side by side with the “rule of the bourgeoisie.”
But Lenin regarded this as making the formula itself antiquated: “It is worthless. It is dead. And all attempts to revive it will be in vain.” Secondly, dual power was a situation of the struggle between two contending classes (both fighting for decisive influence over the peasantry): it was not itself a state with a neutral or hybrid class content – ideas advanced by Johnstone which make nonsense of Marxist theory of the state.
Lenin quite categorically stated in the very same article (page 46): “A Marxist must not abandon the grounds of careful analysis of the class relations. The bourgeoisie is in power.” The Soviets were the embryo of workers’ state, which to some extent had undermined the power of the capitalist class, but had also (under Menshevik leadership) allowed the capitalist state to begin to re-establish its own authority.
Lenin’s conclusion was not that the Bolsheviks should work in this (as Johnstone, like Kamenev at the time, would see it) “transitional state”; pushing it towards socialism or trying to tip the balance towards the workers. On the contrary the Soviets should engage in a struggle against the bourgeois state to smash it and establish their own power through the Soviets (with the support of the peasantry).
Johnstone completely distorts Marx’s and Engels’ view position in the 1848 revolutions.
Whilst of course supporting common action with the petty bourgeoisie against the reaction, they were opposed to any “special union” which they warned would reduce the workers to an appendage of the petty bourgeois. “Alongside any new official governments (of the petty bourgeoisie) they (the workers) must establish simultaneously their own revolutionary workers’ governments.”
Even at this time, in Germany of 1850, when the working class was still a small and relatively weak force. Marx and Engels argued that the main aims of the workers as the revolution developed must be: “Destruction of the influence of the bourgeois democrats on the workers, immediate independent and armed organisation of the workers, and the enforcement of conditions as difficult as possible and compromising as possible upon the inevitable rule of the bourgeois democracy.”
We will leave it to the reader to contrast this revolutionary, class approach to the policy (defended by MJ) of the CP in Spain in 1936-39. Far from denouncing the idea of the “permanent revolution” (supposedly from the heretical invention of Trotsky!) Marx and Engels wrote (in 1850): “Their battle cry must be: The revolution in Permanence.”
The May Days in Barcelona 1937 were provoked by the Stalinists who were determined to crush all genuine elements of workers’ power. It has only later become known (from German archives) that Franco boasting that he had 13 agents in Barcelona who he claimed were responsible for fermenting the fighting. In his book on Spain, Hugh Thomas dismisses this as a boast (p. 656).
But at the time, the CP frequently accused the POUM, the anarchists, Trotskyists, and all other opponents as being “fascist agents”. This was the usual “argument” and “justification” for the assassination, imprisonment, etc. of the CP’s opponents.
Johnstone may scrupulously, fastidiously deny any suggestion that he is accusing the POUM or Trotsky’s supporters in Spain of being fascist agents: but if so, why does he continually repeat the claims of Franco printed in the German archives? He is simply using the old Stalinist method of “answering” opponents by smearing them with unsubstantiated allegations.
Fascist agents would of course have exploited differences within their opponents’ ranks: but the difference arose from the situation, created by the policies of the CP, and it was the Stalinists who provoked the workers in Barcelona to revolt against the dictatorship that they were installing in Republican Spain.
Lynn Walsh
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