In Defence of Leon Trotsky

The appearance of a new work on 'the exile and murder of Leon Trotsky' by an American academic Bertrand M Patenaude, Stalin's Nemesis, which is being serialised on Radio 4 was always likely to cause a bit of a stir. I mean, if people know one thing about the legendary revolutionary it is that, thanks to the Stanglers, they are able to come up with some kind of answer to the question 'whatever happened to Leon Trotsky?'.

The work has been widely reviewed (the reviews are usefully collected together by a welcome newish addition to the blogosphere, POUMista) but it has also been an opportunity for reactionaries and liberals of every stripe to once again slander and denigrate someone who faced the most terrific slander and denigration during his life from almost every quarter. Just as Stalin smeared the Jewish Trotsky as an agent of Hitler, so Richard Overy describes Trotsky's supporters as a 'motley crew', while Trotsky himself suffered from a 'blindness to any sense of humanity' and apparently 'never had any scruples about killing those in the way of the Marxist utopia'. It is a pity that Overy has seemingly not made time to read Trotsky's Their Morals and Ours where he answered exactly Overy's critique about 'moral scruple' over seventy years ago:

'A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified. From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man. "We are to understand then that in achieving this end anything is permissible?" sarcastically demands the Philistine, demonstrating that he understood nothing. That is permissible, we answer, which really leads to the liberation of mankind. Since this end can be achieved only through revolution, the liberating morality of the proletariat of necessity is endowed with a revolutionary character. It irreconcilably counteracts not only religious dogma but every kind of idealistic fetish, these philosophic gendarmes of the ruling class. It deduces a rule for conduct from the laws of the development of society, thus primarily from the class struggle, this law of all laws. "Just the same," the moralist continues to insist, "does it mean that in the class struggle against capitalists all means are permissible: lying, frame-up, betrayal, murder, and so on?" Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means, we answer, which unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are permissible. When we say that the end justifies the means, then for us the conclusion follows that the great revolutionary end spurns those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against other parts, or attempt to make the masses happy without their participation, or lower the faith of the masses in themselves and their organization, replacing it by worship for the "leaders." Primarily and irreconcilably, revolutionary morality rejects servility in relation to the bourgeoisie and haughtiness in relation to the toilers, that is, those characteristics in which petty-bourgeois pedants and moralists are thoroughly steeped.

Overy concludes with a bon mot: 'Trotsky was also famous for the metaphor 'the dustbin of history'; sad to say, he has probably joined the trash'. I like the 'probably' in that sentence - Overy may know little about Trotsky but he is a good enough historian to have some sense that many people concerned about the future of humanity continue to recognise Trotsky as a heroic fighter for the oppressed and exploited and are likely to be still reading and learning from Trotsky long after Overy's own books have been surpassed and lie, unread, mere dusty relics on a library shelf.

I have not read Stalin's Nemesis itself yet, but another of the reviews - that of Robert Service in the Guardian - simply demands a response in some form or another. Service, we learn, is writing 'a biography' of Trotsky. Given his biography of Lenin (2000) was a 'badly-written demonisation' we can guess what his forthcoming work on Trotsky will also be like - but Service's review of Stalin's Nemesis gives us a taste of what lies in store. Service starts out with a metaphor about writing about animals:

The death of a hunted fox is usually written about in two ways. One focuses on the chase and killing with sympathy for the defenceless animal. The second, usually favoured by the hunters, takes into account the hens, rabbits and lambs that have been the fox's victims.

True enough. I feel sorry for any poor little hunted fox, but I also feel for the unfortunate hens, rabbits and lambs that are killed by foxes too.

Trotsky's assassination in Coyoacán in August 1940 more often than not attracts treatment in the first mode, and Bertrand Patenaude's book falls into this category.

Eh? How did we go from foxes, hens, rabbits and lambs to Trotsky and his death at the hands of Stalinist terror? Can human activity and behaviour - politics - really be simply described using animal metaphors? It's one thing if you are writing a novel - or a 'fairy tale' like Orwell in Animal Farm - to reduce matters in this way for artistic effect - and Orwell did it with great skill - but Service is a historian at Oxford University - isn't he is supposed to, well, view things a little more seriously and historically?

Coyoacán, on the outskirts of Mexico City, was the final abode of the fallen Soviet leader after Stalin had him deported from the USSR in 1929. He stayed successively in Turkey, France and Norway before the government of President Lázaro Cárdenas offered him permanent asylum. The intervening years were disastrous. His followers in the Soviet Union were shot or put to forced labour. Abroad, his daughter Zina committed suicide and his son perished in mysterious circumstances in a Paris hospital. He knew he too was marked for liquidation when the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros led an attack on his villa-fortress in May 1940. Three months later NKVD [Spoviet secret police] agent Ramón Mercader got into the compound and drove an ice axe into his cranium.

Ah, so that's what happened to Leon Trotsky! Cheers Robert, though you might have mentioned that Trotsky also sought refuge from Stalin in the great parliamentary democracy that is Britain but that the government of the day (incidently a Labour government) refused him political asylum as well...

Trotsky blamed all his troubles on Stalin.

If true, then perhaps understandable given Stalin wanted him dead, and was in the process of murdering his family and close friends.

In his elegant autobiography - one of the 20th century's political classics - he laid out how a criminal group had seized control of his beloved Communist party and pushed it to a terminus of self-seeking bureaucracy, corruption and violence.

Well, that's close to what Trotsky argued actually happened. Trotsky's My Life is indeed a classic but isn't Service thinking of The Revolution Betrayed here (My Life stopped in about 1929)? This doesn't really bode that well if he is writing a biography of Trotsky does it...

Patenaude does not hide how Trotsky himself had been associated with dictatorship and terror, but flashbacks to earlier episodes of Trotsky's career mostly show how the fox was caught by his hunters. The hens he had bloodily torn apart and devoured do not figure prominently.

'The hens he had bloodily torn apart and devoured' - Service really needs to get a grip and pull himself together a bit. He is supposed to be a historian - surely he might deign to mention something of the historical context to the Soviet 'dictatorship' and 'terror' - namely the Russian Civil War? Just in passing even? No? Oh well, hens bloodily torn apart and devoured for no reason other than it is in a fox's nature to tear apart and devour hens it is then and Trotsky is not a human being but an animal living by instinct. I see.

Not every unhappiness in Trotsky's life, was attributable to Stalin. Mentally unstable and afflicted by tuberculosis, Zina had left the USSR to join her father in the Sea of Marmara. A number of fires soon occurred in Trotsky's rented house. The suspicion of the resident Trotskyists was that Zina was the culprit. She was only happy when she was performing political tasks for her father, but he shrugged her aside and sent her to Berlin for medical attention. In Germany she wrote painful letters to her mother saying that the root of her difficulties was the alienation from the man she had "adored since the day of her birth". In despair she gassed herself. Trotsky's Bulletin of the Opposition denounced Stalin for what had happened, but the decisive factor was Trotsky's own incapacity for emotional empathy.

This is just sick frankly. 'The decisive factor' in Trotsky's daughter's suicide was apparently not the context of Stalinist persecution and exile (the suicide was 'not attributable' to Stalin at all apparently) but Trotsky's 'own incapacity for emotional empathy' - really, how low can one go? Talk about kicking the man when he is down.

On the political plane, too, he helped to design and build a political order that persecuted whole social categories.

I like this bit about 'social categories' - at least he recognises that enemies of the Russian Revolution were not farmyard animals but by 'social categories' does he mean maybe 'exploiters' and 'oppressors' or something like that? Or what? He does not say - it is pathetic, frankly..

His Terrorism and Communism, written in 1920, justified the application of terror to presumed "enemies of the people". In his period of power after the October Revolution, he revelled in introducing a harsh dictatorial regime and never questioned the need for one-party rule. His ferocity continued after his deportation. In 1931, when the Menshevik leaders were arraigned in a show trial, he spared not an ounce of compassion. For Trotsky, as for Stalin, such people deserved to be punished without pity.

Still not a mention of the context of the Russian Civil War I see. Nevermind, one can't ask for everything I suppose. At least Service has moved on from talking about foxes and hens and is at least attempting to present some historical 'facts' before us. We have to be grateful for small mercies.

The strength of Patenaude's account is in his detective work on the last weeks of Trotsky's life. He has a good feel for the topography of the villa on Avenida Viena and has blended his story with an account of contemporary political conditions in Mexico. He is also up to date with the recent Russian research on the operations of the NKVD.

At last - something about the book itself under review. It sounds an interesting read. Thanks Robert.

Trotsky still has the power to raise passions.

No shit - Service is so passionate in his hatred he can't even bear to describe him as a fellow human being - he has to portray him as a bloodthirsty predator.

The brutal circumstances of his assassination, together with his genius for producing books of literary brilliance, continue widely to elicit the feeling that he would have constructed "socialism with a human face" in the USSR.

Trotsky also wanted 'socialism with a human face' internationally as well as in the Soviet Union - a small point but I think one worth mentioning given his defence of this basic principle of Marxism led to his exile and murder at the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy (who wanted 'socialism in one country'). Memo to Robert Service - Trotsky's internationalism might be worth mentioning in the biography somewhere. Look up 'Permanent Revolution, Marxist Theory of' for more information on this perhaps.

But Trotsky was a master of selectivity and evasiveness when telling the story of his career and he drew a curtain across his complicity in consolidating an edifice of lawless dictatorship.

Thank goodness Service doesn't engage in any 'selectivity and evasiveness' himself when it comes to telling the story of Trotsky's revolutionary career - no, none whatsoever.

The fox indeed endured a grisly end. But it is surely also important to remember the deaths of the hens, ducks and lambs.

Eh? It was 'hens, rabbits and lambs' earlier - now it is 'hens, ducks and lambs' - what about the rabbits? And where did the ducks come from? Either get your animal metaphors right, Service, or just stick to writing about humans as humans. Actually, given his lack of interest in Trotsky the man, let alone Trotsky the revolutionary Marxist, why does he even bother? Oh, yes, I remember now, to try and discourage people from reading too much else about Trotsky and the Russian Revolution in case they get some odd ideas about 'socialism with a human face' being slightly better than the current wonder to behold that is global capitalism in the midst of one of its endemic crises. Denigrating one of twentieth-century capitalism's greatest critics through the form of a 'biography' that will doubtless sell well enough - Service's anti-Trotskyism all starts to make sense now - even if the need for such propaganda on behalf of the existing order in the twenty-first century is, in a way, only a reminder and a recognition of Trotsky's enduring appeal and importance.

Without Michael Jackson There Would Be No Tap

After a weekend spent lounging around in the sun reading an introduction to Martin Heidegger (don't ask) and watching Glastonbury highlights on TV (do ask - and incidently, what was it with all the Loyalist flags flying about all over the place?), I am not really in the best position to comment on what is going on politically in Britain and internationally (though I did gather a much loved icon from the world of music died last week - as did this chap - and that Wimbledon is underway). Hopefully I will have a better idea and understanding after this weekend's Marxism festival (while there is always good old Lenin's Tomb).

But briefly surmising the headlines, I see New Labour are still defiantly insistent on making the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism by removing unemployment benefit from under-25 year olds deemed not to be working hard enough at finding a job - while silmulaneously freezing student grants and loans (though not tuition fees). There was a time when a threat to cut unemployment benefit would bring down a Labour Government through internal rebellion - but the Party has long stopped worrying about such things and learnt to love not simply Peter Mandleson, but also fraud and corruption around expenses going to the highest level of government as well as bailouts for bankers that have to be paid for somehow.

Still, if New Labour can't provide bread, at least it is providing circuses. Lets not worry about the billions to be spent renewing Trident nuclear submarine or the killing fields of Afghanistan - lets get all nostalgic for the old imperial spirit and kick back and enjoy the spectacle of 'Armed Forces Day'! Let's party like its 1945!

Tony Blair is doing his bit to raise people's spirits too. At a time when most people are worried about whether they will have one job at the end of the week, Blair is bravely leading the fight for the right to work. Though Blair already has so many jobs it is difficult to keep count (there was bringing peace to the Middle East, saving the planet from climate change, ending world poverty, as well as advising the bankers JP Morgan, Zurich Insurance, and running the Blair Faith Foundation thing, but I am sure I have forgotten something) he is now bravely battling to also be the next European president regardless. As the Guardian notes 'the Briton's main assets are name and brand recognition, international contacts, and the absence, so far, of any serious rival for the post.' There is just one minor problem which might stop Blair adding yet one more job to his CV - most people in Europe, for some odd reason, associate the 'Blair brand' with lying and committing war crimes. Oh yeah, and also being a complete and utter wanker.

Meanwhile, Ed Balls, currently New Labour's schools secretary but also the man who dreams of being a future Labour leader, is doing his bit to get people to smile through the recession with his own distinct brand of political comedy. Not only was Balls-by-name recently caught out putting through Mark Steel's classic Reasons to be Cheerful on his expenses, Balls-by-nature has now also come up with the cheery idea of introducing a five year MOT 'license' for weeding out incompetent professionals. Which profession in British society is it that has most failed in its duty, that is full to the brim of the most shady and sinister characters? Which profession is the weakest link that most needs the introduction of a five year license to practice? Greedy bankers? City traders and speculators? No, underpaid and overworked teachers of course! Brilliant stuff Balls!

The only possible 'reason to be cheerful' will be if New Labour's anti-working class policies and measures such as these fail to get onto the statute book because this utterly useless Brown government fails to renew its own 'license to govern' when it comes up for renewal next year (and long before reaching the five years in office mark). Those wishing to help build something new from the ashes of New Labour, a socialist phoenix that can rise from the flames, should join those protesting at the Labour Party conference, Sunday 27 Sept, in Brighton at the demonstration called by the UCU and NUJ, supported by the Fight for the Right to Work campaign.

International Socialism 123

The new issue of International Socialism is out now, and it includes among other things Martin Smith on the resistable rise of the British Nazi Party - the electoral breakthrough of which is tragically already having all too predictable consequences - and analysis of the Euro-elections which concludes that regarding the British situation,

'Sometimes a threatening shock spurs people to sudden action. There was a sign of this with the magnificent and militant protests against the BNP after the election results emerged. Now is the time to see if the feeling can take on a new political form. The alternative is to cling to the hull of the Labour Party as it sinks into a sea infested with UKIP and BNP sharks. We do not know whether campaigning for a political alternative will gain enough critical mass to bring it about before the general election. But in any case, the networks drawn together in the process would help in the wider extra-parliamentary resistance to what capitalism has in store for us. There will be an urgent need in the months ahead for coordination in support of whatever struggles occur, in standing by those subject to abuse by the gutter press and in preparing for the fightback against the inevitable onslaught on the public services.'

There are also a host of other excellent-at-first-sight-looking-articles, including a reply by Roland Boer to John Molyneux on Marxism and Religion, Joseph Choonara on debates between Marxists over the current crisis, Talat Ahmed on Gandhi and Ken Olende on the first part of Jeffrey Perry's new biography of Hubert Harrison. Some critical summer reading for people...

New book: Zombie Capitalism

New from Bookmarks Publications:
Zombie Capitalism: Global crisis and the relevance of Marx by Chris Harman.

A major new study of capitalism from Marx to the 21st century
Faced with the financial crisis that began in 2007 some economic commentators began to talk of ‘zombie banks’, financial institutions that were in an ‘undead’ state incapable of fulfilling any positive function but representing a threat to everything else. However 21st century capitalism as a whole is a zombie system dead to achieving human goals and responding to human feelings but capable of sudden spurts of activity that cause chaos all around. Chris Harman shows how Marx’s understanding of capitalism is essential for any explanation of how this world emerged and developed over the last century and a half. He shows that the roots of the crisis today lie not in financial speculation but much deeper in a crisis of profitability which 30 years of the neoliberal offensive have failed to reverse. The future of the system will not be a return to steady growth but repeated instability and upheaval, together with a rising ecological crisis. Finally he looks the force in society capable of ending the rule of capital — the global working class.

Praise for Zombie Capitalism:
'A powerful, comprehensive and accessible critique of capitalism from
one of the world’s pre-eminent Marxist economists. This book needs to
be read far and wide. It is a clear, incisive warning of the massive
dangers posed by a "runaway system" and the threat it poses for the
future of humanity.'
Graham Turner, author of Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis

'Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the present
crisis and its place in the history of capitalism and an important
contribution to Marxist political economy.'
Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, King’s College London

Edited to add: A review in Socialist Review.

What the Total Workers Know

'A worker’s labour power is his only wealth. It is also his strongest weapon. The irritated cart-horse that snorts and kicks in impotent rage makes no impression on its master so long as it continues to drag its load along the way. But when it sticks its hoofs into the macadam and refuses to budge, then the driver is up against a tough proposition.'
The Worker (organ of the Clyde Workers’ Committee), January 29, 1916.

First Visteon, now Total - who says that the modern working class can no longer fightback and win?

Homage to John Saville

Lucid, fiercely loyal to friends and causes, and a formidable enemy of bullshit, Saville made his contribution to history and to scholarship outside the limelight. "There are not many entries in the Dictionary of Labour Biography," [Ralph] Miliband wrote in the introduction for the Festschrift (Ideology and the Labour Movement, 1979) presented to him by friends and pupils, "which record lives of greater dedication and integrity."
Eric Hobsbawm remembers fellow Marxist historian John Saville (1916-2009), whose autobiography, Memoirs from the Left, was reviewed here and here

Edited to add: 'I did a lot of work when I was able': remembering John Saville, 1916-2009 over at the ever superb Reading the Maps

Solidarity with the striking Lindsey workers

Statement from the Socialist Worker's Party on the construction dispute:

The sacking of 900 workers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) is an attack on every trade unionist in the country.

Total used the sacking of 51 workers as a threat to activists at the site. They have now moved to break the recent unofficial strike movement based around LOR. If the employers succeed in breaking this well organised group of workers then every trade unionist will suffer.

There is only one response to this outrageous attack. That is to shutdown every construction site, every refinery and every power station. Workers across the movement have to move now to support the workers at LOR.

The fact that workers have moved to do exactly that should be applauded.

Unite and the GMB unions repudiated the action at Lindsey. They say that they were forced to by the anti-union laws. But 12 years into a Labour government that Paul Kenny, Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson tell us to back why are these laws still in place.

There are 2.2 million on the dole now and soon there will soon be 3 million out of work. A job goes every 30 seconds. We have just seen British Airways ask their workers to work for nothing.

Its time to resist now. These sackings are a challenge to the whole working class movement. We have to back the construction workers to the hilt.

Earlier this year on some construction picket lines the slogan "British jobs for British workers" appeared. Every construction strike is now branded as "anti foreigner". This is not true.

But to win support from the whole movement it needs to be made crystal clear that the battle is for every worker to have decent conditions and one rate for the job, no matter where they are from.

Every trade unionist, every workplace has to get behind this fight.

Sometimes there are pivotal moments in the history of the workers’ movement. The sacking of the printers at Wapping in the aftermath of the miners’ strike was one such moment. It was used to intimidate the whole working class. At a time when resistance to the economic crisis is just developing we can't allow this to happen again.

This is a battle for everyone. We have to build the maximum possible solidarity, urgently. A victory for construction workers would be an inspiration for every worker who is fighting back for the right to work, this is a fight the labour movement has to win.

Ken Loach on the need for left unity

From an interview with Martin Smith in the new Socialist Review:

"My feeling is that we need to think of the regroupment of the left in Britain in terms of the European left now. The European left is a project obviously bigger than any one group. I am very encouraged by the events in France right now and the development of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste. The European left, which is so big, will just swallow up the differences between the different groups on the left over here. I've been in meetings where we've talked about this for 45 years, and organisationally are we any further forward in all that time? If you want to be depressed, that's the depressing thing. On the optimistic side the need just gets more and more intense. It was urgent after the Iraq war, but now even more urgent with the collapse of the banks and increasing unemployment, industries closing down and so on, and the environmental disaster that's awaiting the next generation. The pressure to unite just gets bigger and bigger. Every left meeting I go to is based on the fact that the crisis is about to engulf us all. It's not in the distant future. It's unfolding before us now. We've got to get together at some point. Living in separate tents isn't going to solve anything really."

Edited to add: The SWP's Open Letter to the left about the need to create a socialist alternative, with some responses here

Europe Today: Like the 1930s in slow motion?

[Reflecting on the election victory of a former member of something called 'the National Socialist Movement' as my local MEP in Yorkshire, I was once again reminded of what to me has always seemed the prescience of a comment made by the late and indeed great Marxist Tony Cliff, who became a Trotskyist in Palestine during the 1930s and went onto found what became the Socialist Workers Party, during the last decade of his life - the 1990s. As Cliff put it, 'At the beginning of the 1990s I stated that observing the 1990s in Europe was like watching a film of the 1930s in slow motion.' Cliff's perspective has often been caricatured by some on the Left as a catastrophist one, and as American capitalism actually succeeded in enjoying a boom during the 1990s which helped world capitalism in general and fascist totalitarianism did not engulf Europe, at times it has seemed that if we were living in a period like the 1930s again, then things were this time round were happening in exceedingly 'slow motion'. However, the Great Crash of 2008 and the current economic recession have signalled the end of the boom, and the current political polarisation between victories of hard right or neo-Nazi parties in the current European elections (together with some successes for the Communist/Trotskyist far left in places like Portugal) suggest that perhaps we should take another look at Cliff's suggestive analogy about the 1930s - which seems more than relevant today with respect to Europe at least. By way of contribution to a possible debate on this, I reprint below an extract from Alex Callinicos's 1994 article 'Crisis and Class Struggle in Europe Today' from International Socialism 63, which I think draws out some of the suggestive similarities between the 1930s and the period since the start of the 1990s well]:

A more helpful way of thinking about the future is provided by a formulation of Tony Cliff's, that observing Europe in the 1990s is like watching a film of the 1930s in slow motion. The same ingredients are present today--deep seated economic crisis which puts increasing pressure on the social structures which built up during the boom, crisis also of the political system, class polarisation involving both the growth of the fascist right and greater working class militancy. The pace of development of the crisis along these different dimensions, however, is - as yet -slower than it was in the 1930s. This can be seen in a number of respects.

1. The economic crisis is not yet as severe as it was in the 1930s. To take the most important case, that of Germany, in December 1932 there were 5.8 million registered unemployed, nearly a third of the workforce: the rate of unemployment was even higher--40 percent--among male industrial workers. There were, in addition, over a million unemployed who no longer bothered to register, and at least 2 million workers on short time working...

2. Bourgeois political structures, though under severe strain, are not yet as fragile as they were during the inter-war period. The First World War and the upheavals which followed it caused an immense shock to the political system. The empires of eastern and central Europe vanished; the successor states were often weak and generally unstable. The Great Depression encouraged a shift towards authoritarian, if not fascist rule across the continent. Surviving parliamentary regimes - above all in Britain and France - found themselves besieged internally and externally. Once again the Weimar Republic offers the clearest case of this process. The conditions of its establishment - first the overthrow of the Hohenzollern monarchy, then the defeat of the revolutionary left - meant that from the start the republic's existence was opposed by mass parties on both the far right and the far left. During the brief period of relative stability in 1923-8 the parties of the moderate right and left were able to evolve some kind of modus vivendi, but it did not survive the onset of renewed crisis in 1929. The Brüning government marked, in effect, the decision of the bulk of the ruling class to dispense with parliamentary rule.

Bourgeois democracy in Western Europe has, by contrast, much stronger roots today. Even those states whose parliamentary institutions date only from the 1940s, like West Germany and Italy, have now experienced 40 years of political continuity against a background of economic growth. Class conflict has to a large degree been contained within the framework of bourgeois democracy, which has been able to weather some severe challenges, notably the upheavals of the 1960s and their terrorist aftermath in Italy and West Germany. Finally, the late 1970s and early 1980s saw the successful extension of liberal democracy to Spain, Portugal, and Greece, an achievement all the more remarkable because of the intensity of the class struggles which accompanied the fall of the dictatorships in these countries. Of course, bourgeois democracy is now under considerable pressure throughout Western Europe...

3. The challengers to liberal democracy from the far right have been successful chiefly in accumulating votes. As yet fascist parties like the National Front in France and the MSI/National Alliance in Italy are primarily electoral machines rather than the paramilitary mass movements built up by Hitler and Mussolini. This is, from the point of view of the fascists' long term chances of winning power, a serious weakness. As Chris Harman argues:

they need an active mass movement behind them capable of penetrating every pore of society. Only that can give them the means to counter other social forces, especially the organised working class which is capable of blocking their totalitarian schemes. They need more than votes. They need supporters also prepared to face up to the risks involved in smashing every street, every housing estate, every factory, every office and every school.

Of course, the existing fascist organisations are willing to use political violence. But small gangs of skinhead thugs who are brave enough to firebomb the homes of sleeping Turks, or beat up young Asians in dark alleyways, do not amount to what Harman calls 'mass street fighting organisations', like Mussolini's squadristi, or the Nazi stormtroopers (SA), who numbered 400,000 in 1932. The existence of these formations was critical in winning the support of big capital for Hitler's accession to office. Unleashing the SA seemed to be the only way of breaking the organised working class. Today's Nazis have yet to convert their largely passive electoral support into the kind of mass paramilitary force which might lead the bosses, should the general crisis become sufficiently acute, to back them.

4. Finally, the organised working class in Western Europe is considerably stronger than it was in the 1930s. In his major study of the German working class under Hitler, Tim Mason argues that mass unemployment after 1929 was a crucial factor in sapping the will of the strongest labour movement in Europe to resist the Nazi takeover. 'The fate of the working class in these years was progressive immiseration, hunger, fear and hopelessness... In the frightful distress of this period the labour market too became politicised--the decision for political activism against National Socialism became more and more a decision for unemployment and hunger.' These circumstances, as well as the confusion, vacillations and divisions of the leaders of the social democratic and Communist parties, may help to explain 'the relatively limited resistance to the destruction of the workers' parties and the unions in the spring of 1933'. The European working class today, however, whatever defeats it may have suffered, and however much certain of its gains may have been eroded with the return of mass unemployment in the past 20 years, is plainly in a much better position to resist future assaults...

None of these differences between the 1930s and the 1990s constitute any reason for complacency. One lesson history teaches is the way in which quantity can turn into quality - how the cumulative effect of small scale changes and pressures can suddenly produce a systematic transformation in the situation. There are already some examples of this in Western Europe today - most notably the collapse of the party system in Italy, and Germany's sudden leap into instability. The continuation of the economic crisis - likely even if there is some temporary and partial recovery from the recession of the early 1990s - may create conditions in which the political structures of bourgeois democracy come relatively quickly under much more acute pressure, and some of the fascist parties are able to make the transition from electoral machines to paramilitary mass movements.

The film of the 1930s may, in other words, be running in slow motion, but it is running. This is not a reason to sink passively into despair, but rather to spring into action. The film need not have the same end this time round. Whether it does or not depends, as does every historical outcome, on the conscious intervention of human beings. It is undoubtedly the case that the existing organisations of the European left are part of the problem, rather than of the solution. The reformist organisations - the various social democratic parties, and the inheritors of Stalinism, like the PDS in Italy - have given up even pretending to offer an alternative to capitalism, and seek simply to manage the market more efficiently and humanely than the constitutional right. This Tweedledum-Tweedledee politics simply drives many of those who want real change into the arms of the fascists...

But the crisis of the 1990s is creating a new generation of young workers and students who can be won to the ideas of the revolutionary Marxist tradition...The potential for revolutionary socialist organisation is vast. The need for it is equally great if an alternative to a capitalist society once again in crisis, and to the fascist barbarians seeking to exploit it, is to emerge. There is time to build such organisations right across Europe in the struggles that are developing--so long as that time is seized now.

Join Unite Against Fascism

From Unite Against Fascism:

Last night saw the fascist British National Party (BNP) gain its first two seats in the European parliament. BNP candidate Andrew Brons, a former stalwart of the National Front and a lifelong Nazi, narrowly took the final MEP place in the Yorkshire & the Humber region. The fascists polled 120,139 votes, representing 9.8% of the vote as compared to 8.0% in 2004.

BNP leader Nick Griffin took the final MEP place in North West England in the early hours of today. Griffin, who has a criminal conviction for incitement to racial hatred, polled 132,094 across the region, or 8.0% of the vote as compared to 6.4% in 2004.

Peter Hain MP, secretary of state for Wales, said:

"It is a shameful stain on Britain that we now have racists and fascists representing our country. It is vital that everyone now isolates and confronts the BNP and works with Unite Against Fascism to defeat them."

Ken Livingstone, chair of Unite Against Fascism, said:

"The economic crisis and abuse of MPs' expenses have provided fertile ground for the extreme right. It is no surprise in these circumstances to see an electoral breakthrough for the BNP, a fascist party, in Britain.

"The BNP claims to be a normal political party. In fact they are 21st century Nazis. As in the 1930s they exploit people's anxieties in an economic crisis to scapegoat minorities and ultimately threaten all our democratic freedoms.

"Wherever the BNP wins elections, racist attacks increase. Nobody should use the BNP result as an excuse to capitulate to racism. That is exactly the approach which has helped them get this far and it would help to get them further.

"Unite Against Fascism is committed to the broadest progressive alliance against the BNP -- linking all democrats, trade unions, minority communities and the great majority of society against every kind of racism and fascism."

Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said:

"This is a turning point in British politics. It is the most significant electoral success to date for a fascist party in this country. It threatens to normalise the presence of the BNP on the political scene in a similar manner to Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National in France.

"We cannot allow this to happen. It is vital that we mobilise the largest possible mass movement across every walk of life to stop the fascist BNP and drive them out of the political mainstream.

"We have done this before when working people rose up in unity to defeat Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. We did it in the 1970s when the Anti Nazi League drove the National Front of the streets. Now it is our duty to inflict the same defeat on the British National Party."

Hubert Harrison on how to review books

'In the first place, remember that in a book review you are writing for a public who want to know whether it is worth their while to read the book about which you are writing. They are primarily interested more in what the author set himself to do and how he does it than in your own private loves and hates. Not that these are without value, but they are strictly secondary. In the next place, respect yourself and your office so much that you will not complacently pass and praise drivel and rubbish. Grant that you don’t know everything; you still must steer true to the lights of your knowledge. Give honest service; only so will your opinion come to have weight with your readers. Remember, too, that you can not well review a work on African history, for instance, if that is the only work on the subject that you have read. Therefore, read widely and be well informed. Get the widest basis of knowledge for your judgment; then back your judgment to the limit.'
Quoted in Harrison Redux: The resurrection of a pioneering cultural journalist by Scott McLemee

Thomas Paine: Permanent Revolutionary

Tomorrow marks the bicentenary of Thomas Paine's death. When he died in 1809, only six mourners attended his funeral, two of them free African Americans (testament to Paine's hatred of slavery). As the great orator Robert Ingersoll noted,

Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.

Today the corset-maker from Thetford, East Anglia, is claimed almost as a 'founding father' of America, to the extent that he was even quoted (though not named directly) by Barack Obama in his inaugration speech. Yet, as the radical historian Peter Linebaugh, who is working on an eagerly awaited biography of Paine, notes in two recent articles for Counterpunch - here and here there was much more to Paine than meets the eye: as Linebaugh notes, Paine was 'a revolutionary opposing kingship, one-man rule, the puppet-show of sovereignty, the war-making essential to monarchy'.

Of course there are inevitably limitations to Paine's political vision. As Megan Trudell noted,

'Paine's anger and disgust at bloated privilege, his sense of justice, faith in 'lower orders' and defence of revolution are very relevant. But Paine took part in revolutionary movements against the old order at a time when the bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class. Now that class is the order and is therefore the active enemy of revolution and a block on the further development of human society. Paine's work, however marvellous, does not give us the tools with which to break the grip of that parasitic class.'

Yet one aspect of Paine's politics does seem to be also very relevant today in particular - his tremendous internationalism. Paine was that quintessential prophet hated in his own country - England - at least among the rich. He went to fight in the American War of Independence, a revolutionary people's war against the British Empire, and then championed the Great French Revolution which so terrified the rich and powerful crowned heads of all Europe. Yet his internationalism did not stop him becoming an inspirational figure in the making of the English working class, as testified by E.P. Thompson in his classic work of 1963. As Mark Steel once noted, according to one account, the Chartists of Merthyr Tydfil 'assembled in secret places on the mountains, and taking Paine's works from under a concealed boulder, read them with great unction'.

Yet Paine's very internationalism (his motto was 'the world is my country') poses a problem for those who talk, like Andrew Marr, of 'a strong English patriotism of the left, a vision that gathered Tom Paine, Hazlitt, the Chartists, the struggle against fascism and the post-war welfare state'. Those today like Billy Bragg et al who think the English Left need to try and reclaim English nationalism from racists and nationalists and use it for 'progressive' ends, would not, I feel, have found a supporter in Paine himself. Paine, like many of the Chartists (one of whose leaders after all was William Cuffay) was a tremendous internationalist to his very core - and that aspect of his life, together with his revolutionary ardour and spirit, should be why the Left, particularly in England, remember him today.