Permanent Revolution and Its Renegades

BRICS-expansion

14-10-2023: To abandon something under the pretext of defending it really takes some doing. The Spartacist League (SL) have achieved this and unfortunately much more with their document released on the 1^st of September titled: In Defence of Permanent Revolution – For Communist Leadership of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle![1]Seeking to reinvent and relaunch themselves, the SL has managed to jettison its most fundamental pillar which it spent more than five decades developing. To be sure, the SL had in our view already definitively ruled itself out as a potential nucleus from which to build an internationalist Marxist vanguard party with its monumental capitulation alongside the lockdown faux left in March 2020 when the imperialist elite launched a civil war on workers complete with military and police repression under the guise of a fraudulent “Covid pandemic”. The Workers League (WL) took note that the SL did come out – 12 months after the fact – with an abstract stance of opposition to lockdowns only.[2] Yet the entirety of Covid propaganda was swallowed whole by the SL, from vaccine mandates to a fantastic “deadly virus”, which meant that it remained an integral component of the historic but repellent orgy of working-class betrayal unsurpassed in modern history.[3]

Calendars set at 30 years ago

The SL, as de facto inheritors of the mantle of Trotskyism, set the stage by declaring that the world today is characterised by the hegemony of US imperialism, which subjugates the world in alliance with other imperialist powers such as Germany, Britain, France and Japan.[4] In the hard copy edition, the SL provide a photo of the imperialist G7 meeting in Japan in May of this year. But surely they jest? The G7 (United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany and Japan)[5] is dominating the world? This may have been the case in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), but this occurred some 30 years ago. Today, the G7 is fading away into virtual irrelevance. If the SL hadn’t noticed, it is the stupendous economic and political rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its alliance with the Russian Federation especially which is the modern game changer. The outshining of the G7 is demonstrated when the main topic it discusses when it does meet – is China![6]

In 2022, the G7 capitalist economies accounted for 27% of global gross domestic product (GDP), which covered only 0.8 billion people.[7] As one result of backfiring sanctions on Russia via NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, the G7 capitalist economies are struggling under high inflation from around 5% in France to 7.9% in the UK. These are official figures, though in reality they are much higher, especially for food, which hits the working class the hardest. Meanwhile, the PRC has an inflation rate of 0.2% (!) in May this year, dropping to zero or even deflation in subsequent months.[8] 2021 figures show that the PRC’s share of the global economy rose to over 18%,[9] well past that of the US at around 14%. This is reflected in the GDP breakdown where the PRC’s industry in 2020 made up 38% of its total, compared to 27% in Germany and just 18% in the US.[10] In the face of this, the SL claim that the G7 is dominating the planet? Even the PRC based Global Times was noting in 2021 that the G7 is becoming “increasingly outdated [and] irrelevant in [a] multipolar world”.[11] This “multipolarity” is changing the geo-political, economic and military face of the Earth. And this is despite the US state alone levying over 300 sanctions against Russia.[12] Yet this is entirely unremarkable, according to the SL, who appear to uphold a perspective of a world scenario which existed before the internet!

BRICS 11

The whole of the SL’s “permanent revolution” document does not even mention the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) alliance, let alone the expansion of the BRICS to the BRICS 11 from January 1, 2024, with the addition of Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.[13] Actually, the BRICS 11 bloc is not technically an alliance, but primarily a trading and economic bloc. Nevertheless, the BRICS 11 is a stand-out marker of a changing world order, indicating above all the rise of the East and the decline of the West. Before expansion, the BRICS bloc accounted for 40% of the world’s population and 26% of global GDP.[14] After expansion, the BRICS 11 will comprise 29% of global GDP, 46% of the world’s population, 43% of world oil production and 25% of the world’s exported goods.[15] If measured in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP or the amount of good and services that can be obtained with a given amount of money) the BRICS 11 will account for roughly 37% of global GDP.[16]

One would imagine that the SL, “enlightened by Marxism” would at least have to consider the shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics and its effect on the global working-class and the political perspective it needs to advance its interests. After all, even after the BRICS 11 expansion, there are another 30 or so countries – all from the “Global South” – that are just itching to join as members.[17] But no, none of these developments warrant a mention for the SL. The SL perhaps doesn’t feel fit to point it out, but the fact is that the BRICS 11 and prospective members entourage is clearly an era changing non-imperialist bloc. It is of course true that the political leaderships of the BRICS 11 countries are not anti-imperialist per se, and only the PRC has taken the first step towards socialism.

The conservative and bureaucratic caste which rules the PRC through the Communist Party of China (CPC) rigidly applies the twin Stalinist policies of “socialism in one country” and “peaceful coexistence with imperialism”. In practice this means that the foreign policy and international diplomacy of the CPC often mirrors that of its Russian Federation non-imperialist ally, as well as the basic approach of all other non-imperialist nations, including in the “developing” world. It is true that the international working class cannot at all expect any revolutionary inspiration or even rhetoric from the current leaderships of the BRICS nations. However, the BRICS bloc is offering an alternative for the majority of the world’s working masses, which does NOT involve political and economic subservience or plunder by the old European and US powers, whose economies are in a downward spiral in any case.

National Liberation and the Renegade SL

If the SL’s worldview of imperialist domination via the G7 is 30 years out of date, the SL’s 180-degree U-turn on “national liberation” is at least 60 years out of date. If they hadn’t noticed, in the wake of the Second World War, many countries which were formerly part of European colonial empires fought and won their independence. China, Cuba, Vietnam, the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or “North Korea”) and Laos won their independence through victorious wars won at great cost against US imperialism. These countries became deformed workers’ states, but they went further than simply independence to win their liberation from capitalism. We agree with the SL that these states still require proletarian political revolutions to sweep away conservative and bureaucratic Stalinist ruling castes to open the way to socialism in conjunction with socialist/anti-capitalist struggle in the imperialist West. Despite this, and despite the treacherous collaboration of its respective anti-internationalist Stalinist leaderships with the imperialist elite in the West – witness the glaring submission to Western governments on “Covid”) – these deformed or “unhealthy” workers states have demonstrated how to achieve genuine independence.

It is a different story for those Third World nations which won their independence but did not at all break from capitalism. India, Pakistan, Kenya, Myanmar, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and more all gained independence from British colonialism. In Africa, Algeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Morocco, Senegal, Togo, Chad, Burkina Faso and more all gained independence from French colonialism.[18] The supposedly democratic imperialist Netherlands had colonial outposts on five continents but exposed itself as no more humane via massive slaughter and use of concentration camps in Indonesia. Following the defeat of fascist imperialism (Germany, Italy and Japan), Indonesia waged a struggle for independence from Dutch imperialism which was declared on August 17, 1945.[19] All of these countries and many more thus broke from direct imperialist political control, but as they had not overthrown capitalism, they remained in some degree under imperialist economic domination. The solution is to erect a workers’ state via the permanent revolution perspective, in conjunction with workers struggles in other developing countries and those in the imperialist core as the main proletarian cohorts.

Yes, this is a difficult task, but if one follows the muddle-headed advice of the now upside-down SL, one will wallow in a petty-bourgeois (or bourgeois) mishmash and go nowhere. The SL prattle about how national liberation should no longer be viewed as a thorn in the side but a lever for revolution, complete with quotes torn completely out of context from Lenin and Trotsky.[20] They make the incredible claim that communists should fight for the leadership of national liberation movements so that it is not conceded to bourgeois nationalists. Great. And then what? More flag waving nationalism by “communists”? After correctly denouncing left nationalism and petty-bourgeois nationalism for over five decades, the SL now declare that they are the best left nationalists! This flag-waving appeal to non-proletarian forces is a galling abandonment of permanent revolution, not a “correction” of it. Paraphrasing VI Lenin in his epic smackdown of Karl Kautsky and his liberalism with regard to the historical need for the dictatorship of the proletariat,[21] the SL demonstrate open renegacy and apostasy with regard to permanent revolution. What happened to the working class – even in the Global South – remaining politically independent of all wings of the comprador bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces? All gone. What happened to the building of Leninist vanguard parties? One doesn’t need them to simply join “national liberation” movements. What happened to a struggle for socialism through workers’ revolution? All gone.

“Trotskyists” for “Democracy” !!

In the hard copy of the Defence document, the SL provide a picture of the Indian farmers protests from 2021 and a caption which says that “an alliance of workers and peasants is the key for socialist revolution”.[22] Trotsky would be spinning in his grave at 3000 rpm! After more than five decades of correctly admonishing the reformist left for haplessly campaigning for “democracy” i.e., capitalism as opposed to socialism, the SL now drop a bombshell and imply that the main task for Trotskyism is – the fight for democracy !! One cannot make this up. They even reverse their 2011 position which identifies the demand for a constituent assembly as the call for a new capitalist government.[23] Now, apparently, constituent assemblies in the Third World are all the rage. This will establish a “democracy”, and then at some indeterminate period 10 or 100 years down the track, the conditions will be ripe for socialism. If this sounds like the Stalinist/Menshevik two stage theory of revolution – which the SL has been vituperating for five decades – it is because this is precisely what it is.

Trotsky and Lenin understood that the nature of the political alliance between workers and peasants is the key to the whole construct for a socialist revolution where industrial development has not yet come to the fore. In The Permanent Revolution,[24] Trotsky affirmed that classes fight not with their bare hands, but with [political institutions], i.e., parties. Trotsky, since 1905, insisted – unlike Lenin who until February 1917 argued algebraically for an untenable and doomed to collapse into chaos and civil war “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat AND peasantry” – that the proletariat must be the leading component of this alliance. This is due to the fact the peasantry (or their party or parties – as with the petty-bourgeoisie in the “advanced” West) cannot play an independent (that is, independent from capital and labour) political role due to their petty-bourgeois class position, whose “privileged” non-proletarian existence depends on the maintenance of capitalism. After the workers’ victory in the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, there was indeed a “stage” in 1918 where the Soviets waged a political struggle in support of the poor peasantry against the rich peasants or kulaks. But the point stressed by Trotsky and the Bolsheviks from 1917 to 1924 is that for this subordinate class struggle to take place, the workers first had to establish their own state power. From February 1917, Lenin had discharged his concept of a two-class dictatorship to the archives of Marxism. There was no “democratic” stage, composed of some kind of multi-class “people’s democracy”. All this is ABC to the SL, they know it like the back of their hands and can quote it by rote. But now, in a rush to “re-invent” themselves following their shameless genuflection before imperialism in the name of the capitalist rulers’ sudden angst about what was but the usual annual cold and flu, all this is put out with the trash. A “fight for democracy in stages” is base liberalism, and the desecration of everything Lenin and Trotsky ever stood for.

Colour Revolutions

The “Leninist” SL has had a long history of being unable to identify imperialist sponsored colour revolutions, which take place on a fairly regular basis today. Through such agencies such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), US Agency for International Development (US AID), but also through billionaire regime change kingmakers such as the Open Society Foundation (OSF) of George Soros, the Ford Foundation and others, Washington, London, Canberra and the Hague constantly work at undermining Third World nations under the guise of funding “NGOs” (supposedly Non-Governmental Organisations) doing humanitarian, social justice and so-called civil society work. In reality, the decades of mole-work these NGOs perform is to erode the sovereignty of underdeveloped nations piece by piece, which are then animated – when given the trigger – for a full-throated imperialist backed colour revolution. Regime change in Washington’s favour is the not-so-subtle goal – but many on the left fall for the three-card trick, including above all the SL.

The hard copy issue of the SL’s Defence document provides a photo from Peru in January 2023, with a caption supporting some protesters calling for the reinstatement of Pedro Castillo, after he was voted out of parliament for massive corruption. The caption claims that “communists must place themselves at the head of democratic struggles against the national bourgeoisie”.[25] On planet Earth, this was never a “struggle for democracy”. Rather, the US state helped rigged the elections to get Castillo into power, he was outed by the parliament by a vote of parliamentarians, and then the imperialist backed “protestors” provoked violence in order to re-instate him. It was clearly a colour revolution in reverse, i.e., to install a fake “leftist” rather than throw one out via an outright blatant and illegitimate regime change.[26] Faux revolutionary socialists from around the globe bowed before this altar to democracy, including the SL. It demonstrates once again that genuine anti-capitalists cannot simply take part in “democratic struggles”, much less in colour revolutions, alongside imperialist backed forces – and fight for the leadership. Imperialist rulers have learnt very well how to manipulate the nationalism of “democratic” forces in the developing world, and to activate it for its own interests, as on the home front.

For example, the “Chile Desperto” movement in late 2019 was so manipulated by imperialism behind the scenes that it launched situations of mass violence and destruction of public transport and public buildings – before this tactic was used less than a year later by Black Lives Matter rioters in the US.[27] The Chile Desperto rioters in Chile brandished the Chilean national flag in huge numbers – while setting fire to some Chilean cities. In “solidarity” actions internationally, ex-pat Chilean community supporters held actions in the West, where on some occasions the organisers expressly stated that only national flags were allowed – and flags of political parties were banned ![28] It is a dead end for anti-capitalist socialists to partake in such a movement and then set themselves up as being more enthusiastic national flag bearers than the Western sponsored “democratic” forces. Yet the SL has historically been unable to identify the depth and extent of covert imperialist backing of all kinds of movements in the Global South – from NGOs and a slew of “civil society organisations” right up to financial and military backing of paramilitary forces such as Al Qaeda, ISIS and many more.

Anti-imperialist national liberation versus proletarian political revolution

Revising history and theory into its opposite is taken to its outer limits when the SL make the stunning claim that now, national liberation can be “a lever” for a political revolution against Stalinism in degenerated and deformed workers’ states. Firstly, the SL has made tendency founding blatant blunders from the outset when they have misapplied Trotsky’s correct prognosis of proletarian political revolutions to sweep away conservative and bureaucratic Stalinist castes in both the former workers’ states of the Eastern Bloc and the deformed People’s Republic of China (PRC) workers’ state. As we wrote in Red Fire, the SL imagine the events in Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968 and China in 1989 were “proletarian political revolutions” whereas in practice they were ultra-reactionary pro-capitalist counterrevolutions.[29] It’s true that the SL correctly identified the Solidarnosc led movement in Poland in the early 1980s as being backed by the Vatican and the CIA. Yet today, the SL clam that what should have been done was to take part in a counter-revolution while trying to point workers not in the direction of Washington, but “uniting Polish and Russian workers in common struggle against Stalinist misrule”.[30]

However, the struggle against the woefully distorted “Marxist” Stalinism is subordinated to the struggle for world proletarian revolution aimed against imperialism. It is hardly going to be the case that in the former USSR, or the PRC today, Trotskyists on the ground can fight for “national rights” shoulder to shoulder with some of the most squalid anti-communist forces demonstratively funded and animated by Washington, London and Brussells (the capital of the European Union – EU). In the PRC, the SL does admit that imperialism is behind the false “Free Tibet” (Tibetan Autonomous Region) and “Free Xinjiang” (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) operations, but then opines than the Chinese Stalinists of the Communist Party of China (CPC) somehow suppress the national rights of Tibetans and Uyghurs! It is true that workers’ democracy as such is not extended to Tibet and Xinjiang, but that is the same situation which faces the hundreds of millions of Chinese workers in the eastern coastal cities of the mainland. The SL’s absurd claims of “Han-Chauvinist oppression” in Tibet and Xinjiang are exposed with the open fact that both the Tibetan and Uyghur languages appear in print on the banknotes of the Yuan (national currency of the PRC).[31] What is more, Tibetans are hardly complaining about the “suppression of national rights” when the PRC has extended passenger high-speed rail to the plateaus of the Himalayas![32]

For authentic Permanent Revolution

The Workers League will not abandon permanent revolution in favour of a chimerical “national liberation”, nor for any other non-proletarian cause. What is required is the application of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution which takes into account today’s political and geo-political developments. For example, if a nation in the neo-colonial Global South is looking to ease its economic reliance on imperialism, the first thing one should do is to telephone Beijing and/or Moscow. Signing up to Beijing’s flagship trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)[33] would provide these regimes with access to trade routes and infrastructure that could scarcely be built on their own, and projects which the imperialist West simply cannot offer. Signing up to trade and security arrangements with the non-imperialist yet great regional capitalist power in Moscow would likely present an opportunity to protect themselves against US/EU sponsored military invasions and regime change attempts. Applying to join the expanded BRICS bloc – as many of them have already signaled a deep interest in doing – will integrate them into a bloc of non-imperialist and workers’ states which is rising to challenge the fading and decaying West. While the non-imperialist BRICS and workers’ states bloc is only economic at this stage, the BRICS friendly countries are already coordinating their activities together in international bodies such as the United Nations (UN).

The expansion of the historically arising BRICS bloc, linked and based on the economically powerful Chinese deformed workers’ state at the centre, is ultimately the historical advance of the world proletariat against capitalism. With its rise, questions such as national liberation have largely faded into the past. Rather, in the Third and First Worlds, the immediate necessity is proletarian revolution. The BRICS political leaderships are obviously not heading in this direction, but the working class can use the rise of the East’s alternative to the West entirely to their advantage. Through building tactical alliances with the non-imperialist bloc, the working-class struggle against capitalism and imperialism can advance much easier and faster. There is no doubt that difficult political and organisational tasks still need to be undertaken, but the objective march of history is on the side of the working class. The more or less obsolete G7 is a metaphor for imperialism’s decline into decadence and obsolescence. The path is opening for the forging of internationally linked Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard parties which lead the proletariat to a real permanent revolution – the finally established dictatorship of the international proletariat and the victory of socialism.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@protonmail.com

[1] www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/68/permrev/ (04-10-2023)

[2] www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/247/lockdowns.html (04-10-2023)

[3] www.redfireonline.com/2021/11/11/australian-totalitarianism-the-yield-of-left-betrayal/ (04-10-2023)

[4] Ibid, 1.

[5] www.worldatlas.com/articles/group-of-seven-g7-countries.html (04-10-2023)

[6] www.edition.cnn.com/2021/06/11/china/g7-summit-agenda-mic-intl-hnk/index.html (04-10-2023)

[7] www.worldeconomics.com/Regions/G7/ (04-10-2023)

[8] www.statista.com/chart/30398/inflation-rates-in-g7-countries/ (04-10-2023)

[9] www.english.scio.gov.cn/pressroom/2022-05/12/content_78214348.htm (04-10-2023)

[10] www.chinapower.csis.org/tracker/china-gdp/ (04-10-2023)

[11] www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1222051.shtml (04-10-2023)