Die Neue Zeit
4th May 2009, 06:42
Revolutionary defeatism, "revolutionary defencism," and nationalism
Although this RevLeft post sets the overall framework (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1203523&postcount=32), this particular article (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/621/macnair.htm) raises specific questions about revolutionary defeatism, centrist "revolutionary defencism," and nationalism.
The Trotskyists have made of defeatism something different: not a practical strategic choice for the working class’s struggle for power, but a purity test. Every war becomes, like 1914-18, a test of the revolutionary moral fibre of organisations; positions considered false on international conflicts are ‘proof’ of succumbing to the pressure of the bourgeoisie.
It has to be said that this Trotskyist use of war policy as a purity test does originate in the Comintern and Lenin’s policy of defeatism. But it originates not in defeatism itself, but in the arguments for the split from the right and centre.
The Spartacist League and sub-Sparts might be said to have reduced this idea to absurdity when they argued that Afghan communists should join with the Taliban (who would immediately shoot them) to fight US imperialism. But the crown must surely belong to the Socialist Workers Party comrades, who claim their revolutionary credentials by calling for “victory to the Iraqi resistance”.
This same SWP has for the last 20 years resolutely opposed in the name of ‘broad unity’ any political agitation either for a democratic republican military policy, or for organised workers’ self-defence. Today its ‘revolutionary defeatist’, supposedly anti-imperialist alliance with political Islam involves sacrificing fundamentals of democratic, let alone socialist, policy.
But what was "revolutionary defeatism" in the first place? Although Lenin coined the term, it was conceptualized in 1909 and formalized by the Second International's in 1912:
The Growth of Revolutionary Elements (1909) (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/ch06.htm)
To in the age of railroads and telegraphs, of newspapers and public assemblages, of countless industrial centers, of magazine rifles and machine guns it is absolutely impossible for a minority to cripple the military: forces of the capital, unless they are already completely disorganized. It is also impossible to confine a political struggle to the capital. Political life has become national.
Where these conditions exist a great transfer of political power that shall destroy a tyrannical regime is only to be expected where all of the following conditions exist:
1) The great mass of the people must be decisively hostile to such a regime.
2) There mast be a great organized party in irreconcilable opposition to such a regime.
3) This party must represent the interests of the great majority of the population and possess their confidence.
4) Confidence in the ruling regime, both in its power and in its stability, mast have been destroyed by its own tools, by the bureaucracy and the army.
Basel Manifesto of the Second International (1912) (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1912/basel-manifesto.htm)
If a war threatens to break out, 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 war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway 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 to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
But what was the context of this? It was by no means colonial struggles (or even imperialist bullying like the Falklands war or Kosovo), but inter-imperialist war:
The flip side of this argument is that Draper only partially addresses the internal limits of Lenin’s argument. Lenin argues for generalising a defeat position to all the 1914-18 belligerents on the basis that 1914-18 is a war among the imperialist robbers for division of the spoils of the world. He - and the Comintern - further generalise this position to ‘colonial wars’: that is, the wars of the imperialist states to acquire and retain colonies and semi-colonies.
They do not argue that communists in the colonies and semi-colonies should be defeatist in relation to these countries’ wars for independence/against the imperialists. On the contrary, in this context the third and fourth congresses of Comintern urged the policy of the anti-imperialist front. I argued in my 2004 series on imperialism that the course of events since 1921 has proved that the policy of the ‘anti-imperialist front’ is not a road to workers’ power and socialism. That does not alter the point here that the defeatist policy is specific.
After all the considerations of the above, what can be taken from the centrist tactic of "revolutionary defencism"?
http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/revolutionary-strategy-reply-by-mike-macnair/
However, though I reject automatic colonial-country defencism, I do not reject revolutionary defencism as a tactic in all circumstances. Revolutionary defencism does not mean supporting the existing state or bourgeois leadership. It means addressing masses who are want to defend their country against a foreign invasion or liberate it from foreign occupation, where this attitude is justified (i.e. we are not merely in a war for redivision of the world between rival imperialists) with the idea that in order to defend against attack, it is necessary for the working class to take power away from the existing capitalist (etc.) regime.
But what about workers in imperialist countries who wage rather minor geopolitical bullying conflicts (i.e., not inter-imperialist wars)? Is there a viable third tactic?
[Such a tactic, as I have discussed with two Trotskyists on the Falklands war here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/militant-8217-s-t104376/index.html?p=1402928), here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/militant-8217-s-t104376/index.html?p=1403455), and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/militant-8217-s-t104376/index.html?p=1404247) would have to be one also based on the independent centrist (not vulgar "centrist") tendency in the Second International, but this would probably entail a sort of practical class-strugglist apathy on the question of imperialist wars outside of revolutionary periods (limited to at best token sympathy for the revolutionary defencism in the bullied countries), focusing instead on building the worker-class movement at home, including within the military.]
Although this RevLeft post sets the overall framework (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1203523&postcount=32), this particular article (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/621/macnair.htm) raises specific questions about revolutionary defeatism, centrist "revolutionary defencism," and nationalism.
The Trotskyists have made of defeatism something different: not a practical strategic choice for the working class’s struggle for power, but a purity test. Every war becomes, like 1914-18, a test of the revolutionary moral fibre of organisations; positions considered false on international conflicts are ‘proof’ of succumbing to the pressure of the bourgeoisie.
It has to be said that this Trotskyist use of war policy as a purity test does originate in the Comintern and Lenin’s policy of defeatism. But it originates not in defeatism itself, but in the arguments for the split from the right and centre.
The Spartacist League and sub-Sparts might be said to have reduced this idea to absurdity when they argued that Afghan communists should join with the Taliban (who would immediately shoot them) to fight US imperialism. But the crown must surely belong to the Socialist Workers Party comrades, who claim their revolutionary credentials by calling for “victory to the Iraqi resistance”.
This same SWP has for the last 20 years resolutely opposed in the name of ‘broad unity’ any political agitation either for a democratic republican military policy, or for organised workers’ self-defence. Today its ‘revolutionary defeatist’, supposedly anti-imperialist alliance with political Islam involves sacrificing fundamentals of democratic, let alone socialist, policy.
But what was "revolutionary defeatism" in the first place? Although Lenin coined the term, it was conceptualized in 1909 and formalized by the Second International's in 1912:
The Growth of Revolutionary Elements (1909) (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1909/power/ch06.htm)
To in the age of railroads and telegraphs, of newspapers and public assemblages, of countless industrial centers, of magazine rifles and machine guns it is absolutely impossible for a minority to cripple the military: forces of the capital, unless they are already completely disorganized. It is also impossible to confine a political struggle to the capital. Political life has become national.
Where these conditions exist a great transfer of political power that shall destroy a tyrannical regime is only to be expected where all of the following conditions exist:
1) The great mass of the people must be decisively hostile to such a regime.
2) There mast be a great organized party in irreconcilable opposition to such a regime.
3) This party must represent the interests of the great majority of the population and possess their confidence.
4) Confidence in the ruling regime, both in its power and in its stability, mast have been destroyed by its own tools, by the bureaucracy and the army.
Basel Manifesto of the Second International (1912) (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/social-democracy/1912/basel-manifesto.htm)
If a war threatens to break out, 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 war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway 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 to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
But what was the context of this? It was by no means colonial struggles (or even imperialist bullying like the Falklands war or Kosovo), but inter-imperialist war:
The flip side of this argument is that Draper only partially addresses the internal limits of Lenin’s argument. Lenin argues for generalising a defeat position to all the 1914-18 belligerents on the basis that 1914-18 is a war among the imperialist robbers for division of the spoils of the world. He - and the Comintern - further generalise this position to ‘colonial wars’: that is, the wars of the imperialist states to acquire and retain colonies and semi-colonies.
They do not argue that communists in the colonies and semi-colonies should be defeatist in relation to these countries’ wars for independence/against the imperialists. On the contrary, in this context the third and fourth congresses of Comintern urged the policy of the anti-imperialist front. I argued in my 2004 series on imperialism that the course of events since 1921 has proved that the policy of the ‘anti-imperialist front’ is not a road to workers’ power and socialism. That does not alter the point here that the defeatist policy is specific.
After all the considerations of the above, what can be taken from the centrist tactic of "revolutionary defencism"?
http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/revolutionary-strategy-reply-by-mike-macnair/
However, though I reject automatic colonial-country defencism, I do not reject revolutionary defencism as a tactic in all circumstances. Revolutionary defencism does not mean supporting the existing state or bourgeois leadership. It means addressing masses who are want to defend their country against a foreign invasion or liberate it from foreign occupation, where this attitude is justified (i.e. we are not merely in a war for redivision of the world between rival imperialists) with the idea that in order to defend against attack, it is necessary for the working class to take power away from the existing capitalist (etc.) regime.
But what about workers in imperialist countries who wage rather minor geopolitical bullying conflicts (i.e., not inter-imperialist wars)? Is there a viable third tactic?
[Such a tactic, as I have discussed with two Trotskyists on the Falklands war here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/militant-8217-s-t104376/index.html?p=1402928), here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/militant-8217-s-t104376/index.html?p=1403455), and here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/militant-8217-s-t104376/index.html?p=1404247) would have to be one also based on the independent centrist (not vulgar "centrist") tendency in the Second International, but this would probably entail a sort of practical class-strugglist apathy on the question of imperialist wars outside of revolutionary periods (limited to at best token sympathy for the revolutionary defencism in the bullied countries), focusing instead on building the worker-class movement at home, including within the military.]