From The Archives Of The American And International Left -Marxism and the state: an exchange:The State: A Marxist Programme and Transitional Demands

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Markin comment:

This archival issue of the International Bolshevik Tendency journal may be of some historical interest for old "new leftists,” perhaps, as well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social and political questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Spartacist and other periodicals from other leftist organizations, past and present, periodically throughout the year.
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Mirrored from www.socialistparty.org.uk/pamphlets/state2006/1.htm on Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:20:38 GMT
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Marxism and the state: an exchange:The State: A Marxist Programme and Transitional Demands

Lynn Walsh

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THE SOCIALIST TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY

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Surely, asks Michael, our aim is "the establishment of working class power… a revolution to create a workers' state". The bourgeois state must be "broken up, smashed, and replaced by a new workers' state," with the formation of workers' militias, local soviets and factory committees. In the midst of a revolution, of course, like Russia in 1917 or Spain in 1936, such basic aims might provide some guidance for the drawing up of a revolutionary action programme. A situation of dual power, with a struggle for power between the capitalists and the working class, and the threat of bourgeois reaction, would undoubtedly pose the question of a struggle for power. Even in a revolutionary situation, however, a Marxist programme has to go beyond generalities of smashing the state and establishing workers' power. In 1917 Lenin and Trotsky put forward concrete demands as the situation developed, to expose and undermine the role of the Provisional Government and to strengthen the position of the workers' and peasants' soviets. In relation to Spain in 1936, Trotsky advocated concrete demands that would expose the role of the Popular Front government and prepare the working class for a struggle to take power into its own hands.

But that was clearly not the position in Britain (or in other advanced capitalist countries) in the 1980s (the period mainly referred to by Michael). Parliamentary forms of rule were the norm in the post-war period, and the consciousness of the working class, including its politically advanced layers, was that, while gains could be made through industrial struggle, political change would be achieved through the election of governments based on the traditional labour or social-democratic parties (or in some countries the reformist communist parties). Our task was to expose the bourgeois limits of these reformist parties, to show the impossibility of achieving socialism through gradual, step-by-step changes in the economy and the state. The political influence of the mass reformist parties over big sections of the working class was an objective fact, and would only be undermined by a combination of events – through workers' experience of reformist governments – and the subjective factor – the intervention of Marxist ideas and policies.

Through our publications, meetings, interventions, etc, we conducted a political struggle against reformism and Stalinism. However, theory and propaganda reaches only a relatively small, politicised layer, except in exceptional periods of intensified class struggle. Reaching broader layers requires a programme, and the key task during the period to which Michael mainly refers was to popularise the idea of a socialist programme. The key planks are the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, a plan of production, and workers' control and management of industry. Moreover, we always stressed that such measures would have to be extended on an international basis.

By themselves, of course, such measures would not add up to a socialist society. But they pointed to the social foundations on which the working class could proceed to build a socialist society. Our programme presented the case for "the socialist transformation of society" – a popularised form of 'socialist revolution'. We use this formulation to avoid the crude association between 'revolution' and 'violence' always falsely made by apologists of capitalism. A successful socialist transformation can be carried through only on the basis of the support of the overwhelming majority of the working class, with the support of other layers, through the most radical forms of democracy. On that basis, provided a socialist government takes decisive measures on the basis of mobilising the working class, it would be possible to carry though a peaceful change of society. Any threat of violence would come, not from a popular socialist government, but from forces seeking to restore their monopoly of wealth, power and privilege by mobilising a reaction against the democratic majority.

Until the end of the 1980s, we worked within the Labour Party, because of its dominant position as the vehicle for working-class politics. With the process of bourgeoisification of the Labour Party in the late 1980s, and the emptying out of its working-class rank and file, we turned away from Labour and have since campaigned independently as Militant Labour and subsequently as the Socialist Party. In the earlier period, however, the majority of workers, including left workers, looked to Labour governments for improvements and socialist change. That was the existing consciousness. For this to be undermined, workers had to go through the experience of successive Labour governments. During the 1970s and 1980s, we therefore posed the question to the Labour leaders: If you really want to defend workers' interest, if you claim to be advancing towards socialism, carry through a programme that will take economic control out of the hands of big business. Nationalise the "commanding heights" of the economy and introduce workers' control and management. The idea of an Enabling Act was put forward to cut through the reformist argument that it would be too complicated, and take too long, to get extensive nationalisation measures through parliament. It was precisely the idea of short-circuiting the parliamentary 'checks and balances' designed to impede any radical change.

Contrary to Michael's claim, we never based ourselves on the idea that a socialist programme (in the popularised form we outlined) could be carried through using existing parliamentary procedures. Regarding nationalisation: "Such a step, backed up by the power of the labour movement outside parliament, would allow the introduction of a socialist and democratic plan of production to be worked out and implemented by committees of trade unions, the shop stewards, housewives and small businessmen. With the new technology that is on hand… it would be possible both to cut the working day and enormously simplify the tasks of the working class in the supervision and control of the state." (The Role of the State, Peter Taaffe – in The State: A Warning to the Labour Movement, p32) Even a superficial review of our material on this question would show that we warned that big business would inevitably attempt to sabotage socialist measures and we always raised the need for a mobilisation of the working class to provide mass support for any anti-capitalist measures carried out by a Labour government. We raised the need for a transformation of state institutions from top to bottom, taking them out of the hands of servants of the ruling class and placing them under the control of elected representatives of the working class. Our programme put demands on the Labour leaders, who were seen by most politicised workers as their representatives in government, but our approach was not based on an electoralist strategy.

The experience of Chile in 1970-73, to take the best known example, was repeatedly used to show the need for a root-and-branch transformation of the state. In the case of Chile, a revolutionary situation was opened up by the election of the popular front government under Allende (which included the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the bourgeois Radical Party). It had a radical programme, which included some nationalisation measures (of the copper industry, for instance), but fell far short of a programme of socialist transformation. Political developments of this type, with the election of left parties to government on the basis of mass radicalisation of the workers, are a typical scenario for the development of revolutionary crisis in capitalist countries with a parliamentary form of rule. In such a situation, Marxists have to advance a programme that relates concretely to the role of a 'socialist' (popular front) government and to the necessary tasks posed before the working class. In Chile between 1970-73, bald calls on the lines of 'down with the Allende government', 'smash the state' and 'for a workers' government' would have been be completely inadequate.

We advocated that Marxists in Chile should call on the Allende government to take decisive control of the economy through nationalisation of the copper mines and basic industries, while supporting the poor peasants in carrying through a radical land reform. We also called for decisive measures against the developing counter-revolution, led by the tops of the military, the big landlords and capitalists. We warned that it was a fatal mistake on the part of Allende to try to buy off the military reaction by promoting the military tops to more powerful positions and increasing the pay of the officer class. While calling on Allende to take bold socialist measures, we advocated the organisation of the workers from below, with the strengthening of factory committees and the 'cordones', effectively local soviet-type organisations. We also advocated the democratisation of the armed forces, with the purging of reactionary officers and control of the armed forces being placed in the hands of committees of soldiers, sailors and airmen. When it was clear that the reactionary forces were preparing for a counter-revolutionary coup, we called for the arming of the working class to defend itself against a bloody reaction.

There was no question, moreover, of our treating these developments as if they were a purely Chilean development. "The lessons of Chile, written in the blood of more than 50,000 martyred workers, is a warning to the labour movement here." (The State…, p28)

The same article (and there were many other articles elsewhere) rejected the theory of the leaders of the Communist Parties of France, Italy and Spain (the so-called 'Euro-communist' trend) used to justify the approach of the Socialist and Communist Party leaders in Chile under the Allende government. "However, it would be fatal to pretend, as the Communist Party leaders and the reformist left of the Labour Party do, that 'the democratisation of the state' will be sufficient in itself to guarantee the British working class and a Labour government against the fate which befell their Chilean brothers and sisters. Piecemeal measures will neither satisfy the working class nor the middle class, but will inflame the opposition of the capitalists – and, moreover, give them the time and opportunity to strike a decisive blow against the labour movement. This would above all be the case when attempts are made to 'democratise' their state. The capitalists would take this as a signal – particularly if the army is touched – to prepare to crush the labour movement." (The State…, pp31-32)

Again: "The lesson of Chile, where in 1973 the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende was overthrown and the workers' movement crushed by Pinochet's bloody counter-revolution, must be taken as a serious warning to the British as well as to the world labour movement. Chile underlies the fatal consequences of taking half measures which provoke a reaction from the ruling class while failing to give the working class decisive control of the economy and the state. In particular, the lessons of the Allende government's fundamentally mistaken policies towards the state's armed bodies of men must be absorbed by the British labour movement." (Introduction – The State…, pp9-10)

The example of Chile was repeatedly used in our material to demonstrate the impossibility of a reformist 'parliamentary road to socialism' in Britain or elsewhere. However, the situation in Chile in 1970-73 was not the same as in Britain in the early 1980s. In Chile it was necessary to call for the arming of the workers to defend themselves and past democratic and social gains from the threatening counter-revolution.

Is Michael seriously suggesting that we should have been calling for workers' militias and the arming of the proletariat in Britain in the 1980s – or today, for that matter? Such demands do not correspond to the situation today in Britain or most other countries, and they do not correspond to the current consciousness of even the advanced layers of workers.

Marxists have to study the history of such demands and the vital role they play in the appropriate conditions – where there is a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation in which the working class is threatened by a bloody reaction. But to raise today the slogans of 'smashing the state' and 'arming the workers' would not win workers to socialism or prepare them to carry through a change in society. On the contrary, such methods, if adopted by organisations with any real influence among workers, would alienate workers and play into the hands of our class enemies.

Our main task today is to win support for the idea of a socialist society, for a socialist transformation carried through under the leadership of the working class. There is no question of our abandoning our long-term aims. But in order to build mass support for socialism we have to present our programme in a popular form that will get a response from workers. While advocating a socialist transformation of society, we have to struggle for partial and transitional demands, for the basic interests and needs of working people.

Michael focuses much of his criticism on our position on the police, referring in particular to several articles published in Militant in 1981. He considers that our position on the police is based on "reformist methodology" and reflects "congealed illusions" in the possibility of "establish[ing] a workers' state through electoral activity". Our mistake, according to Michael, was in not putting forward our full programme based on the idea that the capitalist state "must be broken up, smashed, and replaced by a new workers' state". Instead, our intervention in the events of 1981 was primarily based on immediate, democratic demands on the police put forward in a transitional way.

Michael quotes from Militant articles first published in 1981 at the time of the riots in Brixton, Toxteth, Bristol, and several other British cities. They were also reprinted in 1983 in the Militant pamphlet, 'The State: A Warning to the Labour Movement'.

The three articles on the police quoted were a small part of the material we produced in relation to the riots, which were really uprisings of some of the poorest inner-city areas. The economic and social decay of these areas, aggravated by the slump after 1980 (intensified by the policies of the Thatcher government) created the conditions for the upheaval. However, it was the aggressive and provocative methods used by the police that provided the trigger, and we continually emphasised the responsibility of the police at the time (see the section on 'The Riots' in 'The Rise of Militant', by Peter Taaffe, pp163-166).

Young people, both black and white, were to the forefront of these events, and right from the start supporters of Militant (the predecessor of the Socialist Party) were present to help organise the defence of the areas from further police attacks and (as opposed to merely 'rioting') to win young people to socialist ideas.

We called for an end of police harassment and for the disbanding of the Special Patrol Group, the most aggressive section of the police at that time. We related the role of the police to the social situation. Our key demands were: "An urgent labour movement enquiry, step up the fight for socialist solutions to the social and economic crisis underlying the explosion [and for an] enquiry into the police." (Militant 548, 17 April 1981)

We stressed the need for the young people of the area and the wider community to organise to defend themselves against police harassment and a clampdown on the areas through prosecutions and vicious prison sentences in the aftermath of the upheavals. We set up the Labour Committee for the Defence of Brixton, which played an important part in exposing the role of the police, defending those facing charges, and calling mass meetings at which our policies were put forward.

Among our policies were the demand for a thorough-going enquiry into the police (going beyond the limits of the slow-moving Scarman enquiry set up by the Thatcher government) and measures to establish democratic checks on the police through elected committees involving labour-movement representatives.

Michael considers such demands to be irredeemably reformist. Nowhere, however, does he say what demands he thinks we should have been putting forward. From what he writes we can only conclude that he would have been advocating demands on the following lines: Smash the state! Fight the police! Form workers' militias!

Such slogans might be appropriate in a revolutionary or at least an immediate pre-revolutionary situation, when conditions were ripening for a mass movement of the workers to take power into their own hands. Even then, slogans on the state would have to be formulated much more skilfully and concretely than suggested by Michael. Lenin and Trotsky frequently explained the need for a 'defensive' approach, in the sense of putting the responsibility for revolutionary action (e.g. forming workers' militias or disbanding capitalist bodies) on state aggression or counter-revolutionary violence by auxiliaries of the ruling class (such as fascist bands).

Would Michael argue that there was a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation in Britain in 1981, even in some of the inner-city areas in which there were upheavals? For a few days, the clashes on the streets between the police and local residents, especially the youth, had some features of an insurrection. But the clashes involved a minority of the communities affected (though there was wide sympathy for action on common grievances). They were not organised, but a spontaneous outburst of anger, and the level of political consciousness was low, though a section of young people were quickly being radicalised and were responsive to socialist ideas.

Moreover, it would be absurd to argue that there was a pre-revolutionary situation in Britain as a whole. The working class suffered a setback as a result of the defeat of the Labour government in 1979. The Wilson-Callaghan government had introduced monetarist economic polices and launched attacks on workers' living standards, especially low-paid local authority workers. That had produced the 'winter of discontent' in 1979, a wave of public-sector strikes. In the absence of a mass alternative on the left, however, Labour's defeat brought Thatcher to power and the assault on the working-class rights and living standards was redoubled. There was a bitter struggle of print workers on The Times, and other mainly defensive battles. There were many important workers' struggles in which we intervened, but it would be completely fanciful to describe the situation on Britain at that time as pre-revolutionary.

In our publications and discussions we explained the Marxist theory of the state and our programme for the socialist transformation of society. This was done then, as it is now, on the lines of the 'What is the State?' section of the 'What is Marxism?' pack quoted by Michael. Many discussions were based on Lenin's 'State and Revolution' and other Marxist classics (e.g. Engels' Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State).

But for our intervention on the streets of Brixton, Totexth, Bristol, etc, we needed a programme of immediate demands that corresponded to the situation and pointed in a transitional way towards a socialist transformation. Calls to 'Smash the capitalist state! For a new workers' state' would have got no echo. We would have been very isolated – suffering severe 'social ostracism' – in a situation in which we were in fact able, with a correct approach to demands and slogans, to win a layer of youth to our ranks and get a favourable response for socialist ideas among a much wider layer.

Some of the 'front-line' youth might well have welcomed the idea of an armed militia – but not necessarily for progressive political motives. Had a 'militia' emerged at that point, it would not have been a democratic defence organisation responsible to democratic workers' organisations. There was neither the level of consciousness nor organisation necessary for the formation of a defence force. Any call for an armed defence force would have been far in advance of the consciousness of even the most politicised sections of organised workers.

Democratic control of the police

However, there was widespread condemnation of the police for the aggressive, paramilitary methods they had been using, especially the provocative 'stop and search' tactic aimed mainly against black youth. At the same time, in areas like Brixton and Toxteth people wanted something done about the high levels of crime, especially violent, drug-related crime, which blighted their lives. There was a broad demand for accountability and control of the police. To have called for the abolition of the police, however, without the realistic possibility of alternative workers' organisations to protect the community, would have been a serious mistake.

The Thatcher government responded to the broad public mood of criticism of the police with the Scarman Enquiry. Lord Scarman's report confirmed that a section of the police had been systematically harassing black youth. He recommended reforms in police practices, but naturally wanted to ensure that they were implemented within the framework of capitalist institutions and legal procedures. For a time, the police adopted more low profile methods in inner-city areas, though the Scarman reforms did not prevent them from assuming emergency powers and acting as a paramilitary force against the miners during their titanic strike of 1984-85, a strike that had many features of a civil war in the coalfields.

In 1981, however, we raised demands for control of the police that went far beyond anything proposed by Scarman. The key element of our demands was democratic control by local government police committees – elected bodies involving the working class through representatives from trade unions, community organisations, etc. We demanded that elected police committees should have the power to appoint and dismiss chief constables and senior officers, and would be responsible for 'operational questions', that is, day-to-day policing policies. Police committees should ensure a genuinely independent complaints' procedure, and should be responsible for weeding out any racist elements or fascist sympathisers within the police. We called for the abolition of the Special Patrol Group and other similar units, as well as the abolition of the Special Branch and destruction of police files and computer records not connected with criminal investigations.

Local authority police committees, such as the Greater London Council committee, had become quite prominent in the period before the riots. They played a progressive role in opening up the police to greater public scrutiny, exposing their worst methods, and trying to assert some influence over policing priorities or policies. (The recent sycophantic comments of Ken Livingstone on the head of the Metropolitan police, in spite of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell and the outrageous Forest Gate raid, are an indication of how far the political situation regarding the police and civil rights has been set back since the 1980s.) However, they were ultimately toothless bodies that had no power to assert any effective control over police policies or day-to-day operations.

Our demand was for bodies that would reflect organised pressure from the working class, pressure that would be used to check police activities and impose limits on their methods. The degree to which the police would be checked would depend on sustained organised pressure from the working class through elected, representative bodies. Of course, the ruling class (and their political representatives, including Labour leaders) were bitterly opposed to any such development, which they regarded as a potential encroachment on the prerogatives of the bourgeois state.

In opposing any steps to democratise control of the police, police chiefs, supported by many Tory and Labour leaders, argued that increased democratic accountability would subject the police to 'political control': "They try to perpetuate the myth, important for gaining public acceptance of their role in the past, that the police are an arm of a 'neutral' state. They are, according to this view, 'above' politics and sectional interests, and ultimately answerable to the equally 'neutral' and 'independent' judiciary." (The Police, Lynn Walsh – in The State…, p52)

To answer this line of argument we related some of the history of the police in Britain, particularly in relation to the development of watch committees. In the nineteenth century, "the control of the watch committees [over the police] was absolute". (TA Crichley, History of the Police in England and Wales) Our approach is: Regarding the police, things were different in the past and they can be different in the future. There was no question, as Michael asserts, of arguing that there had been an "organic development of police accountability" and that this should be extended by the working class. Our references made it clear that past 'democratic accountability' of the police was to the bourgeois ruling class, and our demands were to challenge capitalist control on the basis of working-class struggle.

Our line of argument was: If democratic control of the police was good enough for them (i.e. the bourgeoisie) why is it regarded as taboo now? Of course, it is a rhetorical question, we know the answer. But we cannot assume that everybody automatically sees through the ideological arguments used by the bourgeoisie to legitimise their class role. Michael seems to assume that it is all self-evident. There is no need for this kind of argument. Experience shows, however, that such arguments – combined with action – are vital to changing consciousness.

"In the past, before the working class had emerged as an independent political force, the spokesmen of big business and the middle class insisted that the police were democratically accountable. Now, the labour movement, which represents the overwhelming majority in society, must demand that democratic accountability is extended to cover this force which, it is claimed, exists to protect the interests of the public." (The State…, p54)

Reform and revolution

We were putting forward democratic demands, but demands that go to the heart of the role of the police as an instrument of the bourgeois state and raise the need for the working class to defend its own interests in the current battle over the role of the police. Were we (as some will no doubt argue) pandering to the current consciousness of the working class and failing to defend the Marxist programme on the state?

On the police, we were putting forward immediate, democratic demands, which are always part of a transitional programme. They corresponded to the consciousness of the advanced layers of the working class, who wanted a democratic check on the police. The setting up of democratic police committees cannot be ruled out in a future period of heightened class struggle. Whether they will be achieved, how far they will go, will be determined by the strength of working-class struggle. An element of democratic accountability over the police would help create more favourable conditions for working-class struggle. But such an element of 'workers' control' could not last indefinitely. Either the workers would move forward to a socialist transformation of society, or the ruling class would move to destroy the elements of democratic control.

The concession of elected police committees under pressure from the working class would be a progressive development. However, if this gave rise to illusions that, as Michael puts it, the police are "an isolated entity which can become removed, or extracted, from the clutches of the bourgeois state through working-class control of local watch committees" that would be a negative development.

During the 1918 German revolution (as noted in the section on the police in The State: A Warning to the Labour Movement, pp46-47) the Berlin police were in fact "extracted from the clutches of the capitalist state", and the revolutionary workers appointed Emil Eichorn, a leader of the Independent Social Democrats, as police chief. This was a positive step, so far as it went, but could only be a very temporary situation. The failure of the workers to consolidate power through new proletarian organs of state power meant that the Berlin police, together with other 'revolutionised' institutions, succumbed to the bloody counter-revolution (for which the right-wing Social Democratic leaders provided a political cover).

With regard to democratic police committees (or a new form of watch committees), we clearly warned against any illusion in the step by step reform of the police or other state bodies into socialist institutions:

"If the working class is to preserve the economic gains and the democratic rights that it has wrested from the capitalists in the past, it must carry through the socialist transformation of society. Past gains cannot be preserved indefinitely within the rotten framework of a crisis-ridden capitalism. In transforming society, it is utopian to think that the existing apparatus of the capitalist state can be taken over and adapted by the working class. In a fundamental change of society, all the existing institutions of the state will be shattered and replaced by new organs of power under the democratic control of the working class. While basing itself on the perspective of the socialist transformation of society, however, the labour movement must advance a programme which includes policies which come to grips with the immediate problems posed by the role of the police." (The State…, pp53-54)

Michael quotes this passage. But how (he asks) can we, on the one side, advocate democratic police committees while, on the other, warn that the police cannot be reformed into a worker-friendly institution? He sees this as a "contradiction [that] is too great to ignore".

But it is no more contradictory than demanding any other reform under capitalism. Reforms can be won through struggle, but we warn that they will not be lasting gains under capitalism. In the field of democratic rights do we not defend the right to jury trial, legal aid, procedural safeguards for defendants, and so on? Clearly, such legal rights do not guarantee real 'justice', which is impossible on a juridical plane without a deeper social justice, which is impossible in capitalist society. But it would be absurd to argue that such legal and civil rights are of no consequence for the working class. Such rights have been won, clawed back by the bourgeoisie, re-established for a period, and so on. Demands for social reforms and democratic rights will always remain an important part of our transitional programme. Legal and civil rights, like the right to vote, freedom of political association, etc, create more favourable conditions for working-class struggle. Demands for democratic control of the police are no different, in principle, from demands for other democratic rights. Doesn't the demand for universal suffrage, for instance, reinforce the illusion that an elected parliament can control the executive of the capitalist state?

The demands that we put forward on the police in 1981 corresponded to the situation in Britain at that time. Since then, the situation has obviously changed in many respects, especially since the 9/11 attacks in the US which have provided the political pretext for an enormous strengthening of the powers of the state and a broad clawing back of legal and democratic rights conceded in the past. The methodology of our programme remains the same, but we naturally have to take account of recent changes. But it would be a fatal mistake to abandon a programme of transitional demands in relation to the state, the police, etc, in favour of bald denunciations of the 'repressive capitalist state' and calls for 'workers' power'. This is all the more important given the general setback to working-class consciousness in the period since the collapse of Stalinism. There will be many struggles to recoup past gains that have been lost in the recent period. As we have always done, we will link our immediate and transitional demands to the need for the socialist transformation of society.

The formal or 'logical' contradiction between, on the one side, demands for reforms and, on the other, spelling out the need for a socialist transformation of society reflects the very real contradiction between the objective need for socialism and the immaturity of the consciousness and organisation of the working class.

Trotsky commented on this issue during a discussion on the Transitional Programme in 1938. One issue that came up at that time was the Ludlow Amendment, a constitutional amendment moved in the US Congress which would have required a popular referendum before the US could go to war. The leadership of the US Socialist Workers Party (the US section of the Fourth International) opposed support for the Ludlow Amendment on the grounds that it would promote pacifist and democratic illusions. Trotsky disagreed, and his comments are relevant to the issue of democratic demands in general.

This is a rather long excerpt from Trotsky's comment, but it is worth quoting in full because it illuminates the issue of democratic rights:

"The [SWP] NC declaration states that the war cannot be stopped by a referendum. That is absolutely correct. This assertion is a part of our general attitude toward war, as an inevitable development of capitalism, and that we cannot change the nature of capitalism or abolish it by democratic means. A referendum is a democratic means, but no more and no less. In refuting the illusions of democracy we don't renounce this democracy so long as we are incapable of replacing that democracy by the institution of a workers' state. In principle I absolutely do not see any argument which can force us to change our general attitude toward democracy in this case of a referendum. But we should use this means as we use presidential elections, or the election in St Paul [Minnesota]; we fight energetically for our programme.


"We say: The Ludlow referendum, like other democratic means, can't stop the criminal activities of the sixty families, who are incomparably stronger than all democratic institutions. This does not mean that I renounce democratic institutions, or the fight for the referendum, or the fight to give American citizens of the age of eighteen the right to vote. I would be in favour of our initiating a fight on this; people of eighteen are sufficiently mature to be exploited, and thus to vote. But that's only parenthetical.

"Now naturally it would be better if we could immediately mobilise the workers and the poor farmers to overthrow democracy and replace it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the only means of avoiding imperialist wars. But we can't do it.

"We see that large masses of people are looking toward democratic means to stop the war. There are two sides to this: one is totally progressive, that is, the will of the masses to stop the war of the imperialists, the lack of confidence in their own representatives. They say: Yes, we sent people to parliament [Congress], but we wish to check them in this important question, which means life and death to millions and millions of Americans. That is a thoroughly progressive step. But with this they connect illusions that they can achieve this aim only by this measure. We criticise this illusion. The NC declaration is entirely correct in criticising this illusion. When pacifism comes from the masses it is a progressive tendency, with illusions. We can dissipate the illusions not by a priori decisions but during common action.

"… The situation is now different-it is not a revolutionary situation. But the question can become decisive. The referendum is not our programme, but it's a clear step forward; the masses show that they wish to control their Washington representatives. We say: It's a progressive step that you wish to control your representatives. But you have illusions and we will criticise them. At the same time we will help you realise your programme. The sponsor of the programme will betray you as the SRs [Social Revolutionaries] betrayed the Russian peasants."
(The Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolution, Pathfinder 1977, pp114-117)

A bourgeois cop is a bourgeois cop?

One of the demands we put forward in the Militant in 1981 (and the 1983 pamphlet) was for "The right of the police to an independent, democratic trade union organisation to defend their interests as workers." In Michael's view, however, "it is a mistake to view the police in general as 'workers in uniform' who should be treated like any other worker". The role of the police in the 1984 miners' strike, he argues, confirms the position of our 'What is Marxism?' pack, that "the police, together with the army, constitute the central 'body of armed people' which is at the centre of the state apparatus. They are the first line of defence against anything which disturbs the public order of capitalism."

As on other issues, Michael can see only one side of the issue: the reactionary, repressive role of the police as an instrument of state repression. They undoubtedly played an aggressive, repressive role during the 1984 miners' strike. The miners, as well as other sections of militant workers, certainly did not regard the police as 'any other workers'. They organised to counter police tactics, and took them on in massive confrontations, notably the battle of Orgreave. Similarly, in the 1972 miners' strikes, the flying pickets countered the police and defeated them at the famous 'battle of Saltley gates' (where miners' pickets and other workers blockaded the Midlands' coal depot). Support for trade union rights for the police ranks (or for the army ranks, for that matter) does not for a moment cloud our analysis of the role of the police and army as part of the state apparatus, or undermine the recognition of the need to organise against police or military repression.

This is only one side of the question, however. The other side of a revolutionary policy (which Michael, with his characteristic black-and-white approach, fails to see) is a policy of making a political appeal to the ranks of the police and the army and supporting their democratic rights, including the right to organise in a trade union. Anything that weakens the authoritarian control of the state over the ranks of the police (and the army) and brings their ranks, or even a section of their ranks, nearer to the workers' movement, helps create more favourable conditions of struggle for the working class.

But Trotsky rejected this approach, exclaims Michael! He proves this by an experiment. Searching an internet Trotsky archive with the word 'policeman', he came up with the following quote: "The worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state is a bourgeois cop, not a worker." This quote comes from Trotsky's article, 'What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat', written in 1932. Having googled this quote from the internet, Michael appears to think that Trotsky's comment is the last word on the matter. If he conducted further searches on the context of Trotsky's comment and the situation in Germany in 1932, Michael doesn't bother to relate them to the issue under discussion. In fact, Michael generally appears to believe that demands, slogans, etc, are eternal, and that we should uphold them without concerning ourselves about changing conditions.

The situation in 1932 in Germany was not the same as in Britain in 1981 or today. Only a year before Hitler seized power, there was already an intense struggle between the forces of revolution and counter-revolution. Because of the failure of the working class to carry through a successful revolution, Germany was ruled by a series of bonapartist regimes (under chancellors Brüning, von Papen, and von Scheicher), who relied on reactionary sections of the military and the fascists to smash the workers' movement.

In the passage from which the "bourgeois cop" sentence is taken, Trotsky is arguing against the 'parliamentary cretinism' of the Social Democratic leaders. They argued that because the German army was controlled by the president of the German republic, they would not allow Hitler to come to power. Trotsky, in particular, was arguing against the wishful thinking that, because the police were originally recruited from among social-democratic workers, they would prevent the fascists from coming to power: "Consciousness is determined by environment, even in this instance." A "worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state is a bourgeois cop not a worker. Of late years, these policemen have had to do much more fighting with revolutionary workers than with Nazi students. Such training does not fail to leave its effects."

There was a pre-revolutionary situation in Germany, which (apart from the need for a revolutionary party politically armed with a Marxist programme) posed the need for workers to arm themselves, to form workers' militias, to counter the fascist onslaught. It was absolute cretinism to appeal to the government, the chancellor, etc, to protect the working class against the fascists.

"I think that Trotsky was right," says Michael. But it would only be in a world of pure abstraction that we could ignore the differences between Germany in 1932 and Britain, or for that matter France, or Germany, etc, today.

There is no question of our material arguing that, if trade union rights were conceded to the police or the army, it would be sufficient to counter the danger posed by the state to the workers' movement: "… it would be fatal to pretend, as the Communist Party leaders and the reformist left of the Labour Party do, that 'the democratisation of the state' will be sufficient in itself to guarantee the British working class and a Labour government against the fate which befell their Chilean brothers and sisters". (The State…, p31)

The state should not remain untouchable, as right-wing Labour leaders have always argued. "On the contrary, measures to make the state more accountable to the labour movement must be stepped up. But the limits of such measures must be understood by the labour movement. The capitalists will never permit their state to be 'gradually' taken away from them. Experience has shown that only a decisive change of society can eliminate the danger of reaction and allow the 'democratisation of the state machine' to be carried through to a conclusion with the establishment of a new state, controlled and managed by working people." (The State…, pp31-32)

The pamphlet gives many examples of episodes of radicalisation of sections of the police in Britain and elsewhere. In Britain, there were police strikes in 1918 and 1919 during the post-first world war crisis. Between 1970 and 1977, a series of police pay disputes, together with the general political climate, brought a radicalisation of some sections of the police. At the Police Federation conference in 1977, a young Metropolitan constable said: "We're no different from other workers. We may wear funny clothes and do society's dirty work for them. But we come from the same stock as other workers. (Boos) We have only our labour power to sell, not capital." (The State…, p45) This speaker clearly belonged to a small minority, but the fact that such a class-conscious attitude could be expressed by even one delegate was significant. Would Michael argue that Marxists should ignore such trends, regarding the ranks of the police as 'one reactionary mass' regardless of actual conditions or the mood within the police?

During the May events of 1968 in France, the mood of the police (in contrast to the paramilitary riot police, the CRS) was affected by the mass general strike movement. Representatives of the police "tacitly let it be known that operations against workers could not only cause a grave crisis of confidence within their ranks but also the possibility of what would in effect be a police mutiny". (Beyond the Limits of the Law, Tom Bowden) The logic of Michael's position is that the advanced workers should ignore such developments, and pass over the possibility of winning sections of the police over to the side of the workers, or at least neutralising a section of the forces of the state.

In fact, Michael makes no comments on these and other episodes related in the pamphlet, demonstrating the completely abstract character of his approach to the issue of the police.

The Communist Manifesto and Marx's Demands

The problem is that Michael does not understand the Marxist idea of a programme. He is only really happy with declarations of "the fundamental principles of Marxism". "The existing bourgeois state… must be broken up, smashed, and replaced by a new workers' state." Anything less is "confusion, dissimulation, and ultimately betrayal". Michael criticises all our immediate demands as part of "a more limited reformist agenda" or "elements of an outright reformist strategy".

What is noticeable, however, is that Michael himself nowhere suggests any immediate demands that might relate to existing consciousness and provide a bridge to revolutionary aims. Marxists, he says, should not seek popularity or be afraid of being socially ostracised. It is our "responsibility to maintain the link in the chain of revolutionary continuity by developing and charting a path towards socialism armed with the distilled lessons of past class struggles. We must stand firmly on the tradition based upon the historical legacies of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, for if we deviate from the latter then we will inevitably recede into empiricism and the eternal present." So how, may we ask Michael, will our party "engage with, and intersect, the existing consciousness of workers" in order to change it? He offers us no guidance at all.

An important part of the historical legacy of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, is the understanding of the role of a programme in providing a bridge between existing consciousness and revolutionary objectives. In the course of their activity, they drew up various programmes, some corresponding to relatively quiet periods of class struggle and some for revolutionary situations. All of them were based on the understanding that mass consciousness lags behind social reality. In periods of social quiescence, class consciousness, even of the advanced layers of workers, may develop very slowly. Under the impact of social crisis and intensified class struggle, it can develop very rapidly. But the 'subjective factor', the involvement of a conscious revolutionary leadership, especially in the form of a mass revolutionary party, is a vital catalyst in the process. Moreover, a programme which encapsulates the vital political tasks facing the working class and at the same time engages with existing conditions and consciousness is an indispensable instrument of intervention for a revolutionary party. A Marxist programme is not merely a declaration of fundamental principles. According to circumstances, a programme has to fulfil a variety of theoretical, programmatic and immediate tasks.

Let's consider a well-known example. In February 1848, Marx and Engels published (under the banner of the Communist League) the most famous programme of all, the Manifesto of the Communist Party, just before the outbreak of the revolutions that swept Europe in that year (www.socialistparty.org.uk/manifesto/). Clearly, the Manifesto was in many ways a declaration of fundamental principles and political objectives. It brilliantly sketched out a theoretical analysis of capitalist society and a perspective for socialist transformation under the leadership of the proletariat. But it also included a number or democratic, immediate and transitional demands.

"The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the immediate aims of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement." (Manifesto, Chapter 4) The Manifesto (Chapter 2) puts forward ten demands, calling for an end to landlordism and progressive taxation of wealthy property owners; for a national bank with a state monopoly of credit and the extension of state industries; and for free public transport and education. The aim of these demands is "to raise the working proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy".

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class…"

Undoubtedly, the Manifesto sets out fundamental aims, even suggesting some of the features of a future communist society. When the revolutionary wave broke out, however, Marx and Engels wrote another programmatic document, published by the Committee of the Communist League in March 1848. Published as a leaflet and reprinted in many radical newspapers throughout Germany, the 'Demands of the Communist Party in Germany' was at the time much more widely read than the Manifesto.

The 'Demands' constituted an immediate programme, a political weapon for the intervention of the Communist League in the developing revolutionary movement. The seventeen demands corresponded to the situation then unfolding, where the relatively weak German working class was playing a key role in the struggle for a bourgeois-democratic revolution. The Demands called for the unification of Germany under universal suffrage, and the universal arming of the people. Demands 6 to 9 were aimed at the abolition of landlordism. Like the Manifesto, the Demands call for free public transport, and progressive taxation of the wealthy. Demand 10 is for a state bank to "make it possible to regulate the credit system in the interests of the people as a whole" and "undermine the dominion of the big financial magnates". Point 16 calls for "national workshops", in effect a transitional demand that would in practice challenge the basis of capitalism: "The state guarantees a livelihood to all workers and provides for those who are incapacitated for work."

Unlike the Manifesto, however, the Demands do not call (apart from the public ownership of all transport) for the extension of state industries. There is no mention of aiming "to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class" or of wresting "all capital from the bourgeoisie" or of centralising "all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class…" The aim of the Demands, set out in the concluding paragraph, is summed up in this way: "It is in the interest of the German proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the small peasants to support these demands with all possible energy. Only by the realisation of these demands will the millions in Germany, who have hitherto been exploited by a handful of persons and whom the exploiters would like to keep in further subjection, win the rights and attain to that power to which they are entitled as the producers of all wealth."

The Demands were focused on the immediate task of strengthening the struggle for a bourgeois-democratic parliamentary republic in Germany, by exerting the maximum working-class pressure on the radical petit-bourgeois democrats. Despite its class limitations, a parliamentary republic was the form of government that would provide the most favourable conditions for the working class to strengthen its forces and struggle for socialism.

Were Marx and Engels, in putting forward a more limited programme in the Demands than set out in the Manifesto, guilty of dissimulation and pretence? Were they spreading illusions in bourgeois democracy? Isn't this the logic of Michael's position?

But, of course, Marx and Engels were putting forward of programme of demands that corresponded to the immediate situation of an unfolding revolution and to the consciousness of the most radical sections of the mass movement. The Demands form an action programme, a platform for intervention in a mass movement. The Demands are much more limited than the Communist Manifesto. But this did not mean for a minute that Marx and Engels had abandoned the ideas of the Manifesto, or postponed fighting for communist aims to the distant future. They did not have the idea of 'stages', later adopted by Stalinist leaders, according to which the proletariat had to accept the limits of the bourgeois-democratic revolution until it was completed, and only then proceed to socialist tasks. Nor did they have the position later adopted by social-democratic leaders (criticised by Trotsky in the Transitional Programme) of a maximum and minimum programme, independent of each other: a minimum programme of reforms achievable within the framework of capitalism and a maximum of socialism in the distant future.

In 1848 the Demands and the Manifesto complemented each other. During the course of the revolution, Marx and Engels never ceased to criticise the radical bourgeois democrats from the standpoint of the ideas set out in the Manifesto. They quickly moved from a position of critical support of the radical bourgeois democrats to a position of remorseless criticism of their political cowardice and treachery towards the working class and poor peasantry. From the outbreak of revolution through to the end, they advocated the ideological and organisational independence of the working class. The German workers, wrote Marx and Engels, must not be "misled for a single moment by the hypocritical phrases of the democratic party into refraining from the independent organisation of the party of the proletariat. Their battle cry must be: The Revolution in Permanence!" (Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, March 1850)

The working class should not allow the radical bourgeois democrats to consolidate power solely in the interests of the bourgeoisie, but prepare for the workers to set up their own revolutionary workers' governments (in the form of "municipal councils" or "workers' committees") alongside and in opposition to bourgeois-democratic governments. (This was the germ of the theory of permanent revolution later developed by Trotsky on the eve of the 1905 revolution in Russia.) The policies of the Communist League went far beyond anything in the Demands of March 1848 and were more concrete than those set out in the Manifesto. Formally, there are many 'inconsistencies' between the Manifesto, the Demands, and Marx and Engels' statements during 1848-1850. But demands and tactics – the evolving programme of the League - were developed by Marx and Engels in response to events – not according to some abstract, logical schema of the kind Michael seems to favour.

A bridge to existing consciousness

The Communist Manifesto and the Demands set out the tasks of the proletariat in a period of bourgeois revolutions. Trotsky's 'Transitional Programme', written in 1938, sets out the tasks for the period of the "death agony of capitalism", with a life and death struggle between fascism and communism and the approach of a new world war. Like the Manifesto, the Transitional Programme is based on a concrete, theoretical analysis of the period. It is based on a perspective.

The programme contains immediate demands, that is, for reforms, democratic rights, etc. "Indefatigably, [the Fourth International] defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers… within the framework of… [a] revolutionary perspective." But the key demands are transitional demands. For example, the demand for a "sliding scale of wages and hours" (to achieve full employment and a living wage for all workers) could not be fully implemented within the framework of crisis-ridden capitalism. The demand implies a socialist society, without spelling it out.

Discussing the Transitional Programme with US comrades, Trotsky commented that "if we present the whole socialist system it will appear to the average American as utopian, as something from Europe. We present it [in the form of a sliding scale of wages and hours] as a solution to this crisis which must assure their right to eat, drink and live in decent apartments. It is the program of socialism, but in a very popular form."

A programme is not a compilation of fundamental principles. The essential elements of a programme for socialist transformation have to be presented in a way that relates to the actual consciousness of different layers of workers. Trotsky recognised that the way a programme is presented to workers is very important. "We must combine psychology and pedagogy, build the bridge to their minds." Trotsky could never be accused of being afraid of standing out, when necessary, in defending revolutionary principles, even if it meant being isolated for a period. But he would never have willingly accepted the 'social ostracism' that Michael appears to welcome.

"… some demands," commented Trotsky in discussions on the Transitional Programme, "appear very opportunistic – because they are adapted to the actual mentality of the workers… other demands appear too revolutionary – because they reflect more the objective situation than the actual mentality of the workers."

Moreover, Trotsky pointed out that the Transitional Programme was incomplete: "… the end of the programme is not complete, because we don't speak here about the social revolution, about the seizure of power by insurrection, the transformation of capitalist society into the dictatorship [of the proletariat], the dictatorship into the socialist society. This brings the reader only to the doorstep. It is a programme for action from today until the beginning of the socialist revolution. And from the practical point of view what is now most important is how can we guide the different strata of the proletariat in the direction of the socialist revolution."

In other words, it stops short of what Michael advocates, a programme for smashing the bourgeois state and the establishment of a workers' state, a programme for an uprising and seizure of power. To have satisfied Michael, the Transitional Programme would have had to incorporate a new, updated version of Lenin's April Theses (The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution – www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm). Produced as the Russian revolution moved from its bourgeois phase to a "second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants", the Theses called for the seizure of power by the soviets of workers and peasants, the formation of a workers' republic, and control by the soviets of social production and distribution.

Clearly, the Transitional Programme of 1938 was written when there was a pre-revolutionary situation in a number of key capitalist countries, not in the middle of a deepening revolution. But by stopping short of the question of seizing power, 'leaving it till later', was Trotsky not falling into "confusion" and "dissimulation"? That is the logic of Michael's method of argument.

Michael says he recognises the need for our demands "to engage with, and intersect, the existing consciousness of workers if we are ever going to change it". The approach he advocates, however, is that we should be raising general theoretical formulas, abstract demands, such as "smash the state". Nowhere in his critique of our position, which he represents in an extremely one-sided way (to say the least), does he propose any immediate, democratic or transitional demands that would "engage with existing consciousness". He shows no recognition of the need for a flexible transitional programme that corresponds to different periods and different situations. If we were to adopt his approach, we would be doomed to political isolation – in a period that is actually becoming more and more favourable to winning workers and young people to socialist ideas. Adherence to abstract formulas might allow individuals or small groups to comment on events – and level doctrinaire criticisms of those who do engage in struggles. But the method to which Michael has now unfortunately turned will never provide a bridge between the programme of revolution and wide layers of workers and young people. If he follows this line, Michael will certainly be in no danger of becoming a populist – but, more importantly, he will not be an effective Marxist either.