Escalation leads both ways

 In a final act of madness Joe Biden has sanctioned the use of NATO-supplied weapons of mass destruction against the Russians in Ukraine. Shamefully, the Starmer government has followed suit on a blatantly obvious attempt to stymie any efforts by the incoming Trump team to end the conflict. It didn’t take long for Biden’s Ukrainian puppets to do their master’s bidding launching American long-range rockets and British-made Storm Shadow missiles on targets deep inside Russian territory.
These decisions by the US and British governments were made without any debate or decision by the US Congress or the Westminster Parliament. The Stop the War Coalition is calling on Starmer and Biden to stop these provocations immediately and to focus on securing a negotiated end to the war while Jeremy Corbyn wants Starmer to explain to the public whether we are now “at war” with Russia,
Corbyn, who now leads the Independent Alliance in parliament, says Starmer “must tell the British public if this means we are now at war with a nuclear power, what risk this poses to people in Britain, and why this action was taken without any approval from parliament. As we edge closer and closer to catastrophe, we should be doing everything in our power to bring about de-escalation and peace. Instead, our political leaders have added fuel to the fire and gambled with people’s lives for political gain”.
What happens next nobody knows. Biden’s provocation clearly crosses a Russian red line. The Kremlin has, so far, not responded in kind. But Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, warns that use of such Western-made systems in the conflict has drastically changed its nature. “A regional Ukraine conflict instigated by the West has acquired elements of a global one,” he said. Russia’s air defence systems have successfully repelled all the attacks made with these Western long-range missile systems. “The goals that have apparently been set by the enemy have not been achieved,” he said.
Russia reserves the right to strike the military facilities of countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russian territory Putin said. “We will determine the targets during further tests of our newest missile systems based on the threats to the security of the Russian Federation. We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities”.
Russia has always favoured a peaceful resolution and the Russian Federation is ready to resolve all contentious issues. “But we are also ready for any development. Do not doubt it, there will always be a response”.
Donald Trump has long said that he’s going to swiftly end the Ukraine war which he rightly sees as a drain on American resources while serving no purpose for the American people. But he put out mixed messages on Ukraine during his campaign for the presidency, rhetorically posing as the peace candidate yet having a friendly meeting with Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky at Trump Tower in September. We’ll soon see one way or the other which way Trump turns – or indeed what other tricks Biden has up his sleeve to wrong-foot the incoming Trump administration.
Escalation works both ways. These long-range British and American missile systems cannot be used without the direct involvement of Western military specialists and there clearly will be long-term repercussions unless there is a speedy return to the negotiating table.

For a genuine working class party

Starmer & Zelensky - the unpopular front

Last month Ihe NCP and the RCPB (ML) held a seminar to look at the challenges facing the communist movement following Labour’s victory in the summer general election. Both parties believe this is a discussion that needs to be taken throughout the labour movement. At the seminar Ian Donovan spoke on behalf of the Consistent Democrats, a Trotskyist movement that takes it name from a famous phrase of Lenin’s, and has, over the years, supported a number of NCP initiatives including the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign. This is what Ian said:

Starmer’s Labour is the least popular new British government after 100 days in office than any in living memory. The Tory government it replaced was an absolute shambles, led initially by the public school right-wing populist Johnson, whose corruption and penchant for pathological lying were legendary. When he had to fall on his sword having been caught partying when the population at large was locked down during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21, he was replaced by Liz Truss, the shortest-serving Prime Minister in British history, whose 2022 mini-budget with her Chancellor Kwarteng introduced massive, unfunded tax cuts for the very rich in such a way as to spook the capitalist market and cause a near-collapse of the British economy. When she was forced out after only 45 days, she was replaced by Rishi Sunak, the husband of an Indian IT heiress richer than the British monarch, who, like John Major at the end of his 1992-7 Tory premiership, struggled and juggled for nearly two years with multiple crises in a government that had obviously completely run out of steam. 
But after only 100 days in office, Starmer’s approval ratings dipped below those of Sunak, who is still caretaker Tory leader while they tear themselves apart trying to elect his successor!
A key starting point of this was the government’s refusal to abolish the Tories’ brutal two-child benefit cap, which condemns millions of working-class children to dire poverty and even homelessness. Popular hostility to Starmer’s government then exploded with his attack on poor and middling pensioners, subjecting their annual winter fuel payment, previously a universal payment, to draconian means testing so that 9 million pensioners, whose income is just above the threshold for pension credit, will have their winter fuel payments of around £300 taken away. They lost the vote at Labour Party conference on this, but of course the government does not take any notice of things like that – Starmer’s regime is implacably hostile to the trade unions.
 The new government abolished the Tories’ brutal scheme to deport refugees to Rwanda, but only because it was considered an expensive failure, not for any reason of principle.  In fact, Starmer has been off to Albania trying to arrange a cheaper replacement. The Blairite Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, ordered a massive series of immigration raids across the country in July, almost as soon as they took office. The anti-migrant, Islamophobic riots incited by far-right Zionist helpmates in August were seen as a ‘law and order’ problem, not a problem of racism, and the government had nothing to do with the mass mobilisations of socialists and anti-racists that stopped the wave of attempted pogroms. On the contrary, they instructed MPs and councillors not to go on anti-fascist demonstrations, and in some cases suspended those who did and were too outspoken against the far-right terrorists who were burning down mosques and refugee accommodation, and violently attacking people for having the ‘wrong’ colour skin. They have also been instructing the cops to harass anti-racists and Palestine protesters and arrest them often on phoney charges of supporting ‘terrorism’ (resistance to genocide)  and ‘anti-Semitism’ just as much as the Tory regime did.
Starmer and his neo-liberal clique are more worried about satisfying their Israel lobby donors and more general corporate sponsors than the working class, trade unions and oppressed minorities. This has manifested itself in the sleaze scandal, of Starmer and his ministers receiving gifts of luxury items from ‘donors’ who have nothing to do with the labour movement, which has discredited them the way similar scandals discredited the Tories. Though, like a classic bourgeois liberal party, which they aspire to project themselves as to the ruling class, they must make some gestures to the unions, they keep them as far away as possible from influencing policy. This has even upset Starmer’s most virulent supporter and apologist from the trade union bureaucracy, UNITE’s pro-Zionist semi-syndicalist Sharon Graham. Her leadership has actively sought to suppress political opposition to Starmer within the union, echoing the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt against militants within UNITE sympathetic to Jeremy Corbyn, and banning the showing of films about the witch-hunt within the union. But even she was not able to endorse Starmer’s General Election manifesto, and not does not endorse his tepid softening of some Tory anti-union attacks, as they do not remotely meet the concerns even of the union bureaucracy. 
Starmer’s government did not come to power on the back of a wave of working-class support and anger, and determination to sweep away the brutal Tories. Everyone with the slightest political consciousness in Britain knew Starmer as the political assassin of Jeremy Corbyn, whose main purpose was to smash the resurgent left that brought Corbyn to the labour leadership in 2015, and within a whisker of unseating Theresa May’s Tories in the 2017 General Election. In 2017 Corbyn’s Labour got 40% of the vote, nearly 13 million votes (12.87 million to be exact). In 2019, Corbyn’s Labour got 10.29 million votes, but a resurgent right-wing populist Tory party meant they got only 32.1% as a percentage. In 2024 Starmer got only 9.7 million votes, which amounted to a higher percentage, 33.6%, only because of a considerably lower turnout. This was not a class vote based on working-class enthusiasm for Labour, as was clearly the case in 2017. The vote was depressed because Starmer made it very clear (not that his war against the left did not already) that his government in power would just be another variant of anti-worker neoliberalism, fundamentally the same as the Tories, with only secondary differences. Thus, there was no principled basis for socialists to support Labour in the General Election in July.
Starmer’s government came to power 9 months into post-October 7th Israel’s Western-backed genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians, and in a developing crisis caused by the US/NATO slowly losing their Nazi-fuelled proxy war in Ukraine. It has proven utterly craven, supportive of these genocidal projects on a consistent basis, and as willing as the Tories to steal the remaining and threadbare social gains working class people depend upon to funnel the proceeds to Netanyahu and Zelensky.
Supporting Israel’s preservation as a transplanted settler-imperialist state in the Middle East is a strategic priority of imperialist capitalism in the early 21st Century. This is the reason that the pretence of so-called ‘international law’ has collapsed, and why there is such huge resistance from the ruling classes of the major Western powers to doing anything to hinder, let alone stop, the extermination of the people of Gaza and now the extension of similar monstrous crimes to Lebanon.  
The same goes for the proxy war against Russia over Ukraine and the seemingly distant, but gradually nearing prospect of a similar proxy conflict with China over Taiwan. All these militarist projects reflect the class interest of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the over-arching project of the bulk of them to preseve Israel and maintain the political cult of Zionism that helps to hold them together as a cohesive world-dominating class-cartel.  At the same time, they wage a parallel campaign for neo-liberal regime change and dismemberment of the anomalous bourgeois states of Russia and China, which embody elements of two social systems – capitalism and embryonic/invading socialism - in a unique manifestation of ‘combined and uneven development’. These giant former workers’ states are still too close to ‘Communism’ for the imperialists’ liking. 
Furthermore, they have put themselves at the head of a revolt by semi-colonial, oppressed countries around the world and thus threaten imperialist domination as it has existed since the late 19th  century. The aim of the proxy war and mooted extensions is to open them up fully to Western economic penetration and thus give the imperialists’ declining system a new lease of life. The converse possibility, of a defeat for NATO in Ukraine and possibly defeat of Israel by the Arab masses, opens up a horrendous scenario for the imperialists, where militarism and ‘sanctions’ (imperialist economic blackmail) no longer work, and the so-called ‘rules-based order’ (“we make the ‘rules’, you do as you are told”) ceases to function and hold any terror for oppressed countries around the world. The monopoly of world power of the Western imperialist countries, which lasted the whole of the 20th  Century and so far in the 21st century, is within sight of its own mortality.
So Starmer’s government represents the will of the bourgeoisie, pure and simple, and in no sense can be said to be even a deformed product of working-class resistance to capitalism and neoliberalism. The strategic task of Marxists is to build a party that can split the working-class base from Labour to a genuine working class party, one that has the potential to generate a revolutionary programme and lead a proletarian revolution as part of an international revolutionary movement. This is a key strategic task for Marxists in Britain, but it finds expression in different ways depending on the concrete political configurations that dominate in Labour at a given time. In the period of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, from 2015 to 2020, the correct tactic for Marxists was to join the Labour Party and actively get involved in the struggles of its subjectively pro-socialist left wing against the neo-liberal Blairites, who despite Corbyn’s election remained enormously powerful in their hold over the apparatus of the party. In the late 20-teens the Blairite and Zionist right-wing, the ‘friends of Israel’ etc, devoted huge amounts of energy to sabotaging Labour’s chances of achieving government, both through the smears of so-called ‘anti-Semitism’ against the left, and though manipulating the issue of Brexit to try to mobilise backward workers influenced by right-wing populism against Corbyn and the Labour Party.
It is now very clear that the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt was political preparation for the Labour Party to support the genocide in Gaza, which was always on the cards. Indeed, Starmer’s Labour has done so, quite openly, as when on Nick Ferrari’s LBC Radio show in October 2023 Starmer clearly endorsed the measure announced by the genocidal monster and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who denounced Gaza’s Palestinians as “human animals”, that Gaza was to be starved of fuel, energy food and even water. Starmer, when explicitly questioned by Ferrari about these measures, replies that “I do think that they [Israel] have the right to do this.” A clear endorsement of monstrous, genocidal actions that should lead to Starmer being charged as a political accomplice of genocide. 
More recently, under massive pressure of public opinion and the Palestine Solidarity movement, the Starmer regime has put an embargo on around 10 per cent of arms export licences to Israel. But Starmer’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who is a prominent supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, made clear at a meeting of that body that they did so reluctantly, that this was the minimum that they could get away with doing, and that if he had his way and his hands were not tied by popular pressure, even these minimal measures would not have happened.
Likewise over Ukraine, the Starmer regime has made very clear its support for NATO’s proxy war against the people of the Donbas, and Russia itself, and its support for the massive arming of Ukraine’s dominated politically by followers of the Nazi leader Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, who since the far right, US-funded Maidan coup of 2014, have waged war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians and the people of Crimea, on a genocidal basis. They seek to crush the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass and openly use cluster bombs and depleted Uranium against them. They fire missiles at Crimea aimed to kill civilians and punish them for voting to rejoin Russia in 2014, as they do to the Donbas population that voted to join Russia in 2022. The Starmer regime has stated that it would like to allow Ukraine to use long-range Storm Shadow missiles against Russia, which has drawn warnings from Russia that such actions would be regarded as an existential threat and likely to provoke a nuclear response. Because of these statements from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, the Biden administration backed off from such provocations, in fear of Russia’s evident military capacity. But Starmer’s government has made it clear that it abides by the US decision reluctantly – it would like to let Ukraine go ahead and attack Russia with long range missiles.
Over the past few years, since the beginning of the Special Military Operation in February 2022, the Starmer regime has threatened any Labour MP who dares to endorse even pacifist opposition to what the West is doing in Ukraine would be thrown out of the party.
The tactical task of Marxists confronted with Labour at this point is to try to cohere a genuine (not bourgeois), workers party in opposition to Labour, and to give it as much coherence as possible in that regard. That is the point of our activity in the Socialist Labour Network. That does not mean that we cease to regard Labour as a bourgeois workers party. Our strategic aim is to split it along class lines. But a workers’ party outside it could be a key means of doing so in a period like this when the bourgeois, imperialist pole has achieved unparalleled dominance. That may change, as it did from Blair/Brown via Miliband to Corbyn. If it does, which is not guaranteed, we would have to change our tactics. But at this time, for Marxists, these are the correct tactical positions to take.

People’s China leads the way

 The UN Climate Change Conference kicked off in Baku, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, this week, amid hopes that the COP29 summit will bolster climate finance, carbon trading, and the global transition from fossil fuels. Keir Starmer was there, pledging to reduce carbon emissions by 81 per cent relative to 1990 levels by 2035. But this did little to off-set the fear amongst the leaders of the Global South that the new Trump administration in the United States will seriously undermine international efforts to deal with the ecological crisis.
Donald Trump is a climate change denier who serves the interests of the big American oil and gas corporations. “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” Trump said during his victory speech, a statement backed by the CEO of the American Petroleum Institute who said that “energy was on the ballot, and voters sent a clear signal that they want choices, not mandates”.
During his first presidential term Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the 2015 international climate accord that guides the actions of more than 195 countries; rolled back 100-plus environmental rules and opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. The Biden administration managed to undo some of these measures but Trump has pledged to reverse them during his second term. Climate change campaigners believe that this could lead to a rise of an additional four billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – equalling the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan.
But while the Trump Team turns its back on scientific opinion at home and abroad People’s China is leading the way with its carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, accelerating the comprehensive green transformation of its economy and society.
China is now an indispensable nation for global climate efforts, says former UN Under-Secretary-General Erik Solheim adding that it is essentially "impossible for the world to go green without China”.
China plays an important role in the global green energy transition, accounting for 60 per cent or more of global production in key green sectors, including solar, wind, and hydropower, as well as electric cars and batteries. The former UN official stressed the need for more investment to tackle climate challenges, saying multilateral platforms, like BRICS, are increasingly significant for addressing climate change.
"BRICS has become very important since that's an avenue for the Global South to come together and lead the world," he said, adding that the initiative will move to countries of the Global South. "The 'Belt and Road Initiative' has recently turned into a major vehicle for green investment in the world, in solar, wind, hydropower and green corridors".
Whether COP29 can be a climate conference that upholds commitments and makes progress in climate institutional innovation remains to be seen. Time is of the essence. During the opening ceremony, COP29 President Mujtar Babaiev, the Azerbaijani Minister of Economy and Natural Resources, warned that “we are heading for ruin. And it's not about future problems. Climate change is already here, the moment of truth has arrived”.

Trump redux

The Second Coming of Donald Trump has come as no surprise to many on the American left who warned that the Harris camp ignored their traditional core voters at their peril. Workers and the ethnic minority communities that had long supported the Democrats in the past wanted to see plans to curb unemployment, halt the slump in living standards and an end to the slaughter in Gaza. All they got were the usual platitudes – the dismal tune of the dying Biden administration that had nothing to offer apart from more misery and more war. Some just sat on their hands or voted for protest candidates on Tuesday. Some even voted for Trump.
Not that we can expect much from Trump judging by the people who surround him. More tax breaks for the rich, more curbs on the unions and civil rights in general and sweeping tariffs that could plunge the rest of the capitalist world into deeper recession.
Much of this will be approved by the ruling circles in the United States. Most are not at all troubled by the return of the maverick property speculator turned politician who wiil be back in the White House in January. Some, however, are concerned at Trump’s “transactional” foreign policy stand which they call “isolationism” even though this reflects a long-standing trend within the Republican party. During the Nixon era this type of diplomatic bargaining was called “reciprocity” at Soviet-American summits that traded-off nuclear arms limitations with spheres of influence in what was then called the “Third World”. The Soviet Union and its allies were the “Second World” but the “First World” was never actually called that. It was the “Free World” led by the United States, the “land of the free” and the home of the “American dream” that we were all supposed to aspire to.
The real American dream, world domination, was only spelt out after the fall of the Soviet Union. The most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class called it the “new world order”. The deep state that pulls the strings across party lines in the United States launched a series of “regime change” wars and “colour revolutions” to bring down all those who stood in their way. But it didn’t quite work out the way that they planned.
Yugoslavia has gone, Libya is in ruins but the American attempt to overthrow the popular front government in Syria has failed. The Americans have been driven out of Afghanistan and they’ve lost control of Iraq. The wars in Palestine and Ukraine are going against them and the BRICs group, which includes Russia and People’s China, is fast becoming the new focus for economic development throughout the Global South.
Kamala Harris’ Democrats still believe in the ‘new world order’, though they now prefer to call it “globalisation”. Trump, on the other hand, represents circles in the Republican Party who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe and north-east Asia so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s hegemony over south and central America,
Trump says he’ll end the war in Ukraine at a stroke when he’s back at the helm. But we’ve heard it all before over Korea. Though he promised much when he was last in the White House he still remained a prisoner of the most aggressive elements of the American ruling class. No one knows if it’s going to be different this time round.

The other Cromwell’s story

by Ben Soton

What do we know about Henry VIII?  He had six wives; three called Catherine, two called Anne and one called Jane.  Less widely known is that he spent much of his reign in the company of men called Thomas.  Thomas Wolsey, who served as Lord Chancellor in the early part of his reign, Thomas Howard the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas More, who also served as Lord Chancellor as well as the less well-known Thomas Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton.  The BBC latest Sunday night drama, Wolf Hall – The Mirror and the Light is the story of Thomas Cromwell. 
Thomas Cromwell served as Henry VIII’s Chief Minister from 1534 to 1540; ultimately a moderniser with strong Protestant sympathies who oversaw England’s break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries.  He played a role in modernising the English state; which saw an increased role for Parliament.  Cromwell’s origins were considerably humbler than those around him, which almost certainly played a part in his downfall.  
The Mirror and the Light is the second TV adaption of the novels of Hilary Mantel; in both adaptations Cromwell is played by Mark Rylance and Henry by Damian Lewis.  Both the book where Cromwell is the narrator, and the television series, portray Cromwell in a sympathetic light.  Rylance’s Cromwell has both humanity and toughness; on the one hand he shows genuine kindness to Princess Mary when it suits his interests and, in another scene, physically moves an opponent out of his way. 
The Mirror and the Light starts where the first series ended with the execution of Anne Boleyn and Henry’s marriage to Jane Seymour.  Both series show the intrigue that existed within the Tudor court.  Rival factions strive to push the King in their direction, whilst avoiding his wrath.  The most reactionary sections of the nobility oppose Henry’s break with Rome and look to Princess Mary, his daughter by Catherine of Aragon.  This faction gravitates around the De La Pole Family.  In episode one, Wreckage, Cromwell is able to bring Mary into line leaving the De La Pole family weakened.  This episode shows Cromwell gaining in self-confidence as he out-manoeuvres his opponents, whilst keeping the King onside.  Cromwell is seen taking advice from his long dead mentor, the late Cardinal Wolsey (played by Jonathan Pryce); who acts as his conscience and a sounding board for his thoughts.
If you think this sounds like a complex chess game you are not far from the truth and evidence suggests that Cromwell was influenced by Niccolo Machiavelli and his famous book on statecraft The Prince.  But Thomas Cromwell eventually fell afoul of his master.  In 1540 he was brought down by a rival faction around issues related to Henry’s marriage to the German princess, Anne of Cleves.  Although Thomas Cromwell came to a sticky end at the hand of the King the star of one of his in-laws was rising. A Welsh courtier in Henry’s court had married Thomas’ sister and, as was the custom of the day, assumed the name of his wife’s more noble family. One of his descendants become this country’s greatest moderniser – Oliver Cromwell – but that’s another story!

  

Peace Call in Berlin!

by New Worker correspondent

Around sixty peace activists gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin last Saturday, which happens to be exactly adjacent to the United States embassy.
The rally called for solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba and the Global South, Peace with China and Russia, and Palestinian freedom, with speakers from the United Front for Latin America, Cuba Si, and the Communist Party of Chile.
Theo Russell spoke about the history of the current war in Ukraine on behalf of the International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity campaign, saying “the war in Ukraine started in 2014, and not with the Russian military intervention in 2022. The NATO-backed coup on February 22nd 2014 ushered in a tragedy for all the people of Ukraine.
"Over 6 million Ukrainians went into exile, with 4 million finding a home in Russia.
The forces that allied with NATO in Ukraine have started two wars in Ukraine. The first was the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) which was launched on 15th April 2014 with the full support of NATO, which claimed that Russia had invaded Ukraine.
"That claim was a barefaced lie based on satellite images and old pictures of Russian tanks on exercise. But Kiev’s army was defeated by the Donbas anti-fascist militias in 2015.
"Since 2014 we have the Western media collectively censored all reports on the deaths of thousands of civilians in the Donbas Republics at the hands of Ukraine's forces and the Nazi military battalions.
"We now know that the 8 year-long Minsk peace talks were used by NATO to secretly re-arm Kiev’s army, and even while the peace talks continued, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky declared in 2021 ‘We will re-occupy the Donbas’.
"NATO used the talks to secretly re-arm and train Ukraine's military, with the participation of the US, Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Canada.
"The US military expert Scott Ritter has described how these countries brought the fascist battalions into Ukraine's armed forces, and trained them to use NATO military equipment.
"Several days before the Russian intervention on February 24th 2022 a 60,000-strong Ukrainian force launched the second all-out military offensive against the Donbas People's Republics, the first being in 2014.
"In February-March 2022 the Russia and Ukraine negotiated a deal to end the war, but the NATO Council met and decided that Ukraine must continue fighting with NATO weapons and money.
"This was the second great tragedy for Ukraine. About 180,000 Ukrainians have died since then as NATO’S cannon fodder. Their deaths could so easily have been prevented.
"After this war ends, perhaps in 6 months or a year, a new government will emerge, with the participation of Ukrainian anti-fascists and democrats. But our media will then tell us that this new government is a Russian colony, worse than Nazi Germany, and will no doubt label it a "Stalinist dictatorship".
"Even now they are very likely laying preparations for future terrorist attacks and sanctions to destabilise and isolate a new Ukraine. So a genuinely democratic Ukraine may need our solidarity for many more years to come. I want to end with the words: No Pasaran! Sie werden nicht durchkommen! Nyet fascismu!”

The other Russian revolutionaries

by Ben Soton

Felix Volkhovskii – A Revolutionary Life by Michael Hughes; Open Book Publishers, 356pp, rrp £22.95

When it comes to the Russian Revolution this paper tends to give wholehearted backing to Lenin and his group, the Majority faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), more commonly known as the Bolsheviks. This is not to say there were no other grouping and individuals working to bring about the end of Absolutism in Czarist Russia.  One such individual was Felix Volkhovskii, the subject of Michael Hughes’ book.      
Volkhovskii was born in 1846, in what is now Ukraine; his parents were from a minor aristocratic family and he led a privileged life.  He became involved in opposition politics whilst studying in St Petersburg and was eventually exiled to Siberia.  In 1890 he left Russia first to the United States then to Britain where, despite a brief return to his homeland around the time of the 1905 revolution, he spent the rest of his life.  Whilst in exile he was heavily involved with the Society for Friends of Russia Freedom and edited its publication Free Russia.  He died in 1914, three years before the overthrow of the Czar.        
The book gives a detailed study of the various organisations in opposition to the Czarist autocracy. These included Liberals who favoured reform but opposed any significant social change and the various revolutionary groups who supported social and political change through revolution. Meanwhile the book also explains the shift in emphasis away from the rural peasantry to the urban working class as the main revolutionary force. The strategy was ultimately taken up by the Lenin and the Bolsheviks who carried out the world’s first socialist revolution.
Volkhovskii, who later joined the Social Revolutionary Party, often referred to as SRs, favoured a broad front which include both Revolutionaries and Liberals.  History later proved this to be a pipe dream; with Russian Liberals being more fearful of the working class than the Czar. Indeed many Russian capitalists who upheld the liberal ideology had close connections with the Czarist state and the imperial court.  It took the crisis brought about by the First World War to bring an end to both the Czar and Russian capitalism, at least for a few decades.  
The book is in many ways an odyssey through the complex myriads of Russian opposition politics from the 1870s to the outbreak of the First World War.  As well as what could be described as the Russian solidarity movement in Britain.  However it gives little mention to either faction of the RSDLP and leaders such as Lenin and Stalin, or for that matter Trotsky.  Instead it features less well-known figures from the Social Revolutionary Party. The book may be an attempt on the part of certain sections of academia, motivated by either anti-communism or Russophobia to create a narrative that the Russian Revolution was essentially high-jacked by authoritarians; whilst true revolutionaries, such as Volkhovskii have been overlooked.  We know better!                          

Which way forward for the communists following the election?

That was the question posed at a seminar in London this month. The 30th anniversary of the start of the dialogue between the NCP and the RCPB (ML) was appropriately marked by the opening of a discussion that both parties believe needs to be taken throughout the labour movement. NCP leader Andy Brooks, who chaired the meeting at the NCP Centre, welcomed everyone to the seminar at the Sid French library or by video link and the discussion was opened by Michael Chant, the RCPB (ML) leader. The theme was Tasks of the Communists in the Light of the July 2024 General Election, and this is Michael’s contribution to the discussion.

Solidarity:Andy Brooks and Michael Chant in 2014 

We are taking up these themes as fraternal parties who see the need for the unity of the communist movement. It seems important to remind ourselves of this to set the context of such joint initiatives as this seminar, which is the communist equivalent of modern scientists presenting seminar papers and opening the way to sorting out the problems in their field so as to accord with reality.
We took up this cause in 1994, and so have 30 years of discussion between NCP and RCPB(ML) under our belt, and our first point of contact was between myself and Comrade Andy and we have kept our relations vital since that time. When I spoke at the funeral of Eric Trevett, who was General Secretary of NCP from 1979 to 1995, and subsequently its President until his passing in 2014, I mentioned on behalf of RCPB(ML) that “this work to build anew the communist movement which had its common roots in the anti-revisionist movement of the 1970s was our common aspiration, and our two Parties have made strenuous efforts to make this aspiration a reality”. And in our message of condolence, we said “our two Parties continue to make headway in developing our unity, discussing all the questions of the strategy and tactics which a communist party must adopt in the 21st century, and beginning to pay attention together to the theoretical work without which the revolutionary movement cannot take full shape. To honour Eric’s memory, let us continue to overcome the obstacles which the bourgeoisie places in the path of building the unity of the communist and workers’ movement.”
Besides giving messages on important anniversaries, such as those of the founding of the NCP, and attending each other’s Congresses and conferences, we have continued the efforts to make our aspirations a reality. We have even issued joint statements, such as on the Anglo-US aggression against Afghanistan, on Kashmir, against war on Iraq and in support of the Palestinian people, and in 2003 giving the call for an anti-war government. Particularly we have worked together in Friends of Korea in building friendship with the DPR Korea. Among the events which have taken place are the joint seminars On the Agenda for the Working Class in 2014, and What it means to be a communist—new and revolutionary today in 2022.
In this last seminar, I opened by saying “taking the topic at face value, and giving an answer in a nutshell, one could say to be a communist means seeing the face of the New in the crisis of the Old, and working for the necessary change, for the transformation of the Old into the New, with revolutionary sweep.
“Further, one cannot conceive of being a communist without membership of a communist party, a modern type of party which mobilises and organises the people to defend their own interests, collective, individual and the general interests of society.
“And, as both propositions imply, the communist party takes up the problems of the day, whether national or international, with the spirit of proletarian internationalism, in order to provide solutions and to advance the progress of society”.
So this is all by way of introduction and setting the scene on the independent programme of the working class.
There are the overall tasks of the communists in this period of the past 30 years, and there is the experience of the communist and workers’ movement in the light of the general election, which is not so decisive in itself. But we can use it to say, this is a confirmation of what are the tasks of the communists. We can use it to ask, what is the call of history that the communists must take up. This, in a word, is to leave the Old behind, renovate our thinking and continue to inspire, organise and set the line of march for the working class as the detachment in Britain of the international communist movement.
When the tasks of the communist and workers’ movement was addressed in “Discussion”, in 1994, the document which began the discussions between our two parties, and which set the tone for this period of history, it was said:
On the role of communist parties: While the basic doctrine of communism remains the same, it is quite clear that the communist movement has a lot of work to do in terms of elaborating a theory and line based on the circumstances within which each party finds itself. It has to be understood that while the communist movement has historically been guided by the doctrine of communism of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in its general form, the working class has always had to work out the particularities based on the specifics of its own situation. The entire economic, political and philosophical basis for a new system has to be elaborated as an integral part of the workers’ movement. The modern proletariat needs its consciousness and the communist parties have to be in a position to provide it.

What kind of party is necessary at this time?

This question must be answered by keeping as a constant that it will be a communist party, it will be revolutionary and it will be based on democratic centralism. The modern feature which will be added in a demonstrative way is that it will not come to power itself or as the representative of the working class. It will be the instrument of bringing the working class into power to lead the people to establish the broadest possible democracy.
The sharpest class struggle is taking place on the question of what kind of democracy and what kind of system should be established in various countries. Is there a party which can exploit this situation in favour of the working class and open the path to the progress of the society?
On the question of modern definitions on the basis of which solutions to having fidelity to the relations between humans and humans, and humans and nature, are to be found: Today the struggle has to be directed against all the theories of the liberal bourgeoisie, all of whom are essentially Tories. It has to be directed against those who want to divert the communist movement and working class movement away from its task. All parties have to, within their conditions, work extremely hard to extricate themselves from that narrow-mindedness, that myopia, which has been imposed as a way of life. They have to present themselves as having relevance to modern society. There is a space for communism.
At this time, unless minds like Marx, so to speak, exist who revolutionise social science within the present circumstances, who are travelling on the high road of civilisation, there will be no revolutionary movement. Such a role belongs at this time to political parties and not to individuals alone.
In Britain where the greatest crisis in political theory exists, the bourgeoisie will not want to see and will not respond to those who would want to establish a democratic society in modern terms. A communist party cannot remain aloof from waging the most vigorous struggle to isolate the bourgeoisie.
When I appeared at the Undercover Policing Inquiry, along with Kate Hudson and Lindsey German, I had to explain to the inquiry that a Marxist-Leninist party had its various fronts of work, that communism represents the modern high road of civilisation and enlightenment, and that it was not characterised by the violence and public disorder with which the capitalist state tries to blacken its name. It is characterised by the mass line, not the obsession with recruiting members. Following which the undercover officer who had tried to infiltrate our Party in the early 1980s was obliged to say that while undercover he had felt he was out of his depth and spoke as little as possible for fear he would blow his cover.
Now, the debasement of politics by the cartel parties puts the need to raise the level of political discourse on the agenda by workers, women and youth setting the example themselves. Ways and means must be facilitated so that the working class and people can speak in their own name, and, while emphasising that the warmongers and neo-liberals in this so-called “representative democracy” do not speak in their name, use this as the transformation to becoming empowered.
Communists have a duty to call on workers to not permit the debasement of politics and nor should they drop out in disgust. Rather, the ruling class must not be given free rein to commit crimes. This is what happens when they manage to disorient the working class and people on matters related to the economy, sovereignty, war and peace or divide them on a racist basis by blaming immigrants for all the social ills plaguing the capitalist society and making them targets of attack. Communists emphasise and organise for the importance of getting together with one's peers to discuss the challenges the country faces and speaking out in one's own name on all matters of concern. It has to be said that illusions about the Labour Party changing the situation in favour of the people have reduced drastically since the days of Tony Blair. For working people to get together and give solutions for changing the direction of the economy and society at all levels is the necessity at this stage of history.
All of the developments centring around the July general election show the untenable state of affairs in the Parliament and the urgent need for democratic renewal – that working people provide for themselves the occasions and the means to speak in their own name, make their views known, organise to see that their demands are met and by empowering themselves provide a pro-social alternative to cartel parties and the private and supranational interests they represent. In our view, the political situation has deteriorated so that these parties are appendages of the state, rather than mass parties where members set the policy and programme, and determine the conduct of their own affairs. This is the meaning of what we refer to as cartel parties, which are wedded to the arrangements in society whereby the people are marginalised from political life and institutions. This is the meaning of the battle of democracy, of fighting for democratic renewal.
It is true that the results of the July 2024 elections saw a move towards independent candidates and smaller parties. In this context, it is a moot point whether an official coalition of small parties or independent candidates would transform the Commons proceedings in favour of the people, or would confer an illusory legitimacy on the party system and not challenge the present party-centric approach to the conduct of political affairs. The issue is to encourage the electorate to find new forms in the battle of democracy and encourage them to participate in setting the political and other agendas, based on their own experience, transforming the conception of a political party into one which truly links the electorate with governance, not simply as voting machines which resolve nothing.
It is also true that the actions of the working class in fighting for their rights and interests make a significant difference, and that forces the cartel parties, notably the Labour Party, to take notice to attempt to get the workers’ movement onside. But it can also be looked at the other way, in that the Labour Party programme, historically of social democracy, but now of a cartel party arm of the state in its pro-war, pro-business, anti-social outlook and programme, feeds its way into the workers’ movement. Nevertheless that same workers’ movement is showing evidence of its independent working class stands, such as the TUC’s stand for Palestine, and the rejection of the neo-liberal austerity measures.
In our way of thinking, as I stressed earlier, communists at this time have to heed the call of history and show imagination in envisioning the line of march, and calling the working class and people to leave the Old behind. This means bringing the organising work on a par with the political work that we take up.
What brings about wars of destruction, of genocide? What brings about droughts, climate crises, famines, mass migrations of people escaping untenable conditions? Who controls the decision-making and who the decisions benefit are of course key. But this means that it is the power structures which are characteristic of these crises, not right or wrong policies as such. It is the human factor/social consciousness which is decisive, the working people speaking out on their own behalf, and the task of the communists is to organise to bring this into play, in terms of the class struggle which is being waged, the battle for democracy and democratic rights. As we conclude our document, There Is A Way Out of the Crisis, which is included in the first issue of Discussion, we strive to unite all people in a storm against “the cuts”, working together with all for the empowerment of the people and for the creation of a socialist society!
Our conclusion is that the cutting edge of our work is the fight for an Anti-War Government. This has only been confirmed with the election of Starmer who is for further integration into the US/NATO war machine and virulently pro-Israel and against the resistance which the government labels as terrorism. This is not to say that we do not include Labour MPs in campaigns we engage in, particularly in the anti-war and pro-social movements. But the crucial issue is who makes the decisions on war and peace. In this respect, the conception of an Anti-War Government is not simply that within the status quo you have a government which takes an anti-war stand. It prepares the way for bringing about a society and state arrangements that embody a modern democratic personality.We could sum up our strategic goal in this period as:

 For a Socialist Britain with an Anti-War Government!