Interview with a fugitive Ukrainian soldier

This is an interview with a Ukrainian soldier, called here Alexander, who escaped from a training camp for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Poland and is currently living in hiding in Europe. The interview was conducted by a special correspondent for the New Worker, Vsevolod Razumny, a member of the Red Square-Molotov Club, a Ukrainian anti-fascist campaign group based in the Russian Federation.It contains shocking and horrific revelations about the treatment of Ukrainian conscripts and threats against their families, as well as claims that Poland is playing double game with its erstwhile ally Ukraine and recruiting agents in its armed forces on a large scale.

Please introduce yourself and tell us where you are now?

Alexander: My name is Alexander, I am 24 years old. I escaped from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as you know, and I am in a European country, but I can’t say where exactly.

Your previous interview with Sovranita Popolare is currently circulating on the Internet, in which you told the story of your escape from the Ukrainian army. You spoke of the forced, and in your view illegal, mobilisation in Ukraine. Do you think we will see more escapes like yours? Can your example encourage your compatriots to escape and seek political asylum abroad?

Yes, I think there are more guys who will follow my example.

 What is the name of the base where you served, and how many Ukrainian soldiers are there now?

We were told the base is called the 10th Tank Cavalry, near the small town of Świętoszów, but no one told us the actual name of the base. I don't know the exact number now, but from time to time 80-90 people come there for training. The training is carried out by NATO instructors, mainly Polish, but there are also Norwegians, and I understand that American military personnel also study there on an exchange basis.

In your first interview, you mentioned that Ukrainian conscripts are brought to Poland for training without stamps in their passports. Do you think this is because NATO and the Zelensky fear mass desertions of Ukrainian personnel and are prepared to declare such "escapees" illegals in order to capture and return them to Ukraine?

That’s right, there was no stamp, they just look at the passports and let them through. Firstly, this discourages possible desertions because people are afraid of becoming illegal aliens. They don't know where to run, what to do, or how to find safety. Second, if there is no record they can be immediately deported back to Ukraine and into the military. And by the way, when we crossed into Poland we didn’t go as military personnel in uniform, we were in ordinary tracksuits and they let us through just like that, without any stamp. So even the Polish border guards had no idea who we were or where we were going. 

Could this be evidence of the disdainful attitude of Europeans, in particular Poles, towards forcibly conscripted Ukrainians?

I think everyone knows how the Poles treat Ukrainians, whether you’re a soldier, a civilian or a conscript. They tell you to your face: you are fighting, you are killing the people we would have to kill ourselves anyway – that’s the only reason they are helping to train us, and they don’t bother to hide it. And they make jokes about us: we are beggars, we always need weapons, we always need more help, we can’t do anything without them.

 You have revealed numerous cases of human rights violations at conscript camps in Ukraine, including detention without process in basements, beatings, and threats. We were recently shocked by the story of a fitness trainer from Odessa, Sevastian Gogovich, who was forcibly mobilised by nationalists (fascists), tied to a pole and subjected to an act of sexual violence. Do you know of similar cases in Ukraine?

Yes, I’ve seen many similar stories, they are commonplace, but they don’t get into the media. The easiest place to find them is on TikTok. It’s a sad and tragic story. I don’t know why Ukraine allows such things to happen, but I personally know of cases from my acquaintances and people I met at the training camp. They are common.

It’s sad that this is happening, it’s just awful. How did they make you sign the necessary papers at the training camp? Were you personally beaten?

Not me personally. My story began when I ended up at the conscript camp. After issuing my call-up papers, they seized me at the border and confiscated my phone. After arriving at the camp I was kept in a basement for three days and refused to sign any documents – but they just signed everything for me! There were also people at the camp who couldn’t speak, read or write Ukrainian, who didn’t even have Ukrainian passports, and yet they were in the training camp. And they too had their documents signed for them.

Do the training camp employees forge the signatures of conscripts? 

Oh yes, with no any problem, at least in my case. I didn’t signed anything, but all the documents were signed for me showing that I had ‘volunteered’.

You spoke about the presence of Polish military personnel without insignia or even uniforms at the Polish training camp. Were they employees of the Polish special services?

Yes, I believe so. They didn't introduce themselves in any way, and they were in civilian clothes. 

You mentioned that in addition to the domestic political situation in Ukraine, they were interested in Ukrainian nationalist groups. What questions did they ask about the Ukrainian right-wing radicals?

Yes, they wanted to know all about Ukrainian ‘nationalists’. They started with how many are there, where are they, and what group are they with? Do you have any connections with battalions like the Kraken, Azov and so on. Those who had such connections were questioned for a long time. I have quite a few military friends who have been fighting from the first days of the war in Ukraine, so I was asked lots of questions, such as: did they go to the Maidan Square?* It occurred to me that they might be thinking of organising some kind of revolution in Ukraine using surrogate groups. I don’t think they cared about these groups themselves, but only about of using them for their own ends, I got the impression they were counting on that.

(* A reference to the Euromaidan protests in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2013-14 leading to the NATO-backed coup and the start of the war in Ukraine. The original mass protests against rampant corruption were taken over by far-right Banderite, pro-Nazi groups like the Azov Brigade).

Do you think the Polish intelligence agencies are infiltrating the Ukrainian ‘nationalists’? Are they worried about Azov, for example, getting out of control and becoming inconvenient and dangerous for Poland and the collective West? Or was it about the Poles’ historical hatred for Ukraine and trying to find their weak points?

I don’t think the Poles are afraid of them, but I’m convinced that they want to use them for some kind of ‘revolution’, and they want their own people in each nationalist group. Plus, this is additional information about what is happening right now in Ukraine. As you can understand, what they tell you in the news media is not the whole story.

Do you think that Polish intelligence is trying to recruit Ukrainian conscripts on a large scale?

Yes – I believe all the conscripts sent to Poland are being ‘spoken to’ in this way. And I believe there are many in the Ukrainian army above us, higher in rank, who were trained there previously, and they too all went through this.

Did the Polish intelligence officers threaten or hint at physical violence against your relatives in Ukraine, using data they had from the forms you completed?

Oh yes, of course! They said openly that they have all your relatives’ details, names, phone numbers, addresses. They even have details of your relatives and friends who live abroad! I don’t know where they got them from, but they have them. So they can influence your mum and dad, for example, if they live in Poland. They can ruin their lives or even deport them back to Ukraine. These details are given to the conscripts without pity – in other words they are used to threaten them.

You said you reported the Polish recruitment efforts to your senior commanders. Why didn’t the Ukrainian officers being trained in Poland try to stop this recruitment?

Yes, they went through all this as well. But because they were higher in rank, in the first batch so to speak, they ended up staying in Poland. It was clear to me that they weren’t interested because they don’t want to lose their cushy positions. Or that they could already be working for the Poles, or simply be afraid of them.

Were there many attempts to escape from the Polish training camp?

When we first arrived, we were split into two groups: half was a repair company, and the other half were training to be tankers. After our first escape, we were forbidden to go into the city at weekends and couldn’t leave the camp area. When we tried to negotiate with the camp commander, he didn’t want to know and wouldn’t talk to anyone. One guy escaped before me, but I heard later that he was found and deported back to Ukraine. 

How do you see your future?

I’d like to settle in a country of my choice and forget all about this war. If I start a family, I want to make sure my children know nothing about war at all.

Thank you for the conversation, Alexander, and good luck in everything.

Thank you too, and all the best!

World mourns loss of renowned “Red poet”

by Chris Mahin

The world has lost a great poet – and a militant communist. Jack Hirschman died suddenly on 22nd August at his home in the North Beach district of San Francisco. He was 87 years old. He died in his sleep, shortly before he was scheduled to take part in a Zoom meeting of the World Poetry Movement (WPA), a group of which he had recently been appointed coordinator.
    As the sad news spread, expressions of sympathy poured in from around the world – from other poets, former students, and fellow revolutionaries and political activists. In a statement issued to the Turkish news media, the World Poetry Movement called Hirschman’s death “a great loss to American and world poetry.” The organisation’s statement pledged that “WPA and the poets of the world, who share his humanist and revolutionary ideals, will keep the memory of this great poet alive; will continue to work … for a freer, more just and egalitarian world.”
    Jack Hirschman was a brilliant poet, scholar, and translator -- and a proud communist. (The documentary film made about him in 2010 is fittingly entitled Red Poet). In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, he stated: “The most important thing as a poet is that I worked for the communist movement for 45 years, and the new class of impoverished and homeless people.”
    In addition to publishing more than 100 volumes of his own poetry, Hirschman translated over two dozen books from languages including Russian, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Albanian, Yiddish, Vietnamese, and Creole. He was deeply committed to ensuring that the works of revolutionaries like Pablo Neruda of Chile, Nazim Hikmet of Turkey, and Rene Depestre of Haiti were available in English in the United States.
    Hirschman was named poet laureate of San Francisco in 2006 by then-mayor Gavin Newsom, a post that allowed Hirschman to create the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. Three years later, he became the poet in residence at the San Francisco public library.
    Jack Hirschman was born on 13th December in New York City in 1933 into a Russian Jewish family and grew up in the Bronx. While still a teenager attending the City College of New York, he worked as a sub-editor for the Associated Press. Later he taught at Dartmouth in New England and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Hirschman was fired from UCLA in the 1970s for encouraging his students to resist the draft during the Vietnam War.
    In 1973, he moved to San Francisco where he became part of the city’s vibrant literary scene, becoming a close friend of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the writers from the Beat generation grouped around City Lights bookstore in North Beach.
    For decades, Jack Hirschman was a constant presence in San Francisco’s streets and cafes, attending innumerable poetry readings and political rallies, distributing copies of his poetry and the People’s Tribune newspaper. Hirschman served as the assistant editor for the literary journal Left Curve, formed the Union of Left Writers in San Francisco and was a founder of the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, and the League of Revolutionaries for a New America.
    I first met Jack in the early 1980s. He was always warm, funny, and totally unpretentious. He went out of his way to encourage anyone who wanted to write – provided they were going to stand on the side of the oppressed. Whenever I sent him an issue of the New Worker containing an article on US history that I had written, the man who wrote more than 100 volumes of poetry somehow always found the time to write back. His response would invariably contain kind words of praise for my article and for the New Worker – often with a few exclamations in Italian or Russian thrown in for emphasis.
    Above all else, Jack Hirschman had a warrior’s spirit, a fierce determination to oppose injustice anywhere in the world. As he himself once wrote: “Poetry is really a weapon. It’s a spiritual weapon for the transformation of the world. And, of course, all my poems are love poems. The nicest thing in the world is to propagandize for love.” Rest well, Comrade Jack. Others will take up your weapon.

Greek communists speak out!

Dimitris Koutsoumbas and Theo Russell

Last month Greek communist leader Dimitris Koutsoumbas, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), came to London for a number of events, including a visit to the Marx Memorial Library and Marx’s tomb at Highgate Cemetery. During his stay he talked to the New Worker’s Theo Russell about the current situation in Greece.

Theo Russell: What are the main problems that working people in Greece face?

Dimitris Koutsoumbas: The Greek economy was at the centre of the international capitalist crisis for a decade, from 2009, when the first memorandum was signed, until 2019 when these programmes formally ended. The capitalist economy in Greece is currently entering into a phase of weak recovery but there are ominous forecasts for the economy worldwide in the near future.

Capitalist development requires and demands attacks on the rights of workers and the people by targeting wages and pensions, imposing job losses and deterioration of working conditions (especially for young people), and maintaining a pool of unemployed people. At the same time, trade union rights are under severe attack. The most recent examples are the efforts to restrain the right to strike and force the unions to succumb to the control of the government and employers.

Finally, we have to note our great concern over the continuous and prolonged questioning of the sovereign rights of Greece by the Turkish bourgeois class through the unacceptable maritime agreement with Libya for the establishment of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). We are very concerned over the increasing involvement of our country in imperialist war plans of the USA, NATO and European Union, to which all the people in our region (including Greek people) must be alert as antagonisms intensify in the Aegean Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East.

Has the Greek economy recovered from the crisis of 2009–2010?

According to figures and indexes, the Greek economy has recovered to some extent. Nevertheless, living standards, rights and incomes that were lost during the years of the crisis have not been recovered. Of course, any recovery of the economy is uncertain and unsafe due to the conditions prevailing in the European and global economy as well as the deceleration of strong economies, which might bring forward and expedite an upcoming new crisis.

None of the rights that were stripped by the governments have been recovered. On the contrary, the anti-people policies are still in force and the flexible labour relations intensify. This barbaric reality for the workers and the popular strata cannot be hidden behind benefits for the extreme poverty given by governments – either the previous only-by-name left-wing government of SYRIZA or the current right-wing government of New Democracy (ND). These benefits aim only to hide the cause that creates and augments poverty along with the fact that the product of any economic growth will be at the hands of capitalists.

It is proven that in the vicious ‘crisis-recovery’ circle of the capitalist economy the only victims are the workers, so the aim of the struggle must be to break this circle through the fight for a development path where the needs of the people will be at the centre, for socialism.

How is the Greek economy affected by the migration of young people?

It is a fact that during the recent years due to the capitalist crisis, the immigration of young scientists, students and workers to other countries, including Britain, increased dramatically. This deprives Greek society of the workers, including the scientific workforce, that could contribute positively. It also worsens the demographic problem in Greece as the population is ageing.

At the same time, though, Greece becomes a host country of other migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. They arrive in our country and they stay trapped because of the reactionary EU policies. It has been established that economic crises, wars and labour being a ‘commodity’ in capitalism are the causes of immigration and refugees. The working class and people’s movements must aim at the elimination of these causes.

How did SYRIZA survive the treachery of the 2015 referendum?

It is worth reminding that the so-called ‘settlement’ or ‘treachery’ perpetrated by SYRIZA was foreseen and rather anticipated. SYRIZA, even when it was only a small opportunist party, always supported Capital’s strategic priorities and strived to present them as ‘left’. People’s disillusionment of the SYRIZA-Independent Greeks (ANEL) coalition government’s administration did not therefore, come as a consequence of some sins committed by some leading cadres of SYRIZA.

SYRIZA never ‘lost its way’ or proved ‘inadequate’. Its true identity was just revealed: a force willing to be a life-jacket for the bourgeois system as its two basic pillars, ND and PASOK, could not form a stable government to manage the crisis to the benefit of Capital. It actually took this step, contributing substantially to the plans of US–NATO imperialism in the area.

Even the referendum organised by SYRIZA was set with a trap question. It actually asked people to choose the memorandum. It eventually joined the group of political forces that supported “Yes” as its MPs voted a third memorandum together with the rest of the bourgeois parties.

This course of SYRIZA, from false hopes to denial, caused a great deal of damage to people’s consciousness. It led left-wing, progressive people who believed in its misleading slogans, to the biggest disappointment, fatalism, resignation. It contributed to greater conservatism inside Greek society, which was also reflected in the election victory of the right-wing party New Democracy last summer. This has always been, after all, the role of social democracy. KKE has highlighted this danger since 2012, when a stream of illusions erupted that SYRIZA would deliver pro-people solutions within the context of EU and capitalist barbarism.

The conclusion that emerges from all this is that the struggles of workers and the people, which break out on the ground of the aggravated problems that the system generates, should target bourgeois governments, international alliances of the Capital, the capitalist economy and the bourgeois state. These struggles should not be trapped in the supposedly ‘humanitarian’ or ‘pro-people’ management of the system, which has never occurred anywhere.

Does the extreme right-wing threat remain eminent after the collapse of Golden Dawn?

The threat of fascism and extreme right-wing will exist for as long as the capitalist system exists; for as long as the big business interests and parts of the capitalist state support and feed organisations such as Golden Dawn, in their attempt to absorb popular discontent; for as long as bourgeois parties that play games with fascism exist. For example, it’s far from coincidence the fact that at the ongoing Golden Dawn trial the prosecutor’s proposal is very lenient despite the fact that plenty of evidence came to light proving that Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi, criminal organisation.

The Central Committee of KKE in its statement after the latest national elections when Golden Dawn failed to win any seats in the parliament noted: “No one should underestimate the fact that the same forces that previously promoted Golden Dawn ‘withdraw’ it in order to keep this neo-Nazi organisation as a reserve; that a part of its votes moved to other bourgeois parties or to political forces of similar ideology, such as the new party ‘Greek Solution’.”

The strengthening of KKE is the basic precondition to repel, and for the complete isolation of, such forces because KKE is the only power fighting the capitalist system that breeds and uses them. KKE steadily and consistently fought such forces, showed no tolerance, played no games, did not fish for votes from nationalists like other parties did.

What is KKE’s position on the EU and the North-South divide?

The examples of the peoples of Britain, Greece and other EU countries, demonstrate that this capitalist union has far from satisfied the contemporary popular needs. To the contrary, people in all member states are faced with very intensive and long-lasting issues.

This interstate capitalist union serves the capitalist exploitative system and cannot be improved or transformed to a pro-people union, as is argued by those who apologise on the EU’s behalf such Labour in Britain, or SYRIZA and DiEm25 in Greece.

The imperialist nature of the EU has been portrayed as a problem of management regarding which the interests of the ‘hard-core neoliberal’ North and the ‘open-minded’ South collide. This matter is neither geographical nor cultural.

For example, one may consider that the current dangerous situation in Libya is a result of the actions of the EU, USA and NATO, whilst countries of the so-called South such as France and Italy have played a leading role assisted by Greece through the use of the NATO base of Souda in Crete, which has been used for bombings in Libya.

Similar anti-people measures for the dismantlement of the social security system are promoted not only in Greece and France, but also in other countries such as the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. The fake and disorienting ‘North–South’ division hides capitalist economies of different sizes and at different phases of capitalist development.

In any case, without the working class and the people who will play a leading role in any developments and take the power and control of the economy, any renegotiation of a country’s position inside the EU – or even the departure from the EU – unavoidably serves the interests of the bourgeois class and specific parts of Capital.

The disengagement from the EU can be for the benefit of the people through people’s power and the development of mutually advantageous relationships with other countries and peoples.

Why we still say – Vote Labour!

By Theo Russell

The electoral policy of the New Communist Party (NCP) since its formation in 1977 has been to vote Labour, with the exception of European parliament elections because we believe it has no genuine democratic content. This policy was slightly amended in 2000 to permit support for independent Labour candidates with mass support and the NCP backed Ken Livingstone’s successful bid for the London Mayoralty that same year.

The theoretical basis for this policy, detailed below, supports the belief that in the conditions we face today, modest gains for working people can be achieved under a Labour government and realistically only under a Labour government.

The 1997–2010 Labour government saw increased spending on the NHS and education, devolution in Scotland and Wales, the peace process in Ireland, the restoration of the Greater London Authority (GLA), a massive increase in pensioner winter fuel payments, the extension of bus passes, a renaissance in public libraries, Sure Start and dozens of new children’s centres.

Although the Thatcher anti-union laws were not repealed and Labour reneged on its promise to re-nationalise the railways, trade unions were given the power to force bosses to recognise unions.

These small gains could not have happened under the Tories nor any non-Labour coalition likely to form a government in Britain today.

Of course we opposed New Labour’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, PPI [public-private investment] and part-privatisation of the London underground. But despite its imperialist foreign policy and neo-liberal economic doctrine, our position on Labour was maintained because of Labour’s strong organisational ties with the labour movement and because the Labour Party is far more than Blair, Brown or the right wing.

Our members and supporters work with Labour and labour movement activists at all levels. We support and defend left and progressive elements in the labour movement against the right wing, whilst understanding their limitations and being critical when necessary.

We have defended Diane Abbot, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Ken Livingstone for their contributions to peace, national liberation struggles, workers’ rights and the public sector.

Our party puts forward the most advanced demands of the day whilst also calling on its followers to work towards the long-term goal, working-class state power and genuine socialism.

We can also see the immense influence of bourgeois ideology within the organised working class, described so well by Engels in his day, which holds the class back from revolutionary militancy, but we work with it in order to educate and win people over to our positions.

The ‘Left’ alternatives

We believe that standing candidates against the Labour Party divides the working-class vote and undermines the loyalty of union, trades council and co-operative society members to the party they affiliate to.

In the current electoral system, which effectively means that only the Tories or Labour can form or lead a government, voting for ‘alternative left’ parties – and indeed tactical voting or abstaining – in effect ultimately benefits the Tories, the only other party likely to win at the national level.

Undeniably a Conservative government, with or without support from the Liberal Democrats, will always be much worse than any Labour government.

Even where Labour candidates have little chance of winning, union members and labour movement activists should still vote Labour simply out of class unity because in most cases they are indirectly affiliated to Labour.

History shows that ‘alternative left’ parties have been rejected time and again by the same working class that they claim to represent. They can never gain more than one or two MPs or a few local councillors.

A vote for these parties, however satisfying it may feel, is actually a win for the bourgeois parties because it is one less vote for Labour, the only realistic option of forming a government more aligned with working-class interests.

These parties may believe they are leading the working class to socialism – but in the years since the Labour Party was founded in 1906 not a single left alternative with the remotest possible chance of forming a government has emerged.

The one possible exception is the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which was inextricably tied to the Labour Party for most of its existence. Many ILP members were elected as Labour MPs and several later became ministers, including Ramsay MacDonald. But the ILP’s candidates actually stood as Labour candidates.

The NCP is not necessarily hostile to left parties who stand candidates, and in most cases is happy to work with them on commonly agreed campaigns, but we disagree with their electoral strategies.

Lenin’s analysis in 1920

Our electoral strategy also rests on Lenin’s guidance in his 1920 speech On affiliation to the British Labour Party.

“The British Labour Party is a highly original type of party, or not at all a party in the ordinary sense,” Lenin says. “It is made up of members of all trade unions, and has a membership of about four million, and allows sufficient freedom to all affiliated political parties.

“It thus includes a vast number of British workers who follow the lead of the worst bourgeois elements [our emphasis], but it has let the British Socialist Party into its ranks, whose own publications openly declare that the party leaders are social-traitors.

“In such circumstances it would be highly erroneous for the best revolutionary elements not to do everything possible to remain in such a party. Let the Thomases and other social-traitors, whom you have called by that name, expel you. That will have an excellent effect upon the mass of the British workers.”

Of course in Lenin’s day other parties could affiliate to the Labour Party and put forward candidates, a practice which ended in 1924; but we believe Lenin’s description of the Labour Party as “a highly original type of party” still stands.

In our view Labour is still unique amongst social-democratic parties in Europe, if not the whole advanced capitalist world, because of its unbroken organisational ties with the organised working class.

Many European social-democratic parties have seen their electoral support collapse, or in the case of the French Socialist Party virtually disappear, after surrendering to neo-liberal doctrine.

The direct input of unions into Labour’s policy-making, and the fact that many party members are also trade union members, forms a living, dynamic connection between the two. 

With its organisational ties to the trade unions, local trades councils and the co-operative movement still unbroken after 113 years, the Labour Party offers the best option for the working class in the current period of bourgeois parliamentary democracy.

So although many on the left claim that Labour is just another bourgeois party purely on the basis of right-wing policies adopted over its history, this is simply untrue. It does not primarily represent the business, finance and landed interests, nor is it funded by them.

This confusion arises from the penetration of agents of the bourgeoisie into the Labour leadership, as well as that of many trade unions. But that does not make Labour a bourgeois party according to any scientific definition.

In 2017 the unions contributed 45.6 per cent of Labour’s funds, with the rest coming from local branches and donations, and Labour’s general election campaigns are almost entirely funded by the unions these days.

During the first week of the 2017 election campaign, as the Daily Telegraph lamented, Unite the Union donated almost £2.4 million, money collected from working-class union members.

The Labour Party and the unions may not be totally democratic structures, but they are far more democratic than any of the main bourgeois parties. The reforms under Blair’s leadership greatly undermined Labour’s internal democracy but we have consistently supported those fighting to reverse those changes.

Another plank of Labour’s strength is that, unlike most other capitalist countries, Britain also has only one main national trade union federation, the TUC. Although not all trade unions are affiliated to the Labour Party or the TUC, the vast majority are affiliated to both.

After Corbyn became leader Labour’s membership increased from 388,000 to 544,000 in two years (it has since fallen slightly), as trade unionists, socialists and activists against austerity, Britain’s imperialist wars and Trident, returned to the party.

Many of the new members were young, making Labour’s current membership profile far younger than that of the Tories or Lib Dems.

Under Corbyn, Labour is fighting to restore the welfare state and part of the public sector that Labour established after the second world war. Hence the attempts to portray Corbyn and McDonnell as dangerous ‘Bolsheviks’!

The bourgeois parliamentary period

To understand the conditions in which we are currently operate, we can turn to the writings of Lenin and Stalin on the strategy and tactics adopted by the Bolsheviks in a similar period.

In the chapter Strategy and Tactics of Joseph Stalin’s work The Foundations of Leninism (a series of lectures at Sverdlov University in 1924), he writes: “The period of the domination of the Second International [before the creation of the Comintern] was mainly a period of more or less peaceful development when parliamentarianism was the predominant form of the class struggle. Class conflicts, preparing the proletariat for revolutionary clashes or achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat were not on the order of the day” (our emphasis).

A period when “class conflicts… were not on the order of the day” seems a fairly accurate description of the situation in Britain today. The class struggle hasn’t ceased altogether, but compared to the 1920s, 1970s or 1980s levels of strike action, union organisation and militancy have clearly declined sharply.

This is concrete reality and it can’t be ignored or wished away, so as Marxist-Leninists we have to adapt our tactics to it.

Stalin says of the period 1907–1912, when the Czarist autocracy had the upper hand: “The Party was compelled to resort to tactics of retreat; for we then experienced in the revolutionary movement, the ebb of the revolution, and tactics necessarily had to take this fact into consideration.” This meant participating in the Duma, partial economic strikes, “or simply a lull in activities”.

Looking back at these tactics now they seem timid and distinctly un-Bolshevik! But when the Russian working class was at “the ebb of the revolution”, they were infinitely preferable to no activity at all.

In Britain, one of the world’s most stable countries thanks to its colonial history and highly developed monopoly capital, the current ebb in the class struggle has lasted at least since 1985 (the end of the miners’ strike), whilst the current period of stable bourgeois parliamentary democracy has lasted over 150 years.

In the last 40-odd years the capitalist class has adopted new tactics, not just in Britain, and arguably outwitted the working class tactically. This period of unfettered neo-liberalism has seen defeat after defeat for the working class.

Compared with the 1920s or ‘30s, when communists were elected as Labour MPs and there was mass pressure on the leaders of the labour movement, in this period of a ‘low ebb’ we too have to trim our sails, to work with the labour movement as it is and to be content with minor victories.

As Lenin put it: “You must strive for daily success, even if small… and at all costs retain the 'moral ascendancy'".

In such conditions our expectations must be limited. Even at the heights of working-class militancy there were limited gains, which have since been reversed, including many of the great advances of 1945–51 and the more modest ones of 1997–2010.

At such times, small gains and small victories not only boost morale, but the working class learns valuable, even basic lessons that are carried from generation to generation.

Even during such times of ‘low ebb’ no-one can deny that the labour movement has far greater influence under Labour.

Labour’s 2019 manifesto is indeed limited: reversing a fraction of the spending cuts since 2010, restoring only the post-2017 benefits cuts, and proposing tax increases on the wealthy far lower than those of 1964–79.

But if it can carry out its plans for public ownership, social housing and social investment, after so many defeats and setbacks, it would still be a major victory and a huge boost to morale for working people!

The ‘reformism’ accusation

There is one more criticism levelled at our electoral policy we need to answer, that by supporting the Labour Party we are merely supporting reformism and only seek to tinker with, rather than change, the capitalist system.

Not only is this false – our publicly stated long-term goal remains socialism – but the fact is that contrary to widespread belief, neither Lenin nor Stalin opposed reforms outright.

In the Foundations of Leninism, Stalin says: “Some think that Leninism is opposed to reforms, opposed to compromises and to agreements in general. {This is absolutely wrong} [our emphasis]. Bolsheviks know as well as anybody else that in a certain sense ‘every little helps’, that under certain conditions reforms in general, and compromises and agreements in particular, are necessary and useful.”

He also quotes Lenin: “To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complicated than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to refuse beforehand to manœuvre... is not this ridiculous in the extreme?”

This merely reinforces our position, that when the working class is the weaker class in the balance of forces – clearly the case at present – is essential to continue to work side by side with the organised labour movement, which is organically connected with the Labour Party, in our workplaces, on the streets, on the picket lines and in our communities, for whatever small victories we can achieve.

The alternative is to stand aloof from the mainstream of the labour movement, like those irrelevant sects that adopt a hostile, ultra-left position towards Labour and union leaders whilst claiming they are wiser, more advanced and ‘revolutionary’ than them.

The fight for socialism

As for the long-term goal of socialism, Marxist-Leninists have to be incredibly patient and accept that whilst we may achieve small victories from time to time we may also lose them, and we have no way of knowing when major changes might come.

However much we would like to see a militant, fighting and revolutionary class, we don’t have one right now. Such a class only emerges extremely rarely in history during a sharpening of the class struggle, such as in Europe in 1848 or 1917–19.

This is not defeatism or weakness, it is the correct application of theory to reality. Those who can’t see this have been shown again and again that their tactics may produce a lot of hot air, but nothing in terms of concrete, lasting results.

So whilst we support limited advances in this period, the NCP fights for genuine socialism as the only way to end exploitation, unemployment, poverty, economic crisis, endless wars, pollution and climate change. But the reality, whether we like it or not, is that realising that goal lies in the indeterminate future, not the predictable future.

Supporting limited advances doesn’t mean turning our backs on the immediate demands for social justice and state welfare advanced by a labour movement that represents millions.

So for us in the present conditions a Labour government remains the best possible outcome for working people, the best way to take forwards the fight for socialism, slowly and patiently.