By John Molyneux
The counter-revolution in Egypt,
together with the confused outcome of the upheavals in Ukraine, has revived the
old argument that real popular power is impossible. John Molyneux explains why
this is wrong.
The state of the world - with climate
change, poverty, wars, racism and much else - is such that it is not easy for
our rulers to persuade people that everything is alright. But they don't need
to. All they need to do is persuade people that there is nothing they can do
about it. This is why, when it comes to justifying capitalism, inequality and
war, the mantra of: "But you can't change human nature" has always
been popular with the powerful and drummed into the heads of ordinary people.
Linked to the human nature argument is
the idea that revolutions always end in failure. They are tied together by the
conviction that they fail because ordinary people are incapable of running
society. Popular power is always going to be an illusion. Thus, although George
Orwell was a socialist, his book Animal Farm has always been popular with the
establishment because it suggests that the degeneration of the Russian
Revolution into dictatorship was inevitable owing to the lack of intelligence
of the animals who represent the working class.
Every time a revolution is defeated the
doom merchants put forward this argument. The current situation, with the
difficult circumstances that have developed in Egypt and the right wing nature
of the forces driving the overthrow of the regime in Ukraine, lends itself to
this kind of thinking. Thus Simon Jenkins in the Guardian recently argued,
"Maidan, Ukraine..., Tahrir, Egypt..., the square symbolises failure not
hope."
It is easy to produce a list of
revolutions and uprisings that failed - the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the
Peasant War in Germany of 1525, the Paris Commune in 1871, the Spanish
Revolution of 1936 and so on. However, as a historical generalisation the idea
that all revolutions fail is false.
Many of today's main democratic
capitalist regimes are the product of successful revolutions. The most obvious
examples are the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish Empire in the 16th century
which laid the foundations for the Netherlands; the English Revolution of
1642-49 which broke the power of monarchy and the feudal aristocracy and opened
the door to parliamentary rule; the French Revolution of 1789-94, which removed
the head of Louis XVI, broke the power of the French aristocracy and ended
feudalism in France; and the American Revolution of 1775, which paved the way
for the development of the United States as the world's leading capitalist
nation.
The contemporary bourgeoisie, that is
the capitalist classes who dominate today, are embarrassed about their
revolutionary origins and try as much as possible to conceal them. The English
Revolution becomes the English Civil War and not a revolution at all. Moreover,
the conservative English bourgeoisie more or less sympathise with the "gay
cavaliers" of deposed Charles I against the grim "puritans" of
Oliver Cromwell who in fact laid the basis for their rule. Similarly, the
tendency of historians has been to denigrate the French Revolution and depict
it as descending into an orgy of violence, with the guillotine and "the
Terror" of 1793-4.
But none of these efforts at
revisionism can conceal the fact that these were real revolutions involving the
mobilisation of large masses of ordinary people, the forcible overthrow of the
existing regime and, crucially, the transfer of power from one social class
(the feudal aristocracy) to another (the bourgeoisie) in such a way as to lead
to the creation of a whole new social and economic order.
Moreover, all of these revolutions
were, in their own terms - spectacularly successful. The Dutch Revolution made
the Dutch Republic the most successful economy in Europe between 1600 and 1660.
It also made it outstandingly democratic, liberal and progressive by the
standards of the day - a haven for rebels, thinkers and artists such as the
Leveller John Lilburne, the philosophers Descartes and Spinoza, and the painter
Rembrandt.
In England the Stuart monarchy was
restored with Charles II in 1660 but he came back on quite different terms from
those his father tried to maintain. Parliament had defeated the king and never
again was Britain ruled by an absolute monarchy. The consolidation of
parliamentary and bourgeois rule was easily achieved in the "Glorious
Revolution" of 1688-89 and Britain became the country of the Industrial
Revolution and the dominant capitalist power in the 19th century.
The French Revolution not only turned
France into a modern capitalist country and made Paris the political and
cultural "capital of the 19th century" but, more than any other
event, gave rise to modern democracy and political philosophy with its concepts
of liberty and human rights and then socialism.
The 20th century saw a multitude of
national revolutions which destroyed colonial rule and established national
independence.
These range from the Irish Revolution
which began in 1916 and culminated in 1920-21, to the Egyptian Revolution of
1919, the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the
Algerian Revolution against the French in 1954-62, the revolutions against
Portuguese rule in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique and many others.
So how is it, after this abundant
experience of successful revolutions, that the claim that they always fail has
the resonance it does? The answer is that none of these revolutions have yet
produced a society of equality and freedom as almost all of them claimed they
would.
Bourgeois revolution
We need to be clear about the
difference between the bourgeois revolutions of the past and the workers'
revolution we are talking about today. The bourgeois revolutions were both progressive
and successful but they could not introduce economic equality or a classless
society.
They adopted the rhetoric of
"equal rights" to mobilise popular support but in reality were led
by, and transferred state power to, a class - the capitalists - which was by
its nature an exploiting class and which could not exist without a working
class beneath it. They could not go beyond achieving formal, constitutional
democracy with, at the very best, equal legal rights for all (in practice, of
course, they generally didn't even achieve that).
The same applies to the various
anti-colonial and nationalist revolutions. For historical reasons these
revolutions often adopted more radical language than the bourgeois revolutions,
frequently calling themselves communist or Marxist - the Chinese and the Cuban
Revolutions being the most important examples.
But in so far as these revolutions
remained under middle class and not working class leadership, they could do no
more than establish independent state capitalist regimes which would not only
be class societies but would also be subject to all the distorting pressures of
the world market.
Here a word needs to be said about the
peasantry. Ever since the development from hunting and gathering to agriculture
5,000 or more years ago, the large majority of the world's population have been
peasants. Inevitably, many and, in some cases, most of "the people"
participating in revolutions have been peasants. This was the case with Pancho
Villa's and Emiliano Zapata's armies in the Mexican Revolution, with Mao's Red
Army in the Chinese Revolution and Fidel Castro's guerrilla band in Cuba.
But there is a huge difficulty with the
peasantry as a revolutionary force: they can fight ferociously against the old
order, against the landlords and the colonialists, but they cannot take control
of the new society that emerges if the revolution succeeds. This is nothing to
do with lack of ability or intelligence and everything to do with their
conditions of life.
Power in any society depends,
ultimately, on control of the forces of production, and in modern society the
decisive forces of production are located in cities. Peasants are based in the
countryside. After taking part in any revolution the peasants eventually have
to return home to the countryside leaving someone else to run the cities and
therefore the society.
The working class, those who live by
the sale of their labour power, are different. Unlike peasants they are
concentrated in large workplaces - whether it's factories or call centres,
shipyards or council offices - and large towns, where the real power in society
is located.
As capitalism has spread around the
globe the working class has dramatically increased in size to where it makes up
a majority of world's populations. Without the working class not a car or
computer is assembled, not a shop or supermarket is staffed, not an office or
school opens and no bus, train or plane moves.
This gives the working class immense
potential power - power not only to defeat capitalism but also to construct and
rule the society that comes after and to do so democratically. The working
class is the first oppressed class in history that has the ability to run
society without exploiting or oppressing others.
But can the working class maintain
democratic control over its own leaders - won't a new set of privileged
oppressors inevitably rise from its ranks to take over? Posing this question
raises the issue of human nature and also brings up the fate of the Russian
Revolution and its transformation into dictatorship.
It is commonly said that human nature,
being greedy and self-interested, makes real equality impossible. But this is
false because human nature is not fixed. It changes and develops as
circumstances change. We know from the fact that hunters and gatherers lived in
democratic and egalitarian societies for tens of thousands of years before
classes emerged that there is not some innate obstacle to equality lodged in
human nature.
Russian Revolution
We have to recognise that the degeneration
of the Russian Revolution into tyranny is one of the main reasons why many
people think revolutions are destined to fail. It was, after all, the greatest
revolution of the 20th century and the only one in which the working class
succeeded in taking power. It is inevitably seen as a test case. However, the
material conditions in which the revolution found itself in the years following
1917 were so grievous that its degeneration was almost inevitable.
Before the revolution Russia was the
most economically backward major power in Europe - the overwhelming majority of
its population were peasants, with the working class making up less than 10
percent. Its economy was damaged by the First World War and then utterly
devastated by the Civil War. By 1921 industrial production had fallen to 31
percent of its 1913 level and large-scale production to only 21 percent. This
economic collapse was compounded by serious outbreaks of famine, typhus and
cholera.
The social effect of this was to
destroy the urban working class who had made the revolution and established
workers' power in 1917. The working class had, as Lenin said at the time,
"become declassed, ie dislodged from its class groove, and ceased to exist
as a proletariat". Physically and politically exhausted it lost the
ability to control its own government and the officials of its own state.
In these circumstances it was
unavoidable that the officials of the state and the party, sincere Communists
or not, would develop into an unaccountable and privileged bureaucracy and that
their consciousness would change accordingly. The dictatorship of (or by) the
proletariat that Marx and Lenin had envisaged would become, and did become, a
dictatorship over the proletariat.
Was there any way out of this impasse?
Yes, but only if the revolution could be spread to other more economically
developed countries which would have enabled aid to be sent to the enfeebled
Russian workers. This nearly happened: the revolution did spread to Germany and
Italy (as well as elsewhere) and it came very close to being victorious. But
their defeat, mainly for lack of revolutionary leadership, left the Russian
Revolution isolated and sealed its fate.
Once we grasp the material conditions
that caused the failure of the Russian Revolution it is clear that these send a
message of hope, not despair, for revolution today. There is now no major
country where the productive forces are not more developed, and the working
class far stronger, than it was in Russia in 1917. The world is far more
internationally integrated than it was at that time, so once a breakthrough is
made in one country spreading the revolution internationally will be much
easier than it was in 1917-23.
Failure of the squares?
Having answered the general historical
argument against revolution we can return to the specific argument about the
failure of the squares (Tiananmen, Tahrir, Puerto del Sol, Taksim, Maidan, etc)
to produce new and better societies - which is the argument put by Simon
Jenkins and others.
Jenkins says that crowds in squares
have become "icons of modern revolutionary politics" and recognises
their inspirational power. But he claims that "crowds destroy but seldom
build". He writes, "A crowd can blow the fuse of a weakened regime
and plunge the state into darkness. It seldom turns on the light of democracy.
Any upheaval can offer the hope of better times. But history is always a
sceptic."
But Jenkins makes two basic mistakes.
First he treats all crowds in squares as the same phenomenon, rather than looking
at the specific class composition, political aims and dominant ideology of
each. He doesn't attempt to distinguish between a middle class crowd and a
working class crowd, a reactionary crowd and a radical crowd and so on.
Second, because crowds in certain
squares have come to symbolise revolutionary movements Jenkins identifies the
square with the revolution as a whole, failing to consider its other elements
or the wider social forces involved. It is like reducing the French Revolution
to the storming of the Bastille or the Russian Revolution to the march on the
Winter Palace.
This is wrong in relation to all the
recent upheavals but especially so in the case of the Egyptian Revolution
because although the media focused almost exclusively on Tahrir, there were
major struggles and mobilisations across the country, particularly in
Alexandria and Suez, and because it was the combination of the masses on the
streets with rapidly spreading strikes and workplace occupations that was
decisive in forcing the fall of dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Consequently Jenkins, and others who
would write of revolutions as doomed to fail are drawing the wrong conclusion
from the struggles. While it is true that a movement that does not go beyond
simply occupying public spaces is unlikely to succeed, it is quite false to
imagine that such mass mobilisations cannot go beyond such limitations.
Indeed the correct conclusion is that
mass mobilisation on the streets is an absolutely necessary step in any
revolutionary process but we also need mass strikes and occupations of
workplaces, because it is at the point of production that capital is most
vulnerable and working class power is concentrated.
In addition we need revolutionary
socialist leadership, because without revolutionary politics any mass movement
can be misled, misdirected and betrayed.
If these elements can be brought
together the potential of the global working class to defeat capitalism and
build an international socialist society is now greater than it has ever been in
history.
No comments:
Post a Comment