great class struggles predetermined by objective 'relationships of forces', considered above all as economic. The subjective factor is removed from the analysis. Every defeat is written in the stars. The actions of the political leaderships of social classes, of parties and their leaders do not count at all. Alternatively - and this boils down to the same thing - their conduct is said to flow more or less automatically from economic 'colonial superprofits'.
The fatalist character of this approach the way it excuses the traditional leaderships mile. underpins this vulgar economic determinism is a blind admiration for the accomplished fact: *Everything that happened was inevitable and had to happen. Every thing did not happen could not happen'
In the pre-congress debate of the last American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) conference, comrade May S explicitly reproached us for not being materialist because we were hoping for a repetition of victorious revolutions along the lines of the 'soviet model', which had been reproduced nowhere half-century (SWP Discussion Bulletin, No 1, June same logic one might condemn as 'non-materialist' struggle for the formation of a mass labour party in the USA, which has been unsuccessful for the struggle for the mass of the American workers to break politically with the two bourgeois parties, successful after the efforts of three-quarters of a century; or the struggle to remove the hegemony geois workers' party over the Australian working class, which has been going on for eighty years 'without success.'
The non-dialectical this line of reasoning is disturbing. It counterposes in an absolute way 'what is' to 'what is not' as two mechanically separated poles. The materialist dialectic on hand starts from what becomes, what is changing, what is growing. It analyses reality not as fixed ('there have been no revolutionary victories in the imperialist countries') but as subject to processes of transformation, tendencies of development. It registers the tendency for the periodic breaking out of deep pre-revolutionary revolutionary crises in a whole series of imperialist countries since 1905: Russia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and on the borderline, even Great in 1926. These crises are generally characterised by mass movements of colossal scope, mass strikes, political
International Viewpoint 24 February 1986 general strikes and strikes with factory occupations, which shake bourgeois society to its very foundations. The bourgeois state is temporarily paralysed. Independently of their starting point and the proletariat's level of consciousness actions express the instinctive tendency of the proletariat to reorganise society on a socialist basis (to take a formulation used by Trotsky). To deny these tendencies one has to rewrite the whole history of the class struggle from the Russian and German revolutions of 1917-18 to the tumulworkers struggles Portuguese revolution of 1974-75.
is true that the proletariat's political differentiation and the insufficient level of its do have historic origins, among which
The craft/skill privileges, independent superprofits' differentiation is neither absolute nor permanent. It is open to the possibility (we would say inevitability) of recomposition, during unbridled mass movements characteristic of revolutionary crises or explosions. revolutionary upsurge the majority of switched their allegiance in the space of less than two years first from the democrats to the 'independents' (left social democracy) and then from left social democracy to the Communists. As a result of the June 1936 general strike the French Communist Party replaced the SFIO (social democracy) as the majority working-class space of less social democracy lost its hegemony over the organised workers' movement (that it had shared in Catalonia and in Aragon with the anarcho-syndicalists) in the 1934-37 period. We could give other examples. The dialectic of the objective factors is a true dialectic and not a variant of vulgar and fatalistic economic determinism.
Does this mean to say that the still enormous forces and reserves of the imperialist bourgeoisie have no influence at all on the real development of the objectively revolutionary processes in these countries compared to the colonial, semi-colonial semi-industrialised would be obviously absurd to support such an extreme thesis adopting mechthe exact opposite of the 'determinism by colonial superprofits' 'recognise' this 'influence' (that is the
ABC of Marxism), but to situate it correctly.
The strength and reserves of the imperialist bourgeoisie do not make it capable of avoiding the periodic breaking out of extremely serious revolutionary crises or of explosive mass struggles of such a scope that they objectively put on the agenda the possibility of a socialist revolution. To believe the contrary is to seriously underestimate the crisis affecting imperialism and capitalism in general since 1914. The strength and reserves of the imperialist bourgeoisie mean they are able to manoeuvre in a more subtle and determined way in relation to the masses than the weaker bourgeoisies facing analogous situations. It allows the imperialist bourgeoisie to 'recuperate'
're establish order" much more rapidly, if the movement reaches its peak without having conquered power.
Revolutionary crises have therefore been more short-lived in the imperialist countries than in the less developed world. In the imperialist and the dependent semi-industrialised countries a more experienced revolutionary leadership is needed to confront the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie, to neutralise them and to politically paralyse its power and then to take adrantage of this paralysis to seize power itself. Such a leadership must have an adequate longbe ready to make sharp turns and be able to unify immense proletarian masses. In has to have gone the stage of revolutionary can suffice in certain under-developed countries to precisely the weakness and extreme decomposition of the ruling classes, as well as the long period of the crisis. The strategy of the transitional programme
In a roundabout way our analysis of the strength and reserves of the imperialist bourgeoisie has brought us back to the heart of the debate: the key role of the 'subjective factor', of the revolutionary leadership and political class consciousness for revolutionary victory; and the key respon(of the labour bureaucracy) for the "The crisis of humanity is the crisis of revolutionary leadership'.
Doug Lorimer asks the question: •Where are the best objective conditions for revolution found, in the
countries or the imperApart from the fact that in the course of the last ten years has only been one victorious socialist revolution in a Third World aside the tragic Grenadan episode) it is the sort of question you commentator,
Marxist who understands the the overall crisis of capitalism. It replaces the task of working out and progressively apply. ing an adequate revolutionary strategy speculation who gambles in a lottery: what will be the next winning number? In 1962 it might have seemed that the best objective conditions' for the revolution existed in Algeria and not in France. However in May 1968 France
Demonstration in Vladivostock, 1917 (DR) than Algeria had ever been.
What is so serious about such an approach is that it disorientates the practice of revolutionary Marxists in the imperialist and dependent semi-industrialised countries, indeed also in the bureaucratised workers' states. It makes their tasks depend speculation about 'probability' "improbability' of explosions or even short-term revolutionary victories, instead of making them dependent on the imperatives of intervention in the mass struggles actually underway, determined by real social contra-
Those who start from the hypothesis that explosive mass struggles with revolutionary potential the imperialist countries, at least in the foreseable future, will present struggles to supporting imforms of organisation, rounded out at the most with general propaganda for socialism and agitation for solidarity revolutions in other parts of the world. But when the mass movement itself periodically goes beyond the level of 'economic strikes elections' - which is inevitable, given societies of the imperialist countries -have prepared neither the masses, nor even the members and cadres of the revolutionary organisation itself, for the new tasks arising out of the sharp turns in the class struggle. So people with such routinist practice become themselves a supplementary preventing the victory of the socialist revolution, for the same fundamental reason as the one underlying reformthe beginning: they believe that this revolution is not possible (at least not in the foreseeable future). On most occasions 6 they will convince themselves in any case that ten million workers strike and occupying as in May 1968 in France only 'really' elections and it was therefore necessary to limit the dynamic of the movethese realistic' objectives. The proof of their argument? "There revolutionary victory'! It is obvious that with this line of reasoning any political basis for criticising the Communist Party or Socialist Party brand of reformism evaporates, at the same time any political foundation for building a broaderrevolutionary party at these
On the other hand all those who from an understanding of the seriousness of the historical crisis of capitalism and of bourgeois society, and who understand, with Trotsky, that the revolutionary the period does not lie in the imminence of revolution everywhere and at all times, but in the inevitability of sharp radical turns in the 'objective conditions', (3) will apply the strategy of the transitional programme. They will intervene in all mass struggles, starting from supporting the immediate demands of these struggles - on economic, democratic questions, however limited - but without limiting themselves to this support. They try combine this support with the of transitional demands and propaganda in favour of forms of mass self-organisation (and if possible the carrying out of such self-organisation). The latter will proapprenticeship preparing them for new tasks that will arise when bigger explosions take place. This combination of immediate and transitional objectives for the mass struggles crowned by the defence of an overall political line and a political project for a government capable of satisfying the basic concerns of working
But in order to be able to defend such an approach with conviction and coherence in ideological debate, one obviously has to be convinced that explosions of mass struggle putting the question of power on the agenda are sooner or later inevitable:
"The strategic task of the next period - a pre-revolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organisation - consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation). It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands the socialist programme of the revolution. This bridge should include of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the that it permits of the accomplishment of the revolution, that is, the seizure of power at every given
Its revolutionary and abrupt and frequent transitions from in other words, such as enables the comto a provisional regime of the golden mean the inclusion of the social of power to the party of MacDonald, and and acutely raise the question of power.'
"The Third International after International Viewpoint 24 February 1986