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STRATEGY AND TACTICSHow the left can organiseto transform society

John Rees


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What makes change happen? What makes some people ghtto change the world while others remain passive? For thosewho want change, what sort of political organization couldmake it happen faster?

Drawing on the experience of recent mass movementsand past revolutions, this booklet suggests ways in which theleft can maximize the effectiveness of all those who want totransform society.

It looks at what has worked in the past and what has gonewrong. It concludes with a call to all those who want to changethe world to come together in a form of organization that canshape the outcome of the battles that lie ahead.

About the author

John Rees is a co-founder of the Stop the War Coalition andthe author ofThe Algebra of Revolution and Imperialism andResistance. He is on the Editorial Board of Counterre, and hewrites and presents the Timeline political history series. He is

currently researching the Levellers and the English Revolution.

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www. .org


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Contents

Introduction: What is to be done? 5

1. What are we aiming or? 7

2. Whose strategy, whose tactics? 11

3. Revolutionary organisation 15

4. Sectarianism and liquidationism 19

5. Political organisation and class struggle 23

6. iming in revolutionary politics 27

7. Seizing the key link 31

8. What are cadre? 35

9. Propaganda and agitation 39

10. Te united ront 43

11. Ultra-leism 49

12. Marxism and the trade unions 53

13. Te Marxist method 59

Further reading 65


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Introduction:

What is to be done?

What is to be done? is the essential question at the hearto Marxism. Strategic and tactical decisions are about just

this question. How do we organise to act? What methods,what arguments, will best enable us to change the societyaround us in the ways we wish?

Many people will say that there is so much more toMarxism than strategy and tactics. Marxism is a theoryo history, a philosophy, an economic theory, a politicaltheory, and so on. And o course this is true. But in

Marxism the whole point o this vast panoply o analysisis to bring us to the point where we have the knowledge toact eectively. As Marxs amous 11th thesis on Feuerbachhas it, Te philosophers have onlyinterpretedthe world,in various ways, the point is to change it.

So Marxism is distinguished rom all other sociologicaltheories and le-wing doctrines by its insistence on

answering the What is to be done? question. Otherdoctrines, academic and political, may analyse andobserve the social reality around them, but it is Marxismscommitment to acting upon such analyses that marks itout.

Tis commitment to the unity o theory and practicepoints toward some other undamental aspects oMarxism. It raises the question, or instance, o who isgoing to do whatever it is that needs to be done. Tat is, itasks this question: which class and what political actors inthat class are capable o making change happen?

In asking this question, the question o agency, it mustthereore ask a urther question: rom what point o view

should we analyse and observe historical development?


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6 Strategy and tactics

Tis question runs right to the heart o the debate betweenacademic sociology and Marxism, because it requires us

to consider whether the truth about the society we live inwill be better revealed rom the standpoint o its centralexploited class, the working class, or rom a detached,neutral point o view.

Strategic and tactical decisions are, then, at the hearto Marxism, and they rest on a much broader and deeperanalysis o the class structure o capitalist society and on

ways o viewing the world that arise rom that society.Te early sections o this pamphlet take a brie look

at these issues in order to provide a ramework or thediscussion o strategy and tactics. But the later sectionsalways reer back to this ramework, and it is always thepresupposition on which later discussion rests. Tere isalways the closest connection between general theory andstrategy and tactics in Marxism, even i the connectionsare not necessarily obvious.

When, in 1902, Lenin took the title What is to be done?or what became one o his most amous pamphlets, hedid so at a time when the orces o the revolutionariesin Russia were scattered and weak. But his persistence

in answering this question, at that time and aerwards,brought them to the point where they could play a decisiverole in the Russian Revolution. I revolutionaries are toplay a constructive role in the battles that working peopleace today, they must still have the strategic and tacticalcapacity to answer that same question.


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1. What are we aiming for?

Te phrase strategy and tactics is military in origin.Armies have strategic war aims and they adapt their tacticsto overcome the problems they ace in battle in ways thatmove them towards their strategic goal.

Te great Russian revolutionary Leon rotsky wrote:By tactics in politics, we understand, using the analogy omilitary science, the art o conducting isolated operations.By strategy, we understand the art o conquest, i.e. theseizure o power.

Indeed, rotskys very distinction between tactics andstrategy, which Lenin shared, was borrowed rom theGerman military theorist von Clausewitz. One o thereasons this denition became important to Lenin androtsky was that it allowed them to insist that tactics aresubordinate to strategic goals.

Beore the crisis in the Second International causedby the First World War, in which most o the socialist

movements leaders abandoned internationalism andsided with their own ruling classes in supporting thecarnage in the trenches, this way o looking at strategy andtactics was not common.

Beore the war we did not, as a rule, make this distinction,writes rotsky. In the epoch o the Second Internationalwe conned ourselves solely to the conception o social

democratic tactics. Nor was this accidental.It was not accidental, in rotskys view, because the

Second International had in reality abandoned the goalo socialist revolution. All that was le or it was a serieso tactical activities unrelated to the goal o revolution aiming, in act, at simply reorming the existing system.

Tus, the social-democratic parties had trade union

tactics, parliamentary tactics, municipal tactics, and


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so on, but the question o combining all orces andresources all sorts o troops to obtain victory over the

enemy was never really raised in the epoch o the SecondInternational, insoar as the task o the struggle or powerwas not raised.

Tis question was re-imposed on the movement rstby the 1905 Revolution in Russia, and then again by theoutbreak o war in 1914 and the Russian Revolution o1917. Aer that, the worldwide revolutionary turmoil o

the post-war years persistently raised the issue o politicalpower or the working class everywhere rom Germany in1918 to China in 1926 through to Spain in 1936.

Tat is why this era is so ruitul or a study o strategyand tactics but similar questions are raised in everyserious class struggle and every revolution.

In these circumstances, military analogies like strategyand tactics will always be valuable, because politicalanalysis and warare have something crucial in common.Tey are both great simpliers: they demand a ocus on theessential and a ruthless relegation o the inessential.

One o the most dicult tasks in deciding strategyand tactics is to draw out o the mass o inormation and

events that swirl around us what our key goals should beand what basic methods we should adopt to achieve them.Tis, inevitably, means treating as secondary many acetso the situation that to others may seem vital.

Tis same business o prioritisation is o course centralin warare. One cannot, either strategically or tactically,aord to waste resources on those ronts that are not

essential. One has to abstract rom the chaos o war thoseronts that are essential and concentrate orces at them.

But this process o abstraction the selection o criticalareas o activity then has to be tested in practice. Is it truethat i we concentrate orces at this point we can make abreakthrough? Aer making an assessment, there is onlyone way to nd out try it and see!

Lenin liked to quote Napoleons advice: Lets engage in


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Strategy and tactics 9

battle and then well see. At a certain point, all theoretical,strategic, and tactical disputes can be resolved only in

practice.Or as rotsky put it when condemning the barren

scholasticism o endless debate:

It would be analogous to wrangling over theadvantages o various systems o swimming whilewe stubbornly reused to turn our eyes to the river

where swimmers were putting these systems intopractice. No better test o the viewpoints concerningrevolution exist that the verication o how theyworked out during the revolution itsel, just as asystem o swimming is best tested when a swimmerjumps into the water.


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2. Whose strategy,

whose tactics?

Every organisation has strategy and tactics. Armiesobviously have strategies and tactics. So do corporations,

NGOs, charities, trade unions, governments, and politicalparties. But the strategy and tactics you adopt depend onthe kind o organisation you are in. Moreover, dierencesin strategy arise because o the diering class base o the

various organisations in society.So although it seems obvious that discussion o strategy

and tactics should be about the most immediate and

pressing campaigns in which we are involved, in act, suchdiscussion must start much urther back. It must beginmuch deeper in the social structure.

We, o course, are interested in the working class and itscapacity or resisting the system. So let us look at some othe key characteristics o workers in capitalist society.

Workers are an exploited and oppressed class. Tey

have to work or a wage which represents only part o thewealth that their work produces the rest creates protsor the owners o the actories, oces, mines, transportsystems, inormation technologies, power industries,supermarkets, and all the other accumulated economicwealth o society.

Tis subordination has its counterpart in the ideasthat workers hold, at least some o the time. Economicand political subordination breeds passivity and atalism.Some o the clichs we learn early in lie express this: thepoor are always with us, there will always be the rich manin his castle and the poor man at his gate, so its been, soit will always be.

It is not surprising that many workers accept these ideas,


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at least partially. Teir economic subordination involvesbeing told when to work and when not, how hard to work

and at what, what they will be paid, and how much theywill have to pay or what they produce when it reappearson the market.

Tis lack o control over the productive core o society what Karl Marx called alienation does not encourageideological independence.

Every conservative, rom the heads o corporations to

the leaders o the ory Party, relies on the passivity inducedby powerlessness. It provides soil within which acceptanceo the status quo takes root.

So is our situation hopeless? Are we in an Orwellian1984-like nightmare where a completely divided andatomised working class is constantly disoriented andimmobilised by the propaganda o our rulers? Is this notthe ory dream o a working class without the capacityor revolt? I this were true, our discussion o strategy andtactics would be a short one. No strategy is possible whereno resistance takes place.

But alienation is only hal the picture. Te system alwaysinduces revolt as well as passivity. Te exploitation and

oppression that working people and other groups suerhave always provoked resistance, revolt, and revolution.Tere always comes a point where some group o workerssomewhere decide that enough is enough and that theymust take some kind o action.

But i the ory dream o absolute passivity amongworking people is untrue, we must not think that its

opposite, the anarchist dream o perpetual and spontaneousrevolt among workers, is true either.

In reality, there is always a battle between where workersinterests lie in combating the system and where theirconsciousness is at any given time which involvesacceptance o the system at least to some degree.

Some critics o Marxism say that this distinction

between workers interests and their consciousness is


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an articial one invented to explain away that act thatworkers ought to oppose the system but oen go along

with it. How can you say, the critics ask, that workers haveinterests dierent rom the views they express?

But this is really not a dicult idea to deend. Ineveryday lie, we all accept that individuals interests canbe dierent rom their consciousness. Look at people whosmoke cigarettes. We, and they, know where their interestslie. Tey lie in giving up smoking, because, as it says in

large letters on every packet o cigarettes, Smoking Kills.Yet their consciousness does not register this act and theygo on smoking.

We think we have some insight into why people behavelike this: peer group pressure, advertising, amily example,stress, and so on. And many o the same social pressures,on a much greater scale, exist to persuade people not tostrike, join a union, riot, or make revolution.

Te result is that most workers, most o the time,have what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci calledcontradictory consciousness. Tey accept certain thingsabout the system while rejecting others. Tey may beanti-racists, but admire the Queen. Or they may be great

trade-union militants, but believe in immigration controls.Te variety o such contradictions is endless.Te aim o socialists must be to raise the level o

consciousness and combativity among workers. Tey mustnd a way to act with workers in such a way that the moreconservative elements o this contradictory consciousnessare reduced and the more progressive strengthened.

Tis is what socialist strategy and tactics are all about:inding those organisations, slogans, and ideas thatcounteract conservatism and passivity among workersand instead encourage them to ght back.


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3. Revolutionary organisation

Leon rotsky once said that ve workers that he met earlyin his political lie told him everything he needed to knowabout the need or socialist organisation.

Te gist o rotskys story is this: one o the ve workers

was a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary he would never join aunion, he was a racist and a sexist, and, i there were a strike,he would scab. Another o the ve was the exact opposite a good union activist, an anti-racist, and a socialist alwayswilling to stand up or the underdog.

Between these two polar opposites were the other threeworkers. Tey could sometimes be swayed by the argumentso the reactionary, leaving the socialist isolated. But theycould also be won to the arguments o the socialist, leavingthe reactionary isolated.

rotskys point was this: a revolutionary organisationmust seek out and relate to the minority o socialists, becauseby becoming part o a network that produces a paper, holds

meetings, develops explanations o the world, and organisesaction, the minority, the one in ve, will become clearer andtougher about their politics, and better able to win over theirellow workers.

his short able crystallises two critical Marxistviews o working class struggle. It highlights the unevenconsciousness o the working class (discussed in the last

chapter) and it proposes that a minority or vanguardorganisation is the most eective tool or overcoming thisunevenness in a progressive way.

he most advanced sections o the internationalworking class movement aer the Russian Revolution o1917 reached the same conclusion. Generalising rom thesuccess o Lenins Bolsheviks, they concluded that only

a party o a new type (in the phrase used by the newly


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ounded Communist International) could be eective inleading workers struggles.

Te Hungarian revolutionary Georg Lukacs expressedthis idea in its simplest and most direct orm: the militantminority must assemble in the orm o an organisation.

Tis may seem like an elementary point, but, in act,the exact opposite o this orm o organisation was almostuniversal in the working class movement beore 1917 andremains the most common orm o workers organisation

today.Te Labour Party model o organisation is deliberately

nota vanguard organisation. It is a broad party that seeksto encompass most, i not all, working class opinion. Inthe terms o rotskys metaphor, it seeks to unite at leastour o the ve workers in the same organisation. Unlike a

vanguard organisation, it seeks to unite them in the sameparty whether or not they agree with the militant.

Such parties were the accepted norm in the SecondInternational that dominated the labour movementinternationally between the 1880s and 1917. Tey haveremained the model or electoralist Labour and social-democratic parties internationally ever since.

Te strength o such parties is obvious: they are big. Buttheir weakness is atal and it undermines this strength: theyare divided politically between a radical minority and aconservative or, at best, conused and vacillating majority.Tis is absolutely inevitable in a working class that hasuneven consciousness. A broad party is bound to reproducethis unevenness.

Te eect o alienation, the separation between the inter-ests and the consciousness o the working class, the eectso the media, the education system, and so on, all mean thata majority o workers, most o the time, will not share theoverall or general views o the radical socialist minority.

Add this to the conservative bureaucracy o MPs,councillors, trade union leaders, and other unctionaries

that dominate the upper reaches o electoralist parties and



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we can easily see why such organisations almost alwaysabandon their principles at decisive or dicult turning

points in the class struggle.Tis is exactly what happened to the parties o the

Second International at the outset o the First World War.For decades, they declared opposition to war and threateneda united general strike o workers to prevent war should itlook imminent. On the day, virtually all the national partiesand in particular the greatest o them, the German Social

Democratic Party, collapsed into jingoistic support or theirown rulers.

In Britain, we have beore our eyes over a century oLabour Party history to demonstrate the ailure o thistype o organisation to take us one step nearer to socialism.Indeed, we can show that on most occasions the conservativemajority in the party manages to silence or reduce toineectiveness the radical minority.

It was just such experience that drove revolutionarysocialists to the conclusion that there must be a dierentorganisational relationship between the militant minorityand the rest o the class. Rather than being together inone organisation where the minority was subordinated to

conservative orces, the minority had to orm its own radicalorganisation able to organise and operate reely.But this immediately raises the issue o how this

vanguard should relate to, aim to organise, and strive to winover the rest o the working class. How does the minorityprevent itsel becoming a sel-satised sect that is never ableto lead eective action by the majority o workers?

Tis, indeed, is a undamental problem o revolution.For i a revolution is the democratic act o the majorityo the working class, i the revolution is, in Marxs phrase,the sel-emancipation o the working class, how does anorganisation o the militant minority relate to this widermovement?

Tis is the core question o revolutionary strategy

and tactics.


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4. Sectarianism

and liquidationism

An organised grouping o revolutionary socialists,independent o all infuence except that o working

class struggle, is the indispensable prerequisite or anyrevolutionary strategy.Without such organisational independence,

revolutionaries will nd themselves tied to the moreconservative layers o the working class and, thereore,to the infuence o the ruling class and its ideologuesamong the middle classes and the labour movement

bureaucracy.But once such an independent revolutionary

organisation, resting on the most advanced sections o theclass, exists, it must immediately nd a way o relating tothe wider struggles o the working class.

In the years aer the Russian Revolution, Lenin urgedrevolutionaries in Italy to break with urati, the leader o

the reormist Italian Socialist Party (SP), and create theirown independent revolutionary Communist Party (CP).

Nevertheless, Lenin also realised that many verygood workers would remain in uratis party and wouldnot immediately join the CP. He insisted that the Italianrevolutionaries should continue to work with, relate to,and address these SP supporters, even though they reusedto join the CP.

Lenins advise to the Italian revolutionaries was: youmust break with urati in order to unite with urati. Hedid not say this because he had any aith in urati ratherthe opposite: he wanted Italian revolutionaries to workalongside SP supporters in order to undermine theiraith

in urati.


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Tis example highlights the twin dangers that ace anyindependent revolutionary organisation: liquidationism

and sectarianism. Not to break rom the SP would havebeen to liquidate (dissolve) the revolutionaries into asocial-democratic or reormist party and neuter them asan independent orce.

O course, they might still have been able to makerevolutionary speeches and propose motions thatembodied their own ideas within the SP. Tey might have

hoped, over the long term, in this way, to win the majorityo the Socialist Party to their views. Tis was the coursethat Rosa Luxemburg adopted in the German SocialDemocratic Party beore 1914.

But what she lacked then and what the Italianrevolutionaries would have lacked i they had not le theSP and ormed an independent organisation as Leninadvised was any capacity or independent action. Shewas as they would have been a prisoner inside a social-democratic party. Te danger in this situation is that theactivity o revolutionaries is shaped by the rhythm anddirection o electoralist and reormist politics, not by therequirements o the class struggle.

But i Lenin had not also insisted that, as soon as theyhad created an independent organisation, the Italianrevolutionaries then seek every opportunity or jointaction and common struggle with SP supporters, theywould have been guilty o the equal and opposite error osectarianism. Tis means attempting to insulate yourselrom conservative infuence and create a pure socialist

organisation in isolation rom the majority o theworking class.

Marx was orthright against this as ar back as 1848,writing in Te Communist Maniesto:

Te Communists do not orm a separate partyopposed to other working-class parties. Tey have

no interests separate and apart rom those o the


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proletariat as a whole. Tey do not set up anysectarian principles o their own, by which to shape

and mould the proletarian movement.

Lenins idea o a revolutionary party seems to contradictthis. But this is only really true i the non-sectarianpurpose o Marxs injunction is ignored. It would besectarian, or instance, or revolutionaries to reuse to jointrade unions on the grounds that they are not socialist

organisations and do not ght to overthrow capitalism,but merely or better pay and conditions. Workers needunity on the most basic economic issues. Socialists shouldthereore be the best trade unionists, not people who standon the sidelines preaching about the need or an alternativeto capitalism.

Since it is oen precisely through the experience osuch struggles that workers become aware o the limits otrade unionism and o the need or socialism, it is not onlysectarian but also counter-productive or revolutionariesnot to be central to the ght.

In recent years, in Britain, we have oen seen smallgroups on the le stand aside rom, or take a sectarian

attitude towards, the anti-war movement, because it isnot, in their view, suciently anti-imperialist. What theymean is that not everyone involved is opposed in principleto imperialism as a global system. Tis is true, but irevolutionaries do not throw themselves into the anti-warmovement, how will they ever persuade anti-war activiststhat the best way to oppose war is to be consistently anti-

imperialist?ony Cli, the author o a path-breaking biography

o Lenin, used to underline the dangers o sectarianismand liquidationism with this example. Imagine you are ona picket line, he used to say, and the striker next to youmakes a racist remark. Tere are three things you can doin response.

Te rst is to ignore the racist comment and talk about


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the weather. Tis is unprincipled and liquidationist youhave just collapsed your own anti-racist politics and

ignored a remark you should have challenged. Te secondis to protest at the racist remark and walk sel-righteouslyo the picket line. Tis is sectarian, because although youhave demonstrated your principles, you have weakenedthe strike and may help strike-breakers deeat it.

Te right thing to do is to argue with the person makingthe racist remark, but stay on the picket line and i the

strike-breakers arrive, you should link arms with theperson you are arguing with so that together you can stopthem getting through. Tis creates the essential bond osolidarity which gives you a chance o winning the politicalargument.

Tis example underlines the point that both sectarianismand liquidationism have the same root: impatience withthe speed o development o the consciousness o theworking class. Te liquidationist wants to short-cut thelong struggle to raise the combativity and consciousnesso the working class by dissolving into it in its currentstate. Te sectarians want to ignore the current state o theworking class by cutting themselves o and subsisting in a

cocoon o revolutionary purity.Both orms o impatience have the same result:nothing changes.


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5. Political organisation

and class struggle

I a revolutionary organisation is the most advanced parto the working class, how does it relate to the rest o the

working class and to the wider struggles o the workingclass? Te rst step in understanding this relationship is tograsp that although a revolutionary network o militantsseeks to organise the most advanced sections o the class, itcannot substitute or the working class as a whole.

Te party does not and cannot make a revolution. Tismust be the act o the majority o the working class, not

just its most advanced section. At the very moment o theOctober Revolution in 1917, the leaders o the BolshevikParty military organisation argued that it should be thisparty body that organised the seizure o power. Leninopposed them. He insisted that it could not be a partyorganisation that made the revolution. He was absolutelyclear that it must be the military organisation o the

Workers Council that should accomplish the task.Te party represented only part o the working class,

whereas the Workers Council included representativesrom the broadest swathes o the class. Lenins reasoningwas clear: the Bolsheviks may have been able to providepolitical leadership at decisive moments but it is onlywhen this lead was taken up and acted on by a majority othe working class that such action was eective. In the oldphrase, Man proposes, God disposes; in revolutionarypolitics, the party may propose, but the working classdisposes.

In any case, any organisations ideas, and its role as avanguard, can only be sustained i it learns rom working

class struggle.


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Te claim to be a vanguard rests on the revolutionaryminoritys ability to condense and express the best

experiences o working class struggle. Tis is not achievedin a single moment at the time o the organisationsormation and assumed to remain the case ever aer. Itmust be constantly renewed.

Frederick Engels made the point that all reallyinnovative military tactics were discovered by rank-and-le soldiers under the impact o emergency conditions in

the heat o warare. Te job o a good military leadershipwas to recognise such advances, even i they confictedwith established theory and practice, and to generalisethem throughout the army.

Lukacs makes the same point: in no sense is the partysrole to impose any kind o abstract, cleverly devised tacticson the masses. On the contrary, it must continuouslylearn rom their struggle andunite the spontaneousdiscoverieswith the totality o the revolutionarystruggle, and bring them to consciousness.

Lukacs is here pointing to a double process: therevolutionary minority must learn rom the class, butit must also unite what it learns with the totality o the

revolutionary struggle. But what is this totality, and how isit to be united with what is learnt rom the class?he totality o the struggle is the accumulated

historical experience o the working class in its battle withcapitalism. Tis means not just the historical experiencein an immediate sense what happened in the 1984-85miners strike, or the poll tax campaign, or in 1968, or

in the General Strike o 1926, and so on. It also meansthe more theorised experience o how capitalism workseconomically, how imperialism works, how to judge

various philosophies, religions, or art orms.Only a political organisation is capable o organising

such an educational experience on a broad scale orthousands (or perhaps tens o thousands) o militants in

the working class movement. Tis is the meaning o the


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idea that the revolutionary organisation both the memoryo the class and the university o the class.

And how do we know i we have learnt the right lessonsor made the correct theoretical generalisations? Only thepractice o the organisation and the class will tell. As Marxexpressed it: the question o whether objective truth canbe attributed to human thinking is not a question o theorybut is apracticalquestion. Man must prove the truth, i.e.the reality and power, the this-sidedness o his thinking

in practice.Te revolutionary organisation can perorm its role

only through an interactive, dialectical relationshipwith working class struggle. Te party both learns romand summarises the past experience o the struggle. Itproposes action based on what it has learnt. And it assessesthe correctness o these proposals according to what itlearns anew rom its conscious attempt to intervene in thestruggles o workers.


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6. Timing in

revolutionary politics

Te activity o a revolutionary organisation orms part oa chain o events taking place over time. Te revolutionary

minority never controls the whole chain, because itis composed o economic actors, the actions o otherpolitical organisations, the consciousness and combativityo the working class, and many other elements that areeither wholly or partially independent o the infuence othe organised minority.

A network o revolutionaries can have a crucial eect

on the course o events, but onlyi it accurately gauges theway in which these other actors are shaping them, and i ittailors its actions to promote some outcomes and suppressothers. Moreover, and crucially, since the weight o theseactors and the overall direction o events are constantlychanging, what a revolutionary organisation may be ableto achieve at one time may not be achievable even a short

time later.In short, the question o timing is crucial. Tis is never

more true than in the timing o revolution itsel.Here is one less well-known example rom the English

Revolution. In 1647, aer the First Civil War, KingCharles was being eted by the moderates in the Houseo Commons. I they had been successul, the radicals inthe New Model Army, the decisive revolutionary orceat this moment, would have been marginalised, and therevolution might never have achieved its ull stature.

But decisive action by Cromwell who vacillatedbeore and aer attempting to come to a treaty with theKing and the Army radicals, led to the seizure o Charles

by a troop o horses commanded by Cornet Joyce (a very


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junior ocer). Asked by the King or his commission orthe arrest, Joyce simply pointed to the troopers behind

him. Had the King not been taken prisoner by the Army,he might have been restored to the throne.

A more amous example comes rom the RussianRevolution. Te period immediately beore the Octoberinsurrection was one o conusion among the leaders othe Bolshevik Party. Lenin wrote letter aer letter urgingpreparations or a new insurrection. Lenins tone is rantic

in this correspondence because he believed that delaywould be disastrous: Delay is criminal. o waitwouldbea betrayal o the revolution. And again: to miss sucha momentwould be utter idiocy, or sheer treacheryorit would mean losing weeks at a time when weeks and evendays decide everything. It would mean aint-heartedlyrenouncing power, or on 1-2 November it will havebecome impossible to take power.

Finally, aer he had threatened resignation rom theCentral Committee, the Partys leading body, Lenins viewprevailed and the insurrection took place on 25 October1917.

It is not always the case that urgency means a matter

o days. In a revolution, as Lenin noted elsewhere,developments that normally take years can be contractedinto days, even hours.

But there is, nevertheless, always a window oopportunity outside which certain actions will no longerbe possible or will not have the same orce. In recenthistory, or instance, had revolutionaries not decided to

launch the Stop the War Coalition within days o the attackon the win owers, it is unlikely that it would have hadthe same galvanising eect that it did.

O course, it is also possible to move too quickly. Hadthe Bolsheviks attempted a revolution in the summero 1917, when reaction was in the air, it would certainlyhave rebounded on them, strengthening the counter-

revolution, perhaps decisively. At this time, the Bolsheviks


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worked to restrain those who wanted to push orward andlaunch an insurrection. But whether one is urging restraint

or advance, issuing a clear call at the appropriate time isessential.

Many years ago, the labour historian Ralph Samuel wrotethat one o the things he disliked about the CommunistParty was that there was always a tone o emergency inthe organisation. Something or other always had to bedone now, could not wait, and so on. Tis criticism is

misplaced. I a revolutionary organisation is to play itsrole in the chain o events, whatever that role might be atany given time, it must act with dispatch. Tere is alwayssomething to be done, and, i it is to be done to maximumeect, it needs to be done in a timely manner.

But timely is a variable quantity. What is necessaryto prepare or imminent revolution may have to beaccomplished with greater speed than the preparation or ademonstration in normal times that is six months hence. Butsince all organisations, even revolutionary organisations,produce their own inertia, adhering to past patterns owork even when new challenges arise, there will always bea battle to turn the organisation to a correct orientation in

good time.Other political orces, both enemies and rivals, willnot wait. So timing will always be o the essence orrevolutionaries. Duncan Hallas, a leading revolutionarysocialist and the author o a very useul study o rotsky,used to quote Shakespeare to make the point:

Tere is a tide in the aairs o men,Which, taken at the ood, leads on to ortune;Omitted, all the voyage o their lie,Is bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a ull sea are we now aoat,And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose our ventures.


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7. Seizing the key link

In all Lenins writing on strategy and tactics, there are ewmore important passages than this one:

Every question runs in a vicious circle because

political lie as a whole is an endless chain consistingo an innite number o links. Te whole art opolitics lies in nding and taking as rm a grip aswe can o the link that is least likely to be struckrom our hands, the one most important at the givenmoment, the one that most guarantees its possessorthe possession o the whole chain.

Tis is a proound insight or number o reasons. It veryaccurately describes how many people rst experiencepolitical reality. A whole host o issues, all equallyimportant rom a general point o view, assail them romevery direction. Global warming, racism, trade union

struggle, war, abortion, civil liberties these and manymore are all important, all demand our attention. Eachone will have its specialist advocates, and they will oenhave a good case.

A requent response to this dilemma is to try and doeverything. But this rarely leads to eective political work,even or individuals, never mind entire organisations.

Another response, or organisations, is to allow theirmembers to pick and chose what work they do accordingto their own preerences. Tis is common in reormist,Labour Party-type organisations. Since all they reallycare about is electoral activity, this is the only time theyrequire an organisation-wide ocus rom every member.For the rest o the time, members can be active in whatever

campaign most takes their ancy.


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But this buet lunch approach (come when youlike, eat as much or as little as you like, o whatever

you like) can develop in any organisation that is notruthlessly ocused on the key issues. And the approachis undamentally wrong because the world is not in acta chaos o competing issues all o more or less equalweight.

It is actually a series o related issues, all o which tracetheir origin back to the essential class contradictions o

capitalist society. Global warming, war, racism, and so onare all in their dierent and specic orms consequenceso the anarchic pursuit o prot that governs the systemand o the class and other struggles that it generates. Atany given time, the struggle that is most likely to challengethe system can arise in any one o these areas. Te knacko understanding which is the key link is thereore aquestion o theoretical analysis.

Here is a contemporary example: it is obvious nowthat imperialism is a key link in current global politics.But to see this during the First Gul War, or the BalkanWar, or even in the immediate aermath o 9/11 requireda preceding analysis o the new imperialism that arose

aer the Cold War.As Lenin points out: anybody who tackles the partialproblems without having previously settled generalproblems, will inevitably and at every step come up againstthose general problems without realising it. o come upagainst them blindly and in every individual case meansto doom ones politics to the worst vacillation and lack o

principle.Without an analysis o the new imperialism, it would

not have been possible to see the anti-war movementemerging as a key link and to make this central to thework o revolutionaries. Moreover, to get the necessaryocus on this key link, it was essential to mount a speciccampaign on the le more widely over a period o weeks

and months.


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Tis bending the stick, as Lenin called it, is a ruthlessorm o prioritisation in which other, oen in themselves

important issues are relegated to second place. hisinevitably requires internal discussion and argument insidean organisation. Old priorities, quite correct in their time,have to be superseded. Understandable but oen moralisticobjections to neglecting other areas o work have to beaddressed.

Come what may, there is no avoiding the requirement to

dene and grasp the key link. Look how the recession in allits aspects (the general election, the coalition government,the nancial crisis, the budget cuts, the attacks on jobs, wages,pensions, and services, etc.) surged to the top o the politicalagenda in Spring 2010. Any socialist organisation that doesnot shape a wide-ranging response to this crisis and pursue itruthlessly would simply prove itsel not t or purpose.

Does this mean that all other areas o political work areignored? No. But at all times, the party must prioritise.Lenins point is that grasping the key link guaranteesits possessor the possession o the whole chain. Forcesaccumulated on the key ront can then be deployed inother areas o struggle according to their importance.

Successes on one critical issue will li the condence othose struggling on other ronts.We know rom recent history how successes in the

anti-globalisation struggles that ollowed the greatSeattle demonstration in 1999 underpinned the launch othe anti-war movement. I revolutionaries had not ocusedon the anti-capitalist struggles, even though they were

smaller in this country than elsewhere, they would nothave been as well placed to launch and sustain the anti-warmovement even though the anti-war movement thenrequired their ull attention, to the detriment o earlieranti-globalisation work.

Te nal point is simple but vital: the best orm ocontinuity between all these dierent ronts and dierent

phases o the struggle is the revolutionary network. At


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each turn, it must seek to recruit and sustain a group oactivists who see the whole o the class struggle in all its

dierent orms as their political home, and who are ableto ocus their whole attention on each vital question as itarises in the course o that struggle.



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8. What are cadre?

Anyone who is active in le-wing politics or very longwill soon come across the term cadre. It has come to meana group o activists who have a certain level o politicalunderstanding and practical organising experience.

It is easy to see why any organisation would want to developsuch a body o members. It gives the organisation weight andeectiveness in the struggle. It enables it to integrate newmembers into a political tradition. And it should give theorganisation the ability to operate eectively in a wide rangeo dierent struggles and dierent phases o struggle.

Such members are also oen, though not always, morerooted in the trade unions and working class organisations.Tey have more weight in the movement and so can bemore eective in moving sections o the class in a particulardirection than those who are less so.

actical fexibility is only possible or an organisationthat has a high degree o unanimity about its basic

principles, and this requires a stable group o members whounderstand and transmit these ideas to other comradesand across the generations.

Te cadre o the organisation gives it stability, durability,and eectiveness in the struggle. But this can also give riseto problems, especially when the conditions o strugglechange quickly. rotsky explained the problem like this:

Each party, even the most revolutionary party,must inevitably produce its own organisationalconservatism; or otherwise it would lack thenecessary stability. Tis is wholly a question o degree.In a revolutionary party, the vitally necessary doseo conservatism must be combined with a complete

reedom rom routine, with initiative in orientation


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and daring in action.

Tis highlights an important point: cadre only remaincadre i they continue to relate correctly to the turningpoints in the struggle. I they do not, in spite o theiraccumulated knowledge and experience, they turn roman asset into a liability. Here is rotsky again:

Even the most revolutionary parties, when an

abrupt change occurs in the situation and a newtask arises as a consequence, requently pursue thepolitical line o yesterday and thereby become, orthreaten to become, a brake on the revolutionaryprocess. Both conservatism and revolutionaryinitiative nd their most concentrated expression inthe leading organs o the party.

Especially at such times, new members o theorganisation may much more accurately understandwhat is necessary or the party to act eectively. In suchcircumstances, the old clich about revolutionary partiesbeing about top-down leadership is urther rom the

truth than ever.In the period beore the October insurrection, whenthe leadership o the Bolsheviks were united againstLenins call or a second revolution (already discussed inthe previous chapter iming in revolutionary politics), itwas the most advanced section o the class and the mostdynamic elements in the Bolshevik Party that overcome

this conservatism.It is in this way that the cadre o the party renews itsel.

In such moments, it retains those who have moved withthe times and integrates and educates those new cadre whohave proved capable o leading in new circumstances. Inthis way, the debates and actions o the party constantlytest the old cadre and create new leaders.

Lenin had aced this problem beore 1917. As the


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Bolshevik Party began to orm, ollowing a split withthe more moderate Mensheviks, he had insisted that the

creation o tightly-organised committees o trusted partymembers in as many town and cities as possible was thekey.

Tese committee-men were, Lenins wie Krupskayarecalled, sel assuredand did not like innovations. Teywere neither desirous nor capable o adapting themselvesto changing conditions.

When the 1905 Revolution broke out, these committee-men on whom Lenin had relied reused to open up theparty and its structures to newly radicalised workers.

Now Lenin reversed his previous emphasis: Really, Isometimes think that nine-tenths o the Bolsheviks areactually ormalists We need young orces.

Te lesson is this: cadre are not dened simply as thosewho know Marxist theory and have much experience othe struggle. Tey are certainly not dened simply by ageor by the length o time they have been in the party.

Tese advantages only remain advantages i the cadreare capable o bringing them to bear on the struggles othe day, using their experience to understand, explain, and

act in new circumstances. For this to happen, they mustbe active party members who are attempting to shape thestruggle by conscious intervention, not simply observingand commenting on it rom aar.

In What is to be done?, Lenin draws a contrast betweenthe economic leadership given to the working classmovement by a trade union secretary and the kind o

leadership he thinks a revolutionary socialist should give:

Te secretary o any, say English, trade union,always helps the workers to carry on the economicstruggle. He helps them to expose actory abuses,explains the injustice o the laws and the measuresto hamper the reedom to strike and to picket

explains the partiality o arbitration court judges


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who belong to the bourgeois classes, etc, etc Itcannot be too strongly maintained that this is still

not Social Democracy [i.e. revolutionary socialism].Te Social Democrats ideal should not be the tradeunion secretary, but the tribune o the people, whois able to react to every maniestation o tyrannyand oppression, no matter what stratum or classo the people it aects; who is able to generalise allthese maniestations and produce a single picture

o police violence and capitalist exploitation; whois able to take advantage o every event, howeversmall, on order to set orth beore all his socialistconvictions


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9. Propaganda and agitation

Every active socialist has to carry out two broad tasks inthe class struggle. One is to educate and the other is toorganise. Education is about bringing the accumulatedhistorical and theoretical experience o working class

struggle to bear on contemporary politics. How can weanalyse the recession or modern imperialism i we donot have a grasp o Marxist economics or the theory oimperialism?

But this understanding cannot simply be the privateintellectual accomplishment o those already in arevolutionary organisation. It should and must be spread aswidely as possible in the wider working class movement.

Te word propaganda has a largely pejorative favourin everyday speech. It is associated with hack-partyormulations o the Nazi or Stalinist regimes. But thereis a more positive meaning that simply implies a series orelatively complex ideas like those contained in Marxist

theory that one is attempting to disseminate.When today we talk about how the recession shows thatthe market is automatically prone to periodic crisis, thatthe capitalist system is exploitative, and that it underlinesthe need or a new society based on collective ownershipo the economy, we are propagandising. What we are notdoing is suggesting that we can take immediate action

on the basis o these ideas. We cannot, in other words,immediately set about abolishing the market and buildingsocialism.

Tis does not diminish the vitally important task ospreading these ideas in the working class movement. Buti we are talking about what we can do now, say, about therecession, then we need other, simpler, more direct ideas.

Tese are agitational slogans.


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Tey concern immediate action. Strike now againstbelow-inlation pay oers is an agitational slogan,

especially in those unions where a ballot over takingaction against a low pay oer is taking place. March to getthe troops out now is a direct call to action or the anti-warmovement. Both these things can and should happen now.Whether or not they do depends on a subjective argumentin the movement. Tey may or may not happen, but, unlikeabolishing the market, the political orces exist in the here-

and-now that could make them happen i socialists andothers win the argument with those around them.

Tere is another orm o demand that lies betweenthe two extremes o propaganda and agitation: concretepropaganda. By this we mean a demand which a majorityo workers think is possible and desirable, but which,alone, they do not have the power to enact. Tey thinkthat someone else the government or the trade unionleaders should make it happen.

Te demand or a windall tax on corporate prots is agood example. Te movement can mobilise around thesedemands in the rst instance, and, i momentum builds,they may become directly agitational in their own right.

For instance, i a movement develops demanding thatpensioners be given ree heating, and the governmentreuses, the pensioners may then begin a non-paymentcampaign. his, o course, is what happened underMargaret Tatcher when the demand to abolish the polltax developed into a non-paymentcampaign.

Te Russian Marxist George Plekhanov, rom whom

Lenin learnt much in his early years, gives us a useuldenition that can help us think clearly about this issue.

A sect, wrote Plekhanov, can be satisied withpropaganda in the narrow sense o the word: a politicalparty never A propagandist gives many ideas to one or aew people, while an agitator gives one or only a ew ideasto masses o people Yet history is made by the masses.

Knowing how and when to advance what orms o


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propaganda and agitation requires real experience.Listening to what workers are saying, understanding what

they think is possible, judging what they are willing to do all this bears upon what kinds o propaganda and whatagitational demands should be advanced at any time.

Tere is a sect on the British le that has advanced theslogan General Strike Now! in response to every indus-trial dispute o any size or many decades. On nearly alloccasions, this had no resonance among even the advanced

layers o workers. It is not that it would not be a good ideain the abstract (like socialist revolution itsel). But the slo-gan hardly ever had any capacity to generate action.

Yet at certain points during the miners strike o 1984-85, when the level o class-wide anger was massive and thedesire to aid the miners very strong, the call or the unionleaders to organise a general strike did have a purchase onthe minds o many activists.

What this points to is that the judgement about orms opropaganda and agitation depends on a prior assessmento the condition o working class struggle. What is thebalance o orces between workers, employers, andgovernment? Which issues are in the oreront o workers

minds? What are the key arguments in the movement?Tese are all questions that need to be addressed whendiscussing the ocus o party propaganda and agitation.

As Lenin said about both agitation and propaganda:propaganda and agitation alone are not enough or anentire class, the broad masses o the working people, thoseoppressed by capital, to take up such a stand. For that, the

masses must have their own political experienceIt is only by going through these experiences as part

o the working class, learning rom this experience ininteraction with the working class, that revolutionariescan ormulate appropriate propaganda and agitation.

Moreover, they have to adapt their ideological andpolitical stance constantly according to how these ideas

are received and acted upon in the struggle.


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10. The united front

A network o the revolutionary minority must, as we havediscussed in previous chapters, nd ways o uniting withwider sections o the working class. Many o these workerswill be organised in political parties that are, in general

political terms, the opponents o revolutionaries, mostobviously Labour Party-type, social-democratic parties.

Te necessity or this kind o unity is obvious: workersare strongest when they are united, and there are all sortso battles that have to be ought long beore a revolutionarysituation in which a majority o workers agree with therevolutionaries.

I revolutionary and Labour Party-supporting workerswere to allow their political dierences to divide them overtrade union struggles, or anti-war campaigns, or in theght against ascism, the ruling class would nd it easierto deeat us. Leon rotsky conronted this issue mostsharply in the 1930s, when he was advising revolutionaries

in Germany on how to respond to the growing threat oHitlers Nazis.he German Communist Party (CP), under the

direction o Stalin, reused to unite with the SocialDemocratic Party (SPD). Te Social Democrats, arguedthe CP, were supporters o capitalism, and capitalism bredascism. How can we beat the ascists, they asked, i we do

not take on capitalism? And the Social Democrats supportcapitalism, so we cannot unite with them. Tey even wentso ar as to describe the Social Democrats as social ascists.In response, rotsky told one o Aesops ables:

A cattle dealer once drove some bulls to theslaughter-house. And the butcher came nigh with

his sharp knie.


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Lets close ranks and jack up this executioner onour horns, suggested one o the bulls.

I you please, in what way is the butcher any worsethan the dealer who drove us hither with his cudgel?replied the bulls, who had received their politicaleducation in Manuilskys [Stalinist] institute.

But we shall be able to attend to the dealeraerwards!

Nothing doing, replied the bulls, rm in their

principles, to the counsellor. You are trying to shieldour enemies rom the le; you are a social-butcheryoursel.

And they reused to close ranks.

Tis, tragically, was the story o a death oretold. Eventhough the combined vote, to say nothing o the organisedpolitical weight, o the CP and SPD was greater than thato the Nazis when Hitler came to power, the ailure tounite led to the destruction o the German working classmovement, the Second World War, and the Holocaust.

In urging a united ront, rotsky was drawing on hisexperience in the Russian Revolution. Here, unity was

achieved and a successul revolution resulted. Te crucialepisode came in the summer o 1917.Te weakness o the Provisional Government that had

taken power in the February Revolution had disappointedits working class and peasant supporters and emboldenedits sarist enemies. In the summer o 1917, the Government,under the leadership o moderate socialist Alexander

Kerensky, aced an attempted right-wing military coupled by the sarist general Kornilov.

Tat summer, Kerensky had been cracking down onthe revolutionary le rotsky was jailed, Lenin orcedinto hiding. It was this that had emboldened the Kornilovplotters. Indeed, until the last moment, Kerensky wasdirectly encouraging the coup. Many Bolsheviks were,

understandably, reluctant to deend the Kerensky


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government. But Lenin and rotsky insisted that theKornilov coup was the greater and more immediate danger,

and that the Bolsheviks must unite with supporters o theProvisional Government to deeat the coup.

rotsky later went so ar as to say that i Kornilov hadsucceeded, the word or ascism would have been a Russianterm. But the Bolsheviks did unite with the supporters o theProvisional Government. Trough the workers councils,they organised the deence o the revolution, crucially by

arming the workers, and Kornilov was deeated.Tis success shied the balance o orces in two ways.

Firstly, it shied power rom the eneebled ProvisionalGovernment to the workers councils. Secondly, it shiedpolitical infuence in the direction o the revolutionariesand away rom moderate socialists like Kerensky.

As Lenin had said in the heat o battle:

Even now we must not support the Kerenskygovernment. Tis is unprincipled. We may be asked:arent we going to ght against Kornilov? O coursewe must! We shall ght, we are ghting againstKornilov, just as Kerenskys troops do, but we do not

support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose hisweakness.

Te successul deensive united ront against Kornilovpaved the way or the October Revolution. But this wasonly possible because the Bolsheviks retained their ownspecic, independent political organisation within the

united ront.Te united ront was a limited political agreement or

common action, not a programme or general politicalunity or the dissolution o the Bolshevik Party into a broadworking class coalition.

Te Bolsheviks kept up their criticism o the Kerenskygovernment even while they were uniting with it to

deeat Kornilov. Had they not done so, Kerensky would


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have emerged rom the deeat o Kornilov to renew hispersecution o the Bolsheviks. Once the decisive action was

achieved, the Bolsheviks did not shy away rom returningto their own independent political programme.

A powerul counter-example is provided by the exampleo the popular ronts o the 1930s. Intially, when rotskyurged a united ront o all working class organisations tocombat ascism, the Stalinist communist parties (CPs)took an ultra-le turn, rejecting any unity with the

mainstream o the labour movement, which they deridedas social ascists.

But as the ull calamity caused by this sectarian anddivisive policy became apparent, the CPs turned 180 andadopted the policy o the popular ront.

rotskys united ront was a call or the unity o workingclass parties, crucially the Communist Party and the SocialDemocratic Party in Germany. It thereore aimed to uniteall those workers who had a class interest in opposingascism, even i they might disagree on how to achievesocialism.

Te popular ront, by contrast, wanted to unite workingclass organisations with middle class, liberal, and bourgeois

parties it was a peoples ront, not a workers ront. Tedanger was clear: sections o the middle class may havehad a temporary reason to oppose ascism, but, unlikeworkers, their whole existence as a class was not underthreat. Tis made middle-class opposition to ascismlukewarm and vacillating.

And the cost was very high. Te popular ront limited

the actions o the working class by subordinating themto their bourgeois allies who might be rightened o byradicalism and militancy in the struggle.

Any mass united ront may well attract individuals andcurrents rom within the middle class but the policy,action, and direction cannot be set by, or subordinated to,these elements. It is a question o who is leading whom. In

the united ront, the working class parties set the direction;


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in the popular ront, the working class parties are reducedto tailing a policy set by bourgeois parties.

Te lessons are these. Revolutionaries should seek unityin action with the widest possible working class orces.Tey should oppose ormal alliances with bourgeoisorganisations that will limit the action o the working class.And they should always maintain their own independence,seeking to infuence and win other workers at the sametime as uniting against common enemies.

Tis can be done only by building working classunity in struggle and revolutionary organisation at thesame time.


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11. Ultra-leftism

Lenin observed that or a vanguard party to perorm itsunction properly, it must always be in touch with therearguard. It must encourage and organise action by themajority o the class, or at least by the widest possible layers

o the class beyond its own ranks. It cannot substitute theactions o its own members or those o the workers.

Ultra-letism is the term given to those slogansand actions that attempt to substitute the actions o themilitant minority or that o the majority o workers. Temost graphic example o this policy is the behaviour o theGerman Communist Party in March 1921.

Germany was in a highly-charged political crisis aerthe revolution o 1918 that overthrew the Kaiser and endedGermanys participation in the First World War.

Huge class battles swept the country, at one timeproviding opportunities or revolution, at others openingthe door to armed counter-revolution.

In 1921, a combination o intervention rom thenewly-ormed Communist International in Moscow andhome-grown ultra-les in Germany itsel orced througha new tactical turn in the German Communist Party. Teexisting line o the Communist Party was criticised as toopassive and in need o activising. Karl Radek and BelaKun, the representatives o the Communist International,

urged the party to go on to the oensive in order to shockworkers out o their passivity, i necessary by a provocation,and orce them to conront the government.

When the social-democratic President o PrussianSaxony announced a police crackdown on industrial areas,this policy o orcing the revolution was activated.

Te party paper ran an editorial on 20 March headed

Who is not with me is against me: a word to social-


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democratic and independent workers. It was an ultimatumto workers, telling them they must choose sides in the

coming struggles.Te party called or and organised a general strike (the day

beore the actories were due to close or the Easter holidays),with the occupation o actories and the arming o workers.But the mood in the working class was not revolutionary,and the tactic was a disaster, pitting Communist Partyworkers against the non-Communist Party majority.

In Berlin, the strike was practically non-existent.Elsewhere, armed Communists clashed with workers asthey went into the actories. In Hamburg, in an exchangeo gunre, dock workers drove o CP-supporting dockersand unemployed workers who had occupied the quays.

Estimates o the number who heeded the strike callvary between 200,000 and 500,000 in a country with aworking class o many millions, and where the CommunistParty itsel claimed no less than 500,000 members. It hadended, as one Central Committee member had predictedit would, with the 50 or so CP members who ormed thecore o the party in each workplace ranged against ellowworkers who would, and oen had, ollowed their lead in

other circumstances.Te adventurism o the March Action isolated thevanguard o the class and put reaction in the ascendant.Te lesson o Lenins Le-wing communism: an inantiledisorder, written a year earlier, now stood out in thesharpest possible relie:

While the rst historical objective (that o winningover the class conscious vanguard o the proletariatto the side o soviet power and the dictatorship o theworking class) could not have been reached withouta complete ideological and political victory overopportunism and social chauvinism, the second andimmediate objective, which consists in being able to

lead the masses to a new position ensuring the victory

50 Stratregy and tactics


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o the vanguard in the revolution, cannot be reachedwithout the liquidation o Le doctrinarism.

In this battle, Lenin argues, propagandist methodsalone, the mere repetition o the truths o purecommunism, are o no avail. What is necessary is that theslogans and actions o the revolutionaries point out thenext, most pressing, step in the struggle, not simply theultimate goal o the struggle.

But to know what the next step is, revolutionariesmust be in close contact with the mass o workers andmust judge both what the most urgent problem is andwhat the next possible step might be. Only then can a

vanguard organisation unite with the majority o theclass in taking that step. I the revolutionaries attempt toleap over the current consciousness o the class, they willdivide themselves rom even the best non-party workers,damaging their own organisation, the wider working-classmovement, and the relationship between the two.


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12. Marxism and

the trade unions

rade unions are the basic deence mechanism o theworking class. Tey were rst built to deend workers at

the point o production rom employers attacks on wagesand conditions. Tey work best when they organise thewidest possible sections o the working class irrespective opolitical, religious, ethnic, or any other kind o distinction.Te old trade union slogans are, in this sense, undamentaltruths: unity is strength; united we stand, divided we all.

For these reasons, the rst and undamental job o any

socialist at work is to build and strengthen trade unionorganisation wherever possible. But that is just the starto the problem.

Precisely because trade unions organise over the mostbasic economic questions, and because they aim to organiseall workers rom the most politically conscious to themost conservative a question arises about relationship

between the politically conscious minority and the rest othe unionised workorce.

I we return to rotskys metaphor o ve workers withdierent outlooks (that is, uneven consciousness), then, inthis case, we might imagine that all ve workers are in theunion together. Moreover, since trade unions exist withincapitalism in order to bargain over the conditions underwhich labour is exploited and not to abolish capitalismand exploitation they inevitably exist in a state ocompromise with the system. Even the most militant andsuccessul strike will end with signicant improvementsor workers within a still-existing capitalist system. Andmany strikes will end with compromises that are worse

than this.


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Tere is, thereore, a contradictory pressure withinthe unions. On the one hand, there is the constant spur to

organisation and action provided by employers attemptsto worsen conditions, lengthen hours, intensiy work,and lower wages. On the other, the necessary class-wideorganisation o the unions introduces an element oconservatism, and, because compromise is inevitable atsome point in every union struggle, the more conservativemembers are encouraged to push or compromise sooner

rather than later, settling or less rather than more.Moreover, the longer unions exist and the more

stable they become, the more likely they are to developa conservative layer o ull-time ocials. Tese ocials,especially those higher up the union structure, no longereel the daily pressure o those still at work. Tey are likelyto enjoy better conditions and higher pay than those theyrepresent. Tey meet with employers and governmentministers ar more oen than any ordinary trade unionistis ever likely to do.

In many instances, union ocials will also be memberso the Labour Party. Tis reinorces their conservativetendencies, because the Labour Partys ocial doctrine

is to seek reorm, and thereore compromise, within thecapitalist system. When the Labour Party is in government,the pressure to compromise is even greater.

Under these circumstances, there exists an intensepressure or trade union ocials to cease representing theinterests o their members to employers and government,and instead to represent the interests o employers and

government to their members.o counter this pressure, rank-and-le organisation

is desirable whenever it can be built. Rank-and-leorganisations bring together ordinary workers and theirmost immediate elected representatives (shop stewardsand oce representatives) in union-wide or sectionalorganisation that can act as a counter-weight to the

conservative pressure o ull-time ocials and give a lead


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to the rest o the workorce.Such rank-and-le organisation, through meetings and

bulletins, seeks to maximise the militant impulse o workersto deend themselves and to minimise the infuence oocials who wish to dampen down the struggle.

But it is also necessary or a revolutionary organisationto maintain its own prole, both within the unions andin any rank-and-le organisations that it can assist inbuilding. Te organisational and political independence

o the advanced minority is extremely important in thetrade unions precisely because it is here that the directmechanisms or transmitting the views o the employersand the government, and the pressure o the moreconservative workers, can be most eective in disruptingthe action o the working class.

Tere are many important lessons to be learned romthe great General Strike o 1926. One o them, highlightedby rotsky, is the way in which the pressure o the rulingclass is transmitted into the working class movement.

rotskys point was that the government did not simplydeeat the strike militarily so to say. Nor did it exerciseonly direct ideological pressure on the working class

movement. Rather, pressure was exercised indirectlythrough the intermediary layers o the Labour movement,especially its leaders. But the ultimate success even o thisorm o pressure depended on the political weakness o thele at the end o the chain o infuence.

rotsky saw that the government put pressure on theLabour Party leaders, the Labour Party leaders put pressure

on the UC, the right-wing o the UC put pressure on thele-wing, and they in turn put pressure on the MinorityMovement, the Communist Party-initiated rank-and-lemovement o shop stewards. And nally, the MinorityMovement, those who stood closest to the CommunistParty, pressurised the Communist Party itsel whoseresistance to the sell-out collapsed.


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Te Minority Movement, embracing almost amillion workers, seemed very promising, but it bore

the germs o destruction within itsel. Te massesknew as leaders o the movement only [trade unionleaders] Purcell, Hicks, and Cook, whom, moreover,Moscow vouched or. hese let riends, in aserious test, shameully betrayed the proletariat. Terevolutionary workers were thrown into conusion,sank into apathy, and naturally extended their

disappointment to the Communist Party itsel,which had only been the passive part o this wholemechanism o betrayal and perdy. Te MinorityMovement was reduced to zero; the CommunistParty returned to the existence o a negligible sect.In this way, thanks to a radically alse conceptiono the party, the greatest movement o the Englishproletariat, which led to the General Strike, notonly did not shake the apparatus o the reactionarybureaucracy, but, on the contrary, reinorced it, andcompromised Communism in Britain or a longtime.

In this case, as rotsky explains, a critical weaknesswas introduced into the Communist Partys politics bypressure rom the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow. Stalinwanted oreign allies and he so-pedalled criticism o theBritish trade union leaders in the hope they would assistthis project.

But the warning stands without the peculiarity o Stalins

infuence. Te state will always try to exercise infuencethrough the union bureaucracy. And the reormist politicso the union bureaucracy will always lead them to try andtransmit this pressure to the rank-and-le, using le-wingallies who are not suciently strong to resist them.

Tis underlines the importance o the political andorganisational independence o the revolutionary

minority. I and this moment should be avoided i it can


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be there comes a moment when the allies o yesterdaybecome the channel or compromise today, the party must

assert its independence even rom its closest riends.Long beore the General Strike, in 1915, the rank-and-

le organisation, the Clyde Workers Committee, hadsummed up the right attitude towards the trade unionleaders:

We will support the ofcials just so long as

they rightly represent the workers, but we will actindependently immediately they misrepresent them.

rotsky was only paraphrasing the same sentimentwhen he wrote:

With the masses always; with the vacillatingleaders sometimes, but only so long as they stand atthe head o the masses. It is necessary to make use othe vacillating leaders while the masses are pushingthem ahead, without or a minute abandoningcriticism o these leaders.


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13. The Marxist method

Tere is prejudice about intellectual thought in oursociety, boosted by academia, which assumes that thegreatest heights o theoretical achievement are the urthestrom practical politics. Whether these are philosophical

questions about the nature o human experience andthe undamentals o ethical choice or natural-scienticquestions about the origin o the universe and the structureo the atom, they all seem a long way rom our everydayissue o what to do next.

But or Marxists, the very opposite is true. Te questionwhat is to be done? is very closely linked with issues aboutthe Marxist method o analysis in other words, withquestions o Marxist philosophy.

Why is this? Can we not simply get by with the kindo ideas about strategy and tactics that have already beendiscussed in this pamphlet the united ront, sectarianism,ultra-leism, and so on? Obviously, these concepts are

essential, but how do we know when it is the right timeto deploy a particular tactic? Te Bolsheviks, as we haveseen, almost missed the right time or the revolution inOctober 1917. But, as we have also seen, the GermanCommunist Partys call or revolution in March 1921 wasa catastrophe.

Te bad news is that there is no guarantee. Te good

news is that there are two kinds o experience that cangive an organisation the best chance o making these

judgements correctly.Te rst kind o experience is the struggle itsel. A

network that has many members rooted in the battles othe working class will have had to make these kinds o

judgements, or less dramatic versions o the same kinds

o judgements, over and over again. Its members will have


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learnt how to evaluate the moods o its own class, thecharacter o the labour movement leaders, the nature o

the police and media, and so on.Roots in the class should inorm the party about the most

pressing questions or workers and what action is alreadybeing taken, and this can orm the basis o judgements abouthow to respond. But this kind o experience is never enoughon its own.

No situation is ever an exact repeat o the past; it always

contains something new. And no situation ever interpretsitsel; it always requires an act o intellectual labour toexplain it. Despite the old aphorism, the acts never speakor themselves. Tey always require interpretation. As Marxsaid, i appearance and reality coincided, there would be noneed or science.

So a second kind o experience is necessary: theoreticalexperience. Tis kind o experience gives us a method bywhich we can interpret the struggle. Te starting point oany such analysis is to grasp the contradictory nature o oursociety. We have seen at the start o the pamphlet how theneed or a vanguard organisation arises rom the existenceo contradictory consciousness among workers. And we

have also seen that this contradictory consciousness arisesrom the interaction o oppression and revolt that is in thenature o wage-labour under capitalism. Tis in turn rests onthe undamental contradiction o capitalist society that itrequires the collective labour o workers to produce wealth,but that capitalists privately appropriate that wealth when itis produced.

We see here, in simplied sketch orm, a series ointerlinked contradictions, each resting on the other, whichrun rom the undamental economic structure o capitalism,through the consciousness o workers, to the orms oorganisation most eective in acting on these contradictions.But this series o contradictions only describes the mostgeneral, and thereore relatively timeless, aspects o the

system.


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o analyse a new strategic and tactical situation wouldneed much closer and more careul analysis. But the approach

would be the same: rst analyse the most general objectiveeconomic, social, and political contradictions. Ten examinethe contradictory orms o consciousness and organisationsthat arise rom these. Ten careully speciy what orms oorganisation, slogans, demands, and so on might be expectedto act on these contradictions in such ways as to advance thestruggle. Finally, develop the organisational tools capable o

realising these tactics.Lenin was insistent that only a concrete analysis o a

concrete situation could be a guide to action. In criticism oan analysis o the possibilities o revolution in China by oneo his ellow Bolshevik leaders, Nicholas Bukharin, Leninwrote:

I know next to nothing about the insurgents andrevolutionaries o South China [but]since thereare uprisings, it is not too ar-etched to assume acontroversy between Chinese No 1, who says thatinsurrection is a product o a most acute nation-wide class struggle, and Chinese No 2, who says that

insurrection is an art. Tat is all I need to know towrite a thesis la Bukharin: On the one handonthe other hand. Te one has ailed to reckon with theart actor, and the other with the acuteness actor,etc. Because no concrete study has been made o thisparticular controversy, question, approach, etc., theresult is dead, empty eclecticism.

Lenin insisted that the truth is always concrete. In eachcase, generalities may or may not apply and will certainlyoccur and combine in unique ways. Tis is why a concreteanalysis is always necessary.

At the point where revolutionaries took the step oinitiating the Stop the War Coalition in 2001, we undertook

an analysis something like this. We had already understood


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the nature o the new imperialism rom theoretical work atthe end o the Cold War, during the First Gul War, and during

the war in the Balkans. We understood the contradictionbetween expansive US military power and its relativeeconomic decline. We judged, rom preceding experiencein the anti-globalisation movement, that there would be amood to resist and that the le might not be divided in theway it had been in the Cold War.

Te judgement, the analysis o the contradictions and

the assessment o the consciousness o the class, mighthave been wrong, but the immediate reports o activistsin the workplaces in the days aer the attack on the Worldrade Centre suggested they were not. Te success othe rst Stop the War rally in London, only 10 days aer9/11, proved it. Had it not, practice would have dictated arethink o theory!

Crucial to this method, and what makes it essentiallydierent rom the normal method o science, is that itincludes within it the subjective element. And this is notsimply in the exterior sense that it requires a judgementabout workers consciousness, but in the additional sensethat it must calculate the eect o our actions as organised

revolutionaries on the objective situation. It must try to tellus not simply what is, but also what might be i we act onthe objective situation in certain ways.

As Lenin argued:

Te objectivist speaks o the necessity o a givenhistorical process, the materialist gives an exact

picture o a given socio-economic ormation and theantagonistic relations to which it gives rise. Whendemonstrating the necessity o a given series o acts,the objectivist always runs the risk o becoming anapologist or the acts; the materialist discloses theclass contradictions and so denes his standpointthe materialist would not content himsel with

stating insurmountable historical tendencies, but


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would point to the existence o certain classes whichdetermine the content o a given system and preclude

the possibility o any solution except by the actiono the producers themselvesmaterialism includespartisanship, so to speak, and enjoins the direct andopen adoption o the standpoint o a denite socialgroup in the assessment o events.

In summarising Lenins application o the Marxist

method in this eld, Georg Lukacs wrote:

He studied in order to learn how to apply thedialectic; to learn how to discover, by concreteanalyses o concrete situations, the specic in thegeneral and the general in the specic; to see in thenovelty o a situation what connects it with ormerdevelopments; to observe the perpetually newphenomena constantly produced under the lawso historical development; to detect the part in thewhole and the whole in the part; to nd in historicalnecessity the moment o activity and in activity theconnection with historical necessity.

And Lukacs concluded:

Leninism represents a hitherto unprecedenteddegree o concrete, unschematic, unmechanistic,purely praxis-oriented thought. o preserve this isthe task o the Leninist.


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Further reading

I you have ound this short introduction interestingyou might also like to read the ollowing:

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,

Te Communist Maniesto

V I Lenin,What is to be Done?

Le-wing communism: an inantile disorder

Leon rotsky,Lessons o October

Te Struggle Against Fascism in Germany

Georg LukacsLenin: a study in the unity o his thought

ony CliLenin4 volumes, but especially Volume 1: Building the Party


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