THE REVOLUTIONARY TRADITION
The ISO stands in the tradition of revolutionary socialism–starting with Karl Marx, who argued more than 150 years ago that only the working class can bring about a society of real equality and democracy (socialism). Our tradition stresses the importance of the working class actively, democratically, and self-consciously transforming society to meet human needs. Democracy is at the heart of Marxism. As Marx himself said of democracy, "This is the law; all the rest is commentary."
Most people don’t realize it–we are rarely taught this in schools–but here in the United States, the working class has a long and proud history of fighting back against exploitation and oppression. From the movement that demanded an eight-hour day in the late 1800s, to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s, to the fight against corporate greed today, workers in the U.S. have shown time and again that they will organize and struggle for better working conditions and a better world.
Eugene Debs, the great orator and American socialist, became committed to socialist ideas through his experiences and the lessons he drew from leading the Pullman strike in 1894. Debs went on to win nearly one million votes as the Socialist Party’s candidate for president in 1912. Likewise, the experiences of the massive strikes that built the industrial unions in the 1930s turned union activists into socialists, many of whom joined the Communist Party. And people seeking to rebuild the genuine socialist tradition out of the radical movements of the 1960s founded the ISO.
Rather than an alien idea, the class struggle is an ongoing feature of U.S. society. For the first half of the twentieth century, socialists were an influential part of the labor movement, and at any given time, tens of thousands–and sometimes millions–of workers considered themselves to be socialists. U.S. workers, contrary to the claim in many history textbooks, are as combative and potentially radical as are workers anywhere else. The politics of socialism from below seeks to build, on the basis of this collective experience of struggle–from both the victories and defeats–a movement that can unite workers to get rid of capitalism once and for all.
Stalinism
For more than 60 years, socialism was equated with the kind of societies found in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, or East Germany and other former Eastern Bloc countries. In reality, however, these societies had nothing whatsoever to do with Marxism. They bore a remarkable resemblance to the capitalist societies they claimed to condemn: parasitic and often despotic rulers, an exploited and oppressed working class that had no real say in the running of society or their own lives, and military machines used for imperialistic adventures and to smash workers’ struggle.
To equate these regimes with socialism is to deny everything that socialism stands for–most centrally that socialism is about human liberation and about building a society based on fulfilling people’s needs rather than creating profits for a few. Since the late 1920s, this lie, that socialism already exists in Russia or China or elsewhere, has been propagated by rulers East and West. In the West, it was useful for our rulers to point to the horrors of Stalinism in Russia as a way to discredit the socialist alternative. In the East, the so-called communists used the language of Marxism to cover up their own atrocities and class interests while pointing at the inequality in the West to discredit market capitalism.
While these perversions of socialism were convenient for ruling classes internationally, they were disastrous for the working-class movement and for the left. Unfortunately, throughout the Cold War, most people who called themselves socialists around the world also argued that one or more of these societies was a model of socialism–and held it up as an example for workers in capitalist countries to emulate or support. To workers and oppressed people struggling here for better conditions and more rights, these countries were hardly attractive alternatives.
Support for these so-called socialist regimes effectively distorted the meaning of Marxism in the eyes of millions all over the world for several generations. Moreover, time and again since the late 1920s, those who claimed to be socialists lined up to defend Communist Party officials against workers’ struggles: in Hungary in 1956; Czechoslovakia, 1968; Poland, 1981; and Tiannanmen Square, 1989. These are just a few of the workers’ movements drowned in blood by so-called communists.
In the United States, this distortion of Marxism meant that at the height of the Depression-era working-class struggles in 1936—37, the Communist Party urged workers to back Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party, not to build an independent working-class party. By the end of 1937, Roosevelt had betrayed the working class.
The Communist Party was the largest working-class socialist organization ever built in the United States, and it could have led the movement forward. Instead, the Depression-era strike wave ended in a series of defeats–which were followed by a world war–when it could have ended in a working-class victory.
How the Russian Revolution was Lost
To understand the rise of Stalinism, it is necessary to understand what happened to the international socialist movement after the failure of the Russian Revolution. The years that immediately followed the victory of the 1917 Russian Revolution were indeed a model for workers all over the world. Russian workers provided an example of the power and creativity that working-class people have to end tyranny and build socialism democratically. From Budapest to Seattle, workers who were inspired by the victory in Russia built their own socialist movements.
From the outset, the leaders of the Russian Revolution stressed that if the revolution remained only within Russian borders, it would be weak. The Bolshevik Party, which had become the majority party in the workers’ councils and helped to lead the revolution to victory, understood that spreading the revolution internationally was the only way the revolution would survive. To spread the revolution was not an abstract wish but a distinct possibility, especially in Germany. In the words of the Bolshevik leader Lenin, "The absolute truth is that without a revolution in Germany we shall perish."
While there was a revolutionary upsurge–in Germany, there were actually three revolutions in the aftermath of the First World War–none of these movements matched the success of the Bolsheviks in Russia. This left the Russian workers’ government isolated and besieged by hostile capitalist countries. Fourteen capitalist governments, including that of the United States, sent armies to invade Russia to overthrow the workers’ government. This immersed Russia for nearly three years, until 1921, in a civil war.
While the Russian workers’ government won the civil war, it did so at a tremendous cost. Russia was left economically devastated, with industrial production reduced to 18 percent of its pre-war level. Starvation was rampant in the countryside, and disease plagued the cities. The working class itself, which had made the revolution and served as the basis of power in the new society, was physically decimated–reduced to 43 percent of its former size. Half of the working class either had been killed defending the revolution or had fled to the countryside in search of food.
A workers’ government cannot exist were the working class itself has been destroyed. And socialism cannot exist in the midst of scarcity on the scale that Russian society experienced after the civil war. The only hope for the revolution in Russia was a successful workers’ revolution in an advanced industrialized country, which could have then come to Russia’s aid. This hope began to fade as the revolutionary tide ebbed in Europe by the mid-1920s.
The Communist Party in Russia was left standing like a skeleton around a working class that had all but ceased to exist. Bureaucrats, not workers, increasingly staffed the workers’ state. In this context, Joseph Stalin came to power after Lenin’s death in 1924. Once he had maneuvered himself firmly into power, Stalin led a bureaucratic counterrevolution against the working class in Russia through a bloody purge of all those who had helped to lead the Russian working class to victory in 1917.
Stalin’s consolidation of power marked the beginning of massive industrialization in Russia–the decimation of workers’ councils, the reintroduction of one-person management in the workplace, the forced collectivization of agriculture into state-run farms, and forced labor camps. Millions of people perished in the decade following Stalin’s consolidation of power in 1928.
While Stalinism’s victory represented the reintroduction of capitalist production in Russia in competition with the West, he claimed it was under the banner of "socialism in one country." This distortion has haunted the left ever since, with state ownership replacing workers’ power as the defining feature of socialism in the USSR, China, and Cuba.
Trotsky and the fight against Stalinism
The rise of Stalinism did not take place without a fight. In particular, Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik leader of the Red Army, fought the rising bureaucratic elite and, even after he was exiled by Stalin, kept the revolutionary tradition alive during the darkest days of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. For this, Trotsky was hounded and eventually murdered by Stalinist agents in Mexico in 1940. Trotsky gave his life to keep alive the hope and ideals of revolutionary socialism.
Trotsky’s ability to influence events was limited during the 1930s–at a time when most of those on both the right and left considered Russia to be a socialist society. In this context, throughout the 1930s, Trotsky and his followers were unable to build large enough organizations to combat the influence of the much larger and more entrenched Communist Parties internationally. Small Trotskyist organizations were built and led some impressive struggles, such as the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters’ strike. These organizations also fought tooth and nail against fascism in Europe. But they never reached the size necessary to play a decisive role.
Trotsky’s analyses of the 1930s are unequaled. Trotsky alone was able to apply the Marxist method to analyze the rise of fascism in Europe and show how it could be beaten. Moreover, he laid down the foundations for a revolutionary understanding of and opposition to Stalinism. While Trotsky underestimated the impact of Stalinism (he believed that Stalinism represented a political degeneration of the revolution, rather than the reintroduction of capitalism), his contributions to the Marxist tradition were critical. Trotsky’s insights and his commitment to working-class struggle internationally meant that the revolutionary socialist tradition was kept alive, if only by a small minority.
The 1930s marked the betrayal of the Russian Revolution and the rise of fascism in Europe, but it also marked a high point of class struggle and working-class militancy in the United States. While the Communist Party’s politics were moving further away from genuine socialism, it still attracted tens of thousands of members and was instrumental to building the industrial unions, which united workers across race and ethnic lines. The potential shown in the 1930s for American workers to unite, struggle, and be won to socialist politics (even if in a distorted form) is proof that socialism is not alien to them.
The 1960s
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the U.S. emerged as the strongest economic and military superpower. During the 1950s and 1960s, American bosses enjoyed such huge profits that they were willing to grant some wage concessions to workers–in return for higher productivity. While none of these concessions was won without a fight, American workers did enjoy one of the best standards of living in the world during this period.
Of course, not all workers shared in the benefits of this boom economy. Black workers in particular faced legal Jim Crow segregation in the South and de facto segregation in hiring and housing in the North. Black working-class people were all but shut out of the American Dream. If they bought a home in the suburbs, chances were that racists would drive them out. Most Southern Blacks were still denied voting rights in the early 1960s. The civil rights movement showed the entire world the contradictions and oppression at the heart of the free market.
By the late 1960s, a new student movement began to emerge. Inspired by the example of the courageous fight for civil rights and angered by the imperialist war against Vietnam, student demonstrations against the war rocked American campuses and cities. The Black Power movement also emerged in the late 1960s, with the formation of the Black Panther Party and other groups that were committed to fighting for Black liberation. The women’s and gay liberation movements emerged soon after. While the radical movements in the U.S. by and large remained isolated from the labor movement, mass strikes shook advanced industrial countries such as France, Britain, and Italy. Revolution once again seemed to be on the agenda, and thousands of activists who were radicalized through the student movement began to look toward socialist politics.
But the socialist movement was still dominated by the distortions of Stalinism in the late 1960s–in particular, by the brand of Stalinism known as Maoism, named after the Chinese nationalist leader Mao Tse-tung. Maoism attracted the (mostly middle-class) student radicals who accepted the idea that American workers were "bought off" by the system and were therefore part of the problem, not the solution.
From a Maoist perspective, the only forces capable of fighting American imperialism were outside it–in poor countries of the so-called Third World (and including "Third World" populations such as African Americans and Latinos living inside the U.S.). Mao’s China was considered the model for Third World revolution.
While Maoism is, in all important respects, a variant of Stalinism, it was able to attract some of the most committed activists of the period. The experience of the 1960s showed the possibility of rebuilding the revolutionary left in the United States. Unfortunately, the nationalist politics of Maoism were a dead end for anyone serious about changing the system. Once the social movements collapsed and China made its peace with U.S. imperialism, Maoist organizations collapsed and virtually disappeared.
The Democratic Party
With the decline of the social movements of the 1960s, the politics of liberalism and support for the Democratic Party were once again posed as the only realistic alternative to the right-wing Republican Party. But the lesser of two evils is still evil. The Democratic and Republican Parties are both capitalist parties. Both receive the majority of their funding from big business–and both carry out policies in the interests of big business. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who achieved legendary status as a friend of the working class during the Great Depression, once said of himself, "I’m the best friend the profit system ever had."
While the Democrats and the Republicans differ on specific issues, they both agree on the fundamentals: protecting and serving the bosses’ interests. Nowhere is this clearer than in the bipartisan attacks on the social safety net, from welfare to social security. While the Republicans under George W. Bush and the Democrats under Tom Daschle may quibble on the specific size of the cuts, both parties have shown that they are committed to gutting social programs for the working class and the poor in order to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.
No matter how much appears to separate the two parties, when American business interests are threatened abroad, the Democrats and the Republicans always come together to extend U.S. military and economic domination. From Vietnam to the Persian Gulf to Colombia, bipartisan U.S. intervention and war is the rule, not the exception.
And bipartisanship is evident in both parties’ attempts to keep third-party candidates out of the running, as with Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader in election 2000.
Traditionally, Democratic Party politicians pay lip service to various groups–from civil rights organizations to organized labor–only to take their money and their votes and then sell out their causes once the election is over. Bill Clinton was no different. He promised abortion rights supporters that he would pass a Freedom of Choice Act. It never saw the light of day. He promised to pass health care reform. However, at the end of Clinton’s eight-year term, more than 44 million people had no health coverage, compared with 39 million before his election in 1992. He promised to end the ban on gays in the military but replaced it with a law that actually increased the level of harassment and discharges of gays.
For this reason, socialists call the Democratic Party the graveyard of social movements. The Democratic Party is a dead end for anyone interested in winning substantial change in the United States. We should have no illusions in the Democrats as allies for our movement. In 1900, Eugene Debs laid out the socialist perspective on the two-party system, which still holds true today:
We hear it frequently urged that the Democratic Party is "poor man’s party," "the friend of labor." There is but one way to relieve poverty and to free labor, and that is by making common property the tools of labor. The differences between the Republican and the Democratic Parties involve no issue, no principle in which the working class has any interest, and whether the spoils be distributed by [the Republicans]...or by [the Democrats] is all the same to it. Between these two parties socialists have no choice, no preference.
Social Democracy
Another variant of socialism is what is known as "social democracy" or "reform socialism." The Labour Party in Britain and the Socialist Party in France are parties built on the social democratic model. Social democracy stresses the gradual transformation of capitalism into socialism. It also views electoralism, or electing candidates to office, as the main tool by which workers can have a say in how society is run.
While elections are important, they are not decisive. Under capitalism, politicians are elected by spending enormous sums of money on their campaigns, which guarantees that the rich will have a much bigger say in formal politics than workers do. Most decisions that impact people’s lives never come up for a vote–for instance, whether to lay off workers, or whether to allocate more money for the CEO’s salary or to improve workplace safety. These decisions are made in corporate boardrooms, not in Congress.
But an even bigger problem presents itself for reform socialists. In countries where reform socialists have won elections and tried to make good on their promise of a gradual and orderly transition to socialism–by nationalizing industry, granting land reform, or broadening the welfare state– the capitalists who control the economy do everything in their power to stop them.
Sometimes, as in France in the early 1980s, big businesses simply moved their investments elsewhere, leaving behind unemployment and misery. Other times, as in Chile in the early 1970s, capitalists and the big landowners actually fought to destroy the emerging organizations of workers’ power and killed thousands. Chile’s president, Salvador Allende, was killed in a coup in 1973, which restored power to the capitalist class under the totalitarian rule of Augusto Pinochet, who led the coup.
Whether through economic blackmail or outright civil war, the capitalist class has proven time and again that it won’t give up any of its wealth or power without a fight.
The Revolutionary Road
The revolutionary road is the only way to get to a socialist society. As historian R. H. Tawney put it, "You cannot skin a live tiger paw by paw." Capitalism will not fall under its own weight but must be swept aside by a mass revolutionary movement.
Well-meaning politicians or an enlightened minority cannot grant socialism from above. It must be fought for and built democratically by the great majority of the population.
In the course of struggles, both small and large, people who have been divided and lacking in confidence learn the lessons of solidarity: When workers stick together, they can win even against the most powerful enemies. For instance, when workers go on strike, racist and sexist ideas are often challenged and overcome as workers are forced to decide who their real friends and enemies are.
Thus, by its very nature, a revolutionary socialist movement is multiracial and involves men and women, gays and heterosexuals, skilled and unskilled workers, all on an equal footing. In a revolutionary struggle, when the great mass of the population moves into action to change society, the importance of solidarity is learned by millions of people in a relatively short span of time. In a matter of weeks or months, a revolutionary movement can sweep away prejudices that have been around for centuries.
Most importantly, workers learn through their own struggle that they don’t need the bosses to run society–they can do it better themselves. Through their own experience in struggle, workers learn how to run society in the interests of the vast majority, to fulfill human needs.
A revolution is necessary then, not just because we can’t win socialism any other way, but because it is in the course of revolution that the working class throws out old prejudices and backward ideas and, in the words of Karl Marx, "becomes fit to found society anew."
We are often told that revolutions are violent and bloody and can only result in a new set of rulers who are no better than the present bunch–or maybe even worse. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Instead, a socialist revolution would involve, for the first time in human history, the vast majority of people deciding how to reorganize society and their own futures. That is why every modern revolutionary movement has had the feel of a "festival of the oppressed," in which people who have been oppressed their entire lives fight for their own liberation and get a sense of their own power and worth.
Nothing is inevitable about the victory of socialist revolution. The last century has seen many revolutionary movements, from Portugal to Iran, but only one in which the working class was able to take power: in Russia in 1917. The decisive difference in Russia was the existence of a revolutionary party that organized itself years before the revolutionary crisis. The ISO aims to build such a party.
For Further Reading:
There are a number of books and pamphlets that add depth to the ideas outlined here. Most of these are available from Haymarket Books.