Northeast Marxist School Points The Way Forward

This article originally appeared at Fightback and In Defence of Marxism.

Over 50 comrades attended the second annual Northeast Marxist School in Montreal last weekend. Organized by supporters of La Riposte Quebec, Fightback Canada and Socialist Appeal USA, the school was a resounding success that saw a 30% rise in attendance from the previous year. Comrades from Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, New York and New Jersey enjoyed two days of vibrant political discussion and revolutionary socials.

The most important lesson of the weekend was the pressing need for a revolutionary tendency with correct Marxist ideas to help the working class achieve its emancipation. This year’s sharp increase in attendance is a reflection of the revolutionary epoch we have entered.

Since last year’s school, which took place in the immediate wake of revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, we have witnessed the wider Arab Spring, pre-revolutionary turmoil in Greece, and massive protest movements around the globe including the Spanish indignados, the Occupy movement and the anti-Putin protests in Russia. The inability of ruling classes to resolve the contradictions of capitalism have led to a global impasse. More and more workers and youth are turning to the ideas of Marxism in order to explain the world we live in and to present a viable alternative.

Arriving on Friday night to a social at the Jazz Hostel, comrades awoke early Saturday morning for a veritable two-day Marx-a-thon. Alex Grant from Fightback’s editorial board delivered the opening presentation, “Perspectives on the World Capitalist Crisis”, which briefly covered the broad historical movements of 20th century capitalism – its boom and bust periods, its contradictions leading to wars and revolutions – as a background for the new crisis we find ourselves in today.

The mass movements in the Arab world, Europe, Africa and North America illustrate that we have entered a tumultuous new period. The presence of all the objective factors for revolution is contrasted by the lack of an organized revolutionary tendency to harness the energy of the working class. If not addressed, this contradiction will play a tragic role in future developments.

Time limits prevented inclusion of some key topics in the lead-off, such as Latin America, but comrades in attendance were more than happy to fill in the blanks and provide their own perspectives during the subsequent discussion period. This was to be a recurring pattern throughout the weekend, as each participant drew upon their individual knowledge to raise the theoretical level of all.

After lunch, Camilo Cahis gave a lead-off on “Lessons of the Spanish Revolution”, a crucial struggle of the interwar period rife with lessons for today’s revolutionaries. The involvement of so many political tendencies in this struggle from 1931-1938 – Marxists, Stalinists, centrists, liberals, anarchists, fascists, conservative nationalists – renders study of the Spanish Revolution an indispensable primer on how the interaction of objective and subjective factors can make or break a workers’ revolution. Not coincidentally, Fightback just released a new booklet reprinting works of Leon Trotsky, Pierre Broué, and Ted Grant on the Spanish Revolution. These booklets were eagerly snapped up by attendees seeking more information.

The last session of the day was “The History of Marxist Organizing”, with Tom Trottier discussing the development of Trotskyist tendencies in the United States and Britain. He examined the strengths and weaknesses of prominent American Trotskyists, particularly James P. Cannon, and how the inability of the leaders of the Fourth International to absorb Trotsky’s method after his death led to a series of splits and muddled opportunistic positions in the ensuing decades.

Tom’s parallel history of the Militant tendency in Britain made the case that Ted Grant had a superior grasp of the Marxist method in his approach to organization and theory. Unfortunately, Militant was not immune to errors or objective factors that led to its eventual split. The importance of these lessons in building a new revolutionary tendency can be found in the old cliché that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

As Saturday drew to a close, comrades adjourned to the Jazz Hostel for that night’s social. Despite the ostensible goal of unwinding after a long day, the quality of the presentations fuelled many in-depth political discussions over beer that evening, and a splendid time was had by all.

Refreshed comrades returned the next day to hear Mark Rahman from the US Workers’ International League give a presentation about “The Minneapolis Teamster Rebellion of 1934”, a pivotal Depression-era struggle that saw American Trotskyists play a key organizational role.

Joel Bergman from La Riposte (Quebec) gave a final presentation on Trotsky’s In Defence of Marxism, a compilation of letters and essays the “Old Man” wrote to his American followers in the 1930s. One of the most important lessons comrades absorbed was Trotsky’s use of the proper Marxist method. Unlike the Stalinists and sectarians who attempt to resolve political differences through organizational means such as expulsions, Lenin and Trotsky always attempted to use every dispute as a means of raising the general political level of the cadres.

The comrades capped off the weekend with raucous renditions of “The Internationale” and “Bandiera Rossa”. As the weekend school ended, enthusiasm among attendees was palpable. For the first time in decades, Marxists are no longer swimming against the tide. Not only do Marxist ideas make sense of current events – far more so than the confused commentary of the bourgeois media – but workers and youth are eager to hear them, as the Northeast school demonstrated.

The current crisis of capitalism is not going away anytime soon. In the absence of an organized revolutionary tendency, the capitalist system will continue to cause unspeakable horror and misery for the vast majority of the human race. Development of this subjective factor must be the primary focus for all Marxists going forward. This school played an important role in this development and helped build unity between revolutionaries in Quebec, Canada, and the United States.

Toronto: Fred Weston speaks on the Syrian uprising

Originally published at Fightback.

Fresh from his appearance at Fightback’s 2011 national conference, In Defence of Marxism editor Fred Weston spoke at the University of Toronto’s OISE building on May 24 to discuss the Arab Revolution and specifically its effects on Syria.

While the fate of the Assad regime remains uncertain, the widespread revolts that have shaken the country to its foundations are only the beginning of a long process, which Fred put in the context of the wider Arab Revolution.

The bourgeoisie had been completely taken aback by the mass revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Prior to the eruption of popular anger, the Economist had described revolution in Tunisia as unlikely, given that the country was more “Westernized”. By contrast, once Ben Ali was deposed, the BBC stressed the unlikelihood of revolution spreading to Egypt on the conceit that that country was so unlike the West. This racist portrayal of a passive and sedate Arab population, combined with a belief that revolution was purely a phenomenon of the past, gave the bourgeois a sense of false confidence.

The sudden mobilization of the Tunisian and Egyptian proletariat revealed the true balance of power. As Fred outlined, the global working class has actually never been stronger than it is today – both numerically and as a percentage of the population. Many of the Arab countries currently roiled by revolution were actually experiencing China-level economic growth at the time. Yet the distribution of wealth was skewed towards the capitalists and the workers saw no improvement in their standard of living – a worldwide phenomenon. The anger of the working class was already evident in the explosive protests across Europe during the fall of 2010 – the strikes in Spain and Portugal, riots in Greece, and the largest student protest ever in Britain.

This revolutionary turmoil came not as a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky, but was the culmination of decades of economic policy. The past 30 years saw extensive privatization and ruthless cuts to welfare and social services. Bourgeois economists’ worship of the “free market” and supposed contempt for government was utterly discredited in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, when the bankers were bailed out to the tune of billions by capitalist governments. In the Arab world, the move to privatization accelerated in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, when the state’s role in the economy began to shrink.

The revolutions in Africa and the Middle East, Fred argued, confirmed the Marxist theory of the state. In the 1970s, many leftist groups advocated terrorist methods while genuine Marxists said this would only strengthen the state (e.g. Palestinian use of terrorist methods only strengthened the Zionist state). Under the pressure of a mass movement, the state apparatus can break down. We saw this in Tunisia when a soldier first saluted a coffin, and in Egypt (with its 1.5 million armed men), when the determination of the masses swayed ordinary soldiers.

Bahrain and Libya

Fred briefly touched on the events in Bahrain and Libya. He exposed the hypocrisy of imperialist claims to be “protecting civilians” in Libya with bombing raids, while the United States quietly backed Saudi Arabia’s invasion of Bahrain to quash non-violent protesters. With the U.S. fleet based in Bahrain, much-ballyhooed concerns for “democracy” and “human rights” did not apply.

Quite simply, it was in the imperialists’ interests to intervene in Libya but not in Bahrain, with its more reliable authoritarian regime. On a more strategic level, Libya gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to intervene militarily in the Arab Revolution, which had caught it completely off-guard.

Where Egypt had led to the idea that all you needed to overthrow an authoritarian government was to go on Facebook and Twiter and gather enough people together in a square, Libya illustrated that it wasn’t so simple. In Libya, regime figures defected early out of a belief that they could channel the revolution towards their own ends. Right from the start, there was a conflict between the revolutionary youth and the interim government, which saw the events in terms of a military struggle.

There is no real difference between the economic policies of Qaddafi and the “rebel” leaders, who would promptly hand over control of Libya’s resources to the imperialists. While the dictators are now gone in Tunisia and Egypt, the regimes they headed are still largely intact. Those in power shuffle the chairs on the deck, but the same powerful economic interests always prevail.

Syria

Following the coup that established the Assad regime in the 1970s, Syria pursued the Soviet model of development, which provided some genuine benefits to the population. Syria experienced phenomenal growth rates in its early decades of well over 50%. By the 1980s, this had slowed to 33% growth per annum. Today, it is an anaemic 1%. The masses supported the Syrian government in the 1960s and 70s, when it provided real material benefits and the country’s oil money was partly used to fund social services.

Syria’s economic decline paralleled the stagnation of the USSR. Emphasizing that real socialism requires workers’ democracy in addition to a nationalized planned economy, Fred noted that the privileged Syrian bureaucracy became increasingly resented as the country’s economy stalled. Following the Soviet collapse, the Syrian government began taking tentative steps towards a market economy, beginning with private banking in 1991 and later progressing to foreign investment and a stock market.

Assad’s government privatized and passed on the fruits of the country’s wealth to its own cronies. In essence, the Syrian elites strove to emulate the Chinese model, transferring the means of production from public to private ownership. Identical terms were even used – e.g. “social market economy”. Having lost most of its claims to legitimacy, the Syrian regime as it stands today is one of the world’s most brutal. Legions of police are tasked specifically with monitoring the internet for any signs of dissent.

Like the Tunisian Revolution, which began when a young men harassed by the police set himself on fire, the Syrian revolt began with a small event on February 17, when hundreds of bystanders intervened after watching the police harass two motorists. Protests soon swelled to over 1500 and one of the government’s ministers was forced to intervene. Throughout February and March, the movement gradually gained in strength, with the most affected layers being the youth (who constitute 60% of the population) and the poor.

In addition to its use of brute force to repress the protests, the Assad regime has also sought to exploit certain “moderate” dissidents to dampen the revolutionary fervour. The Syrian working class pushes ahead, but the threat posed by reformist elements reflects those of leftists around the world. The task in Syria remains the same as elsewhere: building a mass revolutionary party to provide a programme and leadership for the workers’ movement.

Special brigades have been deployed to put down the Uprising, but the government does not have enough forces to repress the entire country at once. Thus far the protests have largely been confined to individual cities, allowing the security forces to move wherever trouble appears. The lesson is obvious: a truly national movement is necessary to exploit the state’s weakness.

What comes next? Fred theorized that, should the Syrian workers succeed in overthrowing Assad, the resulting government would likely follow the pattern set out by Tunisia and Egypt – probably some form of bourgeois democracy. Yet democracy is only a means to an end, and bourgeois democracy cannot solve the problems faced by Syrians today. Even in the advanced capitalist countries, the system is incapable of alleviating severe unemployment – why would it be any different in Syria?

In order to progress, the protest movements require a solid programme and revolutionary leadership. The means of production must be nationalized under the control of the workers themselves, and a genuine proletarian democracy established. The task of the Marxists is helping youth in the Arab world reach these conclusions and fight for an Arab socialist federation.

Q & A

During the question and answer period, a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq asked about the absence of socialist or communist groups in the February protests. While frontline organizers were individual working class activists, mainstream socialist parties seemed closer to the state – a dangerous development when the Iraqi government recently announced its own privatization programme.

Fred responded that when examining a jar, one should not merely read the label, but rather examine the contents inside. The leaders of so-called working class, “socialist” and “communist” parties worldwide are not up to the tasks facing humanity. There is a huge gap between the leadership and the rank-and-file. Reformist leaders came of age at a time when capitalism seemed to be able to offer reforms such as free health care and public education.

Regarding the self-proclaimed socialist/communist parties, Fred reminded his audience of the Stalinist “two-stage theory”, which these corrupted figures used to derail revolutionary situations. By claiming the need to first have a “democratic” revolution before attempting socialism later, and therefore arguing that the working class should ally itself with the “progressive” bourgeoisie now, the Stalinists abort revolutions before they begin.

In order to solve this problem, the working class must change the leadership of its mass organizations. When Fightback supporter Arash Azizi asked what the task of real socialists in Syria should be, Fred called for strikes in all industries, for Syrian youth and workers to occupy the schools and the factories, and for election of workers’ representatives to create an economic programme that will allow the working class to take total control of the country. The pressing need is for a mass revolutionary leadership.