Wage-labour and Capital, Section III - Part 3 of 5

All of these commodities, such as buildings, machines, raw and auxiliary materials that exists as means of production, also form the physical components of capital, but what is it that constitutes them as capital rather than just commodities, or means of production? As commodities they are not just physical use-values, but, also, exchange-values. A machine with an exchange-value/price of £100 can be sold, again, for that £100 less any wear and tear and depreciation. But, on that basis, it is only a commodity, like any other, not capital.

To be capital, the machine, as previously described, must employ wage-labour, and, in so doing, brings about the creation of surplus-value, in production. That surplus value, embodied in the commodity, is appropriated by capital and realised as money-profit, in the sale of the commodity. The original exchange-value of the commodities advanced to production, thereby, self-expands, in the production process itself, and it is this which constitutes capital as distinct from merely commodities or money. The value of capital is always greater than the value of the commodities that constitute its physical components. It is greater by an amount equal to the average industrial rate of profit.

As Marx sets out, in Capital III, it is this use-value of capital, to be able to produce the average rate of profit, that enables capital itself to be sold as a commodity, so as to acquire this use-value. In other words, £100 can be sold as capital, and, if the average rate of profit is 20%, the use value of this £100 is its ability to produce this £20 of profit. The value of £100 as capital is £120. The owner of the £100 sells this use-value to a buyer for a contracted period, i.e. they loan them the money. The price the buyer pays for this use-value depends upon the demand and supply for capital. If there are many lenders and few borrowers, the price – rate of interest – will be low, and vice versa.

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Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 13

The ruling-class is a global class of speculators, of owners of fictitious capital. But, this global ruling class, does not have a global state to represent its interests, as every other national ruling class had in the form of the nation state. It has attempted to create such, with global para state bodies, such as the UN, WTO, World Bank, IMF and so on, but these cannot substitute for such a state, and simply continue to reflect antagonisms between the existing nation states, and the material national interests they represent. Indeed, not least amongst those interests are the material interests of the dominant form of property, the property upon which the revenues of the ruling class, and of the state depends, i.e. the interests of large-scale, socialised, industrial capital.

This is, in effect, a repeat of the analysis and debate about the United States of Europe, between Trotsky and Lenin, in 1915. Both Lenin and Trotsky agreed that imperialism drives towards such a solution, and that it is progressive, but, where, Trotsky argued, therefore, for raising the demand for a United States of Europe, Lenin argued that the divisions between the various imperialist states in Europe would prevent them from bringing it about, and that it would only be possible after the socialist revolution. In the 1920's, Lenin and the Comintern adopted the position put forward by Trotsky, of arguing for a United States of Europe as a transitional slogan.

Lenin, in fact, consistent with his analysis in “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism”, misunderstood the nature of imperialism, partly conflating and confusing it with the already outlived era of colonial empires, in which the world was carved up into geographically based territories controlled by the dominant colonial powers – Britain, France, Germany and Russia. Trotsky, also, was misled by this analysis of Lenin, formulated during WWI, and largely as a polemic against Kautsky, and his theory of super-imperialism. But, Trotsky, as seen in his analysis in “The Programme of Peace”, more accurately saw the true nature of imperialism, and of that war as being, not about colonialism, but about the need of capital to develop ever larger single markets, just as the nation state had so developed in the 18th and 19th century.

“At bottom of the war lay the need of the productive forces for a broader arena of development, unhampered by tariff walls. Similarly, in the occupation of the Ruhr so fatal to Europe and to mankind, we find a distorted expression of the need for uniting the coal of the Ruhr with the iron of Lorraine. Europe cannot develop economically within the state and customs frontiers imposed at Versailles. Europe is compelled either to remove these frontiers, or to face the threat of complete economic decay. But the methods adopted by the ruling bourgeoisie to overcome the frontiers it itself had created are only increasing the existing chaos and accelerating the disintegration.”

(Trotsky - Is The Time Ripe For The Slogan: ‘The United States Of Europe’?)

Trotsky raised the demand for a United States of Europe, as a transitional demand, in the same kind of way that Marxists had supported demands for the national bourgeois revolution, in the 19th century, not as an end in itself, but as part of the process of class struggle, whose goal is the socialist revolution. It was raised alongside the transitional demand for a Workers Government.

In other words, the majority of the masses, including the proletariat, did not posses a revolutionary class consciousness. They continued to hold bourgeois-democratic illusions. We do not, but as long as the masses do, we have to deal with that reality, and, in the process of struggle, win the masses away from those illusions. The masses would continue to place faith in bourgeois and reformist workers parties in elections, and in periods of intense class struggle, as in 1905 or 1917 in Russia, in which these bourgeois-democratic struggles become folded into the wider class struggle (permanent revolution), the Marxists promote the development of workers' self-government, in the form of the soviets/workers' councils as the means of struggle for these demands.

The Marxists would not join any such Workers Government, made up of these reformist and centrist parties, but would utilise the soviets to press down on it. As he writes in The Transitional Programme,

“From April to September 1917, the Bolsheviks demanded that the SRs and Mensheviks break with the liberal bourgeoisie and take power into their own hands. Under this provision the Bolshevik Party promised the Mensheviks and the SRs, as the petty bourgeois representatives of the worker and peasants, its revolutionary aid against the bourgeoisie categorically refusing, however, either to enter into the government of the Mensheviks and SRs or to carry political responsibility for it. If the Mensheviks and SRs had actually broke with the Cadets (liberals) and with foreign imperialism, then the “workers’ and peasants’ government” created by them could only have hastened and facilitated the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But it was exactly because of this that the leadership of petty bourgeois democracy resisted with all possible strength the establishment of its own government. The experience of Russia demonstrated, and the experience of Spain and France once again confirms, that even under very favourable conditions the parties of petty bourgeois democracy (SRs, Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists) are incapable of creating a government of workers and peasants, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.

Nevertheless, the demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the SRs: “Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!” had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and SRs to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks.”

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The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 9 of 10

In an actual colony, or semi-colony, engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle, the Marxists, on the basis of permanent revolution, seek to unite the masses under the leadership of the working class. They subsume the tasks of the bourgeois revolution under the proletarian revolution, so that, as the former tasks are accomplished, by revolutionary proletarian means, so the social weight of the workers rises, and they draw behind them the poor peasants and urban petty-bourgeois, enabling the dialectical dynamic to do its work, making the revolution permanent, and flowing over into proletarian revolution, and social transformation. But, Stalin/Bukharin, instead, gifted the leading role to the Chinese bourgeoisie, represented by the KMT, and subordinated the workers and peasants to it. The idiot anti-imperialists have done the same in every such struggle, and with similar catastrophic consequences for workers, and the cause of international socialism.

In Ukraine, however, it is not even a question of an anti-imperialist struggle, or war of national independence, but a war conducted by a fully fledged capitalist, indeed imperialist state, and its army, backed by NATO imperialism, against another fully fledged capitalist, indeed imperialist state, and its army, backed by Chinese imperialism! The Popular Frontism of the petty-bourgeois, nationalist “Left”, of subordinating the class struggle to the interests of various national bourgeois forces, amounted to idiot anti-imperialism, and a betrayal of Marxism, and the global working-class struggle, but that same stance, taken in support of Zelensky and the Ukrainian capitalist state is idiot anti-imperialism raised by several powers of lunacy, or more correctly, outright betrayal of the working-class on a scale that makes the role of Stalinism in the Chinese revolution look rational by comparison.

“The concentration of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the abandonment of the revolution by the workers, the schism between the Party and the masses, were appraised as secondary phenomena in comparison with the peasant revolts. Instead of a genuine hegemony of the proletariat, in the anti-imperialist as well as in the agrarian struggle, that is, in the democratic revolution as a whole, there took place a wretched capitulation before the primitive peasant forces, with “secondary” adventures in the cities.” (p 218)

In Ukraine, there is no bourgeois-democratic revolution to pursue, because that is past. However, as with all bourgeois-democracy, it is a sham. In the UK, its necessary to expose it by raising demands for consistent democracy, in respect to the Monarchy, House of Lords, election of judges, officials, military top brass and so on. But, compared to Ukraine, Britain is a model of democracy, liberty and probity. As Sraid Marx has described, in fact, even according to western liberal organisations, there is little difference between Ukraine and Russia, when it comes to corruption, illiberal laws, and lack of democracy. If the Left were proposing a national war for liberty and democracy, in Ukraine, it would start by raising demands for consistent democracy inside the country, to be championed by the workers, as it would also do, in relation to Russia, rather than simply acting as cheerleaders for western, liberal stooges in both places.

But, where is that socialist programme, subsuming these bourgeois-democratic demands, in relation to Ukraine? It is not to be seen anywhere, because the pro-NATO “Left” has simply capitulated, and lined up behind Zelensky, and the Ukrainian oligarchs. It cannot raise, even such minimal, bourgeois-democratic demands, and seek to seriously mobilise the workers in a class struggle for them, because it has subordinated itself to Zelensky, and his corrupt capitalist regime, ridiculously claiming that imperialism and the capitalist state are defenders of workers' interests!!!

“Unfortunately, the triumph from the theoretical point of view of our Marxian analysis, in the case before us, has as its political foundation mortal defeats for the revolution.” (p 219)

That applies in spades to the historic betrayal, by the social-imperialists, in relation to Ukraine, and that debt will have to be paid. In relation to the mistakes and betrayal of Stalin, and the Stalintern, it was enabled by the degenerate regime that had developed within it, in which honest debate was impossible. The same is true of today's “Left” sects that have become ossified cults of Leader worship, riddled with petty-bourgeois egoism, petty intrigues and cliquism, with all of the features of studentism. In place of open debate, we have bureaucratic censorship, and “safe spaces”, so as to avoid having to defend ideas and practice. Its one reason why, when any such clique inside these sects reaches a relatively significant mass, the consequence is a split, and creation of a new microsect.

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Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 12

To the extent that real industrial capital expanded in the developed economies, it increasingly became concentrated in its pre-social-democratic forms. Just as newly industrialising economies filled the gaps of large-scale production, to meet the consumption needs of developed economies, so, within those developed economies, a growing petty-bourgeoisie arose to meet the needs of local consumption, i.e. a growth of labour services such as window-cleaners, gardeners, child minders, domestic cleaners, back street garages, sandwich shops and so on. In addition, of course, was all of those that simply became small traders, as depicted by Del Boy Trotter, but also as epitomised by the White Van Man.

A vast reservoir of unskilled, and semi-skilled labour, thrown out of work in the 1980's, fed into these businesses, particularly in those decaying urban areas, where that deindustrialisation had been most acute. In Britain, the growth of this reactionary petty-bourgeoisie was not only facilitated by the process of deindustrialisation, and encouragement of speculation, but also by conservative government policies, for example, the Tory introduction of the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, in the early 1980's.

But, this general, reactionary, petty-bourgeois ideology pervades the rest of politics too, much as Lenin described in his polemics against the Narodniks. As noted earlier, its not just the reactionaries in the ranks of the Classical Liberals (Libertarians), or the conservative social democrats (Neo-liberals) that have focussed their ire on large-scale socialised capital, in favour of small businesses, but it pervades the “anti-capitalism” of most of the Left too. The idea of a Universal Basic Income, to encourage the development of small business and self employment, is just another variant of the various schemas put forward by Sismondists, Narodniks, and other reactionary socialists over the years.

As I set out some months ago, this explains the transformation of the Conservatives from being a conservative social-democratic party, as it existed for much of the twentieth century, into being a petty-bourgeois, reactionary nationalist party, but explains why Labour has also been dragged along into that same camp, under Starmer. The same processes apply in North America and Europe. As I set out in that post, in the UK, the number of small businesses rose from 2.4 million in 1980 to 3.6 million in 1989, whilst the continual rise in the number of wage workers, going back 200 years, ceased in 1978, and began to fall, only resuming the upward trend in 1998. This significant change in material conditions, of the declining social weight both of the working-class, and of the ruling class, and growing social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie, was bound to exercise its reflection in the ideological and political superstructure, as it has.

The declining social weight of the working-class was greater than the fall in its numbers indicated, precisely because of those wage workers being, also, weakened industrially, as they became less secure, their organisations were undermined, and in many places they were atomised, a condition that has only begun to change with the more recent developments, as the process of labour reserves being used up, from 1999 onwards, and labour shortages arising, most notably from 2023, strengthens the hand of workers, and enables a rebuilding of their organisations. The social weight of the ruling class (already tiny to begin with, in terms of its numbers) simply meant that it resorted even more to its reliance on its state, and bureaucratism. Hence, a growing Bonapartism, both on the part of the petty-bourgeoisie, and its reactionary political parties, but also on the part of the ruling-class, and its state, in opposition to it.

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Wage-labour and Capital, Section III - Part 2 of 5

Capital then is not a “thing”, such as a drill, or plough, but is a social relation. What makes a drill or a plough capital when it is used by a wage-labourer, whereas it is not when it is used by me to do DIY, or by a peasant to produce food, is that the wage labourer does not own it, and the capitalist that does will only allow the labourer to use these means of production on certain conditions, i.e. that the labourer provides hem with an amount of unpaid labour – profit.

The peasant who produces food for their own consumption, does not need permission to use their own plough, and nor do I to use my drill to put up shelves. In neither case is their consideration of whether such activity will result in a “profit”, but only that it will result in a product that will meet a consumption requirement. In these cases, the aim is the production of use values by the most efficient means, the means of production are simply employed by labour to that end.

But, for capital, this relation is reversed. The purpose of production is not consumption, but profit, and it is now the means of production (capital) that employ labour, only to that end. Indeed, as Marx describes, in Capital III, Chapter 27, that remains true when the labourers become their own capitalist, as in the worker cooperative. So long as that cooperative must operate in a capitalist economy, it must continue to act as capital. It must maximise profit so as to accumulate capital, and, thereby, remain competitive. Otherwise, it will lose market share, and go out of business.

Subjective analysis, and explanations of exploitation, therefore, of the form based upon “greedy” capitalists are wide of the mark, moralistic and unscientific. This social relation between capital and wage-labour exists whether there are private capitalist owners of industrial capital or not. So long as there is commodity production and exchange, there is a market, and a market presupposes competition, an so winners and losers. To be a winner requires capital accumulation and maximisation of profit.

“Capital also is a social relation of production. It is a bourgeois relation of production, a production relation of bourgeois society. Are not the means of subsistence, the instruments of labour, the raw materials, of which capital consists produced and accumulated under given social conditions, in definite special relations? Are they not utilised for new production, under given special conditions, in definite social relations? And is it not just this definite social character which turns the products serving for new production into capital?” (p 28-9)

What is the basis of this maximisation of profit? It comprises two elements. Firstly, the rate of surplus value (actually annual rate of surplus value), and the quantity of labour employed. The first of these is essentially a function of the level of technological development. In very primitive societies, for example, the standard of living of labourers is very low, and, yet, the amount of surplus product/value they produce is very small, because a low level of productivity means they must spend most of their working-day simply reproducing their labour-power.

The second is the quantity of labour employed, so if 100 workers are employed for 10 hours, with a 100% rate of surplus value, that gives 100 x 10 = 1,000 hours of new value, comprised of 500 hours necessary labour, and 500 hours of surplus labour. If 300 workers are employed, new value is 3,000 and even if the rate of surplus value is only 50%, that gives 1,000 of surplus value. As Marx put it in Capital III, Chapter 15.

“Given the necessary means of production, i.e., a sufficient accumulation of capital, the creation of surplus-value is only limited by the labouring population if the rate of surplus-value, i.e., the intensity of exploitation, is given; and no other limit but the intensity of exploitation if the labouring population is given.”

That creates an inevitable contradiction. Capital seeks to maximise surplus value, by raising the rate of surplus value. The only way to do that is by increasing the length (time wages) or intensity (piece wages) of the working-day, so as to increase absolute surplus value. If the existing working-day is 10 hours, of which 5 represent necessary labour and 5 surplus labour, raising the working-day to 12 hours increases surplus value to 7 hours. Likewise, if with piece-rates an average 100 pieces per hour is required, that might rise to 120 pieces.

However, there are physical limits to such increases. Beyond a certain level of intensity, workers can only work for shorter periods, and vice versa. For any worker, in any day, they require a number of hours rest and recuperation, besides there only being 24 hours in a day. The other way of compensating for that is by increasing the length of the social working-day, i.e. employing more labour. Any given worker might be only able to work, optimally, for 12 hours, but that does not preclude using 2 workers, working shifts. Instead of 7 hours of surplus value, per day, there is, now 14 hours. The more the social-working-day is expanded, the more the mass of surplus value is increased.

However, as Marx describes in Capital III, Chapter 15, and Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21, there is still a physical limit to that. Firstly, shift systems allow a certain amount of fixed capital to be used more effectively, but, after a while, more buildings and machines are required. The use of more capital, including just more raw materials, with no more rapid growth of surplus value, means a fall in the rate of profit. Moreover, as employment rises, relative labour shortages mean rising nominal wages, but also real wages, and eventually, relative wages, i.e. a rise in wage share, and squeeze on profits/overproduction of capital.

The answer to that, Marx suggests, in the earlier quote, is to turn to the other determinant of surplus value, the level of technological development/productivity. In other words, if social productivity rises, even with a 10 hour working-day, surplus value rises to 7 hours, if the necessary labour falls to only 3 hours. Higher productivity cheapens wage goods, and so reduces necessary labour.

That, however, conflicts with the other element of maximising surplus value, which is the need to maximise the employment of labour. Higher productivity, by definition, means less labour required to produce any given amount of output. As the mass of surplus value is determined by the mass of labour employed x the rate of surplus value, raising the latter, by increasing productivity, reduces the former. Capital has to continually reconcile this contradiction as manifests over the long wave cycle, in alternating phases of extensive and intensive accumulation.

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Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 11

In the 1980's, one solution for developed capitalist economies was to shift production to a range of newly industrialising economies, particularly in Asia. This production was largely of those mature commodities, based on high levels of output, using significant amounts of fixed capital, with very high rates of turnover of the circulating capital, and consequently small profit margins, but a much higher annual rate of profit. In other words, mostly routine assembly. Low wages in these economies helped to boost profit margins. It was not that the total volume of industrial production, in developed economies fell, either, but that, as productivity rose, it required much less labour than it had previously, and accounted for a much smaller proportion of total output value. It was the same thing that happened with agricultural production in the 19th century.

Production moved up the value chain, away from these mature, low profit margin, high volume products, to new, higher profit margin, lower volume products and services. This is the process Marx describes in The Civilising Mission of Capital, but also, in Capital III, Chapter 14.

“new lines of production are opened up, especially for the production of luxuries, and it is these that take as their basis this relative over-population, often set free in other lines of production through the increase of their constant capital. These new lines start out predominantly with living labour, and by degrees pass through the same evolution as the other lines of production. In either case the variable capital makes up a considerable portion of the total capital and wages are below the average, so that both the rate and mass of surplus-value in these lines of production are unusually high.”

By shifting the unskilled production to China, and other parts of Asia, as well as sourcing things like coal from Poland, and so on, capital, in the developed economies, expelled large amounts of labour in these industries, in a process of deindustrialisation. It, thereby, ended the labour shortages that had arisen during the period of long wave boom and crisis (1962-1985) that had caused relative wages to rise, relative profits to fall, interest rates to rise, and inflation adjusted asset prices to fall.

But, it also expelled large amounts of labour, even without moving production, by simply replacing labour with technology. The microchip revolution was the means by which that was made possible. As I have written, elsewhere, it wasn't Thatcher that defeated the British working-class, but the microchip, without which, the mass expulsion of labour would not have been possible.

This process created a new international division of labour. Globally, relative wages fell, and relative profits rose, raising the rate of profit. The moral depreciation of fixed capital, also raised the rate of profit, and brought a huge release of capital. The rise in productivity also increased the rate of turnover of capital massively, as did other methods made possible by the technology, such as the move to containerisation. The rise in the rate of turnover, massively raised the annual rate of profit. ( I set this out ten years ago in my book “Marx and Engels' Theories of Crisis). Interest rates fell, from 1982 onwards, and asset prices soared. Between 1980 and 2000, the Dow Jones Index rose by 1300%, compared to just a 250% rise in US GDP, in the same period.

The example of the Apple iPhone illustrates the point. The task of assembly of the phone takes place in China, with around 1 million workers employed at Foxconn. Which illustrates the point that although this is capital intensive, assembly work, requiring only unskilled labour, the huge volume of production, still requires large numbers of workers. But, of the total value of the iPhone, only 10% of it is accounted for by this assembly, with 90% of the value comprising the high value, skilled labour involved in designing the microchips and architecture of the phone, the development of the software and so on, all of which takes place in the US. This is all, low volume and high value, labour-intensive production. It does not employ vast numbers of workers, as with the assembly labour, but the labour employed is all high-value, complex labour, low organic composition of capital, and so with a higher than average rate of surplus value, and rate of profit.

This process had other consequences, creating further contradictions. Firstly, this shift of production to a range of newly industrialising economies in Asia, speeded up their own development. This aspect of combined and uneven development was understood by Marx, and also described by Trotsky. Contrary to the petty-bourgeois notions of moral socialists, Stalinists and Third Worldists, and their theories of super-exploitation and underdevelopment, as the basis of their reactionary “anti-imperialism”, the process of equalisation occurs faster under imperialism than was previously the case.

“In contrast to the economic systems which preceded it, capitalism inherently and constantly aims at economic expansion, at the penetration of new territories, the surmounting of economic differences, the conversion of self-sufficient provincial and national economies into a system of financial interrelationships. Thereby it brings about their rapprochement and equalizes the economic and cultural levels of the most progressive and the most backward countries. Without this main process, it would be impossible to conceive of the relative levelling out, first, of Europe with Great Britain, and then, of America with Europe; the industrialization of the colonies, the diminishing gap between India and Great Britain, and all the consequences arising from the enumerated processes upon which is based not only the program of the Communist International but also its very existence.”

(Trotsky - The Third International After Lenin)

As these economies industrialised, just as had happened elsewhere, in the past, it developed the domestic market alongside it. Large numbers of peasants moved to the towns and cities to become industrial workers, their living standards, low compared to those of workers in the West, but much higher than those of the peasant production they left behind, itself being a source of further demand, and expansion of the domestic market. The main thrust of the dynamic of real industrial capital moved to these areas, where real industrial capital accumulated at a faster pace, to satisfy a growing global market, whilst in the developed economies, real industrial capital was undermined, as surplus value was siphoned off into financial and property speculation, and consumption expanded on the basis of a delusion of growing wealth produced by inflated asset prices, and increased debt.

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Forward To Part 12

The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 8 of 10

Trotsky quotes the Committee's resolution, summarising the basis of the erroneous evaluation of the situation by the Chinese party.

““1. The revolutionary movement was estimated as an uninterrupted ascent [the “permanent revolution” à la Bukharin-Lominadze! – L.T.].

“2. No attention was paid to the loss of contact between our party and the masses, nor to the decomposition of the mass organizations at the turning point of the revolution.

“3. No account was taken of the new regrouping of class forces inside the enemy camp during this turn.

“4. No consideration was given to leading the movement in the cities.

“5. No attention was paid to the importance of the anti-imperialist movement in a semicolonial country.

“6. During the insurrection, no account was taken of the objective conditions, nor of the necessity of applying different methods of struggle in conformity with them.

“7. A peasant deviation made itself felt.

“8. The Central Committee, in its estimation of the situation, was guided by a subjective point of view.” (p 216-7)

But, this applied even more to the ECCI, and the Stalin/Bukharin leadership, of which the Chinese party were merely instruments. In essence, the resolution, based on the experience, directly, on the ground, copied, almost exactly, the analysis and theoretical evaluation of the Opposition, based on the insights of Marxist class analysis, and its experience of previous revolutions in Russia, in 1905 and 1917. Trotsky highlights the fifth point, the failure to take account of the problems of anti-imperialism in a semi-colonial country. Again, this is illustrative, in relation to the pro-NATO, social-imperialists, in relation to Ukraine, but also in relation to idiot anti-imperialism in general.

“How could this happen? By the force of the dialectic of the false political line; mistakes have their dialectic like everything else in the world. The point of departure of official opportunism was that the Chinese revolution is essentially an anti-imperialist revolution, and that the yoke of imperialism welds together all the classes or at the very least “all the living forces of the country”. We objected that a successful struggle against imperialism is only possible by means of an audacious extension of the class struggle, and consequently, of the agrarian revolution. We rose up intransigently against the attempt to subordinate the class struggle to the abstract criterion of the struggle against imperialism (substitution of arbitration commissions for the strike movement, telegraphic advice not to stir up the agrarian revolution, prohibiting the formation of soviets, etc.).” (p 217-8)

This is seen in the idiot anti-imperialism of the petty-bourgeois, nationalist “Left”, in every such struggle, but is even more glaring, in relation to Ukraine, for the simple reason that it clearly is not a colony, nor semi-colony, but a fully functioning – if grossly corrupt – imperialist, nation state, in its own right, and, indeed, one clearly tied to, and seeking membership of, the largest, most powerful imperialist bloc on the planet!!

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Forward To Part 9