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No 1660 10th August 2025

Impossible “two-state” hypocrisy splitting West as Zionism’s inhuman Gaza hunger-holocaust exposes weakness and failure of its horrifying “solution” for ever-rising rebelliousness. Far from suppressing world “terrorist” revolt driven by the great capitalist Catastrophe, this 2-year unprecedented public savagery has not defeated dogged Palestinian anti-occupation resistance - while its grotesque historic inversion of Nazi barbarism has appalled the planet. Imperialism is damned forever, Third World hatred and revolt magnified and the rich world’s “democracy” and “freedom” delusions holed at the water line. But despite new contempt for Labourite scumminess the need remains for revolutionary perspectives – Leninism.

The 650,000 sign-ups after the first 10 days for the Jeremy Corbyn-Zarah Sultana new party project are healthy sign of huge pent-up hostility for capitalism’s slump failure and grotesque war degeneracy.

But so far it is dangerously herded back into “safe” bourgeois “democracy” channels.

Even if “Your Party”, or whatever name it chooses, were to get somewhere in the teeth of the massive electoral manipulation, gerrymandering, saturation establishment advertising, big money support bias, dirty dealing, bribery and sabotage for ruling class interests that is the reality of the “parliamentary process”, its peace platitudes and reformist demands will not – cannot – change anything at this late stage in the world capitalist crisis collapse.

Only full on revolutionary class war against the depraved and collapsing monopoly capitalist order can now stop its horrors deepening, by bringing to an end this entire historical period of class rule society and its brutal violent exploitation tyranny, now bankrupt and unstoppably dragging the whole planet into economic and ecological Catastrophe and ever-more gruesome genocidal wars like Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and the Congo and brewing or threatened worldwide.

If any “democratic vote” changes did appear to be going somewhere effective, even temporarily, the whole process would prove anything but “safe”.

To the contrary: putting any trust in any of it would leave mass popular opinion wide open to the dangers of escalated police and military coup (already partially underway through police repression, “thought policing”, war censorship and “anti-terrorism” raids on even minor pacifist protest) as a desperate bourgeoisie grapples with the inevitable financial collapse already moribund, bankrupt and outcompeted capitalist Britain would immediately be faced with.

That does not mean it should be written off, opposed outright or ignored – such a surge reflects huge mass movement as already discussed in the last EPSR and further shows the decades-long slow collapse of workers’ faith in Labour has reached a historic breaking point – already initiated by Arthur Scargill’s miners’ militancy in the mid-1990s formation of the Socialist Labour Party perhaps but this time on a much broader scale.

Neither goes much beyond the boundaries of “traditional” trade unionism and parliament however and Corbynism even less than Scargill’s initial notional anti-capitalism (see EPSR Books Vol 33-34 on Theory & Party Building Parts 3 and 4) being barely describable as long-anticipated centrism yet (meaning reformist in content while making revolutionary noises).

But if some of the working class and some petty bourgeois elements, still have some “democracy” illusions on a relatively mass scale, despite over a century of experience of opportunist parliamentary treachery (including its “Left” wing always propping up Labourism) then may be revolutionary politics has to stay with such movement, for as long as is necessary, to prove that this supposed break is no different to all past opportunism – and in today’s crisis conditions, even more deadly.

It might need supporting for the moment, as Lenin famously said (in Left Wing Communism - an infantile disorder) but only in the way a rope “supports” a hanging man.

What this spontaneous, angry anti-capitalist sentiment – (some confused and backward elements of which also get diverted behind Farage’s reactionary Reform) – urgently needs however is conscious Leninist understanding of just what a giant class war fight is coming both domestically, and internationally – far beyond the vicious clashes of the Great Miners Strike for example where capitalism’s dirty civil-war blows already showed its true dictatorship nature (and the treachery of TUC class collaboration).

If this new party is sufficiently open to allow that openly to be argued inside then well and good, otherwise work to expose it will have to be done alongside it on the outside.

But only with the deepest revolutionary perspective produced by constant polemical struggle and debate, can the working class forge the unity to carry through the fight it must make against ever more degenerate capitalism, without being split, pulled this way and that, diverted, and stampeded behind chauvinist wars (like Ukraine) and racist persecution of hapless asylum seekers and foreign scapegoats, letting the ultra-rich off the hook.

The great surge which threw up Corbyn as Labour’s leader ten years ago has already demonstrated the scale and depth of the skulduggery that the capitalist state is ready to mobilise, using every aspect of its stitched-up domination, state control police and court mechanisms, sinister secret police spying and sabotage (through specialist infiltration, GCHQ surveillance units and the MI5/MI6 “intelligence” Gestapos), totally bent mass media influence and brainwashing, plus ever broadening censorship of working class opinion, (and anti-imperialist voices abroad) along with twisted character assassinations, poisonous innuendo and elaborate lie fabrication campaigns (and most of all the “left anti-semitic racism” nonsense) to head off and disrupt any class unity.

Gold-braided generals (who elected them??) were wheeled out on television and radio (especially the BBC, who elected them?) to issue barely veiled coup threats, ostensibly on not touching nuclear arms and military resources but with an overall ruling class dictatorship intent; and the “left” leadership was forced into humiliating grovels around the secret Privy Council, (who elected them?) and “pledging loyalty” to the Crown (who elected them?) etc, – all part of the bourgeois (and still partially feudal!) big money ruling class dictatorship that actually runs everything, – while disowning or backtracking on its support for the Irish republican nationalist struggle, for Third World anti-imperialist national struggles and most of all for Palestinian national-liberation.

And much of this sinister conspiracy was carried out by the rightwing of the capitalist stooge Labourites themselves, MPs and “officials” (who elected them?), and particularly the pro-Zionists (often funded by Israeli and Jewish lobby connections) who have had huge influence, (all the way back to the partition which entrenched the Jewish occupation in Palestine as a colonist “state” under Attlee’s (allegedly “left”) majority government in 1948).

Ten years back even the tepid left-reformist measures which won huge enthusiasm (Corbyn’s 2017 popular vote count far exceeded any of the sour and disillusioned levels of prior Blairite or Tory votes since) were too much for a fearful bourgeois system poleaxed by the depth of its economic and political breakdown, brewing for decades and bringing the whole world to near financial-Armageddon in 2008-9’s bank and credit implosion.

Despite massive credit props to bail out the rich bankers, the great plunging turmoil of international trade war and “austerity” brought to cutthroat levels by the capitalist over-production crisis (see economics box, Marx’s Capital, Communist Manifesto etc), has intensified dramatically since then.

Everything is far worse now, as already signalled by Trump’s international trade bullying and at home by the increasingly fascist-acting Starmerite stooges’ slide into demented militarisation and warmongering, with massive censorship on Russia, on Palestine and much else, “anti-terrorist” crackdowns (whose real target is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist turmoil and upheaval), ever-escalated state surveillance and insane bogeyman war propaganda lies deluged out morning, noon and night, with lurid fearmongering nonsense about “invasion threats” from Russia and hysterical anti-Chinese evidence-free fabrications about the Uighurs, Tibet and Hong Kong’s violent petty bourgeois counter-revolutionary disruptions.

North Korea, Myanmar, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, South Africa and many more constantly get it in the neck from this psyops lie deluge too as well as the growing world resistance from Lebanon to Iran and even the right wing populism in eastern Europe when it does not comply with other bourgeois interests like the German domination of the EU.

Counting on parliamentary paths, “freedom of speech” and the principles of civilised “justice” is to disarm the working class just when it most needs to be on its guard against an ever more desperate ruling class, driven frantic by the crisis.

Class collaborating “left” reformism like Corbyn’s group and fake-“left” revisionist or Trot complacency supporting it will doubtless declare such warnings “over the top” or even inapplicable when “such things couldn’t happen in a country like this.”

That is exactly what Salvador Allende said in “sophisticated” Chile in the early 1970s before his “majority elected” parliamentary socialist alliance was toppled by the murder-and-torture Augusto Pinochet military coup in 1973 (CIA coordinated); what “left” nationalist leader Sukarno thought in Indonesia in 1965 before the Suharto military (MI6/CIA coordinated) butchered his movement and its allied communist core, along with at least one, even two million fellow travellers or simply “suspect elements”.

It’s what the Muslim Brotherhood’s “moderate” Mohamed Morsi thought after winning the presidency in the newly installed “democracy” in Egypt after 2011’s Arab Spring revolutionary toppling of the Western stooge Zionist-collaborating dictator Hosni Mubarak, only to be toppled himself by the General Sisi military coup in 2013 (deludedly cheered on by fake-“left”-ism like the Stalinist CPGB-ML(Proletarian) and all the Trots. They all denounced the great anti-Western surge’s Muslim Brotherhood majority for being “reactionary Islamist” and not “perfect” democratic socialists, missing the staggering significance of the giant street masses upheaval’s shattering impact on Western capitalism’s grip on the crucial Middle East (not simply oil rich but strategically vital)).

Dozens of countries have also experienced the same in the Third World as nationalist anti-colonialist movements, anti-imperialist independence struggles and elected governments have been toppled by colour revolutions, coups, assassinations and full on wars (though like Vietnam and Korea, not always successful).

Some 400 such interventions by (mostly US) Western imperialism have been made just since World War Two.

Every part of Latin America has been an endless cauldron of US backed and trained military dictatorships and counter-revolutionary conspiracy like the vicious Chile/CIA instigated multi-nation Operation Condor programme of “disappeared” kidnaps, torture and assassination as well as non-stop massacres of tens of thousands in countries like Guatemala and El Salvador.

Haïti, one of the most exploited poverty stricken countries in the world, has seen nothing else but bloody Duvalier dictatorship and then US not-so-secret coups for decades, though now resisting with the confused armed uprisings of the Port-au-Prince slum “gangs”, immediately labelled “criminals” by the West (and much fake-“left” cravenness) as it escalates yet more attempted violent suppression with US drone equipped mercenaries and outside stooge Kenyan police (but failing and facing their own rebellious turmoil at home).

Grenada’s island-in-the-sun socialist revolution was butchered by the sledgehammer-on-a-nut 1983 Reagan invasion (see EPSR Books Vol 12 Grenada), hundreds were killed in the US invasion of Panama in 1989 to suppress its independence aspirations, and the left nationalism in Venezuela, first under Hugo Chávez and then Nicolás Maduro has faced virtually non-stop coup attempts and violent demonstrations whipped up by the local bourgeoisie and their CIA advisors, supplemented with crippling Washington economic sanctions and complicated “democracy” plots.

Similar “lawfare” plots and coups have been non-stop against Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and most weightily Brazil.

Africa has faced the same from Zimbabwe to Angola and Mozambique (and almost Equatorial Guinea in the notorious foiled and never-mentioned British plot backed by Mark Thatcher (and known of by Labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw) – EPSR No 1250 28-09-04) and especially around the mineral and resource riches of the giant Congo, stretching all the way back to the CIA and European organised capture and coup assassination of national liberation leader Patrice Lumumba in 1953, installing decades of brutal dictatorship under Mobutu Sese Seko and then disruptive wars for the last thirty years, led by the US stooge dictator Paul Kagame out of Rwanda, (whose ludicrous 99% votes, and endless dirty assassinations of rivals are never queried by the Western politicians and media – so ready to denounce “totalitarians” when they are anti-imperialists).

The plundering is backed too by the equally Western-installed stooge Yoweri Museveni in next door Uganda (both on Congo’s north-east borders), the latter the long time ally who harboured US military-trained Kagame for years while he plotted the Tutsi elitist takeover of the Hutu ruled Rwanda, (provoking the horrific mass butchery of the 1994 genocide - see Herman & Peterson Politics of Genocide).

War over this giant country continues, with the brutal M23 “insurgency” killing thousands this year to take over key cities in the mineral rich areas on the eastern borders, backed by Kagame (and US support effectively) and siphoning off vast profits through Rwandan capital Kigali.

It goes on, and will continue to go on for as long as the imperialists remain in the saddle.

And nor are things simply “different in the Third World”.

Britain itself has already imposed such fascism in its own (claimed) territory with nearly 30 years of brutal suppression of the dogged and determined Irish nationalist armed struggle in the ripped out colonist enclave of the north, complete with concentration camps (H-blocks), arbitrary mass detention “internment”, night- and day-raid mass terrorising of civilian districts, some of the most brutal torture ever devised (now used by America in its warmongering – see Ian Cobain’s Cruel Britannia); blackmail and bribery run informer networks, random assassination and outright deathsquad killings either with information fed by the state or directly organised and run in secret by bodies like the army’s Force Research Unit or MI5 and MI6.

The infamous “Diplock courts” stripped of juries and the supergrass system of stitched-up “evidence” which made a mockery of justice during that Irish struggle are even now being revived by Labour, under cover of “reviewing the overloaded legal system” to “make it more efficient by removing ‘expensive’ jury trial”.

Even all that now pales to insignificance compared to the fascist measures capitalism is now forced into because none of its world control tyranny has solved its crisis problems.

Nor has its turn to international warmongering, started with the 1999 NATO blitz on Serbia, and blitzing half a dozen countries so far, brought relief.

So now world capitalism has totally abandoned “civilised standards” in its backing for the unspeakable horrors of US/Zionist starvation genocide on Palestine – with all pretence of justice, and humanity now jettisoned and cynical fascist intimidation substituted.

But such is the disastrous impact of this turn to outright barbarity – as the imperialist system rips up the entire century long framework of the bogus “international law” and “human rights” system consolidated and expanded particularly after WW2 to hoodwink the world’s masses during the Cold War and keep them away from demonised “evil communism” (which actually was fighting for such rights for the working class for the first time in history) – it continues to declare itself to be upholding “democracy”.

Nowhere is this more so than in occupied Palestine itself.

The denial of, and justification for, its own atrocities and deliberate population extermination programme by Western armed and backed Zionism, (dutifully parroted by the Western politicians and media) must be one of the greatest “gaslighting” exercises in all history, making the Goebbels “big lie” technique look positively primitive.

But even the “patriotic” forces of imperialism itself are finding these horrors hard to swallow:

A former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) says he saw Israeli soldiers commit war crimes at the aid distribution sites being run by the Israeli-backed American agency.

In a series of interviews, former GHF employee and Green Beret Anthony Aguilar alleged that he saw Israeli soldiers use “indiscriminate” force against civilians at various Gaza aid sites.

“My most frank assessment — I would say that they are criminal,” said Aguilar. “In my entire career, I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.”

“I have never witnessed that in all the places that I have been deployed to war, until I was in Gaza — at the hands of IDF and U.S. contractors,” he continued.

In an interview (with) Democracy Now, Aguilar said the aid sites were “designed as death traps.”

“All four distribution locations were intentionally, deliberately constructed, planned and built in the middle of an active combat zone.

“Those sites were built in the middle of those areas intentionally. It’s not by accident. That, in and of itself, to designate humanitarian distribution sites to service an unarmed, starving population, to build them deliberately in an active combat zone, is a violation of the Geneva Convention protocols,” he continued. “It’s a violation of humanitarian law. And in my opinion, it’s a violation of humanity in general.”

In a conversation with the Israeli anti-Netanyahu group UnXeptable, Aguilar told the story of a starving, barefoot boy who thanked him for food before being killed by Israeli soldiers.

“On May 28, at secure distribution site #2, this young boy, Amir, walks over to me, reaches out and kisses my hand,” explained Aguilar. “This boy is not wearing shoes. His clothes are falling off of him because he is so skinny….He doesn’t have a box, he has half a bag of rice , lentils, and he was thanking us. He walked 12 kilometers to get there … and when he got there he thanked us for the crumbs he got …he kissed me and said ‘thank you.’”

“[Amir] walked back to the group, and then he was shot at with pepper spray, and tear gas, and stunt grenades, and bullets, and he was shot at, at his feet and in the air, and he runs away…and the IDF were shooting at the crowd…Palestinians, civilians, human beings, are dropping to the ground, and Amir was one of them,” he continued. “Amir walked 12 kilometers to get food, got nothing but scraps, thanked us for it, and died.” (See picture).

This week, a group of U.S. Senators led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio a letter calling on the Trump administration to stop funding the GHF and resume support for the UN’s food distribution program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed there is no starvation in Gaza, but President Trump acknowledged the severity of the situation in recent remarks to reporters.

Last week U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Friday that a thousand Palestinians have been killed trying to access food since the end of May.

“We hold video calls with our own humanitarians who are starving before our eyes,” said Guterres.”We will continue to speak out at every opportunity. But words don’t feed hungry children.”

And doctors, aid workers and Palestinian journalists spell out the truth:

I’m writing this from Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, where I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase “skin and bones” doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her. We are witnessing deliberate starvation in Gaza right now.

This is my third time in Gaza since December 2023 as a volunteer surgeon with Medical Aid for Palestinians. I experienced mass casualty events and raised the alarm about malnutrition back in January 2024. But nothing has prepared me for the sheer horror I’m witnessing now: the weaponisation of starvation against an entire population.

The malnutrition crisis has become catastrophic since my last visit. Every day I watch patients deteriorate and die, not from their injuries, but because they are too malnourished to survive surgery. The surgical repairs that we carry out fall to pieces, patients get terrible infections, then they die. It is happening repeatedly, and it is heartbreaking to watch. Four babies have died in the last few weeks in this hospital – not from bombs or bullets, but from starvation.

Families and staff do their best to try to bring in what they can, but there simply isn’t enough food available in Gaza. For infants, we have virtually no baby formula. Children are being given 10% dextrose (sugar water), which has no nutritional value, and often their mothers are too malnourished to breastfeed. When an international colleague tried to bring baby formula into Gaza, Israeli authorities confiscated it.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach is twofold: block food from entering Gaza while leaving desperate civilians no choice but to visit militarised distribution points to receive some limited supplies. Until May, Gaza had more than 400 aid distribution sites where people could access food safely. Now there are just four of these militarised zones in the south where starving families are in constant danger of attack.

I’m hearing about dozens of trauma casualties flooding Gaza’s emergency departments daily – many of them with gunshot wounds from these militarised distribution points. I have operated on boys aged 12 to 15, whose relatives say they were shot while trying to get food for their families. Last week a 12-year-old died on the operating table, shot through the abdomen at what can only be described as a death trap for those seeking basic sustenance.

My colleagues in the emergency department have also reported a disturbing pattern: injuries concentrated on specific body parts on different days – heads, legs, genitals – suggesting deliberate targeting of those body parts.

In recent days, I operated on two women who were shot by quadcopters while sheltering in their tents near one of the locations, according to the people who brought them in. One was breastfeeding her child when she was hit; the second was pregnant. Thankfully, both have survived their injuries so far. These women weren’t even seeking aid – they were simply sheltering in areas that are supposedly “safe” but exposed to indiscriminate fire from the IDF’s weaponised hunger apparatus.

It is not just the patients here who are malnourished, but also healthcare workers. When I first arrived, I barely recognised colleagues I had worked with last year – some had lost 30kg. At lunchtime, some doctors and nurses head towards the distribution sites, knowing they risk death but having no choice if they want to feed their families.

Nasser hospital is the last major functioning hospital in southern Gaza, but we’re operating at breaking point, reeling from previous attacks and overwhelmed by mass casualties, all while facing shortages of everything. Netanyahu’s systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system has funnelled desperate medical needs into this single facility while directly targeting healthcare workers and patients. Just this week, one of our dear theatre nurses was killed in his tent along with his three small children.

I want to be clear – what is being done to Palestinians in Gaza is barbaric and entirely preventable. I cannot believe we have come to a point where the world is watching as the people of Gaza are forced to endure starvation and gunfire, all while food and medical aid sits across the border just miles away from them.

The enforced malnutrition and attacks on civilians will kill thousands more if not stopped immediately. Every day of inaction means more children will die not just from bullets or bombs, but from hunger. A permanent ceasefire, the free and safe flow of aid through the UN-led system, and the lifting of the blockade are needed now – and all can be achieved with political will.

The UK government’s continued complicity in Israel’s atrocities is unconscionable, and I do not want to spend another day operating on children who have been shot and starved by a military our government supports. History will judge not just those who committed these crimes, but those who stood by and watched.

Prof Nick Maynard is a consultant surgeon at Oxford university hospital who has been travelling regularly to Gaza for 15 years.

************

The UN expert who first warned that Israel was orchestrating a campaign of deliberate mass starvation in Gaza more than 500 days ago, has said that governments and corporations cannot claim to be surprised at the horror now unfolding.

“Israel has built the most efficient starvation machine you can imagine. So while it’s always shocking to see people being starved, no one should act surprised. All the information has been out in the open since early 2024,” Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, told the Guardian.

“Israel is starving Gaza. It’s genocide. It’s a crime against humanity. It’s a war crime. I have been repeating it and repeating it and repeating it, I feel like Cassandra,” said Fakhri.

On 9 October 2023 – two days after the deadly Hamas attack – Israel’s then defense minister, Yoav Gallant, declared a “complete siege” of Gaza and said he would halt the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel. By December 2023, Gazans accounted for 80% of the people in the world experiencing catastrophic hunger.

Now, widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease are driving the sharp rise in hunger-related deaths across Gaza, with more than 20,000 children hospitalized for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative that provides real-time data on hunger and famine for the UN and aid groups.

The “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” across the Gaza Strip, the IPC warned in an alert earlier this week.

In an interview with the Guardian published on 28 February 2024, Fakhri said: “We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely, that is the consensus among starvation experts … ??Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian … this is now a situation of genocide.”

[...]In July 2024, a group of UN experts including Fakhri declared a famine after the first deaths from starvation were reported in Gaza. Fakhri also published a detailed report for the UN into Israel’s decades-long control over food production and supplies to Palestinians, a stranglehold which meant 80% of people in Gaza were dependent on aid when Gallant announced the current siege in October 2023.

Yet there has been little or no action to stop Israel starving Palestinians, which it has achieved by systematically destroying local food production (greenhouses, orchards, farmland) and blocking aid – in violation of international law.

“Famine is always political, always predictable and always preventable.

“But to frame the mass starvation as a consequence of the most recent blockade, is a misunderstanding of how starvation works and what’s going on in Gaza. People don’t all of a sudden starve, children don’t wither away that quickly. This is because they have been deliberately weakened for so long. The state of Israel itself has used food as a weapon since its creation. It can and does loosen and tighten its starvation machine in response to pressure; it has been fine-tuning this for 25 years.”

Despite stark images of skeletal Palestinians, the Israeli government and some of its allies have continued to insist that the hunger is the result of logistical problems, not a state policy. Last week Netanyahu said: “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza. There is no starvation in Gaza.”

Unicef is among multiple aid agencies to confirm that malnutrition and starvation have escalated since early March 2025 – when Israel unilaterally violated a ceasefire agreed after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Israel reinstated a total blockade after allowing some aid trucks in during the ceasefire, though UN agencies and charities on the ground said it was never enough to fully meet the needs of the starved, sick and weakened population.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an opaque logistics group backed by Israel and the Trump administration, began operations in May, with armed security provided by private contractors and the Israeli military. It was authorized to replace 400 UN distribution hubs with just four across Gaza, in response to unproven claims that international aid was being diverted by Hamas.

The UN and hundreds of aid groups condemned the move as a weaponization of aid that violated long-established humanitarian norms. On 1 June, Israeli soldiers killed 32 people at GHF sites, and since then more than 1,300 starving Palestinians have been killed trying to access food.

Israel has long sought to discredit and weaken the UN and other international mechanisms including the courts, hostile to its ongoing de facto annexation of Palestinian territories, accusing them of antisemitism.

Along with the crude belligerence of Trump’s devastating tariff wars: famine and war across Africa and the Middle East; hair raising nuclear threats and non-stop NATO/Kiev nazi war on Russia these are developments that can only be understood with a Marxist perspective on monopoly capitalism’s historic demise.

Its 800 year long rise and supremacy over world affairs, exploiting the entire planet, has hit the buffers, trapped by the contradictions in its private ownership and profit system.

Just as three times before (1870, 1914, and 1939) the system is descending into inter-imperialist cutthroat war destruction.

This is World War Three and nothing will stop it until the stinking inhuman and depraved capitalist system is overturned by revolutionary class war.

Until and unless that happens the these monstrous and barbaric developments will get far worse.

They are all aspects of the world’s deepest ever overproduction crisis – the great Catastrophe predicted by Marxist-Leninist science (see box) sliding ever deeper into fascist intimidation and vicious hatred.

These are the only means left (it thinks) for a bankrupt US Empire bourgeoisie to hold on to the sweet delights of extreme power and ever-more monopoly concentrated wealth and privilege.

It is tailed – for the moment – by lesser-fry imperialist powers submissively grovelling to hang on to some share at least of ever more contested world imperialist super-profits as the bourgeois press points out:

The trade deal agreed between Washington and Brussels this week lacks the drama of troops being sent in to recapture one of the world’s key waterways, but it is the EU’s Suez moment all the same. What’s more, European politicians know as much.

Donald Trump said the outcome was “great”, and for the US that was certainly the case, since the EU made all the concessions and got nothing in return. Most European goods exported to the US will face a 15% tariff, while the already small tariffs on US goods entering the EU will be eliminated altogether. European companies have been forced to accept higher costs as the price of access to the world’s biggest market.

That’s by no means all. The EU has also committed itself to $600bn (£450bn) of US investments, $750bn in long-term fossil-fuel energy purchases and to buy more US military kit. Plans for an EU digital services tax that would affect US tech giants had already been dropped.

As far as the financial markets were concerned, it was reason to feel relieved, since this one-sided peace pact removed the threat of a tit-for-tat trade war. It isn’t that economists think tariffs will be good for the global economy, but rather that they feared an even worse outcome. For Brussels, any deal was better than no deal.

But appeasement always has its critics, and condemnation of the deal was swift in coming – particularly from France. François Bayrou, the prime minister, said it was a “dark day” for Europe. His predecessor, Michel Barnier, said the agreement was an admission of weakness.

Posting on X, the entrepreneur and commentator Arnaud Bertrand said the terms of the agreement represented one of the most expensive imperial tributes in history. He added: “This does not even remotely resemble the type of agreements made by two equal sovereign powers. It rather looks like the type of unequal treaties that colonial powers used to impose in the 19th century – except this time, Europe is on the receiving end.”

The US-EU agreement needs to be approved by EU countries, which could be a problem if the hostile French reaction is anything to go by.

Moreover, the deal may prove to be a pyrrhic victory for Trump if, as looks increasingly likely, tariffs increase the cost of goods in the US. Coupled with the clampdown on migration, there is the clear risk that growth will slow and inflation will rise. Share prices on Wall Street are high in expectation that the good times will continue.

But...Europe’s fortunes are tied to those of the US. It needs access to the American market because its economic model relies so heavily on exports. This is particularly true of Germany, which runs large and persistent trade surpluses. German carmakers can probably just about live with 15% tariffs, but they would have been ruined (with) levies of 30%.

Plunging Stock Markets after the tariffs signal the reality on all that for America.

But the trade war defeat forcing the crisis on these rivals means they must squeeze their own populations ever harder, to keep their heads above water.

That can only meaning explosively rising discontent.

And one form that takes is against the grotesque and disgusting genocide being imposed on Palestine, forcing all the bourgeois governments (save the US) to suddenly find a “conscience” after nearly two years of outright support for the Zionist monsters and their utterly depraved fascist butchery of an entire people.

The most grotesque must be “Sir” Keir Starmer’s initial declaration (later back-pedalled but too late) that it was acceptable put the near prison camp of the Gaza strip, isolated by Zionist siege since 2007, under conditions of food and water deprivation, paralleling the Zionists’ overtly stated intent as even pro-Ukraine war former Labourite Owen Jones has said:

Israel’s leaders have said, explicitly, repeatedly, from the very beginning, that they are deliberately starving Gaza’s people. [...] On 9 October 2023, Israel’s then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, announced “a complete siege: no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel”, justified on the grounds: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”. The next day, the Israeli general charged with humanitarian affairs in Gaza and the West Bank – Ghassan Alian – declared that the “citizens of Gaza” were “human beasts” who would suffer “a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

The following week, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, promised “we will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip”. These statements were not reported at all by many western media outlets – or, if they were, it was in passing and with no explanation given about their objectively illegal intent...(otherwise) our media would have been forced to cover Israel’s onslaught as a criminal enterprise, rather than [..]self-defence.

The sudden burst of empty mouthings on a “two state solution” and recognition of a Palestinian “state” is obviously beyond cynicism (and especially when deferred “to September” when tens of thousands more will have starved to death).

Firstly they don’t mean a word of it, disarming horrified public opinion with hollow mouthings.

And secondly as the EPSR has always explained, there is not the remotest hope of a Palestinian state “alongside and in peace with” the Zionist occupation.

Material and class balance conditions mean such an outcome is impossible, has always been impossible and always will be – and would be the grossest injustice anyway if it were implemented, giving the Palestinians just a 22% section of the whole land taken from them by first the high-handed imperialist-dominated “United Nations” “Partition” of 1948 (tragically voted for by dire Stalin-led Soviet revisionism) and then immediate terror-war waged by the new “Israel” to take even more, with a first great ethnic-cleansing “Nakba” expulsion forced by Stern Gang and other massacre forces.

Subsequent wars took Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, still all deemed illegal occupation by the “international community” but without any consequences for the Jewish settler colony.

Conditions for a Palestine state, hemmed in, disarmed without any forces of its own other than the CIA/Zionist trained Quisling Palestinian Authority, make the whole exercise a grotesque joke.

This is just a hypocritical cover for the bourgeoisie and stooges like Starmerism, going along with the US’s arming, funding intelligence and even covert “special forces” military support for the demented Zionists in the overall interest of world imperialist domination.

Only Zionist fanaticism was considered brutally single minded enough to overcome the weakness and uncertainty gripping the entire bourgeois ruling class, hammered by crisis defeat.

They have all been intent on smashing down rising tide of world rebellion and “terrorist” revolt, unstoppably gaining momentum as intractable economic crisis has deepened.

But every effort has failed, despite three decades of utterly savage depravity and massacre from the blitzing of Serbia onwards, through destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya Syria, Yemen, and the turmoil in half a dozen other countries.

The great lurches in the world capitalist economic system at the turn of the century (newly capitalist carpet-bagger Russia economic collapse, Enron bankruptcy, dot.com implosion), already saw explosive developments like the 9/11 World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks – relative pinpricks against the huge US but morale shattering indications of rising Third World anti-imperialist hostility, however barmily expressed.

Blitzing Afghanistan in revenge solved nothing and stirred even more world hatred which the long-planned 2003 Iraq war invasion (after ten years of horrific sanctions siege as brutal as Gaza is now) did not solve either.

Just the opposite; it magnified hugely the terrorist/jihadist recruitment as warned and turned Iraq into cauldron of civil war revolt, eventually forcing the US and others to retreat.

When the unrelenting “surplus” capital crisis lurched again in 2008-9, this time bringing the whole world to the edge of banking and credit finance abyss, the subsequent world austerity impact saw growing insurgency leap to a qualitatively new level, exploding in the massive street revolts of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and most populous Egypt.

That threatened to lose imperialism its grip on the Middle East, the most strategically important region in the world.

Hence the horrors.

But bankrupt imperialism is losing - its real nature now exposed forever and its weakness confirmed. Only missing revolutionary consciousness keeps it afloat.

Build Leninism.

Alan Moss

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The “new” RCP’s bogus “Defence of Lenin” is in reality an attempt to breath new life into tired old Lenin-Trotsky “joint-leadership” fictions and instant “workers’ democracy” fantasies to hide their petty-bourgeois class hatred for Lenin’s proletarian-dictatorship science.

Review: In Defence of Lenin – Volume 2* by Rob Sewall and Alan Woods – Part 2

(*Part one last issue and also Vol 1 review EPSR No 1652)

Woods and Sewall continue to downplay the Bolshevik Party leadership whilst fraudulently boosting Trotsky in their account of the civil war*.

[*Devastating civil war was waged by numerous Russian White counter-revolutionary forces over nearly four years, merging initially with the intervention of armies raised by some 14 imperialist countries which had tried to suppress the 1917 October Revolution.]

Their claim that as Army and Navy Commissar and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council (the supreme military authority), Trotsky proved to be a “great military strategist” is not backed up by their own argument that his “greatness as a military leader consisted in his ability to make full use of morale and political ideas” to motivate the Red Army soldiers. This statement only recognises his undoubted agitational abilities. It says nothing about military strategy.

Nor is this claim backed up by their description of the Commissar’s (ie. Trotsky’s) role, which they claim was “firmly” focussed on “political and propaganda work” but with “final overall control”. Military strategy, or in their words “military leadership and military questions” was, they point out, the responsibility of the Main Commander-in-Chief (p.657).

To ‘demonstrate’ Trotsky’s “military greatness”, they over-emphasise his role in the successful defence of Petrograd against British imperialist-backed Yudenich’s White forces in October 1919. They tendentiously boost Trotsky by giving him the credit for the entire Petrograd campaign (the ex-tsarist officers Colonel Gittis, General Nadezhney and Colonel Kharlamov also played key roles) and by exaggerating its significance, – by suggesting that Trotsky’s “personal intervention” had saved Petrograd and implying that this had rescued the Soviet state:

“The Soviet state had managed to hang on, but at the skin of its teeth” (pp. 644-647).

In fact, Yudenich’s forces were relatively small, and were exhausted by the time they had reached the outskirts of Petrograd, and the British contingent had held back from the final assault. Yudenich would have found it extremely difficult to hold densely populated Petrograd had it fallen, let alone march to Moscow (see Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War).

The main threat at that time came from Denikin in the Southern Front. Lenin’s telegrams show that he insisted on reinforcements being sent from all fronts to support that fight (see telegrams no.435, 441 & 442, vol. 44, Collected Works). Yudenich’s coordinated assault was aimed at supporting Denikin by diverting Soviet reserves from the south. Lenin was keenly aware of this and told Trotsky firmly that Yudenich needed to be defeated quickly so that all efforts could be focussed on defeating Denikin (see telegram no. 449, and Lenin’s Speech to the Students of Sverdlov University, Oct 24, vol. 30).

Also not mentioned is that Trotsky had previously misjudged the situation on the Eastern Front. He had opposed General Sergei Kamenev’s plans for a pursuit of Kolchak forces beyond the Urals, and sacked him. Lenin, through the Central Committee, overruled this, and Kamenev’s counter-offensive successfully crushed Kolchak.

Also left out of the account is that Trotsky was transferred to Petrograd after commanding the Southern Front, where he had felt overwhelmed by the difficulties of mobilising war-weary workers and peasants. As a result of that, the Soviets suffered numerous defeats from Denikin’s forces.

Trotsky was clearly capable of making invaluable contributions when placed under Party control, otherwise he would not have been made Commissar following his sulky Brest-Litovsk resignation, and given a position in the five-member Politburo (alongside Stalin) when it was created in 1919. As well as his highly important agitational work, one key contribution was the crucial organisational role he played in transforming fragmentary Red Guards and militias into a centralised and disciplined regular Red Army. Key to this was his fight to expand the already existing use of tsarist-era military specialists (first introduced by the former tsarist officer M.D. Bonch-Bruevich, not Trotsky) against much Party opposition, and to attach political commissars to military units. This was necessary precisely because the Bolsheviks lacked the skills in military strategy and leadership necessary to defeat the White counter-revolutionary forces. Colonel Gittis, for example, co-ordinated the defence of Petrograd.

These measures were an extension of the Leninist policy of utilising the scientific and technical expertise of bourgeois, and even aristocratic, elements in the management and administration of all sectors of industry and society to develop the new socialist state (under strict proletarian-dictatorship control), whilst educating the proletariat and poor peasantry so that they could eventually be able to take over the roles themselves [see Lenin, Achievements and Difficulties, Apr. 1919].

In fact, overall strategic leadership and direction during the civil war was provided by Lenin, as demonstrated by the hundreds of telegrams contained in volumes 35, 44 and 45 of his Collected Works, including several instructions sent to Trotsky, Stalin and others. It was Lenin who developed and fought for the clear revolutionary line explaining that the proletariat and poor-to-middle peasantry were in an existential class-war struggle against internal and international counter-revolution; and because of this, he insisted on use of the firmest of proletarian-dictatorship measures to enforce discipline. This also led him to prioritise the survival of the new Soviet state at all costs, particularly in the industrial regions of Petrograd and Moscow, over the utopian-defeatist notions of Trotsky and other romantics who pinned all their hopes on exporting the revolution to Europe (as argued for over Brest-Litovsk).

Lenin’s leadership and theoretical grasp also crucially prevented Central Committee disputes from breaking out into open splits whilst the civil war was raging regardless of whatever “factionalism, clique considerations and all kinds of petty jealousy and personal resentment” Woods and Sewall claim were at play. Here, the two authors are insinuating that any rightful distrust that there was within the Bolshevik leadership of ex-tsarist officers who had persecuted them for the previous 20 years, and any healthy wariness towards Trotsky who only joined the Bolsheviks at the last minute after 14 years in opposition, had sinister motives.

This twisted rigmarole is aimed solely at slandering Stalin and those he worked closely with (the alleged “Tsaritsyn Opposition”). They do this by deceitfully, and cartoonishly, asserting that their understandable distrust, especially after examples of bourgeois officers colluding with the White counter-revolutionaries were uncovered, was consciously “cultivated” and “groomed” by Stalin to create

“a nest of cronies and yes-men”; a “preparatory school for Stalin’s intrigue against Trotsky” that would “culminate in the complete destruction of Lenin’s Party.” (pp. 658-661).

The sound concerns of Stalin, Zinoviev and others that Trotsky placed too much faith in the former generals, and their justified fears that the ideological influence of political commissars over these officers was not strong enough to prevent counter-revolutionary conspiracies and defections, led the Eighth Party Congress (Mar. 1919) to impose further party controls.

Although the substantive argument over the use of military specialists was, with Lenin’s backing, carried in Trotsky’s favour, measures were also introduced to strengthen the role of political commissars, increase the power of the Party within the Red Army through a centralised Political Directorate, and expand the training of Red Commanders so that they could eventually take over the leadership of the army. These made a considerable contribution to the Red Army’s eventual victory over the Whites but are not mentioned in the book despite its discussing the dispute.

In the same month, and as a result of military defeats in Kharkov and Tsaritsyn, the Central Committee replaced Trotsky’s preferred commander, Jukums Vatsetis with S. Kamenev. As a result, and as an indication of the contemptuous tone Trotsky took throughout the dispute, Trotsky again threatened to resign rather than to submit to a majority CC decision, but was this time rebuked. This is also left out of the book.

Woods and Sewell finish off their chapter on the Red Army by exaggerating and generalising a statement made by Lenin in which he referred to “monstrous and shameful” rumours of differences between him and Trotsky “spread by the landowners and capitalists” [Lenin, Reply to a Peasant’s Question, February 1919, Volume 35] in a way that implies that they were united forever more:

In reality there was a close political bond and working relationship between the two men. The revolution of 1917 had brought them together. Their paths had crossed and there was a meeting of minds. Nothing remained of the differences that had kept them apart in the past. Lenin often expressed the warmest praise for Trotsky’s military achievements, and many of Trotsky’s operational instructions carry a note of Lenin’s approval.(p.677)

This is a deceitful attempt to cover up not only the significance Trotsky’s 14-year-long campaign of hostility to Leninism prior to joining the Bolsheviks belatedly, and his subsequent patchy “support”, but also his frenzied “everything-is-rotten” opposition to Bolshevism that soon emerged in the trade union dispute that erupted as the civil war was ending. This deepened further into rampant subjective factionalism in his 1923 defeatist New Course bid for leadership while Lenin was dying, and very quickly degenerated in into calls for outright counter-revolution (or a “political revolution” in deranged Trot-speak) against the Soviet workers state (see EPSR Books Vol 5 Against Trotsky’s Permanent Counter-Revolution).

The two authors attempt to wriggle Trotsky out of his hysterical “everything-is-rotten” response to some bureaucratic clumsiness on these trade union matters allegedly perpetrated by Tomsky and Losovsky by light-mindedly dismissing the dispute he started as an “ephemeral” squabble of no real consequence.

The 1920-21 trade union dispute was deadly serious. It revolved around the need to rebuild the Soviet economy after the civil war. By 1920, the railway and transport system, crucial for the revival of the economy, was in a state of collapse and Trotsky was assigned to lead it. He formed the Tsektran (the Central Transport System) in September, and modelled it on the wartime system of state-coordinated militarised labour. Following the successful rehabilitation of the railways, Trotsky advocated a “shake-up” of various trade unions along the same lines, with elected trade union leaders replaced by state-appointed officials who would impose labour discipline and control the economy.

Lenin demonstrated that Trotsky’s approach was a dangerous over-bureaucratisation that threatened to split the trade unions. And, because the Bolsheviks were in a minority within the unions in a peasant-dominated society, it also threatened bring down the Soviet workers state.

Lenin explained that the main role of the trade unions in the proletarian dictatorship is to participate in (but not control) the economic management of the workers state; and to train, educate and mobilise workers as “schools of Communism” so that they are gradually able to take over management of the whole of its economic life. Such activities expand workers’ democracy and are the chief means of combatting bureaucratisation, but they do not eliminate the use of coercion where necessary. After an initial oversight, Lenin backed Rudzutak’s practical theses on the trade union question (see Once Again on the Trade Unions, Jan 1921, for example).

Look at how the authors slyly paraphrase Lenin, out of context, to pretend that this dispute was a pointless waste of time:

This violent eruption was, on the one hand, the result of growing objective problems facing the country and, on the other, the impasse of the old policy of War Communism. After a period of sacrifices, struggle and regimentation, people were exhausted, frustrated and at the end of their tether. These frustrations soon spilled over into this fractious dispute, in which all the accumulated tensions were expressed in a wildly exaggerated form. All the separate streams of discontent found their expression in the ‘trade union controversy’.

The whole affair was exacerbated by the irresponsible actions of ‘Left Communists’ and the vicious intrigues of the Mensheviks, who joined the fray, loudly demanding ‘freedom of labour’. Once again, Bukharin became the champion of the ‘Lefts’.

Lenin was very alarmed at the turn of events. He believed that the debate, which centred around the caricature of a discussion, was only serving to drive the Party into a blind alley and raise the danger of a split. Lenin criticised both Trotsky and Bukharin. He blamed Trotsky for mixing up issues, while he attacked Bukharin’s position for light-mindedly playing with ‘left’ sounding slogans, which only served to confuse and polarise the dispute.

They were, in effect, debating in a closed circle hemmed in by an objective situation not of their making. It was this that coloured the whole controversy and became a lightning-rod for everyone’s frustrations.

Lenin saw the affair as an enormous waste of time and energy, generating a colossal amount of heat and little light, when far more important things were at stake. He viewed the runaway debate as an illness that had suddenly gripped the party: “The Party is sick”, he complained. “The Party is down with a fever.”

Faced with an exceptionally difficult situation, Lenin correctly felt that a debate over trade unions was an entirely avoidable and inadmissible luxury.

In reality, the whole business was leading nowhere, which only served to obscure the impasse over economic policy. Even Lenin admitted the debate got the better of him and he was drawn into the arguments. He said that he “allowed himself in the course of the dispute certain obviously exaggerated and erroneous sallies…” (pp728-731)

The “erroneous sallies” quote at the end is left hanging in the air to suggest that entire dispute was just a lot of hot air of no consequence; and that Lenin’s harsh criticism was an over-the-top response to Trotsky for simply “mixing things up”(What “things”???). Woods and Sewell quote this to conceal the real issue – Trotsky’s dangerous factionalism (exacerbated by factional attacks from Bukharin, Shlyapnikov and others) – which, as Lenin argued, threatened to bring down Soviet power. Some mix up!!!

They do this in a number of ways:

1. They fail to explain that Lenin was referring to a specific Central Committee plenum that took place on 9th Nov. 1920 in which Lenin and Trotsky presented opposing drafts on the trade union question. By doing this, they misleadingly generalise the comments to imply that Lenin was suggesting that his contributions to the entire debate (which continued until the Party Congress in Mar. 1921) were “exaggerated” and “mistaken”. In fact, Lenin’s comments only referred to the initial stages of the dispute (see Lenin quote below).

2.The “obviously exaggerated and erroneous sallies” quote is a piece of trickiness anyway. Woods and Sewall take this from an obscure alleged translation E H Carr made of a Russian language version of The Party Crisis (Jan. 1921). The tone is different from the commonly accepted English translation as found in volume 32 of Lenin’s Collected Works. This translates it as

“a number of obviously exaggerated and therefore mistaken “attacks”.

Carr’s translation implies that Lenin was admitting to sudden outbursts against Trotsky that were both exaggerated and factually wrong. The Collected Works more accurately quotes Lenin as acknowledging that his early confrontational tone had led to some legitimate points being seen by some as incorrectly overstated, but he disputed any interpretation of his argument as “attacks” by putting this in inverted commas. Woods and Sewall had read the English version as that is where they took “the Party is sick” quote from.

4. By the time of the 10th Party Congress in March, Lenin was arguing that what some claimed be “an unavoidable exaggeration in the heat of the controversy” and even “intimidation” “a few months earlier” (ie. in November) had actually proved to be extremely prescient, - the Party crisis stirred up by Trotsky was become so dangerous that it threatened to overturn working class rule and the proletarian dictatorship.

5. They indulge in some more sly quote-chopping again, this time from Lenin’s Congress report, to pompously suggest that Lenin had

“admitted that he let the debate get the better of him”.

In fact, the dispute was becoming so serious that the Congress voted in favour of a resolution from Lenin calling for the extraordinary measure of banning factions completely, and for the first time ever, giving the Central Committee the power to defend itself from factionalism by expelling from the Party any party member, including any member of the CC (which included Trotsky). The two authors ignore this completely.

Because of the authors' fraudulent dismissal of the dispute and their sick distortion of Lenin’s position, it is worth providing the “attack” quote from The Party Crisis (Jan 1921) in full alongside the “the Party is sick” comment. In it, Lenin points out that the dispute started with Trotsky’s out-of-the-blue “shake up” demands, which threatened to split the trade unions and the Party at a time when the new workers’ state was battling to survive the harsh consequences of the civil war, - and thereby threatened the collapse of the Soviet republic. He also demonstrated how the Party should argue through differences to a correct conclusion in a discipled, scientific way:

The pre-Congress discussion is in full swing. Minor differences and disagreements have grown into big ones, which always happens when someone persists in a minor mistake and balks at its correction, or when those who are making a big mistake seize on the minor mistake of one or more persons.

That is how disagreements and splits always grow. That is how we “grew up” from minor disagreements to syndicalism, which means a complete break with communism and an inevitable split in the Party if it is not healthy and strong enough to purge itself of the malaise.

We must have the courage to face the bitter truth. The Party is sick. The Party is down with the fever. The whole point is whether the malaise has affected only the “feverish upper ranks”, and perhaps only those in Moscow, or the whole organism. And if the latter is the case, is it capable of healing itself completely within the next few weeks, before the Party Congress and at the Party Congress, making a relapse impossible, or will the malaise linger and become dangerous?

What is it that needs to be done for a rapid and certain cure? All members of the Party must make a calm and painstaking study of 1) the essence of the disagreements and 2) the development of the Party struggle. A study must be made of both, because the essence of the disagreements is revealed, clarified and specified (and very often transformed as well) in the course of the struggle, which, passing through its various stages, always shows, at every stage, a different line-up and number of combatants, different positions in the struggle, etc. A study must be made of both, and a demand made for the most exact, printed documents that can be thoroughly verified. Only a hopeless idiot will believe oral statements. If no documents are available, there must be an examination of witnesses on both or several sides and the grilling must take place in the presence of witnesses.

Let me outline the essence of the disagreements and the successive stages in the struggle, as I see them.

Stage one. The Fifth All-Russia Trade Union Conference November 2-6. The battle is joined. Trotsky and Tomsky are the only Central Committee ’’combatants’’. Trotsky lets drop a “catchy phrase” about “shaking up” the trade unions. Tomsky argues very heatedly. The majority of the Central Committee members are on the fence. The serious mistake they (and I above all) made was that we “overlooked” Rudzutak’s theses, The Tasks of the Trade Unions in Production, adopted by the Fifth Conference. That is the most important document in the whole of the controversy.

Stage two. The Central Committee Plenum of November 9. Trotsky submits his “draft theses”, The Trade Unions and Their Future Role, advocating the “shake-up” policy camouflaged or adorned with talk of a “severe crisis” gripping the trade unions, and their new tasks and methods. Tomsky, strongly supported by Lenin, considers that in view of Tsektran’s irregularities and bureaucratic excesses it is the “shake-up” that is the crux of the whole controversy. In the course of it, Lenin makes a number of obviously exaggerated and therefore mistaken “attacks”, which produces the need for a “buffer group”, and this is made up of ten members of the Central Committee (the group includes Bukharin and Zinoviev, but neither Trotsky nor Lenin). It resolves “not to put the disagreements up for broad discussion”, and, cancelling Lenin’s report (to the trade unions), appoints Zinoviev as the rapporteur and instructs him to “present a business-like and non-controversial report”.

[Note that the “attack” comment comes in his description of stage two of the dispute. Lenin outlines three subsequent stages, and all of this comes before further developments that arose after he wrote the article. He clearly was not suggesting that? everything he said throughout the dispute was “exaggerated and mistaken”, as Woods and Sewell imply by leaving their quote hanging in the air without explanation. Lenin then accuses Trotsky of taking a bureaucratic approach to the trade union question.]

Trotsky’s theses are rejected. Lenin’s theses are adopted in its final form, the resolution is adopted by ten votes to four (Trotsky, Andreyev, Krestinsky and Rykov). And this resolution advocates “sound forms of the militarisation of labour”, condemns “the degeneration of centralism and militarised forms of work into bureaucratic practices, petty tyranny, red-tape”, etc. Tsektran is instructed to “take a more active part in the general work of the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions, being incorporated in it on an equal footing with other trade union bodies.

The Central Committee sets up a trade union commission and elects Comrade Trotsky to it. He refuses to work on the commission, magnifying by this step alone his original mistake, which subsequently leads to factionalism. Without that step, his mistake (in submitting incorrect theses) remained a very minor one, such as every member of the Central Committee, without exception, has had occasion to make.

[Trotsky’s factionalising refusal to work on the commission after losing the vote follows on from his previous loser-resignation posturings over Brest-Litovsk and during the Civil War (see above) and further emphasises his lack of party spirit and hostility towards party discipline when applied to him.]

Stage three. The conflict between the water transport workers and Tsektran in December. The Central Committee Plenary Meeting of December 7. It is no longer Trotsky and Lenin, but Trotsky and Zinoviev who are the chief “combatants”.As chairman of the trade union commission, Zinoviev inquires into the December dispute between the water transport workers and Tsektran. The Central Committee Plenary Meeting of December 7. Zinoviev makes a practical proposal for an immediate change in the composition of Tsektran. This is opposed by a majority of the Central Committee. Rykov goes over to Zinoviev’s side. Bukharin’s resolution—the substantive part of which is three-quarters in favour of the water transport workers, while the preamble, rejecting the proposal to “reconstruct” the trade unions “from above”(§3), approves of the celebrated “industrial democracy”(§5)—is adopted. Our group of Central Committee members is in the minority, being opposed to Bukharin’s resolution chiefly because we consider the “buffer” a paper one; for Trotsky’s non-participation in the trade union commission’s work actually implies a continuation of the struggle and its transfer outside the Central Committee. We propose that the Party Congress be convened on February 6, 1921. That is adopted. The postponement to March 6 was agreed to later, on the demand of the outlying areas.

Stage four. The Eighth Congress of Soviets. On December 25, Trotsky issues his “platform pamphlet”, The Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions. From the standpoint of formal democracy, Trotsky had an uncontested right to issue his platform, for on December 24 the Central Committee had permitted free discussion. From the standpoint of revolutionary interest, this was blowing up the mistake out of all proportion and creating a faction on a faulty platform. The pamphlet quotes from the Central Committee resolution of December 7 only that part which refers to “industrial democracy” but does not quote what was said against “reconstruction from above”.The buffer created by Bukharin on December 7 with Trotsky’s aid was wrecked by Trotsky on December 25. The pamphlet from beginning to end is shot through with the “shake-up” spirit. Apart from its intellectualist flourishes (“production atmosphere”, “industrial democracy”), which are wrong in theory and in practice fall within the concept, ambit and tasks of production propaganda, it fails to indicate any “new” “tasks or methods” that were to gild or camouflage or justify the “shake-up”.

Stage five. The discussion before thousands of responsible Party workers from all over Russia at the R.C.P. group of the Eighth Congress of Soviets on December 30. The controversy flares up to full blast. Zinoviev and Lenin on one side, Trotsky and Bukharin on the other. Bukharin wants to play the “buffer”, but speaks only against Lenin and Zinoviev, and not a word against Trotsky. Bukharin reads out an excerpt from his theses (published on January 16), but only that part which says nothing about the rupture with communism and the switch to syndicalism. Shlyapnikov (on behalf of the Workers’ Opposition[1]) reads out the syndicalist platform, which Trotsky had demolished beforehand (thesis 16 of his platform) and which (partly, perhaps, for that reason) no one is inclined to take seriously.

In my opinion, the climax of the whole discussion of December 30 was the reading of Comrade Rudzutak’s theses. Indeed, Comrades Trotsky and Bukharin, far from being able to object to them, even invented the legend that the “best part” of the theses had been drawn up by members of Tsektran — Holtzmann, Andreyev and Lyubimov. And that is why Trotsky humorously and amiably twitted Lenin on his unsuccessful “diplomacy”, by which, he said, Lenin had wanted to “call off or disrupt” the discussion, and find a “lightning conductor”, “accidentally catching hold of Tsektran instead of the lightning conductor”.

The legend was exploded that very day, December 30, by Rudzutak, who pointed out that Lyubimov “did not exist” on the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions, that in its presidium Holtzmann had voted against these theses, and that they had been drawn up by a commission consisting of Andreyev, Tsiperovich and himself.[2]

But let us for a moment assume that Comrades Trotsky and Bukharin’s legend is true. Nothing so completely defeats them as such an assumption. For what is the conclusion if the “Tsektranites” had inserted their “new” ideas into Rudzutak’s resolution, if Rudzutak had accepted them, if all the trade unions had adopted this resolution (November 2-6!), and if Bukharin and Trotsky have nothing to say against it?

It is that all of Trotsky’s disagreements are artificial, that neither he nor the “Tsektranites” have any “new tasks or methods”, and that everything practical and substantive had been said, adopted and decided upon by the trade unions, even before the question was raised in the Central Committee.

If anyone ought to be taken thoroughly to task and “shaken up”, it is not the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions but the Central Committee of the R.C.P., for having “overlooked” Rudzutak’s theses, a mistake which allowed an altogether empty discussion to flare up. There is nothing to cover up the mistake of the Tsektranites (which is not an excessive one but is, in essence, a very common one, consisting in some exaggeration of bureaucracy). What is more, it needs to be rectified, and not covered up, toned down or justified. That’s all there is to it.

The Party Crisis, January 1921, vol. 32

(To be continued) Phil Waincliffe

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