THE CLASS CHARACTER OF CHINA

A discussion on FaceBook. Mine is the final comment.

DB:  Alan the Spart family are about the only groups that still hold to China being a DWS. Surely you recognise the long process of restoration of the LOV starting in the villages in 78, extending to the SOEs and SEZs in the 80s and becoming prevalent in the 90s and 2000 as China joined the WTO and rapidly expanded into the global market. Restoration was only possible because it did defeat workers opposition. The SOE workers fighting mass sackings in the 80s were defeated. The students and intellectuals fighting the corrupt party officials taking backhanders from capitalism were defeated at Tienanmen in 89. The CCP at the 14th Congress in 92 was then able to announce the adoption of the LOV and hence its defence of capitalist social relations. At that point the class character of the state changed. Your position is hardly different from the Maoists today who see China as still socialist because of the CP rules behind a veil of 'market socialist' ideology. They are dangerously deluded and so are you.
 A G:  So you have accepted that reformism in reverse has occurred in China with a state power seamlessly changing its class nature...
 D B: The defeats of workers in the late 80s and in the 1989 crisis were not 'reforms' but a series of counter-revolutions that destroyed the remaining potential of workers and peasants to stop the restorationists who by 1992 were able to change ithe class character of the state marking the decisive victory of the counter-revolution. From that point on workers and peasants would have to fight for a socialist revolution against a capitalist state.

CM: Sorry Dave, but the Sparts aren't the only ones to see China as a DWS or hold that neither a bourgeois counter-revolution or a restoration of capitalism has taken place. The only real historical parallel (ie guide) we have to  the process of restoration is the USSR. There we have seen extreme political degeneration take place in the late 20s and the 30s, with much bloodshed, and we have a Marxist analysis of the process provided by Trotsky in the Revolution Betrayed. Economic and full-scale bourgeois restoration took place formally, with the legal abolition of the workers state, in 1991.

Now, if we are to use this real historical development in our analysis of world events the first thing we must do is take note that even after a full-scale quasi-fascist political counter-revolution in the Soviet Union (Trotsky's characterization, not mine), the socio-economic foundations of the workers state were strong enough to hold back full-scale restoration (ie economic and social counter-revolution for six whole decades counting from 1930.

The character of this socio-economic counter-revolution is a NEW phenomenon. It's HISTORICALLY UNPRECEDENTED. And we have not yet had a serious full-scale Marxist analysis of it.

What we can say prima facie (just on the face of things) is that the working class has been hit in every aspect of its life by the restored bourgeois-capitalist state. Health, welfare, education, culture, security, legal rights (!!), working conditions, employment, exploitation of labour. Things weren't good under Stalinism (in fact they were fucking awful), but we have seen that there has been plenty of scope for further and more brutal deterioration.

The shocking thing for most of us (as Marxists) was that the counter-revolutionary coup was radically different from bourgeois counter-revolutionary coups we have witnessed - the Kissinger-Pinochet coup in Chile is paradigmatic.

Since the Stalinist bureaucratic counter-revolution was partial (ie political) and "peaceful", we should perhaps have been prepared to expect a similar chain of events during the bourgeois counter-revolution. The bloodshed and suffering came after the coup, not during it.

And the bourgeois counter-revolution was accompanied by an uprising of the people against the bureaucracy. The people helped throw the baby of the workers state out with the filthy bath-water of the counter-revolutionary regime. This is hugely paradoxical, but it's a logical consequence of the hatred aroused among workers and oppressed people in general by a repressive regime.

The bureaucracy paved the way for the socio-economic counter-revolution, but it only came to fruition after decades of deliberate neglect and mismanagement.

OK, so what has this got to do with China?

Everything. The Chinese revolution wiped out capitalism on the mainland, but the workers state it created was run from the outset by a counter-revolutionary bureaucracy - hence the term Deformed Workers State.

The rule of the bureaucracy as a bureaucracy managing (in its deformed and counter-revolutionary way) the new socio-economic system as a national whole has NOT CHANGED FUNDAMENTALLY. The bureaucracy as a massive whole is still VERY MUCH IN CHARGE. And it is supported by the army and militia which of course form an integral part of the bureaucracy.

What we need to understand is that THE BASIC INTERESTS OF THIS MASSIVE BUREAUCRACY  in the current world situation of capitalist crisis and political degeneration ARE NOT SERVED ONE JOT BY A FULL-SCALE BOURGEOIS-CAPITALIST SOCIO-ECONOMIC RESTORATION. They are doing extremely well thank you very much as things are now. THE MASS OF THE CHINESE BUREAUCRACY - and they are much more secure in their positions than any Soviet bureaucrats were - HAS EVERYTHING TO LOSE AND NOTHING TO GAIN FROM A FULL-SCALE RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM IN CHINA.

In my view this is the clearest description of the current situation in China. There is a political regime fundamentally deformed from the start, and extreme economic deformation. This economic deformation cannot be described as fundamental in any Marxist sense however. Yet. To become fundamental a real socio-economic counter-revolution is needed, and that hasn't happened yet.

It is impossible to imagine the horrors of a full-scale restoration in China with its massive but submerged class tensions (a circumstance note by Trotsky in relation to the Soviet Union in the Revolution Betrayed) and the extreme and murderous poverty lurking under the surface like dragons in the Yangtze River.

One more crucial factor is the HISTORICAL TIME SCALE involved. The USSR survived as a workers state for six decades despite the pressures brought to bear on it by an overwhelmingly hostile and aggressive imperialist world and the catastrophic mistakes of the Stalinist regime - the victory of Nazism in Germany and the Second World War, to only take the most obvious and appalling examples of this.

CHINA, after (say) two decades of similar but nowhere near as extreme pressure, has not been politically or economically threatened as a state by imperialism since the seventies. Imperialism has been in full crisis since then, completely unstable and completely dependent on destruction and global oppression for its survival. The only reason it was able to push the Soviet Union over the brink was the total destruction of the organizational and political independence and sense of identity of the working class achieved by the bureaucracy over seven extremely harsh decades.

The arena of the world class struggle today is determined by the growing decrepitude and desperation of imperialism, and the growing power and prosperity of China. (India is in the middle and Brazil is looking on, so to speak.)

While the nature of the world class struggle - as Trotsky stated in the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International - is chiefly characterized by the lack of revolutionary leadership in the working class.

As I see it, we have to see this, acknowledge the EXTREME POLITICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS in play, and realize that THE QUESTION OF CHINA IS ABSOLUTELY CENTRAL IN THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE AND OUR PART IN IT. WE MUST APPLY REVOLUTIONARY DIALECTICS TO UNDERSTAND AN UNPRECEDENTED WORLD SITUATION. Only then will we take the struggle forward and move beyond 1950.

Barcelona - Real Madrid, Copa del Rey, 25 Jan 2012

What a match!
RM like a hurricane sending non-stop bolts of lightning screaming down on Barcelona. Barça like a flock of seabirds weaving their way through the raging elements to peck out the eye of the storm god.
I've never seen Madrid press so high and hard, or Barcelona pass with such speed and precision under such close and aggressive marking.
No time for showboating, and precious little time to think at all. Ronaldo without the preening! Özil like a mercurial mix of Messi and Beckham (!). Puyol's one-man drive down the whole pitch! Kaká on form! Xavi and Xabi playing blinders. Pepé getting his come-uppance from Messi. Ramos everywhere, Pinto running the gamut, Piqué strong and supple, Casillas requiring every goal against him to be a miracle...
And Danny Alves rounding it all off with that miracle goal.
Now just imagine being part of all this in the flesh!
What a match...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jan/25/barcelona-real-madrid-copa-del-rey

What to do when they smack us down

The following was posted on Facebook:

S M

aren't these companies supposed to obtain permits before they can proceed to fracking? shouldn't those permits detail the hazards the local population will be exposed to? when are we going to consider the precautionary principle?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-09/fracking-moratorium-urged-by-u-s-doctors-until-health-studies-conducted.html

Fracking Moratorium Urged as Doctors Call for Health Study

www.bloomberg.com

The U.S. should declare a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in populated areas until the health effects are better understood, doctors said at a conference on the drilling process.

I commented:

S - just asking questions like this isn't enough. The answer is "of course", followed by "so???". They've got to have their power to disregard humanity (and the world) removed, by force if necessary. They *never* hesitate to use force to further their ends. One example should be enough to demonstrate this: the US-engineered Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973 - copper. They use force (preferably the threat of force, but that's just icing on the cake) to keep us and our interests out of power. When did you ever see an election where power over the economic structure of society was an issue? Or if there was, where it was allowed to take place, or if it still did, where the result was allowed to stand? Or, if the result stood, where the issue wasn't finally decided by force? Again Latin America provides a myriad examples. "If voting could change the system, it would be illegal." When they butcher and torture our families and friends and destroy our communities, it doesn't help to stand by and weep. Libya. Syria.




S M responded:

i hear you. is there a peaceful way, though?

I replied:

Nope. Never has been. No system has changed without the violent ejection of those profiting from it. Today we have a big problem. Previous system revolutions have started piecemeal - you could see a tide rising around the rocks - like the welling capitalist enclaves under slavery (in Rome say) and in the bourgeois city-states of Italy after the fall of the Roman Empire. Today the bourgeois capitalist system is entrenched worldwide and has to be overcome on a world scale - this is a much greater challenge. This doesn't mean every country all at once - the October Revolution and the post-ww2 revolutions showed us that. But capitalism will keep savaging humanity until the non-capitalist socialist system dominates the world economy. If previous oppressive systems were rocks swallowed up by a tide, capitalism is a pressure cooker (goatskin bottle) that will explode from the pressure building up inside it. The better the precision we use in cutting our way out, the less destructive the explosion will be. Which means that the more we know about this process, the better our chances - both of getting out and in fact of surviving at all as a civilized species.

Om svenska skolan - on Swedish education

En mycket vass artikel av lärarförbundets ordförande om den svenska skolan efter 20 år av kommunalisering och privatisering:

http://www.expressen.se/debatt/1.2660199/metta-fjelkner-bjorklunds-svek-ar-farligt-for-sverige

En slö och trög och infam (han har mage att åberopa Vygotsky!!) reaktion på verkligheten som ligger till grund för Metta F:s artikel -- dvs på SVT:s dokumentärserie 'Världens bästa skitskola' -- finns här:

http://johankant.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/varldens-basta-skitskola-del-1-kommentar-2

Min korthuggna kommentar till denna reaktion:

Mycket korthugget, tyvärr:
1. Om man ska ha betyg ska de vara relativa. "Absoluta" betyg funkar INTE. I England har de funnits (bokstäver o allt) mycket länge, och betygsstegen befolkas av passande socialgrupp, inget annat. Absoluta betyg kräver att lärarna har mycket god insikt i ämnet och lärarna har inte det. Dessutom är fokus omöjlg i relation till absoluta betyg. Relativa betyg utgår däremot från att de flesta barn är normala (38% treor) och att bättre och sämre prestationer är avvikande - mycket bra och mycket dåliga prestationer är mycket avvikande (7% var femmor och ettor). Lärare klarar att se prestationsskillnader mellan elever bättre än de klarar att bedöma elevernas insiktsgrader. Särskilt när de har standardprov till hjälp.
2. Skolan är utslagsmaskin lika mycket som utvecklingsmaskin. Alla betygssystem bidrar till utslagning. Relativa betyg är öppnare och tydligare när det gäller denna funktion. Barnen sorteras i förhållande till varandra som grupp, som socialt kollektiv. Absoluta betyg ger sken av att barn bedöms i relation till en absolut kunskapsmängd. Förljuget hyckleri både i relation till skolans utslagnings- och sorteringsfunktion och till kunskap och inlärning som kultur- och samhällsgärning.
3. En del av mina fd kollegor (jag var gru-lärare i Norra Botkyrka under många år) trodde (i sin utopiska enfald) att kommunalisering plus absoluta betyg skulle tvinga skolpolitikerna att förse skolan med de medel som behövdes för att möta elevernas utbildningsbehov. Nu vet de att verkligheten inte fungerar så.
4. Min egen karriär som lärare sammanfaller med yrkets fullständiga nedgång och skolans kollaps - från en institution med hög allmän kunskapsnivå som gav de flesta förutsättningar att fortsätta ett steg till i en utbildning, till en rad institutioner med låg ojämlik kunskapsnivå där många inte får med sig förutsättningarna för att gå vidare i en utbildning. Jag har alltså bevittnat det statistiska förfallet med egna ögon, och känt slagen på min egen rygg.
5. Dagens skola betjänas av tidsstudieterrade lönesättningslismande lärarhjon. Den leds av - tja - folk som tycker att kronor och ören är de enda argument som behövs. Och planeras och styrs av ideologiskt förblindade vinstgynnare.
6. Kontentan? Skolan formas av samhället, samhället formas inte av skolan. Ska vi ändra skolan (och därmed våra barns möjlighet till allsidig kunskaps- kultur- och samarbetsutveckling) så ska vi ändra på samhället.

Judging China using western economic criteria

China is different - as I argue below in a FaceBook discussion

China's epic hangover begins - Telegraph

www.telegraph.co.uk

China's credit bubble has finally popped. The property market is swinging wildly from boom to bust, the cautionary exhibit of a BRIC's dream that is at last coming down to earth with a thud.

December 15, 2011 at 10:53am

Choppa Morph China can't be judged using western economic criteria. In the first place western economic theory is bollocks - they can't understand their own economy (nation-based imperialism and world capitalism) for starters - just look at the mess in the US and Europe that they are helpless before and can't give any coherent explanation for. In the second place - and I assert this with tremendous confidence - China is not fundamentally capitalist. It's still a deformed workers state. The Stalinist USSR degenerated monstrously in the political field, less in the economic. China is monstrously deformed economically, less in the political field (Trotsky made direct comparisons with fascism, and was right - this can't be done with China, however much we detest its repression.
So it's a proto-socialist state that is mismanaging this appallingly - cos it doesn't understand or want to understand Marx's economic theory. But as such it isn't subject to capitalist laws of investment or credit. Above all it doesn't need to subject itself to western-style demands for short and medium term returns on infrastructural/large-scale productive investment. The USSR outperformed all the imperialists in terms of pave of development throughout the 30s. (Good stuff on this in The Revolution Betrayed by Trotsky, of course.)
Mistakes will be made and losses and lurches - how not?! - but they will have nothing   the effect such things have in the imperialist world.
If China fucks up it will be because of political action by the top bureaucracy changing horses and selling out to imperialism - as in the USSR. I don't think the conditions for this are present now, for lots of reasons. The most obvious one at the moment is that imperialism is an visibly stinking and bubbling economic cesspool and who would voluntarily jump into that? The top bureaucrats can do very well thank you expanding their present positions as is.

December 15, 2011 at 10:53am ·   ·  1

Kriya Zur I don't think real estate and "property market" constitutes fixed capital investments... That is allowed greater flexibility in China than fixed Capital investments . Additionally, since land below the structure is all nationalized in China the real estate market appears very different than what it does in India which also means that the property market "swindling" in China would have much lesser effect

December 15, 2011 at 11:58am · 

R H S ‎> since land below the structure is all nationalized in China...
Just   in Australia....

December 15, 2011 at 12:06pm · 

Kriya Zur Eminent domain ?

December 15, 2011 at 12:07pm · 

Kriya Zur ‎@Robert : What acc. to you would be non-capitalist ownership of land then ?

December 15, 2011 at 12:24pm · 

R H S Not sure if state ownership is necessarily non-capitalist. In Australia you only can rent land, not buy. This gives income to the state and a certain 'grip' on real estate, but the overall effect does not seem to be very different from owning land and pay taxes over it perceived value.

December 15, 2011 at 12:45pm · 

Kriya Zur That still doesn't answer my question. Presuming that government ownership of land is merely another form of capitalism where private property technically doesn't exist, what then IS non-capitalist property ? Also there's a contradiction and vagueness in your comment you say that the government has a "grip" over real estate but then say that "the overall effects don't seem to be very different from owning land and pay taxes over it perceived value" . The contradiction is that there is no ownership of land by private persons and all land is owned by the government so how is the tenant able to SELL the land which he does not own ?

December 15, 2011 at 12:57pm · 

R H S The very word property is a capitalist concept, so I'm at a loss what you're looking for.
When the stae owns all land, the possesor of a certain piece of land does not sell, it, but just passes the lease contract to somebody else. He can charge whatever he  s, providing he finds a candidate. I assume however that 'the state' (/municipality/whatever) has a veto. Not very different from the western concept where the state may veto or regulate the *use* of any land, whoever the owner.

December 15, 2011 at 1:04pm · 

O C China is not so strong than we believe. Not all people live well. There is a big difference between towns and country. The last people live   Mao´s times.

December 15, 2011 at 3:11pm · 

Adhiraj Bose ‎@Robert : There cannot not be a Socialist property that is an impossibility. Every social form be it Capitalist or Socialist is based on how property is used and organized. In fact the very difference between systems in how property is organized between one and the other. Capitalism differs from Feudalism in that it can be freely transferred and owned by private persons excersizing their free will based on their wealth rather than their birth as it was with feudal nobility. Under Socialism the private aspect of ownership logically would stand abolished in favor of Social ownership. In transition this necessarily means the state having complete ownership of property. More important than that of course ... is who controls the state i.e. which class controls the state.

December 15, 2011 at 5:09pm · 

R H S Evidently we live a world apart, both geographically and historically. When we had a feudal system, in what we call the Middle Ages, a big and wealthy middle class existed and they transferred property between them all the time.
"Social ownership" as in 'Everything belongs to all of us and nobody is responsable'? I wish you a great future.
The question 'Which class controls the state' reveals where you're coming from; in a functional democracy there are no classes and the state is controilled by whover won the last elections.
BTW My son H S lived in Pune the last half year!

December 15, 2011 at 7:39pm · 

Kriya Zur ‎@Robert : Read up some English history then :-) and see how Common law came into existence. On the point of 'responsibility' have you heard of such things as COOPERATIVES ! :-) *( P.S : Amul cooperative is a $3bn enterprise :) )

December 16, 2011 at 9:35am ·  

Cuba - imperialism, bureaucracy, socialism

An article in Havana Times dealt with some pressing issues, and got a dismissive "workers control of the workplace" response, so I responded to both the article and the comment.

Cuba: Counter-revolution vs. Socialist Utopia

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=58814 

Pedro Campos
HAVANA TIMES, Jan 1 — The genuine counter-revolution doesn’t conceal itself, it protests openly against socialist utopia with arguments like this:

“No. It’s not possible. It can’t be done under the current conditions. We cannot develop large-scale cooperativism, self-management and the consequent democratization of society. The objective and subjective conditions don’t exist.

“We have to first develop capitalism, letting domestic and foreign capital develop the country. They will return to modernize the sugar industry and all other industries, ports and communications for us, though we need a strong and organized working class. Furthermore, imperialism is right here; it could easily appropriate self-managed cooperatives and enterprises and take advantage of democratization to get rid of the historic leaders and put the old oligarchy back in power.”
Those who express such notions — and reveal their leanings toward the new Chinese imperialism — cannot even fool elementary school children. In any case, imperialism, which is one sole entity, can paint itself blue, yellow or red and it would be very easy to appropriate the assets of the government.

These assets belong to “all” in words, but which in truth, the only ones who feel like they are owners are the members of the bureaucratic class, who are increasingly isolated from the people.

If properties belong to the people — to individuals or collectives, to work groups or community groups, to freely associated workers or the self-employed — then all of this would indeed be very difficult for imperialism.

It would not be the same to confront and expropriate a bureaucratic state, ready and willing to share economic power with foreign capital, as it would be to take on people who own the means of production and control their destiny.

The supporters of statism spout a line that sounds orthodoxly Marxist (“the great development of the productive forces of capitalism and the wealth it generates is what will bring on socialism”).

Yet they have destroyed the country’s economy, squandered its resources and compelled its youth, professionals and technicians trained by the Cultural Revolution to choose between leaving the country or selling churros [strips of fried dough] and ice cream cones.

They have in fact become the main brake on the development of new forms of socialist production.

The enemies of de-statization are opposed to the turning over the management and control of the profits of state-run enterprises to workers’ councils. The statists are the ones who are blocking the establishment of an extensive cooperative law for industry and services, while at the same time they prioritize wage exploitation by private wealth.

They are preventing the elimination of the multitude of absurd state monopoly regulations on the market, rejecting the urgently needed unification of the currency and impeding other changes.

In short, they are the ones who are retarding the development and strengthening of the Cuban revolutionary process. They are obstructing the socialization and democratization of economic and political power.

Whether they achieve their objectives or not, only time will tell. What is clear is that many young people, workers, professionals, technicians, homemakers and retirees who have spent their lives for this lamentable system of “state socialism” are unwilling to continue putting up with the deceit.

They’re demanding radical changes to the state-centric economic and social policies of the party/government.

These same people from below — on their own and without waiting for the readiness or approval of the established bureau-bourgeoisie — are carrying out various life-important economic, social, cultural and political initiatives outside of state institutions.

It is within those institutions where many are grabbing on, attempting to control everything possible in society while accusing their opponents complicity with the imperialist enemy.

Any initiatives from outside bureaucratic control are met with the slogan, “Either you are with us, or you are with the imperialist enemy.” For them, then, there are no more options.

One has to ask themself: Who have been the true accomplices of the imperialist enemy?

Have they been those who have shown through their policies that “socialism” — which has never existed — has been a social, economic and political disaster. Are they those who have succeeded in making most people not even want to hear the word “socialism”? Those who have made Latin Americans reject socialism as an approach to people bettering their lives and living more freely?

Are the true accomplices of the imperialist enemy those of us who want socializing and democratizing changes now, with less state and bureaucratic control over the economy and politics?

Alternatively, are they the supporters of counter-revolutionary immobilism, who are counting on foreign investment and private capitalism to save their state-centered bureaucratic wage-labor model of the neo-Stalinist cut, to later “try” to reintroduce the cycle of bourgeoisie expropriation by the “working class”?

Are the accomplices of the enemy the ones who have never set out to change production relations of capitalism?

Are they the ones who wish to deepen the revolution and change everything that resists it or are they those who in the name of change don’t want to change anything, so that everything remains the same, especially the same bureaucracy that has held political power for a half a century and has led the country to the current disaster?

Are they the ones who turn to various forms of violence and repression to combat those who peacefully advocate different ideas?

Likewise, the following will also have to be answered: Can the majority of those old, reactionary, conservative, stiff and accustomed brains, with their old, authoritarian, bureaucratic-centralism-educated ways of command and control change their mindsets, as is demanded by those at the heights of power when self-recognizing the incapacity of the centralized system?

Wouldn’t it be better to set aside those stuck in neo-Stalinism thought and instead empower the people, the younger generations, to democratically develop new forms of social, economic and political organization and new leaders demanded by the changing situation, instead of seeking a “cadre policy” aimed at ensuring the perpetuation of “everything that must be changed”?

I hope the party conference this January will help in finding answers to these questions, whether by action or omission.

2 RESPONSES TO “CUBA: COUNTER-REVOLUTION VS. SOCIALIST UTOPIA”

1. Grady Ross Daugherty says:

   January 3, 2012 at 2:32 am

   Like all Marxists, comrade Pedro apparently believes that only state property is socialist, and that socialist property can only be that owned by the state. The fact that he calls for democratic running of state-owned enterprise by the workers does not alter the fact that he is, in a programmatic sense, a state monopoly socialist.

   The old Utopians made the programmatic error of abolishing private productive property rights immediately. Those entering their exemplary communes put everything into the communal pot, and this was going to show the world how communism could be exampled and built right now, without a multi-generation bridge to is elimination.

   The Marxists speak of socialism as a bridge to a society without private property, then force the abolition of private property onto society at the beginning of the bridge journey. It has never worked.

   Marxism makes the same programmatic error as the Utopians, by making everything productive common, state property, as did Cuba by 1968. Pedro Campos still cannot understand that workers can only achieve democratic self-management of the workplace by owning it directly. He clings to the fantasy that someday, somehow the workers could and would achieve workplace democracy under state monopoly ownership socialism.

   Reply
   • 
     

     
     

     THIS IS MY RESPONSE:

     
     

     January 4, 2012 at 4:57 am

     Grady thinks that direct workers ownership of the workplace will bring socialism. If that ownership is capitalist – which it will be if the state hasn’t expropriated the capitalist bourgeoisie – then the workers will start off exploiting themselves and before long transform themselves into capitalists using the labour of workers imported from outside the workplace. This is anarchist, autonomist utopianism.

     
     But for a state to expropriate capitalism, it can’t be a bourgeois state – the bourgeoisie won’t expropriate itself. Individual bourgeois rivals – of course! But not the whole class. And to create a non-bourgeois non-capitalist state you need an anti-capitalist revolution that tears the means of production (land, factories, finance) out of the hands of the bourgeoisie, and takes them into its own hands defending them against the raging bourgeoisie/imperialism by force of arms.

     
     The problem of a non-capitalist state run by a reactionary privileged bureaucracy is one facing every workers (plus peasants) revolution. Revolutions can degenerate, and the harsher the pressure from imperialism, and the less well-developed the material preconditions for modern production, the easier this degeneration is. This was seen in the USSR in the 1920s in the losing battle fought by the revolutionary Left Opposition against the degenerating Stalin-led wing of the Communist Party. The defeat of the revolutionaries led to the political degeneration of the USSR and ultimately to its capitulation to imperialism in 1991. And made the successful anti-capitalist revolutions in Yugoslavia, Vietnam and China deformed from the start, since they took the degenerated Soviet Union as their model. No workers democracy – in fact, anything but workers democracy!

     
     Before the threat of imperialist restoration in China (the biggest threat) or Cuba (most important for Latin America and the Americas including the US) can be properly tackled, all this historical experience needs to be examined, understood and assimilated. Which means spreading and discussing in depth the issues and arguments in the 1920s when the revolutionary fire was still bright in the Soviet Union. Which means discussing the Left Opposition and most significantly the arguments and positions of its leader, Leon Trotsky, whose role in the October Revolution together with Lenin can be compared to the teamwork of Fidel and Che in Cuba, with the difference that Lenin and Trotsky were incomparably better versed in Marxism and more deeply rooted in working class revolutionary activity.

     
     Pedro passes over this completely. And this makes his well-meaning words a bit like foam on the waves. History and the workers revolutionary movement are the ocean and the Gulf Stream, speeches detached from these are liable to be flung in the air by a rock and swept away by the wind.