[page 4]
World peace or uneasy truce?
Recent negotiations between Russia and the ed by appealing to their good will' to adopt who believed that capitalists could be convinc- Already the proportion of GNP that Japan United States and its allies, including the Reagan-Gorbacher summit, are supposed to bring world peace. They bred illusions that peace can be achieved through 'good will' and a genuine desire to reach an agreement. But this is fundamentally false. The boom in the capitalist countries in the last eight years, coupled with the contradictions within imperialism and the crisis in the Stalinist states, have led to a temporary desire by the superpowers to arrive at an agreement. But the underlying reality is of two fundamentally opposed social systems which cannot tolerate indefinitely the existence of the other. Their basic antagonism can be 'softened' only temporarily. In the West, the productive forces ie. the means of producing wealth, have grown beyond the limits of private ownership and the nation states. In the East, there is a crisis of burcaucratic control and planning in the countries of proletarian bonapartism. In addition, there is the aggravated crisis of imperialist exploitation of the impoverished countries of the Third World. War and poverty are an inevitable accompaniment to the contradictions of capitalism.
Arms expenditure amounts to $1000 billion every two years. If this expenditure were used for productive purposes, it could undoubtedly solve all the economic and social problems of the terribly impoverished underdeveloped countries, the capitalist countries and the soviet Union itself. But to imagine that this would be achieved through 'good will' is to hark back to the ideas of the Utopian socialists Ted Grant explains why recent superpower agreements on arms reductions do not berald a move towards permanent world peace.
socialism.
Arms expenditure is a crushing burden on the economies of the West and on the Soviet Union and its satellites. levertheless, the imperialist powers are not prepared to cut down the production of armaments too much through any agreement with the Soviet Union. A massive cut would affect the military-industrial complex in the NATO countries. It would reduce a vital market for those capitalist enterprises, which are paid to produce scrap metal by developing new weapens is old ones are made obsolescent. Ant suh-tantial cutback would seriously aggravate an! developing eco- On the other hand, the oni! power which has a light burden of arms. Japan. has succeed- I Ted Grant, whose Inbroken the second greatest imperialist power in the Thread is world. Japan spends just 1.6 per contes its reviewed on GNP on arms, whereas other imperialist page 24.
powers spend five, six or seven per cent. lapan has demonstrated her superiority in the tield of cars, computers and so on, because Japanese capitalists have been able to plough bach the surplus which would otherwise have gone on armaments into the productive sectors of the economy.
Japan will not maintain its lon arms spending indefinitely. To preserve its markets in any recession, and to enhance its political 'muscle' in the world arena, inevitably Japan Will attempt to achieve military as well as economic supremacy by building up a military machine in the air, on the sea and on land MIR 03
[page 5]
40 MIR Summer World p
1989 eace»
orbachev
aims to
reduce
arms
spending
in order • provide consumer goods for
a restive
Soviet
people.
spends on arms is ( 530bn) than the Britain spends.
These contradictions have forced the imperialist powers into making an attempt at 'compromise'. All the imperialist powers feel the burden of arms and would like, if not drastically, at least to cut the arms bill in some way. In the Soviet Union, particularly during the Brezhnev era, production was ploughed into arms, up to 15 per cent of GNP, slowing growth. This policy contrasts with relatively light arms expenditure of the Soviet state under Lenin and Trotsky who relied on a policy of socialist internationalism and the support of the international working-class to defend its borders. Recognising that developing the productive forces is the key to the stability of any society, Gorbachev aims to reduce the money spent on arms, in order to produce more consumer goods to boost the living standards of the increasingly restive Soviet people. That is why Gorbachev is prepared to concede more in negotiations with imperialism than he is off ered in return.
Another reason for temporary detente bet. ween imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracies is the dangerous social consequences of the continued super-exploitation of the neo-colonial countries - more rapacious and more parasitic than ever before in history. The debt of the colonial countries to imperialism has reached $1300 billion. Rising interest rates and the widening gap between the relatively low price of raw materials and foodstuffs, the dominant form of production for the underdeveloped economies, and the relatively high price of the capital goods and industrial products, which are produced in the metro politan countries, have exploited the labour of the masses of the Third World.
This remorseless exploitation of the colonial peoples has pushed them down into levels of poverty which are greater than at any time in the last 50 years. This is a formula for explosions and retolutions: guerrilla wars in the Philippines, Peru and El Salvador. social upheavals in Haiti, Venezuela. Algeria. Tunisia, Egypt and now Jordan.
This has happened during the boom of the 1980s. What is going to happen in the inevitable development of slump conditions in the coming period or even during the course of the next few years?
That the situation has not become totally unmanageable for the imperialist powers already is because of the role of the Stalinist bureaucracies. They have acted as a counter-revolutionary force, both against social revolution in the West and against the national and colonial wars of liberation in the Third World.
In order to arrive at good terms with the
West they are prepared to sell out the colonial
greater six per
in absolute terms cent of GNP that
peoples. The May events in France 1968 demonstrated that the Soviet bureaucracy is fundamentally opposed to socialist revolution in the developed countries because of the effect this would have on their grip on society in the Soviet Union.
There has been a complete degeneration ot the Stalinist parties in the West and in the excolonial areas. They are no longer even openly committed to revolution and the transformation of society in the Western countries. Nor are they in favour of the development of the socialist revolution, either through a workers' democracy or even in a deformed way through guerrilla war in the ex-colonial countries. For example, the Philippine 'Communist' party supported Marcos and denounced the NPA guerrillas.
In a desperate attempt to get an agreement with the capitalist powers, the Soviet leadership has openly renounced the strategy of revolution and has denied the relevance of class struggle. This is against everything Marx, Engels and Lenin ever stood for - ideas which were the very basis of the Soviet state.
For example, Honecker, the East German leader, without blinking an eyelid wrote in the Morning Star that: "Human beings include people from different, even antagonistic classes in society. They extend from the working class and circles of monopoly capital itself. We are far from reducing international relations to a class struggle stereotype" Similarly, at the time of Gorbachev's visit to Britain (5 April) the Morning Star was happy to state that: "new thinking suggests that there are universal human values - peace, security and justice; values that are common to all of us irrespective of our nationality, religion, ideology or class; values that transcend all such differences."
This is absolute utopianism of the worst character. It is going back a century to the Utopian socialists who imagined they could conciliate the capitalists and reconcile them to a movement in the direction of socialism.
Gorbachev claims to have broken with Stalin, on whom he blames all the crimes of the bureaucracy in the past. However, he has adopted the fundamental ideas of Stalinism, of a society in the Soviet Union which is divided between the bureaucracy, on the one hand, and the working class on the other. He accepts Stalin's nonsense that "peaceful co-existence" between the capitalist states and the Soviet Union, a deformed workers' state, can continue indefinitely.
Peaceful co-existence of different economic
and social systems was Stalin's, not Lenin's idea. "We live not only in a state but a system of states," Lenin said at the 8th party congress in July 1919, "the existence of the Soviet republic side by side with the imperialist states for
[page 6]
an indeterminate period is unthinkable. In the end either one or the other will conquer". Again, only a year later, after the defeat of the foreign armies of intervention into the Soviet Union, Lenin said: "we have passed from war to peace but we have not forgotten that war Will come again. So long as both capitalism and socialism remain we cannot live in peace. Either one or the other, in the long run, will conquer. There will be a funeral chant either for the Soviet Republic or for world capitalism. This is a moratorium in a war." Two years later, Lenin summarised the relations between the new Soviet state and the imperialists: "we have got a certain equilibrium, although extremely fragile, extremely unstable. Nevertheless, such an equilibrium can exist - of course not for long - in a capitalist environment". And Lenin's prediction was proved right when peaceful co-existence' ended in the explosion of the imperialist Second World War.
The idea of peaceful co-existence which was rejected by Lenin has been adopted by Gorbachev. He pretends that the idea is the idea of Lenin and not of Stalin. While Gorbachev has repudiated Stalin and all his crimes, he still maintains the fundamental ideas of Stalin on which the bureaucracy rests.
It is true that for relatively short periods peacetul co-existence can be maintained. But inevitably the contradictions between two conflicting social systems must generate irreconcilable antagonisms.
At the same time, Lenin's idea of the international revolution was distorted by Stalin into the 'theory' of 'socialism in a single country'. As Trotsky explained: "Internationalism is not some abstract principle but an expression of an economic fact. Just as liberalism is the ideology of national capital. so socialism is international. Capitalism started the worldwide division of labour, the task of socialism is to carry the international exchange of goods and services to its highest development". The nationalist idea of socialism in one country reflected the interests of the Russian bureaucracy and is still accepted by Gorbachev. And yet the bankruptcy of 'socialism in a single country' has been revealed by the crisis that exists in Russia today, which Gorbachev himself has admitted.
The once mighty Communist International
longer exists Gorbachev has even suggest-
(Soviet News 8 May) that there be joint
ed
activities between the Soviet 'Communist' party and the West German Social Democrats to celebrate the anniversary of the Second International! Apparently: there are no differences now between the Soviet bureaucracy and the Western reformist parties.
Those parties that claim to be Communist' are now degenerate nationalist organisations. In this sense, they are reformist parties of a different nature to the reformist parties of the Socialist International. They are what Lenin called social-patriotic parties. Their leaders have degenerated completely and have nu intention of moving in the direction of the socialist revolution - although the party rank ard tile may have a different attitude altogetner
All this has had an effect on internatunal relations. The imperialists are no longer territied of the possibility of revolution in the West. at least not one led by the Communist Parties. They realise that even in the colonial countries the Communist parties are not in favour of the overthrow of imperialism and capitalism.
Gorbachev is desperate to arrive at some sort of an agreement with world imperialism. Consequently, the Soviet bureaucracy is prepared to bring to an end many of the regional conflicts between the superpowers. at the expense of those in struggle.
The latest evidence of this is the attempt to arrive at a compromise to bring independence to Namibia and to solve the question of South Africa through the diplomacy of an agreement between the white ruling class in South Africa and the black majority. This is completely utopian and impossible. The Kremlin bureuacracy is now attempting to restrain the ANC from the 'armed struggle', in reality futile guerrillaism, which they supported in the past. But they do not substitute a policy of arming the black masses, arguing instead for virtual capitulation to the Botha-De Klerk
MIR •5 Summer 1989 World peace?
NATO's short-range nuclear missile, the Lance, which Bush and Thatcher wan to modernise
Gorbachev has openl renounced class struggle and revolution.
[page 7]
60฿ MIR Summer World p
1989 ace?
social
causes beneath regional conflicts nnot be
wished
away
regime
In Namibia the South Africans were forced into negotiation after they suffered a military defeat at Cuitocunaval at the hands of Cuban and Angolan forces. A deal was struck by the Soviet bureaucracy and the Cubans with US imperialism and the South African regime over the heads of SWAPO, the nationalist force in Namibia. 'Independence' was to be granted to Namibia and South Africa would stop its direct attacks on the region. In fact, Namibia will remain subservient to South African interests. South Africa will continue to control most of Namibian industry and its major port at Walvis Bay. But this agreement is inherently unstable because, in reality, as it will become clear, it does not meet the aspirations of the Namibian people for independence from South African control and economic domination.
In Afghanistan, the Soviet bureaucracy, in order to reach an accommodation with imp erialism, withdrew from the country in return for a pledge that Pakistan would not continue to supply the Mujaheddin. But no sooner had the agreement been signed in Geneva, than the Pakistani ISI and army generals broke the agreement by stepping up the supply of 'advisors' and weapons for the Mujaheddin guerrillas to launch an attack on the Afghan cities. But contrary to all the boasts of the guerrillas and the predictions of the Western governments, the Najibullah regime has survived. The Soviet bureaucracy has so far maintained military and food supplies to the cities. The Mullah-led guerrilla armies are really just brigands and bandits. They have failed to take even one city and have become bogged down. They are split along regional, ethnic and religious lines and their guerrilla traditions have proved disastrous in front-line assaults on Jalalabad that the CIA and the Pakistani secret service urged them to attempt.
In Nicaragua, the Soviet bureaucracy has exerted massive pressure on the Sandinista government to try for an agreement with US imperialism, by dropping its programme of expropriation and allowing up to 60 per cent private ownership of industry and of sectors of the land. Even though the Contras have been shown to have no popular support within the country, many of their demands are being conceded by the Sandinista government under pressure from US imperialism. But these concessions will not satisfy US imperialism because even the now mangled form that the revolution has taken in Nicaragua can still act as a beacon to the impoverished masses of other
Central American states. So the long-term aim of the US government to overthrow the Sandinistas remains. The failure to solve any of the social problems of the Nicaraguan people opens up the possibility of an internal rightwing coup, or alternatively the Sandanistas
may and ism.
In Kampuchea, in an attempt to mollify the Chinese bureaucracy rather than imperialism, the Soviet bureaucracy has pressured the Vietnamese-backed regime to come to an accommodation with pro-capitalist guerrilla armies, and the Khymer Rouge forces of the former Pol Pot regime. The Kampuchean masses would never tolerate the return of Pol Pot who massacred millions and there is no real popular or military basis for the pro-capitalist forces. So even if imperialism, China and the Soviet Union succeeded in imposing a coalition government, the dominant force would still be the present pro-Vietnamese group.
Any analysis of these regional conflicts shows that despite the huge concessions sought by imperialism and agreed to by the Soviet bureaucracy, the social causes underlying these conflicts cannot be wished away. So the agreements are built on weak foundations and can only be temporary.
Capitalism has not solved its problems, nor has Stalinism solved the problems in the Soviet Union. In fact Gorbachev is now talking about 'reforms' proceeding over decades. Long before this, the antagonisms between the West and Russia will have become exacerbated, and social explosions will erupt in the Third World, both in those areas where temporary accommodations have been made and in new areas.
The scrapping of a few nuclear armaments, while 96 per cent of the stockpiles remain, is an indication of the ferocious determination of US imperialism and the other imperialist pow. ers to maintain nuclear arms in reserve. Under conditions of capitalist crisis, when militarypolice dictatorships could be established in the West, then undoubtedly there would be the possibility of a world nuclear war, which would mean the destruction of mankind and of all life on the planet.
In the past Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky spoke of either the establishment of socialism throughout the world or the inevitable development of barbarism. In this present epoch we can say that the alternative is even more stark, either the establishing of the democratic socialist rule of the working class, or the possibility of annihilation of all life on the planet. This is the choice for the future.
All the sugary talk by the Communist Parties of the world, by the so-called democratic parties, and by the reformist parties of the working
class about arriving at an agreement through
the so-called United Nations is an illusion. All
agreements are subject to veto by the major imperialist powers and the Chinese and Soviet
bureaucracies represented on the UN's securi-
ty council. They all have nuclear arms at their
be forced to expropriate
go further than they intend landlordism and capital-
[page 8]
disposal. The Western powers have no intention of scrapping their vast nuclear stockpiles. They only want to scale down their nuclear and conventional weaponry.
Since the Second World War there have only been 15 days of peace. Wars are continually taking place in the colonial world. This reflects a jockeying for position between the superpowers. World history since 1914 has been the history of attempts to arrive at agreements and compromises which end in further explosions. The temporary agreement between the socalled democratic powers and the Soviet Union during the course of the war against Hitler did not last long after the collapse of the Nazi regime and of Japan.
Towards the end of the war there had been an agreement between the Allied powers for the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan. But the imperialist powers changed that policy. The Japanese were ready to surrender but President Truman still ordered the dropp ing of two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs were a warning to the Soviet Union of what could happen to it, if it did not do what US imperialism wanted. However, Stalin realised that the troops of imperialism were war weary and were demanding to be sent home as soon as the war was over. Russian troops entered Manchuria and defeated the Japanese army. So the bombs failed in their purpose.
Very rapidly international relations entered the period of the 'cold war'. This in its turn led to the arms race, dwarfing even the massive rearmament programme of Hitler between 1933- 39. But the arms race cancelled itself out. One superpower's attempt to gain an advantage in one sphere or another was immediately counteracted by the other. The cold war has been followed by a period of relative 'detente' but this is of a very shaky character and can only prepare the way for new and even greater arms race.
The arms race also had the purpose. for the West and the Soviet Union. of diverting the mass of people to look for an enemy outside the borders of their own country. Thus Amer ican imperialism endeavoured to put all the blame for the explosions in the Third World onto the shoulders of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bureaucracy. On the other hand, the Soviet bureaucracy portrayed itself (with more justification) as a beleaguered fortress threatened by imperialism.
Imperialism has not been able to launch a war against the Soviet Union because the latter has built up an overwhelming superiority in conventional arms and has a strategic dominance on the European continent, while nuclear war would mean mutual suicide. The power of the working-class which is enshrined in bourg eois democracy, trade union rights and the
rights of political parties, acts as a deterrent to the ruling-class of the West launching an attack against the Soviet Union. Howerer, unless there is a socialist transformation of society, then eventually the ruling-classes will try to crush the organisations of the working-class. If they succeeded through some form of militarypolice dictatorship, then it would open up the possibility of a lunatic general resorting to a first strike against the Soviet Union, leading to world war
On the other hand, the Soviets cannot use their conventional arms superiority: partly because any conventional war in Europe would inevitably lead to the use of nuclear weapons. But most importantly, the Soviet bureaucracy has not invaded because the Red Army could not hold down the masses of Western Europe. If the bureaucracy cannot tame the Polish masses, it can hardly suppress the European working class.
There is another fundamental antagonism which undermines world relations: the divisions between the imperialist powers themselves. Sooner or later the rivalries between Japan and the USA: between the EEC and the USA: and between the BEC and Japan, will surface. These rivalries are already exhibited in embryo in the squabbles over tariffs and restrictions on one another's exports.
US imperialism built up its pulitary might not just for the sake of piling up arms or to maintain a market for its military industrial complex. It needed military might to dominate the colonial world for imperialism. But since 1945
MIR O7 Summer 1989 World peace?
IF
7 Á1
The rivalries between the imperiali powers will also surface
[page 9]
The Contras
have failed
but the US
still aim to overthrow the
Sandinistas.
The fate
of the world will
not be decided by superpower agreements
but by
class
struggle.
MIR
all the old colonial powers have burnt their fingers in colonial wars - in Vietnam, Algeria, Central America and Indonesia. They were forced to abandon direct control in return for a collective economic domination using the force of US arms.
But imperialism is not one homogeneous whole. There are differences between the national capitalist states, even about arms. US and British imperialism wish to modernise shortrange nuclear weapons whatever Gorbacher is prepared to concede. West Germany: however, opposes this. While the market of the Soviet Union is only worth 2-3 per cent of West German exports at present, the Germans wish to develop commercial ties with the bureaucracies of Eastern Europe as an important market for the future. Any new escalation in the arms race would jeopardise that.
But the main consideration for Kohl and the West German government is that, in the eyes of the West German people, short-range nuclear weapons make their country the arena for any war. There is massive opposition to the idea of a tactical nuclear war which would destroy the economy and annihilate the West German people, without directly affecting other NATO countries or the Warsaw pact. So Kohl has no intention, when it could cost him the election, of drawing the chestnuts out of the fire for his dear allies.
Thatcher and Bush want to force through this modernisation before the next year's elections in West Germany, after which any elected Social Democratic government would
be under great pressure to scrap this nuclear escalation. Kohl is resisting modernisation prior to the elections, although once they are safely out of the way, and assuming the Christian Democrats are returned to power, then it is possible that he or any new CD leader would then agree to reach a compromise with Bush and Thatcher.
This split in NATO alone shows the strains within imperialism which threaten stable world relations. The growing antagonisms will lead to new convulsions and new revolutions, not only in the colonial countries but in the West as well.
The capitalist West and the bureaucratic workers states of the East are in the grip of a growing crisis. Inevitably they will be at each other's throats in the future. The whole history of capitalism over the last 200 years has demonstrated that any agreements made are not worth the paper on which they are written. As soon as the relations between the powers alters the old agreements are scrapped - as Hitler showed when he systematically broke the terms of the Versailles treaty, imposed on Germany after the First World War and sup posedly the guarantee of everlasting peace.
The dialectic of history has increased the mutual dependence of all nations to an immeasurable degree over the last four decades. The world economy is bound together into one interdependent whole. Yet, the Stalinist bureaucracy acts as a fetter on the development of the productive forces in the East and the imperialist powers hold back economic and social
progress in the west.
The next epoch will not see continued and permanent collaboration between the Western powers and the Stalinist states. On the contrary, it will be an epoch of growing antagonisms, especially with the end of the present
economic boom which has so far lasted for
eight years. Inevitably there will be trade wars
between nations, as well as struggles between
the classes within nations.
These conflicts within imperialism, in their
turn. will have an effect in the countries of
proletarian bonapartism. This in its turn will
lead to new recriminations and to new war
preparations between the powers.
The fate of the world will be decided not by
agreements between the powers but by the
struggle of the classes. Sugary illusions in det-
ente will be exploded by events.
It is on the road of storm and stress, along
the road of struggle, that a solution to pro-
blems of the world will be achieved. Fraternal
relations between the peoples can only be
guaranteed by the coming to power of the
working class and a collaboration on an inter-
national scale of the workers of all countries in
a socialist plan of production.
[page 10]
The 200th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille is the occasion of national celebrations in France, a flood of books, articles and TV programmes, presenting opinions for all tastes.
Yet beneath all the ballyhoo, the ghosts of 1789-93 are beginning to stir uneasily. The modern descendents of that very bourgeoisie which was the principal benefactor of the revolution are experiencing a crisis of identity in their attitude to their own past. As one journalist expressed it, "although all serious politicians in France are republicans. only the left are entirely happy with the founding event." The suggestion by the Communist mayor of Thionville that a bust of Robespierre be erected in the town square led to a vitriolic argument in which one right wing councillor desc ribed the Jacobin leader as "the Ayotallah Khomeini of his day."
While formally "celebrating the Revolution with lavish parties and speeches, the ruling class and its spokesmen make sure that the real significance of this great event is carefully buried. The most ignorant pundits proclaim that the French Revolution "proves" that revolution always ends in tears. The more refined falsifyers of history re-take the Bastille in the comfort of their studies, demonstrating irtefutably that the Revolution never really occurred and that, even if it did, everything was just the same after it as before. 1789 In the first of a two-part article on the French revolution, Alan Woods analyses the events that led to the fall of the ancien regime 200 years ago.
Fall of the Bastille
[page 11]
100 MIR Summer France
French evolution was one
of the
greatest vents in
human
history.
The French Revolution was, however, one of the greatest events in human history. It is an inexhaustable source of lessons for the labour movement even today. Yet here the first note of caution tust be sounded. The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution. and it would be entirely mistaken to atrempt to draw exact parallels between the processes involved and the movement of the modern proletariat. To attempt to do so would end up in all kinds of anachronistic and unscientific conclusions.
In the period with which we are dealing, the proletariat, in the modern sense of the word hardly existed in France. True, ihere were already a fem large enterprises. like the Van Robais textile mills at Abbexille which emp. loyed 12,000 workers or the Mines d'Anzin near the Belgian border with t.000. But the general picture of industry was one of extreme underderelopment when compared, for example, to Britain.
In 1789, for example, there were 900 'Spinning Jennies' in France compared to 20,000 in Britain. In the whole of Paris there were only 50 factories employing between 100 and 800 workers. As a rule, industry in France had not yet got beyond the stage of handicraft and cottage-industry, often conducted on semifeudal lines under the distant supervision of merchant-manufactures
Large scale industry: insotar as it axisted. was largely due to the role of the state. But the nor mal development of capitalism was hampered by state interterence and feudal restrictions
In 1789 only 15 per cent of the population lived in towns. Paris. wirh a population of about half a million. was by far the biggest permitting it to play a decisive role in the events which were to unfold.
The bulk of the population consisted of peasants, and the agrarian question was central, as always, to the bourgeois revolution: Historians like Alfred Cobban in The Myth of the French Revolution, have attempred to show that the
French revolution was not
a bourgenis revolution.
among other reasons, bec-
ause feudalism had been
abolished before 1°89
It is irue that serfdom
had been abolished for
most of the peasants before
1789, although pockets of
serfdom still existed in
parts of France - Comte
and Nivernais, Cobban ass-
erts that "not only had the
feudal anisocracy ceased
to govern the country. it
had even ceased to own a
large part of the land." But
this presents a very one-
sided picture of the real
state of the French countryside before 1789.
Despite the abolition of serfdom, only about one quarter of the peasants owned the land (See George Rude, Revolutionary' Europe. p23). More than half were poor share-croppers ('metayers') who owned no capital and shared their product fifty-fifty with the landlord, while about a quarter were landless labourers or rented tiny plots.
As in tsarist Russia, where serfdom was abolished in 1861. this measure in no way alleyiated the plight of the peasantry but on the contrary increased the misery and wretchedness of the vast majority while creating favoured conditions for the 'Kulak' minority.
In France too the abolition of serfdom created a class of wealthy peasants, the 'laboureux', which did not alter the miserable conditions of the great majority of even the peasant proprietors, let alone the landless peasants. The parcelling of land created a large number of uneconomical units from which only a bare living could be scratched. The resulting 'rural over-population' meant that by 1777 over one million people were officially classed as beggars.
This rural semi-proletariat flocked to the towns, where industry, still in its most primitive stage, could not absorb them. Those who remained in the village existed by begging or doing seasonal work for the landlords or 'laboureux. In bad seasons they provided plenty of combustible material for riots and banditry
The abolition of serfdom, moreover. did not mean the abolition of other feudal rights' which still existed: the corvee (statutory lab our obligation), toll charges for roads, bridges, etc. other duties on fairs, markets and the like. 'lods et ventres' (impost on transfers of land within an estate), quit rents, ground rent and dues in money or in kind, hunting rights, rights to keep rabbits. pigeons, and a further bewildering array of direct and indirect taxes.
Apart from the landowners. the Churches and monasteries had the right to levy similar impositions. In some areas, they even held serfs. The fact, as Alex de Tocqueville explains, that some of these rights had fallen into disuse and they were levied unevenly in certain reg ions, merely helped to highlight the anachronistic nature of feudal rights and render their existence still more intolerable.
To make matters worse, the state imposed heary taxes. including a poll tax (the 'taille'), the 'vingtieme' (from which the nobles, clergy and officials were usually exempt) plus a whole battery of indirect taxes. No less than 10 per cent of royal revenue was raised through the salt tax (the 'gabelle'). There were both internal and external customs duties ('traites') plus purchase tax ('aides') and other indirect taxes which weighed heavily on the poor.
The need to raise taxes in turn reflected the
[page 12]
crisis of the absolutist state. A series of disast-
rous wars, culminating in the French interven-
tion in the American War of Independence (1778-83) emptied the treasury. The royal
debt increased from £93 million in 1774 to
$300 million in 1789. The Queen became
known as 'Madame Deficit'. The regime faced
bankruptcy in the most literal sense of the
word
The fall in real wages caused by inflation,
plus the increased pressure of taxation, gave rise to a spate of peasant uprisings or Jacqueries', which became almost a permanent phenomenon from 1782 right up to the revolution. One province after another was affected - Poitiers, Vizille, the Cervennes, Vivorais, Gevaudan. In 1786, the strike of the silk weavers at Lyons served notice on society that the working class was already beginning to flex its muscles.
It is a dialectical contradiction that revolution always starts at the top. The ruling class, no longer able to push society forward, begins to sense that it has become an obstacle in the path of progress. Fissures and splits begin to appear in the upper layers, as they seek to find a way out of the impasse.
Already in the preceding decades, the wind of change had began to blow in the ranks of the intelligentsia, that most sensitive barometer of the mood of society. In the writings of Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire, D'Alambert and Rousseau, the ideological basis of the Ancien Regime was subjected to a thoroughgoing criticism. Religion, absolute monarchy, inequality, were all required to give account of themsel ves before the judgement seat of 'Reason', long before they stood condemned before the revolutionary tribunals.
The revolution in ideas anticipated the real political and social revolution which was sil ently maturing in the womb of the old society. It provided the rising bourgeoisie with the philosophical premises for its attack on the old order.
By contrast, the impasse of the Ancien Reg ime was reflected in the spectacle of moral and intellectual decay of the ruling clique. The court of Louis XV resembled nothing so much as a high-class brothel, dominated by the King's favourite mistresses, the Pompadours and Du Barrys. The all-pervading whiff of corruption hung around the court of his successor, Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, the hated 'Austrian woman', herself involved in a scandal, the 'diamond necklace affair', shortly before the outbreak of revolution.
Feeling the earth more under his feet. Louis desperately attempted a reform of the financial system, now teetering on the brink of collapse Like Gorbachev today, his intention was to effect a partial reform from the top to prevent a revolution from below. A whole series of finan
cial reformers were appointed: Maupeau
under Louis XV; Turgot, Necker and Calonne
under his successor. But every one of them
stumbled over the principal obstacle: the flat
refusal of the aristocracy to accept that they
should pay tax.
Here, too, Louis' dilemma resembles that of
Gorbacher and a whole series of 'reforming'
tsars and Chinese emperors: how to get the
ruling aristocracy or bureaucracy to agree to part with some of their privileges in order to
save the system as a whole? In other words, how to square the circle.
For a time Necker performed financial 'miracles' which consisted entirely of raising new loans, which made things worse. When he was replaced by Calonne in 1786, the loans had finally run out. There was nothing for it but for Louis to grit his teeth and confront the aristocracy with the facts of life (as seen by the treasury).
However, the nobles replied by pointing out the facts of life, (as seen by them). Their resistance was organised through the 'parlements', not parliaments in the modern sense, but law courts, remnants of the Middle Ages, dominated by the aristocracy which used them to defend its vested interests against both King and Church.
With the conflict between the King and the parlements over taxation, the split within the ruling class became open. It is ironical that the reactionary parlement of Paris for a time became a most unlikely focal point of popular resentment against the Monarchy.
The tax collecting system was beginning to break down, and the loyalty of the army, even the officers, was in doubt. The arrest of key 'parlementaries' and the suspension of the parlement on 8 May 1788 merely raised the agitation to a new level.
The masses began to sit up and take notice, aroused by the open warfare between the Monarchy and the 'parlements'. There were riots in Bordeaux. Dijon, Paris and Toulouse and more serious uprisings in Brittany and Dauphine.
Faced with the prospect of a nation-wide revolt, the King backed down. The parlement of Paris was first recalled, then dismissed, then recalled. An 'Assembly of Notables' was convened in an unsuccessful bid to persuade the nobles to accept taxation, but it merely encouraged the latter to demand further concessions. in the form of the convening of the 'States General', a body representing the Nobility. Clergy and Third Estate' (the 'Commons'), which had not met since 1614.
These vacillations and splits revealed the weakness of the Monarchy, which finally agreed to call the 'States General' for 1 May 1789. The breakdown of authority undermined the censorship. Paris was inundated with a
MIR summer
•11 1989 ance
Louis.
The anc regime was in financial collapse
[page 13]
120 MIR Summer France
14 July
was not
the end
but the beginning
of the evolution.
flood of pamphlets. Suddenly the whole of society was caught up in a fever of political ferment.
This in turn reflected a growing mood of discontent in the deepest recesses of society. The early months of 1789 are characterised by a wave of peasant disturbances, directed against taxes and feudal dues. Two bad harvests had caused the price of bread to soar, provoking riots and attacks on grain convoys. The unrest spread to the towns. In April a mob attacked the factory of a manufacturer accused of starving the poor. It was not the only case of its kind. From March on, there were food riots in Paris.
In this context, the 'States General' was convened, and at once revealed itself as a gigantic fraud. There was not a single peasant among the delegates. Worse still, the non-aristocratic component, the 'educated classes' - bourgeois lawyers, manufacturers and teachers, representing 'the people' - were out- voted two-to-one by the nobility and clergy.
The behaviour of these representatives was decisively affected by the mood of the masses. It is impossible to understand the history of the French revolution in parliamentary terms without reference to the movement of the masses, particularly in Paris, which completely determined the evolution of events at every decisive stage.
Anticipating 'glasnost' by two hundred years, all sections of society were encouraged to present their grievances in writing, through the famous 'cahiers de plaintes et doleances' (notebooks of grievances). The 'cahiers' of the "Third Estate', if taken together, represented a complete programme for the transformation of society. "When I had finished my labours," wrote de Tocqueville, "and made a list of these various proposals I realised with something like consternation that what was being asked for was nothing short of the systematic, simultaneous abolition of all existing French laws and customs.
"There was no avoiding the fact that what the authors of these cahiers jointly sponsored was one of the vastest, most catastrophic revolutions the world had ever known. Yet the men who were to be its victims had not the least presentiment of this: they nursed the foolish hope that a sudden, radical transformation of a very ancient, highly intricate social system could be effected almost painlessly, under the auspices of reason and by its efficacy alone. Theirs was a rude awakening!" (The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution, p165).
The electoral assemblies which met to discuss the 'cahiers' were packed and agitated meetings. In Paris, in particular, the mood of the masses was raised to fever pitch, with attacks on individual 'aristos' as well as strikes, riots and clashes with troops. Kropotkin, in his book on the revolution, describes a typical scene where the Keeper of the Seals and the Archbishop of Paris were "hosted, abused and scoffed at. They were so overwhelmed with shame and rage that apparently the King's secretary Passeret, who was with them, died of shock the next day" (The Great Revolution, p56).
The scandalous situation where a tiny minority of wealthy nobles and bishops had more votes than the rest of the French nation put together caused tremendous indignation. Under pressure of the masses, the bourgeois representatives of the Third Estate plucked up enough courage to demand extra representation to cancel out the advantage of the nobility and clergy, and also the right to vote separately.
While the 'States General' debated, Louis, having realised too late the dangers inherent in the situation, was preparing an armed coup to disperse them. The dismissal of Necker, widely seen as a reformist minister, served to bring the Paris masses onto the streets on 12 July. The following day the working people of Paris seized guns and powder and set about arming themselves. The workshops of Paris produced 50,000 pikes in 36 hours. Thus, as Marx expl ained, the counter-revolution acted as a whip to the revoiution itself
The army now found itself caught up in the general social ferment. Troops disobeyed orders and refused to fire on the people. The generals found their armies melting away. Determined to find arms, the people raided the Hotel des Invalides which surrendered without a fight, yielding 28,000 muskets.
This situation was absolutely characteristic of the French revolution in all its decisive stages: the people's parliamentary 'representatives' talk, debate, move resolutions, while the real issues are decided by the revolutionary direct action of the masses.
Historians have evolved a whole mythology, vaunting the alleged achievements of the parliamentary 'leaders' of the Third Estate, who on
[page 14]
17 June took the title of the National Assembly
and three days later, in the famous tennis
court oath', swore not to disband until a con-
stitution was granted. But the role of the
masses was decisive even in this. The galleries
of the Assembly hall were constantly packed
by thousands of cheering and booing people
urging the politicians on. This was a decisive
factor in stiffening the resolve of the most radical elements and cowering the forces of reaction.
More decisive still was the spontaneous mass
insurrection in Paris which smashed Louis
attempted coup. The workers, artisans and journeymen of the Fauborg St. Antoine joined forces with the bourgeois militia to storm the
Bastille held by mercenary Swiss guards on 14 July. This action dealt a death blow to Louis'
plans and was the signal for a nationwide insurrection. Nevertheless, the 'official version' which tries to reduce the French revolution to this one event is very far from the truth.
14 July 1789 was not the end but only the beginning of the revolution. This distortion is not at all accidental. The first phase of the revolution placed power in the hands of the most conservative wing of the big bourgeoisie in alliance with the so-called 'reformist' wing of the nobility, much the same as the February revolution in 1917 in Russia initially placed power in the hands of the Cadets and Milyukov.
From a Marxist viewpoint it is quite amusing to read the attempts of 'revisionist' historians like Cobban to 'prove' that the French revolution was not really a bourgeois revolution because the Constituent Assembly which emerged from the July overturn was extremely reluctant even to approve the abolition of the feudal payments and services which weighed heavily on the peasantry.
The bourgeoisie was, as Cobban says, as terrified as the nobility at the peasant uprising which spread like wildfire after July. In the summer of 1789, the chateaux blazed from one end of France to the other. Yet the Assembly dragged its feet with hair-splitting arguments as to which payments were really 'feudal' and which were not, a distinction not really app reciated by peasants who cared little about legal niceties when life and death questions were at stake.
The bourgeois in the Assembly clung like grim death to the landowners who had no difficulty in convincing them that the peasant movement represented a challenge to property and order. Armand duc d'Aiguillon, a big landowner, argued that "the rights in question are a form of property and all property is sacred." (AW emphasis).
However, the sheer size of the rebellion made it impossible to put it down by force, especially given the unreliable state of the troops. In the words of Lefebvre: "They liberated themselves and successive Assemblies
only sanctioned what they had accomplished."
(The Coming of the French revolution, p213)
Feudal rights were thus abolished from
below by mass action and in spite of the 'revol-
utionary bourgeoisie'. In fact, as soon as it
could, the Assembly reintroduced them in a
disguised form. A law of 3 May 1790 establish-
ed that the peasant would have to pay for the
privilege of abolition, setting redemption rates
at a very high amount (20 times the annual fee
for dues in money and 25 times for dues in
kind) which imposed a crushing burden on the
majority of the peasants. This sell-out to the aristocracy represented 'a bitter deception', in the words of Lefebvre, and led to the continuation of the civil war in the countryside.
On 27 August, the Assembly adopted the 'Declaration of the Rights of Man' which today is trumpeted as a great achievement. But to the mass of the people, deprived of bread and land, such declarations of abstract 'freedom' were
worse than useless.
The new constitution established only a limited franchise based on property and laid down a difference between the so-called 'active' and 'passive' citizens. The latter, the poorest classes, were denied the vote.
In reality, the 'freedom' of the bourgeois consisted basically in the freedom to pursue their business unhindered by feudal restrictions or the action of the workers. Thus, the guilds were abolished, and at the same time, both strikes and trade unions were banned The confiscation of church property, which was allegedly 'put at the disposal of the nation', was also a measure in the interest of the bourgeois who bought up the lion's share of the church land. The peasants gained nothing by this measure. There was not even an attempt to set up a republic. The monarchy, now supposedly reconciled to the changed order, was left well alone.
However, despite all the ingratiating flattery, the King remained implacably hostile. The court circle became a hotbed of reaction and conspiracy. A section of the nobility had already gone into foreign exile to organise the counter-revolution from Coblentz. Theremainder bided their time and awaited an opportunity.
If matters had been left in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the plans of the reactionaries might have succeeded. But once again the masses intervened. The shortage of bread caused increasing discontent, finding an echo in the numerous 'Clubs' which sprang up like mushrooms after a thunderstorm, and which were the i8th century equivalent of modern political parties. There were strikes, petitions and protests and a rain of pamphlets.
The centre of discontent was the royal veto and the justified fear that the King and Queen might leave the country and join the counterrevolutionaries massing on the borders of
MIR D13 Summer 1989
France
Danton.
The King remained implacabl hostile to reform.
[page 15]
140 MIR summer France
Brissot.
France.
On 5 October there was a second insurrection. The women of Paris who bore the brunt of rising inflation and food shortages, and who were awakened to political life, led a march on Versailles, shaming their menfolk into following. This dealt a decisive blow to the counterrevolution. The King and Queen were 'invited' to Paris where the people could keep an eye on them. For a second time the masses had saved the revolution.
In reality, following the victory of 1789, there were two years of reaction within the revolution itself. This, however, merely prepared the next stage of revolutionary upswing which once again came as a consequence of the threat of counter-revolution.
In June 1791, the King and Queen attempted to flee abroad but were detained by the vigilance of the revolutionaries and sent back to Paris. Even then, the cowardly and treacherous Assembly tried to cover up the tracks, claiming incredibly that Louis had been 'kidnapped'.
The increasing polarisation in society had found its reflection inside the National Convention which split into 'left' and 'right, these terms originally describing the seating arrangements of the revolutionary and reactionary parties. On the right were the members of the Feuillants Club, a collection of reactionary nobles, clergy and monarchists. On the left were the members of the Jacobin Club and particularly the radical Parisian Cordeliers Club, dominated by the larger-than-life figure of Danton.
But the stage was Vergriand.
main party in the Assembly at this the 'centre' party of Brissot and popularly known as the 'Girondins'
Armed women from Paris marched on Versailles to detain t King and Queen in October 1789. Womel intervened decisively on several occasions foil counterrevolutionary plots (contemporary drawing).
because many of them came from the Gironde in Western France. The Girondin deputies were drawn from the well-to-do classes and professional people: teachers, doctors. but above all, lawyers. Brilliant orators, they represented the backwardness of the provinces which always tended to lag behind revolutionary Paris. They stood first and foremost for the interests of the big mercantile bourgeoisie of towns like Bordeaux.
They stood for the defence of the revolution, but were terrified of the independent movement of the masses. They were the party of order, of property, the restoration of the currency and the rights of the provinces against Paris. They were also the party of war.
For war, at this point, was rapidly becoming the central issue. Austria and Prussia, egged on by royalist exiles and in cahorts with Louis and Marie Antoinette, were clearly seeking a pretext to invade.
On 20 April 1792, the Assembly declared war on Austria. A series of disastrous defeats ensued. The army which had been taken over virtually unchanged from the old regime and hurled into combat without preparation under the leadership of corrupt and treacherous officers, many of whom were only looking for a suitable opportunity to defect, was soon routed.
By Summer 1792, the fall of Paris looked inevitable. The darkest hour for the revolution was the surrender of Verdun which General Dumouriez treacherously handed over to the enemy. The Girondin leaders, despairing of victory, entered into secret negotiations with Louis.
Had it depended on the Assembly and the Girondins all would have been lost. But fortunately, once again the Paris masses took matters into their own hands. On 10 August. about a week before the fall of Verdun, the masses of Paris, together with the revolutionary volunteers or 'federes' from Marseilles and Brittany staged an insurrection which effectively overthrew the monarchy.
This is the way in which the French bourg eois revolution unfolded: at every stage the big bourgeoisie attempted to manoeuver and compromise with the monarchy, dragging their feet and attempting to preserve as much as possible of the old regime. Only the revolutionary intervention of the plebeian and semiproletarian masses, above all in Paris, succeed ed in clearing aside all the obstacles and pushing the revolution forward. To do so it was obliged to struggle against the very bourgeoisie which would inevitably be the heir to the revolutionary conquests paid for with the blood and sacrifice of the masses. Such was the dialectic of the French revolution.
Part Two of Alan Woods' article
appear in MIR 41, Autumn 1989.