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Comrades and friends, since we are all here tonight to celebrate the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917, it seems like a good moment to look back at the roots of Bolshevism, and the organisational principles which Comrade Lenin and the Bolsheviks espoused.
1898 Founding of the party – Economism – What Is To Be Done
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was founded officially in 1898, but its first stumbling steps were dogged by police suppression, ideological muddle and poor organisation. Things were made worse by the influence of the Russian opportunist trend known as ‘Economism’.
In the name of standing up for the interests of the working class, the Economists insisted on limiting the class struggle to purely ‘bread-and-butter’ industrial issues. They saw Lenin’s plans for a united and centralised political party of the working class as an unnecessary and artificial intrusion upon workers’ spontaneous industrial skirmishes. Their influence helped to perpetuate ideological muddle and lax organisation.
Under these circumstances, Lenin and his comrades – we cannot yet call them Bolsheviks – used the columns of the party paper, Iskra (Spark) to wage a relentless struggle against the disorganising ideas of Economism. By this means, the ground was prepared for the ideological and organisational consolidation of the party.
A key moment in this struggle came in March 1902, with the publication of Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? This work not only delivered a great blow against Economism, it also laid the foundations for the whole future Bolshevik approach to ideology and organisation.
Against the blind worship of spontaneity which characterised the Economists, Lenin asserted the vanguard role of the proletarian party. The party’s role was not to follow but to lead. And key to the development of this leadership role was the central, all-Russian party newspaper.
The purpose of the paper was not simply to comment and analyse but to organise. It was the paper’s job not only to weld the party ideologically, but also to unite local bodies within the party organisationally, as Lenin wrote that such a paper “is not only a collective propagandist and collective agitator, but also a collective organiser”.
These were not just very clever ideas on how to run a political newspaper, but an assertion of the indissoluble bond between the ideological and organisational make-up of the party – the unity of its theory and its practice. And the battle was not just against the Russian Economists, with their exclusive fixation on narrow trade-union struggles. Lenin makes it clear that these gentry were no more than a pale local variant of a virulent strain of opportunism which was international in scope.
There can be no better proof of the continued relevance of the organisational principles advocated by Lenin than the fact that they continue to provoke today’s opportunists just as badly as they did 100 years ago!
Lenin was clear that for the revolutionary movement to hold out, it needed a stable organisation of leaders to maintain continuity; and the bigger the movement grew, the more crucial would such an organisation be. The vanguard organisation would need to consist first and foremost of professional revolutionaries, trained in the art of outfoxing the political police. Far from limiting the scope of the movement, argued Lenin, such an approach to leadership would offer the best prospect of drawing the masses in ever greater numbers into working for the revolution.
It is legitimate for us to ask how much relevance these organisational tactics have for communists today. After all, we are not living in an autocratic state, we do not live under Tsarism, and perhaps we do not require a party leadership that has professional training in the art of combating the political police – yet.
However, as degenerate British imperialist society moves deeper into crisis, the retreat from bourgeois democratic forms is becoming daily more pronounced. Wars of national oppression abroad, erosion of civil liberties at home, cuts in public services, attacks on the pay and pensions of workers, the dismantling of the ‘welfare state’ and the spread of anti-immigrant propaganda – all these combine to create a harsher political climate for dissent of any kind.
The plunge into financial crisis and slump can be expected to intensify this process, precisely in the degree to which the bourgeoisie feel it more urgent to safeguard the exploited workers from the growth of communist influence.
This period of renewed crisis presents the proletariat with an immense historical responsibility, which it cannot hope to shoulder without the guidance and leadership of a party that has learnt to match ideological with organisational strength.
The working class may not yet require a party ‘professionally trained in the art of combating the political police’ – but we certainly do need a party that is no less professional in its approach to organisation than it is in its approach to ideology.
Second Congress of the RSDLP
In 1902, Lenin explained these organisational principles in his work, What Is To Be Done? In July 1903, the ideas advanced were tested out in political struggle at the Second Congress of the RSDLP.
Lenin and his comrades at Iskra submitted a maximum and a minimum programme for the party. The maximum programme dealt with the ultimate goal: socialist revolution and proletarian dictatorship. The minimum programme dealt with the bourgeois democratic phase of the revolution: getting rid of the Tsar, securing a democratic republic, limiting the working day and giving land to the tiller.
Mention of proletarian dictatorship ruffled some opportunist feathers, as did the prospect of an alliance with the peasantry and recognition of the right of nations to self-determination. But on all these issues, the Iskra view prevailed.
However, having failed in a direct assault on the Leninist programme, opportunism now turned its attention to the rules. Having failed to undermine the party’s ideology, opportunism now set its sights on the party’s organisation.
The opportunity for this mischief-making arose around the very basic question: what determines who is a member of the party? Martov could hardly disagree with the common-sense stipulations that party members had to stick to the party line and pay their subs. Where he got cold feet was over Lenin’s insistence that every member should submit to party discipline by working within one of the party’s organisations. The Short History of the CPSU(B) puts it in a nutshell.
“Martov regarded the party as something organisationally amorphous, whose members enrol themselves in the party and are therefore not obliged to submit to party discipline, inasmuch as they do not belong to a party organisation.” (Short History, p36)
To the untutored ear, the Martov approach to party building could sound very bold and revolutionary. Why not have done with it and say that every worker who downs tools and goes on strike demonstrates by his actions that he has the right to be in the party? But such phoney rank-and-file fervour conveniently forgets that it takes all sorts to make a strike, including non-socialists and anarchists.
And in any case, the real intended beneficiaries of Martov’s ‘come all ye’ approach to party membership were not workers at all, but unreliable bourgeois intellectuals eager to parade as progressive leaders but not prepared to “join an organisation, submit to party discipline, carry out party tasks and run the accompanying risks”. (Short History, pp36-37)
Even on the Iskra side of the argument, not all were wholeheartedly behind Lenin. Thanks to some of these wavering elements, Martov’s views on party rules were for the moment tolerated, and this was a temporary setback for the party. What was established at the Second Congress, however, was a clear distinction between the Menshevik and the Bolshevik positions on both ideological and organisational questions, a distinction which proved to be of great political value to the Bolshevik cause in the struggles to come.
It was in the elections at the conclusion of this Second Congress, in which Lenin and his followers secured a majority of the votes, that the two trends within the RSDLP started to be identified as Bolshevik (majority) and Menshevik (minority).
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
In May 1904, the essence of this key struggle over organisational principles was crystallised in Lenin’s work, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.
1. Lenin insisted that what was required was a vanguard party, arguing that “To forget the distinction between the vanguard and the whole of the masses which gravitate towards it, to forget the constant duty of the vanguard to raise ever wider strata to this most advanced level, means merely to deceive oneself, to shut one’s eyes to the immensity of our tasks, and to narrow down these tasks.” (Short History, p41)
The very word ‘vanguard’ has become anathema within the reformist left, drawing knee-jerk accusations of elitism and arrogance. Yet such accusations are no more than a smokescreen to cover the left’s abdication of responsibility towards the class they purport to champion.
2. Every member had to be working for a specific organisation of the party. “If the party were not an organised detachment of the class, not a system of organisation, but a mere agglomeration of persons who declare themselves to be party members but do not belong to any party organisation and therefore are not organised, hence not obliged to obey party decisions, the party would never have a united will, it could never achieve the united action of its members, and, consequently, it would be unable to direct the struggle of the working class.” (Short History, p41)
3. The party must struggle to guide all other organisations of the working class, not hiding behind a cloak of false modesty like the Mensheviks. To belittle the leading role of the party is, in fact, to weaken and disarm the proletariat.
Comrades here present know from experience that it is not always easy to combat Labour party influence in the unions. It is tempting to declare the struggle unnecessary (because ‘eventually the crisis will in any case loosen the ties that bind organised labour to social democracy’). It is tempting to declare the struggle impossible (because ‘social democracy is so ingrained in the trade unions – why waste the effort?’). It is not so unusual even to hear both optimistic and pessimistic versions expressed in one and the same breath!
But however the issue may be fudged, the fact remains: no matter how weak we may judge communist influence to be at present within the unions, the task remains to build a party that can guide all the other organisations of the working class.
4. The party must multiply and strengthen connections with the non-party masses.
For example, this is the light in which communists should see work with the anti-war and international solidarity movements, as well as with organised labour, however grandiose the term ‘masses’ may sound at this early stage of development.
5. The party will be a party of democratic centralism, with election from below and leadership from the centre. As Lenin puts it, “Now we have become an organised party, and this implies the establishment of authority, the transformation of the power of ideas into the power of authority, the subordination of lower party bodies to higher party bodies.” (Short History, p43)
The working class is not best served by a loose association of study and agitation groups, but by a party of democratic centralism, with a central committee, regions and branches.
6. All the comrades in the party must share a common proletarian discipline, binding upon all. And it is the duty of everyone to make sure this happens. The “class-conscious worker”, says Lenin, “must learn to demand that the duties of a party member be fulfilled not only by the rank-and-filers, but by the ‘people at the top’ as well.” (Short History, p44)
In short, the Mensheviks of yesterday and today want a party as a kind of club for ‘great thinkers’, unburdened with a lot of tiresome rules binding upon all without exception.
The Bolsheviks of yesterday and today demand a party that not only seeks ideological unity but also learns to consolidate that ideological unity by the material unity of organisation of the proletariat.
Lenin rubs this home in the final paragraph of One Step Forward.
“In its struggle for power, the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital … the proletariat can become, and inevitably will become, an invincible force only when its ideological unification by the principles of Marxism is consolidated by the material unity of an organisation which will weld millions of toilers into an army of the working class.”
1905 and the Third Congress
The eruption of revolution in 1905 created a new situation for the party. The divisions over organisational questions were now supplemented by open splits over questions of political tactics.
Where the Bolsheviks insisted that the bourgeois democratic struggle against Tsarist autocracy must not be left to the gutless bourgeoisie to lead, but must be conducted in a revolutionary manner under the leadership of the advanced proletariat and its party, the Mensheviks took the position that workers should leave leadership in the hands of the liberal bourgeoisie. The revolution was not socialist, so why should the workers get involved in leading it? This left-sounding posture merely served as a cover for the Mensheviks’ own inaction.
If the party was not to betray the trust of the masses, it had to resolve these differences without delay. This required the convening of a Third Congress, but when the Bolsheviks proposed this, the Mensheviks declined, preferring to sit on their hands.
The Bolsheviks then convened the Third Congress unilaterally, in April 1905. Sooner than attend, the Mensheviks responded by calling a congress of their own. The splitters’ congress duly committed the Mensheviks to the tactics of tucking in behind the liberal bourgeoisie, whilst the Third Congress of the RSDLP took on the burden of leadership which the Mensheviks insisted upon shirking.
When the Moscow proletariat began the armed uprising of December 1905, it was no accident that, out of a fighting organisation of about 1,000 combatants, over half were Bolsheviks.
It was not until 1912 that Menshevism was finally so discredited within the party that the Bolsheviks could finally release the party from the sapping influence of their opportunism and indiscipline. However, the lessons learned in those struggles proved invaluable to Bolshevism in the trials that lay ahead, both in making revolution and in defending proletarian dictatorship.
In that crucial year of 1905, when what some had belittled as ‘just’ organisational disagreements erupted into fundamental disagreement as to the whole character of the revolutionary development and the role to be played in it by the proletariat, another influential figure on the revolutionary left was to be found energetically taking the wrong side.
Insofar as he consented to being organised by anybody between 1903 and 1917 (the year which saw him jump ship into the Bolshevik ranks), Leon Trotsky was identified with the Mensheviks. So it was that, whilst the Bolsheviks were leading the Moscow proletariat in revolt in 1905, Trotsky and his fellow-Mensheviks, Khrustalev and Parvus, were using their ascendancy within the St Petersburg Soviet to obstruct plans for the uprising, refusing to arm the workers or bring them into contact with the soldiers of the St Petersburg garrison.
Trotsky and 1917
In fact, one way to gauge the organisational maturity of Bolshevism in finally leading the masses to seize the power in October 1917 is by negative reference to the shallowness of Trotsky’s ‘Lessons of October’. Such is the very revealing approach adopted by Comrade Stalin in his 1924 work, ‘The October Revolution and the tactics of the Russian Bolsheviks’.
Though Trotsky finally joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, it is clear from his analysis of the events of that world-shaking year (in his ‘Lessons of October’) just how poorly he grasped the complex character of Bolshevik leadership.
Having himself, for all those years, resisted being organised within the discipline of a communist party – feeling more at home in the world of cabals, factions and conspiracies – he now proved incapable of understanding how such a party could take on the task of organising the vast revolutionary masses of mother Russia.
Leadership, for Trotsky, was either a question of dazzling an audience with brilliant words, or of issuing military-style orders to the obedient ranks.
Comrade Stalin poured scorn on Trotsky’s ‘explanation’ of Bolshevik tactics as they evolved between April and October 1917. Trotsky talked as if, right from the word go, the Bolsheviks had a ready-made political army – as if it were only a question of conducting a few reconnaissance missions before sending in the masses to bring home the revolutionary victory.
“If one were to listen to Trotsky, one would think that there were only two periods in the history of the preparation for October: the period of reconnaissance and the period of uprising, and that all else comes from the evil one. What was the April demonstration of 1917? ‘The April demonstration, which went more to the ‘Left’ than it should have, was a reconnoitring sortie for the purpose of probing the disposition of the masses and the relations between them and the majority in the Soviets.’ And what was the July demonstration of 1917? In Trotsky’s opinion, ‘this, too, was in fact another, more extensive, reconnaissance at a new and higher phase of the movement.’ Needless to say, the June demonstration of 1917, which was organised at the demand of our party, should, according to Trotsky’s idea, all the more be termed a ‘reconnaissance’.
“This would seem to imply that as early as March 1917 the Bolsheviks had ready a political army of workers and peasants, and that if they did not bring this army into action for an uprising in April, or in June, or in July, but engaged merely in ‘reconnaissance’, it was because, and only because, ‘the information obtained from the reconnaissance’ at the time was unfavourable.
“Needless to say, this oversimplified notion of the political tactics of our party is nothing but a confusion of ordinary military tactics with the revolutionary tactics of the Bolsheviks.
“Actually, all these demonstrations were primarily the result of the spontaneous pressure of the masses, the result of the fact that the indignation of the masses against the war had boiled over and sought an outlet in the streets.
“Actually, the task of the party at that time was to shape and to guide the spontaneously arising demonstrations of the masses along the line of the revolutionary slogans of the Bolsheviks.
“Actually, the Bolsheviks had no political army ready in March 1917, nor could they have had one. The Bolsheviks built up such an army (and had finally built it up by October 1917) only in the course of the struggle and conflicts of the classes between April and October 1917, through the April demonstration, the June and July demonstrations, the elections to the district and city Dumas, the struggle against the Kornilov revolt, and the winning over of the Soviets. A political army is not like a military army. A military command begins a war with an army ready to hand, whereas the party has to create its army in the course of the struggle itself, in the course of class conflicts, as the masses themselves become convinced through their own experience of the correctness of the party’s slogans and policy.”
Conclusion
Comrades and friends, how much less is that ‘political army’ of the revolution ‘ready to hand’ in Britain today – to the dismay of all the would-be drill-sergeants of the revisionist and Trotskyite ‘left’? Where is it to be found?
Let us leave it up to these gentry to search for their ready-made army in the dwindling ranks of the imperialist Labour party. We will do better to recall those prophetic words of Lenin, way back in 1904, in One Step Forward.
“In its struggle for power, the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital … the proletariat can become, and inevitably will become, an invincible force only when its ideological unification by the principles of Marxism is consolidated by the material unity of an organisation which will weld millions of toilers into an army of the working class.”
There can be no better way to celebrate the proletarian revolution of October 1917 than to study for ourselves the real lessons of October, the heroism of the revolutionary masses and the revolutionary maturity of the Bolshevik party that led them.
The firmer these lessons are grasped, the surer can we be that our celebration of Bolshevik history tonight is but a foretaste of the communist future for which we struggle.
Long live October 1917!
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Thank you very much. This is the third time I was invited here and the second time to celebrate and be with you on this special day of the October Revolution. I am honoured and am very happy.
The first time, I was a bit depressed. But for the third time, the second time of the October Revolution, I’m very happy. Happy for the simple reason that capitalism, imperialism, is in a serious general crisis. [Laughter and applause]
I live in a very small country, a small imperialist country. It’s called Belgium. I do remember, and I was watching, the day the Soviet Union was overthrown and the counter-revolution over the Soviet Union [took place]. The news: chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl comes with two books. One, in the left hand, the book of Lenin – Imperialism – and in the right hand, Das Kapital, and then he was laughing and he said ‘The day of Karl Marx and Lenin is finished!’
I knew he was attacking me, he was trying to make me depressed, to take some medicine or whatever [Laughter], but I knew that capitalism cannot survive.
But a lot of people believed it. It is very difficult to teach and to explain to young workers – every worker – women and men in the imperialist countries, about the Soviet Union.
I would like to share with you one aspect which was not mentioned: the achievements of the Soviet Union that were realised after the October Revolution, particularly under the leadership of Lenin and specifically comrade Stalin.
Stalin came from a very small, minute, nationality – Georgia. Is it possible for me to be a prime minister of this country? [Chair interjects: I don’t know, after Obama! Laughter]
The Soviet Union had a huge number of different nationalities. The Tsar, Russian imperialism and colonialism had abused and colonised, killed, eliminated, destroyed a lot of colonised nationalities within the Russian empire. But the Soviet Union could build and solve, for the first time in the history of humanity, the equality, the fraternity of all nationalities to live under one home with a new civilisation which is called the Soviet Union. [Applause] It never had been achieved [before].
We know that nationalism is a creation of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie looks for the market and it fights for the money. That great home, that great civilisation [the Soviet Union] was not right [to the bourgeoisie]. The enemy is not only the one who is outside standing with a gun. The enemy also plays a lot of ideological enemies, infiltrators.
The Soviet Union, after the Bolshevik revolution, the October Revolution, everybody ganged up on the Soviet Union. Fifteen countries, including the United States, invaded the Soviet Union, destroyed everything that had existed there, and killed 10 million Soviet people, which later on, even, they used that killing and famine as if it was Comrade Stalin that had destroyed Ukraine in 1932.
Lenin says in his marvellous work, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, ‘This happens to an individual: you make in life one step forward, you get drunk and you gamble, lose all your money, you divorce, you think too much, then you take two steps backward in order to come back. It happens to a nation, it does happen also to the class.’
The Soviets were invaded. All modern things were destroyed by the counter-revolution. Lenin says: ‘If there is no industry, there is no proletariat, let us concede.’ And that is Leninism, is Marxism, in the era of imperialism.
The tactic of Lenin, by introducing the New Economic Policy, NEP, was a temporary strategic withdrawal. But some crazy ones who are not really correct communists and Bolshevised in the party, believed that the NEP, the New Economic Policy, was in fact the policy forever.
Once Italian fascism took over in 1923/24, German Nazism was menacing, imperialism was in a crisis already by 1929, Comrade Stalin, he said: ‘If we don’t catch up, the gap between us and them is one hundred years, this beast will destroy us. Collectivisation and industrialisation [are what we need].’
When you just take one work of Lenin and you compare in his work, ‘Shame on America for the plight of the negroes’, in that wonderful work of comrade Lenin, the Afro-Americans today, the ex-slaves in the south, their literacy grade was higher than the Russian peasantry in 1918. When you compare Russia, the Soviet Union, in 1918, there was a 400-year gap between Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Have you ever seen a civilisation who closed the gap in eight years’ time? [Applause]
The Soviet people, they don’t exist anymore. Now they have become Chechens, Georgians, fighting one another one – tribes.
The richest man in Belgium is not a Belgian today; he’s a thief from Kazakhstan. [Laughter] Somalis, who speak one language, have one psychological make-up, one geographical territory, one religion, Islam, and even from Islam, sunni, and from sunni, one line, Maliki – they are now, today, clans and warlords, according to the imperialist media.
My country, Ethiopia, a poor country, or a country with a poor people but rich resources, sent troops when I was a young boy going to school. There was an Ethiopian musician who was singing about Ethiopian soldiers who were being brought in a train to go and fight on the American side in Korea. They died for nothing.
The nationality issues, the equality of people, it can only be solved under the Soviet type of system.
We know that most of our countries are multinational. Today, when you look in Africa, the imperialist media will tell you tribe X against Z, Z against W, W against this, while inciting and creating a proxy war. But one thing: they [the Africans] like a resistance that can shatter the American imperialist dream.
Afghani people resisting the unity of Nato provided the Pakistani people with the correct anti-imperialist leadership against these puppets who are trying to drag 140 million people of Pakistan into a serious problem.
Imperialism is seriously wounded. Comrade Harpal Brar is one of my teachers in one of his eloquent, wonderful works on ‘Capitalism and immigration’ in imperialist countries.
They don’t have children. In the city where I live, 100,000 people live, 30 percent of the population are pensioners. There are no children. In Spain, Italy [the same], by 2040, Russia’s [population] will be 30 percent reduced, Ukraine 40 percent. Not because people don’t won’t to have children, but because it has become impossible for young people to have a job, to have a decent shelter, they have to work flexible hours, they have temporary contracts.
I think that it’s not difficult; I wish I knew Russian to study. They have already now 18 years, the imperialist bourgeoisie, they have all the finest Soviet history, [but] they couldn’t even publish where are the 30 million gulags; they couldn’t produce even a film about it.
They used to inculcate us day and night that there was a famine in Ukraine, a deliberate famine and 10 million Ukrainians dead. There is no [evidence] today [of] that.
Young people in the imperialist countries have to be educated. I am happy for the young one, when she spoke, honest and decent. We, the older ones, we have to have the patience and we have to do all the maximum to win our young generation to realise our defeat and bring, as the Arabs say, for every oppressor class there is a day, and that day is the October Revolution. [Applause]
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Thank you Comrade Harpal, and I’d like to thank the CPGB-ML for organising this great event.
People have stopped celebrating October it seems to me, and I think it very important to do so. And the best way to do so is to try and understand what socialism is about.
You hear this over and over again: Marxism is ‘economic reductionism’, Marxism is ‘economic determinism’, but actually, Marxism points to the one thing that is extremely important, which is that the economy really does determine and condition a lot of what goes on in society. Which is why today, to celebrate October, I’ve decided to talk a little bit about socialist economics in comparison with capitalist economics.
Now, the minute you mention socialism, you hear this tape running in your mind like Joti said, especially for our generation: socialism is equal to government, which is equal to lack of incentive, which is equal to inefficient; capitalism is equal to greed, profit motive, selfish motive and therefore it creates incentives for growth and it is equal to innovation.
This is the standard formula you get when you begin to study economics in O-levels and A-levels and it continues through university on to your PhD and so on and so forth. But in fact this is a load of, pardon the expression, BS. [Laughter]
The fact of the matter is that innovation, which is the bedrock of what drives the economy, does not occur because somebody or other sitting in their backyard decides to split an atom; clearly, you’d recognise that an atom cannot be split in your backyard!
Scientific innovation is really the product of research and development organisations, and the dominant research and development organisations in the world today, whether you look at the most advanced capitalist society or you look in the Soviet Union or anywhere else, you will discover that they are all funded by the government. None of them are under private control, whether you look at Nasa or anything else.
And the enormous spin-off of what we call the second scientific and technical revolution, the second industrial revolution, the creation of satellite technology, fibre-optics, [micro]chips, etc, etc that are used in computers and so many other things that we use in consumer electronics and so on today – those are all spin-offs of science technology that was created through Nasa and through other government-sponsored research and development organisations.
So this great worship at the altar of innovation is actually all occurring through government spending anyway. And this is something that is just obscured from everyone’s view.
The thing about socialist and capitalist economics is that there’s an interesting paradox. Everyone knows that the Soviet Union managed to defeat the largest army assembled in its day, which had the combined economic power of all of continental Europe behind it; that is, the fascist armies Germany, Italy and so many other countries. They defeated them all – one single country, one socialist economy with several republics within it – and then after that, and the devastation caused, in which 20-25 million people lost their lives in the Soviet Union and something like 70 percent of industry was wiped out, they rebuilt it all and became another superpower.
If I go back into history, they went through World War I, they went through a civil war, and each time, that society was entirely destroyed and then once again they were a superpower. How did they accomplish these fabulous miracles?
And then, suddenly we discover, in the 1970s and 80s, Gorbachev comes along and says ‘The Soviet Union is in crisis’. Why was the Soviet Union in crisis? Because, according to Gorbachev, it was no longer catching up with the West at the same rate as it was doing. It’s still catching up with the West, but it’s just not catching up with the West as fast as it was catching up with the West before. That was the big crisis.
Let’s accept Gorbachev for now. Why did the Soviet Union gradually slow down in terms of its economic development and growth?
For this, we have to go back to the reason why it grew so rapidly.
There was a time when the bourgeoisie required the mobilisation of workers and peasants; they made everything quite simple and said: ‘This is what we need; we need to get rid of that king, so come join us, we’ll get freedom, we’ll get democracy, come join us.’
Now is not that time. Now is the time that the bourgeoisie wants to make everything complicated. They don’t want to explain things to workers and peasants because they don’t want workers and peasants to be mobilised, and I can find no better example of this than in the field of economics, in which every little thing is completely obscured, abstracted into various mathematical formulas from which you can’t get your head out of [Laughter], so you don’t understand anything that’s going on.
Actual economics is really simple, and people just like making it very complicated. Even Marx’s Capital is actually very easy to understand. The language is difficult; he writes in German, his sentences go on for three pages [Laughter] – that’s what makes it hard! – but the concepts themselves are actually not hard at all to understand.
What drives growth? That’s the central thing that I want to get at today. What drives growth, ie, productivity, the capacity of society to produce more and more, is the fact that humanity creates, through social labour (all labour is social) implements, tools and machines that help humanity mobilise nature in a manner that is beneficial to humanity. That’s economic growth in a nutshell.
It’s not very complicated, is it? It’s just tools. It’s just machines. The development of tools and machines is economic development.
Now the thing about capitalism is that the very process that develops tools and machines and introduces them into the economy simultaneously displaces scores and scores, sometimes millions of workers from the economy, because machines take the place of workers, and unless new investment comes in, more and more workers will be displaced by machines.
So this means that the very process which increases the capacity of society to grow simultaneously decreases the capacity of society to purchase on the market what has been produced. And this causes a recurrent economic crisis.
Every time you go through the introduction of new machines into society, new technology into society, and you displace hundreds and thousands of people from the market, what is the result? There is a slump in demand and capitalists can’t sell their commodities, and as a result, you see economic crisis such as the one you’re witnessing today.
So how does socialism work? In socialism, in fact in every society, whether it’s capitalism or socialism, a certain percentage of your revenue or your ability to work (which is one and the same thing), is reserved for reinvestment into the creation of machines.
So, for instance, if we were one society [indicates audience in hall], we could say that these 10 people will be responsible for producing new machines that the other 90 people will be using.
In capitalism, the way that we determine whether it’s going to be 10 people or 20 or 50 that are going to be producing these machines is through the market mechanism of profit. And that is, that all the capitalists want to earn as much profit as they want to, so they will only build machines, and they will only build the type of machines, which earn them profit. That’s the bottom line. They will not build machines that will help people; they will build machines that will earn them profit.
So it is what Marx called the normalisation of the rate of profit (the equalisation of the rate of profit Adam Smith also talked about), which determines where that savings and reinvestment is going to go.
But in socialism, you don’t have to do it through the market; you can do it through a central plan. We can all get together and we can decide: ‘Ok, what we want to do, friends, in order to develop our society, is to increase the number of enterprises that are producing machines that are going to boost the productivity of our society.’
This is what Stalin called, very briefly and simply, the production of the means of production.
So the purpose of a planned economy is to increase the production of the means of production. Just think about it, it’s actually quite intuitive. Let’s say that these 10 people here were producing tractors and the rest of us were all peasants and were working the fields. Now, in a capitalist economy those 10 people would only produce enough tractors that they can sell them at a profit and that is what is going to determine how many tractors are going to be produced, when they are produced and how they are sold.
If we now suddenly overthrow the capitalist government and we have a socialist society, we can decide it’s not going to be 10 people that are going to be producing tractors, why not get all these 50 people on this side of the room to produce tractors. In fact, let’s forget about producing these tractors for a profit, for a profit we could maybe produce 50 tractors a year, now we are going to produce 150 tractors a year. Moreover, we are just going to give them out for free. Anyone that organises a collective farm can get a tractor.
Now, for all the capitalist economists, that doesn’t make any sense, they’re asking: ‘Why are you running all your tractor factories at a loss? You’re not making a profit! There’s no incentive, it’s all coming apart! Ah, the world is falling!’ [Laughter]
But think about it from the view of the entire economy. When there were only 50 tractors produced, or whatever the number it was that I spoke about earlier, the growth out of 50 tractors was going to be, say, 100 percent. Now that there are going to be 150 or 200 tractors, the growth is going to be three or four times that amount. Because the tractors are going into the fields and they are going to produce that much more. It’s really that simple.
So, what may be an economic loss to the individual enterprise producing the means of production is in fact of enormous economic benefit to the economy as a whole. That is why, during times of war, even capitalist governments decide to take industries, nationalise them, run them at a loss and ensure that thing is produced, that the thing that is required is produced in sufficient quantity. Mostly I am referring to the war industry, which is never run at a profit but run under a planned economy.
So, this is how the Soviet Union managed to perform its economic miracles. If you read Stalin’s great book Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, he says that the way to build socialism is to take those industries that are producing consumer items, take the extra revenue from those and cross-subsidise those industries that are producing machines, producing the means of production. And when those means of production go back to the consumer industries, everything is just going to grow.
And that is exactly how it performed their economic miracles.
In other words, sector A industries, the ones that are producing consumer goods, cross-subsidise the sector B industries, the ones that are producing the means of production. It’s just that simple, comrades.
With respect to China, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, the third world, there is a consistent problem of underdevelopment. It could be just that simple as well, if we could understand that we need to cross-subsidise those industries that have positive growth. In order to do that, you need a planned economy.
What happened in the Soviet Union with the rise of opportunism, what Mao Zedong calls modern revisionism, was that, somehow or other, these really important aspects of a socialist planned economy were thrown overboard. Instead, in their place was introduced the notion that every individual enterprise, not the economy as a whole but every individual enterprise, must run at a profit.
These were called the Lieberman reforms in 1965. Ninety thousand industrial units of the Soviet Union from the main industrial units, with the exception of the military, were under this plan reorganised. They were separated from the central plan, and the principles upon which they were reorganised were that the enterprise, instead of the plan, which was the case previously, would be the basic unit of the socialist economy.
In this, they said, in the new economy, the increased the role of profits increased the ‘real incentives’, which basically amounted to nothing other than increasing the incentives of mangers, middle men and technical managerial intelligentsia.
They said that development funds would no longer be supplied by the Gosplan, by the central bank, by this method of cross-subsidisation, but should be supplied either through loans, credit, or should be generated by the enterprises themselves. They thought that by increasing the rights of factory managers, they could somehow incentivise these factories to produce more.
In fact, they did the very opposite. They slowed down their own economic growth, gradually, even though the Soviet Union still grew at a phenomenal rate, but they slowed it down. They fractured up their social revenue into 90,000 little parts instead of centralising it all and utilising economies of scale, centralising all that scientific knowledge, centralising that revenue, utilising economies of scale to build bigger and better things.
They fractured their social revenue into 90,000 units, which is the number of enterprises that they had at that time, and, as a result, the economy slowed down. And when the economy slowed down, that slowing down of the economy ironically was used by what I would call liquidationists within the party, trying to destroy the party, to further justify the break-up of the Soviet Union, the break-up of socialism, the destruction of the planned economy and the eventual destruction of the soviet state.
The lesson to be learnt is, well, first of all, let’s call things by their right names. The Lieberman reforms were a step back toward capitalism, although they were at the time called a step toward socialism.
Every single step back from socialism since the 1950s has been covered up as a step forward towards socialism. Whether that is the new left, the Frankfurt school of thought, whether that is within the communist party, whether it is post-modernism, post-structuralism, all these things, all this ‘great advance’ is actually a step backwards. It’s always undertaken, because of the dominance of Marxism over the entire intellectual world, it’s always been justified as an ‘advance’.
This retreat, which caused the slow-down in the economy, was used as further justification for the complete break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
We must learn from this history and we must conduct a ruthless ideological war against those people, those trends, those political ideas that pretend to be part of the working-class movement, but are actually representatives of ruling-class ideas within the working class.
Thank you very much. [Applause]
Reply to Taimur’s speech by Harpal Brar (CPGB-ML)
Precisely because these reforms were a step backwards to capitalism, rather than a step forward in the direction of what Khrushchev used to call the ‘higher stage of communism’, which they were going to achieve within 15 years, that’s why they malign the central planning during Stalin’s period of time by some lured stories.
If you read those stories, it sounded as though Stalin had steel for breakfast, more steel for lunch and even more steel for evening meals. And this because he was the evil-minded dictator who wanted to starve Soviet people of articles of consumption.
What people don’t realise is, as Taimur has told us, you can’t even actually expand on a large scale the production of the articles of consumption unless you’ve got the means of production to produce it. What’s more, the machines that produce those means of production, particularly machine-building industry, metallurgical industries, chemical industries, etc. You need all those.
Everything was on track in the Soviet Union, which is precisely why, between 1928 and 1941, June 1941, when the Soviet Union was attacked, her economy has actually gone up by ten times. After the devastating war, the Soviet Union rehabilitated its economy by 1948. From the middle of 1945 to the end of 1948 they had rehabilitated production to the pre-war level.
Then from 1948-51, the Soviet Economy had doubled in size again. Now, the stupid idea is that innovation took place in the Soviet Union because Stalin took a gun and said to their scientist: ‘You will produce this.’ Try and take a gun elsewhere! Everyone knows that Tsarist Russia was not bad at using guns. Why did innovation not come to Tsarist Russia and why to Soviet Russia? Precisely because of the collective efforts where people helped each other in solving the problems.
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The video of this speech can be found at the CPGB-ML YouTube page.
Dear comrades, our ambassador to the UK was very happy to receive the invitation to this meeting to celebrate the October Revolution organised by the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), and he asked me to be here on his behalf.
We are very happy to have a meeting with our beloved comrades today. This is the first time that I have joined a meeting like this in London. I’ve stayed in London for three years, but we didn’t have much chance to get in touch with each other, so I’m very happy to be here with all of you. [Applause]
The Vietnamese people, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam, at this moment are carrying out the policies of Doi Moi, which means ‘change’, in order to build up the country after a very long war.
Now we have achieved quite a lot of development, economically as well as socially. We have worked with many countries in order to attract foreign investment into the country in order to build up a strong economy and satisfy the needs of our people.
Some of you may know that in March this year Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung paid a visit to the UK, as well as Germany and Ireland. The connection between the UK and Vietnam is going well and is very active.
The October Revolution was, as Harpal just said, a unique revolution in the world. It opened a new era for the working class. Every year in our country, we always organise celebrations of the October Revolution and working people join in, in order to remember that very special revolution that opened a new era for our time; that opened the way for the working class to grow up and take the power and to build up an ideal society all over the world.
Thank you very much. [Applause]
Reply to Vietnamese comrade by Harpal Brar (CPGB-ML)
Thank you very much for coming and delivering this message on behalf of his Excellency the Ambassador for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. We are very pleased to see you.
I am, perhaps, too young to remember anything about the Chinese Revolution, but I am old enough to remember about the Vietnamese Revolution.
When I came to this country, the Vietnam war was at its height, and I gained my political education to your country’s heroic efforts in defending your sovereignty and fighting for an advance forward. I was very much impressed, as indeed were all the comrades in our party, by what you have contributed by way of the defeat of Japanese imperialism, French imperialism and American imperialism, and we grew up shouting the name of Uncle Ho all over the place, and I want you to remember that. [Applause. Comrade Phong stands up to shake Comrade Brar’s hand]
Whether we have met before or not, I want you to take this message: we have always been friends of the Vietnamese people, and of their revolutionary struggle. We wish you well in improving the lives of your people, who fought for 40-odd years against various imperialisms, and perhaps much longer, ever since the colonisation of Indochina.
What you are doing for your people has our support; we hope that you are able to build a very prosperous society for the Vietnamese people, where every man and woman can stand with his or her head held high and be the members of a free society, rather than being subjected to oppression and exploitation by imperialism.
We are very, very pleased [to see you here]; Vietnam for us – at least for me – has a very special place, so let us not lose this contact; I hope we will be meeting each other again soon.
Thank you very much. [Applause]
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Date: Saturday 3 January, 6.00 pm
Time: 6.00 pm
Venue: The meeting room above the Lucas Arms, 245a Gray’s Inn Road, WC1X 8QY
(near Kings Cross)
Israel is trying to wipe out the Palestinian people. It claims to be acting in self-defence; it says it has a duty to defend its population from rocket attacks. Do you know how many people have died as a result of Qassam rocket attacks in the last seven years? 15! Meanwhile, hundreds of Gazans have been killed in the last few days alone.
Not happy with the democratic choice of the Palestinian people, Israel is seeking regime change in Gaza (having already effected regime change in the West Bank). Foreign Minister Livni has clearly stated that it is her “strategic objective to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza”.
If Israel genuinely wanted to stop the Qassam rocket attacks, it could have done so very easily by complying with the terms of the ceasefire, under which it was supposed to lift the blockade against Gaza in order to end the humanitarian crisis there. It totally failed to respect those terms, and therefore should not be surprised that the ceasefire has collapsed.
The right to resist occupation is enshrined in international law, and the Palestinian military resistance to Israeli occupation is legitimate and laudable. We reiterate the call of Khaled Meshaal, leader of Hamas, for a renewed intifada against Israel. Only through the intensification of the Palestinian resistance will Israel be forced to recognise the right of the Palestinians to freedom from colonial occupation.
Come to this urgent meeting, including a speaker arrested at picket of Israeli Embassy, join the discussion and form part of a growing movement in the imperialist countries against imperialist aggression.
Download leaflet (PDF)
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The CPGB-ML condemns the massacre that is currently being perpetrated against the people of Gaza by the Israeli state. We join with all progressive and freedom-loving people around the world in calling for the immediate cessation of Israel’s bomb attacks, and we state our unreserved support for all Palestinian groups involved in Gaza’s defence.
Over the last two days, nearly 300 Gazans have been killed in air raids, with up to 700 others wounded. Saturday (27 December) was the single deadliest day in Gaza since the 1967 war.
Predictably, Israel has claimed that its actions are a legitimate response to Palestinian rocket attacks since the collapse of the ceasefire last week – Israel says militants have fired 110 rockets into Israel over the last few days. This sentiment has been implicitly (and in some cases explicitly) backed by the self-appointed ‘international community’. As hi-tech bombs were raining down on Palestinian civilians, that seasoned stooge Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to the UN, had the audacity to claim that “the way forward from here is for rocket attacks against Israel to stop, for all violence to end”.
What a joke! Imagine the outcry in the imperialist press if 300 supporters of the ‘Movement for Democratic Change’ were killed by Zimbabwean state forces – the various bourgeois scribblers would be lining up to condemn Zimbabwe, and the plans for a commemoratory rock concert at Wembley Stadium would be well under way.
As we have said before, one cannot equate the violence of the oppressed with the violence of the oppressors. Israel is not under siege; it is not an occupied country; its citizens (at least its jewish citizens) are not denied their basic human rights; its water, electricity and medical supplies have not been cut off; it is not in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, Gaza has over the last two years been effectively turned into a giant concentration camp. Gazans cannot move in or out of their country; the supply of food, electricity, water and medicines has been cut off; frequent Israeli bombing raids take place; the unemployment rate exceeds 80 percent and the people are living a miserable existence well below the poverty line.
Are the Palestinian people expected to simply give up their right to existence? The right to resist occupation is enshrined in international law, and the Palestinian military resistance to Israeli occupation is legitimate and laudable.
Still, one does not need to accept the legitimacy of the Palestinian rocket attacks in order to condemn the massacre that is taking place in Gaza. According to detailed information released by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a grand total of 15 Israelis have died as a result of Qassam rocket attacks since these were first fired over seven years ago (in October 2001). Meanwhile, close to a thousand Gazans have been killed in Israeli military raids this year alone. These lopsided figures alone are enough to give lie to Israel’s claim that it is simply protecting its citizens from rocket attacks.
Israel’s agenda is clear enough: not happy with the democratic choice of the Palestinian people, it is seeking regime change in Gaza (having already effected regime change in the West Bank). Foreign Minister Livni said in an interview with the BBC: “We took Hamas by surprise, we targeted Hamas headquarters, so this is the beginning of a successful operation, I hope, but the idea is to change realities on the ground.”
Recently, Ms Livni told a meeting of the Kadima party that she would topple Hamas if she was elected prime minister in the coming general election, saying: “The state of Israel, and a government under me, will make it a strategic objective to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza. The means for doing this should be military, economic and diplomatic.” It would be difficult to be clearer than that.
If Israel genuinely wanted to stop the Qassam rocket attacks, it could have done so very easily by complying with the terms of the ceasefire, under which it was supposed to lift the blockade against Gaza in order to end the humanitarian crisis there. It totally failed to respect those terms, and therefore should not be surprised that the ceasefire has collapsed. As has happened many times before, Israel has violated the terms of a ceasefire and used the Palestinian response to ‘justify’ the unjustifiable.
We reiterate the call of Khaled Meshaal, leader of Hamas, for a renewed intifada against Israel. Only through the intensification of the Palestinian resistance will Israel be forced to recognise the right of the Palestinians to freedom from colonial occupation.
NB. While Israel’s crimes are being ignored, 10 people protesting outside the Israeli Embassy in London have been arrested by police under trumped-up charges (our party comrade, who is among those arrested, is being charged with “threatening words and behaviour”). We call for the immediate release of these ten people, whose only ‘crime’ is demonstrating their support for, and sympathy with, the people of Gaza.
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From Venezuela’s US embassy, via Stephen Gowans
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela – Ministry of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs – Statement
Emergency Health Situation in the Republic of Zimbabwe
The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, on behalf of the Venezuelan people, expresses its solidarity with the people of the Republic of Zimbabwe during this public health crisis caused by a cholera epidemic that is hitting this brother country in southern Africa. Likewise, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela manifests its firm rejection of the use of this emergency situation by outside factors to politically destabilize Zimbabwe, its government, and the twisting of national dialogue and regional mediation taking place in this Republic for a Zimbabwean agreement.
The people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, upset over the 1,111 victims of cholera and nearly 20,000 cases of infected people, offer their condolences to affected families, and expresses their solidarity during this difficult time.
President Hugo Chávez, on behalf of the Venezuelan people, calls upon the international community to contribute medicine and doctors to control the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. He also manifests his solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe, hopes this difficult situation will be overcome, and expresses his support for the independent government of Zimbabwe in its efforts for stability and peace in this brother country of Africa.
Ministry of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs, Unofficial translation by the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Press Office / December 19, 2008
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In our country, in the USSR, the workers have long forgotten unemployment. Some three years ago we had about 1.5 million unemployed. It is already two years now since unemployment was completely abolished. And in these two years the workers have already forgotten about unemployment, about its burden and its horrors. Look at the capitalist countries: what horrors result there from unemployment! There are now no less than 30-40 million unemployed in those countries. Who are these people? Usually it is said of them that they are “down and out.”
Every day they try to get work, seek work, are prepared to accept almost any conditions of work, but they are not given work, because they are “superfluous.” And this is taking place at a time when vast quantities of goods and produce are being wasted to satisfy the caprices of the favourites of fortune, the scions of the capitalists and landlords.
The unemployed are refused food because they have no money with which to pay for it; they are refused shelter because they have no money with which to pay rent. How and where do they live? They live on the miserable crumbs from the rich man’s table; by raking refuse bins, where they find decayed scraps of food; they live in the slums of big cities, and more often in hovels outside the towns, hastily put up by the unemployed out of packing cases and the bark of trees. But this is not all. It is not only the unemployed who suffer as a result of unemployment. The employed workers, too, suffer as a result of it. They suffer because the presence of a large number of unemployed makes their position in industry insecure, makes them uncertain about their future. Today they are employed, but they are not sure that when they wake up tomorrow they will not find themselves discharged.
(The Results of the First Five-Year Plan, Problems of Leninism, 1933)
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Following Obama’s speech, on May 23 this year, to the Cuban American National Foundation established by Ronald Reagan, I wrote a reflection entitled “The Empire’s Hypocritical Policy”. It was dated on the 25th of the same month.
In that Reflection I quoted his exact words to the Miami annexationists: “[…] together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba; this is my word and my commitment […] It’s time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime. […] I will maintain the embargo.”
I then offered several arguments and unethical examples of the general behavior of the Presidents who preceded the one who would be elected to that position on the November 4 elections. I literally wrote:
“I find myself forced to raise various sensitive questions:
- Is it right for the President of the United States to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may be?
- Is it ethical for the President of the United States to order the torture of other human beings?
- Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the United States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet?
- Is an Adjustment Act, applied as punishment on only one country, Cuba, in order to destabilize it, good and honorable, even when it costs innocent children and mothers their lives? If it is good, why is this right not automatically granted to Haitians, Dominicans, and other peoples of the Caribbean, and why isn’t the same Act applied to Mexicans and people from Central and South America, who die like flies against the Mexican border wall or in the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific?
- Can the United States do without immigrants, who grow vegetables, fruits, almonds and other delicacies for Americans? Who would sweep their streets, work as servants in their homes or do the worst and lowest-paid jobs?
- Are crackdowns on illegal residents fair, even as they affect children born in the United States?
- Are the brain-drain and the continuous theft of the best scientific and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and justifiable?
- You state, as I pointed out at the beginning of this reflection, that your country had long ago warned European powers that it would not tolerate any intervention in the hemisphere, reiterating that this right be respected while demanding the right to intervene anywhere in the world with the aid of hundreds of military bases and naval, aerial and spatial forces distributed across the planet. I ask: is that the way in which the United States expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and human rights?
- Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks on sixty or more dark corners of the world, as Bush calls them, whatever the pretext may be?
- Is it honorable and sound to invest millions upon millions of dollars in the military industrial complex, to produce weapons that can destroy life on earth several times over?”
I could have included several other issues.
Despite the caustic questions, I was not unkind to the African American candidate. I perceived he had greater capacity and command of the art of politics than his adversaries, not only in the opposing party but in his own, too.
Last week, the American President-elect Barack Obama announced his Economic Recovery Program.
Monday, December 1st, he introduced his National Security and Foreign Policy teams.
“Vice President-elect Biden and I are pleased to announce our national security team […] old conflicts remain unresolved, and newly assertive powers have put strains on the international system. The spread of nuclear weapons raises the peril that the world’s deadliest technology could fall into dangerous hands. Our dependence on foreign oil empowers authoritarian governments and endangers our planet.”
“…our economic power must sustain our military strength, our diplomatic leverage, and our global leadership.”
“We will renew old alliances and forge new and enduring partnerships […] American values are America’s greatest export to the world.”
“…the team that we have assembled here today is uniquely suited to do just that.”
“…these men and women represent all of those elements of American power […] they have served in uniform and as diplomats […] they share my pragmatism about the use of power, and my sense of purpose about America’s role as a leader in the world.”
“I have known Hillary Clinton…,” he says.
I am mindful of the fact that she was President-elect Barack Obama’s rival and the wife of President Clinton, who signed the extraterritorial Torricelli and Helms Burton Acts against Cuba. During the presidential race she committed herself with these laws and with the economic blockade. I am not complaining, I am simply stating it for the record.
“I am proud that she will be our next Secretary of State,” said Obama. “[she] will command respect in every capitol; and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world. Hillary’s appointment is a sign to friend and foe of the seriousness of my commitment…”
“At a time when we face an unprecedented transition amidst two wars, I have asked Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of Defense…”
“[…] I will be giving Secretary Gates and our military a new mission as soon as I take office: responsibly ending the war in Iraq through a successful transition to Iraqi control.”
It strikes me that Gates is a Republican, not a Democrat. He is the only one who has been Defense Secretary and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, that is, he has occupied these positions under both Democratic and Republican Administrations. Gates, who is aware of his popularity, has said that first made sure that the President-elect was choosing him for as long as necessary.
On the other hand, while Condoleezza Rice was traveling to India and Pakistan under Bush’s instructions to mediate in the tense relations between these two countries, two days ago, the minister of Defense from Brazil gave the green light to a Brazilian company to manufacture MAR-1 missiles, but instead of one a month, as it had been the case until now, it will produce five every month. One hundred of these missiles will be sold to Pakistan at an estimated cost of 85 million euros.
In a public statement, the minister said that “these missiles that can be attached to planes have been designed to locate ground radars. They allow the effective monitoring of both the ground and air space.”
As for Obama, he continued unflappable his Monday statement: “And going forward, we will continue to make the investments necessary to strengthen our military and increase our ground forces to defeat the threats of the 21st century.”
On Janet Napolitano, he indicated: “[she] offers the experience and executive skill that we need in the next Secretary of Homeland Security…”
“Janet assumes this critical role having learned the lessons – some of them painful – of the last several years, from 9/11 to Katrina […] She understands as well as anyone the danger of an insecure border. And she will be a leader who can reform a sprawling Department while safeguarding our homeland.”
This familiar figure had been appointed a District Attorney in Arizona by Clinton in 1993, and then promoted to State Attorney General in 1998. Later on, in 2002, she became a Democratic Party candidate and then governor of that bordering state which is the most common incoming route used by illegal immigrants. She was elected governor in 2006.
About Susan Elizabeth Rice, he said: “Susan knows that the global challenges we face demand global institutions that work… We need the UN to be more effective as a venue for collective action – against terror and proliferation; climate change and genocide; poverty and disease.”
On National Security Advisor James Jones he said: “[…] I am convinced that General James Jones is uniquely suited to be a strong and skilled National Security Advisor. Generations of Joneses have served heroically on the battlefield – from the beaches of Tarawa in World War II, to Foxtrot Ridge in Vietnam. Jim’s Silver Star is a proud part of that legacy […] He has commanded a platoon in battle, served as Supreme Allied Commander in a time of war, (he means NATO and the Gulf War) and worked on behalf of peace in the Middle East.”
“Jim is focused on the threats of today and the future. He understands the connection between energy and national security, and has worked on the frontlines of global instability – from Kosovo to northern Iraq to Afghanistan.”
“He will advise me and work effectively to integrate our efforts
across the government, so that we are effectively using all elements of American power to defeat unconventional threats and promote our values.”
“I am confident that this is the team that we need to make a new beginning for American national security.”
Obama is somebody we can talk to anywhere he wishes since we do not preach violence or war. He should me reminded, though, that the stick and carrot doctrine will have no place in our country.
None of the phrases in his latest speech shows any element of response to the questions I raised last May 25, just six months ago.
I will not say now that Obama is any less smart. On the contrary, he is showing the mental faculties that enabled me to see and compare his capacity with that of his mediocre adversary, John McCain, who was almost rewarded for his “exploits” merely due to the traditions of the American society. If it had not been for the economic crisis, television and the Internet, Obama would not have won the elections against the omnipotent racism. It also helped that he studied first in the University of Columbia, where he graduated in Political Sciences, and then in Harvard where he graduated as a lawyer. This enabled him to become a member of the modestly rich class with only several million dollars. He is certainly not Abraham Lincoln, nor are these times similar to those. That society is today a consumer society where the saving habits have been lost while the spending habit has multiplied.
Somebody had to offer a calm and serene response even though this will have to swim up the powerful stream of hopes raised by Obama in the international public opinion.
I only have two more press dispatches left to analyze. They all carry news from everywhere. I have estimated that only the United States will be spending in this economic crisis over $6 trillion in paper money, an amount that can only be assessed by the rest of the peoples of the world with their sweat and hunger, their suffering and blood.
Our principles are the same as those of Baraguá. The empire should know that our Homeland can be turned to dust but the sovereign rights of the Cuban people are not negotiable.
Fidel Castro Ruz
December 4, 2008
5:28p.m.
